Meghann Myers

Photo Shootout, a photography game from Man Mountain Productions, puts you directly in the shoes of a professional photographer as you learn essential camera skills.

Photo Shootout seems to be targeting those already familiar with SLR -- that's "single-lens reflex" to the uninitiated -- photography, so it's tough to determine whether the tutorial is supposed to bring amateurs up to speed or dumb things down for professionals.

With a title like "SlasherDerby," you'd probably expect a game involving a combination of bladed weapons and rundown cars. But instead of being a strange Mad Max ripoff, SlasherDerby, by Centerus, is a rather straightforward and unexciting boxing title.

Thanks to simplistic controls, SlasherDerby is an intuitive boxing game where you essentially tap your way to victory. The graphics are equally primitive, but at $2 that's not entirely surprising.

The zombies have taken over your trailer park. Now, only you can save your sweetheart in this third-person shooter. Tucker Ray in: Rednecks vs. Zombies, from developer Frozen Giant, provides some variety to the zombie-themed survival-horror genre by offering a white trash superhero in a post-apocalyptic trailer park. Your weapons, which include traditional firearms and more unconventional backwoods weaponry, allow you to dispatch the green hulking monstrosities with extreme prejudice (and some humor).

Tucker Ray, redneck extraordinaire, arrives home from the farm one day to find that a mysterious meteor attack has destroyed his home. The park is now under siege from mutant zombies, but more importantly, he has no idea whether his beloved Bobby Sue is alive or dead.

There are a lot of video games out there with the potential to take over your life. At least with SimCity Deluxe, from Electronic Arts, all of your free time will be sucked up by the arguably cerebral activity of urban planning and management.

Those familiar with the 20-year-old SimCity franchise know the drill: you design a city from scratch, then develop it while trying to stay on budget and meet the needs of your population. SimCity Deluxe differs from the original iPhone version by offering improved graphics, more build options, and gameplay elements taken from more recent editions of SimCity. When you first launch the app, you're given a choice to "Play," which will take you through the steps of building a city from the ground up, or you can load a scenario and play the game according to its pre-set goals.

What happens when you mix eccentric family members, an instigator best friend, and an annual birthday quest? The Jim and Frank Mysteries: The Blood River Files, a puzzle-based adventure game from Chillingo.

Every year on Jim's birthday, Grandpa Stevenson challenges him to complete some sort of elaborate quest, with each year becoming progressively more difficult. When the game begins, it's Jim's fifteenth birthday, and he's waiting for his best friend Frank to show up so they can get going on this year's adventure.

Hexalex, from developer Nathan Gray, bills itself as "a new angle on crossword games," but it would be more accurate to compare it to a colorful version of Scrabble with sound effects.

Having said that, Hexalex's learning curve is pleasantly short for anyone familiar with the classic board game. The "Hex" part of the equation comes from the hexagonal shape of the board and the tiles, in which you lay down letters to form words vertically or diagonally.

Mumble Jumble, a word search app from developer Jonathan Pulham, combines elements of Scrabble, Tetris, and grade school word puzzles. The result is a fun little app that offers more than the standard word search game, although its $3 price tag might be a bit steep.

Upon launching the app, a "Tap the screen" prompt appears. This will open up a game on the app's default settings, but a quick tap on the "Menu" button will open up a whole host of options to customize the game. The menu also has a section with instructions for the game, which is helpful because the gameplay is not particularly intuitive.

Picture this: mobile, virtual ping pong, with iPhones as paddles and an iPad as the table. This is the promise of Ping Pong Battle, but unfortunately, the developers at LIME seem to have bitten off more than they can chew.

In order to play Ping Pong Battle, you must first download the iPad app. It seems a little weird that the two-player option would be first on the menu, but it becomes clear when you click on it. You get a choice to play with or without paddles; without paddles means the players tap the ping pong ball to serve and return.

Licensed games can be a bit of a crapshoot, but Chillingo Ltd's Predators-- an action game modeled after Robert Rodriguez's latest movie -- is just the right mix of authenticity, well-rounded gameplay, and over-the-top violence.

Somewhat bizarrely, the game asks you to sign up for the social network service Crystal first thing when you open the app. I skipped through everything to continue as a guest, but it doesn't take more than a few minutes to sign up.

Sometimes, you just need a simple, silly app to kill a few minutes. Slingshot Safari, sequel to Digital Prunes' Slingshot Cowboy, is a great example of casual entertainment for the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

The game drops you into an animated savannah with a jungle-beat soundtrack, full of animals you're meant to slingshot to death. It's a little dastardly, but fun if you can appreciate the ridiculousness. Grumbling, groaning water buffalo, elephants, and other beasts mosey across the screen as you launch rocks at them.

Having an iPhone or iPod touch at the ready means you'll never have to wonder if you're running low on tomato paste ever again. That seems to be the idea behind In My Pantry, a productivity app from developer Point & Code that aims to turn you into an unparalleled grocery shopping guru.

The first time you launch In My Pantry, the home screen is divided into a fridge and a freezer. Tap on either to select from around 300 included "blueprints"--basically, profiles for food items--to stock them accordingly. The app doesn't include every item under the sun--you won't find ice cream, for example, but don't freak out. You can create your own blueprints, customizing them down to the label color or simply taking a photo on your iPhone for illustration.

Add zombies to anything and it's instantly awesome. Zombile Bowling HD, from AtlanticNet, combines the delightful tongue-in-cheek camp of a classic bowling alley with the grumbling, gurgling undead.

The game includes two modes of gameplay, one for full-on bowling and one for when you're just in the mood for unadulterated zombie carnage. "Bowl" allows you to pick an alley, a ball, and a "bravery" setting with how many bullets you want. Those bullets will come in handy later.