Google Plus is going for web-browser gaming in a big way as well, with last month’s launch of Games for Google+.

Since a large chunk of my Sundays seem to be spent clicking on these attempts at sucking the into the murky waters of microtransactions, I’ve decided to launch this new weekly column focused on browser games. First up: The Sims Social, which has been available in open beta for a few weeks now.

At heart, it’s The Sims but faster. You have the classic meters that go down over time: social, fun, food, bladder, hygiene and sleep. These decline over time and you only need to perform four of the appropriate action to fill up the meter. Make Sim friends with your Facebook friends and pootle about little house and gain simoleons to buy new furniture, build new rooms and so on. Click on an object to bring up a radial menu, choose what you want to do. Practice skills like writing and cooking to level up and visit other people’s houses to improve your friendship. Same old, same old, right?

Not quite. For those of us who know The Sims, the differences are jarring. Firstly, there are no jobs. We all seem to be perpetual Open University students who just lounge around at home, occasionally slapping some paint on a canvas or jamming on a guitar to feel like we’re achieving something.

Secondly, playing on your guitar improves your fun levels but not your skills. And learning to cook will improve your skills but not assuage your hunger. It’s an annoying little time sink and I don’t see any advantage from a business perspective. On a slightly different note, playing lightsaber wars with your torch appears to be a seduction tactic in the Sims Social universe. Geeks represent! ;)

Third and finally, the entire game seems to be geared around spamming your friends. It’s virtually impossible to progress without being prompted to post on at least three Facebook walls. Bought a double bed? Sorry, can’t build it yet. You need a wrench, four pillows, four “dreams”, 8 “loves” and a “bling”. You could try generating them yourself through the suggested actions but it’s far faster to just spam your friends with messages saying “Can you help me build my bed by sending me 1 soft pillow? They’re free to send!”. Bought an expansion room for your house? Sorry, you need to ask three friends to help you out. It’s just not possible to build a house by yourself. If you go over to a friend’s house and see something incomplete, you can’t click on the object and volunteer to help them out. Nope, gotta wait for that help request. Not just on the wall, either. You get the notifications in game as well for a double whammy.

It’s sad, really. This could be quite a fun but every time I log in, I’m greeted with a scene like this:

The game is still in beta so it’s entirely possible that all this will change as times goes on. On the other hand, what websites aren’t in beta these days? Facebookers, head on over to The Sims Social to virtually shag all those friends you’ve secretly been lusting after. They won’t even know…

Elite has been built to fully integrate with Modern Warfare 3 as well as supporting earlier Call of Duty games like Black Ops.

Think of it as a Call Of Duty career management system. It keeps track of what you’ve been up to in-game and can help you improve through analysis of your own performance stats as well as providing detailed information on all the maps and weapons available. Or you could just nerd out on all the numbers.

Approximately 90 seconds after finishing a multiplayer match your record will be updated with all this new information. Given the vast number of online matches currently taking place, this is a pretty impressive feat.

Activision have said that Elite will be accessible from the internet, mobile phones (e.g. iPhone app), from your TV and in-game. I don’t know what the difference is between in-game and on your TV, as no further information was provided. The full premium service will be subscription based, the details of which, including pricing will be made available over the next few months. To sweeten the deal, all Modern Warfare 3 map packs (i.e. paid-for DLC) will be included in the subscription. It was stressed that multiplayer will remain free and part of MW3 when you buy the game.

Call of Duty: Elite is split into 4 distinct sections:

1. Career – This is where you can pore over all your performance stats like games played, win/loss ratio, personal bests, recent performance and a weapon performance matrix. You can also compare your self against other players. The feature I liked the the most was the heat map that is generated after every multiplayer match. This allows you to analyse the locations of every kill/death and spot bottlenecks.
2. Connect – This is the video section where you can link your YouTube account to Elite, post your favourite Call of Duty videos and also view those posted by the community and the developers themselves.
3. Compete – Sign up to all the Call of Duty events that are available here. You can search by event type, date etc. Some of the events I looked at had an iPad 2 as the prize or even the Call of Duty Jeep Wrangler. There were also a few screenshot events for those of us that don’t have ninja FPS skills.
4. Improve – Detailed maps and overviews, tips, stats and video guides for all the weapons and items in the game can be found here. This section should help you plan your tactics for each of the maps so you don’t get lost and know how to best use your weapons.

Here’s a video showing Call of Duty: Elite in action. I strongly suggest muting the video and just watch the pictures.

I was impressed with how well Call of Duty: Elite manages the huge amounts of data that is already available for each player and all the data that is generated from each game. It’s doing some serious number crunching in the background. However, I was a bit disappointed that you couldn’t save the heat maps for off-line analysis which could do with the maps from the improve section.

I will be interested to see how many people will sign up to Call Of Duty: Elite given that Valve Software’s Steam platform provides a similar level of service for free. I’m sure Activison would argue that Elite provides far more in terms of player stats that Steam does at the moment. But can you really be arsed to wade through and make use of all that data?

You can now register for an invite to the Call Of Duty: Elite beta.

Screenshots:

Call Of Duty: Elite will be available during Autumn 2011.

The aim of the game is to build the most challenging dungeon possible. You can also train the monsters that will inhabit this dungeon (dragons, ghouls etc) to be as nasty as possible. I did like the bit in the press release that states that “Only happy creatures fight with all their might, though.” So you need to be a nice monster trainer.

You can also raid other people’s dungeons too, not only to steal all their treasure but also to collect new monsters, rooms and items for your own dungeon. Combat between you and rival dungeon keepers is turn-based.

After a very long wait since the last decent dungeon games (Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 came out in the late 1990′s), we now have 2 newcomers – Dungeons and Dungeon Empires. Yay! If only someone would remake Dungeon Master. Hint hint.

One word of warning, there is a picture of an buxom elf-like woman in a fairly revealing outfit on the website. It just looks all a bit unnecessary rather than being NSFW. It’s a cartoon as well, not a real woman/elf.

Dungeon Empires is currently in closed beta. No word of a full release date yet.

The website went live to all and sundry a few days ago. According to the press release Games Cast TV’s goal is:

to become the online portal or “interactive TV station” for live e-sports entertainment – we accomplish this by bridging the gap between competitive gaming and spectators by providing a single destination to watch all of the major e-sports broadcasters and events.

Currently featured games:

• Counter-Strike
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Tekken 6
• Team Fortress 2
• StarCraft I and II
• Street Fighter 4
• Quake Live
• Quake World
• Heroes of Newerth
• Battlefield 2
• Left 4 Dead 2

Looking at the show schedule for the next 30 days, a lot of them are during the night (e.g. 1am, 3am, 5am). Fortunately for UK viewers there are some daytime friendly shows at the weekend.

Let us know what you think of Games Cast TV. Are there any games you’d like to see them feature?

You can sign up on the Nike Grid website and there is also a Facebook page. You can also run as a team and as a University if you so wish.

The game lasts 15 days and covers all of London’s 48 postcodes. You can see postcode maps showing the grid phoneboxes on the Nike Grid website. Here’s a screenshot showing what the EC2 grid looks like and I’ve clicked on one of the grid phoneboxes to see its location in more detail.

Each day during the game one phone box in London will go lunar. That means the first person to log a run using that phonebox wins a pair of Nike trainers (LunarGlide+2 running shoe). This means you need to check the website/facebook page to find out when a phone box goes lunar.

I’m all signed up and ready to start tomorrow at 6pm. Is anyone else going to play? Your welcome to join the theaveragegamer Nike Grid team too?

The core idea behind the show was to create something funny, appealing and well crafted.

Which, if you watch the first 2 episodes that he’s produced so far, I think he’s started off pretty well. I really like the animation style, and the length of the clips is just about right. I’m hoping that he’ll continue to create these great little animations.

However, there is a catch. Being a kind of cartoon start-up site Greg needs your help. He wants to hear from people about possible script ideas, give donations and business help. So if you want to help Greg, than get in touch via the 8bitstrange.com

Episode 1: Enter Snake

Episode 2: Porta-ops

No, seriously. Look at it!

That poor little white bunny on top of the pink one? If you don’t shoot the pink one, he’ll turn pink too and go hopping away to infect another rabbit. BAD unprotected bunnies!

I suppose at 60+ years old, it is time for the NHS to start acknowledging the internet. Both NHS London and Healthcare for London have been on Twitter for some time now. Hell, the wonderfully catchy NHS Commissioning Support for London has a Facebook page. We’ll see how long this strategy lasts with the Coalition, hey? (HfL on Twitter, NHS London on Twitter)

Do you have a burning desire to shoot rabbits with doxycycline? Get over to check urself to cure the hapless rabbits and learn a little something about disease vectors!

For the record, some form of chlamydia can actually cause respiratory problems in rabbits though I have no data on whether or not it’s transmissible to humans. Given that the identifying characteristic of STDs is that they’re not airborne, I’m not sure I want to think about how…

What do you think? Is it good to see the NHS engaging in Facebook, Twitter and gaming or should they GTFO and stick to treating sick people?

So here’s a low down of what’s in Quake Live:

• More than 30 arenas
• 5 game modes
• More than 50 characters
• Leaderboards
• Player profiles
• Statistics
• Achievement-based awards and trophies

Quake Live beta, to use its full moniker, is completely free due to the streams of ads pumped in front of your face. I would like to report on the ad-ness of Quake Live to qualify my last senstance, but I can’t as the servers are currently rammed and I’m 26,000 in the queue!

Ho hum…I’ll kill some time looking at Lolcats while I wait.

It’s basically a collection of web games with a flashy interface and some social networking features thrown in. As I write this, there are 52 web games available. They range from the standard fare like Sudoku and variations on Bejewelled to the oddly relaxing Amoeba. Even though most of the games are classics, they’re usually drawn with enough style that you don’t really mind.

The best thing about Doof is that you can play against other users. I’m not entirely sure how the matching system works but here’s the gaming experience. You buy credits. Playing a match against someone else requires you to bet a fixed number of credits on yourself. Winner takes all slightly less than all. You can also play all the games in single-player mode for free.

OTOH, they’re still in development so there are a few downsides. For one, you get popunder advertising. I hate any kind of pop-out advertising. It’s a small mercy that these ads are silent. Next is email spam. I played one competitive game and got two emails with commiserations and an invitation to try again. And this WITHOUT responding to the address confirmation email.

Worst of all, there was an error in the competitive game which meant that neither my, nor my opponent’s scores were saved yet our credits were still deducted. Boo! Glad I was using the introductory 10 credits.

No matter, I’m sure these problems will be ironed out soon enough. It’s definitely one of the nicer gaming portals I’ve seen lately.

Anyway, the the reason I’m posting is to point you towards Alihja’s hilariously withering reaction at NotAddicted.com:

Lets take a look at the requirements… Number four. Loves the beach? Uh-oh! This one looks like trouble…

…You see, as a gamer I love dark cold rooms that are lit by flat panels and LCD monitors. The hum of the fans in my Scorpio “Z” 668 case with its kick-ass “Z” backlight on the front panel which is a lovely shade of blue… kind of like a beach, right?

…A couple of months ago, when I was at DragonCon and I sat on two video game panels, did I think about the beach then? Alas, my sweet adorable cupcakes, no, I did not fucking think about the beach. I hardly even remember what the beach looks like. I think it has water, and sand… and—hey, wait a minute! Computer chips are made out of silicon, and sand is also known as silicon dioxide. And guess what’s at the beach?

Okay. I love the beach! Hooray!

Link:
Miss Video Game 2007: Sexism In The Name Of Equality!