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Castro 2 Brings a New Way to Manage Your Favorite Podcasts

Castro — Play and Share Podcasts ($4.99) by Supertop is the brand new version of Castro that emphasizes a new perspective on podcasts for enthusiasts: triage. If you enjoy listening to podcasts on a daily basis, but aren’t satisfied with other top-notch podcast players out there, such as Overcast, then you should definitely give the new Castro 2 a try.

Though I’ve fallen quite behind on my podcasts as of late, I still enjoy listening to podcasts whenever I have the time to, whether it’s a long road trip or a commute through the city. I enjoy podcasts because of the interesting discussion that the hosts always bring up, and it’s great to just find shows that discuss topics that you’re interested in, rather than listening to whatever may be on the radio or something. I’ve gone from Pocket Casts to Overcast ever since Marco Arment released his feature-rich podcast player (love that Smart Speed), but that doesn’t stop me from checking out the competition. And now that Castro 2 has launched, I had to check it out for myself to see if it can work as my daily driver for podcasts.

In terms of visuals, Supertop has knocked it out of the park. While I love Overcast, the problem with that app is the fact that it looks engineered, so it’s not the prettiest thing to look at when it goes head-to-head against other apps in terms of design. Castro 2, on the other hand, has a gorgeous design that you’ll love to look at while you go through your podcasts. The main screen area for Castro has rounded corners that take me back to the Palm Pre days, the white and light gray day theme looks sharp, and there’s an easy-to-access night mode (various shades of gray) with just a two-finger swipe down (or up to go back to day mode). Whether you’re in day or night theme, the thumbnails of podcast art contrast nicely against the background, and the icons for the queue, inbox, archive, and discover are easily recognizable. The app has subtle but fun and smooth transition animations as you switch views, change themes, or bring up menus, and everything flows together perfectly. The playback screen lets you check show notes without any fuss, and the floating buttons make it easy to perform an action if needed. The playback button bar at the bottom of the screen gives users plenty of space to touch the buttons they need. Not surprisingly, Supertop has done a great job once again with the finer details in regards to the design of Castro 2. If you like functional but beautiful apps, then this is not one to be missed.

When you launch Castro 2 for the first time, there will be a brief introductory tutorial that shows you the ropes. It’s quick and simple, and the app itself is pretty straightforward anyway. Since Castro 2 is a new app, you’ll have to export your existing podcast subscriptions from the original Castro or any other podcasting app (there are instructions in the app) and import them into Castro 2.

Another option is to start over, and you can use the Discover tab to browse popular shows in various categories or just search for the shows you want by name or URL. When you find a show that interests you, just tap on it to view the show details, and see what their latest episode was and what that episode is about. Castro 2 also shows the oldest episode available, but you can also tap on the middle break to view all episodes that are in-between the oldest and latest. While you can subscribe to a show as you normally would, there are also individual options that you can trigger by tapping on individual episodes. These options include Play Now (no need to subscribe), Add to Queue as Next, Add to Queue as Last, or Favorite, which adds favorite show episodes to the inbox automatically.

So what is the inbox feature? When Castro’s servers detect a new episode of your subscribed or favorited shows, it will put the latest episodes in the inbox for you. The shows appear in a small ribbon that you scroll horizontally to view more of your favorites. From here, you can go through them to determine what you want to listen to by adding it to the queue or play now, and then archive the rest. The archive will show all of the podcasts of the shows you subscribe to, so you can browse older episodes, see starred episodes, and view your complete listening history. While the process of triaging podcasts may not appeal to everyone, it does let those who prefer to assign a sense of urgency and priority to their podcasts do just that.

When you are playing a podcast, you’ll see the currently playing episode represented by a small icon of the artwork in the bottom right corner, where the playback bar is. Tapping on the icon lets you view the show notes, and you can use the buttons to pause, rewind, and skip forward (the rewind and forward increments can be changed in the app settings). There is also an arrow button in the playback bar that lets you expand the Now Playing view. In this more detailed Now Playing screen, you’ll be able to set a sleep timer, adjust the playback speed, and have a nice audio wavelength scrubber, in case you want to go back to a certain part of the show. You can also access the Share Sheet from this view to share a Castro link to the episode through a myriad of options.

For those who prefer to fine tune their podcast players, the settings for Castro 2 can be accessed through the cog icon that appears in the four main sections. There are options for toggling day or night mode (though the two finger vertical swipe is easier), opening links in Castro’s browser or Safari (even Chrome if it’s installeD), notifications and badges, toggles for queue downloads (if it’s off you stream only), and playback settings, which include continuous play, streaming on cellular, and the rewind and forward intervals.

I’ve been testing out Castro 2 this morning for this review, and I love what Supertop has done for Castro’s revamp. As someone who has less time for podcasts these days, I like the triage system because it lets me check the description for each new episode and this determines if I’m going to listen to it or not. Plus, the app itself looks great, it’s easy to use, and the Now Playing view focuses on useful features and doesn’t waste space to prominently display podcast art. Still, I’m a bit torn between Castro 2 and Overcast, due to my love of the Smart Speed feature — it’s hard to go back once you’ve saved over 100 hours with it, after all. Despite this, I think Castro 2 is a solid update to an exceptional podcast app and definitely worth checking out if you’re a podcast enthusiast looking for fresh new takes on podcast management. Hopefully an iPad version is in the works for those who prefer their iPad for podcast listening.

I recommend giving Castro 2 a try for yourself if you were a fan of the original Castro, or aren’t satisfied with the other podcast apps on the market. Castro — Play and Share Podcasts is available on the iPhone App Store for $4.99.

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Hack and Augment Your Way Through a Conspiracy in Deus Ex GO

Deus Ex GO ($4.99) by SQUARE ENIX INC is the third installment of the GO series of games, which also includes Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO. For the uninitiated, the GO games take popular Square Enix franchises and distills them down into beautiful strategy puzzle games. Whether you’re a fan of the original game series titles or not, the GO games are definitely all worth checking out regardless.

Even though Deus Ex has been around since 2000, I never got into the games myself. In fact, I have a copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution somewhere, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet because I have a large backlog of games and not enough time. Despite this, I know the gist of the Deus Ex games, since it combines stealth and role-playing elements with FPS action and features a lot of cyberpunk themes, hacking, and all that good stuff. I’ll get around to the real games one day, but since I loved the previous GO games (I didn’t play much Tomb Raider or even Hitman titles before), I had to get my hands on Deus Ex GO, especially after I had a demo of it at E3 this year. Now that it’s available on the App Store, I must say that it’s one of my favorite games so far this year.

Visually, Deus Ex GO is gorgeous, as it is a stylized interpretation of the Deus Ex universe. If you’re a fan of the main games, then the world will be instantly familiar to you. Even if you’ve never played a Deus Ex game in your life, you’ll be in awe because of how good the game looks. Like the other two games, Deus Ex GO features 3-D graphics with an angled, top-down perspective so you can see all of the action that happens. The futuristic, dystopian environments are packed with fine details and textures, and the colors are bright and vivid with a subtle vignette effect going on around the edges of the screen.

Your character, Adam Jensen, will be sporting his signature black trench coat and sunglasses, while moving fluidly on each turn. His enemies, including guards, turrets, and more, have their own unique appearances, movements, and abilities that you have to watch out for. All animations in Deus Ex Go are smooth and flow seamlessly with no lag on my iPhone 6s Plus. There’s also an intricate plot to uncover as you go, which will be told through dialogue boxes that aren’t intrusive. The artwork for each character’s avatar in dialogue boxes is beautiful, as it’s done in 2-D but with a stylish low-poly look to it. The game’s atmospheric soundtrack immerses you in the Deus Ex world, and the sound effects are realistic.

Like the other GO games, Deus Ex GO is level-based, and players must go through each stage in chronological order to advance through the story, which involves a conspiracy behind a terrorist plot. The objective in each puzzle is to help Jensen get from the starting point to the portal at the end that takes you to the next area, but you can’t be detected by the enemies. There’s a line path on each level, and you move Jensen one space on each turn. If you’re detected by an enemy, they will activate their Titan Armor and come after you in a straight path, but only as you make your move. Turrets shoot you on sight, and later on there will be drones, walkers, and other crazy enemy types. Since everything is a puzzle and things happen on a turn-by-turn basis, it’s important to make note of where enemies are going and time your movements for the perfect opportunities to strike or escape using hacks and augmentations.

The controls in Deus Ex GO are simple, and you should know how it works if you played the other games. To make Jensen move, just tap on the point adjacent to where you are to have him walk over there. If enemy guards detect you, they will activate their Titan Armor and the path you’re on (in their line of sight) turns red. With the Titan Armor active, you can’t strike them, but if it is off, you can attack them from the sides or even behind to get rid of them. Other enemies like turrets can be disabled by sneaking up behind them, or you can even hack the computer systems (yellow icons) by tracing paths to have the turrets shoot down foes for you instead, or activate floor panels to get where you need to go. You can also get items like Invisibility, which you activate with taps to get by otherwise impossible spots, but don’t confuse invisibility with invincibility (this is an achievement).

The amount of stealth gameplay combined with environment-manipulating puzzles mean a ton of challenging stages for players, which is a great thing. Deus Ex GO starts out pretty easy, but things get much more complex and elaborate as you have to use enemies to block other ones, take control of turrets, use invisibility to get by tricky spots, hack computers and change the flow of electricity so you can cross gaps in the floor, and much more. Fortunately, since there is no time limit or move restriction on the puzzles, you can take as long as you need to solve them, and if you fail, just try again — the game doesn’t penalize you.

In addition to the main story mode missions, the developers have a “Live Content” section, which includes new puzzle events every weekday, and you can play puzzles from previous days of the current week. However, these puzzles are incredibly complicated and hard to solve, and it is recommended to play through the Story mode first, though nothing stops you from taking them on.

I had been looking forward to Deus Ex GO for a long time, and needless to say, I’m not disappointed. The game has an exquisite and stylish aesthetic that represents the Deus Ex universe nicely, the ambient music is great to listen to, and the controls are simple enough for anyone. The puzzles themselves are hard and challenging, especially as you get further into the story, and having daily puzzles that aren’t part of the storyline adds to the replay value of the game. Like Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO, I’ll be keeping Deus Ex GO on my device for a long time to come.

I highly recommend checking out Deus Ex GO for yourself, whether you’re a fan of Deus Ex or not. It’s a fantastic puzzle game nonetheless, and one that you should not miss. Deus Ex GO is on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $4.99. There are in-app purchases for more hints if you are truly stuck (but trial-and-error goes a long way).

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Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews