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American Laser Games’s so-awful-it-ends-up-being-good FMV shooter, Mad Dog McCree, is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch this December 20, according to caretaker Digital Leisure. This is a port of the original arcade release of the game, so don’t expect anything too fancy, however the team is noting that it has converted the game’s silly footage for phones and even added an “all new casual mode” for those without hardcore gunslinging skills.

If you’re unfamiliar with McCree, take a gander at the footage just below. You play as a gunslinger charged with killing a band of Wild West cutthroats who have kidnapped a hole in the wall town’s mayor and his precious daughter. Most of the time, you’ll be killing dudes in fairly linear sequences, but there’s some hilariously bad reflex-laden one-on-one shootouts. We can’t wait to see this one, for sure.

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Plants vs. Zombies for iPhone [$.99] got some new and exciting stuff this morning in a fresh and free update. At the top, the game finally now supports Game Center leaderboards. It can also now boast some parity with the series’ PC, Macintosh, XBLA, and DS adaptations — I, Zombie mode is now supported and can be purchased via IAP in Crazy Dave’s shop.

I, Zombie, if you’re not familiar, is a table-turning twist that lets you play as the undead horde . You’ll get one free level in this update, and eight more, as well as an Endless take on it, if you do decide to pony up the dough. Holiday hats have also been introduced via this update because, hats.

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English Country Tune [$4.99] is a game that’s hard to describe. It’s a puzzle game, one loosely based off the original block-pushing mechanics of the long-standing Sokoban. Its puzzles arrange themselves in complicated 3D designs, except that sometimes they’re two-dimensional. The goal is to free certain blocks from a prison of others, or maybe it’s to put all the balls in their holes, or perhaps it’s to paint every free tile in a level. That changes. Sometimes it’s hard, other times it’s easy, and not necessarily in a linear order.

Here’s what I can say with some certainty. Increpare’s English Country Tune has made the transition from desktop to mobile boldly and without compromise. It’s a game that will stump even the most experienced puzzle gamer at times, and it’s absolutely inflexible about easing you past those difficult points. It’s not a game for the easily stymied, but it will do an outstanding job of challenging puzzle experts.

It begins simply enough. You control a flat panel that can flip itself over and over on the surfaces of blocks. You control the panel with swipes in all directions. You must push a ball, the Larva, into a particular space. Not so bad, right?

Then you learn that the Larva is effected by gravity, and that gravity is determined by the position from which you push it. Knock it down from above and you might send it flying down, but hit it from the side and it may move along that plane with you. Then the Larva levels twist themselves into knots, leaving you to follow along with your understanding of the mechanic as things go completely off the rails.

Completing one section will branch off a new path. This one teaches you about Whales. Whales need to be free, and can be pushed off the level. But you can only push them by running into beams of light that shine from each of their sides, so you often have to find a way to run parallel. Then the Whales also find themselves brought into three dimensions and things get kind of weird from there.

And so it goes. Each time you may think you have a handle on a mechanic, you’re introduced to a new one. You’ll paint blocks, then learn you have to do so in 3D. You’ll find yourself punching holes in your panel to squeeze past obstacles. Occasionally things will get extremely strange, pushing the boundaries of every bit of game design you’ve seen so far.

Throughout this process, you’re lead level by level through a series of branching paths that sometimes come to a sudden end and sometimes pull back in on themselves. This may leave you with punishingly challenging choke points and no way past but through. There is no level skip, no walkthroughs, no assistance. But on the brighter side, there are no timers, no move limits, no one watching you and tracking your performance. You can play and experiment, try everything you can think of to find your way through. It’s refreshing to be so unconstrained.

Less refreshing is English Country Tune’s camera. It is essentially uncontrollable, following along behind you as you go. You can use two fingers to pan around, but it snaps back into position immediately. This occasionally leaves you with no way to see your panel, or whatever you’re trying to interact with.

This is the unfortunate kind of frustration, the kind that can’t be alleviated with perseverance and eventually success — you can’t succeed over an occasionally uncooperative camera. It’s bad enough that I was left in a particularly challenging level staring at the bottom of the construction while I moved around on top. When the camera finally moved, it did so dizzyingly. While this sort of thing occurred rarely, it was crippling on those occasions.

On a related note, another quibble: in a game where levels can be long and extremely complex, positioning the reset button immediately adjacent to the undo button is cruel.

Otherwise, English Country Tune is rare treat: a puzzle game filled with variety, but trusting in its players enough to get out of their way. The visuals and music are subtly stylistic — the game looks and sounds fantastic, but not so striking as to distract. The interface is uncluttered. Nothing judges your performance, but no one will help you either. This is puzzling at its purest, and it’s sure to challenge anyone willing to step up.

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ustwo’s adventurous, psychedelic, and ultimately awesome Tiny Wings-y flying game, Whale Trail [$.99], has received a huge content update. Now, it has its own challenge mode that tests users’ bubble-gobbling mettle across 32 individual levels. We gave this a spin earlier, and we’re happy to report that it’s a meaningful addition that really makes you dig into the subtle bits of the flying and collection mechanics.

Nine additional achievements compliment the package, but you’ll also find something called “Hyper-Boosts” that have the ability to “launch Willow high up into space.” As if the game needed more outer space, right? Check this all out, though, if you’re into Whale Trail. Spoiler: this is fun stuff — almost as fun as the game’s music video is crazy. Seriously, check this out:

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Remember when we wrote about the fact that Carcassonne [$9.99] will receive expansion support in the future? It has that right now. Developer The Coding Monkeys has released two of the more popular expansions to the board game, “The River” and “Inns and Cathedrals” at $.99 and $1.99 respectively. It’s also thrown out a new update, which offers the ability to pick and choose between these expansions, play a baby version of the game sans fields, and an option to disable tile placement overviews.

In a nutshell, River adds 12 “river” tiles that essentially serve as territorial wedges and divide the game in fascinating ways. Inns and Cathedrals adds 18 additional tiles, some of which double the value of roads or add a point to towns. The twist with the new buildings is that if a territory is incomplete, it loses its value completely. The Carcassonne page has the specifics on both of these new expansions. Our review, on the other hand, has the details on the game.

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Bejeweled [$.99], the new stand-alone version of Bejeweled proper on the App Store, is as good as you’d expect. After all, it’s Bejeweled — the same insanely colorful, sometimes hypnotizing, and always creatively gifted match-three that has ignited the creation of a legion of pretender titles over the years. This Bejeweled in particular doesn’t do anything that will blow your mind. For the most part, it’s simply the core experience translated well to iPhone and iPod Touch. Not that I’m complaining about that aspect.

The thing that always gets me about Bejeweled is how mesmerizing the puzzle mechanic is, and the artful things the game’s creators do to bolster this effect. This version’s new Classic mode kinda encapsulates what I’m saying here: at the top, it’s a gauntlet style mode that has you matching until no other moves remain, but the matching itself so darn hypnotic, you do everything in your power to ensure that you keep the game moving. But then the mode also zips you between new backgrounds and shows off some pyrotechnic match bonuses that radically change up the play.

For example, matching more than three of a gem can net you a sizzling gem that ignites gems in its area or an electrical gem that zaps entire columns of gems. You move with flow without really thinking about these, but they change the pace and the progression of an entire puzzle in satisfying ways. Getting these bonuses is almost a meta-game, as you subconsciously realize that they’re so integral to keeping Classic moving.

Bejeweled also has a mode called Diamond Mine which pairs the core play with a funky digging mechanic. Underneath the board is dirt. Matching above the dirt clears some of it. Some spots have special bonuses, but a timer keeps you from scheming too heavily.

Again, this is one of those neat twists on the formula. You have to play fast and loose, but also with a specific goal outside of straight-up matching. The explosive bonuses are just as integral here, as they’ll rid the board temporarily of massive chunks of dirt. I like this one in particular: the points you’ll earn are ridiculously high, which gives a certain sense of momentum to Diamond Mine that Classic doesn’t have, and the timer is a devilish addition that keeps the pressure satisfyingly amped up.

Zen Mode, on the hand … it’s the oddest of the trio of modes in this version. It takes the formula, spits it out into a regular match, and then tells you to play at your leisure. It also sports a variety of “zen” options, such as ambient effects like crickets and lets you even pick various mantras to display on the screen.

It comes off as silly, and, well, it is. I don’t get it and probably never will. I just don’t see how it could possibly achieve the goal of making you feel like you’re sitting in a meditation room blazed out of your mind. This is Bejeweled, you know?

And while we’re exploring negatives, it’s notable that Bejeweled does not ship with Game Center support — the game’s leaderboards are filled with fake entries and you’ll never see what your friends have scored. It’s a weird, bad decision not to include this.

Zen and the lack of Game Center work against the game as a whole, but taking it all in, they’re forgivable issues. Bejeweled is Bejeweled, and that means it’s a great match-three puzzle game that goes above and beyond what other match-threes do. The play is as mesmerizing as ever and the game’s two other modes really support it and add to it in meaningful ways. If you’re into the franchise or not, give this a look.

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Prior to Grand Theft Auto III I’d say I had fun messing around in Grand Theft Auto games, but never really enjoyed myself. The top-down view felt incredibly claustrophobic, and, at least for me, made getting immersed into the game world incredibly difficult. I don’t think it’s hyperbole at all to say that GTA 3 changed everything.

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.

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Containment: The Zombie Puzzler [$4.99] from Bootsnake Games is definitely not your typical match-3 game. In fact, you don’t even need to match three of anything. Instead, the goal is to surround zombies with cops, soldiers, scientists or punks. This is far more interesting than matching colorful gems, tiles or bubbles, and once you’ve contained some zombies they’ll be eliminated in a blood-splattering burst of gun-fire.

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.

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One genre that seems to be overlooked a bit on the App Store is tank games. Sure, there’s certainly a ton of them available for download, but it always seems as if they contain the same boring gameplay, drab military-esque visuals, and awkward controls. Enter Tank Riders [$1.99], the latest title from Polarbit (maker of Reckless Getaway) which attempts to differentiate itself from the rest of the genre with vibrant visuals and objective-based campaign gameplay. Unfortunately, the lack of content, multiplayer issues and frustrating controls keep Tank Riders from reaching its true potential.

At its core, Tank Riders is a somewhat simplistic, top-down 3D tank driving game. Players run through approximately 25 colorful levels (with five additional tutorial levels) with the goal of either getting to the other end of the map or collecting items to advance to the next mission. At the completion of each level, players are scored via a number of categories (such as health and speed) and are ranked via a 3-star system.

Along the way are enemy tanks equipped with one of several weapons along with destructible walls that occasionally hide coins (which boost your score) or hearts (which recover your health). Most levels also feature barriers that require a switch to either be stepped on or shot at in order to proceed. If the core gameplay seems basic, that’s because it is; there is very little in terms of actual innovation. However, it’s important to note that what Tank Riders does offer is implemented pretty well, which can be a challenge in itself.

The controls in Tank Riders are one of the more frustrating aspects of the game. The primary control method has movement done via a virtual joystick on one side of the screen. Attacking, meanwhile, is done by touching whatever direction you want to aim around the tank. The core problem with aiming in this mode is that the tank is always centered in the middle of the screen, meaning that if you’re trying to attack on the side with your movement stick, you have to either stop moving and use that hand, or use your opposite fingers and work around your other hand (which is presumably controlling movement at the same time).

Thankfully, Tank Riders does offer an alternative ‘dual-stick’ mode, but you lose a lot of accuracy and speed when using this control option. Considering that some of the later missions require a lot of simultaneous shooting and dodging, the shortfalls in both control options are disappointing.

In addition to the short single-player campaign, Tank Riders also features multiplayer. Normally, I’d expect multiplayer in a tank game to be pretty fun, but unfortunately there are a few flaws in Tank Riders. For one, multiplayer requires registration in yet another online service, and there’s currently no support for Game Center. Even worse, it’s nearly impossible to find a match currently, much less a match with more than one opponent (which really isn’t all that much fun).

To add insult to injury, each match I tried had a certain amount of lag and hit detection issues, which made the matches even more unsatisfying. In addition, there doesn’t appear to be an option for local Wi-Fi matches, which would have been a decent alternative for players looking to play something.

If multiplayer was working properly, Tank Riders probably would have been a game worth checking out. The controls, while annoying, were workable, and the different types of weapons offered some variety in taking out opponents. Unfortunately, without multiplayer, all you’re left with is the too-short single player campaign which can be completed in a few hours and simply doesn’t have enough content to carry the whole game. If Polarbit were to perhaps expand on the single player, Tank Riders might be worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, as it currently stands, you may want to pass on this ride.

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This seemed to slip through the cracks a few weeks ago, but The Pinball Arcade, a project we told you about in October, has released a new video showcasing several of the tables that will be included in their game. The Pinball Arcade is an effort to bring digitized representations of some of the most beloved real life tables to have ever existed to the iOS and many other platforms, all in one tight little package. Developer FarSight studios, well known for their work on the Pinball Hall of Fame series, has partnered with four of the biggest pinball manufacturers in history in order to secure official translations of their pinball games into The Pinball Arcade.

In the following trailer, you can see Tales of the Arabian Nights, Theatre of Magic, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and Black Hole. It’s downright uncanny just how similar these digital versions look and sound to their real life counterparts:

The Pinball Arcade is slated for an “early 2012″ release, and should come equipped with all the games shown in the trailer. The plan is to then frequently update the app adding new tables, for years to come, until you have the ultimate pinball collection sitting right in your pocket. I’m eagerly anticipating actually trying out the finished product, so we’ll be keeping our eyes out for a solid release date for The Pinball Arcade in the coming months.

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