The Simpsons Arcade Game

February 7, 2012 by 35 Comments

Bart’s shirt is the wrong color. Sideshow Bob helps him instead of tries to kill him. 99.9% of all the characters established in the canon don’t show up. All the enemies are completely generic characters. None of the bosses outside of Mr. Burns and Smithers are from the TV series. The whole game is just a reskinned version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that some guys at Konami probably threw together in a weekend. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best Simpsons game ever. Only it’s not. It fucking sucks, but you should already know that.

And yes, I’m aware that the wrestler guy that’s the first boss was actually from the episode where Bart tries to jump Springfield Gorge on his skateboard. The bear doesn’t count, because it’s actually just one of the generic guys in a bear suit. I’m also aware that the game originally came out in 1991 and that I shouldn’t be so nit-picky about those things. To that I say this: fuck you. The Simpsons Arcade Game is a fossil that should have been left in the tar pits of non-release obscurity.

Remember that episode where the family started brawling with quintuplet accountants riding teacups?

Don’t look at me that way. I’m not attacking your childhood or raping your memories. That’s a George Lucas move. I’m not even saying the Simpsons was a bad game for back in the day. Hey, it was either play the Simpsons Arcade or, like, go outside and exercise or something. Psssh, what kind of loser would do that?

What I am saying is maybe those memories are better left where they are. The Simpsons Arcade Game, much like Ninja Turtles or X-Men, has not exactly aged well. Let’s face it, it’s a relic. And not one of those good, Sean Connery type ones. As much as the concept of it baffles me, I can almost understand going back and playing stuff like Final Fantasy VII for the twentieth time. I think there should be mandatory castration for anyone who does so (not that they’ll ever actually use those parts, but you can never be too cautious), but I can almost understand it. But an arcade brawler that was, quite frankly, a lazily produced reskin of an existing game designed to sucker lunch money out of children?  Why would you want to go back and play that?

And yet, since the announcement of it a few weeks ago, teenagers of the early 90s are going gaga. I had never actually played the Simpsons Arcade Game, outside of one attempt at a Pizza Hut when I was like six years old. The joystick was broken and I couldn’t move to the right, which is one of only two requirements the game actually has. I got my quarter back and thought nothing of it until I heard the announcement. I planned to ignore it, but it came free with a Playstation Plus account and I’ve never turned down a chance to troll you retro nerds before, so why start now?

I think the appeal in the Simpsons Arcade Game is the same as Sonic CD: it was the “lost game” in the series. It never got a home console port due to some licensing issues and thus it became a legend. As teenagers grew older and their minds became more polluted with various drugs, alcohol, children of their own, and all the Simpsons gaming crapola that has come out since then, those memories of the Simpsons Arcade Game became pretty fuckin’ sweet.

Remember that episode where the Simpsons dropped acid and fought a giant bowling ball?

I promise you, the Simpsons Arcade Game is not as good as you remember it. I know this because I’ve yet to hear a single person tell me that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Reshelled was as good as they remember it. And at least that one had updated its graphics. They couldn’t even bother with that here. This is a lazy port of a lazy game, and you can tell it was produced early in the show’s run. The character models are way off, the voices are off, and the game is forced to use so many generic characters because the cast of millions the show currently uses wasn’t established yet.

So here’s a wild idea: if they had the rights to make this game, why couldn’t they have produced an updated port to go with it? Leave the original game intact so that people could see how horrible it is, and then throw them something newer, using all the crazy space-age technology that leprechauns have given us over the last twenty years?

Actually, EA did a port of the Simpsons Arcade Game for iOS. I have it, and I tried to play through it, but it’s fucking impossible. This is mostly due to the fact that it uses one of those God-awful fake joysticks-and-button layouts that is about as accurate as a dart player that injected his hands with Novocaine. But imagine if they had ported that over to consoles. I mean, that game actually has characters from the series. You fight Chief Wiggum, Mayor Quimby, and various other fan favorites. It might not be the exact same game as your childhood fantasy, but it actually might be better. You know, if you could control it.

Or, even better, build an entirely new game modeled after the original arcade title, but replace all the generic baddies with random characters from the series that you fight only once, locations based on the series that actually look like they might have appeared on the series (Moe’s Tavern is a quarter-mile long casino. Who knew?), and add some modern twists. Use Castle Crashers as the basis for it. Leveling up, a variety of weapons, branched paths, hidden items, and so on, and so on. Why settle for something that was designed to steal your money as a child? Don’t you deserve better? Well, no. I suppose you don’t. If you actually gave away $10 for this piece of shit, ay caramba, there is no helping you.

The Simpsons Arcade Game was developed by Konami

Going off the math of how many free games and discounts I’ve gotten with my Playstation Plus account, approximately $0.38 was spent playing Teenage Reskinned Ninja Simpsons in the making of this review. TOO MUCH!

The Simpsons Arcade for iOS was developed by EA and costs $0.99. For God’s sake, do not buy it. 

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Retro Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Katana Land

February 7, 2012 by 3 Comments

Ninjas.  At one point they were the most overused cliché in gaming.  Then came zombies, and the time of the ninja had passed.  In a way, it makes sense.  Zombies are easier to shoehorn into pretty much any type of game.  I mean, can you imagine if they tried to do a DLC pack where you take on ninjas in Red Dead Redemption?  It would be fucking absurd.  Who could take that kind of thing seriously?  What is this, Shanghai Noon?  But a zombie DLC pack?  Fuckin’ A!

Ninjas are still stars on the gaming scene, but it’s only in the same way that John Travolta is still technically a movie star.  They get pulled out and dusted off from time to time to star in increasingly ignored and unsold games, usually stuff developed by Tecmo, hoping against hope that their day in the sun will come again.  Maybe once zombies are done being the flavor of the month, that day will come.  Personally, I’m betting on mutant gophers being the next big thing.  Don’t scoff, we’re one Caddyshack remake away from it.

In a way, ninjas are a perfect fit for Xbox Live Indie Games, where genres of a bygone era are the perfect training ground for the next generation of game designers, or a place where hobbyists can try their hand at getting involved in their favorite pastime.  It’s just too bad that most of their games turn out mediocre.

For example, we have Katana Land, an action-platformer where you have to save a princess from some evil ninjas.  Why can’t it ever be something more practical, like a ninja saving a country from economic downturn?  But no, save the princess and rescue the kingdom, blah blah blah.  What sets Katana Land apart is each level has a different objective.  Sometimes you’ll have to kill all the enemies.  Sometimes you’ll have to disable all the traps in a room.  Sometimes you’ll have to purpose sweeping legislation that will help begin the recovery from an economic downturn.

This would be fine, if the game wasn’t obsessed with being a total prick.  The controls are actually pretty decent, but Katana Land pulls the ultimate dick move sandwich by not granting your character invincibility when you take damage.  As a result, enemies are free to juggle your ass until you run out of life.  And they will, especially if you jump up to a ledge they’re standing on and end up occupying the same space as them.  I can see why your dude wasn’t recruited to join the more lucrative evil ninja organization, because he’s twice as slow as most of the enemies and doesn’t have their random immunity to damage.

Throwing a ninja star at common enemies is a bit of a mixed bag.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes the star hits them and does nothing.  I’m talking about a straight shot right in the middle of the enemy that they make no attempt to avoid, doing no damage at all.  When a hit registers, the enemy either dies or recoils a little.  But sometimes the star would hit them and nothing would happen other than the enemy charging at you and chopping you up. It’s not as if those characters have protection from the stars either, as I was able to kill enemies of the same class using it.  The game simply failed to register half the stars I would throw, like it has attention deficit disooooh look at the kitty cat.

Our hero has a few other annoying quirks.  If you fall too great a distance, the guy bounces and rolls to the left.  No matter which way you fall, it’s always to the left.  Did you jump off a high platform with the control stick pushed as far to the right as you can possible go and hit the ground?  Your dude is going to bounce left when you hit.  And the bounce is a fairly theatrical one.  Even when landing near the center of a large platform, there’s a good chance the bounce will be good enough to send your dude completely off of it and into a pit.  It makes me wonder if the guy really is a ninja or just plays one at the amateur dramatics society, because he over-acts every single bit of damage by flying backwards several feet.  If an enemy isn’t juggling you, there’s a good chance you’re going to fall off the stage when they hit you.

There are some things that lessen the aggravation factor.  You get a full health-restore every time you kill an enemy.  But every step in the right direction is immediately followed by a giant leap backwards.  In some of the stages you have to fight zombie ninjas.  If you kill them, they turn into ghosts that are unkillable and stalk you for the rest of the stage, charging faster than you can jump and juggling you until dead.  Thus it creates the situation of the forced-pussyfest, excuse me, pacifist section.

Fuck these guys.

If this makes the game sound overly difficult, it’s actually not.  It takes about an hour and a half to beat the whole thing.  The difficulty curve is all kinds of fucked up.  There’s four bosses.  Of them, the first boss is by far the most difficult, as he attacks you with lightning and the reaction time of your dude assures that it’s almost impossible to avoid it.  I had to restart the level several times against it.  Bosses two, three, and four were complete pansies that I beat on the first try.  The final boss in particular is embarrassing.  He just sort of slowly strolls towards you, allowing you to unload ninja stars into him.  When he takes three hits, he pauses and allows some easily avoidable fireball demon thingies to pass by the screen.  Then, you get to attack him some more.   That’s it.  That’s the only attack he has.  And then the game is over.  Thank God.

Really, Katana Land is not awful by any means.  It’s aggravating to get caught in an enemy juggle, and the level design is pretty low rent.  There’s a stage where the object is to find the hidden exit, which is marked by giant-sized flags.  I found the exit just by scrolling right until I happened across it.  You know, sort of like every fucking platform game out there.  So it’s not exactly original or inspiring, but it is a functional game.  There’s some good ideas at work here, and with some more refinement and level design to change things up, it would have been a pretty good game.  Of course, you can say that about pretty much any game.  “It would be better if only it didn’t suck in the following ways.”  But Kablammo Games actually has something here that they can build on in the future, so I’ll keep an eye out for them.  Maybe they’ll even get some courage and try something other than ninjas.  I hear mutant gophers are expected to be hot.

Katana Land was developed by Kablammo Games

80 Microsoft Points think ninjas never recovered from working with Vanilla Ice in the making of this review. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

100,000 Served

February 5, 2012 by 5 Comments

IndieGamerChick.com was opened with no expectations grander than “make my boyfriend and his pals have a chuckle or two.”  My Xbox Live Indie Game experience was limited to exactly two games, and I hadn’t even thought of the channel in months.  I had never done a blog, wrote extensively about gaming, or really paid much attention to the process of independent game production.  I wasn’t looking to join a community.  I wasn’t expecting anyone to pay attention to me at all.  Indie Gamer Chick was kind of a lark that fulfilled my need for a hobby and my desire to play some original games during the summer gaming drought.

219 days later, Indie Gamer Chick has just cleared 100,000 views, and is now viewed as a force to be reckoned with on the Xbox Live Indie Game scene.  Go figure.

I’ve run the well dry on thanking people individually, so I’ll just issue one all-encompassing THANK YOU to everyone.  To all those developers who embraced me, to community leaders who have endorsed me, to readers who have recommended me, and even the haters that have made this whole thing so fun, thank you.

My only goal with Indie Gamer Chick is to have fun.  I think that’s why it’s doing so well.  I’m not a professional writer and I don’t aspire to be one, so doing reviews as if I was one would be silly and probably boring.  Boring for me to write, and boring for you to read.   Video games are supposed to be fun, so why would I not want to transfer that fun to the writing process?  Hopefully, if I’m having fun writing, that means you’re having fun reading.

Well, I’ve had a ton of fun so far.  And I’ve played some really amazing games as well.  I’ve met some incredibly talented people.  Hopefully I’ve helped sell their games.  I hope I can continue to do well for your community.  Although Kairi Vice is tough and mean and has to bust your balls from time to time, the real Catherine has boundless respect and love for you all.

Thank you for allowing me your company.  Hopefully you leave room for the hilarious Alan C with Tea of Indie Ocean (the funniest Xbox Live Indie Game reviewer alive) and the awesome (and awesomely plageristic!) guys at Gear Fish, even when they’re late with my celebratory banner.  I really should work on those Photoshop skills.

And no, I didn’t review Fortress Craft.  I realized that I probably should have played MineCraft first.

And no, I didn’t extend the leaderboard.  But I’m working on something to make up for that.

And no, I didn’t watch the Superbowl.  I’m still pissed that Stanford didn’t get in.

And no, I’m not that stupid.  I know Standford can’t play in the Superbowl.  AFC Championship game at most.

And no, I’m not just padding this out because the longer I do, the longer I have to go without playing Fortress Craft.

And no, I’m not going to mention that I started playing Fortress Craft and was as lost as Ted Nugent in a gay bar.

And no, I’m not going to keep this joke running any longer.  Tootle-loo.

28,880 Microsoft Points can’t believe anyone reads this shit in the making of this site.

Filed under Editorials

Diamond Digger

February 5, 2012 by 2 Comments

Diamond Digger is the second game by Elemental Focus, the developer of former leaderboard occupant The Cannon.  The cheeky British developer was one of the first developers to endorse my arrival on the Xbox Live Indie Game scene but who I hate hate hate hate hate for that fucking “You Saved the Cannon!” song that will never leave my head.  Diamond Digger is a big departure from the Cannon, as this is a logic-puzzler CUNNILI.. oh right, I already used joke.

The idea is you’re given a grid of blocks with various diamonds scattered throughout it.  Each block is assigned a numerical value.  If a block that is positioned directly above another block that is exactly one number higher in value, it will break that block and drop down.  Diamonds are given a value of 1, and the object is to drop all the diamonds completely out of the grid.  You can only move blocks by shoving an entire row one space to the left or one space to the right, and only if the move will result in a block being broken.  You have to restart the puzzle if you run out of moves.

Sigh. Nobody said there would be math.

If that sounds boring, well, it is.  I actually nodded off for a couple of minutes writing that description.  I swear, I’m not kidding about that.  I can’t really put my finger on why Diamond Digger didn’t gel with me, but I’m weird like that with puzzle games.  I got into Blockt, which was about as exciting as watching wet cement dry, and yet Diamond Digger took on a chore-like quality after only a couple of minutes.  It has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of the game.  They work perfectly fine, even if I seemed to solve some stages by total luck, and others in ways I’m almost certain the developer did not have in mind. I used to be amused by those kind of situations, but now I find them a bit annoying.  It would be like a mystery book ending with the butler being the killer, even when there was no butler in the book.

The developer did try to change things up by adding some effect blocks.  Dynamite blows up an area of blocks the first time it’s moved.  Lava destroys a whole vertical column of blocks.  Whiskers the Magic Game Saving Tabby deletes all the blocks and replaces them with The Cannon so that you can actually have fun, or maybe that was just a daydream.

No relation to Mrs. Flufferstein

Honestly, the gimmick blocks really don’t add anything to the game.  I played through the forty puzzles and felt nothing at all.  No sense of satisfaction.  No sense of accomplishment.  Nothing.  I don’t know whether or not you will like Diamond Digger.  The game works, so I can’t really complain about it in any way.  I guess the best way to describe it is functional but dull.  But puzzle games invoke different reactions in different people.  I loved Pixel Blocked but some people found it to be a snoozer.  I’ve had a lot of people tell me they think Blocks That Matter is overrated too.  So maybe this game will be the opposite, where I thought it was a sleeping pill but others will think swear it’s a masterpiece that opened their eyes to the genre.  I wouldn’t bet on it though.  Quite frankly, if this game opens anyone’s eyes it would probably be the result of a reverse-coma.

By the way, sorry this review sucked.  I’ve been sitting on this game for five days, waiting for inspiration to strike.  But it never came, like a old man who had his Viagra switched with NyQuil.

Diamond Digger was developed by Elemental Focus

80 Microsoft Points said “naturally the 100,000 views day would have to fall smack dab on Superbowl Sunday” in the making of this review. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , ,

Brand

February 3, 2012 by 11 Comments

Brand.

Brand.

Braaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnddddddd.

Nope.  The name doesn’t work.  It doesn’t sound like a video game.  It sounds like a breakfast cereal, and a bland one at that.  The type that you would need to add copious amounts of sugar to just to choke down.  When you can name your game anything that your imagination can come up with and Brand is the best you can do, what does that say about the developer?  It’s not one of those catchy one-word names that you can get away with, like Halo or Infamous.  Brand.  Seriously, the name of the game is Brand.  What were they thinking?

“Brand thought Braid” says Brian.  Excuse me while I untie my tongue.

Brand is a hack-and-slash platformer where you try to upgrade your starting sword to make it “fit for a king.”  Once you’ve done this fifteen times (or sixteen, whatever) you move on to a final battle.  There are nine ways to upgrade the sword, and you can do each upgrade up to five times.  To get an upgrade, you select what one you’re going for, and then you’re sent off on a fetch-quest in one of three locations.  Once you’ve met the terms of the quest, you open up an exit portal and wait five seconds, then return to the shop and activate it.

It sounds like a solid idea, and if it worked it would have been fun.  But it doesn’t work.  I put eight hours into Brand yesterday and I can honestly say it’s one of the worst games I’ve played on Xbox Live Indie Games.  Wholly and entirely without any redeeming value whatsoever.

Let’s start with the first thing people talk about with Brand: the graphics.  They seem really good.  Certainly a couple notches above what people expect from an XBLIG.  But really, what do those good graphics get you?  In Brand, there’s only four enemy types.  Those four creatures are the same in every one of the three levels.  Nine Dots Studio didn’t even bother re-skinning the enemies to match the theme of each stage.  Variety is achieved through palette-swapping, with the stronger enemies usually signified by darker colors, resulting in the characters lacking distinguishing features.  The spitting frog-monster thingies are particularly pitiful in design.  It looks like someone just vomited out a puddle of sprites on a screen and said “good enough!”  If it seems petty of me to call out one creature type, I’ll remind you that creature represents 25% of the monsters you fight.  Great graphics?  Not when the character design is that bad.

Oooh, pretty! I can't make out anything, but damn!

Ironically, it’s the backgrounds that stand out the most.  They’re rendered beautifully and would work at setting the mood for the title.  They would, if they didn’t come with a tradeoff in performance.  The game has major issues with lag.  Especially the Castle, which scrolls very jerkily, like a first-generation Playstation 1 game.  These also are probably the contributing factor in the brutal load times throughout the game.  I actually used a stopwatch to time them.  It takes 52.2 seconds for the Mine stage to load.  If you die in the level and want to restart, the total time it will take is a 1 minute, 16 seconds.  For a 2D side-scrolling indie game.  The other two levels are worse, both taking over a minute to load, and about a minute and-a-half to reload if you die.  It’s not unlikely you’ll spend over an hour waiting for stuff to load up, in a game that should only take a couple of hours to beat.  It’s outrageous.

Once you’re actually playing the game, things go downhill quickly.  Combat is relatively simple: X is weak attack, Y is strong attack, B you’ll never ever ever ever ever ever use (it’s a useless dash attack) and A jumps.  Allegedly there are combos, but you’re not told what they are and I couldn’t figure out how to activate any.  The one or two times I thought I had done one, they didn’t really do any damage so I didn’t bother experimenting further.

Not doing any damage to baddies was a recurring theme throughout Brand.  Of the fifteen (or sixteen, whatever) upgrades you have to do, I “refined” my sword four times and strengthened it three times.  I also gave it the ability to poison, I made it so a magical light sword thingie would poke out my back allowing me to fight creatures behind me, and I added a fire wave to it and upgraded that a couple of times.  The end result?  The starter enemies might die in one hit, but everything else remained damage sponges.  Mind you, the entire game is about upgrading your offense.  There’s no defensive upgrades at all.  Yet, even once I had done the fifteen (or sixteen, whatever) upgrades and was dumped into the final stage, I felt like I had made no progress.  My dude was still a total pussy and my sword couldn’t cut butter.

Part of it seems to be a result of the game just ignoring your actions.  Direct combat seems to work best, in that about half of your attacks will result in damage.  On the other hand, the upgraded effects do not want to work at all and will fight you every step of the way.  As I noted, I got the fire sword thingie and then upgraded it once.  I then watched as I would send a colossal wave of fire at an enemy and have it pass right through him, doing no damage at all.  I know it didn’t because the enemy didn’t do it’s damage-indication flash.  I wish I could say this was an uncommon occurrence, but actually it got so bad that I started keeping count of how many attacks a single enemy could fail to take.  Around three seemed about average.  Ten wasn’t all that rare.  The most was this one mid-level wasp that was all alone in a normal room with no walls, barriers, or anything else in the way.  I was swinging the sword close enough that in theory the sword itself would do damage, but if that failed the fire would get it as the wasp was dead center in the wave.  Total swings before it registered damage for the first time?  Twenty-fucking-two times.

In order: useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, and useless.

Again, there’s no defensive upgrades in the game.  Well, there is one.  It makes it so you damage a creature you block.  Sounds great!  Sure, the block doesn’t even work on anything past entry-level enemies, but at least you’ll be dealing them damage back!  Yea, about that.  If you get this upgrade and use it too much, it kills you.  No really, you die from it.  And once you have it, you can’t turn it off.  Thus, you’ll be unable to defend yourself throughout levels for the rest of the game.  Given the fact that harder enemies attack faster, cause more damage, and gang up on you, you’re already screwed without the block “upgrade.”  With it, you might as well take your sword and commit Seppuku.  Although if you could actually do that, it would probably take the game five or six tries before registering it.  You can’t increase your lifebar, armor, speed, or jumping ability.  I guess Brand wanted to prove that a good defense is a strong offense.  It’s too bad a strong offense is not an option.

Once you’ve made the last upgrades to your character, you enter the final stage.  Hopefully your sword will be strong enough -snicker- because you’re entering the arena.  You know those stages in Zelda games where you fall down a hole and then you have to fight every single enemy in the game?  Yea, that’s what this is.  You fight a wave of ten or so guys off, all attacking your literally defenseless ass all at once.  If you kill them, a door unlocks, you fall down a hole, and you repeat the process.  There’s no situational health refills.  It seems like one random enemy in each stage will restore a sliver of your bar, so naturally it was always the first enemy I killed each time.  Hell, I can’t say with 100% certainty that there is a random enemy giving away a teeny tiny scrap of health each floor.  I cleared whole rooms out and was always left with a micro-fraction of health left.  I tried beating this for an hour yesterday and another thirty minutes today, never actually making it past the fourth wave.  Perhaps I didn’t upgrade my sword correctly.

Yes, Brand has avatar support. No, I have no fucking clue why this was added instead of fixing the game.

Apparently there is some kind of boss monster at the end of it.  I never found out for myself.  The thing is, I’m guessing that the giant scorpion-dog thingies that were scattered throughout the normal stages are in the Arena and I just hadn’t reached them yet.  If they are, I want to go on the record of saying the game is probably impossible.  I encountered several of those fucking things throughout the game and I only managed to kill one.  They have four attacks, three of which are maybe-unblockable quick strikes that drain your health faster than smoking the exhaust pipe of a bus.  If you manage to get close enough to start swinging, they take dozens of shots before they die.  The mere threat of them was enough to make me realize playing the arena wasn’t worth it, because unless the game ends with you shoving the sword through the throat of the king, then deleting Brand from your hard drive and replacing it with a better game, it’s just not worth the effort.

I could go on about the play control (meh) or the jumping (bleech) or the fact that the price of Brand is going to be raised to 240MSP in 90 days (a proclamation so fucking arrogant the developer ought to be flogged just for thinking about it) but I think I’ve said enough.  If anything I’ve said about this game sounds like something you want to play, have at it, you fucking weirdo.  I’ll close by going back to the graphics, because once again the usual gang of idiots are saying “it’s worth it just for the graphics!”  Quite frankly, I don’t think the graphics are that good.  But let’s say they were.  I think saying gameplay doesn’t matter if the art is good is kind of a hypocritical stance from a community that complains about everything done by guys like Silver Dollar who phone-in nearly every title they release.  How come it’s not okay for them to release busted, broken games with limited play mechanics, but a game like Brand can be nearly unplayable and still get you XBLIGers to stock up on tissues and baby lotion?  I don’t get it.  It would be like only being able to enter the Louvre if the curator gets to cockslap you across the face while the janitor shoves his mop up your ass.

Brand was developed by Nine Dot Studios

80 Microsoft Points said “yes, mop side first” in the making of this review.

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

Tales from the Dev Side: Last of the Seal Pelts by Ian Stocker

February 1, 2012 by 20 Comments

When I came up with Tales from the Dev Side, I figured it would be a good way to solidify myself in the development community while also providing some entertaining insight to my readers.  What I didn’t expect was thousands of page views and a reception so warm that it could double as an Easy Bake Oven.  And it all started with Ian Stocker’s magnificent “Magic Seal Pelts” piece.  It became easily the most popular, most linked to, most talked about article ever at Indie Gamer Chick.  It also opened up the flood gates of developers changing their prices.  We might never know if it was directly responsible for the recent change in price change policy for Xbox Live Indie Games, but I wouldn’t bet against it.  Well, it’s been over a month and Ian is back to let us know how his pricing experiment played out.

Read more of this post

Filed under Tales from the Dev Side Editorials

The Chick’s Monthly Top 10 Update: January 2012

January 31, 2012 by 3 Comments

I probably shouldn’t call this a monthly update, since I didn’t do one in December.  It wasn’t out of laziness or forgetfulness either.  The truth is, nothing made the leaderboard in December.  We all knew that it would come to the point where a month or more would pass between new games being added, and so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.

Having said that, there is not one but two new additions to the leaderboard this month.  Well, I guess that’s technically not true because one of them is a former leaderboard occupant that fell off the list and is now back on it.  So what are they?

The new #8 game is Pixel Blocked!  It occupied the #9 spot from August 1 to September 1, way back when Indie Gamer Chick first opened.  In the six months that passed since I first reviewed it, multiple games have joined and fallen off the list.  It says a lot that a game that hit so early in the life of the leaderboard could find its way back on the list after a five month lull.

This drops Blocks That Matter down to the #9 spot.  Meanwhile, Orbitron: Revolution has become the new #10 game.  The glitzy shooter was cut from the same cloth as Defender, but features the same timed-frenzy feel of Pac-Man Championship Edition.  The developers recently had a promotion where they tried to entice people to buy the game with all proceeds going to charity, and still only sold under $50 worth of it.  Hopefully a price drop will come and cause a sales spike.  If not, there’s always a PC port that will run in glorious 1080p.

Drool.

In the “close but no cigar” category, I really, really considered Avatar Grand Prix 2 for a spot on the list.  This awesome clone of Mario Kart nailed most of the fundamentals and also included online play and leaderboards.  Ultimately, it came down to the track design.  Most of them were just too dang short.  Also up for consideration was Lexiv, the Sim City-Scrabble hybrid that was a bit too glitchy, but ultimately rejected because the game starts you off with the letter “V” no matter what.  Petty on my part for sure, but as any word game fan will tell you, completely justified.

Since I skipped December, I figure I should bring up the game from that month that came the closest to making the list: Alien Jelly.  I really enjoyed its wacky “cube puzzle as told by Tim Burton” feel, but I’ve played dozens of games like this over the current console generation, and there’s nothing particularly special or memorable about its gameplay.  But it’s a good game and it’s worth your dough.

And of course, it’s time to say goodbye to the two games that got bumped from the leaderboard: Flight Adventure 2 and Johnny Platform Saves Christmas.  And by “goodbye” I mean “if you haven’t already bought them, they are still worth your money.”  So go get them.  Now.

And thus ends January.  Hopefully February will be an awesome month at Indie Gamer Chick.  The site will reach 100,000 hits sometime early in the month (currently sitting on 96,572 at publication time), an event that will be commemorated with the most requested review I get.  Can’t promise the review will be, ahem, crafted well, so please don’t storm my, cough, fortress if it sucks.

Very subtle.

Oh don’t worry Kairi. If you hate it, you only alienate a million fans.

The first sequel to a Tales from the Dev Side will be posted tomorrow.  Ian Stocker’s first editorial, “Magical Seal Pelts” was one of the most read and retweeted articles ever at Indie Gamer Chick.  Ian is back to update everyone on how his pricing experiment worked.  Last time, he announced the price drop of his popular SoulCaster series.  This time, well, you’ll see.

And I’ll be reviewing the Simpsons Arcade Game, coming February 6 to Playstation Network.  Why?  Well, I’ve never actually played it.  But I know enough to know that the game fucking sucks.  If it really is the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game with a Simpsons reskinning, yea, it sucks, and you should know better to be excited for it.  Then again, I should know better than to think you would know better.  Anyway, I haven’t taken the piss out of a sacred cow since December, and like Bart Simpson himself says, don’t have a sacred cow, man.

Filed under Editorials

Pixel Blocked! (Second Chance with the Chick)

January 28, 2012 by 6 Comments

It’s been exactly six months since I first reviewed Pixel Blocked! I thought it was essentially the basis of a good puzzle game that was in dire need of some tender loving care. Well, developer Daniel Truong took that to heart. He started taking it out to fancy restaurants and spas, writing it mushy love letters, and buying it expensive shiny jewelry. And then I said “no you idiot, I meant fix the fucking problems with it.” “Oh” responded Danny.

Just so I’m clear, I really liked Pixel Blocked the first time around. Hell, it was an original occupant on the leaderboard here. But I couldn’t ignore the numerous design flaws that held it back. Patches were promised and Danny went back to the drawing board. How did he do? Well, let’s take a look.

Graphics are nice and spiced up, but fuck graphics. This chick only cares about game play.

Original Problem: The reward system was broken due to way out-of-bounds minimum requirements.

Current Build: The reward system has been drastically overhauled. Now you’re scored on the classic Gold-Silver-Bronze system. Having said that, getting a gold on the time attack mode is still a total bitch. Pixel Blocked is a logic puzzler, so the speed fits in like Colonel Sanders taking a job at Weight Watchers.

Original Problem: The game was too easy on account of having missiles at your disposal to clear away bad shots.

Current Build: There are no missiles. At all. And this works just fine for me, because if they had been around I wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to use them. When it came to them, I was like an alcoholic whose only hope for salvation is removing every outlet of liquor from my entire life.

Consequently, now if you fuck up you do have to start the whole puzzle over again. How do you know if you’ve fucked up? It’s simple: any time you make a wrong move, the game makes a sarcastic quip at you followed by the words PIXEL BLOCKED! It’s actually pretty motivational. I only wish there had been a wider variety of quips, or maybe the ability to customize them. I think I would have taken my time and not fucked up as much if the game told me “Wow, you’re getting dumber Cathy.  Also, you’re putting on weight and your hair is ugly. PIXEL BLOCKED!”

“Wow, what an amazing fuck-up you are. PIXEL BLOCKED!”

Original Problem: The cursor had visibility issues.

Current Build: You can see it.

Original Problem: If you rotated the board after firing a shot, it would result in misfires as the blocks traveled too slowly.

Current Build: This got fixed too, so a block will go exactly where you meant it to go whether you rotate the board or not.

So as you can see, every major complaint about Pixel Blocked has been fixed. The result is a game that has completely shed its indie feel. Pixel Blocked plays like a polished title by a major studio. It makes me wonder if Mr. Truong isn’t essentially slumming-it by keeping this title on Xbox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone. Pixel Blocked is a game that’s ready for prime time. Sure, taking away the missiles left me gibbering in the corner and possibly in need of an intervention, but that’s fine. Once I got over my dependency I took the game in stride and was able to have an even better time. I never thought a game would fall off the leaderboard and then manage to climb back on, but Pixel Blocked has done that, so come back to Indie Gamer Chick on February 1. What are you waiting for? You should grab it now before Danny is turning tricks for Nintendo, learning first hand how the concept for Kirby came about.

Pixel Blocked! was developed by Daniel Turong
Point of Sale: Itch.io

igc_approved180 Microsoft Points said “also your eyes are too close together and you smell a cross between a chimpanzee and a bucket of sweat, PIXEL BLOCKED!” in the making of this review.

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

Avatar Grand Prix 2

January 26, 2012 by 13 Comments

And so we conclude this ill-conceived theme week, but at least I’m playing a game that tries to ape something released in my lifetime.  Out Run and Super Sprint both hit in 1986.  At the time, I was too busy not existing to be a fan of those.  On the other hand, Super Mario Kart was released in 1992, meaning I had been upgraded from non-existent to existent by way of parental fucking.  Crudeness aside, my first gaming memory is playing Super Mario Kart with my friend Meagan at the ripe old age of around fourish, so the series has always held a special place in my cold little heart.  It’s also probably why I’ve never cared too much for kart racing clones.

When I was a kid, I was a huge Crash Bandicoot fan, but I always thought his kart racers were kind of stupid.  It was around this time that the word “generic” entered my vocabulary, because that pretty much describes every kart racer that doesn’t star Mario.  I got a Nintendo 64 for my ninth birthday in July of 1998, along with Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing.  I loved Mario Kart and absolutely hated Diddy Kong Racing.  It was so boring, and its cast of characters so cookie cutter.  Who the FUCK was Tip Top the Turtle and why the fuck should I care about him?  By the way, it was around this age that I first learned what soap tastes like.

I haven’t played a Mario Kart clone yet on XBLIG, but there are quite a few.  Avatar Grand Prix 2 hit and I figured since I was going to do this silly race week shit, I might as well make it the grand finale.  I had my expectations set a bit low, because the screenshots looked a little on the bland side and, well, it’s an avatar game.  Those are usually underwhelming at best and skull-fuckingly horrible at worst.  So it surprises me to say this and you should be surprised to hear that Avatar Grand Prix 2 is actually a pretty good game.

It doesn’t look like much in screen shots, but the graphics of Avatar Grand Prix 2 are pretty solid.

Obviously the idea is “it’s like Mario Kart, but it has your Xbox avatar” and that creates a possible problem right off the bat.  There is a time-honored tradition in racing games.  There’s the fast cars with the shitty acceleration.  There’s the slow cars that handle the best.  And there’s the middle car that’s average in every category.  That gets chucked in the dumpster here.  There’s no karts to select from, so everyone has equal footing.  On one hand, I kind of see the advantage of that.  You won’t have four people fighting over who gets to be Wario, because we all know that Wario is the shits.  On the other hand, not having a kart with stats that cater to your skills as a gamer kind of blows.

Thankfully the handling is pretty decent.  Well, most of the time.  Avatar Grand Prix 2 is easy enough that it has a good pick-up-and-play quality about it.  The accelerator is mapped to the right trigger, and breaking/drifting is set to the left one.  The learning curve for this is fairly small, so you should be able to easily handle corners.  I figured since most Xbox Live Indie Games put as much stock in good play control as the village whore puts in monogamy, the game would handle like shit.  I was proven wrong.  And then I crashed into a wall for the first time.  This was immediately followed by me bouncing off that wall into the opposite wall.  What started as a game of kart racing turned into a game of Pong with me as the ball.

Playing through the game on the 50cc setting, this wasn’t a huge problem.  No, it became a huge problem once I started using the higher speed classes.  On 150cc, the game is significantly faster, and cornering becomes more of a reflex tester.  Hitting a wall on this setting was akin to hitting a bumper in pinball.  My kart was suddenly getting bounced from left to right for nearly the length of a full lap before I was able to correct myself.  And by the time I did, I was usually primed to hit another wall and watch the walls go all Venus Williams on my ass again.  It wasn’t just me either, because both Brian’s roomie Bryce and some random dude online were having problems with the walls as well.

There’s twelve tracks, each with four possible variations.  For the most part, they’re well designed and the variety present is pretty good.  However, they are way too short.  Without exaggeration, you can complete three laps on some courses in just over twenty seconds.  The longest any three-lap race took me was about a minute-and-a-half, which is ridiculously short.  I would have way preferred less tracks that were more substantial in length.   In the single-player grand prix mode, races only have three laps, plus one “qualifying lap” which feels out-of-place, especially when it can begin and end faster than it takes to finish taking a piss.

Once you go online, the options pick up quite a bit.  Races can last as much as 50 laps, which will still only take you about five to ten minutes, depending on what track you select.  Regardless, kart racing is always fun with more people and Avatar Grand Prix 2 is no exception.  I do wish the weapon selection was better.  Some of the items are downright worthless, like one that makes you invisible to other drivers.  In theory, that would be a good thing.  The problem is, it also makes your kart invisible to you.  Sure, the camera still centers on your kart, but not being able to see exactly where you are is not a good thing.  There’s also a force-field weapon that Bryce used while I was right on his tail.  It resulted in my kart being propelled way out in front of his, giving me the win for that track.  Not helpful for Bryce, but hilariously awesome for me.  Of course, if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would probably be getting booked on murder charges by now.

A few other glitches reared their ugly head.  The worst one caused myself, Bryce, and other players to be signed out of Xbox Live.  It happened to me more than once, and I would have to quit out of the game and sign back in for online features to work.  There were also instances of us getting stuck in the walls, which actually proved to be more annoying than the whole bouncy thing.

So yes, I have a lot of bad things to say about Avatar Grand Prix 2.  But I say them out of love, because I had a really good time playing it.  For all it’s faults, a lot fun can be had with AGP2.  Sure, it needs some patchwork to get rid of the wall recoil and a few other niggling little annoyances, but mechanics  here are really solid.  I’ve played a lot of crappy Mario Kart clones over the years, and screenshots of this were enough to set off alarms.  My worries were unfounded, and Avatar Grand Prix 2 is worth your money.  Thus concludes race week at Indie Gamer Chick.  If I ever talk about doing something like this again, you have my permission to spray saline in my mouth, tie a fork in it, and then shove me into a wall socket.

Avatar Grand Prix 2 was developed by Battenberg Software

80 Microsoft Points has never seen anyone actually pick Luigi in any Mario Kart game in the making of this review.

A review copy of Avatar Grand Prix 2 was provided by Battenberg Software 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

Magic Racing GP 2

January 26, 2012 by 7 Comments

Update: Magic Racing GP 2 is now 80 Microsoft Points.

Well, this was quite stupid of me.  Three racing games recently hit Xbox Live Indie Games, so I said “Hey, I’ll do a racing theme week!  Sure, I don’t normally play racing games, or at least ones that don’t involve throwing turtle shells at other drivers, but that’s the point of my site!”  It seemed like a good idea, especially after I had such an easy time doing a review for Ocean Drive Challenge.  The next game on the list was Magic Racing GP 2, which looked like little more than a glorified Super Sprint clone.  How hard could it possibly be to write about?

Having spent the last hour cowering in the fetal position, mumbling to myself “I don’t understand this at all” I guess the answer is pretty fucking hard.

Magic Racing GP 2 does have gameplay similar to Super Sprint or Super Off Road, but that’s where any resemblance ends.  The developers were aiming for a more authentic simulation feel, and their dedication to this is admirable.  First things first, if you’re not a Formula One fan, you might as well stop reading this right now.  I feel like a party crasher because I’m clearly not someone who should be playing this particular type of game.  It would be like asking a Hindu for proper ways to cook a steak.

Focusing on gameplay, I found MRGP2 to control pretty much just like the arcade ports of Super Sprint or Super Off Road that I played on the Midway Treasures series.  The thing is, I could never handle those games, and I couldn’t handle Magic Racing GP 2 either.  At least at first.  Even after putting thirty minutes into it, I was still crashing into barriers, cutting corners, and getting a speed penalty for driving too fast through the pit.  I did have a breakthrough after about an hour of gameplay and could, more or less, keep my car on the track.  At least when doing practice laps.  In the game’s season mode, where you have to deal with other cars and weather conditions, the control constantly locked up on me, not in a glitchy way, but as if I had actually stalled the car.  This is probably because I have no fucking clue what different types of tires do, or how to “use the weather” or various other idiosyncrasies that Formula One fans would know.

Magic Racing GP 2 is a F1 fan service that aims for the type of crowd that insists they would rather play Tecmo Bowl over the latest Madden entry.  Gameplay is old school, yet the amount of modes is impressive and the level of customization offered is pretty intimidating.  There are dozens of drivers to choose from, all based on real F1 stars.  There is an option to edit their name, so Sebastian Vettel doesn’t have to be stuck with the more wanky moniker of “Sebastiano Vartel.”  Every other aspect of F1 is present here as well, from well-known venues to the scoring system to the team system.  Sure, you’ll want to change “Renalot” and “Mercides” to their proper names.  Or you can do what I did and give them more catchy ones, like “Hippo Riders” and “Skid Marks.”  There’s also 16-player online play, but I would guess that you’re more likely to see a Yeti figure skating with Jimmy Hoffa before you actually manage to get a full lineup of players together for it.

I can’t really tell you whether or not Magic Racing GP 2 is a good game.  The best I can do is make the following observations.  First, it’s not newbie friendly.  The game assumes you know the ins and outs of Formula One, because there is little in the way of help or instructions for you.  Second, the amount of ambition on display here is highly commendable.  The fake versions of real drivers, real teams, and real tracks easily impressed my Formula One loving boyfriend, so it hits the right cord with the type of crowd it’s aiming for.  Third, the game is playable, probably more so if you’re familiar and skilled at the classic racing titles that it builds off of.  So if you’re into this sort of stuff, Magic Racing GP 2 is the game for you.  If you’re not, for God’s sake do not buy this game.  I have never been into car racing and I can’t see myself ever getting into it.  Besides, if I want to watch cars driving really fast, all I have to do is hop over to Oakland and pull up a lawn chair to watch Formula 510, featuring the biggest stars in drug dealing hauling ass in their blinged out Cadillacs while the boys in blue give chase.  Sponsored by Krispy Kreme.

Magic Racing GP 2 was developed by Magic Studio

240 Microsoft Points played Magic Racing GP 2 by Magic Studio while wearing a Magic Johnson jersey at Magic Mountain in the making of this review. 

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

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