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Pavel Tsarev's iDaTank [$1.99 / Lite] was released a few weeks ago but had some troubles, namely some crashing issues and a lack of a save function when the home button was pushed — thankfully an update thrust out last week fixes those problems, meaning all of us can sit and enjoy the unique experience without having to worry about saving issues.

Nailing down what it is that makes iDaTank enjoyable is difficult. At its core, it’s a resource-hoarding exploration game where you're controlling a small tank as it moves around a small, three dimensional planet collecting resources and killing enemies. Somehow it also manages to feel a bit like a rogue-like, where permadeath can end your game quickly (although you can purchase more lives through the in-game economy), weapon upgrades are slowly seeded out and an RPG system lays underneath the hood to increase the tanks properties.

It doesn't fit into an easily definable genre-box, which is what makes it all the more appealing. The game play doesn't stretch much further than what you'll get from the outset — you drive around, stripping planets of resources and killing enemies, but you still feel like you have to see what's at the end.

You control the tanks movement by sliding your finger in the direction you want to go — there is no virtual joystick, but it feels similar, perhaps even better than one. The firing is done automatically, so even though it might look like a duel stick shooter, it's not. Somehow, the constant upgrades keep it interesting and as the game progresses, you can actually feel it change underneath your fingers. You get more control over your tank, more speed, weapons, storage — the progression feels spot on, even though you'll have to grind a bit to get through later levels.

There are a total of 26 different levels, each subdivided into different subsections based on planet type. Each planet has its own alien life, is shaped differently and a few even have bosses, which if you run into unprepared, will absolutely slaughter you. That's made all the more difficult by the fact you can't back out and leave a planet if you find it too tough, which means you'll need to grind the early levels before you jump into some of the later ones, providing a serious challenge even if you're fully prepared. The goal of each planet is to capture a certain amount of resources, sometimes this means running over and delivering some blue crystals, other times you'll need to kill enemies or blow up giant egg things. You'll often need to make several trips from the resources to the delivery platform before you're finished with the level.

Picking which upgrades to use on your tank and your weapons is integral to your success in each mission. Weapons are handled by the same in-game economy as the lives, so you have to choose between the two. Tank upgrades are dispersed out when you reach a new level by gaining XP from killing aliens. There's also the whole permadeath thing that might turn some people off — when you're out of lives, you have to start over at the very beginning of the game.

iDaTank is built in Unity and looks the part. The 3D graphics are simple, but they work with the overall atmosphere of the game, which is to say it's a minimal, but well-planned and well-executed idea. That said, the enemy animation is top-notch and the tank looks great as well — like something pulled straight out of Jonathan Ive's brain if Apple suddenly decided to start making space-tanks. The interface continues the minimalist trend, almost to a fault as it takes a couple of taps to figure out what a button does instead of just one, but the uncluttered look works well with the rest of the game. It's a universal build, but it looks a little better on the iPhone's smaller screen then it does on iPad. However, the controls are a little smoother on iPad, so pick your fancy there if you have a choice.

Despite the ambiguous name, iDaTank is a surprisingly in-depth adventure game with a thin, but adequate layer of RPG elements added on top to keep you coming back for more. Like the best rogue-likes, it works like crack in that you'll manage to inch further and further into space through each playthrough before suddenly realizing it's three in the morning.

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Like asynchronous-multiplayer word games? Then Hanging With Friends [Free / $1.99] is the game for you.

Brought to us by Zynga and the folks behind Words With Friends [Free / $2.99 / HD], Hanging With Friends is a strange-but-fun combination of Hangman and Scrabble. Like other asynchronous titles (and exactly like the other With Friends games), you start a game by finding someone to play with. You can find opponents randomly, or amongst Facebook friends or your contact list. You can also find a friend by their username or play locally with pass and play.

Once you've found a friend to play with, you create a word using a random selection of letter tiles. You have a chance to earn bonus points by positioning your letters on double or triple letter/word score spaces. When your word is made, its your opponent's turn to guess.

Guessing is done in classic hangman style. You have a set number of strikes based on the length of the word (shorter words are harder, so you get more chances with them), and you can pick from all the letters in the alphabet. Guess your opponent's word before running out of strikes, and you live to play another day. Fail, and your cute little avatar loses a balloon and gets closer to falling into the pit of lava below.

Avatar? Lava? Yeah, you're not getting hanged in Hanging With Friends. This is a kinder, gentler, Zynga-er take on the game. When you first begin, you're asked to create a boy or girl avatar, with a few customization options (I can almost smell the cash shop coming, though it's not in yet). When you play, your avatar floats with balloons above almost certain death. Animations let you watch your opponent (or yourself) squirm as failure draws near. But this is a family game, so you'll never see the fatal fall.

You and your opponent each take turns creating words and guessing at them until one of you runs out of balloons. To keep things interesting, you're both given a set of lifelines that you can use to save yourself. The extinguisher removes options from the board, revive gives you back a strike, and suspects gives you a one-in-four chance of getting the right letter. They're free the first time you use them against a given opponent, and after that they cost 20 coins. It looks like you'll be able to buy coins with an in-app purchase in the future, but for now you earn them with with bonus points or high-scoring words. It's a nice little addition to the formula.

My only reservations are the usual complaints about the With Friends games. The game feels slower than it should. Each time you open the app you have to wait for your games to update, and then you have wait to load your game. The new mechanics slow things down even further, letting you sit through an animated retelling of your opponent's turn and making you go through a few pointless extra clicks. I'd love to see the game streamlined, but it's never slow enough to be a serious problem.

I'm glad there aren't any serious issues, because it's not like many fans of async word games are going to pass this one up. If you're not completely sold, grab the ad-supported free version. You'll probably get hooked-Hanging With Friends is fun, cute and clever, so you're going to find lots to like. And if you need a few more friends to play with, our forum thread is a great place to start.

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Baseball Superstars has been a favorite around these parts for years now, with entries to the franchise released each fall. So it's surprising to see Baseball Superstars II Pro [$0.99] released a little over half a year after the series' last major outing.

Each update to the series brings new features and improvements, and this one is no different. It's a huge upgrade from the earliest games in the series, but when compared to last year's model, it's a bit less impressive. Don't get me wrong—this one is better than Baseball Superstars 2011 [$0.99 / Free] across the board. But if you've spent some time in Gamevil's series already, you'll find a shinier, prettier game, but not one that's much different from what you've already seen.

If, on the other hand, you're new to the series, this is the one to grab. The visuals have been given a major overhaul. Each sprite is more detailed, as are the environments. The other players no longer look oddly squashed, and animation upgrades have them looking a lot smoother as they run around the field. With configurable weather, light and particle effects, it's by far the best looking entry in the series.

If you've never played before, here's the (abridged) run down. Baseball Superstars II Pro is a Sports/RPG hybrid. You create baseball players and run them through My League mode, which spans a career and tells a story, or create teams and run them through Season mode. Either way, you're responsible for training your players, buying and managing items, handling stats and actually playing the game. Playing involves carefully timed and placed taps for batting, pitching and stealing bases. The game also has missions, tournaments, home run challenges and online multiplayer to keep things interesting. Once you take into account the load of unlockable teams, items, players, and Game Center achievements, you'll probably never need to leave the house again.

Whether or not you'll enjoy it depends less on whether you're into sports games (I'm not, and I love it) than if you're okay with the potential for IAP. There's a lot of it. Many of the available items and skills cost G Points. You can earn G Points several different ways in the game, or you can skip ahead and buy them. If you're a completionist, you're going to run into roadblocks where you'll need to either grind or pay. If you're a casual player, you can easily go without paying extra money. You're also going to need to be okay with some silliness. The translation and story are a bit dodgy. Also, you can buy ridiculous equipment in these games, and super players add a big element of chance.

Speaking of super players, they've been improved this time around. Now you can recruit them and add them to rosters more easily. Your teammates are also a little smarter. Batting hasn't changed much, but pitching is a lot nicer. Rather than tapping a single point in the hit box, you're given a zoomed-in plate to target. The pitching gauge is also much easier to use, and it's on by default now. This should give newbie pitchers a big leg up. Custom pitches add a little variety, too.

The interface has seen a pretty major overhaul, and while some things are a bit more straightforward (especially player recruitment), the main menu is probably going to overwhelm every new player that hops in. Here's some help: Mission Mode will give you a chance to safely learn the basics, and you should play My League on Easy to start.

Since this is pretty much a shiny, cleaned up version of last year's game, whether it will catch the fancy of existing Baseball Superstars fans depends on whether 7 months is a long enough gap to leave you wanting to start fresh. With the sheer volume of content these games offer, some of you may still be working through the last iteration. For folks who haven't hopped on the bandwagon Baseball Superstars II Pro is a sure bet. It takes the best baseball RPG series on iOS and makes it even better—sounds like yet another home run to me.

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This review is going to get a little wordy. Not only am I telling you all about Great Little War Game, a fantastic turn-based strategy game from Rubicon, I also get to tell you all about the upcoming 1.4 update. So if you're short on time and you want the summary, let me just say that this is a game you need to own if you like turn-based strategy, and the update is going to make it better than ever.

I'll call Great Little War Game "great" without hesitation, but I'd hardly call it "little" – not with 20 campaign levels, a 10 level IAP expansion, and tons of maps for pass-and-play multiplayer and AI skirmishes. This isn't a game that's over quickly – the levels take time and multiplayer matches can turn into all-out war.

The campaign gives you a thorough introduction to the game's many units, from the humble Engineer to mighty tanks, warships and aircraft. Early on, you learn the simple controls – tap to select and move, hold to see range and movement – and then then you'll learn to capture the enemy's resources and base. You'll also need to pick up vital strategies like holding high terrain, defending your resources and picking the right spot to lay an ambush.

You're set against enemy forces controlled by an AI that poses a challenge without becoming frustrating. In each level, you're facing ongoing assaults by the enemy while you try to achieve a goal. Sometimes you need to capture the enemy base. Other times you're left to hold out against a superior foe or to struggle to build up your resources before being overwhelmed. Your performance is ranked on how quickly you succeed.

Great Little War Game isn't just an impressive strategy game; it's also pretty darn funny. The cut scenes between levels feature your army's Generalissimo and his terribly courageous approach to warmongering. I've never seen someone lead so bravely from the (distant) rear. Unit voices, animations and descriptions also offer up some laughs.

I've had a chance to go hands-on with the upcoming 1.4 update. It's going to be submitted Friday, so hopefully we'll see it soon. The biggest change is the addition of difficulty modes. You'll start on Basic difficulty, and there are three higher modes to unlock by beating the campaign with each. Damage increases for both sides as you play on higher difficulties, so you'll need to be very careful about keeping your army safely out of range while picking off the enemy.  The AI also gets more cash to spend, and it's a little smarter in all modes, so skilled players are going to be challenged.

Great Little War Game is also getting a cosmetic bump, with improvements to lighting and water, multisampling and bump maps. It looks very nice – still cartoony, but much more polished. Despite the nice new look, 1.4  feels snappier than ever on my 3GS. As for the one thing some of you have been holding out for – the game's 16 achievements now sync to Game Center. Three new skirmish maps have been added (including a sweet little nod to this site). On top of all that, there's a new 15 level campaign, Holiday from Hell, available for in-app purchase.

Rubicon's always been very responsive to their fans, adding fixes and updates based on feedback. They've adopted a lot of ideas from users on our forums, so if you've got any suggestions, make sure to stop in.

One technical note: the game only supports third-generation devices and newer. Also, be sure to grab the right version. With an HD version, a standard version, and a lite version for each, things can get a little confusing. The HD is Universal with Retina graphics, while the standard version has neither feature. I do like the recent trend of releasing a second version that's a Universal HD, but restricting Retina graphics to that version is less awesome.

Great Little War Game is the kind of game you can really sink your teeth into, which is rare enough. So I'm delighted to discover that it's also rich in features, good looking and full of humor. With the 1.4 update, it's going to be even more of a must-buy. I've got my fingers crossed for asynchronous multiplayer, a feature Rubicon hopes to include some time in the future, but in the meantime there's quite the bounty to enjoy. And if you're quick, you might still be able to grab it on sale.

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NaturalMotion Games has unveiled their newest iOS offering called Icebreaker Hockey. Picture NaturalMotion’s highly successful arcade-style football game Backbreaker 2: Vengeance [99¢] and apply it to ice hockey, and you have a pretty good idea what to expect from Icebreaker Hockey.

Players will race down the ice towards the net from a third person perspective, avoiding hits from opposing players using deke and spin maneuvers in an effort to get a clean shot on goal. This arcade-style of gameplay worked really well in the Backbreaker series on iOS, and seems like a natural fit for the sport of ice hockey.

Here’s a set of screenshots from Icebreaker Hockey which is looking quite impressive:

The game is being developed by Digital Legends Entertainment and published by NaturalMotion, and will also use their advanced “morpheme” animation engine to provide smooth and realistic animations to the players in the game. Icebreaker Hockey will come with 2 different modes to play across 3 difficulty levels, and will use Game Center integration for achievements and leaderboards.

Icebreaker Hockey is scheduled to hit the App Store on June 2nd at a price of $2.99. Members in our forums correctly speculated way back in October that we’d be seeing Icebreaker Hockey on iOS, and now it’s actually official. We’ll be sure to check out Icebreaker Hockey when it releases next week.

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I’m nearing the point where it’s impossible to say something of significance about the Back to the Future series. The third episode, which just released in the US App Store for $6.99, is a definite follow-up to the previous two. It takes no sudden turns. This is still an adventure title with a stellar cast, solid production values, and a casual-leaning curve.

I felt some fatigue with the last release specifically, but I couldn’t attribute it to a specific design element. And while I didn’t rush to the App Store for Episode 3, I did actually get drawn into the experience this time around. I think the reason for this lies somewhere in the more exciting tone and setting in this one.

I won’t spoil the story details, but in Episode 3: “Citizen Brown,” you’ll be walking around a 1984-ish version of Hill Valley headed by Doc Brown. This far-flung utopian society, I suppose, just appeals to me more than 'classic' Hill Valley, but there’s also a lot of fun art and clever ideas being thrown around in this specific entry that weren’t present in the last.

I want note, too, that this serial runs a lot better than its brethren from the onset. For the first time ever for a Telltale joint, I didn’t need to restart my iPad just to run the game. I also haven’t caught a single audio or animation glitch. I’ve no idea if this is just a clean port or if Telltale did something different, but it runs better.

Like with Episode 2, if you’re a fan of the first, you should probably keep following the series. It retains what made the first game good and capitalizes on the fiction in a lot of cool, original ways.

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At first glance, HotGen's To-Fu: The Trials of Chi [99¢ / HD] looks like a riff on the Xbox Live Arcade game Super Meat Boy, but where SMB was a gruelingly difficult platformer, To-Fu takes a more slow-paced approach. That's not say To-Fu isn't difficult, it certainly is in the later levels, but you can generally take your time with it.

You'll touch and pull To-Fu in any direction and release to send him flying through the air. He'll end up sticking to most surfaces and those he doesn't, he'll bounce off, slide down or move up them. It's helpful then that you can get a view of the whole level and all of its obstacles by touching and scrolling too, which becomes an absolute necessity by the end. If you've ever touched a video game at any point in your life, you're going to know which obstacles to expect because they're all here — every single one of them.

Going back to the Super Meat Boy comparison is easy to do because To-Fu really does look like it took a lot of hints from it, but the problem is that Super Meat Boy took its inspiration from every platformer before it. If To-Fu wasn't a piece of Tofu the inspiration probably wouldn't be as transparent, but both games are certainly deeply seeded in the history of the genre. Spinning wheels of metal, rotating platforms, portals, disintegrating obstacles, lasers, spikes — all designed specifically to make you die.

And die you will — a lot. It's not a big deal, overcoming adversity is what makes a game like this rewarding, but the lack of instantaneous restarts is a tad annoying and having to wait out a death animation can be taxing when you're in the mood to just pick up and play quickly.

Thankfully, the level design keeps up with the ridiculous amount of obstacles and across the course of the 100 levels you'll see a lot of innovation in screen setup. Each level has three separate objectives. Most importantly, you need to get To-Fu to the end, marked by a pink fortune cookie. Along the way, you have two supplementary, but not complimentary directives. Scattered throughout the level are blue orbs, which you'll be trying to pick up by any means possible. Contrary to that is a goal to solve the level in a limited number of jumps. Rarely do these two coincide so if you're the type to obsessively finish a game, you'll have to play through them multiple times.

It's that trifecta of objectives that makes To-Fu a game that's likely going to appeal to a broad range of people. You can get through each level with a limited amount of challenge and enjoy the game as much as someone keen on getting everything. It's too bad there isn't Game Center support as it would give people more of an excuse to reach the 100 percent mark.

Visually, the game gets the job done. To-Fu looks great stretching out and sliding down walls, but the backgrounds start to get a bit repetitive as you move along. The music sticks in the back as do the majority of the sound effects, neither drawing much attention good or bad.

The touch screen controls really do work remarkably well and To-Fu: The Trials of Chi does a great job of working with the touch screen, not against it. The depth of challenges here works well, but it would be nice to have some type of meta-game or leaderboards so you could track your progress against others.

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It's pretty clear the first time you load up Delusion Studio's House of Mice [99¢] that one of the developers is a big fan of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It's not just because you're playing as a group of mice hell-bent on destroying a cat, it's also because the game features some of the slickest animation you'll find in a puzzle game.

Unless you've never booted up the App Store in your entire life, you're going to recognize House of Mice right away. It's a one-screen puzzle game that requires you to get from one point to another while grabbing onto three tasty pieces of cheese. The game certainly looks the part of Cut the Rope or its countless iterations, but the gameplay takes a different, albeit familiar approach.

House of Mice is essentially billiards with mice that turn into bombs. To complete a stage, you need to flick one of three mice through a set of obstacles and into a cat that bears a striking resemblance to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Along the way you'll want to pick up pieces of cheese to improve your score, but if you're struggling with a particular level, killing the cat will suffice.

The game currently features 80 levels spread across four different areas and as you progress through them, new obstacles are introduced. Boxes will block your path that require one or two mice to destroy, pipes will transfer you over to another part of the level and fans and magnets will alter your pathway. You'll oftentimes have to bounce a mouse off a wall and into a box to sacrifice it so another can pass through to kill the cat. The quicker you do so, the higher your score.

As of right now, you'll only be competing against yourself for those high scores, but as noted in the forums, Game Center and Facebook integration is coming in the next update (as well as a Lite version). That's lgoing to help offer more in the way of replayability for anyone obsessed with high scores, as it's not just about grabbing the cheese and exploding the cat, but how quickly you can do it.

While the gameplay is far more original than it looks on first glance, the real appeal is its visual style. Not only is the premise derived from classic Tom and Jerry cartoons, but the entire look of the game is. It's a beauty to behold and the visuals look like the hand-drawn animation cells of '40s classics. There aren't a whole lot of moving parts in the game, but when there are, you'll be wishing you were playing on an iPad just to get a closer look at them.

If you needed more proof of the games visual importance, you can click through the "Extras" screen to watch the opening video, the credits and the ending video again. They're short, but they're well worth watching for their style alone. The fact they're included at all is an indication of their merit.

It might sound a bit like this is a case of style over substance, but while House of Mice's wrapper is certainly its most delicious part, the gameplay inside still gets by as an enjoyable, easy to grasp concept that offers enough of a challenge to keep it interesting. If you enjoy puzzles with a heavy emphasis on light-geometry, you'll love what House of Mice has to offer, but even if you don't end up getting into the gameplay, it's hard to deny how great it looks.

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If you are amongst the millions of iPhone owners who also happen to have PS3's, I've got the perfect app for you. Behold, PSN Status [Free]. This free app will tell you both quickly and easily whether or not PSN is up. Sure, it would have been much more useful last month, but it will be handy to keep around if/when PSN goes down again.

Oh also, on the subject of PSN being down, if you're like me and really only use your PS3 for watching BluRays, don't forget to claim your free games. Even if you weren't really affected by the downtime in any real way, you're still eligible for two free PS3 games and two free PSP games. The selection is surprisingly decent, too.

On a somewhat related note- If you're a proud PS3 console warrior and your pride has taken a substantial hit over the last month as you were the brunt of countless "PSN is down" jokes from your Xbox 360-loving friends, don't forget to also download i360Emu [Free]. It's a shockingly accurate emulator of early Xbox 360's, or, it was, before they changed the power-on animation.

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Combine two cups of freemium with a scoop of time management. Then add a dash of social, mix it together, and you'll get MobCrete's Pucca's Restaurant [Free], the freemium game that's currently devouring my spare time.

Pucca is a massive media franchise that spans animation, console games, fashion lines, and a lot more. If you know absolutely nothing about it (like me!), you'll still find Pucca's Restaurant to be an adorable restaurant sim. If you're a fan, you'll see all your favorite characters come together to help take your restaurant from a tiny diner to an opulent five-star affair.

There are likely hundreds of freemium sim games on iOS, so I'm not going to claim that Pucca's Restaurant is the best or most unique. I can, however, tell you that it's a lot of fun, and I can't stop playing. There are a few things I look for in a freemium game, and this one stacks up well. I never feel like I absolutely need to pay for currency, I'm not missing out by choosing not to harass my friends, and there's always lots to do.

To take your restaurant to a five-star destination, you'll need to manage meals, staff and decor. Cooking meals earns you money and experience, so you can unlock new recipes and items as you level up. You can use those items to decorate, drawing in more customers and earning more stars. As your restaurant gets more popular, you'll need more staff to cook and serve the food.

There's a slight time management flavor to Pucca's Restaurant, as you'll need to plan your dishes carefully to make sure there's always something ready to serve. You also have to make sure your meals don't go bad before you serve them. Decorating feels a bit like Animal Crossing, which is a game that desperately needs more iOS imitation. And hey, if you want some educational content, each dish you can cook in the game includes a full recipe.

I'm really loving the social content. I'm usually wary of letting games use my location data, but I'm glad I threw caution to the wind for this one. Not only is there a Yelp-style list of restaurant ratings, you can also check out a local map and rate your shop against everyone nearby. Or you can travel around the world and check out the top rated international restaurants. Pucca's Restaurant has only been out for a couple weeks here, but it's been around since March in parts of Asia, so you can see lots of crazy-awesome high level restaurant layouts – and they're all different. You can also check out the restaurants of your Game Center friends.

There are a few items you can't get for your restaurant without using Garu points, the premium currency of the game. You earn Garu points for hitting milestones and unlocking secret rewards, but they don't show up often enough to cover every possible purchase. I haven't had any problem going without, though, and my little restaurant is certainly remaining competitive. I am, however, completely mystified about why saving progress to the cloud costs Garu points. You'd think making sure players never lose progress would be valuable enough on its own.

My biggest gripe is that Pucca's Restaurant badly needs a tutorial. I muddled my way though the first few levels, and eventually figured out how to store decor, how to move things around, why I want new staff, but it was a struggle early on. Apparently a tutorial is on the way in the next update, and so far MobCrete has been quick to bring out bug fixes and new content. You can also hit them up in our forums.

If you've got room in your heart for a new freemium game, give Pucca's Restaurant a try. It's super cute, it's fun, and it's free. Is there a better recipe for success?

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