Falling Skies - Review - Castle Boloody

falling skies lead

TNT is a forward-thinking network. Kickoff they picked up the sci-fi serial Falling Skies, which comes from executive producer Stephen Spielberg. Science fiction can be expensive to produce then we don't see nearly enough of it on television. Only a few episodes of the show have aired so far, just it's already been picked up for a second season. Farther showing back up for the show, TNT has also released a companion app for Windows Phone. It comes to united states of america from Cluttered Moon Studios, the developers of numerous official apps like Best Purchase and FlightAware.

Before nosotros talk about the app, let'southward touch on the show itself. Falling Skies takes place half dozen months later on a malevolent alien race has conquered the earth, killing most of the homo population. A grouping of liberty fighters, the Second Massachusetts, struggles to push button back the invaders while protecting equally many civilians as possible. These defenders include the protagonist Tom Mason, a former history professor (played past Noah Wyle); his teenage son Hal Mason (Drew Roy); Captain Weaver (Volition Patton) – the military leader of the group; and Anne Glass (the e'er bonny Moon Bloodgood), a pediatrician-turned-medic. The testify features plenty of action and intrigue. Occasional sappy moments, mostly involving Tom's youngest son Matt (Maxim Knight) may induce groans, but they're largely overshadowed by the meliorate bits.

Head past the jump for our full review.

falling skies Menu

The Falling Skies app, like you might expect, is designed to evangelize content from the testify's website in mobile-friendly grade. As a result, the app requires an cyberspace connection to use. This has several advantages: it keeps the file size of the application down, and it allows for the addition of new content without updating the app itself. That doesn't mean the app shouldn't exist updated, but we'll become to that in a moment.

falling skies bioxs

Falling Skies on Windows Phone contains the post-obit sections: Near the show, Episodes, Bios, Comics, Photos, Videos, and Community. Let's expect at the contents of each section.

About the show, Episodes, and Bios: Each of these pages includes a single photograph and text for fans looking to learn more about the bear witness. The Episode descriptions are updated as new episodes air. They tend to be brief, simply do assistance readers keep track of what episodes they've seen or missed. Bios draw the principal characters (11 then far) and proper name the actors who play them. Filmographies would take been appreciated, but aren't actually necessary.
Comics: Read the 64-page webcomic on your phone. Given that the series airplane pilot starts half-dozen months after the get-go alien attack, at that place's a fair amount of prequel ground to cover. The webcomic tells part of the story, with the rest supplied outside of the app via a merchandise paperback. Just don't expect to learn anything new about the skitterers (aliens), as that data volition exist slowly drip-fed inside the show itself. Reading the comic on the phone is a painless procedure – swiping left or right advances panels, while taping the lower-left corner of the screen toggles between two levels of zoom.
Photos: An array of xviii images from the prove. The app has some catching up to exercise with the series website, which has many more images sorted by episode. Photos can't be saved from within the app, either.
Videos: Two videos are available at the moment: a special effects featurette and a "sneak peek" at this week's upcoming episode. Like Photos, the real website contains several more videos than the app. The other content isn't really missed though.
Customs: Opens the serial' Twitter folio in the phone's web browser.

Metro-tastic

falling skies comic

The app has a prissy, clean expect that fits perfectly with the Windows Telephone Metro UI. Swiping left or right from the primary menu and within some sub-menus switches to other pages, as with many apps that are well-optimized for the platform. When the user taps an paradigm from within the Photos section, there's a dainty zooming blitheness as the photo fills the screen.

On the downside, the menus can exist a bit convoluted. The main bill of fare lists several options for users to jump into, merely others (like Bios) tin but be reached by swiping left or right. Comics are presented in a especially awkward way. If y'all tap on the words "mobile comic" from the main menu, it merely opens up the first chapter of the webcomic. The end of the chapter doesn't lead to the next chapter, so one could easily think the app doesn't accept the other chapters. The chapter menu does actually exist, only y'all have to swipe left or right from the chief bill of fare to get to it. It would make much more sense for the main menu link to get straight to the chapter listing instead of the first comic.

falling skies videos

Finally, the text portions of the app could utilise some refinement. Every such page displays a photograph at the top of the screen, with text relegated to the bottom third of the screen. Scrolling the text doesn't move the photo out of the way, so the bodily readable area is annoyingly minor. Hopefully this outcome is fixed with an update.

Overall Impression

The Falling Skies app does about everything series fans could want in a mobile app. It's a user-friendly manner to read the prequel webcomic, episode synopses, and grapheme bios, equally well as view teasers of upcoming episodes. The but content from the series website that is sorely missed is the ability to stream full episodes of the show. Perhaps the omission is due to a rights effect? If nosotros could scout the show straight from the app, I would easily recommend it to anyone who likes episodic science fiction. As it stands, the app is just a useful tool for people who watch the bear witness elsewhere to acquire more most it on the go. Those who don't scout the prove won't get as much out of information technology, but maybe it'll inspire them to check it out on TV or the web.

Falling Skies is a free app. You'll find it here (Zune link) on the Market.

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