Tag: Special event »

Blood Brothers 2is DeNA's follow-up to their popular strategy RPG of the same name (minus the "2"), and it's just been updated with a bunch of new stuff. New stuff like player guilds and special daily events.

Guilds let players team-up for all sorts of benefits. Along with in-game chat to help members communicate, mastery levels can be pooled and shared with all guildies, any in-app purchases made by a guild member will bestow gifts to every other guild member, and newcomers can begin to enjoy the shared upgrades as soon as they join.

The new special events, on the other hand, include things like daily bonus stages that give players the chance to earn rare items, specially-themed daily packs for everyone to purchse, and treasure boxes containing random rewards will drop whenever players complete a stage.

All of these features are live right now, and you can grab Blood Brothers 2 off the App Store for free to check them out.

TRANSFORMERS: Age of Extinction, by Mobage Inc., has received its the first major update. The popular game now includes Stinger, a new challenging boss, the epic assault feature, and the ability to use Energon Shards to upgrade your character.

Mobage has also added levels from the film including Hong Kong and Lockdown’s Ship, and introduces Special Events to the game. The first of these special events is the Hunted Survival Missions, where players take on waves of enemies in an attempt to survive as long as possible. This special event is only available until Wednesday, September 17, and players can earn big in-game rewards for a high ranking on the leader boards.

You can download TRANSFORMERS: Age of Extinction for free on the App Store.

Wondering where you can watch the announcements from the Apple announcements today? We've got details below.

It doesn't look like Apple is going to live stream the event today, so live blogs will be the only way to follow along with the announcements. As usual we'll tweet the highlights to our Twitter stream, you can follow along there.

And while not there in person, our friends over at Pocket Gamer are pseudo-live blogging the announcements.

Engadget usually has really good coverage but they don't seem to be covering the event this time are covering the event, just slow about it. The Verge is usually another good option.

Don't get your hopes up for anything too exciting. The event is being held at the Cupertino home base of Apple in a theater that is rather small for an important event. The small scale signifies that nothing too huge will be announced. My guess is the two new iPhones we have read about (iPhone 5S and 5C), updated iPod touch, revised Macs, and maybe an small update to Apple TV. And of course we'll hear about the release date for iOS 7.

Check back here later and we'll have more thoughts on the announcements made today. And we'll post the video as soon as it's up.

Announcement Recap

We'll have more in the coming days, but here's our recap of the event today where the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C were officially announced along with the release date of iOS 7.

Early Thoughts on the Apple Announcements

Tuesday is a Very Important Day for Tim Cook, and For Apple - Jeff looks at how Apple may be trailing behind it's users sophistication level when it comes to mobile devices.

iOS Is Falling Behind For Family Users - Jen takes a hard look at how iOS has failed to respond to the needs of multiuser families.

How to Prepare Yourself for iOS 7 - Carter looks at some things that will help get an iOS device ready for iOS 7.

While all the little kiddies are out gathering candy - assuming they aren’t out on the East Coast because that would be fairly dangerous given the current circumstances - it can be tough figuring out what the rest of us can do with our time. Sure there might be the odd Halloween party and there’s always sitting around waiting for trick-or-treaters. But what’s a person to do with their downtime? Why not take to the App Store and sample a bunch of new Halloween content that’s just been added to a number of DeNA titles?

Blood Brothers - The most recent “gather creatures and strengthen/evolve them” game to come from Mobage is having a special Grave of Kings event. Players can nab some event-only familiars (complete with jack-o-lantern masks) until November 1st. Or until the special raid boss event ends. Which will also be on November 1st. So yeah.

Deity Wars - Starting now and continuing through October 31st players will be able to participate in a special live event to try and earn both rare cards and the expected Halloween-themed in-game items. Nothing like mixing a few ghosts and goblins with gods, right?

Fantasica - Guard your dreams! A bunch of Halloween nightmares have been let loose and players must band together to fight them off. The special event runs through the 31st and will give us all the chance to win some special loot and cards. I feel like I should reinstall this just so I can ogle the new characters because I love the artwork so much.

Kingdom Wars! - Get your hands on some limited time Halloween Edition Dungeon card packs and hopefully bring a ghost, witch, or other nightmarish monstrosity into the ranks. “Mwahahahahaha!!!” and all that.

My Monster Rancher - Rather than focusing on special event monsters (although there are those, too), My Monster Rancher is tossing lots of special prizes and costume items into the pot cauldron. Witch hats, pumpkin heads, and more await!

Ninja Royale - This Halloween a bunch of vampires chose the wrong ninja to try and snack on. In addition to the special themed drops a special jack-o-lantern clan, CARVER, has been added. Seriously though, of all the human prey to hunt why would vampires want to go after a ninja?

Pocket Planes - We’re all familiar with ferrying bitizens back and forth to earn some cash. We’re also accustomed to hauling a bunch of the little pixel people and their gear to special destinations for specific purposes. Now we can fly lots of ghouls, candy, and whatnot around until the 31st. Let’s make sure these bitizens have a Halloween they’ll never forget!

Rage of Bahamut - Granted I’m used to special events in this CCG but I’ve yet to take part in any that were holiday themed. This time it’s going to be the Manor of Illusions, complete with plenty of special items and cards to earn. I suppose it’s time to start stockpiling more cure waters.

Tiny Tower - Not even Tiny Tower is safe from the horrible spirits roaming the App Store. Granted the ghostly costumes have been available for bitizens to wear for quite some time but now there’s a special Halloweed-themed mission to complete. And you can dress them up and start haunting your tower’s floors now through the end of the month.

Note: Forgive us, this article isn't something that we would normally publish. But last week was not an ordinary week. We're still trying to adapt to it all.

I've started to refer to this moment during Tuesday's special event as the Schiller sigh. The first time I noticed it, it seemed like a very odd reaction. But we now know it was a moment of true emotion escaping in a very important presentation. With hindsight I understand the reaction and the strong emotion behind it, and it speaks volumes. Take a look at the video below, if you missed it during the presentation.

That reaction has haunted me ever since noticing it upon re-watching the special event stream. This week has been a very emotional week and after noticing Phil Schiller's reaction, I could not get it out of my head.

Was that a sigh and did he look sad right after announcing the new flagship iOS phone? He should be really proud after announcing a new product. People should see in your face and reaction how great the product is and how proud of it you are. But no, that was a sigh, and a very sad face.

Initially I thought that perhaps Phil didn't like the iPhone 4S or name. Then I quickly realized it wasn't the name but the fact that he was up there announcing it. A product who's real creator could not be up there to announce it himself. Only the next day did we understand exactly why.

That was just a single moment in the middle of a very subdued presentation. Not the traditional Apple presentation we are used to. Phil let his emotions tell what, out of respect to the family, he couldn't say with words. The life of a great man, the one whom everyone in that room admired and respected, was coming to an end. The executive team knew it. They went on with the event, most likely because Steve expected them to. They were all very professional, but the emotional toll on the presenters was evident.

Looking back, they held up amazingly well. I can not imagine how tough it must have been to be up there. But they are professionals who knew that Steve would be watching and expect nothing less from them. And the products announced, which Steve was responsible for, deserved it.

An empty seat that can never be filled. Reserved last week at the iPhone 4S announcement.

We started talking about iPhone OS months ago. We've already covered what we'd like to see in iPhone OS 4. Today at 10am we get to see what Apple will be delivering to us in the coming months.

Join us back here at 10am Pacific for the announcements. We'll be grabbing the best bits from all over the web and posting them here along with discussion of what we find out.

Remember, iPhone OS 4 won't be released tomorrow, at least not to consumers. But we will get an idea of what we have to look forward to when it is released, probably in June or July of this year.

Update: Instead of a live discussion, we are going to provide highlights and a wrap-up of the announcement after the event has finished. If you'd like to keep track of the live events, gdgt generally has really good live coverage.