Worst apps in the world: Christmas edition
There's something magical about opening that new tablet or smartphone on Christmas morning, plugging it in, and then opening the app store for the first time. Wonderful, isn't it? Like a toy store that never ends, filled with promises of fun and delight. Then you download some of the apps on our list and the magic is instantly asphyxiated. Santa's dead. The tree's on fire. Grandma's in tears.
Yes, as a special Christmas treat we've brought back our worst apps list for a one-off festive edition. If you want a Merry Christmas this year, you're best avoiding this lot.
Iron Desert
Platform: (iOS and Android)
Price: Free
Nothing says Christmas like military strategy and in-app purchases. Iron Desert: Christmas Edition gets you in the festive spirit as you fight to free the continent from the oppressive despot, Iron Dragon. We're not saying the game is bad, but this is one of the most shameless bits of Christmas shoehorning that we've ever seen. Ah but look, they put tinsel on a tank. We take it all back.
Christmas Dentist Office
Plaftorm: (iOS and Android)
Price: Free
We've played with some atrocious apps in our time, but none that have bombarded us with as many adverts as Christmas Dentist Office. Not just that, most of them are for 'John Edwards Funerals', diminishing the Christmas magic just a tad.
Then we come onto the locked content, which turns out to be most of the game. Even once you've waded through the copious death-related pop-ups and you're faced with Santa's decaying molars, a number of the tools are unusable without further purchases. You literally cannot succeed in this game without coughing up money to drill Santa's face. Happy Christmas everybody!
Christmas Greetings
Platform: Android
Price: Free
We don't know where to begin. While it's meant to be an app for sending cheerful Christmas pictures to loved ones, the images are small and crappy, the app barely works, and, frankly, if we received any of these in an email we'd disown our families. "Touch here for 100 more cards for free", it tells us as we start roasting our smartphones on an open fire.
Christmas Photo Frames
Platform: Android
Price: Free
Christmas is cancelled.
1. The ten worst apps in the world
There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are crap.
We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.
Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.
So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
1. I Am Important
Platform: iOS
Price: Free
"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." - Vince Lombardi
The price of success in 2014 is jack all. All you need is an iPhone and a sense of deep, penetrating loneliness.
I Am Important is a fake diary organiser designed to make you look like, in the words of the app itself, a "top-flying shaker". For example, it'll generate made-up contacts in the app and put them in your address book. Those contacts aren't just low-life nobodies though - they're "highly important and highly paid business people". You know, better people.
Even more deplorably, the app will create fake events and insert them into your calendar. This is "to make you look busy and important as important people are involved in many events", as the app helpfully informs us. These important people sound really busy and interesting.
But of course, none of this is any good if no one is checking your phone, and as you're so "unimportant", chances are that they won't be. That's why the app lets you post your "success" to Facebook to make your friends green with envy. That's assuming you have any friends, which is unlikely if it's reached this point.
"Sometimes, when you feel like nobody cares, I Am Important will ask you about your day and what happened that day," notes the app description. Sure enough, there's a box at the bottom for you to write how you're feeling. Appropriately, ours suggested "self-condemning".
That last part might not quite match the criteria of the app's mission statement: "I Am Important does two things: 1. Shows the world how important you are. 2. Makes you feel more important."
But here's the best bit: you can pay to remove the app's adverts using a three-tier pricing system dependant on how "Important" you think you are. By clicking "Kind of important" and paying a minimal 69p, you'll get the ads removed but nothing else, while paying more will earn you bonus features, such as a colourful background. And if you fancy coughing up £6.99 for "Head of State/CEO" - importance then: "You're important - big time. You need a crazy, moving background to show everyone that your level of importance is [something undisclosed]."
There's a scene in the The Office (US version) where boss Michael Scott finds a video-recorded TV appearance from when he was a child. In it, a cat puppet asks Michael what he wants to be when he grows up. Michael replies: "I want to be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends. And no one can say no to being my friend." It's a surprisingly sad moment in an otherwise funny scene. I Am Important is that moment embodied in an app. In a word: tragic.
2. Funny Hand Dryer
2. Funny Hand Dryer
Platform: Android
Price: Free
This week's app is called Funny Hand Dryer but there is literally NOTHING funny about it. In any way at all. It's just a pretend, crappy, low-res picture of a hand dryer that makes a noise. If you've ever laughed at this, you're a moron.
To get the "funny" started, you touch beneath the vent as if you were sticking your hands out to dry, and the familiar blowing sound starts blurting out of your phone or tablet speakers. We have literally just described the function of Funny Hand Dryer as exhaustively as possible.
Now, perhaps we're missing the big joke that the rest of you are all in on, but as far as we can tell hand dryers have never quite been a source of 'banter'. Never have we heard a good joke involving a hand dryer and we highly doubt the "funny" is going to start with this app.
But who are we to argue with ten thousand downloads? And the app's creator is obviously keen to maintain the quality their fans have come to expect. The 1.1 update makes sure the app is now installed to any inserted SD card, so you can rest assured that you're never too far from a good bathroom facility-based joke. Just imagine the look on your friends' faces when you whip this one out. You don't deserve friends.
We'd say that iOS users are lucky to have dodged this bullet but the app Electric Razor is almost as harrowingly crap, though we guess you could at least rub the phone all over your face to help imitate the act of shaving. The 21st century is great, isn't it?
Needless to say, the reviews for Funny Hand Dryer are less than complimentary, although one person wrote: "It's alright not the best game in the app store,"
Not the best... but not the worst apparently. You mean you've played worse games than this, anonymous Google user? That may also be the most liberal use of the word "game" we've ever heard.
Luke Stanbridge gives the most in-depth analysis of the bunch, however: "Too basic, you can't change any settings of this app, when you take your hand off the screen the sound effect just cuts out unrealistically."
Yeah, because up until that point it had us utterly hornswoggled.
3. Floating Miley Cyrus
3. Floating Miley Cyrus
Price: Free
We'll begin this week's worst app review by paying it the one compliment it deserves: Floating Miley Cyrus does exactly what its name promises. That's more than we can say for a few others on this list.
The app drops a tiny version of the titular pop star on your screen, who will dance while you catch up on the day's news, watch a film, or simply brush up on some Marxist critique of capitalism. Whatever it is you people do on your tablets these days.
You can drag her around the screen, but beyond quitting the app, deleting it and moving on with your life, you have no other control. Miley is going to dance and she's going to make you watch. There's no variation either, she just does the same move again, and again, and again, and again.
This being the classy piece of software that it is, a nice little advert will also appear every time you boot up Miley, and because its close icon is so damn small, you're probably going to accidentally open it. Sorry about that.
It's pointless and no one is ever going to open this more than once, but we did discover our own fun game to play. We call it 'Where can you put Miley that's really funny?'. Turns out, quite a lot of places.
On 'researching' this week's app, we discovered a surprising number of Miley-related games in the Play Store, all of an unsurprisingly low quality. So we're also giving an honourable mention to the 'Miley Cyrus Game', in which the player earns points by dragging many Miley faces off the screen. We've experienced fun before. This is not it.
4. Beef War
4. Beef War
Platform: Android/iOS
Price: Free on Android/ $0.99 (69p) on iOS
Imagine an alternate version of history where America fought the Nazis not with guns or Buccaneer bombers, but with beef. No, in fact, stop imagining - you can live that very scenario right now.
Beef War is precisely what its name suggests. It's a war where your only ammunition is cuts of cow. The description doesn't give much away beyond the fact we can expect "48 unique cuts of beef, seven types of panzers, and 'intense strategies'."
Enemy tanks will blast different bovine parts in the middle of the screen, and it's your job to fling meat at them. Yes, meat beats Panzer. What do you mean you've never played Beef, Bayonet, Blitzkrieg before?
Every piece of meat is labeled on an Angus Beef Chart, which unhelpfully uses the world's smallest font size. You'll soon know your chuck pot roast from your flank steak, assuming you have superhero vision.
Ok, so there's some underlying message about American beef farmers being undermined by foreign trade. However, any awareness of the issue is offset by Herbert the Pervert seductively calling out the names of the beef types as you annihilate the enemy, like we're living in some war-meat fetishist's kinky sex fantasy.
And none of this is helped by the absence of any explanation from the app developer whatsoever beyond "BEEEF WAAAAAR" being screamed at you every time you start the game.
And while there's some strategy to it, we'd hardly call it "intense". Though we'll give it this: it's the most realistic war simulator with beef cuts you can play right now, down to the constant and not-at-all-annoying sounds of distress as cowzilla is slowly Panzer'd to death.
Sometimes at night, we can still hear the mooing.
5. Will you marry me?
5. Will you marry me?
Platform: Android
Price: Free
By this point, we've already dug up some some pretty atrocious apps - really, truly awful things. But just when you think you've scraped the bottom of the barrel, someone lifts that barrel up and out squirms a monstrosity that defies imagination.
That monster is Will you marry me?, an app that wants to do the job of proposing to your most beloved one for you.
"Have you ever tried tell your feelings for your girlfriend, or boyfriend?" asks the blurb in broken English. "Want you to make it with your phone? Can't you say it yourself? You can't speak in these situations? You are not alone! But... You can do it with your phone!"
No. No you can't.
Let's start with the design. The app is a single landing page that can only be described as 'my first Powerpoint'. You don't read the text so much as decipher it from a font that, for good reason, we've never seen used before in our lives.
Thankfully the adverts at the bottom are completely legible, directing you to apps that will help you "meet flirty single women" and other entirely inappropriate dating sites. This really helps the romantic mood.
The background displays two giant wedding rings with "Will you marry me?" scrawled across the top, while your significant other has the choice of selecting either "Yes" or "I need more time".
If your soon-to-be-ex taps the latter, "Think it through again, please, I LOVE YOU!" appears on the screen, suggesting that this relationship has turned into some hellish multiple-choice RPG that they cannot win.
But that button's so unreadable that they'll probably just hit "Yes" to just make the nightmare end. Then the shrill organ music starts to play and they realise that the real nightmare has just begun: they're about to spend the rest of their life with a person who thought that this app was a good idea.
6. Ethan
6. Ethan
Platform: iOS
Price: Free
Who is Ethan? How is Ethan? Why is Ethan? In some ways, aren't we all Ethan?
These are the inevitable musings that come with downloading Ethan, a conversation app that lets you speak to one person and one person only: Ethan.
Ethan is an ordinary guy, apparently. We don't know much about him but we wish we did. So far he's not responded to any of our messages. Oh sure, he'll speak to TimParker. "What a great chap, highly recommended," so goes his review on the App Store. Why won't he message us? We feel really quite left out.
Put simply, Ethan is a real-life Siri. Want advice on what to watch on Netflix tonight? Ask Ethan (we're told he'll always recommend The Room). Stuck for a date idea? Ask Ethan. Which season of Grey's Anatomy is the best? Ethan may have an opinion (we think season 6, hopefully Ethan agrees).
But the way we see it, Ethan is just a guy with access to Google and more free time on his hands than he knows what to do with. "Don't ask if I'm real (I am)" he says. But who are we to believe him when Siri is just as evasive with such questions? We also find his preference for multiple choice questions highly suspicious.
Siri is a robot parading as a human, Ethan Gliechtenstein is a so-called human in our smartphones. This is Philip K Dick's existential nightmare. We are Ethan and Ethan is all of us.
7. Got Juice?
7. Got Juice?
Platform: iOS
Price: Free
From the very the people who created Hold On comes another smash hit app you never thought you needed: Got Juice?
"What's Got Juice?" you ask? Well let us answer your question with another question: ever wondered how much battery you've got left but had no easy way of seeing it? Us neither! Luckily that's not what Got Juice? does, which is just why you need it! This is an app that inaccurately tells you your battery status with a crappy graphic. On our first try Got Juice? told us we had 80% of battery left, the iPhone battery indicator reckoned it was 86%.
Wait, you mean Got Juice? wasn't meant to get the percentage wrong? Well that explains why it's in this list doesn't it.
But then again, who are we to argue with the real critics? sonydog123 said: "This app is free and great, very simple to check your battery status and highly recommended - great job on it!"
While the one and only reviewman57364 really dug deep for his analysis. "Great app! - liked how it goes up to your percentage. Very nice feature."
"Looks cool - I'm shocked there are no ads!" said mriphoneaddict. We'll be more shocked if this is a legitimate review.
But it's allytheangel who really nails it with Roger Ebert-esque insight: "You'll always know exactly how low your battery is! Makes me wonder why it isn't included as a standard."
Yeah, us too...
8. Hold On
8. Hold On
Price: 69p
The past few years have seen smartphones completely transform the gaming industry, with some notable titans helping to blow the medium wide open.
Angry Birds defined mobile gaming from the off. Infinity Blade showed us that smartphone games could go toe-to-toe with consoles. Monument Valley proved they could be thoughtful and beautiful. Hold On, which costs 69p, shows us that the app store really needs to sort itself out.
Here's the premise: hold the button for as long as you can. If you let go, the game is over. Then try to beat your previous record. When will the fun end!?
"Develop your perseverance and improve your concentration skills to make you more productive!" reads the app store description. We'll cast some doubt on that. This app is more likely to aggravate any underlying anger issues when you realise you wasted ACTUAL MONEY on it. But perhaps we're too quick to judge, so let's take a closer look.
We've covered the central tenet more extensively than it deserves, but there's plenty more to do. Say, for example, you want to submit your high score, just tap 'submit' and enter your name like it tells you to. What's that? Oh, you can't actually enter your name because there's no working keyboard. Just tap OK then, we guess.
Now that you've anonymously entered your score to the global rankings, better go see how you're faring. Oh look, that just brings up a load of code. This is paying for itself already.
But wait, we forgot the biggest feature of all: you can connect to a friend via Bluetooth and enjoy the shoddiness together! Of course we haven't been able to test this feature because we couldn't persuade anyone to spend their money on it.
9. 99 Bottles!
9. 99 Bottles!
Platform: iOS
Price: Free
Let us set the scene: You're having '99 Bottles of Beer' sung to you by Stephen Hawking. We just described the entirety of the 99 Bottles app.
No, that's not fair, you can also pause the song or choose to start it over. There are also some crap bottle animations that twitch along with the "music". Ok, now we've described it.
Yes, it's the slow, awkward rendition of 99 Bottles you never asked for but you're sure as hell going to get anyway. And what happens if, God forbid, you last the whole 19 minutes and 48 seconds? No spoilers here, but we can confirm that time is accurate because we sat through the whole damn thing ourselves.
Actually, we got a text message at just over 50 bottles down the first time and accidentally hit 'start again', so we basically sat through it twice for this column. You're welcome.
You'll hear all the greats: 87, 64, 50, 42… And if your phone goes to sleep just as bottle 93 has been taken from the wall, does it start exactly where it left off? Course not, it starts number 93 ALL OVER AGAIN.
We really can't think of any useful applications for this other than torture, and Amnesty would be all over this in a heartbeat.
To its creator's credit he at least acknowledges how ridiculous the app is. We just don't know why anyone would use it, let alone make it. Then again we did play it for the whole 20 minutes so we're hardly in a position to judge. No wait, make that 29 minutes and 42 seconds. Again, you're welcome.
10. Pet Baby
10. Pet Baby
Platform: iOS
Price: Free
Here's how I imagine the meeting at Trashicon HQ happened the day the idea for Pet Baby was born.
"Hey guys, people like sharing pictures of their pets. I think I've spotted what they call a 'market opportunity'."
"You sure have, Jerry. But our app budget is focused on babies right now. Babies are funny, remember?!"
"But wait, why don't we combine the two?"
*The room falls deadly silent. A single bead of sweat runs down Jerry's forehead. He's eyeing up his desk across the room, mentally packing up his belongings*
"Careful Jerry, that's the sort of thinking that'll get you a… PROMOTION."
*Everyone claps*
And thus, Pet Baby was born. An app that asks the question that's been on the collective lips of humanity since the dawn of man: "What would your pet look like… as a human baby?" Given that most babies look the same, the answer is probably 'just like every other baby ever', right?
WRONG. Your pet baby is a mutant child that will devour your soul.
You see, rather than making any effort whatsoever to morph your dog's face into some sort of funny canine-baby mashup, the app lazily hacks the two together with an opacity tool to create what can only be described as a pure evil.
But does the fun stop there? Oh no. No, once your rabid demon child has been conceived, you can expose your friends and family to the horror via Facebook and Twitter.
Just look at some of the beauties we came up with:
And God forbid the app ever does produce anything looking mildly sentient, you can expect something like the following:
This app had zero reviews at the time of publishing.
from www.techradar.com/
