Five Stars - Katamari Amore, Brick People, Slam Dunk King, and more

When it comes to cataloguing the best iPhone games - as we do every week in Five Stars, our seven-day tribute to the most top notch iOS releases - you start to see massive fluctuations in the prices you're asked to pay.

These five games, for example, really run the gamut of price tags on iTunes. At one end of the spectrum, in gory sci-fi shooter Shadowgun and 2012 kickabout FIFA, you you're asked to pay a few quid - prices that make you think twice about an impulse buy.

And at the other end, as far as you can possibly get, Katamari and Slam Dunk King are available for nothing. You might choose to pay up later for bonus content, but they're yours for free, right now.

And then somewhere in the middle is the pocket money Brick People.

It essentially means that there's something for everyone. Giant, big-budget games for Mr Money Bags, 69p classics for those on a tighter leash and freebies to try for nothing. What's your favourite price point?

FIFA 12
iPhone - £3.99 / iPad - £5.99 - Electronic Arts

It feels like it's been about 16 seconds since the last football game hit iPhone, so it's about flipping time that EA pulled its finger out and delivered its latest sport sim to the App Store. FIFA 12 is here, to coincide with the console kick-off, and it's absolutely jam packed with features.

Just about every human being who's ever touched a soccer ball is present and accounted for, from Rooney to Benzema. There are 32 real-world stadiums to play in and all the teams and leagues from around the world.

But FIFA 12 is not just a fluffy content update. The game brings a whole-new control scheme with it, which promises to be more responsive than ever. If you really want (and you're really rich), you can use an iPhone as a controller for the iPad version. Yours, for just £602.

When you're not booting a bag of air up and down an expensive slab of turf, you can try your hand at being boss in Manager Mode. This simulation spin-off lets you scout for talent and trade players, while coming up with unbeatable tactics for the next time you hit the pitch.

Katamari Amore
Universal - Freemium - NamcoBandai Games

Katamari, if you've blissfully unaware, is a bonkers game about a 5cm-tall prince who must roll his magically-adhesive ball over everything in sight to appease his strict father, the regal King of All Cosmos. Yes, this is a real video game, and not just a dream I had.

It's not the first time that the Prince and his sticky ball has appeared on iPhone, but some improved controls and the added grunt of more recent iOS devices means Amore is closer than ever to its console counterparts, and the Katamari itself is far more easy to pilot.

On each stage, from a little boy's bedroom to an East Asian palace, you're tasked with either making your ball as big as humanly possible in the time limit or rolling up specific items to appease the King of All Cosmos. If you want to kick back and relax, Eternal Mode lets you roll forever.

Shadowgun
Universal - £5.49 - MadFinger Games

Shadowgun is cheesy. With its cliche-ridden dialogue, trashy heavy metal soundtrack, and beefcake body builders for heroes, you'd be remiss for thinking it's a parody - and not just a light-fingered pinch - of Gears of War.

Whatever the case, much like Epic's brutal sci-fi shooter, Shadowgun has fun, punchy, and fast-paced combat.

And, as your hero flings himself at handy knee-high walls to fire from cover, the battles evolve over time. As enemies move, flank, and deploy from the shadows you will need to constantly relocate to get a better shot, evade incoming foes, or nab better weapons.

Some responsive controls and a few smart button-saving ideas (you simply need to push John towards a wall to take cover, and moving the virtual joystick forward makes him vault over it) mean that Shadowgun plays nice on the touchscreen, and without a smorgasbord of buttons to fall back on.

And it looks gorgeous, with its expansive levels and dynamic lighting effectively showing off 3D game factory Unity as a competitor to Epic's Unreal engine. It's a little repetitive and the presentation is super corny, but if you fancy Gears on the go, you can't really go wrong.

Slam Dunk King
Universal - Freemium - PikPok

In PikPok's Flick Kick pantheon of kicking, punting, and lobbing virtual spheres, turning basketball into an addictive, point-scoring, physics-based time-sink was an absolute no brainer. Hence this gawdy, hip-hop-backed freemium app.

The setup is simple. For two minutes or so, endless basketballs are thrown in the air and you've got to grab them with your finger and dunk or lob them into the hoop. Just to keep you on your toes, fizzing black bombs will appear too, and you'll need to swat them away or face a penalty.

Sounds simple, but Slam Dunk King soon ratchets up the tension with a wicked game of risk versus reward, where juggling together sick tricks - like bouncing a ball off the rim, spinning it around in mid-air and then hanging off the hoop when you finally dunk it in - can net you mad points, or waste precious seconds if you fluff up the trick.

Luckily, the game introduces new tricks and concepts slowly so your repertoire of smooth moves increases almost every time you play. By the time you're ready to challenge the leaderboards you'll have an exhaustive knowledge of point-heavy tricks up your sleeve.

Much like its footy and rugby predecessors, Slam Dunk King is a gruesome time waster, and it has elements of Fruit Ninja and Paper Toss. But it's far smarter and involving than either of those mindless brain-sinks, and has an winning presentation to boot.

Brick People
iPhone - 69p / iPad - £1.49 - SEGA

Like a platformer that's been augmented with sticky-brick Lego blocks, Brick People is about building stairs and structures to help the game's hungry heroes reach delicious fruit. You'll need to stack quickly to beat the clock, and watch out for the devilish Brick Monster.

It's actually based on a Japanese arcade game of the same name, where you literally stack spongy plastic bricks on a tray in front of the screen, and the game's pintsize people run up and down your real-world creation.

Sadly, the iPhone app doesn't come with physical bricks. But thanks to multi-touch and the bigger screen of the iPad edition you'll be able to snap down blocks at record speeds. You can play with pals, too, either over Bluetooth or both on the same device when playing on iPad.

It's woefully cute and charmingly Japanese. If you've never had a chance to play this game in the arcade, now is a very good time to give it a go.