Shooter

Meet Doodle Assault for Android, a quirky side-scroller that strays from the typical spaceship-versus-aliens shoot-'em-up style by incorporating some childish humor into its plot. In this game, you are a paper airplane, flying across an infinitely long landscape of doodled-on binder paper. Your enemies include snout-shooting flying warthogs, winged pencils, and other fantastic classroom doodles come-to-life.

As you destroy enemies with your tiny origami shooting stars, you can pick up coins that can be used to upgrade your plane. Upgrades include Plane Speed, Weapon, Health, Firing Rate, and Defense. What's great is that you keep all of your … Read more

The wildly anticipated Battlefield 3 has been catching on with gamers.

According to the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, preorders for the title are more than 10 times higher than they were for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the last title the company released in the franchise. It's an impressive feat. Last month, EA announced that it had sold 9 million copies of Bad Company 2 since the game's launch in March 2010.

Battlefield 3 is being called by some industry observers a possible Call of Duty killer. The game, which is scheduled to launch on October 25, is a first-person shooter that puts the gamer in the shoes of U.S. Marines. Gamers must work their way through several missions spanning Paris, Tehran, and New York City. Battlefield 3 promises gameplay that's quite similar to real-world battles--a hallmark of Activision's Call of Duty franchise.… Read more

Hungry for more details about Battlefield 3? DICE revealed a few details about Battlelog, an upcoming free social-networking site that will roll out in conjunction with BF3 on October 25.

While there's no shortage of statistical sites for Battlefield games, the Battlelog service aims to be different with an infusion of social features. In an official blog update posted today, DICE describes Battlelog as a service where "players will be able to build a network of friends, communicate with other gamers, and compare their Battlefield stats with friends and foes alike."

The main area of Battlelog will be Battlefeed and it will be similar to a Facebook feed. It's a real-time area that displays your friends' activities, such as ranking up, unlocking guns, or awards achieved. For example, instead of pressing "Like," you would press "Hooah!" under a status update. Comments can be left on any action posted in the feed. DICE also mentions in the blog post that the service will offer a detailed stat-tracking system that features a "soldier progression section, bringing full stats tracking for every shot fired and every action performed in your Battlefield career."… Read more

We've seem numerous iterations of games like Bubble Shooter 4, a puzzle game that involves shooting colored bubbles at other bubbles of the same color to clear them from the board. Bubble Shooter 4 is neither the best nor worst that we've encountered in this genre, but there is one thing we can say for it: we ended up playing it for way longer than we had intended.

The game has an underwater theme, and gameplay is overseen by a cranky-looking mermaid. The game board is filled with bubbles of various colors, and a pointer at the bottom … Read more

Games, to me, are like movies: I rarely go with the mainstream. Genres tire me out. I get excited about the element of surprise, of the new and unusual. It's why I'm initially drawn to new gaming hardware: the shock of the new promises surprises, the unknown. When Microsoft's Kinect debuted last fall, I wondered how Xbox 360 games might change because of its hands-free design.

Except for a few games (Dance Central, mainly), the answer is not much at all. Post-E3, it looks like more Xbox games will tack on Kinect-ready features as opposed to designing … Read more

Those who grew up playing titles like 1942, Aero Fighters, or Space Invaders understand the beautiful simplicity of the shoot-'em-up genre of games, or the "shmups," as the E3 contingent might call them. In a shmup, you, a lone character, are tasked with obliterating an entire army of enemies, many of which attack from all directions. You are often piloting an airplane or spacecraft, and you are always armed with only the measliest of weapons to start off, making the job of upgrading your stock setup half the game's challenge, and, therefore, half the game's … Read more

Air Attack HD is a vertically scrolling "shmup" (shoot-'em-up game) that pays homage to old-school airplane adventure games like 1942 and Aero Fighters. In it, your mission is to fly through different stages and obliterate hordes of enemies, both in the air and on land.

In Air Attack, you choose one of two unique airplanes and make your way through eight challenging missions. Each airplane is equipped with a different default cannon, and both are capable of dropping crater-making bombs. To upgrade your arsenal, destroy enemies carrying power-ups or purchase add-ons in the shop. These upgrades can … Read more

It's Tuesday, right? That means it's the perfect day to indulge my love of alliteration and toss out a twofer. Also, I couldn't decide which of these two items was the "winning" deal, so I'm giving them equal time.

First up: TV deals seem to be on the rise these days--meaning prices are falling. Today only, Dell has the Sharp LC42SB48UT 42-inch LCD HDTV for $444.99 shipped (plus sales tax in some states).

That's a crazy-good price on a 42-inch TV, especially when you consider that the average 32-incher still sells for … Read more

opinion For years now, Infinity Ward and Treyarch's Call of Duty franchise has been the big bully on the playground, commanding millions of day-one sales with each new installment. Even piracy can't slow down the speed at which Call of Duty is swallowing the market, pushing every other worthwhile competitor in the most popular video game genre down to steerage class.

After knocking the Halo franchise to its knees in 2007 with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, 2011 may be the year COD needs to shape up. Will gamers choose the eye-catching Battlefield 3 over their current FPS fare of choice? The heart-stopping Battlefield 3 trailer that debuted at last week's Game Developers Conference suggests that could well be, but will its prioritization of the PC version kill its chances?

Gamers can expect an intensified version of the current Iraq conflict with this game, which is set in 2014 in the parched cities and barren wastelands of the Middle East. Focused on the chaos caused by the PLR terrorist group, it's your mission to stabilize the region from a recent rise in terrorist attacks.

The waiting game is a dangerous one in game development, particularly when catering to the hard-core class that chews through first-person shooter games like they were candy. Tantamount to a first-person shooter's bankroll is the quality of the graphics engine, and developer DICE has wisely bided its time in fine-tuning its Frostbite 2.0 engine for the past three years. When the preview for Battlefield 3 faded to black at GDC and on millions of computer monitors worldwide, the impression was virtually unanimous: expectations for this game went through the roof. … Read more