Earlier this afternoon, Jared and I spent some time puzzling out a couple of the many mysteries of Kairo [$4.99], a first-person puzzle game. The name should kinda sound familiar; Kairo launched on PC and Mac back in October and made some noise in media circles. This version appears to be a straight port, but we're checking in on that to make sure.

In a lot of ways, Kairo is more of an experiential joint than a puzzle game. It just plops you into a weird world and you just ... go. Along the way, you generally get a feel for what you're supposed to be doing and how you're influencing the world.

It's a weird one, for sure, so check out this video to get a better handle on it:

Earlier this afternoon, Jared and I gave Traal [Free] a spin. It's a top-down horror slash puzzle game that tasks you with solving the mystery of a dungeon while avoiding its various inhabitants and spike-y obstacles. Don't let the simplistic, almost retro-y visual design fool you: this thing requires some serious patience and wits.

Look familiar, maybe? Traal first appeared as a flash game. You can play it here with a keyboard. That page, by the way, notes that Traal is the end product of a 48 hour dev cycle, which is kinda blowing our minds.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for something different on iOS, this might be it. We love the ideas and themes, even if bits of the scenario design are a little wonky. Give it a look below:

Earlier this afternoon, Jared and I spent some time with Candy Crush Saga [Free] in a valiant attempt to get inside its head. It's a cutesy, candy-themed match-three that has been making some waves on the App Store charts. After inspection, it seems like the game's campaign is the likeliest reason why it's clicking with so many folks. It's big and it isn't afraid to keep delivering new twists on the core matching formula.

This might not be your cup of tea. We realize that. But it's healthy to see what people are up to and what makes popular games tick. In this case, the game is pretty good. You should check it out:

Earlier this afternoon, Jared and I sat down with Momonga Pinball [$2.99], a pinball game with an impressive layer of presentation slapped on top of it. In the game, you'll play as a flying squirrel tasked with taking down a band of owls that sacked his village and, as if that wasn't enough, kidnapped all the folks who were living in it. In practice, this boils down to flipping the squirrel into targets across a bunch of colorful objective-based levels.

Think pinball, but with adventure game sensibilities thrown in for good measure, and you've got a good idea of what this game is all about. If that word picture doesn't do it for ya, we've got some video below.

We're still not sure about Momonga as a whole. If you don't dig pinball at all, you probably won't dig this. But the visuals are off the chain. See if it clicks with you.

This afternoon Eli and I also spent some time with Temple Run 2, the surprise follow-up to the ground-breaking original. As you'd expect, it's a lot like the first Temple Run, but with a few snazzy new obstacles, upgrades, and characters. Notably, it's rocking a new engine. It looks and plays a lot better overall, and we're guessing it's a lot more modular, too, though that's just speculation.

We're pretty happy with how it turned out, and we're guessing a lot of TR fans will be stoked with it, too. Check it out in action just below, or hey, download it tonight when it hits the App Store for the price of zero dollars.

So, Final Fantasy: All the Bravest is indeed an actual video game, and it'll hit tonight as international releases continue to worm their way across the globe. In brief, it's a frantic, distilled, and "mobilized" take on the series that eschews pillars like exploration and dungeon crawling and even dialogue in favor of focusing purely on the series' combat and equipment mechanics and systems.

In the game, you can control up to 30 different classical Final Fantasy heroes across series of fights against classical villains. To attack, you tap on a character or, as we've discovered, just swipe up and down on the screen to activate all of them. After each attack, characters are smacked with a cool down timer, which keeps them from being able to attack for a few seconds.

Every enemy kills with one hit, regardless if it's just a basic Final Fantasy goblin or one of the horseman of the apocalypse. In addition to being flimsy, heroes are one note: they attack, that's it. You can't activate special skills, you can't target enemies, and they can't buff each other.

Boil it down, and the strategy revolves around raw numbers. The design reflects that. As you level up, you gain the ability to take more characters into battle. When you find a weapon, it's magically auto-equipped to every character of that can use it. Also, you can recruit new hero types on a regular basis, expanding your roster.

There's an emphasis on speed, too. Get slack with attacks, and enemies will shred you. A weird method we've been using is a constant circular swipe, as it'll activate every hero as soon as his or her timer refills. Pushing the bar further, every three hours you'll be able to activate a "Fever" attack that nukes your cool downs and lets you go nuts for a short, but effective, length of time.

If you haven't caught on, this definitely isn't the Final Fantasy you know, but there's a lot of the series' touches present. The presentation is old-school Final Fantasy. The enemies and heroes are, too. The simple "save the world" narrative hooks are all present and accounted for, as well as the late title card.

There's some mobile sensibility thrown in for good measure. When a character goes down, a cool down for a replacement starts. At any point, even if you lose your entire party, you can use an hourglass to replace every member. You can buy these in packs of three, if you're into that sort of thing. Also, you can buy classic named heroes via IAP and buy new arenas set in places from old games. Final Fantasy 7's Midgar is one, for example.

Watch the video to see if it clicks. We're still kinda chewing on ATB as a whole, so we don't have a firm opinion on if it's good or not and why. But we do think the game is an interesting one, especially if you've been riding on the Final Fantasy train since the start. There's a lot of like here.

Earlier this morning, Eli and I spent some time with Wipeout [$1.99]. It's an "old" game by TA Plays standards, but it's an otherwise interesting one because of its staying power in the App Store charts. We took a look at it in this context, and were kinda surprised by how not bad it was. This is a pretty fun physics-based platformer on its own, and we're guessing it hits even harder for fans of the TV show it's based on.

If you didn't know, in Wipeout you're tasked with weaving your character through three platform-based obstacle courses under a certain time limit. Each course is littered with weird, rubber-y machines designed to knock you off the platform. You can fall down as many times as you want. It's the time that matters.

Give it a look if you haven't yet. It's pretty cool in its own way.

Earlier this morning, Eli and I spent some time with Zenonia 5 [Free]. If you've been under a rock, this is the latest iteration in a long-running RPG franchise with a bunch of old-school sensibilities. In the game, you play as a young adventurer charged with saving a kingdom from a vampire-looking dude. Along the way, you'll take a bunch of Collect [X] or Kill [X of X] missions and fiddle around with a complex skill tree full of powers.

We played the first 15 or so minutes of the game together. The footage doesn't really scratch the surface of the scenarios and places you'll see in the game, but we do think it'll give you a good heads up on the general feel of the game. If you've wanted to see more before you jumped in, this might do the trick:

Earlier this morning, Jared and I spent some time with ShaqDown [Free]. It's a side-scrolling brawling game starring Shaq, the former all-star NBA center and video game star. In the game, you're tasked with plowing through hundreds and hundreds of the undead in order to do ... something heroic. We kinda didn't pay attention to that part.

This isn't a brawling game in the traditional sense. In each of the three levels, you'll be presented with three lanes with zombies occupying each. You can ram, uppercut or toss a basketball at the smaller zombies, earning points in the progress. The bigger zombies, however, are invincible and will instantly kill you if you hit them. This is where the lane-switching comes in. Gotta keep moving to avoid the big guys.

If your brain is kinda scrambled by all of that, check out the video. That'll set you straight, more than likely.

Earlier this morning, Jared and I spent some time with Run N' Gun [Free]. It's another endless runner that doesn't do to much to break the mold. In the game, you'll be tasked with the usual: running as far as you can while sliding, jumping, and tilting your way past weird obstacles. It's most notable mechanic is the shooting. During runs, you can shoot little goblin dudes that spit out steady streams of coins.

This is a free-to-play game, so it has a couple of systems that work together to keep you invested in the game's economy. Notably, there's several characters you can buy with the game's control currency.

If you're into endless runners, chances are you'll dig this. But it's so similar to the other games out there, you might burn out quick. Check it out:

We've known since last April that Hello Games was working on an iOS version of their beloved franchise Joe Danger, and in June we finally saw the first screens of it on an actual iOS device. Now, a half a year later and Joe Danger Touch is almost here, and is set to arrive sometime this month. I've been lucky enough to get my hands on a preview build of the game and all I can really say is: WOW. It's simply fantastic so far.

Today I grabbed Brad and his fancy new swiveling microphone arm thingy and we spent some quality "together time" playing some of the early levels in Joe Danger Touch. The thing that stands out to me more than anything is that Joe Danger Touch absolutely feels like a made-for-touchscreen game. The swiping and tapping controls to perform your stunts feel leagues better than if it was some virtual button setup, and the overall presentation in Joe Danger Touch feels completely on par with its console siblings. In other words, it doesn't feel "dumbed down" in the least, more like re-imagined for this intended platform.

I could probably gush some more about Joe Danger Touch but I'll save some of that for when the game actually launches later this month. For now enjoy our look at and discussion on some of the early levels in the video above, and be sure to check out our forums for even more talk on Joe Danger Touch and nuggets of info delivered straight from the development team.

Earlier this morning, Jared I spent some time with Repulze [$2.99]. It's a sci-fi racing game that tasks you with completing time trials across six different tracks. There's also a polarity mechanic thrown in for good measure. Bash through three red or green barriers in a row, and you'll be awarded with speed boosts, which can improve your times.

We've seen a lot of racers like this -- you know, the hover-y kind of racers packed with outlandish track design and neat sci-fi locales -- but, we're digging Repulze. It has a great sense of speed and the vehicles all have a neat, mostly unique, feel to them. Give it a look if you're interested:

Earlier this afternoon, Eli and I gave Catch the Ark [$0.99] a spin. It's an endless runner of sorts that tasks you with racing downstream in a raft while avoiding rocks, dinosaurs, krakens, and sharks. The more distance you cover, the higher your score. Catch the Ark also has a connection to the whole Noah's Ark Thing, if you're wondering what the title of the game is all about.

As you play, you can also pick up coins. With these, you can buy new faster, much more agile water boats. You can also grab the usual power-ups. Nothing out of the ordinary on this front, though it seems the IAP is exceedingly generous. (You can grab the top boat for a buck, basically.)

The look of the game is pretty sharp and, for what it is, it plays pretty well. Check it out if you're curious:

Earlier this morning, Eli and I gave Pudding Monsters [Free / Free (HD)] a spin. It's the new puzzle game from ZeptoLabs, the dudes behind Cut the Rope. In Pudding Monsters, you're tasked with sliding gelatinous blobs into each other in order to form one single mega blob. Paying attention to each level's obstacles, in addition to blobs, is key as blobs will slide off the map unless they crash into a piece of the environment or another blob.

You've probably seen this puzzle mechanic before in a billion other games or mini-games through the years, but Zepto manages to add a spark with its bright characterizations, in addition to devilish puzzle design. This game is way harder than it looks, especially if you're the type of person who must get three stars before moving on.

Anyway, check out our video if you're on the fence. We dig Pudding Monsters, at least, so maybe it'll click with you, too:

Earlier this morning, Eli and I spent even more time with Waking Mars, our 2012 game of the year. Waking Mars [$4.99] came out before we started our video series, so we decided to do a TA Plays with it to close the coverage loop. It's a lengthy video, so buckle up.

It goes without saying at this point, but Waking Mars is fabulous. One thing we kind of key in on during this video -- outside of our riveting GDC and Denny's discussion -- is how awesome Mars's systems designs are. Specifically, the ecosystems aren't strictly just a product of your own interactions with the ground. Plants can plant Plants and set off tornadoes of emergent activity. It's a neat touch.

If you haven't seen Waking Mars before, this is a good way to jump in. The video shows the entire first chapter of the game and ends right as the second begins.