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As far as board games go, Monopoly can be found somewhere near the bottom of the barrel. It's simple to play but hard to keep track of, it takes forever, and someone always steals from the bank. Usually it's the banker, who's probably just looking for a bit of entertainment to offset the monotony. Someone in Korea took the fundamentals of Monopoly and made BlueMarble [$0.99] with them, which is, well, equally unfun, according to the fine people at BoardGameGeek. Thankfully, when the folks at M&M Games Inc. adapted that game for iOS, they kept only the basics — and then they threw in card collection, deck building and adorable avatars.

BlueMarble doesn't have the cleanest translation, but if you've ever played either of the board games you won't have trouble falling into its rhythms. The first square gives you a nice chunk of cash, you visit places around the world and buy them, and build houses or hotels on them. Some squares cause you to lose money, and others win you more. There's even a jail, er, desert island.

Instead of fighting over who gets to play the hat and who will be the race car, BlueMarble lets you pick between adorable animated animals, blobs, robots and more. And you don't necessarily need to play until all the other players are bankrupt — in single-player, the game usually goes for a certain number of rounds, at which point the player with the highest worth wins. You can also play until someone reaches a certain amount of money or total net worth.

But what really sets BlueMarble apart is the addition of collectable cards. In single-player, each match has a second condition to meet — hitting it wins you a new card. You can also earn stickers, achievement-like meta game rewards that unlock new cards and avatars.

The cards replace "Chance," "Community Chest" or "Key" cards, depending on which game you're used to. You can build a deck of up to twelve cards (out of a possible 80 cards), and you'll always have three randomly-chosen cards available to you while you're playing. They cost marbles to use, and you earn marbles as you move around the board. But there's a catch — it costs marbles to upgrade your lands too.

The cards let you do all sorts of things. Some are familiar — one lets you leave the desert island instantly. Some are aggressive, letting you steal lands, marbles and cash from your opponents. Others are stranger, or reliant on luck. Deciding which to bring, when to use them and whether to save or spend your marbles adds a nice layer of strategy to a game that otherwise rides entirely on a roll of the dice.

The single-player levels are abundant, spanning six worlds, each with ten scenarios to master. The multiplayer, on the other hand, is sadly lacking. BlueMarble offers single-device multiplayer only, which isn't the best call for a non-iPad game. I'd love to see an iPad version — the extra screen real estate would show off the candy-colored visuals beautifully, and I could see playing with friends on the big screen. Even more, I want online multiplayer. I'm not holding my breath, but an update that brought Game Center and its associated multiplayer is exactly what this game needs.

BlueMarble is currently on sale, so if you're considering buying it, do so while it's cheap. It's great fun, but without proper multiplayer integration it's probably not worth the higher asking price. If you share my fond memories of childhood games of Monopoly, though, and are looking for something that scratches that itch while actually entertaining, you won't do much better. Charming, cheerful and fun, BlueMarble does a great job of breaking the mold while not straying too far from its roots — and you won't ever have to be the banker.

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The original Cut The Rope [$.99 / HD / Lite / HD Lite] now boasts a new box, yet another new mechanic, iOS 5 support, and some other goodies and bug fixes in its brand new update. Tool Box, the branding of this new utilitarian themed box, has 25 additional levels and introduces rotating saw blades to avoid if you plan on making Om Nom’s day. The update also introduces a new Om Nom drawing, as well as “perfect box” stamps for jobs well done across entire boxes.

As for the technical side, Cut The Rope now boasts a “safer game progress reset” and a better selection screen — it’s now apparently easier to scroll through worlds map courtesy the game’s new scrollbar.

Cut The Rope, regardless of how long in its sweet tooth it's getting, remains one of our most highly recommended games. You can read our review here if you’re still in dark about Om Nom and his cravings.

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Yesterday at EA's Naughty or Nice event in New York, I sat down with Levi Buchanan of Chillingo to have a look at a few of the titles the studio has in the pipeline for iOS. One of the titles in question places iOS gamers in the role of a hero that is in no way wanting in the blue and red spandex department. Yes readers, the Man of Steel will soon be training his heat vision upon the App Store.

Superman, developed by Tiger Games, is an iPhone only game that puts you in the red boots of the son of Jor-El. It's a stand alone action adventure, not tied to any particular film outing, old or new. The story goes like this. Lex Luthor has taken it upon himself to launch a series of satellites to "help" with the whole climate change problem. Superman is understandably concerned by the bald villain's true motives. (Spoiler: they're bad.)

The game throws you right into the City of Metropolis, represented in side-scrolling 2D, with a good sampling of your superpowers available for use. The goal is to make it through 18 levels, defeating baddies by any of a number of different means, putting out fires with your freeze-breath, and working your way to defeating the evil Luthor and his orbiting offensive.

The game is designed to be played in mobile-friendly 3-4 minute sessions, each of which call upon most of Superman's superpowers to get the jobs done. As Superman flies about Metropolis, arrows surrounding his powerful self point directly to situations that need attention, color coded for urgency. The backstory is told via comic book-style panels, appropriately, and the whole thing is a touch-controlled race against the clock.

As long as your iPhone case isn't crafted from Kryptonite, you should have no problems taking a stab at the role of Kal-El in Superman later this year.

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We sat down with EA at yesterday's Naughty or Nice games event in New York and had a look at a number of upcoming iOS titles, one of which should put a smile on the faces of all the real-world FPS fans out there. Coming this winter, for iOS only, is a spin-off of the imminent, big-news home console title Battlefield 3, entitled Battlefield 3 Aftershock, which we first covered back in August.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock is a single- and multi-player FPS that will feature a range of battlefield locations around globe. The early demo version I played with was set  in Iraq (only) and the additional play locations have not yet be revealed.

Single player mode, EA explained, is being built around powerful 3D visuals, great gameplay, ragdoll physics and a wave system of enemy attacks designed to provide the best mobile wargame possible — with an emphasis on mobile. The combat system is built around incoming hordes of enemies — 150 waves per map — designed to deliver relentless FPS action that can, on the go, be played just one wave at a time in 3-4 minute sessions.

There are four different character classes with heavy weapons variation (over 50 in all) and a high degree of player customization options. The multi-player game is expected to support matches with up to 10 players and character experience gained in single-player mode will translate over to multi-player, allowing for solo build-sessions between matches.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock is controlled via two on-screen "sticks," movement on the left and aiming on the right. There is also an aim-assist button on the right that helps lock down targeting for those wanting a bit of help with the headshots. A few minutes of gameplay showed an impressive degree of detail and action on the demo iPad's screen. In this early build of the game, there's still room for some shader work, it seemed, but striking visuals are on EA's list of priorities for the final release, so I expect that will get tightened up before release. Even still, as is, it's one of the best looking iOS shooters I've seen.

Battlefield 3 Aftershock will arrive as a universal application (for iPhone and iPad) in late '11 or early '12 and will feature integration with EA's own Origin online network. You can count on a review of the title, closer in.

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Yesterday, TouchArcade attended EA's Naughty or Nice game event in New York and spent time with a number of just-announced titles on the way from Chillingo. Perhaps the most stand-0ut game of the lot is Zombie Wonderland 2, sequel to the June 2010 release Zombie Wonderland [App Store]. As in the original, the upcoming sequel puts you in the shoes of Chuck, the renowned Zombie Cleaner of the pleasant little '50s Americana town, Niceville. While, before, your task was to keep the homes of your clients as clean and as zombie-free as possible, your new order of business is a bit more complex a proposition.

Now, while we aren't allowed to get into to many details as far as the storyline goes, just yet, I can tell you that the rooms you will be defending (and cleaning) are, this time around, spread throughout time. From the local museum, which serves as a kind of time-hub, you will be traveling to medieval castles, ancient Egyptian crypts, Viking halls, and ancient Japanese dwellings — all riddled with zombies that make terrible stains when dispatched.

Some of the tasks that must be completed involve several stages set in different locations and / or times. For instance, one of your clients, Vlad the vampire, has given up drinking blood and moved over to milk. So you must travel through time to get him a glass of milk by milking a cow in a zombie-swarmed barn. Each of the temporally far-flung locales features its own mini-boss that appears and drives the zombies into attack frenzies that make the task of keeping the rooms clean and zombie-free quite a challenge.

While the original release featured four locations, four weapons, and five types of zombies, Zombie Wonderland 2 delivers 25 locations, 25 weapons, and 22 types of zombies, as well as a mega-boss zombie. Some of the weapons available are special bullets, medusa bullets, gnawers, turrets, lightning bottles, killer grass, the brain toy — even a Roomba(-like robotic vacuum). Weapons can be damaged by zombies, but can also be repaired. New weapons can be quickly bought via in-app purchases or unlocked through dedicated gameplay.

Some areas of the town's museum are visibly under construction, and serve as placeholders for additional areas that will arrive in updates, down the road.

We'll take a closer look at Zombie Wonderland 2 when it arrives sometime before Christmas, but, however we rate it, it's sure to is sure to take the crown as far as number of genres represented. This survival cleaning, time management, tower defense zombie shooter will be priced at $0.99.

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So far, the top note on my Things I Didn’t Expect To Hear This Morning List is the that Grand Theft Auto 3 is poised to hit a smattering of high-end tablets and handsets later this fall. No, really — I have a list and, yeah, Rockstar Games announced plans to port its once-technical marvel to touch devices at some point in 2011 in celebration of its 10th birthday.

We don’t know anything about Grand Theft Auto 3 for mobile, including what it’ll look like or what price it’ll launch at. The blog post announcing this seemingly ‘big deal’ bit of news is strangely focusing more on a new and limited run of $150 12-inch Claude toys with “30 points of articulation” instead of the game. But, hey, pre-orders for the toy are open now!

I’ve got a fantastic and equally unfulfilling love and hate relationship with GTA3, just as I do with every other GTA title. I love the bluster, the scale, and a good deal of the content, but the controls and general technical wonkiness of Rockstar’s open worlds drag everything down. It’ll be interesting to see if this tenth anniversary edition on handhelds will debut with an improvement or two. I guess we’ll see.

Oh! And here’s the devices you’ll have to have in order to play it:

Apple iOS Devices: iPad 2, iPhone 4S
Android Phones: Droid X2, HTC Evo 2, LG Optimus 2X, Motorola Atrix, Samsung Galaxy S2
Android Tablets: Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

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We’re in the middle of a fluid and defining time in the games space as digital really takes hold, nontraditional payment models continue to prove viable, and expectations of how and where people play their games mutate. Things are changing, no doubt, and we’ve heard a fair share of doomsday scenarios for multiple platforms as a result. This one from Valve boss Gabe Newell is pretty juicy as far as these things go. Speaking at a tech panel the other day, Newell said that he suspects Apple might step into the living room and blow up that particularly isolated experience into a perspective-shifting one that’ll spell the end of a ‘separate’ console platform.

For some context here, Newell believes there are four legitimate platforms at the moment: Internet, mobile, the computer, and the living room. Newell’s also a noted not-fan of closed platforms, which was pretty apparent during the panel covered by The Seattle Times.

“I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” he said.

“I’m worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going — there's going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say 'I'm tired of competing with Google, I'm tired of competing with Facebook, I'll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don't like from my world.'"

I often wonder if Apple’s hobby project, the Apple TV, is ever going to become this possible hardcore games device– Or at least a vital part of the puzzle along with iOS 5 AirPlay mirroring. I’m not sure if that’d be enough to realize what Newell is thinking here, but it’s a good start.
[Via The Seattle Times]

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Somehow, at some point, it became public yet-still-unofficial knowledge that Criterion Games’ Burnout Crash was coming to the iPad. It’s official now. In a new blog post, publisher EA has confirmed that the top-down racer is headed to our favorite tablet in 2011. It’s also coming to the iPhone and iPod touch, too, during the same “holiday” release window. Neat!

We haven’t seen this version in action yet, but the features EA is noting makes it appears as if it’ll stick pretty close to its XBLA and PSN source material:

Use intuitive taps and swipes to steer vehicles, trigger explosions, and rack up ridiculous scores across three game modes, 18 traffic junctions, and six unique locations. In addition to a rocking 80s soundtrack featuring Vanilla Ice and Gloria Estefan, you can look forward to Autolog support to connect, compare, and compete with friends and rivals.

Basically, Crash is a critically middling top-down version of pre-Paradise Burnout’s uber-popular crash mode. Like vehicular pinball, you wreck your tiny car into traffic and hope to pull off various multipliers and chain effects with explosions. We think it’ll actually be better on touch devices, but we’ll have to wait to see.

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Yesterday , TouchArcade attended EA's Naughty or Nice game event in New York and got some hands-on time with a host of new titles on the way to the App Store from EA, Chillingo, and PopCap Games. We'll be sharing details on these titles across several posts, but first up is the new one from PopCap, Popcorn Dragon.

Popcorn Dragon is a fun little game full of the cute and also the whimsy. It puts you in touch control of Ignatius Flambé, a little dragon with big dreams. Ignatius is something of a cinephile and, as such, he flies about 10 different levels, each themed with different classic movie backdrops — there's westerns, sci-fi, mysteries and more. Along the way, Ignatius must ch0w-down on as much popcorn as possible by using his fiery breath to pop the hale of corn kernels that float across the gamescreen. The more popcorn he eats, the longer his tail becomes. Sadly, various baddies seek to thwart Ignatius' popcorn popping progress, so the player must be on the lookout for vultures, velociraptors, luchadores and the like. Luckily, Ignatius' fiery breath can singe more than just popcorn, and that long tale is good for a few whacks at the baddies.

While flying and popping and eating and whacking, movie tickets can be collected to buy Ignatius stylish outfits to wear to the cinema. Strong play earns experience points and achievements, and various power-ups can be unlocked to crank up the face fire.

Popcorn Dragon has that clean, colorful, charming aesthetic we've come to expect from PopCap and will be available for both the iPhone and iPad sometime in November at an as-yet undisclosed price.

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A lot of game-changing updates are coming out this week thanks to the release of iOS 5 and its long-anticipated cloud support across devices. We want to go ahead and hit pause on the whole digital whirlwind to bring you this choice bit of information: Capybara Games has pushed out its iOS 5-centric update for Sword and Sworcery [$4.99], most notably adding in a Twitter sign-in functionality that jives with the integrated account you’ll be using in the OS update. It’s also addressed some ‘hard-to-find’ bugs and somehow tweaked and sharpened the “artwork and visual designers that have helped define” the game.

Sword and Sworcery is a ridiculously special experiential game with some of the coolest music, art and points of design we’ve seen on touch devices. It’s great and we think you should own it. If you don’t, go to a doctor because you’re broken.

What’s next? I don’t know, but I hope it has the words “cloud” and “save." Or "badger." The latter is just because I like badgers.

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