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.

First, let's talk about the kind of gameplay that's in Tweet Land. You control a car heading down the highway (Route 140 no less) and you must make it to the finish line while dodging tweet-driven hazards and other traffic on the road. You can veer into the other cars from the side to knock them off the road and score some points, and ramming multiple cars off the road at once will multiply the points you earn. If you hit cars from behind or run into road hazards, you lose a bit of life, which is represented by the visual damage on your car.

I really like Tweet Land's retro style, and there is a lot of humor and personality in its pixel art visuals (though it's kind of blurry on my iPhone 4S). But things start to fall apart when you actually start playing. The controls are very slippery, and it's hard to be precise when trying to properly ram other cars or avoid hitting hazards. With practice you can get used to it, but it's still really annoying when you're trying to quickly react to something and the controls don't afford you the kind of finesse that you need to get it done.

I think when you have games that are built on top of a very simple core gameplay concept, you have to get all the little details right. That's why games like Jetpack Joyride or Angry Birds are often imitated but rarely duplicated. as they get the feel of the controls and the movement in the game so right. If you're going to be doing the same action over and over again, you want that action to be fun. While Tweet Land has its share of fun moments, something about it just feels off, like it's missing something but I can't pinpoint what.

The game is broken into two environments with 12 levels each, with a spot for a third environment that's said to be coming soon. With each new level, new tweet-driven elements are introduced and added to the current ones, so as you keep going the variety of things that can happen increases quite a bit. An example of a hazard would be if someone tweets the word "meteor" then a meteor will fly in from off screen and you'll have to use the position of its shadow in order to avoid being crushed. There are helpful things that can be triggered in the game too, like health packs or a temporary spread shot for your vehicle.

One problem with the progression in Tweet Land is that it gets rather hard rather quickly, and if you get stuck on a level there's no moving forward until you beat it. This got pretty frustrating since many of the times that I died it felt like it wasn't actually my fault. When elements are brought in from Twitter, they are accompanied by a label with the Twitter handle of whoever tweeted that keyword. This is neat, but leads to an incredibly cluttered and distracting screen, especially when there are multiple things happening at once. Coupled with the floaty controls and the speed at which things are zooming by, and the odds are stacked against you.

Arrows indicate where things will be coming in from off screen, but they're hard to notice amongst the busyness on the screen and often aren't very helpful. Add in the fact that there's usually a ton of traffic on the road with you, and making it to the finish line intact can require a healthy dose of luck just as much as skill. The levels tend to be a bit longish, and nothing is worse than seeing your cheap demise when you're within a stone's throw of the finish. The more I failed a level over and over, the less I felt compelled to go back and conquer it.

However, my biggest issue with Tweet Land is something that I didn't really expect: the tweets that the game draws from can be much too somber for what is supposed to be a fun and lighthearted game. For example, if someone tweets about a "car crash" then cars will zoom in from offscreen and wreck into some of the other traffic on the road. When your run ends, you have the option of looking at a list of all the tweets that were used to bring things into the game.

To my horror, I found that in this particular instance "car crash" was pulled from a huge retweet campaign trying to raise money for a girl who had lost her parents in a car crash in Florida. I know Tweet Land has no way of telling the difference, but I couldn't help but feel crass for playing a game that was fueled by somebody else's tragedy. With some of the other keywords used in the game – like tsunami, terrorist, and death – I have no doubt that encountering a downer situation like that will occur often.

While I do still think the idea behind Tweet Land is incredibly clever, I just find the game too fundamentally flawed to be enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, I want to like it and I did find myself having fun with the game at times, but those fun times are quickly diminished when you realize your game is possibly being powered by the tragic tweets of strangers. Beyond that, the gameplay is too average to warrant dealing with cheap deaths and an unpredictable difficulty.

With some tweaks to the controls and interface, and perhaps some sort of filter for what kind of keywords are utilized, then Tweet Land could end up being something pretty special. It feels like it's just a couple notches off of being something great, and I hope it gets there someday. As it is now, though, it's hard to recommend the game except to those who might be curious to check out its novel use of Twitter or are prepared to deal with its shortcomings.

Now there's no need to worry about any of that. Not because One Epic Game [$0.99] brings any of that to the table, mind, but because Jetpack Joyride [Free] came out a year later and blew its predecessor out of the water. So why is it we're still seeing retreads of an older, lesser product? Could it be, she wonders, because Grip Games forgot their own game's roots when bringing it back from PlayStation Minis?

Say it ain't so, but I can't see many other explanations for what's happened here. One Epic Game isn't a Monster Dash clone, but there are some obvious similarities. To name a few, both have a humorously hardcore hero, randomized levels and weapon drops, the same flavor of non-stop platforming, the same methods of murdering slow-moving enemies, and three-life heart system. Maybe one wasn't inspired by the other, but that reads like a bit of a stretch. Now, all's fair in love, war and game development, especially when it comes to making games on different platforms. But if you're going to bring your game back to compete against its grandaddy, you at least ought to be sure you've made a few improvements in the meantime.

Here's the thing: One Epic Game has more content than Monster Dash. The latter is an endless runner, period. The former has a handful of levels in a story mode and seven challenge modes on top of that. But more isn't the same as better, and that's doubly true here.

The game is presented as a parody, hanging a lantern on all those silly things we've seen in games. It's the broadest sort of parody, satirizing concepts that are virtually universal. Ha ha, tutorials are a pain, aren't they? And so many games have zombies, am I right? Look at this obnoxiously jingoistic story, and mock these bland heroes and villains.

But here's the rub - the story, heroes and villains are extremely bland. The tutorial is horrid. It's not a great joke when you actually respect your audience so little you feel you have to teach them the ins and outs of the jump and shoot buttons. One makes you jump. The other makes you shoot. Got it? And yes, there are zombies. And aliens. And World War II settings. Hah, I bet you haven't seen so much of any of those things before that you might actually be profoundly tired of playing games that fail to use them in any sort of interesting way.

Maybe I'm just not getting the joke, but does it extend to clarifying why the rest of the game is so sloppy? The lack of Game Center and Retina support are the biggies, but if you look any deeper it's just issues all the way down. The game makes due with the bare minimum of animation, for example. Alpha Dog, your musclebound space marine stereotype, has just one: running. Jumping is just the running animation slowed down. The enemies only get to walk (or fly) in a straight line until they fall off something, still walking. Only the weapons and jetpack do anything of note with the visuals.

So it goes with the platforming. The game just loves to screw with you, sticking the best power-up in a place you can't survive or hiding the fact that a platform is too small to hit until you're already mid-jump. That's the joy of intentionally frustrating design, but then occasionally a platform crumbles away before you can reach the end or an obstacle you jump over stretches a little too far to be survivable. It's sloppy, pure and simple.

One Epic Game has two things over Monster Dash: you can chain kill enemies to build up a score multiplier, and you actually have a score, making killing monsters distinctly more valuable than avoiding them. All other things being equal, maybe that would be enough to set it apart. But all other things aren't equal, and we've had nearly two years to find better endless runners in the interim. There's just no reason to go back to something that might have been an okay (if slightly familiar) title two years ago when there are so many fantastic games coming out right now. If you decide to take the plunge anyways, share your thoughts in the discussion thread. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judge Dredd vs. Zombies

Hearing "I am the law" or some other ridiculously chest-puffing line every 15 seconds isn't this game's biggest problem, though -- the free-to-play model is. It comes across as much too pushy and needed and, as a result, it consistently strikes me as gross.

Sure, you can upgrade your weapons and bring along "special equipment" like "Instant Reload" or "Body Armor" using in-game credits, but they quickly end up costing too much in comparison to the amounts you can earn. The difficulty curve on zombie damage models are pretty sharp, too, so you'll feel naked in short order -- and grinding on previous levels, for whatever reason, won't net you any extra credits.

Dredd sure doesn't seem to mind. Like a 50-year-old wrestler who keeps taking bumps because he filed bankruptcy one too many times and still has a camper on a line of credit, an under equipped Dredd is consistently revved to keep battling against increasingly bad odds. His confidence and enthusiasm are off the wall.

What really salvages this entire experience is  its combat model. It's really, really enjoyable. Movement is a snap, while the shooting in particular is great. There's a brilliant auto-aim mechanic that flawlessly moves from threat to threat as smoothly and intelligently as if you were the one making the choice. And even when you do want to control where you shoot, you can just tap on the screen to target.

A combo system, the reload mechanisms, and item pick-ups alter the pacing of the combat in consistently entertaining ways. As you kill, you'll steadily earn more bonus points as a combo meter builds. The catch is that, whenever you stop to reload, the meter has a chance kick back to zero by virtue of inactivity. This is where the Dredd badge pick-ups littering the game come in: not only do they give you points, but they also keep that combo meter going when you're not actively blasting zombies into re-oblivion.

This isn't ground-breaking stuff, but it works and it works really well. Dredd's other constituent parts, on the other hand, are merely competent: the UI is inelegant but alright, the level selection and rating system are industry standard, and the visuals are OK. Nothing outside of the shooting feels particularly inspired. The lackluster and oftentimes barren level, sound, and presentation design leave a lot to be desired.

But... as far as fundamentals go, the fact that Judge Dredd vs. Zombies's combat rocks is a pretty big boon to what is otherwise a fairly competent, yet  occasionally annoying game. The bad parts, and particularly the greedy free-to-play hooks and the barrage of Dredd-isms, are the big stains. The shooting makes up for a lot of this, but there's a whole lot of ugly to wade through before you get to the good.

But hey, Superman [$0.99 / HD] can handle all that. All in a day's work, as they say. It's just too bad he couldn't be doing it in a better game. One that plays a bit less like The Hero, by Traplight Games, perhaps?

It's not that Superman is a total knock-off of The Hero. The Hero has style, charm and humor, and Superman has laser eyes, optional retina assets and the ability to beat up missiles while riding them. But the similarities are abundant.

This is the basic gameplay for both games: you fly around a two dimensional city putting out fires both proverbial and literal. You control your flight with a virtual joystick on the left, and a boost button on the right. You have special abilities you can use to do your job better -- those also hang out on the right side. You go through waves of enemies and crises while a top bar ticks down as you harm the city or allow it to come to harm (because Superman would never harm something himself). You have to finish each level before the bar runs out, and you're scored on the things you destroy or save in the meantime.

Superman adds a score multiplier to that formula. It builds up as you succeed, and falls when Supes gets hit by an otherwise harmless projectile or lets a target get away. At the end of each level, you're ranked based on the score you manage to earn.

But even if it weren't so very similar to The Hero, Superman wouldn't be a very good game. It has its positives -- the flight control is nice, and the control that handles your laser vision is conveniently contextual, changing to the control that punches dudes or picks up cars as needed. And you get to play Superman, if that's your thing.

The negatives just pile on, though. The missions are long and samey. Save a plane from dropping on Metropolis? Cool, you'll do that ten more times over the course of the game. You'll shoot up the same Luthorian police force every few levels. And it's not like the things you're doing ever really make any sense. You need to destroy these cameras/bombs/comets/fires around the city because, whatever, Lex Luthor, am I right? Unless Lois Lane telling you there are criminals on the run is your idea of a great reference to a beloved property, there just isn't much to love.

A couple levels manage to rise above the rest of the familiar, boring schlock. Those with boss fights can be fun, although they highlight the limitations of the controls (flying and shooting moving targets at the same time gets extremely awkward). And there are a handful of time trial levels peppered throughout, which just let you fly and fly and fly. Those are the good times.

Ultimately, if you love Superman and you miss the days when arcade games didn't bother with all that story nonsense and just let you get straight to beating stuff up, you might get something out of this game. If not, it's certainly a fun diversion at times. But if you'd like to see the same game done better, get The Hero. It's starting to show its age, but even so the love with which it was crafted still shines through -- more than I can say for this take on the Man of Steel. Either way, drop by our discussion thread and let us know what you think.

The apps have a lot in common, you see. Both of them are fantastic at bringing back the properties we know and love. Both flawlessly emulate the look of the classics. Both are missing a few key features. And both are cripplingly tied into IAP and grinding mechanics.

Snoopy's Street Fair does a particularly good job of cranking up the nostalgia machine. As you build up your street fair to help Charlie Brown go to the baseball tournament, you'll be flooded with memories. The game is filled with familiar sound bites that were either pulled from the Peanuts TV specials or are excellent impersonations. All manner of beloved characters pop up -- Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Peppermint Patty, Linus, Lucy and a huge roster of B, C and D-listers.

But more than that, nostalgic features are peppered throughout the experience. As you level up, you unlock classic comic strips that you can go back and read freely. After unlocking a certain item, you can take Peanuts photobooth pictures and send them to your friends. There are Snoopy trading cards to collect. These sweet little Easter eggs really elevate Snoopy's Street Fair to something occasionally special.

It's almost enough to make you want to use the app to, say, introduce the Peanuts gang to your kids. I'd recommend against it. To its credit, Beeline Interactive does a very good job of pointing out that the IAP costs real money, and warning players that there are real world purchases to be made. But that hasn't stopped the developer from making this game's argument for IAP very compelling. You can earn everything in-game, it seems, but it would take an extremely long time. You only earn a couple Snoopy Dollars each level, and many of the items and characters can only be bought with them -- for 20, 50, even 75 Snoopy Dollars a pop. The minimum purchase is 50 for $4.99, so be prepared to dig deep.

This wouldn't be so irritating if the game surrounding the IAP was more compelling. I've fallen in love with a few freemium games with simple grinding mechanics, but this one is just a bit too brainless. You can tap each of the stalls and features of your fair once in a while - 30 seconds, 24 hours, or somewhere in between. You get coins and experience when you do, and occasionally random rewards pop out to try to hit the part of our psyche that loves that kind of thing. The grinding is oversimplified, as is the decorating. It's all just rather bland.

There are a few mini-games that round out the experience, but they're pricey and straightforward. You can twist lemons for lemonade, or marshmallows for campfire roasting, and you can play with paints. But you can only do these things occasionally, because you could otherwise earn too much experience or have some kind of fun.

Rounding out the flaws, on the other hand, are a pair of familiar issues. While Snoopy's Street Fair lets you add Game Center friends, it doesn't have any other Game Center integration. Worse, it doesn't make any attempt to save your progress to the cloud. Delete the app for any reason and you'll have to start over from scratch. It's a bad call for a game with its hands so deep in your pockets.

If Snoopy's Street Fair is a game for nostalgic adults, it's not interesting enough to hold any attention. If it's a game for children, the aggressive focus on IAP is distasteful. Still, if you have fond memories of Charlie Brown and crew, it's worth your time to poke around briefly and see what charm this game has to offer. Just don't get sucked in -- unlike Peanuts, wine, or cheese, Snoopy's Street Fair doesn't get better with age.

And that's when the disappointments started rolling through the door. To be fair, I don't blame Mojang. If anything, they've done a rather masterful job at porting their world-famous IP onto the platform. Nonetheless, there's only so much you can do around technical constraints. Regardless of how you slice, the truth of the matter is that Minecraft just doesn't work here (not yet, anyway). To paraphrase the Genie from Disney's Aladdin, phenomenal cosmic power and itty-bitty living spaces do not mix.

Minecraft's familiar sense of scale is all but missing in Minecraft - Pocket Edition. Everything is forever frozen in a state of unnatural daylight. There is no day and night, no sunsets to behold, nothing to reinforce the feeling that we're in a world of our own. Instead, what we have is something that feels more akin to an open-air museum, a place to exhibit your mastery of multi-colored blocks. But even then, it's hard to be deeply impressed with a Big Daddy replica that someone has built when you find yourself running about in circles, struggling to take in every detail. Again, this has nothing to do with Mojang; small screens are small. You might as well complain that winter is cold.

Once you've grown acclimatized to the controls (it's your standard D-pad sort of thing), building is relatively easy. Blocks are placed by tapping the screen and removed by holding a finger over the cube. It's about as simple as it gets. Granted, you'll probably find yourself doing a lot of the latter. It could just be my lack of finesse but I found it a bit of a challenge to get the blocks exactly where I wanted them to go.

Asides from that, there's not much else to Minecraft: Pocket Edition. Building is everything. The game gives you an unlimited supply of blocks (there are about thirty or so to choose from) to play with. It also features cross-platform multiplayer. Don't get too excited. You won't be able to interface with your home server. For the time being, you'll only be able to sojourn to worlds built on the iOS and the Android.

Seriously, though. I could just be spoiled. I want my creepers. I want my skeletons. I want the ability to craft items. I want to be able to mine, damn it. Minecraft: Pocket Edition doesn't feel like Minecraft. It feels like something else entirely, something that may well be the point. And, for one reason or another, that just doesn't sit too well with me.

But if you're willing to take it for what it is and want nothing more than the ability to engineer pixelated utopias while you're on the go, Minecraft: Pocket Edition isn't exactly a lost cause. The developers appear to have a number of updates lined up. Minecraft: Pocket Edition could potentially be an awesome thing someday. Until that day comes, though, it is best purchased by the curious, the affluent and the hardcore fan.

Despite its impressive pedigree, Evertales falls totally flat. It's short, and it's got a few kinks that still need working out. It's excessively straightforward. But far worse than any of that, it's just not very much fun.

The formula should work. You've got three heroes, each with his own set of abilities. Sort of. You have platforming, combat, and something that could resemble puzzle-solving if you squint hard enough. You've got upgradeable weapons and big boss fights. You've got great looking environments -- I'll give this game that much. But you haven't got much else.

The trouble starts with those three heroes and their abilities. They just aren't all that unique. The archer can shoot, but so can the mage and warrior if you buy their extra weapons. The mage can cast spells, which is a lot like shooting but much more useful. The archer can double jump, and the mage can float slowly to the ground. There will be areas where you need to use those abilities. The warrior can't do much, but he seems to hit pretty hard. You can switch between them, but for the vast majority of the game you won't have any reason to want to.

Then there's the levels. There are only twelve, and they aren't particularly long. It's actually more like six with a hard checkpoint in the midst of each. They aren't hard, though they're occasionally irritating. I ran into a few bugs, places where I fell forever, coins that were stuck, that sort of thing. But more frequently I encountered areas where I'd be one death in before I could see where I needed to go next, which is simply shoddy level design. Deaths don't mean much, though. You'll run past several checkpoints per level, and you lose nothing for dying. It might rob the game of some potential challenge, but at least it keeps the lousy parts from getting too frustrating.

At the end of every second level, you'll find a boss. It seems like the idea of these bosses is to provide an epic, puzzling fight, but jumping and hitting them works efficiently and universally, right down to the final boss.

Like me, you might think you'll find some replayability in the Game Center integration. You probably won't. Most of the achievements are for defeating the game's six bosses. The others are for collecting all the armor for each of the characters. You can do that by grinding for coins -- which just means replaying levels to collect the same coins in the same spots, not improving your performance or anything -- or you can just buy the IAP. Which you should probably do if you're really into getting achievements, since there's one for that too. Maybe it's just me, but achievements lose a bit of their luster when you literally need to purchase them.

When you beat the game, you unlock Survival mode, which will give you a leaderboard to climb. You get a tiny sliver of Evertales' least interesting level to stand on while you fight off waves of enemies. It doesn't seem like you can earn coins this way, so forget about working your way up the leaderboard while earning useful upgrades.

The controls are another issue. By default, they're awful. Movement is controlled with a virtual stick that hangs out wherever you place your thumb, and that's fine. But jumping and attacking are both controlled by swipes on the right side of the screen, and more often than not the game confuses which you intend. That's okay, because there's a traditional jump/attack button set up available. It probably should have been the default, but that's the least of this game's problems.

Aesthetically, Evertales is pretty good. It looks great, sounds good, and has some cute cosmetic upgrades for its heroes. Otherwise, it's bland and boring. I've always been pleasantly surprised by these studios in the past. Evertales was a surprise, but it wasn't pleasant. Whether you love it or hate it, though, share your thoughts in our discussion thread.

Dark Incursion

Dark Incursion is a 2D side scrolling adventure game with a touch of platforming mixed into the gameplay. You play as Anya, an underground resistance fighter attempting to infiltrate a secret military laboratory. The game plays exactly like the recent 2D iterations of Castlevania or Metroid. Dark Incursion even preserves the standard ‘find power-up, backtrack to previously inaccessible area’ sort of gameplay (hence the term Metroidvania). Dark Incursion’s similarities don’t end with gameplay, as even the graphics and music are very similar to those spiritual predecessors. Even though Dark Incursion isn’t particularly original when it comes to its presentation, it still does a good job integrating a visual style that has proven to be popular in similar games.

Dark Incursion deviates somewhat from the traditional formula in its ‘fuse’ system. Anya has four different fuse slots, which can be filled with a variety of enhancement fuses that range from increasing your defense, to making you move faster, to adding elemental powers to your attacks. The elemental fuses are especially important because they also have secondary powers that are necessary to advance beyond certain sections (for example, the electric fuse can jump start elevators, allowing you to actually use them).

The interesting twist is that each fuse (with the exception of some basic ones) has a finite amount of uses. Also, when a fuse is depleted, it disappears. This goes for even the all-important elemental fuses, which means that poor fuse management can get you to a point where you cannot advance further because you don’t have the proper elemental fuse. Granted, fuses are dropped randomly from baddies, and since enemies continually respawn, you aren’t ever permanently locked out. Still, it’s an interesting choice but has the potential for some frustrating outcomes.

Whatever success Dark Incursion has quickly crumbles when it comes to its controls. Simply put, the controls are inaccurate, cumbersome, and are just not implemented well. Dark Incursion employs a virtual joystick, but the entire joystick moves with your finger. That means that, visually, the joystick always looks like it’s in the neutral position, even when it isn’t. In addition, simple actions like moving while in the air after a jump or even ducking to avoid a shot just aren’t reliable.

Also there were some occasions where I’d encounter a certain amount of lag between pushing a button and Anya actually performing the action. However, the jumping movement issues are by far my biggest issue, as you’re going to need to do a lot of jumping not just for the platform portions of the game, but also simply to avoid the potshots being taken at you throughout the game. Also, when you consider the limited checkpoint system, as well as the finite fuse resources, the control issues in Dark Incursion simply become inexcusable.

It really is a shame about the controls, because otherwise Dark Incursion would be a game worth checking out simply for its somewhat successful implementation of the Metroidvania formula on iOS. However, in its current state you would be far more likely to simply be frustrated with the game than actually enjoy any aspect of it. According to folks in our forums, a controls fix is supposedly in the works. Assuming that prospective update does improve the situation, Dark Incursion would easily be a game worth trying. However, in its current state, you’re better off passing.

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.

The first thing you’ll notice while playing High Flyer Death Defyer is its well-done cell-shaded visuals. The game’s graphic engine does an excellent job conveying the sense of adventure and discovery that is prevalent throughout most of your play. Even more impressive is its relatively stable and high framerate, a requirement for games that need to convey that sense of free-falling speed. Granted, High Flyer requires either an iPhone 4 or an iPad in order to enjoy the game and all its visual glory.  Strangely, even though the iPhone version is classified as a universal app, a lot of elements will appear blurry unless you buy the separate ‘HD’ version that only works on the iPad.

Unfortunately, once you get past High Flyer Death Defyer’s eye-candy, you’re left with a game with a messy tutorial and dreary controls. The tutorial is way too long, doesn’t do a good job of explaining all the gameplay elements, and some tutorial levels are even harder to pass than the post-tutorial levels. In fact, the only saving grace is that you can skip most of the tutorial and head straight to the story, but folks that don’t figure this out (the game does not really show you how to quit the tutorial beforehand), are in for a frustrating initial experience.

You may be able to skip the tutorial, but you can’t avoid High Flyer’s control issues. The game comes bundled with two different control schemes: a tilt-based option that simply does not offer the amount of precision, accuracy and speed needed to do well in High Flyer, and a (default) virtual joystick that lacks the responsiveness and customization necessary in order to use it well. The joystick is a better control option than the tilt controls, but it still leaves much to be desired.

These issues are a shame too, because High Flyer Death Defyer’s story mode is actually well-done. I particularly liked the fact that the game features seamless continuity between stages without any loading screens. Each level has you jumping from island to island, and once you land you get your score, the game saves, and then you get immediate control of your character right where you left off. It’s certainly something that’s not really seen in these types of games. There’s also a lot of content to play through, and plenty of treasures and collectibles to seek out. It’s just too bad that the controls will likely prevent you from ever obtaining the harder items.

High Flyer Death Defyer had the makings of an excellent game, particularly with its nice graphic style, story and core gameplay. Unfortunately, these features don’t mean much when the controls are this frustrating. If Game Mechanic Studios were to address these issues in a future update (and I believe that they can certainly be fixed via an update), then High Flyer might be a game worth checking out. However, in its current state (and current price), I really can’t recommend High Flyer Death Defyer.

BridgeTheGap [$0.99], a pirate-themed puzzle game, attempts to recreate a portion of the classic Lemmings formula while infusing it with even more strategy and precision than its spiritual predecessor. While BridgeTheGap certainly brings some good ideas to the mix through its bridge building mechanics, atrocious controls and poor execution prevent it from being little more than a subpar puzzler.

Your mission in BridgeTheGap is simple: a group of pirates need to get from one end of the level to the other. In your way are a variety of gaping chasms that require bridges to be built over them. The only tools you have at your disposal to build said bridges are barrels, which act as your weights, and bamboo rods, which allow your pirate buddies to cross those gaps. In addition, littered throughout each level are gold coins which can be collected by your pirate crew and typically require more complicated bridges in order to reach them. As you get towards later levels, you will also encounter ‘natives’ which will attack your pirate companions unless you take them out first with your pistols.

BridgeTheGap can be separated into two different phases. In the building phase, you have twenty building supplies (either rods or barrels) to work with. Once you feel you have a legitimate path to the end goal, you activate the movement phase which has your pirates start moving forward indiscriminately (a la Lemmings). The only commands you can give them are to jump or shoot their pistol. Otherwise, they’re going to keep moving forward. I would have really preferred the option to continue building during the movement phase, as it would allow players to make on the fly adjustments and possibly bring more excitement to the overall game.

Initially, levels are extremely easy to get through. However, they quickly become harder and more complicated, especially if you’re trying to get to the gold coins. Considering that those gold coins are necessary in order to unlock future levels, you quickly learn that they’re less of an optional quest and more of something you have to take into consideration if you want to be able to play through the whole game.

Overall, BridgeTheGap manages to create a decent bridge building game. The later levels require some pretty complicated designs in order to collect all the coins. Thankfully, there’s an adequate tutorial, along with some instructional screens showing some recommended bridge designs (although I hate the fact that you can’t access these designs in-game). There’s definitely a feeling of accomplishment once you manage to get all your pirates safely across all obstacles in a level.

Unfortunately, what little enjoyment BridgeTheGap provides is outweighed by a multitude of design blunders throughout the game. First off is the use of a virtual gamepad for moving about the level during the build phase. I would have much rather have seen a two-finger scroll or some other multi-touch gesture, as the virtual pad definitely gets in the way when you’re trying to do some precise bridge placement. Relatedly, the button placements during the build phase just seem to get in the way of the action. I can’t count how many times I was trying to place a bridge and then I accidentally hit the ‘Ready’ button in the bottom corner. Since there’s no confirmation dialog, my pirates would just start moving and I’d have no choice but to reset the entire level and try again, which becomes increasingly annoying due to load times that really shouldn’t exist in a game like this.

There are also a few other annoying minor issues, such as the main menu being a blob of selection choices without much organization and the fact that the game won’t even automatically reset once all your pirates are physically unable to reach the finish line.

These design issues are really a shame, considering how much potential the underlying game actually has. Unfortunately, in its current state, I can’t recommend BridgeTheGap for anyone other than the most diehard of puzzle fans that are willing to look past all the problems. For everyone else, it’s best you steer clear.

Croma [$0.99/HD/HD Free], a shooter by Mindfruit Interactive, looks like a new game – its aesthetic is modern and minimal, sporting the en vogue polarity-switching system of games like Ikaruga and Outland.

But the philosophy that drives its design – perform one action for as long as possible until you inevitably fail – is a very old one indeed, and its reemergence has been one of the by-blows of the growth of the iOS gaming scene (perhaps most visibly in the nascent runner genre). You can trace this quarter-munching mentality from Asteroids to Ski Free to Geometry Wars to Canabalt, but Croma comes full circle – it’s more or less a touch-enabled version of Missile Command.

Croma is a straightforward game, all in all: players are tasked with defending a small circle at the bottom of the screen by shooting physics-enabled pellets at descending meteors of varying size, weight, and color.

Tapping your circle changes its polarity from black to white; tapping anywhere sprays an endless stream of bullets (or lasers, depending on your power-ups), which don’t destroy the oncoming meteors as much as they push them  off the screen. White bullets interact with the white globes, and black with black – an appropriate mechanic, given the Ikaruga name-drop in Croma’s AppStore description.

Enemies come in waves, each capped off by a monstrously big sphere lumbering, like a wayward asteroid, toward you. The screen shakes, the music gives way to deep-rooted rumblings, and the cataclysm is on. The heavier spheres have more momentum and require more bullets to fend off; avoiding the apocalypse invariably feels triumphant. When an invading object inevitably breaches your defenses, Croma simply tells you how long you managed to survive.

And that’s the real beauty of Croma: these arcade-style games tend to pick one emotionally fraught verb and bear down on it until the player hits a breaking point. In Asteroids, that verb was destroy; in Canabalt, escape; in Croma, defend. Croma doesn’t have the narrative trappings that make mechanically similar games like Missile Command so evocative -- remember that it was saddled with a 70s zeitgeist of cultural anxiety over nuclear holocaust. Nevertheless, there’s something primordial about defending oneself from harm, even if that harm is abstracted into black and white bubbles.

Croma is, if nothing else, undeniably slick. The clean lines and vivid, monochromatic colors are a treat, and the sound design is remarkable. The controls are generally responsive and tight, though things get messy when enemy globules get close to your shooter –instead of switching polarities just in time, you may find yourself spraying useless black bullets at white invaders. The inverse is also true: instead of squeezing a few desperate bullets at a quickly approaching sphere, you may just impotently switch the color scheme back and forth.

Whether or not this is shoddy implementation or cruel design is up for debate – the problem is largely mitigated by your access to a screen-wiping bomb (though the minute-long cooldown is wicked in a game that only lasts on average, for me, 180 seconds). My gut, though, says that multi-touch support would solve this singular niggle in Croma’s design. If nothing else, it forces you to play economically and efficiently, doing just enough to deter one meteor before focusing your attention on the next.

Croma isn’t a bad game, by any stretch – in fact, I enjoy it a lot. But it is a simple game, one that might endure in the same way that Canabalt endures, something to come back to when an errant OpenFeint notification reminds you how easy it is to kill an afternoon chasing the dragon. For that to happen, Croma needs to expand its user base to include your friends and family, a tall order for a $1.99 game on the fickle and predatory App Store. Simplicity and elegance can be useful hooks – a rarity for most games – but I’m skeptical of their ability to do for Croma what they did for Canabalt.

Things began well. Drawin' Growin' has a premise I can get behind. The plants of the kingdom have withered away, and Meu, a plant-loving sprite, is tasked by the King to fill the world with greenery. To regrow all the plants, you need to use line-drawing tactics to funnel sun to the sun-loving flowers, rain to the damp types and so on. You need to tap to keep them free of bugs, use your lines to protect them from lightning and volcanoes, and generally babysit them until they grow. It's a frantic formula, but not a bad one.

But after a while, the levels start to blend together. Levels offer a few different objectives, but they can all be distilled down to growing plants and keeping them alive. In many of Drawin' Growin's levels, succeeding at that task is punishingly challenging, especially without power-ups. The power-ups can do all sorts of things - increase the number or length of the lines you can draw, bring Meu out to protect the plants from bugs and disasters, and make the plants grow quickly. And as you progress through the game, Meu becomes better at using them. When I found myself having genuine fun with the game, it was because I'd carefully selected just the right item to pull out for a particular level. Too bad that fun couldn't last.

For some reason, Taito has locked the power-ups behind a pay wall. There are a few given out on completing levels, but those just give you a taste. If you want more, you'll need to cough up some cash. It makes perfect sense to charge in-game coins -- keeping players from abusing them -- but by limiting those coins to in-app purchases rather than handing them out for skilled play, it just makes the game's failings more apparent.

As the King drags Meu through the levels and puts him to work, I found myself wondering why I was bothering. Meu didn't seem to want to be there, and as the game progressed, neither did I. I wasn't really having fun, I was working -- and if I wanted to make that work more tolerable, I'd have to put in my own money. When I'd lose the King would toss me a pity power-up or two, keeping me from ever being completely stuck. But if you want someone to buy your consumables and keep coming back, you have to give them a reason. Instead, I realized that paying to make Drawin' Growin' tolerable wasn't worth it. There are plenty of games out there that respect my time and money, and this isn't one of them.

For those unfamiliar with platform runners in general, the gameplay in Darkness Escape Deluxe is simple: your character starts off at the left side of the screen and continually runs to the right until you reach the end of the level. In addition, you start off with 100 coins on each level and must avoid hazards that reduce your coin total (end up with less than 80 and you fail and must repeat the level).  There are some barriers that can stun or stop your movement, but otherwise, you have no control over your speed. In fact, the only control mechanism you have is a jump button which you use to avoid said barriers as well as chasms that lead to death. Several different kinds of power-ups (ranging from increased speed to invulnerability) are littered throughout each level, but most of them seem to do more harm than good in most situations.

Overall, Darkness Escape Deluxe satisfies most of the prerequisites for a platform runner, but there’s just nothing gripping about the gameplay. There is very little story (you’re a female thief that steals from the rich and gives to the poor, that’s it), and little incentive to continue playing other than to unlock another monotonous level. Even that incentive doesn’t last very long as there’s only twenty levels in the entire game, with no additional difficulties. If you’re not particularly good at platform runners (like me), you should still manage to play through all the content in about two hours, which is a very low amount of content for games like this.

Besides content, there are a few annoying design decisions that make Darkness Escape even less of an enjoyable experience. For example, some of the obstacles are colored very similarly to the ground tile set, making them hard to distinguish while running at full speed. Some may argue that’s just part of the difficulty, but I think it’s just poor game design. Also, the music that plays when you die just seems completely annoying and out of place. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but considering that death happens a lot in this game (as with most platform runners) it eventually becomes maddening.

If you’re looking to try out a platform runner, there are far better alternatives out in the App Store. In fact, the only folks that I think would bother checking out Darkness Escape Deluxe are the genre obsessives that would probably enjoy any playable platform runner. If you’re not one of those gamers, Darkness Escapes offers very little to distinguish itself, and should probably be avoided.

I'm still high off the faster, crazier NFS: Hot Pursuit and the dialed back Real Racing 2, I think. Shift 2 exists in a limbo-like spot somewhere in between those titles, with a slightly heavier weight toward the realistic racing, which is something the franchise has only recently started dabbling in. We loved the first Need for Speed: Shift because it nailed what we wanted from a console approximation and it was a convincing, competitive iOS sim-racer. This sequel hits those same notes, but the standard, and thus what I expect, has raised since.

The idiots on your morning commute are probably evidence enough that passing the driver's test doesn't make you a great driver, just the same as Shift 2's isn't a great game because its basics are up to snuff. The sum of A Bunch of Cars and A Bunch of Tracks doesn't amount to much, particularly because there's little to differentiate the vehicles from one another beyond their look and stats. At least upgrading the speed, tires, brakes and all that jazz gives your ride a feel akin to actual driving. The tilt-turning sensitivity is as stellar as it's ever been in these iOS versions of NFS, particularly when turning off the driving assists.

Vehicles move faster as you move up the tiers, graduating from the D-class to C to B and so on, which is a structure so straightforward I found myself struggling to stay interested. I didn't feel like I was grew and improved as I moved up the ladder--more like I was checking chores off a to-do list that rewarded me with more mediocrity. Unleashed worked great for scratching the upgrade itch the series always gives me, at least.

Speaking of which, EA, it'd be far more enjoyable to let me improve cars at my own pace. Stop nagging me to spend real money on in-game cash every couple of races, yeah? Those incessant pop-up ads are really annoying. On the other hand, I didn't mind the interruptions encouraging me to use Origin, EA's new digital distribution service. I dig its implementation here--I tap the Origin icon and I can send challenges to current friends, add new ones, and play around with my profile. It's early, but the potential here for a universal in-game social network for EA titles is fantastic, and I can't wait to see how future games expand on the basics of daring someone to do better than you.

Most of all, I was caught off guard by the demanding difficulty of Unleashed, actually, and I consider myself a solid driver (at least when it comes to video games, let's not talk about my real-world insurance). Earning stars for first-place finishes and stylish, flawless maneuvering earns stars, and even at the C-level I struggled to earn enough to advance to the next set of time trials or 1v1 duels. I ended up replaying older races endlessly before burning out on Need for Speed playing it safe.

Shift 2 understands the racing genre like the best of 'em, but coasting on its competence and expecting us to adore what others (including EA) have done better isn't enough. So, yeah, once again: Don't bother. This is a bland, boring racing game compared not only to previous iOS Need For Speed titles, but also other racers already on the App Store. Wait for the inevitable iOS port of Need for Speed: The Run, which is so fundamentally different from the rest of the series that I gotta believe it'll be the refreshing change of pace we all wanted.