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Surprisingly, a search of the App Store won't reveal much in the way of Tolkien's epic high-fantasy trilogy. We've seen many other movie adaptations converted to games, but nothing in the way of the Fellowship's desperate plight to Mt Doom. It's strange then that Glu Mobile has championed the well known licence on the App Store, and has done so in the form of a tower defense game, The Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense [$6.99 / HD].

Thankfully, Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense isn't your typical tower-defense clone. Obviously, this is largely due the vast source material it draws from, using the entire Lord of the Rings adventure as a tapestry to bind each of its 18 levels together. You'll encounter goblins in the Mines of Moria, fight with the Rohirrim in the Battle of Helms deep and fend off Nazgûl a-plenty on your way to defeat Sauron. There are 7 iconic battle locations all up and a host of familiar enemies to mow through.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, what really sets apart Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is the way it uses the heroes of the fellowship as your typical TD towers. Maps in Middle-earth Defense aren't comprised of static paths bordered with designated areas where you place your towers. Instead, in much the same way as Fieldrunners handles TD, the path the enemies take can and must be manipulated by you to succeed. To do so, you'll be able to build a variety of different barricades with wood earned after each wave. Barricades each have different abilities, such as slowing or damaging creeps that pass by them. Though you are limited where you can build, it is up to you to decide what paths to open or close.

Once your path is determined, you must then place your heroes. Ranged heroes operate much like your typical towers, attacking from static positions. Melee heroes however, roam around their area picking fights, and so can get up close and personal with a creep wave hitting them constantly as they pass. Heroes can be upgraded with earned gold, improving their attack power, speed, range or skills. The latter is unique to Middle-earth Defense, as each warrior Hero (there are support heroes too, such as the hobbits) has a skill that can be periodically activated to dramatic effect. Effective use of skills such as Gandalf's meteor shower or Gimli's axe tornado are pretty much essential for getting past the harder levels, as the game does get quite difficult at times.

The individual creeps and heroes in Middle-earth Defense are a mixed bag– some look terrific, whilst others are barely recognizable. This can be attributed to the somewhat jaggy models and darker textures experienced on the 3GS device we tested the game on, though we're thrilled (and surprised!) to see that a Retina patch has already been released which sharpens things up significantly. Unfortunately, this doesn't remedy the fact that animations are only just serviceable, and that heroes are sometimes indistinguisable and easily lost amidst the chaos.

Glu Mobile have otherwise done a great job of maintaining the standards of the license. The musical score is not overstated, and is actually worth listening to as you're battling wave after wave. Short cutscenes describing each scene and text dialogue between characters abridging each level are well written and give context to your encounters. There is also a Challenge Mode which is unlocked after completing the tutorial that allows you to attempt each of the Story Mode environments with unlimited enemy waves, in an attempt to post your best Game Center or Facebook score.

Finally, there are a host of trophies (achievements) to earn in Story Mode that unlock additional characters and environments in Challenge Mode. We're happy to see that Glu Mobile haven't skimped on content, as there's a heap to do here; and with 3 difficulty levels you can honestly expect several hours worth of gameplay all considered. Certainly don't expect to breeze through your journey to the Black Gates.

Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is an interesting take on the saga for its first journey to the small screen. Though an unusual use of the licence, it is not an unwelcome one, as Middle-earth Defense does enough different to make it stand out from the very crowded tower defense market, not the least of which is provide great context for your battles and an interesting and well-known story to keep you engaged. There is one minor setback though– while we don't usually comment on price, it is obvious that use of the Lord of the Rings licence does bring with it a slightly elevated hit to your hip pocket. If that doesn't phase you, we can certainly recommend Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense as a challenging and entertaining TD clone that should pose a pleasant surprise to cult fans and fans of the genre alike.

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Last week, we took a look at some new screens of Namco's iOS port of Splatterhouse [$2.99], the arcade side-scrolling brawler from 1989. Splatterhouse was notorious for being one of the edgier titles of the time, featuring plenty of gore and demonic undertones that are actually quite tame by today's standards. Being a big fan of Splatterhouse in my younger years, I was pretty excited to hear that the game was coming to my favorite mobile platform, but two major concerns immediately popped into my head as well. First, I wondered if this would be an actual arcade port rather than the toned-down version that made its way to home consoles. Second, Splatterhouse was a ridiculously hard game even with the tactile feedback of joystick and buttons, so I wasn't too sure how well that would translate to virtual touch screen controls.

With Splatterhouse now being available in the App Store, I finally have answers to those concerns. Thankfully, the game is indeed a port of the racier arcade version of the game. There are a couple very minor changes that I've noticed so far, but by and large this is the real deal that includes all the gore, weapons, and original death mask from Splatterhouse in the arcade. As for the controls, they are about as good as virtual controls can be, which isn't saying much. Splatterhouse required some quick reactions in order to combat the many enemies approaching you from every angle. This is made infinitely harder with the lack of tactile feedback, and even worse since the virtual buttons aren't always very responsive. It's still playable, and worth putting up with because Splatterhouse is so awesome, but you'll inevitably encounter a lot of frustration due to the controls.

In regards to the content and features, the iOS version of Splatterhouse really delivers. There is the full 7 stages of the arcade version, with three levels of difficulty to choose and the ability to start a new game from the beginning of any previously beaten level. An option to turn on “assistance” adds a third button (besides the jump and attack buttons) that allows you to perform a slide attack. This move is normally pulled off by jumping and hitting down+attack right when you land, which is nearly impossible with virtual buttons, and is still difficult to perform even with this added feature. The original screen aspect ratio is preserved in Splatterhouse, so there will be borders when you play, but there is the option of three different screen sizes and multiple choices for border wallpaper.

In addition to the arcade game, there is an exclusive mode to this version called Splatter Rush Mode. Here, you play on a special elongated level with a fixed zoom as baddies rush you from both sides of the screen. You'll try to survive for two minutes killing everything that comes your way, with the ability to score chain combos by killing enemies in quick succession. At the end of two minutes, or if you die beforehand, your stats are tallied up and can be uploaded to Game Center for competing on the leaderboards. There are three difficulty levels of Splatter Rush Mode, each with their own unique environment and enemies taken from the arcade game. This mode is a ton of fun, and the virtual controls are less of an issue when playing in this mode.

This is a video from the actual arcade game, but gives you an idea of the gameplay in the iOS version as they're nearly identical:

If you grew up a fan of Splatterhouse then this version is most likely worth the few dollars just for nostalgia alone. It's a competent port though too, with no noticeable technical issues, and the new Splatter Rush Mode adds a nice new twist to the gameplay. If you can deal with the less than ideal controls then you'll find yourself having a pretty good time with this version of Splatterhouse. However, if you've never played Splatterhouse before, I doubt this version will impress you. The 20 year old gameplay is pretty shallow, and the original difficulty is only compounded by the poor virtual controls. Personally, I'm pretty excited to have this classic in my pocket to play at any time, and many of our forum members feel the same.

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Back in September, developer CAVE announced they were creating an original iPhone game based on their Mushihimesama series titled Mushihimesama Bug Panic. The next month they released a video showing gameplay in Bug Panic, and we've been anxious to get our hands on the game ever since. Tonight, Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$3.99] went live in the US App Store. With CAVE's previous releases Espgaluda II [$8.99/Lite] and Dodonpachi Resurrection [$8.99/Lite] setting the bar rather high for iOS games, I was curious to see how Bug Panic would stack up considering it was out of their typical comfort zone of bullet hell shmups. I'm happy to report that Bug Panic meets the high expectations of a CAVE title, offering a fun and unique adventure that's perfectly suited to the platform.

Mushihimesama Bug Panic would be considered a dual-stick shooter, but not exactly like the ones we've previously seen flood the App Store. Your main character, the adorable “Insect Princess” Reco, moves around the environment with a left analog stick that can either be fixed in the corner or appear wherever you place your thumb. The right stick controls a cursor that represents where you will toss your Burst Seeds, the ammunition in the game that function similarly to grenades. Placing your thumb on the right stick allows you to move the cursor around and releasing your thumb actually fires. As your thumb is held down, a meter at the bottom fills up allowing you to charge your Burst Seed shots for extra damage and splash range.

Adding to this interesting offensive mechanic is the ability to lock your targeting reticule on up to three enemies. This effectively lets you toss your Burst Seeds in three completely different directions if you want, or target three enemies in the same group to deliver a wider area of damage. This lock-on feature can be disabled at any time, giving you full manual control of where your shots land, but I actually found that it added tremendously to the strategy of the game. Choosing which enemies to lock onto and when to charge up your shots is what really sets Bug Panic apart from other dual-stick shooters, and it will be hard to go back to one where the right stick just mindlessly fires bullets in a single direction.

The bulk of Bug Panic is the Adventure mode that follows the story of Reco as she battles against the bugs in her world that have seemingly gone wild. There are five different worlds to play through, each with four levels and a boss level. Each level is fairly large, with multiple pathways and hidden secrets to find. As with any good CAVE game, a multiplier system lets you chase crazy high scores by killing multiple enemies in succession. After you complete a world by defeating its boss, that world is then unlocked in a Score Trials mode. As fun as playing through the Adventure mode is, Score Trials mode is what will bring you back to Bug Panic for a long time to come. Here you can play against the enemies of each unlocked world in a 2 minute timed trial or an endless survival trial, with scores for each being tracked with Game Center leaderboards.

There are many other nuances to Bug Panic as well, like specific goals to achieve for each level and hidden puzzle pieces that are part of a bonus mini-game. It features the same wonderful pixel art and massive amounts of onscreen sprites that the developer is known for, and offers a unique take on dual-stick shooting that controls like a charm and mixes beautifully with the bullet hell style action. There's a tremendous amount of replayability with the different modes and unlockables as well. Like other CAVE games, Bug Panic will only run on 3rd generation devices and higher. The game is currently on sale for $3.99 for the first four days before returning to the regular price of $4.99, and a lite version should be launching in the very near future. Our forums are full of positive impressions of the game, and I'd have to agree that Mushihimesama Bug Panic is another excellent entry from the folks at CAVE.

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Last week we took a look at an upcoming game from The Iconfactory called Astronut [Free], a new “spinning disc jumping game” similar to Dizzypad [$1.99/HD] or Jump O'Clock [99¢] but with an element of gravity that affects the gameplay. Just a couple of days ago Astronut went live in the App Store, and so far I've been having a great time playing through the game. Even though this sort of game has been done before, Astronut does it with some interesting new twists and a lot of personality, and stands out as a unique take on the formula.

In Astronut you'll play as Jacques the astronaut as he explores 24 different levels, or systems, that are filled with various spinning planets. A button in the lower corner enables Jacques to leap from planet to planet. Every planet has its own force of gravity, and you can use this to actually slingshot yourself along in between them for an added score bonus. This is a really fun aspect to the game, and there's nothing like making a perfectly timed jump across a huge part of the level.

The planets themselves also offer their own set of nuances. They come in various sizes and can spin at differing speeds. There are regular planets which are safe to stand on as long as you like, giving you ample time to line up the perfect jump. Then there are hazardous planets that force you to act quickly before they bump you off or cause damage. The levels in Astronut have a beginning and ending, rather than being one long endless level like similar games.

Aside from just having fun jumping between the planets in Astronut, the main goal is to achieve a high score for each level. You do this by making extraordinary leaps between the planets, defeating enemies, and  by collecting items. A number of different enemies will impede your path. In the opposite corner from the jump button is a boost button that allows you to shoot through enemies with a burst of speed, and you can also collect a temporary shield that will defeat any enemy you come into contact with while wearing. Collecting four star shards in a level unlocks a tilt-controlled rocket mini-game at the end of the level where you can earn even more bonus points.

Astronut looks fantastic visually, with charming character designs and Retina Display support for 4th generation devices. Strangely there's no in-game music, other than a spacey theme during the title screen, but all of the sound effects in the game are well done. Game Center is used for high score tracking and 40 achievements to unlock. The 24 levels are spread across 6 different sectors, with 4 levels per sector. Astronut is free to download and comes with the 4 levels of the first sector to play through, with the rest of the sectors unlockable through IAP for $1.99. There is a discussion of Astronut taking place in our forums, and seeing as it's free to try and a lot of fun, there's no reason not to check it out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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There are many gamers, myself included, who would consider the 16-bit era to be a golden age of role-playing games. The wonderful pixel art, unforgettable music, memorable characters and stories – there are literally too many fantastic 16-bit RPGs to name them all. Even todays most high-tech, cutscene-laden, 200 hour epics fail to capture my attention like a traditional top-down 2D RPG. I get the feeling the folks at SRRN Games feel the same way, as that is undoubtedly what prompted them to create Ash [$4.99], a brand new iOS exclusive RPG that is a great homage to the classics of the 16-bit era. Ash tells an interesting story which is complemented by its simplistic but satisfying gameplay. It's rough around the edges in certain areas, but overall Ash delivers an experience that shouldn't be missed by RPG fans.

Unlike some RPGs, the dialogue in Ash is well written and holds your attention in a way that compels you to keep progressing. So many times I've started an RPG only to eventually become frustrated with a convoluted, boring story to the point that I never finish the game. This isn't the case with Ash. Sure, there are many clichés in the story here but that's also kind of the point, as this is an homage to classic RPGs. The dialogue has pop, and all of the characters are well developed with distinct personalities, even the most nonessential ones. It may not win the award of greatest story ever told, but amongst the heap of cookie cutter storylines from most RPGs Ash definitely stands out.

Graphically, Ash achieves what it sets out to do which is emulate a 16-bit style RPG. It's created using RPG Maker software, so it does have a kind of generic look to it, but it's charming nonetheless. What I really appreciate are the subtle details in Ash. There are many interactive objects in the game world, and I've come across all kinds of neat items and gold just by exploring boxes, barrels, and other nooks and crannies. I also really like how a character's text bubble will dim once you've spoken to them, and will light up again when they have something different to say. It's a small touch, but it helps avoid wasting time reading repeated dialogue from characters. Also worth noting is the excellent music in Ash. While not retro-inspired like the rest of the game, it's an appropriately moody score that adds tremendously to the atmosphere.

Like most RPGs of this kind, you'll travel an overworld map visiting various towns and dungeons. Combat happen randomly in dungeons and the overworld, but not too frequently as to be annoying. When you do encounter an enemy, the view switches to a first-person perspective with 2D illustrated sprites. A simple skill system will unlock new abilities for your character as you level up, and a decent assortment of armor and weaponry can be equipped. The character progression is really straightforward, and far from deep, so if that is a huge part of what appeals to you in an RPG you'll find Ash lacking in this regard. The combat is fun though, and the menu UI works really well and makes it easy to always keep up with your party.

My major complaint with Ash is that it's a pretty hard game in the early goings. There were some points where I just hit a wall trying to defeat a particularly difficult enemy. Ash is far from being a grind-fest, but there are definitely times where you'll need to level up in order to progress past a certain part. Luckily the difficulty levels out as the game goes on, but in the beginning prepare to have your mettle tested. There is a nice strategy guide available on the SRRN website to help you get started if you want a leg up. Another negative in Ash is the slightly funky character control. You press left, right, above or below the actual onscreen character in order to move in said direction. This effectively turns the entire screen into one big d-pad, which sounds like a good idea, but in practice it's actually pretty awkward. You get used to it eventually and it's only mildly bothersome, but I would have much preferred some additional options like a regular onscreen d-pad.

Even with its minor faults, Ash is one of the better RPGs available in the App Store. It tells an engrossing story with characters that are full of personality and emotion. It's definitely not the most complex game when it comes to character progression, but the gameplay is fun and a nice change from some of the more convoluted RPGs out there. You can expect to get about 15 hours of gameplay from Ash, or more if you explore every nook and cranny like I did, and the ending definitely leaves open the possibility of a sequel. Players in our forums have been loving the game, and the developers have also joined the discussion and are actively addressing user feedback. If you grew up in the era of 16-bit RPGs and are looking for a new adventure to tackle, or if you're just in the mood to hear a wonderful tale, then make sure to give Ash a look.

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Last month we posted about Sarien.net, Martin Kool's home built tribute to a wide array of classic Sierra Adventure games ranging from Space Quest to Leisure Suit Larry. Currently, all of these games are completely playable via any modern web browser just by navigating around the site. Since we last spoke with him, Martin has been hard at work customizing and tweaking Space Quest to run on the iPad. We were given a hands-on preview of the game, and it didn't take long to come to the strange realization that they really feel like how the games were meant to be played… nearly 25 years later, on a device that the original developers likely couldn't even imagine.

Playing the game on the iPad is effortless. Installing it is as simple as navigating to a (secret) URL, at which point the game tells you to go through the sequence to add the URL as a home screen icon. From there, you tap the home screen icon and the game loads completely seamlessly without any additional work. It's crazy just how fast and easy the whole process is. The first time you load it up, there's a small load time, but as soon as mobile Safari starts caching parts of the game it's just like playing the actual computer game. There's even multiple save slots, and accessing them is as simple as rotating the iPad in to portrait mode.

The version of the game we were given access to seems complete, and playing it is simple. You tap in the game world to move there, and text commands are entered via a menu tree of sorts represented by buttons on the bottom of the screen. Instead of typing, every command is only a few taps away. It works really well, and I suspect will make the games much more approachable to people who haven't experienced them before as the available commands usually at least nudge you in the right direction by hinting at what you're capable of doing.

What makes this all that much more impressive is the technical wizardry taking place behind the scenes making this all possible. Space Quest is built entirely with HTML, CSS, and Javascript and once they've been cached on the iPad you can play them in their entirety offline. Also, to preserve the classic retro blocky graphics, Kool had to jump through quite a few hoops since modern browsers love to scale things with bicubic filters. This makes photos and other images look good, but turn these ancient pixels in to a blocky mess. Due to this, each of the games on Sarien.net will need to be hand-tweaked to run on the iPad. Space Quest should be finished within a week if everything goes according to plan, and after that Martin has his sights set on The Black Cauldron, King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry.

As huge fans of retro adventure gaming, we're following this very closely. As soon as Space Quest is ready to be made public, we'll let you guys know.

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Back in late August, Deceased Pixel announced Super Mega Worm [99¢], a game inspired by the flash game Effing Worms that was itself inspired by the original worm havoc game Death Worm by JTR. Literally the next day, developer Playcreek announced that they were working on an official version of Death Worm in conjunction with JTR for the iPhone and iPad. The battle for worm game supremacy was now in full swing, but Super Mega Worm was first to market as it launched in the App Store just a couple of days following its announcement. We liked Super Mega Worm in our review, and most of our complaints with the game have since been fixed via updates, but we were still anxious to get our hands on Playcreek's take on the game with Death Worm [99¢].

Following the new trailer for Death Worm we posted last week, the game has since wiggled its way into the App Store this past weekend. Death Worm features sharp Retina Display graphics, three different environments to cause destruction in, a fairly deep upgrade system for your worm, and even a mini-game to break up the core gameplay. The question I keep seeing asked in our forums is which game is better – Death Worm or Super Mega Worm? Honestly, it's a toss up, and will likely depend on personal preference which one you end up enjoying more as they both have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses.

In Death Worm you'll control your worm using a virtual stick, which works really well but is also the only option. There are two special moves your worm can perform which are enabled by collecting icons dropped from defeated enemies. One allows you to move with increased speed and strength for a period of time, and the other is a fireball that can be shot from your mouth. These special moves, along with your more basic attributes like speed and size, can be upgraded as you progressively destroy more and more enemies. The upgrading aspect is fantastic, giving Death Worm a slight RPG feel as you choose what areas to improve your worm in.

Another nice touch in Death Worm are the three different environments to play in that all have their own independent save states, essentially allowing you to have three games in progress at once. Each environment has 15 levels to play through with certain requirements that must be met to pass each one. This is the part of Death Worm that I absolutely did not like, as sometimes the requirements can be downright frustrating. For example, there are levels where you must kill a certain amount of enemies without taking damage of any kind. With one enemy left before passing a level, a single bullet from a soldier's pea shooter will reset the quota, forcing you to start over again. I've literally been stuck at points like this for dozens of retries, and the game gets difficult enough in the later levels that there isn't a need for such a cheap requirement.

Other than those infrequent frustrating moments, Death Worm is a ton of fun to play. It's different enough from Super Mega Worm that both games can coexist in the App Store, and both certainly warrant a spot on your device. Super Mega Worm feels like more of the arcade experience, with its colorful pixel graphics and over-the-top style. Death Worm has a more realistic look to it, and feels more strategic and challenging. It also has the added bonus of more content, with the nice upgrade system, three environments, and a fun iCopter-like mini game to play. There is promise of more mini games and environments for future updates to Death Worm, but Super Mega Worm hints at additional content updates as well.

As they are both currently priced at 99¢ each, I have no problem recommending both to ensure you've covered all your worm game needs. If I was forced to choose just one, however, I'd choose Death Worm as it's the game I've continually been coming back to.

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Late last month we covered John Carmack's announcement on the Bethesda Blog regarding his plans with future iPhone development. It turned out that he wasn't planning on making a full-blown RAGE port like we originally suspected when he demonstrated RAGE on the iPhone 4 at Quakecon, but instead is bringing a more iPhone-friendly game that takes place in the RAGE universe.

This game world is based on a post-apocalyptic future, following the Apophis asteroid smashing into Earth. (A plausible future, given there actually is an Apophis asteroid which at one time scientists believed had a 1 in 42 chance of hitting our planet.) In the full PC and console versions due out 9/13/11, you play as a member of the Eden Project, a government program that placed important members of society in underground "arks".

The goal of all this, much like the vaults in the Fallout series, is to be able to restore society after the nuclear (or in this case, asteroid) apocalypse. Unsurprisingly, the ark system doesn't work as well as was hoped. You are the sole survivor of your ark, and with all the other members of your group dead, you awaken to a very different future in a world that has long since forgotten about the Eden Project and the existence of the arks.

It isn't really clear whether you're playing as this same protagonist in Mutant Bash TV, but the basis of the iPhone game is that you are a contestant on a weekly game show where people are pitted against an onslaught of mutants to win fabulous prizes. It works well, and I'm sure I will appreciate it more once RAGE is actually released and I get more of the tie-ins with other elements of the RAGE world.

Mutant Bash TV plays surprisingly similar to DOOM Resurrection [$6.99]. The entire game takes place on rails, and even the controls are laid out similarly. Tilting controls the camera and your aim, and you have buttons to dodge, fire, switch weapons, and reload. The main difference is just how much faster everything is in Mutant Bash TV. Mutants pop up everywhere, and while you're dealing with them there are bags of cash to grab and bullseyes to shoot. Your overall performance is graded at the end of the level, at which point you can either move on to a new level or replay the last one for an even higher score. Four difficulty settings are included, ranging from easy (where it's seemingly impossible to die) to nightmare (which is incredibly difficult).

In the preview we were given, only the first level was playable, which takes place in the mutant tenements. These tenements look a lot like your typical broken down corridor-heavy graffiti-covered first person shooter level, but you hardly have time to look around at the scenery because there is no downtime. You're always either shooting or quickly moving to the next area.

The graphics of Mutant Bash TV are amazing, and really make me look forward to the future of iOS gaming. The demo we were given was on a 4th generation iPod touch, which consistently ran at a high framerate throughout all parts of the game we had access to regardless of how much was going on at once. Mutant Bash TV looks so good in motion that the screenshots barely do it justice, especially when you add the pixel density of the Retina Display into the mix. While you might notice some jagged edges or low resolution textures if you were to carefully analyze the screenshots on your computer, none of this is apparent at all when you're playing it.

I'm sure there will be people out there who are disappointed to find out that Mutant Bash TV is a first person shooter on rails, especially with the backlash we saw surrounding our DOOM Resurrection review. However, after playing the demo level over and over, I really thought that the automatic movement was basically exactly what I'd be doing if I was actually controlling my character. Instead I didn't need to have a third of the screen obscured working two virtual thumb sticks. In any case, due to the level design it doesn't seem like there's anywhere else you could go if you controlled your movement in Mutant Bash TV. Since this was just a brief demo, it's hard to get a real idea of what the rest of the game will entail.

It's incredibly exciting to see industry giants Id and Epic going head to head in releasing their next-generation graphics engines on the iPhone. Id's Mutant Bash TV should beat Epic's Infinity Blade to market, as currently Id is shooting for the end of November for the release of Mutant Bash TV. Meanwhile, Infinity Blade is still set for a vague holiday release. Pricing hasn't yet been released for Infinity Blade, but Mutant Bash TV is launching at 99¢ for non-Retina Display iPod touches and iPhones and $1.99 for Retina Display-equipped devices and the iPad. After being amazed by Epic Citadel [Free], looking forward to Infinity Blade, and now getting my hands on Mutant Bash TV, I can say with the utmost confidence that this is an incredible time to be an iOS gamer.

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