What’s here is just a single short, linear story with a few impediments to progress, and though kids will like what’s here, they’ll definitely want more to do, and won’t find it. While the $4 app doesn’t feel expensive by comparison with an actual printed book, so many earlier kids’ apps offer more than just a handful of pages to move through, and Callaway in particular has brought everything from videos to 3-D rendered animations, puzzles, and drawing tools to bear on earlier titles. The three biggest issues with Another Monster are in length, depth, and interactivity.
SKY GAMBLERS AIR SUPREMACY FULL
Full voice narration is provided for each set of seemingly hand-drawn pages and text, spoken by Sesame Street’s Kevin Clash and Eric Jacobson. Childlike but bold, Elmo shows no fear of continuing to move through the pages, while the older but fearful Grover erects several obstacles to try and keep you from seeing the end: paperclips that need to be removed, blocks that need to be knocked down, and even a safe-like combination lock that has to be opened. The app is a short, 12-page book for kids, setting blue-furred Grover against the red-furred Elmo in a quest to reach or avoid the end of the story.
iLounge Rating (Both Versions): A-.Īnother Monster at the End of This Book… Starring Grover & ElmoĬallaway Digital has developed some really nice kids’ apps for Apple’s devices, and though its collaboration with Sesame Street- Another Monster at the End of This Book… Starring Grover & Elmo ($4)-isn’t quite as impressive or deep, it’s an example of how the new iPad’s higher-resolution screen will be used for traditional edutainment. Apart from Rovio’s nickel and diming, this is a great follow-up for Angry Birds fans, and certainly worth any fan’s time. While higher-resolution Retina artwork for the new iPad looks sharp, the difference in app sizes is tiny, and even the HD app is a mere 20.1MB. It’s only a shame, then, that Rovio has once again split a single title into separate iPad and iPhone/iPod versions, and opted to sell the Danger Zone levels as a separate $1 in-app purchase for each version, not transferrable from one to the other. Similarly cool are levels that evoke old Angry Birds stages, now with the challenge of knocking asteroids from the sky to rain down on the pigs, and new “Danger Zone” area, filled with grids of floating, sometimes gravity-free structures that would have been impossible in earlier titles. Planets pulse with gravity fields-sometimes individual, sometimes overlapping-to let you know generally where your slingshotted birds will be pulled, but there’s a certain joy in seeing a bird spiraling around a planet, taking out one target, and then continuing to hit others before rolling to a stop. We have nothing but praise for the way Rovio has handled the new play mechanics and level designs in Angry Birds Space.
Epic cosmic music plays in the background of menus, once again giving way to similar sound effects to fill the air during gameplay. New and somewhat confusing “Egg-steroid” bonus levels are unlocked by finding hidden objects in the main levels, and as always, additional levels are teased as “Coming Soon,” promising to give players a reason to revisit after they’ve finished the first 60. Borrowing graphic design and gravity-bending elements from Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy, both titles bring back the same cast of hero birds and evil pigs found in the prior Angry Birds titles-redrawn a little with comically futuristic, galactic influences-while introducing new birds, such as a purple vector-targeting bird, a cube-shaped freezing ice cube bird, and a massively destructive Space Eagle. There’s no doubt that Angry Birds Space ($1) and Angry Birds Space HD ($3) are the most noteworthy titles of the week, not just because they’re bound to be incredibly popular, but also because they’re the most legitimately fresh sequels Rovio Mobile has come up with since the original “slingshot birds to knock down structures full of pigs” game Angry Birds.
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