I grew up on video games. I’ve supported, advocated, and played video games a huge portion of my life so far.

I’ve grown. You’ve grown.

There’s a problem, though. You’ve grown a little too big for me in a sense.

Let me start off by saying this. I love epic 60+ hour games.

I love them a lot.

I even love beautiful cutscenes. I never said I didn’t.

I’m married now. Working full time. I have 2 kids, and another on the way. I still game, but my time is REALLY limited. All I’m asking for is for you to allow me to suspend my games when I don’t have time to reach a save point.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to allow me to save whenever I want. All I want is the ability to suspend my system, turn it back on at a later time, and pickup where I left off.

I know it’s not THAT complicated to do. I love that I can do that with my DS and PSP.

Why can’t I do it with my Wii or 360? Why must I always feel rushed when I play more in-depth games, frantically trying to find save points when my time is almost up?

Seriously. I love playing your games, but I’m missing out on more and more gaming because I can’t afford to waste time playing, and not knowing if all that I’ve done over the course of an hour or two will matter, or if I’ll have to do it all over again.

Stumbled across Canabalt this morning. It’s a simple to play (as in controls) game where you only can only do one thing…jump.

In the game, SOMETHING is chasing you. You run faster and faster, having to jump across building and over objects to get away. Meanwhile, jets are screaming past you in the opposite direction and giant robots can be seen in the background.

My best score so far has been around 1200m. I’m wondering if you can slow yourself down enough by hitting things to actually see what’s chasing you.

I’ll have to try that.

The game starts you out with a phrase, two additional words, a girl tied to a rock, and two different types of sea life.  You can manipulate all these things, and must do so to figure out how to “beat” the game.  Different combinations will produce different effects.  As the game progresses, the phrase at the top of the screen will slowly change to reflect what is going on.

There’s two endings to the game, and I won’t spoil how to get either one of them.

After playing, check out the designer’s other, similar, games.  Very tasteful, beautiful, and well done.

Today I Die

I get a mention in the first post in the series, Advice for Sony and the PS3.  Head on over and check it out!

Totally pointless, yet I actually had a use for it today! I wanted to choose between Dr. Mario and Lost Winds on WiiWare. Lost Winds won!

(Good thing too, because I was going to buy that one anyway)

I’m playing Puzzle Pirates again, and loving it. For those who don’t know, Puzzle Pirates is a massivly multipleyer online game where you create a pirate and do all sorts of fun things. You can join the navy, pillage with a crew, build up your house, own a shop, etc…

What makes this all unique is that everything in the game is accomplished through playing different puzzle games.

Sailing, bilging, gunning, drinking, etc… are all different puzzles.

The nice part of the game is that there are two types of oceans to play on. Subscriber oceans require a monthly subscription, but allow full access to the game. Dubloon oceans allow you to play without a subscription, but require dubloons to access certain things in the game. Dubloons can be purchased with real cash, or with your Pieces of Eight (the games currency).

I highly recommend you give it a shot. It takes care of both my video game and board game itch at once

If you do decide to give it a shot you can find me on the Hunter Ocean.  My pirate’s name is Topplebottom.

Eventually we heard about the now-famous bug that the Wii version was Mono only.  No big deal right?  We enjoyed the game, and that’s all that mattered.

Well when the time came and Activision was offering replacement discs I figured, “What the hell.  I payed for the game, so I might as well get what I paid for.”

We sent the game back in the envelope provided to us and just got the game back last night.

What a difference!  I can’t believe how much we were missing out on.  Certain songs sound completely different.  It’s a much better playing experience now and I recommend everyone with the Wii version to send in their discs and hear what they’ve been missing.

Click on that sucker to get my Wii friend code. All of my Miis are set to travel, so they may be hopping onto a Wii near you!