Pac-Man Dash has some fast and fun action here and there, making it a good title to mess around with for a little bit. But I was not going in to this game ready to be blown away by anything. It’s really more or less what you would expect of a stock endless runner title that revives a classic video game character.

It lasted for a little bit, but as with a lot of free-to-play titles out there, staying power was not its strong suit. While there are certainly things to unlock and grind for, it doesn’t feel like there will be any gameplay-related payoffs to work your way towards. But Giant Boulder of Death is certainly a good enough time to give it a look.

Ultimately, I recommend Scrooge’s Loot to those with children due to it being free, imaginative and simplistic fun. But for those hoping for a clear-cut shooter, I suggest you look elsewhere.

Gold Diggers was a better title than I thought it was going to be when I first downloaded it onto my home screen. It’s worth giving a try if you’re looking for a new title that offers up some fun, fast-twitch action.

There is vast amounts of potential, but without spending actual money to unlock some of these potentials, Cross Horizon is simply your run-of-the-mill iOS RPG with a fresh coat of cel-shaded paint.

Gleamer’s clutter-free art style and basic controls mask a game with slightly more complexity to it than you’d expect (but not much). Some players will likely find their in-game avatar — the ever-moving cube — annoying, but despite some minor gameplay complaints what lies here is still a fairly solid platformer designed for the bite-sized consumption needs of most iOS gamers.

It’s a decent title, but unfortunately, it never reaches the angelic heights of fun that were promised.

If you enjoy these type of freemium games, then Dungeon Keeper is a worthy download.

Dodge This! is a fun, solid game. Exactly how long it stays fun will depend on the player, but thanks to the high degree of repetition and stingy upgrades and unlocks, the fun will run out eventually.

If you’ve got a couple of bucks and feel like you need something to occupy your time in minutes-long intervals, whether on bus rides, in waiting rooms or just while you’ve got a moment, Triblaster is a pretty fun distraction.

To sum up: Gizmo is super cute, and playing Drop That Candy can be fun for a little while.

That is the problem with Ooga Jump, it doesn’t have the staying power. The gameplay isn’t varied enough to be the full experience it wants to be.

Lara Croft: Reflections, after its initial speed bumps, is a diverting enough app that, if you love card games, is worth a peek.

If you can get past the occasionally finicky controls and lack of things to do, and if you’re really into just wheeling around and mastering this two-fingered skate system, you may find that Touchgrind Skate 2 shreds gnarlier than most; other gamers, however, will probably find more fun digging back through the huge library of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles.

Halos Fun is an enjoyable enough experience that should appeal to physics puzzler lovers.

“Serviceable” is the word when it comes to Warhammer Quest. Its job is to be a turn-based dungeon crawler, and that it is. What it doesn’t do, however, is find a way to light that fire in a player’s belly, the hunger for loot and the thirst for the blood of the unrighteous.

Sidekick Cycle is a simple game that’s fun to play in bursts, but there are better endless runner/downhill racer experiences to be found in the App Store.

The story is interesting if you like fairytales and gives you a chance to battle the once good-guys-turned-bad instead of playing as them.

Along with the ability to swap your gunfighters in the middle of combat and a seemingly endless achievement-based system, Pocket Gunfighters should have been a can’t miss title. With treasure chests to discover, gold coins to grab and villains to eliminate with a quick finger swipe, this app still has me hooked even with its gaping freemium flaw. It’s a compromise I’m willing to make, but it’s still disappointing that this app isn’t more than just a charming little dog and pony show.

If you’ve got a younger sibling who’s into the show, they’ll probably have a blast with Ski Safari Adventure Time… for a little while. Its repetitive gameplay and the prohibitive costs to its in-game shop will deter players for playing it too long, which is a shame given how fun-loving and imaginative the source material is.

The Last Guardian is an interesting and frustrating game that can’t decide if it wants to be modern or retro, and that constant argument brings the entire experience down a notch. While I was willing to deal with the limits of the previous era to enjoy the perks of the current one, I can understand where others might grow weary of the experience.

It may not replace Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 as your go-to for trading card gaming goodness on the iPad, but it’s a decent enough game for you to pick up and play every few hours on your iPhone. Just don’t expect to get terribly strategic.

It’s a good game, it’s just not a memorable one, nor is it one you’ll feel the need to keep coming back to.

As it stands, the controls don’t work very well and aren’t nearly as responsive as they need to be for such a fast paced game.

Baby Nom Nom will tease your brain and fingers into satisfaction while at the same time making your heart feel nice since you’ve contributed a little bit of good to the world.

I had fun with this, but I could also see how it could get under the skin of some who are growing tired with hipster pixel art games. Case in point: developer I Fight Bears makes “Games For People With Beards.” Granted, that’s a joke. But I can’t tell whether or not there’s a line in Fist of Awesome that divides between satire or pandering.

As disappointed as I was in the experience, I can’t help but look forward to future installments. There’s a lot of promise in Spiral and I’d like to see where the story goes and whether or not Pixel Hero Games will tighten up the controls. For now, I’ll rate Episode 1 with a modest 6.5. Let’s hope that subsequent episodes warrant higher scores.

Once the Jedi Mind Trick of nostalgia and Star Wars love wears off, you'll realize there are plenty of better multiplayer shooters out there that aren't as far, far away.

Football fans will love NFL Runner: Football Dash because it’s a blast to play. You could get super competitive, building up enough coin to top whatever team that you hate, or just strive to topple as many obstacles as possible. Either way, it’s game on!

After beating the game, the was one puzzle I couldn’t solve — why the The Room Two was such a disappointment.

What Telltale has been able to do from strictly a narrative standpoint is up to the company's usual high standards. Enjoying those moments is an absolute challenge though, as so much of the rest of the game just doesn't work properly. Telltale has earned our trust to eventually rectify these qualms, but Batman's adventure is still off to one of the roughest starts we've seen from the developer.

There's a solid foundation of ideas here with Codename S.T.E.A.M, both in its outlandish character selection and its unique take on the strategy genre. The problem is both of these elements trip at the finish line, the cast with their boring and repetitious script and the strategy gameplay with its inconsistent pace.

For the first time in years, I was left wondering if my video game's disc was scratched, only to remember that I was playing a digitally downloaded game. While this is meant to be a proper sendoff to Street Fighter IV, intending to hold us over until the release of Street Fighter V, Capcom has given us the worst-playing version the game to date.

It’s an app that doesn’t really set the world on fire, but now that it’s resurfaced with its free to play deal, giving it a chance won’t kill your vibe.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime tried for a bold experiment with its control scheme, and though this sets it apart from other similar games, it’s ultimately an experiment that needs to go back to the drawing board.

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse was obviously an experimental platformer in every sense of the word, and while some aspects of the experiment completely succeeded (the claymation looks so good), the most important parts fell short of expectations.

The universe is huge. It instills such a feeling of insignificance and it is incredibly fun to think of all the possibilities when arriving in a new place, but when it inevitably requires the patience to do the same things over and over, the wonder of exploration loses out on some important magic.

Warhammer 40K: Storm of Vengeance is a completely serviceable title, and if it was a free-to-play experience with the DLCs serving as one of its premium packages, then I’d totally be on board with this app.

I don't fault Ubisoft for trying something different with its acclaimed Assassin's Creed franchise, and in some respects there's a lot to like. However when the game stumbles it does so in grand fashion, creating an infuriating experience that makes me want to throw my controller more than continue on my quest.

The character models are impressive, the levels are dark and mysterious, and battles are legitimately fun most of the time. However, the constant repetition of the game’s format and the crippling loading faux pas bring this Contest down a few notches.

Rise of Iron is a strange hiccup in Bungie’s progress towards making Destiny a better overall experience. SIVA is an interesting villain that is ultimately never explained or explored. The majority of the content here is the actual Plaguelands themselves, and all there is to do is a couple of fetch-quests and patrol missions. Everything in this expansion seems to revolve around tedious grinding; grinding to finish the Iron Record book and get more rewards, grinding to get your light level up to do the raid. Whereas Taken King did so much to improve Destiny in every way, Rise of Iron feels like a big step back.

Maniac Manors certainly isn’t the best point-and-click adventure out there, with its moderately unimaginative puzzles, poor graphics, and name so close to Maniac Mansion that it borders on copyright infringement, but it’s still a pretty decent point-and-click adventure.

Even aside from the issues, Ninjas – Stolen Scrolls can be pretty fun. Power up your ninja, equip him/her with better weapons, pound on some baddies’ faces, and search for the stolen scrolls. As is typical with most iOS games, the in-game purchases are fairly pricey, so be prepared to put in the time or some real-world dimes.

For its cheap price and the ability to revisit one of video game’s most celebrated heroines, Tomb Raider is a decent enough download.

This is a flawed platformer with some admirable qualities. I like how strange Incredible Jack is, combined with the heartfelt mission of a parent rescuing his kids (a plotline that’s not featured in many games). But I can’t get past some of the more egregious bumps in the road that serve to take the game down a few notches.

It provides a very real tennis experience, but is also very limited in the extra options it provides.

Street Fighter V's core skeleton is sturdy, but beneath those bones lies a barely beating heart. With almost no single-player, limited multiplayer, a tiny cast, and unstable online, this feels like an Early Access beta that Capcom had the gall to try to price as a completed game.

Tappy Chicken is, without a doubt, the best-looking Flappy Bird clone on the mobile market. Unfortunately, its physics need just a little bit of fine-tuning in order to make it the perfect game out of the plethora of similar titles on the market.

There is no denying that Sensei Wars still has enough virtual stimulation to keep your attention for a fixed amount of time, but the screen viewer hiccup and lack of real difficulty makes it tough for me to keep this game on my phone for much longer.

Rooms of Memory is a first rate mystery and puzzler that’s filled with nuance and ingenuity. Unfortunately, the free to play mechanic severely handicapped any kind of pure love I had for the title, and maybe if I truly inherited Bellows’ lavish mansion I’d buy every single in-app purchase available.

Random Runners isn’t the best endless runner out there, nor is it the worst. This running, gunning title manages to be average in virtually every area, making it neither a good purchase, nor a terrible one.

For a penultimate episode, "Thicker Than Water" doesn't ramp up the stakes quite as much as some of Telltale's earlier efforts. With so little changing during the events of this fourth chapter in The New Frontier, it's hard not to be disappointed by the time seemingly squandered in this episode. Granted, the final moments accelerate things to a worthy climax, but save for those 10-15 minutes, everything that transpired in "Thicker Than Water" could easily have been folded in to the previous or upcoming episode. Hopefully Telltale was saving all the fireworks for the upcoming final chapter, as it would be a shame for A New Frontier's strong start to end with a whimper.

Since 9 Elefants is $2.99 to download, I expected a bit more of an addictive experience. Instead, I solved a few puzzles, checked out a few pretty pictures of Paris and had a decent enough time. For a free to play title, that’s all fine and dandy. But when money is involved, the puzzles take on an entirely different meaning.

Monsters Rising’s heart seems to be in the right place, at first, but the sloppy crafstmanship, uninspired combat, and aggressive microtransactions in a game that already has an upfront cost all lead to this being a dissatisfying experience.

Garden Warfare 2 does nothing new outside of those new maps and the hub area, which really isn’t that much. This sequel feels like a “complete edition” of the first Garden Warfare only with different maps. The weak campaign and lackluster multiplayer modes outside of Gnome Bomb aren’t doing it any favors either.

Lego Pullback Racers fulfills the basic need of a fun little video game on your iPhone/iPad.

Tales of the Adventure Company functions well, but its marriage of RPG and puzzle gameplay have been done many times before, and many times more strongly, in the past, leaving this as one party you may be better off leaving at the inn.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2’s first episode is a welcome return for the franchise, but it’s a little lacking in the depth department.

BattleFriends in Tanks is an interesting concept, but doesn’t quite live up to the game it could be.

There is tons of polish on it and its controls are topnotch, but the rest of my experiences with The Drowned were extremely conflicting. If the gameplay mechanics were more in tune with a survival horror experience, Drowned could have been the definitive horror experience for the iOS format. Instead, it is simply an average shooter that gives a great update beyond the overused two thumbstick-style of FPS control; it simply happens to have great looking monsters and backgrounds instead of your run-of-the-mill FPS baddies.

The world of Sym is very cool, but the flaws that don’t belong really hurt the overall beauty of the game.

For something that tries so hard to test your reflexes, Spectra ultimately tests your patience more than anything else.

If you’re a huge Anchorman fan, throwing some coins to spend time with the mustachioed San Diegan shouldn’t be a problem. But after 15 minutes of ice tossing, you’ll be clamoring for more Burgundy in your mix, and a little less of that same old Scotchy Scotch.

If you absolutely loved Aladdin and would like some form of a modern game that follows in a Cave of Wonders-esque adventure, then Treasure Tower Sprint is an inexpensive choice that would occupy time. Otherwise, I’d rather just keep the dollar and not chase peacocks.

Though there is a bit of inspired madness behind Coaster Crazy Deluxe, I was left a tad uninspired with my roller coaster experience.

While Mario Party 10 is still a great party game and fun to play with friends,the fun is short lived due to small boards and a lack of any customization.

Ultimately, Mad Dragon is an uninspired but charming title most people can enjoy for free. As with most free iOS games, players will eventually reach the harsh conclusion that you cannot get the things you want most from the title (that afro-wig!), without having to spend money for supplementary in-game content.

Perhaps if the game was stretched out to flesh out some thin plot points, or expanding on the almost non-existent world, the game would hold up better. As it stands though, High Strangeness feels like a game that was built around a novel idea and hurried to completion.

Asphalt Overdrive may get your blood pumping for several minutes, but unless you want to pay for the privilege, the races are over within the blink of an eye.

If you can master the controls, it’s a lot of fun to try to beat your high score and check off the achievements linked to GameCenter. But, with as finicky as these controls are, most players will find more aggravation than fun here.

Adr1ft tries to break away from the tropes of bombastic violence and self-congratulation found in so many video games, and for that, its development team should be lauded. It’s too bad that this game set in the black void of space didn’t find anything interesting enough to fill the void of its barely-existent gameplay.

Into the Stars, despite some lack of variety, isn’t boring. Even for being a bit repetitive, it provides urgency, difficulty, relief and frustration in-game that runs pretty flawlessly.

It’s a semi-fun puzzler that’s held back by a cap on playtime, thanks to the key system, and an in-app purchase store that’s totally unneeded.

While it is a uniquely shaped puzzle block, it is still just another one buried under a number of games that are much more worthy of your puzzle solving time.

The 3D graphics are passable, if not somewhat boring, and the sounds in the game are also decent. But if I had to pick the hero of BattleFriends at Sea Reloaded, it would be the social gameplay that can provide a brief distraction.

Let’s face it, if you’ve played earlier versions of ControlCraft 3, you have played this newer one as well.

You can pay for the premium version to remove ads and open up the options to play as a guard or a civilian, but if you don’t mind the constant ads and being relegated to a prisoner, then Hard Time is worth a look.

I really would have loved a few less ads for NFL Pro 2014, but since I’ll devour anything with a helmet and pads, I’m okay with the horrible compromise.

Overall, Pocket Mobsters is a decent game. Anyone wanting to play with others in an online community will probably enjoy it, but know that it could cost you some money.

Smarter Than You’s base idea is certainly fun, but its execution needs a lot of work to make it anything other than a brief time-waster barely worth the efforts it takes to download it.

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal is bogged down by slow and repetitive exploration, but there are moments of great, fast platforming that call back to Sonic’s heyday.

Despite the nice presentation, I couldn’t get past the blatant cash grab of how this game is designed.

If you’re looking for a basic game without a lot of bells and whistles and a high difficulty, Crush! might be right for you. However, if you want something that’s a bit flashier, more skill-based, and more fun, look elsewhere.

In creating a title which gives us a diverse array of racing experiences, the developers were on the right track. Unfortunately, this racer falls off the rails with a third rate control system. Variety may be the spice of life, but sans the proper navigation, those hot wheels will continue to spin in the wrong direction.

Ultimately, most of this game feels as though it should have been patched into the original and it plays almost exactly the same.

The only saving grace is the co-op multiplayer campaign mode. You might be interested in trying it out… if it’s really important to you. Just don’t expect bells and whistles to go off.

Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is one of the most disappointing games I’ve played this year. The tennis part is pretty fun, but the rest of the game is so light on content it’s hard to recommend this to anyone outside of children or tennis fans.

Nikko RC Racer is well worth its free price. Anyone more familiar with racing games may not enjoy the finicky controls, slow-moving cars, and uninspired level design, but as a game for people who just want to drive some cars around, you could do worse.

Smash ‘n’ Bash is a free download, so if saving money is the name of the game, you probably won’t be too disappointed. With such a promising start, Ingvar ends up a hero with tons of guts and gusto, but a surprising lack of finish. He may eventually get his beloved ship once and for all, but you may need a lot of patience and suffer a ton of in-game deaths before reaching gaming Valhalla.

There are brief moments throughout The Order: 1886 when it’s clearly striving for excellence, which only makes the end result more tragic. It’s easy to toss aside a game that looks bad or is full of bugs, but The Order feels like it should be a good game.

If you’re in need of a virtual batting experience should download this free to play title. Just don’t expect a home run.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones has a few nice touches that I dig, but will I resume my Shadow Hunter duties anytime soon? Probably not, since there’s just way too many great apps out there waiting to be played on my iPad.

Way To Go is puzzler that is cute, but ultimately two dimensional. It offers a few minutes of fun, but I have to recommend you steer your finger clear of the little tile icon in the App Store. There are so many better destinations for your puzzle loving brain.

There are too many cars to drive, and unfortunately F1 Challenge doesn’t go the distance.

The Blue Blur’s had his name dragged through the mud by starring in many subpar games over the years, and Sonic Jump Fever is another ignoble entry in the muck pile.

Unlike the Pixar movies themselves, which parents can enjoy just as much as their young ones, the same cannot be said for this pair of games.

Tanglers Blitz is an innocuous and mildly entertaining app that, in the end, is also easily forgettable. It’s a worthy enough download since it’s free, but don’t once the ads stop popping up on your device, you may want to leave these aliens behind and let someone else do all the work.

So unless you positively have to find out what happens to Brian and Gina for $4.99, I’d skip over this one and play another run-through of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead.