Tag: GAMES

Although frequently overshadowed by fervent game-haters, scientists continue to illuminate the particularly valuable benefits of 'Tetris' and its block-dropping action. One 2009 study indicated that playing Tetris improves various mental skills. Oxford University performed a separate study in the same year that even determined the game "may reduce the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder ...

As much as Google has shrunk our world for the better, we fear the all-seeing G might, in the same motion, strip it of the wonders it holds. Then, we see something like this game. Giving you a Street View image, a gridded world map and fifty guesses, it asks you to pinpoint the spot it was taken, and remember the uniqueness of every vista and street corner. ...

Computers have been beating humans at games for a while now. Remember IBM's Deep Blue, which beat chess champ Gary Kasparov way back in 1997? More recently, IBM developed a supercomputer that could defeat a human at 'Jeopardy.' Despite these advances, computers haven't overthrown the human race -- yet. But, according to The Mainichi Daily News a computer dubbed Akara 2010 recently defeated ...

If you've ever wanted to leave a path of destruction across the Web (or just been bored), check out this 'Kick Ass' bookmarklet. It turns any page into a destroyable playground for a tiny ship jacked straight from the classic game 'Asteroids.' You can even continue to browse with the blasted elements removed. Now, if it would just mix in some "pew pew" sound effects... ...

We hate to say it, but in the far-off future, we'll probably have managed to extinguish all non-human life on Earth. Furthermore, what if our descendants have nothing but video games to inform their ideas of what animals used to be? They'll think cats were snarky pests that inhabited embarrassingly ugly, three-dimensional landscapes. Or that hedgehogs were sneaker-clad hooligans with a penchant ...

Among nerdier interests, your writer is very much a fan of Trivial Pursuit. (What other activity would demand the entirely pointless knowledge that Dr. Pepper debuted at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in 1904? Sadly, none.) Game-maker Hasbro has lately been working its way into the digital realm (notably with the buggy and entirely underwhelming iPhone version of Pursuit), and its most recent ...

When Fort Gay, West Virginia resident and 26-year-old gamer Josh Moore created an Xbox Live profile, he naturally listed his location as "fort gay WV." The ever-vigilant enforcement team from Xbox Live, however, recently suspended Moore from the gaming platform, due to what they believed to be a fictitious -- and inappropriately named -- town. As the AP reports, Moore pleaded with security ...

Being under the weather never seemed like much fun until we played 'Cloud Control.' The game is super simple, and resembles puzzle games you've most likely played before. Basically, there are three types of clouds: fluffy white, stormy gray and rainy blue. Using the arrow keys, navigate the white cloud(s) around the level to find the blue ones, which will be absorbed by whatever white cloud mass ...

Our favorite online games are the simple ones with a high-replay value (e.g., 'Canabalt'). It doesn't hurt if they're free, either. The latest title to drag down our productivity is a 2-D side-scroller called 'Solipskier' that asks gamers to guide a stick-figure skier down the slopes -- while drawing those said slopes. Like we said, it isn't a complex game, with the simple objective to navigate ...

If you're looking for a way to blow off work (or recover from that marathon session of 'StarCraft II'), there's now a sequel to everybody's favorite meta-flash game, and, yes, it has even more possible achievements than the original. 'Achievement Unlocked 2' stars everybody's favorite blue elephant as it runs, jumps, dies, stands still, avoids death by spikes, collects coins and performs other ...

Foldit may seem like a relatively straightforward game, but the scientific theory behind it is anything but. Created by Washington University's Seth Cooper, the game requires players to deconstruct the complex, three-dimensional structures of various proteins -- a task typically left to biochemistry PhD students or researchers. Foldit, though, allows even novices to enter the world of protein ...

Built around the tenets of storytelling and puzzle-solving, the adventure-game genre has evolved quite a bit over time. Beginning with its origins in text-based, graphic-less interactive fiction, adventure games soon became a dominant force in PC gaming during the '80s and '90s. At the time, the games had the unique ability to convey stories in more detailed and expressive ways than other ...

Whether you love or hate 'FarmVille' and its Facebook-game brethren, you can't deny their reach or their influence on how we play today. Enter video game designer and critic Ian Bogost and his new Facebook app 'Cow Clicker,' a meta-game that pares down social networking lifestyle entertainments to the root of their essential mechanics. According to Bogost, "You get a cow. You can click on it. In ...

In the biggest digital migration since folks moved down on the farm, millions of "pioneers" have hitched their covered wagons and moved West in search of new online lives. According to USA Today, since its June 9th launch, 20 million gamers have played 'FrontierVille.' Now, that number pales in comparison to Zynga's other most popular social-networking game -- 'FarmVille,' with its 62 million ...

One 'Games on the Go' column was hardly enough to express our love for the pixel. Luckily for us, there's a bonanza of blockiness currently happening in gaming. United by a nostalgic affection for the simple (yet, oh so expressive) graphics of a bygone era, game developers have been producing a heap of gems that recall the video games of old. For those who painfully remember the clumsy controls ...