Middle-earth a Middle-Tier Game
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Granted, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth presents gorgeous graphics and interesting matchups between Tolkien's characters. But there isn't much strategy involved in this strategy game. Game review by Lore SjÃ¶berg.
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Is competition to keep up with the next-gen Joneses slowly running the video-game industry into the ground?  In Game|Life.
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This is turning out to be more like a game of snakes and ladders than anything else. Or perhaps an analogy with chess would be better.
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Movies have inspired video games for decades now, whether directly (as in the dozens of "Star Wars" games) or indirectly (the inescapable "Star Wars" rips in "Rogue Galaxy"). TV shows have been a less reliable source; I don't think there's ever been a great TV-based game.
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It's slim pickin's for aficionados of techie TV. Here's an idea: Show us elves and gnomes courting a World of Warcraft &#252;bernerd. Commentary by Lore Sj&#246;berg.
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Fantasy fiction isn't a big seller in the first part of the 20th century. Along comes Tolkien and  changes everything.
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The first video game to mimic a presidential election
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Tycho:  When I started reading articles about Senator Brownback's bill - the one that would require that the ESRB play through games in their entirety - I expected to agree with it in principle, but take issue with its execution.  The shrill phase of the site, where I would don armor and ride under the aegis of the true gamer no matter how mild the incentive, now rests in the reliquary with Xbox Controller Jokes and Jabs At User Friendly.  I had chosen a singularly poor moment to become reasonable.  Upon further examination, the Senator's plan (which I think may be rightly called a machination) is the sort of thing one might forge in the fires of Mount Doom.
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Mel Gibson's Mayan action flick is about as true to human history as Lord of the Rings is -- only without the orcs. In Table of Malcontents.
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Bethesda Softworks today announced new details on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the sequel to 2002&#39;s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
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The house where JRR Tolkien wrote the Hobbit and most of the Lord of the Rings wins protected status.
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?
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Tycho:  It's gotten to the point where we're considering placing Chinese-style hard limits on our own World of Warcraft play.  Ordinarily, we do not consider the Chinese Government a model for emulation.  But I think they might be onto something there.
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Word over at Penny-Arcade is that Mike and Kara are playing WoW again. My wife and I have also recently gotten re-hooked on the game. Could this mean a renewed interest in the conflict between Panda Attack and the Penny-Arcade Alliance? Considering that there are about 4 Arcadians to every 1/2 of a panda, that means [...]
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Now that the new World of Warcraft expansion is upon us, it's time to consider the extras that are yet to come. How about smokin' cybersex, more elves than you can shake a Quidditch broom at, and humanoid tapirs? Commentary by Lore SjÃ¶berg.
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When Peter Molyneux designs a game, players take notice. Referred to by many in the video game industry as a man with a Midas touch, this soft-spoken British game maker
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Every other Sunday, in the fields and playgrounds of suburban Baltimore, a medieval fantasy world materializes. That world is the subject of âDarkon.â