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When Reckless Racing [$0.99 / HD] hit the scene back in October 2010, we praised it for the incredible top-down racing experience it offered. Now, the folks at Pixelbite Games are back again with Reckless Racing 2 [$4.99], the long awaited sequel to this arcade racer. Improving on nearly every facet of its predecessor, Reckless Racing 2 is hands-down one of the top arcade racers I’ve ever played and is well worth the price of admission.

From a presentation standpoint, Reckless Racing 2 makes some significant changes in comparison to its predecessor. Gone are the country themes present in the music and characters (although the latter still remains somewhat in the avatars and names of your AI opponents). In its place is a stylized, clean motif complete with fast-paced music reminiscent of 80s action movies (think Top Gun). Some folks may argue Reckless Racing 2 loses some of the ‘charm’ found in the original, but I think this is a great move that moves towards a more universal appeal.

Another area that receives an overhaul in Reckless Racing 2 is its core gameplay formula. A comprehensive career mode takes center stage in this sequel, complete with 18 different cars to purchase and a plethora of upgrades available for each individual vehicle. The career mode is actually pretty standard – players race through a variety of cups containing several courses. Money is awarded after each race, with a larger monetary bonus depending on your final position at the end of the cup.

Rather than forcing players to complete cups in a sequential fashion, Reckless Racing 2 employs a Performance Index (P.I.) restriction. The higher a P.I. rating is on a car, the ‘better’ it is stats-wise. Modify your car with new parts and its P.I. rating increases. Cups have a P.I. range that your car must fit into in order to play. While it is possible to upgrade your car so it can participate in progressively harder cups, eventually its P.I. max will be reached and you’ll have to buy a new car with a higher range in order to advance to more difficulty cups. It’s a disappointing restriction for folks that become attached to cars, but I thought it was an excellent way to balance upgrades and difficulty while nudging players towards trying new vehicles.

In addition to career mode, Reckless Racing 2 features an excellent challenge mode that supplies the player with a pre-determined car and track. Race against the A.I., place third or higher, and you advance to the next challenge. I found it a great distraction from career, as it allows you to quickly race while still having goals to work towards. Rounding out the modes are single race and wifi-enabled multiplayer. While online multiplayer was pretty fun, the lobby system was a bit rough around the edges (lots of players holding up games from actually starting). An auto-join with P.I. balancing would have been nice, as well as some improvement to the ‘ready’ system.

Racing mechanics also receive substantial changes in Reckless Racing 2, exchanging the ‘floaty’ and hectic feel of the original for a driving system that imbues much more control to the player. This is also reflective in the physics system which feels more suited towards a system requiring actual driving technique. The controls work well enough within this system, but not all control schemes are equal in this sequel. The new dynamic difficulty system, which raises and lowers the overall difficulty based on performance, is another addition that moves the game towards a semblance of realism (you can turn this off if it doesn’t work for you). In some ways, you can argue that these changes make Reckless Racing 2 a bit less, well, reckless. Despite this step away from its predecessor, I think the changes have created a game with more depth and challenge than the original. The upgrade system, for instance, allows you to customize your car to suit your driving style, somewhat preserving the original Reckless Racing style of play.

One of the areas Reckless Racing excelled in was its incredibly detailed visuals. Reckless Racing 2 ups the ante with an improved graphics system that just looks pretty damn amazing. Tracks are meticulously detailed and even effects like the dirt kicking up from your wheels on the off-road portions of the track are well done. Maneuvering my car around a curve with a giant gorge at the bottom or driving along an oceanfront watching the beautiful water effects are some of the nicest graphics I’ve seen on my iPhone 4S. Add in the fact that the game runs fast and smooth (at least on the latest hardware generation), and Reckless Racing 2 would give any game a run for its money in the visual department.

I’ve got to give kudos to Pixelbite – it’s pretty rare for a developer to take a chance and mix up the elements of a successful game in its sequel. However, in the case of Reckless Racing 2, that risk has paid off tremendously. The comprehensive career mode, wealth of maps, and tweaks to the arcade racing formula has made this game more enjoyable in the long term. Add in the amazing visuals and music, and there’s not much to dislike here. Folks have sounded off in our forums in regards to the significant changes to the core gameplay. Personally, if these changes result in an incredibly fun to play game, then what more can you ask for?

TouchArcade Rating:

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We’ve had our eye on Tweet Land [$1.99] from Why Ideas ever since we spotted it as a curious Kickstarter project back in April of last year. The project was more than sufficiently funded, and last month we were treated to a new trailer and news that Tweet Land would be hitting at the end of January. As expected, earlier this week the game finally went live in the App Store.

Tweet Land was intriguing due to its unique real-time usage of tweets drawn from Twitter that would trigger elements into the game. It reaches out into the vast ocean of Twitter and utilizes special keywords from real tweets to create things in the game. It’s a fantastic idea in theory, and Why Ideas did pull it off on a functional level just as they had promised. However, despite being really innovative, Tweet Land doesn’t hold up as well in the gameplay department, and there were a couple of unintended side effects of using live tweets that left a sour taste in my mouth.

First, let’s talk about the kind of gameplay that’s in Tweet Land. You control a car heading down the highway (Route 140 no less) and you must make it to the finish line while dodging tweet-driven hazards and other traffic on the road. You can veer into the other cars from the side to knock them off the road and score some points, and ramming multiple cars off the road at once will multiply the points you earn. If you hit cars from behind or run into road hazards, you lose a bit of life, which is represented by the visual damage on your car.

I really like Tweet Land’s retro style, and there is a lot of humor and personality in its pixel art visuals (though it’s kind of blurry on my iPhone 4S). But things start to fall apart when you actually start playing. The controls are very slippery, and it’s hard to be precise when trying to properly ram other cars or avoid hitting hazards. With practice you can get used to it, but it’s still really annoying when you’re trying to quickly react to something and the controls don’t afford you the kind of finesse that you need to get it done.

I think when you have games that are built on top of a very simple core gameplay concept, you have to get all the little details right. That’s why games like Jetpack Joyride or Angry Birds are often imitated but rarely duplicated. as they get the feel of the controls and the movement in the game so right. If you’re going to be doing the same action over and over again, you want that action to be fun. While Tweet Land has its share of fun moments, something about it just feels off, like it’s missing something but I can’t pinpoint what.

The game is broken into two environments with 12 levels each, with a spot for a third environment that’s said to be coming soon. With each new level, new tweet-driven elements are introduced and added to the current ones, so as you keep going the variety of things that can happen increases quite a bit. An example of a hazard would be if someone tweets the word “meteor” then a meteor will fly in from off screen and you’ll have to use the position of its shadow in order to avoid being crushed. There are helpful things that can be triggered in the game too, like health packs or a temporary spread shot for your vehicle.

One problem with the progression in Tweet Land is that it gets rather hard rather quickly, and if you get stuck on a level there’s no moving forward until you beat it. This got pretty frustrating since many of the times that I died it felt like it wasn’t actually my fault. When elements are brought in from Twitter, they are accompanied by a label with the Twitter handle of whoever tweeted that keyword. This is neat, but leads to an incredibly cluttered and distracting screen, especially when there are multiple things happening at once. Coupled with the floaty controls and the speed at which things are zooming by, and the odds are stacked against you.

Arrows indicate where things will be coming in from off screen, but they’re hard to notice amongst the busyness on the screen and often aren’t very helpful. Add in the fact that there’s usually a ton of traffic on the road with you, and making it to the finish line intact can require a healthy dose of luck just as much as skill. The levels tend to be a bit longish, and nothing is worse than seeing your cheap demise when you’re within a stone’s throw of the finish. The more I failed a level over and over, the less I felt compelled to go back and conquer it.

However, my biggest issue with Tweet Land is something that I didn’t really expect: the tweets that the game draws from can be much too somber for what is supposed to be a fun and lighthearted game. For example, if someone tweets about a “car crash” then cars will zoom in from offscreen and wreck into some of the other traffic on the road. When your run ends, you have the option of looking at a list of all the tweets that were used to bring things into the game.

To my horror, I found that in this particular instance “car crash” was pulled from a huge retweet campaign trying to raise money for a girl who had lost her parents in a car crash in Florida. I know Tweet Land has no way of telling the difference, but I couldn’t help but feel crass for playing a game that was fueled by somebody else’s tragedy. With some of the other keywords used in the game – like tsunami, terrorist, and death – I have no doubt that encountering a downer situation like that will occur often.

While I do still think the idea behind Tweet Land is incredibly clever, I just find the game too fundamentally flawed to be enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it and I did find myself having fun with the game at times, but those fun times are quickly diminished when you realize your game is possibly being powered by the tragic tweets of strangers. Beyond that, the gameplay is too average to warrant dealing with cheap deaths and an unpredictable difficulty.

With some tweaks to the controls and interface, and perhaps some sort of filter for what kind of keywords are utilized, then Tweet Land could end up being something pretty special. It feels like it’s just a couple notches off of being something great, and I hope it gets there someday. As it is now, though, it’s hard to recommend the game except to those who might be curious to check out its novel use of Twitter or are prepared to deal with its shortcomings.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Imagination’s PowerVR GPU’s have shipped in every iOS device since the release of the iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch. Those early devices used the PowerVR SGX, while the iPad and iPhone 4 moved on to the PowerVR SGX 535, and finally the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S came packed with the PowerVR SGX543MP2. At CES today, they got ever-so-slightly more specific regarding the Series6 family of PowerVR GPU’s, and it seems incredibly likely that we’ll see them included in future iOS devices, judging by Apple’s three-generation track record of utilizing Imagination’s GPU technology.

Per the press release, gamers will be able to expect 20 times the performance of current generation hardware, along with a 5x boost in efficiency. Imagination has announced that 8 different outfits have signed up to utilize these new GPUs, but curiously enough, only list 6 of the companies. If I were a betting man, I’d put Apple as one of the two unlisted chip makers.

Needless to say, the potential these new GPUs have is just crazy to think about. The iPad 2 and iPhone 4S are already graphical powerhouses capable of rendering beautiful games like Infinity Blade 2, and imagining the next generation of devices potentially being 20 times more powerful is incredible.

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Our ratings for games we reviewed in December are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.

Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in December, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in December.

5 Stars

Bejeweled Blitz, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Popcap takes the glorious match-three mechanic of the classic puzzle franchise, pumps up the volume on the jewel and match bonuses, and then condenses it all down into frantic, one-minute bursts of eye-gasmic, point-laden play.

Sonic CD, $2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Here we have the best installment of one of the greatest gaming franchises, which received both flawless review scores and game of the year awards when it was originally released ported with complete perfection to iOS. This is a game you flat out need to buy if you even vaguely consider yourself an iOS gamer. Not only because it’s such an impeccable port of an important piece of gaming history, but because we need to vote with our wallets to tell Sega (and anyone else who might be watching) that this is the quality we demand out of retro games brought to the App Store.

Wind-up Knight, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Picture Super Mario Bros. Got a nice image in your head? Good. Now imagine Mario could never stop moving and would only change direction if he hit a wall. A little tougher. And what if absolutely everything could kill him in one hit, and there was no such thing as a checkpoint? That sounds like the sort of game that would have you cursing, spitting, and contemplating throwing your controller, and it also sounds a lot like Wind-up Knight.

4.5 Stars

Bag It!, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – It’s rare to find a puzzle game that feels so fresh but also so obvious. I’ve never played a game about bagging groceries before, but why not? It should be mandatory training for everyone who moves out on their own, never mind the folks who work at grocers.

Don’t Run With a Plasma Sword, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – From presentation to gameplay to overall fun factor, Don’t Run With a Plasma Sword simply shines. It’s got distinctive character and a great sense of humor. It’s also a treat to look at — great design, excellent color.

Zen Pinball, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Pinball games have been great on iOS devices, and Zen Pinball is one of the best ones we’ve seen so far. It’s totally free to try, and if you like the game engine and the pinball physics (which you will), you can buy additional tables via IAP.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Containment: The Zombie Puzzler for the iPad from Bootsnake Games is definitely not your typical match-3 game. In fact, you don’t even need to match three of anything. Instead, the goal is to surround zombies with cops, soldiers, scientists or punks.

Grand Theft Auto 3, $2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Even though GTA 3 wasn’t designed for virtual controls, you’ll have a great time with it, even if all you do is drive around Liberty City listening to the fantastic in-game radio stations. (My favorite is the talk station.) As you become more accustomed with the splattering of virtual buttons all over the screen, you’ll find hours upon hours of content to plow through. Having played GTA3 to completion many times in the past, I’m incredibly happy to be able to take it anywhere with me on my phone of all things.

Bug Princess, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Aside from a few small quibbles, Bug Princess offers yet another stellar entry in CAVE’s series of iOS shooters. It’s probably the most straight forward and least complex out of them all, which makes it a great starting point for bullet hell newbies, but it does have its share of depth for those looking to master its strategies.

Snow Fight, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Snow Fight is a really fresh-feeling real-time strategy game, a fun re-imagining of Capture the Flag that engages you in wintry warfare against scrappy neighborhood kids in a kind of snow battle royale.

The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.

As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone’s personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.

For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our “Best iPhone Games” category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer:

• So You Just Got an iPhone 4S… Here’s What You Need to Know!
• So You Just Got a Verizon iPhone… Let’s Get You Up To Speed!
• So You Just Got an iPhone 4 – An App Store Gaming Guide
• Best iPod Touch and iPhone Games: 2010 Buyer’s Guide
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Eli
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Blake
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Brad
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Jared
• Best iPod Touch and iPhone Games: 2009 Buyer’s Guide

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Final Fantasy Tactics [$11.99] on iPhone and iPod Touch has inspired numerous, uh, passionate e-commentaries since its release earlier this year. One of the components we’ve seen the most bickering about has been addressed: Tactics‘ latest update zeroes in on the port’s decidedly unspectacular visuals on retina devices and supports the screen.

To be clear, the text is still tiny on iPhone 4S, for example, but it’s apparently much less blurry overall. Also, the UI is noticeably sharper, and various assets like facial graphics and icons have been updated to mesh with the retina support. This update also rolls in some nebulous “bug fixes.”

Off-topic, here, but we definitely want to note that Tactics is available at the lowest price it has ever been since its August release: as of December 19, it’s $11.99 instead of $15.99. Still steep in comparison to other App Store games, but better.

If you already own the game and choose to update, note that you’ll lose your auto-save data in the process because, reasons.

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In a bit of a surprise today, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia Classic [99¢] into the App Store. Now you might be thinking, “Hey, Ubisoft. Didn’t y0u already release a classic version of Jordan Mechner’s influential platform adventure last year?” And the answer to that is, yes, it’s called Prince of Persia Retro [99¢]. That game was basically a perfect port of one of the earliest versions of the game, Prince of Persia for Macintosh, with some very sub-standard virtual controls tacked on. The nostalgia factor was there, plus it was cheap and Universal, but Prince of Persia Retro was far from the ideal way to play such a finicky game that demanded precision control.

Today’s release is actually another port, this time from the 2007 Prince of Persia remake that was available on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Prince of Persia Classic is essentially the exact same game as the original – same level layouts, same enemies and hazards, same storyline and one hour time limit – but completely redone with fantastic 3D visuals and what appears to be a more zoomed in camera to better suit iOS. Sure, if you’re a purist then that might not sound like such a great thing. But if you love the original gameplay and can appreciate a shiny new coat of paint, then Prince of Persia Classic fully delivers.

As for the translation from controller to touch screen, obviously it’s much more difficult without tactile feedback but at the very least the controls feel leaps and bounds better than those in Prince of Persia Retro. There’s a more intuitive use of action buttons, and there is a slider for movement as opposed to directional arrows which gives you more control over running or walking. The controls aren’t perfect, and they make an already difficult game that much more frustrating, but I think they’re the best they can be while still being true to how the original game played and they certainly shouldn’t prevent you from playing through the game with a bit of practice.

So if you’re in the mood for some good old fashioned Prince of Persia gameplay, but want an extra dose of shiny, then Prince of Persia Classic is where it’s at. From my limited time with the game, it appears to be a very faithful port of the 2007 remake with virtual controls that are about as good as you can expect from a touch screen. You’ll get a headache from some accidental leaps to your own death, but after a bit of play it’s pretty easy to work within the confines of the controls in order to play through the game.

As an aside, some players in our forums seem to be having trouble installing the game on an iPod touch device. Indeed, the App Store notes that it’s compatible with “iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S” only, with no mention of any iPod touch or iPad devices. I’m not sure if this was just an oversight when uploading the game to iTunes or if the game really does require the two latest iPhones in order to run. If you own an iPod touch or iPad, it might be worth waiting a few days to see what the final verdict is on that, but if you’re an iPhone 4 or 4S owner and enjoy yourself some Prince of Persia, then I’d jump all over Prince of Persia Classic for just 99¢.

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Initially, I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw a thread in our forums posted for a game called Infinity of God. After the sweeping success of the Infinity Blade series, tacking “infinity” onto your title in any way has just about as much effect on me as if it was “doodle” or “angry.” That’s to say, the predetermination is that what I’ll find will be a low quality knockoff of the highly successful games that have made those words ubiquitous on the App Store.

For better or worse, Infinity of God actually does not resemble Infinity Blade so much, but it definitely does not hide the fact that it’s a God of War-inspired game. In fact, it appears that in the developer Calvi Game’s native Chinese, the subtitle reads as “Wrath of God of War”. And so it goes.

However, no matter your feelings on games that are very blatantly “heavily inspired” by other successful games, the trailer for Infinity of God looks mighty impressive:

A few more tidbits of information can be found at Asian gaming blog Ewtang.com, and while I’m not totally sure how much is lost in translation, it looks like Infinity of God is already in the review stage with Apple and waiting for approval, at which point it will hopefully be released this month for $5.99. We also know that the game is being developed in Unreal Engine 3, the storyline will follow a classic Chinese mythology named Shan Hai Jing, there will be 10 unique upgradeable skills for your player, and two game modes including a Story and a Racing mode. The game will be compatible with 3rd generation hardware and up, and will have additional enhancements for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S devices.

I haven’t totally figured out if this is some dodgy knockoff that will look great on the surface but contain little substance, or if this will be the type of high end action game we’ve all been waiting for but just seems dodgy due to language barriers. Either way, I’m at least interested enough to give Infinity of God a spin if and when it launches sometime this month.

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Harmonix is giving the gift of VidRhythm [$1.99] away this holiday season. Soon, the crazy, but always hilarious audio and video mash-up app will go free indefinitely. Also, it’ll receive one of its biggest updates at the same time — twelve new tracks, including “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls, six new video styles, an all new pitch correction mechanic, and an iPad 2 and iPhone 4/4S-exclusive YouTube export upgrade to 720p are all a part of the new package.

We spent some time speaking with the man who spearheaded VidRhythm at Harmonix, Josh Randall, in this week’s bonus edition podcast. Randall and I go deep on this update and many other things Harmonix, so check it out if you want to hear this news and other bits from one of the creators. And, hey, I also think you’ll leave the conversation with a pretty good idea of how much music truly matters to the studio and how iThing stuff figures into its future. Later today!

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Today, 5th Cell and Warner Bros. unleashed an update to Scribblenauts Remix [$2.99], the iOS port of the popular franchise from the Nintendo DS. The big new feature in this update is something they’re calling Scribblespeak. Scribblenauts is a game where you’re able to type in just about anything you can think of, complete with descriptive adjectives, and it will be created for you within the game. This is intended to be the way you solve the many puzzles in the game, as you can create objects that you need to complete the tasks that allow you to pass a level.

However, while that’s all well and good, the serious fun in Scribblenauts Remix is just thinking up the craziest objects or creatures that you possibly can, and then making them fight each other. At least, that’s how I get my kicks, and that goes for just about everybody I know too. This sandbox-like aspect of Scribblenauts Remix is the thing that ensures this wonderful little app will never leave my device.

Anyhoo, what the Scribblespeak update allows you to do is utilize the voice recognition functionality that powers Siri in the iPhone 4S and just blurt out whatever whacky thing you happen to want to conjure up in the game. It’s a pretty cool idea, and although it doesn’t really change the nature of the game a whole lot, it does make it feel a lot more personal, especially if you’re hamming around with friends while playing the game, as the Scribblespeak trailer will show you.

Also part of this update is a holiday theme, hence Maxwell wearing a Santa hat in the updated game icon. So cute. You also get a holiday themed sandbox level, decorated with snowy Christmas trees and gingerbread houses, which is basically the interactive start screen that let’s you just create things to your heart’s content. You can switch to the normal sandbox level at any time if you wish, if the holidays aren’t your thing. Finally, Scribblenauts Remix now supports screen orientation flipping, for those of you who like to play your games while doing cartwheels (or something like that).

The new Scribblespeak feature is a pretty cool addition to an already stellar game, so if you own an iPhone 4S be sure to update and give it a try. I’m also pretty down for the holiday theme, since like, Christmas is practically just a couple weeks away. I should probably start my shopping soon, thanks for reminding me Scribblenauts Remix! Oh, and for Christmas, I want new levels. Not that I don’t appreciate the update you just gave me, I just thought I’d let you know.

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