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The Simpsons Tapped Out – iOS App Review

Posted: 11 Nov 2012 10:00 AM PST

Hey,

I love The Simpsons. There is nothing better than watching the episodes every week. To make things even more awesome The Simpsons family are coming to your iPhone or iPad in the form of The Simpsons : Tapped Out. A fun ‘social’ game featuring The Simpsons hi-jinks and episode characters. The game is simple, fun and easy to get to grips and the way it is designed you will have hours of fun building your very own Springfield. If you are a fan of The Simpsons and want a game featuring all of your favourite characters, this game is for you.

Entering Springfield

The story revolves around you having to build another Springfield. Homer (who else) was too busy playing on his ‘myPad’ and allowed the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to explode. The resulting aftermath caused the city to be destroyed and the townspeople thrown far and wide. You pick the story up as Homer and begrudgingly starts to rebuild. After his house is rebuilt other people being to show up, Lisa, Apu and eventually Flanders.

The Simpsons Tapped Out

Once you begin building the houses and popular destinations in Springfield such as the Kwik-E-Mart, quests will start to arrive. This allows you to progress through the story line of the game. For example, since the city has been destroyed by the explosion you need to clean up the little area of the city. You then send Homer out to clean up the mess. Each quest takes either a couple of minutes, or in the case of some of the quests, a day.

Move through the game by completing quests.

Once you have completed a quest you will earn XP, money and possibly a pink donut. XP is used to ‘level up’ your city, which in turn allows you buy other places of interests such as the school or the nuclear power plant. Money is the cash used to buy such premises. The pink donuts are used to skip the time it takes to complete a quest. For example it takes Homer 24 hours (as in the time it takes the earth to rotate once) to watch ‘Monkey Trauma Center Marathon’ however you can skip this time by using a pink donut. The donuts are rare, so you have to use them wisely.

By completing quests, you earn more money which allows your city to expand. You start with the Kwik-E-Mart, but move on to buying a brown house, and then Cletus’s Farm. Each brings in more money and XP. Every building brings in a certain amount of cash and experience.

Your Springfield starts our small, but begins to expand.

As you build other characters begin to arrive. All of your favourite characters are available in the game, it is up to you to build the building, complete the quests and collect the cash and experience that follows.

Apart from finding the characters, your overall aim is to get your city up to 5 stars on the Conform-o-meter. This means you have to build various buildings and achieve various goals such as consumerism, vanity, gluttony to name three. This is done by building and completing quests. The quest interlink, for example Apu will ask Cleutus to plant Tomacco, so he can sell it in his store.

There are a variety of cool buildings to have in your city.

The game is across between SimCity and a social game you find on Facebook. Its fun to build a city featuring all of your characters. However, the time it takes to build them and the need to keep checking back every hour or so does make it a little tedious and long. However, the app will give you a notification when something interesting has happened such as a quest being completed.

My Springfield after about three hours of playing.

Conclusion

The graphics on The Simpson : Tapped Out, are ace. They look just like the TV show and take full advantage of the retina display on your iPad or iPhone. The funny quirks made by Homer are funny and the way it features all of Springfield, rather than just a small subset is fun.

The only disadvantage I have of this game is the time it takes to build things. It is not a game you can play over a weekend, its something you play over a week. Coming back every day, every hour or so to see how your city is doing. Its a good little game to play between meetings.

I also feel that the pink donuts, designed to speed things are a little forced in the game. You can buy pink donuts with real money, which are quite expensive, although I understand that the makers of the game have to make money somehow with a free game, the time it takes to build things and the opportunity to spend real cash to speed things up is a little intrusive.

With its minor faults, this game is good. I do enjoy playing it. It is free, which is always a bonus. It is available on the iPhone or iPad. I played on the iPad and had a great time. I will becoming back each day and allow my Springfield to grow.

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View Hidden Files And Folders When Opening Or Saving Files

Posted: 11 Nov 2012 05:57 AM PST

Hey,

Your Mac has a variety of hidden files and folders, these are used to run your Mac and you don’t need to change or alter the majority of them. However, if you are doing some worth where you are accessing a hidden folder, or want to save or open a hidden file I have a quick tip which can save you a lot of time and allow you to view the hidden files and folders on your Mac. This tip works when you want to save and open a file. I have tried it in most applications and it generally works, although it may not work in apps that don’t use the default file browser.

Normally when you are presented with the open and save dialog you see something similar to the image below.

The default save window, shows only a few files.

However, when your press Command + Shift + . (full stop), the window will change and present to you all of the hidden files and folders on your system.

Your Mac has many hidden files and folders

Notice how there is far more files to view. If you have a file that is normally hidden, you can easily see it within the open or save dialog. It makes it quicker and easier to change and files you don’t normally see.

This is only a quick tip, however I think it certainly saves some time.

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Sunday, November 11, 2012