We've been excited for Crescent Moon and Invulse Games' Deadlock [Free] ever since we first heard about it back in May, and at long last the game has finally gone live in the US App Store. Just to recap, Deadlock is a dual-stick shooter with competitive online multiplayer over Game Center for up to 8 players. There is a fairly deep weapon and equipment system that has you earning new items as you rank up through playing online. Deadlock is completely free to download and play and doesn't contain any ads. There is an in-app purchase system that will allow you to accelerate unlocking items in the game, but all of these same items can be earned for free just through playing as well.

Have a look at the brand new launch trailer for Deadlock to get an idea of the gameplay:

We've been playing beta builds of Deadlock for weeks now, and while it's been a pretty fantastic time playing with the select group of people who had access to the game, it really isn't possible to fully review an online-centric game like this before it's available to the masses. We'll be playing Deadlock over the following days as the servers fill up with players and then come back with a more in-depth look at the game after we've fully gotten a feel for how the online community shakes out.

But really, you don't need to wait around to find out our opinion as Deadlock is completely free anyway. There's no reason not to grab the game right now and actually try it out for yourself. There's a link below for downoading the game and you can check out the thread in our forums for early impressions of the game or the Deadlock code sharing thread to link up with your fellow gamers to get some matches going online. See you on the servers!

I wouldn't call Firaxis' Sid Meier's Pirates! a true follow-up or a sequel. It's more of a re-imagining of the classic Commodore 64 game that clutches the original's foundation to its breast, but also builds on that source material with much more overstated mechanics and systems. It also has what feels like a larger, richer world. If I had to pin down just one thing that Pirates [$3.99] on the iPad has to share, it's that �by updating, refining, tweaking and adding the�classic's mix of simulation and strategy, Firaxis has made a game that's even more of a blast to play.

I missed out on the 2004 original that this version is based on, so you'll have to excuse my fawning. From what I gather, this is a pretty close translation. What is different is its new, much more flat look and the implementation of touch, which works well enough, but also tends to feel imprecise and unresponsive when the action gets hot.

Pirates tells the dull tale of a young lad bent on revenge after his family is kidnapped by a group of debtors with funny things stuck in the brim of their overlarge hats. It's a boring hunk of narrative to begin with, and it's also one that comes off as disingenuous. All the threads of story that nap while travelling courtesy of your "Rescue Your Family" map are just cold, mechanical excuses to partake in sub-games like, for example, the oft-used "construct a another map by killing evil barons" sub-game.

As odd as it sounds, the core of Pirates resides outside of this goal. In equal parts, you'll be able to try to find your family members and seek fame and fortune. In the process, you'll spend a lot of time bombarding and pillaging cities, pillaging galleons, pillaging people, and dancing with governors' daughters until your lad morphs into a toothless old man and is forced to retire from his swashbuckling days.

You'll also get a chance to serve one of four powers in the region or, alternatively, you can disrupt political power through those aforementioned means. It's hard to get a real sense of this landscape the first time through the game, though, which indicates a larger problem that most simulation games share: Pirates isn't good at telling you what's going on in the background and it's doubly-bad at sharing how to play and succeed in a world that changes and hinges on you and AI interaction.

If my take on Pirates sounds Project Mayhem-y to you, it's because this is how I choose to view and roll in the world. While the simulation and simplicity of Pirates are two great aspects of a coherent whole, the fact that you can just be a pirate and do your own thing is welcome. Pirates has a deceiving open-ended nature.

Let's dig in a little bit. A vertical slice of the game would look a little something like this: you're in charge of 20 men on a scoop, which is a fast and lightweight boat. As you travel along the coast you'll see cities, all of which give you the option to enter or bombard. You'll also see boats rumbling here or there and you can attack them one-by-one.

If you do attack, you'll enter into an over-the-top, instance-based map. It's man-on-man, the goal being to take the other ship. Depending on the amount of cannons you have, you can choose to either put your boat in a good position to destroy the opponents with metal or you can just ram into it and force an on-board battle. The number of dudes you have in the boat matters, but so do your sword skills. There's a mini-game that lets you take on the captain of this boat in a swipe-based free-for-all where you pick high, low, or medium attacks or counters versus his own. If you kill him, the boat is yours and so are his goods, which you can sell at other ports for money.

What you won't see in this slice are the other things: your men expect to earn gold and if you don't eventually earn enough and break up your pirate party, they'll mutiny. Also, you need to buy food to make sure they don't die as you travel to destinations, which you can either (a) sack or (b) visit the governor and receive new titles that boost your fame meter and give you a larger cut whenever you do break up the party. You also wouldn't see me buying special items to increase my skills, assembling treasure maps, stealthing, killing the Top 10 pirates, discovering hidden locations, escorting royalty, and much, much more.

I suppose if there's a single driver in the game, it's the assortment of mini-games that you play in order to keep the simulation running. Most are super simple and have endlessly repeating cut-scenes and transitions that come across as, generally, as pretty cheesy. Despite this, I've yet to tire of the tasks set before me: they're breezy, for one, and they also feed into the "one more time" mentality that keeps you up late with other games of this ilk.

While there are some simulation blues � feeling that countdown timer on your youth is a bit depressing and travelling without wind at your back chips away at that like none other � there is a lot to like about Pirates. It's deceptively deep, riddled with charming animations, colors, and characters, and offers a huge bag of things to do. It also runs well enough and is tuned well enough to recommend it on the iPad, which obviously is a huge plus. I like it, but I admit that it's probably for all the wrong reasons.

Now, excuse me while I sail up and down the world in service of Dutch dominance just so I can re-sack the towns for the Spanish. Ahoy!

For more than a year now, CAVE has had a reputation of releasing high quality shooters on the App Store that featured hefty amounts of action, depth, and replay value. Their bullet hell shooters Espgaluda II [$11.99/Lite] and Dodonpachi Resurrection [$11.99/Lite] are two of the finest shooters around, and they proved they could translate their particular brand of manic gameplay to a more traditional action game with Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$6.99/Lite]. CAVE's latest title, Deathsmiles [$11.99/Lite], furthers their reputation of offering top quality shmups and us yet another excellent shooter to add to our collection.

Like the aforementioned CAVE shooters, Deathsmiles consists of a mode that mimics the arcade version of the game as well as an iPhone-specific mode with exclusive features. The arcade mode features 4 different playable characters and 8 total stages to play. The underlying gameplay mechanics are fairly straightforward. Your character automatically fires, and a button in the bottom corner toggles firing to the left or right. There's also a button to toggle between a regular shot and a laser shot, and a third button that performs a lock-on shot.

Enemies approach at a dizzying pace, and every level from start to finish you are constantly being bombarded by an assortment of awesome baddies in all shapes and sizes, as well as absolutely massive boss battles. Slain enemies will drop items which can be collected and go towards filling a counter in the lower left corner of the screen. When that counter reaches a thousand, you can activate a powered-up state that will give you increased firepower for the duration it takes the counter to return back to zero.

These base mechanics are pretty standard shmup stuff, but as with most CAVE games the real brilliance comes from the hidden depth in the scoring systems. Playing through Deathsmiles simply to complete the game is an exhilarating (if brief) experience, but players who want to score big and are looking for an extra challenge must take advantage of the many nuances to how enemies are killed and items are collected. If you want to take the game to the next level and really learn the ins and outs of the gameplay, our forum member ColdCoffee has put together this excellent�detailed FAQ thread that explains pretty much all you need to know about arcade mode and scoring tricks.

Then there's the new iPhone mode which is similar to the arcade mode but is played with a brand new exclusive character that has an interesting alternate storyline. It also features a sweet weapon and equipment system that lets you customize your character with different items that have unique attributes. You can buy items from a shop in the game or collect them when they are randomly dropped by defeated enemies. The ability to collect items adds a very slight RPG element to the game, which is awesome, and your items and gold are carried over persistently to each new play of iPhone mode.

Just about the only flaw I have found with Deathsmiles isn't something that's the fault of the game itself, but rather it's an inherent problem due to actually controlling the game right on the touch screen. It's a horizontally scrolling game rather than a vertical one, and enemies come at your from both sides of the screen rather than just the top, so your character spends a lot of time right smack in the middle of the screen. This means that by nature of controlling your character with your thumb or finger, you're going to be blocking a good amount of enemies and bullets that enter from the sides of the screen. It doesn't entirely hinder the gameplay, and it's manageable with some practice and experimenting with the 3 available screen sizes, but it's really the only area where Deathsmiles falters and is worth noting.

If you can deal with the less than ideal control situation, Deathsmiles offers a just as robust and enjoyable shooter experience as their previous efforts, if not more so. On the easiest settings, the game can be enjoyed by even the biggest shmup newbie, but deeper below the surface lie advanced difficulties and complex scoring mechanics that will tax even hardcore veterans of the genre. Multiple characters and storylines as well as Game Center achievements and leaderboards ensure that Deathsmiles can be played over and over again for a long time to come.

So far, CAVE is 4 for 4 with top-notch game releases on the App Store. If you're any sort of shmup fan then you'll definitely want to at least try out the lite version of Deathsmiles, and if you do be sure to check out the scoring FAQ thread and the general discussion game thread in our forums to get the most out of the experience.

Early yesterday morning we posted a trailer for Ninja Fishing, an upcoming title by Gamenauts which centralizes around a fishing mechanic, then gathering up those fish to kill them with your katana once they've surfaced. The trailer shows how all the gameplay works:

We saw the trailer and thought it looked pretty cool, and decided to toss it up here because we often do that with trailers of upcoming games that seem neat. Unfortunately, the Twitterverse woke up a few hours later and started raising awareness of just how similar Ninja Fishing is to Vlambeer's Radical Fishing which predates Ninja Fishing by nearly a year. How similar? Well, here's the trailer for Radical Fishing:

What makes this even more interesting is that Vlambeer had been secretly working on a reboot of Radical Fishing entitled Ridiculous Fishing, and had just been sitting on the announcement, presumably until they were a little further along. Things obviously changed in light of the impending release of Ninja Fishing, and Vlambeer sent us the following screenshots of the upcoming Ridiculous Fishing re-imagination:

Now, this isn't the first time we've seen such blatant "inspiration" in the life of the App Store. Looking back, we were incredibly excited for Super Mega Worm before a remake of the original Super Death Worm was announced a day later. And, hell, Gameloft releases new cringeworthy "inspired" games all the time. In regards to this particular fishing drama, we've reached out to both developers involved for reactions.

Vlambeer mentions how they've been contacted by Gamenauts who admit that Ninja Fishing was in fact inspired by Radical Fishing, although Vlambeer wishes Gamenauts would change things to not resemble Radical Fishing quite so much. Gamenauts' told us their side of the story, and here's what they've got to say:

…we wanted to provide a more family friendly experience while incorporating elements such as humor, explosive gameplay elements, such as mines and dynamite, and a slicing gameplay mechanic. We brought the fishing mechanic into the game, but wanted to deliver it in a new way. We intend to give the proper credit to Vlambeer for the original inspiration.

As far as TriplePoint, Gamenauts' PR agency is concerned, they were unaware of Radical Fishing before this all came to light yesterday. Unfortunately, the App Store has become a fairly welcome home to games that are either direct clones, or highly inspired by other games, making this particular story fairly familiar. After all, Angry Birds is the result of inspiration from Crush the Castle just like Papi Jump planted their flag first in the vertical jumping scene before Doodle Jump grabbed it.

With that being said, I'm looking forward to both Ridiculous Fishing as well as Ninja Fishing, and sincerely hope that there's enough to differentiate the two to make two crazy fishing games worth keeping around on my iPhone.

Hey it's Wednesday again and there is a lot going on in the world of Apple. Maybe not specifically iOS, but Lion was released today along with new Mac Minis, MacBook Airs, and a really sweet Thunderbolt-powered LCD that I've been fighting the urge to order for most of the morning. Our sister-site MacRumors has been doing a bang-up job of covering all this, as well as the Apple investor call yesterday which included some ridiculous statistics on just how well Apple is doing as a company.

Anyway, here's how these Wednesday releases work: iOS developers are able to set future release dates for games. Since the App Store is an international market with regions all over the world, things get released in each region as it becomes the pre-set date they're supposed to be released on. Thanks to its proximity to the International Date Line, things pop up on the New Zealand App Store first, followed by Asian markets, then European markets before appearing on the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern.

Here's what's coming tonight:

A Cloudy Adventure, 99� � Forum Thread � Apparently, a gang of evil squares have stolen a bunch of wheels of cheese and because of this you need to help a cloud on an adventure? Even though the premise doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, I love wacky physics-based platformers, and have high hopes for this one.

Allied Star Police, Free � Forum Thread � This free game is the latest from Popcap's 4th and Battery. Better yet, it's the product of 9-year-old game designer, Owain Weinert who helped Popcap make the game via the Make a Wish Foundation. It's a lane-based battle game, and I'm expecting it to be just as much fun as 4th and Battery's previous freebies.

Back to the Future Episode 5 HD, $6.99 � Forum Thread � The exciting conclusion to the Back to the Future series of adventure games. If you've managed to make you way through the previous four installments, you might as well snag this one too, in the interest of not being left hanging on what happens.

Deadlock: Online, Free � Forum Thread � This dual stick shooter has a number of interesting twists: It's universal, played online with up to 8 players in multiple game modes, oh and it's free. There's daily tournaments to play in, 5 maps with more on the way, and tons more.

Dream Track Nation, 99� � Forum Thread � This physics-based sidescrolling stunt-centric racing game just looks awesome. Really, this is the kind of game I'd have been happy to spend $10 (or more) for on Xbox Live Arcade available on the App Store for a buck. I hope the game is successful enough to spawn a community of track makers, as Dream Track Nation could have infinite replay value.

Feed The Duck, 99� � Forum Thread � I think forum member Nullroar described this game the best in its thread: "It uses the wildly successful 'physics-based' genre, combines it with equally acclaimed 'cute, flightless birds-as-projectiles that you control' trope and introduces some clever twists." Yeah, I don't know how this one won't do well either.

Hero Teams, 99� � Forum Thread � This game looks an awful lot like Worms, but I've got to admit, I'm totally digging the art style. Hopefully gameplay follows suit.

Jet Set Go, 99� � Forum Thread � Crazy about time management game? Well, this one is apparently made by the team that had their fingers all over Sally's Spa. Themed with a travel agency, you'll need to make sure all of your customers happy through typical time management style actions and mini games.

Leap Worm, 99� � Forum Thread � In this game, you jump from planet to planet collecting stars. Yeah, the gameplay mechanic has been done more than a few times before, but Igloo Games always seems to make great games, so I've got high hopes for this one.

Mega Bad, 99� � Forum Thread � It seems like this game is a cross between Tilt to Live and several weird themes ranging from Zelda to Star Wars. Yoda, apparently, even is a boss in the game. Curious.

P-47 � The Phantom Fighter, $1.99 � Forum Thread � This game has a heck of a lot of history behind it through various ports and arcade machines, and I'm happy to finally see it on the App Store. Heck, now I can play it for eternity for what amounts to 8 plays of the old arcade.

Pet Society Vacation, Free � Forum Thread � EA's latest free to play game revolves around cute looking endlessly customizable pets. It doesn't do much for me, but I wouldn't be shocked at all to see this high up on the top grossing lists in a few days.

Qvoid, $1.99 � Forum Thread � This clever puzzle game centralizes around moving a cube around to clear colors from each level. Check out the above trailer, it looks really cool.

Sid Meier's Pirates!, $3.99 � Forum Thread � The Pirates! series has been amazingly popular, similar to basically everything Sid Meier touches. In the game, you take control of one of 27 different included ships, and do various pirate activities. Oh, it's even optimized for the iPad 2.

The Jolly Gang's: Spooky Adventure, $1.99 / Lite / HD / Lite HD � Forum Thread � I had a great time with Hamlet, even though some portions of the game involved puzzles that were beyond insane. I'm hoping for a similar adventure with The Jolly Gang.

Wooords, 99� � Forum Thread � Alright, so there have been a ton of similar word making games in the life of the App Store, but I really like the style of this one. Who doesn't love refrigerator magnets?

Zombie Gunship, 99� � Forum Thread � The coolest levels in Call of Duty games are always the AC-130 shooting levels (alright, and the sniper levels). Zombie Gunship takes that similar AC-130 gunning gameplay and puts you up against zombies, and I'm all for it.

8 Ball Pool, 99� � Forum Thread � 8 ball pool on a timer, and you've got to pocket as many balls before the time runs out. The Flash version apparently has been played over a billion times as well.

Big news for those of you on the fence about Continuity 2 [$.99] and for those of you who went ahead grabbed the game after our glowing review: a free trial version of the puzzle title is hitting this Thursday, featuring a total of 11 levels picked from the game's total 50. Also, the full version is set to receive Game Center achievements support in a future update.

The Continuity series began as an award-winning flash game, but soon found its audience with the sequel on the App Store. It's a really creative puzzle game that has you flipping pieces of levels in order to progress or solve puzzles. Like most of its ilk, Continuity 2 features a rich drip-feed of new mechanics and concepts, so you'll never really get settled. Also, if you've a competitive edge, there's completion time level tracking.

You can read more about the game here, if you'd like. I'm digging it so far, which strikes me as odd considering how easily I'm frustrated by puzzle games in general. I guess I've got something for stick figures and simplistic art direction.

I saw a lot of cool things over the week of insanity that was WWDC and E3, but the game that got me jazzed the most was Pocket Heroes. Some of the most fun I've had in my life gaming has been sitting around a table with friends playing pen and paper RPGs. However, as many former Dungeons & Dragons (and similar) players know all too well, once your gaming group graduates college, gets married, has kids, and all that other fun stuff, those dice rolling marathons that used to go until the sun came up become increasingly rare.

As mentioned in my E3 preview, F5 Games hopes to solve this problem by leveraging push notifications and just how stupidly well asynchronous turn-based gaming works on iOS devices. Instead of needing to round up a half dozen of your friends whose schedule all allow for a real-world campaign, you'll be able to play a similar style turn-based RPG right on your phone, with everyone taking their turn whenever they have time throughout the day.

We've got an incredibly active thread on our forums where the developers are doing a great job of engaging our community, and today they posted the following demo video:

Now, before jumping to any conclusions, keep in mind that this game is still heavily in development. As mentioned in the video, basically everything is still being tweaked. For more information on Pocket Heroes, the best thing you can do is check out the previously mentioned forum thread. Alternatively, the F5 Games blog has a few other tidbits of information, including a shot of the crazy contraption used to shoot the above video.

In a move that makes a lot of sense, PopCap Games has announced that it has penned an agreement with Sony Ericsson that will see its titles pre-loaded on the Xperia Play mini and the pro later this summer. News of this comes mere days after EA's acquisition of the casual games developer and subsequent promises to further its reach. This will be the first time PopCap Games' games have been available in Europe on Android.

Chuzzle [$2.99], the lesser-known puzzle game from PopCap, will be pre-loaded in its entirety on new Plays, while trial versions of Plants vs. Zombies [$2.99 / HD] and Peggle [$2.99] will round out the offerings. A healthy amount of native Play games at the moment are PSOne titles, so this is a welcome shot in the arm to an aging line-up of downloadable titles. On the other hand… I suppose these games have been available on a billion other formats for several years, too.

If anything, take this as a sign to come from PopCap as it starts expanding what it can offer under the wings of EA and its larger, consumer-facing bandwidth. "As the Android ecosystem matures, PopCap is committed to providing best-in-class game experiences for Android game players," a rep said in a statement. Fingers crossed for Peggle Nights!

In somewhat related news, Sony Ericcson also wrapped up an exclusive with Mojang. The platform is, at least, trying to be competitive. And really, the best thing that could happen for iOS gamers is for Apple to see some serious competition, especially if you buy into the idea that competition breeds innovation.

[Via TechFlash]

The studio that built Skittles the Tiger is dipping its toes in App Store development later in 2011. Kinectimals creator Frontier Developments has announced its intentions to port its critically successful WiiWare puzzle title, LostWinds, to Android, the iPhone, and the iPad. LostWinds originally hit in 2008 and was soon followed by a sequel in 2009.

Eurogamer nabbed the exclusive on this one via a conversation with Frontier head honcho David Braben. Braben showed the pub the game running on an iPad and demoed its virtual control / touch control scheme. As of right now, players will move Toku with a virtual joystick, but will be able to create the wind effects with on-screen touch.

Not familiar with LostWinds? You and a lot of other people, I'm guessing, considering it debuted and was soon buried on a lackluster digital service notorious for its clutter. Toku is the lead, but the real star is the wind that you conjure with gestures. Check it out:

Braben is a big deal in retro circles. He co-wrote the space trading game Elite in the 80s and went on to establish Frontier. Since then, he's had a hand in Frontier: Elite II, V2000, Darxide and several other titles leading up to its more recent, more gesture-friendly titles. We'll be keeping our eyes on this one, for sure.

[Via Eurogamer]