I began my diary this week with a story about my unhealthy obsession with Take Two's "Civilization Revolutions" on the DS. Literally "unhealthy," you may recall, because the game motivated me to stay underground, sitting in a subway station, breathing subway station air, for 45 minutes more than I needed to a week ago today. So I quit the game. Last night a friend opened his DS and showed me that he's now hooked.

In the middle of this week, THQ sent me a new preview build of "Lock's Quest." I think they're subtitling the game as "Construction Combat," which fits. "Lock's Quest" is an isometric real-time-strategy game that puts you in control of a hero named Lock who can be manually controlled to fend off armies of bad guys. These bad guys attack in timed waves. The main way you hold them off is with towers that you build from pieces of walls and turrets bought from a budget of points earned in combat. This essentially makes the game a tower-defense title, like "Desktop Tower Defense" or "PixelJunk Monsters," but with story and character action mixed in. I've played it through many of my subway rides this week. (This build, unlike the last one, let me get past the tutorial.) It plays well, it's fun. I'm hooked.

The headline here is that in 2008 my DS gaming has been almost completely driven by games not made by Nintendo. How odd is that? Read more...

Since the last entry I've hit three roadblocks in three games:

I hit a bug in the preview build of the otherwise enjoyable DS character-action/tower-defense game "Lock's Quest." So that's going on the shelf.

I re-tried DS rhythm game "Ouendan 2," which I hadn't played in months, and was reminded that I can't get the beat of either of the two songs I'm stuck on -- even though I reached cheer girls status in the first "Ouendan" and "Elite Beat Agents."

I was playing EA's "Scrabble" beta on Facebook and am currently stuck with the following tiles: AIIARIR. Yay for me! I can spell the world "AIR"! And then I can spell it again! I'm going to lose...

Next: Maybe I'll download that Square-Enix iPod game. Anyone know if it's any good?

Since the last entry a game got me a little steamed.

I was dabbling with the tutorial of my preview build of "Lock's Quest" for the Nintendo DS. Several weeks ago, I got a demo of the game during the course of lunch with game director Jeremiah Slaczka. He didn't need to tell me much more about it other than it is partially a tower-defense game. Good enough for me! It's tower-defense mixed with real-time combat, actually, which is pretty interesting.

The "problem" I've had with "Lock's Quest" so far is that it's one of those games with a tutorial that's as long as my subway ride home. I wanted to get going, to play it and enjoy it. But first it had to take me to school.

I don't think I've ever held a game's tutorial against it. There's always something else that makes or breaks a game. But impatiently tapping through the necessary tutorial (it's a pretty complex, though smoothly-presented game) brought back a familiar feeling: tutorial frustration. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has started a game I'm expecting to like only to be bogged down by so much preliminary explaining and semi-interactive teaching and ... okay, okay, let me control the game!

I didn't hold this kind of thing against "Advance Wars" back in the day, so things could work out superbly anyway. A tutorial can't ever ruin a game, can it?

Next: Maybe Facebook will let me start playing official Scrabble at some point.

Since the last entry, I...

*Saved a dog from a gunshot wound in "Trauma Center: New Blood." Am I the only one who uses GameFAQs to find out how much longer a game is going to last? I don't go there for tips much these days. But I do go there to find out how much longer the games I'm playing are going to be. One more chapter for "Trauma Center."

*Played more "Secret Agent Clank."

*Played a still-in-development version of the DS game "Lock's Quest," a character-driven tower defense game from the makers of "Drawn To Life." It made a good first impression. I'll have more to say about it next week.

Next: This weekend will involve the playing of "LEGO Indiana Jones." Somehow. Some way.