I don't mean to insult anyone in saying this, but as I'm playing more and more of these games, evidence is leading me to postulate that there are three different classes of games in this catalog:
1) Lines of code and design documents that were strewn about in an effort to scrounge together a passing grade (e.g. A Series of Tubes or Aether)
2) Games made with limited time and resources made for the same purpose as class 1 but with genuine attention to detail and care for video games as an artistic medium (e.g Astrobunny or Amaia)
Base Invaders belongs to the third class: Games with the same kind of spirit as those in class two but with the time and resources that come from being designed to win a prize or gain extracurricular prestige. In fact, Base Invaders took home the 2007 IGF Student Showcase award and was also a finalist in the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition of the same year.
Indeed, Base Invaders must have had a good amount of time spent on it for this kind of quality. Caveat: when I say "quality" I'm referring to the kind of polish that makes it seem like it was made by professionals rather than students. That does not necessarily make it a better game than other games without this polish. For example, I enjoyed playing Arc Angle much more than I enjoyed playing Starfox: Adventures, even though the latter is far more polished.
I've gone on the record saying I don't really like tower defense games, and Base Invaders is literally a tower defense game. I still found it to be really enjoyable, though. Why? Simply, it doesn't force you to sit by and watch your defenses fail. See, in most tower defense games (and really strategy games in general), either you're restricted from modifying your defenses once the battle begins or building up defenses costs money, leaving you defenseless once the green well dries out. Base Invaders fixes this problem by giving you a base attack which costs no money to utilize. You pick up and throw your enemies, much like in Defend Your Castle. This keeps gameplay fun and tense, as not only are your strategic skills tested, but your reflexes are too.
In addition, there are a wide variety of baddies to fling about, each with a particular ability, meaning each enemy must be disposed of uniquely. This adds many layers of depth to the game, which left me frantically clicking around and running a million calculations in my head after just level 3.
The graphics are pretty and stylized, showing off not only a good amount of aesthetic sense but also that much touted polish that I raved about mere paragraphs ago.
Sound direction is competent. The music is enjoyable and the high-pitched monster voices are more adorable than they are annoying, giving the game a cutesy kind of charm like a kitten with a little pink bow on its head.
I think what I like most about this game are the little things. Little things that let you know that the game cares about you. Like enabling a stage select from the get go but still including all the story/tutorial elements or the fact that the little monster guy on your team shouts "hey, where are you going?" when you exit the game.
And that's pretty much all there is to say about Base Invaders. I'll be honest, in my effort to play these games as swiftly as possible in order to meet my schedule, I didn't have time to play the whole game. However, the parts I experienced provide me with enough evidence to support a hearty recommendation. Enjoy.
Until next time, stay safe (use lasers).
Links
Invasive Base: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=441
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Bang!
It's 9:33AM and already this day has left me dazed and confused.
The first time I started up "Bang!" or as it prefers to be called, "Exclamation Point: The Game," I experienced the most miserable crash in my entire career as a gamer. It brought me to some grey screen with a pulldown menu where I could select from 1pt to 6pt thickness on some kind of line. As I desperately fumbled with my keyboard, trying to regain control of my laptop, the music from Astrobunny started playing! I was convinced this was part of the glitch, so I restarted my computer and tried again.
Once I got Bang! to behave itself, I was treated to a beautiful menu screen. And by beautiful I mean holy hot damn, it's pretty. Couple that with the very pleasant and calming background track and...wait...this sounds familiar...oh no.
Much to my dismay, it actually wasn't a glitch that caused the music I so ardently praised in my Astrobunny review to be played. That's actually the menu music.
I felt quite betrayed having discovered this. Bang! was created the year before Astrobunny was, and the two games had different sound designers. I don't know what kind of plagiaristic game the folks at Digipen are playing, but I don't like it. It gives me a weird feeling that anything I praise or critique in these reviews might be rendered moot because the project I'm commenting on might just be a carbon copy of another one on this list.
Oh well, beyond that, Bang! is a very fun bullet hell shooter. The thing that bothers me most about it is that there's nothing new to it. It's just a bullet hell shooter. A rather minimalist one at that. The best you'll get in terms of power-ups, which are usually the trademark of bullet hells, is the ability to fire 4 shots at once instead of 1 in a perfect straight line. Not very impressive.
Unlike those in Aether, the projectiles in Bang! can actually harm you, giving a very tangible sense of threat when the screen fills up with enemy fire. Killing an enemy will immediately wipe all his bullets from the screen, which may seem like broken gameplay, but trust me, it's only there to keep the game fair in the later levels, and is a very necessary mechanic.
Graphically, the real game isn't as pretty as its menus, but is still pleasing to look at. I genuinely can't tell if the characters are 3D models or 2D sprites, but either way they are definitely the hardest things to look at in this game. They're just so minimalistic when compared to the backgrounds or power-up sparks.
There's not much else to say about this game. Try it out. It's worth your time.
Until next time, stay explosive.
Links
whoosh pow kabloosh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18590
The first time I started up "Bang!" or as it prefers to be called, "Exclamation Point: The Game," I experienced the most miserable crash in my entire career as a gamer. It brought me to some grey screen with a pulldown menu where I could select from 1pt to 6pt thickness on some kind of line. As I desperately fumbled with my keyboard, trying to regain control of my laptop, the music from Astrobunny started playing! I was convinced this was part of the glitch, so I restarted my computer and tried again.
Once I got Bang! to behave itself, I was treated to a beautiful menu screen. And by beautiful I mean holy hot damn, it's pretty. Couple that with the very pleasant and calming background track and...wait...this sounds familiar...oh no.
Much to my dismay, it actually wasn't a glitch that caused the music I so ardently praised in my Astrobunny review to be played. That's actually the menu music.
I felt quite betrayed having discovered this. Bang! was created the year before Astrobunny was, and the two games had different sound designers. I don't know what kind of plagiaristic game the folks at Digipen are playing, but I don't like it. It gives me a weird feeling that anything I praise or critique in these reviews might be rendered moot because the project I'm commenting on might just be a carbon copy of another one on this list.
Oh well, beyond that, Bang! is a very fun bullet hell shooter. The thing that bothers me most about it is that there's nothing new to it. It's just a bullet hell shooter. A rather minimalist one at that. The best you'll get in terms of power-ups, which are usually the trademark of bullet hells, is the ability to fire 4 shots at once instead of 1 in a perfect straight line. Not very impressive.
Unlike those in Aether, the projectiles in Bang! can actually harm you, giving a very tangible sense of threat when the screen fills up with enemy fire. Killing an enemy will immediately wipe all his bullets from the screen, which may seem like broken gameplay, but trust me, it's only there to keep the game fair in the later levels, and is a very necessary mechanic.
Graphically, the real game isn't as pretty as its menus, but is still pleasing to look at. I genuinely can't tell if the characters are 3D models or 2D sprites, but either way they are definitely the hardest things to look at in this game. They're just so minimalistic when compared to the backgrounds or power-up sparks.
There's not much else to say about this game. Try it out. It's worth your time.
Until next time, stay explosive.
Links
whoosh pow kabloosh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18590
Ballocks
Well this was...strange.
I think the best course of action here would be to just recount my play experience. The first thing I notice is that the game is only 7MB. Wary of this, I start up the game and am greeted to a wonderful background track and a demonstration of the stylized, cell-shaded 3D aesthetic to come. Suddenly, a crude pencil drawing of a panda emerging from a chicken egg appears to give me its salutations and then swiftly disappears into the night, never to be seen again.
Ignoring that, I click the play button and am brought immediately to a server menu. "Exciting!" Thought I, wondering which of the many servers to choose from. I could pick:
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
oh, here's a fun one: N/A
N/A
N/A
or N/A
Since none of these obviously functional servers responded to my click, I figured the best course of action would be to click "host" and hope the game was courteous enough to include some AI for me to whack about.
Sadly, no such thing happened, and I was left in an empty world rolling around merrily and zapping the occasional environmental block.
You know what's strange, though? I still kind of like this game. I definitely recommend it more highly than I would Bacon Pirates in Space or many other on this list. You won't get more than a minute or two of playtime out of it, sure. But bouncing, rolling and zapping my way through an empty, cell-shaded planet has and odd kind of appeal to it. It offers a much more low-key catharsis than Attack of the 50ft Robot, which I consider gold star-worthy.
I wish there was more to say, but nope. There's not. Maybe if I can convince a bunch of my friends to download it and come over to my house, we can get a LAN game going. Don't hold your breath, though. That's pretty low on my list of priorities.
Until next time. Stay bouncy.
Links
The game with the funny title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=416
I think the best course of action here would be to just recount my play experience. The first thing I notice is that the game is only 7MB. Wary of this, I start up the game and am greeted to a wonderful background track and a demonstration of the stylized, cell-shaded 3D aesthetic to come. Suddenly, a crude pencil drawing of a panda emerging from a chicken egg appears to give me its salutations and then swiftly disappears into the night, never to be seen again.
Ignoring that, I click the play button and am brought immediately to a server menu. "Exciting!" Thought I, wondering which of the many servers to choose from. I could pick:
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
oh, here's a fun one: N/A
N/A
N/A
or N/A
Since none of these obviously functional servers responded to my click, I figured the best course of action would be to click "host" and hope the game was courteous enough to include some AI for me to whack about.
Sadly, no such thing happened, and I was left in an empty world rolling around merrily and zapping the occasional environmental block.
You know what's strange, though? I still kind of like this game. I definitely recommend it more highly than I would Bacon Pirates in Space or many other on this list. You won't get more than a minute or two of playtime out of it, sure. But bouncing, rolling and zapping my way through an empty, cell-shaded planet has and odd kind of appeal to it. It offers a much more low-key catharsis than Attack of the 50ft Robot, which I consider gold star-worthy.
I wish there was more to say, but nope. There's not. Maybe if I can convince a bunch of my friends to download it and come over to my house, we can get a LAN game going. Don't hold your breath, though. That's pretty low on my list of priorities.
Until next time. Stay bouncy.
Links
The game with the funny title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=416
Friday, January 18, 2013
Bacon Pirates in Space
What's with all the bacon-themed games? One of them was a barely passable 3D destrocto-physics playset and the other straight up didnt work. Maybe this one will break the bacon trend and actually be a fun enough game to warrant such delicious theming.
nope.
It's definitely the most fun of the three bacon games I've "played" so far but that's not saying much. It's still frustrating and monotonous.
Pretty much all you do is fly around on a pig stabbing other pigs that fly much faster than you. Sounds revolutionary, eh?
The biggest problem this game has by far is the hit detection. It seems completely arbitrary. Whether I fly directly into an enemy pig from the perfect angle or I just happen to bump into someone while trying to adjust to the awkward control, the outcome seems to be the same: completely random. This turns what could have been a strategic game that makes your brain run a million calculations a second for an intense and faced-paced experience into bumper cars.
The graphical style is fine. Nothing to complain about. it's just a bunch of 2d sprites flying around on a screen.
The music...ugh the music. I'm fine with looping a track to infinity and beyond as long as it meets 2 criteria:
1) it has to be fun to listen to. Bacon Pirates in Space fails on this front.
2) it has to be more than 2 seconds long! The 2 second piece could be the most beautiful thing ever to grace humankind but that won't mean much if you get tired of it after 10 seconds of gameplay. Combine this with the fact that BPiS uses music loops that aren't even particularly good and you have one miserable experience.
As previously mentioned, the control is awkward as hell. Elevation is a key aspect of the game. How do you elevate yourself? Repeatedly tapping the space button. Trust me, it's nothing like controlling Kirby or Pit in Super Smash Bros. Those characters actually respond to one hit of a button. Your little flying piggy in BPiS on the other hand will only raise his fat behind off the ground after a straight second or two of vigorous button mashing. It's not visceral. it's not intuitive. It's annoying.
Another problem is that there are way too many enemies per screen. It's manageable when an enemy ship boards yours, but during what I assume are the main levels, you wont be able to progress until you've monotonously murdered multicolored pigs for about 15 minutes.
Don't bother with this game. Trust me, it's not worth your time. If you want to play it anyways, be my guest. Until next time. Stay smelly.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=485
PS - hey, at least it has a save feature
nope.
It's definitely the most fun of the three bacon games I've "played" so far but that's not saying much. It's still frustrating and monotonous.
Pretty much all you do is fly around on a pig stabbing other pigs that fly much faster than you. Sounds revolutionary, eh?
The biggest problem this game has by far is the hit detection. It seems completely arbitrary. Whether I fly directly into an enemy pig from the perfect angle or I just happen to bump into someone while trying to adjust to the awkward control, the outcome seems to be the same: completely random. This turns what could have been a strategic game that makes your brain run a million calculations a second for an intense and faced-paced experience into bumper cars.
The graphical style is fine. Nothing to complain about. it's just a bunch of 2d sprites flying around on a screen.
The music...ugh the music. I'm fine with looping a track to infinity and beyond as long as it meets 2 criteria:
1) it has to be fun to listen to. Bacon Pirates in Space fails on this front.
2) it has to be more than 2 seconds long! The 2 second piece could be the most beautiful thing ever to grace humankind but that won't mean much if you get tired of it after 10 seconds of gameplay. Combine this with the fact that BPiS uses music loops that aren't even particularly good and you have one miserable experience.
As previously mentioned, the control is awkward as hell. Elevation is a key aspect of the game. How do you elevate yourself? Repeatedly tapping the space button. Trust me, it's nothing like controlling Kirby or Pit in Super Smash Bros. Those characters actually respond to one hit of a button. Your little flying piggy in BPiS on the other hand will only raise his fat behind off the ground after a straight second or two of vigorous button mashing. It's not visceral. it's not intuitive. It's annoying.
Another problem is that there are way too many enemies per screen. It's manageable when an enemy ship boards yours, but during what I assume are the main levels, you wont be able to progress until you've monotonously murdered multicolored pigs for about 15 minutes.
Don't bother with this game. Trust me, it's not worth your time. If you want to play it anyways, be my guest. Until next time. Stay smelly.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=485
PS - hey, at least it has a save feature
Thursday, January 17, 2013
B.A.C.O.N.B.E.A.R.S T.O.W.E.R.D.E.F.E.N.S.E
Remember a while back when I tried to review Army of TD but it just brought be to a 404 screen? well this game got a step further than that, at least, and found itself a nice little 50MB cranny in my hard drive before telling me it didn't feel like running. Apparently d3dx9d_42.dll is missing from my computer. Don't know what that measn? Neither do I. All i know is that not every component necessary was installed, so I'm calling this a broken link. Just like my other review, though, I'm considering this completely legitimate.
It's not a big deal, anyway. If the title tells me anything it's that this game probably involves tower defense, which, as covered in my Ancient Forest and Grumpy Monsters review, I'm not too fond of.
Speaking of the title, yay! We're in B territory now. That kinda sorta means we're 1/26th of the way done...hold on, folks. It's gonna be a long and bumpy ride.
I'll try and get an actual review out later tonight, but I can't make any promises.
Links:
why even bother: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26137
It's not a big deal, anyway. If the title tells me anything it's that this game probably involves tower defense, which, as covered in my Ancient Forest and Grumpy Monsters review, I'm not too fond of.
Speaking of the title, yay! We're in B territory now. That kinda sorta means we're 1/26th of the way done...hold on, folks. It's gonna be a long and bumpy ride.
I'll try and get an actual review out later tonight, but I can't make any promises.
Links:
why even bother: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26137
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Avenger
*grumbles*
Sorry guys, today is an off day. My interwubs are slow, drivers ed kept me away from me work for a million hours and, speaking of work...yeah. Not a fun time.
It's really a shame because I really want to give Avenger its due. It's not the best game on the list so far...not by a long shot...but it's still really fun and does a lot of things right. Alas, since it's already 9:16 and I have a mountain of work to get to, I'm just going to rattle off the pros and cons.
Pros:
- variety of gameplay styles from agile mech suit, land racer, and heavy mech suit. My favorite is the agile mech suit, which is good because 3 out of the 5 missions utilize it
- solid control with the agile mech suit and land racer. Even though the agile mech suit is a tad slippery and reacts to the mouse WAY too much, it's still controllable and can suck you right into the experience like you're marrow in the bones of a veal shank.
- graphics are appealing, though they kind of remind me of that fever dream I had that one time in sixth grade when my temperature broke 105...also, they made my computer (which was built with alien technology) heat up without lagging out, so at least it makes me feel like my purchase was justified.
- sound direction is competent. SFX clue the player in when appropriate and the music is fun to listen to and fits the mood.
- story is well done for a game of this length (~45 minutes). FATE reminds me of Icarus from Deus Ex, which is good because I think Icarus is the most well crafted character in the entirety of narrative media.
- not really a selling point but I think it's cool that this game had a team of only 2 people.
Cons:
- ugh dat voice acting. I have a deeper voice than the imposing military general and I'm a shrill, barely-pubescent high-schooler.
- as previously mentioned, the agile mech is slippery. Its long-range attack is just a lunging melee attack, but it acts like a spoiled toddler in that it only works when it wants to. In addition, the heavy mech is just downright boring. You're equipped with a nuke that wipes out any potential threats faster than you can say kapow. Then you just have to slllloooowwwwllllyyyy walk to your objective. Snore!
- some of the primary functions of the game can only be used by pressing the middle mouse button, meaning if you dont have a mouse, your gameplay experience will be affected greatly.
and that's pretty much it. Overall, Avenger is a good game with lots of potential. I bet if the guys who made this had some coin backing them up for a new project, they could turn out something great. I dare say this hypothetical product might even be revolutionary
Stay classy, internet.
Links
pretty colors: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=11754
Sorry guys, today is an off day. My interwubs are slow, drivers ed kept me away from me work for a million hours and, speaking of work...yeah. Not a fun time.
It's really a shame because I really want to give Avenger its due. It's not the best game on the list so far...not by a long shot...but it's still really fun and does a lot of things right. Alas, since it's already 9:16 and I have a mountain of work to get to, I'm just going to rattle off the pros and cons.
Pros:
- variety of gameplay styles from agile mech suit, land racer, and heavy mech suit. My favorite is the agile mech suit, which is good because 3 out of the 5 missions utilize it
- solid control with the agile mech suit and land racer. Even though the agile mech suit is a tad slippery and reacts to the mouse WAY too much, it's still controllable and can suck you right into the experience like you're marrow in the bones of a veal shank.
- graphics are appealing, though they kind of remind me of that fever dream I had that one time in sixth grade when my temperature broke 105...also, they made my computer (which was built with alien technology) heat up without lagging out, so at least it makes me feel like my purchase was justified.
- sound direction is competent. SFX clue the player in when appropriate and the music is fun to listen to and fits the mood.
- story is well done for a game of this length (~45 minutes). FATE reminds me of Icarus from Deus Ex, which is good because I think Icarus is the most well crafted character in the entirety of narrative media.
- not really a selling point but I think it's cool that this game had a team of only 2 people.
Cons:
- ugh dat voice acting. I have a deeper voice than the imposing military general and I'm a shrill, barely-pubescent high-schooler.
- as previously mentioned, the agile mech is slippery. Its long-range attack is just a lunging melee attack, but it acts like a spoiled toddler in that it only works when it wants to. In addition, the heavy mech is just downright boring. You're equipped with a nuke that wipes out any potential threats faster than you can say kapow. Then you just have to slllloooowwwwllllyyyy walk to your objective. Snore!
- some of the primary functions of the game can only be used by pressing the middle mouse button, meaning if you dont have a mouse, your gameplay experience will be affected greatly.
and that's pretty much it. Overall, Avenger is a good game with lots of potential. I bet if the guys who made this had some coin backing them up for a new project, they could turn out something great. I dare say this hypothetical product might even be revolutionary
Stay classy, internet.
Links
pretty colors: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=11754
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Autonomous
*disgruntled groan*
I'm running on empty here as it is, folks. The last thing I needed was something like this. There's literally nothing to say about it. I think all I can do is describe the mechanics because nothing about it is good and nothing about it is bad it's so painfully average.
I will say one thing, the game is awfully generous. After I spent 10 minutes plowing through it, it promptly informed me that I was in fact "the best player ever." Not that I disagree, but I don't think this game really had enough material to make such a judgement.
Anyway, all you do is go around picking up blocks and throwing them at other blocks. That's it. That's literally it. I have nothing else to say. The only thing that makes this experience palatable is that "another one bites the dust" and I'm one step closer to completing the catalog. That's not what a game should be about. A game should be about making me laugh and smile and forget about the miserable existence we all share (jk I totes love the world n stuff).
eh, that's all for now. Sorry this review wasn't very substantive...
Links
something: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26150
I'm running on empty here as it is, folks. The last thing I needed was something like this. There's literally nothing to say about it. I think all I can do is describe the mechanics because nothing about it is good and nothing about it is bad it's so painfully average.
I will say one thing, the game is awfully generous. After I spent 10 minutes plowing through it, it promptly informed me that I was in fact "the best player ever." Not that I disagree, but I don't think this game really had enough material to make such a judgement.
Anyway, all you do is go around picking up blocks and throwing them at other blocks. That's it. That's literally it. I have nothing else to say. The only thing that makes this experience palatable is that "another one bites the dust" and I'm one step closer to completing the catalog. That's not what a game should be about. A game should be about making me laugh and smile and forget about the miserable existence we all share (jk I totes love the world n stuff).
eh, that's all for now. Sorry this review wasn't very substantive...
Links
something: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26150
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