Games - page 32

Apple has been focusing on improving App Store discoverability as of late, and now it has added a “Best New Updates” section for games, which introduces users to notable updates of top-selling titles.

Prior to this addition, Apple included game updates as part of its curated “Best New Games” section, which resulted in a long list that took ages to scroll through. By separating updates from entirely new games, users can now more easily browse through the list to discover games that they might otherwise miss.

“Die, fish. Die! Die, shark!”

That’s what one goggled attendee shouts near the end of Sony’s new video (below) showing people’s reaction to its not-yet-released virtual reality headset, codenamed Project Morpheus, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo a couple weeks back in Los Angeles.

He and many other gamers got the chance to try out Sony’s answer to the Oculus Rift at the expo, and boy is it weird to watch them from the outside.

It’s hard to show what VR is really all about without, you know, actually having you wear the headsets. VR rigs like Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus have an uphill battle to convince the rank and file that VR is going to be compelling enough to shell out even more money for their gaming systems.

Sony opted to show us people from the outside, and I’m not sure it’s any more compelling than a 2D video of the VR games on offer right now.

If you like a bit (a lot!) of wanton carnage in your iOS games, you may want to check out World of Tanks Blitz, which has finally rolled into App Stores around the world.

Based on the massively popular World of Tanks game for PC and Xbox, World of Tanks Blitz is a free-to-play mobile massively multiplayer online game, which lets you battle it out in explosive 7v7 PvP battles, using 90 iconic tanks from Germany, the US, and Soviet Russia.

When it was released in August last year as a free-to-play game, Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time shipped with three distinct worlds and countless new plants and zombies.

But for lovers of the first game, all of the new levels, plants and enemies in Plants vs. Zombies 2 didn’t make it a total improvement over its predecessor. Notably, many of the plants from the first game — including all of the nocturnal plants — were missing.

Luckily, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is being constantly updated, and the latest update adds the nocturnal plants back to the game in a new world, appropriately called the Dark Ages.

I recently wrote about an upcoming game that re-imagines SNK Playmore’s The King of Fighters as an, um, music-based beat-em-up, called The Rhythm of Fighters. As a huge fan of the franchise (and the proud owner of a 4 CD compilation of the series’ various soundtracks) I was intrigued by the idea — even if it is a major departure from what we’re used to.

Jump forward a week and the game has now landed in the App Store, priced $0.99.

With summertime here in the northern hemisphere, it’s definitely time to get outdoors and sample all that the world has to offer.

Of course, if Steam or GoG.com have anything to say about it, you’ll stay inside working on your pasty complexion playing all these amazing games for very little money.

Both gaming digital distribution platforms have their respective summer sales on right now, and you can grab some amazing games without emptying your wallet. All of the games below are playable on Mac or PC, so pick your poison.

Just lay off the sunscreen, ok?

The sequel to one of our favorite games is headed to iOS this July 2. Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution 2 will be a premium title for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, so get ready to strategize your way to victory with new leaders Churchill and Kennedy on the go.

This is the first Civ game developed especially for mobile devices with new gameplay and controls that work well on touch screens. You’ll get the same core strategic and tactical joy the series is known for, but with more user-friendly controls and interface. You’ll also get some new historical leaders — like Churchill and Kennedy — who will take their place alongside favorites Ghandi, Lincoln, and Napoleon.

I’m a sucker for old school platformers in the vein of Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, and upcoming iOS game Escape from the Pyramid certainly fulfills those criteria.

Set across 45 levels — representing three worlds in all — the game borrows from ancient Egyptian art to create something that definitely looks like it could stand out in a year already full of interesting-looking iOS titles.

LOS ANGELES — Free-to-play games don’t enjoy the same cache as games that cost money right out of the gate. Sure, they’re at the top of the “making money” charts, as gamers download freebies by the bucketful (and apparently purchase loads of virtual stuff from them), but ask any gamer what they think of them and they’ll typically give you a blank, slightly annoyed stare.

So I honestly didn’t hold out much hope that I’d see anything super-interesting at an Electronic Entertainment Expo luncheon sponsored by free-to-play mobile game maker DeNA last week.

However, the developer showed off a couple of pretty damn good games at the event. We saw the recently released Transformers tie-in game and several others, including Peter Molyneux’s latest effort, Godus. But what really stuck out for me were Royal Defenders and WARP.

I’m a massive fan of SNK’s King of Fighters franchise, to the point that I own a 4 CD compilation of the series’ soundtracks over the course of its lifetime. Which is why I’m incredibly happy to hear that SNK Playmore is working on a rhythm game based on the King of Fighters fighting game franchise “packed with legendary SNK tracks!”

We’ve written a lot about how there’s no shortage of great games in the App Store, and just to gobble up even more of your time this summer, Electronic Arts has just staged a massive sale on some of its most popular titles — discounting them by as much as 90 percent in some cases.

Some of the company’s hottest games are included, so this is a great opportunity if you’re looking to pick up some worthwhile bargains.

Here’s the complete list of titles on sale for just $0.99!

Chances are you’ve heard of Tamagotchi, the little handheld virtual pets that took over the world during the first decade of the 2000s, selling more than 76 million little egg-shaped devices as of 2010.

Hatch is one of the many virtual pet apps out there, but it’s an adorable one. You may even recognize the little Fugu creature from its own Facebook Messenger sticker series.

Virtual pets aren’t anything new to the iOS ecosystem, but this new collaboration between Hatch and super-popular video game Pocket God is something new. If you’ve ever thought about doing more with that little digital pal in your pocket, now might be the time. Check out the launch video below for more.

Halfbrick Studios, the folks behind massively popular endless-runner Jetpack Joyride have decided that the best way to get you to play their games is to give them away for a grand total of nothing.

The Brisbane-based game development studio was founded in 2001, and has gone on to make a ton of popular games across iOS and other platforms, including fruit-slashing hit Fruit Ninja and tongue-in-cheek giant robot game Colossatron.

There’s also Fruit Ninja Puss in Boots, the endless-runner Monster Dash, the song-creation game Band Stars, dual-stick shooter favorite Age of Zombies, and the wacky Fish Out of Water, where you get to flick various marine creatures across the top of the ocean for distance and style-based high scores.

All of these games will work on your iPhone or iPad, and — since you’re buying them at the free price now — you will own them into perpetuity.

You can grab any one of Halfbrick’s premium games for nothing right now, so head on over.

Source: iTunes

Jose Torres, CEO of Boogio, wants you to track your fitness with the most obvious part of your body: your feet.

“We’ve got 60,000 layers of sensitivity in the Boogio,” he told Cult of Mac at last week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, “so we can track gravitational force, inner balance, and three different acceleration forces of your feet.”

If you haven’t gotten enough of disgruntled avians from Rovio’s hit series Angry Birds, what with last week’s Angry Birds Epic or the well-received Angry Birds Star Wars mobile games, then this news is for you.

Rovio has teamed up with Hasbro to mashup its own quirky mobile gaming franchise with yet another pop-culture phenomenon, the Transformers. And not the Michael Bay hyper-CGI movies, either. This looks to be a full-on 1980s cartoon take on the “robots in disguise” theme, complete with birds disguised as robots that can turn into cars and airplanes.

Sigh.

Facebook is trying to transform its News Feed into more than just a hotbed of baby pictures and Buzzfeed quizes and its first move is a new side panel to help users discover more timely content.

To make the app more relevant for the way people use tablets, Facebook for iPad is adding a new channel on the right-hand side of your news feed featuring trending topics, videos and tons of game suggestions to try to get users to read more news, watch more videos and play games in the app. And you can bet there will be plenty of ads to compensate.

LOS ANGELES — Drop this tactical-style vest onto your shoulders and fasten it high on your chest, and you’re suddenly feeling the action. Using audio-based haptic technology (the kind of rumbling vibrations that you’ll find in any video gaming controller), the KOR-FX turns the audio in the game into rumbles you can feel.

The makers of this new gaming peripheral have a few prototypes set up on the show floor at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week, and they’ll let all comers come and try a demo.

“Some people want to wear this thing lower on their chest, but up high is what stimulates the limbic system,” Seth Fandetti, CEO of Immerz (the makers of the KOR-FX) told us onsite at the expo. “It’s more than just feeling bullets hit you; it’s a whole immersive experience.”

Instead of trotting out the cliché question, “Are games art?,” an exhibit at the Electronic Entertainment Expo aims to explore the actual artwork from upcoming and recently announced video games.

Long gone are the pixellated abstracts of yesteryear: these are fully realized, gorgeous works of art in various styles, hung for all to see in the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the Expo takes place this week.

Developing today’s graphics-rich video games –mobile, console, or PC — takes a lot of time, talent, and passion, and the images above show the kind of artistic energy that is put into them. From the painterly styles of artwork from Assassin’s Creed Unity and Destiny to the poster illustration of The Banner Saga and Sunset Overdrive, there’s a lot to like in the images above.

All photos by Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Rovio has officially launched its latest Angry Birds game, Angry Birds Epic, for iOS devices worldwide.

Unlike previous Angry Birds sequels which have flapped their wings since the original game flew into the App Store back in 2009, Angry Birds Epic takes the form of a fantasy RPG starring both the Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies. The game soft-launched in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand back in March, but today marks the first time gamers from across the globe can get their hands on it, too.

Apple TV may have a new competitor in the form of Sony, which unveiled its PlayStation TV at Monday’s E3 event — showcasing a TV set-top box which features a strong emphasis on gaming.

Released as PS Vita TV in Japan, PlayStation TV will arrive in the U.S. and Canada this fall. It will allow users to stream games from their PS4 to other TVs in the house, thereby extending the gaming experience. It will also let you stream PS3 games and older classics via the forthcoming Playstation Now, which will presumably require no PS4. On top of this it will provide all the streaming services you’d expect from a set-top box, such as Netflix and Hulu.

The App Store is constantly evolving as both Apple and individual developers struggle to get the most out of the experience as possible. The latest change in this vein appears to involve App Store moderators cracking down on apps which incentivize or reward users for enaging in a range of activities — many related to advertising.

For an example of what we mean, consider a game which gives users more lives when they die in exchange for sharing to Facebook. Several mobile apps have recently been rejected for using these techniques, alongside offering virtual currency or additional game play for asking viewers to watch video “app trailers.”

Stealth survival game République can be pretty intense at times. For players who just want to experience the story and spend time exploring the game’s beautifully rendered environments, however, there’s a new update available which adds an easier “Story Mode” for just that purpose.

Launched in the App Store back in December last year, République features an episodic type of gameplay which sees protagonist Hope fight back against an “an oppressive totalitarian state” (making it pretty appropriate imagery for Apple.) Unlike games such as the tremendous GTA: San Andreas port, République is a console-worthy game especially designed specifically for the touchscreen environment of the iOS platform.

Certainly, it’s an immersive experience, and that doesn’t change with the game’s Story Mode, which simply makes the title more accessible to less experienced players.

Last week’s WWDC demonstrated how Apple devices can communicate with one another to make life easier for users. Well, the same holds true for games which can take advantage of the interactivity between, say, the built-in motion sensors of an iPhone and the viewing experience offered of Apple TV to replicate the experience of a full-on games consoles like the Nintendo Wii.

That’s the idea behind Rolocule Games’ innovative new game Dance Party, which is powered by something called “rolomotion” — the winner of the Silver Edison Award for best innovation in the Entertainment category at the recent 2014 Edison Awards in San Francisco. Rolomotion is a technology which precisely tracks the various movements made by an iPhone and allows users to play games using natural motion gestures on television using a combination of Apple’s smartphone and the Apple TV.

Gameloft’s previous Spider-Man games have been pretty fun, even if they’ve also been plagued by enough in-app purchases to well and truly set off our spider-sense (or, at least, overdraft fee alerts). With E3 coming up next week, Gameloft and Marvel have announced a brand new Spider-Man game called Spider-Man Unlimited, based on the Marvel comic of the same name.

This game is set to take the character of Spider-Man and place him into an endless runner scenario, with the developers promising that: