Avatar Block War

March 21, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 8 Comments

Nope, I still haven’t played Minecraft. No, I’m not avoiding it for the sake of being that one person who always has to thumb their nose up at whatever the current bandwagon is. You won’t hear me calling it “Minecrap” or bitching about the endless clones of it that fill up the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace like pimples on the face of a 14-year-old Hershey enthusiast.

I avoid it because I’m afraid of it. When it comes to PC gaming, I have an addictive personality. I lost nearly a full year to World of Warcraft, another few months to the Sims, a few months to Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Plants vs. Zombies, and Bejeweled, and Peggle, etc, etc. Basically, I have a problem. And props to me for recognizing that and accepting that with certain games, temperance is the only solution for me. Quite frankly, all you people like Nate Graves and Tim Hurley who keep telling me to give it a try because all cool kids are doing it are evil. That’s right, evil. They make after-school specials about this stuff, you know!

But if Minecraft is anything remotely like Avatar Block War, I have nothing to fear. I’ve tried to avoid using terms like “soulless” and “cash-in” as it relates to Xbox Live Indie Games. I have no problem with that here: Avatar Block War is a soulless cash-in. That and it’s a buggy, crappy, glitchy, shitty, badly conceived piece of shit. It is so bad that I think it might be the worst XBLIG I’ve played yet. And yea, I say that a lot, but it’s not my fault you guys keep lowering the bar the way you do.

Bubbles Bubbles everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Yet.

Avatar Block War tries for the sandboxy-feel of Minecraft, but aims to be more of an arena shooter of sorts. This was their first mistake, and leads into mistakes 2 through 285,195,106,344. The two genres just seem incompatible. At the very least, it doesn’t work as a kill-count driven game. Capture the flag or territorial control might make more sense, but all that counts in Avatar Block War is the body count. But who knows, maybe what Call of Duty really is missing is the ability to build a giant cock-shaped statue in the middle of a fire fight. Of course, that would be a risky strategy if you played by the rules of Avatar Block War, where bullets instantly destroy blocks you lay down. Oh, and they also kill you, because that’s sort of what bullets are made for.

There really is no benefit in building. It doesn’t make an effective shield. The game does have various mountains of blocks already in place, but they are of no use except to help the game find new and exciting ways to glitch out. So I suppose I should focus on the gun-play. It’s shallow. It’s limited. Bullets are represented by your gun bubbling for some reason. The variety of guns you have doesn’t really seem to make a difference, as they all have about the same range and same kill potential. I suppose the assault rifle is the most effective because it can destroy blocks. That’s kind of like saying a panzer tank is the most effective vehicle during five o’clock traffic. Only here, the panzer tank’s bullets register about three years after they’ve shot someone and the barrel doubles as a soap-bubble wand.

And now to the glitches. Instead of picking them apart in my typical smart-ass fashion, I’m just going to list things that happened to me while I played the game using bullet points. Mind you, I’m not going to list everything, because we would seriously be here all day and I have laundry to do.

Trying to climb the mountain and falling through it.
Being able to walk through blocks.
Being able to see through blocks.
Blocks appearing and disappearing due to clipping issues.
Blocks have significantly shorter draw distance than characters, so you’ll see dudes walking around long before you see any blocks, rendering hiding behind them useless.
Lag. During single player. Lots of it.
The most brain-dead AI I’ve ever seen. Bots will walk against walls indefinitely.
In online matches, lag is truly insane. If you shoot a person, they might go three or four minutes before the bullet registers. I played with Bryce and Brian. They would kill me, and then while I was respawning, the bullets I had shot at them would slowly sink in. I would respawn, only make my way half-way to where they were at, never shooting mind you, and they would suddenly die from the bullets I had shot several minutes earlier. This wasn’t on our connection, by the way. We’re sure of that on the basis that SINGLE PLAYER has lag just like this, only not as brutal.
Also, whatever blocks you build in online play aren’t necessarily visible to everyone else. The boys called me over to see the tower they constructed. I came there and instead saw something vaguely resembling Stonehenge. I also noticed they were walking on air about three feet in front of me. As it turns out, they had built a really elaborate tower. I just couldn’t see it. Then I shot them in the head and they died about a week later. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But trust me, five minutes feels like a week in this fucking game.

If not for the glitches, it's possible the game would merely be boring.

I want to once again stress that I have nothing against Minecraft. I haven’t played it, and thus I’m not going to hate on something I haven’t tried myself. If you’re the type that does that, grow up you fucking whinny child. I’m also not going to hate on the fact that Minecraft clones dominate the XBLIG sales charts. You know what? Blame the guys making the official port of Minecraft to the Xbox 360 for taking so long. It’s a perfectly valid market and taking advantage of a genre that is trendy is smart. Period. This is how the game industry works, folks. Space Invaders was a hit and then there were Space Invader clones. Same with Pac-Man. Same with Super Mario Brothers. Same with Doom. When you bitch about crafting games dominating XBLIG, you might as well say “Someone please get me into special education because I have followed gaming my entire life and somehow still have no clue how it works at all and thus I obviously have an undiagnosed learning disability. It’s amazing that I haven’t been killed by the force from the black hole-like vacuum where my brain should be.”

BUT, feel perfectly free to bitch about games like Avatar Block Wars, which make no effort to be fun, polished, or even working. It’s really quite sad that it’s on the first page of the best-selling games list, or at least the daily one. It made it look effortless, but only on account of no actual effort being made during development.

Avatar Block Wars was developed by Fredrik Stigsson

240 Microsoft Points can’t cast stones for being shameless clones of popular things for obvious reasons in the making of this review.

A review copy of Avatar Block Wars was provided by Mr. Stigsson to Indie Gamer Chick. The copy played by Kairi was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points. The review code was given to someone else to provide her with a proper online experience. That person was not involved at all in the writing or editing of this review. For more information on this policy, please consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

Keep voting in Kairi’s Katch-Up Thursdays. On April 5, I’ll be giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to someone who participates in the democratic process. Even though the winner is not determined by a popular vote. Whatever, just go vote.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with Gaming

Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest

March 20, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 9 Comments

Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest has two unique distinctions on my indie game journey. First, it has the most unwieldy name I’ve ever come across in gaming. Second, it’s the first Xbox Live Indie Game I’ve played that takes advantage of the raised file-size limits. Coming in at a whopping 377.59MB, it’s the biggest XBLIG of all time. I wish it was also exceptionally bad, so that I could say it’s also the biggest piece of shit on the platform. Sadly, that’s not the case. Don’t get me wrong, Ogre’s Phantasy Star Online is bad, but it’s not bad-bad.

Ogre’s Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead is sort of a bargain basement knock-off of Shadow of the Colossus. You play as a girl with a sword that is roughly the size of a Pinto, though probably not half-as-deadly. The object of the game is to slay giant ogres that wear football helmets. You do this in a quite frankly impressive 3D battlefield. Action takes place in real-time, with hordes of little goblin things trying to kill you. All that matters is taking down the larger enemies. Once you’ve killed all the ogres, the level is beaten.

Unfortunately, Ogre’s Phantoms Starring Ben Affleck falters in pretty much every way a game can. I’ll start with the combat mechanics. X does a horizontal slice and B does a harder vertical one. Sounds pretty straight-forward. The problem is once you’ve swung, the chick just stands there like she just simultaneously pulled every muscle in her body and is waiting to see if her heart is going to start beating again. Granted, she’s swinging a sword so large that it defies practicality and she’s probably walking around with a hernia big enough to park a car in, so maybe they were aiming for realism. Probably not. I mean, the chick can jump about twenty feet in the air and pogo-stick off bad guys in a way that reminded many of my Twitter followers of the NES game Duck Tales.

The pogo stick thing is the main method of attack. When you jump on a bad guy, you spring extra high in the air. If you tap the B button, you do a down-stabby thing. If you press B and then A before you land, you’ll spring off one baddie and onto another. This also works for doing multiple attacks on ogres, which should pop their helmet off after a few whacks. After that, you just keep bouncing until the thing dies. Once you figure this out, most of the levels are laughably easy. I figured I would be able to coast right through to the end. I thought wrong.

If the only problem with the game was having a chick who swings a sword like an octogenarian brandishing a sledgehammer yet is somehow able to spring off enemy heads with all the energy of a ring-tailed lemur that’s been drip-fed cocaine since conception, I could probably still recommend Ogre’s Fantasy Football League. But I can’t. Why? Because the game crapped out on me a whole bunch of times. Whenever more than a handful of guys were on-screen, the frame rate would sputter like a jet turbine that just took in a whole flock of pelicans. It’s worth noting that the smaller baddies respawn constantly, so it is impossible to not land yourself in a situation where the frame rate takes a beating. And the problem only gets worse whenever one of the ogres swings at you, which is pretty much the entire time you’re engaging them. The game also has pretty horrible draw-distance as it relates to the enemies. Once they get about 15 feet away from you, they simply vanish. Perhaps the chick needs to visit LensCrafters. Or maybe she has the strangest case of Akinetopsia ever.

There are lots of little glitches too. Enemies getting stuck in walls. Ogres getting stuck in walls. You getting stuck in walls. Or an enemy attack getting “stuck on you” somehow. I went back to level two so that I could grind-up some cash to buy the best sword in the game. I got charged by the giant deer-thing in that level and got knocked down. Whenever you take damage, you drop some of the money you’ve collected. Well, the deer had ran clean past me and was no longer in sight. Yet, my dudette was still hemorrhaging money as if she was taking damage. It was bizarre. Despite wanting to retain whatever cash I had, I was curious if the game was having a blond moment, so I bailed well out of the range of any enemies, just to make sure there was nothing actively biting me. There wasn’t.

Thankfully, all you have to do is press start once and you’re instantly teleported back to the stage-select screen. But this brings me to my next complaint: pressing start once instantly teleports you back to the stage-select screen. There’s no option to pause in the middle of battle. If you press start, back to the map you go. It’s fucking annoying as hell. There is absolutely no reason for a game to not offer the option of pausing. I thought this was established back in the days of the NES. Sometimes you’s gotta answer the phone, sometimes you’s gotta piss. The only purpose this could have possibly have served is to establish the developers as colossal dickheads. If so, mission accomplished.

I admit, I kind of, sort of like Ogre’s Final Fantasy Fan Art, but I can’t recommend it in its present state. It feels too much like an alpha build. Almost as if the developers had something highly ambitious in mind, but had a teeny tiny bit too much fun themselves with the early prototype and said “you know what, fuck it, this is good enough.” With proper patchwork, this might be a special game someday. Hey, slaying monsters so big that they can’t fit completely on the screen is fucking awesome. I’m sure we can all agree on that. I’m sure we can also agree that if the best offense those monsters have is butt-fucking the frame rate down to sandpapered-DVD levels of skipiness, perhaps we’re better off waging war on mushrooms with legs and turtles. At least they fight fair.

Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest was developed by Divider Games

240 Microsoft Points said at least there’s no annoying horse to drive you crazy in the making of this review.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Dream Divers

March 17, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 8 Comments

We meet again, Team Shuriken. Only this time you guys made an actual game instead of a lame ass series of static anime boobies peppered between completely random multiple choice options that are just as likely to lead you to death as they are to advance the story forward. Now then, Dream Divers is a lame ass series of static anime boobies that are peppered between, um, completely random multiple choice options that are, uhhhh, just as likely to lead you to death as they are to.. advance the story forward? Wait, what?

Oh you bastards.

Hey, 18! That means she's legal! Of course, if she was an actual human being, she wouldn't give you the time of day.

Yea, Dream Divers has gameplay more complex than “push one of four buttons and see what happens.” You start up on a ship and use a mechanic similar to one of those double-click things they use in golf video games to decide what position you’ll dive from. Next, you swim around collecting air bubbles and try to find a star. If you get one, you return to the ship. If you die, well, you still return to the ship. In order to stay in the water, you have to get air. The amount of air you have left is represented by a pair of tits. Of course it is.

I figure there’s two types of people who will buy this game: kids whose only option to get risqué games is through XBLIGs, which are not subject to parental lockout due to their lack of ESRB ratings, and losers. Either way, they’re in this to see fake boobies. And I’m not talking about the kind you see in Playboy. If you’ve gone so far as to purchase the game, download it, and begin playing it, the only thing that will hold your attention is the digital tits. In the hour or so I played Dream Divers, I never even noticed the air gauge. It’s pretty obvious when you’re running out of air, because you slow down and eventually stop moving. The picture of breasts is just further pandering to guys playing co-op with Rosy Palm and her five ugly sisters.

As utterly shameless as Team Shuriken is, and they are, Dream Divers is not a complete abortion of a game. Exploring underwater caverns is fun. They make entire movies about that, some of which barely have any cleavage at all. The problem with Dream Divers is it still relies too much on trial-and-error gameplay. Each of the stages contains false pathways that lead you into the lair of a giant, drooling Octopus that will presumably rape and kill whatever chick you’re using. There is a map that you can see between levels, but it only fills in once you’ve physically been through the stage. Given that all movement has to be made with minimal forethought and there is absolutely no room left for error, they should have been nice and given us full view of the map.

Wow, it's so erotic! Paying $1 for this is totally a better idea than doing a free Google search for boobs! Those might feature, icky, REAL boobies. Gross. They have like skin and veins and stuff. That's just wrong.

The control isn’t bad. You point the chicks and they go where you tell them too. I guess you can’t ask for more than that. Things do occasionally move too fast, and thus you’re forced to die and memorize exactly where to make hair-pin turns and the locations of the larger air bubbles that you will need to make it just a few feet further. Anything after the first two stages becomes teeth-gnashingly frustrating, but I would venture a guess that most men will have pooped themselves out and taken a nap by that point anyway.

I have an idea that XBLIG developers can use to market these games: instead of pushing the sexual content, push them as an exercise game. I’m guessing stuff like Dream Divers is the only cardio workout anyone who would want this type of shit actually gets. But if you’re the type of person who does buy games like this, I have a better idea for you: multitask. Use that Google search and find some real titties, and save your Microsoft Points for a game that doesn’t pander to your primal urges. Play a good game, and if you feel the need to buck the slobbering donkey, just look over at your monitor and have at it.

Yea I know, it won’t happen. Well, as long as Team Shuriken can live with being responsible for more spanked monkeys than a chimpanzee dominatrix, who am I question them?

Dream Divers was developed by Team Shuriken

80 Microsoft Points imagine diving underwater with two plastic floatation devices sewn into your chest would be rather difficult in the making of this review.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with Gaming

Nostalgia Gone Mild

March 17, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 2 Comments

I’m not going to try to force my anti-retro-gaming stance onto anyone. I’ve had long, drawn out arguments with people I consider my friends on this issue. I simply think playing old games I’ve already beaten is a waste of my time. Others are content to beat Chrono Trigger for the third time this year, turning their nose up at our modern, newfangled stuff like Mass Effect 3. “Psssh, new stuff. That’s so gay.”

We’ll never see eye-to-eye on this issue, but I think I found something we can all agree on: re-releasing mediocre games that weren’t all that great to begin with is not an event. Apparently, it is to Sony. They’re in the middle of their “Spring Fever” promotion on PlayStation Network. It began this week with Journey and will apparently end in two weeks with Closure, an award-winning indie game. Yep, this promotion is only three fucking games. And what is the middle game? Rayman 3.

Wow.

Really, Rayman 3 is apparently so special now that it’s release is part of an exclusive promotion that lasts a whopping three weeks. Rayman 3 is. Ray fucking Man fucking 3. It’s not even going to be exclusive to their system! It’s being ported to XBLA as well.

Party like it's 2003! Let's all drink Red Bull and bitch about gas prices!

I know there are a ton of Rayman fans out there, but really, this is a mascot more committee designed and soulless than Sonic the Hedgehog. Sure, he’s got a better track record in recent times than the overrated Erinaceinae, but it’s not like it’s an iconic character or anything. I would wager a guess that it’s barely more recognizable among causal gamers and non-gamers than a second-string Pokemon. My boyfriend Brian is a semi-regular gamer, in the sense that he plays major releases like Gears of War and Mass Effect, and he couldn’t have picked Rayman out of a lineup before he was introduced to the series with Rayman Origins courtesy of me.

But why is Rayman 3 special? Look, I like the series. Rayman 2 was one of my favorite Dreamcast games as a kid. But the game has been ported and re-released so many times to so many platforms that I get nauseated hearing about it. And now, Rayman 3, a game nearly ten years old, getting a modern port is apparently a special event. Rayman 3 was kind of the jump-the-shark moment in the series for me. Well, Raving Rabbids on the Wii not withstanding. It was just a rehash. Like Ubisoft lucked into making something that was a borderline masterpiece in Rayman 2, decided not to fuck with the formula, and shot anyone who had an original idea. Oh, and it was one of the first games that kicked off the idea of sequels having less content than the original. In this case, the cool projectile attacks of #2 were replaced by, well, nothing.

I was 13 when Rayman 3 came out, so I get it. It’s been a long time and there’s a whole world full of fresh-faced kids who will experience Rayman 3 for the first time. It’s the same reason fanboys should lay off Nintendo for porting Ocarina of Time and Star Fox to the 3DS. You’re not the target audience and neither am I. Having said that, I can kind of see why the Nintendo ports would be an event. Zelda especially. It’s considered one of the greatest games of all time. But Rayman 3? Or how about Marvel vs. Capcom 2? Microsoft did that as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion a few years back. These aren’t even B-Lister games.

This shit along with the Smash Brothers series proves at least one thing: nerds will pay for anything that brings their wettest fan-fiction dreams to life.

As much as I loathed the Simpsons Arcade Game, at least all parties involved had the decency to just quietly put it out on the market with as little warning as possible. The same goes for the Chronicles of Riddick rehash, Assault on Dark Athena. It’s a prime example of how retro re-releases should work: the developers don’t talk about it and consumers do not buy it. What a re-release shouldn’t be is a featured game in an event designed to draw attention to a platform. Way to go Sony, you fucked up yet another event. You did it last summer when you included Street Fighter III, a game nobody asked for a port of, as part of your horrible Play event. And you’ve done it again here with Rayman 3, another game nobody asked for. I look forward to the next Sony event to find out what game nobody gives a shit about will be the next game elevated to super-special status and promoted. And by promoted, I mean Sony mentions it on their Facebook page. Really, they don’t pimp these things too hard, do they? Come on guys, you’re fucking Sony. At least pay someone somewhere to talk about your shit, even if it’s just a town crier.

Sadly, Closure will not be reviewed by me. I checked out the trailer with Brian. Lots of strobey lightning effects. Me is a sad kitten 🙁

Filed under Editorials Tagged with Gaming, Sonic the Hedgehog, spring fever

Lumi

March 15, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 15 Comments

Welcome to the first installment of Kairi’s Katch-Up Thursdays. The results were tallied and the clear favorite of the first vote was the 2010 Dream-Build-Play winner Lumi by Kydos Studios.

I hate you guys.

And obviously the feeling is mutual, because anyone with love in their hearts would not subject anyone to the sheer torture that is Lumi. I’m guessing it won the vote for the same reason that it won Dream-Build-Play: it looks good, and to most idiots, that’s all that matters. Game play be damned, if the graphics are pretty, we’ll line up to buy it and then spend hours convincing ourselves that we didn’t just waste perfectly good cash. I bought both the Xbox Live Indie Game version and the port to iOS, so I’m doubly dumb. Full of more DERP than a “Bring Back Knight Rider” convention am I.

I get it guys. It's got good graphics. Who cares? The game SUCKS!

At first, I figured Lumi would be a generic 90s style mascot platformer. You play as what looks like a premature, still semi-embryonic Pikachu thingie that has to save his species and the world when a race of invaders steals all the light. Your Pika-thingie has the ability to create red and blue electric currents that cling to various spots on the screen. Red will cling to red and repel from blue and vice-versa. Sounds great, except that you have to press a different button for each. Blue is done with the left trigger and red with the right one. This is an unintuitive nightmare the likes of which you can’t believe.

But I didn’t really care all that much over the first few levels. They were nice and breezy. You just had to collect a few fireflies, load them into a couple arks, restore light to the stage, and move on. Easy peasy. But then you start encountering water traps, enemies that fire projectiles that kill you in one shot, and magnet platforms that fade in and out of existence. Oh dears, Lumi is a punisher.

The juxtaposition of bright, beautiful, child-friendly graphics and tough-as-nails level design was completely out of left field, even though a few of my fans warned me about it. After the first couple levels, I didn’t believe them. Bunch of liars they must have been. Well, there’s egg on my face. Lumi gets so brutally difficult that it’s almost like it started its period. But once again, we have to examine why its difficult. Is it the level design? The enemies? Not really. The fault clearly lies in the control scheme. Using the magnetic red/blue powers to launch yourself from floating platform to floating platform is frustrating, because there’s so much you need to keep track of. What colors point you in what directions, what buttons you need to press, and when do you then hit the opposite button to repel you to towards the next area. This is like asking someone to take their driver’s license test while practicing sword-swallowing. You know it’s a bad idea before you even start. Surely someone at Kydos had played a video game at some point in their life and recognized the control scheme was unacceptable.

As bad as the Xbox version is, the iOS port is even worse. And it really pains me to say that, because one major flaw in the console version is fixed: the whole “separate colors” thing. On iPhone, you tap the screen and it sucks you into whatever is the closest platform. It’s such a no-brainer of a design choice that I feel like I should sarcastically type DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, but I’m too classy for that. Unfortunately, movement is controlled with one of those fake iOS joystick things they map to the corner of the screen. They suck. I call them “Joyshits.” I don’t care what anyone says: those fucking things never work, they are not accurate, and they need to be abolished by any means necessary. I don’t care if we have to pull eggheads off of curing cancer to do it. Joyshits have got to go.

On iPhone, I made it to the first level that its possible to die on. And trust me, I sure realized it. At least on Xbox, if I push the analog stick to the right, the fucking dude moves right. Here, if I try to push right, I’m just as likely to not be pressing anything at all because my thumb is not properly lined up. And NO, I’m not going to buy some peripheral that lets you suction-cup an actual joystick to the screen. It would be like surgically grafting a tumor onto it. Can’t we all just accept that not every game belongs on iPhone? I know those precious iBucks are tempting to make a play for, but do the right thing. If your game requires the precision of a control stick, you should probably put it on a platform that HAS A FUCKING CONTROL STICK!

The iOS port. I seriously doubt anyone has actually beaten it.

My overall Lumi experience ended during the first boss encounter. Some giant rhino-bug thingie started chasing me through a forest and I had to make a run for it. The stage is laid out like a hopping puzzle, sort of like the boss encounters in Super Meat Boy. Only that game had something resembling responsive controls. In Lumi, you cannot afford a single wasted second or misstep. One mistake and you will have to start over. After at least a dozen tries at this, I came to two realizations. First, I was having no fun at all and hadn’t since I started Lumi. Second, I must have really pissed you guys off something fierce for THIS pile of shit to win the vote. Rage quit, console off, controller thrown, and you guys are now officially on my shit list. I hold grudges, and I will remember this. Pay back will be mine. Oh yes. I have plenty of free time and access to Africanized Bees. Be afraid.

Lumi was developed Kydos Studio

240 Microsoft Points and $0.99 think Lumi is really just run-off of aborted Pikachus in the making of this review.

Don’t forget to vote for next week’s game on Twitter. Votes earn you a place in a drawing for 1600 Microsoft Points. Check the original post for a list of games you can choose from.

Thanks to Michael Wilson for the banner.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews, XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with Gaming

Retro Arcade Adventure

March 15, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 6 Comments

Yesterday, I played a game that drove me from apathy to suicidal thoughts in approximately fifteen minutes. Yes, I actually spent forty-five minutes with Lemmy Lizard. The remaining thirty minutes were spent under the assumption that I would suffer a cerebral hemorrhage if I continued playing. Forgive me. I had forgotten that I was playing a video game and not listening to the poetry of Grunthos the Flatulent.

But today is a new day. Albeit one spent with a slightly sore neck after my botched attempt at hanging myself yesterday. Note to anyone reading this: pantyhose do not make an effective noose. So back I go into the murky waters of Xbox Live Indie Games. I had promised to make this a special Minecraft clone week, but then I remembered that we’re already in the middle of the fucking week, so I bought Retro Arcade Adventure instead.

A decidedly Anglo-Saxon looking dude fighting off a tribe of dark-skinned humanoids brandishing spears. Hey, if it's good for Capcom, who am I to say anything?

Retro Arcade Adventure is a single-screen hoard-slayer where you play as a dude with a sword who has to kill various evil thingies. All the baddies except the final boss take a single swing to kill and have no variations outside of size and speed. They’re all pretty much like the guys who run at you with the clubs in Smash TV. To fight, you swing with the A button, dash with the triggers (I never even knew this existed until after I had beaten the Adventure mode), and use a power-up with the X button that turns you into a gigantic black dude with a giant sword. Someone’s over compensating for something.

Every stage features you taking on 200 or more of these pantywaists. After four levels of fighting the same fucking guys, you fight a boss, beat it, and the game is over. Fifteen minutes tops and you’re done. So what did I think? Well, Retro Arcade Adventure is as shallow as the wring-off of a moist towelette, easier than winning the skip-rope competition at the National Amputation Foundation’s annual picnic, and over with faster than a Roseanne Barr hunger strike. Yet, it’s not the worst thing I’ve played all week. Then again, compared to Lemmy Lizard, Retro Arcade Adventure would have to come to life and decapitate my boyfriend just to contend for that honor. It did try to pad things out by adding an “arcade” mode, which is really just the same game, only the power-ups might also cause damage to you as well. Oh, and one of the modes has you fight an endless string of mummies. There is no score and, as best as I could tell, no end to it. I wasn’t sure if the developer forgot to include a finale to it or if I really did have a cerebral hemorrhage during Lemmy Lizard and had been sent to video game hell.

Retro Arcade Adventure was developed by SIACTRO

80 Microsoft Points wondered out-loud why pumpkins would be killed by getting rained on in the making of this review. Seriously, why would they? Wouldn’t a pumpkin actually feed on rain and grow stronger from it? I suppose in theory it could be acid rain, but if that’s the case, why wouldn’t it hurt me too? I wasn’t aware that water, acidic or otherwise, could distinguish between good and evil. What, did my knight guy wear his special acid-rain repellent armor out in battle on the off-chance that he picked a power-up that would unleash acid rain upon his enemies? Given all the absolutely useless story text in this game, I find a plot hole of this size to be inexcusable and I demand an answer.

I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points as part of a new feature called “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays” and you buttholes aren’t participating enough. 1600 MSP! That’s 16 XBLIGs! Read how you can win it.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with arcade adventure, Gaming

Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs

March 13, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

How soon a rage-quit is too soon? I’m honestly not sure. Since I’m not a professional game critic, nor do I care to be one, I’m not sure there really are any rules or ethics that apply to me regarding this issue. But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to walk you through the 45 minutes I spent with Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs and let YOU tell ME if I gave up too soon.

Upon starting the first level, I pick up a note. The note informs me that I’ll want to eat various food things over the course of a level, but I probably shouldn’t because they take up spaces in your inventory. You can fit eight items in it at a time. All notes you find take up a space in that inventory and you have to manually discard them. It’s about the most inconvenient method of sign-posting game mechanics I’ve ever seen. As if that wasn’t ominous enough, it took me all of a single second to figure out that the control scheme was going to be wretched. Without any D-Pad mapping, you’re stuck with just the analog stick. Applying even the tiniest bit of pressure to it sends your lizard thingie off like it just got whacked in the ass by the Motivator from Wipeout. We’re not off to a good start.

Nope, I didn't make it this far.

The first enemy encounter was fun. A couple mecha-egg thingies marched up on me. Thankfully, I could shoot at them, so I did. And they kept coming. So I kept shooting. But then they were on top of me, munching my health away. I kept shooting. And shooting. And shooting. After around a dozen shots, one of them died off. Only a dozen more and the other one died. Nice, so the opening level enemies are bullet sponges. Later, I encountered one that could shoot back at me. Only it moved twice as fast as me, shot twice as fast, and did damage twice as fast. So I died a couple of times against it, which resulted in me getting to start the game again. Even though I had saved. Nifty.

Well, I’m a tough chick. I drink molten lead and spit nails. I can deal with this shit. I had picked up some items that would cause my dude to spit sticky stuff at the enemies, slowing them down. I threw a couple of those on and I actually managed to kill the dude with the gun. This was immediately followed by another dude with a gun falling from the sky to take his place and finish me off. Only this one had wheels and a faster gun, so I died extra fast. Maybe the game’s policy is “die in 30 seconds or less or your pizza is free.”

Not being a masochist, I wasn’t prepared to deal with getting gang-banged this early into things. So I did what any self-respecting gamer would do: legged it past the baddies. And it worked. I got past those guys and instead came upon a fire pit. Situated above the pit were a few single-block platforms for me to hop across. Unfortunately, controls are extremely slippery, so I kept falling into the fire, dying, and being sent back to the checkpoint. So I used a carrot on myself, increasing my ability to jump. I managed to clear the fire and pick up a key. I don’t remember seeing a door or anything that was locked, but that didn’t matter. I had to get past the fire again. Only this time, I simply could not stick the landing on any of the platforms. Or, if I did, I would die as soon as I pushed any button, because even just pressing jump caused my dude to skid off the block and into the fire. After a dozen or so tries to make it past this, I quit.

If it seems like I'm being too harsh on this game, I'll remind you that the developers sent me a request for this review. Then again, I'm not sure they actually have ever read my site, given that they sent me a review code with the request. I pity the fool the actually ends up cashing that in, because their day is pretty much ruined when that happens.

Was it too soon? I had played Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs for maybe 45 minutes at most. In that time, I encountered inexcusably horrible play control, amazingly bad level design, horrible graphics, and the feeling that my leg would be much nicer if I carved a large chunk of flesh out of it. I can’t really recommend you actually purchase Lemmy Lizard. In all seriousness, it’s one of the very worst video games I’ve ever played in my entire life and I hate myself for paying $1 to find that out. But try it yourself and tell me if I’m nuts. Maybe you’ll make it further than I did and discover that the game magically stops being terrible at the exact moment I quit. Or maybe you’ll take a chainsaw to your own foot.

I’m not responsible if that happens.

Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs was developed by Wytchlight

80 Microsoft Points said “That Light” sarcastically in the making of this review.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with game critic, game mechanics, Gaming

Paper RPG and The Impossible Dungeon

March 12, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 17 Comments

Ah, Team Shuriken. The guys behind the infamous Temple of Dogolrak. I receive more bitching about their games than I get about Silver Dollar these days. It all began a few months ago when I released the list of search engine terms that have led people to this very site. If you need a reminder, here are just the search terms that people have done for Temple of Dogolrak, along with Trailer Park King and Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy.

trailer park king 2,043 (#1 search term)
temple of dogolrak 2,011 (#2 search term)
don’t die dateless dummy 1,059 (#4 search term)
trailer park king review 266 (# 6 search term)
dont die dateless dummy 247 (#7 search term)
trailer park king game 246 (#8 search term)
don’t die dateless, dummy! 180 (#10 search term)

And those are just the top 10. Once you start getting lower than that, you really do get lower. Some other prime searches include the following:

trailer park king nudity 106
trailer park king porn 103
trailer park king nude 17
is there nudity in trailer park king 15
temple of dogolrak sex 14
trailer park king nudity? 14
does trailer park king have nudity 11
xbox indie games with nudity 11
don’t die dateless dummy porn 7
temple of dogolrak porn 7
xbox live indie games with nudity 7
trailer park king girls boobs 5
are there any xbox indie games with nudity 5

And that’s just the stuff that gets multiple searches. On my most popular day ever at this blog (January 16, 2012), these were some of the random searches.

best xbox indie game tits
trailer park king has nudity?
xbox indie game that has nudity
trailer park king girls
indie porn games xbox
temple of dogolrak hentai pics (Hentai means “Perversion” in Japanese, kinda)
can you fuck in temple of dogolrak
temple of dogolrak hentai
xbox hentai
dogolrak nude code
how do you see porn in trailer park king

You get the picture. In short, three out of five searches that land people on this site center around those three games. Also, damn, I’m embarrassed for you guys.

And while I think Sean Doherty (the Trailer Park King dude) gets a free pass on the hostility because his games actually make an effort to be games, there’s unquestionably resentment towards Team Shuriken. Although I’ve found them to be fairly nice guys, I admit that I did think their marketplace pictures of Dogolrak were extremely misleading compared to the actual graphics of their game. Having said that, don’t blame developers for taking advantage of the hopeless pocket-pool crowd. They sort of have it coming, because about ten seconds of research on Google would let them know that nudity and sexual intercourse are no-nos on XBLIG. Another ten seconds and they would learn that jerking off too much causes your palm to turn purple.

Over/under on the percentage of readers that just looked at their palm? What, 30%?

It’s not like Team Shuriken relies completely on boobies. Over the last month, they’ve released two new games to the marketplace that don’t tease titties at all.

Well, mostly.

Both games still use the same engine and play mechanics as the previous game. First up is Paper RPG. It uses sketch drawings to tell a very short story of a knight trying to save the kingdom. How short? Oh, about three to five minutes, depending on how many mistakes you make.

Like any “choose your own adventure” game, luck is everything in Paper RPG. There’s no visual indications of what choices will advance the story and which ones will lead to death. This is especially problematic in game #2 of this review, The Impossible Dungeon. Here there is nothing in the way of graphics, aside from a useless map. Everything is text driven. In this one, you can lead yourself down certain paths where no matter which of three to four options you choose, none of them will lead to anything but death. So moving the story forward is 100% luck, based on nothing.

It's like Russian Roulette, only some wisenheimer loaded every chamber.

And if you die, you get to start over again. Sure, there’s the occasional checkpoint, but that’s not much help. You still have to read the same fucking dialog again and again. Who would ever confuse this for entertainment? Neither game is fun. Or anything vaguely resembling fun. If you were terminal with cancer in the middle of a nuclear holocaust having just watched your puppy eat its own leg off and bleed to death all over your mother (thus drowning her) and the only thing that could be offered to you for any comfort was these games, you would think it was a final “fuck you” from God himself. And you would be right.

I will admit that I liked the art style in Paper RPG. The main character has a Spy vs. Spy like charm about it. If Team Shuriken was willing to put forth some effort, they might be able to use this character in a platforming game and find modest success. But I’m guessing they’re not willing to put in the effort. Prove me wrong, guys. I would love to be able to tell people that you’re not the worst thing that can happen to a gamer. Right now, you’re neck-and-neck with hand amputation. Which, ironically you caused, because they also proved that jerking off to anime porn causes cancer of the hands. It’s distinguishable by yellow freckles on your lower palm.

Make it 40%.

Paper RPG and The Impossible Dungeon were developed by Team Shuriken

80 Microsoft Points apiece always bet on the black spy in the making of this review.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with Gaming, Indie Games, Xbox Live

Journey

March 9, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 21 Comments

I’m going to try to keep this spoiler free, but obviously that’s going to be difficult. You should probably avoid the comments section until you have played the game. Any plot discussion will be hidden with invisible text.

Going into Journey, I wasn’t exactly a fan of Thatgamecompany. For one thing, I hate their name. It’s not the fact that they call themselves THAT Game Company. Even though that sounds like something gaming snobs say when scoffing about a larger developer. I once heard someone say “Mirror’s Edge? I don’t play anything by that game company.” No, the name sucks because it has that “we’re too cool and/or quirky to put spaces between words” asshole vibe to it. “Pssh, spaces. Whatever. That’s such a conformist thing.”

But more important towards my firm dislike for them was their previous titles, Flow and Flower. I know both games are critically acclaimed, but I though they were boring, pretentious, self-indulgent pieces of shit. And you know what? I don’t think most people found them entertaining. I think they got a free pass because they could ride the “art house” label. If you actually admit to being bored stiff by them, that puts you firmly in bed with what’s left of Roger Ebert and the rest of the so-called “anti-gaming-as-art” crowd, or something like that.

Well, I was bored stiff by Flow and Flower, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I didn’t get what they were pitching, I didn’t get why people liked them. According to Thatgamecompany, when they begin developing a title they start by choosing which emotion they wish to invoke in a player. I’m not sure what emotion I was supposed to get out of Flow. Is confusion an emotion? How about self-mutilation? Is that an emotion? Because that was about the only thing I could have done while playing Flow that would have stimulated anything other than apathy in me. And as for Flower, the only emotion I felt towards it was anger that I had dropped ten bucks on it. I mean what the fuck, seriously? You use the crappy PlayStation 3 tilt-motion-thingie to clumsily aim some petals at bulbs and bring life back to the world. What the fuck kind of hippie bullshit is that? It’s not that I don’t think gaming can be based around an abstract concept, but it has to make at least some effort to be fun. Flower was just not fun.

Having spewed all that, there was something undeniably different about Journey. You could feel it even before the game was released. Maybe it was because Journey looked like it could be a Team Ico game. Now that it’s becoming obvious that Last Guardian is some sort of elaborate hoax, this is as close as we might get to another entry in that series. And unlike Flower or Flow, the character in Journey looks human, so we might actually be able to relate to it. Plus it still has a minimalist story and no dialog, so the art house crowd can still get all snooty over it.

Not included: soundtrack by Maurice Jarre.

Journey got released this week if you’re a cool PlayStation Plus subscriber, like me. Was it worth the wait? The hype? The $15 without any PS+ discount? Yes, yes, and hang on, and why is my underwear so damp?

Journey gives players no indication of what exactly the plot is. You’re placed alone in a desert, with only some flags on a hill to kind of steer you towards where you should be walking. Eventually, it’s made clear that you should be traveling towards a mountain that is visible in distance. Soon into the game, you get a piece of cloth that extends the scarf the protagonist wears. The longer scarf, the more you are able to fly for short amounts of time. You can’t die in Journey, and there is no time limit, so you’re free to explore. I have to say, normally I am the type to hunt every nook and cranny. That wasn’t the case in Journey. It wasn’t because I was bored, but because I was compelled to move on. The story is revealed in snippets between each “stage” and I was totally enthralled with it.

Okay, here’s the story discussion. I’ve spoilerized it. Just highlight it with your mouse.

Allegedly, the story is left up to interpretation. I really don’t see how. It seems pretty cut and dry early on to me: the dude (or dudette, as it could be either/or) is dead, and is progressing through the afterlife. This isn’t something like Shadow of the Colossus (or All the Bad Parts if you’re one of those types that wants me to stick to XBLIGs) where there’s a lot of open-ended questions. I suppose I could come up with one or two more cerebral, artsy-fartsy explanations, although it would feel weird to do so without putting on a beret and using a cigarette holder. I suppose the dude could be an embodiment of human civilization itself. The cut scenes show a progression in technology, which suggests that a significant amount of time has passed throughout the entity’s existence. But I still lean towards the “he’s dead” theory. Perhaps the dude died early in human civilization, and before its soul is reincarnated (which is how the game ends), a significant amount of time passes. And now I feel a little snobbish. Back to the game.

Despite all the mean things I’m about to say, Journey is a truly fantastic game. It might be the best PlayStation Network title ever. It really does feel like an emotionally driven experience, and although it only takes between 2 to 4 hours to complete, depending on how much fucking about you do, the conclusion is beautiful and satisfying. But the game is hardly flawless. My biggest gripe is the continued hard-on the guys at Thatgamecompany have for using the Sixaxis. There is nothing that couldn’t be done without it, and in Journey it’s especially unnecessary. All it does is control the camera. Mind you, the right analog stick, which was put there in the first place just to move the camera in games, also does that. I think my “Thatgamecompany is full of assholes” theory is spot on, because you can’t turn off the Sixaxis camera control, even though it’s provably useless. And don’t think it doesn’t get in the way. If you pause the game, but then put the controller down in a way that sets off the motion controls, it un-pauses the game. That could (and did for me) make a difference in some of the later stages. So yea, Thatgamecompany is full of more assholes than a Proctology text-book.

Other issues include the fact that you’re utterly dependent on your ability to fly, yet in some areas of the game, the art style renders depth-perception difficult to get the hang of, resulting in some frustrating missed jumps. Also, despite how much fun it is, it’s still a three-hour game with limited replay value and thus I feel $15 is pretty overpriced. UPDATE 2022: I no longer feel this way. In 2012, when I wrote this review, the indie pricing landscape was a LOT different. Now, I fully support pricing flexibility and I regret I ever made comments like this in my reviews.

I also want to point out that I thought the game’s concept for online multiplayer was a dumb idea. Basically, you’re paired up with some random person to play the game with. There’s no method of communication with this person, aside from doing a chirpy call. Microphones are disabled, there’s no texting, no shortcuts, or anything to talk to the person with. You can’t even see the name of the person. To anyone who hasn’t followed the game since it was announced, you wouldn’t even know you’re actually playing with a real person. In fact, it actually surprised many people on my Twitter when they learned it wasn’t an NPC. It’s another move that is artsy for the sake of being artsy.

Shockingly, it does work. Sometimes. Not a whole lot. Quite frankly, not very often. The first time I played Journey with networking turned on, I didn’t even realize I had been paired up with someone. They just sort of snuck up behind me, startling me. But then we actually did work together and did a good job, at least for a little while. When we encountered a stage that had an element of stealth to it, things fell apart. Having played the level before, I knew what to expect and tried to give my partner a heads up. Unfortunately, with only one form of chirping as an option, even slamming the thing as fast as I could wasn’t enough to communicate “shit in this level can fuck you up” to my new buddy. Thus he charged in and got his cock turned inside out. There were several other moments of this type of frustration, almost to the point that I’m not sure the whole thing is worth it.

Well look at that. That dude looks just like my dude. The same thing happened to me when I visited Prague. It was weird.

Even if you are marooned on an island with someone of an entirely differently culture, you can communicate on some level other than whistling. In a video game where you can’t use facial expressions, gestures, other forms of body language, things really are too limited in most of the game’s situations. That so many people are unaware you’re playing with a real person actually isn’t all that surprising. It’s almost as if someone from Thatgamecompany saw the horrible online component for Demon’s Souls and said “you know what? This would be better if it had mimes instead! Mimes with no functioning limbs. Make it so!” When it works, it is unquestionably something special. But those moments are few and far between.

You know what? Despite all that muck I just dredged up, Journey is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Yes, ever played. It does strike an emotional chord with the player. You feel a connection with your on-screen avatar, and legitimate concern for their ultimate fate. The world created seems barren, and yet you get a feeling that it is living being, a character in and of itself. Intimate objects have that same quality, although in the case of the scarf pieces, it is anything but subtle. Perhaps Journey is too manipulative in getting players to draw the conclusion that the developers had in mind. But even if that’s true, it’s not as if they’re the only ones guilty of that in one of these “minimalist” games. Look at Shadow of the Colossus. As you progress in that, your hero’s body becomes warped and monstrous, his voice deepens, and I swear your horse seems to approach you with increasing apprehension (although I’ve had people argue otherwise on that). Journey never takes it that far.

Do I recommend Journey? Yes. For my money, it’s the best game PlayStation Network has put out, and actually it might just be the best overall exclusive on the entire system. What limited time it gives you is breathtaking from start to finish, and ending sequence actually made me cry. Me. The chick who has caused three confirmed panic attacks in developers just by mentioning that I had started to review their games. Have I gone soft? Let me answer that by saying this: the next one of you mother fuckers that makes a “Don’t Stop Believing” joke in reference to this game is getting stabbed in the fucking heart.

Journey was developed by Thatgamecompany

$14.99 are your judge, Journey, and executioner in the making of this review.

Filed under PlayStation Reviews Tagged with Gaming

Introducing “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays”

March 8, 2012 by Indie Gamer Chick 28 Comments

Today I noticed that my Xbox’s hard drive was filling up. Given my tendency to not replay games, I decided it was time to purge some digital shit. So I began the process of clearing stuff when I realized that I had more Xbox Live Indie Games than I have reviews. Like, a lot more. I’ve done 168 XBLIG reviews, but I’ve got around 260 games on my hard drive. How did this happen?

Then my loving boyfriend reminded me that I bought around $100 worth of XBLIG games when I started IndieGamerChick in July. We spent a few days just watching trailers for XBLIGs on Youtube and purchasing the games. The thing is, I figured nobody would read me, so I wouldn’t have to worry about sticking to new releases. I mean, who knew that anyone would actually read this shit? Besides, I’ve gotten bored with every other would-be hobby I’ve been trying to find since I turned 18. Why would this be any different? A week or two tops and I would be looking into something else, like Etch-a-Sketch, or paragliding. Or Etch-a-Gliding, which I invented just now and it totally fucking rocks.

Well, obviously I’m here to stay. And that’s all well and good, but I’m also a penny-pinching tightwad, and the thought that I downloaded nearly 100 games that I haven’t played made me sick to my stomach. So what do I do with them? Well, I’ll review them, exactly the same as I’ve done with 168 other games. But I’ll let YOU guys decide what order I review them in, and include YOUR comments in the reviews. Who knows, if the feature works, I’ll probably add some other games to the queue.

Below is a list of the games that I have that I haven’t reviewed. Now, I have played some of the games, and I’ll make a note if that’s the case. It doesn’t mean I won’t review them. It just means the game isn’t fresh for me. Others might be off-limits due to my epilepsy. Again, I’ll note it if that’s the case. The selection of the game will not be based on total votes, but rather which game receives the most convincing endorsement. Voting will take place on Twitter all week, every week, with the selection taking place on Wednesdays and the review going up on Thursday. Or possibly on Fridays if I’m lazy.

And to celebrate the launch of this feature, I’ll be giving away a 1600 Microsoft Points code on April 5 to one lucky person who participates via voting. Vote early and vote often, but you’re limited to one entry per week. The code is only valid in the United States. If you’re not an American, you can still participate, but I can’t provide you with a replacement prize. Make sure you follow me on Twitter so that I can provide you with the winning prize code. Ah, see what I did there? This is also a way to get new followers on Twitter. Sneaky. I should work in a way to get you to follow me on Facebook too.

Here are the games. This page will be updated as games are reviewed, or new games added. Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays officially starts on March 15. So start voting now!

Remaining Games

360 Mega Pack HD Remix

A Madman’s Guide to Happiness

a Voxel Action (I did start playing it but its likely an epilepsy risk)

Adventures of Captain Becky

Aesop’s Garden

Alawishus Pixel

Along Came a Spider

Arkedo Series 01: JUMP! (I started playing it and just never got back to it. If I do this series it will be a 3 in 1)

Arkedo Series 02: SWAP!

Arkedo Series 03: PIXEL!

Attanck!

Avatar Crate Crusaders

Cave In – Miner Rescue Team

Choc-a-riffic (I’m saving this one for Easter so it’s off-limits)

Crazy Wizard in Creepy Castle

Curse of the Crescent Isle

Cursed Loot

Cutouts!

Dark (By far, by far, the worst offender of the “Google Rule” I’ve seen so far)

End of Days: Infected vs Mercs

Escape From Robot Doom (Played it for about 10 minutes, maybe the worst game I’ve ever played in my life, not an exaggeration, couldn’t get past first stage, worst controls ever)

Googly Eyed Splitters

Lil’ Demons: Splatter (This was recommended to me when I bitched about lack of good first-person shooters on XBLIG. Played it for 10 minutes, hated it, forgot about it)

Mirror

Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess

Ninja vs. Zombie

Old School Adventure

Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey

Penga’s Peril

radiangames JoyJoy (probably a huge epilepsy risk)