Web-based games tend to have a bad reputation, often for good reasons. For years they've been primarily characterized by bulky, inefficient plugins, dated 2D graphics, and basic gameplay. But Google's latest Chrome-based experiment shows that HTML5 gaming has advanced quite a bit past that stereotype.

At its core, World Wide Maze is a pretty basic ball-rolling game in the style of Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball, with 3D levels that are built dynamically using the HTML elements from any webpage you care to use as a template. But there are a few things that make it interesting.

The first is a link to the mobile version of Chrome that turns your smartphone into a PC game controller. By syncing the two browsers or entering a code, players are able to move the ball on their PC by tilting or tapping on their mobile phones, which show a continuously updated overhead map of the action that brings to mind the Wii U GamePad or Microsoft's Smartglass Xbox controls. There's a decent bit of input lag when using this method and the tilt sensitivity is a bit loose, but just being able to use a mobile phone to control a Web-based game in this way creates a pretty intense "wow, that's neat" moment.

The second notable bit is just how advanced a purely HTML5 game can be these days. World Wide Maze works off the WebGL standard, and it requires pretty decent system specs for a browser game, including 1GB of RAM and a 256MB graphics card for hardware acceleration. If you have that kind of power, you'll see the kind of graphics that just a few years ago probably would have required some sort of clunky proprietary plug-in or a native, downloaded app. If this is the future of gaming based on open HTML standards, sign us up.