casual

Following the single-focus of social networking found within Games for Windows Live, Xbox Live, and Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has brought the beginnings of a central gaming network to its casual gaming sites.

The company today put out what it's calling the "Microsoft Gaming Hub," which is a system of social-networking features that have been built around each casual game and spread across three of Microsoft's online-gaming properties: Bing Games, MSN Games, and Windows Live Messenger. More than anything, the feature has been created to unify the social-gaming experience on each of those sites.

Included as … Read more

Nintendo's been battling for control of casual gamers, especially when it comes to family-friendly entertainment. At the top of the heap are the "Wii" games, aka Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, and the latest, Wii Party. Featuring the sometimes-overlooked Miis, Wii Party avoids any sort of physical fitness agenda in favor of casual group fun. We played Nintendo's latest in the comfort of our own homes, and have come back to tell the tale.

Scott: Virtual board games and endless minigame compilations have been inundating the Wii's software library, but Wii Party's formula is a little different. It's a series of game shows and virtual board games, at heart a sequel to the long-lived Mario Party games. Up to four players roll dice, jump around spaces on various boards, and compete in minigames to advance. My wife happens to love the Mario Party series. Every time I ask her to join me in some game-playing, she requests Mario Party 8, which I dutifully drag out of its dusty box. Mario Party 8 on the Wii happens to be some fun--but it's slow, and has letterboxed graphics. Wii Party freshens up the look and has a collection of 80 minigames that feel more streamlined and simplified, but very much in the vein of Mario Parties past.

There are also a number of game modes in Wii Party, tailored for play length (5 minutes to over an hour), number of players, and play style. A new two-player 5-minute game that feels like a condensed version of The Dating Game is a great and somewhat romantic little time-waster, but it's too short. The board-game-style experiences are more elaborate, but aren't quite as complex or as competitive as in Mario Party. All the Miis on your console--plus some added extras--gets shuffled in across the entire Wii Party experience, just like they do in Wii Sports and Wii Fit. It's fun, but it's not something we haven't seen before.

One of the most innovative new wrinkles in Wii Party comes from a series of room-immersive games that use the Wii remote's built-in speaker.… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--While in Texas for a visit with the in-laws, I made a side trip to Austin to check out that town's annual Game Developers Conference. The show has been around for years, and this time it's been renamed GDC Online, and is now focused on online gaming--from MMOs to mobile games to social and Facebook games.

As one might expect, the real stars of the show were FarmVille, FrontierVille, and the other Facebook games that regularly bring in tens of millions of monthly players (interestingly, the show happened simultaneously with Facebook's big press conference announcing new … Read more

Soccer Superstars is a unique and fun soccer game for iPhone with cartoony, anime-style graphics, RPG elements that let you level-up special players, and challenging gameplay. Unlike most 3D soccer variants you find in the iTunes App Store, Soccer Superstars has a much more arcadelike feel. At the beginning of every match, you're able to choose a special character who plays as a striker with super moves for scoring goals. This arcade style is particularly apparent in the My League mode, which lets you play as your own special player you can level-up and comes complete with special moves … Read more

A few weeks ago, Nintendo developed a partnership with the American Heart Association. The Wii Fit is one of Nintendo's most successful product/game combinations ever. All new Wiis are now packaged with Wii Sports Resort and Wii MotionPlus, along with an approval stamp from the AHA.

It seemed like the stage was perfectly set to trot back out with the Vitality Sensor Satoru Iwata unveiled at last year's E3 press conference.

So, what happened?

Instead of fitness, motion, and heart health, Nintendo's presser was full of retro games and the 3DS. We're not complaining; far … Read more

Google loves to build platforms on which programs run--Android, App Engine, iGoogle, and in the biggest picture, the Web itself. But platforms are of no use, and aren't much fun, without applications on top, so Google often also kick-starts development with applications of its own.

Now it appears Google is interested in boosting development in a variety of casual gaming and entertainment areas with the acquisition of LabPixies, announced late Monday. The company offers a collection of games and lightweight utilities that run on iGoogle, Google's customizable home page, and on the iPhone and Android phones.

Terms of … Read more

Valet Hero is a fast-paced path-drawing game in which you're in charge of a crowded parking lot, parking a steady stream of speedy, color-coded cars into matching colored spots.

Its touch-screen interface is a little more interesting than you'll find with similar games: as you draw the dotted path that you want each car to follow, you can actually twist the patterns so that you're pulling through or even backing into spots. You're scored ("paid" a certain number of dollars) based on how precisely you park each car--anywhere from "perfect" to "… Read more

Casual gaming has taken over the industry, and particularly the App Store, by force. Popcap Games is at the epicenter of it all, with several notable games--Bejeweled 2, Peggle, and now Plants vs. Zombies--being stand-outs on the iPhone. We won't lie: we were eagerly awaiting the release date of this long-promised iPhone and iPod Touch port, having fallen into an addictive trance with the PC version.

For those not familiar, Plants vs. Zombies is a variant on tower defense games, where the player sets up fortresses and weapons to stave off waves of enemy attackers. In the case of … Read more

Unblock Me Free is the free version of Unblock Me, a simple but stylishly made puzzle game in which you solve spatial challenges involving rectangular wooden blocks.

The gameplay and interface are fittingly simple: you use your touch screen to slide blocks back and forth inside a tight grid (only left and right, or up and down, depending on the block's placement), maneuvering them around in sequence so that you can slide a red block out of the grid. This setup is the same on every level, but each time you have to move a different set of blocks … Read more