I have a weird amount of respect for the Worms franchise because not only has it lasted for almost two decades, it has consistently been a solid, albeit unchanging experience. The problem is, I've never actually been able to really get into the games, but with Team17's Worms Crazy Golf [$2.99 / HD], it's the first new experience that takes the oddness of the franchise and converts it into something a little easier to pick up and play.

If you've ever played any of the Worms games dating back to the Amiga, you should have a good idea of what to expect with a golf game. The difference is that you're only controlling one worm instead of a battalion and your goal isn't to crush the opposing team, it's to hit a ball into a hole. The same control scheme from other Worms iOS ports comes into play here, you can slide your finger around for a better view of the course and you'll move a small aiming reticle to line up the trajectory of your shot. You'll hold a button to set the strength and whack it as far and accurately as you can.

Perhaps you've already been clued in by the "crazy" in the title, but just so we're all on the same page, this isn't a set of normal golf courses. They're essentially tricked out, massive mini-golf style puzzles, with exploding sheep, suicidal worms, cannons, magnets and more.

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Starbase Orion [$4.99] is a space-based 4X strategy game from Chimera Software, the makers of Starbase Command [99c] . If you're not familiar with the 4X genre, it stands for "explore, expand, exploit and exterminate." You navigate your space fleet around the galaxy (on a map) exploring various star-systems and colonizing planets. Your planets can be customized with buildings, farmers, scientists, and/or workers. You research new technologies, spy on other races, design new spacecraft, and engage in space combat. Phew! There's plenty of stuff here for strategy gamers to totally geek-out on!

Two game modes are provided. There's a single player mode against AI players, or asynchronous turn-based multiplayer modes (1 vs 1, 2 vs 2 team-play, or free-for-all). It uses the cool new iOS 5 Game Center features to manage the asynchronous play, letting you play against an online opponent, each taking turns at different times during the day (or night) without necessarily being online at the same time. The game will automatically quick-match you with an online opponent or you can invite a specific friend to a custom match. It also supports the new iCloud functionality, so you can switch your iOS device and keep playing from where you left off. Starbase Orion does run on iOS 4, but without multiplayer or iCloud support until you're on iOS 5.

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Madfinger Games is continuing to tinker with Shadowgun [$4.99] after its shaky late September debut on the App Store. For starters, the game is cheaper. For a limited time, you can grab it at $4.99 instead of its usual upper tier price tag of $7.99. It’s also less buggy. An initial patch run has sealed up its iPad 2 crashing issues, the Driller bug in the fourth level, and ‘optimized’ memory on lower-end devices.

These things combined present an interesting value proposition for anyone who read our review of the original build and remain on the fence. While we loved its technology, we weren’t too big on its level design or a handful of its mechanics.

Here’s a snippet:

If Madfinger can fix the crashing and save-game deletion issues with a patch, they're still left with a repetitive, but lovely looking shooter. There are hints of true quality in the boss fights and some minor sections of the campaign, but the majority relies on a simple, corridor design that's hard to find engaging for very long.

We’ve seen Madfinger say that it’s continuing to work on the game post-release and that’s great news. Its also still planning for an Android release later this month. We’ve been told that the Android iteration will support anything with a Tegra chip in it, so make sure you’ve got the right hardware for the job if you want in.

5th Cell’s and Iron Galaxy Studios' Scribblenauts Remix [$4.99] is a work of utter genius. Think of a noun, type it in, and then the game conjures whatever you chose to aid you in a puzzle. Need to find a way to reach a button on a cliff above the sliding door it controls? Hop on a pegasus. Want to bury a dead man? A stylish coffin, a shovel, and a spot of dirt will do the trick. Remix's brilliance is in its ability to let you use any tool to solve any puzzle. It cradles creativity unlike any other game, and Remix isn’t shy about letting you play in its world, to create all the fire-breathing dragons or toasters you can handle.

If you said Remix is a Best Of port of Super Scribblenauts and Scribblenauts, you wouldn’t be wrong. Remix is the sum of those core experiences with added touch controls that can, in some instances, feel inorganic. It strikes me as more of an upgrade, though. The game engine has a noticeably sharper look and feel, extraneous movements and navigation elements have been stripped or streamlined, the play is generally snappier, and some new levels have been thrown in for good measure. While 5th Cell didn’t re-invent the wheel with Remix, it did bother with the balance, weight, and treads on the thing. (more...)

Whenever anybody brings up the question "what game would you love to see on iOS?", it's almost always a guarantee that somebody will bring up developer 5thCell's Scribblenauts series, which has led a fairly successful life on the Nintendo DS platform since 2009. The gameplay hook of typing in words to create objects in the game world, which then help you solve the puzzles in the game, is a hallmark of the Scribblenauts series and would be a perfect fit for iOS devices.

Well, Scribblenauts enthusiasts, your time has come as 5thCell and Warner Bros. Interactive along with Iron Galaxy Studios have just released Scribblenauts Remix [$4.99] into the US App Store.

Scribblenauts Remix is sort of a "best of" version of the previous titles in the series, developed specifically for the iOS touch screen. There are 40 levels taken from both the original Scribblenauts and its sequel Super Scribblenauts, as well as 10 brand new levels that are exclusive to this iOS version. Additionally, there is Game Center support, iOS 5 iCloud saves across separate devices, and literally tens of thousands of words within the in-game dictionary, ensuring there's no lack of items to create to solve the various puzzles.

We'll put Scribblenauts Remix through the wringer and come back with a full review soon, but early impressions in our forums are extremely positive and if you're already a fan of the Scribblenauts series then chances are you've already hit the buy button before finishing reading this post.

Remember WAAYYYYYY back, oh I don't know, like, 9 hours ago when we told you that the Unreal Engine powered first-person shooter Warm Gun was hitting the New Zealand App Store and slowly worming its way throughout the world? Well, those sentiments have just a bit more meaning now for those of us in the good ol' US of A as Warm Gun [$4.99] and its free spinoff Carnival of Bullets [Free] are now available in our little neck of the woods.

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The TouchArcade hive mind has been anxiously anticipating Emotional Robots' Warm Gun since early this year when it was first announced. Since then, we've seen a number of different videos and screenshots which have only served to get us all even more excited about the game. It's actually launching in two different versions, the online-centric Warm Gun [$4.99] which is currently live on the New Zealand App Store, and Warm Gun: Carnival of Bullets, which focuses on single player. We've yet to spot Carnival of Bullets for sale in international App Stores, but something tells me that as soon as someone does, a link will get dropped in the Warm Gun forum thread.

Just for fun, here's the trailer again:

We'll be working up a review for Warm Gun, but since it's an online game, for the full experience we're going to have to wait for the game's community to pick up some steam… So, keep an eye out for that in the next couple of days. In the meantime, if you're excited for Warm Gun, swing by our forums where people will likely be offering up their first impressions as the game slowly is released across international App Stores. Like most New Zealand releases, Warm Gun should be available in the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern.

Also, as soon as we spot a link for Warm Gun: Carnival of Bullets, we'll update this post with it.

Update: Warm Gun: Carnival of Bullets [Free] is now available internationally.

I have such a love-hate relationship with High Flyer Death Defyer [$4.99 / HD]. On one hand, I love the visually striking graphics which I think complement the sky-diving gameplay beautifully. On the other hand, the poorly done tutorial and lackluster controls hold back High Flyer Death Defyer from being even an above average addition to the genre. Whether you actually decide to pick up this skydiver is going to depend on how much you love graphics over, well, everything else.

At its core, High Flyer Death Defyer is a sky/cave diver with a heavy dose of exploration and collection quests thrown into the mix. You play as Arreon, a member of the Death Defyers: a group of skydiving explorers charged with discovering new islands (and treasure) in a post-apocalyptic world in which the only human cities reside in the sky.  At the onset, High Flyer’s story is a bit convoluted and confusing, but as you continue playing through the story, you’ll get a better glimpse of what the heck is going on through the game’s comic book style cutscenes.

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There's not much to say about the Hector series -- rushing headlong to its conclusion in Beyond Reasonable Doom [$4.99 /$6.99] -- that hasn't been said before. We've noted its sharp writing; its high production values; and, most importantly, the way it continually tweaks and revises the traditional adventure genre.

Straandlooper have achieved this by making each episode in the series structurally unique. Ep1 gave Hector three discrete objectives to complete while Ep2 led him through a long and meandering investigation. Episode 3, though, is very clear cut in its goals: Hector most stop a terrorist from using biochemical weapons on the Clappers Wreake fair.

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2K Games’ NBA 2K12 [$4.99 / HD] doesn’t have quite the thrill or the touch of its brethren, but it’s a competent basketball title that stresses simulation over finesse and AI over finer points of control. Super fans might want to stay on the bench, though: 2K has reigned in and streamlined the overall NBA 2K experience to such an extent that it's hardly a recognizable game in the long-running series. It’s a shell of the experience available on consoles, and it’s not much of a looker, either.

What 2K did with 2K12 is similar to how it handled Civilization Revolution [$6.99 / HD]. Civ Rev, which was already a dumbed down version of Civilization proper, is even more dumbed down on touch devices, offering up simpler menus and actions that keep the pace ramped up without throwing away what made the core game good in the first place. 2K12 is an exceedingly simplistic game in the same vein. You can’t pick plays, some control options have been removed, you won’t be going online, franchise mode is missing some parts, and some of the special Michael Jordan touches -- the retro teams in particular -- have been stripped. What’s left is a fairly linear basketball simulation experience that you never really have direct control of, but can still participate within. (more...)

A pre-existing game might be one of the best to show off your soon-to-be brand new iPhone 4S’ power, if Firemint’s Real Racing 2 is in your collection. Real Racing 2 [$4.99] and Real Racing 2 HD [$6.99] are set to receive a free and new update that’ll add an extra layer of graphical goodness on top of their pre-existing sizzle, all in the service of harnessing the A5 chip. New dynamic shadows and lighting, increased polygon counts, reflections, and exposure effects are all being added in the game’s latest update, which should hit pretty soon.

And that’s not all -- iOS 5 is coming and so are a handful of features to Real Racing 2 that revolve around Airplay support. With the update, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream the game’s content to your TV. Also, if you’ve got friends with the game and an iPhone 4S or an iPad 2, you’ll be able to play with them in split-screen. “Party Play” mode will allow up to 4 players to compete on the same screen, provided the host has Apple’s new hotnesses.

Firemint isn’t known for missing a hardware launch, so we didn’t expect any less. Still, this seems like an absolutely spectacular deal for current and new owners of the game. Real Racing 2 was great to begin with, and now it’ll look even sharper than ever.

I'm a bit of a closet Sims admirer. Not exactly a die-hard fan, but I appreciate what the series does in a lot of ways. I've still kept up with each release and although the iOS ones haven't been constantly solid, The Sims: Medieval [$4.99] still stuck out to me as playing to two of my weaknesses, wizards and sandbox play.

The most obviously different thing about The Sims: Medieval is the directed nature of it (aside from the setting, clearly). After picking your social type and designing your character, you're immediately struck upside the head with a few quests and tasks to complete that don't inherently feature screwing around, socializing and trying to make your Sim make kissy faces at other Sims.

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Machinarium [$4.99] is a treasure, judiciously and efficiently designed, with not a single pencil-drawn sprite out of place.

It was worthing playing on the PC two years ago, it will be worth playing on the PlayStation 3 later this year, and it's worthing playing on your iPad 2 right now.

The "story" of Machinarium -- Amanita Design's first full-length effort -- is unobtrusive and elegant, told entirely through the unnamed protagonist-bot's thought bubbles and context clues. There is no human speech to parse, no dialogue trees to navigate, no lengthy exposition to ignore -- Jakub Dvorsky and his team have a laser-sighted focus on puzzle design.

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Real Steel [$4.99] was released to the App Store this month by Indian developers, Jump Games as a tie-in to the boxing movie of the same name. The film is due to be released on October 7th, and as far as we can tell from trailers, combines Wolverine and Kate from Lost with an $80 million dollar budget and a likely drunken bet in the Hollywood production rings that they could get people to pay money to sit through a movie based on Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

If you don't generally follow upcoming releases of robot-centric movies with lots of explosions, this trailer will get you up to speed:

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It was back during GDC 2011, during Eric Chahi's Classic Game Postmortem presentation, that we first learned that the French gamemaker would be bringing a 20th Anniversary Edition of his acclaimed classic Another World to iOS [App Store] with the help of DotEmu, through BulkyPix. A few days back, I interviewed Chahi and shared his thoughts on the coming App Store release and the iOS game scene in general. Since then, I've been playing through the release version of Another World for iOS and wanted to take the opportunity to post an early review of the title so readers know what they've got to look forward to on the game's September 22nd App Store launch day.

Another World (which was also known as Out of this World in certain markets) is a cinematic platform adventure originally released on the Amiga back in 1991. The game tells the story of physicist Lester Chaykin. As is illustrated in the game's introductory sequence, Lester returns to his underground laboratory one stormy night to continue work on a particle acceleration experiment. Shortly after the experiment is underway, a bolt of lightning strikes the laboratory, sending millions of volts into the accelerator and resulting in the freak teleportation of Lester to a far-away alien planet.

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