Video Games: PC, PSP, PS3, xBox, and Wii Gaming News

So I got bored recently, and decided to take a stroll down memory lane, aka Flash Games Avenue. I rediscovered a classic: Defend Your Castle. The goal here is to defend your castle from barbarians, who are actually just stick figures. I find the first few stages the hardest because you have to do everything by hand. You have to click on each stick figure and fling him into the air, letting gravity chalk up another kill. As you accumulate points, you can upgrade your castle such that you can “convert” the barbarians and train them to man your castle as archers, wizards, kamikazees, or craftsmen.

Repair Damage: Fix damage incurred to your castle
Upgrade Walls: Increase your castle’s ability to withstand the onslaught
Temple: With this upgrade, you can drop enemy units (gently) into your castle to convert them to your side. These converts can be trained or deployed as kamikazee units.
Archery Range: Train archers to defend your castle automatically
Workshop: Train craftsmen to repair your castle automatically
Mana Pool: Train wizards to use powerful spells
Demolition Lab: Allows you to deploy kamikazee units by clicking the convert icons below your castle hitpoints. Click the unit to detonate.

My strategy is to buy a Temple, and then an Archery Range as soon as possible after that, training my converts into archers. Then I skip the Workshop and the Demolition Lab, and save up for the Mana Poll. It is crucial to get the Mana Pool because wizards have powerful spells such as instant kill, massive explosion, and instant conversion. Thus you can eventually begin to compound the number of converts you get, and the rate at which you get them, by investing in wizards. It gets extremely simple when you have a sufficient amount of converts there is literally nothing left to do!

Even though the stick figures have buffed-up, do more damage, and run extremely fast, they are of little challenge to take out because I have 1630 archers, 728 craftsmen, and 215 wizards. You should get over 200 wizards so that mana-regeneration doesn’t become a problem.

That’s right. I didn’t get bored until I got to the 59th stage of Defend Your Castle and had acquired over 13 million points. That’s how addicting it is. Two thumbs up for this flash game! You can play it here.

PC Mag has confered its illustrious Editor’s Choice award on Canon’s new ultracompact, ultra-excellent, 7.1 megapixel PowerShot SD550 Digital Elph. For only $409, you can partake in hours upon hours of this high-def goodness. The SD550 is a patched version of last year’s also-praised SD500, and both myself and PC Mag share the sentiment that the SD550 has earned the 50 points. “While matching its predecessor in resolution, the human color-wheels over at PC Mag agree that the SD550 actually takes a better picture than the SD500, and sports a bigger screen to boot (2.5-inches vs. 2.0). Also impressive were the ‘excellent’ flash, ergonomic design, bootup time, shutter lag (or lack thereof), and 30fps VGA video capture that ‘was slightly better than that of the SD500.’ The only quibbles were relatively minor, and involve some obscure photographic wonkiness that we’ll leave to the review.” Methinks this is one for the kids!

Engadget reports that Aximsite “rookie” kryten007, “who wanted a Bluetooth controller for his PDA but was unhappy with the fit of the only commercial model available, the GamePad”, has modded a $3 hollowed-out Playstation controller using the guts of the GamePad. Then he managed to attach the modded controller to his Axim x50 PDA by using altered, spring-loaded mechanical pencils. How cool!

Kotaku recently recieved an anonymous email with information about a possible Nintendo Revolution game called Sunder: Land Of Divide. This shooter might be a fake, but even if it is, someone clearly went to a lot of work to con Kotaku.

Here are a few more guns and blades from Sunder: LoD:

Now that we’ve covered the guns and blades, here come the bombs and decoys. The next set of pictures will all deal with something call Nanon weapons, which is explained in the image below.

Considering that this Revolution title has not been announced, it’s really hard to speculate on its credibility. Only time will tell.

Here are some breath-takin screenshots from the upcoming Xbox 360 title Splinter Cell Double Agent:

Gamespot gives us a plot preview:

As a double agent, gamers will not only have to answer to the National Security Administration, but also to some nefarious terrorists hiding out in the States. There will be tasks set forth from each group, and Fisher will have to find a happy medium between doing his job for the NSA and playing along with the bad guys. If he kills too many members of the terrorist organization, he may give away his allegiance too early. But if he waits too long, their plans might come to fruition and millions of unknowing citizens will die.

Missions will take place all over the world, including Asia, Africa, and the US, in a variety of environments. Fisher will not only dive underwater, trudge through sandstorms, and stealthily sneak through fog and smoke, but he’ll also take the plunge as a skydiver.