I learned about retrograde motion during college, but it was always a concept that slightly eluded me. As much as the teacher would explain why it appeared that planets would travel backwards through space, I never quite grasped how this could be so. I finally learned why today, thanks to the website Planets. There’s not a ton there to monkey around with, but what is there is a very nice demonstration of what retrograde motion is and why it works. There’s some freaky spirograph shit going on inside. It’s rather frightening, and more than a bit amazing, to think that a website had an easier time conferring to me a concept than a university system could.

A big argument that keeps reccuring in the video game community is the one of casual games vs. hardcore games. Apparently gaming has become so popular with such a diverse amount of people, that gaming companies are putting out more casual games that “every one can enjoy”. This wouldn’t be a problem except that these games are taking away from the hardcore market who like really indepth games which require actually reading an instruction manual and playing sessions lasting in the hours instead of mere minutes. I’m not sure why this i such a new and unique trend for people. Apparently no one remembers the Tetris craze in which everyone was addicted to falling blocks. Even my parents played that one, and my parents had a hard time getting to world 1-2 in Super Mario Bros. I guess I’ve been part of the problem since my wife and I have been having a lot of fun playing through 2D Boy’s World of Goo. Which is as casual as you can get out of the realm of popcap games.

I’d like to say that World of Goo is a bit hardcore, since some of the puzzles within can be rather challenging and require a number of play throughs before accomplishing, but I’d probably be lying to myself. I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad considering that the game was made by only two guys, and has been garnering quite a lot of praise, and well deserved praise at that. The game has an excellent production value. There’s no overblown CGI video welcoming you to the world (of goo) but everything from the level design to the load screen has a very unique (and fun) style to it. I got the game first for my PC, and since my wife showed interest in it, I bought it for our Wii, and it’s one of the better looking games on both systems, not because of any technically magnificent rendering or particle physics, but because the artwork is so rich and vibrant. It’s really beautiful in some parts.

There’s also amazing soundtrack. When we first started playing my wife heard the music and asked who composed it; she said, ‘it sounds like that guy.’ Luckily enough, I knew exactly who she was talking about. The music has a very Danny Elfman-esque feel to it. It’s energetic, light, and (again) fun. We were both surprised to learn that it wasn’t Elfman but one of the two developers who composed the score for the game.

Okay, so the game looks and sounds great, but how does it play? Well, it plays like awesome. In each level, there are goo balls and a pipe. The goal is to get the goo balls to the pipe. Luckily the goo can stick to each other and make basic geometric shapes, but the shapes are more fluid than rigid and will kind of sqoosh together. If you make a trianlge, the sides will bulge. It makes building things a bit more complicated since there’s always a certain bit of bounce to the objects. If you make something too unstable, the joints may fail and the whole structure might collapse in on itself. Luckily, the game provides a number of do-overs on each level, in the form of lightning bugs that follow you around. Squishing one will take you back one move.

The levels, and building goo pieces vary quite a bit and add a lot to the game play. In one level you have to climb up two towers, using friction to keep your structure from falling. As the towers get higher, one of them leans so the area between them gets larger. Luckily you are given green goo balls, which can be reused. Instead of making a giant tower that climbs up the whole level, you keep re-arranging a bridge; cannabalizing the lower levels to add upper levels. In another level, you have to use balloons to raise and lower bridges to allow you access to different areas. A lot of the fun of the game is seeing what each level has in store for you. One of my favorites involves a lot of wind and a lot of destructive windmills. Get too close and your goo balls disintigrate along with the structure they were apart of.

Once you get playing through the full game and figuring out all the puzzles, there’s the apply titled OCD mode, which gives you certain goals to accomplish for each level. This often involves collecting a certain amount of goo balls, but can also include beating a level within a certain time or within a certain number of moves. While the main game involves quite a bit of trial and error to get past the puzzles, OCD mode requires some pretty deft handiwork and quite a bit of forethought.

World of Goo is only $20 if you buy it online, though if you hunt around you may find a retail copy for cheaper, and only $15 on the Wii virtual console. I think it’s definitely worth the money. If you’re not convinced you can always download the demo or watch the preview.

If you’re too cheap to buy World of Goo but are intrigued by physics based games, you can always try http://www.physicsgames.net/ which I’ve also become addicted to recently. A lot of the games involve stacking and balance, probably my favorite of which is 99 Bricks, which asks you to use (wait for it) 99 bricks to build as high of a structure as you possibly can. The shapes are the same as the ones used in Tetris, so it sounds easy, right? I mean, the easiest thing about tetries was the moment after a monumental fuck up when you realized that there was no way to save the game and you just pressed down until the pieces hit the top of the screen. Well, 99 Bricks is a bit different then Tetris in that all the bricks have momentum and thier own center of balance. If you just lower them all down, they’re going to topple over. Even lowering a piece down and then shifting it over into an empty space can move a tower enough to cause the whole thing to come crashing down.

There’s also Invention Suspension which is a Wallace and Grommit tie-in game where you pilot a little helicopter around to pick up varios parts of an unbuilt invention. The game has a number of achievements that you can earn while flying through the various levels.

Probably my favorite game, though is Civiballs which has you cutting chains to release different colored balls into different colored vases. While the first couple levels are as easy as it sounds, the game quickly becomes frightfully challenging as you have to figure out the correct order to cut the chains in, but also deal with the moment of the balls as they fall and fly through the air. It’s intensely rewarding when you figure out a particularly difficult puzzle.