Indie Gamer Chick

Cape’s Escape Games (Switch Series Review)

December 3, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 2 Comments

As previously stated in what became the least-viewed feature in the entire history of Indie Gamer Chick, the Vice Family has a new pastime: Escape Rooms. Certainly healthier than our previous pastime: smoking copious amounts of tobacco while sitting on our fat asses and binge-watching old TV shows. Escape Rooms have been our post-Covid salvation. You go into room, they “lock” you in (there’s typically no actual lock for safety reasons, though we did once do a room where we started handcuffed), and you work together to solve puzzles to hopefully exit the room (or in some cases simply unlock a primary treasure chest) before time expires. It’s normally an hour time limit, but sometimes you only have 45 minutes if it’s a shitty room made by cheapskates. In my experience, the 45 minute rooms are the ones that put in the least effort anyway. Either way, Escape Rooms can get expensive. When it’s my parents, Angela, and me, it usually runs us $100 per room. We’ve paid as much as $300 for a single room when we did one with my brothers from different mothers Reggie and Christian and their wives and kids. Spendy, yes, but it’s such a great time. Seriously: if you’re looking for a great Christmas gift, check to see if there’s escape rooms in your area and buy someone the experience. You’ll be hooked. You’ll also find out who among your friends and family are the dumb ones. Of course, you risk finding out it’s you. Not that I would know anything about that. Cough.

On mobile, this game is called “Cape’s Extra Room.” On Switch, FOR NO REASON, it’s called “Cape’s Escape Room 2.5.” That makes it sound like the same room as #2 with different puzzles. It’s not. At all. It’s an entirely different room, in an entirely different location, with entirely different puzzles. I met developer Alignment Sharp on Twitter and confirmed that he doesn’t speak English at all, so some of these quirks seem to be a result of poor translation. The dude has talent and honestly I’d love to see him design an actual real life Escape Room.

Of course, that experience can’t possibly translate to a video game. According to my non-seizure-having family, doing the rooms in VR isn’t remotely the same as real rooms with real props. So, translating the experience in a video game is tough. I’ve done several Escape Room video games lately and all of them fall short. Usually, it’s via clunky controls and unstable engines. That’s why it’s funny that the closest I’ve seen any game come to feeling like the real thing is any of the releases in the VERY cheaply made series called Cape’s Escape Games. There’s five of these on Nintendo Switch and presumably more coming since this series runs ten-deep on the iPhone App Store, where the franchise originated. This review covers the whole shebang, including future releases, because no matter which room you buy, all games offer the same fundamental experience. One that is being shit on by other critics, and I don’t get it. Did they even play it, or did they take one look at the graphics and thumb their snotty noses up at it? Because this was far and away the best I’ve seen any Escape Room video game come to feeling authentic so far. They’re really not bad at all, as long as you ignore the writing and the mediocre visuals. Basically, if Kevin Smith did a video Escape Room, it’d be this.

As you’ll notice in this screenshot, there’s no word-wrap in the dialog. It’s SO annoying. It’s hard to believe that one of the best options the Cape series offers is turning the story off, but you can. It’s a shame, because Cape is hella cute, but the actual dialog is overly sexual and so cringey. These should ideally be good games for the whole family, and they still are.. as long as you turn the story off. Like, immediately. Before the kids are in the room.

Unlike the more higher-end Escape Room video games, the Cape series doesn’t have a physics engine or a 3D environment to deal with. Everything is handled like an old-timey adventure game with static screens and items to collect. But, instead of having to deal with LucasArts style octopus logic (“mix the stick with the trashcan to arm the racoon to overthrow the mayor who in turn gives you a key..” YEA, THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!), the puzzles are exactly the type you find in Escape Rooms. They’re scattered along a small handful of interconnected rooms, along with hints to how to solve them. You have to figure out the sequential order of the puzzles, since solving one always unlocks something essential towards another. This process repeats until you get the final key that unlocks the ultimate door. There’s a story framed around a ghost named Cape that keeps trapping people in these places, but it’s poorly translated from Japanese, overly horny (the implication being that the main person Cape keeps trapping is a pervert), and completely skippable. In fact, you can disable it in the menu, and I strongly suggest doing so. I know this sounds weird coming from the girl who paused the ending of Walking Dead: Season 2 to go play with herself in celebration of her most hated character finally dying, but there was NO REASON for these games to have that type of “humor” in them. What the Cape’s Escape Games do best is perfectly replicate the type of puzzle design you see in real life escape rooms. They took a “less is more” approach that makes every game in the series a genuine joy to experience.

Sure, it’s not much to look at. It won’t win any awards for presentation, but actual effort is made to assure you can locate the puzzles and figure out your way around the room. If you get lost, there is a hint system which can do as little as point you at the next puzzle you’re scheduled to solve, which I confess, we did use once or twice. Hey, we had shit to do! Mostly play other Cape’s Escape Games, but that counts.

So, for example, a drawer might have a lock with a different color for each number, while somewhere else those colors are represented by X amount of colored objects. Count how many of each object, input those numbers into the lock, the drawer opens, and you get something that helps you solve the next puzzle. None of the puzzles are obtuse, with one exception (more on that in a bit). Repeat that for an hour each game and it’s done. Usually, Escape Room releases have no replay value, but Alignment Sharp also included an after-the-game mode where you find various hidden ghosts. Nice addition, but really, you’re paying $3 – $9 (depending on the release) for a one-and-done hour or so experience. That’s fine. Not every game has to be a permanent investment that will be fun for ever and ever, people. If you think $3 for an hour is too expensive, you’re a snot. Hell, we pay $30 every month FOUR TIMES OVER for Escape Room-at-home subscriptions from Cratejoy (we get Deadbolt Mystery Society, Finders Seekers, The Conundrum Box, and the bi-monthly Escape the Crate, at a combined cost of around $140 a month with shipping & handling figured in) that also take roughly an hour or two to finish and offer no replay value. Of course, too many people these days expect every game to last a lifetime. Right. And how many arcades let you take home the machine you dropped a quarter into for 90 seconds of gameplay? Christ, you people crack me up sometimes.

Which of the five games is this from? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. They’re all basically the same level of difficulty. Gun to head, my Dad and I agreed Cape’s Escape Game 3rd Room was very narrowly the hardest of the series. Or was it? We did finish it at like two in the morning, so it’s possible our brains weren’t firing on all cylinders.

Of course, the Cape’s games don’t have the charm of being a real life escape room OR an escape room box with physical maps/puzzles/trinkets. But, you’re also paying a fraction of the price. In fact, I’d say that these are excellent games to spend very little money on and sample if the Escape Room experience is something you’d be interested in. There’s only one puzzle in the entire franchise that we agreed was bullshit. In the second game (I think it was the second game), you have to call up your note pad and use the transparency filter, which suddenly reveals a clue that you couldn’t see before. That’s the only such puzzle like that in the entire game. Otherwise, you never have to use the built-in tools or counters. You can sit and play the game with a notepad and a pen, and it works better than the tools provided.

There’s a learning curve to navigation, and occasionally it’s hard to get a feel for the geometry of the room, but thankfully puzzles and points of interest call your attention with things like (?) stamps. Plus, anything that’s finished and offers no further value to the rest of the game is removed from being able to be clicked on, which is INSANELY helpful. Seriously, as cheaply done as these games are, they really feel like they’re made to be enjoyed. The fatal flaw in so many Escape Room video games is that it seems like developers want confusion to factor in, but that’s just being unimaginative. Really, a video game escape room should have massive advantages over real ones in terms of being able to wall-off players from areas that no longer matter. Even the best video game escape rooms can’t beat the charm of a real one, but they sure as hell can be more convenient and accessible.

All puzzles BUT that one are well done, feel rewarding to solve, and even leave you wanting more when the game is over. When you finish a puzzle, you don’t have to worry about ever clicking that area when you try to navigate the room. Finished puzzles are walled off, and even whole rooms get locked-off once you no longer have use for them. The navigation arrows that lead to those rooms simply vanish, never to be seen again. That’s perfect! That’s the type of video gamey thing a real escape room can’t actually do. If you can’t be better, at least do the things real escape room designers could only dream of doing. The funny thing is, when I showed off that my Dad and I were playing these games in early November, a few people got snobby based on how cheap they look and sound and assumed they were shitty. But actually, these are REALLY good examples of how to do video escape rooms, and we had fun with all five of them pretty much equally. Seriously, it’s embarrassing how excited we are for even more of these games. We’re going to buy every single one from here out. That’s an incredibly rare accomplishment for any indie franchise.

One of the most rewarding aspects of doing an Escape Room is when you enter the room and you see all this weird shit that makes no sense, until you start to solve the puzzles. Suddenly these weird, out of place things have a logic to them, and when you realize that, it’s like you just learned an entire new language, because you sort of did! You’re speaking the puzzle’s language, and it’s genuinely thrilling. Like when I was a kid and I learned how to say “fuck” in ten different tongues.

The one thing I don’t get is why they’re priced differently. The first one sells for $3. The second and third one (which is actually 2.5) sell for $4.90. The 4th and 5th one (which are numbered 3 and 4 sequentially) sell for $9. Mind you, the more expensive ones don’t offer more challenging puzzles or a longer experience. It’s such a nonsensical way of selling a game franchise and it’s bound to trigger confusion. These games seem to go on sale regularly, so if you’re only casually interested, you might be better served waiting for a sale. But seriously, don’t be one of those people who says “well it’s a mobile port and it’s ugly..” Gameplay is king! Take it from someone who has done over a dozen real life escape rooms in 2021: this accomplishes what those 3D escape room games haven’t come close to doing. The lack of physics allows you to FOCUS ON THE PUZZLES! That’s what it’s about! You can’t do that if you’re fumbling around with a camera or if the engine is unstable or you can’t examine items or can’t interact properly with the environment. All credit where it’s due to the Cape’s Escape Game series: it fucking gets it. It’s about the puzzles, stupid! And puzzles don’t require state of the art technology or graphics engines to do right. In fact, they get in the way more often than I do when we enter real escape rooms. HEY, AT LEAST I’M HONEST!

Cape’s Escape Games are developed by Alignment Sharp
NINTENDO SWITCH STORE LINKS
Cape’s Escape Game
Cape’s Escape Game 2nd Room
Cape’s Escape Game 2.5th Room
Cape’s Escape Game 3rd Room
Cape’s Escape Game 4th Room
Each game was purchased at a discounted price.

This entire series is Chick-Approved and ranked as a single entity on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

THIS REVIEW WILL BE UPDATED if any additional Cape’s Escape Games become an exception and are not worthy of wearing the IGC Seal of Approval.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews, Nintendo Switch Reviews Tagged with Cape's Escape Game, Cape's Escape Game 2.5th Room, Cape's Escape Game 2.5th Room Review, Cape's Escape Game 2nd Room, Cape's Escape Game 2nd Room Review, Cape's Escape Game Review, Cape's Escape Games, Cape’s Escape Game 3rd Room, Cape’s Escape Game 3rd Room Review, Cape’s Escape Game 4th Room, Cape’s Escape Game 4th Room Review, Ohhh Cape as in ESCAPE I get it now

Drizzlepath: Deja Vu (Review)

December 2, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment

Drizzlepath: Deja Vu is the new champion of awful. The absolute worst game I’ve ever played in my entire life. It’s been a while since I reviewed anything that left me with nothing positive to say. It’s been so long that I forgot what that feels like. I’m confused. I’m sort of angry. I’m checking to make sure I didn’t have a psychotic episode and imagine the game. I pinched myself. I pinched others. I sawed off my pinky toe.. actually that one was just for fun. But really, this was such a waste of time. Not even that much time either. It takes well under an hour to finish Drizzlepath: Deja Vu, but it feels longer. It’s unreal how bad this game is. It’s so pretentious and unlikable in every way that you’d swear it’s deliberate. But, at least I can try to turn this into a positive and get my thoughts out on how, yes, Walking Simulators can be fantastic. You know, with actual effort.

I envy that ram, for it knows not the pain of playing Drizzlepath.

The insane thing is, this is the 4th game in a series. I’d not known that if my readers hadn’t alerted me. You’d think after four games, they’d know what they’re doing. The game starts with you being dropped in water, at which point, you walk in a relatively straight line until you have to double back a bit and turn a different direction. Then something kills you. Then you start at a different scene, and five minutes or so later you’re given one final thought on the meaning of life, and the game ends. There’s no action button and almost no interactive elements besides tiny visual gags that set-off the main hook of the game: “deep” philosophical commentary that comes across like you’re being stalked by a 14-year-old who actually knows dick shit but fancies themselves to be “worldly” and “enlightened.” On Switch, the commentary sounds like it’s coming through a microphone purchased at a dollar store, which tracks with everything else about the port. On other platforms, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu has one thing going for it: it’s nice looking. On Switch? It looks like a Wii game, and not even a good one. The audio and visuals are some of the worst I’ve seen. Here’s a pivotal scene from the Steam version:

And as close as I could get to the same scene on Switch:

THAT is fucking embarrassing.

Now, normally I don’t give two squirts about presentation because gameplay is king, but with Drizzlepath: Deja Vu, that’s all it could potentially have going for it. There’s no gameplay! You walk down a path that’s walled-off. I managed to kill myself once by walking off a narrow walkway, but otherwise, there’s no puzzles or truly interactive elements. The full-of-itself commentary will play if you walk past certain moments. Like you might see a cabin and a shadowy figure standing in the door of it, and then that person slams the door before you get close. Early on, a character runs away from you. There’s animals, some of whom run from you, and others just sort of stand around. Sometimes a bird will fly overhead and the camera will auto-pan up to highlight them. Finally, a demon rushes you and the screen goes black before you begin a brief final sequence. But you don’t do anything with any of those things. You just observe and listen to the most droning commentary I’ve heard as IGC. Everything you need to know can be summed up by the fact that, instead of an action button, there’s a button that walks in a straight line for you. Yes, they actually added cruise control to a game!

The giant archer in the background has no connection to any other visuals or the glorified fortune-cookie commentary. Apparently Drizzlepath: Deja Vu is the 4th game in the series, and according to the Steam store page, it features nods to the previous three games in the franchise. Who knows if this or the other “WTF?” moments are those nods. They’re just random, confusing shit that show up and do nothing. What a truly unlikable game.

Ideally, a walking simulator makes the world compelling and interesting, or gives you some overarching point to it all. After all, people walk to GO PLACES and DO THINGS, so if you’re making a game that removes the entire reason we, as a species, walk, you’re just being lazy. It’s so unimaginative to just have you walk and “appreciate visuals” while hiding behind the pretense that it’s “okay, because it’s supposed to be relaxing.” Yea, but don’t we play games to relax in general? Isn’t that our escape from the real world, however you define it? If I want to veg out, I don’t just stare at a screen saver. I throw on Tetris, or I’ll even pop in Dead Cells for a run or two. But, you can make a breezy, low-thrills walking simulator WHILE STILL HAVING SHIT TO DO IN IT! Look at The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. It’s 99% walking, but at least you have destinations and stuff to do at those places. For those developers who make games like this, that really are just “hey, look at this stuff”, be honest: you intended to do more and just can’t be bothered. It’s okay. HEY, listen.. it’s okay. Shhhhhh. I’m lazy too.

This burger embryo basically ignores your existence. At one point, there was a deer (I think it was a deer) that ran away from me, which is the closest any of the wildlife comes to actually interacting with you.

A great walking simulator is not just a nature hike that’s occasionally (in the case of DP-DV, rarely) interrupted by weird things photo-bombing the scenery. You’re trying to create the illusion of freedom, so as to immerse the person in the world you’ve created. If you don’t have immersion, you don’t have shit. But, right at the start of Drizzlepath: Deja Vu, the illusion is broken when you encounter a look-out tower with an open door, but you can’t actually go up inside it because there’s a platform seven inches off the ground that you can’t step up on. I tried, and I tried, and I tried. I kept checking and rechecking the control menu to make sure I didn’t miss a jump or action button. I didn’t. Nope, it’s just something you can’t enter. This is it:

Now, being the thorough person I am, I checked to make sure I understood how walking works, just in case I’ve been wrong all these years. Experts agreed with me that, indeed, it involves lifting one leg and moving it forward before planting the foot attached to the bottom of the leg somewhere in front of you, so as to create a forward motion before lifting-up the other leg and also moving it forward, and the process repeats from there. This is how walking works, and it’s dependent on picking your feet up and off the ground. If you don’t pick your feet up, that’s a different thing entirely, with a completely different name. Sometimes it’s called shuffling your feet. Now, in this WALKING SIMULATOR, you are apparently not moving your legs up off the ground, because I could not enter this tower. The gate for the tower is a platform that’s barely elevated above the surface you’re standing on. So, what is being simulated in Drizzlepath: Deja Vu? Because it’s sure as hell not walking!

I want to do a satire of this game where I question how many tampons you’d need to clean up the blood rain. By the way, while this seems like it might be a cool visual, on Switch? Yea, not so much. Click here to see what it looked like when I played it. Warning: cringe-inducing deep commentary about the rat race included.

With no point, no action, and not even gorgeous visuals in the port I played, the only thing a “game” like this could have going for it is immersion. But that tower and that tiny step that you can’t take immediately took a torch to any potential I had to be immersed. From there out, it was just walking forward, occasionally being confused when random shit like miniature UFO balls show up, and then being left dumbstruck by the philosophical ramblings that are so arrogant and pretentious that they made me angry. The Nintendo store page says “you’ll take the role of a nameless man climbing towards a mountaintop in search of answers. Witness events as you explore, each gradually adding to the larger existential narrative..”

Here’s some examples of this, and you might want to set some easy listening in the background to soften your soul in preparation to receive this deep wisdom. Ready? Here we go..

“We may choose to see the world in black and white. Yet, it is anything but!“

Mind. Blown! You’re so right!

“All live and die in cages of our own design!“

That is some deep thinking, man! You must have access to the GOOD weed to put that so elegantly!

“They say up to 60% of the human body is composed of water. Perhaps this is what draws us so frequently in its direction!“

Dude…………….. DUDE! Duuuuude. Dude.

This has been Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey!

This whole thing is supposed to be “surreal or ominous” according to the Switch store page. It really just comes across like a student film by the kid in the class everyone else hopes they don’t get partnered with.

Actually, those are just the opening parts of these long-winded diatribes that are the most completely meaningless philosophical musings I’ve heard in any game. There’s no deeper meaning to be gleamed from this crap. It’s the most base and shallow philosophy. Someone who thinks they’re a free-thinker, man, but really just regurgitates stuff they’ve heard that they know is wise, even if they don’t totally understand it. With no context and little, if any, over-arching tie to the actual in-game happenings, it really just comes across as someone who thinks they’re smarter than you talking down to you.

In reality, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu completely betrays the concept that the game is about exploring existentialism. I’m going to guess they don’t even get what that should be about. If the developer understood it at all, the game would challenge cookie-cutter philosophy instead of just blankly stating it. Instead of the commentary reminding people the world isn’t black and white, existentialism would flip the script. Any well-adjusted adult knows the world is shades of grey, and existentialism would force you to say “am I totally sure about that. Oh God, WHAT IF I’M WRONG?” It’s about reflection and questioning, not reinforcing. But, who needs that shit? Just spew puddle-deep thoughts that make you think you sound smart, package it in the most lazy game imaginable, and put it on everyone else to find meaning in a product you couldn’t even be bothered to create meaning for. The only thing deep about Drizzlepath: Deja Vu is how full of shit it is.

Drizzlepath: Deja Vu was developed by Tonguç Bodur
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox

$5.59 (normally $6.99) can spit deeper than this is the making of this review.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Reviews Tagged with Drizzlepath: Deja Vu, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu PS4, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu PS5, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu Switch, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu Xbox, It's the drizzling shits

Worse Than Death (Review)

December 1, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick Leave a comment

I’m not a horror person in general. I don’t watch scary movies. I don’t play scary games. I’ve never locked myself in a bathroom and chanted BLOODY MARY. I’ve never bungee jumped. I know people say “that’s not horror.” WHY ISN’T IT? You’re tying a rope around your feet and throwing yourself off a tall structure. If the point is to be scary, isn’t that horror? If you want an extreme sport, go play hockey using samurai swords and a puck that’s on fire. Bungee jumping is horror: a simulation of something that should kill you, only you walk away without the dying part. And it’s not for me. None of it is. Maybe I was traumatized by walking past those creepy-ass Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark covers in book stores as a child, but I just never got into the genre.

Worse Than Death mixes comic-style art with neo-retro pixel art. It’s a bit jarring. I never really felt like either style was specifically in service to the game. It’s just how it looks. That’s fine, I guess. I normally hate it, but I’ll let it slide this time.

There’s always exceptions, but it’s certainly not something I seek out or get excited about at all. But, as Indie Gamer Chick, I feel it’s important to wet my whistle in as many areas of gaming as possible. I’ve actually bought tons of indie horror titles over the years. Most of them I don’t even remember the names of, let alone ever get around to playing. In those rare instances where I do, they have to live on their gameplay or storytelling merits, and most are utterly forgettable. I have a hunch I probably won’t forget Worse Than Death, but for the wrong reasons. It’s one of those games where you think you get the twist ahead of time, and then when you realize you’re wrong and the game goes in a completely off-its-nut direction, you can’t help but laugh.

The inspection screens always use the comic book art style. I suppose that was out of necessity, because these screens would be incomprehensible pixelated vomit puddles with the large-dot, faceless characters. Still, it makes me wonder if the whole game should have been done like this. It’s perfectly good comic book artwork. I’d buy a graphic novel by this artist.

In Worse Than Death, a pair of besties arrive at their ten year high school reunion. You’re Holly, and you’re trying to convince your BFF, a Fonz-lookalike named Flynn (I typed THE Flynn, which he should totally roll with), to attend the reunion party. He doesn’t want to because everyone is a bit pissed that he wrapped his car around a tree and killed the their friend, Grace. Yea, that’s just the sort of thing people hate. I don’t even get why you’d bother to show up if you’re a known pariah. Like, these things ARE optional, you know? I’m not exactly an expert on high school politics or dynamics. I was home-schooled. I kind of wish I hadn’t been. I would have gone to school with future NBA star Jeremy Lin if I had attended, and he would have no doubt fallen in love with me. I shit you not, I could be Mrs. Lin right now! Well, actually, probably not, as the minute he signed with the Houston Rockets would have been the moment I’d of filed for divorce. Anyway, among the things I do know about high school is that class reunions aren’t legally binding. If two people didn’t want to go, I can’t imagine why they would. “So the plot can happen” is basically the answer, though there is a kinda, sorta unseen force that seems to have pulled them there, maybe?

Thankfully, the developer didn’t skimp on sound design. Eerie songs and spooky sound effects play throughout Worse Than Death. Channel your inner SNES fandom and PLAY IT LOUD!

Anyway, supernatural shit starts happening and bodies start piling-up, as bodies tend to do. I kinda figured this was going to be the “everyone is already dead and this is purgatory and/or hell” trope. It’s not, and which is the only spoiler I’m going to do. I’ll just say that the plot goes so far off the rails that you question if it ever belonged on the rails in the first place. By the final third of the game, and especially the ending, the story is absolute bat shit on a stick, and not necessarily in a good way. The more that was revealed, the less tense the atmosphere got, which made the jump scares less effective and everyone’s motives less consequential. People keep dying, but it never feels like it matters. It’s supposed to be about secrets and the damage they do, but the back stories are kept too vague, to the point that the destructiveness of those secrets feels somewhere off in the background. By the end game, Worse Than Death had long since ceased being tense or frightening and had just become silly. I went from totally on the edge of my seat to giggling at what a train wreck the whole thing had become.

Of the three hours and change we spent playing this, probably twenty or so minutes was spent trying to figure this fucking thing out. My sister, Angela, finally got it after she took a bathroom break that mysteriously required her to take her tablet and ask what the name of the game was again. Funny how that worked out. This “puzzle” was clunky as all fuck and probably should have been explained better.

So, I must have hated it right? Well.. no. While I feel Worse Than Death ultimately failed to deliver on the promise the opening chapters had, to the point that the end game felt like it was satirizing its own story by time the end credits roll, I still never lost interest in seeing where this was all going. It helps that the writing is razor-sharp throughout. Developer Benjamin Rivers clearly has a gift for making compelling characters and creating dialog that feels almost always authentic. Some of the tropes, like the school bitch or the aggressive bully, feel forced and unnatural. But the relationship between Holly and Flynn feels totally real and affectionate, with the slightest hint of apprehension (which, by the way, the end-game makes sense of with the only aspect of the story where the payoff DID work, and there’s even an after-the-credits gag that put a smile on my face). Maybe the plot is completely off its rocker, but the characters made me and my entire family stick it out for the full three hours or so of gameplay. That was nice.

Worse Than Death’s #1 survival mechanic is waiting in the background while specters walk back and forth, a mechanic that loses its zing a bit when you’re often straight-up told you “feel cold” when they’re around. Plus, a lot of levels have places you can hide but no ghosts, which sort of spoils that later chapters will have the ghosts appear in those rooms.

Well.. maybe gameplay is too strong a word. In fact, you don’t encounter your first puzzle element until the second chapter of the game, and that element is simply finding a code for a door lock. Mostly, the game consists of story bits, exploring relatively small areas for clues, and finding keys or passcodes to open doors. There’s a handful of almost-Escape Room-like puzzles, but don’t buy this game for the problem-solving elements as they’re very basic overall. The survival-horror part of the game is handled better. You’re given not-so-subtle warnings when a danger element is approaching and must either hide in the background or make a run for it. These encounters are constant, but I never actually died from them. There were moments where I got particularly bold (IE impatient) and legged it, only to see a ghost was right there, but still managed to live. It never completely stops being tense, but as a horror experience, Worse Than Death was a lot better when it relied on atmosphere and jump scares. The game might have been better served removing all the hiding stuff completely.

I struggled with the ultimate verdict on Worse Than Death more than most games. To its credit, I was never bored playing it, except with the radio puzzle where we had it on the right channel but didn’t realize we apparently had to flip the switch up and down, and one brief spot where we got lost late in the game that was actually on me. Otherwise, the writing is always compelling. The characters are realistic enough to grow attached to. It does mistake “startle” for “scare” far too much, but what survival horror game doesn’t? It’s so much better when you’re walking by a mirror only to see a shadowy figure run across the reflection. THAT’S the type of horror it does best, and should have stuck to it. After the first hour, I would have bet the farm I was going to award Worse Than Death my Seal of Approval on the characters and atmosphere alone. I mean, yea, it’s weird that the character has to describe the details of seeing a dead body that’s hanging from the ceiling (“OH GOD, HER EYES JUST KEEP STARING OUT!”) because the chosen graphical style isn’t very good at showing off small details, but it’s still always eerie.

That’s a dog? Was its cause of death “infection by The Thing?”

But, that damn direction it took. I sat at my keyboard for ten minutes looking for the right words, and all I could do was make a “mmmmph” sound. I was so ready to feel an uneasy dread going into the finale, and instead I was just giggling by the end. Even worse, I was doing so at the game and not with it, because the ending is so sincere that it makes my heart hurt that it didn’t work for me. A bad ending normally doesn’t sink a video game, but in the case of Worse Than Death, it absolutely needed an incredible payoff. A mystery killer is great! Worse Than Death felt almost like I Know What You Did Last Summer, easily the most underrated horror movie that came out in the wake of Scream. Even if the game did silly things like instant-cure headache medicine (yea, because that’s how pills works, right!) or ghosts that come dangerously close to feeling Scooby-Doo like. I could forgive all that, because it sure seemed like everything was building to a great ending. Then the ending happened, and it sucked, and it retroactively made everything before it feel like a waste of time. It’s so jaw-droppingly whackadoodle that, after getting over the initial shock, we all just started laughing. It was such gloriously awful shit.

So, I can’t really recommend Worse Than Death. Granted, I’m one of the last people who anyone should go to for advice on which horror games to purchase. But, if you’re a non-fan like me, I feel safe in saying that Worse Than Death is not going to be an exception. Either way, I’m totally going to check out other games by Benjamin Rivers. No question he has a gift for dialog and atmosphere. Paying it off? Well.. to be determined. What about all the successful jump scares in the game, you ask? So what? I can do that too. Give me a pack of balloons and a thumbtack and I can startle my family every time with minimum effort, but that hardly makes me Stephen King.

Worse Than Death was developed by Benjamin Rivers
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Steam

$1.99 (normally $9.99) wasn’t really worse than death in the making of this review.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Xbox One Reviews Tagged with eh better than Game of Thrones's ending, Indie Review, Worse than Death, Worse than Death PlayStation, Worse than Death Review, Worse than Death Switch, Worse than Death Xbox

Angry Video Game Nerd 1 & 2 Deluxe (Review)

November 30, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 5 Comments

I’ve never been the biggest Angry Video Game Nerd fan. It’s nothing personal or anything. It’s one of those YouTube shows that caters to people born before me who also realized that some games suck (“wait, I thought it was just me who hated Back to the Future on the NES!”) who also never grew out of singing the Diarrhea Song (“When you’re sliding into first and you feel a sudden burst..”). Which is not to say I’ve never found AVGN funny. Just mostly unfunny. He cusses a lot and makes poop jokes. Which, yea, I do that too, but at least I try to be clever about it. He just strings them together like a third grader filling in every blank in his Mad Libs book with the word “shit.” The majority of AVGN bits and jokes seem to have never evolved past the idea that fecal matter is the single most hilarious thing ever. It’s funny because it’s poop, and poop is funny all by itself. It’s not for me. I’m more of a fan of crotch shots and casual murder, as long as effort is put into both. And murder by crotch shot? It’s why I can’t play as Cassie Cage in Mortal Kombat XI unless I’m prepared to spend the next hour getting stains out of the couch.

Oh, and diarrhea. The Angry Video Game Nerd has a HUGE fascination with diarrhea. Also known as that thing that kills millions of people every year, especially children. You know, as Indie Gamer Chick, I only pretend to be a psychopath. If you think diarrhea is funny, you might actually be one. Seriously, who snickers at the idea of shitting yourself to death? I can’t believe I, of all people, am saying this, but hey James Rolfe and crew: grow the fuck up. How about a good faith effort towards removing that gag from your show, and maybe kick a few bucks to Doctors Without Borders? I’ll do it too, just to show there’s no hard feelings. I just don’t find that particular running gag to be funny. It’s the drizzling shits. Hopefully it’ll be gone by time #3 comes out.

Really, the Nerd’s best bits are the ones that have a set-up and pay off, like actually landing the plane in Top Gun using the Power Glove. If the show could pull off gags like that more often, I’d of actually become a fan. Instead of being someone who, once every 18 months, remembers the show exists at 3AM when I get sick of binge-watching VFX Artists React. At least James Rolfe seems like he’s a nice guy. As opposed to your average YouTube star, almost all of whom come across like complete fucking tools. Like, you know, basically everyone else who appears on the Cinemassacre channel. I’m sure they’re nice too, but if I had to fill a roster of the All-Youtube-Douchebag Olympics, I’d probably just use them and Channel Awesome’s staff and call it a day.

Apparently, most people didn’t get the Captain N joke here. Meanwhile, I was born exactly 60 days before the first episode of Captain N aired on NBC and *I* got the joke. I’m not sure what is more sad: that the intended audience didn’t get it or that I’ve watched enough Captain N in the last couple years to understand it. BTW, Captain N debuted September 9, 1989, which means it debuted in North America exactly ten years to the day that the Sega Dreamcast did. How’s that for useless trivia?

I figure I should have prefaced this review with that fact that I’m not a big AVGN fan. That’s actually really important to note, because I really, really liked the revamped Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe. I know I’m late to the party here, but the thing is, the original builds of these games were not exactly compatible with my photosensitive epilepsy. Then, developer FreakZone Games met me, and we’ve been good friends ever since. Oh right, disclosure: I’m friends with FreakZone Games, or Sam as I know him. He even hid my mascot in his latest game, which I keep calling Spitball Sparky. That is, in fact, NOT the name of his new game. It’s “Spectacular Sparky.” Spitball Sparky is a Game & Watch knock-off of Breakout. Anyway, Sam’s my buddy. BUT, he’s the kind of guy who would never want to be friends with someone who would spare his feelings when reviewing his work. That’s probably why he’s so good at what he does. Good thing, because I have a lot of mean things to say about these games. They’re great, but hardly perfect.

This is Spectacular Sparky, one of two major 2021 indie releases hid Sweetie in them as nods to me. She’s in Axiom Verge 2 too. I don’t really have a joke to go with that. It’s nice that my work meant something to devs that are so talented. Plus, let’s face it: Sweetie is cool! I owe her.. like.. 70% of my success. 75%. Somewhere in that ballpark.

For a while, it seemed unlikely that the AVGN games would ever get a re-release due to tricky rights issues, but once that changed, FreakZone added options to make the games playable for people like me. The original was so flashy that my Twitter followers were blowing up my inbox warning me away from the game. I’m fond of Neo Retro games and AVGN was on my radar as a potential IGC review. Here we are, nearly a decade later, and I’m finally playing it. Incredibly, it still looks amazing. I’ve seen games that had six-figure Kickstarter campaigns that don’t look, sound, or play anywhere near as nice as these do, yet Sam put this whole thing together for under the price of a budget car. Seriously, Sam could have bought a Mitsubishi Mirage or made this game. They cost roughly the same. Wow.

Seriously, I can’t stress enough how gosh-darn beautiful these games are. The second one especially left me gobsmacked several times. THIS is how you do neo-retro: dress the game in pixel art, but go completely bonkers with the tools that actual retro developers would have sold their first-born to have access to.

The original build of AVGN Adventure was notable for its extreme difficulty and lack of options. The most common complaint was centered around “Death Blocks” that resulted in your instant kill if you touched them, sort of like Legos on bare feet. In the revamped AVGN Adventure, there’s now a whopping SIX difficulty settings, and while you can play the original build if you’re sick in the head, there’s now modes that scale back the Death Blocks. I made a good faith effort to beat the game on Normal mode (which is #2 of the six difficulty settings) and couldn’t make progress. But, on “Easy”, the game still has teeth and pretty sizable difficulty but becomes.. gasp.. FUN! Actually, really fun. INSANELY fun even! One of the best games I’ve played as IGC. It’s almost like when you leave an absurdly talented developer to their own devices, they end up making a great game. Who’d of thunk?

Lazy movie quotes and tons of swearing without even the faintest hint of cleverness. Yep, this really is an Angry Video Game Nerd game.

You don’t have to be a Nerd fan to appreciate how good AVGN 1 is. You don’t need to get the references from the show. You don’t need to get the references to classic games. In fact, this feels less like an AVGN release and more like an M-Rated Captain N: The Game Master game. Which, according to many of my readers, was their dream game as children. I’m not just being nice here: the opening cinematic and the stage-select screen are based on the opening credits from that “classic” 1989 animated series and you play as a protagonist who uses an NES Zapper for a weapon and plays through recognizable-but-completely-wrong video game zones.

Only rarely over the course of both games, at least on Easy mode (and “easy” is relative, as I died over 300 times between the two games) did the game become so difficult that it was demoralizing. The stages based on sci-fi stuff in AVGN II had the action grind to a halt. The shit thing is, they probably also use the most imaginative portals in a game since.. well.. since Portal! But, you’re forced to heel-toe your way through them, and it’s just not that fun. That part and one section of the Virtual Boy area were the closest I came to quitting AVGN at any point. Once the action got going again, I immediately remembered why I was so smitten with these games.

There’s a Castlevania stage, a Mario stage, a Mega Man stage, with winking nods to dozens of famous games along the way. There’s even an entire stage dedicated to Atari’s pornography games, and when I say “dedicated to” I mean THE ACTUAL SPRITES FROM BEAT ‘EM AND EAT ‘EM ARE IN THIS GAME! Do I think Sam took that stage too far? Yes. I don’t think there’s anything funny about Custer’s Revenge, a game that’s about rape, but that’s the final boss of the stage. I had to do the parent thing and say “I’m not mad at you so much as I’m disappointed in you” and hope it cut him to the bone as much as it did when I was a kid and my parents said it to me. I mean, my parents still say it to me. Pretty much every day, and for different reasons. For me, it’s just white noise at this point, so hopefully Sam has been otherwise decent.

Yea yea. Whatever. I grew up in the Bay Area. We call this shit “Tuesday.”

Functionally, the games are platform-shooters that feel closer to Mega Man if the Blue Bomber got over his crippling arthritis and was able to lift his arm up. You run, you jump, you shoot, and you precision-platform your way around enemies and traps. This was probably the smart way to go, though I’m a little surprised that FreakZone didn’t change the weapon to suit each stage’s theme. A whip for the Castlevania stage. A different kind of whip for the Beat ‘Em and Eat ‘Em stage. I’ll wait for that image to be cleansed from your soul. Are you good? Okay, moving on..

Enemies explode like meat piñatas, their organs often left rolling around the ground in a way that seems tailored to leave me sitting in a puddle of my own joy goop.

The action is really well done. The enemies are NEVER too spongy, and thus the two games (especially the first one) cut blistering paces. There’s also various limited-use weapons scattered around, which are probably the biggest flaw in the game. AVGN 1 & 2 are still punishers when you get down to it. You have unlimited lives and the finale screen of each title ends with a total death counter. So, why would you lose the temporary weapons between each death? That’s not fun! A couple of them, like the Glitch Gremlin or Super Mega Death Christ, I never once successfully used outside of the tutorial level. Oh, I would have, but I always died from spikes, pits, or death blocks before I got to a section where they were useful. Or, because you can only carry one item at a time, I might have accidentally replaced Jesus with a beer keg, like many in the south do today. If you kept items after dying, or if the weapon/area items were kept separately, it’d been so much more fun. AVGN 1 & 2 handle items the way someone who gives you something and then takes it back. What’s that called again? Oh right.. an asshole.

On the plus side, I finally played a decent indie game with Jesus in it. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences (see my reviews of Fist of Jesus and Save Jesus).

The disastrous use of secondary weapons are probably the biggest flaw, but they’re hardly alone. You also lose multi-shot upgrades if you take a single hit. It’s such a tease. There’s some minor control issues unique to both games. The learning curve for the relatively loose jumping will have you falling to your death several times early in AVGN 1. By time you start the sequel, you should be at peace with the handling, but it’s always going to be a bit off-feeling. In the sequel, an item caused me the most trouble. ASSimilation (seriously, that’s the name) has permanent upgrades. One of them is a Nintendo Power Pad that you use as a cape. But, I found the cape absolutely fucked me when I attempted to wall-jump (an ability exclusive to the sequel), and there’s no way to disable it. Once you acquire an upgrade, it’s on, period. Even worse, I never found a single instance where the cape was useful. It’s the leaky silicon breast implant of game upgrades: fun to look at, but dangerous to your health.

The second game also includes worlds themed around other Cinemassacre productions like Monster Madness and Board James. If you’re not a diehard fan of those things, you’ll wonder why a game about a video game critic has you dodging Hungry Hungry Hippos and fighting Mr. Bucket. Having said that, the Monster Madness stages were truly stunning to both play and just admire. AVGN 2 might be the best looking neo-retro indie ever.

The weird thing is, Sam assured me that I’d like AVGN 2 even more. He was wrong. The second game builds off the first with the same look, mechanics, and physics, but adds a Mario 3-like map, unlockable special moves, and feels closer to a direct-homage to classic “bad games” than the first one did. While it’s a fine game (seriously, these are both great efforts), I felt the first AVGN had bolder level design, better action, and some of the best pacing I’ve experienced in any punisher. Seriously, I’d tell any aspiring developer that if they intend to include checkpoints in their game, play AVGN 1 on easy mode. The checkpoints are perfectly spaced, something the sequel fell well short of. Even the set-pieces in the first game are more memorable. Seriously, how can you top riding a flaming Jaws? Maybe if it had chainsaws for teeth or something. Actually, dibs on that idea.

The second game features regular encounters with “Fred Fucks”, which is based on a gag credit from the NES Castlevania. Yes, they stretched a joke that lasted about a second in one Nerd review into a mini-boss you have to fight like six times in a game. Seriously though, how else do you make a game based on someone who plays bad games?

It’s one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen in my ten years of doing game reviews. Here you have a pair of games from the same series. They now even have the same engine with the same play mechanics, same controls, same type of action, same characters, and same overall theme. The sequel adds special moves that weren’t part of the first game, but otherwise, these two games should feel very similar. But, that’s all superficial. Scratch below the surface and I found Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures to be a much more white-knuckle, tense, twitchy action-platformer. ASSimilation instead feels more like it’s built around themes and high-concept satire. That stuff is there in the original, but it always takes a backseat to the gameplay. So, yea, the first game is better. By quite a margin, too.

I think a big reason why Sam and me hit it off as friends so much is that we have very similar taste in games. When it comes to 2D run-jump-spray titles, we like tight action and big, grandiose set pieces. AVGN has some truly spectacular set pieces, and even the lesser ones are still memorable.

Don’t mistake that for saying one game is weak. This has to be one of the greatest gaming two-packs ever made. Both games feel like proper loving tributes to gaming’s past, and for fans of the Nerd’s show, you’ll have lots of Memberberries. Hell, even being a non-fan myself, I still remember the bit in his Ninja Turtles review where he tried to make a jump, only to discover you’re supposed to just walk-across a gap. That’s here, and I checked: yes, if you jump, you fall through. That’s the good stuff, there. Sure, the language is 4th grade playground levels of juvenile (perfectly aware of the hypocrisy, you’re welcome) and the gags don’t land nearly as much as the game wishes they did (though there’s one laugh-out-loud moment with a boss in Nerd 2 that had me wiping tears), but as video games? These are outstanding efforts! The first game NEVER gets boring. The second game does cross the line a few times with moments that are so unfair that they become tedious and sloggy. But, those moments only stand out because they’re so rare. In a just world, these games would be remembered as all-time top indie titles.

After finishing both games (a 100% completion is not required), you open up a bonus world with three new levels and a boss fight. Instead of being a tacked-on throwaway extra, these are actually some of the strongest levels in the entire set. Even better: all three levels are distinct. The first one is like a highlight reel of the best nail-biting platform sections. The second level (pictured above) is a concept stage where you must avoid a speeding truck, and the third stage is a maze-like tower that utilizes wrapping-around the screen. If that’s how the Nerd’s 2D adventures end, it’s a hell of a swan song.

They’re not considered among the all-time elite indies, and that’s tragic. Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures (and the sequel to a much smaller degree) is proof that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. It’s a game crucified by its 2013 reputation. The AVGN Adventures included in the two-in-one-pack you can buy now is so radically improved that it might as well be a whole new experience. One that has been toned back enough that you can actually appreciate the sublime level design, excellent enemy balance, spectacular boss fights, and that PERFECT pacing. I can’t stress enough how I’m going to be pointing out this game to newbie developers for generations to come as an example of how to space your checkpoints absolutely dead-on balls perfect. When a game has reached that level where I’m going to be citing it as the ideal standard of what new devs should aspire to, that’s rare. So, for those of you who hated this in 2013 based solely on the difficulty, give it another shot. If you just hate the Angry Video Game Nerd, nothing I can say will matter. That’s another reason I’m guessing this hasn’t taken the world by storm. When you base a game on a YouTube personality who has one very specific formula that they haven’t evolved in over a decade, and a polarizing figure at that, it’s basically impossible to market a game on the game’s merits. It’s not like the trailer will say “the games are still fun to experience, unlike new episodes of the Angry Video Game Nerd!”

Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe was developed by FreakZone Games
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Steam

$11.99 (normally $14.99) had her nerd immersion broke ever since Rolfe got that midlife crisis/wannabe badass tattoo in the making of this review.

The Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Reviews Tagged with Angry Video Game Nerd, Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe, Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe PlayStation, Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe Review, Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe Switch, Angry Video Game Nerd I & II Deluxe Xbox, Hahahaha he said "shit!", LMAO LOOK HE SAID ASS, OH MY GOD HE MADE A POOP JOKE! CLASSIC!

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Review)

October 14, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 2 Comments

I actually get why some people don’t like the Smash Bros. franchise. I don’t agree with them, but I do understand them. Gameplay can become an unimaginable clusterfuck of visual spam that looks like effects from multiple different genres were spliced together in a way sure to cause a tension headache. If you find yourself in a match on one of those massive platforming-stage-type arenas with Pokeballs and Assist Trophies set to max, keeping track of the action or even where the hell you are on screen, even with ID tags on, is a pain in the ass. Plus, despite varied move sets, most non-professional players tend to spam the same attacks over and over and over and that can get boring.

Still a better ending for this dragon than the ones from Game of Thrones got.

So yea, I do get how someone could not buy into the hype. Frankly, the only reason I didn’t is because I couldn’t get my epilepsy under control for years, and Smash Bros is to photosensitivity what a Big Mac is to dieting. In my pre-epilepsy days, I played TONS of Melee on my GameCube. It was easily the Cube game I put the most time into. I got every single trophy and loved every moment of it. Then came epilepsy, and I realized halfway through Brawl my Smash days were over. I never even made it far enough to unlock Sonic The Hedgehog, and I didn’t even bother trying with Smash on Wii U. I didn’t like the 3DS version at all. I hated how it felt, and I put it down after less than an hour, never to return.

Now, I have my epilepsy under control. This last week, my Dad and I watched the Sora reveal trailer. My Mom and sister were out of town, meaning it was just the two of us. My Dad just started gaming full-time within the last couple years, and after seeing the trailer, he wanted to know if it lived up to the hype. As I type this sentence, he’s putting somewhere around hour #70 into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It’s safe to say, the hype was lived-up.

Good lord! Of course, there is room for four more fighters after Sora drops. Hmmmmm. Nah, I’m sure this is it. Probably. Who knows? It’s weird that there’s still space there.

In that time, I’ve mostly been struggling to wrap my head around the sheer amount of content. Yea, I’m disappointed that the single player campaign doesn’t more closely resemble Brawl’s design, and I preferred collecting trophies in Melee to “spirits” in Ultimate, but otherwise, this is such a massive game. It took us just under 40 hours to complete World of Light and score a 100% completion on Normal difficulty. Along the way, you collect “spirits” that are basically static JPEGs of characters from all over the video game spectrum. And I mean ALL OVER! In fact, there’s really one Nintendo game that gets no love at all: StarTropics. There’s NOTHING for StarTropics. Hal’s Adventures of Lolo also never shows up, but Lolo & Lala (or rather Lololo and Lalala, the Kirby bosses) appear in a background on the GameBoy stage, so in a way they’re here. As of this writing, there’s 1,499 spirits with more coming in the Sora update, and it’s likely more will be added even after Sora drops this next week. Sadly, there’s no biographies for them. They’re just static pictures that also work as buffs for fights in the adventure mode or for the “spirit board” where you aim to collect even more spirits. It’s like you’re a gaming version of Ghostbusters, which is funny because the first thing my Dad asked is “are the Ghostbusters in this?” I said “no.” He said “there’s a Ghostbusters video game!” He’s a delight.

I’m really not a fan of the whole “time and shoot to get the spirit” shit. Maybe if there had been a larger variety of ways you had to finally unlock the spirit, it’d be okay. But, after having to battle some of the harder, four-star level spirits, needing to do this one last thing became a major pain in the ass.

Beyond the spirits, there’s several other collectibles. There’s a boatload of Mii Fighter costumes, new songs for the soundtrack, tons of optional challenges, and more. Hell, the roster itself is a collectible. In fact, when you first boot-up Smash Ultimate, you only get the original roster of fighters from the Nintendo 64 game (plus any DLC characters you’ve bought). That means you have to unlock SEVENTY characters over the course of the game. You can do this in a few ways. We got ours mostly through the World of Light campaign. Anytime you “wake-up” a playable character, you gain access to them in all other modes. Or, when we’d quit out of World of Light, it’d usually say “A NEW FOE APPEARS” and we’d unlock another. This would happen while we cleared-out the Spirit Board as well, but it was hugely annoying when that happened. The Spirit Board works on a timer, and after five minutes, the spirits reshuffle. Apparently you can also unlock fighters through the Classic Mode, which I’ve actually decided is the weak link of the game. Compared to all the other modes, it’s just old fashioned anymore. But, I was annoyed that the target practice stuff was gone too. I’m sure if I really, REALLY think about it, I’ll remember how hard and frustrating some of those were, but in the spirit of Smash Bros. fandom, I’m just mindlessly complaining right now. Also, they could have made the alternate costumes of the fighters collectible too. That’s.. like.. 623 more things they could have made you collect. I mean, fuck it, why not? Literally every single new thing you get feels special. When has that ever happened in any game?

Dad, mad bastard that he is, bought EVERY Mii Fighter costume. The thing is, you still have to create the Mii that goes with the costumes and manually create the fighters for them. Really, each of these costumes should have come with a prefabricated Mii and just been added to the menu for the Mii Fighters. I mean, you DID pay for them!

Of course, all this stuff is predicated on whether or not you like playing Smash Bros. If you don’t, none of it matters. I really like Smash Bros. I hate doing this type of thing, but if I had to do the “describe the game in one word” thing, the one word would be “cathartic.” It’s the poster child for my beloved “OOMPH”, the idea that violence in games feels like it has weight and gravity and isn’t just pixels and polygons painted on top of each-other. A fighting game without oomph would be awful (see Clayfighter 63 1/3 for an example). Smash might be the most OOMPHful game ever. It feels so violent, and it’s fantastic! But, I was already sold on the concept back in 1999. Even with the worst box art of any Nintendo first-party game, I totally fell in love with Smash Bros on the Nintendo 64. Super Smash Bros. Melee spiked the ball and would easily make my top five GameCube list. I didn’t need any convincing. I mean, I wasn’t as bad as those fans who declared this their Game of the Year before they even played it, but I knew I’d have a good time, and I did. That’s not why this is a special game.

The shop, like the spirit board, is limited to a max of ten randomly-chosen items at a time. You can’t just grind-up resources. You also have to wait for the stuff you’re missing to appear. I get the idea is to keep players coming back to the game after they’ve finished all the content, but it’s still really annoying that you can’t just knock-out the music or the Mii Costumes first.

No, how I know Smash Bros. Ultimate is something special is my Dad, in his 70s now and brand-new to gaming, is totally hooked on it. Yea, it’s the reward mechanism thing of unlocking something new basically every minute. Sure. But there’s more to it. The simple play mechanics ease newcomers into the action and slowly reveal to them depth and nuance on a scale someone watching would never imagine. My Dad started by mashing buttons and now he’s stringing together combos and feeling mighty proud of himself. Sure, you can mindlessly mash buttons if you wish. That’d probably be enough to get you through the single player modes. But for those who journey deeper, you’ll find one of the most satisfying and balanced fighting games ever made. In fact, Smash does such a good job of being newbie friendly that it opened my Dad’s eyes to the entire fighting game genre. He wants to get into this style of game now.

Wow!

Some of the spirit battles are absurdly difficult. The one that took us the most attempts was Pauline from Super Mario Odyssey. Here, Princess Peach runs around trying to avoid you, and with a short timer, you must knock her out while dealing with Mario and Donkey Kong’s attacks. It’s maddening, but what really was a kick in the ass was that, after dozens upon dozens of failed attempts, we only won because Peach accidentally killed herself after missing a jump. She had ZERO damage. Dad checked, and apparently this has happened to multiple other people who have struggled with this level. It makes us wonder if they secretly built in a mercy feature. Come to think of it, the other extra-hard battle, for the spirit of Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid, also killed itself.

Yea, there’s stuff that bugs me. I really do wish they’d done something like Subspace Emissary. I wish the map for World of Light had been less abstract and easier to find your way around. I think the larger stages are boring and the camera is often panned too far back for the action. Also, I can’t imagine how brutal playing this must be for those poor souls who have to use their Joycons instead of being able to buy the GameCube controllers. (Speaking of which, after 70+ hours, the wireless GameCube controller we bought for Ultimate is still on its original Duracell batteries. Holy moley! The Energizer Bunny wept in despair). But honestly, I’m happy that I got Smash back. It’s fan service and full of really lazy Memberberries (even I geeked out at a picture of the girl from Eternal Darkness. OH MY GAWD LOOK! THE GIRL FROM ETERNAL DARKNESS!) that are devoid of all context. Playing Smash Bros Ultimate often feels like watching an episode of Big Bang Theory without the laugh track. LOOK, IT’S THAT THING OR CHARACTER FROM A GAME YOU PLAYED! But, you know what? It got me. It got me because it’s fun! It feels like a labor of love that wanted to figure out a way to include everything, and did. Except StarTropics. After five games, it’s the one that gets no love. God, what the fuck did StarTropics do to Sakurai? Did it run over his grandma or something?

Super Smash Bros Ultimate was developed by Sora
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$59.99 + a lot more in DLC sang GRANDMA GOT RAN OVER BY A STARTROPICS in the making of this review.

Smash Bros. Ultimate is Chick-Approved! Non-indies aren’t eligible for the IGC Leaderboard.

Sorry the formatting sucks. WordPress keeps getting worse and worse.

Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with Smash Bros review

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension (Switch Review)

September 6, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment

Apparently “game player fucks with game developer” is now a game genre unto itself. And I don’t mean “play a game for a minute and leave a one-star review on Steam” which can be fun if you’re a complete scoundrel. No, I mean “meta games” where a narrator matches wits with you, though in the self-loathing world of Indieland where game developers perpetually suffer from imposter syndrome, it’s telling the narrator is always the most witless mother fucker in the world. There’s a few routes this can go: completely unlikable pretension (see The Beginner’s Guide), or I did one a few years ago called Dude, Stop that was fine to play (it won my Seal of Approval on gameplay merit alone). I mean, it wasn’t funny. If you’re aiming for comedy, it seems like “be funny” should be a given. And those are just the ones I played. Again, this is now a genre! If you’re not up for a sports game, a shooter, or a puzzler, you can now accumulate a library of titles in the Fear of Failure category.

Among those titles is recent Switch release There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, a paid remake of a free-to-play PC game. Oh hey, speaking of new genres, let’s call this one the Kicking One’s Self genre, because it’s trendy recently to re-release formerly free games at much higher prices than nothing from game developers who never expected their free-to-play quirk release to get downloaded more times than Windows Update. See also Doki Doki Literature Club. But hell, I’m willing to pay money for a game that entertained me, and There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension truly inspired. At least to start. At first, it feels kind of like an Escape Room game. You’re stuck on the title screen and trying to start the game that the developer most certainly doesn’t want you to see or play. The dialog is genuinely funny, as are the increasingly comical lengths the developer goes towards preventing the game from starting. I loved it! I mean, I wondered how long they could possibly stretch having a title screen be an entire game. The answer is “about thirty minutes, maybe”, depending on how much you’re able to sniff-out the moon logic of solving the puzzles. Because, after the first of six “chapters” the game goes completely off-the-rails, switches genres entirely, THEN SWITCHES AGAIN, and it’s um…..

Weird.

I thought Kennedy died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound?!

I don’t want to spoil it, because my recommendation is mostly based on the fact that I was genuinely caught off-guard several times, and the laughs never stop coming over the handful of hours you get. I’ll note that There Is No Game was better served when the focus is you versus the developer. When it dips its toes in commentary/satire of other gaming tropes like ad-supported content or pay-to-win mechanics, the laughs slow to a trickle, because these are just variations of the same jokes and meta humor that comedy games have been leaning on for a decade now. “Isn’t it funny how games charge money for stuff you used to get for free?” Yea, it’s goddamned fucking hilarious. My sides split like the sticks of a double popcicle every time DLC for anything is announced. While There is No Game: Wrong Dimension never completely craters out, you get a lovely view of the crater that lasts long enough that I spent as much time worrying that There Is No Game was in danger of bottoming-out at any moment than I did enjoying the farce. And really, some of the solutions to puzzles are too abstract. Is it fun? Yes. Did it lose the plot? Somewhat. Do I recommend it? Yes, very much. Rare is the game that is fun AND funny from start to finish, even if the humor is sometimes a fruit so low-hanging it could be misclassified as a vegetable.

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension was developed by Draw Me A Pixel
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam

$12.99 noted the game’s store page spoiled what I wasn’t willing to spoil.. grumble.. in the making of this review.

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews Tagged with There is No Game: Wrong Dimension

Escape Room Crate Review #1: Finders Seekers – Mont Saint Michel

July 24, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 3 Comments

My family is absolutely hooked on doing Escape Rooms. It’s something I’m singing the praises of to everyone. I literally can’t believe something so cool is taking off the way it is. But, there’s this niggling little voice in the back of my head screaming “THIS IS A FAD! ALL THESE PLACES WILL BE OUT OF BUSINESS BY THE END OF THE DECADE!” I’m not trying to be a debbie-downer here, but I think every fan of the Escape Room phenomena is operating under the assumption that the party could stop at any time. In fact, Covid drove a stake through the heart of many. I’m just trying to enjoy it while it lasts. For those that don’t know, it’s exactly what it sounds like: you’re locked in a room and have an hour to get out. The room contains all the clues you need to escape. There’s usually a sequential order to the puzzles, but sometimes there’s literally just a chest with a dozen padlocks on it and you have to figure out which puzzle goes to which lock and what the combo is. Speaking of which, if you want to do these: practice at a variety of combination locks. Trust me. We’ve lost exactly one room in 2021, and that was because we didn’t have the combo in the correct position in the lock, despite having the correct number. Grrrrr.

The other issue is you’ll inevitably run out of rooms you haven’t done. Most establishments have 3 or 4, maybe more. Many also have only one or two decorated rooms, with the rest relying on virtual reality. I can’t do virtual reality, as one of the keys to beating epilepsy is distance from a TV screen, and VR is literally strapping a television next to your eyeballs. Many of the establishments around here rotate their rooms every 3 or 4 months, but with Covid, they’ve curtailed that. We’re not TOTALLY tapped out yet, but our thirst for more puzzling needs to be quenched. But, one of my fans on Twitter who knew of my family’s obsession with Escape Rooms asked if we’d ever considered doing the mail-order ones that you play in the privacy of your own home. Um.. no, and that actually sounds fucking awesome. So, we subscribed to a few. The first one just arrived yesterday, and I’d like to talk to you all about it.

Finders Seekers arrived in our mail box, and I was sort of stunned at how small it physically was. “Crate” in this case is about as thick as a normal pizza box, but nowhere near as long. We all were a bit disappointed.. until we opened it. The elaborate puzzle-based mystery therein was genuinely the most fun we’ve had “playing a game” at home in years. It actually feels like a stripped-down Escape Room that keeps the best elements from the physical locations, IE the puzzles, and works them into a linear storyline that was razor thin on plot BUT engaging enough that all five of us cared about the ultimate solution. To their team’s credit, they also do their best to give the truly dedicated families/groups ways to immerse themselves by recommending Spotify music to play over the game, though for the life of us we couldn’t get it to run on any device without crapping out after 10 seconds.

Everything that comes in this month’s box. Some puzzles were better than others. We were especially annoyed with one that’s like a maze but also a weave, which was a bit obtuse. In fact, we actually solved that one by working backwards from the exit and logic-ing out what the letters COULDN’T be.

Contained within the box was several different puzzles, all of which used their own rules, cyphers, and logic. In order to play a Finders Keeper box, you MUST have direct access to a device with a web browser, since the padlocks or keys common to escape rooms are replaced with entering the passwords you discover into a web browser. You’ll work your way from one enclosed element to another. This particular crate came with thirteen “elements.” Among them, a satchel of French lavender that stunk to high heaven.. in a good way.. and a folding cup with a lid. You start the adventure by typing in a specific web address that will guide you along the journey. It feels almost like a physical version of Professor Layton, where every person you encounter will present you with a puzzle to solve. Take one of the elements, figure out what about it contains the password, and enter it into the provided box OR boxes provided on the website. The story is also presented chapter-by-chapter on the site.

I’m not kidding when I say we smelled the box this shipped in from our porch.

The puzzle design is truly the standout aspect of Finders Seekers. We worked out every puzzle as a group, and when we correctly entered the password into a device, we cheered and slapped high fives. You don’t need to be a super-genius for them. If you have a group, at least one of you is bound to figure out what the “trick” is and then, as a group, you can sort it out from there. IN THEORY an individual can easily do these. If I had a knock on this, it’s that they don’t give you a cheap option to have them double-up some of the elements for multiple people. We sat at a round table and all would stare at each one, but only one person of course is going to have the best view. We would pay extra to add extra copies, but not so much that we just pay twice for one box. Something they may want to consider. They might also want to consider doing their own app that you use to “drive” each of their monthly games instead of using a URL and a web browser, which could also be designed to be more immersive. And, yes, the story COULD be better written. Again, the Professor Layton “flimsy excuse to present a puzzle” vibe is thick, but like Layton, you inevitably care about the ultimate point of it all by time it’s done. It NEVER comes close to the immersion an escape room can achieve (duh, we’ve done ones where you start handcuffed to the wall), but the puzzles are exactly like the ones you encounter in them, and you don’t even have to waste time finding them!

We optionally recommend each player carry a pen and paper notepad while playing.

A quick side-note: Finders Seekers updates their Facebook and Instagram accounts. BUT, their Twitter has been dead since 2018. They really need to get someone updating that. We genuinely were worried they’d gone out of business. DON’T DO THIS, ANYONE WHO MAKES GAMES! You are genuinely better off closing down that social media page than just leaving it stagnant.

We had a LOT of fun playing Mont St. Michel. Even without the pressure of the timer of a normal escape room, anyone should be able to complete this box in a couple hours, and there’s NO replay value. We did write on ours, but it’s not necessary. You could, in theory, not write on it and then pass it on to someone else. The business model is based on a subscription, or you can order one at a time for $30. Mind you, $30 is the average price for one person to enter an Escape Room. Go with a group of four and you’re spending $120. A year’s subscription will run you $300, essentially giving you two months for free. We have subscribed for a year, and we’re also planning on ordering a few of their in-stock past boxes (though apparently those go quick). For our first-ever Escape Crate AND our first Finders Seekers box, Mont St. Michels was VERY fun, and we’re extremely excited for what else they’ll come up with. Really good, guys. Tons of fun! But, let’s see if that can be maintained over the course of a year.

Visit Finders Seekers website to subscribe.
$12.50 (Normally $25 per a month, but this month we had a 50% off our first month discount) was spent in the making of this review. A single month of Finders Seekers will cost $30.

Filed under Escape Room Crate Reviews Tagged with Escape Room, Escape Room Crate Review, Finders Seekers, Finders Seekers Crate, Finders Seekers Review

Save Me Mr. Tako Definitive Edition

July 2, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment

Technically, this could be a Second Chance with the Chick review. I reviewed Mr. Tako back in 2019, noting I didn’t care for the difficulty, the lives system, etc. In fairness, I didn’t have nostalgia for the Game Boy, which is as close to a prerequisite for enjoying Mr. Tako as it gets. As far as difficulty and other technical issues go, developer Christophe Galati was game, and in fact, he did patchwork on Steam. Unfortunately, his publisher on Switch, who I won’t even give the dignity of naming, just wouldn’t cooperate. Having gotten to know Chris, he got a raw deal. What really sucks is there’s no way of getting those adopters of Mr. Tako this port for free. I like Chris. A lot. He’s a good guy. I admire that he persevered through a nauseating situation to get his work out there at its maximum potential.

This dialog from Mr. Tako became absurdly meta.

Now, having said that, my #1 problem with Save Me Mr. Tako was always that I was never this game’s target audience to begin with. That’s totally out of Chris’ hands. I’m just not nostalgic for the Game Boy. I don’t see how anyone can be. Such nostalgic feelings would be no different than someone being nostalgic for.. I dunno.. rabbit ears on a television. Why would you long to go back to that today? It doesn’t seem convenient, and the picture quality was never as good, and sometimes you’d probably have to get up and adjust the damn things. Imagine someone wishing they could tune-in Netflix using rabbit ears. That’d be so dumb! Why would you want that, Dad? What is wrong with you?!

Sorry, that was awkward.

Well, how come that’s dumb, but reminiscing about the Game Boy, to the point you’d crave a new game that looks like a Game Boy game isn’t? The Game Boy looks the way it does because it was cheap, could run on batteries without sapping them, but was still a major step above the previous option for handheld gaming, which was either Game & Watch or typing swear words into a calculator. Unlike something like, say, the NES or Super NES, where you can do a lot with the limited color palette and sprite-sizes, the Game Boy is just always ugly. Even a game like this, which if it had come out in the 90s, would have been in the upper-echelon of Game Boy games, in both graphics and gameplay. Yea, Mr. Tako is an amazing achievement: a modern indie stylized like a retro game with almost no seams of modern stitching, and it’s even fun. But I’d rather it look like almost any other platform. I can’t get over it.

There’s tons of different four-color palettes you can use. Why not just do the Super Game Boy thing and have a customize option? On a side note, thank you for including photosensitive options. Always classy.

Which is not to say you can’t appreciate Mr. Tako as a game without the four-color thing getting in the way. Mr. Tako is still potentially one of THE all-time great indie mascots, but like Pikachu before him, he has to get his adorable ass out of Game Boy Land and into something more flattering for his personality. Then again, Save Me Mr. Tako goes to some wickedly dark places. The parents of Mr. Tako, the former King & Queen lived happily ever after. No wait, they fucked and died, like all Octopi do. None of that cutesy Disney crap. Octopus die after mating, and by god, that’s going in the game!

I get why they’re there and I know that other players like them more than me, but I sort of wish none of the human-based levels existed. I always winced when they came up. I didn’t like a single one, but again, that’s just me. I thought they were always boring.

Actually, “by God, that’s going in the game!” seems to have been the motto for developing Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition. There’s a jaw-dropping FIFTY power-ups. Fifty! In a weird way, I kind of admire that Chris didn’t say “I’ll save that one for the sequel!” at any point. But for a mascot platformer, it’s kind of overkill. You can reload your hat at any midway checkpoint, but realistically, you’ll only have one or two that you actually like to use. There’s also fifty stages, a few of which are inspired, but most of which are plain at best, if not outright tedious. Christophe suffers from Peter Jackson syndrome: he desperately needed an editor. Rework the fifty levels down to eight worlds of four stages each, with all the best bits from the stages deleted used to extend the good/average levels. When Mr. Tako is good, it’s a lot of fun. But it gets samey and sloggy, and for what? So a sales blurb can say fifty stages? If nobody is raving about the level design, it doesn’t matter. Give me thirty-two good levels to fifty mostly dull ones any day.

I decided a few weeks ago I’d save this for my 10th Anniversary review. Then I went down my timeline to fetch the media for this review, since I hadn’t added that, and I realized “oh shit, I only uploaded videos. Well, that’s okay, the video are still.. on.. my Switch.. wait, didn’t I clean all my media out a few weeks.. ago?” 🙁 Well, fudge.

But, Mr. Tako actually is an overall net-positive this time. Part of that is the difficulty is adjustable and therefore more reasonable this time around. It allows you to appreciate the absolutely batshit raving story about a war between humans and octopus, which is so gosh-dang charming and melodramatic that you have to admire it. At times, the story interruptions can get a bit annoying, and the limited Game Boy appearance can make telling some characters apart a bit harder than it needed to be, but I was genuinely invested in where this was all going. Funny enough, as nutty as the story is, it’s also thoughtful and at times sentimental and sweet. I didn’t really care for the human leads as much, be it their arc in the storyline or playing as them at various times in the game, but I appreciated that gameplay was used to drive the narrative. It’s the rare mascot platformer where the story matters.

The boomerang was my go-to weapon. There’s a sword as well, but it has no oomph to it.

So, they added hit points and now a game I barely didn’t like is one I barely liked. Yes, Mr. Tako is fun. It needed less levels with more going on, and less power-ups with the filler cut and the best stuff refined to a mirror-shine. For all the baffling choices made, Mr. Tako still manages to pull-off a worthwhile platforming adventure. That doesn’t exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, but it’s still an endorsement. Oh, I’m all-in on Mr. Tako as the next big indie franchise. I hope it can find its audience this time. And, if not, maybe next time! Assuming the Game Boy stuff is exchanged for 16-bit aesthetics. It’s kind of funny: ten years ago today, I posted my very first review. The Cathy who wrote THAT review didn’t get nostalgic for anything. The Cathy of 2021 says things like “do you know what I could go for today? Super Mario Sunshine! You know, that game I liked when I was twelve!” Maybe if I’d grown-up with the original Game Boy, I’d been a lot more enthusiastic about a game looking this way. Then again, I did grow up with a Nintendo 64, but if an indie developer made a game that looked like that, I’d dunk their nut sack in teriyaki sauce and let my dog eat their balls off.

Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition was developed by Christophe Galati
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam

$14.99 wiped tears away and thanked everyone for ten amazing years in the making of this review.

Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews Tagged with Game Boy, Gaming, Mr. Tako, Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San, Save Me Mr. Tako, Save Me Mr. Tako Definitive Edition, Switch, Switch review, Tako

A Decade Later

July 1, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 3 Comments

Thank you Waff for the amazing job! Check out his online store and follow him on Twitter!

I’ve been staring at my screen for the last hour, trying to find the words that best sum up the last ten years. I’ve typed stuff and deleted it. I’ve changed the title dozens of times. No matter what I say, it doesn’t feel like it properly conveys the love and gratitude I have for the hundreds of game developers and thousands of readers who have made the last ten years so special to me. I still can’t find anything that feels powerful enough, so I’ll simply say “thank you!” It has truly been my pleasure.

I’m not the same person I was ten years ago, and the next ten years are going to be.. interesting to say the least. For those that don’t know, I found out last year that I’m among the ten-million people on Earth living with Parkinson’s Disease. I’m healthy right now. In fact, in many ways I’ve never been better. I haven’t had a seizure in eighty days as of this writing. That’s four-times longer than I’ve gone at any point since I was sixteen-years-old. So that’s really cool. I’m showing some symptoms of Parkinson’s, but nothing drastically interfering in gameplay as of yet. That won’t last, though. There’s going to be changes. My reaction times will inevitably slow. Thumb-accuracy will likely be an issue. But, I’m not quitting gaming. Fuck that. I’ll find stuff I can play.

Probably not stuff with motion controls.

It’s just another phase of my weird journey as Indie Gamer Chick. But the beauty of gaming is there’s something for everyone. Even people fated to be professional Jiffy Pop poppers. If I’ve learned one thing in my ten years spent reviewing games, it’s to have faith that good stuff is always coming soon to a device near you. I don’t get when people say gaming used to better “back in the day.” Back in the day, gamers couldn’t bring off-trend, off-beat projects to consoles all on their own. Indies and digital distribution have really brought us into a golden age for gaming. For all the bitching we all do (myself included) about too much DLC or microtransactions, I can buy a $20 giftcard and walk away with a handful of games on pretty much any gaming format, with at least one or two near-certain quality releases. I couldn’t do that as a kid on my Nintendo 64 or PlayStation 2 or Dreamcast. What an amazing thing we all have. What a time to alive!

“Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. It’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
-Conan O’Brien on his final Tonight Show

That’s my favorite quote. I love it because it’s true. It’s so weird, because a lot of people found me via scathing reviews of games that cost $1 – $5 on their Xbox 360s. I’d get angry and I’d get confused and I’d tear a game a new butthole for baffling design. On the surface, I’d come across like the stereotypical angry gaming critic. There’s a few notable ones, but most of them are a dime a dozen and fade into obscurity just as quickly as they start. I think the difference with me, the thing that’s kept me going for ten years now, is that I’m not cynical. I’ve always kept faith that the best game I’ll EVER play is somewhere off in the future. I used to say it would be tragic if, in my mid-20s, I’d already played the best game I’ll ever play. I’ll be 32-years-old next week, and I’ll never be as healthy again as I am right now. And yet, I still believe in my heart-of-hearts the best game I’ll ever play is still yet to come. I think that’s what makes me different. I think a lot of gaming people these days are too cynical about the future of our pastime. That the best days are behind us, and that nothing will ever be as good as it once was.

But, I look at what I’ve played over the last ten years, and I look at the incredible artists who made them, and I ask how anyone can be that jaded? These guys and gals have given me every reason to believe gaming’s future is brighter than a supernova. I have faith in their drive and their creativity and their homespun moxie. They’re going to assure our future as gamers will be as vast and limitless as our imaginations can conceive. And I’m so very excited, and I want you to be too!

For the adventures coming.

For the challenges we’ll conquer.

For the kingdoms we’ll save.

For the villains we’ll slay.

For the quests we’ll complete.

For the puzzles we’ll solve.

For the dreams we’ll see come true.

Have faith, my friends. The best of gaming always belongs somewhere in the future.

-Cathy Vice
July 1, 2021

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Indie Gamer Chick versus Game Boy: Game & Watch Gallery

June 4, 2021 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment

I’m experimenting with using my blog instead of Twitter.

Game & Watch Gallery
Developed & Published by Nintendo
Also developed by TOSE
1997 Game Boy

Certainly an interesting concept for a 1997 game. Nintendo had this wonderful library of LCD handhelds that predated even the Famicom/NES. Simple games that lent themselves to portable gameplay. Meanwhile, the Game Boy was still going strong, and Nintendo had this massive collection of games that could be collected. Nintendo did a trial run with the concept in 1994-95 with a release that never happened outside of Europe and Australia.

Game Boy Gallery, released in 1995, tasked developer TOSE with recreating five of their vintage LCDs.

This is basically the prototype for the Game & Watch Gallery series, as all five games have updated graphics that aren’t intended to look exactly like their LCD counterparts, but rather modern interpretations of them. However, the gameplay is directly-lifted from the originals, with no “modern” minigame counterpart.

I can’t find sales data on Game Boy Gallery, but I imagine it must have done well-enough to keep the concept alive. The solution was self-evident: include both the classic games in all their animation-devoid glory, but also include updated versions of the games. And use popular Mario characters. Genius! The series was successful enough (or cheap and easy enough to produce) to run four-games deep. Today, I’m checking the games of Game & Watch Gallery 1. Do they hold up?

MANHOLE
Series: Gold, New Wide Screen
Release: January 29, 1981 (Gold), August 24, 1983 (New Wide Screen)
Gameplay: Spinning-Plate
Cathy’s High Score 848 (Classic) 1,081 (Modern)

CLASSIC VERSION: Manhole is, for me, the definitive Game & Watch release. The gameplay couldn’t be more simple: you have a single manhole cover and four gaps. Cover the gap for each runner. It’s just a matter of judging which runner is going to be the next to step over a gap. You have to memorize how many steps each runner will need before he’s over a manhole. Once you’ve registered a “cover” over a gap, you can move and the runner will hang over the gap in defiance of gravity without following. It’s not exactly “fun” in the traditional sense, but I really found myself unwilling to quit when I reached 500 points and had lost my one miss at some point. The key to Manhole is remembering to press A to automatically switch to the opposite diagonal corner. I’m almost certain the 848 points I had on my second attempt of Manhole beat even my childhood score, but I was *never* having fun.
Verdict: NO Pile

MODERN VERSION: The basic layout remains, only now there’s three different types of beings crossing: endless Toad clones, endless Donkey Kong Jr. clones, and rarely, Mario clones. Each runs at a different speed, which further complicates the spinning-plate element. But, this time, there’s four manhole covers that you can replace and leave alone. When something crossing runs across a cover, it displaces it. Yoshi can stop this from happening on one cover at a time, and then when free, replace the covers that have been knocked loose. As far as updating the Manhole formula goes, this is probably the very best you could do. I hate how the free-lives work, as every 200 (400?) saves, a heart will be tossed onto the playfield, but it wasn’t always tossed at an opportune time, which forced me to miss one. But, this is a *lot* more engaging than the 1981 LCD while also feeling exactly like a proper remake of it. One of the better remakes. I did only play one game of it and scored 1,081. As a kid, I scored almost 2,000 once.
Verdict: YES Pile.

FIRE
Alternate Title: Fireman Fireman (North America original title)
Series: Silver, Wide-Screen
Release Date: July 31, 1980 (Silver), December 4, 1981 (Wide Screen)
Gameplay: Juggler
Cathy’s High Score: 447 (Classic) 642 (Modern)

CLASSIC VERSION: A “classic” that I can’t believe people don’t consider an abject failure. The concept of having to juggle people jumping from a burning building sounds fine, but this is one of those games where the lack of animation completely ruins the gameplay. Once the game gets moving and there’s four or more jumpers at once, it’s damn near impossible to judge which ones are next to land, or even if you correctly “saved” the next jumper. This is a formula that *needed* a taller screen with more animation cells
Verdict: NO Pile.

MODERN VERSION: Having animation made me realize another problem with Fire: there’s no quick passage from the left side to the right. Every single one of my deaths was the result of split-second gap between making a save on the right side not leaving enough time to save the jumper on the left side. But what can you do? Fire shows up again during Game & Watch Gallery series. Here’s hoping it improves.
Verdict: NO Pile

OCTOPUS
Alternate Titles: Mysteries of the Sea (UK) and Mysteries of the Deep
Series: Wide Screen
Release Date: July 16, 1981
Gameplay: Cross the Road
Cathy’s High Score: 1,138 (Classic) 1,371 (Modern)

CLASSIC VERSION: Octopus is probably my favorite classic Game & Watch game. Having played a ton of LCD games last summer (go here, here, and here), I’ve come to the conclusion that cross-the-road format games are inherently the best use of LCD’s technology. Octopus’s mechanic of having you go from the ship to the treasure chest to load-up on plunder while avoiding tentacles is fairly straight forward. IN THEORY you should be capped at how much you can load up from the chest. But I scored my first 400 or so points while barely surfacing at all. IN THEORY your hand should get a lot slower when loading the treasure, but it’s never insanely slow. Without animation, movement from spot to spot can’t be slower. Also, you’re capped at 3 bonus points per surfacing. It’s super easy to time the tentacles too. Octopus is still one of the better Game & Watch games. Which tells you how badly these games aged that I still can’t recommend it.
Verdict: NO Pile

MODERN VERSION: Much, much better. Here, loading up on treasure slows your movement down, but you also bank extra points for every grab you make. Also, the tentacles can go into different lanes, but you seem to have the ability to bait them into going down specific ones. It turns Octopus Remake into the game that tests your greed. You have no limit on how much treasure you can get, but you can become so slow that it’s impossible to get back to the boat no matter how perfect your reflexes are. The game dares you to grab a ton of gold, but as long as you remember that there’s no time limit, it’s just a matter of how patient you are in grinding up a score. As a remake of an LCD game, Octopus gets incredibly repetitive. It’s also the fastest-scoring and genuinely best video game in Game & Watch Gallery 1.
Verdict: YES Pile

OIL PANIC
Series: Multi Screen
Release: May 28, 1982
Gameplay: Catch-and-Release
Cathy’s High Score: 2,775 (Classic) 1,022 (Modern)

CLASSIC MODE: My god. MY GOD! I have never in my entire, miserable life played a game that is this competently made that is also so boring that it’s genuinely torturous. Here, you collect drops of oil that fall from the ceiling and then dump them out the windows. Below you is a man walking back and forth with a bucket that is apparently limitless. Instead of doing the logical thing, saying “HEY ASSHOLE, CAN I USE *THAT* BUCKET?!” you have to deal with a three-drop limit for your own. You lose a life if you miss the oil, catch a drop when your bucket is full, or if you throw the oil out the window when the big bucket guy isn’t on that side. Mind you, if the oil hits the floor, it catches fire. In theory you should be napalming the two pedestrians below. To death. They certainly should be just shouting at you with as much anger is generally displayed when one is cut-off on the freeway. Anyway, the formula seems like a decent-enough take on the Catch-and-Release genre. But, it’s actually too easy. On the A mode, I rolled the scoreboard twice, and would have a third time if I hadn’t got bored to the point that I asked my family to walk in front of the TV screen to add challenge. Which they got bored with after a couple minutes, so I held the controller upside-down and I think I made it two whole points after that. One of the problems is you have, in theory, as many as five lives in Oil Panic, because screwing up the oil-side of the screen and screwing up the roaming oil collector and two fire-proof pedestrian side of the screen are counted separately. For no reason. Also, all your misses are erased every time you reach X300 points. That’s just too generous. But the real biggest problem is that the difficulty, and speed of the oil drips, resets when you roll the scoreboard after X999 points. Which you will, because this is insultingly easy. I suppose I could have quit and reviewed the B part, but who actually plays Mode B?
Verdict: NO Pile

MODERN VERSION: Easily the best remake in Game & Watch Gallery 1, as Octopus already had a more-than-solid foundation and was on the cusp of being good, while this time, it turns a boring game into a decent one. Oil Panic retains the basic “catch the oil” formula, only there’s now multiple twists. As Mario instead of Mr. Game & Watch, you hold two buckets instead of one. And instead of a bottomless bucket holder to throw to, it’s Yoshi. You have the ability to rotate your buckets, which makes this feel like a follow-up the NES/Game Boy classic Yoshi. There’s also a few bonuses tied to Yoshi if you feed him two full buckets back-to-back within nano-seconds IN THE RIGHT POSITION. You see, Yoshi walks back and forth too, and he has to be as far to one side as possible to get the bonus. On the plus side, Yoshi’s tongue can catch the oil even if he’s not exactly to the edge. On the negative side, I never benefited from this from a meaningful range away from the ledge. It only screwed me out of the bonuses. Anyway, on the right side, doing back-to-back full buckets creates a block which has coins (and, when you reach milestones in points, also provides a free life). On the left side, Yoshi creates a block, and making four of them allows Yoshi to fireball/egg/melon-seed-spit Bowser for extra bonus points. You’ll be tempted to fill up the the buckets to the max every time, but like many Game & Watch titles, it’s often your own greed and impatience that will cost you lives. In fact, with both Octopus and Oil Panic, it’s absolutely possible to slowly grind up world-record points (the best you can do is tie former Donkey Kong world champion Wes Copeland’s 9,999 max score). It would take forever and be considered a form of self-harm, but it can be done.
Verdict: YES Pile

VERDICT

I actually owned Game & Watch Gallery as a kid, and I’m almost certain it’s a game I fished out of a clearance bin. To be frank, Game & Watch Gallery going four-deep as a franchise (five if you count the pilot-run with Game Boy Gallery.. seven if you count the lazy DS games that were given as part of Nintendo’s reward program) is astonishing, because there’s Mario Party minigames with more depth.

Game & Watch Gallery is a odd cat. When you get right down to it, it’s just a mini-game collection where the only true significance is these are based on early 80s Nintendo LCD games. All eight games presented here are incredibly repetitive and often you’ll welcome a game over. That’s usually a sign of being a bad game. I literally gave none of the “classic” Game & Watch games a YES, and to be frank, I wasn’t very enthusiastic about any of the YES pile games. It was more like I conceded their decency. Octopus Remake feels the most balanced. Oil Panic Remake is probably the most compelling formula that seems like it could lead to a solid full-fledged game. Manhole Remake is fine, just like the other two YES pile occupants. But none of these are worth actively seeking out. The most telling thing: Game & Watch Gallery is a slog, even when it’s at its best. It’s NEVER exciting.
Overall Verdict: NO Pile

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with #IGCvGameBoy, Game & Watch, Game & Watch Gallery, Game Boy review, Super Game Boy review

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