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When you talk to Simogo, you get the sense that it burns through prototypes just as fast as we churn through toilet paper. In our big article highlighting what the studio does, we talked about a few of its prototypes that weren’t turned int actual games. Over on the studio’s blog, it’s highlighting another one: 16 Games.

Simogo’s Simon Flesser describes it as a “neat little two button punk thing” that offered a variety of simultaneously playable mini-games. It had a punk look and a chip-tunes soundtrack that went alongside its insane play style.

Below is one of three promotional images Simogo has unveiled. It should give you a sense of what it was shooting for:

Interestingly, the failure to get 16 Games out of the door made Simogo switch its focus to Beat Sneak Bandit [$2.99]. Good call, right?

Check out the rest of Simogo’s post for some links to its music and a look at its other promotional document.

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So here’s something cool you may not have noticed about the new iPad: If you’re playing an iPhone game (or using an iPhone app) that has Retina Display assets for the iPhone, it will use the higher resolution set of assets. On previous models of the iPad, this functionality required the jailbreak utility Retina Pad. It actually makes a massive difference.

It’s a little hard to do that accurate of a comparison without just looking at both devices side by side, but I’ve doubled the resolution of the iPad 2 screenshots on the left to be the same size as the new iPad on the right. It may seem exaggerated, but the difference is even more noticeable when you’ve got a game like Flight Control running on two iPads side by side.

If you remember, back when the iPad was first released to make up for the complete lack of iPad-specific apps, Apple added the pixel doubling functionality to allow iPhone-specific apps to run full screen. The results were always a pixelated mess, and while it worked, it was a pretty terrible overall user experience. Now, with (almost) every iPhone app coming bundled with Retina Display assets, this new fullscreen functionality actually results in surprisingly decent looking upscaling.

Of course, iPad apps and games that are actually designed for the Retina Display of the new iPad look tons better, but now you don’t need to essentially write off any non-universal app as being a huge pixel party.

UPDATE: Here are some shots of Real Racing 2, an iPhone-only game with Retina Display assets as well as Real Racing 2 HD which is optimized for the Retina Display of the new iPad:

iPad 2 running Real Racing 2 pixel doubled:

New iPad running Real Racing 2 utilizing iPhone Retina Display assets:

Real Racing 2 HD running on iPad 2:

Real Racing 2 HD running on new iPad:

There are differences in lighting between the screenshots since each version of the game seems to render the scene at a different in-game time of day. Also, the iPhone versions running full screen on the iPad have a slightly different UI so I tried to line things up as close as I could. Regardless, the jump in quality is just astounding, and it seems like the image quality between iPhone Retina Display-ready games and non-Retina Display iPad games is pretty similar.

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Turn-based strategy can get a little fiddly. It’s all position this, attack that. Depending on your point of view, Rune Raiders [$0.99], the first release from Retro64, could be the genre’s lowest common denominator, or a delightfully straightforward distillation. I’d put my money on the latter.

Rune Raiders couldn’t be much more simple. You take a small party of adventurers—six at the most—each with a single ability and a unique attack pattern. Then you run them straight down a hallway, one grid square at a time. Orcs and minotaurs attack, orcs and minotaurs die. Simple, right? But in that simplicity there hide enough layers of complexity to keep things interesting.

The first layer holds the twelve heroes. For creatures confined to square tiles they’ve rather rich personalities, or archetypes at least. The elf, an archer, is arrogant and image-obsessed. The healer is quite the feminist when it suits her. They’re two of the first, unlocked early on. More come with time.

The elf shoots in a wide circle, a dead-zone all around him. The healer heals things immediately adjacent to her square. Each hero has one ability and a certain range, and the ability triggers at the start of any turn something is in range. Like chess, all you need to do is put the pieces in the right place. It’s just that there’s an awful lot of strategy involved in that simple task.

Layer two is the force you’re up against. There are 15 enemy unit types, and all of them have unique attack patterns. Here’s what you do: you figure out where to put your heroes so you can attack them and they can’t kill you. Each time you move you start a new turn, whether you’re moving your entire team forward or repositioning one hero. And there’s no going back.

As you progress through the game’s 15 levels the enemy formations get more and more complex. But your team also gets stronger. Occasionally an enemy will drop an item that lets you apply a perk to a hero of your choice. Those perks can change the game drastically. They can make a weak hero one of the strongest, or make a tank pull double duty as your best healer. Strategy isn’t something you can simply settle in to, it has to evolve with your team. Let’s call that layer three.

Then there’s the matter of economy. You pick up gold for each enemy you kill, but each hero you bring with you has a cost each time you bring them out. Later heroes cost a mint. Want to assemble a dream team of all your best units? You’ll have to pay for it. Early on you’ll need to learn to do more with less, and that can pay off well in the long run too. You can grind old levels for more gold, and go back stronger to max out your star ratings. That’s where things fall apart, just a little.

Rune Raider’s balance is a bit off. Eventually you can narrow your strategy down to just a few heroes that are the best for every circumstance, and they’ll carry you through any situation you get thrown into. Maxing out their perks is quick work when you focus and with enough gold you can bring them out whenever you want. There are three difficulty modes to play with, but eventually you hit three stars in all 15 levels and that’s that. That, and a strangely scored Survival mode.

So it’s a little rough around the edges. The sound effects are bland, there’s some choppiness when Game Center is enabled, and there’s an outstanding crash that hits when it’s not (a fix is already en route). You can break the game for yourself, so you might end up needing to throw challenges in your own path by restricting your team size. Not ideal in a strategy game, which really ought to hold up to min/maxing on some level. But for a few hours of casual fun? It will certainly do.

Rune Raiders is simple, but it isn’t mindless. It packs several layers of strategy into a casual frame. More than that, it’s rather charming, with characters and quips to make you smile. This is light fare, maybe too light for the serious strategy nut. But it’s also fun and engaging, and just challenging enough to keep its hooks in you till it’s done. Give it a shot, and stop by our forums to share your thoughts.

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Depending on how much you relish your DotA (If the acronym made you raise a puzzled eyebrow, don’t worry. We’ll get into all that shortly), you may either find Plants War [Free] an unexpected treat or a moderately competent RTS. It could go either way. Best described as a heavily diluted, single-player version of the world’s favorite Warcraft III mod, Plants War will have you leading Dryad Forest’s local vegetation in a struggle against some encroaching… animals? Global warming definitely screwed up the environment here.

Gameplay-wise, Plants War – Gamevil’s latest freemium title – works something like this. Before you begin each stage, you’ll be asked to elect an upgradable hero (the first you get for free, the others you’ll have to earn through extensive grinding or buy as an in-app purchase). After that, you’ll be at liberty to select the troops you want to deploy in the upcoming onslaught. Yet again, only the first one comes free.

To unlock the other units, you’re going to have to amass a fortune in gold or green leaves. A fair warning, however – the number of horticultural soldiers that you can utilize is limited by the number of slots and plants points you have available. In order to exceed the quota, you’re going to have to (you guessed it!) make a few choice purchases.

Once you’re done with all those decisions, the action begins. The objective here is to blow up the enemy’s base before they can do the same to yours. At regular intervals, both bases will spawn pre-determined units that will barrel towards their opponent with all the suicidal fortitude you would expect of NPC shock troopers. Needless to say, death is their only inhibition. Though you’re significantly more powerful than the ground troops, you’re not omnipotent. In order to succeed in your mission, you’re going to have to make efficient usage of your unsuspecting meat shields.

You will also have to make full usage of the four different skills available to the Leafy that you’re using. Initially, you’re only going to be able to invest a point in one skill. However, as you gain in level (acquire the last hit on an enemy to gain the maximum amount of experience points possible), you will be able to pour more points into your skills. Alternatively, you can choose to increase your mana pool. The choice is yours. Anything goes so long as it ensures certain victory.

(For those of you who do play DotA, Plants War can be summed up as ‘Middle-lane only DotA with no river, items or neutral camps.’)

And that’s pretty much the whole game in a nutshell. It doesn’t get more complex than that. However, the details are what make Plants War work. Each stage will impose a new challenge to your talent for picking the most suitable troops. Are you facing off against highly aggressive mice with a penchant for gnawing through shrubbery? Be sure to bring along a Tree Protector and a grim-faced Potato Blower. Are you up against some sturdy bears? Try some Seed Shooters.

Though certain combinations work better than others, it’s not impossible to be creative with things. As you progress through the game, you’re also going to have to battle with a variety of enemy heroes, each more difficult than the last. While you can bring a different hero to the conflict (assuming you’ve already purchased them, of course), you can also attempt to make do with the first Leafy you use. How do you bait a fast-moving tiger into being mounted onto a wall? Can you kite a hard-hitting bear around in circles while slowly pepper spraying him into submission? Once again, it’s entirely up to your own discretion.

The controls in Plants War are responsive and extremely simple to learn. To move, you tap on the screen. To attack, you tap on the screen. To use an ability, you – you get the picture. In order to zoom in and zoom out, you’re going to have to alternately pinch and unpinch the screen. My only complaint here is the fact that targeting can be extremely difficult at times when the hero is clumped up with their troops.

With three levels of difficulty associated with each stage, twenty-four achievements to unlock, a multitude of rewards to collect and a menagerie of units to discover, there’s not much to dislike about this stream-lined little title. Unfortunately, there’s also not much to it. Once you’ve beaten the first few levels, things can grow rather repetitive. You can only do so much with the same set of faces. If you want new minions to abuse, you’re going to have to either spend an inordinate amount of time grinding for gold coins or cough up the greens.

All said and done, however, it isn’t too bad given the non-existent price of admission. The problem here is whether or not you like this style of play. If you enjoy this sort of experience, you will probably lose occasional hours to the game. If not, you will probably lose interest after the first three games. It’s all rather binary.

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Nowadays there is a veritable smorgasbord of excellent iOS platformers, but it wasn’t always this way. Virtual controls have always been a sticking point with platformers on a touch screen, rarely offering the type of precision needed in such a game. One of the games that managed to nail the control problem early on, back in October of 2009 to be exact, was Touch Foo’s Soosiz [$1.99/HD].

Soosiz was a bright and colorful 2D platformer built around an interesting gravity mechanic and levels made up of tiny planet-like platforms not totally dissimilar from the Super Mario Galaxy titles. Soosiz was pretty well-loved by gamers and critics alike, and served as an early benchmark for how virtual controls should work in a platformer.

Since Soosiz, however, Touch Foo has been quiet on the App Store front, and I’ve caught myself wondering just what the team might be up to for their follow-up release. Last week, they announced in our forums what that follow-up title is, and they’ve sent word today that we won’t be waiting long to try out the game for ourselves as it will be launching this Thursday.

The game is called Swordigo, and it’s another platforming game but looks to be quite a departure from Soosiz. It’s a 2.5D game, meaning the visuals are made of 3D graphics but the gameplay itself is strictly classic 2D. There is a bigger focus on action and battling enemies this time around, and there will be RPG elements that let you level up your character, weapons, spells, and items.

Check out the awesome trailer below to get a good idea of what’s in store for Swordigo:

Swing back by later this week when we do our weekly roundup of new releases to get your own hands on the game, which will be launching as a Universal app at the $1.99 price point, and we’ll put Swordigo through its paces once it’s released and bring you a full review soon too.

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It was just this past Friday that we took an in-depth look at Digital Tales’ Battleloot Adventure, a new action-focused RPG, and really enjoyed what we saw in our preview copy. The game had been submitted to Apple and we were hopeful that the final version of the game would be available sometime this week. Well, the Apple approval gods must have been shining down on Digital Tales, as literally the very next day Battleloot Adventure [99¢/HD] appeared in the App Store.

Our preview of Battleloot Adventure should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect based on our limited time with the game, but we’ll definitely be curious to see how the experience holds up through the entire game. We’ll be putting Battleloot Adventure through the ringer to test out that very thing, but all signs seem to point to a quality offering with a stellar art style and presentation, wonderfully simple combat mechanics, and the usual character leveling elements that come with an RPG. You can grab Battleloot Adventure from the links below, or check in on our forums for even more impressions.

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When it comes to platformers and racers, RedLynx (1000 Heroz, DrawRace 2) knows a thing or two about what makes the genres successful on iOS. The trend continues with MotoHeroz [$0.99 / HD], a time-trial based platforming racer with an emphasis on physics. Sporting refined gameplay elements including a good implementation of asynchronous multiplayer, MotoHeroz does a good job combining genres into an interesting gameplay experience.

Based on the WiiWare game of the same name, MotoHeroz combines the time-trial based platforming elements of previous RedLynx titles with vehicles and upgrade mechanics. Each level pits you in a race against the clock to get to the other end of the map. Some maps offer power-up items ranging from turbo boosts to jetpacks in order to add some variety. Stars and cash are awarded based on your speed. You can then use that cash to upgrade your vehicles, which allows you to earn previously unreachable stars, and so on.

Make no mistake, while the general gameplay sounds simple, MotoHeroz can get quite difficult. This is especially true once you find yourself needing to earn that second or third star to advance to the next world. Players looking to succeed will need to master fine-tuning their jumps and landings in order to squeeze out as much control and speed as possible. The controls add another layer of difficulty on top of the game, as I found it challenging to effectively manage the items and landings.

All this leads to a game that involves a lot of trial and error. While veterans of the genre may be used to it, newcomers may be met with frustration. Still, for fans of memorizing tracks and patterns, MotoHeroz is almost as good as it gets. Alternatively, folks can also hunt for treasure chests in each level that bestow a decent amount of cash for upgrades (which make star chasing much easier).

If neither of those actions appeals to you, you can always purchase cash via IAP and pimp out your ride instantly to earn those stars faster. This is one area that MotoHeroz falters somewhat. While it’s theoretically possible to earn enough cash to upgrade your vehicles enough to collect more stars, it can be a fairly lengthy process and is not for the impatient. In this sense, the IAP will certainly prey on a lot of gamers. However, MotoHeroz deserves some credit simply because a viable non-IAP method of advancement does exist.

Unfortunately, this version of MotoHeroz is a bit lacking compared to its console cousin. The total number of levels was reduced from 100 to 30. A few other modes (single-player story, multiplayer) were also omitted. However, there’s still enough content for a worthwhile experience, particularly with its asynchronous ghosts and multiplayer leagues.

While MotoHeroz doesn’t have live head-to-head action, the asynchronous multiplayer via racing ghosts is well done and acts as a great substitute. Each level will pit you against a ghost for the next available star, as well as an actual player that raced the track. As you set times in each level, you’ll be matched with player ghosts that are slightly faster than your best time. The ghosts are an important element to the overall success as MotoHeroz as it provides you with continual motivation (as if getting all the stars weren’t enough) to perfect each level.

MotoHeroz also allows you to form ‘Leagues’ that can replace the overall leaderboard, meaning that your racer ghost will be someone from that league. Leagues can be created and joined by any other player (in fact, you can join the ‘Touch Arcade’ league that our forum members have created). It seems like a minor feature, but I found it much more gratifying to actually play against folks you know.

Visuals and overall presentation are areas where MotoHeroz succeeds really well. Environments are detailed, vibrant and do a great job echoing the personality of the vehicle for that region. The framerate is also fast and smooth, which definitely enhances the experience. MotoHeroz even gets the small touches right, such as having an instant restart button for quick do-overs.

Despite the shortcomings in content and difficulty, MotoHeroz is still a great addition to the platform racer genre. While I think the ‘hardcore’ nature of the gameplay will appeal mainly to the hardcore fans, the supplemental league ghosts and leaderboards do a good job of providing additional goals that might appeal to a wider audience. Regardless, fans of platform racers (or previous RedLynx titles) need to check this game out.

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Azkend [Free / HD] took me by surprise—a gem matching/hidden object game that devoured my hours and my phone’s battery until I’d burned through everything it had to offer. After that, Azkend 2: The World Beneath [$2.99 / Universal] shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, but it was.

Trouble is, the surprise wasn’t good. The bones of the game are still there, and it’s prettier than ever with Retina graphics. But where the original sucked me in so hard I forgot to put my phone down until it was done, I keep dropping the sequel in frustration.

All the elements are in place. This game, like its predecessor, is split into two parts. The first is a matching puzzle where you chain identical icons together to flip a hex grid board. The second is a hidden-object style puzzle where you match small segments of an image to their positions in a larger landscape. The two intertwine in a sweet and simple adventure story.

In Azkend, the matching game was a blast. The chaining mechanics allowed players to set up and execute outrageously long chains, something I found super satisfying. Powerups were unlocked bit by bit and expanded your capabilities like crazy. The powerups made it back into Azkend 2, but the satisfaction is gone. The board layouts are painfully constricted. Long chains aren’t usually possible, no matter how carefully you set them up. In fact, there comes a point when you’re lucky if you can make chains at all.

No joke, about a quarter of the way through the game I began to run into levels where the board would shuffle with no moves left, I’d make a single move, and it would shuffle again. This kept happening. At first I thought I’d forgotten how to play effectively, but when there’s only enough room on the board for one or two matches in a row you just have to accept that something’s gone terribly wrong.

As a result, most levels are an exercise in tedium. You rarely get to set up great chains or plan ahead to set off tesla coil explosions. You hunt down the single match that’s hiding on the board and pray that when it shuffles you’ll be blessed with a setup that works. There’s simply no room to strategize.

This doesn’t mesh well with the new goals that have been scattered throughout the Adventure mode levels. Each of these goals requires you match things in unusual ways. Fog and fire can be cleared by matching adjacent tiles (and fire spreads if you don’t succeed), bugs get hurt by matches and lightning, flowers need to be matched before they lose their petals, and everything is on a tight time limit. That would all be great if there were room for strategy, but instead it just makes survival even more of a struggle.

The hidden object sections are lovelier than ever, with pretty, animated vistas, a robust soundtrack and passable voiceovers. And there are other ways to play. The Time Challenge mode is super fun—it’s a race against the clock to clear wide-open boards over and over until the timer runs down. It reminds me of the good old days. You can also play through the game’s levels a second time for timed awards in the Medals Challenge mode.

It’s hard to recommend Azkend 2 in its current state. The board layouts are too frustrating, and the game never opens up enough to make the struggle worthwhile. It’s a simple problem in a game that would otherwise be excellent, but it’s also an insidious one. It’s hard to get past levels that just aren’t any fun, you know?

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In another world during another time, roving bands of mercenaries die with staffs and swords clutched in grimy, blood-stained hands on epic quests to seek out fame, fortune, glory and honor. Also, tax relief — precious, precious tax relief. Kameloot’s king has pumped up the tax on gold to unbelievable levels, but he’s offering a way for cities to opt-out. It’s called the “Grand Gossip Notoriety Prize,” and the competition in the kingdom is getting stiff as heroes of all shapes and sizes, as well as bandits, monsters, and other various bump-in-the-night stuff, vie for the break.

It’s this not-so-subtle lighthearted edge that gives Digital Tales‘ Battleloot Adventures its legs. It has all the usual tropes, including the classes, items, and structure, of a 16-bit era RPG, but it put a lot of weight behind them. It knows that swords, zombies, wolves, claymores, and magic are as tired as the M4 is becoming, so it focuses on the fun inherent in playing a fantasy game instead. Things like loot, combat mechanics, and art design are what it leverages.

This easygoing attitude is sinuous, as it winds and curves and penetrates into basically every aspect of the experience. The world of Kameloot feels playful; cities and castles are bubbly and inviting, while backdrops are sketchy and bright. Even the weapons and armor and the characters of this world reject straight lines and sober tones. Everything is goofy — even if that thing is trying to squash your head into bite-sized pieces. Check out that screen and you’ll see what I mean.

Having your head squashed is an unfortunate side effect of not taking battle seriously, by the way. At its core, this is a strategy RPG that, like others in the genre, isn’t afraid to be punitive when you make a bad choice. Damage in combat is largely dictated by a rock, paper, scissors style of balancing. Pit rock against paper and you’ll feel a bump or two a couple of turns down the line, guaranteed.

Parties consist of three fantasy warriors, each of which has a specific color and class. Battles are fought in instanced zones freely picked from the world map. Generally, you’ll be fighting against three or four others. Some battles have multiple phases, and there aren’t stat refreshes between them.

Digital Tales subscribes to the Keep It Simple philosophy. Tap on an enemy to attack. Touch a UI element to activate an item or special power. Tap on yourself to defend. It’s a miraculously simple setup, but that doesn’t make the strategy simple. What looks to be this game’s greatest accomplishment is how much has been streamlined into the background. Stats like strength and dexterity still guide a character’s abilities and there’s some degree of dice-rolling when it comes to negative spells, but you never really have to interact with this stuff. There’s also a lot of automation in battle. Healers, for example, automatically heal at a turn’s start, while rogues automatically throw accuracy decreasing potions.

“We wanted to move away from the typical, number-crunching world of core RPGs and reach for players who would still enjoy the pleasure of managing their party of adventurers without worrying about hit chance percent or armor coefficients,” Digital Tales’ Andrea De Siena says. “We tried to make combat more about choices than maths by streamlining such elements as stats, damages and special skills.”

“We wanted to entice both casual gamers and RPG aficionados alike with a simple yet strategic combat system, where you’re free to focus on what you like most: if you’re a newbie, you will easily jump in but you won’t be able to simply button-bash your way to the top; if you’re a seasoned RPG veteran, you will enjoy some well-deserved gameplay depth, mastering the edge system, energy management and talent and equipment choices.”

“Do you think that’s an ambitious mission statement? It probably is, but we’re not afraid: we have robot chickens, pumpkin-men and sheep-bombarding gryphons under our belt,” it jokes. I’ve seen a robot chicken and I can confirm that it is glorious.

Defending has an interesting price: it lowers an energy bar. Energy guides the action-y components. With energy, for example, you can attack enemies with several party members at the same time. Energy usage also closely ties into the “star” system. If you pull off a big combination attack, you’ll be rewarded with a star that can then, in turn, be used to activate big-time class-specific abilities.

The combat doesn’t feel as fluid as Digital would like. It’s still turn-based, so there’s a degree of sluggishness inherent with this kind of design. But battle does operate rather without any hassle on your end. The fighting in general, actually, seems as sweet as a chocolate, and it keeps me playing more so than the loot component, which in most RPGs that stress gear and new items like this one does, always ends up providing the actual fuel. It’s nice to see combat take the front stage for once.

Speaking of loot, expect to get plenty along the way. As you level up, more and more items that match your level unlock. Winning fights earns you coins, and you can spend this change buying these unlocked items. Special “guild” missions unlock new items as well. Rich swathes of UI and tons of equipment, like rings, swords, armor, and shields, as well as hates, should keep the collector busy. This is also tied to an IAP system, but I get the impression that it’s just there for people who don’t care for grinding.

Most of the world navigation is just cut-and-dried, task-focused stuff. Find an open zone, jump into battle, and then repeat. Later in the game, after a hefty tutorial, you get introduced to a more political component: guilds. When with a guild, you get certain bonuses, and you can freely switch between them as the story unfolds and the fights get nastier and nastier. In my short time with the game, I didn’t get to experience this as much as I’d like. I’ll be stoked to see it in action when the retail version hits.

In all, actually, there seems to be a lot to like here. Most fantasy games get so into themselves, so muddled in their own goop, that it can be hard to see what separates them from the rest of the pack. Battleloot is different. It wears everything on its gleeful, not doubt dapper, sleeves. It’s funny, it’s cute, it has a lot of depth to offer, and above all, it appears to be fun.

My total time has been short, so expect some additional coverage down the line. You can keep an eye on the game’s progress via this message board thread, or hey, give it a try yourself next week if the Apple approval process goes well.

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It’s been a long week (Well, a little more than a week.) of waiting since the new iPad was announced. But, if you were in the initial batch of preorders or are ambitious enough to head to an Apple Store today, you should have a new iPad in your hot little hands right now. I just got done unboxing and syncing mine, and I’m sort of at a loss as to what to post about it, as I really think the new iPad is what everyone expected it to be.

The screen is incredible, and inspires that same sense of awe the first time you see it that the original Retina Display of the iPhone 4 did. No photos, screenshots, or videos will do the display of the new iPad justice. You simply must see it for yourself to truly appreciate just how ridiculously high resolution it is.

I’ve run through the list of the few games that are Retina-ready, and am totally impressed that the new iPad can actually pull off running all these games with performance levels that seem on par with the iPad 2, only at double the resolution. The GPU Apple packed in this thing doesn’t mess around.

Remember how non-Retina apps on the iPhone 4 looked like total trash comparatively during that awkward transition where not very much was Retina-ready? Well, oddly enough, non-Retina apps and games on the new iPad actually don’t look all that bad at all. There’s obviously a huge contrast between things running at 1024×768 and 2048×1536, but it doesn’t seem to induce that same jarring “Oh wow, this looks bad” that non-Retina iPhone apps did. Maybe it’s just me.

Just like the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S, the new iPad is a solid upgrade over the iPad 2. In my opinion, the screen is worth the cost of admission alone, but again, like the iPhone 4 to the 4S, the iPad 2 still is as capable of a device as it ever was. What I’m anxious to see is what sort of apps and games developers are going to start churning out developed from the ground up specifically with the new iPad in mind instead of just resolution-boosting updates.

But enough of my rambling, those of you who braved the Apple store or waited for FedEx to show up today, tell us your first impressions of the new iPad in the comments here. Is it everything you wanted and more? A worthy upgrade? A little disappointing? Let’s have it!

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