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Does the name Timo Vihola ring a bell? If you're a card carrying member of the cult of Minigore [99¢ / HD] you're surely familiar, otherwise, he's the artist and co-creator responsible for the Minigore phenomenon as well as a game designer for the recently released Death Rally [$4.99]. In its day, Minigore had an absolutely ridiculous amount of tie-ins with playable characters from other similarly popular games, so it's not much of a surprise to find that John Gore himself is making an appearance in the below video showing off impending Death Rally update.

All of the features of this new update are detailed in our forums, but it basically amounts to a new car, two new weapons, a new challenge mode, as well as oodles of tweaks and bug fixes.

The update is currently "in review" and Timo is expecting it to drop at any moment. Also, the second update for the game is on the verge of being completed, and it sounds like it will be submitted as soon as this one is approved. Death Rally is a fantastic game, is universal, and is one of the few iPad 2 optimized titles out there. For more information check out our review. I've got nothing but good things to say about Death Rally, especially with developers committing to these kinds of update cycles. Actually, I do have one complaint. They included TUAW's Mike Schramm as a playable character with the game's launch, where's the TouchArcade love?!

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Looking for something to do during the commercials commercials while you watch The 2011 Masters Tournament? Why not also play a game of golf yourself? In honor of the Masters, EA has dropped the price of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 [$4.99 / Lite]. Sure, it's only two bucks off but Tiger 12 only came out a few weeks ago.

We liked Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 a lot in our review, and it's even easier to recommend now that it's priced on par with a Subway $5 foot long. Also, the closest to the pin challenges have turned out to be really cool. If that's all you're interested, you only need to download the lite version.

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DarkWave Games, developers of Master of Alchemy [99¢/HD] on the App Store, have revealed their latest game titled Act of God: Hurricane. It’s similar to a vertically scrolling shooter with one major difference – there’s no shooting. Instead, your main character can turn himself into a destructive hurricane to defeat enemies. It’s a pretty interesting concept, and I had a chance to try out a work-in-progress build at GDC last month and was pretty impressed.

The story in Act of God: Hurricane involves you playing a soldier who, due to a military experiment gone bad, finds himself able to turn into a hurricane. You decide to turn against your former military and seek vengeance for turning you into a freak of nature (literally). Plus, they're just corrupt and bent on world domination, which doesn't sit so well with you. The game employs a comic book art style, with graphics inspired by classic arcade shmups and neat special effects for your hurricane which can be upgraded with additional abilities.

During my time with the game, I really enjoyed the non-shooting aspect of it. It feels like a melee-based shooter, where the focus is on dodging bullets and sneaking next to enemies to pound on them with your hurricane. I love shooters but have always been slightly annoyed at the auto-firing of practically every shooter on iOS, since originally games like this were all about pounding away at a fire button. The concept in Act of God: Hurricane solves this problem and is a nice alternate take on the genre. The controls are also extremely responsive, as they should be for a game like this. Check out the following video which shows a complete playthrough of one of the levels in Act of God: Hurricane.

Act of God: Hurricane is still in the midst of development, and DarkWave is really interested in collecting feedback about what people like or dislike about the game in order to shape its outcome. They’ve opened a thread in our upcoming games forum where they’ll be listening to any feedback and working towards implementing some ideas into the final product. Definitely drop by the forums and sound off with your opinion of the game, and we’ll keep our eye on Act of God: Hurricane and bring you more from the game as it nears release.

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Remember earlier this week when PopCap revealed they were starting a spinoff studio called 4th & Battery, and that their first game Unpleasant Horse was on the verge of release? Well, according to a Twitter outburst by the new studio, the game has been rejected by Apple. Joystiq was lucky enough to snag some screenshots of the ordeal before the tweets vanished:

Weird, right? Either way, 4th & Battery has attempted to smooth things over with a followup tweet. No official statements (aside from these tweets, which I guess are sort of official) have been made by either PopCap or 4th & Battery.

What will come of Unpleasant Horse? Who knows, but you've got to admit watching drama on twitter is always fun.

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Just a quick heads up that the iOS version of Sega's classic Dreamcast puzzle game ChuChu Rocket! [Free] has gone free for today. ChuChu Rocket! involves directing hoards of mice around various puzzle boards towards their escape rockets while avoiding dangerous cats and other hazards.

The action is quite frantic and many of the hundreds of included puzzles are fiendishly clever, and the reworked controls work great on the touch screen. Also, there's local and online multiplayer using Game Center for up to 4 players, which is appropriately full circle as the original Dreamcast title was one of the first to utilize online play.

Unfortunately this sale does not also apply to the iPad version, but ChuChu Rocket! is a must download for your iPhone or iPod touch while it's free. You can check out our original review of ChuChu Rocket! from when it released last October, though keep in mind it's received an update or two since then. As with any sale on the App Store prices are subject to change at any time, so make sure to jump on this opportunity as soon as possible before ChuChu Rocket! jumps back to its regular price of $2.99.

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I wish there were more details available than the headline, but that's it. SoMoGa is responsible for the bringing the similarly fantastic old-school RPG Vay [$4.99] to the App Store, and we're expecting Lunar: Silver Star Touch to be of similar quality. We briefly chatted with SoMoGa at GDC, and the one tidbit that we can offer about Lunar is that it won't be a shoddy port by any means, this is a complete from the ground up touch-based port of the game, not a ROM wrapped in a mediocre emulator like Sega's offerings.

(Video of the PlayStation remake of the game.)

Originally released in North America for the Sega CD in 1993 and the PlayStation in 1998, Lunar was chock full of animated cut scenes, voice overs, and all the other fun stuff that they were packing on CD-ROM games at the time. We had a ton of fun playing Vay, and are totally stoked for the future release of Lunar. As soon as we get more details, you can be sure we'll post them.

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Remember when we took a look at the Parrot AR.Drone last September? It seems like ages ago with how fast the App Store moves. Anyway, one of the things Parrot was pushing hardcore for the AR.Drone device was a yet-to-be-released two player augmented reality game where players would be able to engage in real-time augmented reality dogfights utilizing two iPhones and two AR.Drones. (Making it one of the most expensive two player games on the App Store.)

Details are vague right now, but Parrot is openly announcing the release date of AR.FLYINGACE as April 15th. In addition, they've also released the following teaser trailer of the game in action:

With third party app support for the AR.Drone being somewhat predictably lackluster, it's great to see Parrot finally releasing some games for the device. I'm not entirely sure that AR.FLYINGACE makes the AR.Drone any more compelling of a purchase since it requires having a buddy who also has an AR.Drone, but assuming you're in that kind of situation now, you've got something awesome to look forward to next week.

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This is a little odd, as we've already posted about the latest update to Dungeon Raid [$2.99]. It's standard for us to post about substantial updates to games like Dungeon Raid which we loved in our review, but it wasn't immediately apparent just how much better the game got until we spent the following weeks playing it because so much of what was added involved playing the game lots. We thought "Oh hey, cool, an update to one of our favorite games," posted the changes, and went on about our day.

The biggest change to Dungeon Raid came from the unlockable classes and associated races. Playing as a standard adventurer in normal (or harder) difficulty can randomly result in a special skull dropping a trophy, which then unlocks one of the included classes. Similarly, playing as a class and collecting a trophy levels up that class. Since these drops are completely random, it takes playing quite a while to actually unlock (or level up) anything.

Video by AppBank

Each class and race has its own special ability, which can substantially change both how you play the game as well as your strategy for upgrading as you level up. Since it will take quite a while to unlock everything, here is the list of classes, associated races, and what each of them do to look forward to:

Ranger: Unique skill is Volley (15) – Converts all swords to arrows.
Perk – 5% of swords are arrows (match 1 tile away)
Flaw – -1 armor
Race – Elf, with Slow Poison (poisoned enemies do half damage), and mortal enemy Poisonous (can't remove poison while this enemy's alive)

Raider: Unique skill is Masochism (15) – converts all coins into skulls. This is better than it sounds!
Perk – 100% bonus chance for tracing 10+ tiles
Flaw – Matching only 3 tiles gives you nothing.
Race – Halfling, with Guts (+1 to max armor when you kill at least 15 enemies in one attack), and the mortal enemy Invisible, which causes other monsters to appear with double armor while its alive.

Priest: Unique skill is Wish – single-use skill. Collect all tiles.
Perk – Double effect from regeneration upgrades
Flaw – -20% armour piercing
Race – Faun, with Rejuvenate (HP restored to 25% on level up if it's currently lower than 25%) and the mortal enemy Assassin, which will automatically move down 1 tile each turn.

Barbarian: Unique skill is Berserk (14) – Killing enemies this turn gives health equal to their attack
Perk – +1 base damage
Flaw – -10% bonus shield chance
Race – Orc, with Stun (10% chance of freezing an attacked enemy) and the mortal enemy Corrosive, which reduces your armor to 0 when it first appears.

Mage: Unique skill is Rune (12) – If you trace a closed path this turn, you collect all tiles inside it
Perk – 5% of potions are mana potions (reduce the cooldown of abilities by one turn per potion)
Flaw – -10 max health
Race – Changeling, with Shapeshift (killing a special enemy refills one of your skills (possibly an already full one), and mortal enemy Unstable (teleports you into a room with enemies and no swords)

Rogue: Unique skillis Greed (25) – Kill every enemy positioned next to a coin.
Perk – 10% bonus gold
Flaw – 3% of shields are broken and don't give any benefit.
Race – Sauren, with Search (double the chance of getting a scroll in the item shop) and the mortal enemy Thief, which damages you by double its attack value if it steals gold from your inventory.

Paladin: Unique skill is Last Stand (35) – Refill health completely if you are killed this turn
Perk – Mortal enemy only appears half the time
Flaw – Special monsters appear 1 turn earlier
Race – Dragonkin, with Fire Breath (Ignite a random enemy every time you use a skill (deals base damage at end of turn)), and mortal enemy Freezing (your base damage is halved while this enemy's alive)

Warrior: Unique skill is Charge (18) – collect all tiles around the edge of the board.
Perk – +10 max health
Flaw – Special monsters have +5% max health
Race – Dwarf, with Uppercut (+ damage to enemies swiped upwards, from the tile below to the tile above), and the mortal enemy Chaotic, who can only be damaged by an uppercut.

Assassin: Unique skill is Haste (16) – Creates a chain tile, which allows you to match 2 different tile types.
Perk – -1 cooldown for the 4th skill chosen.
Flaw – all enemies have +1 health
Race – Werewolf, with Cripple (enemies with less HP than armour die at the end of the turn) and the mortal enemy Vampire, which can gain health above its starting health.

If you haven't already, at least check out our review or give Dungeon Raid Lite [Free] a try. Dungeon Raid has become my default "Hey I've got a minute let's play something!" game, and it has similarly absorbed everyone who has seen me playing it. This latest update masterfully combines long-term goals to the game which previously only had short-term session-based goals, giving me the drive to play it even more. Seriously, get it.

Also, massive thanks to LittleCat for compiling this list of classes as I've been playing this game non-stop and still don't have everything unlocked.

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I can't think of a better headline than this one. I love Puzzle Quest 2 [$4.99]… and I love seamless online multiplayer via Game Center. I doubt I'm alone in that, so make sure you grab the latest PQ2 update as soon as you can find some fast WiFi today somewhere that you can stick around long enough to download all 576MB worth of goodness. If you're not into playing online and would prefer to play locally with a friend, Namco has you covered too. In addition to Game Center multiplayer, you can also play via both WiFi and Bluetooth.

Multiplayer can be played two ways: With a hero of your own that you have saved from the single player campaign, or using randomly generated heroes of whatever class you chose. If you chose random heroes, you can select low, medium, or high level characters and in both game modes you can set a turn timer anywhere from 5, 10, 20 seconds or none at all.

Multiplayer works very well aside from two minor issues which sort of play off of each other to snowball into a major issue. First off, it seems like games take entirely too long. Even with low level characters and attentive players, chopping through the 100 or so hit points you start with takes 10-15 minutes and I can't imagine how long it would take to get through a game with high level characters who come loaded with upwards of 500 hit points. Currently, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of players playing online either.

These two things together make it very difficult to get matched up into a random game as it seems that the limited pool of players combined with the fact that there isn't much player turnover because you need to get involved in 10+ minute games to play. I'd love to see some kind of "sudden death" game mode or something like that which is limited to something like 5 minutes, or with characters that have even fewer hit points.

Either way, I'm just glad that Namco is still updating Puzzle Quest 2. And if you haven't played the game yet, check out our review and if nothing else, give the free version of the original a try. The Puzzle Quest series is a ton of fun.

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This morning, one of our favorite iOS social games got an update. Two-brother team Pixelocity released a version 1.5 update to their unique, turn-based racing game, Disc Drivin' [App Store]. This latest version features three new maps (Zoom Zoom, Hopper, and Canyon Jump) along with an updated user interface, an added FAQ, and various other fixes.

This asynchronous online multiplayer racing game has you taking turns flicking a small disc around a track against your competitors to see who can cross the finish line first. Powerups and hazards add a bit of a Mario Kart flair to the action, and the turn-based nature of the game works incredibly well for gaming on the go. We really enjoyed the game in our initial review from December, and things only got better when random online matchmaking was added to the mix in February.

Late last month Pixelocity released an iPad native version of the title, Disc Drivin' HD [App Store], which we found to be a great way to experience the game.

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