Confession time: I goofed up yesterday. I reviewed 2 games from the 2012-2013 academic year even though I said i was going to save them for after I was done with the rest. I guess in the interest of consistency, I'm just going to keep running down the list as it continues to form and then catch up with the alphabetically earlier ones later. As long as I've reviewed all the games in the gallery on the moment of midnight on January 1, 2014, I'll be happy.
anyways, Lucid Nightmare is another title I'm not all too enthused about. My main problem with it is that it's not original. It gets its aesthetic and lever-switching puzzle system from Limbo, its enemy programming from Super Mario Bros and its life system from Sonic the Hedgehog.
I guess you could make a case that as long as a game takes elements from other games and combines them in an original, fun, or interesting way, then it's still a good game. I agree with that, and I do think Lucid Nightmare is a good game. It's functional and not too frustrating. It's just nothing you haven't played before.
I will nitpick and say that there are two things that could have been fixed. The sound your socktopus makes as it swings through the air is a little too loud and the hitboxes are a little too ridiculous for my tastes. I can be nowhere near an enemy and it can still hit me.
Well, that's all I got for now. Until next time, stay awake
links
Decent 80s hair metal band name: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24645
Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Lucent
While this game holds slightly more of my favor than Lonely Knight did, it suffers from many of the same problems.
First, let's talk about something I didn't mention in my Lonely Knight Review. The spacebar should be the jump button. Lonely Knight at least had an excuse because spacebar was used to attack. Here though, it serves no purpose, which lead to a few cheap deaths early on.
The main problem Lucent has is that it's just substanceless. Each of the 6 levels are almost identical, so playing through them feels like busywork, especially when you've fallen off a cliff to your death and had to repeat from the checkpoint for the millionth time.
Also, if you're going to put enemies in your game that aren't at all threatening, they have to be satisfying to kill. The ghosts in Lucent are almost there, but storming past them and letting them get stuck on a piece of terrain behind you is just the better solution.
Overall, this game feels like it was rushed...thoughtlessly shoved together so the students could survive the day. Trust me, I know that feel. Speaking of which, There's a paper I should really be writing...
Links
New Scent: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26683
First, let's talk about something I didn't mention in my Lonely Knight Review. The spacebar should be the jump button. Lonely Knight at least had an excuse because spacebar was used to attack. Here though, it serves no purpose, which lead to a few cheap deaths early on.
The main problem Lucent has is that it's just substanceless. Each of the 6 levels are almost identical, so playing through them feels like busywork, especially when you've fallen off a cliff to your death and had to repeat from the checkpoint for the millionth time.
Also, if you're going to put enemies in your game that aren't at all threatening, they have to be satisfying to kill. The ghosts in Lucent are almost there, but storming past them and letting them get stuck on a piece of terrain behind you is just the better solution.
Overall, this game feels like it was rushed...thoughtlessly shoved together so the students could survive the day. Trust me, I know that feel. Speaking of which, There's a paper I should really be writing...
Links
New Scent: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26683
Lost in Thought
yep. mhm...broken. Takes me back to the good ol' days.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26144
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26144
Lonely Knight
Friends, strangers, countrymen and otherwise, I've come to the conclusion that I simply can't reach my goal if I keep going on the way I am. Even with the school year winding down, these reviews take more out of me than you'd think. I try to comment on everything I can, but these reviews are going to have to become more frequent and less in-depth if I'm going to hit em all by the year's end. Yeah, it's true that I don't really put out quality content as it is, but I gotta do what I gotta do. Leave complaints in the complaint box.
Maybe I started with that because it's all true. Maybe I started with it because I'm in a crappy mood today. Maybe Lonely Knight just didn't give me much to talk about. The answer is all of the above, but I'm only here to talk about the game.
It seems to be a nod to the sidescrollers of the SNES, but only the really crappy ones. Your character moves way WAY too slowly, first off. This wouldn't be a problem if traversing the levels at the pace of a snail was fun or interesting, like it is in Dreamside Maroon, Bastion, etc, but the design is banal and dispatching enemies is frustrating.
The sword is nigh useless, mostly because it's too short. It makes hitting enemies feel more like a dice roll than a test of skill. Then again, I say the same thing about Link to the Past, so what do I know? In addition to your sword, you can also carry up to 5 arrows at a time. First off, why do the arrows spin when I throw them? I appreciate that it might be a bit difficult to aim a bow and arrow in a suit of armor, but if you're just going to chuck the darn things, why not make them throwing knives? Second, why is there no aiming mechanism whatsoever? The arrows just fly in what seems to be the most inconvenient arc possible and there's nothing you can do about it. Third, was there any thought whatsoever put into the placement of the arrow pickups? As I said, you can only carry 5 at a time, so why would there ever be two arrow pickups right next to each other unless there was an immediate situation which required 10 arrows to solve?
All in all, Lonely Knight is boring, unoriginal and not worth your time. Give it a miss.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay lonely
Links
Typical Night: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26682
Maybe I started with that because it's all true. Maybe I started with it because I'm in a crappy mood today. Maybe Lonely Knight just didn't give me much to talk about. The answer is all of the above, but I'm only here to talk about the game.
It seems to be a nod to the sidescrollers of the SNES, but only the really crappy ones. Your character moves way WAY too slowly, first off. This wouldn't be a problem if traversing the levels at the pace of a snail was fun or interesting, like it is in Dreamside Maroon, Bastion, etc, but the design is banal and dispatching enemies is frustrating.
The sword is nigh useless, mostly because it's too short. It makes hitting enemies feel more like a dice roll than a test of skill. Then again, I say the same thing about Link to the Past, so what do I know? In addition to your sword, you can also carry up to 5 arrows at a time. First off, why do the arrows spin when I throw them? I appreciate that it might be a bit difficult to aim a bow and arrow in a suit of armor, but if you're just going to chuck the darn things, why not make them throwing knives? Second, why is there no aiming mechanism whatsoever? The arrows just fly in what seems to be the most inconvenient arc possible and there's nothing you can do about it. Third, was there any thought whatsoever put into the placement of the arrow pickups? As I said, you can only carry 5 at a time, so why would there ever be two arrow pickups right next to each other unless there was an immediate situation which required 10 arrows to solve?
All in all, Lonely Knight is boring, unoriginal and not worth your time. Give it a miss.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay lonely
Links
Typical Night: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26682
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
LMNT
My eyebrow was raised skeptically upward upon reading the description of LMNT. It claims to pay "respectful homage" to a bunch of genres, claiming that it has "the best of all worlds." Quite an extraordinary claim, LMNT, and extraordinary claims warrant extraordinary evidence, so let's see what you've got.
Yikes! I haven't seen a file size this big since Crazy Cross! Guess we're in for a wild ride, kids.
My next warning came when I saw the name the devs were working under. "Senioritis."
Lo and behold, this game is a mess. I only got to the second world before it became too painful to carry on.
The first problem is just that this game is, to quote Dr. Steinman, ugly. It's almost as if each texture was designed by a different person who had no idea what the rest of the game looked like. Colors are bland yet conflicting, the textures blend together at a distance, the particle effects are nightmarish and it's all just a pain to the eyes.
The controls are stable, I guess, but the level design is so frustrating that the brief satisfaction of mounting a platform is swiftly overcome by the rage induced by getting knocked off by one of the most annoyingly designed enemies in existence.
If there's one thing this game does right (and I think there might be only one), it's conveyance. Yeah, remember that old gem? There's no mandatory tutorial and everything is explained to you through the mechanics themselves. Gold star for that, but a rotten egg sprayed with Febreeze is still a rotten egg.
Even though the game teaches you what to do, doing those things is unsatisfying due to frustrating and often self-contradictory design. So no, this game does not offer the best of all worlds.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay focused
Links
Everything, so nothing: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18583
Yikes! I haven't seen a file size this big since Crazy Cross! Guess we're in for a wild ride, kids.
My next warning came when I saw the name the devs were working under. "Senioritis."
Lo and behold, this game is a mess. I only got to the second world before it became too painful to carry on.
The first problem is just that this game is, to quote Dr. Steinman, ugly. It's almost as if each texture was designed by a different person who had no idea what the rest of the game looked like. Colors are bland yet conflicting, the textures blend together at a distance, the particle effects are nightmarish and it's all just a pain to the eyes.
The controls are stable, I guess, but the level design is so frustrating that the brief satisfaction of mounting a platform is swiftly overcome by the rage induced by getting knocked off by one of the most annoyingly designed enemies in existence.
If there's one thing this game does right (and I think there might be only one), it's conveyance. Yeah, remember that old gem? There's no mandatory tutorial and everything is explained to you through the mechanics themselves. Gold star for that, but a rotten egg sprayed with Febreeze is still a rotten egg.
Even though the game teaches you what to do, doing those things is unsatisfying due to frustrating and often self-contradictory design. So no, this game does not offer the best of all worlds.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay focused
Links
Everything, so nothing: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18583
Leshy
Leshy is another one of those games that is reliant on the player having aI mouse rather than a good ol' fashioned trackpad. I know this is kind of my fault, I mean, what kind of serious PC gamer doesn't have a mouse? But my damn laptop keeps breaking anything I plug into it, so until I get motivated enough to send this baby to a repair shop, I'm not going to be a great judge of this game's quality.
I did manage to scrape by using the scroll function on my trackpad for a little while before it got way too annoying. In that time, I discovered a simple game with tight controls, decent aesthetics, and a cool concept. Your goal is to collect spheres; for every 10 spheres, you can grow a little bigger and shrink a little smaller, thus opening up more areas of the map. This is one of the most creative and ingenious gameplay mechanics DigiPen has offered me so far. It gives the world a sense of vastness when you're small, making the feeling of empowerment that you get from scooting across previously treacherous terrain with your mountainous size all the more satisfying. I can only imagine how fun this game would be if I had a mouse. After all, it responded beautifully to any kind of input I successfully managed to give it.
Try it out for yourself if you have a mouse. I betcha it's one hell of a time. This is the most reluctant seal of approval I've given yet, since I'm basing it on something I haven't experienced, but I can tell that this game is very well made. Good job, guys.
Links
Big balls, little balls: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24627
I did manage to scrape by using the scroll function on my trackpad for a little while before it got way too annoying. In that time, I discovered a simple game with tight controls, decent aesthetics, and a cool concept. Your goal is to collect spheres; for every 10 spheres, you can grow a little bigger and shrink a little smaller, thus opening up more areas of the map. This is one of the most creative and ingenious gameplay mechanics DigiPen has offered me so far. It gives the world a sense of vastness when you're small, making the feeling of empowerment that you get from scooting across previously treacherous terrain with your mountainous size all the more satisfying. I can only imagine how fun this game would be if I had a mouse. After all, it responded beautifully to any kind of input I successfully managed to give it.
Try it out for yourself if you have a mouse. I betcha it's one hell of a time. This is the most reluctant seal of approval I've given yet, since I'm basing it on something I haven't experienced, but I can tell that this game is very well made. Good job, guys.
Links
Big balls, little balls: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24627
Law of the Sea
Much like me without coffee on any given weekday, this game crashes on startup.
Links
meh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=470
Links
meh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=470
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