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.