"If there is an app for that"

StoryCut - Video Editor &Maker

Wenzhou XunChi Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

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MovieMusic Review

November 21, 2020 by RSS Feed

Music is a more powerful storytelling tool than most people realize. It’s the vital seasoning that makes every movie, TV show, advertisement, and internet video meme work how it should, manipulating your emotions in exactly the right way.

MovieMusic | Music For Videos

The problem is, using an existing piece of music involves paying exorbitant fees or drawing on classical pieces that everybody has already heard a trillion times.

MovieMusic aims to solve that problem for you by providing a library of compositions that you can dip into for every conceivable dramatic context.

These tracks, which have been written by a company of jobbing professional composers and performed by a live orchestra, tend to be around a minute long. They fall into 70+ albums, with titles like “Attractive”, “Badness”, “Excitement”, “Light”, “Christmas”, and so on.

The tracks themselves have titles too. In the “Love” album, for instance, you’ll find “Bond”, “Bliss”, “Longing”, “Intimacy”, and more. Each album contains 30 tracks, meaning there are over 2000 in all.

There are a couple of chapters of Orchestral Tools as well - subtle accents to create mood rather than full-blown musical compositions.

The first two tracks in each chapter are free, while the remaining 28 cost 99c a pop. The reason MovieMusic is able to sell its music so cheaply is that the files are restricted to a bitrate of 128kbs, and the tracks are licensed for personal, non-commercial use. So if you’re looking for a cheap way to score your next Hollywood project, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

The Good

MovieMusic | Music For Videos

MovieMusic is simple to use and it works surprisingly well. The Christmas music sounds Christmassy, the Comedy music sounds suitably quirky and upbeat (think Curb Your Enthusiasm), and the Disgusting music, somehow, sounds disgusting.

A bit of imagination is required when it comes to the individual track names, such as “Baking” (“Bright pizzicato helps show off the intricacies of the expert in full flow”), but on the whole MovieMusic provides snippets of music that intuitively belong in their categories and do what they’re supposed to do.

Every single one of the app’s 2000+ tracks is in the same key and tempo, too, so you can in principle blend them into a seamless orchestral score. It’s very clever.

This really helps when navigating the 2000+ tracks, as does the simple preview - or “audition” - facility that lets you listen to each track in full before deciding whether to spend money on it.

It’s also worth mentioning that each track in MovieMusic has three versions: Cinematic (the default), Intimate, and Modern. While the quality levels of the different versions naturally vary according to the track, in general we find that Cinematic is the one to go for.

MovieMusic has a seamlessly simple interface. You just choose a chapter, pick a song, and tap the play icon to listen. Once you buy and download a song you’re given the option of sharing it via iMessage, WhatsApp, Mail, or even opening it in iMovie or another video-editing program. It couldn’t be easier.

The Bad

MovieMusic | Music For Videos

While MovieMusic’s interface is intuitive and easy to use, its presentation is functional rather than enjoyable.

You could argue that the same applies to the music itself. This isn’t a criticism of the compositions, all of which sound polished and professional. But the wall-to-wall orchestral arrangements don’t reflect the breadth and variety of music right now.

There’s a bit of digital percussion overlaid on the tracks in Modern mode, but few other nods to contemporary musical styles. If you’re looking for a traditional sound, it’s perfect. Otherwise, you may struggle to find what you’re looking for - even in the Technology chapter.

Overall

MovieMusic is a slightly odd proposition. While asset libraries are usually for commercial use, this one is just for fun.

But it’s a fun tool that will add a pleasing sheen to your personal and non-commercial YouTube videos. It’s incredibly easy to use, too, and it contains a generous supply of musical morsels.

8.4

OVERALL

User Interface 9

Lasting appeal 8.4

iPhone Integration 8.5

Is engaging 8.1

Does it well 8

MovieMusic | Music For Videos

Gothic Projects

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Athenion: Tactical CCG Review

November 21, 2020 by RSS Feed

Athenion might not have the pedigree of some other deck-building card games available for mobile, but that shouldn't put you off. This is a game that's packed full of bright ideas, fresh new gameplay modes and enough content that you can lose hours of your life to.

Athenion: Tactical CCG

Battles take place on a 4x4 grid, and see you taking it in turns with your opponent to lay down cards. You draw up to five cards from your deck of forty at the start of every turn.

These are the units you're playing in the fight, and they range from hulking monsters to flighty fairies, from magical trees to fearsome undead dragons.

Your cards have arrows on them that you show you which direction they can attack. You'll also notice a bunch of other numbers on the cards. These let you know the hit points a card has, how powerful its attack is and how many soul points it grants you.

Those soul points let you attack your opponent and they're the key to victory. The first player to lose all of their own hit points is the loser.

There's a lot more going on than that though. For one thing you need to pick from one of six different factions before you even get to the fights.

These factions have different strengths and weaknesses and figuring out which of them best suits the way you want to play is the first step of a pretty long journey.

Different factions have different special moves as well. Some let you link together cards to make them more powerful, others are all about sacrificing weaker units to create pockets of dark magical energy. One lets you build giant rock walls that you can use to protect some of your units or power up others.

There are single-player challenges, regular events and much, much more as well. You're never short of something to do in Athenion, and the pace of the matches lets you get a lot of them in in a single setting.

The Good

Athenion: Tactical CCG

There's a staggering amount of depth to Athenion. It's going to take you a good while to get to grips with the basics and once you've done that there are layers and layers to peel back. Every time you win you'll figure out a new strategy and every time you lose you'll be trying to find a way to right that wrong.

The game looks amazing too. The cards all sport a brilliant anime art-style and you'll want to collect all of them just so you can check them out. The speed of the fights is a massive plus too - they deliver huge chunks of tactical action in the sort of short-blast sessions that are perfect for mobile play.

On top of that there's a brilliant community to the game, and you never have to wait long to find an online battle. There are a number of different modes that let you practice with different decks, take part in intriguing events and fight it out in ranked and casual multiplayer matches.

The Bad

Athenion: Tactical CCG

There's a pretty steep learning curve here, so if you're not in for the long haul then you might be better finding your card-based fun somewhere else. Even when you've got the basics down you've still got a lot to learn and it can be punishing to come up against an opponent who knows more than you do.

There are also a lot of currencies, crafting materials and other rewards to figure out. The game does tell you what they do, but the tutorials are pretty brief and you're left on your own for a lot of the time to try and get to the bottom of things.

Overall

Athenion might not be the easiest game to understand, but once things start clicking it becomes something really rather special. There are some brilliant ideas here and they're woven into a bright tapestry of gorgeous visuals and wonderfully paced mobile play.

It won't be to everyone's taste, and it's fair to say that some players are going to put it down before they've even got to the good bits, but this is one CCG that it's well worth sticking with.

8.2

OVERALL

Replayability 8.1

Game Controls 8.2

Graphics 8.7

Sound/Music 8.2

Gameplay 7.8

Athenion: Tactical CCG

ZERO-bit Company Limited

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Be More Productive With Google Tasks

November 21, 2020 by RSS Feed

Google Tasks: Get Things Done (Free) by Google is the official app for managing your tasks and to-dos associated with your Google account. The app came out earlier in the week, which should be appealing to users of the service, which was previously only available through the web.

Ever since I got my first iPhone back in 2008 and then joined the lovely AppAdvice team, I've grown into a kind of productivity nut. I never really kept track of a digital calendar until I got an iPhone, at which point I started to just use Google Calendar for everything. I also went through many different task managers, writing apps, and other miscellaneous things to up my productivity levels. Even though I've come to settle down on a workflow that works for me (Things 3 is what I currently use), I can't help but check out other to-do apps as they come along. So when I saw Google Tasks hit the App Store this week, I had to give it a go, especially considering the fact that most of my stuff is on Google anyways.

Google Photos

Google, Inc.

Google Calendar

Google, Inc.

$9.99

Things 3

Cultured Code GmbH & Co. KG

Google Tasks is available on the iPhone App Store for free.

OmniFocus 2

The Omni Group

Visually, Google Tasks is simple and clean. If you've used other Google apps and services before, then Tasks will look familiar to you right away. It's definitely not the prettiest thing to look at, but no one uses Google services because they're pretty, it's more about functionality. Tasks features plenty of whitespace and bold headers so you know exactly where you are in your lists. The app is fast and responsive, with smooth transition animations as you navigate through the app and edit items. And since this uses Google's cloud, syncing data is fast and seamless across multiple devices, such as between your iPhone and the web (this version needs some work).

When you launch Tasks, you'll need to sign in to your Google account, obviously. Most of us should already have a Google account by now, but you can also make one if you don't use Google's productivity suite yet.

Once you sign in, your default screen is "My Tasks." This is like the inbox for your items, and where they go to by default if you don't add to a specific list. Speaking of, Tasks only has support for lists, so if you wanted to create projects, such as "Work" with multiple jobs, then you're out of luck. You can switch lists at any time by tapping on the hamburger button in the bottom left corner and then selecting the list you want to view. You can also create a new list from here as well.

Creating a new list is fairly barebones — just give it a name, and then hit "Done." It gets saved and you have an empty list, ready to get to work. When you want to add a new task, just tap on the large button in the center, and it brings up the prompt. Type in your task, and then tap on the "+" button for additional details like notes and a due date.

Unfortunately, Google Tasks does not support due times, which is something I prefer, with deadlines to meet. Maybe it's something that Google could consider in the future, but it may or may not be a deal breaker for some.

If you decide you need a task to be in a different list, it's easy to move. Just view the item in question, and then tap on the list in the upper left corner, then pick where you want to move it to. Or you can trash it with the button in the top right.

Google Tasks does come with support for subtasks straight out of the box, though, so at least there's that. You can add subtasks to any existing task in a list, and there's no limit on the number of subtasks you can have. You can check off each subtask off as you complete them, but checking off the main task also marks any subtasks as done in one go.

A nice thing about Google Tasks is that it has the ability to create tasks for you from emails. When you use Gmail to directly add a task, you can check out your tasks in the sidebar of Gmail. Tasks even let you trace it back to the source, in case you forget where it came from.

Previously only available on the web, Google Tasks is now a standalone app.

The Good

Google Tasks is a great choice to consider for tasks if you are already using Google's other G Suite apps, such as Gmail and Calendar. The mobile app looks a lot nicer than the web version, and it's fast and simple. It's not a complicated app, so those who are usually scared off by complex task managers like OmniFocus should definitely take a look at Google Tasks.

The Bad

I can see Google Tasks being good enough for those who don't want anything too complicated. However, I'm not a fan of the lack of due times with dates, and I wish I could organize lists together in a collection or project. Perhaps it's something that can be considered in the future.

The verdict

While I use Google for a lot of things (Calendar, Gmail, Contacts, and Photos), I don't think I'll be sticking with Tasks. While I like the simplicity of the design, it's just too barebones for me. However, if you don't need a complicated task manager and just need something that handles basic lists with subtasks or integrates with Gmail, then Tasks is a good fit. But if you need more powerful features, then I recommend looking elsewhere.

7.8

OVERALL

iPhone Integration 8

User Interface 8

Is engaging 8

Lasting appeal 7.5

Does it well 7.5

Google Tasks: Get Things Done

Google LLC

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Throw Axes and Slay Your Foes in AXE.IO

November 21, 2020 by RSS Feed

AXE.IO (Free) by Crescent Moon Games is a brutal battleground arena game. If you enjoy games like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile, but want something a bit less serious and more comical, then AXE.IO is a good choice.

When I need to take my mind off of things for a bit, I turn to video games. Whether it's puzzles or some arcade action, it usually helps ease my mind. But lately, I've been needing something a bit more action-packed, something that lets me take my anger out in a non-harmful way. So when I saw AXE.IO on the App Store, I knew it was going to be a good fit.

Fortnite

Epic Games, Inc.

PUBG MOBILE

Tencent Mobile International Limited

Visually, AXE.IO has a distinctive, low-poly art style that seems popular these days, especially since Horizon Chase. It reminds me a tiny bit of Fortnite, since it's rather cartoony, but the characters are modeled after fantasy and medieval designs, rather than modern young adults. The arenas are not vast and huge as PUBG and Fortnite, but there's still plenty of space to move around as you try to survive. The colors are bright and colorful, with some muted earthy tones thrown in to the mix. Animations are smooth and fluid on my iPhone 8 Plus, though I get some lag and frame rate issues when a lot is going on. The soundtrack is rather exhilarating and action-packed too.

There's four game modes in AXE.IO: Arena, Deathmatch, Battleground, and Dragon Hunter. Arena is the default mode, and lets you partake in small 6-player arenas, where you fight for as long as you can. Deathmatch puts you up against players in real-time, and you can keep reviving and trying again until time's up. Battleground puts 50 players on a map and you fight to be the lone survivor. Dragon Hunter is more of a co-op mode, where you team up with others (instead of fighting them) to defeat huge dragons.

No matter which mode you choose, AXE.IO is just brutal multiplayer fun with throwing axes and other melee weapons. The controls are easy to pick up as well. To move around in the arena, just use the virtual joystick in the bottom left corner. Opposite of that, in the right corner, you have buttons for throwing your axe, rolling to evade, and even a sword attack if you have a sword equipped.

AXE.IO, as the name implies, involves throwing axes to kill your enemies. To do this, you'll want to make sure that green arrow in front of your character is aimed towards your target, and then you just tap on that axe button to throw, hopefully hitting them. Those axes land in their skulls for some nice, brutal kills, which is exactly what the game was going for. But since you just threw your axe, you'll become vulnerable until you pick up another axe laying around, ready to strike your next target.

As you get kills in the arenas, you'll earn experience points, represented by the gold coin drops from fallen foes. The higher your level is, the more advantages you'll have in battle. That's because there are tons of items just laying around, such as multiple axes, swords, and shields, but they require a higher level to use. Having such items protect you from more hits, and let you dish out more hits without having to find another axe laying around.

You have the opportunity to earn crystals as you play, which can be spent on new character unlocks. Each character has their own unique trait. There are also skills that get unlocked, and if you use them with the right character, their abilities get boosted. It's important to match the right skill with the proper character for maximum efficiency.

If you die, you can spend some gems to revive with all of your existing items and level, or watch an ad for the same purpose. Otherwise, if you revive, you start back at level one and all items are lost. Be careful though — you only get one continue, so use it wisely.

AXE.IO is an intense and brutal multiplayer battlegrounds arena game that is perfect for bite-size mobile gaming sessions.

The Good

AXE.IO is a fun and entertaining pocket battleground game that's sure to keep you busy for some time. The graphics are nice, the music is fun, and the gameplay is challenging, considering that it's against other real players from all over the world. The controls work out nicely, and it's hard to stop once you get used to the system, even if you end up dying a lot.

The Bad

Like other battleground games, you're going to die a lot in AXE.IO. If you get frustrated because of a lot of deaths, then perhaps AXE.IO is not the type of game for you. However, it's all really in good fun, so you shouldn't be too serious about it. Plus even if you don't usually play these types of games, AXE.IO is a lot easier than games like Fortnite and PUBG, so it gives everyone a more fair chance of playing and rising in the ranks quickly.

The verdict

I've never played any .IO games before, but AXE.IO is a pretty fun one, I must admit. I enjoy low-poly graphics, so the visuals appeal to me, and the cartoonish style works considering the nature of the game. The music is fun and delightful, along with the sound effects. Controls are intuitive and not too complicated, considering the battlegrounds theme, so it's friendly enough for everyone. I just wish that there wasn't so much lag when the action gets pretty intense, as that has screwed me up a few times in the middle of combat. Not that big of a deal though, since it's so fast-paced, but some optimizations would be nice.

AXE.IO is available on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for free. There are in-app purchases for characters and gems.

8.4

OVERALL

Game Controls 9

Replayability 8.7

Graphics 8

Sound/Music 8

Gameplay 8.5

AXE.IO

Crescent Moon Games

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