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.

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.

We love it, especially on iPad, where the bigger screen affords you more precision, while a boat-hat-wearing mutant crab and mecha-driving giant dog aim to bring your tower down. Like we said: odd.

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.

Of course, the game's stark simplicity means it lacks depth and perhaps longevity, but we reckon it'll always be fun for a quick blast.

We hugely enjoyed our time with Swampy. The game looks great - Swampy has plenty of character and the cut-scenes are a reminder of creator Disney's animation pedigree. It also controls well (bar an awkward, out-of-place scroll bar for navigating larger levels), especially on the iPad, which allows more precision (not least for younger players) due to its larger screen.

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.

And so after an hour of this game, the only thing you'll want to launch skyward is your device.

True to the original, puzzle-solving and survival rely on brutal hair's-breadth accuracy and timing, enjoyment of which hangs on your nostalgia quotient. Vintage gamers will lap up the cryptic cut scenes and tricky puzzles, but newcomers… consider yourself warned.

Our sole complaint is its baffling demand for an iPad 2; we honestly can't see what it's doing that needs the extra power. It spends quite a bit of time loading and there are lots of animated things going on, but nothing especially excessive that we'd expect to require an iPad 2. What do we know, though? If you have the technology, we strongly recommend it.

If elaborate construction is what you had in mind, check out the more scholarly - not to mention free - Tinkerbox. But for when you want fun firing catapults at dolls to knock bowling balls onto see-saws, Casey's your man.

The real joy here is the fluid gameplay. Play is controlled simply with an analogue stick for movement and three buttons for attacking and defensive activities. You can also double tap the right side of the screen to pull off some context-sensitive special moves.

The bit when the blocks pulling happy faces when you win is the most exciting bit of an uninspiring game.

Konami has done its best to make this an authentic footy experience, and certainly in terms of graphics and gameplay it does a decent job. But the relative scarcity of licensed players and teams, and the presence of outdated strips, dilutes the overall experience.

The range of scenarios that crop up is impressive, and the gameplay is complex and rewarding, but only if you can get past the fact that the lack of animation, multiple menus and statistics make for rather a dry experience.

Authenticity was always FIFA's strong hand. Now that the gameplay is world class too, this is the most realistic footy sim available, by a mile.

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.)

It's brutally difficult. Also, it's utterly brilliant; ever since we started to get our heads round it we've been hooked by the concept and enthralled by the potential of its waldoes and reactors; part of the fun is seeing how other players have solved the level that you've just cracked, because you can guarantee that you'll discover an exciting new way of doing things.

In fact, it not only beats Atari's Greatest Hits, but also the original Asteroids! Hello, Atari? Oh, you've gone.

If you're a veteran, a discordant Blue Danube from Manic Miner and characters from 8-bit classics will raise a smile; if not, revel in the lovely craziness and wonder why all iOS games don't have this much imagination and heart.

SplitAppleWe never want to meet this game's star. He's bonkers. It's one thing to be a fan of archery and set up a target. It's another to fashion a madcap contraption that wheels a target along a washing line, or to pepper a grassy plot with pop-up targets.

Often in gaming, details matter, and it's here Running Sheep falls short. The controls aren't tight enough, and too many levels hide floor tiles behind pillars. Worse, you're chucked right in, with no chance to plan.

Not much to it, but simple, fast fun when you've got friends about. Better still, it's free!

We suspect too much predatory play might leave you with few friends to play against, but the mode's inclusion nonetheless propels Greedy Bankers to the top of the iPad match-game heap. Let's hope the dev doesn't blow the cash on subprime credit.

It's shameless in its copying, but we still like it.

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.

Charming, but beyond barebones.