When Plants vs. Zombies [App Store] was originally announced on April 1st last year, PC gamers everywhere (myself included) were unsure if Popcap's newly revealed game was part of an elaborate April Fool's Day hoax or not. A little more than a month later, the game was released and not only saw universal acclaim from the gaming media resulting in an 88 on Metacritic, but also earned the title of Popcap's fastest selling game of all time.

In Plants vs. Zombies, Popcap takes the standard tower defense formula and greatly simplifies it. Instead of a path to build towers along, you drop seeds in your yard which then grow in to plants that have various offensive or defensive capabilities. The yard is organized in a grid, and zombies move straight across the row they spawn on, munching (or in some cases jumping or flying over) anything that they come in contact with.

A gauge on the top of the screen shows how close you are to the end of the level, with flags indicating when big waves of zombies are going to come. When you clear a stage, you're often awarded with the seeds of one more of the nearly 50 included plants. This seemingly constant progression does a great job of keeping you interested, as it always seems like you have a new toy to play with. To shake things up even more, mini game levels are mixed in, including a bowling game of sorts, a whack-a-mole game with zombies, and others.

Originally designed to be played with a mouse, Popcap did an excellent job of porting Plants vs. Zombies to the iPhone. The resource required to build your defenses is sunlight, and in the PC version feverishly moving your mouse around to click on the small suns falling from the top of the screen got tiring (especially when playing on a laptop with a touchpad). On the iPhone, the sunlight mechanic is also in place, but seems to work so much better when you only have to tap the falling suns to collect them.

Interface elements have been made smaller to dedicate more screen space to your yard, and some things have been moved around. Your available seeds have been moved from the top of the screen to the left, and to plant one all you need to do is tap it then tap the grid square of your lawn where you want it placed. Alternatively, you can tap the seed icon then drag your finger around your lawn. This causes both the X and Y axis of the square you're currently selecting to light up which effectively put an end to me accidentally placing seeds in squares I didn't mean to.

Plants vs. Zombies is absolutely loaded with high quality animations, excellent cartoonish zombies, and silly dialog between your neighbor/shopkeeper Crazy Dave and even notes from the zombies themselves. Throughout the game you'll defend your front lawn during the day, at night, then defend your back yard which introduces water plants that can only be planted in your pool.

As you advance through levels you will come across many more zombies than just the standard run of the mill mindless brain-muncher. There's a Michael Jackson zombie that causes others to rise from gravestones following a Thriller-like dance. There's also zombies that have armored themselves with screen doors, traffic cones, buckets, football pads, and other equally ridiculous equipment. 25 different zombies in all are included, and one end-boss. Each zombie even has their own profile inside the in-game almanac, and they're really worth a look once you unlock it.

Plants vs. Zombies performs well on both my iPhone 3G and 3GS. I did experience some slowdown when there were tons of zombies and projectiles on screen, but overall this didn't cause a problem playing through the game as the only time there was enough things happening on-screen to cause slowdown was at the very end of some levels where you already have your yard fully covered and are just waiting for the last wave of zombies to die.

On the iPhone, Plants vs. Zombies only includes the main story and a quick play mode that is unlocked once you've beaten the game that will allow you to play a few different scenarios and the various mini games you came across in story mode. The endless survival mode from the PC version is nowhere to be found, which is very disappointing, especially since I imagine quite a few people excited about Popcap porting the game to the iPhone have already completed the story mode on the PC.

There is only one difficulty level, and if you're a veteran of tower defense games, Plants vs. Zombies will likely be very easy for you. Personally, I love the tower defense genre, and being able to make it all the way through Plants vs. Zombies without much difficulty at all hasn't stopped me from playing through the game multiple times on my computer, and I'm enjoying the iPhone version just as much. I'm not sure what it is about Popcap games, but similar to Peggle and Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies never seems to get old.

The 88 Metacritic score of the original Plants vs. Zombies (complete with 100's from multiple sources) just goes to show how great this game is. The iPhone port is absolutely phenomenal, and even though it's lacking a few game modes, there's always hope for them to be implemented in the future either via an update or a DLC add-on. There isn't a lite version, but there is a free Flash demo that I highly recommend trying if this is the first you've heard of Plants vs. Zombies.

App Store Link: Plants vs. Zombies, $2.99

Every now and then a game comes along that just dazzles and blows you away by getting things exactly right. Such a game was released into the App Store yesterday by Venan Entertainment.  That game is Space Miner: Space Ore Bust [App Store].  In short, it's Asteroids meets the RPG. But that description really doesn't do the game justice.

Space Miner places you in the role of the nephew of good ole' Uncle Jebediah Gritstone, proprietor of the galactic Gritstone Mining Station. Uncle Jeb has hired you on to help with the ore mining and it's with much excitement that you make your way to his mining station in your veritable space jalopy. Once on board, things get complicated (it's a long story, enjoy it in-game) and Uncle Jeb is desperately counting on you to go out into the neighboring sectors, blast asteroids, and bring back the precious ore contained within. The more ore you collect, the bigger your cut of the profits. But the pitiful ship you start off with is hardly up to the task.

As you accumulate profits, the money can be spent in Uncle Jeb's shop, where more powerful ships, weapons, shields, ore collectors, power plants, and the like can be purchased. It doesn't take long to find yourself sitting in a decent ship with multiple ore blasters, a sizable cargo bay, and an ore collector that can get the job done. And the whole package is done up with a great deal of spot-on humorous dialog and even an amusing banjo-based audio track that fits ole' Uncle Jeb's operation to a T. (There's no doubt that he's got a still hidden somewhere on that rock of his.)

The game features highly configurable touch-screen controls (onscreen buttons, analog stick) that work nicely, 50 in-game achievements, and online score tracking via the Plus+ network.

Now, with all the heavy RPG aspects and the well done comedy, you might think the game is light on shooter action when it comes to dealing with those asteroids. Happily, that's not at all the case. The asteroid combat system is an example of shooter gold — for an Asteroids-like experience, it really couldn't be any better. And it's not just asteroids you're fighting. There are competing robot miners bent on stealing your ore that must be dealt with. Not to mention the occasional encounter with the daunting gasteroids… (Yea, they're about as bad as they sound.)

Aside from the standard goal of blasting asteroids to mine ore, there are a total of 24 missions to complete, such as rescuing helpless tourists floating through space (think Dave Pool), destroying a massive robot enemy in order to save a heartless CEO, and the like. There really is an impressive degree of gameplay variation here that just keeps things moving. In my experience, you really have to be careful not to lose track of time while playing this one. "Hard to put down" understates it.

See the developer's game trailer for a look at the action.

Space Miner: Space Ore Bust really is an App Store gem, given the unusually broad appeal I feel surrounds the title. Shooter fans definitely have a lot to be excited about, as do RPG fans — but even those that usually find themselves impatient in an RPG setting should enjoy Space Miner. The RPG layer is not only light, but easily manageable and delivered with a healthy dose of humor. It strikes a balance between two different gaming styles — shooter and RPG — like I've not experienced since playing Activision's Battle Zone, which married action and real-time strategy with similar elegance. Without a question, this is one of the best games I've played since the App Store went live over a year and a half ago. And you don't need to take my word for it; our forum readers are going nuts over this one.

Whatever sort of gamer you are, don't miss Space Miner: Space Ore Bust.

App Store Link: Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, $4.99

From Revolution Software, the same people who brought the iPhone the fantastic remake of Beneath a Steel Sky, comes Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars: The Director's Cut [$6.99], a remake of a point-and-click adventure from '96 that many consider to be one of the greatest games within its genre. As we covered in our preview two different versions of this remake were already published on the DS and Wii in March of 2009, and the new iPhone version is a bit of a mixture of the two, adding full voice acting and other features that the DS version lacked.

Broken Sword, which was renamed Circle of Blood for its release in the USA, has been given a significant facelift. Whereas the original version of the game focused almost solely on the male character, George Stobbart, The Director's Cut does a better job of fleshing out the back story of the game's female protagonist, Nicole Collard. The game opens as Nicole prepares for an interview that unexpectedly becomes a murder investigation when the man she was set to interview is shot by a mysterious mime. Other modifications to the game include new puzzles that are specific to the iPhone platform and new art and animation from Dave Gibbons, who you might be familiar with through his work on Watchmen.

The story in Broken Sword, as in most point-and-click adventure games, is the most important element of the game, so those who haven't played a version of the game before will be pleased to find that Broken Sword's writing is excellent, and the story is quite gripping. I particularly enjoyed the self-depreciating sense of humor that Nicole occasionally displays with her commentary, and George is a comedic parody of an American from a European perspective, making him a fairly amusing character as well.

For a point-and-click adventure, Broken Sword does a lot to make itself easily accessible. In an intelligent move by the developers, a simple finger swipe will reveal everything that George or Nicole can interact within a single screen, preventing players from having to poke around the screen randomly until they find something that they can interact with. The game's many puzzles range from brain games wherein an abstract combination of collected items must be used to progress to a lock-picking game that's nearly identical to the iPhone's own Blocked to a ridiculously complex cypher that players must harness incredible code-breaking skills to crack.

Luckily, the game has a built-in walkthrough in the form of a hint system that can be easily accessed if players want to give up and find the answer to a puzzle. For each puzzle there are several hints, each one more explicit than the last, with the last one usually being a straight-up answer to the puzzle for players who just couldn't figure things out. The genius of both the "swipe-to-reveal" mechanic and the hint system is that it's possible to never use either if a player doesn't want to. Some of the hardcore fans of the original PC version of the game that're picking up the iPhone version will want a more "pure" experience, and that option is available to them, but softies like myself can still enjoy the game without having to resort to an online walkthrough.

Broken Sword's creative touch interface works like a charm on the iPhone screen, but it was the one-two punch of the game's fantastic soundtrack and art that really hooked me. The piano-heavy orchestral soundtrack is so good that I purchased it from the iTunes store so I could listen to it later, and the fact that every line of dialogue in the game is voiced makes this a game that must be experienced with headphones. Dave Gibbon's contribution to the art and animation was an invaluable addition, as the painted backgrounds and the fluid animation adds a certain appealing touch to the game.

Even though I've never been a huge fan of point-and-click adventure games, the story and all around high-quality production values of Broken Sword sucked me in like a good book. Whether you're an old fan of the original game, a newcomer to the series, or even someone who's never played a point-and-click adventure before, Broken Sword is a game with mass appeal that will draw you in.

App Store Link: Broken Sword: The Director's Cut, $6.99

Back in 1997 when the first Grand Theft Auto hit the PC, I doubt anyone at Rockstar (known as DMA Design at the time) expected it to spawn a series that would span ten different games and four expansions over the next thirteen years. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars [App Store] for the iPhone is an excellent adaptation of a game previously only available on the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. These prior versions of the game were met with universal acclaim, and according to Metacritic.com Chinatown Wars for the DS holds the title of the highest rated game available for the platform. On the PSP, Chinatown Wars is a close second, beaten only by God of War: Chains of Olympus by a single point.

The recently released iPhone Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars seems to be a hybrid of both the DS and PSP versions, with graphical quality that lies somewhere in between the two games, tutorial elements that reference PSP buttons, as well as some of the cell shaded graphics and all the stylus mini games from the DS. The main difference is how the controls have been adapted to the on-screen virtual joystick and buttons of the iPhone. Like other games that use a similar control scheme, there is always an inherent lack of precision without physical buttons that take a little getting used to, but this didn't hamper my enjoyment of Chinatown Wars in the least bit.

While on foot, a virtual joystick controls character movement, with a button for using whatever weapon you have selected (or your fists) as well as buttons to kick and leap over short fences. When you approach a car, a button appears on the bottom of the screen that you can touch to get in. If you're stealing a parked car, this will often trigger a timed touchscreen mini game where you need to turn a screwdriver in the ignition, twist some wires together, or even insert a PDA and crack the car's security system in order to get the car running without triggering its alarm.

These sequences are pretty neat the first few times you do them, and do an excellent job at adding suspense to police chases as you hastily hotwire a car before the cops converge on your location. Once you're in a car, one of five in-game radio stations start playing and the on-screen controls switch to buttons for accelerating, braking, firing your gun, and by default two buttons to steer right or left. Also available is an analog stick for steering, configurable in the game's options.

The biggest control hurdle new players will come across is learning how to cope with Chinatown Wars' driving assist system, which will automatically keep your car going straight down a road. This can be disabled, but without it perfectly lane splitting on a motorcycle seems to be nearly impossible. I've found myself preferring the default steering buttons over the optional joystick because very little control is required when driving. You really only need to hold a direction to turn, or just tap a direction to make minor adjustments to your position on a road. It feels a little strange at first, but after you make it through the tutorial missions you will be flying through Liberty City without issue.

The plot of the game is classic Grand Theft Auto, with an asian spin, made obvious by the game's title. You play as Huang Lee, the son of a recently murdered Triad boss who comes to Liberty City and unsurprisingly enough winds up knee deep in gang drama. Initially you complete tasks assigned by your Uncle, but it doesn't take long for you to meet other contacts who also require your services. The game continues like any GTA game with missions that involve killing people, stealing cars, driving people around, and other often illegal activities.

Of course, like other games in the series, once you complete the short array of tutorial missions you can disregard the main storyline entirely and instead spend your time roaming around the city, completing the various submissions, seeing how long you can survive with a high wanted level, and dealing drugs to increase your net worth.

Chinatown Wars is packed with a surprisingly fun and full featured drug economy that is highly reminiscent of the Texas Instruments calculator game Dope Wars (Originally a DOS game released in the mid-80's.) that I spent an embarrassing amount of my teenage life playing. As you drive around the city you will meet drug dealers, who are all selling or buying various drugs at different prices. Prices change depending on whose turf you're in, but you have to exercise caution because if you get busted with a car load of coke, you lose it all.

Drug dealing is just one of the many other activites that exist inside the game. Of course Chinatown Wars also has the standard taxi, ambulance, firefighter, and other driving games along with tons of secret items and locations to find. There are scratch off lottery tickets you can try your luck on, and random encounters with pedestrians who will also have various things to ask of you. The amount of depth in Chinatown Wars is unbelievable.

Since the inception of the App Store, quite a few developers have tried their hand at making an open-world crime game. Without much serious competition, most of these games seemed quite good– But even the best pre-Chinatown Wars iPhone games pale in comparison to a real Rockstar Grand Theft Auto. The level of depth is completely unmatched, but most importantly, Liberty City feels alive.

Games like Gangstar are far too sterile, with spotless city streets, stereotypical characters with no personality, and very little to make the environment the game takes place in feel like anything more than a basic sandbox. The streets of Liberty City are filthy, filles with cars, pedestrians, trains, people fighting, and emergency vehicles racing through the streets responding to randomly spawned traffic accidents. The mood and lighting of the city changes with the clock in-game, and even though the story and characters you come across aren't really anything revolutionary compared to other Grand Theft Auto games, the people you meet are usually amusing and of course the game is absolutely loaded with expletives and other racy material that the GTA clones haven't dared come close to.

There are a few issues with Chinatown Wars, the most serious being the lack of a solid targeting system. When you hold down the attack button to shoot or punch, you simply attack whoever you're facing. There isn't a way to cycle through targets, and the only way to stay locked on one target is by holding the attack button which often results in quite a few wasted bullets. It seems like there is a lot of lost potential in not having a touch-based targeting mode.

Chinatown Wars also doesn't have any kind of save state system to save your progress if you get a call or need to answer a SMS when you're in the middle of a mission. Instead the game just quits, and the next time you launch it you're back at your apartment. This can be annoying, but thankfully Chinatown Wars was designed to be a portable game, and as such the missions are usually never more than a few minutes long so the amount of progress you lose is fairly minimal.

One of my favorite things about Grand Theft Auto games is the soundtracks, but the radio stations in Chinatown Wars are fairly limited and it seems that all the pedestrian chatter was also cut. However, once you get sucked in to the game these problems fade away as you immerse yourself in Liberty City.

Chinatown Wars is a massive game, so much so that the few things I've mentioned in this review barely even scratch the surface of what there is to do and all the different features that help you to do them. An excellent in-game GPS system guides you around the city, periodic email messages tip you off to new missions and other things to do, safehouses scattered around Liberty City can be purchased once you're wealthy enough, and there's even multiple save slots so more than one person can play the game on a single device.

Performance on my iPhone 3GS is absolutely outstanding, and according to forum members, Chinatown Wars also runs without issue on the entire iPhone and iPod touch product line. The game is restricted and won't install on the first generation iPod touch, but apparently with a little tinkering can be played just fine. Something worth mentioning is while the download itself is only 188MB, Chinatown Wars requires a little over 600MB free on your device to install.

There is so much to do in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars that completing the whole thing will likely necessitate a trip to GameFAQs to consult the various guides and maps to find every hidden object and complete every mission– A task that will likely take days of concurrent playtime. For $9.99 App Store gamers can get their hands on a game that sells for two to three times as much on other platforms, representing a substantial value even at a price point reserved for "premium" games on the platform.

Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's vice president of sales and marketing described Chinatown Wars' sales on the DS as "frustrating", and sadly the PSP version didn't perform any better. In less than 24 hours following its release on the App Store, Chinatown Wars is already the #1 top-grossing app– Something that hopefully other giants of the gaming industry are noticing, as I doubt I'm alone in hoping even more of these "full" console games make their way to the iPhone.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

If you're at all interested in open-world crime games, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is by far the best available on the platform and simply cannot be passed up. The sheer amount of content, the amazing graphics, and gameplay that will keep you coming back for more whether you choose to follow the story or rampage through Liberty City on your own is absolutely fantastic.

Now, if you'd excuse me, I've got $50,000 worth of heroin to unload.

App Store Link: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, $9.99

One of my favorite things about the App Store are all of these insane game concepts that likely would have never seen the light of day if it wasn't for the low barrier of entry in to iPhone development. Discussed during our most recent podcast, Sword & Poker [App Store] is a game we greatly enjoyed with an odd combination of gameplay elements that surprisingly enough work very well together.

At the core is a card-based strategy/adventure game where battles take place by making poker hands on a 5×5 grid. When each game starts, nine cards are dealt in to the center of the grid and you take turns with the AI opponent placing pairs of the four cards you're dealt on the perimeter of the game board to form hands down, across, or diagonally. Jokers are wild, and as you play more hands a gauge in the bottom left slowly fills which allows you to swap a card for a joker as well.

There is a surprising amount of strategy in placing cards, as you need to look at what you've been dealt to try to determine the best order to play them as your opponent could also have plans for the same squares you hope to utilize on your next turn. Furthermore, as the game board fills up, you can potentially form multiple hands. A well-planned hand placed on the diagonal could also form many other hands going down or across.

The "Sword" portion of Sword & Poker comes from the roleplaying game layered on top of these poker battles, which could practically stand alone as its own game. Instead of just playing poker battles of increasing difficulty, the games are structured as floors in a dungeon and the challenge differs based on the type of monster you're fighting.

The various monsters have different amounts of coins, which is how your life is measured in game. Forming a hand like a flush subtracts far more coins from your opponent's coin purse than a simple pair, and when either you or the monster you're fighting runs out of coins the battle is over.

As you get farther in the game, the shop eventually unlocks where you can use the money you win from battles. Aside from upgrading your coin purse to increase your stamina in battles, you also can buy a number of different weapons. These weapons change your damage output, and some of the later ones you come across also have special abilities when you form particular poker hands.

Weapon selection adds yet another layer of strategy on top of Sword & Poker, as some weapons are bottom heavy, and do more damage when you form simple hands like one or two pairs. Other weapons are top-heavy, and while they do very little damage when you match pairs, they inflict devastating strikes upon laying down hands like straights or flushes.

In addition, certain weapons (along with some monsters) have special effects associated with certain hands. For instance, the thief's knife I'm using now steals a card from my opponent's hand when I form any kind of straight. Other special effects include shielding yourself from damage, causing your opponent to skip a turn, and more.

This is barely scratching the surface of Sword & Poker, a game which nearly defines the term "a hidden gem of the App Store." There are a few things that are strange about the game, such as there seems to be a huge benefit in passing your turn to make sure you are able to play the last two cards of each game board as you're often guaranteed more than one poker hand.

Also, as you progress in the game, poker battles can drag on for quite a while especially when fighting harder "boss" monsters. These fights can be a lot of fun, but the battle music is a painfully short loop that quickly becomes very repetitive as it has a very clear start and finish. However, these are merely minor complaints for an otherwise fantastic game.

If you like poker, RPG's, or just strange games that actually turn out to be a lot of fun you owe it to yourself to at least try the five levels in Sword & Poker Lite [App Store]. We discussed the game on our last podcast, and there is a thread on the forums where several people have posted about how much they're enjoying it if you need any more reason to give the game a try.

App Store Link: Sword & Poker, 99¢ – Sword & Poker Lite, Free

Few games have generated the amount of hype that Gameloft's N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance [App Store] has, and even fewer have managed to live up to that same hype. NOVA is one of those rare instances where a upcoming game is everything we wanted and more. It's not perfect, but there aren't many games to even compare it to on the platform. NOVA feels like a complete video game experience, something which is quite rare indeed on the landscape of bite sized games that make up the App Store.

In Nova you play as Karl Wardin, an ex-space marine who has been reactivated to investigate some strange alien activity in a futuristic setting where the Earth has depleted its resources and no longer can sustain life, forcing humanity to live on nearby orbiting colonies. Admittedly, the plot isn't anything to write home about and the voice acting ranges from passable to downright cringe-worthy at times– Especially whenever Karl himself speaks. Thankfully, the gameplay itself more than makes up for these shortfalls.

The first series of levels will leave you wandering around on a space ship while you're guided by various characters communicating over the radio. An arrow guides you from objective to objective, and gameplay amounts to simply following this arrow, killing anything that moves, and flipping switches to activate or unlock different objects and areas. Deadspace fans will feel right at home when the game asks you to traverse the hull of the space ship, even going as far as to mention enabling your magnetic boots. What do you do while you're outside the ship? Run from pressurized area to pressurized area while avoiding incoming asteroids of course. (If you haven't played Deadspace, you do exactly this several times throughout the game– The hull is even laid out similarly.)

Eventually after fixing a few different parts of the ship and killing oodles of aliens, you will make your way to the bridge to initiate the self destruct sequence and escape back to your ship. You then fly down to a planet with beautifully rendered lush forests which also happens to be infested by these same (although slightly different colored) aliens. The rest of the game continues in a similar fashion, with different characters telling you where to go and what to do across 13 different levels that take place in five distinctly different environments.

The run and gun action is broken up by mini games, a level where you man the turrent on a warthog-like truck from Halo, and even a couple boss fights. Scattered throughout the levels are locked crates which must be opened by playing a brief mini game where you move different objects around on a grid to solve a puzzle where you're directing a laser beam from its source to the target. None of these are particularly difficult, and depending on how you feel about mini games you will either find these to be enjoyable distractions or just too annoying to bother with. Thankfully, it seems like there is enough ammo dropped by enemies and laying on the ground that the crates are optional but you will be forced to solve a few of these puzzles throughout the game as you "hack" things to progress.

Similar to Halo, your life is measured by a shield meter at the top of the screen which depletes when you take damage and recharges slowly afterwards. Your shield gauge also serves as your oxygen supply when you're in space, and your super abilities also take off a chunk of your shield's power. Super abilities? Oh yes, straight out of Metroid Prime you will slowly gain new abilities such as the ability to freeze enemies, shoot a charged up energy beam, and even run faster with speed boots.

If you've played Modern Combat: Sandstorm [$4.99 / Free], the controls in NOVA will be instantly familiar to you. If not, the game uses a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen for movement, and moving your thumb around the right side of the screen changes your view around. Different buttons frame the screen that do things like fire your weapon, toss a grenade, change weapons, reload, etc. There are two other included control schemes, one where the screen is split in half and moving your left thumb anywhere controls your movement while your right controls your view (essentially just removing the virtual joystick) and another with two virtual joysticks where you tap the screen to fire. I've found the default controls to be fine, although I did spend some time fiddling with the sensitivity.

Another nice feature is the ability to move all of the elements of the game's UI around. I've moved the reload button closer to the fire button because I'm a compulsive reloader in first person shooters, but you can customize it however you want. (Although currently this option only seems available by adjusting your controls mid-game, and not from the main menu.) Strangely enough, even though it seems that Gameloft has put a great deal of thought in to different control options and customizations, the ability to invert the Y-axis of the camera control is notably absent. What will leave you scratching your head even more regarding the lack of invert look is that Modern Combat: Sandstorm, a game which shares a similar engine to NOVA includes Y-axis inversion. You can however flip the screen orientation, something that should make iPod touch users happy.

The performance of the game is phenomenal on the iPhone 3GS with fast load times, high frame rates, and everything else you could ask for in a first person shooter. Meanwhile, reader reports all the way down to the slowest device in the iPod family have been said to be smooth. Even while playing online in NOVA's four player deathmatch mode, which surprisingly enough seems to be working just fine for everyone, a nice change of pace from Gameloft's recently released Modern Combat: Sandstorm multiplayer update.

Playing online requires both WiFi and a Gameloft Live account. Registering for Gameloft Live is easy, and once you're online you will have the option to play deathmatch or look at the worldwide leaderboards of players with the most points and kills. When creating a deathmatch game, available options include choosing one of the five maps, as well as enabling or disabling weapon stay and aim assist. Games can be set with a time limit or a frag limit, and both can be set to none to play for as long as you'd like.

When joining a game, you're thrown in to a lobby which lists available games that have open slots for you to join. Those of you waiting for an Eliminate "killer" will be disappointed to discover that currently there doesn't seem to be any random matchmaking, or the ability to have friends-only private matches. All you can do is create a game and hope that three of your friends join it before other people do.

Despite its limitations, online multiplayer (as well as local bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer) is a lot of fun and performs surprisingly well. I haven't come across any lag or connection issues, and so far it just works– Although the true test of NOVA multiplayer will be how well it holds up once players start getting good at the game and scrutinizing the weapon balance. It's too early to say how large the online community will get and what kind of staying power NOVA's online presence will have, but it seems quite enjoyable right now.

If you're a fan of first person shooters, or any of the previously mentioned console classics that NOVA is obviously inspired by, then you too will also likely really enjoy NOVA. It's one of the most ambitious iPhone games I've played so far, and despite the questionable originality of the game I've really got to hand it to Gameloft for creating such an amazing iPhone experience.

App Store Link: N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, $6.99

We got our hands on EA's upcoming Need For Speed: Shift this week, and after spending the last few days playing through the game I'm confident in saying that EA has succeeded in bringing yet another amazing racing game to the platform. With in-game options to tune the difficulty to the point that your car is almost driving itself, Shift is not only an extremely accessible racing game, but also can be a very technical driving experience for veterans of the genre with all of the assists turned off and the manual transmission mode enabled.

Believe it or not, Need For Speed: Shift is the thirteenth in the Need For Speed series which originally debuted all the way back in 1994 with Road & Track magazine heavily advising on both the sound design and vehicle physics. Since then, the Need For Speed saga has been through many iterations covering everything from super cars to underground street racing to police chases.

With recent Need For Speed games taking sharp turns towards the arcade racing genre (Such as Need For Speed: Undercover [App Store] for the iPhone.) it's nice to see EA getting back on course with what feels much more like an actual racing simulation in Shift.

The 20 included real licensed cars can have both their visuals and performance upgraded. In the visuals department you can add a body kit, change paint colors, buy ridiculously huge spoilers, and change out your wheels. If you care more about your car actually going faster than looking cool, you can upgrade its top speed, acceleration, nitrous oxide system, as well as tires and suspension. Each of these upgrades come in multiple stages and once you've hit a car's limit to remain competitive in races you will need to buy new cars.

Cars in game must be bought with winnings from races, and available cars are slowly unlocked as you progress through the game. Initially, Chicago is the only locale you have access to, but both London and Tokyo are eventually unlocked granting access to all 18 different courses included in the game. In each locale you can participate in seven different types of events which range from standard races to drifting competitions, time trials, and the driver duel which pits you against a single AI opponent.

Each event has an associated set of stars that can be earned while racing to unlock additional events. You will always earn stars for being in the top three, with additional available stars for doing things like being in first place for an entire lap, never going off the track, and beating the track's lap record. These stars go hand in hand with the in-game score system which tallies points for both "precision" and "aggression" based on different actions.

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Jeff McCord's iPhone remake of the 1980s classic Sword of Fargoal has arrived in the App Store. We were excited to preview the iPhone remake of this dungeon crawler back in November.

In a nutshell, the Sword of Fargoal places the player within the top level of a deep series of dungeons with the quest of seeking out the legendary "Sword of Fargoal" and escaping with it from the depths of said dungeons. Complicating matters is the fact that the layout of each dungeon level is randomly generated when the player enters it, and that the dungeons are all initially bathed in darkness, revealing themselves only as the player explores. Those lucky enough to locate the sword have only 2,000 seconds to find their way out of the dungeons which, even on the way up, are also randomly generated.

The iPhone version features completely redone graphics utilizing OpenGL ES to add depth to the stony visuals. It allows for pinch-and-spread zoom control to focus on the action at hand and features an optional on-screen mini map to aid in negotiating the twists and turns of each dungeon level. What's more, the developer has implemented a full, real-time music synthesizer system for the game which delivers sound that, while ringing of retro, surpasses the quality of the C64's SID-based score.

But, really, what makes the game so well suited for the iPhone is its casual nature as compared to the typical roguelike. And that's not to say the game is shallow or light on dungeon crawling action, but rather we feel it's simply a bit more accessible to the typical gamer than, say, Nethack, Moria, or Rogue thanks to an economy of controls, spells, and the like. Those who've never played a dungeon crawler before might just find themselves drawn in to Sword of Fargoal.

Early impressions from our readers are also quite positive, including great first impressions from the Rogue Touch developer as well as from at least one skeptic. The game is on sale 40% off during its first week.

App Store Link: Sword of Fargoal, $2.99

True Axis' Jet Car Stunts [App Store] has been eagerly anticipated here at Touch Arcade, largely due to impressive previews of its stylish, uniquely crafted game world in which to soar around. Now that we have it in our hands, it is safe to say that our excitement for this game was not remiss: Jet Car Stunts has really set the bar high in both visual appeal and handling.

As explained by the developers in our earlier interview, the clean-lined track design is created by a flat-shading of solid colors that really draw the eye to the engine’s pre-calculated lightmaps. Each of the tracks are set over detailed, eye-catching skymaps that act as contrasting backdrops- the effect culminating in one particular level with a breathtaking sunset casting shadows all over the race track. The developers have previously stated in our forums that as well as looking terrific, this design has allowed them to achieve an impressive 60 frames per second on 3rd generation devices, and a smooth 30 fps on all previous models.

All the visuals in the world however cannot sustain a lacking gameplay design or frustrating controls; two unfortunately common traits of many AppStore releases. Fortunately, Jet Car Stunts sports neither, its simple name belying a surprisingly feature and content-rich racer. There are two markedly different gameplay experiences to be had in Jet Car Stunts; a Platforming mode and a Time Trial mode, with 36 individually crafted tracks to complete between the two.

Platforming mode sees you carefully managing your rocket boost and brake-flaps to perfectly land mind-boggling jumps and death-defying drops. There are 25 tracks to master here, ranging in difficulty from ‘Just learning’ to ‘Impossible’, the latter of which is very true to its name. Platforming, and to a lesser extent, Time Trial mode too, is not something that you will expect to complete on your first or even fifth attempt. To pass each level you must complete the track without retrying more than 10 times. That may sound lenient, but Jet Car Stunts sees you careening off-course at blistering speeds more often than not, until you’re adequately familiar with each turn and have gauged each jump. Fortunately, there are regular checkpoints throughout each level that make each new feat manageable and prevent the game from ever getting frustrating.

Time Trial mode presents 11 tracks of lesser vertical challenge, but which are far more capable of maxing out the speed potential of your jet car. Checkpoints award a much needed time bonus and boost recharge as you wildly drift and rocket your jet car around precarious bends and stomach-wrenching leaps to complete each lap. It’s pleasing to see a racer capable of two very different yet still exciting game play approaches.

Considering the break-neck pace at which Jet Car Stunts is played, it is a credit to the developers that they have managed to fine tuned the accelerometer steering. Acceleration and braking is controlled separately from the boosting and brake-flaps, meaning four buttons must be considered at all times. When in the air, tilting the device up or down alters the pitch of the jet car to achieve desired distance and trajectory, whilst left and right tilting affect the roll of the vehicle. Proper use of air-braking and tilting is critical for success especially in the Platforming levels. Though every now and then you may find your jet car the wrong way up, you never feel as if it is a result of the game controls, but simply due to the need for extra practice with the track. It is also worth noting that there are a variety of different on-screen button configurations available depending on your personal preference.

In addition to all this, Jet Car Stunts boasts OpenFeint integration, with 39 achievements to unlock; gained through feats such as somersaulting, barrel rolling and spinning your jet car, as well as through mastering each track on offer. Online leaderboards for each track in both Platforming and Time Trial will see that the competitive types continue to play Jet Car Stunts for a long while to come. For those simply interested in completing Jet Car Stunts, the time needed to memorize and master the 36 tracks available will certinaly be satisfactory.

All in all, we've been having a great time with this game and highly recommend it. Early impressions pouring in from readers in our discussions forums are also overwhelmingly positive. If you are vaguely interested in a challenging rocket-paced racer with attractive and crafty level designs then you owe it to yourself to check out the break-neck paced racing and fresh visual design of Jet Car Stunts.

App Store Link: Jet Car Stunts, $1.99

We felt somewhat obligated to review a game as huge as Eliminate Pro [App Store]. Following its epic development cycle, it's hard to think of many other games which were as highly anticipated among our community. But it's not just Touch Arcade forum members who have been waiting for Eliminate, as countless other developers have all been anxiously holding their breath to see how successful the microtransaction-powered gameplay is from a business perspective.

If it wasn't apparent by now from reading our other coverage on the game, we really enjoy Eliminate. The classic four player deathmatch gameplay is enhanced with an RPG-style progression system which adds a great deal of depth to an otherwise simple game. Power-ups littered throughout the maps spice up battles, and when it's working as intended, the matchmaking system seems to do a decent job of making sure the game you get thrown in to is reasonably matched.

While we did feel obligated to review Eliminate Pro, since you can download and experience everything in the game for free, there isn't much reason for me to dwell much on the gameplay. Instead, I'll try to clear up some common misconceptions I've seen in comments and in forum posts, along with offering some helpful tips and hints for new players.

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