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Angry Birds Seasons has been given a back-to-school update with 20 new free levels. Version 2.5 also includes new bonus levels, a new soundtrack and a new look bird that developers Roxio describe as “cute, pink, and bubbly — but watch out, this girl is no pushover!”.
Amongst the new features, the new bird has the ability to blow egg shaped bubbles which bewilder pigs into committing suicide.
Ubisoft unveiled Ghost Recon Online today at Gamescom 2012. Previous Ghost Recon games had multiplayer modes, but they required buying a Ghost Recon game. Ubisoft gets rid of this barrier of entry with Ghost Recon Online, which offers squad based combat and tons of weapons and customizations to unlock, all for free. Like most games being released today, Ghost Recon Online is free-to-play but players have the option of using real money to buy upgrades within the game.
Ghost Recon Online adds to Ubisoft’s vision of a Ghost Recon ecosystem with PC, console, and mobile applications working together. Ghost Recon Online will feel familiar to those who have been playing Ghost Recon: Future Solder as it is based heavily on that game.
Much of the aesthetic of Ghost Recon: Future Solder reappears in Ghost Recon Online. There are futuristic guns and soldiers wear exo-skeletons that allow them to carry tons of gear and special weapons like the ‘heat’ gun. Continue reading “Gamescom 2012: Ghost Recon Online now available”
At Gamescom 2012, Square Enix revealed a new online game mode for Hitman: Absolution.
Contracts is a new mission mode where players can create kill orders for any character (including non-playable characters) in the game and define the methods to complete the mission.
Contracts creates challenges in the game that require players to become the best assassin possible. You choose a level in the game, up to three targets, the weapon, and set game rules, like the time limit, to complete. Contracts are updated from the community, and you can even challenge your friends.
As you play as Agent 47, you have to approach Contracts with the same careful planning as you would in the single player. Completing Contracts with specific conditions gives you money that you can use to purchase weapons, disguises, and upgrades.
Square Enix will be promoting Contracts by picking the best from the community and highlighting them in Hitman: Absolution. Hitman: Absolution’s new mode expands on the replayability of the game beyond the single player and presents a great challenge to Contract creators and players.
Gamescom 2012 is in full swing and soccer fans will be happy to know that Electronic Arts showed off more FIFA 13 action. The FIFA franchise has been around for ages and there hasn’t really been anything that revolutionary in its past releases. EA took it upon themselves to try and make FIFA 13 much more realistic by introducing a feature called Match Day.
So what exactly is Match Day? It’s actually a pretty cool feature that incorporates real world events throughout the soccer season. For example, injuries, suspensions, and team form will all be taken into account in FIFA 13 and will directly affect the teams that you play as or against.
Information is updated on a daily basis so you’ll want to have your gaming console connected to the internet to receive these updates. The Match Day feature used to only be available in the ‘Live Season’ mode of FIFA but it is now an integral part of the game. Continue reading “Gamescom 2012: FIFA 13 brings Match Day feature and updated Ultimate Team mode”
Microsoft recently completely redesigned and re-branded their email service, Hotmail, to Outlook.com. The redesign included a major visual refresh with the goal of making a Windows 8-like web interface to match its desktop operating system. Big tiles, buttons, and text make the new Outlook.com visually pleasing and touch friendly.
In my preview of Outlook.com, I mentioned that the Calendar and SkyDrive sections of Hotmail didn’t receive any improvements. Well that changes as Microsoft has redesigned SkyDrive.com to follow Outlook.com’s footsteps. The new redesign is slowly rolling out to users over the next 24 hours so don’t be too disappointed if you don’t see the new site yet.
On top of announcing a visual overhaul of SkyDrive.com, Microsoft announced that a SkyDrive app for Android would be coming in “just a few weeks.” There is no solid date for the Android app yet. Let’s take a look at the changes in the new SkyDrive.com. Continue reading “SkyDrive.com receives a redesign with an Android app on the horizon”
Adobe previously announced that they would stop allowing new installations of Adobe Flash for Android. That day is tomorrow August 15, 2012. Instead, Adobe will be putting their support behind HTML5, the format that many multimedia sites have adopted instead of Flash.
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean doesn’t have support for Flash in Chrome, and subsequent releases of the operating system will be Flash-less. I discussed before that I didn’t think Flash even mattered on mobile anymore and HTML5 looks like a better solution.
On the Google Play page, Adobe states ” NOTE: FLASH PLAYER IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED FOR NEW DEVICE CONFIGURATIONS. FLASH PLAYER WILL NOT BE SUPPORTED ON ANY ANDROID VERSION BEYOND ANDROID 4.0.x.”
If you want to install Adobe Flash, today is the last day because it will no longer be downloadable through Google Play.
You may be able to circumvent using Google Play if you can find an apk and side-load, but independent developers will already have a fix by the time the cutoff happens.
Adobe has stated they will still update older installs until 2013.
Final Fantasy VII was PlayStation’s first big role playing game (RPG) release. Over three discs, the game was the first introduction of the RPG genre for many players with 3D graphics.
It’s one of the most requested games that players want remade with HD graphics, but Square Enix has still denied any existence of work on a HD port.
Still, players can now experience the game on PC as Final Fantasy VII for the PC has been released through Square Enix’s eStore today.
We’re at Gamescom 2012 in Cologne all week, and there are a host of games we’re looking forward to seeing. There will be something for all tastes, from the biggest blockbusters to smaller indie titles like Cactus’s Hotline Miami.
We’ll get to try FIFA 13, see the American revolution in Assassin’s Creed III, and find out if Burnout developers Critereon have worked their magic again with the latest Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
When I started writing about video games, I discovered free-to-play/microtransaction games. I thought it was a very interesting idea. It can be fun to explore a game that is free to download and play, while being supported by in-game purchases.
South Korea is one of the biggest free-to-play nations in the world, with companies releasing free-to-play games supported by microtransactions. The exploding mobile market in the United States quickly adopted this model, with many iOS and Android developers releasing free-to-play game apps. Some companies’ entire catalogs consist of free-to-play titles. Now, the word “microtransaction” has recently been replaced with “in-app purchase.”
The success of the free-to-play model has expanded into social games since then. Now both developers and publishers are accepting the model for many multiplayer games. It looks like free-to-play is becoming a dominant and accepted force in mobile gaming.
Are free-to-play games going to replace the triple-A title?
Continue reading “The free-to-play future”
Google Translate‘s Android update introduced using your phone’s camera to take snapshots of text and translate it into another language.
You need a data connection to use the app, because there’s no offline mode. Since this is a new feature, there are some quirks that appeared when I tried to use it. The first is the camera icon is not defaulted but rather locked to specific supported languages. Google Translate’s camera option also requires Android 2.3 Gingerbread and above.
Here’s how to use this new Google Translate feature.
After opening Google Translate, the language selection is listed as “Detect language.”
Continue reading “How to use Google Translate’s camera translation”
