Well, this is interesting. While the rest of the world was ogling over what’s coming down the pipe from Google, Steam introduced collectible virtual trading cards that you can earn by playing games, and trade in for bragging rights and prizes.

Sound odd? Sure, but it’s also rather neat. Steam Trading Cards are currently in beta, and themed after the few games that support them. You earn cards by playing the participating games, though you can only earn about half of a game’s total card set on your own. You’ll need to collect the rest of the set by bartering with friends or other Steam users.

Here’s where things get interesting (and potentially valuable): complete a set of cards, and you can craft them into a game badge. These badges can be displayed on your Steam profile, but you’ll also earn random goodies like backgrounds for your Steam profile and (more lucratively) coupons for DLC and discounts on Steam games.

These collectible cards can be sold on Steam’s Community Market, and as of the last hour virtual game cards have been selling for about $2 - $3—which sounds ludicrous. There is of course the potential to earn a badge and get a coupon for 50% off a game or DLC, and… nope, still ludicrous. I’m sure the market prices will level off once that “shiny new feature” smell wears off, more folks get invited to the beta, and a true median price is determined by supply and demand.

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Following in the footsteps of 2010’s Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light improves upon the gameplay of its predecessor without destroying what made the series great in the first place: the setting. Last Light takes you back to the post-apocalyptic Russian wasteland, employing an excellent soundtrack and bleak, desolate imagery to deliver a first-person shooter with surprising pathos and one of the most genuine game narratives in recent memory.

Boot up Last Light and you'll be dropped into the boots of Artyom–a man haunted by memories of his mother, or lack thereof–as he attempts to leave the Russian Metro to capture “a dark one”, monstrous remnants of the world before it was devastated by all-out nuclear war. Of course, nothing goes smoothly for Artyom, and along the way you'll be captured by other survivors and work together with another captive, Pavel, to orchestrate an escape. Artyom's quest ranges across the Russian wasteland, ultimately leading you through areas devastated by nuclear destruction and nests of enemies mutated by the apocalypse before culminating in one of the coolest and most intense firefight finales I've ever experienced.

But frenetic, fast-paced combat is tiresome without a meaningful reason to fight, and Metro: Last Light tells a meaningful story through emotionally-charged flashbacks to the moment the nuclear missiles struck, and how that moment affected the Russian people. It’s a series of powerful scenes scattered throughout the 9-12 hour campaign that don’t force themselves on you, allowing different players to experience as much–or as little–of the narrative as they like. That’s one of Metro’s greatest strengths: it doesn’t force anything on the player. There’s plenty of optional areas to explore at your leisure, allowing you to intuitively control how long you spend in Metro: Last Light's bleak alternate reality.

Moment to moment, the actions you're taking in Metro: Last Light are very similar to those you performed in Metro 2033: exploring, scrounging, and fighting for your life with a hodgepodge of unique and innovative post-apocalyptic weapons. Even your weapons tell a story, like the handmade submachine gun that has a magazine that slides left-to-right, through the weapon, as shots are fired. It’s a little thing, but idiosyncratic touches like this do an excellent job of showcasing the unique, alien nature of Metro's alternate reality Russia.

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It's only been a couple of months since the launch of SimCity and the debacle that followed (which still lingers today), but Maxis and EA want to cleanse your palate with a new addition to the Sims franchise: The Sims 4 is coming to PC and Mac in 2014.

Electronic Arts

EA writes on their blog: "The Sims franchise is fueled by the passion and creativity of its millions of fans around the world. Their continued devotion to the franchise ignites the fire of creativity of the team at The Sims Studio, driving them to continually improve and innovate on one of the world’s most successful simulation game that has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide."

Before the SimCity boondoggle, the announcement of a new Sims game would barely be newsworthy. But in a post-SimCity world, any new EA game is worth scrutinizing: Will a constant connection be required? Will multiplayer features be shoehorned in? Will extravagant features be promised but then redacted until further notice? Or will it all come together smoothly, and redeem EA in the eyes of an audience still smarting over the belly-flop that was the SimCity launch? I guess we'll find out in 2014. And no, I'm not bitter at all!

(Okay, I'm a little bitter.)

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Slay my foes, and then eat their skulls? Well, that's hardly sporting. Or sanitary. But the horde of undead foes I'm facing in 17Bits'  Skulls of the Shogun certainly won't hesitate to tap into the unparalleled power that a calcium-rich snack will offer, so it's a case of getting them before they get us, really. And who doesn't enjoy crushing the occasional skull?

As befits a turn-based strategy game, securing resources is the linchpin for success. And Skulls offers no shortage of resources to manage, some less obvious than others. The most important is rice—rice paddies are strewn about the game's single- and multi-player maps, and while the dead don't have much need for food (besides skulls, but I'll get to that) haunting rice paddies will allow you to stockpile the rice you'll need to acquire resource number two: soldiers.

Can't have much of an army without soldiers; haunt a shrine, and you'll be able to spend rice on the game's three primary units: infantry, cavalry and archers. Infantry will form the backbone of your army, offering decent attack power and strong defensive capabilities. Cavalry have meager defenses, but their expansive movement range allows them to dive in and out of combat quickly, helpful for capturing buildings or harassing enemies. And then there are your archers: their powerful attacks are devastating and the extra range means they can only be counterattacked by other archers, but they can't hit enemies in melee range, so you'll need to keep them protected. And no one needs to be protected as much as your general—he's a powerful fighter in his own right, but once he's slain it's game over.

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What's the most difficult thing you did in the last year?  Now stop. Before you answer, can it compare to creating a full-fledged indie game—slated to be approved on Steam—created entirely with QBASIC? Probably not.

QBASIC is a software interpreter for the BASIC programming language that showed up in 1991, and basic it is. Here's a little video of a game created by IBM to show off the awesome power of QBASIC when it first launched:

You get the idea after about 45 seconds. Now, over 20 years later—but with the exact same programming tools—we have Black Annex. Check out this trailer with actual gameplay—and I can't say it enough—using the same programming language that the above video was "showing off."

Not only are the simple visuals awesome, but the gameplay actually looks complex and tough to master—not something you'd expect from a programming language with simple loops and statements.

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At first glance, the Razer Edge Pro is indistinguishable from other Windows 8 tablets: It’s 2.2 pounds of matte black metal with a 10.1-inch screen and a single Windows button. But pick it up, and you'll immediately feel the heft in your hands. It's bulkier than the Surface Pro, and also runs much, much hotter.

That heat flows from the powerful components nestled inside. An Nvidia GPU and an Intel Core i7 CPU allow Razer's tablet to compete with similarly priced ultrabooks in terms of raw processing performance. The goal? To deliver no-exuses PC gaming in a handheld tablet form factor. Throw in a Gamepad Controller accessory, and the Edge Pro begins to approximate a console gaming experience, care of dual analog sticks, a D-pad and action buttons.

I haven't yet spent enough time with the tablet to know whether it delivers on its promise—look for our full review next week—but Razer's latest gaming hardware began to leave a strong first impression the moment I pulled it out of its packaging.

Playing PC games on a tablet is fantastic

The most important thing you need to know about the Razer Edge Pro is that it delivers in terms of frame rates and battery life. You can use it to play contemporary PC games at decent settings, and the battery lasts long enough to let you play for at least two to three hours at a stretch before you need to recharge. You can augment battery life with an extended battery pack, which Razer sells separately or as part of a Gamepad Controller bundle.

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Building a city is hard work. Armchair urban planners have known this for nigh on three decades, ever since 1989’s SimCity introduced us to a game world of zoning regulations and budget balancing. ­_­

It’s been a long time, but SimCity has been reborn. Powering the experience is developer Maxis’s GlassBox engine, which attempts to dynamically simulate conditions in a city. You can track individual citizens as they shuffle about your city, filling residential areas as they move in and causing traffic jams as they attempt to commute to work. While much of the gameplay has been simplified (no more laying down power lines and water pipes), new complexity has been introduced through a focus on multiplayer cooperation and specialized cities.

The end result is a visually striking homage to a classic series that takes city building in bold new directions, but troubling business decisions and technical snafus ultimately hamper the game’s ability to eclipse its predecessors. Is the new SimCity worth your hard-earned simoleons? Let’s find out.

Moving on up

Cities in the new SimCity are decidedly smaller than previous entries in the series; the sprawling metropolises of yore have necessarily given way to a focus on careful planning and design, largely because of the GlassBox engine's hefty computational requirements. The new SimCity keeps the familiar Residential, Commercial, and Industrial zone trinity, but the classic approach of plopping down low-, medium- and high-density zones to balance your city’s development has given way to a more organic approach: buildings start small, and only grow when they have enough money, happy residents, and space. Roads are the lynchpin to a thriving city: power and water flows along your roadways, which are themselves available in low, medium, and high capacities, ultimately determining how large your zones can be.

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Whether you're killing time playing the beta or sitting there twiddling your thumbs waiting for the Heart of the Swarm expansion to release on March 12, now you can distract yourself with the pretty new CGI trailer titled "Vengence."

They revealed it live on their Twitch channel yesterday at 12pm PST then promplty uploaded it to their Youtube channel.The trailer got me really pumped to dive straight into the campaign, and maybe even go back through the Wings of Liberty campaign as a refresher. Just when you thought there may be a happy ending for Raynor and Kerrigan, it seems the Queen of Blades is a little restless adjusting to Terran life.

The few things I took away from the trailer:

• Sweet dubstep
• Raynor is a romantic
• Kerrigan is not the most trustworthy ally
• Battlecrusier battle
• Only one appearance by the Protoss

Razer’s CEO and Creative Director Min-Liang Tan, confirmed via a tweet Thursday that the company's Project Fiona gaming tablet, first discussed at CES 2012, is in the design stages and will eventually be released.

He sent out a Facebook update Wednesday asking for 10,000 likes in seven days to gauge interest and to see if the hardware was worth releasing. As of this writing, he’s gotten 10,788 likes on the update and has decided to proceed.

The Razer executive's Facebook page asked for suggestions and user feedback when it comes to the tablet’s design. “We’ve been working on it since [CES] and have narrowed down a couple of key concepts/designs. We would like to reach out to the community to see the level of interest before we actually launch it,” the post reads.

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What major tech company isn't involved in some sort of legal dispute these days? While Microsoft has recently been successful in keeping Motorola's Android phones from making their way into the country, a U.S. Judge is giving MS a taste of its own medicine by recommending a ban on Xbox 360s in the United States.

Judge David Shaw from the US International Trade Commission may ban the sale and import of Microsoft's popular console over a patent dispute the company has with Motorola. The patent involves the way that the Xbox handles video decoding, and a ban is already in place in Germany over a similar lawsuit.

This is only a recommendation, and the ITC would have to approve the idea before anything else could happen. Even then, the Obama administration would be the ones to sign off on the ban--something that wouldn't happen for some time.

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Ready, set, Fallout New Vegas (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) lands tomorrow, a proper standalone sequel to Fallout 3 that skips cross-country from the urinal-colored husk of Washington D.C. to a urinal-colored preserve in the Mojave Desert. The lure here, aside from publisher Bethesda's quality stamp and seal, is lead designer Chris Avellone, the guy behind Planescape: Torment. ETA: 10/19

Clocking in with 100% fewer radiation sickness victims, Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii) sees Nintendo's dimpled blob transformed into a piece of thread and flung into an "unraveling" world. Stitch it back together as an off-road truck, robotic tank, submarine, and whatever else yarn spins into under Nintendo's whimsical fingers. ETA: 10/18

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