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If you follow me on Twitter, which you totally should, you’ll know that I’ve been having what amounts to a full-blown love affair with a 2011 Prius for the past six months or so. The car is great, gets fabulous milage, is chock full of gadgetry, and really, is only lacking in one department. See, the Prius is a really quiet car. So quiet, that it’s even been the center of jokes on The Office. And, sometimes, you really just want to hear the throaty growl of a V8 engine.

That’s where 2XL Games’ XLR8 [ $0.99 ] comes in:

In a nutshell, you download this 99¢ app, plug it into your car stereo, crank it up, and throw your iPhone into a cup holder. Then, with some reasonable precision, it makes your car, truck, minivan, or whatever else you drive sound just like a sports car. The initial purchase comes with a generic V8 sounding engine, and additional engine sounds can be unlocked via IAP. It’ll even throw in burnout, braking, and drifting noises.

I imagine XLR8 would work better if you had an actual mount for your phone, as getting jostled around in the cup holder sometimes confuses it. Regardless, driving around in your non-sportscar with some fairly realistic engine noises of an Italian super car? Totally worth it.

Just, you know, drive responsibly and all that.

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We’ve been covering Warballoon’s Star Command for over a year now, and every time they release some new screenshots or do anything else I get a little more excited. Check out the new teaser, and make sure you watch it to the end:

No release dates more specific than “summer” have been announced yet, but, needless to say, we’re super stoked.

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If you’re still in the honeymoon phase with your new iPad, know this: Tilt to Live HD [Free] has joined the family of retina-supported titles, which has given it some fresh legs in yet another new generation of hardware. One Man Left tells us that it had to dig through all of its old assets and code to make this happen, but the end result of that work is paying off. The dots look so much more… red. And round.

For those of us looking ahead to One Man’s Outwitters instead, don’t worry about new iPad support. According to One Man, it’s currently in the process of upgrading all of its gorgeous assets for the device’s retina screen. We’re especially pumped for this one, if you couldn’t tell by our excited GDC 2012 ramblings for the new-look strategy game with a dab of StarCraft-inspired multiplayer.

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Go somewhere quiet and you might just hear us screaming “yes” at our monitors. Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that we won’t be waiting long for Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 iPad. It’s coming this “summer,” and launching alongside the 2013 Core Set of playing cards, which will be featured prominently in the game, too. Ten fresh decks are expected at launch, and more presumably will come down the pipe as downloadable content.

We still don’t know a ton about this version of the game, but a dude at Wizards of the Coast did recently blast out a statement name-dropping one of our platforms of choice, and seemed tickled by the prospect of opening up Magic to a hungry and new base:

“We’re excited to make Magic: The Gathering even more accessible to our growing player base by adding iPad iOS to the suite of platforms that Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 will be available on this summer,” director of Digital Games for Magic: The Gathering Worth Wollpert said in a statement.

“Given that the original Duels and Duels 2012 have been downloaded well over 2 million times combined since its launch in June 2009, our customers are clearly enjoying what we’ve done with the game to this point, and we’re thrilled to be able to offer both new and existing Magic fans exciting content and gameplay options on a world-class tablet platform that many of our customers have been asking for.”

If you aren’t familiar with Duels, it’s a little like Magic for Babies. It gives you pre-built decks, holds your hand if you aren’t familiar with the rules, and lets you play against AI until you’re good enough to take your game online. The previous two iterations have been fantastic, and we can’t wait to see this new one on iPad.

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Linux Tycoon, in case you’ve never heard of it, bills itself as “the world’s premiere Linux Distribution Building Simulation Game.” It’s got similar gameplay to the many other Tycoon-style games out there, with one gloriously nerdy twist. In Linux Tycoon, you’re not building railroads, managing hospitals, or anything like that, you’re trying to build the world’s greatest Linux distro.

You’ll analyze and select the software packages included in your distro, fix bugs, and manage both your volunteers and paid staff while trying to keep the file size of your distro reasonable… And much more. There’s even an online component, which will turn Linux Tycoon into the world’s first MMOLDBSG, or, for those of you playing along at home, that’s a “Massively Multiplayer Online Linux Distro Building Simulation Game.”

If all goes as planned, Linux Tycoon will be submitted to the App Store for approval sometime next week, and released as soon as Apple gives the thumbs up. Pricing is yet to be announced, but it sounds like it’ll be in line with what you’d expect.

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For the last couple days, I’ve been turning a dilemma around in my head. Do I tell you guys how fun Sky Gnomes [$0.99] is, and thereby increase the number of people who are likely to defeat me in a given tournament? Or do I just keep raking in the sweet, sweet prizes for my wins?

I suppose I’ll take the high road and let you in on it. Here’s how Sky Gnomes works: each day you face a new slate of players in a series of races. You launch a garden gnome on a little airship straight down at top speed, dodge storm clouds and ice balls, collect coins and snowflakes, and try to smash perfectly into the landing pad ahead of your foes. Do so, and you can turn your winnings into new parts and upgrades for your ships. Seriously, there is no way I could avoid getting obsessed with this game.

I’m not surprised it’s a solid title. It was developed by Foursaken Media, the folks behind the Bug Heroes titles. I expected it to live up to that pedigree. I just wasn’t expecting it to grip me so completely. I’m checking my phone several times a day to make sure I’m still ahead of the pack and furtively sneaking in extra rounds if I’ve slipped down the ranks.

The game’s tournament structure is brilliant, and it’s what drives my obsession. There are four race cups to compete in, three of which can be unlocked over time. Each one has its own theme, length and difficulty level. Each day you’re placed into groups based on your previous results, so everyone starts on even footing. You play against ghosts of your group mates, aiming for a quicker completion time than the rest of them—especially the one randomly assigned as your nemesis.

The more successful you are, the better you’ll be rewarded. After each race your performance is broken down by your placement in that race, the accuracy of your landing and the things you pick up along your route. You earn coins for those, and overall rank for your finish time. You also get a random part from a selection of nuts, bolts and gears. At the end of the day you’re compared against the rest of your group. If you place high enough you take home a big bag of coins, and if you beat your nemesis you’ll get even more.

There are other rewards, too. Each cup has achievements to earn, and earning a set of them bumps you up to a new tier. That unlocks the next cup and gives you coins and parts to mark your success. Each day also offers up a new, special goal. It might be something as simple as taking gold in a race, but it’s often something more esoteric like finishing with an exceptionally low time. Having all these different things to work toward makes it easy to enjoy yourself even when you’re not always winning.

In fact, even when you’re losing you’ll still have fun pulling in coins and parts. Then you can use them to upgrade your ship. Each upgrade costs a mix of things, usually a few thousand coins and a handful of assorted parts. The economy is most limited by the rarity of gears—you only earn one randomly every few races, and most upgrades cost one or two for the first tier alone. But those upgrades are so very worthwhile.

You can upgrade the engine of your ship, improving its speed, acceleration, afterburner and efficiency. You can unlock and rank up a host of powerups. You can also get yourself three slots for trinkets, and that’s where the real fun comes in. Trinkets can do all sorts of crazy things. They can magnetize your ship so you pull in coins more easily, they can improve your steering, or they can make it so dangerous obstacles like storm clouds can be used to boost your speed. They’re costly to upgrade, but they can make or break a run.

Choosing them is a strategic process, or at least it’s meant to be. You can check the weather before each race and adapt your plans, focus on speed or survivability or income. Unfortunately right now it seems like certain combinations outdo others significantly, but Foursaken is keeping a close eye on the trinket balance and plans to adjust it if necessary. Even if the popular combos are great fun to play with, it would be nice to have more viable options.

I should also give you a heads up: you can purchase coin and part packs. These aren’t quite your typical consumable IAP items since they’re used for permanent upgrades, but they feel pretty similar. The way your daily groups are selected keeps upgrades from offering a significant advantage, thankfully. They do offer a bit of one, though, since you can use your upgrades to boost your capabilities after you’re placed. At least the IAP packs are well balanced, so purchases won’t put people far ahead of the folks that are willing to grind. And frankly, the grind is pretty fun on its own.

That’s the thing of it: while it’s pretty obvious that Sky Gnomes is using a grab-bag of standard psychological tricks to keep players coming back every day, I can’t bring myself to mind. The racing is seriously fun. Once you manage to gear yourself up enough you can compete with players for top overall scores, hitting the Platinum league in each race and ranking at the very top of the daily leaderboards. If you get there, make sure to spend some time in our discussion thread—our forum users are dominating the charts. By the time you reach that point you’re travelling through races at insane speeds, sucking up coins and snowflakes, dodging obstructions like a champ. It’s a great time.

And that’s what keeps me coming back. There are small issues aside from trinket balance—setting your time early in the day isn’t worth much, and even at the highest ranks your success will be partially based on luck—but they are hardly a blip in the fun to be had. There might be an end somewhere in sight, a time where the grind outweighs the entertainment, but the hours of fun to be had in the meantime are well worth the initial purchase. Don’t miss this one. I’ll know, because I’ll be waiting for you out there on the podium.

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This past February I was very pleasantly surprised with the quirky title The Hacker [Free], a story-driven collection of puzzle mini-games that put you in the role as a member of an international computer hacking ring. The storyline itself was interesting if not a bit cliche, and the mini-games that served as the “hacking” in the game were both clever and challenging.

But where The Hacker really won me over in our review was in its level of immersion and attention to detail. It did a fantastic job of making you feel like you’re really the protagonist programmer in the story who must utilize an 80s-era computer and unravel an evil plot surrounding your former employer, the sinister Glider Corporation. It’s really an entertaining little escape from reality.

Currently, you can grab all this hackery goodness for the very affordable price of zero dollars. You should get at least a few solid hours of entertainment from the main campaign, not to mention the inclusion of fictional arcade games that are “emulated” on your system and come equipped with Game Center integration. Additional content packs are available as IAP if you crave more puzzle solving, but aren’t necessary to enjoy the main story.

The Hacker is a surprisingly fun experience that feels right at home on iOS, and everybody should make sure to check it out while it’s free.

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After releasing the well-received Sonic 4: Episode I way back in October 2010, everyone was pretty confident that Sega would be releasing the next episode in the rebirth modeled after the original Sonic trilogy shortly after. Well, it took more than a year, but they did finally officially announce Sonic 4: Episode II this past December, and I even enjoyed some hands-on time with an early version of the game at GDC last month.

Today, Sega announced on their blog that owners of the original Sonic 4: Episode I are in for some bonus content if they get Episode II on the same device/platform. Doing so will unlock Episode Metal, a set of 4 reworked levels from Episode I that you will be able to play through as Sonic’s arch rival Metal Sonic. Episode Metal will also bridge the story gap between Sonic CD and Sonic 4: Episode II where Metal Sonic makes his return.

Sonic 4: Episode II is slated to release on practically every platform including iOS on May 17th, and you can bet we’ll be all over the highly anticipated platformer when it hits the App Store then.

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Let’s face it, kids: If you are going to become a giant, fire-breathing monster and take over a city by way of stomping on it, you want to do it right. In style. So if I play a videogame that puts me in the role of said monster, I have one rule — I want to have fun. Glorious, building stomping, people eating fun.

That’s why the original Rampage was such a bounding success. When I saw screens of Monster Takedown [$0.99], I thought I was looking at the same kind of thing. You get to be a big octopus or monster with too many eyeballs or whatever and fend off flying helicopters and incoming bombs. The art looked crisp and cute, and I thought if the gameplay hit the mark, we could have a winner on our hands here. Could. Maybe.

Unfortunately, I can’t report that, because Monster Takedown is pretty boring despite its good looks (and oh, haven’t we all fallen for that formula a few times).  It goes with a very pared down approach, which goes something like this: pick a monster out of five, find yourself splayed over a city doing basically nothing, and wait with a glazed look while helicopters and bombs fly in to attack you. You can’t even move, which really takes the fun out of being eighty feet tall with giant eyeballs stalks.

Seriously though, the lack of movement wouldn’t have bugged me that much had there been something more exciting going on. The helicopters and other flying stuff can be taken out with the touch of a finger, and that can get more complex as you go, although it’s nothing to complain to your friends about.

But the killer is when a nuke flies in from above, which you are supposed to be able to swipe away. I say supposed because no matter how much I swiped or in how many directions, I had trouble getting the game to be responsive when it came to this. It did happen a few times (try a quick left to right swipe), but considering that if that bomb touches your monster, you instantly die — well, let’s just say this little snag took quite a bit of the fun out of things.

You do start each level with one Slow power and one Bomb power, and you can guess what they do by their names. And that’s about all I have to tell you. Oh, except you can post your scores to Facebook and Twitter as well as the Game Center leaderboards, but I’m guessing you already figured that out.

Monster Takedown is completely mediocre, but I think what hurts here is that the look is so cute and you can really see they could have done a lot more with just a little bit of effort. Ah well, there’s always next time. For now, save your dollar, or put it towards a better game.

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