Tids and Bits for Monday 061410

Well, Clyde is down in South Africa for the World Cup, so I'm sure he'll have some interesting stories about that when he gets back. I tried watching the U.S.A. - England game. Ugh, I just don't like soccer. It's boring, and that's coming from a pretty avid baseball fan. They just kind of slowly trot around a giant field--sorry, pitch--kicking the ball back and forth to each other. Soccer games--sorry, matches--just feel devoid of events. It's unfortunate that Britain's influence spread soccer to all their colonies because had that not happened, maybe they'd like a better sport. I get it though, when you live in a third world country, soccer is accessible because it's cheap. Anyway, I'll let Sweet Clyde handle the rest of the soccer talk.

So, the second best Flash game ever made is getting an update, so I posted the video advertising it above. That's right, a Flash game is getting an update and they're advertising it. That just speaks to its monumental awesomeness.

So, you may ask, if that's only the second best Flash game ever made, what could possibly be the best? Why, it's Vision by Proxy, of course! All kidding aside, that little game I was a part of was apparently good enough to be recognized by IndieCade. In fact, they've decided to showcase it at E3, so that's where I'll be this week. Whether or not I'll be able to update (I'm not using the b-word) from there is to be seen, but you can be sure that I'll be back Friday evening with plenty to write about. Since I'm going as a developer and not as part of the media, I probably won't be able to get into the keynotes. However, I'll be sure to try out some demos and just soak up the nerdy atmosphere.

--Chilly P

Halo Wars, the Big XII, and Strasburg, D.C.

I'll start off with the quote of the week:

"There might come a day where I don't feel like a twat using an iPad in a public place, but that day isn't here yet. It's a little too ostentatious, like toting around a scepter. I don't like it. The only thing it can do that my iPhone can't is be more expensive."
--Tycho Brahe

A friend of mine gave me access to one of his two Starcraft II beta keys, but my laptop can't run the game particularly well. So in order to quench my recent RTS thirst, I've picked Halo Wars back up, and it's been sublime. I absolutely love Halo Wars. I've never been particularly adept at playing games with a mouse and keyboard, and games like Red Alert and Starcraft demand a kind of multitasking that I've yet to adapt. Halo Wars, on the other hand, works extremely well with a controller, and they've done a good job of shrinking the decision space so that RTS novices like myself can stay competitive. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the Call of Duty of RTS games where any asshat can come in and wreck your day; you still have to be a thinking man, but it's on a scale that I can cope with. Its Rock-Paper-Scissors framework is very thinly masked (intentionally), so I can usually stay competitive with a handful of strategies that I've gotten pretty decent with. The unit cap also keeps battles on a manageable scale, and each army can only get so powerful. The side effect of this is that 3v3 games, which I usually play, typically devolve into a race to max out your army before attacking. It just so happens that that's my favorite flavor of battle. It's a great game for people who love RTSes and would like to be competitive at one, but can't commit the time it takes to get good at a game as hardcore as Starcraft.

College football's cannibalizing of the Big XII has been very interesting to watch unfold. I'm an SEC man myself, but my family is from Texas and I come from a long line of Big XII guys. The Texas, Texas A&M, and Okie St. grads in my family all refuse to acknowledge that the SEC is simply the best conference in college football, so the fact that the Big XII is so close to extinction is like sweet redemption. For those not following the events, the basics are that the Big 10 might acquire some combination of Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Missouri. They also want Texas, but everyone wants Texas. This includes the Pac 10, which is rumored to be looking at acquiring Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., and Colorado. The caveat here is that wherever Texas goes, the Aggies are sure to follow, as well as some other schools who depend on their rivalry with Texas for relevance. While I'd find it hilarious if the Big XII dissolved, I in no way want the Pac 16 becoming the new power conference in the country. A conference with USC, Texas, and OU will probably get a title contender every year. However, if the Pac 10 and the Big 10 both expand to 16 teams and the SEC follows suit by gobbling up Florida St., Clemson, and two other schools, it's going to be really hard to not have at least a 4 game playoff for the National Championship. That being said, the Pac 16 could inevitably become the powerhouse conference that usurps the SEC in national coverage, especially if the SEC expands with lame-duck schools like Clemson and Florida St. that aren't especially noteworthy athletically or even academically. Should that happen and we don't move to a playoff system, the SEC won't get essentially automatic bids into the National Championship game anymore. After that, it's going to be a whole lot harder for SEC schools to recruit against Pac 16 teams in Mississippi Delta area.

One of the most interesting things about all of this, and Colin Cowherd pointed this out, is that nobody is going after Kansas, Duke, or North Carolina. These conferences are looking at expansion so they can make more money, and the money is in football. Colorado, which isn't particularly good at anything but still sells out their football games, is more coveted than storied basketball powerhouse Kansas. Maybe the Jayhawks should've held on to Mangino.

Finally, who watched Stephen Strasburg dazzle the Pirates last night? I don't watch a lot of baseball games that don't feature the Astros, but I might watch this kid every chance I get. Watching him pitch is more exciting than the World Series (unless my Astros are in it...which won't happen again for a long time). How is it fair that one guy can throw a 99 mph fastball in the 7th inning and follow it up with a Barry Zito-esque curveball? He was making hitters look stupid, and outside of a fluky homerun ball, he was almost perfect. Let's hope the MLB knows they have a LeBron on their hands and promote the hell out of him. It's a crying shame that only people with Direct TV and/or the MLB Network got to see him last night. Wake up, Selig, here's your white knight.

--Chilly P

Bad Company 2 "Fixes" I'd Like to See

I posted yesterday about a couple of patches coming to Bad Company 2. For the most part, I think DICE has done a very good job with keeping its game balanced. In particular, I think the folks over at Bungie could learn a thing or two from DICE about vehicle balance. That being said, there are still some minor bug and balance fixes I can think of that I'd like to see in the near future:

• Fix that bug where you get stuck in the weapon screen if someone revives you while you're changing kits and you have to suicide to get out of it.
  
• Get rid of the glitched games.
• Make the PP2000 the way it was before the before it got nerfed. It's just useless now.
  
• I would like to see the tracer dart become part of a class instead of being available to every class. I'd also like to see that class not be the Engineer, so that it takes two people to take down a chopper (now that the tracer dart is so easy to use). The helicopters become pretty worthless when an entire team of Engineers is using darts. I know it's never going to happen, but I'd like to see it.
• Give the Blackhawks stronger armor so they can survive the first RPG.
  
• Take the 500 point cap off the marksman bonus, and then add a marksman bonus leaderboard.
  
• Make it so you can see other players' K/D's in the leaderboards menu.
• Make it so friends who've never played Bad Company 2 don't show up in the friends leaderboard.
• Get rid of the whole extra lines for SPECTACT classes. Just make it an option at the end of the row to turn SPECACT on or off. It's stupid that I have to scroll through eight classes now.
  
• I've had some glitch ever since I got the SPECACT classes where my Recon class resets at the beginning of every game. Fix that.
• Don't automatically change the pistol for every class if you change it for one. I never want a Tracer Dart on my Recon class. Ever.
• UAVs should explode if a C4 pack attached to it damages an enemy crate, player, or vehicle (but not if some jerk teammate blows it up because he wants to take it from you).
• Don't let people be temporarily invincible after a revive.
• I don't know if it's a glitch or a design choice, but you can't knife or throw a grenade within 3 seconds of spawning. Get rid of that.
  
• Buildings should collapse sooner. It's too easy to escape a collapsing building.
  

As you can see, most of those are very minor issues. Anyway, just food for thought.

--Chilly P

More Bad Company Updates

Update 1
Update 2

Some more Bad Company 2 updates are rolling in. The first is mostly bug fixes and the second is more on the balance side. Changes of note:

• The Garand's stats will finally be tracked correctly, meaning you can now finish out your medal collection.
• The Isla Inocentes fence glitch is getting fixed. I'm actually kind of upset about this one.
• The minigun on the blackhawk is going to more powerful at range. Maybe it won't be so worthless now (although it's just going to make my island hopping on Isla Inocentes just that much more difficult).
• The points awarded for objectives are being increased. Now playing to win may actually be worth it!
• They're making Conquest suck less: that God-awful horn isn't going to last as long, and the number of tickets is being increased while the speed those tickets are drained when your team has no flags is also increased. Maybe people will actually go for flags now.
  
• The G3 and M14 can now use AR Marksman.
• The stats in the weapons menu now reflect the updated stats from the previous patch.
  

The first update is going to the PS3 first and coming to the 360 "soon." The second update says that an optional update is coming to 360 tomorrow, which I believe means that it's not just a server update. The whole thing is pretty confusing; read for yourself if you want to figure it all out. I just hope they find a way to fix the East Coast lag.

VIP Map Pack 3 is also coming out. It adds Squad Deathmatch for Nelson Bay and Squad Rush for Laguna Alta. Yeah, I don't when they're going to release new maps for realsies.

Onslaught mode is also coming at some point soon. It's Bad Company's version of Horde/Firefight/Nazi Zombies. Joystiq has a preview of the mode here.

--Chilly P

Top 10: Most Disappointing Sequels

What's nice about movies is that when a sequel comes out, you can just expect it to suck. It's only once in a blue moon that an Empire Strikes Back comes out and eclipses the original. In the video game world, however, I'd say it's about a 50/50 chance that the sequel will be better than the original. Often times, even if it's not as good, it's still close. Sometimes, though, you let yourself get too excited and just set yourself up for disappointment. The following is the list of the ten sequels I found most disappointing. It's important to note that these are not all bad games, but some of them definitely are.

10. Burnout Paradise
Burnout Revenge was the first racing game not featuring turtle shells I ever played that got me hooked. It had a blinding sense of speed, physics built for fun before realism, and spectacular car wrecks. The only drawbacks were the lacking online mode, limited car models, and 2-player only local multiplayer. All I wanted for the first true next-gen Burnout was a larger variety of cars (instead of just two basic models), giant multiplayer races, and next-gen crashes. I only got one of those things (and *damn* did the crashes look good). Unfortunately, the good people at Criterion decided that we a sandbox racing game. I'm not going to lie, the game is very impressive, and there are a lot of people who like it and play it to this day. Hell, they even managed to have an in-game DJ who actually succeeds in sounding cool. I'll also give Criterion major props offering arguably the best post-release support this generation. The problem, though, is that every race just goes from point A to point B. Point A is a random stoplight and point B is one of eight cardinally-directed finish lines. The races are too short, too hard to organize, and it takes way too much memorization to stay on course. Burnout always succeeded in balls-to-the-wall racing where you always felt a little out-of-control, but the courses did a good job a directing you. When you have to quickly react to turn signals and turn down the right road, it's pretty easy to accidentally find yourself going 90 degrees in the wrong direction. Plus, having to take right turns just interrupts the flow of the race. It certainly has its great moments, but they're too short-lived and too few-and-far between.

9. Gears of War 2
If you were to pick this game up for the first time today, you might wonder why it's on this list. However, those of you who picked this up week 1 know exactly what I'm talking about: glitches and head-scratching balancing issues. Why, for the love of everything holy, would you let everyone spawn with a stun grenade that ragdolls players for 2 agonizing seconds? Why would you let ragdoll physics impact the outcome of each confrontation and why would you stun someone that long? In the heat of battle, 2 seconds is an eternity. Aside from that issue--which they've fixed--there were the unlimited and nearly indestructible grenade plants, the unbalanced weapon cycling, the broken matchmaking, the nonsensical ranking system, and the schizophrenic shotgun with a mind of its own. I'd list more, but at this point it's beating a dead horse. I've harped on this before, but the lesson here is that you should always do a beta test for a highly anticipated game. Epic got caught with their pants down big time.

8. Resident Evil 5
This is another game that wasn't necessarily bad, just not as good as I'd hoped. Resident Evil 4 was the critically-acclaimed and 100% bitchin' revamp that the series desperately needed. The big thing that game accomplished was being smooth. It was an incredibly well-crafted experience from beginning to end, which stood in stark contrast to its clumsy predecessors. RE5 kept RE4's revamped control scheme, but added back a healthy dose of clumsiness. The cooperative play was a nice idea, but it just didn't work particularly well. It just felt so forced, and by consequence, RE5 was stripped of a large number of the nice touches that pushed RE4 into the all-time great category. The weapon, inventory, treasure, and upgrade systems were all greatly reduced and felt naked in comparison. Not only that, but inventory was strictly limited and had to be managed in real-time. There's a reason co-op shooters don't give players inventories. On the story side, the Uroboros were way less cool than las Plagas, and while RE4 had some of the best boss fights in recent memory, RE5's boss fights ranged from dull to uninspired. Had the co-op been an in-game spin-off like Assignment Ada, the game could have been a lot better. Forcing co-op throughout the entire game (and I say "forcing" because trying to play it with an AI partner was excruciating) ended up crippling the experience.

7. Perfect Dark Zero
The current generation of games got off to a really rough start. Where Super Mario 64 and Halo: Combat Evolved let us know that their respective generations were going to take us places we'd never thought possible, Perfect Dark Zero introduced us to the Xbox 360 with a whimper. Never has the premier launch title of a hotly anticipated console sucked so much. Not only that, but it was supposed to announce the return of Rare, who was of the former king of console FPSes. Honestly, I can't really list off a bunch of specific problems because I returned it the day I bought it. It was archaic, unpolished, clunky, and ugly. The graphics weren't even noticeably better than Halo 2's. Had it not been for the surprisingly solid Call of Duty 2, there wouldn't've been any reason to own an Xbox 360 for the first year of its existence. Oh, and seriously, what is with the redesign of Joanna Dark's character model?

6. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite games of all time and remains my favorite RPG. When Bioware decided to turn the sequel over to Obsidian, I was understandably nervous. Turns out my fears were completely justified. The game just felt like it had no soul. Like the developers just didn't have any passion for the Star Wars universe. The story felt empty, the characters were uninteresting, and your character got too powerful too quickly, so the game was too easy. It was impressive technically, but the experience just felt hollow.

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
I've never seen a developer get so cocky as to blatantly remove functions that gamers wanted, and then scoffed at their complaints. PC gamers like dedicated servers? Well, screw you, you don't get them because their stupid. Xbox gamers like party chat? F that, we're taking that away, too. May your Modern Warfare sessions echo with the prepubescent screams of nine year-olds. On top of that, there's the whole knifing issue, the terrible maps, the incoherent single-player, and infinite grenade launcher rounds. This game was so close to being the best online shooter ever made, but IW got out of control.

4. Twisted Metal III
Twisted Metal 2 was awesome. Then, 989 Studios took over for the sequel, and it was just terrible in every way. That's about all there is to it.




3. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
I don't I've ever been more excited for a game's release as I was for this game's (maybe Melee). Metroid Prime is my favorite game of all time, but its sequel was a huge let down. First off, let's just forget that I was actually excited for the multiplayer, which ended up being little more than a afterthought. The first Prime was incredibly atmospheric. Echoes was half purple. Half of the game was spent in a parallel, dark version of the planet where everything was an ugly purple. The enemies here looked like they were handcrafted by a 4 year-old, and for some reason it was necessary for the player to take damage in this world when outside of protective light bubbles. Traveling to the dark version of the planet was not something one did with anticipation, but with agitation. Add to that that three of Samus' four beams required ammo, something that had never been a part of Metroid and hasn't since. As a result, instead of getting to wield fire, ice, or electricity at will, the player basically stuck to the boring old power beam and saved the light and dark beams for boss fights. The game wasn't exactly terrible, but it's just so much worse than its predecessor.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV
This is the only game on this list that seems to be universally acclaimed by reviewers (Modern Warfare 2 had good initial reviews, but it quickly fell out of favor), and I'll never understand why. Is it because of the convoluted, meandering story line? The annoying incomprehensible accents? The impossible-to-drive vehicles? The clunky aiming and running controls? The God-awful cover mechanic? The blatant disregard for checkpoints? The constant pestering of in-game characters? The confusing world map? The creepy character models? The boring side missions and mini games? Niko's inability to buckle a seat belt? The absence of tanks? The fact that at no point during the entire 90 mission long campaign was game fun? I'm tellin' ya, I just don't get it. They took away everything that was fun about Vice City and expanded on everything that was annoying about it. Ever wish they went down a more Vice City-esque path? Go play Saints Row 2.

1. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
And here we have the inspiration for this entire list. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one of the most surprisingly good games of the last generation. Hell, it was great, and even won some Game of the Year awards. It started the whole parkour game thing, and the level design puts Assassin's Creed II to shame. Sure, the game was entirely linear, but it worked well that way. The Sands of Time also had an incredibly moving story about lost love, and the ending was pretty gut-wrenching (but still very good). The Prince was also a very well-crafted character who was very likable (which is very rare for an action game character). He had a softer side, but could kick ass when necessary. The problem is that while The Sands of Time was critically acclaimed, it sell as well as, say, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. So for the sequel, Ubisoft decided that the parkour platforming needed to take a back seat to the combat, and that the prince needed to be more of a badass. So, in the opening sequence to this sequel to an extremely tasteful game, the Prince is on some ship in the middle of a storm, doing battle with some "bitch" in a metal thong. See that America? The Prince swears now! He's so much cooler. So instead of trying to regain his lost love, he's running around killing random people and forcin' out swear words at every turn. I fuckin' love swearing as much as the next guy, but it was just so out of place here. There are games on this list that were worse sequels to better games, but no other game on this list completely bastardized everything the original stood for like Warrior Within.

--Chilly P

The End

**SPOILER** If you haven't watched the finale of LOST, then read no further.

Well, it's finally over. What do we do now, right? I wanted to get all of my thoughts in writing before I talked to anyone or read anything so that I know they're all mine, so here we go.

After sleeping on the finale, I'm going to say that I'm happy with how the show ended. There's really no way they could've pleased everyone, but I think they did a fair amount of fan service without ruining the plot to try and please everyone. Sure, there were bunches of unanswered questions: why was Libby in a mental institution with Hurley? what made Walt 'special'? why exactly couldn't women survive childbirth? Sayid's soulmate was Shannon? Hell, I still have a stack of questions about the island, Jacob, Smokey, and all the mysticism. But, in the end, the finale was not only sufficient, but I liked it a lot. So, here's a list of what I liked specifically:

• It answered the one question I'd come to care about more than any other: did the bomb work? Thank goodness, no, it didn't. Double thank goodness, it didn't make some stupid-ass alternate reality like Star Trek or Back to the Future. Finally, a show or movie gets it right: what happened happened. I'm glad they didn't pull a 180 to say that variables could change the past or some bullshit. Jack had always set off the bomb...er, well, Juliet.
  
• I like what they did with the alternate reality by making it Purgatory or some other between lives thing. It accomplished the above task, but it also means that it was nothing but fan service. It was unimportant to the plot, and that's the way I like it. We all got to play the "what if?" game, and it brought Sawyer and Juliet back together. It would have been nice if Juliet never died, but I think they might have had trouble sustaining that great chemistry. Plus, her death at the end of season 5 was the single most gut-wrenching scene of any movie or show I've ever seen. It was sad, but it was powerful.
  
• I love the idea of Hurley and Ben palling around the island. Spin-off plz?
• The real ending--and this is important--is not that they all went to the afterlife together. The ending is that Jack, like John Locke, was ultimately a martyr to the island. The show ended the way it began, and it was perfect.
• On that same note, the way it wrapped up really drove home that Jack was the main character, and that the whole purpose of the story is Jack's redemption and his sacrifice.
• In the end, John Locke was right, and without him, Jack never would have realized how important he was.
  
• Although it's frustrating that they never really answered what the island is or how it came to be that way (and who the hell built the drain), I guess I'm glad they didn't. Any answer probably would've been pretty cheesy. Just let us imagine that the Egyptians built it...or whatever.
• It didn't end with a question or a cliff hanger. We have a sense of closure, and thank goodness for that.
• All the mysticism and mysterious 'rules' surrounding the island suggest that there is in fact something greater in this world. The ambiguously religious--though very Christian-influenced--sideflashes make sense within the canon of the show. Dead people were always showing up here and there, and the unworthy ones, like Michael, are forced to whisper in the woods of the island. It makes sense, then, that the redeemed get to enjoy an afterlife, and that they can only begin it after realizing what their lives could have been without the island and how much they impacted each others' lives. It's a bit cheesy when looked at out of context, but it fits with the theme of the show.
  

So, anyway, those are a lot of the things I like about it. I can't stress enough how much I liked what they did with the flash sideways in the end. I would have been soooo disappointed if it ended up being the true reality or something. Don't underestimate how important it is to me that the bomb didn't work. Plus, what other show has done that? The whole being reunited in the afterlife ("See you in another life, brotha") thing is something I don't think I've ever seen. That may be because it's cheesy, but I don't care. LOST had me wound around its finger so tightly that I was really just along for the ride. That being said, one thing that does and always will piss me off is how Jin and Sun died and orphaned their daughter.
On a side note: Something that I'm disappointed with was the third to last episode because all it did was paint Smokey in a sympathetic light. Jack's sole purpose in life culminated with him defending the island from Smokey, but that episode failed to show exactly why the island must be protected and why Smokey must be eliminated. Honestly, the show might have been better without that episode.

The last thing I want to re-stress is for the potential those of you who didn't like the revelation that the side-flashes were of the afterlife: don't dwell on that. In the end, they're trivial and completely unimportant in terms of influencing the events of the show. They were purely fan service: they gave potential answers to the question of "what if Jack and Daniel's plan did work?" and they offered a chance for the characters of the show to reunite and be together again...I mean, if you didn't get a little emotional when Sawyer and Juliet reunited, then you might wanna make sure you still have a soul.

In the end, LOST is the single finest piece of television I've ever seen and will probably ever see, and the finale did the show justice. I'm sure everyone has something to say on this matter, so go ahead and sound off. I'm looking forward to it.

--Chilly P

Update: see comment #5

The Space/Time Continuum of Multiplayer Gaming

It's not a particularly novel concept, but it is interesting to look at how we play games with our friends in terms of space and time. Are we playing together in the same room, or are we in separate places and competing over the internet? Are we playing together at the same time, or can our play time be mutually exclusive? It should seem quite obvious that the most popular form of multiplayer gaming is remotely synchronous. Every online shooter falls under this category, and it's this category of competitive gaming that companies spend the most amount of time and money on... Right?

Well, it's not entirely true, and I'll get to that in a bit. First, let's look at which realm the first form of competitive gaming was in: co-located synchronous. Spacewar! and Pong were both strictly multiplayer games that required both players being in the same room looking at the same screen. It's interesting to note this, because the next wave of arcade games were almost all single-player. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong; just about every other old-school arcade game you can think of is single-player, but they did issue in the second realm of multiplayer gaming: co-located asynchronous. While you were not directly competing against anyone, every game had a leaderboard, so you took turns going for the best score, and in that way you were competing against everyone who came before you and everyone who would come after you.

So, if you think about it, leaderboards are still the most common form of competitive gaming, but now they're all online. Just about every Xbox 360 game has some sort of online leaderboard, but when the boards are so expansive they tend to lose meaning. They're great for competing for the best kill-to-death ratio in Call of Duty or the for the highest Pacifism score in Geometry Wars 2, but they're such minimalist interactions that they barely qualify as competition. In fact, they're more of a meta-game than a game, since you don't play leaderboard. So, if you exclude leaderboards, the most common form of competitve gaming these days falls in the remote synchronous quadrant. While I would never complain about this, I would like to enjoy games in the other realms as well.

Party games, much like blockbuster PC games, seem to be a dying breed, which is just a shame. Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo: Combat Evolved pretty much mark the the last hurrahs of co-located synchronous gaming. We definitely live the age of online gaming, and the problem with it how impersonal it can be. Sure, split screen was and still is a nightmare, but we've become so spoiled by Xbox LIVE and the like that it's almost become taboo. Hell, Call of Duty and Battlefield won't even allow you take a friend online with you, which is almost unforgivable. LIVE games are great for keeping in touch with friends who've moved away, but it's ridiculous that if I'm hanging out with a group of friends and we all want to play our favorite multiplayer game, everyone has to return to their respective residences to play on their on 'Boxes. These days, the only company that seems to still encourage the party game is Nintendo...which not-at-all coincidently has the worst online gaming network.

So, there's my little rant about synchronous games, but what about the asynchronous? Well, if you take leaderboards out of the equation, they don't exist all that much. There are turn-based games like Chess or Advance Wars, but are they truly asynchronous? I guess I'll accept a "yes," especially if you're playing Advance Wars on a single Gameboy since people usually take turns observing the gamespace.

Something that I hadn't seen very often until quite recently is the asynchronous remote game. The first game of this type I remember enjoying was Scrabulous on Facebook. Now I play Words with Friends on my iPhone, and it's essentially the same thing, but I like it better because playing it on my phone is far more convenient. It's absolutely fantastic. For those who don't know, it's the classic Scrabble board game (with a few minor changes to avoid copyright infringement), but you can take as much time as needed between turns and simply play at your convenience. It's a way to throw in some quality gameplay with friends while you should be doing something else. I would love to see more games like this in the future.I'd love to see more original games of this type that aren't adaptations of established board games like Chess or Scrabble. Advance Wars (well, it'd have to be a copycat of it) would be particularly great.

So, anyway, I hope I've given you guys something to think about while I'm out of town this coming week. For those of you familiar with Words with Friends, check out the 1500+ point play in the picture above. Somebody had the play of a lifetime; although I suspect it didn't come about organically.

--Chilly P