Hijinks Inc.

Author: Aaron Nelsen

  • We Have Clout

    You may recall a few weeks ago, our very own Frederick Smith wrote a review of Tower Madness HD, at the end of which he wrote this little letter to the developers:

    Dear Limbic Software,

    In your next update we at Hijinks kindly request you focus on fleshing out your multiplayer mode. It’s the best part about your game, and we really want another excuse to hurl insults at each other involving the pilfering and security of sheep. Add more abilities to hurt your opponent, like destroying a random tower, or sending a wave of stronger/faster aliens.
    Most of all, please look at your pricing structure. We’re big fans of capitalism and making the almighty dollar, but if you price your product at the the same level with games by studios with bigger budgets and names like Popcap, we’re afraid your hard work will get buried in the every increasing avalanche of iPad games coming out. Try $4.99. Seriously. Try it.

    Love,
    Hijinks Inc.

    I’ve underlined the important part of this letter. Why is this important? Because I’ve just been informed by Limbic that Tower Madness HD is now available for $4.99, yes, that just happened. Help convince Limbic this is the right price point and go download it, otherwise the price goes back up to $7.99 next week.

    [ iTunes Link for Tower Madness HD ]

  • Hijinks Reviews: Command & Conquer Red Alert for iPad

    Red AlertPublisher: Electronic Arts
    Platform: iPad, iPhone, iPod touch
    Cost: $12.99  [iTunes Link]
    Release date: April 1st, 2010
    Version Reviewed: 1.00

    Let’s jump right in, is it worth $12.99 you ask? Good question. I really have mixed feelings about its price point, though I suppose when you consider that I paid more than $13 for almost every game in the Command & Conquer series for the PC it seems a little more reasonable. That said, unless you’re a die hard Red Alert fan and someone who finds these types of campaigns engaging, you might want to hold out for a lower price. This isn’t a bad game, but as in introduction to the series it’s not that impressive, and it really could use an update to fix some serious bugs.

    When I first heard Red Alert was coming to the iPad I was pretty excited, I’d downloaded the Lite version for the iPhone in the past, but didn’t buy the full version because of screen size issues. So I figured the iPad would be a perfect platform for an RTS game like RA, and I still think that’s true, but EA needs to get their act together before someone else comes out with a better RTS for the iPad. The controls in this game are sloppy at best, unit highlighting isn’t precise, selecting buildings often results in accidentally selling them (how hard is it to add a “Are you sure you want to sell this building?” dialog?), and the build interface in general could use some tweaking.

    Other than using a touchscreen interface, the game hasn’t changed much from its PC counterpart. Your goal is still to destroy everything in sight, all while managing the mundane tasks of generating enough money and energy to keep everything running smoothly. Graphics are nice, but not awe inspiringly so, and they suffer from the occasional stuttering problem when there’s a lot of action going on. (more…)

  • Google Me

    Google Me - A Facebook Killer?The internet has been abuzz ever since Kevin Rose drunkenly tweeted that Google was launching a Facebook competitor and was going to call it Google Me, though still no confirmation from Google, but that’s not really very surprising.

    My knee-jerk reaction to this “announcement” was something along the lines of “WTH, Google?!”. Have they so quickly forgotten just how successful their Twitter killer, Google Buzz was? Seriously,  hasn’t Google already made enough failed attempts at social networking? Let’s review… Orkut (fail), Google Profiles (meh), the afore mentioned Google Buzz (eh), and to a degree Google Wave (blah). Name one of those products that’s successful by any stretch of the imagination. And no, just because Leo Laporte uses Buzz does not make it successful.

    Currently Google does one thing well in the social scene, and that’s aggregate your social content. For example, Social Circle (beta) is a nice feature added to the results page which displays your friends tweets and blog posts that might be related to your search, they also have fairly robust support for importing your content from various sources into Buzz, though that’s still not enough to get me to actually use Buzz.

    There’s also some speculation that Google Me will just be a more robust version of Google Profiles, building off the existing profiles that users have setup and expanding their functionality, which would make sense. But at that point why bother renaming it. And would really compete with Facebook?

    Bottom line here, I agree Facebook needs to die and Google might seem to be the best company for the job, but I don’t think given their track record of late that they’ll be able to pull it off.

  • iPad 3G Data Usage for June

    Live any where in Nebraska, Kansas or Colorado? Notice a major slow down in your AT&T data service? Yeah… that’s just me passing through.

    Last month I used 16GBs, this month I might’ve used a few GBs more.

    37.1GBs! Suck it AT&T, you deserved worse considering you ditched the unlimited plans for new iPad 3G owners.

  • Hulu Plus Announced – Invite Only

    Hulu PlusYes, you have to be invited (for now), but holy crap, the long rumored subscription based Hulu Plus is real.

    $9.99 a month gets you access to full seasons of TV shows on all sorts of devices, support currently includes the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, some Samsung TVs / Blu-ray players, and various game consoles and set top boxes will be supported later this year. Did I mention it’s all in HD? And If Hulu can just get some current movies added in there Netflix might have some competition. And remember kids, competition is good.

    Also, the only device I care about being supported is the iPad, I’ve been using Hulu on my TV for years.

    Now what are you waiting for!  Hit up this link to apply for access and let us know if you get in!