What We’re Playing – Sept ’11

Adam the Artist

I recently retreated to a childhood favorite while I wait for Silent Hill Downpour & Batman. Anyone remember Psi-Ops for the X-Box? It was a really creative third-person shooter, with mind control powers and pyrokinesis, and the power to blow people’s heads up with your mind. Sure, the AI is dumb as bricks, and almost all the boss fights are completed by throwing boxes at people to death. But still, mind-jacking a sniper, making them shoot all their friends, then jumping them off a building was an experience worth reliving. You can download a free, ad-supported version somewhere (couldn’t find a good link), or buy it here.

On iOS I fell in love with Gesundheit! this month. It’s a stylish stealth game about monsters that eat boogers… Despite what that might sound like, it’s well worth your money.

Alex the Codesmith

My current playing habits on iOS, whenever I do have time to play, gravitates towards Touchgrind BMX lately. I’m a huge fan of the old Tony Hawk Pro Skater series back in the day, and illusion labs’ latest entry brings back that spark, and also executes it extremely well on a mobile platform.

It’s that genuine feeling of accomplishment that you actually got better at something rather than the game artificially boosting stats as you progress that I find appealing with these kind of games. Starting out in touchgrind BMX my scores were meager and it looked completely impossible to achieve the scores needed to advance to further levels. But after watching a tutorial or two, I immediately saw what I needed to work on, and through practice my scores starting rising and levels started unlocking! A pure game. Love it.