EA is fast in that crowd-pleasing sort of way. It announced that Command & Conquer 4 would arrive in 2010, and less than a year after we first heard the news, we can already play the demo. The LA studio seems to have a real soft spot for Japanese flavor — after Red Alert 3 they only got more hooked, and even Kane in the C&C4 pre-order promo art is done up as an Imperial warrior. 《命令与征服4》multiplayer demo Note: This demo requires a genuine Red Alert 3 Special Edition serial number (CD-key) to activate before you can get into the game.

This morning, by sheer chance, a portal dropped me into “Adoogen - Connecting Game Lovers Everywhere“. A few minutes of scanning the whole site told me what I needed to know — this is exactly the kind of game community site I’d been hoping for.

This afternoon halley summoned me over for a few rounds of Red Alert 3, and my craving for StarCraft 2 shot straight through the roof… Finally there’s some solid word: Q2 next year. Well, sooner than I can mentally handle, hehe.

During the long wait for Diablo 3, we’re no longer lonely — because now we have Torchlight. Here’s some info (download links at the bottom):

I happened to come across the CNC4 promotional animation — I wonder if it’ll be the intro for next year’s full release?

A few days ago I watched the movie 9 — mediocre plot, but grand visuals — and the images of those future robots are still vivid in my mind. Yesterday, the big Flash game Machinarium entered my gaming journey.

I remember it only officially came out yesterday, and today there’s already a download… I’d like to play it too, but I never imagined a pirated copy would show up this fast. Is this game getting a lot of attention?

Last night I got to that mission, can’t remember the exact name. It’s the one you pick up from Playboy X — head into the construction site and kill a few gang leaders. I died a ton of times. Every restart meant driving for ages just to get back to the site, and I don’t even want to talk about how much time that wasted. Sigh… The combat in this mission is great though — lots of enemies, plenty of cover, outdoors, and it doesn’t show you where all the enemies are, so it feels pretty realistic.

It’s been a long time since I last played an RTS. Yan asked me how to deal with the aliens in Kane’s Wrath, which got me reminiscing about Red Alert 3 and Tiberium Wars all over again.Along the way I remembered a one-line tip I once gave to a newbie — let me share it:

Plants vs. Zombies won over a lot of players with its adorable art and casual style — I’m one of them. Recently, while digging around for games, I found another management sim with the same cute look: Farm Frenzy 3. I never played the earlier titles, but judging from the description and screenshots, it’s a small, neat, thoroughly entertaining casual game too. Game overview: A farm simulation game, similar to QQ Farm — except this one is level-based. You keep completing tasks to move on to the next level, and the more money you make, the better farm equipment you can buy. You build five types of farms across the world’s five continents, i.e. five major levels, and each level yields farm equipment with different functions.