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Virtual Programming has announced the release of Defense Grid: The Awakening for Macs. The tower defense game challenges players to defeat hordes of enemy aliens seeking to steal power cores. The game features 8-10 hours of storyline, 20 unique maps, a variety of tower types, and 15 different types of enemies.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is the definitive Tower Defense Strategy game that’s easy to pick up, engrossing to play, and hard to set down. Strategically place your towers on the map to prevent alien enemies from stealing your power cores. Play just for fifteen minutes or several hours!

This award winning game includes 8-10 hours of story play with 20 unique maps in the Awakening campaign, a wide variety of tower and enemy types, an interactive soundtrack, plus over 60 unlockable challenge modes adding dozens of hours of additional fun. Protect the Cores!

Beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack bring the world to life. The controls are intuitive and the gameplay is deep - the special attacks and properties of each tower work together to provide many ways to succeed.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a unique spin on tower defense gameplay that will appeal to players of all skill levels. A horde of enemies is invading, and it's up to the player to stop them by strategically building fortification towers around their base. Beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack bring the world to life. The controls are intuitive and the gameplay is deep — the special attacks and properties of each tower work together to provide many ways to succeed.

Features:

• High Replayability. There are approximately 8 hours of gameplay in the main storyline, and many hours of play in challenge modes that give players unique starting conditions and objectives. Each game level is very replayable, and can be solved in many different ways, with increasing rewards for improved efficiency.
  
• Wide Variety of Enemies. Over the course of the game, players battle 15 different enemy types that become increasingly stronger, and employ a variety of strategies in an attempt to bypass the player's defenses. As the levels progress, the enemies become tougher and more difficult to defeat.
  
• 20 Unique Levels. Defense Grid: The Awakening has 20 unique environments, each with a different placement of roads, tower build locations, and open areas to plan a strategy around.
  
• Numerous Tower Options and Upgrades. There are 10 different tower types with 3 levels of capability each. Each tower has unique trade offs that affect ideal placement, such as line-of-sight attack or ballistic trajectory fire. Some towers improve other nearby towers, and some are ideal at specific locations, such as a rear guard tower that unleashes a devastating attack.
  
• Achievements. Successfully completing each level provides a bronze achievement award. Additional goals provide silver and gold awards for a particular level. A novice player may be able to survive the onslaught, but only an experienced player will be able to get all of the gold achievements.

Requirements:

• OS X 10.5.8 or higher
  
• Any Intel CPU
  
• 1GB RAM (1.5GB recommended)
  
• GeForce 7300, Radeon X1600 or newer, 128 MB VRAM (Low-end video cards (GeForce 7300 and Radeon X1600) support only low and medium quality settings)
  
• 1.1 GB hard disk space,
  
• Internet connection for product registration

Virtual Programming

Defense Grid

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Apple Games has posted a new feature article, this time focusing on Telltale Games' zany adventure game Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse. In their latest adventure the duo face "a mysterious otherworldly power for controlling matter and space that calls to the strongest and strangest who might wield it - intergalactic warlords and eldritch gods, under-dwellers and scholars of the arcane." Apple's article includes an overview of the game and a history of the Sam & Max franchise.

As in Telltale’s other adventure games, such as Tales of Monkey Island, you collect items and use them to solve puzzles during the course of the story; Sam carries a large .44 revolver that sometimes serves a purpose. You can switch control between our heroes at will, which is key to overcoming many obstacles: use one of Max’s psychic powers to complete a goal, and then rely on Sam to deliver the coup de grace.

And don’t forget to speak to other characters at every opportunity. Not only are the conversations amusing, but they impart plenty of vital information and make available new options in the gameplay that require you to complete certain interactions.

Apple Games: Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse

Telltale Games

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

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Gamertell has posted a new review of Winter Wolves latest title, Vera Blanc: Full Moon. In the visual novel mystery players take the role of Vera Blanc, a young woman with the power to read minds, who must deal with a werewolf in a mysterious German town. Gamertell gave Vera a combined score of "Two thumbs up, 91/100, A-, * * * * out of 5"

From the review:

The key to finding the truth in Vera Blanc: Full Moon is paying attention. You need to read closely to know what’s going on in Wolfach, and be ready to read minds, talk to important people and solve mini-games in order to find the best ending. Vera’s actions determine what you’ll learn about the case, so you have to be careful.

Mind reading is a guessing mini-game. You will usually have only a few opportunities to read someone’s mind, and then you’ll have to decide before you do if it’s worth it. You could end up reading the mind of someone with no pertinent information, which would mean you’d miss out learning crucial information that could lead to an important revelation that could bring you to the true ending. You click letters to try and see if they are in that person’s thoughts. If you miss a certain number of times, you don’t know exactly what was being said and could miss out on important information.

I also found the art style in Vera Blanc: Full Moon quite appealing. Most visual novels tend to favor Japanese manga and anime art styles, so Vera Blanc: Full Moon really stands out. It fits the situation as well, since it makes you feel like you’re reading an old noir or detective comic. This may give some visual novel fans pause before picking it up, but I think it may actually help Vera Blanc: Full Moon become more accepted by general adventure fans, since it stands out.

Gamertell: Vera Blanc Review

Winter Wolves

Vera Blanc

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Aeropause recently published a new preview of Two Worlds II, the upcoming fantasy RPG from TopWare Interactive and Reality Pump. The game will send players to the unexplored land of Eastern Antaloor and will feature detailed graphics, an active combat system, and a complex storyline.

Dialog choices play a bigger part in Two Worlds II, with your decisions and choices shaping the path for your character. It seems this has become the rage for games lately, and when it is done right, it can make for a fantastic experience. We stepped through a few dialog trees, and it was nice to see all the different options that we hand, but also how the camera was dynamic during these dialog sequences, and the fact that we could still interact during these sequences. It is such a small touch, but is so much more engaging for the player to feel as if they are in control, and also keeps them feeling immersed in the game.

We moved forward a bit in the game to see some of the customization options for characters, weapons and magic. With Two Worlds II, you are no longer stuck in a class for the rest of your gaming days. Now, you can customize your attacks and skills to fit your play style. Also, you can now respec your character at anytime, with no penalty, allowing you to try new character options on the fly to see what might work for you in combat. The team also realized that people like to find cool armor designs and tend to want to stick to them, even if the armor or weapon might be weaker than their other equipment. With this in mind, you now can keep the equipment that looks cool, and then smelt down other equipment, using its bonus features as upgrades to your current weapons and armor. I love this idea, as I do get complacent with certain weapons and armor due to their look, rather than their functionality. Spells also get a similar customization system, where you take a base spell and add cards to customize the effects. So you could have a spell that you add a fire card into, and then mix it with a wind effect to create a flame tornado spell. You can have up to four different cards and three levels of cards per spell, which prompted the question of how many combinations can you have. The answer – 10 to the 16th power. Yeah, that’s a lot of combinations.

Aeropause: Two Worlds II Preview

Two Worlds II

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