Gameloft doesn't miss sales opportunities, so it's not much of a surprise to see a very select number of its titles get a price-slashing treatment this week in celebration of Make Kids Fat Night. Starting now and for a 'limited time,' you can save a bunch of dollars on decidedly un-spooky titles like Gameloft Action Pack, its MMO Order & Chaos Online, and Shrek Forever After: the Movie: the Game.

Here's the full list for perusing pleasure:

• Order & Chaos Online - $6.99 → $.99
• Gameloft Action Pack - $4.99 → $.99
• Shrek Forever After: The Game - $4.99 → $.99
• Shrek Forever After: The Game HD - $4.99 → $.99
• Iron Man 2 - $4.99 → $.99
• Iron Man 2 for iPad - $4.99 → $.99
• Driver - $2.99 → $.99
• Skater Nation - $2.99 → $.99

We're not 100-percent behind any of these, but we will note that the Gameloft Action Pack has a total of three decent titles bundled inside of it: Gameloft's answer to God of War, Hero of Sparta, its WWII shooter Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes, and its Mortal Kombat-ish homage, Blades of Fury. You could do worse with your dollar. For example: you could buy candy.

We've heard some rumblings lately about Order & Chaos Online [$6.99] accounts getting hacked, and the attacks were recently confirmed by our pals over at PocketGamer. Order & Chaos, if you're unfamiliar, is Gameloft's fairly blatant riff on World of Warcraft, complete with characters, monsters, and areas that might look a more than a little familiar to anyone who has played WoW before.

Anyway, the cause of this security breach as well as how deep this rabbit hole goes has yet to be revealed, although Gameloft says they're actively investigating. A thread on the official Order & Chaos forum indicates that players of both mobile and Facebook versions of the game have been hacked.

If you've ever played Order & Chaos and you're the kind of person who still uses the same password for everything, it's a good idea to change all your others. While you're at it, check out this New York Times article on creating strong passwords, and maybe even think about getting some password management software. I'm partial to 1Password myself, which basically exists for all platforms you'd ever want to access your passwords on and gracefully keeps all your data in sync via Dropbox.

Migrating from a single password you use for everything to a password management suite and different passwords for everything will take a little getting used to, but consider this: Once you start doing that, security breaches like this are entirely insignificant. Thanks to 1Password, I use a different password for everything. Order & Chaos getting hacked makes no difference to me, since all anyone would ever be able to access with those login credentials is my character… As opposed to desperately hunting down every login form that you've used your favorite password, "password", for.

Update: I was just reminded that Order & Chaos uses Gameloft's Gameloft Live service for logins, and if that is what was compromised, if you've ever created a Gameloft Live account it might be a good idea to get busy with the password changin' too.

Like most geeks, I've spent some time thinking about the best place to go in case of a zombie apocalypse. My pick is always Costco -- food, weapons and big solid doors all in one place. Since that plan is unlikely to ever have any real world value, I've taken the opportunity to barricade my local big-box against the zombie horde in Please Stay Calm [Free], a new location-based MMO from Massive Damage Inc.

If you've ever played a game like Mafia Wars, you'll have some idea of what to expect in Please Stay Calm. It's similar in design, but it takes place in your neighborhood. The world has been overrun by zombies, and you're a survivor. You'll need to scavenge for resources, build up a safehouse and a good team, and gun down the undead -- and a few of your fellow survivors.

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If this review had the same layout as Avalon Wars [Free], here’s how you would get a feel for what the game is like. First, you’d go to the reviewer’s home base screen. For now, ignore the individual game-mechanic analysis buildings titled Combat, Resource Management, Base Building, Troop/Hero Development, and MMO Elements; we’ll come back to those later in the tutorial. To start, simply click on the Review Overview Command Center. Once on the Overview Command Center screen, you’ll select the Review Introduction tab. Choose “Two Paragraphs” as your option from the Review Length sub-menu.

Now, exit the Command Center and scroll over to the Reviewers’ Barracks. Enter the Barracks and select my name from the list of recruited reviewers. Drill down into the Writing Skills menu and click the sub-menu tab for Add New Skill. Spend 30 TAPs (TouchArcade Points) to activate the skill “Analogy Synopsis”. If you lack the necessary TAPs to activate the skill, a modest in-browser purchase will get you more to speed up the process. Now, launch the reviewer and see him crank out a brief overview of the experience of playing Avalon Wars in the style of Avalon Wars.

If you’re still reading at this point, you may just be the kind of person who will love the hell out of this game.

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Supermono Studio, the same studio who achievement-ized standard non-game tasks like chores and scrubbing behind your ears in the stupendous Epic Win [$2.99], are close to releasing its next game, Forever Drive.

Forever Drive, if you didn't know, is a futuristic racing game, complete with track building and neat customization elements, sorta like ModNation Racers. The coolest element, on paper at least, is its online, perpetual city. Supermono describes the game as “Outrun-meets-SimCity-in-the-future-online,” if you need some analogues.

Of course, it also dropped some screenshots. There’s probably a great word for this kind of art style, but because my brain doesn't work so great all the time, I’ll just say it looks great (in a TRON kind of way) and let you tell me my business in the comments.

If you’re familiar with this project, you might be wondering why it’s now called Forever Drive instead of "Drive Forever." According to Supermono, there’s a legal reason for the flip. It didn't go into the details in the official blog's latest post, probably because the story would be REALLY boring.

It also didn't discuss release date. We've got in touch and hope to bring you that information and more in the near future.

Gameloft has been posting video podcast on their YouTube channel for quite a while now, and it can be a little hit or miss regarding the amount of interesting tidbits nestled inside. The latest episode, which hit a few days ago, mostly covers E3 and the games they were showing there. Some are already released, and we had our hands all over some of the other ones. Considering all this, the most interesting part of the last podcast is a Facebook game of all things, which should be more than a little familiar to some of you (proper part queued up for your viewing pleasure):

Utilizing the Unity web player plugin, Gameloft has (since this podcast was released) brought Order & Chaos to Facebook. Playing is as simple as downloading the plugin (if you don't have it already) and heading over to the Order & Chaos Facebook page. It's completely free until level 10, and after that you'll need to subscribe. There's a number of payment options ranging from 1 Facebook credit (equal to 10¢) for a day of access, or 30 Facebook credits for six moths.

Unfortunately, Facebook players play on separate servers from mobile players, so you will need to start fresh. Regardless, this is incredibly cool to see Gameloft doing and just goes to show the sheer ubiquity of the Unity engine. It's always neat to see iOS titles hopping platforms, and it will be interesting to see how Order & Chaos does on Facebook since it's basically now a passable World of Warcraft clone that people can play at work in their browser.

It’s written in the United States’ constitution that every holiday must be honored with a sale or two on the App Store. No joke -- it’s a new law according to yet another wiki page that I just finished vandalizing. If you're interested, the law is sandwiched between the “freedom of press” thing and that other law about how all American babies should be named after me.

Anyway, it’s with great honor that I tell you about Gameloft’s massive $.99 Father’s Day sale, a sale meant to stir your loins and your wallet. I can’t pin down a rhyme or reason for what games are being offered at their discounted rates, but hey, they’re cheap and I think that’s all that matters at the end of the day.

Here’s the list. The first link you’ll see is connected to a write-up of ours about the game, while the second will take you straight to the App Store:

Eternal Legacy - 99¢
Eternal Legacy HD - 99¢
Fast Five: The Movie: Official Game - 99¢
Fast Five: The Movie: Official Game: HD - 99¢
Fishing Kings - 99¢
Gangstar: Miami Vindication - 99¢
Gangstar: Miami Vindication HD - 99¢
NFL 2011 - 99¢
NFL 2011 HD - 99¢
Order & Chaos Online - 99¢ [Universal]
Real Soccer 2011 - 99¢
Real Soccer 2011 HD - 99¢
Spider-Man: Total Mayhem - 99¢
Spider-Man - Total Mayhem HD - 99¢

You know, maybe these are supposed to be games that father's dig? My dad refuses to play anything without the words "King's Quest" or "Hearts" in the title, but to each his own I suppose.

Here's a fact that might not be entirely too surprising: People are hungry for World of Warcraft. Seriously, I still know people who spend hours upon hours a day and have been playing with the same fervor since it was released in 2004. Also, tickets for Blizzcon, Blizzard's yearly almost entirelyWoW-centric convention, sell out within seconds of going up for sale. So, really, Gameloft couldn't have picked a better game to clone with Order & Chaos [$6.99], especially judging by the fact that the company just announced that they've managed to make $1,000,000 in the first 20 days that it was available on the App Store.

In addition, there's also an update on the way which fill add some new quests, the ability to migrate characters between servers, and separate chat channels for each language. After that, future updates are planned which will include things like new dungeons and PvP arenas. Something tells me that with the kind of cash Order & Chaos is making, Gameloft will be supporting it very well.

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Straight up: you’ll have to forgive me if some of the nuance of Shadow Cities [Free] -- one of the newest geo-centric MMO games available on the App Store -- has evaded me. It’s not good at telling you what it is and how you’re supposed to interact with it. Although, a lot of that might have to do with the fact that I don't exactly live in a dense metropolitan area, rendering the location awareness of the game moot since there's no one around me playing.

The PR isn’t much better, though the press releases and the buzz around it are the things that drew our attention in the first place. Shadow Cities is billed as a PVP-centric ARG that uses wherever you are as the game’s map. Like an MMO, it supposedly offers a cool and deep leveling system and a ton of missions and ‘activities.’

That's real high-concept stuff. What I actually see is a weird, blacked-out Google Maps-style world with little purple, blue, red, and green orbs floating around like neon snowflakes. With a couple of flicks of my wrists, my orange orb can decimate these other colored orbs. Then, I get experience points and, I guess, the implied promise of further orb decimation.

It seems like the point of the game revolves around killing these orbs. With each victory, I come closer to dominating my urban center, which happens to be a small city deep in the American south. I don’t see any progress bars or anything of that sort, though, so I’ll just assume that the forthcoming tyranny will take some time to seed.

In Shadow Cities, you play as a mage of one of two sides. I picked the “tech priest”-type of dudes assuming that the meld of man, psychic powers, and machines would fair better against the earthy, organic types of mages. I don’t think there’s a substantial difference in what “team” you pick. At least, I don’t get that impression.

There are two chat rooms available to you once you start the game. It isn’t, at least here, specific to your urban center. The guys talking in the chat are from my state in general and they’re looking for people to battle because app hasn’t reached the kind of critical and consumer response that it needs to flourish and become more than a proof of concept that sounds neat in press releases.

Over on the game’s official blog, proof of stuff that can happen in the game can be found. Earlier in May, users were encouraged to join battle groups, which are, essentially, global communities of 100 mages assigned to a country. There was a campaign in which one team won over another by keeping large cities to themselves, while destroying the other team’s big cities. That sounds pretty cool, actually.

I’d like to get a sense of that scale, but through the app, I can’t. I just see city streets and AI-controlled wisps of color that dance around my orange wisp. I destroy these wisps and then more generate and then I destroy them. If I could see where my battle is going, how my individual fights are factoring into a larger picture, or if I actually felt like I was interacting with a larger world, Shadow Cities would click better with me.

There's a lot of promise here. I mean, think about it. Just by whipping out your phone and spending the 15 seconds it takes to crush an orb, you could be helping to decide the fate of a global battle. That's heavy, man, and fun-sounding idea to boot. Or, additionally, if you live in a dense area, this could be like Yelp!, except with mage battles. You walk into a store some jerk checked-in to and then BOOM -- you take him out.

I should note that the studio behind Shadow Cities, Grey Area, is behind the project and willing to keep iterating on top of the existing software. Gamasutra caught up with its CEO recently and he said as much, adding some specifics on new mechanics being added in the future:

"We want to develop it further and enable people to interact in the way that they want," he said, "we’ve been really conscious and paying attention how people want to create the battles... that’s what people want to do: strategize, plan, raid locations together, and all of that, so it’s definitely in the works, if you will.”

Cool. Come next update, I hope someone, anyone, around here picks up the game so I can put a spell all over his face.

The first major content update to Order & Chaos Online [$6.99] is coming down the pipe, so says a new thread on the World of Warcraft-like MMO’s official message board.

Details on the complete patch and its eventual release are still cloudy, but we do know a number of key fixes, tweaks, and enhancements that it’ll package in. Foremost, expect to see a number of new quests in “the last two high-level regions” and a new teleport in the Greenmont region of world. Also, forget about killing dudes in cemeteries -- with the arrival of this patch, these zones are to become hands-off, non-PVP areas.

Of course, there’s more. The ever descriptive “additional content and ... fixes” has been promised and game creator Gameloft is still teasing new dungeon, PVP arena, and level cap add-ons.

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Sometimes promotions never end. At least, that’s the case with Pocket Legends. In April, developer Space Time Studios kicked off an anniversary celebration that dished out free access to six areas for the generous asking price of $0. Now, the studio is announcing that those areas will remain free FOREVER -- or until we all die in 2012, one or the other.

That’s a deal, but you have to wonder how Space Time plans to make money while a large swathe of its instance-based content is free. That’s where this comes in: the studio has just announced a brand new “premium” area called the “Sandstone Caves.”

It’s made for players around level 20 to 25 and includes what you want: a new town, a new series of quests, new enemies, new bosses, and new weapons, armor and items.

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Yesterday I posted some basic details and then followed that up with some additional impressions as I made my way to level 10. At some point during the night, Gameloft threw the switch to make the game available internationally. If you've been anxiously reading our preview coverage and forum thread, download Order & Chaos Online [$6.99] as soon as you can.

And as soon as you do, disable global chat for the love of all things true and decent. To do so, bring up the text entry and instead of tapping the "Global Chat" button to talk in that channel, holdit down until it is blocked. For whatever reason, Gameloft apparently hasn't segregated servers at all, so Global chat is a mishmash of every language under the sun.

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Ever since Gameloft's Order & Chaos Online showed up for download on the Canadian App Store this morning, our forums have gone wild with speculation regarding gameplay, how the IAP works, and everything else. Since the release is Canada-only right now, and the game isn't free, it has left all of our "Canadian" forum members on the outs anxiously awaiting impressions from the few actual Canadians out there. Consider this post a continuation from the one from earlier today, so check that out first if you haven't already.

I decided to play an orc ranger because I wanted to play on the chaos side of things and I've always been partial to ranger-like classes in general. Starting the game, you're inundated with various tips, all of which will be incredibly obvious to anyone who has played an MMORPG before. The early quests, like most (all?) MMORPG's walk you through how the basics of the game works, and the path my orc ranger took involved slaying pigs, killing crabs, and various other low-level kill quests before I decided to go exploring.

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At some point early this morning, Gameloft released their MMORPG Order & Chaos Online on to the Canadian App Store, which seems to be standard operating procedure for a wide-scale "beta" of sorts. Ngmoco and other similar developers all have used the Canadian market to test out how their servers are running and how the game is performing, so it isn't out of the ordinary by any stretch of the imagination to see Gameloft doing something similar.

I've downloaded the game and put around an hour of playtime into it so far, and in the process discovered quite a few of the things we were wondering from the trailers Gameloft previously released. First off, the game isn't freemium which may be a relief for some. It's launching at $6.99, which includes three months worth of subscription to the game. Following that, you can subscribe for a single month for 99¢, three months for $1.99, or six months for $2.99.

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Alright, I'll admit my curiosity has been seriously piqued by Gameloft's upcoming MMORPG. Order & Chaos Online could have some serious potential, especially judging by the following trailer which shows just how many players can be on screen at once in the game:

Unfortunately, details are practically non-existent outside of this trailer and the previously released teaser. Will it be a buy once then play forever game like Guild Wars? Will Gameloft employ the newly implemented iTunes subscription functionality? Will Order & Chaos be free to play with all kinds of IAP? It's hard to say, but I'm thinking we'll find out soon. Historically speaking, Gameloft rarely ever releases trailers for games that are at least somewhat close to release.

If you'd like to join in on the rampant speculation taking place on our forums, it's a pretty good place to hang out with other people remarkably excited for the game.