TouchArcade.ru

Last week we detailed an upcoming update to EA Mobile and Pixelbite's Reckless Racing [99¢] and Reckless Racing HD [$4.99]. This new update includes the previously iPad only track “The Island” added into the iPhone version of the game, and both versions of Reckless Racing get a brand new track called “Frozen Lake” and two new playable characters, “Granny” and “Boss”. Just a few hours ago, this update went live in the App Store and is now available for download. I spent a bit of time checking out the new content, and can say that the new tracks and vehicles are a welcome edition to Reckless Racing.

The Island track will already be familiar to owners of the iPad version, and is a nighttime course with some beautiful lighting, a couple of shortcuts, and a cliff to fall off of if you aren't careful. Frozen Lake is a snow covered level that partially takes place on dirt and partially on – you guessed it – a frozen lake. This is a really curvy track, and coupled with the slippery conditions you can expect to be power sliding around every turn while a couple of snowmen cheer you on from the sideline. Like the other tracks in the game, the two new tracks come with both regular and reversed versions to race on.

As for the new characters, Boss drives what appears to be a long, pink, Cadillac-style car and Granny is a sweet old lady who drives a beefy monster truck. Both vehicles seem to have tremendous power and speed, but at the cost of extremely difficult handling. With Granny on Frozen Lake, I can hardly even gain enough traction to get moving as the tires just endlessly spin on the frozen terrain. These new vehicles will likely offer something new for those who are willing to invest time with them, but so far I'm feeling much more comfortable with my old friend Cletus.

Seeing as our chief complaint in our review of Reckless Racing when it was released was an overall lack of content, I'm really happy to see that the game is receiving updates adding new vehicles and tracks. I can only hope that this trend continues into the future. If you currently own either Reckless Racing or Reckless Racing HD, make sure to grab this latest download and check out the new stuff. And if you have yet to pick up either version of the game, you had better hurry as the iPhone version is still currently 99¢ but the iPad version has since risen back to its normal price of $4.99.

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If you've been wondering when in the world you're going to be able to play Chair's upcoming Unreal Engine powered sword fighter, Infinity Blade, the wait is over. A release date of December 9th was just announced, at a price of $5.99. Infinity Blade will be a universal app, and will run on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch as well as the iPad.

In addition, a new set of screenshots have been released:

Needless to say, as soon as the game appears for download we'll be reviewing it, and we really can't wait to get our hands on it.

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When Steve Jobs announced last month that the Mac would be getting its own App Store, we saw quite a few current iOS developers confirm that they would be bringing their iPhone and iPad products to the Mac. One of those products will be Majic Jungle Software's Chopper 2 [$4.99], a universal side-scrolling helicopter combat and rescue game that was released back in July and has since been quite successful.

We really enjoyed Chopper 2 in our full review, and while the gameplay itself is a lot of fun, we also found the array of options for displaying and playing the game to be rather intriguing. Chopper 2 comes equipped with the ability to remotely control the game running on an iPad, iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch over Bluetooth or WiFi using another iOS device. We demonstrated this feature back in April with a video showing Chopper 2 being played on an iPad using an iPhone as the remote. Additionally, Chopper 2 uses the video out function of newer iOS devices to allow the game to be displayed on a larger screen while being controlled with an iPhone or iPod touch, as we posted about later that month showing the game running on a 42” plasma (or this video of it running on a 50” screen, if you're a "size matters" kind of person).

Now, with the impending Mac App Store release of Chopper 2, these features are once again being utilized. Developer David Frampton of Majic Jungle has shot a brief video in his ultra-high tech secret underground testing facility that shows the Mac version of Chopper 2 being controlled with an iPhone.

Also, while the original Chopper 2 is already quite visually pleasing, the Mac edition will benefit from enhanced graphics over its iOS siblings. These two comparison shots show the differences between the two versions (iPad screen on left, Mac on right. Click to enlarge):

Even though TouchArcade is primarily an iOS gaming site, we are also really excited to see what the new Mac App Store will bring to the table. The innovations included with Chopper 2 really tie together gaming on the Apple family of devices, and it will be really interesting to see what kinds of other things developers will think of in the future. We've created a new Upcoming Mac App Store Games section in our forums where you can get the scoop on what games will be coming to the Mac App Store, which should be launching sometime in the next couple of months.

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We're big fans of Dinofarm Games / Fusion Reactions' arcade-style dungeon crawler 100 Rogues [App Store]. The game, which we reviewed back in May, is a re-imagination of the typical Rogue-like formula. It features the typical elements of the genre — near-certain death, randomly generated maps and loot, and a foray into the depths of an enemy-riddled pit — but delivers it in a way that makes you feel you are playing something else entirely. In our initial review, we found it to be pretty brilliant.

In that review, we spoke of the long list of planned features that the developer had in store for the title. Here, half a year later, it's clear those weren't empty promises. The developer released all of nine updates to the game through October, and two weeks ago released version 2.0, a massive update that enhanced the gameplay in a great many ways.

Some of the enhancements that came with version 2.0:

• Hell! Another world, with new levels, music, monsters and maps to explore, has been added to the end of the game, appropriately situated between the Dungeon and Satan
• New Boss: A new, Dungeon-themed boss has been placed between the Dungeon and the new Hell world
• Amafyst: The Fairy Wizard's basic projectile skill now leaves behind Crystal Caltrops upon impact, each lasting 10 turns dealing damage and slowing monsters that walk on them. Each skill point in Amafyst creates a higher number of more damaging crystals
• Easy Mode now spans all three game worlds
• Map Generation: Each map is now comprised of a mix of handcrafted and randomly generated rooms
• Mob Clustering: Monsters now spawn more tightly in groups, and only spawn in mobs within rooms, reducing the incidence of difficult encounters in hallways.
• Game Center can now be disabled via 100 Rogues user preferences in the Settings App
• Stability improvements throughout the game

And the continuing evolution of 100 Rogues is showing no sign of slowing down. The version 2.1 update has been submitted to Apple and should go live later today or tomorrow. And it's a pretty significant update.

A partial list of what version 2.1 will bring:

• Two new weapons
• One new armor type
• End Cutscene now rendered in-engine (Apple's movie player has been entirely removed from the game. Enjoy the greatly reduced update size!)
• New Bandit Hole 1 music
• Custom Playlist support via Options Menu
• iOS 4.2 support (Game Center / Multi-tasking on iPad)
• Load Times improved throughout the games
• Many various bug fixes

In addition, a new, third player class will be released by December 15. This new class is known as the Skellyman Scoundrel, which lead designer Keith Burgun describes.

In terms of character, the Scoundrel is a member of the Skellyman race, a race of Skeleton-People created by magic many generations ago. This means that they actually reproduce and have baby skeletons which grow into adult skeletons – they're not undead and they don't come from humans. The Scoundrel in particular happens to be an undead Skellyman, however, as she was killed by her lover in life – he stabbed her in the back of the head with a dagger. She now keeps it in her skull (and it ends up looking like a fashionable ponytail because of its tassle) and stalks the dungeons looking for greater and greater kills with which to satisfy her thirst for revenge. When you get enough backstabs, you can deliver the ability SKELLY VENGENACE, a skill which makes the skellyman pull her lover's dagger from her skull and plunge it into a target. This skill can do *MASSIVE* damage, like you've never seen in 100 Rogues.

This Leap Attacking, Skelly Vengeance-dealing new class is all about stealth, mobility, speed, and dealing great damage to singular targets. It should mix up this already heavily-updated title rather nicely. Hats off to the folks behind 100 Rogues for so admirably keeping the ball rolling with 100 Rogues, as well as for these exclusive details and (inset) design sketch.

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The onslaught of tower defense games seems as if it will never let up. Fortunately, when we're treated to something special like the recently reviewed Lord of the Rings or Guns'n’Glory, neither does our hankering for slaughtering wave after wave of enemies at the base of our towers. iBomber Defense [App Store] is Cobra Mobile's TD spin-off of their classic iBomber games on the iOS, taking you out of the cockpit and into the seat of Tower Master Extraordinaire.

Contrary to the abovementioned games, iBomber Defense is very true to the staple TD formula, on its face doing very little to toy with the basics. Instead, iBomber Defense concerns itself with tightening up the loose ends of games gone before it, by squeezing out a terrifically sharp look and interface, and really locking down a challenging campaign that will put your accumulated TD experience to the test. That's not to say that it doesn't innovate however, as iBomber Defense adds a few game-changing mechanics that you'll be wondering how you did without.

Primarily amongst these, is the ability to Rewind the current wave of creeps. This allows you to re-do your recent tower placement and upgrades and hopefully try to minimize your losses suffered by taking a fresh approach. Of course, this would be easily abused each wave, so the game restricts the amount of Rewinds you are allowed through a cooldown system. Secondly, is the impact that height has on the placement of towers. Towers placed on high ground are afforded a large range advantage, which is an essential tactical consideration to beat the more challenging missions.

The other major feature shows off its iBomber roots. All towers placed have their own life bar, and are attacked by enemies whenever they are within range. As expected, larger enemies pack more of a punch– such as when a fleet of battleships passes by– requiring you to micromanage your damaged assets and repair them lest they be destroyed completely. In another throwback to iBomber, aircraft are particularly devestating against towers and will take a more direct route to bombard your base. Other small additions purely functional, such as the ability to place and upgrade towers when pausing and the ability to zoom right out and easily pan the large maps and scan the multiple attack paths.

Of course, the highlight of TDs are the towers themselves. The iBomber Defense list of towers doesn't read long, but is definitely just as focused as the rest of the game. Machine guns are your standard fast firing towers, Cannons are the slower, AOE, anti-vehicle big-guns, AA launch flak at enemy aircraft, Sabotage towers fire mortar round that slows creeps, Comms increase the battle effectiveness of nearby towers and two specialist towers unlocked later in the game, the Firestorm and X-Weapon each have additional weapon effects that augment the damage of other towers. A victory point is rewarded for completing each mission, and an additional point is up for grabs for doing so perfectly. These can then be spent upgrading overall tower effectiveness between levels, augmenting the in-game upgrade system.

There are 22 levels all-up stretching across the Axis and Allied campaigns of Africa, Europe and Russia, each with their own iconic settings. The backdrops and graphics in iBomber are simply stunning (with some really meaty explosion effects), and thankfully textures are at their intended resolution when fully zoomed in. Another neat addition that spices up the level offerings come by way of routine Counter Attacks, which appear on the map over levels already played and offer bonus victory points. These depict offensive pushes by the enemy as they swarm over part of your already established defenses, and force you to defend a newly opened path on the map. In addition to the Campaign, there is a Quick Play mode with its own separate achievements to obtain per level, and 3 variable difficulties to play through.

iBomber Defense is undoubtedly the man's man of tower defense games. It doesn't overextend itself with a multitude of new fandangled features, but instead builds upon nearly every aspect of the existing TD foundation and just does it better. It's tough as nails even on the regular difficulty level, requires good forward thinking and strategic placement of gun embattlements, and also forces you to react quickly to multiple attacks happening simultaneously. It also has Game Center and Crystal support and is thoughtfully a Universal app which will definitely please iPad owners. In short, if you absolutely love tower defense games, then iBomber Defense is a tribute made just for you.

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One of the great things about the App Store is that the games you buy have the potential to evolve over time with updates. Couple that with our forums which are chock full of helpful feedback from our members, and developers with a listening ear can turn a game into something that is much greater than it originally started out as. While the App Store has been around for over two years and this is nothing new, I've never quite seen anything like what has happened with Rogue Runner [99¢/Lite] from developer Glowdot Productions.

Rogue Runner is an “endless running” game like so many others that have recently been popular in the App Store. It was released two full months ago, and to be perfectly honest I just wasn't very impressed with it at the time. It featured some excellent pixel art and a cool 16-bit style, but the content was limited and the gameplay just felt “off” compared to similar running games. Rogue Runner just didn't do anything that different from the competition to make it stand above the rest.

But then something happened. Glowdot listened to all the great feedback that was given in the forum thread, and the first update issued addressed a lot of the gameplay concerns. Rogue Runner was now much more enjoyable to play, and Glowdot vowed to issue content updates at a ridiculous pace. As soon as one update was approved, he would immediately submit the next one that he was working on while the previous one was in review. Two months and five updates later, and Rogue Runner has blossomed into much more than the initial release, and the beautiful thing is that the majority of content is directly inspired by the actual people playing the game.

Rogue Runner plays like your typical running game, with a button for jumping from platform to platform and another button for firing your weapon. Besides the enemy soldiers and vehicles that litter the ground, airborne enemies will fly in from the left side of the screen and attack from the right, and tapping on them will launch a missile in their direction while you continue to focus on blasting away the ground threat. It's not really anything we haven't seen before, but it works well and is a whole lot more playable since the first update.

Initially Rogue Runner contained just two vehicles to choose from and a single desert environment to play in. Now after the slew of updates the total is 6 environments, including a Gameboy-style theme and a 1920's noir-style San Francisco, and 10 vehicles which range from Back to the Future's Delorean to a dinosaur. All of this is merely cosmetic, mind you, but it's very cool nonetheless to be able to choose from all the different options, and it adds a lot of enjoyment to the game. The video above shows a bunch of the different themes available in the game.

What isn't cosmetic is the two additional game modes that have been added into Rogue Runner. The first is a chase mode, similar to the main game but with constant boss enemies that you chase after and battle. The second new mode is basically an entirely new game. It's a top-down mode similar to Spy Hunter in a way, where you travel around different lanes on a highway shooting or ramming enemy cars while avoiding innocent pedestrians. This top-down mode could have easily been a second game from Glowdot, but instead it's been included in the original Rogue Runner for free. You can check out the top-down video below.

Really though, there's too many different things in Rogue Runner to cover them all. The best thing to do is check out the thread in our forums where the first post lists videos of the various themes and the second post details all the updates so far. Then, if there's something you would like to see in the game, make sure and leave a comment about it because chances are pretty good that it could become a reality. A recent lite version has also been released, so you can actually experience what the gameplay is like before buying.

I still don't think that Rogue Runner is the best of the endless running games. The jumping still feels a bit floaty and the controls are not as responsive as they should be. But you do get acclimated to how it plays and with Glowdot's track record I have no doubt that the gameplay will be refined even further. What Rogue Runner really is, though, is a labor of love from both the developer and the community, and for that reason alone it is worth having a look at. I get excited whenever I see the Rogue Runner icon pop up in my list of updates in iTunes, and I can't wait to see what sort of content comes out for it in the future.

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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and has been all my life. What's there not to love about an entire day revolving around eating massive amounts of turkey, stuffing, and all the other fixings? Sure, I could do without needing to feign interest in football, but thankfully tryptophan overload usually allows me to sleep through all of that. If you're looking for something to do this year while you do your best to either pretend to be interested in football or anxiously wait for the food to be done, there are a ton of sales on the App Store to consider.

The basis of this post comes from SirAwesome's awesome thread in our new price drops, freebies, and deals forum. He put together an extremely exhaustive listing of everything that's on sale, and the thread is good to stop by just to make sure you're not missing anything that might have since gone on sale since the writing of this post.

First off, here are some of what we consider must-have games that are on sale. We've positively reviewed all of these, and really recommend picking them up if you're going to grab anything from this price drop extravaganza-

Need for Speed Shift, $0.99 This is an absolutely fantastic arcade style racer that actually manages to capture almost everything that made the console version of the game fun. A must-have at 99¢.

ChuChu Rocket!, $0.99 A classic Dreamcast puzzle game that I paid full console game price for that I don’t regret one bit. A recent updated added a ton more content, making this a no-brainer for a buck.

Ravensword: The Fallen King, $2.99 This is the cheapest that this open-world RPG has ever been. It hasn’t exactly aged well compared to more recent 3D games (especially looking forward to Aralon) but it’s still a ton of fun and probably your best bang for the buck with hours upon hours of gameplay.

Defender Chronicles – Legend of The Desert King, $2.99 A cool twist on tower defense that has been updated a ton with all kinds of new content since its initial release. If you like tower defense and earning experience points, this is the game for you.

Harbor Master, $0.99 Harbor Master has been selling for $1.99 for quite a while now, if you missed the initial 99¢ launch price of this fun little content-packed line drawing game, here’s your chance to snag it again.

Jet Car Stunts, $0.99 Half racing game, half puzzle platformer. Pilot your jet car through a series of ridiculous jumps, twists, turns, and other obstacles. Retina Display graphics looks awesome, and the game runs fantastic on every device I’ve ever played it on.

Chopper 2, $2.99 This awesome sequel is loaded with all kinds of cool options, such as being able to control the game running on your iPad with your iPhone. Chopper had a huge fan following, and Chopper 2 doesn’t disappoint.

Game Dev Story, $3.99 If you’re looking for a game that will quite literally suck up your entire day (and battery in the process) look no further than Game Dev Story. Create your own game company, and even release your own game console eventually. It’s awesome.

And here's everything else we consider noteworthy that's on sale-

Namco

99¢
BIT.TRIP BEAT
BIT.TRIP BEAT HD
Dug Dug Remix
Galaga Remix
Garters & Ghouls
Gator Panic
Inspector Gadget
Isaac Newton's Gravity
Lt. Fly Rise of the Arachnids
Mr. Driller
Ms. PAC-MAN
Noby Noby Boy
PAC-Attack
PAC-Chain
PAC-Chain Compact
PAC-MAN
PAC-MAN for iPad
PAC-MAN Championship Edition
PAC-Match Party
PAC-Match Party HD
PAC-MAN Remix
Pole Position: Remix
Pool Pro Online 3
Pool Pro Online 3 for iPad
Star Trigon
Tamagotchi: Round the World
Time Crisis Strike
Tinseltown Dreams: The 50s

$2.99
Ace Combat Xi
i Love Katamari
Ridge Racer Accelerated

$4.99
Time Crisis 2nd Strike

Gamevil

99¢
Zenonia
Hybrid: Eternal Whisper
Soccer Superstars

$2.99
Zenonia 2
Hybrid 2
Baseball Superstars 2010

EA

99¢
Need For Speed Undercover
The Sims 3 Ambitions
Tetris
RISK : The Official Game
Monopoly
Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition
SimCity Deluxe
Need for Speed Shift
The Sims 3 World Adventures
Scrabble
The Game of Life Classic Edition
The Simpsons Arcade
Reckless Racing HD
Yahtzee HD

$4.99
Rock Band
Mirrors Edge for iPad
Scrabble for iPad
Madden NFL 11 for iPad

Gameloft

99¢
Let's Golf!® 2
NFL 2011
Hero of Sparta II
Iron Man 2
Brothers In Arms® 2: Global Front
UNO™
The Settlers HD
Splinter Cell Conviction™ HD
GT Racing: Motor Academy HD
Brothers In Arms® 2: Global Front HD
Iron Man 2 for iPad
Let's Golf! 2 HD
Hero of Sparta 2 HD
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within HD

$4.99
Real Golf 2011

Big Pixel Studios

99¢
Meow Meow Happy Fight
Meow Meow Happy Fight HD
Piyo Blocks
Piyo Blocks 2

Glu

99¢
Deer Hunter 3D
Paperboy: Special Delivery
Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year
Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year HD
World Series of Poker Hold'em Legends
World Series of Poker Hold’em Legend for iPad

Sega

99¢
Chu Chu Rocket
Phantasy Star II
Golden Axe

$2.99
Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Edition
ChuChu Rocket HD

$4.99
Sonic The Hedgehog 4™ Episode I

Bootant

99¢
Victory Day
Crazy Tanks
Pirate Waters
BeeCells HD

$1.99
Victory Day HD
uBoot HD
Crazy Choppers HD

99 Games

99¢
Wordsworth
Mystic Emporium
Christmas Sudoku
Create a Mall
Wordulous
Create a Mall HD
Mystic Emproium HD
Christmas Sudoku HD

Chillingo

99¢
Billabong Surf Trip
Radio Flare REDUX
Radio Flare REDUX HD
Ravensword: The Fallen King
Parking Mania HD
Defender Chronicles – Legend of the Desert King
Master of Alchemy
Master of Alchemy HD
Fiona’s Flowers

$1.99
Cogs HD

Everyone Else

Free
Chop Chop Runner
Depict

99¢
Harbor Master
Mr. Bill
Jet Car Stunts
Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2011
Rapala Pro Bass Fishing
MovieCat!
Fantastic Contraption

$1.99
The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition for iPad
Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge for iPad

$2.99
Chopper 2
Game Dev Story
Fruit Ninja HD
Fantastic Contraption 2
Ragdoll Blaster 2 HD

$4.99
Crimision Gem Saga
UFC Undisputed 2010

• All popular games on sale.
• All games on sale.
• All popular games that dropped to free.
• All games that dropped to free.

Also, to see iPhone, iPad, or Universal games just click the respective buttons on the top left of the AppShopper listing. Oh, and if you haven't yet, be sure to check out the AppShopper App [Free] itself. It's got push alerts and all kinds of other slick features so if what you want isn't on sale this time around, you will get a push alert as soon as it is.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Last week, we took a hands-on look at Wispin [99¢], the debut game from indie developer Grumpyface Studios. Wispin is an arena survival shooter without the shooting, instead relying on a unique color matching mechanic as the core of its gameplay. I really enjoyed my time with the preview version of Wispin, and it has since become available for purchase in the App Store. If you typically like the kind of action you would find in the multitude of iOS dual-stick shooters, but are tired of how similar they've all become, then Wispin is worth a look as it offers a new take on the formula and does it with the kind of style and polish that would rival long-time development studios.

In Wispin, you move your character with a left stick as per usual, but the right “stick” is actually a color wheel that changes your character to one of three colors. Enemies called Bloopers pop up from the ground all around you, and you'll use the right stick to change to the same color as the enemies you want to attack. As more and more enemies appear, Wispin turns into a frenzied battle as you are constantly trying to change your color on the fly while running down every last one of them. Bombs and arrows can be picked up randomly to mix up the offense as well as some special items like a wedge of cheese that draws all like-colored enemies towards where you toss it.

Just changing colors and mashing into enemies is pretty fun, but a nice multiplier system adds a layer of strategy to the combat in Wispin. Each Blooper you splat in quick succession adds to a multiplier that increases the points earned for defeating enemies. Getting 3 kills in a row of the same colored blooper will give your character a temporary speed boost, and getting to a 20x multiplier sends him into a crazed frenzy around the screen killing Bloopers of every color in his path. The multiplier aspect is what really makes Wispin fun to play. Taking your time and carefully defeating Bloopers is what will help you last a long time, but since this is a high score game the temptation to try to kill enemies quickly and build up a huge multiplier can lead to some reckless decision making.

There are two different modes to play in Wispin. The first is Standard Mode that brings wave after wave of increasingly harder Bloopers, and the other is called Super Intense Mode that is one endless wave with a constant onslaught of enemies. The Standard Mode starts out pretty slow, and the action doesn't really start to pick up until about the 5th wave. Lasting past 10 waves unlocks Super Intense Mode which is much more action-packed right off the bat. Wispin is a really challenging game, and just getting to wave 10 to unlock the new mode is a tough feat. Adding to the challenge is the slightly awkward handling of character movement. It's hard to be precise in where you move, and I've had more than one death because I accidentally bumped into a Blooper when I didn't mean to. Also, the smaller Bloopers can be hard to pinpoint and kill, leading to more unintentional damage. It's not a game breaker, and Grumpyface has already issued an update to Apple that tightens up the control stick, but it can lead to some frustrating moments.

Overall though, Wispin is a breath of fresh air in iOS gaming. The crisp Retina Display graphics and charming art style are very visually pleasing. The unique color matching system adds a twist to a genre of gameplay that has been done to death on the App Store before. There are two different environments to play on currently, but Grumpyface has plans to add more with future updates and is actively seeking new ideas in our forums for things to add to the game. Game Center integration handles online high score tracking and achievements, and there is even a color blind mode to help the color blinded players amongst us to differentiate the default colors. If you're looking for some arcade-style action that's deviates from the norm, I would definitely recommend checking out Wispin.

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At this point in the life of the App Store, I'm not sure if it's fair to say that the tower defense genre is any more overloaded than any other genre of game, but there definitely does seem to be a real lack of any kind of innovation in that section. There are a ton of tower defense games out there, but very few of them are that memorable. Much like match three games, you've really got to do something different to stand out. Recently, Guns'n’Glory sticks out as a game that features more than typical tower defense gameplay, but the Sentinel series has always been my favorite tower defense games on the App Store.

The original Sentinel was released back before tower defense games really started blowing up on the platform and provided some really solid classic tower defense gameplay with great graphics, a cool array of towers, and a high frame rate that didn't stutter even on fast forward modes. Sentinel 2 was a worthy sequel in every way, and my review of the game reflected just how much I enjoyed it. The second Sentinel introduced things like orbital weaponry, new tower types, along with both repair drones and energy drones to keep your defenses online. Sentinel 3 takes the series another step further, providing RPG elements and further customizations.

The forefront of these new features it the commander unit, which is deployed at one of the barriers on the map. This unit provides a morale boost to any tower within range, increasing its damage. In addition, it also has ranged and melee attacks to take out any incoming enemies that your towers missed. Progressing through the campaign awards experience for your commander, and with each level you're able to increase the commander's statistics. These range from pumping up its own health, ranged attack, melee attack, and how much it boosts the strength of nearby towers. In addition, you also slowly unlock additional abilities such as being able to jump between barricades, temporarily boost your damage output, and others.

Also unlocked through the game are the different tower types and orbital attacks. However, unlike previous games, you'll need to buy these individual towers with in-game credits. In addition, much like how Plants vs Zombies offers a wide array of tower options but only space for a few of them when you're actually playing each level, you'll eventually only be able to bring eight of the ten towers with you. Similarly, the various orbital super attacks work much the same way. Eight in all are included, but you can only select up to six at a time. Between levels you're given the opportunity to modify which of these defenses you have access to.

All this flexibility greatly increases the level of personalization in the game, and much like how there wasn't really any "right" way to beat levels in Sentinel 2, 3 takes this even further. For instance, it seems equally viable to dump tons of points upgrading your commander's attack capabilities as it is to pour all your points in to the nearby tower strength boosting effect. With a strong commander, you could place towers elsewhere, and with a commander that is good at boosting your towers, you'd want to place as many nearby as possible. The amount of different approaches you can take to the levels included in Sentinel 3 make for a surprisingly deep tower defense experience.

Sentinel 3 was submitted on November 16th, and is awaiting Apple's approval. Things tend to get pretty backed up towards the end of the year, but the good news is Origin 8 doesn't plan to hold up the game's release for a specific date. As soon as Apple throws the approval switch, we'll be in tower defense heaven. For more details on Sentinel 3 check out the thread in our upcoming games forum.

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Early last week we reviewed a new iOS exclusive RPG called Ash [$4.99], a game inspired by the fantastic RPGs of the 16-bit era that featured some engaging gameplay and an excellent story. Our only real problems with Ash were the overly difficult nature of the early portions of the game and an awkward control system that required touching all over and blocking portions of the screen during play. The feedback in our forums echoed these same problems of an otherwise highly enjoyable title.

Developer SRRN Games took this feedback to heart, and yesterday they released an update to Ash that rectifies both of these problems beautifully. There is now an option to turn on a d-pad and action button from the pause screen. The d-pad is unobtrusive, tucked away in the lower corner, and makes moving around in the game a whole lot easier.

The other big change to Ash is that the beginning portion of the game in the town of Nikel has been made significantly easier. You now start with better equipment and will find more potions to heal your health. Also, the overall character level cap has been raised from 32 to 40, and any experience you had earned after capping out previously will go towards gaining these additional levels now that the update has hit.

It's really hard to find anything to complain about in Ash after this latest update. The control movement is much better, and after starting a brand new game I can definitely tell that the difficulty curve in the early goings is a lot smoother. I'm looking forward to playing through the game again just for kicks, and I sincerely hope that SRRN will put out a sequel in the future. If you like RPGs but were holding back on Ash because of any of the negative points from our original review, rest assured that they have now been taken care.

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