Epic Games' Unreal Engine has been the backbone for a ridiculous number of titles. At Apple's music event Wednesday, they announced an upcoming action-RPG titled Project Sword that would finally put Vice President Mark Rein's comments that devices like the iPad had the same graphics capabilities as consoles to the test. Epic has certainly had a lot of nice things to say for the iPad, calling it the "console of the future," but until now it's been hard to see them quantify that comment with concrete examples.

Read the rest of this entry »

Steam announced yesterday that they had partnered up with Prima, long the purveyor of official "strategy guides" for games like Mass Effect 2 and Prince of Persia, to offer downloadable versions of their guides through Valve's platform. At first glance I liked this idea a lot, but after buying one of them it seemed like a waste of money.

Read the rest of this entry »

drone is a short freebie game by David Wilson. Mixing ideas, drone is a hybrid top-down shooter combined with a tower defence game in a way that works really well. Your character is a little sprite, the titular "drone," who has to kill enemies to collect money– this money is used to finance the weapons and ammo you need to go on and kill bigger and badder enemies. However, there's more than one way to play the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to multiplayer death-match games, the typical goal is to avoid getting killed for as long as possible, taking out hostile players along the way. You run around closed maps collecting power ups and avoiding your enemies, sneaking up on them to kill them before they can kill you. Plain Sight, a new indie release by Beatnik Games (available now on Steam and other digital-distribution retailers), takes this traditional concept and twists it around to create an innovative experience– instead of avoiding death, the objective is to suicide yourself on your own terms in your own time.

Read the rest of this entry »

R.U.S.E. is a upcoming RTS developed by Eugen Systems and published by Ubisoft. While a private beta has been under way for some time, Steam users were treated to a free open beta test earlier in March, continuing through until April 9th. Set in the time period of World War 2, R.U.S.E. takes the traditional RTS and gives it an interesting spin through the form of the eponymous "ruses," wildcards that allow a player to trick and deceive the enemy in a variety of ways.

Read the rest of this entry »

Global Agenda is one of a few new science fiction-themed MMOGs that have been announced recently. Developed by Hi-Rez Studios, the title blurs the line between FPS, MMOG and strategy game, delivering something that is a fun amalgam of the three even if it lacks a lot of the depth found in any one facet. As such, Hi-Rez has named their game a "spy-fi" MMOG.

Read the rest of this entry »

Given the organic, ever-evolving nature of MMOGs these days, the line between alpha, beta, open beta and release are blurring moreso than in usual titles. Even though Cryptic will be releasing its latest MMOG, Star Trek Online, in a bit over a week, the state it goes live in will likely not be representative of the game in a few months. As such it's difficult to give a really fair round-up of the game, or any MMOG in general, because they change so drastically in such a rapid space of time. Perhaps because I played the Champions Online beta, I am approaching Cryptic's latest offering with a bit of a raised eyebrow. In its current state, Star Trek Online is a rather buggy mess that shows great promise but feels rushed and unpolished.

Read the rest of this entry »