"But all you do is click..."

What I am about to show you might not even be considered a game by some of you, and I'm not so sure myself, but I've been seeing it so often that I've reached the "Why not" threshold, and now YOU get to "benefit" from it. You know whats tasty, and great in moderation? Cookies. You know what you're good at, what you've been doing this entire time without even really thinking about it? Clicking on stuff. What if you could combine those? (and throw moderation out the window because you'll wont be needing it where YOU'RE going) You'd get Cookie Clicker, and that's the...thing for today.

The cause of it all

The point of Cookie Clicker is to make cookies. You open it up in your browser and you make cookies by clicking on the giant cookie, but you can sell those cookies to buy things that give you more cookies over time, basically spending money to get money, if money were delicious and had no real dietary value (These aren't your fancy "nutri-cookies", its old fashioned chocolate chip, get ready to get pretend not real virtual fat).

"Why can't I stop?"

At first that's all there was to the game, but now there's achievements, upgrades, better art, cookie per second tracking, and game saves so you can stop to treat your crippling carpal tunnel before going back in to click the giant cookie some more to feed the endless cycle, eventually leaving you a hollow shell of who you used to be.

"Why couldn't I stop?"

FAIR WARNING: To some this game is pretty addicting, so I just want to tell you to not play this at your job or whatever if you work with computers, this is both the kind of thing you could have going in a browser in the background and the kind of thing some bosses would fire people for, and I don't want to be thought of as the guy who helped get people fired, I'm not gonna be a part of that, so this is me telling you not to do that.

Whoever thought up cookies and milk was a mad genius

If you're willing to risk developing a horrible case of OCD and ruining your mental stability to check this out for the sake of curiosity then you can check out Cookie Clicker here. You were warned.

The FINAL FRONTIER

You know whats awesome? Space. Know whats even better? Flying around in space in your own spaceship. Even better than THAT? Flying around in space in your own space ship meeting alien species and going on SPACE ADVENTURES. Unfortunately its unlikely that you or I will be able to go into space today, so I got a game for you today that is all about doing just that. Take a look at Star Control 2, brought to you by the Ur-Quan Masters Project!

Hey I dont think that alien is friendly, just FYI

Just what IS Star Control 2? Well let me tell you! Its an adventure game that originally came out in the November of 1992. It takes place in space as the title implies, with the plot taking you all across the galaxy, being diplomatic with alien races, getting into fights when diplomacy fails, maintaining and upgrading your ship, pouring over star charts to see where to go next, all in an effort to save the galaxy from things I'm not going to reveal because spoilers.

UPGRADING

What is the Ur-Quan Masters Project? Well let me tell you! The original developers over at Toys for Bob made an effort to port the original 3DO game to work on modern systems, the Ur-Quan Masters Project team took over when the open source of the unfinished port was released to the public. Its been a long project, going back to at least 2003, but the game is in a playable state so its all worth it.

EXPLORATION

Star Control is one of those games that people look back on when they're waxing nostalgic. From the game play to the art to the number and range of alien species, the guys over at Toys for Bob hit the magic formula. So if you like SPACE, SPACESHIPS, SPACE ADVENTURES, ALIENS, or adventure games in general, then Star Control 2 might be for you

DIPLOMACY

You can snag Star Control 2 here

Dance, puppets! DANCE!

HEY YOU! Yeah, you! You ever want to command legions of little, helpless people and send them off to die, but DONT want to join the army or get into politics? Well then do I have a game for YOU! The name of the game today is Lemmings, I hope you're prepared to get REALLY frustrated trying to figure how to save them all on the harder levels.

Developed back in 1991 by DMA Design, an eight man team, and published by Psygnosis for Amiga, Atari, and PC among others, Lemmings is looked back on as one of the best games to come out at the time, and is considered by some to be THE best Amiga game ever. A numerous amount of expansions and level packs came out for it, making the end result level total fairly absurd. 

"Aw, I ran out of builders"

The internet labels Lemmings as a puzzle-platformer and I'd have to agree, each level is basically an obstacle course you need to guide your lemmings through from start to finish, using skills you can assign individual lemmings to make a path through destructible walls, over pits and around traps to get to the exit. The skills themselves are fairly self explanatory: Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Builder, Basher, Miner, and Digger.

It takes hard training to be able to punch through a wall with your bare hands

This version of Lemmings was remade entirely with Javascript, and is playable from your browser. It doesnt have any multiplayer capability like some versions of the original, but its more than enough to help you kill time, especially with the original difficulty levels in place. If you want to maliciously torment things that cant fight back, or sob at your computer helpless wondering "WHY CANT I SAVE EVERYONE" then Lemmings might be for you!

"What? NO! DONT GO THERE STOP KILLING YOURSELVES"

You can play Lemmings right from the internet here, just dont try it on a toaster

Steam powered sword wielding robots on another planet

Know whats great? Robots (When they aren't rising up against us). Know what isn't all that great? Crazed wild life, rabid animals, demons, sentient plants, and violent elemental creatures (unless they're attacking someone you don't like, then its great!) So lets talk about a game that has all of that, and way more! That game is Spiral Knights

SPIRAL KNIGHTS

Spiral Knights is of those massively multiplayer RPGS. It's pretty action oriented, instead of having a large overworld to explore, the game play mostly takes place in the semi-randomly generated dungeons, full of treasure, traps, monsters, and boss fights. The gameplay feels like the Four Swords Zelda game, especially with a party fight along side. Like all MMOs, you can play it solo if you want but its not as good as playing with a group, so your mileage may vary. The art for the game is great, lots of color and fun designs, you can tell the artists had fun with this project.

"Hey"

The reason why I never talked about this game before was because of the system that would limit how many dungeons you could enter per day, and how many times you could resurrect after dying per day, and seeing as they let you just buy more time that was HOW THEY GOT YOU, but in a recent patch they've eliminated that system and the game is getting a second wind because of it, so if there's a time to jump in, its now.

ADVENTURE is calling

If any of that sounds good to you, or you just want to play dress up in a video game, or you like the idea of robots wearing armor, or you're one of THOSE people and just want to scream obscenities into the chat to bug other people then Spiral Knights might just be for you!

Time to go fight EVERYTHING

You can snag Spiral Knights here

You will learn to hate two of three colors

"Hey guys more updates soon" and then there was nothing, this is a bad habit I need to break, but now I'm so mad I need to shoot someone in the face, let me show you how to do that without getting thrown in jail. My method will in fact allow you to shoot LOADS of dudes in the face. That method is "play this video game", the video game in question being PlanetSide 2.

The game world is big, either hoof it or catch a ride

The basic frame work of the game is that its one of those MASSIVELY ONLINE MULTIPLAYER games, built around three factions fighting in the future on another planet: The Terran Republic, the New Conglomerate, and the Vanu Sovereignty . Each side has their own color scheme, unique weaponry and vehicles with their own distinct silhouettes, overall weapon balance (IE: rapid fire, damage, accuracy drop off, ect), and each has their own separate reasoning to fight. Something about the original PlanetSide spawned a rabid loyalty in the players to the sides they chose that lived from the end of PlanetSide, through the long gap between games all the way to the sequels release, most companies today would kill for that kind of brand loyalty.

You can just as easily find a version of this that paints them as corrupt corporate puppets

 The game itself is a first person shooter, based on fighting on and over the continents of the planet Auraxis (with the inclusion of more planets in the future to be very likely), capturing bases, defending resources, fighting back and forth in a war that never ends. While that would be incredibly dark and depressing in real life, in a video game its perfect, when the players get organized it actually looks somewhat like a real war instead of pixel men fighting over other pixels, with tanks actually being used to provide support and with air support being flown by people who actually know how to fly!

It changes everything, really

Maybe that isn't enough to convince you. Maybe you blood lust isn't stoked yet and my words aren't enough for you. That's fine, I got a video for you to look at that I think is the best piece of free advertising this game ever got. (WARNING: CURSE WORDS, also violence and stuff yeah BUT CURSE WOOOOORDS)

 If any of this convinced you, you can snag PlanetSide 2 and jump into the endless war here

Megamad Unlimited Anger

Another, shorter update today because I need to make up for that big stupid gap in updates. Do you like Megaman? No? Get back to work Capcom. For the rest of us just recently a Mega Man fan game was released, after five years of development by a guy who goes by the name "MegaPhilX". Take a look!

Its a full blown new Megaman game, with completely original levels, music, and bosses! On top of all that; it's also SUPER HARD, so you have fun with that! You can jump, shoot, and shoot WHILE JUMPING! What more do you need? What more could you possibly want?

Wait, a lot of things, come to think of it

You can get Megaman Unlimited over here

Ten billion players: only ONE map

Time to tell you about a video game genre that's so stupid and convoluted that no one can even agree on what to call it. DOTA-like? Multiplayer Online Battle Arena? Action Real Time Strategy? Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two Sides? People argue endlessly over the name of the genre, and that's before we even get into the games themselves or the legal mess surrounding the original game this mess sprouted from, proving that they're played by the some of the worst people on the internet.

"Wow, never even heard of some of these curses before"

 How the genre works is that on the games one map there are two bases, each with a team of guys and their goal is to smash up the big fancy thing at the opposing base while not letting the other guys take out theirs. Each side has computer controlled armies that move toward the other side in regular waves, usually the first step in the game is to follow these dudes and NOT fight beside them, but instead hide behind them and  jump out only to get the last blow on the guys from the other side as that's how you get money to buy items. Eventually you become tough enough to fight the other team, and past that you'll level up enough to storm their base, break all their shit, and win.

"Whats all the fuss about?"

 For each game in this genre there are some differences but that's the gist of it. You might read that and go "Well that's not so bad". YES, IT IS THAT BAD. I wasn't joking about these games being played by the worst people. Between people with languages you don't understand making you incapable of working with them, people flying into a frothing rage at the slightest opportunity, or those same people bragging about their great skill at commanding one unit in a RTS game. For other multiplayer games I've said that playing with friends is fun, implying that the game is less enjoyable but still playable with strangers. This is not the case here. Playing with friends is MANDATORY for having a good time while playing these games, everyone else out there will let you down or scream at you for reasons you cant really understand.

You might not understand Spanish or Russian, but you'll know smug superiority when you see it

 These games aren't going away, too many E-celebrities doing commentary on matches, and with Valve throwing their fat sacks of  cash into the ring the tournaments are going to have even bigger cash prizes. Oh yes, there are tournaments. You dont know depression until you've seen someone win over two hundred grand by pressing "R" at the right time.

"Could that be me? Dare I try?" (no, and you shouldn't)

If for some reason any of that sounds appealing to you, theres DOZENS of flavors for you to try!
Like this one, or this one, this, this one for mythological fans, or this one!