games - page 52

I remember playing Call of Duty a few years back, killing soldiers (and time) every other day. I was never all that good at it – especially playing against others – but I did have a lot of fun. Thanks to Cult of Mac Deals, I can get back to having that kind of fun again with The Call of Duty Bundle!

The bundle includes 3 Call of Duty games and 2 expansion packs for Call of Duty: Black Ops. And they’re downloadable through Steam, so if you want to use a Windows machine to game on then that’s no problem either. And the bundle only costs $39.99 – a savings of 69%!

You’ve got to admire a game that matches its own intent so perfectly that you suddenly can’t visualize how else the genre should be done. That’s certainly the case here with Zynga’s Solstice Arena. It’s currently my favorite MOBA game on any platform, which is great, since it plays well on both iOS and the Mac. I’m reviewing the Mac version here, but assume that–aside from touch controls–the game plays exactly the same on iOS. This is a good thing.

As a genre, the action real-time strategy (ARTS), or multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), has a history reaching back to modified RTS game maps for Starcraft and Warcraft. Recently, League of Legends from Riot Games has taken on the mantle as the most well-known game of its type, moving into the lucrative world of eSports, as well.

Zynga may be more known for Farmville and other Facebook games, but the San Francisco games publisher has delivered a much more midcore game than I expected. Developer A Bit Lucky has created a streamlined, compelling take on the ARTS genre, and while the game may not surpass more traditional entries in the field, Solstice Arena still engages players of all levels without sacrificing too much of the strategic depth of the game type.

The idea of being a martial-arts master has always sounded cool to me. But not the Zen-like, pensive, thoughtful type. If I’m honest, I’d really just kinda like to be the guy in the movies who can walk into a room full of generic dudes and beat them all up while they attack him one at a time. And I’m not particularly proud of that, but I challenge you to picture yourself doing it and not once think, “Yeah, that would be pretty neat.”

But one thing is standing between me and that dream. Alright, maybe a few more than one, but one major thing: I am completely uncoordinated. I don’t have the balance or grace to execute any of the amazing fighting maneuvers I see in movies, and so I watch them with a sad sort of wistfulness and self-disappointment. And this feeling extends to video games, in which physics and animations unbound by natural law allow for inhuman feats of martial prowess about which my clumsy limbs can only dream. If limbs dream, I guess.

Anyway, Dragon Finga, the recently released fighter by developer Another Place, did not inspire those feelings of inadequacy in me because it contains the least graceful fighting system I’ve ever seen.

And that’s a good thing.

There are a bunch of video games out on iOS for kids, from educational games to adventure games and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.

We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.

Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of video games on the App Store that they’re playing.

This week, it’s creature-creating, monster-battling Pet Peaves Monsters, from RED Interactive Agency. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter thinks.

Gaming on the Mac got a whole lot better once Steam (by the fine folks at Valve) entered the equation. With the addition of this gaming portal, game development for the Mac rose to new heights, with games like Portal and others that were previously not as easy to port over to OS X becoming available.

Borderlands 2 is an example of one such game, and Cult of Mac Deals has it for $11.99 for a limited time [ends tonight at midnight!].

iOS 7 provides two new features under the hood that will blow the lid off mobile gaming: game controllers and a sprite animation and particle physics engine. While these may not sound super sexy, they have the potential to revolutionize the way we play games on our mobile devices. The first is a recognition that many games really need physical buttons to provide high-end gaming experiences, while the second is a step toward supporting game developers in the way that development engines like Unreal and Unity already do, but built right in to the operating system. Together, these two developments are nothing less than—forgive the pun—complete game changers. Mobile gaming is already a big business for game developers, publishers, and Apple. And while Apple has never put gaming front and center before, that’s going to change with iOS 7. Gaming is already huge; now it’s going to get even bigger.

As we noted earlier this week, iOS 7 includes some code that will allow third party manufacturers create universal controllers for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch using Apple’s latest mobile operating system. It’s groundbreaking stuff, especially for a traditionally game-averse tech company, but we’re starting to see the first wave of controllers to come out.

Sometimes, mindless dungeon crawling, at least within a video game, is good. I’ve never actually crawled a real dungeon, to be honest.

While I love deep, story-based games, sometimes I just want to roll around pixel-based catacombs, corridors, and rooms, bashing or blasting hordes of baddies as they converge upon my location.

Developer OrangePixel (Gunslugs, Meganoid) has figured out how to perfectly encapsulate the dungeon crawling experience within a pixel-perfect arcade eye-candy shell.

We met with Morgan Belford, Game It Forward’s co-founder, when we hit PAX last month, and he told us about his company’s new game, Quingo, a free-to-play mix of trivia and bingo for iOS. The game lets players of all skill levels, including kids, play the trivia game to earn money for some great charitable causes, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Kiva, PAWS, Seattle Children’s, Splash, and The Martinez Foundation.

“We want to make sure our players can see the concrete results of their contributions, so we worked hard with our charity partners to define specific projects that will receive the funds,” said Belford in a statment. “To that end, players can see how much they’ve contributed and how well each project is doing.”

If you like trivia, it’s a great way to give something back while playing a game. Not too shabby, for sure.

I’m really not a fan of trivia games. Any time someone drags out Trivial Pursuit at a party, I’m the first to come up with an excuse not to play. But You Don’t Know Jack was always different. It’s a trivia game with attitude, a sense of humor, and a weird bald mascot. What’s not to like?

The original game launched in 1995, and now it’s on iOS with a new title: You Don’t Know Jack Party. This is a new, live multiplayer version of the trivia game that lets you connect up to four different iOS devices to one Apple TV and play together in the same room on the big screen, via a secondary, free JackPad controller app.

Sure, there’s also a single player experience, but it won’t be as much fun.

Puzzle Knights is a match-three game with tactical strategy, light RPG elements, and online arena battles created by Mojaro, a developer made up of some pretty experienced game development folks, like founder Laurent Ancessi, who has worked in the gaming industry for over 25 years, with a bunch of top gaming companies, like Electronic Arts, Sony, Radical Entertainment, and Naughty Dog.

The game has just launched into the app store, and is looking pretty good. Check out the launch trailer below.

Calling it the “first Speed MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena),” Zynga released Solstice Arena to the iOS App Store this past June. The game garnered many awards and some fairly good reviews from around the web.

Tuesday, Zynga announced that Solstice Arena was available in the Mac App Store, bringing the streamlined real-time action battle arena game to OS X.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncyN-LTKTMw&feature=youtu.be

Just after CES wound down back in January, I was part of a (relatively) small group of journalists and bloggers present at the Disney media event that revealed Disney’s Infinity game universe to the world. Problem was, I had no clue why I’d been invited, as all the hoopla was about the console game. Toward the end, I bumped into Bill Roper, Disney’s product development chief, and asked why I was there as I gulped down a delicious, miniature milkshake.

His answer was cryptic. But the reason I’d been invited has just made its entrance onto the app store today — it’s the Disney Infinity: Toy Box iPad app, a virtual sandbox mashup that allows anyone with an iPad to take a variety of Disney characters and play with them in different Disney worlds. And it’s free — for now.

September 17th sure has turned into a gamers delight. Not only did highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto V launch today on consoles as well as two companion iOS apps, but the biggest iOS game of the year is available an hour before midnight too.

Chair’s final piece of the Infinity Blade III trilogy is available a few hours ahead of the iOS 7 launch.  You can grab Infinity Blade III from the App Store now for $6.99.  The game is compatible with the new iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPad 4, iPAd 3, iPad 2, iPad Mini, iPod touch 5 and iPod touch 4.

We’ll have our full review on the game coming shortly, so stay tuned for more coverage. In the meantime, get to downloading. You only have about 10 more hours to play before iOS 7 drops too.

Source: iTunes

“Always read the instructions before playing,” is what my dad would say every time he found my sister and me making up rules on mortgages and bankruptcy whenever we busted out Monopoly. Knowing the rules and how to play is even more important with an open-world game as vast as Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos, so to help gamers out, Rockstar released its second iOS companion today: Grand Theft Auto V: The Manual

As one of the year’s most anticipated games, Grand Theft Auto V is sure to be one of the biggest time sucks you’ve ever experienced. To keep you plugged into its action adventure open-world game more than ever before, Rockstar has launched a companion iOS app for the console game called “iFruit.”

The companion app allows GTA V players to to create their ultimate vehicle from the Los Santos Customs shop. Players can customize everything from the paint job down to the body armor, place an order, and then find the vehicle waiting in the shop when you boot up your console. You can also use the app to train and play with your canine sidekick Chop. The more you play, pet and feed your virtual Rottweiler, the more useful he becomes playing alongside Franklin once GTA V launches on consoles September 17th.

Here are the full release notes:

Robot Loves Kitty is the husband and wife team that lived in a treehouse to save money while they ran a Kickstarter project for the game that became Legend of Dungeon.

It’s out now on Mac, PC, and Linux, and it’s a brilliant combination of high tech, retro-graphics, and a strong sense of irony, not to mention whimsy. When I chatted with Alix Stolzer (Kitty) at PAX this year, she mentioned that she and Caleb Goble (Robot) liked vastly different types of games, so they decided to make one they could play together.

From those humble beginnings, they’ve succeeded, at least, in making a game that allows up to four players to explore procedurally generated dungeons together, to fight various monsters, explore environments, and try to stay alive. The game works with keyboard and mouse or console-style controllers, with a real-time battle system. Also, there are funny hats! If you take some time to give this one a play; you won’t be disappointed.

Alright, stop me if you’ve heard this one:

An unseen protagonist, armed only with a flashlight, sets off on an investigation into some spooky woods. With no map, our hero wanders through the forest gathering a bunch of pages for unknown reasons with a shadowy, black-clad figure in pursuit. The tormentor can appear anywhere at will, and if you look at it too long, the game will end, and you will have to start over from the beginning.

If you think that sounds an awful lot like developer Parsec Productions’ instant classic Slender: The Eight Pages, you would be correct. But that’s also the premise of 3 Cubes Research Limited’s less ominously named The Woods, which is available now for iPhone and iPad.

I’m not really sure what else to say; The Woods is Slender with more pages, a less scary antagonist, and worse controls.

We got a glimpse of the incredible graphics and gameplay of Chair’s upcoming Infinity Blade III during the Apple’s keynote on Tueday, but Chair released a cinematic trailer for the new game this morning that dives into the Infinity Blade mythology of the first two games before setting up the narrative of the final chapter of Infinity Blade.

Unlike Infinity Blade: Dungeons – which was eventually canned after fans were left waiting over a year for the release – Infinity Blade III is ready to go and will launch in the App Store on September 18th for $6.99.  The game features seven huge new worlds, fire-breathing dragons, and enough swordplay to keep you entertained for weeks.

Take a look:

Evan loved it, which made us want to try it. And try The Room we did, finding it to be a gorgeous, brain-engaging, Myst-like exploration of the puzzle genre, with some amazing 3D mind-benders to solve.

Here’s our video showing us solving the third chapter; we’ve condensed it a bit so that you’ll still have to do your own puzzle solving, though.

There are a bunch of video games out on iOS for kids, from educational games to adventure games and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.

We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.

Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of video games on the App Store that they’re playing.

This week, it’s endless faller, Daddy Was A Thief, from indie dev Cezary Rajkowski. It’s available in the App Store for $1.99 now.

Days of Wonder‘s Small World was the first ever cardboard-and-plastic board game to jump the digital chasm and become an iPad board game; the game actually made its debut the same day the iPad went on sale, over three years ago.

In the intervening years, Days of Wonder has neglected the digital version of Small World somewhat, and instead concentrated heavily on its best-known title, the massively popular Ticket to Ride (of which there is now a bewildering assortment of variations — both physical and digital — available for play).

But now, finally, the indy game company has come back to the game that started it all and released Small World 2 on the iPad — a huge, socially rich sequel that should make board-game fans very happy once the sticker shock has abated.

Remember that amazing trailer that Apple introduced on stage yesterday to show of its new iPhone 5s? It was Infinity Blade III, what Epic Games’ Donald Mustard called, “The conclusion of the epic Infinity Blade trilogy.”

If anything, the trailer below shows off just how amazing mobile gaming can look like. Just like the last two entries in the franchise, Infinity Blade III is pushing the envelope on environment size as well as visual and gaming performance. Here’s the video to feast your eyes on.

I’m going to get right to it here: The Room, an escape game by developer Fireproof Studios, is the best mobile title I’ve ever played. You can read the rest of the review if you want, but it’s basically going to be versions of that.

I know “best ever” is a bold statement, though, so let me back it up: The Room, which is available for both iPad and iPhone–the latter as The Room Pocket, I assume because it fits in your pocket and not because it’s about a pocket in which someone stores rooms–has beautiful graphics, clever puzzles, and simple, responsive touch controls that actually work.

Apple brought Donald Mustard, co-founder of ChAIR entertainment, up on stage today at the iPhone keynote in Cupertino. Mustard talked about the incredible performance of the new 64-bit A7 chip, saying the new iPhone 5s was five times as fast as the original iPhone 5.

The demo onstage was reported by live-bloggers as stutter-free and gorgeous. Mustard said that the conclusion to the Infinity Blade Trilogy, Infinity Blade III, has huge areas to explore, each one larger than the original size of the entire original Infinity Blade game itself.

Infinity Blade III will be available alongside the iPhone 5s when it releases. Last year’s game got canned, so hopefully it actually ships this time.

Image: Techcrunch