Playing mind games

Though Halo is an excellent source for all the fragging you could possibly stomach, occasionally the collegiate gamer will find him or herself in need of something that tickles the old noodle a bit more than the (ahem) “spirited” discourse on Xbox Live. In the back-to-school spirit, the Vanguard presents a look at some fresh new games that challenge your brain in different ways.

Story based puzzlingHotel Dusk: Room 251 for Nintendo DSThe rundown:Part graphical adventure, part hard-boiled fiction, Hotel Dusk: Room 251 is an interactive mystery novel (of sorts) that chronicles an ex-cop’s investigation into the titular Hotel Dusk, where his allegedly dead ex-partner was recently sighted.

Hotel Dusk doesn’t give Raymond Chandler a run for his money, but noir games aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, and the storyline and gameplay are pretty solid. Plus, the game’s hand-drawn, black and white character models look fantastic.

The brainwork: Hotel Dusk‘s puzzles mostly involve logical legwork a la survival horror staples like Resident Evil, with a healthy dose of sleuthing and conversational revelations.

The bottom line: Hotel Dusk actually came out about a year ago, but for those of you that missed out on it the first time, Nintendo has seen fit to re-release the game, cheap. If you like noir, puzzles or are just looking for a different way to exercise your brain, give this one a shot.

Think, then shootPortal: Still Alive for Xbox 360 (Xbox Live)The rundown:The original Portal armed you with a special gun that could shoot entry portals in the fabric of space. After shooting a point of entry, you could then shoot an exit portal. Anything passing through the entry portal will end up wherever the exit portal was placed.

The sequel, Still Alive, looks to follow in the footsteps of the original, with more spatial puzzles and a refreshing tongue-in-cheek presentation.

The brainwork:An easy puzzle in Portal would be “shoot a hole in a nearby wall with your gun, then shoot another on a far wall across a wide chasm to bypass it.” However, most puzzles were more like “move through a multi-room robot-sentry guarded area using momentum from portal jumping to slingshot over barriers and position energy particles to unlock the switches to the room’s exit” variety. Expect more of the same kind of physics-defying shenanigans.

The bottom line:Although little is known about it, Still Alive should be a downloadable treat for 360 gamers looking for something to tease their brain this fall. As an added bonus, the original game is also included with the package.

A matter of perspectiveEchochrome for the PSPThe rundown:Echochrome places you in the minimalist confines of a world governed by strange, illusory laws that change the physical reality of the game. Essentially, you’re tasked with creating optical illusions inside obstacle-filled levels your non-descript character model must traverse.

One example of these “perspective changes” is rotating the camera so that a pillar blocks the view of a hole, causing the hole to no longer exist. It’s kind of like an interactive M.C. Escher painting, complete with a simple black and white graphical presentation.

The brainwork:With five perspective laws and 360 degrees of rotation to play with, Echochrome‘s puzzles can get pretty complex, forcing you to stretch your visual perceptions.

The bottom line: Challenging, interesting and affordable, this one is a no brainer if you’ve got a PSP. It’s also available to download on the PS3, and each respective version of the game has different puzzles.

Dude, where’s my cow?Flock for the PS3 (Playstation Network)The rundown: Like Lemmings, mixed with… uh, something else, Flock puts you inside the body of an archetypal ’50s flying saucer and unleashes you into the gaming world with a sole purpose: abduct farm life!

Basically, animal abductions are separated into four categories–cows, pigs, chicken and sheep. It’s your job to use your saucer’s tractor beam (as well as other goodies, like an obligatory death ray) to frighten said livestock and herd them into an extraction zone for pick-up.

The brainwork: Each category of abductees has to be herded in a different way, and each individual animal has its own independent AI to make things difficult. Oh, and each level takes place on an island.

The bottom line: With completely different strategies per animal, a simultaneous two-player mode and over 50 different stages, real-time alien abduction management should make for some fast, strategic gameplay, and with versions also being developed for Xbox Live Arcade and PC, UFO fetishists everywhere should be able to get their fix later this year.

A less serious approachSam and Max: Season One for Nintendo WiiThe rundown: Sam and Max isn’t a traditional puzzle title, but rather a straight-up point and click adventure, involving the investigational escapades of a Sam, a gumshoe dog with a gray suit and fedora, and Max, his manic partner.

Throughout the season’s six episodes, you take control of Sam to solve humorous cases with Max (the game’s first case sees the duo’s business telephone held ransom by an office mouse demanding Swiss cheese) interacting with game characters and the environment to find clues and solve puzzles.

The brainwork:Like the point-and-click classics such as LucasArts’ Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max involves searching every nook and cranny for clues, getting information from people, and using inventory items to solve puzzles and overcome obstacles.

The bottom line: Sam and Max have been sorely absent from the gaming scene since their mid-’90s PC adventure Sam and Max Hit the Road until developer Telltale Games revived them last year with the PC-only first season. Now that it’s being ported to the Wii in its entirety, there’s no excuse not to pick this one up.