Category: Videogames (1-10 of 311)

Feb 3 2012 04:23 PM ET

'Triple Town' creator David Edery talks copycat apps, Zynga, and the future of original gaming

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L: 'Triple Town'; R: 'Yeti Town'

All is not well in Triple Town. The much buzzed-about puzzle game, which successfully launched on Facebook and Google+ in October and on iOS and Android in January, is engaged in a fierce legal battle with a rival company accused of ripping it off.

Triple Town co-creator David Edery confirmed on his blog last Sunday that the development studio filed a copyright infringement suit against competing studio 6waves Lolapps (also known as 6L) in response to Yeti Town, a virtually identical game released two months after Triple Town, which one review called “the exact same game, only this time with snow.” Edery alleged that, among other offenses, 6L entered into a nondisclosure agreement with Spry Fox, only to abruptly end negotiations when Yeti Town was released. Today Rex Ng, the CEO of 6L, fired back, telling Venturebeat, “This accusation is unjustified and plainly not true. We have not broken the NDA signed between 6L and Spry Fox.” 6L also released this statement to EW: READ FULL STORY »

Jan 31 2012 01:50 PM ET

'Star Wars' now officially gay-friendly; Conservatives are surprised, thought C-3PO and R2-D2 were just friends

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Image Credit: Lucasfilm, Ltd.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that Star Wars: The Old Republic will allow players to pursue homosexual relationships. After all, the game was created by BioWare, the company that also developed the Mass Effect trilogy, which allows you to participate in lesbian, interspecies, and transgender relationships. (At one point in Mass Effect you flirt with a blue-skinned semi-immortal hermaphrodite, which is exactly the sort of thing your parents warned you about when you moved to the big city.) However, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has a bone to pick with the new homosexual option. In a new mixed-metaphor piece of radio commentary titled “Rebel Fleet Surrenders to Gay Empire,” Perkins said: “In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists… in a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side.” READ FULL STORY »

Jan 25 2012 12:00 PM ET

'Kinect Star Wars': Chris Pratt challenges Darth Vader to a duel -- EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

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Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Andy Dwyer? In Kinect Star Wars, the upcoming motion-controlled game for Xbox 360, anyone can feel as though he or she is a real Jedi master — even Chris Pratt, who plays the lazy shoeshiner-turned-assistant Andy on Parks and Recreation. Case in point: this new two-minute short film, which EW.com is exclusively debuting. The clip features a bathrobe-wearing Pratt facing off against Darth Vader in the iconic lightsaber duel from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. All I’ll say is that Mr. Vader is a very patient man (and that Pratt’s geeky giggle at 0:44 is priceless). Check out the video below: READ FULL STORY »

Jan 19 2012 08:15 PM ET

'Resident Evil 6' coming in November: Watch the trailer! (Plus: Pics from the new 'Resident Evil' movie!)

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The Resident Evil game franchise helped kickstart the zombie craze back in 1996. Since then, the series has gotten steadily more outré. The beloved Resident Evil 4 sent iconic series protagonist Leon Kennedy (hairstyle: Blond Proto-Bieber) into a vaguely Transylvanian village to rescue the President’s daughter. The controversial Resident Evil 5 sent the somewhat less-iconic series protagonist Chris Redfield (hairstyle: Brown Go-Go ’80s Reaganaut) on a racially queasy mission to kill lots of undead Africans, although it’s difficult to ascribe any real political motivations to a game that ended with a mutant giant trying to pull a helicopter into a volcano. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 17 2012 07:56 PM ET

Atari is returning as a pale imitation of Atari, and it will almost certainly be successful

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Atari was an important architect of the rise of videogame culture in America, creating the first home-console boom and bust years before the original NES even arrived on our shores. Unfortunately, Atari has also been inessential for nearly three decades now — a brand name handed from investor to investor, like a sad little baton in a retirement home relay race. So it’s not surprising that, in an interview with CNN, new CEO Jim Wilson talks a lot about getting Atari back to the good old days. “We’re looking at different ways to reinterpret or reinvent our classic franchises in ways that people are playing games today in the business model that people are playing today,” says Wilson, which translates from the corporatese into: More mobile games! READ FULL STORY »

Jan 17 2012 02:05 PM ET

'Max Payne 3' delayed until May

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Generally speaking, the release dates of big Hollywood movies are set in stone at least two years in advance, since that’s how long it takes contemporary filmmakers to gild their mega-budgeted sequel-remakes with lavish digital effects that will look incredibly lame in five years, if not immediately.* Conversely, the videogame industry rarely abides by release dates. (Except for the Call of Duty franchise, which owns November the way Ben Foster owns January.) So it’s no big surprise that Max Payne 3 — the bigger, balder, Brazilian-er sequel to Rockstar’s storied bullet-time franchise — has officially moved from a planned March release to an actual May 15 release date. READ FULL STORY »

Dec 28 2011 10:00 AM ET

This year's pop-culture time capsule: What will be your 2011 keepsakes?

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Filed under: Books, Music, New Girl, News, Revenge, TV, Videogames and tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Image Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP Images

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, PopWatchers, is to help me put together a 2011 pop-culture time capsule. It’s been a year of change that swept from the lowest brow (Two and a Half Men) to the highest (the Arab Spring). We saw many great people pass on and many more step into the spotlight. With all this in mind, what cultural relics would you pick to communicate this strange and marvelous year to the future? Check out my picks, then add your own ideas to the mix. READ FULL STORY »

Dec 20 2011 04:59 PM ET

'Star Wars: The Old Republic' launches today. Can it defeat 'World of Warcraft'?

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Image Credit: Jason DeCrow/AP Images

Expectations are high for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the just-launched massively-multiplayer online RPG, which represents probably the most ambitious effort to provide an online-game alternative to World of Warcraft. The game comes from BioWare, a company with experience crafting galactic space operas — they created the Mass Effect series, and also developed the fondly-remembered Knights of the Old Republic, a dry run for SW:TOR. With a rumored production cost between $135 and $150 million, it’s one of the most expensive games in history. And, as noted by Forbes, the decision to give voice to the in-game dialogue (instead of just communicating via textbox, like Warcraft) means that The Old Republic has the largest voice cast of any videogame… ever. To celebrate the launch, Stormtroopers flocked to the NASDAQ to ring the opening bell (see picture). Will it all pay off? READ FULL STORY »

Dec 18 2011 03:41 PM ET

Angry Birds' 'Wreck the Halls' cartoon: Fun on the slopes, but I miss balloon bird

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The Angry Birds empire has been growing ever larger since it first sling-shot its way into millions of addicts’ players’ two years ago this month. There are the plush toys, the movie tie-ins, the haute couture. And now those sassy Finns at Rovio are trying to elbow their way into seasonal animated specials.

Yesterday, to commemorate the release of it’s “Wreck the Halls” level in Angry Birds Seasons, Rovio released an animated tale with hints of How the Grinch Stole Christmas with a dash of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Check it out below:  READ FULL STORY »

Dec 18 2011 04:01 AM ET

Best of 2011 (Behind the Scenes): Nolan North (a.k.a. Nathan Drake) talks about getting lost in the desert in 'Uncharted 3'

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As 2011 comes to a close, EW.com wanted to honor some of the hardworking names and faces from behind the scenes for their outstanding achievements. The essence of the videogame medium is action: running, jumping, shooting, dodging, flying. That’s especially true of the Uncharted series, a franchise which has made its name by offering better-than-Hollywood thrills. But November’s Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception took an intriguing turn when — following a fantastical plane-crash set piece — series protagonist Nathan Drake got lost in the desert. No guns, no exciting settings, no enemy except thirst: The player had to guide Drake through an apparently empty landscape, wandering and wandering and wandering. Nolan North — one of the hardest-working voice-over talents in the videogame industry — has played Nathan Drake via an intensive motion-capture process since the series began. Read on to find out how he helped to make something out of literal nothingness. For more behind the scenes access to the year’s best TV and movie scenes, click here for EW.com‘s Best of 2011: Behind the Scenes coverage.

As told by: Nolan North

Lost in the desert! People loved that level! They felt isolated. They didn’t know what to do, or which way to go. The same way that Nathan Drake is feeling. I think that Uncharted 3, more than the earlier games, you got to experience not only what Drake was doing, but what he was feeling. READ FULL STORY »

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