XM-13 Deadly Assault is one of those games that reminds me that I'm reviewing school projects. It wasn't made to push any boundaries or test an idea or to present a new way of designing games, it was just made for the sake of being made. While it would be fallacious to say "not that there's anything wrong with that," it would also be a bit unrealistic of me to say every game should set out with some passionate agenda, and the inspiration behind the game doesn't intrinsically make the end product any better or worse. With that said, let's take a look.
XM-13 is your standard "splosions go everywhere bang bang boom" type of game. You control a giant mech, so the game naturally feels sluggish. I don't see why so many games feel the need to limit your sprint and jump functions. I mean the jump would make sense if this game had any real platforming, but for the most part it's just shooting everything in sight.
This game tried to go for the Attack of the 50ft Robot appeal (whoa, blast from the past. I'm gonna get emotional) that hits that primitive part of your brain that just wants to destroy. What 50ft Robot understood, though, is that the player needs to feel fully in control of the destruction they cause. That game didn't feel the need to jam the screen with particle effects: it just gave you things to crush and let you crush them. Most importantly, 50ft Robot controlled smooth as butter.
XM-13 on the other hand, chugs like a steam train in a beer drinking contest. It's pretty bad when a game boldly declares "tactical nuke inbound" and my first reaction is not "oh, this is gonna be sweet" but rather "ooh, the framerate's not gonna like that." I've said before that my laptop is a pretty disappointing piece of machinery (even though it's an ostensibly top-of-the line Alienware, so idk what that's about), but come on. I was just running Saints Row IV seamlessly and I can't handle a game that might have looked impressive in 2005? Look, I'm not suggesting that a DigiPen game should resemble the newest games with cutting-edge graphics nor am I suggesting that DigiPen studenst should be as good at optimization as people who do that for a living. All I'm saying is that if you're going to push the envelope and go for graphical quality, you'd better be able to make it run, because a game with poor graphics at 60 frames per second looks and feels a hell of a lot better than even the most visually stunning games at 2 frames per second.
And Xtreme Arena was a not real exe, so that's all I got for now. Until next time, stay deadly.
Links
W-DED Sirius XM: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26688
doesn't exist: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=604
