There’s something truly amazing about being able to download games straight to a mobile device without having to blow into a cartridge, or wipe the back of a CD and wait hours for something to install, only to crash on the first playthrough.

“Unparalleled convenience” some might say. Of course we wouldn’t say that because that would be a compliment and compliments are only given once a year. You know this.

That said, mobile gaming is pretty nifty isn’t it? We can choose, download and realise a game is a dud before the initial crowning is over during Toilet Time. It’s as simple as a Kardashian, and almost as easy. Booyah! Unfortunately Superman is one of those games that you regret buying almost immediately after opening the app for the very first time.

“Become Superman and act like a self-congratulatory dickhead!” Reads the description in the App Store.

Although the idea behind the game is strikingly original; a 2D adventure flying around Metropolis putting out fires, throwing booby trapped cars into space and blasting asteroids out of the sky, unfortunately the common trap that mobile gaming falls into rears its ugly head once again.

“What’s that recurring problem?” We hear you shout before offering your ill-informed opinion on the latest Twitter outrage. Well the controls. No one has yet to perfect onscreen controls without them becoming a fiddly nightmare. Someone should realise that gamers don’t want to have a large proportion of the screen taken up by our dirty nails and bitten fingers. Who would want that? We all know that people with dirty nails are thought worse of than the letter “Oh, I’m a consonant, now I’m a vowel, I’m so flirty” Y.

It’s good having the option to zoom around Metropolis in your pants and a cape, but eventually you lose patience having to rearrange yourself time and time again because you’ve overshot the destination with the control stick, or supersped away from the speeding car by pressing the wrong button.

Although it is a wallet-friendly price, this doesn’t mask the fact that essentially it has the same failings as many other portable gaming titles. Give it a whirl if you want to, we don’t care, we have citizens to save!

Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s HECKLER MAN!

What is the Black Helix? The Black Helix is not, regrettably, anything to do with those old pencil cases that looked like massive calculators, but rather, a mindbending game that switches between the virtual world and real life. Imagine if a pixel could punch you in the face. That.

So, this new Alternate Reality/Transmedia game is running through March 2011 and wants to take things a step further, presumably ending up with some Tron-style bloodsport which sucks you through the screen.

There’s already over a thousand players who are engaged in this interactive game, which include live events, phone calls, parcels in the post, real world tasks and a final role playing event. It sounds mental doesn’t it?

Unlike most ARGs players of Black Helix will become part of an as-yet unwritten story with the game itself responding to the players and the alias names with information, research and sub plots developing over the game, eventually all ending up in a unique book.

If this sounds like the kind of mental, brilliant, life-stealing fun for you, then you can join the game at any point over at theblackhelix.com. There’s videos, photos and clues that have been unearthed so far for your perusal.

Of course, there’s a social networking element to it as well over at facebook.com/theblackhelix and twitter twitter.com/blackhelix

The plot revolves around the kidnapping of the kidnapping of 27 year old PHD science student Jess. The latest story development is that on the 10th March, the character Zero Tolerance revealed himself, seeking support for a common cause to reveal the truth about Pharmucom and Jessica Harrington’s kidnapping with a video.

Players within the game rushed to join the cause at http://www.toleratenothing.org and help Zero Tolerance by uploading all their research to his site. 3 Days later, Zero Tolerance had infiltrated a secret drop at a Dock in Belfast, as a security camera engineer.

Seriously. Look

This Zero Tolerance was able to capture one man from the scene and keep him alive. If you want find out more about what was going on that night, he is being held at a secret location to be interrogated. To make sure that Zero Tolerance gets the right information he called out to the in game players for questions which would help uncover the mystery.

The LIVE interrogation is taking place on the 15th March at 9.30pm (GMT London) and the questions have been crowd sourced from the players in the game.

If you sign-up to this, you may as well quit your job now. This looks like a life-ruiner worse than Football Manager.

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Stan Lee is a God to millions of geeks everywhere and a seemingly harmless, eccentric old man to the rest of us. Lee is the former president and CEO of Marvel comics, the publisher that brought us such legends as Spiderman, the X Men and Squirrel Girl (seriously).

Why is a washed up old geek in the news I hear you ask? Well, apparently the great state of California is attempting to restrict the availability of violent video games. That is to say, the state governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who appeared in a boat load of violent films, most of which had videogame adaptations, thinks that games are bad and should be stopped before they harm the kiddywinks.

Crazy ol’ Uncle Stan posted the following message on the Video Game Voters Network’s website, which interestingly had never been heard of until this story:

My memory has always been lousy and it’s not improving with age. But it’s good enough to remember a time when the government was trying to do to comic books what some politicians now want to do with video games: censor them and prohibit their sales. It was a bad idea half a century ago and it’s just as bad an idea now.

Despite how liable he is to wet himself, Grampa Simpson Stan Lee is right, the politicians are overstepping the mark by using games as a scapegoat and this new bill is a blatant attempt to appease conservative voters. He also found time in his open letter to accuse the politicians of doing all this just to drum up positive headlines, to ensure they get re-elected and that 50 years on, politicians still haven’t changed.

And he’s right, after all, 70 or so years ago we saw another Austrian with a dubious past and some right wing ideas get elected to power. He did manage to write a book though. I’m not convinced the Governator can actually write.

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Fifa vs Pro Evo. It’s a battle that has caused many a forum argument and playground bullying campaign as people try to decide which provides the better footballing experience. A battle that has had fresh life breathed into it with the release of the demo versions of Fifa 11 and Pro Evo 11 on both Xbox Live and PSN.

Having spent a long time playing both the latest Fifa and Pro Evo demos I can tell you that they once again offer a broad range of differing aspects of the game… and all of them are boring and insignificant.

I don’t care about the motion capture, I don’t care about the ball having the same physics as a ball that was, in possibly one of the most bizarre statements in sport, described as being too round and I don’t care about the player likenesses.

You know why? Because football is no longer about football, it’s about some of the world’s richest, thickest and, quite frankly, ugliest people taking copious amounts of drugs, sleeping with prostitutes whose ages range from 12 to 90, players trying to win an Oscar for throwing themselves to the ground at every available opportunity while crooked billionaires buy up anything and everything they see.

Seriously, Wayne Rooney and Peter Crouch, 2 men who between them have the IQ of a particularly stupid potato and who both look like they escaped from a zoo for handicapped animals, managed to cheat on their model girlfriends with high class hookers and random girls in clubs. How is this not a more interesting aspect of the game than the lack of talent they managed to display at the World Cup?

Fine, if you want an arcade feel buy Pro Evo, if you want an all around better simulation, buy Fifa. But for the love of God shut up about it being, “the most realistic football experience ever,” it isn’t, there is no button that allows you to dive, no clubs go bankrupt half way through a match and no tabloid sex scandals in the season or be a pro modes. Even This Is Football had a dive button, which instantly makes it 10 times more realistic than either Fifa or Pro Evo.

It’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011 all over again.

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Death has been good to Michael Jackson, his songs got back in the charts, he had a film out, everyone seemed to miraculously forget about all of the kiddy fiddling allegations, none of us had to look at that weird face of his anymore and he’s even got a new game coming out called Michael Jackson: The Experience!

The new game casts the player as the gloved one and utilises Microsoft’s over-hyped and underwhelming Kinect technology. A camera records the players movements and has der fuhrer von popmusik act them out in real time while a microphone allows the player to sing along and believe that they are, for that moment, Michael Jackson, except without their face melting off, more drugs in their system than every 80s metal band combined, vast collections of Nazi memorabilia and numerous allegations of child molestation (although we can easily imagine that a few people who purchase this game will fit all of these criteria).

The game promises that players will be able to learn the same choreography as MJ and his dancers and be able to sing many of the songs from his back catalogue but fails to mention whether Michael’s appearance will change slowly as the game goes on in some sort of freaky story mode that sees you lose parts of your face in hardcore back-street dance battles.

Seeing as the game is built to make the most of the motion tracking Kinect software, one has to wonder what would happen if a child stepped in front of the camera, especially as in demonstrations of the Kinect hardware (when it was still known as Project Natal) Hecklerspray staff noticed that it took pictures of participants as they were playing, which were then stored and displayed later. Does that not seem slightly sinister to anyone else when it’s being combined with a party game that uses bright colours and has the Wacko Jacko moniker on the box?

The game’s bound to be a hit; it’s a safe formula that, once again, fails to deliver the magical gaming breakthrough that Kinect is supposed to offer. The songs are popular and the catalogue is huge so downloadable content can be a good revenue source and since his death Jackson has been held on some sort of pedestal that ensures he can do no wrong.

However, this game clearly won’t be suitable for anyone under 5.

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Your children are addicts. Well, not really, but according to Dr Alex Yellowlees of the Priory Hospital in Glasgow they are. But why does Dr Yellowlees believe that your child’s XBOX, PS3 or Wii will violently murder your child and then molest their corpse?

The obvious answer is because he’s a whole spread short of a picnic, or (more likely) he’s just a press whore.

“Dr” Yellowlees, who offers Personal Life Coaching Consultation as well as sensationalised sound bites, believes that our children are at risk of becoming addicted to videogames as parents look to games as a method of keeping their kids quiet for a few hours.

But wait, I’m sure I’ve heard this argument before about television and the internet. Come to think of it, it was a certain Alex Yellowlees who said all of these things are highly addictive. Who’d have thought the Medical Director of a private addiction clinic would be able to find so many things to declare dangerously addictive?

According to the good doctor parents should look out for the warning signs of gaming addiction include:

“Tendonitis in wrists and neck pain, depression, mood swings, angry outbursts if interrupted or restricted, avoiding normal socialising and being active with other friends, preferring to be in their rooms to being with the family (even for meals), and deterioration in quality of school work and poor attention during classes.”

Aren’t these the normal habits of teenagers? Admittedly tendonitis in the wrists would only affect the males and the really slutty females (although where these slutty female gamers would find the time to get out and about so much with all the gaming they’re doing is beyond me).

Gaming isn’t actually listed as an addiction, but according to the BBC parents and doctors such as Yellowlees (read: fake ones) are growing, “increasingly alarmed,” at how many children are locking themselves away in their room to play videogames.

None of them seem to see the irony in this as they are the same parent groups and doctors that tell you to lock your child away in some sort of Fritzl like dungeon to save them from paedophiles and items that don’t comply with every health and safety regulation under the sun.

Yellowlees does actually have one sensible thing to say, parents should spend more time with their kids. Which is a nice sentiment, even if it is so painfully obvious it makes me wonder whether or not Mr Yellowlees got his PhD from a seaside claw machine.

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If, like us, you enjoy online games that make you curse because your brain isn’t quite as fast as your hands, then you’re going to love Climbing Ninja.

All Climbing Ninja asks you to do is climb up a rope, occasionally hopping across to other ropes to collect coins on your way up. But then the spikes start coming down. And the blades. And you’ll get confused and start swinging into them. And then there are the monkeys. We’re pinning the terrible headache we’ve currently got on Climbing Ninja, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped playing it.

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Screw it, it’s Christmas. Here’s a classic – Street Fighter. Or, you know, not actually Street Fighter, but a dodgy flash knock-off of it. Christmas!

If you’ve played the real Street Fighter, you’ll know how to play this one. Most of the characters are there, all the controls are in the game and away you go. Best of all, we’re pretty sure that there’s definitely never going to to be a movie adaptation of this flash Street Fighter. And if there is, Kylie almost certainly won’t be in it.

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With Christmas rapidly approaching, you should really be preparing to get your jigsaw on. After all, if you can’t spend the festive period joylessly slotting pieces of cardboard together, you’re obviously some sort of moron.

Until then, though, here’s Jigcircle. It’s like a jigsaw, but in a circle. Do you see? In actual fact, Jigcircle is more like one of those slidey tile games than a jigsaw – you’re presented with a mangled-up picture and asked to spin a bunch of circles around until you’ve unmangled it. It’s easy, it’s fun and you don’t need to be hammered on supermarket wine to enjoy it. What’s not to like?

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Aqua Turret is unlike any other game you’ve played. You see, whereas most shoot ‘em ups of this nature seem to be set in space, Aqua Turret is set in the sea, which obviously makes it completely different to anything and, um…

OK, Aqua Turret isn’t unlike anything you’ve ever played. In fact, it’s actually shockingly generic. Stuff comes at you, you shoot it. Some more stuff comes at you, you shoot that too. Nevertheless, though, Aqua Turret is easy to pick up and, if it’s mindless destruction you’re after, you could do an awful lot worse.

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Did you think that Super Mario Galaxy was the work of evil wizards, and that Super Mario 64 was a bit too high-tech for you? Then never fear, for here’s Super Mario 63!

Yes, you heard. Mario 63. It’s just like Mario 64, except one less and therefore completely different. In actual fact, Super Mario 63 is more like the original Mario games in style, gameplay and sound – except for when Mario is hurt, at which point he inexplicably switches from being a squeaky Italian plumber to being James Brown. Anyway, play Super Mario 63 now because how often do you get to violate multiple copyright laws, anyway?

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Think of a more pretentious name than The Majesty Of Colours. Go on, try. You can’t, can you? The  Majesty Of Colours is literally the most pretentious name for anything ever. Literally.

But maybe that’s fitting, because you probably won’t ever play a game as pretentious as The Majesty Of Colours, either. In The Majesty Of Colours you play a sort of tentacley thing, and it’s up to you to make decisions based on things that happen to you – you can be good or bad, and your choices directly effect the outcome of the game. If you can even call The Majesty Of Colours a game, that is. It’s – as we’ve said – pretentious.

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Dear God, we’ve fallen in love. Meeblings is one of the best games we’ve ever played, and it’s so stupidly simple we wish we came up with it first.

Meeblings is a bit like Lemmings, in that you’ve got to get a crowd of creatures from one place to another. But rather than the think-on-you-feet fluidity of Lemmings, Meeblings only move when you make them. Some Meeblings attract Meeblings when you touch them, others repel them. Others turn into trees. It’s this mixture of attributes that makes Meeblings so addictive – and it’s also the reason why we’re not going to be able to stop playing it. Meeblings is almost perfect.

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And now a science lesson in the form of a game. Wait, no, come back. We didn’t mean it. Well, we did a bit. Anyway. This is Cosmic Crush.

In Cosmic Crush you play a little meteor drifting around a solar system being tugged by the gravitational pull from larger objects. Hit any of these objects, though, and you’ll die. So what’s the alternative? Easy – gobble out other meteors smaller than yourself until you’re big enough to eat everything. It’s basically the story of Rick Waller told in intergalactic form. But you’ll like it.

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Look, we’ll come clean – we only picked Hey Wizard as a Slackerjack because its name made us laugh, and from now on it’s how we’re going to summon all wizards that we come across.

So it’s just as well that Hey Wizard is kind of good as well, really. It’s a sort of platformer where you can’t jump and need to utilise all sorts of wizardy tricks to get you anywhere. Thanks to this quirk, Hey Wizard is a game that you need to play for a while to truly get the hang of, but when you do, it’s almost worth the effort.

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