Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (2004)

If you spent a good portion of your childhood wishing you had your own amusement park, this is probably as close as your going to get. That is, of course, unless Atari does make the fourth installment they've been hinting at.


I'm a big fan of customization, and there's plenty of opportunities to customize here. From the start, you get to decide how you want to play. Do you just want to build roller coasters? Fine, go ahead.

Wanna focus you time on the guests in your park? Feel free.

Have you got hours and hours to waste on creating the perfect amusement park in Sandbox Mode (no money restrictions)? Then prepare to dedicate the next several weeks to one thing, buddy.

The Roller Coaster Tycoon games have been the only things in my life that made me think business might be fun. I'm not dumb enough to believe it, though. If you were offended by that last sentence, of course I'm kidding, silly!


You can get the original game for four dollars on Amazon. If you want the two expansion packs Soaked! (water parks) and Wild! (animals, dinosaurs, safari-type dealies), they are available in an all-in-one bundle for $12.25, also on Amazon.


And trust me, you want Soaked! You want to be able to enter that game world, because no real water park could ever be as cool as some of the ones you can find on Youtube. Like this one:

I'm a little sad now.




Music


Freaks - The Creeps

   genre: aggressive dance
   ideal for: wigglin' in a most determined manner
  Youtube


David Guetta feat. Chris Brown - I Can Only Imagine

   genre: part dance, part hip-hop, and part ballad
   ideal for: spending an ADD night at the club
  Youtube

Battle Realms (2001)

Quick! It's a Saturday afternoon, and you must choose between doing your homework and building an army of Dragon warriors to defeat that nasty Lotus clan. What do you do? The answer is obvious!


There are a few games that I keep going back to. This is one of them. Released ten years ago, Battle Realms is a real-time strategy game that never gets old. You can play one of two modes: story or skirmish. I almost always play skirmish because you get to decide the number of players, what teams they are on, where you battle, and how easy it will be.

The Wolf clan protect their base from the invading Lotus

I have wasted many an hour switching between the four clans--Dragon, Serpent, Lotus, and Wolf--and varying my battle strategies. Do I send out small raiding parties to keep my enemies weak? Or do I focus on defense while I amass the largest possible fighting force, then crush all that dare oppose me in the final five minutes? Both can be pretty fun.


Battle Realms is different from other strategy games in that your peasants are the key to everything.

They're very nonchalant about it, too.

Like in similar games, peasants gather resources so that you can build and train and then construct your buildings, but here they are also the troops you train into Samurai or Unclean or Ballistamen or what-have-you.


Seriously, this is a really fun game, and a round of battle can take as short or as long as you wish. There's a trailer here, and the demo of the game can be found here.




Music


Fort Minor - Petrified

   genre: "Oh, snap!" hip-hop
   ideal for: shaking your head and smirking at those posers
  Youtube


DaCaV5 - Tetris

   genre: "Some people call it hip-hop, trance, dance, rock, and pop. It don't matter, it's hot."
   ideal for: schooling your friends in old video games
  Youtube