More parks are planned for later this year, but today's True Skate update includes two enhancements that actually change the fundamentals in the game. One is the ability to tilt a gyroscope-equipped device prior to doing an ollie, which will then shift which way your ollie ends up in the air depending on which direction you tilt. It's a small change, but it helps a lot when trying to line up your board to hit a rail or ledge for a grind or slide trick.

The second and more significant change in this update relates to skating transition, a spot that True Skate has had difficulty getting right in the past. Previously, when skating transitions you'd have to stick to the larger stuff that had actual vertical surface in order to keep your board in the air and land back down in the transition. Otherwise you'd just launch yourself out of the bowl or quarter pipe and it acted more like a jump ramp.

With the updated version, you can actually flick your device towards you right before doing a trick in transition and it will ensure you stay hovered in the air above that transition, so you can land right back down in it. This totally improves skating transition in True Skate, and I have to say it feels awesome to bust a big trick in a bowl and be able to land back down and keep going. I'm not typically a huge fan of having to flick or move my device in any way, but here it feels completely natural and works incredibly well. Hats off to True Axis for finding an elegant solution to this tricky problem.

As I mentioned, True Axis has more goodies planned for True Skate in the future, but for right now they're going hard and heavy on Jet Car Stunts 2 and as much as I love True Skate I have to say I'm more than happy for them to devote the time to that much-anticipated sequel. However, I'm also quite pleased they were able to push out this latest update and how just a couple of minor tweaks have really improved the overall experience. It's also worth mentioning that this update improves performance on older devices, and you can now slow down by touching the ground with your finger if you feel like you're going too fast at any time.

If you're into skating or skating games and have yet to check out True Skate then you should get on that, and join in on the discussion in our forums too.

Here's the skinny, ripped from that update:

Here’s the problem, and thus this un-scehdule Kickstarter update: due to the pure number of bugs found in the PC version alone (the Mac version is being tested now, but not via Steam), we’re having to delay the game, yet again, until the end of June.

I can’t tell you how many phone calls, arguments, and heart breaking conversations I’ve had with my advisors on this. I SERIOUSLY wanted this game out by the end of May because we’ve postponed it more times than Larry’s been rejected. Ok, well, maybe not THAT many, but still... we’ve had some delays.

While a bummer, delays are usually a good thing. Who wants to play a buggy game? For this one in particular, a buggy release could be pretty catastrophic. If bugs keep folks from enjoying this one, there's really no incentive for them to play the next re-make in the series. Plus, there's that whole "re-introducing Larry to people who have never played the original" thing, too.

It's hard to tell who owns this property or, really, who even had the idea to do a game like this first, so we don't comment much on that in the video. What is kinda clear is that this is the Slender game fans have really responded to, and for good reason: it's not a bad video game.

Slender Rising has seen a lot of updates since its initial debut, so hey, maybe now's the time to check it out again if you weren't so happy with the initial launch. If you're already happy with and at an MLG-level with Rising, have fun laughing at two idiots trying to play.

EVE is a relatively niche MMO -- it breached 500,000 subscribers only recently, after ten years of operation -- but its players are devoted and loyal, and the game’s revenue has allowed CCP to expand consistently. They just released Dust 514, a free-to-play PlayStation 3 shooter that ties into EVE’s universe and in-game economy, and they’re working on World of Darkness, an MMO based on White Wolf’s legendary Vampire: the Masquerade pen-and-paper game.

CCP’s newest frontier, however, will be mobile development.

“We’ve been dabbling in mobile for a long time,” erstwhile EVE Online executive producer Jon Lander told me last month during CCP Fanfest 2013 in Reykjavik, Iceland. “But we’ve never really focused on it. We’ve never taken the time to put a clear strategy together about how these things fit in with our universe.”

The wheels to rectify that started turning earlier this year, when CCP quietly announced that Lander would be transitioning out of his role on EVE to “lead [the company’s] emerging mobile strategy.”

Mobile development -- or, euphemistically, “out-of-client engagement” -- was a recurring, if downplayed, theme across all of CCP’s projects at Fanfest. During her portion of the EVE Online keynote, senior producer Andie Nordgren discussed the necessity of giving players access to their accounts, even when they’re not actively logged in. Smartphone and tablet apps are one way of doing this, she explained, but plans for web- and browser-based systems are being hashed out as well.

World of Darkness senior producer Chris McDonough mentioned similar possibilities during a panel devoted to his game as well. “There will be access to in-game stuff, and all the levels of interactivity are being determined” McDonough explained to me in a follow-up interview. “When CCP is building EVE, they consider it a universe. The goal is that Dust 514 interacts with the same database that EVE exists in.”

“That interactivity allows the main database to be a platform,” he continued,  “World of Darkness is being built in a similar way.”

In the short term, CCP fans can look toward Dust 514: Neocom for the PlayStation Vita for a rough idea of what an iOS app might look like. Neocom, which is coming “soon,” will interact with most of Dust’s non-gameplay systems, including weapon and armor customization, starmap updates, and buying and selling consumable items. Jon Lander calls Neocom a “tracer bullet,” a lightweight project built by a small team to gauge interest in possible future companion apps.

“Ultimately, our strategy is to create bespoke experiences that are tailored to what our fans are using,” says Thor Gunnarsson, vice-president of business development at CCP. “Of course, they’re using tablets and smartphones, day-in and day-out. We want to bring another access point to them, wherever they are.”

Still, Neocom isn’t out yet and a Vita isn’t a smartphone or a tablet. “We’re not a mobile development house yet,” Lander admits. “We don’t know this stuff. But we can learn.”

Despite not having released a commercial app yet, CCP aren’t going in completely blind. Before joining CCP, Andie Nordgren spent time working on RJDJ, an audio app on iOS; Gunnarsson was at Ideaworks3D prior to shifting gears to help make a spaceship MMO.

Gunnarsson’s time at Ideaworks3D was spent developing mobile versions of big-name IPs like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, The Sims, and Tomb Raider for early mobile devices. “That was before iOS, obviously. We were actually doing our first 3D title on a Compaq iPaq in 2001,” he told me.

“Then we did a lot of titles on the Nokia N-Gage,” he says with a laugh. “We did four of the launch titles for that. It was weird to go from the most extreme, constrained corner of the games industry, which was mobile gaming at that time, to working on EVE Online with the team here.”

During his presentation during a keynote address on the last day of Fanfest, Lander detailed a bit of CCP’s checkered history with developing EVE-related mobile apps. In 2006, a team had created a working build of EVE Mobile, but it proved difficult to run on Tranquility, the London-based, single-shard server that houses the majority of worldwide EVE Online players.

By 2011, CCP had designed and developed apps for Nvidia-related mobile devices, but the project stalled out after the catastrophic launch of the EVE Online: Incarna expansion in June of that year. Amid player protests and a drop in subscribers, CCP was eventually forced to lay off 20% of its staff worldwide. Mobile development was put on the backburner again.

“My remit for EVE when I was made executive producer was to get it fixed, get it strong, get it in position where we can be ambitious again,” Lander tells me over drinks at a reception after the final keynote. He’s set to transition into mobile development full time later this summer, with a string of well-received expansions under his belt. “We’ve got a really good set of people in place so that we can take this on."

In addition to company-wide stability and growth, the development and release of Dust 514 has paved CCP’s foray into mobile development. According to Gunnarsson, Dust is built on a two-way programming interface, called CREST. In layman’s terms, Dust not only reads information from the EVE server, but is able to send information back. This is what allows in-game events in Dust 514 to also take effect in EVE Online.

“You can imagine that with that platform in place, we can start to create experiences that are truly attractive, that could become new games, or different genres,” enthuses Gunnarsson. “They would have some touchpoint to the EVE universe. They could be light footprints, or they could be something very deep.”

CCP are keeping the specifics about what types of apps their designing and for which platforms close to the chest for the time being, assuming they’re far enough in development that there are any specifics -- Lander envisions small teams and quick turnaround times prototyping lots of different ideas.

Still, he seemed excited at the prospect. “We have an amazing opportunity to work with a persistent, sandbox world. Oh my God, just imagine some of the best mobile games out there ...” he tells me at the reception before trailing off.

Whatever form CCP’s mobile projects take, Lander finished his keynote presentation with a confident pronouncement: “This time next year, you will have EVE Mobile in your hand.”

All the images in this article are from the PC version of EVE Online.

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GAMES

• Trucker: Parking Simulator - [Free] [TA Plays]
• Blitz Brigade - [Free] [TA Plays]
• Manuganu - [$0.99]
• Gravity Guy 2 - [$0.99]
• Sonic The Hedgehog - [$2.99]

FRONT PAGE

• Hey, A 'World War Z' Movie Tie-In Game Is Happening
• Google Announces A Game Center Thing
• Frostbite Coming To Mobile

This sim's a particularly hard sale because the titling is so awful, so we decided to do a little video of the game in action to show it off. In the below, Eli and I power through several levels, carefully avoiding all road cones and parking like pros. Give it a look and, hey, maybe get as hooked on this thing as we are at the moment:

You can grab this right now, by the way, and you should if you need another simulator in your life. Here's a Steam link to Eurotruck Simulator 2 for PC, as well, since we talked about it so much.

One of the newest movie tie-in games released is a joint venture between PikPok and Dreamworks Studios for the upcoming movie Turbo. The movie is about a snail named Turbo who dreams of being a race car driver, and following a freak accident involving a nitrous oxide spill that gives him turbo speed he sets out to make his dream come true.

PikPok's take on the movie is called Turbo Racing League [Free], and follows Turbo's escapades on his way to becoming the fastest snail in the universe. Is that even something to be proud of? That's like being called the smartest dumb person in the world. But I digress.

Turbo Racing League itself is actually a very fun kart-style racing game. By that I mean it's very casual and arcadey, with a heavy emphasis on drifting and hitting turbo pads spread along the track. The game's 9 courses are all made out of real-life mini locations like a kitchen table or a garage, and you can trick Turbo out with spoilers for his shell that give him improved attributes.

It's all pretty standard racing game stuff, but it's very well done, like most PikPok games. What sort of blew my mind is that in conjunction with the release of Turbo Racing League, Verizon has stepped in to throw a competition called the $1,000,000 Shell Out and are giving away a million dollars in prize money. For the next 8 weeks the top 10 racers per week will each win prizes from a $500,000 pool, then all 8 of the 1st place winners will fly out to Los Angeles for the finals and a chance to win the grand prize which is the other half of the million.

A million dollar prize for a mobile movie tie-in game seems nuts to me, but here we are. You can get the full rules and all that jazz from the official $1,000,000 Shell Out website if you're interested in entering, but even if not, Turbo Racing League is a pretty neat racing game that's free to check out. People in our forums have been enjoying it as well, and as for the actual movie, that'll be opening in theaters in July.

Gangstar Rio: City of Saints, $4.99 - Gameloft is offering up a couple of freebies this weekend on two games which have never been free before. First up is Gangstar Rio: City of Saints [$4.99], their take on the whole Grand Theft Auto open-world sandbox game. We reviewed Gangstar Rio when it released back in late 2011, and despite some typical Gameloft-isms like terrible voice work and a paper thin story, we thought it offered up a fairly robust open-world crime game experience.

It's been pretty regularly updated too, adding in new content and most recently widescreen support for the iPhone 5.

N.O.V.A. 3 - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, $6.99 - The second game being offered up for free is N.O.V.A. 3 [$6.99]. Previously, the N.O.V.A. series had been mostly a riff on the Halo games, but this most recent entry more closely resembles something like Crysis. Either way, expect lots of sci-fi first-person shooting action and impressive visuals. As with most Gameloft entries, there's a robust online multiplayer offering in N.O.V.A. 3, and as such we gave it its own review back when the game released in May of last year. We also reviewed the single-player campaign, which is pretty excellent as well.

Gameloft has been flirting more with free-to-play games as of late, but both N.O.V.A. 3 and Gangstar Rio are premium-priced games that you can snag for zero dollars right now and through this weekend. Don't miss out.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out, for the 12 of you or so who haven't seen it yet, is a free-to-play city simulation game that tasks you with building a new Springfield after the first one got blown up. Along the way, you'll meet familiar faces and build familiar places. EA constantly updates the app, adding in stuff like the above for users.

You can download Tapped Out now, of course, but be warned: this thing seems to eat up folks' time.

While a first glance might lead one to believe its primarily for kids, beneath the playful, cartoony exterior lies a game that expertly combines tower defense with puzzle elements, making it one of my current favorites of the genre.

Apparently the love for BBQ is so great it extends across time periods and species. As such, Dinosaurs puts you in command of an army of gophers that must guard their delectable BBQ pit against an onslaught of hungry dinosaurs.

When it comes to basic tower defense gameplay, Go Home Dinosaurs plays similar to many other titles. Dinosaurs run down a pre-set path towards the BBQ pit with two pieces of dynamite acting as last-second defenses against impending BBQ devouring. Meanwhile, players place a variety of gopher-manned weapons around the path in an attempt to drive the dinos towards extinction. A coin system rounds out the gameplay, allowing players to earn currency in-game (no IAPs) and purchase supplemental towers with limited, but powerful effects.

Where Go Home Dinosaurs differs from other TD games is in actual tower placement and in the ability to directly control a movable attacking gopher.

While tower placement is important in each level of Dinosaurs, players will spend the majority of their time using their gopher to collect coconuts (which act as the currency needed to place towers) and place them in a good position to attack the oncoming dinos. The gopher isn't a slouch in terms of damage dealing either, meaning players will need to balance collecting coconuts with keeping him constantly attacking.

It's a fun twist to the gameplay that adds some continual, fast-paced action to an otherwise passive genre.

Taking a page from classic puzzlers like Tetris, tower placement is the other aspect that Go Home Dinosaurs mixes up. Each tower has a specific "shape" that takes up a certain amount of spaces in a certain formation on the gridded play field.

Players quickly learn that towers can't be placed indiscriminately without forethought. In addition, the level design will naturally prevent certain towers from being effective, forcing players to develop a well-rounded approach to using all the towers. This actually brings some challenge to later levels, a concept that I welcome whole heartedly in TD.

In this regard, Go Home Dinosaurs almost becomes a TD/puzzle hybrid. Considering players can only bring a certain number of towers into a level, part of the challenge becomes figuring out which towers to bring and in which formations to place them.

There's also the fact that your gopher also has to be part of the equation. Do you place your towers at the entrance and risk blocking any effective spots for your gopher to attack from? Or, do you focus on saving up coconuts for powerful towers while using your gopher as the primary damage dealer until you can get them set up?

These are just a couple of many questions and scenarios that will pop up, and showcase some of the depth that Dinosaurs offers beyond standard tower defense titles.

There are a few annoyances with Go Home Dinosaurs, mainly its iPad-only status, some minor control issues when placing towers (i.e. tap and dragging a specific tower will occasionally select another tower in my inventory), and slow-down on non-iPad 4 hardware. However, these are relatively minor in comparison to the many positives the game offers.

In the end, Go Home Dinosaurs is a well-executed tower defense title with enough additions to the genre to make it worth checking out. Suffice to say, I hope other developers take note when trying to differentiate and improve upon tower defense.

Firaxis has stormed on to the mobile scene: first came last week's spooky strategy game, Haunted Hollow [Free] (see our review here), and later this summer should see the release of the much-anticipated iOS port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Sid Meier's Ace Patrol [Free] completes this strategy trifecta, and is the first iOS exclusive to bear the legendary designer's name. His involvement shows: Ace Patrol is a fantastic, meaty title well-deserving of your time and gaming dollar.

Ace Patrol sees the player leading a squadron of pilots in World War I, witnessing the infancy of aerial combat. Ace Patrol is a premium game masquerading as a freemium title: the free download serves as a demo and gives you a portion of the British campaign to play. The full British, French, German and American campaigns are unlocked as IAP for $0.99 a piece.

After choosing your nation, you lead your squadron through four of the war's most famous and bloody campaigns. Each campaign is composed of eight combat missions, drawn from a pool of random scenarios. You are given a choice of three potential missions, tasking you with such varied objectives as assaults on supply convoys, bomber escorts, or air skirmishes. Should you do well enough, the eighth and final mission of each campaign will be a climactic decisive battle.

Since aerial combat is Ace Patrol's bread and butter, the question is how do the battles play? I'm happy to report that Ace Patrol's dogfights are awesome. The game is gorgeous and a lot of love went into faithfully rendering the aircraft tearing up the skies over industrial era Europe.

Controlling your pilots is simple, with arrows overlaying the battle map showing your pilot's potential moves. Your available moves are dictated by a number of factors, including your present altitude (the higher the better), the G-forces your pilot is experiencing (such as if he's been banking for the last few turns), the type and condition of the aircraft being piloted, and the maneuvers the pilot is trained in. Thankfully, all of this is done under the hood, so all you see as the player is what your pilot can do for each particular turn and whether or not he can hit an enemy.

While turn-based dogfights might not sound like the most riveting experience, the combat is surprisingly intense. The game also includes a cool replay function which allows you to watch the results of a mission in real time when you finish it. Ace Patrol's turn-based battles will have you on the edge of your seat–imagine, your ace pilot is on the verge of downing a bomber that is seconds from its target when suddenly a German fighter bursts from the clouds and right on to your tail. Do you bring down the bomber and risk having your best pilot gunned down, or do you sacrifice the headquarters, loop back and give that bastard a taste of his own medicine?

Difficult tactical decisions are the order of the day in Ace Patrol, and the stakes are high even on the most routine missions. This is due in large part to the consequences of losing an aircraft: when one of your pilots is downed–or even worse, captured as a POW–he can be out of commission for many missions.

The battlefields in the game are surprisingly varied. I mean, all that's up there is air, right? Well, yes and no. You'll often find yourself fighting above World War I's infamous trenches, with bases on either side providing flak coverage. Flak attacks will ravage your planes, so there's a fair amount of strategy to be had in avoiding enemy anti-aircraft fire or attempting to lure your opponent into range of your own flak guns. Clouds conceal aircraft, making them great for pulling off evasive maneuvers or launching devastating surprise attacks.

The game is also to be commended on its difficulty settings: this is one of those rare games where the AI becomes smarter, not merely harder, as you crank up the difficulty. Strategy novices and pros alike will find a difficulty setting suited to their skill level.

Outside of the great air battles you'll spend your time at your airfield, managing your squadron of four pilots. It is here that you rank up your pilots, outfit their planes with items earned in battle, customize your pilots and planes, and upgrade their airplanes as aviation technology improves over the course of the war. Generally you will have two planes to choose from, with one usually focused on speed and strength and the other on superior maneuverability.

Your pilots start the game as the greenest of rookies but will develop into fearsome aces during the course of the war. Treat these four men and women with respect because they're all you get–when one is out of commission due to injury your roster will simply be down a pilot. Though the game gives you the ability to drop a buck and bring a pilot out of the infirmary, it feels like a cheat to avoid dealing with the consequences of your actions rather than a necessary expense.

As your pilots rank up they gain access to new maneuvers. These aerial maneuvers come in two flavors: general techniques (such as rolls) that will unlock a suite of similar combat maneuvers; and ace maneuvers, powerful unique abilities like the Immelmann Turn. With a host of techniques and ace maneuvers to choose from, you're never at a loss for choices when a pilot gains rank. By the end of the game your most skilled pilots might have a dozen or more potential moves to make each turn, and old tricks like tailing your opponent can become traps as he might pull an ace maneuver from his own sleeve, turning on a dime and blasting you out of the sky.

Ace Patrol also sports two multiplayer modes and Game Center support with leaderboards and achievements. As of the time of this review, the online multiplayer isn't functioning. You can still play the game on a single device in hot seat mode with a friend. Curiously enough, the multiplayer mode is rather limited: you can choose from the different nations you've unlocked, but that's it. You have no control over which pilots you use, their skills, the planes they fly, or even the scenario you play. The game chooses all of this for you. Also, your pilots will always be in the best planes possible with all of the maneuvers unlocked. Hopefully a future patch will give players more options for customizing multiplayer duels. And though we're unlikely to see it, the option to play through an entire campaign with a friend would be fantastic.

You've really got to dig to find something not to like about Ace Patrol. As mentioned before, the online multiplayer isn't functioning yet, and customization options seem pretty limited. Occasionally the controls can be finicky and on more than one occasion I accidentally started a mission prematurely. Thankfully, once you're in combat every move requires a confirmation tap so it's never an issue in the heat of battle. The four nations' campaigns all play pretty similarly and draw from the same pool of missions, with the only differences between the nations being the airplanes they use and when they become available.

Pay no heed to those who complain about the implementation of IAP in Ace Patrol, this game is an example of IAP done right. Outside of the initial campaign unlocks, the IAP are entirely unnecessary, and you can be enjoying the bulk of the game's content for as little as a dollar. If you've still got the freemium jitters you can always get a second opinion from the TouchArcade community on our forums.

Sid Meier is perhaps the biggest name in gaming, and whenever he puts his name on a game heads are guaranteed to turn. We've come to expect a certain caliber of game bearing the Sid Meier label, and fortunately Ace Patrol lives up to the high bar it has set for itself. This is a game with style, substance, and its own great blend of action and strategy, and for now is an iOS exclusive to boot. If you have any love for Sid Meier, strategy games, aviation sims, or just darn good games you'd be crazy to not give this game a shot.

Make sure to leave us a comment and let us know if you think Ace Patrol earned its stripes. Pretty soon you'll find yourself absorbed in the struggle for the skies over the war-torn trenches of Europe. If this is the future of mobile gaming, let me be the first to enlist.

Looking to differentiate itself from the glut of matching games on the App Store, Scurvy Scallywags uses an interesting mechanic where after a match is made the game board collapses in the direction of the match to fill in gaps, rather than just dropping all the blocks downwards like most matching games. Seems like a small change but a potentially significant one, and you can tell that Scurvy Scallywags has a ton of personality in its first official trailer.

Gilbert is not alone on Scurvy Scallywags, either. He has partnered up with Clayton Kauzlaric, the designer of the 2003 Xbox title Voodoo Vince. Gilbert and Kauzlaric have teamed up in the past too, for the 2010 action-RPG DeathSpank and more recently for the quirky and enjoyable iPad game The Big Big Castle! [$0.99 (HD)] last July. Can a proven developer power couple like Gilbert and Kauzlaric reinvigorate a tired genre like match-3? I hope so, and I'm looking forward to finding out when Scurvy Scallywags launches sometime in the near future.

Dark Avenger is all action with little in the way of overall substance. As of this review, there is only one playable class, the Templar, with a second class “coming soon”, the Ranger. Despite having only one type of character at the moment, the game gives you three save game slots. You're tasked with killing bad things from bad places because... well, it's a game without a story. Perhaps because some evil convenience store clerk looked at your grandma the wrong way and now you're exacting sweet revenge.

Delving into the game proper is as easy as choosing your character and selecting your mode. Single player consists of progressing through multiple levels, all within the same basic environment. The virtual joystick is dead simple to use; one joystick on your left controls movement and direction, while the icon on your right controls attacks. Tap it once for a basic attack, tap it up to three times for a combo attack.

The combo attack will come in handy, because you’ll be relentlessly assaulted on all sides. Luckily, your hero is capable of switching direction mid-attack, so those ghoulies sneaking up behind you while you’re already fighting? Just aim toward them and hack! Slash! They’re dead.

The game begins easy enough, pitting you against frail-looking skeletons and crawling torsos, but gradually increases in difficulty. As you slash your way through, you build up a rage bar that when full gives your attacks a glowing, flashy look that results in increased damage for a short period. Failure to continue attacking enemies will slowly deplete your rage bar, but unless you’re traversing to a diffrent area, you probably won’t have the chance to let it drain out.

Rounding out the usual hack-and-slash pieces are your ability to use health and magic potions. Throughout the game, you’ll also be able to unlock up to three special abilities that will decimate whatever is in front of you.

In your quest to fight for whatever reason it is you’re fighting (there isn’t much of a story to go with the game, in case that wasn't clear), you’ll come across bosses who, obviously, will need a beatdown. The majority of these fights consists of you going after them repeatedly; there’s no real strategy per se.

Single player consists of two modes; normal and time attack. The only difference between the two is time attack gives you a limited amount of time to kill everything, while giving slightly better rewards (20% more xp, 10% more coins, etc.)

Multiplayer is where the game lives on, as if you only play single player you’ll be done with it in three or four hours, if that. There are two modes to this; Infinity Tower and Deathmatch.

Infinity Tower is basically a gauntlet. There are an infinite number of dungeons supplied with an infinite number of enemies, and you keep going until you finally succumb to death. There is a leaderboard that charts your score and stats, and compares you worldwide to other gamers.

Deathmatch pits you one-on-one against other players for rewards and fame. I’ve had difficulty playing this mode, as more often than not I’m greeted with an error saying it can’t connect to the server. I’m sure that, like most iOS games, this bug will be fixed in a future update.

If you're looking for some like-minded players to fight with because, like me, you don't always like random matchmaking, feel free to check out our forum and find some frenemies.

Dark Avenger has two IAPs; gold and gems. Gold can be accrued through the normal course of gameplay, by earning rewards in multiplayer and slaying enemies in single player. It is then used to purchase items, potions, skills and upgrades.

Gems are the premium currency, and are used to unlock the best items and equipment. Despite this, neither IAP makes you feel like it's necessary to purchase something to win the game, and you’ll do just fine without by just grinding it out. Gamevil has also chosen not to harass you constantly to buy gold and gems, and in a straight playthrough of one hour I wasn’t asked once to buy anything, unless I had tapped on an item that I didn’t have enough currency for and was asked if I wanted to purchase more.

Despite the multiplayer options, Dark Avenger seems lifeless and relegated to a passing game as opposed to one you'll find on your device a year from now, when you remark "oh right, so awesome, that's why I still have it."  There is no storyline, the graphics are far from eye-popping, and there is no substance. You have one goal and one goal only: get from A to B while killing everything in between.

Perhaps with updates, Gamevil will add more to Dark Avenger, and bring it up to a competitive level. It’s worthwhile to try because it’s different enough and free, but unless you’re playing on the subway or are bored at work and have nothing better to do, it won’t last you long.

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

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

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

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

Bad movie tie-in games (and even worse zombie games for that matter) are incredibly common on the App Store, so it's probably very wise to keep your expectations in check on this one. Don't get us wrong, it'd be neat to if Phosphor can pull this off, but it seems like time and money are always short on these sorts of projects especially given the typical scope of mobile games and the relatively low development budgets that App Store price points even allow.

Fingers cautiously optimistically crossed!

[via IGN]