Kid-Friendly

Genre:  Strategy/Simulation
Platform:  Playstation Portable (PSP)

What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2.  Yeah, that’s really the name of this game.  I was so excited to get it.  It looked like a lot of fun.  The premise is simple enough – you build a dungeon by digging out the earth and creating monsters to help the villain avoid the heroes.  Sounds easy enough, right?

Wrong.  Totally, completely wrong.  This is the hardest game I’ve ever tried to learn.  I started by going through their numerous tutorials, but I could barely pass those.  This game requires you to start, develop and maintain a very delicate ecosystem below the ground.  Your basic monsters are eaten by the next tier, and so on.  But you can’t run out of nourishment for them or you won’t have any future growth.  No matter how much I tried, I just could not get it and pass more than the first few levels.  I tried A LOT.

This game came with the original on the UMD (disk), so I tried that as well.  Failed there, too.  Only on this one, I can’t get passed the first level.  I have looked up tutorials online, but the consensus seems to be that this game is just stupid hard.  Here’s the thing, though – it’s still a really fun game!  There’s some sort of satisfaction digging in a large area and trying to thwart the hero.  The game uses humor very well, too.  I would definitely recommend that you try it for yourself.  Maybe you’ll think in a different way and be wildly successful.

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Stinkers – Civilization V

Genre:  Turn-Based Strategy, Simulation
Platform:  PC

It’s been a couple of years since this game came out, and it still hurts to have to put it on this list.  I wanted to love this game so much.  I have played A TON of Civilization over the years between Civ 3 and Civ 4.  This game was a monster disappointment.

Civilization is a turn-based strategy game, which means that you take as much time as you need on your turn (you’re playing either other players or the computer).  Once you are done, you end your turn and the other players do the same.  Then it’s your turn again.  The goal of the game is to win the world – peacefully with a cultural, space race or democratic victory or by force with a domination or conquest victory.  You build up your civilization with new cities, buildings, technology and military.

There are many out there who say that this was the best Civilization game yet.  I just can’t agree with them.  It was not a fun game for me.  They took out a lot of what I found fun about Civilization 4.  First, I could not adapt to the new combat method.  In Civ 4, you could have “stacks of doom” on a single tile, which had its advantages and disadvantages.  It provided a lot of defense bonuses to your army, but if you were flanked, you could take heavy casualties.  I HATE the new system.  It forces me to play a new way, but I just couldn’t adjust.

They also removed religion from the game.  Now, if you know me, you’ll find it ironic that I have a problem with them removing religion from anything.  However, it really added a deep strategic element to Civ 4 and I really missed not having that as a tool.  Now, they did add this in an expansion, but I had no interest in buying it.

There were some good changes as well such as ruins in exploration, natural wonders, barbarian changes and city-states.  These were not enough to keep me playing, though, and I never finished a full game.  If you’re a fan of the Civ series, I would recommend playing it and making your own judgement.  It just wasn’t a good game for me.  I’m a bit nervous about Civilization 6, which is coming out later this year.

 

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Genre:  Word
Platform:  XBone

I found this game two days ago on the XBox Store.  I am already declaring it an awesome game.  I’ve spent a total of about 8 hours playing it, although it feels like a lot more.  I love a good word game and will easily get sucked into one.  This particular word game combines a typical word game with an RPG!

You start the game playing as Grimm, a little dude working his way through a monster-filled realm.  You can play in either story mode or endless mode.  Both are fun.  Endless is just what it sounds like – a survival mode where you work your way through monster after monster.  You earn coins as you go and can occasionally buy upgrades and potions to help with the increasing difficulty.

As with most games, story mode is where it’s at.  You work through a map of levels, earning stars as you go.  This is where it gets cool – the stars aren’t just given for varying levels of “good job”.  Instead, you need to play through each level four times to get all of the stars.  Each is an objective.  For example, the first is simply beat the monsters.  The second is a time trial.  The third is some sort of challenge like “can’t use E” or something equally as challenging.  The fourth is a special challenge where the monsters are much tougher and have specific requirements like “takes damage only from words starting with a vowel”.

As you play through story mode, you can spend crystals you earn on permanent upgrades.  There are a lot of them and they all help to make you more awesome.  Of course, if you’re not good at the core of the game, it’s not going to matter much.  The game play is simple – find words from a block given to do damage to monsters.  It sounds simple and is, but when I spelled out the word “AFFIDAVIT” the other night, I felt pretty awesome.  Some monsters will make tiles unusable or make it so you take damage when you use them.

It also keeps track of your stats!  This is a feature I always like.  It shows you how many of pretty much everything you’ve done.  I’ve spelled the word “BACON” five times and spelled out 25 palindromes.  And for the fellow achievement whores – this game is going to be a breeze to complete.  I’ve gotten 40 achievements in just under 8 hours.

This all leads to a really fun and highly re-playable game.  If you like word games, find it!

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Chey’s Top 25 – #15 – Project Gotham Racing

Genre:  Racing
Platform:  XBox Original

I got Project Gotham Racing (PGR from here on out) when I got the XBox original on launch day.  I loved this game from the second I put it in the drive (pun intended).  The graphics are amazing and still hold up well today.  It was the first game that I played that allowed you to integrate your own soundtrack from the XBox’s hard drive into the game.  It handles that brilliantly – there’s a DJ on the radio and he talks between your songs, just like the radio.

I wasn’t much of a fan of racing games before this one.  I played a few of them over the years including RC Pro Am, Super Cars and Need For Speed.  But this game was/still is special.  You don’t just drive to win in this game.  Now, if you want to, there is a mode for that.  However, that is a tiny fraction of what you can do.  The game is divided into cities – New York, London, Tokyo, San Francisco, etc.  In each city there are different tracks and challenges that you need to pass to get better cars and progress through the game.  My favorite car was the Nissan GTR Skyline (superb handling).  Those challenges include time trials, overtake challenges, total laps and more.  But the heart of this game is kudos.

You get kudos by driving with style.  Anyone can slam into other cars and walls to win.  This game rewards you for finesse.  You get points and combo streaks for things like clean sections, drifting around corners, getting air, driving on two wheels, passing cars (without hitting them) and a lot more!  If you hit something, your streak is over and you don’t get the kudos.  Let me repeat this – you are rewarded in this racing game for using your breaks once in a while.  Once you get good at it, notice how your hands react to the course and how fluid you are with the game.  I love this game so much that it regularly finds itself in my XBox 360 drive (thank goodness for backwards compatibility).

Even if you don’t typically like racing games, I would recommend trying this one.  It’s very different from all other racers and I haven’t been able to find one like it since (except PGR 2, 3 and 4, which are all solid games).

 

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hyperkin-smart-boy

So check this out!  A company called Hyperkin has developed an attachment for smart phones that will actually be able to play those old Gameboy original and color cartridges that you may have laying around.  This allows you to have a larger screen to play with and is just…cool!

I don’t have any of these cartridges and this isn’t enough to make me go buy them.  I have a lot of them on my GCW and that’s good enough for me.  It’s still an awesome idea, though!  Read the full article from The Nerdist below.

Gameboy Phone adapter

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Oldies but Goodies – Neverhood

Genre:  Puzzle
Platform:  PC

Once upon a time, I moved out of my parents’ house and into the world.  I had a decent paying job, so one of the first things I bought was a shiny new Packard Bell computer (I didn’t know any better yet!).  And the first game I bought for that computer was The Neverhood.

This game was made entirely from stop-motion using clay.  It was beautiful, funny and HARD.  Back then, we didn’t have much of an internet to look up help files or forums.  We had to figure things out for ourselves.  This is why a lot of us didn’t finish many games back then, and this was one of those for me.  It was a puzzler through and through.  There were always levers and buttons that did some unknown thing.  Your next step usually wasn’t obvious and you would get all frustrated and AAAAHHH.

Neverhood play 2

I’ve pushed this damn button 15 times and NOTHING HAPPENS!

I digress.  This was actually a fun game.  I haven’t played it since way back then (1997ish).  I don’t think I would play it again as I want this one to remain a happy memory.  Sometimes, when you play old games, they are just not as good as you remember.

 

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America’s True Pasttime – Bowling games!

Bowling Atari

Matt and I started our real-life bowling league last week, so I figured I’d celebrate by talking about some bowling video games through the years.  For the record, I’m a much better real-life bowler than video game bowler.  As usual, I’m only focusing on games that I’ve actually played.

My first video game bowling experience was called “Bowling” on the Atari 2600.  That’s the image above.  It was pretty simple.  Line up your bowler and throw the ball.  It made some interesting sound effects and the ball moved about as fast as a 5 year-old can throw it, but it was bowling.  I don’t think this game was able to keep my attention for too long.

Bowling Zombie

Next up we have Zombie Bowl-a-Rama for the PC.  This was a fun game where you could inflict all sorts of carnage on zombies walking your way in an alley.  The “bowling” aspect of it can be applied loosely as you’re really just throwing stuff at zombies.  It might look a bit bowling-y, but it seems to lose something in all of the fire.  Still, it was a fun game to play once.

Bowling Rocket Bowl

Next is Rocket Bowl on the XBox 360.  I really enjoyed this game and still play it from time to time.  As you can see in the image above, it’s not your typical bowling game.  The lanes are warped, there are water hazards, hills and collectibles to get as you play.  You don’t even have to hit the pins on the set you’re aiming at, either.  The “rocket” comes from the fact that your ball can be motivated in a rocket way in different directions.  Fun!

Bowling Wii

This wouldn’t be an article about bowling games if we didn’t include Wii Bowling.  I did have a Wii for a while and I did enjoy this game.  The motion controls were new and innovative and just worked well with bowling.  True story.  A friend and I created a local Wii bowling tournament for senior living facilities and everyone had a blast.  Here’s a video of our event.  Yeah, I still have the shirt:

My final bowling game of the day is Kinect Bowling for the XBox 360/One.  I am terrible at this game.  I can never seem to aim in the correct spot.  It’s still fun and uses motion controls, but damn I suck.

Bowling Kinect

Are there any bowling games that I’ve missed that you have enjoyed?

 

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Oldies but Goodies – RC Pro AM

Genre:  Racing
Platform:  NES

I still play this one from time to time on my GCW Zero.  This was a fun little racing game where you were racing an RC Truck.  There were supposedly 32 tracks, but I certainly never made it through them all.  As you raced your truck around the track, you could pick up new parts for upgrades, letters to spell out PRO AM and other boosts.  There were also hazards on the track such as oil spills and water.  The crew at these tracks were not very good at cleanup and cautions weren’t a thing.  I know this is not unique in any way to racing games, but it was one of the first I played and thought it was a blast.

The AI (computer) was also notorious for cheating in this game.  You could be almost a lap ahead and suddenly the second place car would come soaring up right behind you, often passing you.  It was complete and utter BS, but that was a part of the game.  The idea of the RC cars was also very appealing to me as a kid.  The sound effects were good and hearing the music brings a smile to my face every time.

If you missed this one the first time around, I strongly recommend finding it and giving it a try!

 

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