Games based on comic books have been almost as hit or miss as games based on movies in the past, so I think my cautious optimism for Gamelofts recently released Spider-Man: Total Mayhem [$6.99] was well deserved. Sure, there are some absolutely fantastic comic book games such as the quarter-sucking X-Men Arcade Game, and a few others over the years. Unfortunately, many fall in to the same pit that movie games fall in to where they lean far too heavily on whatever intellectual property the game is based on instead of actually having good gameplay. This is true to some extent in Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, but the whole package is comprehensive enough that it doesnt even seem to even matter.

Like all Gameloft games, many parts of Spider-Man are clearly borrowed from other titles of theirs, and Total Mayhem is no different. A lot of the combat feels like a mix of James Camerons Avatar [$4.99 / Free / Free] and Iron Man 2 [$4.99 / Free / HD]. Spider-Man is host to the same wall climbing and rail sliding sections as nearly every other 3rd person action Gameloft game, and just like almost all of their other titles, the voice work is laughable at best and face palm worthy at worst. They even managed to sandwich the upgrade system from Hero of Sparta II [$6.99 / Free] in that nearly everything in the game drops orbs of various colors which are then used to upgrade Spider-Mans various abilities.

What saves the whole game is that even though they recycle all these different elements, they seem to combine extremely well to create a game that just feels like a Spider-Man game should. There are endless thugs for you to bash, a heavy reliance on the spider sense, and a surprising array of extremely recognizable bosses that anyone who has read a Spider-Man comic or watched a Spider-Man cartoon will know. The levels included are fairly linear, but feature a great mix of fighting standard enemies, bashing mini-bosses, swinging around, climbing, and the varied events leading up to the boss encounter.

The combat system works well, and even though it feels a little button mashy at times, its a lot of fun to watch Spider-Man execute his combos filled with punching and web slinging. However, even fighting bosses is a little too easy because of how well the spider sense evasion system works. Whenever youre fighting, when theres an incoming attack youre able to slam your thumb down on a virtual button that appears just to the left of the joystick. A successful button mash kicks the game in to slow motion, and Spidey evades the incoming blow and counter-attacks. It all flows together great, and these spider sense moves usually look really cool.

Theres a surprising amount of content in Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, including a hefty amount of unlockables to boost replay value. Twelve levels are included, and in each of the levels are tokens you can pick up to unlock bonus art to look at. In addition, theres an "ultimate" difficulty to unlock as well as a boss rush mode. Theres even the black Spider-Man symbiote suit to unlock to play through the game again with Spidey powered up. Also, when fighting bosses you have opportunity to take photos of them, and these photo opportunities seem fairly easy to miss. If youre a completionist, you will be playing through Spider-Man: Total Mayhem many times.

Total Mayhem is loaded with high resolution graphics that look absolutely fantastic on the iPhone 4. Its not universal, but like most Gameloft games it wouldnt surprise me if an iPad-specific HD release was on the horizon. Gameloft did a great job of making a game that plays like a Spider-Man game needs to. The spider sense seems entirely overpowered in combat, and it wont take long for you to get tired of the spider sense quick action sequences that are liberally used in cut scenes, but beating up an endless array of nameless thugs is just as fun as it should be.

Its hard for us to say enough good things about Halfbricks Monster Dash [99�] and Ratloops Helsings Fire [99�]. One game takes the running right forever gameplay formula thats become so popular, spices it up, and adds weaponry. The other is an incredibly unique puzzle game which is unlike anything weve played on the iPhone, a claim thats almost impossible to make with puzzle games. Both games have received recent updates, so be sure to download them if you havent already.

Monster Dash now comes packed with an additional power-up for Barry to pick up, a motorcycle that makes you temporary invincible while riding it. Along with the motorcycle comes new motorcycle-related stat tracking and achievements as well. Halfbrick also made some fixes and other tweaks to the game such as fixing heart placement so theyre a little easier to pick up. Best of all, this update just shows that theyre committed to supporting the game much like Fruit Ninja [99� / HD] which has also been host to several great updates.

Helsings Fire 1.2 adds an entirely new campaign to play through, a new character, a new enemy, additional puzzle mechanics, and even a cool online system where you can solve puzzles for bounties to compete against other players online. The new campaign also comes with an additional survival arena, and you can now replay, save, and share puzzles youve played in the past.

If you still dont own these games, we have overwhelmingly positive reviews for both Monster Dash and Helsings Fire that you should check out. The two games combined would probably be the best $1.98 youll spend today, but if you already own them, be sure to mash your update button in iTunes as soon as possible.

A little over a month ago I first posted my review of Godville [Free] and was entirely amused by the concept behind the game. In essence, Godville is barely a game at all, as your interaction with the world is limited to either encouraging or punishing your hero who otherwise just goes about his business. You play as your heros god, and the "game" basically consists of you reading the events that transpire in your heros life. Depending on how you treat your hero either through punishment or encouragement, your hero will either be a cold hearted bastard killing everything in its path or a happy go lucky lover of all things living� Or something in between.

Godville is a community driven game, and once your hero reaches level 10 youre able to participate in the idea box. You can submit ideas for items, equipment, quests, enemies, combat actions, and tons of other things. Users then vote on these entries, which are eventually implemented in the game. Initially, the adventures of your hero in Godville when the game first launched were fairly repetitive, but after a month of idea box submissions from users, the game has only grown more amazing.

Not only is Godville getting better from user submissions, but the developers have been hard at work releasing updates both to the Godville client itself, and the web-based backend that powers the whole game. Special artifacts are one of my new favorite inclusions. These are new items that your character will loot from monsters or win from duels that have special abilities. Of course your hero is entirely too stupid to operate said artifacts themselves, but you can spend your god power otherwise used for punishing and encouraging to have them operate the item. These items can teleport them back to town, put a gold brick in their inventory, strike a death from their records, and many other things.

The amusing part of all this is that if you dont catch that your hero has one of these special artifacts in their inventory, chances are theyll just give it away, sell it, or otherwise get swindled out of it before you even have a chance to use it. Even if you do use it and it has some marvelous effect, theyll usually just hawk it for beer money anyway. How little control you have over your hero is part of what makes Godville so much fun for me, as my hero almost never does what I want him to do, but seemingly has developed his own fairly stupid but evil personality of his own.

Previous to the recent update, your character would randomly find themselves in duels with the heroes of other players. Now, every few hours, you can send your hero off to an arena to immediately participate in these duels. Aside from potentially humiliating another god with defeat, winning a duel also awards you all the coins that the opponent is holding along with some other swag� This is often lost anyway as your heros ego grows and he bites off more than he can chew in combat, then endlessly begs you to be resurrected.

I decided to post about this game again not only because it has had significant updates since our initial review, but also because Im downright amazed that a game that isnt really even technically a game has held my attention for so long. Checking up on what my Godville dude is doing has somehow managed to slip in between checking my email and checking my Twitter feed on my phone. Admittedly, when I first tried the game I thought Godville had sky-high novelty value, but I didnt see it lasting for me as most novelty-heavy games are only amusing until said novelty runs out.

The buckets of creativity being dumped in to Godville seems to always make loading up the game amusing. Initially I only saw Godville as a clever jab at the grind of RPGs as instead of you spending your time grinding, your hero does it for you. After spending an immense amount of time with the game over the last month, Godville seems to be the most captivating virtual per experience Ive had so far on the iPhone. If you havent yet, you really need to give this game a try to see if it grows on you just as much as it has grown on me.

Cut the Rope Already drawing comparisons to the incredibly popular Angry Birds [99�/Lite/HD], Cut the Rope is a new physics puzzle game developed by Zeptolab and being published by Chillingo. In the game, youre tasked with feeding candy to a hungry little creature named Om Nom. For whatever reason, the candy is tied up by ropes, and you must cut each rope strategically in order to let it swing and fall or sometimes rise into Om Noms mouth. Hazards like spikes and spiders look to make feeding Om Nom even more difficult than just swinging the candy to his mouth, and bubbles can grab a hold of your candy and cause it to float away.

This game trailer gives a glimpse of the gameplay on offer in Cut the Rope:

There will be 100 levels in Cut the Rope, and each will be able to be played through quickly, but all the stars on each level must be collected if you intend to get the best score. Much like Angry Birds, it will be easy to keep retrying a level until youve achieved perfection. Expect a similar three star scoring system, as well as Chillingos Crystal service for achievement and leaderboard tracking. You can join in on the discussion of the game in our forums, and expect Cut the Rope to be hitting the App Store in the coming weeks.

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Lost Company Announced at the beginning of July, Lost Company is a new tactical turn-based strategy game from developer Tome Studios. Its an online multiplayer focused game, with a single player element that is designed to teach you how to play the game before battling it out online. The style is reminiscent of Team Fortress 2 meets Final Fantasy Tactics, and the art and character design is looking very nice so far. Youll choose a team of five from the available unit types, which include a sniper, flamethrower, engineer, melee expert, and more. Winning matches unlocks new weapons, perks, and abilities for your units as you evolve and level up your persistent online profile. Matches will take place on various terrains that feature high grounds, half cover points, water, bridges, and other elements that add to the strategy of play.

This short video shows some of the tactics necessary in dealing with the terrain, and other gameplay videos can be found on the Tome Studios YouTube page:

One of the coolest things about Lost Company is that game data will be stored on the server side. The game will be universal for iPhone and iPad, and available on Mac OSX as well. So, if you start a game on your iPhone, you can then pick up in the same game where you left off later on your iPad or Mac. Lost Company is shooting for an October beta, with release to follow sometime thereafter. Once the server is up and running, you will be able to log in and create an account even before the game is available, earning an undisclosed in-game bonus for doing so. The developer is actively discussing the game with members in our forums, so be sure to check out the thread for a ton of concept art as well as details on how to log into the server when it goes live.

There is nothing worse than getting a FedEx tracking number late on a Thursday, knowing full well that your package will not arrive until Monday. Even as an adult, Ill still obsessively refresh tracking information, even when I know something wont be delivered for days. Still, that didnt stop me from tracking the Parrot AR.Drone all weekend, or getting up and looking out the window when I even thought I might have heard the sound of tires on gravel in the distance all day today. Surely any self respecting geek knows the feeling as they anxiously await their newest techno-toy.

The AR.Drone arrived mere moments ago, and after carefully opening the packaging I was greeted with the wondrous quadricopter that weve been drooling over since we first caught wind of it back at CES in January. Since then weve had a brief hands-on and later discovered that it would sell for $299.99 available for preorder through Brookstone.

In the demos weve been given in the past, weve never actually been able to touch the unit, only fly it around for a few seconds inside of the controlled environment of the Parrot booth at conventions. My first impression as I took it out of the box was just how amazingly light and delicate the whole unit feels. I suppose it makes sense that its light because it has to fly, but it feels like nothing.

In the box with the unit is a brief quick start guide which explains to first charge the battery, how to install the battery, and the basics of getting the Parrot AR.Drone in the air. Like any impatient man child, I immediately installed the battery, and paired it to my iPhone which was as simple as downloading the free Parrot AR.Drone Free Flight app and connecting to the WiFi network it creates. After that, you launch the app, it connects to the quadricopter, and youre met with a screen that looks like this:

Unfortunately, since I skipped that whole "charge the battery first" step, the AR.Drone only flew for about 45 seconds before it ran out of juice. Im currently impatiently waiting the light on the charger to flip from red to green, and daylight is fading fast. I hope to have some extensive video of how the unit works, how it is assembled, and flying it in the not too distant future. All depending on how long it takes to charge of course.

Following that, Ill be doing a full review of the Parrot AR.Drone, so if you have any questions that youd like answered or anything you want me to do as I put it through its paces, post a comment on this story.

The 1986 arcade classic OutRun, with its easy to pick up gameplay and simplistic mechanics, seems like it would be a perfect fit for the iPhone. Its strange then, given the wealth of racing games on the App Store, that no one has taken a serious stab at an OutRun-inspired game yet. Now, developer Oyatsukai.com has risen to this challenge with their first iPhone game Final Freeway, and delivered in fairly impressive fashion. Final Freeway does an excellent job at capturing the feel of the original OutRun, while offering tight controls with multiple configurations and a terrific sense of speed that runs well even on older devices.

Just as in OutRun, Final Freeway is a point-to-point racing game, where instead of trying to beat other cars to the finish youre trying to reach each checkpoint in the given amount of time until finally reaching the end. In total there are six different sections to race through, each with their own unique scenery, but unfortunately there arent the branching paths at the end of each section as in OutRun. The racing is simple and arcadey, with the focus being to race each leg of the track as fast as possible while avoiding traffic and staying on the track. You dont crash in the game, but will slow down a lot if you hit another car or go off track. If time runs out before you reach the end of the track segment, its game over.

In another nod to OutRun, you can choose one of three different tunes to listen to while youre racing in Final Freeway. Also, your ride looks suspiciously like a Ferrari, which is the staple car in the OutRun series. The graphics in Final Freeway are very nice, with added support for the higher resolution iPhone 4 and iPad displays. The framerate is ultra smooth, even on my iPod touch 2G, and makes for a blazingly fast sense of speed. There are touch and tilt control options, with various other configurations of onscreen button placement. Either control option works well, but I found myself preferring the touch controls. There isnt the option for auto-accelerate, only separate gas and brake buttons, but this actually benefits the game as it can pay to merely let off the gas when approaching turns rather than slamming on the brakes.

Really, the only fault of Final Freeway is that there just isnt that much of it. The six track locations are decent, and can be played on a normal or expert setting, but I would love to see more. It sounds like that just might happen too, as the developer is active in our forums and has hinted that more levels are on their way, as well as taking note of other suggestions from our forum members for future updates. With a few updates, Final Freeway could evolve into something truly special, although what is here already is quite competent for the price. The bottom line is that Final Freeway is fun, plays extremely well, looks great, and will scratch that OutRun itch whenever you need it to.