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"Each week, Digital Spy rounds up the biggest mobile gaming releases with reviews and trailers. This week&amp;#039;s games include traveling the stars, a zombie zoo, a haunted strategy game and the sequel to one of the iPhone&amp;#039;s most addicting games. Star Command Platforms: iPhone, iPad Price: \u00A31.99 / $2.99 After two Kickstarter campaigns Star Command has finally arrived, bringing the much-anticipated space sim to iOS. Players can build and customize their own ship, and set off to explore an ever-expanding galaxy of planets and alien encounters.  Ship customization is somewhat limited to only certain ship blueprints, though there is still flexibility in the types of weapons and science rooms you equip in the pre-determined spots. Your crew is where the real customization comes in, as they can be assigned to different rooms for science, engineering and weaponry, which both power that ship function and grant secondary abilities to the crewmates.  For example, weapons specialists can attack invading forces while engineers can repair damage to your ship. However, using crew to attack invaders could mean leaving your weapons unattended and unable to attack the enemy ship. Your crew will level up in these specializations as you use them, and can be reassigned at will, giving players great flexibility when it comes to having the right crew combination available for any situation. Where Star Command falters is in its difficulty curve, which frequently throws enemy ships at you that are more powerful than you can reasonably prepare against. Part of the issue is the dialog system, which almost always seems to lead to battle rather than diplomacy, with the only difference being whether or not you take damage before the battle begins. You can upgrade your ship with tokens earned after each battle, but the number given does not adequately prepare you for most enemies, so it feels unbalanced that most situations do not provide the option to also obtain tokens through non-violent negotiation. Even with the spikes in difficulty, Star Command is still heaps of fun on a mobile device. FTL did the punishingly difficulty space-faring genre better last year, but for that type of experience on the go Star Command is your best bet.  &amp;gt; Download &amp;#039;Star Command&amp;#039; from the App Store       Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte Platforms: iPhone, iPad Price: \u00A31.99 / $2.99 Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte takes the lane-based tower defense of Plants vs Zombies and adds a more action-heavy twist to make it better fit touchscreen devices. As undead zoo animals charge at you from the right side of the screen, players trace lines with their finger to direct the path of a boomerang-like hatchet.  Drawing the hatchet&amp;#039;s flight path takes some getting used to, since the animals keep moving as you try to time your throws, but after a few levels it proves to be quite intuitive and becomes second nature. As you progress new weapon types and zombified animals are introduced, with each enemy offering its own movement speed and weapon weaknesses. Do you use the weapon that defeats elephants in one hit instead of two, or the weapon that can penetrate tortoise shells?  The weapon trade-off ensures that the difficulty keeps increasing even as new tools are unlocked, since no weapon can be a jack of all trades. There are also items called especiales to unlock in addition to your main weapon, which can offer a range of abilities from slowing zombies to increasing your throw speed or curing zombified animals. There are 45 increasingly difficult levels, each with five goals to accomplish that will challenge players to complete levels in unique ways, like using a particular weapon or a certain number of throws. It all comes back to the controls through, which are perfectly suited to touchscreen gaming.  &amp;gt; Download &amp;#039;Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte&amp;#039; from the App Store      Haunted Hollow Platforms: iPhone, iPad Price: Free Firaxis, the strategy studio behind Civilization and XCOM: Enemy Unknown have taken a stab at mobile tactical games with Haunted Hollow. The game has players constructing a haunted house as their base, using it to create monsters that can scare up the local town with the goal of claiming the entire village under your monster rule.  Some monsters are better for scaring the houses in town, while others can fight or use unique abilities. Placing multiple of the same room next to each other can also produce stronger monsters, though there is the tradeoff that these creatures require more resources. Each turn you receive a random room card to build, which forces players to adapt their strategy to the monsters that are available. On paper it seems like a solid tactical game, however after a few matches it all starts to feel the same. There is only one map to play on, so even with the random rooms all matches will essentially boil down to the same strategies: capture smaller neighborhoods first to get extra moves each turn, then avoid the angry mob of villagers that can kill monsters and burn down captured houses. For more variety you can buy new monsters with actual money to add new abilities into the mix, but ultimately the changes they bring to the game are minor. Perhaps the game&amp;#039;s best quality is that in addition to asynchronous online play it offers pass-and-play multiplayer using a single device, which is the ideal way to experience the turn-based strategy game. However, along with the ability to complete matches quicker in person also comes the faster realization that matches play out much the same each time.  &amp;gt; Download &amp;#039;Haunted Hollow&amp;#039; from the App Store      Draw Something 2 Platforms: iPhone, iPad Price: \u00A31.99 / $2.99 Last year Zynga made a big investment in buying the studio behind Draw Something, just in time for the game to plummet in popularity. Now Zynga is releasing Draw Something 2 in hopes of reinvigorating its digital Pictionary.   At its core, Draw Something 2 remains unchanged, as players take turns with one person trying to draw a prompted word while the other guesses. Correct guesses earn both players coins, which can now be used to buy a host of new drawing implements in addition to new colors. New tools include a pattern marker, spray paint, watercolor paint, crayons and a highlighter. Users can create much more detailed drawings with the new toolset, for example the highlighter allows for transparent and semi-transparent layers of color to add a shading effect. Since the drawings can become more complex, Draw Something 2 has added the ability to free draw and share your creations with the entire game&amp;#039;s community. It&amp;#039;s quite astounding how talented some of the artists are in Draw Something 2, but of course the new tools won&amp;#039;t suddenly turn anyone into an amazing artist if stick figures were already the extent of your drawing ability. Draw Something 2 comes in both paid and free versions, with the paid version removing ads along with giving users more starting coins and an additional sparkle brush for their drawings. The sequel is impressive for its robust drawing suite and shift in focus toward a community art gallery, but casual artists may find the significant bump in quality intimidating, which could hold Draw Something 2 back from being as big of a hit as the original.  &amp;gt; Download &amp;#039;Draw Something 2&amp;#039; from the App Store  What mobile releases have you been playing recently? Add your comment below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/review/a479213/mobile-reviews-star-command-draw-something-2-more/>