games - page 68

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445DW89GO2c&feature=youtu.be

I’ve never actually played Taboo (which is apparently massively popular; shows you just how much I get out); so when Clucks‘ PR guy referred to this new game as “video Taboo for iPhone,” my reaction was: Huh? So I looked up the game on Wikipedia (and finally realized that I had, indeed, heard of Taboo before), and it turns out that’s a perfect description for Clucks. But he might have called it “the next big social media craze on the iPhone,” because that might turn out to be an even better description.

It’s been nine months since Madfinger Games teased a multiplayer version of its hit title ShadowGun. An early build of the game was demoed at CES back in January along with a YouTube video showing off some in-game footage. A few lucky CES attendees received some hands-on with the game and MadFinger Games claimed a Q1 launch. Well, Q1 has long since passed with no sign or word on the future of ShadowGun Deadzone. That was until today.

Gameloft is doing what it does best: teasing its upcoming titles. Next on their list is Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour and they’ve released quite the reveal trailer for us to drool over. Being released for Android and iOS this fall, the next installation in the Modern Combat series looks just as intense as the 3rd and chock full of guns, ammo and bloodshed.

We told you last week about the Humble Indie Bundle, now in its sixth iteration. Today, four new games were added, bringing the total to ten games on offer with a pay-what-you-want model that sends the purchase price along to independent developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Child’s Play, a charity that provides game consoles to children in hospitals.

Valve’s continued support for Mac games is laudable. Including Mac gaming in their offerings continues to prove to naysayers that Macs are a viable gaming machine, and deserve to be treated well, with support for games, developers and, of course, publishers of Mac games.

Steam Greenlight is a new initiative from Bellevue-based Valve Software aimed at allowing the growing Steam membership a say in the process of choosing what games to produce for the popular multiplayer and online digital distribution system, Steam.

Galaxy on Fire 2 is perhaps the best-looking space game on iOS. With astronomical scenes that call to mind a portable Eve Online, Galaxy on Fire 2 is an action space shooter with RPG elements, such as upgraded ships and weaponry, questing systems, and the like. It’s even made the move to Mac OS X.

It’s been a couple of months since FishLabs, the developers behind the title, released a teaser trailer and a vague September timeline for a release date for the upcoming downloadable content (DLC) expansion, Supernova. Well, that date is actually here, as Supernova is available on both the iTunes and Mac App Stores, for iOS and Mac OS X, respectively.

It’s about two years behind the Windows release, but who cares; in just under a week you’ll be able to tell those Zune-loving sods to take their “but Macs can’t game” nonsense and shove it down the barrel of your MP5 — because Call of Duty: Black Ops arrives next Thursday. In the meantime, Aspyr has again made the three other Call of Duty titles temporarily half-off, just to hold you over.

The Humble Indie Bundle has always been a fantastic source of solid Mac games for a very reasonable price. How much, you might ask? Well, the five initial offerings in this year’s bundle would run you almost $90 retail, but the price you’ll pay for them here is totally up to you.

Yes, you could pay no money at all for games like Rochard or Torchlight, both solidly great games that have been released on other platforms. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? The Humble Indie Bundle gives the money you decide to pay to the developers, to EFF, and to Child’s Play, a charity that raises money for games and consoles for sick kids in hospitals. See? I told you that you wouldn’t pay nothing.

It looks like those little green hamlets have been filling their noggins with all sorts of engineering tidbits. Armed with nothing more than a few spare parts and ingenuity, these Bad Piggies are set to take off and conquer Android, iOS, PC and Mac come September 27. Rovio has teased us once or twice already, but this is the first time we get to see the actual gameplay of this upcoming Angry Birds spin-off.

MacHeist 4’s first nanoMission is live as of now, according to an email I just got from the organizers. Solving this one will net you one copy of NetShade, a $30 anonymous proxy software for your Mac that will let you search all those websites privately. While the prize isn’t a slam dunk by any means, it’s a nice little bit of kit for relatively little effort along with a bit of fun. Oh, and you’ll also be helping MacHeist donate 25% of the proceeds to a charity cause, so it’s definitely worth the karma points.

So, I’m hanging out on Twitter, basking in the Tweet-flow (you know what I mean, right?), when I start to notice this thing happening. FTL. I see it in a tweet by a game developer I follow. Then I see it in a tweet by another smart person I follow. Then it’s almost everywhere. FTL. FTL. Starship captaining (is that a real word?). FTL.

I think, “For the Loss?” Well, maybe. Or perhaps, “Faster Than Light,” says my inner sci-fi geek. Looking it up on the interwebs, I see that it does, indeed, refer to the speed at which we cannot go, and it is for sure a sci-fi geek’s dream. I also notice that it came out today, which is why everything’s all a-twitter.

Sword of Fargoal 2, an upcoming game for Mac OS X, iOS, PC, and Linux, just launched a fund raising project on Kickstarter. This will be a sequel to the iOS and Mac OS X game that was itself a re-imagining of the original Commodore 64 game from 1980.

The team is high-end, as it includes original developer Kevin McCord, developer Paul Pridham (Saucelifter, Punch Quest), Emmy award-winning animator Charlie Canfield, and British composer Daniel “LittleBigPlanet” Pemberton–all of whom contributed to the highly-reviewed iOS/Mac port from a couple years ago, published by Chillingo/EA.

The Kickstarter campaign was launched to help take the sequel, Sword of Fargoal 2, from 80 percent done to fully done. The extra funding will help the team add new music, animations, and graphics to the game, as well as polish up the game engine itself to ensure fluid movement and controls.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, an updated release of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role playing game coming from Bioware, has been delayed until November 30, 2012, according to the company’s forum. The Mac and iPad version was scheduled to release in September, sometime soon after a September 18 PC release date.

Now, all three versions will ship at the end of November.

As we told you would happen two days ago, Subatomic Studios has officially released Fieldrunners 2 HD in the App Store. The highly-anticpated iPad version of the game features new weapons, features, and full support for the iPad’s Retina display.

The iPhone 5 and the iPot touch both got a revamp today, as announced at the Yerba Buena center in San Francisco. They both have a new look and a new screen size. The 4 inch diagonal screen is at the same ratio of 16:9 as most HD movies, for one. But what about gaming? Everyone knows how great iOS is for gaming, right? What will the extra length bring to the party? Let’s take a look.

Great news for fans of the popular tower defense game Fieldrunners. Subatomic Studios has announced the highly-anticpated release of Fieldrunners 2 HD for iPad!

The fully-optimized iPad version of the critically acclaimed sequel will launch in the App Store this Thursday, September 13th. Not only will the game look great on the iPad’s Retina display, but new weapons and surprises are included to keep you on your toes.

Steam, the online portal for Mac and PC games, announced a new beta feature coming tonight to PCs and soon to Macs – The Big Picture. Parent company Valve has created a new way to play games purchased through the Steam store, using the same exact Steam friends list and games you already own.

Once you’ve updated the Steam client, you’ll be able to click a button and play your games with a controller, a mouse and keyboard, or what have you. Valve has made the new interface controller-friendly, designed to kick back on a couch and play games right on the big screen TV you already have in your living space.

This last weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), I spent time with the developers at Wizards of the Coast, the creators of Magic: The Gathering, to talk about their latest Magic: The Gathering expansion, due out on iOS, PC, and console, Return To Ravnica. They sat me down in the nice room behind the Magic and Dungeons and Dragons booth for some hands-on time with the expansion, which takes players to a new plane in the Magic: The Gathering Universe, Ravnica.

The expansion comes with new single player opponents, each with their own deck and playstyle. As in the original iOS version of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, once you beat one of the computer enemies, you unlock their card deck to play in your own battles with the online multiplayer.

There’s a fantastic episode of Pendleton Ward’s postapocalyptic candy land show Adventure Time in which Fin the last human and Jake, his magical dog companion, play a game called Card Wars which is like a futuristic version of Magic: The Gathering matched with the Holochess game in Star Wars.

I’ve always wished Magic was played like that — by placing real cards down on a sort of holographic desktop to see the creatures come alive and do battle right before my eyes — but it never occurred to me that my iPad could already do something like that. But here comes Nuko Cards to prove me wrong.

The Arctic. A tribe of mystical, peace-loving Eskimos. A greedy, visionary corporation named Toxi Co. (get it?). A freak accident unleashes goo that mutates all in its path, including a massive polar bear named, you guessed it, Fatty Sparkles.

Can’t you picture this on your television or movie screen? How about as a turn-based multiplayer digital board game? I bet you can see it both ways, and that’s what developer, Lantern, is banking on. Co-founders Austin Hice and Carlo Eugster in 2011, Lantern began with a dream to make games influenced byt he storytelling they learned about while working in film and television. This past weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, they showed off a pre-release four-player demo of the game, and it caught our eye.

You may have played any one of a half-dozen similar location-based games on the App Store, from PerBlue’s Parallel Mafia and Parallel Kingdom to Self Aware’s Fleck, but you’ve never seen a location-based game like Life Is Magic before.

Subatomic Studios has released a massive update for the original Fieldrunners iPhone game. The App Store tower defense classic has been updated with Retina display support, a new soundtrack, and other improvements. To celebrate the update, the game is also on sale now for $0.99 in the App Store.

If you haven’t had the chance to play Basion on the Xbox or your Mac, yet – heck, even if you have – you owe it to yourself to pick this game up for your iPad.

Bastion is available on Mac or the Xbox gaming console for around $15. The iPad version was released today at a fantastic $4.99, making this the best gaming deal you can get for a brand new out-of-the-gate game.

The world’s first cross-platform MMO is still alive and kicking. Whether you’re just getting into it or have been around since its iOS debut back in April 2012, you’ll be happy to hear that today marks the beginning of Pocket Legends’ Double XP weekend!

Capcom announced today the upcoming release of three of its wacky courtroom games to the iPhone and iPad. Originally released on Nintendo’s dual screened handhelds, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy HD will include all three of the Phoenix Wright games, with Ace Attorney, Justice for All, and Trials and Tribulations stepping up to the courtroom bar.