That certainly isn’t the case with The Hacker [99¢], though, a story-driven faux hacking game from developer Angry Bugs. When I fire it up, my iPhone is transformed into a Glider OS-equipped computer that becomes my gateway into an international tour de hacking which leads me to uncover a devious plot involving my former employer. It’s far from the first game to let you take on the glorified role of a top level hacker, but it executes the idea incredibly well and offers a fantastic level of immersion with a fairly compelling story.

The Hacker starts with you trying to log into the Glider Operating System on your computer, an OS you helped develop as an employee of Glider Corp. You’re notified on the screen that several things failed to install properly, but you finally boot to the desktop. When you try to connect to the ‘net, you’re denied, and then contacted via email by someone who claims to be a former coworker. He is one of a handful of developers, including yourself, who worked on Glider OS and were unceremoniously fired shortly before it was set to launch.

He informs you that he’s discovered a trojan in the Glider OS and suspects that Glider Corp is up to something shady, and since you have experience with the software he recruits you to join him and several other ex-employees in hacking into Glider Corp’s system and getting to the bottom of things. From there you’ll go on to experience several twists and turns as you dig in and discover just what Glider Corp is up to.

The coolest thing about The Hacker is that it hardly ever breaks character in terms of presentation. It tries to simulate a computer you might find from the late 80s with a green monochrome screen and very basic graphics, and it does it very well. There’s rarely a time when navigating through the game that you don’t feel like you’re actually operating a computer (minus the fact that everything is touch enabled, of course). This level of detail is very cool for people who remember when computers looked like that, but a younger generation might not appreciate such a low-fidelity presentation.

The Glider Corp system is spread across 8 servers around the globe, and the way you “hack” in into each one is by completing various types of mini-games. These are mostly just logic puzzles disguised as computer-y things.

For example, one type has you moving little nanomachine bugs onto trigger pads placed on a circuit board in order to “open the ports” into a server. The catch is that all the bugs move at the same time, and you’ll need to use objects on the board to get each one into the proper position to have them all be on their respective pads at the same time. A couple of the hacking games use similar mechanics to the classic Pipe Dream, like creating a path out of sections that will lead power to a set of dead nodes. Outside of the server mini-games, another bit of hacking lies in “decrypting” emails by completing a slightly altered version of a lights out game.

The mini-games aren’t necessarily anything groundbreaking, but they are really fun and can be quite challenging. It makes you feel like you’re doing real work by putting your brain to use and then being rewarded with an unlocked server and a new part of the story. I won’t spoil too much, but there is definitely more beyond the 8th server including some very cool secrets and surprises.

If you finish the initial 8 servers and still want more you can choose from 3 new areas to buy as in-app purchases for 99¢ each. These 3 areas each have 5 new servers to hack into, and completing each area will lead to some periphery story bits and additional secrets. There’s also Game Center achievements and leaderboards for every area as well as an overall leaderboard.

Doing pretty much any kind of hacking will earn you experience, which acts as an in-game currency. You can pay a bit of XP to pass a mini-game if it’s giving you trouble, or buy an assortment of sweet backgrounds for your virtual desktop that feature ASCII artwork. These definitely bring a nostalgic tear to my eye. But the coolest thing you can spend XP on is unlocking arcade games from the G.A.M.E. portal on your desktop. These playable games include takes on familiar genres like snake, brick breakers, shmups, cave flyers, and dodging games. There’s even a hidden platformer game in there too (but you’ll need to find it yourself).

There aren't too many things that I didn't like about The Hacker, but there were a couple of issues that stuck out. There are a ton of spelling mistakes throughout the game, which on the one hand feels a bit sloppy but on the other sort of fits perfectly with a game based around communicating with people over the internet. Our grammar has certainly suffered since the rise of the internet age.

The other problem I encountered was an inconsistent difficulty. The mini-games appropriately get more complex as the game progresses, but at several points no matter where I was in the campaign I ran into puzzles that stumped me for a frustrating amount of time. Then, after finally figuring out the solution, the very next puzzle or two I would beat in a matter of seconds. It could be that’s just how my own particular brain handled certain challenges, but to me the difficulty curve felt kind of choppy.

While at its core The Hacker isn’t much more than a collection of mini-games, the fantastic presentation and little details really pull you in. The story might be a bit cliché, but the way it’s gradually revealed to you as you access each new server compels you to keep hacking away to learn what happens next. Plus, the mini-games and accompanying arcade games are really pretty fun on their own, and can be played over again as many times as you want just for kicks or to earn some extra XP.

Above all else though, The Hacker does a great job at making you feel like a bad ass international hacker, which is what it should really all be about anyway.

I use the term loosely, by the way. My Little Monster isn't exactly what you would call a Tamagotchi, though the simplicity of the gameplay here is definitely on the same level. At the beginning of every in-game day, you'll be given the opportunity to decide whether you want to purchase new hats, upgrade one of your three skills or improve various statistics. This, in turn, is accomplished by spending the currency you earn from your daily fights.

Now, before you get excited about the idea of rumbling with other leviathans, combat here isn't all too fancy either. You have no direct control over the fights themselves. For the most part, your time will be spent tapping on various words on the screen, tapping on the ability you want to use, and a fair bit of waiting. Assuming you survive, you'll then have your score tallied and the whole cycle will begin anew.

Yes, I know. It's kind of underwhelming but that doesn't make it a bad game. In an odd way, it's actually one of the reasons that My Little Monster works so well. You can play it anywhere, any time. Because so little brainpower is needed to propel the game forward, it's ideal for meetings and long, uncomfortable road trips. Of course, things would be different were the presentation any less stellar.

Group Sound really did a brilliant job (granted, they could have gone with a better choice of fonts but that's me being nit-picky) with the delivery in My Little Monster. The nostalgia-inducing visuals, the silly cut-scenes, the menagerie of eccentric enemies, the offbeat dialogue, the ludicrous plot - they all go along together like Japanese curry on rice. I mean, really? Is it even possible to dislike that little green guy and his earnest quest to grow up and destroy the world? I thought so.

Though considerably shorter than I would have liked it to be, My Little Monster is a reasonable amount of bang for your buck. If 'virtual pet simulators' weren't a thing back when you were growing up, you might not quite enjoy it as much as some. But for the rest of you, this may be a pleasant trip down memory lane.

Embedded in the patch notes, however, is a roadmap for future content updates: more evolutions, more food options, and also plans to add brilliant features like pooping, mini-games, and a social component are coming, the studio says. Oh, and that iPad version, by the way? It was name-dropped. We're guessing it's not strictly a possibility anymore.

Here's the scenario being laid out:

You receive a transmission from the Evil Cortexians. You start a fight with them; your weapons begin to charge and you fire using a brief 10 second mini-game to target them. You then take a few critical hits and your shields drop; now, you have a fire from the last shot occurring on you're bridge so you move some guys from engineering to go fight the fire. Meanwhile, engineering gets hit by an even bigger blast and you have to split this repair crew... and ...

... then two different follow-up scenarios are introduced, both of which are fairly wide-reaching and strategically harrowing. The problem that the developers are running into is that they're afraid to ditch the methodical X-Com-ish strategy in favor of a more seamless, action-focused kind of approach. Your thoughts matter here, however it does seem like turn-based is currently out of favor.

Check out the thread to dive in, see everyone's thoughts, and add your own to the delicious pile. And speaking of thoughts, it looks like free-to-play might be thing in Star Command. Check out this post:

...the game will be fully playable, beatable and fun but with the monetization along the lines of unique characters, or something along those lines.

This way the game isn't forced to go slow or be painful just to entice to raise revenue. Instead, we will have random drops of non-important game items -- and if you want that specific one -- you will have to pay for it or just keep trying to grab it.

At SOME point we need revenue, and freemium might perhaps be the least painful way of doing it. Perhaps not, but it is also (as we are all mature) a good way of raising more revenue which leads to more Star Command.

If that seems up in the air, it's probably because it still is. The larger takeaway from these kinds of community outreach pitches is this: Star Command probably isn't anywhere near finished. You don't ask about stuff like "Hey, how should we do our combat" unless a product is still a ways off. Kind of a bummer, actually, now that we think about it... but, hey, at least you can have a voice in this stuff.

Order Up!! was first released for Wii in 2008, and is due to come out soon for PS3 and 3DS at full retail price. I haven't played the console version of the game, but it sounds as though To Go is essentially the same game. For the mobile outing, Supervillian Studios has added advertisements, removable with IAP, and taken away certain goals to encourage players to purchase currency. Aside from that, it looks like everything else is intact. Intact, and downright entertaining.

Just one catch: you've gotta like grinding. Every day you buy meals in preparation for your customers, and those you sell give you a small profit. That profit goes toward buying spices and special meals, cleaning your restaurants, unlocking new recipes and working your way into new locations. Eking out a living this way takes time, and nicer restaurants are pricey. Originally this was handled by letting players unlock new restaurants once they met certain goals. In this freemium version, you have to earn the cash - or buy it.

If you're down with grinding, though, Order Up is great. It looks like Cooking Mama at a glance, and I'd be lying if I said there weren't similarities. But Order Up goes deep, ending up with as much focus on the management elements than the chopping and stirring.

At the highest level, you're responsible for caring for your restaurants. As I mentioned, this means, amongst other things, earning enough money to open them up and keep them running. Each day you pick out the menu based on a randomly selected special, a descending list of popularity and a daily customer total. Say you expect 14 customers in a day. 6 might order the special, 5 the most popular item, and 3 the second most popular. Or maybe 12 will order the special. You don't have those numbers, so you have to balance buying enough stock to cover all your customers' potential desires with your rather slim profit margin.

One you open up for the day the customers start to stream in. You send out your server to take their orders one table at a time, and she or he brings them back to you to cook up. Take too long and customers will start getting unhappy, which will cut into your profits. You're given up to a handful of orders to handle at once, and you have to time your preparations to keep anything from getting cold, doing as much as you can at once to keep things moving but holding back some steps to send your orders back out piping hot.

Preparing food is very hands-on. To make a burger and fries, for example, you have to drop meat onto the grill, then gesture to flip it when it's at the perfect temperature. You drag fries down into the oil and then up when they're cooked. You pull the leaves off a head of lettuce by swiping, and chop a tomato by tapping at the moment its guidelines meet. As each part is finished you tap it onto the tray, and once everything is ready you hit a bell to send it off to the table. Each meal is ranked by how well you complete each of its steps, and your profits depend on that rank.

The game's setting, Port Abello, has six restaurants currently, each with its own unique theme and a slew of recipes. You work your way through a greasy spoon to a Mexican joint, up to a slightly swankier Italian place, through Asian fusion and finally into fine dining. Each setting has thematic decor, recipes and servers, and each of those servers has several lines of dialog with which to compliment your work and butter up your customers.

Port Abello also has a few characters of its own that show up at your restaurants as special guests. They too have voiced dialog to express their spiciest seasoning desires. If you've purchased the right spices and figure out their hints in time to add the right one to their dish you'll earn a hefty bonus, something every struggling restauranteur can appreciate.

Assuming you manage to keep on top of everything else, you can put your coins toward upgrading your kitchens. There are currently a few options available for faster food prep, but it looks like assistants and mini-games are en route as well. You'll also want to keep your kitchens clean with regular payments to the cleaners. If you don't, you'll end up dealing with tedious mini-games like flicking away rat infestations or showing the health inspector that you can, in fact, wash lots of plates.

Other than its sheer grindiness, the only real problem with Order Up is that you're going to be doing a heck of a lot of gesturing. Each recipe you pick up increases your daily customers, increasing the length and complexity of your day. By the time you've grilled your thousandth burger it starts to lose its charm, and days dragging on longer and longer doesn't help. But that's just a sign that it's time to take a break. Give your wrist a rest, have some real food and come back refreshed and ready for another day at the grill. It's hard to fault a game for having too much to do.

Really, it's hard to fault Order Up!! To Go for much at all. It's virtually free, though it would probably be hard to live with the ads for long. It's filled to the brim with a variety of tasks and locales. If not for the damage done to the game's pace by its freemium elements it would be a nearly flawless casual restaurant management title. It's a shame that the best way to monetize the game was to make it frustratingly slow, because that will undoubtedly turn away many potential players. Don't make their mistake. Slow and steady wins the restaurant race, so take it easy and cook up something nice.

Adventure Bar Story

Knock out the "item" part of Recettear's title and insert "bar" if you want a decent idea of what you'll be getting into with Adventure Bar Story. The goal is to have the best bar in the kingdom; To accomplish this, you'll need to dungeon crawl and harvest the component parts of a variety of monsters to win cooking and drink contests. You know, just like in real life.

As of right now, the title is not slated to incorporate iPad support. That'll be a thing the studio evaluates based on sales. Pricing, by the way, has yet to be confirmed.

I'd go so far as to say that Pocket League Story is the most approachable game Kairosoft has put out on iOS to date. There are a few tricks to min-maxing the game, but if you do exactly what it tells you to do you'll be fine. For the spreadsheet geeks among us it may be too straightforward, but ultimately this is the perfect game to serve as an introduction to Kairosoft's catalog, or for anyone who loves their games but gets hung up on lists of combos and other arcana.

As manager of a soccer team, you're responsible for pretty much everything your team does, right down to the strategies they use on the field. The only thing that's out of your hands is how they play in the moment, and even there you have some input.

You're given control over hiring and firing players, arguably the most important part of the game. You might love your starting team, with their bright-eyed eagerness, but they're terrible. Just atrocious. They'll get you through the first few games, but your priority is to court better talent. Think Game Dev Story's talent pool, but vaster and more costly. You can really customize your team down to the last detail.

Building your team is an ongoing process, one you'll handle alongside training your players. You earn research points both on the field and off, and you can use those to improve your players stats, build up a fan base, and unlock new content. There is a bit of a building sim tucked in as you set up training facilities, but it's really low key. Most of your time off the field will be spent managing numbers, choosing basic coaching strategies and courting players, sponsors and fans.

On the field, things get a bit weirder. Like Grand Prix Story's races, Pocket League Story's matches mostly play themselves. You pick lines and formations in advance, and basic passing technique during the game. You can also fiddle with your strategy at halftime and trigger auras here or there, but your players are mostly on their own.

So you're left spectating a lot of the time. There's a huge selection of matches and league tournaments to work through in the eight years you're given, but they all boil down to the same thing: watch as your players win or lose. Games can take three or four minutes, and Pocket League soccer just isn't that stimulating a spectator sport after a few hours.

This is a misstep, for sure, because it takes players out of that non-stop, always-something-on-the-go mentality that Game Dev Story so perfected. It's much easier to put this game down than any of Kairosoft's other titles - not that that's necessarily the worst thing for those of us with other things to do.

Whether you'll enjoy Pocket League Story depends a lot on where you're coming from. Aside from a few issues some of our forum users with older devices have run into, this is probably the cleanest Kairosoft game yet. The translation is good, the tutorial explanations are clear and nothing's left to muddling through foreign cultural references. So it's easy to get into, and lays out all the traditional sim fun in a very manageable way.

But it's also quite shallow, with neither the complexity of a proper football simulator or the depth of most of Kairosoft's other games. If the meta-game of keeping spreadsheets and consulting FAQs is your thing, give this one a pass. But if it's the first Kairosoft title you're considering or you're okay with a streamlined experience, I can recommend Pocket League Story wholeheartedly.

Mojang has again updated their blog with the latest status of what direction the Minecraft - Pocket Edition project is heading. They admit that they mistakenly thought gamers would want something closer to Minecraft Creative while on the go, so that's sort of how Pocket Edition was designed from the start. Because of that, now that they want to go back and add in things like enemies, survival, and crafting it's going to take some pretty hefty rejiggering of the entire game.

And the beginnings of this rejiggering will be what's in the forthcoming update which Mojang plans to have submitted by February 8th. There will be some pretty heavy behind-the-scenes type stuff in the update which will allow for a smoother transition when survival mode is added in the future. Crafting is also coming, but since it requires a pretty extensive interface overhaul, it's still a ways out. Survival mode will most likely be hitting pretty soon this year, and the update lays the groundwork for that.

But just because this update is filled with a lot of boring technical foundation which you cannot see, there are still a few minor new content additions to look forward to. There will be some "neat looking animals" and some new blocks, as well as doors and fences. That's right, doors and fences! The best part of this update though is that with the behind-the-scenes grunt work out of the way then new content should be easier to create and updates should start coming much faster going forward.

We'll definitely be keeping our eye on how Minecraft - Pocket Edition evolves, and while you wait for the update that's coming next month you can hit up our forums for discussion of the game.

Big Poppa Pump is my little monster dude in Hatchi, Portable Pixel's game for those of us who remember the Tamagotchi so fondly. The two games -- and I use that loosely -- are pretty similar. You hatch an egg that contains a monster, and then that monster becomes your digital pet. As an owner, you'll be responsible for feeding, cleaning, entertaining and even applying first-aid to the little one.

Functionally, this is all really simple to do. If your monster's "smarts" bar is low, and his energy is high enough for an activity, you click the book button to raise it. If his "hygiene" is low, you hit the baby button to give it a bath. If his energy is low, or if you just want a break, you can hit the lights and that puts him to sleep.

The sleep mechanic rolls in a little save state trickery, by the way. When you put a Hatchi down and exit out of the app, upon returning you'll notice a slight visual hitch and then magically see the energy bar fill according to the amount of time he's been doing the bed thing. My experience with this varies; sometimes Big Poppa Pump needs hours of rest, sometimes just dozens of minutes.

Most of my day with Big Poppa Pump isn't spent doing anything thrilling, complex or even all that fun, which is why I hesitate to call this a game-game. In the mornings, I wake him up and grind until his needs are all completely met. I continue to do this through the afternoon until he gets too tired and needs that big nap. At night, I try to tire him out so he doesn't wake up angry, unclean, and unsatisfied at 2AM.

My greatest fear as an owner is that he'll die in the night, which is something that can happen. "Yes, it can die if you don't look after it," Portable Pixels tells us. "It will get sick first and you can use the first aid to cure Hatchi."

It's hilarious, but I really, really, really don't want Big Poppa Pump to bite the dust. I've somehow bonded with the thing, as silly as that sounds, and the competitive part of my brain wants to see an evolution based on my meticulous play.

Big Poppa Pump isn't evolving as fast as I'd want it to for our preview coverage, so I asked Playable Pixels how it works. "You'll need to feed, clean, play with and generally look after your pet to ensure it grows up," it tells us. "[Pets have] several different forms they can evolve into depending on how you look after them."

That's as much detail as we're getting at the moment, but as you'll see in the article, there are some pretty hip forms. Big Poppa Pump is getting a lot more exercise than he needs, so here's to hoping that he evolves into a gigantic muscle monster.

That's the experience as it stands now -- train, wait, train, wait some more, and then receive some sort of evolution. In the future, though, Playable Pixels hopes to add a lot more content, including a social component, if sales are good.

"Initially its a retro theme, but we've had lots of ideas about bringing it into the mobile era. Taking him on day trips for example, or socializing with your friends Hatchis," it tells us.

"One of our beta testers said she would give her left arm for a graveyard for all her past Hatchi's, and one of our developers wants a defibrillator. Its really a side project inspired by a reddit post back in September."

Portable Pixels says its been "fairly overwhelmed by the response" so far. In an effort to keep up with it, its set up an e-mail address for people to be notified when the game is hitting and for feedback purposes. That address, if you'd like to get in on this, is: hatchi@portablepixels.com.

Currently, the game is on track for a January 15th release at $.99 for iPhone and iPod Touch. A Universal version isn't slated to happen yet, but it could if "the need is great enough."

Pocket League Story appears to be no exception. The theme of choice this time around is soccer, or football depending on which country you hail from. You'll build up a team of players, train them, and then take on the rest of the league. You also have the ability to sell your team's own merchandise, build a gym for training, and even build your own stadium. The goal is to increase your fan base as you progress your team's abilities through competition.

It looks as though all the components are here of another solid Kairosoft simulation, especially if you're a fan of footy. We'll be digging in a lot deeper before passing final judgement on Pocket League Story, but if you're generally a fan of Kairosoft's work you probably can pretty much guess what you're getting here. You can pick it up for $2.99 which is an introductory price, and at some point it will raise up to their usual $3.99.

We'll have a full review of Pocket League Story in the near future, and until then you can check out impressions in our forums which are starting to trickle in.

Hatchi is a fine-looking Tamagotchi-style, er, throwback that provides a similar same kind of experience. You'll feed, teach, train, and clean your digital little animal and then, as a result, forge some sort of emotional bond to it. Basically, it's like a dog that can't do the annoying things like, say, pee on the carpet or drool.

Tamagotchis were huge for a spell and we had more than a few hanging from our keychains, so we're pretty stoked to give this mobile iteration on the idea a shot. Portable Pixels has submitted the app for review, so it should hit within the week.

Venture Towns, for the most part, is a carbon copy of Oh! Edo Towns set in the modern day. You'll build houses and then people will buy them; you'll build buildings and then people will work in them; you'll buy cafes, and arcades, and pastures, and parks, and then people will spend money in them. A grid-based placing system keeps everything as neat and tidy as can be, and a UI choked with options and graphs and additional mechanics will be where you spend the most of your time.

Buildings, in order to be efficient enough to profit, need to be paired with other very specific buildings. People, in order to fair well in the workplace, need to earn bonus statistics given nebulously from these buildings. Special items, on the other hand, can increase the parameters of buildings, shops, and commerce.

All these systems feed into the overall research and build structure; buildings dish out research points at unpredictable intervals, and this gives you the power to research new buildings. Money gathered then goes into building the stuff you just researched.

This is all pretty simple in theory, but there's a huge, catastrophic catch: the only way to execute well and learn what works is to continually fail, and to fail so badly that you need to start new games over and over again. This is a code-red, oh-my-god-I-hate-this-game kind of stuff -- and nothing really saves it.

I've had to dump around five hours into deficit drowning towns in order to even figure out how to position houses and stores together efficiently. Worse, it has taken over four restarts to get a handle on the combination system -- what buildings go together to create the most profit -- and how to acceptably micro-manage my citizens and buildings with boosts. Venture Towns never gives you the tools to be successful. It fails to give you any kind of blueprint for success, and there's obviously one it wants you to use, or else it wouldn't punish you so much.

This is a problem that feeds into everything else just about as well as its structure feeds into the research and build model. Kairosoft's typically sluggish pacing feels even slower as you flounder, the hot-and-cold translation effort gets even more grating as you're forced to read bad tutorial bubbles, and the dumbphone-geared interface gets even more in the way as you knowingly suck at the game for hours on end.

Venture Towns uncharacteristic ruthlessness makes what's usually forgivable with Kairosoft's formula unforgivable. It makes me feel like the whole thing has been played out; that sly hesitancy to give me all the important information up-front comes off as underhanded, the cutesy visuals feels like a mask, the resemblance to other Kairosoft games conceptually and mechanically is grosser, and the mechanics are bulky and the systems brutal. Its just all so muddled. Confidence and fun come at a costly premium of tons of your time and patience.

For what it's worth, there is a decent-enough game buried in this mess. After wrapping my head around all of the unmentioned mechanics and systems and uncovering most of the title's great mysteries -- such as how to advance as beyond as a town, how to unlock cars as vehicles, and how to grid buildings -- the actual game part, the weighing and measuring of what to build and when, became magically entertaining.

It just sucks that Venture Towns sucks until you invest massive, massive amounts of time into failing and discovering what the game is actually offering. As a whole, it doesn't feel like a fully fleshed out title -- there's too much hanging in the breeze.

Oh! Edo Towns has a similar kind of approach, so I think that game's fanatics might find something they might like in Venture Towns. I gotta say though, the modern backdrop doesn't do this game any favors; it's bland, SimCity type of stuff with Kairosoft's characteristic wrapper.

But The Sims FreePlay [Free] hearkens back to those early days in more ways than one. For one thing, it's more like the original than any of the other mobile titles. For another, this game plays in real time. That means when you take the time to send your Sim off to shower, you really could be doing it yourself. Never before has a game given me such an uncomfortable awareness of my own time-wasting -- but the returns make it feel worthwhile.

By moving the game into real time, players are free to, well, not play on occasion. Freemium titles like this work on timers, and timers have to keep moving while you're away. Since the game is all about micromanaging your Sims lives, imagine a 20 minute day -- step out for an extended lunch in real life, and all your Sims would have starved away to nothing.

Instead, you can pop in to babysit them as little as once or twice a day, or as often as you want. It's a lot like playing The Sims with autonomy turned off: your Sims will do nothing on their own. They will suffer, starve and humiliate themselves if you're not there to care for them. Will they die? I couldn't bring myself to let it go that far. Seeing their tiny, defeated frames as they stood there starving a few steps from a fridge was enough of a heart-breaker.

If you want your Sims to take on gainful employment, you'll need to stop in a bit more often. Jobs also function in real time, so if you're not able to play around, say, 8 am there will be certain jobs you'll want to avoid. It's awkward, but your Sims really don't care -- they lack interests, desires or skills, so one job is as good as the next.

That's the fundamental problem of The Sims FreePlay: if every action is equally good, they all start to feel a bit pointless. You can send your Sim down for a quick nap that takes 4 minutes or a deep sleep that takes 8 hours, and the only difference is the amount of experience you'll earn at the end of it. It's streamlined gameplay that works exceptionally well for a freemium title, but feels a bit pointless when compared to the desktop titles.

Still, as a freemium game The Sim FreePlay works very well. Grinding for experience takes a back seat to entertainment. You can customize your Sims' looks and outfits. You can play with their hearts, setting up love triangles and household-spanning affairs. You can set your Sims to gardening and play Farmville-lite. You can rebuild their homes and decorate with a decent selection of furniture and decor. Playing interior decorator is always my favorite part.

Of course, to buy furniture you need money. Your Sims can earn their simoleons by going to work, selling the fruits of their gardening labor and playing with their pets. Or you can skip all that and just buy them. You can also buy lifestyle points, which can be used to instantly complete timers or purchase some awesome furniture and houses. Lifestyle points can also be earned as you level up and complete missions.

Here's the rub: simoleons and lifestyle points are expensive. The smallest simoleon packs you can buy are $4.99, and give you about enough cash to buy one shop in town. You can do it all yourself instead, but it's going to be a long grind to buy homes to unlock all 16 Sims, open all the shops and build all the workplaces.

If you go into the game looking for the next great Sims title, you'll be disappointed. The game is all surface without much underlying personality. But if you're looking for a new freemium title to sink your teeth into, The Sims FreePlay offers so much fun and variety that you'll barely notice the same old timers underpinning the works. That's no small achievement. If you find yourself as hooked as I am, stop by our discussion thread and share your thoughts.

It's interesting because it's so strict, which is basically why Arma 2 the full game has been receiving love despite its variety of technical issues. Firing Range's connection to the full experience stops at the guns, but it's notable that you can view them all with previews and even "study" the specifications of each.

Firing Range at $0 includes a single firing range and three weapons. With an IAP of $1.99, you'll get access to all the current crop of weapons and challenges. We've been told that more guns and firing ranges will be added later.

Civilization Revolution

Starting now, you can upload and sync your saves between iPad and iPhone, which allows you to rock out in the same conflict regardless of iDevice on-hand. Also, 2K Games has dropped in achievement support and added to the game's visuals. New resource and unit icons compliment all new environmental animations including moving water and animated seagulls and fish. Seems small, but you'll be surprised when you boot it up.

Civilization Revolution for iPhone, by the way, has also just received "Create Your Own Scenario" challenges, which brings it up to date with the iPad version. This mode in particular is the most entertaining and rich one that Civ Rev has to offer, so definitely give it a look. You'll be saying, "Oh, god, it's 2AM" in no time.