Of course it wouldn't be a Wednesday without a Chillingo game, and tonight's title seems to be R.I.P. Rally, a rare free to play game in Chillingo's typically fairly "premium" lineup. I dig the premise of the game, which is laid out in an entirely text-less comic book page showing your car (with a giant gun mounted on top) being heli-dropped into a massive arena of zombies. I think the easiest way to describe R.I.P. Ralley is to take the vibe of those arena levels in Twisted Metal, throw in a dash of Smash TV, replace all enemies with zombies, then apply a heavy glaze of free to play on top.

The gameplay loop seems to revolve around fighting wave after wave of zombies, earning coins, upgrading your car, getting slightly stronger, fighting slightly stronger enemies, and repeating this process. The vehicular-based combat is actually quite a bit of fun, as just being able to run over massive groups of zombies always feels satisfying. One thing that immediately jumps out at you is how (comparatively) poorly the zombies themselves are animated, and I'm wondering whether or not that was a conscious decision to simplify the zombies to allow way more of them to be on screen without any kind of performance drop or not- As even on my iPad mini, the game runs great with loads of undead lumbering around.

I liked the game a lot until I started delving in to the upgrade system, at which point the freemium elements begin to rear their ugly heads in a big way. R.I.P. Rally features the whole kit and kaboodle of free to play trimmings between ads (which you can disable for 99¢) and two different currencies (one you can buy). There's even super-gross Burstly referral deals where you can do things like sign up for a Discover card or complete a survey to qualify for a free glucose meter from Alliance Healthcare Services for a small stipend of in-game coins. Being pushed into trading a Blockbuster membership for a bumper upgrade really makes me sigh and say, "I wish I could've just paid $2.99 for this game."

Forum Thread: [NZ] R.I.P. Rally - (by Chillingo Ltd) [Universal]
International App Store Link: R.I.P. Rally, Free

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R.I.P. Rally should be available on the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern, or potentially much earlier if you're in a region east of the USA. To be alerted when the game is available, open this story in the TouchArcade App [Free] and add it to your watch list. A little after 11:00 PM tonight you'll get a push alert with the download link.

In the world of iOS games, we're often impressed with what our mobile hardware is capable of, and crave those big gaming experiences that are comparable to those found on consoles and desktops but with the ability to be played on the go. It's a neat world we live in where stuff like that is possible.

The flip side of that coin is that mobile devices are also a perfect place for the not-so-robust title; something quick and accessible that we can distract ourselves with for those few moments throughout the day when we'd otherwise just be killing time.

With that, sometimes a game does basically just one thing that's clever or unique, but won't necessarily be a game you spend months or years with. But for their intended purpose – a quick distraction – these games do what they set out to do really well, and while an in-depth review typically isn't warranted for such a game it's worth quickly highlighting their unique aspects for those people who are constantly looking for new and interesting gaming fixes while on the go.

Over the weekend a game caught my eye that fits this bill perfectly. It's called 1800 [Free], and the idea is simple enough that literally anybody can give it a shot. Picture those meters used in golf games over the years, you know the ones I'm talking about – a cursor travels back and forth and you're tasked with stopping it at just the right spot on the meter which correlates to the power and accuracy of your shot. It's a classic game mechanic used in lots of instances, and the basic idea is what drives 1800.

A cursor travels back and forth, and stopping it in the dead center awards a perfect score of 1800. You're graded on a 3-star level based on how accurately you can stop the cursor in the center and get 1800. That's the game at its core, at least, but as you progress through the 20+ levels more complicated and challenging variations of the idea come into play.

For example, a line will run across the meter along with your cursor, both traveling in different lengths at different speeds. You'll need to time it just right to stop the cursor and the line right in the middle of the meter at the same time. Levels increase in difficulty by adding more line variations and even an additional cursor to keep track of.

1800 is an incredibly difficult game. Just getting the 2-stars in a level that are needed to progress to the next is really hard, but if you're going for 3-stars on every level then it's downright brutal. It's extremely quick and easy to retry levels though, so it's actually a pretty welcome challenge. There's an additional Timed mode to unlock too, which gives you 60 seconds to land as many direct hits as possible. Game Center leaderboards are included for both the regular and Timed mode, along with just a handful of achievements.

It might not be the most robust title out there, but 1800 is a quick bit of fun when you feel like challenging your motor skills, and if you really click with it then chasing the elusive 3-stars for every level will keep you busy for a good long time.

The digital money printing machine known as The Simpsons: Tapped Out [Free] has received a new update themed after the most important fake holiday known to man: Whacking Day. Ok, maybe it's the second most important right behind Festivus, and let's not forget about Love Day, but Whacking Day is definitely up there.

Despite being your typical freemium Farmville-ish city building game, The Simpsons: Tapped Out does incorporate a ton of excellent fan service. Basing an update on the iconic show's fictional snake-clubbing holiday is further proof of that.

Whacking Day is officially on May 10th and in this new update there are all sorts of new ways to celebrate this special day. Take place in a time-limited event to whack snakes and earn special rewards, expand your city with new buildings and decorations, and complete new quests. You can also play with a handful of new characters including "washboard abs" Willie. Just don't be playin' with him between 4 and 5. That's Willie's time!

If you've been dutifully building up your own virtual Springfield in The Simpsons: Tapped Out then you should be pretty stoked to check out the new Whacking Day update content. If you're a Simpsons fan but haven't dabbled in this city-building adventure then it's a free download if you want to give it a look firsthand.

Good things (or is it bad things?) come in threes, so first we had Real Racing 3 repair timers getting nerfed, then today GolfStar heart regeneration got buffed, and now Gameloft is joining the party by reducing the cooldown for potion regeneration in Dungeon Hunter 4 [Free] to four hours down from eight. To back things up a bit, Dungeon Hunter 4 is the last of a long line of Gameloft dungeon crawlers. Over the years, they've gotten more and more free-to-play-y, climaxing on the release of the fourth iteration which among other free to play elements made players wait eight hours between getting additional potions.

We thought this felt particularly gross in our recent TA Plays video of the game. Eight hours seemed like a long time to us, and the general vibe on our forums was in near-complete agreement. This time around, Gameloft has been uncharacteristically active in our community, gathering feedback and actively responding to it. They even mentioned the possibility of the timers going down to two hours.

It's a really promising sign that all of these different companies are listening and responding to player feedback when it comes to balancing the timers in their free to play games, but I'm starting to feel like a broken record here in that much like with GolfStar, I wish we just had the option to buy DH4 and play it like a normal game. Either way, it's nice to see some leeway from developers when it comes to tweaking their free to play elements to be a bit more player friendly.

One of the reasons that previewing free to play games is hard is because you never really get an idea of what the out of the box experience is going to be like until you actually download the game yourself. Back at GDC we got a great demo of Com2uS's GolfStar [Free] but like most of these demos we see, it was a development account with loads of IAP which essentially allowed them to play the game, well, like you'd think a golf game should be played. In actuality, when GolfStar launched yesterday, it was packed with some shockingly gross freemium elements which our forum members were (understandably) having no part of- Which really is too bad, because I was really excited for the game as it was demonstrated at GDC, without all that junk.

The good news, if there is some to be had here, is that Com2uS is listening to the player base. Similar to how Real Racing 3 [Free] saw some timer tweaks, Com2uS is changing up how quickly "hearts" regenerate. See, your hearts are used as that all-too-familiar energy mechanic to rope you into either paying or waiting to play in GolfStar. When the game launched, you'd regenerate one heart every half hour, which is just crazy considering playing a nine hole course burns up five of your hearts.

This regeneration rate is being doubled, so it'll only take fifteen minutes to regenerate a heart. That still doesn't feel great, but it's way better than two and a half hours to play another round of golf. So, if you grabbed GolfStar and deleted it because of the timers, or you just skipped the game because of the overwhelming negativity in the forum thread, it might be worth a second look.

Personally, I wish I could just pay $9.99 or whatever reasonable price Com2uS sets for this game and just play it like you'd normally play a golf game. It's too bad too, as if you stripped away all the freemium offers, ad pop-ups, timers, and other nasty stuff you'd be left with a really radical game with great multiplayer, a cool almost RPG-like feeling of progression between gear and ability unlocks, and a bunch of other neat features.

Fingers crossed for that, I suppose.

UPDATE: Oh, and if you do give the game another shot, Com2uS is doing a free item promotion where if you enter this code on the events screen in game you'll get some free stat-boosting gear:

Last week we told you that a new update was heading to Real Racing 3 [Free] which added two new vehicles from Chevrolet, a new "Hunter" mode, and more than 100 new events to play through. Today that update has gone live in the App Store.

If you hang around TouchArcade with any kind of regularity then you should be familiar with Real Racing 3. It's the third entry in the popular racing sim series that has made hugely positive waves with its jaw-dropping visuals and presentation, but has also made waves in the opposite direction with its decision to be free-to-play rather than a premium title.

Where you fall on the whole pay model drama largely depends on your own personal preference and gaming habits. If you just want to jump in and take part in a few races throughout your day then Real Racing 3 is an impressive experience on your phone that you'll likely never feel the need to throw any money at at all. If you want to sit down and spend hours with the game at a time, well, you pretty much can't without doling out premium currency in some way.

Anyway, if you're among those who have been enjoying Real Racing 3 since its launch last February then you'll want to give this new update a look for the new vehicles and events. If you don't enjoy Real Racing 3 then there's nothing here that's going to change your mind, but at the very least if you haven't given the game a try it's worth the free download to check it out.

I just got the call from fellow carb-free buddy, all around nice guy, and honorary King of Australia: Halfbrick's own Phil Larsen (who was also actually on a recent podcast) to tell us that Fruit Ninja [$0.99] as well as the iPad counterpart Fruit Ninja HD [$2.99 (HD)] are both free. Originally released in 2010, Fruit Ninja quickly ascended to "classic" status along side App Store staples like Doodle Jump [$0.99] or Pocket God [$0.99] with an incredibly simple premise and controls that even your grandma can get a hang of.

It seems silly to explain the premise of Fruit Ninja, as I'd hope anyone who reads TouchArcade would already know about it, but the basic idea is fruit gets tossed up on the screen of your iOS device of choice, and you swipe it to slice it while avoiding slicing bombs. Through a variety of updates they've added new game types, fruit to slice, and have even released the movie-themed spinoff Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots [$0.99].

I figure there's a good chance most people around here already have Fruit Ninja, but still, if you don't now is a great time to snag it. Similarly, if you're a TouchArcade regular chances are you're also "that guy" who all your iPhone-owning friends ask for game recommendations, and, well, Fruit Ninja for free is a pretty solid one.

Here is a video game that caught our attention last month, but I really only just got around to checking out. It's called Mayday!! Emergency Landing [Free], and it's a flight simulator of sorts, except rather than tasking you with successfully flying an aircraft it instead thrusts you into emergency situations on said craft, and it's your job to figure out how to handle the problem and land all of your passengers safely.

Here's the thing with me and flight simulators: I'm terrible at them. Especially the really realistic kind. Mayday I would say falls into this category. In each of its dangerous scenarios, you'll need to be patient as you hold your device steady enough to follow the proper path that will lead to a safe landing. I am not that patient when it comes to things like this, and my movements also aren't so subtle. So try as I might, every single time I end up flinging my plane all over the sky and ending in a fiery crash. Note to humanity: don't ever give me a pilot's license.

We briefly talked about Mayday on our podcast last month, and found it to be an interesting premise but weren't too sure how much lasting appeal landing planes in disaster situations would have. I'd have to say that I do love the idea here, but I just can't get into it, even though I really wish I could. It's much too hard for me. However, your experience might be different with flight simulation games, and since the idea behind Mayday is so neat we thought we should let you know about it in case you missed its release.

Mayday is free to download and try, and there are options to buy IAP currency or you can shell out $4 to unlock the full game and all future updates outright. If you've felt like your flight simulator experiences have all been much too safe, give Mayday a try for a new spin on things.

Starbucks has been offering various iTunes freebies for what feels like years now, and typically the way you'd get them is by going to an actual Starbucks location and looking around for the physical cards that had iTunes promo codes printed on the back of them. There is/was several problems with this system, in that some Starbucks locations didn't seem to bother to put them out, their employees didn't know about them, or if they did, some jerk could've just come and taken the whole stack to give away or trade online (something I've actually seen with some high-demand freebies). Well, that's behind us now as the Starbucks app [Free] is now offering freebies directly.

If you download the app, then go to the home screen by tapping the "Home" button in the bottom left you'll see a "Messages" icon. Tap that, and you'll get a mews feed of sorts filled with free songs, as well as a free offer for Angry Birds Star Wars [$0.99]. Getting it is as simple as tapping "Download Now" which tosses you over to the App Store with a free copy of the game.

Angry Birds Star Wars is a fantastic game, which you can read about in our review. Rovio did a great job of combining those super-familiar Angry Birds mechanics with new abilities and gameplay elements that make the whole thing feel very Star Wars-y. And, for free, why not? Also, the Starbucks app is pretty useful too, especially if you drink a lot of coffee from them. It's a little shocking how quickly rewards stack up if you use the Passbook Starbucks card.

UPDATE: ...Aaaand if you really don't want to bother downloading the Starbucks app, or would prefer to redeem the offer on your computer, you can mash this link right here and get Angry Birds Star Wars for free in your normal web browser. This sort of seems to be circumventing the whole idea behind the promotion though, so don't be surprised if that direct link doesn't work for very long.

Foursaken Media's Heroes and Castles [$1.99] is a castle defense style game that also lets you jump right into the action yourself and beat the snot out of some bad guys from a third-person perspective. It's a more hands-on approach than your typical defense title, but still takes all the strategy and planning that's a hallmark of the genre. Basically, Heroes and Castles is awesome.

If you have yet to experience the game yourself yet, Foursaken has released a new free version called Heroes and Castles Free [Free] which essentially gives you the entire game, including all online multiplayer functionality, without dropping a single dime.

Here's how it works. The regular paid version of Heroes and Castles comes with three playable hero types unlocked from the start, with three additional heroes available to unlock using the premium in-game currency, which is earned through play or bought as IAP. This version also costs two bucks right out of the gate.

Heroes and Castles Free is the same as the paid game in every way but one: rather than having all three starter characters unlocked from the start, you'll choose just one of those three to unlock as your starter character, and the remaining 5 characters are all unlocked using the same premium currency setup as the paid game.

So if you're alright with only unlocking a single character at a time, you can get in on the fun of Heroes and Castles totally for free. In my own experience, I've been plenty busy working my way through the campaign with just a single character type anyway. Each character is incredibly different from one another and requires learning their different strategies and nuances. For the time being I'm content sticking with my Knight, and by the time I get around to wanting to explore another character I should have stockpiled a good amount of currency anyway.

If you were on the fence about Heroes and Castles then you should jump all over this free version. I wasn't sure about it at first myself, as I'm not usually big on castle defense games, but about ten minutes in and I was hooked. It really is a game that needs to be experienced to be appreciated, and now it won't cost you anything to check it out firsthand.

Alright, so posting about iPhone 5 updates might be a little old hat these days, considering the iPhone 5 came out in, um, September of last year... But, you can't miss out on a game this good when it's free. The Blocks Cometh [$1.99] is a great game with a simple premise: Survive as long as you can by avoiding and climbing on top of the endless supply of boxes falling from the sky.

This simple gameplay mechanic is greatly enhanced by a silly amount of playable characters that you can unlock. Each have a slightly different play style, and can make the way you approach the game change substantially. For instance, dudes with a more powerful attack can get away with destroying more blocks, while guys who can jump well are often better off relying on acrobatics to survive.

Oh, and to make things even better, you can play as me, Brad, and Jared in the game if you're a bad enough dude to unlock us. If you missed it the last time the game went free, now's your opportunity to snag it. If you've already got the game on your phone, and you're rocking an iPhone 5, be sure to grab the new widescreen update.

Apparently it's the 16 year anniversary of the Tamagotchi, the tiny egg-shaped virtual pet keychain toys that either engrossed or annoyed practically everybody in the late '90s and early 2000s, and to celebrate NamcoBandai has released an official virtual iOS version of the virtual pet, which is almost too much virtual for me to handle. There is an Xzibit joke in here somewhere I'm sure.

As you can see, Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. [Free] is an actual digital recreation of the toy, virtual plastic egg and all. It has the same simple LCD display graphical style as the original toys, and you interact with your pet using three virtual buttons on the egg in a similar way to the toys too. It's quite the nostalgia scratcher, for sure.

However, there's also a more modernized view of your pet which you can switch to on the fly. It's more zoomed in, features some basic color for you pet, and also includes a pretty cool rock-paper-scissors mini-game you can play against your little guy or gal. Check out the contrast between the two styles in the screens below. It's pretty cool.

Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. also includes a bunch of neat fan service, like additional egg styles and LCD backgrounds to unlock and use to give your pet a personal touch, and the original batch of different pets to raise. Seeing as we all pretty much carry our smartphones around with us at all times, having a little Tamagotchi living in there seems to make perfect sense and is within the spirit of the original keychain toys.

The virtual recreation goes beyond that, though, as just like the original toys used to incessantly alert you when your virtual pet needed some kind of attention, much to the annoyance of teachers and parents everywhere, Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. delivers this same functionality in the form of push notifications. Except it feels like it's ten times worse.

I don't recall exactly how often the toys would bother you with alerts, but the iOS version sends a push notification about every 2-3 minutes, regardless of if your pet actually urgently needs something or not. It's mostly just your pet "calling you!" to say hello, or something. Either way, with each subsequent push notification my desire to let my pet just starve to death slowly increases. Yeah, that was pretty messed up, and I feel bad for saying it. Here's two different examples of Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. taking over the lockscreen in a matter of minutes.

Is my Tamagotchi trying to get my attention? I'm finding it difficult to tell. In all seriousness, though, I'm not sure if the charms of Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. are enough to overcome my intense hatred of push notification spam. Of course you can toggle them off, but if you forget about your pet for long enough and harm befalls them that's not exactly an ideal scenario either. Ideally I'd like to be able to toggle push notifications just for urgent things, and leave the rest of the responsibility of hanging out with and caring for my pet to myself.

Anyway, annoying notifications aside, the Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. app is actually quite well done, and is a cool gift for fans of the original toys. It's also free and ad-supported, so you can try it out risk-free, and if you want you can drop a buck to permanently disable the ads. Also, in a game that seems rife for IAP abuse ("Please pay 1 Tamagotchi Buxâ„¢ to feed your pet!"), it's refreshing that the ad-disabling IAP is the only thing you can buy.

Hopefully NamcoBandai can tweak the push notifications, but as it is if you're hankering for some virtual pet nostalgia checking out Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. for free is recommended.

Arguably the best part of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 of yesteryear was the Chaos Emerald bonus stages. You remember those, don't you? The camera jumped behind Sonic's shoulder and he hustled forward all on his own while you wove him from side to side to collect rings and dodge obstacles.

Those stages unwittingly created the template for the droves of endless runners available on the App Store today, so the logical next step for the spiky blue hedgehog was an endless runner built around ye olde bonus stages, don't you think? Enter Sonic Dash [Free], a fun runner plagued by the same problems that plague most endless runners.

Sonic Dash is all about swerving around enemies, rocks, pits, and other hazards to collect rings. Swipe the screen left and right to switch lanes, swipe up to jump, and swipe down to perform Sonic's trademark roll, which you can use to clobber the enemies puttering around the environments. You can change direction in midair, drop straight down into a roll to treat enemies in your path like bowling pins, and weave around pillars and rocks on a dime.

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TouchArcade Rating:

Have you ever found yourself playing Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes [$4.99] and wishing it was less of a puzzle game and more of a card game? (Hey, that might be the case for someone?!) You're in luck, as Ubisoft just released the iPad-only card game Might & Magic: Duel of Champions [Free (HD)].

We're going to dive deeper into the game very soon, but at first blush it seems like a fast-paced fantasy-based card game that centralizes around using cards to summon an army, cast spells, and pull off other tricks to defeat your opponents. Of course being free to play there's an extensive in-game store to buy all sorts of things to tweak out your deck, and an online tournament and guild system to participate in once you've got a handle on the game.

Right now, early reactions on our forums are a bit mixed between the game offering a strong first impression, while also being "riddled with IAP." There's been a bit of weirdness with where the game has been available as well, with no real rhyme or reason as to why it's available in some regions and not in others. Regardless, if you're a Might & Magic fan and own an iPad, there's not much reason to not give this game a shot.

Like many gamers, my three best friends and I have a long-standing gaming tradition. Every holiday, we gather for our perennial New Year's Eve LAN party. In an ideal world, we tear down our gaming rigs on New Year's Eve, drop them off at one friend's house with plenty of space, go to dinner at our favorite Tex-Mex place, and then ring in the New Year over a good 8 to 10 hours of gaming nirvana fueled by salty snacks and sugary drinks.

The reality usually played out differently. After several years of frustration caused by out-of-date drivers, lost game discs, forgotten Steam passwords, and bizarre network anomalies (what exactly is a network bridge, and why did it only appear on my Win98 machine?), we threw up our hands and downsized to Nintendo DSes and Mario Kart. This past weekend, the gang got together ahead of schedule and downsized even further.

Armed with our iPhones, we listened to the ranting of one friend who insisted we play some iOS game called Spaceteam [Free]. In preparation for the meet-up, I downloaded the game and perused the list of features. They included teamwork, shouting, confusion, and four-stroke pluckers. Being a big fan of three-stroke pluckers, I could only imagine what fun it would be to tinker with four. I was not disappointed.

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TouchArcade Rating: