For a limited time, Rockstar Games is offering their iOS versions of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars at a 50% discount from the regular price of $9.99 to celebrate the Chinese New Year. GTA: Chinatown Wars was originally released for the Nintendo DS in March of 2009, and featured all of the essential components of a full-blown console GTA game but with toned down visuals and presented from a bird's-eye view rather than the traditional third-person view. The title was a critical success, and later that year was ported over to the Sony PSP with greatly enhanced visuals.

In January of 2010, the entire game made its way onto the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. The iOS version falls somewhere in the middle of its portable console cousins, with visuals that are markedly improved over the DS version but fall a bit short when compared to the PSP version. It retains all of the content, however, and the virtual touch screen controls actually work much better than I ever could have expected, which we noted in our full review. Last September, a native iPad version was released with visual improvements that brought it nearly to the level of the PSP version and UI enhancements that catered to the larger screen.

GTA: Chinatown Wars has previously been on sale a few times during its lifespan, but it doesn't happen terribly often. With a huge influx of new iOS device owners from the holidays, this is their first chance to grab the title at a discount in 2011. GTA: Chinatown Wars offers dozens upon dozens of hours of playtime given the lengthy story missions, numerous side quests and collectibles, and of course the endless hours you can spend aimlessly goofing around in the humongous sandbox world of Liberty City. If you own an iOS device and don't yet have GTA: Chinatown Wars, it comes highly recommended, especially during this half-price sale that runs through this Sunday.

In the interest of making your day even that much more awesome, I bring you this bit of delightful news. Adult Swim has slashed the price of every game in its App Store library to a mere 99 cents. That means, for a "limited time," you can download all four�Robot Unicorn Attacks, My Li'l Bastard, Floater Pro, Spell My Finger, and several other games for about what you'd pay for a nice big sack of tacos from Taco Bell.

Here's a list of what's available:

• Robot Unicorn Attack
• Robot Unicorn Attack HD
• Robot Unicorn Attack Christmas
• Robot Unicorn Attack Heavy Metal
• Floater Pro
• My Li'l Bastard
• Spell My Finger
• Meowcenaries
• Amateur Surgeon
• Amateur Surgeon iPad
• Amateur Surgeon 2
• 5 Minutes To Kill

People think I'm crazy, but I'm pretty sure Robot Unicorn Attack is the greatest game ever made. I wasn't a huge fan of the Heavy Metal or the Christmas version, but they both feature the same old "run until you die" mechanic that I still get a kick out of. There are some great games in the above list, so make sure you grab whatever ones you've had your eye on before they return to regular price.

If you've been following TouchArcade, you've seen that we've been closely keeping up on Gameloft's Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden [Free] since before it even had a title. Early on we suspected it to be an action oriented game with Zelda-like mechanics, and that turned out to be true. I also mentioned that I'll play any Zelda game and any game that vaguely resembles a Zelda game without issue, regardless of how good or bad it is. So, I've fulfilled that blood oath by spending a ridiculous amount of time yesterday and today powering through Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden.

Before I get carried away, it's probably a good idea to discuss Gameloft's new approach to how they're selling their games now. They're labeling it "freemium", which seems to differ from everyone else's definition of the word. Instead, it seems more along the lines of a demoware, with the rest of the game available via a single in-app purchase. Basically, now instead of a paid and lite version of the game, there's a single version. In Sacred Odyssey, you're able to play through the first few missions (which more or less amounts to the tutorial) and get a good handle on what's coming in the rest of the game. This takes about 15 minutes. After that, a screen comes up asking you to make a one-time in-app purchase of $6.99 to continue.

Reactions on our forums have varied wildly from people who think this is an interesting approach to people frothing with rage. Personally, this kind of thing is what I always hoped for when I first heard about in-app purchasing coming to the App Store. The benefits of this are massive. Instead of downloading a lite version, getting 15 minutes in, hitting the end of it, and downloading the full version only to do that 15 minutes over again you can just keep on truckin' after making your IAP. It also helps to remove clutter from the App Store since separate lite and paid versions of Sacred Odyssey aren't needed. Sure, the download size may be a little bigger than your average lite version, but you're actually saving time and bandwidth by not needing to download a second game if you decide you like it.

The opening of Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden takes a cue from many other RPG's and begins with a dream sequence where a mysterious princess is calling out to you. After doing some dirty work around your village, you start off on your adventure, and believe it or not actually end up meeting this mysterious princess inside the first 15 minutes of playing the game. She sends you off on your first task which involves visiting the first dungeon, snagging your first piece of loot, fighting the first boss, and discovering that you're not just some mild-mannered townsperson� You're a grail seeker. You then return back to your home town only to find it ravaged by orcs and burnt to the ground. From here, the plot takes a curious turn down Star Wars street, and if this cut scene doesn't remind you of Luke returning to Uncle Owen's farm on Tatooine, nothing will.

This brings me to my first issue with Sacred Odyssey� It's like the writers couldn't really decide if this is supposed to be a serious fantasy game, a pop culture parody game, or a comedy game. Dialog varies wildly from heavy-handed RPG cliches of foretold prophecies, to your fairy companion telling you that a mythical sword of the gods is "uber-sharp" and "begging to slice and dice". Meanwhile, you've got two horses, "Maya" and "Moto." It feels incredibly disjointed. The good news is, Gameloft's voice acting seems significantly better than previous offerings, so even though dialog is cringe-worthy at times, at least it's voiced well.

Solid dialog and plot lines have never been Gameloft's strong points, but thankfully, the actual gameplay in Sacred Odyssey is awesome. The game is controlled using a virtual joystick and variety of virtual buttons. Like most Gameloft games, these are all completely configurable, although I've had no issue with the defaults. Fighting works well, and unsurprisingly has a Hero of Sparta feel to it, with virtual buttons for swinging your sword as well as blocking or dodging if you hit the block button while holding the virtual joystick in the direction you'd like to roll. Combat is actually really fun, and you'll often find yourself in situations where you'll need to be evasive and defensive instead of just mindlessly mashing your attack as if it were an "I Win!" button.

Progressing through the main storyline involves taking various quests, which inevitably lead you to people who have other quests, and then eventually a dungeon. These dungeons often have puzzles which much like other Zelda-esque games involve sliding blocks around or using whatever item you just received to overcome obstacles. Of course no dungeon would be complete without loads of bad guys, and a massive boss at the end, two things you'll also find in Sacred Odyssey. Boss battles are a lot of fun, even though they can sometimes feel like going through the motions of "Oh hey, I just got this ability, time to use it over and over on this dude until he dies," but that seems to be the case for any game following this formula.

Aside from the main quest line, there are an ample amount of side quests too, although none of them that I've come across have been particularly engaging or offer good rewards. Still, it's cool that they're there, as they provide a bit of a distraction from just running from dungeon to dungeon. Along the way you'll also collect blue orbs, as seemingly everything spews them. These are used to purchase things from a vendor who follows you around. You can buy everything from simple potions, to potions that heal a larger amount of life, to extremely expensive power-ups.

While Gameloft isn't treading on any kind of new or original territory (as at times, Sacred Odyssey feels like a direct carbon copy of Zelda, Darksiders, or both) but there just isn't anything else like this on the App Store. We'll likely never see a real Zelda game either, so I suppose I don't really mind playing Gameloft's "highly inspired" version of it. If you love Zelda-style games, this isn't one you should pass up, especially to see what you think of Gameloft's new payment method.

What's going to be fun to watch is where Gameloft goes from here, as although I had a bunch of fun with Sacred Odyssey, it's hard to dispute the fact that the graphics do look a bit dated compared to more recent releases� Especially those utilizing the Unreal Engine. Also, it will be curious to see whether or not Gameloft sticks with this payment method for several reasons: They're now competing on the free charts, which is substantially more competitive than the paid charts. Sites like AppShopper don't (and can't) track sales of items purchased via IAP, as Apple doesn't offer this data as part of their third party App Store API. This means that all the people who save Gameloft games to a wishlist and wait for sales aren't going to get any notification. Last, but certainly not least, the IAP transaction requires an active internet connection on your device, which may be an issue for iPod touch users.

Regardless, I had a ton of fun with Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden, and highly recommend any Zelda fan give it a try. You'll have a great idea of whether or not you want to continue by the time you hit the pay wall, and hopefully you're somewhere with connectivity so you can proceed past it.

Free games make me happy on the inside, and I imagine they do the same for you. So, it's with pleasure that I get to announce this: Pocket Frog developer Nimble Bit's entire App Store catalogue is now available for the price of zero dollars. That's right, from now until an "indeterminate time," you can download every iOS game that Nimble Bit has to offer for free.

We're talking about over a dozen titles here, so I'll be general with the following: our readers and ourselves pretty much have a universal love for everything Nimble Bit has to offer, so yeah, you should probably get on these ridiculous deals. I should note that, yeah, most of these games are free or have gone free before, but we've yet to see price-slashing on this scale from the studio.

That said, here's the list:

I've been experiencing different levels of excitement for Monty Python's Cow Tossing [99� / HD] since I saw the first details on the game at the International Mobile Gaming Awards last month. Since then, I posted the trailer, and generated a bit of excitement from fellow Monty Python fans in comments and on our forums. The game launched yesterday, and I couldn't wait to try it.

See, I've been a Monty Python fan as long as I can remember, and have watched Monty Python and The Holy Grail more times than I could even estimate in my lifetime. I suppose it's my own fault for letting my imagination run wild, but I figured classic Monty Python style Holy Grail humor combined with Angry Birds gameplay could have been a combination that worked incredibly well.

Monty Python's Cow Tossing is based around the point of King Arthur's quest in The Holy Grail where they come across the French stronghold on the search for the grail. After an exchange of taunts, the French claim to have the grail, and Arthur demands it. At this point, the French launch a cow over the wall at Arthur and his men, which is what you'll be doing in Cow Tossing� Launching farm animals at English knights who are often positioned inside of various structures which will also need to be destroyed, exactly like Angry Birds.

Unfortunately, things go pear shaped quickly. The game takes an incredible amount of time to load each level, even on recent devices. The physics of the game itself are crazy, and not in a good way. Aiming is entirely too difficult, and the additional adjustments that allow you to move the catapult around a bit only serve to make things more convoluted. Also, in the event of you actually hitting a weak point of the English defenses that causes it to fall over, the frame rate often drops to unbelievable levels. There's more that I didn't like, but you probably get the idea.

Despite all this, Monty Python's Cow Tossing does happen to have a few interesting things that are vaguely redeeming. Instead of being limited by the amount of ammo you have, you're forced to complete each level in a certain amount of time. Each level features an English battering ram rolling towards your French defenses, and if this battering ram reaches you, the level is over. The English defenses that you must destroy are often built on top of this battering ram, which forces you to re-adjust your aim with each shot instead of just getting more accurate via trial and error.

Another cool thing is how power ups are handled. They drop from the sky and you can time your shots to match your ammo to its corresponding power-up for a bonus effect. For instance, if you launch a cow through the cartoony bacterium falling from the sky it will turn in to a mad cow and do tons more damage. There are also power-downs to avoid, and launching your animal through them will cause your shot to fall to the ground.

All in all, Monty Python's Cow Tossing is full of wasted potential. There are clips of the movie included, so presumably they had quite a bit of free reign over the Holy Grail IP, which is why it makes so little sense to me how little of the movie's humor actually translates to the game. I was hoping for an absolutely ridiculous parody of Angry Birds, and instead all we really got was a half-baked Angry Birds clone with a Monty Python skin.

The moving battering ram and its associated defenses are a neat feature, and it's nice that they've included some clips from the movie in to the game. Overall, I'd just download Angry Birds and either rent or buy Monty Python and The Holy Grail from iTunes instead.

Back in November, Grumpyface Studios released their first iOS game Wispin [99�] into the App Store. Wispin is a unique take on an arena battling style game in that you don't actually use any weapons, but instead must match the color of enemies as you bash into and defeat them as wave after wave of them come at you. It's a really interesting idea that also worked really well in practice and was topped off with an incredibly appealing art style.

Since release, Wispin has been updated several times in an effort to tighten up the handling and controls, which was the main issue we had with the game in our review. Now that the developers have sorted that out, Wispin has finally received its first big content update. In version 1.1 of Wispin there is a brand new enemy type, an interesting new powerup, a third map with a unique twist that completely changes how the game is played, and an assortment of other fixes and improvements.

The new enemy is named Bleek, and he will run up and steal one of your three colors from you if you aren't careful to defeat him first. Once he grabs a color from you it's greyed out in your color wheel and you will be unable to change into that color for 10 long seconds or until you're able to snatch it back from him. As for the new item, it's called the Spirit Touch and once activated it allows you to defeat any enemies on screen by just tapping them. Both the new enemy and new item fit really well into the gameplay scheme of Wispin, and add even more strategic elements to the game.

The biggest addition to Wispin in this latest update is the new third map, The Glacier. Here a pack of Bleeks rush you before the round starts and steal all the colors from your color wheel. Instead of being able to change your color at will, you'll now have to pass through colored spotlights in the ground that change position randomly during play. This new take on the Wispin formula retains the core idea behind the game but causes you to have to play it in an entirely different way. Narrowly avoiding enemies as you make a mad dash for a colored spotlight adds an even more frantic element to the gameplay, and it's a whole lot of fun.

Besides these three major additions to Wispin, there are also a number of smaller tweaks to the game. The beginning waves when you start a game now ramp up more quickly, which is good as it tended to be kind of slow going when first starting a game before. Enemies are now smarter and attack in new patterns, and the behavior of some special items has been made more effective. Also, the Canyon map has been redone and is now much more open and easier to navigate, as it could get pretty cluttered and hard to move around in previously.

We liked Wispin a lot before, as did practically everybody in our forums, and with its first big content update now available it's an even better game now. If you already own Wispin, make sure to grab this latest update and check out the new features. And if you haven't yet picked up the game, it's an easy recommendation if you're looking for something that's a bit different with a ton of action.