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Rock Band fans have got another installment to keep them tapping — or perhaps, in this case, singing — to the beat with EA's recent release of Rock Band Reloaded in two versions, one for the iPhone [link] and one for the iPad [link]. This latest release is the first iOS Rock Band that features the (rather forgiving) new vocal recognition mode where gameplay consists of singing right along with the available tracks.

And, speaking of available tracks, there are 27 free tracks (some of which must be downloaded) along with four pay tracks that can be purchased at $.99 for a bundle of two. The complete list follows.

Free songs:

• A Jagged Gorgeous Winter by The Main Drag *
• A-Punk by Vampire Weekend
• Am I Crazy by Little Fish *
• Blood Doll by Anarchy Club *
• Bodies by Drowning Pool
• Call Me When Your're Sober by Evanessence
• Can't Let Go by Death of the Cool *
• Day Late, Dollar Short by The Acro-brats *
• Dearest (I'm So Sorry) by Picture Me Broken
• Entangled by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives *
• Get Clean by Anarchy Club *
• Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar
• Hella Good by No Doubt
• Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran
• I Get By by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives *
• In Bloom by Nirvana
• Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down
• Night Lies by Bang Camaro *
• Pleasure (Pleasure) by Bang Camaro *
• Peace Sells by Megadeth
• Remedy by Seether
• Rock'n Me by Steve Miller Band
• Seven by Tijuana Sweetheart *
• So What'cha Want by Beastie Boys
• The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails
• White Wedding (Part 1) by Billy Idol
• Your Decision by Alice in Chains

Pay songs:

• Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly *
• Mean Woman Blues by Roy Orbison *
• Requiem for a Dying Song by Flogging Molly *
• You Got It by Roy Orbison *

( * denotes DLC tracks )

Rock Band Reloaded features Facebook integration, local (WiFi and Bluetooth) multiplayer, and a new Expert Mode for those wanting more of a challenge. The iPhone version supports the Retina display where available.

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Last month Ngmoco launched its first person shooter Star Wars: Imperial Academy [free], but in Canada only. Last night the game finally arrived in most other markets around the world (with the apparent exception of Japan, right now).

As we said in our initial report, with Star Wars: Imperial Academy, Ngmoco appears to be going for what's more or less Eliminate with a heavy layer of Star Wars plastered on top. The game's feature list can be found on the Ngmoco website.

Now that the title is available (pretty much) everywhere, we will shortly be posting a closer look.

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Character can be a dangerous thing. All the narrative, charm, or wit in the world can be churned into mush if the foundation it sits on is unsound. Games that are able to inject doses of character into their tried-and-true fundamentals are special. They're hard to put down, even harder to forget, and inarguably solid.

Corpse Craft [Free] manages to be this type of game. It's no-nonsense approach and mixture of two different genres works spectacularly well, while its clever veneer adds a delectable flavor to the play.

But let's start at the beginning, shall we? Corpse Craft is a castle vs castle title with a matching twist. The UI itself has a built-in matching-game puzzle board. Each color within this board represents a different kind of material that you can use to build your soldiers, which are represented in the game just above the UI. The more dramatic the match, the more materials you'll receive as a result.

Materials aren't figurative and the soldiers are people… sort of. The game draws its name its peculiar choice of castle vs castle troops: cobbled together, reanimated flesh. In a way, this is castle battle "Frankenstein" minus all that stupid "What is it to be human?" crap. Also, there's no stalking.

Once material is gathered, you can build a butcher knife-equipped attacker or even a mix-and-match consisting of a female's head held up by multiple hands. Later, you'll be able to build a disgusting rolling sphere of interconnected parts or defensive creatures with multiple arms.

What's important to get here is that each soldier has its own specialization, as well as a flaw. And while these guys are all separate, they do share one thing in common: a quirky, yet dark and original character.

The weird, but whimsical aesthetic is present throughout the title, soaking the atmosphere in its quirk. You'll notice that Corpse Craft has a delightful pen-and-ink approach reminiscent of Graham Annable's "Grickle." It's an approach that keeps the gruesome in the forefront, but doesn't dish out copious gore. The narrative follows the art's lead, presenting the macabre substance via grim singsong poems.

Since we're dealing with monsters here, it's only natural that there's a day and night mechanic. At night, your abominations can attack and defend at will. But during the day, the entire board is wiped clean of the reanimated, leaving you to gather resources until the next night falls.

Depending on how good you are, you may only see more than a dozen nights, as there appears to be around 16 levels in the game. I wish I could confirm this, but there's a sharp difficulty spike just beyond this "free" title's pay wall. (Yes, Corpse Craft is one of those "Buy the full game" games.) The AI in these later stages turns into corpse grinders, able to blast out many more soldiers than you can within short spurts. A good deal of strategy is required and, unfortunately, luck. I'll note though that nothing seems impossible to beat.

In addition to a campaign, there's a Survival Mode and an online component, which presents 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2 play via Game Center. The online sounds cooler in theory than what it actually is. The simplicity of the matching component lends itself to spamming blocks for massive amounts of soldiers, which turns out not to be so grand when you, and not the AI, is on the receiving end of the punishment. Again, this is where luck rears its head. If you get a bad board, you'll probably lose since there's not much complexity to Corpse Craft.

Regardless, it's hard not to love Corpse Craft for solely for its slick character, so it's really nice that it sits on such a solid foundation. I've enjoyed my time with the game immensely and I expect many others will as well. Go ahead and give the game a download — you'll easily get a good enough indication of how much you'll dig the game before you hit its pay wall.

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Nintendo killed the bowling alley with its spin on the popular "throw spherical hard thing at cone-like hard things" sport in Wii Sports. Now, Freeverse is piling on the pain with its iPhone and iPod Touch game We Bowl [Free], which debuted on the App Store this December 2nd.

As you'd expect, We Bowl is a touch take on the sport, requiring little more than a finger swipe to send a three-holed ball down a virtual alley. The twist is in its avatar creation component, which houses a rather deep pool of items to put on your unique little bowler. And as you compete in the game, you'll unlock even more stuff to put on your fledgling bowler / drunkard / wife abuser, provided you don't opt to just buy items with your real, hard-earned cash.

We Bowl a simple and free game that we have no real problems with… except when we dig into the way they're presenting the game. "Why bowl boring when you can bowl gonzo," asks the game's curious slogan. We've been digging furiously through the game in an attempt to locate this indicated Muppet tie-in to no avail. Gonzo or his chickens — or even Kermit, Rawlf, or that cute little shrimp with the accent, for that matter — simply do not appear in We Bowl.

"Ludicrous!" we've cried to the skies with one fist cocked, the other firmly clenching our phones on numerous occasions. But no matter how frazzled, how depressed we get, we'll continue to try to locate this elusive connection. Muppets have got to be in the game somewhere, right?

Regardless of how you feel about bowling, Muppets, or the apparent lack of Muppets, the avatar system in We Bowl is really cool. We've been told that items you unlock in the game to pimp out your avatar will stay with your avatar across future Freeverse games that also utilize this avatar system. Of course since We Bowl is the only game that's using their avatars right now, we'll have to take Freeverse's word that my awesome Walter Sobchak looking avatar will persist.

Even if you're not interested in the bowling aspect of the game, the avatar system is flexible enough and fun enough that you can sink a stupid amount of time in to just building all kinds of different looking characters. Just keep in mind that We Bowl is a freemium game like the other We games, so expect some ads, in-app purchases, and all that fun stuff.

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Earlier this week Zynga sent out some curious invitations to a conference call to various members of the media, including TouchArcade. That left us scratching our heads to see what exactly it was that Zynga was up to that could possibly interest us. I was half expecting them to reveal plans to bring more games to iOS following the success of Farmville [Free] on the App Store, but this took me completely by surprise.

Zynga has acquired NewToy, the developers behind both Words with Friends [$2.99 / Free] and Chess with Friends [$2.99 / Free]. Where things really get interesting is when you consider that NewToy collaborated with ngmoco to release We Rule [Free] back in March, which has since been reskinned several times in various themes. Ngmoco has since been bought by Japanese social gaming conglomerate DeNA, which currently is one of Zynga's biggest competitors in the social gaming realm.

While many of our readers are (understandably) getting tired of freemium time sinks, it is incredibly interesting watching the international business battle unfold between all of these companies making untold millions on microtransactions and ad impressions. We're not sure yet what this will mean for NewToy other than a shiny new titles for the higher-ups at NewToy as well as the rebranding of NewToy to "Zynga With Friends." Like all these previous high-dollar dealings, it will be fun to see what happens once the dust of the acquisition settles.

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Back in October, Master Eli told you that Halfbrick Studios' Age of Zombies [$2.99] was a solid dual stick shooter, definitely worth its asking price. Eli doesn't lie; His words are worth their weight in Silver Dragoons. Now, we wouldn't normally throw disbelievers of Eli's Gospel bones, but today is as good of a day as any. Age of Zombies now has a Lite version on the App Store, which will allow you to play the game and evaluate it for free, if that review didn't do it for you for whatever reason.

Take note that this Lite version only showcases the first full chapter in the game, a prehistoric-themed romp. In it, you'll meet the "legendary" zombie T-Rex and even be able to unlock a level of the game's "Survival Mode," in addition to being able to upload your scores and earn Achievements.

In celebration of this release, creator Halfbrick Studios is handing out a little something special to owners of the actual game. Upon downloading the Lite version, you'll receive a bonus unlock code that, when used in the full version of the game, unlocks a "Hoverboard" similar to that one in those popular movies.

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Word that Rovio Mobile was stuffing its yuletide Angry Birds update into its Halloween version of the game [$.99, HD] struck us as odd. Sure, Halloween is a "seasonal" offering, but these two holidays are complete opposites.

This thought must have occurred to Rovio as well because the update, which does indeed add several new snow-laden levels to the game, adds more than just Christmas cheer: It also rebrands the Halloween to "Angry Birds: Seasons," killing the current confusion and thereby nipping all future hullabaloo in the bud.

The Christmas-themed episodes are packed within the App under the heading "Season's Greetings," while the Halloween stuff has been moved to another episode called "Trick Or Treat." Angry Birds Halloween is still $.99 for the iPhone and iPod, while the HD version for the iPad remains at $1.99.

Having spent a few mind numbing minutes with "Season's Greetings," we can say that we fully endorse Rovio Mobile's attempt to get us in the seasonal mood. Plus, it's free, so complaining would be a bit silly. Download this update as soon as you can.

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Looking back on this last year, it's pretty crazy how much has changed since the last time we posted about Blacksmith Games' Appvent Calendar. This time last year, the free game phenomenon was practically unheard of. Following the success of the original Appvent Calendar, a silly amount of copycat sights have since sprung up. The main difference between the Appvent Calendar and these competing sites is that the Appvent Calendar had great games available for free as a one-time holiday promotion, versus many free app site which seemingly exclusively feature games that were designed to be free with ads, in-app purchases, and other things. We've been told to expect the same high caliber of freebies again this year, with a new free game released every day much like a regular holiday advent calendar.

Today's freebie is Time Geeks: Find All! [Free], a hidden object game of sorts that we liked quite a bit in our review. Especially while it's free, there's no reason not to download this game. (Unless of course you already have it.) If you own an iPad, Time Geeks: Find All! HD [99¢] is also available, although it isn't free.

It's probably a good idea to bookmark the Appvent Calendar, as they'll have new freebies every day. And of course, you can always use AppShopper to find all the games that have dropped to free instead of lurking around the slew of free app sites every day as well.

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Faithful followers of TouchArcade know this song and dance all too well by now. It seems that the cool thing to do is to set the release date of your game to a Thursday. This means that as soon as Thursday crosses the international date line, games become available in New Zealand. They then slowly filter out to the rest of the international App Store markets as it becomes Thursday for other people, until finally showing up in the US App Store at 11:00 PM EST Wednesday night. This creates a few awesome phenomenons such as everyone cluttering up every game thread with anticipation waiting for things to appear in their neck of the woods, and us having little to do on Monday and Tuesday, but I digress.

This week's haul of releases isn't anywhere near as huge as I was expecting, but we've heard from several developers that today was the last day to submit a game to have it approved before the end of the year. Next week will be insane with the release of Infinity Blade, and the first onslaught of pre-holiday approvals. We've already got a thread in our forum with some people estimating they'll be spending $100+ this month on iPhone games that's worth checking out if you want to get yourself hyped up for future releases.

Rockband Reloaded, $4.99 – Even more Rockband action. This time around you'll be able to sing along as well. Reloaded comes with 29 "free" songs, and additional songs available via in-app purchase.

Backbreaker 2: Vengeance, $2.99 – Similar to the previous Backbreaker, players run down the field attempting to avoid being tacked. A new game mode turns the tables and has you doing the tackling, and new obstacles have been implemented that you must jump over.

Hooga, 99¢ – A caveman platformer that reminds us a lot of Bonk's Adventure. It comes with a bunch of weapons, power-ups, and other goodies. If the controls work well, it should be really fun.

Miro: Color The World!, 99¢ – A physics-powered rolling game. From the looks of it, you're timed by how quickly you can roll around an object to color the world (as the title hints). 25 levels and online leaderboards are included.

Plant Tycoon, Free – I'm not really sure what to think about this game, as I dumped hours of my life in to it on my Palm Treo. It was a great game, with tons of history, which really has my scratching my head as to why it's free. Hopefully it's not laden with consumable DLC required for progression.

Kosmo Spin, 99¢ – The art style of this game is dripping with charm, and the game itself is packed with various objectives and achievements which hopefully will keep the seemingly basic gameplay fresh.

Scarlett and the Spark of Life: Scarlett Adventures Episode 1, $2.99 – A episodic point and click adventure game that's promising both an angry princess with a crowbar and a talking horse with a god complex. These types of games have worked very well on the platform, and I'm excited to play through this one.

All of the above links should begin working as soon as the games are available for download in your region except for Rockband Reloaded, as EA typically releases an international version and a US version of their games for some reason. We'll be taking a closer look at these games throughout the day.

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Developer Gameloft is holding an Advent Calendar promotion over their Twitter account and will be tweeting a free gift every day until December 25th. Seeing as today is December 1st, it appears that they wanted to start things off with a bang, as today's free gift comes in the form of the iOS port of vehicular mischief game Driver [Free].

Driver is an open world driving game that was originally released on Playstation and PC over a decade ago. It's similar to the 3D Grand Theft Auto games, except you don't ever leave your car, and was considered one of the classics of the time. Gameloft did a marvelous job porting the game to iOS last December, keeping most of the game intact and giving it a slight graphical makeover. We really liked it in our review, and recommended it at its initial price of $6.99. Now that Driver is free for a day, there's no excuse not to pick it up.

If you are hip to the Twitters, then you can follow Gameloft to check out what other kind of freebies will be in store during this month. I wouldn't expect a big name title to drop to free every single day or anything, but it should be worth keeping up with just to see what kind of free stuff you can score. At any rate, a free copy of Driver is a great way to kick off the promotion, and I'd highly suggest downloading the game while you can.

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