For you high-score addicts who insist on global high scores in your games, Canabalt has been updated to version 1.2 which includes:

• global leaderboards
• new alternate music track
• new obstacles

Here's a video showing the new features, and, as always, you can play the game in your web browser at Canabalt.com.

App Store Link: Canabalt, $2.99

When John Kooistra, the developer of Blue Defense and Blue Attack, announced his upcoming real time strategy game, Red Conquest [App Store], fans went crazy. Kooistra has developed quite a following over time, and expectations were high for this prequel/sequel to the Blue games.

One of the big talking points for Red Conquest is the fact that it ties together the story of Blue Defense, Blue Attack, and this game into one comprehensive whole. Aside from pre/post-battle text dialogue, the story is largely told through the use of cutscenes with zero talking. Quite frankly, the cutscenes, while cool in concept, fall flat due to the arguably weak art direction that was taken as well as the fact that the story itself is pretty difficult to make heads or tail of.

Red Conquest does not feature a ton of different unit types, but it covers all of the necessary bases. Harvesters collect resources from floating rock formations, Cruisers and Battleships serve as combat units, and Carriers serve primarily as support units. All units are initially created from the Base unit, but can also be created from the Foundry unit, which is created by the Base. You'll be playing as the Red team throughout most of the game, but it is possible to play as the Blue team in multiplayer (the differences being that Blue units cost less resources to create, take more time to create, and do not heal automatically).

The core gameplay of Red Conquest can be extremely complex for first time players, with multi-touch menu navigation being required for such simple actions as moving a small group of units. While I really believe that they're some of the most well thought-out RTS controls on the iPhone, the learning curve at the beginning of the game is just too intense.

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We'll have some full impressions soon, but in the meanwhile, here's our hands on video of the game:

A second video shows the menus and upgrade system. Need for Speed Shift is expected to be released soon.

At GDC back in March, Touch Arcade had the opportunity to sit down with Engineous Games and spend some time playing with a pre-alpha version of their rather unique, upcoming title ,Sketch Nation Shooter, in which you're not only the game's player...but also its designer. An interesting proposition, eh?

Sketch Nation Shooter allows users to create their own games by drawing a player, enemies and a level on a piece of paper and taking a picture of the drawing with their iPhone camera. Users can then share their creations with their friends and other users. Our unique image recognition technology automatically detects the objects drawn and calculates collision boundaries. Sketch Nation Shooter is the only game to incorporate the iPhone camera in such a way. iPod Touch users can import their drawings through the Photo Library. After the drawings are imported into the game, users will be able to place enemies and powerups as well as set their properties in our easy to use in-game editor and then play with their unique creation.s

We were quite impressed with the image capture technology in the game that we saw and feel sure that iPhone gamers will have a good time experimenting with this one when it hits the App Store early next year.

The pre-release game has since won AppFire's AppStar contest. Watch the video to see how it works.

Engineous views their technology as a development platform more than just a single game, so while their first release will be a shooter, they intend to apply the tech to games of other genres such as tower defense, platforming, etc. Have a look at the developer's Sketch Nation blog to track development of the game and stay tuned for more details from Touch Arcade as we get them.

Earlier this week we took a look at Sega's recently released Super Monkey Ball 2 [link], a followup to their popular App Store launch title. The game commands the premium price of $9.99 but, for this weekend only, Sega is offering the game at 50% off, bringing the price down to $4.99.

As we indicated in our review, Super Monkey Ball 2 improves upon its forerunner by delivering notably enhanced visuals, improved controls, mini-game support, and WiFi multiplayer. Read the full review for more details.

Those who were held back by the launch price may want to consider grabbing Super Monkey Ball 2 while it's only half as dear.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Sega has submitted a version 1.1 update to the App Store, which addresses certain user-reported issues.

App Store Link: Super Monkey Ball 2, $4.99 (weekend sale)

John Kooistra's latest game Red Conquest has finally arrived in the App Store. Red Conquest is a real time strategy game set in open space.

Take command of your fleet with a user interface designed specifically for the mobile platform! Casual players of RTS games will appreciate the ease of managing their units with simple multi-touch controls, while RTS veterans will love the variety of advanced macro- and micromanagement options for tactical warfare.

The developer's trailer and walk through video show how the action goes:

First impressions are starting to be collected in our forums, and we'll spend some time with the game and report back.

Kooistra was also the developer for Blue Defense and Blue Attack.

App Store Link: Red Conquest, $3.99

When you see a game with a name as nondescript as Angry Birds [App Store], it's pretty hard to get excited. Even after playing through the first few levels, I was enjoying this game, but failing to see the real appeal. Sticking with Angry Birds for more than 30 minutes, however, reveals a game that can easily be compared (both by the design and quality) to the Wii's family-friendly hit, Boom Blox, and turns out to be a lot of fun.

Angry Birds is a game that doesn't even pretend to have a story, and I really appreciate that. The full intro to the game is a single picture which illustrates some green pigs stealing eggs from a variety of birds. Naturally, the only way for the birds to vindicate this atrocity is to launch themselves from a slingshot in a suicidal attempt to take the lives of as many pigs as possible. I like to think that because the pigs are green this is some sort of swine-flu revenge fantasy, but it's likely that there's zero credence to that idea.

With all of that out of the way, players are haphazardly tossed into a level in which several angry-looking red birds are gathered around a primitive slingshot, with a small wooden tower harboring a little green pig to the right. Touching and dragging backwards on the bird that is currently mounted in the slingshot will prime your disturbed little critter for launch. From here, your goal is to aim your shot effectively and take out a weak point on the pig's tower, causing him to fall to his little piggy doom.

As the game progresses, you'll be given access to different types of birds that each have a unique power which can be activated by tapping the screen while the bird is mid-flight. Blue birds will split into three separate birds, yellow birds will get a large speed boost, black birds explode, and white birds drop explosive eggs.

Angry Birds will hand you preset numbers and types of birds in each level, so strategy becomes key as you find yourself trying to figure out how each of your birds can work cooperatively to cause some Rube Goldberg-worthy destruction. Over the course of the 63 levels in the game the challenges will become more difficult, yet simultaneously more rewarding upon completion.

There isn't much in the way of extras in Angry Birds. While developers Rovio have promised Leaderboard support in a future update, for now the only thing to do in the game is play those 63 levels. There is no tutorial, no multiplayer, no challenge mode, and no other features that are common in other titles.

There is, however, some good motivation to go back and improve scores on previous levels due to the rating system for each level in the game, and Rovio has announced in our forums that they will be holding a fun little contest to see who can get a the highest possible rating on all 63 levels (with the prize being a free Angry Birds poster hand-signed by all the developers).

Angry Birds might not have a lot of extra features besides its single player mode, but to be honest, that mode alone makes the game a fantastic value. Angry Birds successfully captures the spirit of Boom Blox using a 2D viewpoint, a compliment that should make this game an automatic purchase for many.

App Store Link: Angry Birds, $0.99

Flipt [App Store] brings to the iPhone a game in the fashion of the wildly popular flash game, Shift, but vastly improves on the formula.

Flipt is a puzzle game where you take control of your character in his or her attempt to reach the final door, and do so on the correct axis to enter it. This is essentially Flipt's trump card-- the ability to vertically flip the game world by simply rotating your device, completely setting the world on its head and making what was original underfoot now traversable. Additional elements in the game further the depth of its puzzles; with explodable boxes, gravity switches, moveable platforms and hazardous spikes all needing to be accounted for in your efforts to reach the end. The more mainstay of these, the gravity switches, are included in almost every level, rotating the game world in any of four compass points and doubling the axes to wrap your head around.

The world in Flipt could be lifted straight from a cyberpunk novel; every grungy surface and eerie blue or red light detailed on a terrific industrial backdrop. The sound in Flipt is a hot and cold affair, though always to an exceptional, crystal clear standard. It is unfortunate that the interesting and diverse ambient sounds evident throughout the first few levels are soon overrided by a droning factory clamour that while appealing at first, soon grates to beyond frustration. Fortunately, these can be quietened or turned off altogether.

The movement controls, though separate from the rotational mechanism, are handled with the same care and fine-tuning. Holding your thumb to the left or right of your character, regardless of the device's orientation, will move the character left or right. Jumping is achieved by pressing the other thumb at the same time, rounding out a hassle-free control system that is accurate and straight forward.

There are 20 puzzles to work through in Flipt, which should take you about an hour or so to complete all up (unless you get really stuck). There are reasons to come back to each level however, as your fastest game completion time is recorded, and the top 10 global results appear in the rankings menu. Upon completing the game you are given the option of unlocking an additional character, which while nice, appears to be purely cosmetic. A Time Trial mode is also unlocked once you complete all 20 levels, which allows you to play each level individually to record and perfect your time. It is unfortunate that the global rankings do not also extend to the Time Trial levels; an oversight by the developer that could have added to the game.

Flipt is a high quality platform puzzle game that shows off the breadth of the iPhone's touch and tilt controls. The puzzles are challenging but never frustrating, and it is a delight to behold how clever many of the levels actually are once you have solved them.

App Store Link: Flipt, $2.99.

Canabalt [2.99] is getting online leaderboards and some additional obstacles in the not too distant future. We were recently given a sneak peek and shot some video of the new update which hopefully will be released any time now:

The new obstacles include a mangled billboards to run across, and a mysteriously massive object that rips apart an entire building which can be seen at the end of the above video. This new huge space-craft (if that is what it is) crashing in to your path has never failed at ending even my best runs since getting the update. If you haven't tried Canabalt yet, check out our review which features the full flash version of the game for you to try.

Touch Pets Dogs [Free] also has an update in the works that will be released very soon to add some holiday themed items as well as significantly changing the balancing of the food system.

Previously, Touch Pets worked a lot like an arcade game in that you needed to be constantly feeding small amounts of money in to it in order to play the game. With the food system retuned, players will get a full food bowl recharge every 15 minutes, putting the focus less on buying food to play the game and more on buying food if you want to trade food for in-game puppy bucks to outfit your dog faster. This aims at making the game play much more like Eliminate [Free] which recently saw energy recharge rates significantly reduced to facilitate similar "pay more if you really want to upgrade quickly" gameplay.

If you're looking to trade some pocket change for a few games that you could find yourself spending entirely too much time playing this weekend, here are three that are worth checking out:

Starball, 99¢ - A very simple tilt controlled game where you move a green ball around collecting stars. With each star you collect a red bouncing ball is spawned that must be avoided, and gameplay is spiced up with a series of power-ups which are all detailed in the above video. Starball comes loaded with OpenFeint for online leaderboards with separate listings for each of the game's three difficulty settings.

Boom It Up!, 99¢ - A curiously casual title from Gamevil. In Boom It Up! you tap the screen to fire a cannon ball skyward, and as you get higher and higher you need to time your launches with even more pinpoint accuracy to avoid all kinds of obstacles. I'm not entirely sold on the gameplay, but it is interesting to see the casual side of Gamevil, a company which historically has released epic RPG's and other games with insane levels of depth. Boom It Up also has global leaderboards as well as the ability to brag to your friends on Facebook about how good you are at an iPhone game.

Arachnadoodle, 99¢ - This game is like the developers took Peggle and Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, threw them under a Slap-Chop, slapped it a couple times, and put the absolutely fantastic results up on the App Store. You fling a spider up through a set of pegs to form a web within a certain number of jumps. There's more to it than that though, when you're building your web you need to try to reinforce it as much as possible by connecting to pegs you may have already covered. At the end of each level a swarm of flies comes through and each fly that gets caught adds to your bonus points. If that wasn't enough, it also has OpenFeint, achievements, and all kinds of marvelous slow motion effects and text popups when you're doing well.

MikaMobile, the makers of the popular Zombieville USA, a game that stood out for its exceptional cell-shaded artwork, have released their second title in the same fashion and OMG Pirates! [App Store] does not disappoint-- bettering the Zombieville formula in every conceivable way.

OMG Pirates! is a game that takes one thing very seriously-- non-stop action. From the get go, you are introduced to a simple plot-- your ninja town is in ruins from a pirate invasion, and your silent hero tasks it upon himself to take out every last pirate he can find. The action never lets up, and is only briefly interrupted by the hilarious modes of transportation between one area and the next and the quirky pirate dialogue from the various bosses you encounter, before you proceed to dispatch them in true ninja flair.

Each action your ninja takes is an impressively animated feat, be it a combo attack that launches your enemy into the air, or a chain of flip attacks to get out of trouble, you'll be pulling off some terrific looking moves. Your ninja is controlled with a shuriken-styled analogue stick that offers 360 degrees of movement and there are only three other buttons available to control your ninja; a green jump button; a red attack button; and a gauge/button in the top-left corner that fills as you attack your enemies. This button can be used to unleash a devastating super attack that is both unblockable and affords you invincibility for the length of the attack.

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Resolution Interactive already has had players racing across the water in Aqua Moto Racing [99¢ / Free] and the dirt in Dirt Moto Racing [99¢ / Free]. It seems like the natural progression of racing environments would have to include some kind of arctic racing, which precisely where their newest game, Snow Moto Racing [99¢] comes in.

Featuring 6 tracks, bluetooth multiplayer, unlockable achievements, and strangely enough a file size that is small enough to download over 3G. It shares all the same tilt controls as the previous games, and seems to use a similar engine as the game plays very similar to the other two games in the Moto Racing series short of being on a snowmobile instead of a Jet Ski or an ATV.

The physics in the game can be a little weird at times, with your snowmobile just bouncing off things you run in to instead of crashing, but other than that it's an enjoyable racing game with a price that can't be beat. (Not to mention getting loads of air and pulling of tricks is just as fun on a snowmobile as it is on a ATV or Jet Ski.) While Snow Moto Racing doesn't have a lite version, you can try out the free versions of either Aqua Moto or Dirt Moto to get a good idea of how these games perform and control.

App Store Link: Snow Moto Racing, 99¢

For those looking for more of a old school arcade version of soccer than offered by FIFA, The Game Creators has recently released Goals! in both Pro and Lite versions. The game has drawn comparisons to a popular 90s soccer game Sensible Soccer and has been getting favorable reviews in our forums.

Goals! is a top down arcade soccer game that uses an on screen joystick and virtual buttons to control the action. The game has been discounted to $0.99 in the days since it's release and also offers a Lite version to try yourself.

The Pro version was originally released at $4.99 and has since dropped to $0.99.

You can see the action in this gameplay video:

App Store Links: Goals! Pro, $0.99, Goals!, Free

Thanks to the Appvent Calendar, Craneball Studios' fantastic blimp piloting game, Blimp - The Flying Adventures [App Store] (affectionately referred to as "that blimp game" around here) is free for the day. Featuring 20 missions, an awesome art style, as well as OpenFeint online leaderboards, the only acceptable reason to not download this game is if you already own it-- In which case downloading it again would just be silly.

You control your blimp using a mixture of on-screen buttons and tilting your phone to accomplish various goals like rescuing people or destroying enemy blimps. While I'm sure a lot of iPhone gamers either play with the sound muted or playing through the speaker, Blimp is one game you really should play with headphones on. It seems like just as much care went in to designing the music and sound effects as the rest of the game.

Blimp is a very fun game, and even has difficulty settings so you can still enjoy it, even if you're not very good at it. When it first came out, forum members went crazy over the game, and with it being free today you really need to drop what you're doing and get your Blimp on.

When Driver [App Store] was originally released for the Playstation and PC way back in 1999, it was heralded by critics as a genuinely fun, challenging racing game. With the intense cop-chases, gang-centric story, and open-world exploration, Driver could be most easily described as "Grand Theft Auto without the on-foot parts." Flash forward to 2009, and Gameloft has just released their updated version of the game for the iPhone and iPod Touch via the App Store. Are slightly improved graphics, the addition of a much more tolerable difficulty level, and well-thought-out controls enough to make Driver a viable purchase for gamers, even 10 years later?

In Driver, you play as Tanner, a detective from New York who has been assigned a dangerous task: going undercover with the gangs that make up the criminal underbelly of New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. The "Undercover" mode serves as the single player campaign in the game and consists of about 40 missions. Missions do a good job of providing some decent variety in their structure; one minute you'll be attempting to keep up with a speedboat as it makes for an island hideout, the next you'll find yourself ramming into restaurants with the goal of busting up their glass fronts.

Driver isn't all about the story mode. There are numerous minigames, referred to as "Driving Games," on the game's main menu. In "Pursuit" you'll be tasked with chasing down another vehicle and dealing enough damage to take them out as quickly as possible. In "Getaway" you'll switch roles, attempting to evade and lose the trail of the police. Other minigames failed to catch my interest, like "Cross Town Checkpoint" or "Trailblazer", the latter of which involves randomly driving around knocking down 100 traffic cones.

Despite the weak first half of the "Driving Games" list, the second half of the minigame collection is much better and includes several fun games, my favorite of which being "Survival" mode. In Survival, players are brutally attacked by an unending legion of cop cars. The utmost skill in evasion techniques will be required in order to even stand a chance at lasting over a minute in this mode, and it makes for an extremely compacted session of what I consider to be the best parts of Driver. I also loved "Dirt Track" (a rally-style time trial game) and "Carnage" (an extremely fun mode that's very similar to the "crash" mode in the Burnout series).

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