FarmVille Outside of Facebook

FarmVille may be the biggest game on Facebook, with over 75 million active users, but you don't necessarily have to be on the social network to play anymore. Utilizing Facebook Connect, developer Zynga has made the farming phenomenon accessible both from its own website and MSN.com. You still need a Facebook account to play, but these options let you experience FarmVille without having to be on Facebook, perfect for computers where the social network might be blocked. Here's how you can sneak in a little farming while you're stuck at work or school. 1. MSN.com Starting recently, the game is now playable at MSN.com. Again, you still have...

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Playing Literati or Scrabble Online

If you enjoy word games, but you can't always find a Scrabble partner, the Literati rooms at Yahoo Games may be the answer to your prayers. It's free to play - the only requirements are a Yahoo ID and a Java-enabled browser. The latest version of Java can be found at Java.com. What is Literati? Literati is a word game that is very similar to Scrabble. Players use a set of 7 letter tiles to construct intersecting words on a board, collecting points based on letter values and bonus squares. Literati vs. Scrabble The most noticeable differences are the game board and the tile values. Both boards are 15x15, but the bonus squares (or, in the...

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Trends of the Decade

Looking back over the last ten years of online gaming, there's no doubt that it has been an astounding decade. To say that the hobby has seen explosive growth is an understatement, and it has taken some interesting twists and turns along the way Here's a quick look at what I would consider the most significant trends that have impacted online gaming in the last decade. Digital Distribution Although it got off to a slow start, digital distribution has truly taken off in the last few years, thanks in part to services like Steam and Xbox Live Marketplace. It's very hard to estimate just how large digital distribution of games has become because some of the major companies involved are privately owned and subsequently not required to release any figures. Although it still probably hasn't...

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The misconception of Japanese games

If you're a gamer then we assume you're aware of an event that’s recently passed called the Game Developer's Conference. If so then we also presume that you heard of the controversial comments made by Polytron director Phil Fish towards his fellow Japanese developers in the industry. "Your games just suck", were the four words Mister Fish used to begin his critique of today's Japanese developers. Fish's rhetoric didn't conclude after his Q&A session ended either. The outspoken developer later took to Twitter and attempted to apologize for his harsh criticism but refused to back down. "I'm sorry Japanese guy! I was a bit rough, but your...

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In the Spotlight: Harry Mason (Silent Hill)

Last time around in our on-going spotlight series PSU got chummy with Resident Evil’s floppy-haired hero Leon S. Kennedy, tracing his roots in the series’ second instalment to present day. Keeping in with the horror game vibe, we’re now taking a peak at one of the heroes from Konami’s pulse-pounding psychological horror franchise, Silent Hill. Here, we scrutinize original protagonist Harry Mason as a trip to the eponymous town with his daughter doesn’t go quite according to plan…. Mason’s debut in the 1999 horror classic Silent Hill was pretty memorable for a number of reasons. However, it has to be said his character wasn’t something...

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We bet you never thought Sephiroth was this sexy

You remember Final Fantasy VII for many reasons. It was a great RPG for its time, had a cast of memorable characters, and it even had one of gaming`s most badass bosses ever, Sephiroth. We even gave that boss his own classic track feature. A woman cosplaying as video game character is nothing we haven’t heard or seen before. However, it`s not every day that a model is officially backed by a game development studio. Red 5 Studios, developers of the upcoming game, Firefall, sponsor Crystal Graziano and all her photoshoots. That might explain why they look so damn good. View the original article h...

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