While I'm not quite at Sean “Chair-Smasher” Sands' level of rage, I frequently get angry with my games. A challenging game can almost seem like it's taunting you, holding the possibility of success over your head while constantly smacking you in the face with defeat. The sign of a really good, challenging game is that it gets under my skin by with its carrot-shaped-stick gameplay. It looks like a reward, but it's really just an excuse to smack you around some more.

Give Up, Robot takes this theme of challenging puzzle games and brings it to the forefront, it's a jumping-puzzle game with a very solid grappling-hook mechanic. The game stands out because of the computerized voice egging you on: She will give you encouragement, praise and, occasionally, laughter when you die. When you do finally succeed after many, many deaths, she expresses annoyance. This sounds simple, and it is, but it's also amazingly effective. The computer's taunting is more compelling than achievements and gamerscore combined, the sense of schadenfraude when completing a difficult level is palpable.

While the levels are a seizure-inducing collection of flashing pixels, the art style is effective and fun. For a Flash game, the controls are spot-on and really make the game's clever puzzles shine. The levels start out fairly easy, the first 10 are basically a tutorial for the various abilities of your robot and the obstacles he will face. The next 50 very gradually ramp up in difficulty. I hit my own personal wall on level 29, where I just kept getting angrier at the puzzle and the computer's mechanical laughter when I died. It's a testament to the game that I just couldn't stop. There's 60 levels in total, though I haven't beat it yet because the game gets fairly hard in the later levels.

Why You Should Check This Out: Give Up, Robot is a simple jumping puzzle game with very solid controls and a fun grappling-hook mechanic. The computer voice that taunts you every level adds another layer of frustration and determination to an already challenging shooter. It's a perfect example of why SHODAN is one of the most memorable video game villains of all time: A challenging game is all the more compelling when it's taunting your failures.

This is part 4 of an ongoing series of conversations about dubious game achievements, trophies and rewards, with the hopes of unlocking some sort of meaning.

With special guest Michael "ahrezmendi" Stone!

Signposts Along the Way

Achievements that shadow a player's progress through the game proper -- usually a campaign or story mode -- represent the lion's share of Gamerscore or trophy allocation for most titles. They are usually superfluous, heaping praise on the player for doing nothing more than progressing through the game as intended. These kind of 'rewards' are often the focal point of critical attacks on the uselessness or redundancy of achievements in video games.

Level one completed? Here's a prize. Level two completed? Have another! Signpost achievements unlock like clockwork, popping at regular intervals as the player meanders down the breadcrumb trail.

Because the only way to miss one of these achievements is to stop playing the game altogether, they are rather ineffective as a motivational tool (unless, of course, a player is so trophy or achievement-crazed that they feel compelled to push through a game they dislike just for the profile prizes). However, signpost achievements can serve the following purposes:

• They track progress, allowing developers and friends to see the approximate point where the player got bored or super-enraged and traded the game in for $3 in store credit. Signposts achievements can also serve as a meta-roadmap if they aren't hidden, not only highlighting where the player has been but also how much further they have to go.

• They are easily implemented by developers, requiring little thought or creativity. From the player's perspective, they pad out the game's achievement or trophy yield, ensuring that a straightforward playthrough doesn't result in folks finishing with an unsatisfactory 50/1000 Gamerscore.

Under the flickering light of an alien sun a handful of Protoss probes busy themselves about the endless, automated work of collecting crystalline minerals. Occasionally one of them, as if directed by some guiding intelligence, breaks off from the main group and targets a spot of nearby ground where monumental energies are expended to warp in technology from some faraway somewhere before returning to its primary job.

A handful of minutes pass, and already the first Zealot has boots on the ground and takes position just outside the main camp. He crackles with alien technology and surveys the domain that shall soon belong to him and his allies. His confidence is echoed in his stance, as if he has taken illicit but irrevocable ownership of the dust under his feet. As he oozes his dominion a second soldier quickly takes proud position at his side. They are the vanguard of an invasion force that shall sweep across the face of the planet.

Before long a Cybernetics Core is furiously preparing the troop Gateways to become Warp Gates, dramatically accelerating the rate at which an army can be amassed. The first Robotics Facility nears completion, while nearly 2 dozen probes work furiously to sustain the resources of the war machine. Again, one of these proud probes breaks off from the gathering congregation to lay claim to a second nearby resource rich patch of land. Grand plans for glorious expansion are at work on the face of this doomed world.

As the determined probe passes through the small contingent of soldiers, now five units strong and down a ramp it encounters a wall of Terran firepower, and is annihilated under an immediate rain of fiery ordinance. There is a beat of shock before the sense of panic sets in.

It’s all over a few moments later. After 9 minutes and 56 seconds, the Protoss are wiped clean from the Blistering Sands.

As I sit back in my office chair, having played the first of what will be two humiliating games of Starcraft 2 against forum member and arbiter of genocide, Tkyl, I am reminded again of the monumental gulf that so often exists between myself and others in games like this.

This week we finally get our email backlog cleared up! If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563.

There’s an odd coldness clawing at the back of my throat as I lay down for an uncharacteristic 6 PM nap. By the time I stir to life, it’s four in the morning. I’m drenched in fever-sweat and that tenderness I felt hours ago has become an unmistakable, raw rasp. I down three days' worth of Vitamin C in a vain effort to give myself some peace of mind before splashing water on my face. I scribble a quick note to my girlfriend (“Call in for me. Thanks.”) before turning in again. As my mind falls blank, I balance the pros and cons and think only of tomorrow’s inevitable conclusion:

I’m going to have to take a sick day.

Lost Planet 2, despite being our Game of the Week, goes off my rent list with the general revelation that unless you're playing the campaign reliably with three other mouth-breathing humans, you are in for an extended exercise in frustration. Even if I were inclined to friend up a few LP2 players and engage in the alien exercise of co-op play, the idea of being able to do so with any predictable frequency for a game like this is exponentially ridiculous.

This coming week on the podcast we talk briefly about advances in AI as a desirable future for gaming's evolution, and I can tell you right now that we totally miss the boat. We got so focused on talking about enemy AI that we completely missed the area where games need the most improvement: friendly AI. I have rarely turned off a game simply because my enemies were too easy to kill, but when my veteran soldier companion starts running in circles as entrenched enemy snipers pluck the buttons from his texture mapped shirt, those enemies might as well be killing my very desire to play.

Word on the street is that if you've got a good group to run co-op with, then Lost Planet 2 may have a lot to keep your attention. For solo nuts like me, it's just another week until Alan Wake comes out.

Also of note this week, Skate 3 and 3D Dot Game Heroes.

When you move Ethan over to the mirror to brush his teeth in Heavy Rain, you're going to repeat the same movements over and over until his teeth are thoroughly brushed. You may think this is brain-dead repetition, but how different is this from the initial build orders in Starcraft 2? Games can use repetition to instill emotional depth, from Ethan slowly walking around a sunlit house to Starcraft 2 instilling a sense of urgency and fear about your opponent.

The Experimental Games Project's theme for April was "Repeat," and there are 25 games which explore this theme. I'm going to highlight a few of the better entries below, but feel free to check out the rest as they are all free, quick downloads and interesting little snippets of gameplay.

Robert Recurring – It's apparent the developer spent all his time on the gameplay as the graphics are fairly terrible. The gameplay is inventive and varied if at times a bit too difficult. You go through a series of puzzles; however, the next time through the puzzle you meet your previous self, solving the puzzle. You have to solve a puzzle in a different way because, as TimeCop clearly specifies, if you touch your former, self your head will explode.

Oh No! Spaceman – Asteroids on a loop, by our very own Switchbreak. You play a normal game of Asteroids; however, every few seconds a ghost ship appears and retraces your movements. The twist is that your previous ship's bullets can hurt you, so judicious use of your gun is key here.

PushPuzzle – This one's a sliding puzzle masquerading as a number puzzle. There is a square in the middle of the screen with different numbered slots, and numbered tiles are strewn randomly about the level. You have to click on the numbered tiles to get them to slide into their corresponding slot. With a cute theme and solid gameplay, this is one of the more polished of the featured games.

Flowearty – In this game you're repeating pieces of the level, literally copy+pasting parts of the level over and over to move the flower to it's stem. The flower can move kind of slowly, but the copy+paste is well done, and the levels are challenging.

AutoCannibalism – This one is more repEAT than repeat. You are tasked by your tribe to go find food in a nearby cave, yet when you get there all you find are poisonous plants. But the next guy they send down finds a little something extra you left behind, namely yourself.

There's several more games playing with time and repetition on the blog, so check them out, as well as hundreds of other little game snippets to play. They do an Experimental Games Project every month, so if you're interested in experimental indie games, keep this site in your feed reader.

Were I Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone, but instead of books I was left with the worlds’ complete canon of video games, I would die long before I finished finding good games to play. Throw a few thousand other people in the mix with whom I could play games like Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft or Starcraft 2— preferably folks of equally scaling skill levels — and I may not even notice the mind bending apocalypse except during brief and infrequent “bio breaks.”

It seems the world doesn’t actually need any more video games. That’s not to say that I am asking for that, or cheering the grim end of humanity, but that there is so rich and diverse a wealth of material out there that from a purely rational perspective it’s hard to imagine why I’d ever pay for a new game again.

This occurred to me the other night as GWJ’s stalwart and hyper-talented crew steamrolled our likable and benign opponents from Telltale games in a friendly game of Team Fortress 2, a game I haven't fired up for the better part of a year. During a break in the action I asked, “why the hell did I stop playing this game, anyway?” And, though I will likely let TF2 drift back into its undeserved slumber on my hard drive in favor of titles more shiny and perky, the sentiment is valid.

In reality, I should never need to buy another new game again.

This week everyone brings a topic to the table and we discuss Tribes 2 night and the ultimate slaughter of Telltale Games in TF2! If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563.

I sometimes have to smother a chuckle when people tell me how hard it is to be a parent of a small child. Little ones are exhausting, yes, but these parents' faith that somehow they're on Easy Street once they hit the first day of school is misplaced at best. It's just as hard to live in a sane way with a tween/teen. Even now that mine are grown, there are days when I would give the world for a problem that could be handled with a mop. And if I had some sort of cleaning wipe for the messes that come from broken hearts, I'd be a trillionaire.

But I think the worst of parenting sins I see are committed in the name of trying to be the cool mom or the cool dad. But giving them everything they want and giving in to their every wish and whim is not the way to achieve true coolness.