Dead Sea II: Mutation

March 24, 2013 1 Comment

Imagine a game centered around quick-time events where pressing the correct button doesn’t always work.  Sounds fucking terrible, right?  But wait, what if I told you that if you fail (or if the game determines you fail even when you don’t), the load times can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds before you get a chance at restarting?  Or what if I told you the frame-rate can stutter right as the enemy that will touch-off the quick time event draws near you, causing the quick-time-event to only appear on-screen for a small fraction of a second?  What if the graphics are choppy and the enemies have issues clipping when interacting with your character?  What if your character moves as slow as a snail encased in liquid nitrogen?  What if the text was so small that you have to physically get out of your chair to read it, even when you possess a television large enough to cover an active volcano?  What can you say about a game where nothing seems to have gone right?

It’s really strange because the first Dead Sea was not God awful or anything.  I ultimately didn’t recommend it, because the gameplay was boring and repetitive.  But I think with some work, the concept of being stuck in the middle of the ocean with sharks out to turn you into the catch-of-the-day might be a good one.  When I heard the guys at Brave Men Games were working on a sequel, I was hoping they would try to mend the concept, which I think is salvageable.  The developers seemed to disagree with that assessment, because Dead Sea II is completely different from the original, with no real connection besides starring the same chick.  Actually, I think the “mutation” part refers to the girl, because that’s the only explanation for why she has the spray-on-tan from Hell, making her look like the love child of Courtney Stodden and Hulk Hogan.  How did she get that tan?  Didn’t she just spend, like, days bobbing around the ocean?  That wouldn’t have bronzed her.  That would have had her peeling a human onion.  A pickled human onion.

It's also possible she's in need a liver transplant. In which case, I'm sorry.

It’s also possible she’s in need a liver transplant. In which case, I’m sorry.

My biggest disappointment with Dead Sea 2 is that the original was a bad game merely because the mechanics were not fun.  It did give me hope that the developers were on the right track.  Instead, the sequel is broken to the point of being nearly unplayable.  Being attacked by giant mutant-shark-people-things might not be the worst idea, but the execution here is awful.  I searched around for viable pathways to make stealth kills on the enemies, but couldn’t find any without being detected.  When an enemy charges you, you have to perform a quick-time-event to escape.  However, sometimes I would push the correct button almost immediately and still die.  It seemed completely random when it would work.  Combine this with excruciating load times and I didn’t really feel the urge to press on.  I tried to finish one floor that had two mutant dudes for a good solid hour, but a combination of stuttering frame rate, broken quick-time-events, and demoralizing load times made me give up.  Maybe without technical hangups, Dead Sea 2 could have been decent.  Instead, it’s dead in the water.  Ba-ba-baaaaaaa.

Dead Sea 2Dead Sea II: Mutation was developed by Brave Men Games

80 Microsoft Points said this series has jumped shark in the making of this review.

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Loot Grinder

March 21, 2013 4 Comments

How to Please Indie Gamer Chick

  • Step one: make sure your planned video game is actually a video game.
  • Step two: Send a bribe to P.O. Box…………..

Actually, Loot Grinder didn’t make it past step one, so there’s no need to continue.  What it does manage to do is be one of the most baffling “games” I’ve ever played.  It’s menial data-entry from Hell.  Who would see the potential in taking a genre, removing the aspects of it that are most important to gamers, and then releasing it for mass consumption?  Dirt-eating insanity!  But that’s exactly what Loot Grinder is.  No story.  No characters to interact with.  No world to explore.  No hidden treasures.  No dungeons.  No plot twists.  No real dialog at all.  Thus, all that’s left is the grinding.  Also known as the least fun part of any game.  That’s why they called it “grinding” instead of “super fun happy time!”

I don't remember any game making me yawn more. No, I didn't finish it. I quit saving my progress and the first time I died after that, I decided I had seen enough. Two hours of utter tedium.

I don’t remember any game making me yawn more. No, I didn’t finish it. I quit saving my progress and the first time I died after that, I decided I had seen enough. Two hours of utter tedium that should be avoided at all costs by anyone looking to have a good time.

They didn’t even get the whole grinding part right.    Without a world to explore, there’s no way you can hang out in a specific area, fighting guys you know you can beat.  That’s what I consider grinding to be.  Here, you could very well end up fighting guys who are well out-of-bounds for your party, get smacked down, and have to start over from your last save.  Money is too slow to be acquired.  Potions are way over-priced, and so is use of the inn.  Progress feels slow.  Upgrades are expensive enough to seem well out or reach.  And then there’s weird moments, like buying a spell only to find out that your particular dude can’t actually use that spell.  I bought a spell called Fire 1, but it turns out that’s for diamond wizard things, and my guy was a pearl wizard thing.  Unless I missed something, and I was looking very closely, there was no way of knowing that until I had already spent a large chunk of money on the spell.  It’s like buying a used car and not getting to know if there’s a dead body in the trunk until you pass your first police checkpoint.

Worst of all, the game only leaves in battles, but the battles are slow, basic, and boring.  Gaming traditionalists might appreciate them, since they’re lifted liberally from the 16-bit era.  Of course, those battles were palatable because they had the benefit of advancing the narrative.  Without that, the gameplay has no sense of achievement.  This is one of those “sounds like it might work” on paper concepts that probably shouldn’t have made it out of the planning stages.  Loot Grinder is one of the most boring ideas in gaming history and should only be put to use in weeding out which interns at the office are unsuited for redundant filing work.

xboxboxartLoot Grinder was developed by Pixel Polish Games

80 Microsoft Points said this game should come with one of those “may cause drowsiness” warnings in the making of this review.

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DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die

March 18, 2013 12 Comments

DLC Quest was one of those rare games that exists strictly to parody the industry, did everything right, and ended before the joke stopped being funny.  It did real well, even taking home the Official Xbox Magazine’s XBLIG of the year award. I really liked it too, to the point that I wrote my single most boring review ever because I was dead afraid of spoiling the game.  I wanted people to play it.

I also did not want there to be a sequel.  I just figured that there was no way the joke could be stretched any further.  DLC Quest is pretty much a game without flaws, in the sense that it gives you just enough gameplay to not get too bored while waiting for the next gag to hit.  It gave players one hour worth of genuinely funny jokes, and ended before they started going flat.  It really felt like the joke had gone as far as it could.

Zombie sheeps. Also known as Sega's fanbase.

Zombie sheep. Also known as Nintendo’s fanbase.

Still, everyone clamored for a sequel.  Not me.  I did everything I could to discourage it.  I asked creator Ben Kane nicely to not do it.  Then I asked not so nicely.  Then I made threats.  Then I blackmailed.  Then I  held his parents hostage.  Then I left a horse’s head in his bed.  Then I burned his house down.  Then I found out I was talking to the wrong Ben Kane.  Then I had to explain to the cops that I hadn’t grossly over-reacted to an ultimately trivial situation.  Then I had to make with the bribes.  By time I had tracked down the real Ben Kane, it was this morning and the sequel was already out.  Grumble.

Guess what?  My fears were for not.  DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die is still quite funny, briskly paced, and offers genuine laughs.  Having said that, the best jokes clearly came in the original, where you had to get “DLC” just to be able to pause the game, or walk to the left.  It took absurdity to a new extreme.  The punchlines in Live Freemium feel more like run-of-the-mill gaming humor.  Well done, mind you, but still the type of jokes that can be done in any type of game.  Stuff like making guys speak with Canadian accents, or having a token NPC character that adds fuck-all to the game.  If the writing wasn’t so damn good, it would have really been a letdown, because this shit has been done before.

As a game, DLC Quest 2, like its predecessor, is as basic as buttered bread.  Jump around, collect coins, find the occasional secret room that contains more coins, and that’s pretty much it.  I’ve reviewed dozens of games at Indie Gamer Chick that have minimal gameplay and focus on the writing, but platforming is much more preferable to scrolling through menus, or pointing and clicking.  And I have to stress, the writing is sublime.  As an example, there’s a section of the game that focuses on fetch quests.  Such events in any game are guaranteed to induce cringes, and this was no different.  Then, just as tedium was about to settle in and make of mess of things, a brilliant punch-line to the whole sequence instantly defused me.  It was the biggest laugh of the whole game.  I actually shook my head in disbelief.  I can’t believe he made that part work the way he did.  He got me.

Add an extra thirty minutes to the playtime to find everything if you so wish.

Add an extra thirty minutes to the playtime to find everything if you so wish.

Like the original, Live Freemium takes about an hour to finish.  Unlike the original, it doesn’t stay fresh to the end.  It doesn’t really get annoying or boring.  In fact, I didn’t think the game had run out of steam until right before the finale.  But, yes, the joke has officially ran its course.  It’s nothing short of remarkable that Ben Kane stretched it for over two hours before it grew stale.  His talent as a game designer is remarkable.  At the time of this writing, he has three games on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard, ranked #19, #20, and #31.  That’s pretty damn impressive.  Thus, I officially proclaim Ben Kane and his Going Loud Studios the first recipient of the Indie Gamer Chick Certified Developer Who Doesn’t Suck Award.

dont_suck2

Congratulations Ben.  But for God’s sake, don’t make another one.  I don’t care if this earns you enough money to buy a small nation.  Don’t make me put a horse’s head in your bed.  This time I’ll get it right.  How many Ben Kanes can there be?

xboxboxartDLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die was developed by Going Loud Studios

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points said “no seriously, I know I doubted you before, but there is no possible way you can stretch out this joke for another episode.  Think of Naked Gun 3.  That shit was unwatchable” in the making of this review.

DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. 

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Battle High 2

March 16, 2013 7 Comments

In this edition of Second Chance with the Chick, I take a look at a game I played way back in August of 2011.  A game that was a participant in the 2011 Summer Indie Uprising.  A game that..

Huh?  What do you mean this is a different game?  No.

Really?

(checks notes)

Well I’ll be damned.  It really is a sequel.

Awkward.

Even more awkward is the original Battle High that I played I sort of took a big dump on.  Perhaps an undeserved dump.  I was only on my second month as Indie Gamer Chick at that point, and the game was prominently featured in the Uprising event despite being completely unoriginal.  I think my expectations for the types of games in the Uprising (and XBLIGs in general) were misguided.  I thought I would be playing dozens of weird, exotic, experimental games.  Why?  Because I was (some would say “still am“) fucking stupid.

The beautiful truth about Xbox Live Indie Games is that the best titles typically are directly inspired by classic games and formulas.  So was I overly harsh on Mattrified Games?  Yes.  I’ll eat some humble pie and admit that I was wrong, and that Battle High was better than I said.  Their primary goal was to pay respectable tribute to a beloved genre, and I can’t deny they succeeded with Battle High.  I didn’t like it all that much, because I didn’t grow up with an endless stream of 2D fighters that were practically indistinguishable from one another.  I imagine if I had, I might have been more receptive towards it.  Sort like how my father keeps trying to sell me on the new Dallas.  I gave it a shot and thought that it was total crap.  My father watched the original and eats the shit up with a spoon.  The point being whether it’s crap or not is irrelevant to the target audience.

Not that I think Battle High 2 is crap.  It’s not.  If you’re into fighters, I seriously doubt you’ll find a better one on Xbox Live Indie Games.  It controls well.  I guess.  I mean, I would bet it controls much better on an arcade stick.  I had difficulty imputing even the simplest of moves.  Neither the standard Xbox 360 controller or the transforming d-pad one I have are suited for fighters.  But I already learned that lesson years ago when attempting to play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on XBLA.  I can hardly blame the developer for that.

Calling it a sequel is a bit of a stretch though.  It has basically the same graphics, same characters, same bonus games, same setting, and same controls as the original.  Maybe a new move here, or more emphasis on plot there, or a small handful of new characters.  But, it just doesn’t feel like an evolution.  Maybe more like a special edition, sort of how there were five fucking versions of Street Fighter II before they brought out Street Fighter III.  Put it this way.  If you looked at the two screenshots below, could you tell me which is the original and which is the sequel?  Is it this one?

1 or 2 2

Or this one?

1 or 2 1

The top shot is the new one.  The bottom one is the original.  See what I mean?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Capcom made millions re-relasing the same game with minor tweaks.  If it’s good for them, it’s good for XBLIGs.

I guess there is one major difference I could point out: I had fun this time around.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing about XBLIGs for nearly two years, so I have a better understanding of the platform.  Originality is not the goal of every developer.  I imagine if you were a kid who played fighters and dreamed of making your own fighting game, your first goal on a platform like XBLIG would be to do just that.  That’s what Mattrified Games did with Battle High, and they did a damn good job.  Maybe Battle High is a glorified patch disguised as a sequel, but I enjoyed it, and I have little love in my heart for 2D fighters of the 90s.  I was weaned on Soul Caliber, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and God-awful 3D Mortal Kombat games.  I chalk my dislike of SNK-style fighters to a generational thing.  To me, they’re boring.  Just like how you guys hate the contributions of my generation, like um.. uhhhhhhh.. we had that thing where that guy did that thing that one time and um.. this review is over.

xboxboxartBattle High 2 was developed by Mattrified Games

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points thought this game was about Matthew Riddle.  That dude always battled high in the making of this review.

Battle High 2 is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  No, I’m not retroactively putting Battle High 1 on there, unless you count Battle High 2 as Battle High 1.5, which I do.

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妖精冒険記 (Chronicles of the Fairy)

March 14, 2013 Leave a comment

Chronicles of the Fairy is kind of like a Kirby game.  The protagonist can “fly” indefinitely, levels center around the simple act of reaching a goal, and the game is as easy as a round of dodge ball against a group of senior citizens.  It also features some pretty good 16-bit graphics and decent play control.  If we left it simply at that, Chronicles of the Fairy would be a decent, albeit forgettable game.

Come on, now.  How often can we leave it at just that?

It looks the part, but Chronicles of the Fairy feels unfinished.

It looks the part, but Chronicles of the Fairy feels unfinished.

Chronicles of the Fairy isn’t really terrible, but it’s underwhelming or mediocre in so many ways that I simply have to shake my head in disappointment.  It looks like it should be good, and feels like it should be good.  But the six levels that take all of twenty minutes to complete are boring and uninspired in design.  The music is annoying, the enemies are all but useless, and lives are far too plentiful.  But what’s really awful is the collision detection on the spikes.  Levels are littered with spikes all over the place, with the main challenge being having to squeeze between them.  The problem with this is, the collision box for the spikes is not too generous.  It leads to many moments where you don’t come that close to the spikes and still take damage for them.  Imagine if real life was like that.  Imagine if, in football, getting to the three yard line was considered good enough for a touchdown.  Raving insanity!  Even if replacement referees apparently liked that idea.

Even if that wasn’t the case, 妖精冒険記 is boring.  The whole experience feels like the demo for what should be a larger game, or perhaps an early beta-build or proof-of-concept, as evidenced by the ball-and-chain swinging enemy who clipped right into a wall and got stuck.  There’s no challenge (even the spikes don’t make much difference when you’re tripping over extra lives every two feet), and no real reason to keep playing once you’re past the opening stage.  Then, just as it looks like the game might grow some teeth and ramp up in difficulty, it’s over.  It’s quite disappointing.  I was interested to check it out because it’s rare when a Japanese-developed XBLIG shows up on the marketplace.  It seemed like it might be exotic.  Instead, I feel like one of those chicks who gets a tramp stamp in Japanese characters that she thinks says “Free Spirit” and only later learns that it says “Insert Umbrella Below.”

xboxboxart妖精冒険記 (Chornicles of the Fairy) was developed by Yuwaka’s Soft

80 Microsoft Points said “maybe Kirbys are the tadpole stage of a fairy.  IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!” in the making of this review.

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Wright Brothers’ Mysteries

March 8, 2013 9 Comments

Oh my God.

Oh.

My.

GOD!!

I can’t believe I live in a world where Wright Brothers’ Mysteries exists.  It’s bad.  Bad bad.  Endearingly bad, yes, but endearingly bad is still bad.  Devoid of anything positive to say about any aspect of it’s design.  Hell, there’s really not a whole lot of game here.  Watch cut scenes that were apparently made using The Movies (the opening credits show the intro to The Movies), maybe answer a question about that scene, do the occasional amateurish quick-time-event, and that’s it.  Fifteen minutes tops.  Fifteen unintentionally hilarious, flat-out fucking weird minutes.  Surreal in ways I’ve only heard in descriptions of drug intoxication.

The sad part is, if I squint just a little bit, the dude on the right looks kind of like my boyfriend.

The sad part is, if I squint just a little bit, the dude on the right looks kind of like my boyfriend.

The story?  Incomprehensible.  The dialog?  So disjointed and unnatural that it’s practically alien.  The voice acting?  Awful accents, unemotional tones, and delivery so bad that it sounds like it was pieced together with a sound board.  The game?  There is no game.  Two quick-time events, one of which involves picking a lock and the other which necessitates restarting a heart.  That’s really the extend of any “game” function.  Otherwise, you get to watch horrible cut scenes play out.  I spent the first couple minutes rolling my eyes.

And then the Ninja showed up, and I started laughing.

I didn’t stop laughing for ten minutes.  Every single word spoken, every terribly choreographed fight scene where continuity changes from camera angle to camera angle, and just the overall awfulness of the whole mess.  Wright Brothers’ Mysteries made me fall to the floor in a rolling laughter that made my sides hurt and tears run down my cheeks.  I’ve never laughed harder at any game.  Not in a good way, mind you.  Wright Brothers’ Mysteries is the brand new Worst Game I’ve ever played in my entire life.  It’s awful.  But hypnotically so.  I can’t really say you should buy it.  There’s already videos on YouTube that show you the full game, like this one.  It’s just awful.  I don’t know how far unintentional comedy goes towards redeeming something this bad.  I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.  For me, Wright Brothers’ Mysteries made me laugh until I was clutching my sides and my stomach in agony, not to mention the headache.  I could have probably been trampled by a marching band made entirely of tuba players and walked away in better shape.

xboxboxartWright Brothers’ Mysteries was developed by Archor Games

80 Microsoft Points honestly aren’t sure if this game wasn’t some gigantic gag against the entire XBLIG scene in the making of this review.

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Voxel Runner

March 7, 2013 9 Comments

“Foul!” cried the gaming community.  “Someone made an off-brand, generic version of Bit.Trip 2 and released it right before Bit.Trip 2 came out.  A pox on their house!”  You see the same venom directed towards developers of Minecraft clones, or guys like Milkstone when they release cheap XBLIG clones of popular hits like Slender or Binding of Isaac.  The weird thing is, the gaming community seems to treat this phenomenon like it’s exclusive to them.  Um, The Asylum anyone?  Mock if you will, but they’ve made over fifty movies and never once lost money on a production.  They’ve proven that, if profitability is all you desire, clones made without the slightest tinge of shame are the surest fire bet to get there.

Yes.

Yes.

Voxel Runner sounds like it would be The Asylum’s port of a video game, does it not?  None of that coy “Sushi Castle” type of shit like Milkstone does.  “Voxel Runner!  Done!”  The funny thing is, everyone assumed that the game would be shit, myself included.  Timely release.  Blatant clone.  How could it be good?  Surprise, it is good.  Well, good seems maybe too generous.  How does decent sound?  I’ll go with decent.

Actually, Voxel Runner felt more like The Impossible Game, at least to me.  Maybe it was the art style, the pace, the spikes, or the constant deaths.  While the game offers more complex maneuvers (swiped liberally from Bit.Trip Runner) than simply jumping, it just felt like a memory-tester where you have a minimal chance of success on your first run through.  However, I did beat level 22 on my first attempt.  That was the only such level I was able to do that, but it felt fantastic.  It doesn’t matter if I failed 531 other times.  For a few seconds, I was an invincible destroyer of games.

Yes, because "ducking" is one of the most notoriously difficult to master moves in game history. It makes Zangief's spinning piledriver look like child's play.

Yes, because “ducking” is one of the most notoriously difficult to master moves in game history. It makes Zangief’s spinning piledriver look like child’s play.

This is a weird one to write-up.  Everything about Voxel Runner is decent.  Not great.  Not memorable.  I played this three days ago and I barely remember any critiques I had.  It’s possible I didn’t have any.  Well, there was one: the controls are slightly unresponsive at times, which resulted in about 10% of my total failures.  Otherwise, there’s really not a lot to cover here.  Voxel Runner is a shameless rip-off of a popular franchise, but it doesn’t suck.  If that’s all the developer was trying for, congratulations Captain Ambitious.  Take a seat in the dollar store hall of fame, next to a bin of movies starring Lorenzo Lamas and a can of expired off-brand chicken noodle soup.

xboxboxartVoxel Runner was developed by Dizzy Pixels Ltd.

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points look forward to future productions from Dizzy Pixels, such as Super Italian Brothers, Sonny the Hedgehog, and Street Brawler II in the making of this review. 

Voxel Runner is Chick Approved.. don’t look at me like that, it doesn’t suck, I swear.. and is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Seriously, stop looking at me.

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Procrastinating Squirrel (Updated)

February 23, 2013 12 Comments

Procrastinating Squirrel put up a fight when I first downloaded it.  From the moment I booted it up, the game started skipping like a DVD that got into a fight with a belt sander.  Thus it was rendered completely unplayable.  I made a video so that others could feel my pain.

After publishing the original piece, I got word from a few players that they didn’t have problems.  Curious, I switched consoles, then switched which storage device I was saving my progress to.  While it didn’t run perfectly, the experience was vastly improved and thus I could write a full and proper review.  Of course, in a way I already did that.  Procrastinating Squirrel is essentially Miner Dig Deep, only not as deep.  Miner Dig Shallow perhaps?  Miner Dig Less Deep?  Miner Scratch the Surface?

Oak Nuts. It's what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

Oak Nuts. It’s what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

How about Toddlers Dig Deep?  Because this stripped down version of one of my former Top-10 XBLIGs is pretty much that.  Miner Dig Deep, sans strategy or most dangers.  Fewer upgrades.  Fewer things to mine.  The boulders are still there and can still cause you to scream curse words you forgot you knew, but that’s the only thing that can kill you.  There’s no need to worry about digging too many tunnels that could cave in, because the game is presented from a top-down view.  That’s the one advantage Squirrel has over Miner: you can mine in any direction.  Every other aspect is less than what is already offered in Miner Dig Deep.  There’s no positive outlook on that.  People who haven’t played Miner would be better served skipping this and playing that.  People who have played Miner can only find Squirrel to be an inferior, watered-down clone.  I kept waiting for the game to present some kind of hook to change things up, and finished it still waiting.  While I still was practically hypnotized by the prospect of digging up new materials, those moments are few and far between.  It even ends significantly faster than Miner Dig Deep.  Miner Dig Deep left me wanting more.  Procrastinating Squirrel left me disappointed, and recommending it would be nuts.

Thirty minutes staring at the screen and that’s the best pun I could figure to go out on.  I knew I should have written this sooner, instead of waiting for the Oscars to end.  That’s what I get for procrastinating.

xboxboxartProcrastinating Squirrel was developed by Daivuk

80 Microsoft Points wondered why every single pet squirrel is named “Penny” in the making of this review?

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Pester

February 23, 2013 1 Comment

I suck at space shooters.  I’ve spent the last two years establishing this fact on this very blog.  While I try to claim neutrality towards all genres, that’s obviously a bit of a stretch.  Some I like more than others, with shmups typically being “the others.”  I’ve just never been able to get into them.  Which kind of sucks for the hard-working XBLIG community, because even ones that earn near universal praise (like Aeternum) don’t do anything for me.  It seems like the best they can hope for out of me is “I wouldn’t rather be dead than play this.”

Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?

Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?

On that note, I wouldn’t rather be dead than play Pester.  Congratulations to the team at Flump Studios for doing as good as you could do with this genre in relationship to me.  I was able to get through the full hour Brian forces me to play these games (“out of fairness” he says, the goody two-shoes prick) without wondering if I’ll be locked up in the nuthouse for choosing to hurl myself through a plate-glass window to get out of it.  And, while I wasn’t like wowed by the experience or anything, I wasn’t bored.  It’s nothing new though.  You’re a ship.  There are enemies.  Enemies fire a whole lot of bullets at you, and you fire a whole lot of bullets back.  I’ve always kind of wondered about the economics of bullet hells.  Presumably if enemies are firing plasma rounds at you with projectiles the size of small ships, that stuff has got to cost money.  You would think they would fire a little more accurately.  Conserve ammo, instead of seeing you, going crazy, and firing bullets in every direction including behind them.  Or hell, since we’re dealing futuristic space warfare, you would think an enemy force that can employ thousands of ships to take out one single rinky-dinky little adversary could figure out how to do weapons that instantaneously destroy whatever they’re targeting the moment the fire button is pressed without giving them a chance to dodge out-of-the-way.  What kind of morons do they have running these evil empires?

Anyway, it’s basic space shooter shit with some neat graphic filters added, and not a whole lot more.  I played for a while and realized quickly that I was every bit as shitty at playing Pester as I am at every other game of this godforsaken genre.  But the screen wasn’t so spammed with bullets that it was demoralizing or anything.  Then something funny happened.  At one point, I turned to Brian and said “honestly, I’m not having a blast or anything, but there’s nothing really wrong with this one.”  Within ten seconds of me saying this, the game decided to give me stuff to complain about.   I’m not saying this for comic effect.  This really happened.  First, I was fighting a boss that throws giant swords at you and died.  That’s not the bad part.  The bad part is when I blinked back into existence, the game spawned one of the sword bullets into the same space I respawned into and insta-killed me.  The sword wasn’t there at that moment. It just appeared.  A bizarre glitch I’m guessing, but it’s so weird that it happened right after I told my boyfriend I had nothing to complain about.  As if the game heard me and said “nothing to complain about?  Bitch, I’ll give you something to complain about.”

And Pester kept being a shithead to me after that.  I played three straight rounds where the game never once spawned an upgrade for my ship’s guns.  It spawned plenty of speed-ups and bombs, but no gun upgrades.  It was fucking strange, because they had been plentiful before.  Not that it really mattered.  Gun upgrades or not, I still made it about the same length as I always did, which was between wave 7 and wave 10.  Yea, I really suck at this shit.  So I booted up Tempus mode, where lives are replaced by time.  When you shoot enemies, instead of them dropping coins, they drop clocks that add one second to a timer.  When you die, you lose ten seconds.  The game goes until you run out of time.  Okay, fine.  Question: where the fuck is the timer?  I couldn’t see it.  Otherwise, it’s the same game with the same enemy layouts.  You can also adjust the difficulty, and add extra challenges if you’re a masochist, like controlling two ships at once.  I didn’t try it myself.  I barely have the coordination to tie my shoelaces without breaking my neck in the process.  I don’t need a game to tell me I’m an embarrassment to humanity.  I already know it.

A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?

A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?

Really, Pester isn’t bad or anything.  And the sword bit I mentioned above was a one-off thing.  I guess I kind of, sort of recommend it.  A little bit.  I’m not sure if that’s because I genuinely enjoyed it based on merit, or if I genuinely enjoyed it because Brian got such amusement out of my pitiful lack of shmup talent.  Either way, I had something vaguely resembling a good time playing it, and had the sense to turn it off before I got bored.  Having said that, it’s not an ambitious title.  This shit has been done before and Pester offers nothing new.  Nothing.  At best, it shows competence in making a functioning, mildly entertaining game that closely resembles about a thousand other games.  I’m not against playing them, but I want to see a different angle on them.  There’s got to be a wealth of unexplored twists for bullet hells.  I mean come on, you guys are indie developers.  You’re supposed to buck the norm.  Be weird for the sake of being weird.  Dance to the beat of a different drummer.  When games like this fill out the cliché checklist with such determination, it’s kind of sad.  Not as sad as watching me play games like this must be, but still pretty sad.

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedPester was developed by Flump Studios

80 Microsoft Points made a fortune selling ammunition to an evil galactic empire in the making of this review. 

Pester is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Barely.  

Filed under Xbox Live Indie Game Review Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ascent of Kings

February 21, 2013 1 Comment

Ascent of the Kings comes from the developer of Quiet, Please!, the 2D platforming/point-and-click mash-up I played last April.  The fingerprints of the developer are all over this one too.  Same art style, same silliness, and same bite-sized game length.  It took me just over thirty-minutes to beat Quiet, Please!  For Ascent of Kings, which is a Metroidvania type of platformer, it took me about twenty minutes to become king and another twenty-five minutes to find all 12 hidden shrines.  So, forty-five minutes total of gameplay.  At this pace, Nostatic Software’s next game might stretch to a full hour.  Not that it needs to.  I’ve enjoyed games that lasted as little as ten minutes.  It’s crazy how spending 600 days immersed in the indie gaming scene alters your perception on how long a game should be.  I’m fairly certain I’m now in a state of mind where I could approve a game that lasts one minute, as long as it’s the best damn one minute I’ve had since I lost my virginity.

A Boy and his Blob?

A Boy and his Blob?

So the idea is, the king has died, and in order to determine the new king, all possible suitors (which seems to consist of four brothers that live in a small cottage, still better than what England faces sometime in the next twenty years) have to hop around on platforms and reach a small shrine that bestows upon that person the power to rule.  The father of these kids, apparently a bit of a dick, only gives each of the older brothers one special tool that can help them reach the summit and become king.  But their hearts don’t seem quite into it.  They pull such bullshit excuses as “ouch, sprained my wrist” or “twisted my ankle” like they’re trying to get out of jury duty.  The youngest brother, aka you, collects their tools, allowing him to double jump, climb vines, and fire slingshots.  You know, the kind of tools found in a real world monarchy litmus test.  Psssssh, diplomacy?  Economics?  Fuck that shit.  That’s for democracies.

As a game, what can I say?  It’s alright.  The movement physics are a bit loose and the double-jump sometimes didn’t seem to work.  Level design is very basic, no frills, no surprises.  There’s one section that features a timed jumping puzzle, and I hate that if I get to the top and screw up, I have to wait any amount of time before hitting the button to start over.  But, the game is so brief that you can’t really get bored with it, and it ends long before any amount of frustration over the various control foibles can settle in.  I guess what I’m trying to say is I had a decent enough time playing Ascent of Kings to say it’s worth a buck.  It’s not the most enthusiastic recommendation, but hey, it’s not the most ambitious game!  One hand washes the other!

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedAscent of Kings was developed by Nostatic Software

80 Microsoft Points were joking about the one minute thing.  Brian has way more stamina than that in the making of this review.

Ascent of Kings is Chick Approved and has ascended the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Filed under Xbox Live Indie Game Review Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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