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So, Mass Effect is returning to the iPhone. At a recent EA event, the publisher passed around a pamphlet announcing Mass Effect Infiltrator for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. In a nutshell, it’s a third-person shooter featuring universe’s trimmings, and it will apparently tie into Mass Effect 3’s Galaxy At War component.

EA also announced a companion app called Mass Effect Datapad, but revealed nothing about it except its platform: iPad.

On to what we know then. In Infiltrator , you’ll “help free prisoners from a hostile Cerberus base” and receive rewards as you gather evidence of Cerberus’ crimes. All your rescues and your discoveries will feed into Galaxy At War’s ”Galactic Readiness rating,” which informs events in the game’s single-player.

As if the latter wasn’t enough to get you to check it out, the app will also offer users exclusive weapons to use in ME3.

Infiltrator’s announcement is pretty hot off the presses, so the details are pretty vague. On the other hand, it seems like it is passing through certification as we write this — if EA is using the term “soon” in regards to its release traditionally — so, the wait to see what’s actually going on should actually end shortly.

UPDATE: Fun fact: this is being developed by Dead Space iOS devs Iron Monkey Studios. This can only be a good thing, we think.

UPDATE 2: IGN has nabbed the first screenshots for Mass Effect Infiltrator:

[Via Shacknews, Joystiq, IGN]

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It’s safe to say that cave flyers have been around the block a few times, and that a few of you might just be sick of ‘em. Hey, that’s fair—I know my enduring love of endless runners and cave flyers isn’t shared by everyone. But do me a favor: take a look at Blot’s [$0.99] trailer before writing it off. Yeah, it’s just another cave flyer, but goodness, it’s gorgeous.

We’ve seen the control scheme and basic design a thousand times before, and there’s nothing new about collecting coins for upgrades, cosmetic or otherwise. Blot won’t win many points for fundamental originality. But it’s a solid, fun cave flier that also happens to be beautiful, with an underlying sense of humor that’s sure to please.

Screenshots don’t do it justice — a big part of Blot’s appeal is how lovely its parallax backgrounds look in motion. Someone at Majestic Software has taken time to sketch out all manner of things — trees, candies, wastelands, ponies, helicopters wielding swords and morningstars, you name it—which the game then combines and recombines to build new backdrops each time you play.

This is part of a broader vision. Blot himself is an ink spatter, flying outwards from a pen. He dodges pencils and seeks out paint cans and smudges. The artistic theme isn’t carried through as far as it could be—art and coin collection don’t exactly go hand in hand—but it gets very, very close.

For controls you’re looking at something a lot like Jetpack Joyride [Free], to name one recent and popular example. The titular Blot is bigger and a bit floatier than Barry Steakfries and his jetpack, but it has the same inputs—tap to rise, let go to fall. The arc of its movement might take a bit of getting used to, but there are no drastic changes.

And what would a modern cave flyer be without a collection mechanic or two? Aside from coins, you’ll also seek out boost buddies. Blot grows as it absorbs these cute little dudes, making it easier to grab coins but harder to dodge obstacles. Once you pick up four, you get a big boost of speed and temporary invincibility. There are also colorful paint cans and smudges to be found that mess with speed, direction and magnetism.

The coins you collect can be exchanged for upgrades. The selection is pretty cool—stuff that makes paint effects or boosts last longer, alerts you to upcoming boost buddies, makes you magnetic or doubles your income. Since you can only pick one to equip, you’ll have to consider whether you’re grinding for coins, going the distance or working on a Game Center achievement that requires a bit of extra assistance.

The game takes any chance to serve up pop-culture references. Little things, mostly, like how the buddy detector is called the “pip-blot 2000,” and the unlockable costumes play off things like Star Trek and the Ace Attorney series. There are also achievements for flying past wild reference in the background sketches, although you’ll probably die if you take the time to look for them. Best of all, none of this feels as forced or out of place as memes so often do when they pop up in games.

Some of the foreground elements are a bit abrasive against the terribly sexy backgrounds, but everything else is awesome. There’s lovely (if brief) music to fly to, and Blot is stupidly charming for something with only a few frames of animation (that little scrunchy face…!). And while there isn’t a plot or a complicated mission system to keep you motivated, the high score grind is made valuable with coin rewards and a grading system. Practice makes perfect, but getting an A+ will take skill.

One little warning – you can purchase coins with cash. Don’t bother unless you’re out to support the developers or stockpile a huge supply of portals—you’ll just rob yourself of the fun of actually playing. The grind isn’t painful at all unless you need the highest end items right away. My only quibble is that the IAP coins come a bit cheap – a single $2.99 purchase can give you most of what you’d ever need, so grinding starts to look like a bad value proposition.

It’s hard to complain, though. While it fails to distinguish itself on mechanics, Blot blows most of its competition out of the water with style alone. It’s delightful, plain and simple, and when given the choice between equally solid games, I’ll take the one that delights me any day. Who wouldn’t want a little more joy in their games, right? So take a good long look at Blot, and let us know if you like what you see.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Let’s wind the clocks back to Tuesday when news hit that Zynga was relentlessly ripping off NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower [Free] with their Canadian pre-release “beta” of Dream Heights [Free]. Dream Heights is basically identical to Tiny Tower in every way, except for the lack of the Bitbook and a different art style. News of this spread like wildfire, and it wasn’t long before even the mainstream media was reporting on it. (These are crazy times we live in, I tell you.) Well, Zynga has been silent on the matter as far as we can tell, which you’d think would result in a dead story.

Not so fast though, as Glu also seem to be anxious to hop on the relentlessly ripping off Tiny Tower bandwagon with a similar Canadian release of Small Street [Free]. Small Street is arguably an even bigger knockoff than Dream Heights with the only changes being the tower laid vertically into a street and the elevator car replaced with a taxi.

Fans of Tiny Tower will find these screenshots curiously similar:

I guess when it rains it pours in regards to cloning NimbleBit games. The only question left, is which company is going to release their own Tiny Tower knockoff next?

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Man, these digital platform companions apps come out of nowhere. Today, Valve, the creators of Half-Life and everyone’s favorite PC download platform, Steam, announced Steam Mobile [Free]. It’s what you think it is, which is to say, it’s a companion-y type of experience that’ll let you chat with Steam friends, view Steam groups and profiles, check out video game screenshots, and just about anything else Steam-related, including sales.

Best part? It’s available right now across iOS and Android. Worst part? This particular version is still in “closed beta.” To get in, you’ll need to sign into Steam through the mobile app as a way to “express interest in the beta.” Users will be rolled into the beta eventually.

Steam sales are deadly for our collective wallets under normal circumstances when we’re sitting at our computers. I’m not sure I’m ready to live in a horrible future where I’ll be able to impulse-buy $2.99 PC games from the toilet.

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Per the nearly standard operating procedure of “beta testing” wide-scale free to play titles, Canadians and “Canadians” can now get their hands on Zynga’s latest iOS game, Dream Heights [Free]. It doesn’t take more than a few quick glances at the screenshots and iTunes text to realize that Zynga has firmly focused their copy machines on NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower [Free]. It’s really incredibly just how blatant of a clone this is, as Zynga has gone far beyond just copying the premise of the game- They even directly lifted the restocking mechanics, elevator upgrades, UI elements, and more.

NimbleBit’s Ian Marsh has taken to twitter with an image that perfectly exhibits just how shamelessly Zynga’s “inspiration” is for this new free to play title of theirs with side by side screenshots and a hefty amount of trademarked NimbleBit snark.

Take a look:

(Click for full size, with many more comparisons.)

It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Historically speaking, Apple has had a very hands-off approach to even the most blatant of clones on the App Store. But, we are talking their very own game of the year last year that’s being mercilessly knocked-off here, by Zynga of all companies. I doubt much if anything will actually happen, but I’m not sure how Zynga couldn’t stir up a hefty helping of bad blood amongst anyone who realizes that such a large company is lifting ideas straight from a three (3) man development studio.

We’ll have to see how Dream Heights does once it eventually sees its worldwide release. The amusing (and sad, to be honest) part of all this is that per another tweet, Zynga once attempted to acquire NimbleBit. If you can’t buy ‘em, clone ‘em?

Canadian App Store Link: Dream Heights, Free

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Adventure Bar Story, a Recettear-like RPG that originally released in Japan as Adventure Bar of Wonderland Portable on PSP, is being localized and fitted for iPhone and iPod Touch. Zigza Game, the studio behind this new effort, revealed its intentions to do this over on our message board, and even dropped a few new screenshots to stimulate the community. We’re including a much less, er, eye-melting PSP selection below.

Knock out the “item” part of Recettear’s title and insert “bar” if you want a decent idea of what you’ll be getting into with Adventure Bar Story. The goal is to have the best bar in the kingdom; To accomplish this, you’ll need to dungeon crawl and harvest the component parts of a variety of monsters to win cooking and drink contests. You know, just like in real life.

As of right now, the title is not slated to incorporate iPad support. That’ll be a thing the studio evaluates based on sales. Pricing, by the way, has yet to be confirmed.

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Last week, we told you about Glitchsoft’s upcoming Star Marine: Infinite Ammo, a run ‘n gun shooter that looks to capture the magic of classic action platformers like Contra and Metal Slug. A game like Contra demands precision in its controls due to the hectic action on screen, and it’s hard to say whether or not that type of precision can be possible with virtual touch screen controls. Star Marine is hoping it’s found the answer to this problem by taking a dual-stick approach to its control scheme, which is looking pretty good so far.

In our preview last week there were just screenshots for Star Marine, but Glitchsoft has just released a trailer for the game so you can get an idea of what it looks like in action.

From the trailer, a few things stick out at me as looking particularly awesome. It appears there are quite a few weapons to use, including one that looks a lot like the infamous spread gun from Contra. Also, I really like some of the enemies that are absolutely humongous, sometimes filling up the entire screen. Finally, Star Marine incorporates a feature that slows down your descent when you’re falling through the air, giving you a better opportunity to lay waste to the enemies on the screen. I imagine this coupled with the dual-stick controls will allow a game like Star Marine to be quite playable with a touch screen.

Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is scheduled for a release this week, and we’ll be looking to get our hands on the title to see just how well it turned out when it hits the App Store.

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Walkabout Journeys [$0.99] is a game of almosts. It’s almost a puzzle game, almost a platformer. It’s almost beautiful enough, almost clever enough, almost deep enough – but always falls just short.

It’s love at first sight, too, with its striking visual style and a solid central conceit. A little bit Lemmings, a little bit And Yet It Moves, Walkabout Journeys gives you a handful of Burton-esque characters to shepherd, characters that will die tragically given the slightest neglect. Rotating the world around them, you have to ensure they stay alive and stay together as they slip back and forth across each level. It’s almost wonderful.

For a short jaunt, Walkabout Journeys is a delight. I adore the nameless characters – the tall one, the tiny one, the one with the umbrella and all – the cheerful music and the colorful backdrops. The gameplay is no slouch, either. It’s quite fun to rotate the game world to and fro, tilting the little fellows just far enough forward to clear the next obstacle, or back just a touch so they don’t smack into something deadly. You can even choose your flavor of controls – slider, tilt or a dragging rotation. The last of those is, by far, the best.

There’s a sing-song, storybook quality to the whole experience, brought together with charming bits of doggerel on each loading screen. You march the characters through the season in a world scattered with names like “The Pumpkin Promenade” and “Persephone’s Fall.” Almost, almost worth it alone.

But not quite. Though the game grows more difficult over the course of its 16 levels, its formula never really grows. You may encounter a few tricky gates, or clever platformy sections, but what works in the first level will work in the 16th. Similarly, the music and aesthetic never much change or grow. What’s terribly sweet for the first few levels grows cloying without variety.

What results is a game that feels under-developed. The sixteen levels go by in a flash, and the addition of four with Christmas themes doesn’t much help. More length would only be a band-aid fix, highlighting the lack of variety, and an unfortunate opacity in the scoring mechanism. The more survivors the better, true, but what marks a high score beyond that? Players can’t play faster as the camera moves at a steady pace. There’s nothing to collect, no clever techniques to pull off or secrets to find. So why have a star system and a high score system at all?

This is exacerbated by the lack of achievements or leaderboards. There’s a bit of artificiality to extending a game with achievements, but they’re also a challenge to developers to expand a game’s horizons. Walkabout Journeys doesn’t feel intentionally minimalistic, so why not throw in some additional objectives and give players a reason to replay and improve? Instead it feels more than a bit unfinished.

Ultimately, Walkabout Journeys never arrives at its full potential, but as it sweetly proclaims at each of our deaths, “this place is nice too.” It is for a time, and that’s almost enough. It’s a lovely little lark, so if you enjoy the screenshots it’s certainly worth a go. Just don’t expect more than a stroll.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Stretched [99¢] is a new physics-based slingshot-platformer from Chillingo, which has been receiving praise in our discussion thread.  The objective is to fling a ball between various slingshots, collecting as many bubbles from each level as possible, before reaching the exit portal. There’s no time limit or restriction on the number of turns, so there’s no hurry, but each time you fling yourself you need to land safely, as there’s no ground or safety net.

The best feature of Stretched is that new gameplay elements are constantly being introduced as you progress through the 80+ levels and 4 worlds (Sunrise, Monochrome, Misty and Desert). Each world has it’s own features and music and it’s often a pleasant surprise to discover what comes next.

Initially you’re propelling  yourself between slingshots of various sizes and orientations, or bouncing off walls. But that’s just the start. You’ll manipulate chains and sliders, use a sticky green character to your advantage by sticking to walls, explode bombs to blast yourself across the level or to move obstacles, turn wheels with your finger to rotate items and encounter various moving contraptions to master. Some levels challenge you to balance the ball precariously on the end of a stick, while also collecting bubbles! There’s a surprising amount of variety in this game (more than I’ve described here) and each new feature is carefully explained when it first appears.

The touch controls are simple and effective: Use your finger to stretch back the slingshot and determine the direction and power of the shot (the slingshots fire in either direction). A series of dots shows the trajectory path, for aiming purposes. Once you release your finger, the ball is propelled in the chosen direction. If you’re attached to a sticky green character, you can tap it to make it disappear. Or tap a bomb to make it explode.

Your score is based on the number of bubbles collected before reaching the exit portal. Collecting over half of the bubbles earns 2-stars, while you must grab all the bubbles to 3-star the level. High scores and achievements are all managed via Chillingo’s Crystal and Game Center.

A “skip level” option is available and there appears to be no limit to how many times you can use it, as I skipped several levels in a row. However, a certain number of stars is required to unlock each subsequent world and skipping levels doesn’t earn any stars, so there’s some incentive to actually play through the levels. An In-App Purchase can be made to unlock all levels, although there’s really no need.

Stretched was released without much fanfare, so it’s quite a pleasant surprise. The bubble graphics are not overly impressive, so the screenshots don’t look too flashy, but don’t judge this game by it’s screenshots alone as the variety of gameplay is excellent. The puzzles are interesting and varied, rather than intellectually complex, and the various soundtracks sound good without feeling repetitive. You’ll get a few hours entertainment for a dollar, with more levels promised in the future, making this an easy game to recommend.

TouchArcade Rating:

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