Name: N.O.V.A. - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance

Price: $6.99 (AppStore Link)

Developer: Gameloft

Size: 161MB

Overall Rating: 9/10

NOVA is probably the second most hyped game for the iPhone to date (Eliminate earns that #1 spot) and it is probably one of the few games that have lived up to those expectations.  NOVA is one of those rare instances where a upcoming game is almost completely flawless and fun.   It feels like a complete video game experience, something which is quite rare indeed on the landscape of bite sized games that make up the App Store. In NOVA you play as a ex-marine named Karl Wardin.  He has been reactivated to investigate some strange alien activity in a futuristic setting where the Earth has depleted its resources and no longer can sustain life, forcing humanity to live on nearby orbiting colonies. Admittedly, the plot isn't anything to write home about and the voice acting ranges from passable to downright cringe-worthy at times, especially whenever Karl himself speaks. Thankfully, the gameplay itself more than makes up for these shortfalls. The first series of levels will leave you wandering around on a space ship while you're guided by various characters communicating over the radio. An arrow guides you from objective to objective, and gameplay amounts to simply following this arrow, killing anything that moves, and flipping switches to activate or unlock different objects and areas. Deadspace fans will feel right at home when the game asks you to traverse the hull of the space ship, even going as far as to mention enabling your magnetic boots. What do you do while you're outside the ship? Run from pressurized area to pressurized area while avoiding incoming asteroids of course (if you haven't played Deadspace, you do exactly this several times throughout the game– the hull is even laid out similarly).  Dead Space fans might enjoy this, but I was bored after a while, but I had to keep playing! The action is spaced out by minigames, levels where you man the turrent on a warthog like truck and even a few boss fights scattered about the levels.  Also scattered through the levels are locked crates which must be opened by playing a brief mini game where you move different objects around on a grid to solve a puzzle where you're directing a laser beam from its source to the target. None of these are particularly difficult, and depending on how you feel about mini games you will either find these to be enjoyable distractions or just too annoying to bother with.  Luckily, there is enough ammo dropped by dead enemies and on the ground to sustain you throughout the level, but some of the crates are mandatory to unlock. Similar to Halo, your life is measured by a shield meter at the top of the screen which depletes when you take damage and recharges slowly afterwards. Your shield gauge also serves as your oxygen supply when you're in space, and your super abilities also take off a chunk of your shield's power. Super abilities? Oh yes, straight out of Metroid Prime you will slowly gain new abilities such as the ability to freeze enemies, shoot a charged up energy beam, and even run faster with speed boots. If you have played just about any other FPS like Modern Combat, you should know the  controls, but for the sake of nothing I guess, I will re-inform you. The game uses a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen for movement, and moving your thumb around the right side of the screen changes your view around. Different buttons frame the screen that do things like fire your weapon, toss a grenade, change weapons, reload, etc. There are two other included control schemes, one where the screen is split in half and moving your left thumb anywhere controls your movement while your right controls your view (essentially just removing the virtual joystick) and another with two virtual joysticks where you tap the screen to fire.  If you don't like the placement of the virtual buttons, the game has kindly inserted a page where you can move the buttons to your liking. The game is very polished and will run smooth on any device.  The iPod touch had great loading times, high frame rates, and everything else you could ask for in an iPhone FPS. NOVA boasts a wifi/bluetooth online experience, but a quick Gameloft Live! setup will have you on your way to play.  Once you have you account, you will have options to see the online leaderboard or play a deathmatch. When creating a deathmatch game, available options include choosing one of the five maps, as well as enabling or disabling weapon stay and aim assist. Games can be set with a time limit or a frag limit, and both can be set to none to play for as long as you'd like. When joining a game, you're thrown in to a lobby which lists available games that have open slots for you to join. Those of you waiting for an Eliminate "killer" will be disappointed to discover that currently there doesn't seem to be any random matchmaking, or the ability to have friends-only private matches. All you can do is create a game and hope that three of your friends join it before other people do. I have tried all forms of online and they all play well with no lag or connection issues. . It's too early to say how large the online community will get and what kind of staying power NOVA's online presence will have, but it seems quite enjoyable right now. You can check out the video below showing both online gameplay action and a mission in story mode: If you enjoyed Modern Combat:Sandstorm or any other FPS for the iPhone or even a console as Gameloft obviously took idea from many games, you will have many hours of happy gameplay.

N.O.V.A. ($6.99)

The Christmas Season will begin in seven days, and many developers have released their Christmas apps, and Broken Thumbs Apps isn't going to be left behind.  In fact, they might actually come up on top with their new app, Santa's Run. Santa's Run is a fairly easy game to begin with, but if you want to master it, you will be hooked way after Santa makes his run on the 25th.  The objective of the game is very easy,deliver the gifts to houses around the world, battling strong winds coming from the east or west. Included in Santa’s Run are two mini games – around the world and endless delivery. The bulk of Santa’s Run comes from trying to improve your accuracy of throwing the gifts. It becomes very addicting very quickly. In the minigame around the world, you will travel to four locations: Islands, Europe, Asia, and America. The goal of around the world is to deliver the amount of presents each house needs while keeping your accuracy as high as possible. At the end of four rounds, your accuracy is posted on a local scoreboard within the app, as well as the global leader board through the OpenFeint plugin included in the game. I don't think I really have to explain what endless delivery means, but I will.  Endless delivery is...... endless delivery!  The goal is the same, deliver presents to houses. In endless delivery the goal is to delivery as many presents as possible to houses in a row as you can, without missing. You miss, you start over from zero. Like around the world, scores are posted locally and globally through OpenFeint. The music is great, pulling you into the Christmas spirit. Santa's Run by Broken Thumbs Apps is a great game for the holidays, or when your bored and want to wish that tomorrow was Christmas, or today even.  The OpenFeint keeps me playing to claim that top spot on the global leaderboards.

The day has come.  Ravensword is finally out.  After what seems to be forever, I can finally taste greatness on my iPod. The Basics Ravensword is a mix of Elder Scrolls, Zelda, and RuneScape.  Set in medieval times, you are a character who was found on the edge of the woods and healed by a friendly girl named Beatrice.  She talks about a castle north of the village you are in that is filled with evil, and urges you to stay away from it.  She instructs you to head down to the nearby Rat Donald's stand to take your first quest: Collecting five rats for the "dinner rush". He arms you with a club and then sends you off to the nearby forest to bash the surprising amount of giant sized rats. The rest of the game continues as you hop from quest to quest, leveling up, collecting items, and discovering more about your mysterious identity. The Controls Ravensword features both a third person and third person view, and the game's controls are the same as just about any other games similar to this one.  . A virtual joystick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, and swiping anywhere on screen with your right thumb allows you to look around. Swiping with two fingers changes your view much faster, and is useful for when things sneak up on you from behind.  I highly suggest that you go into the options and put the sensitivity to the maximum. To fight, you use a lock on system where you tap on an enemy and then attack by pressing the attack button.  Double tapping an enemy brings up a stat screen of the enemy you are battling. Graphics and Music The first thing you probably noticed in the game is the graphics.  If you thought that Eliminate had good graphics, then you will think that Ravensword is stellar!  The music fits the game perfectly. The Bad Yup, even a game like Ravensword can have some disadvantages. Weapons and armor are limited and the inability to customize your character's skills. In games like Dungeon Hunter or Underworlds, different loot flows like water, and it seems like you're constantly upgrading gear– something I feel like I'm missing from Ravensword.  That is the only set back. The Verdict Buy it now!  I like it so much.  I keep getting sucked into the game!  Ravensword is definitely the best RPG to date for the iPhone, and the story is interesting and funny!  9.5/10 in my book! Ravensword: The Fallen King- $6.99

I haven't posted in a while, but expect great reviews like this to come! Be sure to comment on the Call of Duty thread in our forums!

Call of Duty World at War: Zombies replicates the best part of Treyarch's otherwise inferior Call of Duty game—Nazi Zombies—to the iPhone. It looks great. It sounds great. And parts of it, like the multiplayer over Wi-Fi, work great.

It doesn't feel great though. The controls suck. We're all used to the mediocre virtual joystick, a pale translation of a three-dimensional control implement into a flat two-dimensional space, which here moves you backward and forward, and strafes left and right. Turning and looking up and down is imprecise, accomplished by sliding your thumb in the direction you want to turn or look—a longer slide makes you turn faster and further. What's tricky, and tensely uncomfortable, is trying to turn while moving with the virtual joystick. It winds up being jerky and spinny, like your soldier had one two many beers before fighting the undead. I have found that this can be fixed in the options by turning down sensitivity. If you want to ditch the swipe alltogether,a dual joystick mode that confines the turning area to a second joystick, making it slightly more precise than the general corner area controls of the default layout (though it's still tricky), and an accelerometer mode, that's unwieldy, but more fun since you have to swing your whole phone around to aim. Also the game is $10. Yes that isn't a typo. $10 dollars. For a 16 megabyte, one level iPhone game. Crazy Right!

The bottom line is if you want to pay $10 for a minigame, go for it, but don't yell at me if you get mad at the poor controls of this otherwise perfect port.

Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies: $9.99

Eliminate, after what seems like enternity waiting, is finally out.  You are an employee of Arsenal Megacorps, a weapons manufacturer.  They are very successful because they test all of their weaponry on live humans. You are one of those humans and you compete against other players online via either 3G or WiFi. The controls of this game are similar to any 1st person shooter. You have a virtual joystick on the left that controls movement, and you can touch anywhere on the screen to look around and aim. I have found that flicking the screen in a sideways manner makes you spin quickly, and you can usually spot an enemy this way. Simply tapping will stop the spinning at anytime. To fire your weapon, simply tap the right side of the screen and hold to fire an automatic gun. Tapping the top of the screen brings up the menu and tapping the bottom of the screen makes your character jump or fly with the jet-pack. When your ready to play, there are three different options, one you can be match with similar skilled opponents by tapping world, private matches by tapping private, and for offline or practice mode, bots.  There are five different playing fields that range from flood to tank. In-game credits serve as an experience point system as well as a monetary system to buy upgrades. While you're energized, each person you kill will drop credits. Credits can then be spent on different armor types that give your character small bonuses such as higher defenses, the ability to jump higher, swim faster, and other effects. Guns are also purchased using credits, and following that everything that you've purchased can also be individually upgraded. For example, I like the plasma cannon, but the long reload times always make me end up dead.  I can upgrade the reload time. This makes the game even more fair, because while some players are upgrading weaponry, another player will upgrade armor, making the game much more fun. The game is very sleek and the actual battle is alot of fun.  One problem that Ngmoco faces is that of energy. Each time you play online, you use up about 1/4 of a energy bar. When the bar depletes, you cannot earn credits when you play. Energy is recharged once every 90 minutes for free, but if you want it sooner there are two options: The first of which is to simply buy more energy via an in-app micro transaction you can play12 games for $1.99 energy pack.  The money from the energy is used to power servers, so I might buy some from time to time. Personally though I think that is a rip off. Even without the extra game modes, Eliminate is a ton of fun. I played through the five different maps both locally with bots and online . The maps are all small, but most have elevators, different water elements, and even walls that slide back and forth to squish you. When it does come out around the world, Eliminate is a must have.  This game truly revolutionizes iPhone shooters.  I will add App Store Link when the game is out world wide.