Veteran designer John Butterfield's Batle of the Bulge [$6.99 (HD)] is one of the best historical wargames we've played. Designed from the ground up for the iPad, it feels perfectly suited to that device - so much so that one of its few flaws is that it isn't quite as perfect a fit on the iPad Mini's smaller screen. With it's Avalon Hill-esque gameplay, appealing and unintrusive winter campaign styling, and inspired mix of original and sampled period music, the main thing we wanted in our review of it was more.

Shenandoah Studio delivers in a new update that includes three additional scenarios (two free, one IAP) and two new AI generals. They're so confident that the new AIs, modeled on Omar Bradley and Hasso Von Manteuffel, are going to your socks off that each one is a $1.99 IAP. I was initially skeptical of that decision, but having played against each one, I have to say that Von Manteuffel is, as advertized, a tricky bastard. He stole a draw from me in what should have been a clear win for the Allies. When I played Axis against Omar Bradley in the shortest scenario, "Race to the Meuse," I won easily, but I noticed that he'd done a good job of flanking me: if I'd been playing the full Battle of the Bulge scenario, I would have been in a lot of trouble going forward.

The scenarios are more straightforward: "Bitter End" appeals to those with no patience for victory points and conditional wins by playing out to the, ahem, bitter end of the engagement. That's a feature many players had been clamoring for. There's also added replayability with "Luck of the Draw" which deviates from history by shuffling starting unit placement and reinforcements. Both "Bitter End" and "Luck of the Draw" are free, and are more oriented to players who want some of the options commonly found in strategy videogames.

For the grognards, there's "The Endgame," featuring the siege of Bastogne, which some of you may know from Band of Brothers, and famous for Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's laconic response to a demand that he surrender: "NUTS!" If you've ever wanted to stand with the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, or if want to see if you can break McAuliffe for his impudence, "The Endgame" will let you fulfill that fantasy for $3.99.

The pricing scheme here is clever: Shenandoah has made the content that will appease those who wanted more "bang for their buck" free, while offering more exotic goodies to the hardcore at a premium. In a move worthy of Von Manteuffel, you have to go to the "purchase" screen to get "Luck of the Draw" (for free), thus ensuring that nearly every player will see the premium IAP. The update is also well-timed, bridging the gap between the winter release of Battle of the Bulge and forthcoming El Alamein, which should be giving us a chance to wage war in the desert sometime this summer.

Slitherine Software has built a name for itself on well-researched historical strategy and tactical wargames, and Legion is where it all started, back in 2002. Slitherine's Legion [$9.99 (HD)] is a well-executed port of that game, deep and complex, but not taking full advantage of the iOS platform.

The look and feel of Legion will be familiar to fans of the Civilization games, including Civilization Revolution [$2.99 / Free / $6.99 (HD)], though it is much more deeply rooted in its setting, with nearly all of the maps based on historic Roman campaigns, and balance more finely honed in the absence of a research system.

Legion handles resource management, city development and logistics in a manner common to 4x games. There are a few wrinkles that enhance the sense of being a Roman Legate, rather than, say, the ruler of an intergalactic empire. Building construction and unit recruitment are only completed in the spring, for example, and the same "units" of population that work to provide resources are expended to create new military units.

The battles are perhaps the game's most interesting element, as you select initial placement, formation, and orders, but can only watch the engagement as it plays out. RTS fans will be appalled, but I found this appropriate to the era (formations are important, but mid-battle changes of orders nearly impossible), and makes you think about orders and formations, rather than counting on reflex and fast-scrolling to win the day.

The game's flaws result from it being a port: the controls are responsive and become comfortable quickly, but still fall into the category of adapting the player to use a finger like a mouse. The main problem is that there are parts of the interface that are easy to miss or misunderstand if you just jump into the game. The tutorial, however, is both brief and sufficient, and a very lightly edited version of the game's original manual is included.

At first, tooltips were poorly placed, and I found I often had to switch hands to see them, but a new update fixes that. That just leaves my biggest gripe: saves. Slitherine's Legion only saves via the original save-game and autosave (at the beginning of a new turn). That means that if you have to leave a turn in progress to do something else (such as chasing after your hyperactive toddler) you could lose everything you've done in the current season.

One of the advantages of this being a port of a classic game is that there is far more content – more scenarios and ways to play them – than would be invested in an original iOS game. You can play historical campaigns as any of the tribes and nations involved, or swap out for fantasy scenarios in which the Romans invade England starting in Scotland, or Gallic tribes conquer the Italian peninsula (Asterix's revenge!).

If you're wondering what Slitherine's Warhammer 40k game might be like, Battle Academy [$19.99 (HD) / Free (HD)], with its tactical play and 3D graphics, or Slitherine's own Field of Glory rules for historical tabletop play [$14.99 (HD)] are probably going to be better reference points. Legion, however, demonstrates that these people can handle strategy on every scale. There has never been a Warhammer videogame that preserved Games Workshop's tabletop rules: maybe Slitherine will be the one to do it.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition [$9.99 (HD)] is a faithful port of the classic AD&D computer game, and that in itself is an impressive thing.  Overhaul Games put a lot of work into this one, massaging the antique codebase, agonizing over the implementation, adding a new tutorial and arena-brawling in the Black Pits.

Fans of the original Baldur's Gate have been drooling over this one since it was announced, and we were pretty jazzed as well. When the game hit, players with anything older than a 3rd generation iPad had problems that varied from minor irritations to unplayable crashiness, but the new patch seems to have fixed those issues for nearly all iPad 2 / Mini users, and greatly impoved original iPad performance (results still vary).

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Shenandoah Studios' The Battle of the Bulge [$6.99 (HD)] is to the iPad what SSG's fabled Panzer General was to PC gaming in the '90s. Its a game that will make historical strategy diehards swoon, while also being pretty enough, and easy enough to learn, to draw in people who never knew that this was the game they'd been waiting for.

It's even educational, with day-by-day summaries of the historical course of the Axis' last offense and additional materials about the battle presented in an incredibly appealing "magazine" format with historical photos. This is a game that could be taught in a military history class.

There are several things that Battle of the Bulge is not, by design. It's not real time, it's not a multi-mission campaign, it's not a game where you can see every soldier fight and die in 3D animated gore, thank the strategy gods.

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Ever since this past March when we first heard that the legendary role-playing game Baldur's Gate was heading to the iPad in a new enhanced version, out excitement has been palpable. Brad and Eli are excited to relive a late-90s classic on the touchscreen, and yours truly has never had a chance to play said title, which I've heard is a crime in the gamer community. Well I'm more than ready to right that wrong as following an accidental release last week, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition [$9.99 (HD)] has finally landed in the App Store.

If you happen to be an original iPad owner who's been awaiting Baldur's Gate: EE with bated breath, you might want to sit down for this. Beamdog's Trent Oster recently tweeted about running into memory problems with the iPad 1 due to it only having 256MB of RAM, but it sounded like they might have gotten a handle on it.

Sadly it doesn't look like that was the case, as Baldur's Gate: EE requires iOS 6 to install, which isn't supported on the original iPad effectively excluding it from compatibility. That's something that'll likely tick off owners of 2nd and 3rd generation iPads too who have held off on upgrading to iOS 6 for whatever reason. I'd say it's also entirely possible that they checked the wrong box in iTunes Connect or something and didn't actually mean to require iOS 6, but that's just speculation. As of right now the bottom line is you'll need to be running iOS 6 on anything newer than an original iPad to run the game.

If you're among those that are able to play Baldur's Gate: EE, you better clear your calendar. This bad boy promises upwards of 80 hours of gameplay, including some brand new content available as in-app purchases like a new adventure called The Black Pits and 3 new playable characters. If you buy the initial game and all IAP you'll be getting the exact same content as the desktop versions, which did launch last week without a hitch, and it'll be the exact same price. Of course if you don't splurge on the extra stuff you're still getting the entire original game for half the price as on other platforms at $9.99. Not bad.

We will of course be bringing you more on Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition soon, and you can stop by the forum thread to check out discussion and impressions as gamers are reliving - or even diving into for the first time - this classic RPG.

One of the first games I ever bought on the App Store was Solitaire City [$2.99], and I remember thinking all the way back in mid-2008 that card games work amazing on touch screens and how unfortunate it was that (at the time) the most complicated offering available was the same game of Solitaire I'd spent most of my educational career playing on Windows computers. Since then, there have been a number of collectable card games available on the App Store, but they all pale in comparison to the nearly 20 years of refinement and evolution that Magic the Gathering has experienced since the physical game was originally release in 1993. Of course, two decades of complexity, rulings, and card releases can be a double edged sword in that getting involved as a new player is potentially very intimidating.

This is exactly where Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 [Free (HD)] comes in. I've often described the previous installments (only available on PC and consoles) as a "gateway drug" to the Magic universe, and really, I still can't come up with a better way to put it. Previously, getting into M:TG required buying (potentially lots) of physical cards, and either finding someone to play with or attending an actual event like Friday Night Magic. Even then, you'd still deal with the fact that it's a complicated game that (despite Wizards of the Coast's best efforts) is fairly difficult to learn without someone teaching you all the little nuances.

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The iOS platform is hardly lacking for games that allow you to send living things to their inevitable death, and Gratuitous Space Battles [$9.99 (HD)] satisfies the tactical itch with a capital T, while managing to bring some big eye candy and a light sense of humor to compensate you for all your hours spent constructing.

When you first launch the app, you’re driven towards a fairly anemic tutorial, which hardly deserves the name. A game like GSB has a lot of meat, layered on top of more meat, with a crust of meat at the center - a simple text-driven tutorial cannot even begin to prepare you for how many numbers there are to be crunched, how many configurations possible, and how many men are ready to die in your service. Inexperienced strategy gamers are going to be overwhelmed with the complexity, and while the tutorial does a competent job of getting you into the cockpit of the starter-ships, it does little to prepare you for the amount of ship-building you’ll be doing.

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Growing up as an avid Mac gamer in the 1990s, I was a huge fan of RPGs put out by the folks at Spiderweb Software. Not particularly known for their graphical prowess (even back then), these shareware games of old focused more on exploration, narrative and, most important, freedom. Avernum: Escape From The Pit [$9.99] is the second game from Spiderweb to hit iOS, serving as the pinnacle for these RPG tenets and should be looked at as a gold standard for iOS RPGs.

First, a brief history lesson is in order. Avernum for iPad is a remake of the 1999 Avernum title, which itself was a rewrite of the 1995 Mac shareware title Exile: Escape from the Pit. While each iteration brought visual and combat upgrades, the same open-ended exploration system remained. The same holds true for Avernum for iPad, which receives overhauls in both its visual and character/battle systems.

In Avernum: Escape From the Pit, the Empire rules the surface. Anyone that crosses this oppressive regime is banished to underground region of Avernum, a world unto itself that replaces the sun with luminescent moss and the sky with endless caverns. The world, along with all its inhabitants comes to life in the game’s deep narrative which could easily span its own novel. It’s this world that you’re violently thrown into, and it’s in this world that you are free to do what you wish.

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Depending on how you look at it, my weekend was either a complete success or a disastrous waste. Asides from my daily ablutions, I've done nothing but sit on my derriere and play Capcom's Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective [Free]. It's true. I'm not ashamed.

I would be ashamed if this was a cheap rip-off stemming from some copycat's attempt to cash in on a popular indie title somewhere but Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective isn't that sort of game. If you had to liken it to a gender-unspecific trophy spouse, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective would be a 6'2" Scandinavian model with a degree in rocket science and a part-time job as a professional comedian. You won't be ashamed to be caught with this one.

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Hey guys! Here's a surprise, Chrono Trigger [$9.99] just came out of nowhere. Well, not entirely out of nowhere, since Square Enix had mentioned that it was coming this month… But after the rampant delays that Final Fantasy Tactics saw, my hopes that they'd hit this release window could be best described as "cautiously optimistic."

My first impressions are fairly positive so far with this port, mostly because Square has re-rendered all of the text and game UI to actually be legible, unlike Final Fantasy Tactics! We'll offer a more thorough review in the not too distant future, but in the meantime you can swing by the thread to check out forum user impressions as well.

Even though King of Dragon Pass [$9.99] is one of the nichiest (is that a word?) niche titles that has been released lately, I just can't get enough of it. It's been over two months since our review, and I'm still working towards ascending to the position of king. I love how different each play through is, too. I've lost count of how many times I've needed to reboot my tribe, but each time I've taken a different approach and was met with a substantially different outcome.

The one exception to this is the duck people. They're always jerks, and a few weeks ago I started a "relentlessly murder all ducks" policy that has been met with moderate success. KoDP players know what I'm talking about. Show no mercy.

Anyway, the one thing that I mentioned in our review that I really wish the game had was universal compatibility. These massive text-based games I want to be playing kicked back with my iPad, not hunched over my phone. In a recent blog post, the developers confirmed that the original game will in fact become universal in a future update. (Previously, they were undecided on a universal update or a separate HD version.) Unsurprisingly, the iPad version of the game is going to feature much less scrolling, and better yet, the crazy art that accompanies so much of the game won't be obscured by so much text like it is on the iPhone.

No word on release yet, as the same post mentions that the update hasn't been through any kind of QA yet, but it's still reassuring to know that it's in the pipeline and that it will be universal. Seriously though, check out our review if you haven't. King of Dragon Pass most certainly isn't a game for everyone, but if it hooks you, it won't let go.

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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We've already told you just how awesome Fish Labs' Galaxy On Fire 2 is in our review, which hit almost exactly one year ago. Since then, the original title has been updated a few times, and a DLC pack hit. In addition, Fish Labs had been teasing a high definition version of the game initially running on Tegra devices for way too long.

Well, that HD version hit earlier this month as Galaxy On Fire HD, released exclusively for A5-equipped iOS devices. It's even universal, to run on either your iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Better yet, it can use either OpenFeint or iCloud to sync progress between devices. It launched with a few technical hiccups which kept us from sounding the alarm to go out and download it immediately, but those things have all since been fixed in subsequent updates.

Galaxy On Fire 2 HD is the exact same game as Galaxy On Fire 2, with substantially better graphics. If you already own Galaxy On Fire 2, there's basically no reason to "upgrade" to the HD version unless you just want some additional eye candy. However, since the game is so "old" (in App Store terms, anyway), it wouldn't surprise me if there's a bunch of people out there with 4S's or iPad 2's that never heard of it the first time around-- In which case, there's no better time to hop on this awesome game.

2K Games’ NBA 2K12 [$4.99 / HD] doesn’t have quite the thrill or the touch of its brethren, but it’s a competent basketball title that stresses simulation over finesse and AI over finer points of control. Super fans might want to stay on the bench, though: 2K has reigned in and streamlined the overall NBA 2K experience to such an extent that it's hardly a recognizable game in the long-running series. It’s a shell of the experience available on consoles, and it’s not much of a looker, either.

What 2K did with 2K12 is similar to how it handled Civilization Revolution [$6.99 / HD]. Civ Rev, which was already a dumbed down version of Civilization proper, is even more dumbed down on touch devices, offering up simpler menus and actions that keep the pace ramped up without throwing away what made the core game good in the first place. 2K12 is an exceedingly simplistic game in the same vein. You can’t pick plays, some control options have been removed, you won’t be going online, franchise mode is missing some parts, and some of the special Michael Jordan touches -- the retro teams in particular -- have been stripped. What’s left is a fairly linear basketball simulation experience that you never really have direct control of, but can still participate within. (more...)

King of Dragon Pass [$9.99] originates from what I consider to be on the tail end of the golden age of PC gaming, where developers focused more on depth and originality instead of texture resolution and polygon count. In fact, King of Dragon Pass is a fantastically extreme example of this as there's no polygons to speak of, and the graphics only really consist of a assortment of hand-drawn illustrations to accompany whatever event is taking place at the time. I think the easiest way to describe what the game is all about is to call it a largely text-based menu-driven mash up of a Civilization game and a Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you're the kind of person who requires flashy graphics, fast action, rock-bottom pricing, and online multiplayer, stop reading now. This is not the game for you. If, however, you can barely even fathom a more glorious conglomeration than Civilization and Choose Your Own Adventure, prepare to absolutely lose yourself in King of Dragon Pass.

The game is set in the fantasy world of Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford, and used in several other traditional roleplaying games, literary works, and even a board game. The universe was originally imagined in 1966, and is chock-full of things which have since become standard in fantasy-based worlds. The people of Glorantha are the pawns of an array of both new and old gods who offer various benefits in exchange for worship. Magic and supernatural occurrences play an important role in the world, and aside from the typical races found in most fantasy worlds like elves, dwarves, etc, Glorantha is also home to strange humanoid hybrids such as anthropomorphic ducks and scorpion-men.

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