We were shot some unexpected, but welcome news from the folks at�Double Fine this afternoon. The studio � which is probably most known for Brutal Legend but let's not talk about that because ugh � has launched its first iOS application: the Psychonauts Vault Viewer [Free]. Milestone!

As its name implies, it's a companion app loaded with every slide from the game's vault. The added bonus that the app adds is commentary from Double Fine's Tim Schafer and Scott Campbell. In addition to learning a thing or two about the game, you'll probably get a few laughs. Also, it's free and universal.

Here's a small taste of Tim and Scott in just one of the slides:

TIM: "Now, he's way up in the air. Is there an artistic term for that? Can you tell?"

SCOTT: "Uh, air-spective."

TIM: "And what is the dad doing? Is he unapproving? Is he saying, 'why are you throwing my baby in the air?' "

SCOTT: "He's probably like, 'I don't understand the fun in this.' "

TIM:"And you snuck in a little cleavage, too, which is your way… sneaky."

�

In other Psychonauts news, Double Fine has also launched a Steam update for the title, adding in cloud saves and achievements and a small tweak said to make the its brutal Meat Circus level "slightly less punishing." A Mac version of Psychonauts [$9.99] is also now live on the Mac App Store and Steam. Play this game, people! It's great!

Back in the depths of 2008, we had our hearts broken by I Love Katamari. The controls were problematic, there were performance issues, it was Katamari, but it was a mess. Now Namco is taking another shot at winning our love with Katamari Amore [Free].

Full disclosure: I'm a Katamari fan from way back. I got in on the ground floor with Katamari Damacy on PS2 and I've played every console release since. Over the years the formula has become a little stale, the craziness has started to feel a little forced, but I'm still a person who loves to roll things up. Sushi, cats, Ultraman, I'm not picky. So it's with a heavy heart that I tell you that Katamari Amore is a loveless thing.

Yes, yes, it's Katamari! On iOS! But that's not enough. The framerate gets choppy at times, especially on my 3GS. The controls are improved over the last outing, now offering one virtual pad, two virtual pads or tilt. The two-stick method is essentially the same as the console controls, if a bit stiff. The method for switching controls is awkward and confusing, but whatever. Technically this game is pretty much fine. It's just completely and utterly joyless.

The level design is the worst offender. One of the joys of the Katamari series is exploration. Strange scenarios can be found if you pay attention. You might find bears corralling humans at a campfire, or a hidden shrine to sashimi. It doesn't often make sense, but it rewards curiosity. In Katamari Amore, you'll find whatever random items are needed to make you bigger, strewn appropriately to allow you to progress. The most interesting thing I found in my travels was a space dog with an astronaut, and I guess the game thought it was interesting too because I got an achievement for rolling it up.

And that's emblematic of the whole problem with Katamari Amore. Nothing is there just for fun. To clear most of the Story Mode levels you'll need to roll up nearly every item available. This turns the game from a frantic size race to a tedious exercise in hunting down the one item you need to get just big enough to get the next batch of items. It's a bare-minimum philosophy that permeates everything � the King of All Cosmos's dialogue, the levels, the items and the entertainment value.

We mentioned that this game would have a special Pac-Man themed level, and it does. But don't get too excited. It's basically one level of the classic game, but with terrible controls and an obnoxious camera angle. There are better ways to play Pac-Man.

If none of this concerns you and you just want to get your Katamari on, here's what you need to know. The game is free to download, and contains one level of Time Attack mode. With an in-app purchase of $3.99, you can unlock all six currently available levels. Each has a Story Mode (in which the King asks you to roll up a specific item that always happens to be the largest item in the level), time attack, an exact size challenge and eternal mode. There are more packs on their way, but there's a reasonable amount of content here to start with.

It's not that Katamari Amore is completely terrible. There are a few technical speedbumps, but it's competent on the whole. Some of our forum users have decried the graphics, but simple art is a series staple. And it's a functional game, with plenty to do. It's just that it could be so much more.

Most of the things Namco has left out aren't the things that would push the limits of the platform � they're the humor and the spirit of the series. iOS games can be made with love and joy, they can be funny and charming. Those are things the Katamari series has had in spades, and it's a shame they're missing here.

Metro Games' Pixel Ranger [$.99] is a deliciously offbeat vertical shooter that executes on its old-school SCUMM-like art direction and its jokey It Came From Outer Space vibe well, but it's an otherwise forgettable game on a mechanical level. A crippling jump mechanic that feels out of place, a horrific control scheme, and poor checkpointing hamstring the action and combine for a storm of constant frustration. Pixel Ranger looks good, is hilarious when it intends to be, and it has a lot of potential, but it falls flat in the face of its issues.

Like most of its breed, Pixel Ranger combines tons of overhead enemy archetypes and power-ups into an increasingly feverish orgy of upwards-based shooting and pixelated vomit. Its angle is that shooting should be methodical: ammunition is a finite resource and in order to get more, you'll need to take out enemies and gather up what they spill onto the ground.

Bullets pass through enemies and ammunition counts stack from level to level, which puts the emphasis of the action on multi-kills. Pixel Ranger does a good job incentivizing the multi-kills specifically with rewards, but power-ups in particular provide the heaviest relief and the most tactical opportunities. They're pretty powerful in general � a great touch.

The balance being struck between the ammunition and kill count goes haywire when you're asked to start running around and handling ground-based opponents. Basic side-to-side movement is tilt-based while shooting and jumping are handled with touches to the screen. When the action gets hot, you'll need to jump, tilt, and shoot at the same time, meaning you need Twister two fingers on the screen and tilt your phone to and fro simultaneously. It's hard to do with any sort of panache and often impossible depending on where you are when ground enemies emerge.

Jumping in particular just feels like an afterthought. It doesn't jive with the core action, and in the worst cases, just gets in the way of it. When you have to stop and consider jumps over environmental or enemy obstacles, you take your eyes off of the prize.

The lack of checkpointing stacks on the finger frustration. If Pixel Ranger wants to punish you for not having the finger dexterity and muscle memory of a Rubik's Cube enthusiast, fine, but the price of not being god-like is a total restart of an entire chapter. The pixel count you have in a previous level carries over to the next, so it's easy to see why you can't just "reload" a level, but this fact doesn't negate the pain of having to start over.

The glaringly awesome part of Pixel Ranger, which at times override whatever bitterness I feel when I think about the game as a whole, is its art and sound direction. It reminds me of zoomed out Version 1 Maniac Mansion. The cowboy avatar has that blockiness and feature set of Mansion's characters and the color selection utilized in the intro scene had me re-calling some weird, totally unrelated experiences. The cutesy "aliens stole my lady and I'm also a cowboy" contrivance somehow works and brings a flavor that informs everything in the title thematically well, including even the (hilarious) power-ups.

Excluding the wonky jumping mechanic, I like all of the ideas in Pixel Ranger. Its look and style, its enemies, its attrition-based vertical shooting, and its power-ups are strong parts of a whole that, unfortunately, doesn't feel cohesive. This is the kind of game that sort of flat-lines itself over the haul and that's unfortunate. Granted, it's not terrible, but it's not a great game, either. We suggest that if you're into its style and methodology, to go ahead and give it a try, but just be weary that it has its share of faults.

If you're not familiar with Johnny Two Shoes, you really should be. They're responsible for Plunderland [$2.99], which we thought was absolutely fantastic in our review. It's a super clever physics-based pirate game that, while being a little old by App Store standards, has aged wonderfully. It's even universal, which only serves to sweeten the deal further. Anyway, they revealed their next game earlier today. Take a look at the trailer:

Details are vague at this point, but I've managed to juice some information out of the looser of the Johnny Two Shoes brothers. Prevail is a game about the small planet where your character lives. It's on this world where you've got a happy, beautiful, and technology-free existence. Well, some jerk aliens (I added the "jerk" part myself, they could be nice, who knows.) abduct you and you begin to slowly realize that there is so much more to the universe than your tiny existence of building and farming. It's at this point where the game shifts to a more exploration-centric experience where you're discovering new planets, species, and need to decide what to do with them.

All of these things and more will be revealed in future trailers, along with additional "secret" features of the game. I loved Plunderland, and according to Johnny Two Shoes, "We want to make Plunderland look like sh*t." If they manage to do that, we're going to have one hell of a game on our hands.

A few days back we posted word that John Calhoun would soon be launching an iOS version of his classic early Macintosh game,�Glider, in the App Store. Glider Classic [link] is now available for download and I've had a chance to put it through its paces. Let me share my impressions.

The good news is that Glider Classic for iOS is just what Glider was for the early Macs: quaint casual gaming with nicely frustrating puzzle elements and a simple visual aesthetic.

That simple assessment should be enough to let those familiar with the original title know that it's definitely worth a grab. For the uninitiated, let me explain the magic of the formula. (But I'll go ahead and toss out a spoiler: you want this game, too.)

Glider was originally released by Soft Dorothy in 1988 as shareware. It presents a simple proposition: fly your paper glider through a house filled with obstacles, room to room, and get it outside. The only controls were (and are) "move left" and "move right." Air vents on the floor and sources of heat, such as lights and stereo equipment, keep your glider aloft. And don't land on anything. That's it. It's a task that sounds far simpler than it is, and giving it your best is a whole lot of fun.

The original game featured modest aesthetics � line drawn shelves, simple dithered object shading, etc. � and that was, in part, forced by the limitations of the original platform, which was a Macintosh with an 8MHz CPU and a 512�384 pixel black and white display. The developer made the best of it way back when and the result was a charmingly simple, yet complex, casual game. The formula worked, and worked well. And so, in bringing Glider to the staggeringly more powerful iOS platform of today, Calhoun has maintained the control and visual aesthetics � the former by way of left / right tap controls, and the latter by entirely re-creating the visuals, but doing so in an intentionally minimalist fashion. The result is a game that looks and plays like the modern analog of the original that it is.

For those familiar with the earlier versions of Glider, Calhoun indicates that Glider Classic, from a gameplay perspective, is something of a mix of all of the titles from version 4, on down. He considers his commercial release of the game, Glider Pro from Casady & Greene, to have strayed a bit from the solid formula of the earlier releases, and so it was not a basis for the iOS version.

The house in Glider Classic features five different floors plus a basement level to fly through. The first floor is a pretty easy run, but the challenge ramps up notably as you progress. The developer not only hopes to add more houses to the game in a future update, but may also bring the classic Mac OS "house editor" to Mac OS X Lion, which would allow users to create their own play areas for the iOS version as well as the possible Mac App Store version that he indicates is likely to arrive at some point.

The current v1.0 release of Glider Classic runs on the iPhone 3GS and 3G iPod touch devices, on up, including the iPad (it's a universal application). Calhoun let me know, however, that he has already submitted the v1.0.1 update to Apple, which enables support for earlier iPhones and iPod touch devices, and squashes a few minor bugs, as well.

Glider is just a great little game with a lot of personality. And whether or not you've spent time with it in the past, it's a treat to play on modern iOS devices. The only criticism I can make. based on my time with the title so far. is the lack of online leaderboards. However, I discovered in a recent conversation with the developer that Game Center integration is on the list for a future update.

As indicated in our earlier post, John Calhoun recently left Apple after 16 years in order to bring Glider Classic and other titles to iOS. Last month he released�Lab Solitaire [App Store], a photo-realistic version of Free Cell.�For a bit more history on his days as a Mac game maker, I recommend checking out Bitmob's article entitled "Dreaming of a thousand-room house: The evolution of Glider," as well as MacScene's�two part interview.

Glider Classic is currently available for a limited time at an introductory price of $0.99.

I'm a bit of a closet Sims admirer. Not exactly a die-hard fan, but I appreciate what the series does in a lot of ways. I've still kept up with each release and although the iOS ones haven't been constantly solid, The Sims: Medieval [$4.99] still stuck out to me as playing to two of my weaknesses, wizards and sandbox play.

The most obviously different thing about The Sims: Medieval is the directed nature of it (aside from the setting, clearly). After picking your social type and designing your character, you're immediately struck upside the head with a few quests and tasks to complete that don't inherently feature screwing around, socializing and trying to make your Sim make kissy faces at other Sims.

The experience simply isn't as random as most Sims games. For a lot of people, that's going to be a good thing, for others, it's going to completely defeat the purpose of a Sims game. The Sims: Medieval ends up playing out more like an extended version of Fable than a traditional Sims game, minus the hack-and-slash portions.

The game is designed around these new rules though, so it works surprisingly well. You'll spend most of your time venturing around the tiny village and completing tasks for people, which include the likes of fishing and the occasional fight. Your character will advance along depending on how you act, but unlike many previous games, The Sims: Medieval seems more interested in seeing you succeed on a larger level.

You'll still get the bulk of experience you expect from a Sims game � you can outfit your home (but not design one), socialize, fall in love, become evil, sleep, eat, and everything else, but the sandbox nature is played down in importance. It's all about forward momentum � you want to complete quests to master skills to become a wizard to join a party so you can run a castle. It's not as much about setting up a world with circumstances and seeing what happens.

It might be best to just describe the course of my Sims life. Upon waking in his house, he wandered off to complete some tasks, including picking flowers, starting a fight and fishing. Bored with such trivial things, he decided to instead concentrate on religion and in turn, began appealing to people to join his new religion, Thoronian. If the other Sims were not willing to join the cult, he would hit them � you can't kill people, unfortunately. Bored of these tasks, I sent him along to steal chickens, pickpocket and do otherwise dastardly things until he eventually built up enough rep to keep a kingdom of his own. He then married a fair maiden with a metal hat and a pike, and they slept together for all eternity.

The games shortcomings are on par with other Sims releases, music is repetitive and features far too much flute and some of the touch commands don't seem to respond very well. The larger town map is also a disaster to use, as the marked spots you can visit don't have obvious touch-locations to get to them. It's also iPhone and iPod Touch only, which is too bad, because The Sims: Medieval would be terrific on an iPad.

So, for all intents and purposes, lets call this a light RPG with mild sandbox elements � one that's trimmed a bit from its PC counterpart � it's a tiny, handheld version of a game that's already a bit scaled big from its originals. Still, it's one of the first truly different experiences of the Sims in a while and although it's a more directed experience, it offers enough new to keep casual players happy. If you're partial to medieval fantasy settings, this might be the one Sims title to really draw you in.

I want to love Madfinger's Shadowgun [$7.99]. I really do. It's a lovely looking game, one of the best on iOS, but it's so riddled with holes, crashes, bugs and repetition, it's easier to walk away frustrated than in awe of it.

You play John Slade, a brute with a gun hired to bring back a mad scientist. There's a whole back-story about how corporations rule the world and whatnot, but none of that makes a difference to the core of the game. It's basically you and your A.I. making bad jokes at each other while a mad scientist is on the loose causing havoc.

Shadowgun is a looker in all respects and running it on both an iPhone 3GS and an iPad produces amazing results (although, text is incredibly blurry on the 3GS). If you look closely, you can see some of the tricks Madfinger used to make it run and look the way it does, but as far as the environments go, it's hard not to sit with your mouth agape in awe.

There has been a lot of speculation that this is a Gears of War clone, but it's not as blatant as it appears. Yes, it's a cover-based shooter with enemies that appear to dig bondage, but the comparisons pretty much stop there. The guns aren't as fun to play with as Gears and the lack of any squad mechanic ensures Shadowgun won't be confused as a Gears clone by anyone who's actually played it.�The weapon variety is stagnant, all feeling relatively similar and none of them standing out from the usual suspects in action games � shotgun, SMG, rocket launcher, grenade launcher � you get the point.

For movement, the controls work well and cover is handled automatically when you get near a wall. However, I was either running into a bug or an odd feature on both devices that would lock my gun in place while shooting a little over half the time. It was never consistent when it would decide to do this, and was amazingly frustrating during portions of the game that had enemies who actually moved. Maybe it's supposed to be like this, but if it is, it doesn't work well.

It's a good thing the enemies don't move much. Most of them will be content appearing on screen, running to cover, then popping up to shoot at you. There are a few different types of enemies who don't do this, but their movement is mechanical and predictable throughout. They're not stupid so much as programed to only follow a set path, regardless of where you are or what you're doing.

Then there are the crashes. So many crashes. In around four hours, the game had crashed around twenty times on my iPhone 3GS, then, after the third hard-reset, it decided to delete my save game on the second to last level. Full disclaimer: I didn't bother going back to it at this point.

I've learned to deal with a lot of technical issues with games in the past, but the one I have no tolerance for is a deleted save game. It's the gaming equivalent of blacking out at party and finding pictures of yourself making out with a goat in the morning. It's heart breaking, frustrating and there's nothing you can do about it.

Maybe if Shadowgun was a little more diverse I would be interested in pushing through it again, but the bulk of the game follows the same formula on repeat: walk into area, trigger event, enemies rush out, hide behind cover, shoot. There are enemies later on with different attack-styles, but most of your time will be spent in long corridors with unexplainable cover, shooting at grunts.

All of that said, there are a few interesting mix-ups throughout the campaign worth noting. Boss fights, for example, are well thought out and shift from combat to minor puzzle solving. There are also Simon style hacking mini-games spread throughout to mix things up, as well as light environmental puzzles here and there. They work as a nice respite from the game's shooting heavy tone, but are never challenging enough to offer more than a quick stop-gap in the action.

I have a whole list of pet peeves Shadowgun manages to break � poorly chosen checkpoints, unpredictable splash damage, and the bizarre choice of chapter ends � all things that will frustrate some more than others.

If Madfinger can fix the crashing and save-game deletion issues with a patch, they're still left with a repetitive, but lovely looking shooter. There are hints of true quality in the boss fights and some minor sections of the campaign, but the majority relies on a simple, corridor design that's hard to find engaging for very long.

Big Blue Bubble's�Fling a Thing [99�] is one of those simplistic games with an almost indescribable appeal. Its core mechanic is so refined and entertaining and its constituent parts exist in such a strong harmony that you can't escape re-visiting it. Fling a Thing is great because of the sum of its parts � the sound direction, the presentation, the action, and even the level progression system live to serve each other and it makes for a good time over and over again.

Fling a Thing is what happens when a studio takes the Doodle Jump formula and gives it structure, and then swaps the alien for an insect that has a suction-cup for a mouth. In the game, you control a sticky-mouthed "Thing" that adheres to glass panes. By grabbing its tail, you gain the power to fling the Thing in an arc. Sometimes you'll need to attach to other bits of glass, but more often you'll be flinging to bubbles, which act as a puzzle device.

What makes this mechanic pop is the approach to the puzzle design. Bubble puzzles are all free-form and not available in bits and bobs of UI. The number of "flings" you get at the start of the experience is all you'll get until you're out. As you progress, you'll get shots at earning more flings via power-ups, but not enough to entitle you to horse around.

In a larger sense, Fling a Thing is a game about attrition and patience, and that's a smart way to design a puzzle-light experience. You could go ballistic and waste flings on clearing four bubbles, but wouldn't it be better to wait to fling until they line up, the game asks? You never know how much further up you could go, it teases.

Sometimes its fun to be a game manager as well an active participant. If you want to be critical and reserve what you can, you'll be rewarded. If you want to just fling around, there's simple entertainment to be with that, too.�Big Blue Bubble nails the two approaches and seamlessly integrates them together.

The progression components back up the idea of infinite-ish play, as the game offers up various unlockables including different Things to play with, different level themes, and modifiers for the power-ups you'll encounter in exchange for stars, which are the game's currency. You can buy stars for a real-world price or gather them as they spawn randomly. You'll need a lot to purchase stuff, so be prepared.

All the pieces of Fling a Thing fit together well. The fling mechanic and your strange avatar are held up by the otherworldly look of the visual direction while also propping up the bubble puzzle mechanics, and the design direction is bolstered by a rich progression system that keeps rewards coming with continued effort. However, there are some nagging issues.�Foremost, it's hard to fire your Thing with accuracy when its in a corner. Also, the game supports ads before each new game, which is always kind of a bummer in a game that you've paid for. They're unobtrusive and easily skipped, but it would be nice to be able to disable them altogether.

The mark of a strong mobile game is often how much you go back to it and everything in Fling a Thing beckons more play. Fling a Thing is a sharply put together a package, assembled with a care to simple refinement that we often see in the indie space. Give it a spin if you need something fast and fun. You'll dig it.

When it comes to the crowded Tower Defense genre, a game truly needs to take an innovative (or extremely well-produced) approach in order to make its mark. Unfortunately, Tiny Defense [$0.99] doesn't really satisfy this lofty goal. Sure, Tiny Defense manages to take the core gameplay of Plants vs Zombies and offer a twist on the traditional formula (as well as a vastly different setting), but it just doesn't offer any sort of gameplay� experience that can't be found in better games in the genre.

As mentioned above, Tiny Defense closely mimics tower defense gameplay made popular by Plants vs Zombies � gamers place various attacking and support units on the right side of the screen in order to defend against baddies coming in from the left. If any enemies get to the other side, you lose a life. Lose enough lives, and the game is over. Tiny Defense differs somewhat in its theme and perspective. Instead of plants, you control a variety of robotic units that are defended against evil (and usually much bigger) robots. Also, instead of the gameplay arena taking place from a top-down perspective, Tiny Defense has a purely 2D perspective.

This change in perspective means that Tiny Defense features a bit more specialized units than other Tower Defense games, as you now have to deal with air units as well as ground units. It's not a particularly big change to the gameplay, but having to ensure proper unit compatibility for both ground and air does require a bit more strategy than normally expected. In addition, I appreciate the inclusion of both air units that attack ground targets and vice versa, as the extra variety certainly increases the amount of variety in terms of strategic placement (and selection) of units. This extra twist is certainly one of the high points for Tiny Defense.

Another thing Tiny Defense does well is its availability of content. There are a ton of robots to unlock, as well as a large amount of stages and mini-games to play through. It's also all available up-front without any annoying IAP. One complaint I had was with the general length of each stage � I just thought they were too short. Overall, however, Tiny Defense should not disappoint as far as getting your money's worth is concerned.

Unfortunately, Tiny Defense doesn't offer much else in the way of innovative or even particularly well-done gameplay. Even with the changes mentioned above, you will definitely get a Plants vs Zombies vibe from the moment you place your first crystal-producing (think: Sunflower) support robot. Everything from the robot selection screen at the start of each stage to the mini-games to even the in-game "store" that has you buying new units and various power-ups just feels rehashed.

Even more disappointing, the parts of Tiny Defense that don't give you that sensation of déj� vu just seem to lack any personality. I just couldn't bring myself to care about the story, much less about my individual units. Being able to create that sort of personal attachment goes a long way towards enjoying a game such as this, and I just wasn't feeling it from Tiny Defense.

It may seem unfair to compare Tiny Defense to one of the 'giants' of the Tower Defense genre, but when your game elicits the same sort of general gameplay feel, it can't be helped. Simply put, Tiny Defense is an average tower defense game with small twists on the gameplay that don't particularly propel it above mediocrity. �If you're a fan of games like Plants vs Zombies and you're looking to try anything with a remotely similar gameplay experience, then Tiny Defense will certainly satisfy that urge. However, if you're looking for the next hit Tower Defense game, you won't find it here.