Owen Faraday from Pocket Tactics joins us to talk about the best iOS games of 2012, as well as news from CES. We also consider how XCOM is newly ripe for another playthrough, what the heck Zero Escape is, whether Sleeping Dogs will stand the test of time, and how Bridge Constructor Playground might be the most fun on the iOS since your Campus Life sorority dinged level 10.
Podcast (games): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
So I finally earned enough money in Assassin’s Creed Liberation to buy the pocket pistol for Aveline to carry when she’s wearing her lady’s outfit. Now she can use it to defend herself from the thugs who accost her in the rougher parts of New Orleans. I earned the money by running an East Indiaman cargo ship full of ice from England to the New World, and then returning with Haitian spices.
And where does Aveline carry her new pocket pistol? See if you can spot it in the screenshot up there.
Sweetie, no, everyone can see that. For a lady who has a blowgun hidden inside her parasol, that’s awfully indiscreet. You should sew yourself a nice holster or something.
“Worker placement game” sounds so dull. “Worker” is, at best, a generic word. It’s also from a word that means the opposite of fun. It’s a word about Mondays. “Placement” isn’t doing the phrase any favors. Placement is one of the least active things you can do, hardly a notch above loitering. It’s what you do when you set the table before a dinner. Placement. “Worker placement” is basically job assigning. Depositing labor. Task designation. Clerk putting. Office management, really. Even “human resources” sounds better, because if you screw up your perception just so, you can imagine it’s about using people to make soylent green. “Worker placement” is as prosaic a phrase as “peon management”, and like peon management, you’d never know it can be the cornerstone of often awesome gameplay.
So I suggest we call games like Stone Age — now ported to the iOS — not “worker placement” games, but “I steal from you the thing I know you wanted to do and now you have to react or pretend you didn’t want to do it” games. Or — you know you’re thinking it — “cockblock” games.
After the jump, I promise I’ll clean up the language Continue reading →
