Alright, I admit I got a little heated in my last post. Certain aspects of game design just get me kind of...emotional. But I've cooled down now. I'm ready to take on the next challenge.
Much to my relief GenJox is an IGF student showcase finalist from the grand ol' year of 2001. Now, being an IGF finalist is by no means an instant indicator of quality (or even functionality if Commando Attack Sub is any indication), but it guarantees that at least one person playtested it...right?
well, yes. I would wager that multiple people playtested this one. The learning curve is a little too steep too fast, but once you get the hang of it, it's really fun.
It's your standard top-down bot vs bot deathmatch ordeal. you glide around the map, pick up weapons, use said weapons on other bots, profit. I honestly don't have much praise or criticism to offer, so I'm just going to comment on a few things that interested me.
First off, I don't think this game keeps score. It just seems to be an endless deathmatch (unless of course you play last man standing). It goes to show what this game is trying to be: a stress reliever. In that respect, it passes with flying colors. Since there's really no consequence for dying, you can just charge into battle carefree. That's not a positive quality in and of itself, but it's certainly great for catharsis.
uhm....yeah. That's it, really. It's a good stress reliever. I had fun with it, so yeah. Go nuts. Good job, DigiPen.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=556
Friday, April 12, 2013
Gene
Guess what, guys?! I finded a Wifi!!
*ahem*
To quote the wise game philosopher Jon Jafari, I don't know what anything in this game is. It's one of those mind-rapey RTS games with horrible conveyance like Empyrean Contrata. I'm really tempted to stop the review there and dismiss it as a bad game, but I wouldn't feel right about that. After all, I did blaze right through the text dump at the beginning that explained what i needed to do (even though it's my right as a gamer to do just that). I will say, though, I'm starting to get suspicious of the professors over at DigiPen. I'm sure they're all very qualified and all, but how do you let your students get away with stuff like this? This should be one of the first lessons they learn: text dumps bad! It's fine if one or two bad apples try and pull it, but when there are more games that just settle for the lazy text instruction method than games that even try conveying instruction through the mechanics, something has definitely gone wrong. I understand that it's hard to convey all the necessary knowledge to play a complex genre like RTS, but you could at least give it a try!
ugh...alright, so now I'm going to strap in and force myself to read the instructions at the beginning. Let's see how it goes.
Welp, that did absolutely nothing. I'm going to establish a rule now for text-based tutorials. First off, you're not allowed to have them. If that fails, for whatever reason, you have to at least proofread the text on the screen. Come on, DigiPen is a college. How do they get away with the kind of mistakes that would make a 4th grade English teacher spiral into drunken depression? Even if the tutorial were grammatically sound, which it's not, it would still make no sense. They used too much game-specific terminology and the text wall was too esoteric as a result. I don't know what it means to mutate a gene in the context of a game I haven't played yet.
Okay, I think I've made my point by now that the game fails miserably at conveying instruction to the player, which is definitely enough to get thrown into my junk pile from the get go. However, I'm not going to let all this free hotel wifi go to waste. Let's dig in deep and get nitpickin...
*5 minutes later*
AARGH nevermind! I can't take it anymore! I refuse to accept that this is a problem with the genre. There is just no excuse for game design this esoteric and asinine! Again, I'm not a game designer. I couldn't make this game if I tried. But you know what was the key word in there? TRIED! I know it's tough to make a game that's actually fun to play, but please, please put in the effort and try to make it a little bit enjoyable!
As I subjected myself to this game, one of the other guys in my hotel room was playing The Walking Dead on his Ipad. He could hardly contain the paroxysms of glee that came from a game that was designed around the player. Gene seems like a game that was not meant to be played. Seriously, I'm guessing somewhere down the line, the designers made some kind of mistake that was so garish and game breaking that they decided to design the game so that the player ragequits before he gets to it.
That's all for now. I gotta cool down with some Astrobunny or something...
Links
This: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1550
PS- this game advertises itself as "Simple and fun." FFFFFFFUUUUUU-
*ahem*
To quote the wise game philosopher Jon Jafari, I don't know what anything in this game is. It's one of those mind-rapey RTS games with horrible conveyance like Empyrean Contrata. I'm really tempted to stop the review there and dismiss it as a bad game, but I wouldn't feel right about that. After all, I did blaze right through the text dump at the beginning that explained what i needed to do (even though it's my right as a gamer to do just that). I will say, though, I'm starting to get suspicious of the professors over at DigiPen. I'm sure they're all very qualified and all, but how do you let your students get away with stuff like this? This should be one of the first lessons they learn: text dumps bad! It's fine if one or two bad apples try and pull it, but when there are more games that just settle for the lazy text instruction method than games that even try conveying instruction through the mechanics, something has definitely gone wrong. I understand that it's hard to convey all the necessary knowledge to play a complex genre like RTS, but you could at least give it a try!
ugh...alright, so now I'm going to strap in and force myself to read the instructions at the beginning. Let's see how it goes.
Welp, that did absolutely nothing. I'm going to establish a rule now for text-based tutorials. First off, you're not allowed to have them. If that fails, for whatever reason, you have to at least proofread the text on the screen. Come on, DigiPen is a college. How do they get away with the kind of mistakes that would make a 4th grade English teacher spiral into drunken depression? Even if the tutorial were grammatically sound, which it's not, it would still make no sense. They used too much game-specific terminology and the text wall was too esoteric as a result. I don't know what it means to mutate a gene in the context of a game I haven't played yet.
Okay, I think I've made my point by now that the game fails miserably at conveying instruction to the player, which is definitely enough to get thrown into my junk pile from the get go. However, I'm not going to let all this free hotel wifi go to waste. Let's dig in deep and get nitpickin...
*5 minutes later*
AARGH nevermind! I can't take it anymore! I refuse to accept that this is a problem with the genre. There is just no excuse for game design this esoteric and asinine! Again, I'm not a game designer. I couldn't make this game if I tried. But you know what was the key word in there? TRIED! I know it's tough to make a game that's actually fun to play, but please, please put in the effort and try to make it a little bit enjoyable!
As I subjected myself to this game, one of the other guys in my hotel room was playing The Walking Dead on his Ipad. He could hardly contain the paroxysms of glee that came from a game that was designed around the player. Gene seems like a game that was not meant to be played. Seriously, I'm guessing somewhere down the line, the designers made some kind of mistake that was so garish and game breaking that they decided to design the game so that the player ragequits before he gets to it.
That's all for now. I gotta cool down with some Astrobunny or something...
Links
This: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1550
PS- this game advertises itself as "Simple and fun." FFFFFFFUUUUUU-
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