What holiday is this again?

I know there's a reason we don't have to go to work tomorrow, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

We're in NJ at Chad & Dana's, and we actually spent a lot of time outside. They have two little girls and Clark has had a blast playing with them. But while whiffle ball and frisbee are things that happened, it's the gaming that I'm willing to weblog. Particularly the stuff that was new to me, or at least had not been touched for a while.

Right now I'm watching Chad play Braid. This is clearly not my thing. I'm putting Braid right inside the Mega Man 9 category of games that are unconscionably difficult. I'm sure many people enjoy this. I would not. My favorite part is listening to Mike watch walkthrough movies on YouTube and try to explain the solution to Chad.

"He's going up the ladder. He's doing that crazy jump thing we talked about. He's... what the fuck?"

I can see how Braid is achingly clever. But the continuous trial and error gameplay is painful and brutish. Particularly in the time-based puzzles. The shadow man portions are much better.

Castle Crashers. Cute look. Obnoxious poop jokes. Not as instantly appealing as I would have guessed after all the hype. It's coming to PS3 at some point, and my personal jury is out as to whether I would purchase it. I really like the little animal power-ups, but the actual game is pretty spare. It's no Fat Princess.

World of Goo. The presence of multiplayer surprised all of us. But with four people trying to place goo balls and only one with camera control... it's more of a social laugh than an actual multiplayer experience. In the end, I think I'd probably prefer a mouse-based version, but I'd need to test that out.

Noelle took down another de Blob level for me. Not that I've played that one in a while, but I'll gladly take the assist on my save file. What in the hell were they thinking making those levels so damn long. Each level could have easily been cut into three pleasing sections, instead of one awful draining killer. Checkpoints, de Blob. Checkpoints.

I showed off Madworld. People will watch Madworld, but nobody ever wants to play Madworld. And that explains the sales.

Here's an experiment that you, having a brain, will fully expect to fail. And I did as well, but I had to try to get the 100% on it. If you copy a WiiWare/VC game to the SD card, then take that SD card to another Wii, you cannot play that game. I mean, of course, right? If you could play games off the SD with impunity, nobody would ever buy anything. Still, I had to know firsthand. Had it worked, we'd be playing Darklord right now.

Chad busted out the Arkham Horror last night. Very, very nice. It takes some chewing to get it set up and the basics explained, but once you're in the groove it's not bad at all. Giant co-op board games are such a treasure. I love that angle where we're all deciding who is going where and what happens next. The card-based character customization thing is brilliant.

We won - even with Mike fading and Chad and I finishing things off using Mike's character as fodder - but we had some rules wrong. So that's an introductory game of Arkham Horror, I suppose. Next time, it will be bloody. I'm going to have to get this one... it's been a regular surprise to me that I don't already own it.

We're planning another multi-day trip up here for New Year's, which will probably have less outside stuff.