See, the basic principles of games like (Desktop) Tower Defense are what make them so addicting. As such, tower defense’s rules are simple to understand: build a maze of different weapons which the enemy - in case of Fieldrunners a varying number of ground and air units - has to walk through or fly over. (more…)

Larry Hryb, maybe better known as Major Nelson, just posted instructions on how and where to get early access to the New Xbox Experience (NXE).

I know that many of you are excited to get your hands on the New Xbox Experience, which will go live all Xbox LIVE regions wide on November 19th. Well, we’re just as excited to as you are so I am happy to announce that I’ve been working on a little project that I think may interested you.

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When Steve Jobs entered the stage today one of the first things to appear on the screen was “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. Anyone saying he’s got no sense of humor: shut up, now!

But he didn’t wait long until he got to the meat of the show. The first announcement was that NBC is returning to iTunes. This means all the Heroes, BSG and 30 Rock loving people can get their fix now online at Apple again. And another good thing about the TV shows: they’ll be available in HD for 2.99 a pop (SD still at 1.99) and watchable on your Mac, thus not limited to the Apple TV like the HD movies. (more…)

I’m really trying hard not to use the FAIL meme for this one. Just for the kicks, go to Amazon’s Spore page and have a look at the customer reviews. It has a single, shining star out of five possible. Currently 1.281 people - granted, many of them are trolls - raised their opinion of the game, or, well, the DRM on it. This number is still growing by the minute.

So what’s the problem this time? EA managed it again to pack a beautiful game, the metacritic score for the game itself is 86 out of 100 nonetheless, in a monstrous DRM system that eats your child and takes your food. Apparently you only get three activations and can call EA for one additional activation for your proof of purchase. After that, well that’s to be discussed/found out. Are we buying or renting a game? For ~50 bucks it better be buying. (more…)

In the gaming world this past week has been all about E3 in LA. But just like the recent years it didn’t manage to bring really stunning news. Of course there were things like Final Fantasy coming to the Xbox 360, but most of the “news” only were updates on titles we already knew existed.

Don Reisinger, a person I’m wondering about how he manages to get all that stuff out like he does, did a recent podcast about this at CNET.

All three major players, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, didn’t really show any special new things. Nintendo is going to jump on the Singstar-Guitar-Hero-Rockband bandwagon, doing Wii Sports Rev 2 and of course didn’t forget to mention how great they are.

Sony announced a price drop of their console (as did Microsoft just a day before E3) and how cheap, 30 Dollars to be exact, some of their games are getting. There also was the announcement of their video store, congratulations. Oh yeah, they also said they’re awesome.

And then there was Microsoft, the first major press conference of the whole show on monday. I really thought they had some major things to show considering the 360 price drop on sunday. Boy, was I wrong. For the US the inclusion of Netflix might be major news, for the rest of the world, not so much. Then there was Final Fantasy XIII, which - at this point - won’t be released for the 360 where it has many fans: Japan. Other than that? Well - you guessed it - they mentioned they’re doing fine.

Of course the show generated many news (and videos) and gave the people there the possibilty to play some of the upcoming games, but overall E3 looks like a show where old news were getting some more hot air.

By the way - this is for the people covering it: if you’re doing a “live ticker” you have to say thanks for sites like Engadget/Joystiq, because you can virtually xerox them. Show them some love, it’s not such a bad thing.

Looks like Microsoft couldn’t hold it for much longer and already released some information about the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 which was previously equipped with a 20 GByte harddrive now comeswith a 60 GByte drive at the same price of 349 US-Dollars. The old model will be around while it’s still available for 50 USD less. For the German people over here I’d say the same will apply to the model that is sold here for around 270 Euros.

Maybe the premature release means that Microsoft wanted to get it out of the way for the real things on the show. A good place to watch for news is, as usual, Major Nelson. He’s got a Twitter and FriendFeed account to keep you posted.

Live streaming of the press conferences at E3 will be available by G4TV and GameSpot. For those of you who want to have a sneak peek at the games people can’t wait for, here are some links to make you happy.

E3 will be an interesting event for everyone following the games business. And the next event, the Games Convention 2008 in Leipzig, Germany, taking place from August 21st to 24th, is right around the corner.