EA should be commended for its efforts to bring full-fledged sports games such as Madden 10 and FIFA 10 to the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. While they haven’t been perfect, they certainly have elevated the playing field for competitors. The latest addition is targeted at the basketball aficionados with NBA Live 10, which is probably the best of the bunch with balanced AI, easy-to-use controls, and most importantly, engaging gameplay. While those looking for a true console-quality experience should stick to your PC, PSP or XBox, those simply looking for a high-quality basketball game on the iPhone platform should strongly consider NBA Live 10.

NBA Live has all 30 NBA teams and their player rosters with photos and statistics are at your disposal. The game has several play modes—Exhibition, Season and Playoff. Exhibition mode allows you to play a quick single game using your favorite team. Season mode takes you through a choice of 12, 20, 41 or 82-game season tracking season statistics and standings leading to the playoffs. Playoff mode gives you the option to play a single, 3, 5 or 7-game playoff series. Each mode provides numerous customization options such as quarter length from 1-12 minutes each, but two areas worth noting are penalty enforcement (easy, medium, hard), and most importantly, 3 levels of gameplay difficulty (Rookie, Veteran, All-Star).

The AI can become significantly challenging based on how you set the penalty enforcement and gameplay difficulty. Shot clock violations, out of bounds, reach-in fouls and shooting are all enforced. By increasing the degree of penalty enforcement, additional penalties are leveled. With medium, fouling out and goal tending are included, while hard adds backcourt violations, charging and 8-second violations.

The graphics and animation are solid for the device with minimal lag on my iPod Touch 2g. The different stadiums and arenas are well represented, although the players can look Lego-like. Running up and down the court with multiple simultaneous animations, NBA Live doesn’t experience much stutter. The game includes optional commentary from Marv Albert. Like most games, the commentary is repetitive, but generally fit with the current game situation. In addition, 15 music tracks from artists like Matt and Kim, Snoop Dogg and Xzibit are included and playing your own music is also allowed. Other options are choice of camera angles (broadcast and baseline), left/right flip controls, and horizontal or vertical button layouts.

NBA Live’s two-button control set-up may appear limiting, but it does make the game intuitively easier and more responsive than FIFA 10. NBA Live uses a virtual control stick for maneuvering players up and down the court along with a pair of blue and red buttons. These action buttons can be used to do different actions depending on if your team is on offense or defense. On offense, the blue button is used for passing and the red button to shoot. Depending on how long you hold a button, other options appear. For example, holding down the blue (pass) button will bring up icons for other players each identified by risk for making a pass. Tapping a player icon will then deliver the pass. Meanwhile, flicking the blue button will bring up juke and crossover moves. Pressing and holding on the red button lets you shoot the ball and releasing at the peak of the jump increases your chances of scoring. Simply tapping the red button will create a pump fake, while flicking when driving to the basket will result in a dunk. And depending on the direction you flick, different dunks can be unleashed. Blocking, rebounding and stealing controls are also offered.

One of the game's nicer features is the ability to call plays. The Clipboard icon in the top right is used to select plays on offense and defense. For example, you can select zone or a 4-1 offensive play set as well as specific plays such as a pick and roll or set up for a 3-pointer. On defense, a limited set of play sets are available such as man to man, and various zone set ups.

Team management is probably one of the weak spots for NBA Live. Trading and customizing rosters is done by dragging and dropping player names and profiles between select teams. Like Madden 10, there are no roster limitations based on salaries, although teams are required to have certain position players, which tends to make team management shallow and less than fulfilling. You can easily create your own dream team without too many restrictions. A nice touch, however, is the addition of Legend Players such as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Dr. J, which are unlocked based on your progress through the season.

The gameplay is as good as you would expect with NBA Live, and a lot of this goes back to the controls and AI. The simplified control set up should make this game accessible to a broader audience. The AI works smoothly and ratchets up nicely playing an intelligent offensive and defensive game. NBA Live 10 delivers a fun and immersive basketball game. Whether playing a quick game or a more prolonged season mode, the game is a solid offering and provides a good degree customization without too many complex controls. Given the overly easy AI in Madden 10 and the high learning curve of FIFA 10, NBA Live 10 seems to be right in the middle balancing the appropriate challenge within a manageable environment.

App Store Link: NBA Live, $9.99

Early this month Empty Clip Studios gave us an exclusive preview of the upcoming iPhone port of their download / retail Wii rhythm puzzle title, Groovin' Blocks. Those anxious to get their hands on this one can now try the full [link] or lite [link] version, which went live in the App Store yesterday.

Each of Groovin' Blocks' 50 levels is played to a pumping techno soundtrack with scrolling beat-indicators on either side of the screen.  Block clusters slide onto the playfield in a Tetris-like fashion, and will ultimately come to rest at the bottom of the screen.  A tap on the 'drop' button will quickly drop the piece into place — but if you "hit a beat" (tapping the drop button during a beat of the soundtrack) the blocks will be bigger, brighter, and worth more points.  Hitting consecutive beats without a miss increases your score multiplier — but miss a beat and it drops back to zero.  Hitting the occasional Superbeat, shown brighter in the scrolling beat display, will double your current score multiplier.

Certain blocks contain power-ups that can be collected only if you hit a beat when placing said block.  Power-ups are unleashed when the successfully placed block is destroyed by a match-three scenario.

See our preview video for a closer look.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

GameSpot calls the Wii version of Groovin' Blocks "a music-based game like no other."  As we said in our preview look, there's no shortage of match-three puzzlers in the App Store, but Groovin' Blocks' musical / rhythm component really does set it apart from the pack.

App Store Links: Groovin' Blocks, $1.99, Groovin' Blocks Lite, Free

We just got word from John Carmack himself that Doom Classic was recently submitted to Apple for approval.

According to our previous interview with Carmack, Doom Classic will stay faithful to the original with OpenGL rendered graphics along with slightly better sound quality and a "brand new finely crafted control system".

Recently he posted in our forums asking for opinions on how our forum members preferred controlling first person shooters on the platform, so it should be interesting to see how much of this feedback gets implemented in to the actual game.

We will have more information on Doom Classic and its impending release next week.

This weekend is "crazy Donut Games weekend," folks.  Why the craziness?  Donut Games is giving away three of their popular iPhone titles for free.  Have a look.

Spikey's Bounce Around (normally $2.99)

Bounce with SPIKEY through the magic gardens on a quest to free all his friends.

The sacred butterflies have all been trapped inside glass jars, and it's up to Spikey to smash them open using his wild bouncing skills!

Rat on the Run (normally $0.99)

Help Ratty get FATTENED UP for the winter in this hilarious platform game!

Ratty has just found the house of his dreams - a house full of cheese blocks and doodles.
There's just one big problem. All floors are full of slimey blobs, mean spiders and other baddies who try to stop Ratty from getting the goodies.

Includes the bonus game: RAT ON A SCOOTER

Lucky Coins (normaly $1.99)

LUCKY COINS is a bumping fun mix of the best elements of Pinball, Pachinko and casino style games!

Feelin' lucky? Drop the golden coin and watch it bounce off bumpers, pins and moving gizmos. Magnets will trap the coin and allow you to aim and blast the coin in new directions to grab more bonus items than you can think of.

Combine your skill and luck to rack up loads of points in this updated version of LUCKY COINS.

Based on the crazy Donut Games weekend forum post, readers are having a great time with these limited-time freebies.  Grab 'em for free while you've got the chance.

Ethan Nicholas is one of the big indie success stories of the App Store. Nicholas quit his job back in January after his tank artillery game iShoot grabbed the #1 spot in the App Store. Nicholas reportedly made over $800,000 within five months.

The pressure is on for Nicholas who was recently profiled in a Newsweek article which described that it is harder than ever to find success in the App Store. Nicholas admits that a lot of the success of iShoot was "pure luck" and he is "very worried about being a one-hit wonder."

According to the article, Nicholas has spend eight months and more than 6 figures working on his follow-up title. Nicholas tweeted the first peek at his next project with just these screenshots. No other details have been provided.

The TouchArcade forum thread has generated speculation about exactly what kind of game it might be from a traditional first person shooter to a hunting game. The following tweet from early October doesn't seem to provide much clarity:

Working on making critters explode when hit with a rocket.

We'll be interested to see Nicholas's followup game. Good luck Ethan!

App Store Link: iShoot, $1.99, iShoot Lite, Free

Much to our surprise, StoneLoops! of Jurassica was recently removed from the App Store. This is particularly unfortunate, as we not only gave the game a glowing review, but I would also include it in any listing of really great iPhone games.

Maciej Biedrzycki, co-founder of Codeminion, developers of StoneLoops explained on his blog today the reasoning behind the recent removal, which all boils down to a complaint filed by Mumbo Jumbo, developers of Luxor:

About 3 weeks ago we have learned that Mumbo Jumbo supplied Apple with a formal complaint and a request to remove StoneLoops! from the AppStore. The reason? Infringing Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code!

Codeminion responded to the complaint, and heard nothing of it for several weeks. After assuming their response was satisfactory, they later discovered that StoneLoops had ultimately been removed from the App Store.

This entire situation has left members of our forums both in both the StoneLoops and Luxor threads scratching their heads. While the original version of Luxor was released about 3 years prior to StoneLoops!, neither game is based on an entirely original concept, as PopCap's Zuma was released in 2003, and Puzz Loop (which is also on the App Store) was released all the way back in 1998. We've yet to receive a response from Mumbo Jumbo to get their side of the story.

I’m always on the lookout for new twists on puzzles. Sometimes these new twists or elements work and often times, they don’t. Besides the degree of fun which is highly subjective, the ideas that generally work and succeed are the ones that add complexity without complicating the game. When I first started playing Wriggle, I was lured in by the fun looking graphics, but what’s kept me playing is the mind benders that at first glance look simple enough. As you play with Wriggle, it becomes a test of logic all presented in a lighthearted package.

Wriggle is all about squirmy worms that come in a variety of colors. The only one you really care about is the blue one that must get to the exit within a certain number of moves. While the goal sounds mundane on paper, in practice, Wriggle is brain teasing at its best.

The control scheme involves your finger and the ability to drag Blue and the other worms in whatever direction. Wriggle has 4 levels of difficulty—easy, medium, hard and expert—with 80 total puzzles. In order to unlock the puzzles at the higher difficulty, you must complete 50% of the puzzles at the previous difficulty.

Each puzzle has a number of moves in which you must get Mr. Blue to the exit if you’re to receive an award. This involves strategically moving the other worms out of your way. Worms can be moved by dragging the head or the tail, and moves are counted when you drag a new worm. In terms of other features, once you’ve unlocked a set of puzzles in a difficulty level, you can choose to play any of the puzzles, skipping forward or replaying previous puzzles. Within each puzzles, a handy undo button is available so you can re-think your strategy without having to start from scratch. Plus, the game has auto save so your progress is saved regardless of where you left off.

Wriggle fits in that category of “simple to play but difficult to master”. It provides enough puzzles with a range of difficulty levels that novice and advanced puzzlers will enjoy, and provides enough to keep you coming back

App Store Link: Wriggle, $0.99, Wriggle Free, Free

Gamevil's latest epic RPG got its own lite version today, Hybrid: Eternal Whisper Free [App Store] offers a brief look at the world of Hybrid through three included battle stages where you will be able to master nine different fighting skills.

Hybrid is an adventure roleplaying game with an extensive skill system all wrapped around a brawler-style fighting game. You play as Grey, a kid with a mysterious past protected by an equally mysterious guardian named Fairy through a quest that will take you numerous hours to complete that touches on a number of RPG cliches along the way.

With every enemy you kill, you gain experience points and in-game currency which can be spent on an impressively deep character customization and upgrade system. The combat is the star of the show in Hybrid, and as you fight through each level you eventually gain more moves, techniques, and magical attacks to dispatch your enemies. These attacks can be chained together to form massive combos, and fighting entire gangs of baddies at once can be fairly satisfying.

Like Zenonia, there are a lot of people who love Hybrid, there's a thread on our forums filled with fans of the game. I do appreciate all the work Gamevil has put in to the game, and as you level up and gain more abilities, watching Grey fly around the screen killing enemies is fairly spectacular.

Where the game fell short for me, however, was in the seemingly endless amount of button mashing and thumb swiping required to kill all the enemies on a level only to watch a cut scene with tons of dialog, then get back to mashing the attack button. Regardless, I still recommend trying the free version, because opinions on this game seem divided, and you could find yourself amongst those who can't get enough of Hybrid.

App Store Links:

• Hybrid: Eternal Whisper Free, Free
• Hybrid: Eternal Whisper, $5.99

EA recently release a cute point and click adventure game for the iPhone called Mystery Mania. It's a charming adventure game that was originally released for mobile phones before it was ported to the iPhone.

The game offers 27 puzzle rooms throughout which you unravel the mysterious storyline. You play the role of F8, a robot with amnesia who must figure out what's going on. Touch controls offer the ability to interact with your environment and you must perform tasks in the correct order into order to solve each room. The game as been relatively well received in our forums with mostly positive experiences.

The only real criticism for some has been the relatively short length and ease of difficulty of the game, though it appears to be a good time during. Here's some of the Lite gameplay recorded by AppBank.

Two things, however, may convince you to give the game a shot. First, EA offers a free Lite version that gives you a taste of the game, and second, they have temporarily dropped the price of the game from $3.99 to $1.99 for the next 24 hours.

App Store Link: Mystery Mania FREE, Free, Mystery Mania, $3.99

I first got a look at Five Minutes to Kill Yourself [App Store] as part of an oddly secretive preview from the folks at Adult Swim. With the game's impending release in the near future, now is finally the time to pull the cover off Adult Swim's latest iPhone adaptation of yet another one of their flash games.

As the title may imply, in Five Minutes to Kill Yourself, you've found yourself fed up with working in your monotonous office environment and have decided to off yourself. Utilizing various objects found around your office, you only have five minutes to do enough damage to put yourself out of your misery.

It isn't that simple though, as your bothersome coworkers often initiate unskippable conversations with you. Much like working in a real office, these conversations accomplish nothing other than wasting your time. In some instances, through dialog choices you might get a coworker to attack you, but most of the time they just pester you about lunch.

You can staple your forehead, drink toilet water, pee on computers, and countless other things. The amount of objects that you can interact with and the objects that can be combined with others for even more lethal damage is pretty amazing. The following video shows the game's tutorial, selecting clothing, and finally, killing yourself:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself is also available as a free flash game on the Adult Swim website. It plays exactly the same as the iPhone version, the only difference is instead of using your mouse you use your finger.

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself should be available on the App Store very soon.

Update: Wow, we weren't kidding about it being available soon. It was just released moments ago.

App Store Link: 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself, $2.99

And now for a change of pace.

If your first reaction to this app is "Why would you let your toddler play with your $300 iPhone?", well, it's pretty clear you don't have kids, so you can skip this story.

For those who do have children in the 2-5 year old range, Whizzit 123 seems to be the functional equivalent of Doodle Jump that has them coming back again and again. The game simply consists of different objects that are presented in quantities of up to 10 or 20 based on a user selectable option, and the child simply taps on each one as they are counted out loud. Each item displays a brief animated flourish as they are counted. Each tap offers a small animation and the final tally is repeated out loud at the end. That's pretty much it.

It's fun, educational, and strangely rewarding. My daughter rates it as "Yay!"

App Store Link: Whizzit 123, $0.99

I spent a good amount of time yesterday playing through a preview copy of Namco's upcoming shooter Garters & Ghouls. You play as the freshly reanimated Marie Dupois fighting against an evil force known as "Thrum" who has caused the dead to rise under its control. It's your task to close the portals of the underworld that spawn the various zombies, werewolves, and demons that are rampaging across the countryside.

The game plays a lot like iDracula and other similar games, with two virtual joysticks that control your movement and shooting. Along the way you come across different weapons and powerups, and throughout the land are shops run by the "Steam Queens" where you can buy upgrades for your character's health, movement, weapon damage, and other things.

The main difference between Garters & Ghouls and similar iPhone games it that the gameplay is structured around 25 distinct and large levels and framed in a story that slowly reveals more about Marie Dupois, Thrum, and the other intricacies of the Garters & Ghouls world.

Each of these levels are laid out differently, within varied environments such as graveyards and churches. The goal of each level involves closing all of the evil minion spawning portals, and making your way to the exit. The portals can be seen on the on-screen radar, and making your way through the large maps can take some time. This is notably different than games like Alive 4 Ever and iDracula that keep you relatively contained in a very small area.

The game can get a bit monotonous at times, but the same can be said for all of the games in the same genre. Here's a gameplay video of me playing through the fourth level and a little bit of the fifth:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Garters & Ghouls is still in development, so the video likely will not be entirely representative of the final version. In particular, your shooting directions felt a bit too discrete, though we heard that this may still change. We'll post more information on the game as we receive it.

Last weekend was the Big Buck Hunter Pro world championship held in Chicago, IL and aside from thousands of dollars of prize money that was given away, they were also giving people the first look at the upcoming iPhone game.

The iPhone version is based on the series of Big Buck Hunter arcade machines which originally debuted all the way back in 2001. Since then, there have been several spin-off machines that have you hunting things like big horn sheep, elk, and even antelope. The arcade game is played using a shotgun aimed at the screen to shoot whatever it is you're hunting and often can be found at bars right next to the Golden Tee machine.

The iPhone, obviously lacking any light gun accessories uses your fingers to do the shooting. This mobile version of the game plays remarkably similar to the arcade machine, although quite a bit of the allure of Big Buck Hunter has always been playing it while you're out drinking with friends and there isn't much the iPhone can do the emulate that.

In the following video I go over all the functionality of the game including shooting deer, the bonus stages, online leaderboards, and even the ability to use your GPS coordinates to find the nearest arcade machine:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Big Buck Hunter has an absolutely massive following, and it's great to see an iPhone port of the game that is actually fairly representative of the original instead of a quick cash-in on the series. Big Buck Hunter Pro is expected to be available soon, and while no price has been announced yet, I'm sure the iPhone game will be much cheaper than a single night of pumping quarters in to a real Big Buck Hunter machine.

Those waiting for a more proper Star Wars themed game may be in luck with this upcoming Star Wars: Trench Run for the iPhone. THQ Wireless gave us a heads up on this preview video which shows a game built around a famous scene from the original Star Wars movie.

Use the Force to overthrow the evil Galactic Empire as they attempt to destroy the small Rebel base on Yavins jungle moon.

As part of the Rebel Alliances Red Squadron you dogfight with TIE Fighters above the Death Stars surface before heading into a trench where you are inundated by cannon fire. Dodge obstacles, and stay out of Darth Vaders sights as he tries to gun you down before you have the chance to fire your proton torpedoes into a thermal exhaust port the size of a womp rat. If successful, a direct hit will cause a chain reaction that destroys the Death Star, thus saving the Rebel base from impending doom.

Remember, only a precise hit will start a chain reaction. That's impossible you say? Even for a computer? Bah.... I used to bullseye womp rats with my T-16 back home...

In the midst of all the various approvals last night, Apple also let loose a tidal wave of updates. It's probably a good idea to mash the "Check for Updates" button in iTunes to see what is available. Here's a list of the more notable updates that went live tonight that added some new features or functionality to some games that we have posted about in the past.

Words With Friends, $2.99 - Aside from Facebook and Twitter integration, Newtoy also finally added push notifications to the game. With them enabled, you will get an alert whenever it's your move in an active game. There is also a lite version available, but so far push alerts are only in the premium version.

Harbor Master, 99¢ - Version 1.6 adds bluetooth multiplayer, fast forward, and the ability to toggle auto-docking. In the multiplayer mode, when you send a ship off screen, it appears on the same position on your opponent's screen with a full load of cargo. With careful planning, you may be able to overwhelm your opponent by keeping empty ships on screen to send them all over to your opponent in one huge wave. There's also an available lite with one of the maps from the full version.

Run, 99¢ - The latest update adds all kinds of new functionality. A quick start mode to ramp up difficulty faster, OpenFeint, extra lives, a combo system, along with several new achievements and obstacles. There's a clock on the pause screen to see how long you've been playing, and a whole bunch of other minor gameplay tweaks.

Bobby Carrot Forever, $3.99 - FDG Entertainment has extended the game world, bundled in a new free level pack, and 5 new downloadable content level packs that boast 15 additional hours of gameplay. Bobby Carrot 5 Lite will let you get a taste of the game if you don't already own it.

Hi, How Are You, $1.99 - This Daniel Johnston-powered puzzle game somehow got even more awesome with 33 new levels, even more enemies and obstacles, and additional achievements. The new update also introduces some interface tweaks, bug fixes, and some rebalancing of gameplay elements. If you haven't yet, give the lite a spin.

Lion Pride, 99¢ - As if hunting for prey during the day wasn't enough, Blue Fang Games added a night time mode, along with elephants and four new levels along with some bug fixes and scoring tweaks.