Bungie’s Marathon, for which I upgraded my Mac to a Quadra 840AV in order to play it back in 1994, has been ported to the iPad by Soli Deo Gloria Productions. The best part about this game? Totally free. Bungie released the source code to the game a while back and Marathon die hard Daniel Blazek undertook the effort to bring this seminal Mac title to the iPad.

I’ve been playing now for hours and have found the touch controls to be super responsive. If you can look past the antiquated graphics, the gameplay in Marathon is truly wonderful. For the time, it was even ground breaking.

If you remember Marathon fondly, this is a great way to play the game again. If you’ve never played, now is your chance to pick up a game that defined Mac gaming for years.

Bungie recently released the source code to the remaining Marathon titles as well. I’m personally hoping to see a Marathon Infinity port, with multiplayer, so I can whip out my flechette gun and flame thrower and toast some bobs.

I saw this really neat gadget at MacWorld called Fling that gives ipad gamers a physical analog thumb stick. Or two, if you prefer. It is a little plastic doohickey that sticks to the ipad with suction cups and has a capacitive touch device mounted inside a flexible center. It looks flimsy as hell, and may well break easily, but I got one and mounted it on my ipad this week.

I love it.

It makes games like Star Battalion, Galaxy on Fire and Speedball soooo much easier to control. The gizmo obscures some of the screen, but it is totally worth it to get that precision game control.

I will be trying it on Rage HD next.

A new title in the App Store, Xenome, caught my eye. It promised an open world environment akin to Borderlands and Fallout 3, two games I love. There was no free version to try, and no reviews yet, but “what the hell” I thought, and downloaded.

Poor controls mar what might otherwise be a great game.

First let me say that the developers have done a lot of great stuff in this game. Good design. Good story. And it is evocative of both Fallout 3 and Borderlands. But after about an hour and a half of struggling with the controls, I just gave up. The game utilizes a dual joystick set up, but the responsiveness just isn’t all that great. I had a very hard time getting where I wanted to go and getting the camera to swing where I wanted it to so I could see who or what was attacking me. The hud is also painfully cramped. So much so that it is a real pain to access all the additional screens to manage inventory, quests, etc.

I didn’t dislike the game, but I didn’t really enjoy playing it either. I’m hopeful that a later update will make the controls more responsive and the camera more fluid.

Alive 4 Ever

What sets this game apart is that it isn’t just a shooter. Alive4Ever incorporates a number of RPG qualities, like experience to level up your character. You can also collect equipment to change your character’s stats. But the thing that really makes it better than the average top down blast fest is the missions. Some are straight up kill the zombie affairs, where others require you to retrieve survivors, vaccine, gold, or a combination of the above. The catch is that when you’re retrieving something, you can’t use your more powerful rifle, you have to switch to your handgun. It does add to the challenge.

As you make your way through the levels, you accumulate cash that can be used to buy better weapons, from shotguns, to assault rifles to pistols. Having a variety of weapons to choose from going into different missions makes the game feel deeper.

I’m a big fan of this little gem. If you like action, pick it up.

Note: I don’t give ratings. I only write about products that I think you should get, or that you should avoid.

Wolfestein RPG

I’ve always been a fan of Id Software. I went out and bought Orcs and Elves the day it came out for DS and played the hell out of it. I fired up my iPhone the other day and found their follow up title (in spirit,) Wolfenstein RPG, available in the App Store.

The game is a turn based RPG like the old style D&D games you might have played on your PC or IIe. You move one tile at a time and take turns fighting and executing actions. The graphics are a lot better though, and the game is in your pocket, both plusses over Eye of the Beholder.

The game is a lot like the classic 3D game that was also recently released on iPhone in that you are fighting Nazis in a castle, you have guns, chicken to eat, and prisoners to rescue, so if you’ve ever played a Wolf game, you’ll immediately know what to expect.

I’m really enjoying the game so far, and it drains the battery a lot less quickly than Doom Resurrection does. If this seems up your alley, I highly recommend it.

Knights Onrush

I am an iPhone addict. I admit it. And I’m a big fan of the games that Chillingo publishes. Their titles probably take up more space on my iPhone than any other publisher’s.

Knights Onrush is a gesture based castle defense game. You are the king of the castle and have to defend it from an onrushing hoard of villains, from knights to ghosts to leaping something-or-others. You defend your castle by using your finger to literally flick the little bastards up in the air, where, you hope, they’ll come down with a thud and a splat.

You can improve your defense by upgrading your castle. There are two currencies at work in the game. Gold and Souls. You get gold from killing your enemies. You get souls from sacrificing your enemies in a fire pit or offering them up to a dragon. As your wealth mounts, you can acquire crushing columns, smashing boulders, cannons, ballistas, and, my favorite, a flame thrower.

The game has a very challenging quest mode and a free play mode, so there is plenty of replay value.

My only gripe is that you can develop some serious hand cramps trying to flick all the little buggers off the screen.

Thumbs Up.