The Shaman Engines and The Ward

Oh no, Dean forgot to blog yesterday.  What ever shall we do? Oh noooooooooo

Anyway, The Shaman Engines starts up with a splash screen featuring bright whitish yellow contrasting against the black background, which is welcomingly similar to that of Dark Souls (wow, Dean is still playing Dark Souls?  That game must be really good.  Maybe I should support From Software and buy such a wonderful product...okay I'm done with that now).

So I start up the game and immediately, without so much as a "ready, go!" I am assaulted from all sides by giant rocket-slinging robots.  I must say that this is one of the few games on this list to ever make me vocalize.  It's up to you to decide whether you want to play a game that, in the first few seconds, will make you go "oh Jesus oh man oh God oh ding dang darn it!"  Personally, I love this merciless style of opening the game.  It's hilarious and effective.  Granted, the controls didn't differ very much (read, "at all") from standard FPS controls, but it didn't take me long to learn the most efficient strategies when giant bipedal war bots are constantly throwing explodey stuff in my direction.

If there is beauty to be found in this game, which I think there is, it is to be found in its elegant simplicity.  No fancy AI programming to make your enemies hide behind walls or look at fish or whatever.  No unnecessary plot or stealth, just pure adrenaline-fueled robot 'sploding action.  The game is fairly challenging and damn empowering to play.  The sprint makes you rocket forward at the speed of sound, and the jetpack can quickly fling you to the perfect vantage point, but all of these features are well-balanced.  The jetpack, for example, will drain your fuel and leave you a sitting duck to tank damage for a few seconds if you're not careful.

The flaws of this game are not flaws that make it any less fun.  I already touched upon the AI, which, I'll be honest, is a bag of crystalized stupid.  The enemies don't know how to do anything but rush you and shoot at your immediate position.  I'm not saying a circle strafe will leave them 100% defenseless, but I will say that they're not much of a match for a seasoned veteran of Goldeneye.  It's not really a problem, though, because there are enough enemies on the screen to maintain a challenge and give you enough fun things to shoot at.  There also seem to be a few things that were added just for the sake of adding them.  For example, the game flirts with a platforming section for about half a second as if just to say "look, I made a platform section."  It's worth noting that I quit before I beat level 3, so maybe there's a good explanation for this, but it seemed frivolous to me.

Again, none of these things make the game any less fun to play, so the final verdict is that this one is worth your time.  Check it out!

The Ward is what happens when you mix the gameplay of A Flipping Good Time with the narrative style Oniro and glaze it with Primordial's visual aesthetic.  Let me break that down for you.  The Ward is a platformer that centers around the ever popular gravity manipulation mechanic.  Imagine VVVVVV but you're allowed to jump first.

The platforming is decent, but nothing special, and certainly can get frustrating at times.  This game needs something to keep the player invested.  The developers realized this and threw in narrative in the form of writing on the walls (like in Erebus.  Man, I'm batting a thousand with the references today...)  I pieced together something about me being dead and wanting to see my girlfriend again, but I ragequit before I could learn any more.  See, the game committed the unforgivable sin of killing me because I rubbed up against the side of a spike.  That was enough for me.

To review:  The Shaman Engines is a shooter that rivals Fight Zone, and you should totally try out, while The Ward probably has a lot of payoff if you're willing to put up with a lot of frustration, which I frankly wasn't.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay dead.

Links
Robot Souls: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18571
Consciousness after Death: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24364

The Lift (sorta) and The Root of Life

The Lift was made with the ever-functional Zero Engine, which I haven't had much luck with in the past.  At least when this one crashed it gave me the option to write an error report, so maybe this game will be functional soon...

The Root of Life is a simplistic game wherein you guide a root down into the ground to find a water supply.  This is one of those games that I consider to be a complete vacuum.  There's really nothing to talk about.  I quit within the first 5 levels for 2 reasons:  first off, the background music started to awaken murderous feelings I never knew were in me.  Second off, the game was just kinda dull.  Essentially, you're just clicking wherever there is a bright color until you win.  The game offers no form of experimentation; you're lead by a choke chain through the levels.  The game fails to make you feel like you've done anything.  It's more like "hey, look, we made a whole bunch of levels.  Appreciate them!"  And yes, I do appreciate them.  I'm sure they took quite a long time to make and you should be proud of the fruits of your labor.  All I'm saying is the orchard in which the fruits grow is not very fun to play in.

I'm going to end this here before I end up torturing even more innocent metaphors.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay concise.

Links
The Broken Lift: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26734
The Prequel to The Tree of Life: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26019

The Fourth Wall, The Last Helper, and The Legend of the Steam Yard

What's this?  Another 3-game review?  And none of the games had those stupid NOT_REAL_EXE things?  Has Christmas come early for you guys or what?

Well, actually, for once, I should be celebrating along with you, because the first game on the list is a refreshing reaffirmation that people know what they're doing over there at DigiPen (a breath of fresh air that I desperately needed after the massacre that was yesterday's batch of games).

The Fourth Wall has it all.  I'm going to cut all the fluff and just tell you what especially caught my eye: it conveys its mechanics stellarly. I can almost see Egoraptor with his little notepad checking off each thing the player learns as they play.  The player isn't pandered to nor is he (or she) ever left completely clueless. This is the hallmark of successful game design.  Now, how about those mechanics?  Well conveyed mechanics mean nothing if they're not fun to use.  Well, fear not, fellow interwebbers, because the gameplay in The Fourth Wall is fun and unique.  It's kind of like Perspective in that it forces you to thing around the typical conventions of platforming and manipulate the (well designed) levels rather than just jump on platforms.

This is definitely one of those games that I stopped playing because I didn't have time, not because I genuinely wanted to stop.  There's really not much more to say about it, so if you like to appreciate good game design where you see it, this game is definitely for you.  I'll be honest, though, while it is a fun game, don't mistake my praise for an affirmation that you will be at the edge of your seat for the duration of play.  It's not that kind of game.  It's the kind of game you roll around your palate for a bit before swallowing, if you catch my drift.  I, being the seasoned afficionado that I am, have no problem giving this one my seal of approval.

Moving on, The Last Helper was...well, it was interesting, but not in the Braid sense of interesting where you're left pondering the symbolism of the mechanics and the significance of the design.  Rather, it's interesting in the "what were they going for here, anyway?" sense of the word.  As the game starts up, you're greeted by a (rather oppressively long) loading screen that spits a whole bunch of facts about HIV/AIDS at you.  "Huh," I thought.  "This probably means either of two things:  the game wants to prove that video gaming is a legitimate medium for tackling serious issues, like HIV/AIDS, or that video games can be powerful educational tools."  Both of those statements are true, but honestly, The Last Helper isn't exactly the best way to prove them. First off, I may only have an elementary knowledge of Biology, but I'm pretty sure this isn't how helper T cells work.  It's totally possible to deliver an educational experience that engages the player and teaches them at the same time using the mechanics, but creating a shooter out of a white blood cell isn't how to do it.  Secondly, you can't expect the player to take your message seriously if you juxtapose sobering facts about the tragedies of the modern world with pew pew whoosh kapowey laser madness.

But maybe that's not what they were going for.  Maybe they just wanted to create a fun horizontal shoot-em-up in a new and interesting locale.  It's possible, although the very in-your-face Missile Command-esque ending makes it seem far less plausible.  Regardless, let's play devil's advocate and say the overall goal was fun.  The Last Helper, well...just doesn't do anything different.  It's ground that's been well trodden a million times before.  You fly to the left and shoot everything in your path.  Is it constructed well?  Yeah, kinda.  I mean there are a lot of rookie mistakes, like the shooting sound being way too loud and annoying, but it's nothing you can't get past.  The problem is that I had no motivation to actually get past them because the actual gameplay is repetitive and uninteresting.  It's not terrible, but I'd say this one has a long way to go.

Finally, Legend of the Steam Yard is a very short but very smooth experience, like a perfectly crafted yet dishearteningly insubstantial chocolate truffle.  It's a fast-paced, 3D third person shooter.  It foregoes Brute Hardcastle's interesting mechanics in favor of more typical ones, but it completely eradicates the former game's other problems.  Your character moves lightning fast and there are enough enemies to keep you on your toes.  The biggest problem I had was that the particle effects, while kind of cool looking in a charming "baby's first Blender project" kind of way, make it difficult to tell whether or not you're hitting an enemy at a far distance. Not that it matters, though, considering you're just going to be plowing through and spamming bullets wherever you go regardless of who's dying in front of you.  This game stays as long as it takes to explore its mechanics, which is only about 3 minutes.  It doesn't overstay its welcome and it doesn't offend, so this game would seem to make a pretty good house guest, but at least the other, rowdier guests had the courtesy to bring some quiche. Steam Yard showed up empty handed, told one amusing anecdote, looked at its watch, said "good lord, this metaphor is tortured" and ran off.

So yeah, we had a pretty good mix today.  One great game, one decent game and one "meh."  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay steamy

Links
Hello Audience, Good Bye Tradition: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24623
Magic School Bus Gone Wrong: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26707
Robot Zappy Funtime: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18589

The Chronicles of Brute Hardcastle, The Exiled (kinda), and The Fantastic Adventures of Francis McKrispi

What inspired me to write 3 reviews before noon, you ask?  Well, the fact that I was inert the past two days has something to do with it, but as we all know by now, my lack of motivation knows no bounds.  No, the real reason I'm giving you this splendid 3-for-1 deal is that each of these games lasted no longer than 5 minutes before I ragequit.  Let's get this party started.

Brute Hardcastle is my favorite kind of game to review, even though it makes for very uninteresting reading.  It's the kind of game where one or two flaws dominate the experience so intensely that nothing else matters.  Firstly, the movement speed is a joke.  Seriously, nobody could have playtested this game and figured "yeah, he walks about fast enough." What's worse is that this game is ostensibly a beat 'em up, so the slow movement speed doesn't even complement the gameplay.  Slow movement speed can be effective when used correctly, like in the last minutes of Mass Effect 3, but when the game expects you to believe that you're in the heat of battle and you're cruising along city streets at about 2 miles per day, there's a serious problem.

The other big issue is the level design.  I try to be polite in these reviews, but I can't pull my punches here.  This is some of the laziest and unthoughtful level design I've seen on this list.  It's a relatively expansive city built on a grid, like Manhattan, but there's nothing in it! Coupled with the slow movement speed, this means you're going to be spending a lot of time strolling casually down the sidewalk wishing that there was something to do.

You know what?  I really wanted to have fun with this game.  I did!  That's because it uses a fight mechanic that, for a long time, I've been saying would make a game very fun to play.  You control the trajectory of your fists with the mouse.  I love that they included this, but even that is executed so sloppily that it's just borderline broken.  This game fails to impress.  Moving on.

The Exiled is one of those NOT_REAL_EXE things.  I don't know what to do about that.

Francis McKrispi, or, as it's otherwise called, Bacon, is a charming little platforming hack-n-slasher wherein you are a strip of bacon with a butter knife on a mission to destroy all eggs.  This is my least favorite game to review because there is no outstanding mechanic whatsoever.  It's just "a game" rather than "the game that" or "the game with."  Get what I'm saying?

Bacon is the only game in this post that I might review if you're bored enough that you think cracking like a bazillion eggs is going to be entertaining.  I do love the aesthetic, though.  It's got enough quirk to make me smirk, but it does smell a but of rotten eggs trying too hard to be witty, which, especially to a cynic like me, is a death sentence for any piece of art because it shows how unwitty the creators actually were.

Man, I was a jerk today.  Oh well.  Such is life.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay cruel.

Links
Brute Slowcastle: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=499
The Exiled EXE: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=603
Yummy Pig Meat: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18527

The Busted Android

First off, right out of the gate, this game's development gets the award for most creative and hilarious name I've yet encountered: "Victorious Secret."

Brilliant.

You know what's not brilliant, though?  making the left and right directional buttons do the exact same thing.  Seriosuly.  The Busted Android is a freerunning game of sorts, kind of like Roger Fastman but without the ability to spew bullets literally everywhere.

Sometimes a gameplay feature will stick out to me so much that I stop caring about the rest.  I don't care so much that the art style could be mimicked by anyone with Inkscape and three spare minutes.  I don't care so much that when the game doesn't decide to throw you into an enclosed space, the game can actually induce quite a sense of flow.

Really, all I care about is the fact that holding left can cause you to rocket to the right, and holding right can cause you to rocket to the left.  The way it "works" is that both the left and right buttons give you a boost in whatever direction you're facing.  You switch directions when you hit a wall.  It feels very unnatural and is quite difficult to learn.

And that's basically it.  This one fails to impress.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay busted

Links
The Perfectly Functional Android: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26018

Thanatos and The Bowling Ninja

Thanatos advertises itself as having "an emphasis on balanced and tactical gameplay."  I, still recovering from my bad experience with Super Street Fighter 4, was intrigued and delighted by this proposition.  Then, I booted it up, and found a low-grade version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl....Hhhnnggg-

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the latter two games, it's just that I don't think they are either particularly balanced or tactical, and I was looking forward to a game less about spamming hadokens and more about outwitting your opponent on the battlefield.  Thanatos does not deliver in that aspect. 

The game experience is most similar to those old-style cartoon fight scenes where the characters involved just sort of dissolve into a cloud of dust and moving fists.  Here's how you play Thanatos: spam special attack ad nauseam, repeat.  Between the smoke clouds and tiny characters, good luck following anything that's happening.

I understand that my opinion on Brawl and Street Fighter doesn't exactly coincide with the popular opinion, so take what I say about Thanatos, which appears to have combined the worst aspects of both, with a grain of salt, but I can't recommend it.

Moving on, The Bowling Ninja...

for all my banging of the "DigiPen <3 Ikaruga" drum, I do have to admit that there are a few games on this list that try to get away from that stereotype.  For example, The Bowling Ninja is Ikaruga in reverse!  Seriously, I'm not stretching this point just to be funny; if I tell you that a game is about destroying things with projectiles based on their color and that the color of the projectile must coincide with the color of the object, what do you think of?  Now add in the fact that projectiles tend to quickly fill up the screen, and you've got a pretty good match.

Anyway, you are a ninja with an unlimited supply of bowling balls of four different colors.  You throw those bowling balls at other ninjas, who are destroyed if hit with a bowling ball that matches their color.  This is an interesting concept, at least, but the game design seems rather self-destructive.  The bowling balls can bounce off walls, and when they do, they turn from colored to grey, and grey bowling balls can one-shot any incoming enemy, so rather than strategically placing your shots like the designers ostensibly planned, you end up just spamming balls and spinning in a circle until every threat around you dies.

So yeah, this may be fun for a few minutes, but just pressing the same buttons over and over can get really stale really fast, so the game is not helped by the fact that each level does nothing but introduce a greater quantity of enemies you must defeat to move on.  I wouldn't necessarily call the game overly frustrating, but it does a terrible job of motivating the player to continue.

So, today we had two games with relatively similar pros and cons:  graphical style that resembles the dooldes of a bored 4th grader (though I can't really blame them, each coming out more than 6 years ago), repetitive and boring gameplay, and a failure to impart a feeling of agency onto the player.  These games aren't terrible, but they're at least below average compared to the others on the list.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay scribbled

Links

Overused Greek Word: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=517

The Beginning of The end of Creative Naming: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=455

TerryTori K9 and Tetragrams

TerryTori K9 is an exclusively 2-player game, so I wasn't able to play it to its fullest extent.  The only thing I can really comment on is the concept.  Two dogs move around a map in real time to control territories.  Those territories earn points per second for their owner, and the first to reach a certain number of points wins.

It seems like it could make for a really fun game.  You can choose a certain special move before the match starts, each with effects like "prevent your opponent from taking your territory" or "stun your opponent," etc.  They seem balanced enough to make the game enjoyable and tense.  Of course, you'll have to play it with a friend to find out.

Tetragrams, on the other hand, is a one-player game, and a damn fine one at that.  As its name sort of alludes to, the game is based heavily off Tetris, but is original enough for me to call it an homage rather than a rip-off.  The idea is that there are certain polygonal shapes outlined on the board.  Other shapes come in through a conveyor belt, and you have to place them so that the outlined shapes get filled in.

The big seller here is that the game is absolutely frantic.  I, of course, forewent the tutorial, and was thoroughly confused by the time the "game over" screen reared its ugly head.  There are so many different things going on at once...so much for the player to consider; yet somehow, it never gets so overwhelming that it becomes frustrating.  Like a phoenix rising from the ashes (by the way, if anyone can guess what I was just foreshadowing, I will personal mail you a cookie of your choosing), I kept coming back stronger than before every time I lost.  The difficulty curve is perfect and each loss only motivated me to keep trying to master the controls.

This is my favorite kind of game: simple, yet perfectly designed.  I didn't come across a single flaw in its design (though, in fairness, that might just be because I wasn't able to play far enough to find one).  For that, this game gets my seal of approval.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay strategic.

Links
Woof Woof Piddle Piddle: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24635
Even More Shape-Related Death than Super Hexagon: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25000