While we weren't too crazy about Dungeon Defenders: First Wave [$2.99] in our review, the latest news from Trendy Entertainment is really cool. In an upcoming update, the game is going to have completely cross-platform multiplayer. How cross-platform? Well, the following video shows the game being played with an iPad, two different Android devices, and on a PC:

Characters are also going to be completely portable between platforms as well. Prior to this announcement, we've seen some cross-platform multiplayer on the App Store such as Homerun Battle 3D, but I haven't seen anything like this before. The thought of being able to bring my iPad over to a friends' house and play in a multiplayer game with them that they're playing on their PC feels like the future.

Dungeon Defenders [$2.99] is an ambitious title full of carrots that propel a basic hack-and-slash experience. It also has systems and content out the wazoo, providing a level of good depth rarely seen in App Store titles. But as effective as its smoke and mirrors are, and as much as it has to offer, its controls and interface are a pain to use and navigate, making it hard to recommend.

A lazy bit of shorthand to describe Dungeon Defenders is "Diablo meets Tower Defense." Dungeon Defenders has the hack-and-slash appeal and the character classes from the former, and the tower building and flow of the latter. Overall, the two mesh into a good whole, providing a ceaseless stream of stimuli to play with.

You'll spend more time hammering away at fantasy foes with the "action" button than anything else, but this basic offense is always in the service of defense of large, neon-blue crystals that sit in the middle of the game's instance-based levels. These crystals have their own health meters, and if foes manage to pummel it to zero, it's game over.

What makes defense manageable is the scripting and flow. A preset number of monsters amble out of spawn doors on scripted routes during each "Wave" of play. You can choose to confront these foes with weapon in hand or set up defensive towers via a character-specific radial menu. But maps are huge and enemies spawn in every possible corner, so towers quickly become the star of the show.

The placement of towers versus your decision to be in a certain place during a certain "Wave" is satisfying and rewarding. And there's no shortage of towers. Each of the four character classes -- the mage, the archer, the knight, and the warrior monk -- have different spins on the same five or so towers, presenting some unique gameplay opportunities when coupled with the Rock, Paper, Scissors nature of the strategy you'll need to consider.

Player-side, the combat boils down to basic hack-and-slash. Each of the classes do bring their own style of combat, which helps to mix it up, and the loot and grind lust that the game encourages with its constant drops keeps things interesting, too.

Dungeon Defenders has a neat online multiplayer compliment to the play and the characters are balanced in such a way to provide a rich experience. The catch is that the single-player balance is off, so you'll need to get with some pals to push through the later levels.

For the most part, the network code appears to be stable. You'll encounter a fair amount of latency and matchmaking oddness as you get into and attempt to find matches. And the lack of voice chat is annoying on a fundamental strategy level.

If the game controlled well, this would easily be a highly recommended game. Alas, the controls and interface are terrible. It's painfully obvious that this is a game designed foremost and balanced for a dual-analog controller. Instead of integrating good touch-based controls, Trendy Entertainment has chose to just put all of a controller's functionality up on the screen. It's littered with buttons, bubbles, and dials to the extent that they obscure play.

But Dungeon Defenders is also fundamentally an awkward game to move around in, in part, due to the terrible 3D camera which needs to be babysat with an on-screen pad. As you can see below in the image of the game's overlay, the camera control is not in a convenient or intuitive location, meaning you have to take your eyes and hands off the action in order to swivel the camera to a sensible spot. Also, a virtual d-pad for movement?

(Edit:  There's a virtual joystick-less control option that you can turn on from the game's menu, but it's no good.)

Dungeon Defenders iOS is a deep, sometimes entertaining game… but the controls are a core, critical, nasty flaw that I don't think can be "fixed" or addressed in any meaningful way. The game, quite simply, requires all the stuff the UI is lit up with. There's a chance that if you're the kind of guy who can play, say, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light without issues, you might be able to get into this one. If you're not, I'd stay away from Dungeon Defenders until it hits Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and PC at some point.

Just a note: Dungeon Defenders is a Universal App. Playing on an iPad does reduce the UI clutter by virtue of being a bigger screen, but it's still a mess and doesn't alleviate any of overwhelming button overload going on here.

Pardon the messiness with this one. Earlier, Subatomic Games sent us word that it pushed a new update for both versions of Fieldrunners [$2.99 / HD] to Apple. We're still not sure what's in the iPhone / iPod update, but we do know the contents of the iPad update, which is live and has been, apparently, for more than 24 hours.

So what's in it? As the headline so boldly states, new maps, new towers, and a new same-screen multiplayer component have been added. Specifically, the update adds a total of five maps, three of which are single-player only. The other two maps (which are takes on the added maps) support versus and cooperative, same-screen multiplayer.

Each of the single-player maps adds a new tower to the mix. Subatomic shot us a list of all of these:

Plasma Tower -- creates combo attacks when used with other plasma towers!
Shotgun Tower -- fires a devastating volley of drill bits.
Lava Tower -- incinerates all nearby fieldrunners in a giant wave of fire.

While the exclusivity might be a bummer for the iPhone and iPod owners out there, take comfort in the fact that you might also be getting these three single-player maps and turrets. Subatomic wasn't clear about this point at all, so we've tossed an e-mail to the studio to confirm the contents of this supposed update. We'll let you know as soon as we know.

In the meanwhile, check out this screen of a level that could be yours, provided the smaller-screen App update gets what we think it will. Basically you're looking into a window to the future if our hunch is right. But, again, we're checking with Subatomic.

UPDATE: Still waiting for word, but the information we can confirm is up there.

Character can be a dangerous thing. All the narrative, charm, or wit in the world can be churned into mush if the foundation it sits on is unsound. Games that are able to inject doses of character into their tried-and-true fundamentals are special. They're hard to put down, even harder to forget, and inarguably solid.

Corpse Craft [Free] manages to be this type of game. It's no-nonsense approach and mixture of two different genres works spectacularly well, while its clever veneer adds a delectable flavor to the play.

But let's start at the beginning, shall we? Corpse Craft is a castle vs castle title with a matching twist. The UI itself has a built-in matching-game puzzle board. Each color within this board represents a different kind of material that you can use to build your soldiers, which are represented in the game just above the UI. The more dramatic the match, the more materials you'll receive as a result.

Materials aren't figurative and the soldiers are people… sort of. The game draws its name its peculiar choice of castle vs castle troops: cobbled together, reanimated flesh. In a way, this is castle battle "Frankenstein" minus all that stupid "What is it to be human?" crap. Also, there's no stalking.

Once material is gathered, you can build a butcher knife-equipped attacker or even a mix-and-match consisting of a female's head held up by multiple hands. Later, you'll be able to build a disgusting rolling sphere of interconnected parts or defensive creatures with multiple arms.

What's important to get here is that each soldier has its own specialization, as well as a flaw. And while these guys are all separate, they do share one thing in common: a quirky, yet dark and original character.

The weird, but whimsical aesthetic is present throughout the title, soaking the atmosphere in its quirk. You'll notice that Corpse Craft has a delightful pen-and-ink approach reminiscent of Graham Annable's "Grickle." It's an approach that keeps the gruesome in the forefront, but doesn't dish out copious gore. The narrative follows the art's lead, presenting the macabre substance via grim singsong poems.

Since we're dealing with monsters here, it's only natural that there's a day and night mechanic. At night, your abominations can attack and defend at will. But during the day, the entire board is wiped clean of the reanimated, leaving you to gather resources until the next night falls.

Depending on how good you are, you may only see more than a dozen nights, as there appears to be around 16 levels in the game. I wish I could confirm this, but there's a sharp difficulty spike just beyond this "free" title's pay wall. (Yes, Corpse Craft is one of those "Buy the full game" games.) The AI in these later stages turns into corpse grinders, able to blast out many more soldiers than you can within short spurts. A good deal of strategy is required and, unfortunately, luck. I'll note though that nothing seems impossible to beat.

In addition to a campaign, there's a Survival Mode and an online component, which presents 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2 play via Game Center. The online sounds cooler in theory than what it actually is. The simplicity of the matching component lends itself to spamming blocks for massive amounts of soldiers, which turns out not to be so grand when you, and not the AI, is on the receiving end of the punishment. Again, this is where luck rears its head. If you get a bad board, you'll probably lose since there's not much complexity to Corpse Craft.

Regardless, it's hard not to love Corpse Craft for solely for its slick character, so it's really nice that it sits on such a solid foundation. I've enjoyed my time with the game immensely and I expect many others will as well. Go ahead and give the game a download -- you'll easily get a good enough indication of how much you'll dig the game before you hit its pay wall.

The onslaught of tower defense games seems as if it will never let up. Fortunately, when we're treated to something special like the recently reviewed Lord of the Rings or Guns'n'Glory, neither does our hankering for slaughtering wave after wave of enemies at the base of our towers. iBomber Defense [App Store] is Cobra Mobile's TD spin-off of their classic iBomber games on the iOS, taking you out of the cockpit and into the seat of Tower Master Extraordinaire.

Contrary to the abovementioned games, iBomber Defense is very true to the staple TD formula, on its face doing very little to toy with the basics. Instead, iBomber Defense concerns itself with tightening up the loose ends of games gone before it, by squeezing out a terrifically sharp look and interface, and really locking down a challenging campaign that will put your accumulated TD experience to the test. That's not to say that it doesn't innovate however, as iBomber Defense adds a few game-changing mechanics that you'll be wondering how you did without.

Primarily amongst these, is the ability to Rewind the current wave of creeps. This allows you to re-do your recent tower placement and upgrades and hopefully try to minimize your losses suffered by taking a fresh approach. Of course, this would be easily abused each wave, so the game restricts the amount of Rewinds you are allowed through a cooldown system. Secondly, is the impact that height has on the placement of towers. Towers placed on high ground are afforded a large range advantage, which is an essential tactical consideration to beat the more challenging missions.

The other major feature shows off its iBomber roots. All towers placed have their own life bar, and are attacked by enemies whenever they are within range. As expected, larger enemies pack more of a punch-- such as when a fleet of battleships passes by-- requiring you to micromanage your damaged assets and repair them lest they be destroyed completely. In another throwback to iBomber, aircraft are particularly devestating against towers and will take a more direct route to bombard your base. Other small additions purely functional, such as the ability to place and upgrade towers when pausing and the ability to zoom right out and easily pan the large maps and scan the multiple attack paths.

Of course, the highlight of TDs are the towers themselves. The iBomber Defense list of towers doesn't read long, but is definitely just as focused as the rest of the game. Machine guns are your standard fast firing towers, Cannons are the slower, AOE, anti-vehicle big-guns, AA launch flak at enemy aircraft, Sabotage towers fire mortar round that slows creeps, Comms increase the battle effectiveness of nearby towers and two specialist towers unlocked later in the game, the Firestorm and X-Weapon each have additional weapon effects that augment the damage of other towers. A victory point is rewarded for completing each mission, and an additional point is up for grabs for doing so perfectly. These can then be spent upgrading overall tower effectiveness between levels, augmenting the in-game upgrade system.

There are 22 levels all-up stretching across the Axis and Allied campaigns of Africa, Europe and Russia, each with their own iconic settings. The backdrops and graphics in iBomber are simply stunning (with some really meaty explosion effects), and thankfully textures are at their intended resolution when fully zoomed in. Another neat addition that spices up the level offerings come by way of routine Counter Attacks, which appear on the map over levels already played and offer bonus victory points. These depict offensive pushes by the enemy as they swarm over part of your already established defenses, and force you to defend a newly opened path on the map. In addition to the Campaign, there is a Quick Play mode with its own separate achievements to obtain per level, and 3 variable difficulties to play through.

iBomber Defense is undoubtedly the man's man of tower defense games. It doesn't overextend itself with a multitude of new fandangled features, but instead builds upon nearly every aspect of the existing TD foundation and just does it better. It's tough as nails even on the regular difficulty level, requires good forward thinking and strategic placement of gun embattlements, and also forces you to react quickly to multiple attacks happening simultaneously. It also has Game Center and Crystal support and is thoughtfully a Universal app which will definitely please iPad owners. In short, if you absolutely love tower defense games, then iBomber Defense is a tribute made just for you.

At this point in the life of the App Store, I'm not sure if it's fair to say that the tower defense genre is any more overloaded than any other genre of game, but there definitely does seem to be a real lack of any kind of innovation in that section. There are a ton of tower defense games out there, but very few of them are that memorable. Much like match three games, you've really got to do something different to stand out. Recently, Guns'n'Glory sticks out as a game that features more than typical tower defense gameplay, but the Sentinel series has always been my favorite tower defense games on the App Store.

The original Sentinel was released back before tower defense games really started blowing up on the platform and provided some really solid classic tower defense gameplay with great graphics, a cool array of towers, and a high frame rate that didn't stutter even on fast forward modes. Sentinel 2 was a worthy sequel in every way, and my review of the game reflected just how much I enjoyed it. The second Sentinel introduced things like orbital weaponry, new tower types, along with both repair drones and energy drones to keep your defenses online. Sentinel 3 takes the series another step further, providing RPG elements and further customizations.

The forefront of these new features it the commander unit, which is deployed at one of the barriers on the map. This unit provides a morale boost to any tower within range, increasing its damage. In addition, it also has ranged and melee attacks to take out any incoming enemies that your towers missed. Progressing through the campaign awards experience for your commander, and with each level you're able to increase the commander's statistics. These range from pumping up its own health, ranged attack, melee attack, and how much it boosts the strength of nearby towers. In addition, you also slowly unlock additional abilities such as being able to jump between barricades, temporarily boost your damage output, and others.

Also unlocked through the game are the different tower types and orbital attacks. However, unlike previous games, you'll need to buy these individual towers with in-game credits. In addition, much like how Plants vs Zombies offers a wide array of tower options but only space for a few of them when you're actually playing each level, you'll eventually only be able to bring eight of the ten towers with you. Similarly, the various orbital super attacks work much the same way. Eight in all are included, but you can only select up to six at a time. Between levels you're given the opportunity to modify which of these defenses you have access to.

All this flexibility greatly increases the level of personalization in the game, and much like how there wasn't really any "right" way to beat levels in Sentinel 2, 3 takes this even further. For instance, it seems equally viable to dump tons of points upgrading your commander's attack capabilities as it is to pour all your points in to the nearby tower strength boosting effect. With a strong commander, you could place towers elsewhere, and with a commander that is good at boosting your towers, you'd want to place as many nearby as possible. The amount of different approaches you can take to the levels included in Sentinel 3 make for a surprisingly deep tower defense experience.

Sentinel 3 was submitted on November 16th, and is awaiting Apple's approval. Things tend to get pretty backed up towards the end of the year, but the good news is Origin 8 doesn't plan to hold up the game's release for a specific date. As soon as Apple throws the approval switch, we'll be in tower defense heaven. For more details on Sentinel 3 check out the thread in our upcoming games forum.

Last month we came across some interesting news about an iOS version of the upcoming Dungeon Defenders game that will be launching for PC/Xbox Live/Playstation Network early next year. Dungeon Defenders is a tower defense game with a healthy dose of action/RPG elements thrown into the mix, though at the time of our preview there were scant details available about the looming iOS version of the game. Late last night, developer Trendy Entertainment released a brand new video of the mobile version of Dungeon Defenders, which will be called Dungeon Defenders: First Wave.

While the core gameplay of Dungeon Defenders: First Wave appears to be rooted in the tower defense genre, players will seemingly have a ton of freedom to roam around the battlefield using their created character, giving it an added action/RPG element. The characters you create will also be able to transfer to the PC version of the game for cross-platform play, though this feature won't make it to the more closed Xbox or PS3 versions. Also included in the description of the video is that Dungeon Defenders: First Wave will be powered by Unreal Engine 3, which explains why this video looks so gorgeous and very near to its console counterparts:

Other tidbits of information that can be found in the upcoming games thread in our forums is that Dungeon Defenders: First Wave will launch around the middle of December for $2.99 with an accompanying lite version. The game will support Game Center for achievements and multiplayer between iOS devices, and will support Retina Display. Like many of the more advanced titles coming out as of late, Dungeon Defenders: First Wave will only be available for 3rd generation devices and above, including the iPad. This definitely looks like one of the more interesting titles to be hitting the App Store this year, and we'll be looking forward to bringing you more information on Dungeon Defenders: First Wave when it releases next month.

Surprisingly, a search of the App Store won't reveal much in the way of Tolkien's epic high-fantasy trilogy. We've seen many other movie adaptations converted to games, but nothing in the way of the Fellowship's desperate plight to Mt Doom. It's strange then that Glu Mobile has championed the well known licence on the App Store, and has done so in the form of a tower defense game, The Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense [$6.99 / HD].

Thankfully, Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense isn't your typical tower-defense clone. Obviously, this is largely due the vast source material it draws from, using the entire Lord of the Rings adventure as a tapestry to bind each of its 18 levels together. You'll encounter goblins in the Mines of Moria, fight with the Rohirrim in the Battle of Helms deep and fend off Nazgûl a-plenty on your way to defeat Sauron. There are 7 iconic battle locations all up and a host of familiar enemies to mow through.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, what really sets apart Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is the way it uses the heroes of the fellowship as your typical TD towers. Maps in Middle-earth Defense aren't comprised of static paths bordered with designated areas where you place your towers. Instead, in much the same way as Fieldrunners handles TD, the path the enemies take can and must be manipulated by you to succeed. To do so, you'll be able to build a variety of different barricades with wood earned after each wave. Barricades each have different abilities, such as slowing or damaging creeps that pass by them. Though you are limited where you can build, it is up to you to decide what paths to open or close.

Once your path is determined, you must then place your heroes. Ranged heroes operate much like your typical towers, attacking from static positions. Melee heroes however, roam around their area picking fights, and so can get up close and personal with a creep wave hitting them constantly as they pass. Heroes can be upgraded with earned gold, improving their attack power, speed, range or skills. The latter is unique to Middle-earth Defense, as each warrior Hero (there are support heroes too, such as the hobbits) has a skill that can be periodically activated to dramatic effect. Effective use of skills such as Gandalf's meteor shower or Gimli's axe tornado are pretty much essential for getting past the harder levels, as the game does get quite difficult at times.

The individual creeps and heroes in Middle-earth Defense are a mixed bag-- some look terrific, whilst others are barely recognizable. This can be attributed to the somewhat jaggy models and darker textures experienced on the 3GS device we tested the game on, though we're thrilled (and surprised!) to see that a Retina patch has already been released which sharpens things up significantly. Unfortunately, this doesn't remedy the fact that animations are only just serviceable, and that heroes are sometimes indistinguisable and easily lost amidst the chaos.

Glu Mobile have otherwise done a great job of maintaining the standards of the license. The musical score is not overstated, and is actually worth listening to as you're battling wave after wave. Short cutscenes describing each scene and text dialogue between characters abridging each level are well written and give context to your encounters. There is also a Challenge Mode which is unlocked after completing the tutorial that allows you to attempt each of the Story Mode environments with unlimited enemy waves, in an attempt to post your best Game Center or Facebook score.

Finally, there are a host of trophies (achievements) to earn in Story Mode that unlock additional characters and environments in Challenge Mode. We're happy to see that Glu Mobile haven't skimped on content, as there's a heap to do here; and with 3 difficulty levels you can honestly expect several hours worth of gameplay all considered. Certainly don't expect to breeze through your journey to the Black Gates.

Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is an interesting take on the saga for its first journey to the small screen. Though an unusual use of the licence, it is not an unwelcome one, as Middle-earth Defense does enough different to make it stand out from the very crowded tower defense market, not the least of which is provide great context for your battles and an interesting and well-known story to keep you engaged. There is one minor setback though-- while we don't usually comment on price, it is obvious that use of the Lord of the Rings licence does bring with it a slightly elevated hit to your hip pocket. If that doesn't phase you, we can certainly recommend Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense as a challenging and entertaining TD clone that should pose a pleasant surprise to cult fans and fans of the genre alike.

Guns'n'Glory was released in late August and our review reflected just how surprised we were with just how fun the game turned out to be. Unlike many tower defense games where you place a tower and it stays there until you sell it, Guns'n'Glory almost plays closer to an RTS than a TD because you're able to move all of your units around whenever you please. This allows you to adapt your entire defense to each incoming wave of, well, innocent settlers attempting to make their way west.

Another thing that is amusing about Guns'n'Glory is that you don't control a faceless set of towers that attack an array of geometric shapes, monsters, or aliens. No, instead you control a team of bandits that quite literally position themselves on bridges and over mountain passes, slaughtering entire families of people trying to settle out west. It's a silly and entirely unexpected premise for a tower defense game, and I'm more than a little surprised that it didn't seem to offend anyone.

Take a look at the trailer, and take a peek at our review if you'd like, but really you should just download this game as quickly as possible while it's still free. The mix of tower defense and realtime strategy elements really makes for a fun game. It's a little short on content, but that's hard to get worked up over while the game is free.

Trudging through the forums of TrendyEnt's Dungeon Defenders, an upcoming game on PC that recently caught my eye, has upturned some pretty juicy developments. Apparently, Dungeon Defenders' release in November and a console version on the way hasn't prevented the busy developers at TrendyEnt from finding the time to post their work on an iOS port of the game, too. And it's looking mighty fine, even at this early stage.

The Dungeon Defenders website describes the game as a hybrid between a Tower Defense game and a Co-op Action RPG, where 4 players take on the role of heroes tasked with defending the onslaught of enemy creep waves by building defenses and directly attacking the horde themselves. There seem to be rich underlying RPG concepts driving Dungeon Defenders, as heroes collect loot, level up, lay traps and even get their own familiars along the way.

It seems as though Dungeon Defenders' iOS release may not be too far away, either. A video released by the developers on YouTube (below) shows Dungeon Defenders already being played co-operatively on 4 different iOS devices. On initial observation, it looks to have many of the features of the PC version, with the touch interface effortlessly replacing the standard point-and-click and the bright, colorful, cartoon-like graphics remarkably in-tact in its translation to the handheld device.

The PC release is described as having an extensive campaign, lots of planned DLC, detailed stat tracking and the ability to seamlessly mix both online and local participants, all features we'd love to see carried over to the iOS port too. Little information is actually known on the project so far, beyond what has been released in alpha demonstrations. We have contacted the developers to see what else we can get from them, and will keep you up to date on any further developments.

Here's their non-iOS trailer:

It was just about this time last year that Apple introduced the 3.1 firmware update to the iPhone that allowed developers to access the built-in camera for games and apps. What followed was an avalanche of “Augmented Reality” games, or in other words games that utilized real-time images from the iPhone camera and added digital graphical effects over those images to create gameplay out of the environments in front of you. Unfortunately, nothing too spectacular ever emerged from this technology, and most games consisted of shallow gameplay with Space Invaders-type graphics slapped over the camera's view. There have been some interesting uses of Augmented Reality on the iPhone just to be clear, but as far as gaming was concerned it never amounted to more than just a gimmick.

Now it seems that developer Int13 is trying something a bit different to bring a more authentic Augmented Reality experience to the iPhone (and camera-enabled iPod touches) with their upcoming game ARDefender. The way ARDefender works is that you'll print out an image from a PDF file available on their website, and this special image will be read by the camera and create a tower where the image is placed. The goal of the game is to defend that tower from waves of enemies by moving your device around the fixed position of the tower to take aim and blast away at them. It may sound a little simplistic gameplay-wise, but what I really like is how convincingly the tower and enemies seem to actually be on the table, which can be seen in the video below.

We previewed a technology very similar to that used in ARDefender way back in March of last year at GDC, but at that time use of the iPhone camera APIs was off limits to developers. The technology has also been used in the Playstation 3 game Eye of Judgment, and even in this incredible Augmented Reality tattoo. Ideas like this are obviously possible on the iPhone as well, and it seems like ARDefender is a step in the right direction. All I've ever really wanted from an Augmented Reality game is for it to make me actually feel like something is being created in the real life space around me, and by the looks of things ARDefender does just that.

It shouldn't be too long before we can get our hands on the game either, as ARDefender has already been submitted to Apple. Interestingly, the game has been available for over a month on the Samsung Wave, and impressions from those gamers have been positive. They've even come up with some clever ideas on how to use the technology, like printing out a huge version of the PDF image to create a gigantic tower and playing the game from an elevated area like a balcony, or pulling up the PDF on their computer at work and pointing their phone at it to play the game directly on the screen. We'll be sure to take a closer look at ARDefender when it gets released in the near future.

Not long ago classic iPhone tower defense game geoDefense [$1.99 / Free] version 1.5 hit the App Store, adding support for the Retina Display of the iPhone 4 as well as the framework for DLC level packs. The first of those level packs was just released this afternoon, and a 99¢ in-app purchase unlocks brand new set of 3 medium levels and 3 hard levels. Also, these levels are immediately playable once downloaded so you can dive right in without needing to play any previous levels. While a game as good as geoDefense getting more levels is totally newsworthy by itself, it also gave us an excellent opportunity to pester developer David Whatley who is quite literally floating around the Caribbean as we speak.

Last time we spoke with Whatley he was extremely excited about the potential of the iPad, and told us that a sequel to geoDefense was coming which would be exclusive to the device. Since then, several things have gotten in the way such as the release of the iPhone 4, a Facebook game called Fantasy University, launch day ports of geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm for Windows Phone 7, and the never-ending question of what will make a worthy sequel to a game with the notoriety of geoDefense.

According to David, the recent update to geoDefense had a lot of work done behind the scenes to eventually ramp up in to an iPad version of geoDefense which is going to be the next title to be released by Critical Thought Games. From there, they're going to be testing the waters of the iPad App Store to see whether or not sticking to their guns regarding the iPad exclusivity of geoDefense 2 makes sense or not. Whatley admits that not doing an iPhone version of the sequel would likely be a big mistake, especially given the size of the market.

When talking to David about geoDefense 2, he mentioned the amount of pressure he's under to deliver something that will impress gamers, but not stray too far from what everyone has since come to expect out of the geoDefense series. He wants to take geoDefense to the next level, but he's still not entirely sure what that next level is. The situation seems eerily similar to Galcon [$2.99 / Free] and its successor Galcon Labs [$2.99] which despite the popularity of the original saw a lackluster response from gamers as it felt too much like an expansion pack, and not enough like its own game.

If you've beaten every level in geoDefense over the last year and a half since its initial release, now is a great time to re-download the game and try out the new levels. Admittedly, I'm fairly rusty but so far the six new levels completely live up to the difficulty level we've come to expect of geoDefense and are highly recommended for any fan of the game.

Tower defense games on the App Store come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors it seems as the genre becomes more and more saturated with each new release. Much like match threes, it's getting harder and harder for these games to stick out amongst the crowd when there are already such fantastic tower defense staples such as Fieldrunners [$2.99 / HD], geoDefense [$1.99 / Free] (along with geoDefense Swarm [$1.99]), or my personal favorites, Sentinel: Mars Defense [99¢] and Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [$1.99]. But just because all these awesome games exist, doesn't mean I don't try every tower defense game that looks interesting (and every match three for that matter) but so often in these games there's not much in them that given the choice would make me tap their icon instead of just playing some Fieldrunners or any of the other games I just mentioned.

Guns'n'Glory [$2.99] is a somewhat rare exception to that, and I really can't believe it hasn't generated more buzz in the time since its release over a week ago because it's one of the most unique tower defense games I've played in quite a while. Handy Games did a great job of combining some elements of realtime strategy with the standard tower defense formula as well as a ridiculous premise, great sprite-based graphics, and a western themed soundtrack that fits the game perfectly. On top of that, it's even universal and while I prefer it on the iPad, it's just as much fun on the iPhone.

So by now it all sounds good and you're probably wondering what's the deal with the title of this review. Well, I'm not entirely sure how the setting of the game will sit with some people as in Guns'n'Glory you're not protecting Earth from invading aliens, or killing the anonymous troops of some enemy army. Instead, you control a gang of bandits made up of various stereotypes, train-mounted gatling guns, and cannons. These bandits slaughter waves after waves of men, women, horses, and a few different types of covered wagons all trying to make their way west. It's actually kind of amusing how when playing the game I went from "Wait a minute, these are... obviously women... that I'm gunning down" to "Argh, get back here you!" as a settler makes it to the end of the path and off the screen.

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There are tons of tower defense games on the App Store, and for good reason-- The touch interface and fairly slow-paced gameplay just works fantastic on iOS devices. I have quite a few favorites in the genre, but Origin8's Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [Free] is always on the top of any list of tower defense games I recommend. There is just so much I like about this game which I explained in my review.

In a nutshell, Sentinel 2 has great graphics, good sound effects, a nice variety in both towers and enemies, and the inclusion of both repair drones as well as different destructible barriers to defend really adds an interesting layer of strategy to the game. There are also mega weapons that are fired from your orbiting space ship that slowly recharge over time, my personal favorite being a massive orbital laser strike that destroys anything it comes in contact with. The best thing about Sentinel 2, at least in my opinion, is how well the game is balanced.

There doesn't seem to be any "right" way to beat the included levels, as quite a wide variety of different tower constructing and upgrading strategies all seem to work. This makes the game a lot more fun than a lot of other tower defenders which often seem to be games of how intelligently you can manage your resources to ramp up to whatever the fully upgraded ultimate tower is that kills everything in one hit-- Allowing you to just put your phone down and wait for all the waves to just die to your defenses and for the next level to start.

If you even have a vague interest in tower defense games, or even have never played one before, you should download Sentinel 2 while it's free. If you miss the window of the freebie promotion, I'd even recommend buying it.

iPad owners are in for a treat heading into this weekend, as TowerMadness HD has gone free for today. Not only is it a rare occurrence to get a full fledged iPad editioin of a game for free, but this particular game normally sells for $7.99. TowerMadness HD is a fully 3D tower defense game, and the iPad version features same device multiplayer for head to head competition. We previewed the game back in May shortly before it's release, and you can take a look at our review for the original iPhone version that was released over a year ago for more information.

This short developer video showcases the added multiplayer mode of the iPad version:

Even if you're not typically a fan of tower defense games, there's no reason not to give TowerMadness HD a spin during this free promotion. More information and player impressions can be found in the game's thread in our forums.