For the most part, though, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a welcome throwback.

Temple Run: Oz isn't a revolutionary entry in the gaming series, but it is the most polished Temple Run experience to date.

For the most part, though, the game excels in taking mundane tasks and making these activities fun. At the same time, having to unlock everything (along with the required Devilish Calculations demo) is an awkward way to introduce players to the experience. Nintendo would be wise to remember this before releasing a sequel.

It may not be the deepest strategy game on the App Store, but fans of other card-battling heavyweights such as Rage of Bahamut will feel right at home in Spellstorm's world. There's a huge variety of creature cards to collect and evolve, a generous campaign to work through, and a far more engaging world to explore in comparison to the competition. It won't convert any genre naysayers, but card strategy fans are in for an unusually high quality treat here.

Those minor complaints aside, Star Wars Pinball is a wonderful extension of Zen Studios' outstanding games, and even non-fans will enjoy everything it has to offer.

That said, two things mar the experience. First, there's a considerable lack of depth with so few areas to explore. Second, unless you feel charitable, it will take a lot of grinding to unlock everything, so expect to visit the U.S. and South America (and stare at the same scenery) quite a few times. Of course, Killer Snake is free, so what did you expect? Will you play it months from now? Probably not, but it's the sort of guilty pleasure that'll entertain you a few minutes each day.

Performance aside, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus is a razor-sharp sequel that delivers over-the-top cut scenes, special moves and pulverizing attacks. Final verdict: A quality on-the-go beat-em-up that should find its way into your Vita library.

There's a bothersome crashing issue that seems to occur during random fatalities and the camera will occasionally spaz out, but otherwise, AVP: Evolution is a well designed franchise tribute and a blueprint for how to do a kickass Alien versus Predator experience on mobile.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to download Toy Story: Smash It!, from the head-scratching puzzles to the welcome fan service. Appropriate for all ages, Disney has once again provided an iOS title that does the respective license proud, and with more levels on the way via update, we expect to keep this game on our devices throughout the year.

In its current state, the game fails to thrill, but if you're in search of a bloody beat-em-up, this average title satisfies on the most basic level.

The fact that you'll often see the worm a section or two above the character adds to the adrenaline rush you'll experience, and the constant need to stuff your pockets with Grubies adds a welcome mini-game of sorts, but despite all of that, you'll probably curse the controls at some point. Heck, we'd even take an old-school NES controller. Instead, we'll just have to settle for Worm Run being flawed, but good.

To be fair, Hell Yeah! Pocket Inferno isn't a bad game per se. The artwork sets it apart from the competition, and scoring three stars for each level will take a while. At the same time, there's little to distinguish the game from the numerous runners readily available, and we can't help but wish Sega would have just ported Wrath of the Dead Rabbit to iOS instead of publishing a companion title that for the most part is a mere shadow of its console counterpart. Worth $0.99, but let's face it, you've probably experienced a game like this before.

It's a lot of fun, it's very pretty to look at, and a huge amount of attention has been paid to the upgrades, weapons and environment.

Where the game falters (and it's minor, really) is the repetition that comes from grinding and the somewhat lengthy load times between missions. But if you cut your virtual teeth on the likes of Smash TV and Total Carnage, Gun Bros 2 should find its way onto your favorite device, maybe longer than expected, considering Glu plans to add more MODS and vehicles in future updates.

Don't let Cyto get lost in the noise of the brasher physics puzzlers on the App Store. It may have its moments of frustration, ones where you feel the game is working against you just a little more than is strictly fair, but this is still one of the finest new games you can get for your mobile this week, and we want to see more of its kind in 2013.

So Year Walk is much more than a single riddle, wrapped in a single, mysterious enigma. It's an intricately blended experience of puzzles and exploration, with seemingly forgotten clues returning to the surface later on. That those puzzles often unravel in a somewhat illogical order is the only real complaint we have about the game - it's more of a journey through a developer's imagination than a traditional game, and it's a relatively brief experience too.

Stardom: Hollywood looks great, has an occasionally wicked sense of humor, and it knows how to crack a few barbed quips at celebrity culture. But ultimately it fluffs its lines in the only area that really matters - the gameplay.

We don't condone abusing animals, but we still recommend Hackycat for its intense touchscreen play, power-ups (rainbows are a godsend) and lighthearted presentation.

The dreadful soundtrack is by and large the game's worst feature, and you'll probably want to nix the audio. This aside, Relic Rush provides a fun bite-sized mobile experience that, while falling short of greatness, definitely justifies its price. More levels please.

In fairness to Die Hard, the game does - awkward character modeling and animation aside - at least function and do what it sets out to do. It's not the best runner though, and it's certainly not the best shooter, and the combination of the two in this instance is rather slow and dull. But it works for however much time you're prepared to give to it.

The developers aren't kidding when they say the game is suitable for those 17 years and over, but Clear Vision 2 isn't the feast of gratuitous violence for violence's sake that you might be expecting. Instead it's a fascinating gaming experience, one that's expertly crafted and told with a very keen eye for black humor rather than outright offense.

Fionna Fights certainly has its moments, although the game's a very short-lived affair when all's said and done. Having grabbed a few power-ups and run a dozen or so games, you'll have seen everything the game has to offer, but fans of the cartoon series will certainly get more mileage out of this particular adventure.

Ideally, an endless mode would have topped off the game nicely, but for now, Rock Runners is a smart mix of old and new school design, wrapped in a joyful platforming experience iOS users will dig for weeks. Kudos to everyone involved.

All that's required though is a little willingness to teach yourself, along with the patience to dig deeper into the game's surprising charms. Puzzle Restorer won't be to everyone's tastes, but if you're ready for a stiff challenge this is one puzzle game you won't want to miss out on.

Whether the exact implementation of Real Racing 3's show-stopping freemium model is a question of greed or inexperience, we can't know - but we want to believe the latter. We also want to believe that between now and the game's global release on February 28th, greater consideration will be given to the long-term supporters of the series, and that a timer-free premium edition of the game will be released alongside this current incarnation. If that happens, we'll revisit our opinion of Real Racing 3 - and give it the accolades it would otherwise unquestionably deserve.

Line Runner 2 isn't perfect - while the challenge is a menacing yet satisfying one to overcome, there's a distinct lack of variety in the obstacle types, and there's more that could have been done to spice up that challenge and keep it fresh. But it is something very different and unashamedly tough in the runner genre, and for those reasons alone we encourage you to both try, and persevere, with this fiendish game.

While the Valentine's connection to this mini-collection may be rather tenuous - and the experience is certainly brief - those who've never sampled the delights of Where's My Water? before may find that this taster pot prompts an irresistable purchase. For those who have somehow managed to burn through the hundreds of levels released for the full versions, it's a slice of extra content for the price of nothing.

Be Together doesn't so much reinvent the wheel as paint it pink, slap it on a wedding car, and send it roaring off into the distance, but physics-puzzle fans will certainly find plenty to be enamored with here. It doesn't do anything particularly new for the genre, and the constant romantic giggling and burbling of the characters might drive you up the wall, but when all's said and done it's a solid enough puzzler.