Darth Brick

Recently I sold my PS2 and games to a co-worker. Surprisingly the only games I was sad to give up were the Star Wars Legos games. So I went out and bought the Complete Saga for my 360 using the cash I just made from my PS2 sale… and the cosmic wheel of video game karma keeps turning.

Seeing it again for the first time for the second time I am in awe of this game all over again. Not only is it a perfect blend of core and casual game design it’s also possibly one of the most solid star wars games out there.

Typically core games are hard and you die a lot. Typically casual are easy and you never die. In Lego Star Wars you die a lot but you come right back to life so it doesn’t entirely matter. Half the time I’m playing with my wife is spent watching her fall off ledges and thinking she is playing my character and it doesn’t matter a damn bit because it doesn’t stop us from finishing levels and just enjoying the game.

And like I said it is a really solid Star Wars game, no other one out there lets you play almost every single main character from the series. Few other games mesh ships, the force, the swords, the planets and the guns so well.

Son of Starcraft

“Carrier has arrived”

While I am as excited as the next man about the arrival of Starcraft 2 (provided the next man isn’t a Korean) I am more excited to see what improvements have been made to battle.net since Warcraft 3. I kind of missed the boat with the original Starcraft, my mother would only buy Apple computers for our family and by the time Starcraft was ported to Mac’s most of the newbie fun was gone. Every match I played was on Big Game Hunters against people who were insanely good at the game. It wrecked the experience for me.

Warcraft 3 fixed many problems with online competitive RTS gaming, like finding an opponent of equal skill, playing on a variety of maps and easy ways to find your friends. Having that kind of back end for a Starcraft game has gotten me really excited, more so than if the game was just releasing on it’s own.

By far my favorite innovation introduced be Warcraft 3 was the ability to be an “observer” in a match of other players. You could join and watch the action in real time. Like watching a live sporting event it was more exciting than just watching a replay, the difference between watching a live baseball game and a recorded one. RTS games are stressful and after a few matches I personally would need a break. But with Warcraft 3 after a few matches you could join as an observer, relax and be a spectator.

The only downside to all this was that you actually had to be there at the start of the match to join in as a spectator. What Blizzard really needs to do is set up Starcraft 2 so that you could look at a list of games in progress and join as a spectator mid game. Kind of like flipping through channels on a TV. As long as the joining observer doesn’t cause any lag for the players in the match this would be a brilliant way to increase users on Battle.net. South Korea already has two television channels (or did?) dedicated to Starcraft replays anyway, the ability to join and watch games in progress would also turn Starcart 2’s Battle.net into a kind of pseudo-TV.

Ode to Joy

Ok I dont know why it’s taken this long and I’m mad I didn’t think of it first but the Ode to Joy needs to be in every casual game ever. Peggle, plays the Ode to Joy every time you clear a level. The best casual games are all about continually winning (I click something and I get points, I click something else and it glows, I sneeze and magic faeries wipe my nose). Playing the Ode to Joy, possibly the most celebratory piece of music ever written was a stroke or genius.