20 best iPhone and iPad apps this week - Technology Portal

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9/22/2013

20 best iPhone and iPad apps this week

Infinity Blade III, Toca Cars, Hamlet: Explore Shakespeare, Grand Theft Auto V: iFruit, Angry Birds Star Wars II, Google Wallet, Axel Scheffler's Flip Flap Farm and more
Infinity Blade III
Infinity Blade III concludes ChAIR Entertainment's trilogy of monster-battling iOS games
It's time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices.
It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (Free) may mean (Freemium) in some cases. There's a separate roundup for Android apps, which was published earlier in the day.
For now, read on for this week's iOS selection (and when you've finished, check out previous Best iPhone and iPad apps posts).

Infinity Blade III (£4.99)

ChAIR Entertainment's epic trilogy reaches its conclusion, with more eye-popping scenery, more characters (two) and many more enormous monsters to stick a sword through. There's the usual levelling up, "massively social" clashmob challenges to co-operate with players around the world, and even a new song by Imagine Dragons on the soundtrack.
iPhone / iPad

Toca Cars (£0.69)

Children's apps developer Toca Boca's latest app is a sandbox driving app for 3-9 year-olds. One mode gets them to race around a cardboard world knocking things over, while the other lets kids create that world by placing houses, trees and other items. Then knock it all over again.
iPhone / iPad

Hamlet: Explore Shakespeare (£9.99)

Cambridge University Press and developer Agant have released a series of Shakespeare plays as iPad apps in recent months, with Hamlet the latest to get the treatment. The app offers the full text, an audio performance and photos of famous productions, with a host of interactive features all geared to better understanding the play (rather than just whizzy novelties).
iPad

Grand Theft Auto: iFruit (Free)

GTA V's official companion app should be an essential download, but be warned that a lot of people are struggling to sign in to it – as shown by its two-star average rating on the App Store. When it works, it'll provide news and social features, let you pimp your rides ready for use in the main game, and play a virtual pet mini-game to develop the Franklin character's dog Chop. And if you're playing GTA V on console, it's well worth downloading its separate manual app too.
iPhone / iPad

Angry Birds Star Wars II (£0.69)

Rovio's latest Angry Birds game is its second to be set in the Star Wars universe, with characters turned into birds and pigs, and 120 levels to fling them through. This time round, you can play as both sides, and there's a range of Telepods toys that interact with the game. Read our review for the full lowdown on the game.
iPhone / iPad

Google Wallet (Free)

This one's US-only for now, but it's a significant move from Google, bringing its payment app from Android to iOS. It stores your credit and debit card details, lets you send money to people in the US using their email addresses, and can be remotely disabled if your phone gets nicked.
iPhone

Axel Scheffler's Flip Flap Farm (£0.69)

Axel Scheffler was the illustrator for The Gruffalo, among other books. And Nosy Crow has made a succession of well-crafted book-apps for children. They're a match made in heaven for parents, then, and their latest app is great fun. Inspired by printed flap-books, it gets kids to make weird and wonderful animals from two halves (e.g a Shig from a sheep and a pig), with poetry to match.
iPhone / iPad

Crowded Fiction (Free)

Literature for older readers, here: an intriguing app that poses the question "what if reading eBooks and fiction was more like playing video games?" And while some gamers AND readers will roll their eyes at the idea, Crowded Fiction is the latest interesting attempt to explore the potential of interactivity in fiction. Journalist hero Jackson encounters fist-fights and car chases while investigating a museum curator's murder. Worth investigating.
iPad

100 Cult Films: BFI Screen Guides (£2.99)

The British Film Institute has teamed up with developer Aimer Media for this listy app profiling 100 cult movies – "from Akira to Withnail and I, from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to This is Spinal Tap; from Italian cannibal movies to Japanese anime..." Details, stills, links to trailers and fan sites, and the ability to tick the films off as you watch them all feature. There's another app in this series too, for 100 American Independent Films.
iPhone / iPad

Disney Infinity: Toy Box (Free)

Disney Infinity is that company's ambitious attempt to compete with Activision's Skylanders: a video-game universe with its own range of physical toys that can be scanned in for use on consoles. In this case, those characters are Disney's famous faces, from Jack Sparrow and Lightning McQueen to the Lone Ranger and Mr. Incredible. Toy Box is the companion app for iPad, where children can build their world and scan in the same toys.
iPad

Mary Berry (£1.99)

Yes, that Mary Berry: of The Great British Bake Off fame. This is her solo app with a festive theme: 15 recipes for Christmas, taking in Traditional Roast Turkey, Apricot and Chestnut Stuffing and a nut roast for vegetarians. Berry's app gives you the necessary shopping lists, step-by-step instructions and kitchen timers to ensure Christmas Day goes with a bang.
iPhone / iPad

BBC Wildlife Bumper Book of Answers (£4.99)

The latest BBC app-mag is tailor-made for parents facing difficult wildlife questions from their children, promising as it does to explain what evolution is, why crabs walk sideways and why people are scared of spiders (among others). The app offers hundreds of questions and answers in a slick tablet app.
iPad

Carnage Racing (Free)

This iOS racing game comes from the developers of console series Midnight Club, and the production values are accordingly top-notch. It combines racing with stunts and combat, with weapons including a flamethrower, bombs and road sludge to nobble the opposition. Solo skills can then be tested against other people in the eight-player online racing mode.
iPhone / iPad

Women's Health 28-Day Fat Blaster (£1.99)

This app comes from Women's Health magazine: a 28-day programme made up of sessions under 30 minutes each, promising to "turbocharge your metabolism, build lean muscle, and torch tons of calories". Instructions and timers are included.
iPhone

Heroes of Camelot (Free)

Kabam's The Hobbit is currently one of the most popular mobile games in the world, up there with the likes of Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans. This new game may find plenty of players then: it's a card-battling RPG set in Arthurian times, with multiplayer battles and (of course) lots of dragons to fight.
iPhone / iPad

Looptical (£10.49)

MooCowMusic was one of the first developers to ever have an app shown off by Apple: fun musical app Band was demoed at the App Store's announcement in 2008. Five years on, it's still working in music, but several leaps on. Looptical is a full mobile-studio app for musicians, recording and mixing up to 24 stereo tracks, and helping you create loops and share them with other apps.
iPhone

The Good Pub Guide 2014 (£4.99)

Pubs. Yes, fellow Brits, there is an app for them. It's the official iOS version of The Good Pub Guide, offering reviews of 4,800 ale-houses across the UK, including images and the ability to add your own comments. Listings for another 20,000 pubs are also included, with everything plotted on a map. Extra points to Random House for the release version of this app being 2014.0.0.
iPhone / iPad

Niko and the Sword of Light (Free)

This is another take on bringing fiction to the iPad in an interesting form. Niko and the Sword of Light is an animated comic book by a team of designers who previously worked on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland film. It sees hero Niko setting off on a quest to save his kingdom by finding a magical sword – complete with voice narration and a soundtrack by DJ Yoda.
iPad

Jake's Never Land Shapes and Patterns (£2.99)

Jake and the Never Land Pirates is Disney's modern TV show reboot of Peter Pan, and this is its first educational app. It gets children to recognise shapes and patterns through three piratical mini-games starring the characters from the TV show.
iPhone / iPad

Captain Bubblenaut (£1.49)

Developer Dean Tate has decent form, having worked on the first two BioShock games, then Dance Central. He's since teamed up with another developer, Owen Macindoe, for this characterful action game, where you guide the titular hero through a series of colourful levels battering "erfling" enemies out of the way as you go. It's hoping to be the next Tiny Wings, and doesn't suffer in that comparison.
iPhone

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