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We were fortunate to be given hands-on time with Jet Set Games' upcoming game, Highborn; a medieval turn-based strategy game with a blend of the traditional 2D map gameplay and a great looking 3D combat engine. To give some context, Jet Set Games is led by the original creators of the immensely popular Command & Conquer RTS.

Much of Highborn clearly draws inspiration from popular PC titles such as Heroes of Might and Magic. From the very first map Highborn's richly painted levels catch the eye. In fact, all the artwork we saw was exceptionally well drawn, from character designs to unit icons on the combat map– all had a grand cartoon-like style that we've really taken to.

This is true of the combat engine too. When you engage in combat, the screen transitions into a focused battlefield, akin to other popular TBS games such as Rogue Planet. Where Highborn differs is that attack moves are played out in full-3D. These 3D encounters are just as detailed and are terrifically animated; units are brought to life to look just as great as their 2D counterparts. The many different battlefield environments we saw were crafted to the same high standard, too.

The rich world created by Jet Set Games doesn't stop at the visuals though, as each character we encountered in our brief time with the game were larger-than-life and very self-aware. We appreciated the (often very funny) well-written banter between characters and the many instances where dialogue segues right through the fourth wall. It's been a long time since a game made us laugh, but Highborn promises to do just that.

Highborn also promises asynchronous multiplayer via Facebook, where you can send challenges to your friends and play against each other on selected multiplayer maps. We had a chance to test this, and we're pleased to say it works really well. You can even have multiple games going at once, meaning time spent waiting for your friends to move can be kept at a minimum. Thoughtfully, the game icon also displays the number of multiplayer games currently awaiting your attention.

Highborn is shaping up to be an excellent turn-based strategy with a storyline worth caring about. It's a breathe of fresh air to see time and effort devoted to good dialogue writing, and it seems to pay off in what we've seen so far. We're eagerly awaiting Highborn's release (which is still slated as 'Coming Soon' by the developers) to see what more fun Jet Set Games have in store for us.

In the interim, whet your appetites by checking out our video above of the opening mission. Be sure to watch it in HD, as you'll get a better feel for the game by reading the mission dialogue.

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Following the cinematic debut trailer of Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within last week, Gameloft has revealed three new images of the game on their official Facebook page.

The first screenshot shows the dark-haired Prince in action, dropping down on a duo of foes with curved sword brandished and seemingly ready to cut. The second image is far more interesting: in it the Prince is riding a fantasy beast.

Of course we haven't seen the game in action yet, but these images do give us an indication of what to expect in terms of action. An on-screen digital stick sits in the bottom left-hand corner, while simple action command buttons — stab, defend, and possibly jump — dot the right-hand side.

In an official tweet, the studio admitted what we're thinking: this game looks awful "beautiful" for an iPhone / iPod Touch title.

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There's been a number of games released on the App Store featuring mainstream music acts such as Lady Gaga, Metallica and Coldplay. So it didn't really come as much of a surprise to see Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion arrive over the weekend. What does come as a surprise however is that this isn't rhythm-based like most other music games, but rather a side-scrolling beat-em-up of sorts with a heavy focus on social networking. It sounds strange, and it kind of is, but it's also quite refreshing to see something other than the expected. The result ends up being more of an interesting experience, rather than a solid game.

The story has you helping each of the six members of Linkin Park to find their stolen music track. Once all tracks have been found, they complete an exclusive new Linkin Park song which will save the world… or something like that. You'll travel through the seven different locations in the game talking to different characters for clues and performing menial tasks that eventually lead you to each track. The gameplay is a bit shallow and repetitious, and incredibly easy. Battling enemies is done by merely mashing an action button, but there are some pretty cool weapon upgrades to help spice it up a little.

During play you'll collect coins from defeated enemies which can be spent in the shops spread throughout the seven game settings. You can buy gear for your avatar or furniture and decorations for your apartment. There's a heavy focus on this collection and customization aspect, and there's lots of different items for you to buy in the game. 8 Bit Rebellion does a great job of providing fan service with this, and the real life artwork and posters of Linkin Park albums can be adorned on your apartment walls. Even better are the music tracks in the game, which are familiar Linkin Park songs that have been given the 8-bit treatment. I'm not the biggest fan of Linkin Park, but I couldn't help but enjoy the retro versions of their songs. There's eight songs in total, and during the game you'll unlock all the original versions of them as well so you can compare them to the 8-bit remakes.

What really shines about this game is the online component. You're constantly connected while playing, and you'll see the avatars of players from around the world walking around inside of your game. At any time you can tap on one which brings up a menu to check out their profile, “poke” them á la Facebook, or even engage in real time chat with them. It's fun to see these people roaming around, and I've already run across some familiar usernames from people in our forums. Each level even has a bulletin board where anyone can post a message for all to see. Full Facebook and Twitter integration are included so you can post various game accomplishments and search out friends. If none of this sounds appealing to you, the entire game can be played just fine offline.

If you're a fan of Linkin Park, you'll likely get a lot of enjoyment from playing through 8-Bit Rebellion. The gameplay is a little too simplistic for serious gamers, but it can still be fairly entertaining at times. It's almost as if River City Ransom, Zombieville and Facebook decided to make a game based on their love for Linkin Park. In reality it feels like the type of game that actually would be played on a social network like Facebook. If this sounds interesting to you, you're definitely getting a high quality experience that's been designed beautifully to suit the iPhone interface. If you're not a huge fan of the band, however, 8-Bit Rebellion may just be a little too flimsy to hold your attention.

App Store Link: Linkin Park 8-bit Rebellion!, $4.99, Linkin Park 8-bit Rebellion! iPad Edition, $4.99

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Chaos Rings [$12.99] producer Takehiro Ando posted a note on the Square Enix Facebook page today that confirms the existence of Chaos Rings HD for the iPad. Ecstatic with the success the iPhone version of the game has seen, Ando has the game running on the iPad, but admits it needs quite a few tweaks to get everything how it needs to be before it's ready to be released.

Chaos Rings seems to be a massive success so far, annihilating the top grossing charts in multiple markets and even beating out the $14.99 MLB.com At Bat 2010 app- A particularly massive feat, especially considering how early we are in the baseball season. The Facebook notes doesn't give much detail beyond the above photo showing the game running full screen on the iPad Ando thinking that Chaos Rings on the iPad is a "good idea".

If this is the first you've heard of Chaos Rings, go take a peek at our review. We enjoyed the game a ton. It's not entirely clear right now whether the iPad universal compatibility is going to be updated in to the original Chaos Rings as well or if Chaos Rings HD is only going to be its own standalone game. If you haven't picked up the game yet and own an iPad, it might not be a bad idea to wait for more news on Chaos Rings HD to leak out of Square Enix first.

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The extremely popular Facebook game, FarmVille, may be making its way to the AppStore. FarmVille is a farming simulation game, where users plant, grow, and harvest virtual crops along with raising livestock, similar to the freemium ngmoco game We Rule [iPhone / iPad] that was released last month. FarmVille is developed by the company Zynga, who is no stranger to the AppStore, with over 40 applications including Mafia Wars and Live Poker.

News of this broke when Supererogatory posted that DNStination Inc. registered the domain names farmvilleipad.com, and farmvilleiphone.com. DNStination is the same company that holds the domain name to the official farmville.com website by Zynga.

When Mashable.com asked a spokesperson for Zynga about it, they were told, “Zynga plans to expand to various mobile platforms." However, they were not able to get any more information. With the combination of the new domain names,  Zynga's willingness to move to mobile devices, and their history of being in the AppStore, it seems likely that FarmVille may be coming.

It will be interesting to see if the mobile devices that 'Zynga plans to expand to' will include all the features that the full version has available online.

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Venan Entertainment's Space Miner [$4.99 / Free] seems to be universally loved by nearly everyone who touches it. We couldn't get enough of the game in our review, and it is one of the few iPhone games video games I've ever played where I enjoyed playing through it so much the first time that immediately after I beat the game the first time I started a second play through on the next higher difficulty.

From our review:

In short, it's Asteroids meets the RPG. But that description really doesn't do the game justice.

Space Miner places you in the role of the nephew of good ole' Uncle Jebediah Gritstone, proprietor of the galactic Gritstone Mining Station. Uncle Jeb has hired you on to help with the ore mining and it's with much excitement that you make your way to his mining station in your veritable space jalopy. Once on board, things get complicated (it's a long story, enjoy it in-game) and Uncle Jeb is desperately counting on you to go out into the neighboring sectors, blast asteroids, and bring back the precious ore contained within. The more ore you collect, the bigger your cut of the profits. But the pitiful ship you start off with is hardly up to the task.

As you accumulate profits, the money can be spent in Uncle Jeb's shop, where more powerful ships, weapons, shields, ore collectors, power plants, and the like can be purchased. It doesn't take long to find yourself sitting in a decent ship with multiple ore blasters, a sizable cargo bay, and an ore collector that can get the job done. And the whole package is done up with a great deal of spot-on humorous dialog and even an amusing banjo-based audio track that fits ole' Uncle Jeb's operation to a T. (There's no doubt that he's got a still hidden somewhere on that rock of his.) …Read More

This update makes this amazing game even better. If you've got an iPhone 3GS or 3rd generation iPod touch, you will be able to enjoy new shader effects on the asteroids that really make the game look a lot cooler. If you don't have a new device, you'll still be able to enjoy the rest of the new features which include a new level 7 pilot's license which unlocks even more spaceship upgrades. Also, five new pieces of alien technology are floating about somewhere in space for you to find.

My favorite addition is the new even harder UltracORE perma-death difficulty mode. Perma-death always adds an amazing sense of danger to a game, and seeing how far I can get in Space Miner on UltracORE has pretty much owned my evening so far.

The difficulty curve of the game has been slightly tweaked, and to go with all of these new features comes another set of Plus+ achievements for players to unlock as well as Facebook and Twitter integration to make sure your friends know exactly how good you are at the game.

If you haven't picked up Space Miner yet, this is an excellent opportunity to do so. It's on my short list of games I tell people to check out after buying an iPhone, and if nothing else, you really should give the lite version a spin. Space Miner is a fantastic game made even better by this update.

App Store Links: Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, $4.99 – Space Miner: Space Ore Bust Lite, Free

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Back at GDC 2010 we got a brief hands-on of Gameloft's upcoming Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction. We thought the game looked cool back then, but this new pack of screenshots includes even more of the game that we didn't have a chance to see in the short amount of time we had with it.

Gameloft's Facebook page is promising a "new revelation" tomorrow, so stay tuned for that if you've been looking forward to this game. Personally, I really want to see how the helicopter battles pan out. That looks insane.

Update: Gameloft also released the following gameplay trailer earlier this week-

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Apple's surprise announcement of their new social gaming network caught a lot of people by surprise. Most affected by the news were the many social gaming networks that have sprung up on the iPhone over the past 3 years.

OpenFeint was the earliest iPhone Gaming Network and remains the largest one in terms of active developers. We caught up with Jason Citron, founder of OpenFeint, and asked him his reaction to the news (full interview embedded below). OpenFeint seemed to be taking the news in stride and has already issued a press release indicating that they are refocusing their product behind OpenFeint X which was announced this past February.

Personally, Citron believes the move is "a really good thing" for gamers, as he acknowledged that the fragmentation in the market has been difficult for users. In the long run, he expects developers will adopt Apple's solution for leaderboards and achievements. He reports, though, that they plan on continuing to support OpenFeint's implementation and will offer developers and users an easy migration path to Apple's solution when it ultimately goes live. But Citron points out that OpenFeint offers a lot of additional features that don't fall under Apple's Game Center, the most significant one being a OpenFeint X which offers developers tools to build free-to-play games with micro transactions. This so called freemium model has been massively successful on Facebook and is making its way to the iPhone.

Ultimately, Citron believes that they will be able to tie in their features into Apple's Game Center which will allow for a single consolidated login, but from there they can build additional features for developers. He hopes to migrate other OpenFeint features (such as replays) to the new system, but details will have to wait until Apple releases more information about Game Center.

Citron wanted to reassure developers that they are continuing to support OpenFeint and will offer migration paths when Apple finally launches Game Center.

Podcast music provided by Overclocked Remix.

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes or Direct Download (M4A, 14MB)

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Engineous Games' Sketch Nation Shooter [AppStore] is not your typical game. In fact, it is arguable whether it is a game at all, featuring very little in terms of out-of-the-box content. Instead, Sketch Nation Shooter is a development platform for end users to explore the limits of their own imaginations, in a similar fashion to Sony's ludicrously popular Little Big Planet on the Playstation 3.

And, just like that title, Sketch Nation Shooter is designed from the ground up to facilitate the creation of an entire community of users who submit their creations and explore the work of others. It sounds like a sure-fire hit, but such an ambitious task is a first for the platform, and so we were anxious at first to see just how well the system is implemented.

When you first launch Sketch Nation Shooter you are presented with a depiction of a writing pad and a few menu options with very little fanfare. To start with, we'll look at the 'Play' option. A fresh install of Sketch Nation Shooter will have a few developer-created levels for you to mess around with. Launching any of these will reveal a rich-looking, colorful, themed setting, which ultimately showcase what can be done with the application. Your standard fare vertical scrolling shooter is there in the form of 'Zorx Attacks' and 'Air Support 1944' (which have some very cool comic-like artwork) but there are also a few surprises, in the side-scrolling 'Under the Sea' shooter, and a top-down 'against the traffic' avoidance game, Traffic. It is clear that a little creative thinking can go a long way in Sketch Nation Shooter.

And where that creativity will be best put to work is in the 'Create' menu. When you first go to create a game, you are presented with either 'Simple Mode' or 'Advanced Mode', dictating the extent of complexity you're aiming for with your creation. This is something we really appreciated, as showing off a game quickly to your mates isn't a protracted process; 'Simple Mode' lets you create a player, add enemies, and away you go. 'Advanced Mode' is where the big boys will go to play though, as it offers the full customization suite.

From here you can dictate player and enemy graphics, hit points, weapon effects, sizes, AI patterns and even rotation options. Graphics can be added either from your Photo Library, from a selection of pre-installed Art Packs, or by taking a photo of a page via the camera. We had a few issues where drawings with light-colored backgrounds imported from Sketch Book were not picked up (despite having thick, black borders) but overall our experience with the image recognization was a positive one. There is also a level editor, where backdrops can be imported and where obstacles, enemies and powerups can be hand-placed on each level segment (4 of which comprise an entire level). One especially neat feature is the inclusion of an 'Intro' page, which the developer levels show off as a cool way to give your levels some context through a storyboard.

All in all, whilst the creation mode is quite comprehensive, we felt it was lacking in some areas. To begin with, powerups and boss encounters are two elements set in stone that can't be toyed with as much as we'd like to. Bosses can have their HP and weapon effects changed, and can have their attack pattern selected from 8 pre-defined options. But that's it– we would have loved to have seen multi-stage boss encounters, or bosses with customizable weak-spots to make these encounters less repetitive. Similarly, powerups collected in game number only 10 and seem pretty stock-standard for the genre. Which leads to another criticism– that levels aren't really long enough to get a decent rhythm going, or to explore an interesting weapon or upgrade system to begin with. We expect to be blown away with what some users create with the platform, but it seems that user creations are largely restricted to a similarly sized and formulated level design.

Once created, levels are submitted via Facebook and are available for all to play under the 'Download' menu option. Unfortunately, Facebook is the only means of content distribution in Sketch Nation Shooter, a fact that introduces a number of issues. Firstly is the matter of privacy, where submitting a high score unwittingly splashes your full name across the Global ladders. As we speak, the developers have recognised this as a problem and are looking at introducing a pseudonym for high scores, a feature that cannot come soon enough. But we're still not convinced that using Facebook as the solitary delivery medium is wise, as it effectively excludes those that use Facebook solely for personal correspondence, and tend to keep their gaming separate. Granted, Sketch Nation Shooter does not spam your Facebook wall with activity, but instead neatly highlights it in a separate, in-game only News Feed.

If you can get passed the Facebook requirement (without Facebook you do not have access to any user-generated content), then there is already a wealth of very cool-looking content created by fans, and it seems to be growing by the minute. One particular favorite of ours is a TouchArcade themed level that simply must be played, created by forum user Tocarina (heads up: Arn and Eli feature prominently and hilariously). On that note, the developers are doing a great job of filtering out objectional and copyrighted material, and seem to be doing well in keeping up with submissions thus far.

Sketch Nation Shooter is easily recommended simply because it does something no other app can do– it allows you to design competent games and share them with your friends. Some creations have already shown hallmarks of genius, but the ultimate fun is in seeing what your peers are capable of creating. On the flipside, the underlying Sketch Nation Shooter model remains largely derivative, and could do with even more customization options to differentiate the gameplay and keep user-generated levels fresh and interesting.

We're already looking forward to not only Shooter enhancements, but to see what other plans and genres Engineous Games have in store for their very nifty Sketch Nation game development platform. Be sure to check out our forum thread too, where users are sharing their many designs, plans and submission approval notices.

App Store Link: Sketch Nation Shooter, $0.99.

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Bravo Game Studios' Touch Racing Nitro [App Store] reminds me a lot of one of my favorite NES racing games, RC Pro Am, which is a very good thing. In Touch Racing Nitro you race one of twelve RC cars around the eighteen included tracks. (Both are slowly unlocked as you play through the game.) There are a number of games that look similar on the App Store, but Touch Racing Nitro's single finger control method makes playing the game feel substantially different.

Instead of the somewhat expected racing controls where you're either tilting or using some kind of virtual joystick/steering wheel with on screen buttons, the developers have implemented this scrumptiously simple single finger input where the car goes in the direction of your finger, with your speed controlled by how far away your finger is from the center of the screen.

Our forum members seem somewhat divided on how they feel about the controls in the Touch Racing Nitro thread, but I really think once you get a hang of them they work quite well, especially since you can effectively play a fast paced racing game with one hand which allows me to multitask and do things like race my car in game while I drive my car in real life.

Like any good racing game, Touch Racing Nitro has its fair share of jumps for you to get massive air off of. This is assisted by using nitro that you pick up while burning around the track. Tapping on the screen with a second finger fires off your nitro which can either send you flying over jumps and ahead of the pack, or cause you to lose control entirely through a turn.

Two game modes are included: Tournament mode where you race against AI opponents and the self explanatory time trial mode where you can play any track you've unlocked. Sadly, there isn't any online leaderboards currently and the iTunes description only mentions Facebook Connect coming soon. After seeing how well Jet Car Stunts implemented their leaderboard and replay system via OpenFeint, it's hard to really imagine a racing game without that.

With how polarized the reactions on the forums have been regarding the controls, it really seems like Touch Racing Nitro is a game that badly needs a lite version. Once I got used to the single finger controls, I liked them a lot, but without anything to accurately compare them to it's hard to give a full recommendation on picking up the game if you're on the fence. So, it might be worth seeing how the online leaderboards play out and if a lite version ever materializes.

App Store Link: Touch Racing Nitro, $3.99

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