An arcade beat-em up with a Diablo pedigree; a fast-paced multiplayer first-person shooter; a complex competitive strategy kingdom builder—these are the first shots fired in Facebook's battle to expand its gaming player-base beyond farmers and puzzle-players, with another seven in the chamber for 2013.

After years of steady growth, Facebook's gaming revenue has gone flat—fourth quarter revenue from games was the same is it was a year ago. The money hasn't gone away, but it's not coming in any faster, so Facebook is looking to tap a gaming segment that's long eschewed playing on the social network. It wants the players that will pour themselves into a proper experience, spending more money on guns and ammo than the casuals spend on limited-edition cows and timer-trimmers. Facebook wants the hardcore.

In an interview with Reuters, Facebook's head of game partnerships Sean Ryan laid out the company's plan to tap into this fresh audience. Since last summer Facebook's been working with developers like u4iA (Offensive Combat) and Plarium (Stormfall: Age of War) to bring the games hardcore gamers want to play online.

"You'll see a whole set of games hitting in the next two quarters in particular and throughout the year that really start to redefine what people think of Facebook games," Sean Ryan...

Another game that falls into the purview of the hardcore is nWay's ChronoBlade, a game designed by the creator of Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings and the designer of Diablo and Diablo II. These aren't "mid-core" titles aimed at bridging the gap between casual and hardcore—these are games aimed squarely at gamers looking for the sort of depth and challenge they get on the PC and consoles.

With these three and at least seven more coming in 2013, the only obstacle Facebook needs to overcome in courting the hardcore is a problem of perception. Distancing the social network from Zynga—the creators of all of those "Ville" games—late last year was a step in the right direction. Getting the rest of the way there will be far more difficult. Facebook wants to be the Xbox Live or Steam of web-based gaming. The trouble is getting gamers to see it as such.

Developers of core titles go to the social network because of the built-in community of gamers—it's much easier to use Facebook's infrastructure than build their own from scratch. Ultimately it's going to be up to these developers to create games compelling enough to overwhelm players' opinion of Facebook as a place to plant crops and bother people.

Coming soon to Facebook: more action, battle games [Reuters]

I want to tell you that Skulls of the Shogun is excellent.

I want to tell you the game is fantastic, and that it has some of the best writing this year so far. I want to tell you about how lovingly crafted it is, about the small details it includes. I want to tell you these things, without including all the technical issues.

I can't do that. Skulls of the Shogun is absolutely a game worth playing, but at times, glitches can get in the way of the experience.

What happens in the afterlife? In Skulls of the Shogun's rendition, it's not much different from what we already do in the real world. In General Akamoto's case (aka you, the protagonist), that means he continues making ample use of his tactical prowess—only instead of meatbags, he commands skeletons.

The premise: just as Akamoto is about to become a shogun ("great general who subdues barbarians" according to Wikipedia), he is stabbed in the back. No poetic moment, you don't go all et tu, Samurai?—no, you get something better: the chance for revenge.

In the land of the dead, nobody treats you like the great general that you once were—and even worse, an usurper took your name and rightful, prestigious place in the afterlife. Thankfully, some of the undead join your payback crusade, either out of admiration, or out of a devilish desire to see the world burn. Turns out, the afterlife is a funny, playful place.

Skulls of the Shogun is a turn-based strategy game. You command an army, and every turn you get five actions.

There are three main unit types: infantry (high defense, limited movement), cavalry (average attack and defense, but great movement) and archers (high attack and range, but awful defense.) These are your bread and butter skulls and crossbones of battle, though as the game progresses, you use what are some of the most creative units in a turn-based strategy game I've seen.

The game lifts from Japanese folklore, which means you battle with Oni (possibly Yokai?) and special animal monks. It's a delight to use a new unit. Some do magic spells, like thunder or fireballs. Some heal and resurrect. Others exist simply to be a nuisance thanks to the ability to alter the positioning of friendlies, enemies or even power-ups.

All are a joy to command, and not just because they're interesting in battle. Small details suggest care was put into creating these units: moving the cavalry means watching your undead horse gallop and hearing it neigh across the map, for example.

The game as a whole has stuff like that, really: there's the serene drift of cherry blossoms overlayed on maps, units attack in slo-mo when dealing a final blow, or having units recoil if they're incapable of retaliating. There's probably stuff I missed, too.

Back to the units: it gets better. If you defeat an enemy, they drop a skull. It's, uh, their actual skull. And you can eat it. Kind of gruesome when you think about it, and yet it gives us a glimpse of just how monstrous Akamoto must've been in battle when alive—what kind of a man commands his forces to eat fallen foes?

You'll want to eat them, though. They'll up your health, and, should a unit manage to eat three, the unit transforms into a demonic version of itself—capable of taking multiple turns and sporting fancier stats. Some units even unlock advanced abilities with skulls, allowing everyone a chance to become as frightful as a reaper.

I like to think of it as the closest thing a strategy game has to a curbstomp: something you do to either finish someone off, to rub your superiority in, or simply because the crunchiness feels oh-so-good.

Perhaps skull-eating is better than a curbstomp, because it's useful and comes with the visible reminder that you're a badass. Every skull you eat revolves around your unit ominously, and when you turn into a demon, your appearance becomes menacing. I love it.

WHY: Skulls of the Shogun is a creative take on the strategy genre that manages to be accessible while not dumbing itself down. And, you'll get to laugh while you mull over tactics.

---

Skulls of the Shogun

Developer: 17-BIT

Platforms: Xbox Live Arcade, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows RT (and features cross-platform play between these platforms!)

Released: January 30th

Type of game: Turn-based strategy.

What I played: I spent 15 hours going through the campaign, currently at the end of the third area—there are four areas in all. I haven't meaningfully touched multiplayer yet, but it's there, and if the single player campaign is any indication, it's probably fun.

Two Things I Loved

• The skull-eating mechanic is fantastic—it heals you, and turns you into an awesome demon.
• Anticipating the moment you get to awake your general: the whole battlefield will know.

Two Things I Hated

• Argh! These bugs!
• Hey, let's play 'find the exact pixel' to get a chance to attack.

Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes

• "I had no idea skulls were such a great snack. Maybe I should try some." -Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com
• "Fear me, mortals. I'm a demon." -Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com

Much of battle revolves around skull management: either seeking them out for ultimate power (and hoping that you don't get destroyed for being a glutton), stopping enemy forces before they gain a demon, or snacking on skulls to heal. Trust me: you do not want an enemy to gain a demon. And if the GENERAL becomes a demon? Ho, boy. More on that in a bit.

You move all these units on a gridless battlefield, which gives you flexibility in movement, but also means it's imprecise. You don't know exactly how far away you have to be before you can hit without selecting a unit and looking at its range. Finding the precise location which grants you an action can be frustrating.

Unit positioning is also crucial here. If a unit is on an edge or a cliff, you can push them off for quick and easy kills. This is also used against you, though—so pay attention! You can preempt knockbacks through spirit walls, which requires friendly units to defensively stand shoulder to shoulder.

The game does an admirable job of keeping battles fresh, too. Most battles introduce novel elements, and it's rare to find a battle that can be reduced to simply ‘destroy everything.'

Maybe you have to take into account a new, mysterious unit. Maybe you have to get to a certain part of the map. Perhaps you need to survive an intense ambush. Or, you might race for the pile of skulls in the middle of the map. Depends!

Add the ability to haunt paddies, which give you rice, along with the ability to haunt shrines, which give you units (which sometimes cost rice), and you have a game with a surprising amount of depth.

I like to think of Skulls of the Shogun in the vein of the stealth game Mark of the Ninja—and not just because they have a similar aesthetic. They're both genre games of the "popcorn" variety (think ‘popcorn flick.')

What I mean is: they're both excellent gateway drugs for more ‘hardcore' titles in the genre, but they don't sacrifice the essence of what makes the hardcore games fun. Actually, they might focus on the best aspects of the genre while satisfying both diehards and newbies alike. That type of accessibility is a feat.

You won't find the involving, eats-away-your-entire-night time suck of more ‘serious' strategy games in Skulls of the Shogun. Instead you get quick and sweet romps—most levels took about 15-30 minutes, with more complex levels taking nearly an hour. As someone who is highly sensitive when it comes to games wasting my time, I welcome the pithiness with open arms.

Unfortunately, some of my time was wasted anyway. Yes, there's the typical ‘restart the battle when things go bad' that is endemic to any game that gives you such an option. But there are also a few technical mishaps. Some levels seem riddled with bugs.

There's one battle that comes to mind thanks to how long I spent trying to beat it—at first due to incompetence, and then, because of strange glitches. Here's how it went down:

Lose, restart. Lose, restart. And then, what's this? Why can't I move these units, what are they stuck on? I'm standing in an open field. They can't move in any direction. Uh? Restart. Okay, they can move now. Oh look, I'm finally doing well! Hell yeah! Aaaaand there's an error and the game forces me to restart. Okay, fresh new game. Again. And then gives me an error. Again!

These things occurred more than once, but not always all in the same battle. I've played 15 hours of Skulls of the Shogun, but I'd reckon that at least 5 of these hours were me restarting either out of incompetence or because the game screwed up somewhere. Thankfully, the battles are all short so this wasn't a deal breaker, but I've cursed more at Skulls of the Shogun than I've wanted to.

At times strategy went out the window if a general was within reach. Suddenly, a difficult map would devolve into an all-out attack against one unit—for if the general falls, you win the match. There were situations where I would barely touch the normal units and would win thanks to this loophole, which would make that win feel hollow.

Still, I enjoyed commanding the thunderous Akamoto, thanks in no small part to the sheer power he held. This was reinforced by details like having his awakening happen with a controller-shaking strike of lightning, or even just his ability to wield two swords (and thus take two turns) from the get go. Normally, a unit has to become a demon to do the same thing.

Perhaps generals are too powerful. There were a couple of instances where all my units were destroyed, save for Akamoto... and I waited to wake him up, and managed to make him into a demon version of himself. Demon Akamoto gets three turns. That's three chances for annihilation.

I could wipe entire maps—entire maps!—with this unit alone. That's insane. It also meant that if I had the misfortune of having an enemy general consume three skulls, there was no feasible way to take him down even if I used all five of my turns to attack him—and even if some of these units were demons themselves.

Thematically this fits; generals are supposed to be the most feared units. But being able to ignore tactics in a strategy game thanks to a single unit isn't so great.

Wrapping this experience up is excellent writing that isn't afraid to poke fun at itself. It reminds me of Paper Mario a little, only more ridiculous: these are generals and esteemed samurai! They speak with the look and gravitas of Kabuki theater! Their chatter sounds intimidating! And yet this is a sampling of what they said:

"I like you! I shall eat your skull last!" - Akamoto, on meeting his enemies for the first time.

"Gyah, how dare you! Do you know who I am?! I'm connected, I know people!" - An enemy general.

"Easy for you to say! You don't have the A.I. in charge of your destiny!" - A monk.

"I got money! I can make it rain rice and potions!" - A general, in an attempt to impress a spring goddess.

"Not very good at pre-battle banter, are you?" - Akamoto to an enemy general.

"I see, do you often have difficulty... *ahem* ... "performing"? - Akamoto to a general extolling the virtues of ‘performance enhancing' potions.

You get the idea. The afterlife is a place for hijinks, populated by devilish creatures. Devilish in the playful sense of the word; these mischievous Yokai would be right at home with calacas. The light-hearted humor provides a good balance for the heavier turn-based strategy play.

So cheer up, Akamoto. You might be dead thanks to a traitorous worm, but you still get to kick ass and have a good time while you're at it. If you don't get hit with a bug, that is.

UPDATE: 17-BIT told us that there is a title update that will address known bugs and issues. We will update this review as soon as we know more.

Before diving into an extended hands-on session with Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, creative director Neil Druckmann describes what he hopes I'll take away from the demo: "We want to demonstrate through gameplay, through action what people have had to deal with." By "people", he's referring to the survivors of a population-wiping plague that took hold 20 years prior when a plant-based parasite began burrowing into human brains. As far as what those struggling few "have had to deal with", well, Druckmann's talking about the Infected.

We got a brief glimpse of this threat in the game's first trailer, but Naughty Dog has since kept the scares to a minimum while they focus on the game's world and characters. In fact, the only real enemies we've seen protagonist Joel and fellow survivor Ellie face have been a bunch of angry, hobo-looking humans. While these Hunters-as Joel dubbed them-seemed a formidable foe, they now look like cookie-baking grandmas next to the Infected.

My demo opens roughly two hours into the game. Joel and his smuggling partner Tess have accepted an assignment to sneak Ellie out of Boston's quarantined zone and deliver her to the city's capitol building. Everything outside the protected area-which has become a strict police state not above executing its rule-breaking citizens-is either destroyed or has been overtaken by an aggressive Mother Nature. Caught in a vicious downpour, the trio seek shelter while navigating bombed-out buildings, overturned subway cars, and collapsed highways.

They soon find refuge in an office complex, but a fresh corpse on the floor suggests they're not alone. It's at this point I'm introduced to the Stage 1 Infected, dubbed Runners. Druckmann elaborates: "Stage 1 is where the infection starts taking over your mind and kind of drives you mad. You're not in control of your body anymore and it's driving you to attack other people. Runners can see, they're still human, but they're doing something beyond their control." Before I engage the first of these fleet-footed freaks, Druckmann warns they also move in packs and are as agile as they are nimble. Great.

Armed with a pistol and shooting mechanics that'll feel familiar to anyone who's dropped a bandit from behind Nathan Drake's marksman skills, I'm able to down some of the creeps with slugs. They move fast and erratically, though, so getting more than the first shot off with any degree of accuracy is impossible. The rest I pop off in a state of frenzied panic. Ammo's also super scarce, so running and gunning isn't an option, ever. I find melee weapons, such as splintered 2x4s and bricks, effective, as are Joel's bare knuckles. All encounters are frantic affairs, however, that call upon a combination of shooting, running, hiding, looting, and up-close attacking. Tess helps sometimes, occasionally putting a bullet in a Runner's rotting brain just as it's about to free Joel of his jugular. Despite this hunger for flesh, Druckmann ensures these baddies are not zombies. Brain-eating is simply a by-product of their need to spread the pandemic and survive. "If they sense another person is not infected, it's their instinct to attack and try to spread the fungus."

With trigger finger instinctively twitching and nerves properly frayed, I'm afforded a bit of a reprieve to dig into the game's crafting system. Not nearly as complex as the term usually implies, crafting in The Last of Us is a streamlined, intuitive affair. As players progress through the story, they'll scavenge items—binding, scissors, alcohol, sugar, rags etc.—which can be used to cobble together weapons and supplies. A quick button-press calls up a menu displaying all inventoried ingredients as well as items ready to be built. It's important to note though, you're vulnerable while making items, so finding a safe spot before MacGyver-ing is essential. Another pro-tip: Never pass up crafting items or ammo; unlike most games, The Last of Us won't generously surprise you with an entire box of shotgun shells or a surplus of med-kits.

I quickly learn shivs, made by combining scissors and binding tape, are a great stealth weapon. In fact, the crude blades even take out Clickers, the next Infected type I encounter. Named for the terrifying sound they make with their tongues, Clickers represent the infection's third stage. At this stage the brain-burrowing parasite has grown to the point that it's poking through the host's eyeballs, rendering it blind. Druckmann grimly refers to this as "a fate worse than death." The grotesque mutation, which uses a form of echolocation to navigate the environment and track potential targets, makes the Runners look like playful puppy dogs.

Sneaking up behind them and burying a blade into their neck is the way to go, but shivs are in short supply. Shotgun blasts are effective, but attract nearby Clickers. As I progress, I find I'm relying on both stealth and aggressive strategies, utilizing various combinations of ranged and up-close attacks. Because some areas are populated by both enemy types, no single method is full proof. The Runners have their sight and are fast, but are easier to take down, while the Clickers can't see, but are attracted to sound. The odds are modestly evened by Joel's "listen" ability; the mechanic places the protagonist in a prone position, filters out all surrounding sound, and shows nearby enemies-even through walls. Objects, such as bricks and bottles, can also be tossed to distract and mislead enemies.

While my demo clearly funnels me through a specific path with conveniently placed objects, its clever design also supports sandbox-y play. I'm able to skulk around interiors to get the jump on targets and, more often, runaway and regroup when encounters get too intense. While doing the latter, The Last of Us' combat depth begins to reveal itself. As a typically aggressive player, I'm quick to combine all bindings with alcohol to craft Molotov cocktails, but soon regret not saving one as a life-reviving bandage. Upon barbequing several baddies with a single Molotov, I'm confident I've crafted wisely, but Druckmann reminds maintaining a delicate balance between offense and defense is a continuous struggle.

With my demo coming to a close, I'm able to steal a quick breath as I lead Joel, Tess and Ellie to safety. Still, thanks to some of the most immersive sound work I've experienced this generation, The Last of Us never lets me truly relax; from the Runner's pattering feet to the Clickers tell-tale tongue twitch, the air always seems to be carrying some unsettling sound. Even non-threatening audio cues, like deafening shotgun blasts and the finger-nails-on-chalk-board screech accompanying the movement of environmental objects, has little trouble shooting a chill down my spine.

Previous looks at The Last of Us left me wanting to learn more about its intriguing story, setting, and character relationships. Now, after spending thirty minutes in its nightmare-conjuring world, I can add my next encounter with the Infected to that wish-list. Before leaving Druckmann, I ask if there's anything beyond the Clickers, a level of infection even more terrifying than Stage 3. Like a man who takes a bit too much pleasure in scaring the pants off people, he shoots me a sly look and says "Yeah, there's more stuff...oh yeah."

A veteran freelance journalist covering the videogame industry for nearly a decade, Matt Cabral contributes regularly to a variety of enthusiast and print outlets. You can find his work on the web, in print, and, if you look carefully, in the foam of your latte. Find him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @gamegoat

The first time I heard the battle music in Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, I thought, "Ugh."

That's never a good sign. In a Japanese role-playing game like Ni no Kuni, the battle music is arguably the most important music in the game. Sure, the world-map music is crucial, but it's the battle music that you're going to hear over, and over, and over again. It's the battle music that will accompany your many victories and defeats, and so it had better be good. Persona 4. Final Fantasy VII. Trails in the Sky. Many a JRPG has made a mark with its excellent battle music.

The Ni no Kuni soundtrack was composed by longtime Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi, the man responsible for the scores for films like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. Hisaishi's work on Ni no Kuni is one of the most remarkable things about the game, both for its outright quality (it's often jaw-droppingly good) and because it's the kind of grand orchestration and performance that we rarely hear in video games.

But I just don't care for the battle music. Every time it begins playing, it sets my teeth on edge.

Here is the battle music, recorded direct from my PS3. Compared with the relatively placid (though lovely!) version that accompanied the Ni no Kuni DS game, the tempo has been kicked up a good chunk, we've got countermelodic flourishes happening every few seconds, and the mallet players are really earning their paychecks. The entire thing is faster, denser, and more energetic than its predecessor.

As I recorded this and listened to it, I couldn't help but think, "Man, this is good stuff!" The music, on its own, is distinctive and energetic, with some strong themes and interesting fake-out metric modulation. It's actually in 4/4 time, but the way it's written trips the listener up and makes things feel unsteady and plunging. The introduction, taken in the context of the whole piece, is really cool.

So if I like this music as a discrete composition, why doesn't it work as battle music? I think it might be that tumbling introduction, actually—it's so strident and stabby, and starts things off on a weird foot. It's as though every time I begin a new battle, I stumble off the starting block. It takes the music 20 seconds to land at a place that feels like you can latch onto it, and it isn't until almost the one-minute mark that it hits something resembling a stride.

The problem, then, is that Hisaishi has assembled this battle music like a regular non-video-game composition, without allowing for the requirements of JRPG battle music. As you play Ni no Kuni, you'll hear this music hundreds of times. But because of the nature of the game's battles, you'll often only hear the first twenty or thirty seconds. Most fights in this game are over in that amount of time, meaning that it's only on rare occasions that the composition even reaches the point where it settles into a groove. (This isn't a problem unique to Ni no Kuni—for example, as my colleague Jason Schreier pointed out to me this morning, the battle theme for Final Fantasy XIII takes a minute to get to the good part.)

Compounding the issue is the fact that in Ni no Kuni, you're likely going to start "farming" for enemies at some point. The game encourages you to defeat and collect monsters for your ever-growing menagerie, but to do that, you've got to fight dozens of low-level beasties until one allows you to recruit it. That means dozens of fights that all last a matter of seconds, since you're taking on comparatively weak foes. And so time and again, you'll listen to that stabbing, disorienting musical introduction without ever hearing the music develop the theme or settle into its middle section. (Surely none of this is helped by protagonist Oliver's repetitive and irritating pre-battle shouts. "Let's do it!" etc.)

Hisaishi's work on the Ni no Kuni soundtrack is rare in its quality, and I mean that in both ways. It's uncommonly gorgeous and well-written, and it's also often remarkable just how musically and sonically different it is from most garden-variety video game soundtracks.

With the game's battle music, the soundtrack's more distinctive qualities work against it. Under ordinary circumstances, it would feel unfair to fault a composition for its introduction—listen to the whole piece, please! But these aren't ordinary circumstances. Repetition is something that any video game composer should take into account, and a failure to do so can make otherwise exceptional music like the Ni no Kuni battle anthem feel chaotic and unpleasant.

The beta is over and battle lines have been drawn. They're sort of squiggly. Team17's classic team-based trajectory shooter is now open to everyone on Facebook. Release the sheep!

The spineless competition is fierce in the Facebook version of Worms. Along with the four-on-four battles that have been endearing these slimy little bastards to gamers for ages, players can participate in weekly tournaments, customize their squad and island, and conquer single-player challenges to prove their superiority over 2D sprites of all shapes and sizes.

It's really the perfect sort of game for Facebook. You can play it right here.

Oh, Grand Theft Auto mods, you never cease to amaze me. Here's footage by taltigolt of someone playing as Red Bird...in Grand Theft Auto IV. Naturally, knocking stuff over happens. And, eventually, guns.

Hey, man. They're angry birds and the citizens of Liberty City sure don't help by being rude!

Grand Theft Auto IV - Angry Birds (MOD) HD [taltigolt]

In the Fox News segment excerpted above, Judge Jeanine Pirro argues that banning guns won't stop crime. She should certainly feel free to argue that position. But when she invokes video games in a preposterous culture-war argument, it's hard to take any of her comments seriously. Here's a partial transcript of what she says at 0:28:

So, if we ban assault rifles, then should we ban the images of assault rifles in movies and video games? What's that, you say? The First Amendment protects free speech? Of course it does! And the Second Amendment protects my right to bears arms. Neither trumps the other.

The whole seven-minute clip comes off as shrill and screeching, which is par for the course with on-air punditry. But it's the comparison of the constitutional amendments that feels way off. Pirro equates the right to see an image of a gun with the right to own one. The implicit idea is one of controlling access to potentially harmful things like guns and video games. But that's a false equivalency that doesn't work, especially as it's framed here. The harm caused by a gun in the wrong hands has a different impact than the harm that caused by exposure to violent imagery. It's the worst kind of apples-to-oranges comparison.

Look, folks, here's the deal on gun control: we are at one of those moments in America's political history where a particular aspect of everyday life seems almost destined to be legislated. A war of ideas is being waged over whether Americans will be able to access guns and ammunition in the same way that they currently do. It's an understandably worrisome concept for some people. But, when boneheaded rhetoric like this rears its head, you can't be blamed for thinking that the public good isn't actually a priority for the people making statements like this.

If you go to school for game design, you might be stoked to hear that the Entertaiment Software Association, also known as the ESA, also known as the shadowy masterminds that secretly control the video game industry the people who run E3, just announced a contest for college students in the United States.

Around 400 schools can enter the contest, which will start accepting submissions on March 15. Each school can submit one video game, complete with "story details and content assets." By May, a panel of judges will whittle the slate down to five finalists, all of whom will win display spots at the E3 conference in Los Angeles this June.

The ESA promises that those finalists will be able to "mingle with top game industry figures including publishers, developers, venture capital and marketing executives," which sounds like a pretty sweet opportunity for anyone who wants to make games.

Image: eteimaging/Shutterstock

While we've already seen one new German-themed quest released in ChefVille this week with it an upgrade to the Hofbrau Skillet, there's an additional timed series available to tackle. The thing is, it's probably buried among the many Chinese New Year event quests that have also been rolled out this week, so its timer has already started counting down. These three "Guten Appetit" quests will be available for just five days, and they'll see you visiting your neighbors, asking friends for items, and of course, cooking lots of dishes. We're here with a look at these new quests, thanks to Zynga.

Animal Style
• Earn 2 Mastery Stars for Spaetzle
• Collect 11 Rauchermannchen Statues
• Tend 10 Neighbors' Chicken Coops or Egg Fridges

The Statues are earned by posting a general news item to your wall for help, but you can only earn a maximum of five Statues per request posted. This means that you'll need to keep coming back to the game and posting additional news posts whenever the game lets you (normally every four or six hours). As for the Spaetzle, this is a dish that is cooked on the Intermediate level of the Hofbrau Skillet (pictured below). When you complete this quest, you'll receive the 11 statues as decorations for your restaurant, a Beef Broth ingredient and 15 XP.

German Engineering
• Serve Bratwurst with Sauerkraut 7 Times
• Earn 3 Mastery Stars on Knackwurst
• Give 15 Chef's Services on Sauerbraten

The best way to complete this chef's services task is to wait to serve this dish until it's the only dish that will be available in your entire restaurant. That way, you're guaranteed to see requests for just this dish, and can rack up 15 servings faster than you might be able to otherwise. You'll receive two Beef Broth, two Red Sauerkraut, and 15 XP for completing this quest.

Starch Nemesis
• Craft 4 Red Sauerkraut
• Earn 2 Mastery Stars on Potato Pancakes
• Tend Potato Stall 12 Times

The Red Sauerkraut is crafted inside the Stone Fermenter. You'll need to use Red Cabbage to create the Red Sauerkraut. As for the Potato Stall, this is a 2,000 coin ingredient stall that is purchased in the store. Even though you need to tend Stalls 12 times, you can have up to four of them in your restaurant at once, so this task won't take as long to complete as it might initially appear. For completing this final quest, you'll receive a Mounted Stag decoration, two Instant Thymes, and 50 XP.

Zynga may change some of the details about these quests between now and their expiration date, but we wish you the best of luck in completing them either way.

Play ChefVille on Zynga.com >

More ChefVille Coverage from Games.com

• A Series of Wursts Quests Guide
• Sauce for Celebration Quests Guide
• Dance of the Dragon Quests Guide

What do you think of this expansion to the German food event in ChefVille? Have you already expanded your Skillet to intermediate? Sound off in the Games.com comments!

Republished with permission from:
Brandy Shaul is an editor at Games.com

Hyper-complex medieval strategy game and one of our 2012 GOTY nominees Crusader Kings II has a new expansion on the way, and the announcement trailer just hit the web. Old Gods will place you back in good ol' 867 AD, when Vikings ruled the land and seas. This pagan-themed jaunt will offer "hundreds of new events," and more of the dense, challenging gameplay the series is known for.

With new armies and empires to control, and hundreds of new years to do it in, Old Gods will presumably steal more hours of your life than ever before. For those of you who've been waiting for some Viking drama of sex, politics, bloodshed and sweet helmets, look out for Old Gods on your PC later this year.