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If there were ever a genre in need of reinvention, it’s the marble shooter. As a genre it’s been around for nearly 15 years now, and the two big names, Luxor and Zuma, are pretty much indistinguishable. Swap ancient Egypt for the Inca Empire and you’ve pretty much got the same game. PopCap stepped things up recently with Zuma’s Revenge [$1.99 / $4.99 ], which added boss fights and made a few alterations to the formula. But Luxor Evolved [ $0.99 ], MumboJumbo’s answer to Zuma’s evolution, is feeling like the genre’s next frontier.

It shouldn’t be mind blowing that Luxor Evolved looks different from its predecessors, but it sort of is. Between a new setting in space and wild geometric art it hardly looks like the same game at all, making this the genre’s first serious face lift since 2003. Of course, it is the same game—it’s still about matching and destroying strings of colored marbles, and it even has Luxor’s usual ancient Egyptian theme. But this time it’s space Egypt, and space Egypt has a few new tricks.

Like the last two Luxor titles, you control a ball launcher that moves along the bottom of the screen. Strings of colored marbles follow complicated tracks toward your (space) pyramid, which is unusually prone to death by colored marble. You stop them by launching other colored marbles into the strings to match three or more of the same color. With the help of a little aim assistance, this can all be managed on a touch screen as easily as it ever was with a mouse.

Luxor Evolved has a ton going on at any given moment. Not only are you matching marbles, you’re grabbing the treasures and heart pieces that explode out of them. Treasures are tallied to unlock secret levels, and heart pieces add up into extra lives when you’ve collected a few. You also need to rock your score if you want to level up, because the better you do the more powerups you get.

The powerups are my favorite feature of Luxor Evolved. Every point you earn goes to filling up a progress bar after each level. Whenever it hits its limit something new unlocks. This might be a brand new powerup—and they can do a ton of things, like blow up marbles, paint them in a single color, reverse their path and so on—or it might be an upgrade to an existing powerup. They have a lot of room to grow.

The extra-nice thing about the way the progress is measured is that doing poorly on a boss level means unlocking a huge pile of things. The bosses are complicated. Taking inspiration from bullet hell shooters, they protect their weak points with huge streams of marbles. You have to clear away enough of them to reach the weapons, and then the central ring of marbles. The only problem is that they keep coming back. If you manage to shoot your way through everything you expose the core, and one more shot will destroy it.

This can all be a little challenging, especially if, like me, you aim poorly when it counts. But there’s a bonus: if you really struggle and take a long time on a boss, you’ll pick up a ton of extra treasures and hearts and points. When you finally succeed you’ll be well rewarded with a pile of upgrades and unlocks. If one of them is a secret level, you’re in for an even better reward: they’re built as homages to classic games like Pac-Man and Marble Madness.

And let’s not downplay the new aesthetic. With its intentionally retro stylings, it looks like nothing we’ve seen from any of the big marble shooters before. That new style extends to every part of the game, right down to the interface, and a collection of techno tracks really rounds out the package. For the choosy, Luxor Evolved includes a selection of aim assist options and control tweaks—all of them variations on drag and tap controls. There are multiple difficulty modes to play through, too, and the usual assortment of achievements and leaderboards.

It’s not all good, though. The game currently doesn’t work for anyone who isn’t on iOS 5 (a patch is in the works), and even there I ran into a few bad crashes. One took a good chunk of progress with it. There’s also a popup for MumboJumbo’s other games on load, so heads up to the ad averse. I’m not the biggest fan of the series of aggressive price drops that have occurred since launch either, seeing the game drop from $6.99 to 99¢ incrementally over just the first several days, but at least that means those of you hopping on now will get a great deal.

Honestly, this game surprised me. Marble shooters have a real been-there, done-that vibe for me. I love them, but how many times can you play the same game with a new name? Luxor Evolved isn’t a full reimagining, but it’s different enough to feel exciting again, and it’s hooked me thoroughly. The issues are worth being aware of, but if you’re on iOS 5 and you hop on now you should be just fine. And really, classic marble-shooting gameplay in a fresh new package? That’s an evolution I can get behind.

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I’m a huge fan of rollercoasters. There’s something about the grandiose structures, raw speed and pure adrenaline that just appeal to me. Maybe that’s why I’m such a fan of Madcoaster [$0.99], an endless runner with a rollercoaster twist. Hitting all the major points for the genre, Madcoaster’s interesting premise is enough to put it ahead of other, more generic titles.

As an endless runner, Madcoaster doesn’t add too much to the genre in terms of innovation. Your rollercoaster moves from left to right on randomized tracks with the primary goal being to jump over track gaps and avoid the chasms. Meanwhile, you’ll encounter a wide variety of birds and animals sitting on the track that earn you extra points if you hit them. A few standard power-ups (such as a coin magnet, speed-up, and rollercoaster jetpack) are also occasionally placed throughout levels. There are also plenty of coins to collect, but they only add to the score and aren’t collected for anything else.

As you progress, the track layouts get more complicated and the rollercoaster (obviously) speeds up. Eventually, the game will end once you lose all your lives, with the game scoring you based on total distance traveled and total points (with leaderboards for both, respectively).

In addition to the standard score chase, Madcoaster also offers a leveling mechanic based on objectives. As you hit all the level’s goals, your rollercoaster gets a visual overhaul and the raw score multiplier goes up. Being able to permanently raise your score multiplier is an interesting feature, but it does take away some score parity and penalizes score chasers that don’t focus on objectives.

Visuals are cartoony and vibrant, and look great on a retina-iPhone. There’s no retina support yet for the new iPad, but Madcoaster looks fine regardless. While gameplay on both device sizes works well, I did find the iPhone screen to be a bit more cluttered with information than the iPad.

As a rollercoaster-themed endless runner, you’d expect the framerate to be fast and smooth and for the most part Madcoaster doesn’t disappoint. The game does a great job with its sense of speed, especially in the latter portions of a run. I did encounter some minor slowdown on a current generation iPod touch, but for current iPhones and iPads, I encountered no problems.

One area that Madcoaster does well is its colorful and varied backdrops. Every 1000m the rollercoaster enters a cave that serves as a gateway to a new location. Environments include a Halloween-themed twilight grounds, the innards of a volcano, deep within a jungle and even the pyramids of Egypt. Each region also has its own music as well as unique animals and birds, which become important with later objectives.

While the variety goes a way towards addressing the inevitable monotony of some endless runners, not every environment is created equal. Each location has foreground flora and fauna with some actually blocking the bottom rails, making it a bit difficult to time jumps and landings if you’re close to the bottom of the screen. Some may consider it a challenge, while others may find it simply frustrating. Another minor complaint is that some locations are locked behind IAP. However, considering that you can eventually unlock all IAP with a good enough run, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

As mentioned above, Madcoaster doesn’t stray too far from the endless runner formula, but it does do a good job executing most of the elements we love in the genre. Combine this with the rollercoaster motif and decent visuals and there’s little reason for you not to at least check it out.  Madcoaster may not have the lasting power of a Jetpack Joyride, but there’s still plenty here for an enjoyable ride.

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New iPads are popping up all over Asia, and aside from a variety of unboxing and comparison videos, it seems that the first set of GLBenchmark 2.1 [$4.99] results have come in.

MacRumors explains:

Benchmarking the graphics performance of the new iPad also showed significant improvement over the iPad 2, with benchmarking tests boosting performance from 90 frames per second (fps) to 140 fps in the GLBenchmark 2.1.1 Egypt offscreen test and from 146 fps to 250 fps in the GLBenchmark 2.1.1 Pro offscreen test. Similar data had previously been uploaded to GLBenchmark’s site, although its authenticity has not been confirmed.

If these results turn out to be true, the new iPad could be a absolute beast in the gaming department. Ever since the announcement of the new iPad, our community has been justifiably worried about the graphical performance. I really hope these benchmarks are real, because, wow.

Keep in mind, like most benchmarks, take these alleged results with a grain of salt. We’ll have to wait to get our iPads on Friday to see how the actual real-world on-screen performance actually is.

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Yesterday, TouchArcade attended EA's Naughty or Nice game event in New York and spent time with a number of just-announced titles on the way from Chillingo. Perhaps the most stand-0ut game of the lot is Zombie Wonderland 2, sequel to the June 2010 release Zombie Wonderland [App Store]. As in the original, the upcoming sequel puts you in the shoes of Chuck, the renowned Zombie Cleaner of the pleasant little '50s Americana town, Niceville. While, before, your task was to keep the homes of your clients as clean and as zombie-free as possible, your new order of business is a bit more complex a proposition.

Now, while we aren't allowed to get into to many details as far as the storyline goes, just yet, I can tell you that the rooms you will be defending (and cleaning) are, this time around, spread throughout time. From the local museum, which serves as a kind of time-hub, you will be traveling to medieval castles, ancient Egyptian crypts, Viking halls, and ancient Japanese dwellings — all riddled with zombies that make terrible stains when dispatched.

Some of the tasks that must be completed involve several stages set in different locations and / or times. For instance, one of your clients, Vlad the vampire, has given up drinking blood and moved over to milk. So you must travel through time to get him a glass of milk by milking a cow in a zombie-swarmed barn. Each of the temporally far-flung locales features its own mini-boss that appears and drives the zombies into attack frenzies that make the task of keeping the rooms clean and zombie-free quite a challenge.

While the original release featured four locations, four weapons, and five types of zombies, Zombie Wonderland 2 delivers 25 locations, 25 weapons, and 22 types of zombies, as well as a mega-boss zombie. Some of the weapons available are special bullets, medusa bullets, gnawers, turrets, lightning bottles, killer grass, the brain toy — even a Roomba(-like robotic vacuum). Weapons can be damaged by zombies, but can also be repaired. New weapons can be quickly bought via in-app purchases or unlocked through dedicated gameplay.

Some areas of the town's museum are visibly under construction, and serve as placeholders for additional areas that will arrive in updates, down the road.

We'll take a closer look at Zombie Wonderland 2 when it arrives sometime before Christmas, but, however we rate it, it's sure to is sure to take the crown as far as number of genres represented. This survival cleaning, time management, tower defense zombie shooter will be priced at $0.99.

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We’ve got some screens of Crescent Moon’s Siegecraft, a hot-looking fixed-weapon castle defense game set to hit the iPad and iPhone later this September.

Siegecraft is all about putting you in control of various kinds of turrets against several different types of hordes: catapults, ballistas, rams, siege towers, and trebuchets will be your weapons against boats, vikings, vikings in boats, knights, and other ‘races’ who wish to take the object or place you’re protecting in Siegecraft's instance-based levels. One of the most remarkable things about the title is its visual appeal, which is why we want to show it to you.

The camera perspective might be pretty tight, but know that this is a 3D rendered game and it leans on a robust physics engine, which should make for some additional fun if it proves to be solid in final release form.

Aside from the look and tech, though, the game does have another edge: race-based play. In its initial form, you’ll be able to play as Knights, Vikings and Samurai across their own unique campaigns. Down the line in updates, Crescent Moon is planning to expand on this with Orcs, legions of the Undead, Egyptians, Romans, and men from Sparta.

Looks cool enough and, surely, the race thing will give it the edge it needs to feel like a new thing amongst the throngs of other fixed-turret games out there. We’ll keep following it as it worms its way through Crescent's innards.

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Gobtron [$1.99] from Juicy Beast Studio started out as a Flash game a few years ago, and last week an iOS port made its way into the App Store. Gobtron is a type of castle defense game where you play as a gigantic pink monster who must fend off puny human attackers throughout 5 ages of history. The interesting thing is how the Gobtron goes about defending himself, primarily using a string of snot from his nose but also utilizing other bodily functions for additional attack types. It’s a bit on the gross side but done in a lighthearted way, and Gobtron actually offers some pretty fun gameplay with its unique control mechanics and weapon upgrade system.

Gobtron takes place over 18 levels in 5 eras, starting out in the Stone Age and moving to Ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages, modern-day military, and finally a futuristic age. In each level enemies will approach the base of the massive Gobtron in waves, feebly attacking with their weapons which chip away at his health meter. The enemies’ attacks start out as small spears and rocks in the stone age, and evolve into more deadly weapons like guns, aircraft, and ground-based vehicles.

Gobtron deals with these enemies by flicking his snot at them like a whip, which sucks them up into his nose. This is accomplished by dragging a hanging booger upwards with your finger and letting it go, slingshotting it down and splatting on the enemies. It’s crude but intuitive, and it’s really fun to nail a group of enemies with a well placed snot sling. As you progress new weapons become available like a booger bomb, a defensive saliva wall, and a belch attack which inflicts damage to everyone on the screen.

Upon completion of each level DNA points area awarded which act as currency for upgrading your bodily offense. Each attack, as well as your health meter, can be upgraded several times. There’s even a special fart attack which can be unlocked after maxing out the rest of your moves. That’s right, a fart attack. It may be crude, but the upgrading aspect is engaging and the unique mechanics of performing your attacks works well with the touch screen. There’s just something really fun about growing your Gobtron stronger to take on the increasingly difficult swarms of enemies.

The somewhat gross subject matter of Gobtron is toned down by the cute and colorful graphics in the game. Gobtron himself is just a big, dumb, pink monster who is adorable in his own way. My biggest criticism of Gobtron is that it’s a fairly easy game overall, and I completed every level on the first try which didn’t take much more than an hour. It’s a fun time, but some reason to come back to the game after completion, like an endless mode or leaderboards, would be a nice addition. Gobtron does use OpenFeint and Game Center for achievements, but unfortunately my completed achievements failed to unlock on the Game Center side of things.

Gobtron is one of those games that could be recommended just based on the weirdness factor alone, but it’s also a unique take on a defense game and is really pretty fun anyway. It’s a bit too short and light on content, but what’s here is worth playing if you can deal with the low brow nature of the game. There’s further impressions in our forums, or you can check out the Flash version which is nearly identical, but if you’re looking for an interesting take on castle defense with silly graphics and crude humor then Gobtron is worth checking out.

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On Thursday, prior to the launch of the iPad 2, we posted a look at some early numbers from a suite of benchmarks run on a pre-launch, iPad 2 media unit. These included a custom benchmark written by Guy English to gauge the graphics performance of an iOS device, which showed Apple's new tablet to boast a dramatically improved fill-rate as compared to the original iPad.

For example, on my original iPad, with 200 on-screen sprites, the framerate dropped to 45 fps. On the iPad 2, with 400 on-screen sprites, the framerate remained at 65 fps. On the iPad 1, Guy’s demo app dropped below 60 fps with about 100 animated sprites; on the iPad 2, it didn’t drop below 60 fps until there were over 750 animated sprites.

Since then, we've seen the iPad 2 land in stores and additional performance reports start to surface, now that folks can get their hands on one. One such report was posted by AnandTech who has put the iPad 2's graphics processor through its paces using GLBenchmark 2.0, an application written to gauge OpenGL ES 2.0 performance. They are also indicating that Apple's new A5 system-on-a-chip contains a dual-core configuration of Imagination Technologies' graphics processor, the PowerVR SGX543MP2, which comes as no surprise.

Architecturally the 543MP2 has more than twice the compute horsepower of the SGX 535 used in Apple's A4. Each shader pipeline can execute twice the number of instructions per clock as the SGX 535, and then there are four times as many pipes in an SGX 543MP2 as there are in a 535.

The full report of the benchmark results can be seen over at AnandTech, but I've compiled the key numbers for quick review, below.

As you can see by the results, the iPad 2 markedly outperforms both the original iPad as well as Motorola's new Android-based Xoom tablet with its Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. GLBenchmark shows it moving nearly 5x the number of triangles per second as the iPad and fetching textures nearly 7x faster than the Xoom. Truly impressive results.

Coinciding with the launch of the iPad 2, we've seen a number of developers release updates to their titles that take advantage of the new device's muscle. (And, most every existing title is benefitting from the extra horsepower as well, we're seeing.) But, really, it's going to take some time before we see the power of the iPad 2's A5 truly exploited, as developers have a chance to really test the limits of the new hardware and craft titles that are dramatically more complex than anything we've yet seen in the App Store.

And, of course, we'll keep you posted.

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Some dudes like to throw around the word definitive when they talk about upgraded ports of awesome games. I’m not a huge fan of doing that — definitive is a strong word. But, I think the Flying Hamster HD [$4.99] comes as close to being a must-have version of an App that I’ve seen so far.

Just released the other day, The Flying Hamster HD offers the same cutesy side-scrolling shooter experience of The Flying Hamster [$3.99] with added screen real estate, hilariously offsetting the base game’s cruel, cruel difficulty which proved to be one of the biggest knocks against the title in our review. Also, it just plain looks better — a great thing considering that the game’s colorful art is one of its biggest draws.

Just take a look. Isn't this a-dorable!?

So, if you’ve ever wanted to progress past the Egyptian stage without losing lives, this is the version to get. Enemies are much more spaced and there's also more room to maneuver, making this a very playable game. It’s quite the contrast, for sure.

Need to know more about the game before you dip your toes in the water? I got your back, son. Download the free version or, hey, read our review. Also, take note that the other flaws mentioned in the write-up, like the scoring and the by-the-numbers level design hasn’t been addressed in the HD version.

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