Sometimes a game does not have to have good graphics to be great. Here’s a classic game thats been twisted upside down.

Enjoy. Here are other great games:

Shift 3
GemCraft

After eight long years, Blizzard finally announced a sequel to the addicting-as-crack Diablo II game. Diablo 3 promises to be a doozy with a re-vamped engine and play system(hell, it’d better be if it made us wait eight years for this). The game will be fullly in 3d and hopefully play more like a fully fledged RPG. Some fans are complaining about the fact that they are changing the formula some because it worked so well for the first two.

To those people, I have to say that times have changed and you have to either change with it or get out. A 2d point and click adventure of aimless slashing simply cannot compete in today’s triple-A game title market. One of the big letdowns for me in Diablo II was that it was really almost the same game as Diablo one with bigger worlds and more character classes. Playing it reminded me of the same-old-same-old. It also was lacking many actual RPG elements that made games like Final Fantasy so great.

While this new game has taken eight years to come to fruition, I’m impressed by what I see. The 3D environment looks fabulous and now you can actually interact with the environment to destroy the enemy - something sorely lacking in D2. I still remain skeptical, but I’m actually excited for Diablo III, but not as excited as I am about Starcraft II. Still with these two games on the horizon, there will be plenty of wasted time coming ahead.

If you’ve followed the world of online flash games, you would know that Bloons player pack 4 just came out. Actually I think there’s been four player packs before this so I can call this pack 4B or something. When the game originally came out, it was great. Completely brand new and one of the best games ever made. Now, however, each additional player pack has been received with less and less enthusiasm. The latest player pack still got decent ratings but did not get nearly the standing ovation that the first game did. I think the message is clear: people are tired of the same thing over and over again and its time for something new.

This is a piece of advice that Ninja Kiwi, the creator of bloons should take to heart. They really need to come up with something new. Most of these levels are same-old, same-old and some of them are downright impossible. There is very little innovation to these levels and people are just looking for another idea or game from what was once an extremely creative company. I hope they read this post as I’ve enjoyed most of their games and would like for them to come out with another blockbuster. Bloons has had its day, its time to move on to something else.

Growing up in the digital age, I’ve been fond of playing games with friends. I prefer real-time strategy games for Lan parties and this is a list of my five favorite RTS Lan games. Note that this list only includes games that I have played in a Lan setting and so may not include many of the newer titles.

#5:
Empire Earth(I haven’t played 2 and 3) — This is just like Age of Empires except with more ages. With the ability to fight anywhere from the ancient era to the modern era with 15 ages of upgrades, this was the ultimate epic game to play. Fielding thousands of units to kill enemies was fun too.

#4:
Warcraft III - Might be #1 for alot of people but I never really got into the micromanaging of a couple of units. I’d rather macro than Micro in RTS games. Still, the balance of 4 unique and distinct races led to many different strategies and play styles. There was enough variety to play for hours on end. Still, a great game.

#3:
Red Alert II - Red Alert II was great — especially compared to the piece of junk that was Tiberian sun. The game was well balanced and strategy was mostly Macro but good micro did help. Games were fast and battles were quick and furious. The combination of land, air, and sea, made for some very interesting battles. Yuri’s mind control was annoying though.

#2:
Starcraft — Its like the most widely done thing in Korea but it also makes for a great Lan party game. With three races utilizing completely different strategies and build orders, this game was always a blast to play. Although great for one-on-one or free-for-all, starcraft was at its best when play 2-on-2 or 3-on-3.

#1:
Total annihilation — My all-time favorite Lan game. Mass production, hundreds upon hundreds of units of many different varieties and just as many defensive structures. There were many times the battlefield was so filled with wreckage that it was hard to move across. The explosions were incredible and the fun was off the charts. By far, the best LAN RTS game ever.

Note: I heard supreme commander was like total annihilation but I haven’t played it on LAN yet, so I can’t comment.

I play a lot of online flash games. My favorite games are the tower defense games, mainly because they keep me interested for more than a few minutes. Here are my favorites from the ones I’ve played so far:

#1: Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 — By far and away the best tower defense game. Create your own maze with many towers. Towers are upgradeable through 5 levels. Three levels of difficulty plus many challenges. My favorite online game.

#2. Vector Tower defense — The selection of where to place the vectors, different mazes, and the variety of upgrades kept me interested for hours. The graphics and music fit the theme very well.

#3. Flash Element defense - One game I can easily say that the sequel is better than the first. The variety of enemies, towers, and upgrades were amazing. Also the ability to purchase elements back, move elements back, and other purchase-able upgrades made this game really enjoyable. It was a bit easy though.

#4. Bloons tower defense 2 - Pop the balloons and don’t let them escape. Pop the balloons using monkeys of different sorts. Many strategies you can form here by using tacs, cannon towers, dart towers, and more. There are certain ballons that are immune to certain attacks. Three difficulty levels are sure to challenge you for quite some time.

#5. Defender — Heros, upgradaeable unit-towers, and unlockable speciality towers put this game over the top. It takes a while to get used to the map grid though.

#6. Elite Forces Defense - A really good follow-the-path game. New paths for the creeps appear every so often so you have to pay attention. What really makes this game good is the numerous upgrade paths for towers and the hero.

#7. Anti-TD — Not so much great as it is for the novel idea. This is the opposite of tower defense. You must build a creep that can go through the defenses.

#8. Temple Guardian 2 — This plays more like an RTS than any other game. You have to collect numerous resource, build stuff like markets to increase your economy and then defend your temple.

#9. Turret Wars — Whats cool about this game is that you get to set up your own turrets and use natural obstructions to defend against enemies.

#10. Xeno Tactic - Alot like desktop tower defense but futuristic. Its not as robust as DTD, but the theme kept me entertained for a long time. A good variety of difficulties for maps too.

I’ve been writing a lot about politics lately and have been ignoring my other big interest online, flash games. I often play these games(my favorite are tower defense) and I usually go to a few sites that have the best games and features. In this bit I will list my favorite game sites and what they feature. Some of these will be well-known sites that everyone has visited, others will be smaller sites that some people have no yet found. All of the sites have hundreds of games to keep you busy and interested for hours on end.

1. MiniClip — Miniclip is a huge site that produces its own games or licenses other games. All the games on their site are specially produced or licensed to them and there are hundreds of games here to play. Many of them have multi-player capabilities. Miniclip also has contests, prizes, and tournaments. Its definately one arcade site you want to check out.

2. Newgrounds game collection — Everyone knows Newgrounds and although I do come here more often to watch cartoons, I’ve spent a good deal of time here playing games as well. Newgrounds probably has the largest collection of any site as almost anything that is published eventually makes its way to newgrounds. There are always ratings and discussions of the games going on here.

3. Jay is games - More of a blog than an arcade, JIG always has news, reviews, and games for you to check out and play.

4. Armor games — One of the biggest publishers/producers of flash games there is. Armor games comes out with many new games each week and their site has the best games for other publishers as well. Armor has revamped in the last few months to include a membership system, game comments, and high scores.

5. Crazy Monkey games — Another large publisher of games. CMG is known for licensing quality flash games from developers. Their site only has a few hundred games, but all of the games are theirs and are of high quality and enjoyable to play.

6. Flash Ninja games — A large publisher of games with more than 70 of its own unique games to count. This place is also a sort of game dump for authors who want to get their games more exposure. This is a fast updating site that adds at least 10 games per day.

7. Games for work - A gaming site that adds 20 games every weekday. Quality of the games varies and they add just about anything but most of the games are enjoyable. As of date, this site has over 9000 flash games.

8. Orisinal games — A collection of easy to play homemade games that have been fun for me for many years. I really like this site.

9. Hallpass - A great gaming site with high scores and challenges.

The following are a few sites that didn’t quite make the cut:
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1. Addicting games — This site would have made it into my favorites if it actually hosted most of the games. Instead it frames them. Framed game pages are just plain annoying, so I don’t play here much.

2. Kongregate — I really want to like this site and would probably go here more often if it wasn’t down half the time and extremely slow for most of the time it is up. Many times, hardly any of there advanced features work correctly. This lack of proper functionality keeps me away most of the time.

When one thinks of RTS, two franchises should automatically pop up. One is warcraft/starcraft and the other is Command and Conquer. These two series of games helped carve out the RTS Genre. Here are some previews of the game:

They look pretty nice. For more previews, check out gamespot . I’ve always liked the C&C games more than warcraft. With the exception of Tiberian sun, I’ve spent hours playing each one both in single player and in multiplayer. Red Alert 2 was one of the best LAN games my friends and I ever played and I look forward to Red Alert 3.  Red Alert 3 takes place during the cold war, in a scenario where the cold war never ended. Despite the somewhat seriousness of the storyline, units like parachuting bears keep the game fun. Red Alert III will also feature prominent Naval units, something other RTS’s have failed to do. In fact in RA 3, naval power is a key part of victory as some resource nodes are only found in water. Looking at the preview, I can’t wait to grab a copy when it comes out. I just hope my video-card is up to the task.

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Game plays of the day:

TBA++

DJ FEST Vol 1