Despite its eccentric title worthy of some 1980s spoof horror film, Speargun Hunter 3D  by Yossi Malki is a deceptively good game. Once you get past the dated-looking intro screen, and the hokey ringtones that accompany any tab selection, the game proves to have decent graphics – at par with DeerHunter 3D and what you’d expect from other hunting games – and a very decent spectrum of sound effects, ranging from your snorkeling tube releasing air bubbles, to the thick, almost soupy kick of your fins, and the trickling echo, the eerie drone that permeates the

Aiming can be tricky - use your fins to catch up with those fishies

ocean below. I took amusement in one comment a user posted on the iTunes Store about how the only thing he heard was, “the sound of my fins and my tank.” *pause* Well, what do you expect? You’re underwater… in the ocean… in skintight rubber. Do you expect there to be sound in space, too? Star Wars is fiction, little fella. On a different note, I was pleasantly surprised at the range of fish exhibited in this game, in particular the attention to detail the developers gave to the Yellowfin Tuna, and the Groupper. Fish aficionados can rest assured that the different fish species are easily identifiable – and, of course, what ocean would be complete without an ominous, great white shark?

The game is presented through the first person vision of your scuba diving character. Your view is encapsulated by the perimeter of your goggles – as they would when actually scuba diving – and your depth and health are monitored right where your air intake valve would be. To the right are your controls for both kicking your fins for a burst of speed, and to shoot your speargun weapon, when the moment to strike occurs. On the left is your motion control, in the form of a poorly-constructed joystick that proves to be insensitive to touch, unless you precariously center your thumb on the center at all times – a task more difficult than it sounds. The tilting control proves even more difficult to manage – at least the joystick is easy to operate, if a little stubborn at times. Your oxygen is monitored by a yellow tube to the left of your air intake valve. It seems you’re at a constant risk of low supply, or else you have the smallest capacity tank on the market, because you sure

Don't mess with the Great White Shark. Trust me.

do run out of oxygen fast in this game. Be prepared to swim to the surface to resupply, otherwise you’ll be swimming with the fish permanently.

The game is divided up into 10 levels, with different objectives for each. In the free version for Speargun Hunter, only the first three are available, and then the option to upgrade is presented as an option for $0.99. When learning the controls, the first level seems like a huge challenge – learning to aim with the joystick took a few minutes, and even then the fish swim about erratically, as they seem to do in life, making aiming that much more frustrating. To boot, there are sharks, stingrays and other predators floating around, and they’ll eat the fish if you’re not quick enough to spear them first – or, even worse, if your aim is a little off, you may end up spearing them, instead, and then, boy, are you in a world of trouble. Or, should I say, ocean of trouble? If I were physically in the ocean, I’d probably be draining all my oxygen just hyperventilating in anger. Hey, I just solved the mystery of why your character is always low on oxygen.

Despite the slight lagginess (it’s probably better on the 3GS model), Speargun Hunter distracted me enough with its cool, blue jets of light streaming into the depths of the ocean environment, radiating off the shark as it swum past me, its black, expressionless eyes staring out at nothing, and yet everything. If the gameplay were not up to snuff, the game is beautiful enough to keep you returning to it again and again; thankfully, the gameplay is up to snuff, and the challenges posed in each level get progressively more tricky, keeping you at the edge of your fins. If you haven’t strapped on the scuba gear before, you can at least try out this game, and battle a shark head on.

cover model Brooklyn Decker

In light of the recent controversy over the loss of certain scintillating, titillating apps in the iTunes app store, we rejoice over our continued access to the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition on the iPhone. It may seem odd that the Swimsuit edition is still available, given the picketing outrage of many a feminist, but compared to the more, dare I say sexual apps out there, the SI Swimsuit edition is downright vanilla. But, in all seriousness, looking at beautiful women in something as natural and breezy as a swimsuit, and especially when part of a well-known publication, is hardly something worth considering outrageous or anti-feminist. I hardly consider idolizing voluptuous women as something degrading and abhorrent. Besides, there’s a thing called Parental Control in case you don’t want Junior oogling over bikini-clad women at an early age. He has plenty more hormonal years ahead of him before he can give up the bike riding just yet.

But, back to the app. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2010 was recently released for the iPhone, as I mentioned when reviewing the Sports Illustrated app two weeks back. The app is free to download, for you to admire the likes of Brooklyn Decker, Jessica Gomes, Daniella Sarahyba, Irina Shayk, and, my personal favorite, Bar Rafaeli. Plenty of newcomers appear in this edition, along with newcomer actress Ashley Greene, of the now famous Twilight franchise. While free, the app is considerably limited in its photo and video albums, and in order to view more options, you must upgrade for a price. It’s too bad, considering GQ offers its entire publication for free, but I guess looking at beautiful women is an entirely different privilege. For the bare bones, dry minimum free download, you can view one photo and one video for each major model in the issue – in the upgraded, premium version, you are granted access to more videos, more photos, and the entire rookie model collection (new faces to the swimsuit modeling world). You also can read the models’ biographies, and pertinent information. For a mere $1.99 you can get 50 videos, photos of several Winter Olympians, some women from Dancing with the Stars, photos of Ana Ivanovic, and even a few famous soccer stars’ wives and girlfriends in body paint. How absolutely… scintillating.

It’s too bad the app, itself, isn’t terribly functional on the technical front. Sure, it’s easy enough to navigate, but a few simple measures could make it breezier to flow through, like the ability to swipe through photos, rather than exiting and tapping each photo individually. Really, what photo app

Jessica Gomes

doesn’t have a swiping ability? Other than that, the app is pretty basic: it’s meant for a younger demographic, of both men and women, who enjoy seeing models in swimsuits. It’s a famous, annual spread, and it’s usually a hugely anticipated event, one highlighted in magazines, blogs, and news sites – whether you consider it something worthwhile or not is entirely your own opinion. I think it’s fun, like looking through a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, and I relish the fact that Sports Illustrated tends to choose models with a more natural, full figure, rather than the twiggy icons we see on catwalks. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with the latter, it’s just nice to see variety. Sure, models are models, and many women can choose to be nitpicky over their own or others’ perceived flaws, but it’s hard to argue with a magazine that showcases natural beauties, in next to nothing, with happy, radiant smiles, like the girl you’d find next door, or just frolicking on the beach. Almost like your best friend. So if you are one of those avid readers of Sports Illustrated, why not just buy the iPhone app, instead?

In the spirit of the recently ongoing Olympics, here’s a cute game called Track & Field that will put you in the game, when you can’t partake in the sports, yourself. I like running as much as the next self-professed runner, but I will never be referred to as an Olympian – not in this lifetime – nor will I ever participate in any televised events, with fans cheering in stadiums, while donning those ridiculously skintight shorts that long distance runners use, the wedgie ones barely covering their sinewy muscles.

Ruuunnnnn!!!!

No, I’m content to satisfy my Olympian urges with this game by Playman Sports, where I may select an avatar to participate in one of several events, including the 100m dash, the long jump, the 110m hurdles, the pole vault, and the javelin toss. You may select one of 12 characters as your avatar, the default being a duo of red-headed twins. I took a liking to the rather Germanic looking blonde with green beret, much in the same tough vein as Cammy from Street Fighter II. Oh, how I loved Cammy, in all her muscly, braided hair glory. For my character, I chose the Ukrainian flag, for no particular reason, other than I love saying the Ukraine, with a thick, horribly affected accent. If you don’t like the Ukraine (why wouldn’t you?!), don’t worry, there are plenty of other countries to choose.

Tap the numbers in order to jump better and faster.

After creating your carefully crafted avatar, you may go to the Challenge section as an Amateur, where you may participate in any of the aforementioned events; you must beat each event, and the final tournament, before you can unlock the Pro mode. I have yet to beat the Pro section – it’s quite difficult – but I assume the Survival Mode, as indicated by the tightly clad Eskimo on the main screen, will be unlocked for use as soon as I beat the Pro tournament. Multiplayer is available right away, should you want to take your hurdling, running, jumping and throwing skills to the global universe of Track & Field players, but as my readers know, I’m a lover of the single player. Though, I digress – multiplayer is awesome. Suddenly, instead of just one A.I. opponent, you now have four or five players running alongside you and jumping at different times. It’s pretty cool to watch, and I’m curious why the single player mode doesn’t offer you more opponents.

After you’ve selected your event – say, the long jump – I highly recommend you read through the instructions before participating. The game isn’t obviously intuitive the first time around, so the instructions give some much needed insight into what the orange and green buttons mean. “Buttons?” you may ask. For each event, you power your player forward, to hopeful victory, by tapping the orange buttons to start, and by tapping the green buttons as soon as they appear onscreen, then ending with a calculated press and release of two orange buttons to give your player the final surge of power to propel himself forward to the finish. The more quickly you react and tap to the green buttons, the better your player will perform – whether he’s running, or jumping, or otherwise. The use of the orange buttons can be trickier in some events than others – the pole vault, for example, took Ocie and I countless tries before we finally succeeded in figuring out that the orange buttons must be pushed at one, single moment, otherwise your character will fail miserably, hoisting himself a mere foot or two off the ground before haplessly falling, or just not making it into the air at all. Not exactly the Olympian feat we all admire. I believe it was I, who finally figured that as soon as your player begins moving the pole forward and down, you must then, and only then, press the orange buttons – despite their repeated glaring onscreen – to successfully vault yourself into the air, and over the high beam, to land down on the other side in triumph. Phew! What a workout that was.

Out of all the events, the pole vault and the long jump are the two most frustrating and difficult to master. You challenge different opponents, randomly, for each event, and you must conquer them in three rounds to successfully complete an event. If you’re lousy at the game (a little like me), then at least the game is enjoyable to watch, with its retro-stylized graphics that seem appropriate for a classic Nintendo. I always appreciate anything retro, anyway.

Definitely a fun game to pick up whenever the urge to compete strikes, with Track & Field you don’t have to worry about scraped knees or muddy shorts. Just make your player do all the dirty work and reap the applause, anyway.

Gridiron Football

The late, great Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “Football Season Is Over.” Nostalgia has set in and the Super Bowl was Sunday! Luckily, the next season starts March 5, 2010… for the players and coaches, that is: the rest of us will have to wait until September. Oi. Despite sports week ending last Friday, I think it’s time to take a look at a football app for the off-season. Could Gridiron Football be the app that tides you over?

Amid the plethora of Sports apps, especially Football-related apps, Gridiron, by David Hardenbrook, stands out. Not because it’s particularly flashy, slick or even great, but because it’s unique. It’s a turn-and-text-based strategy app that forces you to think methodically, like a coach rather than maniacally smudging the screen trying to make a play. It’s a lot to take in at first, but actually, despite the foreign look and feel, it’s very easy to pick up and play. I decided to jump in to a game after reading half way through the instructions.

Bombs away

There are two modes – Regular and “THE DRIVE!”. In the regular mode you can choose the length of the quarter, if you want to play another person or the computer, and whether you’re the Home or Away team. Once you start your game, the coin toss is automatically determined (randomly) and the winner chooses whether they kick or receive, etc.. The game is straight football. On offense you can choose which player you want to go to (two WRs, one TE, one Fullback, one Tailback and the QB – used for Quarterback sneaks). Each player has his strengths and weaknesses that you have to take into account when choosing the play. On the defensive side of the ball you can choose your formation and whether the defense is pass or run balanced – you can even drag your players around to customize the formation, which is pretty cool. In “THE DRIVE!” mode you get to basically run a 2 minute drill at the end of the 4th quarter and prove that you have the guts and arm of Peyton Manning Joe Montana.

I'm still catching my breath

Gridiron football claims to place focus on strategy in order to win. Well, that’s true, but what extent is it strategy and to what extent is it random? For three plays in a row I chose to throw deep into a zone with no defenders and all three times the pass was incomplete. Other times I ran into two linemen and gained 9 and 16 yards. I know it matters if the defense is pass or run focused, but this was just a little bit preposterous. Additionally, I found a pretty big glitch in the game: when customizing your defense, if you grab two players with two fingers and reposition them, new players are created. You can repeat this until every zone has two people in it. I don’t know if this makes a difference strategy-wise, because both times I did this the offense gained first down yardage, but it looks pretty intimidating!

And everyone thought the Patriots taping opponents was cheating!

Aside from this exploit the game is pretty solid. It runs fine (c’mon, there are no moving parts) and has enough variety to keep me playing for a while (unless I’m playing 15 minute quarters – WAY too long). It could use a few improvements: WiFi or Bluetooth multiplayer and the ability to flip the tight end would be good improvements. Also, a moving play clock would change the game a lot, and would allow for better use of time-outs (or use them at all). The ability to call a time out after viewing the setups could add complexity. And lastly: the game shouldn’t always show a brief tutorial when starting a new game, it’s very annoying.

If you’re looking for a different kind of Football game, one without the hitting and juking and injuries but with all of the intellectual stimuli that escape you on game day as you sit in your armchair with your beer cozy, Gridiron Football is the game for you.

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Sports Week was another exercise in challenging myself to foray into the unknown, to take a whiff of the wild side, gamble with that of which I have little to no inkling. In other words, it was fabulous. I like learning and trying new things, and Sport apps are no exception. My fellow Appstruck writers and myself experimented with all sorts of apps, and we settled upon the ones shown this past week not because they were the most well-known or popular, but because they were the ones that got the job done, in the best way, with the best bang for your buck. And, most of them are really entertaining.

So, I encourage you, check out the apps below if you want to do anything from tracking your favorite player’s stats, to playing golf, to testing your tackling abilities.

Action Bowling Free





SportsTap





Real Tennis 2009





CBS Sports Mobile





Air Hockey

Tiger Woods PGA Tour

Sports Illustrated





BackBreaker Football

O M G.

I never thought I’d say this, but I love this sports game. And, it’s a football game. I’ve reached a milestone here. Of course, let’s be reasonable here: it’s not a true football game, in the sense that a true football game would actually require you to play football. BackBreaker Football by Natural Motion does not do this. It’s just the backbreaking part, which I think, is my main attraction to football. This game effectively skips all the positioning, the strategy, the score keeping, the fumbling, and fuming by just having you play as one football player, carrying a ball, sprinting down field toward the goal while avoiding, with a hop, skip and jump, the opposing forces that sprint toward you. Like I said, it’s fun, if a little simple.

The game immediately sucked me in with its hip, rock music fairly typical of any football movie or game (*starts thinking of those gritty, grainy film textures with yellow filters for adding dimension and grungy personality to sports flicks*). It’s too bad the music gave way to lame emo music of the kind where a man yells in some unflattering and mundanely generic tune, for you and me to ignore. It’s not a big deal – the music goes away once you’re in the game. When starting the game, a nice 360 view is given of the entire stadium, with all the fans standing and cheering you on. The graphics are definitely good enough to keep me playing this game – I have no qualms about admitting my addiction and high expectations for aesthetic quality. The objective? Make your way to the endzone without being tackled. Well, that’s simple enough, only for each level of difficulty there are 60 waves of increasingly tough defenses to beat. Thankfully, there are a few ways you can really amp up your scores, whether it be through juking, spinning, or showboating (150, 250, and 100/sec points, respectively), or, if you’re really daring, you can do combos of any of the above. These really help if you’ve been tackled a few times in a row and see your scores plummet. I particularly like showboating – it’s practically a rite of passage for football players – but I try to save it for when I’m a few yards from the endzone. I think the fans might think you a wee bit too cocky if you strutted a silly dance in the middle of the football field. At least optimism is on your side.

The controls are incredibly easy to use – I wouldn’t change a thing. Tilt the iPhone forward to start your player running, and then turn the phone to the left and right to move him in those direction; otherwise, hold up the iPhone to slow his speed, or even come to a standstill. The two buttons immediately to your left and right, the ones with arrows, let you juke in the corresponding direction, and the buttons adjacent to these are your spinning buttons, once again, corresponding to the direction they’re in. To make your player sprint, hold down the sprint button mid-screen on the right. Watch out, though, he you turn slower when sprinting, making you more vulnerable to tackles, and you can’t double up points by simultaneously juking or spinning. On the opposite spectrum, the showboating button in mid-screen on the left, for you to slow down, open your arms, and show the fans just how much of a pompous ham you are. Oh, it’s all in good fun.

Now, it’s on to play the game. Should the regular game mode ever get tired, there are two additional modes of play, Challenge and Endurance, that challenge you in different ways, with different scores and bonuses (things like gold helmets and the like). When playing, your character runs so smoothly it’s just a pleasure to behold, and the game has no discernible choppiness when being tackled heavily by opposing forces. When you do get tackled, a loud grunt and clanging of plastic is heard – very well done, I might add. For your added delight, BackBreaker includes instant replays from various angles that go on interminably until you hit the “skip” button. I rather like this. It adds to the enjoyment factor.

Running, spinning, showboating and the rough tackle or two really make these game enjoyable to play. It becomes more and more challenging, and there are plenty of levels, so despite the exceedingly basic premise, BackBreaker somehow turned out to be a quality game, with much more life than I anticipated. I’ll be playing this one for awhile to come.

Touchdown!

The Sports Illustrated iPhone app is a subscription-free, ad-subsidized application that allows users to view all the latest sports stories and photos; access all the latest scores; view the latest columns from SI’s editorial staff; and access sport-specific scores, news, and standings. Users can also view Sports Illustrated photos – which includes model shots, in case you want enough of a teaser to check out the Swimsuit Edition app – , and read about the latest truth and rumor articles. One rumor that caught my eye was the seemingly insane title, USC offers scholarship to 13-year old QB. Whoa, I know some kids can be precocious, but when it comes to physical strength? A 13-year old? Try again. The app overall tends to lean more toward the website than the magazine, in design, as the content reflects daily sports news and not the thoughtful features that are a hallmark of the magazine.

The first thing that struck me about this app was how much content it included. It’s not the entire SI.com website in an app, but it’s close. The top stories, photos, scores, columnists and breaking news are all there for you to root through. It visually has a different design from the website, but it still manages to convey the same feeling of navigation – from an aesthetic standpoint, it’s one of the better looking sports news apps you can find. I enjoyed the fact that it covers all the requisite basics – NFL, College Football, MLB, NBA, College Basketball, NHL, Tennis, Soccer – and it covers additional ones we tend not to clump alongside the aforementioned: racing, boxing, cycling, horse racing, and the Olympics. Any stories you read about are able to be shared via email or Twitter, which I found odd. Why faze out facebook?

The reason why I prefer the Sports Illustrated app to other sports-tracking apps is it includes the stellar articles that made Sports Illustrated famous, and the most highly regarded sports journalism in the world. Having a tab for the SI writers really makes this app, because you can sort through headlines and various articles by your favorite editors – it’s just a nice icing on the cake for an already excellent app. The scores tab could definitely be better organized – it’s true, I may not follow sport scores, so I am unfamiliar with navigating and deciphering the terrain, but it wasn’t at all obvious to the layman. I experienced no crashing or glitches when using the app, and I read of no such complaints from forums.

A good app to have if you’re a regular reader of Sports Illustrated, it’s even better to have given the way print publication has been going. GQ has already made the transition to uploading their monthly issues as iPhone apps – sooner or later we’ll see other popular publications taking this route, and given the ease of the SI app, it’ll likely make this transition soon.

Rawr!

Tiger Woods plays Golf?! You wouldn’t have a very good sense of his abilities if all you read were the tabloids – well, you wouldn’t have a good sense about his abilities outside of the bedroom. Now that I  got that out of the way (really, how can I ignore it?), let’s take a look at Tiger Woods PGA Tour for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

EA Sports should issue a declaimer: long-time fans of the now decade old franchise of Tiger Woods Golf may suffer a bout of nostalgia when playing this game – it feels and looks like Tiger Woods ’99, a game beloved by many me. Of course, I was 15 years old and hanging out with my ten-years-older brother and his friends, so my trip down nostalgia lane may be a bit more nostalgic than others’. The look and feel of this game are so like the original PlayStation version that it makes me wonder if they somehow ported the game over. That’s highly unlikely, I know, but I’m not kidding. Save for a few differences, improvements really, it’s remarkably similar. The graphics, the physics, the feel of the game are all so similar that it makes me wonder, at $4.99, how they ever charged $50!

Wait, this game is similar to one from Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Nine? That was a decade ago: last century, last millennium! It’s actually not that similar, it’s much better. To start off, I have to say I was really impressed when I played Real Tennis 2009 after Jackie reviewed it yesterday – the graphics and playability were top notch. The game is hard, but not in an annoying way; it’s hard in a way that makes you want to persevere, to even buy the full app. Tiger Woods PGA Tour, on the other hand, is a bit underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, I played the hell out of this game for a month or so, but mostly because I love Golf. The game hits the intricacies of Golf right on the sweet spot. You can choose from multiple swing types (full, pitch, chip, punch and lob); you can put spin on the ball (top, back, side); you can shape your shots to draw or fade. Of course, the extent to which you can use these shots depends on your upgrades.

*brushes shoulders off*

You start the game as a novice and you must play rounds of golf to make money progress in order to purchase equipment upgrades for your game. There are upgrades for putting, recover and power, to name a few. Initially, it’s a challenge to stay on the course and earn money for upgrades and tournaments, but once you get over the initial hump the rest of the game is like a playing winter rules in the summer from the red tees (what??). Read: it’s too easy. After a few hours you’ll learn to read putts and use the putt preview (hint: use the putt preview after you line your putt up and adjust accordingly). And after a few hours you’ll realize playing single rounds is a waste and you’ll enter a tournament and see that the payout amount increases tenfold compared to single rounds, even if you don’t win. And once you start winning tournaments the upgrade costs become a thing of the past. Essentially, you go from a novice to a monster that not even Tiger can compete with. At the point, the game gets stale, well, after a little while of completely destroying the courses.

The game comes with a few courses ready to play (Pebble Beach, St. Andrews) and along your way to Godliness you unlock more. Thanks to the 3.0 software update you can even – now, in the latest versions – buy additional courses from the Pro Shop in-game, but I haven’t. $0.99 for an additional course? Nice try, EA. In addition to useless features such as the Pro Shop, Tiger Woods PGA Tour has a number of glitches and incomplete areas that really bring the experience down in my book.

"It's in the hole" - Bill Murray, Caddyshack

First, the score-keeping is inaccurate. One time I was at about -50 through 54 holes (yeah, exactly: insane) and had to quit. I chose to save my progress and quit, as opposed to just hitting the home button. When I returned my score was drastically lower, in the -30s. Big deal? Well, yeah. I don’t know if there’s a score limitation by design, or if it is a glitch, but it should correctly record your score, period. Another annoying glitch is the fact that the game only starts about every other time. When it doesn’t work it hangs on the loading screen but eventually just kicks you back to your home screen. Here are some more glitches: when you’re putting, the suspense of whether it will drop or miss is completely ruined since the camera shot for a make is the same 99% of the time, as is the camera shot for a miss; when playing on uneven ground, such as out of a pot bunker, your character will hit the ball and walk towards the shot, sending him straight into the ground like he’s wading in water.

The biggest miss this game makes is the vast separation between your character and other players in the game. Once you get to a certain point, it’s absolutely dumbfounding how much better you are. In ridiculous games like the old NFL Blitz series, it was even. In this game, it’s far from. They could have at least included a difficulty setting so you can play against people who don’t shoot -10 when you’re shooting -50. I haven’t tried the multiplayer option for lack of camaraderie, but that could be a solution to the lack of competition in the game, itself.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour is definitely worth the $4.99 price tag, but it’s not a great game. It’s fun, but not fantastic. It misses on technical notes, but what I feel is really important is that you learn to feel the shots. You can go from calculating distances based on yardage and percentages to simply knowing the shot, which is something I never fully experienced in the console versions I played.

The app’s opening screen made me chuckle a bit. Sports channels tend to be glossy nowadays, with immaculate special effects and dazzling intro scenes – it’s just marketing at its finest, building up anticipation for the actual event, which is all the fans care about anyway. In the same vein, CBS Sports Mobile opens to this glossy, glamorous page, with blue jets of light shooting in all directions, and the faded blue silhouettes of sports players in the throes of their action plays. I half expect to hear the American Idol theme song ring out, the cheese factor is so overwhelming. But, at least it’s not boring.

Like other sports-tracking apps, this app gives you the latest headlines in sports news of the NFL, the NBA, CollBK, the NHL and the MLB. Four headlines appear at a time, accompanied by a photo, and tapping on the story will link you the full story. A tab at the bottom of the screen will take you to the next page, with four more headlines. The news stories are easy enough to read, printed with blue letters on a white background, but the app curiously lacks a zoom feature. If you’re someone who squints frequently and zooms iPhone articles until they reach the numeric size of 14, then CBS Sports Mobile is not for you – at least, not without a magnifying glass, or monocle. I was a little annoyed at the bright banner at the bottom of the screen, always reading “IS YOUR CAR BATTERY OUTRAGEOUSLY DEPENDABLE?” in glaring, offensive green caps. This is my own quarrel, but the large, green letters are so bright and loud that they overpower the fine, blue print of the sports article, and so I found my eyes involuntarily drawn down all the time, magnetized to the heavy pull of the banner ad. It’s pretty distracting, but, since many apps rely on banners for additional income, my rhetoric will probably fall on deaf ears.

The app is pretty easy to nagivate, despite slower than average loading times, and I really appreciated the tab setup at the top of the screen, with a quick tap on the Sports tab revealing all the different channels (NFL, NBA, and so forth), allowing for quick switching of sports. There’s even the option to tap into your Fantasy sports team, should you have an account set up. I, myself, am not a fantasy leaguer – unless you count Magic, The Gathering (go ahead jocks, laugh it up) but just from perusing the review comments on the iTunes page, I could ascertain that perhaps the Fantasy sports option wasn’t quite up to snuff. There was plenty of negative commentary to root through, ranging from high crashing rates to poor execution, and there were enough low ratings to reduce the app’s iTunes rating to 3 stars – I can confidently guess that this substandard rating is predominantly from those let down by the Fantasty Sports. However, much of the negative feedback on the app is just drivel nonsense. The layout isn’t terrible, and I have yet to experience any crashing – should frequent crashing ever happen to me, then I’ll happily update this post to reflect that. In the meantime, this app is at part with other sports-tracking apps, and is completely functional, with an adequate layout – maybe not as intuitive as others, but it gets the job done. I think we’ve reached a point in the app universe where after being inundated with millions of apps, we expect stellar results each time – otherwise we’ll just find a better one. Something to work on for the next update, I suppose.

But, regarding regular sports tracking, it’s hard to beat Sports Mobile. Scores, videos of plays, player stats, and more are included in this app, and should you wish to learn more about specific sports (teams, W/L), then CBS Sports Mobile will provide a tab that will link you to the app store so that you may download another sub-app (part of the whole CBS Interactive) that will provide you with that additional information. This might deter you from checking it out, having to download additional parts, but hey, it’s free. Plenty of the live-streaming sports apps require purchasing, so it’s always a breath of fresh air to get quality information at no cost. CBS Sports Mobile may not be the greatest app – our fellow Appstruck writer Ocie is pretty keen on this one – but a lot of these sports-tracking apps are just a matter of preference; someone may just like the fact that one app is bare bones, while another may prefer a flashier app with more panache, despite the apps providing the same essential information. At least CBS Sports Mobile is a quick study in sports news, at a free cost, with an good setup. Who can argue with that?

Yesterday I discussed how much fun bowling can be, but today, I’ve shifted my focus to tennis. Aside from golf, I can’t think of a more uptight, frilly, steeped in aristocratic breeding, white sport than tennis. The sport just oozes British accents and white shorts, polo shirts, matching terry head and wristbands, and an immaculately groomed appearance. Hmm, maybe I’m confusing tennis with polo. That’s tennis’ stereotype anyway, even when contrasted with Serena Williams’ often questionable and revealing fashion choices on court, and the rippling, bronzed god that is Rafael Nadal. But, I love watching tennis on TV. The women are always grunting, sweat is always pouring off the players’ faces, and then there’s Roger Federer, who with his ridiculous good looks, perfect coif, perfect form, and ever white uniform, should be branded the face of tennis – like Laetitia Casta being cast as the face of France. There are plenty of tennis games out there to put users in the shoes of these great tennis pros, but Real Tennis 2009 isn’t too shabby at all.

Real Tennis 2009 is definitely a solid tennis game — if you’re not ready to be quick on your virtual feet, or are looking for something more casual, you might check elsewhere. But with eight players, seven courts and three surfaces (not to mention some interesting multiplayer options to try), it’s a worthwhile tennis experience. The full version is priced decently at $4.99, but if you just want a quick overview, try out the free version – the gameplay is still there, there are just limits on court options and, unfortunate for some, no multiplayer. The whole game is flashy and dazzling, with game replays, and intermissions where, for five or so seconds, you watch your player recoup his wits and muscles on the sidelines, drinking from his sports bottle. I really like these little details – it adds a lot of personality to the game.

The game plays pretty well, though the players are controlled with onscreen buttons rather than touchscreen gestures. One thing I’ve noticed about iPhone games with built-in touchscreen buttons is they’re not terribly responsive. Something about your sweaty finger getting stuck on the screen, or the grease from your finger obscuring the screen’s ability to tactily respond to and translate your every swipe and tap just makes for a poorer game than those that rely on gestures. Besides – having buttons onscreen, while malleable (they could be on the left, or right, of hey, why not in the center), are kind of a throwback to almost archaic methods, no matter how tried and true they are. Even if Gameloft had you move the characters by tilting the iPhone, it would improve the playability. Serving is the only activity that tries to take full advantage of the iPhone’s controls: you can target your serve with the accelerometer, and then tap the screen anywhere when the serve meter is full. But, at least the game is fun: The action is pretty fast, and sometimes too fast. If you don’t get moving in the right direction right off the ball, your player will most likely end up diving and missing. Or just missing in a silly, obvious manner. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch it in instant replay.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the game lies in its impressive four-player WiFi multiplayer. That could be pretty impressive – if you can find three other people with iPhones and the game to play (hopefully, you’ll have more luck with this than finding other Harry Potter fans to duel). Single player is good enough for me, though, and I easily passed the time volleying with the AI – who have a tendency to hit the mark exactly (all the time). It’ll be awhile before I rise beyond the Rookie status, if I’m even at that level, but this game is far more enjoyable for me than playing the actual sport. When I play in life, I sort of make it up as a I go along, diving to the left and right and striking the ball whenever possible. I tend to cringe and later fume, not so quietly, when my boyfriend offers suggestions on my form. I do have plenty of stamina (cardio is my friend), so the quick switch-around and momentous, pirouetted leap are but two of the reflexive techniques in my repertoire, but I digress – I’ve never been one to participate in competitive sports. For one, I’m far too competitive. With games I was always the one throwing the controller across the room, or, in one famous incident among my brothers and I, when Diablo killed me in the first Diablo, and I screamed, picked up my director’s chair, and threw it across the room, near where my brothers were perched. My brothers left soon after that. I’m so calm and collected in my daily life that sports unleash my childish temper tantrum, where I just let loose with the primal screams and pout in a very unflattering and unforgiving manner. Plenty of people thrive in this type of competition, but I’d rather team up and rock climb, or run together, or take a long hike. Those are sports too, in a sense, perhaps not as most Americans define “sport” (i.e. football, basketball, baseball, tennis), but they’re right up my alley. But, I enjoy playing most sports games – with Real Tennis 2009 I’m a step removed from the sport, and I can rest assured knowing my players onscreen will always have better form than me.