Best of FingerGaming: From Fantastic Contraption to Payback

[Every week, Gamasutra sums up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by editor Matt Burris and guest editor Danny Cowan.] This week's notable items in the iPhone gaming space, as covered by FingerGaming, include the debut of Apex Designs' GTA-like Payback, the release of Fantastic Contraption, and a review for EA's iPhone port of SimCity. Here are the top stories over the last 7 days: - Politically Charged Pay2Play Submitted to App Store "Mere weeks after the controversy that followed the rejected Prohibition 2: The Dope Wars (and its sugary-on-the-outside sequel Prohibition 3) comes Pay2Play, a Dope Wars-styled simulation title that parodies the recent scandal involving former Illinois governor and accused Senate seat auctioneer Rod Blagojevich." - Payback Hits App Store "Payback includes nearly all of the features and details seen in Grand Theft Auto's early days, and comes complete with a similar overhead viewpoint. Players will carjack dozens of different vehicles and travel through 11 different cities to complete missions and cause a good deal of general mayhem." - Review: SimCity "The problem with SimCity is that while it's admirable that they've crammed SimCity 3000 onto the iPod Touch/iPhone, the already tiny, isometric graphics aren't especially suited for such a small screen, and as a result it will be rare, if ever, that you manage to select the area on screen that you wanted to first time." - Reo Nagumo Returns to Rhythm Gaming with Aero Series "Seeing as how Beatmania basically invented the kind of rhythm-based gameplay seen today in games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Nagumo's contributions to the genre are not insignificant." - Super Monkey Ball Gets Free Lite Version "Today, Sega released Super Monkey Ball Lite, a free demo version of their flagship iPhone title that includes three levels from the full game, along with a tutorial." - inXile Releases Fantastic Contraption "A physics-based puzzler in the vein of The Incredible Machine, Fantastic Contraption challenges players to build motorized vehicles from simple parts in order to solve each of the game's 21 levels."