Sure, there have been some developers that toyed with the idea along the way. The Paper Mario series often features pipes that bring you to hidden items in the background, and Donkey Kong Country Returns features some dynamic set pieces that make frequent use of the temples and trees in the distance. Last year’s Shantae sequel for the DSi and iOS also springs to mind, though the layered levels are too confusing for their own good. I’m sure that you, the reader, can rattle off a few examples as well. However, to see Mutant Mudds in motion is a thing of beauty, and that’s largely because of the way it uses the 3D display and alternating planes.

Mutant Mudds confirms what I’ve often suspected, that 2D, sprite-based games often look better in 3D that their polygonal counterparts. Your own eyes might see otherwise, but you’d have to admit that the graphics really pop here. When swinging spiked balls or hammers are set to attack, the appear to fly out of the screen in a way that is very striking and immediate. While Mario Kart 7  or Pushmo go for subtlety, Mutant Mudd embraces its gimmick with all of the tricks that VB Wario Land and many of its crimson peers used years ago.

What really makes everything come together though are the three layers of of each level. From designated jump pads, the player can leap into the foreground or deep into the background, becoming “bigger” or “smaller” based on the virtual proximity to the screen. All of these layers move with parallel scrolling, giving an amazing sense of depth with 3D turned on or off. There’s a richness here that has yet to be matched, and it makes me excited for the future possibilities.

We already know that a new 2D Super Mario game is on the way, and I’m assuming that this game will use 3D in a similar fashion. In fact, with the Vita set to dominate the fancy graphics space, I’m hoping that we see a return to the sidescrolling wonderment that we had on the original DS, only souped up with better resolution and some of the effects we see on display here. Hopefully, Mutant Mudds is just the beginning. Whether this is the start of something more or just a single great game that fades into obscurity, I ultimately appreciate Renegade Kid’s nods to the past in the form of “VB Land,” a series of deep-red levels that aren’t nearly as blinding as the technology that inspired them. Still, it’s nice to know that I wasn’t the only one who remembers Wario’s lost chapter.

As the title implies, pushing walls in is a major element of Pushmo, but just as important is pulling them out. Each levels starts off with a flat surface, and the challenge lies in figuring out which colored segments to move in what order, keeping in mind that there are three different planes along which you can move. Early on, this push/pull technique is used to make basic stepping stones leading to the goal (and a random living puffball in need of your aid). It’s fun, but you’ve seen similar block puzzles in games like Catherine and Cuboid, among many others. However, as the puzzles get taller and wider, the stakes become much greater as well. A handy rewind feature ensures that Pushmo is never too frustrating, but you’ll need to be patient and methodical when climbing up a multi-screen Christmas tree.

Though developer Intelligent Systems definitely had a “right way” in mind when creating this game’s puzzles, I was happy that the more expansive levels feature multiple paths to victory. Pushmo is not so rigid that you can’t experiment with different solutions, and because you’re hopping from platform to platform as you would in a standard platformer, you can sometimes finagle your way out of certain traps. That said, when the game introduces switches and manholes, the difficulty quickly spikes. Four-star challenges and beyond are brutal, but conquering them is incredibly rewarding.

Though the game would work just find on the regular ol’ DSi, Pushmo puts the 3D effect to good use by making it easier to differentiate the depth of each part of the wall. Coupled with the game’s very bold colors, it’s much more of a looker than the screenshots scattered throughout this  review suggest. The color palette’s richness greatly benefits the create-a-level portion of the game,  which gives you all of the tools you need to bring your totally appropriate creative vision to pixelated life. It’s too bad that this doesn’t support StreetPass, but overall, Pushmo continues Nintendo’s trend of pushing user-made content.

Maybe that’s how this game will build momentum. Or maybe Pushmo just needs strong word of mouth. Either way, this is the game that the eShop has been waiting for, something around which to rally 3DS owners that have dismissed the service up until now. It’s not the first Nintendo downloadable game worth owning or even necessarily the best, but it’s an absolute crowd-pleaser and one that I hope is destined for  moderate success.

To be fair, the actual creation mode, in which you’ll spend a good deal of time, is incredibly versatile. As you play through the adventure, you’re offered dozens of parts, all of which can be stretched, shrunken, rotated and thickened to suit your needs. As long as your formee has a mouth and a body, the game will find a way to put it into motion, and there isn’t an advanced physics model or anything like that to get in the way. I love LittleBigPlanet as much as anyone, but sometimes I just want to slap some wheels on a brick and call it a car. Freakyforms lets you make things as rudimentary or as complex as you’d like, but you’ll never be punished for ever making something “incorrectly.”

However wonderful this creation mode may be, you’ll eventually want to do something with your misfit toys, and that’s when Freakyforms stumbles a bit. Apparently, the game’s director, Hiroshi Moriyama, directed the Chibi Robo series as well, which is unsurprising given their shared emphasis on helping others and spreading happiness throughout the land. However, while Chibi Robo was constantly throwing in new gadgets and sections of a huge house to explore, Freakyforms never offers much besides repetitive fetch quests and scavenger hunts. It’s impressive that every element of the environment can be tweaked – you can swim through a green lake of dnL with purple sky and pig shaped clouds if you so desire – and there are enough developer-created friends to collect that you might go along with the monotony longer than expected. But there’s still not much of a game here.

However, I’d argue that Freakyforms is much more of a toy than it is a game, and if you’re willing to tinker with it, there’s plenty of fun to be had. Assuming that you still have your AR card from way back, you can bring your creations into the real world, and the QR codes ensure that you don’t need online functionality to share over long distances. (There’s already a sizable Japanese community.) The game also uses StreetPass quite effectively, allowing you to share of your creations with any random passerby, without any content restrictions. Sure, Nintendo’s risking having all sorts of phallic nightmares being sent out into the world, but I love that this infamously strict publisher is actually facilitating creativity for once. Many of its games, especially on the handheld front, have featured terrific user-generated content – Picross 3D and WarioWare D.I.Y. come to mind – but until now, the distribution channels just weren’t there. Believe it or not, the motley Freakyforms is actually incredibly forward thinking in that regard, and perhaps it’s a sign of things to come. That, or it’s just means of slapping googly eyes onto an endless string of mistakes, but either way, it’s a winner in my book.

Special thanks to Tiny Cartridge for all of their fantastic coverage of this game.

For those of you bombarded with updates about how many times my Sim has gone to the bathroom today (apologies!), it might be tough to see the appeal. These games are traditionally less interactive and more compulsive than typical console fare, and there’s no shortage out there of uninspired puzzlers with popular licenses attached. But I’d argue that just being able to access some part of your game from the office or morning commute is a powerful motivator, and a recent batch of franchise tie-ins actually seem thematically appropriate and ambitious.

Below are just a handful of social media games that get the small stuff right, beyond just unlockable extras:

Assassin’s Creed: Project Legacy – I remember this being one of the first Facebook games to make waves in my circles, and it’s not hard to understand why once you’ve played through a few chapters. As an Abstergo recruit, you inhabit the memories of various assassins, whose stories are told mostly through text. The individual plot lines don’t have much of an impact, but getting to use your own version of the Animus operating system is a neat visual hook. Even though the game is mostly text-driven, you have a number of gameplay options – combat against friends, territories to buy, items to craft, and more. You’re unfortunately limited to so many units of usable energy per day, but players who can deal with the frequent cool-down periods will be able to tweak their own assassins from Brotherhood, a nice perk.

Dragon Age Legends – Admittedly, I haven’t spent as much time with this game as some of the others I’ve touched upon lately. Tom and Kaz’s apathy towards Dragon Age II, as well as my general dislike of high fantasy, ensure that I was never going to stick with this for long. However, as the “first real game on Facebook,” Legends also enjoys high production values, a deep turn-based battle system and a world that feels in keeping with the overall series. I may not like how EA monetized this project, but it’s still another slice of role playing for fans on a more manageable scale.

Global Resistance – My favorite of the bunch (and the inspiration for this article), GR is global, online Risk with Chimera and sci-fi trappings on the board. There are tons of achievements to unlock (with rewards transferable to Resistance 3), but more importantly, there’s a persistent battle online with an active community, and after some amount of play, you can amass enough troops to feel like you’re turning the tide of war. The presentation evokes more of that mid-20th-century wartime aesthetic, and everything just feels really well thought out.

Of course, there are definitely games that I’m missing. (A number of you pointed out the Madden 12 Facebook card game as quality stuff.) But I think the picks above are representative of a general shift in attitude towards these games. Each one of them has attracted hundreds of thousands of players, definitive proof that “real” gamers won’t automatically dismiss social media extensions of their favorites. And with this shift, I think we can look to a future in which developers take these games much further.

Assassin’s Creed: Project Legacy lets you take contracts for your assassins and earn a couple capes, but there’s a huge real estate component to those games that’s just waiting for a PC interface. Dragon Age Legends is a fun side story, but what if your Facebook characters could be weaved in and out of the main storyline? And as for Global Resistance, I could totally see territorial influence on the global map having some influence on team skirmishes in Resistance 3. I think you can run the risk of putting to much emphasis on these outside experiences, but as long as Facebook and browser games (and hell, iOS/handheld stuff too) are an option to enhance the main experience rather than something forced upon players, I don’t see why multiple styles of play can’t coexist.

In other words, no offense taken if you need to take me off of your social media news feed in the near future.

The Sims Social throws out many of the series’ conventions in order to make it work within a browser. Job trees have been reduced to in-home art projects, the town has been reduced to a single “street” of friends and managing a Sim’s needs is no longer the give-and-take tedium it once was. In order to make the experience more manageable for the casual set, energy limits have been put in place so that you’re only doing menial tasks for 15 minutes at a time – Animal Crossing comparisons aren’t too far off. However, while I’m totally in favor of making the experience more approachable, all of the little tweaks mean that suddenly this take on The Sims has lost its creative spark. Social has been reduced to a game of keeping up with the Joneses.

One of the many joys of The Sims 3 was how such a seemingly mundane setting could produce some of the most outlandish stories I’ve encountered in gaming. My time as head of the “Hemanway” household was the very definition of emergent gameplay. One day, Fred Hemanway was a paunchy young go-getter with the potential to become a famous astronaut. The next, he was suddenly an octogenarian writer with an evil wife plotting his demise. I realized that I had fallen in love with the game around the time I had his daughter, Gertrude, get a part-time, afterschool job at the cemetery so she could track down Fred’s ghost. My virtual Walter White in The Sims Social can do none of this. All he can do is get on the writing or painting treadmill and make enough money to buy the best furniture. In some ways, that’s even more addicting for this collecting fiend, but the whole experience feels hollow.

The Social element is the game’s most distinguishing feature, but even that is mired in the spammy tactics found in some of Facebook’s most exploitative games. You can share items with friends, help them build additions to their homes, interact with them socially and more, which definitely creates an interesting cooperative/competitive dynamic. (For instance, I’m willing to help Tom build an addition to his house, but only because the cheese he offered me in exchange will help me surpass everyone’s cooking abilities.) But while I like seeing all of my friends’ homes and befriending their Sims, constant notifications beg you to share every little milestone on your feed. Worse yet, The Sims Social basically requires you to reach out to your friends like this in order to meet quest requirements, with buying your way out of these quests as the only other option. (These fees, as well as those for premium furniture, are exorbitant, but in the game’s defense, I’ve had plenty of fun without spending a dime.)

I’ve been playing The Sims Social for about two weeks now, and I’d be lying if I said that it hadn’t become a compulsion to see how Walter White is doing every time I turn on the computer. But it’s interesting to me how this is The Sims game I always thought I wanted, and yet the results are not nearly as satisfying as I had anticipated. Stress may have eventually driven me away from the franchise, but at least I had some memories to look back on. Without that stress, The Sims Social basically becomes an interactive furniture catalog.

When the 3DS debuted, you may recall that most reviewers were more taken with the numerous bells and whistles than they were with early software like Pilotwings and Steel Diver. Between the AR Cards, Face Raiders, 3D photos, SpotPass and more, the general consensus was that these apps would offer limited replayability but maximized laughs. However, the one feature that seemed like it could have legs beyond the novelty phase was StreetPass. Because this function is always on, and because developers can tailor it to fit all sorts of game types, there’s a lot of potential for passive interaction between users. Street Fighter IV and Nintendogs + Cats used it in pretty meaningless ways, but like the old Game Boy’s link cable port or the Xbox 360′s achievements, StreetPass seemed like it could end up being the most integral feature you never knew you needed. Luckily, as someone who has used it extensively during my daily commute, I think it still can.Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said in interviews that one of the company’s major failings was not educating the public about the benefits of the 3D display, and going a bit further, about how the 3DS is different from the DS. The added visual depth is still cool in this blogger’s book, but the bigger misstep has been failing to educate the public – and developers – about why StreetPass is not just another worthless tag mode. The initial way to do so is to push the Mii Plaza games.

I began my own Mii Plaza quest back in May, stuffing my 3DS in my front pocket so that it could broadcast my funny hats to the world. Mii Plaza is designed to let you show of your Mii and very simplified gamer profile with those around you. There are two games within – a puzzle collection quest and gaming’s simplest RPG. It’s a far cry from Words with Friends, but it was enough to get me to charge my 3DS every night for a few consecutive months.

It should be noted that my experience is not at all typical; I live in New York City, one of the most bustling cities in the world with one of the most widely used public transportation systems in the world. I hope that my experience would be the ideal that more of you would get to experience as the handheld’s sales rise. Regardless, I found myself entranced by the puzzle exchange half of the game early on. The game is about a collective experience. Unlike Street Fighter IV‘s trophy mode, you aren’t trying to show off how awesome you are by clobbering people with your all-Rufus lineup. You share pieces with each other to create 3D images of your favorite Smash Bros., and if someone has more pieces than you, that just raises the likelihood of finding a sliver of Yoshi that you don’t already have. It’s passive cooperative gameplay, and it was great to think that I was helping others as much as they were helping me. I completed that one back in June – thank you Ocarina 3D launch event – and have been happily helping the occasional passerby ever since.

From there, I moved onto Find Me, in which you enlist other Miis and free agents to rescue your captured king. This half had an added bonus of wearable hats to show off to friends, including a yellow pikmin hood currently attached to my Mii. Despite this incentive, I began to notice that I was StreetPassing far less often, despite being crammed in the front car of the F train each morning with at least a couple folks with whom I had connected earlier. Eventually, I made it to the end of the castle summit on my own, mainly thanks to the brute force method of dropping Play Coins for CPU-generated helpers. But without new software support, the limited Mii Plaza content just wasn’t holding people’s interest. I doubt most made it even half as far as I have. However, for a couple glorious months, I was able to discover the one feature that could set the 3DS apart in the market.

Now that the price drop has spurred sales some, it’s time to give the grand experiment another, bolder chance. Iwata has already said more StreetPass software is in development, and that’s fantastic news. I think giving folks a reason to keep charging their 3DS systems every night is crucial, and just seeing that green light blink whenever I’ve secretly exchanged information still elicits a thrill. But from what we’ve seen of the retail stuff, it doesn’t seem like Nintendo’s pushing StreetPass nearly enough in its retail games. As far as I’m concerned, StreetPass should be in every single first party game if the feature is to turn into a system seller.

Case in point: Ocarina of Time 3D was a huge missed opportunity. The game somehow sold several hundred thousand copies to a very small user base, meaning that we were all playing the game at the same time. I know that most of the Miis I’ve been bumping into have been carrying Hyrulian shields with them. Why not let us share the experience somehow? At the bare minimum, I’d love to know how far everyone has progressed, but what about an exchange of in-game masks or customized ocarina melodies? What about map doodling – think Phantom Hourglass – to share secrets in the overworld? None of this would have been that hard to implement, and I suddenly would have a reason to pop in a Zelda game after completing it, a series first.

User generated content is always tricky when it comes to Nintendo, but StreetPass is practically begging for it. Super Mario 3D Land is almost guaranteed to be worth a purchase based on pedigree alone, but platforming games can only last for so long. I wouldn’t mind Mario taking a page from Sackboy and offering very simple customized levels. Hell, I would even be willing to use existing levels if I could alter enemy/coin/item placement. Again, there’s an unique thrill to a mutually beneficial exchange, and I think “unlimited levels,” in a sense, would be a hard-to-refuse bullet point.

There’s no reason why developers can’t be more ambitious with the feature. One of the advantages of handhelds like the Nintendo 3DS is that you can take them with you. (Duh.) But like the iPhone with its GPS tagging, the 3DS can help put things in pretty cool geographical contexts. According to Mii Plaza, I’ve connected with people from Japan, France and even Canada. I suppose those distinctions are meaningless on their own, but what if a developer were to include a viral “achievement” of sorts in his or her game? You see these a lot in console multiplayer games, but it’s not that big a deal when I don’t have to leave my house to get one. However, if I could trace an item’s path back to its origin after acquiring it through StreetPass, that journey would suddenly seem incredible.

Now, I already hear some of you asking why I’m not opposed to 3D-less games on the 3DS but insist on shoehorning StreetPass into everything. Trust me though – the feature is potentially that versatile. Mario Kart 7? Share your favorite track ghost. Star Fox 64 3D? High score challenges and multiplayer bots with recorded voice samples. Luigi’s Mansion 2? Hidden Mii ghosts strewn about the map. I’m not a game designer, but I can see dozens of possibilities quite clearly.

I’ve walked over one million steps, I’ve maxed out my Play Coins, I’ve completed my Pokedex 3D, I’ve exhausted Mii Plaza and I’ve walked my Nintendog around the neighborhood more times than I care to admit. I’m hungry for more StreetPass content, and I think you’ll find this fall that so are a lot of other 3DS owners. When we’re on the train, we may not be able to launch Angry Birds at each other, but I know I’ll never tire of seeing someone else’s funny hat.

Anyone who’s still bemoaning the stagnancy of the Japanese gaming scene hasn’t been paying attention this summer. From El Shaddai‘s beautifully bizarre take on the Dead Sea Scrolls to Child of Eden‘s kinetic synesthesia, there’s been more creative output from that country lately than its likely to get credit for. But perhaps most outlandish of all would be Catherine, Atlus’ not-exactly-an-RPG experiment that broke the publisher’s own sales records last month. Sure, it may feature a weird puzzle game at its core and an art style familiar to any Persona fan, but Catherine‘s greatest feat is that it finds the perfect sweet spot between the linear, cut-scene-driven narratives of Japanese games and the more expansive, open-ended worlds of games like Mass Effect and Fall Out. It’s a game that features well-drawn characters and tight plotting without completely sacrificing player influence and interactivity.

Take, for instance, the frequent outings with Vincent’s friends each night. After each nightmare, you’ll find our hero (or anti-hero) sitting down at a bar, the Stray Sheep, with three of his friends discussing the day’s events. This usually amounts to him getting chewed out — rightfully so –  for cheating on his longtime girlfriend Katherine with a floozy…named Catherine. But this is neither completely passive nor active. The banter goes back-and-forth for a bit, but these aren’t lengthy cut-scenes by any stretch. And while you may not be able to control the words that come out of Vincent’s mouth, you do have control over the flow of the conversation. You choose whom to talk to in which order, and in between, you can send text messages, order drinks or watch the barroom television for news on the latest mysterious murders. OK, so this may not sound like the most scintillating stuff as I type this, but I loved the execution. (It also helps that game is full of surrealist touches and a great sense of humor. This is seriously one of the best localizations I’ve seen in a while, and there’s a vibrancy to this world that really draws you in, even when the imagery is macabre.)

Better yet, while you don’t necessarily have to leave your little booth, each night gives you opportunities to meet your fellow barflies, and it’s here that the game offers even more choices. These guys won’t stick around all night, and as far as I can tell, you can’t talk to everyone in one play-through. Catherine isn’t so subtle about letting you know that the bar patrons’ fates are in your hands, and the folks you end up saving will likely be those whose lives you become most invested in. While I love Mass Effect and other games of its ilk, I often feel like I’m going down a people-of-interest checklist as I talk to NPCs. If you’re patient enough, everyone will be willing to stand around and just wait for you to help them solve their problems; Catherine does not give you that luxury. Because people come and go from the Stray Sheep, you can easily lose track of them, and thus they won’t have you as a confidante willing to listen about their sins. The game forces you to make choices with real consequences, and it certainly was a punch to the gut to learn that I couldn’t save the police officer and the journalist from their demons.

Of course, Vincent (the character) has other things on his mind, as he tries to juggle his rocky relationships. Catherine hinges almost entirely on this central dilemma, and if you can’t buy into it, then you’re unfortunately going to have some gripes. To the game’s credit, Vincent is not a blank slate. He may have typical commitment issues, but even if you bring out his slimiest tendencies, he seems to want to minimize hurt feelings for all parties involved. It’s frustrating to see him unable to break things off with one of these girlfriends sooner, but I’ll always prefer an interesting-but-flawed character over some silent, anonymous avatar. More problematic are the two leading ladies. For all of Vincent’s internal monologues about how much he loves Katherine, we never really get a sense of his reasons. Throughout my time with the game, I never got a sense of chemistry between them. She softens some after a cold, domineering introduction, but I can see why Vincent would be reluctant to pop the question. Catherine isn’t much of an alternative though. She’s painted with broader strokes than any other character in the game, and while it was clear by the end that the writer intended for us to have some sympathy towards her, she never really ends up being more than an object of desire for Vincent. (Thankfully, there’s at least more going on to Catherine than the provocative PS3 box art would suggest.)

The game may offer a choice between Catherine and Katherine, but it never explicitly asks you to pick one or the other at a given moment, as something like Heavy Rain might do. Instead, the outcome of this plot line (and several peripheral plot lines) is tied to a “morality meter” of sorts. It’s definitely Catherine‘s greatest failing, but it’s not necessarily as limiting as you’ve been conditioned to believe from other games. The two extremes here are not “good” and “evil,” but “order” and “chaos.” The former features an angel and the latter a devil, but based on the chaotic outcomes towards which I leaned, I didn’t feel as if the developer was judging me for making bad decisions. After all, the Persona games lean heavily on demonic characters and imagery, so it makes sense that this realm is not necessarily the “wrong” one.

You’ll notice that I have barely even touched upon Catherine‘s puzzle game core. It was an afterthought on the podcast, and it’s an afterthought here. It’s not to say that the cube climbin’ isn’t fun — at least on easy — but the plot offers so many strange pleasures that the puzzle stuff gets bumped from my memory. It’s neither as sweepingly epic as a Final Fantasy or as immersive as an Elder Scrolls, but Catherine‘s smaller scope and small choices end up being its greatest strengths. Who needs endless expanses and battles when the cozy neighborhood bar is just a few nightmarish puzzles away?

This past Wednesday, the editors of the magazine “Kill Screen” helped put on a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This isn’t the first time that video games have been displayed in a museum, but the MoMA’s a pretty ritzy place, and so it was seen (by me, at least) to be a pretty big deal, a means to bring some of the industry’s more avant-garde fair to the masses. And for the most part, I think the evening could be called a success.

Starry Heavens

Admittedly, if I were curating that shindig, my list of games would have looked a lot different. Kill Screen’s selections seemed to be more about the beauty of mechanics, while I tend to prefer a little more graphical splendor when I’m gripping a controller. On the other hand, the event tied in beautifully — probably intentionally so — with the incredible “Talk to Me” installation, which compiled dozens of modern technologies that humans potentially use to communicate with one another. Some of the wackier devices on display like animal-sensory simulations, a fifth dimensional camera and a metal pair of underpants that simulate menstruation for folks who don’t menstruate (like guys) will get the most buzz, but the entire collection as a whole was just awe-inspiring. It’s so cool to see such technological innovation in one room, and I’m glad that video games could be lumped along for an evening.

So what games were on display? A lot of them have already been commercially released, including Limbo, Bit.Trip Beat and Echochrome, as well as a bunch  of iOS games on the top floor. But there were some game designers who took advantage of the huge space, putting together games that could never really fit in your living room (assuming that you don’t live in a mansion). Favorites included:

B.U.T.T.O.N.

• B.U.T.T.O.N. – This stands for Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now, which sounds about right. Up to four players stand in front of their giant buttons and are given a series of instructions. For instance, my group was told to run to another room and then play dead. After a few random prompts, the game then asks you to screw over your friends in order to win. My girlfriend ended up knocking me out when we were asked to hold down the loser’s button for 10 seconds. B.U.T.T.O.N.‘s frantic pace reminds me a lot of WarioWare on the GameCube, and I would love to bring this to my classroom next year. This is such a killer party game, and one that would be friendly to any age group. The only problem is that if and when the game is ported home, you won’t have the oversized buttons to smash, and that was half the fun.
• Starry Heavens – This gigantic board game in the sculpture garden was designed by Eric Zimmerman and Nathalie Pozzi. It played a bit like an over-sized game of Twister, and again, the rules were designed to encourage backstabbing and ruthlessness. (I noticed that this was  a subtle theme in many of my top picks that night.) The balloons overhead offered a nice atmosphere, but I don’t know how much people bought into the thematic background stuff about the lord of the sky (or something like that). Perhaps our board game experts Kaz and Tom would have appreciated it more.
• Tentacle – While my Android didn’t take the greatest photos — as you can see — it at least allowed me to spawn my own tentacle in this multiplayer take on FlOw. Players could download an iOS/Android app that synced up with the game and created new avatars for everyone. From there, it was a race to eat as much organic matter as you could, though I guess I missed out on a cooperative element along the way. This game was one of many projected onto the wall, and I loved seeing the action up on such a massive “screen.”
• PXL PUSHR – I’m not sure if this will ever see a commercial release, which is too bad, because I think designers Matt Boch and Ryan Challinor of Harmonix are on to something here. One player sets down squares on a grid displayed on an iPad, while the other stands in front of a Kinect and tried to touch all of those squares in the space around him or her simultaneously. Here, the set up was competitive, but I could see this setup working cooperatively, too. Switch the iPad out with an Xbox controller, and I think you have a potential indie hit.

As with any good Kinect game, you’ll look just a little silly when you play PXL PUSHR.

So overall, a fun show. I hope that if Kill Screen attempts this again next year, we see more games and more outlandish ideas, but this is a great way to lay down some inroads.

According to our Steam stats, the Rumble Pack somehow managed to put 108.6 cumulative hours into Terraria in just a single week. Granted, that’s split among half a dozen people, but still – that’s a lot of time devoted to digging holes in the ground. The Minecraft influence is pretty clear, but everyone has brought their own reasons for playing this wonderful little sandbox title. I’ve heard comparisons to LEGO sets, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, Dig Dug and more; with a game so expansive, it’s only natural for it to evoke memories from a bunch of different sources. For me, though, Terraria offers everything I always wanted from Nintendo’s Animal Crossing, fulfilling that game’s potential for amazing social interaction whether your buddies are playing online or not.

Back in 2001, when Animal Crossing was a non-gaming novelty, I had these lofty dreams of maintaining a village with my entire family. There were four houses available for my parents, brother and I, and we were to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for those furry chatterboxes that populated the game. Though Animal Crossing doesn’t offer simultaneous co-op, you can take turns with the upkeep. Anything that one player does – either good or bad – will have consequences for anyone else who boots up the game. And when you’re not playing, the game “plays itself” – plants grow, villagers leave and mail arrives at everyone’s doorstep. If I were to leave a note for my dad or plant a tree next to my mom’s house, they’d  eventually discover my good deeds on their own time.

Unfortunately, the grand experiment of “Yetisburg” never got very far off the ground. My dad and brother wanted nothing to do with the babyish dialogue and feng shui interior decorating, while my mom, the other big gamer in the family, had little patience for paying a virtual mortgage to a crooked raccoon.* Seeing as I was left stranded, not even the allure of NES games could sustain my interest, and the village was soon taken over by weeds. (Tom knows this phenomenon all too well.)

Yetisburg’s tragic demise was but a footnote in my gaming career, but the memories came flooding back when Terraria was included in Steam’s “Summer Camp” sale. I’m not a big PC gamer and Minecraft has left me confounded in the past, but I’m not one to turn down a popular game when it’s under five bucks. Upon booting Terraria up and entering my randomly generated new world, I was asked to chop down lumber and gather supplies for a small house. Doing chores in a video game? That sounded awfully familiar. I dug a few tunnels, fought off a couple blobs and planted some torches before shutting it down for the afternoon. It seemed fun, but I could see that other Rumble Pack group members were picking it up and I figured I’d wait until we were all playing that evening.

When I signed in after dinner, I was invited to a friend’s server. I could already see that the group had put a fair amount of time into their world, but I was completely unprepared for the progress they had made. The first thing I saw was their towering, multi-story base with multiple NPCs and multiple doors for them to open. The tunnels were expansive and well-lit, and all of my friends had decked themselves out with colorful armor, hook-shots, double jumps and other wild stuff. In just a few short hours, it felt like Terraria had completely transformed into something that was both wildly exciting and intimidating at the same time.

Now, if you know me well at all, you’re aware that I burn that midnight oil almost every night. I pick up the controller long after the rest of you have hit the pillow, and this makes for some fairly solitary gaming habits. (Don’t feel bad for me – I much prefer my single player adventures.) So after everyone sheathed their swords for the night, I was free to tinker with the world as much as I wanted. Not being an ass, I kept almost everything in tact, but I did build myself a little above-ground fort, and I left a sign with a hidden message deep underground. (Nobody has found it yet.) Though my pick axe was only of the dull, copper variety, I was able to carve out a path to some untapped iron ore, and I then I too retired.

Since that opening evening, my play sessions have been sporadic. I’m still plugging away at games like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Ms. Splosion Man, which leaves little time for an endlessly fun timesink like Terraria. However, I felt oddly satisfied about my small contributions to my friends’ world. My little fort had apparently been converted into a makeshift nursing station, my own tunnels had extended to the lava-filled depths and my little avatar helped down the Eye of Cthulu in the group’s first major boss fight. I’ve been wanted to craft a virtual world ever since user-generated content became de rigueur, and now thanks to Terraria, I’ve finally helped do just that. And unlike Yetisburg, I think its future looks quite bright.

*(glaring menacingly…)

Believe it or not, a surprisingly high percentage of DSiWare is not horrendously bad.** In fact, as we’ve said on the podcast a few times, the service is one of Nintendo’s best kept secrets, since the company refuses to advertise it at all. Games like the Art Style series and Shantae have earned accolades from both ourselves and the big sites, but the problem here is that only a very small audience has had access to them — that is, until now. The vast majority of DSiWare is compatible with the 3DS and can be found on the eShop, making this the perfect time to check out what you’ve missed. And to help you get started, I humbly suggest that you direct your attention to the following.

**Even if most of it is!

The Art Style Series: I’d argue that this is the cream of the crop, especially if you’re into puzzle games. The majority of the series was developed by Skip, the studio behind the brilliant Chibi Robo. Art Style: Pictobits is arguably the developer’s finest work. You gather up pixels in a “well” using the stylus and place them directly below falling blocks of the same color to create pixel art from Nintendo franchises like Mario and Zelda. The unlockable chiptunes tracks help sweeten what was already a great deal at $4.99. Art Style: Box Life is also a winner. Here, you cut out patterns from a constantly rolling sheet and assemble them into cubes. If these sound a bit hard to grasp, I probably shouldn’t even bother trying to describe Q Games’ contribution, Art Style: DigiDrive. Trust me when I say that while it may be a bit incomprehensible on paper, but it’s mesmerizing in practice. There are other Art Style games in the collection that aren’t quite as successful, but they’re all safe bets if you’re sick of the typical match-3 formula.

Aura Aura Climber: Nintendo has been outspoken in recent months about pricing and perceived value — that cheap downloads somehow translate to subpar experiences. As a counterpoint, I would offer up the company’s own Aura Aura Climber, in which you control a cheery spark latching onto grapple points in order to rise through the atmosphere. The grapple mechanic isn’t nearly as fluid as PixelJunk Eden’s, but the sense of freedom that comes with swinging through the air is still thrilling. The emphasis is placed on high scores and precision jumping, which has kept me coming back ever since its release. At only $1.99, you won’t find a better bang for your buck.

Link ‘n’ Launch: This could have very easily been a welcome Pikmin spinoff, but I’ll cut Intelligent Systems some slack since the results are still pretty grand. Another puzzler, your goal here is to propel a rocket ship to its destination. Doing so requires quickly spinning tiles to connect pipes to fuel supplies, which is slightly reminiscent of Pipe Dream from back in the day. It’s more mentally taxing than some of the other puzzle games listed here, but I’m sure some of you would welcome that.

Q Games’ Sci-Fi Trilogy: These game don’t seem to have any direct ties to each other, but they do share an outer space motif and addictive gameplay. Trajectile is the most straightforward of the bunch — you line up rockets to ricochet off walls and clear blocks — but you get a lot of content for five bucks. It plays a bit like a combination of Bust-a-Move and Breakout. Starship Defense may be my favorite tower defense game ever, with balanced weapon choices, varied missions and a cool graph paper art style holding things together. And most ambitious of them all is X-Scape, the sequel to an obscure polygonal Game Boy game that served as a precursor to Star Fox. The campaign spans over a dozen planets and offers one of the most satisfying experience you can find on the DSi (and 3DS, for that matter).

My losing pose, witnessed by literally tens of people.

Photo Dojo: Part of me wonders if I should leave this out because Face Raiders renders it a little obsolete. That said, the gimmick of using photos of your friends to create a custom fighting game still elicits smiles, and the custom voice quips are guaranteed to be hilarious.

The WayForward “Trilogy”: These games are also very tenuously connected, but they are all just as vital as the first party stuff. Mighty Flip Champs got many people to take notice of DSiWare when it came out a few years ago, and even more will get to see it when it arrives on the PSN as a Mini this month. I’m also partial to Mighty Milky Way, which I reviewed not to long ago. Lastly, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge might be the very best DSiWare of all. This “Metroidvania” game can easily stand with the best in the genre, with fluid animation, vibrant colors and the ability to traverse multiple planes.

R.I.P.: I would have loved to include the Art Academy games and Flipnote Studios, but these games sadly did not make the transition to the 3DS. On the bright side, the former is at least available at retail and the latter is rumored to be coming back slightly retooled.

I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface, too. A Kappa’s Trail, Spotto! Mario vs. Donkey Kong and more narrowly missed the list, and I’ve heard some praise for games like Glow Artisan and Inchworm as well. I’m sure our readers (and Tom) can offer a few more suggestion. In the meantime, remember that not all of these random puzzle games should be dismissed outright. For every dozen miserable Bejeweled clones, you might actually stumble onto a hidden gem.

A better dinos-in-space romp than Dino Crisis 3

Mighty Milky Way is a colorful puzzle-platformer with a heavy emphasis on managing various gravitational pulls as you navigate your green spacelady to the finish hole. Luna can jump on most planetoids twice; one tap results in a tiny hop, while a second blows up the planet and sends her flying in the direction she’s facing. Players can destroy, but they can also create; so long as Luna has a “planet candy” available, she can conjure a spherical surface anywhere in space. Early levels offers some puzzle-solving leeway, but later levels force players to take their time aiming jumps and figuring out the proper order of steps for careening through space.

WayForward has certainly earned its reputation of 2D mastery, and while this game isn’t the studio’s most technically accomplished, Luna and her nameless T-Rex still have plenty of personality. I’m not sure what inspired the decidedly French flavor — Luna’s a chatty Francophile and the levels are book-ended by scenes at Parisian cafes — but it helps the game stand out amidst all the DSiWare garbage. Also of note is Jake “virt” Kaufman’s terrific pop soundtrack.

It’s admittedly been a while since I’ve reviewed something for the site, but then it’s been quite some time since I’ve played a game this likely to slip under the radar. It’s easy to forget the DSi shop given Nintendo’s long history of neglect, but whether you grab this now or when the 3DS eShop launches, it’ll be 800 points well spent.

If you want to play Pokémon with the big boys, sign up for our official Facebook group!

Let’s get down to business. Pokémon Black and White launch on Sunday (or Saturday if you’re in New York), and we as a Rumble Nation need to coordinate our attack strategies. There are over 163 new monsters to catch — one of which is almost literally a pile of garbage with googly eyes — and we’re going to need each other. I’m not just talking about the standard version-exclusive Pokémon. Obviously, we can hunt those down pretty quickly with a little help from the online trading station and one reliable buddy. But there’s so much more to this than that.

I’m talking about feeding each other legendaries that we wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. I’m talking about putting our poor Dittos to work to mass produce a herd of valuable starters. I’m eventually even talking about Rumble Pack tournaments that may or may not have an attached prize. (I need to look through my drawers of crap to find something Poké-flavored.) This series was originally envisioned as a very social experience, and we intend to get the most out of it.

And yes, I’m well aware that I take my Pokémon a little too seriously. I’m indeed the guy who forced himself to write a 60 page senior thesis over a weekend because I had been too busy rounding up Ludicolos in the weeks prior. But I’m confident that we’re in this together. Oh, and you’ve got about one week until PAX, so do have your critters in order as soon as possible.

P.S. I swear that I’m not crazy! I’m taking this the game only about 40% as seriously as this post would suggest.

My closest ally or my worst enemy?

In 2011, I don’t think I’ll have any problems spending less on video games. In fact, I’m making that a formal resolution. This is not to say that I won’t be tempted; this fall’s glut is a potential killer. But there were a few moments this year that really made me realize that I need to rethink my consumerism:

• Amazon’s Black Friday sale (and subsequent Cyber Monday sale) offered huge discounts (33% or more) on games that in some cases had only been out for weeks. If you bought Fable III or Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood on their launch dates, you had to feel just a little foolish when you could get them later for $30 and $20 less, respectively. The lightning deals could go quickly, but anyone willing to watch the clock could easily reap the rewards. It certainly beat my previous Black Friday plan of waiting outside an Old Navy at 5 a.m. for Lego Rock Band.
• It seemed like almost every major retail chain was holding a “buy two, get one free” or “buy one, get another for __% off” sale. Having drained my nerd funds on Christmas gifts this year, I couldn’t really take advantage of these, but you’d better believe that I’ll be more patient this year.
• Easily the most impressive deals could be found on Steam over the past week or so. Major hits were being offered for $5 or $10 bucks a pop. Better still, I’ve already discovered tons of great PC indie games that I wouldn’t have even heard of otherwise thanks to those $5 indie packs. It’s a great time to be into PC gaming.
• Don’t forget all of the Xbox Live Deals of the Week and pay-want-you-want charity drives, with the Humble Indie Bundle 2 leading the charge.
• Oh yeah, and now that I’m an “adult” with “big life decisions” in the coming years, I can’t afford to continue being a childish, impulsive consumer whore.

I have no doubt that some of these sales were initiated because of the cruddy economy and struggling industry conditions. While there were huge grosses and a handful of success stories, there were seemingly more stories about huge layoffs and studios being closed entirely. However, even once the game biz bounces back, I expect that there will still be some huge deals for the patient gamer. There are so many channels from which to pick from — Steam, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, iTunes, standard retail, etc. — that eventually the right deals will come along.

I do feel some minor pangs of guilt about my new direction. For instance, I’m holding off on Lost in Shadow and Epic Mickey until they’re in the bargain bins, even when I know that their makers could use all the sales they can get. But it’s not my fault that the standard MSRP is ridiculously high. I’ll make exception along the way — LittleBigPlanet 2‘s collector pack will be mine on day one — but as much as I want to stay on the cutting edge, and as much as I want to steer our listeners towards the hottest new games, I cannot justify it to the same extent anymore.

As for what this means for you, the guy or gal listening to the show? Probably not that much. You may hear me sometimes looking backward rather than forward — get ready for my thrilling recounting of my Sims 3 family’s work schedule — but I don’t think you guys are tuning in for the latest news anyway. I just want to give game’s their full due, and holding myself to this resolution will allow me to do just that.

*Not counting the Virtual Boy as a console, folks.

Familiar Franchises?

Looking back on the Cube’s launch day, Nintendo’s “big” flagship release, Luigi’s Mansion, was pretty indicative of what owners could expect down the road. Instead of offering running and jumping typical of the Mario franchise, we were offered a cartoony survival horror game with more emphasis on puzzle solving than twitch platforming. Luigi had to clear out his new mansion by sucking up ghosts with a vacuum cleaner, which obviously bears more of a resemblance to “Ghostbusters” than Mario. Suddenly, Bowser was out and Professor E. Gadd was in, much to the chagrin of my fellow Packmates and others.

You don’t need to like the game, but I feel sorry for anyone who isn’t delighted by the Game Boy Horror.

It’s not hard to see why Luigi’s Mansion was maligned by so many, and even this huge fanboy will admit that the game has aged a bit, but it’s still unlike anything that had come before or has come since. The horror sub-genre is crowded with games that take themselves way too seriously — see all of Resident Evil‘s Umbrella storyline — and I still find Luigi’s Mansion to be a lighthearted response to that. For a brief time, Nintendo wasn’t about just giving fans what they wanted; they tried to offer something new, and “new” doesn’t always translate in NPD figures.

Of course, Nintendo did milk its franchises, but the end results were often not at all what we had come to respect. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, for instance, had traditional dungeon design, but the gratuitous sailing and incredibly fluid “toon-shading” had some practically rioting in the street. Super Mario Sunshine didn’t inspire the same hatred, but Mario’s ridiculous water pack was still an odd departure. Even Mario Kart: Double Dash!! was met with apathy in some parts. As someone who spent his entire undergraduate career repeatedly driving up DK Mountain, I was always blown away that there were some people who’d rather go back to one-man karts, but sales for Mario Kart Wii have proven me wrong. Anyway, in all three instances, the Cube entries were of extremely high quality but remain controversial today.

Luckily, the one sequel that everyone could agree on was Metroid Prime. After nearly a decade of dormancy, Samus made her triumphant return. Many of you probably know about the game’s “sordid” development history — Retro Studios had to cancel all of its other projects, and it took a long time to figure out the first-person perspective — but all that matters is that the end result remained true to the series, while also showing how to do first-person platforming correctly. Every time rain would trickle down Samus’ visor or steam would obscure her vision, the game was just as engrossing as her 2D trips to Zebes from years prior. Though the game plays much better with the Wii controller, Metroid Prime was more immersive than any of its peers at the time.

Obligatory Chibi Robo Love (and More!)

Other Nintendo series that received unique-yet-excellent updates included F-Zero, Animal Crossing**, Smash Bros., Paper Mario and Custom Robo**. But for once, the company should also be given credit for not just sticking with big names. Nintendo also published games that were almost guaranteed to die the moment they hit store shelves. (In this sense, the console reminds me a lot of the Dreamcast in its waning days.) Could it have expected anything but dismal numbers for Chibi Robo, an adorable adventure game in which you earn “happy points” for cleaning up after a dysfunctional family? What about Odama, Yoot Saito’s voice-activated military pinball simulator? Is there even a Japanese market for voice-activated military pinball simulators?

**These debuted on the N64 in Japan, so they’re technically returning.

Miyamoto did manage to create at least one new hit series during the Cube years, which came in the form of Pikmin. Both Pikmin and Pikmin 2 were almost-RTS games in which the starring Captain Olimar led the titular plant creatures to all manner of  mundane knickknacks. In the first game, he was stranded on a “mysterious” planet***, while the sequel had him return to raise money for his bankrupt company.

The golden age of in-game advertising!

***Was there ever any question that this planet was Earth?

Though some developers have managed to make RTS controls work well enough on the console, Miyamoto scrapped the interface entirely, creating instead something much more streamlined but still allowing for gameplay depth. Using the c-stick, the player could control an army of 100 with relative ease. (Pikmin 2 in particular has such an elegant design that I may be writing about the second game once I’ve completed it 100%.) Though Olimar hasn’t enjoyed the same fame as Mario or Link, he’s one of the few memorable new characters to come out of the company in the past decade. I love my Wii, but new faces are long overdo.

Now that rockband.com’s account linking is ready, you can create new playlists wherever you go. You can set up your post-work jams and share with like-minded bandmates.

From the very moment I booted up the game, Rock Band 3 told me that it’s all about the band. While RB2‘s tentacles and familiar tiger had a certain charm, none of those trappings ever screamed rock to me. RB3‘s start-up screen, on the other hand, features my custom band — The Earnest Hemenways* — strutting down the street, itching to play at their next gig. I was able to create decent stand-ins for my girlfriend and I, which instantly creates a sense of ownership missing from RB2. I could do without the repetitive loading screens, but it’s great to see my virtual Angry J flipping through his record collection or visiting the drive-thru. The pre-made, too-hip performers in Dance Central couldn’t hope to match my character’s charm.

*Thanks, Shawn!

In order for my band to climb the charts, I’ve had to spend hours in the career screen completing goals. Rock Band 2 made strides away from unlocking songs one-by-one, but RB3 pushes that concept so much further. The collection of goals on hand is simply staggering. On the show, we’ve talked about meta-gaming and achievements, but this game does an even better job of showing players the myriad ways to play.

Some of the goals are incredibly basic — calibrating your guitar, logging in to rockband.com, sharing a setlist. They highlight modes that could very easily be overlooked otherwise. Other goals are more what you’ve come to expect from the genre. Players are encouraged to play through all of the tracks on the disc across all difficulties, and there are a few “100% Expert” epic challenges thrown in to humble ordinary strummers like myself.

However, what I love about the goals is that they actually encourage you to return to previous titles and DLC, too. From AC/DC Live to Lego Rock Band, all of the previous games in the series are represented here. Players would be fine just importing old tracks and letting them sit on their harddrives, but Harmonix’s bonus challenges offer new incentives to revisit. As bummed as I am about “legacy” DLC pricing, it was also a cool gesture to create goals specific to certain bands or genres not prominently featured on the retail releases. Suddenly, owning groan-inducing Boston DLC doesn’t seem as foolish. (You heard me.) I find myself playing tracks I downloaded a year ago, which is something I could never say about RB2. Besides time constraints, I can’t figure out why Dance Central would return to such pedestrian game progression.

There’s so much more to appreciate, such as how well Harmonix handled metadata sorting, the easy instrument swapping, or the potentially cool (but early) web-enabled set list creation. All that really needs to be said is that the new presentation of information might have an even more significant impact on the longevity of the franchise than any of the new plastic instruments. As the Move and Kinect take off, developers need to remember more than just how long a player needs to hold his hand above an icon. Smart organization and an inviting interface will be what keeps audiences, both new and old, rocking out.

By the way, feel free to follow me on rockband.com.