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About a month ago, Gameloft's N.O.V.A. [$4.99/Lite/HD] received a nice update adding high resolution graphics and gyroscope aiming for players of their Halo-inspired first-person shooter with an iPhone 4. Today, their Call of Duty-inspired shooter Modern Combat: Sandstorm [$4.99/Lite/HD] gets the same treatment with its new update. Our impressions for this new update are pretty much the same that we had for the N.O.V.A. update last month, and what was once old feels relatively new again. The game looks as crisp as ever on the Retina Display, and gyroscopic aiming allows for much finer precision while leaving your hand free to mash away at the fire button.

This new update isn't the only news out of Gameloft today, as they have also released a teaser trailer for the sequel to Modern Combat: Sandstorm which is so far only known as Modern Combat 2. The trailer is, well, interesting to say the least:

Unfortunately the video doesn't demonstrate any gameplay of Modern Combat 2, but it's certainly good for a laugh, and it definitely makes me wish I had an iPad capable of shooting rockets (is there an app for that yet?). The video pegs the release for Modern Combat 2 as this fall, so most likely Gameloft will be offering more information and showing off the game in action in the coming weeks. Until then there is a discussion going in the Modern Combat 2 thread in our forum, and if you're an iPhone 4 user or have an iOS4 device capable of fast app switching, make sure and download the new update for the original Modern Combat: Sandstorm and check out these new features.

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It's been a good week for content updates, as not only did Battle Bears -1 [99¢] receive a massive update with new levels, weapons, and enemies but another one of my favorite shooters Puppet War: FPS [$1.99/Lite] has expanded on their original game in equally impressive fashion. Puppet War puts you in the role of an unfortunate janitor who is trapped on the set of a popular kids show. The puppets that star in the show have decided to take over the world, and it's up to you to fight them off with the many dangerous weapons that are inexplicably lying around the studio. The completely silly style of the graphics and story coupled with the satisfying first-person shooting action combined to make for an incredibly enjoyable experience that we really enjoyed in our review.

This new update takes that concept and runs with it, adding some great new features and tightening up the game overall. One of my main complaints about the initial release of Puppet War was the lack of different locations, and this has been remedied with an entirely new map and a variation on the original. Puppet Town is an L shaped arena made to look like a city street. It features cardboard cutout cars that can be destroyed and puppets that pop out of trashcans that fire tomatoes at you. Also, the original Studio map gets a nighttime version. Lighting is dim here, and the set decorations are outlined in bright neon lights. It sets a terrific mood, and while it essentially plays the same it's different enough to feel like a new location. It's also the perfect setting to debut one of the new enemies, the zombie puppet (the other new enemy being a ninja puppet). There is a nighttime version of the new Puppet Town set as well.

Another big addition is a Survival mode. Here, you can choose one of the four locations and battle an endless onslaught of all the various puppets. The goal is to see how many puppets you can take out before dying, and they will occasionally drop ammo and health packs to keep you going, but there is no money to be earned. Instead, you'll use the weapons you've unlocked during the campaign, and the Survival maps are unlocked through the single player story as well. A zombie Survival mode can be unlocked too, and features a foggy haze in the level and strictly zombie enemies. The Survival mode is a ton of fun, and is a good way to jump right into some action when you feel like taking a break from the campaign.

Besides these major additions, a ton of other refinements have made their way into Puppet War. OpenFeint has been integrated for high score and achievement tracking. Also the game plays quite a bit faster in regards to weapon switching and ammo drops, and it feels like an all around tighter experience. There is now 3 difficulty settings to choose from, and options to invert aim and change left/right handed controls have been added, which was another complaint I had from the initial version. Puppet War was a fun game to begin with, and this update has gone a long way to making it even better.

If you haven't picked up the game yet, you can give the game a try with the brand new lite version that was released today and features an exclusive boss fight that will make its way into the full version down the road. Screens of the new boss and player impressions can be found in the game thread in our forums. Previous owners of the game should make sure to update and check out all of the new stuff in Puppet War: FPS.

App Store Links:

• Puppet War:FPS, $1.99
• Puppet War:LITE, Free

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Tower defense games on the App Store come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors it seems as the genre becomes more and more saturated with each new release. Much like match threes, it's getting harder and harder for these games to stick out amongst the crowd when there are already such fantastic tower defense staples such as Fieldrunners [$2.99 / HD], geoDefense [$1.99 / Free] (along with geoDefense Swarm [$1.99]), or my personal favorites, Sentinel: Mars Defense [99¢] and Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [$1.99]. But just because all these awesome games exist, doesn't mean I don't try every tower defense game that looks interesting (and every match three for that matter) but so often in these games there's not much in them that given the choice would make me tap their icon instead of just playing some Fieldrunners or any of the other games I just mentioned.

Guns'n’Glory [$2.99] is a somewhat rare exception to that, and I really can't believe it hasn't generated more buzz in the time since its release over a week ago because it's one of the most unique tower defense games I've played in quite a while. Handy Games did a great job of combining some elements of realtime strategy with the standard tower defense formula as well as a ridiculous premise, great sprite-based graphics, and a western themed soundtrack that fits the game perfectly. On top of that, it's even universal and while I prefer it on the iPad, it's just as much fun on the iPhone.

So by now it all sounds good and you're probably wondering what's the deal with the title of this review. Well, I'm not entirely sure how the setting of the game will sit with some people as in Guns'n’Glory you're not protecting Earth from invading aliens, or killing the anonymous troops of some enemy army. Instead, you control a gang of bandits made up of various stereotypes, train-mounted gatling guns, and cannons. These bandits slaughter waves after waves of men, women, horses, and a few different types of covered wagons all trying to make their way west. It's actually kind of amusing how when playing the game I went from "Wait a minute, these are… obviously women… that I'm gunning down" to "Argh, get back here you!" as a settler makes it to the end of the path and off the screen.

Five units are included in the game: "Desperados" which are your standard run of the mill pistol totin' bandits, "Mexicans" who toss sticks of dynamite, "Indians" who shoot flaming arrows, cannons which are strong against wagons, and the gatling gun. These units are all on screen at the start of every level, taking a nap in the hot desert sun. To enlist their help, they have to be paid off with the gold coins you earn from slaying settlers, at which point you can tap one, and wake them up to start shooting. The cool part about how all these units work is that you can move them around at any time during the battle, and this mechanic really starts to become important later in the game where there are multiple paths and not enough manpower to cover all of them.

Tapping an awake bandit selects them, then you can tap anywhere and have them walk there if there is a clear path to get to the destination. This actually works out to be really cool, because you can totally change your defensive strategy on the fly and it's awesome to just be able to upgrade a small handful of units then just micromanage them well to complete levels with minimal defenses. There isn't a fast forward button in Guns'n’Glory to speed up the gameplay, which normally would be a negative in any tower defense game, but I never felt the need to speed time up at all in this one as you're almost always busy repositioning your units for maximum effectiveness.

Further in to the game you will get access to trains to mount your gating guns on which can move quickly but obviously are limited to train tracks. Also, chests will spawn in the game world and depending on the icon over the chest sending a unit over to collect it will make their attacks stronger, faster, or just award you some gold. In later levels, juggling all of the mayhem between moving your units, going for chests, deciding what to upgrade, and which units to wake up is a ton of fun.

The main down side to all of this is when you begin to realize how few levels there are in the game. There are ten levels included, and really not much reason to replay them once you beat them. This wouldn't be so bad, if half the levels weren't building up as a tutorial, as you don't even gain the ability to upgrade your units until the fifth level– Half way through the game. Regardless, Guns'n’Glory is a very fun ride while it lasts.

iPad left, iPhone right

Curiously enough, Guns'n’Glory is listed in iTunes proudly and prominently as "AD FREE", and according to the developers on our forums there is a free version in the works, though still waiting for approval by Apple. Whether you keep the free version on your App Store watch list or you grab the paid version, Guns'n’Glory is a game that any fan of tower defense games will enjoy.

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Early last month, Villain's Archetype [$2.99] hit the App Store, and we thought it was great in our review. Archetype is an incredibly impressive game, providing 5 on 5 team-based deathmach that works well regardless of if you're connecting via WiFi or 3G/EDGE. The new iPad version plays the same, with graphics and controls that have been optimized for the large screen of the device.

Archetype HD [$4.99] comes with all the same maps and game modes from the iPhone game, including the new rocket arena mode and Avarice map that dropped not long ago in an update. You can even play with people who are playing the game on their iPod touch or iPhone. It's a bit of a bummer that Archetype wasn't just updated to be universal, but if you've been enjoying the iPhone game, the iPad version is worth picking up as well as it controls a lot better with the iPad-specific controls instead of the pixel doubled iPhone controls.

For more information on Archetype, check out our review and/or the thread on our forums. There's also a thread specific to the iPad version as well as a thread filled with people trading usernames if you're looking for someone to play with.

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Craneball Studios is well known for providing us with apps that are just that little bit different to anything else out there. Their latest project to hit the App Store, Monorace [App Store] continues that tradition; a gravity-centric side-scrolling platform racer that takes takes one-touch gaming to a whole new place (or 'pace' for that matter).

Monorace pits you as one of three distinct drivers– Fat Big D, Skinny Gus and Hot Jane– of a giant mechanical wheel called a Monobike. The basic idea behind Monorace is straightforward– get to the finish line as quickly as you can and avoid going slow. Going slow is bad– it gets you stuck, it gets you minimal stars (which are needed to unlock further tracks), and ultimately, it gets you dead.

At the beginning of each level, your Monobike launches into full-throttle and never looks back– sticking to any surface it encounters but always moving forwards. Your job is limited to ensuring it always has somewhere to go, by avoiding obstacles and turning gravity on its head when the need calls for it. Gravity is pivitol in Monorace; as the entire world shifts on its head when you tap the screen, throwing its polarity upside-down. If you reach a ledge normally, you'll drop down to the next level; if you're racing upside-down, you'll drop upwards to the next level. If you're getting queasy already, don't fret– it's a whole lot easier in practice.

Another important feature to understand in Monorace is that slopes of any kind, be they upwards or downwards, will drastically slow your racer. The beginning tutorials make it clear that you are better off jumping mid-air down (or up) these chutes than touching the floors or cielings as they may be. Other obstacles are littered throughout the world which can also put the brakes on your racer. Spikes, pits, open-air gaps– these are all things that if not avoided, will end in your demise. Other obstacles like slow pads and jumpers (which force a polarity shift) can throw your speed and trajectory completely into disarray, whilst speed pads and time pickups are essential to getting the best laps.

The menus and characters in Monorace look really slick, and though the characters don't have any racing differences, their personalities and drawling over-the-top voice-overs lend a fun, tongue-in-cheek vibe. The levels themselves are blander in comparison; but when the game is paced as fast as it is, the lack of detail is not that noticeable. That said, I would have liked the detail of the menus to carry through to the rest of the game.

There are two career modes to choose from in Monorace, a Beginner career and a Racer career comprising 40 levels each. The former leniently scales the difficulty of its levels, whilst the latter throws you head-first into more mind-boggling and twitchy racing experiences. It often takes a couple of tries to get your head around certain sections of each race, particularly how the polarity shift will affect your headlong rush.

Supplementing the campaign mode in Monorace is also an Endless Mode which provides a randomly generated endless level in the same vein as the likes of Canabalt, scoring you based on how far you reach. Scoring in both modes is recorded by OpenFeint, which also niftily displays your friends scores in each level screen and lets you initiate Challenges, a feature that Monorace is obviously pushing users to make the most of, as your Challenge stats are displayed prominently on the main menu.

Monorace is a different kind of one-touch racer that provides some exhilarating but potentially frustrating gameplay, as repeat attempts can easily escalate into the dozens. In that respect (for better or worse) it reminded some of us a little of Squareball in feel. The career missions range from easy to outright gruelling, but the sheer number of them means completionists can be occupied for a long while. For those drawn to the topsy-turvy polarity shifting and break-neck pace of Monorace; a challenging, mind-bending racer awaits.

Be sure to check out the hilarious trailer above too, and pop into our Monorace thread to see what our readers are saying.

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