Gaming

The time has come for the kingdom of man, hobbits, elves and dwarves to once again join together to take on the forces of Sauruman as Lord of the Rings Online's eleventh update, Treachery of the White Hand, finally goes live.

This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. I had my World of Warcraft year. In 2007, when 'The Burning Crusade' came out, the game clicked with me and it became almost the only thing I played for months on end, to the point where I started raiding with an up-and-coming guild. I know many other people who've had that year, with WoW or some other massively multiplayer game, before they lost interest, burnt out, or continued out of habit more than joy. In the last year or so, I've tried several massively-multiplayer role-playing games - Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World - and couldn't find that magic again. I could admire the design, but quickly lost interest in playing them. I was starting to think I'd never really like a massively multiplayer game again - and then, on a whim, I decided to check out Defiance. Defiance is the main game I've been playing for two weeks now, and this may continue. It's not that it's less flawed than the other MMORPGs, but instead that the parts of the game that it focuses on hold much more appeal to me. To put it another way: Most games within this genre are focused on combat, and Defiance's combat is significantly more fun for me than its competitors'.Gallery: Defiance (PAX East 2012)Continue reading Why Defiance's 'fun now, depth later' is great for MMORPGsWhy Defiance's 'fun now, depth later' is great for MMORPGs originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 19 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Deathstroke is a playable character in Batman: Arkham Origins, according to this preorder offer (of course) from Amazon. Click this link and then on the Arkham Origins box in lower right to see it. [via TheSlanted]

This morning a deal between Yahoo and Tumblr has been approved according to sources familiar with the matter. This deal is said by people familiar with those speaking with the Wall Street Journal to have been approved by Yahoo’s board only at this time, and that Tumblr’s board is not yet at a final decision point. This deal has been reported after several days of rumors surrounding purchases by not just Yahoo, but other large-name web-based businesses as well. This deal has been tipped at $1.1 billion in cash only, this marking a rather high point for a company acquisition – especially in an all-cash deal. Sources speaking on the subject have suggested that the deal was finalized by phone this Friday while the first announcement of said deal could be announced as early as Monday. In acquiring Tumblr, it’s said that Yahoo will keep the social networking site largely the same as it is today as far as how independently it operates. It’s suggested, on the other hand, that advertisements may be incorporated on a much larger level than they are today, generating revenue for Tumblr and Yahoo at once. Tumblr has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past few years, coming up especially in the smartphone and tablet world due to its scalability. Tumblr announced this past week during Google I/O 2013, the company’s yearly developer conference, that they’d be delivering an official app for the wearable device platform Google Glass. When asked about the Yahoo deal, Tumblr representatives on-site at the Moscone Center this week during Google I/O 2013 made it clear that they were unable to comment on any rumors or possibilities. That said, Tumblr’s representation at the event was limited to developer relations, so it isn’t as if they’d have had any knowledge on the matter in the first place. We’ll likely hear more on the situation early this week! Yahoo Tumblr acquisition reportedly approved in cash-only deal is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear. © 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Hisense, a company known for making budget Chinese tablets, will soon be releasing their Android tablets stateside. Late last month a new Hisense Sero 7 tablet was spotted clearing the FCC here in the US, and today we have all the details. Their first official Google Play certified Android tablet to go on sale stateside is pretty impressive. It has more to offer than the Nexus 7, and only comes in at $99. Read on for more details on this exclusive first look. Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader we’re getting the first official details, specs, and pictures of what is called the Hisense Sero 7 Pro. This tablet aims to deliver Nexus 7 like performance to the masses for only $99, and will be hitting retailers like Walmart shortly. According to our tipster, it’s already for sale extremely early at some select Walmart stores. The Hisense Sero 7 Pro is a pretty impressive tablet in every sense of the word, especially given the price. You’ll be enjoying a 7-inch 1280 x 800 IPS HD display, and quad-core power thanks to NVIDIA‘s Tegra 3 clocked at 1.3 GHz. The same as the Nexus 7. You’ll enjoy 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, but hey, unlike the Nexus 7 this has a micro-SD slot. Oh and it also sports a mini-HDMI out port as well. Two things sorely missing from ASUS and Google’s Nexus 7. That isn’t all this has going for it either. The Hisense Sero 7 Pro not only runs on Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean, but it also rocks two cameras. A 5 megapixel rear (with LED flash) and 2 megapixel front facing camera. You’ll enjoy the usual WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and sensors, as well as NFC and a 4,000 mAh battery. So basically everything you’ll get from the Nexus 7, plus 4 or 5 things we wish it had like cameras and micro-SD, all for only $99. Hisense has been popular in China with their well-rounded tablets, and it looks like the same is about to be true here in the US. The company, Hisense, sells some TVs and other things here in the states but this is their first tablet to officially go on sale. According to our reader, who has the tablet in hand after purchasing it from a local Walmart, said the link to their US tablet site doesn’t even work. Claiming it says www.hisense-usa.com/tablets on the box, which at the time of writing isn’t an active page. Their new slate just cleared the FCC in late April, and shouldn’t be available for sell yet, but we’d recommend you run down to your nearest Walmart and try to snag on up before they sell out. With those specs, that design and build quality, all for $99 we expect this tablet to do quite well. Running the latest version of Android and having full access to the Google Play Store doesn’t hurt either. – Thanks Selim for the tip Hisense Sero 7 Pro Tablet leaks to take on the Nexus 7 is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear. © 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Kevin Conroy will be in Batman: Arkham Origins, and he's already spent 10 months in the studio recording those gruff-yet-dulcet tones. Conroy confirmed his involvement at Dallas Comic-Con, but didn't specify if he plays The Bat himself - not that he has to. He opened the panel with, "I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman." Because, you know, he is. NAG magazine reported in April that Warner Bros. had passed on Conroy for Arkham Origins. Conroy voiced Batman in both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and he was the man behind Bruce Wayne in Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Beyond and subsequent DC universe cartoon spin-offs. Arkham Origins is scheduled to launch on October 25 for Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii U.Kevin Conroy returns for Batman: Arkham Origins originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 19 May 2013 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments More...

I spend a lot of time staring at our release calendar. For my job, I mean. I don't just sit there staring in a fetishistic way; that would be super creepy. Rather, I use it a lot to try and figure out what games we have/need for upcoming review and Quick Look content. If you ever bother to look at this page as I do, you may have noticed that since April, the calendar's been a bit dry. In fact, for a long while there, last week's calendar only showed one new game: Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, an eShop download for the 3DS. By the time the week began, that calendar began to fill out a bit more, with such rousing titles as the (delayed) XBLA version of Monaco, a PS2 Classics re-release of Fatal Frame II, and the advergame Doritos Crash Course 2.Though I sort of wish it weren't hitting, quite literally, THE DAY after E3 ends, I'm thrilled that a game as big as The Last of Us is coming out in a space where most big games fear to tread.Yep, it's official: We are in the thick of the spring/summer doldrums.It happens most every year. By the time the holiday season winds down, game releases begin to dry up. It used to be that we wouldn't see much of anything for the entire first half of the year, though in recent years the first quarter has at least been a steady home of big releases that either slipped out of the holiday schedule, or just floated into March to help pad out a publisher's fiscal report. This February/March was actually pretty heavy with quality game releases. But now that we've gone past the end of every publisher's fiscal year (which ends on March 31), the quality has begun to take a precipitous dip.Things aren't as bad as they used to be by any stretch--the last couple of years have seen some pretty great games like Mortal Kombat, Portal 2, Diablo III, and Max Payne 3 hit during the late spring--but as I look through this year's current release calendar, all I see for weeks on end are one, maybe two noteworthy releases pocking each month's schedule. This week, we got the one-two punch of Metro: Last Light and Dust 514. Two weeks after that, the Insomniac-developed multiplayer shooter Fuse (which one gets the impression EA couldn't figure out a better release week for). The week after that, Capcom's futuristic adventure Remember Me is the biggest game of the week (see previous parenthetical, substitute Capcom for EA). Then, the week of E3, Animal Crossing: New Leaf hits, followed that Friday by The Last of Us. Eventually we'll see the likes of Game & Wario, Shin Megami Tensei IV, and Deadpool, but that's about it until the calendar picks up again in August.So tends to be the way of the spring/summer release calendar. A few big games spread across months of time, like butter scraped across too much toast. This notion of back-loading game releases into the holiday season is practically as old as the industry itself. After all, video games began, at least from a marketing perspective, as an offshoot of the toy industry. It's irrefutable fact that people spend more money on toys and video games during the holiday season than they do any other time of the year. That's been true even during our most recent recession, and it's seemingly been the guiding ethos for publishers looking to find an ideal calendar spot for all their big games.But just because sales invariably pick up heavily in the holiday months doesn't mean that there isn't value in those long, hot, slow summer months. Microsoft practically owned the digital game market when it introduced its Summer of Arcade push. Out of that promotion, hugely popular downloadable titles like Geometry Wars 2, Braid, Shadow Complex, Limbo, and Bastion have emerged. Now Microsoft even has competition from Sony, with its PSN Play program, which theoretically should inspire both companies to be pushing for higher quality summer content. Then again, considering what a drag most of Microsoft AND Sony's summer digital lineups were last year (a few outstanding games like Sou

I know you’ve been worried. You’ve been keeping your phone in that heavily-padded case in a locked lead box under your bed. Your iPad is in a safe, and not for its own protection. You’ve got handcuffs for your Nexus 7, and not the kinky kind. Well do not worry, my friends. None of this week’s gaming apps will kill you. More »      

I really want to go out and grill, but the weather is just not cooperating. I occasionally see gazebos that seem to be intended as grilling shelters, and today would certainly be a good day to have...

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