Propero

Whoa! Hng-Oh God..

In my experience at the DigiPen Game Gallery, there have been quite a few racing games, and while many were good and many were bad, there were pretty much only 2 that actually made a lasting impression on me.  Those two were Nitronic Rush, a game that delivered exactly the experience that was advertised with only very minor faults in level design, and A Series of Tubes, a game almost as diseased as its developers, who were stricken by a severe case of senioritis.  What if I told you that Propero was like if those two games had a child?

It takes the high-octane, adrenaline-fueled gameplay from Nitronic Rush and its visual style and absurd speed from A Series of Tubes.

The final product actually works very well, and while it is plagued with some really irritating design flaws like the classic "esc" insta-closeout, the game as a whole has a reasonable difficulty curve and gameplay that will really make you grip the edge of your seat (or, in my case, just giggle a little bit).

You know how oftentimes I'll criticise a game for not having enough "polish?"  Well, here's an example of a very unpolished game that's still incredibly fun to play.  I was thinking of witholding my seal of approval for this one because of how unrefined it is, but screw it.  I had enough fun to warrant giving this game the highest honor I can.

I would talk more about why, precisely, the game is good, but Blogger is giving me a weird glitch at the moment where I can't type anything unless the mouse button is being held, so instead of the rest of the review, here's a relevant image.



That's all I got for today, until next time, stay speedy.

Prominence

Prominence is a 3rd-ish person shooter where you shoot little bits of yourself to kill other enemies, which then turn into absorbable globules that make you bigger and, therefore, give you more ammo.  You shrink in size as you take enemy fire or go out of bounds.

I say "3rd-ish" because the camera appears to be embedded inside you.  I don't know, something about the angle is very weird...maybe it's because the camera is placed directly behind the character at all times, making you seem like a blue smudge mark on the lens.

Other than that, though, the central mechanic is solid and the gameplay is quite fun.  It's another one of those small, time-wastey games like Bossinabox or Claustrophere.  The shooting works well, and killing enemies is both challenging and satisfying.

I'm going to save us all some time and say that other than the less-than-beautiful visual style, the only real problem is the camera.  It's especially aggravating when you go out of bounds without even knowing where the bounds are.  The whole thing feels just a bit too disorienting.

All in all, it's a decent start but it needs a bit of tweaking.  That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay big.

Links
Big Blob Kill Little Blob: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26677

Promethia7

Ah, the noble shoot 'em up.  In my opinion, some of the greatest games ever created operate under this name.  These games tend to be created with only one objective in mind: fun.  It's not about telling a story or advancing the medium, both of which are very venerable and worthwhile endeavors, mind you, but the shoot 'em up says "forget all that for now.  You deserve to unwind, so here are some 'splodable things.  Enjoy."

One branch on the tree that is the shoot 'em up is the bullet hell.  Typically top-down shooters that flood the screen with so many enemy projectiles that attempting to follow them all will probably result in a brain hemorrhage.  Done well, the bullet hell will allow the player to step back, analyzing only vague patterns along the screen, and enter a state of flow unlike any other.  Done poorly, it's a frustrating, stressful mess that will have players throwing their controllers into various inorganic substances, screaming "I quit!"

Promethia7 is, thankfully, an example of a good bullet hell...half of the time.  Essentially, there are 2 portions to each level in the game.  There's the very short, enemy-filled pathway leading up to the boss, and then there's the boss battle, which is clearly the focal point of the level.  In this way, the level structure is kind of similar to that of the Joe and Mac games.

Now, here's my question to the developers:  what did you intend the player to do in those short passageways leading up to the boss?  Did you want the player to actually take time dispatching each and every enemy? Because I just ran right past them as soon as I figured out that was an option.  Sure, the enemies drop health and ammo when killed, but you'll spend way more of that stuff killing all of them than you will ever gain.  Besides, the boss fights all have smaller enemies within them, whom you can kill and reap the same benefits.

See, in Joe and Mac, the pre-boss level made sense because there were powerups for your weapon and such that you could get there.  These would in turn make the boss fights easier, but only if you were skilled enough not to lose half your health fighting the smaller guys.  In Promethia7, there are no powerups, just items to replenish what you lost by being there in the first place.  Thus, there's no reason to actually take out the guys before the boss.

That said, the boss fights are done pretty well.  There's enough stuff on the screen to make the whole thing challenging, but not quite enough to drive the player into sensory overload.  I still haven't come close to beating the third boss, but hey, that doesn't mean the game is unfair.  Just that I'm not good enough to conquer it.   If you just ignore the parts before the boss battles, this game ain't too bad.

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

Links
Esoteric Word Followed by Number: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26661

PS- there's a SWORD in this game?  I only figured that out after I replayed it and clicked the "how to play" button for kicks and giggles.  Good conveyance there, guys.  5 stars...

Project3

Really, guys?  Two CUB3 clones in one day?

Alright, well at least this one has some damn substance.  Actually, I'm not sure whether I like this game more than I like CUB3.  They both have their advantages.

I think the main thing Project3 has going for it is the aesthetic.  This game is quite pretty.  And hey, CUB3 was nothing to sneeze at either, but I think Project3 has it beat.  The colors pop more, the sound effects are crisper, the turning is smoother, it just feels better.

The thing that CUB3 has over Project3 is variety, and CUB3 did not have much variety.  The only real difference in the gameplay is that CUB3 let you use missiles as well as lasers to take down your enemies.  In Project3, it's lasers or gtfo.

Really, there's a very simple way to determine whether I recommend this game to you.  Didja like the space shooter sections in Star Wars: Battlefront II?  Yeah?  Then you'll like this.  End of story.

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

Links
Third Project: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1409

Project Zeit

Well, this was different.

Project Zeit can best be described as Chibi Robo meets Grand Theft Auto.  I'll give your mind a moment to stop imploding...you good?  Alright.

you play as a robotic Vietnam veteran who is strapped for cash and has to take on a job at a delivery service.  That delivery service is in some serious financial trouble as a result of it being a generally terrible service being located not too far from a vastly superior one which you, in all your robotic, logic-processing glory, decided to forego.  

Then again, maybe it's for the best you don't try offering your services to a place that can actually afford to fire you, because since the various surfaces of the overworld all have the same amount of friction, you're going to be barreling through roads, sidewalks, and lawns alike just to get to your next objective.

Pretty soon after you learn the ropes, the game decides to give you a gun, at which point all bets are off and you, as the bloodthirsty player, decide to just go ape-nuts bonkers.  Soon enough, by doing missions that come right the hell out of nowhere (such as 'sploding cars with c4), you get more weapons and are able to go even more lollipop loony.

Actually, this game ends up being kind of similar to Attack of the 50ft Robot. Except you're not 50ft, you're just a robot who uses conventional means to tear up the city. 

Aside from all that, the game's design is preposterously sloppy, but I actually think that adds to the charm.  For example, while walking around on foot, the entire city may as well be built on an ice rink, because you slip around like mad.  I think that's kind of fun, though. It's not so bad to the point where getting to where you need to go is impossible or even frustrating.  It's just funny.

One sloppy design choice that I didn't care for, though, was the completely arbitrary placement of checkpoints.  No wonder the delivery service is doing poorly, the routes you have to take make the US Postal Service seem efficient.  It's not too terribly inconvenient to just drive back to where you were once you go through an obnoxiously out of place checkpoint, so it didn't bother me too much, but still.

The thing that bothered me most, though, is that there is only one save point in the entire overworld (or at least only one that I could find).  This means that you not only have to remember how to get back to that save point, but you actually have to put in the travel time to get there before you can quit without losing progress.  Whyyyyyy.

The whole game just kind of smells like "don't give a damn," which I find to be a quite appealing fragrance if applied to an appealing surface.  In some cases, it can be a death sentence for games that are designed to be taken seriously.  Project Zeit is just a silly little adventure that's a great relaxation tool.

That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay predominant.

I have no idea what they were going for with this title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=504

Project Starfighter

I tried, I really tried to come up with some clever analysis of this game, but I just couldn't think of anything.  The only thing that strikes me about this game is that it's CUB3 but worse.

Everything is gray, there are no sound effects, the controls are floaty as hell...actually, on the subject of controls, you guys all know that I love WASD as a default movement control, but in this game, it's counterproductive.  See, the "A" and "D" keys do the same thing as moving your mouse left and right.  It's not a bad thing, but still...just kinda pointless.  Actually, I guess it's better to have the option to control with the keyboard for players who prefer to do so, but up and down don't have alternate controls, so the whole thing just feels sloppy.

This was a senior game, surprise surprise.  The guys who made this were probably done learning about game design, and they needed to make some sort of game because of educational obligations.  That's what I'm guessing, at least, almost all of the games on this list that have made me just feel defeated and without anything useful to say have been senior games.

Some day I'm going to figure out how to make the senior games interesting...but it is not this day.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay involved.

Links
Project Unoriginal: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=406

Mass Effect 3.

it tired me out, all right.  After plowing through to the end, I hopped on the DigiPen gallery, saw that the next game in line was a 3D space shooter, and said "that is a big fat nope."