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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

App Store Link: Parachute Ninja, $.99

We just got word from Chillingo's Clickgamer that an Angry Birds [App Store] update is in the works that adds 40 new levels, two new environments, and complete Crystal integration for online leaderboards, achievements, and all the other fun stuff Crystal provides. They're planning on submitting the update "very soon", and even released a new trailer for the game that is easily one of the better iPhone game trailers I've seen recently:

Angry Birds is a catapult game where you assist several angry birds as they seek revenge on a gang of egg-stealing green pigs. From our review:

Players are haphazardly tossed into a level in which several angry-looking red birds are gathered around a primitive slingshot, with a small wooden tower harboring a little green pig to the right. Touching and dragging backwards on the bird that is currently mounted in the slingshot will prime your disturbed little critter for launch. From here, your goal is to aim your shot effectively and take out a weak point on the pig's tower, causing him to fall to his little piggy doom.

We also discussed Angry Birds in our recent podcast, and I really recommend giving the game a look, as I've sunk an unbelievably amount of time recently in to total pig destruction. This new update (especially with online leaderboards) is just going to make this great game even better.

App Store Link: Angry Birds, $1.99

Lately it seems that we've been collecting an increasing number of comments in the discussions of some of the more popular games we've covered from Android users hoping to see more iPhone games in the Android Marketplace. Homerun Battle 3D [$4.99 / Free], a game we reviewed back when it was called Baseball Slugger, was released early last month for Android devices, and features cross-platform multiplayer-- Allowing existing iPhone players to face off against Android-equipped online rivals.

Com2Us sent us the following video of a match between an iPhone and a Motorola Droid:

As more and more iPhone games eventually make their way to the Android Marketplace, I hope developers decide to follow Com2Us's lead and implement cross-platform multiplayer. The more people playing online the better, regardless of what game it is.

Monster Gila, creators of Ignite [$1.99 / Free], recently sent us an early preview build of their upcoming space shooter, NovaRift Arena. Right now the state of the game seems like little more than a framework for something that could really turn in to a cool multiplayer game built around a physics engine that takes in to account the different functions of your ship's components and as you take damage your ship will perform and handle differently.

For instance, lose a thruster in the heat of battle and you're going to have problems steering. If one of your gun takes too much damage, you'll have to hope some of your other offensive abilities are still intact. Included in game are four different types of ships to choose from, each of which both perform differently and come with different weapon load outs. In the build of the game I've been playing, online multiplayer doesn't seem to be working yet, but the local arcade mode is a lot of fun, especially as you get to the more difficult waves of enemy drones.

On its initial release, NovaRift is said to include an online deathmatch mode where players will face off in a timed deathmatch to see who can get the most kills. In the future, Monster Gila plans on maintaining the game through content updates, adding team deathmatch modes and additional ships. Designed to be easily expandable, new players are said to be able to expect "a lot of new content" after the game's release.

The developers plan on launching the game with two different versions, a free one where players can play for 30 minutes online or try out most or all of the single player arcade levels as well as a paid version that offers unlimited online play. NovaRift is still in development, but I can see a lot of potential for a great online multiplayer game if the community picks up following the game's release.

Looking to go head to head with Taito's Cooking Mama [$6.99 / Free], Gameloft's recently released Pocket Chef [$4.99] is a remarkably similar game, with 3D graphics taking the place of Taito's sprites. Gameplay involves selecting a food to cook, completing several mini-games in order, and being graded for how fast and accurate you were.

Recipes are simplified to basic steps, and you must perform each of them within a time limit. For instance, when making french toast in game, the first step involves cracking eggs. To crack the eggs, you drag them back then forward to hit the rim of the bowl and finally separate the shell to drop the egg in the bowl. From there you need to stir the eggs by tapping the nearby whisk, and then moving your finger in a circular motion over the mixture.

Following that, you move to the cutting board where you slice up a few loaves of bread by tapping the knife to pick it up, then dragging down across the loaf. The next step involves taking the bread you just sliced, dipping it in to the egg mixture and placing it on another plate, all accomplished by sliding your finger around the screen. Nearing completion, you then tilt the phone to move a pad of butter around the frying pan, then finally cook the french toast, flicking the phone down and up to flip it.

And after all that, you have a glorious virtual piece of french toast for you to... not eat. Pocket Chef features five different kitchens, each with different cuisine ranging from classic American foods to desserts. 25 recipes in total are included, with multiple steps that involve playing through 19 different individual cooking step mini games. There's also an in-game cookbook that has the actual recipes if you want to try your hand at making some of the in-game food in real life.

Cooking Mama has flirted with various positions near the top end of both the paid games listing as well as the overall paid app listing, so the appeal of these cooking games is undeniable. I just wish I could see what other people saw in the genre, as cooking virtual food seems so unbelievably dull to me. Regardless, if you've played through Cooking Mama and are looking for more to cook, Pocket Chef seems to be a competent cooking simulator that I'm sure some will enjoy.

App Store Link: Pocket Chef, $4.99

It's hard for me to resist a game with a ridiculous premise, and it's difficult to get more silly than this. In Ghosts'n Zombies [App Store] you play as a bushy-eyebrowed, cigar-smoking, shotgun-toting monk who apparently was dispatched from the Vatican to investigate a mysterious haunted chapel. Upon your arrival, you discover the church is absolutely loaded with rats, ghosts, zombies, and other demons. So, as an agent of the Vatican, what do you decide to do? Shoot everything that crosses your path of course.

The movement of your monk is controlled by tilting your iPhone, and shooting is just a matter of tapping the screen. Alternatively, you can drag your finger around to precisely aim your shots, which are then fired upon releasing your finger. Aiming your shots quickly becomes a vital component of the game, as apparently the Vatican sent you out on your mission woefully low on ammo. Killing multiple baddies in one shot causes them to rain loot for you to pick up which restores your ammo and slowly builds a meter in the top left corner of the screen that you can tap to briefly upgrade your weapon to a rifle, mini gun, and even a rocket launcher of sorts among others.

The more enemies you can kill at once, the more loot and points you get, but at the same time there is a delicate balance between holding off to be able to shoot multiple enemies while still allowing yourself a clearing to run to without getting hit. As you progress through the game, different environmental obstacles and enemies are introduced, with spice up gameplay even further. Ghosts'n Zombies includes OpenFeint, providing leaderboards for each level along with a bundle of achievements to earn.

One thing that's strange about Ghosts'n Zombies is that the paid version game comes bundled with Ad Mob ads on the menu screen. According to the developer, these ads are only going to be in place until the introductory sale is over, but they seem like a very odd thing to include regardless-- Especially with how much people dislike advertising in anything they're paying for. Never the less, Ghosts'n Zombies is a fun shooter with a silly premise, and worth picking up if you can ignore the ads rotating on the main menu.

App Store Link: Ghosts'n Zombies, 99¢

Little White Bear Studios joined us on our podcast this week and discussed their latest game Compression, the iPad and their experience with FreeAppADay.

Little White Bear Studios

• Compression - Their latest game in which Tetris meets Bejeweled. This husband/wife team made the switch to full time just this past September and talk about their success and plans for the future. We also discussed the new iPad and their participation in FreeAppADay.com

Games We Played

• Vector Runner ($0.99)
• Angry Birds ($0.99)
• Arctopia ($1.99)

Blakespot's iPad blog post referenced in the podcast: "Apple's iPad: The Dynabook, And The Future Of Computing, Has Arrived"

Podcast music provided by Overclocked Remix.

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes or Direct Download (M4A, 38MB)

In early January we first stumbled across We Rule by finding some curious achievements showing up on some ngmoco employee Plus+ accounts. Details have been slowly leaking out of the ngmoco stronghold over the past few days, and so far it sounds like We Rule is going to be ngmoco's take on the popular Facebook game Farmville, only instead of cultivating virtual crops, you're tasked with managing a virtual kingdom.

We Rule is a collaboration between ngmoco and NewToy, the makers of Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] and Chess With Friends [$2.99 / Free]. Before the App Store, brothers Paul and David Bettner were responsible for creating the Age of Empires series, a fantastic set of real-time strategy games where players build armies and advance through several ages starting with the stone age and eventually advancing all the way to the iron age.

So far, what we know about We Rule makes it sound like NewToy has taken their expertise from Age of Empires, rolled it together with the social gaming juggernauts that are both of the With Friends games, while leveraging the power of ngmoco's Plus+ network. Players start out with a plot of land that they will found their kingdoms on, which can be tweaked, customized, and tricked out with all kinds of different buildings, landscaping, and other things.

To buy these various kingdom components and upgrades, you will need to draw from your gold stockpiles. You can earn gold in three different ways: Farming, collecting taxes from your subjects, or selling the things the businesses in your kingdom create. There is also apparently going to be a massive social component to the game where players will be able to cooperate with friends to strengthen their kingdoms. Details on this aspect of the game are vague right now, but ngmoco has promised a deeper experience than Farmville-- A claim I'd normally raise my eyebrow at if it weren't for NewToy's experience from previously released incredibly deep games.

Ngmoco isn't ready to discuss how they plan on monetizing the game, but judging by both ngmoco's and NewToy's overwhelming success in the budding freemium market of the App Store, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find a similar payment model in We Rule. With the popularity of Farmville and other similar games, if ngmoco and NewToy play their cards right, they could have a runaway hit on their hands with We Rule.

This weekend I had the chance to spend some time with Freeverse in their Brooklyn headquarters checking out a few of their imminent iPhone releases. The crew was kind enough to let me bring back a bit of demonstration video footage to give readers a feel for the action in these upcoming titles. Let's take a look.

Parachute Ninja

Parachute Ninja is something like Doodle Jump, but with rubber-band platforms and parachutes thrown into the mix. Basically, in Story Mode, you've got to use a series of elastic platforms to sling this little, round ninja, from start to endpoint through 30 different levels, picking up stars and avoiding dangerous obstacles along the way. There's also a Survival Mode which is an attempt to climb (or, be slung) as high as possible up a never ending scrolling wall of elastic platforms. To help with landings, a tap to the ninja activates a parachute that slows his descent, which can be guided by tilt.

Scores and achievements are globally tracked, thanks to Plus+ integration. Parachute Ninja is a great game that's a whole lot of fun and should have big appeal to any fan of Doodle Jump. It is expected to make it's worldwide debut tonight at a price of $1.99.

Zombie Cannon Carnage, developed by h.grenade who brought us Circuit Strike One, is an inflict-most-damage-to-self type game that was somewhat inspired by the classic destruction game Burnout (though it reminds me much more of Ow My Balls!).

Basically, you control a little guy that you fire out of a cannon (which can be aimed by dragging) in hopes to do the most damage to him possible by way of impacting various city-skyline obstacles. You've got a jetpack with limited fuel that can be triggered to help keep you aloft (don't fly too high or you'll feel the sting of an air strike), and every so often you can self-destruct, just to mix things up a bit. For the squeamish, the level of blood and carnage can be dialed down from Buckets to Yes Please to No Thanks.

It's is a simple game with a single mode of play, but maximizing the damage inflicted as your poor, little onscreen avatar soars through the mesh of obstacles definitely takes some skill.  Destruction fans should have fun with this one.

Zombie Cannon Carnage should be finalized in the next day or so and appear in the App Store within a few weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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