Windows: You’ve probably never heard of it, but QQ Messenger is the most popular IM client in China. With over a billion registered accounts, it  has everything you need: support for voice and video, tons of smileys, customization options, photo and file sharing… all of it in a nicely designed interface that makes the program a pleasure to use.

iPhone: Tower Defense has to be one of the most addictive game genres of all time. This free iPhone version of the game sees you try to defend your sheep from aliens who want to make scarves out of them. TowerMadness Zero: 3D Tower Defense arms you with a variety of different weapons that you need to place strategically on the field in order to block the baddies’ route.

Mac: The creation of Letterbox is a good example of developers responding to simple user needs. Letterbox takes advantage of widescreen monitors to make using Mail a much easier experience. It’s ideal for those using Powerbooks, MacBook Pros and Cinema displays, although it’s appropriate for anyone with a widescreen display. It makes reading clearer and organization more stress free.

Vector Conflict: The Siege is a defense game where you have to keep waves of attacking vector enemies from hitting you. Vector graphics gave us the first true 3D games way back, and ever though they’re unnecessary today, there’s something undeniably attractive about their minimalism.

The game is pretty tricky. You have  a number of weapons at your disposal, and a tiny radar to warn you of approaching attacks. You can be attacked from any direction, so you have to spin round taking out enemies with one eye always on the radar. It plays straight from your browser, after just a little loading time.

Windows: Having the appropriate codecs is essential in order to be able to play any audio or video format. With K-Lite Codec Pack Mega you can rest assured that you have all the codecs you need on your PC, plus a bunch of interesting related tools. The latest update 5.4.4 includes the most recent versions of a handful of codecs, plus other changes and improvements.

Santa’s Run: Being the actual Father Christmas is not a job I would relish, given the amount of work the guy has to put in. However, playing the role of Saint Nick for just a few minutes can be jolly good fun, as Santa’s Run proves. The game charges you with the task of delivering presents to children across the planet. You need to throw the presents into the chimneys or doorways, using your finger to flick them in the air.

Mac: Are you frustrated by the inability to use the webcams in MSN Messenger for Mac? aMSN (now updated to version 0.98 1-1) is an alternative to the classic MSN Messenger with more features - including webcam support (but not audio) - yet a more slimline interface. The aMSN developers have delved into the preferences menu, adding extra little features like event alerts and sounds and conferencing support.

Well, just a few days after the release of Dragon Age: Origins, fans probably think that things can’t get any better. But they’d be wrong!

It’s not often you get something for nothing, but luckily the world of software is a little different. The lovely people at BioShock have brought out an additional piece of software for new game Dragon Age - Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator. As we’ve seen around the forums, the news has left some gamers cold, but the more creative among us are definitely going to have a lot of fun with the tool, which allows you to create characters to use in the PC game and upload them to Dragon Age’s upcoming social networking site for use as a (really cool) avatar. There’s even mention of an in-game bonus for people who use the tool to create characters that they later use online.

The whole creation process is really simple. You pick gender, race and class, and get creating. The really cool thing is the degree of control you have over facial features. You can tweak just about every aspect, which means that your end character will be unique and easily identifiable in the chaos of the game. When you’ve finished with your character’s appearance, you can chose a voice and a pose for what they call the profile (in reality, a small avatar). Don’t forget that every option has specific subsequent options, so have a good fiddle around with the tool so you don’t miss anything cool. Read the rest of this entry »

In Pierre: Insanity Inspired, you play an artist struggling to find inspiration to finish his magnum opus. This is done by collecting various objects you need over 6 levels. Each level is a rotating disc that you run around, avoiding dangers and finding enough pieces to get your inspiration back. It’s a pretty simple little game, but gets really tricky as it progresses.

What makes Pierre: Insanity Inspired different is how it treats the player. When you make a mistake, it insults you. Developers at MIT’s Singapore GAMBIT game lab are trying to find out whether this motivates players more or less. My experience was that the insults were irritating to begin with - I didn’t like the voice. Next, I got angry with one insult “butterfingers” which didn’t describe my mistake correctly - I can take an insult, but it should at least be accurate!

Finally, I got annoyed with Pierre: Insanity Inspired, but I’m not sure whether it was the irritating voice, the inaccurate insults, or the game, which gets pretty unfair without being very inspiring! Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea, so check it out! It plays in your browser and requires Flash.

[Via:  Play This Thing]

Exploration is a standard attraction in many games, and Small Worlds makes it a central feature. I don’t want to say too much, as playing it for the first time is genuinely surprising. It’s a platform game - you control the red figure above, using the cursor keys. It’s completely simple to play and not difficult, but really addictive and extremely pretty. Just play it!

[Via: ByteJacker]

One of the only major disadvantages of switching to Mac is that there are far fewer games available for OS X than Windows. For example, Steam is a hugely popular gaming application on Windows which allows users to download and update an array of great games from developers Valve - the makers of Second Life.

Sadly it’s not available on Macs and usually, the only way to use it on a Mac is to install a virtual environment such as Parallels, VMware or boot in Windows using Bootcamp.

However, the former is expensive and usually results in poor game performance and of course, both methods require purchasing Windows. It’s far better - and cheaper - to run games natively in OS X if possible. But how?

That’s where CrossOver Games comes-in. CrossOver Games is based on what’s known as the “Wine” platform which means it allows you to play Windows games on Mac (or Linux) computers without purchasing a copy of Windows. Best of all, it’s only around $40 which is a snip compared to buying a virtual environment or Windows. CrossOver Games comes from the same makers of CrossOver which allows you to run many Windows applications on your Mac in a virtual environment. The advantage of CrossOver Games however is that it squeezes every last drop out of the Wine platform in order to handle the demands of games.

The app is designed for those with little technical knowledge and holds your hand throughout the setup process. You should be up and running within a matter of minutes. It won’t work for all games but the good news is that all the major ones - such as World of Warcraft, Half Life and the Steam platform, work perfectly and have been awarded “platinum” status for their stability on the Wine platform. You can find a full list of the specific games that work within Steam (most of which have been awarded at least silver status) here.

If you’ve been disappointed by gaming using a virtual environment or with Boot Camp and only miss Windows for gaming, CrossOver Games is a great solution.

The 12th Annual Independent Games Festival is almost upon us, and has a huge selection of submissions to check out. There’s a record 306 entries, covering a huge range of genres. Lewie Procter at SavvyGames has completed part one of a ‘Pretend you are an IGF judge‘ series, which usefully brings together all the publicly available submitted games, so you can check them out yourself.

The sheer volume of games is pretty intimidating, but there’s sure to be tons of great stuff. I’ve already reviewed AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, which I love and Terry Cavanagh’s excellent Don’t Look Back is also there, alongside his upcoming and highly anticipated VVVVVV (no demo for this yet, sniff!).

While publishing giant Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 will break barriers by allowing you to be a brutal terrorist, these indie developers are proving that you don’t need to shock or ask ridiculous moral non-choices of your players to do something revolutionary with video games or story telling. There’s also a wealth of humor, weirdness and creative enthusiasm that I feel is lacking from many of the season’s big upcoming releases - which unless I’m forgetting something are all sequels. While there is certainly lots of good stuff to play, like Hollywood before it, the games industry seems stuck in a blockbuster-sequel cycle, making it seem difficult for genuinely new games to make their mark.

Windows: The quintessential optimization suite for Windows is back! The all-new TuneUp Utilities 2010 has a new redesigned interface and a bunch of new features and improvements that make it even better: Turbo mode, Live optimization, TuneUp desktop gadget, Optimization report and support for Windows 7 in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

iPhone: Aside from a jellyfish attack or a sudden downpour, another guaranteed thing to a ruin a day at the beach is an attack by the entire Japanese Imperial Navy. Blood Beach puts you in the unenviable position of a soldier who must take down the entire Japanese WWII fleet alone. You’re holed up on a thin stretch of beach in the Solomon Islands and must take down the waves of planes, boats and foot soldiers landing on the beach.

Mac: Renaming huge numbers of files can be a real pain, especially when you only need to make a few minor changes. Renamer (formerly known as Renamer4Mac) makes it easy to rename a huge number of files at once, in several different ways. One possibility is to search and replace certain components or words, much like using a word processor. Alternatively, you can simply insert or copy over a chunk of text to multiple files.

After waiting all day yesterday with no joy, finally this morning the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is available to download and play! The first game offered some of the best cooperative multiplayer gaming around, and on first impressions, that certainly hasn’t changed.

This demo lets you play one campaign, entitled “The Parish” either in one player mode (with three AI companions), or online with four players fighting to survive together. There’s plenty of high speed frights and thrills in both, but playing with bots just isn’t the same. Multiplayer games are much more dynamic, and there’s more emotional involvement - whether it’s anger at a selfish player, or pleasant surprise when people are working together!

It looks like Left 4 Dead 2 is cementing its supremacy over the aged, lumbering Resident Evil series - these zombies are varied, fast moving and extremely vicious. There’s really nothing like the moment when a horde of zombies is rushing towards you: it’s one of the most visceral, adrenalin pumping creations in gaming history.

To play you’ll need the Steam client, and from there you can download the demo - but be warned, it’s not for the faint hearted.

Windows: Do you like Skype? Then you’re going to love Skype Portable! This is a special version of the popular VoIP client that doesn’t require installation and can be taken anywhere on a USB pendrive. Skype Portable works just like its desktop brother, features great audio and video quality, and has everything you need to keep in touch with your beloved ones!

iPhone: It’s been a long time coming but iPhone gamers at last got a decent driving sim. Firemint Real Racing GTI is a Volkswagen-sponsored racing game which makes wonderful use of the iPhone’s hardware to deliver a high-octane, realistic driving experience. The control system is probably the most refined, yet simple you’ll find anywhere on the iPhone platform.

Mac: The ability to run Windows on Macs has massively increased the reach and popularity of Apple computers. But you need a virtual environment to do so and the choice usually comes down to either Parallels or VMware Fusion. For developers this ability is absolutely essential, allowing you to run Ubuntu, WinXP and now even Windows 7 (in fact this latest release 3.0 has been optimized for it) all at the same time.

Like the idea of “Massively Multiplayer Online Games”, but put off by all those orcs and demons? Cryptic Studios are making their new comic book inspired Champions Online free this weekend. Boasting excellent character design, you can create your own super-hero and enter a colorful world where the Earth is of course in peril. Help save us all from Doctor Destroyer!

Like their City of Heroes before, this promises a much more light-hearted take on the role-playing genre. You can sign up here and download the client in preparation for 10am Friday (30th Oct) US Pacific time (5pm GMT).

[Via: Eurogamer]

iPhone: What do the three comedy greats Homer Simpson, Fred Flintstone and The Dude from The Big Lebowski have in common? The answer, of course, is that they all love bowling. Guys, if any of you are reading this and have an iPhone then make sure you check out iBowl. This game is perhaps the closest you’re going to get to bowling without actually getting out of the house and going to the lanes.

Windows: If you already have uTorrent as your favorite torrent client, wait until you see its portable version! uTorrent Portable features the same characteristics as its desktop counterpart (clean interface, fast connection, easy to use), only that it doesn’t require installation and you can take it anywhere with you on a USB memory device.

Mac: Grappling hooks have often played a big part in comic book fiction and games like Bionic Commando, but they have never caught on in real life. Grappling Hook is a novel 3D first person game where the excellent device is essential. It starts with little explanation, but a computer communicates to you along the way that you are in some kind of test, and all you have to do if find the right teleporter to finish.

Gretel and Hansel is a surprisingly macabre and grizzly take on the classic Brothers Grimm tale. You play Gretel, who becomes alarmed after overhearing her mother planning to send the children away into the dangerous forest!

Presented in really pretty water-colors, with a perfect soundtrack, Gretel and Hansel isn’t particularly complicated (and there’s a walkthrough linked on the game page if you get stuck). It does feature achievements, and some of them feature very dark humor! It’s not a cute kids game, this one.

Check out Gretel and Hansel here.

[Via: IndieGames.com]

Windows: It’s finally here. Windows 7 has hit shelves worldwide! Generally considered as the true heir to XP, Windows 7 brings many new features and enhancements to your computer that make it faster, more stable and easier to use. Take a look at our review and video, and follow our full coverage on the blog about Windows 7.

iPhone: Boulder Dash is one of the oldest franchises around, and surprisingly the basic format hasn’t changed for 25 years! Boulder Dash - ROCKS! is the latest addition to the family, this time on your iPhone. This Lite version only has 8 levels, but is fun never the less. You control Rockwell as always, and he’s trying to collect all the jewels he can find.

Mac: It’s no surprise then that Altitude has been developed by two self confessed nostalgics for the good old days of computer games when everything was so much simpler. Altitude is a beautifully put together shoot ‘em up where you take control of World War II biplanes and blow the enemy out of the skies. It’s a frenetic game with lots of levels and a breakneck pace.