Hasta La Gadget!

Right on the money, both Rockstar and Gameloft have released their respective games to the mobile market. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour are now available for purchasing and downloading in the iTunes App Store. While Modern Combat 4 is planned to be released on Android “shortly after” today, Vice City was actually planned to have a simultaneous launch. However, the Android version seems to be MIA for the time being.

Modern Combat 4 costs $6.99, which may seem like a steep price, but you can’t really go wrong with one of the best first-person shooters on any mobile platform. Plus, it works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. Also if you didn’t already know, the game comes with multiplayer, complete with leaderboards and over 20,000 weapon arrangements.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City will cost you $4.99, the same price as Grand Theft Auto III when it launched not too long ago. As aforementioned, the Android version seems to be MIA. The Google Play store link shows up in Google search results, but clicking on it will lead to a 404. It’ll probably only be a matter of time before it’s fixed, so we’ll update you once it goes live in the Google Play store.

UPDATE: Rockstar has issued a statement on the missing Android version of the game:

“We’re aware that some users have attempted to download Vice City: 10th Anniversary Edition from the Google Play Store and have experienced validation errors. Just to be clear: the game is not available for Android devices just yet, and if you’re seeing it listed on the Store then this is an error, and you shouldn’t attempt to download it. We’ll keep you up to date and let you know as soon as the game is live and available to purchase.”

While Rockstar originally said that the game would be released on iOS and Android at the same time, it looks like that’s no longer the case.

If you’ve played GTA: Vice City before, the mobile version will be very familiar to you, since it’s essentially a port of the console and PC version, but with a few few enhancements implemented, including updated character models and lighting effects, as well as more precise firing and targeting options with weapons.

Download Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for iOS now.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour now available [UPDATE] is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’ve ever played Cut the Rope, then you know just how fantastic it is. It’s been one of the most popular casual games of the past couple years, racking up over 250 million downloads. However, the developer behind Cut the Rope, ZeptoLab, is back with a new game called Pudding Monsters, and it’ll be releasing on December 20.

The goal of Pudding Monsters is to essentially get pieces of pudding to stick together. Unlike Cut the Rope, Pudding Monsters is more of a puzzler than a physics game, and it’s even more casual than Cut the Rope, since it doesn’t focus on physics and having to get your timing just right. Players are tasked to move pieces of pudding around a board, but unless they hit an object or another piece of pudding to stick onto, the pieces will fall off the board and the game will be over.

Pudding Monsters will be released on iOS and Android simultaneously, and just like with Cut the Rope, ZeptoLab plans to sell licensed plush toys, comic books, and other merchandise based on the new game. Obviously, we’re not sure what these will entail, but if it’s anything like Cut the Rope‘s merchandise, we’ll see a lot of the products be based on the game’s characters.

Cut the Rope currently still has around 50 million monthly active users, even after releasing over two years ago. It seems people still aren’t sick of the game, and hopefully ZeptoLab can recreate that same amount of buzz for Pudding Monsters. We certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the upcoming game stole the spotlight for a few months.

Cut the Rope developer unveils new game, Pudding Monsters is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Beleaguered social and mobile games maker Zynga announced today that it has acquired November Software. With less-than-stellar quarterly reports and the recent reveal that it would be laying off a large number of workers, you might be wondering why Zynga is spending the money to acquire other companies. As it turns out, Zynga actually bought November back in the spring, but is only revealing the buyout today.

This acquisition is another step in Zynga’s transition to focus on mid-core gamers – players who have decent machines as opposed to high-end machines or low-end computers that can only run social and indie games. Mid-core gamers tend to stick with games longer, which means that Zynga could potentially make more money than it can from the social and mobile crowd. It sounds like a good idea, and the team at November is already hard at work on a new game under Zynga’s watch.

That game is called Battlestone, but other than that, the details are pretty slim. We’ll have to wait until the game is further along in development to find out more, but if Battlestone works out, we might see Zynga begin to climb out of this rut it’s worked itself into. Zynga’s player base has slowly been abandoning the company’s social titles as they graduate to mobile games, which has left Zynga is something of a sticky situation.

We’ll see if it works soon enough, but one thing is for sure: Zynga needs to change up its strategy or it risks losing everything. The switch the mid-core gaming might just be the thing that saves Zynga in the long run. What do you think? Will the mid-core gaming crowd bring Zynga back from the brink?

[via TechCrunch]

Zynga acquires November Software is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The release day for Rovio’s latest Angry Birds installment is quickly approaching, and we’re finally within just days of the launch of Angry Birds Star Wars. Rovio has released several teaser trailers over the past couple of weeks, but today they launched what they call the “official gameplay trailer.”

We’ve seen a little bit of gameplay from the upcoming title, but this trailer gives us approximately one full minute of nothing but Angry Birds Star Wars gameplay. We see characters such as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and even Chewbacca, as well as lightsabers and lasers galore. There’s definitely no shortage of Star Wars in this Angry Birds installment.

We also get to hear a little more of the game’s soundtrack, which includes a mashup of the classic Star Wars theme song with Angry Birds’ traditional upbeat goofy music. It’s definitely the most content-rich trailer we’ve seen yet from Rovio, and we’re frankly pretty excited for the release of the game this Thursday.

The Angry Birds series has come a long way since its original title, and while the gameplay and graphics have ultimately stayed the same throughout, the folks at Rovio have no problem coming up with different themes to keep the series going. Plus, they finally started to introduce new elements into the games, like Angry Birds Space for example, where the use of non-gravity and orbital pull play a huge part in the game’s physics.

Rovio launches “official gameplay trailer” for Angry Birds Star Wars is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Were you raring to go and buy a Wikipad instead of trick-or-treating? You might want to search around for some leftover chocolate bars and potato chips. The gaming tablet maker has postponed its shipments the very day they were meant to start after chances to both to improve the bundled content and make a “minor refinement” to the experience. We’re interpreting that last mention as either a pleasant surprise or an unexpected hiccup. Any delay may be comparatively short when Wikipad says it’s already in the last stage of firming up a new schedule, and it’s vowing a gift in return for maintaining a pre-order — still, the clock is ticking if the company wants to score some mobile gamers before the holidays are over. You can check the full statement for yourself after the break.

Continue reading Wikipad sees last-minute delay for new bundle and ‘refinement’

Filed under: Gaming, Tablets

Wikipad sees last-minute delay for new bundle and ‘refinement’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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