Taking on the 
undisputed leader in online search might seem like a fool’s mission for any company, regardless of size, but MC Hammer says when it comes to searches that go beyond keywords, Google can’t touch what he has planned.
The 80s rapper, real name Stanley Burrell, has spent the past two years working on WireDoo, a search engine he recently introduced at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco – and hopes will become the new standard for web inquries.
The Scribblenauts series 
is one of the most unique to come along in years, so it’s delightful to see it make its debut on iDevices. Scribblenauts Remix is a best-of game, combining the highlights of the first two Nintendo DS titles (along with 10 new puzzles) and the offering a wonderful mix as a result. Veteran players know the drill, but newcomers to the game will be astonished at the wide variety of ways they can solve puzzles. (It is, in fact, just as fun to play with the game’s dictionary to come up with ideas as it is to solve the puzzle.)
Some of the puzzles are tough, but an integrated clue system will help people along. The real joy in the game, though, comes from seeing how creative you can be in your answers. Climbing a ladder up a tree to get a star is easy and obvious, but it’s so much more fun to ride a friendly dragon to the top to retrieve it. If you’re not playing this, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Richard Garriott has 
always lived in a slightly different world than the rest of us. He’s the creator of the revolutionary Ultima role-playing series. He’s an astronaut. And he lives in one of the coolest houses in Texas.
Or used to live there, at least.
Garriott’s epic digs can now be yours — if you’ve got a spare $4 million lying around.
Occasional trick questions 
in a game that puts itself forward as an IQ test are to be expected. But loading the game with them obliterates any fun factor — and Stupidness 3 Pro is virtually nothing but tricks. It’s meant as a light-hearted nudge at trivia games, but it quickly becomes an exercise in frustration and temper control. Sure you can buy answers (at the cost of “IQ points”), but when you see the answer has nothing to do with the actual question, you’ll only get more frustrated. While you have to acknowledge the creativity that went into designing the puzzles, this is a game that appeals to an incredibly narrow audience. The free version will be more than enough for most.
Aiko Island doesn’t 
follow the path of virtually every other game in the puzzle field and that alone makes it worthy of notice. While the game itself isn’t revolutionary (it’s a physics-based block popper, where you must eliminate all but the blue blocks onscreen), its inclusion of a branching path system, letting you decide which puzzles to tackle next, is nice. And the multiplayer mode, letting you compete against friends via speed-run results, is a nice solution to the solo gaming silo so many puzzlers fall into. The plot is completely forgettable, but that’s not unusual. On the whole, it’s different enough to be worth of your time.
Tropico 4 is a lot 
like Tropico 3 (which was a lot like its predecessors as well) — so if you’re looking for an innovative city-building experience, this isn’t it. There’s a strong argument to be made, though, that if something’s not broken, then there’s no need to fix it. The tweaks to the game, such as the reworked goal system and inclusion of natural disasters, improve on the formula and keep players engaged. The game’s Achilles heel is the Xbox controller, which handles the enormous slew of in-game option choices adequately, but not admirably. Playing the PC version of the game is much smoother.
The game is remarkably deep, but that might actually work against it with people who are new to this genre. It’s intimidating — and even with a good tutorial, it takes a while to get your sea legs. Worse still, the tutorial takes quite a while to work through, and some players will be tempted to skip it, which will ultimately hurt them. However, for those who stick with it (or those who are familiar with the series or genre), it’s a solid addition to the Tropico line of games.
Blending sky diving 
with action gaming sounds like a wonderful recipe for success, but HighFlyer Death Defyer (i4) wastes that potential with an overbearing story, terrible controls, and poor pacing. The opening tutorials go on so long that it’s easy to think they’re the actual game — before the story really kicks in with a comic book-style narrative and dangerous obstacles to avoid. It’s the controls that really hurt the game, though. It’s very easy to get lost as you dive and to miss goals — which ultimately means you fail the level and must restart. And that quickly leads to frustration. The game has ambitious goals, but in the end it doesn’t achieve any of them well.
Of all the video game 
publishers, none has been more bullish on 3D than Sony. Most of the company’s original titles for the PlayStation 3 this year will be 3D enabled – and the company previously announced plans for a 3D starter set for players who were on the fence about the technology.
After a lot of dodging, Sony has finally unveiled the launch date for that set: Nov. 13. The 24-inch display will be bundled with one set of active 3D glasses, a six foot HDMI cable and (for those who preordered the device) a copy of the upcoming “Resistance 3” (others will get a copy of “MotorStorm Apocalypse”). It will retail for $499.
After remaining 
eerily quiet for months on when gamers outside of Japan would get their hands on the PlayStation Vita, Sony has finally come clean.
The next-generation handheld gaming system will go on sale in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Latin America on Feb. 22 of next year, just over two months after it goes on sale in Sony’s home country.
You don’t have 
to be a wizard of Wall Street to know the market sucks these days. While the Dow Jones Industrial average is slightly higher than it was at the start of the year, persistent fears of a double-dip recession – or worse – are preventing both individual and institutional investors from jumping into the market with any gusto.
That’s starting to affect the valuations of companies with looming public offerings, including a high profile one in the gaming world. And it should be a lesson to other game companies thinking about an IPO.
Chris Morris: Journalist 