From watching my older brother use firecrackers to destroy my G.I. Joes into smithereens to watching MacGyver whittle a roll of toilet paper and a paperclip into a door shattering bomb, I was always intrigued with blowing things up as I was growing up. This hasn’t stopped, trust me, I have a movie collection of action-adventure titles to prove it. Much to my happiness and appetite for destruction, there’s an iPhone game from Dekovir called Amazing Breaker , which is amazingly awesome. What makes this game the “No. 1 ice-smashing game” on the app store is its endless appetite for mass destruction. Destruction of what? Ice sculptures of course. The player is presented with objects such as a telephone, house, pumpkin, ghost, you name it, it’s there. They are quite beautiful too, which makes it a shame to destroy them. Ok, not really.  Read the rest of Amazing Breaker Will Blow Your Mind and House Up or discover more iPhone apps . © 2011: written by gregdawson for AppCraver.

It was back in May we first heard about Red Wasp’s forthcoming Call of Cthulhu game, entitled The Wasted Land.  Details were sketchy at the time, but we’ve finally been treated to not only a release date for the game, but a selection of screenshots too. Initially available for the iPhone and iPod, Call of Cthulhu:

The Adventures of Tintin – The Game (universal) by Gameloft is a brilliant tie-in to the movie. So much so that one would think the movie was based off of the game. What makes it so special is the emphasis and attention to exploration. At the heart of the game and the movie is a boy and his travels, which makes for an instant classic for the entire family. The mobile game for iPhone and iPad opens an entirely new world of adventures, including sneaking past guards, swordfighting, flying a plane, racing a camel and a lot more. With use of the accelerometer, the player tags along Tintin’s travels while taking control of his friends Sir Francis Haddock, Captain Haddock and his dog Snowy around the time of the great Age of Pirates. The 3D world is a well-designed place of adventure that seems to invite the player into the game with the lure of experiencing Marlinspike Mansion, the desert and the Karagoudjan ship in an epic journey.  Read the rest of The Adventures of Tintin – The Game is Outstanding Movie Tie-In or discover more iPhone apps . © 2011: written by gregdawson for AppCraver.

For those new to the world of the iPhone, the discovery that you can easily and comfortably read on that little screen is a bit of a revelation. Suddenly, you can carry entire volumes of prose in your pocket, as easily as your contacts list. App developers are keen to this, and so the iTunes App Store is flooded with e-readers and e-books. Some are better than others. Read on to discover the very best of bunch. Stanza Stanza Price: free User Ratings Download on the App Store Stanza is an e-book reader app so good, Amazon snatched it up before it could pose a threat to their Kindle iPhone app. Thankfully, you can still download Stanza for free and use it to read Kindle files, or any other e-book files, for that matter. Stanza has a gorgeous, easy-to-use library view, access to online book repositories like Project Gutenberg, and a clean, distraction-free interface for reading. You can also annotate chapters, dog-ear pages, and get word definitions without ever leaving the app. McSweeney’s McSweeney’s Price: free User Ratings Download on the App Store For indie literature aficionados, McSweeney’s needs no introduction. For everyone else, McSweeney’s is the brainchild of award-winning author Dave Eggers: an empire which includes a publishing house, quarterly journal, magazine, and a free website for daily doses of humorous lists and irreverent essays. The McSweeney’s app brings it all together. Read free dispatches, advance stories from Believer or the Quarterly Concern, even purchase or read e-books that have been beautifully typset specially for the iPhone. Comic Zeal Comic Reader Mini Comic Zeal Comic Reader Mini Price: $3.99 User Ratings Download on the App Store If you’re into comic books (and maybe if you’re not), Comic Zeal is an app that is not to be missed. Comic Zeal makes uploading, organizing and reading comic books on the iPhone not just easy, but fun. The library view automatically places comics from a series into their own “boxes,” and the reading screen has a clever touch-to-zoom interface. Comic Zeal can handle the common CBR, CBZ and PDF filetypes. And, if you don’t have any comics in your collection yet, you can also download some from right within the app. Bookmark Bookmark Price: $2.99 User Ratings Download on the App Store Anyone who has tried to listen to an audiobook with the native iPod app knows it’s an uphill battle. Books that are broken into smaller files often won’t play in the right order, and if you take a break to listen to music it can be a hassle trying to resume playback where you left off. This is why the iPhone gods created Bookmark. This app will tidy up all those little audiobook files and give you precise control over playback. There’s not room here to get into all the awesome features, so download Bookmark to see for yourself. Google Books Google Books Price: free User Ratings Download on the App Store Google Books is Google’s attempt to take a piece of that sweet e-book pie that Amazon and Apple are hording. While the reading screen feels an awful lot like Kindle or Stanza, there are a few features that set this app apart. First, your place in the book is automatically synced in the cloud, so when at your desktop or laptop, you can read the book online in an attractive browser layout. Second, Google has been scanning archives full of books for years, so there’s a huge number of free, public domain works just waiting to be downloaded. Goodreads Goodreads Price: free User Ratings Download on the App Store Goodreads is a social network for people who love books. Disproving the stereotype that booklovers are anit-social, the Goodreads app is a great place to see what your friends are reading, how far along they are in the book, and what reviews they’ve written. It’s cross-listed with the database of books at Amazon.com, so finding and adding books is a breeze. Beyond the social features, Goodreads has infinite value in its ability to track what you’ve read by category or in “shelves,” as well as a handy “to-read” list for the future. GoodReader GoodReader for iPhone Price: $4.99 User Ratings Download on the App Store To call GoodReader an e-reader app is to sell it short. This app will display just about any filetype imaginable, and allow you to organize it all into folders and sub-folders. You can zip these folders, e-mail them, upload them to Dropbox, or send them off to Google Docs. In other words, you can use your iPhone to manage your entire digital library. And, underneath it all, GoodReader is a top-notch e-reader. If you’ve got a wonky PDF or DOC that Stanza or iBooks can’t figure out how to display, chances are GoodReader can do the job. Are you a book worm? What are your favorite reading apps? Let us know in the comments . Related posts: Reading Gets Social with Kobo Six Book Cases for iPad That Deserve Space on Your Shelf myBooks Tracks Your Reads, but Not as Well as Similar Apps © 2011: written by Peter Miller for AppCraver.

I’m not a big fan of grocery shopping as the inevitable always happens to me. I write down a few things I need and because I’m not used to bringing paper with me I get to the store and  realize I’ve forgotten the shopping list and then I usually come home with half of what I needed. Luckily, there’s PurchaseList , an app that simplifies the task of creating a list and allows me to bring it with me on my phone. And I never leave home without my phone. Some might be thinking that Apple’s built-in iOS app called Reminders will do the trick and sure, it will for short lists, but for people who are anything like me, having a bit more organization is an essential part of the shopping experience. PurchaseList provides such organization.  Read the rest of PurchaseList Brings Social Sharing to Grocery Shopping or discover more iPhone apps . © 2011: written by gregdawson for AppCraver.

Cope-Com, the developers behind the arcade hit Battle Squadron ONE, has just released version 2.0 of the iOS game along with a brand-new edition for the iPad.  Battle Squadron ONE was reviewed back in July and awarded 5/5. So what’s in the new version?  A total of 36 Game Center achievements have been added, along with

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYiqyMwtcs4 FAVI Entertainment , a leading provider of digital projection and visual display products, today announced a new portable mini projector capable of displaying images and video files from a USB or SD card port as well as a range of devices such as iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktops, tablets and DVD/Blu-ray players. The new RioHD-LED-4 , weighing in at less than one pound, is an LED-based mini projector ideal for both business travel and home entertainment.  (more…)

Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy Developer: The Way of H, Inc. Price: $9.99 Download from the App Store User Ratings: Ranked No. 1 by Joel McIver in “The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists,” Dave Mustaine godfathered fast-heavy-metal guitar generations, first as the original lead guitarist for Metallica, and then as the founder of legendary Megadeth .Now, Mustaine has teamed with the creators of Rock Prodigy to give his legions of fans an entirely new way to experience and learn his music. Available today on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy is an interactive application that teaches fans how to play Megadeth songs on ANY guitar.Mustaine and his pro guitar team coach fans through each lesson. The application uses real master tracks and listens to every note played, providing instant feedback on your performance; it’s like taking private lessons with Dave.  (more…)

RetroMem Developer: Augmented Prime LLC Price: $0.99 Download from the App Store User Ratings: RetroMem combines four classic memory games in one app, and is appropriate for all ages, and especially for children. “Light Squares” game displays four lights which run in sequence that the player would respond to by tapping them in an identical sequence, for as many as can be remembered. “Towers of Hanoi” is an ancient puzzle of strategy where the player shifts plates between three towers. “Memory” is a classic memory game with the goal of matching images as they are uncovered. The “Eight Puzzle” can be solved by shifting tiles to a final sequence in the least moves possible.RetroMem has a unique old fashioned-style appearance with professionally recorded Ragtime music by Scott Joplin, Classical music by Frédéric Chopin, Beethoven, and several others. All sound effects are original recordings exclusive to this game.  (more…)

LetterSchool Developer: Boreaal b.v. Price: $2.99 Download from the App Store User Ratings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sDZqBMqG-4Boreaal Publishers thinks it’s high time for a new approach to handwriting instruction. The need for one is high; in the United States and other Western countries, handwriting quality is deteriorating. Boreaal says that LetterSchool , the educational game it just released, can provide better instruction than parents or teachers.In LetterSchool children between 4 and 6 learn all about letters and numbers: writing, counting, phonics and more. It is a universal application for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. The makers have invested heavily into high-quality graphics, effects and animations at a level not easily found in educational apps for this age group. LetterSchool is using an entirely custom-built, full-featured OpenGL-based 3D game engine. Young children work magic as they write letters and numbers with sparkling candy, squealing tires, cuddly animals, whistling trains and humming lawn mowers. The wide variety of games captures the child’s attention and keeps young players practicing their letters and numbers, over and over again. At home, at school, in the car and everywhere else, children can learn at a comfortable level and at their own pace.In the app, young children practice each letter or number in four steps combining different learning approaches. They first play every letter and number in the silver level, then play them again in the gold level with greater challenge. To put their acquired skills to the test, players write their very own letters in the final free-form writing game. This extensive practice in two distinct levels ensures children’s letter knowledge takes permanent root. LetterSchool makes exclusive use of visual information to demonstrate the letters: American studies indicate that visual clues are easier for a young child’s brain to process than verbal instructions. And visual interaction is exactly where mobile devices are very well suited for.At home, parents rarely know how they can best help their children learn to write. At school, overfull curricula leave little room for handwriting lessons. Moreover, those lessons often make less than optimal use of the available time. There are several reasons for this. Many schools consider handwriting skills a lesser subject. In studies, many teachers indicate that they received poor handwriting instruction themselves. The quality of LetterSchool’s instruction is constant and independent of the person, place and time. These are a few reasons why LetterSchool provides better handwriting instruction than parents and teachers.About the creators: Boreaal Publishers and PiMZ.com formed a select team of specialists for the LetterSchool project. The contributors have decades of combined experience in education, publishing, software development and computer graphics.