Temporal Power Racing and Terra

Alright, so maybe I overreacted earlier.  Yeah, the addition of 14 new games so close to the end of the year kinda screwed me up, but not THAT much.  My schedule is relatively unchanged, though I'm going to have to do these "double the games, half the quality" type reviews more often.

Anyways, let's talk about these games quickly, because I'm tired and really looking forward to hitting the hay.

Temporal Power Racing is your standard F-Zero clone, so if you're into that kind of game, then yay for you.  I found something you should totally try out.  For the rest of us, though...eh.  The game isn't poorly designed, but it seems a lot more frustrating than it has to be.

The basic setup is decent enough.  The levels are littered with red and blue patches.  You swap between red and blue by hitting the "z" button, and depending on what color you are when you go over a patch, you will either get a speed boost or be slowed to a near stop.  It's one of those ideas that sounds pretty bad on paper, after all, it's just adding an unnecessary step to the racing, but it actually works out to be pretty fun, though it does nothing to alleviate the stereotype that DigiPen students approach gamemaking as "How can we remake Ikaruga today?"

The real problem with the game is the car design.  Usually, in a racing game like F-Zero, where the different cars are afforded ranks for how well they turn, their max speed, acceleration, etc, the player can look at those ranks and interpret their car choice as "how do I want to win this race?  Do I want to blaze past the rest carelessly or do I want to carefully maneuver around my opponents, etc, etc, etc."  In this game, the question is "in which way would it be least frustrating to get absolutely piledriven into last place?"  I'm not saying the game is too hard, it's just that the fast carts all have terrible turning and the carts that allow you to stay on the track are too slow to be competitive.  This doesn't make for a challenge, it makes for frustration.

Still, though, the graphical style is interesting and the gameplay isn't terrible, so I'll still give it a reluctant recommendation.  Now, then, let's talk Terra.

Terra confused me quite a bit at first.  Firstly, there's no academic year listed next to it in the game gallery, leading me to believe that this game was conjured from some intemporal void that transcends time and space, like it's our gift from God or something.  Actually, the game displays the Valve logo upon startup, oddly enough, so I guess it is a gift from God...Well, if so, it's a shame God didn't keep the receipt.

Okay, that was too harsh.  Terra is actually not bad.  Some might find it pretty damn good.  The concept is original and creative:  tilt the world using RMB to manipulate your surroundings in order to get from point A to point B.  When it works, it's actually very fun.  I ragequit after the second level, however, because of how easy it is to kill yourself in this game.  One errant nudge could mean the difference between completing a puzzle and being squished against a wall, losing all your life in a matter of nanoseconds.

So yeah, the word of the day is "frustration," kiddies.  Try to avoid it at all costs.  These games didn't, and they suffered because of it.  I can recommend Terra for its polished and professional look and TPR for its interesting "Mortal Combat meets F-Zero 64" graphical style, but otherwise, I am largely unimpressed.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay rewarding

Links
Big Words, Little Cars: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=434
Overused Latin Word: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=23877

OH GOD NO HELP ME PLEASE GOD WHY

So I got home today from a particularly abysmal day of school, checked the DigiPen Game Gallery and....huh...something's not right...

...wait a minute...

...oh God...

...did they?...yes....yes they did....

They added 14 more games...

.............................please help me...

So yeah, in a tragically ironic twist of fate, my seeing that left me with infinitely less motivation than I had when I typed that ever fateful "Dig" into my address bar.  I'll try and get a review out tonight, but....damn.  I was already running way behind schedule.  I don't know how I'm going to deal with this...

Well...I've still got a month and a half.  Maybe a kindly old demon will appear to me and offer me some more motivation in exchange for the other half of my soul.  One can only hope...

Peace