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| | May 11, 2009
Hooray for Mum!
A slightly belated Happy Mother’s Day to mothers everywhere! Whether you go by Mom, Mama, Mommy, Mum, Ma, or – for those long-suffering ladies with rebellious teenagers – your first name in a slightly disdainful tone of voice, this holiday is just for you and I can’t imagine anyone who deserves it more. In fact, I think you should celebrate all week long! Have that extra cup of tea. Make someone else do the dishes. Enjoy yourself! | |
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Of course, Mother’s Day was a great opportunity for us to make another list of our current favorite games; that’s something we all love to do, since everyone wants to recommend their own particular fave for any given theme. (It’s like those little signs at Starbucks saying what sort of coffee each of the baristas drinks… except you won’t get the jitters by trying our suggestions.) So in honor of moms everywhere, the theme this time is Leading Ladies! We’ve also put together a bit of TV Moms Trivia for channel-surfers of the matronly persuasion, but we still contend that our own real-world moms are much cooler than June Cleaver or any of her television peers.
Daily Dose of Delightful Diversions
One of the things I’m really enjoying about the new MSN Games front page is the Daily Fun section. It’s funny: we’ve had most of those games available for ages, and yet I never really remembered to go play them. But now that they’re featured every time I go to our site, it’s kind of like having a sticky note on the fridge door that says “you haven’t played the new Sudoku puzzle yet today!”
As you can probably guess from the name, every game in the Daily Fun section has at least one new puzzle (or, in the case of Trivia, a new set of questions) to solve each day. And they’re all the sort of games you can play in 10-15 minutes or less, so it’s the perfect solution to what to do while you’re waiting for somebody to call you back, or the noodles are taking forever to boil, or you need a break but can’t really leave your desk. Or – and this is a completely hypothetical situation, of course – for when you’re sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room with your laptop and the guy next to you is doing nothing about his two screaming, wrestling toddlers and your only options to stay sane are to confront Mr. Oblivious about his blatant lack of parenting skills or put on your headphones and retreat into a nice, socially acceptable world of mental challenge and pretty jigsaw pictures…
…but I digress. The next time you have a few minutes to spare, check out the latest of our Daily Fun games, Spot the Difference!
Ranch Rush Redux
I mentioned in the last Coffee Break that I was playing a bit of Ranch Rush, the then-newest free web game on our site. (Although not the newest any more; I’d have to write a lot more Coffee Breaks – and drink a lot more coffee and lose a lot more sleep! – if I wanted to keep up with all the new games!) Well, over the past couple of weeks, “a bit” somehow turned into “a lot”. After a few rounds through the free version in pursuit of my Level 10 Mastery badge, I returned to the download version of the game. I’d played it before, when it first came out, but never got past finishing Casual Mode. This time, I went all the way through Casual and then moved on to Expert, and wow, even Mastery Level 10 didn’t prepare me for that sort of frantic, resource-wrangling panic. To use one of my father’s favorite phrases, I was “sweating bullets” by the last couple of rounds. It was fabulous!
As much as I love games, and given that I’ve played hundreds upon hundreds of them over the years, it’s rare for me to label one among my all-time favorites. But Ranch Rush is now right up there in my affections with Jewel Quest, Plantasia, and Text Twist as the best casual games I’ve ever played. If you like time-management games, and you haven’t taken a look at this one yet, please give it a try!
A Change of Scenery
Every new game is a change of scenery on the Isle of Catan, since the whole board reshuffles each time. But as some of you may have heard, our online version of Catan will be retiring soon, and that calls for a more dramatic change of venue. Now, there’s always Catan: the Computer Game for when you want to play offline against clever (and occasionally downright wicked) AI opponents.
For the true Catan junkie, though, only the thrill of live competition will do, and for that I invite you all to my own stomping grounds: Catan on Xbox Live Arcade. I’ve had more nail-bitingly tough matches in the Live Arcade version of Catan than I ever experienced playing with friends around the dining table… and that’s saying something, since my board-game buddies are devious. So if you’re looking for a real challenge (and the resultant bragging rights), fire up the family Xbox 360 and join us for an evening!
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| Tech Talk
So you’re trying to play You Know It! Trivia on Windows Live Messenger and this weird message pops up saying “ActiveX Objects Missing 2”, and now you’re wondering what sort of objects they are and where the first ones went and, above all, why you can’t get to your game? No worries. Just drop a message to zmaster@microsoft.com with “Messenger – ActiveX issue” as the subject line, and we’ll send you a list of potential solutions. You’ll be trivia-ing again in short order!
I’ll see you next time!
Ask Moxie!
Do you have a question or comment? I’d love to hear from you. Just email me at zmaster@microsoft.com and I’ll do my best to answer in one of these Coffee Breaks! Oh, please make sure to include your MSN Games nickname, so I know who to list here if I quote you!
(And if you have technical questions or problems with a game, we’ll cheerfully answer those as well. Just submit them through the support section of this site!)
More Moxie!
Need a bit more Coffee Break? Take a shuffle through our archives. | |
