Meteor Blitz ($2.99, link) comes from a genre known as “dual stick shooters”. In the last few years, these have been incredibly popular, mostly due to the influence of the highly successful game Geometry Wars, but traces its origins back to the early days of the arcade, with games like Robotron. In this type of game, you use one d-pad to control movement, and the other to shoot in any direction. With these two basic controls, and a few tricks up your sleeve, you try and survive as long as possible.

This type of game is always something of a survival test — you just have to last as long as possible against incredible odds. In Meteor Blitz you’re tasked with blowing up a certain number of meteors per stage, who, in classic arcade fashion, shatter into medium sized versions, and then a slew of small ones upon further destruction. While attempting to dodge and destroy this hulking space rocks of death, you also have to dodge incoming enemies, and at the end of each level take on a boss.

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Two hours into Pocket Legends, I was addicted. Five hours later, I was bored.

Pocket Legends (free, link) is an online multiplayer RPG with a lot of potential. The action is quick and bloody, the magic and skills are fun to use, and the camaraderie from fighting alongside complete strangers is enjoyable. Yet the game suffers from shallow game design. You brainlessly walk from fight to fight, with no advanced features like quests, keys, or puzzles to break up the monotony. It’s pure hack-n-slash.

The good news is that the developers can easily update the game. They are already rumored to be adding in-game trading of items and player-vs-player battles, and daily tweaks are a sign that the developers are aggressively improving the game.

Part of our excitement for Pocket Legends is its online infrastructure. It works well, as we experienced almost no bugs or server crashes while playing (although that could always change as the game grows more populated). We also found the system for finding or starting new games fast and effortless. If you want companions, they usually pop up quickly.

Pocket Legends‘ describes itself as a massively multiplayer online RPG, aka, an MMORPG. The “massively multiplayer” part may not be entirely accurate. Only 5 players can adventure in a level at a time. There is currently no interaction with the world outside your area, and each group gets its own instance—meaning your area starts out fresh and complete with all monsters and gold available. The only time you can interact with more than 5 people are in special chat rooms where your character can run around in. There are no guilds or clans, but there is a friend system where you see who’s online.

The game plays very much like a simplified Diablo or perhaps more accurately Gauntlet. You can fight in an area alone or with a pack of fellow warriors. After that, you simply mow down monsters one after another quaffing a lot of potions along the way, until you reach the end of the area, then rinse and repeat. Along the way you collect gold and sell equipment you don’t need. The gold is almost entirely used for mana and health potions, with some eq available for purchase. The variety of EQ available is currently not very impressive.

The game is free for the first 13 levels, which is about an hour or two of gameplay. To continue leveling, you must buy new zones via in-app purchases. For example, the next area after level 13 is Dark Forest, which costs $0.99. Other higher level areas currently cost $1.99.

We have no problem with the cost of the extra zones—the game starts off free after all. But we do take major issue with the ability to buy equipment and gold in the game. We feel this is a major mistake by the developers that will throw the balance of the game off, especially if they add player-vs-player battles. This type of system also breeds a lot of resentment among players.

Conclusion

We think Pocket Legends (link) is a game to keep an eye on, and we recommend downloading it and watching the updates for features like quests, keys, potion making…or generally anything that adds depth to the gameplay. As is, we have a hard time recommending spending money beyond the $0.99 for the first additional area (Dark Forest). We’re withholding a number rating until the game matures, then we’ll revisit.

Pocket Legends is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

There’s a beautiful simplicity to Canabalt ($2.99, link), which makes it addictive and highly replayable, yet still damn hard. The trick is, there’s only one button. Jump. That’s it, that’s all you control. You’re a little guy, sprinting across grayscale rooftops in a collapsing city, and you tap the screen to jump. Tap longer to jump higher, a little tap gives you a hop. And run as long as you can.

Much like Doodle Jump, the simplicity of the controls and quick playtime makes it utterly addictive, but slightly tricky at times. As you sprint across rooftops, the levels are completely dynamically generated, so no two plays will be identical. This means that the landscape of the roofs are different every time, which leads to some very easy games, and some ones that are utter bastards. Occasionally, obstacles are thrown at you at the worst possible time, and you feel like there’s no way you could’ve possibly gotten past them.

Your character builds up speed as the game progresses, making you have to react faster, but giving you more length and height in your leaps. You can slow down my intentionally tripping over small items left on the rooftops, but this is the only way to mitigate your speed, which is sometimes essential for making precision leaps.

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Eliss ($2.99, link) is a unique puzzle game that has long been a darling of iPhone game reviewers, and it only takes a few minutes of play to figure out why. Eliss packs more challenging multitouch puzzle play into its levels than just about anything else in the app store.

Eliss is a space-themed puzzle game where you control planetoids and try and get a certain number of them per level to join with a squeezoid, which is like a big round black hole that only swallows planets that match its color and size. So if the planets on the screen don’t fit, you need to either make them bigger by combining two of together—or smaller by splitting them apart with a reverse pinching motion. While you’re doing this, your task is complicated by multiple colors of planets, each of which cause you to lose health if they enter the same area of space as one another. Throw in time slowdowns, vortexes, and a whole bunch of extra problems, and you have a damn tricky game.