No review tomorrow, guys. Sorry. I'm going to be out all day. Don't worry, though. I did the math, and as long as I produce an average 1.26314426576 reviews a day from now until the year's end, I'll meet my deadline.
Thanks for understanding
-Dean
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Redivivus
The video game is a good medium for an impersonal character. Sure, you can have a wonderful game that focuses on the development of a character, and you can even use the gameplay to develop the character; Oniro proves that, but lacking emphasis on characterization or plot of any kind means you get to focus more on the mechanics of a game. You can't get much more impersonal than the sphere from Leshy, but the creators of Redivius certainly tried. They did this by taking the sphere from Leshy and making it a bit more transparent, along with the world in which it rolls.
Anyway, Redivivus is a platform-racer of sorts wherein you roll around a semi-transparent and ever-flowing road to a finish line. By manipulating the momentum physics and the roads made out of silk that exist only partially, you strive to traverse the level as quickly as you can.
There's a certain bad tendency some games fall into where they establish a mechanic and then design a billion lackluster levels in which to explore that mechanic, leaving the game to feel mediocre and unnecessarily long-winded as a result. Redivius doesn't do that. There are only 4 levels and they're all very short. Of course, the risk one takes with that approach is that the game can very easily feel anemic if there are no more than 20 minutes of fun to be had, so the game needs to do either or both of two things when it's this short: 1) it needs to be designed beautifully, allowing for a full exploration of the mechanics or 2) it needs to have tons of replay value.
Redivivus has both of those qualities. The levels are wonderfully designed, forcing you to master all of the game's mechanics without relying too heavily upon one or leaving any behind, and the brutal but obtainable achievements for showing your mastery make sure you won't be truly done playing until you want to be...which probably won't be for a very long time. The levels ripple beneath you in a kind of psychedelic way, but it all feels natural in some way. Imagine rolling around on a semi-inflated bouncy castle made of Jell-o.
So in case you haven't caught on yet, I like Redivius. I like it a lot. It suffers from some of the same problems that other games featuring balls as their main characters suffer from, namely that friction is a bitch and your jumps are a bit tough to gague. There's also one portion of one level that simply does not fit in with the game's mechanics very well. The whole game you're plowing through the levels, making speed your priority, and then suddenly the game demands that you slow down and time your jumps like in those extraordinarily annoying moving platform segments in Sonic the Hedgehog.
One final note: the other two notable "sphere games" in the gallery that I've played so far (AEscher and Leshy) both forewent a traditional tutorial in favor of some floating text telling you what to do, which isn't a perfect method of conveyance, but it gets the job done in an unobtrusive way. Redivius has a tutorial level, but it seems kind of pointless because the floating text appears in the main levels anyway. Oh well, the tutorial level is just as fun as the other levels anyway, so I'm not complaining. That would be like saying a bunny hill undermines the value of the rest of a ski mountain's black diamond tracks.
All in all, Redivivus is a very fun and extraordinarily well designed game that actually earns the much-misused term "fast-paced." That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay translucent
Links
Like Rolling a Marble in Honey: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18597
Anyway, Redivivus is a platform-racer of sorts wherein you roll around a semi-transparent and ever-flowing road to a finish line. By manipulating the momentum physics and the roads made out of silk that exist only partially, you strive to traverse the level as quickly as you can.
There's a certain bad tendency some games fall into where they establish a mechanic and then design a billion lackluster levels in which to explore that mechanic, leaving the game to feel mediocre and unnecessarily long-winded as a result. Redivius doesn't do that. There are only 4 levels and they're all very short. Of course, the risk one takes with that approach is that the game can very easily feel anemic if there are no more than 20 minutes of fun to be had, so the game needs to do either or both of two things when it's this short: 1) it needs to be designed beautifully, allowing for a full exploration of the mechanics or 2) it needs to have tons of replay value.
Redivivus has both of those qualities. The levels are wonderfully designed, forcing you to master all of the game's mechanics without relying too heavily upon one or leaving any behind, and the brutal but obtainable achievements for showing your mastery make sure you won't be truly done playing until you want to be...which probably won't be for a very long time. The levels ripple beneath you in a kind of psychedelic way, but it all feels natural in some way. Imagine rolling around on a semi-inflated bouncy castle made of Jell-o.
So in case you haven't caught on yet, I like Redivius. I like it a lot. It suffers from some of the same problems that other games featuring balls as their main characters suffer from, namely that friction is a bitch and your jumps are a bit tough to gague. There's also one portion of one level that simply does not fit in with the game's mechanics very well. The whole game you're plowing through the levels, making speed your priority, and then suddenly the game demands that you slow down and time your jumps like in those extraordinarily annoying moving platform segments in Sonic the Hedgehog.
One final note: the other two notable "sphere games" in the gallery that I've played so far (AEscher and Leshy) both forewent a traditional tutorial in favor of some floating text telling you what to do, which isn't a perfect method of conveyance, but it gets the job done in an unobtrusive way. Redivius has a tutorial level, but it seems kind of pointless because the floating text appears in the main levels anyway. Oh well, the tutorial level is just as fun as the other levels anyway, so I'm not complaining. That would be like saying a bunny hill undermines the value of the rest of a ski mountain's black diamond tracks.
All in all, Redivivus is a very fun and extraordinarily well designed game that actually earns the much-misused term "fast-paced." That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay translucent
Links
Like Rolling a Marble in Honey: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18597
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Redevilopment
Something tells me this title either took waaaay too long to think of or just popped into the heads of one of the developers while they were on the can...but I digress.
This is the kind of game that makes me want to neglect playing and reviewing DigiPen games as a whole in favor of wrecking shop in Saints Row 2. There's virtually nothing to talk about that I haven't said a million times before, so this review is inevitably going to end up being about as large and imposing as a shrew in a sinkhole.
I'll say this much: this game has possibly the worst conveyance of any game on this list I've played. What should have taken 0.0000001 seconds ended up taking like 3 minutes because the developers thought it was essential to crowbar in some incredibly basic...things which I refuse to call humor before it let me play. The text boxes fade in and out in no hurry at all, and by the time you actually start playing, you're already insanely frustrated by what you just had to sit through, so you're probably going to end up just running straight through the not-very-thoughtfully-designed levels with no inclination to keep running...like how I felt during races when I was on the track team.
If I had to compliment the game on one thing, it would have to be the character design, which conveys enough about out character to make him relatable (without the help of those accursed text boxes) while also making him slightly lovable...of course, this is vastly overshadowed by the crap factor.
Then the game crashed, which was my excuse to stop playing fo' good. So yeah, that's all I got for now. Until next time, stay evil.
Links
Gotta love portmanteaus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=473
This is the kind of game that makes me want to neglect playing and reviewing DigiPen games as a whole in favor of wrecking shop in Saints Row 2. There's virtually nothing to talk about that I haven't said a million times before, so this review is inevitably going to end up being about as large and imposing as a shrew in a sinkhole.
I'll say this much: this game has possibly the worst conveyance of any game on this list I've played. What should have taken 0.0000001 seconds ended up taking like 3 minutes because the developers thought it was essential to crowbar in some incredibly basic...things which I refuse to call humor before it let me play. The text boxes fade in and out in no hurry at all, and by the time you actually start playing, you're already insanely frustrated by what you just had to sit through, so you're probably going to end up just running straight through the not-very-thoughtfully-designed levels with no inclination to keep running...like how I felt during races when I was on the track team.
If I had to compliment the game on one thing, it would have to be the character design, which conveys enough about out character to make him relatable (without the help of those accursed text boxes) while also making him slightly lovable...of course, this is vastly overshadowed by the crap factor.
Then the game crashed, which was my excuse to stop playing fo' good. So yeah, that's all I got for now. Until next time, stay evil.
Links
Gotta love portmanteaus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=473
Redemption
It's not very often I come across a DigiPen game with a decent plot. What with the time constraints and limited resources that I assume these students have to work under, most of them don't even try coming up with a plot for their games. Even the ones that do sort of just establish a setting and leave the rest up to the imagination.
Redemption is sort of a condensed version of everything I think a video game plot should be. And I mean really condensed. A quick bit of text at the beginning establishes that a manmade substance called Sample17 has effectively rid the world of humanity and it's up to you, a cleaner robot, to clear out the evil goo and make the world habitable again. It's kind of like the plot to Wall-e, except...well, you know...good. In fact, your character actually looks a bit like Eve's brother as he goes through his punk rock phase.
Now, the plot of Redemption took a bold step into the unknown just by existing, which is respectable, but if humanity was wiped out by this Sample17 nonsense, then who is communicating with you and telling you to clean the place up? The beginning text makes it seem like you're just hearing the recordings of scientists just before they were consumed by their creation, which is emotionally moving enough to get me in the right mood for busting some evil purple gooey heads, but then how do the training rooms make sense? The same text that sounded completely defeated by this Sample17 is now telling you not only that they were able to isolate a relatively harmless sample of it, but also develop weapons to stop it AND leave those weapons in close proximity to the Sample17. Wouldn't it make more sense to just have the weapons laying around broken down labs for you to find? After all, if the humans were capable of developing weapons that halt Sample17's growth, how did they manage to get eradicated by it?
These weapons aren't exactly pea shooters, either. With that excellent segue, I can now talk about the game feel. It's damn amazing. The shotgun makes anything in its proximity into a cowering little bitch, and I assume the weapons I'd have unlocked later are even cooler. The reason I didn't play far enough to find out is because the first non-tutorial level hides the goop spawners so infuriatingly well that I end up just running around aimlessly as the area gets completely covered by death, which I would dare to call the game's biggest flaw, even though the rest of the levels could be perfectly streamlined for all I know.
The game looks nice if you can get past the Minecraft-esque block aesthetic, which is essentially the 3D version of pixel art. The music and sound effects compliment the setting nicely, and if it weren't for the aforementioned plotholes and design flaw, I would dare to call this game nothing shy of amazingly crafted.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay redeemed:
Links
What do you need to be redeemed for? You're a robot: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26061
Redemption is sort of a condensed version of everything I think a video game plot should be. And I mean really condensed. A quick bit of text at the beginning establishes that a manmade substance called Sample17 has effectively rid the world of humanity and it's up to you, a cleaner robot, to clear out the evil goo and make the world habitable again. It's kind of like the plot to Wall-e, except...well, you know...good. In fact, your character actually looks a bit like Eve's brother as he goes through his punk rock phase.
Now, the plot of Redemption took a bold step into the unknown just by existing, which is respectable, but if humanity was wiped out by this Sample17 nonsense, then who is communicating with you and telling you to clean the place up? The beginning text makes it seem like you're just hearing the recordings of scientists just before they were consumed by their creation, which is emotionally moving enough to get me in the right mood for busting some evil purple gooey heads, but then how do the training rooms make sense? The same text that sounded completely defeated by this Sample17 is now telling you not only that they were able to isolate a relatively harmless sample of it, but also develop weapons to stop it AND leave those weapons in close proximity to the Sample17. Wouldn't it make more sense to just have the weapons laying around broken down labs for you to find? After all, if the humans were capable of developing weapons that halt Sample17's growth, how did they manage to get eradicated by it?
These weapons aren't exactly pea shooters, either. With that excellent segue, I can now talk about the game feel. It's damn amazing. The shotgun makes anything in its proximity into a cowering little bitch, and I assume the weapons I'd have unlocked later are even cooler. The reason I didn't play far enough to find out is because the first non-tutorial level hides the goop spawners so infuriatingly well that I end up just running around aimlessly as the area gets completely covered by death, which I would dare to call the game's biggest flaw, even though the rest of the levels could be perfectly streamlined for all I know.
The game looks nice if you can get past the Minecraft-esque block aesthetic, which is essentially the 3D version of pixel art. The music and sound effects compliment the setting nicely, and if it weren't for the aforementioned plotholes and design flaw, I would dare to call this game nothing shy of amazingly crafted.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay redeemed:
Links
What do you need to be redeemed for? You're a robot: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26061
Monday, July 29, 2013
Reboot (kinda)
one day, maybe I'll get a bunch of people to download this game so we can actually host a game and play it like it was meant to be played, but as it stands, I have to give Reboot the same treatment I give all the other multiplayer-exclusive games.
I will comment on the 2 things that I noticed while strolling about the maps all by my lonesome. First off, the game looks nice, but what do you expect from the Unreal SDK?
Second off, this game features some of the most ass-backward button allocation I've ever seen in a FPS game short of System Shock 2. Right click to jump? Shift to both sprint AND use a weapon's secondary feature? What the what?
Ah well. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay competitive.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26718
I will comment on the 2 things that I noticed while strolling about the maps all by my lonesome. First off, the game looks nice, but what do you expect from the Unreal SDK?
Second off, this game features some of the most ass-backward button allocation I've ever seen in a FPS game short of System Shock 2. Right click to jump? Shift to both sprint AND use a weapon's secondary feature? What the what?
Ah well. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay competitive.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26718
Rapidfyre
Y'know, I like my computer. I like it a lot, but nobody's perfect. Every computer has its flaws. My computer has a 700GB hard drive. That might seem like a lot, but games tend to be huge files, and I set out to play 500 of them, not counting the non-DigiPen titles I depend on to keep me sane. So now, we're not even 2/3 done with the year and I've only got 130GB left on my drive. Mercifully, the DigiPen games tend to be pretty small. The largest one I've encountered was Crazy Cross, and that wasn't even half a gig.
Enter Rapidfyre. Things were off to a bad start when I saw that the application file alone was 500MB, and the whole package was more than 800. After sighing and saying goodbye to another gigabyte of storage space, the game wouldn't start. "Oh no," I said, "I've sacrificed too much to declare this a broken game." I decided to do a bit of research; then I found out that Rapidfyre is a mod of the Alien Swarm SDK, meaning I had to go download Alien Swarm, a 2GB file, as well. So in total, that's 3 entire gigabytes of space. That could comfortably fit 6 Crazy Crosses!
So yes, I am a bit biased from the get-go, but come on, 3 gigabytes? The game isn't even that long. I got through it in less than 40 minutes. 40 minutes! Crazy Cross took me almost a week of casual play, and that game was entirely original.
Oh yeah, that's another point of bias for me. I absolutely loathe mods, remakes, or pretty much anything that can be construed as lazy. I've never modded a game before (unless you count texture swapping in GTA: Vice City), so I don't know how much effort went into making this game, but I can't give it credit for looking and feeling nice, because that was the work of the Alien Swarm guys.
And once you take that into consideration, there are really only 2 things to judge Rapidfyre for: the dual-color mechanic and the enemy design. Both of these things are pretty well done, but I can't help but wonder how many times the guys at DigiPen are going to try and sell me Ikaruga in a different package. I feel like that time I was like 8 years old and I told all my friends and family that I wanted a new video game for Christmas, and literally everyone who got me a present decided on Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. It's a great game, as is Ikaruga, but I can only play a game so many times before I get bored.
The final boss is well constructed, as are the rest of the enemies, but hot damn they are easy to take down, especially when you're given th-th-thirty lives?!? What?! 5 lives would've been fine, 10 would have been generous, but 30?! How inept do the developers think we are at playing these games? A simple design flaw like that can really sap the tension and excitement away from what is otherwise a very tense and exciting final boss fight.
So yeah, final verdict: Rapidfyre was fun but mindless, a welcome departure from Alien Swarm's unforgiving difficulty, but the concept is unoriginal and the gameplay doesn't deserve a much better adjective than "solid." If you've got 3GB to spare and you were holding out until now for a truly polished game to waste time with, go nuts. Otherwise, don't bother.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay absorbent.
Links
liberal use of "y" does not make you cool: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24912
Enter Rapidfyre. Things were off to a bad start when I saw that the application file alone was 500MB, and the whole package was more than 800. After sighing and saying goodbye to another gigabyte of storage space, the game wouldn't start. "Oh no," I said, "I've sacrificed too much to declare this a broken game." I decided to do a bit of research; then I found out that Rapidfyre is a mod of the Alien Swarm SDK, meaning I had to go download Alien Swarm, a 2GB file, as well. So in total, that's 3 entire gigabytes of space. That could comfortably fit 6 Crazy Crosses!
So yes, I am a bit biased from the get-go, but come on, 3 gigabytes? The game isn't even that long. I got through it in less than 40 minutes. 40 minutes! Crazy Cross took me almost a week of casual play, and that game was entirely original.
Oh yeah, that's another point of bias for me. I absolutely loathe mods, remakes, or pretty much anything that can be construed as lazy. I've never modded a game before (unless you count texture swapping in GTA: Vice City), so I don't know how much effort went into making this game, but I can't give it credit for looking and feeling nice, because that was the work of the Alien Swarm guys.
And once you take that into consideration, there are really only 2 things to judge Rapidfyre for: the dual-color mechanic and the enemy design. Both of these things are pretty well done, but I can't help but wonder how many times the guys at DigiPen are going to try and sell me Ikaruga in a different package. I feel like that time I was like 8 years old and I told all my friends and family that I wanted a new video game for Christmas, and literally everyone who got me a present decided on Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. It's a great game, as is Ikaruga, but I can only play a game so many times before I get bored.
The final boss is well constructed, as are the rest of the enemies, but hot damn they are easy to take down, especially when you're given th-th-thirty lives?!? What?! 5 lives would've been fine, 10 would have been generous, but 30?! How inept do the developers think we are at playing these games? A simple design flaw like that can really sap the tension and excitement away from what is otherwise a very tense and exciting final boss fight.
So yeah, final verdict: Rapidfyre was fun but mindless, a welcome departure from Alien Swarm's unforgiving difficulty, but the concept is unoriginal and the gameplay doesn't deserve a much better adjective than "solid." If you've got 3GB to spare and you were holding out until now for a truly polished game to waste time with, go nuts. Otherwise, don't bother.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay absorbent.
Links
liberal use of "y" does not make you cool: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24912
Saturday, July 27, 2013
PuzzlePusherParty and Qubie (sorta), as well as R-Chain
*sigh* today is a boring day.
PuzzlePusherParty is a multiplayer-only game, so there's not much I can say about it. Mercifully, the game allows you to use an xbox controller, rather than requiring it. One player can play with WASD while another plays with the arrow keys, for example. I've seen way too many games on this list forbid that simple privilege to the players, and it's nice to see a game designed with the players in mind.
From what I can tell, the game is fast-paced, fun and frantic. The mechanics are simple, everything is well-conveyed, the game looks, sounds and feels beautiful, and I genuinely have nothing to complain about...though that's probably because I didn't have anyone to play with.
Qubie didn't install correctly, so I tried it again. It didn't install correctly again. I restarted my computer and tried again. Didn't work, so I'm calling this one broken.
Finally, the only real review today (if you can even call it that), R-Chain.
I was worried about this game when I saw that it was a senior project. Lord knows I haven't had good luck with senior projects in the past. My spirits were lifted when I saw the splash art that said "powered by Unity." Of course, there are exceptions, but games that use Unity tend to look really good, and games that look really good tend to have been made with some bit of care. When a senior combines his experience at the school with genuine care, the product should be good as a result, right?
Well, in this case, yes. R-Chain is a good game. It's one of those games that analyzes music and generates the level accordingly. Instead of jumping over hurdles and gaps, like in ParChord, here you emit radial bursts that cause any bullets in their proximity to explode. Those explosions then trigger other explosions and then you go blind.
Yeah, I would say that's this game's major fault. Even when I played with placid background tracks, the screen was muddled up with so many colorful things that it was excruciatingly difficult to tell what the hell was going on. Still, this game certainly provides enough sensory stimulation to be fun, and exploding your musical tracks is an idea that simply cannot fail.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay bright
Links
misuse of the word "puzzle": https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24657
Qubie: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26629
R-bitraty and pretentious letter usage: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26770
PuzzlePusherParty is a multiplayer-only game, so there's not much I can say about it. Mercifully, the game allows you to use an xbox controller, rather than requiring it. One player can play with WASD while another plays with the arrow keys, for example. I've seen way too many games on this list forbid that simple privilege to the players, and it's nice to see a game designed with the players in mind.
From what I can tell, the game is fast-paced, fun and frantic. The mechanics are simple, everything is well-conveyed, the game looks, sounds and feels beautiful, and I genuinely have nothing to complain about...though that's probably because I didn't have anyone to play with.
Qubie didn't install correctly, so I tried it again. It didn't install correctly again. I restarted my computer and tried again. Didn't work, so I'm calling this one broken.
Finally, the only real review today (if you can even call it that), R-Chain.
I was worried about this game when I saw that it was a senior project. Lord knows I haven't had good luck with senior projects in the past. My spirits were lifted when I saw the splash art that said "powered by Unity." Of course, there are exceptions, but games that use Unity tend to look really good, and games that look really good tend to have been made with some bit of care. When a senior combines his experience at the school with genuine care, the product should be good as a result, right?
Well, in this case, yes. R-Chain is a good game. It's one of those games that analyzes music and generates the level accordingly. Instead of jumping over hurdles and gaps, like in ParChord, here you emit radial bursts that cause any bullets in their proximity to explode. Those explosions then trigger other explosions and then you go blind.
Yeah, I would say that's this game's major fault. Even when I played with placid background tracks, the screen was muddled up with so many colorful things that it was excruciatingly difficult to tell what the hell was going on. Still, this game certainly provides enough sensory stimulation to be fun, and exploding your musical tracks is an idea that simply cannot fail.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay bright
Links
misuse of the word "puzzle": https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24657
Qubie: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26629
R-bitraty and pretentious letter usage: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26770
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