Author: Dexter Johnson

Today we are reviewing a new game from Spacetime Games:  Battle Command, another excellent MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) for Android.

Battle Command puts you in the metaphorical driver seat as a commander as you build and lead your army to victory through a series of missions and invasions. At the beginning of the game, special agent “Charlie” will act as your tour guide through a series of step-by-step tutorials. The tutorials will show you the basic features of the game including how to setup your base camp, recruit new troops and earn steel, crystal and oil resources through achievements along with the main purpose for each resource. Once you have established your troops, you will have three different battle modes to choose from to test the strength of your army: Mission, Player-vs. Player and War Games.

The goal of the Mission battles is to destroy the central storage unit, represented by a black, triangular structure, in each level, which contains a large amount of the stage’s total oil and steel resources. The goal of the PvP battles is to invade the opposing army’s base camp and destroy their HQ base of operations, represented by a silver, trapezoidal-shaped complex, while extracting their oil and steel resources by destroying storage units, oil drills and steel mills. The Mission mode acts as the game’s story mode, placing your army in a total of 29 various operation and military project scenarios and tasks.

The PvP mode randomly matches your troops against a random player’s base camp’s defense. If you think your odds of winning are slim upon previewing your opponent’s camp configuration, you can play against someone else for a small fee. The War Games mode is simply a scrimmage mode to test your base camp’s defense without losing any troops and gain oil and steel in the process.

If you need additional help in gaining more troops or production boosts, join an alliance or create your own via the Embassy. Once you join an alliance, you can visit your allies’ respective camps and provide them with production boosts as well as communicate with them in the public and alliance chat-messaging centers. More offensive and defensive weapons will become available as you upgrade to higher levels such as cruise missiles, stealth cannons, rocket pods, mines, armored vehicles and aircrafts. You can also earn more resources and Play Games achievements by logging in with your Facebook and Google+ accounts.

Battle Command has a lot of similarities to Battle Dragons, another strategy game developed by Spacetime Games, including the same interface layout, same game modes, same top-down camera view with zooming capabilities, same good graphics and, thankfully, the same great and addicting gameplay. Beside the head-to-head battles and easy-to-learn rules, the most impressive characteristic this game has to offer is how strategically demanding it is. For instance, you can replay footage of your battles, whether you are the attacker or the victim.

This will help you review what you need to improve on, what precautions you need to take before someone else invades your camp and which type of soldiers     Battle Command takes of a lot of patience and devoted time before you can fully master the game. The progressively difficult levels in the Mission mode and the endless number of online players to fight against will provide hours of entertainment. The only improvements I would make to the game are being able to redirect your soldiers to hit different targets during battle and add an additional game mode where players could initiate wars between alliances.

Don’t let the colorful, animated graphics deceive you; this “Build and Battle” game is trickier than it looks. You will definitely need thought, shrewdness and critical thinking skills if you want to do well in this game. Every battle you engage in is intense and will definitely keep you on your toes. Battle Command is worth the free download and it is currently available for Android mobile devices.

App Name: Battle Command!

Developer: Spacetime Games

Market: Google Play

Cost: Free

Test your trivia wits against your friends and family on Who Wants To Be  a Millionaire and Friends, Ludia’s newest social-friendly version of the game based on the long-running syndicated U.S. game show. In this game, you will be engaged in a head-to-head matchup against a Facebook friend or a random opponent. Each new game will cost you 30 coins and new users will be credited with a starter pack of 80 coins. The game uses the show’s current “Shuffle” format. However, the TV version’s first round is divided into five-question rounds with dollar amounts ranging from $100 up to $25,000.

Like on the show, the ten categorized questions and dollar amounts in the first two rounds are randomized. You are only allowed to use one lifeline per round. The lifeline options include “Double Dip”, which gives you two chances to answer a question; the ever-present “Ask The Audience” and “Jump The Question”, which automatically provides you with the correct answer. Each lifeline is respectively worth 5, 10 and 15 coins.

On each question, you will have 20 seconds to lock-in your answer. Correct answers win you cash while incorrect answers will not reward you with any money and the game continues. You can also gain a slight edge on your opponent and win bonus money by accruing a streak of up to five correct answers in a row and answering questions quickly. The player with the most cash at the end of the two rounds will advanced to the “Classic Millionaire” round for a shot at answering the final four questions progressing in difficulty leading up to the Million Dollar Question.

Play smartly because there are no lifelines available in the third round and you can’t walk away with your winnings without answering at least one question in the third round correctly. As with most Ludia games, you can earn more coins by collecting items every time you answer a question correctly in the “Classic Millionaire” round to complete theme collections.

This is another great ‘game-show based’ game created by Ludia. This game is equally as impressive as the developer’s Facebook version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. This app maintains the same question structure and cash distribution as on the television version, the same brain-bending trivia questions, made slight upgrades where needed including the in-game bonuses and category collector items and even make users a little nostalgic by reintroducing the “Double Dip” lifeline. Dividing the first round into two turn-by-turn based rounds was a nice touch by Ludia to enable faster and shorter gameplay.

Another interesting observation I have taken note of while playing this game is how the app automatically selects a random opponent for you each time you return the main menu screen upon completing your turn or finishing a game. This is the first time I have ever seen any game with this feature and it is a useful one to keep you interested in the game.

There are a couple of disadvantages that lie within the app’s overall performance and within the actual gameplay. The first is its long ‘connecting’ times, despite the fact that you might have a strong Wi-Fi signal, and its instability. This app will have a tendency to unexpectedly shutdown, even if you are in the middle of a game. Should this happen, just simply reopen the app and resume your game, as your progress will not be affected. The second is the absence of the “Walk Away” option in the early portion of Round 3. Once you enter the final round, you are forced to answer the $100,000 question without any chance of quitting the game with the cash you have won in the first two rounds. This essentially makes the first round pointless to play considering there is a 75% chance that you will lose your front game winnings with no lifeline to assist you. I hope this problem will be fixed in a future update.

Nevertheless, Millionaire and Friends is an excellent and challenge game for trivia fans and fans of the original show, now hosted by Cedric The Entertainer. This app is available for free for Android and iOS devices. You can also play the game for free on Facebook. 

App Name: Who Wants To Be a Millionaire and Friends

Developer: Ludia Inc.

Market: Google Play, iTunes

Cost: Free

Get ready for some Madden football with the new mobile version of one of the most popular and successful EA Sports franchise games of all time. Madden NFL 25 combines the engaging virtual football game with the now defunct Madden NFL Superstars trading card game on Facebook. Once you have created a new account or synced your Facebook account with the game, you will be directed to an optional, interactive tutorial designed for you to get accustomed to game’s new Touch Controls.

Afterwards, you can select your favorite team and will be given a 26-card starter pack filled with low-rated offensive, defensive and special teams base players. As you play each game, you will earn experience points and coins, which can be used to purchase higher-rated players through card packs and auctions. You can also buy the card packs along with “limited-time offer” bundle packs, play packs and more Energy to play more games often with real money.

The game has three game modes: Solo Challenges, Practice and Head-To-Head. The Solo Challenges mode allows you to play a series of themed challenges including competing against the reigning Super Bowl champion, the 2012 Baltimore Ravens, or rising superstars from the NFL Draft Class of 2012. This mode is filled with numerous single-player objectives to increase your Madden mobile skills and free reward cards upon completing each four-game season. The Practice Game mode allows you play a full exhibition game against an NFL team, one of your Facebook friends’ customized teams or the Featured team of the week.

Before each game begins, you will have the options of setting the stadium location (Home, Away, Super Bowl), quarter length (2 ½, 3, 4 minutes) and difficulty level (Rookie, Pro, All-Pro, All-Madden). The Head-2-Head mode allows you to play a game with three-minute quarters against a Facebook user or a random opponent. This mode functions on a turn-by-turn basis and you will only get to play offensively. The plays your defense selects during your opponent’s turn on offense is solely dependent on the plays you have available.

Madden 25 mobile is a great improvement from Madden 12 for mobile platforms. As far as the gameplay is concerned, the graphics run smoother, the controls are easier to use, the play call screen is more detailed and you can see more of the field with the game’s widescreen camera view. This game uses the same tackling/Hit Stick graphics engine as seen on the PC version of Madden 07 and beyond, right down to the touchdown celebrations. The new, simplified, touch-screen controls make the game easier to play without dealing with an overhaul of on-screen action buttons.

It’s no surprise that this game uses a lot of elements from the console version such as the multi-square menu screen layout and a bottom-screen scrolling ticker displaying NFL scores and key stats from your favorite team’s most recent game, future NFL game dates and in-game tips and tricks. Madden 25 also has more to offer with its multiplayer capabilities by immersing social media and actual NFL storylines and recent milestone moments with the traditional Madden game. I like how this aspect allows users to not only play against Facebook friends and other users, but also compete and bid in real-time auctions for higher-ranked players against other fantasy owners. This game will also save your progress by automatically pausing your game anytime you exit the app.

As with every new version of Madden, with every new feature that is added, something has be taken away. In this version, the drawbacks are the lack of audibles, offensive and defensive Playmaker controls, customized hot routes and, more importantly, lack of quick loading times. While Madden 12 is only 11MB large and ran at a normal pace during gameplay, Madden 25’s massive 1.16GB plus size will come as a disadvantage to impatient users. If you haven’t played the game already, you will immediately notice that the lengthy waiting times occur before the game begins, between plays, between play calls and at the end of each quarter. Because of this issue, I would advise running this app on a mobile device with a high-powered, Quad-core processor and high memory to avoid slow waiting times and sluggish and jumpy graphics during gameplay.

Even though this game does not have the same stunning, realistic 3D graphics or next-generation presentation along with the rest of the features seen on the console version, Madden 25 still has excellent graphics, is enjoyable to play and piques mobile gamers interest by allowing them to continue to play as their favorite teams and players and make big offensive, defensive and special teams plays on the gridiron against actual opponents. This game is free to download for Android and iOS devices in their respective app stores.

App Name: Madden NFL 25

Developer: EA Sports

Market: Google Play, iTunes

Cost: Free

JustResizeIt! is a photo application that enables you to change the dimensions and quality of any photo and send them to your friends and family. The process is simple: choose a picture or a series of photos for the image basket, add a new widget, resize the photo and send the image(s). On this app, a “widget” is simply a customizable preset. Once you have named your widget and color-code it, you will be able to resize it by using either the free-range fixed dimension or relative percentage settings, or send the original photo as is.

You can also increase or decrease the quality of your photos and activate the “spare memory” option in case the digital photo processing fails at a frequent rate. After you have made the proper changes to your photos, you can send the images via email, an FTP/FTPS secure sever or locally within the confines of your phone’s hard drive. With the trial version, you are only limited to create one widget; but, if you do decide to create another one, you can just simply delete the one widget you have created.

If you read my app reviews often, you would know that some of the most important elements I look for when it comes to utility mobile apps are clarity, simplicity, functionality and uniqueness. JustResizeIt! hits all four of those key aspects. Because there are some free photo-editing programs that do not have a resize feature, this app is the perfect remedy for that problem without having to shell out a lot of money to buy said program or dealing with obnoxious watermarks on some trial versions of high-end editing suites.

This app processes photos quickly, has a simple user interface with clear-cut instructions and the digital processing task does not regress the quality of your photos. Its versatility allows you send photos through a variety of email applications, send a carbon copy to anyone else who might want them, pull photos from anywhere within the Gallery and send photos locally to any folder on your phone or SD card. The one element that would put this app over the top would be allowing users to share photos on social media sites and between your phone contacts. I am a little surprised this app is missing that element, but it is not a major problem.

JustResizeIt! is an excellent application that lives up to its brand name and built for anyone to use, even if you have no prior photo-editing experience. The trial is free and the full version costs $2.87 in the Google Play store.

App Name: JustResizeIt!

Developer: Perspectives Software Solutions GmbH

Market: Google Play

Cost: Free (Trial Version); $2.87 (Full Version)