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	<title>TechCategory: Game Time &#124; Tech &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>TechCategory: Game Time &#124; Tech &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>10 Games to Watch for Late Spring 2013</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/03/10-games-to-watch-for-late-spring-2013/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/03/10-games-to-watch-for-late-spring-2013/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 18:30:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apps & Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Apps & Web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[3ds]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[playstation 3]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PS Vita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wii u]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox 360]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=161747</guid>
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		<title>Before You Drop Money on Richard Garriott&#8217;s Shroud of the Avatar&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/03/11/before-you-drop-money-on-richard-garriotts-shroud-of-the-avatar/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/03/11/before-you-drop-money-on-richard-garriotts-shroud-of-the-avatar/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:57:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Garriott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shroud of the Avatar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ultima]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=157929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some things you remember better for odd reasons: Ultima VI: The False Prophet was the first game I played on an Intel-based computer, a CompuAdd 386SX 16MHz I picked up in 1990 as I was entering college. I couldn&#8217;t name half the bleeding-edge parts I jammed into the dozens of later desktops I hand-assembled, but I&#8217;ll always remember that CompuAdd: 1MB of memory, a 40MB hard drive, 5-1/4-inch and 3.5-inch floppy drives, and a VGA monitor. The whole thing cost $2,195. I was born in 1972, so I grew up parallel to the Ultima series, but my family&#8217;s home computer lagged behind the times: a Commodore B-128 geared toward business use. But it played text games (downloaded by another local who had what I didn&#8217;t: a modem and BBS access), so while the world experienced the very first Ultima games, I was playing translations of Colossal Cave, Haunted House, Hammurabi and trying to figure out how the heck Calc Result &#8212; a crude spreadsheet program for Commodore computers &#8212; actually worked. To visit Britannia (nee Sosaria), I had to travel by way of my elementary school&#8217;s green-screen Apple IIs during recess or in the late afternoons. High school was thus a treat: a computer lab with color-screen Apples and a sudden flood of games like King&#8217;s Quest, Wizardry and Might and Magic. My first personal computer was actually a Commodore 64; the first game I threw at it was Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny. True story: I rented it from a computer shop in Council Bluffs, Iowa that dropped the floppy disks, cloth map and manuals in a giant plastic ziploc bag, then let you have it for a week at a time. Around this time I started paying attention to game magazines, learning more about Ultima creator Richard Garriott as well as other developers at Garriott&#8217;s Austin-based development studio, Origin Systems. Chris Roberts had just released action-RPG precursor Times of Lore. That went on my C-64, too. My gaming memories in the fall of 1989 are of two things: Playing Castlevania: The Adventure on<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=157929&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Opinion</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/opinion/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shroud-of-the-avatar.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>LEGO City Undercover Q&amp;A: &#8216;It&#8217;s Like a Whole LEGO Game on Top of a City&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/03/06/lego-city-undercover-qa-its-like-a-whole-lego-game-on-top-of-a-city/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/03/06/lego-city-undercover-qa-its-like-a-whole-lego-game-on-top-of-a-city/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:45:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TIME Interviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lego]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LEGO City Undercover]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wii u]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=157717</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A policeman pokes his school-bus-yellow head from the side of a Hummer, waving a pair of handcuffs like a cowboy winding up a lariat. A Snidely Whiplash-mustachioed bandit in domino mask and knit hat races a red convertible down a highway, smashing through a police barricade as hundred-dollar bills go flying like confetti. No, I&#8217;m not playing a LEGO video game; I&#8217;m actually describing the cover shot of LEGO&#8217;s official tie-in play kit for LEGO City Undercover, a medium-sized cardboard box harboring 283 tiny discrete pieces of colorful, LEGO-ized plastic. It&#8217;s a reminder of just how broad-reaching the LEGO-verse is, and the LEGO City series is just the latest incarnation of one of LEGO&#8217;s oldest, most popular building-block sets &#8212; one that dates back to the 1970s. It&#8217;s also the inspiration behind both upcoming Nintendo-exclusive games LEGO City Undercover for Wii U (out March 18) and LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins for 3DS (out April 21). I spoke with TT Games executive producer Loz Doyle about both games last week. For those who&#8217;ve never played a LEGO game, tell us a little about LEGO City Undercover and how it&#8217;s being utilized uniquely on the Wii U. This is by far the biggest LEGO game we&#8217;ve done, and while it&#8217;s quite easy to say that, it&#8217;s also completely packed with gameplay. With our last two games we had quite a big hub area. In LEGO Batman 2 we had a big city, and then LEGO Lord of the Rings obviously had Middle-earth, but they were both very much hub-based as a means to access the levels and go after unlocks. With LEGO City Undercover, the game takes place in the city, so it&#8217;s all about the city itself. We have some levels as well, 15 in all, but the majority of the gameplay and story takes place in the city itself. That&#8217;s a big departure for us, to basically do it the other way around. It&#8217;s also our first open-world game as well as our first non-IP game, which meant that we<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=157717&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>The Looming Living Room Wars: Apple&#8217;s Quiet Threat to Console Gaming</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/01/31/the-looming-living-room-wars-apples-quiet-threat-to-console-gaming/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/01/31/the-looming-living-room-wars-apples-quiet-threat-to-console-gaming/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:55:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iOS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[valve]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=155890</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Imagine: Your ultra-chic future iPhone isn&#8217;t just a sometime mobile game machine, it&#8217;s also a wireless vehicle for hardcore gaming on your big screen television. Maybe it works with a wireless gamepad, maybe it uses ultra-low electrical current that lets your fingertips &#8220;feel&#8221; the edges of control surfaces along your iPad or iPhone&#8217;s perfectly flat glass screen. Either way, imagine that it&#8217;s the future of serious and casual gaming, a future in which dedicated set-top boxes, cables and marathon life cycles shuffle grudgingly into that good night. For years I&#8217;ve made the argument that Apple&#8216;s iOS platform is just a wireless gamepad and HDTV-hookup away from squaring off against Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo in the living room. Take the iPhone 5 with its 1.3 GHz A6 processor and triple-core PowerVR SGX 543MP3 GPU, outputting console-quality visuals to a virtually 720p screen. No one&#8217;s run meaningful comparison benchmarks between the iPhone 5 and, say, the Xbox 360, but we&#8217;ve seen actual game developers suggest that the iPhone 5 is on par, performance-wise, with Microsoft&#8217;s seven-year-old console (to say nothing of the tricked-out A6X processor in the fourth-generation iPad, which probably surpasses it). (WATCH: 10 Things You Should Know About the New BlackBerry Phones) But wait, didn&#8217;t I just type &#8220;seven-year-old console&#8221;? Isn&#8217;t Microsoft coming out with some gobsmacking new Xbox this year? Perhaps, but a few points: One, Apple has a platform in iOS that it&#8217;s able to update once, sometimes twice a year. That&#8217;s an incalculable advantage in an increasingly fickle consumer landscape. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were fresh back when George W. Bush was working through his second term (and even then, they lagged well behind contemporaneous high-end PCs). Are Microsoft or Sony going to start selling upgraded versions of their consoles every year for $400 to $500 a pop? Unless these rumored new game systems aren&#8217;t set-top consoles at all (hey, anything&#8217;s possible) don&#8217;t bet on it. iOS (and Android) devices, by comparison, have been doubling or tripling their raw crunch power annually. Does anyone think it&#8217;ll take another seven or eight years<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=155890&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ipad-gaming.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Women in Combat Roles: Who Knew Video Games Were So Progressive?</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/01/25/women-in-combat-roles-video-games/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/01/25/women-in-combat-roles-video-games/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:07:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jared Newman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics & Law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xcom]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=155614</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When the Pentagon announced this week that the U.S. military will allow women to fight on the front lines within a few years, I was taken aback – but not because I have any problem with the policy change. To be honest, I just didn&#8217;t realize the military had a rule against women in combat roles to begin with. It&#8217;s probably because I spend too much time soaking up technology news, and not enough time reading about everything else. But maybe some of my dumbfoundedness comes from the fact that I play video games. In the virtual warzones of my favorite hobby, it&#8217;s totally normal for men and women to fight alongside one another. One of my favorite games of 2012 was XCom: Enemy Unknown, in which you command a small squad of super soldiers in a fight against alien invaders. The rank and file of your paramilitary group hail from both sexes, and on the battlefield, there&#8217;s no tactical difference between them. A female soldier can aim a sniper rifle or launch a rocket just as capably as any male squaddie. She&#8217;s entitled to the same promotions as well, and can rise through the ranks just as quickly. XCom is somewhat of an ideal example, but it&#8217;s not the only one. In the Mass Effect series, your protagonist can be male or female, and so can the characters who head into battle with you. In Halo 4, your Spartan soldier can be either gender with exactly the same abilities. Gears of War 3 added female squad members to the mix, where previous games had relegated them to support roles away from the action. The funny thing is that video games aren&#8217;t known for treating women fairly. A lot of times, women serve primarily as eye candy, or damsels in distress, or just glorified secretaries for men doing the real work. That&#8217;s assuming there are any women in the game at all. (And of course, not all war games include women. The Call of Duty series, for instance, is almost<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=155614&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/xcomroster.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Jared Newman</media:title>
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		<title>The Most Satisfying Moment in Assassin&#8217;s Creed III</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/14/the-most-satisfying-moment-in-assassins-creed-iii/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/14/the-most-satisfying-moment-in-assassins-creed-iii/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:45:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=153539</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s not when you stumble upon an unidentified flying [spoiler], or the part where George Washington falls off a [spoiler], or even when Desmond finds out that he&#8217;s really the son of [spoiler] (joking!). No, my most memorable experience in Assassin&#8217;s Creed III so far: when I finally, finally beat the computer at Nine Men&#8217;s Morris (not joking). Oh Nine Men&#8217;s Morris, how you wracked my brain and kept me up through the wee hours last night, trying to eek out a single victory, which is probably why I&#8217;m writing about you and too addle-brained to tackle something serious, like whether John McAfee &#8220;desperately&#8221; needs a toothbrush. Nine Men&#8217;s Morris is a strategy game &#8212; actually a game-within-a-game here. Maybe you&#8217;ve heard of it. Maybe you&#8217;ve even played it. I hadn&#8217;t until Assassin&#8217;s Creed III, where it&#8217;s one of three strategy mini-games you encounter ranging around your frontier/homestead, doing do-gooder deeds for the locals (who in turn bolster your convoy-based economy by producing goods you can sell). The other two old-schools strategy games are Bowls and Fanorona. Bowls, a fairly straightforward ball-tossing game that&#8217;s a little like Horseshoes (only with a movable stake), I beat the second time I tried. Fanorona, a vaguely Checkers-like board game, took some doing, but I eventually stumbled into a win. But Nine Men&#8217;s Morris (or just &#8220;Morris,&#8221; in ACIII parlance &#8212; there&#8217;s apparently a &#8220;Six Men&#8217;s&#8221; version in the game, too) took real think-five-moves-ahead strategizing to win. I must have thrown at least 1,000 quid into a black hole of figuring-out-how-to-play before I scored my first (and only) achievement-unlocking victory against the computer. All the while, my portly Ben Franklin-looking opponent in tri-corner hat would tap his fingers impatiently if I dawdled, or wave his hand across the board, as if to say &#8220;Anytime, fool.&#8221; One thing that got me, early on, was an &#8220;almost&#8221; victory where the computer appeared to cheat to win. If, like me, your first time with Nine Men&#8217;s Morris was ACIII, you know exactly what I&#8217;m talking about &#8212; the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=153539&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Game Time</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/game-time/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ac3-leap-of-faith.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Why a &#8216;Steam Box&#8217; Game Console Would Be a Big Deal</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/12/why-a-steam-box-game-console-would-be-a-big-deal/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/12/why-a-steam-box-game-console-would-be-a-big-deal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jared Newman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[game consoles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steam Box]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[valve]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=153228</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At last, Valve has admitted it: The giant of PC gaming plans to release a living room video game console based on its Steam distribution platform. The idea of a &#8220;Steam Box&#8221; has been somewhat of an obsession for the gaming world lately. Rumors about the product have been circulating for months, and Valve has stirred the pot with its own hints before. It&#8217;s looked to hire industrial designers, released a TV-friendly version of its software called &#8220;Big Picture&#8221; and has gone on record talking about its desire to make innovative hardware. But in a recent interview with Kotaku, Valve head Gabe Newell gave the best indication yet that the company&#8217;s actually working on a console. &#8220;We&#8217;ll do it but we also think other people will as well,&#8221; Newell said, referring to other hardware makers who might release their own living room PCs along with Valve. Newell suggested that Valve&#8217;s hardware may run on a Linux-based operating system, in a &#8220;very controlled environment,&#8221; while users who wanted more flexibility could go with a more general purpose PC. Why would a Steam game console be important? Several reasons: Death to the Disc While the established console players hang onto optical discs for dear life, Steam has already moved to a download-first mentality. And what a utopia it is. No more phone calls to GameStop to see if they have any more copies of that game you neglected to pre-order. No more going to the store at all, for that matter. Lament the lack of a used game trade if you will, but in its place Steam lets its back catalog thrive, with amazing deals on high-quality games&#8211;not just the stuff no one wanted to keep. The sooner this becomes the norm, the better. A Steam game console will only speed up the process. Cloud Nine for PC Gamers Steam has a chance to tie together the worlds of console and PC gaming in ways that Microsoft never did. It already has a cloud infrastructure for saved games, so players can pick up on<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=153228&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/steambigpicture.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Jared Newman</media:title>
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		<title>5 Things I Hope Dark Souls II Doesn&#8217;t Do</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/11/5-things-i-hope-dark-souls-ii-doesnt-do/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/11/5-things-i-hope-dark-souls-ii-doesnt-do/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:00:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=153121</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When Namco Bandai&#8217;s surprise Dark Souls II announcement cleared my inbox Friday night, my first thought was &#8220;Why am I seeing this at the end of the week? At 10:52 p.m. even?&#8221; And then: &#8220;Oh right, that something something game awards show I never watch.&#8221; So Dark Souls II, now definitely happening according to Namco Bandai, though that shouldn&#8217;t come as a surprise. Demon&#8217;s Souls, a PS3-exclusive, was one of those games that emerged from the void like a thunderclap, relied solely on critical plaudits and word-of-mouth to capture the public&#8217;s imagination&#8230;and actually pulled off a sales coup. As EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich put it to GameSpot one month after the game&#8217;s U.S. release: Demon&#8217;s Souls is probably one of the most statistically relevant games released in the gaming world as it helps answer an often asked question: how much would a high quality game sell if it was supported by no mass marketing, released by a little known publisher (no offense to Atlus), and was a new intellectual property. That answer? According to Divnich, &#8220;about 30 percent less than the average in the action/RPG genres.&#8221; Pretty darned good, in other words. Dark Souls sold even better, according to Namco Bandai, moving about 1.2 million copies in the U.S. and Europe by this spring (it was released in early October 2011). Whither Dark Souls II? Japanese developer FromSoftware&#8217;s still behind the wheel, so that&#8217;s good news. Also: It&#8217;s still being developed for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, which if we assume all the rumormongering&#8217;s right about the next Xbox or PlayStation in late 2013, could mean we&#8217;ll see this earlier than expected (to get out ahead of all the next-gen hullabaloo). Here&#8217;s the who-knows-what-it-means news: Instead of Souls series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki calling the shots, Tomohiro Shibuya is helming development this time. That could either be a mediocre thing or a good one, depending. (Then again, Miyazaki was himself responsible for Armored Core 4, so playing the track record game&#8217;s iffy.) The trailer doesn&#8217;t tell us much, though certain scenes may suggest<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=153121&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Review: Android Game Controllers Turn Phones and Tablets into Portable Gaming Systems</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/04/review-android-game-controllers-turn-phones-and-tablets-into-portable-gaming-systems/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/04/review-android-game-controllers-turn-phones-and-tablets-into-portable-gaming-systems/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:45:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jared Newman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Accessories & Peripherals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Smartphones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Controllers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=152697</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Not long ago, serious gamers were practically obligated to turn their noses up at smartphones and tablets. These simple devices, with their touchscreen controls and endless Angry Birds spin-offs, were an affront to the weightier endeavor of shooting aliens and zombies in the face&#8211;or so the thinking went. That&#8217;s not really true any more. Sophisticated mobile processors have enabled exactly the kind of games that once seemed only fit for dedicated gaming handhelds, including quick-reflex platformers, third-person adventures and first-person shooters. Because many of these games don&#8217;t feel right without real thumbsticks and buttons, a handful of peripheral makers have stepped up with their own Bluetooth game controllers, effectively turning smartphones and tablets into portable video game systems. I&#8217;ve been spending some quality gaming time with four of these phone and tablet game controllers: PowerA&#8217;s Moga Mobile Gaming System, SteelSeries&#8217; Free and Nyko&#8217;s PlayPad and PlayPad Pro. They&#8217;re all aimed primarily at users of Android devices, but all except the Moga have a limited amount of iPhone and iPad support, and can work with Macs or Windows PCs as well. Here&#8217;s what I thought of each one: Jared Newman / TIME.com Moga Mobile Gaming System ($50) PowerA&#8217;s Moga has a built-in stand that grips your smartphone in place, adding more of a portable gaming device vibe than the other controllers on this list. It connects via Bluetooth to devices running Android 2.3 or higher, and it has its own app that guides you through the setup process and directs you to supported games. Android tablets are supported as well, but you can&#8217;t attach them directly to the controller. The good: The setup process is easy, and the grip is a clever way to combine the phone and controller into a single unit. The bad: The controller can block access to your phone&#8217;s volume controls. The dual sliding analog nubs, while comfortable to grip, aren&#8217;t as accurate as proper thumbsticks, and the left nub doesn&#8217;t support full 360-degree motion in some games. Also, there&#8217;s no D-Pad, and the device relies on<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=152697&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Accessories &amp; Peripherals</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/gadgets/accessories-peripherals/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/androidgamecontrollers.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Jared Newman</media:title>
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		<title>9 Wishes for Microsoft&#8217;s Next Xbox, Whatever It&#8217;s Called</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/03/9-wishes-for-microsofts-next-xbox-whatever-its-called/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/12/03/9-wishes-for-microsofts-next-xbox-whatever-its-called/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:00:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Home Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=152625</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Citing the usual sources-who-shall-remain-nameless, Bloomberg reports what everyone&#8217;s been assuming all year &#8212; that Microsoft&#8216;s going to launch its next game system sometime in late 2013. All that seems left to deduce, then, is when Microsoft&#8217;s going to lift the curtain: at the E3 video games expo in June, or a Microsoft-specific event. I was hoping they&#8217;d wait another year or two, frankly, since nothing about the Xbox 360 feels dated to me, but assuming 2013&#8242;s now inevitable, here&#8217;s what I&#8217;d like to see a new Xbox-whatever-it&#8217;s-called embrace. Don&#8217;t make graphics the selling point. I don&#8217;t care about better graphics. Not the way I used to, back when all the cool kids had 3dfx video cards and pass-through cables, and ran special executables to make Quake and Tomb Raider look extra-nifty on PCs. You can make the argument that Skyrim and Oblivion were just prettier versions of Morrowind, that Grand Theft Auto IV was an easier-on-the-eyes repeat of Grand Theft Auto III, that BioShock was a mass-market version of System Shock and that both Halo 3 and Halo 4 were Halo re-skinned (settle down, I liked Skyrim, GTA IV, BioShock and those two Halos plenty). I&#8217;m just saying that if what&#8217;s next amounts to Call of Duty: Photo Ops or The Graphically Mind-Blowing Scrolls or Halo&#8217;s Awesome New Polygon Parade, well, that hamster wheel&#8217;s getting pretty tiresome, isn&#8217;t it? For all the guff we give the Wii about its last-gen hardware, some of the most interesting games this generation &#8212; hello Super Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade Chronicles, Metroid Prime 3, The Last Story and Zelda: Skyward Sword &#8211; are on Nintendo&#8217;s no-one-plays-it/can&#8217;t-do-HD/still-better-selling-overall console. Besides, I&#8217;m ready for something like Call of Duty: Not Tactically Brain-Dead at this point, aren&#8217;t you? Don&#8217;t over-think Xbox LIVE. My favorite thing about the Xbox 360 isn&#8217;t the games, it&#8217;s the game-space they live in: the colored-tile interface, the simple but efficient friend system, the achievement hunt and gamer score overlay, Xbox LIVE Arcade and Xbox LIVE Marketplace&#8217;s top-notch indie fare. Whatever&#8217;s next still has to live in 1080p-land, just like the Xbox 360 (it&#8217;ll be awhile before we&#8217;re running ultra-HD TVs,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=152625&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/xbox-360.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Take a Peek at What&#8217;s Next from Halo Creator Bungie</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/29/take-a-peek-at-whats-next-from-halo-creator-bungie/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/29/take-a-peek-at-whats-next-from-halo-creator-bungie/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:30:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=152189</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You know, Bungie, right? The guys who made Halo? Surely you haven&#8217;t forgotten. I mean, it has been five years since they split from Microsoft, two-and-a-half since they signed a 10-year publishing contract with Activision Blizzard and their last big game &#8212; Halo: Reach &#8212; came out back in September 2010. Still, they&#8217;ve been anything but idle, quietly soldiering away as an independent studio on their next big thing for new publishing partner Activision Blizzard. Because information about the project surfaced during Activision&#8217;s legal wrangle with former Infinity Ward captains Jason West and Vince Zampella, we know that it is, or was at some point codenamed &#8220;Destiny.&#8221; We&#8217;ve heard that it&#8217;ll initially be exclusive to the Xbox platform (whether the 360 or whatever&#8217;s next), that it might or might not be an MMO, that it&#8217;s intended to be the first in a series &#8212; a series that&#8217;ll eventually go multiplatform &#8212; and that installment numero uno arrives sometime in late 2013. And now we have an official wink from Bungie. That&#8217;s it up top, the concept art shot of a vaguely Helghast-like soldier giving us the evil eye (or would that be a Chimera-like four?), tromping along in some craggy, arctic alien-scape, a giant harnessed presumably biological creature trundling along in the background with what looks like a howitzer strapped to its back. Here&#8217;s what the company wrote on its website accompanying the picture: Go ahead. Take a peek. It’s alright. We weren&#8217;t quite ready, but we will be soon, and we can’t wait to finally show you what we&#8217;ve really been up to. Stick around, we haven’t even started yet. The artwork and a few story details originally leaked to IGN. Surprisingly, Bungie confirmed the art and document were indeed its own (according to IGN) and that the material was prepared by an advertising agency. Here&#8217;s the game overview snippet IGN posted from the document: Our story begins seven hundred years from now in the Last City on Earth, in a Solar System littered with the ruins of man’s Golden Age. A massive, mysterious alien<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=152189&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/bungie-third-time.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Peter Molyneux&#8217;s Curiosity: Tedium Cubed</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/27/peter-molyneuxs-curiosity-tedium-cubed/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/27/peter-molyneuxs-curiosity-tedium-cubed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:30:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=151950</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Curiosity killed the cat, or at the very least distracted it, and like that proverbial animal, I&#8217;ve been pawing at something frivolous, something you might say was as pointless as playing the lottery: poking a giant cube (or a really tiny pocket-sized one, depending on your perspective). Instead of spending cash, I&#8217;ve spent time, which to me is worth more than money, so that&#8217;s saying something. Minutes. Hours. Days and weeks, if I soldier on. I could be reading a book, or watching TV, or going for a run, or, you know, taking an arrow to the knee in Skyrim. Instead, I&#8217;m chipping away at a virtual cube on my iPhone&#8217;s screen, tapping strange patterns on Gorilla Glass, my finger like a chisel or the pointy end of a pick. Thank (or blame) Peter Molyneux, the 53-year-old game designer (and Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) who brought us stuff like Populous, Black &#38; White and Fable, a.k.a. the guy who also spawned an entire conversational sub-genre wherein gamers poke fun at luminaries who sometimes confuse enthusiastically chatting about big ideas with actually pulling them off. Which brings us to Curiosity &#8212; What&#8217;s Inside the Cube?, Molyneux&#8217;s first project since exiting Lionhead and founding startup 22Cans last March. It&#8217;s either a game, a waste of time, a social experiment or all of the above, depending who you talk to. It&#8217;s also completely free, and the only ads you&#8217;ll endure are the ones that occasionally grace the sides of the cube itself. &#8220;Is the power of curiosity enough to unite the world in solving one mystery?&#8221; teases the app description (as if we didn&#8217;t already know the answer &#8212; hello still-confused-about-Lost!). &#8220;Join thousands of people worldwide to simultaneously chip away at a giant Cube to discover the life-changing secret buried inside.&#8221; That&#8217;s the goal, then: to get to the final layer and be the last person to tap the very last piece of a cube made up of billions. Whoever does so wins&#8230;well, something. 22Cans and Molyneux won&#8217;t say what<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=151950&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/27/peter-molyneuxs-curiosity-tedium-cubed/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Game Time</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/game-time/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/curiosity-cube.png?w=202</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Too Late to Grab a Wii U on Black Friday? Not According to Nintendo</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/21/too-late-to-grab-a-wii-u-on-black-friday-not-according-to-nintendo/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/21/too-late-to-grab-a-wii-u-on-black-friday-not-according-to-nintendo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=151805</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For all the racket about the Wii U being sold out, it really happened months ago, when stores ran through their preorder allotment then slammed the door shut. A few retailers held stock back for the launch, last Sunday, and maybe you even snatched something from that handful, standing in line. If so, consider yourself lucky, friend, because the ship has definitely sailed. I poked around eBay this morning and turned up over 5,000 active listings for Nintendo&#8217;s new console. Some are still trying to sell the thing for $2,000 to $3,000 (or &#8220;best offer&#8221; — the highest-priced listing shows 26 offers since Nov. 6, all of them declined). (MORE: Nintendo Wii U Review: A Tale of Two Screens) But on average, it looks like eBay&#8217;s prices are surprisingly not insane, with the $350, 32-GB Deluxe model going for just over $400. I&#8217;m also not seeing sellers try to make that up by charging nonsense shipping fees. The only downer buying this way, if you&#8217;re desperate, is that you&#8217;ll have to wait until at least Friday, and that&#8217;s assuming you&#8217;re willing to pay for expedited shipping and your seller&#8217;s on the ball about dispatching the system today. Will Nintendo replenish stock in time for Black Friday? Looks like it, according to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, who promised as much during a CNBC spot Monday morning. &#8220;This is our big new innovation that we launched yesterday,&#8221; says Fils-Aime in the video, adding that the system is &#8220;already well sold through in retail.&#8221; &#8220;[There's] not a lot of stock left until we start replenishing in a couple days&#8217; time,&#8221; he continues, reassuring that the company will have more units to sell between now and Christmas and also that &#8220;we&#8217;ll have more available on Black Friday in retail locations.&#8221; I&#8217;m not sure how much help a system tracker&#8217;s going to be at this point, much less how well any of these actually work. Nowinstock.net reports the Wii U popped up in a few places as recently as yesterday but currently shows nothing available. Another tracker, zooLert, claims<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=151805&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Nintendo</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/nintendo/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wii-u-basic.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Wii U Review Redux: Nintendo Adds Miiverse, Netflix, eShop and More</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/19/wii-u-review-redux-nintendo-adds-miiverse-netflix-eshop-and-more/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/19/wii-u-review-redux-nintendo-adds-miiverse-netflix-eshop-and-more/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:13:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews & Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=151634</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Until Sunday, my Wii U&#8217;s lobby screen came up population: me &#8212; a skinny little guy in a red wool cap and glasses, wandering in a white void, mumbling stuff like &#8220;Been playing NintendoLand&#8221; as effervescent electronica grooved in the background. Nintendo&#8217;s launch day system update ended my seclusion (if not my word balloon soliloquies), dispatching a full company of Miis in multicolored clothing to invade my lobby-space. They scampered across the screen after the system update finished, congregating in little clusters beneath clickable, hovering icons designed to highlight key Wii U features. And then they started talking. &#8220;Connect to the Internet, and play a game with your friends!&#8221; said one, waving its little ball-hand. &#8220;What should I play today?&#8221; asked another, facing no one in particular. &#8220;You never know what you&#8217;ll find until you go online and see!&#8221; said a third, smiling and doing a little victory dance. Of course they&#8217;re just ersatz pals &#8212; cute little Nintendo robots designed to plug the system&#8217;s features and warm up the joint until I&#8217;m able to add actual friends of my own. (MORE: Nintendo Wii U Review: A Tale of Two Screens) I was worried even these fake friends wouldn&#8217;t make it by Sunday. The Wii U&#8217;s online features were supposed to be ready a while ago, but Nintendo kept pushing the rollout back, right up to launch. My review unit could play games last week and that&#8217;s it. Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, Miiverse, Internet browsing, Amazon Instant Video, Nintendo eShop &#8212; all unavailable until Nintendo deployed a massive zero-day update on Sunday that added them. Well, some of them anyway. Netflix, Miiverse, Internet browsing and Nintendo eShop are working at this point, but Hulu Plus, YouTube and Amazon Instant Video are missing in action. Tap their icons in the Wii U&#8217;s menu screen and you&#8217;ll see a note saying you need a software update &#8212; an update that&#8217;s coming no one knows when. What about TVii? Nintendo&#8217;s ballyhooed interactive live TV service was supposed to be one of the console&#8217;s crown jewels,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=151634&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wii-u-miiverse.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Nintendo Wii U Review: A Tale of Two Screens</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/18/nintendo-wii-u-review-a-tale-of-two-screens/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/18/nintendo-wii-u-review-a-tale-of-two-screens/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 18 Nov 2012 05:01:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews & Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=151440</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a theory about Nintendo that goes something like this: Nintendo has the best IP in video gaming, the characters with the highest Q score. Mario, Wario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Pokémon, you name it. Add up all the Mario-themed games alone and you&#8217;ve got the bestselling video game franchise of all time. But that&#8217;s just part of the equation &#8212; call it the &#8220;apps&#8221; half, the one where leaping over barrels, butt-stomping bad guys and lighting torches to open doors is lingua franca in gaming-dom. The other half involves the way you interact with Nintendo&#8217;s characters, settings and design tropes. Call it the &#8220;interface&#8221; half. If you have an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, take a look at the controllers. We have Nintendo to thank for popularizing what&#8217;s there: the four-way d-pad (the Nintendo Entertainment System), the diamond configuration face buttons (the Super Nintendo), the thumbstick employed to navigate 3D worlds, trigger buttons and force feedback system (the Nintendo 64). For all the talk about missed opportunities &#8212; that Nintendo ought to take Mario and Co. multiplatform &#8212; you could argue Nintendo wouldn&#8217;t be Nintendo without its focus on how we play, as much as what we play. (MORE: Nintendo TVii: The Next Big Thing Isn’t Here Yet) Which brings us to the Wii U, Nintendo&#8217;s attempt to sneak what it calls &#8220;asymmetric gaming&#8221; &#8212; playing the same game from different perspectives &#8212; into our living rooms. Out of the box, the system doesn&#8217;t look so different &#8212; a 3.5-pound base station that could pass for a slightly longer, curvier Wii. Flip it around and you&#8217;ll spot its new HDMI port (better late than never). Plug in the Wii-style sensor bar, dust off your old Wii Remote or Balance Board and you&#8217;ll find everything syncs and works just as it did before. Slide a copy of New Super Mario Bros. U into the slot-load optical drive and you&#8217;ll discover what it&#8217;s like to play a Mario sidescroller in stunning high-definition for the very first time. But the showpiece this time<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=151440&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wii-u-nintendo.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Nintendo Wii U: 15 Points to Consider Before Buying One</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/16/nintendo-wii-u-15-points-to-consider-before-buying-one/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/16/nintendo-wii-u-15-points-to-consider-before-buying-one/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:45:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews & Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=151292</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thinking about picking up a Wii U this Sunday, Nov. 18, when it goes on sale? Already have one preordered? Maybe you&#8217;re planning to brave the lines in hopes of lucking out? It&#8217;s not too late to change your mind, one way or the other. I&#8217;ve had a Wii U for the past week, and while I&#8217;m not allowed to tell you what I think about the system overall until Sunday, I&#8217;ve pulled together a list of points worth considering before you pull the trigger. It&#8217;s pre-sold out, everywhere. Really. Visit the website of any major retailer that carries video games and you&#8217;ll find the Wii U is either long gone or wasn&#8217;t being pre-sold in the first place. The only way to guarantee a system, day one, is to purchase through an auction site like eBay or through retailers that allow third-party sales like Amazon. It&#8217;s likely you&#8217;ll pay dearly if you do, of course &#8212; from $400 or $500 to upwards of $3,000. (MORE: Watch Out, Here Come the Wii U Vultures (Is Anyone Not Sold Out of the Wii U?)) You can always stand in line. Many retailers held units back to have on hand, day one, or simply didn&#8217;t offer pre-sales. You&#8217;ll want to check with your local stores for their launch day plans, but this is arguably the best route to nab a Wii U at launch if you didn&#8217;t preorder and don&#8217;t want to pay scalper prices. Nintendo says it should have plenty to go around. Not on day one, but Nintendo has publicly committed to having more Wii U units in stores during the first week than it did for the Wii six years ago, and it&#8217;s doubled down on that claim by stating it&#8217;ll replenish systems &#8220;much more frequently&#8221; during the holiday than it did for the Wii. The Wii U isn&#8217;t just a Wii plus a DS. It may look like a Wii plus a DS, and it clearly shares second-screen DNA with the DS, but it&#8217;s not a DS. The DS is<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=151292&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/nintendowiiu2.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Nintendo Wii U</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>Look at Your Wii U, Now Back to Me, Now Back to Your Wii U (I&#8217;m on a Horse!)</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/13/look-at-your-wii-u-now-back-to-me-now-back-to-your-wii-u-im-on-a-horse/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/13/look-at-your-wii-u-now-back-to-me-now-back-to-your-wii-u-im-on-a-horse/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:00:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews & Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=150935</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Knowing where to look is important for all kinds of reasons. I&#8217;m rediscovering this as my 3-month-old son learns that his neck is for more than just bobbling around, that he can turn it left or right to feed the vision center. The pleasure he takes in doing so is unmistakable as I watch him pulling at the corners of his mouth, turning that mouth into an O and conjuring broad smiles when he sees something he recognizes. A toy. A face. Mom. Dad. I can make it happen on command now, using my face as a lure, snapping my fingers or singing, saying the sort of stuff you say in parentese to 3-month-olds: &#8220;Over here, kiddo!&#8221; and &#8220;What&#8217;s that?&#8221; and &#8220;Is Daddy silly?&#8221; The Wii U, which arrived last week and then merged with my entertainment center like the Spider-Man symbiote, is doing something like this to me, teaching me how to feed my own vision center using cues from multiple sources. It sounds radical — two screens working in tandem like this, competing for your attention — and it kind of is, though not in the sense that it&#8217;s never been done before. Remember these? Sega&#8217;s Dreamcast offered auxiliary-screen gaming with its pint-size Visual Memory Units, which could either act as standalone handhelds or provide supplemental information during a Dreamcast game. Sony took a stab at the concept with its PlayStation-based PocketStation, which was functionally similar to the Dreamcast&#8217;s VMUs. PC owners have, of course, been multiscreen gaming for decades. And Nintendo experimented with secondary-screen gaming during the GameCube&#8217;s tenure, allowing you to connect a Game Boy Advance to the console and download minigames or use the GBA as a supplemental screen. In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, for instance, multiple players with GBAs could connect to a GameCube, using the GBAs as controllers and their GBA screens to access personal status menus. But the Wii U is the first game system to make the secondary screen the center of attention, placing a crisp 6.2-in., 854-x-480-pixel display in the middle of the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=150935&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Game Time</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/game-time/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wii-u-mario-chase.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Xbox Surface: Does a Standalone Gaming Tablet Make Sense?</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/08/xbox-surface-does-a-standalone-gaming-tablet-make-sense/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/08/xbox-surface-does-a-standalone-gaming-tablet-make-sense/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:00:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rumors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=150715</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Verge recently restoked a rumor started in June. Its claim, five months ago, was that Microsoft was building a 7-inch gaming tablet dubbed &#8220;Xbox Surface.&#8221; You&#8217;ll recall Microsoft unveiled its Surface (not &#8220;Xbox&#8221;) tablet on June 18, and it finally arrived a few weeks ago on Oct. 26. My colleague Harry McCracken, who reviewed it, called it &#8220;impressive&#8221; and its interface &#8220;inventive,&#8221; though noted its chief deficiency, as with nearly all fledgling platforms, was a lack of apps. According to the June Verge story, which included a purportedly leaked &#8220;partial&#8221; tech-spec sheet, Xbox Surface would be a standalone 7-inch gaming tablet with an ARM-processor, 288 MB of memory and a 1280 x 720 resolution display, all paired with a base station that would stream content wirelessly, invoking comparisons to Nintendo&#8217;s forthcoming Wii U. Inside that base station, according to the document: dual PowerPC processors, 5 GB of memory, a 250 GB hard drive, a custom AMD graphics processor, an Ethernet port, HDMI and component video, four USB ports, optical audio and support for up to four wireless game controllers. All that, and you&#8217;d be able to output video from the base station at up to 1440p, or 2640 x 1440 pixels &#8212; higher than standard 720p or 1080p HDTVs as well as most mid-sized desktop computer monitors topping out at 1920 x 1200. Was this actually the next big gaming idea from Microsoft? Could the so-called Xbox Surface actually be the next Xbox? Assuming the document wasn&#8217;t a hoax &#8212; and The Verge had no evidence to suggest it was or wasn&#8217;t &#8212; either a console followup or console tie-in seemed likely. Microsoft&#8217;s official consumer tablet is Surface, after all. The device outlined in the document seemed more like a Wii U analogue, though the apparent lack of thumb-sticks or other buttons suggested a shift toward something that looked more like a mainstream tablet. The Verge wondered whether Xbox Surface would be part of Microsoft&#8217;s big June surprise. It wasn&#8217;t, and with Surface officially the story, the idea of a separate gaming tablet sounded implausible. But<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=150715&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Rumors</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/rumors/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/microsoft-surface.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Microsoft tablet PC Surface is shown at the launch event of Windows 8 operating system in New York</media:title>
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		<title>Why Dying Is a Strategy in Halo 4 (and You Should Play on Legendary)</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/06/why-dying-is-a-strategy-in-halo-4-and-you-should-play-on-legendary/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/06/why-dying-is-a-strategy-in-halo-4-and-you-should-play-on-legendary/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2012 14:00:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews & Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TIME Interviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=150446</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the final installment of my three-part Halo 4 interview series with creative director Josh Holmes, we explore the game&#8217;s refined tactics and deadly new enemies, illumination through death, the new episodic content and why Microsoft isn&#8217;t charging for it, and how Master Chief is still the man despite lagging technologically behind Halo 4&#8216;s new breed of Spartan super-soldiers. The alien Covenant in Halo 4 still feel very much like the Covenant, but the new enemy, the Prometheans, as promised, are playing a very different tactical game. What inspired their tactical design? That was one of the biggest bets we decided to make almost from the very beginning. We knew players had been fighting the Covenant for a decade &#8212; more than a decade by the time the game came out. With familiarity comes predictability, and we wanted something that would breathe new life into the Halo sandbox and really challenge players in new and exciting ways. The obvious addition was a new class of enemies. That really made sense as we were honing in on wanting to explore Forerunner culture and going to a new location that would be the core of much of our story. That led us to explore Forerunner enemies. From the beginning, one of the concepts that resonated with the design team was the idea that the enemies would be collaborative, that they would represent a certain level of challenge individually but when you put them together, they would complement one another on the battlefield. That was a core concept, and we started out prototyping simple behaviors, like the Watchers&#8217; ability to shield other enemies. Then we added the Watchers&#8217; ability to resurrect the Knight. And we looked at the Knight and the different ways it could move around the battlefield to dramatically shift your focus as a player. Those core behavioral components stuck from the beginning, and we just kept iterating and iterating. We knew we had to get it right, to make them feel very different from the Covenant, yet still feel like<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=150446&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>TIME Interviews</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/time-interviews/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/halo-4-promethean-knight.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Ico Influenced Chief-Cortana Bond in Halo 4, Says Director</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/05/ico-influenced-chief-cortana-bond-in-halo-4-says-director/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/11/05/ico-influenced-chief-cortana-bond-in-halo-4-says-director/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:00:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Game Time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews & Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TIME Interviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=150329</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Continuing my three-part interview series with Josh Holmes, Halo 4&#8216;s creative director, we delve into why the traditionally taciturn Master Chief is suddenly so chatty, the similarities between Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved, the refined, almost artful look of the game and the influence of Fumito Ueda&#8217;s contemplative puzzler Ico on the Chief-Cortana dynamic. Let&#8217;s talk about talking in games. Master Chief talks considerably more in Halo 4 than in prior games, which is interesting, because he&#8217;s traditionally this stoic, faceless protagonist &#8212; the &#8220;empty vessel&#8221; into which you&#8217;re supposed to pour yourself. I&#8217;ve never been a fan of the empty vessel approach, so I&#8217;m curious what drove the design choice here. Why the shift to a more conversational Chief in Halo 4? It&#8217;s a really controversial topic when it comes to first-person games, because there are probably as many people who feel exactly the way you do, where the silent protagonist starts to destroy that sense of immersion and takes away from the storytelling. Then you have the people who feel that when a character speaks too much and is speaking for them, that destroys their connection. So it&#8217;s a fine line you&#8217;re walking, and the way that I described it to the team with Halo, I think there&#8217;s a spectrum. There&#8217;s the pure empty vessel at one side of the spectrum, say Gordon Freeman [the protagonist in Half-Life 2], who never speaks and you know very little about him whatsoever in terms of backstory. On the other side of the spectrum you have a very well-defined character, say Nathan Drake from Uncharted who has a complete developed personality of his own and is extremely expressive in every scene throughout the game. What we were striving for with Master Chief in Halo 4 was right in the middle, and I describe it as a marriage of player and protagonist. There has to be enough space within the character for you to feel you can inhabit it as a player. And also, just from the standpoint of personality, Chief is a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=150329&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>TIME Interviews</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/time-interviews/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/halo-4-cortana.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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