Reckless Racing:
Missing the old days of top-down racing games, or just need a reason to play the Dukes of Hazzard theme song? EA’s Reckless Racing is all you need to get your fix of dirt track racing. The best part? You can test your driving skills in a truck painted with the obligatory flame paint job. Complete with five tracks, local Wi-Fi, online multiplayer, and leaderboards, this game will give you plenty to do while donning your bib overalls.

$0.99

Reckless Racing

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-21 :: Category: Games

$4.99

Reckless Racing HD

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2010-10-21 :: Category: Games

Samurai II: Vengeance:
MADFINGER Games takes your hack and slash skills into a gorgeous anime inspired world. The goal, help Daisuke get the revenge he longs to serve to his archenemy. Crazy awesome visuals are just the starting point here. Tense battles, improved gameplay from the original, environmental puzzles, and Game Center support all add to a fun and engaging slashing experience. Throw in a new survival mode and you have hours of fun at a low price.

$2.99

Samurai II: Vengeance

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-10-21 :: Category: Games

Star Battalion:
Did you find that the space fight in Halo: Reach was just to darn short? Do you miss the days of Descent: Freespace? Gameloft has your fix with Star Battalion. This space combat game does not just stop with a simple single player experience though. Four ships, online co-op (thanks to local Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), and Game Center support all bring on the hours of fun and replayability of this title. It even looks fantastic to boot!

$0.99

Star Battalion

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-17 :: Category: Games

FREE!

Star Battalion - The Comic Book

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-19 :: Category: Books

Ace Flashcards:
There was once a day where studying was done with index cards and long arduous hours under a desk lamp. Agile Partners is here to bring back those index cards for your iPhone. A built in dictionary will help you with word meanings. You can even create your own flash cards for just about any subject you can muster up. An easy to use interface keeps things simple so you can get to what is most important, studying!

$2.99

Ace Flashcards

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-01 :: Category: Education

Black Friday Survival Guide:
Halloween is just about to pass by, which means we will all soon be stuffing our faces with turkey, cranberries, and pies in preparation for one heck of a day. You know, Black Friday! Sazze has taken it upon themselves to assist you with all those early flyer leaks, deals, and shopping tasks during this maddening time. If your Friday after Thanksgiving plans include punching and kicking your way into stores at 4AM, this app just might help you in your attack plans.

FREE!

BlackFriday.fm - Black Friday Survival Guide

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-16 :: Category: Lifestyle

MADFINGER Games are bringing their iPhone and iPod touch hack ‘n slash game Samurai: Way of the Warrior to the iPad as the creatively titled Samurai: Way of the Warrior HD. Featuring detailed cel-shaded graphics and a smooth gameplay engine to match, this game has you playing as a samurai who is out to cut his enemies into tiny bits using his sword. There are no puzzles to solve, all you’re doing is just finding and killing your enemies, just trying to survive and advance.

The controls of Samurai: way of the Warrior HD are the most questionable aspect of the game so far. Movement takes some time to get used to, but it’s easiest to just tap to where you need to go. The combat controls have upwards and sideways motions that you can chain together for combos. Early on in the game, you can just wildly swipe about the screen and have success destroying enemies, but soon you’ll unlock combos and they will be necessary to defeat the more challenging enemies you run into. The slash inputs are often inaccurate, especially when slashing from side to side, so sometimes, just kind of swiping like mad and hoping you pull off a combo works better than actual controlled attempts at executing specific combos.

There’s the standard campaign mode with three playable difficulties, along with a selection of Dojos to fight in, that let you fight endless numbers of enemies in an arena until you die, along with online leaderboards via AGON Online for all game modes. Samurai: Way of the Warrior HD will be available on Friday, July 1st for the iPad.

Random musings of the app store

GTA: Chinatown Wars coming to the iPhone

Last week, as most of you know, Rockstar Games announced that it was porting its critically acclaimed GTA: Chinatown Wars to the iPhone. Not only is this great news for fans of the game, though we do already have the superb Gangstar, but it also shows how seriously the iPhone is taken as a gaming platform. Rockstar is not a company to make gratuitous ports for every platform available (I don’t think the Wii will be getting GTA anytime soon), so this upcoming port shows that Rockstar believes in the power of the iPhone. If Rockstar will port GTA for the iPhone, what other big-name developers will follow? The days of the iPhone being a phone that you could play some gimmicky accelerometer games on are over. Sony, I would be afraid.

New ngmoco FPS trailer, now called Eliminate, reveals the use of micro-transactions

Ngmoco has released a new trailer for their upcoming Eliminate, and while the game is looking awesome, most people are fixating on another detail: you will only be able to play so many matches online for credits in one day, and if you want to play for credits again without waiting a day, you have to buy an “energy pack” using real money. So what’s the big deal? Well if you ask me, as long as ngmoco doesn’t abuse this, nothing. Here’s the kicker: if you run out of energy, you can still play online, you just won’t win credits. So the only people who will buy extra energy are the perfectionists who have to show how good they are. For people like me, who just want to play a game to have fun (isn’t that what a game is for), you can play however much you want and still have fun. So really, this is a great idea as long as two things hold true: the game is not originally priced above $6.99 and the amount of energy you get per day is reasonable. What do you guys think? Sound off in our comments below.

C64 Emulator finally approved by Apple

After months of back room deals, Apple rejections, and Apple non-communication, Manomio has finally gotten their superb C64 emulator has been approved! Obviously this won’t appeal to everyone, but if you’re one for nostalgia, at $4.99, it’s worth picking up because of the high level of polish and solid controls. The emulator comes with five fully licensed games, but no BASIC emulator as was originally included, though it’s apparently suspiciously easy to enable the BASIC if you’re SSH savvy. Future games will be available via DLC at prices to be determined by the original IP holders. Next up, Manomio, a legal Atari emulator (I wish)!

$4.99

Commodore 64

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-09-05 :: Category: Games

This week’s sign of the apocalypse

Smule’s “I Am T-Pain” is the number one paid app in the entire app store. Enough said.

$2.99

I Am T-Pain 2.0

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2009-09-03 :: Category: Music

Apps of the Week

Modern Combat: Sandstorm

Modern Combat is the most visually impressive title on the iPhone to date, bar none. Models are good, textures are sharp, and everything is fully and accurately 3D. Not only this, but Gameloft actually nailed the controls, a first for an FPS on the iPhone. The gameplay, specifically the AI and level structure leave something to be desired, but Sandstorm remains a great accomplishment nonetheless, and it comes with a solid recommendation at the low price of $6.99.

$4.99

Modern Combat: Sandstorm

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-09-02 :: Category: Games

Samurai: Way of the Warrior

Samurai is one of the coolest games I’ve played on the iPhone. It’s a hack-and-slasher with great graphics, perfect controls, and gratuitous blood! Controls involve different combinations of swipes, and the gameplay is actually somewhat strategic – you have to balance small attacks with huge combos, because if you miss a huge combo, you leave yourself very prone to an attack. Execute moves correctly, and you might be lucky enough to see the body of the opponent samurai stop, then fall on the ground in two pieces, with blood squirting across the screen. Samurai comes with both a story mode and an endless or “dojo” mode. My only complaints about this game are that once you figure out the controls, it’s too easy – there’s an uneven difficulty curve, and that it does get repetitive at times. Still, I found myself playing this $2.99 gem much more than Sandstorm. Expect a full review soon, but until then, you really have to see a video to appreciate the awesomeness of this game.

$0.99

Samurai: Way of the Warrior

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-09-01 :: Category: Games

That’s it for this week, tune back in next week for the winner of the contest and some more MMAHQ. Have a great week!