Coreship

Somewhere between the last review and this one I woke up with my head on my keyboard, casually drooling onto the touchpad.  The reason I'm telling you this is so you know that my mental status is not exactly tip-top, so please excuse any spelling errors or incoherent ramblings.

With taht being siad, let's give ourselfs the good ol cream puddn

Coreship is an arcade style top-down shooter with an aesthetic like that of a modern day Asteroids.  The main idea is that you are trying to defend a fortress for as long as you can.  You start out with a pathetic little ship equipped with a tiny booster and a couple machine guns, but as you kill enemies, you get money.  You can then spend that money in the shop to upgrade your ship

Here's where the game gets interesting.  You chose exactly where the upgrades go on your ship.  It's possibly the most engaging customization screen I've ever worked with.  Instead of just scrolling through a menu of different guns and armors, you place the armor around your ship.  In reality, this doesn't add too much to the game because there is still a statistically best way to customize your ship, meaning it's still just a linear upgrade system.  However, being able to place the nodes slightly off center or construct your ship's armor to resemble a giant space phallus give it a very personal charm.  The ship becomes yours. the fact that you have to kill ships to get the money gives your ship an even more personal feel.  You earn your right to fly a pair of space breasts that lactate lasers.

That said, no game is without its flaws and this game has a lot of flaws.  As I said before, the customization is pretty much just a facade.  The giant space phallus will be nowhere near as efficient armor that just consists of a bunch of lines protecting your ship's core, so the incentive for creativity is unique to the player.  If this game were done again, I'd like to see things like the option to fortify certain pieces of armor, doubling their strength for the same price as just adding another piece of armor.  That way, you can design your ship however you want and still get the most bang out of your buck.

In addition, the movement controls are a little wonky, and that's not just because my head is currently perceiving the world around me in bright pastel colors while the walls sing jaunty folk tunes.  I like the idea that they were working with; essentially, whichever direction you aim in becomes the front of your ship, so W, A, S, and D will do different things depending on where you're aiming.  I realize that that's pretty much the same description as the movement from Cease Fire 20makeupyourdamnmind but I assure you the game controls nothing like that.  The difference is that Coreship is in space rather than in tanks, so freestyle movement is key.  It's tough to explain, but trust me: the movement system in Coreship definitely has the right ideas but is still a little sticky and hard to grasp.

All in all, despite this game's flaws, it still gets my seal of approval.  The magic word of the day is "creativity," ladies and gentlemen.  That magical human element goes a long way with me.  It invokes that magical childish glee that video gaming is all about.

Until next time, stay creative

Links

if Notch made Asteroids: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26002

Core

Before we begin, I just wanna be a sap for a second and mention a fellow blogger: my girlfriend, Lydia.  She recently gave me a shout out in one of her blogs after doing an amusing mini-review of Portal in a format very similar to my own.  I'll put a link to her blog down below.  Check it out if you're in the mood for some touching anecdotes that are sure to make you go "aww."

Alright, back to Video Games:

Core is Metroid but bad.  Let's start out with the first problem, the control scheme.  I get that in Metroid you had a nice convenient controller with which to aim, but there's no reason a keyboard can't work just as well.  When I emulated Super Metroid (don't pirate games, kids), I was able to set up the input in a manner that didn't confuse me, so why can't it work in Core? aiming the blaster is not easy to get used to.

And on the topic of the blaster, that's another problem.  Why do the shots trail off after only about half a second on the screen?  I feel like it would be more effective to use Simon Belmont's whip than to use this pathetic little pea shooter.  See, when you make a design choice like that, there has to be a reason.  I get that Core is trying to deliver a pseudo-scary experience much like in Metroid, but honestly I don't think having a blaster that actually blasts stuff would be too much of a hindrance to the atmosphere.

What is a hindrance to the atmosphere, however, is the platforming.  The jump is straight up annoying.  The second you let go of the spacebar, gravity has a lot of fun with your sprite.  This means that if you try to time your jumps accounting for the distance you'll gain while falling, like in a good platformer, you'll fall short of whatever platform you were trying to jump on.  This makes the game as a whole feel sticky and unmanageable like a chewed up wad of gum caught in hair that you haven't washed since you spilled talcum powder all over it.

The aesthetic is fine, but unoriginal.  I'll give you all one guess as to which nintendo IP Core wants to be the most. I'll give you a hint: it starts with "M" and ends in "etroid."

This game failed to impress.  Granted, I quit before anything cool was introduced, so there might be some kind of life-altering mechanic of the gods that gets introduced three levels in, but I'll respond to that the same way I respond to people who try to get me to play League of Legends:  A game has to earn my playtime.  If I'm frustrated by the first level, I'm not going to play on to find out what the rest of the game has to offer.  Maybe if I paid for the game and was determined to make my purchase seem worth it, I'd grit my teeth and push through it, but these games are not only free, but numerous.  I can't waste time playing through bad games when there are (probably) more than four hundred games left to play.

Until next time, stay original.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25900
Lydia's blog: http://vivalavidaconamor.blogspot.com/

PS- sorry for the hiatus, but I was away from the computer for the weekend.

Continuum Passage (guest review)

Today, we have a guest review!  Ah, yes, I'm not above shamelessly shirking off my duties to those around me.  Today's review will be done by Luis Gomez of Potentially Meaningful. Here's what he has to say:
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Continuum Passage

Dean’s either trying to work or busy slapping himself in the face, so today you get a guest review from me, Luis. As for the quality of the review, it’s going to be bumpy. I’m not really a review person. I’m more of a cynically-antagonize-everyone-around-me-until-they-loathe-my-opinion person, so if I start going off on wild tangents as to the negatives in this game, I apologize.

With that out of the way, Continuum Passage, made last (school) year by a group of three juniors.
The game advertises itself as a "first-person action exploration game with puzzling elements." If that seems like a lengthy, overly descriptive description for what amounts to a fifteen minute game, that's because it is.

But let me start with the good. Continuum Passage, in being the bastard son of about five different game genres, actually manages to create something uniquely entertaining. The object of the game is to get to the finishing point by utilizing floor pads that reshuffle the level. Step on a floor pad, the level continuously wraps in the direction the arrow’s pointing. It’s a very interesting mechanic, and works to further the idea of the ‘Continuum Passage.’ It seems like these devs, between the drunken parties and orgies DigiPen is famous for, took great care to make sure that their mechanics reinforced the general idea that the title introduces. The game has a vibrant and arcade-y color palette. Lots of neon, bright colors, but that’s indicative of a lot of the library. The music is...okay I guess. There’s one electronic track that the game plays on a loop. Not bad, but gets a bit annoying after awhile.

The annoying bits of this game still stick out obnoxiously, like a finger in your delicious Big Mac. For one, remember that lengthy description from two paragraphs ago? That’s a big issue. In combining so many elements into one game, the game loses focus and direction, like it doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up into a Kickstarter project. The puzzles aren’t really...puzzling, in a sense, and the mechanics reflect this. About midway through this game’s 15 levels, they introduce these little triangular barriers, which you can’t get through without a key. However, once you pick up a key, you never lose it. Well, let me phrase that better. If you pick up a key, and then die without reaching a checkpoint, you restart the level, still holding on to the key. All this does is remove the challenge from the puzzles and turn the game into a race. Speaking of races, the game occasionally feels like a racing game. No, I’m serious.  Half of the time you're just running from the dissolving platforms, which to be honest isn't really that fun.

All in all, Continuum Passage is a short, mostly okay experience that could do with less variety and more specialization. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go tame the horses of Raxacoricofallapatorius.

See you space cowboy:
Continuum Passage-https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25898
Shameless Plug-potentiallymeaningful.blogspot.com

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Thanks for that, Luis!

Since that review was already the length of three of my normal reviews, I'm going to keep my own commentary short, so if I don't respond do something Luis said, you can assume I agree with it.

That said, here are the comments he made which i found to be only...potentially meaningful (GOT 'EM)

I wouldn't say the music gets annoying after a while, especially considering its pace matches the mood of the game. When you're in the world map, for example, if you zoom out, the music gets softer. A game's music score doesn't have to be fun to listen to, it just has to reinforce the feeling that the game wants you to experience, much like the graphical style does. Look no further that Silent Hill to see what I'm talking about.

I also wouldn't say that Continuum Passage is spread too thin. In fact, I wouldn't even say it takes influence from so many other genres. Continuum Passage is a first-person puzzler. That's it. I think it not only knows exactly what it wants to be but pulls it off in a very focused manner. It's certainly a bit of a stretch to say it feels like a racing game, though running from collapsing platforms does create that tension you usually get from racing games.

There are also a few flaws which I think Luis didn't pay enough attention to.

Most glaring is the jump. It's pathetic. I get that they only wanted you to be able to clear one block at a time, but the jump is so tiny I didn't even realize I had it until halfway through the game because it looks like the camera naturally bobbing up and down for a walk cycle. Also, it's difficult to see whether the jump you need to make covers one space or two at first glance, leading me to fall to my death during the last stage when I already had two of the three keys. This not only allowed the challenge to be lost, as Luis said, but forced the challenge to be lost.

That's pretty much all I have to say. Thanks for the help, Luis! Always appreciated.

And hey, if anyone else out there wants to send me their opinions of a game, I'll gladly feature and respond to their points as well.

Until next time, stay original.

Links

look in the guest review, sillypants!

Constellations

What the hell happened?  We were doing so well with games that actually function, and now we have 2 broken games in a row!  This one just plainly doesn't respond to input.  I get to the menu screen, but none of the buttons do anything.

Oh well, at least I'll get to shake things up a bit with the next review.  Now that I've confused everyone except the one person who knows what I'm talking about, I bid you adieu.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18577

Comrade Ivan's Kannonwagens

Oopsie daisy

this game requires windows XP to run.  Since I'm running win7 Home Premium, I can't run winXP programs.  The only computer I have at my disposal that runs XP is my old Dell XPS, but that dinosaur needs a new motherboard, which I'm not gonna co out and buy just so I can run Comrade Ivan's Kannonwagens.

Sorry, folks.  This one's broken for me.  But hey, if any of you out there use XP and want to tell me your thoughts on this game, I'd love to hear them.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=458
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EDIT-2/19/13

who-ee I cannot believe I forgot about compatibility mode.  Thanks for the tip, Yose.

Alright, let's get the real review going.

I agree with Yose that the game gets stale after about a minute of play, but there have certainly been worse games on this list. If you can imagine Battle Ball Brawl, minus the cool jumping mechanics, combined with the steering mechanics of Cease Fire 20somethingorother, then you can pretty much imagine Comrade Ivan's Kannonwagens. 

The movement is sluggish and slippery.  The landscape is very hilly, so prepare to fight gravity and fight it hard.  On top of that, you move so unbearably slow that you may as well be occupying stationary guns instead of tanks.  The aiming is not bad, but at times it feels very unreliable.  If you're even a centimeter off from your target, it ain't going down.  Combine that with the fact that the targeting reticle only gives you a basic idea of where you're aiming and the result is unsatisfying.

The biggest problem I have with this game is just how barren the landscape is.  I think they only give you one enemy tank at a time to shoot at, which is a real problem in maps this big.  The tanks are tough to kill as it is because you die just as easily as they do.  In the first mission, you're expected to kill ten of them.  This might not be so bad if the map was full of tanks, but I spend way more time finding the tanks than I do killing them.  This feels less like a third person competitive shooter and more like spawning yourself in the middle of a field in Garry's Mod with nothing to do and just kinda walking around for a bit.  It isn't fun.  You have to fill the map up with interesting stuff in Garry's Mod before you start walking around the world you make.

Long story short: This game has competent controls, but sloppy movement and desolate maps make it a droning experience

Until next time, remember to google your problems before giving up

Commando Attack Sub

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good lord, this game...

First off, a little context:  downloading this game was no easy task.  The file is more than 70MB and my connection speed seems to have caught the flu.  Once I downloaded it, I was greeted by an error message saying the files were corrupt and had t be re-downloaded.  I was about ready to give up on this game and do another one of my non-reviews.

Something convinced me to re-download, however.  Once I got the damn thing working, I found I had no idea what to do.  Instantly, and I mean instantly, the game had me fiddling with complex menus that I had no idea what to do with.  This is not how you convey your game mechanics, guys.  Finally I figured out how to customize my submarine (though I had no idea what the customizations did) and enter the battle arena.

Here's the best way to think of this game:  It's Custom Robo's alcoholic cousin that had a drunken fling with Forsaken 64.  Thing is, whereas both Custom Robo and Forsaken 64 were not only playable but enjoyable, Commando Sub is neither.

This is one of those IGF games, which really makes me think I'm not doing something right.  How could a game in which you can unload literally your entire supply of ammo into an enemy (with no ammo pickups in sight, mind you) and literally not cause a chip in their health bars get into the Independent Game Festival, let alone be a showcase finalist?

I've never been one to let the opinion of others color my own, but the evidence is clear:  something ain't right here.  DigiPen's website has been having kind of a rough day today, so I'm going to assume something went wrong with the second download.  Unfortunately,  I can't afford more time to this game than I already have without risking falling behind schedule.

I encourage you to try this game out for yourself and see if you can unravel the mystery.  All I can do is recount my play experience, which consisted of nothing but confusion and frustration...but mostly confusion.  A lot of confusion.

Links
wha?: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=553

Coalescence

One day till vacation...must keep pushing forward...I can do this...guuuhhhhh.....

Actually, on that note, while I do intend on being as prolific as possible during the break, This weekend might be a bit of a drought.  My buddies and I are gathering together to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. We already marathon'd all of the Lord of the Rings movies, all of the Star Wars movies, the entirety of Soul Eater, the Harry Potter movies, and all the movies Pixar has made (except Cars: 2)

Long story short, don't get your hopes up for a glut of blogs as soon as the break starts up. It'll probably take us 2 or three days of straight viewing to get it done, and afterwards, I probably won't feel like sitting in front of a glowing screen for any longer than I have to.

Until then, though, Coalescence.

One of the reasons I made this intro longer than usual is because I don't have much to say about Coalescence.  You play as a yellow space marine guy who must traverse through the stages my manipulating the molecular composition of adhesium blocks.  "Whoa now," you may say.  "I play video games to escape from Chemistry class.  What is this, some kind of BS teaching tool?"  Nay, say I, fair sir.  Luckily, phase change is a lot easier to accomplish in Coalescence than it is in real life.  All you gotta do is point your little blaster at a block of adhesium, set it to whatever phase you want it to be in by convenient use of the 1,2, and 3 buttons, and fire away.

Conveyance is a bit of an issue again.  It's a shame because the levels themselves are so well designed that they can essentially act as tutorials in and of themselves.  Unless it was some kind of class requirement to have an instructive tutorial, I see no reason why the game has to block off the use of an ability until a piece of text on the screen politely informs you that you can use it.

In terms of game feel, it's alright but could be better.  The jump is kind of pathetic, leading to many instances in which I hubristically leap across a platform only to fall to my death or in which I find myself adorably jumping up at a 4-foot high ledge, not being able to clear it because my toes' every pixel didn't quite make it to the required altitude.

This is a game in which you'll need to think, and thus it can get rather frustrating rather quickly if you don't figure out a puzzle's solution.  This is the nature of the beast that is puzzle games.  It is, therefore, the game's job to keep the player calm as he or she figures out the puzzles at his or her own pace.  Through aesthetic, the game does a great job of this.  All the environments are really nice, calming shades of blue and the music slyly coils around the player's mind like a seductive boa constrictor.  The game's mechanics, however, reverse the work of the aesthetic with interest.

I already mentioned the frustrating aspects of the platforming, but that's not the only control issue.  Picking up and moving blocks is an integral part of the game, and the way you do this is by clicking the RMB.  Not holding it down, clicking it.  If you abide by your human instincts and hold on to the RMB for as long as you'd wish to hold on to the object, you're out of luck.  Also, LMB throws the block that you're holding; you'd be amazed how easy it is to accidentally throw a block you meant to place, only to see it tumble down a pit, rendering the level unsolvable and leaving suicide as the only option.

To the game's credit, I expected myself to perform far more mercy kills upon my character than I had to.  The levels are designed intuitively enough that you usually won't lose a block you're working with due to one or two silly mistakes.  I will say, though, when you do have to suicide yourself to progress, cover your ears.  The death sound effect is loud and annoying.

In short, Coalescence is a decent little romp, but every admiration of the level design or aesthetic direction can be swiftly uprooted by an annoyance caused by the mechanics or minor design flaws like the death sound effect.  Play it if you want, but you won't be missing much if you skip out.

Until next time, stay gassy


Links
a game that has nothing to do with coal: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25889