Monthly Moderation

As the loading screen tip tells us: "Take everything in moderation (even World of Warcraft!)"

This month's Monthly Moderation still consists of games. Not big, all-time consuming ones like WoW, but smaller ones. Game that I'll pull up when I have 10 or 15 minutes to kill and need something to do.

The best part? All these games are web-based and available online, which means I can play them just about anywhere, anytime.

Auditorium


I first heard about Auditorium from either Joystiq or Ars Technica...I can't remember which. It's a brilliant flash game wherein you bend a flowing stream of light particles through color-coded sound meters to create music. Sounds simple, right? At first, it is. But it gets mind-bendingly complex very, very quickly. Still, I spent hours and hours playing this game for a few solid months when it was released and I still go back to it occasionally, if for no other reason than the soundtrack is nothing short of amazing. And piecing it together an instrument at a time really lets you appreciate it that much more.

I believe the game is also available on the Apple Store for those of you with iPhones or iPad Touches.


Fractal


This is a new game by the same people that made Auditorium. Like Auditorium, the premise of the game is simple, but it makes for some very fun and complex gameplay. In Fractal the idea is to expand hexes on a grid by pushing on existing ones. When you make a cluster of 7 hexes (a ring of 6 with one in the middle) that set is cleared. Clear enough hexes and you move on to the next level. Believe me, it's harder than it sounds.

The game is still in demo phase as I'm writing this, though the full version is due any day now.


Super Mario Crossover


This may just be the greatest thing, ever.

I first heard about this game on Joystiq about a month ago. I immediately wasted the rest of my day putzing around with it.

At its core, it's the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. Except instead of just being able to play as Mario, you can also opt to play as Link, Mega Man, Simon Belmont, Samus, or Bill (from Contra). Each character retains their playstyle from their own games and powers up in ways unique to them, so some levels are not optimal for some characters. For instance, Simon's not the best precision jumper, so he's not the best choice for a level with a lot of pitfalls. You're able to switch characters before each stage or after death.

Too much fun. Especially when Bill gets the Spread Gun.


Armor Picross 2


If you couldn't tell by now, I'm pretty big on puzzle and logic games. I love being challenged to think.

There are a ton of different Picross games out there across a ton of platforms. This just happens to be one of those that's available anywhere I have an internet connection, so it's managed to gobble a lot of my time (as has Mario Picross on the DS).

For those of you unfamiliar with Picross, each row and column has a series of numbers that represent, in order, the unbroken lines of filled squares in that row or column. The challenge is to figure out how they're placed. Good times.


There are lots of other games I could talk about. Sudoku, Kakuro, just about anything by PopCap (Peggle, PvZ, Bejewled, etc). But if I wrote about them all, this would be a very very long post.

Besides, I also want to let some of you chime in. What are some of the little quick games that you play from time to time?