Feb 5 -- You're trying too hard

I'm looking at my XBox 360 controller and it has 12 buttons, 2 analog joysticks, and an 8-way directional pad. That's a heck of a lot of inputs. I've played games that use them all, and actually some that let you re-assign the buttons on the fly. It's like driving an F1 vehicle sometimes. It wasn't always this way. The Atari 2600 had a 4-way joystick and 1 button. The NES? 4-way directional pad and 4 buttons. There's been some excellent releases lately that respect the past in this manner. Splosion Man is a great little game that assigns the command "SPLODE" to every button. The indie darling VVVVVV only allows players do one thing, flip upside down. I'm all for this move to simplicity, if only because I never read the manual.

Game of the Day: CANABALT

Pure apocalyptic Hong Kong action movie madness concentrated down into an interface of "click." The goal is to move to the right. It'll do that for you though--the goal is to move to the right as long as possible, while robot parts and gaps between buildings intrude. Here's a strategy guide for Lvl 1: {pause} {click} {click} {pauuuse} {clickclick} {click}...

It's amazing how much fun is packed in there. Why doesn't some variant of this pop up as a game to play while Crackdown takes all day loading up? Probably patents. Thanks patent trolls.

CANABALT is amazing, buy it for your iPhone or play it free on the web.