Archived entries for Gaming

Play Games’ Page Updated (Finally)

Free Games My poor Play Games page has been neglected for an awfully long time.

I had high ambi­tions for it when I first put it up, but to be hon­est, I just kind of for­got about it.  So for the past year or so it’s only had two games on it. Sorry about that.

Today I finally got around to fix­ing things up over there.  I added a ton of free games to my col­lec­tion and spruced up the lay­out a bit with a fun vin­tage tele­vi­sion set theme.  Basi­cally it’s no longer the big pile of suck that it once was.  I’ll also con­tinue to add more games as I go along, because I’m sure I’ve over­looked stuff.

Here’s a sam­pling of what’s in the collection:

  • Free­ware browser & HTML5 games
  • Old school adven­ture games
  • Pure text adventures
  • Retro­cade games
  • Vir­tual 80’s toys
  • Inter­ac­tive books
  • And other fun stuff & things!

Now you have no excuses to be pro­duc­tive, doing what­ever it is that pro­duc­tive peo­ple do. Head on over to my free games page and have some fun!

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir’ Trailer Drops, Yay for More Horror Games on 3DS!

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir - 3DS

Today Nin­tendo unleashed a load of shiny new 3DS trail­ers in their  Nin­tendo Direct presentation.

The game that most caught my eye was Spirit Cam­era: The Cursed Mem­oir, which is the newest addi­tion to the Fatal Frame series of games.  It also has the dis­tinc­tion of being one of the only few hor­ror titles soon to be avail­able on the 3DS plat­form (in the US, at least).

Spirit Cam­era: The Cursed Mem­oir intro­duces a mys­te­ri­ous girl named Maya who has been hid­ing in the shad­ows of an old house. Play­ers must help Maya break free from a ter­ri­fy­ing curse by aid­ing her escape from the clutches of a malev­o­lent woman in black. By using the Nin­tendo 3DS system’s built-in cam­era, play­ers can view Maya in their own sur­round­ings as the game’s eerie events unfold.

Check out the game’s eerie trailer below:

I’m thrilled to see more upcom­ing hor­ror titles for 3DS, and frankly, it’s about time.  The DS plat­form sorely lacks hor­ror titles, but the few that exist are excep­tion­ally good games. I should really do a blog post about that…

First Look at ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’

Via  Scoop.it  -  Shezcrafti

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Fric­tional Games, the devel­oper of Amne­sia: The Dark Descent— arguably one of the scari­est games ever made—has been teas­ing fans with hints at a sequel  for a while now.  Today we get our first look at some screen­shots, and later today there will be an inter­view with the game’s designers.

Joys­tiq has the very latest:

The power of two crowned indie devel­oper dar­lings have joined together to form one team, set to bring the Amne­sia fran­chise into a new era.

Speak­ing exclu­sively with Joys­tiq, Fric­tional Games and Dear Esther’s thechi­ne­se­room have revealed their lat­est project, Amne­sia: A Machine for Pigs.

Devel­oped by thechi­ne­se­room and pro­duced by Fric­tional Games, Amne­sia: A Machine for Pigs is planned for a debut on PC later this year. No firm date has been set, but inter­nally the two stu­dios hope to launch before Hal­loween. A recent alter­nate real­ity game has been teas­ing the the next Amnesia’s reveal, send­ing fans into a frenzy.

It’s not a direct sequel, in terms of it doesn’t fol­low on from the story of Amne­sia. It doesn’t involve the same char­ac­ters,” Dear Esther writer Dan Pinch­beck told me. Instead, Amne­sia: A Machine for Pigs will be set in the same “alter­nate his­tory and set in the same uni­verse.” In short, the game will look to scare your pants off.

Via www.joystiq.com

 

iOS-Exclusive Games = Mac Envy? [Updated]

Today I saw a post over on the Adven­ture Gamers forums about a new indie adven­ture game for iOS that sounded like some­thing I’d really enjoy, so I got all excited—until I remem­bered that I can’t play it because I don’t own any iOS devices except for an old iPod Nano that I barely use.  Lately I’ve been hear­ing about more and more iOS-only games, many of them horror/adventure titles that, on any other plat­form, I’d have pur­chased and played in a heart­beat.  Deflated, I began to won­der how many cool games I might be miss­ing out on just because I don’t have an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch/iWhatever.  That’s when it dawned on me:

Could this be (gasp!) Mac envy?

I’ve never been much of a Mac fan (for many  rea­sons that I won’t delve into here), even though I do have respect for Apple and its prod­ucts.  So, I’m going to con­sider this blog post a kind of exper­i­ment.  What I want to do is make a list of all the iOS-exclusive games that really inter­est me, and see how long I can go before I break down and do some­thing silly, like go out and pur­chase an iDe­vice  just to play some frig­gin’ games on it.

So here goes:

The Secret of Chateau de Moreau

Secret of Chateau de Moreau

Descrip­tion: In The Secret of Chateau de Moreau ,  you are Antoine, the step­son of the Rich Count Moro.  Your Step­fa­ther was killed by poi­son­ing and now you are enti­tled to an enor­mous inher­i­tance but have also been named as a sus­pect of his mur­der.  Now you must prove your inno­cence and dis­cover who mur­dered your Step­fa­ther through this excit­ing adven­ture thriller.  Every deci­sion counts!  Make game-changing deci­sions through bone-chilling questioning.

Infin­ity Blade

Infinity Blade

Descrip­tion: In the world of Infin­ity Blade you take up the ances­tral sword of your fore­fa­thers to fight foes threat­en­ing to destroy your home, and as a heroic knight, you rise up against the sin­is­ter God-King and his brutish Titans. Epic boss bat­tles and daz­zling weapons and armor all await you in this thrilling iOS gam­ing experience.

With just a few basic swip­ing com­mands, you can spar with a wide vari­ety of chal­leng­ing oppo­nents, upgrade skills, and cast spells. Not to men­tion, there’s plenty of loot to be had. As you build your stats and unlock a vari­ety of achieve­ments, you can get more pow­er­ful items to help you in your quest to defeat the God-King and free the kingdom’s cit­i­zens from an end­less legacy of darkness.

Super­broth­ers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP

Descrip­tion: S:S&S EP is a 21st cen­tury inter­pre­ta­tion of the arche­typ­i­cal old school videogame adven­ture, designed exclu­sively for Apple’s touchtronic machin­ery.  It’s a mix of laid-back explo­ration, care­ful inves­ti­ga­tion & mys­te­ri­ous musi­cal problem-solving occa­sion­ally punc­tu­ated by hard-hitting com­bat encoun­ters. S:S&S EP is an unusual genre-bending effort with an empha­sis on sound, music & audio­vi­sual style that has been posi­tioned as ‘a brave exper­i­ment in Input/Output Cinema.

The Dark Meadow

The Dark Meadow

Descrip­tion: In The Dark Meadow , you wake in the bed of a hos­pi­tal long ago fallen to stun­ning ruin, not know­ing or under­stand­ing why you are here. You are greeted by the only nor­mal look­ing per­son in this world, who sends you on a quest to gather what you need to track down and defeat the evil pres­ence that has you trapped in this never-ending par­al­lel world. The decay­ing hall­ways and rooms are haunted by crea­tures relent­lessly hound­ing your every move. As you explore, you learn more and more about the mys­tery from the world and what you find in it, evi­dence to be gleaned from the envi­ron­ment, snip­pets of the past of this for­saken place, words and writ­ings from oth­ers who have been trapped here, and you look for clues of how to get out.

Updates for 2/21/2012:

Found a bunch more games to add to this list. FML.

Pizza Vs. Skeletons

Pizza versus Skeletons

Descrip­tion:  A game that man­ages to make Plants vs. Zom­bies sound like a banal con­cept,   Pizza Vs. Skele­tons  is a crazy mashup that pits a giant anthro­po­mor­phic pizza against armies of brit­tle skele­tons.  Play­ers must try to roll over, crush, or oth­er­wise destroy skele­tons through tons of zany side-scrolling and under­wa­ter lev­els. You can even unlock bonuses like extra cos­tumes for your pizza, like the badass pirate out­fit pic­tured above (“Arrrrrgh!”).

The Secret of Grisly Manor

The Secret of Grisly Manor

Descrip­tion:   The Secret of Grisly Manor  is a “lite” horror-themed adven­ture game that blends hid­den objects, puz­zles, detec­tive work and bit of clas­sic adven­tur­ing into one enter­tain­ing lit­tle pack­age.  I’m not really a fan of hid­den object games, but this game seems to have enough of a mix of dif­fer­ent ele­ments to make me inter­ested.  From what I’ve read, one of the only com­plaints about the game is that it’s too short.

The Lost City

The Lost City

Descrip­tion:   From the same devel­oper as The Secret of Grisly Manor comes another adven­ture game.  The Lost City is described as a  Myst  clone with lots of explo­ration and puzzle-solving amidst beau­ti­ful graph­ics and scenery.

The Hacker

The Hacker

Descrip­tion:   In The Hacker , you assume the role of an elite pro­gram­mer work­ing for Glider Corp. and are pre­sented with a series of com­puter hack­ing chal­lenges (e.g. mini games) that guide you through the story, which is some­thing of a cor­po­rate crime thriller.  I like the game’s vin­tage mono­chrome aes­thet­ics.  This one sounds like a pretty neat con­cept, and the reviews look very favorable.

To Be Continued…

Do you know of any other great iOS-only games? Tell me about ‘em in the com­ments.  I’m espe­cially inter­ested in any adven­ture or hor­ror titles , which I will gladly list here if they’re exclu­sive to iOS.

FRACT is an Adventure Game Inspired By Synthesizers

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti

FRACT Synthesizer Adventure Game

If there was ever a game con­sid­ered right up my alley, this might be it.  This awesome-looking game from indie devel­oper Phos­fiend Sys­tems fuses sweet synth music with clas­sic point-and-click style adven­ture gam­ing.  As if this didn’t already sound amaz­ing enough, lead devel­oper Richard Flana­gan describes it as “Rez meets TRON.”

FRACT is a first per­son adven­ture game for Win­dows & Mac much in the vein of the Myst titles, but with an elec­tro twist. Game­play boils down to three core activ­i­ties: Explore, Rebuild, Cre­ate. The player is let loose into an abstract world built on sound and struc­tures inspired by elec­tronic music. It’s left to the player to explore the envi­ron­ment to find clues to res­ur­rect and revive the long-forgotten machin­ery of this musi­cal world, in order to unlock its’ inner work­ings. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from Myst, Rez and Tron, the game is also influ­enced by graphic design, data visu­al­iza­tion, elec­tronic music and ana­log culture.

Via www.sonicstate.com

Check out this demo video:

The game is being fur­ther devel­oped for release some­time in 2012.  An older, playable pro­to­type of FRACT is avail­able for down­load for both Win and Mac; you can get it here .

Do video games ruin marriages? Survey says yes.

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti

Do video games ruin marriages?

Accord­ing to a new study by Brigham Young Uni­ver­sity, exces­sive gam­ing often leads to unhappy mar­riages, and in many cases, divorce.  The Chicago Tri­bune reports:

The researchers sur­veyed 349 cou­ples with at least one spouse who plays a mas­sively mul­ti­player online role play­ing game (MMORPG), such as World of War­craft or Eve Online, about their mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion. World of War­craft, by far the most pop­u­lar MMORPG, has more than 12 mil­lion sub­scribers world­wide, about a quar­ter of them in North Amer­ica. The median age of play­ers is about 26, and more than a third are married.

The results con­firmed what Neil Lund­berg, one of the study’s authors, already sus­pected: “Gam­ing wid­ows,” spouses who lose the atten­tion of their sig­nif­i­cant other to gam­ing, aren’t happy with their marriages.

More than 65 per­cent of spouses who don’t play video games said they fight with their hus­band or wife about gam­ing, and 75 per­cent of respon­dents said that their spouse’s habit has neg­a­tively affected their marriage.

Via www.chicagotribune.com

The sur­vey find­ings seem to jive with a sta­tis­tic I found from last year that claims 15% of divorces are due to game addic­tion .

Of course, the flip side to stud­ies like these are those cases where gam­ing is a mutual pas­sion, and some­thing that spouses often share.  When I played World of War­craft, I knew plenty of mar­ried cou­ples who had no issues log­ging four or more hours per day—as long as they were doing it together.  I also knew peo­ple in the game who met, fell in love, and later married.

Moral of the story: cou­ples that play together stay together!

100 Romantic Couples from Video Games

It’s Valentine’s Day!  And what more could you want than yet another list about video game cou­ples?  I know you’re excited. Don’t hide it.

I real­ize there’s no short­age of lists out there about video game cou­ples.  I’ve seen them all:   “Best Cou­ples”, “Great­est Cou­ples”, “Top Cou­ples”, “Worst Cou­ples”, and my per­sonal favorite, “Prob­a­bly Gay Cou­ples.”  (Etc, etc, etc.)

But on my list you’ll find roman­tic cou­ples span­ning decades of video game his­tory: cou­ples from huge, well-known fran­chises to small indie games,  as well as rare, older games you’ve prob­a­bly never played or even heard of.  There are mar­ried cou­ples, doomed/ill-fated romances, cou­ples you know/suspect are more than just friends, cute cou­ples, dead cou­ples, on-again/off-again cou­ples, and a few silly ones thrown in as well.

I began this project with a sim­ple mis­sion: put together the biggest and best unbi­ased list of canon­i­cal, roman­tic video game cou­ples that I pos­si­bly could.

And what did I learn from all this?   That romance is alive and well in video games.

And I’ve got a list of over 100 video game cou­ples to prove it!

 

Did your favorite cou­ple make my list?

 

 

10 Reasons to Buy a PlayStation Vita Right Now (and 10 Reasons Not To)

10 Reasons to Buy a Vita vs. 10 Reasons Not to Buy a Vita

With the North Amer­i­can launch of PlaySta­tion Vita just days away, 1up has put together this in-depth eval­u­a­tion , which serves as a score­card of sorts to help you decide if Sony’s newest hand­held will be a wor­thy invest­ment of your hard-earned gam­ing dol­lars.  Like many gamers, I too am weigh­ing the deci­sion of whether or not to drop $250 or more on this lit­tle piece of plas­tic, how­ever slick and beau­ti­ful it looks at first glance.

After read­ing through 1UP’s four page’s worth of exhaus­tive hands-on review and com­men­tary, I’ve dis­tilled the main talk­ing points into pros and cons to help me (and hope­fully you) decide if Vita is the must-have, can’t-live-without gam­ing portable you should rush out to the store and buy immediately—of if you should save your cash and take the “wait and see” approach.

First, let’s get the fan­boy hype out of the way…

10 rea­sons to buy a Vita right now:

1.  The screen is drop-dead gor­geous.  At 5 inches with a dis­play res­o­lu­tion of 960 x 650, games look amaz­ing even at oblique angles or from a dis­tance.  OLED tech­nol­ogy means richer col­ors and pure, deep blacks.

2.  Clunky UMDs are a thing of the past.   For game soft­ware, the Vita drops uni­ver­sal media discs (UMDs), which were extremely clunky (due to all the mov­ing parts required in an opti­cal drive), in favor of pro­pri­etary, solid state flash mem­ory cards. No more acci­den­tal disc ejections!

3.  Decent bat­tery life.  Vita’s reported bat­tery life is good for up to 5 hours of inter­rupted play. 1Up observed 3.5 — 4 hours of play­time run­ning a high-performance game at full screen bright­ness. It’s not amaz­ing bat­tery life, but it’s cer­tainly on par with most other devices.

4.  Left AND right ana­log sticks for the win.   The Vita is the only hand­held that boasts proper left and right ana­log sticks (ver­sus PSP’s weird lit­tle slid­ing ana­log nub thingy). Most mod­ern games like plat­form­ers and FPSs are designed for dual ana­log sticks, so play­ing these types of games on Vita will be more com­fort­able and enjoyable.

5.  Rear touch pad and two cam­eras.  It’s a hard­ware com­bi­na­tion that should make for some very inter­est­ing games, if devel­op­ers inte­grate them wisely.

6.  Sim­ple, ele­gant, multi-touch user inter­face.   It’s clear Sony was inspired by iOS when design­ing Vita’s inter­face; except instead of lit­tle square icons with rounded cor­ners, Vita’s are cir­cu­lar. Multi-touch lets you flick and swipe the screen to move between home screens and launch and close apps.

7.  Mul­ti­task­ing is now pos­si­ble.  Unlike the PSP, you don’t have to quit your game to jump into another app. And there are sure to be plenty of 3rd-party Vita apps com­ing soon that you’ll want to have the abil­ity to switch between.

8.  Vita’s PlaySta­tion Store rocks.  Accord­ing to 1Up, it “eas­ily ranks among the best con­tent stores any­where.” Nav­i­ga­tion is easy and more direct than on PS3, and the store is sim­ple and clutter-free.

9.  Excit­ing launch titles.   The launch game line-up for Vita, though not exten­sive, includes sev­eral hotly antic­i­pated, note­wor­thy gems like UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss , Lit­tle Deviants , and Grav­ity Rush .

10.  The (some­what) afford­able pric­etag.   Yes, it’s $250, which isn’t a drop in the hat by any means. But this is Sony we’re talk­ing about. $250 for a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior portable gam­ing device doesn’t seem so bad when com­pared to, say, 3DS’s $250 launch pricetag.

And now for some harsh realities:

10 rea­sons NOT to buy a Vita (or at least wait a while):

1.  You’ll have to buy your PSP games all over again.  If you want to be able to play them on Vita, that is. Vita only sup­ports PSP games pur­chased from the PlaySta­tion store. So if you have pur­chased an exten­sive library of PSP games and expect to play them on Vita (which upgrades their graph­ics qual­ity sig­nif­i­cantly), guess what? You’re shit outta luck.

2.  It’s not truly “back­wards com­pat­i­ble.” Even though Sony’s push­ing this as a sell­ing point.  Yes, you can play PSP games on Vita and they look amaz­ing with upscaled graph­ics, but with no way of play­ing your PSP UMDs on Vita with­out hav­ing to re-purchase your games, is it really fair to make this claim?

3. The ana­log sticks are likely to break.  Hav­ing dual ana­log sticks on a portable is great, but not when they jut out so far from the device that they could eas­ily break off. 1Up rec­om­mends pur­chas­ing a hard-shell Vita case to help shield them from acci­den­tal drops, or being snagged on some­thing (like when you’re stash­ing it away in your bag).

4.  The rear touch pad is awk­ward, uncom­fort­able.   Gamers with large hands may have trou­ble hold­ing the device com­fort­ably, since merely graz­ing the rear touch pad acci­den­tally with your fin­gers can trig­ger “back touch,” Sony’s new touch-based sen­sor on the back of the sys­tem. You’ll most likely need to con­stantly adjust your grip while play­ing games, which doesn’t sound very com­fort­able to me at all.

5. Vita’s stor­age media is ridicu­lously expen­sive.  Sony only uses pro­pri­etary (read: expen­sive) stor­age cards for Vita. A 32 GB PlaySta­tion Vita mem­ory card costs $100.  For comparison’s sake, you can buy a 32 GB SD card for about 30 bucks.  And accord­ing to every­thing I’ve read, you’re going to need a lot  of stor­age for Vita’s library of games.

6.  The touch screen con­trols are incon­sis­tent.   Rather than giv­ing gamers a choice between touch AND D-pad con­trols, you’ll be forced to use only touch screen con­trols when nav­i­gat­ing the Vita’s menu sys­tems.  This is counter intu­itive and incon­sis­tent with some games like UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss , where play­ers have the choice to use either/or.

7.  The Vita games library is promis­ing, but not stel­lar.   Other than a few key Vita titles, the library at launch time mostly includes ports and re-worked games from other platforms.

8. That $250 pric­etag is actu­ally more like $400.   By the time you pur­chase a mem­ory card, a pro­tec­tive car­ry­ing case (which you’re going to need, due to the ana­log stick design flaws men­tioned above), and a game, you’re look­ing at a total spend of around $400 or more.

9.  Other than look­ing impres­sive, what does Vita really offer?   Apart from the rear touch con­trol (which, from the sound of it, is less cool in real­ity) there’s not much in the way of inno­va­tion here other than being able to play beautiful-looking games on a handheld.

10.  Is there room in our lives for another portable gam­ing device?  Most gamers already own a DS (maybe even a 3Ds) and a PSP in addi­tion to their smart­phones, tablets, Kin­dles, and other expen­sive gad­gets that can also play games.  That begs the ques­tion: where does PlaySta­tion Vita fit in?

The main ques­tion for me is:  Do I really need this much gam­ing power in my pocket?  Being real­is­tic about the price, am I will­ing to drop around $400 for a device that doesn’t offer me any sig­nif­i­cant value other than look­ing slick and being able to play a small hand­ful of beautiful-looking games?  The thing that would be most likely to get me to change my mind at this point is offer­ing more exclu­sive, must-have titles that would jus­tify and sup­port my pur­chase.   UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss is a good start.  But what else?

As I did with the PS3, I think I’ll take the “wait and see” approach for PlaySta­tion Vita.  How about you?

Gaming to Death: 6 Woeful Tales of People Who Died Playing Video Games

Yesterday’s news of a young man found dead at an inter­net cafe in Tai­wan is just the lat­est case of an increas­ingly com­mon occur­rence: drop­ping dead while play­ing video games.

People Who Died Playing Video Games

With the rise in pop­u­lar­ity of “never end­ing” games like World of War­craft , Star Wars: The Old Repub­lic , and other online games that design their entire busi­ness mod­els around keep­ing play­ers hooked, video game addic­tion is an issue that’s get­ting a lot of atten­tion lately .

But are the games them­selves to blame, or does it come down to indi­vid­ual gamers who just don’t know how to take care of them­selves?  While many of us are able to play a lot of games and still lead (rel­a­tively) nor­mal lives, it seems we’ve all known at least one other gamer who strug­gles to main­tain a healthy gaming/life balance.

In my for­mer WoW life, I never knew any­one who died as a direct result of play­ing the game—but I did wit­ness first­hand how play­ers’ addic­tions led to other ter­ri­ble things hap­pen­ing in their lives.  I knew peo­ple who lost their jobs, neglected their chil­dren, dropped out of col­lege, and got divorced.  And though they’d deny the root cause of these prob­lems, it wasn’t hard for the rest of us to under­stand the con­se­quences that go along with spend­ing 15+ hours of every day logged in to a vir­tual environment.

Below are six woe­ful tales of peo­ple who died play­ing video games:

Gamer’s Death at Inter­net Cafe Goes Unnoticed

Just yes­ter­day, Chen Rong-yu, a 23 year old Tai­wanese man,  died while play­ing League of Leg­ends , a free online MMORPG, at an inter­net cafe in New Taipei city this past Tues­day.  His body was found slumped over in a chair with his hands stretched out towards the key­board and mouse.  The most hor­ri­fy­ing part is that none of the cafe’s other patrons noticed until NINE HOURS LATER. The ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into his death reveals the gamer may have suf­fered from car­diac arrest trig­gered by a com­bi­na­tion of tired­ness, lack of move­ment, and cold temperatures.

Xbox Addict Dies from Blood Clot

Bud­ding com­puter pro­gram­mer Chris Stan­i­forth, who was only 20 years old, died from play­ing too much  Halo .   His 12-hour marathon Xbox ses­sions caused a fatal pul­monary embolism, a type of blood clot that can occur when some­one sits in the same posi­tion for sev­eral hours.  Chris had just been accepted to Leices­ter Uni­ver­sity to study game design when he col­lapsed out­side a UK Job­cen­tre after com­plain­ing of a low heart rate. He had no pre­vi­ous med­ical conditions.

Online Gamer Dies After 3-Day Session

An uniden­ti­fied 30 year old man in Bei­jing died after spend­ing three days immersed in an online game  at a local inter­net cafe.  He lost con­scious­ness and was rushed to a hos­pi­tal but could not be revived.  Accord­ing to reports, the man had spent more than 10,000 yuan (approx­i­mately $1,500) on gam­ing in the months before his death.

Man Loses Job, Dies After Gam­ing for 50 Hours

A 28 year old man from South Korea  died while play­ing Star­craft for 50 hours with only few short breaks. The cause of death was pre­sumed to be heart fail­ure stem­ming from exhaus­tion.  The man, who had eaten very lit­tle dur­ing his marathon gam­ing ses­sion, only stopped play­ing to go to the toi­let a few times and for brief peri­ods of sleep.  He had recently been fired from his job because he kept miss­ing work to play com­puter games.

WoW Gamer Kicked from Guild, Too Dead to Log In

Jer­ald Span­gen­berg, an avid World of War­craft player, died while raid­ing with his WoW guild after get­ting into a heated argu­ment dur­ing the raid. His cause of death was an abdom­i­nal aneurysm, pre­sum­ably brought about by long peri­ods of sit­ting at the com­puter com­bined with the stress of the argu­ment. After Jer­ald sud­denly went silent dur­ing the raid, he was auto-logged out of the game after 10 min­utes of inac­tiv­ity and did not log in again.  His guildies assumed he was  being child­ish and had deserted them, so they kicked him out of the guild and kept on raid­ing.  It wasn’t until three weeks later that they learned what hap­pened from Jerald’s daugh­ter (and felt hor­ri­ble about it).

Young Girl Dies After Play­ing WoW for Sev­eral Days Straight

A young Chi­nese girl known by her nick­name “Snowly” died after play­ing World of War­craft for sev­eral days straight dur­ing a national hol­i­day.  Snowly was a key mem­ber of her WoW guild, who said the girl had been prepar­ing for a very dif­fi­cult raid and had had very lit­tle rest in the days prior.  An in-game funeral was held for Snowly in the week after her death, but sadly the event was over­shad­owed by the death of another pop­u­lar WoW player dur­ing the same week.

Yes kids, it is pos­si­ble to lit­er­ally game your­self to death.  May these sto­ries serve as a warn­ing to you, fel­low gamers, to put down the con­troller every once in a while to eat and sleep.  And for shit’s sake, get some exercise!

44% of the US are Gamers

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti

We’re on our way to tak­ing over the world!

Accord­ing to the Parks’ study, Trends in Dig­i­tal Gam­ing: Free-to-Play, Social, and Mobile Games, the num­ber of US gamers has increased by 241 per­cent from 2008 to 2011. Today, in a nation with a pop­u­la­tion of nearly 307 mil­lion, 135 mil­lion of those peo­ple are clas­si­fied as gamers; that’s up from 56 mil­lion in 2008. Parks defines a gamer as “indi­vid­u­als in a broad­band house­hold who play at least one hour per month.

In three years, 44 per­cent of the coun­try is now gam­ing thanks to a rise in social net­work­ing and mobile adop­tion. If the trend con­tin­ues with the same momen­tum, we could see a major­ity of the coun­try plant­ing vir­tual crops and set­ting up vir­tual kingdoms.

Via www.digitaltrends.com

Now the real ques­tion is: should play­ing Far­mVille count as “gaming”?

5 Awesomely Bad Sega CD Commercials

Terrible  Sega CD Commercials from the 1990s I hap­pen to love the Sega CD dearly and hold a spe­cial place in my heart for it, but holy shit did it have some ter­ri­ble com­mer­cials.  It’s a tough job mar­ket­ing game con­soles that have a max­i­mum of 64 col­ors dis­playable simul­ta­ne­ously, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Today I’m wax­ing nos­tal­gic about my favorite full motion video periph­eral with this round-up of five awe­somely bad Sega CD commercials:

WHOOOOOOOANOTHING ELSE MOVES LIKE IT!”

Appar­ently Sega CD’s most bad ass fea­ture is…that the disc spins.

This 5-minute long in-store commercial/demo reel for the Sega CD is a typ­i­cal exam­ple of early 90’s teen-centric mar­ket­ing: choppy “in your face” edit­ing, sub­lim­i­nal text mes­sages, kids express­ing them­selves in ironic sound bytes, and employs what I like to call the acid wash jeans  fil­ter.  It could eas­ily be mis­taken for an episode of Nickelodeon’s Round­house .  I won’t blame you if you can’t sit through the whole thing.

Hey, was that Lucas at 1:28? (“Sega  CD? SO BAD!”)

“Still don’t have a Sega CD? What are you wait­ing for, Nin­tendo to make one?”

I hate it when angry black men break the fourth wall and fuck up my liv­ing room.

“There is no Nin­tendo CD.”

Jesus, didn’t Dwayne Wayne have any­thing bet­ter to do?

“Now that’s tight.”

Promo spot for Sega CD fea­tur­ing  Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch: Make My Video . This is about as 1990s as it gets, kids.

“Just when you thought you’d seen everything…”

Explo­sions! Fire! Sharks! Can­nons! Cau­tion: may be too EXTREME for some view­ers. Only watch this if you can han­dle how EXTREMELY EXTREME it is!

I hope you’ve all learned some valu­able lessons today.

 

Rumor: Is Rocksteady Working on a ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Game? [False]

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti

God I hope this is true:

TDW Geek by way of Paul Gale is report­ing that Rocksteady’s next game is called The Man­hat­tan Cri­sis… a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles game. If you’ve played the stand­out Bat­man: Arkham Asy­lum or its even more acclaimed sequel, Arkham City, I don’t have to tell you how incred­i­ble this col­lab­o­ra­tion would be.

Via www.ology.com

How amaz­ing would this be?  I’m a huge Tur­tles fan, but I can do with­out most of the campy, car­toon­ish TMNT games of yes­ter­year. It’s time for a darker, grit­tier TMNT game!

Update:  As of 3:30 PM today, Kotaku is report­ing that Rock­steady chief Sefton Hill has con­firmed this report is false.  Aw, man. :(

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland’ Trailer Sure is Pretty

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti
Upcoming RPG for PS3 - Atelier Meruru

Let’s gush over the cute new Ate­lier  game!

Ate­lier Meruru: The Appren­tice of Arland , part three of Gust’s Ate­lier tril­ogy, is cur­rently being local­ized for west­ern audi­ences and prepped for launch by NIS in North Amer­ica and Europe this May. NIS also pub­lished the first and sec­ond entries in the series, Ate­lier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and Ate­lier Totori: The Adven­turer of Arland .   Via www.joystiq.com

Meruru is the princess of Arls, a lit­tle king­dom sit­u­ated in the far north of the Arland repub­lic. After her father and Gio, the leader of Arland, dis­cussed the merg­ing of the two lands, she met Totori, the now-graduated alchemist. Daz­zled by the power of alchemy, and with a desire to help her coun­try pros­per, she forced her­self on Totori as her first student.

Check out the game’s very pretty, very girly trailer here:

 

The Big List of Horror-Themed Adventure Games

If you’ve been read­ing here lately, you already know that I’m on a big Pin­ter­est kick right now.  One of the things I love about Pin­ter­est is how eas­ily you can cre­ate and share curated lists about very spe­cific top­ics.  Horror-themed adven­ture games, for exam­ple (talk about a niche within a niche).

(To go straight to the list, click here .)

Scary Adventure Games, Horror Adventure Games

Scary point-and-click adven­ture games rank among my most favorite types of games to play; many of my most mem­o­rable gam­ing expe­ri­ences can be attrib­uted to this genre.  To that end, I’m always on the look­out for new adven­ture hor­ror games, scour­ing forums for rec­om­men­da­tions, and cruis­ing Google news feeds to get my fix.

That’s why I decided my first Pin­ter­est project would be to put together The Big List of Horror-Themed Adven­ture Games , to keep track of the games I’ve played or have an inter­est in play­ing.  Each of the games on my list includes the game’s title, cover art, plat­form, year released, and a link to its Wikipedia article.

I know there are oth­ers out there who love these types of games as much as I do, and so I thought this list might become a use­ful resource for dis­cov­er­ing sim­i­lar games.  Plus, I love how Pin­ter­est turns the games’ box art into an awesome-looking collage.

Do you know of any other great scary, horror-themed or dark adven­ture games that aren’t on my list?  Please leave a com­ment and let me know.  I’d love to keep this list growing!

First In-Game Screenshots of ‘The Last Of Us’ are Beautiful, Amazingly Detailed

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti

In-Game Screenshot - The Last of Us

Game Informer has the lat­est new screen­shots from The Last of Us , Naughty Dog’s upcom­ing sur­vival hor­ror action/adventure game, and they are absolutely breath­tak­ing.  It’s hard to believe these are actual, in-game screen­shots. It’s clear that Naughty Dog is really step­ping up their game with this release, push­ing PS3’s graph­ics proces­sors to the limit.  Head on over to Game Informer to see all four of these beauties.

The Last of Us  is set in a post-apocalyptic world where fun­gus has infected humans’ brains and turned them into zom­bies, but Naughty Dog insists that it’s not another mind­less “zom­bie game.”  The game will focus on the rela­tion­ship between the two main pro­tag­o­nists, sur­vivor man Joel and his 14-year old daugh­ter, Ellie.

The Last of Us  is due for release some­time in the last quar­ter of 2012.

Via www.gameinformer.com

Power Mushroom Social Media Icon Set Inspired by Super Mario Bros.

I’ve been want­ing some new social media icons for my blog to match the 8-bit theme I have going on, but couldn’t find any­thing decent.  So I decided to cre­ate my own!  The power mush­room from Super Mario was an obvi­ous choice.  I only needed a few icons, but I loved how they turned out so much that I decided to make a whole match­ing set—and give them away for free to you, the good peo­ple of the interwebz.

The Power Mush­room Social Media Icon Collection

(scroll down for down­load link)

Set of 20 Power Mushroom Social Media Icons (Super Mario)

Details & Terms of Use

My col­lec­tion con­tains 20 dif­fer­ent designs in trans­par­ent PNG for­mat, in two dif­fer­ent sizes :  large (80 x 80) and small (40 x 40).

Here’s what’s included:  Blog­ger, Deli­cious, DeviantArt, Face­book, Flickr, Gmail, Google+, LinkedIn, Pin­ter­est, Red­dit, RSS, Skype, Spo­tify, Stum­ble­Upon, Tech­no­rati, Tum­blr, Twit­ter, Vimeo, Word­Press, and YouTube.

Please feel free to use these icons how­ever you wish!  If you want to fea­ture this col­lec­tion on your site or blog, all I ask is that you please link back to this page . I also love com­ments, tweets, +1’s & Likes. ;-)

Download

Click the download link below

Down­load the Power Mush­room Social Media Icon Col­lec­tion from RapidShare

Amateur Documentary ‘IRL’ Tackles Online Game Addiction

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti

IRL Game Addiction Documentary

Count­less doc­u­men­taries have inves­ti­gated gam­ing addic­tion and the sup­posed dan­gers lurk­ing in mas­sively mul­ti­player titles, but it’s not often that some­one who’s expe­ri­enced an addic­tion talks about it him­self. Third year film stu­dent and ex World of War­craft junkie Anthony Ros­ner looks back on his six years in the game in a new short doc­u­men­tary on the effects of MMO addic­tion. With help from friends Dave Novis and Arron Amo, Anthony pro­duced, directed, wrote, and edited the film him­self, ensur­ing that he had the oppor­tu­nity to tell his whole story and tell it from his own per­spec­tive.
Via massively.joystiq.com

TERA’s Closed Beta Signup Opens

Via Scoop.it Shezcrafti
TERA Closed Beta Opens

En Masse has offi­cially opened closed beta signups for its upcom­ing MMORPG TERA.

Via www.mmocrunch.com

Yesterday’ unveils itself a bit more through exclusive screenshots!

Via Scoop.it Adven­ture Games

Yesterday

Yes­ter­day, the new adven­ture game from Pen­dulo Stu­dios, today unveiled a series of 4 new images! After leav­ing its mark in adven­ture gam­ing with its million-selling tril­ogy Run­away and, more recently, The Next BIG Thing, Pen­dulo has given up com­edy for once and is offer­ing an orig­i­nal and dark thriller.
Via www.gamasutra.com

Coming Soon: ‘The Art of Video Games’ Exhibit (Or, Why I’m Glad I Live Near D.C.)

Rez - Playstation - Art

The Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Museum will explore video games as art in its upcom­ing exhibit, The Art of Video Games .   The exhibit will show­case 80 video games, from the early days of Atari and Cole­co­V­i­sion to today’s next-gen con­soles like Xbox 360 and Playsta­tion 3.

Among the famil­iar titles included: Pac-Man, Pit­fall!, The Leg­end of Zelda, Final Fan­tasy VII, Rez (pic­ture above), Por­tal, Heavy Rain, and holy shit is that ChuChu Rocket I see on the list?  Here is the full list of fea­tured games .  The selected games were cho­sen by pub­lic vote, and were whit­tled down from a list of over 240 titles.  (Which helps to explain why some obvi­ous choices didn’t make the cut. Braid  and  Grim Fan­dango  come to mind.)

If you don’t live near D.C, you may still be able to attend.  The exhibit will be trav­el­ling to sev­eral other major cities, includ­ing Boca Raton, Seat­tle, New York, Toledo, Flint, and Mem­phis.  Click the link for details.

The Art of Video Games exhibit will debut March 16 and remain open until Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012.