YSoul and Zartan

YSoul started up with a menu screen featuring an adrenaline-pumping techno beat accompanied by the sight of the camera zooming down a road at high speeds.  I thought I was in for a pulse-pounding adventure that would put my reflexes to the test and challenge my might as a gamer...

This game looks nice and it has some good ideas, but ultimately, it's a "hold 'd' to win" game.  My guess is that the developers wanted to make a Sonic Colors-esque spectacle (hence the powerup that perfectly mimics a powerup from that game, even down to the color), but ran out of time or motivation or whatever and just decided "does it work?  then submit it."  Final verdict: not much to see here.

Zartan is another take on the ol' Bionic Commando swinging mechanic.  It even uses a frog tongue as a grappling hook, like in Froggle.  Like my playthrough of Froggle, my experience with Zartan had a bit of a rocky start.  First off, the game seemed to have a terrible problem with visual conveyance.  Things that looked like walls were actually in the background, etc.  This problem remedies itself before long, though.

Admittedly, I don't really remember many of the other 2D swinging games on this list, but I think I can confidently say that Zartan is not the best...not by a long shot.  In It Belongs in an Ancient Ruin, for example, I never felt cheated out of my progress because the mechanics were all very intuitive and did exactly what you told them to do.  Zartan, on the other hand, is no stranger to the cheap death.  The hitboxes on things that instakill you are too big, the camera moves a bit too fast, making it more difficult to set up your next grapple, and the whole game, while having its very fun moments, constantly verges on being frustrating.  Another thing I liked about IBiaAR is that no design choices seemed pointless, but in Zartan, there seems to be no purpose in collecting the fruit strewn about the level, which is one of the most major objectives the game gives you.

If you like the idea of 2D swinging games, you'll like Zartan, and while the raw quality of the game is not as good as I'd have liked, there's certainly enough to keep you occupied...if not entertained...for a while.  Of course, there is no save feature, so whether this is a blessing or a curse is up to you to decide.

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

Links
Y not: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18529
Lickiana Jones: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25888

PS- we've finally made it to the last letter of the alphabet...how exciting

YAPA-G and YFront

Kids, this is why you don't procrastinate until the last minute to do things.  I'm so tired today.  Under normal circumstances, I would either review only one game or just take the day off, but unfortunately those luxuries have been long since used up.

I guess I'm lucky that neither of these games really gave me anything too interesting to talk about.  YAPA-G literally stands for "Yet Another Post Apocalyptic Game."  I'm not making that up.  They might as well have just named it "nothing interesting here."

And there may have very well been something quite interesting here, but I wasn't able to understand it.  I basically just left-and-right clicked around the screen for a while until the game told me I won.  I'm all for a game easing the player into the experience, but I feel like I shouldn't be able to beat the game if I literally know nothing about the mechanics or how the game works.  All I could gather is that it's a bit like Risk but it's over in like 5 turns.

For all it's worth, the music is nice...that's all I can really appreciate about this one to be honest.

Next up we have Starfox...I mean StarTeddy...I mean YFront, which can best be described as "what might have happened if Starfox were made for a DOS computer that just so happened to integrate seamless voice acting.  This is a terrible idea, by the way, because playing with the z-axis was a daring stunt even when the Super FX chip was around. Seriously, the resemblances to our beloved bush-dwelling starfighter are uncanny.  Not that there's anything wrong with a little homage, but usually when you call back to something, you try to improve upon it.  Otherwise, it usually gets referred to as "ripping off"

and what exactly did YFront improve about Starfox? Absolutely nothing.  In fact, it seems to have taken a step back.  There's a terrible problem with depth.  Your enemies are always way closer (and by extension deadlier) than they seem.  The game is very disorienting in that way and I applaud anyone who can play this game with any semblance of skill, because I'll bet before long you're going to resort to mashing buttons and hoping you don't die, because keeping up with the game's perception problems is far too frustrating.

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

Links
this again: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26698
*doppler sound*: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24156

XM-13 Deadly Assault and Xtreme Arena (kinda)

XM-13 Deadly Assault is one of those games that reminds me that I'm reviewing school projects.  It wasn't made to push any boundaries or test an idea or to present a new way of designing games, it was just made for the sake of being made.  While it would be fallacious to say "not that there's anything wrong with that," it would also be a bit unrealistic of me to say every game should set out with some passionate agenda, and the inspiration behind the game doesn't intrinsically make the end product any better or worse.  With that said, let's take a look.

XM-13 is your standard "splosions go everywhere bang bang boom" type of game.  You control a giant mech, so the game naturally feels sluggish.  I don't see why so many games feel the need to limit your sprint and jump functions.  I mean the jump would make sense if this game had any real platforming, but for the most part it's just shooting everything in sight.

This game tried to go for the Attack of the 50ft Robot appeal (whoa, blast from the past.  I'm gonna get emotional) that hits that primitive part of your brain that just wants to destroy.  What 50ft Robot understood, though, is that the player needs to feel fully in control of the destruction they cause.  That game didn't feel the need to jam the screen with particle effects: it just gave you things to crush and let you crush them.  Most importantly, 50ft Robot controlled smooth as butter.

XM-13 on the other hand, chugs like a steam train in a beer drinking contest.  It's pretty bad when a game boldly declares "tactical nuke inbound" and my first reaction is not "oh, this is gonna be sweet" but rather "ooh, the framerate's not gonna like that."  I've said before that my laptop is a pretty disappointing piece of machinery (even though it's an ostensibly top-of-the line Alienware, so idk what that's about), but come on.  I was just running Saints Row IV seamlessly and I can't handle a game that might have looked impressive in 2005?  Look, I'm not suggesting that a DigiPen game should resemble the newest games with cutting-edge graphics nor am I suggesting that DigiPen studenst should be as good at optimization as people who do that for a living.  All I'm saying is that if you're going to push the envelope and go for graphical quality, you'd better be able to make it run, because a game with poor graphics at 60 frames per second looks and feels a hell of a lot better than even the most visually stunning games at 2 frames per second.

And Xtreme Arena was a not real exe, so that's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay deadly.

Links
W-DED Sirius XM: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26688
doesn't exist: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=604

Wub Wub Racer Magic and Wyrm (kinda)

Wub Wub Racer Magic is beautiful in its simplicity.  You know that weird Japanese game show?  No, not that one, the other one.  The Human Tetris thing? Well, it's basically that, but with spaceships.  You fly a ship down a narrow corridor filled with walls comprised of 9 blocks, one of which is always missing.  You have to fly through the hole lest you be blown to smithereens.

The only real noteworthy thing is that this is one of maybe 5 games on this list to actually have made me laugh out loud.  There's something absolutely hilarious about the way your ship just sorta disintegrates when it hits a wall.  This game is the definition of a time-waster.  It's the kind of game you play while listening to a podcast or something.

And I couldn't get Wyrm to work, so...yeah.  I guess this is where the review ends.

Links
Dubstep Noises: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26685
Wyrmenheimer: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=554

Whisper of the Goddess and Wrecking Ball

Whisper of the Goddess is a puzzle game in the lightest sense of the word.  In my current state of mind, I'm very grateful to have a game that rewards thought and problem solving, but doesn't require you to be more than like 25% conscious to get through it.

I'm going to do a terrible job explaining the mechanics, so I suggest you download this one and try if for yourself if you're curious.  Basically, you have to latch onto blocks that you can then move across rails to get from point A to point B.  You'll have to be strategic about which blocks you flip, move, and latch onto and when...but as I said, the game is fairly straightforward and not likely to leave you stumped.

The most impressive thing about this game, I think, is its sheer size.  The developers seem to have packed as much content as possible into this game, each level maintaining the same quality design as the last.  This is venerable in many a sense, and it will certainly keep you from getting bored.  Personally, I prefer a more concise game that doesn't dwell too much on mechanics after they've been explored, but I can still definitely appreciate the prolific nature of the developers' brains.

The quality of this game is top-notch.  Any problem you have with it will not be because of dodgy design, but because of the concept.  If you're not into puzzle games or if you only like puzzles that make you feel really smart for figuring them out, skip over this one.  I had fun with it, though, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, charming adventure that isn't completely mindless but won't leave you puzzled either.

Wrecking Ball...more like Wrecked Game.  I have no idea what's going on in this game.  All I can figure out is that there are robots playing what seems to be like European handball but with weapons of mass destruction.  Sounds cool, right?  Well yeah, the premise is cool, but good luck playing the damn thing.  My weapons seem to be completely ineffective and whenever I get the ball I get stunlocked by enemy fire and fumble it quicker than I can say "ouch"

I don't know...maybe I was just playing it wrong, but I gave it three tries and couldn't figure it out.  Maybe toy around with this one for a bit to see if you can figure out what I've been missing, because the game seems like it would be really fun if it worked.  I like the "recharge" mechanic that requires you to back off from the action a bit to replenish your armor and weapons, but I just can't figure out the rest....sorry.

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

Links
Shhh, Goddess is talking: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26710
Miley Cyrus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=440

Wake the Dragon and War of the Currents

Hey, remember yesterday when I said some games are designed such that skipping the tutorial is a death sentence?  Well...Wake the Dragon.  Playing this game is just one nightmare after another.  The first thing I did was try to play without the tutorial.  All I could figure out how to do was change the color of certain blocks...but that seemed to do nothing.  So then the timer ran out, an enemy spawned, and it was game over.

Great.

So then I started up the tutorial, which was even more excessively wordy than some of my blog posts, and admittedly, that's saying something.  Having neither the time nor the patience to sit through a tutorial that starts off explaining that the little green glowy orb floating around the corner is, in fact, green and glowy, I promptly nope'd out of the tutorial and clicked "how to play," where I was given an incredibly barebones and unhelpful summary of the mechanics...again, mirroring my blog in the worst possible ways.  Press 2 to detonate...3 to disperse...4 to spawn boss...who? what? what does any of this mean?

So I started up the game again hoping that the mechanics would make sense and...no, they didn't.  I pressed 2 to to the detonate shout to get rid of an enemy when it spawned, but then the shout never worked again.  Does it only work once for some reason?  Does it have a cooldown time that lasts longer than the one indicated by the little meter filling back up?  Whatever.  I didn't have the patience to stick around for the answer to those questions.  This game gets a nope out of 10.

War of the Currents is jam-packed with stuff that interested me, both good and bad, so I'm bound to leave a lot of critical stuff out in a review that I have to push out in the span of like an hour.  Therefore, allow me to give a quick mini-review before I attempt to go more in-depth.  War of the Currents is a clever game with big ambitions and its head on straight, but it bit off a bit more than it could chew and the gameplay suffers a bit as a result.  I recommend it overall.

The story is an interesting "alternative history" take on the Edison v. Tesla conflict, a really interesting thing for any who aren't familiar, so the game gets points right out of the gate for tickling my tangential learning spot.  The opening cutscene does lose some favor with me just for existing, but for what it's worth, the 5 seconds I watched were very well done.  It had a professional look to it and started out with a very thought provoking phrase that summed up a critique I have of modern thinkers much more eloquently than I was ever able to.

Now let's talk gameplay.  Overall, it's very well executed but slightly unpolished.  The game is very combat-oriented, and you have a varied set of moves to keep you entertained.  You can mash the attack key, you can shoryuken, you can stunlock your enemies and you can use some well-timed shields to avoid tanking too much damage.  The major downside to all of this is that it's all optional.  It's like if your teacher offered to give you an extra point on a quiz if you watch a 15 minute long YouTube video.  Yeah, it's nice to get rewarded, and watching the video isn't exactly boring, but if it's all auxiliary, then it can be kind of tough to motivate yourself to do it. Other than that, there are minor issues.  The framerate occasionally chugs (and come on, I know my laptop has heating issues, but it's a game made of 2D sprites.  It should run pretty smoothly), some platforms blend in with the background, making jumping across them kind of a pain, and the "overcharge mode" throws any challenge the game might have had right out the window.

So yeah.  One of these games is definitely worth your time.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay electrical

Links
Don't Wake Dragon-daddy: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26021
Zappity do da: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26712

Voxel Smash and Voyage

It's always bittersweet to see a more recent game on deck to be reviewed.  On the one hand, as technology has improved and game theory has become more understood, the games have tended to get better.  On the other hand, they've also tended to get bigger.  Don't get me wrong, I love a gargantuan epic of a game every now again...I mean hell, I'm one of those people who's crazy enough to consider replaying Mass Effect...as in all of it.  That's going to have to wait till after the blog is finished, of course, but still...

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that neither of today's games were particularly long, but neither of them were anything short of a good time, either.  Essentially, today was the perfect blogging day, so I'd be in a fantastic mood if I weren't so tired.

Voxel Smash is apparently a callback to one of those eras of gaming that I'm too young to have experienced, because I don't know what the hell a voxel is. Apparently, Blogger doesn't either, because it's giving me that ever irksome red squiggly line...then again, Blogger also doesn't understand the word "gameplay." Fortunately for us, Voxel Smash does.

I'll describe the gameplay as "Minecraft meets Dark Souls," if that makes any sense...which of course it doesn't, so let me clarify.  Voxel Smash has the blocky, simplistic aesthetic of Minecraft and the gameplay of Dark Souls...just with the dial turned back down to "baby's first beat em up."

The game is designed with the sole intention of letting the player have fun, and it pulls it off very nicely.  This is one of the rare games that I stopped playing because of time constraints rather than because I stopped wanting to play.  You can roll, slash, shoot hadokens, and even do this really cool spear move that takes a bit of skill to implement, but is very satisfying when you do.  All of the mechanics are explained intuitively, and, without being too esoteric, they reward the player for figuring them out.

This is one lesson that Voyage could have learned from Voxel Smash.  The instructions are conveyed very hamhandedly in the form of a text-guided tutorial that locks off mechanics before the game deems you ready to use them.  I understand that Voyage is a much different game with more complex controls and rules that are more imperative to know, but still.  The first few levels are such walks through the park that I could have beaten them without breaking a sweat without the tutorial, and it would have made me feel better as a player, too.  I guess you could make the argument that they give you the option to skip the tutorial at any time, but before the game begins, I have no idea how nightmarish the first few levels are going to be.  I've played many a game wherein I blazed right through the tutorial without paying attention and have proceeded to have my rear handed to me on a silver platter within five minutes.  Obviously, this is not one of those games, but my point is that I didn't know that before the game began, so skipping the tutorial was way too scary.

Other than that, though, Voyager does everything it means too and does it well.  It's an RTS, which I've never been too big a fan of, but it's a good RTS; my saying that is like a vegan complimenting your steak tartar, so take that as you will, but the game looks good, sounds amazing, and feels fine.  It's competently put together and it doesn't fall into any of the traps that most RTS games fall into.  I hate its kind, but I had fun with it, so I'll give this one a recommendation, but I'll save my seal of approval for Voxel Smash.

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

Links
What does the Voxel Say: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26912
play long and prosper: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26709