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If you wanted a leg up in Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies [$6.99], Activision has your back. In an update that hit yesterday, the publisher has added a new in-game “Points Pack system” that allows users to purchase the game’s currency for real money. There’s a total of six tiers to choose from, ranging in price from $.99 to $49.99. The former gives you 12,000 points to play with, while the latter dishes out an astounding 2,000,000.

More interestingly, this update rolls in a couple of new weapons — the Ray Gun and “the zombie-attracting” Monkey Bomb. Both hit at no-cost after updating, which happens to be the same offering price for all the update’s nebulous bug fixes and optimizations. Content is something we’ve noted that Black Ops Zombies needs, so these weapons are certainly a welcome sight. Hopefully new, wholly original and game-specific maps are hitting soon, too.

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Earlier this month I convened with the panel of judges in Marseille, France that made up the International Mobile Gaming Awards to go through the over 500 games submitted. After a day of some incredibly intense (and incredibly jet lagged) judging, we had our list of finalists which were just recently revealed. We’ve already reviewed almost all of these games, and if you’re missing any of these games from your collection, they’re all worth picking up:

Best Casual Game

• CreaVures [Coming Soon]
• Hector [$4.99 Episodes 1, 2, 3]
• Jetpack Joyride [Free]
• Sprinkle [$1.99
• The Blocks Cometh [99¢]

Best Mobile Social Game

• Charadium II [$1.99
• Funpark Friends [Free]
• Poker Pals [99¢]
• SpellCraft School of Magic [Free]
• The Pirate King [Free]

Best Real World Game

• CityRace.me [Coming Soon]
• Flatmates [Coming Soon]
• Meatspace Invasion [Free
• NBA: King of the Court [Free]
• Shadow Cities [Free]

Best Sports Game

• Bike Baron [99¢]
• Flick Tennis: College Wars [$1.99]
• Sports Car Challenge [Free]
• Touchgrind BMX [$4.99]
• Trial Xtreme 2 [$1.99]

Excellence in Gameplay

• Battleheart [$2.99]
• Contre Jour [$2.99]
• Death Rally [Free
• Draw Race 2 [$2.99]
• Infinity Blade II [$6.99]

Most Innovative Game

• Forever Drive [Free]
• Kodo [Coming Soon]
• KuraKuraMaze [Free
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [$4.99]
• Wild Chords [Free]

The winners will be announced at Mobile World Congress at the International Mobile Gaming Awards summit on March 1st. Also, if you’d like to vote for which games you think should win, head on over to the IMGA site and start voting.

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Last week, Spry Fox released an iOS version of Triple Town [Free], their hugely popular match-3 town builder for the Amazon Kindle, and more recently for Google+ and Facebook. We really liked Triple Town in our review, and it’s personally been my biggest obsession of the past week. The ability to upgrade the game tiles by making matches and the limited amount of space to work within added a tremendous amount of depth to the gameplay far beyond your typical matching game.

Today the first update has hit for Triple Town, which mostly focuses on fixing bugs. Things like broken Game Center achievements, the inability to restart games sometimes, and tons of other quirks that come with a version 1.0 release have now been taken care of. The update description also goes on to say that there are several other known bugs that are currently in the process of being hunted down and fixed, one of which includes a problem with turns regenerating after exiting the app.

You see, Triple Town is a freemium game. It comes with a set amount of “moves” for free, and the ability to purchase in-game coins for real money which will let you buy more moves when you run out. Alternately, these moves are supposed to slowly regenerate while you aren’t playing the game, giving you a way to continue playing for free if you had the patience.

One other alternative is to just buy unlimited moves with a flat in-app purchase fee of $6.99, and with all the troubles going on with the regenerating turns Spry Fox wants to entice you to go for the unlimited option by reducing its price down to $3.99. After getting hooked on Triple Town myself, I had no qualms dropping the $6.99 for unlimited play, but others have felt like it was a bit on the high side for the kind of game it is.

If you’re one of those who felt the price was high, the $3.99 price is a lot easier to swallow, especially for a game packed with such fantastic gameplay. Plus, the maintenance update makes it a much more solid game all around, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing plenty of more updates to Triple Town in the future as well.

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If you’re looking to game on the cheap this week, you’re in luck: a couple of big-time publishers and studios are offering a healthy swathe of their catalogues for $.99 right now. For example, Telltale is throwing yet another free-for-all. Until the end of this month, you can grab the Puzzle Agent and Hector series at a more wallet-friendly price. Gameloft is celebrating the Chinese New Year by killing the prices of nine of its premium offerings, while EA is still rocking price tags with its Daily Deals program.

Here’s a list, and note some of the odds and ends, too — Bard’s Tale and Puzzlejuice are in the mix, as well as a few other cool notables. This, by the way, is by no means a comprehensive list. We’re just highlighting.

Telltale

• Hector Episode 1 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Hector Episode 2 – $4.99 → $.99
• Hector Episode 2 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Hector Episode 3 – $4.99 → $.99
• Hector Episode 3 HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Puzzle Agent – $4.99 → $.99
• Puzzle Agent HD – $6.99 → $2.99
• Puzzle Agent 2 – $4.99 → $.99
• Puzzle Agent 2 HD – $6.99 → $2.99

Gameloft

• Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles – $4.99 → $.99
• Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles for iPad – $6.99 → $.99
• BackStab – $6.99 → $.99
• Fast Five the Movie: Official Game – $4.99 → $.99
• Fast Five the Movie: Official Game for iPad – $4.99 → $.99
• James Cameron’s Avatar - $4.99 → $.99
• James Cameron’s Avatar for iPad – $4.99 → $.99
• NOVA 2 – $6.99 – $.99
• NOVA 2 for iPad – $6.99 – $.99
• Silent Ops – $6.99 → $.99
• Spider-Man: Total Mayhem – $6.99 → $.99
• Spider-Man: Total Mayhem for iPad – $6.99 → $.99
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard – $ 6.99 → $.99
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard for iPad – $6.99  → $.99
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction – $4.99 → $.99
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction for iPad – $4.99 → $.99

EA

• Command and Conquer Red Alert for iPad – $4.99 → $.99
• Tetris for iPad – $6.99 → $.99
• Trenches 2 – $1.99 → $.99

Odds and Ends

• Monkey Quest: Thunderbow HD – $1.99 → $.99
• Plunderland – $2.99 – $1.99
• Puzzlejuice – $1.99 → $.99
• The Bard’s Tale – $5.99 → $2.99

There you go! I heartily suggest Puzzlejuice if you still haven’t gave it a shot. It’s a really, really well-made puzzle game.

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I’m a little out of touch with the Kindle and Facebook game world, so pardon me if you already know this: Triple Town [Free] is amazeballs. Yeah, that’s right. Amazeballs. It’s also freemium, so I’m not actually sure what you’re waiting for. Go download it.

You know how Dungeon Raid [$0.99] took the match-3 thing and made it completely soul-consuming? That’s exactly what TripleTown does. But for those of us not into gaming in our browsers or on our e-book readers, it’s brand spanking new, something Dungeon Raid hasn’t been for a while.

So here’s the scoop. Triple Town is a pretty straightforward matching game with cutesy art and simple tap controls. It’s all about matching things in groups of at least three, a rather familiar task. Instead of clearing the board, you’re building it up. If you play haphazardly, making every match you can, you won’t get far.

That’s because everything in Triple Town can be upgraded. You’re given a six by six grid partly filled with randomly generated terrain. You draw random tiles to work with – a chunk of grass, let’s say. Plant it, and then plant two more beside it to make a bush. Put three bushes together to grow a tree. Three trees together builds a hut, and three huts makes a house. Each combination gives you a little breathing room, but you can’t outright clear anything off the board until you match up the very top tier.

When you put down the last piece of a triad the upgrade forms out of that piece’s position. It’s incredibly easy to end up putting your trees all over town if you’re not careful, and not so simple to actually build them together. If you want to do well you’re going to have to plan a few steps ahead and be ready to improvise. Occasionally you’ll luck out and draw a crystal, which acts as a wildcard, or a bot which can clear a space. You can also switch out one piece for safekeeping, which can save your city-building career if you use it well.

Then there are the bears. You have to murder the bears. Don’t be fooled by their cute little faces – they’re jerks and they’ll fill up your town if you don’t deal with them. You can kill them by trapping them, and they leave a gravestone behind. Three gravestones makes a church. Three churches makes a bigger church. Yeah. Suddenly you’re dealing with two separate upgrade paths all getting in the way of each other.

Since the grid you’re playing on is pretty tiny, mistakes don’t take long to come back and haunt you. The goal is to earn more and more points to upgrade your settlement to a camp, a town, a city, a megalopolis and several steps in between. Each milestone is a Game Center achievement, so let’s just say I don’t have many achievements yet. It’s easy to keep getting better, though. Every failure yields a lesson, and once you’ve got the system down it’s just a matter of putting it into action.

There’s only one problem: eventually the free ride runs out, and when it does, it hurts. Triple Town gives you a limited number of turns to work with – enough for a lot of free play, enough to get you hooked. After that, you can buy 200 more turns with coins. You earn more coins each time you finish a game, but it’s not really a sustainable practice. So you’re probably going to need to shell out. You can either buy coins for cheap and keep going 200 turns at a time, or you can splurge to unlock unlimited turns at a painful rate – $6.99 in the US store.

I won’t argue that’s not a lot to pay for a simple little game like Triple Town, given the App Store economy. But the game offers such a generous amount of free play that it’s worth getting even if you’re not interested in putting any cash on the table. Of course, you’ll need to rely on your willpower at that point, which might be a heavy burden to bear.

Sure, Triple Town is just another matching game, but it’s deep and surprisingly strategic. You’ve got to plan your moves out in advance while dealing with random draws and turns ticking down. You’ve got to balance spending your coins on the exact tile you need with earning enough each game to keep you going. It’s challenging enough to keep your brain working and simple enough to dig in those one-more-game hooks. So why not give it a look? The first hit is always free.

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Back in the arcade fighting game heyday of the ‘90s, 2D heavyweights like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had to contend with a new brand of brawler on the block: the 3D fighter. Games like Virtua Fighter and Tekken forewent 2D sprites and single-plane gameplay in favor of 3D polygonal character models and a full range of movement within the combat arenas. Happily, it turned out that there was room for both kinds of fighters to coexist, with gamers enjoying 2D and 3D fighting games in harmony.

One of the most popular 3D fighting franchises to come out of this era was Namco’s Soul Edge, and more prominently its sequel SoulCalibur, both of which were noteworthy for their focus on weapon-based combat. SoulCalibur hit arcades in 1998, and was then ported to the Sega Dreamcast to launch alongside that system in 1999. The Dreamcast version was remarkable, featuring even better graphics than the arcade version and a wealth of additional modes and characters. In 2008 SoulCalibur was again resurrected for Xbox Live Arcade, boasting a high definition makeover but lacking any sort of online play.

And now in 2012, almost a decade and a half after the original arcade release, SoulCalibur [$11.99] is now available in the palm of our hands on iOS devices. The iOS version appears to be based off of the most recent XBLA version, utilizing those excellent high definition visuals for Retina Display and iPad screens. The framerate and animation is also incredibly smooth, another hallmark of SoulCalibur, and everything looks bright and crisp running on iOS. For those that didn’t already know, you would never guess that this was actually an almost 14 year old game.

However, just because it looks pretty doesn’t mean the iOS version doesn’t have its share of drawbacks. Most glaring is the lack of any sort of multiplayer mode, an integral component of any good fighting game. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Namco Bandai would omit such a feature, but the iTunes description does state that additional modes are planned so I’m still holding out hope for multiplayer sometime in the future. For now though, it’s sorely missed.

As for single player content, SoulCalibur comes with quite a few modes. There’s the standard Arcade ladder, Time Attack, Survival, Extra Survival, and Practice. Sadly, the Team Battle and Mission modes from previous versions aren’t in this iOS version. There’s also a Museum mode where you can set up matches and watch two AI players battle it out or watch an Exhibition where you choose a character and watch them go through all their moves solo. Finally, there’s Game Center integration with leaderboards for Time Attack, Survival, and Extra Survival modes as well as 11 achievements to unlock.

A big factor when considering fighting games on iOS is controls, and SoulCalibur comes through in this department about as well as you could hope for. That is to say the virtual controls aren’t perfect, but they’re entirely workable and just as good as any other iOS fighters out there. If you don’t have any trouble playing games like Street Fighter IV Volt [$2.99] or King of Fighters-i [$6.99], then you shouldn’t have any trouble here either. The button positions and opacity can also be adjusted however you like, which is appreciated. One problem I did have though was with some of the menu UI being a bit too small on the iPhone screen, thus making it hard to make a selection sometimes. A minor complaint, but annoying nonetheless.

Whether or not you need SoulCalibur on iOS will depend on how fond of the original you are, and how important multiplayer is to you. It’s at the higher end of App Store pricing at $11.99, and that’s at a 20% off introductory price. But, I loved the original on my Dreamcast and think the price is absolutely worth it to be able to carry SoulCalibur around in my pocket. As for the lack of multiplayer, it’s a shame, but there’s still plenty to do by yourself. There’s the Game Center leaderboards and achievements, and half of the game’s 19 characters need to be unlocked first, as do several other goodies in the game, giving some good incentive to continue playing.

If you can deal with its shortcomings, SoulCalibur on iOS is actually an excellent port. It looks great, runs smoothly, controls as well as a fighting game can without buttons, and offers a decent amount of single player content to play through. If we can get some kind of multiplayer or other missing modes via updates in the future, then we’ll really be in business.

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Here’s some unfortunate news. Eurogamer reports that Japanese developer CAVE is switching up its strategy following some disappointing earnings from the first half of their fiscal year, which for them starts on the first of June. As a result, they’ve downgraded their forecasts for the rest of the year, which runs until the end of May, and have reportedly put some of their current titles on hold to allocate more resources into “social games”, according to the company’s recently released earnings report summarized in English by Andriasang.

Now, us iOS gamers associate CAVE with their awesome App Store shooters like Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite], Dodonpachi Resurrection [$7.99/Lite], and Deathsmiles [$11.99/Lite]. I don’t really like thinking about the developer of some of the most hardcore games around suddenly switching gears to the surging social/casual games space.

However, CAVE has a separate division focused on their mobile titles and I would imagine they are reasonably pleased with the performance of their games on iOS and Android. I think the problem lies more in getting people to buy a somewhat niche product like a bullet hell shooter on the home consoles for $60 or more. Their earnings report indicates that in the face of a stagnant retail gaming market, retailers are more hesitant to buy and stock as many games as CAVE had projected them to.

It’s not indicated which projects are being put on hold, and hopefully we’ll see CAVE continuing to bring their fantastic library of shooters to iOS, as well as more original titles like Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$6.99/Lite]. It will be interesting to see what direction CAVE moves in both the mobile and console space in 2012, and we’ll definitely be keeping our eye out for any new developments.

[Via Eurogamer and Andriasang]

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Last month Minecraft developer Mojang let their legions of fans know that they’d be changing the current direction of their mobile version of the game, Minecraft – Pocket Edition [$6.99/Lite], into something more akin to its PC counterpart. You see, Pocket Edition launched in the App Store in mid-November after a brief stint as an Xperia Play exclusive, but was missing a couple of core components that are key to the Minecraft experience – namely mining and crafting – which is why we didn’t exactly love it in our review.

Mojang has again updated their blog with the latest status of what direction the Minecraft – Pocket Edition project is heading. They admit that they mistakenly thought gamers would want something closer to Minecraft Creative while on the go, so that’s sort of how Pocket Edition was designed from the start. Because of that, now that they want to go back and add in things like enemies, survival, and crafting it’s going to take some pretty hefty rejiggering of the entire game.

And the beginnings of this rejiggering will be what’s in the forthcoming update which Mojang plans to have submitted by February 8th. There will be some pretty heavy behind-the-scenes type stuff in the update which will allow for a smoother transition when survival mode is added in the future. Crafting is also coming, but since it requires a pretty extensive interface overhaul, it’s still a ways out. Survival mode will most likely be hitting pretty soon this year, and the update lays the groundwork for that.

But just because this update is filled with a lot of boring technical foundation which you cannot see, there are still a few minor new content additions to look forward to. There will be some “neat looking animals” and some new blocks, as well as doors and fences. That’s right, doors and fences! The best part of this update though is that with the behind-the-scenes grunt work out of the way then new content should be easier to create and updates should start coming much faster going forward.

We’ll definitely be keeping our eye on how Minecraft – Pocket Edition evolves, and while you wait for the update that’s coming next month you can hit up our forums for discussion of the game.

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Surprise! Infinity Blade has made a lot of money. The other afternoon, Epic Games announced that, overall, the franchise has earned $30 million since the debut of the original Infinity Blade [$5.99] in December 2010. An astounding $5 million of that comes from the earnings of Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99], which released November 30th, 2011. A month or so ago.

Here’s some boilerplate for your eyeholes:

“The success of the Infinity Blade franchise is testament to our talented team who is devoted to making games we want to play, all while using Unreal Engine technology to redefine what is expected from games on iOS devices,” Epic Games President Dr. Michael Capps says in a statement. “We have so much more in store for players, and will continue to make great content for Apple’s evolving platforms.”

The thing to take away from this isn’t exactly “wow, that’s a lot of money.” Nah, it’s that big-budget, AAA-quality releases on the App Store can make money. Not everything needs to be $.99 and require a razor-thin development budget to see ridiculous returns. Also, there’s a significant audience out there who wants to play great, deep games with superb visuals — and for us, that’s the most heartening news.

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If the golden days of Lucasarts adventure titles such as Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders recall fond memories, there’s a good chance you’re destined to love any and everything about Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World [Free / HD]. After all, who didn’t get a perverse joy out of wandering aimlessly and trying to figure out puzzles that were so odd that using basic logic on them meant you would never advance?

Those types of puzzles make their appearances here, but so does a lot of solid gameplay. Kaptain Brawe opens up with an intro to the title character, a big goofy dude who somehow managed to get hired as a space officer despite the fact he’s clearly not the brightest bulb in the room. Already, we have a recipe for some laughs — that’s what adventure game fans are used to. You’ll start out solo, but eventually meet new characters like Row Boat (a robot of few words) and Luna (a bit of a mystery all around) who you can swap between at different points in the game, offering a bit of new perspective.

What starts out as a basic exploration of a ship on a deserted island segways into Brawe stumbling headfirst into a complex conspiracy that will send him across the galaxy searching for answers. It’s a proper adventure game story, and it never failed to entertain. The humor of the game is pretty spot-on, although I felt it fell a little short from time to time (but in that cheesy way that all adventure games seem to touch on at one time or another.)

Speaking of genre tropes, one thing that Kaptain Brawe also has nailed when it comes to adventure game homage is the difficulty level of the puzzle solving. While there are options here (Casual and Hardcore), some of the solutions to puzzles are so downright ridiculous that it reminded me of playing Myst back in the day. A hint system proves helpful if you get really stuck (Lord knows we never had THOSE back in the day), but there are times when it won’t reveal missing something very small and you will just kind of be sitting there without a clue on how to proceed. In other words, get ready touse your noggin in the most creative of ways.

The interface and controls are pretty basic — an icon rests in each corner of the screen, and all movement is produced by the touch of a fingertip. It makes the game easy to get lost in, but the visuals also take a hand in that, and they do a grand job. The game has a sweeping cartoon feel, but the style is very distinct and memorable. 2D backgrounds and 3D characters work together nicely, and there’s a lot of locations to explore, all of them rendered in loving detail. I personally loved the world of Kaptain Brawe, as it offered a tone and setting that you can mostly only find in Telltale Games titles these days.

While Kaptain Brawe may not be the perfect intro to the genre due to its difficulty levels, it does offer an excellent story and clever writing that ought to draw longtime fans of adventure games into its clutches quickly. There’s no denying the retro appeal, but overall this is a solid title even by today’s standards. If you like the taste offered by the initial free download, you can unlock the full game via IAP, which will set you back $4.99 on iPhone and $6.99 on iPad. If you ever passed time on a game like Leisure Suit Larry or Space Quest, you will adore Kaptain Brawe and all of his fumbling attempts at saving the galaxy.

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