Max & the Magic Marker

Scribble me this.

Source // Nintendo

Remember Crayon Physics? Would you be more interested in it if that kind of gameplay was found in a platformer, instead of a physics puzzler? Would you want to play more of it if you were guiding a kid through a level, dealing with monsters and trying to catch an escaped cartoon drawing?

If you do, it seems Max & the Magic Marker will be right up your street, because that's pretty much what it is. Crayon Physics crossed with a platformer, and you can already imagine the kind of things you'll get up to.

PixelJunk Shooter

Is that a warm, welcoming glow, or a hot, dangerous one?

Source // PlayStation

Gravity. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay, and as soon as it could be modelled to any degree of accuracy in a video game, games were built around obeying its laws, including a great many that subtly taught generation after generation how to fly - and crash - spaceships.

Lunar Lander, Exile, Gravity Crash and more I'm sure have crossed this 1001 list as physics-based challenges involving spaceships shooting enemy forces, bombing infrastructure, and rescuing stranded companions, and these games just don't stop coming.

PixelJunk Shooter is the next in line, but the twist in this PlayStation 3 title is that gravity plays as much of a role in-game as fluid dynamics. Are you ready to safely wrap your head around a lava flow?

Trine

Working together to solve a common problem? What a novel idea.

Side-scrolling adventures with ultra-high production values were a rarity in 2009, says the 1001 list as it introduces us to side-scrolling action-platformer physics-puzzler Trine.

I don't know where I picked Trine up, and definitely don't know why Trine 3 is in my Steam library either, because I haven't got a clue what this game is about, and the title isn't spilling any secrets either. It looks like the kind of game you'd only know existed if you were the exact target audience it was aiming for.

If that's the case, I don't think I'm that target audience...

Crayon Physics Deluxe

This should work. On paper...

Physics. My worst enemy? Probably not. No, of course not. Plastic instruments are my worst enemy from this 1001 list. Physics-based puzzles are a step or two above, sometimes working well for me, sometimes not.

I often have to go back to the drawing board on many occasions when struggling to work out a solution to a physics-based problem. In Crayon Physics Deluxe, everything is that drawing board. Scribble a ramp and you've got a ramp. A makeshift golf club on a pivot point and gravity will swing that sucker in what you hope is a useful manner.

Let's put it to the test, shall we?

Gravity Crash

Those guys have got a rough deal.

Back in the early days of video games, you couldn't avoid a space shooter of one kind or another, be it Asteroids or Galaxian, or one of their many imitators. Throw in some physics to the gameplay and you've something like Gravitar and Lunar Lander, demanding precise input to float across the surface of another world, rather than slamming face-first into it.

Fast forward thirty years and developers are all nostalgic for those kinds of games, and we get something like Gravity Crash, a sort of twin-stick shooter, sort of physics sim.

Hopefully, we'll have learned enough about these genres by now to be good at it...

Boom Blox Bash Party

Jenga with explosives?

Source // Wikipedia

When Steven Spielberg makes a game, you think Medal of Honor, not Boom Blox Bash Party, but that's where we're at.

There was always going to be a game on the Nintendo Wii about flinging something at wobbly towers and watching everything fall over in a physics sandbox. For many that game was Boom Blox, but refine it a little more and fix what was broken and you get the sequel, Bash Party, the one and only title you need if you want to see some chaos on your Wii.

Don't progress any further unless you're Wiimote has a strap and that strap is around your wrist.

World of Goo

This isn't an education about hydrocarbon chains, is it?

Source // Steam

Ah, physics. Where would we be without you, huh? How boring would games be without physics, eh? Why, we wouldn't be able to drag and drop gloopy goo in World of Goo without physics, would we? What kind of world would we be living in without World of Goo?

Fantastic Contraption

Both those words are a stretch, to be honest.

The physics playgrounds return to haunt me, as does Flash, this time in Fantastic Contraption, a little toolbox to play around with on your lunch break. Your goal is clear. Can you get there?

Yeah, right. Like I've got the brains to get there. Come on then. Let's see how fast we fail.

Auditorium

Redefining "Streaming Music"

From one musical puzzler to another, this time Auditorium, which gives you no choice on which music to listen to, and one heck of a particle puzzle to piece together before you're allowed to listen to the oh so chill tracks it offers.

Sit back, relax, and get ready to fiddle with some particle streams in an attempt to bring the orchestra to life.

Pain

Shake the controller to charge up your Super Ooch...

Source // PlayStation

Underlying a great many video games is the Havok physics engine, without which everything would fall a bit flat. With it, though, characters and objects fall over, bounce off each other, break apart, explode, trigger chain reactions of somewhat predictable interactions with yet more objects... Can you make a game around that?

Of course you can. Throwing a ragdoll into an explosive crate or through a cinder block wall is the first thing you do to see what the Havok physics engine can offer your game, and it only takes one person to wonder what would happen if you made a giant slingshot to propel characters through an explosive environment ready to fall apart at a moments notice.

Here comes the Pain.

FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage

Not responding

Physics engines and chaos go hand in hand. Everything dissolves into chaos, so why not just factor chaos into your game in the first place? Burnout games involve lots of crashes and collisions that absolutely batter your car, but what if your car was already a beaten up wreck to begin with? Then we can just immediately get to the smashing and be done with it.

Such is the philosophy of FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage, an Xbox 360 remaster of sorts of Xbox title FlatOut 2, or Burnout meets banger racing.

Purchase a heap of junk, race it through all the debris, and work your way up to better cars to crash in a whole load of environments. Sounds good to me.

Mercury Meltdown

Formerly known as Hydrargyrum. Little chemistry joke for you there.

Marble Madness. Whatever happened to that game eh? You don't really see that coming out in swanky HD releases these days, but its hard to argue that it's not worthy of such a release. Delicately diverting a marble around a stage designed to knock said marble anywhere but across the finish line - the gameplay doesn't even need to be changed.

But along came Archer Maclean, who probably said: "Yeah, but what if it was a blob of colour changing Mercury instead?", and minds were blown and multiple PSP games were made about just that, the second of which being Mercury Meltdown, building upon the launch title (and my first PSP game) Archer Maclean's Mercury.

Tilt stages to manipulate a blob of mercury from the start point to the finish line, through obstacles and puzzles, across level after level of simple, though head-scratchy gameplay. Do you think you're smart enough to avoid a meltdown?

Line Rider

Wheeeeee?

Many games allow players to get creative using inbuilt tools. Maps. Characters. Even whole games, built within other games. But how many of us don't bother? No matter how easy the tools are to use, we know other people have more time, energy, skill, and desire to put us to shame. There is, perhaps, no better demonstration of this than Line Rider.

Armadillo Run

Oh, snap.

You think Half-Life 2 is the only game with physics puzzles? Bah. You've not tried to get an armadillo to roll into an interdimensional portal in Armadillo Run. Also, what the hell have I just written?

Tower Bloxx

This is definitely a hard hat area.

Gaming on mobile phones kinda exploded when the likes of the iPhone were unleashed into the world. It was practically impossible to not find something entertaining to play, whether you wanted to match gems, bounce balls, or create tower blocks.

Wait, what? Create tower blocks? How can that be a game? How can that be fun? How, Tower Bloxx? How?

Yoshi Touch & Go

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's...

Games that show off what a brand new console can do, especially in the gimmick department, seem to have a good chance at landing on a 1001 Must Play Video Games list. I suppose it's to be expected, to some degree. A game doesn't have to be phenomenal to warrant playing it, and by most peoples accounts Yoshi Touch & Go sure isn't anything remarkable - but here it is, showing the world what the Nintendo DS can do.

What's this thin, pencil-like stick? What's a 'touch screen'? What are the laws of physics? Let's find out.

Half-Life 2

"Pick up that can."

Here we are then. The 1001 list has peaked. It's all downhill from here if all the greatest ever games of all time lists are to be believed. There is simply no better title than Half-Life 2.

I, as you'll soon find out, am not the best person to analyse or perhaps even describe this game. My words won't be able to do it justice. I don't even know where best to start.

Let's just revisit this gaming giant and see what we've been missing out on all these years.

Super Monkey Ball

FALL OUT

A long time ago, back in the days of SMS and MSN Messenger, when emoticons were a thing, I'd often find myself using variations of this vaguely monkey-looking chap: @('_')@

I don't know how I stumbled across it, but something tells me I might have been inspired by Super Monkey Ball, a strange little game that I was aware of, but only peripherally. Its premise is simple. Take a strong hint of Marble Madness, but replace the marbles with monkeys in spheres.

Job done, game on.

Elasto Mania

Booooing.

I'm writing this a little after the release of Trials Rising, the continuation of the Trials series that sees players navigate extraordinary circuits on a quest to perfect the physics and then, if skilled enough, exploit the physics in search of faster and cleaner runs for bigger and better scores.

I thought 'ah, it seems there was a game like Trials way back in the year 2000, this should be interesting', only to find that the actual Trials series itself dates back to the year 2000. So what is this Elasto Mania then? A competitor that died out? Inspiration? Something altogether completely different? Just a neat little game worth playing?

Guess I'll download the demo and find out.