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I’m often asked what apps are on my iPhone, and love turning people onto new ones. This time, I think I’ll do a quick rundown on 5 games I’m currently playing. These are some of my faves right now, though I have many others.

1. Plants vs. Zombies. Currently $2.99.

Popcap, responsible for other great games such as Bookworm, Peggle, and Bejeweled 2, comes out with their version of the tower defense game. Better yet, it involves zombies, one of my favorite game themes.

You start slow, of course. You’re defending your house from the zombie apocalypse and it begins in your front yard, which is divided into a grid. In each patch of lawn you can plant a, well, plant. Different plants have different abilities…some offensive, some defensive. After each successful level, you earn a new plant (ability).

For instance, the peashooter – that green plant in the top left of the screenshot above – shoots one pea in a straight line. You’ll need it to take down the zombies. A sunflower generates extra sunlight, which you need to purchase new plants. There are cherry bombs, which blow up all the zombies in a good-sized radius. Or there are magic mushrooms…when a zombie touches one, it becomes hypnotized to fight FOR you and attacks other zombies. LOTS of different plants.

When you build up enough plants in your arsenal, you’ll be asked to choose which 6 (or more) varieties you want to use for the upcoming level. Like so. This is where the real strategy starts to come into play. You don’t get access to ALL the plants you’ve earned, you have to pick the ones you can use each level.

Very addicting game that ramps up in difficulty at a decent pace. Some levels are in the day time, some are at night (which provides a whole new playing dynamic, since there’s no sunlight but what you generate with plants).

This one will have you playing at least 15 minutes longer than you planned on. I’ve played a lot of tower defense games (Fieldrunners and StarDefense both rock), and this is my current fave. Brings new life to tower games, in fact.

2. Moxie. Currently on sale for 99 cents.

There’s a free version you can try before you buy, but if you like word games, I think you’re gonna find it a worthy $1 to spend.

It’s a very simple game. You make words, placing one letter tile at a time. And you make new words by altering words you’ve already played. For instance, the word “pig” above…it WAS “pin,” then I got a “G” and made “pig.” On and on the game goes.

You score points for each word you play. Like in Scrabble or Words With Friends, different letters score different points. The “V” has a 5-point value, whereas an “A” only has a value of 1. And the longer the word, the more points you score. If I got an “S” above, I could make “pigs” by placing the “S” after the “G.”

You’re thinking it’s too easy, right? Heh. Well, if you place a letter and do NOT form a legit word, you get a Twaddle, which LOSES you points. Plus, you can get Moxies, which happen when you make a word that happens to be on the Moxie Word List. I’m playing the Animal list in the above game, so “hen” and “pig” both scored me Moxies, worth an extra 100 points.

You start looking for possible chains. I could make the word “dog” and get 100 points…then, if I get an “H,” form the word “hog,” that’s another 100 points. Course, if you make a 5-letter Moxie, that’s 300 points.

The one thing Moxie lacks is the ability to challenge friends. But no matter, this is one of my favorite games, anyway. It’s casual, there’s no time pressure, and you can save your game at any point and come back where you left off.

Awesome.

3. Paradise Quest. Currently $1.99.

Free version available here, too. And again, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to buy the full version after playing.

This is a match-3 game like you haven’t played before. Far more addicting than Bejeweled, Paradise Quest adds a new twist: as you make matches, the board moves up, down, left, or right, depending on where you match the 3 tiles. It’s hard to describe.

Let’s say I match three tiles near the top of the board. Then the whole board scrolls down and I can match tiles that were out of view a moment before. This means you’re making matches in certain areas of the board in order to navigate toward the “frozen” tiles and amulet pieces you’re trying to get to.

That square sun tile in the center of those dark brown tiles, that’s one of the goal pieces. You have to make matches to break up the dirt surrounding that amulet piece…then you free the amulet, and can move on to the next piece elsewhere on the board.

There are power ups, and a map you need to navigate (which also helps show you where the amulet pieces are).

See that little gold dot on the map, in the lower right of the rectangle? That’s an amulet piece. The 1/5 in the lower right of the screenshot shows that I’ve got 1 out of the 5 amulet pieces on this level. You can jump around to different portions of the map to expedite grabbing those amulets. There is a time clock, but I have yet to grab all the matches before the clock runs out. And no worries, the game keeps playing if you don’t beat the clock.

You also earn resources as you make matches. Those resources (water, plants, vegetables, etc.) allow you to add new lakes and plants, which in turn brings new wildlife back to the island.

There’s a lot going on in this game, and I think after one level, you’ll be hooked.

4. Flight Control. Currently 99 cents.

Some of the best 99 cents you’ll spend on a game in the iTunes store.

You’re an air traffic controller and the goal is to land as many aircraft as possible. Starts out slowly and ramps up to crazy difficulty levels.

Flight Control is a game that wouldn’t work without the touch-screen of the iPhone and iPod Touch. You tap an aircraft, then trace a path between it and the appropriate runway. Once you do, the aircraft turns white and you’ll see the thin white path it’s flying along to its runway.

There are red planes, yellow planes, and blue helicopters, each with different traits and speeds. Match the red planes to the red runway, etc. And you’ve got to make sure that all the flight paths don’t criss-cross into planes colliding…because that’s GAME OVER.

You can select from four different airfields…the aircraft carrier is a real bitch. Highly addicting, great fun. And you can play your own music while playing, too. I’ve lost a lot of hours on this game.

5. Air Assault. Currently FREE.

This one is from Snakehead Software, run by a friend of mine from high school. Fun shoot-em-up game that gets pretty hairy and keeps you coming back for more.

You’re defending against enemy troops in Afghanistan, both in the air and on the ground. Two different weapon types – machine guns (for aircraft and parachuting troops) and mortars (for those ground troops trying to blow you away).

Wherever you place your finger is where you shoot. But don’t think it’s an easy game just because the game mechanics are simple. You have to switch back and forth between machine gun and mortar, sometimes rapidly. Timing is everything.

One of the newer games on my iPhone, I keep coming back to this one because I can play a few levels in pretty short order. Give it a shot, it’s FREE, and last I checked, it was ranked #2 in the iTunes store for free games.

There you have it…five games to check out for your iPhone and iPod Touch. And if you lose track of time, and family and friends are bitching at you for disappearing, don’t come blaming me.

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