The always incredible PopCap Games has announced that their hit, Plants Vs. Zombies, will sprout on XBLA this fall (probably September). This console iteration will contain more content than any other version of the game, with seven game modes, including two never-before-seen co-op and versus modes, 12 unique achievements, online progress tracking, a higher resolution, and 21 mini-games. 

PopCap games released a statement by studio head Ed Allard with their news announcement. “With a ton of new features and content exclusive to the XBLA version, we’ve pulled out all the stops to both expand and optimize this adaptation for a hard core gaming audience,” he said. “The two new multiplayer modes allow gamers to work cooperatively to defeat hordes of invading zombies, or go head-to-head in a true ‘plants vs. zombies’ challenge. We’re also featuring a customized ‘house’ for tracking and sharing progress as well as...

InteraXon is the next device promising to let users control computers, and everything else, with their brains.  Similar to other devices, the InteraXon can only get a general reading of your EEG level and, as their website explains, translate your thoughts "to geek." 

We'll have to wait and see how well the device actually performs, but their site claims that the experience is "so seamless, the connected technology seems like an extension of your own body."

Rumors are emerging of the firing of a "significant" number Rockstar San Diego employees who worked on the immensely popular and critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption.  Rockstar has noted that this is a normal part of their development process, but skeptics point to previous reports by employees of "unfair working conditions" during the game's development.

Read Rockstar's full response

Zynga-branded products have taken over my local 7-Eleven.  Watch out for FarmVille food invading a snack aisle near you!

Zynga is in the middle of a massive promotional campaign with 7-Eleven.  Zynga games are advertised on the packaging of a whole spectrum of the convenience chain's eatables, and in some cases they even have their own products - FarmVille ice cream for example.

That's all well and good, but on to the real question - how long until my Slurpee is ready to harvest??

NCAA Football 11 released yesterday for the PS2, PS3, and Xbox 360. The game promises deeper AI integration that should lead to better blocking and more dynamic defensive and offensive plays. Be sure to check out the video trailer after the break.

I love sports games but sadly, I've never been into the NCAA Football series. I've been a Madden fan ever since I played Madden '93 on the Sega Genesis, where I swear to players say "cuaderno" (which is Spanish for notebook) every time they get tackled. And while I like Madden, I simply don't see a point of having two Football games.

It's always been difficult for me to get involved with Football on the college level as I grew up in NYC and went to New York University for undergrad; both places are not known for a deep college football history.

Crispy Gamer won't be covering NCAA Football 11 for a full review, but if you have played it, please feel...

My favorite part of the first Crackdown was jumping from building to building, collecting agility orbs that let me jump higher and higher.  I was some sort of frog-themed superhero—frogman, perhaps—who could leap out of the sky, punch a dude, and then spring away again into aerial oblivion, arms cartwheeling in glee.  “Oh god,” the gang-members would say, “it’s frogman, defender of no one in particular, puncher of dudes.”

So I was playing Crackdown 2: The Return of Frogman today.  The bad news is that C2:RoF is still in Pacific City.  As in, they recycled all of the old assets.  The other bad news is that Pacific City seems to have rolled around in the mud a bit, and now it’s brown and boring.  Still more bad news includes that the story makes no sense at all, the writing is beyond miserable, and there are  few detectible gameplay improvements.  But hey....

In news that I'm sure will surprise no one (least of all, people that bought the game), Sega has decided that Alpha Protocol will not recieve the sequel treatment. In an interview with CVG, Sega West president Mike Hayes talks about AP's poor metacritic showing but also remains proud of the core concept that the game tried for, and failed to reach:

"The concept was brilliant, though," he added. "You know this whole thing with Metacritic where you have to be in the high 70s to mid-80s minimum [to have any success] - well, with RPGs you have got to be in the late 80s."

Given Obsidian's development track record, combined with partnering with financially prickly publishers (Atari, Sega), I wouldn...

Summer has come to the east coast and with it millions have joined together, united in the sentiment of 'oh, !?@$% this I'm not working!' - I mean, when it's this gorgeous out, when the sun is shinning and the cities are absolutely a-hum with the monotone vibrations of billions of air conditioners, who can possibly sit down and do the requisite and boring office work, studying, and filing necessary to the maintenance of everyday life. What better to do then during these brilliant days when the sun is bright and the wind is warm and breezy than to sit in-doors in a clammy room and play video games for hours on end?

Okay, cynicism aside, I've been very guilty of this very behavior quite recently while trying to brush up on my indie game vocabulary. I've been letting absolutely stunning days go to waste playing titles like eufloria,...

Neptune’s Pride is a long-form browser-based space-battle strategy game.  In it, between 4 and 12 players fight to control at least half of the stars on the map.  Everything happens in real time, and everything moves very slowly.  It takes many hours to travel even to neighboring star systems.  Entire games can take many weeks.  The game is awesome.

And it is consuming my mind.  I think about it all the time.  I can’t go for a walk, take a shower, or watch a movie without wondering who is going to betray me, whose fleets are slowly inching towards my stars, whether my defensive line is sufficient, whether I really should have sprung for that science upgrade.  Just an hour ago I was lying in bed trying to get back to sleep and considering whether I really should have sprung for that science facility.  Whenever I get back to my computer the first thing I do is check Neptune’s Pride.  I...