Laser Fry

March 15, 2013 by Leave a comment

Laser Fry has the feel of a twitchy 80s arcade game.  I can and have gotten into those.  Most of them are based on existing games.  We Are Cubes is like a mixture of Tempest and Buster Bros.  DecimationX3 was a souped-up version of Space Invaders.  There’s been new takes on Defender, Contra, Frogger, Qix, Pac-Man.. pretty much every vintage coin-op under the sun.  Laser Fry is apparently an original idea.  You’re a dude, and there are lasers and balls.  Avoid the balls, or destroy the balls with the lasers.  Just don’t be standing in the path of the laser when you activate it.  Basic stuff they teach you at Testicle Removal School*.

I figured when I started Indie Gamer Chick, I would be neck-deep in original game concepts.  That’s not the case, of course.  Entirely original concepts are as rare as a Yeti.  Developers, even gutsy ones, tend to stick to what they know works, only making minor tweaks on established formulas.  Still, the occasional game centered around a new idea does pop up from time to time.  Such is the case here.  I asked around, and nobody had played anything like it (there were some games on the Commodore 64 that looked similar but turned out to be much different).  Great!  So how does this original idea fare?

No, you can't make sense of this. I think you have a better chance of deciphering the Voynich manuscript.

No, you can’t make sense of this. I think you have a better chance of deciphering the Voynich manuscript.

Not so good.  The main gameplay problem is the background is simply too noisy.  On easy mode, you only have to keep track of the yellow balls and yellow lasers.  This by itself is a decent challenge, especially once the action speeds up.  On higher difficulties, you have three different colors of lasers, three colors of balls, and lots of background shit for those to bleed into.  If you can actually follow the action, your super vision could probably be put to better use in the fields of espionage or Lex Luthor foiling.  Despite decent enough play control, the action in this game is incomprehensible.

But, even if it wasn’t, I don’t think the concept lends itself well to a good game.  That’s the biggest sin Laser Fry commits: it simply is not fun, and probably doesn’t have the potential to ever be fun.  So, like most original ideas that flop, I’ll chalk Laser Fry up to being a worthy experiment that produced an undesirable product.  Sometimes you simply can’t know what will and won’t work until you try it.  It takes a brave person to begin with, who sees a void in innovation and says “I’m going to give this a shot!”  Like an egghead with a chemistry set.  Sometimes you accidentally cure cancer, and sometimes you blow yourself up.

xboxboxartLaser Fry was developed by GGGames

80 Microsoft Points thought the game would involve one of these and a random dude’s hair in the making of this review.

*More commonly called UCLA

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妖精冒険記 (Chronicles of the Fairy)

March 14, 2013 by Leave a comment

Chronicles of the Fairy is kind of like a Kirby game.  The protagonist can “fly” indefinitely, levels center around the simple act of reaching a goal, and the game is as easy as a round of dodge ball against a group of senior citizens.  It also features some pretty good 16-bit graphics and decent play control.  If we left it simply at that, Chronicles of the Fairy would be a decent, albeit forgettable game.

Come on, now.  How often can we leave it at just that?

It looks the part, but Chronicles of the Fairy feels unfinished.

It looks the part, but Chronicles of the Fairy feels unfinished.

Chronicles of the Fairy isn’t really terrible, but it’s underwhelming or mediocre in so many ways that I simply have to shake my head in disappointment.  It looks like it should be good, and feels like it should be good.  But the six levels that take all of twenty minutes to complete are boring and uninspired in design.  The music is annoying, the enemies are all but useless, and lives are far too plentiful.  But what’s really awful is the collision detection on the spikes.  Levels are littered with spikes all over the place, with the main challenge being having to squeeze between them.  The problem with this is, the collision box for the spikes is not too generous.  It leads to many moments where you don’t come that close to the spikes and still take damage for them.  Imagine if real life was like that.  Imagine if, in football, getting to the three yard line was considered good enough for a touchdown.  Raving insanity!  Even if replacement referees apparently liked that idea.

Even if that wasn’t the case, 妖精冒険記 is boring.  The whole experience feels like the demo for what should be a larger game, or perhaps an early beta-build or proof-of-concept, as evidenced by the ball-and-chain swinging enemy who clipped right into a wall and got stuck.  There’s no challenge (even the spikes don’t make much difference when you’re tripping over extra lives every two feet), and no real reason to keep playing once you’re past the opening stage.  Then, just as it looks like the game might grow some teeth and ramp up in difficulty, it’s over.  It’s quite disappointing.  I was interested to check it out because it’s rare when a Japanese-developed XBLIG shows up on the marketplace.  It seemed like it might be exotic.  Instead, I feel like one of those chicks who gets a tramp stamp in Japanese characters that she thinks says “Free Spirit” and only later learns that it says “Insert Umbrella Below.”

xboxboxart妖精冒険記 (Chornicles of the Fairy) was developed by Yuwaka’s Soft

80 Microsoft Points said “maybe Kirbys are the tadpole stage of a fairy.  IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!” in the making of this review.

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Investigate This: Scarecrow!

March 11, 2013 by 2 Comments

Before the fiasco with Wright Brothers’ Mysteries, my plan had been to include this title in my review.  Two for one, that sort of thing.  However, Wright Brothers was so embarrassingly horrid that I thought I would be doing a disservice to the guys at Twist-EdGames.  I had reviewed two of their previous “games”, Shattered Slipper and Lucky, and I found them to be decent.  I mean, they weren’t really games.  They were like the end result of a book fucking a DVD menu.  Interactive in the loosest possible sense.  Read a lot of dialog, press A, read more dialog, and then press A some more.  Occasionally a rudimentary puzzle would pop up that would take all of thirty seconds to solve.  Typically, the whole thing would be over with in an hour or so.  Okay, so I wasn’t exactly glowing when I described what their games were like, but the writing was acceptable and they ended before they could bore.  Oh, and they were a little preachy.  I would equate the whole experience to reading a tween mystery novel, pausing only once to fiddle with a Rubik’s Cube, while being lectured by your mother on proper manners.

Actually, that sounds quite horrible.  Bad analogy.

"Hello Ma'am! Can we interest you in a copy of the Watchtower?"

“Hello Ma’am! Can we interest you in a copy of the Watchtower?”

Well, here’s their newest game: Investigate This.  You’re two young private detectives who get hired to investigate this super natural scarecrow that is trying to frighten a woman into selling her farm.  The difference between this and other Twist-EdGames?  It’s fucking boring.  The dialog has a tendency to drone on and on with inane banter that adds nothing to the plot and makes the characters come across like total twats.  The writing is also not up to the quality of previous games, despite the fact that there’s no soapbox this time around.  It just comes across like a really badly done Scooby Doo plot.  In fact, right during the big reveal at the end, just as I said that very line to Brian, the game made a Scooby Doo joke at its own expense.  I also felt the hedge maze stuff was more of a rehash of Lucky’s finale.  The final kick in the pants is the (required due to file size) 240MSP price tag.  It’s simply not worth it.  Thus, this becomes the first game of Twist-EdGames that I can’t recommend.  If I did so, I would need my head investigated for brain parasites.

xboxboxartInvestigate This: Scarecrow! was developed by Twist-EdGames

240 Microsoft Points were hoping this game would star Batman in the making of this review. 

 

 

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Wright Brothers’ Mysteries

March 8, 2013 by 11 Comments

Oh my God.

Oh.

My.

GOD!!

I can’t believe I live in a world where Wright Brothers’ Mysteries exists.  It’s bad.  Bad bad.  Endearingly bad, yes, but endearingly bad is still bad.  Devoid of anything positive to say about any aspect of it’s design.  Hell, there’s really not a whole lot of game here.  Watch cut scenes that were apparently made using The Movies (the opening credits show the intro to The Movies), maybe answer a question about that scene, do the occasional amateurish quick-time-event, and that’s it.  Fifteen minutes tops.  Fifteen unintentionally hilarious, flat-out fucking weird minutes.  Surreal in ways I’ve only heard in descriptions of drug intoxication.

The sad part is, if I squint just a little bit, the dude on the right looks kind of like my boyfriend.

The sad part is, if I squint just a little bit, the dude on the right looks kind of like my boyfriend.

The story?  Incomprehensible.  The dialog?  So disjointed and unnatural that it’s practically alien.  The voice acting?  Awful accents, unemotional tones, and delivery so bad that it sounds like it was pieced together with a sound board.  The game?  There is no game.  Two quick-time events, one of which involves picking a lock and the other which necessitates restarting a heart.  That’s really the extend of any “game” function.  Otherwise, you get to watch horrible cut scenes play out.  I spent the first couple minutes rolling my eyes.

And then the Ninja showed up, and I started laughing.

I didn’t stop laughing for ten minutes.  Every single word spoken, every terribly choreographed fight scene where continuity changes from camera angle to camera angle, and just the overall awfulness of the whole mess.  Wright Brothers’ Mysteries made me fall to the floor in a rolling laughter that made my sides hurt and tears run down my cheeks.  I’ve never laughed harder at any game.  Not in a good way, mind you.  Wright Brothers’ Mysteries is the brand new Worst Game I’ve ever played in my entire life.  It’s awful.  But hypnotically so.  I can’t really say you should buy it.  There’s already videos on YouTube that show you the full game, like this one.  It’s just awful.  I don’t know how far unintentional comedy goes towards redeeming something this bad.  I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.  For me, Wright Brothers’ Mysteries made me laugh until I was clutching my sides and my stomach in agony, not to mention the headache.  I could have probably been trampled by a marching band made entirely of tuba players and walked away in better shape.

xboxboxartWright Brothers’ Mysteries was developed by Archor Games

80 Microsoft Points honestly aren’t sure if this game wasn’t some gigantic gag against the entire XBLIG scene in the making of this review.

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Voxel Runner

March 7, 2013 by 9 Comments

“Foul!” cried the gaming community.  “Someone made an off-brand, generic version of Bit.Trip 2 and released it right before Bit.Trip 2 came out.  A pox on their house!”  You see the same venom directed towards developers of Minecraft clones, or guys like Milkstone when they release cheap XBLIG clones of popular hits like Slender or Binding of Isaac.  The weird thing is, the gaming community seems to treat this phenomenon like it’s exclusive to them.  Um, The Asylum anyone?  Mock if you will, but they’ve made over fifty movies and never once lost money on a production.  They’ve proven that, if profitability is all you desire, clones made without the slightest tinge of shame are the surest fire bet to get there.

Yes.

Yes.

Voxel Runner sounds like it would be The Asylum’s port of a video game, does it not?  None of that coy “Sushi Castle” type of shit like Milkstone does.  “Voxel Runner!  Done!”  The funny thing is, everyone assumed that the game would be shit, myself included.  Timely release.  Blatant clone.  How could it be good?  Surprise, it is good.  Well, good seems maybe too generous.  How does decent sound?  I’ll go with decent.

Actually, Voxel Runner felt more like The Impossible Game, at least to me.  Maybe it was the art style, the pace, the spikes, or the constant deaths.  While the game offers more complex maneuvers (swiped liberally from Bit.Trip Runner) than simply jumping, it just felt like a memory-tester where you have a minimal chance of success on your first run through.  However, I did beat level 22 on my first attempt.  That was the only such level I was able to do that, but it felt fantastic.  It doesn’t matter if I failed 531 other times.  For a few seconds, I was an invincible destroyer of games.

Yes, because "ducking" is one of the most notoriously difficult to master moves in game history. It makes Zangief's spinning piledriver look like child's play.

Yes, because “ducking” is one of the most notoriously difficult to master moves in game history. It makes Zangief’s spinning piledriver look like child’s play.

This is a weird one to write-up.  Everything about Voxel Runner is decent.  Not great.  Not memorable.  I played this three days ago and I barely remember any critiques I had.  It’s possible I didn’t have any.  Well, there was one: the controls are slightly unresponsive at times, which resulted in about 10% of my total failures.  Otherwise, there’s really not a lot to cover here.  Voxel Runner is a shameless rip-off of a popular franchise, but it doesn’t suck.  If that’s all the developer was trying for, congratulations Captain Ambitious.  Take a seat in the dollar store hall of fame, next to a bin of movies starring Lorenzo Lamas and a can of expired off-brand chicken noodle soup.

xboxboxartVoxel Runner was developed by Dizzy Pixels Ltd.

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points look forward to future productions from Dizzy Pixels, such as Super Italian Brothers, Sonny the Hedgehog, and Street Brawler II in the making of this review. 

Voxel Runner is Chick Approved.. don’t look at me like that, it doesn’t suck, I swear.. and is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Seriously, stop looking at me.

Voxel Runner is also available for Desura for $2.99.  This version is unverified by Indie Gamer Chick.

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Marble Masters: The Pit

March 1, 2013 by 2 Comments

You’re a ball.  You try to shove other balls into a pit.  Marble Masters: The Pit isn’t completely original.  I played a similar minigame in the original Mario Party.  Plus I vaguely recall there was something kind of sort of like it on Wii Fit.  But this is the first full game centered around the idea, and I had my doubts as to whether they could stretch it out for 50 levels.  Things started easy enough.  There were a few holes in the ground and balls located conveniently next to them.  “Okay, well this won’t hold my interest too long.”

I have to say, it looks quite dull in screenshots. But give it a chance. It's a pretty fun, fast-paced hour-and-a-half.

I have to say, it looks quite dull in screenshots. But give it a chance. It’s a pretty fun, fast-paced hour-and-a-half.

Then the balls came to life.  Well, “life” being relative, as the AI in Marble Masters is clinically brain-dead.  The enemy balls will roll at you in a straight line, even if there’s a pit between you and them.  They have no survival instinct at all.  The developer might as well have dressed them up like they were zombie balls.  Hell, that probably would have been worth at least an extra 500 downloads.  Still, it was something unexpected.  There’s no way that could extend the shelf life though.  Oh wait, now there’s no pits, and instead you have to get the balls to break against spikes.  Oh wait again, now the spikes are chasing you like the balls were.  Well I’ll be damned, they did stretch it out to fifty levels without feeling padded.  Call me William Kemmler because I’m genuinely shocked.

Marble Masters is one of those rare instances of a game pacing itself perfectly.  There’s enough twists to hold a player’s attention for the maximum two hours it would take to complete.  It’s not without some huge flaws though.  The difficulty curve tends to spike up and down.  Even late in the game, there were levels that took me twenty or more tries to finish, which were immediately followed with stages that I completed without any fuss on my first attempt.  So the difficulty is inconsistent, but not as much as the gravity.  The physics engine in the game is all sorts of fucked up.  Sometimes it feels entirely too heavy.  Sometimes it feels like you’re doing battle on the surface of the moon.  This leads to some nifty glitches, like the times I collided with an enemy and we both slowly floated up and out of the map.  Maybe the balls passed away and they went up to heaven.  My dog Spot can relate.

A lot of the gravity problems came in levels with the arrows, which have wind-tunnel like things that push you around.

A lot of the gravity problems came in levels with the arrows, which are wind-tunnel like things that push you around.

Of course, the glitches worked to my advantage as much as they screwed me over.  They’re never so prevalent that you’ll rely on them to complete stages.  They’re happy accidents when they work for you, and swear-generating events when they cause you to unfairly die.  Then again, maybe I’m focusing on physics stability a little too much.  It reality, the gravity reached insane weirdness maybe 10% of the time.  It never feels completely right, but you learn to live with it.  Best of all, right as the game seems like it might be ready to run out of ideas, it ends.  I’ve seen a lot of games that don’t have that kind of restraint.  So yea, I really enjoyed Marble Masters: The Pit.  It’s an original idea executed relatively well.  The gravity sucks, but gravity seems to have it in for me anyway, always making me trip and shit.  No, it’s not my fault.  It’s gravity’s.  Look at it, just existing there, smug force of nature, thinking it’s holding the world together.  Who needs it?  Well I dontja;utiqjgqghakl;nag

DAMN YOU GRAVITY!  I hate you!  I don’t care if you make YouTube worthwhile!

xboxboxartMarble Masters: The Pit was developed by Polyart

80 Microsoft Points look forward to such sequels as Marble Masters: Bell Tower, Marble Masters: The Armory, and Marble Masters: Shang Tsung’s Throne Room in the making of this review.

IGC_ApprovedMarble Masters: The Pit is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick: Leaderboard, now sponsored by Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos.  If you combined the two, it would be called Marble Operators, which sounds a little pornographic.  I bet Team Shuriken is working on it.

Oh, and I don’t actually have a dog named Spot.  Her name is Cherry, and she’s upset that she gets no love at this blog.  Hopefully this shout-out is enough to get her to stop pissing in my shoes while I sleep. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Procrastinating Squirrel (Updated)

February 23, 2013 by 12 Comments

Procrastinating Squirrel put up a fight when I first downloaded it.  From the moment I booted it up, the game started skipping like a DVD that got into a fight with a belt sander.  Thus it was rendered completely unplayable.  I made a video so that others could feel my pain.

After publishing the original piece, I got word from a few players that they didn’t have problems.  Curious, I switched consoles, then switched which storage device I was saving my progress to.  While it didn’t run perfectly, the experience was vastly improved and thus I could write a full and proper review.  Of course, in a way I already did that.  Procrastinating Squirrel is essentially Miner Dig Deep, only not as deep.  Miner Dig Shallow perhaps?  Miner Dig Less Deep?  Miner Scratch the Surface?

Oak Nuts. It's what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

Oak Nuts. It’s what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

How about Toddlers Dig Deep?  Because this stripped down version of one of my former Top-10 XBLIGs is pretty much that.  Miner Dig Deep, sans strategy or most dangers.  Fewer upgrades.  Fewer things to mine.  The boulders are still there and can still cause you to scream curse words you forgot you knew, but that’s the only thing that can kill you.  There’s no need to worry about digging too many tunnels that could cave in, because the game is presented from a top-down view.  That’s the one advantage Squirrel has over Miner: you can mine in any direction.  Every other aspect is less than what is already offered in Miner Dig Deep.  There’s no positive outlook on that.  People who haven’t played Miner would be better served skipping this and playing that.  People who have played Miner can only find Squirrel to be an inferior, watered-down clone.  I kept waiting for the game to present some kind of hook to change things up, and finished it still waiting.  While I still was practically hypnotized by the prospect of digging up new materials, those moments are few and far between.  It even ends significantly faster than Miner Dig Deep.  Miner Dig Deep left me wanting more.  Procrastinating Squirrel left me disappointed, and recommending it would be nuts.

Thirty minutes staring at the screen and that’s the best pun I could figure to go out on.  I knew I should have written this sooner, instead of waiting for the Oscars to end.  That’s what I get for procrastinating.

xboxboxartProcrastinating Squirrel was developed by Daivuk

80 Microsoft Points wondered why every single pet squirrel is named “Penny” in the making of this review?

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Pester

February 23, 2013 by 2 Comments

I suck at space shooters.  I’ve spent the last two years establishing this fact on this very blog.  While I try to claim neutrality towards all genres, that’s obviously a bit of a stretch.  Some I like more than others, with shmups typically being “the others.”  I’ve just never been able to get into them.  Which kind of sucks for the hard-working XBLIG community, because even ones that earn near universal praise (like Aeternum) don’t do anything for me.  It seems like the best they can hope for out of me is “I wouldn’t rather be dead than play this.”

Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?

Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?

On that note, I wouldn’t rather be dead than play Pester.  Congratulations to the team at Flump Studios for doing as good as you could do with this genre in relationship to me.  I was able to get through the full hour Brian forces me to play these games (“out of fairness” he says, the goody two-shoes prick) without wondering if I’ll be locked up in the nuthouse for choosing to hurl myself through a plate-glass window to get out of it.  And, while I wasn’t like wowed by the experience or anything, I wasn’t bored.  It’s nothing new though.  You’re a ship.  There are enemies.  Enemies fire a whole lot of bullets at you, and you fire a whole lot of bullets back.  I’ve always kind of wondered about the economics of bullet hells.  Presumably if enemies are firing plasma rounds at you with projectiles the size of small ships, that stuff has got to cost money.  You would think they would fire a little more accurately.  Conserve ammo, instead of seeing you, going crazy, and firing bullets in every direction including behind them.  Or hell, since we’re dealing futuristic space warfare, you would think an enemy force that can employ thousands of ships to take out one single rinky-dinky little adversary could figure out how to do weapons that instantaneously destroy whatever they’re targeting the moment the fire button is pressed without giving them a chance to dodge out-of-the-way.  What kind of morons do they have running these evil empires?

Anyway, it’s basic space shooter shit with some neat graphic filters added, and not a whole lot more.  I played for a while and realized quickly that I was every bit as shitty at playing Pester as I am at every other game of this godforsaken genre.  But the screen wasn’t so spammed with bullets that it was demoralizing or anything.  Then something funny happened.  At one point, I turned to Brian and said “honestly, I’m not having a blast or anything, but there’s nothing really wrong with this one.”  Within ten seconds of me saying this, the game decided to give me stuff to complain about.   I’m not saying this for comic effect.  This really happened.  First, I was fighting a boss that throws giant swords at you and died.  That’s not the bad part.  The bad part is when I blinked back into existence, the game spawned one of the sword bullets into the same space I respawned into and insta-killed me.  The sword wasn’t there at that moment. It just appeared.  A bizarre glitch I’m guessing, but it’s so weird that it happened right after I told my boyfriend I had nothing to complain about.  As if the game heard me and said “nothing to complain about?  Bitch, I’ll give you something to complain about.”

And Pester kept being a shithead to me after that.  I played three straight rounds where the game never once spawned an upgrade for my ship’s guns.  It spawned plenty of speed-ups and bombs, but no gun upgrades.  It was fucking strange, because they had been plentiful before.  Not that it really mattered.  Gun upgrades or not, I still made it about the same length as I always did, which was between wave 7 and wave 10.  Yea, I really suck at this shit.  So I booted up Tempus mode, where lives are replaced by time.  When you shoot enemies, instead of them dropping coins, they drop clocks that add one second to a timer.  When you die, you lose ten seconds.  The game goes until you run out of time.  Okay, fine.  Question: where the fuck is the timer?  I couldn’t see it.  Otherwise, it’s the same game with the same enemy layouts.  You can also adjust the difficulty, and add extra challenges if you’re a masochist, like controlling two ships at once.  I didn’t try it myself.  I barely have the coordination to tie my shoelaces without breaking my neck in the process.  I don’t need a game to tell me I’m an embarrassment to humanity.  I already know it.

A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?

A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?

Really, Pester isn’t bad or anything.  And the sword bit I mentioned above was a one-off thing.  I guess I kind of, sort of recommend it.  A little bit.  I’m not sure if that’s because I genuinely enjoyed it based on merit, or if I genuinely enjoyed it because Brian got such amusement out of my pitiful lack of shmup talent.  Either way, I had something vaguely resembling a good time playing it, and had the sense to turn it off before I got bored.  Having said that, it’s not an ambitious title.  This shit has been done before and Pester offers nothing new.  Nothing.  At best, it shows competence in making a functioning, mildly entertaining game that closely resembles about a thousand other games.  I’m not against playing them, but I want to see a different angle on them.  There’s got to be a wealth of unexplored twists for bullet hells.  I mean come on, you guys are indie developers.  You’re supposed to buck the norm.  Be weird for the sake of being weird.  Dance to the beat of a different drummer.  When games like this fill out the cliché checklist with such determination, it’s kind of sad.  Not as sad as watching me play games like this must be, but still pretty sad.

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedPester was developed by Flump Studios

80 Microsoft Points made a fortune selling ammunition to an evil galactic empire in the making of this review. 

Pester is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Barely.  

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Ascent of Kings

February 21, 2013 by 1 Comment

Ascent of the Kings comes from the developer of Quiet, Please!, the 2D platforming/point-and-click mash-up I played last April.  The fingerprints of the developer are all over this one too.  Same art style, same silliness, and same bite-sized game length.  It took me just over thirty-minutes to beat Quiet, Please!  For Ascent of Kings, which is a Metroidvania type of platformer, it took me about twenty minutes to become king and another twenty-five minutes to find all 12 hidden shrines.  So, forty-five minutes total of gameplay.  At this pace, Nostatic Software’s next game might stretch to a full hour.  Not that it needs to.  I’ve enjoyed games that lasted as little as ten minutes.  It’s crazy how spending 600 days immersed in the indie gaming scene alters your perception on how long a game should be.  I’m fairly certain I’m now in a state of mind where I could approve a game that lasts one minute, as long as it’s the best damn one minute I’ve had since I lost my virginity.

A Boy and his Blob?

A Boy and his Blob?

So the idea is, the king has died, and in order to determine the new king, all possible suitors (which seems to consist of four brothers that live in a small cottage, still better than what England faces sometime in the next twenty years) have to hop around on platforms and reach a small shrine that bestows upon that person the power to rule.  The father of these kids, apparently a bit of a dick, only gives each of the older brothers one special tool that can help them reach the summit and become king.  But their hearts don’t seem quite into it.  They pull such bullshit excuses as “ouch, sprained my wrist” or “twisted my ankle” like they’re trying to get out of jury duty.  The youngest brother, aka you, collects their tools, allowing him to double jump, climb vines, and fire slingshots.  You know, the kind of tools found in a real world monarchy litmus test.  Psssssh, diplomacy?  Economics?  Fuck that shit.  That’s for democracies.

As a game, what can I say?  It’s alright.  The movement physics are a bit loose and the double-jump sometimes didn’t seem to work.  Level design is very basic, no frills, no surprises.  There’s one section that features a timed jumping puzzle, and I hate that if I get to the top and screw up, I have to wait any amount of time before hitting the button to start over.  But, the game is so brief that you can’t really get bored with it, and it ends long before any amount of frustration over the various control foibles can settle in.  I guess what I’m trying to say is I had a decent enough time playing Ascent of Kings to say it’s worth a buck.  It’s not the most enthusiastic recommendation, but hey, it’s not the most ambitious game!  One hand washes the other!

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedAscent of Kings was developed by Nostatic Software

80 Microsoft Points were joking about the one minute thing.  Brian has way more stamina than that in the making of this review.

Ascent of Kings is Chick Approved and has ascended the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

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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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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