Charlie Murder

August 11, 2013 by 9 Comments

Ever heard of something called “The Impressive Monkey Test?” Probably not. I invented it just now. But I think the Impressive Monkey Test could be a valuable tool in judging how much raw brainpower a game requires to play. You see, I would be impressed if a monkey could be trained to beat Super Mario Bros. I would be very impressed if a monkey could be trained to play Tetris. Brawlers, on the other hand, I would so not be impressed if a monkey could be trained to play them. They’re games designed for apes, where slapping buttons without finesse is as valid a strategy for winning as mastering combos.  Don’t get me wrong: games for apes can be fun. But generally, games that can be played just as well by both humans and primates tend to get boring pretty quickly.

Charlie Murder is a brawler that probably couldn’t be enjoyed by our simian cousins. It has a lot more going for it than just randomly mashing buttons and moving to the right. There’s a fairly complex item system, leveling up, special skills, lots of hidden stuff, and a quirky punk rock story that kept me interested until the end. But what really sets Charlie Murder apart is that it’s a brawler that’s more about the adventure than the fisticuffs. Yea, I know. Some other brawlers have been doing that lately too. Recent XBLIG/PC title Fist Puncher certainly aimed to be more about the story than the action, but after playing just a little bit of Charlie Murder, I felt Fist Puncher was positively antiquated. The funny thing is, I’ve met people who feel the same way about Charlie Murder after playing Dragon’s Crown.

Yea, this was a tough one for me to play, and inspired my most passed around editorial ever. Then again, I Made a Game with Zombies was also pretty bad for me. The only explanation: SKA Studios wants me dead. After this review, I don't blame them.

Yea, this was a tough one for me to play, and inspired my most passed around editorial ever. Then again, I Made a Game with Zombies was also pretty bad for me. The only explanation: SKA Studios wants me dead. After this review, I don’t blame them.

Actually, these last two weeks have been eye-opening to say the least. I figured fans of brawlers would be all for things like experience and level-up systems. In fact, a whole lot of them are not. That’s weird, because having a sense of advancement is pretty much the only thing that kept me going once Charlie Murder grew teeth and became difficult to work with. I guess SKA Studios, the guys behind I Made a Game with Zombies In It, are infamous for games that cross the line from enjoyable to infuriating. I would think such a reputation wouldn’t be a badge of honor. Any moron can frustrate people, a fact I demonstrate on a daily basis with my boyfriend and parents. Being able to hold someone’s attention by means other than a sense of obligation? That takes talent. SKA undoubtedly has talent. I just question whether they’re more interested in their poop-stained “we make hard games” badge.

Early on, Charlie Murder is a joy to play. The enemies are well-balanced and the stages are fun to explore. But it doesn’t take too long to realize that there’s going to be some major problems here. Chief amongst them: Charlie Murder is designed with multiplayer in mind. In solo play, the game ramps up in toughness faster than you can level up. I had to replay multiple stages. That didn’t annoy me so much, because I was stockpiling the best clothing and hocking all the rest for cash. But then I would get to bosses that, without hyperbole, I would spend an hour or longer fighting and making no progress. There was one that had a parasite growing out of his head that spawned a full battalion of little worm things. You couldn’t possibly kill the little fuckers fast enough before more would arise to devour you. This forced me to take a smack and run approach with the boss, all the while drip-feeding myself health refills. After a while, I had finally whittled him down to his last tick of health. To beat this boss (and a few others), you have to finish him with a button-mashing quick time event. For the next ten minutes (felt like much longer), every time i went to do the move, one of the minions would grapple on to me, breaking the killing blow and forcing me to mash a different button to shake it off. Of course, when there’s a small army of baddies that can do that attack, you can shake one off and get caught by another. Bosses become such a clusterfuck because of this. One boss has infinitely respawning enemies that can refill its health from across the room. Kill one and another appears within seconds. Just to be clear, Charlie Murder, you want to be enjoyed, right?

No? Only on your terms you say? Those terms being four-players or bust?

Well what if your terms aren’t an option?

No, I don’t particularly feel like going and fucking myself right now.

Grind? That’s your solution? Grind up my stats to have a fighting chance? That’s a shitty deal. I haven’t avoided a single baddie, and I’ve varied my fighting style to try to win over supporters on your in-game Twitter thing (seriously, that’s how leveling up works). Why is the game not progressing with me? Why am I encountering boss fights where I have to practically carry a buffet with me to avoid dying? Why does it take me several minutes to fight normal baddies? Why on earth would you make your end-game such a tedious, boring, repetitive chore?

There's a few minigames to break up the same old shit, like a few rhythm games. The last of which lagged on me (single player offline play, mind you), got skippy, and cost me a perfect score.

There’s a few minigames to break up the same old shit, like a few rhythm games. The last of which lagged on me (single player offline play, mind you), got skippy, and cost me a perfect score.

Fine. I’ll jump on Xbox Live and play with friends and ohhhhh right. We tried that and the connection kept lagging out. And it wasn’t just on me. I tried it with different partners, at home and at my office. During certain fights, it just stopped working. I’m sure this will get patched, but it didn’t help my cause here. Instead, I tried to play local. This was fun. In fact, Charlie Murder is always fun with a party, provided that party isn’t lagging out. But this introduced new problems. I had spent time building up my Chick’s stats and I was NOT going to give that up for anyone. Thus, my friends would jump in and out from the ground floor while I walked around like a fucking super hero. They had no remote shot of playing the levels I hadn’t finished. This forced me to go back and start from the beginning with them. Still fun, but significantly less so. I watched them maliciously brawl with the opening baddies, while I could kill any of them with a single punch. I imagine this is how major leaguers must feel when they attend their children’s tee-ball games.

Oh, there was one funny bit in all this. In order to open up the real final level of Charlie Murder and achieve the “good” ending of the game, you have to gather the parts of an evil Dracula thing. His heart, his eye, his finger nail, his.. this really sounds familiar. Anyway, once you do, you have to equip all five parts before entering the final boss fight. Problem: the ability to get this is dependent fully on you picking the right level-up skill upgrades that allow you to equip more buttons. After reaching level 25, I was able to equip four buttons at most. This was the most offered to me, by the way. If it had given me a chance to have a fifth slot, I would have taken it.

So I cheated: I turned on another controller, gave it the eye (which provided the attributes I figured I would need the least for this fight), and opened up a harder boss fight. Then the unused character got killed while I fought the boss. As he laid there waiting for me to come shock him back to life, he leveled up three times (while dead, mind you) as I spent the next thirty minutes fighting this double-boss thing. Okay, so maybe it’s not that funny, but I thought it was hilarious.

I have two pieces of advice for Charlie Murder. #1: Don’t go into it alone, at all. If friends are not going to be available to you, do not buy this game. The frustration of single player outweighs the fun in a huge way. No thought seems to have been given to balance, to pacing, or to scaling the amount of enemies back to accommodate solo play. #2: If you have friends who you’ll be able to play the game with from start to finish, get this game. For all the bitching I did above, Charlie Murder is an extremely satisfying game.

Despite all the whining above, Charlie Murder is my favorite brawler ever. Nothing remotely close.

Despite all the whining above, Charlie Murder is my favorite brawler ever. Nothing remotely close.

It’s like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of games. Well, I mean, no it’s not. There’s already one of those. But you know what I mean. The contrast between the multiplayer experience and the solo game are startling. Alone, Charlie Murder is a sadistically brutal punisher-brawler with bad pacing, unfair design, and frustration from hour two onwards. The end game especially is anything but fun. With friends, it’s a still-difficult but not quite as frustrating romp with charming characters, fun set pieces, and enough variation to keep anyone from getting bored. A few years ago, I would have hated Charlie Murder. I quite enjoyed it now, flaws and all, on account of having friends. And to think, I used to believe the Care Bears were full of shit. It only took a game chalked full of violence, bloodshed, dismemberment, and cannibalism to show that Tenderheart Bear knew what he was talking about all along.

Charlie Murder releases August 14, 2013

boxartlgCharlie Murder was developed SKA Studios

Seal of Approval Large800 Microsoft Points would make a video of the most horribly violent Charlie Murder four player moments with this song playing in the background if I had such talent in the making of this review.

Charlie Murder is Chick-Approved and will be ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard very soon.

Review copies of Charlie Murder were provided to Indie Gamer Chick.  One was provided to a friend that had no feedback in this review. The other was cashed in by Cathy. At Indie Gamer Chick, we buy our own games. When a game is reviewed before release, a review copy is accepted and a full copy of the game is purchased on release date whether the game is enjoyed or not.  For more on this policy, read the FAQ.

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Limbo

July 3, 2013 by 8 Comments

Probably spoilers in here.  Just a warning.

People are always asking me what I think of certain indie games that existed before I started Indie Gamer Chick. The two most commonly asked about titles are Fez and Limbo. I couldn’t finish Fez because of my epilepsy, so Limbo is the only one I’m really qualified to speak of. (UPDATE: I did end up reviewing it!) But seriously, it’s like a daily thing.  “What did you think of Limbo?” As if Limbo is the be-all, end-all of console-based indies.

I liked Limbo. I really did. I also feel the game is fairly overrated. When you strip out of the visuals and bleakness, it’s just a good, but not great, platformer. A trend I’ve noticed is that a lot of people only played through the early part of the game. When you first enter Limbo, you can be left shell-shocked by the dark tone, spooky visuals, and the fact that one of the first things that happens is an awesome, intense encounter with a giant spider. It perhaps gives the false impression that all those emotions will retain their impact through-out the game. They don’t. At least for me, I found myself desensitized to the whole concept not even half-way in. Once Limbo started focusing more on twitchy-platforming instead of physics-based puzzles, I started finding myself almost bored. It never fully becomes a chore, but once it starts becoming a platforming cliché, it does sort of burn out.

I filled in the blanks by pretending that the game starred Schroeder from The Peanuts. Here he is, learning of Charlie Brown's final fate.

I filled in the blanks by pretending that the game starred Schroeder from The Peanuts. Here he is, learning of Charlie Brown’s final fate.

Also, it was hard to get worked up about the setting when the game was using the all-deflecting “it’s an art game” shield, which pretty much guaranteed an ending “left open to interpretation.” Never been a fan of that. Especially when the game was abstract to begin with. So I guess the idea is the kid, or kids, are dead. How they died or when or where or why is never explained. Theories range from a car wreck to falling out of the tree house to being murdered. I guess from a marketing point of view, it works, because at least people are talking about the game. But I found the ending unsatisfying, because it offered no closure at all. When you invest hours into a game hoping to get some kind of explanation for all the fucked up happenings and the payoff is more questions, it almost feels like the director himself didn’t really know where to go with it. I’ll call this the “Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes Effect.”

Yea, sometimes the questions are more fun than the answers, but in the case of Limbo, you’re playing characters that have no characterization at all. The boy has no back story, no dialog, no personality, no facial expressions, or anything else going for him. The girl is no different. You’re forced to fill in the blanks yourself, but most of the symbolism is in the background and can be easily missed on account of you playing the game. Because the actual gameplay starts to dull towards the end, Limbo really doesn’t lend itself well to replaying to look for the clues that you missed.

Limbo’s ending. I apologize for comparing it to Burton’s Planet of the Apes. That’s a low-blow.

I don’t mean to be too negative here. Sometimes Limbo is brilliantly designed from a gameplay perspective. The bits with the spider early on are one of my all-time gaming highlights. Unfortunately, Limbo pretty much shot its wad in the first twenty minutes. Nothing that followed the sequence where you’re hopping in the spider’s cocoon came remotely close to the thrills and chills that section offered. All that’s left is solid physics-based platforming that I almost wish was in a more cheerful setting, because too much dark shit can get exhausting. But hey, dark is in right now. Any product that aims to be joyful is setting itself up for failure. If an indie game isn’t so bleak that you want to bury your face in your hands and cry, the developer must be mentally ill. Or possibly not mentally ill enough.

boxartlgLimbo was developed by Playdead

IGC_Approved1200 Microsoft Points honest to God can’t believe they just ported this thing to iOS. There is no fucking way this can be played well with fake virtual buttons in the making of this review.

Limbo is Chick Approved. 

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CastleStorm

June 4, 2013 by 12 Comments

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

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

Which happened.  When I watched Cloud Atlas.

Not when I played CastleStorm.  It was very fun.

screenlg9

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

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

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

D’oh.

In retrospect I probably should have seen that coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

boxartlgCastleStorm was developed by Zen Studios

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

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

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

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

May 25, 2013 by 6 Comments

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

Bad news: they were already on it.

Good news: both games moved up the board!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IGC_ApprovedMagnetic By Nature was developed by Tripleslash Studios

Sherbet Thieves was developed by Bang Zero Bang

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

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

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Second Thoughts with the Chick – Terraria

April 4, 2013 by 17 Comments

On Monday, I reviewed Terraria for PlayStation Network/Xbox Live Arcade. I said that I did have fun playing the title, but I didn’t recommend it because it was too glitchy and unfinished. I also said that I had lost interest in the game. Since then, there hasn’t been a review up at my blog. Why? Because I’ve been busy playing Terraria. So allow me to eat some crow and do a 180 here. Terraria IS worth your time, glitches and all.

By the way, even more annoying glitches have popped up over the last few days. The game froze after we defeated the Eye of Cthulhu, crashed while I was harvesting meteor ore, and Brian got a really weird one that forced him to start a new map, then exit that map and reload the old one. Naturally, the one that required that was “our world.” The one we built together. The one that has all of our shit in it. We were seriously worried that we had lost access to it. Apparently, it has something to do with the placement of the bed in the house. Who knew this game was one of those weird “feng shui is real and you must obey it” weirdos?

Starting next year, you'll be fighting pelicans instead of hornets.

Starting next year, you’ll be fighting pelicans instead of hornets.

But, despite dozens of bugs (some of them game-enders), I’ve been pressing on. I figured Terraria was a possible life-ender, and I was spot on. When a game like this owns me, my only choice is to “get it out of my system.” Brian’s heard that term before with me, but this is the only time I’ve dragged him along for the ride. It’s okay though. We’ve both made projects for ourselves. I’ve been focusing on exploring the sky. Brian is alternating between building our house and mining Hell itself. He also built an elaborate trap that we use in the event of a goblin army attacking. Of course, said attacks are rare. Mostly, his trap just kills innocent bunnies.

We named this "Rabbit Season, FIRE" after watching a dozen bunnies off-themselves using it.

We named this “Rabbit Season, FIRE” after watching a dozen bunnies off-themselves using it.

It was sometime a couple of days ago that Brian asked me “do you want to reconsider your review?” After thinking it over, yes. Yes I do. I still stand by all the complaints I said in that review. Terraria is clearly not completely finished and needs a lot of work. But I can’t deny the sheer scope of things you can do in this title. It’s insanity. It’s consumed my thoughts and utterly devoured my free time. I had a seizure earlier this morning (completely unrelated to the game), and since then all I can think about is “I hope I feel good enough to play Terraria later.” It’s single-handedly crippled my productivity here at Indie Gamer Chick. It really says something about a game that, after forty hours, I’m still anxious to dive in. I make no apologies for it either. Look at this game I’m supposed to be writing a review of.

This is Short Circuit for XBLIG by developer Jason Yarber. Jason's a cool dude, but his game is so fucking boring. I've always been bored silly by Lights Out, since the moment Santa Claus put one in my stocking when I was ten years old. And this version doesn't look paticularly engaging. It has that lazy XBLIG font that makes me break out into hives. Now, I can either spend hours trying to be snarky over this, or I can spend them fighting monsters and harvesting rare ore. Hmmmm.. sorry Jason. For what it's worth, your game isn't total shit or anything, but I can play Lights Out for free at any number of sites. I can also take a handful of sleeping pills and feel the same stimuli.

This is Short Circuit for XBLIG by developer Jason Yarber. Jason’s a cool dude, but his game is so fucking boring. I’ve always been bored silly by Lights Out, since the moment Santa Claus put one in my stocking when I was ten years old. And this version doesn’t look particularly engaging. It has that lazy XBLIG font that makes me break out into hives. Now, I can either spend hours trying to be snarky over this, or I can spend them fighting monsters and harvesting rare ore. Hmmmm.. sorry Jason. For what it’s worth, your game isn’t total shit or anything, but I can play Lights Out for free at any number of sites. I can also take a handful of sleeping pills and feel the same stimuli.

I haven’t really paid too much attention to recent XBLIG releases. Over the past couple days, a couple of titles have hit that will be reviewed over the next seven days. Well, maybe. When a game utterly owns me the way Terraria does, I can’t make promises. I don’t take back anything else I said about Terraria, except the part where I said I can’t recommend it. I can, and I do. Put it this way: I got the new Bioshock earlier this week and was enjoying what I was playing, until I started playing this. A little $15 indie game on PSN is completely dominating my game time. And now I’m like one of those evil drug pushers, encouraging players to just take one hit. Come on, one won’t kill you.

LogoTerraria was developed by Re-Logic

Seal of Approval Large$14.99 said crow taste quite bitter in the making of this review.

Terraria is Chick Approved and shame on me for not realizing that three days ago.

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

Terraria

April 1, 2013 by 14 Comments

Update: I had second thoughts on Terraria, and you can read them here.  Terraria is now Chick Approved. 

Being primarily an Xbox Live Indie Game critic, I don’t get a whole ton of requests for XBLA/PSN titles.  But, when I do, they usually come in droves.  Terraria was such a game.  Partially that’s because none of the major sites have a review up yet.  Also because people are simply dying to know what I think of crafting games.  Not a day goes by where someone doesn’t ask me about my opinion on Minecraft.  I still haven’t played it.  Not out of any moral or anti-bandwagon objection.  It’s just one of those “I’ll get around to it at some point” type of deals.  Plus I live in fear of the potential addiction factor.  Time sinks like Minecraft have ruined my life in the past.  Now that I work and have a boyfriend and shit, I’m not really up to risking that by playing a game with life-ruining potential.

But, I aim to please my readers, so I decided to go ahead and buy Terraria on PlayStation Network.  And, just to be on the safe side, I brought my boyfriend along for the ride.  If I’m going to destroy my life, I’m bringing him down with me.  It’s the gaming version of the Days of Wine and Roses.

I guess Terraria is supposed to be Minecraft in 2D.  Maybe that’s over simplifying things, but that’s the game in a nutshell.  You have to mine for materials that you use to build shit to mine for more materials.  There are enemies to fight, a huge (and I do mean fucking huge if you pick the largest map) world to explore, lots of different items, and a few twists along the way.  Brian created the world, chose “large” because he’s a total clod who forgot that I needed to play the game as fast as possible so that I could crank out a review, and away we went.

My world started out in a snow-capped mountain. Brian's started out in a beautiful, serene forest. I think the game was trying to send me a message with that.

My world started out in a snowy wasteland. Brian’s started out in a beautiful, serene forest. I think the game was trying to send me a message with that.

As a young couple that’s getting ready to buy a house, I figured this would be a good test to see how we do at the whole “co-habitation” thing.  The weird thing is, we sort of fell into what our real life roles will be.  Brian became the home maker.  Literally.  He built our house, while I set about bringing home the materials we would need to survive.  For the first couple hours, Brian never ventured far outside of our home.  He kept adding floors, furniture, basements, and buildings for NPCs to live in.  Meanwhile, I was off fighting monsters and tunneling all over the Earth looking for shit to build us more shit with.  It was quite fun, and very 21st century of us.

Finally, I think Brian got jealous of me constantly going “look at all this cool shit I’m finding!” and built a mineshaft, then proceeded to dig a hole straight to fucking China.  That got me all jealous.  Suddenly he was the one saying “hey Cathy, look at all this cool shit!”  I responded to this in a completely rational way: I dug a tunnel to a lake and flooded his ass out.  We’re going to make a great couple.

We put about fifteen hours into Terraria, but it felt like a lot less.  Despite being a time sink without shame, gameplay is rewarding.  Every piece of progress you make is exhilarating.  And really, what else can you say about a game where at least once every thirty minutes, we looked at each other as if to say “can you believe how much fun this game is?”

So I recommend it right?

Well, no, actually.  I don’t.  Terraria is too unstable and glitchy in its current state.  Over the course of fifteen hours, a laundry list of bugs popped up, grew, and frustrated the ever-loving shit out of me.  Chief of which was the game had a tendency to crash at the worst possible times.  It happened to me twice, and both times I had lost all the materials that I had harvested.  To say I blew a gasket is an understatement.  Who knew I was capable of crushing a controller with my bare hands?

How come our place didn't look this nice, Brian? You suck at interior design. Suck suck suck at it!

How come our place didn’t look this nice, Brian? You suck at interior design. Suck suck suck at it!

I can’t stress how furious I was when this happened the second time with Brian.  After hours of searching, I had stumbled upon a vein that was the mother lode of precious metals and rare gems.  I stuffed my pockets and was about to head home with, poof, gone.  Game crashed.  Not for Brian, just for me.  But all those metals that were in my pockets were gone.  Gone permanently from my pockets and from his world.  Ceased to exist.  They can’t be replaced.

At this point, I was done with Terraria.  This had already happened once and I was pretty pissed then, but I was having such a good time that I wanted to go back.  After the second time?  Fuck that.  The game was a waste of my time.  I begrudgingly played on my own just because it seemed like the professional thing to do, but the magic was gone.  That took a lot of work to get those.  Hours of gameplay.  Am I bitter?  Fuck yea, but with just cause.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think a game that cost money should, you know, fucking work.

That crash also made a lot of the niggling little glitches that seemed minor before seem not so innocent.  Such as:

  • Going to craft items and being told I didn’t have the materials.  Even though I did.  Right there, in my pocket.  So I would have to exit out of the crafting menu and reenter it.  Sometimes I would have to do this two or three times before the game would say “oh hey, look, you actually do have them.  My bad!”
  • It had issues keeping track of how much money I had gathered.  I would fight hoards of zombies, picking up coins from each one that died, then go to put my cash away in a chest at home only to find out that the dozens of coins I had picked up was now four or five.  We never actually spent all that much money, so I wasn’t that annoyed by it.  But still.
  • We had trouble picking up the shooting stars.  It seemed to be a networking issue.  Brian would see stars that I wouldn’t and vice-versa.
  • Offline, the game froze for me while it was loading up the world.
  • I had the music start to glitch out on me upon respawning more than once, making it sound like nails on a chalkboard.

It’s also worth mentioning that I had a couple reports on Twitter of XBLA owners also crashing their game.

While going through the screenshots on the official page for Terraria on the PlayStation Store, I realized how very little I had seen of Terraria, even after fifteen hours of gameplay. I want to keep playing. But I won't, because I don't want to get burned again.

While going through the screenshots on the official page for Terraria on the PlayStation Store, I realized how very little I had seen of Terraria, even after fifteen hours of gameplay. I want to keep playing. But I won’t, because I don’t want to get burned again.

As far as the non-glitchy elements go, movement physics are fairly smooth.  Jumping is decent.  But, the interface is so cumbersome and clunky that, even after over ten hours, it never feels intuitive.  When we finally got organized and created a room that was nothing but chests to keep all of the stuff we’d dug up, we could spend fifteen or more minutes just fumbling to empty our pockets into them.  Brian got more used to it than I did.  I just couldn’t get the hang of it.  Have you ever been stuck in line at a supermarket while some asshole has to get a price check on a pack of gum, then decides to pay for it with his card instead of the quarter you just fucking know is collecting lint in his pocket?  Every single menu in Terraria feels like that.

I sure hope that patches are on the way for Terraria.  I can’t stress enough: this game is fun.  Very, very fun.  But it’s not worth getting right now.  Simply put: it’s not finished.  Hopefully it will be someday soon.  If you’re one of those types who can put up with great games rendered too buggy to enjoy, have at it.  For me, Terraria can be fun, but it’s too unstable to recommend.  Funny, because that’s exactly how my parents described me to possible suitors.

LogoTerraria was developed by Re-Logic

$14.99 briefly thought about taking hostages and demanding that the 73 Gold Ore, 103 Silver Ore, 17 Demeteor Ore, 15 emeralds, 7 Topaz, 8 sapphire, and Skeleton Statue that I lost when the game crashed were returned to me, but Brian said “honey, the cops made it clear, no more hostage situations” in the making of this review.  Well fuck.

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

Centipede (PlayStation Home Arcade), Centipede & Millipede (XBLA), Centipede Origins (iOS), and Bad Caterpillar (XBLIG)

February 16, 2013 by 10 Comments

Probably the biggest misconception about me as a gamer is that I’m anti-retro or anti-old games. I’m not. I’m simply of the opinion that some games age better than others. I wouldn’t want to play Space Invaders or Pac-Man as they existed back in the day. I’m perfectly fine with modern remakes of them, like Space Invaders Extreme or Pac-Man Championship Edition. On the other hand, some of those older games have aged pretty gracefully. Centipede is one such game. In fact, it’s one of the few golden age coin-ops that I feel blends in perfectly with the current generation. Its twitchy, fast-paced gameplay lends itself perfectly to ten minute portable sessions. It released recently on the Vita’s Home Arcade platform, and I snagged it for $1.49 in preparation for today’s review. That’s about what I would have spent to last 15 minutes on the coin-op if I had been alive in 1983. Did I mention I really suck at it?

Centipede on PlayStation Home Arcade (Vita)

Centipede on PlayStation Home Arcade (Vita)

So what do I think of Home Arcade? Um, hmmmm.. you know, in the four years its been around, I never have really used PlayStation Home too much. I would rather just be able to launch games straight off my Vita’s dashboard without having to open Home Arcade. The interface is clunky and half the time I’ll be stabbing the ever-loving shit out of the “your games” button and nothing happens. Having said that, the prices are pretty good ($1.49 each) and it has the advantage of being portable and on the coolest gaming gizmo in years. I don’t even have Home installed on my PS3, and I don’t plan on it, but you don’t need it to use Home Arcade. I can’t speak for the rest of the games (get back to me the next time an Asteroids clone hits XBLIG) but Centipede controls well. I guess you can’t ask for more. Which is a good thing, because what you get is a bare-bones port of the arcade original. They could have thrown in ports of the Atari home versions, but hey, it’s called making a lazy dollar.

I picked up Centipede on Vita because I wanted to compare it to Bad Caterpillar, a new Xbox Live Indie Game from Kris Steele. I like Kris, but the dude fucking aggravates me to no end. His games always have something glaringly off about them. Volchaos would have been fun if the movement physics weren’t so damn loose. The same goes for Hypership: Out of Control on XBLIG. If a gnat so much as farts in the direction of the analog stick, it sends your ship flying. In a game that involves lining up your character to shoot smaller targets, precision control is kind of needed. Hypership is actually sublime on iPhone, and very addictive. Of course, that has the advantage of having drag-the-ship touch controls for extra-accurate firing. His track record of acceptable controls on XBLIG is about as good as THQ’s record with bankruptcy avoidance. Considering that Bad Caterpillar looked really close to Centipede, a game which requires precision movement so much that the arcade original used a trackball, I braced for the worst.

Bad Caterpillar on Xbox Live Indie Games.

Bad Caterpillar on Xbox Live Indie Games.

As it turns out, my worries were misplaced. Bad Caterpillar handles pretty well. Not perfect. No joystick-based Centipede can possibly be perfect. But, I can honestly say that it plays better than any other version of Centipede I played today. That’s a lot of versions. For the sake of comparison, I also bought Centipede & Millipede, a 2-for-1 Xbox Live Arcade port of the arcade games. Movement for these is too loose to be acceptable. I’ve always had a difficult time in Centipede lining up shots correctly, especially when the last segments of the Centipede are near the bottom of the screen. That’s not a huge problem in Bad Caterpillar.  It’s a fucking chore in the XBLA arcade ports. If it was any looser, it would hang out on dimly-lit street corners and be considered a bio-hazard.

The "evolved" version of Centipede & Millipede on Xbox Live Arcade.

The “evolved” version of Centipede & Millipede on Xbox Live Arcade.

The biggest disappointment with the XBLA ports (besides the awful controls) is how the “modern” versions are really just the same old Centipede with some new (re: 15 year-old) special effects added. On the flip side, Bad Caterpillar looks old, but it features some nifty new ideas such as power-ups and bombs. Should probably clear this up: by new, I meant “new for Centipede.” My problem here is that they don’t get spit out often enough. I played full games where the item drops were nothing but points. The game should go nuts with them. I mean, I can already play a Centipede-like game that doesn’t offer power-ups. It’s called Centipede.

Centipede Origins on iPhone.

Centipede Origins on iPhone.

I guess I should bring up that I also played the iOS update, called Centipede Origins. It’s a micro-transaction oriented shooter that tries to controls like Kris Steele’s Hypership does on iPhone. But I found the drag-the-shooter controls to be too glitchy, with the cursor being unable to keep up with my finger, even as I dragged it slowly across the screen. Only played it for like five minutes, would never want to play it again. I also dug around and found my copy of Centipede for the Sega Dreamcast, but decided against spending any time digging around for the actual machine to play it on. Honestly, I’m all Centipeded out. So what are my thoughts? Well, the Vita version is a worthy use of money for a solid portable version of a masterpiece. The iOS version is just about the worst thing to happen to iPhone since Siri. The XBLA ports of Centipede & Millipede come across like quick, effortless cash-ins and should be avoided like the clap. Finally, the XBLIG update Bad Caterpillar is actually a decent game with a few problems. The moths are unfair, there’s no online leaderboards, and the heavy metal soundtrack is so out-of-place. It would be like going to Ozzfest to listen to country music. But I do recommend it, because it’s the best (and cheapest) version of Centipede you’ll get on your Xbox. Kind of sad that an XBLIG port made by a guy I consider to be a bit of a twat completely slays the official versions of Centipede. Just kidding, Kris.

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedBad Caterpillar was developed by Fun Infused Games (80 Microsoft Points don’t think Kris is a bit of a twat)

Centipede & Millipede were developed by Stainless Games Ltd. (340 Microsoft Points think throttle monkey sounds like something found in the Kama Sutra)

Centipede Origins was developed by Atari (Free, except all the stuff that cost money in it)

Centipede on PlayStation Home Arcade was developed by Atari ($1.49)

Bad Caterpillar and Centipede on PlayStation Home Arcade are Chick Approved, and Bad Caterpillar is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Retro Reviews, XBLIG / Creators Collection, Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Retro City Rampage

October 14, 2012 by 13 Comments

Warning: there will be some spoilers.  The gist of this review is that Retro City Rampage is fun in spurts but the Grand Theft Auto stuff is the only parts that are good.  Every classic gaming section is boring or worse, and most of the jokes are not funny.  I don’t recommend it.

Retro City Rampage is a good game destroyed by a lack of restraint.  It’s popular among older players because it hits all the right buttons that get their juices flowing.  In other words, it references a lot of 80s gaming and pop culture, and that’s all you need to do to get most retro gamers happy.  Sean Penn is statistically proven to be the most boring man in the world, but if he ever just blurted out “our princess is in another castle” you would have the entire gaming population over the age of 30 lining up to give him head.  That’s the basis for all the humor in Retro City Rampage.  If it’s 80s and pop culture, it’s here.  Do you remember Metal Gear?  Back to the Future?  Battletoads?  Bill & Ted?  The dog from Duck Hunt?  Married with Children?  Saved by the Bell?  Pitfall?  Mega Man?  Smash TV?  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  The guy who made this certainly did.

So what’s the punchline?  “Hey, it’s that thing I remember from my childhood!”  Well that’s not funny.  There has to be some kind of gag to go with it.  When Retro City Rampage has an actual joke, with a beginning, middle, and end, it’s typically funny.  Otherwise, it’s just painful.  I never got how humor like this is supposed to work.  You know how every Adam Sandler movie has a Col. Sanders look-alike in it?  What exactly is funny about that?  Someone please explain it to me.  I’m hoping some context will make it funny in time for his next shitty flick.

This section looks like Contra. I think we’ll all agree that Contra is a pretty good game. The problem here is the game only looks like Contra. It doesn’t play like it, or more importantly, feel like it. It plays and feels like a bad ripoff of Contra that was lifted straight out of the 80s. I’m guessing that isn’t what the developer was aiming for.

When Retro City Rampage is good, it’s really good.  That might sound like high praise, but the flip side of it is when Retro City Rampage is bad, it’s really, really bad.  The sad thing is, the game does the old-school Grand Theft Auto better than the last two official 2D GTAs did.  It controls reasonably well, there’s a fun variety of weapons, and the game keeps track of all the damage you’ve rang up.  If the game had stuck to this stuff, it would have been sublime.  But it doesn’t.  Because it’s so married to the whole classic-gaming thing, it keeps doing “homages” to that era.   And the material chosen here is head scratching.  The dam stages from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES.  I’ve never played it, but I know of its reputation and it’s not a good one.  The same goes for the hoverbike sequence from Battletoads.  I don’t know if it improves the mechanics (since I didn’t choose suicide over finishing the stage, I’m guessing it must have), but why include them in the first place?

The shitty thing is the guy who made this obviously knew sections of the game were not fun, because the game outright tells you such.  When you have a mission where you have to tail a car without being spotted and also refilling on coffee every ten feet, the game outright tells you that it’s “one of those boring missions.”  Which would be funny if it somehow took the piss out of the genre, but it doesn’t.  When it turns out the mission really is boring, it crosses a line from being cute to being to being obnoxious.  When you do the Ninja Turtles dam sequence, it moans “oh no, not another water stage!”  And then it proceeds to be slow, boring, and not fun at all.  I acknowledge that I’m probably not Retro City Rampage’s target audience, but with all the great stuff in gaming history, why pay tribute to the crappy stuff?  Even worse, why keep it crappy?  If you know what’s wrong with something, why not fix it?  If I have a leaky sink, I don’t build a fucking shrine to it.  I fix the damn thing.  Retro City Rampage decided to go with the shrine, and as a result this tribute to bad games itself becomes a bad game.

The Paperboy section, which feels like a bad clone of the real thing.

Whenever it deviates from the Grand Theft Auto stuff, the game sucks.  Sadly, the game keeps forcing you to do these “classic gaming” sections like you’re being dragged by a choke chain.  With no exceptions, I found those fell into two categories: boring, or long and boring.  A section based on Paperboy?  Boring.  And bad, because the engine isn’t suited for Paperboy.  A section based on Contra?  Boring.  An extended section based on ‘Splosion Man?  Long and boring.  And again, the engine isn’t suited for it.  Nor is it suited for a boring Smash TV section, or especially a long and boring Smash TV section.  Yep, there’s two.  Or a portion of the game based on Tapper.  There’s an extended boss fight with Dr. Robotnik (or Buttnik as the game calls him) that is long, boring, and has no check points.  For a game that I was so overjoyed when I started it, and even after several hours, I couldn’t believe how horrible it had become by about eight hours in.  I had just beaten the Robotnik boss, and suddenly the game decided to pay tribute to some 3D motorcycle racing thing.  The good news is they actually used a different engine for this part.  The bad news is this is where I finally said “you know what?  All the fun I’ve had in this game has long since been drowned out by shit like this.”  Exact quote.  I made Brian write it down.  This was somewhere near the end of the game.  After three stages with a motorcycle, you end up in a time-traveling DeLorean, fighting a boss.  I spent an hour with this thing, fighting spotty collision detection, unfair enemy placement, and tedium on a level I didn’t think was possible in something I had previous had a lot of fun with.  Finally, after getting close to the end of its lifebar, something happened and I went from having all three of my hit-points left to having none.  I’m not sure what happened.  I think I should have taken one point of damage from getting hit, but my health was instantly all gone and it was time to restart for the 35th time.  Fuck.  That.

If Retro City Rampage had stuck to gameplay like this, I wouldn’t be calling it Retro Shitty Rampage to Brian right now.

For those of you who will love this game no matter how flawed it is, go ahead and tell yourselves that I only disliked it because I grew up with a PlayStation instead of an NES.  Yea, I probably didn’t get all the references (or “jokes” as they are being passed off as), but if that’s all you really want in a game, you need to get your head examined.  Why punish yourself with a game that sometimes brags about being boring (and it’s not a joke, it really is boring in those sections) just so you can see a reference to Mr. Belding or the raccoon suit from Super Mario 3?  Retro City Rampage can be fun, but it’s so bad in so many sections that you’ll never really reach that apex of satisfaction.  I was practically floating two hours into it, before the game lost me forever by rubbing in the fact that a section designed to be boring had been placed in the game.  That really soured the mood, and it never recovered.   There were still fleeting moments of greatness, but the threat that the game might decide to intentionally be bad again tainted it all.  It also brought to light some stuff I might have missed if I had remained in a blissful state.  Stuff like close-quarters combat being shitty, club-based weapons being useless, and having too much recoil from getting hit.  And then the game would have more sections of intentional badness.  Sigh.  Who could possibly think being bad is a good thing?  Nobody likes things that suck on purpose, unless it involves a mouth and genitals.

Retro City Rampage was developed by Vblank Entertainment

$14.99 killed more dogs than hip dysplasia in the making of this review.

Cathy was assisted in gameplay while playing Retro City Rampage to help her avoid having a seizure due to epilepsy.  The bulk of the game was played by her.  All opinions in this review are her’s alone. 

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

Worms Revolution

October 4, 2012 by 7 Comments

Do you know what annoys me? When I go to read a review of a new version of a cherished series and it doesn’t answer the questions I want to know. So I’ll cut the bullshit and get to the questions that I would want to know as a Worms fan. Stuff like..

How does the class system actually work in practice? 

The short one, the fat one, the smart one, and the normal one. It’s not a sitcom character sheet, but the new class based system. So how does it work? Well, the normal ones are the Worms you’re used to, so I’ll ignore them. The fat ones are absolutely worthless. Yes, they hit harder, take more damage, can barely be pushed around by the “water”, and many other benefits. But they’re all negated by the slow movement, inability to jump, and most importantly, limited opportunities to escape. Plus, they look like Jabba the Hutt, and any creature that looks like something taken down by a girl in a fetish costume should not be entered into armed combat. Sorry, they just shouldn’t be.

The little ones are not as bad, because they’re zippy and are great for “fire and run away” tactics. But their firepower is weak, and they can be pushed around by enemy attacks easily. That is, when they’re not getting insta-killed by stuff that most other worms would survive. If you play with a competent opponent and use them, even if you use them well, they’re weak enough that it’s like flogging yourself on a cruise ship, donning a suit made of chum, and then keelhauling yourself in shark-infested waters. Which, by the way, I think Carnival actually offers for an extra fee.

I think I prefer the old graphics style to this “3D” stuff that looks like it was lifted straight from the Sega Saturn.

And then there’s the scientists. I’m not exactly sure that a ton of thought was given to balancing them. Their firepower is a tick smaller than a normal worm, but the bonuses they give you more than make up for it. They produce better equipment, so stuff like Sentry Guns made using them fire more rounds, seem to have a longer range, and are also more durable. Even better is that when you start a turn using one, every worm you have gets five extra health. I decided to exploit this by making a team that had four scientists. Thus, I was getting twenty extra life for each worm every time I ran through the full circuit of them. Over-powered? Yea. To put this in perspective, I won a game of forts against Brian where I had taken a metric fuck-ton of damage on each of my characters and still finished with over 100 health for each of them. Brian dealt out 500 points of damage more than I did, but I still won, because it was too easy to park worms and let them build up health. And while I didn’t win every game where I played with four brains, every game I did win I did so because of them.

Ultimately, the new class-based system does offer a nice twist on the established formula. But it’s easy to abuse and there are serious questions about balance. With some more tweaking, this might work better, but for now, this is not a positive new direction.

What about the water?

Okay, first off, it’s not water. It’s “water.” I’ll remove the sarcastic quotes when the fucking stuff actually behaves like water. This stuff is more like jelly. It’s slow-moving. It often doesn’t have any force behind it. It acts as a shock absorber more than something to be frightened of. And the act of drowning inside of it doesn’t seem very consistent. It’s too easy to have one little microscopic fraction of a worm poking out and not have it register as being submerged, even if everything it could conceivably be breathing from is covered up.

I really didn’t like the “water” stuff.  I felt the physics of it were all wrong. I felt it was too unpredictable. Water should be very easy to predict how it will behave. But sometimes it would just stack on a flat piece of slope. Yes, stack. “Water” in Worms Revolution stacks. Water doesn’t stack!! Well, unless it’s frozen. Maybe the “water” is some kind of unique hybrid of water and Velcro, because it would slowly trickle down a steep slope like it was clinging to it. Ugh. As for the water based weapons, I felt the water balloons might take the cake for the most useless item in Worms history. The water gun is more effective, especially if you’re trying to push two or more guys off a cliff. However, I found more inconsistencies when it came to using it to push around environmental objects, or stuff like landmines. Sometimes the water gun would push the mine very easily. Sometimes it would cling to the floor like it was cemented into the ground. What changed? Nothing, besides the mood the game was in. This was another good idea that almost completely fails in execution. Although my boyfriend would like to note that he didn’t mind it as much.  But he has red hair and thus can’t be trusted. You know how they are.

How do the “environmental objects” factor in? 

Very well, actually. This was my favorite change to the formula. I always thought it was weird how the battlefield in Worms had scattered about it various cars, football helmets, candy canes, and other fun objects that didn’t do anything different from the normal terrain if they were shot. That’s not the case here. Objects will drown you, poison you, or explode you. They also are allegedly capable of crushing you, but it seems fickle how that works and can’t be relied on. The biggest problem is not being able to see how much “life” an object has, and there’s no consistency to it. Sometimes items blow up instantaneously from such things as a single shotty blast, while others can take multiple bazooka rounds without budging. Without a lifebar or any reliable visual cues, the strategic aspects of using these is lacking. Still, this is the only major change that worked the way it was expected to, more or less.

What about all the old standbys of Worms?

I found the physics of the bazookas and grenades have remained pretty much the same. That is, when they’re not crapping out on you due to glitches. Grenades often defied the laws of physics by spinning around like a top instead of bouncing when you throw them. I’ve seen grenades cling to enemies, walls, and floors like they were coated in glue. Or perhaps the “water.”

For you fans of Ninja Ropes, forget everything you know about them. They work completely differently from past installments of the series. There will be no amazing acts of wackiness. The ropes at most can swing back and forth. Using them to defy gravity and fold yourself up and over the top of a cliff is officially impossible now. I guess this was done to make the game more realistic. Right, because I know I kept saying to myself “this game featuring worms blowing each-other up with bazookas needs to be way more realistic.” And the weird part is, every other thing, like the “water”, behaves in a way that is so divorced from realism that it could be the setting for a new season of Jersey Shore.

And there’s a lot of little niggling things too. You can’t scoot across the ground with the jetpack. You have to be moving upwards to be able to move left and right. The Concrete Donkey now bounces around the map when you activate it, as if it bred with Armageddon to create an unholy offspring. I used it twice over the course of two games and the grand total of damage it did: killed two of Brian’s worms, killed five of mine. Even though mine were nowhere near his. It’s as if someone at Team 17 said “you know how this weapon worked fine the way we had it? Well, and this might be crazy, but what if it didn’t work fine?” And then they high-fived each-other and went back to making the “water” even crappier.

So Worms Revolution sucks then?

No, actually. Even after all the bitching and complaining I did above, my friends and I had an absolute blast playing it. For everything that it does wrong (and it does a LOT wrong), it’s still Worms. If you get four people together with it, you’re practically guaranteed huge smiles, belly-laughs, hooting, hollering, high-fives, and an overall damn good time. Worms remains the most unsung party series in gaming. I wish it had been way better, but what’s here is still potently fun. They even improved my personal favorite game mode: Forts. Instead of being static pictures of castles or jungles or pirate ships, they’re actual forts! As in, they have hallways, basements, openings to fire out of, and logic in design. I enjoyed this mode so much it almost negated all the shit I dug up above.

Ah, now THESE are forts.

Worms Revolution has a long ways to go. A lot of patchwork, a lot of fine tuning, and more content. The single-player stuff is somewhat dull, thanks in part to AI that is way overpowered, like they went to the Far Cry school of AI design. But setting up online games is a breeze and customizing multiplayer options is a snap. So why am I so disappointed? I think it’s because I wanted to love Worms Revolution, and instead I merely enjoyed it. Change is good, but only if that change has a net positive effect. Most of the new stuff in Worms Revolution makes the formula worse. For me at least, the new Worms has turned the series from “holy shit, this is fucking awesome!” to “this is good. I guess.”

Worms Revolution was developed by Team 17

1200 Microsoft Points have a boyfriend obsessed with banana bombs in the making of this review. I never really understood the logic behind a banana bomb myself. Why would it bounce the way it does? Bananas don’t bounce!

Worms Revolution is Chick Approved, but only Xbox Live Indie Games are ranked on the Leaderboard. 

Review copies were provided by Team 17 to IndieGamerChick.com. Indie Gamer Chick’s policy is to pay for its own games. Because the game wasn’t released at the time of this review, full copies were purchased on October 9 (on PlayStation 3.  Not the same platform, but money was spent).

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

Deadlight

August 8, 2012 by 8 Comments

Don’t worry: spoilers are segregated from the main body of the review.  You’ll have ample warning to avoid them.

Randall Wayne believes the best way to survive a zombie apocalypse is to run in a straight line.  That’s the only way I can explain why he chooses to Rube-Goldberg his way up, over, and through buildings instead of walking around them.  Also, he’s a cold-hearted asshole with a voice that sounds like something spawned from a mating between whiskey and a power sander.  I call it the “Video Game Tough Guy Voice” because it’s essentially the same voice as Solid Snake or Master Chief or any other number of emotionally dead heroes.  He’s the star of Deadlight, the “highlight” of this year’s underwhelming Summer of Arcade lineup, and a game that is not worth the hype.

Dude even looks a little like Solid Snake, in both the gameplay silhouette and also in cut scenes.

In Deadlight, the most unlikely end-of-world scenario outside of “Donald Trump elected President” once again occurs: zombies!  Only they’re called “shadows” here because.. I’m not sure.  Maybe this version of 1986 exists in a parallel world where Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Return of the Living Dead never happened, and thus nobody knows what a zombie is.  Presumably this means that Rob Zombie goes by some other spooky sounding name like, I dunno, it’s supposed to be 1986 so Rob Commie or something.    Either way, civilization somehow completely collapses when faced against the most easily disposable threat the world has ever seen.  Seriously, how DOES a zombie apocalypse work?  The ones in Deadlight are among the dumbest I’ve ever seen in a game.  They have absolutely no survival instinct, often walking straight off cliffs, or into electrical wires after watching other zombies fry themselves.  In order to take over the world, an animal would need to become an apex predator.  That means limited weaknesses, higher order of thinking, and genetic advantages.  The zombies in Deadlight have trouble understanding the concept of a staircase.  Even the Daleks figured that one out.

They can’t climb.  They can’t jump.  They can’t use weapons.  They’re easily distracted by whistling or car alarms.  Their only weapon is teeth.  How is it they manage to wipe out 99% of a race that is armed with Uzis, rocket launchers, or plain old human ingenuity?  Fuck you, that’s how.  Just shut up and play the game.

Think of Deadlight as Silent Hill meets the old school Prince of Persia.  You run, you jump, you climb, you hang, you activate switches, you shove boxes, and you fight with or flee from enemies.  Deadlight is a game where survival takes center stage over body count.  While you might at various times have guns or an axe to take on the undead, avoidance is encouraged.  That’s just as well.  Combat with the axe is slow and clunky.  Guns take too long to draw, and sometimes the aiming seems a bit off.  I swear there were times when I know I tagged a fucker square in the head, yet he would get back up and keep coming at me.  When zombies close in on you, you automatically take damage, but you still have to press B to shove off them.  If you’re on your last bit of health, there is no auto-damage, which negates the entire fucking point of having it in the first place.  There might as well not even be a life bar.  If a hoard of zombies closes in on you, it’s automatic death.  There’s various health pick-ups and stuff that will give you an extra bar of life, but why even bother?  There’s unlimited lives (as there should be) and tons of checkpoints.  It seems like a feature tacked on because this is how games are made despite not serving a purpose.

The graphics really are breathtaking at times. And then there are times when enemy limbs clip right through walls. That’s a real buzzkill.

Let’s face it: the only thing Deadlight has going for it is the atmosphere.  It’s a creepy game, at least at the start.  While you’re scaling buildings, running through empty highways, and collecting your first hidden trinkets over the game’s opening hour, the experience is almost exhilarating.  And then things go to hell once you end up in an overly long sewer section where a guy named The Rat Man takes all your accumulated weapons.  At this point, hardly any zombies show up for over an hour and Deadlight becomes a punisher-platformer, destroying the entire mood of the game in one fell swoop.  Creepiness?  Gone.  Eagerness to proceed?  Gone.  Sense of tension?  Gone.  And Deadlight never recovers from it, even after you return to the streets, because the previous section was just that bad.  By time I was at the end, I was anxious for the game to be over with.

Part of that has to do with the controls being crap.  Deadlight seems to give you all the tools needed for the tasks at hand.  You can wall-jump, do a tuck-and-roll off high falls, or a diving roll through narrow pathways.  It sounds great, but the response time to all actions in the game suffer from a delay.  The possible exception to that is using the fire button when you use a gun, but even then something about it seems like it doesn’t fully work all the time.  Meanwhile, there are several sections of the game that require agility-based platforming, yet all movement is hampered by the unresponsive controls.  Is it impossible to beat?  No.  Actually, if not for control problems, it would probably be kind of easy.  But Deadlight doesn’t carry with it the feel of a trial-and-error platformer, yet that’s how the game ends up.

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the story.  Don’t worry, I’ll place all spoilers inside a special spoiler section, although I would caution readers to not read any comments below until you’ve finished the game, assuming you still plan on burning 1200MSP on this piece of shit.

The game stars a Canadian dude who seems a bit on the paranoid militant side.  When the zombies take over, his family disappears.  He joins up with a rag-tag group of survivors as they make their way to a “safe zone” in Seattle, WA.  The game opens with the group on the outskirts of Seattle, with Randy having just blown away a member of their party that has been infected.  Right from the game’s get-go, I didn’t like Randy too much.  He has no personality and a voice like a drunken frat boy trying to sound like Optimus Prime.  But, his story is an interesting one.  When you read his diary, you realize the dude had a few screws loose before the end of the world happened.  Once it got going, he really went off the deep end.  By the way, you pick up the missing pages of his diary throughout the game.  Of all the odd things that spoiled the mood for me, this one was the most obvious.  Why on Earth would pages of his missing diary be scattered all over a town he’s never been to?  The only explanation I can think of is there is no diary and he’s not actually finding pages, but just remembering events.  Kind of artsy-fartsy, but that is the only theory that can possibly work, so I’ll go with it.  Still, I wish they had thought of some other way to do it.  Warning, spoiler section ahead, sandwiched between the next two pictures.

Spoilers!

What the FUCK is up with that ending?  I had so many people building up the big “twist” and it turns out Randy had already capped his wife and daughter at the start of the apocalypse, and he simply forgot about it.  The way people were raving about it, I was expecting it to be something much more cerebral, like the whole thing being a delusion.  But no, it turns out that Randy is simply a forgetful idiot.  He didn’t turn the gun on himself because he only had two shells, and obviously he would need one for each person.  Um, no.  It’s a fucking 12-gauge shotgun, not a pea shooter.  You position your wife’s head against your daughter and you pull the trigger.  I’m pretty sure both would die from that.  Then you have one shell left all to yourself, because daddies always get the biggest portion at dinner.

Oh, and the chick you save at the end was another dumb bit.  They make it out like some kind of deep moment, but come on, we just fucking met her fifteen minutes beforehand.  Maybe Randy had known her for a while, but we didn’t!  Then, after building up an entire game about looking for lost love, they try to pass off Randy’s needless self-sacrifice as some kind of deep emotional moment.  First off, Randy didn’t save the chick.  He pushed her off the dock on what looked to be a wind-powered boat.  That’s not saving her.  That’s delaying a death sentence.  Let’s go over the possible things that can happen to this poor girl.

#1: The girl, who was screaming “I don’t want to be a monster” can have either the waters or the wind push her right back toward the dock.  Best case?  She’s zombie chow.  Worse case?  She becomes a zombie herself, which is exactly the thing she wants least.

#2: The group of humans that are being bastards apparently just for the sake of being bastards are STILL alive, STILL armed to the teeth, STILL have access to helicopters, are just yards away from you,  and are probably pretty pissed off at you for helping to fuck up their base.  If they catch poor Stella, which they will because they’re RIGHT FUCKING THERE, I’m guessing they’re going to do a whole lot worse than just kill her.

#3: Assuming the winds are friendly and none of the angry soldiers survive, she’s still stuck on a fucking boat, all alone, with no supplies and no weapons.  Never mind the fact that zombies have apparently conquered the whole fucking world, meaning there is no safe place to go.  Her options on the boat are starve to death or drown herself.  Don’t you just love happy endings like this?

Maybe Randy should have said “hey, there’s a batshit insane fucker living in the sewers in Seattle.  Try to make your way to him.  Sure, you’ll be eating rat meat until you finally lose the will to live, assuming you don’t die from all the booby traps he’s going to make you dance through for his own personal amusement, but at least you’ll be alive.”  But no, he pushes her out on a boat, stares down the hoard of zombies coming at him, credits.  Horrible ending.

End of Spoilers!

Honestly, Deadlight isn’t terrible by any means.  But the story loses its intrigue only a third of the way through, and ultimately has an unsatisfactory conclusion.  The voice acting is abysmal.  The characters are all twats.  The secondary enemies, a bunch of military dudes,  are one-dimensional cartoon villains.  Actually that’s not true, because even COBRA Command had more depth than these fuckers.  So while Deadlight is not that bad, it’s not that good either.  And it’s not worth the 2 gigs of space it takes up, or the 1200 Microsoft Points it costs.  You could get all of the top-ten games on my leaderboard for the same cost and still have 400 points to spare, and all ten of them are better games.

It felt like the developers had an awesome idea somewhere along the line, but couldn’t figure out how to stretch it out.  I like the idea of a 2D side-scroller/survival game set in a real American city.  Even if my good buddy Cyril at Defunct Games tells me that the city in Deadlight is most certainly not any Seattle he’s ever been to.  Duly noted.   But Deadlight just fails as a game due to not sticking hard enough to the premise of escaping zombies and trying to survive in a world crumbling around you.  The human enemies and the Rat Man section only served to take out the unnerving tension of the goings on.  I entered the game with genuine chills and exited with genuine apathy, because Deadlight is as shallow as a wading pool.  Which Randy would still manage to drown in, but that’s besides the point.

Deadlight was developed by Tequila Words

1200 Microsoft Points never did get the achievement for surviving a lethal fall by rolling through it because it never once was necessary in the making of this review.  I did get five achievements in five minutes, including one you get just for checking the online leaderboards.  I’m surprised they don’t hand out one just for reloading your gun.  Oh wait, they do that too. 

Filed under Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , ,

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