While I have not actually posted anything on my Google+ account yet, I am fairly awesome at time wasting and that makes the addition of games there a fairly attractive prospect. We all know that these games are designed to make the publishers some money and demonstrate (a.k.a. take advantage of in order to make money…) the social aspect of Google+. However, I am not willing to pay money or be social… So, with those restrictions, here is opinions on the currently available games.

Zynga Poker – I like poker, so this game was the first I tried. The good thing about it is that you can use it as a completely free poker client and just play poker. All the extra social crap is optional and does not really get in the way too much. However, there are better poker clients out there with freeplay and they have many more players (I never got to play a “sit and go” match once due to lack of people to form a table). Also, I like to have more than one table running at a time or the waiting gets boring.

Monster World – This almost set of my “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” urge. But it had one fatal flaw. I planted my fields full of an expensive plant that takes 16 hours to grow. But there is absolutely nothing in the game to do while you wait for that 16 hours. So essentially the game is forcing you not to play the game, which I think amounts to the stupidest concept in game design ever.

Angry Birds – I have never really been a fan of this game so I did not spend much time playing it. While it appears that some parts of the game would require teaming up with friends, there is enough single player gameplay to keep you entertained for a decent amount of time.

Dragon Age Legends – This seemed like a game I would like, but I just could not enjoy it for some reason. I think part of my issue was with the graphics. I know these games are not supposed to be graphics powerhouses, but when limited in that department I often think you are better off going very simple and refined. Everything in this game, but especially the characters, just looked horrid.

Diamond Dash & Collapse! Blast – Both these games have the very annoying “feature” that you lose a life for each round you play. And these rounds only last one minute, so you very quickly run out of lives. At that point, the best thing to do is to shut down the game and wait for time to pass so that lives are replenished.

Crime City & Zombie Lane – Like the above games, but instead of running out of lives, you run out of energy and can not do anything. I also did not get what the fun was in Crime City. All you did was click your mouse on the green arrow and wait for a progress bar to fill up.

Bubble Island – I only played the first five or so level sets on this so never actually lost a life. But from what I can see, if I did fail it would require me playing previous levels 500 times to get a retry attempt. That is equivalent to locking you out of the game as far as I am concerned.

Wild Ones – Worms clone with dogs… and as far as I could tell, completely useless single player.

City of Wonder, Dragons of Atlantis & Edgeworld – I dislike any click a building, watch it build, research upgrades, real time strategy type game. And I can not imagine them becoming better with an inability to right click on anything…

Bejeweled Blitz – Meh, Bejeweled… but this is one of the few games where not being willing to pay or be social has very little effect.

Flood It – Puzzle game that I could not find where the fun was located.

Sudoku Puzzles – Not a game… I completed one board to see if there was some sort of side challenge or something to actually make this a game, but failed to see the game part.

Now that I have decided that all these games are basically crap, I would like to clear all of what I have done from the game providers server. But unless I am missing something, not a single game appears to have the option to delete your progress. This is a bit of a surprise given one of the main selling points of Google+ over its competition was the ability to completely control your information, but I guess that does not extend to third parties. So that information you gave the provider authorization to access at the start of the game is permanently in their hands. While Google appears to have done the good thing and allows you to revoke access to your information (under “Account Settings” -> “Account Overview” -> “Security” -> “Authorizing applications & sites”), in reality that will only stop access to new changes you make to your profile as the game providers will already have your data stored. I would be interested in seeing if deleting your Google+ account completely removed your scores etc from the people in your circles games.