Shoot 1UP

Every Thursday, I put a call out on Twitter for a classic Xbox Live Indie Game that could be a possible contender for the Indie Gamer Chick leaderboard.  This last Thursday, three possible candidates came out.  The ultimate winner was Protect Me Knight, a sort of action-based tower defense game that you haven’t seen my review of yet because I haven’t been able to play the game with three other players.  I didn’t exactly do my research on the game before buying it.  As a spoiler, I think it’s perfectly fine game that is not at all a contender for the list.  Expect a review of it sometime next week.

The runners-up were Leave Home and Shoot 1Up.  As it turns out, I already bought the latter when I started Indie Gamer Chick and never got around to playing it, so it became last week’s default winner.  And then I forgot to actually play it for a few days.  My bad.

Shoot 1UP is a space shooter of the bullet-hell variety and not a biography on Robert Downey Jr. set during the 90s.  There’s six worlds and three degrees of difficulty, plus a survival mode.  The gimmick here is that instead of having a wide variety of power-ups, the game spits out a ton of 1UPs.  Instead of building a stockpile of them, each immediately adds another active ship to your fleet.  If you play it safe, you can build an army of dozens, all on-screen, all at once, and all firing at the same time.  It’s original, that’s for sure.

Of course, in a game that’s themed around dodging a ton of bullets, you can’t always have your fleet spread too far apart.  You use the triggers to expand and retract the ships.  On the harder difficult settings, even a small extension will lead to you taking heavy losses.  If a ship is destroyed, you get a small shield from the explosion that will leave you briefly protected, so you shouldn’t expect to lose dozens of ships at once.  Ha, take that, Spain!

Unfortunately, I didn’t really like Shoot 1UP as much as some readers assured me I would, and it has to do with the overall design.  It’s awfully bland.  The backdrops, the enemies, and the bosses are mostly forgettable.  Sure,  there’s also what I think might be a giant space cock escaping an astrovagina and a big-breasted mechabitch that you have to perform a plasma-lasered mastectomy to, but it’s nothing that the Japanese haven’t already done before.  In fact, overall the design comes across as generic and trying too hard.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this whole "that looks like a gigantic space-dick coming out of a quadruple-cunted astrovagina" thing.

There’s some weird design flaws too.  After a couple of minutes on a stage, you’re given the option to keep flying forward or go into an all-range mode.  Even on all-range, the game still keeps you attached to rails, but you’ll be flying in different directions.  That sounds fine, except entering this mode somehow causes your bullets to not go all the way to the edge of the screen.  It’s bizarre, because when you’re scrolling vertically, your bullets do go all the way to the end of the screen.  The enemies are still at the edge, but they become untouchable unless you get closer and put yourself at greater risk.

Then again, maybe not.

I still recommend Shoot 1UP, because it is a solid shump.  But a leaderboard contender it is not.  The 1UPs building a fleet of ships that you control gimmick is unique and makes the game stand out in a crowded field.  At 80MSP, it’s a way better deal than the recent XBLA release of Radiant Silvergun.  On higher difficulty settings, the game’s six worlds do get longer, and the challenge is increased dramatically.  Yet it’s generic and bland and the gimmick isn’t enough to keep this from being totally forgettable once you finish.  If you’re a bullet-hell fan, you’ll likely enjoy this a lot more than I did.  Then again, you would also likely enjoy it if I dressed like a dominatrix and threatened to spank you, you sick fuck.  Besides, I don’t even like wearing leather.

Hey boys, that's not where that stuff goes.

Shoot 1UP was developed by Mommy’s Best Games

80 Microsoft Points never got more than 19 ships at once in the making of this review.

The $1 Zombie Game

Zombie Survival Diary: Day One

So the Zombie Apocalypse broke out.  Again.  And this time I’m stuck in an abandoned courtyard of what looks like a slum.  I’m all alone.  Well, except for this seven-foot tall dude holding a camera that always walks about three feet behind me.  I’m not sure what’s up with that, but he doesn’t seem to eat or sleep, so whatever.

Thankfully this slum was well stocked with guns and ammo, but that should come as no surprise.  I mean, what else are slums good for?  Well, besides drugs and cheap hookers, or cheap hookers on drugs?  Either way, I’ve got a wide variety of weapons at my disposal here.  Shotguns, automatics, sniper rifles, and pistols.  This could be fun.

Zombie Survival Diary: Day Two

Oh my God I’m so fucking bored.  These zombies just slowly hobble around, and for some reason they’re wearing workout pants.  I lose about 10% of my health every time one flails its arms at me from a distance of five feet.  I’m stuck in this courtyard, which is empty and sterile and doesn’t offer anything in the way of entertainment.  And for some reason I have to hold the left click button my Xbox controller to run.  Also, like a total idiot, I only carry limited ammo for the more fun guns but unlimited ammo for my pistols.  The bullets for both seem just about equally as effective, so why wouldn’t I want to carry unlimited ammo for the gun that is more fun?  And why do I only take one fun gun and one pistol out with me when I go outside to mow down zombies?  This makes no damn sense.

Zombie Survival Diary: Day Three

The zombies seem to be getting faster.  Which is counter-logical.  Shouldn’t the zombies have been at their fastest at the beginning of the Apocalypse and not days afterwards?  I mean, they are dead, right?  So by now rigor has set in, their flesh is rotted more, and their muscles should have lost the ability to flex, which is what you need to move swiftly.  So in theory, they should be stiff as a board by now, unable to move at all, which would allow me to walk by and finish them off in more leisurely ways, like using a coping saw to slowly cut their head off.

But no, they’re faster.  It makes me wonder what I was thinking when I decided to bring a sniper rifle out with me today.  Sniper rifles are more suited for things that can’t run the 100 meter dash in five seconds.  You’re meant to set your shot, take aim, and fire.  Here, you don’t have a chance to.  Not that it matters.  I don’t even have to aim, or apparently even hit the zombies to kill them.  I can just point the gun anywhere in their general vicinity and it seems to do the trick.  Man, this Zombie Apocalypse kind of sucks.

Zombie Survival Diary: Day Four

Well so much for that.  The zombies seem to be bullet sponges now.  When I shoot one, a huge cloud of red stuff that I’m guessing is supposed to be blood but looks more like the type of fire-retardant that airplanes drop explodes out of them.  And once the dust clears, it’s not unusual to see them still walking, gasping as if they’re trying to catch their breath, which makes sense since I shot them in the lungs, but it doesn’t make sense because they’re supposed to be dead and not breathing.  Meanwhile, some of the zombies are getting stuck in the various trash cans lying around, or stuck halfway in buildings, or in staircases.  Maybe they’re polterzombies.

Either way, this whole experience has not been particularly difficult.  Or fun, for that matter.  For the most part, all I have to do is run a big circle around the courtyard, all while holding the click button on the left stick down.  Once the zombies are in a line, I just gun them down, fast ones first, then slow ones.  If they get too close, I just repeat the follow-the-leader process all over again.  It’s lame.  I feel like the Pied Piper, only zombies aren’t half as much fun to kill as children.

The $1 Zombie Game was developed by rmm5

80 Microsoft Points are waiting for the $0.01 Zombie Game in the making of this review.

Hurley, whom I hear has a tattoo of me on his butt, also reviewed this for Gear-Fish. 

Avatar Rail Panic and ARP Halloween Edition

Sometimes my own policies come back to bite me in the ass.  And I’m not talking about stuff like not being able to turn away a review request.  At least those typically provide me with material to write a fun, rewarding, and catty review.  No, I’m talking about the whole “I can’t play demos” thing.  99.9% of the time, I have no desire to do so, but every once in a while a game will come along that tests my resolve.

I had no problem purchasing ARP Halloween Edition.  New releases have been slow this week, and the premise for this looked interesting, at least to me.  This is one of those auto-running games that’s more about reflex testing than platforming.  Playing as your avatar, you run across the top of a moving train, trying to collect cookies, jump over barrels, avoid barriers, dodge birds, and try to get a high score.

Honestly, the game is okay, but there’s nothing really to it.  It’s actually pretty slow for a game based on reflexes.  You can clearly see all the objects coming and have plenty of time to prepare yourself to hit the right button.  I’m guessing the developers set out to make it more child friendly, and if that was the goal I’ll assume its a successful one.  Anyone over the age of six is likely to find this pretty dull, and without online leaderboards there’s not a whole lot of incentive to keep playing.

Oh, and the birds are a bit of a dick move.  You can’t really predict which way they’re going to fly until you’re close enough to them that you’re likely going to take damage.  The bane of my avatar’s existence was actually the gaps between the trains.  For whatever reason, I usually missed them and would fall between cars and lose a bit of my health.  Thankfully, you can pick up candy that restores it.  It just goes to show that my avatar is nothing like me.  If I fell between cars on a moving train and survived, I would only want candy if it was made of pure morphine.

I was sort of frazzled (great word) about the whole “Halloween Edition” thing.  That meant there was a previous release of ARP that I missed.  As it turns out, the original release came out in April and is called Avatar Rail Panic.  This is where the “not playing demos” thing took a chunk out of my precious behind.  Just looking at the original Avatar Rail Panic, I figured it was the same exact game as the Halloween one, only with a wild west theme to it.  Watching the Youtube video seemed to confirm that.  But, BUT, curiosity did get the better of me and I wanted to try it just to make sure.  The only problem is I’ve clearly stated that I would never play demos here.  And I really do stick to that, so another 80 Microsoft Points were spent and presto, I had the original game.

And yea, the prophecy was fulfilled.  It’s the exact same fucking game.  And I mean that.  Same item placement, same level breaks, and all the same objects, only with a different skin.  Instead of candy, its hamburgers.  Instead of cookies, it’s coins.  Instead of spooky trees, it’s cacti.  Instead of ravens, it’s vultures.  Instead of a money-bag, it’s a.. well actually it’s still a money-bag.  The money-bag opens up a sort of bonus section where you run really fast collecting coins.  It fits the wild west motif, because you could presumably be a bandit robbing a bank train.  Granted, a poorly run bank train that left all its money up on the roof.  Must be from Wells Fargo.

But how does the money bag thing fit in with the Halloween theme?  You mean to tell me that they couldn’t even bother to re-skin all the items?  That’s laziness on a scale that would make the Teamsters union blush with shame.  Show of hands, who here could think of a better object to use as a power-up in a Halloween themed video game in about two seconds?  Let’s see, you in Arkansas, I see you’re saying “Jack-O-Lantern.”  See that, Bedroom Studio guys?  A guy in fucking Arkansas could come up with something better.  And you know what those guys do with their cousins.  Shameful that you couldn’t come up with that.

So that’s Avatar Rail Panic and it’s inbred spinoff.  I can’t really say either game is a complete waste of time, but without online leaderboards, there’s no reason to keep playing.  You can give the demo a try if you wish, and thank your lucky stars that you never told anyone you would never ever play demos, because you’ll likely have as much fun as I did and save two bucks in the process.  Avatar Rail Panic is not horrible, but it’s not compelling enough to warrant a purchase.  Oh, and why the fuck is it called Avatar Rail Panic?   You’re not really running on rails.  You’re running on the thing that’s running on the rails.  Hey, it’s a big difference.  Have you ever tried to actually run on a rail?  I did, and as a result, somewhere in Palo Alto there’s a handrail that I technically had intercourse with, and a bloody imprint of my face about four feet below it.

Avatar Rail Panic and ARP Halloween Edition were developed by Bedroom Studio Entertainment

80 Microsoft Points apiece gave birth to a baby handrail, befuddling doctors nation-wide in the making of this review.

Gameplay footage courtesy of http://Indies.onPause.org

Glow Arcade Racer

Glow Arcade Racer looks good.  The screenshots and gameplay trailer are likely enough to get anyone excited over it.  I imagined it would be sort of like one of those old school top-down racers like Super Sprint, only with futuristic trappings and lots of power-ups.  How could it possibly go wrong?

Well, you should never judge a book by its cover.  Or a game by its screenshots.  Glow Arcade Racer is fucking horrible.  I’ll start with the controls.  The entire game handles like you’re steering a gas-powered puck across a giant Tron-themed air hockey table.  Fundamental stuff like knowing which way your car is pointed become obscured, leading to weird situations where you’ll go off a jump and by time you land, you’re pointing the other direction while completely unsure how you ended up there.  I felt like an old-timer behind the wheel of a real car, only without the fun of plowing through a farmer’s market.

Ignore the Siren call of this screen shot. The actual game is an uncontrollable nightmare.

Control is a big issue, but it’s the little things that contributed to my firm dislike of Glow Arcade Racer.  For instance, on some levels there’s slowdown.  Not a lot, but the transition from smooth scrolling to a stuttering frame rate is akin to having Ice Capades break out in the middle of the Superbowl.  Meanwhile, the camera is operated by a child that was repeatedly dropped on its head.  It zooms  in and out, always at the least appropriate times in a way guaranteed to fuck you over.  You can zoom out the camera, but it leaves everything microscopic, which only compounds the problem of not knowing which way your car is aimed.  The zoomed out camera also crippled four-player local multiplayer.  They did try to alleviate the controlling issues by offering a control scheme called “simple” where both movement and gas are mapped to the left stick.  It doesn’t work at all, which makes me question if the wording was meant as a kind insult.  As in “forgive us for that control scheme.  That was Jeffery’s idea, and he’s.. well.. simple.”

The AI is kind of bitch too.  There doesn’t seem to be any rubber-banding present here, because on the very first course I was able to lap the 4th place driver.  But when the computer controlled racers get weapons, they fire them with unreasonably perfect accuracy, usually destroying you only a nanosecond before you cross the finish line.  The only way to unlock courses is to finish in first place.  By the second course, I could lead the race for every lap and, just a second away from the goal, I would get hit by a projectile and get knocked back to last.  This happened every time over the course of six straight races, mind you.  And once I actually did clear the level, this type of bullshit continued on every new track that followed.

To the game’s credit, the course designs are imaginative and inviting, and the graphics really are very attractive.  But Glow Arcade Racer is plagued with design problems and some horrible technical issues that keep the brakes fully applied.  Here’s a fun one: I’m driving next to a wall.  An enemy crashes into me and pushes me through the wall.  This happened more than once on the second course in the game.  There was no way for me to return to the track except to drive backwards, which causes you to disintegrate and respawn on the course.  The walls were so problematic that I briefly rejoiced once they were taken away after I reached the set of tracks called “Drift.”  As it turns out, the game is even worse without them.  The courses in Drift seem to be designed in a way that no reasonable person could manage to keep their car on track.  I would end up accidentally cutting far enough out that my car would auto-respawn back on course.  I had already rage quit once after the last-second miracle shots I mentioned earlier.  The quit that happened during Drift was one of disgust.

It was also a permanent one.  I’m not going back to Glow Arcade Racer.  The hour I put into it was total agony.  The horrible controls, crack shot AI, and sometimes quite frankly unfair course design left me more angry than entertained.  It’s such a shame, because it really does look spectacular.  It’s the Megan Fox of XBLIGs.  It looks hot, but if you get too close you realize that it’s.. well.. simple.

Glow Arcade Racer was developed by Polar Blue Games

80 Microsoft Points said “it’s like R.C. Pro-Am if you dropped acid” in the making of this review.  I think my Microsoft Points have a problem.

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

Merball Tournament

Fantasy sports: why don’t more developers do this kind of thing?  When I was a kid and I saw the first Harry Potter movie, I couldn’t wait for a Quidditch video game.  And then one came out and it sucked on a cock-flavored jellybean and nobody has breathed word of a better version since.  Sigh.  It also closed the door to other potential fairy tale inspired games, like Centaur Equestrian or Pixie Badminton.

Merball Tournament kind of reminded me of the Halo variation Grifball, only without the axes, swords, explosions, and fun.  You control a team of mermaids who race another team of mermaids through a maze to find a ball and bring it to the other team’s starting base.  If you’re holding the ball, there’s no way to defend yourself from having it stolen.  If someone on the other team gets close to you, they can just take it, at which point you’re left standing still, unable to move, as if your character is saying “bitch, what the fuck?”

Good for you, bitch. What do you want? A fucking medal?

Without any form of defense, you’re left to just leg it, or flipper it or whatever the fuck you call the tail of a mermaid.  Merball Tournament does provide a useful map and radar, but in a way it kind of kills what should be the theoretical thrill of the game.  It’s the Doom principle, where the excitement comes from turning a corner only to run smack-dab into a cluster of enemies.  Merball is a game that’s set in a maze, yet everyone on both teams plus the location of the ball is clearly labeled.  The mazes aren’t randomly generated, so once you have one committed to memory, you should easily be able to figure out the best routes where you will never run into the opposing team.

Of course, any design choice I can complain about is irrelevant if the game is still fun.  Merball could have been, if the controls worked.  They don’t.  I had a sneaking suspicion the play control might be problematic when the trailer sent to me by the developer featured the character repeatedly swimming into walls.  I know I usually save the trailer for the very end of a review, but here I simply have to let you view it now.  Have a look.

It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?  The funny thing is, I handled the controls a lot better than this guy did.  Not significantly so, but I was able to avoid braining myself on the walls for the most part.  Still, your mermaid handles like the sea she lives in is the dumping ground of choice for unsold Jim Beam.  Maneuvering her up and down was also fairly difficult.  I spent most of the time clinging to the ceiling like I had just guzzled down a bottle of Willy Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting Drink.  Later stages have multi-leveled mazes.  Swimming upwards is no problem in these, but swimming down is unresponsive and feels kind of sticky.  Meanwhile, the AI is absolutely fucking brain-dead.  In a dozen or so rounds of Merball, only once did one of my teammates actually steal the ball from the other team.  Most of the time I saw them they were busy swimming into walls.

Overall, Merball Tournament feels like an unfinished prototype.  Perhaps the groundwork for something of merit is here, but the game is so far away from what it needs to be that I can’t in my right mind recommend it to anyone in its present state.  Conceptually, there’s nothing at all wrong with a game about a bunch of passive aggressive mermaids playing the most pussified form of Rugby the world has ever seen.  It just needs a lot of fine tuning.  I also hate to bring back this old chestnut but this was a game that could have really benefited from online multiplayer.  Considering how bad everything turned out here, maybe it’s absence is a blessing in disguise.  Regardless, Merball lacks the polish to be a worthwhile purchase and as far as I’m concerned it can go ahead and dissolve into sea-foam.  Yea, that’s how the Little Mermaid is supposed to end.  Up yours, Disney!

Merball Tournament was developed by Tarh Ik

80 Microsoft Points are up where they walk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun in the making of this review.

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

SteamSunk

SteamSunk is a twin-stick shooter, only without the second stick actually firing.  Instead, it aims while you hold the right trigger to fire, which increases the potential for hand cramping about ten fold.  Otherwise, this is a typical TwickS (a word I just invented), with the twist being the maritime setting.  Enemies come at you in waves and you fire on them, watch them crash into the water, grab items, and then shoot some more.  Every five waves a boss will appear, bringing a hoard of baddies with him.  Items are your typical assortment of TwickS standbys, like a flame thrower, rocket launcher, and machine gun.  If this doesn’t sound exciting, my apologies, but I can’t really spruce up the description of something this generic.

So what sets this apart from your average XBLIG TwickS?  Well, badness for one thing.  It’s pretty hard to screw up a twin-stick shooter, so it’s almost admirable how many ways SteamSunk pulls it off.  The absolute biggest issue is slowdown.  When multiple baddies are on-screen at once, the frame rate starts to sputter like a bird just flew into its intake.  This is especially a problem when the later bosses show up.  They tend to bring dozens of enemies with them, all of them clustered together in a way to make your processor wave a flag of surrender.  By around wave twenty, things are chugging so hard that I went from full life to instant death in a matter of moments because I could not keep up due to the skippiness.

There’s a few small problems that also contribute to the downfall of this.  The items aren’t always helpful, especially the rocket launcher.  It’s slow and clunky and every single time I picked it up I gave myself a nice, hearty cussing for being so stupid.  There’s also a super-duper weapon, called the “SuperMortar” that’s almost totally worthless.  When you use it, the game pauses and you line up where you want the bombs from it to drop.  The only thing is, once you use it there’s a delay before it actually begins to drop, and the enemies are usually long gone by time it starts to fall.  I’m sure the intent is to drop the SuperMortar where you think the enemies will be once the move kicks in, but in the later stages the bosses move quickly and randomly enough that it’s not always possible to guess.  So all it’s good for is to bog down the frame rate even more, like it needs your help with that.

Meanwhile, the controls are less than smooth and the enemies are really fickle about where you can shoot them.  The bosses often camp outside of the water and if they die there, you can’t grab the items they drop.  The graphics are boring, the map is dull, and there’s no online leaderboards.  I can’t think of a single reason why you would want to own this one.  The Xbox Live Indie Game scene is full of dozens of games that do the same exact thing, only better.  And why the fuck doesn’t the right stick shoot?  At no point when you’re aiming the gun will you also not want to also be shooting.  Sorry fans, but I can’t resist the easy pun, so here it goes: SteamSunk really SteamStunk.

SteamSunk was developed by Snape

80 Microsoft Points lost out on the Defense of the Dark Arts position in the making of this review.  Damn that Potter!

Hurley, whom I hear swabs the decks one Q-Tip at a time, also covered this for Gear-Fish. 

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

Escape The Car

You’ve played this one before.  Trust me.  You might have forgotten about it, but it will all come back just as soon you boot up the demo.  Escape The Car by Afro Ninja has been around as a free internet game for years now.  It’s a point-and-click title where you find various items in a car, use them on various objects, maybe combine them, and try to exit the vehicle.  Well now for $1, you can play the exact same game on your Xbox.  What a, um, deal or something.

Afro Ninja did modernize the graphics, added a smooth music track, and included five meaningless achievements,  but the actual game part is completely unchanged.  The items, the layout of the car, and the solutions all remain from the free game.  There’s no added second quest (besides the option to play the same game with the original graphics), no differences in puzzles, or really any incentive to play this version over the one you can play for free right now.  So why would pay $1 for it?  Hopefully when they bring the rest of the “Escape Series” to XBLIG, they change things up somewhat, because otherwise no dollars will play “Escape the Wallet” to purchase them.

Escape the Car was developed by Afro Ninja

80 Microsoft Points just saved you $1 by giving you this link in the making of this review.

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

I couldn’t find a trailer, but trust me, you don’t need it.  Just go play the free game.  It’s fun.  

Pixelosity

Pixelosity is an auto-scrolling shooter driven by reflexes and high scores.  There’s really not a lot to say about it, so this review will likely be brief.  You control what looks like a penis head with a rainbow shaft that flies around and shoots bullets, or at least I hope they are bullets, at various ships.  Along the way you can grab power-ups that temporarily boost your bullets, or perhaps a bomb that destroys everything on the screen.  It’s pretty standard wave-shooter stuff that we’ve all played dozens of times before.  Here, the game is skinned in Intellivision-style clothing, but it’s still the same old shit.  If you’re into this style of game, you’ll dig Pixelosity.

I’m fairly neutral on wave/space shooters, and what usually tips the balance for me is how many times the developer fucked up.  Here, there are fuck-ups aplenty.  First off, the background color can sometimes make it hard to spot where the enemy bullets are.  In later stages, the game takes on a bullet-hell twist that can be obscured by the wrong color of graphics.  Second, the enemies can be incredibly cheap.  A wall of four will appear, all shooting quickly enough that its difficult to get in a clean shot on them before they disappear.  The game rewards you with bonus stages if you kill all the enemies, but it’s not always possible.  Third, I hate that the bullet upgrades only last a few seconds.  If you go to a child and hand them an adorable puppy, wait just long enough for them to fall in love with it (8.35 seconds.. not that I’ve done this horrible exercise myself or anything.  I swear I haven’t.  What?  STOP LOOKING AT ME!) and then take it back just to be spiteful, that’s a dick move.  And that’s the vibe I got from Pixelosity.  The game is at it’s most fun when you have more bullets, but those items are few and far between, and when they wear off the game suffers for it.

I still had some fun with Pixelosity, but it’s too generic and too simplistic for its own good.  I might have enjoyed it more if the promised online leaderboards worked, but they didn’t.  I’m told they’re working on a fix for that, but honestly it won’t make that much a difference.  By time the patch is up, Pixelosity will be gathering virtual dust.  It’s not a bad game by any means.  It’s just bland.  Oatmeal without sugar.  Rice without soy sauce.  Teller without Penn.  Michelle Bachman without the raving insanity.  It’s good for thirty minutes and then you’ll wonder why you spent a buck on it.  But if you’re into anything that gives off the appearance of being ancient, party like it’s 1978!  Let’s all drop acid and watch Battlestar Galactica!

Pixelosity was developed by GLHF Games

80 Microsoft Points couldn’t think of anything else that happened in 1978 in the making of this review.

Hurley and Nate, whom I hear drive around in a van solving mysteries together, named Pixelosity the “Catch of the Week” over at Gear Fish.

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

Gameplay footage courtesy of Indies.onPause.org

Flight Adventure 2

And now for something completely different.  When I started Indie Gamer Chick, I figured I would be playing all kinds of genres that I wasn’t entirely familiar with.  Instead, I’ve mostly been dealing with platformers and space shooters.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the Indie scene hasn’t exactly been the beacon of new experiences I thought it would be.  And then along came Flight Adventure 2.

Granted, flight sims are nothing new to gaming, but I never really got into them.  My father was hugely into Microsoft Flight Simulator, which he would often talk me into trying.  I would usually last about five minutes before boredom set in.  I did fair a little bit better with Pilotwings 64 as a kid, and later Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. series, although that’s a true simulation of flight in the same way Splinter Cell is a simulation of espionage.  But I never aspired to be a pilot and I didn’t figure games like this would figure into my life at any point.

When I spotted Flight Adventure 2 on the marketplace, I knew I had to give it a shot.  I mean, it looked damn good, and it was licensed by Boeing.  A licensed Xbox Live Indie Game?  Get the fuck out!  And then I was contacted by the developers of it, who assured me that online play was a major component of their game and provided me with a code to give to someone on my friend’s list, which my BFF Brian eagerly snatched up.  This not being the type of thing I’m into, I figured I would monkey around for an hour, maybe do a race or two, and then type up the most entertaining review of an Xbox Live Indie Game flight simulator you’ve ever seen.

Now, six hours of playtime later, I’m barely able to get through typing this without wanting to go back and play it some more.  Fancy that.

I usually try to get unbranded screenshots but this was the best I could do. My apologies.

Flight Adventure 2 isn’t heavy on options.  There’s only one airplane for you to fly, a P-51 Mustang, and you can’t customize it in any way.  There’s also only one map at your disposal, albeit an insanely huge one that contains multiple different routes for races.  I don’t know how much more or less complex this is than your typical flight sim, but the controls are complicated and you have lots of stuff to pay attention to once you’ve taken off.  So the game isn’t exactly easy to use, but neither is an actual airplane so I guess that’s the point.

If I could think of one word to describe Flight Adventure 2, it would be “relaxing.”  This is a no-pressure game experience.  Once you’ve taken to the friendly skies, cruising around at your leisure is very tranquil.  It helps that the developers focused on eliminating things that would take me out of the experience.  The draw distance is insane, to the point where there is absolutely no pop-up or fogging that would destroy the immersion created.  Meanwhile, you still have to manage things like your pitch and roll, adjusting your flaps and maintaining your speed.  If you go too fast, your plane can break apart, as mine often did.  You can change this in the options menu, which is handy if you plan on doing various stunts with your plane, but why bother?  I actually felt somewhat accomplished when I was able to do a loopty-loop in my Mustang without showering the Earth with broken airplane and body parts.

When you get bored with aimless flying, you can enter a race mode using Xbox Live or via system-linking.  You choose one of six courses where you must fly between what looks like miniature nuclear cooling towers.  I also had fun with this mode, but I should note that in my personal opinion, the towers aren’t spread apart far enough, and I would often clear a gate by crashing straight into it.  Brian said I was just being a crybaby and they were perfectly spread apart.  So basically Brian is an asshole and I’m right about this, because I felt it was just too hard to get between the damn checkpoints.

Then again, I really sucked at this game.  Even after several hours of playtime, I had been unable to land my plane successfully.  Brian tried to walk me through it, but our efforts were fruitless.  About five hours in, I was finally able to land my plane.  Kinda.  I broke off the wheels, but by God my character would have survived if he existed, and that’s okay with me.  I also semi-successfully landed on a hill once, but when it comes to collision-detection the game doesn’t seem to factor in speed.  I held the breaks and gently eased my way down the hill, going maybe a few feet per a minute.  At the bottom of the hill, I lightly tapped a tree with a force equivalent to having a fly land on you.  At this point, both my wings flew off at roughly the speed of light and my cockpit exploded.  I theorized that my pilot was in fact Hans Moleman.

I have to also break my rule that says people who received the free code get no feedback in this review, but I have to do so for a very important reason.  Whenever we were doing races, my friends Brian, Bryce, and Cameron had to bank hard to reach a checkpoint, and they would occasionally accidentally click the left stick, which brings up the map.  This happened often enough that it seems like it might be a problem for other players.  That or all three of them were just thick.  Brian?  Maybe.  Bryce for sure.  I don’t know Cameron all that well though, and the fact that it happened to him too suggests to me that maybe they shouldn’t have mapped the map to the left clicker.  For the record, it never once happened to me, but most of the time I was too busy crashing into trees to be worried about how steep I was banking.

I felt like Indiana Jones. "Fly? Yes. Land? No!"

And since I’m giving someone else feedback in my review, I might as well go in for a penny, in for a pound and also note that Brian thought the absence of fuel was weird.  I’ll admit that a game that takes itself so seriously with realism and accuracy ignoring such a key component of aviation was bizarre, but I was actually glad that I had one less thing to worry about.  Between adjusting my flaps, my thrust, and various other words that sound naughty if taken out of context, worrying about having enough gas in the tank would have been too much for me to handle.

Overall though, I really liked Flight Adventure 2.  It’s one of the few Xbox Live Indie Games that I can safely say I’ll keep playing long after I’ve finished reviewing it.  Despite its complexity, the game offers a leisurely experience that’s high in production value and low in cost.  Hell, I managed to write 1,100 words thus far without whining about how they didn’t include dog fighting in it.  My primitive brain is wired for combat, not for adjusting trim on an ancient airplane.  A flying game without shooting?  Total hogwash, or so I thought.  It should have been impossible for me to have enjoyed Flight Adventure 2, but I did.  I guess I enjoyed it because it made me feel like I was Amelia Earhart.  And by that I mean I was an unskilled pilot with a tendency to crash but, damn, what a ride!

Flight Adventure 2 was developed by CAVOK Games (website outdated)

240 Microsoft Points spent more time in trees than Tarzan in the making of this review.

A review copy of Flight Adventure 2 was provided by CAVOK Games to IndieGamerChick.com in this review.  The copy played by the Chick was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review copy was given to a friend with the sole purpose of helping the Chick test online multiplayer.  That person had no limited feedback in this article.  For more information on this policy, please read the Developer Support page here. 

Nate, whom I hear went to the John F. Kennedy Jr. School for Flying, also reviewed this at Gear Fish.  I would like to note that I experienced none of the online issues that he did.

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

Avatar Trivia Online

Avatar Trivia Online is no longer for sale.  Instead, it’s been replaced with Avatar Trivia Party.  See that review here. 

Um, let’s see.  Hmmmm.  I’ll take Xbox Live Indie Games.

The question is: what is the latest release by Red Crest Studios, the guys behind the #9 game on the Indie Gamer Chick All-Time Top 10 list, Andromium?

Andromium 2: Andromiumer?

Sorry, no.  The correct answer is Avatar Trivia Online.  Please select a new category.

Ah crap.  Okay, let’s see, how about..

Actually no, you don’t get to choose categories.  We just throw random questions at you.  The next question is, how many players does Avatar Trivia Online support?

Um, zero?

Wow, you are kind of dumb.  The correct answer is 16.

Boy, that’s a lot of players!

Indeed it is.  Next question: in a trivia video game, what is the most efficient way to be able to answer questions?

Well that would be mapping an answer to each of the four face buttons.

Danny, Tin, and Hipster are all legally retarded.

That is correct!  Next question: how are the questions answered in Avatar Trivia Online?

Um, the efficient way?

Oh sorry, you have way too much faith here.  The correct answer is you have to clumsily scroll through a list of the answers.

No way.  They couldn’t have missed something that obvious.

They could have and they did.  Now, would you like to know your score?

Well, I’ve missed a lot of questions already so probably not.

That’s good, because in Avatar Trivia Online, no score is kept.  At all.

…

…

…

…

You’re joking, right?

Nope.

So it’s a trivia game that doesn’t keep score?  It doesn’t even tell you how many questions you yourself have answered correctly?

That is correct.

Why on Earth would anyone want to play that?  If it doesn’t keep score, and it doesn’t offer any different modes of play besides “answer this trivia question”, what does the game offer that couldn’t be accomplished by just randomly asking questions on a message board, or on Twitter or something?

Oh, well, um, being the host and everything, I wasn’t expecting to be asked questions myself.  I suppose for those things you don’t have to pay $1 to have meaningless social trivia.  I guess that’s actually not a good thing, is it?

No.  No it’s not.

Oh oh oh oh oh, wait, I know.  In those things, you don’t get to use your Xbox Avatar!  That’s a big deal!

Dude, I’m so over my avatar.  I see it every time I boot up my Xbox.  And in this type of game, where you don’t even have direct control over it, the only reason for it to even exist is because there’s a lot of especially thick casual gamers out there who make a big deal of seeing a cartoon version of themselves.  It screams “empty cash grab.”

Well, I suppose you’re right.  It also doesn’t help that Avatar Trivia Online isn’t tailored for playing with your friends.  You’re placed in a random room and have to invite them into the game with you midway through a question.  Of course, since the game doesn’t keep score, it’s not like they’re going to miss out on points or anything.

This doesn’t sound like a very good game.  The whole point of online games is they are supposed to be competitive.  Well it’s hard to have a competition if nobody keeps score.  I’m actually not bothered by questions frequently repeating, because that happens in all trivia games besides maybe the recent You Don’t Know Jack.  Still, I think gamers should likely pass on this one.

Kairi, that is correct!  Congratulations, you’ve won the game!

Really?  Oh my God!  This is the greatest moment of my life!  What did I win?

I dunno.  Since there’s really no way to “win” Avatar Trivia Online, I don’t know what kind of prize to give you here.  How about inner peace?

Inner peace?  How am I supposed to shop with that?

Avatar Trivia Online was developed by Red Crest Studios

80 Microsoft Points took Anal Bum Cover for 400 please Alex in the making of this review.

A review copy of Avatar Trivia Online was provided by Red Crest Studios to IndieGamerChick.com in this review.  The copy played by the Chick was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review copy was given to a friend with the sole purpose of helping the Chick test online multiplayer.  That person had no feedback in this article.  For more information on this policy, please read the Developer Support page here. 

Please donate to Extra Life, a promotional event that shows gaming geeks have heart, and help make a difference in the lives of the next generation of gamers. 

I couldn’t find a video or trailer for this game.  Check back later and I’ll edit one in if it goes up.