PJ-Anon

Hi my name is CraftLass & I'm the live-in girlfriend of a PixelJunkie. What's worse, is I fear I may become one myself.

We downloaded the demo of PixelJunk Eden awhile back and played it a lot. It was a bit pathetic how much we played that demo before I decided we really should buy it. After all, a $10 game that gives you more than 10 hours of fun is a great value, right?

The thing is, I've barely even gotten to play it (or anything on our main entertainment system) since then. My boyfriend has become thoroughly addicted. It's at the point where he is claiming to hate the game because it's gotten a lot harder at his current level and he is quite frustrated, yet he still plays it so much he's even missed a lot of pre-season football (he's in a fantasy league and generally watches pre-season more avidly than the real season to try to spot the surprise new players that would be great for fantasy).

Meanwhile, I'm on the 5th spectra of Garden 1 still. I meant it when I said I've barely gotten to play at all. If it weren't for my PC and his PSP I don't know if I'd get to game anymore!

I'm glad he's so into the game, I really am. Yet, I can't help but wonder if I created a monster. The trouble with a two-gamer household is that it's hard to share, especially when multiple consoles are on the same TV. It's also easy to both forget about things like cooking, eating, drinking water, and sleeping. You know, that mundane stuff that's a requirement for being alive and healthy?

So, thank you and damn you to all the folks at PixelJunk, for making such a silly little game that is so darn compelling!

WHY Am I Enjoying This?!?!

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been playing Order Up! all night tonight. I threw it in thinking I would play for about an hour to check it out and then turn on TS3 and dig into the pile of shows my DVR recorded while I was out last night. Ah, the best-laid plans!

How did this silly game suck me in so hard? I've logged 2 hours of game time with no end in sight. That's actual play time, it's been more like 3 since I've turned it on.

It turns out that cleverness can make up for almost anything.

The gameplay is fairly obvious in some ways, especially if you have ever cooked in real or virtual life. The Wiimote is wonderful for this, you actually chop, flip items in the pan, tear off lettuce leaves, and so on. Does it feel like the real thing? Of course not. It's a pretty good video game version, though. Some of the bits of cooking are quite difficult to get just right (my bane is the lettuce thing), but quickly the game gives you the option of skipping the onerous tasks by giving them to an assistant to prepare. It's a nice feature even though I realized early on that by not practicing these motions I will never get better at them. Oh, well, that's why you get to hire more assistants as you need them and earn enough "coin".

Even a cooking game with nice controls and a bit of a challenge gets boring after a bit, though, which is where the cleverness comes in. Every so often they throw you a mini-game, from a mid-shift game to shake your assistant awake to a very funny rat-flicking challenge. They come up frequently and you can't get out of them. I actually had a lot of trouble at first figuring out how to flick rats and I still don't completely have the hang of it, but luckily, if you fail to rid your restaurant of rats the health inspection mini-game is quite easy. Yep, the Health Inspector will shut you down until you prove you can really get your plates clean!

The point, though, is that these games wake you out of your cooking stupor and get you more engrossed. The monotony that most games suffer from is decimated.

There is also a tiny bit of management to your restaurant ventures but it is very rudimentary, involving mostly upgrades and spices. The game gives you a mini-tutorial on all of these different gameplay aspects as they open up, which is nice. They don't take long and they usually tell you just what you NEED to know.

I just got to the end of the first restaurant, where the food critic comes to evaluate your greasy spoon. It's a little bit crazy how excited I was to manage a perfect recipe and plenty of praise from the critic.

I wanted to stick with the game to this point at least just to see what happens when you open your second restaurant, a Mexican one.

Oh, it's so wonderfully kitschy (cactus chairs!) and just adorable. This game may have the worst graphics I've seen on a home console (even for the Wii) but it manages to take advantage of the crappiness somehow. Even the food is cute and is kind of making me crave some tacos.

With a new restaurant comes not only new recipes but new spices to buy and more assistants to choose from. There are also some new characters and a really tough (for me) folding technique.

Oh, did I mention the characters? To add complication to all matters, your customers have personal preferences like how well done they like their meat and what spices should be in their food. You end up memorizing them a bit and the names are rather Rowling-like, obvious clues to their favorites, like "Tex Porterhouse" liking barbecue sauce and "Sweet Tooth" loving all sweet things (even when completely inappropriate).

You can go back and forth between your restaurants, too.

So, I should get to bed but it's been a fun night. Do I think I'll hang on to this game for all that long? No. Would I recommend it to a friend? Maybe, if they like this sort of thing. I would recommend it for kids, for sure, because it's definitely got some good basic lessons for them and they'd probably have an easier time mastering the motions than I did. Still, it's a nice, fairly mindless distraction that I will enjoy right up until it goes into the mailbox.

Today's Surprise

The thing I think I love most about games is that they are always surprising me. Not just in the sense that technology is catching up to imagination more and more every day, the actual games often surprise me. You can read reviews, listen to your friends, and even follow the development of the game and still have no idea of what you will experience while playing it. Games that look phenomenal turn out to be uninspired and games that look absolutely idiotic entertain you more than you could have dreamt.

Either way, it's always an adventure.

Thank goodness for GameFly! I am willing to put so many games in my GameQ that I wouldn't look at twice in a store. I mean, why not? There's only so many A-list titles out there. Sometimes you don't even want to play a "great game" (using the term like "great books"), the really good ones make you think a lot. They're also ridiculously addictive, and some days you just don't have time to get sucked in.

On the other hand, sometimes you pick up a casual game and do get REALLY sucked in. I'm experiencing this right now (well, I'm typing this during load screens, obviously you can't type with a Wiimote in your hand). I will now make a rather embarassing confession - cooking and food-related games seem to have become my favorite casual games of all. My phone is filled with them and months ago, on a whim, I put Order Up! in my GameQ because I heard it was the best one for the Wii. Still, when it got here I made so much fun of myself and considered sending it back right away. After all, cooking games are great on a subway, but do I really want to dedicate my precious home gaming time to one?

As it turns out, yes. I really do. For the first five minutes the game was on I was cringing at the over-infantile graphics and feeling, and then I did the tutorial and realized this game is HARD. To do okay is pretty easy, but who wants to do okay? I don't care if something is absolutely stupid, I would like to excel at it.

I'm going to start a new post with my review, as my musings have made this one so long already. I think the real point, though, is that you shouldn't shun a game just because it looks dumb. If you can try it out without unloading a bunch of cash you may as well give it a spin. Who knows? You just may be surprised.

(I must remind myself to read this every time I fall into that trap.)

Addicted to a Lame Game?

I hate to say this, but around here we've been a bit addicted to Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune on the Wii. The controls are clunky, aiming is deceptively tough, and there are a host of complaints and bad reviews about this one everywhere you look, all quite valid.

We can't stop playing it!

Maybe it's just my weird tastes (I also like some REALLY bad movies, like Ed Wood bad) but we're having so much fun with this game. The lame controls make it really difficult so maybe it's the determination factor ("This game will NOT defeat me!") that keeps us coming back. It's also a good game to play when you have 15 minutes until dinner and need something to occupy your mind, as each level seems to take about that long. Or maybe it's just that my boyfriend bought it for me for Christmas, and that makes me want to love it. Hard to say.

So, now that I've embarrassed myself a bit by admitting all of this, is there anyone out there who knows what it's like to be hooked on a game you KNOW is really lame? What are your favorite bad games?