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It’s been a long week (Well, a little more than a week.) of waiting since the new iPad was announced. But, if you were in the initial batch of preorders or are ambitious enough to head to an Apple Store today, you should have a new iPad in your hot little hands right now. I just got done unboxing and syncing mine, and I’m sort of at a loss as to what to post about it, as I really think the new iPad is what everyone expected it to be.

The screen is incredible, and inspires that same sense of awe the first time you see it that the original Retina Display of the iPhone 4 did. No photos, screenshots, or videos will do the display of the new iPad justice. You simply must see it for yourself to truly appreciate just how ridiculously high resolution it is.

I’ve run through the list of the few games that are Retina-ready, and am totally impressed that the new iPad can actually pull off running all these games with performance levels that seem on par with the iPad 2, only at double the resolution. The GPU Apple packed in this thing doesn’t mess around.

Remember how non-Retina apps on the iPhone 4 looked like total trash comparatively during that awkward transition where not very much was Retina-ready? Well, oddly enough, non-Retina apps and games on the new iPad actually don’t look all that bad at all. There’s obviously a huge contrast between things running at 1024×768 and 2048×1536, but it doesn’t seem to induce that same jarring “Oh wow, this looks bad” that non-Retina iPhone apps did. Maybe it’s just me.

Just like the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S, the new iPad is a solid upgrade over the iPad 2. In my opinion, the screen is worth the cost of admission alone, but again, like the iPhone 4 to the 4S, the iPad 2 still is as capable of a device as it ever was. What I’m anxious to see is what sort of apps and games developers are going to start churning out developed from the ground up specifically with the new iPad in mind instead of just resolution-boosting updates.

But enough of my rambling, those of you who braved the Apple store or waited for FedEx to show up today, tell us your first impressions of the new iPad in the comments here. Is it everything you wanted and more? A worthy upgrade? A little disappointing? Let’s have it!

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Arguably the biggest addition to this year’s version of the iPad (or at least, the most immediately noticeable one) is the inclusion of a Retina Display screen that ups the resolution to a monstrous 2048 x 1536. As anybody who has upgraded from an older device to an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 4S, you know that the Retina Display screen is a stunning upgrade in person and makes all other mobile device screens look inferior in comparison. Such is the case with the new iPad’s fancy screen, it really needs to be seen to be believed.

For anybody upgrading to a new iPad today, or if this is your first foray into the world of the iPad, then chances are you’re interested in having the games that can show off the new screen as you gloat to your friends. Here we’ve compiled a list of games that have been updated for the iPad Retina Display:

• Infinity Blade II, $6.99
• Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy, $4.99
• Galaxy on Fire 2 HD, $9.99
• Mass Effect Infiltrator, $6.99
• Flight Control Rocket, 99¢
• Real Racing 2 HD, $2.99
• Foosball HD, $2.99
• Touchgrind BMX, $4.99
• Labyrinth 2 HD, $7.99 / Lite Version
• Joining Hands, $2.99
• Woodroid HD+, Free
• Letris Power, Free
• Monsters Ate My Condo, 99¢
• Save the Pencil HD, 99¢ / Lite Version
• Tractor Beam, 99¢
• FMX Riders, $2.99
• Lab Solitaire, 99¢
• Parlour Solitaire, Free

There is a thread in our forums that’s constantly being updated keeping track of compatible games or ones that will be compatible soon. If you’re a developer with an iPad Retina Display update coming out, make sure to post it in that thread or post in the comments below and we’ll try to keep that thread as well as this article updated as new games hit. Also, Apple is currently featuring a selection of games and apps in the App Store that are new iPad ready.

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Cave has basically cornered the market on iOS bullet hell shooters with a slew of solid ports from their vast library of beloved titles. As fantastic as the gameplay is in Cave’s shooters, the fact that they’re ports of arcade titles has typically meant that features like Retina Display graphics and iPad support have required to much additional work to implement into the iOS releases.

Last October, Cave bucked this trend by releasing Espgaluda II HD [$10.99/Lite] for the iPad 2. The game featured a selection of graphics that were redone in high resolution and native support for the iPad’s larger screen. Not everything was HD’d out, though, but it still made a pretty big difference in the visual quality of Espgaluda II, and the nice big screen of the iPad proved phenomenal for navigating a hail of onscreen bullets.

This week, Cave once again is dipping their toes into native iPad support. This time, however, they’re going full stop and have released Dodonpachi Resurrection HD [$10.99/Lite] as a Universal app so that it works with the iPad as well as compatible iPhone and iPod touch models. Not only that, but they’ve gone and updated Espgaluda II HD with the same Universal support, giving both titles new life in high resolution on the smaller iOS device screens.

Example of original screen (left) and updated HD screen with redrawn ship sprite (right) from Dodonpachi Resurrection HD (click to enlarge):

I won’t go into too much detail about either title – you can read our full review of Dodonpachi Resurrection or the review for Espgaluda II if you’re curious to learn more about the game mechanics – but what I will say is that the partial high definition treatment given to each game makes an even bigger difference on the small screen than it does on the iPad.

Both games look gorgeous on an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, and you can see that Cave has actually gone and redrawn many of the sprites in the game, as well as given the menus a visual overhaul. Some elements, like backgrounds and other hand-drawn artwork, aren’t technically as high resolution as they could be, but everything in the game has a much cleaner, crisper look than it did previously.

I imagine many of you have already bought either Dodonpachi Resurrection or Espgaluda II before the HD versions hit, so really it’s going to be up to you whether or not some increased graphical fidelity is worth the additional purchase price. To help you decide, there are lite versions of each, and in the case of Espgaluda II HD you can even buy each of the game’s modes as separate apps, Arcade Mode [$6.99] and Smartphone Mode [$6.99], which have also been updated to be Universal.

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Swedish studio Illusion Labs likes to stay on the bleeding edge of new Apple hardware, so it’s no actual surprise to learn that it has already updated three of its games in its current stable for the new iPad’s much higher resolution display. Touchgrind BMX, Foosball HD, and Labyrinth 2 HD have all received the 4X treatment in preparation for the device’s release later this week, and we’ve got the images to prove it.

In the grand tradition of these pre-new iPad posts, we’ll show you the old version and then the new version to get a taste of what’s changed. Illusion seems stoked about the new hardware, too. We wish ours would ship out of Nashville already.

Touchgrind BMX pre-new iPad update

Touchgrind BMX with Retina visuals

Labyrinth 2 HD before the update

Labyrinth 2 HD with Retina visuals

Foosball HD before the Retina update

… and Foosball HD with Retina visuals

Click on, and then zoom in on these images to really see the difference. For the most part, we’re thinking new iPad’s screen won’t be a life-changer for most studios. Good looking games will continue to look good on either device, much like the transition between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.

Studios that want to capitalize on the hardware are more than welcome to do so, of course. We’re ready for the extra layer of fidelity this thing will bring to our world.

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One of Apple’s more “magical” features in the past year is AirPlay, which allows you to stream the screen from  your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 wirelessly to an Apple TV and right onto your HDTV. Soon, the new OS X Mountain Lion will allow you to do the same thing with your Mac, beaming whatever is on its screen to your TV wirelessly. In terms of gaming, AirPlay offers an additional avenue for playing iOS games – wirelessly on the living room TV – and some titles like Real Racing 2 HD have taken it a step further and offer a custom interface or additional features for playing the game that way.

While Apple has made it incredibly easy to beam the latest iOS devices to a television, and soon will be able to beam a Mac to a television, it’s strange that there’s not also the ability to stream an iOS device right onto a Mac. Someone else must have thought that was strange too, as there is now a new Mac app called Reflection that allows you to do just that. Streaming to a Mac using the Reflection app is just as simple as streaming to a television with an Apple TV. Just run the program on your Mac, and choose the AirPlay option on your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 and just like that it’s on your computer screen.

This sort of functionality has all types of useful applications, but the first thing on my mind was how well games would play using Reflection. For the most part it works pretty good, and it will largely depend on which game you’re playing whether you have a good experience or not. This is mostly due to the slight lag that is present when using Reflection, where your actions on your iOS device translate to your Mac just a tad off from real time. This tad can make a big difference in games that require precise and timely touches, and I shudder to think of playing something like Beat Sneak Bandit with that slight delay.

For lots of games that lag won’t matter though, and it is pretty cool playing iOS games on my MacBook Pro. Another thing I noticed is that the frame rate in Reflection isn’t as smooth as what’s on the actual device, but it isn’t terribly noticeable. Reflection also comes with the options to view the game in an iPhone or iPad frame, much like the simulator in the iOS SDK, or play in frameless or full screen modes. Reflection reacts accordingly when changing your device’s orientation, and you can lock it in either portrait or landscape if need be.

Reflection is a neat piece of technology, I can see it being incredibly useful to some. But for gaming it feels more like a novelty due to the sluggishness of the performance, but it’s still pretty neat and I think that performance will improve over time. If you own a Mac, you can grab a trial version of Reflection for free to test it out. It gives you just 10 minutes of time per day to mess around with it, but that’s enough to see how it works and decide if it’s something worth buying. If you do, the full version of Reflection will set you back $14.99 for a single license.

Product Website Link: Reflection App, $14.99 / Free Trial

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In mid-December, Mountain Sheep quietly dropped their one-on-one arcade hockey title Ice Rage [99¢] into the App Store. We thought it was a pretty fun little game in our review, but Ice Rage was so severely lacking in content it was kind of hard to know what to make of it. Since its initial release, the developers have been addressing this problem with a decent stream of updates.

A week after its launch an update added the Bike Baron as a playable character, and then an update in January added another new character as well as a fun single-player tournament mode with a simplistic stat upgrading system. Then earlier this month, yet some more new characters were added to the playable roster.

Slowly but surely, Ice Rage was getting fleshed out, and today a brand new update has been released that continues that progression. In fact, it’s probably the biggest Ice Rage update yet. A new skater, the big Swedish bruiser Svensson, has been added to the roster, and he looks ready to party. Also, each of the characters have been given their own individual “weight” in the game, giving them a more distinctive feel from each other as opposed to just feeling like different skins of the same player.

What I think is the biggest addition in this update to Ice Rage is iCade support. For such an arcade-y arcade game, mashing away at a physical joystick and buttons can only add to the experience. If they could at some point figure out a way to get multiplayer between two iCades to be a thing then I would be in miniature arcade heaven.

iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners also get treated to anti-aliasing courtesy of the latest update, as well as enlarged touch zones during multiplayer and huge memory optimizations. The core gameplay in Ice Rage is so much fun that I’m really hoping Mountain Sheep keep on making the overall game more robust. But for a dollar, even as a simple arcade experience, Ice Rage is a blast so be sure to give the latest update a spin.

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If you’re a fan of things that are awesome, you should be intimately familiar with Robot Unicorn Attack [$.99], Adult Swim’s popular Flash game that rainbow dashed itself onto the App Store in mid-2010. If you aren’t familiar with the title, well, I’m not so sure we can be friends. Robot Unicorn Attack is an endless runner that is chock full of robot unicorns (duh), magical fairies, a pod of leaping dolphins, and colorful visuals that would make any 7-year old girl (and myself) squeal with delight. All set to a looping soundtrack of Erasure’s Always.

Robot Unicorn Attack was such a success that it saw two follow ups on the App Store, Heavy Metal Edition [$.99] and the festive Christmas Edition [$.99]. A few months back, all 3 RUA titles were updated with Retina Display visuals, something fans had been clamoring for since the release original release of the iPhone 4. Today, the original Robot Unicorn Attack got another dose of update love, turning it into a Universal build and improving its performance on all devices.

If you recall, the Retina Display updates to the 3 RUA games were kind of staggered, taking about a month for all 3 to finally receive their updates. This means that it’s possible the other 2 RUA games will be getting a similar Universal treatment, though I haven’t heard confirmation of this just yet.

Also, in kind of a strange move, the iPad native Robot Unicorn Attack HD has disappeared from the App Store. It makes sense with the new Universal version to not have 2 iPad versions, but I don’t really know what that means for previous owners of the HD iPad version. We’ll be getting to the bottom of this query as well as what’s in store for the other Robot Unicorn games, but for current owners of the original release make sure to grab the latest update, throw that bad boy on your iPad, and rainbow dash your way to ultimate happiness.

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Last month Namco Bandai treated us to an excellent iOS port of the original SoulCalibur [$14.99]. It was based off of the superior Dreamcast version (or more accurately, the high resolution XBLA remake) rather than the arcade version, and came equipped with just about everything that made it a classic back then, barring a couple of significant things.

First was the baffling lack of any sort of multiplayer, as well as a few missing modes that had been in previous versions. The second big thing was the frame rate. See, one of the things that was so memorable about SoulCalibur on the Dreamcast was just how crazy smooth everything moved. The frame rate rocked a solid 60fps, and it elevated the visuals way beyond anything that was on current consoles, and rivaled much of what was popular in arcades at the time.

In our review of SoulCalibur, I definitely found the game quite attractive. The high resolution art assets popped on Retina and iPad displays, but the frame rate wasn’t quite there. Don’t get me wrong, it still ran really smooth, but it was probably only halfway to the coveted 60fps mark. But that changes today, as Namco has released an update that will lock the game at 60fps on iPhone 4S and iPad 2 devices. And let me tell you, the difference is dramatic.

When I saw this update, I played through the game a couple of times real quick before updating so it would be fresh in my mind for comparison. After quickly syncing the update I jumped right back into the game and was blown away by what a difference the increased frame rate makes. It was totally the thing that was missing from SoulCalibur on iOS that really completes the nostalgia trip for owners of the Dreamcast version like myself.

It may sound like a minor thing, but the 60fps was a key element of SoulCalibur and I’m happy Namco Bandai took the time to add it in to the iOS version. Now I can focus all my attention on bugging them for some sort of multiplayer mode, but if you have an iPhone 4S or iPad 2 make sure to check out the ultra smooth new update to SoulCalibur.

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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?

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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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