I avoided the movie Snakes on a Plane because the premise of reptiles causing an aerial ruckus seemed a little lame. So my expectations were equally low for Gorilla Gondola [$1.99], a game about a silverback gorilla who's riding on the roof of a moving gondola. But fortunately it turns out this debut iOS release from UK developers Electric Pixel Factory is pretty entertaining.

The word "Gondola" has a few different meanings. To clarify, this gorilla is not riding on a flat-bottomed boat in Italy or an open railway freight wagon (that would be ridiculous). It's actually  standing on top of a ski-gondola on a cable, which moves along automatically. By swiping up or down with your finger, the Gorilla jumps or stomps. The further and faster you swipe, the stronger it's movements, causing the ski-lift to rise and fall.

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We've had our eye on Tweet Land [$1.99] from Why Ideas ever since we spotted it as a curious Kickstarter project back in April of last year. The project was more than sufficiently funded, and last month we were treated to a new trailer and news that Tweet Land would be hitting at the end of January. As expected, earlier this week the game finally went live in the App Store.

Tweet Land was intriguing due to its unique real-time usage of tweets drawn from Twitter that would trigger elements into the game. It reaches out into the vast ocean of Twitter and utilizes special keywords from real tweets to create things in the game. It's a fantastic idea in theory, and Why Ideas did pull it off on a functional level just as they had promised. However, despite being really innovative, Tweet Land doesn't hold up as well in the gameplay department, and there were a couple of unintended side effects of using live tweets that left a sour taste in my mouth.

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A couple of high-profile games are on sale on the App Store this morning. Warner Bros, in celebration of over a million sales and Valentine's Day, has put Scribblenauts Remix [$.99] on the price-slash block. Down to $.99 from $1.99, the latest version of the game includes a new Valentine's Day playground. The other notable, Another World [$1.99], is now just $1.99 instead of its usual $4.99. We've created the above epic image to mark the occasion of the meeting of these two games within a single blog post. Enjoy!

In all seriousness, both games are imaginative and lovingly rendered on iPhone and iPad. You can read more about Scribblenauts here and Another World here if you'd like, but let us save you a bit of time with this double-fisted spoiler: both games are, like, fantastically buy-it-now good. What are you waiting for, man?

Emotional Robot's FPS, Warm Gun, has received a notable update that aims to fix a lot of what owners have been rightfully grumbling about since the title's release. According to the game's latest patch notes, this update increases performance "across all devices by roughly 40%", which should help a lot of folks with frame rate woes. It also adds in more control schemes, improves the AI and UI, and resolves what Emotional Robot calls "random crashes." Yikes, that's a lot tweaks and fixes for a release game!

There's some content mixed into this update, too -- specifically, an all new map called "Coldshot" has been added to the multiplayer rotation. In celebration of all of this, Warm Gun's price has been dropped to $1.99 until the end of this month. But regardless of price, you definitely want to check in with our forums before diving into this one. You know, just to be safe.

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There’s nothing more frustrating than a game that has good core gameplay that is ruined by missteps and issues in all the other game elements. Such is the case with DvO [$1.99 / HD], a castle defense game that’s heavy on the gameplay depth, but falters in its visuals and slow execution.

DvO (a.k.a. Dwarves vs. Orcs) plays very much like a classic castle defense title. Players send units down five battle lanes taking down the resistance until they reach the opposing castle (with the enemy doing the same to you, obviously). The side that takes down the opposing castle first wins the match. Littered throughout the lanes are crystal patches, which must be mined by your mining units and are used as the currency necessary to build supplemental units.

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There's a lot of value, to me, in something I can confidently call "a happy little game." Niko [Free] fits the bill, with a cute little dude at its center named Niko who is bound and determined to save the lives of his friends who just so happen to have been doomed to exile in some unknown world that lies beneath the forest.

We've heard all varieties of the backstory before, and surely this is just another of those, but you can't deny that developer Sulake knows what they're doing. After all, they're behind the Habbo Hotel world, and the ten million monthly visitors there is nothing to shake a stick at.

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If you're looking to game on the cheap this week, you're in luck: a couple of big-time publishers and studios are offering a healthy swathe of their catalogues for $.99 right now. For example, Telltale is throwing yet another free-for-all. Until the end of this month, you can grab the Puzzle Agent and Hector series at a more wallet-friendly price. Gameloft is celebrating the Chinese New Year by killing the prices of nine of its premium offerings, while EA is still rocking price tags with its Daily Deals program.

Here's a list, and note some of the odds and ends, too -- Bard's Tale and Puzzlejuice are in the mix, as well as a few other cool notables. This, by the way, is by no means a comprehensive list. We're just highlighting.

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Last month, Enviro-Bear 2010 creator Justin Smith released his latest iOS endeavor called Justin Smith's Realistic Summer Sports Simulator [Free], or JSRSSS to lazy people like myself. Summer Sports Simulator was like a twisted take on an old Atari 2600 track and field title, with a bunch of Olympic-style events to partake in by awkwardly flinging your athletes through them. There was something strangely compelling about JSRSSS with its quirky gameplay and charm, and the mini-game nature of the events made it a perfect go-to title when I'm looking for a quick fix of fun.

Despite really liking Summer Sports Simulator, there were a few minor issues that detracted from the experience. With the game's first update, these have basically been taken care of. The most glaring problem with the initial release was that it lacked any sort of online high score tracking, which seemed like a big omission for such a high score-centric game like this. To rectify this, Game Center has been added with leaderboards for every event as well as a leaderboard for most gold medals earned during one play through. I've been having a ton of fun trading spots on the leaderboards with friends in JSRSSS.

The next major addition is a brand new event, the kayak slalom, and then the rest of the update consists of smaller tweaks and fixes. Controls have been improved on the iPhone, the AI has been balanced, and that weird cat that seemed to be stuck on the title screen has been fixed. Also, you can now choose from a list of actual flags and countries, rather than the weird mashup countries from the original release. See? I told you it got more realistic in this update, though I was pretty partial to the silly country names from before. Finally, you can turn on a "turbo" mode from the help screen at the main menu, which makes the entire game run at double speed. This makes an already difficult game that much more so, but it is kind of a fun feature to check out.

Another big change for Summer Sports Simulator is that the initial game is now free. Previously, it cost 99¢ which gave you 4 events and the option to unlock an additional 10 events with a $1.99 in-app purchase. It's something that we took issue with in our review, not so much because the game wasn't worth the money but more because it just seemed confusing and possibly off-putting for those who were thinking they were getting the whole game for their initial $.99 purchase. Now, the game basically functions as a free demo with five events and the remaining 10 still available from within the game for $1.99.

Justin Smith's Realistic Summer Sports Simulator is the type of game that won't be for everyone. Now that the barrier of entry has been lowered to free, there's no reason not to give it a spin. It's a really fun game made even better with this latest update, especially Game Center integration.

Video gaming icon and goat enthusiast Jeff Minter has just pushed out the latest offering from his development studio Llamasoft, called Caverns of Minos [$1.99], which has just gone live in the App Store. Caverns of Minos offers a similar brand of retro-inspired gameplay and psychedelic visuals, and, just in case you were worried, a hefty dose of minotaur rescuing.

Caverns of Minos is a mishmash of genres – part cave flyer similar to Lunar Lander, part rescue game sort of like Choplifter, and part vertical shmup like... well, about a million games since the dawn of time. Its biggest influence was an old Atari title called Caverns of Mars, which should be immediately apparent to those familiar with that game. Caverns of Minos boasts 4 different ships to pilot as well as 21 different caverns to explore and complete. You're tasked with rescuing minotaurs as you explore each cavern looking for a special item which must then be delivered back to the mothership. Yep, this game has that great Jeff Minter craziness we all know and love.

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You might not have downloaded it yet, but you've played Z-Day [$1.99] before. It's the game you play in your head while reading The Walking Dead; you know, that game where you plot out where you would go and how you would operate during the zombie apocalypse? That one.

Would you take in that stranger you found on the road? Would you mug him instead? Would you break into a police station surrounded by zombies? With moans at your back, three kills to your name and a sledgehammer at your side, would you stop to take a bag of tools from a broken-down car in the middle of the road?

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Lots of folks out there became new iOS gamers over the holidays, and one of my personal App Store favorites that may not be on their radars just got iCade support in an update. Madgarden's excellent Saucelifter! Heavy Disc [App Store] is a Choplifter clone that started life on the PC and landed on the iPhone in early 2009. Since then, it has seen numerous updates, getting iPad support as as universal app and receiving various gameplay tweaks here and there.

Gameplay involves piloting your flying saucer to various Earth-based prison barracks, blasting open the doors, picking up your captive crewmates, and dropping them off at the transporter where they're beamed safely back to your alien world.  This is made challenging by evil Earth forces, including tanks, laser turrets, fighter jets, and flying attack drones.

There are a lot of nice touches to the title. The stylized, vector-based 2D graphics lend the game clean, future-retro visuals, with a day-into-night changing skyline that adds nice variation to the scene. A letter-box effect alters the aspect of the play area to provide early warning of incoming enemies. It's extremely well done.

On the iCade, the leftmost six buttons control fire / autofire in the three relevant directions -- left, down, and right. I greatly enjoy Saucelifter! via tilt-control, but I have to say that gameplay on the iCade more closely delivers the kind of fun I remember having in front of Gorlin's helicopter classic, hour after hour, back in 1984. Other iOS controller accessories that feature iCade emulation, such as the iControlPad, should also work fine with Saucelifter.

Those not sold on Saucelifter! should at least have a look at the Lite version [link].

In some ways, platformers are the toughest to make on a mobile platform. There’s always questions regarding the length and difficulty of individual levels, as well as whether the developer can successfully implement a control scheme to make the game accessible enough for level completion and item collection. Crazy Hedgy [$1.99] from Cybertime is a great example of how platformers should be done on iOS. Not only does it get the basics (like gameplay and replayability) right, but the tilt-based control scheme works very well with the rest of the game. Assuming you don’t mind tilt controls, Crazy Hedgy is well worth it and highly recommended.

At its core, Crazy Hedgy is an adventure-platformer that has you playing through a large amount of levels with the primary goal being to get to the end. There’s not much of a story to go on, other than the fact that the land of Green Hedges has changed (and not for the better) and you need to save it. Along the way you’ll find various types of diamonds that can be collected and act as the currency to upgrade your character in the in-game store (IAP need no apply here). In addition, players are charged with collecting gold coins, which unlock the ability to purchase upgrades and are used as an artificial barrier between worlds (each world has about ten levels). In your way is a variety of different enemies and traps that you can either avoid or take on (extra points awarded if you can toss the enemies into those traps).

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Justin Smith from Captain Games is probably most widely known for sparking off the Enviro-Bear 2010 phenomenon of 2009. The world’s first bear driving a car simulator made a huge splash on the App Store, and proved that beyond the surface of MS Paint quality visuals and purposely awkward control schemes could lie a surprising amount of depth and replay value. Also, you play as a bear driving a car through a forest. Not every video game lets you do that.

Those same principles of low-fidelity visuals, unwieldy controls, and high playability carried through to his next iOS release So Long, Oregon! [$1.99], and they are ever-present in his latest bit of zaniness know as Justin Smith’s Realistic Summer Sports Simulator [99¢]. Don’t let the ironic title fool you, there is absolutely nothing realistic about Summer Sports Simulator. In fact, it’s greatest attraction is just how NOT realistic it portrays the various Olympic-style events it contains.

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Oh, it's that time again. Capybara Games's Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery [$.99 / UHD] is on sale for one day in pre-celebration of the solstice. Normally $4.99 as a Universal app or $2.99 in its "micro" variation, the game is now just $1.99 or $.99 respectively. In a post on the game's blog about this sale, the Superbrothers team also extended a thanks to the game's current fans and noted that this "has been a heckuva a year and we're all profoundly grateful."

Sword and Sworcery will, no doubt, be in our discussion for Game of the Year, so we highly advise you to grab it while it's on the cheap. If you'd like a couple of in-depth reasons why you should own this thing, feel free to read our review.

I’m a big fan of top-down arcade racers. The short tracks, speed boosts, and tight races create a kind of intensity that I find hard to replicate in other, more traditional racing games. Enter Mini Motor Racing [$1.99 / HD], the latest from The Binary Mill, and a good example of why I love top-down racers. Everything from the visuals to the great presentation and large amount of content outweigh the physics issues and occasional stability problems, making this a highly recommended game for racer fans.

The first thing you’ll notice when you jump into a race in Mini Motor Racing is the high quality visuals. Both the vehicle models as well as the actual tracks look great and it all runs at a fast framerate. Added touches like weather conditions (the rain looks great) do a good job making the game come alive. In addition, Mini Motor Racing also features a rocking soundtrack that I thought added to the feel of the game. All of these elements combine for a smooth and engaging presentation that simply adds to the overall experience while playing.

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