Reality check: Middle school was an uphill climb especially when it came to the life sciences and basics of chemistry. Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed the books about plants and animals, but that came much later on, right after the study of cells, which is essentially Biology 101. It’s something you HAD to go through to move on to the more interesting stuff.

Fast forward: more than 20 years later, Cellcraft is born. It’s one of the more complex flash based games I’ve seen that really takes you through the first few chapters of your Life Science book, explaining what cells are, how they function and what their purpose is in the whole scheme of things.

The Excitement: Finally, a game that could actually help explain the main differences between mitochondria, proteins, fatty acids, adenosine triphosphate, ribosomes, and all these other terms that were retained overnight just in time for the next day’s exam, and then conveniently forgotten till the quarter finals. Finally, a game that could make learning about cells so much fun and interactive, it’s like I’m “really there.” Finally, I’ll be able to understand science like a boss.

The Reality: Goddamnit. I’m not understanding anything. Cellcraft is one of the simplest yet hardest to understand point and click games ever made. I do admire how the programmers managed to make a story out of this. From what I could tell from playing the first 40 minutes of the game, you belong to a race of humanoid Platypus facing the dire threat of extinction from a deadly planetary impact. To save your species, the Platypus biologists take a parcel of platypus DNA and shoot it out into another planet, preserving their genetic footprint.

This far in and we stil haven’t discussed gameplay. Cellcraft is a top view point and click game set inside a petri dish. As a single cell, you have to work your way up to gaining new body parts (“organelles”) by slothing around, producing essential “stuff” that helps produce more organelles that have specific functions. Everything that you do takes up ATP, which is in colloquial terms, Time Units. ATP recharges whenever you digest more and more … stuff. Between producing ATP, combatting viruses and making sure you don’t poison yourself with your mitochondria’s poop, there’s a lot of pointing and clicking. I got lost after the third stage, trying to remember what organelle does which and completely abandoned the game after the fifth mission.

My hopes and dreams to finally understand cellular biology has gone up in smoke. From a gameplay perspective it seems quite polished with a very relaxing soundtrack I’d just leave on in the background while I go about contemplating life. But this game isn’t for me. It is again, too much science and too much point and clicking.

Upon reflection, 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself: Airport Edition is pretty close to the realities of airport check in sequences. Long lines, bad food, and umm… machine gun nests are some of the staples of your typical airport impediments that want to get you killed.

Surprisingly, there are absolutely no TSA pat-down references.

For the unfamiliar, the “5 Minutes to Kill Yourself” series is a franchise of flash games from Adult Swim where the main goal is to inflict as much damage to your toon as possible, killing yourself within 5 minutes.

The first version was set in an office; killing yourself with paper cutters, staplers, and copying machines was way too much fun. In this second iteration, you have access to the complete safety hazards of your typical airport check-in.

I love it because it’s a quick fix to displacing stress, done in 5 minutes or less (Muting the in-game music makes it perfect for work cubicle play). If you manage to kill yourself in 5 minutes, you’re rewarded with achievements that challenge you to end your life quicker, with more variety.

If you lack the elegance and nonchalance in creatively ending your life, that’s fine. You’ll manage to pretty much get yourself killed between 4 to 5 minutes by repeatedly touching live electrical wires and puking on bad food. But you can also opt to be more creative with the variety of killing yourself by combining items (wow, it’s an RPG!) and thus getting more damage per action. I never thought that getting electrocuted by a terminal billboard only deducts 6 life. Who is this man and why is he so resilient?

Pros
Quick fix for letting out stress with a 5 minute timer
It’s hella funny
Did anyone say Achievements?
Mute option for office play
Same killer soundtrack from the previous version

Cons
Not as fun as the first “5 Minutes to Kill Yourself” episode
Killing sequences can get rather repetitive

Bottomline
It’s a definite bookmark on my browser. Although not as funny as the first episode, “5 Minutes to Kill Yourself: Airport Edition” is still one of Adult Swim’s more noticeable and original titles, up there with Robot Unicorn Attack.

Now most people wouldn’t know the details, just that their iPhone and iPad won’t display certain websites and that “hey website x has less ads on it!”. Also the famous box announcing missing plugin for Flash support is a famous appearance on many websites. In any case here there is a clear infographic that explains what HTML5 is, which browsers support which features, and more details on Flash vs HTML5 techniques.

It’s important for people to be at least a bit aware of what really it’s all about. For example someone on my Facebook commented about getting the iPhone 4 when it comes out and someone else immediately chimed in that it doesn’t has Flash support.

These kind of non supported arguments by friends on Facebook who don’t even know what they are talking about just ruins it for each other if they decide not to buy just because it doesn’t support Flash. Seems just like the final episodes of “Friends” when thanks to Phoebe’s phone call to Rachel about how here plane is missing the “left phalange” grounded the flight due that all passenger panicked because the plane has no “left phalange”.

If I have to analyze the people around me and the phones that they own I can honestly say that more then 80% of them wouldn’t even notice that they can’t use Flash. The majority of users use their smartphone for socializing and games for which all of them there are native apps for their type of smartphones. Even I barely open my web browser on my iPhone. Twitter, Facebook, Games, Websites, for everything there is an app, and my 8GB phone is not even on half its storage capacity.

The message? Know your gadget!

Now, Adobe has announced a mobile version of its AIR technology that will allow developers to create native applications for smartphones across a variety of OSs, including Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm, webOS and Windows Mobile.

It has been designed to take advantage of a device’s capabilities, including touchscreen, gesturing, accelerometer and GPS.

It piggybacks Adobe’s latest addition to the Flash Player line, with version 10.1 announced to take advantage of the increasing amount of high definition content available online.

More information available at www.adobe.com/go/airmobile, including a number of videos of AIR being used on various mobile platforms.

DNAgents - long due for a return.

impressed with.

No Kid Flash title. Nor, despite previous assurances that he was not going to be squeezed out, no strip for the Wally West Flash either, it will be Barry Allen all the way.

Which is great for Barry Allen fans, but we have spent the last twenty-five years following Wally, watching him grow as a person and as a hero. I only hope he will get a home in either the Justice League, or the Titans. And as for Bart, so far he appears to be fading away into comic-book limbo, never mind the promised revelations regarding Max Mercury.

Dan’s big announcement was that of the Earth-One graphic novels, to be released at the stunning rate of (drum roll) ……

Two a year.

That’s it. Two.

Although many of us will await them eagerly, that is not a rate that ill garner lots of interest. When I encounter a new universe, I want to know as much as possible, as quickly as possible. He equates Earth One as DC’s answer to the Ultimate Universe of Marvel, but part of Ultimate Marvels success, and Marvel Adventures for that matter, is the fact that these are monthly, that they continue to provide materials for the hungry fans to enjoy, thus maintaining the interest. No doubt these novels will do well through the book store market, but then so do all the other graphic novels and trade paper-backs. Does DC really need a whole new universe where the next issue is always six months away?

In the mean-time, the All-Star projects’ fate have yet to be decided. Okay, we are still waiting for All Star Batman’s final two issues, but I don’t know about you but I adored All Star Superman, and I would love to see more. As for All-Star Wonder Woman? Again, still in hiatus.

The integration of older universes into the mainstream DCU, such as Milestone, Red Circle (Archie) and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is more than welcome. However we have seen that separate universes can work – maybe not of the characters I just mentioned, but certainly a clone of the mainstream universe with a twist. How about Superman and the Mighty Crusaders? Batman and the Shadow Cabinet? Having all the appeal of the DCU but maintaining the world prominence of the associated heroes, such as the Crusaders et al.

Speaking of spin-off universes, with the success of Supreme Power, it was a shame to see the relaunch of the New Universe in Newuniversal disappear. How about a relaunch of the Ultraverse? Who owns the Protectors nowadays?

Aside from the Ultraverse, to relaunches I would love to see would be the DNAgents, and the Elementals. If DC are adopting characters left right and centre, how about these guys?

I’m a sucker for addictive flash games. I don’t know about you, but I think the best video games are almost always simple and fun. Flash games tend to have both qualities.

Now, I know that Flash games often don’t have much depth. But that’s ok for me. I just like to jump in and have some mindless fun. And Flash games do that for me.

TechCult put together a list of the 150 Best Flash Games currently available. Lots of new gems on that list that I hadn’t seen before.

What do you think of their list? Are there some great games they left out?