TapCritic – Honest iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch App Reviews

HAL9000 here, back from a nice, long holiday weekend stint.  I hope your weekend was as laid-back and filled with alcohol and greasy food as mine.  But now it’s time to get back to work.

And wouldn’t it be nice if there were an iPhone app that could get you up to speed mentally?  Sure, you could down a pot of french roast, but then you get the jitters and end up crashing at about seven P.M.  Isn’t there a non-invasive, better way?

Perhaps, and its name is Cup O’ Joe.  This insanely simple little problem solving game promises to give you a quick mental workout and help prepare you for that important board meeting or your next game of chess.

When you launch the app, you will see a very simple, three-button interface…and simplicity is a good idea in an interface built for sleepyheads who are just one step above the walking dead.

Click “Wake Up!” and you will immediately be bombarded with a number of simple logic and math problems.  They include “Count the coffee pots,” “Find the number pattern,” simple addition and subtraction math problems, and screens that challenge you to do something as basic as count upward.

These problems aren’t designed to be hard.  In fact, they aren’t even really designed to be solved.  The key to this is to use your intuitive mind to find shortcuts and answer questions quickly.  For example.  ”127-43″ will have a number of multiple choice answers, but why do the entire problem when you can look at the last digits, “7-3,” and know that the answer must end in four?  Only one of the options ends in four, so you click it and move on, saving precious time.

After a quick forty-five seconds, your game is ended and you are given a score, along with an either complimentary or insulting phrase like “That was terrible!  You can do much better.”

In addition, there is an option on the main menu to practice specific feats of mental strength.  So if you’re having particular difficulty with the “count the pots” challenge, you can brush up and help improve your final score.

The whole game is designed to get your brain working on the most basic level, and it actually does accomplish that.  All told then, I’d say this game is a rousing success.

There is a little room for improvement, though.  The music, while jazzy and upbeat, gets quite repetitive, and I’d like an option to change it up.   Also, the sayings at the end of challenges never change.  It would add a nice touch if the developers were to come up with a long laundry list of compliments and insults so you never know what you’re going to get hit with.

Overall these are nitpicks…it’ an effective game.  The only catch is the price tag.  At $2.99, I feel it’s a little expensive for what you really get.  I’ve downloaded fully-loaded games for this price, so I don’t know that I can justify throwing away another precious three bucks.  If it were $.99, I’d be all over it.

Should you have the money to burn, though, go for it.  I mean, we could all use a little mental pick-me-up.

You can buy Cup O’ Joe HERE.

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