Blocks & Tanks and Chompy Chomp Chomp (Second Chance with the Chick)

June 18, 2013 by 5 Comments

Do you know what the very toughest thing I have to do as Indie Gamer Chick is? Find people to play XBLIGs with or against. It’s my fault. My friends.. well Brian’s friends actually.. have had to deal with nearly two years of complaining. They have bad timing. They never bump into me when I’m playing really awesome games. Oh no, they run into me when I’m playing stuff that would better be used during enhanced interrogation. So when the time comes to say “hey guys, I have a shiny new XBLIG party game” they all seem to have better stuff to do. Wash the car. Run a marathon. Return over-due library books. It’s total bullshit of course.  None of my friends read books.

But, sometimes I can wrangle them together. The results aren’t always pretty, but every once in a while a game provides us with a level of entertainment that we can’t get from a movie or, quite frankly, some mainstream games. Take Chompy Chomp Chomp. It was a smash hit last year during a Memorial Day party, and since then, has been on the top ten in my leaderboard. But it wasn’t without issue. The game could spawn players unfairly, and some of the maps were poorly conceived. It’s been a year since I last sat down with it. I know the game got patched, but I never got around to trying it again. Well, on Sunday I had the chance. And guess what? Chompy Chomp Chomp is better than ever. It is, unquestionably, the best party game on Xbox 360, indie or otherwise.

Pictured: absolute multiplayer bliss.

Pictured: absolute multiplayer bliss.

First off, go check out my original review. Nothing has changed with the core gameplay. What’s different is nearly every complaint has been fixed. For starters, spawns are significantly more fair. Before, it wasn’t rare for you to spawn too close to someone that’s designated to eat you. In a couple hours of playtime, that never once happened. Nor did the game ever spawn me or anyone else playing into a live trap. That alone makes Chompy Chomp Chomp so much more fun to play. In our previous play sessions, fits of laughter and general happy chatter would occasionally be interrupted by the random scream of “that’s bullshit!” when the game would screw you with a shitty spawn. Now, it’s all happiness all the time. The only other way that could have been accomplished was with laughing gas, but that wouldn’t have been cost efficient. Fixing it was much easier.

Chompy Chomp Chomp was developed by Utopian World of Sandwiches (80 Microsoft Points admit that the Xbox 360 hasn't exactly been the best platform for party games, but regardless, this is still the best on it in the making of this review.)

Chompy Chomp Chomp was developed by Utopian World of Sandwiches (80 Microsoft Points admit that the Xbox 360 hasn’t exactly been the best platform for party games, but regardless, this is still the best on it in the making of this review.)

Yea, there’s still some really horrible levels where you can get cornered with no hope of escape. The guys at Utopian World of Sandwiches insist that there are people who swear those are the best stages. They’re not. They’re unfair and stupid. Thankfully, they made up for their continued existence by throwing in more stages. These new levels, based on classic gaming themes, are fricking awesome. Finally, some of the dumber traps, such as gaseous time bombs that drain your score away, can outright be turned off. Previously, turning off items was an all or nothing type of deal. Now, you can select which ones you want to use. That’s perfect. The online play was totally hiccup-free as well. I can’t stress how amazing this game is. You simply have to play it, whether you do it locally or online. Make sure you’re playing with real players though. The AI goes from being too easy to too hard. When I was playing with my buddies, it was probably the single best multiplayer experience I’ve had since I’ve known them all. Chompy Chomp Chomp is Fuckity Fuck Fuck excellent.

But, if the whole “no shooting, cutesy characters” stuff is an affront to your heterosexuality (seriously, at least one moron on Twitter said of Chompy Chomp Chomp that it “looked like gay children’s shit”. How this guy is an expert in gay children’s shit is beyond me), you can try Blocks and Tanks instead. In a way, it’s getting a bad shake here, because I’m comparing it directly to Chompy Chomp Chomp. Both are simple party games for XBLIG with online play.  But while Chompy’s gameplay reminds me of old school arcade games, Blocks is more like a Nintendo 64 era arena-shooter. Not a whole lot to it.  Aim and shoot, one shot kills (with the cannon), most kills wins. The fact that it revels in its simplicity is part of the charm. It’s a shooter stripped down to its purest, most refined fun.

Of course, Blocks and Tanks is also a voxel game. When I announced that this game was on deck and next to be reviewed, people immediately dismissed it as yet another Minecraft clone. It’s not. But, the voxel angle is a neat one, as the environments are destructible and it opens some pretty neat strategies. In addition to the tank shells and machine gun, you can shoot blocks from your turret, which immediately cling to the environment and change colors to fit that. In a way, this crippled one versus one multiplayer, as whoever was able to get the first kill could immediately burrow a hole and fill it in to remain hidden until time ran out. Of course, only a total coward would do that.

Don’t shake your head at me, Brian. You’re only mad because you didn’t think of it first.

Pictured: the developers of games I was less than kind to waiting for my car to get within range. It's a Honda Fit! Do your worst!

Pictured: the developers of games I was less than kind to waiting for my car to get within range. It’s a Honda Fit! Do your worst!

Blocks and Tanks is a lot of fun and does a lot right. The controls are very responsive. There is a bit of a learning curve to aiming, but once you get over it, it does the trick. It also has some very well designed arenas, many of which take after famous locations. It handles eight players online. I was never once able to get into an eight player game, but when I had six players going, it was super fast-paced and very enjoyable. But, the game has more problems than an algebra book.

We’ll start with the spawns. They’re among the most unfair I’ve ever seen. Sometimes the game will respawn you right in front of someone else. You’ll literally die immediately upon respawning. More often than not, you’ll be put back to life in the thick of a battle. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. The game needs to place you away from the action. Movement speed is decent, and maps are not that big, so there’s no reason to have to drop people in the middle of a firefight. It gives the game an unpolished feel.

But the biggest problem, as of this writing, is online stability. The developer is aware of the issues and asked me to go forward with this review, as long as I note that he will continue to improve the game. Duly noted. Over the course of seven play sessions and about three hours of total play, I experienced a magnitude of connectivity problems. Players would be dumped at random. Brian got a rare “code 3” error on his Xbox, while mine simply froze solid. Again, the developers are on top of it, and the current build is easily the most stable yet. The first time I played, we had problems with synchronization, where shots would register as a hit and a kill on my end, but on my opponent’s side of things, they would still be alive and actively fighting. This is no longer a problem. Actually, the weirdest problem is totally out of the hands of the developer. It’s the type of people playing. I kept finding myself in sessions where players were not trying to kill each other, but instead building stuff. When I would go in to attack, they would boot me out. Huh.  I mean, sure. It’s not like there are different, more appropriate voxel-based games on XBLIG that cater to that type of gameplay.

We had a ton of fun on stages that had cliffs, trying to blow the ground out from underneath each-other. What would have been really neat is if the game had to rely on structrual integrity and you could cause massive cave-ins. Hint hint Maximinus Games.

We had a ton of fun on stages that had cliffs, trying to blow the ground out from underneath each-other. What would have been really neat is if the game had to rely on structural integrity and you could cause massive cave-ins. Hint hint Maximinus Games.

Blocks and Tanks was developed by Maximinus Games (80 Microsoft Points wish the build-gun worked better on water in the making of this review.)

Blocks and Tanks was developed by Maximinus Games(*NOW DELISTED* 80 Microsoft Points wish the build-gun worked better on water in the making of this review.  Yea, that’s not a joke, but I had to squeeze that in somewhere.)

Having said that, if you look around enough, you should be able to find a real game where people have the courtesy to kill each other like civilized people. It’s not as supported as, say, Shark Attack Deathmatch, but Blocks and Tanks does seem to have a growing community. There’s a reason for that. It’s quite good. I feel bad for the guys behind it, that it’s going to be ignored by a lot of people who feel it’s just another generic Minecraft clone. It’s almost unbelievable that such an art style can now be considered a handicap on XBLIG, but that’s what it is now. If Blocks and Tanks had come out three years ago, it would probably be one of the biggest sellers on the platform. Talk about bad timing. It’s a genuinely good game that is worth your time and money. Unless you want to use it to build stuff. It’s not made for that you block heads. Tanks for nothing.

Blocks and Tanks is Chick Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Chompy Chomp Chomp already was, but hey, it moved up five spots! 

IGC_ApprovedReview copies were provided for both games by the developers. The copies played by Cathy were paid for by her with her own money. The review copies were given to a friend to test online play. That person had no feedback in this review. For more on this policy, consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

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

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

June 17, 2013 by 6 Comments

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is one of those games that makes me feel like I’m in a bad relationship; the kind where your head says, “Fool, forget her,” and your heart says, “Don’t let go. Hold on to the end.” Yes, that is a Grease reference there. Deal with it.

This action/RPG experience casts the player in the role of the famous Dr. Abraham Van Helsing’s (the destroyer of Dracula) son. It’s your task to traverse this steampunk version of 19th century Eastern Europe, find your father and rid the fictional land of Borgovia of a mad scientist who is just fucking things up for everybody in general.

I WILL POINT AND CLICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!!

I WILL POINT AND CLICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!!

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing does so many things I don’t, or shouldn’t, like yet I kept coming back to it. I was having fun…until my computer threw a Windows inspired hissy fit, the game crashed when I was two-thirds of the way through and I lost my save file (about 15 hours of progress). It seems that Fate, that cruel, cruel mistress, did not want Van Helsing and I to be together for all of eternity. Such is life.

First and foremost on “The Things I Shouldn’t Like” list is that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a shameless Diablo clone (i.e. the playfield is seen from a 3D, isometric, top down view and the gameplay entails pointing-and-clicking at things until they explode in a bloody flash and drop all kinds of goodies which you then rush to collect like the greedy fucker you are).  Now, I’ve played Diablo clones in the past that I’ve truly enjoyed: Torchlight 1 and 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, just to name a few. But, with Van Helsing, it just feels more shameless somehow. Playing it felt, to me, like those early Sunday morning “strolls” though my college campus after a Saturday night filled with debauchery and naughty young ladies who I had no intention of bringing home to Mother. Yes, that is a Rick James reference. Deal with that one too.

Collect that loot...

Collect that loot and upgrade those stats…

Secondly, there is almost zero strategy to the combat. The monsters literally rush at you in droves the instant they see you. It’s fucking insane. It gets to the point where you barely even know what the hell is happening and you can’t even see your poor, overwhelmed character there is so much outrageous activity happening on-screen. I’ve never seen another game do this to the extent that Van Helsing does…and it happens almost right out of the gate as well. There’s very little hand holding here; your index finger and mouse are going to get a good workout playing this game, know that now. But, to its credit, you do get quite a visceral rush when a battle is done, you are victorious and there are piles of beastly corpses (and treasure…don’t forget the treasure!) at your feet.

Thirdly, the presentation is lacking in comparison to the games Van Helsing attempts to emulate, the Diablos and the Torchlights of the world.  I know this is an indie game developed by a relatively small team in Hungary, Neocore Games, but if you aspire to dance in the ring with the big boys, you have to measure up against them, ultimately. And while Van Helsing isn’t awful to look at by any means, it just lacks that “next level” of polish that those other games definitely have. I should also mention here that the voice acting is all over the place; some performances are spot on while others are quite amateurish. And, for some reason which I couldn’t seem to shake, the actor who voices the main character sounded a good deal like Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd to me…and if you know anything about Moss, you know he’s certainly not a badass monster hunter.

"I was BORN to slay monsters, Roy!"

“I was BORN to slay monsters, Roy!”

Taking all that into account, I still kept coming back to play Van Helsing and would have beaten it if my save file wasn’t corrupted. It is a fun and addictive game to play, with tons of loot to collect and some cool magic and combat customization options. I know I said “almost zero strategy to the combat” above and I stick by that because once the creatures start coming at you thick and fast, all those custom options you set up will go right out the window and you’ll be screaming, “Fuck it, it’s hack and slash time, bitches!” On top of that, I’m just a sucker for humorous, B-grade-horror-shlock when it comes to a story and Van Helsing’s narrative is certainly that.

There is also an option to play The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing online with a few friends, which I didn’t get to try because, as I mentioned, my save file fell down and went BOOM and I lost the character I spent 15 hours building up. That being said, I could definitely see this game being a blast to play online with some likeminded pals, as long as there were no technical or latency issues to speak of.

Mad skills to pay those bills...

Mad skills to pay those bills…

Since this review is peppered with a few musical references and I began it with one, I think it’s only fitting that I wrap it up with another one. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing reminds me of the heartbreakingly pensive love songs that Prince used to write back in the day (Nothing Compares 2 U, Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad, Automatic, et al.), difficult to get through at times but when they are over, you can’t help but go back and listen to them again and again and again because, well, they just hurt so damn good.

And it’s for that reason that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is INDIE GAMER GUY APPROVED. This isn’t a resounding approval like Gunpoint was, but this is a game that I definitely had a good time playing and others should too. If Neocore gets around to making a sequel at some point and addresses the issues I mention above they could have a truly great franchise on their hands.

 

The-Incredible-Adventures-of-Van-Helsing-box-artThe Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing was developed by Neocore Games.

For $14.99, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing will let you point-and-click the holy shit out of some polygonal, gothic monsters. Good      times!

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is available on Steam. igg 2

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is Indie Gamer Guy Approved, but it just squeaks on to the Leaderboard and will probably be point-and-clicked right off at some point down the line.

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Mutant Mudds Deluxe

June 15, 2013 by 4 Comments

Warning: anyone born before 1987 will hate me for this review.  That’s because Mutant Mudds Deluxe seems to bask in the rule that anything retro is good simply because it’s retro.  I don’t subscribe to that theory myself.  I happen to like neo-retro stuff.  Look at my top ten.  They’ll all cut from that same old-school cloth.  But those games all have fun hooks and entertaining gameplay.  Mutant Mudds looks the part.  In fact, it’s one of the best looking games I’ve seen done in this style since starting this blog.  I just wish the actual game matched its beautiful graphics.  It doesn’t.  It’s one of the dullest platformers I’ve come across.

Can't stress this enough: Mutant Mudds looks like it will be really fun. But instead, it settled for "playable."

Can’t stress this enough: Mutant Mudds looks like it will be really fun. But instead, it settled for “playable.”

You’re a dude with a gun.  There are coin-things to collect and enemies to shoot.  Instead of a double-jump, you can float briefly.  The big hook is the ability to bounce off specially marked springboards that send you into the foreground or background.  Neat idea, but it seemed like something that would be better tailored for the Nintendo 3DS, which this is actually available for as well.  Also, I tweeted that the idea seemed original, but apparently it was lifted from Virtual Boy Wario Land or so my readers say.  I wouldn’t know.  I was six years old when that piece of shit game machine was released and my parents wouldn’t even let me try the store’s kiosk out of fear for my eyeballs.  And this is before I had epilepsy, mind you.  But I’m going off topic.

Mutant Mudds mostly controls fine.  Mostly.  The only times I had problems were when the game over-used disappearing/reappearing platforms.  I’ve never been a fan of those.  The weird thing is, most retro gamers I know don’t seem to be either.  They seem to be one of the prime reasons why Mega Man 2 is more beloved than the original.  In Mutant Mudds, the jumping is a bit stiff when you don’t use the Princess Peach like floating, and thus the physics don’t lend themselves well to platforms that appear and disappear quickly.  Using the floating doesn’t help much either, because it screws the timing up.  Deactivating the floating requires another press of the button, but it forces you to get stabby with the controls.  It wasn’t until a couple of hours in that I had collected enough coins to buy the extended floaty hover jump thing.  This did almost completely solve my problems with the disappearing shit.  But, by this point I had spent hours getting frustrated by them, because they’re way over-used.  It’s never so bad that it reaches hair-ripping aggravation, but it does serve to slow things down and damper what is already a pretty snore-inducing experience.

Mutant Mudds seems to hit all the platforming clichés. There's fire. There's ice. There's clouds. Actually, I never ran into an underwater level, but there were still four doors locked when I finally got bored and said "there's no hope this is going to get better."

Mutant Mudds seems to hit all the platforming clichés. There’s fire. There’s ice. There’s clouds. Actually, I never ran into an underwater level, so maybe the game didn’t quite hit a blackout on its platforming cliché bingo card.

When it comes to aesthetics, Mutant Mudd is nearly flawless.  Beautiful graphics, era-appropriate sounds and music.  It’s an extraordinarily well-produced game.  But once you get into the things that make a game fun, it just comes up empty.  Level design is very basic.  Enemies are generic and fighting them is repetitive and boring.  And that’s the prime fault of this game.  It’s visually pleasing, but unambitious.  Well produced, but safe and samey.  I’ve played games like this before.  I want to play something wild and new, but Mutant Mudds is content to stay firmly grounded in tradition.  After finishing all the basic rooms and a couple of the “mirrored” levels that are more like punisher versions of the originals, I found out I couldn’t play on until I had found X amount of hidden trinkets and doors.  Um, nah.  I’m good.  After a couple of hours, I hadn’t really had any fun at all.  I was hopeful after seeing the dimensional hook, but I was still waiting for the game to do something cool and it never came.  I’m guessing older gamers will be satisfied enough just because Mutant Mudds is a really great homage to generic “me-too” platformers from back in the day.  For me, playing through this was no less tiresome than sitting through any average 80s movie or television series where I just can’t get how you children of the Reagan era could accept this as entertainment.  Hey, don’t look at me like that, and don’t say my generation has no taste.  We’re not the ones who made David Hasselhoff a star.  That was you guys.

Mutant Mudds logoMutant Mudds Deluxe was developed by Renegade Kid

$9.99 suggests that if you must buy Mutant Mudds, you should probably get it for 3DS instead since it’s more suited for a 3D screen, plus it would have been nice to not be tethered to a TV for no reason while playing this in the making of this review.

Filed under Nintendo eShop Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Jacob Jones & The Bigfoot Mystery and Quell Memento

June 13, 2013 by 3 Comments

Puzzlers are the absolute toughest games to write a review for.  I’ve spent hours staring at my monitor trying to figure out how to describe these games in an entertaining but informative way.  Good games mind you.  But still puzzle games.  It’s a genre that doesn’t lend itself well to the types of reviews I write here.  If I didn’t love them so much, I would probably quit covering them.  They do the lowest page views too.  And yet, they’re an absolutely essential part of gaming.  I would be beside myself if I couldn’t have a puzzler on my handhelds.  It just seems like it would be wrong otherwise.  I’m also not looking for games to sit down and play through all at once.  That’s why this review took so long to go up.  Because I played these games the way they ought to be played: little bits at a time.  To do otherwise is to maximize a puzzler’s potential for stagnation.

Then I realized I had promised these reviews over a week ago and had still not come close to completing them.  So I embraced the stagnation, like a naturist who thinks showers are for conformists.

Not all the puzzles in Jacob Jones require anything resembling brain power. This puzzle, over half-way in, took me all of twenty seconds to solve. In fact, I sort of solved it on accident while I was trying to figure out which moves to make in my head. Um, I don't think it was supposed to happen like that.

Not all the puzzles in Jacob Jones require anything resembling brain power. This puzzle, over half-way in, took me all of twenty seconds to solve. In fact, I sort of solved it on accident while I was trying to figure out which moves to make in my head. Um, I don’t think it was supposed to happen like that.

First up is Professor Layton and the.. excuse me.. Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery.  Sorry about that, but let me explain how I can make such a mistake.  The game is a set of various logic/math puzzles that are strung together with an utterly nonsensical, raving insane storyline.  The same type of puzzles you would see in the Layton series.  Similar hint system too.  And a  similar “find stuff in the backgrounds to help you buy hints” setup.  Plus, pretty much an identical scoring system for the puzzles.  Or a notepad you can overlay on top of the puzzles.  You know, Lucid Games, in some cultures they cut off your hands for this sort of thing.

The two big differences are in the art style (which looks very similar to Costume Quest) and the episodic setup Lucid is going with.  Here, $3 buys you the first chapter of the game, which gives you 25 puzzles to work on.  This is a very good idea.  I’ve owned all Layton games, but the only one I played through all at once was the first one.  Mostly because the game was such an anomaly that the novelty held up.  For the four sequels, it did start to drag a little.   So breaking up Jacob Jones was a masterstroke.  It doesn’t become “that game that I played so much it got boring.”  They should space out the chapters three months at a time.  Give players just long enough to forget how the story bogs down at the end of each episode, and how the puzzles are not really all that original to begin with.

The real problem is the game is more about the story than the puzzles.  With the Layton series, the story is just there because having 150 random, unrelated puzzles in a package would be a tough sell.  Well, more so than your average puzzler.  Ultimately, I find the Layton games as well written as glorified place-holder stories can be.  But they work because it’s more about the puzzles.  That’s why it’s so funny to encounter a random character on the street who will only give you the clue you need if you can solve a riddle for them.  It’s so stupid, yet charmingly so.  In Jacob Jones, the opposite is true.  The game is over-saturated with dialog.  Not awful dialog, mind you.  The writing can be sharp at times, even if all the characters but Jacob himself are flat-out unlikable.  But the attraction should be the puzzles, or at the very least, an equal blending of both.  In Layton, some of the puzzles can be tricky to the point of being boring.  Nothing in Jacob Jones is that difficult, and instead boredom comes in the form of scenes that feel like they just fucking refuse to end.

Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery was developed by Lucid Games ($2.99 can't believe they introduced the bigfoot as a main character this early into the series in the making of this review)

Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery was developed by Lucid Games ($2.99 can’t believe they introduced the bigfoot as a main character this early into the series in the making of this review)

Regardless, I do highly recommend Jacob Jones, especially to you Sony diehards who’ve never owned a DS and thus missed the Layton series.  It’s not an original idea.  In fact, it’s about as blatant a clone-job as you can get.  I’m actually stunned that my good buddies at PSNStores.com could interview Lucid Games without once bringing it up.  Talk about failure to address the elephant in the room.  In this case, the elephant is holding a bloody machete and standing over a pile of dead cheerleaders.  How can you NOT bring it up?  But the puzzles are well made and very satisfying.  The “find the soda cans” hook for the backgrounds is a huge step above Layton’s “just poke randomly and hope you stumble upon a coin” setup.  And sometimes the dialog is genuinely funny.  I probably won’t fully review the remaining chapters, but I think unless they’re outright broken, you can pencil all of them in for my seal of approval as well.  Probably.  I mean, it’s a pretty hard formula to screw up.  Especially when someone else has so beautifully laid it out for you and your job consists of tracing the lines.

Every time you submit a puzzle to see if you guessed correctly, the game does overly-dramatic close-ups on Jacob (pictured) and whoever is asking the puzzle. It's supposed to look like "gee, I hope I got that right." Instead, it looks more like "I wonder if they realize it was me who farted?"

Every time you submit a puzzle to see if you guessed correctly, the game does an overly dramatic close-up on Jacob (pictured) and whoever is asking the puzzle. It’s supposed to look like “gee, I hope I got that right.” Instead, it looks more like “I wonder if they realize it was me who farted?”

Up next, Quell Memento.  This is one of those rolling-a-ball-in-a-maze puzzlers.  I’ve played dozens of these since gaming hit cell phones, and there’s even been a recent one to hit Vita called Chronovault.  Well, saying it “hit” Vita might be a bad choice of words, since the game missed the mark completely.  It was, quite frankly, awful.  The touch-controls were poorly handled and the level design was overly long and dull.  Right out of the gate, Quell Memento proved to be a better realization of the concept.  Puzzles are all single-screen affairs, and movement is simple and accurate.  It also has a clean but distinctive and pleasant art style.  I can’t stress enough how important accessibility is for you potential puzzle developers out there.  Nobody is going to buy your game because of amazing graphics or expansive 3D worlds.  They just care about the puzzles themselves.  You’re not making the next Skyrim.  You’re making a game that appeals to only those who wish to test themselves, and the likelihood of you wooing non-puzzle fans to your game is slim.  So design your game to appeal to your base.  It’s rare that a puzzle game becomes a break-out hit, and when it does, it’s never because of the art style.  The only time art matters is when it’s ugly to the point of being a turnoff.  Otherwise, it’s always about the puzzles themselves.

In that spirit, Quell Memento succeeds because it does more than just “get ball to exit.”  Some stages are still that.  Others have you lighting up all the blocks, or positioning a ball in a way where it causes crystals to reflect.  It certainly keeps the game fresh throughout.  But, while some of the puzzles can be clever, I really didn’t find Quell to be all that difficult.  I breezed through most of the levels in just seconds, clearing many on my first attempt.  Part of that is on me and just simply having played so many of these type of games.  But part of that is, this sub-genre is inherently simple.  If you make a mistake, just don’t repeat the same moves.  Unlike something like Lolo, there’s only so many different ways you can move the ball.  While many of the solutions are self-evident, those that aren’t become apparent immediately after your first mistake.  I’ll admit right here and now, I did use the hint system for Jacob Jones once.  I never had to for Quell.  The difficulty never really ramps up all that much either, leaving the final stages lacking in a climatic feel.  While it never fully crosses the line to being too easy, it does dip its toes in it a little bit.  Also, the system in place to give the game replay value by awarding you trophies for completing stages in the fewest possible moves isn’t all that significant either.  Again, once you know how a stage is finished, it’s simply a matter of subtracting the wrong moves.  It doesn’t require you to be a genius to figure out.

This is one of the light-reflecting puzzles, which I found to be the easiest of the lot. You can immediately identify where the ball (or balls) have to go to properly reflect the light. But the really insulting thing is, the entire first part of it actually marks the ground with an X. Guys, it's not THAT difficult to figure out. Anyone who needs that type of hand holding would never have bought this to begin with.

This is one of the light-reflecting puzzles, which I found to be the easiest of the lot. You can immediately identify where the ball (or balls) have to go to properly reflect the light. But the really insulting thing is, the entire first part of it actually marks the ground with an X. Guys, it’s not THAT difficult to figure out. Anyone who needs that type of hand holding would never have bought this to begin with.

Quell Memento was developed by Fallen Tree Games ($4.99 said their logo is more like "Fallen Branch" games, but branches fall all the time so I guess that would be a silly name in the making of this review)

Quell Memento was developed by Fallen Tree Games ($4.99 said their logo is more like “Fallen Branch Games” but branches fall all the time so I guess that would be a silly name in the making of this review)

So did I like it?  Yea, a little bit.  That’s really all I ask of from games, to enjoy them.  So it gets my approval.  But the breezy puzzles nearly mute that amazing “TA DA!” feeling I crave from these types of games.  I wasn’t interested in the story in the slightest bit, and I really didn’t go back to find all the hidden gems (one in each level, though I use the term “hidden” very loosely as most of them you can’t help but stumble upon).  You can’t help but like it, because it’s well produced and charming.  It won’t bend your brain too much, but perhaps that does make it more accessible for those non-puzzle loving fans.  Of course, they’ll skip right past it anyway because puzzle games are skateboarding giant emus on parade.  That makes no sense at all, but everyone quit reading one word into this review when I started the first sentence with “Puzzlers.”  I can pretty much say and do whatever I want from here on out.  I think Half Life is slightly overrated.  I have a Sonic the Hedgehog tattoo nobody knows about.  I hate children.  I periodically let the air out of my parents tires.  That penis that someone drew on Brian’s forehead while he slept?  That wasn’t Bryce.  It was totally me.  And nobody will ever know because when it comes to puzzlers, nobody seems to give a shit except me.  Well, me and the skateboarding emus on parade.

My friend Kyle Lock of Vintage Video Game TV is doing a marathon to raise money for the Lung Cancer Research Foundation.  Be sure to check it out starting tomorrow (Friday, June 14).  He’ll be giving free games away and raising money for a good cause.  And hey, as a smoker, I might end up needing their research someday 😛 Donate here and watch the stream here.

Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery and Quell Memento are both Chick-Approved and will be ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard on July 1.

IGC_Approved

Filed under PlayStation Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

They Bleed Pixels

June 11, 2013 by 7 Comments

There are those who define insanity as: “Doing the same thing over and over and, at some point, expecting a different result.” That pithy aphorism pretty much sums up my time with SpookySquid’s They Bleed Pixels. And the “same thing” I was doing over and over and over was dying. After dying almost 100 times (no joke) on the third level, I had enough. I just wasn’t having fun anymore. I play games to have fun and when I stop having fun, I stop playing the fucking game. Period.

The basic premise behind They Bleed Pixels is, essentially, what if early 20th century horror novelist, H.P. Lovecraft, had the resources and wherewithal to design a punishing, NES-hard platformer? What would that be like? Well, I’m assuming, along with the creators of this pain-in-the-ass disguised as a game, it would be a lot like They Bleed Pixels. From what I understand, Lovecraft himself was a rather uptight, prickly and difficult man, so this makes perfect sense in the grand scheme of things. Good job there, SpookySquid! You managed to distill the essence of fucking weird-ass New Englander (weird, yes, but still a great writer) and put it into video game form. Bravo, I say!

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The girl on fire…or…? Wait, wrong thing.

The story is pretty straightforward: a young girl is sent to a creepy boarding school, The Lafcadio Academy for Troubled Young Ladies, where she comes across a Necronomicon-like tome that turns her into a human/monster hybrid each night. Her dreams (or are they…?) are the levels she must conquer to see the dawn once again and regain her human form.

In terms of actual gameplay, it’s pretty standard stuff. One button jumps, the other button attacks as you progress through the macabre levels that are riddled with pitfalls, spikes and random, whirling saw blades. The female protagonist can do double jumps and cling to the walls, as long as they aren’t “slippery” walls, mind you. She can also unleash some rather nasty attack combos on her bland and far-too-similar enemies.

I really wanted to like this game. I’ve been looking forward to playing it since it came out at the end of last August… and reviewing it (finally) gave me an excuse to play it. I think it is easy to tell that I AM DISAPPOINT with They Bleed Pixels overall. To its credit, it does have some nice stylized, 8-bit pixel graphics (with some sweet, bloody flourishes to boot) and the music by DJ Finish Him is very cool as well. One other thing I dug was the innovative checkpoint system that saves the player (some) frustration by allowing you save almost anywhere you want…if you play your cards right.

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Does Satan have an unlimted supply of these random, spinny saw blades lying about? Just curious…

At the end of day, if I want to be frustrated and punished I’ll go to work at my real job. When I play a video game, I want to relax, have fun and get “lost” in the experience.  They Bleed Pixels drove me to brink of madness…to the point of questioning my own sanity, I daresay. I feared for the very life of my gamepad because after dying countless deaths, I wanted to smash it to bits against the wall…to end its horrible, unending misery and my own, by God!

And let me just say this in closing: back in the day, I beat the majority of “hard” punishing, platform games, so it isn’t that I’m not good at them or don’t like them as a whole. I guess it’s just that I don’t have the patience and/or time for this style of game any longer; I have better things to do now…

…like not die 100 fucking times on a single level.

ImageThey Bleed Pixels was developed by Spooky Squid Games.

For $9.99 They Bleed Pixels will eviscerate your eternal soul and then serve it up in offering to the Great Old Ones in the making of this review.

They Bleed Pixels is available on Steam.

Filed under PC Reviews Tagged with , , , , ,

PlayStation 4 is The One

June 10, 2013 by 14 Comments

“What are you going to do when XBLIG is gone?”  I’ve been getting this since the start of the year.  It’s something I’ve thought about myself.  I figured the obvious answer was “I’ll be doing everything!”  I’ve always owned the full slate of consoles and handhelds, and indies are hot right now.  Not just hot, but courting indies makes sound economic sense.  They assume all the costs of development.  They put in all the R&D.  The console manufactures just take a royalty off the top and that’s it.  Easy money.  Indies also serve other important functions.  They prepare a new generation of super-star game developers.  Today’s indies will create tomorrow’s triple-A titles.  Indies provide content during off-peak months, which is the very thing that got Indie Gamer Chick started in the first place.  They also provide much-needed content that is not on-trend, assuring that a platform has something for everybody.  They take the risks that major studios can’t (even if they want to), because they have to be fiscally responsible to employees and shareholders.  Indies have no such limitations.

In short, indies are now necessary to a platform’s health.

Whether anyone believes it or not, representatives from all three major console developers have a fondness for indies and a desire to shine the spotlight on them.  They understand the drive to create and the need for creative freedom.  They also know that it just makes sound business sense.

Xbox One, named as such because it weighs one stone.

Xbox One, named as such because it weighs one stone.

Some out there will probably argue against this.  “No, Microsoft couldn’t possibly care less about indies.  Nintendo too.”  Um, no.  You’re just wrong.  Maybe their corporate policies don’t always reflect it, but people who love indies do hold key positions at these companies.  If you can’t grasp that, you should probably just stop reading now.

Indies will factor into the Xbox One.  More than just Minecraft too.  Whether Microsoft has said anything yet or not, that’s irrelevant to whether indies will exist on the platform, or whether it ever allows for self publishing.  They know the economics of it.  Trust me, I’ve spent my entire adult life in business.  When Microsoft had to cut million-dollar checks to a couple of XBLIG developers, it made ripples in Redmond.  I can’t fathom it being otherwise.  If it’s not true, then they have problems beyond my scope of comprehension.

Nintendo is on board too.  I know they’re taking indies seriously.  They’ve eased off of some pretty silly policies.  Stuff like only allowing for development on their platforms if you make the games in a dedicated office that has a lock.  Yes, because industrial espionage is what’s going to bring about the downfall of Nintendo.  Not the fact that, you know, they haven’t released a first-party game since launch.  But Nintendo has thrown that rule in the trash.  Not only that, but they’re openly courting indies.  They’re opening up their platforms for self-publishing.  They’re attempting to give indie developers a platform to not only exist on, but profit on.  I’ve been hard on Nintendo here, but they’ve earned my respect in this regard.  Nintendo’s tent has room for indies.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but the Wii U's console is actually the nicest looking one of this generation. The Gamepad? Not so much.

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but the Wii U’s console is actually the nicest looking one of this generation. The Gamepad? Not so much.

I’ve never understood the whole “this console is my team” mentality of gamers.  I get it when it’s done among children.  Mommy and daddy only buy Junior one console, and that console becomes his team.  He cheers his team on and boos his team’s opponents.  But for adults who can choose their own consoles, and presumably own more than one, it just baffles me.  Now while I’ve certainly made it clear what console I think is posed to be the most successful, that shouldn’t be mistaken for them being “my team.”  I don’t have a team.  I have three consoles that will each provide me with a vastly different experience.  I’m excited for my future as a gamer, because gaming just keeps getting better and better.  Today, Microsoft and Sony both showed me games that will dominate my free time and drain my wallet, and I expect more of the same tomorrow from Nintendo.  I’m only Indie Gamer Chick on here.  I’m Cathy at all other times, and Cathy has three shiny new consoles to make her imagination run wild.

But, for Indie Gamer Chick, the choice is clear.

PlayStation 4 is the one.

It’s Sony who has told indies “we want you.”  They’ve said it publicly.  They’ve said it clearly.  They’ve given the sentimentality that you’re part of our family, not a party crasher.  For Nintendo, they were too slow to woo.  Before that?  They treated indies like a house guest that you welcome into your home but then follow around like you’re afraid they’re going to steal something.

And Microsoft?  They deserve a tip of the hat for creating the first self-publishing platform on a major console.  But XBLIGs were the black sheep from day one and Microsoft did nothing to alleviate that.  They were something that just sort of was allowed to be there, like a child whose parents force him to invite the freckled kid with the bad body odor to his birthday party.  I’m not saying the games should have been promoted to the determent of titles from major third parties.  Anyone who believes that is delusional.  I’m saying that Microsoft showed total disregard for the platform they created for indies, and they’ve given no reason to believe they’ll be any better this next generation.  And hell, that’s not including their treatment of those lucky developers who got a game published on Xbox Live Arcade.  Just ask the guys behind Fez.  I do fundamentally understand Microsoft’s want for glitch-free games on their platform, but modern game development is a complex thing.  The best, most-well funded developers on the planet struggle with debugging.  Patching of games is now simply part of game production.  Doing so shouldn’t put smaller producers in fiscal danger.  Spin it any way you like.  It’s just plain morally wrong.

Comment of the day from Twitter: "It looks like an italicized Xbox One." It really does.

Comment of the day from Twitter: “It looks like an italicized Xbox One.” It really does.

Indies will always be more dominant on the PC scene, and newcomers like Ouya (which yes, will be covered soon at Indie Gamer Chick) are arriving and openly courting the development community.  They’ll all have a place at Indie Gamer Chick.  I’ve already had a little coverage of Wii U games, and trust me, more is on the way.  Xbox One’s indie scene, no matter what form it takes, will be a part of this site.  My new writers Jerry and Kalle will cover those platforms I don’t.  And, until someone turns the lights out, Xbox Live Indie Games will be featured here, and prominently at that.

But for the next generation, PlayStation 4 is it.  It will be the primary focus of my site, the same way XBLIGs have been for the last two years.  Why?  Well, it has nothing to do with the focus on non-gaming applications.  Hey, I use those too!  It has nothing to do with the used game stuff.  I’ve planned on taking a no-plastic, all-digital pledge for this generation anyway.  It has nothing to do with Kinect because.. well actually I hate Kinect, but it still doesn’t factor in.  It’s because this is the platform I feel indies are most positioned to thrive on.  Where their creativity will be nurtured, their passion will be unchained, and most importantly, where they have the best chance of making something of themselves.  For two years, the indie game development community has been incredible to me.  You guys have changed my life like you can’t believe.  I might be harsh on your games sometimes, but I’m always hopeful of your success and proud of you when you’re triumphant.  I want what’s best for you.  I’m going with PlayStation 4, because that’s where your best chances are.  But, no matter what platform you develop for, the Golden Age of indies is about to dawn, and I’ve never been more excited.

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , ,

Mount Your Friends

June 9, 2013 by 13 Comments

Update: Mount Your Friends received a Second Chance with the Chick. Click here for my updated thoughts. Consider this review to be for the XBLIG version and the Second Chance to be for the Steam version.

Okay, so the name is as absurd and juvenile as a title can possibly get.  But, we are talking about a game by Daniel Steger here.  His previous hits include a game called Baby Maker Extreme (the ninth all-time selling XBLIG), This is Hard, and Blow Me Up.  But the really weird part is, his games tend to be pretty decent.  Blow Me Up and Lots of Guns both are Chick Approved and ranked on my Leaderboard.  And now we have this, a game about building a human pyramid.  In keeping with Steg’s tendency towards gratuitousness, it features Team Ninja-like jiggle physics.. for penises.  This is a game tailor-made to generate scorn and ridicule from the XBLIG scene.

It’s also Daniel Steger’s best game by far.

Schwing!

Schwing!

This is exactly the type of weird, experimental game that I had in mind when I started Indie Gamer Chick.  Okay, maybe I didn’t picture those games having dicks that behave like bobbleheads.  But I figured I would play a lot of games unlike anything I’ve seen before.  Mount Your Friends does that.  It’s like a video game version of the popular Catalonian pastime known as Castell.  In other words, people climbing on each other to build the tallest human-building they can make.  Only here, there’s no worries about the laws of physics or structural integrity.

The way you go about moving at first seemed like it would be overly complicated.  Each limb is controlled by a separate button.  You move one limb at a time, with limbs automatically clinging to the bodies already placed.  Each turn, you must climb higher than the highest body on the stack.  Once you’ve above the line, you can press start to end the turn and start from the bottom with a new body.  In the normal mode, you have 60 seconds to get above the line.  It sounds dull, but it can be exhilarating.  Especially when time is running short.  There were multiple situations where the timer was nearing zero and I just barely got my hand over the line.  This always resulted in hooting and hollering.  Well, just from me, while my friends told me to sit down and shut up.  But hey, I was excited!

Simpsons already did it!

Simpsons already did it!

Where Mount Your Friends really shines is in the multiplayer mode.  Here, each player takes a turn trying to cross the bar at the highest point in the stack.  Play continues until one player can’t make it to the top in the time limit.  I’m shocked to say this, but this is one of the best multiplayer experiences to ever hit XBLIG.  It even has online play that went off without a hitch.  My biggest overall complaints relate to the movement physics.  Flinging yourself instead of moving one hand at a time feels loose in terms of gravity and imprecise.  I also had issues keeping limbs I didn’t want to use from going limp and getting stuck to one of the guys on the stack.  I mean, wait, probably shouldn’t use the term limp in relation to this game.  I mean they had trouble staying stiff.  NO, erect.  NO!  God damn, this is tough to write about.

Okay, so the Mount Your Friends might be embarrassing to pull out to show friends and.. FUCK!!  See what I mean?

Stegs, I fucking hate you.  You make this really awesome game that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen or played before, but it’s almost impossible to describe without receiving an awkward stare.  You know what?  I don’t care.  Mount Your Friends is fun, plain and simple.  It’s not very deep.  The best concepts rarely are.  But you simply have to try it, because there’s nothing else like it.  I’m not the most athletic person in the world, and I’m afraid of heights, so this is probably the closest I can come to climbing a rock wall.  Well actually, this is probably more like one of those walls where you hold a peg in each hand.

Don’t do that Cathy.  Just don’t give him any more ideas.  He’s incorrigible enough as is.

When I first saw the cover art and heard the name, I figured it was going to be a professional wrestling game.

When I first saw the cover art and heard the name, I figured it was going to be a professional wrestling game.

IGC_Approved

Mount Your Friends was developed by Stegersaurus Games
Point of Sale: Xbox Live Indie Games – Steam

$1 (Steam version $3.99) asked if you heard the one about three guys laying in the same bed? They wake up in the morning and the guy on the left says “I had the best dream! I dreamed I was getting a wonderful handjob!” The guy on the right says “that’s weird, *I* dreamed *I* was getting a wonderful handjob!” The guy in the middle goes “I dreamed I was skiing!” in the making of this review.

Mount Your Friends is Chick Approved and mounted on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

A review copy of Mount Your Friends was provided to Indie Gamer Chick to test online functions.  The copy purchased by Cathy was paid for by her with her own money.  The review copy was given to a friend to test out online components.  The person receiving it had no feedback in this review.  For more on this policy, consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

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

Hop Til You Drop (Second Chance with the Chick)

June 7, 2013 by Leave a comment

I wasn’t very nice to Hop Til You Drop when I briefly covered it a couple of weeks ago.  It’s a twitchy single-screen punisher that involves dodging random hazards the game spits at you.  I immediately grasped what the game’s schtick would be and thought “this could be addictive.”  But then I died and found out that replaying the game meant going through a seemingly endless series of menus.  After just a couple more plays, I decided my time would better be spent brow beating the developer for being such a dummy.  My hopes were that he would fix his game.  He did.  Good thing too, because SWAT was closing in on my house.  I admit, taking his family hostage might have been going too far, but at Indie Gamer Chick, we like to take that extra step towards improving the game industry.

None of these screens will make sense. Just look at Aaron the Splazer's video at the end of this review.

None of these screens will make sense. Just look at Aaron the Splazer’s video at the end of this review.

A lot of developers seem to take my advice on aspects of game design, which I have to say is more fucking cool than you can imagine.  But a lot of the advice I give them is stuff that they should have come up with on their own.  In that spirit, I’m going to offer makers of punishers the biggest no-brainer advice you’ll ever get.

Make your game addictive.

Sure, addictive gameplay varies from person to person.  But there are steps you can take to maximum the potency of a game’s addictive potential.  It all boils down to the speed and downtime.  If you’re making a game where players will die a lot, keep the time between death and rebirth at a minimum.  Look at some of the most successful punishers in recent years.  In Super Meat Boy, when you die, BAM, you’re back to life.  It’s a game that could offer a lot of frustration, but because the game skips theatrics and bullshit in favor of gameplay, you don’t notice it.  Who has time to be frustrated when that giant saw you’ve been trying to jump over for the last ten minutes is right fucking there?  Spelunky did this too.  When you die in it, restarting the game is done with a single button press.  The lack of downtime is what gives those games their hypnotic “just one more try” quality.

Now imagine if Super Meat Boy’s failures resulted in theatrical death animations followed by a menu.  It would have been relegated to gaming purgatory.  Nobody would remember it today.  Super Meat Boy is famous for many things.  It’s art style, historical gaming references, and challenge.  But its success probably hinged on how accessible it was.  It’s a game that wanted to be played, and so it cut the bullshit out.  Gameplay was continuous with minimal interruptions.  This is something all punishers should have.  And yet it’s among the most common things bad punishers have wrong with them.  I know you guys have all played these games.  So how do you miss such an obvious thing?  It’s not about the insane challenge.  It never was.  Those games succeeded because they were addictive.  When a person can lose time to a game and not realize it, that’s a game that is more likely to spread by word-of-mouth.

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In a way, it sucks that I won’t have Hop Til You Drop to point to as the poster child for that particular problem.  But I’m happy this simple problem was fixed.  Now, the game is genuinely fun.  Controls might be a bit too loose, and sometimes the random traps are just plain not fair.  The biggest problem by far with Hop Til You Drop is that it’s on the wrong platform.  It’s the perfect micro-session game, suited more for playing on Vita via PlayStation Mobile.  Because it requires precision movement, I wouldn’t want to play it on a touch device like iPhone.  But on Vita?  This would be the perfect game to bust out on a break.  It doesn’t lend itself well to extended play sessions, which is what a platform like XBLIG is better suited for.

But fun is fun, and Hop Til You Drop is fun.  There’s even a couple nifty new additions like bullet-time effects that kick in when you have a close call with an enemy.  Or a moderately amusing time attack mode.  So I do recommend Hop Til You Drop.  It won’t have a lasting effect on you.  Without online leaderboards, there won’t be a lot to keep you coming back.  But it’s a worthy waste of a dollar and probably fifteen to thirty minutes on your Xbox.  Congratulations go out to Chris Outen for saving his game.  By the way, your mother’s pinky finger should arrive by Fed-Ex tomorrow.

xboxboxartHop Til You Drop was developed by Chris Outen

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points said this game was one “S” away from being a video game version of a gameshow I watched as a kid in the making of this review.  Though I usually only watched it because I was too lazy to change the channel after Supermarket Sweep. 

Hop Til You Drop is Chick Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  On July 1, the Leaderboard will go multi-platform to include indies from all consoles and handhelds. 

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

Gunpoint

June 6, 2013 by 16 Comments

Gunpoint is a game that I’ve had a keen eye on for a few years now. Longtime PC Gamer scribe Tom Francis and his small team of five others, have been hard at work on this labor of video gaming love for three years. The videos and screenshots that have trickled out to the internet over those long years were tantalizing to say the least. The game footage itself reminded me of a mishmash of two old-school games that I was rather fond of: Epyx’s Impossible Mission and Mindscape’s Deja-Vu and, most of all, that footage left me in a frenzied state, as if I was a tubby knuckle-dragger with an empty sack of Cheetos…the scant footage left me wanting more, more, MORE!

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Guard + Spy + Crash Through Window = BIG FUN!

Typically, almost anything that I’ve been waiting on for this long never comes close to living up to my grandiose expectations. I’m quite happy (and utterly relieved) to report that Gunpoint is the exception rather than the rule here. Beyond one major, and two minor, quibbles this game is the bees fucking knees to be quite frank. The small, but detailed, graphics, the jazzy, noir-inspired music, the well-crafted storyline and puzzle based gameplay all comes together nicely to form a top-notch interactive entertainment experience.

Gunpoint weaves a fairly complex pulp/crime yarn that’ll keep you guessing until the bitter end. You are cast in the role of Richard Conway, a private dick in the fictional town of East Point. Richard is thrust into a proverbial “web of intrigue” that involves two of East Point’s biggest weapon manufacturers and, oddly enough, the East Point police department as well. The game’s narrative and dialogue mainly plays out via text messages, with various clients blowing up your phone with jobs, requests and updates. Francis’ skill as a writer shows through in these text messages, as there are many pithy exchanges that struck me as rather amusing.

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Witty repartee…check.

For each mission you complete, you are rewarded with cash and skill points. Cash allows you to buy new espionage items and skill points upgrade your jumping abilities and item/battery charges. Pretty standard stuff.

But, to unravel this intricate web of corporate lies, deceit and double talk, Richard has a plethora of spy gadgets at his disposal; the main two being the Crosslink and the Wirejack. You can almost complete the game using only these two items, as only the very last level requires you to buy two other gadgets. The Crosslink/Wirejack combination makes up the core gameplay mechanic of Gunpoint, and it is sublime in its implementation and usage. The potent Crosslink/Wirejack combo allows you to tap into and rewire a building’s various electronic devices (switches, lights, doors, motion detectors, etc.) to suit the needs of a top-notch reconnoiter such as yourself. A quick example of how this works would be: say you needed to get into a building, but all the first floor doors are locked tighter than some douchebag hipster’s drainpipe jeans.  You see on the second floor that there is a motion detector and a guard patrolling past that motion detector. Using the Crosslink, you quickly rewire the motion detector to the door, bypassing the hand panel activation of said door, and once the unsuspecting guard walks past the motion sensor again, viola’, the door springs open and you now have access to the building. Pretty damn cool, right? Let me tell you, that just scratches the surface of all the bad ass spy shenanigans you can get up to with the Crosslink system. You’ll find yourself scoping out the building layouts for exploits for a good ten minutes before you even take a step toward the building…at least, I know that’s how I played the majority of the later, more challenging, levels.

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Using the Crosslink system is intuitive and super sweet.

On to my issues with Gunpoint; they are few, as I mentioned, but important to note. First and foremost, I greatly dislike how this game fucks you over with your own firearm, called “The Resolver,” which is a wicked name but a total misnomer because it doesn’t “resolve” jack shit. In fact, it complicates things greatly. Maybe that’s point, as this is more of a “use your brains,” puzzle-type game, but these kinds of design decisions and/or limitations truly irk me.

You can obtain the gun fairly early on in the game but, beyond one instance at the very end of game, you cannot realistically use it to shoot anyone and complete the mission at hand. You can use your gun to intimidate most guards at “gunpoint” (get it?) and they will back down, but get too close and they will have absolutely no qualms in blowing your dumb ass away.

If you do discharge your weapon, a countdown starts (a little over 20 seconds) and you have that scant time to get the hell out of Dodge. If you don’t, a SUPER SNIPER appears and blocks your exit from the level. There is no way that I found to kill, or get past, the SUPER SNIPER because he can see as far as the Eye-of-Goddamn-Sauron and has the aim of fucking Legolas Greenleaf on a heavy dose of Ritalin. Now, maybe I could rationalize this bullshit if it only happened when you shot and killed a guard; you killed a person and you are being punished for that dastardly act. Fine. Still kind of crap, but OK, I get it. But no, no, no…the asshole SUPER SNIPER appears even when you shoot the walls or at nothing at all! Is the game mad at me because I killed the wall? Did the wall have a Mrs. Wall and three little wallings at home, so I should feel like a terrible person for shooting the stupid fucking wall?

Beyond the jokes, this is an issue with me because it limits the options you have while playing. There are sound based puzzles in the game and the first time I encountered a sound sensor, I figured I could use the gun to set it off since there were no guards around. BANG! I fire my gun and it triggers the sensor which, in turn, triggers the door I Crosslinked the sensor to. Easy peasey. But not so fast, my good man, because I had the temerity to discharge my gun into the wall, the SUPER SNIPER countdown begins. Why? If guard fires his gun, the SUPER SNIPER doesn’t appear. How does the SUPER SNIPER know the difference between the sound of my gun and their guns? He doesn’t. The game (and by extension it’s designer) is just trying to force you to play the way it/he wants you to…by using the clattering of the elevator to activate the sound sensor instead of a gun report.

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The gun play in Gunpoint leaves much to be desired…

To expand upon this SUPER SNIPER countdown nonsense, what if I want to play the game in a run-and-gun fashion? I’m a very direct person and that style of play suits me, much like Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, who memorably quipped: “I don’t wanna kill anybody. But if I gotta get out that door, and you’re standing in my way, one way or the other, you’re gettin’ outta my way.”  I guess Mr. Pink and I are shit out of luck because Gunpoint just won’t let us shoot someone who is standing in our way and complete our mission in a reasonable manner.

I had a similar issue with, Dishonored, another very cool game that punishes you unfairly for playing a certain way. Why make Corvo, the main character, an awesome-steampunk-whale-powered-ninja-man if you are going to shit all over me at the end of the game for actually using my awesome-steampunk-whale-powered-ninja-man powers? The same goes for Gunpoint: why even include a gun in the damn game if you are going to punish me for using it and, on top of that,  I can really only use it the way it’s meant to be used in one spot on the final level!?

The other two issues I have are minor, so I’ll address them as succinctly as possible because the length of this review is getting way out of hand.

  1. I beat Gunpoint in five hours, which included a good amount of “thinking” time (i.e. studying the layout of a building for the best possible route/plan of attack before even setting foot in said building). Put simply, I wanted more because I was enjoying myself a great deal here. But, five hours is still a bit too short, even for a $10 game. There is a level editor included with Gunpoint so, hopefully, I’ll be able to play other people’s uploaded levels in the not too distant future.
  2. I’m going to be honest here, beyond an FPS game, I dislike using mouse and keyboard controls. There are times in Gunpoint when this interface totally failed me. Also, Conway felt too “sticky” to me at times and he wouldn’t get off the wall or ceiling when I wanted/needed him to. This could be an extension of the mouse/keyboard control scheme, but I’m not sure. Maybe I just suck?

The overall coolness and playability of Gunpoint outweighs its flaws by a longshot, though. I’m really looking forward to what Tom Francis and his team come up with next. If you are any kind of gamer, this is a game you need to buy and play immediately. And, most of all, it is the very first INDIE GAMER GUY APPROVED title!

One final note, Gunpoint has another other cool, little feature that pops up at the end of the game and, quite honestly, I’ve never seen something like this implemented in a video game before. It lets you write a blog post in the “voice” of the main character, summing up your adventure, through various point and click options. I’ll share mine with you here:

A Case of Crossed Wires

24 dead. 18 injured. 20 jobs. $13,000. The week echoed in my mind like something that happened in the last week.

They don’t let me name names on this blog, but the person behind the hit I was investigating is dead now.

He played a dangerous game: insulting my hat.

I didn’t get the trigger man. It was the only play I could stomach. Wish I could say it was the right one.

I don’t know.

I guess I picked the least shitty of two incredibly shitty sides.

Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe all that matters is that I now have the ability to kick down doors.

Either way, I need a drink.

GunpointGunpoint was developed by Tom Francis

igg 2For $9.99 Gunpoint will throw you out of a 30-story high plate-glass window and leave your broken ass in the pouring rain in the making of this review.

Gunpoint is available on Steam

Gunpoint is Indie Gamer Guy Approved. It is the very first game to attain this lofty title and is ranked on the Indie Gamer Guy Leaderboard. Huzzah!

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Filed under PC Reviews Tagged with , , , , ,

CastleStorm

June 4, 2013 by 12 Comments

I’m always skeptical of a game that tries to mix multiple genres.  I picture they’re the product of a development meeting full of passive-aggressive types with no alpha-male to make the final decision.  “Let’s do a RTS!”  “No, a brawler!”  “No, shooter!”  “Tower defense!”  And then whoever is in charge just sheepishly says “whatever, just do them all.”  Often, those games turn out to be fairly mediocre.  Jack of all trades, master of jack shit, or something like that.  And thus with CastleStorm skepticism bells were ringing in my ears like someone had strapped me to a gong and smacked it with a wrecking ball.

Can you blame me?  It’s part tower defense, but you simultaneously call people to defend your castle while actively shooting the opposing enemies and their castle with a ballista, thus turning it into a gallery shooter.  But, sometimes you’ll have to take on enemy troops directly by calling your hero into play in a pseudo platformer-brawler.  Huh.  Plus, with the whole “knock over the enemy’s castle by flinging shit at it” angle, there’s a hint of Angry Birds in it as well.   And all this from a studio whose claim to fame is a few video pinball games?  I mean, I fucking adore pinball like you can’t imagine.  But pinball is about as relevant to gaming today as bloodletting is to modern medicine.  Not only that, but I had people on Twitter telling me they had played the demo and came away about as unimpressed from it as anyone could possibly be.  Thus I mentally prepared myself for a weekend of boredom.

Which happened.  When I watched Cloud Atlas.

Not when I played CastleStorm.  It was very fun.

screenlg9

Full disclosure: early Saturday morning, I suffered a moderately severe seizure that pretty much put me out of commission for the entire day.  It almost certainly had some influence on the rotten time I had playing CastleStorm online, which I’ll be getting to later.  But the seizure also means I “lost” about two full hours worth of play time that I simply can’t remember.  I am told I was having a good time during it though.

We downloaded our copies of CastleStorm on Friday night.  The first thing that impressed me was how a game with so many play styles could actually tie everything together in a quick-to-learn package.  It never feels like there’s too much to juggle.  That’s the most common problem with these smörgåsbord games.  So without falling into that trap, it should be clear sailing, right?

Well, not quiet.  But the single player game is hugely satisfying with a wide variety of objectives and really snappy writing.  There’s also a huge assortment of weapons, spells, and bonus rooms for your customizable castle that can be upgraded.  Oh, did you say upgrade system?  You mean that thing I’m known to abuse?  Did I abuse it?  You bet your sweet ass I did.  One level involves “a frenzy” in which weapons don’t have a cool down time.  Here, I set the difficulty to hard, upgraded my Sheep (which acts like the yellow bird in Angry Birds) to its max level, and ended up clearing out the level in six-seconds a turn.  I just replayed it doing this for about an hour.  By time I was done, every weapon, spell, soldier, and room was fully upgraded.  Yea for abuse!  I then steamrolled the remaining game.  Well, until it forced me to switch over from knights to vikings.

D’oh.

In retrospect I probably should have seen that coming.

It doesn’t matter.  I still had a great time.  I haven’t actually finished the Vikings section yet.  I got my $10 worth just from the first half of the game.  Oh, I will totally finish the Vikings stuff at some point.  But I plan on saving it for a time when I have nothing to do and I need an activity I know I’ll have fun with.  That would be CastleStorm.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good, but I do have some complaints.  The backgrounds are pretty noisy, with lots of stuff to distract you.  Mind you, the game is beautiful, but I found this stuff to sometimes annoy.  Now, that pesky epilepsy thing normally means I can’t touch stuff in 3D, but I figured those noisy backgrounds were so noisy because of the 3D stuff.  Things that look like they could be in the foreground probably look further back if you play in 3D mode.  But that’s not something I should risk.  So I enlisted Bryce (who received the review code so that he could help me test online stuff) and Brian (who mostly just sat and gave Bryce advice, even when he was playing *me*.  What an asshole, am I right?) to throw on the 3D glasses.  They were both immediately blown away, declaring it the best use of 3D they had seen ever, movies or games.  They raved about it so much that I threw the glasses on myself for a quick gander.  They were right.  It was absolutely stunning.  More so than, say, Life of Pi or Avatar on 3D Blu-ray.  Granted, because of my condition, I haven’t been privileged to experiment too much with my fancy-schmancy 3D television.  I only had the glasses on for about two minutes and I wish I could have done more.

It looks a little Angry Birdsish, but the structures in CastleStorm take more than a couple shots to take down.

It looks a little Angry Birdsish, but the structures in CastleStorm take more than a couple shots to take down.

Onto the multiplayer stuff.  This is where the seizure bit comes in.  We didn’t play too much of the single-player stuff before we got into the multiplayer.  Bryce and I played a few rounds against each-other and had a swell time.  Your stats and upgrades from single player don’t carry over to online play.  You get a starting budget that you can use to immediately upgrade some of your stuff.  It probably wasn’t a good idea to spend that budget before I knew what I was doing, because once you spend it, as best as I can tell there’s no option to start over from square one.  So I was committed to using shitty upgrades that can’t possibly help me beat people.  That mistake was on me, but the horrible online setup is entirely on the developer.

And then the seizure happened.  Completely unrelated to CastleStorm or any other game.  I just have them every few days or so.  This was a particularly nasty one that put me out of commission for basically the rest of the day.  By the time I was able to play again, Bryce had put upwards of 15 hours into CastleStorm and I couldn’t hope to be competitive with him again.  But finding online matches against people of my experience level wasn’t smooth either.  I was a level one.  The game mostly saw fit to pair me against someone who was a level 155.  That’s not a typo.  I’m not even sure how he got up that high.  The game just came out on Wednesday for fuck’s sake.  As it turns out, many people who were attempting to play on Live (including Bryce) would get stuck with this guy all weekend long.  It felt like that World of Warcraft episode of South Park.  The dude absolutely demolished me in, on average, 20 seconds or less.  Fun?  No.  Annoying?  Oh yea.  Even worse, I never had a chance to make a single coin during these battles, which meant I couldn’t upgrade my stats.  And even when it wasn’t pairing me up with Jenkins, I was way more likely to get paired up against guys thirty or more ranks higher than me than someone on my level.  That meant quick losses and little if any earned coins to upgrade my stuff.  It’s a terrible online system.  Borderline broken.

There’s also a cooperative survival mode, which is a little more promising.  The problem here is one person gets to have all the fun by being in control of the ballista.  The other person assumes the role of the hero.  In the main game and during the online battles, the hero is a spell you can cast that puts you directly onto the battlefield to hack and slash enemies for thirty seconds or so.  It’s fun.  For thirty seconds.  But Survival mode lasts longer than that, and the hero has a limited moveset.  He can swing his sword. He can jump.  He can use a bow and arrow, though it’s slow to use and tough to aim with.  Or, if you want to be fancy, he has a charge move.  That’s it.  It’s simply not a play style that lends itself well to extended sessions.  Of course, Bryce was having a good time.  Of course he was.  He got to shoot things.  And trust me, no matter what mode you’re playing with, the ballista is hugely entertaining to use, and scoring headshots with it is extremely satisfying.  So he had all the fun while I got his sloppy seconds.

The game zooms in when you play as the hero. For what its worth, the controls of this mode are solid. It's just not very fun past the usual thirty seconds you normally use it.

The game zooms in when you play as the hero. For what its worth, the controls of this mode are solid. It’s just not very fun past the usual thirty seconds you normally use it.

I wish CastleStorm had some kind of casual online mode where two people can have the same attribute points.  Just have every weapon, character, room, and spell set to level 5 (out of 10).  I would play the shit out of that.  When the playing field is level, CastleStorm can be a great competitive game.  The problem is it’s next to impossible to find someone who isn’t going to throttle you in seconds.  As a result, games play out like a highlight reel of the Harlem Globetrotters versus Washington Generals, and you’re the Generals.

Regardless, CastleStorm is one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve had at Indie Gamer Chick in a while.  It doesn’t really do any one thing exceptionally well, but the sum of all parts is undeniably engrossing.  The online stuff isn’t so hot, but it wouldn’t take too much tinkering to get that right.  But really, the reason to own CastleStorm is the single player stuff.  It’s a fun quest, with a robust upgrade system.  If you’re into building things, the castle customization stuff is apparently well done and easy to handle.  I’m not into that kind of shit myself, but Brian took over for it and said it was intuitive and enjoyable.  I don’t know if I would have had more fun if I hadn’t lost my entire Saturday and thus my preferred playing partner, but I still highly recommend CastleStorm.  I went into it with my expectations set to “cautiously optimistic” and came away knowing that Zen Studios will never be known as just those pinball guys again.

Although I should probably mention that I absolutely LOATHED this level. See that big, mushroom-shaped mountain-thing? Yea. It actually blocks your shots. At first, I couldn't even tell it was in the foreground. I constantly vomited curse words that my father didn't even know I knew when stuck here, which is where most multiplayer matches seemed to be set in.

Although I should probably mention that I absolutely LOATHED this level. See that big, mushroom-shaped mountain-thing? Yea. It actually blocks your shots. At first, I couldn’t even tell it was in the foreground. I constantly vomited curse words that my father didn’t even know I knew when stuck here, which is where most multiplayer matches seemed to be set in.

Oh, and one last thing: CastleStorm?  Really?  That’s the best you guys could come up with?  CastleStorm sounds like something a sitcom writer would come up with on five seconds notice when they need the name of a fictional video game for the characters to be shopping for during the holiday episode.  The actual game is oozing personality, but the name screams generic and forgettable.  If it bombs in sales, it will be because of the name.  Then again, the studio is called Zen Studios.  Given how the frustrations of being paired with a guy 154 ranks higher than me induced a state of being in me that was anything but Zen like, I’m guessing their name is purely ironic.

boxartlgCastleStorm was developed by Zen Studios

IGC_Approved800 Microsoft Points thought all the banter in the game actually sounded very pinball-like in the making of this review. 

CastleStorm is Chick-Approved.  In the near future, all indie games on all platforms I review will be ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  If you must know, CastleStorm would fall somewhere in the 20s.

A review copy of CastleStorm was provided to Indie Gamer Chick to test online features.  The copy played by Cathy was paid for with her own money.  The review copy was given to a friend who had minimal feedback in this review.  For more on this policy, read this site’s FAQ.

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