Despite being streamlined and stripped-down for portable play, Command & Conquer: Red Alert for the iPhone still manages to pack in much of the series’ signature style and addictive strategy-driven gameplay.

Loved
Style to Spare:From its live action cutscenes to its crazy-ass battle units, the C&C series is famed for its intentionally cheesy excess. And while the silly cinematics didn’t make it into the iPhone version, the title still retains much of the franchise’s wacky trademark charm. Screen-swallowing Russian zeppelins rain death from the skies, armoured war bears charge enemy strongholds, and the sexy-accented Natasha quips “You like my scope?” and “The pleasure’s all mine.” while laying waste to never-had-a-chance infantry. Impressive explosions also engulf the tiny display, and all units, despite their shrunken presentation, are drenched in eye-pleasing detail. Furthermore, a crunchy guitar score keeps the action-and your adrenaline-appropriately amped.

Tactile Warfare:While the RTS genre still struggles to find its sweet spot in terms of control schemes that match traditional mouse-and-keyboard set-ups, there’s no question the iPhone’s touch screen is a good fit. Like a general positioning pawns on a war map, you’ll delight in the tactile satisfaction of fighting with your fingertips; simply touch units, then their target or destination, and watch them go to work. You can also draw a small box around multiple units to move them together, and save specific groups to tabs to easily access them again. Additionally, a swipe of your finger on a mini-map swings the camera to any desired location. Everything, from commanding and training units, to constructing buildings and navigating the map, is a simple intuitive touch away.

Hated
Minus the Multiplayer:Given the platform’s limitations we can totally forgive the omission of some units and even the Empire of the Rising Sun faction (only Russians and Allies are available.) However, the absence of multi-player is sorely missed considering the competitive nature of the genre. I generally think of any RTS’s solo campaign as a warm-up to the online action, so, while C&C’s handful of solo play chapters and two skirmish maps are a blast, they only feel like half the total package. Thankfully, EA is reporting that a future download will remedy this, adding the much-missed multi-player mode. Despite the shrunken presentation, Command and Conquer: Red Alert retains much of the series signature style and charm. Additionally, the touch controls make for a satisfying tactile RTS experience. Give us some multi-player, and we’ll happily jump back into this fight.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert was developed and published by EA Mobile for iPhone on November 1. Retails for $US9.99/$AU12.99. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed the game’s campaign and played skirmish modes.

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With over two billion applications downloaded across 20 categories in 77 countries, Apple is probably right when they call The App Store the “world’s most popular applications store”. Now that they’ve surpassed the 100,000 application mark, perhaps they can get around to making it a bit easier to find something useful.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

I’m not saying there aren’t a bunch of really great apps to be had, especially in the popular games category, but any store housing more than 100,000 titles is bound to be a real bitch to navigate.

So congratulations to Apple for this amazing achievement. We’d break things down by category to see how many of those 100,000 titles are games, but frankly trying to do so gives us a mild headache.

With 20 years of experience in creating video game music and titles like Hitman, Kane & Lynch and Borderlands under his belt, Jesper Kyd has become one of the go-to guys as far as video game soundtracks are concerned. Kyd really seems to connect with the games that he composes music for, creating sounds that enhance the action rather than drown it out. That, and Ubisoft’s Patrice really seems to dig the guy’s work.

“Jesper Kyd’s score for Assassin’s Creed II brings players into the Italian Renaissance by providing a true sense of depth for the poignant moments, while also giving a jolt of adrenaline to the action-packed sequences. We are thrilled to have Jesper Kyd back with us in making Assassin’s Creed II an epic title on all levels.”

Ubisoft is so proud of the soundtrack that they’ll be releasing it on “popular music stores” for download on November 16. I am assuming that includes iTunes. Why buy it? Just ask Jesper.

“We created a unique musical identity for Assassin’s Creed II that reflects the character and story of Ezio and elevated the music, both in terms of creativity and live production, to a whole new level.”

Now if I could only stop mistaking the poor guy for Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale.

Red Alert for the iPhone is a new handheld version of the classic real-time strategy game. It’s trimmed down quite a bit, but it uses the iPhone’s multi-touch capability to pinch-zoom and manoeuvre units around the map, so there’s definitely enough new there to warrant a purchase. Plus, once you make it through the Soviet and Allies campaign and 12 levels of Skirmish gameplay, EA already has six more skirmish maps you can download directly through the in-game store, with an Empire of the Rising Sun expansion pack in the works that introduces a third faction to the mix.

Purchase the game now for $12.99 to get some practice in before the free multiplayer update hits, allowing friends to take to the battlefield via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It looks like EA is planning to squeeze as much out of the iPhone Red Alert as they possibly can. Will you be buying?

You can quibble about the when and the how of this happening, but the inevitability of games being sold online like music, free of their plastic prisons, is certain.

The first real sign of that step away from games sheathed in cardboard and plastic sold in a bricks and mortar store hit earlier this month in the form of the PSPgo.

Sony’s latest Playstation Portable is a smaller, sleeker system that has no way of playing a physical game on it. There is no disc drive of any sort, instead there is internal memory, a wireless internet connection and a virtual store run by Sony.

“This is an intersting step to test the waters on a digital only product,” Eric Lempel, director of Playstation Network Operations, told Kotaku. “We are thrilled and completely cognisant that this is the platform for a digital gamer.

“It’s a really exciting time.”

While gamers can visit the Playstation Store directly on their Playstation Portable or PSPgo, the PSP has to store its games on Memory Sticks, while the PSPgo has 16GBs of internal memory and still has the ability to store titles on Memory Sticks. Top-tier games can take up half a gig to one a half gigs of memory each.

The Playstation Store currently has about 100 PSP games available for download with hundreds more in the pipeline, Lempel said. To purchase a game, you just need to find it and download it directly to the device. The sale is automatically charged to a credit card or taken out of credit which can be purchased at retail stores.

Both the PSP and PSPgo can also display pictures and movies and play music. While the online store both rents and sells movies, it currently doesn’t offer music. That’s something that could change in the future, Lempel said.

“It is something we have considered and are looking at,” he said. “It’s a natural fit, but there is nothing to talk about right now.”

Sony faced quite a few hurdles in launching their download-only gaming platform. Some retailers, which make a bulk of their money off of game not hardware sales, were reluctant to carry the device. And game publishers had to be convinced that the games, no longer on a physical disc, wouldn’t be open to greater piracy.

Under Sony’s system, games have to be “activated” after they have been installed on a PSPgo or Playstation Portable and can only be installed on a total of five different PSPs or PSPgos in their lifetime.

Those steps, Lempel says, helped convince third-party publishers that their device was a safe bet.

“We’re seeing everyone on board with the PSPgo,” he said.

While the $US250 PSPgo is a download-only device, Sony isn’t putting all of their eggs in one basket. Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida told Kotaku that the company intends to continue its support of the $US170 Playstation Portable, which allows gamers to download and play those same games or use the device’s built-in UMD drive to play games.

Moving forward, he said, new games will be released in both the UMD and digital formats. Sony was sure to make it as easy as possible to release a game in both formats, Lempel said.

“It’s not that hard to do, but there is some work involved,” he said.

The hope is that games will hit both the retail store and Sony’s online Playstation Store at the same time and for the same price.

The decision to not drop the price for a game that doesn’t have the added cost of packaging and distribution may not sit well with gamers, but Lempel says Sony is comfortable with the decision.

“Right now there is no price difference,” he said. “We feel (the games) are competitively priced and that there is a ton of content across the spectrum.

He added that a price drop for digital games in the future is possible.

“We’re always looking at our business model.”

The online store does have lower-priced, simpler games available for purchase. These “minis” cost $US10 or less, take up less than 100 megs of memory and can’t have multiplayer or network functionality.

Publishers can also decide they want to place their bigger titles on sale, Lempel pointed out.

“We’ve done a good amount of sales on the Playstation Network in the past,” he said.

One stumbling block for the new platform could prevent current Playstation Portable owners from upgrading to the new handheld.

There is currently no way for a Playstation Portable owner to transfer their library of UMD games to the download-only PSPgo. Yoshida told us that Sony “seriously looked into solutions” but that legal and technical issues prevented them from coming up with a system that would work.

Lempel says that the biggest issue was not just about the games, but rather the game’s music and other royalty issues.

To try and make up for that, Playstation Portable owners in Europe who upgrade to the PSPgo will get three free download games. Currently, there are no such plans for potential upgraders in the U.S., Lempel said. He did add that new bundles for the PSPgo could be heading for the US in the future.

While the PSPgo gives gamers the convenience of instantly purchasing games online without having to leave their homes and the ability to carry many of those titles with them without the need of extra discs, the device is a much bigger win for publishers and Sony.

If successful, the PSPgo and it’s download-only service completely kills the ability for gamers to sell off their titles or buy used copies of games.

A quick check of the top ten rated games for the Playstation Portable found that half weren’t yet available in the Playstation Store and of those that were, only one was cheaper than the various stores and services that sell games used.

The PSPgo is driven by an interesting concept, and has a better design than its predecessor, but to succeed Sony has to drop the price of the handheld console and digital copies of games and should actively court publishers to have regular sales on their titles. Sony should also launch digital rentals of games and push gamer loyalty programs that reward frequent shoppers.

And why wouldn’t they?

Used games, next to perhaps piracy, is a publisher’s biggest concern. Moving gamers away from a system that supports the resale of titles, with nothing going into the pockets of publishers, is likely one of the video game industry’s top priorities.

But to do so with little to no reward for the consumer will alienate gamers and inevitably kill this first test of a download-only platform.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

If you picked up the $US8 app and don’t want to wait for the patch to be abke play now, you can just disable your WiFi to get the game to run.

I’ve spent a bit of time with it and it’s fairly fun, though the biggest draw for me is the ability to play in local and internet multiplayer matches. Something it looks like I’ll have to wait for the patch to test out.

Namco Bandai will be using the Namco Sounds label to release exclusive re-mastered tracks from its extensive stable of classic games. To inaugurate the launch of the label, songs from Pac-Man, Xevious and SoulCalibur Suite: The Resonance of Souls and Swords are now available for purchase, with the latter being a special exclusive release in honour of the launch of SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny on the PSP. Additional tracks under the new label will be showing up on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month.

It’s always good to see more video game music showing up on iTunes, though I’d have to say that I’ve never sat back and thought to myself, “Gee, I wish I had Xevious music on my iPod.” Should be interesting to see what other rarities the company makes available as the label progresses.

Mass Effect Galaxy isn’t just a side story in the Mass Effect Universe. On top of delivering the same deep dialogue system along with top-down shooting action, Galaxy also features two characters that will play a role in Mass Effect 2, giving you insight into the next chapter of the series. It’s almost like buying an interactive prequel teaser for your phone. Developed by the folks at BioWare themselves, Mass Effect Galaxy is now available for only $US2.99 in the App store.