Grab Bag Wednesday: X-COM makes its triumphant return

I won't go into too much detail about this week's releases, because there's only one: Splinter Cell Conviction. It's apparently a little less stealthy, a little more "badass" (their words, not mine!), and a whole lot shorter at only five hours of playtime. Which I guess is fine if you like the killy-killy but don't like to blow your money. You can just rent it!

2K Marin announces X-COM revival

X-COM: UFO Defense is roundly considered one of the absolute pinnacles of PC gaming (although I'd personally give the title to Grim Fandango, but let's not split hairs for the moment). Late last night, 2K Marin, the studio behind the well-received and soon to be reviewed (by us, anyways) Bioshock 2 announced that they were bringing back X-COM… as an FPS. While I think that 2K Marin could make a pretty good FPS out of X-COM, I'm sad that they felt they had to go in that direction. X-COM has always been about strategy, and updating it for modern gamers just doesn't seem like the best option. Sure, the people who never grew up on X-COM might not know the difference, but for us old farts, this is like getting a big slap in the face. Don't they remember X-COM Interceptor?!?!

Flash games that rule

Because I do a lot of my writing from work and have very little time to actually play my consoles of choice (which is why I need to slow down on the purchases, seriously…), I actually dedicate my time to online flash games for the most part. Here's the ones I've been playing the most:

Bubble Shooter

It's Bust-A-Move, basically. But goddamn if this isn't the greatest time-waster on the face of the planet. The combination of strategic shot placement and the almost trance-like state that one goes into trying to connect like colours is nearly hypnotic. Before I got my Wii, I would play this for hours at a time. Sure, it was a way to do something while playing some of my favourite albums, but that doesn't change the fact that I still play it pretty often to this day.

Canabalt

I don't think there's much I can say that hasn't been said about this wonderful game already. This is the most highly regarded Flash game of last year, and after you play it for awhile, you'll feel the same way too.

Bubble Spinner

Like Bubble Shooter but way harder. For Bubble Shooter pros only.

Clockwords

Holy fuck, this game. It combines two of my favourite things – Scrabble and Tower Defense games. Using your (hopefully) broad vocabulary, you have to fight back enemies in increasingly difficult stages. What an incredible game.

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to this game, Penguin Mercenary. Though there was a Flash version in the works, it was scrapped because my friend went into Computer Science and started programming actual games. In this game (which is single-computer multiplayer, by the way. How much does that rule?), you control a spiky ball and you have to try to collect more balloons than your opponent while avoiding the Skull balloons. There's also "mystery" balloons that change the physics or make all the balloons Skull balloons or more, which makes the game incredibly fun. For a game made just for the hell of it in grade 10, my friend Derek Sigmeth managed to make an incredibly fun and awesome game. There was never any "official" soundtrack released with it – whenever we would play, we would play it to a burnt CD of one-hit wonder songs. If you download this game, you should do the same thing. It's what he would have wanted.

Oh, and I got to play the work-in-progress 3D version, and it ruled. It's too bad it never got finished, because I would have played the hell out of it. If you're reading this, Derek – WiiWare version, please?