Quest of Knights Onrush [Free] was originally thrown together by developer MoreGames and Chillingo to spearhead a marketing campaign for their then primary focus, Knights Onrush [$0.99], a castle defense game. It turns out that their promotional app, a side-scrolling arcade beat em-up, was even better received than the game it was promoting, and in April we revealed that it was being made into a full fledged game. That game, Knights Rush [App Store] is finally here.

Knights Rush takes the formula of the original game what was essentially a limited, endless mode-only beat em up and breathes the life of an entire campaign into it. Not shying away from that very definition, developer MoreGames envisioned an entire campaign to mean 40 sizeable campaign levels over 8 unique worlds, and a battallion of 50 different enemy types and 8 giant bosses to clog the daylights out of. Not to mention two very different endless modes that improve greatly on its origins thanks to the huge library of art assets now available.

The campaign begins with a short in-game cinematic where your knight, after a little soul-searching, gets pulled into an alternate dimension. Its a no-fuss opener designed to get you into the action as soon as possible, as its clear this is where the developer has spent most of their time. You start with a tutorial level, where you are soon introduced to two other knights to battle with. Before beginning each mission, you spawn in a portal room, where you can select from one of the three characters: a human Roman-esque knight, an other-world looking, dual scythe wielding knight, and a dwarven, hammer wielding knight. They each play very differently and have their own set of skills and perks to unlock.

The skill system itself needs some explanation, as it may not be apparent how it functions when first picking up the game. Each level, you begin by choosing a character, which is then spawned at level 1. Even if you come out of the first world at level 14, youll still spawn in world 2 with your character reset. At first, this put me off, as I was having lots of fun with the progressive empowerement of my knight. In retrospect however, this seems to be a very clever implementation. Firstly, it allowed me to explore the breadth of each characters abilities over the campaign, mixing them in ways that I was not able to do in my first attempt. And secondly, it gave a nice sense of character scaling as I sliced through the 5 levels that make up each game world, leveling periodically without maxing out each and every skill.

Ultimately, each character has only 2 active spells that can be unlocked. Abilities are sorted into skills and perks, and each level up you have access to 1 skill and a couple of perks. Perks supplement skills and your standard attacks, by adding benefits such as fire or ice to your attacks, or by increasing the rate at which you level or critical strike, or how much health is restored when you pick up health potions or even how many additional skills or perks you earn each level. Skills on the other hand, include your two active abilities and several other passive abilities, such as attack strength or health bonuses. Each ability has 5 levels, and over the course of a world youll generally be able to max out 3 or 4 of the reasonably lengthy list before having to reset.

As well as your active skills, the game includes a variety of consumable spells, from a crazy fox strapped with dynamite to your standard room-clearing freezes, proximity mines, or giant balls of energy. Though combat suffers a little from a tendency towards a truckload of frantic attack button mashing, the 3 skills nearly always at your disposal are crucial to surviving anything after about world 3. At this stage, the odds you face will progressively become more and more overwhelming and any previous thoughts of encroaching monotony are quickly swept away in the chaos. Unfortunately this doesnt extend to the huge, great looking boss enemies, who after the horde of enemies you have to wade through to get to, largely seem like pushovers. I would have liked to see a little more strategic varience to these encounters.

In any case it is clear that alot of time has been spent on the enemies in Knights Rush. Having 50 different enemy types is no small feat but having them all looking unique and with their own individual abilities and attacks is simply astounding. Youll encounter a host of different enemy knights, swamp monsters, giant crabs, giant spiders, the undead, wizards, vikings, golden scorpions, jumping iron-maidens�and more. These are then backed up by the legion of mechanical devices that are littered across each of the worlds. Worlds are replete with spiked traps, falling blades, rotating saws, raining arrows, giant boulders that fall from the sky, cannons, ballistae you name it, its there. And in an interesting twist, these enemies can only be defeated by standard attacks if at all.

Knights Rush has to be one of the most gorgeously detailed and painstakingly created game worlds we have seen on the iOS device. Each character and enemy is inked in a stylized fashion closely resembling that of Castle Crashers on XBL. The backdrops are equally lovingly rendered, richly detailed and set-off in layers to give a pseudo-3D effect that I absolutely love. Playing through the Super Endless Mode where worlds and enemies are randomly generated as you progress is a visual treat.

Finally, the standard Endless Mode rounds out the Knights Rush content, where levels you unlock in the campaign can be played endlessly. High scores for both endless modes are recorded in Chillingos Crystal social platform, which offers additional replay value above and beyond the Campaigns 3 or so hours of game time which can effectively be doubled or tripled if you decide to attempt Hard or Insane difficulties.

While some may initially be deterred by the few active skills available or the kitten-soft boss fights; you cant dispute that the sheer weight of content here resembles something more like what wed expect from an expensive console downloadable title. That there are three very different knights to fight with further compounds the games fun factor as you delve into their individual skill sets. All up, Knights Rush is a highly recommended addition to any action fans game library, and should be a no-brainer pickup for beat em up fans. Note, we did encounter a small bug where reloading the campaign following an endless mode sessions resulted in the wrong skill tree for our chosen knight, something we expect the developers will address soon but certainly not game breaking.

If youre still on the fence, head over to our forums to read other readers opinions and be sure to check out the slightly outdated gameplay trailer above as the game looks infinitely better in action.

Originally released in 1987, R-Type [$1.99] is almost as classic as it gets when it comes to arcade shooters. Since its initial release, the game has seen many sequels, as well as ports to nearly ever platform ranging from the Amiga all the way up to the XBOX 360. Like most arcade games of the era, the game is framed in a vague story with the player piloting the space fighter Arrowhead to defend humanity from aliens. The original R-Type and competent ports have been well received by almost everyone, as the gameplay and level design are still considered by many to be among the best the genre has to offer.

If youve never played R-Type before, you might be in for a surprise as the games notorious level of difficulty has landed it in lists such as IGNs Top 10 Toughest Games to Beat. The levels are crafted in such a way that you likely wont have much luck playing the game in a reactionary manner, and instead, will need to beat them through trial and error, learning the levels as you go. R-Type plays like what we now know as a typical shooter. You need to kill everything that moves, avoid bullets and enemies, fight massive bosses, all while collecting a wide array of power-ups on the way.

As far as the port is concerned, from a technical standpoint its great. To make things easier on new players theres an unlimited mode with never-ending lives, as well as the standard normal difficulty and an unlockable insane difficulty. Three control options are included, touch controls which work like most other shooters where you drag your finger around the screen to move the ship along with tilt controls and even a virtual D-Pad. The virtual D-Pad is actually surprisingly cool too, as it changes the perspective of the game to look more like an arcade cabinet so your fingers dont cover any of the action. Auto-fire can be enabled or disabled, and you can move the on-screen buttons to the right or left side in the options.

The developers really did everything they could do to bring a faithful port of R-Type to the App Store, but Im really torn on how I feel with it. R-Type reminds me of last years Earthworm Jim port in that its hard to imagine a better port of the game, but the control constraints of the platform almost feel like its holding it back. Using your finger often obstructs the screen. Tilting feels off because your ship just moves at one speed regardless of how much you tilt. The virtual D-pad is good, but only as good as a virtual D-pad can be.

If you have fond memories of the original or any of the ports, youll likely love having the game on your phone and will be able to make whichever control option you prefer work well enough to get through the game. Also, at $1.99 it likely is the cheapest way to play the game, since it would cost at least that in quarters at the arcade to make it through the first levels. If this review is the first time youve heard of R-Type, you might find yourself frustrated with the way things used to be with brutally difficult arcade shooters designed to extract every quarter from your pocket. In that case, you might be better off checking out some of the other more forgiving shooters that feature modern day conveniences such as checkpoints.

Back when Sega was releasing games like Sonic the Hedgehog [$5.99], Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [$5.99], and Streets of Rage [$2.99] wrapped in their Genesis emulator we were increasingly critical of the poor performance and mediocre controls. These types of games were built to be played at a high frame rate, with gameplay that basically requires the precision found in the original physical Genesis controller and just flat out didnt work that well on the iPhone. With every one of these games that Sega released, people posted in comments and on our forums asking where in the world Segas massive back catalog of RPGs and other games that would work phenomenally within the constraints of the emulator.

Sega finally responded by releasing Shining Force [$2.99], an effort that was hard to say enough good things about in our review. Tonight theyve released Phantasy Star II [$2.99], and much like Shining Force, the slow pace of the game completely negates any performance issues of control inaccuracies and instead just provides an awesome classic RPG in your pocket.

Phantasy Star II is the sequel to Phantasy Star, a Sega Master System game which didnt see another release in North America until it appeared on the Gameboy Advance and then the Wii Virtual Console. Playing the first is by no means required to enjoy the second, as the plot of Phantasy Star II follow the now entirely cliche story of ridding the world of ultimate evil while the backgrounds of the various characters that make up your party develop. Phantasy Star II has made it on to several greatest games of all time list, and it really should be played by any fan of turn based RPGs.

Really the only thing I could ask of this port is some further refinement to the emulator. Phantasy Star II badly needs a way to speed the game up as your movement is more than a little slow by todays standards, a "problem" other PC emulators have solved by allowing you to crank the speed of the game up. I somehow doubt Sega would ever implement these kind of tweaks, but enough complaining did get them to release two fantastic RPGs so far, so who knows.

Shortly after yesterdays announcement of Super Mega Worm we received word from PlayCreek, creators of Stoneloops of Jurassica, that they were bringing the original worm destruction game to the App Store. Death Worm was created by JTR back in 2006 and is available for free as a 3.5MB Windows game. PlayCreek is promising to take the original concept to the next level, and even has plans to keep the game updated with new levels, enemies, game modes, and other features. Two examples they cite for future updates are a Death Worm soccer mini game and a Death Worm castle defense game mode. Theres also an iPad version in the works.

Its more than a little odd that there are two games being announced in such short succession that are based on such similar concepts, but if you got a chance to play Stoneloops of Jurassica before it was pulled from the App Store, its hard to not get excited for PlayCreeks Death Worm. The additional game modes sound beyond ridiculous, and Im really looking forward to giving both Death Worm and Super Mega Worm a try.

Here is the FoneArena Samsung Galaxy S Review where we take a look at the latest Android Phone from Samsung with a Huge 4 inch SuperAMOLED Display , 1GHz CPU , 5 MP Camera , HD Video Recording and a lot more.

Intro

Samsung was a company that always took the backseat in the initial years of the previous decade. Their mobile phones were never revolutionary or beyond expectations. They were satisfied with making good handsets with available technology and also happy with their sales.

While on the other hand, most companies tried to bring something revolutionary into the market and improve. Motorola enjoyed success through their RAZR series of phones, Sony Ericssons Walkman series of phones were a huge hit, Nokias N95 brought the idea of all in one device, Apple brought a whole new touch screen experience to the table.

Not that Samsung hasnt produced good phones over the years but nothing was able to stand out from the crowd. But recently say around 2-3 years ago, Samsung has started to rise up to the challenge. They are willing to invest, take risks establish a firm position in the smartphone world.

For example they were the first to launch the 8 Megapixel Camera phone, one of the first to launch a 12 Megapixel camera phone, one of �the first to launch a mobile phone with HD Ready Video recording, �Super AMOLED display , Bada OS etc.

They seem to have also gone beyond their usual to market their products, especially with the Galaxy S and Wave.

The Galaxy S is Samsungs latest device with Googles Android OS. Let us take a look whether the Galaxy S is worth all the hype.

Box Contents

The Galaxy S comes in a sleek black rectangular box. The package contents include:

• Samsung Galaxy S
• Battery
• User Guide
• AC Charger
• Headphones
• USB Cable
• Leather Pouch

Nothing exciting or out of the ordinary but still has all the essentials to get you going.

Design and Build Quality

The Samsung Galaxy S is a monoblock touchscreen phone and measures in at 122.4*64.2*9.9mm. A glance at the measurements and you know this phone is sleek. At 9.9mm it fits in easily even into the tightest of pockets. While the handset is wider and taller than most touchscreens, it is not too large for a phone with a 4� screen. Its dimensions are perfect according to us. The phone weighs in at 119 grams which is quite light considering all the stuff fitted into the phone.

The main reason for it being so light is that there are no metal parts used for the phone. Everything is glossy plastic. The battery cover, the front surface etc. But the build quality of the phone is not compromised due to the use of plastic. The phone is as sturdy as a rock; there are no creaks or squeaks. The battery cover is a bit flimsy but does not become a concern once it is on the handset.

The phone is basically black in colour. The battery cover however has a unique dotted pattern in blue. This gives the phone a trendy look however its done in a way that its not too flashy. So while it attracts youngsters, it does not put away the older audiences. The phone is a fingerprint magnet as in the case of any touchscreen phone. The glossy back also attracts a lot of fingerprints. The phone is quite a looker and should please most customers. There have been rumours about a white version of the Galaxy S making its way into the markets. We think it will look quite good in white as well.

Video Review available in 720p HD

Screen

The screen is definitely the best thing about the Galaxy S. The 4� Super AMOLED screen with capacitive technology is a treat just to look at. You could keep looking at video or pictures on it all day and still not feel bored. It displays upto 16 million colours and has a resolution of 480x800 pixels. The sheer contrast and brightness of the screen will amaze you. Even at minimum brightness, everything looks great. The only other screen that can be compared is the retina display of the Apple iPhone 4. All the other screens just cant compete.

An accelerometer takes care of the auto-rotations. Multi-touch inputs are supported. The proximity sensor turns the display on/off during calls. The sensitivity of the screen is brilliant and the slightest of touches are recognised. A stylus wont work on the screen because it uses capacitive technology.

The sunlight legibility is very good thanks to the Super AMOLED technology due to the reduced glare and increase in brightness.. The viewing angles are also great.

Keys and Controls

Being a touchscreen phone, the Galaxy S has minimal hardware buttons. On the front, the three keys on the bottom are the touch sensitive menu and back/return keys which are on either side of the Home button. All three buttons have good feedback and sensitivity.

The home button also doubles as the application/task switcher key upon holding and pressing. On the right side of the device is the power button/screen lock key. The one thing missing on the right side is the camera shutter key and this is one disadvantage about the Galaxy S.

The volume up/down rocker button has been moved to the left side of the device to make way for the power/screen lock key. We would have preferred to have the volume rocker key on the right side and the power/screen lock key on top but this way works too. Although it might be a little confusing at first.

We feel the volume keys could have been slightly more raised rather than making it flush into the casing.

The 3.5mm Jack and the micro-USB port are situated on top. The micro-USB port is protected by a neat sliding plastic cover while the 3.5mm jack remains uncovered.

Calls

The reception on the Galaxy S is brilliant. No issues with the coverage was noticed. The earpiece has good audio quality with very little or minimal distortion. Loudness to is sufficient for most cases but can be a bit feeble in very noisy surroundings such as places with loud music etc.

The keypad used for dialling is large and quite user friendly. Smart dial helps you to make calls easily by giving you suggestions according to your input just like search boxes do. The loudspeaker is loud enough indoors but might not be enough outdoors and the ringing volume too might be drained out in very noisy surroundings. But for everyday use it should be enough.

The proximity sensor turns off the display when you hold it next to your ear thus eliminating inputs by mistake and also help to save battery life. The phonebook has practically unlimited capacity and is great. You can view contacts from phone memory, SIM card and Google contacts. You can easily search through your list of contacts using the alphabet scroll on the right, similar to the one found in the music player. You can add info to every contact such as a picture, various phone numbers, website, birthdays etc.

Messaging

The messaging application organises your messages into threads which are separated on the basis of the person to whom you send or receive the text from. We feel the thread system keeps messages more organised and makes it easier to search for messages.

Messages can be entered using the virtual QWERTY keyboard which is available both in portrait as well as landscape modes. Swype helps you to type quicker by eliminating the need to take your fingers off the screen. The keys are large enough and most of the time very less errors occur while typing even for people with big fingers.

Connectivity and Memory

As with most smartphones available today, the Galaxy S is equipped with every connectivity feature in the book. The vast connectivity options include GPRS, Wi-Fi, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, micro-USB and Bluetooth 3.0. It is one of the first phones to sport the new version of Bluetooth which gives faster transfer rates and more coverage while consuming lesser battery life. The micro-USB transfer rates are very fast and files of big capacities were copied easily without hesitations.

There are two models of the Galaxy S which provide either 8GB or 16GB of internal memory. The memory can be expanded further by an additional 32GB using the micro-SD card slot. The phone also has 512MB of RAM and 2GB of ROM.

We had some trouble in getting the phone to work over BSNL 3G but we hope its an issue only with our unit.

Music

The Galaxy S does extremely well in the music department both in terms of hardware as well as software. The loudspeaker on the device is brilliant in terms of the quality of output. There is little distortion even at maximum volume. But the loudness isnt at the top of the charts. The only let down is that location of the speaker.

You can connect your own headphones without any adaptors thanks to the 3.5mm jack situated on the top. The audio through the jack is spectacular in both quality as well as loudness. You also get various other tweaks and options such as the 5.1 surround effect, the equalizers and sound effects.

The music player is also brilliant. It is not the usual one that comes on other Android devices but a version that has been tweaked by Samsung and it will take your breath away. It not just has the awesome eye candy but also helps to ease the process of searching for music etc.

It is not possible to explain the features with just words so please take a look at the pictures and videos of the Galaxy S music player or if possible try one out for yourself to understand the awesomeness.

Video

Samsung is the current king of video playback. The Galaxy S supports every format that you put into it be it mp4, wmv, DivX, XviD, mkv etc. Although bigger mkv files might not be recognised at times. It is the only Android powered handset to support so many formats and together with its massive 4� Super AMOLED screen, you could keep watching videos on it forever.

We even managed to play HD Ready 1280*720 pixels videos on the phone and it should come as no surprise given the fact that it has HD Ready Video Recording. The phone could be used as a dedicated media player too considering the great battery life. HDMI support would have been cool but Samsung has left it to the hackers.

Imaging and Video Recording

The Galaxy S is equipped with a 5 Megapixel camera with Auto-focus, Touch-focus, smile and face detection and Geo-tagging. Surprisingly the camera does not come with a flash, not even an LED flash. This is one of the very few drawbacks of the device. If it did have an LED flash, the device would have been nearly perfect.

While we are fine with the resolution of the camera, the image quality is poorer than we expected. The lack of a flash aggravates the situation. The images taken with the phone are mostly underexposed, noisy and quality is average or above average at best. It does not compete with the top 5 Megapixel performers. Night time photography is out of the question. But during daytime, it does the job.

Camera Samples

The camera does not have a lens cover so the lens is exposed to scratches, smudges and fingerprints. But that is not the worst part considering the lack of flash and also lack of a camera shutter key. The only way to take photos is by using the onscreen camera shutter key.

You tap on the area where you want the camera to focus, after it focuses, tap the camera icon and the picture is taken. The focusing time is quite good and so is the shutter speed but here again its not among the best.

Video recording on the other hand is quite good. It offers HD Ready 1280*720 pixels video recording at 30 fps Frames per second.� The video quality is one of the best that can be found on handsets currently .� Other handsets offering 720p Video recording are Apple iPhone 4 and Motorola Milestone XT720

Battery Life

The Galaxy S is equipped with a massive 1500 mAh Battery.� Samsung claims it to have a standby time of 750 hours using 2G and 576 hours using 3G. Talk time is rated at 13 hours 30 minutes on 2G and 6 hours 30 minutes on 3G.

In reality too the Galaxy S has great battery life. It exceeded our expectations. You could get 2 days of battery life easily even with heavy usage. We tried everything from music, videos, camera, applications, web browsing etc when we got it and the battery still lasted around 1 and half days which is very good for current high-end phones.

OS and UI

The phone runs on Android 2.1 OS with a Samsung �Touch Wiz 3.0 UI. The default Android Live Wallpapers are available and there are also a few from Samsung. The 7 Home screens are customizable with Widgets Samsung and Android. You can choose from up to 4 Fonts. We liked the Default Font the most. You can download access apps from Samsung Apps and the Android� market.

Browser

The browser is similar to the stock Android browser with minor tweaks. You can browse up to 8 Windows at a time. Flash support is missing but is expected to come soon. There is Tap-to-zoom and Multi-touch, although not a smooth as on the iPhone it is certainly usable. Pages load pretty fast and the huge display makes reading a pleasurable experience

Conclusion

Samsung Galaxy S has turned out to be what we feel is the best Android phone in the market right now. It has everything you could ask for. Its good as a business phone, a multimedia phone etc. It does have a few drawbacks but maybe just one major drawback and no phone is perfect anyway. The only department where it needs quite a big improvement is imaging. It rocks in every other department.

Anyway we feel that this phone will be worth every cent you spend and youll love it.

Pros

• Amazing Screen
• Great Audio Quality
• Great Video Playback
• Good Battery Life
• Good Day light Camera
• Good Video Recording
• SWYPE� Input
• WiFi Hotspot
• ThinkFree Office Suite

Cons

• Speaker could have been better.
• No Camera Flash
• No Dedicated Camera Shutter Key
• No Camera Lens Cover
• No Flash support in Browser
• Weak GPS

Review and Photography by Sandeep Sarma. Additional reporting by Varun Krish

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Developers seem to love scheduling their release dates for Thursday, causing their games to slowly leak out over the world over the course of the day on Wednesday and were in for another onslaught of releases tonight. These games should all appear for download in the US App Store at 11:00 PM EST unless you download your games from the various European or Asian App Stores, in which case they will be available much earlier possibly even as youre reading this.

R-Type, $1.99 Weve covered R-Type a number of times in the past, including getting a sneak peek at it at the recent EA pre-holiday event. R-Type is a sidescrolling shooter that hardly need an introduction filled with huge bosses, tons of power-ups, and everything else that makes a shooter awesome. For more information, and impressions as the game trickles out over the world, check out the thread in our forums.

Dodonpachi Resurrection, $4.99 Another bullet hell shooter from Cave which unfortunately only runs on 3rd generation devices and later due to the sheer amount of things happening at once on screen. Weve been following this game closely, and bullet hell fanatics are already debating Dodonpachi Resurrection versus Caves previous game, ESPGaluda II [$8.99 / Free] in the forum thread.

Phantasy Star II Segas classic Genesis RPG should be available on the US App Store tonight, although it doesnt yet appear to be available internationally. Sega often releases two versions, one American and one international, and while it seems unlikely its possible that the international version simply hasnt been approved yet. Regardless, were keeping our eyes peeled for it.

Knights Rush, $2.99 From the developers of Knights Onrush [99� / Free] and A Quest of Knights Onrush [Free] comes a full featured arcade style hack and slash which sounds like it has a ton of content. 50 enemy types, 8 bosses and 40 levels across 8 different worlds have people pretty excited in our forums.

Cave Run, $1.99 Randomized survival platformers seem to be the name of the game lately between Monster Dash [99�], A Skeleton Story [$1.99], and others. Cave Run is universal and has generated quite a bit of buzz in our forums, packed with an Indiana Jones-like theme and tons of obstacles to avoid.

Were going to spend the day working up reviews for as many of these games as possible, and if youve been looking forward to any of them in particular be sure to stop by the threads linked with each game as international forum members almost always post first impressions throughout the day.

Just a couple of weeks ago we brought you the first screens and info from the upcoming sequel to early App Store classic Blue Defense titled Blue Defense: Second Wave. Since then, weve been able to spend some time with a work-in-progress build of the game and check out how Second Wave plays compared to the original. So far, its shaping up really nicely. It takes the core gameplay of the first game and adds some interesting new features and a lot more content, retaining the simplicity that made the original such a joy to play but adding just enough depth to offer a really different experience.

The basics of Second Wave remain the same. Youll fight off waves of enemies with a perpetually shooting cannon firing from the center of the planet which youre trying to protect. A population of about 7 billion people act as the life of your planet, with that number dwindling with every enemy that penetrates your defense. If the population hits zero, the planet is lost and its game over.

One of the biggest changes this time around is the ability to fire multiple cannons at once. Touching the screen at any time brings up an aiming reticule and a new stream of fire, with multitouch support for adding up to five additional streams along with the first cannon. A quick double tap on the screen locks an aiming reticule in place at that point on the screen, which can be dragged around and set anywhere you want to direct more firepower. You can set up to ten of these locked streams in addition to the five you can add by touching. Coupled with the normal cannon, thats a whopping sixteen streams of fire at your disposal. �These screens were taken from an iPhone 4 and showcase the Retina Display support in Second Wave click to enlarge:

While this may seem like an unfair advantage, the game intelligently balances this out by making every stream share from the same pool of firepower. For example, one stream of fire will rapidly spray many bullets in one direction. Adding a stream cuts this in half, with less bullets firing more slowly out of each stream. This gets divided with each stream added, and by the time you get to the full sixteen, each stream is very slowly shooting just one bullet out at a time.

The ability to add streams adds a tremendous amount of strategy in how you choose to play the game. Its such a big help to be able to quickly direct additional fire towards incoming enemies from any direction, or lock a stream of fire towards a dense group of enemies. Besides the ability to add streams of fire, you also get a new weapon in the form of the planet cannon. Touching your planet and swiping in the direction you want to fire launches a humongous beam of destruction thats as wide as the planet itself. The planet cannon vaporizes anything in its path, but comes with limited uses.

Heres a short video of the preview build no sound in this build:

These additional offensive options take Second Wave to a new level, and I havent even gone into the gauntlet mode yet. Gauntlet mode is essentially a campaign that has you defeating set levels with predetermined numbers of waves and various difficulties, but well leave some of this for when the game is released. The major stuff is done and its just entering the polishing phases now, so it shouldnt be too much longer before well be taking a look at the final version of Blue Defense: Second Wave.

Last month, we were treated to the fun and fast-paced Fastar from developer John Kooistra and Cat in a Box Games. Fastar is a sarcastic take on action-RPGs that has you blazing through side-scrolling levels as fast as possible, all while collecting coins and upgrading your character as you defeat the games many square enemies. The funny thing about Fastar is while its technically taking jabs at the many action-RPG games out there and the genericness of their enemies and gameplay, it actually accomplishes being an incredibly fun game while doing so.

You can read all about Fastar in our in-depth review of the game and get a good idea of the gameplay from the trailer:

If you have yet to pick up Fastar youre in luck as the game has just gone free for a day. We really liked the game, and found it to be a great fit for the iPhone. Players in our forums are also loving the game, and if youve been on the fence about it since its release theres now no reason not to check out Fastar while its free for the day.