FLASH BANG THROUGH THE DOOR BREACHING GO GO GO

OK, HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION TIME. Fast forward six years or so, you're in the ruins of one of those way-too-big super markets looting the last cans of peas. Suddenly upwards of thirty angry fanatics burst through the front doors. They're REALLY MAD because they want those same peas, and they've been running around for a few weeks trying to find them. They all have guns, knives, and baseball bats with nails in them, and you have like, a pistol (not even a good one either). WHAT. DO YOU. DO? Thankfully you can prepare yourself for that day, courtesy of American taxpayers, with "America's Army: Proving Grounds"

HOW ABOUT YOU FIX THE ROADS INSTEAD?

The whole deal with the America's Army games is that "It's like the same stuff the real army uses for training their guys...only its a computer game!" Of course this spawned a whole slew of conspiracy theories that the army was trying to draw in the next generation of soldiers by giving teenagers video games. The big draw of Proving Grounds is that it takes the good stuff from the other America's Army games, and sticks them all in one game, focusing on small unit strategy. They even had a whole simulated medic training course in one of the previous games. That's just crazy.

Proving Grounds is multiplayer capable, so you can get some of your very best friends together over the internet, and find out who can't handle themselves in a fight against computer people, and if they can handle themselves ON THE INTERNET, how can they deal with banditos in real life? Its the best way to figure out who you need to cut from your post apocalyptic fire team.

"The internet scares me! Aaaaaaaaaa!"

If any of that nonsense sounds good to you, or you like rooty-tooty point'n shooties, or you like squad tactics, OR you want to check it out so you can see if theres any brain washing signals in there for your conspiracy website, then you should check out America's Army: Proving Grounds.

ARMY STRONG

You can snag the game on Steam over here

Bad guys explode when they die and there are spikes all over the place

IT'S BEEN TOO LONG SINCE oh wait we're not yelling anymore, ok. So its been too long since I last posted, but I got something to make it up to you. Got TWO somethings actually. Today we got Momodora one and two, so strap in.

It's impolite to stare

If you've ever played Cave Story (IF YOU HAVENT PLAY THAT RIGHT NOW) you'll see the similarities between the games, both in the art work and the game play. The first game is stage based, whereas the second is more open with an exploration based design. Both feature original music, and boss fights.

All these eyeballs

Made by a dude who goes by rdein back in 2010 and 2011 respectively, both games won awards at the time for their release, and there's even a third game in the works, though it might not be out for a while.

Don't like, you know, sit around, is what i'm saying

If you liked Cave Story (YOU SHOULD), or you like platformers, nice sprite artwork, music, then you should like the Momodora games. If you DONT like those things then what is your deal? Do you hate kittens and puppies as well?

DISGUSTING

You can get Momodora one and two, along with seperate soundtrack downloads here

But all you do is YELL

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAARRGRGGHGHGHHHHHH! (WARNING: FEDORA AHEAD)

AAAAAAAAAAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH
RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHGGH!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYEAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHHHH
YYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YOU CAN GET IT HERE

"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