It's not only Apple that's gearing up for the unveiling of the iPhone 5. It appears Samsung is too, as reports suggest the Korean company is currently filming a new anti-Apple ad likely targeting the new handset (and its fans).

Despite being clobbered in the courts by Apple to the tune of a billion bucks recently, Samsung appears to have retained its sense of humor, with a report on Tuesday suggesting the Korean tech giant is currently filming another of its TV ads poking fun at devotees of the Cupertino-based company.

The latest ad, being shot in Los Angeles, looks to be along the same lines as previous Samsung productions, reports The Verge, featuring a store with more than a passing resemblance to an Apple Store, complete with Apple-style signage (showing slogans like “join the crowd”), cardboard cut-outs of smiling ‘Apple Geniuses’ and mock-ups of various Apple products.

Earlier ads, one of which you can catch below, have shown hordes of people waiting in line for the doors of an Apple-style store to open so they can get their hands on the tech company’s refreshed phone. “If it looks the same, how will people know I upgraded?” asks one worried person in the line. Next they take an interest in someone walking by using a nifty-looking handset. They seem to like it, until they discover it’s made by Samsung. “I could never get a Samsung, I’m creative,” says one guy. “Dude, you’re a barista,” his friend tells him. The pay-off line? “The next big thing is already here.” We can expect more of the same in the new ad.

The Korean company is using its anti-Apple ads as part of an ongoing strategy to dampen down consumer enthusiasm for the iPhone. In fact, a study conducted following the airing last year of one of Samsung’s anti-Apple ads appeared to show that they were indeed having a damaging effect on consumer perception of Apple’s iPhone 4S. No wonder the company’s filming another one.

Last month the iPhone’s main competitor, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone, outsold the iPhone 4S for the first time ever, though admittedly this may have been in part down to Apple fans holding out for the soon-to-launch iPhone 5.

With Apple just hours away from unveiling the next iteration of its popular handset, we can expect to see the Korean tech company’s latest pop at Apple coming to our screens in the very near future.

Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier campaign DLC Raven Strike is a mixture of good and bad, but it's mostly good and well worth your time.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is, in my book, the strongest shooter we’ve seen this year (check out or full review for details). It’s a joy to play once you’re on the ground with a virtual gun in your virtual hands, and the use of cool military future tech, coupled with some excellent co-op play and team AI, comes together to create an exceptional gameplay experience. The game is marred by shaky technical execution outside of the actual play — I’m talking about multiplayer connections, matchmaking, Ubisoft’s unreliable servers, and a number of counter-intuitive design choices — but the bits that matter are so strong that it’s easy to overcome any frustration you might feel over the other issues.

Raven Strike is Ubisoft’s first campaign-focused DLC pack for Future Soldier. You get three story-driven missions plus a single new Guerilla map, that I frankly forgot about until I re-read the official press release, because the survival mode is so underwhelming in its own right. The map is set around a sawmill in the Russian countryside, the same basic setting that is the focus of one of the new campaign missions. It’s fine, I guess. As I said above, I feel like Guerilla is a flawed, half-baked mode with not enough of a hook to maintain attention over 50 waves. If you dig it though, well hey… new map. Righteous.

The campaign content breaks down into three missions that will each take your roughly 60-90 minutes on an initial playthrough. There’s a story, something involving a coup in Russia and your attempts to prevent Raven’s Rock, a group of hardline nationalists, from burning the country to the ground, but much like the original game’s campaign it’s largely forgettable and beside the point. What matters is the play, which Ubisoft described as more of a throwback to classic Ghost Recon titles, with larger maps and tougher missions.

I’m not sure how exactly the three new missions qualify as a throwback, though the first of them strips you of your fancy futuretech and none of them include any of the on-rails shooting sequences that marked some of the more climactic moments in the May 2012 release. The challenge is undeniably stiffer, but that’s a good thing. Overall, the three new missions offer a thoroughly entertaining expansion on the core game.

The first mission sends your four-man team through a nighttime swamp searching through the wreckage of an aerial transport shot down by Raven’s Rock. Between wading through chest-high waters, losing your stealth and sensor tech, and navigating through the nighttime fog, there’s a real need to change up the way you probably played through Future Soldier‘s campaign. You don’t have the tools that you had before, and so must rely on what you can see and hear in order to push through. There’s some great sneaking and sniping opportunities on this map, as well as a climactic “hold the line” gun battle to wrap things up.

The next mission shifts to the daytime setting of a rolling Russian countryside. Your gear is back but your orders, at least for the first couple sections, require total stealth. You can kill freely, but only if no alerts are raised. This section of the mission includes some very tense moments that require lots of team coordination and, as a helicopter begins running regular patrols overhead, careful timing. The stealth restriction eventually goes away, at which point you’re essentially running a free-fire gauntlet for the rest of the mission. There’s a nice mix of action here, and another “hold the line” combat scenario to finish things off.

The final mission brings your squad to the streets of Moscow, where they’re tasked with taking our four high-ranking members of Bodark, Russia’s own Ghost-like spec ops force.  This is, by far, the most elaborate of the three missions. You take your targets out in a pre-determined sequence (ie there’s no free-roaming element here), but the map layout and enemy placement — which includes more than a few vehicles and auto-turrets –create some killer challenges. Few games are better at making you feel like a badass than Ghost Recon: Future Soldier when you’re doing it right, and the third of these three missions highlights that very effectively.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news to report. Raven Strike feels like a boiled-down version of what’s great and what’s not so great about Future Soldier. The missions themselves are exceptional and, frankly, worth the price of admission, but everything on the outside is still as janky and unreliable as ever. Solo play worked fine, but whenever I switched to play co-op, the pre-mission briefing video would not play for me — I just got a blank screen — and I would invariably be disconnected from my co-op partner as we transitioned from briefing to mission. My fellow player would then have to get to the first checkpoint save, quit, and reload directly into the mission, effectively preventing me from making any pre-mission preparations.

While a technical issue such as that could be chalked up to one person’s setup simply not working for one reason or another, there are also, once again, some issues with the design. All three of the campaign missions offer challenges to complete just like the main campaign missions. Unlike the campaign challenges, however, these DLC challenges are just there for the sake of it. There are no weapon or attachment unlocks tied to their completion like there are in the main campaign. It feels like lazy, paint-by-numbers design. The main game had challenges and so the DLC must have challenges, but screw the rewards. There’s no sense to it at all.

That said, I can’t help but recommend Raven Strike to anyone who had a good time playing through the Future Soldier campaign. The three new missions offer more of the same great gameplay, complete with some new twists and turns that weren’t part of the main game. Some of the design choices continue to be downright baffling, and the new Guerilla map is debatably worthwhile, but the 3-5 hours of entertainment that you’ll get out of the expanded campaign content make it all worthwhile.

Feedly has stepped outside of its RSS reader comfort zone and debuted a redesigned mobile app that combines a social magazine with RSS feeds.

Feedly is revamping its image after falling behind as a Google Reader platform, while competitors like Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse have turned the news aggregation model on its head. This week, Feedly announced a newly redesigned app that from the looks of it joins the ranks of its more well-known competitors by combining your Google Reader feed with a sleek linear interface and the mechanisms of a social news reader.

Among the most noticeable changes that users will notice is the dramatic update to the app’s design. During some hands-on time with the revamped Feedly, it’s immediately obvious how beautifully redesigned the app is — and that the team definitely considered what users would want from a compact mobile news reader. The design principal with the app adheres to a strict standard of minimalism that it boasted even in its previous version. But this time, with some font changes among other aesthetic details, the app goes beyond what was previously a boring interface.

Feedly’s iPhone navigation is a breeze, which hasn’t changed from the previous version of the app; you can swipe left or right to access different pages of content. But there have been minor tweaks to the cards where the articles sit: The white background is now absent of horizontal lines and sports decreased spacing between each tile of content. The former black gradient footer, where the navigation buttons once lived has been shifted to the top and replaced by a white navigation bar that shouldn’t distract the user’s eyes from the content.

Feedly sports two navigation buttons. The button in the top left corner opens up a list of categories that you can customize to organize the RSS feeds that you would like to subscribe to. Within this page, you’ll notice default categories for “Today,” “Latest,” and “Saved for Later.” “Today” surfaces the most-shared content (via Facebook likes and Google +1s) from publications that you’ve subscribed to through your Google Reader. However when browsing through the app, we noticed that this feature in particular wasn’t curating the most popular content based on the popularity of the content itself, rather it was listing the articles based on the publication, which is a bit of a disappointment.

“Latest” on the other hand offers the latest news listed in an order based on the time of the article’s publishing, and “Saved for Later” needs no explanation.

The right compass-like icon on the navigation bar opens up a list of recommendations for RSS feeds that you can subscribe to and add to your categories. For example, “Business” suggests relevant business publications that we can choose to add to our category. At the top of the list, you’ll notice a search bar. This will allow you to search and subscribe to just about any publication with an RSS feed from around the Web.

Some caveats that we had with the app is that while just about every bell and whistle that we’d want in a news reader is packed into this platform (short of a well-executed “Today” page) the app can at times be confusing for users. There are almost too many features that have been crammed into the app and the intuitive engagement is sometimes lost. One issue that we faced was that previous subscriptions from our Google Reader appeared in an “Others” category, but we’re still not sure if we can move subscribed publications from one category to another without resorting to deleting, searching, and re-subscribing. In another situation, we accidentally discovered a hidden feature that enabled us to swipe down different lengths of the app to mark a certain numbers of articles as read.

It’s not a perfect app. Feedly built a social-based news discovery engine on top of its existing RSS-based framework and this slightly complicates the app’s interface, so there’s going to be a short period of trial and error where you’re trying to determine what each function and button does before you get accustomed, but with these flaws, it’s overall a robust reader app.

You can download the app from the Apple App Store for iOS devices and from the Google Play store for your mobile Android devices.

EA Sports delivers its best hockey simulation yet thanks to the revamped skating physics and smarter team AI in NHL 13.

September is here, and along with it comes the 2012/2013 season for the National Hockey League. And as always EA Sports is there with its faithful annual simulation. The updated rosters are great, but every year the pressure is on EA’s dev team to offer fresh, new content to justify another full-priced game purchase. NHL 13 earns its title as the go-to pro hockey sim of year. That it’s also the only pro hockey sim of the year is, in this particular case, beside the point.

Lacing Up Your Skates

The fundamental different that elevates NHL 13 beyond any of EA Sports’ past hockey efforts can be summed up in three words: True Performance Skating. The game trumpets this fact the very first time you fire it up, with a brief tutorial video hosted by cover athlete Claude Giroux, introducing what amounts to a seismic shift in under-the-hood mechanics.

In short, True Performance Skating is an all-new skating engine that is built on physics. The bullet points will happily tell you all about the 1,000+ player animations and painstakingly rendered motion capture, but in gameplay terms it’s pretty simple: your players now move like they’re actually using a pair of steel blades to maneuver around the hockey rink.

The physics of ice skating are obviously a large part of what makes professional hockey so unique within the sports world. How quickly a given player can accelerate and then reach top speed helps separate the Wayne Gretzky types from the Rico Fata types of world (sorry, Rico!). You really feel the difference now between a mediocre player and a superstar.

It’s more than that though. Momentum is also now a huge factor in how you get around on the ice. If you race from one end of the rink to the other at top speed, you may beat the defenders to the crease, but you’ll almost definitely be going too fast to accurately knock anything more than a quick wrister at the net. There’s value in allowing yourself to coast along the ice now, since it reduces your speed and offers increased maneuverability.

You can both feel and, thanks to all of those new animations, see this unfold before your very eyes as you play NHL 13. As you click the left stick to pour a little more boost onto your top speed, you’ll actually see your skater push down the ice with even more vigor. Cut too hard during a turn and you’ll know it when the controller rumbles and your skates throw up shredded bits of ice. All of this together requires a dramatically changed approach as you play, and for someone who understands the physics of the sport, it’s most definitely for the better.

No ‘I’ In T-E-A-M

There’s another major under-the-hood shift in NHL 13 that goes hand-in-hand with the new skating physics. EA Sports calls this one Hockey IQ and, like True Performance Skating, it aims to offer a more authentic simulation than you’ve seen in the series before.

Hockey IQ amounts to an across-the-board AI upgrade. Computer-controlled players demonstrate much better awareness of what’s happening on the ice around them. Once again, this is largely skill-based. Your starter Ultimate Team of scrubs won’t work well together at first. They’ll miss passes, move out of position, and generally behave like the rough-edged blunt instrument that they’re meant to be when starting out. Switch to an all-star team like the Los Angeles Kings, 2012′s Stanley Cup winners, and you’ll see a dramatic improvement in their performance.

In gameplay terms, skaters are now more on point than ever. With a solid team behind you, you’ll see your mates sticking to the established strategy script. If something’s not working, an entirely new set of AI-influencing sliders — the nuts and bolts of this new Hockey IQ — allows you to tweak a whole new set of variables. You can still fine tune your offensive and defensive strategies, but now you can drill down even deeper and adjust individual line settings. 

Do you want your first offensive line to cycle the puck more frequently, or maybe take more shots? Conserve energy to stay at peak performance through the whole game or pour everything into the opening minutes and then struggle to keep up for the rest of the game? All of this can be adjusted using a series of balance-based sliders, and you can watch as the effects of your decisions play out in-game.

There are separate Build Your AI and Create Play Mode options as well that allow you to fine-tune team strategies on a global level. It’s the sort of thing that an amateur player might never play with or even notice — you don’t need to adjust strategies to play NHL 13 effectively — but serious-minded fans will be all over it.

All The Modes

NHL 13 brings back all of the features that fans have come to expect. The main menu highlights the marquee features, which I’ll get to in a bit, but an “Other Game Modes” option opens into a sub-menu that offers up legacy modes like Be A Pro, Be A GM, Be A Legend, Season Mode, Playoff Mode, and so on.

If you game on a console that isn’t Internet-connected, or if you prefer to play offline in general, then you’ll probably want to give some of those options a closer look. For everyone else, it’s all about GM Connected. Essentially, you’re taking the franchise mode from the previous games and layering an impressive level of online functionality on top of it, to the tune of up to 750 live players in one league, assuming roles up and down the hierarchy, from league commissioner to GM to player.

The potential here speaks for itself, though in fairness, the pre-release review period only offers a glimpse of what GM Connected could be. There wasn’t any chance, for example, of assembling a full 24-player team with its own GM, let alone pitting that team against others. That it’s an option is impressive, but that aspect of the mode will be made or broken over time as leagues come together.

Unfortunately, GM Connected is a bit of a clunky beast in its pre-release state. I will update this review accordingly if anything changes shortly after launch, but the interface just isn’t very responsive. Even trying to do something as simple as browse through the list of available public leagues is painfully slow, with multiple seconds of waiting time whenever you scroll down to view the next league on the list. There’s a lot of potential here, but it’s going to remain unrealized if EA doesn’t smooth things out, and quickly.

Also new this year is NHL Moments Live, a mode designed to offer hockey fans the opportunity to see how they would fare in big moments from the NHL’s past and present. At launch, this mode is built entirely around major moments from the 2011/2012 season, plus a few more fantasy scenarios that drop legendary players like Gretzky and Lemieux into modern-day lineups. Complete these various challenges and you earn EA Pucks for use in the newly revamped Hockey Ultimate Team mode.

One of the big complaints that I’ve had in the past about the otherwise addictive HUT mode is how difficult and time-consuming it is to really advance and improve your team. Even if you’re a top player, the earning of EA Pucks has in the past been at such a drip-feed rate that it’s as if EA Sports was pushing players to spend real dollars on buying team-building booster packs. No publisher would do something like that ever though, right?

While microtransactions are still in play, I’m pleased to report that it’s now much easier to build up your stock of EA Pucks. Depending on which difficulty you play at, you can earn anywhere from 25 to 1,000 pucks for completing an NHL Moments Live challenge. Then, over on the HUT side, the revamped Tournaments feature offers you the opportunity to earn hundreds of bonus pucks in single player and online series play. I’ve always been a fan of the card collector side of HUT, and it doesn’t feel nearly as choked with necessary microtransactions in this year’s edition.

Penalties Incurred

Other than the less-than-impressive performance of the GM Connected mode, there’s very little to complain about in NHL 13. The most egregious misstep in my own mind will probably be defended by those who favor more of a true-to-life simulation: product placement. It is everywhere. I don’t mind seeing ads for various companies lining the hockey rink boards — that’s what they’re there for, right? — but having to look at Company Logo X every time I jump into a game because it’s “sponsored” is offensively overt as a cash grab. It’s unnecessary and it doesn’t add in any way to the sense of realism, existing simply to line EA’s pockets. Perhaps those ad dollars are part of what helped make NHL 13 such a dramatic leap forward for the series, but there has to be a better delivery system than that kind of crap.

Some of the old complaints surface as well. Commentators Gary Thorne and Bill Clement return to provide play-by-play analysis and color commentary, respectively. There’s no marked difference between this year and last year, beyond the fact that some new contextual color was recorded. You’ll still hear a lot of the same comments about one action or another repeated again and again in the space of a single game, or even a single period, and you’ll still find that these supposedly expert commentators aren’t always calling plays correctly. Given all of the enhancements on the AI side, it’s a shame that the commentary can’t be similarly smarter.

Then there’s the soundtrack, which makes me continue to wonder exactly who EA Sports thinks is playing these games. I flat-out turned off the music in the menus so I wouldn’t have to hear the same disjointed selection of songs over and over again on repeat.

Lastly, a word of caution to hockey newcomers: NHL 13 is not particularly welcoming if it’s your first time hitting the ice. Giroux’s video introduction to True Performance Skating is helpful, but it doesn’t exactly qualify as a proper tutorial. Moreso now than ever, you are expected to understand both the rules and the physics of ice hockey. There are some helpful options under “Other Game Modes” that let you skate and shoot freely as well as try out various strategies, but there’s nothing that specifically sits you down and explains the inner workings of the sport.

Conclusion

Assuming that the GM Connected mode starts to run more smoothly, none of those complaints really amount to major marks against NHL 13. EA Sports outdid itself on just about every level with this year’s entry, offering hockey fans a ridiculous amount of value on one disc, and one of the strongest sports simulations I’ve seen in my time as a gamer. It’s not as immediately fun and easily accessible as some other sports games might be for total newcomers, but anyone who appreciates both professional hockey and video games should definitely trade up to NHL 13.

Score: 9 out of 10

Straight Right's building up a respectable portfolio of Wii U games, including at least one new IP alongside its port of Mass Effect 3.

Australia’s Straight Right is one of the studios that will help define the Nintendo Wii U’s early life. Pretty surprising for a group whose only recent credit is the iOS version of Electronic Arts’ Shift 2: Unleashed. Unproven or not, Straight Right is responsible for bringing BioWare’s much-derided, best-selling sci-fi melodrama Mass Effect 3 to Nintendo’s new console. According to the studio, this Mass Effect port is just the start of its plans on the console.

Speaking with Eurogamer, studio head Tom Crago teased Straight Right’s other Wii U plans. “We made a number of bets on the Wii U, so we’re certainly hoping that the platform comes strongly out of the gate,” said Crago, “We’ve got two other titles in development. One of them is original, our own IP, and another is based on another big franchise that will come out in 2013. It’s a big title and you will have heard of it.”

The most exciting news is naturally that an original game is part of Straight Right’s Wii U plans. Crago’s history has been mostly as a gun for hire. His previous studio, Tantalus Interactive, produced mostly ports, spinoffs like Unreal II: The Awakening, and licensed kids games like Megamind: The Blue Defender. No one gets into the video game business to make Megamind games though, so  it’s great that his new studio will get to flex some creative muscles.

What will the second project be? EA clearly has faith in Straight Right, so maybe it’s working on an unannounced Wii U version of a Q1 2013 game? Good money is on Dead Space 3.

Crago also confirmed that Mass Effect 3 will be a Wii U launch title.

Most peculiar moment of E3 2012: When Mass Effect 3 appeared in a series of clips of upcoming Wii U games during Nintendo’s press conference, the entire room started cheering. This is the same Mass Effect 3 that so enraged critics and fans with its ending that BioWare was forced to give away DLC for free just to calm people down. There were petitions to have it revoked from the series! Some people raised more than $80,000 for charity! Why the hell were people cheering? Because apparently people love them some Mass Effect, even when it’s Mass Effect that they hate.  Good news for Straight Right then. This’ll be one more feather in the studio’s cap.

Travel app WeHostels has all the app finesse of Airbnb without the high prices. The startup officially launches to target the last-minute backpacking crowd.

Today WeHostels is announcing its public launch, pivoting from its beginnings as Inbed.me. The currently mobile-only app is targeting the space between CouchSurfing and Airbnb — the world of cheap hotel and hostel bookings. The startup is still riding its $1.2 million raised this past spring, and silently added 30,000 downloads in the past three weeks.

Before the WeHostels mobile app, the service existed as Web client Inbed.me – but surprise, we users all have our minds in the gutter and interpreted the name in the most inappropriate way possible. Though there’s been a name change, the concept more or less remains the same: Connect to Facebook and find last-minute affordable last-minute accommodations on-the-go. It’s not all utility, however, and the social link gives you options to connect with other guests so you can, as WeHostels puts it, make friends en route before you even get to your destination.

Of course, the other big switch-up would be that fact that WeHostels is entirely ditching the desktop in favor of a mobile-approach. According to the team, it was a pure logistics decision when they saw traffic from smartphones growing 10 times faster than their Web app.

“We decided to focus only in mobile because it’s a fascinating new arena that requires a very unique set of skills in terms of product design and distribution,” says co-founder Diego Saez-Gil. “By focusing only in mobile, we’re forcing ourselves to become experts on it, and therefore we can outperform any team in any big company working on it.”

Despite that focus, WeHostels sees beyond the smartphone. “In the future we plan to develop solutions for all devices and platforms – we will need to be ubiquitous,” Saez-Gil tells me. “But we prefer to start on the one platform where the new ways of interacting with the Web are happening.”

The fast and quiet growth that WeHostels experiencd over the last few weeks saw the userbase grow largely in the United States, with Europe coming in second, and from there travelers in South America and Australia getting on board with the network. The current version of WeHostels has 80 cities available, but new partnerships with Hostelworld and Expedia will hugely increase those options worldwide.

“We will keep growing in terms of cities and accommodations, and we will develop for other devices,” says Saez-Gil, who mentions that iPad and Android are up next. “In the longer future we consider expanding to other verticals in the travel space and becoming the one-stop-shop where young travelers plan and book their trips from mobile devices.” 

The next generation of Kinect may do more than track your body. Xbox tech in a Microsoft patent will project the game into a whole room.

Don’t think of the Xbox 720 as a graphically advanced piece of consumer video game technology. Don’t think of it as a vessel for a new and improved version of Kinect and Xbox Live. In fact, don’t even bother thinking of it as the cable TV and connected entertainment set top box, Microsoft’s definitive gambit to take control of living room media. It will be all of those things, rest assured, but the Durango may also introduce some crazy immersion technology that goes well beyond Kinect’s motion sensing.

On Sunday Patently Apple detailed a Microsoft patent just recently published by the US Trademark and Patent Office that describes technology that would transform your entire living room into a game environment. The patent reads: “An immersive display environment is provided to a human user by projecting a peripheral image onto environmental surfaces around the user. The peripheral images serve as an extension to a primary image displayed on a primary display.”

Put another way: You’re playing a motion-controlled Gears of War. If you scan ahead for enemies, they might be taking cover behind broken walls not just on your TV but maybe to the right on your walls. You might be able to see an attack from the air on your ceiling. A locust soldier could sneak up behind you and you could literally turn around to face them.

What is the tech? The Xbox itself is outputting both the primary image on your television and the secondary images on your walls. It’s not necessarily 3D tech either. The figures shown in the patent detail 2D displays, though the tech would be compatible with 3D TVs and could be augmented with “suitable headgear.” In addition to a new version of Kinect is a depth camera that generates the depth information needed for the environment meaning it knows where everything in the room is while the Kinect focuses on where you are. The depth camera might also be built with a three-dimensional scanner that will collect any non-visible light (infrared, etc.) given off by monitors or projectors.

Creating a more immersive video game environment is clearly a priority for Microsoft with the Xbox 720 and the overall future of the Xbox brand. Back in March, another Microsoft patent was made public for “Projector Eyewear for Xbox and Beyond.” These goggles would work in place of a television for the Xbox, projecting a virtual screen in front of the user. It’s not quite the same as turning your living room into the game, but it’s one more example of how Microsoft’s engineers envision the future of games.

Not only is Tekken Tag Tournament 2 the biggest King Of Iron Fist tournament yet, it's also the best.

It’s been 18 years since Namco (now known as Namco Bandai Games) released the original Tekken to Japanese arcades. That’s 18 years since we first met the warring Mishima clan, 18 years since we first ogled Nina Williams, and 18 years since we first discovered a world where an alcoholic Mexican priest/wrestler/jaguar can suplex a cybernetic ninja thief onto his mechanical skull without anyone batting an eyelash.

In that time the series has spawned five official sequels, four handheld ports, four spin-off titles, three movies, a Street Fighter crossover, and most importantly for today’s review, two “dream match” games. The first of those was 1999′s Tekken Tag Tournament which dropped all pretense of telling a canonical story in favor of jamming as many characters as possible into its roster. At the time it was impressive for a fighting game to boast 39 different fighters (41 if you’re playing the PlayStation 2 version), but times change and now it takes a bit more to leave prospective virtual pugilists incredulously agape. Namco Bandai is obviously well aware of this, as Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (henceforth TTT2 for brevity) includes (almost) every character to ever appear in a Tekken game. All told that’s 53 different fighters; an impressive figure that trumps the massive rosters seen in Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and Super Street Fighter IV, not to mention other 3D fighters like the recent Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown and the upcoming Dead Or Alive 5.

That’s great news, not only because bigger numbers are almost always better, but also because over the years Tekken has cemented its place as the world’s favorite 3D fighting game franchise almost entirely through the strength of its wacky character designs. From a purely technical standpoint, the Virtua Fighter series has always been better than Tekken, and for pure accessibility the Dead Or Alive games are far easier to learn than Namco Bandai’s series. That said, neither of the aforementioned franchises can hold a candle to the sheer variety and creativity seen in the Tekken cast, and TTT2 is the perfect example of this. How many other games might feature a bear battling a giant robotic soldier, or the physical embodiment of a fighting spirit squaring off against a boxing glove-wearing kangaroo and her oddly cheery bastard offspring?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Tekken is a bad fighter by any means. If anything Namco Bandai has hit the sweet spot between instantly accessible and overwhelmingly complex with the series, and TTT2 is a perfect example of this. Thanks to nearly two decades of refinement and an obviously massive amount of affection from the series’ creators, TTT2’s fighters are the best-balanced lot we’ve ever seen in the franchise. I won’t claim that the game is utterly perfect or that it should be adopted as the end-all be-all 3D fighter until the heat death of the universe — that’s for the competitive fighting game community to hash out — but in the 400+ matches I’ve clocked on the Xbox 360 version of the game over the past four days I’ve yet to find any character who is either overwhelmingly powerful or pitifully weak. Even characters who were designed to be unstoppable monsters like Ogre and Jun Kazama fit right in alongside the rest of the cast (though, in fairness, the Jun you fight at the end of the game’s Arcade Mode is every bit the cheap jerk you’d expect a final boss to be).

Of course, all of that is information you could have gleaned from the TTT2 arcade release. We’re here to discuss the home console version, and more accurately, praise the massive amount of extra content Namco Bandai crammed into the title to make it attractive to both those who prefer a fighting game’s single-player options, and those who only see the genre as an excuse to punch random people over the Internet.

As with every other Tekken title to date, TTT2’s single-player options start with its Arcade Mode. This is a pretty standard fighting game construct and as per usual, players are tasked with winning nine fights against opponents of various skill levels. Though the first six opponents you face are all randomly selected, the final three fights have you squaring off against a tag-team of Heihachi and Jinpachi Mishima, before fighting your way through Ogre and on to that aforementioned boss battle with Jun Kazama and her ghost werewolf alter ego. This couldn’t possibly be a more rote exercise given the genre, but it differentiates itself in the sheer number of unlockable extras for the taking. Beat Arcade Mode and you’re granted access to your lead character’s ending cinematic. That’s pretty standard for Tekken games, but these vignettes are the longest ever seen in Tekken history: Each runs at least a minute long. Likewise, these endings are surprisingly well crafted. It can’t be easy jamming an entire story into a CGI clip that can run, at most, two minutes long, yet each ending offers a legitimate plot, conflict, and climax. What’s more, there’s an incredible amount of artistic variety to be found in these endings. Bob, for instance, has a comic-book inspired superhero tale awaiting him at the end of the game, while Marshall Law’s ending cinematic is a CGI homage to paper cutout puppet shows.

Tekken games have been offering special computer-generated ending sequences since Namco issued the original in 1994, but toppling Jun at the end of Arcade Mode won’t just nab you a short movie to watch. TTT2, in an effort to appease the swelling number of people who enjoy playing dress up with their favorite fighting game characters, includes a massive suite of customizable items for characters to unlock and attach to their bodies. The underlying system behind TTT2’s customization suite is very reminiscent of that seen in Namco Bandai’s recent SoulCalibur V, and as in that game the sheer number of customization options is overwhelming. You can switch out headgear, pants, shirts, glasses, and custom outfits, while also adding miscellaneous items to your fighter, such as stop signs and handguns (and, as with Tekkens 5 and 6, a number of these special items also grant your character entertaining, though mostly useless, new attacks).

As the customization system is a big part of TTT2, getting started with it can be a bit daunting. If you were to decide that you wanted to unlock every customization option for any given character, by my totally unscientific estimates it would take roughly 30 to 40 hours of gameplay. Fortunately, TTT2 offers a very useful alternative to repeatedly slogging through the game’s Arcade Mode in the form of its Ghost Battle Mode. As with the previous two Tekken entries, Ghost Battle pits the player against an AI-controlled character (or tag team) that has been designed to mimic an actual human. Though these ghosts are no replacement for their flesh and blood analogues, they do offer a more competitive fight than the game’s Arcade Mode, and most crucially, each battle that you win offers a chance to win prizes which can include character customization options, ending cinematics and huge bags of cash. Given the number of items for sale in the in-game store, those bags of cash come in quite handy, and they appear often enough that the grind to create your perfect character is far more engaging than it was in Tekken 6.

Sadly, that major improvement over Tekken 6 is counterbalanced by the complete loss of the fan-favorite Tekken Force mode. This special mini-game, which allowed players to use Tekken fighters in a 3D action game more akin to Final Fight then traditional fighters, first debuted in Tekken 3, returned in Tekken 4, and was replaced by Devil Within and Scenario Campaign in Tekkens 5 and 6 respectively. Despite the name change those last two were effectively Tekken Force sequels, but when it came time to develop TTT2, Namco Bandai opted to ditch the series mainstay in favor of an intriguing, novel take on the standard Training Mode.

Dubbed “Fight Lab,” TTT2’s Training Mode details the creation of a new Combot at the hands of Lee Chaolan. For those of you in the dark, Combot was a robotic character introduced in Tekken 4 whose most notable character trait is that instead of learning his fighting skills, he had them programmed into his electronic memory banks. This ties into his appearance in TTT2, as Fight Lab sees you controlling Combot while Lee walks him through the game’s basic techniques. This takes place over five separate episodes, each of which includes an additional bit of storyline and unlocks new capabilities for Combot to use in TTT2’s other modes. While this only includes standard attacks, throws and dodge moves, once you’ve completed the Fight Lab episodes, you’re able to purchase new moves (lifted from the other fighters in TTT2) to beef up Combot’s repertoire of fighting moves. Generously, the game gives you four separate Combot memory slots, so if you’d like to create multiple versions of the ‘bot with entirely separate attacks, that’s quite possible.

The most impressive facet of TTT2’s Fight Lab though, is that it’s a far more effective primer on how to play the game than any I’ve ever seen in a 3D fighter. Offering a running storyline makes playing through the Fight Lab feel much less dull than it normally would be, and placing a sizable reward (in this case, an immensely customizable character) at the end of the mode gives players ample reason to burn through the whole thing. It’s also appreciated that once you’ve completed the Fight Lab, the entire mode loops, and each subsequent run through the Lab becomes increasingly difficult. Given that anyone who wants to fully trick out Combot will likely spend a lot of time in the Fight Lab trying to earn more development points, that simple tweak makes the mode feel fresh and novel far longer than it has any right to. 

If it seems that I’ve been writing for far too long to have not discussed TTT2’s multiplayer component, there’s a very simple reason for that: I’ve been saving the best news for last. We can all agree that Tekken 5 and Tekken 6 were excellent fighting games, right? Likewise, I’m going to assume that we all found the online multiplayer in those games to be sub-par at best (and at worst, utterly unusable). TTT2 changes all of that. Its netcode is based heavily on that seen in SoulCalibur V and like that game, it runs as smooth as silk. In 78 online matches played so far I’ve only experienced one instance of lag, and after a few moments of frozen on-screen action the game went back to its rock solid 60 frames per second framerate. Beyond that, TTT2’s Online Mode offers a full suite of options, from team battles to downloadable replays; everything you’d expect to find in a modern online-enabled fighter is here, and we love that Namco Bandai included the option to filter online opponents by skill level and connection stability by letting players select a threshold for each that they find tolerable. This prevents wildly unbalanced matchups in which experienced veterans can pick on new players, and also ensures that players with excellent Internet connections need not worry that they might be paired up with some poor kid in the Alaskan wilds who is attempting to play the game via 14.4kbps dial-up. The highest praise I can offer TTT2’s online functionality is that it just works, every time, all of the time. 

There is also the “World Tekken Federation” service that goes along with it at no cost.  Once you link your account, you can then track your stats on your computer or your mobile device thanks to the HTML5 coding. You can then review your last game, check your stats, and build up clans. It is similar to the Call of Duty Elite service, but completely free.  If you are constantly getting beat, you can track the number of strikes that you took, see how you got caught flat footed, and compare records against other gamers.  It is a tool that the dedicated, hard core fans of Tekken, and fighting games in general, will be using to an insane degree. It is an exceptionally good addition, especially considering the $0 price tag.

Conclusion

I came into this review a massive fan of the Tekken series — Tekken 6 was the first game I earned 1000/1000 Achievement points on — and I’m happy to report that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 only intensifies my affection for Namco Bandai’s flagship fighter. Simply put, this game includes every feature you’d hope to see in a modern fighting game polished to a mirror-like sheen. The game’s aesthetics trump every other 3D fighter currently in existence, its solid 60fps framerate makes the fighting action as smooth as physically possible, and there’s enough pure content to be seen and unlocked in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 to keep even those who utterly ignore the game’s online options playing for dozens of hours.

I can’t say how the game will hold up when the really hardcore, competitive gaming types start dissecting it under their notoriously finicky microscopes, but if you’d accept the opinion of a guy who has been playing Tekken games for nearly two decades, I’ll say simply that I adore this game. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is the new gold standard for 3D fighting games, not because it introduces tons of new, flashy ideas to the genre, but because its developers focused on making sure that its fundamental options were as excellent as they possibly could be before offering this thing up to the general public. Propers to Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada for this decision, as it should paid off in spades, not just for Namco Bandai, but also for the fighting game community as a whole.

Score: 9.5 out of 10

According to new data from research firm Nielsen, smartphone ownership is growing fastest among those between 13 and 17 years of age, with more than half now owning such a device.

New research from Nielsen shows that 58 percent of 13 to 17 year olds living in the US now own a smartphone, a significant jump from 36 percent 12 months ago. Ownership is most prevalent, however, among those aged 25 to 34, standing at 74 percent, up from 59 percent a year ago.

As of July 2012, 55.5 percent of all mobile subscribers based in the US own a smartphone, Nielsen said. This marks an increase of 14.5 percent on a year earlier.

With teens clearly the fastest-growing group in smartphone take-up – and with plenty of growth still possible – we can expect to see mobile makers taking an even keener interest in the sector with marketing campaigns designed to win over the young consumers.

Among the various mobile operating systems, Android is still the market leader, with 51.9 percent of all US-based smartphone owners using an Android-powered device as of July 2012. When the figures are broken down to see who bought what during the last three months to July, the figure for Android is even higher – 58.6 percent.

Worryingly for Research In Motion, Android’s recent growth appears to have been at the expense of its BlackBerry devices. According to Nielsen’s research, BlackBerry smartphone ownership now stands at just 8 percent of all US-based smartphone owners, with the figure dropping to just 2.7 percent for those who purchased a smartphone in the last three months. The grim figures highlight the enormity of RIM’s task of rejuvenating its business with the launch of its next-generation OS, BlackBerry 10, although this won’t be happening until at least early 2013.

Of smartphone purchases made in the last three months, 58.6 percent opted for an Android-powered device, while 33 percent went for the iPhone. The figures for Apple’s iOS device may have been skewed by the fact that many of those keen on getting an iPhone are choosing to wait until the launch of the new model, expected to be unveiled by Tim Cook on Wednesday.

In its research, Nielsen questioned more than 20,000 US-based mobile subscribers aged 13 and over.

[Image: Peter Sobolev / Shutterstock]