We all remember that point in a game that made us want to scream with frustration, hurling our controllers across the room and dancing upon their shattered remains. Whether it was a difficult boss battle or simply a couple jumps you could never quite get right, everyone’s had to ask a buddy to take over or pull in some cheat codes to get past it.

This is precisely the sort of thing that frustrates casual gamers to the point where they lose interest in a game. Since Nintendo has been trying to create titles like Mario Galaxy that appeal to both the hardcore and casual crowds they’ve been forced to choose between frustrating casual gamers by making things difficult or frustrating hardcore gamers by watering down the difficulty. Their fix to this is what they call ‘demo play’ where if you’re having difficulty you can simply sit back and let the computer take care of business for you.

Miyamoto discussed this feature with USA today and it was discussed in some hazy concepts that were revealed months ago regarding the next Zelda game where players had the option of viewing the game in a cinematic fashion, only playing parts where they wished to. New Super Mario Bros Wii will be the first title to feature this, but they’re reportedly considering it for future titles as well.

If interesting puzzles that play quickly are to your taste, then you’ll love the new game from Addicting Games, Bubble Quod.

In Bubble Quod. due to outside dangers that are poorly defined, you’ve sealed yourself in a bubble that provides you with invulnerability to all dangers.  But, the downside to this is that soon, your bubble comes to feel like a prison, and thus you’ll have to free yourself by popping the bubble on various nails and hooks sticking out of the walls around you.

So apparently you’re invulnerable to all harm except pointy things.  But we’re not here for the story, we’re here for the bubble.  You’ll have to roll your bubble around and use springboards and fans and oil slicks and everything in between to burst your bubble for thirty full stages.  The result is actually fairly entertaining, and plays rapidly with a solid fun factor.  Decent music and fair quality graphics keep the experience from souring.

You could definitely play a whole lot worse than Bubble Quod–I know I have–especially for the whopping price of free.

If you liked all those little casual cake baking and waitressing games, then you might just enjoy Gazzoline from the folks at Addicting Games.  Now you too can see just how badly the service industry sucks for yourself by waiting on idiots who want way too much too fast, dealing with drive-offs and trying to fit three sports cars at the one sports car pump.

Gazzoline is exactly like those other games–click on the pump to start it, click on the gas station hot dog someone’s feeling suicidal enough to eat (seriously, who eats gas station food unless they have to?  Are there no McDonalds around?  That’s at least supposed to serve food.), click on the car to bring the item to it, take the money, repeat until your index finger falls off.

It’s fast–maybe a little TOO fast–and it’s also a quick, engaging little play.  You’ll have to survive ten days as a gas station jock in a station where people are really impatient, and you’ll discover that you can get pretty annoyed with customers really quickly.  This is, of course, nothing new to anyone who’s actually worked retail (served five years in a video store, thank you very much), but just in case you’d like a lesson in how the other half works, then you’ll get it fairly nicely from Gazzoline.  Otherwise, spare yourself the misery of reliving your part-time summer job.

Coming to you from the depths of the XGen Studios vault is a casual browser game that burned through a LOT more time than I care to admit.  It’s called Motherload, and it is indeed a motherload of fun gaming.

In Motherload, you play a miner on the surface of Mars, but you won’t be on the surface very long as you drive your mining buggy down into the Martian soil in search of vast mineral wealth.  You can upgrade your buggy with better hull plating, faster drills, better engines, and a panoply of additional devices including reserve fuel tanks, teleportation systems, and explosives.

Playing Motherload is a lot like playing that old game Dig Dug, only without the enemies and with lots and lots of greed.  Completionists will find this game like crack as they tunnel through the soil and snatch up every last crumb of rock from beneath the planet’s surface.  The graphics are, of course, only inches from 16-bit fugly, but the gameplay is both fluid and compelling, giving you that just-one-more-level feeling until you finally reach the surprise at the end.  And it will be quite the surprise.

Motherload is a fantastic little time-waster that’ll keep you occupied for hours until you finally reach the end, and when you do, you’ll likely leave satisfied, the best measure of a casual game.

You never really expect a casual game to mean much of anything. And yet, with Kongregate Games’ Death Row, I managed to find just that: a meaningful casual game.

You play what I can only guess is some kind of counselor in charge of notorious terrorist / bomber Hector Van Daemon. Your job is to prove Hector’s innocence, as well as rehabilitate him, and do it all in the two weeks before Van Daemon is to be executed by the state. You have several duties available to you–you can interact with Van Daemon by playing games or engaging him in activities or even through a fairly buggy chat program, you can put Van Daemon to work to earn money, and you can take that money and buy upgrades for Van Daemon’s jail cell. These upgrades–including a TV and computer–might seem frivolous, but they’re actually necessary to find the various clues scattered around Van Daemon’s jail cell.

I had a lot of problems with the game, frankly. Control was a major issue, and the supporting documentation was pretty sparse in terms of just how to improve things like Van Daemon’s health and work ethic. Thankfully, I discovered them myself, and the second game got a whole lot smoother. And if I never watch another man settle onto a toilet with accompanying fart noises again, it’ll be too soon.

But there was something unusually engaging about Death Row. I was actually beginning to sympathize with Van Daemon’s position–an innocent man railroaded by a shoddy trial (they actually describe it as such), steadily trying to improve himself and prove his innocence is actually a position that most of us can identify with. We don’t wish such a thing to happen to anyone, and having the opportunity to help save Hector Van Daemon from his fate is somehow empowering.

In fact, when I managed to find all the pieces of evidence proving Van Daemon’s innocence, and we sent them off to the governor’s office, and his release was STILL denied due to his “dubious character”, I shared in Hector’s rage. He was innocent! We could PROVE it! And yet somehow the system was still making arbitrary decisions about the content of his character and keeping him locked up? This was sick! This was a GRAPHIC miscarriage of justice! This was…

…this was…a video game. All I had to do was press the big red X on the Firefox window I was using to play the game and Hector Van Daemon would cease to exist until I wanted to try again. And yet, somehow, despite myself, I was still identifying with this fictional character so thoroughly that I suffered along with him.

This is the mark of a good movie–allowing you to identify with the characters so deeply you can share in their emotions. It separates the boundary between fiction and reality, obscures it, sucks you into the story and allows you to experience it, albeit in a strictly vicarious fashion. I was amazed. I’d yet to experience a casual game that could do such a thing.

For this sheer uniqueness of experience, I can do little else but recommend this game to you wholeheartedly. Enjoy it. Let it pull you in, and enjoy your two weeks with Hector Van Daemon.

You’ve really got to love the whole casual gaming concept.  It’s given us some titles that are, incongruously, more fun than the equivalents in the massive console market.  That’s hard to believe, I know, but when you try some of these you’ll really be amazed.

For instance, swing on out to Armor Games and try a little title called The Last Stand 2.  Fairly new, it was only available to play back in the latter half of 2008, and is a simple “move the arrow over the zombie and click until there isn’t a zombie there any more” game.  There are two parts to the game, which is an interesting mix.  First, there’s a strategy element in which you’re given twelve hours to “do stuff”.  The stuff in question includes repairing barricades that repel zombies and keep them from eating you, searching for the various weapons you can use in-game, and looking for survivors who will allow you to repair more barricade in less time and will also use the weapons you find.  Second, the actual gameplay, which is point and blast away until the zombies run out.

Being able to use various weapons is surprisingly fun, and having the strategy element forces you to do more than just blast zombies mindlessly.  It’s a game that will simultaneous stretch your mind and relax it, giving you all the fun of a shooter and all the brain-stretching goodness of a strategy sim.

As casual games go, The Last Stand 2 is a clear winner.