(Temporarily) Releasing My Inner Geek

I may not be into the heavy duty games, like World of Warcraft or Call of Duty, but I still enjoy video games. Especially ones involving puzzles or non-violent storytelling. I can sit for hours -- and have done so as both my parents and Caesar can attest -- in front of the computer, taking notes in a small notebook to figure out how to work a special lever or decode a series of glyphs on the screen.

Scary, I know.

And now, I have two more games for my Nintendo DS to keep me enthralled for hours.

The first is Professor Heinz Wolff's Gravity. A very simple game, actually: maneuver a ball at point A through a maze to press a switch at point B. The fun comes when the ball winds up in a small divot or falls through an opening in the maze, and you have to find a way to overcome that obstacle, using a set of objects presented at the beginning of the level. Sometimes it's a collection of different sized rods, or three marbles, or a block and two triangles, or any combination of those. And everything falls spins moves according to real physics. I spent a good half hour on one level, finally managing to get the ball to tap a short rod which in turn tapped a skateboard, sending it over an arc to fall onto a moving conveyor belt and then toppled the remaining three rods which I'd stood up like dominoes just before the button.

The other is geared more toward kids, but the puzzles are more challenging than you would think. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box picks up where the first game left off, this time, with the Professor and his assistant Luke on the trail of a mysterious box that is rumored to kill anyone who opens it. Traveling by train, they discover clues by solving puzzles scattered about the train or presented to them by other characters. The puzzles range from simple logic to sliding puzzles to math to word games to whatever else the designers could imagine. And I love the really challenging ones. The illustrations and animation make it quite a bit of fun to play, as well.

And then, of course, there's the Rhem series, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Gravity image from Games Radar; image of Professor Layton... from What They Play.