Oh goodie, another FPS game! Will it be a fun and intuitive experience like Fight Zone or will it give me more headaches than Echo did? Yes, I've had a pretty interesting experience when it comes to DigiPen FPS games. The noble first person shooter is, while not really a genre in and of itself, my favorite "breed" of video game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those foam-mouthed thrill seekers who play FPS games for the rush of the violence. In fact, I think it's a shame that modern FPS games tend to stick to the same formula when my favorite game of all time (slight props to anyone who can figure it out) deviated so greatly from the "linear shooting gallery" rigmarole. The perspective allows you to truly inject yourself into the character and experience the narrative to the fullest extent and the mechanics of a typical "shooter" game tend to be intuitive and natural. That said, it's very easy to use those qualities as fallbacks to justify an overall mediocre experience.
But now I'm just rambling, so I'm going to cut myself off there. Let's get into the review and find out where on the FPS spectrum FP-FS lands, shall we?
Well, upon starting up FP-FS I was delighted to see that it seemed to take a bit of inspiration from my aforementioned favorite game of all time, using words like "augmentation" and "multitool" (is it clear enough yet?). Indeed, the soundless tutorial screens got me fired up enough to tear through this game like a hot knife through butter. It was when I started looking for the "start game" button that I noticed the words "now loading" at the bottom of the screen. This had been going on for a good 5 minutes, and there was no progress bar to speak of, so I just assumed the game had crashed.
As I write this, I plan to start the game up again and let it sit for as long as it needs to. Hopefully I'll be able to occupy myself with whatever happens to be on Animal Planet...
*sigh* Yeah, this game is just a loading screen. Darn, I was really looking forward to it, too. Oh well. I hope my random musings on FPS games were at least somewhat entertaining. Until next time...
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=448
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Foxglove Copperfield: Robot Hunter
Whoa, nelly! This is gonna be interesting. Not only is this the biggest game (with the exception of Crazy Cross, which I'm still working on) so far, but it's the only one that requires Steam to play it. This is getting serious.
Unfortunately, this is 300+MB of deadweight. That's right, it's another broken game. What a shame. It crashes right after the initial loading screen.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25276
Unfortunately, this is 300+MB of deadweight. That's right, it's another broken game. What a shame. It crashes right after the initial loading screen.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25276
Founder's Glory
At first I thought this game had the opposite problem as Flux in that the video was working fine with no audio. Then I fired my weapon, having forgotten that I turned the volume all the way up in confusion, and now my ears are spewing rivers of blood and grey matter. Hopefully I'll stay alive long enough to finsh thisdfa afghakjrgh glujgksjbn
Just kidding, of course. Let's talk about Founder's Glory
The first problem I noticed straightaway is the ever irksome issue of bad conveyance. Let's get one thing clear, alright? If you must convey basic instructions on how to play the game via text dumps from uninteresting characters (which is never, by the way) please please PLEASE do not restrict control or progress of the player during these text dumps. All I'll want to do is go forth and shoot things, but I can't do that until I've sat through a lecture where Einstein teaches me that if my health bar goes down, I die. Thanks, Einstein! What would we do without you?
Here's my overall summareview for this game: it has the foundation for a great and innovative masterpiece, but it's filled with little things that annoy me to the point of unenjoyment.
The control scheme is great. Seriously, it's perfect for a 2D platformer of this kind. You're pretty much unrestricted in all ways that make sense, and any feeling of disempowerment fits in with the narrative, which is also executed fairly well (minus the whole text dump malarkey).
The levels are designed fairly well and the enemy placement is almost Castlevania levels of ingenious. The game has you imparting strategies (which I DIDN'T need explained to me by a crotchety old professor, thank you) like jumping atop enemies to get a better vantage point from which to shoot other enemies, etc.
Okay, enough praise. Let's get into why I don't like Founder's Glory.
I don't see how you're supposed to get through even the first level without dying. Seriously, there's not really a difficulty curve as much as there is a difficulty skyscraper. The enemies can litter the stage with bullets and you're so slow and clunky that it's nigh impossible to dodge enemy fire. This would be fine if you could exchange enemy scrap for health at any point in the levels or even if there were occasional health drops, but neither of those occur, making this game frustrating rather than challenging.
The rest of the game is honestly white noise as far as I'm concerned. I could go to the R&D shop, but why would I unless I have enough scrap metal to buy anything? How do I get scrap metal? Well by completing that impossible level, of course!
Alright I gotta cut it off here or else I'm going to get angry. Until next time, stay mechanical
Links
Gorey Flounders: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1416
Just kidding, of course. Let's talk about Founder's Glory
The first problem I noticed straightaway is the ever irksome issue of bad conveyance. Let's get one thing clear, alright? If you must convey basic instructions on how to play the game via text dumps from uninteresting characters (which is never, by the way) please please PLEASE do not restrict control or progress of the player during these text dumps. All I'll want to do is go forth and shoot things, but I can't do that until I've sat through a lecture where Einstein teaches me that if my health bar goes down, I die. Thanks, Einstein! What would we do without you?
Here's my overall summareview for this game: it has the foundation for a great and innovative masterpiece, but it's filled with little things that annoy me to the point of unenjoyment.
The control scheme is great. Seriously, it's perfect for a 2D platformer of this kind. You're pretty much unrestricted in all ways that make sense, and any feeling of disempowerment fits in with the narrative, which is also executed fairly well (minus the whole text dump malarkey).
The levels are designed fairly well and the enemy placement is almost Castlevania levels of ingenious. The game has you imparting strategies (which I DIDN'T need explained to me by a crotchety old professor, thank you) like jumping atop enemies to get a better vantage point from which to shoot other enemies, etc.
Okay, enough praise. Let's get into why I don't like Founder's Glory.
I don't see how you're supposed to get through even the first level without dying. Seriously, there's not really a difficulty curve as much as there is a difficulty skyscraper. The enemies can litter the stage with bullets and you're so slow and clunky that it's nigh impossible to dodge enemy fire. This would be fine if you could exchange enemy scrap for health at any point in the levels or even if there were occasional health drops, but neither of those occur, making this game frustrating rather than challenging.
The rest of the game is honestly white noise as far as I'm concerned. I could go to the R&D shop, but why would I unless I have enough scrap metal to buy anything? How do I get scrap metal? Well by completing that impossible level, of course!
Alright I gotta cut it off here or else I'm going to get angry. Until next time, stay mechanical
Links
Gorey Flounders: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1416
Flux
aight guys, I'm going to try and rip through a bunch of these today, so the reviews are gonna be short and (hopefully) sweet.
That said, Flux is broken. Yay?
I start the game up and the music ans SFX start playing but there's no video. Oh well. Next.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26614
That said, Flux is broken. Yay?
I start the game up and the music ans SFX start playing but there's no video. Oh well. Next.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26614
Monday, April 1, 2013
Fluffy Puff Rampage
I'm going to start out this review by paraphrasing the great Yahtzee Croshaw, as I oft do, and throw my support behind his notion that a game that fails due to over-ambition is much preferable than a game that fails because it tried to play it safe. Fluffy Puff Rampage strikes me as an ambitious project that eventually frustrated its creators to the point where they decided to throw up their arms and say "screw it, that'll do."
Making a game must be a lot of work, and Fluffy Puff Rampage is, I hope, proof of that. It's riddled with design choices that strike me as "quick fixes" to problems that the devs didn't know how to fix. "Hey, boss, I don't know why, but the save feature isn't working." "Did you look over the code?" "yeah, I don't know what's wrong." "Alright, just create a bunch of default save files that start off the player from every conceivable angle so that the game at least has the semblance of having a save feature" "now that I can do!"
From a gameplay standpoint, Fluffy Puff Rampage is okay. The levels are short to the point of being unsatisfying and the controls are quite sticky, especially when trying to pull off fancy combos or special moves, which all involve the use of that finicky block button. Other than that, it's a standard 2D beat em up not quite as good as the ones that litter Newgrounds.com.
The visual style is really good...I think. The levels are all themed really well and the enemy sprites seem to have a good bit of variety to them, but they're gone so soon after they appear that you don't really get any time to appreciate them.
Honestly, my only real gripe with this game is the whole "sticky controls" thing I grazed over. Everything else can be looked past, but this game really is a button masher on account of the sticky controls. Some people like that sort of thing, but I'm not a fan of button mashers. I find them to be repetitious and dull. Pulling off combos seems cool at first until you realize that spamming "kick" is infinitely more effective. Dominant strategy, yo. Were it not for that, I might have given this game my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay aggressive
Links
The Pillow Fights Back: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=426
Making a game must be a lot of work, and Fluffy Puff Rampage is, I hope, proof of that. It's riddled with design choices that strike me as "quick fixes" to problems that the devs didn't know how to fix. "Hey, boss, I don't know why, but the save feature isn't working." "Did you look over the code?" "yeah, I don't know what's wrong." "Alright, just create a bunch of default save files that start off the player from every conceivable angle so that the game at least has the semblance of having a save feature" "now that I can do!"
From a gameplay standpoint, Fluffy Puff Rampage is okay. The levels are short to the point of being unsatisfying and the controls are quite sticky, especially when trying to pull off fancy combos or special moves, which all involve the use of that finicky block button. Other than that, it's a standard 2D beat em up not quite as good as the ones that litter Newgrounds.com.
The visual style is really good...I think. The levels are all themed really well and the enemy sprites seem to have a good bit of variety to them, but they're gone so soon after they appear that you don't really get any time to appreciate them.
Honestly, my only real gripe with this game is the whole "sticky controls" thing I grazed over. Everything else can be looked past, but this game really is a button masher on account of the sticky controls. Some people like that sort of thing, but I'm not a fan of button mashers. I find them to be repetitious and dull. Pulling off combos seems cool at first until you realize that spamming "kick" is infinitely more effective. Dominant strategy, yo. Were it not for that, I might have given this game my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay aggressive
Links
The Pillow Fights Back: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=426
Floor It!
Floor It is a game by the McLovin Squad (no, I'm not joking) that captures the emotional roller coaster of the tale of a ghost car wandering through a barren city, desperately trying to find fulfillment in his endless purgatory of existence.
April fools. It's just an unfinished racing game.
First off, I thought one of the prerequisites to being called a "racing" game was that there had to be a "race" of some kind, but the car you control is the only animated thing in the whole city.
More glaringly, however, the game just *feels* unfinished. I don't know whether to blame the engine or the graphics or what, but a game that can have you phasing through buildings to get swiftly to your next checkpoint doesn't really seem like a finished product.
When I found out that you could go through buildings without getting hurt, the game just became a round of "point your car in the direction of the little phallic arrow above you and hold 'W' until the arrow changes direction."
Then, I drove straight into a lake and transformed into what I think was a boat. Then the real fun began. At least as a car, I could enjoy the revving of my engine and the adrenaline rush that came from the speed I'd gather. In the boat, there are no such things. At least there was another boat chasing me, though. Even though it did absolutely nothing even when it rammed into my backside, it at least gave the whole experience the semblance of a racing game.
Then, I morphed into a plane and rocketed off into the sun, a confused, broken shell of a man.
The end.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay complete
Links
A Series of Roads: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=16249
April fools. It's just an unfinished racing game.
First off, I thought one of the prerequisites to being called a "racing" game was that there had to be a "race" of some kind, but the car you control is the only animated thing in the whole city.
More glaringly, however, the game just *feels* unfinished. I don't know whether to blame the engine or the graphics or what, but a game that can have you phasing through buildings to get swiftly to your next checkpoint doesn't really seem like a finished product.
When I found out that you could go through buildings without getting hurt, the game just became a round of "point your car in the direction of the little phallic arrow above you and hold 'W' until the arrow changes direction."
Then, I drove straight into a lake and transformed into what I think was a boat. Then the real fun began. At least as a car, I could enjoy the revving of my engine and the adrenaline rush that came from the speed I'd gather. In the boat, there are no such things. At least there was another boat chasing me, though. Even though it did absolutely nothing even when it rammed into my backside, it at least gave the whole experience the semblance of a racing game.
Then, I morphed into a plane and rocketed off into the sun, a confused, broken shell of a man.
The end.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay complete
Links
A Series of Roads: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=16249
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Flip's adventure
It's Easter n stuff...yaaaay.
Flip's Adventure can best be described as a very competently put together 2D platformer with a few fundamental flaws.
Let me get the praise out of the way first. As I said, it's very competently made. I say that because the presentation is beautiful. Color theming, high framerate, satisfying sound direction, etc. You'd be hard pressed to fine even a professionally made 2D platformer out there with objectively better presentation than this one.
That said, I think the team behind Flip's Adventure was a bit too eager to get a-programmin' and, as a result, made one major fundamental design contradiction that makes the game seem quite reminiscent of the Bubsy series. The level design and the control contradict each other. What I mean by that is that the level design is somewhat akin to Castlevania's level design in that it's all designed around the path you would take if you just tried to zoom through it. The challenge comes from the unexpected; the game demands that you think about what you do before you do it.
On the other hand, the controls are kind of similar to the controls from a Mario game. The jump is super powerful and you gather momentum as you run. Both the level design and control are nigh flawless on their own, much like perfectly made peanut butter and marinara sauce. Put them together, on the other hand, and you have a monstrous concoction that you'd feel guilty giving to a goat.
Okay, that was a bit harsh. Flip's Adventure is still very fun and is definitely one of the better freeware 2D platformers out there (yeah, I said it). That said there are just too many moments when my momentum forces me to slide into a wall of spikes or when my rocket jump is so powerful that holding it down for an extra quarter of a millisecond sends me careening into a wall for me to give it my seal of approval. Everything else about the game is very well done, though.
Well, I suppose I should probably mention the whole "achievement" part of the game. See, for every level, you get rewarded for completing a perfect run (no deaths), a speed run (with a very convenient little meter on the bottom left corner of the screen to tell you how much time you have left) and/or collecting an item (or puzzle piece) somewhere in the level. This is all fine and good, but I don't think it's even possible to get a speed run and not also get a perfect run. What's even the point of treating them as two different things if the clock doesn't reset when you die?
Ah, well. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay pretty.
Links:
What's with DigiPen 2D platformers and the word "flip?": https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25439
here are some videos of Ego and Jontron talking about Castlevania and Bubsy, respectively:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTAlr5raV2U
Flip's Adventure can best be described as a very competently put together 2D platformer with a few fundamental flaws.
Let me get the praise out of the way first. As I said, it's very competently made. I say that because the presentation is beautiful. Color theming, high framerate, satisfying sound direction, etc. You'd be hard pressed to fine even a professionally made 2D platformer out there with objectively better presentation than this one.
That said, I think the team behind Flip's Adventure was a bit too eager to get a-programmin' and, as a result, made one major fundamental design contradiction that makes the game seem quite reminiscent of the Bubsy series. The level design and the control contradict each other. What I mean by that is that the level design is somewhat akin to Castlevania's level design in that it's all designed around the path you would take if you just tried to zoom through it. The challenge comes from the unexpected; the game demands that you think about what you do before you do it.
On the other hand, the controls are kind of similar to the controls from a Mario game. The jump is super powerful and you gather momentum as you run. Both the level design and control are nigh flawless on their own, much like perfectly made peanut butter and marinara sauce. Put them together, on the other hand, and you have a monstrous concoction that you'd feel guilty giving to a goat.
Okay, that was a bit harsh. Flip's Adventure is still very fun and is definitely one of the better freeware 2D platformers out there (yeah, I said it). That said there are just too many moments when my momentum forces me to slide into a wall of spikes or when my rocket jump is so powerful that holding it down for an extra quarter of a millisecond sends me careening into a wall for me to give it my seal of approval. Everything else about the game is very well done, though.
Well, I suppose I should probably mention the whole "achievement" part of the game. See, for every level, you get rewarded for completing a perfect run (no deaths), a speed run (with a very convenient little meter on the bottom left corner of the screen to tell you how much time you have left) and/or collecting an item (or puzzle piece) somewhere in the level. This is all fine and good, but I don't think it's even possible to get a speed run and not also get a perfect run. What's even the point of treating them as two different things if the clock doesn't reset when you die?
Ah, well. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay pretty.
Links:
What's with DigiPen 2D platformers and the word "flip?": https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25439
here are some videos of Ego and Jontron talking about Castlevania and Bubsy, respectively:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTAlr5raV2U
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)