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It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Week in Gaming Apps

This highly educational Week in Gaming Apps is brought to you by the letter T, the number 10,000,000, the sounds of jazz and the culture of Mexico. It’s been the busiest Week in Gaming Apps ever, at least for yours truly. I’ve been steeping myself in Windows Phone 7, Android and iPhone games over the…

Phil Fish told Kotaku a Tweet about Zynga wanting Fez for mobile was “not a joke.” He turned them down.

Another Gamer Testifies To The Awesome Calorie-Burning Power Of His Standing Desk

Earlier this week, I shared my story of falling in love with playing video games (and working) at a standing desk. In this video found via Reddit, YouTuber Happy Jack enthusiastically shows off his standing desk, which he made out of an art easel (nice call!) and actually uses an Ergotron monitor holder (Ergotron makes…

That Guy You Hated in The Walking Dead Game Has Been Punched In the Face 1.4 Million Times

One of the things that makes Telltale’s The Walking Dead video game tick is choice. Players get to make a series of both time-critical and leisurely decisions as the chapters go by. Everything from “who is Lee polite to” to “who gets to live and who dies horribly” is up for grabs, and the game…

Is Valve Teasing a Third, Gray Faction For Team Fortress 2?

There’s a blood-stain on the logo atop the Team Fortress 2 website. A reader at the message board NeoGAF noticed today that it links to a letter. And in that letter is a story, a story that reads like a tease, a tease that seems to be pointing to something new for Team Fortress… a…

Some Americans Think A “Super PAC” Is A Video Game. Most Don’t Know What One Is.

Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and even Super Pac-Man… all video games. But not Super PAC—despite its similar name, a Super PAC is in no way related to Pac-Man. It’s a term for a controversial type of political action group that’s able to accept an unlimited amount of campaign donations and in so doing get around some…

Bullet Time Isn’t Just A Fictional Badass Move. It’s A Real Thing.

For Neo, moving faster than bullets was a matter of realizing the Matrix’s rules could be bent. For most of our video game heroes, bullet time is a popular mechanic that has appeared on titles like Max Payne, Red Dead Redemption, Vanquish and more. It’s not possible to slow down time and perform amazing feats—not…

Five Reasons I Can’t Stop Playing This New Strategy-RPG

I play a lot of role-playing games. You know this already. You read Random Encounters every week. You understand my fascination with this strange and quirky genre. So hopefully you won’t be too angry when I tell you that my shelves are overflowing with the cartridges of RPGs that I’ve opened, launched, and immediately given…

The New Red Dawn Movie Channels a Little Bit of Homefront

If you played Homefront, the new trailer for the remake of 1984’s Red Dawn is going to seem like déjà vu all over again. When THQ’s ambitious but shallow 2011 first-person shooter first started its hype machine, the comparisons to the 1980s Cold War action movie rampant. Part of that is because the movie and…

That Walking Dead Facebook Game Is Terrible. Here’s What They Should Have Done Instead.

I adore The Walking Dead. So when I heard about this drag of a Facebook game Kate wrote about, I worried. This is a game that represents one of my favorite graphic novels, so I worry that the experience of the franchise will be tarnished for a horde of perhaps non-gaming Facebook users. We can…

XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s Multiplayer Mode is One Giant, Violent Toybox

Call it beginner’s luck: my first round of XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s multiplayer was my strongest showing. It came down to a tense showdown at the end. I lost, but could feel proud of how close I had come. Alas, that was my best performance. From there, I got my rear end most thoroughly handed to…

Without Peeking, Can You Name These Five Minecraft-ized Xbox Heroes?

The next batch of skins for the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft include the five shown above. They are all Minecraft versions of characters from games that appeared on the Xbox 360 (though they weren’t all in Xbox-exclusive games). Can you name them? Without peeking? The answers are at the link below. There is no…

Ask One of the People Who Made Sleeping Dogs Some Questions. He’s Answering, Right Here. [Interview’s Over]

Sleeping Dogs is coming out next week. It’s an open-world game set in Hong Kong. You’re an undercover cop. You can use martial arts. You can play it a little like an RPG. And you can even hit people with fish. Really! Perhaps that doesn’t answer all the questions you might have about this PS3,…

Left-leaning Rachel Maddow rips Mitt Romney’s support of for-profit colleges, chiefly, gaming-friendly Full Sail Univ.

Assassin’s Creed III PC Delayed To November 20, Surprising Nobody

Ubisoft has delayed the PC version of Assassin’s Creed III to November 20. This delay should not come as a surprise to PC gamers who have followed Ubisoft’s stealth-action series. There have been four Assassin’s Creed games on consoles so far, and every single one has been slow to make it to computers. But today…

New Diablo III Patch Will Bring Significant Changes To Endgame

The next patch for Diablo III will tweak classes, stat formulas, drop rates, and other significant parts of the action-RPG’s endgame content. Developer Blizzard outlined the patch in a post on their blog today. Here are some of the highlights, courtesy Blizzard: The change we made back in 1.0.3 to remove the bonus monster damage…

And Then the Mr. T Duck Drives His Purple Motorcycle to the Fish Market

Are the colorful cartoon animals of Happy Street truly happy, or are they just incredibly nearsighted soulless consumer drones with no real purpose other than purchasing virtual products and being shit upon by low-flying seagulls? Can they be both? These are the questions that plagued me as I played through Godzilab’s free social game for…

2012 Has Been a Great Year For a Little to Mean a Lot in Video Games

There isn’t much to Sound Shapes. That’s what makes it great. I’m not talking about the campaign, which is great and I certainly could’ve used more of. No, I’m talking about the experience that the new Vita game delivers. From the way you play it—pretty much just rolling and jumping—to the environments you play through,…

Walmart is was listing Assassin’s Creed 3 for $15 (preorder). Probably a pricing error, but they may honor it. [Dealzon]

The Grandest PC Strategy Game of All Returns in 2013

Civilization and Total War are often seen as the big fish in the field of PC strategy games, but for those who are a little more serious about the nuts and bolts of managing an empire, one series often stands above all others: Paradox’s Europa Universalis Dropping the player into the role of a world…