iPhone App of the Week: Lady Gaga Revenge

Despite the major upgrades Tapulous has made to its free flagship Tap Tap Revenge 2 (now just Tap Tap Revenge + Themes!), I've decided to consider that the recently released Lady Gaga Revenge (or if you prefer, Tap Tap Revenge: Lady Gaga Edition) is a bit more fun to review, because it requires less screenshots it's pretty good in its own right.

Tapulous has offered premium content and artist-centric Tap Tap games in the past, but I think, technically, Lady Gaga Revenge is one of the best of the premium games.

Before anyone flames me, I have to say that I'm not saying Lady Gaga Revenge has the best playlist (in my opinion, that title belongs to Coldplay) but there are some pretty catchy tunes in there, and the selection of songs Tapulous has made for the game are pretty spot-on.

To once again clarify, I said that this app was technically the best because I think the interface Tapulous made for the game is much less "flashy" yet creative at the same time (the Coldplay one was too "flat" and Tap Tap Dance is too shiny at times).

True, the placement of Lady Gaga herself can be a bit distracting, but the flashes are just subtler as they are merely on the lower left and right portions of the screen, and the multiplier count is even presented in cards, ala Poker Face.

In addition to that, Lady Gaga Revenge is also the first Tap Tap to utilize the iPhone in a landscape orientation. But instead of just 3 places to tap, it's now four.

It's much more basic, and it's darker so it's a bit of a relief to the eyes since the motif is kind of subtler. Thankfully, activating Revenge mode is automatic during these stages, and the arrows disappear as well.

Like all the other premium Tap Tap games, you'll have to achieve a bare minimum of 85% completion in half of the songs of a specific difficulty. Notably, the Kids difficulty has been omitted.

And like all the other Tap Tap's, you'll be able to challenge a friend to beat your score through E-mail, buy the specific song through iTunes, post your own score to the worldwide leaderboard (or just your Facebook wall), or just visit Lady Gaga's website.

One other thing that has been derived from the free counterpart is the "news feed", but this is more catered to the Lady Gaga fans. Basically, it will alert you if Lady Gaga's been chosen as Rolling Stone's cover girl or whatnot.

Overall, this game is very much catered to both casual and hardcore Lady Gaga fans. The usual complaints like undefined charting (and sometimes downright bad charting), the inability to play online and download new songs persist, but in a technical aspect, it's probably the best premium Tap Tap app out there, but that doesn't say much to dethrone the actual Tap Tap Revenge from still being the best, especially since it's free. If you hate Lady Gaga though, there's obviously no reason for you to even be reading this review since you won't get it anyway.

I'm just thankful that Tapulous has gotten rid of the crashes!

Rating: 8/10 [App Store Link]