The wild popularity of Fruit Ninja [99� / HD] is a hard act to follow, but I think Halfbricks next game is more than up to snuff. In Monster Dash {99�], you play as Barry Steakfries, a man who loves two things in life: Running and killing monsters. Of course I dont know him personally, but Ive been able to discern as much from spending the past week playing Monster Dash in almost every second of spare time I can find.

Monster Dash is a randomly generated survival platformer where you run to the right as long as you can, much like Canabalt [$2.99]. This is where the Canabalt similarities end, as between Barry Steakfries and wherever hes running to is an array of monsters which all must be either avoided or slain. Barrys default weapon is a shotgun, which has limited range, but along the way you will find weapon crates packed with sub machine guns, a powerful six shooter, and even a machine gun jetpack.

Barrys life is represented in heart on the top right corner of the screen, and you can regain health by picking up heart power-ups on your run. Colliding with an enemy or hitting spikes causes you to lose health, and when you run out of hearts or miss a jump and fall to your death your run is over. From there, your score is submitted to OpenFeint online leaderboards, and you start again. On your run you will randomly warp through four different settings, from an egyptian world filled with mummies to the rooftop ruins following a zombie apocalypse.

Monster Dash is host to oodles of OpenFeint achievements and also a ridiculous amount of stat tracking, keeping count of things like your total distance travelled, how many monsters youve stomped, most consecutive stomps, and a bunch of other things. Also, not only is there a leaderboard for single run distance, but you can also compete for total distance ran, total monsters killed in one run, as well as total monsters killed overall.

The graphics in Monster Dash consist of fantastically drawn sprites, and the fast paced music fits perfectly with the pace of the game. Overall, Monster Dash is just a ton of fun, the controls are simple and just consist of tapping either side of the iPhone screen to jump or fire, and Im really having a hard time finding anything to complain about. Best of all, Halfbrick has had an amazing track record with updating Fruit Ninja with all kinds of additional game modes and content and all day people have been contributing their own ideas as to what would make Monster Dash even more awesome in the thread on our forums.

Halfbrick obviously hasnt committed to implementing any of these things, but its not hard to imagine how well various power-ups and additional weaponry could fit in to the game. Regardless of whether or not these things ever happen, Im happy as a clam with Monster Dash. If you like Canabalt-style gameplay and hate monsters, you basically need to download Monster Dash as soon as possible.

This isnt a game by any means, so if youre looking for the next cool iPhone game to download, keep on scrollin. If you like games, RPGs specifically, and have always wondered what would happen if you combined the functionality of a to do list app with an experience bar, Epic Win [$2.99] is right up your alley. Created by Rex Crowle, responsible for the visual design of Little Big Planet, and Tak Fung, the developer behind MiniSquadron [$2.99 / Free], Epic Win is a list keeping app by gamers for gamers.

On your first launch of the app, you choose one of five avatars. Three are unlocked initially, with the other two available via in-app purchase. Which avatar you choose has no bearing on how the rest of the app works, and you can change them at any time in the options. Tapping the pencil icon opens up a new task, at which point you set its epicness and date along with what type of feat said task is. These feats range from feats of strength, stamina, intellect, social, and spirit.

As you complete items off your to do list, youre awarded experience for the level of epicness you set and your avatar gains a point on your profile page for the type of feat the task was. When each task is completed, your dude travels down a curvy road, and eventually is awarded various pieces of ridiculous loot� And thats really all there is to Epic Win. Sure, there are more full featured gettin things done apps on the App Store, but how many of them have loot or experience bars?

Yeah, you can technically cheat in Epic Win really easily by just constantly making and completing tasks, but the game portion of Epic Win really has no competition, and only serves as a neat little bonus for checking things off of a list. If youve found yourself looking for some more motivation to get things done on your to do list, and filling an experience bar is your carrot on a stick that will actually lead you to do things, Epic Win is what you need.

Here is a review of the Nokia C3 an entry level QWERTY phone which is available for purchase in UK. The phone drew plenty of attention in Indonesia when it was launched a while ago.

The Nokia C3 looks at first glanced like a Nokia E72, but essentially it is a stripped down phone geared towards youngsters with a range of social networking applications at its heart.

For a phone that costs from �80 in Britain on Pay as you Go, the C3 has plenty going for. Despite running on Nokias Series 40 platform, the C3 is unusually blessed with WiFi and Bluetooth.�In addition to that it has a decent 2MP camera which is fine for taking web-destined pictures. If you expect anything more then you will be disappointed.

It also has a 3.5mm headphone slot for music listening on the top, a standard Nokia charger port, micro USB port and micro SDHC. It is bundled with a 2GB microSDHC card. The C3 has no support for 3G, but GPRS�is fine with Opera Mini. It is powered by a Nokia BL-5J battery 1320mAh which is fine for up to 800 hours of standby time, according to Nokia anyway.

The display is a standard 2.4? screen with QVGA resolution, and performs well outdoors. Mind, we havent been getting plenty of sunshine lately so I was unable to test the display under full sunlight glare but will update when and if we ever get our summer back.

Below the screen resides two soft keys, two applications keys and a call and disconnect which also doubles as power on/off buttons. Below those is the QWERTY keypad. The keypad is similar in feel to the more expensive E72, though the space bar is also far larger like the E71. Commonly used punctuations are easily accessible.

Series 40 is a rather dated platform and a step down the ladder from the more versatile and mainstream Symbian Series 60 smartphone platform. It does not support multi-tasking, but it works well despite its rather dated look and use of large fonts. Opening applications can be a very slow process. The problem is Nokia should be pushing the smarter S60 onto lower end phones like this.

Nokia markets the C3 as a messaging phone for youngsters. With the QWERTY keypad, typing messages is a breeze. It has support for the most popular messaging platforms such as SMS, email and popular instant messaging platforms such as Yahoo Messenger, MSN via Ovi Chat. There is also Opera Mini 4 installed for all your web browsing need.

As social networking booms, Nokia has included a Communities application for Twitter and Facebook. It is a J2ME application, so loading or starting it up can take a while and it does not run in the background. It does integrate itself neatly on the homescreen though, but you will have to launch the app in order to reply.

As a Twitter client, Communities has some good features, but personally I feel that the C3 is too slow to be of any use. It takes a long time to scroll through messages and replies. Anyone who follows more than 50 twitter users will likely find it a chore and would be better off downloading Twibble or using dabr.co.uk instead.

The sound quality from the music player is rather good, and with a microSDHC slot and 2GB card already provided, the C3 makes for a decent music player. Equally good is the call quality and signal strength. It never dropped a call on me once, but that isnt surprising the telephone bit of any phones has always been Nokias strength.

It is hard to fault the C3. It is a great device with brilliant built quality and has features�many would not expect in such a cheap device. For �80 EUR100 on Pay as you Go, you get a�great looking�device with a wonderful QWERTY keypad built around messaging. Shame the software isnt up to it.

Pros

+ Great QWERTY keypad

+ Built-in WiFi

+ Good Twitter and Facebook integration

Cons

- Slow processor

- Series 40

- Poor camera quality

Note: This review is based on a UK Retail Unit. The C3 would be available soon in more more markets including India.

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If you want to protect you shiny new iPhone 4 against bumps and shocks , you certainly need a case. Otterbox has launched new case for the iPhone 4 under the Commuter Series.It offers 3 layers of protection for your iPhone. The case comprises of a silicon layer and a poly carbonate shell.

�The iPhone 4 offers so many different custom features,� said OtterBox founder and CEO Curt Richardson. �With Commuter Series cases now available, OtterBox lets users choose the case design that best fits their personality and style.�

The case comes with a Screen Protector and a microfiber cloth. In fact Apple stopped providing a cloth starting with the iPad.

You can buy the case on Otterbox for $34.95

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I love installing new themes on my phones, as they let me personalize them to my taste as well as change the look of my device much more frequently, instead of actually paying to buy a new device. Fortunately, Nokia & Symbian theme developers are abundant, and there are a lot of really great ones out there, some who offer their themes for free. One such themer is Larsson from S60Art, and hes good, really good.

His latest theme, Water Spirit, takes his know-how to new levels, thanks to a great blue background that lights up your screen, fully transparent icon and text borders which is something Ive been craving for on my N97 Mini, and a set of custom icons. The whole effect is an elegant theme, that makes you fall back in love with your phone, no matter how old or used it is. Here are some screenshots of Water Spirit on my N97 Mini.

You can download the theme for free from Larssons website, the .zip file provided contains a custom icon and default icon version. And if you like it, dont forget to drop Larsson a few bucks on his Paypal account to thank him for his work.

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Last week during the QuakeCon keynote address, John Carmack pulled an iPhone 4 out of his pocket and shocked the audience by showing a demo of id Softwares next game, Rage, running on the device. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Rage will have elements of racing games and first person shooters. Theres also said to be RPG elements in the game as well, making it sound similar to both the Fallout series and Borderlands. Information is still limited as the game isnt slated to launch until 2011, but either way the following demonstration is beyond impressive:

Weve spoken at length with John Carmack at length in the past, where hes mentioned potential upcoming id Software titles such as Doom 2, Quake Classic, and the rest of the id back catalog coming to the App Store. Wondering what the state of all these projects were, we once again pow wowed with Carmack to see what hes been up to since we last spoke.

According to John, id has restructured a lot last year and several people from the mobile team has since been sucked in to other big projects, and theyve only recently got the mobile team staffed back up to the proper size for iPhone development. Carmack admits that after releasing Doom Classic [$6.99] he hadnt even opened up Xcode until last month to start working on Rage technology.

Currently, id is completely focused on Rage, and John isnt sure when they will get back to the classic games even though it makes a lot of sense. He also explained that while both Doom II RPG [$3.99] and Wolfenstein RPG [$1.99] have done well on mobile phones, their performance on the App Store has been less than ideal, leading to the decision to not bring the Orcs & Elves games over to iOS.

Carmack admits hes had a lot of fun working with iOS 4 recently, and wished he had more time to devote to it. And while its more than a little disappointing that we wont see the classic id games anytime soon, with how impressive the Rage demo was, Im A-OK with John Carmack and the rest of the id Software team working on the forefront of iPhone development instead of focusing on porting retro hits I doubt Im alone in that.

The dreaded curse of the movie game has been in existence since the 1982 release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. Similar to many other famous curses, such as the curse of the Bambino or the curse of the Billy Goat, the curse of movie video games is just something you could almost always count on in that video games based on movies are generally mediocre if not much worse. In the rare instance that a game based on a movie isnt terrible, it needs to be celebrated And Jaws [$2.99] for the iPhone is cause for celebration.

If you somehow have never seen the movie Jaws, heres the gist: Amity is a New England summer town with beautiful beaches whose local economy depends on tourism. Not too far in to the movie the bloody corpse of one such vacationer washes ashore and serves as the first clue that there may be something in the water. They suspect it is a shark attack, but the local mayor refuses to close the beaches as the 4th of July is approaching and doing so would be a financial disaster for Amity. Needless to say, they dont close the beaches, Jaws attacks, and the rest of the movie involves the hunt for the massive shark.

One of the most memorable things for me anyway from Jaws was the use of music in the movie. The iconic Jaws theme ramped up in the movie perfectly with the suspense of being on the open ocean looking for the massive shark, and the developers of the Jaws game have implemented this same audio cue in the game with the real Jaws theme� Which I feel really is the most important part of any Jaws-based game.

Gameplay amounts to doing everything you can to save the swimmers of Amity in a variety of different scenarios. Ten levels are included, and the early ones will just have you flicking swimmers to send them swimming towards the beach while avoiding Jaws who comes marauding through the water whenever the shark fin meter at the bottom reaches the swimmer icon. Eventually this makes way to open water levels where youre able to flick swimmers around to avoid Jaws, and the only way to get them out of the water is by picking them up with boats that are controlled by drawing lines similar to Harbor Master [$1.99 / Free / HD]. There are also boats with guns on them that you target by dragging a crosshair around, and while I wont spoil the end of the game, if youve seen the movie you can likely guess what happens.

While Jaws doesnt really bring much new to the table, it combines gameplay elements that have been proven to work well with the touch controls on the iPhone in to a fun little game that really nails how a game based on the movie Jaws should feel. The later levels are downright frantic, and Jaws himself looks great Especially when he leaps out of the water to turn a swimmer in to a pool of blood. Levels are scored based on how many swimmers youre able to save, and each level has a limit as to how many Jaws can eat before you fail.

Jaws is a little light on content, with ten levels that shouldnt take you more than an hour or two to play through and unlock everything. The game comes with OpenFeint integration for online leaderboards and achievements, but I really wish there was something more to do once you beat the game such as unlocking endless modes for each of the levels that allow you to play as long as you can before Jaws munches on a swimmer. Either way, if you enjoyed the movie, youll likely have fun playing through the game at least once.