The Top 25 Xbox Live Indie Games of All-Time: Part 1

July 2, 2012 by 9 Comments

As promised, I’ll close out my first anniversary celebration in style.  Here we go, the Top 25 Xbox Live Indie Games of All-Time.  According to me at least.  For the sake of this not taking up too much space, and because I’ve been having trouble finding time to write this out, I’m breaking this up into five parts  If you’re looking for the very best Xbox Live Indie Games has to offer, this is where you should start.  As a reminder, you can purchase all 25 games on this list for less than the price of one single disc-based release.  25 amazing games for the price of 1?  How can you say no to that?  You can click on the titles to read my reviews.  You can also visit the Leaderboard to see what the remaining twenty games are.  I really kind of did this in the wrong order.  I suck.  This list doesn’t.  Let’s roll!

#25: Crystal Hunters

Developed by DreamRoot Studios

Concept: Collect crystals while avoiding enemies in this top-down logic puzzler.

Sort of like: The Adventures of Lolo (NES)

Why I like it: Crystal Hunters is an intelligently designed game.  Puzzlers on XBLIG sometimes forget to properly scale the difficult level, dumping players off in the deep-end early on.  Crystal Hunters eases players into the mechanics of the game.  Make no mistake though, the difficulty scales up hugely towards the end.  If you like mind benders, this sucker will go all origami on your brain.

What could have made it better: The play control is pretty touchy.  The graphics are small in resolution.

Who will like it: Mensa types, eggheads, grizzled old prospectors.

Who won’t like it: Dummies, the recently lobotomized, girls named Crystal Hunter.

#24: Lair of the Evildoer

Developed by Going Loud Studios

Concept: Fight various undead enemies while trying to escape the lair of an evil genius in this twin-stick shooter.

Sort of like: Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES) if it was a rogue-like.

Why I like it: Lair of the Evildoer is an intense, though very clever shooter.  Games that feature randomly-generated levels tend to feel generic, but Lair of the Evildoer is overflowing with personality.  With a wide variety of enemies, weapons, and customizable stats, this is probably one of the most intelligent shooters on the platform.

What could have made it better: It was practically begging for co-op.

Who will like it: Shooting fans, zombiephiles, Austin Powers.

Who won’t like it: Shag carpet salesmen, actual evil geniuses, human resources managers.

#23: Wizorb

Developed by Tribute Games

Concept: Old-timey brick-breaker with some RPG elements peppered in.

Sort of Like: Arkanoid set in Middle Earth.

Why I liked it: In my original review, I absolutely scorched Wizorb.  And I regret that I wrote that review the way I did, because I failed to articulate that I really did like the game.  I’m not exactly a fan of the genre, so the fact that Wizorb held my interest until the end is kind of a miracle.  The only other brick-breaker that has done that for me is Shatter on PlayStation Network.  The charming 8-bit graphics that are without a tinge of a modern influence are among the best of their breed on XBLIG.  Wizorb is really special.

What could have made it better: The RPG stuff is mostly smoke and mirrors, so I wish they had gone further with the concept than they did.

Who will like it: Retro gamers, Breakout enthusiasts, demolitionists.

Who won’t like it: Bricklayers, union contractors, people who would rather be the Elforb instead of the Wizorb when they play Dungeons & Dragorbs.

#22: Johnny Platform Saves Christmas

Developed by Ishisoft Games

Concept: Yuletide puzzle-platforming.

Sort of like: The Game Boy version of Donkey Kong.

Why I liked it: The sequel to Johnny Platform’s Biscuit Romp (#36 on the Leaderboard at the time of this writing) combined fast-paced platforming with some clever level design and puzzles.  There should be more games like this on XBLIG.

What could have made it better: Both Johnny Platform games feature a useless lives system that halts progress and forces replaying previously beaten levels for no reason whatsoever.

Who will like it: Platforming fans, people who like puzzlers that don’t require an IQ north of Albert Einstein, Ralphie.

Who won’t like it: Children on the naughty list, the Grinch, people waiting for Johnny Platform’s Hanukkah Brouhaha.

#21: Lexiv

Developed by Andrew Gaubatz

Concept: Build cities using words and parts of speech.

Sort of like: Scrabble and Sim City had a beautiful baby that is potentially a genius and occasionally shits on you.

Why I liked it: Lexiv is probably an acquired taste that requires a love of word games mixed with a deep fondness for simplified Sim City-esq strategy and maintenance.  Despite being a very rough build (I would safely call it a beta), you can see the potential.  I could see Hasbro licensing this and branding it as Scrabble City.

What could have made it better: Every stage begins with “L-E-X-I-V” as the starting word that you have to build on.  This is incredibly stupid because X and V are not the most versatile letters.  I actually hate V more than X.  V’s are the wisdom teeth of Scrabble.  When they show up, they cause nothing but pain and are in dire need of extraction.

Who will like it: City planners who play crossword puzzles, crossword fans who aspire to be city planners, those little shits that make the Scripps finals.

Who won’t like it: Pepole hoo relie to munch un spel chek, the dude who was planning to make “Words of Warcraft”, Charlie Brown.

Continue to Part 2

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Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3

June 30, 2012 by 11 Comments

I never have been huge into Penny Arcade, or comic strips in general for that matter.  I did read it for years, but after a certain point it was done more out of habit.  I suppose it’s the same reason I always check what Garfield is up to every Sunday, even though I don’t think I’ve ever found a single joke in it to be funny.  I’m not sure anyone over the age of six ever has.  I heard a guy somewhere in the South once laughed at one of the endless “he’s a fat cat, get it?” gags, probably something involving lasagna, but that might be an urban legend.  At least Penny Arcade is topical to me, even if it’s really just observational humor with a couple generic stock characters conveying it.  It works, because we notice these things too.  And after going through their recent archives in preparation for this review, I learned that it’s still funny.  I mean come on, who could have watched E3 and not laugh at this?

Having said that, I really didn’t enjoy the first two Penny Arcade games.  And it had nothing to do with developer Hothead Games, who went on to do Deathspank and The Swarm, a couple of my favorite PSN titles.  I have a theory on this, and it goes like so: maybe these characters don’t actually lend themselves well to being in a video game.  Penny Arcade belongs outside the confines of the industry, looking into it and saying “you ever notice how fucked up all this is?”  When you place these characters in a position to drive a complex narrative, it seems like the entire point of their existence has been missed.

The Mario Party series has gotten weird.

I pretty much feel the same way about the latest Penny Arcade game.  Even with a new developer, the insanely talented guys at Zeboyd Games, something about it just doesn’t work.  One of the biggest problems is how married this sequel is to the original two games, the second of which didn’t exactly set the sales charts on fire.  It seemed weird to me that they would do another sequel.  I figured the people had spoken with their wallets and there wasn’t a lot of interest in continuing this particular story any further.  Granted, you don’t need to have played the previous two games to play this.  In fact, they advertise that fact in the game’s blurb on the marketplace.  Again, if we’re going to do that, maybe they should have just started all over with a fresh storyline and new characters.

I actually thought the storyline for On the Oil-Slick Recipe of Blackness Electric Bologna 3 was as dull as a butter knife at times, while downright fucking surreal at others.  The dialog can be sharp and at times very funny, but most of the time I was just like “please stop talking so I can fight something.”  The jokes are hit and miss (emphasis on miss), with the funniest bits not coming until you’re about 75% done with the game.  The best laughs I got were typically from the enemy names, although some of them were pretty damn good.

Ha, Optimus Mime. Classic.

The actual plot of Tycho being some kind of janitor to the universe was confusing and clumsily handled, and I would be hard-pressed to think of a way the ending (the real one, not the bullshit one) could have let me down more.  Maybe if it had advocated the benefits of eating baby seal meat while getting puppies drunk on helium.  I’m still not sure that would be as disturbing as the tone the game took at the end.  It would be like ending a wacky situational comedy by having the lead character suffer a nervous breakdown after watching someone smother a chicken to death.  Only it wasn’t a chicken.  IT WAS A BABY!

(Brian, who actually has watched M*A*S*H*, just told me that the show was supposed to be half-serious, half-comedy.  Yea, fuck that.  It had a laugh track.  It was a comedy.)

I’m not just hating for the sake of hating here, by the way.  If all the stuff you read in the previous 672 words sounded bad, let me reassure you that On the Slick-Dick of District 9 is one seriously amazing RPG.  You can tell Zeboyd spent many of their formative years growing up playing the classics of the genre (which typically included at least one of the following three words: Fantasy, Chrono, or Mana), but knew what could make them better.  So when they were all grown-up, mentally warped, and insane enough to give game production a try themselves, they actually fixed what was wrong with RPGs.  As opposed to most RPG developers who include every antiquated, conventional mechanic, just because that’s how an RPG is supposed to be.  Gone from this game are random encounters, items to juggle, and boring fights that you could win by training a woodpecker to beat on the A button while you go outside for a smoke.

In their place is a simple-yet-deep system involving “pins” that change your character class on the fly.  Each of the four main characters has one default class, but you can equip up to two others, each of which levels up independently as you play the game.  I loved this set-up and was still mixing-and-matching the different pins right up until the last boss.  It never got old, and that is so rare in a role-playing game.  Whenever things threatened to get repetitive, the game will toss out special conditions to change things up, if only for just a fight.  It’s nice that a developer finally recognized the potential for their game to stagnate and put fail safes in to prevent that.

Every mechanic of this game just works.  The combat is fast paced, varied, smart, but complex enough that you have freedom to experiment.  It’s a rare turn-based RPG that feels like more than scrolling through menus.  You truly feel like you are in charge.  Sure, a few stereotypes rear their ugly heads.  The accessory system is more or less the same shit every RPG has, but at least it complements the fighting system well.  Thankfully, you don’t have to stockpile items.  Every item used is replenished between fights, and there’s only six types anyway.  It sure beats dealing with a U-Haul full of potions, mid-potions, high-potions, elixirs, herbs, tents, and bombs.  Instead, you pay to upgrade each item in a shop, or buy the ability to use it more times in every battle.  Having dealt with decades of what RPGs have taught us, that you’re allowed to carry enough health potions that you could practically replace your own blood with the shit, I liked this system.  It kept things clean.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is not perfect.  The dialog can just drone on and on.  When the dialog works, it’s entertaining.  When it doesn’t, that’s usually when it just won’t fucking shut up.  But, as a game?  It’s incredible.  Again, I think most of the problems with it can be tied to the source material.  Penny Arcade is funny.  Penny Arcade as a semi-comedic, semi-dramatic video game is not.  These are characters that make jokes about iPads and E3.  I don’t want to see them dealing with doomsday scenarios and deep introspective soul-searching.  I want to see them taking the piss out of the gaming industry.  Rain-Slick 3 doesn’t do that.  I figure there’s two ways to go around it.  One is to do a straight gaming parody, like Airplane! did for disaster movies.  The other idea is a bit more radical: leave the Penny Arcade characters out of it.  Make Penny Arcade the gaming brand for parody, like National Lampoon or Monty Python do for film.  Oh don’t worry Mike & Jerry.  You guys can still have the ego-inflation you need by inserting yourself into the games, but as cameos.  Hey, some people go very far doing that!  You know that old dude with the sunglasses and the mustache that’s in every single Marvel Comics movie?  Stan something.  Yea, him.  Get this: it turns out THAT GUY actually wrote the original comics those films are based on.  I know, right?  Crazy shit!

Maybe I accidentally didn’t play the right game. Instead, I played a game called “3” that was about the guy from Metal Slug hunting Adam Lambert.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-oh fuck it.

Penny Arcade 3 was developed by Zeboyd Games

400 Microsoft Points thank everyone for an incredible first year.  I love you guys.

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Chester (Second Chance with the Chick)

June 29, 2012 by 3 Comments

Despite being a bit on the underwhelming side, the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising had a few gems floating among the sewage.  Cute Things Dying Violently provided some good laughs, while Take Arms provided me with being called a “camping ho-bag.”  Which brought a smile to my face, if nothing else.  And then there was Chester, a polarizing game that I loved, but others loathed for reasons that baffle me.  Even my brother from a different mother Alan told me he thought Chester was lame.  Dude.  We had something between us, you and I.  But our views on Chester have driven us apart.  Now he’ll return to his life of Goolin and Fish & Chips, while I’ll return to my life of hanging out with Brian, watching Top Gear and Doctor Who.  Wait, which one of us is British again?

Chester, which I reviewed way back in September, impressed the hell out of me with its quirky hand-drawn graphics coupled with running and shooting platforming.  It had what so many games on the service doesn’t: personality.  Well, that and it actually played well.  But here’s the weird thing: the version I played back in September was more or less an unfinished beta build.  The Chester that is currently on the marketplace is a much more complex game.  And it’s even more fucking awesome than before.

In the old build of Chester, you could change the backgrounds of each stage to reflect different art styles.  Now, the styles actually change the gameplay, affecting the strength or speed of the enemies, or your weapons, or the amount of rare items enemies drop.  There are eight different backgrounds, and scrolling through them is a breeze: just use the bumpers.  Likewise, the character of Chester takes ten different forms, all with unique abilities and attributes.  Combine this with the elemental system that turns battles with enemies into a game of rock-paper-scissors and what once was a fairly simple (if stylish) game is now a pretty complex one.

Chester is so loaded with so many unlockables and extra content that it’s actually a bit overwhelming.  Every stage has various trinkets to find, hidden rooms, and enemies that drop delicious brains (thus making the  XBLIG minimum zombie quota in a roundabout kind of way).  You have catalogs to fill up, shit to buy from stores, and multiple difficult levels to try.  If you’re gaming on a limited budget, Chester could very well be the game you’ve been waiting for.  Hell, I bitched about the game’s lack of boss the first time around and now there is one.  It kinda sucks, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, and I appreciate the effort.

If I had to make a complaint about Chester, and I do, it’s that the controls are still a bit on the stiff side.  Then again, each character handles a little differently, and stuff like gravity affects each one in different ways.  Maybe I made a booboo by playing through most of the game with the default character.  The game can also feel like too much of a collectathon at times.  If you’re the type prone to OCD, Chester might be the worst thing to happen to you.  There’s so much shit to collect and stuff to buy in stores that I don’t think I could ever spend the days it will take to get it all.  Don’t worry, you’re not going to be missing out on levels or anything.  But still, I kind of want a chance to see everything a game, especially an indie game, has to offer without having to invest enough time to drive cross-country and back.  I want my games to feel like a diversion, not a second job.

Still, Chester is amazing.  It offers so much value for so little money.  That is, if you buy on Xbox.  On IndieVania or Dasura, it will cost you a whopping $9.99, compared to a meager 80 Mega Super Pesos on Xbox.  Quite a jump there, fellas, one that doesn’t make a whole ton of sense to me.  It would be as silly as asking for $20 for a Blu-ray, but $50 for a 3D Blu-ray.  Okay, bad example.  Or maybe good example seeing how those things would have trouble selling if they came bundled with a holographic Angelina Jolie giving out force-feedback handjobs.

Chester was developed by Brilliant Blue-G

80 Microsoft Points have Chester’s nuts roasting on an open fire in the making of this review.

 

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Mystic Forest

June 28, 2012 by 11 Comments

Mystic Forest is the latest steamer from Team Shuriken. It’s a text-based adventure where you play as a dude who finds a buxom fairy in the garden he was growing for his vegan ex-girlfriend and oh fuck it you’re just here to read about the boobies, aren’t you?

Perhaps it’s long overdue that we discuss the dos and don’ts of Xbox Live Indie Games and sex. You see, developers have a set of rules of things they can and cannot do called the “Evil Checklist.” Among those things they can’t do is make a game with nipples. Boobs are fine, as long as they’re covered. No sex either. The best you can get is flirting between the characters.

This still isn’t reaching you, is it? All I have to do is post a screenshot of the game and you’ll be super gluing your mouse buttons with spunk, correct?

I can practically hear the FAP FAP FAP coming from your computers.

Well, for those of you paying attention:

See, 

her,

breasts?

See her breasts?

Those two bumps on her chest?

Notice no nipples.

It’s very simple.

They’re on the evil Checklist!

No sex is allowed.

Among the XNA crowd.

Their accounts will be suspended.

If the rules are unattended.

If you want to see boobles.

Have a stop at Google.

They have breasts!

They have breasts!

THEY HAVE BREASTS!

See this game?

It’s so lame.

Most Team Shuriken stuff is all the same.

A few texty slides and some choices.

They don’t even bother having voices.

It’s so dumb.

It’s no fun.

And it’s over-priced for some.

240 points for some sex.

Being horny is a hex.

How much do Playboys cost?

Think of the money lost.

To see these breasts.

See these breasts.

SEE THESE BREASTS!

It’s fairly transparent why I’m doing this game.  It’s good for page views. And obviously there’s market for shit like this, because otherwise Team Shuriken wouldn’t turn these things out at the rate they do. They’re businessmen. I can respect that. But the writing in these games is abysmal, they often don’t have proper spelling or grammar, and they’re just so half-assed. These guys aren’t total washes as game designers.  Dream Divers was at least an attempt at doing something with actual gameplay in it. I just have to wonder what future generations will think when they drudge through the wasteland we leave behind as a civilization: what will they think of us?

Mystic Forest was developed by Team Shuriken (who else?)

240 Microsoft Points are sorry Cathy, I can’t let you do that in the making of this review.

Thanks to Nate Graves of Gear-Fish.com for the picture. Really sealed this review good. 

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Washington’s Wig

June 27, 2012 by 6 Comments

Washington’s Wig will win no points for historical accuracy.  Hey guys, Washington didn’t have a dog named Dogsworth.  That sounds like the name of a dog that would follow around Scrooge McDuck or something.  Washington in fact had dozens of dogs throughout his life, including ones named Rover, Drunkard, Vulcan, and Captain.  But none named Dogsworth.  For shame, Team2Bit.  If you can’t trust Xbox Live Indie Games for historic.. wait, they actually have “Historically Inaccurate” right on the box art.  Crap.  I had about 500 words worth of complaints about the type of boat used for crossing the Delaware in this game.  Now I actually have to talk about the gameplay and shit.  Sigh.  I really hate those guys.

Washington’s Wig was the game that won for Team2Bit IGN’s Next Game Boss competition.  It was kind of surprising to me, because when I watched it I thought the game looked so fucking stupid.  Well, now the game is out on XBLIG and having finally had a chance to play it, it might surprise you to hear that I think the game is, well, fucking stupid.  Washington’s Wig is an auto-runner where only the A button is required.  You hop across icebergs, collecting coins, stars, and getting assistance from sturgeons and eagles.  It’s a shallow, completely one-dimensional time sink of a game.  One that I burned a couple of hours on.  With a smile on my face.  To all those who say I have no taste, trust me when I say, I question that myself all the time.

To be clear, Washington’s Wig is dumb.  Wearing your socks over your shoes dumb.  But it’s also kind of addictive.  It’s simple even for an auto-runner.  There’s only basic obstacles to clear.  Mostly dogs that are fighting for the Red Coats.  Some of them stand still, some of them charge at you, some of them jump up at you.  This kind of stuff has been done dozens of times before.  If not for the absurd theme, Washington’s Wig would probably be forgotten almost as soon as you turned it off.

It is lacking in some areas.  It’s a game driven by scores, but there’s no online leaderboards.  The game also has no variety in backdrops.  You’re stuck crossing the Delaware, on a freezey cold night, and that’s it.  They could have totally fucked with the source material and had other levels where Washington crosses the Nile, the Amazon, or the Rio Grande.  But no, it’s just the boring ass Delaware.  There is an included two player race mode, but I thought it kind of stunk.  Really, Washington’s Wig would have been a better fit on iPhone, with Game Center support.  Without competing against other scores, there’s really no reason to play it more than once.  You won’t get much out of Washington’s Wig, but I actually still had fun with it.  Even though I’m not sure if that’s because the game is good or because I have some kind of undiagnosed mental illness.

Washington’s Wig was developed by Team2Bit

80 Microsoft Points wouldn’t mind a sequel.  Perhaps some kind of aerobics game for the Wii starring Sally Hemings.  They can call it Jefferson’s Hand-Job in the making of this review.

Whoever put that God-awful “Washington’s—–Wig” music in the game is now on my list.  That is the worst fucking music in game history, and I can’t get it out of my head.  They used to behead people for less. 

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Spoids (Second Chance with the Chick)

June 26, 2012 by 3 Comments

I reviewed Spoids back in April and it aggravated the ever-loving shit out of me so much that I wrote an editorial on game difficulty in part because of it.  Well, Spoids is back, all patched up and ready to kick your ass some more.  Why?  Because all the changes implemented are so miniscule in their scope that you’ll hardly notice them.  Since I had a fairly big list of complaints last time, I’ll do what I’ve done in the past and go over every concern one by one.

Original: The enemies are too bullet-spongy.

New Build: The enemies are still too bullet-spongy.  I can spam whole sections of the board with all sorts of firepower and the fuckers still can walk through entire hallways with minimal damage.  The bosses are allegedly less tough, but it doesn’t really seem that way in practice.  The bosses that unleash five extremely fast-moving enemies when they die are still able to absorb entire rows of gunfire without so much as blinking.  They’re usually pretty close to an exit when they die, leaving no time for your defenses to stand a reasonable chance at stopping half the shit they drop, no matter how many things you put to slow stuff down.  Speaking of which, the slowdown stuff is ironically too slow to activate.  When the fast-moving “zoomers” show up, they often cruise a few spaces past the slow-down-thingies before they actually do yield.  We call this “Getting a Yellow Light in California Syndrome.”

God this stage pissed me off. Fucking gloriously addictive piece of shit.

Original: The flying enemies and their associated tower are way unbalanced.

New Build: Efforts were made to fix this, but they failed.  The only tower that attacks flying creatures is the Homing Missile.  Before, they cost $125 a unit, which was way overpriced for a tower that is useless against the vast, vast, vast majority of enemies.  The guys at AirWave took this advice to heart and discounted the tower that is useless against most of the enemies and slow to react to the ones it is effective against to a generous $110.  Gee, thanks guys.  Meanwhile, you still need to occasionally couple them with radar towers, which cost $50.  So the discount you gave us isn’t even enough to make a down payment on one of those.  Hell, it’s barely a third of the cost of the weakest offensive tower in the game.  Why not just suck the fillings out of my teeth while you’re at it?

Meanwhile, the flying guys are allegedly weaker and attack less frequently.  I will admit that the flyers are  slightly more tolerable, but they still are overpowered compared to the price and effectiveness of the towers that can attack them.  A problem with Spoids in general is the important, single-functional towers are slow to react to everything.  The radar stuff takes too long to make the invisible enemies visible.  The slow-down stuff takes too long to slow down the zoomers.  The missiles take too long to fire on the flyers, and they don’t put out enough bullets or fire often enough.  I once again spammed entire sections of the screen with the worthless-against-99%-of-the-enemies missile towers and radar and still had entire strings of flyers just shrug them off and cause damage.

Original: Money doesn’t accumulate fast enough.

New Build: It still doesn’t.  In a game that has so many enemies that require special, non-offensive towers just to open up their vulnerability, you really don’t get enough resources in Spoids.  In the stages where enemies hit you from two different starting points, you often have to pick and choose which side to “let go of” and hope you can catch up later.  You often can’t.  When guys who phase in and out of view are around, you have to set up radar towers, which are costly and don’t fire.  The phasers are every bit as spongy as everything else, so you often have to set up multiple towers just to pick off the front line.  When the zoomers come in, not only do they take more damage to kill than Jason Voorhees but they run faster than your towers can shoot.  To have a chance, you have to put the slowdown towers in, but they come at a cost of $100.  However, their range of effectiveness is small and they don’t activate fast enough, meaning that most of them will receive minimal damage.  You have to cover every corner with the slow-down-thingies, but if you do that you won’t have the money for guns.  It sucks that the tougher enemies don’t pay in proportion to how much they cost to kill.

Don’t count on being able to cover the map like this during story mode. Not even close.

Original: The game cost 240 Microsoft Points.

New Build: The game costs 80 Microsoft Points.  Thus I now feel comfortable recommending Spoids.  For all of its faults, and those faults are massive, Spoids is every bit as fun and addictive as tower defense games can be.  If you’re into these things, that is.  Haters of the genre won’t be converted by it.  But, I liked it.  Don’t get me wrong, if I ever encounter the developers I might give this whole “strangle a fellow human being” thing a test drive, but it will be because I liked the game.  Just not as much as I could have.  AirWave Games has talent.  I just wish the next time they say they’re going to fix a game, they do more than drop the price.  Which was admittedly enough to sway me to say “okay, it’s worth buying” but that’s not the point.  I’m not even sure if the game is better.  I did beat it this time, but it still took me over a dozen tries to finish the 8th and final stage.  After that many tries, you don’t feel a sense of satisfaction.  You feel a sense of “thank Christ I don’t have to start all over with it again.”  Games should never leave you feeling that.  Ever.  They’re entertainment, not dental surgery.  Still, Spoids is one of the most polished looking games on the market, and it’s very playable.  And it’s made by some really cool developers whose necks I’m hoping will be very wringable.

Spoids was developed by AirWave Games

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points have always wanted to try the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on someone in the making of this review.  Oh Mommy, come here for a moment. 

Spoids is also available on Desura for $2.99.  This version is unverified by Indie Gamer Chick.  The XBLIG version is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

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Mambow

June 25, 2012 by 4 Comments

Mambow is sort of the Xbox Live Indie Game version of Donkey Kong Country.  Of course, when a game is the Xbox Live Indie Game version of any established franchise, that usually is a sign the game won’t be any good.  Such is the case with Mambow, which has pretty decent graphics and little else going for it.  You play as Mambow, a lion who is king of the jungle.  I never got the whole “lions are king of the jungle” thing myself.  I would think people would be the kings of the jungle, what with our guns and blood lust and the fact that we kill shit just for recreation.  Lions, you need to step up your game.  Kill a wildebeest and keep the corpse around just for decoration.  Because that’s what we did with your grandfather.  No eating it.  Then you can have your title back.

If you have suffered any recent eye trauma, you really would mistake Mambow for Donkey Kong Country.  Instead of bananas, you collect meat, and instead of a gorilla you play as a lion wearing jeans.  Otherwise, the gameplay is pretty much the same idea.  You make your way across 10 levels, searching for tons of hidden trinkets, swinging from vines, visiting platforming clichés, and jumping on the heads of various wildlife.  It sounds great, and it looks like it will be fun, but the developers of Mambow failed to capture the intelligent level design of the DKC series.  Too much of the platforming centers around leap of faith gaming, which is a pet peeve of mine.  I’m so sick of titles that make you take blind jumps onto platforms with enemies or possibly into pits.  It’s the gaming version of walking around your house in the dark and stubbing your toes.  That is not fun.  It fucking hurts.

The controls aren’t exactly silky smooth, either.  Movement is really sensitive, sometimes forcing you to heel-toe it through sections.  Some of the attacks, or at least I think they’re attacks, seem to be worthless.  You can swat in front of you, but every time I tried it with even basic enemies led to me  taking damage.  Jumping on enemies can be a bit fickle too.  They don’t seem to have a generous enough collision box, leading to times where you do seem to land square on them but still take damage.  You get the ability to roar, but I never did figure out what the fuck its good for, beside getting the attention of enemies.  Couple these with problems in the ascetics where platforms and decor are indistinguishable, and Mambow starts to cross into that “hopelessly broken beyond all repair” territory.

When Mambow launched, it was 400 Microsoft Points.  I originally intended to review it soon after it came out, but the developers asked me to give them time to fix some problems.  So I did.  The biggest problem they fixed was dropping the price to a less insane 240MSP.  It’s still 160MSP too much, but at least it stings significantly less.  I’m not sure what glitches they tried to fix, but I encountered a few annoying moments.  The camera shook violently a few times just from me standing on a moving platform, making it impossible to see what was going on.  I also once got stuck clinging to a fence.  For whatever reason, the dude would not let go of it.  I thought my button had gotten jammed, but the guy remained stuck even after I pulled out the battery.  Maybe it was a Venus Lion Trap.

I got used to seeing this after the character got stuck to the fence while I played it. I could move him. I just couldn’t get off.

Mambow looks really good, but gameplay is all that matters to me.  The graphics are polished to a mirror shine (they reminded me a little of Yoshi’s Story), while the mechanics are as sloppy as they get.  I don’t really care if Mambow is a Donkey Kong Country wannabe, even if I think that series was never good to begin with.  Oddly enough, Shigeru Miyamoto is on my side here.  He once famously said “Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good.”  I agree with him, but I feel that it can also be applied to developers as well.  Mambow is an example.  I’m sure the developers are proud of it, because the graphics are sharp.  But graphics should never trump gameplay.  Mambow controls poorly and the level design is boring, if not terrible.  I think this might have been their first game.  If I’m right, highly commendable effort, fellas.  Just remember: gameplay first, graphics second.  Write it down and hang it up on a wall.  Put it next to one of those “hang in there kitty!” posters.  Meanwhile, the only reason why this lion is sleeping in the mighty jungle tonight is because I just euthanized his ass.

Mambow was developed by Team-Mambow

240 Microsoft Points really suck at correctly identifying the correct developers of these games sometimes in the making of this review.

Gameplay courtesy of Aaron The Splazer.  He’s been providing these videos for the community for a while now.  Go follow him on Youtube.  He’s earned it.

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The Impossible Game

June 24, 2012 by 6 Comments

The Impossible Game is, as of this writing, the biggest selling Xbox Live Indie Game of all-time that isn’t a Minecraft clone. It’s a punisher, sure, but since you can’t improvise anything and every jump you have to make is predetermined, it’s more akin to trying to ace a Guitar Hero song set on expert. I’m not really into those kind of games, and my early experience playing the demo of this long before I founded Indie Gamer Chick left me feeling self-mutilatious. And no, I don’t care if that’s not really a word. It is now.

I’m guessing anybody that has hung around the XBLIG scene has probably at least played the demo for Impossible Game. Until last month, that was my only experience with it. Now that I officially do not play demos, I sprung for the full version, with the intent of catching up to all the top-selling games. The first thing I noticed about it? How clunky the jump button is. It’s slow. There seems to be a slight delay in the game’s reaction time. In a game that requires perfect precision with no room for error, I found the control scheme unacceptable. I found it baffling that this was a top game. #3 all-time selling and #10 in total rank.

Part of the problem is the only way to jump is with the A button. None of the other face buttons are used at all. What it could have used was jumping mapped to the bumpers. The least resistant buttons should have had jumping on them, which would have allowed for quicker actions and smoother play. Alas, it was not to be. I said to myself “the idea for this game isn’t bad or anything. If only there was a platform that did not have clunky buttons and inputs were almost completely instantaneous. Too bad such a device is purely hypothetical.” And while I was doing this, Brian was waving my iPhone at me. Weeks later, I figured out why he was doing so.

So I bought Impossible Game on iPhone, and it worked just swell. First off, the layout of the level is completely different from the Xbox version, which is a nice touch. There’s no “push here” area. You can pretty much push anywhere there isn’t some kind of overlay to cause the cube to jump. There was no delay in the jumping, leaving the only challenge as the actual challenge the game is meant to have. Fancy that. I still wasn’t convinced the game was anything special. You jump a cube over spikes. It scrolls quickly. You need to memorize the layout. Whoopee do. Then I noticed that over an hour has passed. Okay, so maybe it’s a little addictive.

This was back in late April. Since then, the Impossible Game has factored into my bathroom time, smoke breaks, TV watching, waiting rooms, and traffic jams. Every time I made it one space closer than my previous best, I would check the stat bar to see what percentage of the first stage (we’re only talking the first of five stages here) was finished. Finally today, after 603 total attempts (it keeps track), I fucking did it. I beat it. I beat a shallow, one-dimensional, total time-sink of a game. Brian asked me if all the time I had put into it was worth it just to get this:

Totally.

The Impossible Game on Xbox 360 and iPhone was developed by FlukeDude

80 Microsoft Points and $0.99 said this is the biggest case of false advertising since the Neverending Story in the making of this review.

My intent had to go without placing any practice flags down, but I slipped at one point. Damnit all, oh well.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews, XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Compromised

June 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

Have you ever played a game that seemed like you should like it, but you didn’t?  I got that vibe from Compromised, a patch-work of twin stick shooting, wave shooting, space shooting, and shooty shooted shooter shooting.  It’s a typical “aliens invade and you have to save the world” claptrap storyline.  In the case of Compromised, I’m not sure why you would want to save this world.  The environments are pretty dank and depressing.  It doesn’t look like a world any reasonable being would want to live on.  For all the people of this planet know, the invaders are a race of architects and home decorators who are trying to liven the fucking place up.  Maybe we shouldn’t start blowing them up so fast.  I mean, they can’t possibly make this place any worse.

Compromised is pretty high in production values, as far as XBLIGs go.  At a whopping 426MB, it damn well better be.  Sounds, character models, special effects, they’re all top-notch.  And yet, the actual setting of the game offers such little visual stimulation that the game ultimately becomes a little draining.  Bleak works sometimes, but I feel doing so requires characters and interaction.  When you put a ship alone with no supporting characters in a sterile environment, it can be depressing.  I had the same problem with Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.  The reason why galactic stuff like Metroid or Mass Effect offer such a variety of locales is because the alternative is boring.  In Compromised, the only variety is a change in color.  It’s as inviting as a traffic light.

Gameplay is a bit more lively and typically involves moving forward, fighting a few waves of enemies, moving forward a little more, fighting more waves, and then fighting bosses.  It’s a solid design, but there’s so many little mistakes that I ultimately really don’t like Compromised at all.  The best way to explain why that is can be summed up with all the times I had to pause the game to say “Whaaaaa?”

The first instance was during the tutorial, when the game was trying and failing to explain how the special attacks work.  Each of the four face buttons activates such an ability, with some kind of sub-space nuclear anti-matter black-hole creating fuck you unholy universe killing bomb mapped to the B button.  The game told me to try each of the weapons, so I did, and the thing mapped to B detonated and pretty much insta-killed me.  During the tutorial, after the game told me to use it.  Whaaaaa?

That was pretty much par for the course for that weapon, by the way.  It lingers, and once its been let loose, you can’t safely be around it.  It’s like one of my dog’s farts.

You can upgrade your stats by collecting little orange cores that enemies drop.  You can use them to increase your health bar, which sounds great!  The only problem is, when you die and respawn from a checkpoint, you don’t get the bar filled all the way.  Whaaaaaa?  Typically if you die and come back to life, that’s like a universal cue that you could use a full health bar, but the game doesn’t think so.  Also, you can upgrade how much health refills charge you up.  Again, sounds great.  The only problem is that enemies don’t actually drop the damn things.  They only appear during preset intervals.  In a game where enemies absolutely swarm the shit out of you and you might fight waves of hundreds of guys between checkpoints, you have no way to gain health.  Whaaaaa?

Enemies can spawn into a position where they’re instantly chewing your ass, before you have any chance to defend yourself.  Whaaaaa?

Compromised is a TwinkS, but missiles don’t fire the way your aiming stick is pointing.  Instead, they fire whichever way your ship is pointing.  Whaaaaa?  The whole point of TwickS are that you can move one direction and fire in the other!

I’ve never been the type of critic who settles for saying “it just wasn’t for me.”  I didn’t like Compromised, so I can’t recommend it to anyone else.  Even without all the problems, I found it to be pretty dull.  It’s not as if you just fight one wave at a time.  You fight strings of waves, one after another, in the same drab environments.  Fire-fights stick around too long, well after you’re ready to move on to the next section of the game.  Checkpoints are often spread too far apart, and without a traditional method of health drops and enemies that are completely unfair, you’ll end up replaying the same sections again and again.  I had maxed out my gun’s strength, my missile load and their power, and I still died often and had trouble making progress.  After five hours, lots of grinding, and no end in sight, I gave up.  I wasn’t having any fun.  Ultimately, I feel that Compromised is built using top quality bricks, but they’re held together with rancid tartar sauce and dental plaque.

Compromised was developed by Super Soul

240 Microsoft Points have a friend who really enjoyed the shit out of this game and spent last night telling me I have no taste at all because he’s a big meanie in the making of this review.

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Manic Miner 360

June 21, 2012 by 10 Comments

Let’s travel back to 1983.  It was a dark time in the world.  A time when people lived in fear of communism, nuclear annihilation, and Walter Mondale.  A time when kids had to play their Ataris in three feet of snow, and do their math homework using solar-powered calculators like savages instead of their cell phones.  A time when the most high-tech consoles had “vision” in them instead of “box” or “station.”  A time when “playing with your Wii” sounded like a shameful act, as opposed to today where.. nevermind.  Most importantly to me, it was a time where I wasn’t born yet.  Thus, I’m not particularly nostalgic for what the early 80s had to offer.

Party like it’s 1983! Let’s all freebase cocaine and watch Knight Rider!

So Manic Miner 360, an XBLIG port of a 1983 ZX Spectrum game, isn’t something that would make me get all warm and gushy.  My reader base might feel otherwise.  Oddly enough, the average reader of Indie Gamer Chick tends to be about ten years older than I am.  In a way, I’m tickled pink over that.  I mean, it’s pretty cool that so many older people are interested in what I, some snooty little shit who wasn’t weened on Space Invaders and text-based RPGs, thinks about gaming.  On the other hand, it can be a bit of a curse at times, especially when it comes to nostalgic releases like this.  When I started to complain about the flaky controls and unforgiving design, I was immediately hit with several “it was good back in the day” tweets.  Somehow, I’m guessing a response of “this isn’t back in the day!  It’s today!” won’t be a sufficient explanation for why I’m not having fun.

I guess there’s no point in debating whether people who liked this game thirty years ago will still enjoy it today.  They obviously do.  I do question whether they really enjoy it on the same level they did as kids.  You mean to tell me that all the evolution gaming has gone through in 30 years doesn’t change your perception of Manic Miner?  Look, I can’t see things your way on this.  Without the perspective of nostalgia, I kind of have to take games like this on face value.  It controls like shit.  Movement and jumping are very stiff.  The levels are frustrating.  The game centers around “gotcha” game design, where you can’t possibly know about a hidden trap until it activates.  Manic Miner isn’t really a platformer or a punisher.  It’s a trial-and-error memory test.  Each level typically has one specific path that you have to follow, and enemies have predictable patterns that you have to memorize.  Once you have that shit down, it’s just a matter of keeping it all together and fighting with the abysmal controls.  Some people liked it.  A few people told me they knew of people who could beat it without the infinite lives cheat (which is thankfully built-in and optional).  Yea, that is impressive.  So is being able to fart the Star-Spangled Banner on command, but I don’t want to take the time to learn how to do it.

Mind you, I’m told this is a truly faithful port, so if you loved the broken controls and restrictive design thirty years ago, nothing has changed here.  Same graphics, same sound effects, same clunky jumping, same dick-moves.  For some people, that’s all they want.  This is a game made for them.  Can a new audience from my generation get behind this game?  Some weirdos might, in the same way there are people my age that have Pac-Man tattoos and dress like Don Johnson.  I’m not saying everything from the 80s was terrible.  I can’t think of anything that wasn’t off the top of my head, but I’m sure there’s something from that decade didn’t suck.

After beating a level that featured things that were certainly not Pac-Man, I entered a stage that featured something that was definitely not Donkey Kong.

I know it’s aggravating for older people to have to listen to people my age say intolerant, obviously erroneous statements like “everything from the 80s sucked.”  The 80s probably didn’t suck any more or less than the 90s or whatever the fuck the last decade was called.  Did anyone ever come to a consensus on the name for the last decade?  If not, may I suggest the Goobers.  No reason why, I just think that would be funny.  My point is, nostalgia is whatever you make of it.  Like any form of entertainment, one Indie Gamer Chick’s trash is another geriatric’s treasure.  Maybe people my age need re-releases like Manic Miner to show us whippersnappers just how lucky we are.  Lucky that we didn’t grow up in an era where games had bad control inputs, shoddy design level design, load times of six minutes, install times upwards of hours and, uh, nevermind.

Manic Miner 360 was developed by Elite Systems

240 Microsoft Points should have probably been 80 Microsoft Points instead in the making of this review.

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