Indie Gamer Chick

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

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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.

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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

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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

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T.E.C. 3001

Sigh.  I really thought I was going to love T.E.C. 3001.  It just looked so fun and polished.  Stills of the game don’t do it justice.  In motion, it’s really a sight to behold, almost like you’re running through the world of Tron.  And the early buzz on Twitter from the usual gang of idiots (™Mad Magazine) is that it was the single greatest achievement in the history of gaming and milestone for Xbox Live Indie Games.

Of course, T.E.C. is none of that.  It’s a barely controllable reflex-tester starring a robotic Sonic the Hedgehog wannabe.  Yea, it’s pretty, but calling this “great” devalues the word to such a degree that the ghost of Ivan III is now going to personally haunt every single person that would label it as such.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In T.E.C. 3001 you play as a robot that has to run around collecting batteries.  In order to clear each stage, you have to get a minimum number of batteries before reaching the goal.  I’m not sure why they bothered with this aspect.  It wasn’t until very late in the game that I actually missed the target amount, and I only failed at this once.  It seems kind of tacked on and not really necessary.

Running is handled automatically.  All you do is dodge left and right, jump with A, and slide with B.  Unfortunately, the controls fail the player more often than not.  T.E.C. is designed in a way that requires the utmost precision for all movement and jumps, but you’re not provided with anything resembling smooth and responsive controlling at all.  Your robot dude moves too damn fast, yet he handles like a shopping cart.  Thus, you’ll spend the majority of the game running off ledges or crashing into pillars.

You also have a double jump that can be a bit on the fickle side.  Sometimes it just didn’t want to work, almost at random it seemed.  I would jump and wait until I was on a slight downward arc before jumping again and it would work.  Then I would die and have to start over.  I would try the same exact move, in the exact same spot, pushing the button for the double jump at what sure as hell seemed like the same moment I previously used it, and watch nothing happen except my dude fall to his death.

Still, I’ve played games that handled less than well but still managed to have a good time.  And early on, that was the case with T.E.C. 3000.  I immediately recognized that controlling would be an issue, but the amazing aesthetics and lightning-fast game play were sure to make up for it.  And then, about four levels into the experience, I realized that everything from that point forward would revolve around trial-and-error game play so unforgiving that there would be no room left for fun.  Allow me to walk you through a hypothetical level of T.E.C.

Start the level, avoid a pillar that you see, hit the pillar you couldn’t possibly see behind it.

Start the level over, avoid a pillar that you see, avoid the pillar you know is behind it, hit the barrier you couldn’t possibly see behind it.

Start the level over, avoid a pillar that you see, avoid the pillar that you know is behind it, jump over the barrier you know is behind that, hit the larger barrier you couldn’t possibly see behind it.

Start the level over, avoid a pillar that you see, avoid the pillar that  you know is behind it, jump over the barrier you know is behind that, slide under the larger barrier you know is behind that, fall into a gap you couldn’t possibly see was there.

Does that sound fun to you?  Because it sounds tedious and archaic to me.  Games like this died out years ago for a reason: because they’re boring and people quit paying to play them.  With the absurd levels of speed your dude runs, there’s just no margin for error here.  They tried to make up for it by adding a decent amount of checkpoints in each stage, but it doesn’t help.  Clear one memory-testing section of obstacles, start a new one.  Yippee.

T.E.C. 3001 feels more like a concept build for something that, with the right amount of time and finesse, could be amazing.  The graphics are among the best I’ve seen on the Xbox Live Indie Game market so far, and the idea of an insanely quick robot running through a neon-coated futuristic wonderland is pretty cool.  But the stop-and-go nature of its game play negates the entire speed gimmick, and the controls kill off whatever pleasure remained.  T.E.C. has style, but the only substance found is a cocktail of bad controls and level design that tastes like fecal matter.

Oh and before I go, I want to set the record straight on something: I don’t troll.  If a game sucks, I say it.  If I enjoy it, I say it.  My standards aren’t even particularly high.  I have no bias against any developer, person, or genre.  I just want to have fun with a game that I purchase with money out of my pocket.  If I don’t have fun, I’m not afraid to say it.  If that rubs you the wrong way, I don’t know what to say except put on some pom-poms and a miniskirt because you are nothing but a cheerleader.

T.E.C. 3001 was developed by Phoenix Games

240 Microsoft Points said the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising still at least has a batting average good enough to start for the San Francisco Giants in the making of this review.

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Cute Things Dying Violently

Cute Things Dying Violently is a physics-based puzzler, sort of Angry Birds meets Lemmings.  Over the course of sixty stages, you have to launch these little dudes called Critters into a door.  You’re given a cursor that can move left or right.  Using it, you can grab onto the Critters or other assorted objects and fling them using the right analog stick.  If you mess up you can expect them to die in a comical fashion, sort of like how Old Yeller ends.  I keed, I keed.

I’m starting to wonder if  perhaps I’m a little too desensitized.  I started playing Cute Things Dying Violently a few hours ago.  Within five minutes of booting it up, the novelty of watching the hapless Critters die in a shower of blood had completely worn off.  I’m borderline disturbed by that.  Perhaps it’s in part because I don’t find these little creatures to be cute.  “Creepy” would be the word I use.  I mean they walk around with a totally fucked up expression of glee, mumbling incoherently and randomly swearing, completely oblivious to their surroundings or the fact that they could die at any moment.  It’s like watching the old people at a retirement home.

For me at least, the funniest moments were my own personal fuck ups.  Not the straight forward kind, like aiming a little too low and sending a Critter into a saw as a result.  No, I’m talking about the grandiose, Rube-Goldberg style fuck ups.  Shooting a dude in what I think is just the right spot, slightly over aiming, and soaking him in oil.  It takes a bounce right into a fire, which causes it to die in a bouncing rage that sets other barrels ablaze and blows up the entire fucking level.  Now that tickled my funny bone.   The other stuff?  Not so much really.

Someone do Alex Jordan a favor and send this picture to Jack Thompson. Mainstream PR bonanza!

And thus I’m just going to take the whole humor thing off the table and let the game play do the talking.  Don’t get me wrong, the violence is a stroke a brilliance, at least from a marketing perspective.  But the situations that actually did make me laugh would have been funny in any setting, gory or otherwise.  Besides, after putting a month of playtime into Mortal Kombat earlier this year, watching teeny tiny little blue things that look like they took about six seconds to draw in MS Paint get cut in half is not going to do it for me.  Well, I suppose they look better than the character model for Freddy Krueger in MK.

I didn't know Dreamcast games had DLC. Oh wait..

I actually had a pretty good time with Cute Things Dying Violently.  The ingenuity displayed in the puzzle designs surprised me more than once.  I figured I would be settling in for sixty stages of non-stop flinging.  As it turns out, many levels don’t even really center around aiming and firing the little fuckers.   Sometimes you’ll have to drag objects like springs or bubble makers onto buttons.  Sometimes you’ll be trying to time getting barrels to explode in synchronization.  And sometimes you’ll fight bosses.  The first such encounter was a bucket of lame sauce, but I enjoyed all the ones that followed.  The amount of variety on display here is truly stunning, and new ideas kept coming even towards the final boards.  How often do you see that in a game, Indie or otherwise?

But I do have a few things to complain about.  For instance, aiming can be a bit of a bitch.  It’s a touch on the sensitive side, and the arrow doesn’t always provide the best indication of where something is being shot.  This game really needed an indicator line.  Not a long one.  That would have crippled the challenge completely.  But some kind of line that sticks out further than the cursor would have made a huge difference towards reducing the frustration factor.

Some of the levels can be really unforgiving as well.  In order to unlock stages, you must have saved X amount of Critters over all the previous stages.  But on some levels, the margin of error you’re given is incredibly small.  This will lead to you making your first shot (which often is the calibrating shot that you need to get the aiming down) failing, and having to restart the level.  A major pet peeve of mine is puzzle games that don’t have a quick way to restart stages.  I hate having to pause to do it.  It breaks the flow up.  Here, you have to pause the game and hit both shoulder bumpers.  It would have been better to just be able to click both bumpers without the pausing, but they were mapped for weapons use in a completely worthless multiplayer mode that is about as much fun as finding out that mole on your back just bought you six months of chemotherapy.

You know what though?  It’s still a lot of fun.  I’ve played a ton of physics puzzlers over the last decade or so and few manage to stay fresh from start to finish.  Or sometimes they try to change things up later in the game and screw everything up.  Angry Birds  for example, where some of the bird types introduced in the later levels to keep things fresh ended up making the remainder of the game rotten.  In CTDV, every new twist works.  The oil cans worked.  The lasers worked.  Okay, the bubbles are a bit annoying, but sometimes the developer still figured out a way to make a puzzle very interesting with them.

I was often aggravated when playing Cute Things Dying Violently.  It can be maddening at times to make some very tight shots.  And, not to be a total killjoy, but the setting really wasn’t all that big a deal to me.  I’m sure it will move more units than if it was a game about flinging unicorns across rainbows or something, but I thought it was dumb and the blood splatter was worth little more than some unnecessary slowdown.  But it’s a good precision-puzzle game, and those I can appreciate.  When I made a good shot on my first try, I felt like Robin Hood.  When I beat a puzzle in a way I know the designer didn’t intend, I felt like Einstein.  Those are nice ways to feel.  Much better than playing Raventhorne or Battle High, where I pretty much felt like Aron Ralston.

Cute Things Dying Violently was developed by Apathy Works

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Battle High: Elemental Revolt

Fighting games are one of my favorite genres, so after the disaster that was Raventhorne, I really looked forward to giving Battle High: San Bruno a shot.  Well actually, it’s now Battle High: Elemental Revolt.  Either way, I was hopeful it would get the 2011 Indie Game Summer Uprising back on track.

Nope.  0 for 2.

Honestly, it’s not that Battle High is broken or even bad.  It’s a fairly function throwback to the early 90s era of Street Fighter or SNK style fighting games.  The problem is that, well,  it’s a throwback to the early 90s era of Street Fighter or SNK style fighting games.  Those titles have been redone and cloned and rehashed and re-released a hundred times in the twenty years that have passed since they hit.  As a result, Battle High feels like a relic that is completely outclassed by the games it took inspiration from.

There’s eight fighters to choose from, none of which are memorable in the slightest way.  Well except maybe the chubby blond kid, and only because he kind of reminded me of Stewart from Beavis and Butt-head.  Everything else feels like a colossal Street Fighter wannabe, from the fighting styles to the extracurricular activities to the special moves.  There’s not one spark of true creativity on display here.  I was kind of under the impression that this whole Indie Uprising thing was supposed to showcase ingenuity and creativity.  I must have been mistaken.

And you know, the fighting really isn’t that good.  Even on the harder settings I was able to fool the AI with just random button mashing.  The developer did try to change things up slightly by throwing in a special super-duper attack.  You have a meter that fills up as you fight and once it’s full you can use it.  Except it doesn’t really function as intended.  The button combination required to pull it off is too long, and thus it takes a little too long to pull off.  Against an actual player instead of the AI, it would be so obvious I was trying to do it that there’s no way I could see it working.  Besides, the super-duper attack can easily be blocked or, even better (or worse depending on who’s using it), interrupted with the lightest of attacks.  It’s pretty much useless.

To the best of my knowledge, this has NEVER been done in a fighting game ever before.

One other gripe is that the Xbox controller really isn’t suited for 2D fighters.  I even have the silver controller with the transforming D-Pad, and although it’s so much better than the standard controller, it still really isn’t all that good for these types of games.  Using the analog stick isn’t a good choice either because it registers full movement if a gnat so much as leans on it.  I did have a lot more success using a fighting stick, but how many people out there own those?  Oh, and a personal nit-pick is that some of the characters I played as had a special move where you have to press forward, then down, then diagonally forward-down.  Call me retarded or a newb but I’ve never been able to do those type of moves in any fighting game, and I’m not the only one who’s like that.  It’s why I never used Ryu or Ken in Street Fighter II, because I could never get that damn Dragon Punch to work.

I didn’t play Battle High with another player.  Yea, I’m sure there will be plenty of people out there that say it gets better with another person around.  So what?  The same thing can be said about dying of radiation poisoning.  Besides, if I tried to get my friends to play this, they would look at the copies of the Mortal Kombat 2011, Super Street Fighter IV, Soul Caliber IV, Tekken 6, or Super Smash Bros. Brawl on my shelf and say “why are playing this again?”

And that’s a good question.  Why?  Unless you live and die by the Indie scene, there’s really nothing at all of value in Battle High: Elemental Revolt.  It’s bland even by the standards of most Street Fighter II rip-offs that popped up twenty years ago.  And if you desperately want something that’s old school, why not just play the original?  It’s right there on Xbox Live Arcade for the low price of 400 Microsoft Points.  That’s only four dollars more than Battle High, but that also buys you online play, achievements, and all the other bells and whistles that come in the package.

Actually, I take back what I said about Battle High not being bad.  It is bad.  It fucking sucks by any standard including Xbox Live Indie Games.  It’s boring.  It’s tired.  It’s shallow.  It’s flavorless.  It’s not memorable.  I’m sure I’ll get accused of trolling on this, but really, it was such a let down for me.  One of the ten best games to showcase the Indie movement my aching ass.

In closing, I want to say that I’m really disappointing in the game selection featured in the Indie Game Summer Uprising so far.  As bad as Raventhorne was, and it was way worse than Battle High, at least it kind of felt a little original.  Battle High doesn’t have that going for it.  What did selecting it for this promotion do towards the betterment of the Xbox Live Indie Game scene?  Players who are not as gung-ho about Indie games are going to play this and let out a collective “meh.”  This was not a showcase of what I know an Indie game is capable of, and it’s not going to win over the hearts of those who don’t care to learn just how good an Indie game can be.  What it did was prove that a small development team lacking a budget and professional game design credentials doesn’t have the capability of making a halfway decent rip-off of one of the most cherished games of all time.  Hell, I could have told you that.

Battle High: Elemental Revolt was developed by Mattrified Games

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