| As a veteran skeptic, I have to wonder whether even a really compelling game can be useful if the smoker or compulsive snacker doesn't already want to change their habits. But it's nice to think that my favorite games might be a tool in someone's quest to become healthier!
As one of my colleagues pointed out, though (and I can't figure out why he was looking straight at me when he asked this), what if the thing you're addicted to is casual games? Hmm. That's a conundrum.
On a completely unrelated note, I've been playing three very different games for the past couple of weeks; the only thing they have in common is how much I enjoy them.
Stylin’ in suburbia
Let me say in advance that I might not exactly have the best taste in home decor. My own home has been described by friends as "a bizarre mix of old European hunt club and Victorian cathouse", so perhaps a game about designing coordinated rooms isn't my best choice of entertainment. Nonetheless, I find myself fascinated with Eye for Design, despite the fact that its furniture and accessory palette contains nothing I would use in my own place. (Where are the antique fainting sofas? The tapestries? The giant preserved insects from South America?) This does illustrate one of the key points of the game, though: everyone's taste is different. And as the game's main character, your task is to design custom rooms based on people's stated preferences and implied clues.
For each home, you're given a number of rooms to decorate, and some basic instructions. For each room, you have a set of different furniture and accessory sets, and a limited number of places you can put each item within the room. As you place items, you can gauge the homeowner's happiness with your decisions; if you can make them happy enough, they'll allow you to decorate an extra room at the end of the project. These bonus rooms are even more entertaining than the rest of the house; you're given a wider range of furnishings, and free reign to place them anywhere you like and decorate to your own taste. (Ahhhhh, my chance to properly clutter things up... every room needs ten different paintings, a multitude of lighting sconces, and rich color on the walls. Design vindication!)
Anyway, it certainly beats moving the furniture around your own home to sate that design craving you get from watching too many home-improvement shows.
Flo goes to the dogs
When I was a kid, I spent about a year of Saturdays hanging out at our local mall's pet shop, watching the mice and hamsters run around in their little wheels, petting the bunnies, and vowing to get a job there when I was in high school. I was determined. I was also such a fixture at the store that the lady who ran the place made me sit down before she told me they were closing down for good.
Of course, by the time I was actually in high school, I'd long since moved on to wanting a summer job "in computers" (a phrase that seems odd to me now, come to think of it, since I had absolutely no idea what exactly I wanted to do "in computers") But I still love pets, and I do tend to linger at pet stores when I stop for a bag of litter or a new cat toy. So you can guess how quickly I downloaded Pet Shop Hop as soon as it popped up on our site. A game about running your own pet store? Sign me up!
The first thing I noticed was the game's close relation to Diner Dash; the very first scene shows your character out for a run with her good friend Flo and their dogs. (Later in the game, Flo stops by your store from time to time.) The gameplay is also quite similar to Diner Dash, as you attempt to keep customers happy while filling their orders. The further you get into the levels, though, the more you realize this difference between the two games: Pet Shop Hop is much more complex and correspondingly tougher. Great news for everyone who loves Diner Dash but considers it a bit too easy... a lunch rush full of businesswomen and cell phone addicts when everyone demands extra crab sticks pales by comparison to a warm summer day when everyone in town wants a specific color of pet, vet-certified, in a particular type of cage with this color of gravel at the bottom, oh and one of those little plastic decorations as well, while you're at it. I'd say it's a crazy-maker, but honestly, I'm enjoying every minute of it.
On the other hand, I'm kind of happy I never had that summer job at the pet store!
Missing money, hidden pictures
I'm always thrilled to see a new game in any of my favorite hidden-pictures series, and I really enjoyed the original Mystery P.I. game, so there was no question I'd be spending way too much time playing Mystery P.I.: The Vegas Heist. The choice of setting is brilliant; Vegas is so glittery and full of distraction that you can hide practically anything among the chaos. Better still, the game developers have been getting more and more creative with each new game, and I've had several moments of sheer befuddlement when I finally find an item and can't figure out for the life of me how I missed seeing it before. It's like seeing a piece of moss move on a rock and then realizing that it was a speckled lizard all along. Between ingenious shading, excellent misdirection, and making some items part of signs or other displays, this latest game has a lot of "was that there all the time?" moments.
As an added challenge, each level also contains a hidden casino chip, key, and fingerprint. Finding them all gives you bonus points and unlocks new game features. Which sounds easy enough, but I assure you that Sherlock Holmes would have a tough tiime finding some of those fingerprints. They're actually quite large, but on some screens they're so well hidden that it's better to find them first and then rush through the item list, using hints if necessary. I ran out of time twice while trying to find the last fingerprint in a set of scenes! And to a die-hard gamer like me, being confounded by a game like this is absolutely wonderful. It's a challenge.
Here's a quick tip for anyone playing The Vegas Heist: when you find an item, don't click on it right away. Remember where it is, find one or two more items, and then click on them all as quickly as you can. You'll get bonus points for "finding" them one right after another! | |
