Take Redonkulous lightly at your peril – the gameplay here is hardcore with a vengeance.

While it doesn’t stray far from genre conventions, GT Racing 2 is competently executed and fun to play. There may be higher-profile racers on iOS, but few that nail the controls and upgrades quite as squarely as this does.

The astonishing illustrations, excellent soundtrack, and delightful world of Morphopolis may be worth the price of admission alone in what is an otherwise middling hidden-object game.

Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies isn’t a drastic re-invention of the original, but adding more content and refined gameplay to an already impressive strategy game is hard to argue with.

Pathogen offers a stylish and elegant tactical struggle against computer or human opponents that draws immense depth from a simple set of rules.

Football Heroes is a fun pigskin game that offers a continual stream of great moments, though it’s held back by unintelligent computer opponents.

Tiny Death Star's slow but satisfying consumer-centric twist on battlestation management lacks the excitement of the films it draws from, but makes up for it raw cuteness and loads of thoughtful fan service.

LEGO The Lord of the Rings may not match its much pricier Mac counterpart on features or gameplay depth, but it's still the best LEGO game on iOS by a wide margin.

It may take a few minutes to grasp the magic of Me vs. You, but it’s an elegantly presented single-screen multiplayer game with all the right vibes for continuing and exacerbating rivalries between friends.

Sorcery 2 continues the adventure with very little iteration, but it’s built on a strong foundation that remains charming.

Rayman Fiesta Run may not dramatically deviate from the formula, but it maximizes the excellence held within and delivers a richly entertaining mobile platformer that’s tough, funny, and ultimately pretty wonderful.

Papa Sangre II’s audio-only horror adventure offers an intense and unsettling improvement on its stellar predecessor, but its uncompromising latter stages may prove too much to bear.

Good looks and a blockbuster movie tie-in don't save Thor: The Dark World from its sloppy battles and lame freemium model.

Every fantastic thing about Dead Trigger 2 is offset with an overriding push towards greedy in-app purchases and/or obnoxious special offers.

Backyard Monsters: Unleashed offers a solid blend of base building and tower offense in a free-to-play package, although its cycle of monster and building upgrades drags it down as you reach higher levels.

With a different economy or more restrained enemies, Romans from Mars might have been able to use its mechanics more meaningfully. As it stands, though, this game is too frenetic and unsubtle to use the tried-and-true designs it sets out to use.

Echo Prime offers plenty of energetic stages full of foes to blast and slice up, but its repetitive nature weighs down some of the more interesting elements.

Even Up’s un-sexy, straightforward approach may not enthrall everyone, but its logic isn’t without merit.

Batman: Arkham Origins features almost none of the complexity Batman games are now known for on other platforms, but it's moderately fun for a while — at least until the game starts trying to milk your wallet.

CSR Classics holds all the appeal of its predecessor with a nice hot rod restoration element, but progression proves extremely slow and repetitive.

First of Awesome suffers due to a lack of variety, but it remains an enjoyable experience in small chunks.

Simogo’s keen eye for design and multimedia elevate what otherwise could have been a breezy mystery novella into one of the best puzzle games on the App Store.

Great visuals and a tactile control scheme combine with the Formula One license to produce a stellar top-down iOS racer. F1 Challenge comes with bells and whistles, but its fundamentals prove top-notch.

Monster Adventures mashes up different genres to give you a compelling and seemingly fresh experience each time you play.

Duet’s elegant brilliance is starkly defined against its unforgiving difficulty, and there’s a truly entrancing puzzler lurking beneath its surface.

With an excellent mix of costumes, tons of collectibles, some truly clever dialogue, and a pleasant sense of humor, Costume Quest is a very likable adventure. Over time, exploration and battles can grow repetitive, but that shouldn't stop you from digging into this sweet Halloween affair.

Getting around has its frustrating moments, but Type:Rider remains a fascinating interactive exploration of typography that's unlike anything else on the App Store.

The relationship between player decisions and race results can be hard to determine in NASCAR: Redline, while vestigial in-app purchases put the brakes on what could have been a solid lightweight sim.