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Title: Boombot
For: Web browsers
Developer: Kaiparasoft
Publisher: Ninja Kiwi
Age rating: N/A

First up is Boombot, in which you have a limited number of bombs with which to propel a cute little indestructible robot to the exit of each stage. Sometimes you only have one bomb; other times you have several. Sometimes there are other explosives in the stage you can set off for a boost; other times there aren’t. It’s a lot of fun, in any case. Just don’t run out of bombs or fall into any open pits, or you’ll have to try the level again.

Title: IndestructoTank A.E.
For: Web browsers
Developer and publisher: Armor Games
Age rating: N/A

And secondly we have IndestructoTank A.E. In this one you control an invincible but weaponless tank beset on all sides by helicopters, planes and other vehicles. You use the explosions of their bombs and missiles to propel your tank into the air, crushing your foes with the sheer weight of the vehicle. Same concept as Boombot, totally different execution, and just as fun in its way. There is a bit of animated blood in this one, so beware.

Enjoy!

(Screen captures by Justin Hoeger)

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“The Dark Knight,” with its hundreds of millions of dollars in box-office monies, is easily the hit of the summer. And don’t think the suits at Warner Bros. and DC haven’t taken notice!

Displeased with the lukewarm reception for Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” a couple summers ago, Warner Bros. has decided to kick that continuity to the curb and start anew.

Says Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov as per the article above: “Had ‘Superman’ worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009, but now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman. We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the character allows it.”

Hooold it right there, bucko. Dark? Superman? No. That’s not what the character is about. And though “Superman Returns” had its troubles and shortcomings — it was kind of boring and not much happened — they weren’t related to its moral shading.

Let’s get something clear here: “The Dark Knight” has not succeeded simply by virtue of its darkness. It has succeeded because it is the single best rendition of the core of the character, his environment, and his friends and foes that has ever been put to celluloid.

The bleak tone of the movie is a necessary means to that end — Gotham is the sort of place where a scar-faced lunatic can use a talk-show phone call to whip up such a state of public panic that its citizens become willing to murder each other in a frenzy of self-preservation, and where Batman himself must wrestle with whether or not to put the Joker out of everyone’s misery at the cost of his own soul.

Metropolis is not that sort of place, and Superman is not that sort of character. He has already conquered his demons — he is a virtual god walking upon (well, soaring above) the Earth — and he uses his power to protect all that he can, not destroy and despoil. That’s what the character is about.

Besides, “Superman III” already explored the unpleasant aspects of the Last Son of Krypton, with Clark Kent splitting into good and bad versions of himself thanks to synthetic Kryptonite. But hey, the good Clark managed to strangle his doppelganger to death, so everything was OK in the end! Yeah, it was really dumb.

But making the next “Superman” movie dark for darkness’ sake — well, that’s downright dim.

(Image from Movieweb.com)

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When I was a kid we mostly played pretty traditional board games: Chess, Monopoly, Life, Connect 4, Balderdash, Clue, Pente, Scrabble, stuff like that. When I was a teenager my brother started playing Dungeons & Dragons — which I  never really got into (too abstract, I think) — and both of us occasionally played fantasy-themed board games like HeroQuest and Battle Masters.

In high school I played a lot of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering (I still have a box of the cards somewhere — anyone need a Vesuvian Doppelganger? I’ve got, like, four.), but I quit the game after myself and my lunchtime play buddies graduated — no one left to play with, you see. Since then my attention has remained focused on video games; aside from occasional matches of Pente or Boggle or whatever with friends and at family gatherings, I hardly played non-electronic games for years, and I certainly didn’t buy any.

I realized last year that I’ve been missing out. The catalyst was Catan, a board game whose cardboard version I’d heard talked up on message boards but which I’d never tried (its picture is at the top of this entry). Suddenly it was made available in video-game form on the Xbox 360’s Live Arcade — I played it a few times, and liked it. I wasn’t very good, but I had fun. And so I started looking into what modern board games had to offer, and discovered the existence of German-style board games, of which Catan is one of the most prominent examples.

Over the following year or so, more digital versions of notable board and card games were released on XBLA, including Carcassonne, Lost Cities and Ticket to Ride. I also figured out that there are more than a few board games based on video games. And now there’s even one based on Battlestar Galactica, pretty much my favorite show ever.

So I gave in. With a birthday coming up a while back, I put games on my list and received a couple doozies: Twilight Imperium, along with its expansion, Shattered Empire; Arkham Horror, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft (thankfully minus the overt racism and classism that marked his writing); and a fun little word game called Quiddler. And about a week later my wife and I picked up a copy of Catan from Tom’s Toys in SLO, and liked it so much that we’ve put in an Amazon order for the Seafarers expansion.

With so many new things to play, I think we’ll be set for a while. Not that I don’t have my eye on a few games for the future.

Catan is the one we’ve played the most — the goal  is to gather resources and build settlements and roads on an island, with the first player to reach 10 “victory points” declared the winner (we’ve found the 10-point limit makes for a shorter game than we’d prefer, so we’ve been upping it to 13).

We haven’t yet had time (or enough people) to try out Twilight Imperium, but it looks like a blast — it’s a space-conquering game where three to eight players try to become the emperor of the known galaxy through conquest and political maneuvering.

I played a few practice rounds by myself to get a handle on the rather complex rules — this one isn’t a rookie game,  but figuring out how a beast like this works is half the fun.

And finally, Arkham Horror is a battle with the forces of chaos and madness. You have to maintain your character’s sanity and stamina while fighting monsters and  exploring alternate dimensions, then return to the city of Arkham so you can shut and seal the gates leading to these strange other worlds. Seal enough of them and you win; take too long and one of Lovecraft’s mythical monsters, like Cthulhu, wakes up and probably eats you. There’s a chance that you can send the creature back whence it came if it wakes up, but the odds are against you — the odds are always against you in this game. It makes for an intense, suspenseful game, and is the only board game I’ve played in which the players can all lose.

The point of all this is that board games these days are really neat, and if all you’re familiar with are the classics it would be worth your while to take a look at what newer games have to offer. Locally, it appears that Tom’s Toys and Captain Nemo Games & Comics have the best selections, though Barnes & Noble has its share as well. Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed and notable local sources. And by all means, discuss your own favorites!

(Images from Wikipedia)

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Title: Debrysis
For: Windows
Developed and published by: OUEO Factory
Age rating: N/A

“Debrysis” is about as simple an action game as can be: You drive around a little vehicle in an enclosed arena and shoot at everything that’s trying to kill you, which is everything that’s not a power-up or weapon pickup. It’s good, blasty fun.

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This week marked a momentous occasion: The first game based on the bizarrely funny Internet cartoon Homestar Runner was released. I ran right out (or actually, sat right down on the couch) to download the game onto my Wii console, but I’ve hardly had time to play it.

My colleague/nemesis Danny, however, has. So I asked him to share some thoughts on the game, called “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attrractive People Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner.” Here’s what he banged out on his rickety keyboard:

If you know the name Strong Bad, then there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.”  For fans of Home Star Runner, it’s probably the best $10 you’ll spend this week.  I don’t know about the non-fans, and frankly, I don’t care about them, because they suck and are wrong.

The game itself is a point-and-click adventure in the style of the recent “Sam & Max” games (from the same developer, Telltale Games), which can’t be a bad thing.  You control Strong Bad as he attempts to pander to his e-mail audience by beating up Homestar.  The puzzles themselves are simple enough, and most of the enjoyment from the game comes from the hilarious dialogue and ridiculous plot.

There are nice little incidental things to play around with, too.  You can send e-mails to your friends using Lappy (Strong Bad’s laptop), play Snake Boxer 5 on what appears to be an old Atari 2600, and write your own Teen Girl Squad comic, which Strong Bad will then rate for you.  Awesome, right?

While you can probably play through the entire game in two or three hours, you’d miss out on most of the fun.  So go buy it, play it and then come back and thank me for telling you how awesome it was and making you buy it and play it.

The game is 1,000 Wii Points ($10) per episode for the Wii, $8.95 per episode for the PC, $34.95 for all five PC episodes. I’m not sure the Wii version is worth the $15 premium over the course of the full “season” of episodes, but I’ve paid more than that for less entertainment.

(Screen capture by Justin Hoeger)

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Title: WeeWar
Developed and published by: WiiWar Ltd.
Age rating: N/A

It’s called “WeeWar,” and it is a free turn-based wargame you play in your Web browser. There is an optional subscription fee for players who want access to additional unit types, the ability to run up to 10 games at once (the game hangs on an absent player’s turn until it’s resolved, and updates  players on opponents’ moves via e-mail) and other goodies. But it’s free to play the basic version, and the colorful graphics make it look a lot like “Advance Wars” on a hex grid. Ands everyone loves hex grids, right? Right.

The game itself looks like it would easily fall in the E or E-10+ range if it were rated by the ESRB. However, as an unrated online game with a number of customizable components (player designed maps, player avatars, etc.), you never know what crude or crass things you might come across, so be aware of that possibility.

(Screen capture by Justin Hoeger)

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In the meantime, a bit of news for the “World of Warcraft” players in the audience: If you manage to hook a friend (as in, send them a trial account key that they later upgrade to a full account for at least two months of game time), Blizzard will give you some goodies. These include faster character leveling and the ability for you or your friend to summon each other for easier teaming-up.

But the real prize is the Zhevra, a horned zebra mount you can ride around. Mounts in WoW typically cost a lot of in-game money and usually can’t even be bought until a character reaches a fairly high level, so getting one for “free” like this seems like it would make it worth the trouble to refer a friend to the game.

Oh, and if you don’t play the game: Watch out if you receive an invitation from someone trying to score their own Zhevra. This game is a tough habit to break.

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