Katharine French and Carolyn Laporte

     Ever since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and the iPod touch back in 2007, people have been creating, buying, and playing applications. Other than iPhones, these applications are also available on Androids. But the popularity of these games does not last forever. In fact, new games are being created every day, pushing old games into extinction. A game that everyone was hyped up about just two weeks ago is now a thing of the past. Does anybody even remember Angry Birds, Bike Race, Draw Something, or Words with Friends? These once were some of the most popular apps in the App Store but now have been replaced with newer games such as Temple Run 2, SnapChat, Doodle Jump, and I’d Cap That.

     Eleven students and two teachers were asked to choose their favorite games out of the list provided which put older apps up against newer apps. The students were Jada Rambert (12), Courtney Fowble (12), Sarah Carey (12), Kirsten Lory (12), Hugh Huppman (11) Abby Laporte (10), Deanna Bracken (10), Jen Bienert (9), Tyler Maizels (9), Addy O’Neill (9), and Megan Lucas (9). The two teachers were Engineering teacher Mr. Brian King and Mr. Littlejohn.

     The games that these students and teachers were asked to choose between were SnapChat and Draw Something, Bike Race and Angry Birds, Temple Run 2 and Words With Friends, Fruit Ninja and Robot Unicorn, and I’d Cap That and Face Juggler.

     SnapChat is an application in which you can take a picture or video using your phone, edit it, set a timer for up to ten seconds, and then send it to one of your contacts. After the time is up, the picture disappears forever. You cannot access the picture after the timer is up. SnapChat alerts the sender if the receiver takes a screen shot of their picture. Draw Something, according to pocket-lint.com, is “a simple game that lets you pair up in a drawing game on your mobile phone. The aim of the game is to guess what your opponent is drawing.” The game is turn-based, so both players do not need to be online at the same time. You can also decide to be paired up with a stranger. You can choose from three different objects to draw (worth from one to three points) and if the person you’re paying with guesses the object correctly, you both get the same amount of points and you move on to the next round. If they guess incorrectly, neither of you get any points and you both go back to the first round.

     Between these two games, nine out of the 13 students and teachers preferred SnapChat while the remaining four said they preferred Draw Something.
 

The next two games were Bike Race and Angry Birds. Bike Race is exactly what it sounds like–a game where you race on a bike. The only controls are to tilt the device to lean and touch the screen to accelerate/brake. Players can race on 96 tracks in 12 worlds and choose from 13 different bikes. Angry Birds, according to gamespot.com is a game where “players use a slingshot to launch birds at pigs stationed on or within various structures, with the intent of destroying all the pigs on the playing field. As players advance through the game, new types of birds become available, some with special abilities that can be activated by the player.”

     Between these two games, nine out of the 13 students and teachers preferred Angry Birds over Bike Race. The remaining four preferred Bike Race.

     Temple Run 2 is a lot more advanced than the original Temple Run. It offers more places to run and jump. It also offers a rope from road to road. The objective of the game is to get money and to not get killed by the monkey who is chasing you. Words with Friends, on the other hand is similar to scrabble and it has the same turn basis as Draw Something. Between these two games, Hereford High students and teachers preferred Temple Run 2 over Words with Friends 12 to one.

     Fruit Ninja is a phone app in which the objective is to cut as much fruit as you can without missing any or hitting a bomb. You can also play with friends or in Arcade mode or Zen Mode (in which you have 90 seconds to cut as much fruit as you can). The objective of Robot Unicorn Attack is, according to the App Store, “to gallop, leap, and dash through the sky in pursuit of your dreams.” Basically you have to run over the land, leap across openings and dash through giant stars that are in your way. Between these two games, seven students and teachers preferred Fruit Ninja and four students liked Fruit Ninja. Neither teacher had a favorite between the two.

      The final two games that students were asked to choose between were I’d Cap That and Face Juggler. I’d Cap That is where you take a picture and the app generates a random caption for the picture. You can send it to friends or save it to your picture library on your phone. Face Juggler is when you take a picture of yourself and your friend and you end up with your faces on each other’s heads. Between these two games, seven students preferred I’d Cap That and four students preferred Face Juggler. Again, neither teacher had a favorite between the two.

     Even though these games are popular now, in a month or so everyone will be obsessing over some other new games that we can’t even imagine right now. It just goes to show that we constantly need different games to keep us entertained.