Space Station Frontier HD is a top-shelf game from Origin8, one that easily justifies the iPad as a viable gaming platform. It’s obvious the designers took great care to deliver a solid package, especially when a straight port of the iPhone version could have been a simple alternative. Instead, Origin8 has overhauled the game specifically for iPad users, taking great advantage of the larger screen and increased processing power to create one of the best real-time strategy games currently available on any mobile platform, and I include the PSP and Nintendo DS in that list (where you’d pay three times as much for a lesser game).

Space Station Frontier HD doesn’t reinvent the wheel with its gameplay, but it does manage to blend different genres into a unified whole, specifically real-time strategy mixed with a heaping of tower defense. However, unlike most tower defense games, Space Station Frontier doesn’t feel repetitive as there are enough random elements that make each session play differently than the last.

You assume the role of a space station commander, tasked with amassing resources from nearby asteroids, a job description made difficult by frequent alien incursions. Mining is more involved than simply sending a ship towards an awaiting resource, as you must build the infrastructure of your facility to best maximize your output. This involves coordinating the placement of Power Nodes that must extend from your main station, nodes that offer juice to your Miner nodes that will extract resources as long as they have power and are not being attacked. In this way, Space Station Frontier is a constant balancing act between spending resources on new defenses and enhancements while protecting your station and attached infrastructures. How well you strategically place defenses and assorted nodes can mean the difference between success and failure.

Space Station Frontier HD is generous in its options, featuring a 15 mission campaign setting as well as Survival Mode, Mining Mode and Protect, each of which offers endless fun long after you’ve completed the campaign. Space Station Frontier even uses the Open Feint system, so you can match your scores with a global leaderboard to better gauge your suckage and even unlock achievements Xbox-style.

Space Station Frontier HD ramps up the game difficulty at a great pace. During the initial stages, it does an excellent job introducing you to the basic concepts, but it doesn’t take long before matters get far more intense. Suddenly, you are no longer facing swarms of little alien fighters but armadas of battleships. In these later stages you have access to a wide-variety of base-building options, including power generators, power storage, repair stations, laser turrets, inteceptor turrets, rail cannons and missile launchers.

None of this would anything if the graphics suck. Fortunately, that is not the case. Quite the opposite, in fact. Space Station Frontier HD is one of the better-looking games I’ve seen on the iPad, offering a rich palette of colors, detailed units, great explosions and unique design aesthetics. Accompanying the great graphics is a beautiful interface that is fast to respond, easy to use, and takes full advantage of the iPad, even working flawlessly in landscape or portrait mode, depending upon your preference. One thing I really love and appreciate is that you can access your iTunes music while playing the game, a simple enough feature that isn’t implemented by enough designers.

At the end of the day, Space Station Frontier HD can hold its head high, proud that it has delivered a high-level of gameplay and polish. This isn’t a game that was crapped out over a weekend of development, like so many other iPhone/iPad games and fully justifies its $4.99 price-tag. If there was one thing I’d really like to see it would have to be multiplayer, but Origin8 is already working on a multiplayer upgrade that should be coming soon, an addition that will Space Station Frontier HD one of the best games available for the Apple iPad.

Final Rating: 5/5

Space Station Frontier HD $4.99 (iTunes Link)

Nintendo’s decision to not include a built-in rechargeable battery pack with the Wii remote has left you with an odd conundrum.  On the one hand, you don’t necessarily have to stop gaming or swap controllers just because the batteries have died.  If you have another set of batteries on hand, you simply swap them out.  There’s no need to stop the gaming session for a recharging session.

On the other hand, you’re also needlessly spending money on items that could have a much longer shelf life.  Why spend money on an entirely new set of batteries each time the previous set runs out of juice?

Let’s face it: disposable batteries have been outmoded for a while now.  Rechargeable batteries are the way of the savvy consumer, and Nintendo’s decision has left you with several options in the rechargeable battery realm.

The Wii’s popularity has rallied in numerous aftermarket accessories, so there’s no lack of variety.  Before you waste another dime on a set of disposable AAs, take a look at our detailed battery guide and choose a set of rechargeables that are right for you.

We’ll weigh the three major options currently available, and provide a breakdown at the end to indicate which option best suits your gaming habits.

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Originally posted here, on our gaming sister site GameAlmighty.com.

Being an invested spectator during the handling of the Nintendo DSi XL / 3DS affair over the past couple weeks has been one of the most fascinating, and confounding, situations I have seen in the nearly 20 years I have been watching the industry.

Now it’s not the first time there has been a bad hardware launch, this isn’t our first exposure to an information leak, and we’ve certainly seen more demonstrations of bad Public Relations decisions. The SEGA Dreamcast, PSP Go pictures, and caged nude dancers are three of the first examples that come quickly to my mind, while readers will no doubt be able to come up with even better ones of their own.

But this perfect storm is quite unique. Days before the launch of another very optional $100+ incremental hardware upgrade, Nintendo hastily shoots out a short, detail-light press release announcing their next big handheld which will be 3D-capable!?!

What was the response?

I had been expecting to write an article myself on the NDSi XL once I had made my purchase, but here is an excerpt from an email I wrote to one of the Staff here, Mike Siciliano:

I ended up waiting on my purchase of the NDSi XL. It is just a lot of money and frankly I am pissed at the constant baby steps of hardware improvements and releases Nintendo makes and insulted they would have the gall (sp?) to announce another major piece of hardware (an entire new platform!) just days before the XL release at retail. I almost feel like writing an article about that. Will it play NDS games? If so, and it’s not to far off, I am not going to play their game this time and I’ll just be frustrated, increasingly angry, and try to wait it out. In this economy gamers and parents of gamers don’t have money to throw around but many of them do have an almost religious loyalty to Nintendo that could very easily be taken advantage of.  Sometimes I wonder if they are just doing what they do, or doing what they think they can do?

I try to remain as objective as possible professionally, but in this personal email my frustration isn’t very well hidden as I start thinking more and more about Nintendo operating as a company trying to make their money selling hardware. I called my local GameSpot and it seems 12 other pre-orders had been canceled and the initial numbers of pre-orders were already lower than they expected. This, of course, is not scientific, but it shouldn’t be ignored if you believe that the buying audience was already restricted to very loyal Nintendo-philes. (Oh, were you supposing large print-dependent senior citizens had always been waiting, wallet-in-hand, for a larger screen before joining Nintendo’s “Touch Generation”?)

So why did they do this? Who decides to upstage themselves and distract from the slow bleed-out of hardware upgrades already in progress? Whoever it was seems to have placed a much higher value on being “first”, rather than trying to contain the possible financial repercussions or message control.

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You can’t even say “Comic-Con” without preceding it with “San Diego”.  The San Diego Comic-Con has been a yearly phrase ever since 1970, when it first began operations. But, with time comes change, and with success comes competition and this is what San Diego is facing now as several cities are making a big push to host future Comic-Cons.

Anaheim, Las Vegas and Los Angeles are the big three, licking their chops at the fact Comic Con’s San Diego contract expires in 2012.

Hotels near San Diego’s convention center have offered Comic-Con 300,000 square feet of free meeting space and have proposed doubling the number of dedicated convention guest rooms to 14,000 in an attempt to lock in the convention through 2015.

By then, convention center officials hope to have completed a planned expansion that would leave the event with ample space.

“San Diego and Comic-Con go hand in hand like Batman and Robin,” San Diego Convention Center Corp. spokesman Steven Johnson said. “We want to make sure that dynamic duo stays together.”

Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer acknowledged that the event has been straining against the limits of its current home and that it is considering whether the San Diego proposal would assuage those concerns.

“We love San Diego. The majority of the people who put the show on live here,” said Glanzer, who did not know when a venue would be chosen. “But we have to make a decision that’s based on what really is best for the event.”

Source