war

Devils at the Gate: Pacific War HD tries to be a defense game in which you battle the enemy to defend your turf. The problem is that there really is no skill or gameplay involved; you just tap where the game tells you to and it plays out while you watch.

To begin Devils at the Gate, you're first asked to enter your name. From there, it takes you to the main page where the Setting feature lets you adjust the music and sound effect noises -- you can also adjust them while playing the game. This is good … Read more

Ewoks aren't real. This is unfortunate. Sometimes we just have to make do with what we can find laying around the house. For Instructables user carlsonbryant, that happened to be a cat and some scrap leather.

Carlsonbryant lays out the steps for turning your regular domestic feline into a denizen of Endor. The ingredients are basic. You need a piece of leather or leather-like material about a foot square, a leather punch, scissors, and some type of twine or string to hold it all together.

I took on the mission of building my own Ewok cat hat using the instructions. It took about 20 minutes of drawing on a old piece of chamois, cutting out the pattern, punching holes, and tying it all together. The cats hovered around me as I worked, batting at the leather and strings.… Read more

It's one of the biggest film franchises of all time. It's also one of the biggest merchandising franchises of all time. It's spawned dozens of novels, countless comic books, spoofs, video games, and even was responsible for the name of a controversial military defense system.

We're talking about "Star Wars," of course, George Lucas' mammoth empire that started back in the early-1970s as a much, much smaller creation. But don't think that Lucas didn't have big ideas. From the earliest days of working on the script of his sci-fi space opera, the &… Read more

Poor President Obama. Not only does he have to deal with Congress, now he's also the target of some interstellar smack talk coming from none other than the Galactic Empire.

Recently, the White House responded to a petition on its "We the People" Web site calling for the federal government to construct an actual Death Star. 

The answer was a definitive no, citing budgetary constraints and the administration's opposition to blowing up planets.

"It is doubtless that such a technological terror in the hands of so primitive a world would be used … Read more

You're onboard the Millennium Falcon. You give the command to jump to lightspeed. The stars outside turn into long streaks of light and you're off. It's one of the most memorable images of sci-fi space travel ever created. It's also likely to be pretty far from reality, according to a study by a group of students from the U.K.'s University of Leicester.

The study, titled "Relativistic Optics Strikes Back," was published in the University of Leicester's Journal of Physics Special Topics. You can indulge in all the delicious physics equations in the abstract.

The physics students started by imagining that the Millennium Falcon has accidentally wandered into our solar system, on a direct course for our sun. If it then engaged in near-lightspeed travel, the stars around it wouldn't appear to stretch out. Instead, it would look more like a disc of light.… Read more

If Luke Skywalker had a living room with a big-screen TV, he would also have a hand-carved X-Wing Fighter coffee table made of wood and glass. The detailed model looks like it's in mid-flight, except instead of blasting the forces of the Dark Side, it's calmly guarding your coffee.

The table is designed so that half of the spaceship is above the glass and half is below. That means it takes up quite a bit of space that could otherwise hold mugs, half-eaten bags of Doritos, and vintage issues of "Starlog" magazine. Still, the design is so cool, you won't miss having the extra room.… Read more

The White House has rejected a proposal to build a Death Star, saying that in addition to its prohibitive construction costs, the current administration does not advocate destroying other planets.

Today's lighthearted official statement came in response to a petition posted in November to the White House's We The People platform that called for the administration to begin construction of a moon-size military battlestation armed with a planet-destroying superlaser by 2016. The petition, which attracted well more than the minimum 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the White House, suggested that such a project could give … Read more

Same-gender romance will soon be in the air in Star Wars: The Old Republic, meaning your Jedi Knight or Bounty Hunter will have more opportunities to get some lovin' in the online game.

To date, characters' romance options have been limited by class and gender. But in a blog post today, Jeff Hickman, executive producer of the BioWare/EA title, revealed that that's shifting come spring -- to an extent.

The upcoming Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion pack, he said, will make it possible for players on the new planet (called Makeb) to flirt with same-gender non-player characters, created by BioWare to give quests, sell items, and otherwise move the story forward. Players will not yet, however, be able to put the moves on same-sex companion characters, the NPCs that accompany them on their intergalactic escapades as a major plotline piece. … Read more

2012 was another year that kept me glued to my iPhone and iPad, checking out the latest batch of iOS games and other apps. So which ones proved to be among my favorites? In alphabetical order...

Angry Birds Star Wars My wife and I love to play Angry Birds, and the Star Wars edition is a great take on the familiar franchise. This app could've easily taken a turn to the dark side. But Rovio knew just how to pair its birds and piggies with the classic Star Wars characters and settings that fans know and love. The challenging … Read more