Previous favorites from Reflexive are Swarm, Star Defender and Ricochet. The latter two are updates on classic arcade scrollers/breakout games, but Swarm is really something special. In it, you drive a little spaceship through debris- and hostile-alien-infested landscapes to pick up glowy blue thingers called EZT. The controls are almost totally mouse-driven (just use the spacebar for acceleration), so no troublesome key combinations to learn. There are killing bugs-only levels, there are pick up weapons-only levels…it has 100 levels in all and is wonderful way to kill an afternoon.

New Reflexive titles I’ve recently tried are:

• WWII Pacific Heroes – It only has 20 levels but flying your own Corsair in pursuit of Japanese Zeros and ships is great fun. You also get to man destroyer- and tank-mounted anti-aircraft guns to take out assaulting planes/boats. I’m currently stuck on level 17 with a godawfully-slow-moving bunker gun and little fast boats heading towards the beach. (That’s a screenshot of level 1 up top there.)
• Chicken Invaders – This game is a side-scrolling space invaders sort of thing, but it’s chickens and exploding eggs you have to watch out for. Lots of fun and cracks up (aheh) the kids every time.
• Saints and Sinners Bowling – Haven’t had time to mess with this one much but it’s a more complex version of the two-slidy bar (speed/angle) bowling game, with personas, opponents, etc.
• Air Strike 2 – This is a helicopter shooter that’s interesting for the first few levels, but then as more and more crap is happening on the screen it just gets tedious in it’s overwhelmitude. Simpler is better, sometimes.

The greatest thing about these Reflexive games (well, other than kickass music and gorgeous graphics) is they’re all right there in the $20 license fee range.

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27 degrees night before last, 39 degrees last night. I WANT cold weather, I NEED cold weather (just for the frickin’ variety, you know?) but, dang my fingers are cold.

We covered up the ficus and the roebelenii palm for the freeze but left everything else to fend for themselves…and are rewarded today with blackened allamanda, mexican petunia, dracena, weigela, firebush and lantana. *sigh* I suspect most of them will recover fine, the new growth pushing off the dead stuff, and if not, that’s fine, too…those allamandas were getting uppity anyway.

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Neatorama has a nifty comparison of Iowa Caucus vs. New Hampshire Primary vs. Reality. The entire caucus premise is so very antiquated that it offends simply by remaining in existence.

Though I would like to take this opportunity to point at Hillary and laugh, laugh, laugh.