Can't get enough of open world sandbox crime games? Well, Gameloft has what you need. Gangstar Rio: City of Saints is on its way to the App Store, and per this brand new gameplay trailer, is packed with helicopters, limos, tanks, explosions, and everything else a good crime spree requires. Take a look:

No release date yet, but it's coming "very soon." My bets are on this being part of Gameloft's upcoming holiday lineup, which definitely (in my eyes) means it'll be out way before the holiday rush- Potentially as early as next week.

Ultimate Shuffleboard [$.99] is a boldly branded product for a good reason: it's definitely a cut or two above the rest out there. Peak Systems, a self-described "full service" firm based out in Seattle, have puzzled out a way to link multiple iPhones to a single game of its shuffleboard title. The end result, as shown in its demo trailer, is pretty hip.

The story behind this is pretty cool, too. In a developer blog post, Peak said it wanted to figure out a way to get That One Guy in their real-life shuffleboard group off his phone and into the game. The easiest way to do that, apparently, was to make a game that required and included his or her phone.

Utlimate Shuffleboard requires at least two phones and it seems pretty easy to set up. A host makes the match, others join, and then you put the phones together end-to-end.

We've seen a developers dabbling in using multiple devices in their games, but sticks out to us as a really implementation of the technology. Plus, it practically requires its users to be social while using it, which is something we don't see a lot in this space in general. Neat!

If you've been listening to our show, you've probably noticed that we've been growing more and more in love with aggressive stunt games. Most of the titles we highlight have revolved around bikes, though, so we thought we'd throw a bone to cars today with this neat and goofy-looking stunt car game with a weird name from Blue Riversa, RPM: Gymkhana Racing.

According to publisher BulkyPix, RPM is a four-location, 20-stage affair that solely focuses on the zany stuff you can do in fast cars, including drifting, donuts, and burn-outs. It's obviously up to snuff from a visual perspective, and seems like it'll have a fair share of off-the-wall challenges, like say, Paint The Wall -- a mode where you skid around in wet paint in order to color a barrier. The game will also include star-collecting and an online component.

Interestingly, it'll also pack in a record mode that'll allow you to share your feats of stunt strength with your friends. That mechanic in particular is an emerging one. We've seen quite a few games in the recent past update to include video sharing and taking, so it's nice to see Blue Riversa sticking with the pack.

You can bet your right-hand that we'll be checking this one out soon. RPM hits the iPad and iPhone later this November on the 17th.

Bit Blot's 2D side-scrolling adventure game Aquaria [$4.99] for the iPad is a gorgeous and well-produced title with a sharp emphasis on world-building and character growth. It's good, and I think the reason why it strikes me as such a quality download has more to do with its atmospheric allure than anything else. Aquaria begs you to explore with every ounce of its being by consistently introducing mechanical novelties, alien setpieces, fascinating creatures, and drip-feeding a not-quite-but-totally convoluted story that keeps you thinking that you're on the precipice of figuring out what's going on with your mercreature in the game's beautiful underwater world. It has a few minor problems, though.

One of the bigger missteps in Aquaria is tied to the limitations of its new platform. Indie developer Bit Blot and its partners have masterfully replaced the cursor with finger, allowing for complete character movement without virtual pads. But the shooting and "singing" components? Those require virtual buttons and that sticks out. Also, when these actions are coupled with the need to evade, you may inadvertently start playing Finger Twister instead of Aquaria.

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We're massive fans of Venan Entertainment, so much so that if I was into tattoos I'd probably have the Venan logo somewhere in my inevitable video game themed full sleeve, back collage, or somewhere else. Anyway, they're responsible for Space Miner which was our iPhone Game of the Year last year. Unfortunately, even though we went nuts over the game it didn't achieve the kind of commercial success it needed, which seems to be a similar sad song we hear with way too many great iOS games. So, while a potential sequel has been relegated to the Venan back burner, Venan has been full steam ahead on their free to play RPG Book of Heroes.

There's massive amounts of customization, 75 unique quests, 25 feats, bosses, and loot galore among other things. Here's the first 20 minutes of gameplay courtesy of forum member Sanuku:

These kind of free to play RPG's can be a little difficult to get excited about, especially as more and more developers hop on the free to play bandwagon… But, Venan being attached to it definitely caught our eye and we'll be giving it a once over to prepare for its US launch in the not too distant future. For more details, check out the thread on our forums, and if you're a customer of the Canada, UK, or New Zealand App Store, you can download the game right now.

Canada, UK, and New Zealand App Store Link: Book of Heroes, Free

We've had our eye on Evertales for quite a while now. It's a collaboration between Crescent Moon Games, creators of Aralon [$6.99], Gears [$2.99], and Siegecraft [99¢] (and more) along with Thunder Game Works who are responsible for the ridiculously popular Trenches [99¢] family of games. Evertales is a side-scrolling action-centric brawler that comes packed with three different characters as well as the gloriously cliche premise of needing to vanquish the "Dark Lord of Darkness."

Check out the trailer:

If all goes as planned, Evertales will be released on the 10th, so keep an eye peeled for it at 11:00 PM Eastern next Wednesday night-- Or potentially sooner if you're one of those lucky Australians or New Zealanders who get everything so incredibly early compared to the rest of us.

I've been searching for a new asynchronous multi-player game for a while, so when I saw Poker Pals [99c / Free / HD] released by Chillingo: a poker-based  game with asynchronous multiplayer mode, my eyes went wide. What I didn't anticipate was that within a few hours I would be snatching up my iPod every couple of minutes to make my next turn, juggling several games at once, like a crazed poker addict. (Thank goodness there's no real money at stake, just bragging rights.)

Poker Pals is not a regular poker game. There's no chips in the middle of the table, no antes and no calling, raising or bluffing. This is actually poker redesigned as a board-game and it resembles a mixture of poker and Scrabble, which works really well. It's reminiscent of Sword and Poker 2 [$3.99 / Free], which also presented poker as a board-game, but included RPG elements.

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There's something particularly apt about the timing of the iPad release of Greed Corp HD [$4.99]. While Occupiers around the world freeze and protest sociopathically greedy behavior by major corporations, Greed Corp explores the ultimate end of that behavior. What happens when you're so bent on profit that you'd destroy even the ground under your own feet to keep the other guy from getting it? Greed Corp has the answer.

It's a turn-based strategy game that encourages players to engage in something one step shy of mutually assured destruction. You destroy the lands you harvest, and firing on your enemies crumbles away the ground beneath them.You win as long as you have at least a single unit on a single hex and your enemies don't. This brutally aggressive game first made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network in the early months of 2010, but it's hardly aged in the time it's taken to arrive on iPad. It's also extremely well done for the most part, offering a natural touch interface and both single and multiplayer content.

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Wizardry is a series with a pretty long history, and the older you are, the more of it you're likely to recall. Thirty years after its original release, gamers still think of the same thing when they hear the word: a long dungeon crawl in the dark, careful stat management, and a pen and graph paper by your side. In fact, Wizardry was really the first graphical incarnation of the Dungeons & Dragons model, and gamers familiar with it would feel right at home on those subterranean treks through poorly lit mazes.

Fast forward to 2011, however, and you may see a game like Wizardry as nothing but an exercise in punishment. Or would a clean-up and polish of the interface make for a more modern experience? This version of Wizardry, called Labyrinth of Lost Souls [Free] ($9.99 IAP unlocks full game), is not exclusive to iOS -- it's already seen its original debut on the PS3 earlier this year.

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Growing up, I had one of those grandfathers that was obsessed with gold and keeping money out of the banks. He used to show me these little pieces of gold he had and would be like “If you work hard, all this can be yours.” (In other news, my grandfather may be Scrooge McDuck.) As such, I’m sure he would be a superfan of Colorbox’s Peak Gold [$.99/UHD], a fun little hooking game dedicated to the pursuit of gold.

Peak Gold might be lacking in coherent tutorials (sample text: “Reach 1000m depth and collect Big Diamond to PEAK GOLD!”), but it makes up for it with cutesy graphics, fun hooking action and challenging levels. Seriously, for being marketed as a casual game, this sucker is difficult. The premise is simple enough; tap the screen to grab gold and other goodies while avoiding bats and rocks before running out of time.

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Saving Moo [$0.99 / HD], one of several recent offerings from ClickGamer, is the latest addition to the elusive genre of Cow Defense. If rescuing our four-legged brethren suits your fancy (or if you’re a fan of certain classic tower defense games), then Saving Moo’s weird story and presentation, combined with solid tower defense gameplay elements, should work for you.

Saving Moo puts you in the role of a farmer that acquired psychic powers after an alien abduction. In order to prevent future abductions, you must use the farmer’s newfound powers to telekinetically place weapons on your cows to ward off the impending UFO invasion. Even though the story is mainly told through a short introductory cutscene, I still found it hilarious and absolutely befitting for the sort of offbeat attitude that Saving Moo offers.

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Somebody go wake up Brad Nicholson. In mid-September, we caught wind of a new Kairosoft game released in Japan called Oh! Edo Towns. The game was quite similar to the classic SimCity in that it has you building a town from scratch and managing the various resources and responsibilities that come with city planning, as well as keeping your citizens happy, with the ultimate goal of creating a thriving metropolis. The quirk here was that your city building took place in 17th Century Japan, rather than a contemporary setting.

At that time, we donned our speculation hats and ventured that Oh! Edo Towns might be hitting the US App Store sometime in October. Well, as it turns out, October came and went with no sign of the game, but just a few hours ago Oh! Edo Towns did indeed pop up in the US App Store. Sure, we were a few days off, but that's still some impressive guesstimating as far as I'm concerned. Miss Cleo would be proud.

Here's a bit of video of the Japanese version of Oh! Edo Towns from our friends at AppBank:

Now, you might remember about a week and a half ago we spotted yet another Kairosoft town-creating sim, called Zaibatsu Towns, that was released in Japan. The key difference with that title compared to Oh! Edo Towns, it seemed, was that it didn't have you building a traditional Edo period Japanese style town, and instead had you creating a city in modern times more akin to SimCity. I'm going to go ahead and start the speculation train, and I'll put out there that we'll be seeing a US release of Zaibatsu Towns before the end of the year. Go ahead and mark that down, dear readers, because if it turns out I'm wrong you can point and laugh in my face.

While it's fun to guess the future and all, let's not forget that there's a brand new Kairosoft title available to us in the US right now. As with most of their releases, it's a pretty good bet that it will be a strong simulation title, so might be worth just diving right in with the link below. Otherwise you can check out impressions in our forums, and you can also be sure we'll have a review of Oh! Edo Towns in the very near future. In fact, despite it being 3am where he's located, I'm calling Brad right now to tell him to download it.

I don't think I give Chair enough credit. Not only did it make a good game in Infinity Blade [$5.99], but it also created an entire mobile game structure and set of mechanics that has caught fire with both developers and mobile game fans. There are good reasons, too: the instance-based conflicts, progression, repetition are perfectly bite-sized for mobile and tablet play and visuals, while the over-the-shoulder slide, tap, and swipe controls are undeniably touch intuitive.

This didn't hit me in a vacuum, by the way. I just spent a couple of hours with Uppercut Game's Epoch and describing the way Infinity Blade gets down is the easiest way to start a conversation about Epoch. Sure Epoch is cover-based shooter based in a broken-down sci-fi world populated by robots, but on a finer level it takes and adapts a lot of what made Infinity Blade so great and applies it to its own action model and structure.

The proof of what this does for Epoch is in its pudding: the game's top-notch visuals are allowed to look great all the time, while the core play consistently stays fun and intuitive. It doesn't hurt to mention that it has the breeziness to make it possible to play on-the-go, but I don't think many of us will be able to put it down as quickly as our loved ones would like. (more...)

We've been asked a couple of times about what's up with the iOS version of Super Crate Box. It's been in the oven for awhile and people are starting to wonder if it's going to come out or not. Good news: it's still a thing Vlambeer plans to release.

Convienently, a new post on Vlambeer's official blog is giving us all a glance behind the curtain. The studio is currently continuing work on Super Crate Box's controls, and while the overall project is taking "longer than expected," Vlambeer believes it'll make it out of the door by the end of this year. It also admitted that this version is harder to get into, but people are putting up high enough scores for that to not be a concern.

In other Vlambeer iOS-related news, Ridiculous Fishing is still happening, too. In the same blog post, the studio notes that the focus "is on getting everything nice for IGF," while adding that it has been "ridding the design of useless junk." To Vlambeer, it seems as if "everything is falling in place" with the project.

So, there you go. Super Crate Box is still coming and, hey, it'll be better for its long-ish cycle. As an aside here, Vlambeer just released its Serious Sam project, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, on PC and I'd imagine that took some time away from its iOS projects.

Mark Jacobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Mythic Entertainment recently unveiled a new development studio, City State Entertainment. They've apparently been building up a team since March, and are anticipating the release of their first game later this year. City State Entertainment will be focusing on "mobile, tablet, and social networking spaces," which generally seems to be a noncommittal way to say "iOS and potentially Facebook."

Mark Jacobs and the rest of his team have some seriously fantastic games under their belt. Most notably in my eyes would be Dark Age of Camelot, a PvP-centric MMO that featured massive realtime battles that were basically unheard of in the MMORPG space at the time. Mythic was also responsible for Warhammer Online, which seemed to have tons of potential but basically floundered in the shadow of the World of Warcraft juggernaut. Other titles Jacobs and his team have dabbled in include Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Neverwinter Nights 3, Knights of the Old Republic II, and more. We're talking some serious talent here.

We're cautiously optimistic about whatever game City State Entertainment is planning on releasing this year. It's fantastic to see Jacobs working in the mobile space, and hopefully his team can make a good transition from AAA to the often lower budgets and tighter development cycles of iOS games.