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Hemisphere Games' critically acclaimed PC title Osmos is making its way to the iPad, and will eventually be joined by an iPhone release in the future. Currently available for $10 for the Mac as well as Windows and Linux PC's for $10, Osmos has been described as a "zen game", with many reviews citing the fantastic atmosphere created with the marriage of hypnotic graphics with perfectly paired music. It didn't take more than a few seconds of playing the free demo on my computer to see just how well Osmos will work on the iPad.

In the game, you play as a bright blue orb floating about absorbing other orbs, called motes. The basic gameplay mechanic involves puttering around the game world sucking up anything smaller than you. Clicking (or tapping on the iPad) in a direction causes your orb to eject mass that way and send you jetting off the opposite way. Things start off easy, but levels quickly ramp up to require extremely precise movements as the game places you in levels where you're absolutely surrounded by bigger orbs just waiting to munch you up.

You can get a good feel for the game by watching the trailer:

Osmos for the iPad is planned for release on July 8th, with the iPhone version following roughly a month later. I've really enjoyed these slow-paced "zen" games in the past, and I think Osmos will be a great fit on both the iPhone and iPad. Hemisphere Games has also posted a brief hands-on video of the game running on the iPad, and it shows how the mouse controls translate to touch as well as teasing a few extra game modes:

You can expect a review from us when the game hits the App Store in a week or so.

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While we're all busy fiddling with multitasking and obsessively organizing our apps in to folders, developers are hard at work to fully utilize all the other things under the hood of iOS 4. Firemint and Secret Exit are among the first studios taking advantage of iOS 4's new anti-aliasing capabilities.

Anti-aliasing is used to minimize jagged edges found in curved and diagonal lines displayed utilizing the grid of square pixels that make up the displays we use today. Using anti-aliasing, the GPU of the iPhone intelligently decides what color to display on pixels that border the edges of 3D objects to make them blend in to the background and appear more crisp.

As you can see from the above image, the A on the left has no aliasing, while the edges of the A on the right have been blended with the background color. This is a gross over-simplification of how anti-aliasing works, but if you weren't aware before it will at least give you an idea of what you're looking at in the following sets of screenshots:

The effects of the anti-aliasing is incredibly apparent when you focus on the bill of the duck in both images. Secret Exit also posted additional screenshots in our forums, and in a second post explaining the technical details of anti-aliasing in Zen Bound 2 which mentions the performance cost being too high to utilize the effect in older devices.

In somewhat related Zen Bound 2 news, they also announced that it will soon be available on multiple platforms. Joining the existing iPad Zen Bound 2 [$4.99] is an upcoming iPhone, iPod touch, PC, and Mac version. Recent MacBook owners will be able to use the multi-touch trackpad or even a Magic Mouse to control the game just like the iPhone.

Real Racing [$4.99] saw an update yesterday which not only made the game iPhone 4 friendly complete with high resolution graphics, but also brought anti-aliasing to the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch. It might not have been immediately obvious when you fired up the game since updating, but take a look at a screenshot I took today compared to a screenshot captured for our our review over a year ago:

Looking at the line following the top of the dashboard, the A pillar of the car, and edges of the banner over the makes the new anti-aliasing really pop out comparing the two screenshots. This is only the tip of the iceberg, too. Now that new features like this have been unlocked for developers, it should be really fun to see what they come up with.

Anti-aliasing being supported by the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch is also good news for people who might not be immediately upgrading to the iPhone 4. While you'll obviously be lacking the Retina Display, if developers start implementing anti-aliasing in all their 3D games, everything will look substantially better on your existing device without needing to do anything other than download some game updates.

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Semi Secret Software's survival side-scroller Canabalt [$2.99] went universal this afternoon, and while (like most pixel art games) it looked great upscaled on the iPad, Canabalt is even more awesome running at the full 1024×768 resolution.

If this is the first you've heard of Canabalt, check out our review:

Canabalt for the iPhone is a port of the extremely popular flash game of the same name. Absolutely everything has been preserved in the transition, and Canabalt is a perfect for a mobile gaming device. It loads quickly, and the games (unless you're really good) rarely last any more than a couple minutes. …Read More

Canabalt can be played for free online, and the paid iPhone game is nearly identical aside from the fact that you're clicking your mouse instead of tapping with your finger. I really can't recommend this game enough. We awarded it five stars in our October '09 Best iPhone Games Listing, and it's one of the few games that not only has stayed on my phone since it was released last year, but also a game I play nearly every day.

A word of warning before updating, Canabalt 1.4 does seem to wipe out your local scores when you install it. If you have any insanely high local runs you'd like to immortalize, screen shot them before installing. Also, some forum members have reported frame rate issues with the new update, but so far I've tried it on every device I have access to and don't notice it running any different than before.

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Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores) never ruled out the possibility that its upcoming third-person horror title Dead Space 2 would come to the PC. Strange as the non-committal attitude has been — the original Dead Space hit the PC, after all — there's little doubt now that the game will be, at some point, mouse and keyboard friendly. It also appears as if it could be swipe, flick, and shake-friendly in the near future, too.

Dead Space publisher EA released an updated version of its blockbuster title release schedule (via Shacknews), seemingly confirming that Dead Space 2 is headed to the PC. Interestingly, it also includes a mention of the iterative title hitting "handheld / mobile."

Rumors swirling around Visceral's last Dead Space title, a Wii-exclusive on-rails FPS sub-titled Extraction, have long suggested that the critically praised, yet financial underperformer, could be making its way to the Xbox 360's and PS3's respective download services. More recent rumors have also pegged Extraction as an iPad title, which we thought was absurd until seeing EA's recent release schedule.

Of course there's a chance by "handheld / mobile" EA only means a PSP release, but given the fact that the recently iPhone-released FIFA 2010 World Cup is also labeled "handheld/mobile", it seems very possible.

This is the first we've heard of Dead Space 2 hitting a mobile platform, so naturally there's no details. We'll ask a few questions and try to get some answers. In the meantime, keep thinking those happy thoughts. You know, the ones that star big multi-armed monsters? Those. Think those thoughts.

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It was little more than a week ago that we were lamenting that Starcraft 2 would not be coming to the AppStore any time soon. Unbeknownst to us, indie developer Pixel Stream has been working on the silver lining to that news for almost 8 months, with the release of their Starcraft-esque real-time strategy game, Armada – Galactic War [AppStore].

Firstly, let's dispense with one important fact early– Armada is a no-nonsense, online-only RTS, at least until a promised future update releases offline play too. This means from your very first game you'll be facing real competitors over your WiFi or 3G networks and won't be charging through a pre-scripted, story-based set of missions. Fortunately, you aren't thrown entirely in the deep end, as a brief page-by-page tutorial offers an introduction to the game's mechanics and features.

Each Armada army, of which there are 3 — the Humans, Cyborgs and Aliens — has 4 distinct classes of units. There are no buildings to concern yourself with, so the scope of your campaign is entirely in considering whether to deploy your Mechs, Tanks, (flying) Ships or your solitary Mothership. Unit effectiveness is determined by a loose rock, paper, scissors formula, where Mechs are effective against Ships, Ships are best against Tanks (who are the only units that can't attack air units) and Tanks use their splash damage to chew through Mechs. Each unit class (with the exception of the Mothership) is further broken down into 3 units of increasing strength and cost. The Mothership is the hub of each team, a goliath of a ship that is both your source of units and a competent fighter against all the other classes. Its destruction serves as the overall objective to achieve victory in Armada.

Your entire army is funded by sending your Mechs to harvest the green crystals scattered across the map (sounds familiar?). Selecting units and ordering them to a task is ingeniously simple in Armada. You enter select mode by holding one finger on the yellow square at the top left of the screen and can either drag a box around your units, or tap them individually to select them. Releasing the select box allows you to then issue commands by tapping on-screen, such as sending Mech units to mine crystal.

It's a wonder that many developers have cited difficulty in translating traditional mouse controls to the touch interface as the major reason RTS games aren't featuring on the AppStore (just read the comments from Blizzard above). Pixel Stream have managed to come up with a control scheme that feels both intuitive and responsive and allows for a surprising amount of micromanagement too. That's not to say we were completely satisfied with the control options, as we would have liked to see a way of de-selecting units and assigning control groups (to on-screen buttons perhaps?) or selecting all units of the same type to better co-ordinate your army in combat, but the basis for a successful system is certainly in place. A few tweaks could make it really exceptional.

We were very impressed by the online service provided via Pixel Stream's Zing Network. Private matches were simple to setup and the matchup system found opponents nearly instantly, or would revert to an AI player if players weren't available. Games played on WiFi naturally ran very smoothly but we were surprised to find that 3G connections were just as capable. Armada's netcode and graphics performance also appeared to be in peak form, as we piled scores of units on screen at once, upwards of 30 or 40, and noticed no perceivable performance hit on our 3GS device. Our 2G Touch device skipped only a few frames too, but combat certainly remained playable.

The 5 maps initially available in Armada can be played in any configuration from 2-4 players, with 4 player battles being a (manic) highlight in our time with the game. The maps all have different configurations and slightly different themes, though their function is more strategic than aesthetic, as each has a number of crystal farms for you to expand to in order to gain a leg up on opponents. The units themselves are crafted in simple 3D; they are evidently low-poly with low resolution textures. That's not to say they don't look nice though, as they are all easily recognised on the battlefield and get the job done. Each race has a completely unique style individual to their personalities too (for example, the Cyborgs are clean-lined and shiny, whilst the Humans are more rugged looking).

Armada also features an underlying upgrade system called A.R.M.S in-game, which we are admittedly on the fence about. 10 customizable upgrades (in total) can be applied to your profile, each one boosting the abilities of 1 particular unit in your arsenal. For example, a Mech 1 speed upgrade will boost the movement speed of any 1st tier Mech that you create by 30%. There are hundreds of upgrades to choose from covering the whole gamut of attributes for each unit (and the mothership too). Upgrades are purchased by credits which are awarded for playing matches, with wins and larger scale matches equating to larger returns.

The A.R.M.S system was intended to offer an additional layer of strategy, but it ends up playing out more like a ranking system on FPS games, where players that stick with the game have a significant advantage over those who play infrequently. To give an example, one player on our forums, backtothis– who is currently on top of the leaderboards– claims to have upgraded his level 1 Mechs to the point where they can destroy level 3 Tanks. This costs an exorbitant amount of credits to do however and won't be an option available to the average player for quite some time. We sincerely hope the developers will keep an eye on this, as the upgrade system could be a major source of serious imbalance issues in future match-ups, something that is far more detrimental to RTS' than other genres.

Armada makes serious inroads into capturing the essence of popular real time strategy games on a portable device. It is clearly influenced by the greats such as Starcraft, and in some ways actually manages to distil the epic unit-to-unit match-ups and combat strategy that made that game a hit. Its focus on unit management over building management ensures a narrower scope of battle that is well suited to shorter, more intense matches. It already has a tight control setup in place (which could still use some tweaking) and a match-up system that works– and works well. Our major concern is with the potential abuse of the upgrade system, the effect of which largely remains to be seen, and whether the developers can keep up with the inevitable balancing updates required.

At this stage though, we're ultimately impressed by what 3-man developer Pixel Stream have done; they have catered for RTS fans in a way that other larger developers had thought too difficult. With the promise of offline play in the near future, Armada is an effortless recommendation to any RTS buff looking to test their APM on the touch devices in a competitive environment. To check out the gameplay for yourself, take a peek at the developer's trailer above or hit up our forums for other readers' impressions.

App Store Link: Armada – Galactic War, $0.99 (Introductory Sale Price).

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Prior to today's release, Kyle Poole's adaptation of Battle of Wesnoth [iPhone: 99¢ / iPad: 99¢] existed only on the iPhone, and while the game was good, it really seemed like it was never intended to be played on a screen that small. Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based RPG with tons of user created content originally developed for the Mac and PC available for free. Since the game was designed to be played on a computer with a keyboard and mouse, we thought that quite a bit got lost in translation to tiny touchscreen controls in our review.

I'm happy to report that the interface issues found in the iPhone version have been completely eradicated thanks to the massive screen of the iPad. At 1024×768, the game is rendered just as it is on the Mac/PC client, and all of the various buttons and menus work great even with my fat, pepperoni greased fingers. The increased screen resolution also allows you to see much more of the battlefield at once, resulting in much less scrolling too.

Unfortunately, right now the iPad port is a little rough around the edges still. There's an annoying bug where the screen goes black momentarily when the iPad is rotated, but launching the game with the rotation lock enabled fixes this. Also, while you don't need to do much scrolling around anymore, panning about battles feels much slower and laggier than it should.

Developer Kyle Poole has been very active on our forums and has consistently been adding content, fixing bugs, and tweaking performance in the iPhone version since its release. Sure, the iPad Battle of Wesnoth has a few issues, but it's completely playable, and with the current 99¢ sale, you really should grab this game if you're a turn-based strategy lover with an iPad.

App Store Links: Battle for Wesnoth, 99¢ (iPhone) – Battle for Wesnoth HD, 99¢ (iPad)

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Back in 2008, Adam Atomic and Danny Baranowsky, two of the three masterminds behind Canabalt created a flash game called Gravity Hook originally based on a typing-tutor game called Gravity Key by Arne Niklas Jansson. After securing permission to develop an endless mouse-based version of the game, the original Gravity Hook was created in five days utilizing the beginnings of what is now the flixel framework.

A year later, Danny and Adam revisited their game and added new graphics, sound, controls, and gameplay to create Gravity Hook HD. Much like Canabalt, a free flash version is available that allows players to experience the game in its entirety, with global leaderboards reserved for the upcoming iPhone version.

If you have flash installed, you can try out Gravity Hook HD by clicking below. The game has sound, so make sure you mute your speakers before clicking if you're playing somewhere that epic soundtracks are frowned upon.

The developers aren't ready to discuss specific release dates, but hope to have Gravity Hook HD on the App Store sometime this month. We plan on spending some time at GDC with the entire Semi Secret Software crew, and might have more information on Gravity Hook HD then.

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When Plants vs. Zombies [App Store] was originally announced on April 1st last year, PC gamers everywhere (myself included) were unsure if Popcap's newly revealed game was part of an elaborate April Fool's Day hoax or not. A little more than a month later, the game was released and not only saw universal acclaim from the gaming media resulting in an 88 on Metacritic, but also earned the title of Popcap's fastest selling game of all time.

In Plants vs. Zombies, Popcap takes the standard tower defense formula and greatly simplifies it. Instead of a path to build towers along, you drop seeds in your yard which then grow in to plants that have various offensive or defensive capabilities. The yard is organized in a grid, and zombies move straight across the row they spawn on, munching (or in some cases jumping or flying over) anything that they come in contact with.

A gauge on the top of the screen shows how close you are to the end of the level, with flags indicating when big waves of zombies are going to come. When you clear a stage, you're often awarded with the seeds of one more of the nearly 50 included plants. This seemingly constant progression does a great job of keeping you interested, as it always seems like you have a new toy to play with. To shake things up even more, mini game levels are mixed in, including a bowling game of sorts, a whack-a-mole game with zombies, and others.

Originally designed to be played with a mouse, Popcap did an excellent job of porting Plants vs. Zombies to the iPhone. The resource required to build your defenses is sunlight, and in the PC version feverishly moving your mouse around to click on the small suns falling from the top of the screen got tiring (especially when playing on a laptop with a touchpad). On the iPhone, the sunlight mechanic is also in place, but seems to work so much better when you only have to tap the falling suns to collect them.

Interface elements have been made smaller to dedicate more screen space to your yard, and some things have been moved around. Your available seeds have been moved from the top of the screen to the left, and to plant one all you need to do is tap it then tap the grid square of your lawn where you want it placed. Alternatively, you can tap the seed icon then drag your finger around your lawn. This causes both the X and Y axis of the square you're currently selecting to light up which effectively put an end to me accidentally placing seeds in squares I didn't mean to.

Plants vs. Zombies is absolutely loaded with high quality animations, excellent cartoonish zombies, and silly dialog between your neighbor/shopkeeper Crazy Dave and even notes from the zombies themselves. Throughout the game you'll defend your front lawn during the day, at night, then defend your back yard which introduces water plants that can only be planted in your pool.

As you advance through levels you will come across many more zombies than just the standard run of the mill mindless brain-muncher. There's a Michael Jackson zombie that causes others to rise from gravestones following a Thriller-like dance. There's also zombies that have armored themselves with screen doors, traffic cones, buckets, football pads, and other equally ridiculous equipment. 25 different zombies in all are included, and one end-boss. Each zombie even has their own profile inside the in-game almanac, and they're really worth a look once you unlock it.

Plants vs. Zombies performs well on both my iPhone 3G and 3GS. I did experience some slowdown when there were tons of zombies and projectiles on screen, but overall this didn't cause a problem playing through the game as the only time there was enough things happening on-screen to cause slowdown was at the very end of some levels where you already have your yard fully covered and are just waiting for the last wave of zombies to die.

On the iPhone, Plants vs. Zombies only includes the main story and a quick play mode that is unlocked once you've beaten the game that will allow you to play a few different scenarios and the various mini games you came across in story mode. The endless survival mode from the PC version is nowhere to be found, which is very disappointing, especially since I imagine quite a few people excited about Popcap porting the game to the iPhone have already completed the story mode on the PC.

There is only one difficulty level, and if you're a veteran of tower defense games, Plants vs. Zombies will likely be very easy for you. Personally, I love the tower defense genre, and being able to make it all the way through Plants vs. Zombies without much difficulty at all hasn't stopped me from playing through the game multiple times on my computer, and I'm enjoying the iPhone version just as much. I'm not sure what it is about Popcap games, but similar to Peggle and Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies never seems to get old.

The 88 Metacritic score of the original Plants vs. Zombies (complete with 100's from multiple sources) just goes to show how great this game is. The iPhone port is absolutely phenomenal, and even though it's lacking a few game modes, there's always hope for them to be implemented in the future either via an update or a DLC add-on. There isn't a lite version, but there is a free Flash demo that I highly recommend trying if this is the first you've heard of Plants vs. Zombies.

App Store Link: Plants vs. Zombies, $2.99

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Last week we noted that an iPhone port of the PC classic Rise of the Triad, which we first caught wind of back back in July, had been made official and would soon be hitting the App Store. We're happy to report that the game has gone live [App Store] and those wanting to take on maniac cult leader El Oscuro and his minions on the iPhone are in luck.

Apogee / Mobila Interactive's iPhone port of ROTT brings all there is to like about 1994 PC original to our favorite mobile platform. The game features 32 levels, a choice of five characters to play (each with unique attributes), five different, customizable controls schemes, and the original game's full soundtrack. A notable feature of the original at the time, the player can look both up and down — up to 45 degrees in either direction — to better take in the surroundings. And the original's horde of minions, comprised of ten digitized enemies (Apogee employees at the time), is fully represented.

I've spent some time with the game and can say that, while the standard formula of mouse + keyboard is definitely the ideal control method for an FPS such as this, the variety of control options offered in the iPhone port of the game, which utilize combinations of both touch and accelerometer controls, should make it easy for most players to find a system that they are comfortable with. It's not perfect — I'd like to see a sensitivity setting for the left / right swipe view controls, for instance — but it works well enough. And it's great fun to get back to this title I enjoyed so many years ago.

Back in 1994, ROTT was a nice alternative to DOOM. And, just as there's certainly a place for DOOM on the iPhone today, so is there a place for Rise of the Triad. For fans of the original, this is an automatic buy, and for anyone else who still enjoys an occasional round of DOOM on the go, Rise of the Triad is a nice alternative that may well be worth a look.

App Store Link: Rise of the Triad, $4.99

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We're not entirely sure what to make of this, but here's what we know so far:

Sega has been teasing the reveal of "Project Needlemouse" since September of last year, which we found out tonight was officially an episodic sequel to Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles to be released on WiiWare, PSN, XBOX Live Arcade, and a yet to be revealed mystery platform. Sonic 4 is abandoning the 3D platforming that has plagued recent Sonic games and going back to its 2D roots as you can see in the following trailer:

Where things get crazy is when it comes to a few details which will be unlocked when a few different timers hit zero on the Sonic 4 web site. According to SonicStadium.org and a post on NeoGAF, finding out what lies behind promo1_locked.png and promo2_locked.png on the web site was as simple as removing the "_locked" from the URL. Of course these files are nowhere to be found now, but here are the two images that allegedly were found on Sega's servers:

Now, it's entirely possible we're being pranked here, but, at the same time, Sega is revealing a fourth platform that the game will be on soon. Episodes of Sonic 4 are obviously being distributed digitally, and aside from the Wii, PS3, and XBOX 360, there really only is the DSi, PSP, and iPhone left that Sega would even conceivably release the game on… So, if nothing else, we've got a 1 in 3 chance of seeing Sonic 4 on the App Store.

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