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If there's one thing that PopCap is really good at aside from making impossible to put down games that appeal to hardcore gamers, grandmas, and everyone in between it's having those game smash sales records.

The original Plants vs. Zombies [App Store] release for the PC was PopCap's fastest-selling video game, and per a press release this morning, the iPhone release is performing just as well.

Since its release, there have been over 300,000 units sold on the App Store, making Plants vs. Zombies the highest grossing launch in App Store history. PopCap is no stranger to greatness on the App Store, as Bejeweled 2 was the first paid app to reach 3 million downloads, and they're responsible for three games that have been #1 on the paid app charts as well: Bejeweled 2, Peggle, and obviously Plants vs. Zombies

If this is the first you've heard of Plants vs. Zombies, you absolutely must check out our glowing review:

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

Now that Plants vs. Zombies has decimated App Store sales records, hopefully PopCap will throw iPhone gamers a bone and somehow implement the missing game modes found in the PC version. I've still got my fingers crossed at least.

App Store Link: Plants vs. Zombies, $2.99

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As noted on MacRumors, the over the air (EDGE, 3G) download size limit for the iPhone App Store has been raised from 10MB to 20MB.

Prior to today, apps larger than 10MB required iPhone users to be connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot for direct downloading onto their device. The reason for the limitation is presumably related to agreements with AT&T to avoid excess data usage. Despite evidence to the contrary, developers have long seen staying under the 10MB size limit as a huge benefit, due to the possibility of "on the go" app purchasing. The actual importance of this cutoff size, however, has been up for debate.

The significance of the cut-off size has likely been diminishing over time as the number of iPod Touch (Wi-Fi only) devices has been growing. The tables could turn around again, however, if the 3G-enabled iPad becomes a big seller.

It will be interesting to see if apps that fall in the 10MB-20MB range get a boost in sales due to this change.

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It's time to head off to the nearest Coinstar machine to turn the treasures lost to your couch cushions in to iTunes credit, as this week has some sales you likely won't want to miss. As usual, all of these prices are current as of this posting and because of the nature of App Store price fluctuations it's usually not a good idea to wait very long if any of these games interest you.

The star of the show this week is Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a game that we not only loved in our review but also awarded 5 stars in our January "Best iPhone Games" round up. For a limited time to celebrate the Chinese new year, Chinatown Wars will be available for $6.99, down from its original $9.99. If you haven't bought this game yet, this is a sale you won't want to miss.

There are also a ton of Namco games on sale:

• ACE COMBAT Xi Skies of Incursion, $6.99 → $2.99
• BurgerTime Deluxe, $1.99 → 99¢
• Dig Dug REMIX, $2.99 → 99¢
• Galaga REMIX, $2.99 → 99¢
• Garters & Ghouls, $4.99 → 99¢
• I Love Katamari, $4.99 → $2.99
• Inspector Gadget, $2.99 → 99¢
• Isaac Newton's Gravity, $3.99 → $2.99
• Mr. Driller, $1.99 → 99¢
• Ms. PAC-MAN, $4.99 → $2.99
• PAC-MAN, $4.99 → $2.99
• PAC-MAN Championship Edition, $2.99 → 99¢
• PAC-MAN REMIX, $2.99 → 99¢
• RIDGE RACER ACCELERATED, $2.99 → 99¢
• Time Crisis Strike, $4.99 → 99¢
• Star Trigon, $1.99 → 99¢

Other noteworthy game sales include:

• Airport Mania: First Flight, $2.99 → 99¢
• Angry Birds, $1.99 → 99¢
• BATTLE BEARS 1.5, $1.99 → 99¢
• Catan, $4.99 → $3.99
• Family Feud, $4.99 → $2.99
• Flower Garden, $2.99 → 99¢
• Low Grav Racer 2, $2.99 → FREE
• MonsterKill, 99¢ → FREE
• Neocell Fighters, $1.99 → 99¢
• Underground , $3.99 → 99¢
• Star Wars The Force Unleashed, $5.99 → 99¢

Of course as usual there are a ton of other games on sale, to see other games with recent price changes, AppShopper has listings of both "popular" games with recent price changes and all games with recent price changes.

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There's a bucket full of games that had their prices slashed this weekend for various reasons. As always, standard App Store disclaimer is in effect in that these prices were all current at the time of this posting. Since sales are often very limited, if you've been waiting for any of these games to see a price drop, you may not want to wait very long before picking them up.

Assassin's Creed II Discovery, $9.99 → $6.99 – A fast paced side scrolling platformer that is highly reminiscent of Prince of Persia. We thought it was cool in our review, although to really enjoy it you need to play the game on third generation hardware, as the framerate on previous-generation devices left much to be desired.

Ravensword: The Fallen King, $6.99 → $4.99 – This impressive open-world RPG was developed by a two man team and features hours of gameplay. We liked the game in our review, and since then the game has been updated to include even more content.

Chop Chopa Ninja, $1.99 → 99¢ – Play as a ninja in this side scrolling beat-em up to rescue a princess. Instead of using on-screen controls, a series of gestures that are taught in the tutorial control the movements of your ninja. For more information check out our post on the game.

Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor, $2.99 → 99¢ – The first Chronicles of Inotia holds the claim to fame of being the first touch action RPG available on the platform. Released all the way back in 2008, Inotia has since seen a sequel that we enjoyed.

Crayon Physics Deluxe, $4.99 → 99¢ – A really fun physics game released in early 2009 that asks players to solve various puzzles by drawing crayon lines with their finger to create objects in game. You need to pick this up if you like physics games.

Heavy Mach 2, $2.99 → 99¢ – A top down mech game we enjoyed in our review. The sequel is an odd departure from the original which was a side scroller, and both games are worth checking out if you're in to vehicular combat.

iZombieland, $2.99 → 99¢ – One of the few movie tie-in games on the App Store that's actually worth playing. iZombieland loosely follows the movie Zombieland with a side-scrolling Splatterhouse-style beat em up. For more information, check out our review.

Theseus, $3.99 → 99¢ – A puzzle game that places players in a maze where they must escape a minotaur. The catch? The minotaur happens to move twice as fast as you do, but has predictable movements and mastering the game involves learning how the minotaur handles your actions. This was a forum favorite when it was released, and we liked it when we took a look at it.

Underworlds, $2.99 → 99¢ – Still one of my favorite hack and slash RPG's, Underworlds has had tons of content added to it since our initial review of the game. On sale for the Super Bowl, or, apparently, for a week following the Super Bowl if the Colts win.

Car Mania, 99¢ → Free – A traffic management game we had some minor issues with in our review, but you can't really go wrong with a free game– Especially when it comes packed with full OpenFeint integration to pad your OpenFeint score.

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For the many that surely missed it, on Wednesday Apple quietly announced a new member of the iPhone OS family, the iPad. And, while it runs existing iPhone applications just fine in a pixel-for-pixel or 2x-scaled mode, the device with its 9.7-inch screen has much more to offer in the way of screen real estate (over 5x the pixel count of the iPhone) and both CPU and GPU power. The iPad proposition gives iPhone developers much to ponder in the way of just how best to support it.

James Brown, author of the lovely, zen-like frog manipulation game Anicent Frog [App Store] has, himself, begun to ponder the situation and has shared his thoughts on what he feels makes the most sense in bringing Ancient Frog to the iPad, in a recent blog post.

I can make the current iPhone application recognise the iPad and behave more like a native application on that platform. What I've done here is run it at 768×1024, but allowing it to letterbox slightly to retain the original aspect ratio (luckily the ragged border gives me a neat way to bring the edges in a bit, as well as a bit of room to lose some pixels top and bottom). This already looks way better than the previous shot – lots of elements are still blurry, but things that appear at varying scales in the game are already at a higher resolution. This means the text, the daisy and the particle effects are all crisp, which makes the whole thing seem higher resolution

He goes on to point out that fully supporting the iPad's enhanced resolution in his existing iPhone game would not only require a reworking of the graphics that make up every level, but would also push the game above the 10MB barrier for Edge / 3G download, which would greatly reduce the game's "impulse buy" potential for iPhone users.

Brown's plan is to bring the incremental upgrade that he describes, enhancing the game experience on the iPad in the near term and, down the road, release a separate, larger iPad-only version that takes full advantage of the device, but does not penalize iPhone and iPod touch gamers with a larger install.

For new games, moving forward, building in specific support for the iPad is one thing. But reaching into the back catalog to refresh existing titles for Apple's new device is quite another. Just what degree of iPad support is worth adding? What make the most sense? Once gamers start getting iPads in their hands, the early reaction to the experience of gaming on the device, as well as overall sales levels, should help answer that question. But developers and gamers alike should keep in mind the fact that, when the App Store launched, the iPhone had been on the market for a full year with millions of units sold. When a gamer downloads the first iPad game from the App Store, its market will be starting at zero. As such, it will be some time before developers determine where the "sweet spot" of iPad development effort lies.

App Store Link: Ancient Frog, $4.99

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Firemint has informed TouchArcade that Flight Control has hit over 2 million in sales over the past 10 months with an average daily sales of 6000. Peak sales were over 30,000/day in late March and reached over 20,000 on Christmas Day 2009.

We listed Flight Control as one of the best games of 2009 in our year roundup.

We spoke with Firemint's Alexandra Peters who reminded us that the game started as a "holiday project" last year. Firemint's CEO Rob Murray came up with the idea for Flight Control after having read multiple times that air traffic control was an incredibly stressful job but one that people absolutely loved. Peters told us, "The combination struck him as really compelling and he started prototyping. By that time we had come back from holidays, and Rob brought the game in to the studio. "

Rob Murray writes, “Flight Control has been an incredible success for us, and we owe that to the way people around the world have embraced it. Flight Control and Real Racing made 2009 a huge year for us, and we’re looking forward to revealing some brand new games for 2010 very soon.”

On future titles, Peters recently hinted on our forums that we'd see more than one new Firemint title soon, though she admits that Flight Control and Real Racing are going to be a tough act to follow. Peters explains, "You might recall that the launch of Real Racing was delayed because Rob decided it needed some more work, and we're continuing on with that same obsession with getting our games right. We've thrown out heaps of prototypes that just weren't fun enough, but we've got a few games in various stages of production now that we think are winners. We're looking forward to announcing our roadmap soon, with some details of our lineup for this year."

App Store Link: Flight Control, $0.99

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Back in 1997 when the first Grand Theft Auto hit the PC, I doubt anyone at Rockstar (known as DMA Design at the time) expected it to spawn a series that would span ten different games and four expansions over the next thirteen years. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars [App Store] for the iPhone is an excellent adaptation of a game previously only available on the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. These prior versions of the game were met with universal acclaim, and according to Metacritic.com Chinatown Wars for the DS holds the title of the highest rated game available for the platform. On the PSP, Chinatown Wars is a close second, beaten only by God of War: Chains of Olympus by a single point.

The recently released iPhone Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars seems to be a hybrid of both the DS and PSP versions, with graphical quality that lies somewhere in between the two games, tutorial elements that reference PSP buttons, as well as some of the cell shaded graphics and all the stylus mini games from the DS. The main difference is how the controls have been adapted to the on-screen virtual joystick and buttons of the iPhone. Like other games that use a similar control scheme, there is always an inherent lack of precision without physical buttons that take a little getting used to, but this didn't hamper my enjoyment of Chinatown Wars in the least bit.

While on foot, a virtual joystick controls character movement, with a button for using whatever weapon you have selected (or your fists) as well as buttons to kick and leap over short fences. When you approach a car, a button appears on the bottom of the screen that you can touch to get in. If you're stealing a parked car, this will often trigger a timed touchscreen mini game where you need to turn a screwdriver in the ignition, twist some wires together, or even insert a PDA and crack the car's security system in order to get the car running without triggering its alarm.

These sequences are pretty neat the first few times you do them, and do an excellent job at adding suspense to police chases as you hastily hotwire a car before the cops converge on your location. Once you're in a car, one of five in-game radio stations start playing and the on-screen controls switch to buttons for accelerating, braking, firing your gun, and by default two buttons to steer right or left. Also available is an analog stick for steering, configurable in the game's options.

The biggest control hurdle new players will come across is learning how to cope with Chinatown Wars' driving assist system, which will automatically keep your car going straight down a road. This can be disabled, but without it perfectly lane splitting on a motorcycle seems to be nearly impossible. I've found myself preferring the default steering buttons over the optional joystick because very little control is required when driving. You really only need to hold a direction to turn, or just tap a direction to make minor adjustments to your position on a road. It feels a little strange at first, but after you make it through the tutorial missions you will be flying through Liberty City without issue.

The plot of the game is classic Grand Theft Auto, with an asian spin, made obvious by the game's title. You play as Huang Lee, the son of a recently murdered Triad boss who comes to Liberty City and unsurprisingly enough winds up knee deep in gang drama. Initially you complete tasks assigned by your Uncle, but it doesn't take long for you to meet other contacts who also require your services. The game continues like any GTA game with missions that involve killing people, stealing cars, driving people around, and other often illegal activities.

Of course, like other games in the series, once you complete the short array of tutorial missions you can disregard the main storyline entirely and instead spend your time roaming around the city, completing the various submissions, seeing how long you can survive with a high wanted level, and dealing drugs to increase your net worth.

Chinatown Wars is packed with a surprisingly fun and full featured drug economy that is highly reminiscent of the Texas Instruments calculator game Dope Wars (Originally a DOS game released in the mid-80's.) that I spent an embarrassing amount of my teenage life playing. As you drive around the city you will meet drug dealers, who are all selling or buying various drugs at different prices. Prices change depending on whose turf you're in, but you have to exercise caution because if you get busted with a car load of coke, you lose it all.

Drug dealing is just one of the many other activites that exist inside the game. Of course Chinatown Wars also has the standard taxi, ambulance, firefighter, and other driving games along with tons of secret items and locations to find. There are scratch off lottery tickets you can try your luck on, and random encounters with pedestrians who will also have various things to ask of you. The amount of depth in Chinatown Wars is unbelievable.

Since the inception of the App Store, quite a few developers have tried their hand at making an open-world crime game. Without much serious competition, most of these games seemed quite good– But even the best pre-Chinatown Wars iPhone games pale in comparison to a real Rockstar Grand Theft Auto. The level of depth is completely unmatched, but most importantly, Liberty City feels alive.

Games like Gangstar are far too sterile, with spotless city streets, stereotypical characters with no personality, and very little to make the environment the game takes place in feel like anything more than a basic sandbox. The streets of Liberty City are filthy, filles with cars, pedestrians, trains, people fighting, and emergency vehicles racing through the streets responding to randomly spawned traffic accidents. The mood and lighting of the city changes with the clock in-game, and even though the story and characters you come across aren't really anything revolutionary compared to other Grand Theft Auto games, the people you meet are usually amusing and of course the game is absolutely loaded with expletives and other racy material that the GTA clones haven't dared come close to.

There are a few issues with Chinatown Wars, the most serious being the lack of a solid targeting system. When you hold down the attack button to shoot or punch, you simply attack whoever you're facing. There isn't a way to cycle through targets, and the only way to stay locked on one target is by holding the attack button which often results in quite a few wasted bullets. It seems like there is a lot of lost potential in not having a touch-based targeting mode.

Chinatown Wars also doesn't have any kind of save state system to save your progress if you get a call or need to answer a SMS when you're in the middle of a mission. Instead the game just quits, and the next time you launch it you're back at your apartment. This can be annoying, but thankfully Chinatown Wars was designed to be a portable game, and as such the missions are usually never more than a few minutes long so the amount of progress you lose is fairly minimal.

One of my favorite things about Grand Theft Auto games is the soundtracks, but the radio stations in Chinatown Wars are fairly limited and it seems that all the pedestrian chatter was also cut. However, once you get sucked in to the game these problems fade away as you immerse yourself in Liberty City.

Chinatown Wars is a massive game, so much so that the few things I've mentioned in this review barely even scratch the surface of what there is to do and all the different features that help you to do them. An excellent in-game GPS system guides you around the city, periodic email messages tip you off to new missions and other things to do, safehouses scattered around Liberty City can be purchased once you're wealthy enough, and there's even multiple save slots so more than one person can play the game on a single device.

Performance on my iPhone 3GS is absolutely outstanding, and according to forum members, Chinatown Wars also runs without issue on the entire iPhone and iPod touch product line. The game is restricted and won't install on the first generation iPod touch, but apparently with a little tinkering can be played just fine. Something worth mentioning is while the download itself is only 188MB, Chinatown Wars requires a little over 600MB free on your device to install.

There is so much to do in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars that completing the whole thing will likely necessitate a trip to GameFAQs to consult the various guides and maps to find every hidden object and complete every mission– A task that will likely take days of concurrent playtime. For $9.99 App Store gamers can get their hands on a game that sells for two to three times as much on other platforms, representing a substantial value even at a price point reserved for "premium" games on the platform.

Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's vice president of sales and marketing described Chinatown Wars' sales on the DS as "frustrating", and sadly the PSP version didn't perform any better. In less than 24 hours following its release on the App Store, Chinatown Wars is already the #1 top-grossing app– Something that hopefully other giants of the gaming industry are noticing, as I doubt I'm alone in hoping even more of these "full" console games make their way to the iPhone.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

If you're at all interested in open-world crime games, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is by far the best available on the platform and simply cannot be passed up. The sheer amount of content, the amazing graphics, and gameplay that will keep you coming back for more whether you choose to follow the story or rampage through Liberty City on your own is absolutely fantastic.

Now, if you'd excuse me, I've got $50,000 worth of heroin to unload.

App Store Link: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, $9.99

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Horror movie based game Dawn of the Dead finally arrived in the App Store this evening after a brief premature release a few days ago. The game is based on the 1978/2004 horror film and gives you the opportunity to try to survive the zombie onslaught.

The game offers both Story mode and Challenge modes while playing with one of three different characters: Salesman, Police Officer, and Nurse. Each character has different Speed, Attack, and Shooting attributes to try to give you some variety in different play throughs. The Story mode and Challenge modes have multiple difficulties, but total gameplay time is not very long. You can easily finish the game's story mode on easy in one session, which then unlocks the hard mode. Story mode consists of 5 different levels of varying goals. While these goals include some mild variety over the standard survival tasks of similar games, they are still ultimately pretty shallow. Goals include killing all zombies in an area, surviving a certain time limit, and finding an exit.

Challenge mode adds a few more individual goals (kill x zombies, survival a time limit etc…) that you can play over again to try to best your previous high score. The game offers both melee and range weapons to battle the zombies, and are demonstrated in the following video:

Controls include the typical left/right dual stick controls for movement and shooting, but the shooting control had some consistency issues resulting in moments of frustration when you'd turn around unintentionally.

Ultimately, for such a short game, the replay value relies on how much fun you had playing the first time through, but given some twitchy controls and slowly paced gameplay, we didn't see much reason to go back. Aside from the movie tie-in, there isn't much to make the game stand out.

App Store Link: Dawn of the Dead, $1.99

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If you've got some extra iTunes credit burning a hole in your virtual pocket, an awful lot of good games recently went on sale. As always with these sale posts, all the prices are temporary and current as of this posting. If you're interested in picking any of these games up for their sale price, it's generally not a good idea to wait too long as some sales are shorter than others.

All Glu games that weren't already 99¢ are on sale for 99¢ (except Deer Hunter 3D for some reason):

• Beat It!, $2.99 → 99¢
• Bonsai Blast, $2.99 → 99¢
• Brain Genius Deluxe, $2.99 → 99¢
• Build-a-lot, $2.99 → 99¢
• Cops & Robbers, $2.99 → 99¢
• Family Guy: Uncensored, $1.99 → 99¢
• Glyder, $2.99 → 99¢
• Glyder 2, $2.99 → 99¢
• Mini Golf Wacky Worlds, $2.99 → 99¢
• Super KO Boxing 2, $2.99 → 99¢
• World Series of Poker Hold’em Legend, $2.99 → 99¢

Appy Entertainment's complete catalog on the App Store is now also 99¢. Their two games are both worth checking out, especially if your interest includes fighting photos of your friends or making pizzas for zombies:

• FaceFighter, $1.99 → 99¢
• Zombie Pizza, $1.99 → 99¢

Other sales of games we've enjoyed include:

• Bridge Odyssey, $1.99 → 99¢
• Driver, $6.99 → $4.99
• Hoggy, $2.99 → $1.99
• Parcel Panic – Post Car Racer 3D, $2.99 → $1.99
• Plushed, $1.99 → 99¢

And of course there are many other games with recent price changes that aren't listed here. You can see popular games with price changes as well as all games with price changes on AppShopper.

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