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Simple board games are often a great source entertainment. Those adding a puzzle element that is simple yet vexing stretch brain cells during lazy holidays! The Gogetter Cat & Mouse puzzle consists of nine elements depicting pathways.

In conjunction with a square board and a book of challenges, the simple task of leading a mouse to a piece of cheese becomes quite a head-scratcher: setting the path from one to the other is reasonably easy, but the important thing to bear in mind is that the remaining pathways cannot simply dead-end.

As skill levels increase, so does the difficulty of the puzzles, often involving the connection of three or more objects and avoiding a connection to others at the same time.

Available at select toy stores, this is a great puzzler for young and old alike.

Puzzle games are not my forte – I prefer racing games and those I can start quickly and leave quickly without having to bother about a plot or strategy.

From both a technical and game-play perspective, Machinarium is an absolute gem and a game I can heartily recommend to most any computer user. First off, the technical implementation is impressive. The game has been developed, and is played, in a Flash environment. That means the game runs on any platform: Windows, Mac and Linux. Machinarium is an independent development that cost less than USD 1000 to develop!

The graphics are stunning, featuring the player’s character (a robot) and spectacularly detailed backdrops to each section of the game. Gameplay is easy: using a mouse, manipulate the behaviour of the robot by either stretching or shrinking his size, moving around and interacting with elements in the game world. It’s a puzzle game, so each screen presents a new set of challenges the player needs to solve to be able to advance. A hint is available to assist those stuck at any point in the game. Throughout each section of the game, the robot is able to collect items and is able to combine them to solve a puzzle.

Machinarium is highly recommended – the purchase price is a scant USD 10 (for a limited time) and this game will provide a lot of entertainment for both young and old. Check out the demo here.

A new version of the Sony PS3 is to be launched overseas sometime this September. The PS3 Slim is much smaller, featuring a space-saving design and promising to cut down on its larger brother’s carbon footprint by consuming about 40% less power.

The PS3 Slim offers built-in WiFi, two USB ports, 120GB hard disk and both HDMI and optical audio output. Blu-Ray drive included, of course. The new PS3 does away with support for third-party operating systems and backward compatibility. No more running Linux or building cheap supercomputer clusters!

At the same time, Sony announced the imminent arrival (though with no specification of a date) of the 3.0 firmware update for the PS3. The firmware update improves the console’s interface with quicker access to certain items and shortcuts to downloads and games. Messaging has moved up to the main menu and is no longer hidden beneath a layer of options. Some avatar icons will be available, as well as new content for purchase.

A new version of the console is great news. As an existing owner of a PS3, it’s of little interest to me, though. Far more important to me is the answer to the question: where the hell is Gran Turismo 5, already? And there seems to be an answer to that too, it seems. According to Blast, Gran Turismo 5 will launch in October – it’s a title I’ve been waiting for since I bought my PSP about four years ago. The same title prompted me to purchase the PS3 with the GT 5 teaser disk in a bundle.

Could it finally be a reality, and how on earth will it stack up against Grid and similar high-octane racing games that have impressed me? Time will tell. I’ll believe it when I see it!

This weekend was the first time in a long time that we put the PS3 to good use. Since we are Lego fans, we stocked up on all three Lego titles available for the console, namely Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the newer Batman.

The Star Wars game for the PS3 was particularly difficult to get hold of. When it was first released, I took the approach of not buying it and instead wait for when we were ready to play it. Little did I realize that the title was very popular and simply sold out. When I eventually got around to looking for it, there was no hope of finding a copy locally, not even pre-played. I had to resort to importing it from overseas. It seems that game titles rely on scarcity, too…

So far, Alexander has been car-crazy and has been playing The Cars game every now and then. That’s fine, but doesn’t do much for a youngster’s interpersonal skills. Whilst I initially balked at the ludicrous price tag of an additional PS3 controller, that’s been the single best addition to the console.

Two-player games are now a reality and open up a new dimension in gaming for someone who is used to grabbing the steering wheel all by himself and determining without intervention which way to go…

We started our adventure in the deep jungles looking for ancient artifacts in Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.

Our progress was reasonably swift, though we needed to work on our teamwork to circumvent traps and to progress. It’s a fantastic game and is great fun. As with all games in the Lego series, different characters have different abilities. There’s no violence to speak of and no worrying about dying and having to restart a level: characters simply bust into their component parts and re-animate. That is useful in that kids (and adults alike) are not discouraged when an obstacle requires many attempts to pass. With Indiana Jones and Marion trapped on the mountaintops in the snow, we decided to venture into space and try out Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

Both games are similar in operation and gameplay. Once again, very enjoyable and a lot of fun. There are plenty of puzzles to solve, often by having characters build bridges and the like out of Lego bricks scattered around. In the palace section, we needed to co-ordinate the use of four characters.

I haven’t had the opportunity to play games on the PS3 like this in ages. Can’t wait to start on Batman some time soon! Highly recommended for young and old alike.

I’m not a huge gamer and rarely spend a lot of time immersing myself into any particular genre or title. But there are certain classics that I really enjoyed and I was overjoyed to see a port of Wolfenstein 3D being made available for the iPod Touch.

The game costs USD 4.99 on the App Store and includes the original adventure with all six episodes and almost 60 levels of action. Of all the games I ever played this is one I not only finished more than once, but kept coming back to.

I’m happy to say that the iPod Touch port looks exactly like I remember the PC version. Controlling the action is possible in one of two ways, by either using a configurable button arrangement for turning, walking and shooting, or by employing the motion sensor on the iPod Touch.

The use of the motion sensor takes a bit of getting used to, but works remarkably well after a couple of attempts – I kept straying to the left and running into a wall, but eventually learned to compensate by leaning more to the right…

For fans, John Carmack goes into a bit more detail regarding the coding and port of the iPhone version of the game, as well as offering the source code as a free download. You can get to that here. That’s certain to be of interest to developers of games on any platform, I would imagine. Best of all, he hints at a release of Doom for the iPhone in the not-too distant future. Now there’s another of my favourites I’d download the moment it is released!

Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone is tons of fun and well worth the 5 bucks. I’m very impressed with the in-game soundtrack and have found myself humming the Wolf-tune every now and then…

A follow-up to my recent headaches with Vista is that operating system’s inability to install software properly. Not to mention that the file operation bug has reared its ugly head again today…

For R4.99 I bought a World of Warcraft trial DVD with the intention of installing it on G2S and to see what all the fuss is about. It’s almost impossible to get WoW to install on Vista, never mind starting to play the game!

A lengthy wait during which the installation program copies many large files to the intended target directory, which oddly enough, is suffixed by .temp. As in C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft.temp.

When the installation finishes, the installer keels over because it’s unable to either rename or move that directory name to something a bit less temporary. Net effect: a good fifteen minutes wasted. Rebooting doesn’t help either.

The error condition is known, though no one seems to have any clue what to do not to make it rear its ugly head. The trick is to boot into Safe Mode, then install WoW.

Then you get to reboot again to actually use the system and fire up the game. Though I hate constantly comparing, the installation process on the Mac worked first time and without any hitches…

So they’ve tried for 30 years but still haven’t managed to invade

This year marks the 30th anniversary of a perennial video game favourite that is still being played in its original and remade forms the world over. From MAME to original arcade machines and handheld conversions to the latest consoles.

Most notably, Tomohiro Nishikado‘s creation caused a temporary shortage of Yen in his native Japan upon its release and earned Taito, the game publisher, in excess of USD 500 million in revenue.

Save planet earth from the Space Invaders (Flash required – the link for the embedded code is here):

Game on!

In the batcave, we focus on racing games. Alexander’s favourite is MotorStorm, a Mad Max alternate racer set in the mud puddles and sand dunes of central somewhere.

His excitement couldn’t be greater when he got to see the trailer for MotorStorm 2. That trailer is now a permanent fixture in VLC and is replayed ad-nauseum.

MotorStorm 2 is to be published by Sony and developed by Evolution Studios. The setting this time is an island in the Pacific…

The graphics have been enhanced and some monster trucks added. The monster trucks will be able to ride over cars, break most vegetation, and destroy structures.

16 tracks will add to the excitement, as will the added challenge of having to deal with driving through pools of water. There’s the promise of a 4-player split screen. I hope it supports the G25 steering wheel.

Something to look forward to on the PS3…

Codemasters‘ latest racer is available on pre-order. Racedriver GRID promises to be a continuation of the excellent racing simulators I remember playing on the PC. With the power and graphics capability of the PS3, not to mention my skunkworks project VRSX, GRID is a must-have addition to my present collection.

In Racedriver GRID, various racing modes and competitions are available including racing around the streets of San Francisco to drift racing in Japan. From the movies highlighting some aspects of the game I am astounded by the realism and graphics quality. The damage model looks impressive, though I’m not sure how a car’s handling and performance will be affected by crashes and bumps.

As with the recent TOCA series, a career mode is available and through the participation in that, the player is able to trade and upgrade cars and take part in various races.

Update: I’ve ordered the game and have just been informed that there is stock. Should be here quicker than I thought!

Most of us in ZA would know the board game Cluedo. You know, the one with Col. Mustard having killed Mr. Green in the study using the candlestick. Why they called it Cluedo here, I don’t know. The rest of the world knows it as Clue and if you are besotted with murder mystery on a grand scale, the Clue Premier Edition may be for you.

The rooms are sunken and fully detailed. There’s a glass panel to keep the dust out and it costs USD 149. Impress your next victim, why don’t you…