Cell Phone Gaming

Early cell phones or mobile phones came with pre-loaded games, of which the most familiar is probably “Snake”. The game, which simply featured a “snake” which you had to direct around a maze (effectively, a box in the middle of the screen which either had walls or didn’t, depending on your choice), was practically inexplicable to those who had never played it, and also maddeningly addictive. Since the advent of more developed cell phones, there have been ever more developed games to go with them.

While on those earlier cell phones, you essentially had the game that was pre-loaded and either liked or lumped it, WAP phones have made it possible to download the games from the Internet and install them on your phone for unlimited play. The more advanced the phone, the more advanced the game, although for the truly massive video games that have been released not unlike those of a Hollywood movie, mobile play will probably still be a pipe dream for a while yet.

The kind of game that thrives on mobile play is a fairly simple one which involves basic movements in any one of four directions (up, down, left and right) – anything larger will usually require a more dedicated control system and will be much better played on a console with its controller. However, there are certain games which thrive when played on a phone – Quiz games are particularly good, especially as it is possible to download updates with new questions when you’ve exhausted the old ones.

The Next Level Gaming

It is often said that video games are more similar to films than to the games of the past. While this is as much a reference to the increasingly realistic graphics and the more interactive relationship between your character and others than anything else, there is perhaps another reason behind it. By clicking here you can read about Debunking Video Game Stereotypes and Exploring the Cognitive Benefits.

In the past, video games “happened” a certain way. You would play in one setting, kill a certain kind of enemy and work through to the end of that setting where you would have to kill a really big enemy, who might need to be hit fifty times or more before he’d go away. Then you would move to the next level, and repeat the process. This “multi-level” system would be very explicit in the game, with opening screens telling you which level you were on.

Now, there is a certain style of game which attracts the description “non-linear”. There are multiple settings, and you move between them as you see fit. To advance the storyline you have to complete certain tasks, but not necessarily in the same order every time. How you complete those tasks can dictate the future path of the game. Games now are very like films, and while we may not script them we certainly play a part in directing them.

Of course, you will still find multi-level games, which will never die out as long as one set of gamers exists that remembers the joys of PacMan and Donkey Kong. The difference is that the new titles are far more likely to be in the newer style.

Cheats Never Prosper – Except When They Do

Completing a video game from start to finish used to mean something. In fact, in some games it was impossible. The game simply sped up incrementally, until the gamer was forced to relent or otherwise became as one with the game. Eventually, because you need to sleep, you’d have to stop. The games that could be completed often required a few months of committed playing to get to that stage – but that was never going to fly in the modern day for too long. This resulted in the development of the “cheat” code.

Usually entered by typing a certain key sequence (frequently extremely complicated – you don’t get anything for nothing), cheat codes can help a gamer who is just having that bit too much trouble getting past a certain stage of the game. Keep dying because that one guy won’t stop setting you on fire? What about a cheat code that makes you impervious to fire? Not so clever now, is he? Of course, cheat codes used to be guarded jealously by the software developers and had to be discovered by gamers (“Oh! You can skip this level if you press Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, A, B, START! How did I work that out?”). Now they are pretty much all on the Internet.

It may say something about us as a society that cheat codes are now necessary for just about every game. Perseverance will take you so far, but if you can resist looking up a way to overcome that guy with the Molotov cocktails, you are practically Zen in your patience.