| Clowning Around ($ 0.99, Trial) | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Chromatic (Free) | ||||||||||||||||||
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| WhatsApp (Free) | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Monster Stack (Free) | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Vevo (Free) [New+Cool] | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Orientle (Free) [New+Cool] | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Angry Birds ($ 2.99, Trial) | ||
| At last, after a series of (good) clones including Pandas vs. Ninjas and Chicks’n’Vixens, the original Angry Birds comes to close the Must Have Windows Phone 7 Games for this summer.
Windows Phone 7 is a complete platform, now that Angry Birds is available for it. |
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| The king of the casual games is a symbol for the Windows Phone 7 and its App Marketplace to have reached the first stage of maturity. After the good news about the Mango features that analysts predict will make WP7 a contender to iOS and Android, now the WP7 marketplace has the games that people want to play, and the number one is still Angry Birds.
If you have lived on another planet for a year and a half or so, Angry Birds is a physics game where you sling birds with your finger trying to take down green pigs who stole the birds’ eggs. |
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| The game is fun, of course, and challenging: there are multiple types of birds that work best with the different materials the pigs use to build their defense fortress. Black birds explode and work well with stone; blue birds multiply in the air and work well with glass, yellow birds work well with wood and so on..
As you progress through the levels your skills are tested: aim and release the sling correctly, use the right bird for the right job and crumble the card castle that the pigs build to defend themselves. |
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| There is a lot of gameplay here, so the $ 2.99 price tag is not out of this world, even if the game costs less on other platforms.
Right after the initial introductory levels, the things get serious quickly: passing a level becomes a precision and tactics challenge (well, sometimes it’s just luck). If you are then going for all the achievements and try to get 3 stars in all stages, things become really hard – it will likely take tens of hours to get all the 3 stars achievements. |
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| Verdict (version reviewed: 1.0.0.0) | ||
| Yes, Angry Birds celebrity is overwhelming and excessive, but the game is fun, trying and the value is definitely there. Graphics are hilarious and sounds exhilarating.
If you played it on other platforms you might want to replay and go for the Xbox Live Achievements and the friends leaderboard – show your friends how good you are at throwing birds! |
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| Penguin (Free) [New+Cool] | |||||||||||||||||
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| Plants Vs. Zombies ($ 4.99, Trial) | ||
 One of the most anticipated games of the Must Have Xbox Live Games on Windows Phone 7 is Plants Versus Zombies and is finally here. Get ready to fight hordes of funny zombies attacking your green WP7 lawn and fight back with peas, cherries and potatoes! |
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| PvZ is just a fantastic game: part strategy, part tower defense, and most of all F-U-N.
Zombies are attacking your house! You defend your turf planting vegetables that can throw pea-bullets to the zombies taking them down as they advance on your lawn. You gather resources in terms of solar energy that either drops from the sky or is generated by sunflowers, then you can spend it to acquire more plants. Different types of zombies and plants give a great variety to the game: attackers range from the plain undead to the pole vault jumper to the Michael Jackson zombie. A total of 26 types of zombies with different characteristics will attack and require adjustments in your defense tactics. Defenders range from peashooters to cherry bombs to potato mines. Use 49 perennial types to defend your doorstep: select the right tactic in every wave or zombies will soon knock on your door! |
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| The game is frenetic, at the beginning of the levels, you barely have the time to collect the sun rays that you have to spend them immediately; then in the middle of the level unfolding you need to save resources for the grand finale: a huge wave of zombies approaches at the end of each level: you better get ready!
Everything is made with great humor and style: the art has an awesome ironic aura, the zombie animations, movements and explosions are simply hilarious. Even achievements and leaderboards have the ironic style of the game. PvZ has become so iconic that Pop Cap has received 41 offers for a movie made with its style. |
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| The experience is completed by different game modes and mini games: Adventure is the main story and when you are done, 20 mini-games, puzzle mode and Zen Garden mode open up to give you even more fun time. PvZ is definitely one of the WP7 Xbox Live Games that provide the best value for your money, and we think that at $ 4.99 is a great price – you will get tons of fun gameplay for 5 bucks. | ||
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| Verdict (version reviewed: 1.0.0.0) | ||
| PvZ is available on every system on the planet (Xbox, PS, DS, iOS, Android, PC and Mac) and is finally available for our enjoyment on your WP7 phone of choice – well, make good use of it and enjoy every minute! | ||
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| USA Today (Free) [Best Rated] | ||||||||||||||||||
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| geoDefense ($ 2.99, Trial) |
| The Windows Phone 7 Must Have series of Xbox Live Games continues this week with geoDefense. This is a tower defense game, as the title suggests, and possibly the best so far on WP7. We already reviewed two great tower defense games: Next War and Big Guns. geoDefense is the perfect balance between the two: fast but not too short; intelligent but not boring; requiring the right time and effort to beat its levels. |
| The game offers 28 levels: 10 easy, 14 medium and 14 hard. The goal is to kill all the creeps with your towers before they get to your base and take a life away from you – once all the lives are lost, game over!
There are five tower types: Blaster (your typical cannon tower), Laser (goes through enemies, good to blast creeps in a row), Missile (area bomb), Shock (slows down creeps) and Vortex (builds up a large attack from dead creeps). Each tower can be upgraded up to seven times to get to their maximum power. There is a lot of game to play here, enemies come in different variations and the levels are designed with a specific strategy in mind. You have to apply the right strategy to the variation of enemies and the level layout or you will soon lose the game and have to start over. Remember: you will be challenged and fail. Multiple times. But then you will find the right strategy to beat the level and you will be gratified!! |
| Besides staying alive, there is a score mechanism. The score is in points, depending on which type of creep you kill; but there is a catch – the score has a multiplier that increases every time you take down a creep, based on where it was on the level: the closer the creeps explode to your base, the more the multiplier increases.
For example: making a creep explode at the beginning of the track is worth only a x1 multiplier increase, the final stretch is worth x5, the zone close to your base x10 and a creep exploding by hitting your base is worth x20 (and you lose a life)! To build up score you will have to use dangerous strategies, building your defenses to the end of the track rather than the usual beginning of the other tower defense games! |
| The great vectors-based graphic style and explosions reminds Geometry Wars. Sound is passable, lacking a little pace and rhythm, but ok.
As every Xbox Live game on Windows Phone 7 there are Achievements and Leaderboards (friends only leaderboard though). The only defect we found is that it’s hard to place the laser towers exactly where you want to, at least until you learn well the placement mechanism, which comes after playing a few games. |
| Verdict (version reviewed: 1.0.0.0) |
| geoDefense has already been a hit on iOS and now is getting ready to do the same on WP7: this is the best tower defense game on the platform, try it with the free trial option and you will agree with us. |
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| Cartoon TV ($ 1.99, Trial) [Best Rated Apps] | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Doodle Jump ($ 2.99, Trial) | ||
| Doodle Jump has been our (and our kids) favorite pastime on iPhone for a long time. Now that our platform of choice is WP7 we are excited to see how the doodly jumpy being fares under the Xbox Live banner.
Ok, let’s try it. |
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| Jump, jump, crack, jump. booooiiiinngggg, jump…
Jump, jump, sproooooiiinnnggg, jump, sproooooiiinnnggg, … Jump, jump, jump, crack, pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. Game over. Jump, jump, jump… …1 hour later… Jump, jump, jump… Jump, jump, jump (coudlhavebeenwrong, coudlhavebeenwrong), zip, zip, jump (coudlhavebeenwrong,) zip, zip, zip … Jump, jump, jump… Ok: the game is awesome. 5 stars. Get it. Now! |
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Yeah. Doodle Jump is that good. It’s a simple game: tilt your phone to control the Doodler jumping on platform. Get as high as you can: miss one platform and you are dead doodle meat. Start over. During your ascension, you will find platforms that break, disappear, move. Also weird alien beings (not that the Doodler is NOT already a weird being, huh) will be in your way, you can shoot them (tap on the screen) or jump on their head. Simple but killer: gotta get higher. This is the Doodley Jumper secret, as you might already have experienced with Birdy Bounce on WP7. As you climb you can see your previous heights as well as those of your friends to top. That is another element that will make you try again. The level graphic theme can change: not all the iPhone/Android themes are available (we loved the Soccer theme on iPhone) but here there are more than enough for some variance: Plain, Snow, Night Ghosts, Jungle, Space. |
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| There are some small differences from the legendary iPhone version, but minor ones: the doodler and the platforms appear smaller here; is it because the Samsung Focus screen is larger than our iPhone 3GS? Also the game seems to be somewhat easier. There are less enemies around, at least at the beginning.
Being an Xbox Live game, there are achievements and leaderboards. For some reason leaderboards are local or friends only, there is no global one (weird) and achievements seem to be hard (jump on 30 monsters in a game, really? On our best game so far we saw at most 10 monsters….) Be warned: insanely addictive, this is the line on the iPhone marketplace. Well Doodle Jump is insanely addictive – just try it with the free trial and you will know. This game is so popular that has even a community web site with suggestion on best hands and body positions for a higher score! (http://www.doodlejump.com/) The simple concept and pure gameplay is so powerful that Doodle Jump is not only present on most phones today, but is also working on the big jump on the TV with Kinect: http://123kinect.com/doodle-jump-for-kinect/ |
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| Verdict (version reviewed: 1.0.0.0) | ||
| Doodle Jump is so powerful that started a series of games called Doodle something on every phone platform available today – there are currently 22 apps called *Doodle* on the Windows Phone 7 App Marketplace. Yeah 3 bucks are 3 bucks, but missing the best game out there is lame. Get it. | ||
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| gMaps (Free) | |||
| GMaps is one of the top map apps on Windows Phone 7, with a very clean and responsive interface, good navigation and search capabilities, it has reached the top of the charts in just a month (number 10 as we write).
The feature set is impressive: GPS tracking with over the top Map Navigation, Traffic and Public Transit overlay, roads, terrain and satellite views, gMaps has it all, and more. |
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| You can start from your position, search for your destination and then decide whether to go there by car, foot, public transportation or Segway (!). The maps are very clean and detailed with indication of parks, schools, shopping centers and so on. Maps updates are also quick and allow easy navigation while you driving, but remind that this is not a turn by turn navigation app, so you have to understand where to turn next looking at the map from top.
Search results are ok but not great. The feedback on the app marketplace is mixed some users report better search results here others on Bing. Personally we found Bing superior. Entering the name of a school nearby Redmond, WA; gMaps returned a school in Scranton, PA (!). Also Bing auto complete is a great help as it return things before we even finish typing. |
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| Extra features like “Where is here”, which gives you the address of your location are a nice touch, but we wished there was a favorite places feature (or a go home type of thing).
Overall gMaps is a clean and fast app that rivals the default Maps app that comes with Windows Phone 7; we think that the research of a place is still better on the Bing maps, but this might be subjective. gMaps is free and should not be missed in your collection – tap it with confidence, it has the BestWP7Apps seal of approval! |
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| Verdict (version reviewed: 1.4.0.0) | |||
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| YouTube by Lazyworm (Free) | |||
| Youtube is one of the top internet sites, and by far the top for video-watching. Anybody with a Windows Phone knows how inadequate the bundled Youtube app is – all it does is launch you back to a browser to view plain-jane Youtube web pages until you finally pick your video and launch it full screen back in the app. | |||
| To the rescue is another app of the same name: Youtube, by Lazyworm. Lazyworm’s app, also free lets you navigate in our favourite metro app interface and gives you far more control.
Whereas the original app only lets you jump backwards and forwards in 30 second increments, this one lets you drag your cursor to any part of the video. You can Like or Dislike a video inline, get links to related videos, toggle between High Quality and Normal Quality. You can even do all this while playing the video, as in portrait mode it only plays inside an inline-window. As soon as you turn the phone, voila’: full screen is served. While navigating, you can also search for videos, see the most viewed, and see your subscribed and favourite videos. |
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| We’d call this an app a must-have, but by no means is it perfect. For some reason, the Comment button is present but greyed out so maybe that’s future-promised functionality. There’s also something called a “lazylist” which seems to be lazyworm’s own subscriptions – it’s not terribly useful but does include an overview of the app itself.
There appear to be more features than just what we’ve covered and the developer seems to be diligent in posting updates so we’ll leave the rest to the reader to discover. There is also a version for sale, called LazyTube that supports HD Video streaming and sells for $0.99. |
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| Verdict (version reviewed: 2.3.0.0) | |||
| Bottom line: if you watch Youtube videos on your WP7 phone or you simply want to (if it were not for the default experience), Lazyworm just made the perfect app for you, get it now. | |||
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| [Nice presentation of Youtube by LazyWormApps] | |||
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