Assorted Recent Video-Gaming

Some notes and recommendations from recent videogaming I’ve been doing:

Rock Band
After Harmonix’s announcement that Rock Band for the Wii would be the lame PS2 version, with no Internerdy downloadable songs, I sprung for a Rock Band machine game system Blu-ray player to get my fix. Though the Xbox 360 is probably a better gaming platform than the PS3 right now, I have more than enough good, unplayed games for my Wii, with more coming. Might as well be able to watch high-def films instead, and Stevey has pretty much convinced me I should try Uncharted.

My PSN username is OldMainstream. I wish I had a fancy badge thing to put on this blog, but not everyone understands the Internet. At least there’s no monthly fee.

And Rock Band is total amazing awesome, but you probably knew that. There are subtle touches that make it killer, such as call-and-response sing-along from the crowd. I can’t wait for a bass, and my neighbors can’t wait for drum pads.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl
The single player Subspace Emissary is weak, unfortunately, due to Smash Brothers’ floaty controls. They’re really frustrating in the platforming parts.

I’m having trouble playing the fighting part locally because Cait won’t stand for all the random shit, and I’m having trouble playing online because of Mozy. (I’m suffering the paranoia of the recently crashed.) I remain optimistic, however, that good gaming will come to me.

Friend code available upon request, but honestly it’s a losing battle. FNintendo.

Desktop Tower Defense
This is a crazy-fun free Flash game. Yes, I’m late to the party, but there’s a new version out so it’s okay. If you haven’t played, give the easy level a try. Build towers, withstand monsters. It has a bit of a SimCity feel — if you’re into that, which you should be — in the “build a bunch of things then sit back and hope it doesn’t go to Hell” kind of way.

I’m playing on Kongregate (thx, 1Up Yours!), where I am OldMainstream, and have been having much fun. So has Cait.

There are some other tower defense games out there, but they’re more complicated, which takes away some of the fun. Leave tips in the comments if you have recommendations.

Grow Island
Grow is an ongoing series of Flash puzzle games, of which Grow Island is the latest. The format of the games is that you add elements to a scene one at a time. If you add them in the right order, they interact and “level up” with fun/cute/clever animations.

Though there are 8! (40,320) different possible orders in Grow Island, you can use hints from the way the pieces interact to guess the correct order in an hour or two.

If you try and like Grow Island, make sure you play the others in the series. I’m particularly fond of Grow RPG, though Grow Cube is also quite awesome. And, since remembering 1 out of 40,320 is pretty hard, they have a good replay value a few months on.

My source for casual games is Jay is Games. Go there and have fun.