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Adult Swim Games has launched a new version of Robot Unicorn Attack on Facebook, dubbed Robot Unicorn Attack Evolution. The title includes a host of social features like leaderboards, daily challenges, and gifting, and brings microtransactions into the mix as well.

You can purchase "Fairy Dust" for enhancements, power-ups, and your daily challenges, or gift some dust to friends. Enhancements boost your abilities, and you can equip three at a time for ability bonuses. Some of the new abilities include the Triple Jump, Glide, Leisurely to slow the game, Danger Close for warning of the next star, and Combo Continuer to allow you to miss a star. Meanwhile the game offers a host of new animals like the panda or wolf, and the Freevolution ability lets you start the game as an alt-creature.

Robot Unicorn Attack Evolution is already available on Facebook, so nothing is stopping you from trying it out yourself now.

Beat 'em up Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior's Rise is teasing that its combat system "turns brawling into an art form... OF PAIN," which is a phrase that certainly makes me sit up and pay attention to a press release. Announced today, it's set to inflict suffering upon Xbox Live Arcade "early this year."

Developer Qooc Soft's face-puncher will let you "seamlessly blend powerful punches, high kicks and perfectly timed blocks to pull off combos that devastate hordes of enemies," according to publisher 7sixty. Unlockable moves "add to the repertoire of agony for your enemies," and, if your kung fu is weak, you'll also have "support characters that can be called in to help when your fists fail you." Gosh, what larks!

The campaign offers a revenge tale set in a divided ancient China, while there will be two-player local co-op and versus play if you want to share the violence.

The blisteringly-difficult Super Meat Boy may find its way to "touch devices." Team Meat has announced development of a "prototype," but reassured fans that a mobile Meat Boy game would be very different from the original game. "This prototype will not play like SMB," the developer proudly proclaimed on Twitter.

"It will be a re-envisioning of SMB remade from scratch for touch. We aren't half-assing this if it turns out to be fun."

If the prototype comes to fruition, it won't be the first time the Meat Boy franchise has graced touch devices. In 2010, Team Meat released an iOS game that parodied the iOS game scene. "Super Meat Boy Handheld is all the branding of Super Meat Boy, without the actual gameplay or art from Super Meat Boy...and all for ONLY A DOLLAR."

This new effort appears to be a more serious effort. "We just had a few cool ideas and wanted a challenge," the developer noted. "It wont be a simple game like Doodle Jump; it will be a larger more traditional game," adding: "We promise you we wont make a game with shitty touch controls."

"If it turns out it sucks, we will act like it never happened and move on to the next idea."

Dragon mounts, home-building, Kinect-powered shouts, werebears, spears, and other strange and wonderful experiments were whipped up for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by the folks at Bethesda Game Studios after finishing their fantasy RPG. The team took a week out for a 'game jam,' toying with ideas which may or may not ever be released officially.

Skyrim game director Todd Howard revealed the game jam's fruits during his keynote speech at the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit last night, saying the team were told "Do whatever you want and put in the game." The highlights were put together in a video for Bethesda's annual end-of-year show-and-tell, which you can see below.

"This is all experiments that we did in a week," he made clear. "How much of this stuff sees the light of day, to be determined. Could it be in a future DLC? We don't know. Could various parts of it be released for free? We don't know."

Other projects included spell combinations, dark dungeons, seasonal foliage, stealth enhancements with water arrows, adoption, goblins, and a lycanthropy perk tree. Check the whole lot out below by skipping to 21:25 to see the game jam highlight reel, courtesy of GameSpot:

As part of his keynote to open DICE 2012 titled "Why we create, why we play," Bethesda Studios creative director Todd Howard dropped a shocking figure. Data from Steam shows that gamers playing Skyrim on PC have racked up an amazing 75 hours of average playtime. This figure served as the exclamation point, driving home his point that the key to avoid people putting down a game is to hit the challenge "sweet spot." Too difficult, and it ends in frustration; too easy, and there's no sense of pride to be earned. Getting it right, though, is a tough challenge that comes from interweaving the different stages of play.

Howard described four basic stages of play as learning, playing, being challenged, and surprise. Early on in a game, a player progresses through these in a rather linear fashion. They learn the way the game works to then move into playing it. Once they have that down, the content challenges them to use what they've learned and practiced. And then finally the designer works in moments of surprise to keep the player from falling into a rut.

One of the ways Howard's team applies this idea to hitting the challenge sweet spot is by weaving the stages together as the game progresses, nesting the stages together so that it becomes a more complex combination. PC allows the game to go a step further with the addition of mods through the Creation Kit. The changes they can bring to the game add a tremendous amount of variety. They naturally lend themselves to adding surprise elements, but their reach goes into the other three elements as well. New ideas introduced in a mod may need to be learned, or at the very least played, and once they are new options for challenge open up.

A new adventure game from Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the rest of the Double Fine Productions gang is on its way, having hit its funding goal of $400,000 only eight hours after launching a crowd-funding plan. What's more, Double Fine is now having "a lovely chat" with Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson about his offer to fund a Psychonauts sequel.

"If I were to go to a publisher right now and pitch an adventure game, they'd laugh in my face," Schafer said in a video for the KickStarter project. So Double Fine turned to its fans, seeking $300,000 to fund a new adventure game and $100,000 for video game documentary team 2 Player Productions to record its progress.

The project launched at 6pm Pacific on Wednesday, and reached the $400,000 mark a touch over eight hours later. Clearly, this is something special. The pledges continue to pour in, but are not going to waste, as extra money will go back into the project. "This could result in anything from increased VO and music budgets to additional release platforms for the game," Double Fine said.

Full Throttle and Grim Fandango

Double Fine has some series adventure game muscle. Schafer himself lead the seminal LucasArts games Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, and had a big hand in Day of the Tentacle and the early Monkey Island games. Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island and co-creator of Maniac Mansion, is also on the team.

Pledging $15 will get you Double Fine's adventure game on Steam when it's finished, plus beta access through Steam and access to the video series. Rewards increase as you pledge more, with some ludicrous goodies if you slap down thousands of dollars, including being in the game or even scoring Tim Schafer's last four shrink-wrapped triangle box copies of Day of the Tentacle.

"Here's my promise to you," Schafer joked, "either the game will be great or it'll be a spectacular failure, caught on camera for everyone to see. Either way, you win. What could possibly go wrong?"

Double Fine's plan was to release the game in October, but given how much extra money it's certain to get, finding ways to spend that may take time.

As for Minecraft creator Markus Persson's Psychonauts offer, which seemingly began as a bit of banter, Schafer has said, "If you're wondering about Notch's generous offer to help Psychonauts 2 happen, all I can say is that we are having a lovely chat about it!"

He added, "These things take time to figure out--if they can be figured out--so please don't expect any Psychonauts 2 announcements any time soon."

Of course, given how well crowd-funding is working for the adventure game, Double Fine can always consider that too. The model's becoming increasingly popular with independent makers-of-things to bring their dreams into reality, but Double Fine is the first video game developer to use it for such a large and high-profile project. Exciting times in the industry.

Here's the Double Fine Adventure project's Kickstarter video:

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you're eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place to feature all of the media we add to our enormous database on a daily basis.

Today's Filter features a behind the scenes trailer for Ridge Racer Unbounded and a teaser trailer for Battleship.

Ridge Racer Unbounded

Battleship

We also have a launch trailer for Shank 2, a launch trailer for Gotham City Impostors, an ESPN integration trailer for Grand Slam Tennis 2, two tutorials for MLB 12: The Show, and new screenshots for Skylanders Giants, Unit 13, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Top Darts, and Little Deviants on their respective game pages.

The annual DICE summit got started with a debate that struck to the foundation of the video game industry. "Is the publishing model broken?" asked the first debate in the Hot Topics panel. Analyst Michael Pachter started the case for it being broken by pointing to the recent woes of THQ and its inability to be a successful business on $800 million in revenue. In such an environment, Pachter suggests that the end game could see the field reduced to only a couple of players, like EA and Activision. He feels that outcome will be bad for the business, that we will be playing Call of Duty 37 at that rate, and that gamers will get shortchanged as new IP dwindles.

In counterpoint, Jesse Divinch of EEDAR said that publishers allow innovation by helping it achieve success on a larger scale. He cited Guitar Hero as an example of a game franchise that found widespread success when Activision picked it up after a couple of well-received but lower performing versions initially came out. The publisher became the conduit as he put it that pushes content out so that it can be experienced.

As a compromise, Divinch offered that maybe it's not the model that's broken, but rather the publishers themselves. Pachter said that he agreed on that point. Divinch went on to talk about the issue of new IP being stifled, saying that publishers adhere to the rule that new IP isn't released late in the cycle because it isn't what the consumer wants. Pachter turned on that point, suggesting that publishers need to take a page from Steve Jobs' strategy and have the vision to tell gamers what they want.

Whether the model or the publishers, the contrast Divinch made between the list of publishers who've gone out of business over the past few years--from Acclaim to Midway and many more in between--to the lack of newcomers made it clear that the situation is tough, no matter who's to blame.

The release of MLB 2K12 is right around the corner, and 2K Sports has announced an intriguing 'Combo Pack' for Xbox 360 owners who also happen to be basketball fans.

The long and the short of it is this: On March 6, interested folks can head down to a "participating retailer" and grab the "MLB 2K12/NBA 2K12 Combo Pack" for the suggested MSRP of $69.99. As suggested, the pack includes complete versions of both games.

The move to bundle both games together at a discount to coincide with MLB 2K12's launch is a pretty cool way to shine a spotlight back on an excellent basketball game that some may have skipped over earlier in the year, given the uncertain and late start to the real-life NBA season.

BurgerTime World Tour is finally making the trek to WiiWare tomorrow, a few months after its Xbox Live Arcade debut. Developer MonkeyPaw Games announced today that it will hit the service for $10 (1,000 Wii Points). It's the perfect gift for someone who wants all the fun of making a delicious burger and none of the enjoyment of eating it.

As in the XBLA version, the puzzle-platformer mixes up the formula with rotating 3D stages. The game features 50 stages in all, including boss battles, in Peter Pepper's valiant attempt to make gigantic burgers. That's right, everyone. America: where even our video games involve ludicrous portions of food.

This is coming slightly later than the promised late 2011 release, so WiiWare patrons had to wait a bit for their supper.

The Make Something Unreal Live competition has gained the rights to use the Fighting Fantasy property, Epic Games and Train2Game have announced. The long-running tabletop roleplaying game will be developed into iOS games for the competition, and then those games will be debuted at Gadget Show Live 2012.

Four indie game studios will each select a book from the Fighting Fantasy series to make into an iOS app. The four chosen for the competition are The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos, Deathtrap Dungeon, and Armies of Death. So lots of fire, and chaos, and death, to put it bluntly.

During the development process, the devs will release regular milestones and stick to intellecutal property guidelines. Industry veterans including Deep Red's Tony Bickley, Epic's Mike Gamble, AppCrowd's Rik Alexander, and Mediatonic's Pete Hickman will serve as guest mentors for the teams.

Once the projects are finished, they'll be shown off at the Gadget Show Live 2012, set for April 10-15 in Birmingham, UK. The winning team will get a full source, commercial Unreal Engine 3 license for iOS devices.

"Steve Jackson and I are delighted to see our 'Fighting Fantasy' gamebooks being developed as iOS games by new teams of talented and enthusiastic students," said Fighting Fantasy co-creator Ian Livingstone in the announcement. "It will be really interesting to see how our IP will be captured and interpreted for the iOS platform. This competition is a great way to showcase the creative talent of a new generation. The evolving games industry is constantly on the lookout for design innovation and new ways of playing. I am really looking forward to playing one of my books as a game."

We've seen quite a bit of protagonists Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, but haven't heard how the two leads got together. Naughty Dog's game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann have explained some of the back story that sets the game's events in motion, including how Joel came to take care of Ellie.

Despite the title, the two aren't the last survivors. In fact, they both live in one of the last quarantine zones operated by the military, Druckmann explained in a Game Informer interview. Since Joel has been alive since before the outbreak, he's experienced loss and become a harder man for it. When the game starts, he's willing to compromise some principles, and he works in the black market. He's given a job to smuggle a trouble-making 14-year-old girl, Ellie, out of the quarantine.

The reason Ellie needs to be smuggled out is being kept under wraps, but things don't go according to plan. Before long Joel is stuck outside the quarantine zone with her, and he can't reenter because the military would hunt him down. So he accompanies Ellie to keep her safe, to deliver her to a contact.

Outside the quarantine, the environment is a destroyed, overgrown cityscape. The team says they were inspired by the book The World Without Us and "ruin porn" photos of urban areas where nature is intruding. "We're constantly pushing nature back to not reclaim the cities," Druckmann said. "In New York City, they're constantly pumping water out. If electricity ever goes out, within two days the subways are completely flooded. Water comes in, and structural integrity starts collapsing and falling apart, and nature starts coming in."

The Last of Us will be available for PS3. No release window has been set.

Some new news from indie developer Halfbrick has been revealed at DICE 2012 today, regarding both Fruit Ninja Kinect and the breakaway mobile hit Jetpack Joyride. Fruit Ninja Kinect has achieved half a million sales on Xbox 360, according to the developer, and Jetpack Joyride has been downloaded 14 million times--thirteen million of which occurred after the game went "free-to-play" in mid-December.

Halfbrick's Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen shared the information with Joystiq during the summit today, and confirmed a few other tidbits. He noted that the iOS version of Fruit Ninja will continue to receive free updates, rather than a sequel, and that a free update is coming to Jetpack Joyride "next month."

"It's the biggest one we've done so far," Larson teased.

Most curious, however, is that although Jetpack Joyride gathered about one million paid downloads (for $1 each) after it was released, the revenue generated by the game has actually been higher since it went "free-to-play." Since mid-December, when Jetpack Joyride became free-to-play, the game has been downloaded an additional 13 million times. Larsen explains that the increase in revenue performance is because despite the lack of an up-front charge, roughly five to ten percent of users are spending at least a dollar through the game's in-app store.

If you hate cars, Wheels of Destruction: World Tour may be a game for you. Announced today by Gelid Games, the post-apocalyptic "arcade-style car combat shooter" for PlayStation Network will encourage you to smash the beastly metal armadillos into pieces. Unfortunately, you'll need to drive one of the dreadful things yourself to do so.

The multiplayer vehicular arena combat will come in a variety of flavors, including free-for-all, CTF, king of the hill, and team deathmatch. Five car classes are on offer for you to smash, and be smashed, in.

The action takes places in 12 arenas set in "five of the most dangerous â€" yet vivid â€" regions of Europe," which could be anywhere, given this is after an apocalyptic event (though who could tell with some corners of England?).

Wheels of Destruction is said to be coming "soon" to PSN. You can follow it on Facebook.

Destroy those wheels

Electronic Arts has made some significant progress in its attempts to capture more of the market share of the first-person shooter. Battlefield 3's piece of the first-person pie jumped eleven percent last year--from 13% to 24%--but the publisher is thinking of ways to up the ante even further. Recognizing the success of Activision's Call of Duty Elite service, EA is determined to get "one step ahead," perhaps by developing a similar service for its own military shooter franchise.

"I think certainly you look at what our competitors do well, and certainly Call of Duty Elite... the numbers Activision have talked about, they've done a great job," EA COO Peter Moore told IndustryGamers in a recent interview. "It's incumbent upon us, whether we do that or do something one step ahead, I think the digital strategy that we're executing against right now - a billion dollars on a trailing 12-month basis - shows that we're doing some good things as well. Differently, maybe," he explained.

It's not just the Battlefield series that could benefit from such an initiative. "FIFA Ultimate Team could be as big as Call of Duty Elite alone - one mode in one game could be as big as that," Moore said. "I'm pretty confident - we announced over $100 million in that mode last year and I'd be stunned if we didn't do better than that this year at the run rate we're currently at."

Moore also praised EA's use of "point-of-sale cards" at retail, which has the benefit of harnessing more consumers at the point of purchase, when many of them are more likely to buy extras.

Moore also noted that while capturing additional market share previously held by a competitor like Activision is important, the first-person shooter market continues to expand. He posits that the audience for such games "could be as much as a quarter of the entire industry." To his point, he notes that franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield have become "cultural phenomenons," whose reach extends beyond that of the core gaming community, and therefore help grow the audience for video games as a whole.

"It's the same as in the old days with Microsoft," Moore illustrated. "Halo was a big deal, bigger than video games. So that element of it--with massive launches that compete favorably with movies--is good for us."

Syndicate garnered a lot of respect among gamers and critics alike when it was released in 1993, thanks to its blend of deep strategic choices and real-time tactical combat. Similar in many ways to X-Com: UFO Defense, players of Syndicate could customize their squads in an RPG-like fashion, using the money they earned on missions to upgrade their agents, tools, and equipment. Syndicate presented players a memorable world: a vision of a dark future, in which all-out corporate warfare was the norm.

Today we add 1993's classic RTS game, Syndicate, to our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

Syndicate was quite impressive when it was released, providing players with a robust and immersive interface. "As a matter of fact," says Mobygames reviewer saladpuncher, "I have never seen another control system that makes you feel like you are IN the game as much as this one. Every action is controlled through a holographic computer aboard your luxurious corporate blimp high above the city," he explains. "This gives a logical reason to why the action is presented from a third person view from above. Selecting your team, arming them, setting up research options, paying for hints from informants, and taxing the local populous are all done though this virtual computer and it really makes you feel like you are using a state-of-the-art OS from Blade Runner or Neuromancer."

Mobygames reviewer phlux touches on the game's variety of different mission types, and how they keep the player engaged. "The missions are suspenseful and you really got many different tasks to master. Rescuing some professor, killing the other syndicate's agent teams or just gathering some innocent people as new recruits are just three of the diverse missions you can encounter," he explains. "The mission descriptions are always informative and sometimes even downright funny. With the huge arsenal of weapons and other stuff to research, you really have something to do even outside the combat action."

Tell Us Your Stories! We want to hear about your experiences with Syndicate. Tell us your stories. Why did you love it? What drove you crazy? Remember it fondly with us in the comments below. We'll select some of your thoughts and memories and add it to a Weekend Update to this feature.

Syndicate on MobyGames.com

In the future, the world is controlled by a handful of global corporations (syndicates). You are the Marketing director (hit man) for one of these companies. It is your job to take control away from the competitors. The job is not one of diplomacy, but one of brute force and physical control. Advance your way to the top of the corporation by successfully completing your missions and managing the money you make from your territories.

The gameplay is visually reminiscent of X-Com, with an angled top-down perspective, but it is real time rather than turn based. You have missions ranging from infiltrate and capture, to seek and destroy. In each of these you direct a team of four agents as they move through the world shooting at anything that gets in their way.

You can upgrade and modify your agents, as well as equip them with tools you have researched or liberated from opposing syndicates. As you complete missions, you gain more funds to use for purchasing agents or researching upgrades and equipment.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

The original Killzone is far from the finest entry in Guerrilla's FPS series, but if you're a fan, you may have been wondering what was going on with the planned PlayStation Network re-release. In which case, bad news: it's been delayed indefinitely.

"With regards to KZ1 for PS3, not sure what happened but I've been informed that it's been delayed indefinitely," explains a message from the official Killzone Twitter account. Adds another, "I have no further info about KZ1 for PS3, save for the fact that it's delayed indefinitely."

The PlayStation 2 shooter was supposed to be released for PS3 on January 24 for $9.99. Of course, "indefinitely" doesn't mean "forever," so keep watching the Tweety-Tweets.

Paradox Interactive announced its line-up for the Game Developers Conference in March, and among the games listed is a new multiplayer combat game from Arrowhead Game Studios. The project from the Magicka team is code-named Project JFK, but is otherwise being kept mostly under wraps for the time being.

The teaser announcement promises "breakneck-paced multiplayer combat with a focus on killing your friends and looking cool doing it." Whatever Project JFK is, it's being developed alongside further expansions to Magicka, so Arrowhead must be busy.

Paradox also teased two other unannounced projects. Project Revenge from Critical Studio is described as "death trap for heroes and children." Lovely. And Project Silverado from Zeal Game Studio combines elements from RTS, shooters, tabletop war-games, in a sci-fi setting. Paradox will also showcase the previously announced games, A Game of Dwarves and War of the Roses.

GDC 2012 will take place March 5-9 in San Francisco.

Ubisoft had warned that a number of its PC games would be unplayable while the publisher transferred servers, thanks to its frightful DRM. The move is underway today, but it seems some games which were supposed to be safe are not working either.

"We apologize for the inconvenience, it seems some of you can't connect to games announced as playable during migration," reads a message on the official Twitter account. "We're on it and will keep you posted here!" added another.

Ubisoft forum members have reported trouble with games including Assassin's Creed Revelations, Driver: San Francisco, and Anno 2070, though Ubisoft is not certain that the latter's woes are due to the migration. If you want to play Anno 2070 but can't, Ubisoft offers a possible workaround.

Ubisoft has estimated that the transition should be complete by Thursday morning. Now, who could have guessed that a DRM solution built upon online authorization could be so fragile?

EA has released a free iOS title sporting the Battlefield name. Battlefield 3: Aftershock is now available for iPhone and iPad, and shares cross-promotional duties for both Battlefield 3 itself and the upcoming war film, Act of Valor. It features online multiplayer and three weapons.

The bad news? It's missing many previously promised features and the user reviews are pretty harsh. Touch Arcade reports that earlier previews promised a single-player campaign and enemy wave mode. Players can unlock a weapon by watching a trailer for Act of Valor, and the game features regular ads for the movie, which is presumably why it's offered for free.

User reviews of the app complain of glitches and control issues, and so far the rating stands at 3.5 stars. If you want to try it out for yourself (and why not, it's free), it requires a iPhone 3GS or higher with iOS 4.0 or later installed.