First Spore Origins came out for the iPhone, which focuses on the first stage of the full blown Spore.

Then on 9/7/2008 the full blown Mac / PC version was released. Not only is it supported for both Operating Systems, but it’s just one disk that has both versions.

There are several stages that you bring your creature through, from an amoeba to a space faring civilization.

Each stage is a different type of gameplay.

• ‘Cell’ stage - Like an old school arcade game, eat the good stuff and avoid the bad guys.
• ‘Creature’ stage - 3D game (almost a first person shooter). You can make friends or make / attack you enemies.
• ‘Tribal’ stage - Real Time Strategy (RTS) game with limited weapons
• ‘Civilization’ stage - RTS with more weapons, vehicles (air, see and land) and spice mining
• ‘Space’ stage - Space exploration and trading. Again make friends / allies and enemies.

I’ve read some complaints that the different stages aren’t as good as other games that do that type of game. For instance the Civlization RTS isn’t done as well as a full blown RTS game. They’re right, it doesn’t and it’s not meant to be.

It’s important to look at Spore as a whole game, not the individual stages.

The most fun part about Spore is you build you creatures and items as you go.

In the early stages you evolve your creature as it grows to make it more adaptable. In the later stages, you build your buildings and vehicles.

Along these lines, there’s also the Sporepedia. This is an online database of things that other players have built that you can download and use in your game!

For me, I played with the creation tool for a while, but in the later levels I would just go to the Sporepedia and browse through the thousands of creations out there until I found one I like.

This game is a blast as you can follow your creature up through the different layers of evolution and shape the path you want the creature to go down - You can have a peaceful herbivores, war-like carnivores, explorers, etc… or any combination of them, it all depends on your (creature’s) actions.

I personally love the game, the Space stage is my favorite but I really loved all the stages.

This is definitely a game I could see myself playing over and over, creating more creatures and leading them down different paths.

My family and I recently went out of town on vacation and the one thing we forgot; our sound machine.

Over the past few years we’ve gotten so used to having a sound machine that I usually set a radio to a static station when I’m out of town on business.

Thanks to Ambiance, I don’t need to do that anymore.

I downloaded the app from the App Store and was really impressed with the number of audio samples an the quality of them.
Plus the option to set a timer and / or use it as an alarm clock is just beautiful!

This is a new one for my iPhone top 10.
Below are some screenshots I just took.

I have been keeping my eyes on SplashMoney in the app store for a few weeks now.

A lot of people wrote some negative stuff about it and they haven’t released the Mac desktop client yet, so I decided to hold off.

The thing is I’m going out of town and needed a money manager…. In fact I’m in the airport right now, using the Wordpress app, on the airport’s free wireless… Sweet…

Anyway, a new version of the app was released (4.02) that is supposed to have fixed a lot of issues.

I downloaded the app, entered all my account info and the app ROCKS.
For me it has been very stable, is very fast and is more feature-rich than most desktop apps I’ve used!

It has budget setting and tracking, you can get graphs of where you’re spending your money and it has multiple types of accounts,so far I’m lovin’ it!

But I, along with everyone else, have been getting apps off the App Store for a little over a week now… and here is my top 10 favorite App Store apps:

10. PhoneSaber - Yes I had to put it on the list.
As you can probably tell by the name it’s a lightsaber for your iPhone.. remember, the site is ‘Random ramblings of a geek’.

9. Pangea VR
This app is WAY too cool. It lets you view 360 degree photos on your iPhone.
You can scroll around, up, down, zoom in and out of the pictures.
They have a pretty large database and some of the pictures are just breathtaking.

8. eBay Mobile
Everything you’d expect, buy, sell, track your items.. it’s eBay in your pocket and very well done!

7. De Blob
This is a very fun game.
You control a blob (either by tilting the phone, or with your finger) and you have to go around restoring color to different zones of the world.. it’s very addicting!

6. WordPress
This just came out tonight and already it’s on the list.
It allows you to edit existing posts and create new posts directly from the iPhone.
It’s pretty basic, but it’s GREAT for posting on the go, I’m going to be writing to the blog a lot more because of it!!

5. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
This is just plain amazing.
It’s a kart racing game, with everything you’d expect in one of these games, and it really feels like your on a PSP or other gaming system.
The controls use that accelerometer to steer, and simple taps for launching weapons, drifting around corners, jumping, etc..
There’s another kart game calld ‘Cro-Mag Rally’, but this is MUCH better IMHO.

4. Shazam
When I first downloaded this I must have messed with this thing for about an hour.
You ever hear a song on the radio and don’t know the artist or song?
All you need to do is launch Shazam, have it “listen” to the song for about 12 seconds (the default setting), it will analyze it and return the artist, song, album info, etc.. it’s just friggen amazing.

3. eReader
This is an eBook reader app but is getting a lot of crap because it only uses the eReader format, but it does it REALLY well.
You can adjust the font type, font size, go to landscape mode, etc..
It will remember where you are in the book so you don’t lose your place and the books are stored locally so you don’t need an Internet connection.
If you already have a big eBook library this is not the app for you, I have no eBooks so this is working great for me!

2. Blackjack 21
I’ve already been spending WAY to long playing Blackjack on my phone.
I have to be honest, this is not the BEST Blackjack game I’ve ever played, but it’s perfect for the iPhone.
Simple, yet elegant and not overly bloated.

1. Pandora Radio
This is by far my favorite app!
If you don’t know what Pandora Radio is, it lets you create “stations” based on an artist or song.
It then uses an algorithm to automatically play artists similar to your selection.
The best part about it is that it works GREAT over Edge (like I said I have a 1st gen iPhone) with no dropouts unless you get in a weak signal area.
I’m going to cancel my Sirius subscription because of this app!

So there you have it, my top 10.

This is my opinion and obviously I haven’t tried every single app on the store, so if you have any you’d like to add feel free to leave a comment.

So I’m one of the lucky few who got the Wii Fit… yes I like and yes it works.

There’s one activity in the game that is synchronized boxing.
Basically you throw punches and step an a particular pattern.

It’s a very good exercise, but the problem is that sometimes the cable to the nunchuck gets wrapped around my hand.
Then when I flick my hand to clear the cable, it thinks I’m throwing another punch.

Then I read about the Nyko Wireless Nunchuck and stopped on the way home to grab one… here’s the resulting review.

First of all, it’s pretty slick how it works.

It comes with a little transceiver that connects to the bottom of the Wii remote.
After a quick pairing, you’re ready to go.

I tried it briefly with Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 (’cause that’s what was in the console) and it worked great!

No wires, it was very responsive and was perfect in combination with the Nyko Perfect Shot I got a few weeks ago.

I popped out the MOH game and popped in the Wii Fit game, loaded up the boxing exercise and had at it!

At first it was great, seemed to be just like the wired one… but after a while I was missing punches thrown from the nunchuck.

The punches were either missed or delayed, I quickly started to realize that it wasn’t as responsive as the wired one. To be honest I’m not sure if it’s the fact that it’s wireless, the motion sensor isn’t as good as the wired one, or what.

All in all for something like MOH, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, etc… where you’re using the nunchuck to control your character, it seems to work great!

For something like the boxing that needs to be responsive, it’s lacking.

I wouldn’t say don’t get it, in fact for most things I would recommend it, but I wouldn’t ditch the wired one just yet either.

I’ve had my 360 on a shelf since I got my Wii. I don’t have a whole lot of time to play anymore with a 2 year old, and I like the interactive aspect of the Wii.

Then GTA IV came out!
I’ve been a fan of the GTA series since it was a 2d, top-down game. I’ve owned GTA, GTA II, GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, the first game I got for my PSP was Liberty City Stories and now I dusted off my 360 for GTA IV… and here’s my review.

Graphics

The graphics for this game are just awesome. Very crisp visual, very engaging environments. The textures and LOD is just a great combination to keep the game smooth while allowing for a lot of eye candy.

The zonal damage on the cars is sweet. If you slam the side of your car into a wall or pole, you’ll have a huge dent (or more) where you hit… on the other hand if you lightly brush up against a similar object or a mailbox, telephone booth, etc… you’ll just have some scratches.

The in game character models are good, but re-used quite a bit, there are a lot of twins walking around Liberty City. The cut scene models are OK and the animation is pretty good, but I appreciate they concentrated more on the gameplay than smooth animation in the cut scenes.

Sound

The sound in the game is also very good.
The environmental sounds are very good, the use of doppler effect is awesome. Even the sound in the car, if you’re listening to music in the car and then get out and leave the door open you’ll still hear the music but much fainter. Nice touch.

Gameplay

Just like the other GTA games, this game is just plain fun. I haven’t tried any of the multi-player stuff yet (I’ll update this when I do), but single player is great.

Just like everyone else that plays these games I like to play the missions for a while, the enter in cheat codes for full weapons and go on a rampage.

There are a lot of nice touches in this respect.
For example, you can injure parts of pedestrians bodies. If you shoot a leg, the person will go down, if you shoot the chest it’ll take a few shots to bring them down, if you do a head-shot they’ll be down and out.

Try this:
Jack someones car, wait until then come back and try to open the door then drive away. Instead of leaving them standing there they’ll still be holding onto the door and you can drag them around for a while. ]:)
Be careful though, this can happen to you as well!

Easter Eggs

I won’t really go into these in detail, but the game is packed with these. From commercials on TV, to billboards and posters and radio commercials to the beating heart inside the Statue of Happiness. They’ve been listed on hundreds of websites, so go ask Mr. Google about it.

Overall Opinion

This game is a blast, there are a lot of bells and whistles that aren’t in the other versions and the overall game just feels more immersive.

When I first started playing the game I got several lockups, but it hasn’t done that in a while. I don’t know if it had to do with something on the disk, something in the game itself or if my 360 just had to get the dust out of its gears.

I would recommend going out and buying this game, yes I said BUYING.. you know who you are.