Gamma Bros.

Oops, it's been almost a week...sorry, I've been busy lately. But I'm back, and I'll be better from now on, I promise! Anyways, I guess I've been feeling in a retro mood lately as far as gaming goes; last time I suggested you play Zork, which was actually an old game, and this entry I suggest you play Gamma Bros, which only seems like an old game. The folks over at Pixeljam Games have decided to take the graphically challenged space shooter thing and run with it, and they've miraculously put together quite a great game!

You know that I really like simple games that are just about the gameplay, and Gamma Bros delivers - the controls are merely the arrow pad and WASD. It's a vanilla space shooter, with the usual assortment of bad guys, powerups, and weapons, but it's strangely compelling, I don't know why. Give it a shot, you'll probably spend far more time on it than you intended to! Just a warning - it does start off a little slow, but trust me, if you hold on for a few minutes you'll really start to like it.

Neon

Neon is a simple, retro space shooter, using just the mouse to control. I've often had serious problems with these kinds of controls, just because it's a bit difficult when you're forced to always move the ship if you want it to aim in a certain direction, but hey, that's the game. And it's quite fun - Gprime bills it as "a flash version of Geometry Wars" - to be honest, I've never played Geometry Wars, so I have no idea if this is hyperbole or not. Probably, if I had to guess. But it's still worth a few minutes of your lunchbreak, so head on over and check it out.

Tanks

Okay, I felt bad not giving any sort of game content along with my Jack Thompson dig, so here's the game Tanks, a fun turn-based shooter game that is a dead ringer for the old classic Howitzer (which is at that link for download, though it's an old DOS game - if I had to guess, I'd say it might run a bit fast on your machine). IMO, Tanks is actually a little lower in quality than Howitzer, but to each his own - Howitzer ain't on the web, so Tanks wins by default! Not quite by default - there are certainly other versions of this type of game, such as the penguin shooter one, which is quite inferior in my estimation, though if the penguin thing is a Tux shout-out I approve.

The setup is familiar if you've ever played Worms: move, aim, and shoot. Hopefully you pwn before you are pwned. You know how it goes - you can see a screenshot of me cleaning up the playing field above. Hopefully you'll do as masterful a job as I have. Good luck!

If you like this, you might also like TurboTanks, which is totally different but...um, also involves tanks. Yeah.

Tank Ball

Okay, so today we've got Tank Ball, a shooter that's also (surprise!) multiplayer and 3D. Of course, it uses the Shockwave player, which to webgame developers is generally considered a Cheap Way Out, since it provides you with automatic 3D and physics capabilities, yet is only installed on some people's browsers; nevertheless, if you happen to have the player installed, this game is actually kind of fun. If you have a fast connection, you might as well install it anyways, because it might even be around to stay unless Macromedia beefs up the Flash player quite considerably. [that's a rant for later!]

Like most webgames, very little detail exists in the modeling, so you're just shooting balls at each other across a simple landscape, but hey, the multiplayer game actually works, which puts this above most browser games. I say good job!

There are some other interesting games at Maid Marian to check out, too, such as Sherwood Dungeon, a free MMORPG (in a browser? I know, I don't like the idea either...) that is quite a bit more complex than the tank game, even if the gameplay gets old a bit quickly.

[Begin Shockwave rant]
I've got to say, regarding all these 3D Shockwave games out there, I can't say I like them, generally. You'd think, hey, great, we can make 3d stuff in the browser, and Shockwave will even do the physics for us! But to me, the resulting games tend to come off a little cheesy. I never get that feeling that the physics is good enough to make the games feel right, although I can't really see what's wrong with it...I suspect a large part of this is that Macromedia has made it too easy to throw any old crap together, add the 3D, add the physics and call it a game, so a lot of people do just that without considering the best way to handle everything else. Controls and camera work tend to be severely lacking as a rule - I don't know if that's because it's very difficult to do, or because nobody's done it right yet. But either way, in my opinion better games have come out on Flash and Java than Shockwave, despite it being the most featureful of the three...

Don't take my word for it, though, decide for yourself. Here are a few Shockwave games (in addition to Tank Ball) that have made the rounds on the web, some decent, some not:

• Pipedown
  
• Vertigolf
  
• Vertigolf 2
  
• Roll On
  
• Alien Abduction
  
• Formula Fog
  
• Super Bike
  
• Snowboarder XS
  
• Fowl Words (this one's probably my favorite, though it's neither 3d or a simulation)
  

[End rant]

Thing Thing 3

This is a screen shot from Thing Thing 3, the newest installment of the popular series from Diseased Productions. I'm not big on the shooting games, but this one is actually decent (if bloody). It's simple, just WASD to control, and point and click to shoot.

Might also want to check out the other games in the series:

• Thing Thing
• Thing Thing 2
• Thing Thing Arena
• Thing Thing Arena 2