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If you’ve been following the new TouchArcade Show for a bit, you’ve undoubtedly heard some of our chatter about this upcoming GDC . This week on the show, we give you a good look behind the veil as we reveal what we’ll be doing at the event and how our effort will benefit all of TA’s lovely readers. We also dive into the latest and best in iOS, as well as general commentary on this week’s news. The topics this week include how the Vita’s digital pricing model makes it a competitor in the mobile space, why we rarely cover Kickstarter projects,  League of Evil 2 , and much more . If you still haven’t give us a listen, this week is an especially good one. Hit up the links just below to stream us or, hey, take the plunge and subscribe to our audio via iTunes or Zune Marketplace. You won’t regret it! I swear! iTunes Link : The TouchArcade Show Zune Marketplace : TouchArcade.com Podcasts RSS Feed : The TouchArcade Show Direct Link : TouchArcadeShow-039.mp3, 41MB And here are our show notes: GAMES Tebit Time [$. 99 ] League of Evil 2 [$. 99 ] RobotGladia8tor [$ 1.99 ] FRONT PAGE PS Vita Games And Game Pricing To Be Flexible New ‘Karteka’ Might Hit iOS, Too ‘Minecraft’ Pocket Edition Update Hitting Soon-ish Double Fine’s Crowd-Sourced Game Hitting iOS For Suresies Eli Note: I’m sorry I sound like a robot towards the end of the show. The stealth game I mention right when I go full-on robot is Mailmen [ $1.99 ] for the iPad. Sorry!

Telltale’s offerings have been received rather frigidly of late, especially after we called Jurassic Park “technically messy” and “poorly optimized.” I’m happy to report, then, that “Ice Station Santa” — the first of five episodes in  Sam & Max Beyond Time & Space [ $4.99 ]  — is a solid iOS port of the 2007 point-and-click. To wit: in the four or so hours it takes to beat the game, I didn’t experience any crashes, frame rate drops, or audio stutters. “Ice Station Santa” runs smoothly and stably, and Telltale’s newfound technical prowess is matched with a great touch interface. Unlike, say, the Hector series , Sam & Max Beyond Time & Space is in three dimensions, and Sam is controlled with a virtual analog stick. A two-finger pinch highlights all the click-able objects in a given area, and the game’s touch implementation is remarkably precise, even when there are dozens of items on the screen to interact with. And good thing, too, as “Ice Station Santa” is relatively dense when it comes to screen real estate. Because there are only a handful of areas for the Freelance Police to explore, every little piece of information and every relevant inventory item is crammed into a few screens. I really like the limited scope of smaller games like “Ice Station Santa” because it reduces the amount of aimless wandering and backtracking, without sacrificing Telltale’s ability to cram humor and detail into each nook and cranny of Sam and Max’ office, Boscoe’s Inconvenience Store, or Stinky’s Diner. Sam & Max is at its best when players know what they need to do, but don’t know how to achieve it. It’s appropriate that, in a game ostensibly devoted to two anthropomorphic detectives, the real bones of “Ice Station Santa” involve talking to different characters and gathering clues. Don’t get me wrong, the mechanics are still well entrenched in the traditions of inventory management, but players who  explore the dialog trees and pay attention to the peripheral, world-building details will have more luck than those who throw items at puzzles until they stick. “Ice Station Santa” is efficiently designed, and one of its great joys is solving the last piece of a puzzle that sets off a larger chain.

Halfbrick Studios has announced that their sublime endless flying adventure, Jetpack Joyride [ Free ], which stars the toughest food-named protagonist that I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, has passed the 13 million download mark since going free-to-play this past December. Combined with the downloads from the time it launched as a paid app in late August, this pushes the total downloads to well past the 14 million mark. We were quite taken with Jetpack Joyride in our review , so it’s not hard to see why multiple millions of people are downloading the title, especially since it’s been expanded on and improved so much following its release. And that reminds me, Halfbrick also mentions that they’re scheduled to release the biggest content update that the game has ever seen sometime next month. Sadly there are no details on this update just yet, but we’ll keep our eye out for anything new in the coming weeks. App Store Link: Jetpack Joyride , Free (Universal)