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FEATURE: Games Reviewed - (G001)

Archived in Games, Free, Entertainment, Reviews | No Comments

I’d like to take some space to talk about, that’s right, FREE GAMES. My (soon to be) regularly occuring feature will highlight sites that provide great GAMES for FREE, online.

Review #001: CBC Kids

LINK: www.cbc.ca/kids

What’s that you say? Who’d think of looking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for quality Flash GAMES? You’d better think again. This site is PACKED with quality re-hacks of your past favorites, and some interesting concepts on new themes.

Sushi Samurai, for my first example, is a classic re-hack of Burgerman. This TIME, however, instead of burger ingredients, you get to dash around the two-dee maze dropping nagiri ingredients whilst avoiding the deadly beasts that chase you about. Pick up some fresh wasabi for some extra point-age.

Show me the Honey is an interesting re-concepting on a classic theme. You’re stuck in the centre of a bee hive tossing coloured eggs (a’la Bust-A-Move) while the workers buzz about filling the comb with wax preventing your advancement and distrupting your strategy. For a bubble-style game, this one has a hefty pace — so grease up that trackball.

The site is packed with nearly 40 GAMES (of varying quality) playable directly in your browser with a current flash plugin and a brief download. Advertising is unobtrusive (or non-existant — thanks CBC!) and many out of the collection are smart enough to hold you attention for that much-needed distraction.

ANDY’S SCORE: Four Classic CBC Logos our of Five

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FEATURE: Games Reviewed - (G002) >> I’d like to take some space to talk about, that’s right, FREE games. My (soon to be) regularly occuring feature will highlight sites that provide great games for FREE, online. Review #002: Flash 3D Logic LINK: www.thatvideogamesite.com That dude who invented the Rubix cube --

Find your middle ground… >> I'm a bit of tech geek, so I offered this advice to a not-so-geeky co-worker of mine. She wasn't too sure what to make of her spouses little "childish" obsessions. Dear Liz, Both my husband and I are nearly thirty years old.

Clash of the Ersatz

Archived in Games, Philosophy, Simulations | No Comments

Two good friends and I are in league to build something amounting to a card-based strategy game.

In summary:

Ersatz Clash is a card-based, multi-player table game combining many elements of strategy, chance, and complexity. Two or more players compete with an expandable collection of card elements to build their own “ersatz”, poorly simulated universes clashing for supremecy and control of the finite number of “dums” trapped inside their SIMULATIONS.

Group it under funny, philosophical ENTERTAINMENT.

The idea stemmed from one of those late-night, half-sober conversations about the nature of reality.

I’m sure you can relate.

Well, okay. Maybe not. The whole “nature-of-reality” was actually my interpretation. In actuality we were talking about The Matrix. (And, gawd, how I hate to bring THAT up here. These days it seems that every philosophical discussion on the nature of reality lead back to that damned movie.) And the after-the-fact, now-I’m-sober, paraphrased recap of that discussion went something like this:

“Sir, would it not be an interesting proposition that all of humanity is purely the result of a computer simulated reality?”

“Yes, my good man, I do believe that you are correct.”

“Ah, but would the simulation indeed be a COMPUTER generated reality?”

“But, sir, whatever do you mean?”

“Could it not also be possible that the simulated reality is caused by a virus or induced via drugs or chemicals?”

“Good point, ol’ chap. Well played. Perhaps there are many simulated realities that are all vying for our minds.”

“Indeed! Perhaps there is an ongoing contest for control of our lives.”

“How droll. Somebody ought to make a game out of that.”

And thus (though perhaps not as formally) work on Ersatz Clash began. And, it just so happens, that as we work out the details of half-assed philosophical card GAMES a number of equally interesting reflections emerge. That approach so far has been an amused reflection on the question “what is reality?” In other words, what quasi-baked state of being might lead to a comprehensive simulation of a simulation: a weak copy of a copy. Shady as it might seem these shades of game stem from an innate desire for us to project a philosophical musing towards our concepts of a likely-to-doom scenario. We’ve pieced out the shape of (to date) four factions; Our factions are born of a sense of mental controls and artificial stimulation: (a) drugs, (b) technology, (c) religion, and (d) infection. Those concepts tend to transcend the nature of what we think is reality and shape that perception through control or force.

For what it’s worth, when the game is done, I think it will rock. To hell with Dungeons and Dragons: it’s TIME for something interesting.

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Television Showdown - Episode #4 >> This is Episode Four of my feature column, the Television Showdown on Haddow Drive where I pit two similar shows against each other on a variety of standard criteria. The criteria are always the same, and the winner of each criterion gets

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