Cloud - It's like a daydream you play

I...I have nothing smart-assy to say here.

Cloud is a oddball game, especially for the current gaming environment.  When the whole world seems bent on making you shell out money every month for games you already own, and forcing you to look down a gun sight for any kind of solid gameplay, Cloud stands out as something totally apart, like a snowman in a battlefield.

First of all, It's peaceful.  I mean really, genuinely peaceful.  The amazing thing is it does this without being boring at all.  You fly about as nightshirted avatar of a day-dreaming boy, collecting and shepherding clouds around to form shapes, or pushing them against storm clouds to make rain.  The thing is, at no time do you feel stressed.  Even when you're trying for the eighth time to make a shape, it's just all so pretty and peaceful it's hard to get worked up.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Not since NiGHTS has a game made more happy to fly.  The controls take a few seconds to get used to, but soon you'll be zipping around, collecting clouds and just generally exploring.  The area is somewhat minimal, but everything is done with such a soft, day-dreaming style that it's still gorgeous to look at.  It's hard to concentrate on missions at times, with the nagging desire to just pick a direction, put the hammer down, and fly!

What's more, there's a nice sized community of folks making add-on missions for converting black clouds, making puzzle shapes, and just generally fleshing out the experience.  At only four levels, it's a short game, but you'll find yourself playing it again and again.  It's just a fun, wide-open sandbox of imagination.  Oh, have i mentioned how cool it is to fly in this game?  It is.  Really.

I keep finding myself grinning at the screen like a idiot.  Well, more of one.

The cherry on top is that it's a free game, distributed here for the joy of all.  It's won tons of awards, and is well worth at least a look.  I may not be the next big thing in the game world, but it's interesting to see that there are still some people with truly original ideas out there.

Now, 'scuse me while I kiss the sky.

All Of Our Friends Are Dead - Dear god what am I playing...

This is the least disturbing thing in the entire game.

I first heard of this on a paranormal message board.  It was talking about creepy games, and with a name like All Of Our Friends Are Dead, I thought it sounded like it was worth a look.  After a bit of looking, I downloaded it, then proceeded to get ready to play.  Waited 'till night, turned off the lights, put on headphones, and sat to play something neat.

I have rarely been more poorly prepared.

THE BULLETS, THEY DO NOTHING!

The game is very, very surreal.  the visuals are gritty and low-tech, but they take away nothing from the hysterical fever-dream horror.  It plays like a Silent Hill infested version of Metal Slug, with a hefty machine gun spitting a almost solid beam of ammo.  It should say something that all that firepower gives you ZERO sense of security.  The odd, grinding pulse-noise that comes off a dead enemy is almost worse then letting them live.

The levels are odd, switching between basic platforming to puzzles and back seeming at random.  One of the first "boss" things, a jittering red...thing, with a wide mouth and glitch-flickering tentacles, appears to fight by belching bleeding, spinning fetal monsters at you.  At no point does the sense of horror ever, ever let up.  It just goes from high-octane horror to subtle mind screw, then back.

This is either a boss, or what God made because you touch yourself at night.  Maybe both.

There is a built-in quicksave feature, and I suggest you use it OFTEN.  One hit is death, and trust me when I say you will die a LOT the first go-around.  It's not a very long game, really, but it packs a lot of creepy, mind-screwy madness in to that small package.  What strikes me the most is that sections seem like...glitches.  Like something you weren't meant to see or get to.  Do a quick little google search for creepy game glitches to see what I'm talking about.

I very much recommend this for any fans of creepy stuff, and for lovers of oddball games in general.  Grab it here and get strapped in.  For best effect, use the dark/headphone combo, as the audio is great as well.  Electronic pulses, rumbling ambiance, it all just adds to the strangeness.  Whats more, a sequel, Au Sable is now out, so if you like this, you can keep the shuddering, mind-twitching horror rolling.

Have fun...hell, you weren't sleeping anyway, right?

And then, sometimes, it just decides to screw with you.

Chex Quest - Defender of the Crunchy

I still think the armor is cool...

Back in 1996, FPS games were really taking off, but as a sheltered kid who's parents still believed that any exposure to violent video game would turn me in to a drooling serial killer, all I could to was watch from the sidelines, and play at friends house.  Then, I found a CD in my cereal box.   I then proceeded to play Chex Quest like a fiend for the next three days.

Chex Quest is a promotional game that came with (surprise surprise) Chex cereal.  You play as the Chex warrior, fighting of the green slime creatures called Felmoids.  What's more, your weapons don't actually kill anything, but teleport the critters back to their home dimension.  This game should be wretched and pathetic, a stupid promo game...and yet, it's not.

ohgodohgodohgod

This game was made with pure, unadulterated love.  This game is perfectly faithful to its doom roots, to supercharge health packs (breakfast cereals) to giant room-clearing BFG-type zorch cannons.  The enemies, while generally simple, can still give you problems with encirclement, and at higher levels can give even veterans the occasional problems.

The layout, the level structure, everything FEELS right here.  There's pitch-black rooms and halls, sending you stumbling along, hugging walls...suddenly, there's a screech and you start getting pounded with goo.  Ideally, if this doesn't send you in to a seizure-inducing collage nightclub flashback, it will feel much like the good old DooM.

Yes, we're fighting off alien invasion with a PowerSpork.  No, I don't see the problem with this.

What's more, it's non-violent.  Normally this is almost a negative for me, but let me explain:  I have three kids.  What's more, my eldest daughter will get nightmares at the drop of a hat, despite her love for all things creepy.  I love first person shooters, yet can't play most of them during the day.  This one, I can...hell, even SHE can play it, and I don't have to worry!

This is a somewhat short game, but trust me, it's worth checking out.  Go to almost any video game forum and bring up Chex Quest, and you're bound to have at least a couple rabid fans chattering about it within a few posts.  Plus, the big deluxe edition, Chex Quest 3, has all three official games in one.  it's good for a day's fun, when blood and gore has burned you out.

Is...is anyone else disturbed by this?  Anyone?

DooM - No, that's how they spell it, it's not a typo...

Wait...are the ones on the right smiling?

Good lord, talk about a game that really changed the face of video games.  There are some landmark games in history, and this one seems to get overlooked by things like Mario, Pong, or Halo.  For god's sake, before the term "First Person Shooter" came in to common usage, any FPS was called a DooM Clone.  Few other games bear the distinction of having their entire genre defined with their name.

DooM, for the eight people who don't know, is about a outbreak of demons.  To be specific, a far-future lab on Mars is toying with teleportation and manage to open a direct pipeline to Hell, and get the entire moon the lab is based on sucked in to the plane of suffering to boot.  You, the gritty space marine, are the only one left to fight back the hordes of demonic horrors and save the earth.

Ok, so this is such a tired line, but the thing to remember is, THIS IS WHAT STARTED IT.  This base concept, with a few tweaks here and there, was rehashed for the next ten years, and is still in circulation to this day.  What's more, this is one of the first games to really bring the concept of video game violence to the main stream, both in the game community and the mainstream media.

FEEL THE FURY OF MY TEEN ANGST!

And oh momma the violence.  No, it's not the beat-you-with-your-own-arm shock of God of War, but it's amazing for the day.  Unlike Wolfenstine, where people just drop in a small spray of blood, the enemies ooze, shudder, scream and melt when they're killed.  The slow explosion of oddly colored guts that come with the death of the Cacao Demon is still a favorite of mine, in all its pixilated glory.

Not only did you get to fight zombies, pink flesh-ripping bull horrors, spider-brains and floating balls of death, but you got to wander through a field of gory wreckage afterward.  What's more, the levels themselves were creepy as hell, and sparked a whole wave of parent outreach and protest to stave off the impending doom of western civilization.

Are you trying to say wandering through oceans of blood is anything more then good, clean fun?

Another amazing aspect of this whole thing is the modding community.  They must be one of the most dedicated, longest-running bunch of gaming geeks in the world, because they have created literally THOUSANDS of levels, packs, and whole games based off the DooM code.  There is no limit to what's been done, everything from megaman and barney themes, to stuff that makes Silent Hill look like Yo Gabba Gabba.  Pick a movie, there's probably a mod of it floating around, the Alien mod got awards for years and years.

Not Pictured: When the Marshmallow Man explodes like a hefty bag full of meat.

If you've never played it, PLEASE do so.  If you have, dust it off and play it again.  Yes, you'll giggle over the cheap graphics and simple gameplay, but the Cyberdemon can still get the pulse racing now and then.  The ZDooM project has made some amazing strides in bringing the game to new audiences and cleaning it up a bit, while still keeping it faithful to the core system.  Check it out if you can, really.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get knee deep in the dead...