Avatar Block War

March 21, 2012 by 8 Comments

Nope, I still haven’t played Minecraft.  No, I’m not avoiding it for the sake of being that one person who always has to thumb their nose up at whatever the current bandwagon is.  You won’t hear me calling it “Minecrap” or bitching about the endless clones of it that fill up the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace like pimples on the face of a 14-year-old Hershey enthusiast.

I avoid it because I’m afraid of it.  When it comes to PC gaming, I have an addictive personality.  I lost nearly a full year to World of Warcraft, another few months to the Sims, a few months to Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Plants vs. Zombies, and Bejeweled, and Peggle, etc, etc.  Basically, I have a problem.  And props to me for recognizing that and accepting that with certain games, temperance is the only solution for me.  Quite frankly, all you people like Nate Graves and Tim Hurley who keep telling me to give it a try because all cool kids are doing it are evil.  That’s right, evil.  They make after-school specials about this stuff, you know!

But if Minecraft is anything remotely like Avatar Block War, I have nothing to fear.  I’ve tried to avoid using terms like “soulless” and “cash-in” as it relates to Xbox Live Indie Games.  I have no problem with that here: Avatar Block War is a soulless cash-in.  That and it’s a buggy, crappy, glitchy, shitty, badly conceived piece of shit.  It is so bad that I think it might be the worst XBLIG I’ve played yet.  And yea, I say that a lot, but it’s not my fault you guys keep lowering the bar the way you do.

Bubbles Bubbles everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Yet.

Avatar Block War tries for the sandboxy-feel of Minecraft, but aims to be more of an arena shooter of sorts.  This was their first mistake, and leads into mistakes 2 through 285,195,106,344.  The two genres just seem incompatible.  At the very least, it doesn’t work as a kill-count driven game.  Capture the flag or territorial control might make more sense, but all that counts in Avatar Block War is the body count.  But who knows, maybe what Call of Duty really is missing is the ability to build a giant cock-shaped statue in the middle of a fire fight.  Of course, that would be a risky strategy if you played by the rules of Avatar Block War, where bullets instantly destroy blocks you lay down.  Oh, and they also kill you, because that’s sort of what bullets are made for.

There really is no benefit in building.  It doesn’t make an effective shield.  The game does have various mountains of blocks already in place, but they are of no use except to help the game find new and exciting ways to glitch out.  So I suppose I should focus on the gun-play.  It’s shallow.  It’s limited.  Bullets are represented by your gun bubbling for some reason.  The variety of guns you have doesn’t really seem to make a difference, as they all have about the same range and same kill potential.  I suppose the assault rifle is the most effective because it can destroy blocks.  That’s kind of like saying a panzer tank is the most effective vehicle during five o’clock traffic.  Only here, the panzer tank’s bullets register about three years after they’ve shot someone and the barrel doubles as a soap-bubble wand.

And now to the glitches.  Instead of picking them apart in my typical smart-ass fashion, I’m just going to list things that happened to me while I played the game using bullet points.  Mind you, I’m not going to list everything, because we would seriously be here all day and I have laundry to do.

  • Trying to climb the mountain and falling through it.
  • Being able to walk through blocks.
  • Being able to see through blocks.
  • Blocks appearing and disappearing due to clipping issues.
  • Blocks have significantly shorter draw distance than characters, so you’ll see dudes walking around long before you see any blocks, rendering hiding behind them useless.
  • Lag.  During single player.  Lots of it.
  • The most brain-dead AI I’ve ever seen.  Bots will walk against walls indefinitely.
  • In online matches, lag is truly insane.  If you shoot a person, they might go three or four minutes before the bullet registers.  I played with Bryce and Brian.  They would kill me, and then while I was respawning, the bullets I had shot at them would slowly sink in.  I would respawn, only make my way half-way to where they were at, never shooting mind you, and they would suddenly die from the bullets I had shot several minutes earlier.  This wasn’t on our connection, by the way.  We’re sure of that on the basis that SINGLE PLAYER has lag just like this, only not as brutal.
  • Also, whatever blocks you build in online play aren’t necessarily visible to everyone else.  The boys called me over to see the tower they constructed.  I came there and instead saw something vaguely resembling Stonehenge.  I also noticed they were walking on air about three feet in front of me.  As it turns out, they had built a really elaborate tower.  I just couldn’t see it.  Then I shot them in the head and they died about a week later.  Okay, that’s an exaggeration.  But trust me, five minutes feels like a week in this fucking game.

If not for the glitches, it's possible the game would merely be boring.

I want to once again stress that I have nothing against Minecraft.  I haven’t played it, and thus I’m not going to hate on something I haven’t tried myself.  If you’re the type that does that, grow up you fucking whinny child.  I’m also not going to hate on the fact that Minecraft clones dominate the XBLIG sales charts.  You know what?  Blame the guys making the official port of Minecraft to the Xbox 360 for taking so long.  It’s a perfectly valid market and taking advantage of a genre that is trendy is smart.  Period.  This is how the game industry works, folks.  Space Invaders was a hit and then there were Space Invader clones.  Same with Pac-Man.  Same with Super Mario Brothers.  Same with Doom.  When you bitch about crafting games dominating XBLIG, you might as well say “Someone please get me into special education because I have followed gaming my entire life and somehow still have no clue how it works at all and thus I obviously have an undiagnosed learning disability.  It’s amazing that I haven’t been killed by the force from the black hole-like vacuum where my brain should be.”

BUT, feel perfectly free to bitch about games like Avatar Block Wars, which make no effort to be fun, polished, or even working.  It’s really quite sad that it’s on the first page of the best-selling games list, or at least the daily one.  It made it look effortless, but only on account of no actual effort being made during development.

Avatar Block Wars was developed by Fredrik Stigsson

240 Microsoft Points can’t cast stones for being shameless clones of popular things for obvious reasons in the making of this review.

A review copy of Avatar Block Wars was provided by Mr. Stigsson to Indie Gamer Chick.  The copy played by Kairi was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review code was given to someone else to provide her with a proper online experience.  That person was not involved at all in the writing or editing of this review.  For more information on this policy, please consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

Keep voting in Kairi’s Katch-Up Thursdays.  On April 5, I’ll be giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to someone who participates in the democratic process.  Even though the winner is not determined by a popular vote.  Whatever, just go vote.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with

Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest

March 20, 2012 by 9 Comments

Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest has two unique distinctions on my indie game journey.  First, it has the most unwieldy name I’ve ever come across in gaming.  Second, it’s the first Xbox Live Indie Game I’ve played that takes advantage of the raised file-size limits.  Coming in at a whopping 377.59MB, it’s the biggest XBLIG of all time.  I wish it was also exceptionally bad, so that I could say it’s also the biggest piece of shit on the platform.  Sadly, that’s not the case.  Don’t get me wrong, Ogre’s Phantasy Star Online is bad, but it’s not bad-bad.

Ogre’s Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead is sort of a bargain basement knock-off of Shadow of the Colossus.  You play as a girl with a sword that is roughly the size of a Pinto, though probably not half-as-deadly.  The object of the game is to slay giant ogres that wear football helmets.  You do this in a quite frankly impressive 3D battlefield.  Action takes place in real-time, with hordes of little goblin things trying to kill you.  All that matters is taking down the larger enemies.  Once you’ve killed all the ogres, the level is beaten.

Unfortunately, Ogre’s Phantoms Starring Ben Affleck falters in pretty much every way a game can.  I’ll start with the combat mechanics.  X does a horizontal slice and B does a harder vertical one.  Sounds pretty straight-forward.  The problem is once you’ve swung, the chick just stands there like she just simultaneously pulled every muscle in her body and is waiting to see if her heart is going to start beating again.  Granted, she’s swinging a sword so large that it defies practicality and she’s probably walking around with a hernia big enough to park a car in, so maybe they were aiming for realism.  Probably not.  I mean, the chick can jump about twenty feet in the air and pogo-stick off bad guys in a way that reminded many of my Twitter followers of the NES game Duck Tales.

The pogo stick thing is the main method of attack.  When you jump on a bad guy, you spring extra high in the air.  If you tap the B button, you do a down-stabby thing.  If you press B and then A before you land, you’ll spring off one baddie and onto another.  This also works for doing multiple attacks on ogres, which should pop their helmet off after a few whacks.  After that, you just keep bouncing until the thing dies.  Once you figure this out, most of the levels are laughably easy.  I figured I would be able to coast right through to the end.  I thought wrong.

If the only problem with the game was having a chick who swings a sword like an octogenarian brandishing a sledgehammer yet is somehow able to spring off enemy heads with all the energy of a ring-tailed lemur that’s been drip-fed cocaine since conception, I could probably still recommend Ogre’s Fantasy Football League.  But I can’t.  Why?  Because the game crapped out on me a whole bunch of times.  Whenever more than a handful of guys were on-screen, the frame rate would sputter like a jet turbine that just took in a whole flock of pelicans.  It’s worth noting that the smaller baddies respawn constantly, so it is impossible to not land yourself in a situation where the frame rate takes a beating.  And the problem only gets worse whenever one of the ogres swings at you, which is pretty much the entire time you’re engaging them.  The game also has pretty horrible draw-distance as it relates to the enemies.  Once they get about 15 feet away from you, they simply vanish.  Perhaps the chick needs to visit LensCrafters.  Or maybe she has the strangest case of Akinetopsia ever.

There are lots of little glitches too.  Enemies getting stuck in walls.  Ogres getting stuck in walls.  You getting stuck in walls.  Or an enemy attack getting “stuck on you” somehow.  I went back to level two so that I could grind-up some cash to buy the best sword in the game.  I got charged by the giant deer-thing in that level and got knocked down.  Whenever you take damage, you drop some of the money you’ve collected.  Well, the deer had ran clean past me and was no longer in sight.  Yet, my dudette was still hemorrhaging money as if she was taking damage.  It was bizarre.  Despite wanting to retain whatever cash I had, I was curious if the game was having a blond moment, so I bailed well out of the range of any enemies, just to make sure there was nothing actively biting me.  There wasn’t.

Thankfully, all you have to do is press start once and you’re instantly teleported back to the stage-select screen.  But this brings me to my next complaint: pressing start once instantly teleports you back to the stage-select screen.  There’s no option to pause in the middle of battle.  If you press start, back to the map you go.  It’s fucking annoying as hell.  There is absolutely no reason for a game to not offer the option of pausing.  I thought this was established back in the days of the NES.  Sometimes you’s gotta answer the phone, sometimes you’s gotta piss.  The only purpose this could have possibly have served is to establish the developers as colossal dickheads.  If so, mission accomplished.

I admit, I kind of, sort of like Ogre’s Final Fantasy Fan Art, but I can’t recommend it in its present state.  It feels too much like an alpha build.  Almost as if the developers had something highly ambitious in mind, but had a teeny tiny bit too much fun themselves with the early prototype and said “you know what, fuck it, this is good enough.”  With proper patchwork, this might be a special game someday.  Hey, slaying monsters so big that they can’t fit completely on the screen is fucking awesome.  I’m sure we can all agree on that.  I’m sure we can also agree that if the best offense those monsters have is butt-fucking the frame rate down to sandpapered-DVD levels of skipiness, perhaps we’re better off waging war on mushrooms with legs and turtles.  At least they fight fair.

Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest was developed by Divider Games

240 Microsoft Points said at least there’s no annoying horse to drive you crazy in the making of this review.

Keep voting in Kairi’s Katch-Up Thursdays.  On April 5, I’ll be giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to someone who participates in the democratic process.  Even though the winner is not determined by a popular vote.  Whatever, just go vote.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Dream Divers

March 17, 2012 by 8 Comments

We meet again, Team Shuriken.  Only this time you guys made an actual game instead of a lame ass series of static anime boobies peppered between completely random multiple choice options that are just as likely to lead you to death as they are to advance the story forward.  Now then, Dream Divers is a lame ass series of static anime boobies that are peppered between, um, completely random multiple choice options that are, uhhhh, just as likely to lead you to death as they are to.. advance the story forward?  Wait, what?

Oh you bastards.

Hey, 18! That means she's legal! Of course, if she was an actual human being, she wouldn't give you the time of day.

Yea, Dream Divers has gameplay more complex than “push one of four buttons and see what happens.”  You start up on a ship and use a mechanic similar to one of those double-click things they use in golf video games to decide what position you’ll dive from.  Next, you swim around collecting air bubbles and try to find a star.  If you get one, you return to the ship.  If you die, well, you still return to the ship.  In order to stay in the water, you have to get air.  The amount of air you have left is represented by a pair of tits.  Of course it is.

I figure there’s two types of people who will buy this game: kids whose only option to get risqué games is through XBLIGs, which are not subject to parental lockout due to their lack of ESRB ratings, and losers.  Either way, they’re in this to see fake boobies.  And I’m not talking about the kind you see in Playboy.  If you’ve gone so far as to purchase the game, download it, and begin playing it, the only thing that will hold your attention is the digital tits.  In the hour or so I played Dream Divers, I never even noticed the air gauge.  It’s pretty obvious when you’re running out of air, because you slow down and eventually stop moving.  The picture of breasts is just further pandering to guys playing co-op with Rosy Palm and her five ugly sisters.

As utterly shameless as Team Shuriken is, and they are, Dream Divers is not a complete abortion of a game.  Exploring underwater caverns is fun.  They make entire movies about that, some of which barely have any cleavage at all.  The problem with Dream Divers is it still relies too much on trial-and-error gameplay.  Each of the stages contains false pathways that lead you into the lair of a giant, drooling Octopus that will presumably rape and kill whatever chick you’re using.  There is a map that you can see between levels, but it only fills in once you’ve physically been through the stage.  Given that all movement has to be made with minimal forethought and there is absolutely no room left for error, they should have been nice and given us full view of the map.

Wow, it's so erotic! Paying $1 for this is totally a better idea than doing a free Google search for boobs! Those might feature, icky, REAL boobies. Gross. They have like skin and veins and stuff. That's just wrong.

The control isn’t bad.  You point the chicks and they go where you tell them too.  I guess you can’t ask for more than that.  Things do occasionally move too fast, and thus you’re forced to die and memorize exactly where to make hair-pin turns and the locations of the larger air bubbles that you will need to make it just a few feet further.  Anything after the first two stages becomes teeth-gnashingly frustrating, but I would venture a guess that most men will have pooped themselves out and taken a nap by that point anyway.

I have an idea that XBLIG developers can use to market these games: instead of pushing the sexual content, push them as an exercise game.  I’m guessing stuff like Dream Divers is the only cardio workout anyone who would want this type of shit actually gets.  But if you’re the type of person who does buy games like this, I have a better idea for you: multitask.  Use that Google search and find some real titties, and save your Microsoft Points for a game that doesn’t pander to your primal urges.  Play a good game, and if you feel the need to buck the slobbering donkey, just look over at your monitor and have at it.

Yea I know, it won’t happen.  Well, as long as Team Shuriken can live with being responsible for more spanked monkeys than a chimpanzee dominatrix, who am I question them?

Dream Divers was developed by Team Shuriken

80 Microsoft Points imagine diving underwater with two plastic floatation devices sewn into your chest would be rather difficult in the making of this review.

Keep voting in Kairi’s Katch-Up Thursdays.  On April 5, I’ll be giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to someone who participates in the democratic process.  Even though the winner is not determined by a popular vote.  Whatever, just go vote.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with

Lumi

March 15, 2012 by 15 Comments

Welcome to the first installment of Kairi’s Katch-Up Thursdays.  The results were tallied and the clear favorite of the first vote was the 2010 Dream-Build-Play winner Lumi by Kydos Studios.

I hate you guys.

And obviously the feeling is mutual, because anyone with love in their hearts would not subject anyone to the sheer torture that is Lumi.  I’m guessing it won the vote for the same reason that it won Dream-Build-Play: it looks good, and to most idiots, that’s all that matters.  Game play be damned, if the graphics are pretty, we’ll line up to buy it and then spend hours convincing ourselves that we didn’t just waste perfectly good cash.  I bought both the Xbox Live Indie Game version and the port to iOS, so I’m doubly dumb.  Full of more DERP than a “Bring Back Knight Rider” convention am I.

I get it guys. It's got good graphics. Who cares? The game SUCKS!

At first, I figured Lumi would be a generic 90s style mascot platformer.  You play as what looks like a premature, still semi-embryonic Pikachu thingie that has to save his species and the world when a race of invaders steals all the light.  Your Pika-thingie has the ability to create red and blue electric currents that cling to various spots on the screen.  Red will cling to red and repel from blue and vice-versa.  Sounds great, except that you have to press a different button for each.  Blue is done with the left trigger and red with the right one.  This is an unintuitive nightmare the likes of which you can’t believe.

But I didn’t really care all that much over the first few levels.  They were nice and breezy.  You just had to collect a few fireflies, load them into a couple arks, restore light to the stage, and move on.  Easy peasy.  But then you start encountering water traps, enemies that fire projectiles that kill you in one shot, and magnet platforms that fade in and out of existence.  Oh dears, Lumi is a punisher.

The juxtaposition of bright, beautiful, child-friendly graphics and tough-as-nails level design was completely out of left field, even though a few of my fans warned me about it.  After the first couple levels, I didn’t believe them.  Bunch of liars they must have been.  Well, there’s egg on my face.  Lumi gets so brutally difficult that it’s almost like it started its period.  But once again, we have to examine why its difficult.  Is it the level design?  The enemies?  Not really.  The fault clearly lies in the control scheme.  Using the magnetic red/blue powers to launch yourself from floating platform to floating platform is frustrating, because there’s so much you need to keep track of.  What colors point you in what directions, what buttons you need to press, and when do you then hit the opposite button to repel you to towards the next area.  This is like asking someone to take their driver’s license test while practicing sword-swallowing.  You know it’s a bad idea before you even start.  Surely someone at Kydos had played a video game at some point in their life and recognized the control scheme was unacceptable.

As bad as the Xbox version is, the iOS port is even worse.  And it really pains me to say that, because one major flaw in the console version is fixed: the whole “separate colors” thing.  On iPhone, you tap the screen and it sucks you into whatever is the closest platform.  It’s such a no-brainer of a design choice that I feel like I should sarcastically type DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, but I’m too classy for that.  Unfortunately, movement is controlled with one of those fake iOS joystick things they map to the corner of the screen.  They suck.  I call them “Joyshits.”  I don’t care what anyone says: those fucking things never work, they are not accurate, and they need to be abolished by any means necessary.  I don’t care if we have to pull eggheads off of curing cancer to do it.  Joyshits have got to go.

On iPhone, I made it to the first level that its possible to die on.  And trust me, I sure realized it.  At least on Xbox, if I push the analog stick to the right, the fucking dude moves right.  Here, if I try to push right, I’m just as likely to not be pressing anything at all because my thumb is not properly lined up.  And NO, I’m not going to buy some peripheral that lets you suction-cup an actual joystick to the screen.  It would be like surgically grafting a tumor onto it.  Can’t we all just accept that not every game belongs on iPhone?  I know those precious iBucks are tempting to make a play for, but do the right thing.  If your game requires the precision of a control stick, you should probably put it on a platform that HAS A FUCKING CONTROL STICK!

The iOS port. I seriously doubt anyone has actually beaten it.

My overall Lumi experience ended during the first boss encounter.  Some giant rhino-bug thingie started chasing me through a forest and I had to make a run for it.  The stage is laid out like a hopping puzzle, sort of like the boss encounters in Super Meat Boy.  Only that game had something resembling responsive controls.  In Lumi, you cannot afford a single wasted second or misstep.  One mistake and you will have to start over.  After at least a dozen tries at this, I came to two realizations.  First, I was having no fun at all and hadn’t since I started Lumi.  Second, I must have really pissed you guys off something fierce for THIS pile of shit to win the vote.  Rage quit, console off, controller thrown, and you guys are now officially on my shit list.  I hold grudges, and I will remember this.  Pay back will be mine.  Oh yes.  I have plenty of free time and access to Africanized Bees.  Be afraid.

Lumi was developed Kydos Studio

240 Microsoft Points and $0.99 think Lumi is really just run-off of aborted Pikachus in the making of this review.

Don’t forget to vote for next week’s game on Twitter.  Votes earn you a place in a drawing for 1600 Microsoft Points.  Check the original post for a list of games you can choose from. 

Thanks to Michael Wilson for the banner.

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

Retro Arcade Adventure

March 15, 2012 by 6 Comments

Yesterday, I played a game that drove me from apathy to suicidal thoughts in approximately fifteen minutes.  Yes, I actually spent forty-five minutes with Lemmy Lizard.  The remaining thirty minutes were spent under the assumption that I would suffer a cerebral hemorrhage if I continued playing.  Forgive me.  I had forgotten that I was playing a video game and not listening to the poetry of Grunthos the Flatulent.

But today is a new day.  Albeit one spent with a slightly sore neck after my botched attempt at hanging myself yesterday.  Note to anyone reading this: pantyhose do not make an effective noose.  So back I go into the murky waters of Xbox Live Indie Games.  I had promised to make this a special Minecraft clone week, but then I remembered that we’re already in the middle of the fucking week, so I bought Retro Arcade Adventure instead.

A decidedly Anglo-Saxon looking dude fighting off a tribe of dark-skinned humanoids brandishing spears. Hey, if it's good for Capcom, who am I to say anything?

Retro Arcade Adventure is a single-screen hoard-slayer where you play as a dude with a sword who has to kill various evil thingies.  All the baddies except the final boss take a single swing to kill and have no variations outside of size and speed.  They’re all pretty much like the guys who run at you with the clubs in Smash TV.  To fight, you swing with the A button, dash with the triggers (I never even knew this existed until after I had beaten the Adventure mode), and use a power-up with the X button that turns you into a gigantic black dude with a giant sword.  Someone’s over compensating for something.

Every stage features you taking on 200 or more of these pantywaists.  After four levels of fighting the same fucking guys, you fight a boss, beat it, and the game is over.  Fifteen minutes tops and you’re done.  So what did I think?  Well, Retro Arcade Adventure is as shallow as the wring-off of a moist towelette, easier than winning the skip-rope competition at the National Amputation Foundation’s annual picnic, and over with faster than a Roseanne Barr hunger strike.  Yet, it’s not the worst thing I’ve played all week.  Then again, compared to Lemmy Lizard, Retro Arcade Adventure would have to come to life and decapitate my boyfriend just to contend for that honor.  It did try to pad things out by adding an “arcade” mode, which is really just the same game, only the power-ups might also cause damage to you as well.  Oh, and one of the modes has you fight an endless string of mummies.  There is no score and, as best as I could tell, no end to it.  I wasn’t sure if the developer forgot to include a finale to it or if I really did have a cerebral hemorrhage during Lemmy Lizard and had been sent to video game hell.

Retro Arcade Adventure was developed by SIACTRO

80 Microsoft Points wondered out-loud why pumpkins would be killed by getting rained on in the making of this review.  Seriously, why would they?  Wouldn’t a pumpkin actually feed on rain and grow stronger from it?  I suppose in theory it could be acid rain, but if that’s the case, why wouldn’t it hurt me too?  I wasn’t aware that water, acidic or otherwise, could distinguish between good and evil.  What, did my knight guy wear his special acid-rain repellent armor out in battle on the off-chance that he picked a power-up that would unleash acid rain upon his enemies?  Given all the absolutely useless story text in this game, I find a plot hole of this size to be inexcusable and I demand an answer.

I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points as part of a new feature called “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays” and you buttholes aren’t participating enough.  1600 MSP!  That’s 16 XBLIGs!  Read how you can win it.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with ,

Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs

March 13, 2012 by 4 Comments

How soon a rage-quit is too soon?  I’m honestly not sure.  Since I’m not a professional game critic, nor do I care to be one, I’m not sure there really are any rules or ethics that apply to me regarding this issue.  But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to walk you through the 45 minutes I spent with Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs and let YOU tell ME if I gave up too soon.

Upon starting the first level, I pick up a note.  The note informs me that I’ll want to eat various food things over the course of a level, but I probably shouldn’t because they take up spaces in your inventory.  You can fit eight items in it at a time.  All notes you find take up a space in that inventory and you have to manually discard them.  It’s about the most inconvenient method of sign-posting game mechanics I’ve ever seen.  As if that wasn’t ominous enough, it took me all of a single second to figure out that the control scheme was going to be wretched.  Without any D-Pad mapping, you’re stuck with just the analog stick.  Applying even the tiniest bit of pressure to it sends your lizard thingie off like it just got whacked in the ass by the Motivator from Wipeout.  We’re not off to a good start.

Nope, I didn't make it this far.

The first enemy encounter was fun.  A couple mecha-egg thingies marched up on me.  Thankfully, I could shoot at them, so I did.  And they kept coming.  So I kept shooting.  But then they were on top of me, munching my health away.  I kept shooting.  And shooting.  And shooting.  After around a dozen shots, one of them died off.  Only a dozen more and the other one died.  Nice, so the opening level enemies are bullet sponges.  Later, I encountered one that could shoot back at me.  Only it moved twice as fast as me, shot twice as fast, and did damage twice as fast.  So I died a couple of times against it, which resulted in me getting to start the game again.  Even though I had saved.  Nifty.

Well, I’m a tough chick.  I drink molten lead and spit nails.  I can deal with this shit.  I had picked up some items that would cause my dude to spit sticky stuff at the enemies, slowing them down.  I threw a couple of those on and I actually managed to kill the dude with the gun.  This was immediately followed by another dude with a gun falling from the sky to take his place and finish me off.  Only this one had wheels and a faster gun, so I died extra fast.  Maybe the game’s policy is “die in 30 seconds or less or your pizza is free.”

Not being a masochist, I wasn’t prepared to deal with getting gang-banged this early into things.  So I did what any self-respecting gamer would do: legged it past the baddies.  And it worked.  I got past those guys and instead came upon a fire pit.  Situated above the pit were a few single-block platforms for me to hop across.  Unfortunately, controls are extremely slippery, so I kept falling into the fire, dying, and being sent back to the checkpoint.  So I used a carrot on myself, increasing my ability to jump.  I managed to clear the fire and pick up a key.  I don’t remember seeing a door or anything that was locked, but that didn’t matter.  I had to get past the fire again.  Only this time, I simply could not stick the landing on any of the platforms.  Or, if I did, I would die as soon as I pushed any button, because even just pressing jump caused my dude to skid off the block and into the fire.  After a dozen or so tries to make it past this, I quit.

If it seems like I'm being too harsh on this game, I'll remind you that the developers sent me a request for this review. Then again, I'm not sure they actually have ever read my site, given that they sent me a review code with the request. I pity the fool the actually ends up cashing that in, because their day is pretty much ruined when that happens.

Was it too soon?  I had played Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs for maybe 45 minutes at most.  In that time, I encountered inexcusably horrible play control, amazingly bad level design, horrible graphics, and the feeling that my leg would be much nicer if I carved a large chunk of flesh out of it.  I can’t really recommend you actually purchase Lemmy Lizard.  In all seriousness, it’s one of the very worst video games I’ve ever played in my entire life and I hate myself for paying $1 to find that out.  But try it yourself and tell me if I’m nuts.  Maybe you’ll make it further than I did and discover that the game magically stops being terrible at the exact moment I quit.  Or maybe you’ll take a chainsaw to your own foot.

I’m not responsible if that happens.

Lemmy Lizard vs The Mecha-Eggs was developed by Wytchlight

80 Microsoft Points said “That Light” sarcastically in the making of this review.

I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points as part of a new feature called “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays” and you buttholes aren’t participating enough.  1600 MSP!  That’s 16 XBLIGs!  Read how you can win it.

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , ,

Paper RPG and The Impossible Dungeon

March 12, 2012 by 17 Comments

Ah, Team Shuriken.  The guys behind the infamous Temple of Dogolrak.  I receive more bitching about their games than I get about Silver Dollar these days.  It all began a few months ago when I released the list of search engine terms that have led people to this very site.  If you need a reminder, here are just the search terms that people have done for Temple of Dogolrak, along with Trailer Park King and Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy.

  • trailer park king 2,043 (#1 search term)
  • temple of dogolrak 2,011 (#2 search term)
  • don’t die dateless dummy 1,059 (#4 search term)
  • trailer park king review 266 (# 6 search term)
  • dont die dateless dummy 247 (#7 search term)
  • trailer park king game 246 (#8 search term)
  • don’t die dateless, dummy! 180 (#10 search term)

And those are just the top 10.  Once you start getting lower than that, you really do get lower.  Some other prime searches include the following:

  • trailer park king nudity 106
  • trailer park king porn 103
  • trailer park king nude 17
  • is there nudity in trailer park king 15
  • temple of dogolrak sex 14
  • trailer park king nudity? 14
  • does trailer park king have nudity 11
  • xbox indie games with nudity 11
  • don’t die dateless dummy porn 7
  • temple of dogolrak porn 7
  • xbox live indie games with nudity 7
  • trailer park king girls boobs 5
  • are there any xbox indie games with nudity 5

And that’s just the stuff that gets multiple searches.  On my most popular day ever at this blog (January 16, 2012), these were some of the random searches.

  • best xbox indie game tits
  • trailer park king has nudity?
  • xbox indie game that has nudity
  • trailer park king girls
  • indie porn games xbox
  • temple of dogolrak hentai pics (Hentai means “Perversion” in Japanese, kinda)
  • can you fuck in temple of dogolrak
  • temple of dogolrak hentai
  • xbox hentai
  • dogolrak nude code
  • how do you see porn in trailer park king

You get the picture.  In short, three out of five searches that land people on this site center around those three games.  Also, damn, I’m embarrassed for you guys.

And while I think Sean Doherty (the Trailer Park King dude) gets a free pass on the hostility because his games actually make an effort to be games, there’s unquestionably resentment towards Team Shuriken.  Although I’ve found them to be fairly nice guys, I admit that I did think their marketplace pictures of Dogolrak were extremely misleading compared to the actual graphics of their game.  Having said that, don’t blame developers for taking advantage of the hopeless pocket-pool crowd.  They sort of have it coming, because about ten seconds of research on Google would let them know that nudity and sexual intercourse are no-nos on XBLIG.  Another ten seconds and they would learn that jerking off too much causes your palm to turn purple.

Over/under on the percentage of readers that just looked at their palm?  What, 30%?

It’s not like Team Shuriken relies completely on boobies.  Over the last month, they’ve released two new games to the marketplace that don’t tease titties at all.

Well, mostly.

Both games still use the same engine and play mechanics as the previous game.  First up is Paper RPG.  It uses sketch drawings to tell a very short story of a knight trying to save the kingdom.  How short?  Oh, about three to five minutes, depending on how many mistakes you make.

Like any “choose your own adventure” game, luck is everything in Paper RPG.  There’s no visual indications of what choices will advance the story and which ones will lead to death.  This is especially problematic in game #2 of this review, The Impossible Dungeon.  Here there is nothing in the way of graphics, aside from a useless map.  Everything is text driven.  In this one, you can lead yourself down certain paths where no matter which of three to four options you choose, none of them will lead to anything but death.  So moving the story forward is 100% luck, based on nothing.

It's like Russian Roulette, only some wisenheimer loaded every chamber.

And if you die, you get to start over again.  Sure, there’s the occasional checkpoint, but that’s not much help.  You still have to read the same fucking dialog again and again.  Who would ever confuse this for entertainment?  Neither game is fun.  Or anything vaguely resembling fun.  If you were terminal with cancer in the middle of a nuclear holocaust having just watched your puppy eat its own leg off and bleed to death all over your mother (thus drowning her) and the only thing that could be offered to you for any comfort was these games, you would think it was a final “fuck you” from God himself.  And you would be right.

I will admit that I liked the art style in Paper RPG.  The main character has a Spy vs. Spy like charm about it.  If Team Shuriken was willing to put forth some effort, they might be able to use this character in a platforming game and find modest success.  But I’m guessing they’re not willing to put in the effort.  Prove me wrong, guys.  I would love to be able to tell people that you’re not the worst thing that can happen to a gamer.  Right now, you’re neck-and-neck with hand amputation.  Which, ironically you caused, because they also proved that jerking off to anime porn causes cancer of the hands.  It’s distinguishable by yellow freckles on your lower palm.

Make it 40%.

Paper RPG and The Impossible Dungeon were developed by Team Shuriken

80 Microsoft Points apiece always bet on the black spy in the making of this review.

I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points as part of a new feature called “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays” and you buttholes aren’t participating enough.  1600 MSP!  That’s 16 XBLIGs!  Read how you can win it.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , ,

Miner Dig Deep

March 6, 2012 by 13 Comments

Occasionally I’ll get bored trying to pick from newly released Xbox Live Indie Games and put out a call on Twitter asking for older stuff on the platform that has the chops to compete for my leaderboard.  Normally, this results in stuff that I like.  Sure, I thought Apple Jack was hugely overrated, and in retrospect the choice of NYAN-TECH was baffling, but a pair of games have landed on the board.  Those being Decimation X3 and Johnny Platform Saves Christmas, if you were curious.  Of course, I don’t take on every game that’s suggested.  Since starting Indie Gamer Chick in July, one title has popped up more than any other, by far.  And yet, I avoided it.  Why?  Well, call me shallow, but the game had box art that looked like this.

And screen shots that looked like this.

Plus it seems to be riding coattails on the Minecraft craze, which I’m not against, but I just haven’t given it a try yet.  I just figured Miner Dig Deep would be no good.  So I ignored it.  And now I feel like this.

To clarify, this is a picture of a jackass, not Nate Graves. Although the two are interchangeable.

In Miner Dig Deep, the object is to collect precious metals from deep inside the Earth.  Why?  So you can buy better equipment.  What do you use that equipment for?  To collect precious metals from deeper inside the Earth.  And so forth, and so forth.  I don’t get the comparisons to Minecraft myself.  My understanding is that game is equal parts harvesting and building.  Besides the occasional elevator, you have nothing to build here. So it’s all digging, all the time.

Make no bones about it: Miner Dig Deep is a time sink and nothing more.  It has no purpose and no clear objective.  It’s also got addiction potency that rivals weapons-grade heroin.  How addictive are we talking here?  I was ready to write a Dear John letter to Brian and let him know that I had discovered a new love in life and it was time for us to go our separate ways.  And I totally would have done it, if I could have pried myself away from the game long enough.

The grind of making minimal progress and trying to figure out exactly what upgrades to get, only to come up just short on funds and having to dredge back into the mine is both soul-crushingly dismal yet oddly satisfying.  Not so satisfying was filling my pockets with premium materials only to get cocky and stay in the mine long after the kerosene for my lantern had run out, usually resulting in me getting bludgeoned to death by a falling boulder.  If you die, all metals you’ve pocketed are lost, so save often and remember to load if you die, because that stuff you lost isn’t coming back.  It’s gone to where your dog Spot went when it got ran over by that UPS truck.  You know.  Hell.

I wasn’t kidding about the “just a little bit longer” quality of Miner Dig Deep.  I put about six hours into it.  I’m pretty sure I was having a good time.  Brian said it was hard to tell from his perspective.  I tried to explain to him that joy is expressed in me through slumping six inches down into a couch, mouth gaped, drool slowly cascading off my lips, unblinking eyes locked on a television.  He said “whatever” and spent the rest of the day playing Gears of War on his Xbox and trying to convince people that he really does love his girlfriend, the carrot.

Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

But all good things must come to an end.  I got to the point in the game where I could no longer place elevators and had to dig for myself.  After finishing upgrades to my drill and buying a large tank of gas to go with it, I dug myself to about 1,500 meters.  Down there, I was harvesting dozens of gems worth 250K a pop.  I was so excited I started singing “We’re in the Money!” while birds fell dead off of power lines and the seas started to boil.  I dug a little more and came across an enormous diamond.  My eyes bugged out and I screamed to Brian “OH MY GOD, LOOK AT THIS ONE!”  And then, as I approached it, the screen faded out and fireworks started to go off.  The game was over.

What?

No.

No, come on, Miner Dig Deep.  Maybe we were spending too much time together, but I think it was too soon to call things off.

I had been dumped.

What followed was the gaming equivalent of a jilted lover cutting her ex’s brake line.  The game gives you the option to continue with your current mine or start a new one while retaining your current items.  For some reason, I figured a new one might have new things.  Sadly, that’s not the case.  Even worse, if you gather “blueprints” that allow you to buy new items, you can’t get rid of them, and they take up a spot in your inventory.  But that’s no problem.  I just bought 100 large elevators and proceeded to line them all in a row across the top of the map.  Now, if you dig too wide open a space in your mine, it can result in a cave in.  Well, elevators can’t be caved in.  So instead the game shook, declaring that a cave-in was happening, although none could be seen.  Finally, the frame rate sputtered and the game crashed.  Ha, serves it right.

Yes, I gave the game the best 300 minutes of my life and it left me high and dry.  But that’s okay, because I’ll always have the memories.  Was Miner Dig Deep the leaderboard contender everyone told me it was?  To hell with the leaderboard.  If things hadn’t ended when they did, I was totally prepared to bear its children.

Miner Dig Deep was developed by Substance Games

80 Microsoft Points tried to explain to their boyfriend that the game really meant nothing to them and he was the only one for me in the making of this review.

Gameplay footage courtesy of this guy.

 

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with

Bug Ball

March 4, 2012 by 7 Comments

Last month, I stumbled upon an Xbox Live Indie Game with beautiful pre-rendered graphics, online play, and a sense of whimsy that could earn the seal of approval from Disney.  Seriously, Bug Ball is just so damn cute I want to hug it and kiss it and love it forever.  Of course, I do so at the risk of infecting myself with leprosy.  As it turns out, the name of the game is quite appropriate.

Ever wonder what the enemies in Pikmin do when Olimar wasn't around? Now you know.

The idea is basically “A Bug’s Life” meets volleyball.  You play as various bugs.  A ball falls.  You want to hit it towards your opponent and hope they don’t return it.  The controls operate like a non-sporting platform game.  A jumps, B does a “spike” jump (which catches the ball and throws it), and the triggers dash to the left and right.  As a fun fact, the original build of the game always had the right trigger going the direction your bug was facing and the left trigger always had it go in the opposite direction.  Well, apparently anyone could recognize how this could be impossible to get the hang of.  Well, anyone but the guys behind Bug Ball.  Thankfully, Brian and I were on the case.  You see, we were unable to fully play Bug Ball due to some severe online glitches, and informed the developers that I would hold off on reviewing their game until some fixes were in.  And then, while they were at it, they should clear up some of the issues with movement as well.

And they did.  Edible Entertainment took on our suggestions exactly as we said them, removing 90% of the stuff I planned on complaining about in this review.  The jumping physics are spot on.  The quick-dash is vastly improved.  When the game is playable, it’s a damn fun experience, and an easy leaderboard contender.  Mostly because it keeps things simple and focused on delivering the most entertaining possible experience.  It embraces its fantasy-sports persona and uses it.  Imagine if a real volleyball game (bore-ring) started tossing extra balls into play that the teams had to keep track of as well.  That happens in Bug Ball.  If the ball comes in contact with a spiny thingie that walks across the ceiling, it splits in two, with each ball now counting against your score.  Ah, but the spiny bug thingie can appear again to further split the ball.  Brian and I had volleys with a half-dozen balls in play all at once.  And trust me when I say, our smiles were never bigger.

Unfortunately, Bug Ball is still besieged with glitches.  Most of them are firmly stuck in online play, so if you’re playing local-only, you’re sure to have a blast.  Maybe the game is a little bit too anal about what constitutes the ball hitting the ground, but otherwise things run smoothly.  Online, shit gets pretty buggy.  It’s not as bad as it once was, where the ball would often go invisible to everyone but the game’s host.  Having said that, I was able to cause the game to “lag out” simply by playing close to the net.  Or by tapping the A button to float in the air.  Or by taking too long to serve the ball.  Or by dashing around before the ball is served.  Or by using the “spike” jump to bounce on and off the ceiling.  Or if more than two balls enter the play field.  Come to think of it, online Bug Ball seems to have problems when you do anything but play the most basic of game with it.

I can only work with the assets I'm given, and for whatever reason the developers decided to post a static shot of the courts on the Marketplace page without any of the action going on. Guys, be more choosey. These pictures could be your one and only chance at making an impression on potential buyers. For the record, the graphics totally hold up in gameplay. These static shots made me think the graphics would suck. They don't, but if I didn't know that I would guess the developers were hiding something.

It’s such a shame, because when Bug Ball worked, it was one of the best times I’ve had playing an Xbox Live Indie Game.  It’s not particularly deep, and it probably won’t excite the type of crowds who expect some kind of six-hour long epic for their $1.  At Indie Gamer Chick, my only criteria has always been “be fun.”  Bug Ball is amazingly fun.  Maybe it’s a call to developers that they should get back to basics.  Drop all the pretentious fluff and filler and accentuate the actual gameplay.  Work it.  Refine it.  Don’t settle for “good enough.”  Strive to be better than all the rest.  If you’re going to put in a half-assed effort, stop developing for XBLIG and go fiddle-fart around with someone who shares your don’t-give-a-shit attitude.  I hear Sega is hiring.

Bug Ball was developed by Edible Entertainment

80 Microsoft Points said more like Buggy Ball.  Nah, that makes it sound like a version of soccer played by Volkswagens in the making of this review.

A review copy of Bug Ball was provided by Edible Entertainment to Indie Gamer Chick.  The copy played by Kairi was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review code was given to someone else to provide her with a proper online experience.  That person was not involved at all in the writing or editing of this review.  For more information on this policy, please consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with ,

NYAN-TECH

February 29, 2012 by 3 Comments

I want to try an experiment.  Let’s start by having you pat yourself on the head.  Good.  Now, try rubbing your belly at the same time.  Can you do it?  Impressive.  I can’t even chew in both sides of my mouth at the same time, so I salute you, oh dexterous one.  I have one final challenge for you.  Keep rubbing your belly and patting your head, then boot up Super Mario Bros. and try playing it.  Because that’s essentially what NYAN-TECH is about.

Okay, so maybe the concept is more like Twister meets Solomon’s Key.  You play as an adorable kitty cat person thingie that has to grab a key and exit a level through a door.  The gimmick here is that the platforms you must hop across are activated by holding down various buttons on the Xbox controller.  Usually the combinations are something ridiculous, like holding the X button and left bumper down while jumping, then releasing X mid jump and pressing the right trigger.  To be perfectly frank, I’m not capable of it.  Dexterity is not something I’m famous for.  Well, unless you count my ping-pong ball trick.

I was able to finish NYAN-TECH, mostly by placing the controller on the table in front of me, freeing my hands up to do the proper stretching needed to complete the stages.  Sadly, this wasn’t nearly enough to make the game playable.  Issues with jumping physics, or to be specific, landing physics, kept me firmly grounded in misery.  The ground is slippery, as if the game is set on a glacier.  It’s not.  At least I don’t think so.  It’s kind of hard to tell, what with the camera pulled so far back that you practically need a telescope to decipher things.  My TV could be used by Godzilla as an ironing board, and yet I had trouble seeing which buttons some of the things required me to push.

Finally, I had a big issue with the time limit that is imposed.  Especially on level 3-4, which took me an hour (it felt more like days) to finish.  In NYAN-TECH, the timer only shrinks when you move.  In most of the 27 levels (excluding tutorial stages) you’ll have more than enough time remaining to finish.  But near the end of the “hard” stages, things get a bit fuck-youish.  In 3-4, you literally cannot make a single misstep.  We’re talking about a game that requires you to do things with a game controller that someone with a third arm growing out of their torso would find difficult to pull off, and that’s on top of the questionable physics.  I admit, it felt world-conqueringly amazing when I beat the stage, but then I remembered that I had lost sixty minutes of my life and felt like crying the entire time, which made me feel not so good.

I asked for an XBLIG I missed that could contend for the leaderboard here.  I got a few recommendations of NYAN-TECH, so I gave it a try.  Do I regret that?  Not completely.  After all, I started Indie Gamer Chick looking for new and experimental types of games.  Does that mean I can recommend NYAN-TECH?  Well, no.  Even if I concede that some people are better suited for the type of hand-yoga it requires, the technical flaws still outweigh the gameplay to a significant degree.  That or I’m way off base and the game is spectacular if you can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Which I can do, by the way.  It’s just that I have a 50% chance of somehow landing myself in a coma while trying.

NYAN-TECH was developed by Dot Zo Games

80 Microsoft Points need defibrillators on stand-by just to attempt twiddling my thumbs in the making of this review.

Some dude named made that video.  Only gameplay footage I could find.  Check out his channel I guess.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

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