I would be ashamed if this was a cheap rip-off stemming from some copycat's attempt to cash in on a popular indie title somewhere but Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective isn't that sort of game. If you had to liken it to a gender-unspecific trophy spouse, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective would be a 6'2" Scandinavian model with a degree in rocket science and a part-time job as a professional comedian. You won't be ashamed to be caught with this one.

The only problem here is that not everyone likes a talker. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective's only real flaw (which is also, paradoxically enough, its strongest quality) is the fact that it is extremely heavy on the narrative. More than half of your time in the game will be spent reading. Sorry guys. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective doesn't come with a voice pack either. If you're the sort who thinks that actions are louder than words, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is probably not for you. (I still recommend giving it a whirl, though.) As for everyone else, why are you still here? Get the game already!

What? No? Fine. I see those raised eyebrows and I'll raise you with a more thorough explanation. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the long-anticipated port of an adventure game Capcom developed for the Nintendo DS. The titular character in this eccentric little delight is, as you might have guessed already, sort of dead. Sissel is also sort of awesome for an amnesiac red-suited ghost with a bad haircut.

Unlike most of the recently deceased, he has to navigate between the Land of the Living and the Ghost World. Sissel can also traverse telephone lines, perform minor feats of telekinesis, communicate with certain living beings (we'll get to that in a bit), and go back four minutes in time to avert untimely deaths. (Sadly, that's only applicable for everyone but himself.)

Incidentally, you'll find yourself using that last power a fair bit. The supporting cast is somewhat uniquely skilled at dying repeatedly. At least, one of them is.

Meet Lynne. She's a somewhat bombastic little redhead of a detective, the sole witness to your murder and – according to the helpful desk lamp (yes, a literal desk lamp) you meet in the introductory sequence – the key to deciphering the circumstances behind your posthumous condition. Needless to say, you will spend a lot of time rescuing her only to watch her barrel headlong into yet another humorous tragedy.

Along the way, you will also meet the rest of the highly memorable crew. From an unbelievably adorable if loud-mouthed Pomeranian (To quote our very own Mr. Nicholson, "Just wait until you meet the dog, man!") to a shotgun-wielding assassin (His name is Nearsighted Jeego. He never misses his target if they're in range.) to a slow-witted prison guard who dances when distressed, every entity you encounter in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is, uh, unique, to say the least. The development team definitely went all the way with the character design here.

(For those of you curious about how well Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective survived the transition to the iOS, I'm happy to say it looks pixel-perfect. While I've never played the original, I've seen the videos and if the videos are any indication of how things were, well, Capcom did you proud.)

Humor-wise, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is about as off-kilter as the menagerie that populates it. Facepalm-inducing moments are in abundance. The actual plotline, on the other hand, is deeper than what the initial twenty minutes might implicate. How so? I can't tell you. Games like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective are kinda like Fight Club. You don't talk about Fight Club. You don't talk about games like this either. At least, not in the context of the plotline, the actual dialogue and whatnot. Not unless you want to peel away some of the magic. The only thing you're getting out of me on this front is the assurance that when the bleaker moments of the game hit, they will hit hard.

Of course, a good story's not much without decent gameplay. Though marketed as an adventure game, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective feels more like a puzzler sequestered away in a visual novel. When you're not otherwise thumbing through conversations, you'll be in what the game calls 'Trick Time'.

To make this a little easier to understand, we're going to use an example here. Let's say you're inside a flag and you have to make your way across the room to get something. In order to accomplish this, you're going to have press the 'Ghost' button, switch to the Ghost World, and then draw a line from the flag to, say, a pitcher of water. Sissel will then do the rest. Interacting with objects is just as easy. For example, if you're inside a candle and the words 'burn brighter' are present on your side bar, all you need to do is switch to the Land of the Living and hit the 'Trick' button. Once again, Sissel will take it from there.

The puzzles themselves are a lot more complex and likely to leave you going, 'Wait. So, how am I supposed to use two suits of armor, a set of curtains, a globe and a framed-up sword?'. To complicate matters even further, there is often a time limit associated with these puzzles. Luckily for you (and everyone else in the predicament), Sissel can rewind time as many times as he likes, something that makes Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective nicely balanced between the realms of 'forgiving' and 'why would you do this to me?'.

While we're on the topic, here's my only other infinitesimally tiny issue with the game. It's too linear. I know, I know. This isn't some sprawling, open-world sandbox of an action-RPG. However, they've done such a superb job at developing the environments that I kind of want to spend some time away from the main storyline. Ahem. If you haven't guessed it already, I think Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the bee's knees and with the first two chapters available for free you should definitely give it a shot. Following that, you shouldn't have too difficult a time parting with the cash to unlock the rest of the game.

My first impressions are fairly positive so far with this port, mostly because Square has re-rendered all of the text and game UI to actually be legible, unlike Final Fantasy Tactics! We'll offer a more thorough review in the not too distant future, but in the meantime you can swing by the thread to check out forum user impressions as well.

The one exception to this is the duck people. They're always jerks, and a few weeks ago I started a "relentlessly murder all ducks" policy that has been met with moderate success. KoDP players know what I'm talking about. Show no mercy.

Anyway, the one thing that I mentioned in our review that I really wish the game had was universal compatibility. These massive text-based games I want to be playing kicked back with my iPad, not hunched over my phone. In a recent blog post, the developers confirmed that the original game will in fact become universal in a future update. (Previously, they were undecided on a universal update or a separate HD version.) Unsurprisingly, the iPad version of the game is going to feature much less scrolling, and better yet, the crazy art that accompanies so much of the game won't be obscured by so much text like it is on the iPhone.

No word on release yet, as the same post mentions that the update hasn't been through any kind of QA yet, but it's still reassuring to know that it's in the pipeline and that it will be universal. Seriously though, check out our review if you haven't. King of Dragon Pass most certainly isn't a game for everyone, but if it hooks you, it won't let go.

Wizardry

Fast forward to 2011, however, and you may see a game like Wizardry as nothing but an exercise in punishment. Or would a clean-up and polish of the interface make for a more modern experience? This version of Wizardry, called Labyrinth of Lost Souls [Free] ($9.99 IAP unlocks full game), is not exclusive to iOS -- it's already seen its original debut on the PS3 earlier this year.

At that time, my impressions of it were that it was presented beautifully and had gorgeous art, but offered the exact same type of experience that its namesake was so well known for. For hardcore fans of the dungeon crawling genre, this was great news, but what about new players who would be facing the genre for the first time? Did they have any hope of enjoying this game?

Simply put, Wizardry is just a hardcore game. Check it out on iOS, and you will find it is almost exactly like the PS3 version, with two small differences -- it's Game Center enabled, and the lovely detail of the art is more or less lost on the iPhone's tiny screen. I think the game would be much more enjoyable on the iPad if you chose to get it for a portable device, but if you had access to all options, PS3 would be the way to go. It's clear lots of attention and effort was put into the art, and it's a shame to see it all tiny and squished up on a little screen.

Gameplay is -- well, it's okay. It's like every other dungeon crawler of this type you've ever played, and it doesn't deviate by a hair. You choose what sex and race you want to play from a small selection, choose your alignment and finally your class. Head to town, get a quest, and choose some recruits to go down in the dungeon with you. If you've never played a Wizardry game before, you may not be aware how crucial this initial party structure is. If you choose poorly, you'll get hammered, even for your first journey into the dungeon. One thing that has stayed true to form in this modern version is the learning curve -- absolutely steep.

I believe that thirty years ago, stumbling around in the dark with no map (unless you buy one in town) and repetitive battles with large groups of enemies might have been exciting, even inspiring as you struggled to get your bearings. After all, it was all so new then. It's the same formula here, and people who loved doing it then may enjoy Wizardry now. That being said, any modern gamer is sure to throw up their hands in frustration.

Tapping the darkness in front of you works just fine to navigate these underground tunnels, but it doesn't necessarily make it fun. Menus are also set up in a way that makes you spend a ton of time jumping in and out of them, which is no big deal for a seasoned RPG player. However, I found myself stabbing at the screen with my finger here and there, and I wished the controls could have been a bit more responsive, especially in the dungeons.

The hard thing about Wizardry is that the gameplay experience it offers can be fun and satisfying if you put effort in, if not somewhat generic. On the other hand, the format will alienate many gamers, but that is what the genre is and will likely always be, so this cannot be blamed on the game.

(Trailer from PlayStation3 version)

"Not for everybody" is probably the best thing I can say about a title like this. On the other hand, if you cut your teeth on this stuff back in the day, slipping into Labyrinth of Lost Souls may feel like putting on a well-worn glove. Accepting quests and gathering loot, or even grinding to level your characters, can still be appealing and surely fulfilling for the right gamer. However, since most gamers are not used to working so hard to keep their characters alive anymore, I believe Wizardry will satisfy a very limited audience. The game demands a high level of competence from the people who choose to play it, and there is no hand holding whatsoever.

In an age where we are literally led through our games, often with more instruction than necessary, Wizardry stands as a testament to the games that may have made us gamers by a very different set of standards.

Well, that HD version hit earlier this month as Galaxy On Fire HD, released exclusively for A5-equipped iOS devices. It's even universal, to run on either your iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Better yet, it can use either OpenFeint or iCloud to sync progress between devices. It launched with a few technical hiccups which kept us from sounding the alarm to go out and download it immediately, but those things have all since been fixed in subsequent updates.

Galaxy On Fire 2 HD is the exact same game as Galaxy On Fire 2, with substantially better graphics. If you already own Galaxy On Fire 2, there's basically no reason to "upgrade" to the HD version unless you just want some additional eye candy. However, since the game is so "old" (in App Store terms, anyway), it wouldn't surprise me if there's a bunch of people out there with 4S's or iPad 2's that never heard of it the first time around-- In which case, there's no better time to hop on this awesome game.

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.

Playing this is like playing a Mario game in which Mario automatically runs on a pre-defined path and the only thing you can do is choose his jumps and activate his special powers. On the surface this sounds pretty terrible, but NBA 2K has always been a strong simulation game with cultured AI and a ton of dice rolls that already pre-determined success. The lack of control and player-born dynamism in this particular one isn’t that big of a turn-off -- the simulation remains sharp and, frankly, it didn’t need a user to feel even better. If anything, we’ve been breaking the elegy 2K has been constructing over the years

The feel I’ve been describing applies to both of the game’s control modes: one-finger and a more direct option dubbed classic. In one-finger, you’ll flick and swipe the screen to pass and defend the ball, while also holding onto players to shoot and attempt steals. In classic, you’ll be allowed to actually move around players of your choice on the court and activate more awe-inspiring moves with a jiggle of the virtual stick it brings into the equation.

On-court turnouts remain about the same using the either. Quite simply, you’re not meant to be the be all and end all in 2K12. So, while your impact varies, the game part remains a hardboiled sim experience throughout.

2K12 does suffer for this approach. When the AI gets finicky or makes a bonehead play choice, you can do nothing but helplessly watch. You’ll also rarely be the hero or driver, regardless of how you choose to play. But the thing that really gets under my skin is the lack of spark -- there’s no sizzle, exhilaration, or emotion to be had. This is almost as cold as it gets in the basketball simulation world.

The absence of titillation is lightly mitigated by the stupendous presentation effort, which makes its way to this version pretty well in-tact. Accurate courts, awesome play-by-play, and great animations are all a part of this package. And while the players look OK, you’ll still be treated to a trip straight down into uncanny valley -- some dudes look downright horrifying, if not in need of immediate medical attention.

2K12 needs a bit more to hold my attention over significant stretches of time -- I’d love to see some sizzle from anywhere and especially from the action on the court. That said, I’m not sure the point here was to give me thrills; this is a simulation to the bone and all of its struts and constituent parts support its sharp, through pretty strict “action.” If anything, this is a good start for a series that'll, hopefully, find some better legs down the road.

The game is set in the fantasy world of Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford, and used in several other traditional roleplaying games, literary works, and even a board game. The universe was originally imagined in 1966, and is chock-full of things which have since become standard in fantasy-based worlds. The people of Glorantha are the pawns of an array of both new and old gods who offer various benefits in exchange for worship. Magic and supernatural occurrences play an important role in the world, and aside from the typical races found in most fantasy worlds like elves, dwarves, etc, Glorantha is also home to strange humanoid hybrids such as anthropomorphic ducks and scorpion-men.

It's in this world where your clan will settle. The game begins with a brief history of your clan, which goes all the way back to the "Godtime" where gods and people lived side by side. This part of the game plays very similarly to a Choose Your Own Adventure book, with the game tossing a hefty amount of backstory at you while offering you choices along the way where you decide things like your clan's main deity, how you feel about dragons, how much land you're going to take up, and other things like that. The cool part about this, which persists through the rest of the game, is that there's no wrong answers to any of these questions. You never hit a point where one decision you made caused the game to end, instead, the decisions you make have consequences, and a main part of King of Dragon Pass is how you deal with those consequences-- But more on that later.

After you establish your clan's history, you come up with a name (mine have all been fart-centric) and decide if your clan is going to be peaceful, balanced, or focus on war. From there, you decide on either a normal or hard difficulty, with the main difference here being what your clan starts with. On normal, you're dropped into a reasonably well equipped settlement with existing trading partners and allies. Alternatively, on hard mode, the game basically treats your clan like you just wandered to a plot of land and decided to make it your home.

From there you can choose one of two victory conditions in either "short" or "long" games. In a short game, you win by forming a tribe with neighboring clans, getting one of your clan members elected to be the tribal king, and hold that position for ten years. In a long game, you'll need to take this one massive step further in convincing other tribes to form a kingdom, and lead one of your clan members' ascension to the position of King of Dragon Pass.

Accomplishing these goals is ridiculously difficult, and requires a serious understanding of the game's mechanics. King of Dragon Pass comes with a huge in-game manual (huge for an iOS game, anyway) which I seriously recommend reading cover to cover. The depth of the game leads to various systems which you'd never utilize or fully understand otherwise, which was the source of every single frustration of mine with the game initially. There's a small tutorial which helps you get started, but I think the best tutorial would have just been a huge button that says "No, really, read the manual."

These various mechanics involve everything you can imagine that would go into managing a fledgling clan trying to make it in the world. You'll need to keep an eye on your clan's population, the number of people filling various roles in your clan, and how many of them are sick or injured. Everyone in your clan has to eat, which requires either successful farming, or trading with nearby clans. Also, a clan without wealth can't really be taken seriously by other clans when forming alliances or trade agreements, so you also need to keep up your production of goods and establish trade routes to keep the economy flowing.

Exploring is also important to find new clans to engage with, who might not always be friendly… Which is where your clan's defensive and offensive capabilities come in. As I've played, I've chosen to take a defensive stance and really only attack when provoked, but you could just as easily be a warring tribe and let your proverbial fists do the talking when it comes to negotiating and taking what you want from other clans. There's so many more little ins and outs that I can barely even summarize them all, even after spending nearly a week with the game now I feel like I'm still finding new ways to approach challenges.

These random challenges are what initially attracted us to the game. They happen quite often, and always keep you on your toes. These random occurrences could be something like a surprise raid from a feuding clan. If you've got a force ready to fight, you could take them head on, or if you're vulnerable because you've sent most of your warriors to accompany a particularly valuable trade caravan you might opt to focus on evasive maneuvers and survival.

Explorers could stumble across a potentially powerful set of runes, but how you choose to deal with them could potentially result in upsetting your clan, the gods, and other things down the road. Refugees from other clans can seek admittance to your clan, and you can decide whether to greet them as equals, or take them as slaves. These random events can be completely ridiculous too-- The best example I've seen of this is a ghost that potentially comes to haunt your settlement. Among other options, you can pursue legal action… And depending on how you've structured your clan and the strengths of your leaders, it can work.

What I like most about King of Dragon Pass is the seemingly infinite possibilities that the game has. The previously mentioned random occurrences are drawn from a pool of around 500, but none really ever have a "right" or a "wrong" answer. As you role-play your particular clan and play to its strengths, you could see the same problem pop up in future games, but the way it's dealt with and the outcome could be substantially different. Similarly, the simulation engine that powers the whole thing seems to completely embrace the whole "there's no wrong way" philosophy that permeates the entire game.

Success, it seems, comes from really playing the game making decisions as if you actually were a part of your clan. Just because there's not necessarily a right or wrong way to do things doesn't mean that your approach can't fail. In fact, you'll likely fail quite a bit as you get a handle on the game… But, understanding why you failed, and consulting the manual to learn what you could have potentially done differently to better manage the events that ultimately lead to your clan's demise is ridiculously rewarding.

Similarly, the flexibility of King of Dragon Pass doesn't make it an easy game either, even on the easy difficulty level. I think it most reminds me of playing a fairly realistic flight simulator in that you can realize your plane is going down, and you know you need to pull up, but there's also all these other buttons and switches that need to be hit at the right time and in the right order to make what seems like a simple maneuver actually transpire properly.

In King of Dragon Pass terms, you could have a random occurrence that suddenly leads to a disease outbreak amongst your farmers. The more time your farmers spend in bed sick, the less time they spend producing food for your clan. "Heal the farmers" seems like the obvious answer, just like pulling up in a flight simulator, but it's not that simple. To heal via magical means, you'll need to sacrifice to gods. If you're already low on resources, sacrificing even more can make the situation much worse. Alternatively, you could send out warriors to raid a nearby tribe to steal supplies from them, but the raid could fail, or worse yet, you could over-extend yourself and be defenseless if you get raided while your warriors are out on their raid. You could attempt to go out trading for food, but your caravan could be ambushed or not result in enough food anyway.

It's weighing all these options and executing the best potential course of events based on an entire dashboard of information on your clan has made what I initially thought was just a silly Choose Your Own Adventure style game into one of the most in-depth and strategic gameplay experiences I've had so far on my iPhone. I'm not sure how I'll ever tire of it either, as the replay value is through the roof because of how much variance there is in every different clan and every situation.

My only complaint with the game is that I wish it was for the iPad. The interface feels cramped at times, there's some weird text scrolling issues that wouldn't exist on a larger screen, but most of all-- Games like this that I want to spend hours on end playing are just flat out more enjoyable on the iPad compared to hunching over your phone. There may be light at the end of the tunnel though, as the developers seem to be receptive of the idea and want to see how iPhone sales go first, but aren't ready to commit to anything yet other than bug fixes to the small-screen version.

Hopefully I've done a good enough job here explaining what this game is all about, as I think if you understand what King of Dragon Pass actually is, and you want it, there's no way that you won't love it. We try to avoid pricing discussion in our reviews, but I think in this case the $9.99 price point is totally appropriate. This is a deep game, and definitely targeted at a niche audience. That price point will make people stop and research what the game is before buying, then feel much more inclined to actually get invested and learn the game instead of tossing it aside like most of the other totally disposable 99¢ titles flooding the App Store.

I've had an absolutely fantastic time playing King of Dragon Pass. Its slow pace makes it a perfect mobile game. Nothing in it is real time, making it totally conducive to just open the game up, send a trade caravan off, then come back to it later without any negative consequences. Cultivating a successful tribe is totally rewarding, and the random occurrences always keep you on your toes so it never seems like you can just fall into a comfortable successful groove where your clan is just on cruise control. I'd love it for my iPad, but either way, I can't get enough of King of Dragon Pass.

Last year Two years ago we took a close look at Madden NFL 10 and thought it was a really great football game for the iPhone. Madden '10 came loaded with all the licensed players, stadiums, logos, and everything else you'd expect of a Madden game along with game modes ranging from single exhibition games to full seasons. The two hip new features of Madden NFL 10 for the iPhone were hot routes allowing players to draw on the screen to control players, and "action control time" which switched the game to slow motion mode allowing for precise maneuvers with the virtual controls.

There wasn't much to complain about with last year's two years ago's Madden, which really left me wondering what EA was going to include in this year's release to up the ante. The preview we got revealed substantial graphical upgrades including Retina Display support, but it wasn't until I got to spend more time with the game today that I realized just how much more fun the other new features made playing Madden NFL 11 12.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a sports person by any means. I don't remember the last time I watched anything more than the Super Bowl on TV, and the only sporting events I've attended have been the result of friends with extra tickets. I play sports games, but generally gravitate towards arcade style sports games like Homerun Battle 3D [$4.99 / Free], or sports games that have RPG elements such as Baseball Superstars 2010 [99¢ / Free] Baseball Superstars 2011 [99¢ / Free].

I mention this because I generally never really got into a Madden game, or really any full football game. The weak link for me always came in choosing from an endless array of both offensive and defensive plays, with each yearly iteration of football game boasting even more plays to choose from. I don't know enough about the strategy of football plays to have ever felt like I was making a wise decision, and when it got down to it, play selection just always seemed like a needless interruption every few seconds while playing the game.

GameFlow changes all of this, and I really can't overstate how awesome a feature it actually is. Using some new AI algorithm likely designed by a team of people who know way more about football than I ever care to, Madden 11 12's GameFlow will intelligently chooses plays for you. It is absolutely insane how much this changes both the feel and the pace of the game. Using GameFlow, endless submenus of plays are a thing of the past. Instead, you just play football. The plays it selects work fairly well too, or at least, much better than my typical choice of plays which usually alternate between the hail mary and the fake field goal kick-- both favorites of mine.

What's also shocking is how much this actually speeds up playing the game. You can tap the screen to skip through the extra animations, victory dances, and other junk and play through a whole football game in what barely seems like any time at all. Of course, if you are the kind of person who knows exactly what every play does, all you have to do is flip GameFlow to off and you have complete control of each and every play.

The hot routes functionality from last year has been expanded seems the same, and at any point during the game you can pause the action and draw paths for your players. If you're playing offense and do this, you can save those routes as an audible, or if you're playing defense you can just send your players wherever you want. The whole system works very well, and by drawing lines you can send dispatch players to man to man duty, follow the ball, or really anything else. This really makes defense a lot more fun because you can now actually sensibly direct your team around instead of just tabbing in between players and chasing after whoever has the ball.

As mentioned already, the graphics of Madden NFL 11 12 look fantastic. The stadium crowd has actual depth now still, and they even still wave around signs for the home team. The included weather effects look good, and overall it seems like all the player models and animations are more just as detailed, if not a little more. Every texture in game also seems to have been substantially marginally improved, making going back and forth between 10 and 11 12 seem fairly drastic.

Madden 11 12 also is host to some other noticeable tweaks over Madden 10 as well such as controls that feel a little better and a spruced up interface. There's an in-game store which currently is home to a free roster update, but seems like it might be used for future DLC. Finally, Madden NFL 11 12 behaves beautifully as an iPhone game, gracefully saving your game and resuming quickly when you load it again.

At the end of the day, people who like Madden games likely don't need this review, or anything more than the iTunes link to download the game for that matter. Who I really expect to sway into checking out Madden NFL 11 12 are the casual sports fans, or people like me, who are vaguely interested in sports games but found the various technicalities of football games to generally be annoying. GameFlow fixes all this, and I can hardly believe that I spent the majority of my day today playing Madden 11 12 on my iPhone-- not because I was trying to power through it to write a review, but because I was actually really enjoying a football game for the first time since Mutant League Football on the Sega Genesis.

The iPad and iPhone versions are essentially the same aside from the price difference and UI tweaks to make the controls more comfortable for playing on the iPad. The iPhone version is workable with pixel doubling if you don't mind big pixels.

Following the formula of most sports titles, Madden NFL 12 appears to be just an incremental upgrade to the Madden released last year. The game description boast new features like expanded rosters (though, some players have noted in the iPad version thread in our forums that they’re not totally up to date, showing Donovan McNabb still on the Redskins rather than his new team the Vikings). Also, collisions are said to have been improved along with the graphics and an expanded playbook.

Chances are that you’re pretty aware of what you’re getting when buying a new Madden game each year. The series has been so refined over its 20+ year lifespan that it’s hard to find innovative new features to add into it every year. That said, the iOS Madden games have always been missing that special something that would make them truly great.

Still, they’re definitely decent little portable games of football, and since there actually is going to be NFL football played this year, it might be nice to have a game to fiddle around with while on-the-go. In addition to the iPad thread linked above, you can also hear what the iPhone and iPod touch crowd thinks about Madden NFL 12 in that forum thread, too.

Take a look at the awesome release trailer:

Fruit Ninja Kinect is available for 800 Microsoft points, which equates to $10. You can find it just by searching around the Xbox Live Arcade section on your Xbox 360, or you can get it from Microsoft's online marketplace. There's even a free demo you can try. Yes, I realize this is TouchArcade, not XboxArcade, but come on, how cool is it to see an original iOS game hopping to consoles utilizing new and crazy control methods? I can't wait to give it a try.

An update wouldn’t be an update without fixes and tweaks, right? New visuals, new sound, and new animations have been added in addition to multiplayer slot, mana counter, and several other bug fixes. Also, you’ll now be able to switch the difficulty of the game mid-campaign instead of having to start over.

If you bothered with the full game unlock for $9.99, all of this will be free as soon as you grab the update. For others, these decks and modes are available via IAP, much like several other options in the game.

We dug Kard Combat in our initial look and that review still stands. In brief, it’s a flawed game with personality and depth that make up for its weak spots. Updates like these certainly make for a stronger offering.

X-Plane for iPad [$9.99], as well as the series as a whole for the iPhone and iPod Touch, has just been updated with a new system failures tab that simulates various woes that can lead to a sure and quick fiery explosion. It’s like creator Laminar made an update just for me!

It’s stupid-fun for me to set up some of the incidents. For example, earlier this afternoon, I set up a four-engine failure coupled with a bird strike. You can also go easier and set up easier problems to cope with, like elevator system, landing gear, reverser failures. You can also set up “unreliable” mechanical issues, though I think this is more for the serious bunch of X-Plane pilots out there.

X-Plane is an ancient series in App Store terms, but they’re good for what they are, which is to say, serious flight simulators. There is even an Apollo mission IAP option built into the iPad version I’m currently checking out!

Obviously, there’s more to the system failure options -- good pilots will get a kick out of trying to right the ship, so to speak, and fight the aerodynamics of these issues.

What an update! Now, excuse me while I go see what happens when trying to land with three tire blow-outs combined with landing gear problems.

[Via iLounge]

You'd be forgiven if you've glanced at screenshots and balked at the idea of playing Avadon, it's not a pretty game. Visually, it falls somewhere in the '90s, pre-CD-ROM drive, which is to say it's an isometric RPG akin to something like Baldur's Gate, Ultima or even Fallout. It's filled with old-fashioned tilesets, hardly animated sprites and a locked camera that doesn't allow you to zoom nor rotate. While I'm getting things out of the way, I should probably also mention there is no musical score. The sound, when it does exist is hardly worth paying attention to and the amount of modern day polish slathered on here lays somewhere between murky and non-existent.

But none of that has anything to do with what makes Avadon a good game, because it's good based solely on the actual game, not the flair.

Avadon isn't as hardcore of an RPG as it might look on first glance and it's also considerably more approachable than Vogel's earlier games. You start the game by picking one of four pre-built classes and typing in a name. No complex stat sheets, no guessing what abilities you'll need and what you won't. You'll meet other adventurers along your journey who will join your party. You'll level up through your adventure, but it's done mostly through a small skill tree, not a vast collection of unknown abilities leading to more unknown abilities.

Combat is turn-based and works well, provided you enjoy turn-based combat. If you don't, consider this an ample warning. Depending on the difficulty level you chose, you'll need to concentrate on your strategy in different ways. There is, quiet literally, something for everyone here. A complete RPG-virgin can pick it up and walk through the game with little trouble on Casual, but the higher levels should provide adequate challenge for players of all backgrounds. Naturally, you'll pick up loot, outfit your team with different equipment and change around your stats. For the most part, this is all relatively self-explanatory, although the menus don't make things easy if you're swapping items between party members.

It's the story that really matters here more than anything else, it's what's going to keep you going through the night. That story bends to your will and your actions and like the best RPGs, you're not always aware of it when it's happening. The core of the narrative comes from you enlisting as a Hand to the Pact, a high-horse power created by a group of nations bent on protecting the good of itself and its people from a fortress called Avadon. This doesn't just mean they protect the borders, it also means they'll burn down villages, kill helpless creatures and lock people into prisons.

As with most of Vogel's games, the writing in Avadon is well done and sprinkled with enough wit and humor that you don't feel oppressed by the seriousness of it all. Within a few hours you'll have a good grasp on the Avadon's structure, the religions, your fellow fighters and a number of the NPC groups. You'll also start getting the sneaking suspicion the Pact and Avadon aren't all they're cracked up to be.

As you play through the game's 20-30 hour campaign, you'll start to notice how your actions are affecting the larger story, from minor quips in dialogue or descriptions to fully-fledged moments that couldn't have existed had you not done something earlier. The dialogue options aren’t the color-coded morally simple choices of modern RPGs, nearly every time you need to respond to a situation it will sit somewhere on a gray scale between good and evil and you'll never know for sure if you're making the right choice. The plotline is basically linear, save for a fair share of side quests, but you still feel like you're having an affect on the world, for better or worse.

The translation to iPad is relatively fluid. I had a few crashes and memory errors while playing, but nothing that set me back too much. The touch screen works well for this type game, although you'll occasionally accidently move your characters around when you mean to fight because you'll tap on the wrong part of the grid. The item screen, as mentioned earlier, is a bit unwieldy with a touch screen and requires an excessive number of taps to get to business, but you'll get used to it. If you've played Spiderweb's RPGs before, you'll know what to expect, but Avadon is considerably more linear and less open than much of its previous work. That's not a bad thing in this case; it's a good entry point into a deeper RPG for iPad players and a great throwback to people who've been playing for a long time. It's streamlined, yes, but not to the point where you feel like you have no control. You still have to read signs to get directions, take note of what people say and remember (in your head, not in an objective screen) where you're going and why you're going there.

Avadon: The Black Fortress HD might take a little while to sink in, but if you get enmeshed in the narrative and the world, it's hard to walk away from it. It's been a long while since I accidently stayed up all night with a game, but Avadon managed to do that without even bothering with fancy visuals or voiced dialogue. It's not going to be a game for everybody, but if you're weary of spending the completely fair price of $10 on the iPad version, I'd suggest checking out the demo for the PC or Mac versions. The experience is similar, although the iPad version will occasionally run into some frame rate drops and has a lower resolution. If you're a fan of '90s RPGs and have been craving something that doesn't hold your hand or guide you along on the iPad, this is the perfect game for you.

Survival mode, in a nutshell, is a “Horde” mode that pits you against an “all-out rush” of Necromorphs. It’s also a convenient way to collect more in-game credits that can be used for all sorts of stuff in the game, including the brand new “Heavy Pulse Rifle.”

This update also adds “Nightmare” difficulty, a fascinating way to play if you’re not into regenerating health or dumb enemies. As if that wasn’t enough, the update adds chapter select functionality to the game, meaning you can re-live your harrowing experiences as much as you feel necessary.

That’s some big deal stuff for an awesome game. If you haven’t checked out Dead Space yet, you’re crazy. Seriously. Give our review a read and click “buy."

While we figure this issue of great import out, play against some of your Game Center friends in one of the best board game turned video games on the planet. Also, enjoy some of the other perks of Version 2.20, which is sure as sure the last “big” update to the game until the first add-on graces the App Store. New leaderboards, 43 new achievements, score sharing, improved stability, chat time stamping, better power consumption, and an ELO bug fix are all a part of this free update that should see some significant hold-over until game creator The Coding Monkey hits fans with some rivers, Inns, and Cathedrals.

What I didn’t mention ever so slyly in the above is that these expansions won’t see the light of day for three billion years Standard Internet Time -- The Coding Monkeys is cautioning fans that it’ll take a couple of months before “The River II” and “Inns and Cathedrals” hit. The good news, however, is that these will be quality bits of content as a result.

It’s hard to believe that someone still hasn’t checked Carcassonne out, but if you’re that dude, give this review a read. Seriously, this is a fantastic title. Just click “Buy app” already. Jeesh.