Every Friday Paste’s editors, staffers and games contributors share what they’ve been playing that week. New games and old, TV and tabletop, major hits and wild obscurities, action-first knuckle-busters and slow-and-stately brain-stokers: you can expect it all, every week, in The Games We Play.
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena
Platforms: iOS, Android
Earlier this month I wrote about how those who want games to avoid politics should play mobile RPGs, because those games almost never have stories or defined characters or put forth any kind of opinion or worldview beyond “we like it when you give us money.” I had one specific game in mind when I wrote it: Disney Sorcerer’s Arena, a game I’ve played on my phone every day for the last three weeks. It is the barest suggestion of an RPG—a combat system strapped to a character progression system and nothing else. You march five Disney or Pixar characters into battle, and if your squad’s collective power rating outranks your opponent’s, you will almost always win. Strategy is negligible, luck nonexistent—it’s just bashing characters into each other and seeing what numbers spit out until one side is wiped away. Like most mobile games, it’s deeply repetitive, almost entirely mindless, bereft of all soul and wit, and interested primarily in sucking money out of me. And yet I can’t stop playing it. Leveling up is such a foundational aspect of games because it’s a simple hook that always works. I’m at the point where I try to avoid actual combat in this game as much as possible, hitting the “autowin” button whenever I can, just so I can reap whatever rewards come my way. The goal isn’t to win, but to get stronger—to boost my Captain Hook, to get my Sulley from the 28th level to the 29th level, to equip enough gear to raise Ariel to the next gear tier. It’s progress solely for the sake of progress, the equivalent of shaking a shiny object in front of my face and expecting me to fixate on it, and the sad thing is it absolutely works. I’ve largely avoided spending money on it, but if the “energy” that lets you enter fights wasn’t limited, I’d probably play this thing—idly, mindlessly, dispassionately—all day long.—Senior Editor Garrett Martin
Nintendogs
Platform: DS
The primary reason I played Nintendogs in 2nd grade was to get enough money to keep purchasing new cute dogs to neglect unless I was walking them, which I only did to find gifts I could sell. Agility training was difficult and obedience training, which required talking into the mic, was impossible because I would play in secret. Having recently found my DS Lite in my dad’s closet, my dogs, as always after a long absence, were “parched,” “famished,” and “filthy.” After feeding and washing, I dressed them in their finest novelty hats to throw a frisbee in the park. I played in the same unsatisfying way I did as a kid, with no volume and maximum efficiency, rarely having tried much else.—Social Media Intern Jane Song
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