If you'd like to read about the press event Microsoft held today to unveil their new Xbox, the Xbox One, you should visit The Verge. There are all kinds of tech improvements over the last console, including audio commands, a Blu-ray player, a Kinect sensor, vibrating controllers, Skype, a Halo TV series, live TV, and exclusive games.

If you'd like to read a good piece about what the Xbox One (and the disappointing Wii U and whatever Playstation is working on) might mean, news intern Ansel Herz directed my attention to Luke Plunkett's explanation of why these new video game consoles are "bumming" him "out."

...I've got an overbearing sense of melancholy. Maybe even ennui. Not at the machines themselves; the PS4 seems supremely capable, and I've no doubt the next Xbox will be similar. No, I'm sad about the fact that this feels like the last gasp. A final hurrah.

The end of console gaming as we know it.

Maybe I can't see gaming's forest for the trees. Maybe I'm just bleak. But I can't see another round of console launches after this. OK, perhaps Nintendo can squeeze one more in, if only out of necessity, but the prospect of Sony and/or Microsoft having the will - or the money - to make a PS5 or Xbox 1080 in 5-8 years seems remote.

I am not a gamer—I can be a gamer or I can be books editor at The Stranger; I cannot do both—but this feels true to me. The idea of a single device to serve a single function feels like something out of the last century, and as much as these devices may try to make themselves into multi-purpose entertainment center devices, I think the idea of a gaming console is not long for this world.

Did you know today is the 25th35th anniversary of Atari's classic Breakout? Google does!

Follow the link or type "Atari Breakout" into Google Image Search to play.

• This is you?

Thanks to Slog tipper Greg!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

There are too many retro games to count, but only a few of them are fun on their own terms. This may result from the rapid evolution of gaming—any particular slice of nostalgia is only going to light up a few brains which were wrapped up in games during the month or year in question. ASCII games may have lasted longer than other tech, but they only touched a few of us who were so needy for dopamine that we chose to identify with @ symbols as they barreled through typographic mazes, questing for Amulets of Yondor and such. Candy Box takes ASCII graphics and, er, story, wraps it in some interesting mechanics and extremely silly candy themes, and offers something way more fun than it ought to be.

Part of the joy of the game is learning how to play—the dev should be making top dollar consulting with other devs on camouflaging tutorials—so we won't say much more than that your playful messing around will be rewarded. The game is more food-obsessed than Pac-Man, Burger Time, and Cooking Mama put together, and it is weird and challenging enough to keep us coming back.

• This is you. On the left. The dragon is not you.

Oh! Wait! This is important! Saving is messed-up, weird, and easy to forget. You've got to click a tiny button marked "Save" at the top of the main tab, and then either bookmark the link it gives you or note the five-character tag so you can retrieve your save later. You could also just leave your browser running indefinitely, of course. We failed to save several times early on, and the riddles of the swamp frog were only entertaining the first time through.

Please note: Candy Box is, as far as we can tell, in no way associated with Candy Land.

Thanks to Slog zoom-tipper Christine!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

The Raygun Lounge opens at 5pm, and Slog Nerd Happy commences shortly thereafter. Come on down to 501 E Pine and play Legend of the Cipher, Thirteenth Age, or whatever your heart desires (some desires may not be available at this time, offer not valid in Delaware). Have a beer! Try an extra-tasty samosa! Mingle with your fellow nerd stars! It is impossible to regret any decisions made at Slog Nerd Happy. Just ask this fellow:

The last Friday of the month is upon us again! It's time for our board-and-card-game Nerdy Slog Happy Hour, from after work until 9 or 10 at Gamma Ray. Thankfully, the cripplingly bright daylight should abate by then, so you won't have to feel bad about gaming indoors (or, for some of you, risk any penalties to Dex and to-hit).

If you've never had the opportunity to sling battle raps—or if you just want to witness the spectacle that is "Table-top Hip Hop"—we've got special guest Gerald King, one of the developers behind Legend of the Cipher. What's that look like? We're as curious as you—but you can find some clues here as Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins throws down a shanty rhyme at the Enforcer after-party at PAX East, about halfway through this video:

We'll also bring along the as-yet-unreleased ruleset for D&D variant 13th Age, which just got much love on BoardGameGeek. Check it out between games, or if you're as nerdy as us and just like to roll up characters, we'll be there for you.

What else do you guys want to play? If you want to bring a game, or want somebody else to bring something and teach, speak up in the comments.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Sadly, we've only got one review copy of BioShock Infinite—so that means one of us has had to slum it in mobile while waiting for the chance to revel in (and/or grump over) one of the apparently best games evar. (And where has the time gone? We're already in the midst of the BI backlash!)

Fortunately, in the meantime, we've had a couple of crazy good mobile games to suck on like a pair of aluminum-foil pipes:

• Nimble Quest, on iOS and Android. People are still making snake games? Maybe the last time you saw one was on your Nokia in 1998, but yes: yes, they are, and you'll be forgiven for underestimating this little fantasy game, right up until its dopamine-fueled tentacles have finished scraping out your entire subcortex like a relentlessly cute kraken. Your "snake" is a party of adventurers, which you unlock and add to one by one—a paladin here, a wizard there, each with its own upgradeable abilities—as you wind through short and increasingly difficult levels filled with spiders, skeletons, knights, and what-have-you. No doubt inspired by the recent vogue of roguelikes, each game of Nimble Quest kills you for good, starting you back at the beginning—but, importantly, with all of your expanded abilities, upgrades, and party size intact (which makes the getting through the early levels more of an enjoyable sprint than a trial). Like all respectable humans, we will never spend money on a freemium game (or at least never admit to it), but Nimble Quest perfectly surfs that whorl of multiple currencies, grinding, and self-respect, with a tight, satisfying design that reveals itself in pieces.
  

  • You know this will be LARPed at PAX.

• Auralux, on iOS and Android. Wow, this is the sweet spot of casual design and hard-core gameplay. Despite being enjoyable even for a real-time strategy noob, Auralux is probably the most "pure" RTS game you'll ever play: You have a base. It makes units. Those units can take over other bases to make more units. There is only one kind of unit, and the only thing you can do is tell that unit to move. Which is the game designer's way of telling you, "If you lose, it's your fault." And all of this happens against a trancey, slo-mo backdrop, with semi-deranged space-calliope sounds that track to the action. Like Nimble Quest, Auralux also gets its pricing right: the game is free, and you pay (not much) to unlock new maps when you want more challenges. We may be getting to the point where if you have a million monkeys working on a million app provisioning platforms, you eventually get some smart, non-obnoxious, sustainable pricing schemes.

• This is a lot more exciting than it looks.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Another month has passed and we are that much closer to death, or summer, or whichever temporal milestone you like best. Celebrate nerd-style with booze and analog games this Friday from 5-10pm at Raygun Lounge for the next Slog Nerd Happy. We're sharing space-time with a Yelp Geek event, so you can expect 2d8 wandering nerds in attendance. Some of them, no doubt, will drop fat loot, but let's try to parley before taking our surprise round. Some of us have Chaotic Good reputations to maintain.

It is also Tabletop Eve, the night before 3/30/13, which celebrity nerds Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day have announced will be International Tabletop Day*. Saturday is full of board game events, so check in with your favorite local game store to see what they've got on offer. Or get down to Norwescon and party old-school. Whatever you do, roll some dice.

* Check out their nifty web series!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

We're big fans of the pay-what-you-want Humble Bundle game packages, and the latest release is a winner. The four games included are Beat Hazard Ultra, a sweet space shooter that uses your music tracks to generate enemies; Dynamite Jack, an adventure romp that mixes stealth with a-splosions; NightSky HD, a neat platformer by the folks behind the legendary Cave Story; and Solar 2, a space trip that's reminiscent of Osmos. They're available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and even good old Android.

• This could be you.

You determine both what you pay and who gets the money, splitting it between the developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play charities, and the Humble folks themselves. If you give more than the average buyer (currently $6.64), you get two bonus games: the subterranean tower defense game Dungeon Defenders (DD: Second Wave for Android) and the maddening twitch-fest Super Hexagon. Soundtracks and Steam codes are part of the package, too.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Take note, gentle gamers: once again, Emerald City Comicon has a whole nested world of gaming within it—with the return of personalities like Jennifer Hale (the storied voice of FemShep) and Felicia Day (i.e., Felicia Day) and gaming-flavored events like "How to Become as Fit as Your Avatar" and "The Critical Hit Show: A Live Dungeons and Dragons Comedy Experience."

Scheduled programming aside, there's a veritable mini-PAX of casual and organized play, too—just across Pike and down in the basement, open until midnight both Friday and Saturday. You can play not one, not two, but three kinds of D&D (13th Age, D&D Next, and Pathfinder), all available in not-too-long, novice-friendly demo form. Story Games Seattle is also running and teaching games, like Fiasco and Microscope (whose creator was even there today), and Munchkin has a couple tables going, too.

If you're just ducking out of the show floor for a bit, the Game Library is back, where you can borrow a game to play with friends—everything from Bananagrams to RoboRally, Cosmic Encounter, and the crazy Order of the Stick game (which we've never found a way to play in under 13 hours, so okay maybe that's not a good option this weekend). Serious players no doubt already know that there's a whole slew of HeroClix and Magic tournaments going on, too.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

I don't play console video games or MMORPGs—I simply don't have the time, what with all the books and movies—but the look of Bungie's new project, Destiny, has me drooling. Take a look at this promotional trailer:

The Polygon says:

Players will explore our solar system in Bungie's new first-person shooter, crafting personal stories as they travel Destiny's surreal, fantastic places.

As Guardians, players will battle alien species with exotic names like Sandeaters, War Rhinos and Spider Pirates. They'll wage war with time-traveling robots and evil space zombies. They'll have shared, social experiences that complement a crafted, mythic science-fiction universe.

The production art looks gorgeous, and I love the fact that this is a completely new science-fiction universe that seems to embrace any number of sci-fi concepts and feeds them into one huge storyline. If the actual game is anywhere near the pre-release hype, this looks like the kind of game that could completely ruin my life. But what do you think?

Sakes alive. So we posted yesterday about the great new traveling Smithsonian exhibit at EMP, "The Art of Video Games," and we offered up two free tickets to tonight's Game Nite opening party for "the best story about having an emotional response to a video game."

You guys really brought it, and now we can't decide. Time for a legally binding Slog poll! Go read the finalists' stories and cast your vote by 4pm....

And whether you win or not, the Game Nite party at EMP should be much fun tonight, from 7 to 11, with live gaming on the Skychurch mega-screen and some cool talks, including a keynote from Jeff Strain, one of the godfathers of WoW.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

The Smithsonian's The Art of Video Games opens this Friday at EMP, and it's a visually striking first stab at figuring out where video games fit into the spectrum of creative work. There's a lot packed into a smallish space, including five playable games (The Secret of Monkey Island!), stills and clips from the 80 games on display, and a mesmerizing look at the faces of people immersed in games we call "What the Video Game Saw."

It's not possible to discuss this exhibit without taking a deep breath and mentioning the epic yes-it-is/no-it-isn't trolling that has passed itself off as argument on the subject over the past few years. To accept the legitimacy of this empty debate is an admission of defeat, and we won't dignify it with more than an acknowledgement of its existence.*

• This is you. You are art!

The selection criteria were eccentric, and involved—not kidding—online voting, but it's hard to argue with the inclusion of any individual title or series in the exhibit. It's sweet to see some of the old gear on display; the ColecoVision controllers instantly Prousted us back to our childhoods. The notable absence of games for smartphones and other mobile devices speaks more to the development cycle of museum exhibits than anything else, most likely. The top-level taxonomy of game types (action, adventure, target, and tactics) posed by curator Chris Melissinos is a good starting point and could launch a few dozen masters' theses.

The EMP is hosting Game Nite this Friday from 7-11pm to celebrate The Art of Video Games, and it sounds like good fun. They'll have live tournament-style gaming broadcast on the Sky Church's alarmingly massive screen, a suite of indie game projects from DigiPen designers, speakers from Valve, Microsoft, and UW, and plenty more. Tickets are $15 for adults or $5 for kids aged 5-12. (Members get in free.) We've got two free passes to give away to the commenter who tells the best story about having an emotional response to a video game. To win, you MUST post your comment by midnight tonight and email std@thestranger.com with your Slog commenter name, so we know how to contact you.

* Though we would like to point out one commonality between video games and art: They both attract staggering numbers of hustlers and grifters.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

FTL is a sweet little indie game that rode industry buzz to blow past its Kickstarter goal about a year ago, then launched last fall. It's sort of a dungeon crawl in space, with bright, clean graphics and a Choose Your Own Adventure-style interface that draws players in quickly. Ship-to-ship combat is a good chunk of the game, but that involves shuttling crew members to repair damage or focus efforts on shields or whatnot, rather than aiming, firing, evading, and other twitchy business. It's fun, it's easy to learn, it's hard to win, and it's compelling enough to play through many, many times.

• This is you.

It's also ten bucks. That stakes out some interesting psychological territory in the space of game prices in between classic one-or-two-buck apps like Angry Birds and $60 box game events like Halo 4, and it provokes a weird discomfort in the mind of the game consumer. It's certainly not the only game in its price range—there are plenty of $10-20 games on Steam, Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network—but it still seems to transcend the spectrum of established game pricing.

That's a good thing! It ties the price of FTL more directly to its value than to simply what everyone else charges. We may not often think "Do I want to exchange ten dollars in exchange for several hours of challenging fun?" very often, but it's a worthwhile effort now and then. When we see the same old price for apps, box games, and DLC (not to mention books, movies, porn, and music), we tend to pull the trigger without thinking. More diverse pricing may lead to more discerning purchases, and maybe to a Utopia filled with unique little experiences like FTL.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

I'm a couple days late to Surgeon Simulator 2013, but I think maybe this is the video game that Duncan Jones should adapt into a movie, not Warcraft. This is the most fun I've had playing a video game in forever.

Like everyone else, I* woke up with a hangover on January 1st. Shortly thereafter, though, a migraine struck from the shadows and crushed my hangover's windpipe, leaving me writhing in the clichés of agony. It would have been a great time for self-reflection, were I not so devoted to the experience of pure suffering, but in the depths of it all, some part of me that was still capable of reason decided to stop playing Marvel: Avengers Alliance.

• This is you (well, me).

It's a Facebook game that launched last March¬—and as far as Facebook games goes, it's pretty good. It won X-Play's Social Game of the Year, and it's splashy and sometimes well written and fun enough to keep playing for at least a few days or weeks. But! After joyously making Hulk smash and Spider-Man sling webs and dashing Magneto's plans for a while, it became a different kind of experience entirely: It turned into a job.

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