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Filed under: Games, Internet

Three days into video game session, Chinese man dies

Run, Luke, Run!We've all heard the horror stories, often emanating from the neighborhood of the far east, of people who take their online gaming a little too seriously. These are folks that get real-life revenge for in-game defeats, like the guy who murdered (in real life) an online opponent for stealing his in-game weapon. There have even been cases, reportedly, where folks who were otherwise healthy just up and died while playing online games.

Apparently, the trend continues. Today, CIO Insight reported that a Chinese man died after playing Internet games in a Net Cafe for three straight days, ostensibly one that stays open 24 hours a day. If the case was like the previously mentioned Korean case, the one must wonder why, if starvation and dehydration were the culprits, the proprietors of the cafe didn't kick him out for being a bum and not ordering something to drink. Exhaustion was the stated reason for death, but even then--don't you think you'd fall asleep before allowing an Internet game to exhaust you? Perhaps not if you play with this level of intensity.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Time-Wasters

Flash Element TD - Today's Time Waster

Flash Element TDI've seen games like Flash Element TD before and haven't been overwhelmed, but after playing this one for about 45 minutes, and then realizing I had been playing it for 45 minutes, I realized it's a keeper. It's of the "tower defense" genre, wherein you have to protect against wave after wave of baddies by building towers. Each tower has strengths and weaknesses against different enemies, which get progressively tougher. For each enemy you kill you get gold, which you can use to buy more towers, and for every seventh wave you get wood, which you can spend to unlock new types of towers. At the beginning of the game you have 20 lives, and you lose one life for every enemy you let pass. While nothing about Flash Element TD stands out too far at first blush, but after playing a few levels I was completely addicted. Check it out.

Filed under: Games, Windows Mobile, Freeware, Time-Wasters

WarCraft clone for Pocket PC - Today's Time Waster

MedievalA Russian developer is working pretty rapidly on Medieval - a WarCraft III clone for Pocket PC devices. Just a few days ago I downloaded an alpha of this program and it was unplayable. Today I grabbed version 0.1, and it's perfectly playable, if a bit confusing. For example, by default the program opens in landscape mode, but if you use your PDA's directional pad to scroll across the screen, it scrolls as if it were in portrait mode. If you switch your Pocket PC to landscape mode before opening the game, you won't have this problem.

If you want a more full-feature WarCraft Clone, you can check out n0p's Wargus port. It uses the Strategus game engine and WarCraft II graphics to make a WarCraft-like experience on the PocketPC. But it requires a huge amount of memory. In order to play on my Dell Axim X50v, I need to have more than 40MB of RAM free. You also need to have a copy of WarCraft II in order to play, and the setup process is rather complicated.

Medieval, on the other hand, is less than 1MB at present. All you need to do to play is unzip the file and copy it to your PDA. Now if someone would just create a StarCraft port, and not get sued into oblivion in the process, (although I'm certain plenty of people would be willing to pay for a licensed copy of WarCraft or StarCraft for Windows Mobile).

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Macintosh, Freeware

It's time to slay dragons

If you've been playing World of Warcraft for any length of time, then you know that there are just some quests you can't do every day. They're too special, too "l33t" to happen all the time. Like slaying the great dragon Onyxia. Or trauling through the menacing dungeon Zul Gurub in search of really rare treasure. But, if you're not paying attention to the spawn schedule of these quests, then you may miss your chance to go on them! And what fun is that?

Fortunately, there's a great widget for OS X's Dashboard called World of Warcraft Raid Calendar that will remind you when a periodic instance raid is about to spawn. It will even display a countdown timer for the most sought-after raids. It works with any Warcraft realm server, and is available as a free download.  Windows users, well, no OS X, no Dashboard. No Dashboard, no Raid Calendar Widget. 

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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