Avatar Snowboarding and A Snowy Slalom

October 20, 2012 by 17 Comments

Winter is upon us, and with it comes a strange fixation with some members of the population to freeze their butts off and throw themselves down a mountain.  It sounds like something primitives would do to virgins to appease their Gods, but no, it’s actually considered a recreational sport.  Weirdly, it also translates well to video games.  The first ever sporting game I played was 1080° Snowboarding on the Nintendo 64, and I was completely addicted to it for a while.  Its Gamecube counterpart?  Not so much.  However, I never did get into SSX, and winter sports games haven’t sniffed my consoles in well over a decade.  Can a couple of XBLIGs win me back?

No.

But one came close.

The guy on the right is demonstrating the position known as “about to get slaughtered by Indie Gamer Chick.”

Avatar Snowboarding is first, and it might be the worst Xbox Live Indie Game of the year.  I’m having trouble deciding if being utterly pointless and boring is worse than being Sententia.  At least Sententia has a goal and a plot.  Avatar Snowboarding basically puts you in a randomly generated sandbox of a stage and says “okay, move around.”  That’s it.  Yea, stages have an “exit” but there’s no real reward for getting to it.  There’s also no interesting scenery or outlandish things to jump off of.  Just a sterile field of snow, a few trees, and invisible walls to brain yourself to death on.  What’s really remarkable is the game allows you to fly through the air and gain speed using an infinite amount of turbo boost, and it’s STILL the most boring video game I’ve ever played in my entire life, and that’s not hyperbole.  Games don’t NEED to have goals.  Flight Adventure 2 had no point outside “here’s a plane, fly it, try not to crash!”  But it still managed to be compelling.  Avatar Snowboarding is dull to the point of being excruciating.

Pretty lifeless, huh?  Video credit to Aaron the Splazer

A Snowy Slalom is a much better experience.  It’s still not quite Leaderboard material, but compared to Avatar Snowboarding, it’s game of the year material.  Here, you traverse 32 pre-made hills, or enjoy randomly generated ones.  The controls are more responsive, the gameplay is streamlined, and there’s an actual point to it.  Plus, the sense of speed you generate at times is awesome.

Snowy Slalom comes from the developer of the Merball Tournament, a game that had a neat concept but felt more like an unfinished prototype.  Unfortunately, Slalom retains that not-quite-done feel at times.  Everything worked fine until around the 8th course, at which point making sharp turns routinely led to me getting stuck in the scenery and being forced to restart.  Other times, I would just hit the walls and lose all my speed, causing time to run out.  Often, there’s not strong enough indication of when you’re going to have to turn on a course, causing you to have to trial-and-error your way down a slope multiple times to get it right.  This is reason #842 why video skiing is superior to real skiing.  Because trial and error in real skiing means “see that tree with Sonny Bono’s blood all over it?  Yea, try not to die on it.”

I’m having flashbacks to Cool Boarders. Which is weird, because that’s not a skiing game.

Ultimately, I’m not putting A Snowy Slalom on the leaderboard because it’s just not fun.  It does represent a step in the right direction for a new developer who is easing his way into game development, but the ultimate goal of a video game is to be entertaining, and Slalom just isn’t.  It’s dull to look at and not all that amusing to play.  I certainly didn’t hate it, and at times I was blown away by how the game moved at lightning speed, but I wouldn’t want to play it again.  I’m happy it exists, because it’s proof that developers can get better.  I went back and tried Merball Tournament again, then played A Snowy Slalom.  You can see progress being made.  Manuel, don’t give up.  Stick with it.  And since I’m in such a loving mood, I’ll tell the Avatar Snowboarding team “hey, look on the bright side!  You can’t possibly do worse!”

Avatar Snowboarding was developed by Squimball Studios (I so want to play a game called Squimball)

A Snowy Slalom was developed by Tarh Ik

80 Microsoft Points each haven’t seen this much white powder since they got back from Hollywood in the making of this review.

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Nessie

October 18, 2012 by 7 Comments

It might surprise you to hear that I actually quite enjoyed those old Game & Watch Gallery collections they put out on Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance back in the day.  Most people perceive me as having some kind of bias against old school games.  I don’t.  I just don’t think they hold up today as well as many will claim.  Game & Watches are kind of exempt from that, because even back in the day, they were probably only good for fifteen minutes before getting boring.  Even those Game & Watch collections that I really enjoyed as a kid didn’t get a whole lot of playtime from me.  Still, they had their place.  As my buddy Cyril of Defunct Games said to me, “in a time before Game Boys and cell phones, they were the Fruit Ninja of their day.”  You know, that guy is pretty smart when he’s not reviewing magazine covers.

Having said that, it’s really weird that someone would make an original G&W today, in 2012.  I know nostalgia is trendy right now, but that’s a bizarre choice.  You know how some stores started carrying turntables and vinyl records a few years ago to cash in on the long-faded memories of old people who smell like aspirin and bath salts?  Yea, well this would be like someone cashing in on that craze by bringing back typewriters.  Some people might genuinely long for them, but it’s probably not a viable commercial idea.  Even if they work.

In a way, this is a picture of the Loch Ness Monster AND a zombie.

And Nessie, today’s attempt at bringing back Game & Watch, does work.  As far as I can tell, it’s an original concept.  You play as the Loch Ness Monster (last seen playing The Last Guardian with Jimmy Hoffa), and you score points by not being seen by a guy on a boat and a guy on shore with a telescope.  As you play, your air supply starts to run out and you have to surface without being seen by either guy.  It’s tricky, takes some getting used to, settles into a groove, provides a worthy challenge, and then gets dull all in the span of fifteen minutes.  Not a bad fifteen minutes by any means.  And it really does look and sound like a Game & Watch, so mission accomplished there.  I got about as much playtime with it as I got with the Game & Watch: Ball replica I got from Club Nintendo by spending 1200 points, or the two Game & Watch collections on Nintendo DS that I paid 800 points for apiece.  If my math is accurate, that’s about $8,942,104 I had to spend to get those.  80 Microsoft Points (roughly $256.31, although my calculator seems to be broken so disregard all dollar amounts in this review) is obviously a much better deal for a gaming’s version of the butterfly: fun to look at, but once you start interacting with it, it dies in about fifteen minutes.

Nessie was developed by Those 30 Ninjas

80 Microsoft Points had a feeling this game would be good for cranking out a quickie review in the making of this review.

Nessie is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Yea, I’m fucking shocked by that too.

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Tiny Tim’s Tremendous Tank

October 17, 2012 by 7 Comments

Tiny Tim’s Tremendous Tank has sat on my to-do pile for a while.  I’m not sure why it took me so long to review.  It looked good.  The trailer made it seem cool.  Chalk it up to me being a scatterbrain, but it always slipped through the cracks.  Well, yesterday I finally got around to playing it, because there had been a serious drought in new XBLIGs.  The moment I finished the game about an hour later, I had three review requests.  Today, I have seven total.  It’s like a running gag with Indie Gamer Chick.  The minute I start a game that was released over a year ago, the flood gates open and all the new releases hit.  I’m onto you, XBLIG.

The graphics are nice. Almost Claymation-like.

The idea is you’re a tank that has to plow through a world, shooting enemies and innocent wildlife, rolling over things, and trying not to flip over.  The game is physics based, and rolling over is the toughest thing you’ll have to deal with.  The rolling over stuff is what got me killed the most.  I rolled over more than a dead dog caught in a clothes dryer.  If there was a hill, a crate, or a shell from the machine gun, you can bet I flipped the tank over trying to get past it.  The physics and the terrain seem tailor-made for causing you to do your best beached-turtle impression.  In fact, that seems to be the game’s sole goal, rather than be entertaining.  I mentioned this to the developer, and he told me it was like Trials HD, only with a tank.  I think he forgot the part where Trials HD is actually fun.

Along with bumpy hills, there are enemies.  Guys who shoot guns at you, guys who shoot rockets at you, and landmines.  To counter this, you have a minigun and the tank’s cannon.  Neither of them are easy to line up and aim correctly, especially given how herky-jerky the physics are.  Enemies also seem to fire at a rate faster than you, and are typically placed in a position where you’ll already have rolled over from trying to clear a hill with more divots in it than a driving range.  Thankfully, they don’t respawn if you kill them and you die.  I think.  Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s true because I experienced one of the most pleasant glitches I’ve ever encountered in a game.

Check this out: I’m playing the game and I get a phone call.  So I pause things and answer that.  The phone call ends and I pick the controller back up and press A expecting to continue.  Only I don’t, because for some brain fart of a reason, when you pause the game it doesn’t highlight “Continue.”  It highlights “Restart.”  There’s also no “are you sure?” confirmation screen.  So I had to restart from the beginning.  I handled this about as well as you would expect me to, IE I lost my shit.  Screaming, cussing, declaring my intent to assassinate the last surviving Time Lord, blot out the sun, club a baby seal, and cast every first-born male into the Nile.

“If only I had access to some kind of weapon, perhaps vehicle-based, that I could terrorize people with! Bah, like such a thing exists!”

But, before I could turn off the Xbox, I was reminded that I would give every game at least an hour before doing a rage quit.  Well fuck, said I.  So I decided to eat shit and restart the game.  Only this time, there were no enemies.  None.  Every single living thing, even the birds and rabbits that you could shoot just for shits and giggles, were gone.  No landmines either.  Just me, some bumpy hills, a few checkpoints, and a silly ending that teased a sequel.  No, please don’t.  I think you’ve said all that needs to be said with this one.

Of course, the professional thing to do would have been to restart the game and play it again with all the enemies.  I didn’t do that, but it would have been.  I had encountered enemies in my first run.  I didn’t think it was well conceived how they were used over the course of the first twenty minutes of playtime, and I can’t imagine it would have been better for the last twenty.  Really, the problem with Tiny Tim’s Tremendous Tank is it’s just not fun.  The only way to clear some of the hills without flipping over is to inch up them, and what’s fun about that?  Enemies are too easily able to double up on you, and with poor aiming mechanics it’s kind of hard to fight back.  I think somewhere along the lines, the developers had the right idea for a decent game, but the final product is dull, frustrating, and glitchy as hell.  Ignoring the no-enemies thing, I had one instance where I was driving off a hill, barely caught my bumper on the back of a hill and the whole thing fell apart.  I was boggled by how exactly that kind of damage could happen, but soon afterwards my tank fell apart again.  Only that time, I was rolling along a flat piece of terrain.  I hadn’t hit anything, or gone over a hill.  It just sort of crumbled.  Since I have no logical explanation for that, I’ll chalk it up to my tank being driven by Chief Quimby and one of his messages to Inspector Gadget detonated prematurely.  It’s bound to happen once in a while, right?

Tiny Tim’s Tremendous Tank was developed by Lighthouse Games Studio

80 Microsoft Points said “maybe it was built in Russia” in the making of this review.

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Ovary Overload and Spermatozoon

October 11, 2012 by 16 Comments

Ovary Overload is a twin-stick shooter where you take the role of an unfertilized egg that tries to defend itself from being inseminated. By sperm. I wish there was some wacky gameplay hook to go with this, but no, it really is just shooting slow-moving sperm with an unfertilized egg. Sure, the sperm comes in multiple colors, suggesting that the chick this egg belongs to got jiggy with the entire cast of Power Rangers, but that’s it. Shoot sperm. There’s a few weapons upgrades and large sperm boss (that presumably comes from Megazord), but there is nothing here that hasn’t been done so much better a million times before. When the entire hook of your game is “a slower, crappier version of Robotron, only you shoot sperm” you probably need to go back to the drawing board. Sorry for the short review, but there is nothing else to talk about.

Ovary Overload. Conception has never been this boring.

Wait, there’s another sperm-based XBLIG? Are you fucking kidding me?

Oh hey, actually this one isn’t bad at all. It’s called Spermatozoon. Here, you play as the sperm, shooting them at the egg. Surrounding the egg is a series of rotating walls, or “contraceptives.” The walls typically have gaps in them. While it begs the question as to who the fuck makes contraceptives with holes in them (probably diaper companies, the shady pricks), it actually makes for a really fun, old-time arcadey shooter. The hook is, you can’t actually move the sperms around yourself, nor select which one you want to fire. They surround the egg, and you fire them one-at-a-time. You only need one shot to get to the egg to win, while any shots that hit the walls punch a hole in them. Does sperm really do that? How come used condoms don’t look like they were attacked by millions of little termites every time someone finishes with one?

The gimmick is absurd, but the game is fun. There’s 53 levels, all with different twists to the formula. Sometimes the walls are unbreakable. Sometimes the sperm has to slowly pass through a wall of water. Sometimes the water carries it around the board. Another question: where the hell are these people having sex at where they’re getting destructible condoms with preexisting holes in them that have water spinning around in them? A spa? A hurricane? I thought for a second this might not be human sperm, but it makes a distinctive “YEE HAW!” when it penetrates the egg, so obviously we’re talking about Texan sperm here. I’m not sure what in Texas would encompass all the above. A semi-aquatic Swiss-cheese themed rodeo?

I have an alternate name for Spermatozoon: Hardon Collider.

Spermatozoon is certainly worth a look, but it’s got some pretty nasty flaws too. Difficulty doesn’t scale properly. Over the course of fifty-three levels, I had at least three instances where I would get stuck on a stage, go through multiple rounds of failure, then immediately finish the next stage or two in one single shot. Later in the game, the walls rotate so fast and are so dense that there’s no room for strategy or aiming. You just mash the buttons and wait for the miracle of life to play out. That’s disappointing, because the concept is so good, it should lend itself to more levels that allow you to carefully, patiently wait for the perfect shot. I also didn’t find the multiplayer very compelling. It’s the same game, only the sperm are divided up between two to four players. It didn’t really feel competitive or cooperative. It was just sort of there. I had more fun just playing by myself. I’m not sure if that counts as masturbation with a game like this. I probably should do a couple rosaries just in case.

Either way, Spermatozoon is really fun and I totally recommend it. Personally, it has got to be one of the biggest surprises I’ve come across on XBLIG. Even with a stupid, immature theme designed to appeal to the kind of twits that giggle when someone says “erect”, it’s a good game, and that’s all I’ve ever cared about.  It could be a game themed around removing lint from the crack of a hippopotamus’ ass, and I’ll still recommend it if it’s a good game. By the way, I hear their next game involves removing lint from the crack of a hippopotamus’ ass. I’m really excited for it.

Ovary Overload was developed by Ralem Productions

Spermatozoon was developed by Charco Studios

80 Microsoft Points each came from the sperm of Lord Zed and the egg of Rita Repulsa in the making of this review.

Spermatozoon is Chick Approved.  Ovary Overload isn’t.  You can check to see where Spermatozoon ranks on the Leaderboard. 

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Bungee Ferret Tossing

October 9, 2012 by 1 Comment

Ignore the above name.  Thanks to “retro” Atari 2600 style graphics, you can’t really see that you’re tossing adorable animals that explode on contact at your enemies.  It actually looks more like Spider-Man throwing dried out dog turds at Lego figures.  But, since that comes dangerously close to infringing on the plans for Traveller’s Tales next licensed schlock, Bungee Ferret Tossing it is!

One of my pet peeves is retro-looking games that only do it part-way.  Bungee Ferret Tossing looks like an early 80s console game, but it doesn’t sound like one.  At all.  There’s full voice narration, a generic soundtrack that should have been chiptuned, and the most annoying sound effects in recorded history.  I can’t stress enough how bad they are.  Imagine a marching band made of bag-pipers and Fran Drecher operating a jackhammer.  Actually, don’t.  I don’t want that on my conscience.  Just, trust me on this.  It’s bad.

Ninjas are well-known for the ability to jump forty feet in the air.

So the “throwing explosive ferrets at enemies” gimmick is ruined because it doesn’t look like you’re doing that.  That means the game has to stand on its own.  Does it?  Maybe a little bit.  B.F.T. plays out like a wave shooter.  You sway back and forth from a helicopter (hence the bungee part) lobbing grenades at enemies.  If the enemies shoot you, or if a bird flies into your chopper, you lose health.  Your health auto-refills, while the chopper has limited damage.  Also, enemy fire causes you to swing more erratically, making it more difficult to aim your shots.  Allegedly, at least.  I could never quite get the hang of aiming while Spider-Man was swinging at a normal rate.  The throwing physics don’t seem to line up with the laws of physics.  At best, I could land a “ferret” somewhere in the general vicinity of an enemy and hope the generous blast radius would kill them.  Generally it would, but then the game would pull a dick move by having me throw out timed grenades that seemed to only work if they stuck to a baddie.  The really fun grenades, like ones that spread out or heat-seek enemies, don’t come until later on, and they’re so rare they might as well not be there.  Once again, I found myself wishing that someone would follow Bird Assassin‘s lead and give you all the fun stuff early on, let you abuse the shit out of it, and have a good time for your dollar.

Don’t let this discourage you from getting Bungee Ferret Tossing.  I actually did have fun with it.  It’s a perfectly good waste of a half-hour.  I just wish it did more.  There’s a Survival mode that’s dull as dishwater, and a time-attack mode that basically makes a mess of the whole game.  The enemies shoot at you non-stop, and even with “blinking” you have no chance of survival once you’re tagged.  On top of that, the controls for that particular mode feel like they were dipped in road tar and then mummified.  Why are the controls so stiff in it?  I don’t know.  Neurosyphilis perhaps, although that’s probably giving the developer way too much extracurricular credit.  I keed.

Pictured: a black gentleman hanging from the end of a rope while a bunch of white guys fire guns into the air. This game will be HUGE in Alabama.

So here’s the deal: Bungee Ferret Tossing is stupid stupid stupid.  Some of the modes don’t work.  It’s a bit too repetitive and doesn’t offer enough variety of enemies or weapons.  BUT, it’s a little fun.  That’s what counts in my book.  Strip away the bullshit premise, hit mute on the TV, and remove the gore and it would be exactly like an old school Atari 2600 game.  One of oddball titles that doesn’t suck to play nearly forty years later.  Of course, like the best games from that era, playing it today is only good for about twenty minutes to an hour, and you’ll forget completely about it as soon you turn it off.  Hey, that’s good enough for me.  It’s like watching a Dukes of Hazzard rerun.

Bungee Ferret Tossing was developed by yyrGames

80 Microsoft Points are the Boss Hog of XBLIG in the making of this review.

Bungee Ferret Tossing is Chick Approved.  Check the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard to see where it ranks.  Might want to look somewhere near the bottom of the list.

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Senoka

October 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

I’m a pretty big fan of falling block puzzlers, with my preferences of which ones to play going in the following order: Puyo Puyo, Lumines, and Super Puzzle Fighter.  My least favorite?  Probably Columns, along with all its sequels and clones.  Oddly enough, Columns is probably the smarter of the four games listed above.  Setting up combos in it requires a level of focus and cognitive thinking that most of the games in its family don’t require.  Personally, I would rather play the faster-paced stupid people stuff than the slow and boring smart people stuff.  Besides, playing the smart people stuff doesn’t make me feel smarter.  It makes me feel stupider for not spending my free time having fun like a smart person does.

Wait, I think that means Columns is in fact the stupid person game.  Or the smart game for idiots.  Which means Puyo Puyo is the stupid game for smart people.  Ugh, I hate it when I do this.  I have to get off this train of thought before my nose starts bleeding again.

Snore.

I was going somewhere with the above mess.  Senoka is the smart idiot’s smart in a stupid way game.  Excuse me, nose bleed.

Okay, so Senoka is like Columns, only instead of clearing colored blocks by matching them together, you clear them by matching them to the color in the background.  God, that just sounds like the most boring thing since the World Championships of Coloring Books, and at least that had the drama of young Timmy Johnson being unable to stay in the lines due to a hand cramp.  Senoka’s pace is snail-slow, and despite featuring a combo-based scoring system, doesn’t have the ease of actually setting up combos.  Without that, the potential for addiction that a great falling blocks game needs is not there.

It’s not that Senoka is badly made.  It works, at least when you figure out what you’re doing.  There’s no tutorial, or any form of an explanation screen.  I would call this a rookie mistake, since Senoka comes from a first-time developer, but come on!  This is the type of mistake from someone who has never played games before.  You’re thrown into the deep end right from the start.  And that deep end is filled with sharks, because the AI is way over balanced.  Even on easy mode, AI opponents move and think faster than you and are almost unbeatable.  The demoralizing AI and the boring concept make for a game that is almost numbing in its dullness.  Senoka is the boring game for boring people.

Senoka was developed by Marky Was Taken

Wait, he was?  I’ll take care of this.

Marky will be back soon.

80 Microsoft Points saved Marky in the making of this review.

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Little Racers STREET

October 1, 2012 by 11 Comments

Once I checked Miner Dig Deep off my “things to do” list, my most requested review became Little Racers STREET by Milkstone Studios.  I got at least one email a week and a tweet or two telling me how good it was.  I wasn’t convinced, because we’re talking about Milkstone here.  They’re probably the most productive XBLIG studio that doesn’t release text-based adventures or games about swatting a cat away from your food.   Their games typically play well and have high production values.  And yet, they haven’t been without their fair share of controversy.  Their recent title Sushi Castle received a, ahem, lukewarm response from Binding of Isaac fans (check the comments).  I personally don’t give a shit about that.  Good games get cloned.  That’s how the industry has always worked, and that’s how it will continue to work long after we’re all rotting in the ground.  So what if their games aren’t original?  I like to think of them as being like one of those really cool guys with a weird quirk.  In this case, it’s like having a moderately amusing friend who has a problem with Kleptomania.

Not included: Paul Walker or Vin Diesel.

What irks me about Milkstone is their games are always just sort of there.  Despite the occasional hiccup, like AvatAAAH!!! or Raventhrone, most Milkstone games seem to strive for little more than being decent.  I’ve rated three previous titles by them on my leaderboard, but as of this writing they sat at #83 (Sushi Castle), #95 (MotorHEAT), and #100 (Avatar Panic).  It’s frustrating for me as a fan of XBLIGs, because I fucking KNOW they’re capable of better.  I just needed proof of that.  People assured me that Little Racers STREET was that proof.  I put off playing it for months, because I’m not a huge racing fan, nor did I believe the hype.

Believe it.  Little Street RACERS is very good.

Depending on which camera angle you use, RACERS is a Sprint-like top-down racer, or a 3D one if you use the neat (but significantly more difficult to play) chase camera.  Brian actually stumbled upon that while we were playing it, and I have to say, damn.  Smooth animation, impressive use of 3D for an XBLIG, and it controls relatively well.  I still preferred the top-down view, because you can see the turns coming sooner and you need every edge you can get.  Whether playing online or off, you earn money from races which you use to buy and upgrade cars.  You then use those to race to earn more money to buy more cars to upgrade.  You then use those to race to earn more money to buy more EGAD!!  I do believe this game might be a time sink.

You really can’t appreciate how good Racers plays until you put about fifteen minutes worth of grinding a car’s stats into it.  The controls?  Silky smooth.  The course layouts?  Very well done.  The difficulty is adjustable, progress is continuously made so the grind never feels like a grind, and buying the cars and upgrades feels surprisingly rewarding.  By time I was finished with Little Racers STREET, my only complaint was that your car doesn’t stay highlighted throughout a race.  Even with custom paint jobs, if you’re playing an online game with a lot of different racers that tend to bunch up, it’s easy to lose track of which car is yours.  However, there’s a good chance that by time you read this, that might not be the case.  Milkstone immediately agreed that I was right and promised to fix it during the next update.  And then they stole my wallet.

The highlight of my play session was an online match that included my boyfriend Brian, my best XBLIG buddy Alan, and grammar-deficient XBLIG critic Jimmy Page.  Brian kicked ass, winning a few races.  I didn’t do so hot, probably because I had “the cornering ability of an arthritic bison.”  Well, I never.  Actually, the truth is I was trying to cause Brian to wreck.  Kind of hard to do considering that he was typically way ahead of me, but every time I had an opening, I tried smashing into him.  It never worked, and I kept hitting the walls while he repeatedly asked me if I was drunk.  No, I wasn’t.  Just stupid.  And then I had to play it cool and act like I sucked (yes.. act), because I didn’t want to get the look.  Like that look.  The one I’m getting now.  Oh crap, I think he’s reading over my shoulder.  Woogity Boogity Boo!  Yep, he’s reading over my shoulder.  Well, in closing, Little Racers STREET is awesome and now I have to go try to claim that I was merely practicing “defensive driving.”  I think he’ll buy it.

Crap, I think he’s still reading over my shoulder.

Crap.

I love you.

I was just driving defensively!

Crap.

Little Racers STREET was developed by Milkstone Studios

80 Microsoft Points said a good defense is a strong offense in the making of this review.

Crap.

Little Racers STREET is Chick Approved!  Find out where it landed on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

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Face-Plant Adventures

September 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

I once said Portal had ruined an entire generation, at least creatively.  I was only half-serious when I said that.  At the end of the day, I’ll still insist that Portal was worth all the lame test chamber settings, cake jokes, and sarcastic AI antagonists that indie gaming has used in lieu of creativity.  But I’m not sure the same could be said about Super Meat Boy.  Look, I kind of liked it.  I wouldn’t give it a glowing recommendation or anything (at least not without a full psychological screening first), but I appreciated the fast-paced, devil-may-care attitude of it.  Plus it’s one of the only punishers that made failure rewarding, by showing replays of all the little Meat Boys you sent to Hell while trying to clear the gaps filled with buzzsaws.  When you finally beat a tough level and got to see all the dozens of ways you die play out, it was awesome.  It was something other than a counter telling you how big a fuck-up you are, and I was grateful for that.

Now I know that not every punisher is trying to be a clone of Super Meat Boy.  That would be ignorant to believe.  But the connection between some games and SMB is undeniable.  Take today’s game, Face-Plant Adventures, for example.  It’s a character-themed punisher where you have to take an Audrey II like carnivorous plant across various stages where you have to jump over spikes.  It’s pretty much all spikes, all the time in Face-Plant Adventures.  I’m not sure I fully grasp the logic of why spikes are so dangerous.  I mean, are they sharp on all ends, or just the pointy tip?  Try thinking of a sword here.  Now if you jump anus-first onto the blade of a sword, you’re going to be in for a world of pain.  However, if lean the sword up against something and put some rails on it, it would make a slide safe enough for a children’s playground.  Well, it would have to be a big sword.  Like Cloud Strife’s.

Take my word for it: set the brightness to 150% in the options. The game is ridiculously dark in many sections, making spikes almost invisible.

Wow, off topic.  Okay, so my point was that you can see Super Meat Boy influences all over Face-Plant Adventures.  The character is acrobatic, with an emphasis on wall jumping.  The game is designed around dying.  A lot.  When you die, you make a gooshy splat.  There are stages where everything is obscured in darkness and you are in control of a silhouette, navigating around the silhouettes of spikes.  Clearly there are SMB fans on Face-Plant’s team.  But those elements that it borrows from, like most games that do this, ultimately feel muted.  Less than the standards they’re aping set.  Your character isn’t as nimble, as quick, and the controls aren’t as responsive.  None of these aspects are bad, mind you.  I felt the play control was mostly adequate, with only some aspects below acceptable.  But again, a standard has already been set, and when you fail to live up to that standard, you’re not going to have a successful product.  Let’s say that everyone’s first car they had was a Ferrari.  And then someone comes along and offers you a Toyota Camry.  The Camry isn’t a bad car, but you’ve already got a Ferrari.  And you’ve already had something that is so much better than Face-Plant Adventure, at least in terms of how it plays.

To Face-Plant’s credit, it’s not just a by-the-numbers Super Meat Boy rip-off.  I almost wish it had been.  One thing I did love about Super Meat Boy was the level design.  It was designed around harrowing jumps, near-misses, and “I can’t believe I did that!” moments.  Face-Plant has those, but not as much.  Instead, the game’s pace slows down to a crawl when you have to solve button puzzles.  They’re not mind benders or anything.  Really, some of them feel kind of like busy work.  And some of the early levels of the game are sprawling, overly long, and dull in their design, with a big over-reliance on backtracking.  The effort to be different is appreciated.  I just feel in this case like one of those parents whose kid decides the best way to be different is to get a shooting star tattooed on their cheek.

I hated Face-Plant Adventures early on.  It does not hook you in quickly.  And I apparently wasn’t alone in that.  The game has online leaderboards that track the time you take to complete the stage.  The first stage had sixty names on it, including mine.  For the second stage, it drops off to forty.  Forty!  One-third of the players had such a good time playing the first stage that they didn’t bother to finish the second.  It doesn’t help that the first two stages, the ones that should be getting you excited, are so boring, and many of the elements of the game haven’t even been included in them yet.  You can’t double jump.  You can’t glide.  And they’re too long as well.  It would be like going to a Metallica concert and having to sit through Swan Lake as the opening act.

Alright, that’s it. Someone get the word out to Obama and Romney: the first one of them that pledges to outlaw water levels in platformers gets my vote. I’m not joking. Fuck the economy. Fuck foreign policy. I have my priorities.

But, BUT, it does get better.  The stages actually get shorter as you go on, which completely eliminated the “oh God, please just be over with” feeling of the game.  And there are some really fun levels, like one that centers around grinding on rails.  It was unexpected, but it was also a blast!  It almost made me forget about some of the nit-picky problems, like how sometimes you can’t tell the difference between a spike and a non-spike.  Or how sometimes there’s a piece of flat-looking terrain on a cliff’s edge that counts as a spike for some reason.  The graphics are good in a first-gen PlayStation 2D game kind of way, but sometimes Face-Plant Adventures puts more thought into being pretty than it does being playable.

By time I beat Face-Plant, I had gone from hating the game, to kind of enjoying it, and then back to hating it.  There’s one final boss fight that is hugely annoying, both in the layout of the level you fight him on, the AI of the boss (the only character you “fight” in the game), and the collision detection of it.  It flushed any remaining joy I felt out the window and I was just happy the game was over.  I then spent the next few hours having an internal debate with myself over whether or not it would go on the Leaderboard.  In its favor, Face-Plant Adventures has some genuinely wonderful moments, and does sometimes stand on its own, out of the shadow of Super Meat Boy.  And against it?  Most of the levels are boring, it’s too slow-paced (by the way, a game that challenges people to do speed-runs absolutely needs to have faster resets than Face-Plant does), the graphics obscure too much, and the last boss is so annoying that only eight people have ever bothered to finish it, on any difficulty setting.  So ultimately, Face-Plant becomes the “close but no cigar” standard for XBLIGs.  Almost worth it, but not quite.  The “if you’re better than this, you’re on the Board” game.  You know that poor schmuck who is the last cut of Spring Training?  That’s Face-Plant Adventure.  Has talent, but not good enough to ride the bench of the Houston Astros.

Face-Plant Adventures was developed by Oddworm Games

I had no idea my mother was modeling for indie game cover art.

80 Microsoft Points made it a whole review without making a Little Shop of Horrors joke in the making of this review.  Which is weird, because when I asked my mom what I should be when I grow up, do you know what she said?

♫You’ll be a critic! 

You’ll have a knack for causing things pain!

You’ll be a critic!

People will pay you to be inhumane!♫

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Xenominer

September 25, 2012 by 20 Comments

I’ve never played Minecraft.  Or FortressCraft.  Or CastleMiner.  Or any number of other voxel-type crafting games that are more trendy now than tramp stamps.  Incidentally, I don’t have a tramp stamp either.  I guess I’m not a very trendy person.  But, there’s no malice behind my ignorance of the crafting scene.  I just haven’t played it because it doesn’t look like something I would have fun with.  Yea, I started Indie Gamer Chick to have new experiences, but I was thinking more along the lines of games that simulate what it’s like to be a penguin in heat, or a game where you fling mashed potatoes at gophers.  Let this be said: if you hate something without playing it, you’re an idiot.  To all of you guys who denounce Minecraft, FortressCraft, CastleMiner, or any other crafting game that you haven’t even played, you’ve really lost the plot.  I know trying to appeal to the irrational core of gamers is silly, but I figure I should at least try.

Obvious joke warning: Minecraft…..IN SPAAAAAAACCCEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I can’t compare Xenominer to something I haven’t played, so this final Uprising review will be somewhat unique.  I go into it with no preconceived notions of what to expect.  I have no bias acquired from the games it borrows elements from.  This is a slate so clean you could perform surgery on it.

So I started the game and went through a brief tutorial that made me suck up various blocks and then reposition them in the open world.  First thing I noticed: the graphics are clean.  Second thing: the jumping is really good.  Like, almost Metroid Prime good.  Third, the frame rate was really good.  Hey, this might not be so bad, I thought.  Then the game wanted me to suck up ice to replenish my dwindling oxygen.  This was a problem.  Although I got as far as “ice = shiny” I couldn’t actually tell the difference between an ice block and a crystal block.  Even with a TV large enough that it’s one of the seven wonders of the world, the text that identifies the blocks is practically microscopic.  It’s also written in an alpha-numeric font, which never looks good when it’s smaller than an ant’s penis.

Most of the HUD displays are too small, but I was able to suck up the ice and covert it to oxygen.  And then the sun went to rise up.  This causes radiation to rain down upon you.  The game warned me to take shelter.  So I dug myself down a few blocks and covered myself up with them.  I wasn’t sure how long to wait, and I didn’t want to press my eyeballs up against the TV to find out, so I undug myself and ended up irradiated.  So I redug myself and waited for the sun to pass.  Most games that makes you wait for stuff to happen are probably not going to win any Nobel Prizes for Fun.  I did attempt to pass the time by drilling deeper, but then my battery ran out of juice, and then I ran out of oxygen, and then I expired.  Sigh.

Upon respawning, the sun was still up and I instantly started taking damage.  I did survive and was tasked with building something that required copper.  I fucking turned over half the world looking for the shit, going through more oxygen tanks than a 70-year-old chain smoker.  After an hour (including more respawns) I had found the silicon I needed, but no copper.    Xenominer was unquestionably going to be a time sink.  I tend to view such games favorably.  Hell, there’s two time sinks on my top 10 list: Miner Dig Deep and Smooth Operators.  But I had fun with those.  Once I noticed how much time had passed versus the amount of fun I had up to that point (which would be none), I couldn’t hit the power button fast enough.  I’ve talked with other XBLIG reviewers and they agree: Xenominer doesn’t get you off to a quick enough start, like all great time sinks do.  Some more direction.  Just a big enough push to get you feeling like you’re actually accomplishing stuff.  But there is none.

No, there’s no killer space bees or space ants. Too bad. That might have livened things up.

So my first real crafting game is in the books.  I didn’t really hate it, because it controlled really well (can’t stress enough how good the jumping physics feel) and the graphics held up.  Mostly.  Actually, the game starts skipping the more you walk around.  I wanted to test how bad it was, so I decided to walk in a straight line with a stopwatch and time how long it would take to start skipping.  Ready for this?  It took less than two seconds per a pause (the average was about 1.7 seconds) .  When the game freezes every two seconds, chances are it might not be quite done yet.  Maybe Xenominer is in an early beta stage, and something amazing will come of it.  I could see myself getting totally hooked into it, just like I did with Miner Dig Deep.  Xenominer’s biggest problem is that it has nothing to hook you in early.  If games are drugs, then picture Miner Dig Deep as heroin.  Every good drug pusher knows you have to hook ’em early, and that game does it.  Xenominer, on the other hand, doesn’t offer you the drug until it makes you watch a documentary on grass growing and the latest episode of the World Series of Paint Drying Watching.  Thanks, but I’ll just say no.

Xenominer was developed by Gristmill Studios

80 Microsoft Points said the Uprising had a 44.44% success rate at making the Leaderboard.  In other words, the promotion had the same success rate as any nine random XBLIGs would have had in the making of this review.

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Pixel

September 24, 2012 by 8 Comments

Pixel is one of the worst names ever for an XBLIG.  Worse than Brand.  Well, probably not worse than Dark.  It doesn’t really fit with the theme of the game, and doesn’t give you a feel for what to expect.  It’s so lazy and so uninspired that, as a consumer, it makes me question whether any effort was spent making the game itself.  I mean, they phoned in the name, so it stands to reason that the game was equally half-assed.  That’s not the case with Pixel.  Despite being an ungodly piece of shit due to really horrible play control and one game-killing glitch that I couldn’t get past, there was obviously some effort made here.

I’ll step away from my typical smart-assed attitude here and make a heartfelt plea to the Xbox Live Indie Game development community.  You guys already struggle so much to get attention.  Why shoot yourself in the foot right out of the starting blocks by not trying to come up with a memorable name for your game?  Pixel is such a prime example.  It’s a 3D dexterity-shooting puzzler.  I would associate a name like Pixel with 2D sprite-based stuff.  I guess Pixel gets it from the fact that there are blocks.  Okie dokie.  I still don’t understand the logic in it, but then again, XBLIGers seem to operate on a plane of existence where logic doesn’t dare tread.  This is evidenced by the fact that so many developers determined that the best way to get attention for their new XBLIG was to launch it alongside the Uprising, even though every major XBLIG writer was committed to covering the games in the promotion.  They might as well of launched their game on a platform that works exclusively in igloos for as much attention as they ended up getting.

It looks like one of those ink-and-paint cheat modes from Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, does it not?

I guess I went so far off topic because I don’t really have a lot to say about Pixel.  I made it seven levels in before I got fed up with it.  The idea is you walk around a sterile, blocky 3D environment trying to reach a goal.  Right off the bat, the biggest problem becomes apparent: the control sucks.  Everything is too loose, causing your character to scoot along like he’s been lubricated in bacon grease.  I tried fixing this by adjusting the control stick sensitivity, but it only half-worked.  Turning around became slower, but sideways movement was still set to Warp 9 and could not be fixed.  The jumping was also unresponsive, with a noticeable delay.  When you have a game centered around precision movement, having less than precise controls is a good way to turn me (or pretty much any reasonable gamer) off.

I’ve put up with worse, but the final straw for me was a pretty noticeable glitch.  On the 7th level, there are these platforms with a red stem poking out of them, not unlike a dog’s wiener.  You shoot the red part, and the white blocks rise up around the red part, allowing you to hop to the next platform.  As established, the controls are utter shit, so messing up is not only possible, but it’s probably expected.  When you fall off the stage, you just fall back onto it, with the idea being that you’ll have a slower stage time.  Something I filed under things I don’t give a shit about.  However, once I respawned, I hopped back to the first platform and shot the red thing.  At this point, without any movement, I fell off the platform and went back to the start.  Huh.  And then it happened again.  And again.  As it turns out, this is a glitch, and you have to exit out of the stage and try again.  But if you screw up at any point in the stage, the glitch will activate again and you’ll have to once again exit the stage and restart it.  Yea, fuck that, I’m done.

Pixel was developed by Ratchet Game Studio

80 Microsoft Points took a 3 day weekend in a land where Minecraft clones don’t exist in the making of this review. 

Other Pixel reviews: Clearance Bin Review (who also noted the glitch), and hopefully more to come.

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