A Green Mushroom

I've been playing a bunch of World of Warships lately and having a really good time with it.  I didn't think it would be a game for me but my brother convinced me to try it and I'm glad he did. Instead of being a game about fast twitch reflexes, World of Warships is about positioning, strategy, and skill.  It does take effort and skill to aim and fire but it's nothing like a FPS in terms of twitchiness. I loved shooting up the first few ranks and unlocking ships along the way.  Each ship feels distinct in a number of ways and I find myself jumping between different types of ships a lot just to change up the feel of the game. This is one of the better free to play games I've played in years.  I can feel my progression slowing down a bit now that I'm around tier IV and V for ships, but I've still felt no pressure to pay.  And even though my progress has slowed down I'm still playing fairly consistently. Mostly I just wanted to get this game on ...

Triforce Heroes is the newest Legend of Zelda game on 3DS.  It came out two weeks ago but I still haven't see much coverage of it.  Maybe it's because Triforce heroes isn't structured like a typical Legend of Zelda game, it's basically a follow-up to The Legend of Zelda Four Swords. If you don't know what that means... it's essentially multiplayer Zelda. The main conceit in making Zelda multiplayer is that the open world exploration is completely gone.  Instead, the game is structured into zones which contain levels which contain stages. You connect online and choose the zone you want to play in.  This will match you with other people who also want to play levels in that zone.  Once you have a party of three you enter the zone and cast your vote for the level you want to play.  It does a little roulette spin and choose the one of your three votes randomly.  Then you actually enter the level and play through the four stages within it as a team...

There is an amazing TED talk by Jane McGonigal about the power of games.  In it she talks about how much time people are currently investing in online gaming, what this means for our culture, and where it can lead us.  Here are a few statistics she presents: 3 Billion hours each week playing online games 5.93 Million years playing World of Warcraft so far. Average gamer spends 10,000 hours playing online by age 21. Compare this to 10,080 hours a child in the U.S. will spend in school from 5th grade to high school graduation with perfect attendance. Watch the full TED talk below.