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I'll fully admit that I'm a total sucker for anything that vaguely follows the Metroidvania formula. Something deep inside of my genetic code just loves navigating a maze-like mixture of corridors and platforms with more areas becoming unlocked as I collect new skills, weapons, and abilities. Robot Wants Kitty [99¢] plays in to this perfectly, even integrating my love for cats. Based on the Flash game with the same name, Robot Wants Kitty has been fantastically translated to the touchscreen of iOS devices and plays just as well as recent platformers like League of Evil.

The basic premise of the game is that you're a robot, and you want to collect kitties, as the title suggests. Doing so involves picking up new "apps" for your robot, to program it to do additional things. For instance, at the start of the game you're not even capable of jumping. You've got to figure out how to get to the jump app, usually by falling, and avoiding enemies. Actually acquiring the kitty on each level will requiring your robot to be fairly decked out, both with abilities like powered up lasers, rocket boosters, and multi-colored key cards.

The way you acquire all of these abilities fits perfectly in to the Metroidvania formula, but how quickly you acquire them and how little fanfare there is makes it feel like the essence of what makes said formula work so well has been practically perfectly distilled. Six levels are included of increasing difficulty level, and while it starts out fairly easy and straight forward, the later levels can take over an hour to complete. There's even a level editor where you can create your own creations, although there isn't a way to share these yet.

I suppose you could look at the fact that there's only six levels as a negative point of the game, but then again, it's a dollar with a complete level editor. Forum members are really digging the game, and it's hard not to get behind a developer like Raptisoft who has historically been so good about updating their games.

If you like robots, cats, and/or Metroidvania style games, don't miss Robot Wants Kitty.

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We've made several posts covering the games that we were shown at the EA Mobile / Chillingo media event that took place during GDC 2011. The last title we've got to share from that event is an ambitious twist on the tower defense formula called Anomaly Warzone Earth, coming from Polish group 11 Bit Studios, to be published by Chillingo for both iPhone and iPad

In 2018, the world stood in terror and watched as a giant comet flung from the heavens entered our atmosphere and slammed into the Earth. Impact point: Baghdad. Only, it wasn't a comet. Upon impact, the alien craft erected a gigantic dome, concealing the invaders' activities from all the world. It's up to you to command waves of Earth forces in order to penetrate the alien defenses and confront the otherworldly intruders.

Anomaly Warzone Earth is tower defense, but in reverse. Your forces, consisting of both ground and air vehicles, must battle their way through harsh batteries of alien defenses to ensure that our planet doesn't fall under alien control.

The game starts off by presenting a tactical planning screen where attack routes and equipment are chosen. From there, it's off to the battlefield where the real action takes place, rendered out in striking graphical detail, with positional 3D audio adding depth to the firefight. As your forces proceed through the Baghdad streets, a number of actions can be invoked, such as heal units, smoke screen, decoys, air attack, etc. And, at any time, your route can be altered back at the tactical map screen.

During the EA event, the game was demonstrated to me on both the iPad and the iPhone and I found the visuals and overall sense of destruction and mayhem that the game delivers to be quite impressive. And, while the above trailer video is for the Mac and PC version of the game, the iOS visuals are not far behind.

Anomaly Warzone Earth was an IMGA 2011 nominee for Most Innovative Game and is set to impact sometime next month.

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Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP has been on our collective minds here at TouchArcade for over a year now. The first time I saw the game, I called it "the most amazing game I've seen at GDC". Blake was sitting nearby for the initial demonstration of the game, and later offered his own remarkably positive impressions. A year passed without much news on Sword & Sworcery aside from the Superbrothers team popping up for air every now and again to deliver some new screenshots, a brief video, or vaguely mention a potential release date. We caught up with them again at this year's GDC where we were let in on the terrible secret of Sword & Sworcery's development.

It turned out that what we were shown of Sword & Sworcery was all that was actually even completed at the time, and we had fallen in love with what amounted to little more than a prototype. This unconventional development approach actually allowed Superbrothers to follow the community feedback on what people expected the game to be, implementing quite a few of the suggestions along the way. In comparison, typically when we're given a game preview the title is finished or close to it. At that point, there's not much a developer can do with major community complaints aside from attempt to address them in updates. Superbrothers turned this process on its head, and it shows when you're playing the game.

Before I continue with this preview, there's something you should know about Sword & Sworcery. It's as much of an experience as it is a game, and at times it's more of an experience of pixel art and music than it is an actual game. This makes determining what is and isn't technically a spoiler very difficult, as discovery is such an important element of this whole experimental project that Superbrothers is conducting.

If you've found yourself captivated by the few S&S details that have leaked out over the past year and have decided you're going to download the game regardless, I'd really just stop reading here. It will have the most impact and by far will be the best experience going in to the game completely blind. Of course, I won't blame you if you need to keep reading, but just beware that all bets are off after this screenshot:

Sword & Sworcery opens with a mysterious cigar smoking man known only as "The Archetype". He explains that "S:S&S EP does not produce the transcendent experience, it is merely intended to free the nervous system of ordinary patterns." The Archetype serves as a narrator of sorts, and recaps what happened between sessions. Initially, he tells you that your first quest, which largely serves as part introduction and part tutorial. A few more taps on the screen and you're playing as "The Scythian" in a lush forest.

The game is controlled like most other point and click (or, point and tap, I suppose) adventure games in that you can drag the camera around with one finger and use familiar pinching gestures to zoom in or out. Double tapping makes your character move to that location, or you can press and hold to move continuously in that direction. Once you've got a handle for the controls you're quickly introduced to "Girl", "Logfella" and "Dogfella", the three supporting characters you'll spend a considerable amount of time with on your quests.

Throughout the game, you'll need to use both sword and sworcery to progress. Drawing your sword to enter battle involves rotating the iPad 90 degrees, at which point a button appears for defending with your shield as well as attacking with your sword. As mentioned in previous S&S articles, combat works a lot like classic NES Punch-Out!! with emphasis on timing. Fights range from being very simple, requiring only blocking and counter-attacking to multi-phase boss battles.

Like any good adventure game, there's a hefty amount of puzzles. Completing these requires "singing the song of sworcery," or, holding your finger on the Scythian until she is enveloped in a colorful halo of light. You will then be able to interact with the environment to complete puzzles that involve both music and logic.

Music plays an absolutely massive part in the game, as the soundtrack was created by Jim Guthrie exclusively for Sword & Sworcery. Similarly, the game itself was created around the music. It is incredibly cool how well the audio and visual effects tie together, at times feeling more like a movie than a video game. There's even a point where the two collide, invoking spine-chilling levels of awesomeness.

I'm reluctant to get much more specific in this preview, but the gloves will be off for our full review when the game launches this Thursday. What I will say is that having played all the way through Sword & Sworcery already, I think it's incredible how Superbrothers have managed to combine both action-oriented gameplay through sword fighting and incredibly existential puzzles through the sworcery components. I enjoyed the game with a partner, who is great at decoding musical puzzles, while I handled the fighting and movement. It was an incredible experience, even more so as our two play styles managed to complement each other for completing the two distinctly different modes of gameplay.

If this preview has left you wanting even more and you can't wait until Thursday, Superbrothers sent us the following brief gameplay video captured from the opening portions of the game. Much like reading this preview, if you really want the full experience of discovering this game I'd avoid watching it.

Stay tuned for the iPad release of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP which is scheduled this Thursday. Like all Thursday game releases, it will actually hit the US App Store at 11:00 PM EST on Wednesday, or earlier than that if you're using one of the various international App Stores. We'll have our full review then, but I still won't recommend that you read it until after completing the game. If you've got an iPhone, Superbrothers is saying the iPhone-specific version of the game will arrive sometime next month.

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I'll be the first to admit that when I first caught wind of Angry Birds Rio I didn't expect much. Video games based on movies are almost always universally terrible, and this seemed like a prime situation for Rovio do to a quick cash-in on Rio, with hype around the movie and Angry Birds in general making the game sell well anyway. Oddly enough, Angry Birds Rio is anything but a quick cash-in.

At this point I'd think it's safe to assume that anyone reading TouchArcade is familiar with Angry Birds, but if not, here's the gist- Angry Birds is a catapult game where you fling birds at forts which are cobbled together with various materials, all precariously stacked. Levels are complete when you fling the birds in to these forts to kill all the pigs. It's graded on a three star scale with hidden golden eggs which can also be collected.

Angry Birds Rio basically plays the same way, but the entire game feels like it has been upgraded. Quite a bit of the interface has been redone, there are far more things to collect, and they've even added parallax scrolling to give the game quite a bit more visual depth. The 60 included levels are all designed incredibly well, and seem to have solutions where you can brute force the level by destroying it, or looking for the single weak spot which sets off a Rube Goldberg-like chain reaction of destruction.

Instead of killing pigs, you've got to break fellow birds free from cages in the first world. Then in the second world you're defeating monkeys. The 60th level has a boss fight of sorts where you've got to fling birds at Nigel, the bad guy of the movie. You even get to fling Blu and Jewel, the two main character birds of Rio. It's all really well done, and any fans of Angry Birds will have a fantastic time playing through Angry Birds Rio.

I hope these improvements eventually make their way over to the proper Angry Birds and/or Angry Birds Seasons, as it would be really sweet to need to deal with a big and crafty boss pig. The collectable items are also a nice touch, really giving reason to replay levels beyond scoring three stars. Really the only down side is the clear display of when additional content is coming, with blank menu spots for May, July, October, and November 2011. I think I prefer just being surprised when an Angry Birds update lands than knowing I have to wait so long… And I doubt I'm alone on that.

• Angry Birds Rio, 99¢
• Angry Birds Rio Free, Free
• Angry Birds Rio HD, $4.99
• Angry Birds Rio HD Free, Free

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Yesterday the popular Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series made its debut on the App Store with Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard [$6.99] courtesy of Gameloft. We’ve given the game some thorough play time since then, and have come away pretty satisfied with how the series has translated to the iOS platform. The single player component offers some enjoyable tactical gameplay, but the part of the game we were most excited about – the online cooperative play – turned out pretty disappointing. Even still, Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard is a competent FPS that’s in line with Gameloft’s previous offerings, and should satisfy fans of the series’ recent console titles looking for a fix on the go.

The single player campaign in Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard spans 11 missions as your 3-man team works to take out a terrorist organization. The premise and storyline bits are fairly cliché, but the missions themselves are quite fun. Each mission is pretty lengthy and features several different ways to go about completing your goals, which requires much more forethought on how to approach them than your typical FPS game. You have two AI teammates in the game, a recon specialist and a demolitions expert, that you can direct them to take cover at specific areas or clear rooms for you. Taking cover behind walls or using a snake camera to peek under doors to see what’s awaiting you on the other side is imperative, as just barging your way through the game trying to run-n-gun will usually result in a speedy death, especially on harder difficulties.

The online portion of Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard is pretty good as well. It features online deathmatch or team deathmatch with up to 10 players spread across 5 specially designed multiplayer maps. There’s also an online cooperative mode that lets you team up with 2 other players and have a go at the single player campaign missions. This mode sounded extremely promising when it was announced, as there isn’t really anything akin to that on the iPhone yet. While it’s a technically sound mode, the lack of any sort of chat feature sucks the fun out of the experience. Playing cooperatively means being on the same page as your teammates, and without the ability to communicate with each other this mode loses almost all meaning.

Both the single player and multiplayer portions of Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard let you earn experience for killing enemies which can then be used to unlock additional weapons and equipment. This is a nice touch and gives you more motivation besides just merely completing levels, though the extent of items and customization is lacking compared to something like Modern Combat 2 [$6.99/Lite/HD]. The graphics look quite good for the most part, though not mind blowing. It utilizes the same engine used in countless other Gameloft titles, giving it a somewhat generic look. Controls also work well though they can feel cramped on the tiny screen and there is very few options to suit them to your liking.

Overall, Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard gets the job done. It’s not nearly as deep or strategic as the console titles it’s modeled after, but it feels similar enough that it should win over fans of the series or those looking for a more tactical FPS experience. The competitive online modes are very good, though not quite as strong as those found in N.O.V.A. 2 [$6.99/HD] or Modern Combat 2. The cooperative play may serve you well while playing locally with some friends so you can discuss tactics with each other, but playing this online is largely forgettable. Surprisingly, the campaign is actually the star of the show in Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard, and is much more engaging than the campaigns in either of the previously mentioned titles.

The best way to sum up Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard is that it’s very competent in every area, but far from the killer app that many might have hoped it would be. Players seem to be enjoying the title in our forums, and if you’re looking for an entertaining new FPS experience then Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard is a pretty solid choice.

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In case you’ve been under a rock, Tiny Wings [$.99] is the new App Store sweetheart, replacing Angry Birds [$.99 / Lite / HD] as the must-have bird based mobile game. The two differ, but both have one thing in common: a wonky physics engine that informs the core mechanic. In Tiny Wings specifically, you fiddle with momentum, gently pulling a fat bird downwards towards a slope in order to feed it more gas for its next abrupt flight.

Now, we’ve got Pilot Winds [Free], another bird based game based on a similar idea. There is no chicken and the egg drama here, either. Pilot Winds was apparently in development before Tiny Wings launched.

Pilot Winds wants you to wrap your head around momentum, too. The distinction is that your avatar isn’t a chubby bird with meager flying skills. No, in this game, you control a penguin who slides on ropes constructed in a series of slopes, all designed to give you the speed to rocket it into the air at fast clips. The motions reminds me of skiing, but as you'll notice, the penguin isn't equipped with skis.

There are a couple of hooks to it, too, mainly in the points area. When you press your finger on the iPad or iPod to bring the penguin down, you can, optionally, “bounce” off a rope to maintain modifiers. You can also give yourself an extra boost by timing a jump or landing without sacrificing speed. So, basically, this is a game about scoring big.

There are individual modes to support the leaderboard-infused nature, but most of them are nestled behind the .99-cent pay wall. “Mad Minute” is a 60-second dash to score the most points, “Checkpoint” is a progression-based mode that requires you to hit flags within a certain time frame, and “Freeplay” is your basic, Zen-like ski-a-thon.

You can download a chunk of the game for free right now, but for what it’s worth, Pilot Winds is a solid download. My caveman brain is enjoying the simplicity of the one-tap control and the basic acrobatics that you can pull off in the rush to gather points. As a whole, this is a pretty low-key, hardly involving game that is enjoyed in bursts.

My one knock on the game involves the physics. They feel stiff. You’d figure the ropes would have a little more give and so would the penguin’s knees. That said, once you wrap your head around the engine and what the game desires, you’ll perform just fine. The tutorial seems annoying at first, yet it actually does a great job at pounding home how the game expects you to play.

I’m not going to get into the debate of what’s better, Tiny Wings or Pilot Winds, or why every App Store game stars a bird, ropes, or both, but I will argue that Pilot Winds is worth your time. I mean, c’mon, you can try it for free.

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Last month we learned that Warner Bros. Studios and developer Square One had a remake of the classic arcade game Tapper (better known as Root Beer Tapper) in the works for iOS, and the game known as Tapper World Tour [99¢/HD] is now available in the App Store. The aim of Tapper World Tour is to keep the original gameplay mostly intact while adding a couple of bells and whistles and wrapping the entire package in the wonderful art of legendary animator Don Bluth. And Tapper World Tour succeeds beautifully at this, creating a game that retains the feel of the original while bringing it into the modern era.

Tapper World Tour has you playing as the quick-on-his-feet bartender Sam from the original game, or his equally capable daughter Nikki. Gameplay involves manning several bar counters at once and serving drinks to the patrons whom are slowly approaching the end of each bar. Dishing out drinks sends these folks back down the bar from which they came, and a level is complete when all patrons have been served and cleared out.

Eventually more gameplay elements enter into the mix. Thirsty drinkers will send empty glasses back at you when they’re finished which must be collected before sliding off the end of the bar and breaking. Also, some customers will leave you a tip at some position along the length of the bar which must quickly be collected amidst all the rest of the chaos to score some bonus points. You have a certain amount of lives for each level, and if you let too many glasses break or leave too many customers without drinks then the level is failed and must be tried again.

A couple of brand new elements have been added to Tapper World Tour which mix up the classic gameplay described above. In later levels customers will request specific types of drinks and you’ll have to switch to the appropriate one using an icon in the corner before serving them. Also, multipliers can be earned by successfully serving consecutive customers which will earn you power-ups like a special drink that guarantees you receive a tip or one that temporarily disables having to serve specific drinks.

Another new aspect is special entertainment shows that are enabled after a certain amount of time in a level. These activate a special sequence, like a sports game on TV or a bull riding show in a saloon, which draws the attention of the customers and causes them to temporarily stop, giving you a chance to catch up on orders. One new addition in Tapper World Tour which falls a bit flat are occasional mini games which can be completed after a level to add to that level’s score. These are simple derivatives of “3 shell shuffle” and “whack-a-mole” style games, and while they do break up the normal gameplay they aren’t very engaging.

These new elements fit right in with the classic Tapper gameplay in Tapper World Tour, making for some frantic and extremely challenging fun. One thing that is a huge improvement over the original is the use of touch screen controls. Simply tapping the taps works incredibly well for serving drinks, and tapping on the screen to move between the different bar counters allows for much quicker reactions than you could get with physical controls. There’s an option for a virtual d-pad and button for a more traditional feel, but I definitely think you’re at a disadvantage when using this control setup.

Tapper World Tour contains a ton of content, with more than 40 levels in Story mode and an additional 50+ expert levels when Story is completed. There is also the Endless Shift mode, which is basically a survival mode that lets you play on any unlocked level for as long as possible until you fail. Each Story level has 3 stars to earn based on score, and every Endless Shift level comes equipped with its own Game Center leaderboard, though at this time it appears the Game Center leaderboard functionality isn’t working properly.

All of the gameplay and content in Tapper World Tour is complemented by the excellent art of Don Bluth and his team. The game takes place across 11 different cities in 3 different countries, each with their own unique drinking establishments and customers. The game just oozes all sorts of personality, and it’s hard not to just sit back and enjoy what’s happening on the screen during play. The fact that the gameplay is so solid just serves to enhance that enjoyment. If you were a fan of the original Tapper games or if you enjoy a good fast-paced arcade experience, then Tapper World Tour will satisfy.

Note: Some players in our forums are reporting that the game is unplayable on their device due to a graphical defect. This issue appears to affect 4th generation iPod touch and original iPad owners as far as we can tell. I had absolutely no issues with the game on my iPhone 4 or iPad 2, and a 1.1 update is in the works to fix these issues and will be released as soon as possible.

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If you're at the point where your frog breeding factory in NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs [Free] is running at 110% capacity and you're looking to get your next freemium fix, I've got just what the doctor ordered. Ian and David Marsh, twin brothers behind Pocket Frogs has been hard at work on their next game, titled Tiny Tower. They haven't even started beta testing their game yet, so details are still being worked out, but here's what we've been told:

Tiny Tower tasks you with constructing and managing a tower populated with bitizens and businesses. Put your bitizens to work and keep your businesses stocked to earn enough revenue to expand your tower skyward. Unlock and collect one hundred plus floor blueprints that will make your tower stand out from the rest.

Check out the screenshots from an early development build of the game:

What made Pocket Frogs so awesome was that NimbleBit designed the game from the ground up to be a fun game first, and a freemium money maker second. There never really was a stopping point in Pocket Frogs where you had to pay to continue, unlike far too many freemium games where it's entirely too easy to spot all the time sinks and "optional pay walls which rarely feel optional on any level. We've been told Tiny Tower is going to be the exact same way, and I can't wait to give it a try.

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Last month we caught wind of the trailer for Liqua Pop [$1.99], a new color-matching game from iChromo and EA Mobile. We were really impressed with the stunning visuals in Liqua Pop, with bright colors and realistic fluidity of the water droplets used in the game. During GDC, we were able to check out the game in person, and last week Liqua Pop finally went live in the App Store. After playing with the game for the past few days, I can safely say that Liqua Pop achieves what so few games are able to on the App Store anymore: it manages to make a color-matching game interesting again. Unfortunately the package is fairly bare-bones, but the potential for Liqua Pop to take its novel twist on the genre is huge.

In Liqua Pop, the play field is a leaf, with multi-colored droplets falling from the top of the screen. Same color drops can be dragged into one another to create larger drops, and when four of the same color have been combined, a timer ticks down inside the drop. When the timer ticks out, the drop pops, clearing it from the screen. Alternately, a quick flick of the device will pop a large drop, or a double tap will reset the countdown timer so you can time the pops with others to form combos. Each popped drop advances a tiny tree frog named Toadie up a stem to the left of the screen, and a level is completed when enough drops have been popped to move Toadie to the top.

As you progress in Liqua Pop, some drops will come with small bugs inside that will affect the gameplay when released. Some are helpful, like ones that change all surrounding drops to the color of the one that was just popped for easy matching, or bomb bugs that pop all nearby drops when released. Others aren’t so helpful, like bugs that turn all surrounding drops into “void” drops that can only be cleared with bomb bugs.

The gameplay works very well, and dragging drops together using the touch screen feels very natural. I’m not usually a fan of having to shake my device in a game, but in Liqua Pop the function is very easy and unobtrusive, and allows for quick popping of bubbles when the screen is filling up and your fingers are busy making matches.

The only problem I have with the game is that there’s but a single mode which features a linear progression through increasingly more difficult levels. They start to get especially challenging around the 20 level mark, and if you find yourself unable to complete a level there’s nothing to do but quit and start over from the beginning. An endless mode or some sort of challenge mode would go a long way towards increasing the longevity of Liqua Pop, and this is the type of game that could really benefit from an online system like OpenFeint or Game Center.

Just to be clear, though, I like Liqua Pop a lot. The visuals are absolutely fantastic, with support for Retina Displays, and the music is minimal but calming and serene. There’s something very relaxing about playing the game, that is until you get to a level that moves so quickly that you can’t keep up — then it kind of stresses you out. Liqua Pop's base gameplay is so solid and unique that, with just a few additions, it could be one of the premiere matching games around. As it is now, it’s still a novel game with plenty of enjoyable points, and although it's missing some variety, I still think it’s worth checking out.

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Nostalgia is powerful. Also, stupid. No matter how faithful a re-release is to its source material, it'll never conjure the meaningful experiences that made you fall in love with the original in the first place. Context is the worst of bugbears.

I have no deep connection to Remedy Entertainment's top-down racer Death Rally, and I consider this a good thing. I can't feel bitter about new design choices that replace the old ones; I can't stomp around about wholesale exclusions; and I can't whine about a lack of spirit. I'm not chasing the dragon looking for that original, glorious high.

Instead, I can just enjoy my extended look at the title, which plays like it was indeed created in 1996. The catch is that it holds up in the iOS arena.

At its heart, Death Rally is a top-down shooter featuring cars. Sure, there are laps, tracks, opponents, and a finish line: racing game trimmings. But the game, perhaps to its own detriment, only dishes out meaningful rewards for violence, for doing things like blowing up other cars or boxes in the road.

It's a weird pretense, the racing, because it's also the weakest part of the preview build I’ve been playing. The AI is programmed in an obvious way: two cars are faster than you, no matter what, while the rest of the pack is glacially slow or average speed. This puts you in the position of needing to kill the two pack leaders at the beginning of the race to win because, otherwise, they'll just zoom ahead of you never to be caught up with. I've had many a race so far that consisted of, basically, just me going around a track three times after dismissing the slower cars. The fast cars tend to be so fast that they even left the camera's field of view.

Also, the racing is just a matter of turning your car around turns without getting caught on geometry. There’s no nuance, no drifting, no power sliding, no split-second decisions.

But — and this is a big, tone-shifting kind of but — your car has guns. Shooting is a breeze and the weapons you’ll receive dish out the kind of satisfying damage you’d expect. Enemies will dish it out, too, so you have to be weary of your position and then prepare to best exploit a given situation, which makes for some interesting strategies. I, for example, often don’t take off on the starting line, just so I can more easily tackle the cars while they’re in a pile in front of me.

For starters, your car is equipped with a basic, auto-firing machine gun. As you play, you can unlock a rocket launcher, mines, a shotgun, and a Gatling gun. Additionally, you can level up all of these weapons, as well as speed, armor, and handling attributes on your car, by earning points in races.

These EXP-based systems feel familiar, but the grip is ever real: Death Rally does a great job at making you want to do just one more race for just one more upgrade. This, married with the action it endorses, makes for some entertaining play.

I think where Death Rally excels is in its personality. It's got a mid-90s, southern developer beer-infused and grungy kind of vibe. It celebrates its violence and features many a brown tone, fire, broken objects, dingy environments and attitude, just like, say, Duke Nukem, a character who also appears in the game as an opponent.

I'm not sure if the racing issues are going to be hammered out by release. But these aren't deal breakers — the shooting feels good, the action can be tight if you play your cards right, the transitions to the next race are snappy, and the upgrades will have their way with you. Death Rally is also pretty imaginative as far as iOS titles go, which I think goes a long way in keeping someone engrossed and entertained.

I may not have an emotional connection with the 1996 version of Death Rally, but I don't want one. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the game as much as I have with the retro baggage in tow, I'm sure. And, yeah, Death Rally might have some core problems with the racing, but everything else appears to be solid. I’ll be keeping my eyes on this one and we’ll definitely be talking about this one again when the full release rolls around.

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