Darwinia has made it’s presence known on the Xbox Live Arcade in the form of Darwinia+. This game has won multiple awards and received lots of attention in the past in it’s PC incarnations. Introversion Software has now brought it to the console where it is surprisingly easier and more natural to navigate. They even threw in the multiplayer incarnation ‘Multiwinia’ to boot.

The game exists in it’s own little digital tron-esque universe. It’s an ecosystem populated with industry, civilization, wild life, and various stimuli. It’s a virtual ecosystem where evolution and artificial intelligence is studied. There even religion as a component. continue…

Pure Digital Technologies Inc. isn’t the most well known of brands. Ask people what they make and most wouldn’t know but show them a Flip Video camera and they’re instantly interested. Its quite a nice lineup of products they’ve got with a very focused direction; simplicity in photography. The Flip Video series has been tremendously well received by bloggers and social media aficionados but yet the brand, in Canada at least, is relatively unknown.With a value price point and a solid product you would think the original Flip Video cameras would be tremendously popular but soon after their release in Canada they started to show their age in as much as they did not support high definition. By that point it was fast becoming a necessity. The cameras promoted their Easy-To-YouTube abilities so then once YouTube began to support HD footage, the lack of HD in the Flip cameras became the elephant in the room. continue…

Today sees the retail release of Forza Motrsport 3 for the Xbox 360. Its first and foremost a car racing simulator but theres so much to it. Its simultaneously a complex and simple game from Turn 10 Studios which really shows the evolution of the genre and tries to push it further. A lot of eyes are on this one. Some are worried they simplified it too much, making things too easy. Others worry that its too hardcore and inaccessible to all but the extreme car enthusiast. continue…

This week sees the release of Shadow Complex for the Xbox Live Arcade developed by Chair Entertainment with help from Epic Games (since it uses the Unreal Engine 3 after all.) It’s been highly anticipated for a while now and is part of the much-promoted Xbox Live “Summer of Arcade” avalanche of top tier releases. Its been a relatively dry year for game releases, with downloadable games generally being the most interesting things out there as most retail titles have been waiting for Q4 or have been delayed until 2010. With such a lack of fresh meat, theres lots of room for a game like Shadow Complex to strut it’s stuff. We’ve already seen the multi-player-only Battlefield 1943 gain huge sales in this industry climate. Now its Shadow Complex’s turn to attempt the same with a purely single player experience. continue…