iGame Radio

Last week was Macworld, the annual pilgrimage for Mac geeks to travel to San Francisco and pay homage to the tech god that is Apple and its products. This year’s Macworld saw a decrease in numbers of attendees compared to past Macworlds in which Apple participated. But the almost 25,000 who walked the Expo floor, attended the over 100 educational sessions, and visited the over 250 exhibitors was still slightly more than last year’s Macworld, proving that Macworld isn’t going away any time soon.

From a gamer perspective, Macworld did not offer a huge amount for the Mac or iOS gamer. Gone are the days when row upon row of Macs were LAN’d together for daily game tournaments, circled by game developers and publishers, big and small. And to be fair those days began to decline before Apple stopped attending Macworld. It was a slow decline over the years, and difficult to determine really where the true source of it began.

But despite that, Mac and iOS developers and publishers were there, and I had the opportunity to see them and talk with them. Read more…

The first game involving the Wikileaks site has hit the App Store. Super Boise, the creators of “Crisis in the Gulf,” a game about the gulf oil spill, have announced the release of their latest social commentary game…Wikileak Defender.

The premise of the game is that the government has failed to stop Wikileaks from releasing hundreds of thousands of classified documents. As a measure of last resort, the government has called in the most thorough defenders our country has to offer… the TSA! Now, right there our suspension of disbelief has been totaled, but there’s more. You play as the TSA agent whose job it is to prevent the leaked diplomatic cables from getting onto the internet, where they will cause unforeseeable damage to America’s reputation. You do this by swiping away the leaks. And here we thought all TSA agents had to do was feel you up!

The game includes four different play modes, universal support for iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad, lederboard and achievement support through Game Center, and daily polls on various Wikileaks topics. The polls are also use to ask about what features you would like to see in future updates.

Wikileak Defender is $0.99, and there is a Wikileak Defender Lite for those who want to try it out.

via Appmodo

Yesterday the incursion began. Droves of capsuleers are being shot down in the wake of the first attack by Sansha Nation ships in New Eden. Thus begins the final stage of EVE Online: Incursion, this winter’s free expansion by CCP.

To mark the occasion, CONCORD, the coalition-based security force of EVE Online, released a video detailing the threat for all pilots. To join in the battle, you can download EVE Online and try it out for a 14 day trial, if you can survive it, and join the hundreds of thousands of others who play the game, breaking their Peak Concurrent User record last Sunday at 63,170 players in one world space (EVE Online is not a sharded world).

Tomorrow starts our week of Macworld 2011 mania! We’ll be posting pictures, blog posts, and podcasts from the show floor all week. So be sure to hit the Facebook page and website each day to get the latest cool info fresh from Macworld. And if you have anything in particular that you want to know about, just post a comment here and we’ll do our best to accommodate your needs.

The deadline for the App Store 10 Billion Countdown Contest is tonight. Just guess on the iGame Radio Facebook page when the countdown will be over, and whomever is closest to the actual time will be the winner!

The winner will get a special edition package of Bejeweled 3, including Bejeweled 3 for the Mac, a Bejeweled 3 Strategy Guide, and a custom mouse pad. All decisions by iGame Radio are final. Have a great weekend!

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Peter Cohen of The Loop talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. Like a phoenix from the ashes, GarageGames announced this week that it has risen again. Omaha and Peter discuss the news and what impact it might have on competitors Unity and Adobe.
• The Verizon iPhone rumor has become reality, but what impact will it have on iOS game developers and gamers alike?
• Valve announced some interesting cross-platform features for Portal 2 for the PS3, including every PS3 customer gets a free copy of the Mac/PC version.
• Konami announced a takeover of Hudson, which may result in Hudson’s entire identity disappearing. Omaha and Peter discuss what this might mean for the close-knit Hudson gaming community and whether this is becoming a trend in the iOS game industry.
• Macworld Expo is upon us! But can you expect a lot of game-related stuff happening there?
• Omaha talks about the iGame Radio poll, and Omaha and Peter talk about games they’ve played and games that have been released.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Zach Young for featuring music from The Great Tree.
• Tomas Dvorak for featuring music from Machinarium.

Happy Belated Trogday to you all. Yeah, I missed the day, but Telltale Games didn’t. And in celebration, they have released Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People for the Mac. Woot!

Based on the character Strong Bad from the HomestarRunner site, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People is now available for just $14.95 for all five episodes, a 50% off deal. The deal ends today, so you’d better pick it up now or risk become the victim of Trogdor the Burninator.

Ready to listen to some rockin’ game tunez? Like free stuff? Then you are ready to download Digital Eel’s Indie game soundtrack collection VooDoo Interface.

This collection of favorite music moments from Digital Eel history features soundtrack music from Brainpipe, Dr. Blob’s Organism (available for FREE!), Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, Digital Eel’s Big Box of Blox (also available for FREE!) and a special guest game.

All music is available in all popular formats, including MP3, FLAC, etc. Though the VooDoo Interface soundtrack is ostensibly free, Digital Eel is looking for donations and is hoping that you will be willing to drop a few pennies (dollars) into the jar for them. The music is awesome, and well worth a few bucks. You can listen to some of the tracks for free before making a decision, too.

Virtual Programming has announced the release of the Infinite War Battle Pack DLC for the RTS Supreme Commander 2. Infinite War features eight new maps, an army of new units, and a variety of research boosts and upgrades for all three factions within the game.

Infinite War’s eight new maps include everything from the two-player QAI Labs, located high above the surface of Pollux IV, to the eight-player free-for-all Tourneydome (eight commanders enter, one commander leaves). Among the new units are a host of experimentals and stealthy units such as the Illuminate Sniper Bot and the Cybran Air Scout. The research improvements decrease production times, give units new capabilities, and more.

System Requirements include:

• Mac OS 10.6.3 or higher
• Intel CPU, 2.2 GHz or faster
• 1 GB RAM
• GeForce 8600, Radeon 2400HD or newer, 256 MB
• 5 GB Hard Disk space
• Internet connection
• Steam for Mac
• Requires Supreme Commander 2 to run

Infinite War is available as a digital download only from the Virtual Programming Deliver2Mac site for $9.95, £6.95, or €9.95.

UPDATE: The patch notes from the previous 1.0.0 release made mention of Fixed and resizeable Windowed-modes not working in the Mac. Those still seem to be disabled, but anti-aliasing has been enabled now for Snow Leopard users only (disabled for Leopard because of client start-up problems).

CCP, developers of EVE Online, has released the final stage of the free Incursion expansion for EVE Online. Incursion 1.1 includes the Sansha Incursion/PVE play and the long-awaited Incarna Character Creator.

The Sansha Incursion is both a main storyline addition as well as a new PVE aspect to the game. Sansha Kuvakei was a messiah of a Nation, bent on creating a Utopia. Until everyone found out that he was creating cybernetic “True Slaves” by melding man and machine. The last Alliance of Empires supposedly wiped him, and his nation, out of existence. Now raids by Sansha Nation ships and claims that “The Master” still lives cast doubt upon this belief.

The PVE aspect means random as well as purposeful encounters with NPC characters in-space at the level of large-scale encounters. The focus will shift from awards for knocking off NPCs to completing objectives. The idea is to tie all of those objectives into the larger picture of the Sansha incursions.

Incursion 1.1 also includes the Incarna Character Creator, a character creation tool for creating highly detailed and individualized characters. This tool alone could end up sucking hours of your time away from your day.