iGame Radio

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. InstantAction is closing its doors, and looking for a buyer for Torque. What does that mean for developers using the Torque engine, and gamers alike? Omaha and Corey discuss the issue in detail.
• iPad iOS 4.2 is *still* not out…oops, time for Corey to rant. What, you mean December is the end of Fall???
• A bunch of great games have been released or announced this week! Feral Interactive announced Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition. Majesty 2 by Virtual Programming was released (but no Kingmaker as originally announced). The GTA Trilogy was released for the Mac by Transgaming. And id Software released their Rage game for the iPhone.
• EA’s purchase of Chillingo has had some interesting fallout, including comments by developer Secret Exit about publisher branding of a game leaving out the developer. What does this mean about game choices? Should developers choose publishers based on what gamers like about them?
• Omaha talks about the iGame Radio poll, and Omaha and Corey talk about games they’ve played.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Matt Jarvis for featuring music from Osmos.
• Bobby “Glorian” Slavov and Victor Stoyanov for featuring music from Eschalon: Book 1.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), in collaboration with TransGaming, today released Free Realms for the Mac. This free MMOG will allow both PC and Mac gamers to play on the same game servers.

Free Realms is an online, interactive virtual world that offers you adventures in the form of quests, activities and minigames. You can engage in ninja fighting, a demolition derby, raising pets, cooking, questing, and more. You can choose from a wide variety of characters to play and customize them. There is also a trading game embedded within the game that you can collect, both within the game and in real-time.

Free Realms players on the Mac will experience consistent controls and functionality and are integrated on the same game servers as PC players. Mac users also have full access to the Marketplace and community forums. Basic free accounts as well as premium accounts are available.

Free Realms offers a safe environment to play and includes parental controls. Free Realms is rated E10+ by the ESRB. Go to Free Realms for more information or to download the installer.

Back in July, we found out that Ubisoft was bringing Assassin’s Creed 2 to the Mac. So, of course, it’s no surprise when yesterday Transgaming announced Assassin’s Creed 2 for the Mac is available for purchase.

Assassin’s Creed 2 sits players in the role of an assassin in the time of the Italian Renaissance in an open world environment with non-linear gameplay. Assassin’s Creed 2 is an epic story of family, vengeance and conspiracy set in the pristine, yet brutal, backdrop of Renaissance Italy. New hero Ezio befriends Leonardo da Vinci, takes on Florence’s most powerful families and ventures throughout the canals of Venice where he learns to become a master assassin.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is rated M, and is available at the GameTreeOnline website today for $34.99.

Transgaming also announced two DLC packs for Settlers 7. The first DLC pack consists of a map pack with 3 maps: Battle of Tanholm, Tempest Taiga, and Fiery Chasm. The second DLC pack consists of 3 new multiplayer maps as well as new challenges. The combined packs are $5.99 and can be downloaded off of the GameTreeOnline website.

Sony Online Entertainment announced today that Free Realms for the Mac is currently in development. Scheduled to release later this fall, Free Realms for the Mac is being ported via Transgaming’s Cider technology.

Free Realms is an online, interactive virtual world that offers you adventures in the form of quests, activities and minigames. You can engage in ninja fighting, a demolition derby, raising pets, cooking, questing, and more. You can choose from a wide variety of characters to play and customize them. There is also a trading game embedded within the game that you can collect, both within the game and in real-time.

Free Realms players on the Mac will experience consistent controls and functionality and will be integrated on the same game servers as Windows players. Mac users will also have full access to the existing Marketplace and community forums. Basic free accounts as well as premium accounts are available.

Free Realms also offers a safe environment to play and includes parental controls. Free Realms is rated E10+ by the ESRB.

Go to Free Realms for more information.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Corey Tamas of MacGamer gives a review of GodFinger for the iPhone by ngmoco. Use your finger to be god. I mean, what else would you use your finger for? Make charming critters worship you, then roast them when you had a bad day. All for free!
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about the iPhone 4 first impressions. Despite over 1.7 million iPhones sold in 1.5 weeks, only 48 apps have been updated for iOS4. What gives? Omaha and Corey talk about what that means. Also, what do people think about the gyroscope, multitasking, and retina display so far?
• OnLive is live. But Omaha can’t connect. Find out why.
• Feral Interactive has announced a teaser for their next game announcement, and Omaha thinks she knows what it is.
• Virtual Programming reissued X3: Reunion as a native Mac port because they didn’t feel the Cider was “good enough”. Omaha and Corey talk about what the means, and whether this is the start of a trend.
• Contests! More contests than you can shake a crashed iPhone at!

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Matt Jarvis for featuring music from Osmos.
• Bobby “Glorian” Slavov and Victor Stoyanov for featuring music from Eschalon: Book 1.

Transgaming announced today the immediate availability of Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom for download from it’s GameTreeOnline.com site. Settlers 7 is the long-awaited sequel to the award-winning strategy game, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire, both published for the PC by Ubisoft. The game was brought to the Mac using Transgaming’s Cider Portability Engine and is enjoying a simultaneous release with the PC version.

Settlers 7 follows similar gameplay as previous games in the series, utilizing RTS and city-building tools to develop an entire kingdom from a village. The player has the choice of utilizing one of three paths of development for victory: Military, Science, and Trade. The game includes more than twelve different AI profiles with unique behaviors. One can also utilize the new online multiplayer mode in which players can both compete and co-operate with one another. Players can also generate and share content throughout the game.

Settlers 7 is available for $49.99 via both download and retail chains. An exclusive Gold/Collector Edition that is only available via download can also be purchased for $59.99. In addition to the standard gameplay, the Gold edition includes exclusive unlockable content, including one exclusive map, the original soundtrack of the game and additional castle forge elements for city customization.

The minimum system requirements include Mac OS 10.6.3…which has not even been released yet (if you are amongst the “lucky” ones to be testing out the beta, you may, or may not, want to actually try the game right now). Apple has been working on 10.6.3 since November of 2009, and there is no date at this time for when the update will be released.

Minimum System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Snow Leopard Only)
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (or better)
• 2GB RAM or more
• 8GB HDD or more
• Video card: ATI Radeon 2600+, Nvidia GeForce 8600+ with 256 VRAM+
• Keyboard and mouse
• Cards not supported: Intel GMA series, Intel x3100 series, Nvidia GeForce 7×00 series, ATI Radeon 1×00, ATI Radeon 2400

This game also includes the Ubisoft DRM that requires a constant Internet connection. The Mac version also requires that you are always connected to the Internet, logged into your account, in order to play the game. Any interruption in the server, your Internet connection, etc, will pause the gameplay.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• An interview with Matt Miller of Paragon Studios about Issue 16 of City of Heroes, and how CoH made it to the Mac. Most memorable quote? “We had Transgaming show up and with no work from us they showed us a demo of our game using their Cider technology running on a Macintosh.” It’s that easy, folks, to get games on the Mac. Bribe Transgaming. ;-)



• Also, a review of Pipe Mania for the Mac by Virtual Programming. Help Junior and Fawcett perform the most fashionable job in the world…plumbing. Wait, what?



• Plus, a review of Dead Panic for the iPhone by Sean Maher. Can the dead panic?

Dead Panic Screen 2

I’m just finishing up writing a review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (yes it took a while…I’ll tell you about it during the review), and one of the things that struck me is that this game was released for the PC in December of 2005, but for the Mac in October 2008, just about three years later. Now Prince of Persia (no relation content-wise to the original 1989 version that was released on the Apple II) has been released for the Mac, only about three months after the PC release in December 2008.

Now, beyond being simply awesome in and of itself, we are seeing a logarithmic scale here. First it was three years, then three months. If the scale holds, the next game in the series would be released for the Mac merely three weeks after the PC version, and the one after that just three days.

I believe in math.

Ubisoft has opened the door to the Mac world a little bit more. In conjunction with Transgaming Inc, Ubisoft has announced the release of several more of it’s titles for the Mac via digital download. Ubisoft will release the award-winning Prince of Persia and Shaun White Snowboarding in March 2009 via Ubisoft’s online digital store, GameTree Online and at traditional retail locations. Mac versions of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence, Rayman Raving Rabbids and Petz Sports will also be released at select retail establishments for the first time in March 2009.

So, should we be thrilled about this? Well, in December 2005 Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones onto the PC, among other platforms. When did it get to the Mac? October 2008…nearly THREE YEARS LATER. Now, we look at Prince of Persia…released to the PC on December of 2008. When are we getting it? March of 2009. THREE MONTHS LATER. Now, I’d say that’s a significant improvement, folks!

 

Host Omaha Sternberg continues her Gaming Macworld 2009 series, covering Macworld Expo 2009 from a gamer’s perspective. Featuring an interview with Joy Kovaleski and Jeff Muncy of Psyclops, the online music creator that will soon allow teenagers to enter their avatars in music and dance competitions. Also, an interview with Blair Yakimovich and Lucas Smithen of Transgaming. We talk about what it’s like to port games to the Mac using Cider, City of Heroes, OpenCL and OpenGL 3, and the future of Cider technology.

Check out the podcast by clicking the player above or downloading from the rss feed.