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Few games inspire more heartfelt nostalgia than the classic LucasArts adventure games of the late 80's and early 90's. While we've still got our fingers and toes crossed that we'll eventually see similar "special edition" treatments to Maniac Mansion and/or Day of the Tentacle, we couldn't be happier that the Monkey Island series is being re-released with the level of intimate care that we've seen so far both with the previously released The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition [$7.99 / Free], and Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge [iPhone: $7.99 / Free - iPad: $9.99 / Free] which just hit the App Store mere moments ago.

Monkey Island 2 takes place after the events of the first Monkey Island where wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood is introduced and meets the cast of characters included in the game as he seeks out the pirate leaders and attempts to prove himself through three challenges. A ghost pirate named LeChuck is thrown in to the mix, along with the beautiful Elaine Marley. Without spoiling too much, the game concludes with romance, root beer, and fireworks. Even though playing the original is by no means required to enjoy the sequel, Monkey Island is filled with great writing, silly characters, funny situations, and often extremely odd solutions to the problems that Guybrush must overcome which is really worth checking out– Especially considering the fantastic job LucasArts did on the iPhone port of the special edition release.

Monkey Island 2 opens with our familiar protagonist Guybrush Threepwood setting the scene for his next adventure. Now that LeChuck is no more, he decides to search for the treasure of "Big Whoop", and in typical Guybrush fashion, he has no idea where it is, has no way to get there, and doesn't really know if it even exists at all. Regardless, this hasn't stopped him in the past, and it certainly won't stop him now. Of course no LucasArts adventure game could ever be as straight forward as finding out where some treasure is, figuring out a way to get there, then digging it up, and it doesn't take long before you're toe to toe with Largo LaGrande, LeChuck's old henchman. One thing leads to another, and LeChuck returns, turning your simple treasure hunt in to yet another epic battle with the ghost (now zombie) pirate.

With a development team that was nearly identical to that of the original Secret of Monkey Island, the sequel shares all of the same fantastic writing and cartoonish charm. Monkey Island 2 is hilarious at times, and incredibly cheesy at others, but manages to maintain a highly entertaining witty atmosphere the whole way through. The port of the original to the iPhone was a load of fun, with the only real complaint being the control system which treated the touchscreen like a trackpad which you used to move the in-game cursor around. Thankfully, this has been replaced by a new default control scheme in the sequel which works like many other iPhone adventures games where you just touch areas in the game world that you want to move to, or objects you want to interact with.

Interactive objects highlighted on right.

The special edition of Monkey Island 2 also has several other refinements over the first, my personal favorite being the highlighting system that shows you objects and areas that you can interact with. Tapping the screen with two fingers makes everything interactive glow, easily allowing you to see things you've missed, or other things to try. This is an incredibly welcome change from the standard tap/click on absolutely everything once you get stuck in an area. This two finger tap also illuminates doors you can walk through, making it very easy to see where you're able to go so you don't miss anything on your journey.

If you do get stuck, Monkey Island 2 features the same great hint system found in the original where you can get hints which initially start out extremely vague to push you in the right direction which eventually ramp up to flat out telling you where to go and what to do. Having played quite a few classic adventure game ports on the iPhone, this really is the best approach as you never need to leave the game to check a walkthrough online, and it's usually much more fun to just get a small hint to send you in the right direction instead of just reading exactly what to do. (Of course, that's there if you need it.)

iPad top, iPhone bottom – Comparing both graphical styles.

Monkey Island 2 also has the incredibly superfluous yet amazingly cool classic graphics included which blew out mind when we first saw the previous special edition. By default you can play the game with its redone graphics, stellar voiceovers, and the toolbar of actions that Guybrush is capable of. Swiping two fingers across the screen causes the game to fade out in to its original pixelated glory with the top half of the screen displaying the original game with the set of actions below.

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge launched with separate iPad and iPhone versions of the game, and while I would have loved there to be one universal version for both devices, the iPad game is definitely the one to have. Not only does it have the same adventure from its iPhone counterpart, but currently for an additional two bucks (assuming you own an iPad) you get high resolution graphics and audio commentary. On quite a few areas of the game, you're able to tap a microphone icon in the top right corner and listen to the creators talk about wherever you are in game. It's not exactly a killer feature that's worth getting upset over if you only have an iPhone or iPod touch, but it is a nice addition.

The one thing that is a bit of a disappointment is that LucasArts flaunts these fantastic looking high resolution art assets in the iPad version, but played on my iPhone 4, the iPhone version is disappointingly low resolution in comparison. It still looks good, but I would have loved to have seen some Retina Display support in Monkey Island 2, I'm hopeful for future updates that might beef up the graphics, but it seems doubtful that audio commentary will ever make its way to the iPhone.

I could go on and on about how great the Monkey Island series is, how wonderful any game build on the SCUMM engine is, and the genius of the original creators Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman, but really this is just a game you need to play. LucasArts is covering all its bases with this launch, with free lites corresponding to both the full iPhone or iPad versions. If you've never played an adventure game before, I can't think of a better place to start. The Monkey Island series is great, and the few minor refinements added to the sequel makes this one of the most accessible point and click (point and tap?) games on the App Store. Download the lite version and give it a try, if the game hooks you in, chances are you will enjoy the entirety of both Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2.

On the other hand, if you're ever played a Monkey Island game before, I doubt you even made it this far in this review before just clicking the first iTunes link you could find and downloading the game for whatever device you own.

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The much anticipated first persona shooter Archetype has finally launched in the U.S. We first spotted the game having beta launched in the Czech App Store a few weeks ago as it prepared for its international launch. Archetype is an online 5-on-5 team deathmatch game that works over Wi-Fi, 3G and EDGE.

Anyone who has ever complained about the "freemium" model of Eliminate now has a chance to put-up or shut-up. The developer says in their game description "No gimmicks, no tricks: iPWNAGE IS JUST $2.99."

We've given the game a quick spin for a couple of games over Wi-Fi. The game runs very well on the two devices we were able to test initially: the iPhone 4 and a 2nd Generation iPod Touch. Controls are very smooth and as you have come to expect from an iPhone FPS: left to move, right to aim/shoot. The game comes with 5 different maps with 6 weapons (Battle and Precision Rifles, rapid-fire AutoMag, shotgun, missile launcher, and brutal melee axe) as well as 2 different types of grenades.

Controller options include invert aim axes, auto-fire on/off, aim sensitivity, vibration on/off, display joysticks on/off, and display radar on/off. The game natively supports the iPhone 4's retina display.

The game comes with 3 different modes: Team Deathmatch, Challenge, and Training. The bulk of the game seems to be focused around the online Team Deathmatch. The developers have 5 different regions covered with servers: U.S. East, U.S. West, Europe, Asia, and S. America. You can easily toggle between them though presumably it originally places you with the group you are closest too.

Since it has just launched within the hour, the number of players available hasn't picked up yet. I've been involved in a few matches with 2 on 2, so I haven't seen the full 5 on 5 action quite yet. Early impressions have been very positive, but we'll post a full review after we are able to spend some time with it. The whole package seems very professionally put together. As with any online multiplayer game, however, the trick is going to be able to build up a sustainable player pool and to see how the servers can hold up.

More impressions are trickling into our forums.

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A little over a year ago Paul Pridham of Madgarden, who teamed up with Jeff McCord to bring us the iPhone / iPad roguelike Sword of Fargoal [App Store], released an iPhone version of his own take on Dan Gorlin's 1982 Brøderbund classic Choplifter. The developer's v1.3 free update to the game has just gone live in the App Store [link], turning the title into a Universal application that takes full advantage of the iPad's large display, among other enhancements.

In Saucelifter, gameplay involves flying your tilt-controlled saucer to various Earth prison barracks, blasting open the doors, picking up your captive crewmates, and dropping them off at the transporter where they're beamed safely back to your alien world.  This is made challenging by evil Earth forces, including tanks, laser turrets, fighter jets, and flying attack drones.

There are a lot of nice touches to the title. The stylized, vector-based 2D graphics lend the game impressive visuals, with a day-into-night changing skyline that adds nice variation to the scene. A letter-box effect alters the aspect of the play area to provide early warning of incoming enemies. It's very well done.

The full list of the enhancements that v1.3 brings, as listed by the developer:

• New saucer!
• New reptoid super weapon!
• Saucelifter is now a universal application
• iOS4 multitasking support
• Support for both landscape orientations
• Fixed sound that was too quiet
• Gameplay tweaks

It's a nice list of enhancements, but the developer has already submitted the v1.3.1 free update to the App Store that brings iPhone 4 Retina Display support as well as control refinements. I'm presently playing v1.3.1 on my iPhone 4 and it looks beautiful.

See our video of the initial release version of the iPhone original.

Choplifter was the first game I fell in love with on my first Apple computer, an Apple //c, back in 1984. Saucelifter is a superb enhancement on the formula and pays faithful homage to the Dan Gorlin masterpiece. Since its release, I've counted Saucelifter among my five absolute favorite iPhone games and, after enjoying the Universal build of the game for several weeks now on my iPad, I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Whether or not you've ever played Choplifter, Saucelifter is one not to be missed.

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It's no secret we love Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99 for the iPhone. We gushed about it in our review, interviewed the developers, sat in on on of their talks at GDC, invited them as guests on episode #8 of our podcast, and finally went on to name Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor our 2009 game of the year. While Tiger Style Games is hard at work building whatever their successor to Spider will be, they've also had time to crank out the free Spider: Hornet Smash [Free], and Spider: Bryce Manor HD for the iPad which they're hoping to submit to the App Store very soon.

Like similar HD releases, Spider HD is little more than the iPhone game with the resolution of everything cranked up to fill the screen of the iPad. This allows you to see much more of your surroundings, making clues regarding the secrets of Bryce Manor much easier to spot than on the iPhone version, where your somewhat limited viewpoint could result in missing certain things if you weren't properly exploring some levels. Also, like most games built around fantastic art, the entire game experience is so much better in high resolution.

All four of the game modes from the iPhone game are included, as well as a brand new two player "sidekicks" game mode where two spiders are on screen, and each spider is controlled by the finger nearest to it. It's actually a surprising amount of fun, as like most games played in cooperative mode it's entirely up to you whether you want to help each other build webs, or simply race all over the screen trying to munch up bugs before the other player. Tiger Style is still working on how sidekick mode is going to be scored, so we'll have to wait and see whether or not they encourage cooperative, competitive, or both types of play style in the two player mode.

Here's a brief video demonstrating how it works, but since shooting iPad video is such a hassle my second player is actually playing the role of the camera man so in this case, yes, I am playing a two player game by myself:

As mentioned, Tiger Style hopes to submit Spider: Bryce Manor HD this weekend which means unless there are any significant bugs or approval issues we should be playing Spider on our iPads early this month. When asked about whether or not Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor for the iPhone was going to see an update to support the iPhone 4's Retina Display, they said that they don't have plans yet, but mostly because they just have yet to get their hands on an iPhone 4. Either way, here's to hoping for a quick approval of Spider HD, and some high-definition love for the iPhone Spider in the not too distant future.

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In early May we first posted about Crescent Moon Games getting involved in the development of Aralon: Sword and Shadow, an RPG by Galoobeth Games that had been in development long before Crescent Moon even started on their previous RPG, Ravensword: The Fallen King [$4.99 / Free]. In essence, Aralon had been the project of two developers who were extremely passionate about building an immersive RPG with levels of detail seldom seen on mobile platforms… But neither of them were artists. Aralon was filled with what amounted to mediocre character animations, place holder art, and 3D models that were beyond basic.

Crescent Moon saw the potential this game had if the graphical front-end could be brought up to par with all of the various subsystems powering the game world that Galoobeth had spent so much time working on. With artist Mark Jones, Aralon had the last piece of the puzzle it was missing to be the game it needed to be.

This is what the world of Aralon was going to look like:

And this is what Aralon will look like now, running at the Retina Display resolution of the iPhone 4:

The night and day difference continues through the rest of the screenshots we were provided:

The time that's being put in to the complete artistic makeover of the game has allowed Galoobeth to add even more to Aralon than they were originally even planning on launching with. For instance, the game now has a complete pet system where any NPC (even a human) can be charmed and serve as your pet. The game now includes well over 30 hours of gameplay, what has been described to us as a "massive" world that players can completely explore, hundreds of items, mounts, four playable classes across three races, and other gameplay mechanics such as faction systems, herb gathering, crafting, and more.

Aralon: Sword and Shadow is planned for a fall release, and if they manage to deliver on the things they're promising, Crescent Moon and Galoobeth games will likely have a hit on their hands. For more on Aralon, take a look at our previous post on the game or the thread on our forums. If you like seeing these kind of drastic before and after shots, swing on by this thread on our forums where other developers are posting shots of their placeholder art compared to their final release art as well.

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Earlier this month at Apple's WWDC 2010 in San Francisco, we had a chance to sit down with Julian Farrior and Dale Thoms of Backflip Studios, who brought us Ragdoll Blaster and Paper Toss, among others. The group has shown real App Store savvy, with eight of their 12 titles reaching the top five overall ranking. What's more, they're presently serving one million unique players per day.

In our time together, the folks from Backflip demonstrated four new titles — three free games along with the paid arcade shooter Tunnel Shoot, a collaboration between Backflip Studios and Team Phobic (Bounce On, Bounce On 2). We liked what we saw of them all, but it was the last that really had us excited — and now it's here. Tunnel Shoot [link] has recently gone live in the App Store.

Now, right off the bat — aside from anything relating to gameplay — Backflip / Team Phobic impress with Tunnel Shoot in that it's a Universal iOS game that graphically renders natively to all three iOS platform devices: the iPhone / iPod touch, the iPhone 4, and the iPad. Everybody wins, here.

Tunnel Shoot is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a tunnel shooter in the vein of N2O: Nitrous Oxide for the Playstation (and is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone's own Boost 3D). The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible, travelling down a neon-vector tunnel while dodging obstacles, blasting enemies, and collecting green gems for points. You're placed in tilt-control of your craft — there are several to choose from, all of which can be visually customized — with a tap / hold mechanic for firing your blaster and bombs.

Your ship's blasters, when first activated, fire bursts of three bolts per shot, but as you hold down the fire "button," that soon drops to two bolts, and then to just a stream of single bolts. Let up on the button and your blasters quickly recharge and it's back to three bolts per shot. (Read: don't just lay on the fire button, folks.) You start off with one bomb which, when activated, flies down the tunnel destroying all enemies in its path. More are accumulated along the way. Your damage bar replenishes over time, and fairly quickly. A nice touch is that when you get blown up, the force of the explosion sends a destructive shockwave down the tunnel before you respawn.

The farther you go, the harder things get. After you get a little ways into the game, the obstacle layouts become rather complex. The arrangement of oncoming pylons and walls becomes difficult to visually comprehend between their appearance on the screen and their crushing impact with your ship. Here, I experience a definite advantage in playing on the iPad and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone 4 as compared to the earlier iOS devices. It's just easier to make out distant structures on larger and / or higher resolution displays. That said — the game is great on the older devices. I've, in fact, spent the most time with it on my 3GS.

As mentioned earlier, the game utilizes accelerometer-based tilt controls for steering. Tilt controls for fast paced shooters can often come up short, given their generally slower reaction time and lesser precision as compared to onscreen swipes. That's really not a problem in Tunnel Shoot as, although the action is intense, the velocity at which you're hurtling down the tunnel is a bit slower than that of some, similar games. I don't mean to indicate that it's some sort of "sluggish" or "laggy" affair, it's just that you're being challenged to dodge hither and yon, choosing your path and placing your shots wisely, as opposed to emphasis being on go, go, go!

The long and short of it is that Tunnel Shoot is a stylized shooter that feels very well implemented, delivers real challenge, supports all iOS devices natively, and costs $0.99. The only gripe I've got is that there's no real explanation as to the specifics, in-game — how the multi-blaster works, that green gems are good, that your damage repairs over time, etc. Nonetheless, it should be an instant buy for anyone that even approximates a shooter fan — especially if you've got multiple devices.

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Austin, Texas based iPhone developer Pangea Softwarehave been making video games since their inception in the late 80's. Originally targeting the Apple IIGS, Pangea has been hopping to each new Apple platform as they're released, this time tweaking their existing iPhone games to run at the native 960×640 resolution of the iPhone 4's Retina Display. As mentioned in our first impressions post on gaming with the iPhone 4, increasing the output resolution of existing games doesn't really add to gameplay at all… But it sure does look good.

Noteworthy games that have been updated include:

Enigmo – Starting its life as a Mac game, Enigmo is a physics puzzle game that was voted Best iPhone Game at WWDC in 2008. In the game you move various objects around the game board to direct water droplets to their destination. Levels start easy and get so hard you will be desperately searching Google for the solution. (App Store)

Enigmo 2 – This sequel takes the same basic gameplay of the original and adds a third dimension to the puzzles, which makes things even more difficult. Before long, you're not only routing water droplets around, but also laser beams. Both games are worth having, although you should probably start with Enigmo before adding the complexity of moving puzzle pieces in 3D in Enigmo 2. (Review, App Store)

Warheads – Warheads is basically Missile Command combined with one of those oddly elaborate 3D fireworks screensavers. The gameplay is classic Missile Command with four directions to defend from instead of just one. The eye candy combined with the frantic camera shaking as missiles are exploding make for a pretty cool experience, especially on the iPhone 4. (Review, App Store)

Nanosaur 2 – Also starting as a Mac game, Nanosaur 2 was ported to the iPhone in late 2008. It hasn't aged very well compared to Pangea's other games, but the premise of piloting a massive dinosaur from the future who is equipped with a massive arsenal of weaponry couldn't get much more ridiculous and/or awesome. (App Store)

I'm glad to see so many iPhone 4 Retina Display updates coming along, especially this soon after the launch of the device. These are just my favorite games of theirs, they have many other iPhone and iPad games on the App Store that are worth checking out as well.

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Engadget posts a hands on video of the iPhone 4 in action with ngmoco's new Eliminate: Gun Range game that supports the gyroscope.

As you can see in the video, the game is a gallery shooter but the use of the gyroscope can add more precision to the movements. (Sorry, not viewable on iPhone)

Not entirely well shown in the video is the fact that you can also move the phone in 3d space to change your aim. While some of the same gameplay can be reproduced with the accelerometers, the gyroscope adds more precision and also allows you to, for example, translate the device in 3d space. Rotating your body to the left, for example, will shift your aim accordingly.

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If our App Store Gaming Guide that we posted yesterday wasn't a big enough list of awesome games worth checking out on your new iPhone 4, it would appear Apple has thrown their own hat in to the game listing ring with their The Best Games You've Never Played list.

50 games are included in said list, and while they cover quite a bit of games that we hit in ours, there are quite a few games we left out. Here are just a handful of the games from the Apple list that we think are worth checking out that we haven't already mentioned in either the recent App Store gaming guide or our 2009 buyer's guide:

Critter Crunch – This game was released all the way back in 2008, and I only discovered it recently as it's made by some of the same guys behind Sword & Sworcery. Critter Crunch reminds me of classic Neo Geo stacking puzzle games, and gameplay amounts to feeding smaller critters to larger critters to score massive combos and clear the game board. (Review, App Store)

Dungeon Scroll – Developed by the same person responsible for the classic BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon, Dungeon Scroll is a marvelous twist on word finding games. In the game, you crawl through dungeons fighting monsters by casting spells. The strength of the spell you cast is directly related to the word you spell from your random tiles, creating an awesome amount of strategy as you save big words for tougher enemies and work out smaller words for weaker ones. (Review, App Store)

HECTOR: Badge of Carnage Ep1 – This point and click (point and tap?) adventure game really pushes the boundaries of the App Store approval process. Filled with dirty humor and raunchy references, Hector won't take you more than a few hours to beat… But those few hours will be amazing. (Review, App Store)

Pix'n Love Rush – I really don't think this game could come packed with any more stylized pixel art. With graphical themes ranging from the classic Gameboy to the Virtual Boy that change on the fly depending on your performance in the game, Pix'n Love Rush is a high scoring game that not only looks great, but is really hard to put down once you get going. (Review, App Store)

Robot Unicorn Attack – An iPhone port of Adult Swim's extremely popular free Flash game, Robot Unicorn Attack preserves everything from the original, including the fantastic Erasure soundtrack. If you like survival platformers, you need to at least give the Flash version a spin. (Review, App Store)

These are just five of the fifty games included in Apple's listing, so be sure to load that up in iTunes and give it a peek if none of these games suit your fancy.

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After an epic wait this morning, I managed to get my hot little hands on an iPhone 4. After rushing home and loading it up with every game I thought would be worth trying on the device, the results were somewhat predictable. The small handful of games that have been released or updated to with support for the Retina Display are gorgeous, and everything else both loads faster and performs better. If for any reason you were sitting on the fence trying to decide if upgrading to an iPhone 4 (or the presumed 4th generation iPod touch when it's released) is worth it for gaming, it absolutely is.

I know we're kind of beating a dead horse at this point, what with posting high-resolution screenshots of the few games that take advantage of the Retina Display already, but the quality of the screen is truly something you need to see with your own eyes to fully appreciate. I was at the WWDC keynote, heard everything Steve had to say about it first hand, spent the following weeks wondering what it was going to be like, and it still exceeded my expectations. The pixels are so tightly packed on the 3.5" screen that games running at 960×640 look more like screenshot renderings you'd see in some kind of a magazine advertisement than any actual game you've played before.

Being unable to distinguish individual pixels really does make things look like they're just printed on the screen. Flight Control [99¢] is unbelievably crisp, and while better graphics doesn't change the gameplay in the slightest, the difference is even more amazing when I run the game side by side both on my new iPhone 4 and old iPhone 3GS. 3D games like Real Racing [$4.99] look absolutely fantastic, and even run at a great frame rate to boot.

One thing that is apparent in these 3D games is that while the output resolution has been increased, the polygon count of the in-game models seems to have remained the same. This can make blocky models stand out even more, and while it wasn't much of an issue in Real Racing, the low-detail players in the recently releasedNCAA Football HD [$7.99] really do stick out like a sore thumb as their little 3D stick legs prance about the field. I expect this to improve over time, as both of these games were likely quick and dirty upscale jobs. 3D games designed from the get go with the iPhone 4 in mind in the future will likely be where the true eye candy is.

Speaking of EA's NCAA Football HD, having yet another platform for developers to target could lead to an even messier App Store. It's too early to really tell how this is going to play out, but currently it seems EA is content splitting their releases in to a normal release for the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and the iPod Touch along with a "HD" release for the iPhone 4, and finally a "for iPad" release for the iPad. This gets even more confusing when you consider how many developers are already labeling things as "HD" for the iPad even though technically speaking neither the iPhone 4 or the iPad are a HD device. Let's all just cross our fingers that developers eventually just settle on single universal releases of their games as I'm sure everyone would rather deal with larger file sizes than potentially purchasing the same game three (or more) times.

Currently the best demonstration of the new gyroscope controls available on the iPhone 4 is ngmoco's Eliminate: Gun Range [99¢]. While the game is just a basic shooting gallery, controlling your aim both by tilting the iPhone 4 as well as moving it about in 3D space is worth 99¢ for the novelty alone. Real Racing also has gyroscope controls but overall they didn't make much of a difference compared to the regular version.

After fiddling around in both games, however, I was really am impressed with just how precise the sensor inside the iPhone is… Although the current implementations feel a tad gimmicky at this point instead of really adding any real benefits to gameplay similar to the iPhone 3GS compass-controlled games. To be fair, we don't believe either Firemint or ngmoco had actual devices in hand to test these games with, and it stands to reason that each implementation will improve once they're able to work outside of the iPhone simulator.

Just like 3D games that fully harness the power of the A4 chip, I expect it will also be a while before developers realize what's possible with the gyroscope. There's definitely some amazing potential waiting to be unleashed here, and maybe not even by using the gyroscope strictly as an input method. For instance, I suspect using gyroscope data could even allow you to play tilt controlled games in a moving vehicle, though haven't gotten confirmation on that possibility.

As far as older games running on the iPhone 4, they load tons faster, so much so that many of my favorite simple games (obligatory Doodle Jump [99¢] plug) have almost no load time at all. Also, unlike the iPad where running games in 2X mode makes most games look blurry or blocky, since the screen size in the iPhone 4 is identical all the old games look just like they did on the previous iPhones. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say they look a little better as often times text is rendered at the higher resolution, and the Retina Display has better color reproduction.

In my initial tests, the battery life on the iPhone 4 seems in line with what Apple has been boasting, and I've both been able to play games and use my phone for other tasks with substantially less drain on my overall battery percentage. None of my tests have been that scientific, but practically everyone with an iPhone 4 is reporting similar battery experiences. A bigger battery obviously means more play time, and who doesn't want that?

Overall the iPhone 4 is most definitely a worthy upgrade for any serious App Store gamer. I'm sure we'll see a similarly specced out iPod touch this fall (or potentially even sooner) that might be worth waiting for if you dislike AT&T, but overall I've been extremely happy with my day of gaming on the iPhone 4.

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