Puzzle games on Steam Edition!
World of Goo - The crown jewel of this batch, such a fun little puzzle game. It's a physics/building simulation. You make structures with these balls of goo that stick to each other. The levels are really inventive and I was totally smiling as I did them just because of the cool ways you have to build your towers of goo. It's a short game, took a few hours to do the whole thing, but it's really fun and it's great, totally worth it. I feel like I should talk more about this than any other game because it's my favorite, but you should just go play it, if you haven't.
Trials 2: Second Edition - Weird little motor bike game. Kind of a physics simulation too, you are just a rider on a motor bike, you have to do an obstacle course. It's 2D, you just go straight on the path and jump over things or go through loops or whatever. It's a fine enough idea, it wears quickly. It's not a rewarding thing to win, it's just you pressed the buttons for the right amount of time finally. I couldn't finish it, too frustrating to figure out every level. Not worth it.
I-Fluid - Another physics game, kind of! You are a water drop traveling around a kitchen kind of scene. Can't roll onto absorbing things or hot things. You have goals of knocking these things over or putting this fruit in that basket. It's simple, it's fun enough, I'm not really captivated though, maybe worth it.
Eets - I remember the demo from forever ago. It's cute, has a cute visual style. It's basically Lemmings, your little Eet walks around of his own volition and you direct him to go where he needs to go. It's not super complicated, I'm pretty bored with it now that I'm 2/3 through. But I got it for $2.50, so its certainly worth it. Even at $10 or whatever the regular price is, I think it's a fine puzzle game that will keep you entertained for a few hours.
Graviton 2 - Remember that game where you are a space lander and you are falling onto a planet/moon surface and you fire your rockets and try to slow yourself down so you land gently and don't blow up? Okay, well this is that, except with lasers and things that shoot at you and trickier paths to fly around. Same mechanic though. Pain in the ass to control, but kind of fun. It's very simple, and it get's old, but I liked it. Get's really hard pretty soon, I gave up eventually.
Multiwinia - The sequel to Darwinia which was a neat little game where are guiding little computer beings to their homes and keeping them safe from viruses or whatever. This is like some weird ass RTS multiplayer battle version of the game. Doesn't make much sense to me. If I want to play this kind of game I'll play a real one, not this half assed one with funny graphics. The first game was so original, this seemed very derivative.
Defense Grid: The Awakening - This is a desktop tower defense game, a genre I really like. I thought I was decent at them, but this game is kicking my ass. It's a good game, the computer is kind of Glados like, though not nearly as good. I don't think the game really has enough variety, maybe I'm missing a mode. But I get stuck pretty easy on a level and give up for a few days, because there's nothing else to do. Maybe it's better they don't plod me along and I get bored. Maybe I should just suck less ass.
Braid - Finally I play the biggest XBLA game of 2008 (on steam). And... how can I not be disappointed? I heard only magical goodness about this game. I was pretty sure Jesus descended and gave your computer extra RAM halfway through, the way people talked about it. It's a good game, don't get me wrong. The art style really is beautiful, though it's not really one that appeals to me outside of games, so it only gets points for originality, not for appealing to me. The music is nice, also different, but nothing that gets me. The story mostly was cute but whatevs. The game mechanic, playing with time, is very cool. Yes, it's just prince of persia plus super mario, but pretty much every damn game is this thing plus that other thing. The game does a great job of moving you along introducing new abilities. But it doesn't to me have that amazing puzzle game ness. It does have its moments where you eureka and figure out the trick and you feel happy, but they are more of "ugh, finally!" than "holy crap that was awesome" I felt a lot of the latter in World of Goo, for instance, I had moments that just made me grin ear to ear with happiness that something worked out. I mostly did not feel that in this game, cool moments, but no grinning. The end, however, is genius, not so much the level, but the backwards after the level, was really fantastic. So the game wins for artisticness vs any game in this list, but loses for fun vs. world of goo.
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