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We were huge fans of Rocketcat Games' original title, Hook Champ [$2.99 / Free], and love Super QuickHook [$2.99] even more– Especially with the updates it has been getting. Super QuickHook came loaded with the fast paced endless Avalanche mode at launch, and the latest 1.3 update added Eruption mode. Eruption mode is even more difficult and requires either playing through most of the game or scoring over 4000 in Avalanche mode to unlock.

In addition, 1.3 adds six new playable characters. Three are unlockable in-game, and the other three are available via in-app purchase. Free characters include Gnomey, Aldora, and Hookbot (the DLC character from Hook Champ). If you're willing to shell out a couple bucks, you can buy Jake and Gunny (also from Hook Champ) along with the new Super QuackHook, the grappling hook equipped duck. Each character comes with their own unlockable grappling hook and unique hats.

They've also packed some new achievements in to the game, with rewards for unlocking some of the difficult ones. In addition, if you've been having performance issues, there's now a toggle in the options allowing you to turn off a lot of the extra effects to improve frame rate. Some members of our forums have been reporting issues with some of the achievements, but the developers have been quick to respond and are already working on another quick update to address these problems.

If you've beaten everything there is to beat in Super QuickHook, make sure you download this update and give the new Eruption mode a try. If you've yet to download Super QuickHook and want to know more about the game, take a look at our full review.

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Rimelands: Hammer of Thor [$4.99] is a new tactical turn-based RPG from developers Dicework and Crescent Moon Games (of Ravensword [$3.99/Lite] fame). We previewed a hands-on video of the game about a month ago that explained how the turn-based combat worked as well as showcasing some of the games many items and weapons. With Rimelands now available, we've been able to experience these first hand, and came away impressed with how well the different elements of the game come together. The dice-rolling combat mechanic gives it an old school pen-and-paper feel, while the dungeon crawling and loot collection offers plenty to discover in the game. Couple that with an interesting story and top-notch visuals, and Rimelands is one of the best RPG experiences you can have on the iPhone.

Humans have squandered the resources of the world, throwing off the balance of the ecosystem and turning their once beautiful lands into an uninhabitable frozen wasteland. They are forced to move into underground vaults for a thousand years, and when they finally emerge they find that a new race called the Fair Folk have taken over the dominant role above ground. Humans try to reclaim their territory, and war ensues. An uneasy peace is finally reached between the two sides, and they are able to precariously coexist together above ground. This leaves countless underground vaults filled with treasures of the last millennium, ready to be explored and exacted by you, treasure hunter Rose Cristo.

The story in Rimelands sets the stage perfectly for a dungeon crawling adventure. You'll play the role of Rose as she travels to the many towns and vaults in Rimelands discovering treasures, completing quests, and evolving her character with the multitude of items and abilities available. The game is played from an isometric viewpoint and combat and movement are grid-based. This can take some getting used to as you're only able to move in four directions rather than being able to move around the world freely. Coming within striking distance of an enemy allows you to engage in the turn-based combat which is a mixture of long-ranged and melee attacks. An interesting dice mechanic determines your offensive and defensive effectiveness, and playing Rimelands feels like an interactive board game where all of the dull pen-and-paper stuff has been automated for you.

An overhead map lets you travel to the towns and vaults that you discover during the game. Quests are obtained by talking with characters around the world much like your typical RPG. There is a main storyline to follow as well as many side quests to pick up and complete. The dungeons in Rimelands are full of dangerous enemies, as well as many unique treasures. Traversing these dungeons feels very Diablo-esque, as there are many rooms to explore and a ton of loot to obtain, although with strategic turn-based combat instead of the hack 'n slash variety. Making your way through the dungeons is incredibly fun, and I found it hard to stop playing until I was sure I'd explored every nook and cranny of each in order not to miss any lucrative treasure chests.

One of the high points of Rimelands is the extensive variety of items and weapons in the game, as well as the various skill trees for your character. Defeating enemies earns you gold and experience points, and upon leveling up you can choose a new ability from one of three skill trees. Barbarian brings melee effects, Assassin boosts your ranged abilities, and Shaman covers magical abilities. There's quite a bit of diversity with how you want to build your character, and good reason to play through the game multiple times focusing in different areas each time. An engineering dynamic is in the game as well, allowing you to build different weapons with blueprints that you find. It's an interesting idea, but not totally necessary due to the many excellent weapons you're bound to come across in the game anyway.

Graphically Rimelands is a beautiful game. The characters and enemies are fairly detailed, and their animations are excellent. The environments are also very attractive, with snowy terrain when you are in the above ground areas and dark dungeons with nice lighting effects when you go underground. The in-game graphics do have a slightly jagged look to them, but nothing overly detracting. Retina Display support is a possibility down the road, as is a native iPad version, although nothing has been finalized. Rimelands runs just fine in 2x mode on the iPad, and players in our forums are definitely enjoying the game this way. The story is told via static illustrations and text, and by in-game dialogue between characters as well. There isn't any full motion video or animated cutscenes, but the story is engaging and the illustrated bits look great.

There are plenty of other nuances to Rimelands, and it really is a game with a grand scope. You can expect to get about 8-10 hours out of one playthrough, and there is good incentive to go through multiple times and try out different character builds. Plus, this should only be the first chapter in the Rimelands universe, as more content will be coming down the line via updates as well as planned sequels. Dicework and Crescent Moon have a winner on their hands here, and I'll be looking forward to seeing more from this series. I don't typically love turn-based strategy games, but Rimelands had me hooked almost instantly. It's easy enough to get into whether you enjoy the strategic combat, loot collecting, character leveling, or just want to uncover the story in the unique steampunk universe. For fans of these elements, or any gamer in general, Rimelands: Hammer of Thor is a solid choice.

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As part of today's keynote, Epic Games showed a brief tech demo of the Unreal Engine 3 running on an iPhone. In a surprise twist of events, this very same tech demo just appeared on the App Store mere moments ago as a free universal app. If you've got an iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, 3rd Generation iPod touch, or iPad, feast your eyes on Epic Citadel [Free].

The 82.2MB tech demo includes a medieval town to explore, complete with a bizarre and a "mysterious cathedral". If you've been waiting to see just what the latest-generation iOS lineup of devices is capable of, you really need to check this out. Epic Citadel is a fantastic display of the potential of future gaming on the platform, as it has been developed using the exact same tools and technology that developers are using now to create high-end console games.

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Big name developers just love setting their iTunes Connect release dates to Thursdays. Every week around this time we start seeing new releases slowly pop up in international markets, then filter out to the rest of the world as the Earth spins and it slowly becomes Thursday across the planet. This week is no different, and tonight at 11:00 PM EST all of the following games will be available for download in the US App Store. (Or even sooner if you're east of us.)

Mirror's Edge for iPhone, $4.99 – We first previewed this game in late 2009, and spent months wondering when it was going to be released. We found our answer as Mirror's Edge for iPad [$9.99] landed on the App Store as an iPad-only launch title for Apple's (then) new device. Back in April we thought it was inevitable that the game would be released for the iPhone yet, but we never suspected it would take nearly six months to happen.

Here's the gameplay video we shot from our preview last year:

From my brief time with Mirror's Edge on the iPhone, it plays just the same as the iPad version and is seemingly identical to the preview we did before of the iPhone version. Mirror's Edge for the iPhone comes packed with Retina Display friendly graphics and looks outstanding on the iPhone 4.

Puzzle Agent, $4.99 / HD – We had some hands-on time with this game not too long ago, and it's definitely something any fan of Professor Layton style games needs to pick up. In the game you play as Nelson Tethers, an agent of the FBI Puzzle Research Division and need to investigate the happenings of an eraser factory in Minnesota.

Puzzle Agent has already been released for the PC on Steam, and has been well received by most gamers. We thought it was a decent port in our preview, but we're going to spend more time with it to see if that still holds true as we get deeper than a brief preview allows.

Other potentially noteworthy games being released tonight include two new offerings from Namco who apparently have no problem juicing poor old Pac Man for all he's worth. PAC-CHAIN [$4.99] is an action puzzle game for the iPad where you tap groups of similarly colored ghosts from the game board with all kinds of Pac Man themed power-ups. Their other release tonight is Mishap [$4.99] a hidden object game for the iPhone that at least looks slightly intriguing with the inclusion of mini-games.

Finally, there's a new Chillingo iPad game on the verge of being released. Lamp of Aladdin [$4.99] is another hidden object game, but the matching mini-game looks like it could be interesting and there's something about the above trailer that's oddly alluring.

We're going to spend the day playing through as many of these games as possible, and like every Wednesday, plan on having reviews available by the time the games appear for download in the US App Store.

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A little over a month ago I first posted my review of Godville [Free] and was entirely amused by the concept behind the game. In essence, Godville is barely a game at all, as your interaction with the world is limited to either encouraging or punishing your hero who otherwise just goes about his business. You play as your hero's god, and the "game" basically consists of you reading the events that transpire in your hero's life. Depending on how you treat your hero either through punishment or encouragement, your hero will either be a cold hearted bastard killing everything in its path or a happy go lucky lover of all things living… Or something in between.

Godville is a community driven game, and once your hero reaches level 10 you're able to participate in the idea box. You can submit ideas for items, equipment, quests, enemies, combat actions, and tons of other things. Users then vote on these entries, which are eventually implemented in the game. Initially, the adventures of your hero in Godville when the game first launched were fairly repetitive, but after a month of idea box submissions from users, the game has only grown more amazing.

Not only is Godville getting better from user submissions, but the developers have been hard at work releasing updates both to the Godville client itself, and the web-based backend that powers the whole game. Special artifacts are one of my new favorite inclusions. These are new items that your character will loot from monsters or win from duels that have special abilities. Of course your hero is entirely too stupid to operate said artifacts themselves, but you can spend your god power (otherwise used for punishing and encouraging) to have them operate the item. These items can teleport them back to town, put a gold brick in their inventory, strike a death from their records, and many other things.

The amusing part of all this is that if you don't catch that your hero has one of these special artifacts in their inventory, chances are they'll just give it away, sell it, or otherwise get swindled out of it before you even have a chance to use it. Even if you do use it and it has some marvelous effect, they'll usually just hawk it for beer money anyway. How little control you have over your hero is part of what makes Godville so much fun for me, as my hero almost never does what I want him to do, but seemingly has developed his own (fairly stupid but evil) personality of his own.

Previous to the recent update, your character would randomly find themselves in duels with the heroes of other players. Now, every few hours, you can send your hero off to an arena to immediately participate in these duels. Aside from potentially humiliating another god with defeat, winning a duel also awards you all the coins that the opponent is holding along with some other swag… This is often lost anyway as your hero's ego grows and he bites off more than he can chew in combat, then endlessly begs you to be resurrected.

I decided to post about this game again not only because it has had significant updates since our initial review, but also because I'm downright amazed that a game that isn't really even technically a game has held my attention for so long. Checking up on what my Godville dude is doing has somehow managed to slip in between checking my email and checking my Twitter feed on my phone. Admittedly, when I first tried the game I thought Godville had sky-high novelty value, but I didn't see it lasting for me as most novelty-heavy games are only amusing until said novelty runs out.

The buckets of creativity being dumped in to Godville seems to always make loading up the game amusing. Initially I only saw Godville as a clever jab at the grind of RPG's as instead of you spending your time grinding, your hero does it for you. After spending an immense amount of time with the game over the last month, Godville seems to be the most captivating virtual per experience I've had so far on the iPhone. If you haven't yet, you really need to give this game a try to see if it grows on you just as much as it has grown on me.

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Since Apple enabled peripheral support for iOS devices in iPhone OS 3, we've been watching closely to see what creative control peripherals hardware developers will bring to the platform. The latest is the PartyDock, a multiplayer remote control dock for the iPhone 4 and iPad.

As TUAW reports, the PartyDock is an iPad charging dock that also docks with four individual remote controls and features video out (component) for connection to a TV, thought it's unclear as to what output resolution will be supported. Griffin indicates that various party, family, and casual games that utilize the PartyDock will shortly be arriving in the App Store. Three mini-games and one full featured game will be bundled with the device, in some fashion.

Have a look at Griffin's PartyDock PR shots:

While gaming is the obvious main thrust for this device, it's also a general media station of sorts. With the PartyDock nestled in your entertainment center, watching videos, photos, and listening to music on your hi-fi rig will be a thing of relative ease.

We're anxious to get our hands on the PartyDock and put it through its paces. It's encouraging that Griffin has a developer contact mechanism on their product site for those wanting to develop for the device. Hopefully iOS control accessories will become a plentiful and well supported option.

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The human intellect is a remarkable beast. Just when we think that all possible Zombie concepts have been duly wrung out from our collective minds, developers renderPaz go and throw us a curve-ball. Picture this: you're driving down the post-apocalyptic interstate, weaving through abandoned vehicles strewn everywhere– when you see a hitch-hiker. Naturally, this being post-apocalyptic America, the rule of thumb (think Zombieland) is to just keep on driving. In Zombie Highway [99¢] you aren't afforded that luxury.

The object in Zombie Highway is to just keep on driving– pedal to the metal, you have only one speed– faster. That's not to say you're get very far, as zombies don't generally take kindly to your brains being cocooned inside an SUV's hard exterior. And unlike the variety in Zombieland, these zombies are willing to work to get them.

Zombies in Zombie Highway will pounce on your car's side rails as you speed past them, doing all they can to bring the car to a stop– generally by using their superhuman undead strength to wrestle it till it topples over. There are 7 types of zombies all up, from the skinny fledgling variety, to the stronger, health-regenerating, weightier monsters that do a world of hurt to your center of balance. As zombies stack up on one side, this is only compounded, with your only recourse being to get the buggers off as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, your own driving prowess and an arms dealer friend in the back provide all the tools you need to get through the zombie horde…at least for a couple of miles. Zombies can be exited from the vehicle by tilting your device to sideswipe them onto one of the many ruined cars littered across the highway. Each zombie has a health bar, and whittling that to zero will ensure they won't be sticking around. To help, your aforementioned friend riding shotgun (ho ho!) has a formidable arsenal that is gradually unlocked as you accumulate collective mileage across all your games. Weapons are fired by touching the corners of the screen– if a zombie is on the right near the front of your car, tapping the top right area will fire at it.

It's a straightforward formula that creates a fun and remarkably gratifying zombie slaying experience. It's also quite challenging, as zombies are super aggressive, and your car's physics are fantastic. For instance, don't expect to steer out of a lean by driving the other way– it'll only tip it further. Instead, a bit of load balancing and fast firing fingertips are required to keep the rubber on the road.

Our only gripes with the game are that for all the great 3D models and presentation there is a notable lack of any real sound effects. Your car is effectively muted until it's being weighed down, and then the creaks it makes are whisper quiet. Not hearing the engine at all detracts from the experience dramatically. In fact, the only sound you'll really hear from the car are the squeaks of your tires as you slide around the road. There is absolutely no music to be found either, which would have done a world of good to further build atmosphere and character.

We're also not quite sure why the developers didn't stick with Openfeint or a similar platform for its social functions, as their current Twitter implementation is rudimentary at best. And though the Facebook option results in a neat competition feature where you can track your friends, those who keep their gaming separate from Facebook are left on the curb. Thankfully neither of these platforms are required to access high scores.

Still, it's hard to stay disappointed with these drawbacks for long because running from hordes of zombies is just so much fun. The further you get, the more obstacles are thrown in your path, until you are eventually wrestling your device to fend off zombies, dodge roadblocks and keep your SUV from going belly up as you're two wheeling back and forth. It's a singular experience seemingly lifted right from classic zombie films and as such is effortlessly recommended. We just hope the developers look at the sound issue, as well as maybe add an achievements system ala Monster Dash [99¢] to pad out the survival game replayability.

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Just a couple of days ago we revealed DeceasedPixel's latest project, Super Mega Worm [$2.99], a game based on the original Death Worm concept by JTR, later made famous by the popular Flash game, Effing Worms. Super Mega Worm is a pixel-art take on the giant worm theme, and is now available.

Super Mega Worm opens with an 8-bit retro cutscene explaining how humans have consumed the earth, and how mother nature now has a bone to pick with us. She tasks her favorite pest exterminator, Wojira the Death Worm, with wiping humans from the earth and restoring balance to the force…you get the idea. It's a nice little setup for the mayhem that is the hallmark of the giant worm game, and an introduction to the glorious mario-like pixel art

In our preview we were ultimately left wondering as to whether Super Mega Worm included the levelling system that propelled Effing Worms to stardom, and we're pleased to find that it has in fact done so. In Super Mega Worm you start as a tiny wormlet, tasked with destroying a number of humans (indicated at the top right of the screen) by burrowing through the ground and erupting from under them (or over them, if you get enough height). To begin with, you can't really jump that high, but as you keep reaching your targets you level up and eventually can propel yourself higher and higher.

Wojira is controlled by either a slider or tilting option, but we found the slider option worked best. Additional buttons appear on your screen as you unlock your spitting attack, EMPs, fireballs, slam attacks and other abilities as you work your way through the worm's 24 levels. One problem we had with Super Mega Worm was that the pacing between levels felt a little off. To start with, you don't actually unlock your first ability until well into the game, and by that stage tedium has settled in as you essentially are attacking the same way over and over. When you finally unlock spit, you have another toy to play with, but this pacing trend persists between each new skill unlock. The game feels as though it has as many peaks and troughs as the path of your worm.

What does help this is the myriad of different food sources you encounter. From talking cows and horses, to elephants, birds, balloonists, moms with strollers (and flying babies), army men, police cars, tanks and airplanes to name a few. You can even reach orbit by propelling yourself from vehicles and chew through the earth's many satellites and UFOs hovering about. Many of these fight back too of course, with RPG-toting army men dropping mines and shooting rockets that are best avoided.

Though it is a lot of fun chewing through everything with a giant worm, we can't help but feel there's more that could be done with the game, particularly to address pacing issues and make it more gratifying early on. There are also no online high scores or achievements in Super Mega Worm; something we thought would have been staple in a game like this, considering its flash origins and focus on scores and multipliers. With the official Death Worm game by Playcreek on the horizon too– toting a number of added game modes, locations and features– we can't help but feel gamers may want to wait to decide for themselves which version is best.

On the plus side, developers Deceased Pixel have also promised additional levels, enemies and modes in future updates, so it seems the battle for worm king has only just begun. In any case, be sure to play Effing Worms on Flash and check out the trailers to see what you're getting yourselves into and visit our forums for our readers' opinions on just how juicy this worm really is.

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Quest of Knights Onrush [Free] was originally thrown together by developer MoreGames and Chillingo to spearhead a marketing campaign for their then primary focus, Knights Onrush [$0.99], a castle defense game. It turns out that their promotional app, a side-scrolling arcade beat 'em-up, was even better received than the game it was promoting, and in April we revealed that it was being made into a full fledged game. That game, Knights Rush [App Store] is finally here.

Knights Rush takes the formula of the original game– what was essentially a limited, endless mode-only beat 'em up– and breathes the life of an entire campaign into it. Not shying away from that very definition, developer MoreGames envisioned an 'entire campaign' to mean 40 sizeable campaign levels over 8 unique worlds, and a battallion of 50 different enemy types and 8 giant bosses to clog the daylights out of. Not to mention two very different endless modes that improve greatly on its origins thanks to the huge library of art assets now available.

The campaign begins with a short in-game cinematic where your knight, after a little soul-searching, gets pulled into an alternate dimension. It's a no-fuss opener designed to get you into the action as soon as possible, as it's clear this is where the developer has spent most of their time. You start with a tutorial level, where you are soon introduced to two other knights to battle with. Before beginning each mission, you spawn in a portal room, where you can select from one of the three characters: a human Roman-esque knight, an other-world looking, dual scythe wielding knight, and a dwarven, hammer wielding knight. They each play very differently and have their own set of skills and perks to unlock.

The skill system itself needs some explanation, as it may not be apparent how it functions when first picking up the game. Each level, you begin by choosing a character, which is then spawned at level 1. Even if you come out of the first world at level 14, you'll still spawn in world 2 with your character reset. At first, this put me off, as I was having lots of fun with the progressive empowerement of my knight. In retrospect however, this seems to be a very clever implementation. Firstly, it allowed me to explore the breadth of each characters abilities over the campaign, mixing them in ways that I was not able to do in my first attempt. And secondly, it gave a nice sense of character scaling as I sliced through the 5 levels that make up each game world, leveling periodically without maxing out each and every skill.

Ultimately, each character has only 2 active spells that can be unlocked. Abilities are sorted into 'skills' and 'perks', and each level up you have access to 1 skill and a couple of perks. Perks supplement skills and your standard attacks, by adding benefits such as fire or ice to your attacks, or by increasing the rate at which you level or critical strike, or how much health is restored when you pick up health potions (or even how many additional skills or perks you earn each level). Skills on the other hand, include your two active abilities and several other passive abilities, such as attack strength or health bonuses. Each ability has 5 levels, and over the course of a world you'll generally be able to max out 3 or 4 of the reasonably lengthy list before having to reset.

As well as your active skills, the game includes a variety of consumable spells, from a crazy fox strapped with dynamite to your standard room-clearing freezes, proximity mines, or giant balls of energy. Though combat suffers a little from a tendency towards a truckload of frantic attack button mashing, the 3 skills nearly always at your disposal are crucial to surviving anything after about world 3. At this stage, the odds you face will progressively become more and more overwhelming and any previous thoughts of encroaching monotony are quickly swept away in the chaos. Unfortunately this doesn't extend to the huge, great looking boss enemies, who after the horde of enemies you have to wade through to get to, largely seem like pushovers. I would have liked to see a little more strategic varience to these encounters.

In any case it is clear that alot of time has been spent on the enemies in Knights Rush. Having 50 different enemy types is no small feat– but having them all looking unique and with their own individual abilities and attacks is simply astounding. You'll encounter a host of different enemy knights, swamp monsters, giant crabs, giant spiders, the undead, wizards, vikings, golden scorpions, jumping iron-maidens…and more. These are then backed up by the legion of mechanical devices that are littered across each of the worlds. Worlds are replete with spiked traps, falling blades, rotating saws, raining arrows, giant boulders that fall from the sky, cannons, ballistae– you name it, it's there. And in an interesting twist, these enemies can only be defeated by standard attacks (if at all).

Knights Rush has to be one of the most gorgeously detailed and painstakingly created game worlds we have seen on the iOS device. Each character and enemy is inked in a stylized fashion closely resembling that of Castle Crashers on XBL. The backdrops are equally lovingly rendered, richly detailed and set-off in layers to give a pseudo-3D effect that I absolutely love. Playing through the Super Endless Mode– where worlds and enemies are randomly generated as you progress– is a visual treat.

Finally, the standard Endless Mode rounds out the Knights Rush content, where levels you unlock in the campaign can be played endlessly. High scores for both endless modes are recorded in Chillingo's Crystal social platform, which offers additional replay value above and beyond the Campaign's 3 or so hours of game time (which can effectively be doubled or tripled if you decide to attempt Hard or Insane difficulties).

While some may initially be deterred by the few active skills available or the kitten-soft boss fights; you can't dispute that the sheer weight of content here resembles something more like what we'd expect from an expensive console downloadable title. That there are three very different knights to fight with further compounds the game's fun factor as you delve into their individual skill sets. All up, Knights Rush is a highly recommended addition to any action fan's game library, and should be a no-brainer pickup for beat 'em up fans. (Note, we did encounter a small bug where reloading the campaign following an endless mode sessions resulted in the wrong skill tree for our chosen knight, something we expect the developers will address soon but certainly not game breaking.)

If you're still on the fence, head over to our forums to read other readers' opinions and be sure to check out the (slightly outdated) gameplay trailer above as the game looks infinitely better in action.

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