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Modern Conflict [$.99, Lite] creators Gaijin Entertainment has announced its first self-published iOS title, an "action-packed" RPG called Braveheart. Don't get too pumped by the name alone — this isn't a movie-related joint. No, it's a brand new IP based in the fantasy Britain lands where King Arthur and his knights ruled the universe.

In Braveheart, you'll play as Richard during his epic quest to find and recover the Holy Grail. Surprisingly, said relic isn't just sitting out in the open waiting to be found by the adventurous sort. According to Gaijin, "numerous enemies and monsters stand in your way and the Grail itself is guarded by a massive dragon!"

The developers have mentioned that Braveheart has 10 different weapons, a bunch of magical spells to use, and will offer "tons" of power-ups and bonuses that will help you reach the Grail. On a quasi-related note, the game's story will be presented in a comic book style via cut-scenes.

Braveheart is slated for release on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad this December. It looks pretty cool, and we can't wait to try it out.

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When I talked with Chair Entertainment's Donald Mustard the other day about Infinity Blade I couldn't let the opportunity to talk a bit of Shadow Complex slip past me. If you don't know, Shadow Complex is a brilliant Metroidvania-style action title that I still consider to be one of my favorite games ever. How could I resist asking Mustard if Shadow Complex could ever be released the iPad? I want it everywhere at anytime.

I told Mustard before I even fired off the query to be prepared to hear something stupid. Shadow Complex is in no way a touch screen type of game. In fact, I can't think of a single way the game could be ported to iOS and end up playing as well as it does on Xbox Live Arcade. I think I caught him a bit off guard with my steamy, hot fanboy desire. He ended up asking me initially in response, "What do you think? How do you think Shadow Complex would control on the iPad?"

I replied, "I don't know! I just want to hear you say it," I exclaimed. We both laughed and then Mustard shared his thoughts on the matter.

Yeah, I mean, for me, I don't know," Mustard said. "I think for Shadow Complex to show up on a touch device would mean we'd have to figure out a way for it to control really, really tight and really, really awesome. I'm not saying that can't be done. In my few minutes of thinking about it I'm kind of like, 'well, I don't know. We'd have to compromise a lot of the tightness that came with the control scheme of Shadow Complex.'

As Mustard said, Shadow Complex for the iPad could happen. But for it to be a reality, Chair would have to feel comfortable with the way the controls translated to the device. It would have to feel perfect, just like the XBLA version does.

For me — that's what it comes down to, if it can't be amazing, then I don't want to do it. I don't want to shoehorn controls in. I don't want to force it. Again, I'm not saying that it can't be done, but we'd have to come up with a way that it would still feel like Shadow Complex and still feel that tight. To me, one of the things that really made Shadow Complex feel good was that the controls were extremely responsive and worked. I'd have to be able to pull off a triple jump while shooting a foam gun while turning on my friction dampener to turn on so I could run across ceilings all with the touch pad. I dunno. We'll see. If anyone out there has a brilliant idea on how to make it control great, let us know!

Infinity Blade is Chair's first game since Shadow Complex. I tend to think sequel whenever a game hits with as much acclaim and sells as well as Shadow Complex did, so with this in mind, I asked if IB was the game Chair wanted to make following Shadow Complex. In short, yeah, it was.

This is the game I… when someone came to me and said, 'we would really like you to make a game for iOS devices and we'll have four months to do it…' What would you do? This is the game I would make. Absolutely. Given those constraints and that opportunity, yeah, we think this game is awesome for that.

But will Chair stick with the iPhone after the release of IB? We'll see. Mustard and Chair are committed to making strong games on every platform.

For us, we just want to make awesome games. We want to make games people like to play, that entertain people and make them happy. I'm pretty device agnostic. To me, every console there's opportunities to do really unique, cool stuff. We will continue to make games for every device and console that makes sense to make games for.

Infinity Blade, which is an actual iOS game created by Chair Entertainment releases this holiday on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPad.

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Mojang Specifications' Minecraft is a game about survival and building. Presented in first person and available for the Mac and PC, it has quickly become one of those indie darling success stories. In its alpha phase of development, Minecraft has sold over 600,000 copies. It's popular, has a great community, and has generated a lot of positive buzz. The game has also inspired an iOS developer to create his own version of the title, which has since been pulled from the App Store.

The game was called Minecrafted and it hit the App Store at $.99. The App's creator, Trevor Wilkin, claimed in the release information for the game that Minecrafted was "built from the ground up for Apple devices without code or content from the original." However, the game looked and played like Minecraft, and could even connect with legitimate Minecraft servers.

But it wasn't pulled because of the similarities or any kind of legal hullabaloo. In a conversation with TUAW, Wilkin said he was just testing Apple to see if he could get approval. Apple approved the App and set it live immediately, which became a problem with Wilkin, as he intended to ask Mojang Specifications if it was cool to release the game before he actually released it.

On Twitter, Minecraft's creator Markus "Notch" Persson weighed in a little bit on the creation of Apps based on Minecraft, stating that "there is no official iPhone or Android Minecraft yet. If you're working on a clone, that's cool, but please don't imply it's ours." Notch added later in a reply, "Ideas are meant to be spread. But I wish [developers would] try to make it original rather than a straight clone."

Wilkin's Minecrafted might be available for purchase again some day. "I've been firing numerous e-mails and waiting on official rulings," he said on our forum thread about the App. "I'd prefer to do this in a way that doesn't cause problems."

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Minigore [Free / HD] is less of a game and more of a legend, at least on the TouchArcade forums. The developers somehow managed to drum up a level of pre-release hype that was unlike anything I've ever seen before, spawning dozens of threads, some going on for hundreds of pages, and the infamous Minigore dog image. Following that, quite literally every dual stick shooter that was released for quite some time was immediately compared to Minigore, with people from both sides of the Minigore love/hate fence duking it out in the comments of every story that was even vaguely relevant. I still don't understand it, and I'm not sure I ever will.

Since the initial release, Minigore has been updated several times. These updates enhanced the graphics, added Game Center, threw in some new playable characters, and implemented so many character tie-ins with other iPhone games it bordered on ridiculous. If you were around for the Minigore release phenomenon but never made the plunge and actually downloaded the game, here's your chance to see what all the fuss was about. If this is the first you've heard of Minigore you should download it anyway because it's still what I consider one of the better dual stick survival shooters out there.

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There are literally dozens of dual-stick arena shooters available on the App Store, and with this in mind developer Grumpyface Studios decided to put an interesting new twist on the formula with their inaugural game Wispin. In Wispin, you'll take on endless waves of enemies, only rather than mindlessly blasting them away with loads of ammunition a strategic use of color serves as your weapon. It's a novel idea that works quite well for this type of game, and is complemented by a wonderfully cute art style and excellent production values. Grumpyface recently sent me a near-final build of Wispin, and I was really impressed by how much I enjoyed the unique brand of action in the game.

The character movement in Wispin is controlled by tilt or with a virtual stick in the lower left corner. Where the right stick would normally be in a typical dual-stick shooter there is instead a color wheel with red, blue, and green buttons. The enemies, called Bloopers, come in various sizes and one of these same three colors. Pressing a color on the wheel will change your character to that color, and if it matches that of an enemy you merely run into it to attack it. In addition to this melee style attack, there are also bombs and arrows to use against the Bloopers, which they can use against you as well. A few different special items are also available to aid you, like a hunk of cheese that will cause one particular color of enemy to be drawn to where you place it or a rainbow colored bomb that will blow up enemies of any color within its blast radius.

The concept of Wispin sounds kind of weird on paper, but it's actually a total blast to play. The action gets frantic as more and more enemies enter the fray, and having to negotiate enemies while worrying about changing your color constantly pulls your brain in two different directions (in a good way). Another aspect to keep in mind is that you are invulnerable to enemy attacks of your same color. So if you find yourself suddenly standing next to a big red bomb that's about to blow, quickly turning yourself red will save you from the blast. All of these different game elements come together beautifully in Wispin, creating a gameplay experience that requires fast reactions and a strategic eye.

On top of the core gameplay in Wispin is a nice multiplier system. With every enemy you kill, a meter in the upper left instantly fills and starts to rapidly decrease. Every enemy that you take out before the meter empties adds to a combo multiplier. Getting a combo of three same color enemies in a row gives your character a temporary speed boost, and if you can get the multiplier up to 20 you'll enter into a frenzy where you fly around the screen taking out enemies of every color. The multiplier system adds a risk/reward element to the game, as you can try to play fast and loose going for huge scores by getting kills in rapid succession, but this also increases the chance that you'll make a harmful mistake. Game Center leaderboards are used to keep track of a number of different kinds of high scores in the game.

Barring any unforeseen problems, Wispin should be released in the App Store this Thursday. It will come with two different maps to play on with plans to add more maps, enemies, items, and modes in future updates. In addition to the Standard Mode of play that pits you against increasingly difficult waves of enemies, a Super Intense Mode can be unlocked that brings a constant stream of enemies gunning towards you. Since the Standard Mode starts off pretty slow and each game can last for a while, the Super Intense Mode is perfect if you want to just jump right into some action. More information including some funny character bios of the enemies can be found in the thread in our forums. In an overly saturated genre of dual-stick shooters, Wispin does something decidedly different from the norm, and ends up being a whole lot of fun because of it. We'll take another look at Wispin when it releases hopefully later this week.

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Way back in March of this year at GDC 2010, we spent some hands-on time with the upcoming sequel to GameResort's popular game Downhill Bowling [$2.99/Lite], appropriately titled Downhill Bowling 2. The original game was a pretty odd concept, but ended up being really fun and well suited to iOS device gaming.

In Downhill Bowling, you controlled a bowling ball using tilt as it careened down an outdoor track filled with 10 sets of pins. Using your momentum from barreling downhill, you would aim the ball for each set of pins while also collecting coins and powerups spread around the track. Your total amount of pins knocked down is tallied up at the end of each of the 10 levels and added to whatever bonuses you were able to collect.

Playing Downhill Bowling is an oddly satisfying experience, and it still holds up really well even today. The sequel looks to keep the core concept intact while adding brand new levels, powerups, and a new jumping ability. This new (extremely brief) teaser video for Downhill Bowling 2 gives a glimpse at what the game will be like:

Originally slated for a Summer release, Downhill Bowling 2 is now supposed to hit this December as a free to download ad-supported game. I'm not entirely sure if that means the extra development time went to adding more features than what was discussed with us earlier this year, but GameResort has started a thread in our forums that will likely include additional details in the coming weeks. We really liked the first game, and we'll be keeping our eye out for Downhill Bowling 2 hitting the App Store this December.

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On the consoles, Need for Speed: Shift was seen as a return to form by the franchise after a series of bungled attempts to recapture the magic of NFS: Underground. This was true of the iPhone release too, which we thought captured some of that tuner magic through a host of customization options and a great emphasis on handling. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit [App Store] throws that formula right out the window, reviving the hit cops and robbers racer of the last-gen console with the same name. And it seems to be a winner, the iPhone version having giant boots to fill already as its big-brother weighs in a critical success (90/100 on Metacritic).

So we'll get one thing out of the way early: unlike its console counterpart, in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit you only get to play as the hunter, not the hunted. That's right– the array of glitzy cars you get to unlock (15 in total) will only sport the black and white of the po-lice, though the range is hardly stunted. You'll get to drive Corvettes, Porsche's, Lamborghinis, Fords, and even a Veyron as this cashed up police force takes it out in kind on the host of tuned-up racers plaguing its streets.

There are no story sequences to worry about in NFS: Hot Pursuit either and nor are any warranted as the devs blessedly throw you into a live pursuit as soon as you fire the game up, bypassing the usual song and dance needed to get started. A quick tutorial showing off the NOS and 180 degree thumb-slide controls is all you need to know as you're thrown head-first into the first of 24 pursuits making up the career mode.

Each event in NFS: Hot Pursuit takes one of four models: Tough Justice, Intercepter, Rapid Response and Power Struggle. The first two are the bread and butter and the events you'll gravitate to most — these are where you get to dish out serious police brutality. In these events you're tasked with taking out one or more opponents– by either ramming them off the road or by using one of several tools at your disposal. These include deployable spike strips, police road blocks and EMPs, all of which can either slow down or disable the target vehicle temporarily. The rest is up to you, as your most effective weapon at stopping these cretins is vehicular battery.

The whole concept is great, but unfortunately doesn't live up to what's expected of it. Setting up an effective road block sounds cool, but in practice does about as much damage as mosquitos on the windshield as racers plough headlong through a barracade while barely pausing a beat. Even EMPs that send cars spinning out of control are rendered ineffective when the cars bounce of the invisible bumper bars around the track and teeter back on course with minimal stopping time. Simply put, the poor physics engine on the small screen does the game an injustice, with the expected high-impact crashes only occurring once the enemy life bar is whittled down to nought.

The other two race types – Rapid Response and Power Struggle – are straightforward checkpoint or straight-line races without the pursuit mechanic. The latter is the more interesting of the two, as it pits cops against cops as you thrash out your tweaked out squad cars (and eventually even getting to use your tech against each other) between doughnut breaks. These races are challenging and fun the first few times, but get boring very quickly and pale in comparison to the cops and robbers races.

This is mostly due to the overarching problem in NFS: Hot Pursuit that far too much emphasis has been taken off the driving to focus on the weapon mechanics. We enjoyed NFS: Shift because it put you back in the driving seat; with steering, braking and gears to worry about if you wanted to. In NFS: Hot Pursuit, there's not even a need for a brake or an accelerator (the default setting is auto-accelerate). The whole game can be played by just tilting your screen, and swiping occassionally when you want to hit the turbo. Gone are all the customization options too, the cash system replaced by a bounty system where gaining enough stars and subsequent bounty unlocks new cars and new events.

Fortunately everything in NFS: Hot Pursuit looks terrific, with a range of different environments to race through at varying times of the day. It looks great on a 3GS device, with only infrequent framerate hitches and bland off-road textures spoiling the visual treat; but really comes into its own on the ultra-sharp, high-res retina display of the 4th gen models. The only downside on the presentation front is that spending even half an hour with the game will reveal familiar track segments, with events eventually becoming predictable due to the high level of section recycling going on.

Despite these set-backs, NFS: Hot Pursuit dishes up some seriously high-octane moments, when you're toe-to-toe with an offender tilting your screen to-and-fro as you try to ram him off track, only to have the bugger jam your weapons as you get ahead of him to deploy a spike strip. This experience is heightened dramatically with local WiFi play (where you're finally able to play as the bad guys), but we're disappointed to see that there's no online race option to duke it out with friends across the globe.

All up, as far as the Burnout-meets-NFS vibe goes, NFS: Hot Pursuit on the iPhone misses the mark, its tuner-lite gameplay hard to recommend to driving enthusiasts. It does have more casual appeal however, and for those unphased by the lack of online racing or customization and the sometimes frustrating driving mechanics, NFS: Hot Pursuit will provide some thrilling moments and maybe a couple of hours of content to work through.

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Early last month we took a look at Elite's ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection (Vol. 1) for the iPhone, a collection of 8-bit, British classics wrapped in a capable emulator, designed to deliver nostalgic gaming reverie to the iPhone- or iPod touch-wielding player. Late last week Elite released ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection HD [App Shop] for the iPad, featuring not only Vol. 1 but Vol. 2 of their game collection, making it the ultimate iOS ZX Spectrum experience.

The Elite Collection HD features all of the games from Vol. 1:

• Turbo Esprit
• Saboteur
• Chuckie Egg
• Harrier Attack
• Frank Bruno's Boxing
• Buggy Boy

As well as the new, Vol. 2 titles:

• Roller Coaster
• Beyond the Ice Palace
• Saboteur II: Avenging Angel
• Batty
• Kokotoni Wilf
• Battle Ships

As with the earlier iPhone release, the iPad Elite Collection plays the games very smoothly with decent controls — about as good as can be managed in a multi-touchscreen adaptation of a system of this sort. I've particularly appreciated these collections as I've long had an interest in experiencing the UK games of the 8-bit era but, being unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the Spectrum systems, I've had trouble with traditional emulators. Having everything neatly packaged up here has been a big win for me.

Though U.S. gamers never really had the chance to play many of these classics on their 8-bits back in the day, classics they are, and ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection HD is a great way to get to know these titles.

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It's easy to get the gist of Chair Entertainment's Infinity Blade by watching a sizzle reel or by reading the various impressions pieces on the web. It's a medieval action RPG that pits you against various titanic foes in pitched battles that'll require you to approximate sword slashes and parries with swipes and gestures. But what you won't get from these mediums are specifics.

This is why I contacted Chair for an interview about IB. The game looks so great, looks so promising, that I just had to know more about it. The man I spoke with, Chair creative director and lead designer on IB Donald Mustard, filled me in.

It's More Of An Action Game
Think of the RPG aspects of Infinity Blade as a strategic compliment. The action part of the game, which has you reacting to attacks from large and small foes, and then dispensing your own punishment composes the core of the game.

When we sat down to look at the device and we had an opportunity to make a game for it we kinda had this idea kicking around in our heads for awhile about how could we make a really cool sword-fighting game that actually felt like you were sword fighting as opposed to mashing buttons. We thought that the touch screen on these devices would be the perfect place to do something like this.

Right down to its core, we thought it'd be really fun to have a game where I could have a big, nasty enemy on the screen that's coming at me with a sword — a sword that could be coming from any angle at any time. And because I have a touch screen, I could swipe my finger exactly where that sword is coming at me and parry it away and knock that guy's blade back and then swipe at the guy.

As for those RPG elements, they come from how you customize your character with items like swords, shields, and armor found in the environment. Every sword and shield has EXP attached to it — as you use the item, the EXP drains into you and into your overall EXP pool. You'll also master the item once it is drained. When you level up, you'll gain skill points that you can then apply to your character, so draining an item is something you want to do. Unless, of course, this happens:

You'll find yourself with a mastered sword that's pretty cool, but… let's say you have an ice sword that you've mastered and you're coming up to an enemy that's weak to ice. You've got a fire sword equipped currently that you're gaining EXP from. You're like, 'Well, do I really want to re-equip my ice sword that I'm not going to get EXP from in this fight? I really want to use it on this guy because he's guarding a treasure. I know can beat him easier that way.'

I should note that you can also use magic rings to cast spells. You'll have to draw the symbol of the spell on the screen. These can level up too and become stronger.

You're A Knight In His Version Of Gannondorf's Fortress
Interestingly, IB kicks off where most games end. You're an aging knight at his end goal ready to square off against the God-King and his last remaining Titans. It's an interesting twist that we'll learn more about as we play the game.

It's Not On Rails
There's a lot of speculation about IB being on-rails, as in the game will do the walking for you. That phrase has stigma attached to it, despite the fact that several games have managed to be great, guided experiences. IB is not an on-rails title, but it does plainly point out where you need to go via "nodes" in the world. To me, it sounds like Myst with some actual guidance.

In IB, you'll be able to move your character in the game world with a simple click on a destination, which is probably why it's commonly thought to be an on-rails game. The point of this streamlined method of control, though, had more to do with ease of play as opposed to a specific point of level design at first.

We really wanted to come up with a way to navigate the castle that was different than games I've played on my iOS device. We're not huge fans of games that try to emulate what a controller would do on the touch screen. We're way bigger fans of games that use the touch screen in a unique way that's more suited for that device. We tried with everything we did in Infinity Blade to make it a game that you can be play with one finger. That was our mantra.

When it came to navigation we settled on more… we call it cinematic click navigation. So, basically, I can use my finger to look around the environment by just holding down on the screen as I swipe back and forth to move the camera. And then I can click on certain points in the environment, kind of more like Myst or some adventure game, and then my character will cinematically move towards that location. While that's happening, I could be picking up gold or see other nodes to go in different ways.

The Multiplayer Won't Just Be Knight On Knight

Post release, Chair plans to release an update that will add competitive multiplayer to the game via Game Center. This component won't just be knight on knight action and furious swipe fests. Chair will try to put you in the shoes of some of the monstrosities in game to make things different.

We've got some cool ideas, how we could make it different than what you'd expect, to make it fun. One of the things that will be key to that is not just having it be 'my knight fights your knight.' But having it be more like, 'How can we have multiplayer that is a knight versus the boss?' We want to give people the opportunity to play as the big, 15-to-20-ft. tall titan. How do we make that work in multiplayer and have that be fun and engaging and balanced?

Epic Citadel Was The Show-Off App, IB Is The Game
Epic Citadel [free], which was the first App to use Epic's Unreal 3 Engine, was a commercial. IB will be the first Unreal 3-powered game. I want to make sure you're aware of that distinction because it's very clear that Chair is really behind IB and working as hard as it can to make a functional, iOS-specific and friendly title.

I think there's room for lots of different kinds of games on every console. Our personal taste is that we tend to gravitate more towards games on any console that are designed more specific to that console. So, if I'm making Shadow Complex on the Xbox 360, I'm going to do everything I can take advantage of what the Xbox 360 does well, whether that's the way it renders graphics or the way its controller is layed out. I'm going to utilize every tool on that device to make it cool.

The same with a touch screen device. There's a lot of things you can do with a touch screen that I can't do with a traditional joystick. And we tried to focus the game design to really take advantage of swipes and clicks and different things you can do that are cool as opposed to try to shoehorn in a traditional control scheme. I think ultimately that makes for a more seamless, more unique experience.

Infinity Blade is due out this holiday for the iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and the iPad. Updates will, as Mustard said, follow soon after its release.

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Capcom's Street Fighter IV [$9.99] is the gift that keeps on giving. First they released Zangief and Cammy as a free update, and later they added both E.Honda and C.Viper. We just got word from Capcom that this update gravy train isn't stopping anytime soon, as they just announced Sagat will be the next fighter included in the game. Also, since they've been releasing these updates with not one but two fighters each, it wouldn't surprise me at all for them to announce another character soon.

In addition, the way local multiplayer works is being tweaked. From the sounds of it, whenever two devices are running the game with Bluetooth enabled as soon as they get in range of each other they will auto-connect for some multiplayer action. We thought Street Fighter IV was great in our review and it's really hard to not get behind a game that has seen so many substantial free updates with even more on the way.

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