On this week's episode of The TouchArcade Show, we powered through discussions of Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 in order to bring you best in class talk on iOS games, news, and interesting issues. At the top of the show, we dive into our real-life experiences with the iPhone 4S in the afterglow of its release. Later, we dig into Uppercut's Epoch, Zombieville USA 2, Angry Birds' record sales, and your user questions.

Lots of stuff on this week's show and we hope you enjoy it. If you'd like to listen, click on one of those links just below. If you'd like to subscribe to us and receive all our show's, including our awesome bonus editions, the second they hit the Internet, do so via the iTunes Store or Zune.

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GAMES

NEWS

Can't get enough of open world sandbox crime games? Well, Gameloft has what you need. Gangstar Rio: City of Saints is on its way to the App Store, and per this brand new gameplay trailer, is packed with helicopters, limos, tanks, explosions, and everything else a good crime spree requires. Take a look:

No release date yet, but it's coming "very soon." My bets are on this being part of Gameloft's upcoming holiday lineup, which definitely (in my eyes) means it'll be out way before the holiday rush- Potentially as early as next week.

Bit Blot's 2D side-scrolling adventure game Aquaria [$4.99] for the iPad is a gorgeous and well-produced title with a sharp emphasis on world-building and character growth. It's good, and I think the reason why it strikes me as such a quality download has more to do with its atmospheric allure than anything else. Aquaria begs you to explore with every ounce of its being by consistently introducing mechanical novelties, alien setpieces, fascinating creatures, and drip-feeding a not-quite-but-totally convoluted story that keeps you thinking that you're on the precipice of figuring out what's going on with your mercreature in the game's beautiful underwater world.

Most of the missteps in Aquaria are tied to the limitations of its new platform. Indie developer Bit Blot and its partners have masterfully replaced the cursor with finger, allowing for complete character movement without virtual pads. Strikingly, the shooting and "singing" components require virtual buttons. When these actions are coupled with the need to move fast, you�inadvertently�start playing Finger Twister instead of Aquaria.

For the most part, control isn't a huge problem. Aquaria's world has its share of danger and the occasional boss fight, but�as a whole it's more of an ambient, leisurely experience that's more centered on exploration of its lovingly crafted environments. It is somewhat telling where the priorities reside, actually, just by how routine the fighting parts tend to feel.

The art in Aquaria, in particular, is captivating and subtle. Bit Blot doesn't beat you over the head with concentrated "look at me" moves pointing out the ridiculous level of hand-drawn detail and quality present it both it, and for that matter, the marvelous sound and music production. On the other hand, the writing is pretty over-the-top.

Song is a bit part of the experience. You play as a mercreature who, one day, begins a quest to uncover the past of this world. Your 'weapon,' initially, is music that can conjure various abilities, including shielding as well as the ability to lift heavy objects or turn your mercreature into a fire-slinging demon.

You pick the notes to songs that summon these powers, kinda like how you played the ocarina in Ocarina of Time. The core difference is the visual representation of the notes, all of which seem to have a connection a specific element. Puzzles all subtely require a knowledge of what's at your disposal and often challenge you to think about combinations or around what you have. Environments usually lay down a heaping of clues, which helps and doesn't necessarily rob you of grand "a-ha!" moments.

If it helps, think of Aquaria as a pretentious Metroid-vania based in a fantastic sea. It adapts and adheres to a lot of those tropes, actually, so much so that it's pacing�can take massive dives. Want to explore over here? Nope, you can't because there's a big rock and you need to go over here first in order to learn the song to move it. Oh, you don't know where to go? Check your map. See that area over there that you didn't get to earlier? There's probably something over there you can open with a power you uncovered in order to earn something else to uncover another location or item. To be clear, this game delivers on all your wants from a Metroid-vania -- I might not be the biggest fan, but that doesn't mean you can't be.

Its gating and, as a consequence, your laser-honed desire to move past those barriers obscures some of the finer elements of Aquaria. Like, the cooking system, which allows you to take bits of "loot" or food you recover from enemies or plants in the world and morph them into something that boosts the stats of your character. On the other hand, these more subtle elements are what makes Aquaria so entertaining; it doesn't spoon feed you or tell you necessarily what you can do. It just lets you exist in its world.

Aquaria is refreshing. It's one of the handful of games on the App Store that you could call "complex" and entertaining in the same sentence while not subsequently pointing out an elaborate and infinitely tweakable RPG sub-menu or sub-system that has a hand in all the on-screen action. Not only is it beautiful, but it's engaging in its own way and has a host of things to find, explore, and be challenged by. Go grab it, already.

Ed. Note: Images in this review are from the PC version, which are basically identical to the iPad game but without all the text found in the screenshots on iTunes.

We're massive fans of Venan Entertainment, so much so that if I was into tattoos I'd probably have the Venan logo somewhere in my inevitable video game themed full sleeve, back collage, or somewhere else. Anyway, they're responsible for Space Miner which was our iPhone Game of the Year last year. Unfortunately, even though we went nuts over the game it didn't achieve the kind of commercial success it needed, which seems to be a similar sad song we hear with way too many great iOS games. So, while a potential sequel has been relegated to the Venan back burner, Venan has been full steam ahead on their free to play RPG Book of Heroes.

There's massive amounts of customization, 75 unique quests, 25 feats, bosses, and loot galore among other things. Here's the first 20 minutes of gameplay courtesy of forum member Sanuku:

These kind of free to play RPG's can be a little difficult to get excited about, especially as more and more developers hop on the free to play bandwagon… But, Venan being attached to it definitely caught our eye and we'll be giving it a once over to prepare for its US launch in the not too distant future. For more details, check out the thread on our forums, and if you're a customer of the Canada, UK, or New Zealand App Store, you can download the game right now.

Canada, UK, and New Zealand App Store Link: Book of Heroes, Free

We've had our eye on Evertales for quite a while now. It's a collaboration between Crescent Moon Games, creators of Aralon [$6.99], Gears [$2.99], and Siegecraft [99�] (and more) along with Thunder Game Works who are responsible for the ridiculously popular Trenches [99�] family of games. Evertales is a side-scrolling action-centric brawler that comes packed with three different characters as well as the gloriously cliche premise of needing to vanquish the "Dark Lord of Darkness."

Check out the trailer:

If all goes as planned, Evertales will be released on the 10th, so keep an eye peeled for it at 11:00 PM Eastern next Wednesday night-- Or potentially sooner if you're one of those lucky Australians or New Zealanders who get everything so incredibly early compared to the rest of us.

I've been searching for a new asynchronous multi-player game for a while, so when I saw Poker Pals [99c / Free / HD] released by Chillingo: a poker-based� game with asynchronous multiplayer mode, my eyes went wide. What I didn't anticipate was that within a few hours I would be snatching up my iPod every couple of minutes to make my next turn, juggling several games at once, like a crazed poker addict. (Thank goodness there's no real money at stake, just bragging rights.)

Poker Pals is not a regular poker game. There's no chips in the middle of the table, no antes and no calling, raising or bluffing. This is actually poker redesigned as a board-game and it resembles a mixture of poker and Scrabble, which works really well. It's reminiscent of Sword and Poker 2 [$3.99 / Free], which also presented poker as a board-game, but included RPG elements.

The idea is to lay down poker hands, like a three-of-a-kind, straight, flush, etc. But as in Scrabble, you can only play your cards if they interconnect with one or more existing card(s) on the board. In Scrabble, if your tiles form two new words, you score points for them both, and Poker Pals works in the same way. So when you slam down a full-house, you might also intersect with existing cards, forming a pair and a straight at the same time, scoring combo-points for all three, which is super satisfying.

The points range from a lowly pair (10 points) to a royal flush (90 points), plus a 10-point bonus for each card you placed. Although a pair of threes scores the same as a pair of kings, as it's based on the hand type, not the face value. Anything less than a pair doesn't score. It would be even better if the face value of cards was taken into account when scoring, as occurs in real poker.

In the four corners of the board, there are wildcard jokers. If you place your cards against these, the joker defaults to the most valuable card for your current hand. For example, if you have two aces it might become an ace, giving you a three of a kind. The game continues until the 7x7 play-field is fully populated with cards, at which point the highest scoring player wins. And the games are often close and exciting.

The game modes include single player (against the computer AI, with 3 difficulty levels), online multiplayer, which includes an option to play a random online opponent. There's also a "pass and play" option for sharing the device with your family at home, although you should probably let them complete the in-game tutorial first.

The free lite version contains all of the game modes, but you're limited to three simultaneous games in progress. If a fourth person invites you to play, they must wait for one of your three active games to end. However, once upgraded, you can play unlimited simultaneous games as well as freeing yourself of in-game ads and unlocking a higher single-player difficulty level.

Leaderboards and achievements are handled by Crystal, with Game Center also storing the achievements, except a bug is currently stopping the Game Center achievements from appearing correctly. Overall I've been having a fantastic time with Poker Pals, I just wish it were a little less cumbersome to switch between existing games and it really needs in-game chat functionality.

Poker Pals delivers a fun interpretation of poker, with desirable asynchronous play and random match-ups for people without many online friends. It has a high replay value and should come with a warning about time-consumtion, due to the constant, but pleasurable interruptions when it's your turn. After trying the free version initially, upgrading to remove the ads was an absolute no-brainer.

There's something particularly apt about the timing of the iPad release of Greed Corp HD [$4.99]. While Occupiers around the world freeze and protest sociopathically greedy behavior by major corporations, Greed Corp explores the ultimate end of that behavior. What happens when you're so bent on profit that you'd destroy even the ground under your own feet to keep the other guy from getting it? Greed Corp has the answer.

It's a turn-based strategy game that encourages players to engage in something one step shy of mutually assured destruction. You destroy the lands you harvest, and firing on your enemies crumbles away the ground beneath them.You win as long as you have at least a single unit on a single hex and your enemies don't. This brutally aggressive game first made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network in the early months of 2010, but it's hardly aged in the time it's taken to arrive on iPad. It's also extremely well done for the most part, offering a natural touch interface and both single and multiplayer content.

Greed Corp is initially overwhelming, so it's for the best that the single player content starts off slowly. The first few maps are slow and the beginner AI is pretty incompetent. This gives you the chance to practice the concepts you picked up in the tutorial, which you better have played before launching into the campaign. There are only a handful of units in the game, but without a basic understanding of how to use them, you won't survive for long.

Harvesters trigger at the start of your turn, dropping themselves and every hex of land around them by one level and giving you gold for the land they destroy. Eventually that land will collapse. Walkers can claim hexes and attack other units, defeating them on a one to one basis. Armories let you build new walkers, cannons fire at enemy hexes, and carriers can lift your isolated units out to the enemy.

Everything is costly, and resources are scarce, so you'll need to make trade-offs. Do you harvest your land, collapsing it as you go in order to afford to fight? Or do you preserve your land, but in doing so fail to defend your troops? If three corporations set out to claim every bit of land and damn the cost, one pacifist on the board won't last long. No matter your politics, you'll have to buy into greed eventually.

Greed Corp's battles are lovely to look at. Though the environments are often bleak, it's a visual feast to watch them crumble away to dust. As they do, the battlefield becomes more and more isolating until each team stands alone on tiny islands in the sky. Or maybe not -- depending on your choices, battles can go many different ways. Directly charging your enemies may be the best call at times, but waiting and letting them destroy each other can be just as effective.

This is the sort of game best played with time and attention. It's long and challenging, with 24 single-player levels divided between the four corporations. The battles themselves are quite time consuming. You have to watch as each of the CPU teams take their turns -- they're not especially slow about it, but any time spent out of control can drag on. Greed Corp is worth the time, though, with a thoughtful storyline and clever gameplay.

I can't comment on the online multiplayer, unfortunately. During my time with the game I wasn't able to connect to a single other player. Hopefully this will improve as the player base grows. Greed Corp allows you to set up a multiplayer game and wait for matchmaking while you play single-player, so if you want to find a game your best bet is to start matchmaking at the beginning of your play session.

But if you have someone local to play with, you don't need to wait for strangers to join you. Multiplayer games can be set up with any combination of single-device local, online and CPU players. The one thing you can't do is play online with friends with any reliability -- the game uses its own matchmaking service rather than Game Center, and there's no friends list.

The exclusion of Game Center is mystifying, actually. Greed Corp includes 12 achievements and 4 leaderboards, but all of them are local. Even more worrying are the bugs I encountered while playing. There weren't many, but one resulted in a couple losses that shouldn't have happened, and one had the game crashing every time I rotated my device (the system-wide rotation lock will let you avoid that if it happens to you). These flaws stand out in a port that's otherwise very well done.

Still, I'd recommend Greed Corp -- flaws and all. It's a strategy board game that feels right at home on iPad, and it outdoes much of its competition on the platform. I wouldn't get it solely for online multiplayer, but with a vast single-player campaign and support for up to four local players, it's a gem of a game for any other purpose. If you're on the fence, swing by our discussion thread for more opinions, but they're mostly glowing. Rightfully so. For a game that drags you into despicably greedy behavior, Greed Corp HD is gorgeous, well designed and fun.

Wizardry is a series with a pretty long history, and the older you are, the more of it you're likely to recall. Thirty years after its original release, gamers still think of the same thing when they hear the word: a long dungeon crawl in the dark, careful stat management, and a pen and graph paper by your side. In fact, Wizardry was really the first graphical incarnation of the Dungeons & Dragons model, and gamers familiar with it would feel right at home on those�subterranean�treks through poorly lit mazes.

Fast forward to 2011, however, and you may see a game like Wizardry as nothing but an exercise in punishment. Or would a clean-up and polish of the interface make for a more modern experience? This version of Wizardry, called Labyrinth of Lost Souls [Free] ($9.99 IAP unlocks full game), is not exclusive to iOS -- it's already seen its original debut on the PS3 earlier this year.

At that time, my impressions of it were that it was presented beautifully and had gorgeous art, but offered the exact same type of experience that its namesake was so well known for. For hardcore fans of the dungeon crawling genre, this was great news, but what about new players who would be facing the genre for the first time? Did they have any hope of enjoying this game?

Simply put, Wizardry is just a hardcore game. Check it out on iOS, and you will find it is almost exactly like the PS3 version, with two small differences -- it's Game Center enabled, and the lovely detail of the art is more or less lost on the iPhone's tiny screen. I think the game would be much more enjoyable on the iPad if you chose to get it for a portable device, but if you had access to all options, PS3 would be the way to go. It's clear lots of attention and effort was put into the art, and it's a shame to see it all tiny and squished up on a little screen.

Gameplay is -- well, it's okay. It's like every other dungeon crawler of this type you've ever played, and it doesn't deviate by a hair. You choose what sex and race you want to play from a small selection, choose your alignment and finally your class. Head to town, get a quest, and choose some recruits to go down in the dungeon with you. If you've never played a Wizardry game before, you may not be aware how crucial this initial party structure is. If you choose poorly, you'll get hammered, even for your first journey into the dungeon. One thing that has stayed true to form in this modern version is the learning curve -- absolutely steep.

I believe that thirty years ago, stumbling around in the dark with no map (unless you buy one in town) and repetitive battles with large groups of enemies might have been exciting, even inspiring as you struggled to get your bearings. After all, it was all so new then. It's the same formula here, and people who loved doing it then may enjoy Wizardry now. That being said, any modern gamer is sure to throw up their hands in frustration.

Tapping the darkness in front of you works just fine to navigate these underground tunnels, but it doesn't necessarily make it fun. Menus are also set up in a way that makes you spend a ton of time jumping in and out of them, which is no big deal for a seasoned RPG player. However, I found myself stabbing at the screen with my finger here and there, and I wished the controls could have been a bit more responsive, especially in the dungeons.

The hard thing about Wizardry is that the gameplay experience it offers can be fun and satisfying if you put effort in, if not somewhat generic. On the other hand, the format will alienate many gamers, but that is what the genre is and will likely always be, so this cannot be blamed on the game.

(Trailer from PlayStation3 version)

"Not for everybody" is probably the best thing I can say about a title like this. On the other hand, if you cut your teeth on this stuff back in the day, slipping into Labyrinth of Lost Souls may feel like putting on a well-worn glove. Accepting quests and gathering loot, or even grinding to level your characters, can still be appealing and surely fulfilling for the right gamer. However, since most gamers are not used to working so hard to keep their characters alive anymore, I believe Wizardry will satisfy a very limited audience. The game demands a high level of competence from the people who choose to play it, and there is no hand holding whatsoever.

In an age where we are literally led through our games, often with more instruction than necessary, Wizardry stands as a testament to the games that may have made us gamers by a very different set of standards.

Growing up, I had one of those grandfathers that was obsessed with gold and keeping money out of the banks. He used to show me these little pieces of gold he had and would be like "If you work hard, all this can be yours." (In other news, my grandfather may be Scrooge McDuck.) As such, I'm sure he would be a superfan of Colorbox's Peak Gold [$.99/UHD], a fun little hooking game dedicated to the pursuit of gold.

Peak Gold might be lacking in coherent tutorials (sample text: "Reach 1000m depth and collect Big Diamond to PEAK GOLD!"), but it makes up for it with cutesy graphics, fun hooking action and challenging levels. Seriously, for being marketed as a casual game, this sucker is difficult. The premise is simple enough; tap the screen to grab gold and other goodies while avoiding bats and rocks before running out of time.

You play as a cute little miner (not to be confused with minor, just so we're clear) in control of a crane that shoots out hooks. Gold, rocks, and gems pop out of a little hole in the wall and fall onto a conveyor belt at varying speeds, which pick up as you progress. As you successfully hook gold and gems, your ore meter fills up. Once that's full, your energy bar (a timer, for all intents and purposes) slightly refills and you go down to the next depth, in search of the fabled Big Diamond. If you run out of energy, the game is over.

The gold you accumulate over your games lets you buy upgrades, which is the only way you'll be able to progress over time. These upgrades are incredibly helpful and can double your time per round, increase your hook's speed, and increase the amount of gold available to you, among other things. I personally was unable to get past depth three without upgrades. The aiming is difficult (though the controls are good!), the objects move by really quickly, and picking up things like rocks slows you down significantly.

If you're lucky enough to get several good objects in a row, you might activate FEVER mode, a temporary mode where all objects are turned into gold and you're given an extra hook in order to score even more gold. However, activating FEVER is no guarantee that you'll pass a level, and it can be tricky to get enough combos to activate it in the first place. No one ever accused mining of being easy!

There are relatively few complaints to be had, and most have to do with personal preference. For example, some players may find being forced to return to Depth 1 over and over again a bit annoying, as there's no way to select levels even after you've beaten them. So if you're particularly bad at Depth 4, you'll have to replay the first three depths just to try it again. If you're playing over and over again it would probably get a little repetitive. Personally, I found myself picking this game up when I had a few minutes here and there, so it didn't get too boring for me. Additionally, there were initially some slight audio issues, though those appear to have been fixed recently.

If you're a fan of hooking games, this one is as good (if not better) as any. It's fun and challenging without any of the dangers associated with real mining (except perhaps mesothelioma, though I'm not sure there's a connection between it and Peak Gold). I would certainly recommend it to fans of hooking games, my grandfather, and any hooker with a heart of gold.

Saving Moo [$0.99 / HD], one of several recent offerings from ClickGamer, is the latest addition to the elusive genre of Cow Defense. If rescuing our four-legged brethren suits your fancy (or if you're a fan of certain classic tower defense games), then Saving Moo's weird story and presentation, combined with solid tower defense gameplay elements, should work for you.

Saving Moo puts you in the role of a farmer that acquired psychic powers after an alien abduction. In order to prevent future abductions, you must use the farmer's newfound powers to telekinetically place weapons on your cows to ward off the impending UFO invasion. Even though the story is mainly told through a short introductory cutscene, I still found it hilarious and absolutely befitting for the sort of offbeat attitude that Saving Moo offers.

The quirkiness in Saving Moo also extends beyond its story. The art style has a dark cartoonish vibe that looks great on both the iPhone and iPad (separate versions are available for each platform). Also, I really enjoyed the writing, although that may simply be because I'm a sucker for puns (trust me, there's a lot of them in this game). One minor criticism is the lack of variety in regards to the level environments, but it's understandable considering there aren't too many places for cows to graze in the first place.

Even though there aren't a lot of basic tower defense elements, Saving Moo plays very similar to one in some respects. Each level starts out with several cows that graze and produce "Moo Sacks" that are collected by being tapped on. Once you collect enough Moo Sacks, you then cash them in for weapons that you attach to the cows. You can also spend Moo Sacks to bring more cows onto the pasture, which let you place more weapons onto the field (and also generate Moo Sacks faster).

Complicating the matter is the fact that there are three different types of bovines, and only certain weapons work with certain cows. Of course, the best weapons require the most expensive cows on the pasture, so you'll have to decide if saving those extra Moo Sacks for different cows outweighs the benefits of having more weapons out on the field faster.

Alien UFOs come in waves, and the goal is to use your weaponized cows to destroy each invader before they successfully abduct your cows (the game ends if you lose all your cows). Successfully hold off the aliens, and you're rewarded with a new weapon for the next round.

If some of these elements sound familiar that's because Saving Moo closely mirrors Plants vs Zombies in a few ways. Everything from the Moo Sacks to the Weapon Selections to even the "Moo-pedia" has that familiar vibe to them. However, one thing Saving Moo does not emulate from Plants is the lax difficulty. Once you get past the first two 'days' of levels, Saving Moo becomes much tougher, and your weapon choices and timing become that much more important.

While Saving Moo's core gameplay certainly borrows some of its elements from previous successful titles, its light hearted foundation and overall wacky presentation puts it above the rest of the pack. Also, the wide variety of weapons, coupled with its progressive difficulty means that folks looking for a challenge will certainly be satisfied. This is a game that combines successful elements from previous games with its own style and succeeds in pulling it off. Simply put, if you're looking for a pseudo tower defense game with an eccentric approach, I highly recommend Saving Moo.

Somebody go wake up Brad Nicholson. In mid-September, we caught wind of a new Kairosoft game released in Japan called Oh! Edo Towns. The game was quite similar to the classic SimCity in that it has you building a town from scratch and managing the various resources and responsibilities that come with city planning, as well as keeping your citizens happy, with the ultimate goal of creating a thriving metropolis. The quirk here was that your city building took place in 17th Century Japan, rather than a contemporary setting.

At that time, we donned our speculation hats and ventured that Oh! Edo Towns might be hitting the US App Store sometime in October. Well, as it turns out, October came and went with no sign of the game, but just a few hours ago Oh! Edo Towns did indeed pop up in the US App Store. Sure, we were a few days off, but that's still some impressive guesstimating as far as I'm concerned. Miss Cleo would be proud.

Here's a bit of video of the Japanese version of Oh! Edo Towns from our friends at AppBank:

Now, you might remember about a week and a half ago we spotted yet another Kairosoft town-creating sim, called Zaibatsu Towns, that was released in Japan. The key difference with that title compared to Oh! Edo Towns, it seemed, was that it didn't have you building a traditional Edo period Japanese style town, and instead had you creating a city in modern times more akin to SimCity. I'm going to go ahead and start the speculation train, and I'll put out there that we'll be seeing a US release of Zaibatsu Towns before the end of the year. Go ahead and mark that down, dear readers, because if it turns out I'm wrong you can point and laugh in my face.

While it's fun to guess the future and all, let's not forget that there's a brand new Kairosoft title available to us in the US right now. As with most of their releases, it's a pretty good bet that it will be a strong simulation title, so might be worth just diving right in with the link below. Otherwise you can check out impressions in our forums, and you can also be sure we'll have a review of Oh! Edo Towns in the very near future. In fact, despite it being 3am where he's located, I'm calling Brad right now to tell him to download it.