Freeverse's Parachute Ninja [App Store] has been getting some much deserved positive first impressions in our forums since its release last night.

Parachute Ninja's story isn't exactly the standout part of this game; some dude set your hut on fire so this weird little yellow guy with wicked eyebrows tells you that you need to put on some funny clothes and bounce around a 2D platforming-based world until a game over screen pops up. Something like that.

The core of Parachute Ninja's gameplay is based around launching a tiny, round ninja from little floating slingshots all around an area and using his parachute to float around the environment. Slinging the ninja from the vines that form the game's slingshot/platforms works much like the slingshot mechanic from Bird Strike. Once in the air, touching anywhere on the screen will cause the ninja to whip out his tiny parachute, which will slow his fall and allow the player to control the direction of his descent by tilting the device.

There are two modes in Parachute Ninja: Story mode and Survival mode. Story mode tests your little ninja with 30 levels in each of which the goal is to reach the exit while collecting as many fireflies (generic floating shiny things) as possible to get a high score. There is no time limit or penalty for taking a long time in these levels, and there is no way to "lose", as a fall into the always-rising (and yet completely unexplained) watery abyss will simply restart your character at the last checkpoint you touched and deduct a few points from your score. Levels are ranked using what is essentially a three-star system, with the highest award going to those who were able to rack up a huge score by collecting numerous fireflies within a short time period, creating a combo. High score chasers out there will be happy to hear that Plus+ has been integrated into the game, making scores and achievements fully featured and online.

The second playable mode in Parachute Ninja, Survival mode, plays quite similarly to Doodle Jump. In this mode the goal is to get as high as possible while constantly being chased by a deadly wave of rising water. While the starting area of this mode is always the same, players who get higher up will start to discover that the obstacles and various items are all randomly generated, making Survival mode a part of the game that many people will find themselves returning to long after beating the Story mode.

There's a decent amount of variety to Parachute Ninja's platforming mechanics due to the different types of platforms like trampolines, slingshots, fans, etc. The introduction of these new mechanics are spread out pretty evenly throughout the Story mode, so the game stays fresh for the whole ride.

The one gameplay element that I had some trouble with was the tilt-controlled movement of the parachute which auto-calibrates to the iPhone's position when you tap on the screen. If you're not paying close attention, this can result in some wild overcompensation due to the sensitive controls. In the end, I found using the parachute in quick short bursts worked much better.

After only a few minutes of playing Parachute Ninja, I knew I'd be writing a very positive review. The art style is cute, the gameplay is fun and well-suited to the iPhone, and the two modes are neatly packaged and make the game easy to look at and play. Parachute Ninja is an easy purchase.

App Store Link: Parachute Ninja, $.99

Assassins's Creed 2 was extremely well-received on the PS3 and X360, numbering amongst the stand-out titles of 2009. It's no surprise then that Ubisoft would want to strike while the iron is still hot, and capitalise on the popularity of the franchise. Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery [App Store] is their (somewhat late) answer to that, but does it do justice to its bigger brother?

The Assassin's Creed universe is undoubtedly one of the more unique intellectual properties to hit the gaming world, and offers a rich source of story and background to draw from. The iPhone off-shoot of Assassin's Creed 2, as in the console version, focuses on the protagonist Ezio and his battle against the Templars throughout Italy and Spain. The story operates as an aside to that of the console storyline, and follows Ezio as he tracks down another threat to the Assassins; a hunt that takes him across the seas to Spain.

Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery is essentially a 2D platformer that employs the Assassin's formula of deception, agility and deadly force. There are a few types of missions to complete in Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery; some which require stealth, where being discovered too many times will see you caught; others that throw Ezio into an acrobatic chase sequence; and those where Ezio must simply reach a predefined target. At the end of each level you are (quite ruthlessly) graded for the time you have taken and kills made, and awarded synch points which can then be used to unlock a number of "animus hacks", such as hard mode and a number of cheats.

Ezio is controlled by a left and right slider dictating his walk/run speed and a number of context-sensitive thumb-buttons to control his aerial and combat abilities. Ezio has two speeds of movement: a stealthy creep and an all-out sprint; the latter of which is responsible for some concerns with Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery.

In the first few missions the high speed at which Ezio runs simply means a few important leaps are missed, requiring you to traverse to the top of the level again, resulting in heavy hits to your time score. This would be fine if we were playing a Sonic-of-old where such speed is encouraged by the level design, but when the chase missions begin Ezio's blazing speed will see you unwittingly running into guards, falling over blind jumps into deadly pits, or scaling walls when you intend to drop down them — failing the mission time and time again until you have memorized the level in its entirety. One of our early frustrations with the game was a lack of clear goals at the start of each mission, resulting in some excessive trial and error as you learn about the different types of levels.

Despite it being a 2D platformer, the levels are crafted in 3D, and the attention to detail in both the levels themselves and the characters that populate them is outstanding. The animations, particularly the many 'kill' and counter animations that Ezio performs, are terrifically life-like and a delight to watch; easily some of the best we've seen on the platform to date. The combat mechanics are simple but effective, utilising two buttons to attack and counter in order to dispatch your foes. In fact, if the game didn't tie you so strictly to a timer in many levels, the combat itself may have presented a more enjoyable distraction, rather than something to be avoided.

Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery features 8 memory blocks (read: missions), each comprising a few different sequences. There is a solid amount of content on offer here. While there are some things in Assassin's Creed II that make the game feel like it could have been left in the oven a little bit longer, it's still easily one of the better platformers on the App Store. Be forewarned that the performance on the 3G is rather lackluster, but the game is a visual treat on the 3GS and has a few enhancements (graphics, audio, extras) over the DS version.

App Store Link: Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery, $9.99

On the eve of what could be the biggest Apple announcement since the iPhone, Battle of Puppets [App Store] somehow is successfully holding my attention over obsessively refreshing every tech blog on the planet looking for more tablet tidbits. (A lofty accomplishment, to say the least.) While at the heart of the game it's little more than a castle vs castle battle, Battle of Puppets is absolutely oozing character and charm through its amazing art style and other really clever features.

If you've played one castle vs castle game, the gameplay mechanics will be instantly familiar to you. If not, here's the genre in a nutshell: Two castles are on opposing side of a battlefield, you need to manage various resources to produce units, often limited by a unit cap that may change on each level. You must formulate a strategy based on the different strengths of your units playing off the weaknesses of your opponents units to fight your way to their castle and eventually destroy it.

The battlefields in Battle of Puppets are amazingly cute stages with scenery that moves around depending on the time of day, and when a unit dies it's yanked off stage. Continuing with this theme, each of the armies in game are themed after a different classical opera, with everything from spanish forces themed after Carmen and to asian themed armies inspired by Madame Butterfly.

Compared to other castle vs castle games, the amount of thought and small touches developers Small Wonders put in to the game is awesome. The animations are great, each army feels a little different, and there's even three save slots so multiple people can be playing the game on a single device. The following gameplay trailer should give you an idea of the atmosphere of the game:

There are a bunch of castle vs castle strategy games on the App Store, but few can come close to rivaling the look and feel of Battle of Puppets. Playing as each of the different opera forces should provide a decent amount of replay value for people who become engrossed in the game, but under the hood it's still a castle battle game. If you haven't been interested in them in the past, the eye candy in Battle of Puppets likely won't be enough to sway you over.

App Store Link: Battle of Puppets, $1.99

As a big fan of time trial games, I took immediate interest in Comet Racer [App Store], the newest release from Donut Games. Comet Racer has you piloting a small craft through the mazelike interiors of comets in a mission to complete each of its 25 different levels in as few seconds as possible. With a unique global leaderboard system and a great physics engine, this is a game that fans of other recently released time trial games like Hook Champ or Jet Car Stunts will enjoy.

Each level in Comet Racer opens with the unveiling of your ship on a launch pad, and an old-school traffic light slides in from the left to give a three second launch countdown. Using a thruster button on the right side of the screen and the two left/right directional buttons on the left, controlling your ships around hairpin turns and through slim corridors is an easily-acquired skill. Crashing into a wall will cost you one of your "lives" (displayed in the form of tiny spaceships at the top left corner of the screen) and cause a significant drop in speed, making it more difficult to finish the level under the given qualification time.

I normally don't like games that require players to unlock all of its levels by beating every level in order (as this can cause players to get stuck on one particular level and become frustrated) but I feel that it's not a real issue in Comet Racer since players will rarely have much difficulty finishing levels. The game is tuned so that levels aren't difficult to complete, but so that it's challenging for players to attain a three-star ranking (the highest possible ranking).

Comet Racer uses a fairly unique leaderboard system that I particularly enjoyed. Instead of setting a separate leaderboard for each level, the game combines all your track times into one total score, where each hundredth of a second that you beat the qualification time by is worth 1 point. For example, if a certain track has a qualification time of 20 seconds, and you finish it in 19.50 seconds, you'll be awarded with 50 points. Naturally, it'll only be possible to max out your potential score once you've unlocked all the tracks, but the real focus of the game is going back through and improving just marginally on your times in each level. To aid with this visually, the game even keeps a "ghost" version of your best time in each level that you can race against later.

As you unlock more levels, you'll begin to encounter more and more unique obstacles and pickups that give some needed variety to the tracks. You'll encounter boost pads, temporary shields, dangrous tracking missles, and walls that must be opened by running over nearby switches. One of my few complaints with the game is that the missiles almost never pose any sort of threat, and will usually be avoided with ease. Even if you fail to avoid the missiles, shield pickups are so common that the useless missiles will bounce right off of you.

I love the way the global leaderboards for this game work, and I will soon start up a major effort to make my way to the top of the boards. Comet Racer is easy to get into and fun to try to master. It's one of those games that can draw you in for hours at a time for the simple chance to improve your high score, and yet it can be picked up and put down in two minutes, a quality shared by the best of iPhone games.

App Store Link: Comet Racer, 99¢

I have a love-hate affair with tile-sliding games, so when I first discovered TileStorm [App Store, I had mixed expectations. Generally, tile-sliding games are pretty difficult (and TileStorm is no different), but the satisfaction that one gets from completing a puzzle is worth the rough path there. TileStorm faithfully delivers this tried-and-true gameplay with some nice, clean 3D visuals, soothing audio, and complete option set.

There are 100 levels in TileStorm, all equally split up between industrial, Egyptian, medieval, and jungle environments, which serve as really nothing more than a set up for some variety in the level-to-level color palette. Your goal as the player is to create a path for "Eggbot the robot" to make his way to the level's exit. This is accomplished by figuring out a way to move around the different tiles that happen to be laid out in a jumbled fashion in select areas of each level. While most levels only require players to solve one puzzle to complete the level, some feature numerous puzzles with pieces that must be re-used.

There's quite a challenge to be had with many of the levels in TileStorm, but players can take their time while playing as their is no time limit or other way to "lose." The game does track your time in the top-right corner of the screen, but this feature is merely included as an option for those who want to beat their own best times. There are no online leaderboards for the game, but I feel that TileStorm gets a pass for excluding this otherwise necessary feature because of the nature of the game; once players memorize the solution for a puzzle improving their own times would become an exercises in finger dexterity, not actual skill, to see how quickly they could mindlessly repeat the motions required to solve them.

TileStorm features a clean 3D isometric perspective, and both the environments and Eggbot himself all look great. The few bits of animation that Eggbot does have all play out without a hitch, and tiles slide along without any lag when prompted with a swipe of the finger. I always appreciate the option to turn a game's audio and listen to my iPod library while playing, and the game offers that up as well. One feature that TileStorm managed to fit in that I enjoyed is an incredibly detailed stat counter for players. By selecting "Game Stats" from its options menu, players of TileStorm can see how many puzzles they've completed, how much time they've spent playing the game and even the number of times that the screen has been touched during play. I think that being able to check out such statistics is a lot of fun, and I'm glad that TileStorm's developer included this functionality.

While I've had a lot of fun with TileStorm, there are a few problems that need to be ironed out. The biggest issue that I have with the game is its level-unlocking system, which requires players to complete all of the levels in one area before proceeding on to the next– Causing gameplay to come to a halt if you get stuck instead of skipping to a different level. Also, there are some interface issues such as requiring players to completely exit levels to restart them instead of simply having a button in a menu somewhere. However, the developer has been very active in our forums, and these fixes should be coming soon.

TileStorm is a fun, well-made puzzle game that offers up plenty of challenge and hours upon hours of gameplay for those who stick with it long enough to complete all 100 levels. While a few minor issues with the game may cause some annoyance, I don't believe that these problems will be nearly large enough to keep players from having a good time with it. This is not an easy game, but is definitely worth considering if you enjoy a good brain-teaser.

App Store Link: TileStorm, $1.99 – TileStorm Lite, Free

Similar to the amount of care that went in to updating and enhancing the Missile Defense formula in Low Five Games' other game, Earth Vs Moon, The Horrible Vikings [App Store] is much more than a simple catapult game.

Like other catapult games, the basic premise amounts to aiming and flinging something to fly as far as possible and collide in to other things on the way. In the case of The Horrible Vikings, you control a pair of vikings: One who moves back and forth in the ship as ballast to control the angle of your shot, and by dragging the catapult back with another viking in it you control the power of your shot. While flying you can tilt your phone to control the direction of your flight, swipe down to stomp targets, and later in the game you get access to other abilities to fly farther such as a wizard that zaps you.

Along the way you pick up coins to spend on items and upgrades, slaughter ninjas, smash jars, and of course– Loot and plunder whatever goal lies at the end of each level. The game is incredibly varied, both in the enemies you come across, the different abilities and upgrades you can buy from the in-game store, and if you're a fan of OpenFeint achievements, The Horrible Vikings has tons.

One of the nice things about The Horrible Vikings is that you can take as many shots as you want to complete a level. You will never run out of lives, and there doesn't seem to be any penalty for flinging your vikings over and over. However, if you are precise with your shots, there is also an OpenFeint leaderboard for your "evasion efficiency", or how few shots it takes you to complete the levels. (There is also a leaderboard for most gold collected.)

Low Five Games has a few different videos up on their YouTube channel showing The Horrible Vikings gameplay:

If you're a fan of catapult games, there isn't much to not like about The Horrible Vikings. Yes, the core gameplay element has been done to death on the App Store, but few of them can even begin to rival the amount of refinement seen in The Horrible Vikings.

App Store Link: The Horrible Vikings, $1.99

As a match-three game on a platform already overcrowded with such games, Compression, developed by Little White Bear Studios, had to do something to set itself apart from the crowd. Its developers realized this and created a new kind of puzzle game, while still managing to capture the familiar, fun feel of classics like Tetris or Bejewled.

Compression works very similarly to Dr. Mario. There are various colored pieces scattered across the game board, some hollow, some filled in. You control blocks that drop from the top of the screen and attempt to match these blocks to the hollow pieces in order to get three of the same color in a column or row, which removes the pieces from the game board. Removing all the hollow pieces from the game board will take players to the next level, where the difficulty will be raised slightly by the presence of even more hollow pieces and faster-falling pieces to be dealt with.

The twist in Compression's gameplay is in the walls, which move in closer and closer in a set pattern after every third piece is dropped into the board. A set of white dots appear on the section of the wall (either bottom, left, or right) that will compress inward next, so players can tailor their placement of blocks to best deal with the walls, which can remove blocks from the field if there is no more room for them after the board gets compressed.

A player's score in a game of Compression is calculated by a number of different factors. Getting rid of as many blocks as possible in one sweep will reward a player with a lot of points, but finishing a level early is important as well, as all available empty squares are worth 50 points each. The game has a full set of leaderboard features via OpenFeint, which should please anyone who is into achievement points and all of the community features that OF offers.

Compression's art uses a rather dark palette unusual in puzzle games, but everything is done in a clean resolution, so the game looks great on the iPhone screen. The game's music is good, but not great, although the track does feature a slow drumbeat that nicely matches up with the dropping of the falling blocks.

Compression is one of those puzzle games that seems to get everything right. The core gameplay is different enough to set it apart from the umpteen-million other match-three games on the App Store and simultaneously familiar enough that anyone can pick up the game and be relatively adept within minutes. This is a game that should give players something fun to distract themselves with for a very long time.

UPDATE: Give the game a try with the just-released Compression Lite [App Store] featuring five playable levels as a free download.

App Store Link: Compression, $0.99 , Compression Lite, Free

I had plans for a highly productive evening yesterday, then I discovered Blockoban [App Store], a simple block sliding game that not only is a ton of fun but also serves as an excellent example of a free trial that is upgraded to the full version via an in-app purchase. Blockoban is the latest game to make its way to the iPhone from developer BonusLevel.org's array of free flash games, the first of which was Moonlights [$1.99 / Free], a structure building physics game we enjoyed in our review.

Like any good puzzle game for the iPhone, the core gameplay elements are both simple and approachable. Controls are implemented well utilizing standard swiping gestures to move pieces around along with pinching gestures to zoom in and out for more precise control– A feature which becomes vital in the later levels which are much larger than the easier ones.

An in-game tutorial walks you through the concept behind the game. On the simplest levels, you need to slide blocks of different colors in to the spaces on the game board with corresponding colors. When you slide a block, it moves until it collides with something, and levels often require quite a bit of planning as you figure out where everything needs to be moved and in what order to end up in the correct positions.

As you progress through the game, new block types are introduced that behave differently and require new strategies to deal with. Meanwhile, every move you make is tracked and optionally uploaded to the Plus+ powered online leaderboards along with whatever achievements you managed to earn along the way.

A solid puzzle game with colorful graphics, good music, and fun gameplay would usually be a slam dunk alone, but Blockoban takes things a step further with the implementation of many more small features which combine in to a game which far exceeded my expectations.

First of all, Blockoban is completely free to try. There is only one version of the game to download that includes both the tutorial and a pack of 100 free levels. If you make it through that and want more, a pack of an additional 820 levels can be purchased inside of the game for $1.99. Optionally, if you're stuck on a hard level you can buy the solutions pack for another $1.99 to watch levels get solved move by move.

You have unlimited undos, and I've yet to find myself in a situation where I just need to completely start a level over as I can quickly undo to before things started to go pear shaped. Blockoban also saves exactly where you are when you quit the game (a feature more games need to have) and if you use Plus+, your game state is also saved online, synchronizing your saved game across any device of yours that is also logged in to your Plus+ account– Another particularly handy feature especially if you own both an iPhone and iPod touch.

If you somehow manage to make it through the 920 different puzzles, each of the five difficulty levels also include a "map generator" which whips up a randomly created puzzle for you to solve. There's even an online level editor where you can submit levels that are then reviewed by the Blockoban team for potential inclusion in to "official" level packs.

Blockoban is a lot of fun, and the single free version that is unlockable to the full version does a great job at making sure you enjoy it and know what you're getting in to before you buy it– In fact, you aren't even given the option to upgrade until you've completed the tutorial. If you like puzzle games, you need to give Blockoban a shot. If you're a developer, it's also worth a peek to see a really great implementation of a free to paid in-game microtransaction system.

App Store Link: Blockoban, Free
(Fully unlocked game, $1.99 or $3.98 with optional solutions pack.)

Aztec Quest [App Store] by Clickgamer is in a unique, 3D puzzle game. The game can be best described as an isometric ball-drop game, but what at first seems to be a simple puzzle game becomes interesting and complex when players discover the intricacies of its full-blown physics engine. Aztec Quest is one of those rare, unique entries into the puzzle genre that could potentially be addictive for everyone who tries it.

At the beginning of each level, Aztec Quest hands players a number of different types of pieces or simple machines which will be used in order to get a small ball from the dragonhead (the origin point for the ball) to the diamond (your target in each level). These pieces are to be dragged with a finger to an open slot on the game board from the bank at the bottom of the screen. This may sound easy, but the game has a specific way in mind for these challenges to be completed, so pieces can only be placed on highlighted parts of the game board.

Players usually only have access to five unique types of pieces per level (the rollers, spring pad, tube, hammer, and catapult) but several of these pieces come in four different flavors that changes the direction they move the ball in; e.g. there are separate catapults that launch the ball up, down, left, or right. There are also warp pads in later levels, and the way that these pads function will force players to use critical thinking to succeed.

There are a full 50 preloaded levels in Aztec Quest, but the real headliners here are the community features. The game allows players access to a complete level creator that gives them the freedom to do pretty much anything they'd like in-game, and created levels can be uploaded to an online database for the game. Alternatively, any level that an player creates can be downloaded for free, giving Aztec Quest potentially unlimited replayability.

During my time with the Aztec Quest I found that it was always a lot of fun to figure out a way to beat the levels in a way that the developers never intended. What would have otherwise been a complex, brain-bending challenge can sometimes be solved with only a few pieces through a little ingenious use of the physics system to bounce the ball into places that it normally shouldn't go.

To showcase this type of level manipulation, I uploaded my own level to the Aztec Quest servers. Search for "Toucharcade Rigney Challenge" and try to beat my level. There is one part of that level in particular that will require you to use a piece in a way that you wouldn't normally. PM me (I'm RKRigney in the forums) if you successfully complete the level and send me a picture of the way that you went about doing it. I don't have any prizes to give out, but I will bestow upon you "mad street cred."

Completing any downloaded player-created level will earn a player points. These points don't really have a practical application in Aztec Quest, but the game does calculate your worldwide rank based on these points, so those who wish to rise to the top can keep easy tabs on their progress. As of the time of this writing the current #1 spot is held by "Lbhb," who has 161,550 points, so to anybody who wants to knock that guy from his throne, I wish you great luck.

There's something oddly satisfying and fun about solving the puzzles, and figuring out creative, unusual ways to do them is especially fun. The online and community features are especially well fleshed-out, and the only real thing that I feel like is missing would be the ability to save online levels to the device for later play, but the developers have said in our forum's official thread for the game that they are considering adding this feature as well in a future update.

Those who like some good, challenging, pick-up-and-play gameplay will likely find something to love in this game, and I can't wait to see what creative types come up with via the online level creator. There is a lite version available on the app store, so no one should miss out on Aztec Quest completely.

App Store Link: Aztec Quest, $0.99, Aztec Quest Lite, Free

iPhone developer The Voxel Agents has recently released Train Conductor [App Store], a pick-up chaos management game that should get the attention of Flight Control and Harbor Master fans.

Train Conductor, like the other aforementioned titles, involves safely getting a series of vehicles to their designated destination. In this game, the vehicles in question are trains and, as such, it's not a matter of drawing an arbitrary path to said destination, but routing the trains from track to proper track.

Each screen is filled with up to five, numbered, parallel train tracks. After a brief warning signal, numbered trains enter the screen along these track — in both directions — and the task at hand is to draw connecting tracks to get each train to its designated track. A tap on any train stops it on its track, and a fast-forward control allows for moving the game along when all on-screen trains are sorted. It sounds like a more simple take on the formula than that of the better known time management games in the App Store — and in a way, it is — but as the developer's video illustrates, things can get hectic pretty fast.

In all, there are eight progressively harder levels across four Australian locales. Certain levels feature a few twists, such as especially long and fast Gold Rush Trains, Demon Trains, and even Ghost Trains in the Graveyard Shift mode where spectral trains don't collide and action ramps up fast. Plus+ network integration tracks global awards and leaderboards.

See the developer's demonstration video to feel the action.

iPhone gamers on the go will find Train Conductor to be a game particularly well-suited to quick, pick-up play sessions. It's right into the action and in moments you're in the heat of the connecting track shuffle. In assessing the game for this writeup, I found it hard to put down and expect to spend some real just-for-fun time with Train Conductor over the next few months.

App Store Link: Train Conductor, $1.99 (limited time)