Super Meat Boy (PC) has proven to be a fantastic distraction for me. The levels are small enough to complete in seconds (but often take a LOT longer). This means it’s great to pick up and more importantly drop out when you have a few minutes to fill. What on the surface could appear as, another, frustrating platformer. It actually seems to reward those old platforming skills such as the “a learned precision jump is a repeatable precision jump” and “frustration leads to stupid deaths”.
As the game not so subtly puts it a controller is a must, so use one! 360 wired controllers will plug right into a PC, Wii controller is meant to work well if you have a Bluetooth adaptor and glovepie installed. Oh and the game should run anything from a netbook up (as long as you adjust the settings appropriately) so there really is no excuse not to play this. Steam Cloud support, in-game editor and a custom content portal is all coming in future patches too.
I guess Amnesia is the only other game I’ve intently played, albeit in short, OMG OMG OMG OMG, stints. If you can forgive the fact it’s not a $100+ million game and so not expect the latest of engines or effects then you’ll do fine. It’s a beautiful mix of classic adventure games such as Myth/7th Guest, wrapped in a realtime first person world that oozes atmosphere thanks to great visual and audio trickery. If you love horror and narrative based games then you should love this.
