No time to explain. I just got home and I have SATs tomorrow. You guys know I try to make time for these reviews, but I just couldnt do it this time. Not the end of the world. After all, I've skipped days before. I promise I'll go hardcore tomorrow
Salutations
Friday, January 25, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
BEMPU
This game...is an absolute mess.
If pinball and roulette had some kind of mutant lovechild, this would be it. As soon as you press start, you are bombarded by sound effects and a confusing game screen before you realize that the only controls that do anything are lift and right click to control your left and right bumpers, respectively. Basically, there's a pair of bumpers on each edge of a shape of your choosing (hexagon for 6 players, etc). Whenever a ball comes within striking range of your bumpers, hit a button. That's how you play. Literally. That's it.
So, basically, you spend 90% of your time waiting for the opportunity to hit a ball and sighing. Sounds like fun? I didn't think so. See, pinball is fun because of its fast pace. When you aren't actively hitting a bumper, you're frantically scanning around, attempting to trace the path of the little shiny metal ball as it bounces off of stuff. This can get a little tricky and it certainly requires focus, but it's manageable and fun because it only forces you to look at one thing. The human mind can trace one object rather easily. BEMPU, on the other hand, features many slow-moving objects rather than one fast-moving one. This makes the game not only boring but also very disorienting. Even if you did try to follow the motion paths of all the balls as they flew through the air, it seems like ages before you actually get the opportunity to hit one of them.
Also, remember before when I said I would stop commenting on sound direction unless there was genuinely something worth talking about? Well in this game, there is no music. I already commented on the confusing and discombobulated sound effects, so I think we can all agree the sound direction isn't exactly competent.
In summary, this game is a bug-eyed, delirious mess that I suggest you pass on unless you want to study it to gain knowledge about the human mind and its weaknesses.
I was kind of harsh in this review, I admit, but you know what? I'm glad that this game was made. Damn glad. All that info I spewed about the difference between one vs many objects I learned just from playing this game. This kind of hearkens back to my Astrobunny review where I commented on the possible benefit to scholarly pursuits that game can have. I see that same faintly glimmering diamond somewhere in BEMPU, but whereas Astrobunny was a genuinely enjoyable experience, BEMPU just hurts.
Thanks for hearing me out again. Until next time, stay sentient.
If pinball and roulette had some kind of mutant lovechild, this would be it. As soon as you press start, you are bombarded by sound effects and a confusing game screen before you realize that the only controls that do anything are lift and right click to control your left and right bumpers, respectively. Basically, there's a pair of bumpers on each edge of a shape of your choosing (hexagon for 6 players, etc). Whenever a ball comes within striking range of your bumpers, hit a button. That's how you play. Literally. That's it.
So, basically, you spend 90% of your time waiting for the opportunity to hit a ball and sighing. Sounds like fun? I didn't think so. See, pinball is fun because of its fast pace. When you aren't actively hitting a bumper, you're frantically scanning around, attempting to trace the path of the little shiny metal ball as it bounces off of stuff. This can get a little tricky and it certainly requires focus, but it's manageable and fun because it only forces you to look at one thing. The human mind can trace one object rather easily. BEMPU, on the other hand, features many slow-moving objects rather than one fast-moving one. This makes the game not only boring but also very disorienting. Even if you did try to follow the motion paths of all the balls as they flew through the air, it seems like ages before you actually get the opportunity to hit one of them.
Also, remember before when I said I would stop commenting on sound direction unless there was genuinely something worth talking about? Well in this game, there is no music. I already commented on the confusing and discombobulated sound effects, so I think we can all agree the sound direction isn't exactly competent.
In summary, this game is a bug-eyed, delirious mess that I suggest you pass on unless you want to study it to gain knowledge about the human mind and its weaknesses.
I was kind of harsh in this review, I admit, but you know what? I'm glad that this game was made. Damn glad. All that info I spewed about the difference between one vs many objects I learned just from playing this game. This kind of hearkens back to my Astrobunny review where I commented on the possible benefit to scholarly pursuits that game can have. I see that same faintly glimmering diamond somewhere in BEMPU, but whereas Astrobunny was a genuinely enjoyable experience, BEMPU just hurts.
Thanks for hearing me out again. Until next time, stay sentient.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Beluxed Defense
You know what, guys? I'm just pooped. Straight up pooped.
I just got home at 7:00pm with an assload and a half of work bearing down upon me, not to mention a math test to study for. I hope you guys appreciate me coming out here and spewing words at your face parts...
Well anyway, I was kind of looking forward to Beluxed Defense because it advertised itself as a "humorous" game, which is just what I need to distract myself from my inevitable demise. Apparently, though, my blinky lights machine that I blew half my savings on doesn't have pixel shader 3.0 technology (which is bs, by the way. I checked and it does) so I can't run Beluxed Defense.
All the better for me. Now I get to say nothing and still feel good about myself for posting.
I wish I had the time to be witty, but I've already blown more time than I should have writing this. Maybe when it's midnight and I'm burned out but still too high on caffeine to sleep I'll come back and drunkenly reveal some deep, personal secrets. Don't count on that, though. I'll probably just pass out.
Until next time, stop procrastinating (unless you procrastinate by reading my reviews...then it's ok).
Links
maybe you have pixel shader 3.0:https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=401
I just got home at 7:00pm with an assload and a half of work bearing down upon me, not to mention a math test to study for. I hope you guys appreciate me coming out here and spewing words at your face parts...
Well anyway, I was kind of looking forward to Beluxed Defense because it advertised itself as a "humorous" game, which is just what I need to distract myself from my inevitable demise. Apparently, though, my blinky lights machine that I blew half my savings on doesn't have pixel shader 3.0 technology (which is bs, by the way. I checked and it does) so I can't run Beluxed Defense.
All the better for me. Now I get to say nothing and still feel good about myself for posting.
I wish I had the time to be witty, but I've already blown more time than I should have writing this. Maybe when it's midnight and I'm burned out but still too high on caffeine to sleep I'll come back and drunkenly reveal some deep, personal secrets. Don't count on that, though. I'll probably just pass out.
Until next time, stop procrastinating (unless you procrastinate by reading my reviews...then it's ok).
Links
maybe you have pixel shader 3.0:https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=401
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Bear Pile
Another day, another review frantically pushed through the series of tubes known as the internets.
I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet and say Bear Pile is an impressive game with a surprising amount of polish. There's my review in a nutshell. You can leave if you want.
Of course, I wouldn't feel right about myself if I left you with just that. Here's a more in-depth analysis:
The graphics are probably the game's most impressive feature. Everything is colorful and stylized as well as being competently textured, giving off what I would call the best 3D graphical style on this list so far (with the exception of Base Invaders).
The sound direction is well done, too. Again, there's not much to say. I'm probably going to stop including this section in my reviews unless I have something outstanding to comment on. I think what I like best about the sound direction in Bear Pile are the sound effects. They do a great job cluing you in as to what's happening. I feel like I could play this game with my eyes closed, but don't want to because it looks so damn pretty.
The gameplay is, once again, the main selling point. The hook this time around is that there are two armories, a defensive cache and an offensive cache, that you can take stuff from. There are no unnecessary gimmicks like warm up time, thus keeping the game fast-paced and fun. You can only carry one weapon at a time, so you need to decide whether to go for an offensive approach or a defensive approach. Although, you won't get far unless you use both caches. The one problem I have is that there's one strategy that's quite easy to figure out and trumps all the others. Build up the defensive before the bears get close and then switch to offensive and smash the bears' heads in with a lead pipe.
All things considered, this game impressed me. One nitpick point I feel I should add in here is that the game doesn't let you alt+tab out of it. I usually play these games with Blogger and Skype open, but while I was playing Bear Pile, I couldn't use either. A bit annoying, but I say you should still give it a shot.
Until next time, stay away from the bears.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18584
I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet and say Bear Pile is an impressive game with a surprising amount of polish. There's my review in a nutshell. You can leave if you want.
Of course, I wouldn't feel right about myself if I left you with just that. Here's a more in-depth analysis:
The graphics are probably the game's most impressive feature. Everything is colorful and stylized as well as being competently textured, giving off what I would call the best 3D graphical style on this list so far (with the exception of Base Invaders).
The sound direction is well done, too. Again, there's not much to say. I'm probably going to stop including this section in my reviews unless I have something outstanding to comment on. I think what I like best about the sound direction in Bear Pile are the sound effects. They do a great job cluing you in as to what's happening. I feel like I could play this game with my eyes closed, but don't want to because it looks so damn pretty.
The gameplay is, once again, the main selling point. The hook this time around is that there are two armories, a defensive cache and an offensive cache, that you can take stuff from. There are no unnecessary gimmicks like warm up time, thus keeping the game fast-paced and fun. You can only carry one weapon at a time, so you need to decide whether to go for an offensive approach or a defensive approach. Although, you won't get far unless you use both caches. The one problem I have is that there's one strategy that's quite easy to figure out and trumps all the others. Build up the defensive before the bears get close and then switch to offensive and smash the bears' heads in with a lead pipe.
All things considered, this game impressed me. One nitpick point I feel I should add in here is that the game doesn't let you alt+tab out of it. I usually play these games with Blogger and Skype open, but while I was playing Bear Pile, I couldn't use either. A bit annoying, but I say you should still give it a shot.
Until next time, stay away from the bears.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18584
Monday, January 21, 2013
Be Good
Well, this was...uh...interesting.
Be Good is an interactive story in the most basic sense of the word. It's a point-and-click claymation game where you live the life of Donald Martin, an average ordinary everyday guy as he journeys from infancy to adulthood, having to make moral choices along the way.
Now, moral choice systems are a relatively debated topic in games today. Some people think they overcomplicate things while others think they add a huge amount of depth that makes the narrative of a game that much more entertaining. Still others think that moral choice systems have the potential to add that kind of depth, but modern implementation of the systems causes them to simply overcomplicate things. I happen to be in this third category, and the reason for that is that moral choice systems are usually binary, meaning there are only two paths to go down. This doesn't leave any room for experiementation or nuance. I'm reminded of one point in Mass Effect 2, a game to which I took a mostly paragon approach, where I needed to choose whether to give a hungry Krogan a fish that he thinks was caught in the magical waters of the Praesidium (but actually was just bought from the store next door) or to keep the fish and tell the Krogan that there are actually no fish in the Praesidium. I wanted to give him the fish for free and wish him a good day as he chowed down on childish delightful wonder, but when I chose the "give him the fish" option (which was the renegade choice) I ended up shaking him down for all the money he had on him, leaving him incapable of buying a gun that he needed to protect himself.
Wow, that was quite a tangent. The reason I mentioned it is because this is the kind of system Be Good is built from. You click around occasionally talking to people around you and having to pick between happy face and sad face. It actually took me a while to realize that the happy/sad screen was a "choose your path" screen because the game never tells you that. It just throws 2 faces in front of you and leaves it up to you to figure out that the faces are actually buttons. See, you have to click in order to progress the dialogue, so the first couple of times this screen came up, I just kept clicking without knowledge of where my cursor was and ended up making choices I didn't necessarily want to.
Other times, it is very difficult to determine exactly which choice is the right one because the buttons don't always do what you'd think they do. Once I was accused of drawing a nasty picture of a girl in my class and was ordered to apologize. When the happy/sad screen came up, I picked happy, thinking that it represented the good feelings to come after I apologized. Apparently, in this instance, happy meant "keep being a douchenugget" and just like that I had a mark on my discipline sheet.
I find the most engaging parts of the game come from environmental interaction. For instance, as an infant I kept badgering my mom while she was trying to cook. Her response changed a bit every time until suddenly the whole family was eating pizza for dinner. See, in this instance, I had a clear idea of who I was annoying and why. I had full control over my actions and I could predict the implications thereof. If the whole game was somehow like this, I think it would have been improved.
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Be Good. I might even give it another go or two to see how many different experiences I can get from it. If it had a little more time and manpower (surprisingly, the whole game was made by one guy) I think it could have been a really neat little interactive story. As it stands, everyone's experience with the game may be a bit different, but everyone will be a little annoyed with the game's design. Still, I encourage you to try it out. Who knows, you may even learn something about yourself.
Until next time, be good (that was too easy).
Links
happy face sad face: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25460
Be Good is an interactive story in the most basic sense of the word. It's a point-and-click claymation game where you live the life of Donald Martin, an average ordinary everyday guy as he journeys from infancy to adulthood, having to make moral choices along the way.
Now, moral choice systems are a relatively debated topic in games today. Some people think they overcomplicate things while others think they add a huge amount of depth that makes the narrative of a game that much more entertaining. Still others think that moral choice systems have the potential to add that kind of depth, but modern implementation of the systems causes them to simply overcomplicate things. I happen to be in this third category, and the reason for that is that moral choice systems are usually binary, meaning there are only two paths to go down. This doesn't leave any room for experiementation or nuance. I'm reminded of one point in Mass Effect 2, a game to which I took a mostly paragon approach, where I needed to choose whether to give a hungry Krogan a fish that he thinks was caught in the magical waters of the Praesidium (but actually was just bought from the store next door) or to keep the fish and tell the Krogan that there are actually no fish in the Praesidium. I wanted to give him the fish for free and wish him a good day as he chowed down on childish delightful wonder, but when I chose the "give him the fish" option (which was the renegade choice) I ended up shaking him down for all the money he had on him, leaving him incapable of buying a gun that he needed to protect himself.
Wow, that was quite a tangent. The reason I mentioned it is because this is the kind of system Be Good is built from. You click around occasionally talking to people around you and having to pick between happy face and sad face. It actually took me a while to realize that the happy/sad screen was a "choose your path" screen because the game never tells you that. It just throws 2 faces in front of you and leaves it up to you to figure out that the faces are actually buttons. See, you have to click in order to progress the dialogue, so the first couple of times this screen came up, I just kept clicking without knowledge of where my cursor was and ended up making choices I didn't necessarily want to.
Other times, it is very difficult to determine exactly which choice is the right one because the buttons don't always do what you'd think they do. Once I was accused of drawing a nasty picture of a girl in my class and was ordered to apologize. When the happy/sad screen came up, I picked happy, thinking that it represented the good feelings to come after I apologized. Apparently, in this instance, happy meant "keep being a douchenugget" and just like that I had a mark on my discipline sheet.
I find the most engaging parts of the game come from environmental interaction. For instance, as an infant I kept badgering my mom while she was trying to cook. Her response changed a bit every time until suddenly the whole family was eating pizza for dinner. See, in this instance, I had a clear idea of who I was annoying and why. I had full control over my actions and I could predict the implications thereof. If the whole game was somehow like this, I think it would have been improved.
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Be Good. I might even give it another go or two to see how many different experiences I can get from it. If it had a little more time and manpower (surprisingly, the whole game was made by one guy) I think it could have been a really neat little interactive story. As it stands, everyone's experience with the game may be a bit different, but everyone will be a little annoyed with the game's design. Still, I encourage you to try it out. Who knows, you may even learn something about yourself.
Until next time, be good (that was too easy).
Links
happy face sad face: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25460
Battlepod
Yet another game that just straight up doesn't work. I got as far as the loading screen before the game decided to crash. Oh well. I'm running out of witty things to say about nothing, so I'm just gonna end it here.
Links
nothing: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25902
#2LineReviews.
Links
nothing: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25902
#2LineReviews.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Battle Ball Brawl
oof...my head...
I want to like this game, I really do! It's faced paced, it's action-packed, the concept is clever enough...
Alas, I can't find myself recommending Battle Ball Brawl. The biggest problem it has is the control. Oh, God, the control. Anyone who's attempted playing a first person shooter on a Wii knows how frustrating it is that aiming your weapon also turns the camera. Those two functions just don't mix. In a game like Goldeneye 007, the player moves the camera but the weapon stays stiff as a board. That's fine, as is a control setup like that of any Call of Duty game where the camera and weapon are moved with different analog sticks. In Battle Ball Brawl, however, the mouse aims not only the weapon, but also the camera, making aiming very slippery and difficult to control. You're lucky to line up your crosshairs with your enemy for a fraction of a second, which doesn't help much when most of the weapons have insultingly low rates of fire.
Aside from the control, the game pretty much does everything right. It's a standard third-person shooter geared toward multiplayer, but also sporting AI for those who showed up to this party stag. The main gimmick is that you can leap onto different planets in a deep-space shooting environment. There's a lot of potential in this concept to create tense, fast-paced strategic battles like something out of Ender's Game where gravity must be manipulated to your advantage. However, the inaccuracy of the weapons and aforementioned sloppy controls make such scenarios impossible, and the best strategy instantly becomes "rush up to your nearest opponent, stand still and fire away." This kind of gameplay delivers no kind of flow and is just outright boring.
The sound direction is good. Nothing to complain about. In addition, the graphics are, while nothing to behold by modern standards, pleasing to look at.
This game reminds me a lot of Forsaken 64, which also tried to incorporate shooting in an augmented-gravity environment. I actually really liked Forsaken 64, despite the fact that it fell into the same pitfall as Battle Ball Brawl. It's controls were hard to grasp, and lining up your shots was a brain-numbing chore.
In conclusion, I would be a happy camper if this game were remade with a budget. The mechanic alone isn't revolutionary enough to sell a game to the AAA industry, so it would need a narrative. My suggestion would be to use the gravity-manipulation mechanic and outer-space aesthetic to create a video game adaptation of Ender's Game, or at a budget game based only around the interscholastic battles therein. What with the movie adaptation scheduled to come out in November of this year, it seems an opportune time to put this plan into action.
And so ends my spiel for today. I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time, stay spacey.
Links
Literally Spaceballs: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=417
I want to like this game, I really do! It's faced paced, it's action-packed, the concept is clever enough...
Alas, I can't find myself recommending Battle Ball Brawl. The biggest problem it has is the control. Oh, God, the control. Anyone who's attempted playing a first person shooter on a Wii knows how frustrating it is that aiming your weapon also turns the camera. Those two functions just don't mix. In a game like Goldeneye 007, the player moves the camera but the weapon stays stiff as a board. That's fine, as is a control setup like that of any Call of Duty game where the camera and weapon are moved with different analog sticks. In Battle Ball Brawl, however, the mouse aims not only the weapon, but also the camera, making aiming very slippery and difficult to control. You're lucky to line up your crosshairs with your enemy for a fraction of a second, which doesn't help much when most of the weapons have insultingly low rates of fire.
Aside from the control, the game pretty much does everything right. It's a standard third-person shooter geared toward multiplayer, but also sporting AI for those who showed up to this party stag. The main gimmick is that you can leap onto different planets in a deep-space shooting environment. There's a lot of potential in this concept to create tense, fast-paced strategic battles like something out of Ender's Game where gravity must be manipulated to your advantage. However, the inaccuracy of the weapons and aforementioned sloppy controls make such scenarios impossible, and the best strategy instantly becomes "rush up to your nearest opponent, stand still and fire away." This kind of gameplay delivers no kind of flow and is just outright boring.
The sound direction is good. Nothing to complain about. In addition, the graphics are, while nothing to behold by modern standards, pleasing to look at.
This game reminds me a lot of Forsaken 64, which also tried to incorporate shooting in an augmented-gravity environment. I actually really liked Forsaken 64, despite the fact that it fell into the same pitfall as Battle Ball Brawl. It's controls were hard to grasp, and lining up your shots was a brain-numbing chore.
In conclusion, I would be a happy camper if this game were remade with a budget. The mechanic alone isn't revolutionary enough to sell a game to the AAA industry, so it would need a narrative. My suggestion would be to use the gravity-manipulation mechanic and outer-space aesthetic to create a video game adaptation of Ender's Game, or at a budget game based only around the interscholastic battles therein. What with the movie adaptation scheduled to come out in November of this year, it seems an opportune time to put this plan into action.
And so ends my spiel for today. I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time, stay spacey.
Links
Literally Spaceballs: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=417
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