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

Namco's Garters & Ghouls made its way into the App Store last night and is the latest twin stick shooter to arrive on the scene. You play as the freshly reanimated Marie Dupois fighting against an evil force known as "Thrum" who has caused the dead to rise under its control. It's your task to close the portals of the underworld that spawn the various zombies, werewolves, and demons that are rampaging across the countryside.

The game plays a lot like iDracula and other similar games, with two virtual joysticks that control your movement and shooting. Along the way you come across different weapons and powerups, and throughout the land are shops run by the "Steam Queens" where you can buy upgrades for your character's health, movement, weapon damage, and other things.

The main content difference between Garters & Ghouls and similar iPhone games is that the gameplay is structured around 25 distinct and large levels and framed in a slowly revealing storyline.

The task for each level, however, remains the same throughout: you must destroy the enemy-spawing portals strewn across the map. Still, going into a level with a specific number of portals to destroy gave me a greater sense of purpose than other pure survival shooters. There is some very light planning involved in avoiding getting caught in the crossfire between demon-spawing portals, and there are a variety of enemies which do get more difficult as well as a number of weapon upgrades.

The game's difficulty, however, ramps up slowly, so it can feel like you are just grinding your way through the game. And if you listened to our last podcast, you would have heard that Eli Hodapp's issue with the game was the repetitive and lengthy nature of the levels. While I don't believe its any more repetitive than many of the existing survival shooters we've played before, I had also hoped the levels would provide more variety in gameplay.

Meanwhile, a number of other factors keeps the game squarely in the "good, but not great" category. The controls and animations are adequate, though not especially smooth, and the targeting of the enemies and portals requires you hitting just the right spot. This gives the enemies a 2 dimensional feel. The 1.0 version also suffers from some occasional crashes, though if this occurs only your in-level progress is lost and you can resume at the beginning of the level.

Further discussion and opinions of the game can be found in our forums

App Store Link: Garters & Ghouls, $4.99

Despite the release of Tap Tap Revenge 3 with in-app purchases, Tapulous is still releasing specially themed versions. The latest band to get this special edition treatment is Metallica.

The game includes new Hard and Extreme landscape modes with 4 or 5 tap rails, respectively, rather than the usual 3. List of tracks included are:

• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Fuel
• King Nothing
• Sad But True
• Some Kind of Monster
• Enter Sandman
• One
• Seek & Destroy
• All Nightmare Long
• Master of Puppets

App Store Link: Metallica Revenge, $4.99

Following Kolonists' apparent removal from the App Store, Catan [App Store] fans were left without an outlet for their need to build roads and settlements along with gathering various resources on the go– That is, until USM and Exozet Games' recently released official Catan hit the App Store.

Catan for the iPhone is a faithful reproduction of the board game, which was first published in Germany in 1995 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since. The game is played with up to four players (or more with expansions not present in the iPhone game) on a board game with 19 hex tiles that randomly go together to create a different layout for each game played.

Players then build settlements, cities, and roads as they gather resources and settle the island. To win the game, you need to have a certain number of victory points on your turn which are earned by meeting various goals within the game. In the iPhone version, victory points are configurable from 8 to 12 along with a few other options to customize gameplay to both make it harder for veteran players and easier for new players.

If this is the first you've heard of Catan, you will be happy to find out that the game has a remarkably full featured tutorial included that covers nearly every aspect of the game. Catan, like most strategic board games can be somewhat intimidating to new players, but the tutorial does an excellent job of starting with the basics and teaching you everything you need to know to be a proficient settler of Catan.

The thread on our forums about the game is filled with great feedback and reviews. INCyr, a fan of the board game, posted a review and thinks its a great game with a few issues keeping it from being perfect. Forum member Farnsworthiness had never played Catan before posted his thoughts and agrees with me on the strengths of the game's tutorials but mentions that the game is a bit of a battery hog.

I've been having a great time with Catan, although I was disappointed with the lack of anything other than hot seat multiplayer. Having spent so much time playing Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] lately, I really wish more turn-based games adopted a similar push-alert powered asynchronous multiplayer mode.

App Store Link: Catan, $4.99

We first got a look at Sniper Vs Sniper: Online [App Store] back at PAX, and it was clear then that the game had as much potential as their previous online multiplayer title, Homerun Battle 3D [App Store] once it went live and the online community started to grow.

The most succinct way to describe Sniper Vs Sniper is Where's Waldo? with guns. The gameplay involves scanning various buildings with binoculars to scout out enemy snipers, quickly switching to your rifle, and taking them down before they take you down. It's a fast paced hybrid between a sniper shooter and a hidden object game, playable online against other players.

The online component consists of two game modes, 1 on 1 sniper battles and cooperative levels. When playing against another player, you will both be randomly positioned in opposing buildings at the start of each round. As quickly as possible you tilt your phone to move your viewpoint around to find the person you're playing against, who will likely also be looking around with their binoculars. While you're doing this, you will be able to choose from a series of ridiculous taunts which all play different quotes like "What would you like on your tombstone?"

Once you find your opponent, you need to take your rifle out and shoot them, but there's more to it than that. Both of you have life bars, and the match is over when you run out of life. Like most video games, head shots do more damage so accuracy is key when it comes to actually firing your rifle. Once you damage your opponent, a new round starts and you both get new positions in the buildings.

The catch is, if you shot your opponent in the previous round, they get a hint showing where you are in your building. Winning online matches usually requires being fast enough at scanning the other building to be able to find the other sniper before they (much more easily) find you.

If competing against other players in the 1 on 1 mode isn't your cup of tea, the cooperative mode will pit you and another player against a building loaded with snipers. Whoever shoots more of these AI controlled snipers wins the round. This is also how the single player mode of the game is played, although given how full featured the online component is, single player feels significantly less entertaining in comparison.

Just like Homerun Battle 3D, online play is ranked on global leaderboards and you have a list of friends that you can challenge. There's even a lobby you can chat in between games. Com2Us also deserves some kind of merit badge for being one of the only game developers that includes a toggle in the game's options to disable the intro movie.

Sniper Vs Sniper is such a strange combination of gameplay elements that put together just work. It's part hidden object, part shooter, with a rich online component that is rivaled by few other games on the App Store. If the community takes off like it has with Homerun Battle 3D, I could see myself getting far too involved in competing online in Sniper Vs Sniper.

App Store Link: Sniper Vs Sniper, $4.99

Rake in Grass recently released their latest iPhone game Undercroft, an old-school styled turn based RPG. The game has been receiving only positive comments in the release thread.

The developer describes the game:

Undercroft is a dazzling, epic adventure set in a fantasy world full of magic and monsters. It combines the atmosphere of classic role playing games with plenty of new features, and brings it all together with cool graphics and sophisticated level design.

The game features multiple environments, hundreds of items, and over 20 hours of gameplay. The developers have provided a lite version to try which will give you a feel for the game before committing to the full version.

App Store Links: Undercroft Lite, Free, Undercroft, $4.99

Luc Bernard's long awaited online multiplayer update for Mecho Wars [App Store] is finally available this afternoon. If you've been waiting to get the game until the online component has been added, now is your chance to join in on some OpenFeint-powered turn based multiplayer action.

Mecho Wars is a turn-based strategy game that plays very similar to the Advance Wars games on the Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance. Since our review of the initial release, Oyaji Games has also added a second single player campaign and even more challenge maps to conquer.

The online component features a ranking system with an insignia that changes as you defeat more opponents, along with twenty different slots that concurrent multiplayer games can be played in very similar to UniWar [99¢]. There are 20 different maps to play on along with four different objectives that range from capturing all buildings, killing a specific target, killing all enemy units, and reaching a certain gold total. There are also options for turn time limits ranging from 5 minutes to 24 hours.

The online multiplayer seems to work equally well both over WiFi and 3G, although it would be nice if there was an even shorter turn limit to make games feel a little bit more real time.

If you have questions for the developers about the game, Luc Bernard started a thread in our forums.

App Store Link: Mecho Wars, $4.99

Gameloft's Derek Jeter Real Baseball [App Store] joined the rest of their impressive sports lineup on the platform this evening. Featuring full 3D graphics, several different game modes ranging from home run derbies to full season modes, and full in-game commentary, Derek Jeter Real Baseball seems to display the same high quality production as other Gameloft games.

We'll post a more detailed look at this game soon as I'm anxious to get deeper into the game to see how it compares to Gamevil's Baseball Superstars 2010 [App Store], another full-featured baseball game we recently gave 4.5 stars to.

Update: A hands-on gameplay video has been embedded above. The game offers two control methods for batting. There is no targeting of the ball for each method. The first is touch in which you simply tap on the screen to swing the bat as the ball approaches. The second method is slide in which you slide down to pull your bat back, and quickly swing upward in time with the pitch. Neither mode requires you to aim at the ball.

Pitching involves a combination of picking your pitch, timing a tap to determine power and accuracy, and use of the accelerometer to direct where the pitch will go. The video shows all these modes.

App Store Link: Derek Jeter Real Baseball, $4.99

While we announced the release of the classic point and click adventure Beneath a Steel Sky for the iPhone, we never took a closer look at the release.

Originally released for the Amiga and DOS in 1994, Beneath a Steel Sky is a graphical adventure set in Australia in a dystopian future. The original game received very high praise at the time of its release and is widely considered to be one of the best adventure games ever created.

The iPhone port of the game has since received rave reviews in our forums. Unlike, LucasArts' Secret of Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky has not been completely re-rendered for the iPhone version, but that's not to say it doesn't have its share of notable improvements.

The iPhone game offers new animated cut scenes, re-sampled voice work and higher quality music. As well, an extensive hint system that will prevent you from getting stuck. Most importantly is that the traditional point-and-click interface has been revamped to the iPhone's touch screen. Rather than controlling a virtual pointer, you can touch and drag your finger across the screen. Items of interest light up with a small blue circle. Tapping on that circle then brings up contextual icons that let you act on that item. An eye, for example. lets you look at the item, while gears allow you to manipulate an item. Meanwhile, inventory items can simply be dragged over to items of interest to activate them. In this regard, the game is a notable improvement over Secret of Monkey Island, and plays much more like a natural iPhone game.

We've recorded some of the animated intro scene as well as basic gameplay elements in this video:

The game's story and dialog remains enjoyable and immersive and the iPhone port does justice to the classic title. While the PC version game has been available for free over the years, the iPhone version is a worthy conversion for fans and newcomers to the series.

App Store Link: Beneath a Steel Sky, $4.99

The battle of the iPhone Kart racers continues with the release of Shrek Kart [App Store] to the App Store.

Shrek Kart contains 10 different karts, 11 different powerups, 15 tracks, single player and arena modes. There is local 6-way multiplayer but no online play. While it might have been an instant purchase in the past, the recent release of Konami Krazy Karts and surprise release of online multiplayer Cocoto Kart might make your decision harder.

Here's a hands on video:

We'll provide a closer look after we've had some time with the game, but early impressions are being collected in our forums.

App Store Link: Shrek Kart, $4.99