STRGamer Codcast - Episode 3

The STRGamer Codcast is a place for intelligent discussion about video games and games of all kinds. And pirates. Each week we bring you news from the games industry and analysis of industry trends, so you can get your fix of gaming news and opinions without having to troll the internet looking for stories (that's our job).

This week we talk about Dragon Age: Origins, Castle, Dragon Age 2, Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions, the IGN/UGO merger, Mass Effect 2, Skyrim, our E3 predictions, and more!

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STRGamer Codcast - Episode 2

The STRGamer Codcast is a place for intelligent discussion about video games and games of all kinds. And pirates. Each week we bring you news from the games industry and analysis of industry trends, so you can get your fix of gaming news and opinions without having to troll the internet looking for stories (that's our job).

This week we talk about Portal 2, Mortal Kombat, Rift, Dungeon Siege 3, Dragon Age 2, Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions, Wii 2, and more!

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Dragon Age II Review

Bioware has a knack for creating game worlds and stories that have the potential to grab your interest for tens to hundreds of hours. Following in the tradition of franchises like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic - and more recently, Mass Effect and Dragon Age - Dragon Age II continues the company's outstanding record of rich storytelling and engaging gameplay, albeit with some issues that hold it back from being a perfect title.

Rather than being a chronological sequel, Dragon Age II starts out within the same timeline as Dragon Age, and carries on past the original game's conclusion. You play as Hawke, a survivor from the Battle for Ostagar in the first game, who is fleeing from Ferelden with his family to the nearby city of Kirkwall in the Free Marches. The story is told within a framed narrative, meaning that one of your companions, the wry dwarf thief Varric, is relating the events of the game to a third party as you play through them, providing a sort of larger context for what you're doing.

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The choice for a framed narrative is an interesting one and different from the previous game, much like many other decisions Bioware has made for Dragon Age II. The story that is being told is way smaller in scope than that it Dragon Age, taking place mostly within and around Kirkwall, rather than across an entire country at war with every monster ever. It's still very engaging and epic, but very different. Similarly, the art style that the game's developers have gone with is much more stylized - and dare we say, better - than the first game, looking much more clean, colorful and polished. The Bioware team seems to have been super self-reflective about the critiques of the first game's art; one of the NPC conversations we've heard in-game has a Ferelden refugee telling another something like, "I'm so glad we've left Ferelden for Kirkwall - it was so drab and brown!"

The RPG and combat elements have likewise been changed and feel much more streamlined and action-packed. Rather than having a number of races and classes to choose from, you can either be a female or male human warrior, rogue, or mage, with several unlockable class sub-specializations. The same radial menu and quick slot action bar exist with some refinements to make them better organized, and the level up system has been simplified to basic progression trees that help you to better plan out your character's projected badassery. Probably the coolest addition to the combat system itself are the new skills and the way that they're presented; I swear I geekgasmed when my rogue Hawke did a backstab for the first time, teleporting through a haze of black smoke to appear behind some noob monster to lay the smack down. More like darksPWN, amirite?!@!

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It should also be mentioned that if you're playing on PC, Dragon Age II no longer supports a full isometric view, only pulling back to a mostly over-the-shoulder viewpoint. This change fully supports the game's vision as an Action RPG, rather than a traditional RPG with strategic elements like in Baldur's Gate or even the first Dragon Age.

The story is fantastically told, and with some few exceptions, is one of the most engaging parts of the game. True to Bioware's canon, Dragon Age II's story is complex and gratifying, getting you involved in the different aspects of the political intrigue within Kirkwall and motivating you to help each of your (mostly) likeable companions with their own quests to further your relationships and potential romances with them. Your party members' personalities are all very three dimensional and easy to relate to, and continually chatter and bicker with each other when you're gallivanting about Kirkwall, which can be hilarious and provides some great backstory about the world and your companions themselves (some of whom will be familiar from the first game). In addition, Bioware has implemented the Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel to streamline the various conversation options when you're talking to people, and it works very well to help you figure out what Hawke (who's not mute like your character in the original game) is going to say. Pro-tip: pick the neutral "funny" dialogue option whenever possible if you appreciate sarcasm!

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If most of this sounds like a great improvement over the first game and a streamlining of its features to be more fun and action-oriented, that's because it it is, which is both a blessing and a caveat. Having played through the entire 40+ hour campaign of the first game and loving it, we can definitely say Dragon Age II is even more fun, but sometimes feels like an upgrade and reimagining of the style of Dragon Age rather than a true sequel. This is especially apparent in certain combat situations and quest scenarios, where you'll plan out some strategies for your character and party members, completely waste the baddies in a room, and a bunch more of them will drop from the ceiling or spawn around you. Equally frustrating is how many of the side quests will take you to the same locations or what look to be similar caves to clear out, which can be very repetitive. Why not figure out a better solution to mob spawning, instead of sending wave after wave of enemies in inconsistent ways? Or create a better variety of locales to explore?

We suspect that although Dragon Age II was most likely in development before the release of Dragon Age, the fact that this game came out only a year after the original game may have a lot to do with why it feels somewhat unpolished. We can understand this, but it largely contributes to Dragon Age II not feeling like a complete sequel and preventing it from being a 10/10 game.

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Dragon Age II also has a considerable difficulty spike towards the end of the game, which may require you to try different strategies with your party to succeed. This isn't annoying by itself, and it encourages you to experiment with different characters and skills. Still, the game's long load times can make repeating battles frustrating, especially if you don't have a recent save (hint: save all the time).

Still, if you're a fan of the Dragon Age mythos and are looking for more of the engaging story and companion relationships that only Bioware knows how to create, you'll likely love Dragon Age II. The action-y combat is really satisfying, and the stylized art style is much easier on the eyes than the first game. Additionally, if you haven't played the original, it's worth playing through to understand the full backstory of the world. After you do, you can import your Dragon Age save to influence certain overarching story elements of the second game, which is pretty awesome, although not as particular as Mass Effect's import system. Despite its issues, Dragon Age II is a worthy second entry to the franchise, and we're looking forward to what Bioware does next with the series.

STRGamer Codcast - Episode 1

The STRGamer Codcast is a place for intelligent discussion about video games and games of all kinds. And pirates. Each week we bring you news from the games industry and analysis of industry trends, so you can get your fix of gaming news and opinions without having to troll the internet looking for stories (that's our job).

The Codcast is reborn! Check out the inaugural (for the second time) STRGamer Codcast below. This week we talk about Rift, Dragon Age 2, Portal 2, Battlefield 3, Wii 2, Anime, and gamification. Also, Cinderella Ninja Warrior and Sleeping Beauty Vampire Slayer.

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Grab a drink and right-click to save as here, or subscribe to us on iTunes. Post your questions in the comments section or send us an email.

Rift Review: Hole in One

Rift is like a new set of golf clubs that fits your hands perfectly.

In the video gaming industry, there's a pretty hotly-debated discussion of iteration versus innovation. While companies like Activision are happy to deliver a slightly modified upgrade to the Call of Duty franchise every year, a lot of gamers are pretty vocal that they're looking for developers to create something new, rather than iterating on the same formula. This is especially true in the micro-community of MMO's, where a multitude of titles continue to follow the tried-and-true formulas established by games like Everquest and World of Warcraft.

Sometimes, iteration can be pretty awesome, especially when mixed appropriately with innovation. It's easy to get on the message boards and either decry formulaic MMORPG's or naysay every new addition to your favorite game, but seriously, TLDR. Rift builds upon the traditional MMO formula in such a polished, complete package, while adding enough new, crunchy stuff that it sets a new standard in MMO development, delivery and gameplay.

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The story of Rift revolves around the planet Telara, which is under assault by a pantheon of dragon gods, led by the evil dragon Regulos. Two factions, the gods-blessed Guardians and the tech-savvy Defiant, have taken up arms to fight Regulos and the other incursions, as well as each other. The lore behind the world is quite engaging and sets the stage for some great narratives and game mechanics, such as the opposition of the two factions in PvP, story quests and dungeons, and the eponymous rifts. Keep reading for more on each of these.

We've been following Trion Worlds' new game since its beta, which itself was a very polished experience, and the same holds true of the launch version of the game. Character creation is pretty much what you'd expect for an MMO, and you get to choose your faction and race from the Guardians' Mathosians (humans), High Elves, and Dwarves, or the Defiant's Eth (humans), Kelari (dark elves), and Bahmi (sort of giants, and very cool). You then pick your character's class from the Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage archetypes. You get quite a few customization options to make your character look just like your favorite celebrity (tiger blood not included). It's very streamlined but still very customizable.

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After a quick cutscene that sets the scene for your faction's involvement in the story, you're dumped into a common starting area for your side's races. The starter area introduces you to the story and most of the game's different mechanics, with the exception of PvP and dungeons. If you've played an MMO before, it'll be extremely familiar and seem very well-polished, while introducing you to new things like the game's class system and public groups. The starter area is a great way to get familiarized with the game quickly (hit a few golf balls with those clubs and see if you like them, so to speak) and has enough story hooks to get you interested in the main game.

Questing is streamlined in all of the glorious ways it should be, without detracting from the immersiveness of the tasks that you're assigned. You've got a handy quest tracker (which you can turn off, if you like running around in circles looking for x number of goblins to kill) that shows your objectives on a neatly comprehensible minimap, and quest-givers in a given hub generally send you to the same location to kill/gather/spam the chat channel/etc., with minimal back-tracking. You're never in the same area for very long and feel like you're making progress as you move from hub to hub.

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One of the first things you'll notice when you get into the main game is how beautiful the game is (both starter areas are kind of dreary, with the world ending and all, spoilers). Rift shares some similarities with Warhammer Online and Aion in its art style, but is unique enough in its assets that it stands out with personality and flavor. It's a mix between photo-realism and cartoony graphics, and it works. You don't have to have an uber-system to run it, and it'll look pretty on most settings, but with the higher quality options turned on it looks fabulous. Character models are nice, but the vistas and lighting effects can be downright stunning in some areas.

If you're looking (or listening) for it, the sound can be quite detailed and charming as well. The game's music is very well-composed, and ambient sounds really add to the immersiveness of the game. Things like the sounds of your feet crunching differently on leaves and on snow, or the rattle of your mount's harness as you ride cross-country really stand out. Battle sounds are appropriately fighty as well.

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So far, we haven't discussed anything too ground-breaking, other than the extreme polish that Rift has demonstrated since even before launch (no small feat, as the million or so players trying to get online during the pre-launch only faced server queues instead of server crashes). But Rift stands out in two very distinct ways: its diverse, customizable class system and its dynamic rift content.

Rift's class system is built on the concept of souls, which tie in to your story as part of the world's mythology. You're basically a resurrected warrior from an apocalyptic battle with Regulos, and as such are able to attune yourself to the souls of other fallen warriors. Based on your class archetype chosen at character creation (Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, or Mage), you'll have eight souls (and one PvP soul) available that can be unlocked over time. Each of these offers a talent tree of sub-specialization that you can mix and match with two other souls at a time.

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This means that you can customize your character as deeply into any given soul as you'd like, while adding touches here and there from your other two souls to augment your main soul, or create a more rounded-out combination from all three. It's super crunchy, and having played a variety of the souls thus far, we're happy to say that each soul is different enough from the others to provide for some real variety and coolness. Mixing your soul trees will open up different class abilities, too, which adds diversity to the standard but fast-paced and fun hotbar-based combat system.

Another incredibly fun addition that Rift brings to the table is its dynamic rift content. As we understand it, Trion Worlds has build its server architecture from the ground up to support the implementation of dynamic content throughout Telara's different zones, and provide server stability while thousands of people are interacting with it. This means that the game can spawn any number of local and zone-wide events that scale to the makeup of players in that region. These events can be things like random traveling merchants who carry rare items for sale, or rifts themselves, where denizens of the outer planes stage assaults against Telara. Players can then join public groups and fulfill quest-like objectives to defeat the monsters and close the rifts, getting currency for sweet rewards in the process.

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If rifts are like small uprisings on your minimap that appear randomly, zone-wide invasions are the apocalypse. Picture this: you're happily minding your own business battling goblins or buying and selling at a local vendor, and the sky darkens. Big-name leaders of the region's towns and encampments start exhorting you to come help them defend their locations, while named monsters explain the doom they're about to visit upon your zone. Then, all hell breaks loose, and monsters and rifts start spawning everywhere, intent on destroying major wardstones (basically big crystals that provide bonuses in encampments) and NPC's in the zone. Everyone in the area will get quest objectives to seal rifts or defeat a number of creatures, and when that's completed, a huge raid boss will spawn in the world for everyone to wale on.

Rifts and invasions are TOTALLY EPIC. They're also made vastly fun and easy to do by Rift's public grouping system, which allows you to join a group in your area that's fighting a rift or invasion by clicking a button. The group will automatically convert to a raid when it's big enough, and each player will receive rewards relative to their contribution. It's very easy to join and beat up monsters without feeling pressured to do well in your class role or having to compete with others for loot, and stimulates a great sense of community and camaraderie throughout the zone. Even if you're more into soloing through Telara's main content - which is totally doable - it's hard not to get swept up in the fun of no-pressure rifting with other people. There are also some great gear and item rewards that you can get with planarite, the currency you get from fighting rifts and invasions!

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Another form of group content in Rift is in the game's dungeons and raids. If you're into doing instanced dungeons and raiding, you'll probably be quite at home here. There are a number of dungeons and raids available at launch (including open-world rift raids and expert difficulty versions of the dungeons) and Trion Worlds has indicated they have a pretty comprehensive post-launch content schedule. The dungeons themselves seem to be very well-laid out and story driven; the one we've played so far has your party tromping around the realm of the fae, which is kind of a hedge maze that progresses through the seasons of nature as you run through it. Neat!

If you're the crafting type, there are nine professions to chose from: Butchery, Foraging, Mining, Apothecary, Armorsmithing, Artificing, Outfitting, Runecrafting, and Weaponsmithing. The first three are gathering professions, while the rest are production, and you can have a combination of three on one character. The crafting system is pretty analogous to those in other MMO's, but being able to chose three is fun, as many of the production professions require materials from two types of gathering professions.

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For those that are of the mind that less QQ and more pew-pew are required in an MMORPG, Rift's PvP has got you covered. Offering four instanced warfronts (basically battlegrounds) at launch, there's plenty of room for you to stab the other faction in the face. The warfronts are unlocked over time as you level, and you can jump in them any time by using the cross-server queue tool. They also scale by every ten levels or so, and provide moderate level buffs, meaning that if you're playing in a level 10-19 warfront, a level 19 player will have an advantage over a level 12 player, but not hugely so. We've dipped in to one of the warfronts extensively so far, and it's very fast-paced and pretty tactical, and since the warfronts are cross-server, we haven't had to wait more than a couple of minutes or so to get in. In addition, Rift offers a bunch of open world PvP that we haven't seen yet, and the PvP rewards are nothing to shake a Kelari longsword at.

There are literally dozens of other things that Rift gets right that may not be new to MMO's, but are certainly improved and polished iterations of their predecessors. The UI is delightfully clean and has some great ease-of-use functions, like an inventory search. There are achievements and a guild leveling system already in place, and and a set of collections in your character sheet for the artifacts and books you'll find in Telara (totally addicting for you OCD types). There's a good, if basic, auction house and burgeoning player economy. Certainly, we'd love to see improvements that don't already exist in the game, such as a cross-server dungeon finder (go ahead and flame, but they just make life easier for everyone). The true test of time will also be if Rift's developers continue to support the game and deliver content on a regular schedule to keep high-level players happy, and it seems like Trion Worlds is on the ball as usual.

Rift is truly a love letter to fans of the genre who love the standard MMORPG formula but are looking for a new, evolved world to play in. Trion World's game is incredibly polished and adds enough innovation, background and personality to give it a character of its own, and will feel instantly comfortable to anyone that's played an MMO in the past ten years. It's also a very friendly introduction for newcomers to the genre, and provides a bunch of new mechanics and dynamic content to excite even the most decorated MMO veteran. Whether you're a pro or are teeing off for the first time, Rift is definitely worth your money - and ours!

Rift: "Planar War" Beta Impressions

Trion Worlds held their sixth beta for their upcoming MMO, Rift: Planes of Telara, this past weekend. The beta event, called "Planar War," focused on content for levels 1-35 of the game, and thanks to the folks at Massively for sharing beta keys, and Trion for letting us in, we were able to spend some time with this promising MMORPG pre-release.

The best way to describe Rift is as a traditional-style massively multiplayer online game with an innovative class system and a host of features that rejuvenate the MMO gameplay experience. It's traditional in the sense that everything you'd expect to be in an MMO is there, such as creating characters from a number of races and classes, two factions that oppose one another, hotbar number-based combat, quests, grouping, dungeons, guilds, PvP, and more. Yet, Rift gets everything so right, it has the potential to remind MMORPG veterans why the genre has become so popular in the first place.

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As with most MMO's, your journey in Rift begins with character creation, and you've got two factions to choose from: the justice-loving Guardians and the might-makes-right Defiants. Depending on the faction you choose, you'll be able to select from a total of six races, including Rifty versions of humans, dwarves and elves as well as other non-conventional races, such as the giant-like Bahmi. The character creator is very robust, allowing for all kinds of alterations to your character's appearance, ranging from facial features and hair color to height and tattoo markings. We suspect that more additions will be available at launch, allowing you to personalize that bow-wielding high elf named "Legolass023" to your heart's content.

Choosing a class is a deceptively simple affair in character creation, which we'll talk about more in a second. Before you jump into the game, you get to select from one of the four traditional archetypes - Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage. Little do you know at that point how the incredibly deep "Ascended" class system will have you in its clutches in like 3 levels or so (we can hear you laughing, Trion).

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After creating a character, you get a quick and cool cutscene that whets your appetite for Rift's lore, which generally surrounds the two factions defending Telara from annihilation at the claws of the Dragon god Regulos and the planar rifts that keep threatening to destroy everything ever. Then you're dropped into the world seeking your first quest. If you're an MMO veteran, it'll quickly become apparent to you that questing is one area in which Rift shines. At least in the beta content, quests are grouped together intelligently, the quest tracking guides you easily to where you need to go, and you're moving pretty consistently from one hub to the next. The quests themselves are pretty standard in format but have enough newness and variation to feel exciting and fresh, and the lore behind them makes you feel invested and important in each task.

Graphically, Rift looks extremely polished and is very easy on the eyes, leaning towards stylization over photo-realism. It's kind of got a Warhammer Online grittiness to it, matched with a little bit of Aion's fantastic sensibilities, and of course, its own great art style that makes it feel familiar and unique at the same time. The UI is very clean and streamlined, with some neat additions to the traditional user interface and inventory, such as achievements that are already built into the game at beta and a place for collections of books that you can find in the world.

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As mentioned, combat is pretty standard and hotbar-based, with traditional combo systems, threat management, spells, cooldowns and the like, but is pretty seamless and has enough additions to be exciting and fun, like teleporting at level 1. TELEPORTING AT LEVEL 1! Also, unlike combat in a lot of other MMO's, which can feel very slow and repetitive, Rift combat is FAST and sometimes very furious. Trion has found a way to make the hotbar system very fluid, and it goes a long way to make combat feel quick and responsive in Rift.

Rift combat also has the potential to be very complex and different from anything you've ever experienced in an MMO, depending on your choice of "soul" combination. This is where the Ascended class system, and Rift itself, really shines. The lore of Rift pits you as an "Ascended" soul from the great Shade War, and you've been resurrected to fight against the forces of Regulos. Depending on your class archetype, you have eight choices of "souls," or subclasses, to choose from, and you get to pick three during the first few levels or so. This combination of three souls is called your class "role," and as you level, you get skill points that you can put into your soul trees to earn bonuses and new skills. It's a very flexible system, and we think that you can swap out souls and change your class role at any time if you're in a party that needs specific skills, but we haven't seen how that works yet.

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The Ascended class system is probably the freshest, most innovative addition to traditional MMO gameplay that Rift brings to the table, and it's pretty incredible. Think of it this way: let's say you're interested in playing the Cleric archetype, because you love seeing "hael plz" spammed in your chat channel and ignoring it. So you select the Warden soul at level 1, which specializes in heals over time. You decide that you want to get in the middle of the action too, so you select Justicar as your second soul, to bolster your healing with combat. Then you add Druid because you love nature, and you've got your first class role. Obviously, combat will depend heavily on the souls that you choose, and can change whenever you want it to by switching out souls or altering how you allocate your skill points.

So far, the Ascended class system really has the potential to set Rift apart from other MMO's on the market. It's incredibly crunchy and customizable and has a little bit of the flavor of Guild Wars' multiclassing system, but in a traditional MMORPG framework. True, some of the souls seem to have a lot of overlap, and balancing all of the different soul combinations and class roles must be taking a lot of work on Trion's side. Still, so far it's crazy fun to play around with and infuses the game with the "it" that turns Rift from being simply a highly polished MMO to a fresh and unique gameplay experience that deserves playing.

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Trion's sixth beta was only open for the weekend, so we have yet to poke around any of Rift's other features, such as public quests, PvP, or any dungeons or raids. As with all other MMORPG's, the real long-term selling points for the game will be having higher-level content that's as polished as the earlier material, compelling endgame raiding and PvP, and an active community that will support post-launch content. We can say that the beta is incredibly polished, far more so than many MMO's tend to be at launch, and we're itching to get into the game itself and romp around in all of Telara's glorious content.

If Trion Worlds has followed up with the rest of the game in the way that they have produced the early beta content, then Rift is shaping up to be a new, exciting take on a traditional MMO format that is worthy of your (and our) $15/month subscription. We can tell you this so far: before playing the beta, we were mildly interested in Rift, and now we're so interested, it's become one of our most-anticipated MMORPG's of the year, along with Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2, and we're pre-ordering it. We'll need people to battle Rifts with and argue about best class roles, so you should too!

Need or Greed: Sony NGP (PSP2) and Xperia Play

Need or Greed is a regular column at STRGamer where we bring you the biggest stories in gaming news along with interesting topics that have gone under the radar. We figure that you're busy and don't always get a chance to scour video game news while you're supposed to be working (and neither do we, so stop trying to get us in trouble), so we'll bring you top stories that you need to know about and interesting trends that you may not have gotten your greedy hands on yet.

Need: Sony's NGP (PSP2) is announced, looks awesome

At Sony's business and strategy meeting last month, the technology megalith revealed the long awaited and highly rumored PSP2, codenamed the "Next Generation Portable" (NGP).

First things first, can we just say, OMG IT LOOKS AMAZING WTB??!?!@@!!

Engadget was the first among many sites to report on the many features of this handheld powerhouse, including a quad-core ARM Cortex A-9 processor, 5-inch OLED touchscreen display, dual analog sticks, a rear touchpad, front- and rear-facing cameras, motion controls, 3G, WiFi, GPS, and more. It'll feature a new type of proprietary media akin to flash, rather than the increasingly unpopular UMD format, and will integrate a new type of cross-media bar and store called "Live Area."

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Among the games demoed at the conference were first-party franchises Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, and Uncharted, along with a cutscene from Metal Gear Solid 4, to showcase the NGP's capabilities. Sony also mentioned that the handheld will be backwards-compatible with downloadable PSP games and will support the new Playstation Suite framework, which allows games to be played on Android devices. There's also been some discussion about the possibilities of cross-platform trophies and seamless play between the PS3 and NGP (meaning that you could be playing Uncharted on your PS3, then hop on the train and keep playing on your NGP), but nothing's been confirmed yet.

No games, release dates or price were actually announced, but the system itself is scheduled to come out Holiday Season 2011 in Japan. Eurogamer also recently reported that the NGP might come out in (at least) two SKU's, with one sporting 3G and the other only having WiFi.

We have many questions about the price, launch lineup and software support, cross-platform functionality, and 3G service, but one thing is clear: it's cause for some serious nerdgasm, and if it's reasonably priced, we're totally getting it!

Greed: PlayStation Phone is real, and it's called the Xperia Play

Hot on the heels of the NGP announcement, Sony has revealed a pretty unsuccessfully-guarded secret, the PlayStation Phone. As Engadget reports, the new phone, called the Xperia Play, will support PlayStation gaming on the go.

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The phone has a 1GHz single-core processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB of RAM, 4-inch multitouch LCD screen, rear-facing camera, and will likely run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. More importantly, it has a slide-out control pad, complete with a D-pad, touchpads, face and shoulder buttons.

IGN reports that the Xperia Play is indeed official, with the airing of its first commercial during Super Bowl XLV last week. No games have been announced yet for the phone, and the system itself has gone a bit under the radar among NGP news and 3DS hype. We're interested to see if the Xperia Play can make a name for itself in a market dominated by more traditional gaming handhelds and the iPhone and iPad.