Five Great Game Center Games for Mac

When Mountain Lion released in July, it brought with it a host of welcome features for gamers. The new AirPlay mirroring Mac feature allows you to mirror your computer screen to your television at the press of a button. Just like that, you can be playing Diablo 3 on your 55" flatscreen, all without involving a single wire.

But Mountain Lion also brought Apple's social gaming hub Game Center to Mac, and it comes with all the leaderboards, achievements, and multiplayer modes of its iOS counterpart. While there still aren't a ton of Game Center games out now, a small handful of quality games let you to challenge your friends in real-time or asynchronously across platforms (iOS to Mac), or compare your highscores to your friends', regardless of where you were playing.

Here are five of our current favorite Game Center games for Mac.

Sky Gamblers: Air Supreme - $4.99

The first thing you'll notice about Sky Gamblers is that it's gorgeous. Shortly thereafter, you'll notice it's a ton of fun.

Sky Gamblers is one of those games just made to be mirrored from an iPad to your TV, where you can scream through the skies shooting down poor pilots. But if you're stuck at a desk, Sky Gamblers: Air Supreme for Mac is just as good, and the best part is you can quickly compete with a friend, in head to head multiplayer. It's tons of fun, and good for a quick dogfight between putting together Excel docs.

Conquist 2 Online Arena - $2.99

Conquist 2 is basically Risk, and that means it has a ton of competition in the App Store. There's an official Risk app, and about 46 million awesome Risk one-offs (like Strategery!) all competing for our time and affection.

But Conquist is also the first Risk one-off to be cross platform on Macs and iOS devices. While games like the aforementioned Sky Gamblers allows you to go head-to-head in awesome dogfights, Conquist's asynchronous gaming style means you can open the game intermittently throughout the day and play a few rounds. It's perfect for a slight reprieve from the workday grind.

Real Racing 2 - $12.99

Just about every gamer with an iOS device probably has a version of Real Racing, and for good reason - they're the best iOS racing games out there. We gave Firemint's excellent racer a 9 (read the review), even with a higher-than-most $9.99 price tag.

Real Racing 2 for Mac is our most expensive game on the list, but it's also fantastic and well worth the cash to race your iOS-wielding friends at anytime. This is a fantastically gorgeous game and looks even better on Retina Display Macbook Pros, for which it's been optimized. Better yet, it has Cross-platform save capabilities and USB controller support.

It might be expensive at $12.99 but it's well-worth the cash.

Two Towers - $.99

Two Towers is a bit different than everything else on the list - it's a very pretty, pretty complex card game, which allows you to challenge friends on iOS from your Mac. There's a lot to learn in Two Towers, but soon you'll be whipping through your 114 cards and almost 30 spells. You can practice up against the challenging AI before sending that Game Center challenge to your friends. Plus, it's $.99.

Anomaly - $4.99

Anomaly is the only game on our list that you doesn't allow you to challenge your iOS friends to a head-to-head match. But fortunately, the game is still an insanely fun tower defense game, the kind of game where the highest score actually matters. Plus the game is really, really attractive. Definitely worth your 5 bucks.

Do you have any favorite Game Center games? Leave your username in the replies and challenge your fellow IGNers.

Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as The Great Gatsby, Super Hexagon, and Mysteries of Pittsburgh. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

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Researchers Read Minds with EEG Headsets, Kind Of

The EPOC Neuroheadset from Emotiv can transform brain activity into usable data for interactions with computer applications and games. A team of researchers from Oxford, Geneva, and Berkeley have turned that $300 input into a brain-hacking device, and now claim that they'll soon be able to pick sensitive information right out of the human brain. The trick is, the brain doesn't even need to agree.

Earlier this month, Ivan Martinovic and his colleagues published a paper titled "On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks With Brain-Computer Interfaces," which they subsequently presented at the 21st USENIX Security Symposium. Their research focused on how to interpret the P300 signal, a brain wave associated with "meaningful recognition", as they received the data on these signals from devices like the EPOC Neuroheadset and the Mindset headset from Neurosky.

During their tests, the research team showed images of bank cards, people's faces, and other stimuli to twenty-eight subjects, then used some proprietary software to better understand the meaning behind the subjects' P300 activity. They discovered that their guesses of the subjects' personal information (associations, PIN numbers, banks) became 15-40% less random. It's not the ground-breaking success that they team was looking for, but it opens the potential for improving this kind of software in other capacities.

For example, the team suggested that because the readings are dependent on the brain's reaction to familiar stimuli, it could be used in lie detection or to discover relevant information in a criminal investigation. Apparently, similar techniques have already been tested as lie detectors but have yet to be formally adopted.

The news here isn't so much that the researchers were able to guess slightly better than before. It's the implication of the research that's startling. We already knew that cheap brain-reading headsets like the EPOC could process rudimentary movement-free controls, and finding yet another, potentially more insidious use for our unintended brain activity could open up a whole new field of neurological and technological interaction. For now, your PIN number is still safe.

Sources: CNET, Emotiv, CBS Seattle, USENIX

Dan Crabtree is an I.T. guy and freelance writer with words on IGN, and a league of other gaming news outlets. His dog is considered handsome and well-read. You can find him (the human) on Twitter and IGN.

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Australia's iGEA Cautiously Welcomes New R18+ Guidelines

The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (iGEA) has cautiously welcomed the final Guidelines for the Classification of Computer Games, which come into effect January 1, 2013.

“We, along with many other stakeholders, have worked for many years to have the classification scheme acknowledge that adults play and enjoy video games and are due the respect of a classification category that reflects ‘age appropriate’ content for adults," reads a statement released by the iGEA. "The new guidelines released today show that they have been crafted to try to balance the concerns of those who have resisted an R18+ classification and adults who want to play video games designed specifically for mature audiences and that are readily available in other developed democracies."

The statement, however, does goes on to criticise the new guidelines for holding games to stricter criteria compared to film and maintaining the interactive nature of video games increases the impact of various classifiable elements.

“Given the opposition to the introduction of an R18+ category from a vocal yet unrepresentative section of the community, along with a largely conservative group of Attorneys-General, it is no surprise the new guidelines hold video games to a higher standard across a number of categories compared to film and what originally existed for video games," continued the statement.

“As we have previously stated, we are concerned with the acknowledgment in the guidelines that interactivity has greater impact on players, despite the Federal Attorney-General’s office publishing a literature review in September 2010 that found no evidence to support these claims. There will be continued debate about whether the interactivity of video games has a greater impact than other forms of media, and we will continue to refer to the lack of the evidence to support these claims."

The iGEA expressed these same concerns on the release of the amended draft guidelines in November last year.

The iGEA will now "wait to see" how the Classification Board will go on to interpret and apply the newly revised guidelines and "trust that they will reflect the standards of morality, decency and propriety accepted by reasonable adults, not just the vocal ones."

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New R18+ Guidelines for Australia Finalised

Minister for Home Affairs and Justice Jason Clare has revealed the new finalised Guidelines for the Classification of Computer Games. The Guidelines will come into effect on 1 January 2013.

Mr Clare said State and Territory Ministers with responsibility for classification matters have agreed to the revised Guidelines after “extensive consultation.”

The guidelines still contain an acknowledgement that “computer games may have a higher impact than similarly themed depictions of the classifiable elements in film, and therefore greater potential for harm or detriment, particularly to minors.”  This, however, is not a new addition; this section regarding the “the interactive nature of computer games and the active repetitive involvement of the participant” has been carried over from the revised draft guidelines revealed back in November 2011.

The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) expressed concern at the time regarding this acknowledgment that interactivity has greater impact on players, despite the Federal Attorney-General's office publishing a literature review in December 2010 that found no evidence to support these claims.

Games that include violence with a very high degree of impact (that is excessively frequent, prolonged, detailed or repetitive), actual sexual violence (or implied sexual violence related to incentives or rewards), and drug use related to incentives and rewards will still be refused classification. These criteria have not changed since last November’s revised draft guidelines.

States and Territories are in the process of passing their own complementary legislation to ensure that R18+ computer games are appropriately regulated.

The ACT has already passed its Bill and NSW and Tasmania’s legislation has also been introduced into their parliaments.

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