Looking for a couple new iOS games to play this weekend? EAGames is offering up two popular iPad games for free today, Flight Control HD and Mirrors Edge. The games couldn’t be more different, Flight Control is an air traffic control simulator and Mirrors Edge is an action side scroller, but they’re both a ton of fun and well worth downloading.
Flight Control for iPhone and iPod touch is also available for free as a separate download, so we’ll include that too. The games usualy sell for $4.99 and $9.99 so download them today while you can get them for free:
Skyrim is one of those games that is so massive with so many individual elements that it could take forever to try and cover everything. Included all over the game is a massive collections of books that fill in elements of lore, backstory, information on quests and characters, you name it, but who has time to read all of that while you’re playing a game?
Now you can read your Skyrim books outside of gameplay, because some guy discovered the all the in-game books are stored as plaintext format, which have been translated into easy to download ePub and Mobi formats, ready to be viewed on the iPad, iPhone, Mac, Kindle, Nook, or whatever other reader you might use. If you want to view the .mobi on a Mac or iPad, you’ll need to download the free Kindle app from the App Store.
Whether you’re playing Skyrim on a Mac in bootcamp or just sitting on the couch with an Xbox 360 controller, this should be a welcome addition to the nerdfest.
The highly anticipated official version of Minecraft for iPhone and iPad has been released to the iOS App Store. For those who don’t know, Minecraft is a virtual sandbox building game with a focus on creating your own worlds and structures that are subject to in-game physics. Thanks to basic electrical circuits and logic gates, some extremely elaborate creations can be built in your own virtual world, it’s kind of like virtual Legos on crack, and is known to be very addictive.
Here’s the official description from the App Store:
Imagine it, build it. Create worlds on the go with Minecraft – Pocket Edition
Minecraft – Pocket Edition allows you to build on the go. Use blocks to create masterpieces as you travel, hangout with friends, sit at the park, the possibilities are endless. Move beyond the limits of your computer and play Minecraft everywhere you go.
* Randomized worlds
* Build anything you can imagine
* Build with 36 different kinds of blocks
* Invite and play with friends to your world (local wireless network)
* Save multi-player worlds on your own phone
There are a ton of nonsensical knock-off titles trying to capitalize on the Minecraft name on the App Store, so be sure you either click directly through a verified link or search for “Minecraft – Pocket Edition” , making sure it’s by Mojang.
For the truly dedicated, you can now run Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim directly in Mac OS X thanks to the Porting Team’s unofficial Mac port of the freakishly popular game. The game is played either through a Cider wrapper or Wineskin, the latter being easier but the former apparently having better performance, but in both cases you’ll need to own a Windows copy of the game to get it working (frankly the game is going to run a lot better natively in Windows through Boot Camp anyway), leaving this in the realm of determined die-hards.
Neither the Cider or Wineskin methods are the easiest thing in the world to get working, and if you have no experience with this sort of thing you should probably just buy the game for Xbox 360, PS3, or stay with booting into Windows on your Mac. Nonetheless, if you’re committed, here’s what you’ll need: Read more »
Will Elder Scrolls V Skyrim run decent on your Mac? If your Mac is relatively new (2009 models and up) the answer is probably, but before you go jumping into Bootcamp, installing Windows on another partition, and buying the game, let’s check to be certain that it will run on your hardware, and run at an acceptable rate for that matter.
First up, here are the general Skyrim system specs for those who are savvy enough to take this information and make a decision on that alone:
Fieldrunners is a very popular tower defense game for iOS and Android, it usually costs between $3-$8 depending on the version, but guess what? You can download and play it for free using nothing but the Chrome web browser and Google’s web store.
You’ll want to download the game to be able to resume games, but you can also just play the game directly at the appspot url. The game can be loaded in either standard or high def mode, so choose accordingly based on your screen resolution.
Technically it’s supposed to be for Chrome only, but you can usually load the game with Safari or Firefox as well. You won’t need Flash either because the app is HTML5. Similarly, you can download and play Angry Birds for free with your browser too, just in case you haven’t beaten that dead horse enough yet.
Portal runs in both Mac OS X and Windows, and once it’s in your Steam account you can download it on other machines if you want.
Here’s the interesting part: the game is offered as a free download until September 20, 2011 as part of the “Learning with Portals” program, where some schools are using the popular video game to help teach physics and critical thinking skills. How cool is that? This blurb from their website explains further:
Today, innovative educators are finding ways to incorporate Portal™ and Portal 2 into their classrooms—helping teach physics and critical-thinking skills. It’s eye-opening to see how video games can be used in amazing and unexpected ways to help educate our next generation.
One of the biggest challenges in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math is capturing the students’ imaginations long enough for them to see all of the possibilities that lie ahead.
Using interactive tools like the Portal series to draw them in makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun which gets us one step closer to our goal—engaged, thoughtful kids!
If you’re skeptical, Valve put together a video which shows exactly how it’s being used by one 7th grade classroom:
Pretty cool huh?
Check it out yourself, the system requirements are relatively basic and it should run on most recent Macs:
OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or higher
1GB RAM or more
NVIDIA GeForce 8 or higher, ATI X1600 or higher, or Intel HD 3000 or higher
Looking for a fun game to play this weekend on the iPad? Grab Crimson: Steam Pirates, an action-strategy game where you can battle through a series of pirate voyages with over a dozen different boats, subs, and airships. The turn-based game is getting raving reviews which isn’t too shocking considering it’s coming from Bungie, the creators of the Halo franchise and Marathon. Here’s the games description from iTunes App Store:
In Crimson: Steam Pirates, plumes of black smoke fill the blue Caribbean sky as Thomas Blood’s pirate fleet steams ahead—over, above, and below the waves. On the surface, ships bristle with swivel cannons and lightning guns. Above, zeppelins drip with incendiary bombs. And below, silent and deadly, submarines stalk their targets, torpedoes at the ready.
Command your fleet and your Steampunk crew using an elegant action interface. Crimson: Steam Pirates’ turn-based gameplay provides an addicting mixture of strategy and action as you anticipate your enemies’ moves and counter them, luring them into a deadly hail of weapons fire while uncovering the mystery brewing in the Caribbean.
Rage is a first person shooter for iOS where you blast your way through mutants in some post-apocalyptic disaster, it’s fairly similar to classics Doom and Quake, and that’s because ID Software created them all.
Both versions of the game, Rage and Rage HD, are available free for a limited time, with the HD version bringing higher resolution graphics and textures to iPhone 4, the latest iPod touch, and the iPad and iPad 2.
Want to make it a gamers weekend? Don’t miss the huge Steam sale going on now that has just about every game for at least 30% and up to 75% off. Everything offered on Steam is instantly downloadable so you can quickly get your gamer fix, some of the hot titles for Mac OS X include:
More games pop up on sale every day, but the core Valve lineup is discounted all the time. The sale goes until July 10 so stock up now and you’ll have entertainment all summer long. If you happen to game or dualboot with Windows there are even more options for you, but the Mac section is quite large and shouldn’t be missed.
