gaming - page 44

Responding to critics, Smuggle Truck, the game about illegal immigration has added a legal mode.

The game still hasn’t been approved for iTunes yet, but if and when it is in April, you’ll be able to access Legal Immigration mode via the game’s main menu.

How do you play? Well, you don’t. Not really. You get a screen with 20-year countdown.

When asked why two decades, Owlchemy Labs developer Alex Schwartz said:

“Well that’s the greater than 10 years it takes for someone to obtain a green card. Plus the multiple occurrences of ‘lost paperwork’ that are bound to happen during the process.”

“Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration” has released a storm of controversy – and free publicity.

In it, players navigate through what looks like the U.S.-Mexican border. As the truck drives over cliffs, mountains and dead animals, immigrants fall off the truck bed. Scores are calculated by the number of immigrants helped into the U.S. Hundreds of news outlets have written about the game, many weighing in on whether it’s in bad taste or a wry commentary on the current US immigration policies.

From the press release released, it sounds like the game makers are keen to keep up that publicity spin cycle:

“Tilt your truck, catch newborn babies, drive over armadillos, and rocket your way over hills, through caverns, and over quicksand to save the people!”

Having  gone through the frustrating, expensive, time-consuming green card process for a family member, the legal mode option gave me a good laugh.

Via Joystiq

If you’re ready to play at smuggling illegal immigrants over the US border, check out the demo for “Smuggle Truck.”

The game, from Boston company Owlchemy Labs hasn’t yet been approved by Apple, but you can try it out on gaming portal Kongregate for free.

“Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration” has released a storm of controversy – and free publicity – for the game devs hope will be approved for iTunes by March.

N.O.V.A. 2 – ($0.99) iPhone – Games

Although it’s not strictly a brand new release, today’s must-have iOS game has been chosen simply because it’s one of the most exciting first person shooters available in the App Store, and it’s on sale today for just $0.99!

N.O.V.A. 2 is the sequel to Gameloft’s first hugely successful sci-fi FPS – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, and this follow up title boasts new enemies with improved AI, a larger range of weapons and powers, and 10-on-10 online multiplayer – you won’t want to miss it!

Find out more after the break!

It’s time for yet another Monday iPhone App Giveaway brought to you by Appular! If you’re into hamsters and zombies, you are going to have your mind blown with the apps we’re giving away. Just checked and the hamsters are actually FLYING hamsters. Good Lord!

All you need to do is follow @cultofmac and @appular on Twitter and tweet this phrase to be entered, “Big ups to @cultofmac and @appular for making it rain with free iPhone app codes!” A 5 random twitterers will be chosen to win this app bundle. We’ll choose the winners at 11:59pm on Tuesday and notify through Direct Message on Wednesday.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

A dad whose daughter ran up his credit card while playing the Smurfs’ Village app has launched a Facebook group to convince Apple to ban in-app purchases in kids games.

The fledgling group – as of this writing, it has 20 members – started after Tobias Feldt’s daughter bought a load of Smurf extras by accident.

Feldt says Apple refunded the purchase immediately, with no questions asked – as it often does in these cases – but he decided the incident shouldn’t end there.

Feldt has tried to teach his two children to play games responsibly. His oldest daughter, age nine, was “devastated” when she found out that she had run up a bill playing the game.

A game developed by a 14-year-old has knocked Angry Birds from its perch as the top free game in iTunes.

The game, called Bubble Ball, is a physics puzzler developed by Utah teen Robert Nay. Nay wrote the 4,000 lines of code using Corona SDK. He did have had a little help from his mom, Kari, who lent a hand with the graphics. Although he’s only in the 8th grade, Nay has been programming for six years and currently codes in languages including HTML, PHP, AJAX and Java Script.

Bubble Ball launched December 29, shortly after iTunes announced that Rovio’s Angry Birds ruled the roost as the top paid and free game.

Nay’s game has had some three million downloads since launch.

What’s it like?

Players try to move  a bubble from point A to point B. To keep things moving along, players use  geometric shapes to create ramps, platforms and catapults to send the bubble to its destination.

Simple, but perhaps that is what catapulted it to the top of the crowded gaming heap on iTunes.

I haven’t played it yet, but looking forward to checking it out: I’ve got three versions of Angry Birds on my phone already.

Source: IB Times

A company called Ten One Design has announced a $25 joystick for iPad called Fling that attaches to the screen with suction cups.

The Fling goes on top of the on-screen controls, and replaces your direct finger or thumb. The joystick is mostly clear plastic, so you can see through it.

Does this defeat the whole purpose of using an iPad for gaming, which is direct touch on an elegant surface? Or is this just cool?

Fling is available for pre-order Jan. 6.

Most tech companies go out of their way to publish product roadmaps, so their customers know what’s coming next. But Apple is not most tech companies. Ask anyone from Steve Jobs to the guy at your local Apple Store, and you’ll hear the same refrain, “we don’t comment on unannounced products.”

It’s this dearth of hard facts on what’s coming next from Cupertino that makes speculation so irresistible. And with the new year now upon us, it’s the perfect time to ponder what Apple may have in store for us in 2011.

Blogger Deon Devine, from Houston, Texas, has sent Cult of Mac some very interesting predictions.

Thanks to the advent of Steam for Mac, the dedication and ingenuity of indie developers and the App Store’s raising of awareness of Apple and its products, 2010 was the best year for Apple gaming since, well, the Big Bang.

We can’t even pretend to have played all the games that came out this year, or even a tenth of them. There were a lot of great games that escaped our radar, or we just didn’t get the time to play. Heck, we don’t even have editorial consensus amongst ourselves.

After the jump, though, you can find at least my list of 2010’s iOS and Mac games that siphoned away most of my time, causing me to miss deadlines, emotionally neglect my girlfriend, and extend my index fingers by three inches through callus mass alone. What were the games that extended yours? Let us know in the comments

Retrospectively casting an eye over an incredible year for both Apple and its customers, one of the most surprising developments of 2010 was the Mac’s long-overdue maturity into a serious gaming platform after years of false hopes and promises.

More surprising than even that, though, is the fact Apple almost had nothing to do with it: even while Cupertino oiled and massaged iOS into a platform capable of rattling the nerves of gaming’s most unassailable colossus, they continued to ignore Mac gamers and its developers.

So who was responsible for the Mac Gaming Renaissance of 2010? There’s no one company in particular, but let’s start with Valve.

Smurfs’ Village, the iPhone/iPad game a lot of parents point the finger at for accidental in-app purchases, has now added a few warnings.

The first sentence of the game description now reads:

“Smurf Village is free to play, but charges real money for additional in-app content. You may lock out the ability to purchase in-app content by adjusting your device’s settings.”

Epic Games, the company behind such diversions as “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and “Gears of War 3″ is releasing tools for developers to meet demand for iPhone and iPad games.

The company will launch the latest version of its game-development tools, called the Unreal Development Kit, to the public Thursday. The free to download kit will include new tools to create high-quality graphics and animations on iOS, which should simplify and speed up the development processes for games.

“Apple’s App Store is the most vibrant market for mobile gaming,” said Epic Chief Executive Mark Rein. “If you’re going to make a game for a mobile device, and you want to make the most money, you’re nuts not to make it for iOS.”

If you’re in the netbook, notebook, PC, hand-held gaming, newspaper or DVD business, Apple wants to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti — at least according to a huge number of observers who don’t know what the word “cannibalize” means.

For example, Microsoft’s general manager for Windows product management, Gavriella Schuster, said this month that the netbook market is “definitely getting cannibalized” by the iPad.

Wait, “cannibalized”? What does that mean, exactly? And why is everybody saying it?

Remember Epic’s stunning display of the Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone with Epic Citadel? That was more of a technology demonstration than anything else, but the first proper game running Unreal Engine 3 is coming to the App Store soon in Chair’s Project Sword, a swipe-controlled fighter with an RPG level-up and equipment mechanic…. and as you can see from the trailer above, it looks breathtaking.

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.

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.

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.

Although I’ve always been absolutely terrible at them, I love Sid Meier’s Civilization games, and the fourth game (and its expansions) is probably the most commonly launched app on my iMac after Mail and Chrome. I’ve been eager to here tell, then, of an OS X port of the newest game, Civilization V.

Good news for me and my fellow Civ junkies then, as Mac Rumors reports that an OS X compatible port of Civilization V will be heading to Valve’s gaming digital delivery service Steam within the next few weeks.

I figure there’re two ways an iOS tower-defense game set in the Star Wars universe might succeed: by being an excellent example of the genre, like TowerMadness Zero, or by immersing the player in the Star Wars universe, like Star Wars: Trench Run.

Unfortunately, Star Wars: Battle for Hoth (by THQ, who also put out Trench Run) does neither, and ends up being only slightly more pleasant than crawling into the slit belly of a dead Tauntaun.

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Sega’s long-awaited return to the 2D roots of their most famous speedster rodent is coming to the App Store tomorrow, and as you can see in the trailer above, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 looks pretty faithful to the original Sonic games for the Sega Genesis… you know, before the whole franchise leapt into 3D and was marketed predominantly at furries with masturbatory echidna fantasies.

Looking pretty good, and I know loads of iPhone gamers will be excited about this, but on my part, I’ve never found running at 1000 miles per hour into an undodgable wall of spikes very fun, which seems to be the defining element of the series. I think I’ll probably give Sonic 4 a pass.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31omgvWDTQ

Up until 1996, id software’s Doom engine was pretty much the de facto technology driving the best and most advanced PC computer games on the market, including Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen and Strife. Then id software released their next game engine, Quake, which boasted true 3D environments, and any game that still ran on Doom’s 2.5D engine was barely worth a laugh.

That was very unfortunate for HacX when it was released in 1997. The last commercial game using the Doom engine, HacX boasted some incredible enemy, weapons and level design, but was ultimately as ignored at retail (where it was passed over for flashier games running on truly 3D engines) as it has been forgotten by all but the most die-hard retro gamers.

I was delighted to hear, then, that HacX has gotten a new lease on life, as it has been ported as a free app for the iPhone and iPad. It’s still using the Doom engine, just this time it’s using the updated iPhone engine released by id software’s own lead programmer, John Carmack.

Here’s hoping that HacX can finally get some of the recognition it deserves this time around.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHl6GTls6m0

Capcom’s Dead Rising series for the PC and the Xbox 360 is an acquired taste, despite the fact that it’s central conceit is the chocolate meets peanut butter of zombie games: killing the slavering, flesh-hungry dead in an American shopping mall. Now it’s coming to the iPhone later this year in Dead Rising Mobile, but can Capcom make the series work on a handheld device?