It's a pity developer Halfbrick was hypnotised by DreamWorks's cash, because a deeper Desperado could have been a fantastic Fruit Ninja sequel.

Bung in a vexation-defeating undo and an AI that amusingly flat-out lies during proceedings and you've got an essential iOS action-puzzler.

The obvious touchstone here is Angry Birds, but there's a neat element of strategy to each level that keeps everything from descending into a mere shoot-and-hope affair.

The five stages play with classic Namco arcade games in an amusing way, the graphics are rich and well-defined, and the controls are tight. This is just as well, given the relative toughness of the boost sections.

The Sims Medieval is far less open-ended than its predecessor.

A game that's at odds with itself. If it had given either of its major components the attention they deserved, we'd be recommending the game without hesitation. But with both sides of it half-baked, it fails to excel.

But creator Zach Gage is clearly some kind of evil genius, because no sooner had we weaned ourself off his furiously addictive game than he laughed like a maniac and presented this update, which boasts Retina graphics, universal support and two new modes.

So if you finished the likes of League of Evil and Mos Speedrun (see Tap! four and five, respectively) at your first attempt, this is tougher, but platform-game weeds need not apply. (Sob.)

The game's not bad, just entirely forgettable.

It's fun for a bit of casual play with chums and randoms, but nothing special, plus you'll tire of the single-player version (against THREE whole AI players!) in record time.

It is, however, a joy to look at and – in spite of its lows – highly replayable. Like guns, robots, and hiding behind walls? Then EPOCH.'s a no-brainer.

At its best, the game resembles a side-on Zen Bound, but the gradual introduction of arcade elements ends up being a frustration, since your finger too often obscures the action.

Still, this is a solid title, with plenty of potential. In short bursts it's a lot of fun, and it can be genuinely tense when you're out of ammo and fleeing through a decaying prison while zombies go after your blood.

At its best, then, this is Spy Hunter and Burnout's highlights combined; at its worst, it's frustrating drudge-work. A pity.

Full marks on a level are achieved by hitting two targets: number of taps and speed. These goals can be met during separate attempts (thankfully, given that the game seems to expect you to solve a puzzle within a second of seeing it), but repeating levels just to get our speed scores up did get a bit dull.

Squids merges the Angry Birds firing mechanism with top-down billiards-like physics, then welds the result to a cute, if short, role-playing adventure.

An emphasis on live action that too often happens under your prodding digit, making levels past the first couple of dozen hugely frustrating? Oh. And what a shame - we really wanted to like this one, and everything else about it is fab.

But a 3D twist – jumping platforms surround a spinning tower – gives fans of the genre something new to tackle.

The game is therefore a little like Doodle Jump, but if jet packs and rockets were platforms and everything else was to be avoided. [Gold Edition]

As a rescue-'em-up, Saucelifter's under half the price, brighter and far more fun. Get that instead.

Wonder why this germ of a good game has average execution and problematic controls (angled shots are tough when your thing's near a screen corner). Realise wading through lower levels every game is a chore. Quit.

But tilt to move and directional fire (that demands you hit multiple targets with single shots to survive) and tap to jump too often feels like juggling while already juggling. This drags the game down from a must-have to a guarded recommendation.

What's less fine is the game's imprecision, forcing you to play levels over and over until you stumble on placing a bomb on a specific pixel. The annoyance is such we were soon fed up, unintentional sinister undercurrent aside.

Yes, it's maybe just a little on the shallow side, and it has this annoying stash of red power-ups that you have to avoid because they leave you decidedly worse off for a while, oh, and it features boss battles, too. We honestly don't mind too much, though, because of the non-stop rocket action.

Super Bit Dash is quite close to greatness, but while it looks lovely, the controls aren't quite tight enough, and the finite number of rooms repeats quickly.

It's messy but when it works – that is, when you're comfy with the controls, laying waste to a horde of Mexican gangsters and not being bothered by the nonsensical plot – it works rather well, and to sweeten the deal there's a full dose of multiplayer, in which we spent a lot of time getting one-shot killed by people with much better weapons.

You can play Shadowgun on your iPhone as well as your iPad, and it doesn't fare too badly here either because it uses the whole left and right sides of the screen to control running and aiming, unlike N.O.V.A. with its tiny joystick.

Being able to spend credits to level up your weapons makes Siegecraft able to stand up to the Viking horde, but it's still far from the best catapult title around.