Games are art. That's a phrase that a lot of people like to plunge into a conversation, propelled by their undying passion for the medium. When presenting their cases in the inevitable newly formed debate, gamers will often cite such works as Braid, which uses plenty of literary devices to present a narrative in such a way that would make high school English teachers wet their trousers with pretentious bouts of intellectual superiority. Many might think that if I were to use a game on this list to make a case that the video game is just as legitimate as any other kind of narrative experience, I would examine a game like Oniro, a game that perfectly nailed the whole "narrative" part and delivered a story which almost moved me to tears, all the while explaining itself through its mechanics and never becoming dull or repetitive.
Yes, it is true, that games like this have a significant role in the distinguishing of video games as a form of art, but such arguments tend to ignore the mindless adrenaline drips...the games that sell like hotcakes during Christmastime. What about the shooter that makes no attempt to tell a story or utilize any kind of arbitrarily named literary device? Should those be lumped into the same category as pornography under the title "things that make you feel good but you should probably keep to yourself?" I don't think so. I think there's just as much value to be had in a mindless but fun experience, and there's certainly enough opportunity for the developers to show their skill, which is what art is by definition.
And show off skill the developers of Shoot on Sight did. Not so much in the visual design department nor in the gameplay balancing department, but the game certainly feels great to play. It's a third-person shooter wherein you are armed with a pea shooter and a nuclear warhead launcher with infinite ammo and quick reload times...guess which one you'll be using most of the time.
Yes, the secondary weapon is quite hideously overpowered, but not so much that it breaks the game completely. You can still have a lot of fun while limiting yourself to the peashooter, and the upgrades for it will keep gameplay fun and varied. What it does do, however, is make the game a bit too easy. Once you learn how to catch enemies within the insta-kill blast radius of your secondary weapon, your own splash damage is pretty much the only thing that threatens you. There are little suicide bomber enemies that can take a good chunk off you if you're not careful, but your health regenerates fairly quickly, so all it takes is a little safe playing before you're ready to start jumping around lobbing pocket rockets at anything that moves.
And is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. In my book, this game is a success. It set out with the goal of providing a fun and addicting (in the good way) experience, and that's exactly what it is. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay trigger-happy.
Links
Kill all sons o' bitches: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1423
Friday, August 30, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Shift
Puzzle games are great starting places for aspiring game designers, mostly because the term "puzzle game" is kind of redundant. A puzzle is pretty much the purest essence of a game. There's a clear objective, certain rules and regulations to which you must abide while completing the objective...and that's basically it. When making a puzzle game, the designer needn't be bogged down by the burden of creating a story, setting, characters, etc. In fact, there's really no need to be that creative whatsoever.
That might sound a bit harsh, but I swear I'm not trying to call out puzzle game designers for being uncreative. Far from it. All I'm saying is that a puzzle game can get away with just putting you in a maze and calling it a day as long as the maze is well designed. I like to call these "lab rat games," and Shift is that in a nutshell.
The problem in reviewing lab rat games is that there's pretty much only one non-aesthetic factor to be weighed in determining the quality of the game; that's how well the levels are designed. More specifically, how well the difficulty curve is designed. There aren't really that many other ways to identify the quality of a level. Shift's difficulty curve is very well executed. Bam. There it is. End review.
The most frustrating part about the game, I would say, is how easily you can fall off an edge and have to restart the level. The game was already challenging enough without that, but at least I can see where the developers were going with it. They don't want you blazing through the levels and stumbling upon the solutions by chance. They want you to take your time and think about the solution before carefully planning every move. If you ask me, that sounds more like limiting the playstyle than promoting success, but again, not a huge problem.
The part I liked most about Shift was the music. I'm not quite sure who the composer was (given DigiPen's music bank or whatever), but whoever it was should be proud, because the music alone was enough to make me want to keep playing.
Long story short, pick this game up if you're bored. You won't be bored much longer. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay shifty.
Links
Caps Lock: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26703
That might sound a bit harsh, but I swear I'm not trying to call out puzzle game designers for being uncreative. Far from it. All I'm saying is that a puzzle game can get away with just putting you in a maze and calling it a day as long as the maze is well designed. I like to call these "lab rat games," and Shift is that in a nutshell.
The problem in reviewing lab rat games is that there's pretty much only one non-aesthetic factor to be weighed in determining the quality of the game; that's how well the levels are designed. More specifically, how well the difficulty curve is designed. There aren't really that many other ways to identify the quality of a level. Shift's difficulty curve is very well executed. Bam. There it is. End review.
The most frustrating part about the game, I would say, is how easily you can fall off an edge and have to restart the level. The game was already challenging enough without that, but at least I can see where the developers were going with it. They don't want you blazing through the levels and stumbling upon the solutions by chance. They want you to take your time and think about the solution before carefully planning every move. If you ask me, that sounds more like limiting the playstyle than promoting success, but again, not a huge problem.
The part I liked most about Shift was the music. I'm not quite sure who the composer was (given DigiPen's music bank or whatever), but whoever it was should be proud, because the music alone was enough to make me want to keep playing.
Long story short, pick this game up if you're bored. You won't be bored much longer. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay shifty.
Links
Caps Lock: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26703
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Shattered Nocturne
Shattered Nocturne advertises itself as a "poetic experience," which basically means it's a regular game with uninteresting machanics anc about 5000% more xylophone and acoustic guitar. I'm a firm believer that narrative alone is enough to hold up a game, hence my love for games like Chrono Trigger, which didn't have bad gameplay, but I think we can all agree that it was a narrative-driven experience. The problem comes when games decide to forego interesting game mechanics for the narrative rather than use the mechanics to drive the narrative.
Unfortunately, this game does just that. It's pretty much the same problem I had with Douse. Just pointing out a character and playing some placid music in the background does not count as a "poetic experience." Poetry makes you think; you don't think because you're reading poetry. See the difference? The thing you can do is walk around and collect little pieces of the moon. It's a very similar game, now that I think of it, to Slender. Both games give you only the ability to move and rely wholly on the atmosphere to make the experience entertaining.
Now, I'm not a fan of Slender, personally, but I can at least understand the appeal of it. For all its flaws, the game does a pretty good job of maintaining tension for the most part. In Shattered Nocturne, I feel no motivation to keep pushing forward. The walking speed is mind-numbingly slow, the world is bland and uninteresting, and the whole game just feels pretentious as a whole.
So yeah, the mechanics get a big fat F- in my book, but as long as the game tells a good story, it might still be able to get a recommendation out of me. You know what? I'd be lying if I said this game's atmosphere didn't have some kind of charm, especially toward the end when you walk on previously inaccessible, glistening water, but there's just not enough here to form any kind of decent narrative. The game's description says that it is a metaphor for dealing with depression, which I don't understand at all. Just coloring your world dark blue and making it incredibly boring to walk around in does not emulate the feel of tackling depression. Depression is many things, but it is not boring, I tell ya that. This game, on the other hand, is.
The best compliments I can give Shattered Nocturne are that it doesn't overstay its welcome and that it does look very nice. The game is pretty enough to look like a professionally made game from 2008 and it's over in less than 5 minutes, so at least there's not a whole lot to get mad at.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay nocturnal.
Links
Shut Her Narc Turn: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26679
Unfortunately, this game does just that. It's pretty much the same problem I had with Douse. Just pointing out a character and playing some placid music in the background does not count as a "poetic experience." Poetry makes you think; you don't think because you're reading poetry. See the difference? The thing you can do is walk around and collect little pieces of the moon. It's a very similar game, now that I think of it, to Slender. Both games give you only the ability to move and rely wholly on the atmosphere to make the experience entertaining.
Now, I'm not a fan of Slender, personally, but I can at least understand the appeal of it. For all its flaws, the game does a pretty good job of maintaining tension for the most part. In Shattered Nocturne, I feel no motivation to keep pushing forward. The walking speed is mind-numbingly slow, the world is bland and uninteresting, and the whole game just feels pretentious as a whole.
So yeah, the mechanics get a big fat F- in my book, but as long as the game tells a good story, it might still be able to get a recommendation out of me. You know what? I'd be lying if I said this game's atmosphere didn't have some kind of charm, especially toward the end when you walk on previously inaccessible, glistening water, but there's just not enough here to form any kind of decent narrative. The game's description says that it is a metaphor for dealing with depression, which I don't understand at all. Just coloring your world dark blue and making it incredibly boring to walk around in does not emulate the feel of tackling depression. Depression is many things, but it is not boring, I tell ya that. This game, on the other hand, is.
The best compliments I can give Shattered Nocturne are that it doesn't overstay its welcome and that it does look very nice. The game is pretty enough to look like a professionally made game from 2008 and it's over in less than 5 minutes, so at least there's not a whole lot to get mad at.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay nocturnal.
Links
Shut Her Narc Turn: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26679
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Shattered Core
Shattered Core claims to "combine the best elements of successful platformers such as Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man with revolutionary new elements." So yeah, I pretty much hated this game before I even started it, but let it never be said that I let my biases impede my judgement. Upon actually playing Shattered Core, I felt there was a lot to love and very little to actually hate. There was plenty to get annoyed by, but the game has a whole has its head in the right place.
First, exactly what elements of Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man do the developers think they've combined? I'd have a hard time arguing that they even implemented the design features that made those games awesome, let alone that they combined them with "revolutionary new elements." By "best elements," do you perhaps mean that the main character has a sword, gun, and the ability to climb walls?....and is also a robot? Well whatever. These aspects are purely aesthetic, so we can call them simple innocuous homage.
My second question is, what exactly are these revolutionary new elements? I only got to play the first two levels before the game crashed on me (and, of course, there's no save feature, so that's as far as I'm getting), but I didn't see anything particularly striking about the game design. Certainly nothing worthy of being called "revolutionary." I'm assuming they're referring to the color-matching powerup system, which is fairly unique, yes, but revolutionary?
That said, let's get into more pointed criticism, shall we? The powerup system works like this: You collect 3 orbs of colors green, red and blue. These orbs determine how many attacks of what kind you can perform. For example, if you have a blue and red orb, you will be able to perform 2 consecutive attacks at the basic attack level. However, the more consecutive orbs you have of the same color, the more powerful your succession of attacks will be. So, for example, red, blue, blue will yield two attacks at the basic attack level and then one more powerful attack, etc. This keeps the gameplay engaging for the entirety of the first level, but afterwards it stops being noteworthy and starts just being how the game is played. The mechanics don't change at all depending on what orbs you've collected, so it amounts to nothing more than added spice on the fairly tasty meat pie that is this game's mechanics.
The thing that made me like this game twofold: first, I love the variety of your moves, and second, I love how that variety is presented to you. Much like in Nightfall, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to attack. "D" controls your gun, "S" controls your sword, and "A" allows you to stride, which is a rather overpowered but immensely satisfying evasive attack. I'm sure "W" does something later on, too, but I didn't play enough to find out.
And that's the other thing I like about the game. It rewards your progress with more complexity, not just more of the same thing. Far too many games, platformer and otherwise, on this list and off it, are way too repetitive. This game gives you a new power each level, meaning the mechanics aren't going to get stale any time soon.
Final verdict: if this game had a save feature, I'd be interested enough to play it to completion. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay versatile.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=482
PS- when I went back a few pages in the game gallery to check the name of Nightfall, I noticed more than one game on the list that I hadn't reviewed, but were dated in past years. That's just not fair! There are 500 games on this list. I'm supposed to leaf through the entire gallery to keep up with the new entries? Whatever. I'm sure I'll figure something out...just an update...
First, exactly what elements of Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man do the developers think they've combined? I'd have a hard time arguing that they even implemented the design features that made those games awesome, let alone that they combined them with "revolutionary new elements." By "best elements," do you perhaps mean that the main character has a sword, gun, and the ability to climb walls?....and is also a robot? Well whatever. These aspects are purely aesthetic, so we can call them simple innocuous homage.
My second question is, what exactly are these revolutionary new elements? I only got to play the first two levels before the game crashed on me (and, of course, there's no save feature, so that's as far as I'm getting), but I didn't see anything particularly striking about the game design. Certainly nothing worthy of being called "revolutionary." I'm assuming they're referring to the color-matching powerup system, which is fairly unique, yes, but revolutionary?
That said, let's get into more pointed criticism, shall we? The powerup system works like this: You collect 3 orbs of colors green, red and blue. These orbs determine how many attacks of what kind you can perform. For example, if you have a blue and red orb, you will be able to perform 2 consecutive attacks at the basic attack level. However, the more consecutive orbs you have of the same color, the more powerful your succession of attacks will be. So, for example, red, blue, blue will yield two attacks at the basic attack level and then one more powerful attack, etc. This keeps the gameplay engaging for the entirety of the first level, but afterwards it stops being noteworthy and starts just being how the game is played. The mechanics don't change at all depending on what orbs you've collected, so it amounts to nothing more than added spice on the fairly tasty meat pie that is this game's mechanics.
The thing that made me like this game twofold: first, I love the variety of your moves, and second, I love how that variety is presented to you. Much like in Nightfall, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to attack. "D" controls your gun, "S" controls your sword, and "A" allows you to stride, which is a rather overpowered but immensely satisfying evasive attack. I'm sure "W" does something later on, too, but I didn't play enough to find out.
And that's the other thing I like about the game. It rewards your progress with more complexity, not just more of the same thing. Far too many games, platformer and otherwise, on this list and off it, are way too repetitive. This game gives you a new power each level, meaning the mechanics aren't going to get stale any time soon.
Final verdict: if this game had a save feature, I'd be interested enough to play it to completion. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay versatile.
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=482
PS- when I went back a few pages in the game gallery to check the name of Nightfall, I noticed more than one game on the list that I hadn't reviewed, but were dated in past years. That's just not fair! There are 500 games on this list. I'm supposed to leaf through the entire gallery to keep up with the new entries? Whatever. I'm sure I'll figure something out...just an update...
Monday, August 26, 2013
Shapes on a Plane.
ha ha ha. Slightly outdated pop culture references. I'm not in the mood, SOAP. It's hard enough coming up with criticism varied enough to hold up a blog for the original games on this list. I don't need you showing up to my party in the exact same outfit as Purge and making my life more difficult.
I can't even get mad at SOAP, either, because it came out a full year before Purge did. I swear, they're the exact same game. Sure, there are minor differences, like the fact that this one's visual style is a heck of a lot more psychadelic, but I honestly have no new criticism for this game. It's a clone of a game that I basically wrote off as a clone of two other games.
And that's it. That's all I have for you. I feel bad giving all five of my readers the cold shoulder like this, but what do you expect me to do? If I did a penance review every time a game on this list left me without enough information to write a sizable post, I'd be out of games by July.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay original
Links
Scrub a Dub Dub: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=433
I can't even get mad at SOAP, either, because it came out a full year before Purge did. I swear, they're the exact same game. Sure, there are minor differences, like the fact that this one's visual style is a heck of a lot more psychadelic, but I honestly have no new criticism for this game. It's a clone of a game that I basically wrote off as a clone of two other games.
And that's it. That's all I have for you. I feel bad giving all five of my readers the cold shoulder like this, but what do you expect me to do? If I did a penance review every time a game on this list left me without enough information to write a sizable post, I'd be out of games by July.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay original
Links
Scrub a Dub Dub: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=433
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Shade
It's no secret that I'm not a fan of RTS games. I find them, for the most part, unengaging and unintuitive. There are exceptions, of course, but my problem is with the starting point. I don't like having other people do my dirty work for me. If I want a bunch of people dead, I want to have the pleasure of tossing their innards around myself, not just ordering a bunch of samurai to do it for me.
You know what kind of game understands this? The beat 'em up. Games like Double Dragon and Kingdom Hearts (that's right, it's not an RPG, despite what people want you to think) know that the best way to clear a room full of baddies is to bash 'em into the ground yourself. Don't get me wrong, those games have their flaws too, but they are rarely unengaging. That's because you tend to have complete control over your character, and, by extension, the events of a battle.
So now, here's Shade. A beat 'em up that renders everything I just said completely moot by being as engaging as an RTS.
I'll start this review, with complete disregard the for context of my intro, the way I always do when I'm afraid I'll be done blogging before a scroll bar even appears on my page: talking about the aesthetics. The game looks fine when it's not bugging out. The main problem is that your character(s) have a very strong love of walls, so good luck getting them to obey orders whenever you make the mistake of directing them within the same postal code of a building or lamppost.
And then of course there are the mechanics. This game can serve as a fine lesson in how not to make the player feel like he or she has control. Instead of just moving your minions around the screen, you use WASD to vaguely suggest where they should head off to, which only exaggerates the problem of wall hugging ghosties.
The biggest complaint I have, though, is that the only attack method you have is to mash the space bar. That's it. If you have enough ghosts following you around, you'll kill people. If you don't, you have to travel back to the middle of the map to get some and then you can kill people. It's about as dull, formulaic and uninteresting as a beat 'em up can get.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay repetitive repetitively.
Links
Ghouls on Parade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25916
You know what kind of game understands this? The beat 'em up. Games like Double Dragon and Kingdom Hearts (that's right, it's not an RPG, despite what people want you to think) know that the best way to clear a room full of baddies is to bash 'em into the ground yourself. Don't get me wrong, those games have their flaws too, but they are rarely unengaging. That's because you tend to have complete control over your character, and, by extension, the events of a battle.
So now, here's Shade. A beat 'em up that renders everything I just said completely moot by being as engaging as an RTS.
I'll start this review, with complete disregard the for context of my intro, the way I always do when I'm afraid I'll be done blogging before a scroll bar even appears on my page: talking about the aesthetics. The game looks fine when it's not bugging out. The main problem is that your character(s) have a very strong love of walls, so good luck getting them to obey orders whenever you make the mistake of directing them within the same postal code of a building or lamppost.
And then of course there are the mechanics. This game can serve as a fine lesson in how not to make the player feel like he or she has control. Instead of just moving your minions around the screen, you use WASD to vaguely suggest where they should head off to, which only exaggerates the problem of wall hugging ghosties.
The biggest complaint I have, though, is that the only attack method you have is to mash the space bar. That's it. If you have enough ghosts following you around, you'll kill people. If you don't, you have to travel back to the middle of the map to get some and then you can kill people. It's about as dull, formulaic and uninteresting as a beat 'em up can get.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay repetitive repetitively.
Links
Ghouls on Parade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25916
SeigeBreaker
huh, now this sounds interesting. Let's go ahead and start this up an-
OH AHHNNNGGGGGHHH MY EYYEESSSSSS
Jeez! You know, there's a reason the people who made games for DOS never tried to do 3D effects. It hurts your brain to look at all those dull colors colliding with one another. Ah well. The splash art may have left me with a slight concussion, but how does the rest of the game hold up?
Well, I was thrilled as always to hear that this was a tower defense game. Oh boy, I love tower defense. Nothing more fun than watchin enemy troops slowly walk right through your defenses because you don't have enough money left to pay someone to go down there and bash them on the head with a rock, nor the moxie to do it yourself. You know what the world needs? A tower defense game where you play as God, so you can just smite the little bastards attacking your castle and erect an infinite number of walls instantaneously to halt their progress.
Well, turns out, Siege Breaker is just that, although the god you play as either has very limited control over how much fire and brimstone he sends to do his bidding or just doesn't really care one way or another whether the castle survives.
You play the game by swapping between two views: one of the entire territory and one of a selected area that you zoom into. You can only attack while zoomed, so you're going to have to be clever about where you place your walls and towers if you want to have any hope of surviving the first few waves. Before long, the screen will be flooded with attackers of all shapes and sizes.
Switching between the two views is quite hectic and fun. demands that you constantly be on your toes, spotting the highest concentration of attackers and smiting them all swiftly before moving onto the next bunch. You'll never have to wait for your arbitrary amount of money to increase to be able to throw more fireballs or build more walls. The only limited resources are the towers, which ostensibly do damage to oncoming attackers, but honestly I didn't notice them helping at all.
If I have any critique for the game, it's that the developers spent their time on some rather unwise things. There is a variety of maps, all of which had to have taken a nice amount of time to create, but you're going to spend so much time in zoomed attack mode and focusing so heavily on placing walls that really where you play doesn't matter. If the time taken to design the extra levels had instead been directed toward, say designing a tower that actually did something, I think this game would have benefited as a result.
Oh well. It's still a very fun game and I recommend it to anyone who likes to play God. There is no way to win, of course (unless you count surviving until the million objects on the screen cause the game to crash, which I like to interpret as God throwing a temper tantrum), so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who thought Missile Command was too hard. For me, however, this game gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay fortified.
Links
Sij Bricker: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18871
OH AHHNNNGGGGGHHH MY EYYEESSSSSS
Jeez! You know, there's a reason the people who made games for DOS never tried to do 3D effects. It hurts your brain to look at all those dull colors colliding with one another. Ah well. The splash art may have left me with a slight concussion, but how does the rest of the game hold up?
Well, I was thrilled as always to hear that this was a tower defense game. Oh boy, I love tower defense. Nothing more fun than watchin enemy troops slowly walk right through your defenses because you don't have enough money left to pay someone to go down there and bash them on the head with a rock, nor the moxie to do it yourself. You know what the world needs? A tower defense game where you play as God, so you can just smite the little bastards attacking your castle and erect an infinite number of walls instantaneously to halt their progress.
Well, turns out, Siege Breaker is just that, although the god you play as either has very limited control over how much fire and brimstone he sends to do his bidding or just doesn't really care one way or another whether the castle survives.
You play the game by swapping between two views: one of the entire territory and one of a selected area that you zoom into. You can only attack while zoomed, so you're going to have to be clever about where you place your walls and towers if you want to have any hope of surviving the first few waves. Before long, the screen will be flooded with attackers of all shapes and sizes.
Switching between the two views is quite hectic and fun. demands that you constantly be on your toes, spotting the highest concentration of attackers and smiting them all swiftly before moving onto the next bunch. You'll never have to wait for your arbitrary amount of money to increase to be able to throw more fireballs or build more walls. The only limited resources are the towers, which ostensibly do damage to oncoming attackers, but honestly I didn't notice them helping at all.
If I have any critique for the game, it's that the developers spent their time on some rather unwise things. There is a variety of maps, all of which had to have taken a nice amount of time to create, but you're going to spend so much time in zoomed attack mode and focusing so heavily on placing walls that really where you play doesn't matter. If the time taken to design the extra levels had instead been directed toward, say designing a tower that actually did something, I think this game would have benefited as a result.
Oh well. It's still a very fun game and I recommend it to anyone who likes to play God. There is no way to win, of course (unless you count surviving until the million objects on the screen cause the game to crash, which I like to interpret as God throwing a temper tantrum), so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who thought Missile Command was too hard. For me, however, this game gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay fortified.
Links
Sij Bricker: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18871
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)