New releases round-up - 2K Drive, Call of Duty: Strike Team, 2013: Infected Wars, and more

At the end of every week, we take time out to look at the new and noteworthy iOS games from the past seven days in both words and video.

I know what you're thinking. 'You're a day late, you lazy idiot!' Well, we can't help it if every developer in the world decided to release its game on Thursday morning.

But, we're here now. So, let's just make the best of it, shall we?

Here, then, are some hands-on impressions of all the noteworthy new iOS games this week.

Video below. Text, screenshots, prices, and links to the App Store down below.

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Call of Duty: Strike Team
By Blast Furnace and Activision Publishing - buy on iPhone and iPad (£4.99 / $6.99)

Well, this was a surprise. A brand-new Call of Duty game, built from the ground up with mobile in mind and dropped onto the App Store with no fanfare (and no warning).

The game can be experienced in two ways. You can play it as a straight-up first-person shooter, which is fast and exciting but has very fiddly and cumbersome controls (as we've come to expect from touchscreen shooters).

Or you can play it from a top-down perspective and control your squad like in a real-time strategy game. This is much more to my liking: it's easier to see what's going on, the action is a lot easier to control. Plus, it's loads more fun to orchestrate stealthy or tactical missions.

The best bit is that you can switch between viewpoints at any time, or play (almost) the entire game in either configuration. Whatever way you want to play, it's worth a look. Check out our full review for more.

2K Drive
By 2K Sports and Lucid Games - buy on iPhone and iPad (£4.99 / $6.99)

2K Drive started life as a free-to-play racer, where practically everything was up for sale. Lucid and 2K Sports then switched it to a paid-for game at the last minute. Like the back legs on a humpback whale, though, some cheeky free-to-play traits have vestigially remained.

So, there's still a premium currency (gold coins), a Real Racing 3-style repair system with wait timers, boosts you can buy, and a "Founder's Pack" in-app purchase (which costs more than the game itself) to get instant access to cars.

The full extent of that, and whether it harms the game, will be revealed in our review. From first impressions, mind, this is a slick and stylish racer, with a really solid driving model and top controls.

It's a lot of fun to pull off screechy handbrake skids around corners, to trade paint with nearby racers, and to bomb through the carefully rendered streets of London in a souped-up pickup truck. A sharp little racer, then, but we'll have to see about those IAPs.

Giant Boulder of Death
By Adult Swim - download on iPhone and iPad (Free)

Long-time collaborators PikPok and Adult Swim have teamed up once again for another madcap iOS game. This time around, it's for Giant Boulder of Death, an endless-runner about an enormous rock rolling down a mountain.

Once you get past the unique setup, this is a pretty typical endless-runner. You'll finish mini-missions, you'll collect coins, you'll upgrade your boulder, and you'll pay for continues when you die.

Nothing too special, then, but a fun little timewaster with a good feel and a bouncy polka-style soundtrack. Worth a download, I say.

Zombie Typomaniac
By Tagstar Publishing - buy on iPhone (69p / 99c) or buy on iPad (£1.49 / $1.99)

With Zombie Typomaniac, Tagstar takes its cues from oddball Sega arcade game The Typing of the Dead. So, zombies waltz in from the side of the screen with short words above their head. You tap out each word on the little green keyboard to blast the walker with your shotgun.

It's much faster to use a Swype-style input and just quickly drag your finger in the general vicinity of each letter. But the game's automatically adaptive difficulty will catch on, and overwhelm you with zombified foes.

Basically, it's either far too easy or far too hard - things rarely settle in a comfortable middle point. Wait for our review on this one.

2013: Infected Wars
By Action Mobile Drive - buy on iPhone and iPad (£4.99 / $6.99)

From where do zombies come? A virus? Some arcane curse? Norway? Well, according to the maker of third-person zombie blaster 2013: Infected Wars, it was all Al-Qaeda's fault.

Topical! Sort of.

This is a rather handsome (in a grotty, dark, dingy, violent kind of way) shooter with solid controls. It is a bit dumb and repetitive, though. You simply keep shooting zombies until some arbitrary gate opens and you can move to the next arena.

The real star will be the multiplayer, where you and a buddy can play through the entire campaign together. Less exciting are the in-app purchases, which don't really belong in a £5 game, if you ask me.

We'll dig into both in our full review. Of that, I'm sure.

Zombie Highway: Driver's Ed
By Auxbrain - buy on iPhone and iPad (69p / 99c)

Last zombie game now. Promise.

So, Zombie Highway was a game where undead jerks would grab onto your car and try to flip it. You had to scrape them off by driving close to barriers or by using weapons.

Driver's Ed is a spin-off version of the game in which the focus is on your driving skills. You'll have to slalom through courses and avoid obstacles, all while zombies try to munch your brains.

It's one of those games that's fun for about five seconds. After that, you start to wonder whether maybe there's more to life than playing a thousand endless-runners every single week. Every week, game developers, every week. Give it a rest.