Junk Jack for iOS Review

Introduction
It's not possible to talk about Junk Jack without mentioning Minecraft.  The game that started the mine/build/survive genre still reigns as its king, leaving newer games in the genre to fight for gamers' attention.  Mobile games in this genre face the additional challenge of balancing depth and accessibility.  Can Junk Jack build a fan base large enough to sustain itself, or will it succumb to the darkness of obscurity?

Visuals
Junk Jack offers a side-scrolling 2D perspective of its world.  The art has a very soft, cartoon-like feel, with pleasing rounded edges and excellent attention to detail.  Compared to Minecraft's standard pixelated graphical scheme, Junk Jack is a nice improvement.  The various critters and monsters running around the world are well animated and identifiable, and the user avatar, the titular Jack, is overflowing with charisma in comparison to Minecraft's default avatar.  The recent Universal update for Junk Jack improved the visuals substantially for gamers on the iPad, though Retina support is still conspicuously absent.

Gameplay
Junk Jack's basic premise is that you harvest resources, build new tools/buildings/crafting stations, and venture deeper and farther into the world in order to continue to harvest better and better resources and build better and better stuff.  Put simply, developer PixBits nailed it.  Junk Jack offers an extremely compelling experience in an on-the-go format.  The extreme number of items that can be built offer a staggering level of customization for your buildings.  Like in Minecraft before it, Junk Jack encourages discovery and exploration, and rewards player creativity.

Junk Jack also includes a number of quality of life additions that make playing a building game on iOS possible.  The in-game recipe book fills as recipes are discovered, providing an easy to use reference that doesn't require the player to swap to a browser and search a wiki.  A Backup feature is also included, ensuring the integrity of the player's worlds.  Interestingly, the game offers multiple save slots, here called 'worlds', but the player's inventory is shared between all the worlds.  While this means you won't be letting your kids play in one save slot while you keep another for yourself, it does make it possible to have a pure mining world and a pure building world, if one were so inclined.

GameCenter achievements are, unfortunately, the extent of Junk Jack's multiplayer capabilities.

Controls
The touch controls on offer here are crisp and fun.  You'll spend a lot of time sliding your avatar around the world, tapping on the environment to dig, chop, build, and otherwise make your mark on the landscape.  The movement works well for the most part, though I still have a bit of trouble getting Jack to jump across gaps.  Luckily the developers thought to include a simple auto-jump/walk up simple 1:1 ratio hills, as the lack of that key feature would have made the game tedious to the point of frustration.  As it stands though, the movement is simple enough, and the crafting is quick enough, that if you, like me, struggle with the occasional jump, it's easy enough to just drop a block to cover the gap, and pick it back up once you're across.

Conclusion
For $2.99, Junk Jack lives in that nebulous "not $0.99, not quite premium" price point on the App Store.  User reviews complaining about the price abound online, but I'd argue that it's a very fair price for a Universal app of this depth and breadth.  You'll find hours and hours of entertainment here, in a package that will follow you wherever you bring your iOS device.  This past weekend I found myself playing Junk Jack at home, reclining in my computer chair…the shortcut to Minecraft sitting on my PC desktop, unused.

4.5/5

Irony In Blogging

What's the best part about writing a blog post about making excuses for not accomplishing something? Coming back to your blog almost 9 months later without having written a thing since. No excuses, though - blogging just isn't as high on the priority list as things like, ya know, being a full-time student while also working full-time.

Turns out my kids like to eat, who knew.

Things are going well at work and I am enjoying a well-deserved rest from school at the moment. I'm enrolled at Western Oregon University for fall term to finish my degree (Anthropology major, for those wondering). The most interesting part of the enrollment process? Trying to figure out how to get credit for learning Icelandic (the eventual focus of my studies will be Northern Europe/Scandinavia) at a college that only offers French, German, Spanish, and American Sign Language. Still trying to work that one out.

Life is good overall - I'm working on a pair of fantasy novels that might actually be one novel when complete, as well as a young-adult novel that is more lit-fic than genre-fic. I alternate bursts of great progress with each, and the result is that I am getting more written on a daily basis now than at any other point in my life, which is exciting. My current obsession is the young-adult story - I honestly think it is some of the best writing I've ever done.

Speaking of which, I should go write that, rather than this. :)

Motivation & Excuses - Your One Reason

It doesn't take Charlie Epps to figure out that my 90 Days on P90x have come and gone. In reality, though, I never made it past about day 5 in sequence. I did about 3 days a week of P90x at the high point of my activity, but then I came down with a nasty flu for a few days, discovered that I am gluten and lactose intolerant, yada yada yada. Essentially, Life Happened.

What is disappointing is that I really wanted to stay on P90x, but for a while there it was literally not possible for me to do the exercises due to health concerns. That being said, that hasn't been the case in quite a while, and yet I haven't restarted the program. At some point this summer, the nice electronic bathroom scale in our home suddenly stopped functioning. Batteries were replaced, sacrifices made to the dark gods of the bathroom scale, all to no avail. In addition, I took a full time course load this summer while working full time, and due to the shortened term, my courses were quite difficult.

So there you have it - my list of excuses. Of course, as I used to tell my soccer players, there will always be excuses why you can't do something. The key to success in life is finding your One Reason why you can accomplish your goals. What's amazing about this process is that no matter how stacked the odds are against you, just one 'excuse' to succeed is enough. Let's say you want to start running everyday before work. The list of reasons why it won't work out is huge.

1. It's too early.
2. I'm too tired.
3. My feet hurt.
4. I'm sore.
5. It's too cold.
6. It's raining.
7. I ate too much last night.
8. I am too tired today, but I'll run twice as long tomorrow. (yeah, right)
9. etc, etc, etc...

As you can see, not running seems to be a more feasible goal than running is. But now, let's come up with that One Reason and excuse for actually accomplishing the goal. First, you start with a premise.

• Being healthy is important to me.

Now, let's make that an even stronger statement. I like to remind myself why my premise is what it is - in this case, why being healthy is important to me. Keep it short, though! One to three sentences works best for me.

• I am a healthy person. I take care of my body because I know it's the only one I get, and I want to be a good example to my kids.

Bam! Just like that, all those other excuses and demotivators lose all their power.

So yeah, here I am, about to start my P90x program all over again (Monday the 6th). In case you were wondering, the above statement is MY one reason for exercising. I have other, lesser reasons for staying healthy, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to this one.

I've used this technique for motivating myself in many areas of my life, from school and work to fitness and family life. Do you have One Reason for staying fit? What about for other goals?

P90X Day 0

Well, I started the P90X program officially today.

Going into my first workout, I weighed 198 lbs, and am only 'acceptable' in terms of my overall fitness. I plan to do the full 90 days of the 'normal' P90X workout program. I am using resistance bands instead of either dumbbells or a pull-up bar (I don't want to hang one in our apartment).

Today's workout was Chest & Back and then Ab Ripper X. The Chest & Back workout was really tough. The pull-downs weren't that bad, and I was able to do some respectable reps with the 40 lb band, but all those pushups were pretty killer. The first exercise is pushups, and I went and did my max not realizing what was coming. In the future I will pace myself a lot better.

After Chest & Back it was time for the Ab Ripper X workout. I did this one once last week (the day the DVD's came but before I had the rest of my equipment), so I knew going in that it was tough. I am happy to report that I did better this time, which I attribute to hydration and eating well today in addition to just being more aware of how my body moves through these exercises.

The addition of the recovery drink has an extremely noticeable difference, and there is no way I could do this workout without it.

I stuck to the meal plan today (Level II of Phase 1 based on my weight). I ended up short 1 protein, but other than that I nailed the portions exactly. I expect my protein bars to arrive on Wednesday and that will help with the portions.

I can tell it is going to be a crazy 90 days. This program is absolutely not for the faint of heart. I really can't wait to see my results though!