Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep. 3

February 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

Our esteemed heroine took time out of her busy schedule working on a cure for cancer and rescuing orphans from a fire to play an episodic platform game for Xbox Live Indie Games called Oozi.  The graceful and magnanimous Kairi forgave the first installment for being such a generic bore that it caused joy itself, manifested corporeally as a beautiful baby koala, to commit suicide by throwing itself in the path of a steamroller.  The villainous Oozi, regretful that it had erased joy from the world (and made a gruesome yet morbidly hilarious mess of a patch of forest in Queensland in the process) reformed itself with episode two.  The sequel proved just fun enough to play that the puddle of gore that formerly was the Koala of Joy started to piece itself together.  However, the threat of Oozi still existed.  Will Episode 3 cause the Koala of Joy to re-liquify itself, or will it spring to life and bring happiness to sad children?  We rejoin the mighty Kairi, already in progress.

As you can see, Oozi: Episode 3 brings us to a science lab.  Ooooh, that’s bold innovation, fellas.  What’s next?  A castle?  A desert?  A sewer?  I bet it’s a sewer.  It can’t be an action video game if there isn’t a sewer level.  It’s a sewer, right?

Okay, so originality was never what Oozi was about.  I’ve actually had people explain this to me like I’m some kind of idiot.  “You know, I think it’s actually supposed to be completely devoid of a personality of its own.  That’s the point.  I think.”  Even if that’s so, let me pose this question: does anyone really think back fondly on the time they played Prehistorik Man?  Gex?  Spanky’s Quest?  Plok?  Of course they don’t.  They remember playing Mario, Crash, and yes, even Sonic.  Paying tribute to the also-rans of gaming sounds more like a skit from Family Guy than a potentially lucrative XBLIG concept.

All bullshit gaming philosophy aside, not a whole lot has changed for Oozi.  The graphics are still far above the standards of a typical Xbox Live Indie Game.  In fact, they’re so good that you can’t help but notice how many corners they’ve managed to cut.  Back when I reviewed Episode 1, I noted that there’s no unique drowning animation, or gurgling sound effect that accompanies it.  Episode 3 has so many situations where a comical death scene could be used for effect, yet Oozi simply disintegrates into a pile of ash or just flops up in the air.  Having a larger variety of animations might have given the game some kind of personality, which is what the series desperately needs.

Really though, any complaint that I could make about Oozi has pretty much been made by me here on this site.  And also through a bullhorn in front of the police station, but they asked me to quit doing that.  Episode 3 doesn’t bring anything new to the table.  It does try to, but it fails miserably at it.  The feature that stands out the most are these annoying parts in one stage where you have to avoid security lights.  If you set one off, a gate shuts and you have to walk out of the security zone and start over again.  Don’t mistake this for stealth.  It’s not.  In fact, the security lights operate under the same principles as various traps and enemies do.  The only difference is instead of taking damage, you have to just wander backwards and then start over.  Some might argue that’s actually worse than death.

Oh, and there’s a boss, just like the last two times.  And, like the last two times, it’s fucking boring as hell to fight.  Oozi boss encounters always operate like the telephone game.  They do one series of attacks at you, then open themselves up to be hit.  Then they repeat the same cycle of moves as last time, adding one new twist before opening themselves up for attack again.  Finally, they repeat all the previous steps, add one final twist, and then leave themselves open for the killing blow.  It’s so fucking tedious, and the opening attacks (the ones that get repeated the most) are so insultingly easy to avoid that I wonder what they were thinking making you go through over a dozen rounds of them.  A lobotomized blind wino would brush them off.  It’s just busy work.  Meanwhile, the later attacks are so cheap that you’ll inevitably die a couple of times, forcing you to go through the same lazy attacks again and again.

Snore.

You know what?  I really am bitching too much here.  I did have fun with Oozi’s third chapter.  I can’t even say I think the game got off to a slow start, like Chapter 2 did.  It actually got my interest right from the start and held on until the boss fight bored me out of the mood.  The level design is so much better than the previous two games, and difficulty is much sharper, if a bit inconsistent.  It looks like the next chapter will be a wrap on Oozi’s tales, and by golly gee wiz, I’m actually looking forward to it.  Mostly because I actually believe it will see the light of day sometime before I start collecting Social Security.  Hey, Red Candy Games, we all like Valve and everything, but you don’t have to follow their lead and treat episodic gaming like you’re operating a bizarre nerd version of a time-share scam.

Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep. 3 was developed by Awesome Game Studio

80 Microsoft Points believe Half Life 2 episode 3 is currently being playtested by Santa Claus, Batman, and the Koala of Joy in the making of this review. 

I got interviewed twice this week.  Check out the interviews from Albatross Revue and Recensopoli.   

Vaya Con Dios, Rodger

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

Cell: emergence

February 9, 2012 by 12 Comments

Cell: emergence costs $5 on Xbox Live Indie Games.  That’s 400 Microsoft Points.  That’s the cost of some pretty good Xbox Live Arcade Games.  What does it get you here?  An obviously unfinished piece of shit with horrible graphics, busted play control, and antiquated gameplay.  What a bargain.

"What did I tell you about licking toads?"

The story revolves around a child being infected with some kind of mystery illness.  Instead of doing the sensible thing, IE calling Dr. House, you inject the kid with some kind of computerized yellow beam shooting thingie to fight off the disease.  At this point, the game starts and things go downhill faster than a soapbox derby racer powered by a jet engine.  The first level starts with a screen of purple voxel gunk.  You’re not given any real instructions other than A shoots and Y zooms in.  I wasn’t sure if the purple stuff was good or bad, and the game doesn’t explain this.  Or anything, really.

Well, the purple stuff started multiplying fast, which clued me in that it might be a bad thing.  So, I started shooting.  However, waiting a couple of seconds proved to be too long, as the purple stuff quickly overran the screen and the child died.  That’s Obamacare for you.  Once I was able to restart the stage, I started firing right away and cleared it in approximately three seconds.  The second stage was basically more of the same “shoot the gunk” type of stuff, and this time I earned my medical degree in Voxelgunkology and cleared everything in about five seconds.  I was starting to think Cell: emergence was trying to be a Wario Ware clone, only instead of a new game loading up every second, it loaded up every three minutes.

That all changed on the third stage.  A purplish ball that I guessed was a tumor was present in a white cylindrical shaft.  The only instruction given was “Shoot membrane to assist antibody diffusion (projectiles coat membranes with prion gel).”  What the fuck does that mean?  The game doesn’t tell you what exactly the membrane is, or what the antibodys look like, or what prion gel does.  It took me several rounds of failure before I realized that it meant shooting the walls, ignoring the tumor-thingie, and watching some little flickery spark thingies dance around.  I guess those were the gel.  After a few minutes, I actually thought I failed the level, seeings how most of the stage had still been obliterated.  Instead, I had won and was moved to the next stage.  Sure, the kid would have been bleeding internally, but I’m a glass is half-full type of gal.  That vein wasn’t 96% dead.  It was 4% functional!

The next level is where I gave up.  It was another “shoot the wall” level, only this time there were germs flying in.  Once again, the only instructions given were vague.  “NEW ENEMY: Germ is invulnerable to all known weaponry. Defend membrane and observe.”  What.  The.  Filth.  Well, I decided I’m obviously supposed to lube up my membrane, so I started firing on it.  And then the biggest problem suddenly became apparent: there is no visual indication of what wall has been “protected” and what one has not.  The “membrane” doesn’t change colors.  A orange-red streak does go through it, but it fades out, and the game doesn’t give off any indication of whether it’s a positive thing or not.  Red is usually a sign that something has gone wrong, and the enemies, or germs, are in fact represented by simple red dots.  I spent about a dozen rounds firing on the surface, adjusting the angle I shot from, and it still didn’t matter.  I continuously died, or rather the little kid did.  You know what, fuck you kid.  It’s your mom’s fault for letting some strange “doctor” (for all she knows it’s drug dealer trying to hook the boy on smack) inject you with a needle full of God knows what instead of taking you to the emergency room.

If you think this screenshot is baffling, just wait until you actually play the fucking thing.

In case you couldn’t tell, I fucking hated Cell: emergence, so much so that I can pull out the not-at-all-hyperbolic “new worst game I’ve played on Xbox Live Indie Games” title for it.  It’s that bad.  The graphics are horrible.  The camera is unmanageable.  It’s not so much a game as it is a proof-of-concept demo for 3D gaming.  Which would be fine, if this was 1992.  I’ve played games on XBLIG that felt this way before.  UnBound for example.  But at least they had the decency to only charge a buck for them.  Cell: emergence costs five bucks.  400MSP that can get you five extremely awesome titles, and the guys behind Cell: emergence expect you to instead spend it on their obviously unfinished game.  That takes a lot of nerve.  The hubris on display here is sickening.

Cell would be boring even if you knew what was going on.  It’s a glorified gallery shooter, only the graphics are indistinguishable blobs of digital vomit.  Hell, the shit you shot at in Space Invaders, a game that is thirty-four years old, actually look like things.  Nothing looks like anything in Cell.  The lack of direction given to a player is irrelevant.  The way things were going, the child is just as likely to get bored to death.  The syringe might as well have been full of air for all the good it does him, and that would have been way more humane.

Cell: emergence was developed by New Life Interactive

400 Microsoft Points took two aspirin and called me in the morning in the making of this review. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with

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 , , , , , ,

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