Valve's games don't age. That's one thing you have to give them. Half Life 1 still holds up to the gameplay test even if the graphics are a little dated. I still have a much fun with it now as I ever did. I'm thrilled with the Black Mesa remake, because the improved graphics may make it more approachable.

More on your topic though, Portal 2 could have been longer but it was so much fun. I played it once in about two days and immediately started another game.

After the first one I was a little worries the second wouldn't live up to the first, but it couldn't have been a better sequel.

Now I want to play it again. :)

I'd hesitate to say "exploit" because of the connotations that word brings along with it, but yes. It most definitely does, and I'm glad.

That said, it's not *just* nostalgia. My nephew wasn't alive for any console generation before the Wii, and he loves Zelda games. He's gone back and played the older ones through VC as well. I'm aware that using my nephew is entirely anecdotal, but there's obviously something there that makes it a good game, not just a nostalgia trip.

My high score was 3. I don't understand why people like it. It isn't that it's hard, it's that it's bad. Even beyond the stylistic rip-off.

But just to add-- you have less than a day to download it. There's been a ton of outrage over it and the developer has announced that he's taking it offline tomorrow. https://twitter.com/dongatory/status/432227971173068800

From what I read it seems like there are accusations that he used bots to inflate his count, votes, etc. to get more people to download it and rake in more ad money. And every question that he's responded to about it has been half-answers to non-answers. That's what the outrage is all about, at least I think. I mean yeah, people have complained about the assets looking like Super Mario World for a while but when the botting allegations came up is when he decided to pull it.

You're certainly right that other games are way worse, though. But "sort of riffs Mario somewhat" downplays it I think. It's that bird-fish-thing from Mario dodging the pipes from Mario. I think it's different enough to guard him from legal issues from Nintendo, but it's still quite obvious.

Sure, I never said it was proof, but he's taking his game and leaving because journalists are asking him questions, which is something they absolutely should be doing. It was just idle talk until he started dodging questions about it, and then it blew up, of course.

If he is innocent, then yeah I feel bad for him (and he needs a coach to tell him how to answer questions) but if he actually did it then it's just cowardly, and the only sad thing is that he's raking in 50k a day from the ad money. Pulling the game just makes him look more guilty though-- that's not a good move.

I don't think this is just homage, but I don't think it's stealing either. 3D Dot Game Heroes was an homage to the top-down Zelda games. This isn't stealing, there are no assets taken from the old games, but it's blatant. There's no original design with the exception of the buildings in the background, it's similar enough that he just took the visual style and barely tweaked it.

And Adym, yeah, that's my problem with it. My progression was about the same as yours. It was on my phone for 15 minuets before I removed it and 1-starred it.

TO HIS CREDIT though, so I'm not just a negative Nellie... The game came out 9 months ago and nobody cared. Nobody cared probably because it's not that great. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he made it as almost like a practice game to move on to bigger and better things. Using derivative artwork and mechanics from a 10-year-old flash game, that's a logical hypothesis.

But PewDiePie made a video about it and it became a thing. I haven't watched the video, but when someone with that kind of viewership talks about something, people are going to download it, and then it's going to blow up.

So the guy wasn't expecting this kind of publicity or pressure. Perhaps he saw a taste of fame and decided to fudge his counts and reviews to get more downloads. Perhaps he didn't. Regardless, this isn't what he signed on for and it's not like he has experience dealing with things. Maybe his question dodging was just because he was nervous and didn't want to say anything that could come back and bite him later.

Still, he isn't handling it well. I don't know how I would handle getting death threats but I mean, for $50k a day in ad money I think I'd stick it out. If he wants to work again in the game industry he should be talking to people. But maybe at this point he doesn't want to. He's getting what Phil Fish got and he isn't as used to it as Phil was. Phil had some communications issues himself.

Anyway, I HOPE he didn't do what he's accused of. I hope it doesn't sour him on developing more stuff. There's no harm in people trying, regardless of what they release, until someone makes a bad game a phenomenon.

What I'm more worried about, really, is games like Candy Crush Saga making it acceptable to spam your friends constantly or pay microtransactions just to be able to play more than a few times a day. At least Flappy Bird is free-to-play and doesn't encourage spamming, even if the ads are a little intrusive.

So kinda back to the original topic, my friend just sent me this: http://i.imgur.com/2C6hDgC.jpg

I would say the 9,999 people are hacking it. It seems it takes less than a day for mobile leaderboards to fill up with maxed out scores.

Ha, awesome. The pipes always won when I played Flappy Bird. It's nice to be on the winning team.

So Andrew (my friend that sent me his high score of 73, posted earlier) just got to 97. I don't even understand how that's possible.

I enjoyed Hearthstone for about two hours. I used to be quite the MtG fan but never cared for the video games for some reason. It seemed something was lost when moving it to digital. But MtG is a very strategy-heavy game. When Hearthstone came out I was hoping for a balance of strategy that would work well as a digital card game.

Unfortunately I didn't find that. It's like you said, simpler than Pokemon. Every match is basically the same, and while there's a little strategy, it's not enough to keep things interesting.

I at least hope it's a good intro to trading card games for those who haven't played them.

Sounds like you guys are not huge fans of Hearthstone :D

I think the game is fun, but then again I haven't played it a ton myself. I like the quick pace of the games and think it's a strength of the game. Keeping things simple means the game is a bit more accessible and ... quicker. The free to play aspect means anyone can play it, which is nice in a way but, like you mention makes it grindy.

You're right in all cases @jdodson. It is fun, it's fast, it's easy to pick up and play, it's accessible, but then it never goes anywhere. It's a game that I can imagine picking up and playing a few rounds every few months, kinda like I do with Super Meat Boy (but for entirely different reasons). I was just hoping Hearthstone would give me a new Blizzard obsession. I wanted it to be MtG good.

Fair enough. I guess it hasn't been compelling enough for me to pick back up either BUT it is installed and I might play it again in the future but it's less compelling than a FTL or heading back to FEZ again.

I forgot all about this game. So excited.