The Smarmy Carny

A while ago, The Smarmy Carny covered two Tower Defense games worth playing, and strategically the best game out there is Desktop Tower Defense.

At long last, the Casual Collective website has opened its virtual doors for anyone to register and enjoy. Previously, I had been playing under the "invite only" beta version of the site.

MPDTD — Multiplayer Desktop Tower Defense

MPDTD

The Multiplayer version of Desktop Tower Defense is much more thrilling and fast paced than the original single player version when the Arcade version is selected. In the original, the higher your tower upgrade, the longer the upgrade took, and when you sold your towers, you got back less money than you spent on the tower. In MPDTD with the Arcade option, all upgrades are speedy and you get all your money back when selling towers. This makes gameplay much more exciting, especially if you are nimble enough to sell and build towers to suit the upcoming wave of creeps.

Another feature of the multiplayer game that creates urgency is that the next wave starts whenever any player completely kills off a wave of creeps. So there's an urgency to finish the wave off before anyone else, thus sending more creeps before your opponent is ready for them.

Desktop Armada and Desktop Armada Missions

Desktop Armada

With Desktop Armada, 2 players each have six "ports" on their own side of the playing board. From each port, you can choose to build and launch one of a variety of different ship types in a variety of routes. Patrol boats are very fast and build quickly but are easily destroyed. Destroyers and missile boats are medium sized ships — the former take plenty of damage and the latter have a long firing range. Battleships are large ships that take a while to build but take a large amount of damage.

The goal is to get your ships through to the other side, where your boats will fire upon the enemy's base. The trick is to not run out of money and to send enough firepower to overtake your enemy or to send your ships on paths that will avoid detection by enemy ships. A fog of war also makes things more interesting and make the puny patrol boats valuable in scouting the terrain.

Desktop Armada Missions is quite similar to Desktop Armada, but as the name would suggest, you get certain missions or challenges to take on instead of the straight out war.

Buggle

Buggle

Buggle is a great game that players can jump right into without much training. A multitude of little buggles (ball-type characters) fly around the board and eventually freeze. You click to place your marker, as do the other players. Your marker converts the nearest buggles to your color, and those buggles in turn convert other nearby buggles. The buggles freeze again, and each player places a second marker on the board. You get more points for controlling more buggles.

This game is a fairly mindless game that involves a small amount of strategy and a large amount of luck. Even if you place your marker in the best location on the board, two other players' markers could flank you, leaving you buggle-less. Sometimes the other players place their markers in a group, allowing your marker to grab the lion's share of the points for a round.

Flash Element TD 1 and Flash Element TD 2

Flash Element TD

Flash Element TD 1 is the single player tower defense game that was the precursor to Desktop Tower Defense. Unlike the newer Desktop Tower Defense, bad guys follow a pre-determined path and your towers must be off the path. You can upgrade towers and have only a small selection of tower types to choose from.

Flash Element TD 2 is still in production, but promises more variety from the fairly limited Flash Element TD 1. Keep an eye out for this new version, as it will certainly improve upon the monotany of the original game.

What would a multiplayer game be without rankings? The Casual Collective keeps track of your own personal score and rank as you win or lose games. Each player gains or loses points based on the ELO system, a sort of prorated points system used in chess rankings. You get more points for defeating players with a higher ranking and you can also lose many points for losing to players with a lower ranking.

Desktop Tower Defense

A month or two ago, I discovered the world of Tower Defense (or "TD") games. If you Google "tower defense games", you'll find an assortment of variations on the theme — some truly fun versions, some poorly planned, and some boring. The lure of a quality Tower Desktop game is that it is as much fun as playing Warcraft, except a lot simpler.

Possibly one of the best TD games is Desktop Tower Defense over at handdrawngames.com. If you play on Medium or Hard level, you can submit your name and score. You can also submit your score to a group scoreboard — feel free to type in smarmy for the group name and you can compare your score with me and others! If you want to learn more about what strategies work and the best towers to upgrade, play the Fun Mode "10k Gold" game and have a blast! The best feature in this game is that you start with a clean slate, and you work however you want to.

If Desktop Tower Defense is a bit too tough, you might prefer Flash Element TD. Instead of having to build a blockade, the baddies in this game follow a pre-set path. You can't build on their road, but you know exactly where they'll be going. If you can get the Combo Towers activated, you'll really start having fun.

Both Desktop TD and Flash Element TD will apparently be coming together at Casual Collective when it is launched. The site will also feature a multiplayer game called MPDTD (Multi-Player Desktop TD) that is basically Desktop TD with a few features that allow you to compete with other players.

Honorable mention goes to Onslaught 2, which is a fun TD game, but I keep running into a bug where my towers just stop shooting at the bad guys. The gameplay on this game is fun, especially if you get the hang of the combo attacks. Let's put it this way — if Onslaught 2 didn't have this bug in it, this post would be titled "Three Tower Defense Games Worth Playing."

In my mind, the Atari 2600 is the best video game console of all time. You either had a joystick or a paddle — both of which had just one button. Modern day consoles have nothing on the Atari 2600 with their 80-button, vibrating controllers and frequent crashes. The Atari 2600 blows these out of the water with its 128 bytes of RAM and 1.19 MHz processing speed.

• Basketball: D- I know that the graphics weren't top-notch on the Atari 2600, and that's fine. But playing basketball with a square ball? Something's just not right with that.
• Combat: B It came with the console, so everyone had it and knew how to play it. Somehow, they managed to turn two games (tanks and planes) into 27 games — really just different options on the two themes. For such a basic game, though, getting those tanks to move and shoot the way you needed them to really became an art.
• Missile Command: C- In retrospect, I probably played Missile Command far more than I should have. This game, though entertaining, quickly becomes repetitive. Gee, I wonder what the next level will bring me — perhaps more missiles I'll have to shoot down in the same manner? You basically played until the game outplayed you.
• Pac-Man: A- Pac-Man was the game. Easy to understand but difficult to master, I don't know a kid who was yelling at their television because of this yellow dude.
• Pitfall!: B+ I don't know how many times poor Pitfall Harry fell down holes or got eaten by a crocodile, but this game was addictive. The game used a combination of timing skills and just a bit of strategy that made you want to come back for more.
• Space Invaders: A+ Simple, easy, and perfectly designed for the platform. You have shields, you have bad guys. They inch closer, and you try and pick them off. And just when that might have started to get boring, you've got a UFO to aim at! It even spawned quite a few 80s song, which actually might not have been a good thing.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which Atari 2600 games do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Here's another wish for the video game buffs!

9-year-old Ben wished to design a video game to help kids with cancer fight back and relieve the pain and stress of cancer treatment.

Eric Johnston of LucasArts helped Ben achieve his dream. Eric not only created Ben's Game, but he involved Ben in every step of the video game-making process. Ben's physician also pitched in as the medical advisor for the game.

In Ben's game, you destroy all the mutated cells and collect the seven shields of protection from the side effects of chemotherapy. You get health from the hospital, medication from the pharmacy, and emotional health at home. Each shield is guarded by a different monster:

• Colds — Iceman Monster
• Barf — Robarf Monster
• Chicken Pox — Big Chicken Monster
• Fever — Fire Monster
• Bleeding — Vamp Monster
• Hair Loss — Qball Monster
• Rash — Tornado Monster

Read more about Ben's Game at Make-A-Wish®'s website, wish.org. Download the game now!

Gregory as chairman

Here's a wish that should be appreciated by video game buffs everywhere.

Gregory, a 10-year-old in western New York, wished to be chairman of Nintendo for a day.

Gregory was flown to Seattle and dressed in a gray power suit. (See the picture for his fancy threads.) When he arrived at Nintendo HQ, he was given a company briefcase. A bit of nepotism soon came into play as his 9-year-old brother was named as Head of Security.

Gregory started working and met with board members. Being such an avid video game buff, he surely had plenty to share. Of course, he also stopped by the game development and testing departments.

Oh, and by the way, being chairman of Nintendo also brings with it partial ownership of the Seattle Mariners. Gregory received a baseball bat signed by Ken Griffey Jr.

Read more about Gregory and his executive career at Make-A-Wish®'s website, wish.org.

The Charlie Action Figure

Mcfarlane Toys announced that they will be making Lost action figures, currently due out in November 2006. The company plans on releasing a few characters at a time in multiple series, including deceased characters. Each character will also come with a small prop (e.g. Kate comes with the toy plane).

As you can see here, a picture of the Charlie figurine has been released. The other characters slated for this first series are Jack, Kate, Locke, Hurley, and Shannon. And yes, that's a bikini-clad Shannon, not a bloody-hole-in-torso Shannon.

If you purchase the deluxe boxed sets, you will also get dioramas of appropriate Lost sets so the geekiest of you can recreate scenes from the show.

Each of the figures will say various phrases (e.g. Hurley yelling, "The numbers are BAD!!!")

You can currently pre-order the figures at AllStarFigures.com at a price based on early estimations. The eventual price might be higher or lower, but you can lock in on the AllStarFigures price right now.

As if that weren't enough, Ubisoft (Myst, Resident Evil, Far Cry, Heroes of Might and Magic, Splinter Cell, and a game based on CSI) is working on an interactive video game slated for a 2007 release. Don't get your hopes up . . . that's going to be late 2007, most likely. The game should support game console and PC platforms.

Google, Sony Pictures, and others are sponsoring the Da Vinci Code Quest, which kicks off today.

I'm no proponent of the Da Vinci Code. (Check back here after May 17 for some detailed comments about that!) Still, I enjoy riddles and games, and that's what the Da Vinci Code Quest is about.

Each day for the next 24 days, the site will release a new puzzle or riddle. Today's puzzle is basically an altered form of a ::wikipedia("Sudoku"):: puzzle. For those that solve all 24 puzzles, there are prizes. One grand prize winner in the US will win a buttload of prizes, including a trip for four to NYC, Paris, Rome, and London. 10,000 others will win a lousy Cryptex replica, valued at $30.

You can read more on the game over at the Official Google Blog.