After a cool teaser video and a load of screenshots, Konami's Krazy Kart Racing [App Store] has been high on my list of games I really wanted to play. As of tonight, the wait is (almost) over, and Krazy Kart is actually surprisingly fun, especially when playing against friends in the various online multiplayer modes.

Konami has tried pretty hard to duplicate as much of Mario Kart as they can, with shells replaced with missiles, mushrooms replaced with a generic speed boost item, the lightning bolt replaced with an item that turns everyone in to pigs, and other fairly blatant copies of Mario Kart power-ups. Instead of the highly recognizable Nintendo lineup or characters, Krazy Kart Racing features a slightly more obscure cast of Konami characters such as Sparkster (from the SNES game of the same name), Robbie Rabbit (the mascot from an amusement park found in Silent Hill), and the frog from Frogger along with seven others.

The controls work well and feature both tilt steering and touch controls. I've found myself preferring touch controls, but tilt worked fine as well. Acceleration is handled automatically, and there are virtual buttons on screen to brake and use whatever power-up you've managed to pick up.

16 tracks are included, based on themes of the games the characters are from. For instance, Power Stadium is a baseball diamond shaped track to go along with the baseball player racer from Power Touch Pros and there's a Antarctic themed track to go with the penguin racer from Penguin Adventure. These tracks can be played in grand prix, time attack, and free run modes as well as with friends or random people online in the included internet multiplayer modes.

Online multiplayer works without any kind of registration. You simply enter your name, connect to one of the game servers, and from there you can either create or join a game room with other players. Any track that you have unlocked in single player is playable online with up to five other players and/or bots. Aside from the standard race mode, there are two battle modes, chicken and bomb chaser. In chicken, players accelerate down a straight track and slam on their brakes before reaching the end and flying off in to the pool of water below.

In bomb chaser, one player has the bomb and drives around a circular arena attempting to run in to other players to give them the bomb. Whoever has the bomb drives significantly faster than the other players, so it can get kind of hectic at times, but neither battle mode is very interesting and pales in comparison to Mario Kart. Performance online is surprisingly good, although there was a bit of lag when playing in a full game with bots, it was still completely playable. The online system seems a bit buggy still as I experienced a few instances where games wouldn't launch, game rooms becoming unresponsive and it not releasing my username. Once you're actually connected, however, the gameplay seemed to work fine. We mostly tested on Wi-Fi though 3G worked as well.

This video shows the multiplayer modes as well as single player using touch control:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Our early impressions of Krazy Kart Racing is that it's a fun kart racer, and while it's currently the closest thing to Mario Kart available on the App Store, it's still hard to compare to the original. There already is a menu item in game for downloadable content, so it should be interesting to see what Konami has in store with that. If Krazy Kart's online community takes off, I could see myself spending a serious amount of time racing over the internet. We'll spend some more time with this title this weekend, and we are still looking forward to Gameloft's Shrek Kart which is due next month.

Note: Krazy Kart Racing is not currently available from the US App Store, but has appeared in international stores. With any luck it should appear for download in the US shortly, though there have been instances (such as Silent Hill) where the U.S. release lagged as long as a week after the international release.

App Store Link: Krazy Kart Racing (EU), $7.99 (Only available in some regions)

Xio Interactive's Mino [App Store] has all the gameplay of Tetris (and all the other associated clones) with one distinct advantage: Really cool real-time 5-player internet multiplayer.

At its core, Mino is the same line-clearing game you've been playing for years with two basic single-player game modes, standard and glacier. Standard mode offers a straightforward version of Tetris but with the addition of the "slow" button at the top of the screen. As you clear lines the bar on the right side of the play field slowly fills up which controls how long you can have the "slow" mode enabled. It's kind of a cheesy feature, but it has saved me from a few game overs in my time with the game.

Meanwhile, Glacier mode works has you dealing with near-constant intrusions of garbage rows of random blocks to clear at the bottom of the screen. There is also a "freeze" button that can be used to briefly stop these additional lines from spawning.

The bread and butter of Mino is in the multiplayer which can be played either over the cellular network or WiFi. Multiplayer pits you against up to four other people. As your opponents clear lines, garbage rows of random blocks are sent to your board (and vice versa). So your play directly affects other people's boards. While you can play with up to four other people, finding that many people online looking for games at once can be challenging. A newly release multi-player enabled Lite version, however, may improve that. When you do actually find a good game, it's just as fun as you would expect and the chat room you can brag in between games only adds to the enjoyment.

I could go on explaining this game, but I'd really recommend watching this demo video released by the developer which details every feature of Mino:

Obviously in a game like this, online community is everything. When I asked the developers if they felt gamers had anything to worry about with Mino being pulled from the App Store (and its community along with it) like most other games similar to EA's Tetris, this is what they had to say:

Xio Interactive is dedicated to protecting the online Mino community from any threats, legal or otherwise. We are prepared to use any and every resource at our disposal to ensure that Mino and Mino Lite remain on the app store, and that our game servers remain running at all times, including substantial monetary and personnel resources. Our customers can rest easy with the assurance that we are here to stay.

Either way, Xio Interactive also has a surprisingly full featured lite edition available. Mino Lite [App Store] has both the standard single player mode and you can play 30 matches of online play. So if you like these kinds of games, at least give Mino Lite a try.

App Store Link: Mino, $2.99 – Mino Lite, Free

Newtoy, developers of Chess With Friends [App Store] recently released Words With Friends App Store] bringing the same asynchronous multiplayer to the game of Scrabble (basically).

Chess With Friends has become remarkably popular among Chess players, since it's both free and offers a modern spin on correspondence chess. Words With Friends takes this same formula and offers four different multiplayer game modes.

You can either search for users to play with using your contact list, or search by user name. If you don't know anyone with the game yet, you can play a random opponent. Finally, Words With Friends also has a mode for local play if you want to play against a friend using a single device.

Like Chess With Friends you can have multiple games going at once with both friends and random internet players. While push notifications aren't supported yet, you can either just launch the app to see if it's your turn yet, or enable email/SMS notifications. A recent tweet by Newtoy mentions push notifications coming soon for Chess With Friends, so I'd assume the same treatment will be coming soon for Words With Friends.

Either way, both games are free and supported via in-game advertising and Words With Friends has a premium version for 99¢ that you can buy if you want to support the developer and/or don't like looking at ads. If you like Chess or Scrabble, both games are a ton of fun.

App Store Links:

• Words With Friends Free, Free
• Words With Friends, 99¢
• Chess With Friends, Free

When people ask me what I think about certain games, all too often my commentary includes “…and it would be really great if it had some kind of online multiplayer.”

Xpressed has knocked my socks off with UniWar [App Store]. The game is by no means perfect, but for the current promotional price of 99¢, it’s impossible to pass up if you’re even remotely interested in turn based strategy games.

UniWar tips its hat at both the StarCraft and Advance Wars series with three playable races that each have slightly different advantages and disadvantages while waging a turn based war on a hex grid.

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The developers of Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart have released a new racing title to the App Store called Raging Thunder [App Store]. The $7.99 title claims to be a "coin-op style racing game" and boasts having "the most breathtaking 3D graphics on the iPhone yet."

Features listed by the developer include:

• WiFi multiplayer
• State-of-the art 3D graphics
• Boost, draft and tackling physics
• Customizable controls

There is a lot of competition amongst racers in the App Store. We had felt that Nitro Kart offered the best "kart racing" experience on the iPhone, so we'll be interested to see their take on a more traditional racer. Raging Thunder has existed for some time in Jailbroken form.

Amongst the other racers currently available, we favored Asphalt 4 Elite Racing over GTS World Racing, Pole Position Remix, and Moto Chaser (formerly Moto Racer). Another notable upcoming title is Need For Speed: Undercover.

We'll provide a full review once we have spent some time with this title.

EA is starting to experiment more with price flexibility by putting Scrabble [App Store] on sale for $7.99. The app is normally priced at $9.99 but is on sale for "a limited time." EA had similarly dropped Tetris from $9.99 to $7.99 (though on a permanent basis).

The most recent Scrabble update has introduced Wi-Fi networking as well as improved game stability and sound quality.

Scrabble is popular word game in which players form words from individual lettered tiles. Words are formed in horizontal or vertical rows with scoring based on which letters are used.

The iPhone version of Scrabble has been reasonably well reviewed, so the discounted price and Wi-Fi option may provide some additional incentive for readers to make the jump.

Gyrocade has released a futuristic 3D take on the classic game of Pong with a distinctive Tron feel through the iTunes App Store.  Vector Pong uses the iPhone's accelerometer to control the player's paddle, enabling him/her to serve, deflect, and spike a puck down a 3D corridor against a computer opponent or another (human) player thanks to WiFi-enable network play.

The game features three levels of difficulty, but even at the "Easy" setting the game is quite hard and the "Pro" level is apparently designed for robots.  However, due to the fluid gameplay and pleasant retro-future feel of this title, I feel compelled to keep at it in hopes of eventually getting a few consecutive victorious matches under my belt.  An "Easier" setting would be welcome, though.

Vector Pong has a feel reminsicent of the 80s classic Shufflepuck Cafe (which, incidentally, exists for the jailbroken iPhone as remake tuxPuck) and provides the player with the same satisfying sense of "WHACK!" with each successful deflection of an incoming volley.  Despite the game's difficulty, it's a lot of fun and seems well priced at $1.99.

Game Details

Name: Vector Pong
Developer: Gyrocade
App Store Link: Buy
Price: $1.99
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod Touch