NOTE

Since Blogspot decided that it wanted to teach people to read bottom-to-top rather than top-to-bottom, my posts will appear in reverse chronological order.  To avoid this asinine layout, please use the Blog Archive located to the right of this post.  For those who don't know, that's this direction:

Thanks for your cooperation :)

Farewell

Well, here we are.  It seems like only yesterday I sat comfortably in the lobby of my grandma's condo in Florida, twinkly eyed and full of energy, playing 0xCELERATOR. For all the good and all the bad, 2013 has definitely been the most emotionally jam-packed year of my life.  This blog was one of the only things that gave 2013 some much needed stability. To me, this was the most meaningful project I've undertaken to date.  Thank you all so much for contributing to it.

I couldn't leave so unceremoniously after leaving you guys hanging for as long as I did, so I prepared a little surprise for you.  It's not much, but I hope it leaves a bit of an impression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5jo_8j7GA

Thanks again, guys.  Here's to an even better 2014.

WHAT THE HELL, DIGIPEN?

Okay, so today the DigiPen Game Gallery underwent a major design overhaul.  The list looks a lot more aesthetically pleasing now, so that's nice, but there's one major problem...what was it again? Oh yeah I have no idea where all the games are.  There were 2 games left on the old list that I was going to review today before moving onto the games I missed over the course of this year.  I searched for both of them and found neither.  So now, I don't know what to do.  As damning as this may be to me, I might have to take another short hiatus.  I don't see how I can continue until I make a plan to conquer this newest obstacle.  Stay tuned.

This blog was going to last for two more weeks, DigiPen.  TWO MORE WEEKS! You couldn't have waited until 2014 to completely alter your website?

Feets of Fury and Protista (Or, How I Learned to Write Nothing and Still Make Progress)

This is not really a typical review post.  Instead, it's going to end up being one of those updates that consist of me whining for 2 or 3 paragraphs.  I did try to play both of the games in the title, but neither of them worked.  With Feets of Fury, it was the same situation as Connection Established.  All I can show you is a video.  Unlike Connection Established, though, Feets of Fury didn't feature their youtube video on their game's webpage, so instead of linking you to the game itself, I'm just going to link the youtube video.  The video makes the game look like a fun, fast-paced platformer kind of like A Flipping Good Time, but again, I wasn't able to play it, so I can't say.

Protista was a bit more of an interesting adventure.  I knew this was going to be an interesting adventure when the thumbnail featured not a screenshot taken from the game, but a picture of some guy playing the game...on his Nintendo DS.  I personally don't own a DS, and even if I did, I would have no idea how to put a file I found on the internet into a DS cartridge...or whatever.  Instead, I found a DS Emulator and tried to use that (so yeah, my hard drive is even more pissed at me than usual), but even after I did that, I couldn't get the game to work.  It starts up fine, but the game has no sound and barely responds to any of my input.  When a reviewer says a game is "unplayable," they usually mean that the game is just incredibly frustrating to play, but Protista is literally unable to be played, at least on the emulator I was using.  Frankly, I have neither the time nor the patience to experiment with different kinds of emulators, so I'm just going to consider both of today's games broken.  Ironically, I still managed to write more today than I have for games that actually worked in the past...not sure whether that says more about me as a writer or certain DigiPen students as game designers...

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

Links
With incredible Speeds I'm Moving my Feets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zjyduEK0EM
I Miss Biology Class: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=436

Connection Established (kinda) and Contrive

The download link for Connection Established didn't work, so I'm only going to be reviewing Contrive.  for all it's worth, though, the link I'll post for Connection Established has a youtube video that showcases the game, so at least you can get a little taste of what it's like.

Contrive, while it doesn't advertise itself this way (thankfully) is one of those "poetic experience" type games.  The exclusion of these two words from the game's description makes me want to pass over the game's narrative, but do I really want to let the description of a game, let alone a single noun phrase therein, determine the content of my entire review?  No, I'm just going to review the game as if it didn't have a description, like I usually do.

The game is a series of puzzle-based levels with a short screen with some textual dialogue in between each.  It's sort of like Braid in that way.  The text tries to give some exposition about the plot of the game, but ends up just sounding like the ravings of a lunatic.  I understand that that's the entire point and that the narrative is not supposed to be completely comprehensible at first glance, but I've always given narrative structures like that a sour look.  Braid's story was complete gobbledygook (Seriously, Blogger?  You're not going to put a squiggly line under that one?  Okay...) as well, but it got away with it because the other elements of the game (gameplay, music, visual style, etc) all conveyed the feelings that the story was supposed to bring.  You didn't need to understand the story.  In Contrive, though, I feel like they made a perfectly fine puzzle platformer and then decided to add a deep, convoluted story that had nothing to do with the mechanics.  The flow of time was a major theme in Braid's story as well as its mechanics, but I didn't see any of that consistency in Contrive.  Then again, I only played through Contrive once, and I had to play Braid like 5 times before I understood it, so maybe the comparison is unfair.  Good lord this is a long paragraph...

Let's talk about the gameplay then.  The levels all consist of blocks, with each block containing platforms.  Before the platforms can be traversed, though, the blocks need to be rotated a certain way.  Imagine a regular succession of platforms, and then slice it into equal squares with a pizza cutter and rotate each individual square.  That's what a level of Contrive looks like.

For a puzzle game, the gameplay is relatively straightforward.  I never really had to think about which platforms to rotate which way, because the levels are designed so linearly.  If you just keep going without even thinking about the level as a whole and just rotate the blocks when you get to the little rotatory cube that allows you to manipulate the level, you'll pretty much get it every time.  A dummy block here and there wouldn't hurt.  As long as it's a puzzle game, try to stump me!

So without the mental engagement of a puzzle game or the physical engagement of a platformer, a game like Contrive falls pretty flat.  It's one of those games that didn't do anything wrong but didn't do anything particularly right either.  Maybe give it a shot if you're bored, but for the most part I'd say there's nothing to see here.

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

Links
Connection very much NOT established: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26726
Is a cute lil bunnymouse adventure: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26725

Abyss and Aurora

Well, here we go again.  I think I figured out why these 8 games are at the end of the list and so egregiously out of alphabetical order.  Whereas the other games on the list were all ".exe" files (whether real or not real), Abyss and Aurora were both ".msi" files.  Well jinkies, guys, I think we solved the mystery.

Remembering some older posts of mine, I realized that I seem to have a strange attraction to "ball games."  From Aescher to Leshy, whenever the protagonist is a spherical object traversing a world of geometric peril, I seem to be sold.  That said, it may come as no surprise that Abyss gets my recommendation.

I can, however, say that Abyss is my favorite of the "ball games" that I've played, so I'm not just enamored with it for its nature.  The game sold me with it's amazing controls.  The common problem with "ball games," which I definitely mentioned in one of my reviews...maybe Leshy's (yay professionalism), is that the momentum always seems out to get you.  In Abyss, while the physics may be a bit wonky at times, they are perfectly tuned to give the player maximum control over their character.

Abyss is careful not to overstay its welcome.  It only has 3 levels, each of which introduce and explore a new mechanic.  In the first level, you're just learning how to play.  In the second, a spring power is introduced.  In the third, an ice power.  If you need more elaboration to understand the game...well, good.  Go play it yourself and find out.  That way I have to write less and Abyss gets closer to the attention it deserves.  Win-win.  My point is that the game is perfectly paced.

Basically Everything in this game is expertly done.  The levels are designed to be manageable but challenging and always fun (with the exception of the very last section, which involves a lot of waiting...and I don't like waiting).  The iteration time between failure and retrial is wicked fast, and the game just feels great to play.

So, yeah, that's all I can really say about Abyss.  It's good enough to get my seal of approval.  Go play it.  Now, let's dive into Aurora.

This is a very interesting game that's very hard for me to describe.  The super abridged version is that you can control 2 or 3 cannons, which you use to shoot moving targets on the screen.  You can also shoot randomly spawning powerups for bonus points, upgraded weapons, etc.

The aesthetic can only be described as trippy.  The bright yet calm red and blue meld together in a way that draws you into the experience, and the immersive music seals the deal.  Add onto that the very active gameplay and you've got yourself one heck of a sense of flow.

The targets move along fixed rails, so the real challenge in the game is lining up your line of fire with the rail that your target is travelling along in order to maximize your chance at hitting it.  Either that or you can just get really good at timing your shots and just try to fire one round after another without worrying about lining up your shots optimally.  Both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages.

The biggest downside to this game is that, after playing through it, I still have no idea how half of it works.  My opinion on game design like this wavers a tad (I have lauded games like Dark Souls for allowing the player to complete the game without experiencing a good portion of it), but I feel like when you are able to utterly destroy the AI opponent without even knowing what one of your 3 primary buttons does, or why you keep stealing a hundred points from your opponent, then maybe the game has flawed conveyance.  I guess I can't fault the game too much for that last thing because it's literally the first thing mentioned in the tutorial, which I was too stubborn to look at before I played.  This entire paragraph is a very minor gripe, to be honest.

The bottom line is that Aurora is immersive and intense.  I only wish that the game explained itself a bit better and that the AI was a bit more of a challenge, but the experience was still very fun.  Now, do I give this game my seal of approval too?  Am I just getting way too generous?  See, I'm not sure.  Abyss got the seal of approval, yet I didn't have as much fun with that game as I did with Aurora.  On the other hand, Abyss didn't have as many flaws, so from a technical perspective, it's the better game.  I guess up until now, my seal of approval has been mostly reserved for games whose flaws, if they even existed, were negligible, and why would I change the formula halfway through my last month of writing?  Sorry, Aurora. You still get a hearty recommendation from me, but Abyss is the only one walking home with the seal today.

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

Links
Ab-Yes: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18581
Awrawrooo: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26727

Zombie Hut and Zombie Pancake Attack

Well, look what we have here.  What better way to end the alphabet than with two zombie shooters?  Well, I can think of a few...don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that the DigiPen gods have taken pity on my poor, tired soul with two entertaining yet insubstantial romps through pewpew town, it's just that having my review of two separate games inevitably take less than a page doesn't do much for my self esteem.  Oh well, we play the cards we're dealt.

Zombie Hut is the one that I really don't have much to say about.  It's a standard top-down zombie shooter wherein you have to deliver 30 (I think) pizzas before they get cold, all the while dodging and shooting impatient zombies who want their hapless delivery boy in 30 minutes or less.  Apart from your gun, you are armed only with medkits, grenades, and energy drinks which make you go faster, all of which are scattered about the level.  

While the grenade is kind of fun to use, it's not nearly as effective as your gun, which tears through zombies like the guillotine of Hephaestus through butter.  The medkits are standard, though you'll never need to use them if you just make an effort to pass by the hospital when your health gets low.  The only truly useful item is the energy drink, without which you might as well just sprinkle pepperoni on yourself and lie in wait of your inevitable demise.  With the energy drink in hand, though, the game becomes almost insultingly easy.  The only real threat is if you play like a fool and run yourself into a dead end, but even if that happens, you will probably have such a stockpile of grenades, bullets, and medkits that any number of zombies will crumble before your might like ants in a typhoon.

Ok, so maybe I had more to say about that game than I thought...regardless, whatever feelings my intro "paragraph" conveyed are probably similar to the ones you'll feel after playing Zombie Hut.  Not wholly satisfied, but still entertained.

Now then, let's get to Zombie Pancake Attack.  If this game had a marketing department, every member in it would deserve to be hunted down and sentenced to a hundred years of exile.  The game advertises itself as a "tower defense" game, and the little thumbnail thing makes it look like it was thrown together in an hour by a dude who has an elementary knowledge of C++ and MSPaint.

Despite the horrible job this game did at selling itself to me, I was actually very entertained by Zombie Pancake Attack.  Calling this game "tower defense" is like calling The Godfather an "Italian family drama."  Yeah, I guess that's technically accurate, but it's a severe undersell.  The only tower you're defending is yourself (and I guess the occasional townsperson), but you don't defend them by erecting automated turrets that fire at nauseatingly infrequent fixed intervals, you just shoot things!

You have two guns, a syrup gun and a plate gun.  You first have to douse your pancake adversaries in syrup, and then you can shoot a plate at them to teleport them into oblivion.  This is probably where the game derives its "strategy" name, but really all it boils down to is holding both the right and left mouse buttons and pointing at whatever you want to go away.

The game has three regular levels and two boss levels.  The differences in kinda among the three levels keep the game as engaging as shooting pancakes can be.  Yeah, the visual style is a little bland, but I find it at least charming, and it never took me out of the experience.  The sound direction is spot on, and the gameplay is solid.  My only real critique is that the game was as thought-provoking as it was challenging.  That is to say, not at all.  The only time I felt challenged was during the final boss, and that's just because I forgot I could move with A and D and was tanking unnecessary damage for the first half of the fight.

And that's it.  Just like that, I can say I've powered through the DigiPen Game Gallery A-Z.  Of course, you all know that my work is far from over.  For some reason, there are still a few games out of alphabetical order after this, and then I want to go back and retry all the games that were added over the course of this year.  It's going to be a fun couple of weeks, ain't it...

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

Links

Zombietime USA: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26148

Buttermilk Doomsday: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18534