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Magic: the Gathering's latest expansion, Dark Ascension, takes place in a world completely taken over by creatures of the night. Vampires are eating humans, werewolves' power is waxing full and bright, and the dead just won't seem to stay that way. More »
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In less than a decade, Sudoku has gone from obscure logic puzzle to global phenomenon. Scientists have built up an entire sub-field of mathematics around this game, mostly to answer one question: what's the toughest possible puzzle that's actually solvable? More »
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Video games can sometimes feel like a Sisyphean task. How many times can you play Super Meat Boy before you feel like impaling your controller on some metal spikes? But Let's Play Ancient Greek Punishment takes frustration to a whole new level, playing out the divine torment of Greek mythological figures. More »
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Greg Bear returns to the Halo universe with Primordium, out next week. But you don't have to wait until then to start delving into Bear's second installment in the Forerunner Saga. Tor.com has the first chapter of Primordium, and the second chapter is live over at Halo Waypoint. More »
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It's the skeeball prize wall of adulthood – a jar filled with candy, coins, or some other tiny trinket. A person at the front of the room compels you to guess the amount in the jar for free, or for a small donation to charity. More »
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While covering GenCon this year, I managed to playtest a couple of cool titles, including a game that designer Tim Rodriguez has been working on for years called Ghost Pirates. More »
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Do you wish you could take your Angry Birds gameplay to another level? Are you looking for every last little edge you can find against those insufferable little porcine bastards and their silly little houses? More »
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This is probably the best Batman costume you'll ever see. A group of artists over at the Effects Lab forums created a real-life reproduction of the Batsuit from the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games, taking painstaking care to match the textures and colors in the game. More »
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What happens when two galaxies meet each other in the dark alley of space? Well, if you're around in 4 billion years, you could find out first hand when the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are predicted to collide. In the meanwhile, kill some time and help researchers with Merger Wars. Merger Wars is a new citizen science project and an international effort between researchers at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Oxford, looking for ways to simulate galaxy collisions occurring elsewhere in our universe.

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Battleship, Monopoly, Ouija — these are all real board games Hollywood has been turning (or at least attempting to turn) into major motion pictures. But what about the rest of the classic brain teasers? A Photoshop contest challenged folks to imagine even more board game movies — by creating horror movie posters. The results were fantastic! More »
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Now that the Mortal Kombat: Legacy webseries has become a huge hit, and the latest MK game has sold 3 million copies, Warner Bros. and New Line have greenlit a new Mortal Kombat film — which everybody is helping will make you forget the 1990s outings. More »
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In the past decade or so, comic-book movies have achieved a credibility that still eludes video-game movies. But that may be about to change, according to a new article over at Forbes. More »
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Phylo is a free, browser-based, flash game unveiled in late 2010 by the McGill University Centre for Bioinformatics, which allows you to manipulate stretches of DNA across species in order to perfect existing algorithms. Essentially a pattern matching game, Phylo allows you to choose a puzzle from diseases effecting medical situations you are interested in or would personally like to see treated (like metabolic, cardiovascular, and immune system diseases) or you can select a level based on difficultly. Your level will be generated from data within the UCSC Genome Browser.

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NASA has a game that allows players to conduct a virtual space walk and go on virtual missions. It's based on actual missions. The game gives aspiring astronauts a tour, a quest, and a timer. The description beckons those who want to do glamorous work like repairing power lines while keeping an eye on their oxygen levels: More »
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Magic has always dabbled in horror, what with all the zombies and demons on black cards, but the game's designers have crafted a true homage to classic Universal and Hammer horror movies with their newest expansion, Innistrad. More »
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In the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine video game, you're the best of the best, a genetically modified supersoldier wearing incredible armor and wielding incredible weapons. This is a third-person shooter/hack and slash action game, but beyond that it's a great military sci-fi story. More »
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Over at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, a group of artists from GroovLabs are building a giant, playable Rubik's Cube as part of the museum's "Puzzle Palooza," starting October 1. There is truly nothing more magnificent than this Cube. More »
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Like first person shooters? Spent too many nights playing Halo, lining up another player between the cross-hairs for a headshot while sniping from the safety of a building across the map? That same, precious skill set can be used to help researchers when you join the Hunt for Supernovae.

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Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is an iPhone-based RPG set in World War I. When it comes out later this year, you can help these doughty British soldiers stave off insanity and defend the world from horrors beyond time and space. More »
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If we can't have Game of Thrones Monopoly in real life, then this is the next best thing — a Futurama Monopoly set is available for preorders during the month of September, with the game shipping in November. Watch out for the Hypnotoad! More »
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Far West: a world of dust and legends; of gunslingers and martial arts masters; of Imperial power and frontier wisdom. Blending the spaghetti western with the tropes of Chinese wuxia and a dash of steampunk, the shared world of Far West will include short story collections, a web series and a pen and paper RPG. More »
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The Dollar Auction shows us how people can become over-obsessed, lose large amounts needlessly, and make the ultimate irrational choice by doing the most rational thing at the time. See the edges of human denial and desparation, for only a dollar. More »
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Science fiction is all about advancing into a shinier future - so why are people always playing such terrible video games in science fiction shows and movies? More »
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What would it look like if James Gunn, writer of such so-wrong-they're-great movies as Slither and Super, wrote a zombie-centric version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Wonder no longer. The first trailer is out for Lollipop Chainsaw, a game about a cheerleader who kills zombies. More »
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In the 2040s, energy resources and the economy in America have collapsed. The poor live in "stacks," vertical trailer parks outside cities where old mobile homes are piled on top of each other. A few lucky kids get to attend school online, in a virtual world called the OASIS that has replaced the Web with an ultra-fast, immersive 3D space. OASIS money is the most stable currency available. Most people are stuck in schools that are like prisons, and unemployment that is worse. More »
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Science fiction and fantasy are full of weird games, from Quiddich to Pyramid. There are games of death. There are games of skill. But most of all, there are games that you'd have to be nuts to try and duplicate in real life. More »
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So you're about to partake in a gruesome series of death games for the amusement of the rabble, or you're entering in a contest to see if you can beat out others to win a hugely expensive artificial organ, or you're about to be publicly executed for being in possession of a Guy Fawkes mask. There are plenty of ways to be done away with by the state in a macabre, carnivalesque celebration, given the many dystopian futures that fiction has warned us about. More »
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GenCon 2011 was a mass of costumes from every area of pop culture. Video games, movies, anime, RPGs, and comic characters brushed shoulders with tens of thousands of attendees. More »
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It's a tough galaxy out there, so you need a ship that can dish out some pain when needed. That's why Gameforge's free-to-play browser game Star Trek — Infinite Space is preparing to roll out the mighty Intrepid-class starship. More »
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GenCon is insane, there's no two ways about it. Between the exhibition hall, the thousands of games constantly going on 24-hours a day, the LARPing, movie-watching, seminars, writing, and just about everything else, it really is four days of overwhelming craziness. More »
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At this year's GenCon, the big announcements on the floor were that two major franchises had just found new homes as tabletop games: Fantasy Flight Games scored a wide-ranging license for Star Wars products, and Margaret Weis Productions will be making a Marvel RPG. I got a chance to swing by both their booths, and get the skinny on their titles. More »
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If I had to choose between facing her sword and facing her dragon, I would drop to one knee and offer fealty. This incredible image is just one of many incredible fantasy illustrations by Jason Engle. Here are some of our favorites. More »
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Quite possibly the most exciting movie panel at Comic-Con yesterday didn't involve Spider-Man or Tintin. Legendary Pictures gave a select few fans a sneak peek of four long-awaited film projects, and we were there. More »
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That's just one of the useful life lessons you'll learn from our exclusive clip from Tekken, the video game adaptation coming to DVD on July 19. You'll also learn the importance of having a Signature. And wearing eyeliner while training. More »
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This pool-playing robot, which was built by Germany's Technische Universität München, made an appearance at this year's International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Watch as this bad boy uses cameras and robotic arms to own the felt. More »
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Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, released this week, provides a fun (if somewhat predictable) dose of RPG action based on D&D 4th edition rules. Team up with friends to save the Dalelands from the Zhentarim threat, and see how many times you laugh out loud at the stilted dialogue. More »
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Artist Christopher Burdett just posted pictures of three dragons he designed for the Game of Thrones card game, giving us something to tide us over until A Dance With Dragons. More »
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This is one of the most ludicrous game parodies we've seen lately. You play the Spider-Queen of Mars, racing around classic arcade-style levels and trying to recapture your escaped Martian slaves. It's all part of Adult Swim's new viral marketing. More »
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