In a surprise move, Activision has released Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies for the iPhone. This first person shooter is a Zombie survival mode adapted from the console version of the massively popular Call of Duty game. This Zombie mode was an unlockable mode in the console version and pits you against endless waves of Zombie invaders breaking down barriers as you try to defend your position by rebuilding barricades and upgrading your weaponry.

The iPhone version of the game includes one map "Nacht der Untoten" but Activision promises an add-on purchase for The Zombie Asylum, Verrückt in the near future. The game comes with both single player and multi-player Co-op modes that supports bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Online play. Yep, Online play. That means you can match up with 3 other players around the world and play together to defend your building. The gameplay video below shows some of this in action.

The game comes with three sets of controls: dual-stick, tilt, and swipe look. Both touch controls are usable though people seem to be preferring the dual-stick option over swipe-look due to the sensitivity of the latter.

The game begins with you in a house with boarded up windows. Waves of zombies slowly start attacking and you need to defend against their attacks. Windows are repaired with the press of a button, though having your attention split across the different entrances is a challenge. The ramp up is rather slow, but soon you'll have trouble surviving the oncoming hoard of zombies. As you kill zombies, you earn coins which can be used to buy better weapons which are found throughout the structure.

Online multiplayer works quite well and you can get quickly matched with others looking to play. Your co-players are seen running around the structure blasting zombies and repairing the base. Unfortunately there's no way to communicate with your partners during the game itself, but still, we were impressed by the inclusion of an online option (shown in the video above).

While the game is limited to one survival map at the moment, it's hard not to be impressed with the overall adaptation to the iPhone, especially with online Co-op play.

App Store Link: Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies, $9.99

We extensively previewed Eliminate last month, and very little has changed since then short of some tweaking of the energy system and increasing the recharge time. Still, as mentioned in the preview, you can play Eliminate for as long as you'd like to without paying a penny– Your character advancement will just be slowed as you will only earn credits (the in-game currency used to level up and buy equipment) while you're energized.

I highly recommend downloading Eliminate. It's free, you've got nothing to lose. Regardless of how you feel about the payment system ngmoco is using to fund the game, it's still one of the more impressive multiplayer games available on the platform, and experiencing that won't cost you anything.

Update: Eliminate is available in most major iTunes markets, it seems there are still some countries that haven't seen it yet, but most European stores as well as the US store are currently stocked with Eliminate.

App Store Link: Eliminate, Free

What I am willing to say is that playing Eliminate with real people is every bit as awesome as I imagined it being. The last time I had played the game was for our hands on preview we posted earlier this month. So far I've yet to notice any major differences, so everything mentioned in our preview is still accurate short of the energy recharge period which ngmoco says still has not been finalized.

So far the Canadian beta has been lag free, and I've always been able to find a game almost instantly. One of the things I've been dying to find out is how Eliminate performs over 3G, and so far it seems to play just fine. Already the Plus+ leaderboards are filling up as more and more people download and install the game, and I can't wait to see how many people are online tomorrow.

Even in its current beta status, Eliminate is receiving rave reviews on our forums and has seemed to ether meet or exceed the expectations of nearly everyone lucky enough to have a Canadian iTunes account. We have our fingers crossed that the beta goes smoothly and quickly, and as soon as the game is officially released worldwide we will post an in-depth look at the game.

App Store Link: Eliminate, Free – Only Available in Canada

Those familiar with the Wolfenstein 3D Classic controls will likely feel at home with the adapted Doom controls but there have been several upgrades to the system. Doom Classic offers 3 different control systems with the option of adding accelerometer strafing. These include:

• 1. Combined single stick for movement and turning
• 2. Left stick movement, Right stick turning
• 3. Left stick movement, Right wheel turning

Each of the controls can be customized further by dragging and dropping them on the screen to the desired location. Notably, the sticks are now "floating" sticks by default that allow more freedom in where you place your fingers down.

The #1 control option offers the benefit of simplicity, with a single stick for movement, though at the sacrifice of pure left/right strafing which is more easily accomplished with the #2 control method. Controls seemed a bit sensitive during my early play with no options to adjust the degree of sensitivity.

The following gameplay video shows the different default methods in action:

Meanwhile, there are a number of control customization options, including the ability to fix the location of the controls (similar to Wolf 3D) or turn the control graphics off completely and just use the left/right sides of the screen. This latter option allows the game to emulate the other first person shooter controls that we've seen in Eliminate and Modern Combat. So far, this has been my favorite combination: #2 with Draw Controls: Off and Auto Use: On (so you don't have to tap on doors to open them), and sensitivity here seems better, but not perfect.

When we spoke to Carmack back in June, he had big plans for the Doom franchise on the iPhone, including adding the ability to purchase in-app content for Doom 2, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom, Master Levels.

This initial release also contains multiplayer, but it is local multiplayer only (WiFi). Competitive internet multiplayer was listed a possibility for a later update when we spoke to Carmack in June.

App Store Link: Doom Classic, $6.99

One of the most anticipated titles that we can remember, id Software's Doom Classic is now in the App Store. The game includes the original three episodes as well as Episode Four, They Flesh Consumed. Features include:

• Fight through 36 missions in four action-packed episodes
• Experience DOOM multiplayer on your mobile device, including Deathmatch and Cooperative play for up to four players via wireless internet
• Choose from three different control types and customize the interface to suit your style

We'll post video and impressions shortly.

App Store Link: Doom Classic, $6.99

Features include:

• Now with the Spear of Destiny levels – 21 total new maps
• 5 new Bosses
• New enemy – Ghosts
• Download custom made maps
• Double tap to Zoom in-game map
• id Software trivia section
• Scrolling map selection menus

The update is free for existing Wolfenstein 3D Classic owners and remains at only $1.99. The map download instructions are detailed here. Instead of in-app downloads, id allows you to distribute .map files through Safari which load the maps directly into Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone. To create levels, you will need to download a Wolfenstein 3D map editor for your computer.

App Store Link: Wolfenstein 3D Classic Platinum, $1.99

In the meantime, ngmoco released another gameplay video. While it's obviously not as good as playing the game itself, it gives you a fairly good idea of the kind of fast-paced gameplay you can expect in the world of Eliminate.

For more information on Eliminate, take a look at our hands-on preview from ngmoco's press day earlier this month or ngmoco's official Eliminate site.

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.

First off, in case you've managed to miss out on previous Eliminate (also previously known as LiveFire and KillTest) coverage, here's the basic premise of the game– You are an employee of Arsenal Megacorp, a weapons manufacturer whose secret to success is that all their weaponry is tested on live humans.

As an employee in the company you compete in four player deathmatches with other employees either via 3G or WiFi. The premise of the game is extremely clever, and I really recommend reading the memos and watching the videos on the Eliminate web site.

The controls work very similar to other first person shooters on the platform, with two virtual joysticks (though you can "touch anywhere") that handle your movement and aiming. Firing your weapon can either be done by tapping your left thumb on the screen, or enabling auto-fire in the game's options. With that turned on, any time there is an enemy in your crosshairs you will automatically fire. Flicking the left side of the screen causes your view to quickly spin around, allowing you to quickly and easily target things all around you.

Tapping the bottom of the screen jumps and tapping the top brings up the menu displaying the scoreboard. The controls took a little getting used to, and after I fiddled with the sensitivity options I felt right at home and was slaughtering other Arsenal Megacorp employees in no time.

Since Eliminate is an online multiplayer game, its bread and butter is in the matchmaking system. When I was playing, there were only 10 or so players online, so I wasn't able to see it in its full glory, but when the game goes live the matchmaking algorithm should make sure everyone is playing against players of equal skill. If you come across a match where you have one person who is destroying everyone, that person will rank up and play with a higher player pool in the next game.

In-game credits serve as an experience point system as well as a monetary system to buy upgrades. While you're energized, each person you kill will drop credits. Credits can then be spent on different armor types that give your character small bonuses such as higher defenses, the ability to jump higher, swim faster, and other effects. Guns are also purchased using credits, and following that everything that you've purchased can also be individually upgraded.

Say you really like the plasma cannon, but can't handle its slow reload times. You can spend credits to make your gun reload faster, along with several other upgrades. This allows for nearly infinite customization between players, as while you may value reload speed on your guns with armor that allows you to move quickly, someone else might opt for armor that provides a higher defense at the cost of speed and they might focus on upgrading the raw damage output of their guns.

The energy system has caused quite a stir on our forums as users all speculated how it was going to work. The build I played was approaching the final version of the game that is set to be submitted to Apple for approval, but everything I saw and discussed came with the caveat of the fact that the whole system was still under development and none of it had been completely finalized yet.

In the current system, your energy bar consists of 20 power cells which is said to be enough for 3-4 games in which you can earn credits. When your energy is gone, you can continue to play but you won't be able to earn credits during those games. Energy is recharged once every 90 minutes for free, but if you want it sooner there are two options: The first of which is to simply buy more energy via an in-app microtransaction (pricing to be announced). Different energy packs will be available at different rates depending on the quantity you buy.

If, however, you're not interested in paying for energy (or waiting the 90 minutes), you can alternatively complete marketing offers in-game to earn additional energy. This method of payment system has seen great success in Facebook games, and I will be very interested to see how it does in Eliminate. The various offers you can complete range from completing a simple survey to signing up for a Discover card, and will change over time.

Bam! Yep, that ngneil7.

The rationale for these systems of "payment" are to support the server infrastructure to host all the games into the future. So in order to keep everything online, players can optionally chip in to keep everything running. Of course, if you don't care about earning credits, there is nothing stopping you from playing all day long. Every 90 minutes you will be recharged and can earn more credits, but in the meantime you can keep joining online games and playing without receiving any benefit to your character level or arsenal.

I wasn't able to test Eliminate over the 3G network, however I've been assured that they've done in-depth testing to offer a great gameplay experience both over WiFi and 3G. Game servers are also being distributed geographically, which should help keep ping times low regardless of where you're playing from.

There has also been some discussion about the fact that Eliminate only feature four player deathmatches. As ngmoco explained, this was a conscience design decision that was made after weighing many factors such as what would work best between the screen real estate, hardware performance limitations, and still achieve a very fun experience. The maps are all designed for four players, and none of the games I played ever felt like something was lacking by only playing with four people. As a veteran of games like Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, four players felt right at home for this kind of game.

ngmoco plans on listening to player feedback and has intentions to continue to support Eliminate through content updates. I also asked about additional game modes, which is also being discussed between the Eliminate development team. The initial decision to launch with only one deathmatch game mode was made so everyone would be playing in the same player pool. While they already have other game modes working internally, and are open to adding them to the game, they wanted to properly seed the initial launch to avoid fragmenting the community across deathmatch, team deathmatch, and other modes.

Even without the extra game modes, Eliminate is a ton of fun. I played through the five different maps both locally with bots and online — including soundly defeating Ngmoco CEO Neil Young (see screenshot above). The maps are all small, but most have gimmicks to them like elevators, different water elements, and even walls that slide back and forth to squish you. All of the maps have a futuristic look to them, fitting in perfectly with the art style of the already released trailers.

Whenever you kill someone (or someone else kills someone) and you're energized, credits explode from their corpse. This is actually one of the elements to the game I enjoyed the most, as it is very easy to steal other people's credits from their kills. (Note: these are "bonus" kill credits and not actually deducted from the victim's personal stash.) When someone dies, all the nearby players run to grab the credits, and I actually found you can set up traps for other players by leaving uncollected credits around and hiding behind a corner waiting for them to come collect the seemingly unguarded credits.

In my time with the game, I was only able to buy one suit upgrade to increase my defenses along with one additional weapon, the plasma cannon, which is the Eliminate equivalent of a shotgun. The other items both were more expensive than I could afford, and also required you to be a higher player level to purchase. (Players rank up from levels 1 to 50 based on lifetime earnings.) I see tons of potential for customizing my weapon and armor load out, and I really can't wait to get the full version of the game to give this a try.

Playing multiplayer Eliminate is one of the most impressive gaming experiences I've had so far on the iPhone. I walked away from the experience amazed by how far the game had exceeded my expectations, and I look forward to sitting on a train playing in a four player deathmatch with people from all over the world using my phone.

The first video released is a short trailer in the same style of the previous Eliminate trailers that exhibit the various technologies offered by Arsenal Megacorp, your employer in the game:

The second video clip is from the latest episode of the ngmoshow where producer Chris Plummer walks us through the upgrade system and the various weapon and armor available for purchase in-game:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

The in-game energy and credit system has been a highly controversial topic on our forums since they were both revealed. Something to consider though, per our WWDC coverage of the game, Eliminate will have an in-depth performance tracking system to match players up with other players of similar skill.

If this system works as intended, there will likely never be situations where you are in game getting stomped by players who have been able to purchase much better equipment than you. Those players will have ranked up enough that they will be fighting with players of similar skill and gear levels, leaving newer and lesser equipped players to compete on a more even playing field.

Details are still sketchy on most of the features of Eliminate, but in the meantime feel free to follow the official thread on our forums.