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The much anticipated first persona shooter Archetype has finally launched in the U.S. We first spotted the game having beta launched in the Czech App Store a few weeks ago as it prepared for its international launch. Archetype is an online 5-on-5 team deathmatch game that works over Wi-Fi, 3G and EDGE.

Anyone who has ever complained about the "freemium" model of Eliminate now has a chance to put-up or shut-up. The developer says in their game description "No gimmicks, no tricks: iPWNAGE IS JUST $2.99."

We've given the game a quick spin for a couple of games over Wi-Fi. The game runs very well on the two devices we were able to test initially: the iPhone 4 and a 2nd Generation iPod Touch. Controls are very smooth and as you have come to expect from an iPhone FPS: left to move, right to aim/shoot. The game comes with 5 different maps with 6 weapons (Battle and Precision Rifles, rapid-fire AutoMag, shotgun, missile launcher, and brutal melee axe) as well as 2 different types of grenades.

Controller options include invert aim axes, auto-fire on/off, aim sensitivity, vibration on/off, display joysticks on/off, and display radar on/off. The game natively supports the iPhone 4's retina display.

The game comes with 3 different modes: Team Deathmatch, Challenge, and Training. The bulk of the game seems to be focused around the online Team Deathmatch. The developers have 5 different regions covered with servers: U.S. East, U.S. West, Europe, Asia, and S. America. You can easily toggle between them though presumably it originally places you with the group you are closest too.

Since it has just launched within the hour, the number of players available hasn't picked up yet. I've been involved in a few matches with 2 on 2, so I haven't seen the full 5 on 5 action quite yet. Early impressions have been very positive, but we'll post a full review after we are able to spend some time with it. The whole package seems very professionally put together. As with any online multiplayer game, however, the trick is going to be able to build up a sustainable player pool and to see how the servers can hold up.

More impressions are trickling into our forums.

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Towards the end of last year, developer ngmoco released TouchPets: Dogs onto the App Store. Despite some odd game design choices (mainly needing to constantly feed your dog to be able to even play with it), it was an engaging game and easily the best virtual pet app available in terms of graphics and depth. But one question that everybody always brought up was “what about cats?” Fear not, feline supporters, as TouchPets: Cats is on it's way. We were given a preview demonstration at a recent ngmoco media event, and our impressions were positive.

The most important new change here is the ability to play with your kitty whenever you like. Gone are the days of needing to feed your pet to get a few minutes of play time. In place of the food mechanic from TouchPets: Dogs is catnip. Having your cat all hopped up on catnip allows him or her to perform actions that will advance you in the game. For instance, coins will collect amongst the furniture of your house over time. Feed kitty some catnip and they will run around collecting all the coins for you. These coins can go towards unlocking new toys, clothing, and furniture items for your house. That's right, there's now multiple rooms in your house that can be customized with different furniture and decorations. There's no more backyard to play in (after all, cats are usually considered more indoorsy), but with multiple rooms and many different items to adorn them out with, this shouldn't be a problem.

Also gone is the forced daily leveling of certain skills. This time around, your cat will actually tell you via a thought bubble what kind of activity it's in the mood to do. You won't be able to teach them any tricks either, but these qualities actually fall in line with the independent nature of cats – they typically march to their own tune. The fantastical careers from TouchPets: Dogs will also not be making an appearance this time, so if you were hoping to have your kitty perform emergency open-heart surgery you may be out of luck. Instead you'll have tiered in-house goals to accomplish and items to earn, and once you complete one tier you unlock a new one in a similar progression to the careers from the last game. The social aspect is ever-present in TouchPets: Cats, and instead of merely inviting a friends pet over to your house to play you can actually visit their entire house for yourself (and vice versa). You'll be able to own multiple cats as well, and a variety of different species are planned for the release.

TouchPets: Cats seems to be coming along nicely, although it's still fairly early in the development process. Some aspects to the game may be changed before it's final incarnation is available. The graphics look very similar to what was in TouchPets: Dogs, and the animations and expressions of the cats are really endearing. It'll be hard not to get attached to these little virtual pets. Best of all, if you just feel like spending time with your cat, there's nothing preventing you from doing so. Goals and coins can be earned at an accelerated rate if you choose to purchase DLC catnip, but it's not a requirement in playing. If you were a fan of the first game, but couldn't help but wish you were playing with a cat instead, keep your eye out for TouchPets: Cats most likely coming before the end of this year.

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Simon Edis of Ezone met with us at WWDC to show off their latest creation. Ezone has been responsible for such titles as Crazy Snowboard, Scarecrow and many more. When we first heard about that they were working on a hoverboard game, my initial thought was that they would simply be reskinning their existing snowboard game. But, instead of another downhill racer, they actually have created the beginnings of what feels more like a 3D exploration platformer.

Explore a turbo-charged 3D world of the future with your fully customized avatar. Hover World features high-speed racing, half-pipes, grinds, loops, exploration, fighting, puzzles, and infinite unlockables. Coming soon to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Central to the game is a world hub where you can fly around and get upgrades and customizations. From there, you can go to any one of many portals that take you to different levels with independent missions. We're told these missions can be one of various goals including collecting gems, tricks, fighting and potentially more. The early version of the game that we were shown showed how you could get from one mission to another and the various environments possible.

On the hoverboard, you can perform tricks on supplied obstacles such as ramps, half pipes, loops and more, along with a trick system planned. Some of the other features they've listed show a pretty ambitious project:

• Collect gems (the in-game currency) to unlock items, upgrades, and character accessories
• Customize: play as male or female, change face, hair, hats, skin, clothing, boards, accessories, etc
• Discover hidden secrets by solving puzzles and completing challenges
• Create your own skate-park area with items you unlock
• Social game-play lets you visit your friends' customised skate-park
• Episodic updates with additional content including new gameplay areas, missions, items and character accessories
• PhysX engine for realistic motion and collisions

Here's Edis showing us the game hands-on at WWDC:

Edis also reports they have plans for allowing you to dismount your hoverboard as well to participate in some types of missions. It's still early, and the final game remains a few months off, but the early prototype had a great feel and shows a lot of potential. We're looking forward to see if they can fill in the game content with missions and goals to match. Hover World is expected to be released as a Universal Binary with support for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

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Back in 1989 now-veteran UK game developer Jamie Woodhouse released a lively little puzzle / platformer called Qwak for the 8-bit BBC Micro home computer.  Not long after, he joined forces with Team17 to develop an enhanhced, two-player Amiga version of the game, which was released in 1993 and featured faster action and more frantic gameplay. The rather well-reviewed title (Amiga Computing magazine gave it a "Gamer Gold" 92% rating) later made its way to the Gameboy Advance as well as the Mac and PC.

We're pleased to report that Jamie recently got in touch to let us know that he has developed an iPhone version of Qwak and will shortly be launching it through the App Store.

In Qwak, you control a duck (get it?). Your objective is to guide this green duck through level after level of platforms, fruits and gems (worth points), bouncing enemies, power-ups to help demolish said enemies, and keys to unlock goodies as well as the level's exit gate. Your duck can run, jump, and fire volleys of egg projectiles to knock out the baddies. Grab a bonus item and watch a hale of colorful fruit rain down upon you. Take too long on a level and meet a hale of spikeballs. In a nutshell, I call it frenetic, fun, and rather fruity (to be alliteratively wanton).

I've spent some time with the exclusive prerelease build of the game Jamie provided us and it's been lovely to play. It's a touch-controlled affair with a left / right control in one corner and jump and egg-fire controls in the other. The vibrant visuals move about the screen as smooth as glass on the iPhone 3GS test device and a very Amiga-sounding score accompanies the action. It feels both retro and highly polished. It's a game platformer fans won't want to miss.

Additional details, I'll leave to the developer to provide (after the jump), as he was kind enough to grant us an interview along with the exclusive ad hoc build.

What were your inspirations for writing the original?  Are there any particular games you had in mind?

Well, there was a bunch of platform games on the Beeb I used to play; Blagger, Monters, Space Panic, Frak etc. I also went in the arcades a lot back then (so much so that I got kicked out of college), and I undoubtedly played Bubble Bobble, which Qwak gets compared to a lot.

What language did you use to write the BBC Micro version?

100% 6502 Assembler. You could quite easily mix BBC basic and assembler, or have 100% assembler; which a lot of game developers did back then, and you needed to, to get the best performance out of the very limited and slow hardware. Fun times!

Is the BBC Micro version, in fact, the original?

Yep, it’s the original. It was released in 1989 by Superior on a 4 game compilation. I still have a review of the game from a 1989 A&B Computing magazine; “The best game of the bunch has to be Qwak! Designed and coded by Jamie Woodhouse it is very addictive and great fun..”.

I think that was the first time I’d ever seen one of my games reviewed and in print; felt pretty good as I stood there reading the mag in the newsagents!

The '93 Amiga rework is a bit more fast paced / arcadey than the original. GBA and PC / Mac versions followed. It seems the iPhone ver is really an adaptation of the later versions, is that true?

Yeah, I guess it’s confusing with all the different versions all sharing the same name; but with different graphics and various gameplay mechanics…

The Beeb version came first, and the Amiga version was a good deal different to the Beeb version.

The GBA version came next, which was a port of the Amiga version, I used all the same graphics and levels etc; and just added in some scrolling to accommodate the GBA’s smaller screen resolution.

Actually, I couldn’t find a publisher for the GBA version so I had a load of carts shipped over from China and self-published a small limited run of carts. All sold out now!

Next came the PC version, which had completely new levels, more tricks and traps, different power-ups and secret bonuses; and a lot more going on visually to! The Mac version was a port of the PC version.

For the iPhone version of Qwak, I’ve managed to retain pretty much everything that’s going on with the PC version. It’s based on the PC version; but there’s a little scrolling, to squeeze the levels in to the smaller iPhone screen resolution. I don’t think it hurts the game-play too much.

How are you liking iPhone game development as opposed to what you've done on the Amiga, GBA and other platforms?

I’m absolutely loving it so far!

There’s a bit of a learning curve, with this being my first iPhone game; but I feel as if I’m making good progress and getting a good technical understanding of the platform.

The Amiga and GBA were also fun platforms to make games for; and as with the iPhone, you have a pretty solid idea of the minimum spec machine people will be playing your game on (which doesn’t happen with desktop game dev). Plus, it’s relatively a low powered device (compared to desktop PC’s), which is awesome! … because there’s more scope for programmer creativity in squeezing more performance from the device (game developers secretly love that kind of thing!).

The music track sounds very Amiga. Is the audio straight from that version?

Yep, it's got the same 10 tracks of music from the Amiga version (which used to be in .MOD format, was a little tricky converting them to .MP3s).

Can you comment at all on the controls of the iPhone ver, thoughts that went into them, etc?

Well, Qwak is quite a fast paced game, so I felt some kind of on-screen D-pad control mechanic would work a lot better than using the accelerometer.

There’s also an issue that your thumbs and fingers may obscure the in-game action; so what I’ve done is when the player is at the bottom of the screen; the screen kinda shifts up a little bit, so you can still see yourself.

I also have the fire (throw egg) button on the right hand side, so it’s easy to waddle your wrist and throw eggs really quickly, one after the other (which is handy as the bigger baddies need multiple hits to ‘dispatch’ them).

The controls work for me; but it’ll be interesting to see how people respond when they’ve tried the game for themselves. I’m wondering too, how left-handed players with cope with the controls. I just hope I get feedback and people let me know, it’s always great to hear what’s working and what needs changing or improvement (and it’s always possible to do an update).

Is there anything down the road you can speak of?

There’s quite a few ideas I have; and it’s funny you should say ‘road’ … as I’m half tempted to do a re-envisioned version of Nitro or ATR. There doesn’t seem to be many top-down perspective racers on the App Store.

I’m also thinking ‘Qwak spin-off’ … I often worry that Qwak may be TOO frantic and fast-paced for a lot of people (although I personally love that kind of thing), so the spin-off game would be slightly slower paced, with more exploration and puzzle solving (and tricks and traps, hehe).

What are your thoughts on the iPhone as a game platform, and the overall situation that is the App Store?

I really like it, it’s a lot of fun to make games for, and I feel genuinely excited at the prospect of making more games for it.

I’m still pretty new to the App Store; but my first impressions, I guess there seems to be a lot of variation in the quality of games on there; from really poor, to really awesome.

I really like the fact that it’s possible for small indie game developers, to make the kind of games they want to make, and share them with other people through the App Store. There’s not so much need for any middle-man or publisher or anything like that. So it’s a lot more accessible to developers that a lot of platforms.

Qwak should be landing in the App Store shortly. We'll give folks a heads-up when it lands. This is a good one, folks.

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Originally released on the Nintendo DS in late 2008, Skate It by EA Games is something of a portable semi-sequel to the original Skate game for Xbox 360 and PS3. It utilized the DS's touch screen to mimic the unique gesture based Flick-it controls of it's console brethren, and delivered a relatively robust experience for such a small package. Now, coinciding with the console release of Skate 3 this week, the iPhone version of Skate It is now available. It's an experience that's virtually identical to its DS counterpart in content, but vastly superior in graphics, ease of use, and overall presentation. A relatively difficult learning curve will likely turn off many players initially, but those who persist will be rewarded with one of the finest portable skateboarding games available.

The bulk of the game takes place in a Career mode that spans 20 separate levels, 13 taken straight from San Vanelona (the fictional city featured in Skate) and 7 levels based on real life locations that are exclusive to the Skate It series. It's not one big open world like the console games, but each level is fairly large and filled with plenty of challenges and skateable terrain. New goals are constantly unlocking as you progress, and the Career challenges are all interesting and varied. You'll perform specific tricks for photos, play S.K.A.T.E. against AI skaters, enter high score contests, and more. There's even challenges that have you participating in checkpoint races against other skaters across the map, which proved to be especially fun. The graphics of the iPhone version utilize much higher resolution textures and a smoother framerate than that of the DS. It's much more visually appealing now, but oddly the actual skater animations when performing tricks seem a lot more fluid on the DS.

While there's certainly a great deal of content in Skate It, whether you'll be able to enjoy it or not ultimately depends on if you can get behind the control scheme. Tilting the device left or right steers your skater in either direction, tilting the screen away from you crouches the skater, and tilting towards you slows down. There's no option for touch controls to perform any of these actions. I'm not generally one that likes tilt controls in games like this, and it took me a good hour of practice before I started to really feel comfortable with it. Some may pick it up much quicker, others may never quite take to it. Once you get it down though, it's a far more immersive experience than a virtual analog stick and actually quite enjoyable.

As for the onscreen Flick-it controls, they have been implemented fairly well here and are far easier to utilize than they are on the DS. Holding that system with one hand while awkwardly trying to wield a stylus to perform touch screen gestures was an exercise in frustration. On the iPhone however, it feels very natural to draw the various trick motions using your thumb or index finger while comfortably holding the device. The amount of different maneuvers you're able to perform with this system is incredible, and although touch recognition is a little spotty sometimes, pulling off tricks in Skate It is a blast. One welcome addition in the iPhone version is Trick Mode, the ability to slow down time while doing a trick. Placing your finger on the screen slows everything down (how slow can be configured in the options), affording you more time to draw the correct gesture. It works really well and helps ease new players into the Flick-it system if you're not familiar with the Skate series.

A huge advantage Skate It has over it's competitors, namely Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, is a large focus on customization. Your avatar for Career mode can be personalized with different faces, clothing, and skateboards. An editor allows you to draw your own logos or board graphics simply by drawing on the screen, and then apply them to your character. There's the option to listen to your own iPod music while playing, although the included soundtrack of licensed songs is very good. Also, there's a fairly robust park editor that let's you set up many different obstacles to your liking in a large warehouse. You can save up to three different created parks, but due to a lack of any online component, you're unfortunately not able to share these parks with other people as in the DS version. Still, creating parks adds an infinite amount of replayability and potential for experimentation. Different park objects and items for your character are unlocked as you progress through the Career, giving you incentive to complete the game's challenges.

In the end, Skate It for iPhone greatly improves upon the already impressive game that was found on the DS a year and a half ago. A lot of care has gone into suiting the entire experience to this platform, and the simple fact of not needing a stylus goes a long way in making it more accessible. Whether or not it takes the current skateboarding crown from THPS2 will largely be a matter of personal preference. Skate It wins in content, graphics, and customization but has a steep learning curve with the controls that may never feel comfortable to some. THPS2 is slightly smaller in scope, but has familiar controls and ten years worth of nostalgia on its side. Honestly, they're both fantastic games that are worth your time. If you're looking for a more realistic portrayal of skateboarding and are up to the challenge of learning the controls, Skate It delivers a wealth of content with style, and is easily recommended for skateboarding fans.

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Work originally began on Motocross Challenge way back in 2004 as the part-time project of three individuals with a desire to create an homage to the classic Excitebike and Motocross Maniacs titles. Unfortunately, various publishing pitfalls and shifting markets prevented it from ever arriving on its intended platforms, the GameBoy Advance and subsequently the DS. By early 2007, with no hope of a retail release in sight, developer DHG Games decided to put the project to rest and give away the completed game for free via their website. While not standing to profit from all their hard work, at the very least a small amount of players among the homebrew community would have the opportunity to enjoy their creation using a GBA emulator or flash cart.

Fast-forward to 2010, where it's relatively easy publishing a game to Apple's App Store, and Motocross Challenge is being given a second chance at life. It's a touching story of perseverance, but ultimately what matters is if the game itself is any good. Thankfully, it most definitely is, and five or six years ago it likely would have been a top selling GBA game. It still holds up really well today, and a lot of effort has gone into enhancing the game for the iPhone. But like many ports it does suffer from some of the common drawbacks that can befall a game when transitioning to a non-native platform.

The most glaring of these drawbacks is the immediately noticeable screen overlay. Since the game was originally designed for the GBA, it retains the aspect ratio and resolution of that system's screen. What this means is that the entire game is presented in a smaller window within the touch screen, with a virtual button overlay made up to look like a nondescript portable gaming system surrounding its border. It doesn't necessarily look bad, and it functions properly, but you'll have to be accepting of the fact that there's not an option for a full screen mode. If you can get over this aesthetic hurdle, an highly entertaining gaming experience is waiting for you.

Much like the recently released Giant Moto, Motocross Challenge really nails the look and feel of its inspiration but offers a much more complete package overall. Graphically it looks like the high quality GBA game that it is, with impressive pixel art and colorful scrolling backgrounds. There's only one option for controls, but it works really well. Separate A and B buttons grace the right side of the screen for gas and nitro, and up and down arrows are set on the left side of the screen for controlling lane changes and performing tricks. Tilting the device affects the angle of the bike and allows for full frontflips and backflips if you can catch enough air. Once comfortable with the controls, it's simply a delight to play and actually feels like a natural evolution of the Excitebike formula.

There are 10 distinct track locations spread across 30 different events which include standard races against three AI opponents, time trials, and trick attacks. The trick attacks are especially enjoyable, and have you completing as many in-air stunts as you can during one lap. I've replayed these multiple times trying to improve my score just because it was such a blast. The campaign is broken up in a way that there's almost always a few choices of which events to partake in. In general the game is a bit on the easy side, but difficulty does ramp up nicely towards the latter half. The entire game can be completed in only a couple of hours, but that doesn't diminish how absolutely fun it is to play through. In addition, OpenFeint integration provides leaderboards, challenges, and achievements that extend the replay value a great deal.

The road Motocross Challenge traveled before finally arriving on the App Store was a tumultuous one. What was originally planned to have sold for $20 or $30 on Nintendo's handheld a few years ago can now be had for an introductory price of just 99¢. Despite a couple of funky aspects due to the translation to this platform, the core experience remains incredibly fun. It's obvious DHG Games is a talented developer, and it would be interesting to see what they could do in creating a game built specifically for Apple's device. Until then, Motocross Challenge is by far the best option available for scratching that Excitebike itch.

App Store Link: Motocross Challenge, $0.99

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Originally released for the PlayStation all the way back in the year 2000, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 [App Store] was the definitive skateboarding game of its day. Since then, the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series has spawned a ton of sequels, but, at least in my opinion, no skateboarding game has come close to the same level of fun. I played Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 so much that I quite literally wore out controllers. I really can't think of another game I can say the same for.

I'm not alone in absolutely loving the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 either, as it's currently the #2 top rated game on all of MetaCritic, second only to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In its day, THPS2 received flawless reviews from nearly everyone who touched it, and believe it or not, even the Gameboy Advance port was great… An accomplishment not to be taken lightly given how terribly mediocre even the best Gameboy ports of "full" 3D games were.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 stikes a perfect balance between an in-depth career mode with multiple skaters you can slowly improve by buying additional stat points, skateboards, and tricks while also sporting an extremely open game world that seems to never run out of things for you to do. Once you do finally beat the game, there's always topping you and your friends' scores which begin to become a test of endurance for how long you can keep an infinite combo going before falling.

Progressing through career mode involves selecting a skate location and completing goals to earn in-game money. Initially only the warehouse is open, and goals range from finding gaps (two ramps you can jump between), picking up the S K A T E letters, knocking over barrels, reaching several different point totals, and others. Once you make enough money the second skate location opens, and the rest of the game continues like that. Of course, you can always visit old locations, which is vital if you hope to fully tweak out your skater as each stat point you buy is incrementally more expensive than the last.

Sadly, even though Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is based on source material that is pure gaming gold, there are the usual console game to iPhone issues. First off, the necessary evil of the virtual D-Pad and set of four buttons to handle all your jumping, flipping, grabbing and grinding really doesn't do the game any favors. They're slowly growing on me and work as well as to be expected, but I'm not entirely sure I'll ever be able to pull the insane infinite combos I could on a real controller just because of how hard it is to rock your thumb between two virtual buttons on the iPhone screen.

Secondly, and potentially worse is that Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 flat out hasn't been adapted to be a very good mobile phone game. It still utilizes a similar save system to the now ancient console game where your progress is only saved after each level, so any phone calls will result in you restarting from your last save. This probably isn't as big of a deal as it sounds, since each skate session is only a couple minutes long, but it still seems worth mentioning.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is also a game that would benefit greatly from some kind of online leaderboard integration. The sheer potential this game has to be the most amazing thing I've ever seen by implementing leaderboards, push challenges, and replay sharing is out of this world. I can't even imagine how much fun sending challenges to all my friends I used to play THPS2 with back in the day would be, and I really really hope they consider adding this.

In the graphics and sound departments, it's all there. In fact, the game looks even better on the iPhone than I remember it. It has a soundtrack of real music, although the original game music by Anthrax, Rage Against the Machine, and Bad Religion are nowhere to be found. Currently the game's availability is severely limited, but according to Tony Hawk's Twitter should be available internationally fairly soon.

Despite these issues, if you have any nostalgia at all from playing the original game ten years ago, you're going to need this game. From the familiar menus to all the skate locations filled with secrets you slowly begin to remember, there's nothing that compares to Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. There is no way you won't be smiling ear to ear the first time you drop in to the warehouse, and chances are, you won't even care that the controls aren't ideal because you're playing Tony Hawk on your phone.

If you're only familiar with more modern Tony Hawk games, you might be annoyed that it's lacking (and I use that word loosely) things like a story mode, a more structured career mode, greater depth of customization, and other things that have since become common place in recent skateboarding games. But, honestly, none of that even matters, because the actual skating in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 has an absolutely timeless feel to it.

This is a game I will never delete from my iPhone.

App Store Link: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, $9.99

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In the wake of a sea of iPad announcements, Activision has finally released Tony Hawk' Pro Skater 2 for the iPhone. Tony Hawk himself announced the coming of the game earlier this month.

The new iPhone version carries both traditional control configurations as well as iPhone-specific accelerometer controls. Features include:

• Ride as Tony Hawk, one of the greatest skateboarding icons of all time.
• Skate as one of 12 other featured pros.
• Master signature pro moves and hundreds of tricks including nose/tailslides, nose/bluntslides, lip tricks, nollies, manuals and more.
• Earn virtual cash to purchase dozens of additional in-game moves and alternate boards.
• Over 13 epic environments to skate.

We haven't had time to spend any time with the game ourselves, so will report back later today. The first forum impression from debtOFskittles is quite positive:

so I've played through the first skate park, and I'm finding the controls very responsive, and the framerate is buttery smooth (on my 2g itouch)… graphics are, shall i say, familiar, as in nothing special (i wish they'd reworked the colors a bit, like gameloft did in Rayman) but it's obviously the gameplay that's the most important here, and it's really good. I personally think the buttons look ugly. I'd say that the onscreen buttons is a much better control method than the accelerometer, since I encountered some weird kinks in that… the game wasn't made for that kind of input. But anyhow, the game's all here, and I like it!

More impressions should filter into the discussion thread.

App Store Link: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, $9.99

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It's no big surprise that when it gets close to a big conference (Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco) that developers will taunt us with new screens.

Earlier today EA released some details on their upcoming port of “Skate It” to the iPhone. If you’re not a console gamer, Skate It was the skate board for the Wii and/or DS that has gotten high marks. The iPhone version's release date is set for May 2010.

Here's the video for the DS version of the game:

If the screenshots are any indication it’s going to look impressive, but we will have to wait and see how it plays.

Key Features

• FEEL IT & PICK UP AND PLAY LIKE IT'S FOR REAL: We've maxed out the potential of your accelerometer and gesture controls. Get a real feel of a true skate experience as you conquer the skater nirvana that is "San Vanelona" or roll through real-world locations.
• FLICK- IT & LAND YOUR TRICKS: Use the revolutionary touchscreen Flick-it controls to pull off ollies, kickflips, heelflips, Pop Shuvits, and more.
• BE IT & LIVE THE LIFE OF THE PROS: Freeskate as a selected pro skater, or as your own customized guy or girl. Score Personal Bests in Career mode, and get sponsorships and perks galore.
• KILL IT & UNLOCK STUFF: Own challenges and KILL them to get the really good stuff — from new boards to outfits. Unlock fresh skate spots, too. Gain enough gear and create your own killer skate park.
• FILM IT & SEE YOUR SKILLS IN ACTION: Capture every sick line or epic bail on camera. Replay footage to view your mastery or just for your own amusement.
• KICK IT TO YOUR OWN TUNES: You can even shred to a soundtrack from your own music library.

Screenshots

The expectations on our forums are high with most people hoping for better controls then other the skate games on the iPhone.

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