Stories By Jonathan Zungre

ImageQuest is a game that gives you nine images and asks you to find the keyword that links them together in under 20 seconds. For example, the game will give you pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and Paris Hilton, and you must type in "Paris" as the word that links the images.

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Mike V: Do or Die Skateboarding makes us wonder if the iPhone's game makers are just a little too ambitious. Many of the best games in the App Store are simple, but so many studios seem to be trying to make the next Civilization, Halo, or in this case, Tony Hawk, on Apple's limited device. Mike V: Do or Die Skateboarding is a game that has all the flash to satisfy its skating demographic, but it lacks a good skating experience at its core.

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Rayman 2 is a trial to play on the iPhone. It's a highly-praised 3D platformer from the Nintendo 64-era that translates poorly to the buttonless, small screen of the iPhone. Watching yourself play Rayman 2 on the iPhone is like watching an elderly person play videogames for the first time. It's hard to do even the simplest of things.

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Hallelujah, Triniti Interactive has resurrected iSniper 3D like Lazarus from his tomb. The problem is that when something's brought back from gaming death to life, sometimes it still stinks a little bit.

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Are You Alright? is a game that helps us understand why some people can be workaholics. There's something naturally addicting about the busyness of a high-performance job, having a thousand things on your plate, and being able handle it all. Much like the popular time management game Diner Dash, Are You Alright? places you in charge of a bustling business, this time a hospital, and it's up to you to make sure it doesn't fall to pieces.

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We like a bloody two-stick shooter as much as the next gamer, but Bird Strike disarmed us with its relentless cuteness. It's a game made with Pixar-like cartoony charm, and you can't help but cheer on your little bird when you slingshot him from his bird wire and direct him to collect boosting rockets on his way to space. Confession: We may have giggled.

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OpenFeint, the popular social networking framework for iPhone gaming, is hopping on the iPad bandwagon. The developers have cited the iPad's $499 starting price point and large screen size, which is the equivalent of four iPhones put together, as the biggest reasons to be excited for the future of iPad gaming.

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Let us tell you about the best two week addiction we've ever had. It's called Turf Wars and it's a crime game that uses Google Maps to let you lay claim to real-world turf, based on where you're physically located. Want to take over your neighborhood, or be slumlord of your college campus? Now you can, and everyone else playing the game will know it. It's one of the first in a new genre of games some are calling "augmented reality".

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We love puzzle games wrapped up in good narrative elements, and Indiana Jones and the Lost Puzzles wears its licensing like a custom fit fedora. In Lost Puzzles you're not just solving a colorful tile-matching puzzle, but you're helping the one and only Indiana Jones collect priceless artifacts in ruinous ancient temples, and helping him avoid falling to his death.

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A new “augmented reality” game called Gunman uses the iPhone’s camera as the scope of a high powered rifle and lets you create a hitman’s shootout between you and a friend. All you need to do is specify the color of your friend's shirt and Gunman will recognize them as your target. Whoever gets the most hits in the specified time limit wins. Tapping the screen fires your rifle and shaking your device reloads with a satisfying “Chuck-Chack” sound.

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Need for Speed Shift doesn't feel like an iPhone game. It feels like a slick, fully-realized AAA game you'd find on a console, albeit a bit shorter. You know the difference: A good iPhone game sometimes feels like a nice little diversion, while a console game feels more like an engrossing experience, something you look forward to coming back to. If all the cute cartoony animals from the two-stick shooters and $1 diversions that are proliferating in the App Store were crossing a highway, NFS Shift would be the roaring Lamborghini running them over.

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One of the ways a puzzle game can be measured is by how it handles the moment when the player solves the puzzle. Consider Braid's ability to make you feel like a genius for discovering that you can snag that last puzzle piece by using the puzzle itself. The best puzzle games guide you along, giving you limited information, holding your hand while you fill in the blanks, then offering congratulations for doing so. Solving Pocketball's puzzles makes you straddle the line between feeling like a genius and someone who just made a lucky guess.

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Ever wish you could be the crime kingpin of your own real world neighborhood? Turf Wars is a crime game that uses your iPhone's GPS to let you lay virtual claim to real world places. The more you travel, the more turf you can take over. The game uses Google Maps to let you secure your turf and also lets you see the already occupied areas that are controlled by other wannabe Godfathers.

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The founders of 148apps.com launched a new website this week called Giggleapps.com, which caters to parents trying to find the best entertainment and education apps for their kids. Because of the touch and tilt controls, iPhones and iPod Touches are expected to be popular gifts for kids this holiday season. Giggleapps.com plans on giving parents a resource of reviews and editorials to inform them on which apps to download for their kids. Hint: you probably don't want to start toddlers off on Doom.

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We've got the first actual screenshot of the newest guest star character to join the Minigore family for episode 4. Minigore's developers love to bring in guest stars from other games, but for a clue to who this guy is, all they've said is that he wears a green cap (which you can see here in a TA teaser). We can only think of one video game character who wears a green cap, and the Minigore guest pictured above doesn't look like he'd be searching for pieces of the Triforce anytime soon.

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A new iPhone app called Sudoku Magic lets you take pictures of Sudoku puzzles in a newspaper with your iPhone's camera, and then saves them in an electronic format on your iPhone. Better yet, it will solve those tricky puzzles for you with a touch of a button. Congratulations, you just became a Sudoku Jedi.

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How is it that Mike Huckabee jumped on the Chuck Norris comedy bandwagon for a political campaign years before a funny Chuck Norris game was ever released? Probably because, in his omniscience, Chuck Norris knew that Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain! would suck. It doesn't matter what you dress this neutered Double Dragon/ Metal Slug wannabe up in, the gameplay's still clunky and often unsatisfying. Chuck deserves better.

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We think it's safe to say that a bartending game has drawn you in if you find yourself flirting with the game's bar patrons. We may even have said, "Ok honey, a shot of Jack and a shot of rum, now that's my kinda girl" out loud while playing this game. But that just illustrates how Shot Bar can use a little music, a couple of liquor bottles and a few drawings of cute girls to make you feel like you're the Don Juan of the bartending scene. It also makes you feel completely stressed when you're forgetting what said hot girls ordered and dropping bottles of vodka on the ground.

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Namco's made an addictively fun game that puts you in the garters of an undead hottie and lets you blast hordes of graveyard beasts with archaic weapons augmented with alchemical tonics. Is there anything more fun than mowing down a throng of shambling zombies and werewolves with 200 rounds of ammunition from a steam powered Gatling gun? But a few big technical issues and crashes have tainted the experience like the evil Thrum tainted your in-game husband, turning something wonderful into something you may want to stay away from.

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At a press event in New York City last Wednesday night, Volkswagen announced that the new GTI would be the first automobile launching exclusively through a mobile platform, more specifically though the iPhone game Real Racing GTI. This marks the first time an automotive company has ever launched a product solely through a free video game, with no other advertising.

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