Beast Boxing Turbo

June 2, 2013 by 2 Comments

Dear Diary:

I wanted my first time here to be special, ya know? I wanted it to be EPIC; I wanted it to mean something but, unfortunately, it was just entirely “meh.”

I really thought Beast Boxing Turbo wasn’t going to be like all the other games. It was soooo sweet to me, when I added it to my shopping cart and plunked down my cash for it. Its sexy screenshots and promises of a Punch-Out meets an upgradable, RPG-like experience really had me fooled, ya know? HA! What a stupid assclown I am! Turns out this game is more like a rehash of an early 90’s Genesis title called Death Duel and it’s just like all the other clones and pretenders: awesome up front but fucking dissatisfying when it comes down to the brass tacks.

I mean, the first couple hours or so are OK. It looks, sounds and controls (use a gamepad rather than the computer keyboard; trust me on this) pretty nice and all but, I mean, this is a boxing game, right? So, why can’t I punch any of the monsters in the body? Why are all my shots to the head? Even Wii-Fucking-Boxing lets me punch to the body, right? And then…and then…this bastard game just started getting lazy on me by throwing the same damn opponents my way but just re-skinning them to look like Santa Claus (no joke) and a zombie. I stuck it out for a little longer to see if things would improve in the Ultra League but this is where your opponents just get cheap as hell and almost unbeatable. To its credit, the game did ask me if I wanted to try it on an easier setting, but I just wasn’t having any fun by then. Better to break it off clean there and move on down the road, ya know? No one likes a “Stage 5 Clinger,” that’s for sure.

Image

Why you wanna treat me so bad, Piglas?

UGH!!! Why does this keep happening to me? Did I have a brain tumor for breakfast or something? All my friends find really great games that make them feel happy and content. When will it be my turn? When will I find the game that’s just FOR ME? And loves me for me and fulfills all my needs?? I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried and they just all let me down in the end. Maybe it’s me. Maybe my standards are too high? I’ve been hurt before, I mean, really fucking devastated (first Assassin’s Creed…hello?), by games before, so maybe my defenses were up and I really didn’t try to let Beast Boxing Turbo into my heart?

No. It wasn’t me this time. This is all Beast Boxing Turbo’s fault with its crazy difficulty, recycled opponents and dumbed down fighting system (it ain’t boxing if I can’t go to the body). All those things had nothing to do with me. And I tried, I really did, but when you stop having fun it’s just better to walk away. It totally is.

Stupid, jerky douchebag of a game, ruining my first time and all!! Oh, I’ll remember you, Beast Boxing Turbo, but, rest assured, it will not be fondly!

BBT-BoxCoverArtBeast Boxing Turbo was developed by Goodhustle Studios

For $4.99 USD Beast Boxing Turbo will get you dressed up, take you out and then leave you wanting in the making of this review.

Filed under PC Reviews Tagged with , , , , ,

Avatar and the Deadly Tomb

June 1, 2013 by 8 Comments

From the studio that brought you the Oozi games comes an utterly generic, avatar-based punisher with bad level design.  Can’t get enough of those.  This is also one of those annoying auto-scrollers.  Hate those in general.  Especially hate them when they’re done vertically.  I probably should have researched my game selection better, because there was almost no way I would have enjoyed Deadly Tomb from the get-go.  Yea, it was a bit of a dick move for me to pick it.  And if you’re expecting some Planet of the Apes style “it was a good game all along!” twist, think again.  I played Avatar and the Deadly Tomb on the easy difficulty, because I’m shamefully bad at punishers and blunt in my admission of this.  Even then, I found it to be beyond frustrating.

So boring I can't even muster the humor to make a funny caption.

So boring I can’t even muster the humor to make a funny caption.

But, I think I must stress the difference between a fair challenge and an unfair challenge.  I feel a fair challenge means you have a realistic (if far-fetched) shot at getting past an obstacle on your first attempt, using nothing but your reflexes and gaming acumen.  When a player of any skill level has no remote shot of clearing some spots on their first try, that’s when a game crosses the line for me.  It’s the difference between “smart-difficult” and “asshole-difficult.”  Auto-scrolling punishers almost always fall into the asshole-difficult category, and Tomb is no exception.  Things like timed-trap platforms combined with vertical auto-scrolling are just cruel, since your vertical field of vision isn’t as large as your horizontal vision.  Not only that, but some sections of the game require you to clear timed sections, then drop down to a lower platform before climbing up.  This is while a column of fire continuously rises.  Unless you are 90% flawless in your run (which you probably won’t be), you have no reasonable chance of clearing these sections on your first attempt.  By time you drop to those lower levels, the fire is probably already there and you’re doing your best impression of Frollo.

I’ve had this review sit unfinished for nearly a week now.  I’ve made several attempts to finish it, but as of yet have been unsuccessful.  Part of that has to do with the utterly generic theme.  Whether or not I thought the Oozi games were ambitious, at least they aspired to look good.  Avatar and the Deadly Tomb features a bland theme and boring graphics.  It doesn’t exactly control that well either.  The biggest problem is the wall-jump is handled the same way as the ledge-cling.  Sometimes for those timed puzzles you’ll need to cling from a ledge.  But most of the time you’ll just want to do wall jumps, but the clinging will get in the way of that.  Screw it.  I give up.  There’s no way to describe my experience with Avatar and the Deadly Tomb in a stimulating way.  The game was dull as a book on cooking with tofu, although I would recommend reading that over playing Deadly Tomb.  At least you’ll get something to eat out of it.

xboxboxartAvatar and the Deadly Tomb was developed by Awesome Games Studio

80 Microsoft Points noted their avatar would never actually have the guts to explore a deadly tomb so the game made no sense from a story perspective either in the making of this review.  Then again, my avatar wouldn’t snowboard, do parkour, or run across the top of a moving train either.  It’s kind of a coward.  

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m Indie Gamer Guy, and I Needed This

May 30, 2013 by 16 Comments

So, it seems I am the now the Indie Gamer Guy. I’m totally cool with this. Let me tell you why:

I’ve done some fairly decent things in my writing career. I’m not going to get into a list of credits and all that here, but if you want you can check out my ABOUT ME page and that will give you a pretty decent overview of my working life.

Due to some recent developments in both my personal and professional life, I was in a existential crisis of sorts. I just wasn’t “getting” anything at all and nothing seemed to be clicking for me on various levels. To quote a classic Weezer song: “The world had turned and left me here.”

Yeah, yeah, I know. How maudlin and downright emo of me, right? If any of you out there actually thought that while reading the paragraph above you can kiss my lily white ass. Twice.

Anyway, like a bolt out of the hand of almighty Zeus himself, I saw a seemingly innocuous tweet from Cathy: “Brian and I are open to trying out guest writers for PC coverage, provided that they buy their own games and write unflinching reviews.”

That simple tweet brought order to the tumultuous chaos that was swirling in my mind for the past couple weeks…and I knew what I had to do: I had to join her on her quest to provide the internet with bullshit free video game content on Indie Gamer Chick.com.

I don’t mean to sound angry or bitter…but I am tired, man, goddamn tired of chasing editors who don’t fucking respond to the simplest of queries and pandering to PR twats who truly DO NOT give a rat’s ass about video games; it’s just another product, another stupid widget, to them.

If I joined forces with Cathy I could write what I want, how I want, when I want. All of the worries; all of the shackles would be removed. I would have the fresh perspective that I really and truly needed.

So, I sent her an email expressing my interest and here we are. I’m the Indie Gamer Guy. And I like it. Very much.

And, much like her, I want you indie developers to impress and inspire me. When I play your games, I so very much want to be that 14-year-old kid again who has gotten a 5 1/4 floppy disk full of new and unknown C64 games from my friend at school. Understand that. I want your games to take me to new places, explore new worlds and most of all be FUN…without all the hype and razzle-dazzle that accompany most of today’s titles. But most of all, I want you to restore my faith in the industry, and hobby, I love a great deal. Can you and your games do that? I sincerely hope so, my indie friend…

I’m primarily going to be covering PC games, while Cathy will stick to the console titles. I am also going to have my very own Leaderboard in the near future. It will be open for sponsorship and all monies are directly given to the charities by the developer. Those charities are either Autism Speaks or the Epilepsy Foundation.

I look forward to working and interacting with all of you.

~ Jerry Bonner, The Indie Gamer Guy

Filed under Editorials

H.i.v.e.

May 30, 2013 by 5 Comments

H.i.v.e. is a digital version of a moderately popular, award-winning tabletop game.  It’s also one of those rare Xbox Live Indie Games that is officially licensed.  You can think of H.i… you know what, fuck it, I’m not using the periods.  Think of Hive as a cross between chess and dominoes.  You’re given a collection of hexagonal tiles, each with its own movement properties.  One of the tiles is a queen bee.  You have to place the queen on the board within your first four turns.  Gameplay continues until one queen bee has been completely surrounded on all sides, whether the titles belong to you or your opponent.  In addition to the bee, there’s also ants, grasshoppers, spiders, and beetles.  Ants can move to any free space as long as there is a path to get to it.  Spiders must move three spaces at a time.  Beetles can walk over and cover other tiles.  And grasshoppers can only move by jumping over pieces.  If you want to read the full rules, you can click here.  You probably should too.  Our first game didn’t involve any rule reading, because Bryce thinks rules are for squares.  We didn’t know fuck all what we were doing, which explains why I lost to.. sorry Bryce.. a FUCKING MORON!

Of course, that doesn’t explain why I lost eight straight games to Brian immediately following that, but you shouldn’t dwell on that.  I certainly haven’t.  Sniffle.

Because there is no board, the camera sometimes has to pull pretty far back. But, worry not, because all the tiles are distinctive and easy to recognize.

Because there is no board, the camera sometimes has to pull pretty far back. But, worry not, because all the tiles are easy to see and distinctive from each-other.

H.i.v.e. is a lot of fun.  I’ve never played the board game that it’s based on, but the interface created by BlueLine Games is well handled.  I’ve always questioned the existence of video-board games that only strive to recreate the exact experience of the corporeal version.  But actually, I think in the case of games like H.i.v.e., they serve a purpose of making complex games easier to learn.  It lays out for you exactly what moves are legal, what pieces can be moved, where they can be moved, etc.  It takes the edge off the learning curve to a huge degree.  But, it still is a no-frills video game version of a board game.  I firmly believe that the best video board game do things that only can be done in the realm of games, and that doesn’t apply to Hive.

Hive is also not without faults.  As of this writing, online play is unstable.  In thirty attempts at playing online, only eight games successfully connected.  If both players are able to make an opening move, the connection won’t drop, but that barely happens a quarter of the time.  The developers are aware of this issue, but I’m actually not grading against it.  I preferred playing locally against human opponents sitting right next to me.  You can play against the AI, which actually isn’t that bad as far as video game AI from a first-time developer goes.  Early on at this site, I played Avatar Chess, which had genius-level AI even on the easiest settings.  While the AI in Hive can lean towards the fierce side on medium, the easy setting is a good way to break into the game, but not so dumb that you’re embarrassed to play it.   I can’t tell you how good the hard mode is, because I didn’t really try it.  I had enough difficulty beating Brian, who isn’t exactly a rocket scientist.  Not that I’m obsessed with the fact that I couldn’t beat such a simpleton.  I’m not.  Really.  DAMN YOUR ACCUSING EYES, STOP LOOKING AT ME!!

So let it be said that Hive, a simple adaption of a cult board game, is the game that ended the Leaderboard’s losing streak.  Despite having no apparent talent for it, I had a great time playing it.  I even played a few rounds against my father, and it was very fun to bond over.  I mean, he wiped the floor with me too, but I still had fun in my failure.  I liked H.i.v.e. so much that I ordered the actual game off Amazon.  So while it doesn’t really need to exist as a video game, I’m happy it does.  And by the way, Brian can’t even remotely come close to beating me at chess, so obviously I’m better than him.  I think that’s how it works.

xboxboxartH.i.v.e. was developed by BlueLine Game Studios

IGC_Approved240 Microsoft Points have a boyfriend who noted that he routinely kicked my ass at Spectrangle too, the cocky fuckwad.

H.i.v.e. is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

A review copy of H.i.v.e. was provided to Indie Gamer Chick by BlueLine Game Studios.  The version played by Cathy was paid for by her with her own money.  The review copy was provided to a friend just to help test online functions.  That person had no feedback in this review.  Consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ for how this policy works.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Indie Gamer Chick has a New Writer and PC Coverage

May 30, 2013 by 5 Comments

Indie Gamer Chick now has an Indie Gamer Guy. His name is Jerry Bonner. He will do PC reviews and editorials.

Jerry shares my beliefs about game criticism: that a critic should hold nothing back and not be a cheerleader. Like me, he will pay for his own games. His reviews will have no score. He also believes reviews should be fun to read.

But Jerry has a much different background than I do. I’m 23. He’s 42. Video games as they exist today came into being in his lifetime. He’s lived through every console generation, whereas I got my start on the original PlayStation. So while he believes in my philosophy, he’ll have his own identity and tastes. He’ll also have his own Seal of Approval and, eventually, his own Leaderboard.

As for me, I’ve exclusively reviewed console and handheld based indies since I started Indie Gamer Chick on July 1, 2011, and nothing is going to change in that regards. I’ll continue to offer the same no-holds-barred coverage of XBLIGs, XBLAs, PlayStation Network, PlayStation Mobile, iPhone, and Nintendo eShop games. We’re coming up on the second birthday of Indie Gamer Chick, and I’m more excited now than ever. With Jerry onboard, I no longer have to worry about expanding to PC coverage and spreading myself too thin. Indie Gamer Chick will now have more coverage than ever before.

Independent game development is not just a fad. The genie is out of the bottle and it isn’t going back in. I’m so proud that my little blog that I started two years ago has caught on the way it has. I’m even more excited now that it will cover all aspects of indie gaming.

By the way, you should follow Jerry on Twitter.  I hope you’ll embrace him the way you have me.  You guys have no idea how much my life has been enhanced through Indie Gamer Chick.  The indie community means the world to me.  My biggest hope is that Jerry finds being Indie Gamer Guy every bit as rewarding as being Indie Gamer Chick has been for me.

So starting sending in those requests for PC reviews.  I also now have a form for developers to fill out to send requests in.  You can look forward to an introductory post from Jerry himself very soon.  Meanwhile, it’s time for me to get back to reviewing the latest XBLIGs.  I think the Leaderboard’s skid is about to come to an end.

Filed under Editorials

Life in the Dorms

May 26, 2013 by 1 Comment

After fumbling around with what might be the worst point-and-click interface I’ve ever encountered, my patience was stretched to the limit during one sequence in Life in the Dorms.  While on a scavenger hunt, I accidentally clicked one of the beds in my room.  What followed was an interaction system so comically awful that I was convinced that I had broken the game.  Upon clicking the bed, the dude you control (named Dack, poor kid) walked over to the door.  Then back in front of the bed.  Then back to the door.  Then back to the bed.  Then the door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  I couldn’t stop it.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  No interrupt button.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  WHY IS IT DOING THIS?  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.  A minute straight of walking back and forth.  Door.  Bed.  Door.  Bed.

Finally, Dack sat down on the bed, and sputtered out a one-liner bitching about how hard the mattress was.  I turned to my boyfriend and said,

“Brian?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Please turn off my Xbox before I murder it.”

Despite the clunky interface, the puzzles of Life in the Dorms seem about as logical as your average point-and-click game. Such as "Use lightsaber to get toilet paper down from shelf."

Despite the clunky interface, the puzzles of Life in the Dorms seem about as logical as your average point-and-click game. Such as “Use lightsaber to get toilet paper down from shelf.”

I’m sure the above CPU brain fart was due to a criminally horrible design choice that required the lead character to physically touch every object you point-and-click on.  Though for the life of me, I can’t bring myself to the mindset where anyone could believe this was a good idea.  Point-and-clickers are slow enough without having to watch your character lock into the appropriate place.  The above example with the bed actually happened, and it kept going because the character couldn’t properly line up in the spot that triggered the “sit down” animation.  That’s the only explanation I could come up with for why he staggered back and forth like a flash bang had gone off next to his face.  But it wasn’t the only time I had problems.

I didn’t make it out of the first chapter of Life in the Dorms before my patience wore thin.  I wouldn’t have even bothered going as long as I did if the writing didn’t at least hold the promise of being good.  Unfortunately, the awful interface negates whatever potential the dialog had.  Like going through a box of DVDs.  Instead of being able to collect every DVD, the game plays out like this.

Step one: click on the box.  Make sure you click the eye, which means you want to look at the contents of the box.

Step two: wait for the camera to hover over the box.

Step three: select one of the DVDs in the box.

Step four: Slowly pull the DVD out of the box and put it in your inventory.

Step five: Click another DVD in the box.

Step six: Dack will address the camera directly saying how he better put one of the DVDs back.

Step seven: you watch Dack put the DVD back, then the camera pulls back, then zooms in again when Dack grabs the next DVD you selected and puts it in his inventory.  The length between steps five and seven is fucking atrocious.

It's even worse because the dude who addresses the camera (and occasionally has awkward hugs with various NPCs) has no expression on his face except "I will steal your immortal soul." Shit will haunt my nightmares.

It’s even worse because the dude who addresses the camera (and occasionally has awkward hugs with various NPCs) has no expression on his face except “I will steal your immortal soul.” Shit will haunt my nightmares.

This is one of the most clunky, cumbersome, awful interfaces I’ve ever seen.  It’s like Life in the Dorms is overdosing from that slow-motion drug from Dredd.  I just want to move the plot forward with as little resistance as possible.  Yet every rinky dinky action requires Dack to turn and face the camera to address the situation, in what I can only guess is an attempt to break down the fourth wall.  I’m actually embarrassed that I gave up on a game this quickly, even though I was an hour in and had made almost no progress.  The only thing I could think about was “this is a point-and-click game.  Those typically require lots of insane logical-leaps and guesswork.  That means I’ll be seeing a whole lot of wrong guesses where the punishment is more slow movement from Dack as he turns to address the camera.  Fuck that.”  I think what happened is the developers forgot they had made a story driven game.  Imagine if the only way you could watch a DVD was to fumble with the controller and push a random sequence of buttons, then wait for the next portion of the movie to slowly load up.  So slowly that you see five minutes worth of story over the course of your first hour in.  Nobody would find it unreasonable if you just moved on to something else.  With that in mind, I’ll move onto something more exciting.  Like sleeping.

xboxboxartLife in the Dorms was developed by Moment Games

80 Microsoft Points said “wouldn’t chain-locking the only exit to the door be considered a major safety hazard?” in the making of this review.

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Magnetic By Nature and Sherbet Thieves (Second Chance with the Chick)

May 25, 2013 by 6 Comments

Good news: these next two games made the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Bad news: they were already on it.

Good news: both games moved up the board!

Bad news: Actually, there’s nothing but good news left!

Still not completely sold on Magnetic By Nature's art-style, but it has gotten critical acclaim elsewhere. Guess I'll hop on the band wagon and give them a quote for their next crowd-funding effort. Ahem. "Magnetic By Nature is Art-Decoriffic!" I'm such a sell-out.

Still not completely sold on Magnetic By Nature’s art-style, but it has gotten critical acclaim elsewhere. Guess I’ll hop on the band wagon and give them a quote for their next crowd-funding effort. Ahem. “Magnetic By Nature is Art-Decoriffic!” I’m such a sell-out.

Last month, I checked out student project Magnetic By Nature and enjoyed it well enough, even though the game had severe frame-rate issues.  I just played through it once again, and the skipping is almost completely eliminated.  Without it, you get to appreciate this smooth, very well conceived physics-platformer.  Sure, I do wish it had more emphasis on physics-based puzzles.  And sure, the controls still never become fully intuitive, but that’s the nature of the magnetic-based physics.  They’re magnetic-by-nature if you will.  Yuk yuk.

Like many twin stick shooters, you can't tell what's going on in Sherbet Thieves just from screen shots.

Like many twin stick shooters, you can’t tell what’s going on in Sherbet Thieves just from screen shots.

Okay, so Magnetic By Nature didn’t have a whole lot to improve upon.  I can’t say the same for Sherbet Thieves, which just broke the record for longest gap between my original review and my Second Chance, at nearly twenty months.  In that time, the game’s been overhauled with new levels, better balanced difficulty, smarter stage design, and a well-implemented unlimited mode.  So what was already a pretty decent (if not memorable) title is now one of the better twin-stick shooters on the XBLIG platform.  If you forgot it before, don’t forget it now.  It’s a keeper.

I’m really puzzled as to why more developers don’t take me up on Second Chances with the Chick.  Almost every game sees improved standings over their previous review.  The best part about being an XBLIG critic is seeing so many developers hone their craft and improve upon the skills they’ve built.  Really, there is no better way to witness evolution in action.  Well, except by watching nature videos of the mudskipper.

Oh look.  Tee hee, there is goes, thumbing its nose at creationists.

IGC_ApprovedMagnetic By Nature was developed by Tripleslash Studios

Sherbet Thieves was developed by Bang Zero Bang

80 Microsoft Points each will be posting a special feature on the five games most in need of a Second Chance with the Chick in the making of this review.

Magnetic By Nature jumped five positions over its previous Leaderboard standing, while Sherbet Thieves jumped an amazing 16 spots.  Head over to the board to see where they landed.  Both games are Chick-Approved.

Filed under Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bug Zapper and Hop Til You Drop

May 23, 2013 by 3 Comments

Update: Hop Til You Drop received a Second Chance with the Chick.  It is now Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Click here for my continued thoughts on it.

Here are two games that seem like good ideas, but the execution is just a bit off, resulting in the losing streak the Leaderboard has been on continuing.  First off is Bug Zapper, which comes from the developer of previous Leaderboard title Zomp 3 (#84 as of this writing).  This time, instead of a Lolo-esq puzzler, Chris Skelly went for the good-old-boy pasttime of bug zapping, with the idea being you’re the one insect who is immune to the hypnotic glow of electric death device.  Thus, you have to prevent your fellow pests from going towards the light.  This is hilariously done by beating them to a bloody pulp.  As far as solutions to potential problems go, that’s pretty fucking awesome.  It would be like helping a coke head stay sober by breaking his nose.

Bug Zapper gives you a lot to keep up with, and in its present form, it really is too much.

Bug Zapper gives you a lot to keep up with, and in its present form, it really is too much.

As far as game concepts go, it’s actually pretty good.  Bug Zapper also features upgradable stats and a wide variety of bugs to smack down.  So what’s the problem?  Well, I had two major problems.  The first was I couldn’t get the hang of the throw controls.  Bug Zapper heavily relies on throwing bugs into each other in order to rack up combos that build your special moves meter, but even with lots of practice, I had just as good a chance of throwing a rescued bug into the zapper as I did into another bug.  This is because the swarms of bugs heading for the zapper is utterly relentless and you have to keep moving nonstop to have a chance to prevent them from dying.  More control over what directions the bug could be thrown would help, because throwing at angles was imprecise.

A more troubling problem is the fact that the player can completely ruin the ability to throw bugs by picking the wrong upgrades.  You can upgrade the strength of your punching and of your throwing.  In order to throw a bug, you must weaken their health past a certain point, depending on how many times you’ve upgraded your throw.  However, it is possible for you to have a punch so powerful that bugs are knocked out before being weak enough to throw.  Since many of the stages later in the game rely on this ability, the result is you have to grind upgrade points to strengthen your throw.  It really saps the fun out of it, because grinding doesn’t really fit well with this style of game.  There’s a few other smaller issues dealing with the difficulty levels (consider “Medium” to be hard and “Easy” to be medium) and collision detection (it’s too easy to accidentally get zapped by the zapper), but there’s a real game here.  It just needs a tiny amount of work to fix the pacing issues.

Screen from Hop Til You Drop. Not a fan of the background changing colors here either, but I didn't play the game long enough to grow what was certain to be a hatred for it.

Screen from Hop Til You Drop. Not a fan of the background changing colors here either, but I didn’t play the game long enough to grow what was certain to be a hatred for it.

Speaking of pacing problems, I didn’t get very far into Hop Til You Drop at all.  Why?  Well, the concept is decent enough, I guess.  You’re a dude who has to hop around a room collecting coins.  The hook is, when you hop, the gravity switches and you end up walking on the ceiling, then back on the floor, etc, etc.  Meanwhile, the game randomly spawns a huge number of traps that try to kill you.  Just get as many coins as you can before dying.  Simple enough.  Hey, I’m into games based on high scores, even if they tend to suffer without online leaderboards, which I don’t believe Hop Til You Drop has.  No, here’s my problem: rounds in Hop Til You Drop can be very, very short.  That’s fine, if it’s done right.  However, once you die, you have to first view a screen that gives you your stats for this last game.  Then you have to go to main menu.  Then you have to select your character again.  There is no quick-load to start playing again, so you’ll spend as much or more time in menus then you will playing the game.  Fuck.  That.  Jesus Farting Christ, hasn’t the developer ever played a fucking good punisher before?  In the good ones, you die and BAM you’re playing again.  There is no break.  That’s how they become addictive, because they cater to that “just one more try” mentality.  Hop Til You Drop openly fights it, and that’s why it sucks.  The game itself is probably good enough to make the board, but I would rather give myself a swirly then play it again in its present state.

xboxboxart1xboxboxartBug Zapper was developed by Chris Skelly

Hop Til You Drop was developed by Chris Outen

80 Microsoft Points said guys named Chris must have problems getting proper playtesters in the making of this review.  It’s because guys named Chris are too sweet for their own good.  Think about it.  Do you know a Chris in your life?  I bet you can walk all over him. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FortressCraft and CastleMinerZ

May 21, 2013 by 4 Comments

There were two reasons I’ve avoided the whole Minecraft craze and most of the clones that have followed in its wake.  I figured I would either not get into them, or I would get too into them.  I decided temperance was the best solution.  Then again, I wasn’t expecting hundreds of requests for these reviews.  Requests that come from people who already own and are fans of these games.  I’m not sure why they want to know what I think, especially if they already like them.  I guess my opinion is just that cool.

Well, while I certainly won’t argue that they’re badly made games (they’re not), I now have the verification I need that this genre isn’t for me.  Probably.  I mean, I couldn’t get as deep as I wanted in either of them due to my epilepsy, but I think I played enough to get the gist of it.  I’ll start with FortressCraft.

xboxboxartYou know how there are people who will get a set of Legos and come up with the craziest contraptions on their own?  Yea, I’m not one of those people.  When I was a kid, I would get a set of Legos, whip out the instructions, follow them to the T, and once completed, never touch that set again.  I just don’t have the imagination to take a set designed for, say, Indiana Jones, and create my own Starship Enterprise from it.  I’m just as bad at playing sandbox games.  I need a specific goal when I play.  FortressCraft has no goal.  If you’re the creative type, hell, it’s probably exactly what you’re after.  I tried to set a project for myself: a giant version of my Sweetie character.  The little angry yellow-faced monster thing in my logo.  But the monument never quite came out looking the way I envisioned.

Give me the world to mess around with and I couldn't come up with anything to do.

Give me the world to mess around with and I couldn’t come up with anything to do.

I also had issues with the speed of building.  This won’t be typical for most people.  Unfortunately, the little ray-gun building thing that allows for faster construction is also what nearly triggered my epilepsy.   So I was stuck using the slow-as-constipated-shit pick-axe.  I don’t think it would have mattered either way.  If you like to build voxel-style and want a clean slate to do it with, FortressCraft might be for you.  For me?  Not so much.  This is a Lego set without my instructions.  It leaves me like a flock of sheep without a border collie: utterly useless.

xboxboxart1CastleMinerZ has more of a point.  There’s zombies.  I mean, hey, zombies!  Who doesn’t love zombies?  I’m fucking shocked that General Mills hasn’t added a zombie to their Monster Cereal lineup.  Probably something that would taste like a blander version of Cap’n Crunch, only with stale marshmallows.  Yea, I’m stalling.  The truth is, whereas I could avoid having a seizure by not firing the build gun in FortressCraft, there was no way to avoid my personal epilepsy trigger in CastleMinerZ.  There’s a lightning effect that seems to go off fairly regularly in the background.  Thus, I was limited to smaller, shorter sessions.  But even without the lightning stuff, I wouldn’t have been able to get into this.  I’m not into the concept of zombies or voxel building.  Getting into something that centered around both would probably be a sort of miracle.

I did almost get into a game mode that requires you to run as far away from your spawning point as possible.  Unfortunately, in order to play this successfully, you typically have to be able to look up, so as to see and shoot the zombies.  Looking up wasn’t really an option for me, unless I wanted to do my best impression of someone holding onto an electric fence.  What would have helped was some kind of radar, so that I could tell where the zombies were spawning in at.  However, what little I did monkey around with in the zombie shooting department slightly disappointed me, as it felt like there was no “oomph” to capping the undead.  There’s so many games that involve shooting zombies, I’m really to the point where the act of killing them has to be satisfying in and of itself.  Otherwise, it’s just as stimulating as shooting those mechanical ducks at the carnival.

I saw more dragons in five minutes of CastleMinerZ than eleven hours (at least that's what it felt like) of watching The Hobbit.

I saw more dragons in five minutes of CastleMinerZ than eleven hours (at least that’s what it felt like) of watching The Hobbit.

If you’re into building stuff, you can do that too in CastleMinerZ.  I couldn’t.  Again, I tried to create Sweetie, and again it came across looking like a smiley face with two pink horns sticking out of its head.  Then again, my logo isn’t exactly the most complex thing in the world and I can’t draw it on paper either.  I think games like this or FortressCraft or Minecraft are probably designed with artistic types in mind.  I’m certainly not that.  Even in Terraria, I did NONE of the building when I played our main world with Brian.  When I made my own world, the building were really just boxes with doors that took minimal effort to make.  If you’re a into building stuff, you might like these games.  They seem to play pretty well from a technical standpoint.  I can’t compare them to Minecraft, but the graphics were crisp, the framerate was consistent (though CastleMiner had the occasional hiccup), and the controls are accurate.  I guess.  But I’m certainly not among this game’s target demographic, and my opinion shouldn’t factor into your purchase of either of these titles.  I’m not really great at building things.  Except animosity among Shenmue fans.

FortressCraft was developed by Projector Games (240 Microsoft Points asked if the whole “world is cooking” thing is what Al Gore warned us about).

CastleMiner Z was developed by DigitalDNA Games (80 Microsoft Points have a boyfriend who is PISSED about the Hobbit joke)

Please note: I know that for some people, the whole epilepsy and games thing is a sensitive subject and they get very vocal about how games don’t cater to their needs.  For me, my doctor has made it perfectly clear to me: playing games is a risk, period.  I can alleviate some of those risks through proper lighting, distance, and medication, yes.  But, if a game gives me a seizure, it’s my fault, not the developer’s.  If you have a preexisting condition such as me, I sympathize with you, but I also ask you to assume personal responsibility.  I don’t expect developers to cater to my relatively rare condition, and you certainly shouldn’t DEMAND it like I’ve seen some people do.  I’ve found that in my nearly two years of being Indie Gamer Chick, developers want to learn about my condition.  I’m guessing they do that because I’m cool about it, and assume all the risk myself.  So while I couldn’t fully play a game like CastleMinerZ, that’s my circumstance.  If you’re an asshole to developers, you’re not helping.  They’re eager to be educated, not yelled at.  I generally start by pointing them in the direction of the Epilepsy Foundation.  But seriously, just be cool and you’ll find they’re receptive.  Indies especially.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Looking to the Future

May 19, 2013 by 2 Comments

We’re less than two months away from Indie Gamer Chick turning two-years-old.  Which is ironic, because according to father, I often have the table manners of a two-year-old.  But seriously, two years already?  Time flies when you’re having fun.  Given how bad the lineup of games I’ve recently tackled has been, that explains why this last month has felt like a fucking crawl.  Still, to all those doomsayers out there who won’t shut up about how XBLIGs are dead and nothing good is coming on the horizon, kindly shut the fuck up.  Quality takes time, and there are plenty of very good-looking games still to come.

A dungeon crawler done right warms my heart, so I have my fingers crossed from the upcoming Tales of Descent.

A dungeon crawler done right warms my heart, so I have my fingers crossed from the upcoming Tales of Descent.

Xbox Live Indie Games were relegated to black sheep status from the get-go.  But, while some developers can lean towards the whiny side over that, most have shown perseverance and dedication to honing their skills on the platform in a way that inspires me to be better at what I do.  A lot of people who follow the XBLIG scene tout the passion of its developers.  I’ve never been a big fan of flogging passion, because everyone who makes games generally has a passion for what they do.  When they don’t talk about passion, they’ll talk about the ingenuity, the creativity, or the resourcefulness.  You know what?  XBLIG developers have all of that and more, but there’s one aspect that always gets overlooked, and I’m sick of that.

Talent.

That’s right.  Talent.  Look at what this community has accomplished, with minimal resources.  Hundreds of games ranging from pretty decent to absolutely spectacular.  That doesn’t happen by luck.  I’ve always been of the belief that talent and aptitude for game development isn’t something you can learn.  You have to inherently have it.  It can be refined.  It can be built upon.  But it can’t be grown from nothing.  Talent is instinctual.  That’s why I love XBLIG.  Because so much untapped talent has converged in this one centralized location.  Some times the talent doesn’t even result in a good game.  A lot of developers are still not far into the learning curve of game development.  Yet, you can still see talent.  It’s there, and it’s starting to bubble to the surface.   And the best part is you can also see the desire to improve.  To make something transcendent.  It’s those dreams that give me goosebumps when I think of what the future of gaming in my life will hold.

On Tuesday, we’ll learn about the next generation Xbox.  Soon, XBLIGs as they exist today will be a thing of the past.  But the skills and dreams this new generation of game developers have acquired?  They’ll carry on to the future.  With that in mind, I want to hear from you, the Xbox Live Indie Game development community, about the games you’re going to make.  I want to hear how you’ll apply the skills you acquired making games for XBLIG in the future.  I want to hear how you learned from your mistakes and successes.  Last year, for the first anniversary of Indie Gamer Chick, I looked at where you were now.  This year, I want to look at where you’re going.  A future that is as bright as you want it to be.

Wyv and Keep is still coming to XBLIG.

Wyv and Keep is still coming to XBLIG, and it looks damn good.

This is a community-wide Tales from the Dev Side special that is open to every XBLIG developer, whether I’ve covered their games or not.  Well, unless you responded to my review that noted your game crashed by saying I lied about your game crashing and that I was on crack, then later admitted your game did crash but refused to apologize.  Call me petty, but I really don’t give a shit what such a person plans to do in the future.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.

There are some rules to this.

#1: No bitching or whining about how shitty Microsoft treated XBLIG.  We’ve all heard it, and I’m bored with it.  This is to be a mushy, optimistic piece, not a score-settler.

#2: You have to have a game published.  Again, it doesn’t matter if I covered your game, but I want to hear from people who went through the full experience of creating, publishing, and getting feedback on their title.

#3:  Feel free to attack me if you feel it’s justified, but there is to be no complaining about other developers or their games, the peer-review process, or other game critics.

#4: I must have something to link to for your name.  Either your website, your Twitter, or the link to your game on the marketplace.

Sound good?  Okay, here’s what I need from you: a paragraph or two (under 300 words) details what you’re going to be up to next.  With the exception of linking to your Kickstarters or other crowd-funding activities, I want to plug the ever-loving shit out of your upcoming projects.  So send me links to YouTube footage, your development blogs, your Steam Greenlight pages.  Talk about what platforms you’re targeting.  Talk about why you want to make this particular project.  I want to hear your hopes, your dreams, and your aspirations.  We all do.  If XBLIG is going out, let’s turn out the lights in style.  So do you want to participate?  Write it up, and e-mail it to me before July 1st with the subject “My Future in Game Development.”  Make sure to include all the proper links.  Don’t worry about putting it in a word file, spell checking, or grammar.   I’ll take care of it.  If you have art assets, you can provide those.  YouTube videos won’t be embedded directly for the benefit of page load times, but I will link them in.  Remember: these projects don’t have to be for XBLIG.  PC, Ouya, PSM, or anything else is fine.  I just want to know where you’re going from here.

Finally, while I’m excited to glimpse into your future, I’m also interested in what you’ve got out right now.  This is an open offer for anyone that has a game ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard: if your game exists on other platforms, send me the links and base prices and I’ll update my old reviews to include links to those other versions.  You guys really do deserve more attention than you get.  If your game isn’t taking on XBLIG, maybe it will take on something else.  There are games on my leaderboard that have sold under 100 copies.  No need to make a joke about it, because that just plain sucks.  Promoting your outside-of-XBLIG projects is something that is, quite frankly, long overdue here at Indie Gamer Chick.  Sorry it took me this long to figure that out.

Filed under Editorials

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