Indie Gamer Chick

LaserCat

Update: This review now applies to the PC version of LaserCat following the great XBLIG purge. The PC port is verified to be functionally identical to the XBLIG original.

Last night I called TIC: Part 1 the best indie game I played thus far and said it “made all other indie games look bad by comparison.”  Well, that sure makes this next review quite awkward.

My cat looked the same way when she swallowed my mini-LED flashlight.

LaserCat is a Metroidvania-style platformer.  You play as a glowing cat who’s BFF owl gets kidnapped by an evil space frog and now you have to save her.  This stuff is every bit as insane as TIC, but here it’s all campy and retro and thus charming in a different way and ending any remaining similarities these two had.  Excluding my undying love for both, of course.

The object is to navigate a 225 room maze and locate 30 hidden keys.  Once you do, you have to find the room that contains your owl friend’s cell, at which point, spoiler alert, you have one last section where you must run to avoid various traps and the space frog’s bullets before finally saving your friend.  The whole experience should take about two to three hours to score a 100% completion. There are no bonus challenges or extra quests, and who needs them anyway?

Oddly enough, for a game called LaserCat at least, there’s no fire button or shooting to be done.  You can’t defeat the enemies, just avoid them.  I know the average gamer these days goes into a coma if the screen isn’t being spammed with bullets or having stuff get blown up, but here it works flawlessly and even creates a real sense of tension.  Once you retrieve a key, you have to return it to one of the many checkpoints scattered throughout the maze.  If you die, you lose the key.  You can hold as many keys at a time as you want, but if you die before you reach a checkpoint, you have to go back and get them.  It makes rooms that seemed so easy to clear before feel much more menacing, because if you die this time there’s a consequence to it.

Polar Bears are noted for being the fiercest killers in the animal kingdom. Except giant spiders.

I don’t mean to imply that LaserCat is difficult, because it’s not.  I breezed through the game in two hours thanks to the ability to warp from checkpoint to checkpoint.  A very useful map that can be brought up with the pause button helped assure me that I left no room unchecked and never was in danger of getting lost.  And that’s all fine, people.  Not every game has to kick you square in your self-hating ass and tell you what a pathetic bitch you are.  The guys at MonsterJail Games were clearly more interested in creating an enjoyable little experience instead of a sadomasochist exercise in futility.

The graphics are straight out of an early 80s arcade and look awesome.  I actually laughed out loud when I saw the animation of the cat, which hops around bobbing it’s head and front legs while the hind ones drag behind, as if it’s been paralyzed.  There’s also a neat bit where the rooms are a different color every time you re-enter them.  Perhaps this was done so you couldn’t get too familiar with the surrounding.  If that’s the case, it worked.

I’m a critic so I had to dig around to find a complaint or two, so here they are.  First, the music isn’t very good.  It’s not annoying, but it doesn’t seem to fit the game.  Something more along the lines of Metroid would have been more appropriate.  And second, when you find a key you have to answer a trivia question, some of which aren’t really questions at all.  And if you select the wrong answer, you die.  They’re not really that difficult, which meant the two times I got a question wrong I felt particularly stupid (a giraffe’s tongue is blue?  who knew?).  These feel incredibly out of place in a game like this.  It would be like touchdowns at the Superbowl only counting if the team can then solve a Jumble.

But these complaints are so tiny and petty that I feel dirty just for writing them down.  I really did enjoy every single minute I spent playing LaserCat.  And it only costs 80 Microsoft Points.  Seriously, what are you going to do with that many points?  Get a pair of sunglasses for your avatar?  Stop being a doofus and buy this game, or else the space frog wins.

I’m not going to be one of those wishy-washy types who says two games are equally as good, so here it is: TIC looks better, sounds better, and feels more like a big-studio game.  And LaserCat is the better game, period.   It has better play control and feels more like a complete game at a smaller price.  Ultimately, when future chapters of TIC are released it might prove to be the better overall experience, but right now the crown firmly belongs to the guys at MonsterJail.  LaserCat is one of the very best games on the marketplace, indie or otherwise.

But if that’s not good enough for RedCandy they can fight it out with MonsterJail for my affection.  Just give me a minute to find some popcorn and a swimming pool full of mud.

LaserCat was developed by MonsterJail Games

$0.99 can’t believe they might have otherwise gone towards a pair of denim jeans for my avatar in the making of this review.

TIC: Part 1

Update: TIC: Part 1 is no longer available following the great XBLIG purge. No port exists.

Damn you RedCandy Games!  How is it possible you guys could make one of the most polished, beautiful, and enjoyable games on the entire indie marketplace and leave us begging for more after only three levels?  That was very cruel of you.  I seriously considered ignoring how much fun I had with TIC: Part 1 over the past couple hours out of spite for having only given us what I’m guessing is 25% of the intended finished product, but I won’t.  I mean, if it’s good for Sega, it’s good for you.

The marketplace is over-saturated with games that want you to suffer while they giggle, but TIC feels more like a Nintendo platformer.  It’s comforting and whimsical and various other cutesy words.  It’s a game that cares about you and wants you to enjoy it, unlike games like Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes where any accomplishment by the player has the game punching a hole through a wall.   It’s even got an ultra-liberal environmental message attached to it.  The world is being overrun by people drilling away all the natural resources, and you must stop them.  Just replace “Mole People” with “Democrats” and and “EvilCorp” with “Halliburton” and you’ve got the official game of Obama’s re-election campaign.

You play as something that looks like a disembodied steam whistle from a locomotive riding a unicycle.  And it hovers.  And you stay afloat by touching acorns. If this sounds too surreal I’ll remind everyone that the most popular game character of all time ate magic mushrooms to grow big and walked around killing turtles by stomping them to death.  Awesome games don’t have to make sense, which is good because TIC doesn’t make any sense at all.  But I still loved my time with it.

Prospective indie developers, take note on how a game is made.  TIC eases you gently into it’s world with a pair of opening levels that are light and breezy.  You learn the controls, which are simple and effective.  Move with the stick, hover with the A button, drill with the right trigger.  You only unlock the drill once you’ve found fifteen silver acorns hidden in each world.  To find them, you’ll have to take to the sky.  You can only hover for so long, unless you touch a red acorn, which refills your energy meter.  Once  you’ve got the drill, you head through some underground caverns in search of an engine.  Find the engine’s power source, destroy it, the engine dies and the giant drill it powers stops, completing the level.  It’s very smooth and easy, with nothing resembling difficulty until the third level.

The controls are very precise, and my only complaint is that when you land your energy meter doesn’t instantly fill back up.  Sometimes I wanted to land and immediately take off again, but the meter wasn’t full and I fell to my death.  I never really got used to this, but it’s hardly a deal breaker.  The music is very smooth, maybe even a little hypnotic, and the sound effects are well done.  Of course, everyone is talking about the graphics, and yes, they’re spectacular.   I feel that spending too much time talking about them might mislead people into believing that the only thing TIC has going for it is eye candy, and nothing could be further from the truth.  But really, it looks good.  Braid good.

TIC only has three levels, and that’s really a shame.  Thankfully Red Candy Games has thrown us a few bones in the realm of unlockable challenges.  You need 15 silver acorns to get the drill in each level, but there’s actually thirty hidden in each one, along with three giant golden acorns.  Finding all of these opens up some extra challenges, and getting them all doesn’t feel like busy work.  In a way, TIC channels the best scavenger-hunt sections of Banjo-Kazooie and places them within a 2-D world.  It works well, and stretches a download that could easily be completed in under an hour into a somewhat lengthy and hugely satisfying diversion.  The main game isn’t really all that difficult, but some of the stuff (such as the 100 purple acorn challenge) can have you ripping your hair out.  Once again, TIC serves as a “how it should be done” lesson for indie developers, building a playable and joyous main feature and putting the tough stuff off to the side as a bonus.

I’m new to indie games, so this doesn’t really mean all that much, but TIC: Part 1 is the best game I’ve yet played on the indie marketplace.  It’s well designed, original, and gorgeous.  Truth be known, Microsoft should have caught wind of this in development and thrown the guys at RedCandy a lifeboat in the form of a full-scale release as an Xbox Live Arcade Game, complete with all bells and whistles.  Simply put, TIC is so good it makes all other indie games look bad by comparison. I wasn’t sure how I felt about 240 Microsoft Points for what is in essence 25% of a game, but all the extra challenges helped to make this feel more complete.  You better not rest of your laurels RedCandy, because if Parts 2-4 suck we’ll storm your offices with torches, pitchforks, and a BFG 9000.

TIC: Part 1 was developed by RedCandy Games

240 Microsoft Points were drilled by a disembodied steam whistle from a locomotive riding a unicycle in the making of this review.

Starzzle

Update: Starzzle is no longer available following the great XBLIG purge. No port exists. 

Puzzle games are better suited for portable devices.  When you have a couple free minutes you can knock off a level or two and then quickly transition back to whatever you were doing before.  Putting them on a console isn’t such a hot idea because, more often than not, extended sessions can start to drag and get boring.  This is what I went through while playing Starzzle on my Xbox 360.

Crying shame I chose the wrong platform to purchase this on, because it’s actually a potentially good game.  The object is to collect all the stars using your on-screen character, a red blob thingy and his companion blue block that can’t eat stars himself.  Once you move, you can’t stop until you hit a wall, so you have to plot out which path is the best way to grab all the stars.  It’s a simple mechanic that has been used as a mini-game in some mainstream releases, only here it’s stretched out to a full length title.  There’s 84 levels to be had spread over four worlds, with the tease of two additional worlds left to be added by the developers.  Although I’m certainly not holding out any hope that they ever see the light of day, nor would I care.

I somewhat enjoyed Starzzle despite that fact that it has more flaws then a fifth generation inbred Kentuckian.  There’s four worlds to explore with 21 levels each, but once the blue companion block is introduced about ten levels in there’s no new gameplay twists to deal with.  Each world has a different theme that in no way changes  any of the mechanics, so it comes across as wasteful.   And I also found level progression to be off.  You don’t actually need to collect every star to unlock the next level, so it’s as if the game rewards you for finishing half of each puzzle.  You do need to collect stars to unlock worlds two through four, but getting the minimum amount of stars in each stage seems to do the trick.

The game attempts to make up for this by giving awards for each puzzle.  One of them is completing each stage using the minimum amount of moves possible.  That one makes sense.  But then the other two awards are based on the amount of stars you collect.  You get one award for 100% gathered.  Fair enough.  The other is if you only get 60%.  Again, this feels like having laziness rewarded.  There’s also an achievement system that begs the question of why Microsoft doesn’t allow indie games to at least use some form of it, even if it’s a separate score just for the XBLIG platform.

And then there’s the glitches.  I encountered quite a few with Starzzle.  The most annoying one started after I completed world one.  I was told I had unlocked world two.  Yeehaw!  High fives all around.  And then after completing level 2-1, I was told I had unlocked the next world.  Which I hadn’t.  This was repeated with every single level that followed.  I was actually worried that when the time came to really unlock world three, the game wouldn’t allow me to, but thankfully this wasn’t the case.  However, later when I completed world 3-5 the game refused to acknowledge it or reward me any medals despite the fact that I had gathered every star.  Thankfully the next level did open up, but I had to go back to the menu to get to it.  It was an annoying hiccup.  Other issues popped up related to the menu’s awkward layout and control scheme, sometimes not allowing me to back out of a level at all.  Clearly this baby was a bit premature.

I never encountered any stages that were unbeatable, which became a worry following all the other glitches early on, and thus I think I can kind of squeeze out a mild recommendation for Starzzle.   I’m actually going to advise players to skip the XBLIG version and download the equally priced iPhone version instead.  Despite it’s flaws, the guys at Bionic Thumbs clearly have talent and I don’t want to discourage them from making further games, or batshit insane trailers to go along with them.  Instead, I’ll remind them that Mussolini didn’t die trying to make the trains run on time just so you guys could release something this unfinished.

Starzzle was developed by Bionic Thumbs

80 Microsoft Points made the trains run on time in the making of this review.

Platformance: Castle Pain and Platformance: Temple Death

Update: Platformance Castle Pain and Platformance: Temple Death are no longer available following the great XBLIG purge. PC ports might exist but we can’t find them.

After swearing to my friend that I wouldn’t touch another punishment platformer, I searched online to see if any of them were actually acclaimed, and found some reviews praising a game from 2010 called Platformance: Castle Pain.  It was only a dollar, so what the hell, right?

80 Microsoft points and ten minutes later, I had beaten the first stage on it’s easiest setting.  One of the many voices in my head said, “well, that wasn’t too bad at all.  The controls were a bit iffy but it was fun and challenging.  Bring on the next stage!”  Alas, no.  As it turns out, I had beaten the game.  Well, at least it avoided the Hard Game Without Zombies problem of running out of fun before running out of game.

I tried it on it’s harder settings and found that the map was the same with a few added traps.  Also, there’s a ghost that follows the same path you take and if it catches up to you, it’s game over.  Unlike Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes there is no limit to the amount of lives you have.  It just keeps track of how much you’ll die, and you’ll die a lot.  Like 1000 Spikes the graphics in both Castle Pain and it’s sequel Temple Death feature NES-inspired 8-bitty graphics and sound, a style which works perfectly for this genre.

This is a little more straight forward then 1000 Spikes.  There’s no double jumping or weapon use.  Just walk from point A to point B and try not to die.  Most of the traps are of the spiky floor variety, but there’s some fireballs and bird shit to avoid too.  Also unlike 1000 Spikes, there’s checkpoints.  In fact, there’s dozens of them, and thus once you get past one trap you usually don’t have to worry about going through it again.  The controls were a bit rough, and I found that getting my little knight to jump the correct height could be occasionally challenging, but it never was too much of an issue, and overall I had a pretty good time playing this.  At $1 it was roughly the cost of a round of the latest crappy street racing coin-op at the grocery store, so why not?

Having enjoyed Castle Pain, I decided to give Temple Death a download too.  It was also 80 points and the theme switched from medieval castle where everything is trying to kill you to Indiana Jones style jungle adventure.  One where everything is trying to kill you.  Okay, so it’s basically the same game with a different coat of paint, but maybe that’s all fans of the first game would want.

Actually one thing did change: the jumping physics were vastly improved and it makes a huge difference.  Now, every single death is unquestionably on you, and that serves to take the frustration factor out.  Because Microsoft are stubborn fuddy-duddies and don’t allow achievements, the guys at Magiko made their own, giving some added replay value.  And just to be smart-asses, they added negative achievements called Flopwards that honor your ineptitude.  It’s pretty clever and it did give me reason to play Temple Death for a couple of hours.  At $1 that’s a pretty good game-to-playtime ratio.

I still don’t care for the punishment platforming genre that is all over the indie marketplace like plague rats but I will concede that the Platformance series are the best of their breed and overall good video games.  They’re pretty to look at, sound wonderful, and are short enough to play through without getting bored.  They’re the only two indie games thus far I think I’ll likely fire up again after I finished them, because they offer a legitimate challenge without going out of their way to be unfair.  But don’t take this as an endorsement, punishment platforming, because the next time I play one of your games and it sucks I’m going to quit gaming all together and take up crocheting.

Platformance: Castle Pain and Platformance: Temple Death were developed by Magiko Gaming

80 Microsoft Points apiece were impaled and/or shit on by birds in the making of this review.

Both games are IGC-Approved.

CTG

Update: CTG is no longer available following the great XBLIG purge. No port exists. 

Question for the guys at DeRail Games: What the FUCK?

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you guys?  You try to make a retro-style game, a sort of cross between Breakout and Buster Bros., and then you throw in an exploding cat’s head and some kind of vendetta against grandparents or the Rascal corporation.   I guess it would be okay if the game was in the slightest bit fun.  The controls scheme is awful, most of the weapons are useless, there’s something off about the gravity physics, and the graphics are butt ugly.  I would sooner recommend snorkeling in acid than playing this tripe.

CTG was developed by DeRail Games

80 Microsoft Points were pissed away in Grandma’s Depends brand adult diapers in the making of this review.

A Hard Game Without Zombies

Update: A Hard Game Without Zombies is no longer available following the great XBLIG purge. No port exists. 

The indie marketplace sure has a stiffy for games with high difficulty. One of the top selling titles is called The Impossible Game, and in lieu of doing a full review of that gem, I’m going to simply say that, despite it’s stellar soundtrack, its developer FlukeDude can choke on a bag of afterbirth.

Part of the problem with punishers is that they run out of fun before they run out of game. With that in mind, A Hard Game Without Zombies certainly lived up to it’s name. It eased me into its web of masochism by making the first dozen or so of it’s twenty-five levels highly beatable. Even the extra challenge of collecting three stars each stage was doable and I figured the name of the game was meant to be ironic. Never have I been so wrong.

1000 Spikes: Crappy Version.

A Hard Game Without Zombies is maddening by game’s end, and that’s really a shame because it has the charm of an early 80s coin-op and the graphics to match. The jumping physics are functional but feel light. When I realized that releasing the stick mid-jump caused your character to lose momentum, it made things down-right breezy for a while, and that’s actually a good thing. It likely did need a little more fine-tuning but it’s not at all broken and if you die it’s due to your lack of super-human skills.

You press any of the four face-buttons to jump and hold the left trigger to dash. There’s a double-jump feature too. The control scheme had my hand cramping in a way that will not be entirely unfamiliar to Guitar Hero fans. As a rule of thumb I think any game that causes physical pain should be sent to detention for some refinement. Any game that throws in psychological pain on top of that needs to see the principal immediately. Developer MasterGroke seems to have talent and the occasional bug, like being able to stick to walls, could be forgiven if he hadn’t decided to be such a bastard by making a game where aggravation is it’s primary selling point.

And thus my prophecy came true: I had grown to hate A Hard Game Without Zombies by game’s end. And not in a good way, like Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes. At least I still felt like I had accomplished something with that one. Without Zombies was so boring that finishing felt less like victory and more like I had finished serving my time.  It didn’t start that way either. I really was enjoying myself, even as the difficulty ramped up. It just didn’t last. My advice to XBLIG developers is if you make a game that takes a running count of how many times you die (446 for me on this one) then your game is likely going to suck more than vacuum cleaner powered by a black hole.

If you’re into this sort of thing, you have two options: go buy a 1600 Microsoft Point card for $20, use it to buy twenty punishers, and get off feeling like you are shit. Option two is put that $20 towards a hooker who will agree to spank you. You’ll still feel like you are shit afterwards but at least you might not die a virgin.

A Hard Game Without Zombies was developed by MasterGroke

80 Microsoft Points were spanked in the making of this review.

Hack This Game

Update: Hack this Game is no longer available following the great XBLIG purge. No port is known to exist.

Hack This Game features 24 puzzles that each require a five-key code to solve.  Each code is made up only of the ABXY buttons and nothing more.  Using the on-screen clues, you have to figure out the order to push the buttons.  Get the right order, move on.  The puzzles range from mind-numbingly easy to W-T-F hard, but anyone who’s into math or logic puzzles should have no problem finishing this in about an hour.  Still, I can honestly say I got $1.00 worth of entertainment out of it.

If this sounds like your type of thing, it costs the same as a lottery ticket and it’s bound to give you a lot more entertainment.  The only problem is a series of infuriating quick-time sequences that feel completely out of place.  To get to the final four puzzles you have to complete twenty of these, with less time for each.  I was convinced it was impossible and only managed to do it when the final couple sequences only required two different buttons.  Also worth noting is while attempting to reach twenty of these, the game crashed.  Twice.  And if I hadn’t finished it when I did it would have crashed a third time after my Xbox would have been hurled out the window in a fit of rage.

Crashes aside, I enjoyed playing Hack This Game because upon completion of the final puzzle, I felt oddly superior.  Nothing here should be so challenging that it requires a degree in Smartassery with an FU in Insane Logic from the University of Smugness, but it’s challenging enough to feel good about completing.  Anyone should be able to solve all the puzzles on here without resorting to a Google search.  Well, except for the Morse Code one.  Seriously guys, the hell?  Like anyone uses that shit anymore.

Hack This Game was developed by Utopioneer Games

80 Microsoft Points .-- . .-. . /  ... .--. . -. - /  -- .- -.- .. -. --. /  - .... .. ... /  .-. . ...- .. . .--

Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes (1001 Spikes)

UPDATE: Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes is no longer available. However, the game 1001 Spikes for all 2017 platforms is functionally the same game and thus this review will temporarily serve for it. A proper Second Chance with the Chick review for 1001 Spikes will be coming sometime in the 21st century to Indie Gamer Chick.

Aban Hawkins doesn’t like me very much.  Over the past five hours he died hundreds of times at my hands.   He fell to his death, was impaled on spikes, shot by poison darts, stung by scorpions, crushed by boulders, burned by flame throwers, burned by fireballs, burned by lava, crushed by falling blocks, and smashed by a giant statue monster thingy.  Needless to say I’m not on his Christmas card list.

Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes is part of the emerging sub-genre of “punishment platformers” that are apparently all over the Indie market.  The idea is not to make a well balanced game with a decent learning curve.  Games like 1000 Spikes throw you into the deep end of the pool and watch you drown while laughing and pointing at you.

My childhood was spent being weened on consoles ranging from the SNES to the Playstation 2 so I pretty much missed the 8-bit era.  I know everyone has a nostalgic hard-on for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but personally I don’t see the big deal.  If you’re one of those types who can only deal with one channel of sound and boxy looking human-creature things who get killed by every single animated object you bump into, you’ll feel right at home with 1000 Spikes.  Or maybe not, as I don’t remember hearing of any games from that era that start you off with a thousand lives.

Wait, those aren’t spikes. They’re fireballs. This is flagrant false advertising!

I will give the graphics this: they look really good.  Considering how many games on XBLIG look like hastily done knock-offs of South Park on a fraction of the budget, it’s nice to see a game that actually looks the way the designers meant it to be.  Every object is distinguishable from everything else and the animation is 8-bitty without the slowdown, so rock on.  Meanwhile, the controls are mostly solid.  The jumping physics are well done and intuitive.  Press A for a regular jump, and press Y for a high jump.  Jumping isn’t floaty, landing isn’t slippery.  Can’t ask for anything more.

The actual gameplay is fun, if completely aggravating.  You’ll die a lot.  You’ll die seconds into each level.  You’ll die LESS than a second into some levels.  This is trial and error gaming without apology, and so if you lack the ability to memorize patterns, don’t even bother.  1000 Spikes doesn’t ease you in, either.  I died 27 times completing the first level, 57 times completing the second, and 46 times completing the third.  Then on level 1-4 I thought I reached some kind of gaming zen when I was able to finish the board on only two lives.  I felt like dancing around the room naked while furiously rubbing my nipples.  Alas, the next board I died another 51 times.

There’s no check points in Spikes.  In fact, the game makes a point of this during the tutorial.  So if you die at any point in a level, it’s back to the beginning of it.  Frustrating as this is, it does mean that when you finally reach an exit, the sense of accomplishment you feel is very satisfying, and beating the game felt like a major achievement.  You can skip levels but that’s for sissies.  Real men (or sadomasochistic girls) play through to the end and do so with a smile in their face and tears in their eyes.  1000 Spikes did seem to hate me, but I totally loved it, and conquering it in a way felt like a painful divorce.

And yet I’m not going to send a dozen roses to the offices of 8-Bit Fanatics just yet because one of the many voices in my head is reminding me that anyone with a ROM editor can make a game that’s out to punish you.  No, a truly great game isn’t one that makes you suffer for giggles, but one that gives a balanced challenge.  Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes is a well designed game and a great value at 80 Microsoft Points, but I question whether or not the designers of it are capable of showing discretion and maybe even a little TLC.  Who knows, they might turn out a masterpiece.

Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes was developed by 8-Bit Fanatics

80 Microsoft Points were harmed in the making of this review.

The Angry Hand of God

UPDATE: The Angry Hand of God is no longer available following the great XBLIG purge.

God is a bit of a bastard, is he not? When he’s not demanding you psychologically torture your children in a pre-MTV version of being Punk’d he’s usually causing some natural disaster somewhere while hobos hold up signs with obscure Bible quotes that allegedly called the whole thing.

It’s in that spirit that Alex Kaiser brings us The Angry Hand of God, where you blow up cities with lightning shot from the finger of the all mighty Jehovah. It’s a mix of Rampage with a Rube-Goldberg puzzle. You’re placed in a city with various citizens and buildings, and you must completely destroy all the buildings to advance to the next level, of which I only made it to the fourth (and possibly final one) before I fell into a coma. This is one seriously boring game.

Here God is not an all-powerful being. You have a limited amount of energy from which to zap the cities with. Using the right trigger, you charge up power and release the button when you’re ready to fire. You can kill humans with one quick jolt, while buildings require multiple full-scale blasts to completely level. You can also knock them over by shooting cars and causing them to swerve off the road and into your target building, although this requires a bit of timing. You also have to deal with various lightning rods that will draw your bolts away from their intended targets. In order to take them down, you need to crash a car into them or get splash damage from further away objects.

South Park on a $0.36 budget.

Oh, and you can’t shoot the Pope, because he’s God’s BFF. I’m a Catholic and even I object to this. Why would. God be friends with the Pope? He looks like Palpatine from Star Wars and is an ex-Nazi who doesn’t want word to get out about just how much child fucking went down in the church and, um, actually never mind. Throw in David Spade and those three can have an awesome road trip movie.

Mindless destruction is usually a lot of fun, but here it’s a total snooze. The graphics give no sense of satisfaction and all the sound effects feel phoned in. You’ll start to get bored before you finish the second level and wish you had spent your $1 on some gumballs instead. Ironically The Angry Hand of God could very well prove there is in fact no such thing as God, for if there was he would have surely struck this game down.

The Angry Hand of God was developed by Alex Kaiser

80 Microsoft Points were sent to Hell in the making of this review.