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So, You Got An I-Pad For Christmas?

    Hey, everyone. I thought I'd update an earlier post about apps you should get for your brand new Christmas device from Apple. You might need a little help spending your Christmas money. The app store is one of the great things about having an I-Pad. A central, convenient and relatively cheap place to buy toys is hard to beat. Just ask all the folks spending $50 for x-box games. I've jotted down a few apps and games you might like. Keep in mind that the I-Phone version of the same game will cost about one third of the price of the I-Pad game and will play just fine. Also, the prices go up and down with sales, so don't get mad at me, okay?
1. Stanza- the best app for books, probably. It has listings of free books, enough to keep you busy for years. There's a version for your PC as well.
2.Plants vs. Zombies-99 cents. The best game on the store, plus no blood and gore.
3.Angry Birds-99 cents. One of the most popular games in the world. The HD version will cost you another $4. Thirty-six million people have bought it.
4.Angry Birds Halloween- an additional 45 levels of irritated aviators. 99 cents
5.Fragger-99 cents Throw grenades, blow stuff up. A great value.
6.I-Books-free. I like it better than Amazon in some ways. For instance, it's easy to delete books. Barnes and Noble or Amazon will drive you nuts trying to clear the shelf.
7. Amazon-free. Everyone knows and likes Amazon. They have free books, too. In fact all the book apps have free books.
8.CBS Pro Football- For the sports fan, a very cool app, with updates to describe plays that just happened. I forgot to mention it's free. Update here: They recently sent out a new update which inserted ads. I immediately deleted it.
9.Carnivores, Dinosaur Hunter. A must for all hunters or shooting game enthusiasts. You even have to be careful to approach your prey with the wind in your face, or you may be the prey. $2.99 Possibly the best game I ever played.
10.Treasures of Montezuma-$1.99 My wife won't put the game down. Match icons that blow up and stuff like that.
11.Ragdoll Blaster HD-$1.99 More physics involved than you'll get from a lot of courses in school. I highly recommend it. Someone went to an enormous amount of effort to make a cool game.
12.Pages-$9.99 It's the poor man's Microsoft Word. I love the way you can place the pictures in text and other things. The problem for a writer of ebooks is, you have to have your books in Microsoft Word to upload them.
13.Real Racing HD-$9.99 The best Racing game on the app store. Update: It's no longer the best racing game on the store. See below.
14.Juxtaposer-$2.99 A terrific photo editing tool, or should I say toy? Put a dog's head on your Dad or whatever.
15.Crazy Booth-free. Lots of cool photo effects.
16.Bookworm-$2.99 pick words out of a group of letters before the flaming letters hit the bottom.
17.Ultimate Hangman-99 cents. Super cute animated guy calls you a loser if you don't save him.
18.Cut the Rope- Get the candy to the frog's mouth by solving physics problems. 99 cents.
19.Virtuoso Piano-free. Yes, you can really play songs on it.
20.Pulse-free. a great news feeder developed by two students at Stanford. That has to be a great school. I love the app. I put my own blog on it. It gives you these lines of little squares that you tap to read the text. If you want to read the full article or see the pics you tap another button to go on-line to the site. What's cool about this is that even if you're in the middle of the desert you can read anything it loaded the last time you had it turned on.
    Keep in mind that most of these games have a free version. That's the smart way to find good games, try before you buy. Type the game title into you-tube. There will be a ten year old that will show you if it's cool or not. Read the reviews on the app store. They help but not everyone has the same taste in games. Plus, what if the maker of the game had all their employees' cousins send in a great review? I read the reviews titled 'most critical'. Once I bought an app everyone loved called Fruit Ninja. I hated it. $4.99 down the drain.
    All the apps listed above come to $38. That's if you don't get the free version available for most of them. Enough games to keep you busy until July. With enough money left over to buy KGB Retirement Plan by CE Wills, a book I recommend. 
   From the green retreat, I'm CE Wills.
    UPDATE: I've found a lot of newer games I recommend. So this is an addendum to the original post. This may be a bit repetitive, as I've done a review on some of them. My thought was, with several million people with a new device for Christmas this might be of help.
1.Brothers In Arms 2. 99 cents on sale. A great value and a great game. WW2 shooter. Intense action, challenging and fun. Wow!
2.Need For Speed Shift. 99 cents on sale. Possibly the best racing game on the app store or anywhere else.
3. Need For Speed, Hot Pursuit. 99 cents on sale. I'll use some overused words here. This game is awesome. They just gave an update which allows you to choose if you want to be a cop or a robber in a car chase. Either way, this game will make you lay it down and say, WOW!!!
4. 10 Talismans. Similar to other match 3 games but it's a lot of fun for puzzle lovers. My wife is currently and for several days, absorbed in it. For a $1.99, it's a no brainer.
5.Stick Golf HD. Free. A fun game, a challenging game, a free game. 'Nuff said.
6. Talking Tom Cat. Free. This cat drinks milk, mimics every word you say, and falls down unconscious if you tap his head. Recently I saw some kids that would have a ball with it. They'd laugh, the cat would laugh, that would crack the kids up and they'd laugh again. Very cute.
7. Battlefield; Bad Company 2. Another great shooter game. When I play games I project myself into the role, as you can see from my post called The Stalk. In this game I'm with my brothers and 'I'll spill the same blood in the same mud'. May be just a shade lower on the scale than the previously mentioned Brothers In Arms. Still, I highly recommend it.
     Well, that's it. Don't get busy playing games and forget to eat. From the gaming place, I'm CE Wills.

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