McPixel (2012)

A perfect sorbet to cleanse the palate between mind-wrenchers, McPixel is the ultimate in un-puzzle games. Straddling the fine line between Zen and Beavis-and-Butthead-grade toilet humor, McPixel throws you into a high-speed gauntlet of idiotic scenarios, almost all of which involve some manner of high explosive about to go off. Using every resource available (examples of which include cows, balloons, dynamite, vodka, firearms, more dynamite, and an endless supply of kicks to the groin), you must disarm the danger within 20 seconds and save the day. Or, failing that, die in a hilarious and moronic way.

Separating it from the usual Wario Ware clone, there's little logic to any of the game's many stages; more often than not you'll muddle your way through by clicking random things and getting lucky. When an actual sense of challenge DOES arise, it's usually due to the necessary key object being barely visible. What saves McPixel from being a completely unjustified waste of time is the fact that it's one of the funniest casual titles you're going to find anywhere. Admittedly, it's extremely low-brow, but my first time playing it basically amounted to 3 hours of near-brainless clicking broken up by a constant stream of disgusted, wonderful laughter. Somehow, the combination of Gary Larson-style cows and humans rendered in 8-bit graphics with 4th grade toilet humor works amazingly well, and after clearing each level correctly I had no problem going back and trying to find every idiotic failure cutscene in order to achieve a 100% completion. It's not the sort of game you'll want to discuss with coworkers around the (likely to explode) water cooler, but sometimes you just need to shut your brain off and laugh as some jerk kicks Batman in the nards a few dozen times, y'know?