ROTM IV - March Submission Thread

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

Review of the Month - March


Comment on it all here!

Submission Rules:
1. You can only submit one review per person.
2. You cannot submit a review written by anyone else, but by all means encourage people to enter.
3. You cannot enter the same review twice.
4. Reviews cannot be taken from other sites.
5. Reviews may be entered that are posted anywhere on this site.
6. The review must follow the guidelines.


Poll Rules:
1. You can advertise the competition on this site only and not individual entries (applies for everyone).
2. No asking for votes, or getting others to ask for votes for you.
3. Poll is public after results have ended.
4. Everyone has two votes which must be used.
5. You cannot vote for your own entry.


Dates:
1st March - Submission thread open in forum
31st March - Submission thread closed
1st April - Poll up
14th April - Poll is closed and winner announced


Awards:
1st place = 3 Competition points
2nd place = 2 Competition Points
3rd place = 1 Competition point

[Bolkonsky]

I'm really enjoying being a critic. I think it might be my natural calling.

LORD Safety Razor

[Yojimbo]

IPHONES

I would like to say before starting this review I have been using an iPhone since 2009. I also own an iPad 3 and love it. This review is solely for the iPhone. I’ve owned a 3G and a 4. I can’t recommend an iPad enough.

Bad things are often popular. Whenever its Skrillex, celebrities, awful games or flawed technology there seems to be no end to the flood of confused people, shrills and rabid fanboys ready to buy up any crap you care to mention and defend it to the death online, glossing over horrible flaws and lousy business practices, leaving anyone with common sense shaking their head and lamenting the certain downfall of mankind.

Apple’s iPhone is a shining example of this kind of thing. It’s a solid product at first glance, is universally, insanely lauded and has a stack of positives, but a bevy of really poor design decisions and unfixed problems really take the shine off a phone that unfortunately is still the premier phone for gaming on the go.

Let’s start with the hardware. The iPhone, as anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last 5 or so years knows is a very sleek device. While there are many phones like it nowadays it was a beautiful product when it launched and its looks still turn heads nowadays. Its simple lines make it comfortable to hold and its metal and glass construction give it a very nice feel in the hard. The phone feels like a high quality device. The screen is extremely hard wearing against scratches; indeed it is nearly impossible to scratch, even with a deliberate effort, let alone with loose coins or a set of keys in a pocket with it or the like. It is much less resistant to force however and a minor drop of say three feet will often shatter the screen. I once dropped my phone off of my bed on to a wooden floor and it shattered. You really should buy a case ASAP for this phone, preferably one that covers the whole phone, such as a flip case.
What really kills the iPhone for any serious user is the woeful reliability. Phones are overwhelmingly obsequious in this day and age and it’s simply a requirement of everyday life to have a solid reliable phone you know will always be ready whenever as an actual phone or a GPS or internet device.

The iPhone just completely fails at this seemingly basic facet. Every time I have had an iPhone whenever it be my two 3GS ones or my two iPhone 4s, within a year the home button has either become either totally inoperable or very unreliable and on my most recent 4 the power button has completely stopped working and it’s only a year and a half old.

The biggest, most overwhelming flaw with the iPhone reliability and indeed the entire phone however is the appalling battery life. Every iPhone since the original one in 2007 has had pathetic battery life that everyone seems to ignore and it has only gotten worse, not better. The recently released iPhone 5 has an even worse battery than the 4 did. It’s beyond me why so much hoopla is made over it’s (behind the times and staggeringly unimpressive) specs and countless array of 3d games when the phone will literally be dead in 1-2 hours of use with those games. Don’t bother trying to actually play any of the games available on your phone or it will literally lose 50% of its battery in an hour. Some of the most touted game, such as Infinity Blade 2 will drain your phone so fast you might as well not even bother.

Even using the phone for more normal low impact use, such as Facebook or web browsing will kill your phone so quickly it’s unbelievable. Two hours of basic web browsing reading pages of text and so on with no YouTube or other intensive activities will just kill your battery, often draining it by30-40% in an hour.

The battery is also terrible when it comes to holding its capacity over time. Every iPhone I’ve owned has gone from the somewhat reasonable 2-3 hour battery life under intense use to an hour or less in a year or so. My current 4 just had its battery replaced with a new one as the battery was draining down to nothing in no time whenever I was using the phone or not. And since the phone is sealed and largely impossible for the layman to access you’ll have a ton of fun taking the thing to an Apple store so you can pay them through the nose for another battery. At least there are many other places to get your phone repaired for a less ridiculous price.

It is pretty obvious this is a problem when you look at the absolute wealth of apps that purport to maximize your battery and the countless guides online to try to squeeze a bit more out of your battery. Of course the simple fact is NONE OF THIS SHOULD BE NECESSARY! There is no excuse for Apple to keep upping the specifications of their phone, loading it with battery draining multicore processors and faster graphics when the battery life is so terrible. Who really cares if I can play GTA (for a whole hour) on my phone if it will kill the battery so completely I can’t use it for the rest of the day? Apple should stop with this attention seeking rigmarole of pointless spec upgrades and start actually making it work better as a phone by using higher quality components and batteries that aren’t bargain basement.

On the other side of the coin the iPhone’s specs haven’t been impressive in a long time. Other manufactures have caught up and surpassed the iPhone years ago and there is really nothing amazing about it. Apple has doggedly stayed with the basic design and screen size for years, the 4S in particular was a worthless edition with only a minor spec upgrade. iOS ceased being revolutionary about 3 years ago and its latest iterations simply copy android and shove unwanted features like Facebook and twitter integration, whenever you want them or not.

And indeed this is another major failing. Apple gets to decide exactly how your phone should be, what features to shoehorn onto it, whenever they are useful to you or not and what features to withhold from previous devices, even if they are obviously able to run them.

The Facebook and Twitter integration is a prime example of this. Whenever you view options for a photo among other places you will see options to share that photo on Facebook or Twitter. Don’t use those services? Too bad; you’ll have those options struck in your photo menu forever.

As for feature withholding the biggest offender is Siri, Apple’s half-baked virtual assistant Siri was excluded on the 4 for no apparent reason. The official reason is that the 4 doesn’t have the specs to run Siri properly.

This is, of course an absolute lie. Siri works fine on the 4 as demonstrated by a hacker literally days after this announcement. The real reason is that the 4S really had nothing whatsoever interesting about it and Apple needed something, anything to differentiate it from previous phones to convince people to buy it. Siri also doesn’t work anything like it is advertised to. It takes a few seconds at least to process what you said, the pauses are edited out in Apple’s commercials and it gets stuff wrong often.

This kind of crap has surfaced again on the iPhone 5, which finally has free, built in, voiced turn by turn navigation, built into iOS6. This is roughly four years after Android had such a thing, but better late than never right? Too bad NO models expect the iPhone 5 get it!

That’s right; a basic feature that has been included on any Android phone you can think of for free for years is only available on the latest Apple phone. It was this reason, along with its unreliability that convinced me to drop the iPhone. There is absolutely no excuse for this and it just shows Apple is truly out of ideas.

The brand new iPhone 5 is lauded for no reason as well since it is simply the same phone Apple has always made, except with a minor screen size bump. Who one earth really cares about this phone when there are much larger screen sizes and faster phones available? The only thing that really sustains the iPhone is the enormity of the app store, but even then you’d be much better off with the iPad.

Another huge failure that Apple has doggedly stayed with is ITunes. ITunes is the worst program I have used. Hands down. Its slow, its bloated to hell and back and its unreliable. ITunes takes forever to do anything, takes up loads of ram and is just a total burden to use. Having to sync your device to do anything is a horrible pain as well. Why you can’t just drag and drop media onto your phone like ANY OTHER PHONE is anyone’s guess who really wants to drag and drop a bunch of crap into a program before you can sync it to your device? Movies are even worse since iPhone doesn’t support mkv, a very common format online both for HD anime and videos downloaded from sites. You are forced to convert it to mp4 before you can use it on the product you bought. Then you get the super fun experience of having to keep all those huge movies on your hard drive, because if they are removed from iTunes, next time you sync your device they will be removed unless you manually choose not to sync movies.

Apps are also completely mishandled. There is no way to transfer saved games from game apps in iTunes. There are about 3 games I’ve played that allow you to move your save file and apple has absolutely no system in place to make sure you don’t lose your data. Sure you can back up your device, but this doesn’t always restore saved games. It is really a crapshoot. Android is guilty of this as well however.

You also have no way to easily retrieve SMS or voicemail from the phone. Unlike Android there is absolutely no system in place to allow you to do this.

As for the phone’s gaming capability, it is well deserved. While the battery lasts you can play a large variety of great games, from the fun hack and slash of Infinity Blade, to some RTS action with Command & Conquer and Starfront. There are also some very good ports like Chrono Trigger and GTA: Vice City. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja will more than appeal to casual gamers who just want to swipe stuff and have some quick fun and there are plenty of heavy games like Tactical Solider: Undead Rising, Simcity or Final Fantasy Tactics to satisfy the gamers looking for a more meaty experience. Multiplayer games include UNO, Wheel of Fortune, Lets Golf, Eliminate, Street Fighter 4 and the awesome Call of Duty clone series Modern Combat. Rhythm games abound with titles like Groove Coaster and you can also use your music with your games like Song Summoner or Voice Fantasy.

There is however a gigantic load of utter tripe on the platform. Chief among these is just about anything that features the dreaded In App Purchase or IAP.

The App Store is loaded with crappy, mass produced games who’s only purpose is try to loop you into a crappy city builder game with zero action or a boring slot machine game or a even worse a great racing game or fighting game, only to stop you every 5 seconds an d ask for money or deliberately slow the game to a crawl or withhold vital weapons or items unless you pony up real cash.

There are a number of games that do IAP very well such as Jetpack Joyride, Rivals at War Punhc Quest and many others, but the majority are morally bankrupt tripe that could have been good games if the developers had just made them normal paid for games rather than IAP riddled fodder. This shovelware is increasingly common on mobile formats.

There are also a lot of just terrible games. Contract killer, Stickman Zombies, Cover Orange, Deer Hunter: Reloaded horrid ports like Secret of Mana and just any number of the poor, horrible city building apps like LOTR: Kingdoms of Middle Earth that has zero strategy or action and just want you to fork over coins or wait though annoying timers. It takes a lot of digging to weed out the gems from the iPhone’s library.

A lot of fuss is made over the belief that the iPhone and iPad is great for kids and less technically inclined people. While this is true and iOS’ bring colours and simple design should appeal to them it sure as heck doesn’t look very professional. Fisher price looking colours and big bouncy icons don’t really make the iPhone seem like a professional device. The counter intuitive iTunes syncing method and annoying multitasking hardly makes it a dream to use. Android is just as easy to use and far more powerful.

To sum it up the iPhone is garbage, it has been garbage for the past several years but now it is becoming old and boring so it is now festering garbage. Do yourself a favour and buy an Android instead.

[SturmChurro]

I sometimes write reviews, Mr. Talking Turtle. I haven't really followed this competition, but Shankbot, here's a review (Killing Floor).

[Mhaedros]

Encouraged by my previous victory I'll submit my Assassin's Creed Revelations review

[TheDarkKnight]

Lol dangit Mhaedros, I'm writing a review for Assassin's Creed Revelations to submit as well...I shall have to postpone that one because it would be silly to have two reviews of the same thing.

Oh well, I shall have something to think of something else to submit now




Edit: Here you go...The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy

[The Roman Republic]

thanks for allowing me to add my submission so late.


Ultra Mini Camera Pen

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

No worries, thank-you for entering. Expect the poll up at some point this evening.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

Sorry for the delay guys, but the poll is now up.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?595550

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

Fancy entering again? Or maybe want to enter for the first time? Then do so now:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?597864

Submissions close on April 30th so be quick getting your entries in!

*Rules/Questions can be found in the above thread*