After a Sandy Delay, CityVille 2 Launches Today

Hurricane Sandy’s reach extended far beyond the real world, causing the unexpected delay of the millions of potential virtual towns of CityVille 2. Originally slated for launch on Monday, Zynga’s brand-new 3D city-builder goes live today. The Baltimore-based Zynga studio working on CityVille 2 wanted to kick off this week with a flurry of city…

Rise of the Collectible iPhone Robots

Backflip Studios takes the addictive formula of the wildly popular Dragonvale, swaps colorful lizards for quirky machine creatures, and guarantees that I’ll be obsessing over robot breeding and battling for the next year. I’ve written about Gizmonauts a couple of times already, back on that website that’ll be returning any day now, but I’ve been…

Anatomy of a Whale

Tonight, Lee’s iPad questioned him with a blue pop-up window: “Do you want to buy one Chest of Gems for $99.99?” Lee could use those gems to immediately fortify his army. He tapped “Yes,” almost without thinking. In less than a month of playing around two hours a day, he’d spent nearly a thousand dollars.…

I’m Surprised By How “Black” Assassin’s Creed Liberation Feels

History often seems lightyears away, doesn’t it? Even game franchises like Civilization-where you zip from ancient Rome to space flight in the span of hours-put a layer of abstraction over the experience that make it feel distant. The Assassin’s Creed games use history exceedingly well, but none of them have felt as personal as Assassin’s…

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Who shoots first in Angry Birds Star Wars? Update: Dammit, Rovio

Nintendo Wants to Be Friends With Your Cell Phone

“We have two things to do,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently said to what may have been the 1,000th person to ask him about the house of Super Mario is going to cope with that fact that people really, really love their cellphones and that that might hurt their ability to love Nintendo machines. The…

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There’s a new Angry Birds Space update out, with a rather curious cameo.

Amazon’s First Mobile Game is a Fresh Take on Tower Defense

After mixing up the hidden object genre with its first Facebook game, Living Classics, Amazon Game Studios takes on tower defense with its first mobile game, Air Patriots. Create a squad of planes and guide them about the screen with your fingers, drawing attack paths in order to efficiently destroy enemy forces. It’s a more…

Dreamfall Chapters Is Real. Actually Happening. Ragnar Tørnquist is ON IT.

Adventure game fans, now is the time to begin squeeing and flailing with joy. Ragnar Tørnquist, the man behind The Longest Journey and Dreamfall-and recent MMO The Secret World-has formed a new studio and actually begun production on Dreamfall Chapters, Funcom announced today. In a press release, Funcom said that Red Thread Games, Tørnquist’s new…

This Week’s Windows Phone Charts: Xbox SmartGlass is Not a Game

Our week of emergency visual representations of our daily top app charts continues with the latest and greatest for the Windows Phone crowd, who seem to be playing a lot of SmartGlass and Xbox Live Extras. My high score in SmartGlass would blow your mind. Cracking Sands continues to dominate the paid charts this week,…

This Hawkeye Figure Aims for the Bull’s-Eye

Adding to their long list of pretty amazing look-alike figures, Hong Kong collectible company Hot Toys has recently released the underappreciated archer, Hawkeye, to their Avengers lineup of the 6-inch Movie Masterpiece collection. The figure was originally slated for a September release, but was delayed until late October. Was it worth the wait? I’ve always…

The Rise of China’s Board Game Cafes

China is a big place but with its huge population (1.4 billion) mostly gathered in urban environments, space is becoming more of a commodity. Grown from this need for space, “board game cafes” began to spring out in major cities much like internet cafes did. In early 2010 a new trend broke out in China,…

My Model Building Skills Are Not This Awesome

Gunhed, the 1989 film that’s since become a cult hit, is getting a new Gunhed plastic model kit from Kotobukiya. At the Kotobukiya shop in Akihabara, there’s a big display on the kit, showing off various versions of the kit completed by several highly talented model makers. The resulting pieces are wonderful. If only I…

Hatsune Miku on the PS3 Lets Players Pick Up Where They Left Off

Hatsune Miku -Project Diva- f has been one the biggest PS Vita titles as of yet. Selling over 159,000 copies in its first week, the PS Vita rhythm game featuring the famous virtual idol will be getting a PS3 version, Hatsune Miku -Project Diva- F. Notice the big F! According to the developers, in an…

From the looks of it, Scott Holden had an epic Halloween with his ATST costume. Above, you can see it in motion.

In Earth Defense Force, This Guy Calls in Air Strikes

The Earth Defense Force has its array of various enemies-giant ants, spiders, UFOs, robots, etc. In terms of player characters, while the arsenal has been quite plentiful, the only choices have been the standard infantry unit and the flying Pale Wing. Earth Defense Force 4 is mixing things up a little more with the addition…

The PS3 Gets Certified in China, Which *Might* Mean No More Console Ban

Video game consoles are available throughout China. Officially, they are banned. But that might be changing. According to this China Compulsory Certificate document (via Sina Weibo and TechinAsia), Sony was issued a compulsory safety mark necessary to sell products in China. The document originally surfaced on Chinese social networking sites, but it can also be…

Today Is “Sushi Day” in Japan

While certainly not a national holiday, November 1 is “Sushi Day” (“Sushi no hi” or すしの日) in Japan. Good news if you love sushi. Sushi Day was started in 1961 by the country’s sushi guild as a way to promote the food. November was selected because it’s after the rice harvest and seafood is especially…

Sony Thinks It Will Sell Slightly Fewer PS Vitas and PSPs

Don’t fret! Sony is doing better and slowly turning things around. However, the Tokyo-based electronics giant is a little less bullish on its gaming handhelds. From Reuters: “Sony cut its forecast for full-year sales of its hand-held PSP and Vita game consoles to 10 million from a previous forecast of 12 million.” Sony posts small…

The Top Ten Ways to Smash a Pumpkin (in Glorious Slow-Motion)

Now that Halloween’s done, you could probably do with a little release. Let the whole thing just go So here’s a video showing ten ways to destroy a pumpkin, using everyday household items like lightsabers and light explosives, brought to you by Thrash Lab Note: nearly all of these are marked “don’t try this at…