Comic-Con: Behold - The Jar Jar in Carbonite Action Figure!

Tomorrow morning I leave for Comic-Con and I'm currently swamped with last minute prep - but I felt I had to post something about the awesome Hasbro Star Wars Comic-Con exclusive that arrived yesterday.

The hexagon-shaped box features a new action figure from each film in the series, in a box meant to evoke the famous carbon freezing chamber from The Empire Strikes Back. The action figure cards are a fun "What If?" choice, based on a design Kenner considered but didn't go with back in the day, using the alternate Star Wars logo seen on other merchandise at time. The selection of characters is something of a hodgepodge: Jar Jar Binks for Phantom Menace, a Clone Trooper Lieutenant for Attack of the Clones, a Shock Trooper for Revenge of the Sith, a Sandtrooper for A New Hope, Princess Leia (in her Bespin outfit) for The Empire Strikes Back and Darth Vader (looking all, "Oh crap, I just got Force Lightninged") for Return of the Jedi. There's a bit of a theme with the three generations of Stormtroopers, but the other three don't really match.

Overall though, this is a great followup to last year's SDCC exclusive, which had another "Could have been" bit of packaging, with the Revenge of the Sith carded figures inside a Death Star-shaped case.

But the most fun draw for the carbonite freezer set is the hidden seventh figure it comes with. Which is revealed by opening a panel on the top of the box, by pulling out the Phantom Menace title piece...

Wait for it...

And it's...

That's right, it's a Jar Jar in Carbonite action figure! Oh, glorious day.

This very special and amusing Star Wars set is available at San Diego Comic-Con at the Hasbro booth. Suffice to say, expect some serious lines.

Source : ign[dot]com

Slender is Pure Horror

You start in a dark wooded area with no weapons, a sense that something horrible is about to happen, and a nagging feeling that you can’t do much to prevent it. Such is the beginning of Slender, a free horror game you can play right now.

Based on the Slender Man mythology popularized through a Something Awful thread, and further spread through forum chatter, YouTube videos and even Minecraft, the game’s tall, unrelenting creature pursues you through the inky black of a fenced-in forest. Slender doesn’t bother telling you why you’re there or if it’s possible to escape. You’re given a standard video game goal – find eight pages – but the terror unlocked by discovering and collecting the pages obliterates the task’s comforting familiarity.

Few horror games thrust you so directly into the heart of fear. All of Slender’s elements – the lack of a map, the threat of instant death, the slight element of unpredictability of the page locations – all contribute to a pervasive sense of hopeless vulnerability as you frantically flee an unknowable predator who may or may not be directly behind you.

Source : ign[dot]com

Why Apple Shouldn't Make an iPad Mini

Once upon a time, I had an argument with a coworker about whether or not Apple was making a 7-inch iPad. It went something like this:

“Apple is making a 7-inch iPad.”

“No they aren’t, you are dumb.”

“Of course they are, how else will they compete with the 7-inch Blackberry Playbook?”

Fast-forward two-and-a-half years and it becomes clear to all that my coworker is eating more hat than a face-hugger at a Limp Bizkit concert.

Analysts like to get their names seen by predicting what companies- especially companies like Apple - are up to. Sometimes they back up their hypothesis with facts, leaks, and anonymous sources. Sometimes they just flail their arms around like Zangief on a bad LSD trip.

This is the reason, year after year, we have to read about Apple’s inevitable 7” tablet, and why every year I have to field calls from friends asking me when a product that doesn’t exist is going to start existing.

First of all, I don't believe the iPad Mini exists, and I don't think it will ever exist. I think someone in Apple is intentionally floating false rumors so people won't buy Nexus 7's. But some very reputable sources seem to think it's a done deal. The iPad Mini could be coming to a fancy glass store near you as early as this fall.

Of course, I don’t know anything you don’t, but I feel like I know a whole Hell of a lot more than analysts who say Apple must position themselves against the Nexus 7s, the Kindle Fires, and other products that are so far behind Apple in terms of sales, that they aren’t even directly competing with the iPad.

Like it or not, the current slew of 7-inch tablets are competing for second place.

“

Apple has never been in the business of competing for the low-end.

The argument I keep hearing is that for some reason Apple isn’t content with simply dominating a market they created a mere two+ years ago, but that they also must own the offshoots. A 7.85” iPad would compete with the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 and become king of the lower end of the market. But it would mostly compete with the 10” iPad, and therein lies the problem.

Apple has never been in the business of competing for the low-end. Apple makes high-quality products at high price points, and it appears to me that strategy is working out just fine for them.

Furthermore, the iPad already has more SKU’s than a game of Scrabble. There are currently 18 versions of the new iPad(!), and six versions of the iPad 2, all of which are on sale simultaneously. Customers not only have to choose color, they have to choose carrier and size. Another version of the tablet would make choosing between tablets even more confusing to consumers and, more importantly, cannibalize their own 10” tablet sales.

That's the really important part: by making a 7-inch tablet, Apple would be implicitly stating that the 7-inch form factor is important, and if that's the case, how could you be sure the 10” iPad was really the ultimate tablet experience? It's not just my own opinion that a 10" tablet is a far superior experience to a 7-inch.

Steve Jobs famously repudiated 7-inch tablets in 2010 with some very choice words, including:

• "This size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size."


• "...We think the screen is too small to express the software. As a software driven company, we think about the software strategies first."


• "7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad."


• "We don't think you can make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen."

That’s not to say the iPad Mini is some entirely fabricated impossibility, just that Apple shouldn't make it.

If recent rumors are to be believed, Apple will try out a new size for their next iPhone. We may very well see the rise of the 4” iPhone later this year (sidenote: this likely won’t be called the iPhone 5, because it’s the sixth generation iPhone). Up until now, Apple has stuck to their 3.5” guns, and has had an incredibly successful run.

In order to see why Apple would upsize their phone, one must first understand that the first iPhone was huge. But in the last five years, the general public has adopted larger phones. In fact, every flagship phone is currently larger than the iPhone – The Galaxy S3 at 4.8”, the HTC One X at 4.7”, the Nokia Lumia 900 at 4.3”.

Apple’s little 3.5” seems undeniably compact – which is a good place to be, separated from the competition, but it also shows the general public is ready and willing for larger phones. By trimming the top and bottom borders up a bit, Apple could create an iPhone that was bigger but not a lot larger.

The tablet market, on the other hand, is a different beast. The iPad is winning the tablet wars with a brilliant display and a solid, but not cheap, price tag. While no company should rest on their laurels while competitors play catch up, the introduction of a 7-inch Apple-brand tablet would cause more problems than it's worth.

What do you think? Should Apple make a 7-inch tablet in addition to their 9.7-inch iPad?

Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as Wall-E, Boyz II Men, and Fable 1. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

E3 2012: SimCity preview

Heading into E3, the big news surrounding SimCity was the new multiplayer feature.  Up until now, SimCity had only been a single-player experience. Cities, however, are always part of something bigger, and that was EA’s goal with the latest installment to the long-running, popular franchise.  They wanted to make it bigger, and they wanted players to interact with other town’s mayors — trade resources, work together for common goals, and thrive off of each other’s cities — like real cities should do.

In our E3 preview, we were shown a few separate, but very distinct towns working together to create an airport, one of several major buildings that can benefit everyone.  The distinct cities, which included a friendly neighborhood, thriving metropolis, and a booming but rundown coal town, each provided the necessary resources to build this airport.  The goal was for each of them to benefit in some way from it being built.

Outside of them benefiting from the airport, each town relied on the neighbors in some form.  Some of the examples showed to us include one city providing electricity to the other. The multiplayer spreads beyond just providing resources.  The cities relied on neighbors in other ways.  For instance, the metropolis was looking to expand its commerce and retail, but it needed people to run the businesses.  Therefore, it relied on the neighborhood which needed to increase its population to provide the necessary workforce.

Here is where the airport enters.  In addition to the extra people it would bring in to the newly built stadium, it could help people arrive in the neighborhood suburb.  The airport also allowed goods and resources to be flown in for the coal town.  It may sound complex, but SimCity simplifies everything.

From electricity to water pipes to public transit, SimCity says goodbye to spreadsheet numbers and introduces color-coded or other useful symbols to convey the message.  They showed us building an above-ground electrical railcar, and instead of just building tracks, a colorful line showed where traffic would be heavy for the railcar.  Green was good, yellow was medium, and red is heavy.

Multiplayer isn’t the only addition, however.  EA showed off SimCity’s new Glassbox Engine which literally simulates everything going on in the city.  From the street lamps turning on to the street lights switching from red to green, Glassbox simulates everything going on in the city and presents it as if it were real life.  Individual lighting for buildings, cars’ headlights, street lamps, and more are all present in the game.  It doesn’t only simulate lights either.  It simulates sims’ actions.  In our preview, the devs showed us a bank robbery play out as a result to crime from the neighboring city pouring in.

Neighboring cities don’t only help your town, but can also harm it. The coal city focused heavily on production and business, but lacked the necessary police stations. Because of that, the city was littered with graffiti and crime began spreading into adjoining towns. Unfortunately, that friendly neighborhood we saw was right next to the coal town.  As a result, crime began spilling into the streets and the aforementioned bank robbery occurred.

SimCity was already a fun game, but this added multiplayer component just adds a whole new level of interesting gameplay.  You can choose to help or harm friends’ cities.  And it’s not like everyone’s city is the same.  You can choose to make the city you desire.  If you want a bustling city, create it.  Just remember, you need people to work there and that is where the fun begins. There’s an all-new aspect to , and EA has done a remarkable job incorporating multiplayer.

Source : gamezone[dot]com

Draw Something Charts Show Off The Perils Of Casual Gaming Ads By Google » Blog Tags Today's Most Popular Videos »

Well, that went South quick -- casual, mobile game Draw Something is hemorrhaging players at an amazing rate. It was only  a month ago that 14,300,000 gamers were drawing little pictures with the game. Now there are 9,100,000 iPhone and Android artists online. That's still a lot of players, but the percentage user drop is huge too, and if you check out the chart below (from Appdata.com) you'll see that the trend line is not moving in a positive direction--unless you think "toward the center of the earth" is positive. Something could happen to reverse the slide, sure, but if it doesn't...

So what happened?

Draw Something came out in February, and by April, the company that made it, OMGPOP, was purchased for $180 million dollars by small-game titans Zynga. Then, almost as suddenly as it blew up, Draw Something deflated. It's hard to say specifically why, but it seems to me that the answer lies in a simple idea that game companies sometimes forget, but gamers never do: It just wasn't fun enough to keep playing it.

Like everyone else, I played Draw Something when it came out. I was quickly enthralled with the simple gameplay, instant gratification and ability to draw dongs on everything (that's how I roll.) It's a simple game, unencumbered by extraneous material, and at first, that purity of function was really cool-- who doesn't like drawing things? I played DS pretty hardcore for a week or so, but then, suddenly and with no warning at all, I no longer had any desire at all to play the game, and never made another doodle. I put it down as casually as I'd picked it up.

I didn't think about it at the time, but it seems like my experience mirrored the overall player charts for Draw Something. Everyone seem to have quickly loved it, worn it out and moved on. Why is that? For me, the effort it takes to draw something, while fun at first, just doesn't "pay off" over the long haul. There are no levels to the gameplay. No risk. No reward. No depth. Just the same repetitive motions, again and again. The game's not-subtle-at-all attempts to pry my credit card out of my wallet didn't help either. Once I started noticing that the same clues came up again and again, and you had to buy new ones, I was right out. Words should be free, man. So should colors. How are you gonna make me pay (in either time or money) for the color orange while giving me the clue "pumpkin?"

Even something like Farmville has a cumulative effect over time. A reason to build your farm and harvest your crops. Angry Birds has varying levels, a cool combination of chaos and thought, and the audacity to make a sequel with radically different physics from the original.

The rise and fall of Draw Something (and the continuing success of Angry Birds and various "-villes") can be seen as a lesson in how to have a successful game. At the final level, marketing, buzz, hype and a huge payout can only take you so far. It's the game design that ultimately determines longevity for gamers, especially for casual games, which can be put down as easily as they are picked up.

Source : http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/723648/draw-something-charts-show-off-the-perils-of-casual-gaming/

Outernauts Facebook Game Coming From Insomniac, EA Ads By Google » Blog Tags Today's Most Popular Videos »

Outernauts is coming to Facebook. EA and Insomniac have teamed up to create an adventure role-playing game that aims to bring something new to the social media space. The game casts players as members of United Earth’s elite Outernaut force. The Outernauts capture and train exotic alien beasts and uncover the riddle behind mysterious “ancients” while battling pirates and evil corporations seeking to control the galaxy. All that on Facebook.

"As we have demonstrated for nearly twenty years in the console games space, we're confident we can help evolve the definition of a game experience on Facebook," said Insomniac prez Ted Price. "With Outernauts, we are delivering a deep story with real RPG strategy, coupled with Insomniac's signature sense of humor."

The game aims to combine Insomniac’s immersive storytelling with "a unique art style and sense of wit." If it goes off the way it's planned, it will bring something really special to Facebook gaming. I'm looking forward to it.

Outernauts will launch this summer and is currently in closed beta.

All of the best people are following Stephen Johnson's twitter feed. Also, email me if you wanna.


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/723615/outernauts-facebook-game-coming-from-insomniac-ea/

Star Wars 1313 Trademark And Domain Registrations Point To Possible Game Ads By Google » Blog Tags Today's Most Popular Videos »

George Lucas' corporate empire appears to be cooking up something called Star Wars 1313, based on an assortment of domain registrations and a newly filed trademark. It all started with the news from Fusible that Lucasfilm registered a variety of domains related to "Star Wars 1313" on May 2, 2012. No less than 20 domains were registered in all, some in different regions of the world, with WHOIS lookups pointing to Lucasfilm as the owner on all of them.

The initial assumption was that these domains related to an upcoming film project due to the Lucasfilm tie, but a subsequent trademark discovery by Fusible seems to indicate that Star Wars 1313 is some sort of video game-related project. Lucasfilm has confirmed nothing, but with E3 approaching very quickly now, we'll hopefully hear more soon.


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/723506/star-wars-1313-trademark-and-domain-registrations-point-to-possible-game/

The Walking Dead Review

The Walking Dead Review:
There’s something to be said about a game developer that takes on the videogame adaptation of one of the biggest franchises out there right now, knowing full well that they have to make it amazing to satisfy fan’s desires and make up for the mistake that was their last title. Yet despite this monstrous feat, Telltale Games still decided to take on The Walking Dead and I’ll be damned if they didn’t do a brilliant job setting up the series with an amazing first episode.
If you’re familiar with Telltale’s take on adventure games, the same formula applies here. The Walking Dead is a beautifully drawn episodic point-and-click adventure game, with A New Day being the first of five episodes. The title is very foreshadowing of the events about to unfold, but then again, I guess that’s the idea. A New Day clocked in right around three hours for me, so it’s safe to say that the full experience will end up running close to fifteen hours. These three hours are exceptionally story and character dependent, as is the nature of the game, so I’ll keep things basic and avoid most spoilers.

Look, in the road!
The game opens on Lee Everett, a convicted felon on his way to the big house, who is stuck with a ride from the world’s most talkative police officer. As they’re driving down the Atlanta highway, the officer can’t help but question Lee, claiming that he believes he’s innocent and all sorts of mumbo-jumbo. Out of nowhere, the car hits a person walking out the middle of the highway and flips into the embankment. Lee come to and escapes, only to find the officer dead on the ground – or so he thinks. The officer springs to life and starts clawing at him. Lee has to make the choice to shoot him, not knowing what is happening. The shot echoes throughout the embankment and, unfortunately for Lee, calls a horde of ‘walkers’ right toward him.
Without giving any more of the story away, he must find help and get away from Atlanta, all while coming to terms with what is happening. He meets plenty of characters from the comics and TV show along the way, but it’s clear that this is meant to be a separate group of people. More importantly, he meets Clementine –a small child hiding in a tree fort– whom he befriends and promises to take care of until they can find her parents.

There aren’t many child characters in games who manage to be anything but an annoying crutch, Clementine is the exception. Her relationship with Lee is so extremely personable and heartfelt that I felt the immediate need to protect her and make my decisions based on what is best for her. Sure, he isn’t her father, but as the story progresses, they start to treat each other as such and I found it to be one of the most ‘human’ parts of the game (no pun intended).

Decisions, Decisions
The core gameplay of the adventure game remains in tact, you walk around clicking on items in the world to solve obstacles that are put in front of you, with quicktime events that require you to stomp a zombie’s face in or choose which member of the crew you want to save. But there’s another layer of gameplay that makes actions much more meaningful and actually alter the way that you choose to play the game. Dialogue between characters is a significant portion of the gameplay and the way that the story plays out will change depending on the choices that you make. It isn’t as simple as “choose X to have it play one way, choose Y for the other” either.
These dialogue options fit right into the conversation at hand, but often have you choosing very definitive sides. In one instance, I sided with a particular character that directly contradicted what another was for. It didn’t seem like anything came out of that, but later in the episode, the character that I sided against betrayed me and left me for dead, barely leaving enough time for my friend to come back and save me. This was a situation that could have played out differently and will, depending on which side you choose to take. Throughout conversation, answers that seem meaningless trigger other characters to make mental notes (designated by a little notification) and these can change the outcome of your character’s path.

WALKERS!
Telltale wants to so strongly get across that life is full of difficult choices that can come back to haunt you. It’s filled with situations that might not seem like much, but they can mean the world to others. The Walking Dead is all about these moments in this unfortunate situation that these characters are in and how they react to them. There’s a deeper level of humanity tied to the characters that makes it extremely easy to become emotional toward them in the way that we would in real life. A New Day is an exceptional start to a five-part series that has me completely hooked and engrossed in a world that I can’t even begin to imagine, let alone speculate about where it will go next.
Want more information on how we score reviews? Read the "How G4 Reviews Work" article here. 
Editor's Note: The Walking Dead was reviewed using a PC copy of the game; however, we also played the PS3 and 360 versions, and found no differences. If further investigation reveals any differences between the PC and 360/PS3 of the game, this review will be updated to reflect those differences. 


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/games/xbox-360/65677/the-walking-dead/review/