Watcher
For: iPhone- From: Freaking Maniacs
- Rating: Three pairs of wet undies
- Reviewer: Fawn Mikal
Watcher is a real-time, GPS-enabled, freak-out from Freaking Maniacs for iPhone users like me who love being scared shitless. Let’s face it–I’m the girl in the horror flick who goes down to the basement to investigate a strange, sickening crunching sound that really couldn’t be anything other than your boyfriend being ground up into hamburger. I love being scared, and so do my friends, which is why we love Watcher. How does it work? Simple. You sign up for a Watcher account and your Watcher whereabouts are broadcast to other users in the vicinity, who can track you. The object is to find other Watchers by pinging them with creepy messages until you’ve indentified who they are–they’re usually the person who is standing in a crowd wetting themselves conspicuously–then you tag them by closing in and hitting the Tag command on your iPhone. (You have to be within three feet of them to make the tag and score the points.) Okay, sometimes you get these totally freaky guys watching you and sometimes they seem to think that once they’ve tagged you that you belong to them and you have to like go to their secret sex dungeon and be their torture toy, but after you’ve fallen for that line a few times you learn to carry plenty of mace, so all those people who tell you that Watcher is just an invitation to be carved up by a psychotic maniac are totally missing the fun. But, don’t forget the mace, just to be safe.





Such simplicity and such joy! Don’t Lose Your Marbles! is simply perfection that you must experience yourself. It is the caviar of video games, the Dom Perignon, the Madame Francoise, to whom I extend my warmest wishes and an invitation to renew our “splik” at her earliest convenience. But let us not speak of love but of fascination. DLYB is a battle of fascination, with each opponent forever on the edge of oblivion.
When international bad guys plot against the United States, Leonetta–the super alter-ego of CIA Director Leon Panetta–is sure to be on the case, hunting them down through his octopus-like network of shadow agents and contacts across the globe. The game play unfolds in two very different ways: first, you’ll direct the Agency in the resource management panel, allocating budgets, reviewing the latest intelligence, doing backroom deals with other leaders of the government, choosing colors to paint your new office and briefing the President when steaming piles of shit hit the “national interest” fan.



Hey, Fawn: Great review. I’ve been playing Watcher for about a month now and I can’t tell youhow many times I’ve been maced. Appreciate it. And don’t forget…I’m Watching you.