Have you ever noticed times in your life where you've 'come to' and realized that you've been enjoying yourself for an extended period of time without even noticing that time was passing? Such and experience is called 'flow'. (See wikipedia for a bit more explanation) I've had that experience many times before. I've had it happen when I'm playing games with friends, when I'm at work, or when I've been enjoying a good video game. Why do I bring this up? I feel like my last weekend passed like a dream.

The game play is very unlike other online role playing games that I've played. First off, the game rewards players more for being skillful than for having the best gear. There were many times where I had to stay on my toes in order to defeat one or multiple opponents that were bearing down on me. It took a bit of practice to figure out what worked and how to use my skills to best defeat my opponents. Second, the game encourages cooperation with other players! The game creates a number of 'events' that show up where the players have to cooperate together to solve. The difficulty of the events increases the more players that show up. Third, the "quests" and events had variety to them. Some events involved trivia, some involved defending or escorting people or places, and some involved taking down a rather large and nasty monster. Most, if not all, of the quests gave players options on how to complete them. I remember doing one quest where I could either retrieve bugs and grubs for cows to eat or I could go and try to cheer up depressed cows. Fourth, the game encourages players to explore. Each part of the game has a set of places to discover and "quests" to perform. It also has a set of 'vistas' that a player can go to in order to see a short cutscene of the area. Some of the vistas are rather easy to get to. One of the more difficult ones I did involved doing an extensive jumping puzzle through some old ruins in order to get to the vista. The game also has other jumping puzzles for players to explore and experience. I was only able to find one of them this beta weekend, but I am sure there are many more.
Anyways, there are many things from Guild Wars 2 that I didn't have a chance to experience such as dungeons and player vs player combat. I could spend the rest of this blog post lauding Guild Wars 2 for so many of things that they've done 'right' in the game (like fast travel, being able to access bank accounts at crafting stations, etc). Anyways, I would like to share with you some Flash games that I've also found to be entertaining over the years. Perhaps you will find a new way to pass the time and experience some 'flow'.
Diib's Dilemma

Merlin's Revenge

After saving his friend, Merlin is set on on a second mission (Merlin's Revenge 2). In this game, Merlin gains the ability to fire energy beams, summon allies, and even transform into other monsters. Both games provided my brother and I with many fun times together.
Seedling

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