Diamond Digger is the second game by Elemental Focus, the developer of former leaderboard occupant The Cannon. The cheeky British developer was one of the first developers to endorse my arrival on the Xbox Live Indie Game scene but who I hate hate hate hate hate for that fucking “You Saved the Cannon!” song that will never leave my head. Diamond Digger is a big departure from the Cannon, as this is a logic-puzzler CUNNILI.. oh right, I already used joke.
The idea is you’re given a grid of blocks with various diamonds scattered throughout it. Each block is assigned a numerical value. If a block that is positioned directly above another block that is exactly one number higher in value, it will break that block and drop down. Diamonds are given a value of 1, and the object is to drop all the diamonds completely out of the grid. You can only move blocks by shoving an entire row one space to the left or one space to the right, and only if the move will result in a block being broken. You have to restart the puzzle if you run out of moves.
Sigh. Nobody said there would be math.
If that sounds boring, well, it is. I actually nodded off for a couple of minutes writing that description. I swear, I’m not kidding about that. I can’t really put my finger on why Diamond Digger didn’t gel with me, but I’m weird like that with puzzle games. I got into Blockt, which was about as exciting as watching wet cement dry, and yet Diamond Digger took on a chore-like quality after only a couple of minutes. It has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of the game. They work perfectly fine, even if I seemed to solve some stages by total luck, and others in ways I’m almost certain the developer did not have in mind. I used to be amused by those kind of situations, but now I find them a bit annoying. It would be like a mystery book ending with the butler being the killer, even when there was no butler in the book.
The developer did try to change things up by adding some effect blocks. Dynamite blows up an area of blocks the first time it’s moved. Lava destroys a whole vertical column of blocks. Whiskers the Magic Game Saving Tabby deletes all the blocks and replaces them with The Cannon so that you can actually have fun, or maybe that was just a daydream.
No relation to Mrs. Flufferstein
Honestly, the gimmick blocks really don’t add anything to the game. I played through the forty puzzles and felt nothing at all. No sense of satisfaction. No sense of accomplishment. Nothing. I don’t know whether or not you will like Diamond Digger. The game works, so I can’t really complain about it in any way. I guess the best way to describe it is functional but dull. But puzzle games invoke different reactions in different people. I loved Pixel Blocked but some people found it to be a snoozer. I’ve had a lot of people tell me they think Blocks That Matter is overrated too. So maybe this game will be the opposite, where I thought it was a sleeping pill but others will think swear it’s a masterpiece that opened their eyes to the genre. I wouldn’t bet on it though. Quite frankly, if this game opens anyone’s eyes it would probably be the result of a reverse-coma.
By the way, sorry this review sucked. I’ve been sitting on this game for five days, waiting for inspiration to strike. But it never came, like a old man who had his Viagra switched with NyQuil.
Nope. The name doesn’t work. It doesn’t sound like a video game. It sounds like a breakfast cereal, and a bland one at that. The type that you would need to add copious amounts of sugar to just to choke down. When you can name your game anything that your imagination can come up with and Brand is the best you can do, what does that say about the developer? It’s not one of those catchy one-word names that you can get away with, like Halo or Infamous. Brand. Seriously, the name of the game is Brand. What were they thinking?
“Brand thought Braid” says Brian. Excuse me while I untie my tongue.
Brand is a hack-and-slash platformer where you try to upgrade your starting sword to make it “fit for a king.” Once you’ve done this fifteen times (or sixteen, whatever) you move on to a final battle. There are nine ways to upgrade the sword, and you can do each upgrade up to five times. To get an upgrade, you select what one you’re going for, and then you’re sent off on a fetch-quest in one of three locations. Once you’ve met the terms of the quest, you open up an exit portal and wait five seconds, then return to the shop and activate it.
It sounds like a solid idea, and if it worked it would have been fun. But it doesn’t work. I put eight hours into Brand yesterday and I can honestly say it’s one of the worst games I’ve played on Xbox Live Indie Games. Wholly and entirely without any redeeming value whatsoever.
Let’s start with the first thing people talk about with Brand: the graphics. They seem really good. Certainly a couple notches above what people expect from an XBLIG. But really, what do those good graphics get you? In Brand, there’s only four enemy types. Those four creatures are the same in every one of the three levels. Nine Dots Studio didn’t even bother re-skinning the enemies to match the theme of each stage. Variety is achieved through palette-swapping, with the stronger enemies usually signified by darker colors, resulting in the characters lacking distinguishing features. The spitting frog-monster thingies are particularly pitiful in design. It looks like someone just vomited out a puddle of sprites on a screen and said “good enough!” If it seems petty of me to call out one creature type, I’ll remind you that creature represents 25% of the monsters you fight. Great graphics? Not when the character design is that bad.
Oooh, pretty! I can't make out anything, but damn!
Ironically, it’s the backgrounds that stand out the most. They’re rendered beautifully and would work at setting the mood for the title. They would, if they didn’t come with a tradeoff in performance. The game has major issues with lag. Especially the Castle, which scrolls very jerkily, like a first-generation Playstation 1 game. These also are probably the contributing factor in the brutal load times throughout the game. I actually used a stopwatch to time them. It takes 52.2 seconds for the Mine stage to load. If you die in the level and want to restart, the total time it will take is a 1 minute, 16 seconds. For a 2D side-scrolling indie game. The other two levels are worse, both taking over a minute to load, and about a minute and-a-half to reload if you die. It’s not unlikely you’ll spend over an hour waiting for stuff to load up, in a game that should only take a couple of hours to beat. It’s outrageous.
Once you’re actually playing the game, things go downhill quickly. Combat is relatively simple: X is weak attack, Y is strong attack, B you’ll never ever ever ever ever ever use (it’s a useless dash attack) and A jumps. Allegedly there are combos, but you’re not told what they are and I couldn’t figure out how to activate any. The one or two times I thought I had done one, they didn’t really do any damage so I didn’t bother experimenting further.
Not doing any damage to baddies was a recurring theme throughout Brand. Of the fifteen (or sixteen, whatever) upgrades you have to do, I “refined” my sword four times and strengthened it three times. I also gave it the ability to poison, I made it so a magical light sword thingie would poke out my back allowing me to fight creatures behind me, and I added a fire wave to it and upgraded that a couple of times. The end result? The starter enemies might die in one hit, but everything else remained damage sponges. Mind you, the entire game is about upgrading your offense. There’s no defensive upgrades at all. Yet, even once I had done the fifteen (or sixteen, whatever) upgrades and was dumped into the final stage, I felt like I had made no progress. My dude was still a total pussy and my sword couldn’t cut butter.
Part of it seems to be a result of the game just ignoring your actions. Direct combat seems to work best, in that about half of your attacks will result in damage. On the other hand, the upgraded effects do not want to work at all and will fight you every step of the way. As I noted, I got the fire sword thingie and then upgraded it once. I then watched as I would send a colossal wave of fire at an enemy and have it pass right through him, doing no damage at all. I know it didn’t because the enemy didn’t do it’s damage-indication flash. I wish I could say this was an uncommon occurrence, but actually it got so bad that I started keeping count of how many attacks a single enemy could fail to take. Around three seemed about average. Ten wasn’t all that rare. The most was this one mid-level wasp that was all alone in a normal room with no walls, barriers, or anything else in the way. I was swinging the sword close enough that in theory the sword itself would do damage, but if that failed the fire would get it as the wasp was dead center in the wave. Total swings before it registered damage for the first time? Twenty-fucking-two times.
In order: useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, and useless.
Again, there’s no defensive upgrades in the game. Well, there is one. It makes it so you damage a creature you block. Sounds great! Sure, the block doesn’t even work on anything past entry-level enemies, but at least you’ll be dealing them damage back! Yea, about that. If you get this upgrade and use it too much, it kills you. No really, you die from it. And once you have it, you can’t turn it off. Thus, you’ll be unable to defend yourself throughout levels for the rest of the game. Given the fact that harder enemies attack faster, cause more damage, and gang up on you, you’re already screwed without the block “upgrade.” With it, you might as well take your sword and commit Seppuku. Although if you could actually do that, it would probably take the game five or six tries before registering it. You can’t increase your lifebar, armor, speed, or jumping ability. I guess Brand wanted to prove that a good defense is a strong offense. It’s too bad a strong offense is not an option.
Once you’ve made the last upgrades to your character, you enter the final stage. Hopefully your sword will be strong enough -snicker- because you’re entering the arena. You know those stages in Zelda games where you fall down a hole and then you have to fight every single enemy in the game? Yea, that’s what this is. You fight a wave of ten or so guys off, all attacking your literally defenseless ass all at once. If you kill them, a door unlocks, you fall down a hole, and you repeat the process. There’s no situational health refills. It seems like one random enemy in each stage will restore a sliver of your bar, so naturally it was always the first enemy I killed each time. Hell, I can’t say with 100% certainty that there is a random enemy giving away a teeny tiny scrap of health each floor. I cleared whole rooms out and was always left with a micro-fraction of health left. I tried beating this for an hour yesterday and another thirty minutes today, never actually making it past the fourth wave. Perhaps I didn’t upgrade my sword correctly.
Yes, Brand has avatar support. No, I have no fucking clue why this was added instead of fixing the game.
Apparently there is some kind of boss monster at the end of it. I never found out for myself. The thing is, I’m guessing that the giant scorpion-dog thingies that were scattered throughout the normal stages are in the Arena and I just hadn’t reached them yet. If they are, I want to go on the record of saying the game is probably impossible. I encountered several of those fucking things throughout the game and I only managed to kill one. They have four attacks, three of which are maybe-unblockable quick strikes that drain your health faster than smoking the exhaust pipe of a bus. If you manage to get close enough to start swinging, they take dozens of shots before they die. The mere threat of them was enough to make me realize playing the arena wasn’t worth it, because unless the game ends with you shoving the sword through the throat of the king, then deleting Brand from your hard drive and replacing it with a better game, it’s just not worth the effort.
I could go on about the play control (meh) or the jumping (bleech) or the fact that the price of Brand is going to be raised to 240MSP in 90 days (a proclamation so fucking arrogant the developer ought to be flogged just for thinking about it) but I think I’ve said enough. If anything I’ve said about this game sounds like something you want to play, have at it, you fucking weirdo. I’ll close by going back to the graphics, because once again the usual gang of idiots are saying “it’s worth it just for the graphics!” Quite frankly, I don’t think the graphics are that good. But let’s say they were. I think saying gameplay doesn’t matter if the art is good is kind of a hypocritical stance from a community that complains about everything done by guys like Silver Dollar who phone-in nearly every title they release. How come it’s not okay for them to release busted, broken games with limited play mechanics, but a game like Brand can be nearly unplayable and still get you XBLIGers to stock up on tissues and baby lotion? I don’t get it. It would be like only being able to enter the Louvre if the curator gets to cockslap you across the face while the janitor shoves his mop up your ass.
It’s been exactly six months since I first reviewed Pixel Blocked! I thought it was essentially the basis of a good puzzle game that was in dire need of some tender loving care. Well, developer Daniel Truong took that to heart. He started taking it out to fancy restaurants and spas, writing it mushy love letters, and buying it expensive shiny jewelry. And then I said “no you idiot, I meant fix the fucking problems with it.” “Oh” responded Danny.
Just so I’m clear, I really liked Pixel Blocked the first time around. Hell, it was an original occupant on the leaderboard here. But I couldn’t ignore the numerous design flaws that held it back. Patches were promised and Danny went back to the drawing board. How did he do? Well, let’s take a look.
Graphics are nice and spiced up, but fuck graphics. This chick only cares about game play.
Original Problem: The reward system was broken due to way out-of-bounds minimum requirements.
Current Build: The reward system has been drastically overhauled. Now you’re scored on the classic Gold-Silver-Bronze system. Having said that, getting a gold on the time attack mode is still a total bitch. Pixel Blocked is a logic puzzler, so the speed fits in like Colonel Sanders taking a job at Weight Watchers.
Original Problem: The game was too easy on account of having missiles at your disposal to clear away bad shots.
Current Build: There are no missiles. At all. And this works just fine for me, because if they had been around I wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to use them. When it came to them, I was like an alcoholic whose only hope for salvation is removing every outlet of liquor from my entire life.
Consequently, now if you fuck up you do have to start the whole puzzle over again. How do you know if you’ve fucked up? It’s simple: any time you make a wrong move, the game makes a sarcastic quip at you followed by the words PIXEL BLOCKED! It’s actually pretty motivational. I only wish there had been a wider variety of quips, or maybe the ability to customize them. I think I would have taken my time and not fucked up as much if the game told me “Wow, you’re getting dumber Cathy. Also, you’re putting on weight and your hair is ugly. PIXEL BLOCKED!”
“Wow, what an amazing fuck-up you are. PIXEL BLOCKED!”
Original Problem: The cursor had visibility issues.
Current Build: You can see it.
Original Problem: If you rotated the board after firing a shot, it would result in misfires as the blocks traveled too slowly.
Current Build: This got fixed too, so a block will go exactly where you meant it to go whether you rotate the board or not.
So as you can see, every major complaint about Pixel Blocked has been fixed. The result is a game that has completely shed its indie feel. Pixel Blocked plays like a polished title by a major studio. It makes me wonder if Mr. Truong isn’t essentially slumming-it by keeping this title on Xbox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone. Pixel Blocked is a game that’s ready for prime time. Sure, taking away the missiles left me gibbering in the corner and possibly in need of an intervention, but that’s fine. Once I got over my dependency I took the game in stride and was able to have an even better time. I never thought a game would fall off the leaderboard and then manage to climb back on, but Pixel Blocked has done that, so come back to Indie Gamer Chick on February 1. What are you waiting for? You should grab it now before Danny is turning tricks for Nintendo, learning first hand how the concept for Kirby came about.
80 Microsoft Points said “also your eyes are too close together and you smell a cross between a chimpanzee and a bucket of sweat, PIXEL BLOCKED!” in the making of this review.
And so we conclude this ill-conceived theme week, but at least I’m playing a game that tries to ape something released in my lifetime. Out Run and Super Sprint both hit in 1986. At the time, I was too busy not existing to be a fan of those. On the other hand, Super Mario Kart was released in 1992, meaning I had been upgraded from non-existent to existent by way of parental fucking. Crudeness aside, my first gaming memory is playing Super Mario Kart with my friend Meagan at the ripe old age of around fourish, so the series has always held a special place in my cold little heart. It’s also probably why I’ve never cared too much for kart racing clones.
When I was a kid, I was a huge Crash Bandicoot fan, but I always thought his kart racers were kind of stupid. It was around this time that the word “generic” entered my vocabulary, because that pretty much describes every kart racer that doesn’t star Mario. I got a Nintendo 64 for my ninth birthday in July of 1998, along with Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing. I loved Mario Kart and absolutely hated Diddy Kong Racing. It was so boring, and its cast of characters so cookie cutter. Who the FUCK was Tip Top the Turtle and why the fuck should I care about him? By the way, it was around this age that I first learned what soap tastes like.
I haven’t played a Mario Kart clone yet on XBLIG, but there are quite a few. Avatar Grand Prix 2 hit and I figured since I was going to do this silly race week shit, I might as well make it the grand finale. I had my expectations set a bit low, because the screenshots looked a little on the bland side and, well, it’s an avatar game. Those are usually underwhelming at best and skull-fuckingly horrible at worst. So it surprises me to say this and you should be surprised to hear that Avatar Grand Prix 2 is actually a pretty good game.
It doesn’t look like much in screen shots, but the graphics of Avatar Grand Prix 2 are pretty solid.
Obviously the idea is “it’s like Mario Kart, but it has your Xbox avatar” and that creates a possible problem right off the bat. There is a time-honored tradition in racing games. There’s the fast cars with the shitty acceleration. There’s the slow cars that handle the best. And there’s the middle car that’s average in every category. That gets chucked in the dumpster here. There’s no karts to select from, so everyone has equal footing. On one hand, I kind of see the advantage of that. You won’t have four people fighting over who gets to be Wario, because we all know that Wario is the shits. On the other hand, not having a kart with stats that cater to your skills as a gamer kind of blows.
Thankfully the handling is pretty decent. Well, most of the time. Avatar Grand Prix 2 is easy enough that it has a good pick-up-and-play quality about it. The accelerator is mapped to the right trigger, and breaking/drifting is set to the left one. The learning curve for this is fairly small, so you should be able to easily handle corners. I figured since most Xbox Live Indie Games put as much stock in good play control as the village whore puts in monogamy, the game would handle like shit. I was proven wrong. And then I crashed into a wall for the first time. This was immediately followed by me bouncing off that wall into the opposite wall. What started as a game of kart racing turned into a game of Pong with me as the ball.
Playing through the game on the 50cc setting, this wasn’t a huge problem. No, it became a huge problem once I started using the higher speed classes. On 150cc, the game is significantly faster, and cornering becomes more of a reflex tester. Hitting a wall on this setting was akin to hitting a bumper in pinball. My kart was suddenly getting bounced from left to right for nearly the length of a full lap before I was able to correct myself. And by the time I did, I was usually primed to hit another wall and watch the walls go all Venus Williams on my ass again. It wasn’t just me either, because both Brian’s roomie Bryce and some random dude online were having problems with the walls as well.
There’s twelve tracks, each with four possible variations. For the most part, they’re well designed and the variety present is pretty good. However, they are way too short. Without exaggeration, you can complete three laps on some courses in just over twenty seconds. The longest any three-lap race took me was about a minute-and-a-half, which is ridiculously short. I would have way preferred less tracks that were more substantial in length. In the single-player grand prix mode, races only have three laps, plus one “qualifying lap” which feels out-of-place, especially when it can begin and end faster than it takes to finish taking a piss.
Once you go online, the options pick up quite a bit. Races can last as much as 50 laps, which will still only take you about five to ten minutes, depending on what track you select. Regardless, kart racing is always fun with more people and Avatar Grand Prix 2 is no exception. I do wish the weapon selection was better. Some of the items are downright worthless, like one that makes you invisible to other drivers. In theory, that would be a good thing. The problem is, it also makes your kart invisible to you. Sure, the camera still centers on your kart, but not being able to see exactly where you are is not a good thing. There’s also a force-field weapon that Bryce used while I was right on his tail. It resulted in my kart being propelled way out in front of his, giving me the win for that track. Not helpful for Bryce, but hilariously awesome for me. Of course, if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would probably be getting booked on murder charges by now.
A few other glitches reared their ugly head. The worst one caused myself, Bryce, and other players to be signed out of Xbox Live. It happened to me more than once, and I would have to quit out of the game and sign back in for online features to work. There were also instances of us getting stuck in the walls, which actually proved to be more annoying than the whole bouncy thing.
So yes, I have a lot of bad things to say about Avatar Grand Prix 2. But I say them out of love, because I had a really good time playing it. For all it’s faults, a lot fun can be had with AGP2. Sure, it needs some patchwork to get rid of the wall recoil and a few other niggling little annoyances, but mechanics here are really solid. I’ve played a lot of crappy Mario Kart clones over the years, and screenshots of this were enough to set off alarms. My worries were unfounded, and Avatar Grand Prix 2 is worth your money. Thus concludes race week at Indie Gamer Chick. If I ever talk about doing something like this again, you have my permission to spray saline in my mouth, tie a fork in it, and then shove me into a wall socket.
80 Microsoft Points has never seen anyone actually pick Luigi in any Mario Kart game in the making of this review.
A review copy of Avatar Grand Prix 2 was provided by Battenberg Software to Indie Gamer Chick. The copy played by Kairi was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points. The review code was given to someone else to provide her with a proper online experience. That person was not involved at all in the writing or editing of this review. For more information on this policy, please consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.
Update: Magic Racing GP 2 is now 80 Microsoft Points.
Well, this was quite stupid of me. Three racing games recently hit Xbox Live Indie Games, so I said “Hey, I’ll do a racing theme week! Sure, I don’t normally play racing games, or at least ones that don’t involve throwing turtle shells at other drivers, but that’s the point of my site!” It seemed like a good idea, especially after I had such an easy time doing a review for Ocean Drive Challenge. The next game on the list was Magic Racing GP 2, which looked like little more than a glorified Super Sprint clone. How hard could it possibly be to write about?
Having spent the last hour cowering in the fetal position, mumbling to myself “I don’t understand this at all” I guess the answer is pretty fucking hard.
Magic Racing GP 2 does have gameplay similar to Super Sprint or Super Off Road, but that’s where any resemblance ends. The developers were aiming for a more authentic simulation feel, and their dedication to this is admirable. First things first, if you’re not a Formula One fan, you might as well stop reading this right now. I feel like a party crasher because I’m clearly not someone who should be playing this particular type of game. It would be like asking a Hindu for proper ways to cook a steak.
Focusing on gameplay, I found MRGP2 to control pretty much just like the arcade ports of Super Sprint or Super Off Road that I played on the Midway Treasures series. The thing is, I could never handle those games, and I couldn’t handle Magic Racing GP 2 either. At least at first. Even after putting thirty minutes into it, I was still crashing into barriers, cutting corners, and getting a speed penalty for driving too fast through the pit. I did have a breakthrough after about an hour of gameplay and could, more or less, keep my car on the track. At least when doing practice laps. In the game’s season mode, where you have to deal with other cars and weather conditions, the control constantly locked up on me, not in a glitchy way, but as if I had actually stalled the car. This is probably because I have no fucking clue what different types of tires do, or how to “use the weather” or various other idiosyncrasies that Formula One fans would know.
Magic Racing GP 2 is a F1 fan service that aims for the type of crowd that insists they would rather play Tecmo Bowl over the latest Madden entry. Gameplay is old school, yet the amount of modes is impressive and the level of customization offered is pretty intimidating. There are dozens of drivers to choose from, all based on real F1 stars. There is an option to edit their name, so Sebastian Vettel doesn’t have to be stuck with the more wanky moniker of “Sebastiano Vartel.” Every other aspect of F1 is present here as well, from well-known venues to the scoring system to the team system. Sure, you’ll want to change “Renalot” and “Mercides” to their proper names. Or you can do what I did and give them more catchy ones, like “Hippo Riders” and “Skid Marks.” There’s also 16-player online play, but I would guess that you’re more likely to see a Yeti figure skating with Jimmy Hoffa before you actually manage to get a full lineup of players together for it.
I can’t really tell you whether or not Magic Racing GP 2 is a good game. The best I can do is make the following observations. First, it’s not newbie friendly. The game assumes you know the ins and outs of Formula One, because there is little in the way of help or instructions for you. Second, the amount of ambition on display here is highly commendable. The fake versions of real drivers, real teams, and real tracks easily impressed my Formula One loving boyfriend, so it hits the right cord with the type of crowd it’s aiming for. Third, the game is playable, probably more so if you’re familiar and skilled at the classic racing titles that it builds off of. So if you’re into this sort of stuff, Magic Racing GP 2 is the game for you. If you’re not, for God’s sake do not buy this game. I have never been into car racing and I can’t see myself ever getting into it. Besides, if I want to watch cars driving really fast, all I have to do is hop over to Oakland and pull up a lawn chair to watch Formula 510, featuring the biggest stars in drug dealing hauling ass in their blinged out Cadillacs while the boys in blue give chase. Sponsored by Krispy Kreme.
I should probably preface this review by noting that I don’t have my drivers license. Apparently the state of California thinks that I would be a danger to others on the account of my epilepsy. And yet they still let Mel Gibson drive. Hmmph. Well, no matter. I can still play racing games. I play them very poorly, but I can still play them! Over the next three reviews, I’ll be taking a look at some recent racing titles to hit Xbox Live Indie Games. It might sound redundant to do three like-minded games, but actually all three are very different. This is because all three picked an entirely different series to shameless copy, or “pay homage to” if you’re all googly-eyed nostalgic for this sort of stuff.
The first one is Ocean Drive Challenge. It’s a street-racer that borrows from the Sega classic Out Run in the same way that a pick pocket borrows from you. You choose one of three cars and try to get from point A to point B before time runs out. That’s pretty much it. Honestly, the game is a fairly good tribute if you’re into this sort of thing. It’s not uncommon for an XBLIG clone of a cherished 80s coin-op to be kind of shit, but Ocean Drive Challenge really is pretty damn close to Out Run. The cars handle the same way, the sense of speed is about the same, and the graphics are light and cartoony. You even select what kind of music you want playing before the race begins.
All the annoyances of Out Run are here too. Like being stuck on a two-lane stretch of road and having the left lane contain a gas tanker and the right lane be occupied by a comatose grandmother. Or the cars interpreting your control movements as polite suggestions that can be gracefully ignored. There’s also no modes of play besides the main arcade race. It’s probably beatable but I was never good at these sort of games and could only make it halfway through the course. Whether you call it Out Run or San Francisco Rush or Cruis’n USA, the time you get back for clearing a checkpoint never seems like it’s enough, at least for me.
Really though, there’s not a whole lot I can complain about here. I can’t even bitch about this being a game that only nostalgic cocknuggets could find delight in, because it’s actually a well made game. The cocknugget crowd that sometimes has to shut down parts of their brain to convince themselves that a bad clone is just like the childhood game they remember will probably have their heads explode when they play Ocean Drive Challenge, because it really IS just like the childhood game they remember. Having said that, if you’re a really big fan of Out Run, why would you need this game? Wouldn’t you already own it? Maybe as part of a compilation disc, or on an emulator, or maybe you own the actual arcade cabinet. Ocean Drive Challenge is close enough to Out Run to be impressive, but also close enough to be useless. It actually makes me wonder what exactly the developer was thinking. Making a really accurate clone of a twenty-five year old arcade game on an entirely different platform using completely different tools does take a lot of skill. Imagine if they had taken that skill and applied it to a new concept. The results could have been really amazing. Instead, they did the video game equivalent of spending six years at MIT just to take a job in photocopy machine repair.
Ramen Ninja is a stealth game starring the world’s most frugal cast of characters. The idea is a bunch of bad guys stole all your ramen and you want to steal it back. Can’t you buy, like, a metric ton of that shit for around $10? Talk about a bunch of cheapskates. And it’s not like they’re against the concept of hard work, because the guy goes to insane lengths to get his noodles back. This involves sneaking around buildings, hiding under cover, and pushing crates around. Meanwhile, the bad guys own those buildings and have hired dozens of security guards and mangoat-thingies to guard it. What the fuck happened to the economy in Japan when I wasn’t looking that it has come to this?
Action in Ramen Ninja is takes place from a top-down perspective. The idea is you have to sneak around various guards while pushing buttons and solving crate puzzles. All the enemies have line-of-sight cones that you have to avoid, or they begin chasing you. You also have to be silent, and this requires holding the A button to tip-toe around guards or the Y button to crawl around them. It all sounds fine and dandy in theory, but the guards are so inept at their jobs that you might as well let them see you and leg it for the finish. This was my primary strategy. At your normal speed you’re faster than them, so why not? I would end up leading entire conga lines of them through each stage in a manner so wacky that the game might as well been set to the tune of Yakety Sax. The penalty if you get seen and chased is a lower score. The game works on a five-star rating scale. If you get seen, the most you can finish a stage with is three stars, which was just fine with me.
Yep, they threw Zombies in there at one point. If you're an XBLIG developer and you don't include zombies, you get beat up, stuffed in a locker, and your lunch money gets stolen.
I would have played along with the stealth stuff, but I found that it often just didn’t work. I would hide in an alcove, which the game makes a big deal of, but the guards would still spot me. The same was true in multiple instances of hiding under tables, behind plants, and sometimes even on the other sides of walls. I would sneak around while holding the crawl button and the guard would still be alerted to my position. Heck, in some stages the level would start with a guard immediately onto me and giving chase. I don’t know if this was by design or not, but considering that the guard was two feet in front of me and there was no chance of escape, I’m guessing it’s just flawed design. The unworkable stealth aspects were just not worth the bother half the time and so I would just begin the Benny Hill sketch again. It was always laughably easy to do that. Again, the guards are not as fast as you. And even if they close in, they might just fall asleep on you. No really, they’ll be inches away from you and then doze off, complete with a “Zzzz” thought-bubble. It’s like the diabolical ramen thieves still wanted to meet all equal-opportunity employment criteria and hired nothing but narcoleptics. It’s something I’ve been accused of having from time to time so I probably shouldn’t jokegffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff huh? Is dinner done? Wait, where I am? Oh right, Ramen Ninja review.
There’s also the mangoat-thingies that chase you around. They’re just like the guards, only they put you to sleep by singing you a lullaby. It leaves you temporarily stunned, but not so much that they can then run up and catch you. Assuming you’ve been legging it, you’ll likely have enough distance to survive the nap and keep running for it. Like the guards, you move faster than them, so unless you get put to sleep by one and caught by another, they’re pretty useless.
It’s such a shame that the sneaky stuff doesn’t work, because you see that a lot of thought went into the level design. All the stages are designed in unique ways that would use the element of stealth. There’s also lame stuff like crate shoving, or in this case, sleepy security guard shoving, but you never really get to experience it the way the developers intended. Despite all my complaints, I admit I had some fun with it. Thus, Ramen Ninja becomes one of those weird games on my site that is utterly broken and obviously unfinished, and yet I do kind of recommend giving it a go. A little bit. Like a quarter-teaspoon of recommendation. I mean, the whole wacky chase thing is not what the developers had in mind, but I was often smiling and giggling along with my boyfriend while I pissed away all the intent of the game. With some more development time, the stealthy stuff might have worked and Ramen Ninja might have been something special, instead of being the kind of special it is. As in “forgive my daughter for licking your wallpaper. She’s special.”
I think the thing that disappointed me most about VolChaos is that I know Fun Infused Games has talent. I know this because I was hooked on Hypership Out of Control for the iPhone and iPad. If that doesn’t impress you, it should. If there’s one genre I dislike more than anything else, its vertical space shooters. Yet Hypership was fast-paced, twitchy, high-score based, and loads of fun.
The idea is that you’re a ship with a hyperdrive set permanently in the “on” position. With no way to brake, you have to clear gates and shoot any debris in your way, all while scrolling forward at break-neck speed. There are some items that will slow you down, but for the most part you have to rely on quick reflexes and digital dexterity to survive. You have a cannon but it fires automatically, so all you have to worry about is using your finger to slide your ship back and forth.
Hypership on iOS is THE Hypershit!
There’s online leaderboards and multiple modes of play. Usually when a game like this hits, one or more of the modes are total stinkers. Here, every mode has its merits. “Hardcore” mode is exactly the same as normal, except you only have one life, creating an awesome sense of tension. In “Coin Down” the coins you collect on the course act as your fuel. In SuperSpeed, you take the role of an albino hamster who is strapped to a rocket car and attempts to beat the land speed record for a rodent on the Bonneville Salt Flats, the previous record holder being Richard Hammond. Actually, it’s just normal mode with more speed. But I’m sure I just gave someone an idea for a bitchin’ new game.
Hypership on iPhone (or iPad if you’re a snoot) is one of the few games I’ve come across that I don’t have a whole lot of complain about. Thankfully a vastly inferior port was just launched on Xbox Live Indie Games that I can gleefully murder. Well I guess technically the iPhone version is the port while the new XBLIG game is a remake of the original. It’s called Hypership Still Out of Control, and it actively sucks with all the might of a whirlpool stuck inside a black hole.
Hypership Still Out of Control has all the play modes of the iOS version, and even includes local multiplayer. But I found the game nearly unplayable because it lacks the precision of touch control that I had grown so accustomed to on my iPhone. Regardless of whether you’re using the D-pad or the analog stick, movement is too loose. This is a major problem when trying to navigate past gates with narrow openings. The whole point of the game is that your ship is moving at unreasonably dangerous speeds, so anything less than absolute flawless control is simply not going to cut it.
Another thing that I had grown fond of on the iOS port was not having to do anything to make the ship fire. On iPhone, the ship never stops firing. It’s pretty convenient because there’s never really a point where you won’t want it to be shooting. On XBLIG, you have to manually fire. It’s not really a deal breaker, because lots of games do that. I guess it’s matter of comfort. It’s like going from laying on a comfy mattress made of clouds to laying on a bed of nails.
Local multiplayer would be fun if the controls weren’t so loose.
And finally, there’s no online leaderboards. Yea, the only option on XBLIG is ghettoized peer-to-peer ones that are hard to implement, but the only reason to own this game is to try posting high scores. There’s actually an explanation screen where it’s explained that it wasn’t worth the effort and you should buy the iOS or Windows Phone 7 (ha, as if) ports if you’re into this sort of thing. So I’ll just go by the same advice the developers themselves gave. If you have a dollar to spare, there are few things as fun or addictive at that price as Hypership out of Control for iPhone/iPad/iPod/iPacemaker (coming in October). If, however, you only have XBLIG, you might as well spend those 80 points on a shinny new sombrero for your avatar because Hypership on it is Hyper-shit. I knew I could work that line in there somewhere.
99¢ and 80 Microsoft Points heard Apple fanboys are now eating bacon three meals a day in anticipation of the iPacemaker in the making of this review.
Hypership Out of Control is also available for Windows Phone for $0.99 or free with ads. These versions are unverified by Indie Gamer Chick. The iOS version is Chick Approved. The XBLIG version is not.
Choose your own adventure games are like being blindfolded and set loose in a pasture full of cows with irritable bowel syndrome. Getting through one from start to finish without stepping in a pile of shit is going to require more luck than anything else. I made five attempts at finishing Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! and I don’t think I lasted more than ten minutes in any of them. I’ve also pretty much given up on further attempts. As it stands, my feet are already so caked in manure that everywhere I’ve stepped in the past couple hours is properly fertilized for the next planting season. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In DDD,D! you play as an introverted virgin on his first day of college. You’re bound and determined to lose the big V before the year is up. It took me all of a minute to determine what the guy’s problem was up to this point: he’s a completely unlikable twit. The first option the game gives you is whether you want to go to the bathroom, use the computer, or go watch TV. I put myself in the mindset of a girl that’s possibly being courted by this guy and figured that it wouldn’t be very productive to be introduced to a guy who’s busting for a piss, so I sent him to the bathroom. It was here that the guy stopped to flex for a mirror and do a few push-ups. Oh my, a narcissistic freshman on a quest to bust his man-cherry. What a catch.
I was determined to help steer the annoying virgin towards the promise land, but the luck of the draw was not on my side. Like every other version of this kind of game I’ve played for IndieGamerChick, it’s just too fucking easy to “die.” Here, death means you reach your 30th birthday as a virgin and thus become a wizard. You know, if that were actually true, I think teenagers across the country would be way more receptive towards abstinence-only education. Here, being a wizard is a bad thing for some reason. I would think if the reward was actual magical powers, waiting until you’re 30 just to get laid would be worth it. Once the magic starts flowing, you would be able to magically order up more pussy than unsuspecting customers than Soylent Blue: made 100% of street cats.
And how did I die? Well, my first mistake was leaning in too close to talk to a girl. Apparently I invaded her space and offended her. How was I to know? She was dressed like she had forgotten to do her laundry and the only thing clean was the shower curtain.
This girl’s digital restraining order against my digital annoying virgin is still pending.
When you make a mistake, it’s time to start over. Unless you save. But saving kind of was an issue for me, in that I couldn’t be bothered to do it. There are no save prompts, so if you get caught up in the storyline (hey, it’s possible!) and step on one of those wrong choice cowpats, you get to relive the entire fucking story from the very beginning. I hate it when games do this. Saving isn’t always worth it, either. The interface to do it with is slow and clunky. A quick-save option would have been preferrable but the game couldn’t be bothered.
So I went through the agonizing story starring the most unlikable fictional creation since those little CGI nail fungus thingies from those one ads (shudder) and kept dying. I died when I got beat up by some catty bitch’s boyfriend. I died when I forgot that one of the chicks I was playing the field with didn’t like tennis. I died right at the start when I chose “use the computer” trying to boost my intelligence level. The game has a point system that gives you points in intelligence, charisma, and strength. I decided since I liked the brainy girl more than shower-curtain wearing slut, I should try to make myself smarter and choosing “use computer” as the very first option was as good a start as any. So I chose it and promptly died because my guy wanted to play Warcraft instead. Hmmmph.
I never did figure out what the whole scoring system does. My inability to go more than two minutes without failing to step right in line with the writer’s logic led to me starting over from scratch again and again. I would like to remind the developer of this and every other game like Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! that video games are made to entertain people. If you forced someone to read a book by reading one paragraph and then starting over at the beginning, go one paragraph further and then start over again, you would be subject to sanctions under the Geneva Convention.
Never got this far. Don’t know what this girl’s deal is. I would probably die a half-dozen times trying to figure it out, so fuck it. Besides, with tits like that I’m sure she’ll have major back problems that I’ll hear bitching about day in and day out. Who needs that? My hand never whines like that so I got the better deal already!
So, shocker of shocks, I can’t recommend Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! I will admit that the writing is slightly less painful than most games like this I’ve played on XBLIG. Even if does annoyingly censor ****ing swear words. This was probably done with the knowledge that it’s target audience have parents who frown on games with gigantic anime boobies in them, but if the cussing is bleeped out they can hope for just one week of being grounded instead of two. Still, I’m sure it won’t matter. This game will sell because the aforementioned gigantic anime boobies. And thus it’s owners will in fact reach the age of 30 with their virginity still intact. No, they won’t become wizards. But if they hold out another forty years, they might become Pope!
240 Microsoft Points would rather see a game about a prudish puritan who actively avoids trying to get laid, just to change things up in the making of this review.
I couldn’t find anything about the developer or a trailer for this game. Sorry.
Remember Orbitron: Revolution? The game that I said does for Defender what Pac-Man Championship Edition does for Pac-Man? Well, if you buy the game on Friday or Saturday, the proceeds from it will go to the BC Cancer Foundation. How often can you play a (future) Indie Gamer Chick leaderboard game and fight cancer at the same time? You can’t. Well, unless you play Dead Pixels while actively getting chemotherapy. This way sounds more fun. For more information, click here.
SOPA is a tactical strategy game in which you are tasked with protecting the intellectual properties of the entertainment industry. Playing as an agent of the industry under the jurisdiction of SOPA (which no doubt stands for Supremely Oppressive Pricks & Assholes), you get to wield unprecedented power at your own discretion to help fight for the big guys and bring justice to the unwashed masses.
I normally try to keep my cards close to my chest when I write these reviews, but I can’t hold off any longer: I FUCKING LOVED THIS GAME! Think of all the dick moves you’ve ever pulled playing Grand Theft Auto and multiply them by a jillion. That’s how much fun you can have as an agent of SOPA. For example, I was perusing YouTube when I came across a video uploaded by a fourteen year old. It was a highlight reel of his best kills in Gears of War 3, set to the tune of “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.” Now, if this was a game like Saints Row, you cap the little bastard in the back of the head and T-Bag his corpse. BOR-RING! In SOPA, you sue the little kid into the stone age, file charges against his parents, have their internet access cut off, and collect damages from YouTube because it was all their fault to begin with. With this level of loosely defined parameters, you have the freedom to pretty much destroy lives in ways you never could have imagined.
Bad controls have always been my biggest sticking point in a game. Thankfully, SOPA gives you more control over non-player characters than any game ever has. I remember playing Mercenaries 2 and watching the dimwitted NPCs fall to their deaths by walking off a four-foot high ledge. You don’t have to worry about that here. Rounding up people to interrogate them over illegally hosting a 60 second long MP3 copy of the Golden Girls’ theme has never been so intuitive or easy to accomplish. And the tools you’re given are amazing too. Wiretaps, bully lawyers (that is lawyers who are bullies, not lawyers for bullies, although I’m sure there is some cross-pollination), lobbyists, and all the power of the federal government are at your disposal. I used to feel pretty damn empowered when I held the Spartan Laser in Halo, but that is absolutely nothing compared to how I felt with all of the power I wield in SOPA.
And if you thought the emotion technology used in L.A. Noire was impressive, you haven’t seen anything yet. This one time I was busting a Captain Kirk fan site for using clips of Star Trek set to the tune of Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need A Hero.” Not only was I able to tie the dude up in court for years, but I was able to go after every single person who had linked to his site in the process. The dude had like 500 followers on Facebook! It was like a genocide, only blood was replaced by tears, and that’s so much more evil and thus fun, wouldn’t you agree? The look of terror on their faces and the tremble in their voices as they slowly realized that all the freedoms they had taken for granted were being extinguished is one of the most defining moments in a game I’ve ever had.
Not to mention all the employees of Facebook and all the internet service provider employees who I was able to put out of work because all these restrictions made their companies unprofitable. It brought me a sense of satisfaction that all the nuns tied to the train tracks in Red Dead Redemption could never hope to equal. Really, how can you go back to running over a Granny with a Buick in GTA when you can litigate a family into bankruptcy over having the theme from Days of Their Lives play in the background of a video of little Junior’s first steps? Hey, you shouldn’t have uploaded it. Not very smooth criminal of you. By the way, using Smooth Criminal lands you five years in Gitmo so watch your step.
On-screen metaphors for what happens when you sue the shit out of a family making less than $40k a year.
Ultimately, your goal is to the destroy the entire internet. Probably the biggest problem with SOPA is how easy that is. If you’re the patient type, you can wait a few years, slowly conditioning the population to accept less and less accessibility to the internet they’ve grown so accustomed and dependent on. And while I can see the merits of watching the people of 2022 fondly reminiscing about the time before SOPA where you could actually upload of a video of you singing the latest Lady Gaga song on your Facebook without having to lawyer-up, I simply don’t have the patience for that. So I went all scorched Earth on the damn thing and just had Google shut down. Hey, served them right for linking to a site that linked to a site that had a copy of the Adventures of Pluto Nash uploaded illegally to it. This move destroyed the entire Silicon Valley economy, crippling America’s ability to stay ahead of the curve in the technology race and pretty much making us about as useless to the rest of the world as Segway access ramps. I watched with satisfaction as the credits rolled on the game and nearly needed some, ahem, private time, as the final cut scene where Nigeria claimed a higher GNP average than the United States played out.
So overall, I heartily recommend SOPA to everyone reading this. It does the wanton-destruction genre better than any sandbox game I’ve ever played, and it does it by a pretty big margin. It’s the little things that make the big difference. Sure, spraying shit on buildings in Saints Row is fun, but it can’t top watching the Feds break down the door of a sixteen year old girl who should have known better than to have downloaded that episode of Vampire Diaries. Or busting that family for uploading a video of them singing Happy Birthday to their St. Bernard while you could clearly see the TV playing the latest episode of Family Guy in the corner of the screen. For those of us who have always wanted the chance to know what it’s like to be truly merciless and cruel, this is the chance you’ve been waiting for. And it’s all in the safety of a video game, where it can’t possibly ever happen in the real world.
Oh wait. Fuck.
SOPA was developed by the United States Congress
240 Years of Freedom were flushed in the name of stopping six-year-olds from linking to unauthorized videos of Justin Bieber in the making of this review.
SOPA is not reality yet. But unless something is done, it will be soon. Do you really want the people who thought nine seasons of Roseanne were a good thing but fourteen episodes of Firefly was too much to decide what is right or wrong for the internet? Visit StopAmericanCensorship to learn what you can do.
Diamond Digger was developed by Elemental Focus
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