Christmas is the time for games, and I found two that look fun and use novel ideas, either in how you control characters, or how you solve the problems you encounter
The first one is a Flash game called Straw Hat Samurai, and as you may imagine, you are a samurai. The objective of the game is to defeat the warlords that are raging war across the land, and between you and them stand tons of other samurais. The cool thing about the game is that the control is mouse-driven, and to kill the other samurais you have to slash through them using mouse gestures. Aim for vital parts and cut them in group to get higher points.
The second one is the work of a company called ratloop, and is competing on the 2009 IGF. It's a 3D platform game, where you play as two characters, the Engineer and the Actionaut solving puzzles and collecting items. Nothing groundbreaking. What it's groundbreaking is the way you can solve the puzzles, which is explained in the link below. My jaw simply fell to the floor.
If you don't want to play or your hardware does not support DX9 (unlikely), watch the video and prepare to be amazed. And curse everything for not having a scanner.
via
Pixfans and
TIGSource 
