Ngmoco's Eliminate Pro has become incredibly popular in the App Store, now sustaining the #1 spot in the Top Free apps. While we covered many details about the game's energy system and strategies, one power-generating feature that we had described in our preview of the game had remained absent: marketing and promotional offers.

If, however, you're not interested in paying for energy (or waiting the [240] 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.

Eliminate Pro launched without this option available, but it appears it's still a possibility. Ngmoco has flipped the switch on the first offer which is pretty painless to complete. It simply requires you to install and launch Epic Pet Wars and when you return to Eliminate Pro, you will have 15 Power Cells.

With Ngmoco's acquisition of the Epic Pet Wars developer, the reason for the cross promotion is obvious, but does pave the way for non-monetary ways to gain energy in Eliminate. While we haven't heard an update on their plans, we expect they will eventually launch more traditional marketing offers beyond this simple cross promotion. But even so, if they stick with these sort of cross-download promotions, with hundreds of thousands of Eliminate Pro downloads a day, they certainly have a massive audience to leverage for their future games.

To take advantage of the offer, you must click on the Gear Up -> Get Energy -> Special Offers button in Eliminate Pro. Once you relaunch Eliminate Pro you still have to "use" the Power Cells to convert them into energy.

App Store Link: Eliminate Pro, Free

Firemint's Real Racing game has received a new updates and a price drop down to $4.99 from $6.99. Real Racing is one of the premier racing titles on the iPhone and recently saw the release of a Volkswagen lite version called Real Racing GTI.

This newest update brings the full version up to par with the Lite by offering two of the Volkswagen GTI vehicles and also provides a bit of a discount for late adopters.

If you've been holding off on getting the full version, here's your chance. If you still haven't tried the game at all, the Lite version is certainly a "must try".

App Store Link: Real Racing, $4.99, Real Racing GTI, Free

The followup title to the extremely popular (and free) Jelly Car game has finally made its way into the App Store. The original Jelly Car was released back in October 2008 and has since developed a pretty massive following. The game is a driving/platforming game in which you drive a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.

The sequel is being published by Walt Disney and comes with more than 30 new levels, new power-ups, and three new modes. The original free version remains in the App Store if you never tried it.

App Store Link: Jelly Car 2, $0.99, Jelly Car, Free

Gameloft's iPhone adaptation of The Settlers has already appeared in the App Store. The $4.99 real time strategy simulation game started out as an Amiga game back in 1993 and has since evolved through multiple iterations.

You’ve arrived in a wondrous place populated by Romans, Vikings and Mayans competing or cooperating to reach a variety of goals. These goals include occupying land, ensuring the supply of raw materials, or simply trying to create the most beautiful settlement. There is more than one path which leads to success – you can engage in trade, forge alliances, or lead your army into battle.

Gameplay is described by Gameloft:

• Gather resources and build a lively and bustling town in an ancient world. Your decisions and skill in managing and protecting your settlement will determine its fate.
• The strength of your units depends on how effectively you have built up your settlement and paid attention to the economic relationships within it.
• Three nations to govern: Conquer new territories, defeat rival armies, and establish an empire with your warriors that encompasses lands and continents.
• A huge number of parameters to manage: Dozens of building’s types, settlements, soldiers, raw materials, and much more.
• An accessible game for everybody, thanks to extensive tutorial missions and multi-touch gameplay, ideal for strategy games.

Early impressions are starting to trickle into the discussion thread on our forums with some positive first impressions. One forum member mrbass posted an extensive gallery of screenshots of the gameplay and tutorial screens. We'll provide a more in depth look of the game in time.

App Store Link: The Settlers, $4.99

We ran in to Subatomic Studios back at the Penny Arcade Expo in September, and part of my chat with them included the mention of the new levels in the PSP version of Fieldrunners [App Store] eventually making their way to the App Store. These new maps are coming next month when the game is relaunched as the first member of OpenFeint's gold game program. Fieldrunners: Gold Edition will have an in-game store where these new maps will be sold as downloadable content, as well as being the first game to include OpenFeint 2.4 which will boast a number of new features including an in-game instant messaging service. Note, the "Gold Edition" will be a free update to current owners of Fieldrunners.

Similar to our monthly game ratings, the OpenFeint Gold program aims to pick out games which are not only of the highest quality, but also make excellent use of the OpenFeint service. They seem to be setting the bar fairly high in nominating Fieldrunners as the first game to get their gold rating, and it should be interesting to see what games they choose in the future.

Here are two screenshots of the upcoming levels, Frostbite and Skyway:

Each will feature new towers, new enemy units, and will require new strategies.

Fieldrunners was among the first of the highly successful tower defense games for the iPhone, and it's always nice to see original App Store classics like this still getting attention from their developers.

App Store Link: Fieldrunners, $2.99

In Karnival, [App Store] you play as a boy with the arm of a goat who decides to take his talents on the road by starting his own carnival that travels the country offering rides, fortune tellers, snack booths, and 30 different included oddities and attractions that are slowly unlocked as you play the game.

Karnival features gameplay that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played any of the Tycoon series of games such as RollerCoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, or many others. In the game you have control over every aspect of your carnival from what rides go where to ticket prices to even keeping your attractions in good repair. You have to intelligently build your carnival to maximize karma, fame, and money earned while (hopefully) keeping your taxes and payroll low enough to turn a profit each day.

Karnival has an intuitive touch based interface to handle all the different carnival management functions, and features a tutorial which does an excellent job at explaining all the ins and outs of running a successful carnival. While the controls and interface do their job well, there were definitely times where I wished I was playing this game with a keyboard and mouse.

If there's any down side to Karnival it's that once you progress in the game a bit, you could drive yourself crazy with the micromanagement of your different attractions. Like other Tycoon-like games, you can mostly let your carnival run itself, or endlessly tweak your business to maximize profits and other stat gains.

Overall Karnival is a game that is a lot of fun wth a surprising amount of depth. The art style and music give the game an atmosphere that's exactly what you would expect of a freaky carnival. With both a story mode that has you traveling across the country as well as a basic sandbox mode, Karnival should keep Tycoon fanatics busy for quite some time.

The game has received strongly positive feedback in our discussion thread, and the developers have chimed in with tips and answers to questions.

App Store Link: Karnival, $5.99

Here are a few recent releases that may be of interest to some of our readers.

Fore by Cobra Mobile

A top-down iPhone golfing game that comes with 54 holes across 3 different courses. The game was designed for touch/swipe controls. Driving the ball simply requires you to slide back and flick forward in the direction of the shot. Putting is also very simple by tapping and sliding in the direction of the hole. A video of the game in action is shown above.

Further impressions and reactions can be found in the discussion thread

App Store Link: Fore by Cobra Mobile, $3.99

Rope Raider

While Rope'n'Fly [99¢ / Free] and Rope'n'Fly 2 [99¢ / Free] were definitely around first, Rope Raider brings a substantial amount of style and atmosphere with a much more detailed cityscape, sound effects, as well as the plump and barefoot Rope Raider character himself. Three different game modes are included: A free play mode where you see how far you can get, as well as two timed modes where you aim for either coins collected or overall distance before the time runs out. Rope Raider feels like a substantial improvement over Rope'n'Fly and is recommended for fans of swinging games. Further impressions and reactions can be found in the discussion thread.

App Store Link: Rope Raider, $0.99

Virtual Villagers 3

Last Day of Work has brought the 3rd installment of Virtual Villagers to the iPhone. The previous installments have been well received by fans of these sort of "sim" games. The game carries forward the basics of gameplay in which you can manipulate the villager's activities by moving them around with your finger to perform specific tasks and aid in their advancement. Villagers can be tasked to do a number of chores, including gathering food, building shelter, performing research and more.

Further impressions and reactions can be found in the discussion thread

App Store Link: Virtual Villagers 3: The Secret City, $1.99

Auditorium is an abstract Flash puzzle game which shares a lot of gameplay elements with the various games on the App Store that utilize the gravity of objects to change the path of other objects on screen. Instead of guiding rockets or spacemen around the screen as in G [$1.99] or Gravity Sling [Free], in Auditorium you have to guide a flow of light particles in to the audio containers on the game board.

Each level has a different set of movable pieces that all have different effects on the flow of these particles, from simply controlling its direction, speed, or even attracting or repelling the flow. The early levels start in grayscale, but quickly make way to vibrant colors and different audio containers that can hold each the various particle colors.

The game itself is so unique that it's extremely difficult to describe. Thankfully, there is a free demo that only requires Flash to play available at PlayAuditorium.com along with a whole slew of videos on YouTube showing how to solve the various levels in game such as this one below:

According to EA Mobile's Facebook page, Auditorium is coming "Fall/Winter 2009" and will have 25 levels played through 5 acts.

As one of the early tower defense games on the iPhone, Zombie Attack quickly became a cult favorite. The story of one man’s survival against a zombie invasion is something we could all get behind. But despite a fresh approach to the genre and all of that undead-hacking fun, the original game ultimately lacked a lot of variety with one small map and only four turret types. Zombie Attack: The Second Wave takes those concerns to heart and offers a vastly superior offering for those looking to fight off a legion of re-animated corpses.

Like its predecessor, Zombie Attack: The Second Wave will place you in the shoes of a zombie invasion survivor. You’ll be tasked with protecting a building from the undead horde. What sets the Zombie Attack series apart from other iPhone tower defense games is that your survivor will have to manually place and upgrade the turrets. You can’t simply swipe around the screen with a high omnipotent finger placing units willy nilly. You’ll need to safely guide your survivor past the oncoming monsters if you want to place that gun turret just right, or upgrade that cannon to maximum ferocity.

New turrets join old favourites and add a little bit of whimsy to this terror-filled TD. Scarecrows will attract zombies to their location and blow up in their faces. A giant hammer will pound back and forth trying to smash any zombies that get in its way. A ray gun will send out a space age sonic pulse that will slow the shuffling feet of the undead. Mix in Zombie Attack staples like saw blades and flamethrowers and you’ve got a fairly decent assortment of weapons at your disposal, which is good, as you’ll need them to tackle an assortment of new enemies.

The original Zombie Attack offered a fairly generic, repetitive experience in terms of enemy units. While the game boasted two zombie types, it was hard to ever notice a difference. This time around IUGO has introduced a slew of new baddies to tackle. Cheerleaders can use their heads as projectiles. Winged beasts are immune to a variety of turrets. Hounds lock on to the survivor and go for the throat. The Second Wave offers 6 zombie types, which is more than enough to help keep things fresh and a definite change from what’s come before.

Tools of death and types of terror aren’t the only thing to see an increase in Zombie Attack: The Second Wave – the map situation has taken a drastic step forward, going from only one map to four. The maps aren’t just greater in number, they’re also better by design. Larger areas mean you’ll need to scroll around the playfield to see every inch of zombie territory, and different map layouts mean there will be different obstacles that you can try and exploit. Each of these areas showcases a different location like a backyard or a trailer park. It’s a nice touch, but at the end of the day what makes these maps a success isn’t whether or not you’re navigating a spooky graveyard or an abandoned highway, it’s how different each of these levels plays.

This video by AppBank doesn't show much of gameplay strategy but shows moving your character around, though many towers have already been built:

If you grow tired of playing these different maps in the standard Survival Mode, you can check out the surprisingly robust Challenge Mode. You’ll select from 20 different challenges (5 for each map) that offer up some twists on the series tried and true survival gameplay. One challenge may restrict you to using certain turrets. Another may speed up the movement of the zombie horde. With 20 in all, there’s enough here to keep any tower defense fan occupied for days.

Zombie Attack: The Second Wave retains everything that made the original a cult classic while at the same time offering a drastically more robust package than its predecessor. If you were a fan of the original, Zombie Attack: The Second Wave is pretty much a no brainer. As for tower defense fans that found the original a little too shallow, the depth of content offered here definitely makes this franchise worthy of a second look. With all of the new additions and improved gameplay, it’s hard to not fall in love with Zombie Attack: The Second Wave. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun killing zombies with saw blades.

App Store Link: Zombie Attack! The Second Wave, $3.99

While this week has been filled with news and reviews of fast paced games, I've always had a weakness for word games on the iPhone, even though I'm fairly terrible at them. Here are three recently released or recently updated word games that are all worth checking out–

Guess the News [99¢ / Free] – Surprisingly enough, the news is good for more than material to auto-tune. Guess the News pulls news stories down from various RSS feeds, and turns them in to puzzles to be solved. You're given a brief description of the article, then need to guess the headline from the pile of letter tiles on the game board. Puzzles are broken out in to several categories such as health, sports, and even "odd stories". For instance, I recently played a few games in the technology category that had me guessing the titles of Engadget posts. Guess the News features three difficulty levels which control how much of the headline is already completed at the start of each puzzle, and with the dynamic content fetching provides infinite replay value.

Word Spin [$1.99] – As seen in the above trailer, this game has two parts to it, the first stage amounts to rotating and positioning the various wheels loaded with letters to line up as many words as possible. You then tap the top of the screen to lock the wheels in place, then find every word you possibly can as you rotate the locked set of word wheels searching for valid words. Once you get good enough, you can compete both against friends by sending email challenges where they will play against your exact configuration of the word wheels or by submitting your score to the global online leaderboard. The gameplay mechanic is solid and provides an interesting spin (See what I did there?) on the word hunting game formula.

Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] – Everyone who owns an iPhone or iPod Touch should have either the free or paid version of this game on their device. Words With Friends takes the game of Literati (a variant of Scrabble) and adds excellent asynchronous online multiplayer with recently added push notifications that alert you when it's your turn in any of your active games. The free version is ad supported, but otherwise fully featured, and according to a recent presentation by the developers at GDC Austin, Words With Friends and Chess With Friends [$2.99 / Free] has 50,000 active users daily.

I've had numerous Words With Friends games going for months now with nearly every friend of mine who owns an iPhone, a clever in-game search function will search the Words With Friends player database for friends of yours you want to start a game with, and if the game can't find them it will offer to send them an email invitation. Everything about the game is implemented so amazingly well that you owe it to yourself to at least try the free version if you're even remotely interested in word games, especially with the recent update adding push notifications. If you need people to play with, stop by the Words With Friends thread on our forums.