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The Secret World, Log Two: I Am Not Always Good at Staying Alive
It’s not that I’m terrible at combat. On the contrary: I’m pretty good at slicing things up. I’ve got solid DPS and a couple of powerful heals that make me a force to be reckoned with. It’s just that my judgment and self-preservation instincts seem to be more or less entirely absent. In other words:…
By Kate Cox -
I Need a Shiny New Phone So I Can Make It Look Like a 25-Year-Old Controller
The wonderfully named Killer Duck Decals sells, well, decals. Stickers for your phone or smallish electronics. But not just any stickers. These NES controller iPhone decals kind of make me wish I had an iPhone, not going to lie. (The store does stock some Android decals! But not, sadly, for my phone.) On the other…
By Kate Cox -
How The World Got Centipede: “It Didn’t Seem That Bad To Shoot A Bug.”
Centipede was an arcade classic, famous still to this day. It debuted in 1981, with a home version for the Atari 2600 showing up in 1982. In honor of Atari’s recent 40th anniversary, the Associated Press caught up with programming pioneer Dona Bailey, the mind behind Centipede and one of only the barest tiny handful…
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Angry Birds Trilogy Coming Soon to Xbox 360, PS3, and 3DS
Sure, you can play Angry Birds on your Android phone, your iPhone, your iPod and iPad, on Facebook, on PC, and in your browser, but what if that’s just not enough? What if, instead of flinging irritated avians across the screen on the go, you want to do it from the comfort of your own…
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Call of Duty Vet Debuts a Whole New Kind of Digital Comic
Keith Arem, talent director on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, among others, is planning an interactive graphic novel designed for the iPad. Infex tells a complicated sci-fi thriller murder mystery. Cancer survivor Evelyn “Ivy” Kendall discovers her father’s research could end all disease… and also create a horde of horrific genetically engineered monsters. He…
By Kate Cox -
Star Wars: The Old Republic Will Now Let You Try The First 15 Levels for Free
If you’ve been curious about Star Wars: The Old Republic but haven’t felt like spending money to find out if you like it, today’s a good day for you. Beginning today, SW:TOR has a free trial available to new players. The trial lets players create characters in any class and play them normally through level…
By Kate Cox -
You Need This Mario Homage For Your New Phone Background Art
Illustrator Marques Cannon has a blog full of nerd-themed art. But the Mario Kart inspired image (close-up above) originally drawn for a magazine has to be the best. Cannon’s also got Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot both feeling a little out of their element, if Mario’s not your style. And if you needed to see…
By Kate Cox -
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Gets Deal to Be the Next Big Video Game Movie
It’s apparently a big week for silver screen adaptations. Yesterday we heard that Michael Fassbender would star in an upcoming Assassin’s Creed film, and today, we learn we’re getting a Deus Ex movie. And not just any Deus Ex story, but specifically Deus Ex: Human Revolution Eidos and Square Enix have announced a deal with…
By Kate Cox -
Never a Mage: It’s A Scoundrel’s, Thief’s, Rogue’s, and Sniper’s Life For Me
It’s been a few years since I first started to suspect I might have a problem. I played the Mass Effect games as an infiltrator. I played the Dragon Age games as a rogue. I tried Guild Wars 2 as a thief and dabbled in World of Warcraft as a rogue. I tried Star Wars:…
By Kate Cox -
LEGO Is About The Best Way to Make 8-Bit Video Game Art
LEGO and video games to together perfectly. The blocky, pixel-based aethetic of retro 8-bit gaming is ripe for recreation in squared off blocks. One gamer out there has the time and the LEGOs to make it all happen, and the tumblr for showing it off. Meufer’s recreations range from the iconic to the nearly unknown,…
By Kate Cox -
Scientists Discover the Mass Effect! Or Is it Just the Higgs Boson?
There is, to be sure, a vast gulf between science and science fiction. The former relies on provable observations about the physical world that is. It quantifies, measures, and predicts the ways that the systems that govern our universe behave. The latter is anything that anybody feels like making up, whether or not it’s truly…
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Somewhere, There’s a Paper Mario Joke to Make About These Adorable Paper Zelda Figurines
Clearly, artist George Alexopoulos does not have a cat. If he did, these gorgeous paper figurines would have a half-life of approximately half a second. And that would be a shame indeed. Not all of these paper figures are video-game themed. Some are inpired by books or movies, or simply depict people doing stuff. (I…
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Telltale Apologizes for The Walking Dead Delays, Promises Next Installment in August
First, the good news: the next installment of Telltale’s five-part series of The Walking Dead has a release target. Episode three, “Long Road Ahead,” is due out in the middle of August, roughly a month from now. But the bad news is, that’s still only an approximate target. Telltale has had some trouble getting their…
By Kate Cox -
Tracing The Musical Saga Of Mass Effect
Remember when this is what Mass Effect sounded like? There was a time when the story had a fairly straightforward theme, using electronic and orchestral sounds to draw us into a sweeping space opera with dark tones around the edges. Back then, of course, it was a more straightforward story. It was a theme in…
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I’d Freak Out if You Kept Getting Up After A Hundred Shots to the Chest, Too
So in a game like, say, Uncharted, we’ve all lamented those nameless henchmen or mini-bosses that seem to take a ridiculous number of shots to kill. “I shot you,” we’ll yell. “I shot you like twelve times! In the head! Why won’t you die?!” But imagine how much worse it is on their side! They…
By Kate Cox -
You Can Pick Up In-Game Health At a Real-World Pharmacy in Robert Bowling’s New Game
If you needed first-aid supplies, you’d probably go to your local pharmacy or drugstore, right? It only makes sense. And when you’re playing a character in a video game, if that character needs first-aid supplies, you tend to loot them from a hospital or pharmacy. It makes a post-apocalyptic kind of sense. Of course, there…
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Diablo III “Item Hunt” Is Not a Sustainable End-Game, Blizzard Admits
Diablo III inhabits a sort of strange hybrid new position in games. Neither entirely single-player nor an MMO, it straddles the world between the two, using its constant internet connection both to connect players to each other in a social experience and to make some cash As such, Diablo III finds itself in an unusual…
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I’m Over Elves and Orcs. Let’s Have Some More Low Fantasy.
When I was writing about The Secret World yesterday, I mentioned that for many years, I’ve wanted to play an MMO based on Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere. So far, The Secret World does some, but not all, of what I’ve always wished I could see a massively multiplayer world do. But as I’ve been thinking…
By Kate Cox
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