OH...SIR!! THE INSULT SIMULATOR

The best part of playing The Curse of Monkey Island for me was Guybrush's insult skill building aboard the pirate ships his crew attacked .I often thought it would be a grand idea if somebody made an entire game based on insulting and being insulted. And voila! Wish granted.

This is everything you 've ever wanted from Facebook but couldn't get- it's about finding ways to insult people and express most of your intolerant views without being ostrasized. You can choose from 5 wonderfully playable characters  with distinctive verbal intelligence levels,traits and quirkiness based on age and stature. All of them have their own strengths and weaknesses you can exploit and abuse. And if you get tired of those or a few unlockable characters there's always a cross-platform multiplayer that allows you to play against your friends or strangers from around the world.

The insult building is pretty addictive too- you string word upon word with each take and see to it that your combo hits a nerve. The words are chosen by characters from a list they both see .There are additional lines that unlock  as the round unravels that only you can see and use. Simple, brilliant, effective!

The best insult simulator that ever was.

CLOCK SIMULATOR

When games are this simplified  they are bound to become philosophical.And what better way to get philosophical about games and life in general than to reflect on time itself? Games have dealt with time in a number of ways and time proved to be a powerful ally in making games memorable and unique. Exploring the concept of time in games, CLOCK SIMULATOR took it to a whole different level making time itself and our understanding of time / our inner clock the protagonists. This game should have been titled - Time Simulator - or the like, and then people would not  look for new features in the game's architecture. Let us embrace the rigours of reality in games for a change.

This game should not be sold ,but integrated with each handheld  device  and played at least 5 minutes a day to make all of us question what we do with the time left to us here on this Earth.

WORMS

Another great game the impact of which was greatly diminished by the gruesome number of sequels.
There was such a simple concept behind it that it was bound to become a cult video game. It needs no introduction  or explanation - the minute you see the screen you soak the game in and become privy to the game's charm. True , we all tried our respective versions and have our opinions of the many,many post-1995 reiterations, but the truth is the players were blown away by the original game more than any other. It had tons of outstanding features for a 1995 game to achieve this -puerile humour to go along with the cartoon-like characters and scenery.excellent graphics and navigation,the level designs that were randomly generated, the multi-player option etc. It made a turn-based games hater like myself re-examine the genre altogether.
I  did playWorms Armaggedon  more than any other game in the series, but all the post-1995 changes they made to the series are purelly cosmetic.

NO MAN'S SKY

I admit I'm easily impressed with half-decent graphics and decent gaming mechanics and by the "cute factor" that confirms my being a casual gamer. Then there's my distaste of any first-person game involving shooting. And I understand that as such I don't fully appreciate the furore with which gamers who play AAA titles lashed out at the studio behind the game for all the hype and clever marketing prior to its release.I feel their pain, I really do.

But this is every spacefaring child's greatest dream- becoming an explorer exploring a whole universe of worlds . So a lot of them  repeat, and a lot of them are boring, and a lot of stations should be brimming with life since they provide services that require considerable resources etc. But awaken your inner trekker and boldly go where no one has gone before for the simple pleasure of going. I would have made it even more abstract, resembling elaborate Universe simulations appearing nowadays (Illustris?) with even more modest gaming elements, but this is a remarkable feat in itself.

You have to applaud the nature of procedural/chance build-up of worlds, their flaura, fauna, surface, lifeforms, mechanical representations of their respective cultures etc. This aspect alone is sufficient enough to sparkle our imagination like very few gaming titles have so far. Hell, even the soundtrack (not talking about the 65daysofstatic's  ogt album) is procedurally generated by a uniquely designed system -how cool is that?

 No Man's Sky is based on four pillars: survival, combat, trading and exploration, and the three of four pillars may have crumbled. But the pillar of exploration will stand tall as a bold pioneering project for as long as there's gaming.

THE OOZE

A scientist named Dr. Craine is about to blow the whistle on a secret plot by The Corporation to spread a chemical plague amongst the general populace when the director of The Corporation poures chemical waste on him in the hope of silencing him for good.  Dr. Caine awakens to find he is a puddle of ooze with a monstrous head. Now he needs to kill the enemies and solve puzzles to collect all the DNA helices ro reclaim his human form or else he's in for an even worse fate of becoming a lava lamp.

Dumb, I know. But you stretch and spit ooze to obliterate enemies and see to it that your puddle doesn't get too small or your head directly hit, and it was loads of fun to play on my friend's console. Some would probably argue in favour of this title being more of a dying breath than a swansong for the Sega Genesis system, but its originality stood the test of time well. I would personally do away with the head, and find some other way to move puddle parts to confuse the player even further, but again it was the easiest way to conform the concept with your average Sega platfomer.

I AM BREAD

Being a slice of bread isn't easy- you have to surpass your bodily  limitations, fight the  physics of rectangular movement, move across tricky surfaces  without dirting yourself too much in the process so that you still be edible after jumping into a toster. So many things to consider.

The very first bread simulator out there wasn't warmly received by the critics or the global gaming community, but it's revolutionary in the sense that it takes us places we never dreamt of visiting. I've always dreamt of inanimate objects imbued with life in games and concepts that would make us question our human identity without actually questioning it. And though such entities were present in gaming as early as mid-80s , they always appeared in the form of sprites who came at us.

I would add interactions with flies, cockroaches and other insects to spice it all up, but the game is perfect as it is.The concept and the absurdity of it is what makes the game stand out. Highly recommended!