I’m a huge fan of games that have tactical combat. I’ve been playing these types of games since Ultima III, Ogre, and Pool of Radiance. But other than Dragon Age: Origins, I haven’t seen a game with good strategic combat in years.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics was released four years ago, in 2007. But having only recently picked up a PSP, I’m just coming around to it. The reviews weren’t great – the game has a metacritic score of 58% – but having now played the game for a bit, I’ve found that I enjoy it. The game is similar in many ways to the PC game Temple of Elemental Evil. Both are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset, and both allow you to control a group of characters in turn-based combat.

When creating my first party, I immediately went to my favorite two synergies. Firstly, a dual-classed sorcerer/monk. This would allow me to create a sorcerer who could cast shield and mage armor, and then dual class him into a monk, which would allow for a monk with an insanely high armor class. But as it turns out, there is no multiclassing in D&D Tactics. So I went for my other favorite: a fighter with a spiked chain and the whirlwind attack feat. The spiked chain is the only reach weapon in the game that can attack adjacent enemies. If you’re totally surrounded and make a whirlwind attack, you can theoretically attack 24 enemies in one turn. That has probably never happened in the history of the game – more realistic is attacking 4-5 enemies – but it’s a cool advantage to have. But as it turns out, neither the spiked chain nor the whirlwind attack feat exist in this game either. The ruleset in this PSP game is far more divergent from actual D&D 3.5 rules than was Temple of Elemental Evil. Nevertheless, I’m having fun with it.

After starting with a paladin-led party and getting stuck in the game’s fourth scenario, I restarted the game with a new party, taking care to have more toe-to-toe warriors and more characters with the heal skill. My new party consists of a high-dexterity dual-wielding fighter, a polearm-wielding orc barbarian, a monk, a cleric, a gnome sorcerer, and a dwarven psionic warrior with an insanely high armor class.

Creating these custom characters and micromanaging their inventories might be annoying for some people, but I enjoy it. It hearkens back to the old infinity engine games: Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. Good stuff.

Moving the party around environments between fights is sometimes annoying – I can completely understand the UI complaints of the game reviewers who bashed the game’s interface. Yes, it could have been better. But all-in-all, this is the kind of game I enjoy playing, and I foresee myself playing it to completion.

One of my favorite new board games is Castle Panic, which I discovered at PAX East this past year. If you’ve never heard of Castle Panic, you can read my review of the game here.

Fireside games has just announced the expansion to this board game: The Wizard’s Tower.

Your Castle has been rebuilt, and a friendly Wizard has joined your forces. As long as his Tower stands, you and your friends have access to powerful magic spells.

And you’ll need them. The Monsters have returned stronger, faster, smarter and with new abilities to threaten the Castle. You’ll fight magical Imps, evasive flying creatures, and more. Make your stand against six new, dangerous Mega Boss Monsters, including the Dragon and Necromancer. Use fire to attack the Monsters, but beware, your Walls and Towers can be burned down as well! The challenge is high but so is the adventure.  Can you survive more panic and defend The Wizard’s Tower?

This eagerly anticipated release is for 1 to 6 players, ages 12 and up and plays in 90 minutes or less. The Wizard’s Tower is an expansion to Castle Panic and not a stand-alone game. It requires Castle Panic to play.

If you’re a fan of Castle Panic, this new expansion is what you’ve been craving! The Wizard’s Tower adds new Monsters, cards, and game mechanics to take the original game to a whole new level. Easily integrated into the core game, The Wizard’s Tower builds on the familiar aspects of Castle Panic while adding new choices and challenges to keep players coming back for more!

The expansion is a bit pricy at $24.95, but it seems to include a decent amount of stuff. The wizard’s new abilities include damage over time and area of effect, which looks very cool. But the new monsters include “climbing trolls” which apparently scale walls, imps which return to a never-ending pile, and ogres with four hit points. Also, new mega-bosses with five hit points.

I’ve been playing Castle Panic with my four-year old daughter, and we love the game. When the expansion is available in November, I’m going to buy it immediately.

It took me three evenings to finish Limbo, and I’m glad to say that I did it with no walkthrough and no hints. In fact, I plan to get all the game’s trophies with the exception of that one that would have you complete the game in one sitting with five or less deaths. That’s crazy talk. During my second playthrough when I’d died more then ten times before chapter ten, I realized that making it through the entire game with five or less deaths was just not gonna happen. There’s also a hidden level that has you jump over a bandsaw in pitch darkness so that there’s no way to know where to actually jump. Not sure if I’ll finish that hidden level. But the main game I’ve completed.

So this is the third and final article full of Limbo hints. Once again, this is not a walkthrough. If you want walkthroughs, get ye forth to YouTube. You’ll find many. But playing without walkthroughs is such a rewarding experience, and you will enjoy the game more. But… for those times when you’re absolutely stuck, I bring you hints. Not solutions, just gentle nudges that may help you figure out the solution without walking you step-by-step through every little thing you need to do.

Something else I’ve just figured out: I think the chapters in the XBox version of the game and the Playstation 3 version of the game are numbered diferrently. I’ll bet they added more checkpoints (chapters) to the Playstation version. That said, since there are no actual numbers applies to the chapters, the numbering may be really confusing. I’ve named the chapters so that you can go by the descriptions of the elements within each chapter rather than counting white blocks.

That said, here are a few brief hints.

Chapter 20: Twin Cannons
Notice that the top cannon moves
It can destroy more than just you

Chapter 21: The Slow-Sliding Block and the Elevator
At the beginning of the level, you will have to use the same technique more than once. Probably more than twice.
You need two boxes to climb the sliding platform.

Chapter 22: Giant Blocks and the Zipline
Note what all the controls are doing
Momentum is helpful in slowing its reversal

Chapter 23: Spelunking Neon
Timing is key. You’ll have to jump _before_ it’s safe.
It’s going to take more than one press of the switch to get that block where you need it.

Chapter 24: Sawblades and Anti-Gravity
Timing is critical. Jump an instant before gravity reverses.

I’m a huge fan of Sci-Fi. Yet somehow, I’d not realized until recently what a huge portion of video games fall squarely within the genre. Looking at the biggies of 2010, we’ve got Super Mario Galaxy 2, Halo: Reach, Vanquish, Limbo, Super Street Fighter 4, Mass Effect 2, and God of War 3, all of which are some flavor of science fiction. There’s also Rock Band 3 and Civilization 5 which are not science fiction, and Red Dead Redemption (which although I haven’t played it, doesn’t seem like sci-fi) but it really does seem like the sci-fi games outnumber those that aren’t.

If we look at game genres, so many of them have a strong sci-fi tilt. FPS games can be military shooters such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, or ArmA, but so many more are Halo, Crysis, Resistance, TF2, Half-Life, Monday Night Combat, FEAR,or STALKER. Role-playing games and MMO games are even more strongly typed to sci-fi – I can’t think of a single one that doesn’t have some fantastical element. Horror games and god games seem to have the supernatural inherent in their types, and even adventure games are more sci-fi than not. I also cannot think of one platformer without some manner of sci-fi.

RTS games, casual games, fighting games, and stealth games are a mix, but for every Company of Heroes, Diner Dash, Virtua Fighter, or Splinter Cell, I’ll give you three Starcraft, Plants vs Zombies, Marvel vs Capcom, or Thief games.

The sports and racing genres seem to be the only ones that have more realism than fantasy, and even they are not entirely devoid of Blood Bowl or Mariokart games, which feature orc linebackers and sentient mushrooms.

Maybe the sci-fi/video game connection was obvious to you, but I’d never previously put much thought into it.

Here’s the second part of the Lungfishopolis Limbo hints extravaganza. Remember – this is not a walkthrough. If you want walkthroughs, there are plenty on YouTube. But I urge you *not* to use walkthroughs. Limbo’s puzzles can be very challenging, but if you can suck it up and just spend some time and experiment, you can figure them out. And it’s very rewarding – you’ll enjoy the game more. But for when you’re absolutely stuck, I bring you hints. Not solutions, just gentle nudges that may help you figure out the solution without handing it to you outright. Unlike part one of our hints, this article covers every chapter, since the puzzles get a bit harder as the game progresses.

Chapter 10: The Flood
That broken box doesn’t need to float any higher.
Look closely at the water levels, and look at what the levers do to change the water levels. Think Archimedes.

Chapter 11: The Parasite
Sunlight burns the parasite and makes you change directions.
The rising water will cause floating objects to move upwards.

Chapter 12: The Hotel
You can see when the electricity is on and when it’s off. Watch the letter H.
The glass is breakable.

Chapter 13: The Bandsaw
You can control your speed when under the influence of a parasite. Slow down and look around.
Notice the handle on the end of that platform.

Chapter 14: The Elevator
You do need that box.
Notice the handle at the bottom of the elevator.

Chapter 15: The Fly
You’ve got an analog stick. Use it.
Be sneaky.

Chapter 16: The Gear
You need two boxes to get up there.
Set that rope to swinging before you jump on.

Chapter 17: The Machine
Pay attention to exactly what the magnet does.
You’ll just have to wait while things move.

Chapter 18: The Factory
You’re safe while you’re hanging on the edge.

Chapter 19: Minecart Ride
The gears take some time to reverse directions. Use this to your advantage.
Make sure the minecart is still rolling a bit uphill when you jump off it.

 I’ve had my Droid X for nearly a year now, and I’ve found quite a lot of decent games for the device. I haven’t yet discussed the crossword games on Lungfishopolis, and now that Scrabble has made its Android debut, it seems time.

 I first tried Words With Friends (pictured far left) when a friend with an iPhone recommended it to me. I loved the fact that it was cross-platform, so I jumped on board. But despite holding my own with some very tough opponents, I soon grew a bit weary of Words With Friends. It seemed that so often, games would degenerate to small, tightly-packed clusters of two and three letter words. I blame this largely on the score tile placements.

 So I tried an alternative: Wordfeud. (pictured center) I’ve found the score tile placement in Wordfeud to be far better than in Words With Friends, and the word-clumping problem is far less pronounced. There’s also a “random” score tile layout, pictured above, but I don’t use that. While Wordfeud doesn’t look nearly as nice as Words With Friends, it runs faster and with fewer connection-related bugs. But the real win for me was that it notified me when friends played a word, even when I didn’t have the app running on my phone. Maybe Words With Friends does something like this on the iPhone, but not on Android. It really makes a huge difference. Playing the iOS version, my wife thinks that the game timeout is far too short, but that’s one of our only complaints about Wordfeud.

And then Scrabble came out. (pictured far right) Actual Scrabble-branded Scrabble for Android. I’d seen it on iOS before, but the Android version is relatively new. I downloaded it immediately. The App is slow. It’s tragically slow. It’s gastropodically slow, and I don’t care if that’s not a word. Running Scrabble on my Droid X feels like running Netscape Navigator on a 286. It does have the best score tile layout of the three games, and it’s nice that it tracks your highest-scoring words, but it’s slow. And the advertising is far more obtrusive than either Wordfeud or Words With Friends. And the notification doesn’t work on my phone. It says that it requires an active Google account, but I have one and I get no notifications. The settings contain no hints as to why. And it’s slow.

So, in summary, here are the three apps and their individual plusses and minuses.

Words With Friends

• Shake to shuffle letter tiles is a nice feature
• When you try to play an invalid word, it tells you exactly which word(s) are invalid.
• Has a terrible score tile layout
• Crashes a lot when connection is poor
• No notifications
  

Wordfeud

• Avatars are a nice feature
• Good score tile layout
• Has notifications that work!
• Quick and lightweight
• Inferior graphics; zoom is clunky
  

Scrabble

• Shows points as you’re making words, which is nice feature
• Uses a Facebook or Origin account to log in
• Has the best score tile layout
• Tracks your highest scoring words
• Slow as hell
• Way too many ads
• Notifications do not work

They’re all good apps, each with features that the others don’t have, but I’ll be staying with Wordfeud. I’m sure that each of the three apps will continue to add features, and maybe the Scrabble app will somehow manage to slim down, but it’s EA-branded so I hold little hope for that behemoth altering development with any agility.

Because I don’t have an XBox, I don’t have access to XBLA games until they’re released on other platforms. This is why I never got to try Braid until it was released on Steam. When I eventually got access to the game through Steam, I found out just how hard its puzzles really were, and I was eventually forced to look up walkthroughs, and found this. It was that page that motivated me to create the Braid Hints pages that I posted on this site back in 2009. Those pages continue to be the most popular posts on this site. So now that Limbo has finally come out on PSN and I’ve been able to play, I find it apropos to write up some Limbo Hints.
This isn’t a walkthrough – I’m not going to provide hints on each and every level. If you’re interested in walkthroughs, there are plenty on YouTube. but I’d urge you not to use walkthroughs. The game’s puzzles are sometimes very challenging, but if you can suck it up and just spend some time and experiment, you’re likely to figure them out. And it’s very rewarding – you’ll enjoy the game more.

But for those times when you’re absolutely stuck, when you’ve spent a half hour and more than two game sessions trying to figure out what the hell to do on this or that damn puzzle and you’re at your wits end… I bring you hints. Not solutions, just gentle nudges that may help you figure out the solution without handing it to you outright.

First, a few pointers about the game in general.

• Remember your controls. Aside from the jump button, there’s also a button that lets you pull things. The game doesn’t present you the controls explicitly, so if you haven’t realized that you can pull things, you’ll never get past the first chapter.
• You can swing on ropes as well as climbing them.
• If you can’t get past a certain part and you keep dying, then you’d might as well experiment. Sure, you might get killed, but if you keep dying anyway then what does it matter?
• A couple of Limbo’s toughest puzzles involve waiting. It’s hard to do nothing, and it’s certainly not the first thing you’d think to do, but if it makes sense for the puzzle you’re on, give it a shot.

Okay, now some specifics. I’m not going to cover every chapter, because while there are plenty of parts in the game that may have you scratching your head for a few minutes, there are relatively few that have a chance to hang you up indefinately.

Damn that spider! I can't get near him without being speared like a fish, and he's blocking my progress! There's not much to my left other than an unreachable bear trap in a tree, so what am I supposed to do?

Firstly, that spider isn’t nearly so coordinated as you might think. Try experimenting. Risk dying. Play around while you’re close to him and see what happens. Stop reading right now and go back to the game. Only read the next paragraph if you absolutely need to.

If you’ve gotten your hands on the bear trap, made use of it, and still are stuck, you should note that repetition has value.

What am I supposed to do here? To the left, there's an odd machine with a lever that does nothing. Then there's a ramp that I can get to if I jump hard enough and a frog-looking thing hiding under a ridge. Over to the right there's a hanging rope that I can pull, but it doesn't do much.

As you may have noticed when you first ran up, that frog really wants the glowing stuff growing on the underside of the ramp. Know what I call that? Bait. Stop reading right now and go back to the game. Only read the next paragraph if you absolutely need to.

Impact will knock that crap on down for the frog. From there, it’s all about you mustering whatever speed and timing you can. Good luck.

Come back soon for a second batch of hints on Limbo.

Not long ago, Kris Johnson wrote an article over at The Secret Lair in which he espoused shame for playing casual games. While Diner Dash and Happyville may not be my own choices, I do believe that casual games have their place.

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?

Beyond Good and Evil is possibly my favorite video game of all time. I recently picked up the HD remake on the Playstation Network and happily ran through my sixth playthrough of the game in short order. The HD visuals were nice, but certainly not stunning. There were, however, a few other things I noticed.

Firstly, the camera controls are absolutely horrendous. At times, this makes the game nearly unplayable. In my playthroughs of the PC version of Beyond Good and Evil, I’ve sometimes used a usb game controller, and never have I had this much difficulty looking around in the game. Whomever messed up the camera controls for Beyond Good and Evil HD should be turned over to the DomZ to have their life energy drained.

Secondly, I really wish the trophies had been more stringent. You can get 100% completion in the game without getting all the pearls, without getting all the MDisks, and without getting all the PA-1 units for full hearts. It’s nice that they added a trophy for handing a PA-1 over to Pey’j or Double H, but they could have gotten far more creative with the trophies in the game. How about trophies for getting through the Slaughterhouse or Nutrapils factory without ever being spotted? How about a trophy for defeating a DomZ serpent within 60 seconds? How about for playing the hidden pearl game or redeeming a save game code at darkroom.ubi.com? They could have done so much more, and they didn’t.

Lastly, I can’t count the number of times I tried to navigate menus using the D-pad and found that I couldn’t. Menus are navigated only via the left analog stick, which is annoying.

If you haven’t yet played Beyond Good and Evil, I don’t mean to dissuade you – it’s a great game, and the HD version finally brings it to modern consoles. I just wish that the port had been handled a bit better.

Ahh, summer. It’s the time for trips to Disneyworld, pina coladas, and day trips to the oceanside. It’s also the time of year when I’m totally unable to use my PC, because my PC sits in my office on the third floor where it’s 110 degrees during the day. Air conditioning might lower the temperature by 20 degrees, but that doesn’t help much. So I’ve had to put aside Bioshock 2 and Starcraft 2 and instead play games on my Playstation 3 in the air-conditioned living room. I’m playing Beyond Good and Evil HD, in which I’m quite disapointed – I’ll have more to say on that matter at a later time. I’m also enjoying Dead Nation, Super Chime Deluxe, and trying to decide whether to start Metal Gear Solid 4 or Metroid Prime next. Yes, that Metroid Prime – I’ve never played it.

So often, I play games months or years after they’ve been released. They cost a hell of a lot less that way, and I get to check out the games I missed. That said, here are the games coming out in 2011 that I’m dying to get my hands on as soon as they’re released.

July 19th: Limbo
It’s been around on the XBox live marketplace forever, but the Playstation folks haven’t yet had the chance to try Limbo. I still know very little about it, but it seems like the second coming of Braid. Limbo comes out next week, and I’m all over it.

Sometime in September: Amy
I love survival horror, so this innovative take grabbed my attention. When Alice: Madness Returns came out, I thought it was Amy. Oops. Then Catherine came out and I made the mistake again and had to google things to find out that the game I was interested in was actually “Amy“. In Amy, you’re trying to survive (or maybe escape) a plague-ridden city while protecting a little autistic girl who is strangely immune to the plague. Oddly, being near her cures you, so you’ve got to both protect her and use her as a type of healer.

9/27: The Ico/Shadow of the Colossus Collection
I love HD remakes of some of my favorite last-generation games, but I sincerely hope that Team Ico puts more attention into the camera controls than the studio that remade Beyond Good and Evil HD. I absolutely loved Shadow of the Colossus, and I think it’s got perhaps the best video game soundtrack ever made. I’ve never played Ico, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

10/18: Arkham City
Last night, I briefly jumped back into Batman: Arkham Asylum to grab an extra trophy I’d missed. What a great game. I’d passed on Arkham Asylum for the first year after its release because it was a comic property, and generally those games are terrible. I’m so glad that I was wrong. I’ll snatch up Arkham City much sooner this time.

11/11: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Oblivion was the first Elder Scrolls game I played, and I lost hundreds of hours to its gameplay. Luckily, by the time Skyrim is released, I’ll have been able to access my PC long enough to have finished both Starcraft 2 and Bioshock 2, and I’ll be ready for a new time sink.

Skyward Sword
The Wii is effectively a dead console. I’m still planning on using it to play Metroid Prime, but other than Skyward Sword, there are no new Wii games, which is a sad shame. But I recently played Wind Waker, and replayed Twilight Princess through the first dungeon. I really love Zelda games, and I’m looking forward to a new one.