Forget about all the other announcements from Google in their I/O conference. All that matters is the announcement that Angry Birds finally made its way to Google Chrome.

It’s now available in the Chrome Web Store with 70 free levels. Chrome also gets some exclusive content: there’s 7 levels part of a so-called “Chrome Dimension”. This web version of Angry Birds will also soon support the new in-app payments system, so new (paid) content will probably make its way to this Chrome version.

As if I didn’t have enough time-wasters already…

Our beloved Pac-Man just got an upgrade. The World’s Biggest Pac-Man is a patchwork quilt of user-generated levels, featuring 4794 mazes at the time of writing. Every maze has an exit point on each of its four sides, leading to its neighbours. It’s a virtually endless Pac-Man game. I pity those with gaming OCD…

Anyone can log in using Facebook and design their own levels, or just play for fun.

The game was unveiled at Microsoft’s MIX11 developer conference as a way to promote Internet Exporer 9 and its support of HTML5, but it should run well in any browser that supports the new standard, like Chrome and Firefox.

Remember those little LCD hand-held games that were around before the Game Boy? Well, someone took upon themselves to make them playable in a browser. There’s 17 of them available so far, and more to come soon.

What a nostalgic way to waste a few hours…

Oh joy! Angry Birds is finally on the PC! It’s available through the Intel AppUp Store for $4.99 (less than €4). By the way, the Intel AppUp Store is just an “app store” for Windows PCs, which I didn’t even know existed until 10 minutes ago…

Here’s a complete guide on how to get Angry Birds on your PC.

I anticipate a lot of hours wasted throwing birds at pigs…

(Source: CrunchGear)

I’m still grieving the fact that my laptop can’t handle StarCraft 2 (it overheats and shuts itself down), so maybe I can overlook the “attack function” and FarmVille instead.

(via Kotaku)

Damn you The Inquisitr, for letting me know about this deal! Now I’ll have to go and buy the damn thing, and waste many hours of my life playing it…

There really is no other way. At little more than €10, it’s too cheap not to buy, really. The GTA series has always been one of my favourites, and the review of this fourth episode is quite good. Yes, it’s old. But I’ve given up on playing brand new PC games a long time ago, since it’s ridiculously expensive to keep up with the ever increasing hardware requirements. At least this way I get to buy the games at a small fraction of their original price.

The only problem seems to be the fact that the game is tied to the Games for Windows Live platform, which is hated by many. Which, among other issues, won’t allow me to load or save the game if the Internet connection is down. Even if I’m trying to play in singleplayer mode…

The sale lasts until Monday, April 19.

(Games on Demand Spring Sale)

The Challenging Stage is an online puzzle game in which 56 video games are represented as abstract images populating a large city. And to make it all the more awesome, the whole thing is in pixel art!

The objective is to figure out what games these pictures are supposed to be. For example, in the image above you can see, among others, Double Dragon.

I’m nowhere near finding all of them, which is a big hit to my gamer-cred. Oh well…

(The Challenging Stage, via Geekologie)

I’ve always been a big fan of Monopoly. It was probably the board game I played the most as a kid, before the video games arrived in force. A couple of years ago I even tried a computer version of it, but it was just boring playing versus the computer (I don’t think the multiplayer capabilities were very good). It was like the board version, minus the pleasure of holding all that fake money and laughing on my friends’ face when I won.

So you can imagine my excitement when, earlier today, I found out that Hasbro would release a version of the game using Google Maps as the playing board and therefore create a worldwide Monopoly game – Monopoly City Streets. WOW!

The details were very sketchy, but Hasbro has since posted on the official blog some information on how the game was created, to answer some of the speculation around it:

So, did Google build it? From the reports you would think so but the application was built by Hasbro’s UK digital agency Tribal DDB.

Have Google helped us? Of course, they’ve been great and have really gotten behind the project with all the support we needed.

Who else has helped us? The project was made possible by using the street data from OpenStreetMap, combined with Google Maps, API tastic!

They have also released a FAQ, to satisfy the more impatient while the game doesn’t start.

Other sites report some more details:

Players start the free game with three million Monopoly dollars and can buy Downing Street for $231,000, while Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, where the White House stands, costs $2 million.

Rent is paid automatically each day, from $50,000 for a house to $100 million for a skyscraper.

The game will start on the 9th of September 2009 and will go on until the 31st of January 2010.

This sounds like a brilliant idea, and I can’t wait to rush in and buy the streets from the Portuguese boardgame version.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x2eZIc7Cwo

Now one of the first commercials for the new Guitar Hero 5 is out, and it stars a whole line-up of Playboy Playmates alongside Hugh Hefner himself. The result is, once again, pretty nice:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3yHK5oam2A

This is what I call good advertising!

Still prefer the one with Heidi Klum, though. Which one is your favourite?

Over at BlizzCon 2009, a trailer for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion – Cataclysm – has been revealed, confirming many of the rumours. The most impressive part is the revamping of the existing areas, giving them a totally diferent look and feel. There will also be 2 new races (Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance), an increase in the level cap from 80 to 85, the possibility to use flying mounts all over Azeroth, and, of course, lots of new quests.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeZL296624Q

As for the release date, and to keep with Blizzard tradition, nothing has been disclosed yet.