N.O.V.A. for iPhone looks and plays like a certain console classic.

(Credit: Gameloft)

Will we ever see Halo for iPhone? Let me be the first to say: who cares? We've got N.O.V.A.

Short for Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance (as if that matters), Gameloft's first-person shooter borrows heavily from the Halo playbook.

You're the sometimes solo, sometimes squad-based hero out to save mankind from the alien threat du jour. The game's 13 single-player missions span five environments (from bunker to jungle to spacecraft), each one dripping in console-quality graphic goodness.

An excellent tutorial acclimates you to the controls, which are always a challenge for any iPhone/iPod Touch shooter, but here are some of the best I've seen. Dip into the settings and you can choose from three control schemes or manually arrange the onscreen d-pad, fire button, and other controls exactly how you like them. Nice.

If you like kicking alien butt, you'll love N.O.V.A.

(Credit: Gameloft)

Once you've exhausted the single-player campaign, you can engage in two- to four-player deathmatches--either locally or online. (One small gripe: online play requires a Wi-Fi connection, so you can't get your frag on just anywhere.)

I could say more about the game, but I really don't want to spoil the fun of discovering it on your own. N.O.V.A. really is something special (and that's saying something in a year chock full of special games). Don't take my word alone: the Download Blog's Jason Parker named N.O.V.A. one of the 17 best iPhone games of 2009.

How would you rank N.O.V.A. among first-person shooters for the iPhone? Is it better than Modern Combat: Sandstorm? Better than Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies? Share your FPS faves in the comments!

Normally $50, the top-rated Left 4 Dead 2 is on sale for $29.99 shipped.

(Credit: GameStop)

If you're among those lucky enough to have this week off, well, I'm insanely jealous. That means you've got time to sit around and play games, which I rarely do. But I can live vicariously through you, and give you three amazing deals on new and classic PC titles alike. Take a look:

1. Valve's Steam service is offering one of my all-time favorites, BioShock, for just $4.99. I've mentioned it for that price a few times before, but if you haven't pulled the trigger, here's another chance. BioShock mixes action, role-playing, sci-fi, and horror to great effect.

2. Also on Steam: The Eidos Collector's Pack for $49.99. This amazing 20-game bundle includes the exceptional Batman: Arkham Asylum, which by itself normally sells for $49.99. Other titles include Battlestations Pacific, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, a couple Tomb Raider games, and Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition. The total value is a whopping $262, and the deal's good until Jan. 3.

3. I love me some zombie-whompin', and right now GameStop has Left 4 Dead 2 for $29.99 shipped (plus sales tax in most states). Regular price: $49.99. Check out GameSpot's review; the game scored a 9.0, making it one of the top-rated titles of 2009.

There you go! While I'm toiling away looking for deals, y'all can go and have some good, cheap fun.

In the meantime, if you've found any killer game deals (for PCs or consoles), feel free to share 'em in the comments.

Let's just come right out and call this the Year of Resurrected PC Games. So far in 2009 we've seen iPhone recreations of Civilization, Command & Conquer, Doom, Myst, and even the ancient Lemonade Stand.

Earlier this month, Gameloft brought back one of my favorites: Driver. I know, I know, the game first appeared on the PlayStation, but it's the PC version I remember.

Set in the '70s (with a funk-a-licious soundtrack to match), Driver casts you as an undercover cop trying to expose a national crime ring.

That, of course, is simply an excuse to get you behind the wheel for madcap missions across four cities. Driver is like a playable version of the classic car-chase scene from "Bullitt"--and you're Steve McQueen.

A 14-year-old boy's mother had enough with her son's gaming over the weekend. After turning off the console hoping he would stop gaming, she called police to ask for their help in solving her son's "addiction."

According to the story first reported in the Boston Herald, Angela Mejia had enough with her son's gaming when she found him playing Grand Theft Auto at 2:30 a.m. She told him to go to sleep, but he refused.

"Sometimes I want to run away, too," Mejia told the Boston Herald. "I have support from my church, but I'm alone. I want to help my son, but I can't find a way."

After unplugging her son's game console, she decided to call 911. Police came to Mejia's home and coaxed the boy into going to sleep.

"[The police] were just like, 'Chill out. Go to bed,'" Mejia's son told the Herald.

What Mejia's son did when he woke up is unknown. My guess: he played a video game. Yours?

The Need for Speed series returns to the iPhone with NFS:Shift.

(Credit: Screenshot by Antuan Goodwin/CNET)

Need for Speed SHIFT for iPhone (photos)

EA Mobile has released the second iPhone game in the Need for Speed series: Need for Speed Shift.

You may remember that we took a look at Need for Speed Undercover not too long ago and found it was a fun, arcadelike take on racing with a decent number of fully customizable vehicles. Shift is an evolution of that game but with more realistic racing physics in place of the hokey storyline. Also new to Shift are customizable racing views. Users can now select between chase-cam, hood-cam, bumper-cam, and cockpit views. The cockpit view is unique to the vehicle you're driving, but unfortunately there are no working gauges. The cockpit view is also the only view that features damage modeling in the form of a windshield that gets more messed up the as you hit things.

This Nissan Z features an accurate interior, but no working gauges.

(Credit: Screenshot by Antuan Goodwin/CNET)

On your first outing with Shift, you'll be treated to a quick tutorial that teaches you how to drive with an iPhone. Shift pretty much plays like Undercover, but with a few key differences. Its steering is still controlled by tilting. The vehicles still auto-accelerate and brake when the screen is tapped. However, the race-breaker, slow-motion feature is gone and the controls are supposedly more realistic. In practice, this means that you can no longer win races without touching the brakes and that the transmission is now manual, which can be frustrating for novice users who just want to drive.

Fortunately, there are driver aids that can be activated that automatically brake and shift for you and assist steering that make your ham-fisted inputs smoother and more accurate. Users who want an easy to play, arcade-style racer can turn on the driving aids and win a few medals on the bus ride to work; and users who want more of a racing-sim experience can set all systems to manual for more control over the game. Driving aids or not, drifting is maddeningly difficult this time around. I prefer the drifting mechanics of Undercover.

In this week's preholiday edition of the Digital City Podcast, we all get ready for our one long break of the year, accompanied by special guest smartphone guru (and new CNET East Coaster) Bonnie Cha.

Scott and Joe have seen James Cameron's "Avatar"; Bonnie and Julie haven't. We also discuss Intel's new Atom Netbooks, 3D Blu-ray on the PS3, holiday smartphones, and upcoming laptops and phones at CES 2010. Best of all, Scott gets a chance to show off his one and only Batjew T-shirt. Watch it on video or you'll miss it.

Plus, don't forget to enter a comment to win a 16GB Zune HD of your very own. Happy holidays!

Related links:
>>3D Blu-ray standard outlined, includes PS3
>>New Atom Netbooks: Strange timing for shoppers?
>>CES 2010 Preview: Cell phones
>>CES 2010 Preview: Desktops and laptops

>>Watch the Digital City live every Monday at 3 p.m. EST on CNET Live!
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>>Need more? Follow Dan on Twitter! And Scott!

Along with Beeker and Fozzie Bear, Animal ranks among my favorite Muppets characters. So it's great not only to see him starring in his own iPhone game, but to report that the game's a blast.

At first blush, The Muppets Animal Drummer from Disney looks like something out of Rock Band: you've got five drums that light up and change colors (and occasionally catch fire); combo bonuses and power-ups that appear as you progress; and Animal himself (itself?) banging away center-stage.

A little bit Rock Band, a little bit Simon, The Muppets Animal Drummer is all fun.

(Credit: Disney)

However, the gameplay's a bit different: Animal bangs out a series of beats using different parts of the drum set and different intervals. Your job is to play back the lick (by tapping the drums) using the exact same phrasing.

It starts off pretty easy, but quickly gets challenging (especially for rhythm-deprived individuals like myself). Even so, I find this a lot more fun than, say, Tap Tap Revenge or Rock Band, both of which reach a level of "impossible" that makes me lose all interest.

Here, you can improve your performance with practice--no superhuman levels of dexterity required.

There's also a Free Play mode that lets you drum along with any of the game's handful of songs (some of which must be unlocked by doing well in Classic mode) or songs in your iPod library. Younger kids in particular will have lots of fun with this, as it's really just noise on top of noise.

Whatever mode you choose, you'll enjoy snippets of Animal's voice along the way--icing on the cake.

And sweet cake it is. Animal Drummer may have built-in kid appeal (assuming kids these days even know who the Muppets are), but it's also plenty of fun for older players who enjoy music- and rhythm-centric games. At $1.99, I can highly recommend it.

It's the last live episode of The 404...of 2009. Russ Frushtick, chief gamer at MTV Networks, joins the show today along with Mark Licea of The Green Show to discuss the tumultuous, but exciting year in videogames. Finally, we get to the winners of our "Hangover" contest.

(Credit: Russ Frushtick)

Because of the Great Recession, many games this year have been pushed back to the next year, and we've seen developers folding left and right. Jeff counts down his list of the most anticipated games of 2010--many of which were suppose to be released this year. Some of the games include Dark Void and Bayonetta. We think the main character of Bayonetta looks a lot like Sarah Palin.

Russ tries to teach Snooki of "Jersey Shore" how to play Buck Hunter.

(Credit: Russ Frushtick)

Some of Jeff's favorite games this year were Ghostbusters and, of course, Modern Warfare 2, which Russ actually says didn't make his top 5. Most of that he says has to do with the so-so single player mode and the glitches and cheats in the multiplayer mode of the game. Jeff and Wilson think that Ghostbusters was pretty entertaining, but they both agree that the gameplay itself was a little unappealing after 6 or 7 hours.

Finally, we had a contest to give away copies of "The Hangover" in Blu-ray and DVD. Most of our hangover stories were definitely NSFW, but a couple of them reminded us of our own horrible hangover stories from college and our adolescent days. On that note, please take care of yourself during the holidays. We will see you on the other side of New Year's. In the mean time, send us an e-mail at the404 [at] cnet [dot] com or leave a voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET (2638). There's no guarantee we will get to it during our break, but we will appreciate it. Be safe and have a blast!

We recently got our hands on a trio of iPhone games all currently available in the App Store. Whether or not you think iPhone games need buttons to work, we were fairly impressed by each of these offerings.

Whether you're looking for stocking stuffer ideas or a game to keep you busy on a long holiday trip, we highly recommend checking out any and all of these solid titles. Best of all, they won't break the bank and are perfect for gamers of all ages.

(Credit: Sega/Other Ocean)

Super Monkey Ball 2 ($9.99)
Now before you balk at its $10 price tag, realize that Super Monkey Ball 2 offers most of what its console-counterpart would. We're talking over 100 levels of monkey ball tilting and rolling, mini-games, and Wi-Fi multiplayer. Not to mention, this is arguably one of the prettiest iPhone games we've seen, and it maintains a very solid framerate throughout.

So how does it play? While it may take you a few minutes to get used to the accelerometer functionality, we were really impressed with how well the title controlled. Though it's a bit tough to make turns on a dime--and stopping is harder than we would have liked--the second iPhone Monkey Ball game is sure to entertain previous fans and newcomers to the series.

(Credit: Bitforge)

Orbital (99 cents, Free)
It might look like a simple puzzle game, but the amount of depth and strategy found in Orbital is mind-blowing. The basic object in Orbital is to destroy orbs by carefully aiming your cannon towards them while bouncing off the walls and other orbs already in the playing field. Each orb contains three hits (the number is displayed inside each orb), and will explode once it has run out of collisions. There's also a danger zone located at the bottom of the screen which you'll want to avoid reaching--think of maxing out the number of bubbles like in Bust-a-Move.

Two different game modes (Pure and Gravity) allow for the same basic mechanics, though your strategy may change between the two. What really got us hooked to Orbital was the multiplayer as it allows two people to switch back and forth turns, each trying to destroy each other's orbs.

There's a free version of Orbital available too, which allows for unlimited multiplayer and a score of up to 15 in the single player mode.

(Credit: Critical Thought)

GeoSpark (99 cents)
GeoSpark instantly reminded us of Geometry Wars with its oddly shaped vector graphics and presentation. But underneath its familiar appearance, GeoSpark is truly an addictive game, forcing you to move quickly.

The objective in GeoSpark is to grab like-objects by linking them together to score points. You do this by essentially dragging these shapes together (you can link up more than just two in a row) and then letting go to cash in your score. You must accomplish this all while avoiding non-matching shapes--the catch being the more you chain together like-items, the stronger gravity you create. When this happens, other objects begin to flow towards your chain, and if one touches it, you lose your points.

GeoSpark has that emergency screen-clearing button found in Geometry Wars, but instead of shooting objects, it's your job to link matching ones together.

As we mentioned earlier, all three of the iPhone games featured here are available now on the App Store and are compatible with both the iPhone and iPod Touch. Check out more screenshots from all three games in our slideshow below!

Three iPhone games make for perfect last-minute gifts (photos)