More Gaming

Well it looks like Fallout 3 is officially not going to hook me. After two more sessions I feel like I understand it a lot better now. It's bleak and you have to conserve ammunition and combat is hard and it's a constant struggle to avoid death and I'm reminded of a story that Chris Pikula tells about teaching his girlfriend (now wife) how to play Magic: They played for a while and she was struggling a bit but then there was this dawning realization in her eyes and she says "OHH, so I compare the numbers on my creatures to the numbers on theirs and I have to figure out how my opponent would block so know whether I should attack or not?" Chris shouts "Yes!" And Kerry says "Why would I want to spend my time doing that?"

Fallout doesn't seem to present any interesting mental challenges for me, it just seems like a grind where you have to not mess up any of the details. At some level I have to admire the way in which their desolate post-apocalyptic flavor has permeated even their game mechanics, and I'm sure if I played a ton of these big open-ended single-player RPG's then I'd probably find this one to be a refreshing challenge. But I don't ... and I don't.

So now I have nothing queued up to play on my XBox 360. I'd love to hear suggestions - what do you guys think I would like?

Meanwhile, I realized after my last blog entry that I left out a platform that I've been doing a fair amount of gaming on:

     iPhone

WordFu - This is basically a well-polished Boggle variant. (All of the ngmoco stuff I have seen seems pretty well polished, by the way.) I'm not a huge word-game guy, but between the sound effects, the power-ups, and the achievement system I am definitely enjoying this one. It's also got the distinction of being the only iPhone game that my wife Del has borrowed my phone in order to play.

iShoot - I first encountered this game by reading stories about how the developer made enough money off of it to quit his day job and do iPhone app's full time. Then I played it, saw how decidedly mediocre it is, and began to think that maybe it was easier to make money off of iPhone games than I realized. The idea is that you spend money on weapons, shoot opponents one turn at a time (where you control aiming), and earn more money for bigger weapons. It's not awful if you like that kind of gameplay, but it wasn't exciting either.

Galcon - I want to like this a lot, but in fact I only like it medium. It's a cute little real-time strategy game and it's absolutely worth downloading the Galcon Lite because the first half-dozen times you play are very very good. It starts to lose its appeal after you have figured out how things work, but I highly recommend trying out the free version because they've chosen to put pretty much that entire initial experience into it. My issue with the game after the first hour is that it becomes a twitch a game once you sort through the basic mechanics. Playign a twitch game versus a computer AI isn't my cup of tea ...

Cuberunner - The idea is that you fly around for as long as possible while dodging the randomly generated cubes. Very simple, but pretty fun and the price is right (free).

Monsters versus Aliens - Those of you with young kids might consider this. It has now replaced Lightsaber Unleashed and watching "Move It, Move It" from Madagascar over and over again as my 4-year old daughter Kira's favorite thing to do on my phone. She gets to poke B.O.B., sort cards, and play random sound effects. (Their website has a decent Monster Builder, by the way, where once again by "decent" I mean "entertaining for a 4-7 year old."

TCGBuddy - The best Magic life tracker app I am aware of. Definitely worth a couple of bucks if you play any TCG irl.

PuzzleQuest - Great game. It's "just" a port of a game that's been around for a couple years on pretty much every platform, but if you haven't already played this then I highly recommend it. On the one hand, it's a really good game. (Basically take Bejeweled, add a spell system, add a number of ways to level-up your avatar between games, then add in an RPG-style plot arch. It probably sounds strange if you don't already know this title, but it totally works. Suddenly the basic match-3 mechanic changes from idle diversion into strategy game that must be beaten.) On the other hand, it lends itself really well to the iPhone because you can easily play it in 5-minute bursts, picking it up and putting it down as convenient. This is the game I have spent the most time on since I got my iPhone in December.

Fieldrunners - Another great game. This is the game I have sent by far the most time on in the last month. On some level it's "just" a tower defense game, but it's well polished, well balanced, and Tower Defense games speak directly to what I want from a game, especially the ones where you get to build your own map (a mechanic this one shares in common with Desktop Tower Defense).

Of course, the biggest flaw with the iPhone app store is finding stuff. Given that my tastes aren't the most mainstream in the world, I don't really know how I'm supposed to find games that I will like. Hopefully some of these suggestions are useful to you and you can reciprocate by telling me what you've found. All I've got left in Fieldrunners is to beat it on hard and PuzzleQuest bogs down a little bit in the late game, so I'm hoping to find something new soon. Anyone?


Posted by Randy Buehler at 4/27/2009 10:41 PM
Categories: uncategorized

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