I have played the brand new Heroes of Order & Chaos only a little bit so far, so take my first impressions with a grain of salt. However, let me get to the point right away: It’s friggin’ awesome. Heroes of Order & Chaos is Gameloft’s attempt to bring the hugely popular MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) style of games to your iPhone and iPad. And this is not a simple task, since the genre is everything but casual. So when I first found out that Gameloft is trying to port it to mobile devices, I was pretty skeptical at first. But before I talk more about Heroes of Order & Chaos, let me backtrack a little bit to give our readers who are not familiar with the MOBA games somewhat of a background.

There was one game that started the genre: DotA (Defence of the Ancients). It was a mod for Warcraft 3, Blizzard’s very successful RTS that was released ten years ago, in 2002. And this game jump started the whole genre. Basically, the mod took a real time strategy game, removed all the base building, added elements from tower defence games, added plenty of role playing elements and limited your control to just one unit, your hero. And BAM – one of the most awesome 5vs5 multiplayer games that ever existed was created (in my own, biased opinion). There are 2 sides, each one with a pre-existing base at the corner of the map. The bases are connected by 3 lanes, protected by towers that shoot the heroes if they cross the border to enemy territory. In regular intervals each base will send out computer controlled creeps, that move along the lanes, trying to get into the enemy’s base and attacking everything that’s in their way (enemy creeps, enemy towers and enemy heroes). To tip the scales of the battle, the five heroes try to support their creeps as good as possible, earning money and experience along the way that has to be invested in new gear and skills so you can ultimately destroy the enemy’s base.

I guess now you’ll understand what I meant by saying this genre is everything but casual. And that’s just the bare bones explanation to give you an idea what MOBA games are about – there’s plenty more to it, like different hero types, upgradable and combinable items, last hitting – I could go on and on. Now, I’d usually point you to some of the genre’s biggest games if you’re interested in learning more about them. But in this case, I’m pointing you towards Heroes of Order & Chaos on your favourite iOS device! Why? Because Gameloft, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, did an outstanding job with their tutorial! In fact, that’s the kind of tutorial I wish DotA 2 would offer (I can’t speak for League of Legends as I’ve never tried it).

So by now we’ve established what a MOBA game is, and that Heroes of Order & Chaos is very competent at making you at home in this genre with its tutorial. So far, so good! The next thing I’d like to talk about is the business model. Heroes of Order & Chaos is a freemium game – and freemium oftentimes is either very good, or very bad news. In this case however, I’d say it’s good news with a bitter taste. First of all, the good news: MOBA games are very dependant on an active online community. These games are really meant to be played against human opponents, so with it being freely available on the App Store, this very much raises the chances for it to get a healthy and active community. On top of it, the way Gameloft handles access to the content necessary to play and enjoy playing the game, it is not necessary to invest money in order to have fun for a substantial amount of time. Heroes of Order & Chaos currently features 30 unique heroes that all need to be purchased to be permanently available for you to chose from. However, at any give time, six of those heroes will be available for you to play with for free. The line-up will change weekly.

So here’s the bad news: If you don’t want to pay any money, you wont always be able to play with your favourite hero. Which means you’ll also have to learn how to play the other heroes – be it what items work well with them or what skills you need to level. Also, buying a hero can be pretty expensive: From what I saw, the most expensive heroes will set you back almost 17$. That’s actually very expensive if you ask me. Now, if some of the most expensive heroes turn out to also be the strongest, this could result in some real balancing issues. Or if you can buy overpowered items with real money that give you a huge advantage in-game.

But like I said, I have only played a little of it so far, so I can’t really comment on the balancing. This is of course of major interest for anyone who plans on playing this game for a long time, but since everyone can check it out for free, I’d say just give it a shot and see for yourself how things turn out. You also have to keep in mind that Gameloft can adjust the freemium system anytime to resolve balancing issues (if it’s in their interest) – or to introduce balancing issues (if it’s in the interest of making more money with the game).

The final thing I’d like to say about Heroes of Order & Chaos is about the presentation. I would have never guessed I’d see the day where I say this, but here it goes: I love the voice-overs! In general, from the tutorial, to the menus and the in-game graphics, Heroes of Order & Chaos looks and sounds great! But what really took me by surprise was that so much of the tutorial, the menu information and the characters was voiced-over. And what was even more surprising: It doesn’t suck! In fact, I found it to be very atmospheric!

So that’s it, these are my first impressions of Gameloft’s brand new MOBA Heroes of Order & Chaos. There’s still many unanswered questions since I haven’t played that much yet – I just wanted to give you a basic idea of what to expect. If this intrigued you, I wholeheartedly recommend that you go ahead and give it a shot, especially since it’s free!

Finally! We’ve been talking about Star Command last week in our Highly Anticipated iPhone and iPad Games List and already teased you by saying that the developers have announced to show us a brand new gameplay trailer of Star Command this monday. And well, here it is! And it’s glorious!

The trailer is giving you a look at what this game really is about. And in short, that’s building a ship, hiring a crew, navigating through the universe, managing your crew, upgrading your ship, fighting aliens, negotiating with aliens, discovering stuff and much more. Well, that list wasn’t that short after all, was it? And I really do hope that it’ll also feel this way once we get a chance to play Star Command, since my biggest and almost only fear for this game is that it might become repetitive if it’s not filled with enough things to do. But let’s give the developers the benefit of the doubt and hope for the best – because then this game will kick some serious ass!

What I’m really digging is how Star Command looks and sounds. It’s like the Star Trek game that I would have played the shit out of if it were released on the Super Nintendo back then. If, like I said, there is enough content to make it worth our while. I sure hope so!

Infinity Blade Dungeons, Epic Games’ prequel to their incredibly successful Infinity Blade saga, was announced earlier this year. What makes it stand out form the previous games is the fact that it’s an isometric hack and slash game. And while this year saw the release of hack and slash heavy hitters like Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2, I’m still super excited for Infinity Blade Dungeons! There’s just something about the presentation and the atmosphere that make Epic’s Infinity Blade games a truly unique experience. The official release date still says “Coming Soon”, and I’m expecting this game to definitely hit before Christmas.

Star Command. Star friggin’ Command. I can’t wait for this game to be finally released on the App Store! The premise of Star Command is as simple as it is beautiful: You’re given the freedom to build your own spaceship, hire your own crew and then go explore the universe with them. Basically, it’ll make you feel like James Tiberius Kirk himself. And that’s just brilliant. Star Command was successfully funded on Kickstarter – but that was already one year ago. At the time, the developers were shooting for a Holiday 2011 release. The good news is that the devs have announced to publish a 10 minute gameplay video this monday. I’m excited to see what Star Command’s current state of development is!

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition is a port of the classic PC RGP that pretty much redefined the genre back then. Baldur’s Gate is a real RPG heavy weight and I’m happy to see games of such complexity being brought to the iPad. It has been in development for quite some time now and is coming out on November 30th. If you are even remotely interested in a deep and rich RPG experience, get ready to be blown away.

Currently, Kavcom is adding the final bits to Z and stated that they’re aiming for a May release – that means within the next 3 weeks. Unfortunately, they came across a few hiccups related to the iPad 2, that might push the release a bit back.

[Update, 03.06.2011: Since it's already June and Z is not yet in sight, we wondered what happened. Turns out that during the QA process Kavcom noticed a few minor gameplay issues. The developers ask for some more patience, they "have spent a long time developing this version which looks awesome" and want to make sure the experience is as polished as possible. To me this sounds like they really care to release a game that's worthy of the original. And if they need a bit more time to do that, then that's a far better approach than what we've seen far too often: Releasing an unfinished product and patching it later. Kudos to Kavcom, although I hope it wont take too long to polish everything up.]

And as if that’s not good enough, here are some more details:

• £2.99 (probably $4.99)
• Universal app
• Approximately 360mb
• It’ll come with all original intros and win/lose outros (over 30min)
• Text and voice overs available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish

Gameloft has uploaded a new gameplay video of their Starcraft inspired RTS Starfront: Collision for iPad. The game is already out for iPhone for quite some time and is a very good take on bringing RTS games to the iOS platform. It comes with three races, each with their own campaign, skirmish and multiplayer (both online and local). Gameloft doesn’t give an exact release date, but they say it’s coming soon – so it should be sage to assuem it will hit the App Store within the next 2 or so weeks. If you’re into RTS games, this is a game you can definitely look forward to.

Kavcom has updated their official blog with 4 iPad screenshots of their upcoming remake of the RTS classic Z. The screenshots make it clear that this will be a truthful remake of the Bitmap Borthers’ classic. However, there is no word on any other details of the game, which means the release date remains a rather vague “2011″. We also know that Z will be available for both iPhone and iPad. And to make you feel all nostalgic just like we do right now, have a look at the rest of the screenshots:

And besides Z we might see even more Bitmap Brothers classics on the iOS platform. Tower Games, the ones responsible for the recently released port of The Bitmap Brothers’ Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe are planning to develop more of these classics for the App Store. Amongst them is the 1993 top-down shooter ‘The Chaos Engine’. It got rated very well by the critics and was released on a lot of platforms. But again, no release date was mentioned. I guess all we can do for now is hope that that’s gonna be sooner than later.