So often, I’ll have fifteen minutes at the end of an evening, and I don’t want to start playing Bioshock 2 or Metroid Prime. It might take half of the time I’ve got just to start playing one of those. So what casual games am I currently digging?

Chime Super Deluxe (Playstation 3)

After the Playstation Network came back up following the crash, I grabbed a Playstation points card so that I wouldn’t have to store my credit card info on Sony’s servers. While my main intent was to use it for Beyond Good and Evil HD, I tried the demo for Chime Super Deluxe and found that I really enjoyed the game. And it’s got multiplayer, which I know that my wife and I will enjoy, even if she does kick my ass at the game.

Chime Super Deluxe is a musical block placement game. The blocks don’t fall like Tetris – instead you’re given an irregularly-shaped game board and charged with filling as close to 100% of the board as possible within the alotted time. The music plays, and a vertical line (“the beat line”) moves slowly from left to right. As it passes over the blocks you’ve placed, completed square groupings (“quads”) of blocks are registered in the grid in time with pleasant musical cues, and each quad adds to your completion percentage. Create enough quads between passes of the beat line and you get a bonus.

It’s a very zen gameplay experience, and the music is enjoyable. I hear that there’s even a PC version of the game somewhere out there that includes Jonathan Coulton’s Still Alive as one of its songs.

Plants vs Zombies (Android)

I’ve played Plants vs Zombies a lot. I played it when it came out on Steam and got 100% achievements over the course of two playthroughs. Then they added additional achievements and I played through the game again to get all of them. Recently, they released an Android version of the game, and Amazon’s Android app store gave the game away free for one day, so I snagged it. I’m currently midway into my second playthrough, and I haven’t yet begun to put much of a dent in the game’s achievements.

In the unlikely event that you’re totally unfamiliar with Plant versus Zombies, it’s a tower defense game in which the zombies shuffle from right to left, heading towards your house in five lanes. You plant sunflowers to produce sun, the resource you spend to create more plants. Peashooters and cabbage-pults attack oncoming zombies, wall-nuts block them, and squash do as their name would imply. There are dozens more plants, and many types of zombies. Nighttime fogs obscure the field, the backyard’s pool requires that you place plants on lillypads to stop scuba zombies, and defending on the slanted roof prevents direct-fire attacks. The game’s got more complexity than you might think.

I had some issues with PvZ for a while, but I was able to fix them by backing out updates for Google Maps on my phone. It’s a ridiculous and insane solution since using my phone as a GPS is far more useful than playing Plants vs Zombies, but I’ve written to Popcap about the situaton. What can I say? I like the game.

Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe (PSP)

I have a confession to make. I have an unnatural zeal for Pixeljunk Monsters. After having a slightly above-average reaction to the demo in 2007, I purchased PS3 game, and then the expansion. I played with Linda. I played alone. four years later, I was still playing. I completed every level of the game with Linda. I got 100% of the game’s trophies separately in single-player. Then I found the PSP game, which included an additional dozen or so levels and a game that included extra enemy types and new towers. I’m playing Pixeljunk Monsters on the PSP a lot, and I love the game. My obsession has grown, and it’s nearly the only thing I ever do with my PSP. I do own more games for the device, I just don’t play them.

Hoard (PS3)

Hoard is a fun game, and I still play it, even if I don’t play it as frequently as I once did. I’ve gotten gold medals on all of the Princess Rush levels and on all but two of the Treasure levels. The Hoard levels are all insanely dificult – staying alive for five minutes is a challenge I haven’t yet completed. But with levels that top out at ten minutes, it’s fun to play when I’ve got a few minutes to kill.

WordFeud (Android)

I’d been playing Words with Friends on my phone for a while, but I switched to WordFeud. I like the bonus tile layout better, and having an avatar image is nice. I only wish that they’d disallow you from trying words an infinite number of times until you find one that works. Games with more than two players would be nice as well.

What casual games do you play?

Yes, I’ve gotten so preoccupied with real life that I’m getting lazy: I’ve stolen this week’s Free Game Friday from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Through what they term “a minor act of skullduggery”, you can now get yourself a free copy of Peggle Nights. I’ve never been a huge fan of Peggle – I prefer Plants vs Zombies, or maybe Zuma. But lots of people love the game, and now you can get it for free by signing up for a Popcap Passport.

Valve has just repriced Popcap’s wildly popular Peggle Extreme. The new price: Free. You’ll have to download Steam in order to play, but if you don’t already have Steam, I mean, what are you thinking?

Install Peggle Extreme

There’s been a lot of chatter over teh intarwebs in the past few months about whether the iPhone will overtake the PSP or even the DS as a gaming platform. It is my firm belief that for a number of reasons this will never happen. Granted, from a certain perspective, everything Apple touches turns to gold. The iPhone is incredibly popular, and has the same “cool” going for it that the iPod does. But Apple has a less than stellar record with gaming.

A lot of the buzz I’ve been hearing hints that much of the iPhone’s potential comes from its motion-sensing capabilities and its touch screen. The Wii introduced motion-sensitive controls to gaming, and after 2 years stores still can’t keep Wii consoles on shelves. The Nintendo DS introduced touch screens, and outsells home consoles in some markets. So if Apple introduces a handheld with both, it’s bound to be popular. Right?

I’m not so sure.

From the initial reviews, it’s seeming like early iPhone games are running into many of the same problems as early Wii games. Anyone remember the Wii version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance? Red Steel? Far Cry: Vengeance? They had shoddy, tacked-on implementation of the Wii’s motion controls. I believe that many iPhone games will run into the same problems. Most of the Wii’s best games are first-party games. And while Nintendo does make many of their own games, not so with Apple. The game developers more likely to create iPhone games are the sort who develop for mainstream audiences rather than “core gamers”. And while we’re likely to get some good PopCap-style games for the iPhone, my expectations are not high.

Another big problem is that the iPhone has no D-pad or buttons. In fact, it has no tactile game controls whatsoever. How well do you think the Nintendo DS would be doing if it didn’t have the D-pad, the A/B/X/Y buttons, or the shoulder buttons? Without buttons that you can feel with your fingers as you press them, you’ve got to continually look at where on the screen you’re pressing. And when you do press, your thumb is covering a portion of the screen. Both of these issues could be partially alleviated by placing on-screen “buttons” at the corners of the iPhone screen, but it’s still a problem. You simply cannot replace a D-pad with touch screen controls.

Lastly, the iPhone will have nothing in place of a stylus. At first, using your finger rather than a stylus might seem an improvement. After all, now there’s no stylus to lose! But have you ever tried playing a Nintendo DS game with your finger instead of a stylus? There are two major problems. Firstly, your finger blocks your view much more than the stylus. Secondly, your accuracy when using your finger is crap, seeing that your fingertip is at least fifty times larger than the point of a stylus.

In the end, I think you can look at the three companies involved here and apply their overall success in gaming to their success in the field of handheld gaming. Nintendo? Hugely successful in gaming. Their Nintendo DS handheld is no exception. Sony? Also very successful with their Playstation brand. The PSP may not be doing as well as the DS, but it’s certainly a success. Apple? Well, let’s just say that gaming on Macs has never gone very far. Nor do I expect it to do so with the iPhone.