Shoot 2 Kill, as the name may suggest, is a shoot 'em up game. More specifically, a side-scrolling shoot 'em up. This is normally the time I compare the game I'm reviewing to Mega Man to appease the little critic in my head who says that any decent review will highlight a game's faults and strong points by comparing it to a popular title everyone can relate to, but you know what? no. I'm not going to do that, because that would imply, at least to some extent, that Shoot 2 Kill was trying to be Mega Man in the first place.
Plenty of games on this list have marketed themselves as "unique," but very few have actually earned that title. Shoot 2 Kill is one of the few, the proud, the games that make blasting through enemies with a zappy thing in space interesting and original.
Time for a pop quiz, ladies and gentlemen. Since we're talking about Mega Man, one of the most distinguished game franchises out there, how did that game make itself so original? Answer: by introducing a new mechanic that people hadn't seen before, namely stealing the boss enemies' powers for use in later levels. Mega Man X distinguished itself with much different mechanics, namely wall-jumping and dashing, but it still used new mechanics to make itself unique. Shoot 2 Kill understands that, so instead of putting all its energy into bells and whistles that make the game seem unique, like that triple-orb system in Shattered Core, that didn't in any meaningful way change how the game was played, it devised a new and interesting mechanic that the player constantly utilizes to clear the level. That mechanic is "blinking," much like the ever proprietary mechanic from Dishonored, but here it's used for 2D side-scrolling platforming.
All things considered, the rest of the game is kinda substandard. Shooting enemies feels about as rewarding as wiping piss off a toilet seat; probably because while you're laboring away at an enemy with your weapon, you're tanking damage from the million other enemies on screen that you'd rather blink to and slice with your far more powerful sword, so really the game is more of a hack 'n' slash than a shoot 'em up. Although, some of the powerups for the gun do make it quite fun to use, especially the rocket launcher, which tears up everything in its path in a way that makes you feel like you're a demigod.
When all is said and done, zipping around the levels and slashing at enemies until they die is a very enjoyable experience. The enemies and bosses are varied enough to keep gameplay interesting. The game doesn't look or sound half bad, either. There are a few things that bug me, like why your character only moves at a speed that can be accurately described as "moseying along," which isn't really appropriate for the setting. The main issue, though, is how impossible it is to dodge enemy fire, especially when you drop into the tractor beam of an enemy you couldn't see. So yeah. The game really is just reduced to blinking and slashing, with the occasional boom boom. If that sounds fun to you, give it a go, but if you're more into the challenging shoot 'em up like Contra, which feeds your sense of accomplishment in addition to your primitive desire to see things blow up, rather than just relying on the latter, then maybe this one isn't for you.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay stimulating.
Links
shoot to kill...now keep shooting...almost...there ya go: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25995
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
Shoot on Sight
Games are art. That's a phrase that a lot of people like to plunge into a conversation, propelled by their undying passion for the medium. When presenting their cases in the inevitable newly formed debate, gamers will often cite such works as Braid, which uses plenty of literary devices to present a narrative in such a way that would make high school English teachers wet their trousers with pretentious bouts of intellectual superiority. Many might think that if I were to use a game on this list to make a case that the video game is just as legitimate as any other kind of narrative experience, I would examine a game like Oniro, a game that perfectly nailed the whole "narrative" part and delivered a story which almost moved me to tears, all the while explaining itself through its mechanics and never becoming dull or repetitive.
Yes, it is true, that games like this have a significant role in the distinguishing of video games as a form of art, but such arguments tend to ignore the mindless adrenaline drips...the games that sell like hotcakes during Christmastime. What about the shooter that makes no attempt to tell a story or utilize any kind of arbitrarily named literary device? Should those be lumped into the same category as pornography under the title "things that make you feel good but you should probably keep to yourself?" I don't think so. I think there's just as much value to be had in a mindless but fun experience, and there's certainly enough opportunity for the developers to show their skill, which is what art is by definition.
And show off skill the developers of Shoot on Sight did. Not so much in the visual design department nor in the gameplay balancing department, but the game certainly feels great to play. It's a third-person shooter wherein you are armed with a pea shooter and a nuclear warhead launcher with infinite ammo and quick reload times...guess which one you'll be using most of the time.
Yes, the secondary weapon is quite hideously overpowered, but not so much that it breaks the game completely. You can still have a lot of fun while limiting yourself to the peashooter, and the upgrades for it will keep gameplay fun and varied. What it does do, however, is make the game a bit too easy. Once you learn how to catch enemies within the insta-kill blast radius of your secondary weapon, your own splash damage is pretty much the only thing that threatens you. There are little suicide bomber enemies that can take a good chunk off you if you're not careful, but your health regenerates fairly quickly, so all it takes is a little safe playing before you're ready to start jumping around lobbing pocket rockets at anything that moves.
And is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. In my book, this game is a success. It set out with the goal of providing a fun and addicting (in the good way) experience, and that's exactly what it is. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay trigger-happy.
Links
Kill all sons o' bitches: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1423
Yes, it is true, that games like this have a significant role in the distinguishing of video games as a form of art, but such arguments tend to ignore the mindless adrenaline drips...the games that sell like hotcakes during Christmastime. What about the shooter that makes no attempt to tell a story or utilize any kind of arbitrarily named literary device? Should those be lumped into the same category as pornography under the title "things that make you feel good but you should probably keep to yourself?" I don't think so. I think there's just as much value to be had in a mindless but fun experience, and there's certainly enough opportunity for the developers to show their skill, which is what art is by definition.
And show off skill the developers of Shoot on Sight did. Not so much in the visual design department nor in the gameplay balancing department, but the game certainly feels great to play. It's a third-person shooter wherein you are armed with a pea shooter and a nuclear warhead launcher with infinite ammo and quick reload times...guess which one you'll be using most of the time.
Yes, the secondary weapon is quite hideously overpowered, but not so much that it breaks the game completely. You can still have a lot of fun while limiting yourself to the peashooter, and the upgrades for it will keep gameplay fun and varied. What it does do, however, is make the game a bit too easy. Once you learn how to catch enemies within the insta-kill blast radius of your secondary weapon, your own splash damage is pretty much the only thing that threatens you. There are little suicide bomber enemies that can take a good chunk off you if you're not careful, but your health regenerates fairly quickly, so all it takes is a little safe playing before you're ready to start jumping around lobbing pocket rockets at anything that moves.
And is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. In my book, this game is a success. It set out with the goal of providing a fun and addicting (in the good way) experience, and that's exactly what it is. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay trigger-happy.
Links
Kill all sons o' bitches: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1423
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Shift
Puzzle games are great starting places for aspiring game designers, mostly because the term "puzzle game" is kind of redundant. A puzzle is pretty much the purest essence of a game. There's a clear objective, certain rules and regulations to which you must abide while completing the objective...and that's basically it. When making a puzzle game, the designer needn't be bogged down by the burden of creating a story, setting, characters, etc. In fact, there's really no need to be that creative whatsoever.
That might sound a bit harsh, but I swear I'm not trying to call out puzzle game designers for being uncreative. Far from it. All I'm saying is that a puzzle game can get away with just putting you in a maze and calling it a day as long as the maze is well designed. I like to call these "lab rat games," and Shift is that in a nutshell.
The problem in reviewing lab rat games is that there's pretty much only one non-aesthetic factor to be weighed in determining the quality of the game; that's how well the levels are designed. More specifically, how well the difficulty curve is designed. There aren't really that many other ways to identify the quality of a level. Shift's difficulty curve is very well executed. Bam. There it is. End review.
The most frustrating part about the game, I would say, is how easily you can fall off an edge and have to restart the level. The game was already challenging enough without that, but at least I can see where the developers were going with it. They don't want you blazing through the levels and stumbling upon the solutions by chance. They want you to take your time and think about the solution before carefully planning every move. If you ask me, that sounds more like limiting the playstyle than promoting success, but again, not a huge problem.
The part I liked most about Shift was the music. I'm not quite sure who the composer was (given DigiPen's music bank or whatever), but whoever it was should be proud, because the music alone was enough to make me want to keep playing.
Long story short, pick this game up if you're bored. You won't be bored much longer. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay shifty.
Links
Caps Lock: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26703
That might sound a bit harsh, but I swear I'm not trying to call out puzzle game designers for being uncreative. Far from it. All I'm saying is that a puzzle game can get away with just putting you in a maze and calling it a day as long as the maze is well designed. I like to call these "lab rat games," and Shift is that in a nutshell.
The problem in reviewing lab rat games is that there's pretty much only one non-aesthetic factor to be weighed in determining the quality of the game; that's how well the levels are designed. More specifically, how well the difficulty curve is designed. There aren't really that many other ways to identify the quality of a level. Shift's difficulty curve is very well executed. Bam. There it is. End review.
The most frustrating part about the game, I would say, is how easily you can fall off an edge and have to restart the level. The game was already challenging enough without that, but at least I can see where the developers were going with it. They don't want you blazing through the levels and stumbling upon the solutions by chance. They want you to take your time and think about the solution before carefully planning every move. If you ask me, that sounds more like limiting the playstyle than promoting success, but again, not a huge problem.
The part I liked most about Shift was the music. I'm not quite sure who the composer was (given DigiPen's music bank or whatever), but whoever it was should be proud, because the music alone was enough to make me want to keep playing.
Long story short, pick this game up if you're bored. You won't be bored much longer. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay shifty.
Links
Caps Lock: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26703
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Shattered Nocturne
Shattered Nocturne advertises itself as a "poetic experience," which basically means it's a regular game with uninteresting machanics anc about 5000% more xylophone and acoustic guitar. I'm a firm believer that narrative alone is enough to hold up a game, hence my love for games like Chrono Trigger, which didn't have bad gameplay, but I think we can all agree that it was a narrative-driven experience. The problem comes when games decide to forego interesting game mechanics for the narrative rather than use the mechanics to drive the narrative.
Unfortunately, this game does just that. It's pretty much the same problem I had with Douse. Just pointing out a character and playing some placid music in the background does not count as a "poetic experience." Poetry makes you think; you don't think because you're reading poetry. See the difference? The thing you can do is walk around and collect little pieces of the moon. It's a very similar game, now that I think of it, to Slender. Both games give you only the ability to move and rely wholly on the atmosphere to make the experience entertaining.
Now, I'm not a fan of Slender, personally, but I can at least understand the appeal of it. For all its flaws, the game does a pretty good job of maintaining tension for the most part. In Shattered Nocturne, I feel no motivation to keep pushing forward. The walking speed is mind-numbingly slow, the world is bland and uninteresting, and the whole game just feels pretentious as a whole.
So yeah, the mechanics get a big fat F- in my book, but as long as the game tells a good story, it might still be able to get a recommendation out of me. You know what? I'd be lying if I said this game's atmosphere didn't have some kind of charm, especially toward the end when you walk on previously inaccessible, glistening water, but there's just not enough here to form any kind of decent narrative. The game's description says that it is a metaphor for dealing with depression, which I don't understand at all. Just coloring your world dark blue and making it incredibly boring to walk around in does not emulate the feel of tackling depression. Depression is many things, but it is not boring, I tell ya that. This game, on the other hand, is.
The best compliments I can give Shattered Nocturne are that it doesn't overstay its welcome and that it does look very nice. The game is pretty enough to look like a professionally made game from 2008 and it's over in less than 5 minutes, so at least there's not a whole lot to get mad at.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay nocturnal.
Links
Shut Her Narc Turn: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26679
Unfortunately, this game does just that. It's pretty much the same problem I had with Douse. Just pointing out a character and playing some placid music in the background does not count as a "poetic experience." Poetry makes you think; you don't think because you're reading poetry. See the difference? The thing you can do is walk around and collect little pieces of the moon. It's a very similar game, now that I think of it, to Slender. Both games give you only the ability to move and rely wholly on the atmosphere to make the experience entertaining.
Now, I'm not a fan of Slender, personally, but I can at least understand the appeal of it. For all its flaws, the game does a pretty good job of maintaining tension for the most part. In Shattered Nocturne, I feel no motivation to keep pushing forward. The walking speed is mind-numbingly slow, the world is bland and uninteresting, and the whole game just feels pretentious as a whole.
So yeah, the mechanics get a big fat F- in my book, but as long as the game tells a good story, it might still be able to get a recommendation out of me. You know what? I'd be lying if I said this game's atmosphere didn't have some kind of charm, especially toward the end when you walk on previously inaccessible, glistening water, but there's just not enough here to form any kind of decent narrative. The game's description says that it is a metaphor for dealing with depression, which I don't understand at all. Just coloring your world dark blue and making it incredibly boring to walk around in does not emulate the feel of tackling depression. Depression is many things, but it is not boring, I tell ya that. This game, on the other hand, is.
The best compliments I can give Shattered Nocturne are that it doesn't overstay its welcome and that it does look very nice. The game is pretty enough to look like a professionally made game from 2008 and it's over in less than 5 minutes, so at least there's not a whole lot to get mad at.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay nocturnal.
Links
Shut Her Narc Turn: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26679
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Shattered Core
Shattered Core claims to "combine the best elements of successful platformers such as Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man with revolutionary new elements." So yeah, I pretty much hated this game before I even started it, but let it never be said that I let my biases impede my judgement. Upon actually playing Shattered Core, I felt there was a lot to love and very little to actually hate. There was plenty to get annoyed by, but the game has a whole has its head in the right place.
First, exactly what elements of Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man do the developers think they've combined? I'd have a hard time arguing that they even implemented the design features that made those games awesome, let alone that they combined them with "revolutionary new elements." By "best elements," do you perhaps mean that the main character has a sword, gun, and the ability to climb walls?....and is also a robot? Well whatever. These aspects are purely aesthetic, so we can call them simple innocuous homage.
My second question is, what exactly are these revolutionary new elements? I only got to play the first two levels before the game crashed on me (and, of course, there's no save feature, so that's as far as I'm getting), but I didn't see anything particularly striking about the game design. Certainly nothing worthy of being called "revolutionary." I'm assuming they're referring to the color-matching powerup system, which is fairly unique, yes, but revolutionary?
That said, let's get into more pointed criticism, shall we? The powerup system works like this: You collect 3 orbs of colors green, red and blue. These orbs determine how many attacks of what kind you can perform. For example, if you have a blue and red orb, you will be able to perform 2 consecutive attacks at the basic attack level. However, the more consecutive orbs you have of the same color, the more powerful your succession of attacks will be. So, for example, red, blue, blue will yield two attacks at the basic attack level and then one more powerful attack, etc. This keeps the gameplay engaging for the entirety of the first level, but afterwards it stops being noteworthy and starts just being how the game is played. The mechanics don't change at all depending on what orbs you've collected, so it amounts to nothing more than added spice on the fairly tasty meat pie that is this game's mechanics.
The thing that made me like this game twofold: first, I love the variety of your moves, and second, I love how that variety is presented to you. Much like in Nightfall, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to attack. "D" controls your gun, "S" controls your sword, and "A" allows you to stride, which is a rather overpowered but immensely satisfying evasive attack. I'm sure "W" does something later on, too, but I didn't play enough to find out.
And that's the other thing I like about the game. It rewards your progress with more complexity, not just more of the same thing. Far too many games, platformer and otherwise, on this list and off it, are way too repetitive. This game gives you a new power each level, meaning the mechanics aren't going to get stale any time soon.
Final verdict: if this game had a save feature, I'd be interested enough to play it to completion. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay versatile.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=482
PS- when I went back a few pages in the game gallery to check the name of Nightfall, I noticed more than one game on the list that I hadn't reviewed, but were dated in past years. That's just not fair! There are 500 games on this list. I'm supposed to leaf through the entire gallery to keep up with the new entries? Whatever. I'm sure I'll figure something out...just an update...
First, exactly what elements of Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man do the developers think they've combined? I'd have a hard time arguing that they even implemented the design features that made those games awesome, let alone that they combined them with "revolutionary new elements." By "best elements," do you perhaps mean that the main character has a sword, gun, and the ability to climb walls?....and is also a robot? Well whatever. These aspects are purely aesthetic, so we can call them simple innocuous homage.
My second question is, what exactly are these revolutionary new elements? I only got to play the first two levels before the game crashed on me (and, of course, there's no save feature, so that's as far as I'm getting), but I didn't see anything particularly striking about the game design. Certainly nothing worthy of being called "revolutionary." I'm assuming they're referring to the color-matching powerup system, which is fairly unique, yes, but revolutionary?
That said, let's get into more pointed criticism, shall we? The powerup system works like this: You collect 3 orbs of colors green, red and blue. These orbs determine how many attacks of what kind you can perform. For example, if you have a blue and red orb, you will be able to perform 2 consecutive attacks at the basic attack level. However, the more consecutive orbs you have of the same color, the more powerful your succession of attacks will be. So, for example, red, blue, blue will yield two attacks at the basic attack level and then one more powerful attack, etc. This keeps the gameplay engaging for the entirety of the first level, but afterwards it stops being noteworthy and starts just being how the game is played. The mechanics don't change at all depending on what orbs you've collected, so it amounts to nothing more than added spice on the fairly tasty meat pie that is this game's mechanics.
The thing that made me like this game twofold: first, I love the variety of your moves, and second, I love how that variety is presented to you. Much like in Nightfall, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to attack. "D" controls your gun, "S" controls your sword, and "A" allows you to stride, which is a rather overpowered but immensely satisfying evasive attack. I'm sure "W" does something later on, too, but I didn't play enough to find out.
And that's the other thing I like about the game. It rewards your progress with more complexity, not just more of the same thing. Far too many games, platformer and otherwise, on this list and off it, are way too repetitive. This game gives you a new power each level, meaning the mechanics aren't going to get stale any time soon.
Final verdict: if this game had a save feature, I'd be interested enough to play it to completion. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay versatile.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=482
PS- when I went back a few pages in the game gallery to check the name of Nightfall, I noticed more than one game on the list that I hadn't reviewed, but were dated in past years. That's just not fair! There are 500 games on this list. I'm supposed to leaf through the entire gallery to keep up with the new entries? Whatever. I'm sure I'll figure something out...just an update...
Monday, August 26, 2013
Shapes on a Plane.
ha ha ha. Slightly outdated pop culture references. I'm not in the mood, SOAP. It's hard enough coming up with criticism varied enough to hold up a blog for the original games on this list. I don't need you showing up to my party in the exact same outfit as Purge and making my life more difficult.
I can't even get mad at SOAP, either, because it came out a full year before Purge did. I swear, they're the exact same game. Sure, there are minor differences, like the fact that this one's visual style is a heck of a lot more psychadelic, but I honestly have no new criticism for this game. It's a clone of a game that I basically wrote off as a clone of two other games.
And that's it. That's all I have for you. I feel bad giving all five of my readers the cold shoulder like this, but what do you expect me to do? If I did a penance review every time a game on this list left me without enough information to write a sizable post, I'd be out of games by July.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay original
Links
Scrub a Dub Dub: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=433
I can't even get mad at SOAP, either, because it came out a full year before Purge did. I swear, they're the exact same game. Sure, there are minor differences, like the fact that this one's visual style is a heck of a lot more psychadelic, but I honestly have no new criticism for this game. It's a clone of a game that I basically wrote off as a clone of two other games.
And that's it. That's all I have for you. I feel bad giving all five of my readers the cold shoulder like this, but what do you expect me to do? If I did a penance review every time a game on this list left me without enough information to write a sizable post, I'd be out of games by July.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay original
Links
Scrub a Dub Dub: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=433
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Shade
It's no secret that I'm not a fan of RTS games. I find them, for the most part, unengaging and unintuitive. There are exceptions, of course, but my problem is with the starting point. I don't like having other people do my dirty work for me. If I want a bunch of people dead, I want to have the pleasure of tossing their innards around myself, not just ordering a bunch of samurai to do it for me.
You know what kind of game understands this? The beat 'em up. Games like Double Dragon and Kingdom Hearts (that's right, it's not an RPG, despite what people want you to think) know that the best way to clear a room full of baddies is to bash 'em into the ground yourself. Don't get me wrong, those games have their flaws too, but they are rarely unengaging. That's because you tend to have complete control over your character, and, by extension, the events of a battle.
So now, here's Shade. A beat 'em up that renders everything I just said completely moot by being as engaging as an RTS.
I'll start this review, with complete disregard the for context of my intro, the way I always do when I'm afraid I'll be done blogging before a scroll bar even appears on my page: talking about the aesthetics. The game looks fine when it's not bugging out. The main problem is that your character(s) have a very strong love of walls, so good luck getting them to obey orders whenever you make the mistake of directing them within the same postal code of a building or lamppost.
And then of course there are the mechanics. This game can serve as a fine lesson in how not to make the player feel like he or she has control. Instead of just moving your minions around the screen, you use WASD to vaguely suggest where they should head off to, which only exaggerates the problem of wall hugging ghosties.
The biggest complaint I have, though, is that the only attack method you have is to mash the space bar. That's it. If you have enough ghosts following you around, you'll kill people. If you don't, you have to travel back to the middle of the map to get some and then you can kill people. It's about as dull, formulaic and uninteresting as a beat 'em up can get.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay repetitive repetitively.
Links
Ghouls on Parade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25916
You know what kind of game understands this? The beat 'em up. Games like Double Dragon and Kingdom Hearts (that's right, it's not an RPG, despite what people want you to think) know that the best way to clear a room full of baddies is to bash 'em into the ground yourself. Don't get me wrong, those games have their flaws too, but they are rarely unengaging. That's because you tend to have complete control over your character, and, by extension, the events of a battle.
So now, here's Shade. A beat 'em up that renders everything I just said completely moot by being as engaging as an RTS.
I'll start this review, with complete disregard the for context of my intro, the way I always do when I'm afraid I'll be done blogging before a scroll bar even appears on my page: talking about the aesthetics. The game looks fine when it's not bugging out. The main problem is that your character(s) have a very strong love of walls, so good luck getting them to obey orders whenever you make the mistake of directing them within the same postal code of a building or lamppost.
And then of course there are the mechanics. This game can serve as a fine lesson in how not to make the player feel like he or she has control. Instead of just moving your minions around the screen, you use WASD to vaguely suggest where they should head off to, which only exaggerates the problem of wall hugging ghosties.
The biggest complaint I have, though, is that the only attack method you have is to mash the space bar. That's it. If you have enough ghosts following you around, you'll kill people. If you don't, you have to travel back to the middle of the map to get some and then you can kill people. It's about as dull, formulaic and uninteresting as a beat 'em up can get.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay repetitive repetitively.
Links
Ghouls on Parade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25916
SeigeBreaker
huh, now this sounds interesting. Let's go ahead and start this up an-
OH AHHNNNGGGGGHHH MY EYYEESSSSSS
Jeez! You know, there's a reason the people who made games for DOS never tried to do 3D effects. It hurts your brain to look at all those dull colors colliding with one another. Ah well. The splash art may have left me with a slight concussion, but how does the rest of the game hold up?
Well, I was thrilled as always to hear that this was a tower defense game. Oh boy, I love tower defense. Nothing more fun than watchin enemy troops slowly walk right through your defenses because you don't have enough money left to pay someone to go down there and bash them on the head with a rock, nor the moxie to do it yourself. You know what the world needs? A tower defense game where you play as God, so you can just smite the little bastards attacking your castle and erect an infinite number of walls instantaneously to halt their progress.
Well, turns out, Siege Breaker is just that, although the god you play as either has very limited control over how much fire and brimstone he sends to do his bidding or just doesn't really care one way or another whether the castle survives.
You play the game by swapping between two views: one of the entire territory and one of a selected area that you zoom into. You can only attack while zoomed, so you're going to have to be clever about where you place your walls and towers if you want to have any hope of surviving the first few waves. Before long, the screen will be flooded with attackers of all shapes and sizes.
Switching between the two views is quite hectic and fun. demands that you constantly be on your toes, spotting the highest concentration of attackers and smiting them all swiftly before moving onto the next bunch. You'll never have to wait for your arbitrary amount of money to increase to be able to throw more fireballs or build more walls. The only limited resources are the towers, which ostensibly do damage to oncoming attackers, but honestly I didn't notice them helping at all.
If I have any critique for the game, it's that the developers spent their time on some rather unwise things. There is a variety of maps, all of which had to have taken a nice amount of time to create, but you're going to spend so much time in zoomed attack mode and focusing so heavily on placing walls that really where you play doesn't matter. If the time taken to design the extra levels had instead been directed toward, say designing a tower that actually did something, I think this game would have benefited as a result.
Oh well. It's still a very fun game and I recommend it to anyone who likes to play God. There is no way to win, of course (unless you count surviving until the million objects on the screen cause the game to crash, which I like to interpret as God throwing a temper tantrum), so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who thought Missile Command was too hard. For me, however, this game gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay fortified.
Links
Sij Bricker: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18871
OH AHHNNNGGGGGHHH MY EYYEESSSSSS
Jeez! You know, there's a reason the people who made games for DOS never tried to do 3D effects. It hurts your brain to look at all those dull colors colliding with one another. Ah well. The splash art may have left me with a slight concussion, but how does the rest of the game hold up?
Well, I was thrilled as always to hear that this was a tower defense game. Oh boy, I love tower defense. Nothing more fun than watchin enemy troops slowly walk right through your defenses because you don't have enough money left to pay someone to go down there and bash them on the head with a rock, nor the moxie to do it yourself. You know what the world needs? A tower defense game where you play as God, so you can just smite the little bastards attacking your castle and erect an infinite number of walls instantaneously to halt their progress.
Well, turns out, Siege Breaker is just that, although the god you play as either has very limited control over how much fire and brimstone he sends to do his bidding or just doesn't really care one way or another whether the castle survives.
You play the game by swapping between two views: one of the entire territory and one of a selected area that you zoom into. You can only attack while zoomed, so you're going to have to be clever about where you place your walls and towers if you want to have any hope of surviving the first few waves. Before long, the screen will be flooded with attackers of all shapes and sizes.
Switching between the two views is quite hectic and fun. demands that you constantly be on your toes, spotting the highest concentration of attackers and smiting them all swiftly before moving onto the next bunch. You'll never have to wait for your arbitrary amount of money to increase to be able to throw more fireballs or build more walls. The only limited resources are the towers, which ostensibly do damage to oncoming attackers, but honestly I didn't notice them helping at all.
If I have any critique for the game, it's that the developers spent their time on some rather unwise things. There is a variety of maps, all of which had to have taken a nice amount of time to create, but you're going to spend so much time in zoomed attack mode and focusing so heavily on placing walls that really where you play doesn't matter. If the time taken to design the extra levels had instead been directed toward, say designing a tower that actually did something, I think this game would have benefited as a result.
Oh well. It's still a very fun game and I recommend it to anyone who likes to play God. There is no way to win, of course (unless you count surviving until the million objects on the screen cause the game to crash, which I like to interpret as God throwing a temper tantrum), so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who thought Missile Command was too hard. For me, however, this game gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay fortified.
Links
Sij Bricker: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18871
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Scribble Wars
My experience with Scribble Wars was a brief one indeed. It's a 2-player splitscreen game, so I went as fat as I could in the tutorial controlling both screens, but eventually some commands were introduced that I wasn't able to pull off because I don't have a full keyboard with those calculator-style number pads. I just have that half-ass laptop keyboard.
I've gathered that when the devs-to-be over at DigiPen don't quite have the energy to rip off Ikaruga, they just rip remove some of the more proprietary elements and rip off Asteroids instead, so this game is basically two of those. You are two thirds of a triangle, there are enemies on your screen and it's your job to murder till you just can't murder no more. Not that this game is all about destruction, though, because you also have the ability to create life! In addition to 4-way shots and shields, you have the option, once you kill enough enemies, to spawn an enemy on your opponent's screen. The more enemies you've killed, the stronger your minion will be.
I assume this game has the potential to be the same kind of friendship-decimating fun as demonstrated in games like Pac Attack, but since I'm a loner with neither the people nor the equipment to play a game built like this, the assumption is all I have, and you know what happens when we assume.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay a'scribblin.
Links
Scribby Dabby Do: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24362
I've gathered that when the devs-to-be over at DigiPen don't quite have the energy to rip off Ikaruga, they just rip remove some of the more proprietary elements and rip off Asteroids instead, so this game is basically two of those. You are two thirds of a triangle, there are enemies on your screen and it's your job to murder till you just can't murder no more. Not that this game is all about destruction, though, because you also have the ability to create life! In addition to 4-way shots and shields, you have the option, once you kill enough enemies, to spawn an enemy on your opponent's screen. The more enemies you've killed, the stronger your minion will be.
I assume this game has the potential to be the same kind of friendship-decimating fun as demonstrated in games like Pac Attack, but since I'm a loner with neither the people nor the equipment to play a game built like this, the assumption is all I have, and you know what happens when we assume.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay a'scribblin.
Links
Scribby Dabby Do: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24362
Friday, August 23, 2013
Scrapped
oh dear oh dear...where to begin here...
Alright, well I guess I'll start with an overview of the aesthetics. Scrapped is a side-scrolling battle arena wherein you play as one of 5 (and no more than 5, despite what the description would have you believe) robots, each with their own unique ability. The game's visual style has that organic "MS Paint" feel, but is certainly no eyesore. The characters move fluidly and the bells and whistles (like screen distortion, my fave) keep the game from ever looking bland.
The game has three play modes: Tutorial, Scurrybot and Battle. Naturally, I played the tutorial first and found myself quite impressed. The robots' abilities are varied enough to keep gameplay constantly interesting. There's cloak, rope swing, machine gun, rocket, and gravity-reversal.
Now, the tutorial was fairly straightforward, ending with me killing a quite challenging opponent with my own arsenal of 3 out of a multitude of weapons. I had high hopes for this game. I thought it was going to be a platformer wherein you solve different problems with the different robots. Swing across a fire pit, change into a ninjabot to cloak behind a big baddie and change into machinegun bot to kill it swiftly, etc. Like Megaman, but with an emphasis on the numbered platform-centric powers. Bottom line: this game had potential. Lots of potential. Enough potential to make me ready to call this the best platformer on the list.
And then...I played the rest of it.
First, let's talk about Scurrybot. You are put into a room with a bunch of little robots and...well, that's it. go nuts, take no prisoners. I didn't even notice whether or not the scurrybots were able to damage me. The most significant threat to my health bar was the splash damage caused by my own weapons. So yeah, Scurrybot mode is insubstantial and not at all challenging, but that's fine for a supplemental game mode. The real game must be hidden in Battle mode.
Aaaaand nope. Battle mode is one hell of a frustrating experience. There's no respawning. Once you're dead, you're dead. The weapons are very powerful, too, meaning your health bar can be drained in a second if you're not careful. Couple that with the fact that all enemies immediately have their sights trained on you from the start of the match and you've got yourself a very anticlimactic battle. I tried every map and match style, but it always had the same result. 2 seconds of gunfire followed by "you have been destroyed" standing menacingly on the screen.
The developers of this game were able to create the tools to make this game wonderful. It's as if they spent hours preparing seasonings and side dishes to complement the meal they were cooking, but someone misplaced the lamb shank and they had to replace it with a handful of dirt. There is some value to reaped from playing around with the robots' varied powers, but the game as a whole absolutely wreaks of lost potential.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay complete.
Links
Scarp: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=548
Alright, well I guess I'll start with an overview of the aesthetics. Scrapped is a side-scrolling battle arena wherein you play as one of 5 (and no more than 5, despite what the description would have you believe) robots, each with their own unique ability. The game's visual style has that organic "MS Paint" feel, but is certainly no eyesore. The characters move fluidly and the bells and whistles (like screen distortion, my fave) keep the game from ever looking bland.
The game has three play modes: Tutorial, Scurrybot and Battle. Naturally, I played the tutorial first and found myself quite impressed. The robots' abilities are varied enough to keep gameplay constantly interesting. There's cloak, rope swing, machine gun, rocket, and gravity-reversal.
Now, the tutorial was fairly straightforward, ending with me killing a quite challenging opponent with my own arsenal of 3 out of a multitude of weapons. I had high hopes for this game. I thought it was going to be a platformer wherein you solve different problems with the different robots. Swing across a fire pit, change into a ninjabot to cloak behind a big baddie and change into machinegun bot to kill it swiftly, etc. Like Megaman, but with an emphasis on the numbered platform-centric powers. Bottom line: this game had potential. Lots of potential. Enough potential to make me ready to call this the best platformer on the list.
And then...I played the rest of it.
First, let's talk about Scurrybot. You are put into a room with a bunch of little robots and...well, that's it. go nuts, take no prisoners. I didn't even notice whether or not the scurrybots were able to damage me. The most significant threat to my health bar was the splash damage caused by my own weapons. So yeah, Scurrybot mode is insubstantial and not at all challenging, but that's fine for a supplemental game mode. The real game must be hidden in Battle mode.
Aaaaand nope. Battle mode is one hell of a frustrating experience. There's no respawning. Once you're dead, you're dead. The weapons are very powerful, too, meaning your health bar can be drained in a second if you're not careful. Couple that with the fact that all enemies immediately have their sights trained on you from the start of the match and you've got yourself a very anticlimactic battle. I tried every map and match style, but it always had the same result. 2 seconds of gunfire followed by "you have been destroyed" standing menacingly on the screen.
The developers of this game were able to create the tools to make this game wonderful. It's as if they spent hours preparing seasonings and side dishes to complement the meal they were cooking, but someone misplaced the lamb shank and they had to replace it with a handful of dirt. There is some value to reaped from playing around with the robots' varied powers, but the game as a whole absolutely wreaks of lost potential.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay complete.
Links
Scarp: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=548
Thursday, August 22, 2013
I return unto thee all that I taketh away
sorry about yesterday and sorry about today, folks. The last two days of my college tour road trip cacophonous extravaganza turned out to be a bit more eventful than I'd planned, so I wasn't able to review any games. I can't promise to be back on schedule by tomorrow, but I can promise to try my gosh darn best.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Scavenger Hunt
One major difficulty people have when trying to come up with valuable IP is that whole "think of something that's never been done before" gambit. The problem with that approach is that it's simply not how the human brain works. It's very difficult to imagine something that you haven't experienced, let alone something that's never even been conceived.
Often, the most successful ideas, even the ones most praised as "original," seem to come from the exact opposite school of thought. Scavenger Hunt exemplifies this mentality. "Let's hide some stuff and make you find it," they say. "Once we have a game that works, let's just keep adding bells and whistles until our deadline comes around."
While simple, the gameplay in Scavenger Hunt is quite enjoyable. You run around your small, circular neighborhood (kind of like that one Matrix-esque simulation world from Fallout 3 but much less depressing) and search for goodies to bring back to the center. The different goodies are color coded, so it's very easy to immediately determine which giant arrows you should run toward and which you shouldn't.
Of course, just running back and forth can get very monotonous very fast, which is why the developers spiced up the world a little bit. One way they did this was with a sprint function, which works decently well until you run out of stamina, at which point you literally screech to an immediate halt and patiently wait for the meter to fill up again. It is to this game's sense of flow what a pool full of crocodiles is to a chicken with one wing.
Another way they spice up the world is with "gags." These are weapons that you can pick up and use against the other players. The gags can do anything from obstruct your vision with cream pie to lower your running speed and limit your carrying capacity. These gags are very frustrating to experience, which might be a good quality in a multiplayer game where you can look over at your friend's writhing face after you've just launched a successful attack against him or her, but against AI, the gags don't have any noticeable effect. You only notice them when they happen to you, which is the absolute worst way to present a deliberately frustrating powerup. If I were programming this game, I would make the gags do something a bit more immediately apparent, like make the victim drop an item or just knock them on their rear ends for a few seconds.
I feel I've been saying this too often lately, but the game really does look nice. The 3D art isn't even all that complex, so games like this really put things in perspective when a far more graphically capable game fails to deliver decent visual design. The textures are simple but charming, as is the soundtrack, game feel, and really everything about this game in general.
All-in-all, this is a good game that could've benefited from more thoughtful gag design. It's quite fun if you have a few moments, but once you figure out how everything works, it is a little too easy. I'm pretty sure any player can win every game without even hitting one enemy AI as long as they use their sprint responsibly and avoid enemies whenever possible.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay diligent.
Links
Rascals' Funtime in Idyllic Suburbia: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=523
Often, the most successful ideas, even the ones most praised as "original," seem to come from the exact opposite school of thought. Scavenger Hunt exemplifies this mentality. "Let's hide some stuff and make you find it," they say. "Once we have a game that works, let's just keep adding bells and whistles until our deadline comes around."
While simple, the gameplay in Scavenger Hunt is quite enjoyable. You run around your small, circular neighborhood (kind of like that one Matrix-esque simulation world from Fallout 3 but much less depressing) and search for goodies to bring back to the center. The different goodies are color coded, so it's very easy to immediately determine which giant arrows you should run toward and which you shouldn't.
Of course, just running back and forth can get very monotonous very fast, which is why the developers spiced up the world a little bit. One way they did this was with a sprint function, which works decently well until you run out of stamina, at which point you literally screech to an immediate halt and patiently wait for the meter to fill up again. It is to this game's sense of flow what a pool full of crocodiles is to a chicken with one wing.
Another way they spice up the world is with "gags." These are weapons that you can pick up and use against the other players. The gags can do anything from obstruct your vision with cream pie to lower your running speed and limit your carrying capacity. These gags are very frustrating to experience, which might be a good quality in a multiplayer game where you can look over at your friend's writhing face after you've just launched a successful attack against him or her, but against AI, the gags don't have any noticeable effect. You only notice them when they happen to you, which is the absolute worst way to present a deliberately frustrating powerup. If I were programming this game, I would make the gags do something a bit more immediately apparent, like make the victim drop an item or just knock them on their rear ends for a few seconds.
I feel I've been saying this too often lately, but the game really does look nice. The 3D art isn't even all that complex, so games like this really put things in perspective when a far more graphically capable game fails to deliver decent visual design. The textures are simple but charming, as is the soundtrack, game feel, and really everything about this game in general.
All-in-all, this is a good game that could've benefited from more thoughtful gag design. It's quite fun if you have a few moments, but once you figure out how everything works, it is a little too easy. I'm pretty sure any player can win every game without even hitting one enemy AI as long as they use their sprint responsibly and avoid enemies whenever possible.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay diligent.
Links
Rascals' Funtime in Idyllic Suburbia: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=523
Monday, August 19, 2013
SAPFA2GTE
this game's installation process was as hair-brained as its name. I couldn't figure it out. I'll keep trying, but for now, it's broken.
Sorry,
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&download=559
Sorry,
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&download=559
Sunday, August 18, 2013
RydenStryke (nope) and Salvage Youth
Hey guys, guess what? My hotel has Wifi! YAY! Here are some reviews:
RydenStryke (I'm so sorry):
I think I messed up. The setup files are apparently corrupted, which sounds like nothing a simple reinstall couldn't fix, but I don't have any internet. Oops. For now, this is a broken game. As soon as I can, I'll reinstall and see if that fixes anything. If it does, I'll update this post. Many apologies :(
Salvage Youth:
To me, the most interesting thing about this game is its message in the lower right-hand corner of the screen throughout the game. It reads: "For educational use only." I can think of a lot of games that would have benefited from that caveat. A Series of Tubes, for example. Lots of terrible experiences can be redeemed at least somewhat with the simple phrase "it was a learning experience." Thing is, Salvage Youth isn't a terrible experience. Not even close. It's got its flaws, but it's a mostly enjoyable experience overall.
I'll admit, my experience with Salvage Youth was short. All I was able to do was watch a quick intro cinematic explaining the plot to Wall-E and play 5 minutes worth of the first level. I'm probably going to play around with this game a bit more in my spare time, but it did give me a reason to ragequit fairly early on, so I'm going to go ahead and use that as my excuse for calling this review legitimate.
First thing to note: this game looks amazing. It's not very often I see textures this detailed from a 3D DigiPen game, but even without the graphical quality, the visual direction is still well done. Everything is stylized with that cell-shaded look that I love so dearly, and the color placement makes the whole thing that much more enjoyable to look at.
The gameplay is solid for the most part. The basic gist is that you control 3 kids, swapping between them with the tab button. Each kid has their own unique abilities: there's the tech wiz, the track star, and the tank. You must utilize these three characters' abilities to progress throughout the level. This style may work from a narrative standpoint, as dialogue between the main characters is an effective method of characterization that doesn't seem quite as contrived as most monologues do, but it doesn't make much sense as a gameplay mechanic. Why couldn't I just control one character with three sets of abilities, kind of like in Rock-it Rails? The only difference is that here, there's some unnecessary travel time when one character has to catch up to the rest in order to do their jobs.
The game mitigates this problem in 2 ways: First, it requires that the three amigos sometimes be in two different places at the same time in order for the game to progress. This does alleviate the aforementioned problem, but that's exactly what it feels like: a contrivance that solves a gameplay flaw rather than serving the game as a whole. Second, the game allows you to call all the kids together at certain spots to minimize travel time. This, I have no problem with.
Do note, of course, that these are but nitpicks in the face of a much more beautiful product. The characters are fun to play with, especially the track star, and the whole game is just so damn charming that it was tough for me to put it down...that is, until I ran into the ragequit moment.
One of the three amigos, the fat one, has the ability to pick up and move blocks. This ability manifests itself in block-stacking puzzles: my favorite! Seriously, I love it when a game incorporates something so silly and game-y as a block stacking puzzle. It worked fantastically in Deus Ex and it would work fantastically here too if the blocks didn't react with each other about as stably as francium reacts with water (chemisty joke, check). At one point, I placed a block on top of another block only to have one block rocket up into the sky, never to be seen again, effectively ending the level and forcing me to restart.
So yeah. That was the ragequit moment. All-in-all, I say this game is worth checking out. You just might learn something.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay educational.
Links
Ryden Dirty: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=412
Salvagery of the Young: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25915
RydenStryke (I'm so sorry):
I think I messed up. The setup files are apparently corrupted, which sounds like nothing a simple reinstall couldn't fix, but I don't have any internet. Oops. For now, this is a broken game. As soon as I can, I'll reinstall and see if that fixes anything. If it does, I'll update this post. Many apologies :(
Salvage Youth:
To me, the most interesting thing about this game is its message in the lower right-hand corner of the screen throughout the game. It reads: "For educational use only." I can think of a lot of games that would have benefited from that caveat. A Series of Tubes, for example. Lots of terrible experiences can be redeemed at least somewhat with the simple phrase "it was a learning experience." Thing is, Salvage Youth isn't a terrible experience. Not even close. It's got its flaws, but it's a mostly enjoyable experience overall.
I'll admit, my experience with Salvage Youth was short. All I was able to do was watch a quick intro cinematic explaining the plot to Wall-E and play 5 minutes worth of the first level. I'm probably going to play around with this game a bit more in my spare time, but it did give me a reason to ragequit fairly early on, so I'm going to go ahead and use that as my excuse for calling this review legitimate.
First thing to note: this game looks amazing. It's not very often I see textures this detailed from a 3D DigiPen game, but even without the graphical quality, the visual direction is still well done. Everything is stylized with that cell-shaded look that I love so dearly, and the color placement makes the whole thing that much more enjoyable to look at.
The gameplay is solid for the most part. The basic gist is that you control 3 kids, swapping between them with the tab button. Each kid has their own unique abilities: there's the tech wiz, the track star, and the tank. You must utilize these three characters' abilities to progress throughout the level. This style may work from a narrative standpoint, as dialogue between the main characters is an effective method of characterization that doesn't seem quite as contrived as most monologues do, but it doesn't make much sense as a gameplay mechanic. Why couldn't I just control one character with three sets of abilities, kind of like in Rock-it Rails? The only difference is that here, there's some unnecessary travel time when one character has to catch up to the rest in order to do their jobs.
The game mitigates this problem in 2 ways: First, it requires that the three amigos sometimes be in two different places at the same time in order for the game to progress. This does alleviate the aforementioned problem, but that's exactly what it feels like: a contrivance that solves a gameplay flaw rather than serving the game as a whole. Second, the game allows you to call all the kids together at certain spots to minimize travel time. This, I have no problem with.
Do note, of course, that these are but nitpicks in the face of a much more beautiful product. The characters are fun to play with, especially the track star, and the whole game is just so damn charming that it was tough for me to put it down...that is, until I ran into the ragequit moment.
One of the three amigos, the fat one, has the ability to pick up and move blocks. This ability manifests itself in block-stacking puzzles: my favorite! Seriously, I love it when a game incorporates something so silly and game-y as a block stacking puzzle. It worked fantastically in Deus Ex and it would work fantastically here too if the blocks didn't react with each other about as stably as francium reacts with water (chemisty joke, check). At one point, I placed a block on top of another block only to have one block rocket up into the sky, never to be seen again, effectively ending the level and forcing me to restart.
So yeah. That was the ragequit moment. All-in-all, I say this game is worth checking out. You just might learn something.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay educational.
Links
Ryden Dirty: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=412
Salvagery of the Young: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25915
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Rust
Game design 101 time, kids. Question: What's the fastest way to completely break down a game experience...Billy?
"Remove control from the player?"
Very good, Billy! Come up and get your cookie. Everyone else, sit your buts down, play Rust and tell me how long it takes for you to become so bored that you decide the best course of action is to kamikaze into one of the raiding enemies.
So here's how this game works: you circle around the small map and pick up scrap metal. You then throw that scrap metal at turrets and towers to upgrade their health and ammunition so that they can survive the onslaught of alien invaders.
The biggest problem with this is that you have no power other than to throw metal at things, so the game very quickly devolves from feeling like you're actually defending stuff to feeling like exactly what it is: quite literally running around in circles, mindlessly and routinely picking up metal and putting it in a place. I've had a more engaging experience putting furniture into a moving van.
Really, do you need anything more than that? The game could pull everything else off flawlessly and it would still be a less than enjoyable experience. People will tell me I just don't like tower defense games and that my opinion is biased, but I had a great time with other tower defense games on this list. Remember Base Invaders? That was fun. You know why? It actually let you do stuff!
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay defensive
Links
Crust: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25891
"Remove control from the player?"
Very good, Billy! Come up and get your cookie. Everyone else, sit your buts down, play Rust and tell me how long it takes for you to become so bored that you decide the best course of action is to kamikaze into one of the raiding enemies.
So here's how this game works: you circle around the small map and pick up scrap metal. You then throw that scrap metal at turrets and towers to upgrade their health and ammunition so that they can survive the onslaught of alien invaders.
The biggest problem with this is that you have no power other than to throw metal at things, so the game very quickly devolves from feeling like you're actually defending stuff to feeling like exactly what it is: quite literally running around in circles, mindlessly and routinely picking up metal and putting it in a place. I've had a more engaging experience putting furniture into a moving van.
Really, do you need anything more than that? The game could pull everything else off flawlessly and it would still be a less than enjoyable experience. People will tell me I just don't like tower defense games and that my opinion is biased, but I had a great time with other tower defense games on this list. Remember Base Invaders? That was fun. You know why? It actually let you do stuff!
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay defensive
Links
Crust: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25891
Runeshift
Hey, remember slide puzzles? Those infuriating little toys you would get at street fairs with 8 pictures that form a big picture? Hands up, everyone in the room whose experience with those toys didn't end when you threw them into a tree and watched them shatter into a million pieces. What's that? Nobody? That's because they're pretty much the most obnoxious things ever conceived. Toys like these have their place in gaming history, but it perplexes me how someone aiming to make a "relaxing and positive experience" would choose this as their central mechanic.
I will say this, though: this is probably the best one can make a game about slide puzzles. It is very clear where each block is supposed to go, the difficulty curve is fair and challenging, and the visuals are pretty enough. The only criticism I have in the aesthetic department is that the sound track is a tad annoying. You can, of course, turn off the sound and just run your favorite song in the background, but you can't turn off the music without turning off the sound effects as well, which ruins the atmosphere of the game somewhat.
The only other criticism I have is one that I make all the time, but it's especially apparent in a game like this. Why, why, WHY is there no save feature? I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, this game actually made slide puzzles relaxing and positive. I enjoyed playing around with it, but a game like this is best suited as a stress reliever, and being required to start from the beginning every time you fire it up is not a good quality for a stress reliever to have. At least throw in a level select or something, jeez.
All-in-all. Eh. 'Sgood. If you're having a bad day, give it a shot, but it's only good for one 5-minute relaxation session. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay slidin'
Links
Slippidy do-da: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18574
I will say this, though: this is probably the best one can make a game about slide puzzles. It is very clear where each block is supposed to go, the difficulty curve is fair and challenging, and the visuals are pretty enough. The only criticism I have in the aesthetic department is that the sound track is a tad annoying. You can, of course, turn off the sound and just run your favorite song in the background, but you can't turn off the music without turning off the sound effects as well, which ruins the atmosphere of the game somewhat.
The only other criticism I have is one that I make all the time, but it's especially apparent in a game like this. Why, why, WHY is there no save feature? I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, this game actually made slide puzzles relaxing and positive. I enjoyed playing around with it, but a game like this is best suited as a stress reliever, and being required to start from the beginning every time you fire it up is not a good quality for a stress reliever to have. At least throw in a level select or something, jeez.
All-in-all. Eh. 'Sgood. If you're having a bad day, give it a shot, but it's only good for one 5-minute relaxation session. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay slidin'
Links
Slippidy do-da: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18574
Friday, August 16, 2013
Run Like Heck (crashed + update)
I can't get this game to stop crashing, though I'll keep trying and hopefully have a real review up by the end of the day. I wouldn't get my hopes up, however.
I would like to take this time to fill you in on what's going on in my life for the next week. I'm taking a road trip down south to look at colleges on Sunday, and I won't be back for a while. I can't guarantee I'll always have internet connection, so I'm going to do the same thing I did when I stayed at my grandma's house and just release a glut of reviews when I get back.
In terms of tomorrow, I hope to get at least 2 reviews out.
Thanks for hanging in there, guys. Peace and love.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=432
I would like to take this time to fill you in on what's going on in my life for the next week. I'm taking a road trip down south to look at colleges on Sunday, and I won't be back for a while. I can't guarantee I'll always have internet connection, so I'm going to do the same thing I did when I stayed at my grandma's house and just release a glut of reviews when I get back.
In terms of tomorrow, I hope to get at least 2 reviews out.
Thanks for hanging in there, guys. Peace and love.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=432
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Rumblebox
Rumblebox takes place in a horrible nightmare world wherein any impact more severe than that of a raindrop upon your head causes you to crumble into a pile of death and disappointment. The residents of this horrifying world entertain themselves by putting a whole bunch of themselves inside tiny roofless boxes and beating the crap out of each other until they can climb out of the box on the corpses of their friends and neighbors.
For a game this dark, the aesthetic sure is charming. Everything is colored in delightful pastels and the characters all consist of basic shapes, giving them the kind of derpy appeal demonstrated by the things in Sumotori.
Now, hold on a second. Did I just say that characters composed of the same basic shapes crumble at such great rates that you literally climb upon them as if they were part of the floor? Yes, I did. Wouldn't that make for an absolute mess of a visual experience, leaving you with no idea where you or anything else resides? Yes, as a matter of fact. It does. To the game's credit, it tries to avoid this by coloring your character in blue, whereas blue is only a secondary color in some of your enemies. It helps a bit, but the game is still painful to look at. Couldn't my character consist of pyramids, the enemies of cubes, and the dead people of disembodied parallelograms or, I don't know, something?
You are given two methods by which to dispatch your enemies, a percussive attack (space) and a grapple (ctrl or alt). The control scheme holds up well, and while it may seem anemic, your character has different attacks depending on what angle your target is standing at and where you're moving and how fast. This keeps the spectacle from getting old, or at least it would if I didn't end up staring at my health bar 90% of the time because it's the only thing that doesn't make me nauseous and gives me a clear idea of when I get hit.
The gameplay is varied enough to keep your attention. The main game has bonus levels in between its regular levels, all of which are difficult and surprisingly not frustrating. I mean, it's still a pain when a pile of cubes you thought was dead punches you in the back, but it happens far less than one might expect. There's also challenge mode, which, as far as I can tell, is just the main game but with a bazillion times more enemies, which makes the whole thing even more of an incomprehensible mess.
Final verdict: If the idea of mashing space and the arrow keys until the game tells you you've died sounds fun to you, then go right ahead and give this game a shot. It's expertly crafted and commits no unforgivable sins. If you're the kind of gamer who values direction and clear motivations, like I am, this one's probably not going to satisfy.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay pugnacious.
Links
you're dead, you're dead, I'm dead, you're dead: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=505
For a game this dark, the aesthetic sure is charming. Everything is colored in delightful pastels and the characters all consist of basic shapes, giving them the kind of derpy appeal demonstrated by the things in Sumotori.
Now, hold on a second. Did I just say that characters composed of the same basic shapes crumble at such great rates that you literally climb upon them as if they were part of the floor? Yes, I did. Wouldn't that make for an absolute mess of a visual experience, leaving you with no idea where you or anything else resides? Yes, as a matter of fact. It does. To the game's credit, it tries to avoid this by coloring your character in blue, whereas blue is only a secondary color in some of your enemies. It helps a bit, but the game is still painful to look at. Couldn't my character consist of pyramids, the enemies of cubes, and the dead people of disembodied parallelograms or, I don't know, something?
You are given two methods by which to dispatch your enemies, a percussive attack (space) and a grapple (ctrl or alt). The control scheme holds up well, and while it may seem anemic, your character has different attacks depending on what angle your target is standing at and where you're moving and how fast. This keeps the spectacle from getting old, or at least it would if I didn't end up staring at my health bar 90% of the time because it's the only thing that doesn't make me nauseous and gives me a clear idea of when I get hit.
The gameplay is varied enough to keep your attention. The main game has bonus levels in between its regular levels, all of which are difficult and surprisingly not frustrating. I mean, it's still a pain when a pile of cubes you thought was dead punches you in the back, but it happens far less than one might expect. There's also challenge mode, which, as far as I can tell, is just the main game but with a bazillion times more enemies, which makes the whole thing even more of an incomprehensible mess.
Final verdict: If the idea of mashing space and the arrow keys until the game tells you you've died sounds fun to you, then go right ahead and give this game a shot. It's expertly crafted and commits no unforgivable sins. If you're the kind of gamer who values direction and clear motivations, like I am, this one's probably not going to satisfy.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay pugnacious.
Links
you're dead, you're dead, I'm dead, you're dead: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=505
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Ruin
This is another game geared toward the multiplayer crowd, so I don't have much to say about it....Brace yourselves for disappointment, folks.
While nothing to gawk at, the visuals are competently done. It's immediately apparent what all the objects are and there's a fair use of bright and happiness-inducing colors. The attack effects are another story. The left-click laser is an utter disaster of particle effects that, when fired from multiple players at multiple angles, clogs up the screen like nobody's business. It gets worse when you add to that the fact that you always shoot a little bit lower than the targeting reticule would have you believe; and by the way, that was an almost acceptable problem in Claustrophere when the attack moves so slowly that the reticule is basically there for decoration anyway, but in Ruin, the laser is an instantaneous attack with no travel time, so the reticule is actually important.
And on the topic of the two basic attacks, what the heck does the right-click bomb even do? All that seems to happen when I use it is that it shines in the air for a second before disappearing. That's the main problem with this game; it doesn't convey when things happen well enough. It took me way longer than it should've to figure out whether I was playing team deathmatch or free-for-all. The addition of some hit sparks would've helped, as would've a death animation, like a little explosion or something.
Other than that, the game is fine and I gather it would bring a good laugh to a group of friends who played it. I wish I had more pointed praise than that, but there's nothing in the game that's done especially well, it's all just slightly above average. Give it a shot if you're into shooting things, especially if you have a bunch of PCs on the same LAN and you can organize a quick game with your friends and/or family.
Links
Robot Murder: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1412
While nothing to gawk at, the visuals are competently done. It's immediately apparent what all the objects are and there's a fair use of bright and happiness-inducing colors. The attack effects are another story. The left-click laser is an utter disaster of particle effects that, when fired from multiple players at multiple angles, clogs up the screen like nobody's business. It gets worse when you add to that the fact that you always shoot a little bit lower than the targeting reticule would have you believe; and by the way, that was an almost acceptable problem in Claustrophere when the attack moves so slowly that the reticule is basically there for decoration anyway, but in Ruin, the laser is an instantaneous attack with no travel time, so the reticule is actually important.
And on the topic of the two basic attacks, what the heck does the right-click bomb even do? All that seems to happen when I use it is that it shines in the air for a second before disappearing. That's the main problem with this game; it doesn't convey when things happen well enough. It took me way longer than it should've to figure out whether I was playing team deathmatch or free-for-all. The addition of some hit sparks would've helped, as would've a death animation, like a little explosion or something.
Other than that, the game is fine and I gather it would bring a good laugh to a group of friends who played it. I wish I had more pointed praise than that, but there's nothing in the game that's done especially well, it's all just slightly above average. Give it a shot if you're into shooting things, especially if you have a bunch of PCs on the same LAN and you can organize a quick game with your friends and/or family.
Links
Robot Murder: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1412
RS-6
I got a bit worried when this game touted its "five insanely difficult levels," because games that are "insanely difficult" tend to have that become their most memorable, if not only, defining characteristic. What do you remember about Battletoads or Ikaruga, for example? Wait a minute...Ikaruga...oh, no...not again...
So yeah. You all know the drill by now, so I don't feel the need to tell you that I've grown a bit tired of bullet hell games centered around changing colors to not die. Whatever, though, as long as the mechanics hold up, this game is fine by me.
I'm glad to say that "insanely difficult" ended up not being the game's only defining characteristic. In fact, it's hardly a characteristic at all. I only played the first level, so it's possible they were just trying to wean me onto the more ball-crunching levels with baby's first bullet hell, but the only difficult part about it was the boss fight, which I dare say was nigh impossible, so there goes the notion of a difficulty curve.
You know what bothers me most, though? The boss didn't need to be as infuriating as it was. The attacks follow a near perfect pattern, being just unpredictable enough to keep you on your toes, but not so much to the point where it becomes random. I actually had a lot of fun with the boss fight until I realized what gave it the name "insanely difficult." It seems one of the developers added a few extra '0's to the boss's health, because the bastard simply does not die. I shot at the thing constantly for five minutes and I was only able to destroy one of its many segments. Its possible I was just doing it wrong, but how complex can a bullet hell boss be to kill? I shot at literally everything it had for as long as I could. I'm not saying I should've beaten the boss no problem, but I should've at least come close. I wasn't just screwing around, I was trying. I was making a lot of mistakes, yeah, but not enough to warrant killing only 4% of the boss.
"lazy" is not a word I like to throw around (especially not to a dev team that includes pictures of themselves at computers, captioned 'hard at work,' which was a nice tough). "Lazy" is a soul-crusher of a word that declares that not only did your project fail, but it failed because you didn't love it enough. It's a cruel word to use and one that I've made people my mortal enemies for using on me, but I have to be honest and say that simply giving the boss more health than Sardinia if it went to CrossFit is a cheap and...*gulp*...I'm sorry...lazy way of increasing the difficulty.
This game didn't need to be "insanely difficult." It could have been a really fun, if simplistic, shoot 'em up, but it tried to be something its not. This game was a pleasant, unathletic kid who occasionally dabbled in Magic the Gathering, but snubbed the nerdy crew to go hang out with the jocks, but the jocks ended up just giving him wedgies and calling him names. Or, if that analogy's a bit too obtuse for you, here's an overview of the game as a whole: It looks good, feels good and sounds good, but artificial difficulty is its downfall.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay modest.
Links
Letter, Letter, Hyphen, Number: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=521
So yeah. You all know the drill by now, so I don't feel the need to tell you that I've grown a bit tired of bullet hell games centered around changing colors to not die. Whatever, though, as long as the mechanics hold up, this game is fine by me.
I'm glad to say that "insanely difficult" ended up not being the game's only defining characteristic. In fact, it's hardly a characteristic at all. I only played the first level, so it's possible they were just trying to wean me onto the more ball-crunching levels with baby's first bullet hell, but the only difficult part about it was the boss fight, which I dare say was nigh impossible, so there goes the notion of a difficulty curve.
You know what bothers me most, though? The boss didn't need to be as infuriating as it was. The attacks follow a near perfect pattern, being just unpredictable enough to keep you on your toes, but not so much to the point where it becomes random. I actually had a lot of fun with the boss fight until I realized what gave it the name "insanely difficult." It seems one of the developers added a few extra '0's to the boss's health, because the bastard simply does not die. I shot at the thing constantly for five minutes and I was only able to destroy one of its many segments. Its possible I was just doing it wrong, but how complex can a bullet hell boss be to kill? I shot at literally everything it had for as long as I could. I'm not saying I should've beaten the boss no problem, but I should've at least come close. I wasn't just screwing around, I was trying. I was making a lot of mistakes, yeah, but not enough to warrant killing only 4% of the boss.
"lazy" is not a word I like to throw around (especially not to a dev team that includes pictures of themselves at computers, captioned 'hard at work,' which was a nice tough). "Lazy" is a soul-crusher of a word that declares that not only did your project fail, but it failed because you didn't love it enough. It's a cruel word to use and one that I've made people my mortal enemies for using on me, but I have to be honest and say that simply giving the boss more health than Sardinia if it went to CrossFit is a cheap and...*gulp*...I'm sorry...lazy way of increasing the difficulty.
This game didn't need to be "insanely difficult." It could have been a really fun, if simplistic, shoot 'em up, but it tried to be something its not. This game was a pleasant, unathletic kid who occasionally dabbled in Magic the Gathering, but snubbed the nerdy crew to go hang out with the jocks, but the jocks ended up just giving him wedgies and calling him names. Or, if that analogy's a bit too obtuse for you, here's an overview of the game as a whole: It looks good, feels good and sounds good, but artificial difficulty is its downfall.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay modest.
Links
Letter, Letter, Hyphen, Number: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=521
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Rouger
My cousin: "Shitty graphics, good plot"
Me: "What was the plot?"
My Cousin: "Killing people."
Me: "Ah."
My Cousin: "All the birds looked sad, though."
Welp, that's basically Rouger in a nutshell. I have no idea why it was called Rouger, when even the name suggested for the main character is "Falconator" or something...My cousin and I ended up dubbing him "Shuffles McGee" because of his hilarious walk cycle.
Anyway, Rouger is a top-down, Realm of the Mad God-esque killfest with no real direction to speak of. You have 3 basic attacks: melee, magic, and arrows. You use these attacks to kill stuff. That's it. That's the game. But hey, as long as the killing is fun, who am I to judge, right?
And the killing is fun...especially when you kill your white-feathered allies desperately searching the woods for their sister...MWAHAHA. After you've killed a certain number of your friends...I mean enemies who threaten the fabric of society and...yeah, your friends...you get to upgrade your strength, dexterity, intelligence and luck. My prior experience with RPGs lead me to take an educated guess as to what these all do, but to the inexperienced player, a bit more conveyance would be nice.
Some enemies drop equipment that you can use, but each item only has one stat to it. For example, a dagger and a sword will be identifiable only by one having +12 attack and another having +11, so this mechanic is pretty brainless, as all you're ever doing is swapping out certain equipment for objectively better equipment.
All-in-all, it's a good time-killer if you don't think about it too much. Nothing about this game will wow you, for better or for worse. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay avian.
Links
Ca-caw! You die: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26663
Me: "What was the plot?"
My Cousin: "Killing people."
Me: "Ah."
My Cousin: "All the birds looked sad, though."
Welp, that's basically Rouger in a nutshell. I have no idea why it was called Rouger, when even the name suggested for the main character is "Falconator" or something...My cousin and I ended up dubbing him "Shuffles McGee" because of his hilarious walk cycle.
Anyway, Rouger is a top-down, Realm of the Mad God-esque killfest with no real direction to speak of. You have 3 basic attacks: melee, magic, and arrows. You use these attacks to kill stuff. That's it. That's the game. But hey, as long as the killing is fun, who am I to judge, right?
And the killing is fun...especially when you kill your white-feathered allies desperately searching the woods for their sister...MWAHAHA. After you've killed a certain number of your friends...I mean enemies who threaten the fabric of society and...yeah, your friends...you get to upgrade your strength, dexterity, intelligence and luck. My prior experience with RPGs lead me to take an educated guess as to what these all do, but to the inexperienced player, a bit more conveyance would be nice.
Some enemies drop equipment that you can use, but each item only has one stat to it. For example, a dagger and a sword will be identifiable only by one having +12 attack and another having +11, so this mechanic is pretty brainless, as all you're ever doing is swapping out certain equipment for objectively better equipment.
All-in-all, it's a good time-killer if you don't think about it too much. Nothing about this game will wow you, for better or for worse. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay avian.
Links
Ca-caw! You die: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26663
Monday, August 12, 2013
Rorrim
I feel kind of bad releasing this review the way it is. I know full well that I didn't give Rorrim the time it deserved. For personal reasons, I didn't get the chance to start it up until about half an hour before time of writing. While the average game on this list usually warrants no more than 20 minutes of play, Rorrim is clearly leagues above its counterparts.
And thus, the gushing begins. Remember earlier when I was saying that visual quality simply can;t be measured by the amount of polygons on the screen? I said that the 3D art has to exhibit solid aesthetic sense, and Rorrim's art pulls that off beautifully. Even after the somewhat shaky expository paragraphs borrowed from the textbook on poor interactive storytelling, the level design conveys the setting perfectly, and the music is just the icing on the cake. It puts you in just the right mood to go out and win yourself some royal lovin'
Everything about the aesthetic is well done. The characters and levels are well stylized, the color variety is stunning, the sound direction is flawless...oh man and I didn't even start talking about how the game feels yet...well to be honest it feels like any good game would...BUT THAT'S THE POINT. It feels good. Every death seems like your fault and every success seems like your own personal triumph.
Alright, with that out of the way, let's dig into the mechanics a bit. You are armed with an enchantment staff and a bunch of mirrors strewn about the level. By casting magic into the mirrors at different angles, you can materialize objects, make them bigger or smaller, make yourself bigger or smaller, and pretty much anything else you need to clear the treacherous levels of Nowhere Castle. Sound confusing? Well think outside the box, Luddite! The reason it sounds so scary is because it's new and different. This is what it sounds like to be unique and original. Besides, it's not an easy mechanic to convey in words, as evidenced by the game's only-moderately-helpful text instructions; but those instructions are completely unnecessary because the mechanics convey themselves so well.
Now, I've seen poorly designed 3D levels before...in fact, I'll be blunt: most of the first-person 3D games on this list have been pretty poorly designed, but hey, designing levels is hard...like really hard. I can respect that. Rorrim takes that benefit of the doubt and hands it back to me after having stamped it thoroughly into the ground. The levels are fantastically designed, each stage making you think before testing your skills; it's never frustrating and it's never overly simplified. The difficulty curve is spot on.
Now, if this review just sounded like 4 paragraphs of incessant praise, that's because it is. Look, I've gone on record saying that praise is useless unless juxtaposed with criticism (which, by the way, is why I mentioned the sub-par introduction), but as I said, I really didn't get enough time with Rorrim to start hating it yet, so before I go, I'm just going to share my ragequit story before giving it a very, VERY well deserved seal of approval.
The short version of the story is that I fell through the floor once and entered the negative zone where I was forced to restart the level and lose my progress thus far. Come to think, that's the long version of the story, too. Then I got tired and decided to call it a night.
So yeah. That's all I got for now. Check this game out, guys. It's well worth your time. Until next time, stay lovestruck.
Links
Whoa, Whim!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26617
And thus, the gushing begins. Remember earlier when I was saying that visual quality simply can;t be measured by the amount of polygons on the screen? I said that the 3D art has to exhibit solid aesthetic sense, and Rorrim's art pulls that off beautifully. Even after the somewhat shaky expository paragraphs borrowed from the textbook on poor interactive storytelling, the level design conveys the setting perfectly, and the music is just the icing on the cake. It puts you in just the right mood to go out and win yourself some royal lovin'
Everything about the aesthetic is well done. The characters and levels are well stylized, the color variety is stunning, the sound direction is flawless...oh man and I didn't even start talking about how the game feels yet...well to be honest it feels like any good game would...BUT THAT'S THE POINT. It feels good. Every death seems like your fault and every success seems like your own personal triumph.
Alright, with that out of the way, let's dig into the mechanics a bit. You are armed with an enchantment staff and a bunch of mirrors strewn about the level. By casting magic into the mirrors at different angles, you can materialize objects, make them bigger or smaller, make yourself bigger or smaller, and pretty much anything else you need to clear the treacherous levels of Nowhere Castle. Sound confusing? Well think outside the box, Luddite! The reason it sounds so scary is because it's new and different. This is what it sounds like to be unique and original. Besides, it's not an easy mechanic to convey in words, as evidenced by the game's only-moderately-helpful text instructions; but those instructions are completely unnecessary because the mechanics convey themselves so well.
Now, I've seen poorly designed 3D levels before...in fact, I'll be blunt: most of the first-person 3D games on this list have been pretty poorly designed, but hey, designing levels is hard...like really hard. I can respect that. Rorrim takes that benefit of the doubt and hands it back to me after having stamped it thoroughly into the ground. The levels are fantastically designed, each stage making you think before testing your skills; it's never frustrating and it's never overly simplified. The difficulty curve is spot on.
Now, if this review just sounded like 4 paragraphs of incessant praise, that's because it is. Look, I've gone on record saying that praise is useless unless juxtaposed with criticism (which, by the way, is why I mentioned the sub-par introduction), but as I said, I really didn't get enough time with Rorrim to start hating it yet, so before I go, I'm just going to share my ragequit story before giving it a very, VERY well deserved seal of approval.
The short version of the story is that I fell through the floor once and entered the negative zone where I was forced to restart the level and lose my progress thus far. Come to think, that's the long version of the story, too. Then I got tired and decided to call it a night.
So yeah. That's all I got for now. Check this game out, guys. It's well worth your time. Until next time, stay lovestruck.
Links
Whoa, Whim!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26617
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Ronin Duck
The first thing that grabbed my attention about this game is that it claims to be inspired by "Classic 3D action-adventure games like The Legend of Zelda," Which leaves me thinking "which one?" Sure they all have the same general control setup, but they vary so greatly in their design that it's impossible to take all of the major elements from all of the 3D Zeldas and put them into one game. Even just the two N64 games are so diverse in their basic design that claiming to be inspired by both of them already makes the game smell of lack of direction...I'm reading too much into it, of course, but at least I didn't go with my first instinct, which was to say that The Legend of Zelda is a top-down 2D action adventure game and surely they are referring to Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Okay, tangent over. Let's talk about Ronin Duck.
Let me make this idea fully known to any future developers, DigiPen and otherwise, who plan to make a 3D game: your job is NOT, I repeat, NOT over when you design a really cool looking 3D model for your character. It is NOT okay to then slap this really cool looking character into a succession of monochrome, boxy, lifeless rooms. That's not juxtaposition; it's just inconsistency. The titular character's model looks almost professionally done (not by today's standards, mind you, but not too far behind), but everything else in the game looks lifeless and...well...boring.
Now, the unique selling mechanic is actually pretty interesting. By left clicking, you enter "zen mode," wherein you can draw across the screen, highlighting different enemies or platforms that Ronin will then leap toward and swing his bamboo blade at. It's cool at first, but it really does seem like it should be an unlockable special move rather than the main method of attack. Maybe by making Ronin's only attack so ridiculously overpowered they were trying to hide the fact that no enemy, not even the final boss, can hurt you. At least I don't think they can.
At first, I thought this mechanic was going to let me determine the angle of my swing, kind of like in Skyward Sword. Then I got to thinking, "why haven't I ever seen a PC game that tries a mechanic like this? The mouse was made for this kind of work!" I've heard Penumbra Overture and Elder Scrolls Arena try something like that, but I've never played either of those...oh yeah, speaking of Skyward Sword, what happened to that Zelda inspiration you were talking about, Ronin? Did you just kinda forget that the main idea explored in those games is exploration or that they always make sure to give you some sort of context and direct goal? These things are important, you know. You can't just name your character "Ronin" and say "See? Being directionless enforces the narrative," because in order for that to work, you need a narrative to enforce.
So yeah, what we have in Ronin Duck is a tech demo for a game with really cool looking character and a fun if overpowered attack. It still has a lot of bugs to iron out, mechanics to expand upon and challenge to...well...have, before I'm ready to call it a game.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay pretty.
Links
Quack Slice Dead: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=8726
Okay, tangent over. Let's talk about Ronin Duck.
Let me make this idea fully known to any future developers, DigiPen and otherwise, who plan to make a 3D game: your job is NOT, I repeat, NOT over when you design a really cool looking 3D model for your character. It is NOT okay to then slap this really cool looking character into a succession of monochrome, boxy, lifeless rooms. That's not juxtaposition; it's just inconsistency. The titular character's model looks almost professionally done (not by today's standards, mind you, but not too far behind), but everything else in the game looks lifeless and...well...boring.
Now, the unique selling mechanic is actually pretty interesting. By left clicking, you enter "zen mode," wherein you can draw across the screen, highlighting different enemies or platforms that Ronin will then leap toward and swing his bamboo blade at. It's cool at first, but it really does seem like it should be an unlockable special move rather than the main method of attack. Maybe by making Ronin's only attack so ridiculously overpowered they were trying to hide the fact that no enemy, not even the final boss, can hurt you. At least I don't think they can.
At first, I thought this mechanic was going to let me determine the angle of my swing, kind of like in Skyward Sword. Then I got to thinking, "why haven't I ever seen a PC game that tries a mechanic like this? The mouse was made for this kind of work!" I've heard Penumbra Overture and Elder Scrolls Arena try something like that, but I've never played either of those...oh yeah, speaking of Skyward Sword, what happened to that Zelda inspiration you were talking about, Ronin? Did you just kinda forget that the main idea explored in those games is exploration or that they always make sure to give you some sort of context and direct goal? These things are important, you know. You can't just name your character "Ronin" and say "See? Being directionless enforces the narrative," because in order for that to work, you need a narrative to enforce.
So yeah, what we have in Ronin Duck is a tech demo for a game with really cool looking character and a fun if overpowered attack. It still has a lot of bugs to iron out, mechanics to expand upon and challenge to...well...have, before I'm ready to call it a game.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay pretty.
Links
Quack Slice Dead: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=8726
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Roger Fastman
This game fancies itself a "reverse bullet hell," which intrigued me because the fun of a bullet hell is that you are vastly outmatched by your adversaries, yet you get to overcome all odds and take down things a million times your size, so what would the reverse be? You crushing a relatively tiny spaceship with one shot to nobody's surprise? When the game also touts its "automatic running and automatic shooting," I'm left genuinely puzzled as to where the creators of this game expected to generate challenge.
Well, after playing the first level, I think I get it: "reverse bullet hell" is sort of a misnomer. Sure, there are bullets flying out of you at an alarming rate, reducing almost every enemy in your path to potato salad, but such things happen in Jetpack Joyride and Super C but I'd hardly classify those as "reverse bullet hell." what this game is, really, is a freerunning game.
In the first level, I don't think anything can kill you. All that happens if an enemy hits you or you run into a spikey wall is that your speed decreases. And you know what? I love that idea! A game like this that bases itself almost completely off speed and flow needs nothing more than for a player's mistake to result in the loss of speed and flow. The player learns their lesson, yet they don't have to perform the same sequence of tasks over and over again. There's still challenge, but the challenge is not in whether or not you'll beat the level, it's in how quickly and with how many points you'll do it. That structure provides a constant stream of fun and oodles of replay value.
But then...the next two levels happen. At first, it's nothing too harmful. There's a giant robot T-Rex following you, and if he catches up to you, you're toast. While I wasn't a fan of this addition, I see what they were trying to do. After all, it adds more incentive to go fast, which is what the game is all about. But then, in the third level, there's tons of stuff that can instakill you. Sometimes the giant robot spider following you will shoot a death beam across the top of the screen, forcing you to not jump for a few seconds, which is more of a frustration than a genuine challenge. Most annoyingly of all, there are certain gaps in the floor that kill you if you fall into them. I'm going at like 300mph, game! How do you expect me to predict whether or not I'll fall into a gap that's completely offscreen at the time of my jump?
Oh well. All-in-all, the game is still very fun. It's pleasing in every sense. The art is original and creative, the sounds meld together beautifully, and the gameplay is real adrenaline-pumping action. This one gets my seal of approval. Give it a go.
Links
Gotta Go Fast: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24650
Well, after playing the first level, I think I get it: "reverse bullet hell" is sort of a misnomer. Sure, there are bullets flying out of you at an alarming rate, reducing almost every enemy in your path to potato salad, but such things happen in Jetpack Joyride and Super C but I'd hardly classify those as "reverse bullet hell." what this game is, really, is a freerunning game.
In the first level, I don't think anything can kill you. All that happens if an enemy hits you or you run into a spikey wall is that your speed decreases. And you know what? I love that idea! A game like this that bases itself almost completely off speed and flow needs nothing more than for a player's mistake to result in the loss of speed and flow. The player learns their lesson, yet they don't have to perform the same sequence of tasks over and over again. There's still challenge, but the challenge is not in whether or not you'll beat the level, it's in how quickly and with how many points you'll do it. That structure provides a constant stream of fun and oodles of replay value.
But then...the next two levels happen. At first, it's nothing too harmful. There's a giant robot T-Rex following you, and if he catches up to you, you're toast. While I wasn't a fan of this addition, I see what they were trying to do. After all, it adds more incentive to go fast, which is what the game is all about. But then, in the third level, there's tons of stuff that can instakill you. Sometimes the giant robot spider following you will shoot a death beam across the top of the screen, forcing you to not jump for a few seconds, which is more of a frustration than a genuine challenge. Most annoyingly of all, there are certain gaps in the floor that kill you if you fall into them. I'm going at like 300mph, game! How do you expect me to predict whether or not I'll fall into a gap that's completely offscreen at the time of my jump?
Oh well. All-in-all, the game is still very fun. It's pleasing in every sense. The art is original and creative, the sounds meld together beautifully, and the gameplay is real adrenaline-pumping action. This one gets my seal of approval. Give it a go.
Links
Gotta Go Fast: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24650
Rocket Doll
You know, I like a game that doesn't overstay its welcome, but there's a fine line between concise and anemic. Rocket Doll has a grand total of 2 levels, each not lasting more than 5 minutes. I've always held to the notion that a game can be as short as it takes to explore its mechanics fully without dwelling on them, but if it only takes you 10 minutes then maybe you simply don't have enough mechanics to explore. In the case of Rocket Doll, I can think only of two: rocket jumping and hitting targets to lower walls...Jeez, when you look at it that way, 10 minutes seems kinda generous!
So yeah, the game loses points straightaway because of its length, but as long as those 10 minutes were fun, the game will still get a pass by me. So, were they? Well...kinda. I have the suspicion that the only reason those 10 minutes were fun was because I was throwing splodey rockets everywhere, because everything else about the game, while not too terrible, was pretty sub-par, which is a word I love using because it makes me sound like I'm sampling Merlot.
Anyway, the visual design would be impressive if this game were made in 2002, but that was more than a decade ago. You may think this sounds hypocritical for a guy who praises the N64 era as the greatest in video game history, but even games like Deus Ex, whose graphics are terribly dated, had some sense of visual consistency. Even without the white text at the start of a new level, I could immediately tell if I was in Hong Kong or Paris or what have you. In Rocket Doll, I had no idea where the hell I was. I knew I was probably somewhere underground because I was surrounded by dirt, but then there were green and yellow metal platforms and green force fields and what the hell is going on?
Besides, even games with horrible 3D art (like System Shock 2) still held my attention because of all the little things. I don't care that the characters faces look like paper masks because that's not what it takes to truly immerse. In Rocket Doll, what happened to the footstep sounds or the character grunts?
Well, there is some attention to detail. It is a little charming to see a splotch of soot where your rocket landed, but that's about it.
All-in-all, it's a sort of fun romp but it's not a game I would praise for its design elements. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay splodey.
Links
Do a Docket Roll: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26699
So yeah, the game loses points straightaway because of its length, but as long as those 10 minutes were fun, the game will still get a pass by me. So, were they? Well...kinda. I have the suspicion that the only reason those 10 minutes were fun was because I was throwing splodey rockets everywhere, because everything else about the game, while not too terrible, was pretty sub-par, which is a word I love using because it makes me sound like I'm sampling Merlot.
Anyway, the visual design would be impressive if this game were made in 2002, but that was more than a decade ago. You may think this sounds hypocritical for a guy who praises the N64 era as the greatest in video game history, but even games like Deus Ex, whose graphics are terribly dated, had some sense of visual consistency. Even without the white text at the start of a new level, I could immediately tell if I was in Hong Kong or Paris or what have you. In Rocket Doll, I had no idea where the hell I was. I knew I was probably somewhere underground because I was surrounded by dirt, but then there were green and yellow metal platforms and green force fields and what the hell is going on?
Besides, even games with horrible 3D art (like System Shock 2) still held my attention because of all the little things. I don't care that the characters faces look like paper masks because that's not what it takes to truly immerse. In Rocket Doll, what happened to the footstep sounds or the character grunts?
Well, there is some attention to detail. It is a little charming to see a splotch of soot where your rocket landed, but that's about it.
All-in-all, it's a sort of fun romp but it's not a game I would praise for its design elements. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay splodey.
Links
Do a Docket Roll: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26699
Friday, August 9, 2013
Rock-It Rails
I throw around the word "polish" a lot in these reviews, and I never really bothered to explain what I meant. There are many ways that word can be interpreted, so let me take this moment to expand upon what I mean a bit.
Polish is NOT having the latest and greatest and prettiest graphics, nor is it the elimination of boxy design elements or choppy animations, nor is it the quality of the sound effects or fluidity of the controls...okay, well maybe a bit of the last two, but my point is that in all the aforementioned areas, Rock-It Rails excels beautifully, but I still wouldn't call the game "polished"
What I really mean when I say polish is "the absence of silly mistakes." You know the kind. There are contradictory design elements where two people on the dev team clearly weren't communicating, but then there are design flaws that seem to have simply flown right over everyone's heads. Rock-It Rails has none of the former, but is filled with the latter.
The most noticeable yet least frequent flaw I ran into was that sometimes you can just phase right through a section of floor and get caught in a sort of underground limbo from which there is no escape. This may not seem like a big deal until you take into consideration the next problem:
There's a big fat unskippable narration type thing that explains the controls before you start the first level. And you have to listen to it every time you lose all 3 lives. 3 lives may seem like a lot, but then you realize:
the game is filled with cheap death areas. For instance, the levels are designed in such a way that I felt comfortable taking a leap of faith...and it worked! Then I tried it again in an area that looked exactly the same, and it didn't. So yeah. Your deaths are only going to be your fault like 1/3 of the time anyway, so those 3 lives don't exactly go a long way.
Alright, I've griped enough. Let me talk about the stuff I liked.
Well, the character design is well done. The little fake engine revving noise the main character makes when she grinds along rails is downright adorable and the professor man's voice seems like it was done by a professional. Everything is drawn in such a charming manner that were the game not filled with the aforementioned annoyances, I would totally have enough motivation to keep playing from the visual design alone.
Also, I like the game's premise and level design a lot. Essentially, you interact with rails, which are strewn all over the levels, in 3 different ways, by phasing through them, by bouncing off them, and by grinding along them. You swap through the modes with the mouse buttons. The first level (the only one I played before I quit) is designed fairly well minus all the cheap deaths. It's big and expansive to promote exploration and the rails are prevalent and fun to use enough that you'll have no problem backtracking and scouring every inch of the level.
So yeah, we have another episode of "great premise, bad execution." Perhaps now you'll understand a bit better what I mean when I say this game lacks polish, though it certainly won't seem that way when you first boot it up.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay scientific.
Links
vroom vroom yay: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26702
Polish is NOT having the latest and greatest and prettiest graphics, nor is it the elimination of boxy design elements or choppy animations, nor is it the quality of the sound effects or fluidity of the controls...okay, well maybe a bit of the last two, but my point is that in all the aforementioned areas, Rock-It Rails excels beautifully, but I still wouldn't call the game "polished"
What I really mean when I say polish is "the absence of silly mistakes." You know the kind. There are contradictory design elements where two people on the dev team clearly weren't communicating, but then there are design flaws that seem to have simply flown right over everyone's heads. Rock-It Rails has none of the former, but is filled with the latter.
The most noticeable yet least frequent flaw I ran into was that sometimes you can just phase right through a section of floor and get caught in a sort of underground limbo from which there is no escape. This may not seem like a big deal until you take into consideration the next problem:
There's a big fat unskippable narration type thing that explains the controls before you start the first level. And you have to listen to it every time you lose all 3 lives. 3 lives may seem like a lot, but then you realize:
the game is filled with cheap death areas. For instance, the levels are designed in such a way that I felt comfortable taking a leap of faith...and it worked! Then I tried it again in an area that looked exactly the same, and it didn't. So yeah. Your deaths are only going to be your fault like 1/3 of the time anyway, so those 3 lives don't exactly go a long way.
Alright, I've griped enough. Let me talk about the stuff I liked.
Well, the character design is well done. The little fake engine revving noise the main character makes when she grinds along rails is downright adorable and the professor man's voice seems like it was done by a professional. Everything is drawn in such a charming manner that were the game not filled with the aforementioned annoyances, I would totally have enough motivation to keep playing from the visual design alone.
Also, I like the game's premise and level design a lot. Essentially, you interact with rails, which are strewn all over the levels, in 3 different ways, by phasing through them, by bouncing off them, and by grinding along them. You swap through the modes with the mouse buttons. The first level (the only one I played before I quit) is designed fairly well minus all the cheap deaths. It's big and expansive to promote exploration and the rails are prevalent and fun to use enough that you'll have no problem backtracking and scouring every inch of the level.
So yeah, we have another episode of "great premise, bad execution." Perhaps now you'll understand a bit better what I mean when I say this game lacks polish, though it certainly won't seem that way when you first boot it up.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay scientific.
Links
vroom vroom yay: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26702
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Rock Station
Wow, they sure did spend a lot of time establishing a plot in the beginning of this game. I sure hope they don't immediately drop it as soon as gameplay starts...
womp.
womp.
wooooooomp.
But I digress. Remember all those space shooters like CUB3 and the other ones whose names I don't feel like digging through my archives to remember? Rock Station is that except instead of fighting a bunch of enemies designed to be enemies (you know the kind, like the little ones that take 1 hit to kill and those big leviathan battle cruisers), you fight AI-controlled ships that are all playable. It's like a fighting game, but in space and with lasers.
The game uses the same basic control scheme as CUB3 and Star Wars: Battlefront, you know. That lot. It works decently when you figure out how to use it, but it's not without its problems. First off, I had no idea how much health I had, but I was pretty sure I was getting hit more often that I was landing hits, so shouldn't I have lost that battle? Well I didn't. My opponent was turned into space dust.
Anyway, aiming your lasers is a bitch because they barely travel faster than the ship (which I guess would make sense, considering we're dealing with faster-than-light travel), so by the time you've figured out how far ahead of your opponent you have to aim in order to hit them, they've made some sort of sharp turn that you couldn't hope of pulling off in your wildest dreams, and once again, you're left to try desperately to figure out how to get behind an opponent while they're zipping around like mosquitoes and you're trying to deal with the world's least helpful GUI.
The graphics are nice, though. The characters are all incredibly stylized anime characters that look like they were drawn professionally. Apart from that, it's good to see 3D art that doesn't look like it could be accurately recreated with a few sheets of construction paper (looking at you, Robox). And speaking of Robox, the sound effects in this game didn't want to make me release a pack of savage mini wolves into my ears to claw away at my cochlea. However, it does get a tad bit grating listening to the same "pew pew" effect over and over and over again. Some background music wouldn't have gone amiss, that's for damn sure.
So yeah. Rock Station is a fun game, and I definitely prefer it to the other space shooters on this list, if for no other reason than it's much more satisfying to blow up your fellow man in a universe you understand than it is to blow up a faceless, nameless battle cruiser with no sense of context whatsoever. However, it's not without its flaws, and I can't recommend it to everyone. Perhaps I've become too hard to impress. After all, I was brought up on Starfox 64, and I've never had dogfights quite as fun or satisfying as the ones to be had therein.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep on rockin
Links
But there's no sound in space: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=513
womp.
womp.
wooooooomp.
But I digress. Remember all those space shooters like CUB3 and the other ones whose names I don't feel like digging through my archives to remember? Rock Station is that except instead of fighting a bunch of enemies designed to be enemies (you know the kind, like the little ones that take 1 hit to kill and those big leviathan battle cruisers), you fight AI-controlled ships that are all playable. It's like a fighting game, but in space and with lasers.
The game uses the same basic control scheme as CUB3 and Star Wars: Battlefront, you know. That lot. It works decently when you figure out how to use it, but it's not without its problems. First off, I had no idea how much health I had, but I was pretty sure I was getting hit more often that I was landing hits, so shouldn't I have lost that battle? Well I didn't. My opponent was turned into space dust.
Anyway, aiming your lasers is a bitch because they barely travel faster than the ship (which I guess would make sense, considering we're dealing with faster-than-light travel), so by the time you've figured out how far ahead of your opponent you have to aim in order to hit them, they've made some sort of sharp turn that you couldn't hope of pulling off in your wildest dreams, and once again, you're left to try desperately to figure out how to get behind an opponent while they're zipping around like mosquitoes and you're trying to deal with the world's least helpful GUI.
The graphics are nice, though. The characters are all incredibly stylized anime characters that look like they were drawn professionally. Apart from that, it's good to see 3D art that doesn't look like it could be accurately recreated with a few sheets of construction paper (looking at you, Robox). And speaking of Robox, the sound effects in this game didn't want to make me release a pack of savage mini wolves into my ears to claw away at my cochlea. However, it does get a tad bit grating listening to the same "pew pew" effect over and over and over again. Some background music wouldn't have gone amiss, that's for damn sure.
So yeah. Rock Station is a fun game, and I definitely prefer it to the other space shooters on this list, if for no other reason than it's much more satisfying to blow up your fellow man in a universe you understand than it is to blow up a faceless, nameless battle cruiser with no sense of context whatsoever. However, it's not without its flaws, and I can't recommend it to everyone. Perhaps I've become too hard to impress. After all, I was brought up on Starfox 64, and I've never had dogfights quite as fun or satisfying as the ones to be had therein.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep on rockin
Links
But there's no sound in space: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=513
Robox
"Hey I got an idea."
"Yeah?"
"Why don't we make Mike Tyson's Punch Out but with robots?"
"Great idea! Nobody's ever done that before"
"I know, right? Hey, wanna play Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots?"
"Boy, do I!"
/snark
So yeah, Robox is a simple boxing game wherein you can choose one of 3 robots: the strong one, the fast one or the all-rounder. Much like in Punch-Out, you're locked in place and your only movement controls are a quick left dodge and a quick right dodge. Other than that, you're armed with only punches and a block.
While slightly restrictive, this setup can provide for buckets of fun, and Punch-Out wasn't the only game to prove that. Even the Punch-Out ripoffs like Rage of the Gladiator are pretty enjoyable, but what those games had that Robox doesn't is good game feel. This came from the stylized graphics (to Robox's ugly, boxy 3D art), satisfying sound effects (to Robox's screechy grunts that makes me want to clean my ears with battery acid) and hit sparks (to Robox's 0 feedback).
Let it never be said, however, that I am a gamer to be swayed by aesthetics alone. I'm the guy who actually finishes his replays of Deus Ex because what I really care about is the game design, not the visual design. So once you get past the god awful sound your robot makes when he punches, is Robox still fun to play? Well...kinda. 1/4 of the time.
Before every fight, there's a little text introduction to the robot you're about to spar with. In that introduction, the game tells you *exactly* how to beat that robot. See, Punch-Out was more than willing to stick a band-aid on King Hippo's belly and let you figure it out from there, but Robox thinks you're never going to figure out the incredibly complex strategy of "dodge the punches and hit the mean man."
Each robot only has 1 attack move that he sticks to rather religiously. Come on, the NES game had more variety than that, and that was on the NES! The only fight worth having is the one against BossBot, who employs all three strategies that you've faced before (see, it's good conveyance, blahblahblah NO IT'S NOT). I would totally play this game more if I could go straight to BossBot, but the fact that I have to sit through the other 3 pitiful fights first makes the slightly satisfying reward of the final fight much less satisfying.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep your guard up.
Links
Box, ro: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1652
"Yeah?"
"Why don't we make Mike Tyson's Punch Out but with robots?"
"Great idea! Nobody's ever done that before"
"I know, right? Hey, wanna play Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots?"
"Boy, do I!"
/snark
So yeah, Robox is a simple boxing game wherein you can choose one of 3 robots: the strong one, the fast one or the all-rounder. Much like in Punch-Out, you're locked in place and your only movement controls are a quick left dodge and a quick right dodge. Other than that, you're armed with only punches and a block.
While slightly restrictive, this setup can provide for buckets of fun, and Punch-Out wasn't the only game to prove that. Even the Punch-Out ripoffs like Rage of the Gladiator are pretty enjoyable, but what those games had that Robox doesn't is good game feel. This came from the stylized graphics (to Robox's ugly, boxy 3D art), satisfying sound effects (to Robox's screechy grunts that makes me want to clean my ears with battery acid) and hit sparks (to Robox's 0 feedback).
Let it never be said, however, that I am a gamer to be swayed by aesthetics alone. I'm the guy who actually finishes his replays of Deus Ex because what I really care about is the game design, not the visual design. So once you get past the god awful sound your robot makes when he punches, is Robox still fun to play? Well...kinda. 1/4 of the time.
Before every fight, there's a little text introduction to the robot you're about to spar with. In that introduction, the game tells you *exactly* how to beat that robot. See, Punch-Out was more than willing to stick a band-aid on King Hippo's belly and let you figure it out from there, but Robox thinks you're never going to figure out the incredibly complex strategy of "dodge the punches and hit the mean man."
Each robot only has 1 attack move that he sticks to rather religiously. Come on, the NES game had more variety than that, and that was on the NES! The only fight worth having is the one against BossBot, who employs all three strategies that you've faced before (see, it's good conveyance, blahblahblah NO IT'S NOT). I would totally play this game more if I could go straight to BossBot, but the fact that I have to sit through the other 3 pitiful fights first makes the slightly satisfying reward of the final fight much less satisfying.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep your guard up.
Links
Box, ro: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1652
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Robotstacle course
When I play a game on this list, there are 3 reasons that I keep playing.
1) I'm having too much ding dang darn fun to stop.
2) I'm interested in how the plot develops from the point I'm at.
3) The game has given me so little to write about that I have to keep playing lest my review look more like a haiku.
Now you tell me...which of these things is not like the others?
Unfortunately, Robotstacle Course held my attention for the third reason and the third reason alone. What makes me even more angry is that after playing to the point of mind-numbing boredom, I still don't have much to say. The game is decently put together, but that's all it is. Everything works, albeit not well.
All right, there are some specific problems I had with the game, though it's mostly nitpicky stuff. For example, light blue is the predominant color used in the visual design, yet the soundtrack wants to set a frantic "hurry up, you're going to die" mood. Contradictory design is like the easiest flaw to avoid...how do you even make a mistake like that? Whatever...not a big deal.
The platforming can be a bit slippery some times. One notable segment had me jumping at the same bit of wall, changing nothing about my strategy, for more than a minute before it worked. Sometimes the platforms are a bit too high, sometimes your momentum is a bit too great, and the whole thing just feels kind of sloppy.
I do like the concept of placing certain platforms around the room prior to platforming to facilitate your completion of the level, but such a mechanic should really only be the icing on the cake rather than the spongey, fluffy goodness that holds it all together.
In short, this game isn't poorly designed. There's nothing about it that makes me too angry. But it's not fun, it's not interesting, and there are much better ways to spend your time. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay on the DAMN PLATFORM YOU STUPID HUNK OF METAL
...okay so maybe I did get a little mad.
Links
Oh look, there's wordplay in the title. How original: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26697
1) I'm having too much ding dang darn fun to stop.
2) I'm interested in how the plot develops from the point I'm at.
3) The game has given me so little to write about that I have to keep playing lest my review look more like a haiku.
Now you tell me...which of these things is not like the others?
Unfortunately, Robotstacle Course held my attention for the third reason and the third reason alone. What makes me even more angry is that after playing to the point of mind-numbing boredom, I still don't have much to say. The game is decently put together, but that's all it is. Everything works, albeit not well.
All right, there are some specific problems I had with the game, though it's mostly nitpicky stuff. For example, light blue is the predominant color used in the visual design, yet the soundtrack wants to set a frantic "hurry up, you're going to die" mood. Contradictory design is like the easiest flaw to avoid...how do you even make a mistake like that? Whatever...not a big deal.
The platforming can be a bit slippery some times. One notable segment had me jumping at the same bit of wall, changing nothing about my strategy, for more than a minute before it worked. Sometimes the platforms are a bit too high, sometimes your momentum is a bit too great, and the whole thing just feels kind of sloppy.
I do like the concept of placing certain platforms around the room prior to platforming to facilitate your completion of the level, but such a mechanic should really only be the icing on the cake rather than the spongey, fluffy goodness that holds it all together.
In short, this game isn't poorly designed. There's nothing about it that makes me too angry. But it's not fun, it's not interesting, and there are much better ways to spend your time. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay on the DAMN PLATFORM YOU STUPID HUNK OF METAL
...okay so maybe I did get a little mad.
Links
Oh look, there's wordplay in the title. How original: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26697
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Robbin Hook
oh, I get it...cuz it sounds like Robin Hood, but he uses a hook to rob people...so he's a robbin' hook...hyeh..
In the past, I've had good experiences with swinging games, especially on this list. Something about Spidermanning through levels at high speeds just tickles my brain.
So take it with a grain of salt when I say Robbin Hook has the most unintuitive swinging mechanics I've experienced in a game on this list so far. In context, that's not really a bad thing. That's like saying your Siberian husky isn't quite as intimidating as a grizzly bear.
Really, the mechanics are fine, they just aren't quite as intuitive as the others, and what's so disheartening about this to me is that I have no idea why. It's just all too common a problem that I lose all my momentum for one reason or another, be it that I grazed the ground or wrapped around a platform or whatever else. Also, why the hell does my hook stay deployed when I hit the ground? I can't see a single scenario in which that would improve anything about the game. Robbin Hook had a crapload of playtesters, too. Not one of them decided to raise their hand and say, "uh, yeah. This is good and all, but keeping my hook deployed 2 feet away from me is kinda dumb."
So yeah. I don't really have much more to say other than casual and unspecific praise. The levels are thoughtfully designed, the menu screen is cute (although why they decided to make the "start game" button a tiny ass notebook that's about the least apparent thing in the room is beyond me), and I like the use of a level select with all levels unlocked from the get-go.
All in all...is good. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay kleptomaniacal.
Links
I steal ur shiz: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18537
In the past, I've had good experiences with swinging games, especially on this list. Something about Spidermanning through levels at high speeds just tickles my brain.
So take it with a grain of salt when I say Robbin Hook has the most unintuitive swinging mechanics I've experienced in a game on this list so far. In context, that's not really a bad thing. That's like saying your Siberian husky isn't quite as intimidating as a grizzly bear.
Really, the mechanics are fine, they just aren't quite as intuitive as the others, and what's so disheartening about this to me is that I have no idea why. It's just all too common a problem that I lose all my momentum for one reason or another, be it that I grazed the ground or wrapped around a platform or whatever else. Also, why the hell does my hook stay deployed when I hit the ground? I can't see a single scenario in which that would improve anything about the game. Robbin Hook had a crapload of playtesters, too. Not one of them decided to raise their hand and say, "uh, yeah. This is good and all, but keeping my hook deployed 2 feet away from me is kinda dumb."
So yeah. I don't really have much more to say other than casual and unspecific praise. The levels are thoughtfully designed, the menu screen is cute (although why they decided to make the "start game" button a tiny ass notebook that's about the least apparent thing in the room is beyond me), and I like the use of a level select with all levels unlocked from the get-go.
All in all...is good. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay kleptomaniacal.
Links
I steal ur shiz: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18537
Monday, August 5, 2013
Rhinopocalypse (kinda)
Well, I promised you 4 reviews, today, and I was getting really tired after Rex Texas, but I'm a man of my word, so I decided to pull through for Rhinopocalypse, but it appears that karma was in my favor, because the download is not yet available. Yaaay! But of course, that means that in order to keep my integrity, I'll have to check up on this game every so often and review it if the download becomes available before the year's end. Booo.
The next game on the list looks interesting, so maybe I'll give it a shot, but right now, my compulsion to play System Shock 2 is much more powerful, and when I start playing System Shock 2, I'm usually too brain-dead to think about reviewing a game afterward, so we'll see how this goes.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay as dishonest as it takes to keep being honest. myaw haw hawwwww
The next game on the list looks interesting, so maybe I'll give it a shot, but right now, my compulsion to play System Shock 2 is much more powerful, and when I start playing System Shock 2, I'm usually too brain-dead to think about reviewing a game afterward, so we'll see how this goes.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay as dishonest as it takes to keep being honest. myaw haw hawwwww
Rex Texas
Whooo-ee, git along, lil' doggy!
I was amused by how little the developers of this little gem seemed to know about what a stereotypical Texan looks like, because for a guy whose name translates to "King of Texas," the titular character looks less like a cowboy and more like "Rico Rodriguez Jr." It's weird, because the icon for this game is a guy in a 10-gallon hat assembled about as crudely as one would expect his moral and intellectual spirits to be (just kidding, Texas. I love you <3).
anyhow, my relative impression of Rex Texas, if drawn on a graph, would sort of resemble a beautiful Texas mountainside. For all who would rather I do the visualizing for them, that looks a bit like this:
/|
/ |
/ |
/ |
/ |
____/ |
Boy howdy, I hate making half-assed ASCII art. The things I do for my nigh-nonexistent audience...
Now, let's break that graph down a bit, shall we? Let's start with the ground-level line at the beginning. first impressions of Rex Texas were a bit shaky. This may have been because the combination of amoxicillin and clavulanic acid in my system has basically reduced my digestive system to a porridge palatable only to those troll-things from The Hobbit, but I was nauseous within the first 5 minutes of play because the developers put way too much stake in the "world" part of the word "overworld" and designed the damn thing as a sphere that shifts along with you, making me feel almost seasick. Not only that, but dying was way too easy. In addition, I was not a fan of this game's "read a barely intelligible sign and hope for the best" method of conveyance which left me confused and completely out of flow.
I started climbing the metaphorical mountain when I entered my first cave and got my first powerup, the double jump. Suddenly, traversing the map was more fun than it was in Just Cause 2. There are few better feelings that the DigiPen Game Gallery has made me feel than the one I get from watching Riccito hookshot onto a mountain and then do a little tumble-roll up onto a cliff. My immersion only increased as I explored the cave more and found more powerups that made exploring the overworld even more enjoyable and rewarding. It was honestly some of the most fun I've had in a very long time, and I've replayed more than a few of my favorite games this summer. It wasn't long before I found myself adding little games to the game, such as "hey, let's see if I can clear this cave without having Riccito touch the ground once" I couldn't help but notice, however, that the one thing this game lacked was direction.
Sure, you can occasionally stumble onto a map that points to a particular place on the map and says "you should totally check this place out," but even Just Cause 2 was able to justify your crazy mass murdering and exploration somehow. In this game, there's just kinda nothing. "This won't be a problem," I thought, "as long as the game lets me continue from where I left off after I exit." After all, this game is basically designed to be a toybox to distract you from your miserable life for a few wonderful moments before you go back to filling in timesheets, and being able to pick it up and put it down is essential to a game like that. Otherwise, it would make as much sense as an action figures that vaporizes once you stop playing with it.
And, since you already saw the graph, I'm pretty sure you all know where I'm going with this. I really hate it when developers forget that people might not want to sit through your game in one go. It doesn't matter how fun your game is, people aren't always going to have 3 hours free to get through your whole fiasco. That's why I was never a fan of the early NES games, but even with those, you could just pause the game and turn off your TV, but a computer is a device that gets absent-mindedly turned off and on all the time. Yeah, that's not my most compelling argument, but still. Learn how to make your game save a player's progress, dammit!
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay a-grapplin'
Links
Text Lexus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1408
I was amused by how little the developers of this little gem seemed to know about what a stereotypical Texan looks like, because for a guy whose name translates to "King of Texas," the titular character looks less like a cowboy and more like "Rico Rodriguez Jr." It's weird, because the icon for this game is a guy in a 10-gallon hat assembled about as crudely as one would expect his moral and intellectual spirits to be (just kidding, Texas. I love you <3).
anyhow, my relative impression of Rex Texas, if drawn on a graph, would sort of resemble a beautiful Texas mountainside. For all who would rather I do the visualizing for them, that looks a bit like this:
/|
/ |
/ |
/ |
/ |
____/ |
Boy howdy, I hate making half-assed ASCII art. The things I do for my nigh-nonexistent audience...
Now, let's break that graph down a bit, shall we? Let's start with the ground-level line at the beginning. first impressions of Rex Texas were a bit shaky. This may have been because the combination of amoxicillin and clavulanic acid in my system has basically reduced my digestive system to a porridge palatable only to those troll-things from The Hobbit, but I was nauseous within the first 5 minutes of play because the developers put way too much stake in the "world" part of the word "overworld" and designed the damn thing as a sphere that shifts along with you, making me feel almost seasick. Not only that, but dying was way too easy. In addition, I was not a fan of this game's "read a barely intelligible sign and hope for the best" method of conveyance which left me confused and completely out of flow.
I started climbing the metaphorical mountain when I entered my first cave and got my first powerup, the double jump. Suddenly, traversing the map was more fun than it was in Just Cause 2. There are few better feelings that the DigiPen Game Gallery has made me feel than the one I get from watching Riccito hookshot onto a mountain and then do a little tumble-roll up onto a cliff. My immersion only increased as I explored the cave more and found more powerups that made exploring the overworld even more enjoyable and rewarding. It was honestly some of the most fun I've had in a very long time, and I've replayed more than a few of my favorite games this summer. It wasn't long before I found myself adding little games to the game, such as "hey, let's see if I can clear this cave without having Riccito touch the ground once" I couldn't help but notice, however, that the one thing this game lacked was direction.
Sure, you can occasionally stumble onto a map that points to a particular place on the map and says "you should totally check this place out," but even Just Cause 2 was able to justify your crazy mass murdering and exploration somehow. In this game, there's just kinda nothing. "This won't be a problem," I thought, "as long as the game lets me continue from where I left off after I exit." After all, this game is basically designed to be a toybox to distract you from your miserable life for a few wonderful moments before you go back to filling in timesheets, and being able to pick it up and put it down is essential to a game like that. Otherwise, it would make as much sense as an action figures that vaporizes once you stop playing with it.
And, since you already saw the graph, I'm pretty sure you all know where I'm going with this. I really hate it when developers forget that people might not want to sit through your game in one go. It doesn't matter how fun your game is, people aren't always going to have 3 hours free to get through your whole fiasco. That's why I was never a fan of the early NES games, but even with those, you could just pause the game and turn off your TV, but a computer is a device that gets absent-mindedly turned off and on all the time. Yeah, that's not my most compelling argument, but still. Learn how to make your game save a player's progress, dammit!
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay a-grapplin'
Links
Text Lexus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1408
Return to the Sky
This game surprised me right off the bat by having something I don't think any other game on this list did: an expository voiceover! While chilled by the professionalism displayed in this introduction, I was not terribly interested in which part of the sky I'm returning to nor why I want to return there in the first place. The title established my mission and that was enough for me, so I dove right in.
Now, a returning reader may know that I'm not a fan of pixel art in modern games. I find it to be pretentious and unnecessary. However, the pixelated art style in Return to the Sky commits none of the sins I normally associate with pixel art while also being pretty damn breathtaking, especially the big, omnipotent skull of purple smoke chasing you around everywhere. I like the kind of art that calls back to the old days, but is beautiful enough in its complexity that it never could have existed back then. The art style herein is distinct, awe-inspiring, and nostalgic without any of those particular flavors becoming overbearing, so, in short, A+.
Many people disagree with me on this, but I feel that the way a game looks is not quite as important as how it sounds, and while the sound direction in Return to the Sky isn't quite as fantastic as its visual design, it certainly gets the job done. Your ears won't be crying for relief, but they won't be calling for more, either. What the sound direction does is set the mood, which is the most important thing it can do. Even if you didn't see the game, you would feel like you were trapped in the darkest part of Aladdin.
But I don't think anyone would deny that how a game feels is the most important aesthetic sense of all, and with a few minor tweaks here and there, Return to the Sky could feel downright amazing. It already flows beautifully with its thoughtfully placed platforms that force you to learn the mechanics through the mechanics alone (a reading from the first book of Egoraptor), but there's a bit of a delay between your pressing the jump button and your character actually jumping. Your character is athletic enough to linger in the air so that this isn't much of a problem, but jumping at the very end of a platform is a habit you will have to unlearn for this game.
In my Resonance review, I said I like games that challenge my mind as well as my reflexes, and I wasn't necessarily talking about philosophically-charged niche games like Deus Ex. This game is a more colloquial example of what I'm talking about. I don't need enough mind food to go ahead and white a dissertation on the nature of man; all I want is to be able to nod my head and go "oh yeah. That was the right thing to do, and I know exactly why," which is a feeling this game conveys to me beautifully. This one gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay skybound.
Links
Wheee: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26721
Now, a returning reader may know that I'm not a fan of pixel art in modern games. I find it to be pretentious and unnecessary. However, the pixelated art style in Return to the Sky commits none of the sins I normally associate with pixel art while also being pretty damn breathtaking, especially the big, omnipotent skull of purple smoke chasing you around everywhere. I like the kind of art that calls back to the old days, but is beautiful enough in its complexity that it never could have existed back then. The art style herein is distinct, awe-inspiring, and nostalgic without any of those particular flavors becoming overbearing, so, in short, A+.
Many people disagree with me on this, but I feel that the way a game looks is not quite as important as how it sounds, and while the sound direction in Return to the Sky isn't quite as fantastic as its visual design, it certainly gets the job done. Your ears won't be crying for relief, but they won't be calling for more, either. What the sound direction does is set the mood, which is the most important thing it can do. Even if you didn't see the game, you would feel like you were trapped in the darkest part of Aladdin.
But I don't think anyone would deny that how a game feels is the most important aesthetic sense of all, and with a few minor tweaks here and there, Return to the Sky could feel downright amazing. It already flows beautifully with its thoughtfully placed platforms that force you to learn the mechanics through the mechanics alone (a reading from the first book of Egoraptor), but there's a bit of a delay between your pressing the jump button and your character actually jumping. Your character is athletic enough to linger in the air so that this isn't much of a problem, but jumping at the very end of a platform is a habit you will have to unlearn for this game.
In my Resonance review, I said I like games that challenge my mind as well as my reflexes, and I wasn't necessarily talking about philosophically-charged niche games like Deus Ex. This game is a more colloquial example of what I'm talking about. I don't need enough mind food to go ahead and white a dissertation on the nature of man; all I want is to be able to nod my head and go "oh yeah. That was the right thing to do, and I know exactly why," which is a feeling this game conveys to me beautifully. This one gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay skybound.
Links
Wheee: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26721
Return of the Fallen Lords
Due to my abnormally unforgiving schedule recently, I was not able to keep up with my schedule, as you may have noticed. I was rather religiously adhering to a "2 reviews every other day" policy. In the name of shirking trends, I have vowed to get back on schedule today, no matter how crappy these antibiotics are making me feel. I've estimated that to take about 4 reviews, so these next four are going to gradually decline in quality, kind of like my intestines at the moment.
Return of the Fallen Lords is an arcade shooter wherein you defend a tower and/or yourself from the minions of Thanatos, whose job descriptions are basically "be a jerkface." You move with the WASD keys and shoot hammers in any of 8 directions with the arrow keys.
Especially in Hammerthon mode, the enemy placement seems to be bullet-hell inspired, which seems like it should make for buckets of fun, given the octodirectional projectile you're equipped with. Note, however, that in any decent bullet-hell game, you can move as you shoot. In RotFL, you get locked in place whenever you attack. This is a rather detrimental design choice because it reduces the gameplay to a very formulaic "line your character up with the enemy, tank a few hits inevitably, kill one enemy, rinse and repeat." Since it's infinitely more difficult to determine the path of an unbending diagonal line than it is that of a straight horizontal or vertical line, you're pretty much only going to use 4 of the 8 directions, which makes the game smell of missed potential somewhat.
Other than that, Tower mode feels like a contrived add-on rather than an integral part of the game, which is weird because Tower mode is what is automatically selected when you start the game. You're not given enough indication as to when more tower pieces become available for you to pick up, and the tower has so much health that it's basically equivalent to a baited tree stand and the enemies are deer. As all of us Animal Planet viewers know, that's illegal because it takes all the challenge out of hunting, so why would you work a mechanic like that into the main part of your game?
So yeah, stick to Hammerthon mode, but even there the air is thick with contrivance. Why does the rock elemental seem to wreck the enemies' shops way more than the other elementals that are just as plentiful, for example?
This game does demonstrate a great aesthetic sense with a 3D design that not many games on this list can match, although this game did come out this year, so the technology was in its favor. Even past that, though, there are some cute details that were able to elicit a smile from even jaded ol' me. My favorite is that when you mouse over the "quit" button, your character does an overly dramatic pratfall flat on his back, so at least the last thing I saw before I walked away was charming.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay fallin'
Links
grrr smash raar: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26714
Return of the Fallen Lords is an arcade shooter wherein you defend a tower and/or yourself from the minions of Thanatos, whose job descriptions are basically "be a jerkface." You move with the WASD keys and shoot hammers in any of 8 directions with the arrow keys.
Especially in Hammerthon mode, the enemy placement seems to be bullet-hell inspired, which seems like it should make for buckets of fun, given the octodirectional projectile you're equipped with. Note, however, that in any decent bullet-hell game, you can move as you shoot. In RotFL, you get locked in place whenever you attack. This is a rather detrimental design choice because it reduces the gameplay to a very formulaic "line your character up with the enemy, tank a few hits inevitably, kill one enemy, rinse and repeat." Since it's infinitely more difficult to determine the path of an unbending diagonal line than it is that of a straight horizontal or vertical line, you're pretty much only going to use 4 of the 8 directions, which makes the game smell of missed potential somewhat.
Other than that, Tower mode feels like a contrived add-on rather than an integral part of the game, which is weird because Tower mode is what is automatically selected when you start the game. You're not given enough indication as to when more tower pieces become available for you to pick up, and the tower has so much health that it's basically equivalent to a baited tree stand and the enemies are deer. As all of us Animal Planet viewers know, that's illegal because it takes all the challenge out of hunting, so why would you work a mechanic like that into the main part of your game?
So yeah, stick to Hammerthon mode, but even there the air is thick with contrivance. Why does the rock elemental seem to wreck the enemies' shops way more than the other elementals that are just as plentiful, for example?
This game does demonstrate a great aesthetic sense with a 3D design that not many games on this list can match, although this game did come out this year, so the technology was in its favor. Even past that, though, there are some cute details that were able to elicit a smile from even jaded ol' me. My favorite is that when you mouse over the "quit" button, your character does an overly dramatic pratfall flat on his back, so at least the last thing I saw before I walked away was charming.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay fallin'
Links
grrr smash raar: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26714
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Resonance
Genre-melding is an easy way to justify slapping the word "unique" onto your advertisements. So many beat'em ups and rhythm games have been made that it's difficult to add anything new to either of those genres, much like there have been so many ways to prepare chicken and milkshakes separately over the years that easiest way to make your own unique milkshake would be to throw bits of chicken into it, if you catch my drift. Now, ask yourself, does that sound like a milkshake you would want to drink?...er...eat....maybe...eh...
Actually, I have a tough time classifying Resonance as a beat'em up, because even though the game has you punch and blast your way through hoards of enemies that could not have more blatantly ripped off the heartless from Kingdom Hearts (another beat'em up game thinly disguised as a different genre), the way you do that is by playing very quick games of Guitar Hero, so that ends up becoming the extent of what the game is to you: a series of 3-second guitar riffs that you try to play in time. Needless to say, it can get quite repetitive quite fast.
The game tries to spice things up by throwing in some enemies that keep their distance while others swarm you, meaning you'll have to adjust your attacks every now and again to adapt to the kind of enemies you face, but doing so in any meaningful capacity just causes such sensory overload that it becomes frustrating. Luckily, you have enough health to tank a few hits while you figure out the best plan of attack, if you so choose, but that was a pretty sloppy way to remedy the problem because since you have so much health, taking hits is almost unnoticeable, reducing the game even further to just a succession of Guitar Hero riffs.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of genre-melding, because the juxtaposition of two types of gameplay allow for an easier and more effective analysis of each mechanic, and that's not just from the critic's standpoint. Even the average player can see which elements work and which don't much clearer through the lens of that glorious juxtaposition. However, just throwing two diverse things into a blender doesn't mean the end product is going to be any good. I had fun with Resonance, but not because of how its mechanics play off each other. I had fun with it because of the beautiful game feel. Hitting enemies is rewarding due to the high amount of damage displayed by stringing together combos, everything is nice and colorful, etc.
I'll admit that I was a bit too harsh on this game. It's good, seriously, it is. It's just not the kind of good that I like, if that makes any sense. I like games that make me think, games that make me feel, games that challenge both my mind and my reflexes. I value depth more than I value sensory stimulation, and this game favors the latter over the former. Does that make it bad? Absolutely not. It just isn't going to rank too highly on any of my personal Top # lists.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay rockin'
Links
Let's Go, Soul Resonance! Huwaaaah!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1637
Actually, I have a tough time classifying Resonance as a beat'em up, because even though the game has you punch and blast your way through hoards of enemies that could not have more blatantly ripped off the heartless from Kingdom Hearts (another beat'em up game thinly disguised as a different genre), the way you do that is by playing very quick games of Guitar Hero, so that ends up becoming the extent of what the game is to you: a series of 3-second guitar riffs that you try to play in time. Needless to say, it can get quite repetitive quite fast.
The game tries to spice things up by throwing in some enemies that keep their distance while others swarm you, meaning you'll have to adjust your attacks every now and again to adapt to the kind of enemies you face, but doing so in any meaningful capacity just causes such sensory overload that it becomes frustrating. Luckily, you have enough health to tank a few hits while you figure out the best plan of attack, if you so choose, but that was a pretty sloppy way to remedy the problem because since you have so much health, taking hits is almost unnoticeable, reducing the game even further to just a succession of Guitar Hero riffs.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of genre-melding, because the juxtaposition of two types of gameplay allow for an easier and more effective analysis of each mechanic, and that's not just from the critic's standpoint. Even the average player can see which elements work and which don't much clearer through the lens of that glorious juxtaposition. However, just throwing two diverse things into a blender doesn't mean the end product is going to be any good. I had fun with Resonance, but not because of how its mechanics play off each other. I had fun with it because of the beautiful game feel. Hitting enemies is rewarding due to the high amount of damage displayed by stringing together combos, everything is nice and colorful, etc.
I'll admit that I was a bit too harsh on this game. It's good, seriously, it is. It's just not the kind of good that I like, if that makes any sense. I like games that make me think, games that make me feel, games that challenge both my mind and my reflexes. I value depth more than I value sensory stimulation, and this game favors the latter over the former. Does that make it bad? Absolutely not. It just isn't going to rank too highly on any of my personal Top # lists.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay rockin'
Links
Let's Go, Soul Resonance! Huwaaaah!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1637
ReLevelEd
Level design is one of those things that the layman tends not to appreciate, isn't it? I mean, when you play a platformer, for instance, you're usually not thinking about how thoughtfully the medley of blocks that you're jumping on were placed because you're too busy trying to jump on the blocks. Level design is a tenet of game design that should really be more appreciated, and games like ReLevelEd are just the way to make that happen.
ReLevelEd is the kind of game I like to call a "reverse platformer." That's a platform game wherein you do not control the character, rather you control the platforms. See also, Penguin Panic (sort of). It's a decent concept, but it can be really frustrating when done poorly, see also every tower defense game ever made. Whether or not the character dies is what determines whether or not you win, so not being able to keep the character from suiciding can be incredibly frustrating. That's why escort quests are so hated among gamers today. In order for a reverse platformer to be successful, therefore, you have to be able to manipulate the pace of the character in some way, otherwise it feels less like you're playing the game and more like the game is playing you, if you catch my drift.
ReLevelEd pulls that off rather well. If the character is about to fall into some spikes, you can trap it by surrounding it with blocks, leaving you to go to work without fear of the character forgetting that pointy things are not good things to cannonball into. The only problem is that if even a little bit of the character makes it across one block, placing a block in their path won't have any effect, leaving the character to just ghost through the halting block and into a spike pit.
I think where ReLevelEd fails most is in 2 areas: conveyance and iteration time. I'd been playing for far too long before I realized how to delete blocks, meaning if I accidentally placed a block in the wrong place, I'd just have to watch as the character flies into a depth charge. Similarly, at one point I thought the game was simply broken because I couldn't get the character to clear a jump that was a bit too long. Then I realized that you could change the intensity of the effect a certain block has by using the mousewheel. I only learned that by playing the tutorial, so if that weren't there, I'd have ragequit way earlier than I did.
the real reason I quit was because of the iteration time. This is a game where you will die a lot...rather, the little red man who thinks spike balls are comfy will die a lot. There are checkpoints, but they aren't nearly close enough together. Sometimes, you will have to clear 3 separate distinguishable areas before you get to the next checkpoint. This kind of design would be fine if the game were about reflexes rather than problem solving, but if I already demonstrated that I know which blocks go where, having to demonstrate that again is just frustrating. And when people get frustrated, they make careless errors, for which there is no room in ReLevelEd.
Now, as frustrating as this game is, as I said earlier, it does make the player gain a bit of appreciation for level design, especially when they go into the level editor and try to create their own levels, quickly realizing how much skill it takes to design levels that are even functional, much less as gargantuan and varied as the ones this game's developers made.
All in all, this game is definitely appreciable, but not all too fun. It's the same feeling one gets from watching one of those preposterously complex and artsy movies like Memento. You can see how much skill, thought, and effort went into the production of the project, but so much flies over your head and keeping up with it is so exhausting that you just want to give up, turn off your brain, and play Saint's Row. In fact, Imma go do that.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay safe.
Links
StUpiDly stYlIzeD: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=481
ReLevelEd is the kind of game I like to call a "reverse platformer." That's a platform game wherein you do not control the character, rather you control the platforms. See also, Penguin Panic (sort of). It's a decent concept, but it can be really frustrating when done poorly, see also every tower defense game ever made. Whether or not the character dies is what determines whether or not you win, so not being able to keep the character from suiciding can be incredibly frustrating. That's why escort quests are so hated among gamers today. In order for a reverse platformer to be successful, therefore, you have to be able to manipulate the pace of the character in some way, otherwise it feels less like you're playing the game and more like the game is playing you, if you catch my drift.
ReLevelEd pulls that off rather well. If the character is about to fall into some spikes, you can trap it by surrounding it with blocks, leaving you to go to work without fear of the character forgetting that pointy things are not good things to cannonball into. The only problem is that if even a little bit of the character makes it across one block, placing a block in their path won't have any effect, leaving the character to just ghost through the halting block and into a spike pit.
I think where ReLevelEd fails most is in 2 areas: conveyance and iteration time. I'd been playing for far too long before I realized how to delete blocks, meaning if I accidentally placed a block in the wrong place, I'd just have to watch as the character flies into a depth charge. Similarly, at one point I thought the game was simply broken because I couldn't get the character to clear a jump that was a bit too long. Then I realized that you could change the intensity of the effect a certain block has by using the mousewheel. I only learned that by playing the tutorial, so if that weren't there, I'd have ragequit way earlier than I did.
the real reason I quit was because of the iteration time. This is a game where you will die a lot...rather, the little red man who thinks spike balls are comfy will die a lot. There are checkpoints, but they aren't nearly close enough together. Sometimes, you will have to clear 3 separate distinguishable areas before you get to the next checkpoint. This kind of design would be fine if the game were about reflexes rather than problem solving, but if I already demonstrated that I know which blocks go where, having to demonstrate that again is just frustrating. And when people get frustrated, they make careless errors, for which there is no room in ReLevelEd.
Now, as frustrating as this game is, as I said earlier, it does make the player gain a bit of appreciation for level design, especially when they go into the level editor and try to create their own levels, quickly realizing how much skill it takes to design levels that are even functional, much less as gargantuan and varied as the ones this game's developers made.
All in all, this game is definitely appreciable, but not all too fun. It's the same feeling one gets from watching one of those preposterously complex and artsy movies like Memento. You can see how much skill, thought, and effort went into the production of the project, but so much flies over your head and keeping up with it is so exhausting that you just want to give up, turn off your brain, and play Saint's Row. In fact, Imma go do that.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay safe.
Links
StUpiDly stYlIzeD: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=481
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