Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Forget about snake and bowling, today there are literally thousands of free mobile games that can be downloaded to a cell phone of PDA in a few seconds. Some of them are quite sophisticated. The great thing about them is that you can take them anywhere.

Take Brothers in Arms 3: Hell's Highway for example. The Brothers in Arms series is a sequential action scenario game featuring detailed combat operations and requiring strategic planning. You can download the game for free from a number of websites. While it takes some getting used to, you will like the sophistication. As we said, this is no "snake game."

Just a few years ago, manufacturers added games to phones almost as an afterthought. They had no idea how much people like to play great games while on the move. Let's face it -- in today's world we have a lot of down time. Waiting for trains, buses, and meetings to start, we need distractions that we can look forward to. The Brothers in Arms series is great for this.

Hell's Highway starts where the earlier games left off. You are an army commander leading an elite unit deep inside enemy territory. You get points for completing missions without getting killed. When you complete a mission, you advance to the next level. If you have to go while in the middle of a scenario, you can indefinitely pause the game and pick it up next time you have time.

Hell's Highway really is an entertaining way to -- pardon the expression -- kill some time. You need to read through the rules when you start, but after that its pretty much self explanatory. When you do really well, the game will remember your high score so that every time you play, you are challenged.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Get a Twist on Sudoku with Hitori

Enjoy A Great Puzzle Game with Hitori

I had always been in to Sudoku, ever since I discovered one day by chance in my daily newspaper. But after a while, I am not sure exactly what happened, I felt like I wanted a change. So when a friend told me he had just downloaded Hitori on to his mobile phone, and he described it as a ?game of Sudoku with a twist,? I figured it could not do any harm to give the game a try. When asking about what kind of name Hitori is, my friend told me that he did not know but that it is a Japanese word as the game originates in Japan.

How Hitori is Played

The game is played on a grid like Sudoku (depending on which version you choose there are various grid sizes from pretty small to up to 17 x 17 squares). In the beginning of the game, all the squares have a number on them. They are either shaded or unshaded. Players must ensure that the shaded ones do not ever come in to contact with each horizontally or vertically. Unshaded squares follow the counter rule; they have to be touching at all times so that they form a line at all times. A player can activate shading or unshading by using their left mouse to click on the specific squares.

Cool Things About Hitori

What I found particularly cool about Hitori was the fact that even though it was a really easy game to learn how to play (simple rules and even simpler for Sudoku players), it requires a bit of strategy vis-à-vis what to do with the shaded and unshaded squares. But that is why I was sensible and started with the first, easiest version of the game. I have progressed since then of course, but I have yet to reach the hardest level. Still, I have all the time in the world given that the game is so accessible on my mobile phone.