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 , , , ,

What’s the Score?

January 25, 2012 by 22 Comments

I’m currently writing an FAQ for this site, and one of my answers ran so long I figured I would just break it off into its own editorial.  The most common question I get is, well, actually it’s “Are you really a girl?”  The answer is yes.  At least it was the last time I checked. Hang on, I need to consult a diagram.

I guess that’s what it looks like. Yep, still a girl.

Now then, the second most common question I get is “why aren’t there any review scores here?”  I get this one daily and it comes in a wide range of variations.  “How come there’s no score?”  “These aren’t really reviews.  Reviews have scores.”  “I can’t tell how good a game is because you didn’t give it a score!”  I even get the occasional developer asking me to make an exception and assign their game a score.  I usually respond with “fine, it’s a 2 out of 10” regardless of the game’s quality because that number is every bit as meaningless to me as an 8 would be.

When I play a video game, my brain does a lot of things.  It thinks about how the graphics look, how the game controls, whether the overall execution is good, and most importantly, whether or not I’m having fun.  The one thing it doesn’t do is spit out some arbitrary number that is the sum of all those thoughts.  Simply put, I think review scores are total bullshit.  I don’t think any game can be broken down into a simple number.  Many sites try to do this and the results are usually baffling to me.  A reviewer can spend pages upon pages ripping a game a new asshole and then close the review by giving a game a 4 out of 5, or a 9 out of 10, or seven thumbs up, or 11 gold stars.

I think people tend to skip through reviews on professional sites and go straight to the final score.  I know this is probably true because I’ve been guilty of it from time to time.  But the result is writers all become interchangeable and devoid of any real personality.  The only way my site can grow in readership is if my writing is good enough to leave an impression on the readers.  If they’re skipping what I write and going straight to a meaningless number, I can’t do that.   When you read one of my reviews, you actually get to learn about the game and maybe decide for yourself whether you want to play it.  If you care about my opinion on a game, it’s usually not too hard to decipher how I felt about it.  A number would actually help nobody, because it doesn’t explain how I felt about a game, or why I felt the way I did.

And really, aren’t scores just flame baiting?  Affirmation that your favorite game is exactly as good as you think it is?  The way gamers act about scores, you would think they were handed down unto the people on stone tablets from Mount Sinai.  It’s just a fucking number, people.  When Uncharted 3 was reviewed by IGN, it immediately resulted in two warring factions of dweebs taking turns shouting “I told you so!” or “What a bunch of bullshit!” at each other for days.  Mind you, the fucking game hadn’t even come out yet.  Not one person involved in this desecration of the human species had played it themselves.  Yet within seconds of the review going live, before anyone could have possibly had the time to actually read the damn thing, the fighting was on.  The Sony fanboys were rubbing it in the faces of Microsoft fanboys, who were decrying it as IGN’s official jump-the-shark moment. Not one person involved actually knew anything about the game or how the writer came to that conclusion, and they probably never will.

World peace? Hell, we’re ready to shed blood over pre-release game reviews.

Sure, fanboyism played a part in that, but that situation wouldn’t have happened if IGN had the balls to shit-can the whole fucking rating system and just let people figure out for themselves whether the writer actually liked the game or not.  So where are the benefits?  Consumers become less likely to know if there are aspects of the game that cater to their tastes or not.  Developers are less likely to learn what could be improved about their game.  I suppose it might in some way benefit me.  I could get listed on Metacritic or get the arbitrary number posted on a developer’s website.  You know, assuming it’s a good number.

By the way, this isn’t exclusive to the world of video games.  Just read any reviews of TV shows on IGN.  Even if an episode is a stinker that the writer clearly didn’t like at all, it usually still gets some kind of highish-sounding number.  Here’s an example.  Read the review carefully.  It sure as hell to me sounds like Ramsey Isler thought the episode completely sucked.  Yet he gave it a 5.5 out of a possible 10.  I actually read through it trying to figure out where those 5.5 points came from.  Going off his writing, I couldn’t find them anywhere.  Maybe one or two points tops, but 5.5 points came out of someone who wrote that?  What the fuck?

Doesn’t that make him kind of lose his credibility a bit?  To spend all that time writing about something only to then throw out a seemingly random number is kind of silly.  But he did it, and so do lots of critics.  Well I don’t really want to do that.  At best, a score would leave most people with a vague understanding of how I felt about a game.  I could give something a 10 out of 10, but maybe the reasons I got that number are things you wouldn’t like about the game.  Or maybe a game I give a 1 out of 10 to had aspects I hated that you normally love.  If you look at a number, you don’t get that information.  So in a nutshell, that’s why I don’t have scores.

Oh, and because I shamelessly ripoff Yahtzee.

Filed under Editorials

Ocean Drive Challenge

January 24, 2012 by 11 Comments

I should probably preface this review by noting that I don’t have my drivers license.  Apparently the state of California thinks that I would be a danger to others on the account of my epilepsy.  And yet they still let Mel Gibson drive.  Hmmph.  Well, no matter.  I can still play racing games.  I play them very poorly, but I can still play them!  Over the next three reviews, I’ll be taking a look at some recent racing titles to hit Xbox Live Indie Games.  It might sound redundant to do three like-minded games, but actually all three are very different.  This is because all three picked an entirely different series to shameless copy, or “pay homage to” if you’re all googly-eyed nostalgic for this sort of stuff.

The first one is Ocean Drive Challenge.  It’s a street-racer that borrows from the Sega classic Out Run in the same way that a pick pocket borrows from you.  You choose one of three cars and try to get from point A to point B before time runs out.  That’s pretty much it.  Honestly, the game is a fairly good tribute if you’re into this sort of thing.  It’s not uncommon for an XBLIG clone of a cherished 80s coin-op to be kind of shit, but Ocean Drive Challenge really is pretty damn close to Out Run.  The cars handle the same way, the sense of speed is about the same, and the graphics are light and cartoony.  You even select what kind of music you want playing before the race begins.

All the annoyances of Out Run are here too.  Like being stuck on a two-lane stretch of road and having the left lane contain a gas tanker and the right lane be occupied by a comatose grandmother.  Or the cars interpreting your control movements as polite suggestions that can be gracefully ignored.  There’s also no modes of play besides the main arcade race.  It’s probably beatable but I was never good at these sort of games and could only make it halfway through the course.  Whether you call it Out Run or San Francisco Rush or Cruis’n USA, the time you get back for clearing a checkpoint never seems like it’s enough, at least for me.

Really though, there’s not a whole lot I can complain about here.  I can’t even bitch about this being a game that only nostalgic cocknuggets could find delight in, because it’s actually a well made game.  The cocknugget crowd that sometimes has to shut down parts of their brain to convince themselves that a bad clone is just like the childhood game they remember will probably have their heads explode when they play Ocean Drive Challenge, because it really IS just like the childhood game they remember.  Having said that, if you’re a really big fan of Out Run, why would you need this game?  Wouldn’t you already own it?  Maybe as part of a compilation disc, or on an emulator, or maybe you own the actual arcade cabinet.  Ocean Drive Challenge is close enough to Out Run to be impressive, but also close enough to be useless.  It actually makes me wonder what exactly the developer was thinking.  Making a really accurate clone of a twenty-five year old arcade game on an entirely different platform using completely different tools does take a lot of skill.  Imagine if they had taken that skill and applied it to a new concept.  The results could have been really amazing.  Instead, they did the video game equivalent of spending six years at MIT just to take a job in photocopy machine repair.

Ocean Drive Challenge was developed by need1D

80 Microsoft Points once caused a seven-car, multiple-fatality pileup on a slot car racing track in the making of this review. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , ,

Hollow Grounds

January 24, 2012 by 1 Comment

Hollow Grounds is about a suicidal cartographer who decides the best way to map the interior of the planet is to dive head-first down it.  This is one of those iPhone that controls entirely using the gyroscopic technology.  To play, you have to spin your iPhone around to steer him through a series of 25 caves.  To pass a cave, you have to meet minimum requirements associated with speed, item collection, and super special item collection.  Well, allegedly.  There were a few times that I barely picked up any items, missed all the super gems, and spent the majority of the stage braining myself against the wall and I still would get a passing grade.  In fact, through the first 14 stages I only failed once and that’s because I paused the game.  As it turns out, pausing doesn’t really stop the action.  It just slows it down.  I don’t know if this is supposed to be a hidden cheat or just a programming brain fart.

Actually, Hollow Grounds is full of cerebral flatulence.  The game is all about quick reflexes, and yet there are stars scattered throughout the stage that you are encouraged to get.  Your dude travels fairly fast, so missing some of them is inevitable.  The only way to overcome this is memorizing the stage, but that will probably be tricky on account of all the stages looking nearly identical.  All you have to go by is the occasional light beam, but in over an hour of play time I swear I never really noticed them on account of my dude free-falling a couple hundred miles an hour.

The level design also gets a little far-fetched around the 15th cave.  Before this, I was barely able to keep up with the sharp bends on the track.  Starting in level 15 it has you doing loopity-loops and figure-eights.  Given the speed your guy falls, I swear this is less a game and more like a conspiracy from Apple to cause you to drop and break your phone.  The game expects every one of its players to have the dexterity of one of those greasy Italian guys who spin pizza dough on their finger tips.

I admit, I did have a teeny tiny bit of fun with Hollow Grounds, but it needs a lot of work.  I know the idea is the game is set in a cave, but the drab visuals were kind of downer, and the game speed is way too fast for what it expects of you as the player.  I think children are more likely to be amused by the spinning stuff, so if you have kids and a desire for a crack across your iPhone screen, give Hollow Grounds a chance.  It will be a good way to soften them up to the idea of a hollow Earth.  That way, when you go to feed them to the Morlocks, they won’t suspect a thing.

Hollow Grounds was developed by Full! Color! Planet!

99¢ fed their sister to a CHUD in the making of this review.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews Tagged with

The Cusp: January 2012

January 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

The Cusp is a monthly highlighting of three Xbox Live Indie Games that came up just short of the leaderboard here at Indie Gamer Chick.

Welcome to the first installment of The Cusp!  For the last few months, Brian and I have kicked around the idea that there should be some “runner-up” list to complement the Leaderboard.  We implemented the first idea, that former Leaderboard games should receive recognition, and while this idea has worked, maybe it’s not enough.

So we came up with The Cusp.  Three games that will be featured over a 30 day period on the sidebar here, and a post explaining why they made it.  Or almost made it, depending on how you look at things.  In addition, The Cusp gives the developers of the selected games a chance to talk about their game and their plans for the future.

In the future, The Cusp will likely include monthly themes, like three games of the same genre or maybe even same developer.  The one thing every game featured on the Cusp will have in common is they are all good games that are worth your money.  If you missed them before, don’t miss out on them again.

For this opening month, we went with a variety pack.  Three games with absolutely nothing in common except the fact that they went overlooked, both at this site and on the marketplace as a whole.  I would also like to point out that the inclusion of a game by Bionic Thumbs has nothing to do with paying them back for trashing their recent game Plugemons: Part 1.  The Cusp has been in the works for a while and Starzzle was always one of the games that I had planned to include.

Read more of this post

Filed under Editorials Tagged with ,

Too Peeved to Achieve

January 22, 2012 by 25 Comments

Well over a year before I started Indie Gamer Chick, I stumbled into the Xbox Live Indie Games channel for the first time.  I had read about this retro-themed RPG parody called Breath of Death VII.  It seemed right up my alley, so I snatched it up.  It was my first XBLIG purchase.  As I went to boot it up, the very first thing I noticed was there was no space for GamerScore points.  In other words, no achievements.  Lame.

I consider myself to be, more or less, the average video game consumer.  If that was my initial reaction, I’m sure that most Xbox owners felt the same way when they booted up their first Xbox Live Indie Game purchase.  Now, I’ve never been hugely into the concept of achievements, but I will admit that they’ve conditioned me to feel a sense of satisfaction every time I hear “Beep Boop” sound when I unlock one.  I much prefer the Playstation trophy system over the arbitrary points one used by Microsoft.  I just find something to be very wrong about a system where you get only 30 points for something as damn near impossible as beating Mega Man 10 without taking a single point of damage, while you get the full 1000 points possible in Avatar: Burning Earth by doing little more than booting up the game.

But a quick and unofficial poll on Twitter confirms that most gamers prefer the Xbox achievement system.  That’s probably because most of the people who read me are Xbox users.  The irony is I’m guessing the system based around numbers instead of actions is the very reason why Xbox Live Indie Games get excluded from the achievement party.

If the Xbox was more like the Playstation, where games hand out four levels of trophy based on the difficulty of the action performed, it would be extremely easy to come up with something for indie players.  A fifth class of trophy for indie games that in no way can be used to abuse the entire achievement system.  Xbox doesn’t discriminate, so the five points you have to work your ass off to get for the Crowning Glory achievement in Perfect Dark mean absolutely nothing more than the five points you get just for turning on The Simpsons Game.  From a personal perspective, I have to say that in the six-plus years I’ve been playing on the console, I’ve seen some mighty-high gamer scores and never once have I been inclined to look and see how someone got them.  I think that’s true of most players.  Conversely, I have looked at people on my friends list on Playstation 3 to see if they’ve unlocked particularly difficult trophies on games I also play.  I don’t recall doing that even with friends on Xbox.

But some people take those gamer scores very seriously.  Too seriously.  Get-a-life seriously.  And they’re not going to want Indie Games besmirching their precious arbitrary numbers.  The thing is, we all know what will happen if XBLIGs get their own achievements.  Within the first month of it going live, no less than two dozen “instant points” games will hit the market.  It’s inevitable.  The majority of “solutions” I’ve seen for this issue range from impractical to laughably absurd.  Some examples include having some kind of fail-safe system in place to assure that such games can’t be made.  Others have suggested, possibly while stoned, that there needs to be a governing body in place that sanctions indie achievements.

All these “fixes” come at a high cost to Microsoft.  Adding achievements is going to require additional infrastructure and overhead to the entire channel.  The bottom line is the bottom line.  Adding this feature, no matter how it ultimately turns out, will cost money.  Someone will have to code it.  Someone will have to debug it.  Rolling it out will necessitate a system update that requires close monitoring.  And people who are on the clock will have to take time out of their schedules just to discuss implementing it.  It’s not as if they only have to flip the “now you have it, now you don’t” switch that some of you seem to think is there. Changing the way things are is rarely free.

Having said all that, I want to make an appeal in the name of capitalism: Xbox Live Indie Games should have achievements.  Why?  Because it makes them more competitive.  Money is the only thing that should matter in the decision-making process at Microsoft.  If a system can be created at a minimal cost with minimal intrusiveness on the current system, it should be given the green light.

I believe the most cost-effective way this can be done is by segregating the standard GamerScore with a new category called IndieScore.  This score will NOT be displayed on the snapshot of a Gamertag.  IndieScore would only be visible by viewing a the full card of a Gamertag.

Kind of like this.

There will be no standards, regulation, or extra moderation for how developers implement IndieScore.  Sorry guys, but it’s really all or nothing.  In a system as open and inclusive as Xbox Live Indie Games, adding this feature means people can and will continue to be dicks and put in as little effort as they can if they can get away with it.  So while you might meticulously spend years crafting your dream game and fine tuning it to perfection, developers can and will be releasing EASY INDIESCORE XII: JUST PRESS START FOR 200 POINTS countless times in the interlude.  Obviously, there will be a cap, but people will abuse the system, and developers will have to accept that it’s better than nothing.  Again, if that seems flawed, remember, you are the guys who love the arbitrary number system.  The scoreless Playstation trophies would be so obviously better for XBLIGs, yet not one person out of dozens on Twitter voted for it.  Fools!

Maybe this isn’t the perfect solution, but it has the advantage of being the easiest to create and the cheapest to implement.  It would be one extra line in the Gamertag’s card.  Mind you, that one extra line will come at a cost of months of programming and overhead to create, not the mention the added infrastructure that the new system will be based around.  It’s the cheapest reasonable solution, but that doesn’t mean it’s free.

So here is something I ask of developers: what are you willing to pay?  Since this system will costs tens of thousands of dollars to put into place, money Microsoft is under no obligation to spend on your behalf, what are achievements worth to you?  Would you pay more for your XNA membership?  Would you take a smaller royalty on your sales?  And don’t try using the argument that Microsoft would stand to make more money, because that’s speculation.  Solid speculation based on good old-fashioned common sense, but speculation none the less.  Microsoft executives are not going to cut a single check to alter the indie system that they’re perfectly satisfied with (even if you aren’t) based on a hunch.

Microsoft is willing to change the way things are to allow Xbox Live Indie Games to be more competitive with mobile gaming, or with Live Arcade games.  Adjustments to pricing policy have already proven that.  There is little doubt that adding achievements would make XBLIGs more attractive to consumers.  Yes, the system will get abused, but so what?  I just played Hypership Out of Control for iPhone and it took me all of five minutes to unlock about ten achievements on that for Game Center.  That kind of thing happens all the time in iGaming.  I do know that many people are less likely to buy iOS games that don’t feature Game Center support.  This shit does make a difference to gamers.  If you think of the Xbox 360 as a car lot, disc based games are the souped-up sports cars like Ferraris or Lamborghinis (even if the occasional Alfa Romeo finds a way in), Live Arcade games are the affordable yet dependable Toyotas, and XBLIGs are the used Pintos with shaky engines and bad handling that most people fail to see the hidden depths in.  Maybe if they had shiny hubcaps in the form of achievements, people might be more willing to take them for a test drive.

Thanks to MasterBlud and Vintage Video Games TV for the video and screenshots.  Well, most of them. 

Hmmmph. 

Filed under Editorials

Ramen Ninja

January 22, 2012 by Leave a comment

Ramen Ninja is a stealth game starring the world’s most frugal cast of characters.  The idea is a bunch of bad guys stole all your ramen and you want to steal it back.  Can’t you buy, like, a metric ton of that shit for around $10?  Talk about a bunch of cheapskates.  And it’s not like they’re against the concept of hard work, because the guy goes to insane lengths to get his noodles back.  This involves sneaking around buildings, hiding under cover, and pushing crates around.  Meanwhile, the bad guys own those buildings and have hired dozens of security guards and mangoat-thingies to guard it.  What the fuck happened to the economy in Japan when I wasn’t looking that it has come to this?

Action in Ramen Ninja is takes place from a top-down perspective.  The idea is you have to sneak around various guards while pushing buttons and solving crate puzzles.  All the enemies have line-of-sight cones that you have to avoid, or they begin chasing you.  You also have to be silent, and this requires holding the A button to tip-toe around guards or the Y button to crawl around them.  It all sounds fine and dandy in theory, but the guards are so inept at their jobs that you might as well let them see you and leg it for the finish.  This was my primary strategy.  At your normal speed you’re faster than them, so why not?  I would end up leading entire conga lines of them through each stage in a manner so wacky that the game might as well been set to the tune of Yakety Sax.  The penalty if you get seen and chased is a lower score.  The game works on a five-star rating scale.  If you get seen, the most you can finish a stage with is three stars, which was just fine with me.

Yep, they threw Zombies in there at one point. If you're an XBLIG developer and you don't include zombies, you get beat up, stuffed in a locker, and your lunch money gets stolen.

I would have played along with the stealth stuff, but I found that it often just didn’t work.  I would hide in an alcove, which the game makes a big deal of, but the guards would still spot me.  The same was true in multiple instances of hiding under tables, behind plants, and sometimes even on the other sides of walls.  I would sneak around while holding the crawl button and the guard would still be alerted to my position.  Heck, in some stages the level would start with a guard immediately onto me and giving chase.  I don’t know if this was by design or not, but considering that the guard was two feet in front of me and there was no chance of escape, I’m guessing it’s just flawed design.  The unworkable stealth aspects were just not worth the bother half the time and so I would just begin the Benny Hill sketch again.  It was always laughably easy to do that.  Again, the guards are not as fast as you.  And even if they close in, they might just fall asleep on you.  No really, they’ll be inches away from you and then doze off, complete with a “Zzzz” thought-bubble.  It’s like the diabolical ramen thieves still wanted to meet all equal-opportunity employment criteria and hired nothing but narcoleptics.  It’s something I’ve been accused of having from time to time so I probably shouldn’t jokegffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff huh?  Is dinner done?  Wait, where I am?  Oh right, Ramen Ninja review.

There’s also the mangoat-thingies that chase you around.  They’re just like the guards, only they put you to sleep by singing you a lullaby.  It leaves you temporarily stunned, but not so much that they can then run up and catch you.  Assuming you’ve been legging it, you’ll likely have enough distance to survive the nap and keep running for it.  Like the guards, you move faster than them, so unless you get put to sleep by one and caught by another, they’re pretty useless.

It’s such a shame that the sneaky stuff doesn’t work, because you see that a lot of thought went into the level design.  All the stages are designed in unique ways that would use the element of stealth.  There’s also lame stuff like crate shoving, or in this case, sleepy security guard shoving, but you never really get to experience it the way the developers intended.  Despite all my complaints, I admit I had some fun with it.  Thus, Ramen Ninja becomes one of those weird games on my site that is utterly broken and obviously unfinished, and yet I do kind of recommend giving it a go.  A little bit.  Like a quarter-teaspoon of recommendation.  I mean, the whole wacky chase thing is not what the developers had in mind, but I was often smiling and giggling along with my boyfriend while I pissed away all the intent of the game.  With some more development time, the stealthy stuff might have worked and Ramen Ninja might have been something special, instead of being the kind of special it is.  As in “forgive my daughter for licking your wallpaper.  She’s special.”

Ramen Ninja was developed by nullptrstudios

80 Microsogfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Hypership Out of Control (iOS) and Hypership Still Out of Control (XBLIG)

January 21, 2012 by 12 Comments

I think the thing that disappointed me most about VolChaos is that I know Fun Infused Games has talent.  I know this because I was hooked on Hypership Out of Control for the iPhone and iPad.  If that doesn’t impress you, it should.  If there’s one genre I dislike more than anything else, its vertical space shooters.  Yet Hypership was fast-paced, twitchy, high-score based, and loads of fun.

The idea is that you’re a ship with a hyperdrive set permanently in the “on” position.  With no way to brake, you have to clear gates and shoot any debris in your way, all while scrolling forward at break-neck speed.  There are some items that will slow you down, but for the most part you have to rely on quick reflexes and digital dexterity to survive.  You have a cannon but it fires automatically, so all you have  to worry about is using your finger to slide your ship back and forth.

Hypership on iOS is THE Hypershit!

There’s online leaderboards and multiple modes of play.  Usually when a game like this hits, one or more of the modes are total stinkers.  Here, every mode has its merits.  “Hardcore” mode is exactly the same as normal, except you only have one life, creating an awesome sense of tension.  In “Coin Down” the coins you collect on the course act as your fuel.  In SuperSpeed, you take the role of an albino hamster who is strapped to a rocket car and attempts to beat the land speed record for a rodent on the Bonneville Salt Flats, the previous record holder being Richard Hammond.  Actually, it’s just normal mode with more speed.  But I’m sure I just gave someone an idea for a bitchin’ new game.

Hypership on iPhone (or iPad if you’re a snoot) is one of the few games I’ve come across that I don’t have a whole lot of complain about.  Thankfully a vastly inferior port was just launched on Xbox Live Indie Games that I can gleefully murder.  Well I guess technically the iPhone version is the port while the new XBLIG game is a remake of the original.  It’s called Hypership Still Out of Control, and it actively sucks with all the might of a whirlpool stuck inside a black hole.

Hypership Still Out of Control has all the play modes of the iOS version, and even includes local multiplayer.  But I found the game nearly unplayable because it lacks the precision of touch control that I had grown so accustomed to on my iPhone.  Regardless of whether you’re using the D-pad or the analog stick, movement is too loose.  This is a major problem when trying to navigate past gates with narrow openings.  The whole point of the game is that your ship is moving at unreasonably dangerous speeds, so anything less than absolute flawless control is simply not going to cut it.

Another thing that I had grown fond of on the iOS port was not having to do anything to make the ship fire.  On iPhone, the ship never stops firing.  It’s pretty convenient because there’s never really a point where you won’t want it to be shooting.  On XBLIG, you have to manually fire.  It’s not really a deal breaker, because lots of games do that.  I guess it’s matter of comfort.  It’s like going from laying on a comfy mattress made of clouds to laying on a bed of nails.

Local multiplayer would be fun if the controls weren’t so loose.

And finally, there’s no online leaderboards.  Yea, the only option on XBLIG is ghettoized peer-to-peer ones that are hard to implement, but the only reason to own this game is to try posting high scores.  There’s actually an explanation screen where it’s explained that it wasn’t worth the effort and you should buy the iOS or Windows Phone 7 (ha, as if) ports if you’re into this sort of thing.  So I’ll just go by the same advice the developers themselves gave.  If you have a dollar to spare, there are few things as fun or addictive at that price as Hypership out of Control for iPhone/iPad/iPod/iPacemaker (coming in October).  If, however, you only have XBLIG, you might as well spend those 80 points on a shinny new sombrero for your avatar because Hypership on it is Hyper-shit. I knew I could work that line in there somewhere.

Hypership out of Control and Hypership Still Out of Control were developed by Fun Infused Games

IGC_Approved99¢ and 80 Microsoft Points heard Apple fanboys are now eating bacon three meals a day in anticipation of the iPacemaker in the making of this review.

Hypership Out of Control is also available for Windows Phone for $0.99 or free with ads.  These versions are unverified by Indie Gamer Chick.  The iOS version is Chick Approved.  The XBLIG version is not. 

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

Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!

January 19, 2012 by 17 Comments

Choose your own adventure games are like being blindfolded and set loose in a pasture full of cows with irritable bowel syndrome.  Getting through one from start to finish without stepping in a pile of shit is going to require more luck than anything else.  I made five attempts at finishing Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! and I don’t think I lasted more than ten minutes in any of them.  I’ve also pretty much given up on further attempts.  As it stands, my feet are already so caked in manure that everywhere I’ve stepped in the past couple hours is properly fertilized for the next planting season.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In DDD,D! you play as an introverted virgin on his first day of college.  You’re bound and determined to lose the big V before the year is up.  It took me all of a minute to determine what the guy’s problem was up to this point: he’s a completely unlikable twit.  The first option the game gives you is whether you want to go to the bathroom, use the computer, or go watch TV.  I put myself in the mindset of a girl that’s possibly being courted by this guy and figured that it wouldn’t be very productive to be introduced to a guy who’s busting for a piss, so I sent him to the bathroom.  It was here that the guy stopped to flex for a mirror and do a few push-ups.  Oh my, a narcissistic freshman on a quest to bust his man-cherry.  What a catch.

I was determined to help steer the annoying virgin towards the promise land, but the luck of the draw was not on my side.  Like every other version of this kind of game I’ve played for IndieGamerChick, it’s just too fucking easy to “die.”  Here, death means you reach your 30th birthday as a virgin and thus become a wizard.  You know, if that were actually true, I think teenagers across the country would be way more receptive towards abstinence-only education.  Here, being a wizard is a bad thing for some reason.  I would think if the reward was actual magical powers, waiting until you’re 30 just to get laid would be worth it.  Once the magic starts flowing, you would be able to magically order up more pussy than unsuspecting customers than Soylent Blue: made 100% of street cats.

And how did I die?  Well, my first mistake was leaning in too close to talk to a girl.  Apparently I invaded her space and offended her.  How was I to know?  She was dressed like she had forgotten to do her laundry and the only thing clean was the shower curtain.

This girl’s digital restraining order against my digital annoying virgin is still pending.

When you make a mistake, it’s time to start over.  Unless you save.  But saving kind of was an issue for me, in that I couldn’t be bothered to do it.  There are no save prompts, so if you get caught up in the storyline (hey, it’s possible!) and step on one of those wrong choice cowpats, you get to relive the entire fucking story from the very beginning.  I hate it when games do this.  Saving isn’t always worth it, either.  The interface to do it with is slow and clunky.  A quick-save option would have been preferrable but the game couldn’t be bothered.

So I went through the agonizing story starring the most unlikable fictional creation since those little CGI nail fungus thingies from those one ads (shudder) and kept dying.  I died when I got beat up by some catty bitch’s boyfriend.  I died when I forgot that one of the chicks I was playing the field with didn’t like tennis.  I died right at the start when I chose “use the computer” trying to boost my intelligence level.  The game has a point system that gives you points in intelligence, charisma, and strength.  I decided since I liked the brainy girl more than shower-curtain wearing slut, I should try to make myself smarter and choosing “use computer” as the very first option was as good a start as any.  So I chose it and promptly died because my guy wanted to play Warcraft instead.  Hmmmph.

I never did figure out what the whole scoring system does.  My inability to go more than two minutes without failing to step right in line with the writer’s logic led to me starting over from scratch again and again.  I would like to remind the developer of this and every other game like Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! that video games are made to entertain people.  If you forced someone to read a book by reading one paragraph and then starting over at the beginning, go one paragraph further and then start over again, you would be subject to sanctions under the Geneva Convention.

Never got this far. Don’t know what this girl’s deal is. I would probably die a half-dozen times trying to figure it out, so fuck it.  Besides, with tits like that I’m sure she’ll have major back problems that I’ll hear bitching about day in and day out.  Who needs that?  My hand never whines like that so I got the better deal already!

So, shocker of shocks, I can’t recommend Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!  I will admit that the writing is slightly less painful than most games like this I’ve played on XBLIG.  Even if does annoyingly censor ****ing swear words.  This was probably done with the knowledge that it’s target audience have parents who frown on games with  gigantic anime boobies in them, but if the cussing is bleeped out they can hope for just one week of being grounded instead of two.  Still, I’m sure it won’t matter.  This game will sell because the aforementioned gigantic anime boobies.  And thus it’s owners will in fact reach the age of 30 with their virginity still intact.  No, they won’t become wizards.  But if they hold out another forty years, they might become Pope!

Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! was developed by “cupholder”

240 Microsoft Points would rather see a game about a prudish puritan who actively avoids trying to get laid, just to change things up in the making of this review.  

I couldn’t find anything about the developer or a trailer for this game.  Sorry.

Remember Orbitron: Revolution?  The game that I said does for Defender what Pac-Man Championship Edition does for Pac-Man?  Well, if you buy the game on Friday or Saturday, the proceeds from it will go to the BC Cancer Foundation.  How often can you play a (future) Indie Gamer Chick leaderboard game and fight cancer at the same time?  You can’t.  Well, unless you play Dead Pixels while actively getting chemotherapy.  This way sounds more fun.  For more information, click here. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

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