You can get Lumines Live now on Xbox Live Arcade. The demo seems just okay to me. I think they have overpriced this and the nickle-and-dime pricing model really sucks. Not a good value really. I might just get this for PSP instead.
Wow, is this a blast back to the past. I played Lemmings on the PC back when it came out for the PC in the 90’s. This is a classic puzzle game. You have these Lemmings, little green haired dudes that will gleefully follow the leader to their death if you don’t use the Lemming’s special functions to make a safe path from them to the level exit. You will have many obstacles, many of them deadly to the Lemmings, and the goal is to get a certain percentage of Lemmings as dictated by the level goals to the safety of the level exit. This is basically a remake with slightly improved graphics over the original, plus some 36 bonus levels never before seen, and a level editor and the ability to download new levels from a web site and share you levels with other PSP users. I haven’t tried sharing levels. I did play with the level editor for a bit and it’s pretty easy to use. I completed 29 or so of the Lemmings Original levels, and about 12 or 15 of the new ones. So far it’s pretty fun, although it’s getting pretty difficult now, and I may need to get some hints soon. I’d rate this at least a B+ so far.
One of the more quirkier titles I have snagged recently for the Nintendo DS is Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! This passes itself off as some kind of brain training program by a virtual brain doctor of some kind (he has a name and I think it is based on a real person but I forgot the name).
The program keeps track of stats for up to four people. You first take a Brain Age Test, which is a series of logic puzzles or math puzzles or memory games that will estimate your “Brain Age”. Your Brain Age can range from 20 (the best) to 80 (the worst). When I first started I had a Brain Age of like 70 or so. Now I’m down to 42 I think but at one point I was down to 33 so it varies every time you take the test.
In addition to the test, you can do Daily Training, which is a series of routines that you should do every day to keep the brain fresh. This is stuff like doing 20 math calculations as fast as you can, or 100 of them, or reading aloud, or other little memory games. The program tracks how well you do at these daily training sessions and charts your progress over time, even allowing you to compare your charts to other people using the same cart.
 The cartridge also has sudoku games on it, and you can play those independently of the brain age checks or daily training. It keeps track of which ones you complete and how fast you did them. This was my first time to actually learn how to do sudoku and it is pretty fun. I can’t compare this game to any others however, since this is the first computerized sudoku I’ve played. It is kind of nice in that it lets you write in “temporary” numbers in the spaces to help you remember things you’re not quite sure of, like if you know it could be a 4 or a 7 you can write those as temporary numbers in a block and then when you figure out which it is, write 4 in big as a permanent answer.
One flaw with the game is that the voice recognition isn’t perfect, and neither is the hand writing recognition. In one of the brain age check games, you have to say the color that is flashing on the screen, like it might write the word “black” but the color it’s written in is actually yellow so you are supposed to say “yellow” but it doesn’t always understand what you say every time. The word “blue” seems to be the biggest one it hangs up on. I don’t know if it’s just my hick accent that it can’t get or what. Also, when writing numbers, you will have to possibly retrain yourself how to write the numbers in a way that can be read correctly. When I first started the game thought I was writing a 1 every time I wrote 7 until I changed how I was writing it. I still sometimes miss questions because it doesn’t read my numbers correctly. And there is a word memory game where you have to write down words that you saw on a previous screen, and that game is attrocious as far as being able to consistantly understand what letters you write. That one seriously needs work and practice on the part of the player to write your letters a specific way so that they are read correctly. All of these recognition problems add up to some frustration, but once you do get the hang of it the game becomes a lot more fun.
At the bargain price of $20, Brain Age is seeking a wide audience. I think it has a lot of mass-market appeal. I got Kim doing it and I think it appeals to the non-gamer quite a bit. She loved the sudoku so much that she bought another sudoku game just for that (which I’ll review later). This game was entertaining enough to keep me doing it steadily for three weeks, and I still have it as my main cart for the DS although I’ve slacked off a bit in using it. I think for the price that’s a decent amount of entertainment. Your milage may vary, of course! I’d give it a B-. Could have been higher if the letter/number/voice recognition problems had been worked out better before release.
I may have to buy a new DS Lite for Kim to use. 
I once blogged about Real Arcade. This is Real Network’s online gaming thingy. You can access it for free, and download all the demos you want. Most of the games are priced between $10 and $20 normally, if you aren’t a subscriber. However, for a subscription fee of $8/month to Real Arcade GamePass, you get 1 free game per month, and a $5 discount on all the other games you buy that month. Once you buy a game it is the full version and yours to keep and play forever*. Pretty much all the games I’ve played on there are worth a pidly $8 which is what you pay to get a free one each month. You do need to remember to log in each month to use your free credit, because they do not cary over at the end of the month. Use it or lose it.
So anyway the reason I am posting about this again now is that I had quit the service a long time ago, but just now resubscribed. If you subscribe now, they are giving away a free game called SuperCollapse II which is a puzzle game somewhat similar to Columns except stuff comes up from the bottom, and it has several variations. Also if you subscribe now, you get another free game of your choice. Your first month is free, and even if you keep the two free games and then quit you pay nothing and have no obligations. You can quit the service at any time. I couldn’t pass that deal up.
If you like casual games, especially puzzle games, I recommend checking Real Arcade GamePass out, it’s a pretty sweet deal now if you ask me. It got me to resubscribe. You can also just view the list of the games they offer. Also a really cool pirate trading game called Tradewinds Legends is now marked down to $10, or only $5 if you are a subscriber. If you’re looking for another game to use your free game credit on, I recommend either Geneforge or Geneforge 2 if you like RPG games. Don’t let the retro graphics of those games fool you, they have very cool gameplay depth.
Lastly, if you do decide to sign up for this, and you don’t mind me benefiting from it, I can get a 15% off coupon if I email you an invitation that you can use to sign up with. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. Other than that I do not get any benefit from Real for writing this, I just thought it was a sweet deal (two free games with no strings attached), so I decided to post about it.
* Forever - but don’t lose the email account you used to sign up to real, because to access Real Arcade to re-download the game in case you reformatted or something, you need that email address (and preferably the password but it will email that to you if you forgot). However, I think you can back the games up to a CD or something but I haven’t tried that to make sure it works when you copy it back to your hard drive.
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