That criticism aside, Backbreaker 2 is a fantastic iPad version of NaturalMotion's original iPhone offering. If you own an iPad and you're a fan of the series, you finally have an optimized version to call your own. And if you're an iPad 2 owner, it's almost worth buying the game just to look at the pretty pictures on your snazzy display.

Icebreaker Hockey takes the Backbreaker Football concept and translates it to the frozen battlefield. You're a hockey player in Icebreaker, trying to skate down the ice without getting checked into next week by any toothless goons. The spin and deke buttons from Backbreaker Football are at your disposal; tapping the screen brings your skater to a hard stop, which, when executed properly, will send your opponents sailing past you as you rack up points. Yes, the Showboating button makes the transition to Icebreaker as well--tapping and holding it makes your skater turn around and play to the crowd or ride his hockey stick like a horse. That sort of behavior gets you knocked into the boards in real life, but in Icebreaker Hockey, it helps you score more points.

You're forever moving forward in Backbreaker Football. Not so in Icebreaker Hockey, which gives you the ability to circle around and back to cover the same patch of ice. It's a great way to increase your point total by continuing deking past the same defensemen and skating over any bonus zones you might have missed on the first pass. It also illustrates how fluidly the graphics engine works in Icebreaker.

There's another critical difference between Backbreaker Football and this ice hockey-themed take on the game, though. It's not enough just to make it from one end of the ice to the other; you've also got to get the puck into the net. That's generally a matter of tapping a button to super-charge a shot past the goalie. (Delay too long on pulling the trigger, and the goalie--or a defenseman--will knock you to the ice.) The goal-scoring objective is certainly in line with the rules of hockey, but I feel like NaturalMotion could have more here to add to the challenge. That goalie is pretty sieve-like--fire a shot in a reasonable amount of time and it's going in the net.

I tested Icebreaker Hockey on an iPhone 3GS, and the game never lagged or stuttered. More impressively, I was still able to take note of some impressive graphics work even without the benefit of a Retina display. There's a beautiful reflective quality to the ice that adds an element of realism to the game. That said, the nature of ice hockey surfaces--with their blue lines, red lines, and face-off circles--can make it difficult to spot the color-coded bonus zones NaturalMotion uses in its games.