gaming - page 31

I can remember saving up my allowance in the late 1970s and early 1980s, itching to get just one more Star Wars action figure from the local department store. When I’d get there, money clenched in my sweaty little hand, I would bliss out at the sheer variety and number of action figures on display.

Which to choose? That robot bounty hunter looked super cool, but it certainly wasn’t Boba Fett, who took my money that day. My younger brother opted for Bossk, because apparently we’re a family who loves bounty hunters.

Today, however, you won’t have to choose. There are nine new videos detailing nine characters from the upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars II game, set to release on iOS on September 19th.

Oh, hey, look, it’s another game from Rovio, the 800-pound gorilla avian in the gaming world, with more money and sales than pretty much everyone else, based on one intellectual property.

When Rovio mentions a new game, especially one based on Angry Birds, we listen.

Most days, you won’t hear us talk too much about a gaming genre that’s been beaten to death with a large stick, but upcoming Puzzle Knights is an exception to that rule, what with it’s interesting blend of, yes, matching colors, but also tactical strategy, light RPG elements, and online arena battles.

The game is expected to release sometime in the first or second week of September, so keep your eyes on this one. It’s exclusive to iOS, but will let you connect via Facebook to battle your FB friends.

Do you remember the Burnout series?

Developer Criterion’s crash-centric racing franchise for consoles was basically the exact opposite of more staid simulation racers like Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo. It was about speed and stunts. It featured absurd crashes that played out in almost fetishistic slow motion with metal and glass separating from cars and sailing through the air like doves in a John Woo movie. The physics were loose, the action was intense, and the event types included several things that were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike racing.

Why do I bring this up? Because Asphalt 8: Airborne is Burnout for your mobile device.

If you’re a fan of famous action director John Woo, you’ll be as excited as we were when we heard that he’s working on an iOS game, Bloodstroke, in development with Moonshark Games (Stan Lee’s Verticus, Neil Gaiman’s Wayward Manor) and to be published by Chillingo.

AppAdvice reports that the game will be an on-rails top-down action game that tasks players with protecting and escorting their in-game employer through hazardous level after level.

Glu Games (Gun Bros, Contract Killer, Death Dome) has a certain reputation for violent free to play games, but the San Francisco-based developer has quite a variety of game genres to its credit, including fantasy and city-building games.

Zombies Ate My Friends is another free to play game, sure, but it has a charm about it that helps cynics like me look the other way when it comes to the typical mechanics associated with the business model. The artwork is pleasing to the eye and there is a sense of whimsy to every aspect of the game, from dialog to undead-smashing weaponry (there’s a ukulele!), that elevates Zombies Ate My Friends from “yet another cash grab” to “worth a download and your valuable time.”

This one caught me off guard this week as I played through the new offerings on the iOS app store, looking for choice games to show off to you.

Little Galaxy is surprisingly captivating, encouraging yet another try to beat my previous high scores, or–in a recent round of the game on the couch with my daughter–trying to beat each other’s score.

Needless to say, she won.

Rovio just released two new videos on YouTube. Above is the actual teaser trailer for the upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars II, itself revealed last month.

In the trailer, the dark side Emperor pig is seen making a recruiting video of sorts for all the young piggies who need new weaponry to fight those upstart Jedi birds. It doesn’t go as well as planned, of course; this is Rovio in the director’s chair, not George Lucas.

The cool thing here is that the Emperor is voiced by none other than Ian McDiarmid himself, the actor who plays the Emperor in the real Star Wars films.

At this point, 2K Games is the most hotly anticipated iOS game publisher in existence. They’ve done huge things on the iPad, like bringing a full-on console game to the iPad with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and helping develop legend Sid Meier’s latest strategy game, Ace Patrol — which just happens to be iPad-only. Now it looks like they’re set to take the whole iPad auto-racing genre and blow it out of the water with their latest project, 2K Drive, developed by Lucid Games.

Take a look at the latest developer’s diary teaser clip (above), with its crazy soccer ball-dribbling driving, Bonneville Salt Flats land-speed record car and a Mazda Miata driving on what looks like a wooden roller-coaster platform, and you’ll see what I mean.

Apple highlights a new iOS app each week: the iTunes App Store App of the Week. Last week, it was a frustratingly compelling puzzle game, Doodle Fit 2, that Apple chose to spotlight.

This week, it’s another game, this time a beautiful dogfighting flight sim called Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders from Atypical Games. It’s the first of the two games Atypical has developed for the Sky Gamblers series, with the follow up, Cold War, recently released on the App Store as well.

Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders is free for a limited time to celebrate the honor.

Lucky Frame’s fantastic iPad and Android game, Gentlemen!, is now available on the Mac App Store, bringing the delightful Victorian-themed dueling game to the big screen for the first time.

We reviewed the game favorably when it released on iPad, enjoying the frenetic gameplay and the whimsical art style. It’s still a go-to app when we’re looking for something to play with a friend on the same iPad.

Now that it’s on Mac, though, we can now go head to head with up to four friends via local multiplayer, flipping and leaping and, well, stabbing our buddies with glee.

Let’s be clear: I love tower defense games. I’ve been a fan since the first time I played Desktop Tower Defense on Kongregate, I fell hard for Gem Keeper and Fieldrunners, and I carry a torch for Kingdom Rush.

These are tough waters to compete in, especially with a free-to-play business model that needs to encourage players to spend real money to help fund the game itself. There’s a delicate balance in tower defense games, between too easy and too difficult.

Does Super Hippo Studios Limited’s Pirate Legends TD bring enough to the table, then, to stand next to these others?

Originally released in 1997 by Electronic Arts (EA), Dungeon Keeper was a PC strategy game made by Bullfrog Productions under Peter Molyneux (Fable, Curiosity, Godus).

Dungeon Keeper tasks players with building and defending their own evil lair while protecting it from “heroes” who seem bent on stealing treasure and killing all the nice monsters. It’s a nice flip to the traditional theme of defending against monsters, and it has a huge following.

Kotaku today reports that the game is returning, but not to the PC. Instead, Dungeon Keeper is headed back tot he digital realm on mobile devices, on iOS and Android.

https://youtu.be/jRAwf_pLgjg

After releasing on Android this past July, Battle Dragons from Spacetime Games has been doing pretty well, but interested iOS gamers have been out of luck.

Today that changes, as the free-to-play build and battle game comes to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch in the App store. It does look quite a bit like Clash of Clans, another highly successful free-to-play game from Supercell, but Gary Gattis, CEO of Spacetime Games, says that may just be an artifact of the trailer.

Gold Diggers is a new take on the endless runner theme, the vertical runner. In it, players are placed at the head of a three-car mining train that actually digs straight down into the earth, picking up gold nuggets and avoiding things like flaming platforms, giant sand worms, and the more run-of-the-mill rocks and walls.

Players move the endlessly descending drilling mine train back and forth across the screen by dragging a finger left or right along the bottom of the screen, where a virtual button sits. The action occurs primarily through avoiding obstacles and chasing down gold nuggets — which can be spent in the game’s store for upgrades and better equipment — as well as power ups that add extra time, distance, or guns to the front of the player’s mine train.

Dragon Age and its sequel (cleverly named Dragon Age 2) have provided PC and console gamers with deep, solid role playing set in an original fantasy world with engaging characters and a wide array of choices to make in storytelling and combat.

While the overarching story is what makes these games work so very well, the combat system, especially in the first game, is unique and compelling to play.

That makes the announcement of a new spinoff of the well-reviewed series, coming to Google Play and iTunes this fall, pretty darn spiffy, as Heroes of Dragon Age seems to focus solely on combat.

Dungeons and Dragons, the venerable tabletop role playing game that arguably started it all, is changing. Currently owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast, the entire game universe is transitioning from the 4th Edition rule sets to what they’re calling D&D Next, a holy grail of streamlined gameplay rules and mechanics that the publisher hopes to spread to all current media, including video games.

It’s with that bit of background that DeNA/Mobage announced the first teaser trailer for a mobile version of Dungeons and Dragons called “Arena of War.” Check it out.

Rubicon, the developer behind successful iOS game, Great Big War Game, announced its latest game in development, Combat Monsters, an interesting mix of tactical, 3D monster battles with deck building card game mechanics.

The game is coming to iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and (what?) Blackberry fairly soon, so we thought it would be a good time to catch up with the Rubicon development team. We chatted with Paul Johnson, managing director and co-founder of Rubicon, about Combat Monsters. Here’s what he had to say.

Gone Home, developed by The Fullbright Company, is a newly released indie adventure game that’s getting quite a bit of buzz across the interwebs. Here’s the setup.

It’s June 7th, 1995. 1:15 AM

You arrive home after a year abroad. You expect your family to greet you, but the house is empty. Something’s not right. Where is everyone? And what’s happened here?

How do you not want this game? Even better? It’s on sale right now through the 21st of August for $17.99 on Steam.

Champs Battlegrounds is an odd mashup of strategy board gaming and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mechanics. Quark Games has created something compelling, though, with this free-to-play iOS game, available on your iPad or iPhone.

Some of the folks behind Project Gotham Racing and Blur are bringing their racing game chops to iOS this fall with upcoming premium iOS game, 2K Drive. Developed by Lucid Games (Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery, Pixel Smash) and published by 2K Games (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands Legends), 2K Drive aims to be everything a car-loving racing game fan could want, all on iPhone or iPad.

Apple spotlights a new iOS app each week as a special pick: the App of the Week. Last week, it was a gorgeously designed alarm clock, Rise, that caught Apple’s editorial fancy.

This week, it’s Namco Bandai’s Doodle Fit 2: Around the World, a delightfully drawn puzzle game that’s sure to keep you frustrated yet coming back for more with its maddeningly simple concept.

This highly anticipated game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe is now available on Mac and PC via Steam. The digital game is based on the popular two-player board game of the same name from Games Workshop, originally published in 1989.

The current digital iteration will feature a single player campaign of 15 missions, each set on the giant derelict spaceship (the “hulk” of the title), “Sin of Damnation.” There will also be multiplayer head-to-head action, oh yes.

Phobic Studios are best known for the collaborative development with Backflip Studios on runaway hit, Dragonvale, but the Boulder, Colorado-based company has been in the game for quite some time, spawning several entertaining mobile titles in the process. The company has just announced its next game, an action platformer game set in, well, a solar system.

In Glare, you’ll play as The Shiner, a being of light who must travel around a beautifully rendered solar system and save the sun itself from an evil threat. Glare will release in fall of this year on Steam for Mac, Linux, and PC systems.

Baldurs Gate fans, rejoice, as the classic role playing game, recently ported to iPad in Enhanced Edition, is back on the App Store after a couple of months.

The developers at Beamdog pulled the game in June after some sort of contractual dispute. That was a sad day, as Beamdog are true believers, and were planning to port Baldur’s Gate II to the iPad, while maybe even developing a Baldur’s Gate III if the second game were a success.