Looking for quality brain food video games.

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As much as I enjoy blowing s**t up and mutilating hordes of my opposition, I feel like I should be spending more quality time engaging with my own intelligence.

I am looking for games that really will force me to apply my intelligence in order to clear them.

If they are available on the 360 or the One, even better. I also have a PS2, as well. My PC is only good for writing and web browsing, though.

I am not looking for trivia games, BTW.

Of course, if anybody here is up to playing Go with me on the 360, I'll take it. That game has zero online community.

I also am a huge fan of XCOM, even if Impossible mode is a stressful experience at times.

Anything with an emphasis on strategy will be a plus. Anything with an emphasis on clever puzzles is a plus. Anything that requires mindless grinding need not be mentioned. I already am dealing with a mindless grind just getting the BTs in Star Ocean 4.

Thanks in advance for any quality suggestions.

I like the Picross games, but if I play for too long, I feel my superfocus (or whatever it's called) kick in, and then I don't really feel like I'm using my brain anymore...

I always felt like the original Thief games had a lot of strategy to them...I would always wait in the shadows and watch the routes that guards take, and plan out how I was going to get through each area (and then back out again!) without being noticed.

Even when I actually used the 360 alot, I never found many puzzle games for it at all. The console is just too much of a shooter farm.

However, I did really like a game by the name of Hexic. That one I think is very much worth looking at.

There is also the original Puzzle Quest (yes, stupid generic name), which is freaking fantastic. That one game spawned a whole new subgenre of puzzle-RPGs, which is exactly what it is. I really cannot recommend this highly enough. Very, very good.

Chime is another good one, very different from either of those two. It's hard to explain. You sort of "stamp" blocks down onto a field, trying to form square or rectangle shapes; the bigger they are, the more points you get. The game though uses this strobe line thing though. This line constantly passes from the left of the screen to the right. Your squares/rectangles do not "lock" into place and give points until the line fully passes over them, so until that point, you are free to try to expand them further, and the frantic nature of trying to do this without screwing up is part of what makes this game so good. The game is also known for it's soundtrack and the pieces sorta interact with the music a bit.

Ilomilo is another one I liked, this is not a "block" or tile puzzle game, but a stage-based one. You have two characters that you switch between, that you maneuver and climb with through the game's bizarre levels, with the idea simply being to bring the two characters together in each level. It starts off fairly easy, eventually hits the "what the hell is even going on here" stage. A very calm and polished game. Well, calm until steam starts coming out of your ears.

And of course there's Tetris. You really just cant go wrong with a timeless classic like this. Even after all these years, nothing ever quite manages to top this. There are MANY versions of this game out there; I forget exactly which versions are on the 360, or how they compare to other ones, but I know it's there in some form.


Now, as for your PC.... I'm curious, just how bad is it? As in, what are the specs? There's about 10 squillion puzzle games available on it, and nearly all of them require next to no processing power.

If you can possibly get it to work, I highly recommend a game with the strange name of "Everyday Genius: SquareLogic". This is a pure logic puzzler; it's like Sudoku on crack. No, on some sort of super crack. Screenshots of the game will make it look like there's math involved, but no, there isnt... it's pure logic, and nothing more. This is good, because I dont like doing math, and frankly, I *cant* do it... never could.

This is, actually, my favorite puzzle game, period. I think it's very, very worth trying to get if you can; this one should run on.... basically anything. It starts out nice and easy. As the game goes on, the puzzles get bigger and bigger, and more and more mechanics are added, until you get to the stage where they're absolutely brain-melting. Of all of the puzzle games I've ever played, this is by far the biggest, with a seriously stupid number of puzzles (20,000. No, seriously). Needless to say you're not meant to play through every damn one; the number of puzzles basically means that when you find an area with a setup that you like, there's just tons and tons and tons of puzzles that you can just keep doing in that particular area. Really though, I think this game is just wonderful. I love games based on pure logic, and to me, this is the absolute best of all of them.


Now, as for the PS2... if I recall correctly, that thing can run PS1 games. There is a game called Intelligent Qube. I loved this one too. It's hard to describe, but there's seriously nothing else like this one. Look it up if you can, just be warned, this one is *difficult*, yet the basic mechanics are super easy to learn.

My suggestions (based on your preference for X-Com):

- Divinity: Original Sin*
- Wasteland 2

Both use turned based combat with an emphasis on strategy (especially Divinity). And both are - as I recall - available on X-Box One.

Recent years have seen a resurgenze of platformers with strong puzzle elements. If you haven't already, you should try these (all available on either 360 or One):

- Limbo
- Child of Light
- Mark of the Ninja
- Ori and The Blind Forest**

For a pure Whodunnit experience, you might also want to check out the Sherlock Holmes games (IMO, these games are seriously underrated) by Frogwares. As I recall, their more recent titles are available on Xbox platforms.

As mentioned by Misery, though, your gaming platform (X-Box) is a limiting factor wrt. games with both strategy and puzzle elements. Because of this, you'll miss out on brainy games like these:

- The Talos Principle (ouch)
- Legend of Grimrock 1 & 2
- Lords of Xulima

Even worse, since you are a huge fan of X-Com... X-Com 2 (February 2016)... is currently only scheduled for release on PC and Mac.

*Here is a complete list of reasons why you should not play Divinity: Original Sin:



** Tough as hell...

Yeah, I plan an getting an upgraded PC when I get my tax return check next year, primarily for XCOM 2.

I loved Chime and Hexic, as well as the Divinity games for the 360.

Thanks for the quality suggestions!

Zactronics has a few brain-teasers available on Steam; i personally like "Infinifactory".
It has a system requirement of "meh, you're good", has a sufficiently high difficulty, a steep difficulty curve and good replayability, in that you can ceep on improving on yourself (and others, as stats are shared); and there is of course the mod community...

This is obviously in addition to what is already mentioned; all good options there.

I recently discovered a game for the Xbox One titled Plague Inc.

It is truly addictive and truly challenging, and I am loving every second of it.

Child of Light, that game is just so easy on the eyes, and it has a bunch of puzzles in it as well, although none really all that challenging.

I just bought this, am about to try it myself. The PC version (which has all of the content of the console versions) is still considered Early Access (in other words, it's still in beta form), which means that they'll be bringing even more features to it. Right now, they're working on adding multiplayer to it.

....aaaaaaand the nearly 1 gig download just finished in 15 seconds, if that. What?

Good grief, technology these days just amazes me sometimes. I still remember the days of 56k and the variety of loud shrieking noises that every modem used to make when connecting.

Allright, time to jump in and see this for myself finally. I am told that I will soon strongly dislike Greenland after playing this enough. We shall see if that prophecy comes true.

EDIT: Okay, this game also has Steam Workshop support (means players can very easily make and trade their own content). Even if you have the console version, it might be worth getting the PC version once you've been able to upgrade.

The Stanley Parable. Available if you do get a gaming PC.

This is not a normal puzzle game, it's a very inventive satire of puzzle adventures and flips the genre upside down. It's an older game and should be a bargain and entertaining.

If it's offers a mental challenge it's mostly in wondering what the hell is going to happen next. It is highly bizarre.

If you had a better PC, Crusader Kings 2 would be a good choice. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get through the tutorials, it's really fun. It's like Risk meets Game of Thrones, but historically accurate-ish. Basically, you're building a dynasty, gaining titles and power through the generations; using war, marriage, and intrigue to accomplish your goals. You play against real historical figures and go through real events in history.

This game always looks so interesting, but that learning curve is a nightmare.

It reminds me of learning Dwarf Fortress all over again, except I've found LESS info on it. With DF I found a very extensive set of video tutorials for the game, done by someone who is very good at explaining things, but even then... it took like 53 videos to learn the basics. Granted DF has one of the most confusing interfaces there ever was (though it works PERFECTLY once it finally "clicks" for you. Except for the job/task assignment screens; those are so bloody stupid that most players use an outside program that makes it NOT take absolutely freaking forever to manipulate those things) but still, that specific bit isnt actually that hard to learn.

Worth noting that Crusader Kings 2 and all of Paradox's "grand strategy" games are similar in that regard. EXTREMELY deep games but also EXTREMELY complicated. It always seems like every conceivable idea has been included.

I personally found that the in-game tutorials for these are just... terrible. I'd really love to find a good set of tutorials done by others as I'd love to jump into these, but yeah, no idea what I'm doing for now.

That being said if you can get a handle on them... they'll more than give you their money's worth. HUGE amount of content in this type of game and there are many of them. But if you're gonna try them, make sure you've got plenty of time on your hands...



On another note, I just finished my first run of Plague Inc. Very interesting and unique game... the passive nature of the strategy of it is something I've not seen very often. I only played on Casual mode for the start since I hadnt even the foggiest clue as to what I was doing. But I think I get the ideas behind it.

I want to recommend you Siberia. It's old but still beautiful. And you could run it on your pc.

I could recommend The Talos Principle. It's a puzzle game with a lot of thought provoking elements on the side. If you enjoy the ideas of AIs learning about religion vs science and longing for personhood, you'll love this game.

Too bad about the pc, I was going to say simcity, especially the new one. It's like an open-ended puzzle.
There's also Osmos, you play as an orb trying to absorb all of the smaller orbs while avoiding the bigger ones. It's a physics puzzler because of all the circular movement and gravity.