Strategy Informer also had a preview that seemed to be hands-on:
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/xcomenemyunknown/847/preview.html
They had a screenshot of what appears to be some sort of jetpack/jumppack-using soldier moving across the screen:

This video from Kotaku with about three minutes of gameplay is encouraging. He's demonstrating how you can use an Xbox360 controller while playing the PC version. Looks pretty good.

Those aliens looked pretty nasty.  Some serious tearing and rending going on there.  Can't wait for October 

[$465k]

Just under 24-hours left to go.  Here are the current stretch goals for the project:

$465k - Additional end-game boss (total of 3) to encounter in some dark and dangerous corner of the world.
$480k - New survivor town hidden in the remote wilderness for you to discover.* Will include a new faction group and new quest-lines to unlock once you've gained their trust.
$490k - 2 additional monster types (models and animations) and another 25 extra pieces of unique item art.
$500k - A new dungeon art-set with a choice of catacombs or sewers that you'll get to vote on.
$520 - SURVIVAL MODE! We'll create a new gameplay mode that will be free for all backers (KS or Website Pre-order).  In survival mode players will fight to stay alive against increasingly difficult waves of monsters.  It will release sometime after the game so as not to delay development.

I played Warlock: Master of the Arcane.  It's quite enjoyable if anyone is looking for a turn-based strategy fix.  Plus it's only $20.

I went ahead and grabbed this today...something to keep me occupied until D3 comes out.  Put in about 4 hours and really quite enjoyed it.  Keep in mind though, I've never really been able to wrap my head around the complexity of Civ games, and was probably one of the few who preferred Civ Revolutions (the dumbed down console version) to the full PC version.  All the criticisms about Warlock above are valid (less than stellar AI, not much depth in magic or city building, etc., etc.), but I actually found that made the game more enjoyable rather than less.  I'm sure that I'm very much in the minority though, and most Civ fans who are looking for something "epic" will get bored of Warlock in a hurry.

If you think you may enjoy something that's a little less taxing on the strategic side of your brain and enjoy the Majesty universe, I'd recommend giving it a look.   Reminds me a bit of Hinterlands in that regard...a "lite" version of the more serious strategy games that comes together to be quite fun to play.  If you're looking for the next big 4X game, this isn't it.

I picked it up and have been enjoying it as well, and I'm a long-time Civ player (starting back with the original Civ 1).  The city building, tech, and diplomacy is all simpler than Civ.  But that lets you focus more on the combat.  

I like what they've done with the religious pantheon, where gaining favor with one god also grants you favor with other gods close to them in the wheel of gods and emnity with gods on the other side.  The god spells and units add a lot of flair to the game.  For example, my last game I built temples to Helia (Warlock's Apollo) and was able to built mighty archer units.  Another game I worshiped Agrela their equivalent of Gaia and had great healing units.  Agrela's brother Dauros is next to her on the wheel.  So while my affinity was higher with Agrela, I was still able to cast Dauros's mighty protective spells in my first game.  In my second game, Helia and Dauros aren't diametrically opposed, so I could cast a few of his spells, but the spells were weaker.  I was completely locked out of spells from the other side of the wheel.

Warlock: Master of the Arcane.  I had a lot of fun with the demo and have already pre-ordered it.

And the guy in the top row between Ron and Hermione is Crabbe. 

And I thought that was the guy you guys were claiming was Neville

More interviews with Jake Solomon, the Lead Designer.  Definitely worth a read:

Part One
Part Two

No surprise, but the kill cam is optional in case anyone was worried about that.  Also alien capture is definitely in.

I'm getting very psyched for this.  Jake really seems to have a good understanding of what made the first game special.  Hopefully this turns out to be great.

I stumbled across a Battle of the Bulge game that looks interesting. It's iPad only (unless you count the boardgame version) and it is from a new company started by Eric Lee Smith, a former SPI designer and co-founder of Victory Games. And the designer John Butterfield designed, amongst other games, Ambush! which was one of my favorites back in the day.

They added Al Alamein game for $20 donation.

Graphically I think it looks great.  Hopefully this turns out well, I'm definitely very excited about the idea.

I can't believe how much content is in this game.  After taking a break to play Mass Effect 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur, I jumped back into SWTOR after the 1.2 patch, and have been focussing on finishing the main story with my powertech bounty hunter.  He's on Hoth now.  There have been several times when I'm mentally done with a planet after doing many hours of quests, only to have even more quests pop up, and then a bonus series.  Unfortunately, I think all of that content can work against the pacing of the game.  I've found myself leaving planets never wanting to look back (Taris).  Some of the planet bonus series have been awesome, with summer blockbuster like endings and resolutions, but by that point I'm mentally ready to move on to the next world.  

While I think less content with a faster narrative experience would have served my interest (and attention span) better, I'm still amazed by how much content there actually is...especially considering all of the voice over work.

I think they should have gone with more planets which were smaller-sized.  The planets do have a tendency to wear out their welcome about 2/3rds of the way through IMO.  I do like what they started doing towards the end where they have you come back to the planet later for a bonus series of missions.  It's not like I don't like Hoth (I loved it) it's just one wants a break from all that snow to do something else before coming back to it later.

I clawed, scratched and groaned my way to 46 on a dps-Commando........and have stabled tons of other alts. I just don't think I can get to 50.
Enough has been said pro and con this game. My final thoughts on SW:ToR is that regardless of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, it could have used another year in the oven.

Do you really think that would have made a difference?  The things that I like about SWTOR it mostly did pretty well.  The things that people don't like about it were baked in from the start (mostly it's WoW cloneness).  Another year wouldn't have helped.

The user interface would have been better, sure, but I don't think that's the main issue why some people don't like the game, and now it is better.

So you feel the end game content is sufficient for a major title release?

I couldn't say, I'm not much of an end game player.  I've started up several instead alts.  But there can never be enough end-game content.  It all goes stale sooner or later.

I guess I haven't heard many complaints about the end game.  Mostly I hear complaints that the game is a WoW clone and that the quest and map design is very old school.  Those aspects would not have changed with an extra year, and that would have been an extra year for the game to fall further behind the curve on the most modern designs.

I clawed, scratched and groaned my way to 46 on a dps-Commando........and have stabled tons of other alts. I just don't think I can get to 50.
Enough has been said pro and con this game. My final thoughts on SW:ToR is that regardless of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, it could have used another year in the oven.

Do you really think that would have made a difference?  The things that I like about SWTOR it mostly did pretty well.  The things that people don't like about it were baked in from the start (mostly it's WoW cloneness).  Another year wouldn't have helped.

The user interface would have been better, sure, but I don't think that's the main issue why some people don't like the game, and now it is better.

[But, I essentially just played this as a single player RPG, and frankly I would have just rather played a single player RPG. While it would have had 1 story instead of 8, it would have been a better, more rich story, and there would not have been as large a gap between key plot moments.]

I finally officially bailed on this earlier in the week. I really had only played sparingly since I finished the Jedi Knight's final boss. I give kudos to this MMO for being the most solo friendly, story driven, least grind laden MMORPG ever (at least in my experience). But, I essentially just played this as a single player RPG, and frankly I would have just rather played a single player RPG. While it would have had 1 story instead of 8, it would have been a better, more rich story, and there would not have been as large a gap between key plot moments.

I guess I am saying what others did when this was first announced. I would have much rather they made a KOTOR 3 than this, despite the fact that I got a lot of hours of enjoyment from this. Sadly, I doubt a KOTOR 3 is coming any time soon, if at all.

Whining aside, this was a very solid B game, and it managed to entice me back into a genre I had sworn I would never revisit if a monthly fee was involved, so they must have done something right....

I have mixed feelings. I'm mostly playing it as a single player RPG (although my JK has played through a good half-dozen flashpoints with the Qt3 crew).  But if it had been just a single-player game, we would have had one story and it would have been the Jedi Knight one.  IMO the fact that we've got all these new perspectives on the KOTOR/SW universe is a great thing.

Those are great!  Thanks for the link Bullwinkle.

HERE is my first iPad touchscreen post here. aaaaaaaaaaaie! if only ihad smaller hands.
:-)

Graz on the new iPad!  And Happy Birthday 

Thanks. Although I'd never really thought of it as anything more than a color preference, I noticed some YouTube videos that attempt to point out some differences the color choices bring:

Apple iPad 2: White vs. Black (Pros and Cons)

White vs. Black The New iPad

Wow that first guy is extremely observant, I wouldn't have thought of any of that stuff.  I got a white one because I'd owned a black iPad1 for two years and decided to be different.  I had similar concerns to you, and I checked with a friend that had owned (and still owns) a white iPad2 for a year, and specifically asked about smudges.  She said she's never had any issues.  I can tell you I haven't noticed any problems with smudges or fingerprints in the five weeks I've owned a white iPad.

[As far as a fresh question,]

As far as a fresh question, I do have an iPod Touch with a lot of stuff on it. I wasn't quite sure if when you add an Ipad, if it's as simple as just synching all the iPod Touch stuff onto it via iTunes, or are they considered entirely separate devices with sort of separate accounts, and you would have to sort of buy an app twice in order to use it on both your Touch and iPad?

It's the same account.  Some applications have iPad specific versions.  If you want to run the iPad version you would have to purchase it.  More and more apps though have a single version that will run in either an iPad or an iPhone/iPod.  For those you can either sync with iTunes or redownload them for free. For the one's with a separate iPad version, you can always just run the iPhone version at double-size if you already own it and don't want to by the iPad version.  Generally on the new iPad, 2x iPhone apps actually look pretty decent -- much, much better than on older iPads.

I thought I asked you guys earlier, maybe it was a different thread; if you own the New^TM iPad, are you guys having any concerns about the increased heat, or with too many programs not supporting the Retina screen and thus being pixelicious? My bday's approaching and I'm close to finally getting one. I just haven't decided whether to get a new one or get one of the now heavily discounted iPad 2s.

Certainly I've read many reviews, but I often find first hand observations more useful.

I haven't had any heat problems.  OTOH I haven't really been running any 3d games on it.  I use it for very long periods of time and will play videos for hours at a time or boardgame-type games on it, in addition to a lot of web surfing, some comic book reading, and other random apps.  It does run hotter than my iPad1, but for the applications I've used it for, it's never gotten past the slightly luke warm stage.

The only place I've had issues with not supporting Retina is on some magazine apps, it's very noticeable.  Other than magazine apps, it's been a non-issue for me.

how the Kickstarter money was spent.

Star Command developer Warballoon, which funded its Kickstarter project in the BDF (before Double Fine) era, decided to share details on where its cash went. The company stressed this isn't it saying "oooops," but simply helping out future kickstarters to think more about their prizes and where their money will go.

I think that's neat that they shared that information.  Hopefully something that will help out future teams.  I hope they do well with their game.

USB dog tags are tempting.

I was already at the $100 level and there was a significant amount of swag offered for upgrading to $125 so I went ahead and upgraded.  

[With that criteria in mind and stripping out the marketing BS about "thanking you for your support", it sounds like a stealth apology (and a please-don't-leave-in-a-huff plea) for stripping out the Ranked Warzones from 1.2, for which a lot of endgame players were presumably waiting.]

Everyone else get 30 free days?

Nope. Only people with a L50 as of 12:00 PM yesterday, as I understand it. My top character is L48.

With that criteria in mind and stripping out the marketing BS about "thanking you for your support", it sounds like a stealth apology (and a please-don't-leave-in-a-huff plea) for stripping out the Ranked Warzones from 1.2, for which a lot of endgame players were presumably waiting.

...

- Ash

That's my theory too.

Never played Shadowrun but I like RPGs so I backed this one and Wasteland.

Same for me.

They've reached their goal.  I'm in for $15 even though I've never heard of this game before.  I like the idea of ordinary people being able to control what kind of games get made instead of nothing but CoD XX

Late reply, but I completely agree Canuck.  I never played the original Wasteland, although I have greatly enjoyed Fallout 1 through 3.  But I kicked in some money in part because I really like the idea of funding some more traditional RPGs and not just creating what the suits in marketing say should be made.

I completely wrote this off figuring it was an April Fool's day gag. 

I think most of us did, and I presume they put out the announcement on April 1st on purpose.  I'd still think it was a gag, but I actually loaded up the game on iTunes by switching to the Australian store -- can't buy it yet, but in a mere 7 hours it shall be mine 

So Combat Mission is coming to the iPad tomorrow.  Information is up on the Battlefront Homepage.  There was some speculation that this was an April Fools joke, but apparently it is not.  The Battlefront folks linked to the Australia iTunes website (where it's actually April 2) and sure enough it's there.

I'm pretty excited about this, although I'm a bit nervous about their In-App purchase model.  For $4.99 it comes with 7 scenarios with additional ones available as in-app purchases.  To be honest, I prefer the Battle Academy model of relatively large number of scenarios available with higher initial price.  But I can see the advantages to the CM iPad model, particularly getting customers in the front door.  We'll have to see how much additional scenarios cost.

I really like both series.  I can definitely recommend the new series, although the quality is a bit uneven (anything with Jar Jar in it is bad, some of the stranger ones are a bit meh), generally I'd say about 2/3rds of them are really great and maybe 4/5 are at least decent.

Nifty!

[no collectible aspects (except for expansions, of course)]

Deck building game, no collectible aspects (except for expansions, of course).  Read more about the source game here.

That's good.  I like Deck Building games, but Magic and its ilk make me too nervous from a pocketbook perspective for me to want to try them, even though they seem like they would be a lot of fun.

So have people received their pre-ordered New^TM iPads yet? Is the increased heat really noticeable enough to be bothersome? Is the fact most apps aren't updated to Retina support yet make everything look crappy and pixelated?

There are a few apps that out and out don't work properly (for example the Ravenmark game guys say that their tiling is broken on iPad3's and have promised a fix this week), but I've never seen an app that works and that makes things look crappy and pixelated.  In general there are a lot of apps that just auto-magically look much better -- particularly any app that uses text, but also apps primarily designed for the iPhone tend to look better because they use the high-res images designed for retina iPhones instead of the lower res ones that the older iPads used.

I haven't noticed any heat, but I haven't done anything that would seriously tax the graphics chip -- no 3d gaming for me.

I debated buying an iPad 3 over the weekend, then I remembered I need new tires and this morning I got a $400 phone bill.

Ain't happening any time soon 

$400, ackk!  Where are you calling Ridah?  Back when I was in college it costs $1/minute to call overseas and I definitely did get a few phone bills that big.  But these days even my overseas calls are dirt cheap.

It was also a lot of fun seeing Bill Amend talk about his geeky gamer side and how he tries to bring it into Foxtrot as much as possible--and how his World of Warcraft addiction played no small part in Foxtrot turning into a one-a-week strip instead of a daily.

Okay, that is just sad.  I suppose if he's wealthy enough now that he doesn't need to work, it's his decision.  But to think about how many people enjoy his work and to see him not doing it because he's playing WoW.  That's just sad.

There's plenty of us where if we didn't work, it really wouldn't matter to anyone else but us, one way or the other.  But Bill Amend is not one of them.  I suppose it could be worse, at least he's not setting aside curing cancer for playing WoW, but still I can't help but be sad that more Foxtrot has been traded off for WoW playing time.

So how much space is this "app" going to take up?

Didn't the original fit on 7 CD-ROMs?  So figure ~600MB x 7 CD-ROMs = ~4 GigaBytes or about the same as one 2-hour HD movie.

i took a lot at screenshots for the first time a few days ago - really neat!  wasnt expecting the comic / teamfortress "lite" animation style.  whens this out again?

Autumn this year.

From Blackjack's SPOnG interview:

How much did you guys deliberate on having fog of war in the game?  Because in modern turn-based games it seems almost like a faux-pas to include it.

Really?  WTF is wrong with you kids.  Now you want to get rid of Fog of War?  Why don't you just put in an instant win button and be done with it.  Get off my lawn dammit.

This is my first tablet but I'm sure my PC laptop got hotter than my iPad, I have yet to play games for any length of time on it (come on Balders Gate) but videos haven't caused that much heat IMO.

It sounds like it only gets warm when the graphics chip is doing heavy amounts of work, and even 720p (1080p?*) videos don't seem to give it much of a workout.  I think the only thing that's really likely to give it a good workout is something like Infinity Blade.  It sounds like the LTE might also have an impact on heat, although that might be hearsay.

I've been using mine a lot since release date and I have not noticed any real warmth at all.

* Not sure I actually have any 1080p unless the iTunes store has been serving them up now for the new iPad and the new AppleTV.  I have been running iTunes HD with no real warmth generated.

Wife has been wanting one of these for awhile now so just picked up a new iPad3 for her. Now, I'm wondering... is there really a need for a screen protector? I've had many 'touch screen' devices, including a couple of Nintendo DS units, a PSP and now a Vita and the only thing I've ever bothered to put one on is my smart phone and they've all survived just fine. Anyone out there using one or think it's really necessary?

My impression is that very few people put screen protectors on iPads -- at least not of the "transparent overlay permanently stuck to the screen" variety.  Most people do either have a protective case they place the iPad in after use, or have something like the official Smart Cover which protects the screen when not in use.

[Penny Arcade Report's take]

Penny Arcade Report's take

The effect of the new screen is oddly personal, and some people may not even notice the change. I checked with my own family, and with a wife and three kids of varying ages I was the only one who was suitably impressed with the retina display. My wife didn’t see much improvement, even after I compared two images from different versions of the iPad. I even pulled out my jeweller’s loupe to compare the pixel density under magnification.

Yes, there was an upgrade, she finally conceded, but for her it wasn’t dramatic. She was happier with the higher quality camera, but the extra heat the iPad 3 pumped out was a turn-off for her.
...
I’ve spent hours playing games, editing pictures, and reading books on the latest iPad, and personally I’m in love with the screen. I’ve dialed down the size of the text in the Kindle app to compensate for the improved sharpness, and the graphics in games are much smoother and feature deeper colors than the iPad 2. You get used to the change very quickly, however, and now instead of marveling at the new screen it’s just hard to go back to previous versions of the hardware. A number of people who have used the hardware have told me that they can barely see a difference. If you’re interested in upgrading, you need to head to an Apple store and spend some time with the product before you put your money down.

Overall he loves it, he just cautions that people who already own iPad 2 probably oughta check out in person before assuming the graphical upgrade would be noticeable to one's own eyes. And apparently the increased heat is quite noticeable, if not scalding. e

I'm pretty shocked that someone wouldn't be able to tell the difference looking at the two screens side-by-side.  I'm somewhere in the middle.  While I can clearly see the difference between the two screens, and agree very much that the new screen is better, I'm not all that excited about it.  I was perfectly happy with the iPad1 screen and the main impact of the better screen isn't so much that I really love the new screen as it is that I know dislike the iPad1 screen which I had thought was quite good.

The main thing I like about the new iPad is increase in memory and performance from my iPad1.  My web browsing experience (which is by far my biggest use of the iPad) is much, much better now that it (1) doesn't randomly crash on some websites and (2) actually can remember the contents of more than one tab.  Now if it could only remember the contents of the last webpage it visited so the back button would cause an instant reload, I would be a happy camper (I really don't understand why it doesn't to this, as far as I can recall pretty much every non-Apple web browser I've used does).

Thanks!

Posted from Teggy's iPad using his fingers.

Don't use your fingers Teggy, use the dictation feature (unless you got the iPad2, of course, in which case revel in your $100 saved).

I am so weak.

Congrats on your new iPad!  

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/19New-iPad-Tops-Three-Million.html

Highest sales numbers for the iPad ever at launch.

Sony and Nintendo have got to be pissed/scared. The iPad is a sales monster.

Nintendo might be worried since their focus is on the casual/family market, but I seriously doubt Sony has any concerns about the iPad. Their markets barely overlap at all.

I don't know about that.  I've got a PSP.  I would probably get a Vita, except I just can't justify it.  I don't travel that often and when I do my iPad can fill in for the on-the-road gaming I would have used a Vita for.  I'm going to bring along the iPad anyway for casual work support and recreation (videos, websurfing, etc) so it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a second expensive device along just to play games, when I can play decent, but not great games on the iPad.

Now as far as giving up my PS3 or XBox for the iPad, no, but the iPad is definitely a reasonable replacement for a PSP, Vita, DS, for all but the hard core gamers.

You are in other words a casual user. You're not the target audience for the Vita, at least not at this stage of its lifetime. My point stands. Sony isn't planning on regaining the entirety of the PSP market because they know that is practically impossible at this point.

Given my rather large gaming budget, and the fact that I own three portable gaming consoles (PSP, DS, and Gameboy SP) along with five consoles (XBox 360, XBox, PS3, PS2, and Wii) and a gaming PC with a $300-400 graphics card, I'm really not sure I can be considered a casual user.

I'm a user that would have purchased a Vita if Apple hadn't come out with the iPad.  So I am exactly the kind of user that was in the Sony Vita's target market that just isn't going to buy their product anymore.

If their markets barely overlap at all it's because Apple has completely eaten up a large part of their market and as you say it will be impossible for Sony to recover it.

Funnily I took my iPad 2 and new iPad to show my parents yesterday, and they both insisted they liked the iPad 2 screen better.  After many looks my mom finally agreed that the resolution on the new one was better but she still preferred the other one.  Normally I would think they were just being cheap/frugal, but this time I could tell they just liked it because it looked "brighter" or something.  It might be because of the different screen protector I have on the new one, I'm not sure.  In all honesty there are certain instances where I do agree the screen seems to look almost grainy.  I'll check it out more once my backup screen protector arrives.  I kind of screwed up the first one anyway.  Anyone have any particular recommendations on protectors?  Or just to not use them at all?

I've never used one on the iPad.  I do always make sure to put the iPad in its slipcase if I'm stuffing it in my backpack or otherwise carrying it out of my apartment or my office.