Archive: Posts about Games
October 26th, 2007, 6 Comments »
Back when I was a teenager and on computers #1 through 3, I became obsessed with SimCity, SimEarth and sundry other SimUlations. I remember them as engrossing games that pleased my mother. For a change, no one died. The Sim games also had this highly subversive educational element, but the teaching never got in the way of the urban planning fun.
The latest installment in the SimX line is SimCity Societies (found via Marketing Green), which looks pretty extraordinary. From the game’s website:
Featuring an all-new, revolutionary feature set, SimCity Societies allows you to create your own kinds of cities and shape their cultures and environments. Make your cities green or polluted, contemporary or futuristic, rural or urban. Create an artistic society or a police state, an industrial city or a spiritual community—or any society you want!
Whew, the language on that site could use an overhaul. I’m pretty sure that most SimCity players don’t think in terms of ‘feature sets’.
Be sure to check out the producer’s walkthrough video–it offers a glimpse of how layered this game seems to be. The thumbnail shows a screenshot of the game, with an inset from the original SimCity (courtesy of Wikipedia) for the Atari ST.
6 Comments »
October 4th, 2007, 4 Comments »
I was just paging through my precious, imported issue of Wired, and read a little blurb about Miss Management, a new game for Windows PCs. From their website:
Get ready to manage a team of zany animated coworkers as you step into the shoes of Denise, a young and beleagured [sic] first-time office manager. You’ll have to juggle incoming work tasks, keep everyone from getting stressed out, and help the coworkers achieve their goals, from flirting at the watercooler to getting more work done than anyone else! Office politics was never as hilarious as this!
Wow, just like real work! I shouldn’t mock. After all, The Sims enables you to simulate ordinary lives, and they’ve sold a few copies, haven’t they? Though, tellingly, there’s no SimWork.
Looking at the website, I’m unclear on the game’s target audience. Girls? Adult women? I’ve got nothing.
4 Comments »
September 26th, 2007, 9 Comments »
I may get pilloried for this, but I’m pretty apathetic about the Halo games. I’ve played and enjoyed a lot of first-person shooters over the years, and I’ve never really seen what makes these games particularly remarkable.
Admittedly, I probably only played Halo: Combat Evolved a year or so after it came out, so other games may have already caught up in innovation. And I only played it on the PC–I don’t know if the XBox version was far superior.
I’ve read articles that sing the praises of its storyline, but I guess that wasn’t particularly compelling for me. The storytelling didn’t strike me as superior to, say, Max Payne or Halflife. Maybe I missed something? It’s a decent game–I just haven’t figured out why people are lining up to buy it.
What do you think sets the Halo games apart from the rest of the genre?
On an unrelated note, that Canada.com article I referenced is under a ‘Games News & Reviews’ banner, but lives in their absurd ‘Share It’ section. I complained about this when they re-launched last year. What rational media organization would put obituaries, e-cards and gaming news in the same category?
UPDATE: Clive Thompson writes about why he likes Halo 3 so much:
Which is Halo’s true gift to the world of games. It did so many things right that designers have been cribbing from it for years. Including, thankfully, the guys who made Halo 3.
9 Comments »
September 5th, 2007, 3 Comments »
Reuters Second Life News Center recently reported that, for the first time, there had been 50,000 concurrent users inside the game. That’s a notable milestone, but it’s not really what interested me.
Lower down in the article, Reuters references these fascinating graphs by Tateru Nino (she of the mop-like hair, sexy glasses and transparent chest). They display a bunch of usage statistics for Second Life. They only go back six months, I loves me a chart, don’t you?
The most interesting charts are the first two. The one on the left shows the dramatic increase in registrations over the past, with the total more than doubling to about 9.3 million. However, the chart on the right shows the number of ‘active residents’ (I think that’s users who have logged in in the last month). It’s pretty much flat. Assuming these charts are accurate, those new users are remarkably, uh, unsticky.
3 Comments »
September 3rd, 2007, 1 Comment »
Because nothing says “I’m committed to this company” like massacring virtual men made of jelly. Logitech recently launched a new, entertaining viral game called Jelly Battle. You have to play three quick levels of single-player mode before you can go head-to-head with three other humans online.
The trick to these games, I think, is to achieve a level of complexity that’s not simplistic, but not overly baroque either. It should be just complex enough to hint at further achievement.
Logitech’s done a nice job of not overly-branding the experience. It took me quite a while to notice that, in fact, they were promoting cordless devices among the jelly carnage.
1 Comment »
August 3rd, 2007, 4 Comments »
Courtesy of Casual Gameplay, I discovered the graceful, monochrome simplicity that is Gimme Friction Baby (it’s the center one of the five games at the top of the page, with the big white cannon).
I didn’t read the rules (are there any?), but the gameplay should become apparent after a few mouse clicks. That’s all you do–click your mouse button at the right time. And yet it sucked up a half-hour of my Friday morning.
My top score? Four.
4 Comments »
July 30th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Via The Thinking Blog, I learned about Moola (that’s a referral link–here’s a vanilla one if you prefer). It’s a Canadian, online Flash game network that enables you to win money based on a ladder system. From Wikipedia:
Players receive free credits to wage against other players in return for watching a 10, 15 or 30-second video advertisement and answering a trivia question related to the ad. By extending credits to the viewer of the advertisment, players have funds to place bets against other players without risking any of their own money. These player may then ‘cash out’ the accumulated winnings for real cash once a suitable amount has been reached.
They have three games at the moment. I just played four rounds of Gold Rush, and finally won on the fourth attempt. Now I have two cents! There’s a bit of a thrill in playing against other humans for tiny amounts of money, but none of the games are as good or addictive as, say, Desktop Tower Defence.
Anyhow, I think it’s an interesting model. Essentially it’s a micropayment system where consumers are paid for watching ads. They just happen to be able to bet that money after they earn it. Is it, in legal terms, gambling? I’m unsure. Interestingly, you’re not allowed to access the site if you’re a resident of Quebec, Louisiana or Nevada.
If you want to give it a try, feel free to sign up via my referral link. Then I might have $0.024!
1 Comment »
July 24th, 2007, 2 Comments »
It’s a busy day, so here are two ways to entertain yourself (just in case you needed two more ways):
My original title for this entry was “Playing with Balls and Milk”, but that sounded horribly wrong.
2 Comments »
July 5th, 2007, No Comments »
Surely you’ve already put in enough work this week for four days, haven’t you? Take a break, and play these two popular Flashy-flash games until your fingernails bleed:
And speaking of games, check out this creative new form of in-game World of Warcraft spam. Apparently it’s come to be called corpse graffiti.
No Comments »
June 21st, 2007, No Comments »
Since I’m on a Mac laptop with a limited bandwidth allowance, I’ve been playing more Flash games:
Of course, it could just as easily be ‘widower’.
No Comments »
