This week in CrunchArcade: OS Mechas, iPhone hot rods, co-op zombie blasting, Mike Tyson, and a baby pixelsaurus. Get your gaming news, previews, and freebies here in pellet form.
Thanks for reading. Let’s get started.
In the news
The weirdest news of the last week has to be the offer from Stride Gum to provide free packs of gum to everyone who signs the petition to ban Uwe Boll from filmmaking. Because gum, bad movies, and games are inextricably linked, I guess. In other game-movie news, Gore Verbinski of Pirates of the Caribbean fame will be directing Bioshock. Now, Gore, to quote a Digg commenter: “Would you kindly… not screw this up?”
In other news, a young Mike Tyson will appear in the next installment of EA’s Fight Night series. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what his special move is (NOM NOM NOM). The gaming scene on the iPod Touch and iPhone is heating up as the fruits of the SDK are beginning to really show. This excellent-looking 3D racing game is controlled by tilt, and who knew the iPhone could run something like that? By the way, if you’re looking for a new MMORPG, Age of Conan is looking cool and may actually be full of people pretty soon — they say they have hundreds of thousands ready to start questing. Sign up for the beta here.
Slavering and shuffling to a PC near you
If you are not familiar with Left 4 Dead, allow me to educate you as to why this game is going to be amazing. Basically, it’s Resident Evil with pals. Join three other survivors and blast your way from one part of the city to another while hundreds of undead monsters attempt to arrest your progress. Check this out.
I know, right? There are some excellent hands-on impressions here and here.
Free Play
This week brought three excellent games to my attention. First, without leaving the comfort of your browser you can play the extremely fun and surprisingly deep Dino Run. The pixelized graphics are fantastic and the game controls well. Definitely read the how-to so you know what the eggs and such are for.
Next, an very enjoyable and straightforward freeware arena shooter a la Crimsonland. It’s called Debrysis, and its manic mouse-and-keyboard action is simple and addictive. My advice: minigun good, igniter better.
Bootfighter Windom XP SP-2 I recommended here. How can you possibly go wrong with a free Virtual ON-style mech team battle game that’s totally free? This game has cut into my time a lot over the last few days. You’ll want a gamepad.
GG all!