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With the Major League All-Star Game right around the corner, America's pastime is getting into full swing. This marks a perfect time for developer Com2uS to release their follow up to last year's popular 9 Innings: Pro Baseball with the aptly titled 9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2011. This year's version features mostly the same simplistic play mechanics, but adds a great deal of authenticity by way of a Major League Ball Players Association license. While this isn't an MLB license (so no actual MLB logos, team names, or ballparks), it's a real boon for the baseball aficionado to be able to play the game with accurate player stats and real player photos. Another huge addition to this year's version is a card collecting mechanic that almost acts like a sub-game of it's own.

The first thing to note about this year's version of 9 Innings is that it utilizes the touch interface much better, whereas last year almost all the game navigation was handled through the use of the virtual controls. It feels more like it's made for this device rather than being shoehorned into working on it. This makes things like navigating the menus and choosing pitch location much more intuitive. You'll start off by choosing a team, and all the same teams from MLB are represented here in a generic form. The team colors and logos are a close enough representation that you don't really miss that they're not the actual MLB franchises.

Once a team is chosen you're given 25 player cards to represent your team's roster. The roster's are according to 2009, so there are a few players here and there that aren't on the correct team, but for the most part you're getting the actual players from that MLB team. The card dynamic is really neat, with each card carrying the real life stats of that player. Certain players will have special attributes as well, like hitting especially well against left handed pitchers or having an extra keen eye at the plate. Points are earned by playing games, with certain special achievements earning additional points, like striking out 3 batters in a row or hitting back to back home runs. These points can then be spent on upgrading each player's card and in turn increasing their overall stats.

A card shop is available to purchase extra packs of cards using these in-game points or even as in-app purchase by spending real life money, if you so wish. These new cards can then be used to swap out players from your team and mix up your roster. There's even cards for the team's manager and for cheerleaders. It's odd, as baseball doesn't have cheerleaders, but they can be looked at as a team's mascot. These cards can add special attributes to your team or players to give you an added boost in the stats department. The card collecting and player leveling adds a nice RPG-ish wrinkle to the game, and is even more fun for people who are into baseball stats, although you in no way have to be a baseball buff to enjoy the game.

Gameplay wise 9 Innings 2011 hasn't changed too much from last year's iteration. Hitting the ball requires just simply timing the pitch and pressing anywhere on the screen to swing, with icons for power hitting and bunting available as well. Pitching has you choosing a pitch type from the player's repertoire and then sliding a small baseball icon to the part of the strike zone you want it to go. When the pitch placement is set, a circle will enclose that position in the strike zone ,and the closer the circle is to that point when you tap the screen the more accurate your pitch will be. This mechanic becomes harder as your pitcher fatigues during the course of the game.

Defense is handled almost exclusively by the game for you, with minor options like deciding which base to throw to after fielding a hit and attempting pick off plays under your own control. A small portion of the offensive strategy is up to you as well, like deciding to advance runners or not, but by and large the game is mostly about batting and pitching, and while slightly basic it ends up being incredibly easy to play and fun.

Everything combined, 9 Innings 2011 makes for a fun, casual game of baseball with an added element of depth due to the player card system and leveling dynamic. It has much better graphics than last year's version, less basic and with more detail, but strangely the entire game is played in portrait view rather than the landscape view of the last game. The dev has stated in our forums that landscape mode will be coming in an update, which should be a welcome addition and provide a more comfortable way to play. It would also be nice to have some sort of roster update to get the statistics and players more current, although this doesn't really hurt the overall experience much.

With entertaining gameplay, a multi-season franchise mode, an excellent homerun derby mode, and endless possibilities for card collection and customization, 9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2011 is the strongest entry in the baseball game genre to date, and is recommended for both baseball fans and regular gamers alike.

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It seems the new fad on the App Store ever since developers got wind of the freemium model potentially succeeding is social games. Ngmoco has already carved a niche out for itself in the free world with its array of games like We Rule [Free], Zombie Farm [Free] by Playforge puts players to the task of growing a legion of undead, and of course, Zynga's social juggernaut which recently arrived, Farmville [Free] can hardly be overlooked. All of these games basically play the same, with some form of currency purchasable via micropayments, tasks you complete after a certain time interval, and tons of customization to keep you coming back for more.

Newcomer Astro Ape Studios has decided to throw their hat in to the social ring with Office Heroes, looking to capitalize on the hundreds of millions of people who waste their lives away playing social games every day. What makes Office Heroes slightly more clever than your average social game is that you waste your life away in game while wasting your life away out of game, while playing the game. (What a meta mouthful.)

Instead of tending a virtual field or kingdom, you have an incredibly customizable avatar who lives inside of a small office. Rather than tilling fields and planting corn, you buy your little dude a new computer and play solitaire, get him a coffee maker and fix a cup of joe, and other menial tasks with everyday items. As you level up you get access to even more menial tasks, and eventually a larger office to decorate with things like wallpaper, various types of flooring, pool tables, arcade machines, flatscreen TV's, and even a jacuzzi.

With gameplay that closely follows the typical social game template, Astro Ape is banking on the (admittedly sky high) novelty factor of its game to attract new players and keep them coming back for more. It's hard to say if they're going to be able to lure in the sizable player base required to make a game like this a success, but if my Facebook News Feed is any indication, people who like social games are always looking for a new game to sink their teeth (and time) in to.

Office Heroes was recently submitted to Apple for approval, and they're expecting to see it on the App Store in the next couple weeks.

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Big Pixel Studios, the guys behind both Piyo Blocks [$1.99 / Free] and Piyo Blocks 2 HD [$2.99 / Free] for the iPad, have a new game scheduled for release later this month. Meow Meow Happy Fight is a dual stick shooter for the iPhone with a delightfully ridiculous premise: Apparently, a cat from the future, 2336 to be precise, decides he is too happy. Naturally, the logical thing to do in that case is travel back in time to modern day Tokyo… to bring happiness and destruction.

I'm not entirely sure how this turns in to a basis for a dual stick shooter, and I can't wait to find out. Either way, Meow Meow Happy Fight looks like it has a great array of 12 power ups and 15 unlockable characters which even include silly things like a "cat ball", a cup of noodles, and something that looks like a vending machine. Meow Meow Happy Fight has tons of collectables, complete OpenFeint integration, and a similar bright pixel art style as the Piyu Blocks games. Check out the following gameplay trailer:

The thread on our forums has the developers participating in a discussion with other forum members excited for its release, and even though I'm admittedly a little tired of dual stick shooters, I can't wait to give this one a try. According to Big Pixel Studios, beta testing is completed and while it hasn't been submitted to Apple for approval yet, they're hoping to have everything ready to rock by the 3rd or 4th week of July.

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Few games inspire more heartfelt nostalgia than the classic LucasArts adventure games of the late 80's and early 90's. While we've still got our fingers and toes crossed that we'll eventually see similar "special edition" treatments to Maniac Mansion and/or Day of the Tentacle, we couldn't be happier that the Monkey Island series is being re-released with the level of intimate care that we've seen so far both with the previously released The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition [$7.99 / Free], and Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge [iPhone: $7.99 / Free - iPad: $9.99 / Free] which just hit the App Store mere moments ago.

Monkey Island 2 takes place after the events of the first Monkey Island where wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood is introduced and meets the cast of characters included in the game as he seeks out the pirate leaders and attempts to prove himself through three challenges. A ghost pirate named LeChuck is thrown in to the mix, along with the beautiful Elaine Marley. Without spoiling too much, the game concludes with romance, root beer, and fireworks. Even though playing the original is by no means required to enjoy the sequel, Monkey Island is filled with great writing, silly characters, funny situations, and often extremely odd solutions to the problems that Guybrush must overcome which is really worth checking out– Especially considering the fantastic job LucasArts did on the iPhone port of the special edition release.

Monkey Island 2 opens with our familiar protagonist Guybrush Threepwood setting the scene for his next adventure. Now that LeChuck is no more, he decides to search for the treasure of "Big Whoop", and in typical Guybrush fashion, he has no idea where it is, has no way to get there, and doesn't really know if it even exists at all. Regardless, this hasn't stopped him in the past, and it certainly won't stop him now. Of course no LucasArts adventure game could ever be as straight forward as finding out where some treasure is, figuring out a way to get there, then digging it up, and it doesn't take long before you're toe to toe with Largo LaGrande, LeChuck's old henchman. One thing leads to another, and LeChuck returns, turning your simple treasure hunt in to yet another epic battle with the ghost (now zombie) pirate.

With a development team that was nearly identical to that of the original Secret of Monkey Island, the sequel shares all of the same fantastic writing and cartoonish charm. Monkey Island 2 is hilarious at times, and incredibly cheesy at others, but manages to maintain a highly entertaining witty atmosphere the whole way through. The port of the original to the iPhone was a load of fun, with the only real complaint being the control system which treated the touchscreen like a trackpad which you used to move the in-game cursor around. Thankfully, this has been replaced by a new default control scheme in the sequel which works like many other iPhone adventures games where you just touch areas in the game world that you want to move to, or objects you want to interact with.

Interactive objects highlighted on right.

The special edition of Monkey Island 2 also has several other refinements over the first, my personal favorite being the highlighting system that shows you objects and areas that you can interact with. Tapping the screen with two fingers makes everything interactive glow, easily allowing you to see things you've missed, or other things to try. This is an incredibly welcome change from the standard tap/click on absolutely everything once you get stuck in an area. This two finger tap also illuminates doors you can walk through, making it very easy to see where you're able to go so you don't miss anything on your journey.

If you do get stuck, Monkey Island 2 features the same great hint system found in the original where you can get hints which initially start out extremely vague to push you in the right direction which eventually ramp up to flat out telling you where to go and what to do. Having played quite a few classic adventure game ports on the iPhone, this really is the best approach as you never need to leave the game to check a walkthrough online, and it's usually much more fun to just get a small hint to send you in the right direction instead of just reading exactly what to do. (Of course, that's there if you need it.)

iPad top, iPhone bottom – Comparing both graphical styles.

Monkey Island 2 also has the incredibly superfluous yet amazingly cool classic graphics included which blew out mind when we first saw the previous special edition. By default you can play the game with its redone graphics, stellar voiceovers, and the toolbar of actions that Guybrush is capable of. Swiping two fingers across the screen causes the game to fade out in to its original pixelated glory with the top half of the screen displaying the original game with the set of actions below.

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge launched with separate iPad and iPhone versions of the game, and while I would have loved there to be one universal version for both devices, the iPad game is definitely the one to have. Not only does it have the same adventure from its iPhone counterpart, but currently for an additional two bucks (assuming you own an iPad) you get high resolution graphics and audio commentary. On quite a few areas of the game, you're able to tap a microphone icon in the top right corner and listen to the creators talk about wherever you are in game. It's not exactly a killer feature that's worth getting upset over if you only have an iPhone or iPod touch, but it is a nice addition.

The one thing that is a bit of a disappointment is that LucasArts flaunts these fantastic looking high resolution art assets in the iPad version, but played on my iPhone 4, the iPhone version is disappointingly low resolution in comparison. It still looks good, but I would have loved to have seen some Retina Display support in Monkey Island 2, I'm hopeful for future updates that might beef up the graphics, but it seems doubtful that audio commentary will ever make its way to the iPhone.

I could go on and on about how great the Monkey Island series is, how wonderful any game build on the SCUMM engine is, and the genius of the original creators Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman, but really this is just a game you need to play. LucasArts is covering all its bases with this launch, with free lites corresponding to both the full iPhone or iPad versions. If you've never played an adventure game before, I can't think of a better place to start. The Monkey Island series is great, and the few minor refinements added to the sequel makes this one of the most accessible point and click (point and tap?) games on the App Store. Download the lite version and give it a try, if the game hooks you in, chances are you will enjoy the entirety of both Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2.

On the other hand, if you're ever played a Monkey Island game before, I doubt you even made it this far in this review before just clicking the first iTunes link you could find and downloading the game for whatever device you own.

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The endless high score game is a popular genre in the App Store, as Doodle Jump and it's 5 million downloads will attest to. One of the more recent titles to catch our eye is Oddy Smog's Misadventure by two-man developer Medusa. At first glance you might just dismiss Oddy Smog as a clone of Glu Mobile's Jump O'Clock, and while true they share similarities at the very basic level Oddy Smog offers a pretty different experience that we're finding hard to put down.

Oddy is just a small bit of a much larger mass of smog working it's way upward to expel out of the machine that created it. He decides that he doesn't want to be a part of this pollution any longer, and so breaks out on his own ahead of the rest of the smog. He must use the different gears inside the vent to propel himself upwards faster than the mass can follow him, and one wrong move will engulf him back in the dirty blackness from which he came. It's a charming premise with equally charming graphics and music to accompany it. The vent you travel up is rendered in 3D giving it some depth, and Oddy himself is a billowing, lively little puff of smog that manages to have a lot of personality for being essentially a black circle with eyes. There's just something endearing about Oddy, and you find yourself rooting for him to escape his smoggy pursuer.

Holding the right side of the screen latches Oddy onto a gear he comes into contact with, and letting go launches him using the spinning gear's inertia. You don't shoot straight off the gear like you would in Dizzypad for example, and this aspect takes a bit of getting used to when you first start playing the game. Touching the left side of the screen makes Oddy jump in midair, and you can only jump once between touching either gears or the walls of the vent. If you do launch yourself into the wall, Oddy will climb a short distance and then jump off by himself and from there you can latch onto another gear or perform a midair jump to get where you need to go. Occasionally another errant smog blob like Oddy will be chained to the wall and if you jump into these guys you can release them. This acts as the score multiplier, and will multiply your total height by the number of prisoners you catch.

There are different types of gears to latch onto, some can only be grabbed for a short period forcing you to act quickly, and others will propel you high into the air letting you easily cover a good stretch of distance. Other special items do similar things, like a spaceship or teleportation pod that will advance Oddy for you. All these game elements combine to make for a really engaging experience. It's a great feeling to quickly hit a series of gears or narrowly escape the impending doom of the approaching smog, and the risk/reward aspect of trying to free prisoners adds a lot to the formula. There's some hints that this might not be such an 'endless' game, and that there's the possibility of Oddy actually escaping the vent, although I have yet to make it that far.

A couple of small gripes about the game are present, and the most notable is the lack of high score tracking. A game like this is just meant for such a thing, although the ability to post your scores to Twitter helps somewhat. The dev has conceded in the game's forum thread that this is due to waiting and seeing how Apple's Game Center will turn out, and likely a social platform of some type will be added down the line. Another problem I had was due to the random generation of the level, and every so often a section would be too barren for me to latch onto any gears and I'd helplessly fall back into the pursuing smog. Finally, there's no screen flip option which can be pretty annoying for a game that encourages the use of headphones. None of these issues should deter anyone from trying Oddy Smog's Misadventure, and for randomly generated high score game enthusiasts this is one that's not to be missed.

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Owen Goss of Streaming Colour Studios had his third game land on the App Store recently. LandFormer [Free] follows Monkeys in Space: Escape to Banana Base Alpha [$1.99 and Dapple [$2.99 / Free] and is a puzzle game where players use a set of six tools to raise or lower squares on a five by five grid to make everything level. LandFormer is the completed product of the 360iDev Game Jam which we covered in October, and later checked in with Owen at GDC to see its progress. Looking back on the early concepts and in-development screenshots, it's really cool to see how far LandFormer has come.

Gameplay amounts to loading a level where the various tiles on the grid are at different heights. You then touch on the grid where you want one of the tools centered, then either press up or down to raise or lower the terrain. Each level begins by telling you how many moves were used when making the level, and once you make your way out of the easy set of levels, hitting this target is much more difficult than it sounds. Thankfully, there is an undo button.

Like a lot of unconventional puzzle games, Dapple being a prime example, the concept is a little hard to describe but will make sense as soon as you watch the video:

The best part about LandFormer, and where we've really got to tip out hats to Streaming Colour, is how the game is being sold. You can download LandFormer for free, which gets you access to the ten tutorial levels and complete access to the user created level system– You just can't save any of your creations or downloads once you quit the game.

If you decide you enjoy the game, a $1.99 in app purchase unlocks an additional 50 levels of multiple difficulties along with the ability to store user created levels. Also, if the land forming theme isn't doing it for you, there's a 99¢ Discotheque theme that changes things up a bit. Either purchase will remove the in-game advertisements. There are plans for both additional level packs and themes available in the future as additional DLC as well. I've always really liked games that take this sales approach, as you risk nothing by trying the game out, don't need to bother with a lite version, and you know exactly what you're getting in to before you decide to shell out any cash.

The level creation and sharing system works quite well, and will likely provide a ton of replay value between level pack releases if a community springs up of people sharing levels. The level editor is basically just playing the game in reverse, and using the tool set you mess up the terrain as much as possible. From there, you can share levels via email, which really is just trading a fancy landformer:// URL. Because these levels are just cleverly encoded URL's, they can also be shared via forums, text message, or wherever else you copy the URL to. If you've downloaded LandFormer already, tapping this link on your device should load up the game and allow you to play the level that Owen Goss posted in the LandFormer thread.

I've had a lot of fun with the game, and if it has one flaw (and it's odd to even call this that), it's that it can be too difficult at times. There isn't any kind of hint system, and it's entirely possible to just get flat out stuck on some levels. Thankfully, all of the levels are accessible, so you can just skip the ones you get stuck on, but it would be really nice to sacrifice your move count to get a prod in the right direction instead of just skipping ahead. But, if you like puzzle games that can leave you stumped for who knows how long, LandFormer is a game you definitely need to try.

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Last month we previewed the isometric 8-bit graphics puzzler eBoy FixPix [App Store] from eBoy / Delicious Toys. Heavy on the pixel art (in a very good way), the game challenges you to tilt your iPhone to and fro in order to arrange the various layers of the onscreen scene into a coherent view, in an exercise that should be linked in Webster's entry for the word "parallax." Tilt, tilt, score! is the name of the game here. It's one that gets definite points for uniqueness. The game went live in the App Store a few weeks back and somehow slipped past our radar.

I played through the game this morning and found it to be a charming title that's half puzzle game, half graphical toy. To win the game you must "fix" 100 scenes, but you are able to skip ones that are too mind-bogglingly difficult. (I noted that some of the skipped scenes did not repeat in my play-through, so there are more than 100 scenes provided in the app.) It's up to you to form the lovely pixellated scenes into full coherency, which is at times a particularly challenging task, and the reward is seeing the scene properly rendered.

I, personally, love 8-bit art and am highly impressed by what's presented here. Those who are not enamored of the style might find the experience wanting, however, as the game can be played from start to finish in under half an hour. I was pleased to see a link to some of the included 8-bit art as wallpaper on the victory screen.

Have a look at the developer's gameplay video to get a feel for the experience.

You can decide for yourself whether this is a game or a work of art. Whatever the case, eBoy FixPix is a very unique iPhone experience and I urge readers to have a look.

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After an epic wait this morning, I managed to get my hot little hands on an iPhone 4. After rushing home and loading it up with every game I thought would be worth trying on the device, the results were somewhat predictable. The small handful of games that have been released or updated to with support for the Retina Display are gorgeous, and everything else both loads faster and performs better. If for any reason you were sitting on the fence trying to decide if upgrading to an iPhone 4 (or the presumed 4th generation iPod touch when it's released) is worth it for gaming, it absolutely is.

I know we're kind of beating a dead horse at this point, what with posting high-resolution screenshots of the few games that take advantage of the Retina Display already, but the quality of the screen is truly something you need to see with your own eyes to fully appreciate. I was at the WWDC keynote, heard everything Steve had to say about it first hand, spent the following weeks wondering what it was going to be like, and it still exceeded my expectations. The pixels are so tightly packed on the 3.5" screen that games running at 960×640 look more like screenshot renderings you'd see in some kind of a magazine advertisement than any actual game you've played before.

Being unable to distinguish individual pixels really does make things look like they're just printed on the screen. Flight Control [99¢] is unbelievably crisp, and while better graphics doesn't change the gameplay in the slightest, the difference is even more amazing when I run the game side by side both on my new iPhone 4 and old iPhone 3GS. 3D games like Real Racing [$4.99] look absolutely fantastic, and even run at a great frame rate to boot.

One thing that is apparent in these 3D games is that while the output resolution has been increased, the polygon count of the in-game models seems to have remained the same. This can make blocky models stand out even more, and while it wasn't much of an issue in Real Racing, the low-detail players in the recently releasedNCAA Football HD [$7.99] really do stick out like a sore thumb as their little 3D stick legs prance about the field. I expect this to improve over time, as both of these games were likely quick and dirty upscale jobs. 3D games designed from the get go with the iPhone 4 in mind in the future will likely be where the true eye candy is.

Speaking of EA's NCAA Football HD, having yet another platform for developers to target could lead to an even messier App Store. It's too early to really tell how this is going to play out, but currently it seems EA is content splitting their releases in to a normal release for the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and the iPod Touch along with a "HD" release for the iPhone 4, and finally a "for iPad" release for the iPad. This gets even more confusing when you consider how many developers are already labeling things as "HD" for the iPad even though technically speaking neither the iPhone 4 or the iPad are a HD device. Let's all just cross our fingers that developers eventually just settle on single universal releases of their games as I'm sure everyone would rather deal with larger file sizes than potentially purchasing the same game three (or more) times.

Currently the best demonstration of the new gyroscope controls available on the iPhone 4 is ngmoco's Eliminate: Gun Range [99¢]. While the game is just a basic shooting gallery, controlling your aim both by tilting the iPhone 4 as well as moving it about in 3D space is worth 99¢ for the novelty alone. Real Racing also has gyroscope controls but overall they didn't make much of a difference compared to the regular version.

After fiddling around in both games, however, I was really am impressed with just how precise the sensor inside the iPhone is… Although the current implementations feel a tad gimmicky at this point instead of really adding any real benefits to gameplay similar to the iPhone 3GS compass-controlled games. To be fair, we don't believe either Firemint or ngmoco had actual devices in hand to test these games with, and it stands to reason that each implementation will improve once they're able to work outside of the iPhone simulator.

Just like 3D games that fully harness the power of the A4 chip, I expect it will also be a while before developers realize what's possible with the gyroscope. There's definitely some amazing potential waiting to be unleashed here, and maybe not even by using the gyroscope strictly as an input method. For instance, I suspect using gyroscope data could even allow you to play tilt controlled games in a moving vehicle, though haven't gotten confirmation on that possibility.

As far as older games running on the iPhone 4, they load tons faster, so much so that many of my favorite simple games (obligatory Doodle Jump [99¢] plug) have almost no load time at all. Also, unlike the iPad where running games in 2X mode makes most games look blurry or blocky, since the screen size in the iPhone 4 is identical all the old games look just like they did on the previous iPhones. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say they look a little better as often times text is rendered at the higher resolution, and the Retina Display has better color reproduction.

In my initial tests, the battery life on the iPhone 4 seems in line with what Apple has been boasting, and I've both been able to play games and use my phone for other tasks with substantially less drain on my overall battery percentage. None of my tests have been that scientific, but practically everyone with an iPhone 4 is reporting similar battery experiences. A bigger battery obviously means more play time, and who doesn't want that?

Overall the iPhone 4 is most definitely a worthy upgrade for any serious App Store gamer. I'm sure we'll see a similarly specced out iPod touch this fall (or potentially even sooner) that might be worth waiting for if you dislike AT&T, but overall I've been extremely happy with my day of gaming on the iPhone 4.

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While we're all busy fiddling with multitasking and obsessively organizing our apps in to folders, developers are hard at work to fully utilize all the other things under the hood of iOS 4. Firemint and Secret Exit are among the first studios taking advantage of iOS 4's new anti-aliasing capabilities.

Anti-aliasing is used to minimize jagged edges found in curved and diagonal lines displayed utilizing the grid of square pixels that make up the displays we use today. Using anti-aliasing, the GPU of the iPhone intelligently decides what color to display on pixels that border the edges of 3D objects to make them blend in to the background and appear more crisp.

As you can see from the above image, the A on the left has no aliasing, while the edges of the A on the right have been blended with the background color. This is a gross over-simplification of how anti-aliasing works, but if you weren't aware before it will at least give you an idea of what you're looking at in the following sets of screenshots:

The effects of the anti-aliasing is incredibly apparent when you focus on the bill of the duck in both images. Secret Exit also posted additional screenshots in our forums, and in a second post explaining the technical details of anti-aliasing in Zen Bound 2 which mentions the performance cost being too high to utilize the effect in older devices.

In somewhat related Zen Bound 2 news, they also announced that it will soon be available on multiple platforms. Joining the existing iPad Zen Bound 2 [$4.99] is an upcoming iPhone, iPod touch, PC, and Mac version. Recent MacBook owners will be able to use the multi-touch trackpad or even a Magic Mouse to control the game just like the iPhone.

Real Racing [$4.99] saw an update yesterday which not only made the game iPhone 4 friendly complete with high resolution graphics, but also brought anti-aliasing to the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch. It might not have been immediately obvious when you fired up the game since updating, but take a look at a screenshot I took today compared to a screenshot captured for our our review over a year ago:

Looking at the line following the top of the dashboard, the A pillar of the car, and edges of the banner over the makes the new anti-aliasing really pop out comparing the two screenshots. This is only the tip of the iceberg, too. Now that new features like this have been unlocked for developers, it should be really fun to see what they come up with.

Anti-aliasing being supported by the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch is also good news for people who might not be immediately upgrading to the iPhone 4. While you'll obviously be lacking the Retina Display, if developers start implementing anti-aliasing in all their 3D games, everything will look substantially better on your existing device without needing to do anything other than download some game updates.

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Last month the free version of Bar Oasis [99¢ / Free] hit the App Store, and really took me by surprise by how oddly unique the entire game is. There are some elements of time management, a tilt-powered drink pouring gameplay component, and a fairly captivating story told through your encounters with the various customers of your bar. I had some minor annoyances playing the game, but thankfully the free version is fully featured enough that you will be able to tell whether or not you can deal with these before jumping in to the paid game.

The center of the game, which strangely enough is barely touched on in the iTunes description, is the first person narrative that begins with you stumbling across the Bar Oasis, seeing a job posting, and deciding to try your hand at mixing drinks. You are instantly hired by a character known as "the Boss", who shows you the ropes and explains that drinks are never poured using jiggers because pouring straight from the bottle looks so much cooler. (A point that is hard to argue.) This is where the tutorial begins, as the Boss shows you around the bar and explains how to mix drinks.

The main view of the game has you facing across from your customers, and swiping right or left moves from seat to seat. Swiping down shifts the view to the shelves behind the bar where you will find various bottles of liquor and glassware. Just like when looking at the bar, swiping right or left switches shelves, and swiping up takes you back to the bar. When the game starts, you have a bare minimum of available liquor to mix with, but as the game progresses you slowly unlock more types of booze to make even more complicated drinks.

Dragging up looks below the bar where you'll find a cash register and telephone, along with a menu and recipe book. Mixing drinks feels a lot like a time management game, as you're balancing seven different customers with indicators that show their mood which changes based on how long they're waiting. When a customer arrives, you slide them a coaster, take their order, then consult the menu to select their drink. From there, you turn around to the liquor shelves, select the glass and ingredients, then proceed to pouring.

Pouring drinks requires tilting the iPhone like a bottle, and pouring out the various liquors in to your glass. It's cool the first few times you do it, but begins to get repetitive especially since when you mess up when pouring a drink you have to go all the way back to the menu, re-select the drink, pull all the ingredients off the shelf, and start over again.

The game continues like this, with more and more customers entering the bar, each with their own associated story they reveal as you get to know them. Overall, it's a really cool experience, but you will need a lot of patience to make your way through the whole game. Everything seems to take a very long time, from switching screens from the bar, to below the bar, back to the liquor shelves, and when you're making drinks. It doesn't take a very long time until you get tired of the different screens fading in and out, and all the different popup confirmations you need to tap through to make drinks.

The pay off is in the story, which you will either get sucked in to or be annoyed by its pacing. There is a LOT of text in this game, and it's often presented in single sentences which also take a long time to get through. Personally, I read extremely quickly and often find myself annoyed with any RPG that restricts how fast you can blow through text. You can tap to make text appear quicker, but it still feels like the whole pace of the game is much slower than it should be.

Bar Oasis is a game you really should try if you've found yourself sucked in to games like Phoenix Wright [$4.99] and other story-driven RPG's. The lite version features a full tutorial, and it won't take long at all for you to determine whether or not this is a game you can get in to or if like me you're frustrated by the slow pacing. The full version features a full story mode and 100 drink recipes that you slowly come across and can access in the secondary "Make Drinks" mode where the game acts like a virtual recipe book of sorts.

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