Indie Gamer Chick

Chester

Chester received a Second Chance with the Chick.  The game has changed a lot.  Read the updated review.

Update: Chester is now only 80 Microsoft Points.

I’m coming to the end of the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising.  Thank God.  To recap, of the eight games chosen by developers, 2 were pretty good (Cute Things Dying Violently and Take Arms) one was just okay (Doom & Destiny) and one was pretty ho-hum but had potential as a multiplayer game (SpeedRunner HD).  The other four were so bad they almost defy classification.  I hear that my reviews are not going over so well with some developers on the App Hub.  I don’t really know how to respond to this, so instead here’s some music for you.

Do you want to know what it takes to please me?  Don’t make a shitty game.  Need an example of that?  There are ten games on the right that make up my leader board, the ten best Xbox Live Indie Games I’ve played since starting IndieGamerChick.  Do you want a more specific example?  How about Chester, the title currently slated to take over that leaderboard on October 1st as the new #1 game on it. Yea, sorry for the spoiler there.  I suppose Rocks in Spaaace! could derail its chances so make sure to check back at the end of the month.

Chester is a 2-D platformer that tries so damn hard to not be generic that you have to tip your hat to it.  This is mostly due to the inspired graphics style.  Or should I say styles.  There’s many different ones, ranging from the default hand-drawn look that makes Chester feel like it’s a Nicktoons game to sketchbooks to Gameboys, etc, etc.  It’s as if the developer couldn’t decide on which specific direction to take the game, so instead of choosing one he just said “fuck it” and included all of them.  Every stage has a default theme, with extra themes being hidden throughout the quest.  At any time you can use the bumpers to switch between themes.  As of this writing, the themes don’t have any direct effect on game play, but future updates will include hidden areas that are exclusive to one particular graphics style.

The game play is a tad more traditional.  Playing as Chester, you run, jump, double jump, and wall jump your way through three worlds, each with a different amount of levels totaling about twenty all together.  The level designs tend to be straight forward, with paths branching only when you’re near a hidden object that unlocks an extra graphic skins or pieces to a rocketship.  I haven’t quite gotten all of them, but I plan on going back through the game once the next patch hits that will provide a fourth world and a boss battle.  Meanwhile, you collect stamps throughout the adventure which unlocks ten other characters for you to use, each with unique abilities.  That said, the first dude you unlock is all you really need, and I was easily able to complete the game just using him.  The other nine guys (hell, ten if you count the original dude) I never bothered using, which relegates them to “Princess in Super Mario Bros. 2” status as being there just for show.

Things are not always perfect.  The jumping is a bit stiff.  The auto-wall-jump that was just patched in, has a bit of a learning curve to it.  I’m not sure why they added it, but it’s hardly a deal breaker.  From a design perspective, sometimes the graphics put style ahead of playability, making it difficult to tell what’s a hop-onable ledge and what’s in the background.  This is also true of the bodies of water that you can swim in and bubbles that you need to hop across.  Switching to different skins did help, but it’s still not always clear.  Finally, sometimes the level design is really fucked up, especially a level where the end goal is right next to the starting area.  I asked the designer about this and he said that his girlfriend designed the level.  Well this set back the women’s lib movement by about fifty years, so thanks a lot.

In a way, I feel like I shouldn’t have liked Chester as much as I did.  To be absolutely content while playing it almost defies explanation.  It’s neither innovative nor original.  And yet, it’s undeniably charming and loaded with spectacular design choices.  I hate to go back to the graphics, because I’ve never been about how a game looks, but my hand is sort of being forced here.

I remember hearing more than one mentally malnourished nitwit tell me that Raventhorne was worth it’s price on its graphics alone.  Which is silly, because no matter how good Raventhorne looked, it only looked good for an Xbox Live Indie Game.   Compared to 99.9% of all the games released over the seventh generation of consoles, Raventhorne looks like total shit.  The animation leaves a lot of be desired, backgrounds constantly repeat, enemy designs are laughably bad, and it just really stinks of a cheaply designed game.  Again, it looks good for an Indie game.  But that’s not exactly worth the brownie points to the general public that XNA insiders seem to think.

By comparison, Chester‘s stylized graphics look good, period.  Whereas Raventhorne, if placed alongside Xbox Live’s Summer of Arcade releases, would look low-rent and out-of-place, Chester would actually blend in really well.  In fact, there were many times where I turned to Brian and said “this should be an Xbox Live Arcade release.”  It would fit in perfectly alongside art-house titles like Limbo, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, or Braid.  Even with decidedly old-school game play, it has a modern style with mass-market appeal.  I can’t think of a higher praise for it.

The first release of Chester was apparently riddled with bugs.  I guess I somehow missed most of them, but they’ve been patched out so that’s no longer an issue.  I do have to say that if I was running events like the Uprising, I would try to make sure games were more complete and less glitchy.  Some in the community feel that pushing games regardless of merit or polish is all that should matter.  I can’t see things from their point of view, at least without some kind of paint thinner and lots of huffing.  Pushing glitchy games seems to me like a good way to sour people on Xbox Live Indie Games.  That’s just sanity and reason talking there though, so pay no heed.

Chester is not the most original game I’ve played since starting Indie Game Chick.  It’s not even the best looking game.  It’s certainly not the most complete game.  But it is the best game I’ve played yet.  I spent two play-throughs and four hours with it, and I enjoyed every single minute of it.  With new levels to be added over the coming months, I’m certain to continue going back to it.  It’s funny to me that I got multiple warnings from developers and play testers who told me that Chester either “sucked” or “was a total loss.”  Some later told me that they figured “well, you hate everything else, so I figured you would really hate Chester.”  Of course, I don’t hate everything.  All that I care about is how much fun I have with a game.  No Indie game has entertained me more.  That is why I approve so much of it, why I give it my highest recommendation, and why it’s slated to take over the #1 spot on the Indie Gamer Chick Top-10.  It almost made slogging through some of the really bad Uprising games worth it.  Well, almost.  Okay, it did.  Ugh, I feel so dirty now.  Oh well, thank God it’s over and.. wait, what?  One more?  Well son of bitch.

Chester was developed by BBG Games

240 Microsoft Points feel Chester A. Arthur was a vastly underrated President of the United States in the making of this review.

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for a chance to win 1600 Microsoft Points.  Click here for details.

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Take Arms

I haven’t had a ton of experience with online Xbox Live Indie Games.  In fact, the only game I was able to find anyone to play against was Creed Arena, and that wasn’t exactly the most inspiring play session.  So I admit I was a bit on the worried side when Take Arms reared its head.  It’s also part of the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising, which so far hasn’t exactly been brimming with quality, sort of like Netflix lately.

Take Arms is a 2-D online shooter, sort of like what Counter-Strike would have been like if the SNES had online play back in 1994.  And yes, I’ve heard of XBAND, which, from what I hear, really didn’t work all that well.  Anyway, 16-Bit Counter-Strike.  Where was I?

It’s not unusual for me to skip multiplayer when reviewing a game.  In this case, I skipped the single player.  Along with my boyfriend’s roommate Bryce, we played on Xbox Live.  We jumped in and I immediately got a feel for the control scheme.  Well, most of it.  It works pretty much like any third or first person shooter, only from a 2D perspective.  The ability to jump down off of platforms was discovered by Bryce, which was a bit embarrassing for me, but we had a good time learning the ropes.

After about five minutes, it became clear that one-on-one was not going to cut the mustard.  After putting out a call on Twitter, I was able to corral the full lineup of eight players, although for the most part we had to deal with seven.  We moved into team matches, and one of the first major flaws in the game came to light: the inability to choose teams.  Among the players was Nathan Graves of Gear Fish and Dcon from Dcon’s Xbox Indie Reviews.  I wanted to team with them and call ourselves “The Only Xbox Live Indie Game Reviewers Who Don’t Give Ten-Thumbs Up To Every Single Game We Play Like That Episode Of The Simpsons Where Homer Becomes A Food Critic.”  Sadly, because choosing sides is not allowed, team TOXLIGRWDGTTUTESGWPLTEOTSWHBAFC was not to be.

Either way, we started with a random team-death match and things were immediately fast paced and very fun.   Upon spawning, you choose which of three character classes you want to be.  You can be the Striker, who moves swiftly and has a sniper rifle.  There’s the Destroyer, who moves slower but seems to have more armor, or the Grunt if you’re an indecisive douchenozzle.  Since it became apparent that accuracy in shooting was not going to be my specialty in Take Arms, I chose the Destroyer and focused on scoring beatdowns.  This strategy proved effective, and I admit that I had a blast running around, never firing my gun but beating people down with the butt of it, like a very confused pacifist.

Unfortunately, barely a minute of action went by where someone wasn’t screwed over by a glitch.  Most of this had to do with networking issues.  Bullets would pass right through people.  Grenades would explode right under people’s feet and do nothing.  Beatdowns sometimes proved impossible to score, leading to two people swinging at each other for nearly minute like they’re trying to recreate some kind of Waltz.

From a design perspective, there’s a few things that are off.  I think the inclusion of sandbags and various other chest-high objects are wasteful.  I played in multiple matches and nobody besides the snipers made use of these.  This game lends itself more to running and gunning, not ducking and patience.  And also, I was called a cunt on more than one occasion for my use of spawn killing in team matches.  Sorry losers, but it’s just how I’m wired.  I’m like an animal that’s preprogrammed with a nesting instinct and the desire to eat my own young, only I have a bad sense of where home is.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters on recommending a game at IndieGamerChick.com is whether or not I had fun playing it.  And you know what?  I did have fun.  I had a lot of fun.  Everyone I played with did.  Hell, I had so much fun that this review got delayed twice because I needed to, ahem, “playtest it some more.”  Yea, that’s the ticket.  And even with all the glitches, it’s one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had playing an Xbox Live Indie Game.  When eight players are running for flags or dropping from higher platforms onto a passerby like they’re Batman, Take Arms is brilliant, and pie-in-the-eye of all those lazy bastards who say online multiplayer doesn’t make a difference in how enjoyable a game is.  Oh I would say it makes a big difference.

Developer Discord Games has laid the groundwork for something with the potential to be extraordinary.  It’s not quite there yet, but Discord is continuing to patch things and I’ll be keeping a close eye on the progress.  I don’t think one Second Chance with the Chick will be enough, because Take Arms has more issues than National Geographic.  Oh darn, you mean I have to play more Take Arms?  Gee, that’s um, a crying shame or something.  *tee-hee*

Take Arms was developed by Discord Games

240 Microsoft Points say “better being a talentless cunt than a lame ass newb who keeps getting beat down and tea-bagged by a talentless cunt” in the making of this review.

A review copy of Take Arms was provided by Discord Games to IndieGamerChick.com in this review.  The copy played by the Chick was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review copy was given to a friend with the sole purpose of helping the Chick test online multiplayer.  That person had no feedback in this article.  For more information on this policy, please read the Developer Support page here. 

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Thank you so much to Gear-Fish, an awesome source of Indie news and reviews, for the IndieGamerChick Uprising logo seen above!

Shield the Beat

I really suck at music games.  Yea, I likely should have mentioned that before slamming Sequence in a review last month, but I just have no rhythm.  Like everything else that’s wrong with my life, I attribute this to my Cuban genetics.  My DNA is coded for three things: tobacco use, the ability to make boats out of some of the flimsiest shit available, and my ass inevitably doubling in size somewhere around age 35 if my mother is any indication.  Nowhere in there is the ability to keep a beat.  I’ve brought up my theory that Cubans are inferior at music to people before and it’s usually followed by me saying “No, he’s Mexican. No, she’s Puerto Rican. No, that dude isn’t even Hispanic..”

So I’m likely not the best person to review Shield the Beat, a music game where you control the shield of a spaceship that absorbs enemy fire to the beat of generic songs.  Using the left analog stick, you rotate the shield around the ship trying to hit as many bullets as possible.  For a greater challenge, you can play a mode where two different colored bullets are shot.  In this one, you use the left stick to suck up white bullets and the right stick to suck up red ones.  You also have to absorb missiles, occasionally by using the trigger buttons which offer a full-ship shield for about a nano-second.  There’s also a multiplayer mode which I didn’t get to, but I doubt it would have made that much a difference.  Besides, I really don’t want anyone else to see how bad I am at these things.  Likely some post-traumatic stress thing from when I slipped off the platform of a Dance Dance Revolution coin-op back when I was fifteen and suffered a hair-line fracture of my ankle.  That’s true, sadly.  Now you can see why I go under a pseudonym here. Between that story and my admission that I can’t throw a Dragon Punch in Street Fighter II, I’m swiftly losing my gamer cred.

Honestly, I thought Shield the Beat was okay.  It has a few things that could be tweaked, like maybe moving the action closer to the camera.  Even on a sixty-inch television screen it can be a bit difficult to see whether or not you’re really about to catch a bullet with the shield, or what angle the bullet is coming from.  This is especially problematic when the enemy ships start firing spirals at you while the background makes a sudden shift out of nowhere.  I also hate to say it, but the game should have been 80MSP.  It feels more like a mini-game and it’s 240MSP price tag kind of stings a little.

The music is hit and miss, but that’s par for the course from anything in this genre.  Hell, even when playing stuff from really good bands like Beatles Rock Band or Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I’m often left saying “Jesus, these guys really put out a lot of mediocre shit over the years.”  Shield the Beat has no recognizable songs of course, but that’s fine.  What’s here is generic but never really offensive or awful. It sounds like the kind of stuff you hear when you’re put on hold by Microsoft while trying to find out what you do with your freshly bricked Xbox.  Overall, the guys at Detour Games might be on to something here, and with the right adjustments this could actually be one of the better engines for a rhythm game to come along in a while.

Of course, that doesn’t mean as much now as it did a couple of years ago.  The music game fad seems to be on its last legs.  Walk down the aisle of any Toys ‘R Us and you’ll see cobwebs and tumble weeds next to complete sets of Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour with 90%-off clearance stickers on them that STILL won’t sell.  Which I’m sure has nothing to do with the fact that people realized these things are just glorified games of Simon with the notes rarely having anything to do with the actual music playing.  Or the fact that the instruments are so brittle that they break if you sneeze on them.  Or the fact that most of the songs on the discs these days  are crap and they nickle-and-dime you for the good stuff via DLC.  Seriously, raise your hand if you’re absolutely loving the entire collapse of this genre.

Shield the Beat was developed by Detour Games

240 Microsoft Points are actually likely of Colombian descent, but they’re even less musically inclined so that doesn’t really help all that much in the making of this review.

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Train Frontier Express

Is the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising the Xbox marketplace version of being Punk’d?  We’re down to the final three.  We have Train Frontier Express, the game I’m about to execute for Crimes Against Entertainment.  The remaining two, Chester and Redd seem like they could be okay, but I’ve already gotten multiple people tell me “well, if you hate (name of Uprising game) you’re really going to hate Redd and/or Chester because it/they suck.”  Thanks guys.  Very reassuring.  Oh well, I suppose Take Arms could save this abomination.  UPDATE: Chester does notsuck.  A full review will be up tomorrow.

Onto Train Frontier Express.  It’s a sandbox builder game where you design a train.  Duh.  You’re given a limited amount of tools to do this with and you’re left on your own to figure out how stuff works.  There’s no tutorial.  There’s also no objectives.  It’s just you, a sterile map, and some fairly unintuitive controls.  You can lay down track, alter the terrain, or lay down a fairly large amount of scenery.

Things started off bad right away when the game threw me into the deep-end of the pool without so much as teaching me how dog-paddle.  There’s absolutely nothing resembling a tutorial.  There’s also nothing in the way of a first-time guide to help you get the controls down.  I briefly attempted to pull a pussy move and consult the instruction manual, but then I remembered that this is an Xbox Live Indie Game and THERE IS NO MANUAL!  I’ve seen a lot of bone-headed design choices since starting Indie Gamer Chick, but this one takes the cake.  Hell, even generic platformers remember to include one (walk with left stick, jump with A, end of tutorial) so there’s really no excuse here.

After screwing around for a while and making a mess of my map, I finally got the hang of things (not really but I was running out of patience) and thought I should start over from scratch.  I decided early on to scrap my original plans to recreate the climatic scene from Back to the Future III once I learned the on-board train controls were about as useless as tits on a boar, and besides, none of the cars look anything like a DeLorean.  Instead, I would make a simple oval that would stretch past the mountains before coming back around.

This seemed to work as the new tracks I laid down cut right through the mountains.  Feeling adventurous, I decided to go as far as the map would allow.  After a bit, I ended up on the edge of an ocean and the track automatically curved away from it.  I decide to begin to return to the point of origin, only to find that I had somehow doubled back the wrong way.  Suddenly, my perfect oval resembled an Etch-A-Sketch done by me while having a seizure.  Actually that makes no sense, as any lines drawn during one would shake away as a result of the seizure.  But if they didn’t shake away, that’s what my map would look like.  Anyway, being a woman and thus having no sense of direction, I couldn’t locate my starting point and eventually ran out of track.  Sigh.

I started over once again, this time with the goal of making a small, simple oval for which to watch my train complete just a single circuit.  That’s all I asked for.  I cut the track through some mountains and completed the circuit.  Off the train went, and I was like “well, the game still blows even worse than Raventhorne but at least I made a working track.”  And then the train stopped.  And it didn’t start again.  I was totally miffed.  It’s not like it got stuck in the mountains either.  It was on a perfectly flat piece of terrain.  I did notice that the tracks seemed to be sinking into the ground a little bit.  Figuring that a piece of terrain was blocking the train’s path, I started lowering the elevation so much that I could have created an entire new river.  The train moved about two inches and then stopped again.  I zoomed in for a closer look and noticed no remaining turf that seemed to be in the way, but I attempted to lower the ground anyway.  Again, the train moved for a second and then stopped again.  So basically any microscopic speck of Earth grounds the whole thing to a halt.  Which is really odd considering that I saw the train pass right through a fucking tree when it was traveling through the mountains.

I have nothing against simulation games.  I likely would never claim to be a huge fan of any of these types of games, yet they’ve always proven to be a huge time-sink for me.  I’ve lost countless days to Roller Coaster Tycoon, The Sims, Sim City, Civilization, and similar titles since I was a knee-high to a grasshopper.  Hell, I even owned Railroad Tycoon II on the Sega Dreamcast, which I picked up about ten years ago in a clearance bin at Circuit City for $1.99.  Even adjusted for inflation, that’s about fifty-cents less than the cost of what I paid for Train Frontier Express today.

In short, Train Frontier Express, like almost everything else in the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising, is a total train wreck.  The lack of any tutorial, absence of goals, and the horribly conceived control scheme derail this one right out of the station, and it never manages to get back on track.  Anyone choo-choo-choosing this game for the event must have had some serious loco motives.  I can’t imagine how bad the games that didn’t make the cut must have been, but the buzz is a few of them got railroaded.  Zing.

Train Frontier Express was developed by Team Train Frontier

240 Microsoft Points are pissed that they used the obvious “make the trains run on time joke” way back when the Chick reviewed Starzzle in the making of this review.

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for a chance to win 1600 Microsoft Points.  Click here for details.

Tweet this review or share it on Facebook for additional entries into the drawing! 

Thank you so much to Gear-Fish, an awesome source of Indie news and reviews, for the IndieGamerChick Uprising logo seen above!

SpeedRunner HD (Corrected Review)

SpeedRunner HD is a port of a free Flash-based web game that you can play here.  Last month when I interviewed the developers of it, I noted that the web version was glitchy and difficult to control.  Assured that these problems would be fixed for the Xbox Live Indie Game port, I actually looked forward to SpeedRunner HD.  Why not?  The game feels like a video game version of a never-before-released Amalgam Comic starring a cross between The Flash and Spider-Man.

Excuse me a moment while I adjust my coke-bottle glasses and pocket protector.

Playing as the Spider-Flash dude, you have to run through eighteen levels at break-neck speeds.  Along the way, you’ll have to double-jump across pits, swing across gaps, avoid running into boxes that slow you down, and as always dodge spikes.

You know, I think the spike is the truly unsung villain of gaming.  It makes me wonder why real life criminals don’t make use of them more often.  If you’re planning on robbing a bank, make sure you have plenty of pointy spikes lying around.  Of course, any cop that possess a double jump will still be a threat, but it should at least buy you some time.  Just make sure you have a double jump in your arsenal as well, unless you plan on escaping through a window or something.  Then again, the police will likely make use of spikes as well and place them outside of any point of escape.  This will lead to the inevitable Mexican stand-off where everyone has a gun in both hands and spikes surrounding them on all sides.  I hear this is the basis of John Woo’s next flick.

And of course, school spikings will replace school shootings.  The bell to end the day will sound and kids will open the doors to the classrooms only to find that entire hallways are now lined with spikes.  Just to be fair, the perpetrators will no doubt suspend platforms about four feet above the spikes, but this will still lead to a national tragedy.  Especially when the asthmatic kid who always got to sit out gym class has to start to cross the hall.  Candle light vigils will follow, while the NRA will book a meeting in the town the following week to assure people that they still have the right to bare spikes and should continue to use them for self-defense.  And let’s not forget using them for hunting as well.  After all, if people didn’t spike hunt, Italian plumbers could become dangerously overpopulated.  Meanwhile, the ESRB will give any video game containing spikes an automatic M ratings in response to the crisis.

Where was I?

Ah yes, SpeedRunner HD.  So did they fix the problems of the web version?  Yes.  Mostly.  Controlling it with a game pad instead of a keyboard makes a huge difference.  Jumping especially is much easier.  But I found the controls to still be problematic.  The dude runs really fast (hence the name), but making precision turns is difficult because the guy really has an issue with slowing down.  This isn’t much of a problem in the normal stages of the game that are lifted from the web version.

However, in the bonus stages the game really gets tricky with some of its platforming elements.  When the guy jumps he wants to roll through every single damn one of them.  But sometimes this leads to you not being able to use your double jump.  Thus, when trying to clear larger gaps that feature smaller platforms, the dude just doesn’t cooperate and you end up in spiky failure.

My biggest issues came from the button mapping.  You jump with A, which is what A should be used for.  But your grappling hook is mapped to X, and this is not a convenient location for it.  It should have been on right trigger, but that is needlessly wasted by giving you the option to boost with either trigger button in the multiplayer mode.  There’s also no option to customize the button layout.  At least in my case, this made the game uncomfortable to handle.

The main stages are too easy and too short.  I took me about fifteen minutes to clear all those boards.  The six bonus stages are much trickier, but not so much that they add any significant value to the game.  There’s not enough of them.  This is a game that costs 240MSP but feels in every way possible like an 80MSP title.  There’s just not enough single-player content to justify the price.

As I mentioned, there is a four player local-only multiplayer mode.  It’s actually pretty good.  Have you ever played a scrolling game where someone lags behind and holds everybody else up, like New Super Mario Bros. Wii for example?  In SpeedRunner HD‘s multiplayer, the object of the game is actually to do just that: run as fast as you can and make the screen scroll past everyone else.  It’s a novel concept and it sort of works.

When I previously posted the review for this game, I was under the mistaken impression that it only had one multiplayer map.  In fact, the game has five.  I also only played the game with one other player.  After I pulled the review, I decided I might as well try to make up for my huge blunder by playing this with the full monty of players.  I wasn’t surprised to find out that it makes a difference.  What did surprise me was how much fun Speedrunner HD can be when played this way.  Especially once the other players got the hang of the control scheme and the weapons.

But, and this is a big but (I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny.. sorry), my suspicions about the player who actually owns the game having an unbreakable advantage over everyone else were spot on.  I was absolutely slaying the other three saps I talked into playing with me, all of whom were regular gamers.  And so I feel safe in saying that SpeedRunner‘s fairness will be limited to games involving all first-time players.  Alternatively, I suppose four experienced players would also work, but the odds on such a thing happening are likely only slightly greater than being struck by lightning while holding a jackpot-winning lottery ticket.

While multiplayer is potentially fun, I still can’t give a recommendation to SpeedRunner HD.  It has less than an hour of single-player content and there’s too many issues with controls.  I still feel it’s overpriced at 240MSP, as it’s competing directly with its own free web-based game.  So option A is I can play the game  (albeit buggier) for free, or option B is I can pay $3 for six extra single player levels and a pretty decent multiplayer mode that will never get used.  Picture me sarcastically using my hands as scales right now.  Honestly, I don’t think it’s worth it.  Online multiplayer might have made a huge difference, but people look at me as if I just menstruated in the holy water at church every time I bring that up.

SpeedRunner HD was developed by DoubleDutch Games

240 Microsoft Points have a permit to carry a concealed spike in the making of this review.

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for a chance to win 1600 Microsoft Points.  Click here for details.

Tweet this review or share it on Facebook for additional entries into the drawing! 

Thank you so much to Gear-Fish, an awesome source of Indie news and reviews, for the IndieGamerChick Uprising logo seen above!

Doom & Destiny

Yes, I’m a JRPG fan.  I know in some circles that can get you labeled a loser, but for some reason I just love their over-wrought, bat-shit insane story lines and stock characters with predictable twists.  Even when they change-up the formula by making the game action-based and mixed with, say, Disney characters, I’m just charmed as hell by them. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they’re the be-all, end-all of gaming or anything.  In fact, I think anyone who would have the audacity to call Final Fantasy VII the greatest game of all time really needs to be drowned in a bucket of rancid steer semen.

So yea, I love to play RPGs, but they rarely withstand the test of time.  They’re a one-and-done experience.  Once you’ve beaten the game, that’s really it.  I’ve never once played one that I would want to ever play again by the time it’s over.  I know some people who brag that they’ve beaten Chrono Trigger ten times.  I would say beating it twice would qualify you as a waste of flesh.  Ten times?  Wow, you are a deluxe king-sized loser with extra loser sauce.  You might as well hack off your own balls because obviously you’ll never need them, and why risk the testicular cancer if that’s the case?  Anyway, RPGs have gotten better since the days of the Super Nintendo.  You have a greater degree of control over the fights, there’s more customization, and the plots are even a little better.  In general.  Okay, maybe not, but the other two points are true.  Mostly.

A newly made SNES-style RPG in 2011 seems silly to me.  I did enjoy both Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World (who didn’t?) but I wouldn’t call them anything special.  They are what they are.  And so is Doom & Destiny, the latest game in the increasingly irrelevant 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising.  Playing it felt like playing one of those Final Fantasy III ROM-hacks where someone alters all the dialog in a way they consider witty.

It’s a parody game, one that is completely devoid of any coherent plot.  You play as four RPG-loving dudes who are teleported into a patchwork of video game and/or movie satires and have wacky adventures.  The game got off to a rough start by giving us four characters that are completely unlikable in every way imaginable.  Instead of being funny, they’re annoying.  The banter amongst them is rarely tolerable, like a geeky version of The View. 

But, to the game’s credit, there are some genuinely funny moments.  I wasn’t hugely into the parodies of Legend of Zelda (never seen a game do that before) or Super Mario Bros. (yawn) but some of the gags are good for a hearty chuckle.  The script does a serviceable job of helping you to forget that the game has no plot and characters that could generously be described as total douchebags.

As for the gameplay, um, what can I say?  Combat is completely turn based with nothing resembling action to speak of.  Pick an option off a menu, watch your character act it out.  Any criticism I could make would apply to any game of this genre.  If you found the combat in games like Final Fantasy VI to be boring, you’ll find this to be equally as boring.  Likely more actually.  I mean this is 2011 now.  Games have come so far,  and yet Doom & Destiny is firmly grounded in it’s mid-90s style with no attempts of anything resembling modern game play.

If you can deal with that, you likely will enjoy Doom & Destiny.  It looks and sounds generic, and I never could shake the whole “it could be a ROM-hack” feeling.  But I can put up with this type of game because it’s something I grew up on.  I did enjoy it a little.  I felt it was too long at about ten-to-twelve hours for a parody game, but I guess RPGs sell on the basis of having lengthy quests with more padding then a prepubescent school girl’s bra on her first day of 7th grade.  And sometimes the game really did manage to tickle my funny bone, like when the retard brigade was oblivious to the motives of someone who just joined their party by the name of Judas.  Of course he was going to betray them!  What else is someone named Judas going to do, besides sing You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’?

In fact, that’s the best praise I can give to Doom & Destiny.  When I’ve seen Xbox Live Indie Games try to be funny, the script writer’s idea of humor usually centers around endlessly quoting lines from movies or games, or  just adding lots of swearing.  Doom & Destiny does have those elements, but it doesn’t rely solely on them.  That’s probably a good thing too, because when it uses those tactics, it gets a bit cringe worthy.  But it also peppers in situational humor and slapstick with the movie lines and swearing.  Guess what?   It all blends well together.  While the game play is tired, the dialog is pretty dang entertaining.  Not to sound clichéd but if you like JRPGs you’ll like this one.  If you don’t like JRPGs, Doom & Destiny will be about as exciting as getting a lecture on knitting while watching a slide show on synchronized swimming and eating rice cakes.

Doom & Destiny was developed by HeartBit Interactive

240 Microsoft Points thought “Bi-Force” sounded like a mixed martial arts organization for guys who swing both ways in the making of this review.

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VideoWars

Calling VideoWars a real-time strategy game almost seems wrong.  Game play zips along so fast that you have no time to really plan out anything.  Passive-Aggressive Action-Strategy might be a better name for it, but that would be abbreviated PAAS and I hear those Easter Egg dye people are really protective over their trademarks.

Sorry.  Sigh.  Writer’s block sure is a bitch.

Anyway, in VideoWars you play as one of six character classes themed from classic video games.  There’s a single-screen map and you start with one base, called a “node.”

No, not "Noid."

Every time you lay a new node down, it extends your territory.  Scattered throughout each map is special spaces that either give you points or increase the speed at which you accumulate money.  Using money, you can buy new Nodes, upgrade current ones with a defensive turret, build troops, or purchase missiles.  The object of the game is to destroy all the enemy bases.

It all sounded kind of like a stripped down version of Advanced Wars to me, but VideoWars is really nothing like that series.  The game isn’t turn-based for one thing, and there’s also no micro-managing like in your typical RTS.  Once you release a trooper, it will automatically do its own thing.  This design choice had the potential for disaster, but it actually works really well.  The AI is smart enough that if you are in need of defense and you unleash a minion, it will stay behind and defend your territory.  If nothing is attacking you, it will go on offense. Hell, my average team on Call of Duty isn’t that smart.

VideoWars is not a game you’re going to jump right into an instantly get a feel for.  The controls are fairly complicated.  You have to call up building options while holding the right trigger and action options using the left trigger.  CORRECTION: You do not have to hold the left trigger to do action commands.  My bad.  This gives you a lot to juggle, and it takes about twenty minutes for everything to “click” and make sense.  Sadly this is, oh, twelve minutes longer than the average player usually devotes to an Xbox Live Indie Game.

If you actually do purchase it and wait out the opening learning curve, VideoWars is a lot of fun.  It’s like a real-time strategy game as developed by someone with zero patience for any clichés the genre is known for.  The game moves along at an insane speed, with troops making short order of bases, money that builds quickly, and construction times that are minimal.  And if all that is too slow for you, or you’re sick of watching your AI troops have all the action, you can build missiles and fire them directly at whatever enemy targets you want.  You don’t even need to build anything special to get them, although you’ll acquire the ability to use them faster if you build more nodes.  The only way to defend against them is to have your nodes equipped with turrets and manually shooting an intercepting beam in the general direction the missile is traveling, sort of like Missile Command.

However, all is not perfect.  When playing the local-only multiplayer, the issue of balance came up.  There’s six classes you can pick from, themed after games like Defender, Robotron, the ghosts from Pac-Man, etc.  Once I had properly broken in my playing partner to the control scheme, we started having a really good time.  And then, we suddenly realized that the Defender ships were about as balanced as a two-year old who was just introduced to Jack Daniels.  Every character class has a super-duper power that can be activated once a minute.  For the Defender ships, it doubles their attack speed.  This allows them to pretty much steamroll over entire enemy troops and bases in just a matter of seconds.  The other character classes’ super-duper moves can’t remotely compete with that.  We tried to ban using the Defenders, but it quickly became apparent that balance was an issue in every other possible match-up.  No matter what, one class is always going to be too good to be a fair match for the other.

But, if both players agree to not use the super-duper powers, it’s actually the best multiplayer experience I’ve had in an Indie game thus far.  Really.  It’s awesome.

Which brings me to my biggest complaint.  The game’s primary focus is on multiplayer, but like damn near every Xbox Live Indie Game, there is no online support.  People tell me I need to quit bitching about this because it’s hard to program for and people don’t have the time and blah blah blah.  You know what, fuck you.  If your game could really use it and you don’t include it I’m going to call you out on it.  It’s hard to program for?  Here’s a thought: learn how to.  If it frustrates me to play a really good game with no online support then I promise you, it frustrates most non-XNA fanboys too.  You’re making games for a platform that millions of people own primarily to play online with.  Tell your average Xbox Live user that it’s just too hard to include online play and they’ll call you a newb, claim to have had sexual relations with your mother, and spend their money somewhere else, likely while teabagging their own floor.

VideoWars was developed by Baaad Dad

80 Microsoft Points said “granted, the average Xbox Live user is a pit viper raised in the depths of Hell itself, but you should still try to cater to them” in the making of this review.

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