That certainly isn’t the case with The Hacker [99¢], though, a story-driven faux hacking game from developer Angry Bugs. When I fire it up, my iPhone is transformed into a Glider OS-equipped computer that becomes my gateway into an international tour de hacking which leads me to uncover a devious plot involving my former employer. It’s far from the first game to let you take on the glorified role of a top level hacker, but it executes the idea incredibly well and offers a fantastic level of immersion with a fairly compelling story.

The Hacker starts with you trying to log into the Glider Operating System on your computer, an OS you helped develop as an employee of Glider Corp. You’re notified on the screen that several things failed to install properly, but you finally boot to the desktop. When you try to connect to the ‘net, you’re denied, and then contacted via email by someone who claims to be a former coworker. He is one of a handful of developers, including yourself, who worked on Glider OS and were unceremoniously fired shortly before it was set to launch.

He informs you that he’s discovered a trojan in the Glider OS and suspects that Glider Corp is up to something shady, and since you have experience with the software he recruits you to join him and several other ex-employees in hacking into Glider Corp’s system and getting to the bottom of things. From there you’ll go on to experience several twists and turns as you dig in and discover just what Glider Corp is up to.

The coolest thing about The Hacker is that it hardly ever breaks character in terms of presentation. It tries to simulate a computer you might find from the late 80s with a green monochrome screen and very basic graphics, and it does it very well. There’s rarely a time when navigating through the game that you don’t feel like you’re actually operating a computer (minus the fact that everything is touch enabled, of course). This level of detail is very cool for people who remember when computers looked like that, but a younger generation might not appreciate such a low-fidelity presentation.

The Glider Corp system is spread across 8 servers around the globe, and the way you “hack” in into each one is by completing various types of mini-games. These are mostly just logic puzzles disguised as computer-y things.

For example, one type has you moving little nanomachine bugs onto trigger pads placed on a circuit board in order to “open the ports” into a server. The catch is that all the bugs move at the same time, and you’ll need to use objects on the board to get each one into the proper position to have them all be on their respective pads at the same time. A couple of the hacking games use similar mechanics to the classic Pipe Dream, like creating a path out of sections that will lead power to a set of dead nodes. Outside of the server mini-games, another bit of hacking lies in “decrypting” emails by completing a slightly altered version of a lights out game.

The mini-games aren’t necessarily anything groundbreaking, but they are really fun and can be quite challenging. It makes you feel like you’re doing real work by putting your brain to use and then being rewarded with an unlocked server and a new part of the story. I won’t spoil too much, but there is definitely more beyond the 8th server including some very cool secrets and surprises.

If you finish the initial 8 servers and still want more you can choose from 3 new areas to buy as in-app purchases for 99¢ each. These 3 areas each have 5 new servers to hack into, and completing each area will lead to some periphery story bits and additional secrets. There’s also Game Center achievements and leaderboards for every area as well as an overall leaderboard.

Doing pretty much any kind of hacking will earn you experience, which acts as an in-game currency. You can pay a bit of XP to pass a mini-game if it’s giving you trouble, or buy an assortment of sweet backgrounds for your virtual desktop that feature ASCII artwork. These definitely bring a nostalgic tear to my eye. But the coolest thing you can spend XP on is unlocking arcade games from the G.A.M.E. portal on your desktop. These playable games include takes on familiar genres like snake, brick breakers, shmups, cave flyers, and dodging games. There’s even a hidden platformer game in there too (but you’ll need to find it yourself).

There aren't too many things that I didn't like about The Hacker, but there were a couple of issues that stuck out. There are a ton of spelling mistakes throughout the game, which on the one hand feels a bit sloppy but on the other sort of fits perfectly with a game based around communicating with people over the internet. Our grammar has certainly suffered since the rise of the internet age.

The other problem I encountered was an inconsistent difficulty. The mini-games appropriately get more complex as the game progresses, but at several points no matter where I was in the campaign I ran into puzzles that stumped me for a frustrating amount of time. Then, after finally figuring out the solution, the very next puzzle or two I would beat in a matter of seconds. It could be that’s just how my own particular brain handled certain challenges, but to me the difficulty curve felt kind of choppy.

While at its core The Hacker isn’t much more than a collection of mini-games, the fantastic presentation and little details really pull you in. The story might be a bit cliché, but the way it’s gradually revealed to you as you access each new server compels you to keep hacking away to learn what happens next. Plus, the mini-games and accompanying arcade games are really pretty fun on their own, and can be played over again as many times as you want just for kicks or to earn some extra XP.

Above all else though, The Hacker does a great job at making you feel like a bad ass international hacker, which is what it should really all be about anyway.

You know how we raved about Jetpack Joyride's mission system, its hefty in-game store full of customizables, and other single-user consumable perks? Well, Off The Leash does an incredible job of utilizing incredibly similar underlying systems to keep you playing game after game while feeling entirely new and fresh. In fact, in light of the recent NimbleBit cloning drama in the past week, it's seems particularly important to tip our hats at games like Off The Leash that utilize these mechanics that work so well, but only as part of building an entirely new game experience.

In Off The Leash you initially control a single dog. It almost has a Mega Jump [Free] feel to it in that coins are everywhere, and you tilt your device to move your dog around to collect them. There's also food to eat, and various power-ups to snag.

The premise of the game has you running from the police, as apparently dogs have been banned. This lends itself to my favorite gameplay mechanic, the dog rescue system. Since the cops are out in force to catch you (and presumably, all other dogs), you've got to snag every other dog you come across and recruit them into your coin collecting food devouring feral dog pack.

As you collect more dogs, you run in what could be best described as a massive canine swarm. Your dog friends you've picked up form behind you in a almost bird-like flying V formation which greatly increases the amount of coins and food you can pick up since any dog running into any coin or food product counts towards your total.

It's not that easy enough, as there's obstacles which make you lose dogs as the errant corners of your formation bumps into them. Thankfully, touching the screen makes your dogs form up in a line, but doing so greatly decreases your speed, which is really counterproductive since the game ends when your dog pack fails to make it through a checkpoint before you run out of time- Sort of like an old school racing game.

Like most of these games, you quickly find yourself in a rhythm of tilting tilting and tapping and the whole game melts away into this crazy dog pack management experience as you're trying to go as quickly as possible without losing any of your puppy pals. There's power-ups you can collect too such as your standard speed boost, time extension, a familiar coin magnet, and my favorite: DOUBLE DOGS. Collecting this power-up instantly doubles the dogs in your pack, which can result in a silly amount of dogs on screen.

Just like Jetpack Joyride, Off The Leash is totally free to download and play, with no ads or other restrictions as far as I can tell. Instead, it's monetized through selling coins that are then used to buy cosmetic upgrades, better power-ups, and golden whistles which basically act like extra lives to keep playing if you fail to make it through a checkpoint. There's also a similar permanent double coins add-on for 99¢, which seems to be a good place to start if you like playing the game since you can just earn coins for everything you'd want to unlock anyway.

I'm really sort of shocked by how much I find myself enjoying this game. The difficulty curve seems great, Jetpack Joyride already proved that this payment model works, and I love how they take the foundation that worked so well for Halfbrick but created what feels (and, really, is) an entirely new game around it. For the low, low price of free, you really shouldn't miss Off The Leash.

We've seen the control scheme and basic design a thousand times before, and there's nothing new about collecting coins for upgrades, cosmetic or otherwise. Blot won't win many points for fundamental originality. But it's a solid, fun cave flier that also happens to be beautiful, with an underlying sense of humor that's sure to please.

Screenshots don't do it justice — a big part of Blot's appeal is how lovely its parallax backgrounds look in motion. Someone at Majestic Software has taken time to sketch out all manner of things — trees, candies, wastelands, ponies, helicopters wielding swords and morningstars, you name it—which the game then combines and recombines to build new backdrops each time you play.

This is part of a broader vision. Blot himself is an ink spatter, flying outwards from a pen. He dodges pencils and seeks out paint cans and smudges. The artistic theme isn't carried through as far as it could be—art and coin collection don't exactly go hand in hand—but it gets very, very close.

For controls you're looking at something a lot like Jetpack Joyride [Free], to name one recent and popular example. The titular Blot is bigger and a bit floatier than Barry Steakfries and his jetpack, but it has the same inputs—tap to rise, let go to fall. The arc of its movement might take a bit of getting used to, but there are no drastic changes.

And what would a modern cave flyer be without a collection mechanic or two? Aside from coins, you'll also seek out boost buddies. Blot grows as it absorbs these cute little dudes, making it easier to grab coins but harder to dodge obstacles. Once you pick up four, you get a big boost of speed and temporary invincibility. There are also colorful paint cans and smudges to be found that mess with speed, direction and magnetism.

The coins you collect can be exchanged for upgrades. The selection is pretty cool—stuff that makes paint effects or boosts last longer, alerts you to upcoming boost buddies, makes you magnetic or doubles your income. Since you can only pick one to equip, you'll have to consider whether you're grinding for coins, going the distance or working on a Game Center achievement that requires a bit of extra assistance.

The game takes any chance to serve up pop-culture references. Little things, mostly, like how the buddy detector is called the "pip-blot 2000," and the unlockable costumes play off things like Star Trek and the Ace Attorney series. There are also achievements for flying past wild reference in the background sketches, although you'll probably die if you take the time to look for them. Best of all, none of this feels as forced or out of place as memes so often do when they pop up in games.

Some of the foreground elements are a bit abrasive against the terribly sexy backgrounds, but everything else is awesome. There's lovely (if brief) music to fly to, and Blot is stupidly charming for something with only a few frames of animation (that little scrunchy face…!). And while there isn't a plot or a complicated mission system to keep you motivated, the high score grind is made valuable with coin rewards and a grading system. Practice makes perfect, but getting an A+ will take skill.

One little warning - you can purchase coins with cash. Don't bother unless you're out to support the developers or stockpile a huge supply of portals—you'll just rob yourself of the fun of actually playing. The grind isn't painful at all unless you need the highest end items right away. My only quibble is that the IAP coins come a bit cheap - a single $2.99 purchase can give you most of what you'd ever need, so grinding starts to look like a bad value proposition.

It's hard to complain, though. While it fails to distinguish itself on mechanics, Blot blows most of its competition out of the water with style alone. It's delightful, plain and simple, and when given the choice between equally solid games, I'll take the one that delights me any day. Who wouldn't want a little more joy in their games, right? So take a good long look at Blot, and let us know if you like what you see.

Smash Cops

The most distinctive feature of Smash Cops are the controls, which have become a talking point in our discussion thread. The default touch controls involve placing one finger behind your police car and using it to "push" your vehicle along, like a toy car, with acceleration being automatic. This "push" mechanism has received mixed feedback, with some absolutely loving it and others loathing it and preferring the alternate virtual joystick option. Personally, I enjoyed the new push controls, but found the virtual joystick jerky and awkward for steering.

While driving, tapping the screen anywhere causes your police vehicle to lunge forward in a ramming maneuver. Smacking into the side or front of a fleeing vehicle is the most effective and can lead to the criminal's car smashing, rolling and possibly catching fire. There's no warnings, issuing tickets or police diplomacy, you just smash into the criminals as hard as possible each time your RAM meter has fully recharged.

Smash Cops has 22 missions to unlock, with each mission worth six stars. The missions include pursuits, emergency response calls and driving challenges. Pursuits involve racing alone or working with other cops to take down a suspect's vehicle, like multiple sports cars, stolen security trucks or an ATV, before the criminals escape across the state line. However, the other cops are actually more of a hinderance as they drive badly, swerve around, get in your way and appear to purposely take you out. Basically they're more frustrating than the bad guys and civilian drivers themselves.

Responding to emergency dispatch calls involves following a series of markers to the crime-scene within a time limit, speeding around the neighborhood while dodging traffic and bad guys. But the driving challenges proved hardest, like staying between the traffic cones - which is when you realize how poor your driving is. If only the goal was to knock down as many cones as possible! Completing a challenge mission earns you a "Super-Cop" vehicle power-up for one mission, to "Drive faster. Hit harder. Last longer".

The game tries to sell you "Super Cop" upgrades as an in-app purchase, with IAP messages in the game over screen, upgrade notification screen, in the tips and on the main menu screen. And when you restart the game, a red "buy all" button appears. This felt a little pushy, however the IAP is not necessary as you can unlock everything without too much grinding. And when you do replay missions, it's often with a new vehicle so it's still fun.

The graphics are excellent, with the game presented as if being filmed from an overhead police chopper for a live television feed. Check out the trailer below, for a taste of the sweet graphics used for the vehicles and city setting. Smash Cops scores high marks for being visually appealing.

You start out as a new police cadet, in a regular police car, but by completing levels and earning stars you can unlock four other vehicles like the speedy 'Interceptor' or the aggressive 'Brutus'. Vehicle upgrades make it easier to replay levels for more stars, plus because the mission routes don't appear to change, you can learn the route and identify short-cuts for better ramming opportunities. This helps you gain promotions up the five ranks to "Captain."

Smash Cops is a great-looking police-pursuit game, with an innovative "push" control system that's a refreshing variation from regular car racing controls. Opinions on the push controls are polarized, but if they click with you they actually offer a simple and fun way to control the game. It's nice to see developers using touch controls in new and innovative ways, especially when it involves car chases, 360 degree burn-outs, ramming, and slow motion vehicle smashes.

You know how Dungeon Raid [$0.99] took the match-3 thing and made it completely soul-consuming? That's exactly what TripleTown does. But for those of us not into gaming in our browsers or on our e-book readers, it's brand spanking new, something Dungeon Raid hasn't been for a while.

So here's the scoop. Triple Town is a pretty straightforward matching game with cutesy art and simple tap controls. It's all about matching things in groups of at least three, a rather familiar task. Instead of clearing the board, you're building it up. If you play haphazardly, making every match you can, you won't get far.

That's because everything in Triple Town can be upgraded. You're given a six by six grid partly filled with randomly generated terrain. You draw random tiles to work with - a chunk of grass, let's say. Plant it, and then plant two more beside it to make a bush. Put three bushes together to grow a tree. Three trees together builds a hut, and three huts makes a house. Each combination gives you a little breathing room, but you can't outright clear anything off the board until you match up the very top tier.

When you put down the last piece of a triad the upgrade forms out of that piece's position. It's incredibly easy to end up putting your trees all over town if you're not careful, and not so simple to actually build them together. If you want to do well you're going to have to plan a few steps ahead and be ready to improvise. Occasionally you'll luck out and draw a crystal, which acts as a wildcard, or a bot which can clear a space. You can also switch out one piece for safekeeping, which can save your city-building career if you use it well.

Then there are the bears. You have to murder the bears. Don't be fooled by their cute little faces - they're jerks and they'll fill up your town if you don't deal with them. You can kill them by trapping them, and they leave a gravestone behind. Three gravestones makes a church. Three churches makes a bigger church. Yeah. Suddenly you're dealing with two separate upgrade paths all getting in the way of each other.

Since the grid you're playing on is pretty tiny, mistakes don't take long to come back and haunt you. The goal is to earn more and more points to upgrade your settlement to a camp, a town, a city, a megalopolis and several steps in between. Each milestone is a Game Center achievement, so let's just say I don't have many achievements yet. It's easy to keep getting better, though. Every failure yields a lesson, and once you've got the system down it's just a matter of putting it into action.

There's only one problem: eventually the free ride runs out, and when it does, it hurts. Triple Town gives you a limited number of turns to work with - enough for a lot of free play, enough to get you hooked. After that, you can buy 200 more turns with coins. You earn more coins each time you finish a game, but it's not really a sustainable practice. So you're probably going to need to shell out. You can either buy coins for cheap and keep going 200 turns at a time, or you can splurge to unlock unlimited turns at a painful rate - $6.99 in the US store.

I won't argue that's not a lot to pay for a simple little game like Triple Town, given the App Store economy. But the game offers such a generous amount of free play that it's worth getting even if you're not interested in putting any cash on the table. Of course, you'll need to rely on your willpower at that point, which might be a heavy burden to bear.

Sure, Triple Town is just another matching game, but it's deep and surprisingly strategic. You've got to plan your moves out in advance while dealing with random draws and turns ticking down. You've got to balance spending your coins on the exact tile you need with earning enough each game to keep you going. It's challenging enough to keep your brain working and simple enough to dig in those one-more-game hooks. So why not give it a look? The first hit is always free.

Puzzlejuice starts with falling puzzle-blocks, just like Tetris. You can rotate each falling block by tapping the screen or drag it left or right. A ghost image of the block shows where it will end up at the bottom. When you're happy with the position of the block, you can swipe it downwards to speed up its descent. And the idea is to form a solid row. That should all sound fairly familiar for anyone who knows Tetris, but that's just the start of this game.

When you form a solid row of blocks across the playing area, instead of disappearing, the blocks turn into letters. And to make the letters disappear, you must draw a line across adjoining letter-blocks, to spell a word in eight directions, like Boggle. If your word is long enough, the surrounding blocks are also destroyed. So now you're multitasking between managing falling blocks and finding words.

The falling blocks are comprised of different colors. Whenever you match-up three or more blocks of the same color, those blocks can be tapped so they convert into letters. So now you're managing falling blocks, matching and tapping colors and also finding words, which is enough to keep your brain challenged and fully entertained (especially if you're a male, because apparently we're not great at multitasking).

A series of objectives are provided as well, which can be completed across multiple games. For example, you might need to spell a six letter word, use two power-ups simultaneously or activate 3+ rows at once. By satisfying these objectives, you can unlock power-ups, like "The Kabomb!" (explodes blocks), "Driller" (falling blocks carve through everything they touch) or "Twister" (scrambles the blocks). You can choose up to three power-ups to carry.

There are two game modes, Zen and Core. In Zen Mode the blocks don't drop, but you only get 90 seconds to play. In Core Mode you play until the blocks reach the top of the screen. Core Mode has two difficulty levels, with the harder levels requiring longer words to explode surrounding blocks, but offering three times the points. Basically, the longer your words, the bigger the width of your explosion, which all helps your Game Center score.

I tried this universal game on the iPad and iPod touch, both of which played well, although the music spluttered at times on my 4th generation iPod. There's a "picture-in-picture" mode for the smaller screen devices, which shows a zoomed in image of what's under your finger. On the iPad that mode is unnecessary, but on the smaller screen it's useful for seeing the words you're swiping, or un-swiping.

Puzzlejuice may not be totally original, as it combines three common App Store genres, but putting them together into one game was a stroke of genius. It's a real breath of fresh air with loads of frantic gameplay, style and humor. As an added bonus, Puzzlejuice is currently on sale for 99¢ due to being featured by Apple, and at that bargain price (or its original price of $2.99, for that matter) it's a strong recommendation for puzzle and word game fans.

Hero Academy is Robot Entertainment's first iOS offering, and I think it's the sign of good things to come. The premise is very basic: You are playing a tactical battle against another team, and the goal is to destroy their crystals before they destroy yours. Each round allows you five moves ("action points"), which you can use to either place team members and items on the board, or move and attack with your preexisting team members.

If you play the free version of the game, the only team available to you is the Council, which is made up of humans and is a well-balanced option. Should you wish, you can unlock the Dark Elves for $0.99, which can summon the spirits of their fallen enemies to aid them in battle.

At the bottom of your screen, you'll see a selection of five items and characters, which the game randomly deals you each turn. If you don't like what you got, you can use your finger to drag anything you don't want over to the tiny door in the bottom left corner. Once your turn is finished, you'll get new stuff and hopefully get dealt exactly what you were looking for. This selection of items includes spells and weapons to strengthen your characters' attack and defense abilities so you can survive in the field for longer.

The board itself also includes some options to give you the advantage. In the middle of each board is a tile with a crystal on it, and reaching it will weaken the enemy's crystal a bit. There are also tiles that have a sword or a shield on them, which will give you a buff to attack or defense. At the end of a turn, you can also choose to submit your turn normally or submit it with a taunt, which is pretty much just to piss your opponent off.

Getting to know your characters and how their skills can be used is vital. For example, the magician can cast a spell that can hit a row of opponents and only spend a single action point on it. Using these types of skills to your advantage will give you the edge needed to keep those fools off your crystals.

Frankly, I'm no fan of waiting around for someone to take a turn. When I first saw that Hero Academy had no single player mode where you could at least play against the computer, I was a bit let down. At first, I only had a few games going with other friends. The key to the fun of Hero Academy really came clear when I got a lot of games going, and that was when I started to feel my skills were improving and I was getting better at it. Considering my moves more carefully and how I could best defend against the way my opponent played was rewarding, and I started to win more matches.

There is one downfall to the game, and that is that the free version is relentless when it comes to in-game ads. Between each match, you'll see an ad that you have to stare at for five seconds before it disappears and you can play again. If you're good at ignoring things, you may not mind one bit, but if you're like me and it bugs the hell out of you, you can buy any heroic team to get rid of the ads, which costs a buck. Only the Dark Elves are available for now, but Robot promises new teams are coming in the near future. You can also spend a bit more to get new avatars if you so desire.

Hero Academy is a simple game, and it does what it's built to do very, very well. If the content continues to expand and offer more for the fanbase, I could see it being something I would want to come back to over and over again in the future. It also offers access to invite Facebook and Twitter friends to join you right in the menu, so never fear if you don't have enough games going at a time. Invite everyone you know, and soon enough your phone will be jingling with the notification sound you've learned that you're unable to resist.

If you take it down to fundamentals, Windosill is a puzzle game about traveling. A toy car drives from room to room. Each is locked, each has to be solved with creative thinking and exploration to open the next. There are only eleven rooms, and they're over in a snap. Yet whimsy and charm makes it ever so memorable.

This is a port of a Flash game from 2009, but the iPad version feels like it was always meant to be. There was always something tactile about its puzzles; now players can interact with them directly. Multitouch makes a huge difference - not in how the puzzles are solved, but in how they can be played with.

That's what Windosill is: playful. It's a game, there's no doubt about that, but it's also a toy. Poking around is almost as fun as solving a room. Each room is filled with interactive widgets - boxes to open, lights to turn on, leaves to pull off - and the trick is to find which ones can be used to open the next door. But playing with everything else will reward you with equally delightful results. And every bit of it is eye-candy, designed with a look to surrealists of the past.

Windosill doesn't get into how to play, so neither will I. Poke around, experiment. That's all you need to do. There are no awkward controls to deal with - just tap and drag things around, see what they do. And don't be afraid to experiment.

There is a little value in the iPad version over the Flash game. Once you complete the game, you can turn on two settings: Complex Gravity and See-Thru. The former lets you play with tilt controls, the latter lets you look at the inner-workings of each level. It doesn't add much, but it's an extra bit of play. You can also paw through a sketchbook of concept art.

So there you go. Only you can know if you can be satisfied by such a brief encounter. If you can, Windosill is fantastic. It's gorgeous, playful and feels like it was born to be played on a touch screen. But I wouldn't blame you if the brevity is just too much. Bigger isn't better, but Windosill leaves me wanting more, and there isn't more to come. Delighted or disappointed? Stop by our discussion thread to share.

Besides, one of my resolutions, the one striving to reintroduce simplicity in my life, led me to discover a really charming puzzle game for your perusal. That game is Blockwick [Free] by Kieffer Bros. It’s my new favorite puzzle game, and it may just become yours, too.

Yes, that sounds like a big claim, but once you pick up Blockwick, you’ll understand. It’s beautifully, almost maddeningly, simple. There are no real instructions or explanations, just buttons. As you start out, the game directs you to connect the colored blocks in each puzzle until they touch, which completes the level. As you progress, there are different-sized obstacles to slide around and out of the path of the colored blocks. Simple, right?

Right! But also so, so wrong…because the puzzles in Blockwick get insane. I can’t tell you how many times I’d start a new puzzle and immediately think that it was impossible, only to work my way through it and feel like a super genius. And it’s strange how liberating working through the puzzles feels. Over time, I’ve grown accustomed to looking things up when I can’t quite figure out a puzzle in a game.

I’ll also usually make multiple saves so I always have a shot at a do-over in case I make a wrong decision. Blockwick offers none of that security. If I don’t understand a puzzle or get hopelessly lost, I just start it over. The weird thing? I’m totally OK with that, as the game makes starting over minimally frustrating.

Since it’s a free game, there are the inevitable in-app purchases. However, they’re not annoying or overpriced. The game gives you the first sixty levels for free; each additional set of sixty levels costs $.99 each (for a total of 240 puzzles). If you’re prodigiously gifted at figuring out puzzles, you may be disappointed, since the sixty levels you’re given for free are the least challenging.

The game also makes you work through the puzzles in order, which I was OK with. If you’re not down with that (or get stuck on one puzzle and are therefore unable to continue), you can buy the “Master Key” for $.99 which enables you to work through the puzzles in any order.

Even if you don’t make a single in-app purchase, Blockwick gives you more content for free than many paid games I’ve tried. The only downside is that the colored blocks look like gummy candies, therefore leading me to directly violate my resolution of “Stop eating the commercial-sized box of Mike and Ike’s before you pass out in a diabetic coma.” Um, there’s always next year, right?

The "but with levels part" is a pretty big game-defining departure. Run Roo Run's world has oodles of color and instance-based content. In all, it rocks over 400 levels, all of which are clumped into individual chapters that introduce new mechanics. You'll bounce on tires, float on fans, play around with a double jump, and avoid retracting spikes as well as the rest of its outback's hazards, like cactuses, jagged trees and wood, and so forth. The way the game builds on itself, considering it has just a single, super-easy action, is pretty impressive.

Most levels break down like this: on a horizontal plane, you'll be presented with two or three jumps, all with repercussions for failure. Jump too soon, and you might hit a wall or a jagged rock. Jump too early, and you'll collide with the obstacle. As you progress, you'll be jumping to a tire, bouncing off of it at the perfect moment into a double jump that'll carry you in-between two rocks and to the level's end point.

Each level is designed to be super breezy. You'll finish most 3-5 seconds. You'll then be graded and awarded a medal based on some sort of behind-the-scenes magic, presumably tied to the amount of jumps and time spent.

There's a level of thoughtfulness, precision, and attention to specific points of design throughout the game. The jumping mechanic has no give -- when you jump, you've committed; you can't make adjustments. Since this is the case, consideration of how you're going to do something is integral, and so is your observation of level structure and your callbacks on how to do stuff.

Being tuned for scrutiny isn't a problem, by the way. Even though this is a particularly bloated game on an art production level, 5th Cell holds back on filler. Every piece of a level has a purpose, and it's that purity that helps you understand the hazards.

If you wanted to be crazy about this, you could probably call Run Roo Run a "masocore" game. Like a Super Meat Boy, or even Run Roo Run's inspirational material Space is Key, Run Roo Run is all about the thrill of perfectly nailing an increasingly convoluted set of actions in rapid succession. The reward is your accomplishment -- the platformer equivalent of a puzzle game's "a-ha!" moment.

I think the key difference here, though, is that this game doesn't hate you. Every time you jump, 5th Cell throws an arrow on the floor. This helps you focus on that third jump, as you'll be able to easily gauge where to jump again on the first two based on the arrow. Additionally, you can buy or earn level-skips and a fancy bullet-time aid that slows the action down. The in-app purchase stuff, by the way, doesn't interfere with the game.

More importantly, though, it just doesn't set you up for failure like most of these masocore games do. The action is straightforward; each jump is mightily choreographed, each obstacle plainly displayed. You'll never be left scratching your head or feverishly thinking about what your iPhone would look like with its gears and guts sprawled gushing from the sides.

Undoubtedly, 5th Cell is going to get some flack because the overall game is tuned to be easier than it could be -- the vast majority of its hundreds of levels are these simple, breezy romps. There are "Extreme" offerings, however. After finishing a chapter, you can go back and compete in a series of a dozen or super challenging levels. I don't mind the casual build to a remarkable level, so the difficulty isn't a problem for me.

One neat point: 5th Cell is apparently going to get behind Run Roo Run in a big way, as it'll be uploading 10 new levels a week beyond release. It's unclear how long it'll keep this up, or really what base this will serve, but it's a neat idea.

I think you should check this out. Run Roo Run isn't the most original game ever, but it takes the best out of a lot of worlds, and then owns that stuff. Its entertaining in big or small chunks, and those challenge levels are a whole new world of hurt. Give it a shot.

Despite the familiarity of its formula, though, Kingdom Rush is absolutely fabulous. With good-natured charm, with clarity of purpose, and with a touch of clever design, this game makes a place for itself in its crowded genre. It's no wonder Ironhide Games Studio's original Flash version is so very popular (a Flash version you can play right here, minus the premium content included in the iOS port).

You won't be surprised if I tell you that Kingdom Rush takes place in a medieval setting. You might also recognize its four basic tower types: arrow towers, magic towers, artillery towers and defense towers. Those don't seem like much, but there's a method to that scarcity. After the first few upgrades, you can choose between two specialized towers, and each of those specializations has further upgrades and customizations. That's where you'll create the missing classics, like snare and lightning towers.

This is just one of the low-key ways Kingdom Rush presents its surprisingly broad collection of choices. On the micro level, you choose which position to place your tower in, and which way to upgrade it. On the macro level, you can choose difficulty, passive upgrade paths, and a couple bonus game modes per map. The game rarely feels prescriptive. No upgrade is really wrong (though it may be strategically unsound), every mode is rewarding, and your choice of difficulty never punishes you. How refreshing.

While the presentation might be chill, don't expect that means Kingdom Rush will be an entirely casual experience. For one thing, this game sticks close to its browser-based roots, avoiding five-minute matches tuned for mobile players. Expect each level to take time, up to twenty minutes or more, especially as you approach the end of the main game's 13 levels.

There were times this left me wishing for a fast-forward button, one of the few missing genre conventions. But those moments were rare, because Kingdom Rush demands players stay on their toes. In addition to the normal tower defense duties - building towers, upgrading them, praying a creep will get hit just once more before it crosses the finish line - players are granted two cooldown-based abilities that can be used freely. One is a meteor strike from the skies that will damage any creeps it hits. The other brings out reinforcements wherever you tap. Aside from positioning your towers well, this is the main way to strategically influence your success.

Whether you'll find these useful will depend on your play style, but I'll hazard a suggestion that the game will be quite difficult without them. Well-upgraded, they can easily make or break a challenging level, and most of the levels are really quite challenging. While I very rarely failed a level, earning three stars was nearly always rough. And without all the stars, you won't be able to unlock all the passive upgrades for your various towers and abilities. It's a welcome challenge, no matter how thoroughly I've been conditioned by iOS games to consider a failure after 20 minutes of playing an unforgivable waste of time.

That's not to say there are no real issues with Kingdom Rush. There's no Game Center integration until an upcoming update, so you'll have to make due with the in-game achievement system for now. There's also an outstanding save corruption bug (don't close the game while the new level animation is playing on the map), but that should be resolved just as soon as the current update is approved. The only serious trouble I had was with some rather imprecise tapping.

Most of the game doesn't require precision, so this is often forgiveable. But when you call down meteors they always hit just a little too far south of your tap. They're on a long cooldown and are generally only pulled out when badly needed, so this can be frustrating. Worse, the final boss battle includes many sections that require rapid taps, leading to some really inconvenient mistaps, and potentially, mis-upgrades. It's by no means game breaking, but it's an annoyance nonetheless.

(Video of Flash version)

Overall, however, Kingdom Rush is a fantastic package. It's a game that made me take notice, that made a well-trod genre seem a bit fresher and more interesting than it's been in a while. Its presentation is top notch, too. Most units have vocalizations like "Freedom!" or "Reinforcements!," and while by all rights this should be annoying, I found it a welcome accompaniment alongside the martial soundtrack. It's an understated charm that's found throughout the game, in its art, interface, and imaginative encounters.

If you enjoy tower defense, you absolutely must give Kingdom Rush a try. It doesn't stray far from anything one might expect from an "epic fantasy" tower defense title, but everything it does, it does with style. You'll be setting yourself up for hours of awesome, strategic tower defense gaming, so don't skip this one. And if you'd like a little company on your journey, stop by our discussion thread.

But more than that, what I want more than anything is the snow that the movie is named for. I sit inside daydreaming about that beautiful, luscious blanket of powder covering the ground (yes, I realized that they probably filmed that movie on a sound stage not far from me, but a girl can dream!) while red-faced children fling snowballs at each other. Alas, as that is unlikely to occur pretty much ever, I’ve been making do with Snow Fight [Free].

Snow Fight is a really fresh-feeling real-time strategy game, a fun re-imagining of Capture the Flag that engages you in wintry warfare against scrappy neighborhood kids in a kind of snow battle royale. The goal is to get to a flag without being taken out by other kids’ snowballs. Additionally, you’ll want to touch snowmen to claim them for your team in order to get a better score.

The path is full of obstacles and cover; a strategic duck behind a rock for a quick reload of snowballs (hey, a kid can only carry so many) could make all the difference between capturing the flag and ending up face-first in a pile of snow.

You drag your finger across the screen to move around. You tap on other kids to throw snowballs their direction, but just because you can see them doesn’t mean you can hit them (and there’s no auto-aiming; learned that one the hard way when I was haphazardly tapping all over the place). Likewise, they might be able to see you well enough to start chucking snowballs at you, but if you’re smart you’ll be out of their reach.

There’s also a ducking mechanic that slightly helps you avoid being hit while you’re behind cover, but most importantly ducking enables you to make more snowballs and continue the fight.

There’s not much to dislike about this one. My major complaint is that playing on the iPhone or iPod touch, the screen can often feel too small for delicate drawing operations. This becomes a particular problem as you advance to some of the higher levels, though it can be worked around (or may not be an issue at all, if you don’t have giant sausage appendages).

Even the in-app purchase on Snow Fight isn’t annoying. The game itself is free, and you can unlock levels the normal way by finishing the previous level without dying, but there is also a really handy option to unlock every level for $.99. With over forty levels as-is, and the developer mentioning the possibility of adding more levels after the new year in our forum thread, that $.99 could end up going a long way.

Even if you’re lucky enough to live in a Currier and Ives-esque winter wonderland, you’ll find Snow Fight hard to put down. And it’s free, so it’s a perfect treat for yourself if you’ve spent way too much money buying your family lovely gifts for the holidays…or, you know, if you spent your last paycheck buying one of those giant Hickory Farms summer sausages, a box of wine and Twilight DVDs (SHUT UP).

In between two of those releases, CAVE decided to branch out into something different, and brought out an iOS exclusive game called Mushihimesama Bug Panic. It was a departure from their typical offerings as it was a dual-stick action game, but it retained the frantic nature of their bullet hell games extremely well and was equally adored amongst critics and fans.

Now we have CAVE’s latest release, which kind of brings things full circle. Mushihimesama is a vertical shmup released in Japanese arcades back in 2004. It’s seen a sequel with Mushihimesama Futari, and a spinoff title called Puzzle! Mushihimetama. Bug Panic on iOS is actually based in the Mushihimesama universe, featuring the same female main character and insect-based enemies. Now the original Mushihimesama title is available on the App Store as Bug Princess [$4.99].

Typically with CAVE’s iOS ports, there will be the full original arcade version of the game along with an enhanced Smartphone Mode which contains additional things like scoring tweaks, different enemies or ships, and alternate ways to play the game. Bug Princess bucks this trend and doesn’t have a reworked Smartphone Mode, but the original game had three different modes anyway so there are still different ways to play through the game. The three modes in Bug Princess are Original, Maniac, and Ultra. Sadly, the special Arranged mode from the PlayStation 2 port didn’t make it to the iOS version.

Gameplay across each of the 3 modes is similar. You can pick from 3 different ships to play as, each offering a different firing style. One sends a concentrated spray of bullets in a straight stream, one fires less powerful shots but in an incredibly wide stream, and the third ship fires both straight ahead and diagonally at the same time giving a balance between shot coverage and power. You’ll play through 5 stages absolutely filled to the brim with enemies and bullets flying everywhere, along with crazy mid and end of level boss fights. In every mode, you can choose to play straight through the 5 stages in a single run, or choose each level individually to play through score attack style.

Along the way, you’ll be able to collect upgrades for your main firepower, increasing the strength and quantity of your shots. There are bombs which will clear a huge area of the screen, and you can also pick up a little squad of support ships to fly along with you and add some firepower. You can choose two different formations for this support squad, a wide spread or concentrated in a narrow spray.

Scoring in Original mode is fairly straightforward. Shoot every enemy you see, collect the gems they leave behind, and have them tallied up at the end of a level to determine final score. Maniac and Ultra modes, however, add a wrinkle to this formula. In those modes a counter in the upper corner increases with every shot that connects with an enemy, and decreases when no enemies are being shot. Whenever you kill an enemy, whatever the number that the counter is at is added to your score as a bonus. So if you’re at the 2000 mark on your counter, ever enemy you kill gives you an additional 2000 points, each.

Needless to say, this tiny facet can drastically change how you approach the game, and adds lots of strategy to getting high scores. If you’re mindful of the need to always be shooting something, you can get that counter up into the tens of thousands or more, especially with some of the larger bullet sponge enemies and bosses. This added score complexity makes Maniac and Ultra the more interesting modes to play, but they are also significantly more difficult than Original mode.

Speaking of difficulty, you can choose from 4 of them in Bug Princess. It’s a trip to see just how different they are from each other too, in terms of the amount of bullets onscreen and the complexity of bullet patterns. Novice is an easy trip for any casual gamer who merely wants to be able to play through the game without much fuss. But crank the difficulty up to Hell, which is basically exact to the arcade original, and you will be crying for momma before the halfway point of the first level. The 3 modes and various difficulty options really help cater the game to a wide audience, and even if you’re not a bullet hell pro (which I’m not!) then there is still plenty to enjoy.

There were a couple of things about Bug Princess that I didn’t enjoy, though. First off, the game uses both Game Center and OpenFeint for achievements and leaderboards which is great, but they plaster that awful OpenFeint game feed onto the title screen. Admittedly that’s not a problem with the game itself, but the feed is distracting and ugly, slow to load, and cheapens an otherwise top-notch presentation. At least give me the option to turn that bad boy off, please. My other issue with the game is that the load times in general are a bit long, which isn’t a great feature for a mobile title.

Aside from those small quibbles, Bug Princess offers yet another stellar entry in CAVE’s series of iOS shooters. It’s probably the most straight forward and least complex out of them all, which makes it a great starting point for bullet hell newbies, but it does have its share of depth for those looking to master its strategies. And like all CAVE shooters, the touch controls are fantastic, the visuals are striking, and the action is non-stop. Plus, Bug Princess is the first from CAVE to be Universal, and while I prefer playing on the iPhone, it plays pretty nice on the iPad too. At its current price of $4.99, Bug Princess should be a no brainer for your next bullet hell fix.

Originally released in 2001 as a Playstation 2 exclusive, Grand Theft Auto III featured a full 3D game engine for the first time in the game series. At least for me, this transformed a silly and entirely too controversial set of video games into a living and breathing universe. It's debatable how well the game has aged in ten years, but in 2001, after the initial cut scene rolls and you're driving through the beginnings of Liberty City, there was no way your jaw wasn't on the floor.

This magic is alive and well in the iOS port of Grand Theft Auto III. There have been a number of open world crime games, most notably Rockstar's own Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Gameloft's highly "inspired" Gangstar games released on the App Store but neither game holds a candle to the original GTA3 The level of immersion that's possible in the full 3D Liberty City, especially as you become familiar with the cast of characters you'll spend your time taking missions from, feels downright incredible. In games like this, that very same level of immersion is what has kept me sucked in for potentially hundreds of hours, as when you feel like you're actually playing your part in a virtual world, your role in it becomes that much more compelling.

Gameplay in GTA3 is typical of other open world crime games, which would make sense since Rockstar essentially wrote the book on the subject. Your time in Liberty City will be spent doing whatever is asked of you by various gangsters, drug lords, and other unsavories. Often times you'll be doing jobs for multiple people, and between missions will have the choice of which story line you want to continue, and which you'll revisit later.

Alternatively, you can immediately abandon the storyline of the game and instead focus on side missions (such as stealing a taxi and ferrying passengers around the city), looking for secret (and some not so secret) ramps to get ridiculous amount of air off of, or really, anything else you feel like doing. I've always been partial for stocking up on weapons, and seeing just how long I can survive from the police.

I think I've provided a sufficient recap of what GTA3 is for the half a dozen people out there who somehow haven't played it, so the real question is, how does it translate to iOS devices?

I'm happy to say that the game plays surprisingly well. I've found myself preferring the large screen of the iPad 2, but GTA3 is just as much fun on the iPhone. If you think back to actually playing the game on the PS2 (or other console ports), you'll remember that nearly every button on the controller did something. Sadly, the only way GTA3 can work on iOS devices is by replicating all of these functions as virtual buttons.

This results in buttons galore. On foot you'll have a virtual joystick for running around, along with individual virtual buttons for running, jumping, attacking, stealing cars, changing the camera angle, and pausing. Inside of a car, the virtual joystick changes to a set of buttons to steer, along with buttons for the gas, brakes, hand brake, shooting, honking the horn, starting secondary missions (such as the previously mentioned taxi missions), and getting out of the car. Moving the camera involves dragging your finger around in the middle, and viewing the minimap as well as changing weapons involve hitting the top corners of the screen.

These controls are workable, and are easy enough to manage while doing simple missions or just tooling around Liberty City. Unfortunately, things get crazy as soon as you get involved in actual combat. GTA3 uses a zany lock on system for shooting, and it seems like more often than not when you get into an actual firefight you're fighting the camera, the lock on system, and your character's diminishing health supply more than you're fighting the enemies themselves. Things get better as you get more accustomed to the virtual controls, but it never feels like you have the same precision as you would with an actual controller.

Still, it's Grand Theft Auto III on your iPhone (or iPad), and given both the overall quality and depth of the actual gameplay content of GTA3, it's really easy to get over the clunky controls. The performance is great on recent iOS devices, although pop-in on the game's horizon can be pretty noticeable if you let it get to you-- Looking at videos from the PS2 version of the game, it seems like this pop-in was mostly hidden by the relative low-resolution of the game. The retina display, however, makes it really clear.

Picking up GTA3 seems like a no-brainer, especially at the launch price of $4.99. Regardless of the less than ideal control scheme, you'll get five dollars worth of entertainment out of this game, even if all you do is drive around Liberty City listening to the fantastic in-game radio stations. (My favorite is the talk station.) As you become more accustomed with the splattering of virtual buttons all over the screen, you'll find hours upon hours of content to plow through.

Having played GTA3 to completion many times in the past, I'm incredibly happy to be able to take it anywhere with me on my phone of all things.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler

Each type of human unit has a different advantage and a different weapon for taking out zombies. If you surround zombies with cops, you can earn a sniper-shot, whereas soldiers earn grenades. Containing some zombies using punks can earn a molotov to throw, while the female scientists can help you obtain a zombie resistant suit.  Three slots are available for storing these life-saving items.

Containment consists of two different game modes – campaign and survival. In campaign mode, the story is told via short messages super-imposed on the urban landscape during cut-scenes, which take place during the course of the game's 100+ stages. You're playing on the dimly lit streets, roof-tops, drive-in theaters and playgrounds of Franklin County, which are all viewed from a top down perspective. The background and character graphics look great, with zombies and characters moving around and calling out for help.

In survival mode, each round is rated based on zombies killed, time taken and number of survivors remaining. The player's score is shown after each round is cleared of zombies, but for some reason, the final score wasn't displayed when I finally died, which was a bit anti-climatic after surviving multiple rounds; so I stuck to campaign mode. According to the achievements, there's 20 city blocks to travel through in survival mode.

The control options include touch or tap for switching the positions of any two human characters, even if they're not adjacent. And the three weapons slots are activated by swiping them down into the play area to choose a zombie target. If you take too long to play, the undead will attack those nearby, creating more zombies because ... that's what zombies do. When there's more zombies, they're harder to surround and contain, so you have to play effectively before you reach the tipping-point of no return.

Another element is touching items in the background to trigger events. For example, touching a trash-can may reveal a weapon to pick-up (perhaps a lightning strike or a napalm strike from a passing plane). However, the trash could just release another zombie. Touching a sign on the side of a building may cause it to fall, squashing those below. Tapping a vehicle may cause it to explode, while other cars drive into the gameplay area itself, running over zombies and humans. These interactions with the background elements can also alter your journey through the levels, as the campaign has branching pathways.

When you kill some zombies, they disappear and all the characters in the playing area shuffle downwards to fill the gaps. A "cascade bonus" is awarded when one zombie execution leads straight to a second zombie killing, due to the humans and zombies dropping down into the gaps. Combos can also be scored by surrounding two groups of zombies at the same time. Game Center leaderboards are provided for 'Total Zombie Kills' and 'Town Hall survival', plus 24 achievements.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler shakes the dust off matching-style games, using soulless corpses, terrified humans and boss fights to bring this great-looking action puzzler to life.