games - page 78

Gearbox Software’s Borderlands was one of my favorite video games of the past year, but unless you’re willing to reboot into Boot Camp, it doesn’t run on a Mac.

It’s a shame, because in many non-trivial ways, it’s the best multiplayer Diablo-like since, well, Diablo II. Borderlands takes place on a Mad Max style extraterrestrial world in which every chest, container or killed enemy spits out a treasure trove of randomly created weapons, each with their own unique special abilities.

I spent about 80 hours playing through Borderlands when it was released on the Xbox 360 earlier this year… such a substantial block of time that the inamorata can’t even hear the game’s title without whiplashing herself with an eye roll… so no one tell her that Borderlands is coming to the Mac coming December 3rd, complete with all the DLC, for the quite reasonable price of $49.95.

When Steve Jobs said that Android was fragmented, here’s exactly what he meant: according to Rovio, who make the popular mobile game Angry Birds, they are struggling to support the game on all of the different Android hardware. In comparison, iOS development is easy as a dream.

Despite the fact that it’s one of the best games the Mac has to offer, we’ve never talked about Minecraft here at Cult of Mac. Let’s remedy that, shall we?

As a glimpse of the possible gaming future of an iOS-capable AppleTV, this is pretty tops: for the latest update of The Incident, Big Bucket Software has added the ability to hook your iPad up to your HDTV and play the game from your couch using a Bluetooth-paired iPhone as the controller.

If Apple ever introduces an App Store for the AppleTV, this is the way they’re going to do it: in the meantime, we can count on jailbreak developers implementing this sort of functionality in jailbroken AppleTV apps. I can’t wait for someone to get an emulator working on this thing already!

To this day, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust is one of my favorite games for the iOS, and while I’ve been anxiously waiting for a sequel, I think I can make do with this: Venan Arcade has just announced the free-to-play spin-off title, Space Miner Blast, which strips out the former game’s story and RPG elements to deliver a frenetic arcade shooter.

It’s a freemium title, so to unlock all four ships (as well as Retina Display support), you’ll need to drop $1.99 on the Blast Pack in-app purchase, but if you’ve ever been curious about Space Miner, this is an excellent intro… and to tempt you even further into the franchise, Venan has also dropped the price of the original game to just $1.99.

Back in August, Doom creators id software promised to blew us all away with a demonstration of their next generation Rage engine running on the iPhone 4 at sixty frames per second. It was just a proof-of-concept, but don’t worry, there’s a game in there… and it’s going to be called Mutant Bash TV.

As a gamer, I’ve slowly gotten used to the virtual D-pads and buttons in iOS games, but in all honesty, I still miss the tactility of real buttons underneath my thumb pads.

That said, I can’t imagine who would go in for this: the Tactile+Plus is a transparent overlay you put over your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen to lend tactile feedback to a virtual D-pad.

This is a pretty neat spin on the freemium model: Capcom Arcade is a free title that bundles many of Capcom’s classic arcade games — including Street Fighter II, Commando and 1942 — together in a virtual arcade. Just like in a real arcade, to play the games, you need tokens, which you can buy in-app. Otherwise, Capcom Arcade is happy to dole out free tokens every day, which you can then use for a limited number of plays.

It’s a clever little approach. Usually, freemium games use in-game virtual goods to make money, but Capcom’s turned that idea on its head by making a play of their games themselves into a virtual good to be consumed. I wonder if other classic arcade publishers with a presence in the App Store will catch on: Sega, I’m looking at you.

[via Touch Arcade]

Back in 1993, Trilobyte and Virgin Interactive released The 7th Guest… one of the games to be done mostly in full-motion video, and the first game to ship exclusively on CD-ROM. Now it’s got another laurel to add to its belt: Trilobyte says that it’ll be coming to iOS sometime in December.

It’s not the only FMV Trilobyte title planned for the App Store. Shortly after The 7th Guest launches for the iPhone, Trilobyte says they will re-engineer the sequel — The 11th Hour — for iOS as well.

When The 7th Hour hits the App Store, it’ll cost $4.

To be completely honest with you, the thing that amazes me most is that The 7th Guest can even fit on an iPhone. I remember when the game first came out and I was amazed at the seemingly dozens of CDs it shipped on: I remember being astonished that a single title could possibly encompass that many discs.

Of course, in retrospect, most of those discs were taken up by badly compressed full motion video… and compression’s come a long, long way since then. Still, I’m staggered: has technology really come so far? Obviously, but it’s still sometimes hard to deprogram my expectations.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T073m83CQk&feature=player_embedded

Evil Dead — Sam Raimi’s story of five horny college kids who go to an abandoned cabin in the woods to do their rutting and accidentally unleash an ancient, murderous evil — isn’t as well known as its sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. It’s a more serious and frightening film, and Bruce Campbell’s Ash (known in the first movie as “Ashley”) has yet to become the chainsaw-handed, catchphrase-spitting zombie killer we’d all come to know and love later in the franchise.

It also seems like a bad fit for an App Store game, but I’ve got to tell you, this trailer for the upcoming Evil Dead game has won me over. You’d think using Mii-like bobblehead avatars to tell the story that prominently features melting zombies, ankle-stabbing and tree rape would just fall apart, but instead, the trailer’s just incredibly funny and well done… not to mention loyal to the spirit of the (NSFW) original trailer, which I’ve embedded below.

Valve’s excellent Steam for Mac digital delivery service is having a Halloween sale this weekend, pretty much guaranteeing that if it’s spooky, on the Mac and features zombies, ghosts or monsters, you’ll be able to download it for the price of a Monster Mash.

If you’re a Mac gamer, here are the titles that are available at a discount this weekend:

• PopCap’s Plants Vs. Zombies — $4.99 (50% Off)

• Valve’s Team Fortress 2 (now featuring the Horseless Headless Horsemann in a scary new map) — $9.99 (50% Off)

• Valve’s Left 4 Dead Bundle — $14.99 (50% Off)

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent — $10.04 (33% Off)

All five of those games are terrific, and if you’ve got Boot Camp installed, there’s even more horror-themed titles to choose from.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1FxPtUMeM&feature=player_embedded

If you’ve been keeping around that old, dusty Sega Dreamcast just to occasionally send your ChuChus into battle against the nefarious KapuKapus, great news: Sega has just released their classic Dreamcast multiplayer puzzle game Chu Chu Rocket for iOS in both a $4.99 iPhone/iPod Touch version and a $6.99 HD version suitable for iPad.

I’ve been playing it all morning, and it’s a fantastic port of one of Sega’s best games, with the only real blemish on an otherwise superb title being the omission of online multiplayer. If you have any fond memories of Chu Chu Rocket at all, picking this up for the weekend is a no-brainer.

Below the jump: Chu Chu Rocket’s absolutely unforgettable original television advertisement.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ByK2OAvx0

If you’ve somehow managed to do the impossible and deny the temptation to download PopCap’s incredible horticultural zombie defense game, Plants vs. Zombies, jeez… cave already. PopCap’s just put it up for sale on the App Store for only $0.99. Prefer the fuller featured iPad-specific version? PopCap’s put that on sale too: it’s now 50% off at just $4.99.

Seriously, just go download it already. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game on the App Store.

Although I actually play them with what can only be described as garish, butter-fingered ineptitude, I love SHMUPs, and so I’m really excited to take Firi Games’ new $0.99 shoot-em-up Phoenix for a spin.

Not only does the graphics and action look absolutely fantastic — a throwback to some of my favorite SHMUPs like Cho Ren Sha 68k — but Phoenix boasts one nifty little trick to separate itself from competition like Cave’s Espagaluga II: while most SHMUPs are all about pattern recognition, Phoenix is totally random, piecing different enemy ships and bullet patterns together on the fly so that no game is ever the same.

If you’ve not discovered Trainyard yet, it’s high time you got yourself to the App Store and spent a dollar on it. It’s one of those games that offers a great deal of entertainment for a very low price.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTgarcCWZc&feature=player_embedded

Halloween’s just ten days away and two of the most popular games on the App Store are getting in the ghoulish spirit of things wit All Hallow’s Eve themed updates. Both are just skinjobs on existing titles.

Okay, it’s not coming in a few weeks like it was originally rumored, but if you’re a long time fanatic for Sid Meier’s Civilization series, good news: we now have official confirmation that Civilization V is coming to the Mac in time for Christmas.

The port is being handled by one of the biggest names in OS X game ports, Aspyr Media, who also handled porting Civilization IV and its expansions to the Mac. Hopefully that means Civilization V will also be be available through Steam for Mac, just like its predecessor… and also like its predecessor, we hope that means Civilization V will be a Steam Play game, entitling the owner of the PC version to download and play the Mac version for free, and vice versa.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt2_lZFnpbQ

There’s plenty of Twitter clients on the App Store, from Twitter’s official software to power apps like TweetDeck, but watch this peaceful and somnolent video for the somewhat regrettably named Super Twario and you’ll have discovered one of the most pleasant Twitter clients around.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-FhSzoXPTg&feature=player_embedded

If you had a PC in the 1980s, you might have fond memories of playing Sierra’s line-up of classic adventure games: King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, etc.

You’ll probably be delighted to learn, then, that these retro classics will soon be coming to the iPad, courtesy of Sarien.net. Best of all, they’ll be free.

As I noted the other day, I recently completed a near-endless trip around the world, and I used my iPad for pretty much everything while on the plane. And the more I think about it, the more it’s clear to me that I will never again go on vacation with a laptop.

Here are my top 10 reasons why:

10. Though heavy, iPads weigh less than any hardcover and most paperbacks.
A lot of people, me included, spend a lot of time whining about how heavy the iPad is. But at 1.5 pounds, it’s a lot lighter than any edition of every single book in Oprah’s club.

9. Endless battery life makes a lack of power outlets irrelevant.
Whether with my iPhone or my MacBook, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve started watching a movie on a plane only have the power give out partway through. I seriously can’t imagine how that would ever happen with an iPad. Depending on the task, I’ve gotten well over two hours of battery life after getting the 20 percent warning.

Valve Software is a company which has been heaping much love on Mac gamers over the last few months, and whose much anticipated physics-based first person puzzler Portal 2 will be debuting early next year on both PC and Mac simultaneously. It’s about to get even better: they’ve just announced their next game, Dawn of the Ancients 2, coming sometime in 2011. Even better? It’s coming to the Mac.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wP-t_XZ5As

If you ever had an Amiga, prepare to squeal: the Bitmap Brothers have just announced that, in association with Tower Studios and Vivid Games, they will be bringing their famous Amiga game Speedball 2 to iOS.

Tuesday’s news that San Francisco-based iPhone game creator ngmoco had been snatched up for a rumored $400 million by Japanese game developer DeNA raised eyebrows for the sheer massiveness of the sum involved, but Stuart Dredge of Mobile Entertainment has broken down the numbers.

As it turns out, the rumors were true, to a point: The actual payment for ngmoco is $303 million, a payment made up of $146 million in common stocks, $27 million in DeNA investments and $128 million cash, which is actually a third of DeNA’s total savings. They’re betting hard on this being a good deal.

Additionally, a $100 million bonus will be paid to ngmoco if they keep their sales numbers up to a certain standard, and as part of his analysis, Dredge has given us a look at the App Store numbers of one of the biggest app publishers out there: ngmoco has seen 50 million downloads on the App Store and has twelve million users on their Plus+ gaming network across 119 games.

Ultimately, though, is this a smart acquisition? DeNA seems to think so based on the amount they were willing to spend, but ngmoco only brought in $3.16MM last year against a $10.89MM loss, and their 2008 numbers were even worse. Either ngmoco’s doing gangbusters this year or DeNA’s gambling hard on this deal.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEg74pDVek8

This looks cute: Evac is an upcoming pixel block maze game incorporating elements from games as diverse as Pac-Man to Splinter Cell. Your job is to guide a cheery moppet of a pink square through a maze while dodging red guards by any means necessary: from stealthing past them, to trapping them, to outright vaporizing them.

It looks fantastic, and sounds even better thanks to a captivating soundtrack by Kubatko. It should be available on the iPhone and iPad sometime next month.

If you need convincing about the power of HTML5, look no further than Biolab Disaster, a fantastically retro, shoot-em-up platformer with some fantastic gameplay. Here, go play it for a bit now, I’ll wait for you.

Fun, right? Want to play it on your iPhone now? Well, the game’s developer has it up and running on the iPhone 3GS at sixty frames per second, and it looks awesome.

The only problem? The developer seems a little unsure about whether or not Apple will let Biolab Disaster onto the App Store because it uses the JavaScriptCore Framework, which is a private API on iOS. He’s hopeful he can get around that problem by bundling his own copy of the JavaScriptCore Framework with his app, which is perfectly legal to do since it’s part of WebKit, but there’s always the chance Biolab Disaster for iPhone will be shot down.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed: Biolab Disaster on the iPhone would be the perfect pick-up-and-play platformer SHMUP.