Review: Guess the News - Plus Video
by Staff Writer
November 10, 2009
Overview
Guess the News combines two apps in one: it’s a game and a news reader. Don’t just read the news, play it. You’re given headlines from the top stories, and you have to fill in the blanks. The game begins with a pile of letters, and when you’re on each word in the headline the letter in that word highlights in the pile. There are multiple categories of stories to play, and a one sentence excerpt is included depending on difficulty.
Features
Guess the News doesn’t only include top stories, but also international, national, business, sports, entertainment, technology, science, health, and odd stories. Each of the types of news include multiple RSS feeds including ABC, USA Today, AP, CNN, CBS, ESPN, New York Times, and many more. There are two gameplay modes classic, and timed. In classic mode you try to solve a certain number of stories with a given percentage correct. Timed gives you a time limit to figure out each headline. There are three difficulty levels per mode that change the number of articles, percentage needed, and time given to get gold. Two control methods are included with simple drag and drop a letter into the right place or double tap to insert a letter into the next open space. You can read any article after you complete it, or wait to read all the articles in a game.
The Good
Guess the News is great because of the gameplay. Never has reading the news been so much fun. The game is like wheel of fortune in guessing words, but without spinning. You're given the pile of words, and have to figure out the headlines. It's great to guess the varying words in titles, when all you're given is part of the first sentence of the article. The articles are split up into categories, so you can guess top stories, national, international, sports, science, and more just depending on what kind of news you want. By guessing the headlines, you'll want to read most of the articles, and you can do that right within the app. Now you can get rid of the different news apps on your idevice, and throw in a little fun to your daily news. Maybe the best aspect is that the game always changes because the news always changes so you'll never play the same article twice.
If guessing the headlines wasn't fun enough there are two gameplay modes. You can play classic mode where you have to get a certain number of letters correct, or play the more challenging time mode. Plus there are three levels of difficulty for each mode, and each news category. This game will be on your idevice for a long time.
The word game itself, even if it without constantly updated news headlines to guess would still be fun. Even if it was just like wheel of fortune with random words and categories to guess. The basic word gameplay of getting a pile of letters, and figuring out words is down right fun.
The interface is extremely streamlined, and looks like reading on your coffee table. As you're tossing in letters, point values and positive saying hover above including outstanding, excellent, and nice job all of which could be used to describe the game.
With the 1.5 update came sound effects from the dinging of correct letters, to jingles on score combinations, and completed articles. Also in the menus there is a great sounding theme, that backs out in game to concentrate on the words.
It's great to not only guess the headlines, but be able to read the articles after you get a little taste. The news sources are top notch, and updated right before you begin a game. Being able to read within the app, makes this even better. The controls worked flawlessly from double tap to insert the next letter, to actually dragging and dropping.
