Two big moves in the tablet gaming space for one game retailer have been confirmed today.

GameStop has selected an Android tablet model to serve as their “official” gaming platform next year. These tablet models will launch with some titles pre-installed.

“We’re in test phase right now,” GameStop president Tony Bartel told GamesIndustry.biz. “But we’re excited at the prospect of coming out with this tablet. I would call it a ‘GameStop certified gaming platform.’ We looked at all the tablets and these are the ones that really worked for gaming and we’re going to give you a few benefits that you’re not going to get elsewhere.”

Enemies come in waves monsters with swords and axes come at you on all sides. The character is difficult to move and the control stick does not work as fluidly as I am used to from other games with virtual joystick. Frequently he is being jumped from behind because of sluggish controls and an inability to automatically turn to face the attackers. You have two basic type of attacks on tap for the right hand. A quick attack and a heavy attack. Beneath the health bar is a heat meter, and when it is filled a greater attack power can be summoned. He sort of grunts and squats and force waves emanate off him as though he needs a dose of Gas-X.

The backgrounds and the hordes that you have to clear all all a barrage of garish colors all smashed together. You’ll see fuchsia lady bug swarms, heaps of poison spiting green ooze and tall purple crystals dripping with the turquoise waters of fountains. It has a funny over the top art style interpretation that has great resolution.

As each wave comes at you it gets bigger. Thankfully the areas expand too. There are various rewards. Some are straight forward treasure chests. You can keep doing battle until your inventory runs out of power ups and health potions.

You accumulate three types of medium of exchange, you have your experience points. And coins and gems. Killing gleans the experiences points and another factor which is soul remains. The soul remains are a multiplyer you earn by surviving successive waves. Soul remains are transformed at a ‘hearth’ into coins. Coins are used at the shop on new items. Experience points level you up.

Gems are the currency used the freemium currency. Those are earned when clicking ads, watching videos or by in App store purchase. They try to entice you with the better gear armor and weapons, buffs for your character and other bonus deals. Gems can be converted into coin but not vice-versa.

Like other Glu games it keeps annoyingly asking me to log into to Facebook. I don’t want to. I wish it would stop asking me every time. My scores for this game aren’t that important that I want to post them. I’m not likely to want to invite anyone to play through Facebook either, but if someone wanted to, it is more than available. You can play with a friend, or take their character with you on a mission. What I found even more irritating about this aspect of the game is that they repeatedly show a female barbarian warrior avatar with robust cleavage imploring you to add friends. I am wondering if she is playable in the multiplayer? I haven’t found it said anyplace that she is playable though.

Eternity Warriors is a good mindless diversion. It is brightly lit and you don’t have to do much except for tapping the attack buttons. It is a good one for taking up your time while you are doing something else or waiting around and you want something that doesn’t require your full attention. Eternity Warriors best asset is that it is free.

Stephanie Herrera: When I made the game I was a lot younger than now and the differences just came out of thin air, I didn’t plan them at all, just made whatever came to my mind. I think the innocence of the moment also helped and the stuff I was going through in my life at that certain point, such as becoming a self conscious woman.

What art your art style influences?

In that time I liked manga and anime a lot, probably you can tell from the images, lol… But now I’m older I have much more influences in my style, most of all come from cool conceptual art in films and videogames, and the range of styles is infinite, so you can use the stuff you like and combine all the aspects of different design forms.

How hard was it getting your art to become a game?

Actually I was really lucky, I was searching for a freelance job at that time and suddenly Adam appeared out of nowhere, told me he had seen my art and wanted to do a game with me. I never imagined it would become this big within internet gaming.

Was it a lengthy process?

Back then I was exploring my techniques of work as well, so yeah, I was a bit lengthy, but it was very cool process. First I did the sketches, then I put ink by hand, scanned and colored digitally.

Did you begin yiur career with a video game App in mind?

Nope, I never thought this game would become of such proportions. When Adam told me the game had been played more than 20 million times… I was shocked!!

The game tells a story without using words, why did you choose to go that route?

I didn’t chose it to be that way, but I’ve always liked the way someone can tell a story without words. That means the communication level has to be higher to make a story understandable. Now I know it’s better to do games without words, it’s more globalized that way.

Is this your first video game project?

Yes it is I did other small stuff for Adam before Dreams, but nothing as mine as Dreams.

What were you doing before working on Dreams?

By that time, let’s see… I think I was starting with my studies at the university or maybe just finishing high school. I’ve always liked art and drawing and painting, so probably I was doing that as well, lol..

Are you going to make more games?

I already finished some more difference games with Adam that soon will come out, and right now I’m finishing a Pinnochio twisted fairytale in a comic style that I hope people will like a lot too.   Part from that, it’s always been my dream to become a recognized woman in the videogaming world. A lot has been lost in the way of making new games, seems like somehow everybody forgot what is like to really think and use your head to win a game.

What games do you enjoy playing yourself?

I enjoy playing games that are not made for dummies, games that are not just about killing a bunch of dudes and massive special effects, but games that actually require you to use your head and present you an interesting new story and new ways of gameplay.

I had done an interview with someone from Aerial 7 so I checked out what they had. I found this set of Aerial 7 Tank Headphones in a Hello Kitty motif. I wanted them immediately, but I forced myself to really look around first to make sure that it wasn’t just the Hello Kitty design that was drawing me in.

I had many needs to fill. I wanted a headset because I had enough with ear buds. I wanted a decent mic for recording vocals at home. Being able to plug it into an acoustic electric guitar could come in handy for tuning, or practice while the TV is on. It had to be stable enough to handle Skype and not add additional static. Whatever I chose had to be compatible with all of our Apple devices too.

The Aerial7 Tank Headphones feature a 57mm Driver which gives a fairly robust sound quality. They are very comfortable, and have a small enough setting for my size. It came in attractive packaging. The instruction manual was very brief though, and could have been an actual booklet to help explain how each attachment is used in more detail for people who don’t know. For my purpose, just a short description and picture of each cord that they had was enough.

The set Includes a soft cloth case to carry the headphones and the variety of cords all together. The whole thing is compact enough to fit inside the niche in a guitar case, or easily hold an iPod as well as the headphones and the cords, in your purse or a beach bag. It is definitely worth it having the soft feeling of the foam on the ears. The sound is more round and holistic, the stereo separation is much more effective. They cut out background noise such as an air conditioner very well too.

These Tanks, while offering a very cute addition to my collection of Hello Kitty skins and covers for my eQlectronics, are extremely multi functional and handy. There are the many applications for these. I can use them for song writing Apps on my iPad, or gaming, as well as listening to music on iPods. It has those 3.5mm iPhone® – Skype™ adapters which means I can plug the alternate cord with the red and blue ends into my netbook PC for meetings on Skype, and for podcasts. All I have to do is switch over to the cord with the built in mic, or the 3.5mm input plug and 3.5mm iPhone that were included. It also came with a very long coiled DJ cord that can be plugged into a mixer. The fatter plug 3.5mm – 6.3mm (1/4″) adapter is included too. With everything it comes with and the way it sounds, it seems reasonable for the price. I just hope they will last.

Sharon’s background is mainly in marketing, so the goal of her new lifestyle app, Luminous, is to get a high profile sponsor on board to use it as part of Stone Creek Entertainment’s digital marketing campaign. Recently, for example, MTV sponsored a Facebook game Stone Creek created to promote this season of The Real World.

Her career has taken an interesting transition. Her first job was with a sports marketing agency, working on campaigns such as Major League Baseball. She then transitioned into gaming, leading the charge on marketing Grand Theft Auto, developing partnerships with with Jeff Gordon and Coca-Cola. She’s also played an important role in marketing MTV’s Virtual Worlds. Luminous promises to have a wealth of content about prominent females. The app is about understanding your own personality, just as Sharon is now marketing to an audience she feels she can fully understand.

Geek Woman: Your background is in marketing, how did you make the transition to representing games?

Sharon Wood: I worked in entertainment marketing for most of the first half of my career, and then video/digital game marketing the second half.  These weren’t traditional roles, and for the most part, I worked in start-ups, where everyone does and has to know everything.  I was involved with video game product development through market definition and frankly, because I am a girl and have raised a girl, I had opinions about the types of products I hoped to see in the market.  The other thing to keep in mind is that marketing can and should touch product definition, no matter the industry you work in.

What was your job at Grand Theft Auto like?

The Company was ASC Games, not Take Two, and we worked on multiple titles of which Grand Theft Auto was one of them.  It was enormously interesting.  When the first title released, it was quite different from what it is today.  It was more of an appeal to the player’s fantasy of being the “bad guy”, and it made for fascinating focus groups.  We launched with short marketing funds, and the awareness of the game travelled virally before I even began my campaign, so I had a great base from which to launch a campaign.

Are you a gamer?

Yes!  Not a hardcore, console gamer as much as a casual gamer.

What do you play?

I love Words with Friends.  It’s very social and I always have 20 games going with both friends and game-friends.  I also like Tiny Wings, Scoops, Chuzzle (a long time fan) and one of our prior titles, Her Pet Peeves.

What is Luminous about?

Karizmac Luminous is a self-discovery/self-exploration app.  It asks you to agree or disagree with decisions, and then shows you other women who may think like you, spanning women from history, the arts, business, entertainment, fashion and fiction; and it also tells you which personality trait goes with the decision you make, giving you 3 layers of personality traits.  Then it summarizes it on an interactive “Charisma Map”, so you can explore both your traits and the women, in a summarized form.  You can then compare your personality traits from day to day, and see how you do, or do not, shift.

Which type of game play is it?

Although Karizmac Luminous starts out as a quiz, it quickly departs into something that we feel is unique.  We hope women will enjoy gaining more insight about themselves, comparing their thoughts with others and sharing what they think with others.  We’ve seen some women enjoy collaborating on the answer choices, and also being a little competitive in the Bonus/Self Confidence section, which plays a little differently from the other part of the app.

How are the female characters in the game portrayed?

We observed decisions they made and aligned them with the decisions in the app.  We tell you a little bit about them and the situation.  I personally found this fascinating as we were writing.  These are women who, whether their actions were large, high profile, or small, were very thoughtful, in many cases brave and pioneering, and are really interesting.  For example, I had no idea that a woman invented the windshield wiper and the disposable diaper (although that certainly makes sense!).  Another received a Medal from the President for taking her husband’s place on the battlefield.  And various women’s thoughts about their careers, their relationships and motherhood were all intriguing, and thoughtful in ways I hadn’t thought about previously.

How do you go about finding a sponsor for a Facebook game?

In most cases, our team has relationships with sponsors and in others, we reach out to them.  Our sponsorships are strategic in nature; we’re not just asking them to put their name in our game.  We want it to work for them to reach their business goals.

Do you get private information about the gamers from Facebook?

No.

Geek Woman: I was told that you are a snowboarder, do you still enjoy the sport?

Tanya Otero: It’s my passion, and a huge source of inspiration in my life.

Have you ever gotten injured snowboarding?

Oh yes! In fact I am part bionic.

What is your favorite snowboarding video game?

Tony Hawk Shred of course…..I was just released 2010

How do feel when you are snowboarding and listening to your tunes?

Like all the insane beauty was packaged up just for me with my tunes, my mountain, my sound disc and my board. It’s one of my favorite experiences especially when you discover a new tune through Shazam and then its suddenly streaming through your own speakers, so great.

What are your favorite headphones or ear buds at Aerial7?

Actually I like the sound disc. Partially because I am a big fan of headwear, any season and also because you can still hear if need be to the outside world or like with snowboarding for example I like to hear the sound of the board slashing down the mountain.

Do you have anything to offer women who can’t get earbuds in their too tiny ears?

Our new Neo earbud which will be out this summer is smaller in size but carries the same punch as normal size earbuds. They come with a double dome ear tip that fits better in smaller ears plus is comfy for long term use. Aside from a great new product called the Neo, the sound disc is amazing which is a slotted hat or beanie that houses sound discs the Phoenix which is a light weight, compact over ear headphone with a 44mm driver such great sound for the size. Also our Tank, DJ headphone is unisex offering a variety of styles from DJ Loli’s studded headphone to a special Hello Kitty collaboration.

Is there a good sounding product for iPads?

All of our headphones work with apple products and we actually took the liberty of adding a mic to ALL of our headphones as well since we know how much Apple lovers use skype.

What types of products do you offer?

We offer earbuds, over the ear headphones and sound disk beanies

What inspirations do you use in the product designs?

All of our product is designed by our creative team who draws inspiration from music, action sports and fashion!

Are there new products that you can tell us about?

We have new colors coming out in some of our existing lines plus our new NEO ear bud. Then we also have a few new products that will come out late summer/fall timeframe!

Will Aerial7 be getting more into apparel?

We will certainly continue to develop the sound disc offering which does involve apparel on some level however the main focus is quality sounding electronics that last, are comfortable and functional for all the things we like to do.

The School 26 games are said to have been developed with the help of academic research and had extensive focus testing among teens. School 26: Summer of Secrets includes music from up-and-coming Vancouver band Hey Ocean! The first School 26 game is currently on sale $0.99 for iPhone / iPod Touch or $1.99 for iPad.

BUY

Game Loft has produced and successfully released it’s first MMO. Order and Chaos has been called a World of Warcraft knock-off. But in playing Order and Chaos, I feel like I have been playing Guild Wars pre-Searing. When I think of elves that have the long floppy ears, and characters with tree trunk shaped feet then I think of WoW. The human character designs only slightly resemble those good old shoeless, ugly, WoW avatars that you had come to love.

Right now for $6.99 at the Apple App store, you can play Order and Chaos on any iOS device for three months. It is the usual fare character choices: human, elf, ogre, and undead. There are professions to choose from such as warrior, mage, monk (cleric) and rogue.

Like so many MMOs, there is an infestation of human scammers who will steal your account on the pretense of doing a trade outside the game. They get your email account name and then crack your password. There are creeps scamming in other ways, and there are jerks selling gold too. As long as you know enough to stay away from these guys you will be ok. Chat is easily shut off so that you can ignore specific channels or all of them. It would be nice if you could have a master toggle to shut those off long term. As it is now, you have to shut the channels off each time you log in. If you are a new player it is a good idea to prepare yourself for the rude language and crudeness of some of the other players. Once you have that controlled, you can thoroughly enjoy the game.

Since it is new you can expect glitches. I was able to see other characters walking around up in the air as the surfaces they were traveling on disappeared. And my character was also able to see through walls and stick her feet through them. Up until the first major patch. I’ve seen enemies get buried in rocks or hillsides, and I am still able to kill them and collect from them. The loose-ness of the textures is in the players favor though. I don’t know how many times before I’ve wished I could shoot through rock.

There are so many advantages to playing an MMO on iPad vs playing on PC or even laptop. I fear I may sound way too happy. It can and has been criticized for simplicity, but the most addicting games are the ones which conquer the struggle between being simple and monotonous.

Game-play is faster than any MMO I have ever played. I won’t bore you with a list, but if you can think of a title, I’ve been there and done that. On iPad which loads everything in a split second, spells not only look fantastic, but they fly off quickly. Battle doesn’t lag. When you run, your character doesn’t stop and run in place while you wait for the next area to load. The auto targeting works perfectly. When you get attacked unexpectedly, your character begins to attack right back. No time and HP are wasted flailing about trying to get your character to turn around and start to do something. Once triggered you can come in and put out bigger attacks. You have to get used to the flow of traveling with the left hand and the camera with the right. Even when looting the corpse has to be picked from the right side of the screen or the right hand.

When you want to talk to an NPC, all you have to do is click in their icon. Then your character will run directly over to them and a menu will open. Or you will be give a choice between bargaining or speaking with them. There is no messing around trying to get your character into the right place to trigger the NPC. It just smoothly transpires without any additional frustration that you get in some games.

The iPad makes you faster too. The interface is very small. The touch commands are effortless. You swipe, tap and point which gives you a tactile feeling of being inside the world itself. Spells and strikes for warriors are mapped to three fingers of the right hand on a ring at the bottom right corner. It works very well. The ring spins to accommodate more moves. A double ring at some point in the future would work well for getting the rest of the right hand fingers into the game. A hidden panel to the right side of the screen opens for one touch access and release if health potion is or other effects that can be set off even during battle, depending on what it is.

The other speed boost to MMO play is there is no set up time. In traditional MMO’s you can spend an hour or more just setting up before you can get to play. There were hundreds of little icons to select from and then arrange on the desk top, and in bags. The whole prep time has been pruned back to give not only ease of use but also pick up and play-ability. You can press the power button and return to play right where you left off.

Depending on how long you are gone, you may even return with all your Quests and buffs still in place, or even mid battle. Which isn’t a good idea, because your character could get killed when you aren’t there.

Death is nasty. You are without death penalty until level ten, but that comes quickly. The penalty is taken out of your character’s money! It is terrible. If you wander into the wrong area, or if you are going against higher level characters they take even more of your hard earned silver, and could clean you out. You do revive in conveniently located cemeteries but it’s no consolation.

There certainly are lots of people complaining about everything from the map to looking for NPC’s to finish quests. Indeed the maps can use a whole lot of improvement. They need to be labelled, right now the place names are toggled on a button. The locations of shops and trainers should be indicated on zoom. There are many forts and towns which are not on the map at all. Shapes show up on the map and turn out to be large rocks or giant tree stumps. Important structures such as impenetrable walls of mountains or shuttered dams in the north are not notated and they should be. There are excellent mobs and hunting grounds that are hidden in these areas, and they deserve exploration.

The game encourages you to team up but so far at level 22 I haven’t seen where it is required. The quests are easy and give big experience points. You can make it through the levels to 20 easily from experience points gained from Quests and occasional hunting.

You can form Guilds of course. If there is someone that yiu would like to talk to you can exchange in game names and add them to your friends list, invite them to share a Quest or join a Guild. Right now you can’t shut off private messaging called Whisper. So theoretically someone can accost you verbally privately and be pretty vulgar. You can Ignore that person by holding a finger on the character name. I don’t know if that blocks the entire account to prevent stalking, but it should.

There are several cute little pets to choose from. They made it easy to acquire them. Although the prices fluctuate. I got a baby wolf and a baby panda. The prices on both of them increased the next week after I bought them. The pets just do a few cute animations and make adorable noises. They are fun to look at and take pictures with. They don’t do anything, I don’t think they take damage, but they do growl when enemies are near.

The graphics are not bad there are many pretty areas, full towns, temples and statues. There are glowing lights and sparkles coming from magical places in the environment. Where colorful butterflies play, and rainbows of sunlight dapple the leaves. Some of the sculptures are lit with purple and blue fog. When you get bespelled by some baddies, then indigo bubbles infest your brain. The negative spells are imaginative, filling your poor character’s mind with dark tracings or greenish ick. The gothic area around the Silent Castle is chock full of zombies, screaming banshies and harpies. The area is a great deal of fun, if not cliche. It is one of those places in the game where you never know what is going to spring up or how huge it will be.

The layout in the towns can be repetitive. The interior floor plans are similar, which makes it easier to get in and out. Some of the enemy dwellings are exactly the same too, and I hope to see more and better interior models as I advance through the game.

Considering this is a mobile game that can be played on an iPhone or iTouch it is amazing how much stuff they were able to get in there. If you compare it to WoW and not something with gorgeous graphics like Guild Wars, the you won’t be disappointed. The graphics are not at the level of Infinity Blade, but there is much more to do in this game and I for one am liking this game even better.

Game play is very familiar. Your Quests do consist of going to find someone or an item. Then you kill a number of creatures or person(s) and return to the Quest giver to be rewarded. All very standard stuff, but it is all easily done. One of the strengths of the game is it’s simplicity and lack of clutter.

You can have a good time with it, without all the concerns that you have to deal with on a PC MMO. You can stop playing at any time and you will be returned right back to where you were seamlessly without any loss of distance travelled. There are many streamlined innovations in porting a game like this one to touch interface. The desktop MMO’s have even had special custom keyboards for the multitude of short cut commands to run a game taking up an entire qwerty keyboard, function keys and number keys too.

Order & Chaos Online is the best MMO I’ve played since Guild Wars. Period. It does what an MMO needs to do which is to let you kill things, and loot them. The game mechanics get out of your way and allow you to do that without impeding your progress or your good time.

The game is a fine value for the price. The subscription fees are low. You can make micro purchases in game for gold and crystals. Watch out for that . You can use as many iPads or iPods as you have on your iTunes account. You need a Gameloft Account which is free, for who ever is playing on each device or you can log in your own character across your multiple iOS devices.

Burn The City features 45 levels, intuitive controls, touch, drag and release. Similar in style to Angry Birds™ and Worms™, this game will keep you addicted for hours, and includes explosive physics and Game Center support for the competitive players. At your aid to destroy all mankind you have your fireball attack, and by eating different colored YUMs that are gathered by destroying crates throughout the levels, you obtain 3 special attacks: the first is TNT, which turns the standard fireball into a green explosive shot! The second is “Sniper”, which gives better accuracy across far distances, and finally the third special attack is “nuke”, which unleashes a nuclear blast when the screen is tapped.

A free version of the game is available on PC through Kongregate, and a version for the Android was released recently. The iOS version now available on the App Store is compatible with Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch® and Apple iPad, Burn The City.