Sick of running games yet? Too bad! Salt Lake, with the publishing support of Zynga (cue the boos and hisses), has released... a multiplayer infinite runner. What? That's right! One of, if not the first of its kind, Running with Friends features asynchronous head-to-head. Zynga, however, is notorious for business practices bordering on flat-out evil, and money-sucking game mechanics that are obnoxious at best.

After seeing the success of Jetpack Joyride, Temple Run 1 and 2, Canabalt, Mega Jump, etc. to the nth, simply hearing about another runner instinctively inspires a yawn in many of us. With such a big player bringing a new title to the well-worn genre, and with the brand new factor of multiplayer, it's important to check out whether or not a grand splash has been made!

Ever since the aging, groundbreaking release of PC parkour FPS Mirror's Edge, surprisingly few companies have made attempts to cash in on the bandwagon that is the parkour-inspired game. Defined as the art of efficient movement, parkour is a real-world sport that involves acrobatics with the ultimate goal of getting from point A to point B with as little expended energy as possible. In a recent port to iOS, developer Nekki has made its debut attempt to grab at the mobile gaming audience with parkour gameplay in the new title Vector HD.

Whether the best things in life are free is an issue hotly debated over. With iOS apps, this may or may not be the case! The idea of a "free" app has been all but twisted and exploited in dozens of conceivable ways ranging from "lite" apps, which are essentially demonstrations in disguise, to "Chapter 1" apps that give you the first part of a game for free and make you pay for the rest.

Given that, I've rounded up a few of today's popular free apps, selected with a couple of specific criteria in mind, to see if any of them are actually worth a download...

Imangi Studios' iOS run-and-jumper Temple Run had fantastic success in the past, becoming one of the most downloaded games in the App Store. Now they're back with Temple Run 2, and they've made a plethora of great changes.

Nearly everything that the first Temple Run had to offer is intact and present in its sequel. The premise is merely this: You, a bold adventurer possessing the name "Guy Dangerous" have dared to steal some sort of generic, sacred idol from a temple... in the sky. Some sort of generic beast doesn't like that, and proceeds to chase you down through an infinite, floating obstacle course riddled with traps and pitfalls.

I've been playing Words with Friends and am just starting a game with someone who I just realized is a gal I don't want to play games with. We have kind of a history. She's sly, though, not having a real name associated with her Words with Friends account, so it was only a mutual friend who told me. Now I want to resign the game. How do I do that on my iPhone?

I've written in the past [see My Favorite iPhone Games] about Plants vs. Zombies, an entertaining puzzle game where you have an ever-increasing variety of plants, pea shooters, etc., that are your only defense against swarms of staggering zombies. It could have been potentially gory, but fortunately it's all cartoon images and there's a sense of zany fun to the game that makes it compelling.

It's also widely available, on Mac, PC, iPhones, iPads, etc. In fact, it's the iPad version that was sufficiently compelling that I actually played through the entire game and finished it up, then went back and tried to optimize my approach on some of the hardest levels.

Just in time for the holidays, PopCap has released a new "Game of the Year" edition of Plants vs. Zombies. Is it worth buying if you already have PvZ?

Another game for the iPhone? I already have over a hundred games on my iPhone (one reason my kids are always stealing my phone!) so when my friend Gary dropped me a note to let me know that his long-time hit Gold Strike [iTunes link] was now available through the iPhone App Store, I was skeptical. He writes great games but still, another game? Fortunately, I sprang for the $0.99, dropped it onto my phone and am impressed!

I've written a lot about iPhones, and traveled down many different routes in terms of how to use them efficiently, how to have fun, and how to solve a wide variety of problems or glitches. If you've watched closely, you'll have also see in the screenshots that I have a lot of iPhone apps on my phone, in fact I think I've maxed out the number of screens I can create on the 3GS device.

Most of those apps? Games. I have a lot of games for my iPhone and while many of them are intended to keep my kids entertained (their favorites currently are Surviving High School, Cooking Mama, Oregon Trail, Sally's Spa and Pocket God) there are definitely some that I have added for my own enjoyment.

Peggle has you shooting a ball to bounce off, and thereby eliminate, red pegs on screen

Enter iPhone and computer game developer Popcap. I started out downloading Peggle and then finishing the game -- three times through! -- and asking them to release a new version so I could continue to play. Instead, they told me that they'd released a new game and wanted me to try it: Chuzzle.

I just recently downloaded the game "Besieged" for my Apple iPhone but am stumped, unable to get past the last boss. Is there some trick or walkthru or something you can point me to, Dave?

I'm going back and forth on whether to spend the money and buy myself an Apple iPhone. In a lot of ways it seems like a very cool phone, and certainly it has far more features than my clunky old LG. I know about the core functions, but my first glance at the iPhone Application Store was totally overwhelming. I mean, there are HUNDREDS of applications. Tell me, what are your favorites and do you stick just to free apps, or have you bought some too?