[TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This outing, Jeffrey L. Wilson explores The Search for Tobin Frost.]

The Search for Tobin Frost is the official movie tie-in to Safe House, the Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds intelligence thriller written by directed by Daniel Espinoza. The goal is to track down rogue CIA agent Tobin Frost, who has apparently betrayed his country and spilled secrets to various organizations and nations that want to do not-so-nice things to America.

The Search for Tobin Frost gives you four in-game days (not real-time) to track and capture the masterful agent. Each action you take–flying from nation to nation, interrogating people, bribing shady individuals–eats time from the clock, but gives you valuable clues to his whereabouts. These clues demand you identify international currencies, know regional temperatures, and other world facts. Run out of time and Mr.Frost escapes your grasp, Carmen San Diego-style. You can also tap lifelines for clues. They don’t cost time, but you have a limited supply.

Anyone who’s had a world affairs class, or even a history class, should be able to ace the clues and capture Tobin Frost as the game isn’t particularly challenging. The reward for apprehending the rogue agent? An exclusive clip. It’s not super-satisfying, but hey, The Search for Tobin Frost is an interactive movie tie-in.

The Search for Tobin Frost doesn’t really capture the movie experience (it could use some more Denzel and Ryan Reynolds, frankly), but it’s a decent promotional piece for the upcoming film February 10th film.

The Google Plus game library expands with today’s announcement that Zynga will bring its incredibly popular casual game, Cityville, to the upstart social network as CityVille+. This move deals a major blow to Google Plus’ main competitor Facebook.

CityVille has been the most popular game on Facebook and at one point had more than 100 million users. Recently, the game’s popularity waned, which resulted in a decline to a little more than 70 million users. If Google Plus is to succeed, it needs to provide (and improve upon) the services that Facebook users crave. CityVille helps Google come closer to that goal while simultaneously freeing Zynga from the vice grip grasp that Facebook has had on the company.

Under the current agreement with Facebook, it was unclear if Zynga could offer its games to other platforms. Zynga had agreed to keep its games exclusive to Facebook, in exchange for marketing support, and the use of Facebook Credits, but then had to hand over 30% of its revenues to Facebook.  Many thought that Zynga couldn’t port its games to other platforms, but the company proved that was not the case. According to some reports, Google Plus is offering lower fees to developers, which is a wise move to attract more game makers.

Google Plus has approximately 50 million users compared to Facebook’s staggering 800 million. If Google Plus hopes to snatch away users it has to do everything it can, and this move is a step in the right direction for the expanding social network.

TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This outing, Jeffrey L. Wilson explores Thor: Bring the Thunder.

The horribly named Thor: Bring the Thunder, the promotional tie-in for Marvel’s big screen adaptation of its own Norse god comic, hit the Web this week. The Flash-based 2D game, which is free to play at Marvel’s site, puts you in control of the hammer-toter as you attempt to rescue a kidnapped maiden. The plot and gameplay are bare-bones–it is a Flash game, after all–but the retro music and visuals may prove enticing to those with an affinity for sprite-based video games.

Let’s jump straight to the meat: BigPixel Studios’ Thor: Bring the Thunder is cute. Puppy dogs, rainbows, and babies cute. It harkens back to the 16-bit era, with charming music and chunky, black-outlined, aliased sprites that are backed by bright, colorful backgrounds. You navigate Thor through a series of Mega Man-like platformed environments, only stripped down to its bare elements. In fact, comparing it to Mega Man is a bit of disservice to Capcom’s action franchise as, despite the appealing visuals, the game is remarkably bland.

Sure, you can engage enemies with a melee attack, projectie attack (by hurling Mjolnir), and summon a lightning super, but the spike-filled platforms are ho-hum and the jumping tricky. As you leap from platform to platform, you collect red and gold apples that replenish your life bar and add to the score total. Occasionally, you’ll find a lightning orb (you can carry three of these) which you can use to unleash a super on an enemy. Thor: Bring the Thunder includes a standard Campaign mode and a Survival mode where you keep fighting your way through a single level until you bite it. The latter is kind of lame.

But hey, it’s free! If you want to bash demons and other mythological enemies for  few minutes at a time, Thor: Bring the Thunder is a nice diversion. Enjoy the aesthetic and don’t expect much else.

TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This outing, Matthew J. Kaplan explores Canabalt.

It took Adam Saltsman five days to make the new freeware game Canabalt. Like so many Flash freeware titles, the game is played entirely in your browser. Its visuals consist of only six colors. It is played with only one button.

It also might be the best game released last year.

How can I assert something so ridiculous when 2009 saw the releases of Infamous, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Uncharted 2, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? How can a tiny freeware browser game compete with the likes of these multi-million dollar budgeted, triple-A console games?

Because I have never seen a concept so richly and successfully realized in such a simple yet stunningly complete form.

Evocative of the best moments of Sonic the Hedgehog, Out of this World, and even Mirror’s Edge, Canabalt is by all means a tremendous success of gameplay and concept over complexity and density. The goal is utterly straightforward: use the X or C key to jump over items and across gaps while escaping from a city under siege. To my knowledge, there is no end-point to this escape: It’s one of those addictive browser titles whereby players compete for bragging rights. In this case, it’s the amount of digital terrain you can cross before plummeting to your doom or unwittingly detonating a bomb.

The graphics are the very essence of the dystopian sublime: a dark palette that bathes the digital canvas in fluid silhouttes and contrasting whites. Invaders stalk in the background, startled birds fly off in the foreground. The gamescape is industrial, alien. Sierra’s comical Manhunt EGA adventures infused with touches of Virgin’s Beneath a Steel Sky and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

From a design perspective, Canabalt is a very simple experiment, a “what if” scenario that posits maximum simplicity and asks the game’s atmosphere and sole game mechanic to do the legwork. But from an experiential perspective, it is much more. Out of single button presses and randomly generated environments comes a blistering, addictive ode to the futility of escape when circumstances are unknown. The context could have just as easily been running away from a tornado or the dropping of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Whatever happens is frantic and bleak, and you are destined (and compelled) to repeat it. The threat that looms in the background is unsubstantial in terms of game mechanics but all-important in terms of atmosphere and emotion, another note in the game’s admirably simplistic techno score.

And it is this stellar combination of pulse-quickening atmosphere, dread, and almost transcendental simplicity that makes Canabalt a formidable contender for indie hit of the year, if not best downright gameplay experience. Larger, more complex games aim for occasionally memorable setpieces, snapshots of the kind of suspense and cathartic “giving into the doom” that Canabalt evinces in mere seconds of gameplay. But Canabalt does not ask the player to think past the basic human confusion associated with large-scale cataclysm. It does not ask the player to resolve this scenario. It asks the player to run away when running is not an option.

The game is dystopia itself. And the player, taken as a human being, is asked to do what any person would do–spit in the face of logic and inevitability for the sake of the experience, the moment, the promise of going even one step farther. And that one button press? That’s your core survival instinct, your willpower being pressed.

Am I reading too much into this marvelously minimalist game? I’m sure Saltsman himself would think so. But that’s the wonderful thing about being a gamer: I get to take joy from the unintentional. In the grand scheme of things, I will have spent only minutes with Canabalt, but I can see it in my mind so clearly, and I can feel it so thoroughly in the antsiness of my finger on the keyboard. Most small games like this represent the Cliff’s Notes of a more complex experience, and it is true that scenarios such as that depicted in Canabalt can just as easily be found in other, more “polished” games.

Detached from context, however, Canabalt represents the power and potential of small independent games: to evoke an emotion and state of mind so completely that it is less snack, more meal.

You can’t outrun destiny. But boy, you can have fun trying.

TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This outing, Laurie-Anne Vazquez explores Mirror’s Edge 2D.

If you thought 2D flash video games were all movie tie-ins like 8-bit The Expendables or endless variations of Farmville, you haven’t seen EA’s Mirror’s Edge 2D.

A faithful adaptation of its renowned 3D big brother, Mirror’s Edge 2D features courier Faith running through a futuristic city while trying to avoid capture. She has all her parkour moves, and the obstacles – while different – still require skill to reach. It’s fast, too: the game loses nothing of its speed in 2D. This Mirror’s Edge is still a challenge – and a fun one, at that.

The game opens with Merc offering to train Faith as a runner if she can prove she’s got the right stuff. The first mission gets you comfortable with the controls: directional keys help Faith run, slide, and climb walls while the S key helps her jump. Simple to learn, but challenging to master. The controls are always on the bottom of the screen in case you forget (I found that super helpful).

Subsequent missions ask you to collect bags and flags. There’s a time attack mode as well, for those players who want one.  You’ll need to master different skills – wall climbing, sliding, rolling, hanging – to complete the levels.

You can also do secret missions within each level. Break a red window and you’re charged with collecting a file while avoiding a machine gun-toting thug who’s trying to protect it. She takes minimal hits, so use your parkour accordingly.

The music is minimal. The sound effects are light. The loudest sounds are Faith’s breathing – running, jumping and landing. The graphic style was a little hard to describe. It’s crisp and clear and bright, like its 3D big brother, but it’s got a hand-drawn feel to it that I couldn’t quite place – almost like a 2D Jet Set Radio. Everything here felt every bit like the original game.

Mirror’s Edge 2D differs from the original game in terms of its perspective. It’s a basic side-scroller layout, like the iPad / iPhone Mirror’s Edge. While radically different from the first-person perspective of the 3D game, the platformer layout kept me from getting disoriented and helped me concentrate on getting to my goals.

For die-hard fans of the game who loved the first-person perspective, this is probably not for you. For everyone else, give it a shot.

TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This week, Laurie-Anne Vazquez explores The 8-bit Expendables.

If you haven’t heard of The Expendables and you grew up in the 80s, take a gander at the  trailer. It’s everything that was awesome about 80s action movies–overstated muscles, explosions, bad one-liners–crammed into one (hopefully) glorious ass-kicking fest. To celebrate that awesomeness, the movie’s Facebook fan page features an 8-bit game based on the movies, which is as badass as the premise of the movie, right down to  the chiptunes soundtrack.

The 8-bit Expendables is, essentially, a re-skinned Contra – the same backgrounds, same style of bad guys (with different colored clothes), and same power ups (with red or blue skulls in the wings instead of letters). After a screen crawl informing you of your mission (“A team of elite mercenaries head to South America on a mission to overthrow the evil dictator”) you pick your character and are dumped into a jungle that looks exactly like the first level of Konami’s run-and-gun shooter.

You can play on Easy (as Jet Li’s character “Yin Yang”), Medium (as Jason Statham’s “Lee Christmas”), or Hard (as Stallone’s “Barney Ross”). There’s a Bonus Round for extra difficulty, and if you beat that and score in the top 10 you win Expendables-related stuff.  Each character has their own weapon, power-ups, and arsenal of moves to keep things interesting.

Yin Yang uses throwing stars and he was a pain in the neck to control; his jump took me all over the screen and I could never get my feet under me. Lee Christmas, thankfully, felt more grounded, and he had the lion’s share of power-ups, as well as easy to control throwing knives. Shooting enemies with Barney Ross felt exactly like Contra, even though he was incredibly slow.

The red skull power-up gave Yin Yang giant red boomerang stars, triple knives to Lee Christmas, and red machine gun-fire to Barney Ross. The blue skull gave everyone a bubble of invisibility that was actually useful. You have 6 lives to use and infinite continues (there’s even an 8-bit version of your character with a flower on his chest on the continue screen when you kick it). 8-bit Expendables has a lot of play for a Facebook game, so much more so than fluff like Farmville.

What more you could you want from an 80s-style game based on an 80s-style movie? Maybe a sequel featuring the full cast of characters.

TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This week, Laurie-Anne Vazquez explores Robot Unicorn Attack.

Unicorns are a problem in this nation. They clutter up notebooks, stationary, and party favors.  They adorn the clothing and accessories of every 10 year-old girl who believes she’s a pretty, pretty princess. They hog shelf space in our toy stores, stealing precious room away from action figures and water guns.

Now they’re taking over our video games.

Robot Unicorn Attack is a flash game on AdultSwim.com. It is as bright, shiny, and happy as those holographic stickers on your kid sister’s Trapper Keeper—rainbows on the robot unicorn’s mane and tail, the flashes of light that your horn emits as it collects butterflies, the giant, shiny stars you smash through. Yes, you really play a robot unicorn. And the entire game looks like it was painted by Lisa Frank.

Why should you care? Because it feels like something from the wacky minds of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guys. That makes it the most awesome unicorn anything ever.

The whole point of the game is to run free. To that effect, you collect butterflies, jump chasms, and smash through stars that block your path to freedom. You use two buttons – jump (x) and dash (z) – for the entire quest; miss with either and you explode in a fiery ball of rainbow-colored doom.

To aid you in your quest, the opening screen exhorts encouragement like, “You will fail!” and “Over the Rainbow!” while the continue screen urges you onward with “You became a star!” and “You exploded!”  You get to stare at your disembodied robot head as you make your decision, too, because that’s what happens when you’re a robot unicorn running for freedom.

Since all you can do is rack up a ridiculously high score, your unicorn speeds up as you get better at smashing stars and jumping chasms.  Obstacles increase, the layouts switch up, and the game hits Ludicrous Speed as you pursue your quest of freedom. Dolphin friends jump alongside you in your quest, though, so that sort of makes up for the mind-numbingly impossible speed. So does the score.  It’s “Always,” a hit record for vintage 80s band Erasure whose copyright happened to expire. It is the most perfect soundtrack for running unicorns ever; if you don’t believe me, here’s the song’s original video.

Damn you, Robot Unicorn Attack. You made me comfortable with the unicorn invasion. Oh, well: run free, robot unicorn. Run free.

TimeWasters  highlights many of the excellent Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This week, Chris Gampat explores Super Mario Bros. Crossover.

Super Mario Bros. Crossover is a flash game that is the quintessential wet dream of all old-school Nintendo fans. Besides being a free game that allows you to take Mario on a romp through Super Mario Bros.’ Mushroom Kingdom, several of your 8-bit NES heroes (Link, Mega Man, Bill Rizer, Simon Belmont, Samus Aran) have been meticulously integrated to breathe new life into a classic game. Though the game isn’t as diverse as a Mugen title, it provides a great, enjoyable playtime experience.

In Super Mario Bros. Crossover, you’re playing through the levels of Super Mario Bros., but this time there’s no Luigi to accompany you on your mission. Assisting Mario in his unplumberly mission is Mega Man (Mega Man), Samus Aran (Metroid), Bill Rizer (Contra), Simon Belmont (Castlevania), and Link (The Legend of Zelda). Each character has this own unique powers and skills that can be unleashed with different button presses.

The arrow keys control movement, while X, Z and S do different things depending on the character being used (all buttons can be customized as well in the menu system). Responsiveness depends on the character selected; Samus, for example, has the same floaty jumps found in Metroid, while Bill Rizer does his Contra somersaults.

By far, using Mega Man has proven to be my favorite. Mega Man can shoot straight out at a target, slide on the ground, and quickly jump. When he powers up more (done by acquiring mushrooms and fire flowers), users can hold down the fire key for a more powerful blast. Get even more power-ups and you’ll be able to shoot fireballs.

Link will probably be the fan favorite with the large amount of Legend of Zelda players and cosplayers out there. Link is special because he has a sword and his boomerang. Throw the boomerang and players will be able to stun enemies, or collect coins that are in its path. Keep getting power-ups and eventually Link will be able to throw his swords at the enemy. Upon impact, they will explode and damage others nearby. At full power, he is a very rides neck and neck with Mega Man as Super Mario Bros. Crossover’s best character.

Players using Samus will get a very unique experience. Samus is one of the taller characters—the others being Bill Rizer and Simon Belemont. Because of this, Samus can’t hit the enemies on the ground as they are too short. To counter this, Samus can roll up into a ball and drop time delayed bombs that enemies can walk into. Expect players that love to set traps for their opponents to warm up to Samus very quickly.

When players use Bill Rizer, they’ll get a similar but more versatile experience than they will with Samus. Bill is taller, but can lie flat on the ground and shoot his enemies. Further, he can shoot in  a variety of different directions, including diagonals. This makes Bill a very dangerous character because he can easily clear out sections of blocks above him or lots of enemies coming in from the skies. They won’t know what’s coming for them when Bill gets the flower: that’s when he whips out his spread gun from Contra.

Simon Bemont is a character that personifies the maximum level of machoness. Simon throws axes in an arc towards the enemy; this can make Simon a difficult character to control as enemies need to be in just the right spot for them to connect. Lucky, when Simon crouches he pulls out his whip. Therefore, when enemies get in close, hit the deck. As Simon grows more powerful he can throw more axes at once.

Finally, the original Mario plays just the way he does in the other games.

Don’t expect anything really mind-blowing in terms of graphics. As always, since this is a Mario game, the graphics are simple: no dynamic shaders or boasting about how your game is programmed to maintain a straight 60fps. It works for the style of the game, you really do feel like you’re back in the old days playing on a 8-bit console system in front of your box of a television—even if it is your laptop.

The awesome part is the sound: all the original music from each character’s game is in there. I can tell you that there is nothing more satisfying than hearing music from The Legend of Zelda while throwing swords at little mushroom men.

Super Mario Bros. Crossover is, really, nothing short of genius. The game’s remixer, Jay Pavlina has done an excellent job of combing our childhood faves into a game that feels less like a mashup and more like one that was organically made. We’re very much looking forward to Rya Hayabusa joining the fray in Super Mario Bros. Crossover 1.1.

TimeWasters  highlights many of the excellent Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This week, Chris Gampat explores Enough Plumbers.

If you’re a Super Mario Bros. fan, or just like really rad puzzle games involving plumbers and danger, then Enough Plumbers may just be the TimeWaster for you. It combines insanely fun gameplay and really cool music that will keep cubicle slaves addicted for days to come.

The story behind Enough Plumbers is—well, there is none. You simply lead your plumbers to a flag in order to complete the level, while collecting coins and dispatching enemies by jumping on them. There are also bottles that allow your plumber to float upward, springs that let him jump to other areas, and nails that transform your plumber into a heavier version of himself. Call him Iron Plumber, if you will.

When players collect coins, they get a clone of themselves. The clones help the player to accomplish certain goals, such as killing enemies, pressing buttons, or accessing certain areas.

The game controls are simple: up allows players to jump, and left and right lets the player move in the appropriate direction.  Enough Plumbers requires a little bit of thinking and observation to figure out how to get through the levels, but it shouldn’t rack your brain too badly. Certain parts of the game will require precise movement and timing: a good example of this is where players need to navigate a maze of fireballs in order to get to coins and ultimately the flag at the end of the level. Because of this, the game can be very frustrating at times.

While the graphics are better than 8-bit, they still are fairly standard for a flash game. In no way is that a bad thing—especially as the main emphasis for this game is on gameplay. For what it’s worth, the graphics won’t bother players and it will seem as though the game is just a reskinned version of Super Mario Bros .

The sound effects are pretty funny and typical of old-school video games. On top of all this, the music is pretty kickin’. It sounds like something  you’d hear at a chiptunes concert, but it lacks the psychedelic vibe.

All in all, Enough Plumbers is a tribute to old-school video games, but still does retain its individuality by making it a side-scroller, adding more puzzles, and giving the game no real point or story line other than just to accomplish the tasks at hand. Multiplayer features would be nice–if the game got its own version of Luigi, players could help one another solve puzzles. I recommend that players try Enough Plumbers at least once, but  be prepared to be frustrated.