Research in Motion, the company behind the Blackberry
, is still fighting Apple tooth and nail in the smartphone market – and it’s not planning to cede the tablet space to the company, either.
The company today unveiled its Playbook tablet, a 7-inch 9.7mm-thick device that’s due early next year in the U.S., with plans for an international roll-out in the second quarter of 2011.
The Price is Right has always been 
a show about subtle advertising, but it’s not something you have to pay to watch. Paying a few bucks for an app that then proceeds to bombard you with commercial placements is a bit extreme, though. While the game is well-paced and offers a variety of unlockable mini-pricing games and play modes, it’s not entirely stable, sometimes crashing without warning (though this will likely be fixed in updates). Playing with a friend in multiplayer mode is more fun than playing by yourself.
The television version of Press Your Luck
is cheesy fun — and the app has the potential to match that. Unfortunately, the current version is a buggy game that’s prone to locking up and has a very limited number of questions. After you play just two rounds, you’ll start hearing questions repeated. The single-player version is fairly boring, since the automated contestants pick answers seemingly at random — and are never intellectual threats. (In one round, for example, the automated contestant guessed that Muhammad Ali was best known as a scientist.) Multiplayer, which is all done locally and not through online matchmaking, is a bit more fun, but still nothing incredible. Finally, the game moves at an incredibly slow pace — and the host’s continually repeated comments get old fast.
There’s nothing particularly educational about Thomas Tilt and Go
, but kids who are big fans of the television show will enjoy the chance to control some of their favorite characters. It’s not a challenging game, either. As long as the player keeps Thomas moving forward, he or she will easily earn enough points to advance with time to spare. (They’re rewarded with short clips from the television show.) The upside of this is kids won’t get frustrated, but unless they’re die-hard fans of the show, the might get bored after one or two tracks. The gameplay is virtually identical from level to level. Is it worth $2.99? No. But if the price falls, it’s a good, safe addition for young children.
The advent of the app era has certainly 
changed how people view their phones, but its real impact has been less on telecommunications – and more on the electronics industry.
A new study by Deloitte, released today, finds that mobile apps actually aren’t a key driver on smartphone sales, but they do play a big role in people’s decision-making when they’re looking for something like a gaming console or GPS.
Four years ago, Nintendo could do no wrong in
the video game world. The Wii was beginning a triumphant run at retail, and the handheld DS unit had been flying off of store shelves for the past 24 months.
Publishers courted the company and competitors quickly learned their initial scoffing over the Wii’s less-than-eye-popping graphics and lack of a traditional controller was wildly off-base.
Don’t expect to see “The Big Bang Theory” or “Smallville”
among Apple TV’s rentals anytime soon.
Warner Bros., the studio behind those and several other hit shows, is among one of the highest profile holdouts for the service – and recent comments by CEO Barry Meyer would seem to indicate the company has no plans to change its mind soon.
[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris examines the “shaky steps” of the game industry to ensure long-term access and viability for older games, amid controversy over a GOG.com shift.]
Game industry enthusiasts take an odd joy in pointing out that retail sales for this industry now regularly beat the annual Hollywood box office receipts. It’s a fun headline that makes it look like games are winning the culture war – assuming you resist that urge to scratch the surface.
The reality, of course, is that Hollywood smokes games when you compare apples to apples. Movies don’t disappear once their theatrical run ends. There are pay-per-view revenues, DVD and Blu-ray sales (both the original release and the inevitable director’s cut), initial network rights, syndicated network rights and more. Games? Well, they tend to disappear after a brief stay on retail shelves.
Stick Stunt Biker is an over-the-top racing game
that makes motocross look like a ride around a parking lot. The game features impossible jumps and bone-shattering crashes in a cartoon manner that is actually a lot of fun, at least for a while. It’s not an easy game, but the frustration of failure is mitigated by the cringe-inducing experience of seeing the stick figure racer tumble to the ground. The app might use a realistic physics engine to portray those crashes, but there’s nothing close to real about the rest of the game. It’s fun initially, but after a while, the repeated crashes get old and the varying tracks don’t really incentivize you to keep playing. Ultimately, Stick Stunt Biker is a fun diversion, but nothing that will top your list of favorite apps.
Zombie Infection HD tries to follow the path 
set by classic zombie survival games like Resident Evil 4, but it falls far short. The graphics are middling, at best. The story is ridiculous. And the zombies really aren’t that scary. The game also features some sloppy programming — like when zombies crawl through the middle of a roof, instead of up the side of a building. The controls aren’t intuitive and don’t react fast enough for a game in this genre. For 99 cents, it might be worth it for fans of zombie films. For anything more, though, it’s not worth it for anyone.
Chris Morris: Journalist 