Temple Run [Mobile Mention]

Temple Run is what I'd like to call the perfect toilet seat game. It's fairly quick to load up and a round doesn't last very long, at least starting out. You may even get a few rounds in depending how long it takes to do your business, whatever that may be, both on and off the seat. There isn't a whole lot to the game, but play a few rounds and you'll see how compelling it is to try and do just a little better. It invokes that, "just one more round" mentality.

The premise of the game is simple. You're a treasure hunter stealing a golden idol and you are trying to escape the temple. You are running for your life, all while rabid baboons(?) chase you and deadly obstacles block your way. Controls are simple swipe movements on the screen for turning, jumping and sliding, and tilt controls for moving your character to the sides on the path. Powerups can be collected during your run to help you survive or aid you in collecting coins. The further you get, the more frantically you'll be swiping and wishing for that next powerup to randomly appear.

The game is built around randomization, which can feel unfair at times, because there are times where the placement of hazards or a lack of powerups feels like bullshit, but alas another round is only seconds or minutes away. What drives you to play more is the challenges you can complete to increase your score multiplier. The coins you earn can be used to upgrade the effectiveness of powerups or unlock new character skins.

It's a freemium game, at least on Android, so it doesn't hurt to download it to at least try it out. I didn't see the appeal at first, but then I kept playing and now  I have all the upgrades maxed out. You can pay for coins to unlock things faster, but it's in no way necessary to enjoy the game. Performance and responsiveness of controls may vary depending on what device you play on, but usually after the first run, it runs fairly fluid for me. Give it a shot and let me know if it's a decent timewaster game for you.

Bag It! [Mobile Mention]

Bag It! is a tetris style game with a grocery bag theme. The goal is essentially to take items off the conveyer belt and to arrange them in the grocery bag just right to avoid crushing any of the items. Yes, you play as a grocery store bagger and it's awesome. There is a destruction mode and a puzzle mode that are both quite fun as well, though the puzzle mode can be a bit tricky at times.

The art style is cute and cartoony, and each product has their own personality that really add a whole lot of charm to the game. The interface is simple to navigate and the game controls great, using drag and drop touch and two finger taps to rotate each object. It's easy to get into, and easy to get sucked into as you try to 3-star and unlock each medal.

With about 3 main modes and a few other add'tl challenges, Bag It! is easy to recommend at $1.99 on the android market. If anything, be sure and check out the free Lite version to give it a shot. I'm personally looking forward to some more content in the future!

Remember When Games Were Simple... [Words]

It's party game night, so I decide to load up "You Don't Know Jack" into my 360. I plug in the sensor bar from the "Scene It" series of games I already own on 360, and then turn on one regular controller to sign my profile in for easier dashboard navigation. I then proceed to sign in other "dummy" profiles such as Player 1 or Player 2 using the "big button" controllers and distribute them to my friends.  The game is loaded up and the splash screens start displaying and then it happens...

Another update!? Call of Duty Black Ops!?

Xbox 360 restarts, all profiles are signed out, the process starts over and the comments from the peanut gallery begin. Yeah, I could have hit 'Cancel' and went on my merry way, but then I wouldn't of been able to earn achievements! (bolded for importance). ACHIEVEMENTS, I TELL YOU! Alright, so I don't particularly care about achievements, but I do like game patches, especially the bug fixing ones. Besides, my wife actually does like achievements, so it's ideal to stay online; that way, it properly registers the unlock date and such.  There's nothing wrong with liking the "cheevos", really, because a lot of people really do. And however arbitrary you personally believe achievements or trophies or accomplishments (<.<) to be, I'm sorry to say, they are here to stay. I mean, who doesn't like a little pat on the back for the things that they do, especially when it's doing the things they love.

You love reading this blog post, right!? *High Five!*

Now, i'm a far sight from being considered an "achievement whore", but I'll admittedly go out of my way here and there to unlock one for shits and giggles, because sometimes they make you do some interesting things such as: play the game in a different way, challenge you to do a portion of the game better, or they simply act as a guide to hidden secrets or some potentially unfortunate spoilers.  Maybe achievements themselves don't get your jollies off, but I'm sure you find value out of something similar. Maybe you feel accomplished by your overall playtime, a high score or leaderboards ranking, or hell even just beating the game once, or perhaps multiple times... but, I digress.

An achievement system is just adding another layer of complexity to games, which is the point I'm trying to make. They're becoming less simple. Which, could be argued against, by the fact that a lot of modern games are actually becoming "simplified" and user interfaces are becoming more streamlined. The barrier to entry for playing videogames is far less daunting when they are available everywhere you look, which is why there are so many people playing them this day and age. Those arguments are irrefutable, but remember how it used to be! Please note, that I'm specifically referring to consoles. You insert the cartridge, press the power button, and then press start to begin playing. Simple.

Okay, sometimes you had to blow on that shit, but still... simple! And fun!

Achievements, DLC, matchmaking, social features, micro-transactions, DLC, in-game advertising, auto-patching, etc, are all just additional layers of complexity to the videogames we play today. Games aren't complex for the end-user solely... the game developers have to put a lot more into getting a game released. There is a lot more that goes into getting a game certified for release on next-gen consoles than most gamers even realize. Between making sure achievements are properly integrated and unlock appropriately, to making sure console specific features properly function under hundreds of unique conditions during gameplay. Having been part of a QA team that shipped a game for Xbox 360, I've seen the certification requirements manual and it is intense. Making games is hard work, especially when we expect so much out of them now.

Don't get me wrong. There are some modern-day features I love having in my games and if done right, I greatly appreciate the value they add. In this fast-paced digital world though, sometimes you just long for something a bit more simple, if even only for a moment.

Forgetting Key Game Mechanics [Words]

I've become a bit of a game hopper as of late. What I mean is that I jump from game to game playing a little bit here and a little bit there as time allows. Some games are just good to tackle in short bursts, so it's my way of diving into the backlog and fishing for some gaming gems that I might be missing out on. There are some games that I don't come back to for a good while, where entire months may pass before I get around to it again. I try not to do this with heavy narrative-focused games, but rather ones where I feel like I can pick it up at anytime. It's not ideal to have to try and remember key plot points, retrace steps to remember where I've explored, or just in general try figure out what the hell I was doing before I stopped.

Uh, what was I doing before I stopped? Oh god, why is he naked!?

When I pick up a game again, I usually mash all the buttons or press all the hotkeys to try and get a feel for the game again. What I should really do is look at the controller settings to refresh my brain, but that would be too easy eh? Though, sometimes you just forget a mechanic exists, like when I played Deathspank on XBLA. It wasn't until the last hour or so of gameplay that I remembered there was a map... Oh man, would that have saved me some frustration. Maps are handy, especially when they show you the location of a quest giver, so you don't run around the world aimlessly, trying to find out where the hell the person was, who sent you on this or that trivial quest in the first place!

Where's the Thogolith Researcher!? Here's a thought, look at the map!

The most recent game where I forgot a pretty important mechanic was in Shatter. It's a pretty great little indie breakout style game with some fantastic music. The later levels get pretty intense, with the blocks collapsing and flying towards you and pretty much all hell breaking lose.  Then there are the boss fights, where sometimes where it's just impossible to avoid getting hit, since you are trying to keep the "ball" in play, in order to prevent a lost life and reset your score multiplier. So, what did I forget that would've saved me so much frustration and stress... the frakking shield mechanic!

Yup, now's a good time to use that shield.

Destroyed blocks spawn shards that you can collect to fill up an energy bar for a badass power shot that slows time and blasts the blocks to oblivion. Well, you can also use the meter for activating a shield to absorb hits to avoid the .5-1 second or something knockout effect, which means that ball you were trying to keep in play goes out of bounds as you are hit by the block floating right next to it. It didn't help that I already suck at breakout style games, but forgetting the shield until I completed the main mode, that gave me some frowny face.

Pew pew pew!

If there's a bright side to this whole story, it's that I got to pew pew more since I never wasted any energy on shielding. So, I might've been no good at shielding, but boy could I suck, blow, and pew pew with the best of them. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!? /winkyface. PS: Play the game to know what i mean.  It's good!

Are there any important mechanics you've forgotten in any game? I can't be the only one that sucks at videogames. =(

Skyrim! Late to the Party Edition! [Experience]

I finally had a nice sit down with Skyrim for an actual decent length of time last night... a solid 2-3 hours, in one sitting! I realize that's pretty sad and you Skyrim veterans are likely scoffing at that, but I'm pretty happy about it. I hope to get a nice marathon session in one of these days to truly immerse myself in it much like I did back in the Oblivion days.

I still invested 100+ hours into Oblivion even in spite of these gates crippling my PC to below 10 FPS.

It probably helps that I'm finally playing it the way I want to, allowing my wanderlust to consume me. Some articles and a recommendation my wife gave me was to grind up and save for a house early on and follow the main storyline for a bit. It was very helpful advice and it's much appreciated, especially since I have a reliable place to store the endless amount of loot I collect. The early grind was sort of cramping my style though, and I was growing a bit weary of the constant back and forth of looting and selling of the Whiterun citizens' tableware, booze, and food items to save up the money I needed.  Anyways, now I can truly wander, loot, and burninate the world to my heart's content.

Fiiiiiirrrreeee!

Speaking of looting... I sure do that a lot. I've started to establish a bit of a stricter consideration regarding the value/weight ratio of objects that I will loot, but that doesn't stop me from checking every nook and cranny of every dungeon. And lockpicking... I will lockpick the ever living shit out of anything, everything, and everyone if that's even a thing. Expert level, psh... Master level... cake mix. I will expend my entire inventory of lockpicks or constantly save and load until I get that bad boy open, even to the point of frustration. I'm currently at 1 lockpick left in the current dungeon I'm in and I have to save and reload before every chest or door that is locked, because that's just how I roll! Note to self: go finally buy some more lockpicks.

There better be some Nuka-Cola Quantum in this chest!

I find my obsessive lockpicking preferable to the alternative of that nagging feeling of having left some loot behind, or trying to remember where it was if I decide to backtrack later... and I despise backtracking if it can be avoided. I like to do it all in one trip if possible, the same way I try to grab every single grocery bag from the car to the point of it being awkward or painfully heavy. It comes down to a time issue. When I struggle to find the time to sit down with a game, I want to be sure I'm getting every bit of fresh experience I can out of it, instead of repeating content. There was a point in my life where I felt like I had all the time in the world, but that time is long past. I'm not going to let that stop me from making the time though. Besides that level up music is fracking glorious to hear in 5.1 surround sound and that alone may just keep me coming back. Note to self: download a Skyrim soundboard app for my phone.

My Addiction to Co-op [Words]

Hi, I'm Crazyhowie, and I'm addicted to Co-op games.

In the Beginning

My infatuation with co-op games started in the arcade era of video games, I was a big fan of co-op before I even had an appreciation of what it was all about. Joust on the Atari 2600 is what I believe to be my earliest memory of a co-op game.  Bubble Bobble though, is the most memorable, and felt like the first true co-op game I had played. This could be why it's one of my favorite games of all time.

I <3 you too, Bubble Bobble!

I'd say that Beat 'em up games were the primary source of co-op early in those days though and there are plenty that I played throughout the years, especially when I was younger: Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, River City Ransom, X-Men, Simpsons, Battletoads, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, and so much more. Some of these games even offered team-up special moves between two characters. There were of course a few scrolling shooters I was into as well, such as Contra or Salamander.

On the PC side of things, when my family upgraded us to our first Pentium computer, that's where the addiction likely first took hold. Warcraft 2 (comp stomp) and Diablo consumed hours of my life. Diablo even moreso at LAN parties, with the longest binge of 18 hours of playing over one special weekend. LAN Parties were frequent due to a good friend of mine having four computers at his house. It was simply an after school activity for us.

"This 18-hour binge was sponsored by Coca-Cola" or should I say  "alo Diabo"

Player FPS Has Joined Your Game

When Diablo wasn't loaded up, First Person Shooters became the driving force for LAN co-op. And there are endless memories of playing through games such as Doom, Heretic, Quake, Hexen, Serious Sam, and plenty more. My friends and I were big deathmatch fans as well, but then games started to introduce more competitive teamplay modes alongside deathmatch or completely replacing it. Co-operation wasn't necessary for these games, but it certainly helped and felt damn good when it happened, whether the co-op efforts were intentional or not. Games such as Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress were some of the earlier games where I became appreciative of this type of gameplay. Competitive teamplay has evolved substantially over the years, as game designers try to find creative ways in providing players incentive to work together.

So many wonderful memories...

Competitive teamplay games being referred to as co-op would be considered blasphemy by many. And it's true that these games are primarily versus with varying degrees of cooperative elements. I say that it entirely depends on how you play the game though. In my college days, I'd typically jump into games on my own, lone wolfing it. Yeah, occasionally I would attempt to coordinate with a player or two for certain situations, but I found that was not always easy. More and more I find that I really only like to play online with people that I know, for the very reason of people not always being easy to work with. That's just life. We're all different and when it comes to video games, we all have different playstyles and skill levels, that may not particularly mesh well together. These playstyles and skill levels may vary greatly when it comes to different genres or even individual game specific mechanics. It also doesn't help that the anonymity of Internet can bring out the worst in people. I find that playing with people you know makes it easier to deal with those special ones.  Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) on the other hand... are an entirely different story.

The MMO Days

MMO games, the ultimate time sinks. I spent at least a few years playing them, between Final Fantasy XI Online and World of Warcraft. FFXI introduced me to a whole new level of cooperative gameplay than I had ever experienced before. At the time, FFXI wasn't exactly a soloable affair. Of course, there are those who always tried to prove otherwise, but the game was definitely built around the party system. And that party system mechanic was an absolute delight... when everything went smooth. I won't go into too much detail, but those who have played in a party in FFXI understood the numerous things that could go wrong, that resulted in massive experience losses and time wasted for everyone. It was ultimately a lack of coordination that was truly detrimental to a party's success.

3 Mithras is key to any successful party, if you know what I mean.

Then there was World of Warcraft (WoW), the game that many viewed as the "Casual MMO". The two years I invested into it was anything but casual though. It took a few months, but I eventually settled in with an awesome group of people to play the game with. There are a few that I skill keep in contact with even, though many more that I fell out of touch with due to those crazy twists and turns that life takes. The game became what eventually felt like a job, which sounds terrible, I know. It was satisfying though. As one of the guild officers among several awesome people, I'd try and help lead parties or raids of up to 40 people against dungeons or boss encounters that have become some of the most intense and satisfying gaming experiences I can recall (though notably also some of the most frustrating). Communicating and coordinating with a group of 40 players (read: real life people) felt incredible and when everything went smooth, you know you did your "job" right. That sense of progression and accomplishment is an awesome thing to share with so many people at once even if it is "just in a video game". But it doesn't matter if it's in a video game or real life, achieving goals or conquering the most challenging of tasks, will release those happy chemicals into the brain just the same.

The key to succes in WoW is to have a "Get Naked" Macro handy.

Chaos is Good Too

I feel it's important to clarify that cooperative gameplay doesn't have to be a well-oiled machine for it to be fun. Chaos can be fun too. Some of the more memorable moments in gaming I have is when things don't exactly go smooth: Borderlands 4-player co-op, constantly reviving each other, fighting to survive against waves of spawning enemies; Left 4 Dead 2 campaign, continually battling off endless hordes and special infected with the safe room door in sight; or Resident Evil 5, when you are fighting for the focus of a chain-saw wielding mad man to protect each other, all the while scrambling to keep your distance from him.

Then there is Portal 2, when plans just don't execute as expected and you send your partner to their demise in an acid pool or a flurry of bullets.  And let's not forget Magicka, where it's the most fun you'll have killing your friends by exploding, burning, shocking, freezing, and launching them off the map. It is pure, unadulterated chaos. Defying the odds and overcoming the seemingly impossible is an endorphin rush that video games can provide all too well. That balance between too easy and too difficult, where players can get into 'flow', is where co-op really shines for me though.

Co-op is Great. What's the Problem Then?

What it ultimately comes down to is that I tend to buy games with co-op before I even think about who I would play them with. It's not anything and everything, to be fair, and I'm getting a bit better about curbing my impulse purchases. I'm also not oblivious to what I'm purchasing either as I'll typically give a game it's due diligence before I buy. A co-op bullet point doesn't immediately trigger me to say gimme gimme gimme, but it does grab my attention and draws me in to research the game in the first place. The problem is that I stack games onto the backlog and then realize that I may not actually get around to this or that game for it's co-op elements. I just hope that I will and too much so for my own good.

You see, the backlog grows larger as I get older, because now that I'm all adult-like and such, I have less time to dedicate to games /sadface. Not to mention the fact that I plan to spend more time designing games as opposed to playing them, the backlog will only grow larger. Then there's that time coordination thing for multiple adults. Trying to get people together to not only purchase, but to find a mutual agreeable time to play a specific game... that's not exactly easy. Which, is part of the reason why I appreciate Steam. It's easy to gift games and when it comes to co-op ones, there are typically group buying options. I have a small circle of friends in which we all will gift these cheap, indie co-op games to each other as it's a great way to say "hey, let's do this". And, it usually works out to get us to coordinate playing it for at least one night.

As I wrap up these ramblings, I do want to say that I greatly appreciate that my wife likes to play some co-op games with me. It's certainly much easier to coordinate playing with her than anyone else. Her preference in genres are a bit more focused than mine though, so we primarily play Puzzle or RPG games together. It's awesome, don't get wrong, but there are several games I had purchased for couch co-op and no one to play them with. Sad story, I know /violin. It's not a big deal really though, but it does make it appear that I'm some co-op hungry fiend whose hunger can not be satiated. I can't entirely deny that. I'd call that an addiction.

I am Crazyhowie, and I'm addicted to co-op games.