Here’s my Metro News reviews for the week of Mar. 31st
The Trace: Murder Mystery Game
iPhone/iPad
$5.79
This proper, hands-on detective adventure offers elaborate crime scenes you can step through, clues you can pick up and scan, and a trail of grisly murder mysteries to solve using a helpful decision tree of nagging questions and evidence puzzles. It’s dark, engaging, and unfortunately will leave you wanting more.
Kitchenbowl Recipes & Cookbook
iPhone/iPad
Free
Good recipe apps offer clear instructions. The best use step-by-step photo guides. Kitchenbowl goes one step further with animated GIFs and the tools you can use to record and share your own. This creates a social network where you can pick up new tricks as well as find food inspiration.
myHealthPal – Take Control
iPhone
Free
Designed to help those with long-term health concerns manage their condition, this journal uses interactive tests and questionnaires to track symptoms, medication, diet, exercise and mood. Creator Mike Barlow himself has Parkinson’s and will be encouraging users to donate their useful app results as anonymized data towards partnered research programs.
Becoming Steve Jobs
By Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli
Kindle/iBooks/Kobo
This rather affectionate account of Steve Jobs’ life and career puts a strong focus on his spiritual side while portraying his infamously acerbic moods as a “bundle of contradictions” that was often channeled to “good use”. It’s a thorough telling, full of new photos and anecdotes, but offers few revelations.
Bloodborne
PlayStation 4
Rating: Mature 17+
2 ½ Stars
Progress is very hard to come by in Bloodborne, a grisly Victorian combat adventure intentionally designed with a confusing and punishing level of difficulty where you die and reset over and over, doomed to repeat the same sequences again and again. Some may enjoy the challenge, but most will find it frustrating.
For the few who endure, the rewards include an imaginative and eclectic bestiary sprawled throughout maze-like skullduggery streets and an ever-surprising succession of transforming weapons somehow built both for speed and butchery. It is a game like no other, both good and bad.