Mobile gaming

Since I’ve become a *gasp* productive member of society (at least somewhat), I have less time to devote to my chosen hobby than I’d like. That is, I’m away from my game consoles more often than I’d like. But to fill the gap, there’s always portable gaming, right?

You betcha!

But it’s not just the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. Most of us have some kind of cell phone at our disposal, and most of those are just right for playing quick ‘pick-up-and-play’ games in the odd moment of downtime. Which sounds great, but after playing a few of them I’ve made a sad discovery:

Most games available for your cell phone suck.

It’s not the phone’s fault, exactly. Most of them appear that they were designed to be phones first, with the ability to play games just kind of tacked on (there are exceptions, of course). The screen’s too small, the phone interface just isn’t designed to do more than input numbers, or maybe letters, and so on. Playing action games is just an exercise in frustration. Which means that you’ll have to find something that takes less-precise input, and means that you’re left with puzzlers. Slow puzzlers.

Which is what I’ll have to take, so I will.

Oh, and I’m fully aware that this is going to open up the floodgates for people to start telling me how great their cell phones are for playing. But I’m ready for it.