Procrastinating Squirrel put up a fight when I first downloaded it. From the moment I booted it up, the game started skipping like a DVD that got into a fight with a belt sander. Thus it was rendered completely unplayable. I made a video so that others could feel my pain.
After publishing the original piece, I got word from a few players that they didn’t have problems. Curious, I switched consoles, then switched which storage device I was saving my progress to. While it didn’t run perfectly, the experience was vastly improved and thus I could write a full and proper review. Of course, in a way I already did that. Procrastinating Squirrel is essentially Miner Dig Deep, only not as deep. Miner Dig Shallow perhaps? Miner Dig Less Deep? Miner Scratch the Surface?
Oak Nuts. It’s what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.
How about Toddlers Dig Deep? Because this stripped down version of one of my former Top-10 XBLIGs is pretty much that. Miner Dig Deep, sans strategy or most dangers. Fewer upgrades. Fewer things to mine. The boulders are still there and can still cause you to scream curse words you forgot you knew, but that’s the only thing that can kill you. There’s no need to worry about digging too many tunnels that could cave in, because the game is presented from a top-down view. That’s the one advantage Squirrel has over Miner: you can mine in any direction. Every other aspect is less than what is already offered in Miner Dig Deep. There’s no positive outlook on that. People who haven’t played Miner would be better served skipping this and playing that. People who have played Miner can only find Squirrel to be an inferior, watered-down clone. I kept waiting for the game to present some kind of hook to change things up, and finished it still waiting. While I still was practically hypnotized by the prospect of digging up new materials, those moments are few and far between. It even ends significantly faster than Miner Dig Deep. Miner Dig Deep left me wanting more. Procrastinating Squirrel left me disappointed, and recommending it would be nuts.
Thirty minutes staring at the screen and that’s the best pun I could figure to go out on. I knew I should have written this sooner, instead of waiting for the Oscars to end. That’s what I get for procrastinating.
I suck at space shooters. I’ve spent the last two years establishing this fact on this very blog. While I try to claim neutrality towards all genres, that’s obviously a bit of a stretch. Some I like more than others, with shmups typically being “the others.” I’ve just never been able to get into them. Which kind of sucks for the hard-working XBLIG community, because even ones that earn near universal praise (like Aeternum) don’t do anything for me. It seems like the best they can hope for out of me is “I wouldn’t rather be dead than play this.”
Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?
On that note, I wouldn’t rather be dead than play Pester. Congratulations to the team at Flump Studios for doing as good as you could do with this genre in relationship to me. I was able to get through the full hour Brian forces me to play these games (“out of fairness” he says, the goody two-shoes prick) without wondering if I’ll be locked up in the nuthouse for choosing to hurl myself through a plate-glass window to get out of it. And, while I wasn’t like wowed by the experience or anything, I wasn’t bored. It’s nothing new though. You’re a ship. There are enemies. Enemies fire a whole lot of bullets at you, and you fire a whole lot of bullets back. I’ve always kind of wondered about the economics of bullet hells. Presumably if enemies are firing plasma rounds at you with projectiles the size of small ships, that stuff has got to cost money. You would think they would fire a little more accurately. Conserve ammo, instead of seeing you, going crazy, and firing bullets in every direction including behind them. Or hell, since we’re dealing futuristic space warfare, you would think an enemy force that can employ thousands of ships to take out one single rinky-dinky little adversary could figure out how to do weapons that instantaneously destroy whatever they’re targeting the moment the fire button is pressed without giving them a chance to dodge out-of-the-way. What kind of morons do they have running these evil empires?
Anyway, it’s basic space shooter shit with some neat graphic filters added, and not a whole lot more. I played for a while and realized quickly that I was every bit as shitty at playing Pester as I am at every other game of this godforsaken genre. But the screen wasn’t so spammed with bullets that it was demoralizing or anything. Then something funny happened. At one point, I turned to Brian and said “honestly, I’m not having a blast or anything, but there’s nothing really wrong with this one.” Within ten seconds of me saying this, the game decided to give me stuff to complain about. I’m not saying this for comic effect. This really happened. First, I was fighting a boss that throws giant swords at you and died. That’s not the bad part. The bad part is when I blinked back into existence, the game spawned one of the sword bullets into the same space I respawned into and insta-killed me. The sword wasn’t there at that moment. It just appeared. A bizarre glitch I’m guessing, but it’s so weird that it happened right after I told my boyfriend I had nothing to complain about. As if the game heard me and said “nothing to complain about? Bitch, I’ll give you something to complain about.”
And Pester kept being a shithead to me after that. I played three straight rounds where the game never once spawned an upgrade for my ship’s guns. It spawned plenty of speed-ups and bombs, but no gun upgrades. It was fucking strange, because they had been plentiful before. Not that it really mattered. Gun upgrades or not, I still made it about the same length as I always did, which was between wave 7 and wave 10. Yea, I really suck at this shit. So I booted up Tempus mode, where lives are replaced by time. When you shoot enemies, instead of them dropping coins, they drop clocks that add one second to a timer. When you die, you lose ten seconds. The game goes until you run out of time. Okay, fine. Question: where the fuck is the timer? I couldn’t see it. Otherwise, it’s the same game with the same enemy layouts. You can also adjust the difficulty, and add extra challenges if you’re a masochist, like controlling two ships at once. I didn’t try it myself. I barely have the coordination to tie my shoelaces without breaking my neck in the process. I don’t need a game to tell me I’m an embarrassment to humanity. I already know it.
A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?
Really, Pester isn’t bad or anything. And the sword bit I mentioned above was a one-off thing. I guess I kind of, sort of recommend it. A little bit. I’m not sure if that’s because I genuinely enjoyed it based on merit, or if I genuinely enjoyed it because Brian got such amusement out of my pitiful lack of shmup talent. Either way, I had something vaguely resembling a good time playing it, and had the sense to turn it off before I got bored. Having said that, it’s not an ambitious title. This shit has been done before and Pester offers nothing new. Nothing. At best, it shows competence in making a functioning, mildly entertaining game that closely resembles about a thousand other games. I’m not against playing them, but I want to see a different angle on them. There’s got to be a wealth of unexplored twists for bullet hells. I mean come on, you guys are indie developers. You’re supposed to buck the norm. Be weird for the sake of being weird. Dance to the beat of a different drummer. When games like this fill out the cliché checklist with such determination, it’s kind of sad. Not as sad as watching me play games like this must be, but still pretty sad.
Ascent of the Kings comes from the developer of Quiet, Please!, the 2D platforming/point-and-click mash-up I played last April. The fingerprints of the developer are all over this one too. Same art style, same silliness, and same bite-sized game length. It took me just over thirty-minutes to beat Quiet, Please! For Ascent of Kings, which is a Metroidvania type of platformer, it took me about twenty minutes to become king and another twenty-five minutes to find all 12 hidden shrines. So, forty-five minutes total of gameplay. At this pace, Nostatic Software’s next game might stretch to a full hour. Not that it needs to. I’ve enjoyed games that lasted as little as ten minutes. It’s crazy how spending 600 days immersed in the indie gaming scene alters your perception on how long a game should be. I’m fairly certain I’m now in a state of mind where I could approve a game that lasts one minute, as long as it’s the best damn one minute I’ve had since I lost my virginity.
A Boy and his Blob?
So the idea is, the king has died, and in order to determine the new king, all possible suitors (which seems to consist of four brothers that live in a small cottage, still better than what England faces sometime in the next twenty years) have to hop around on platforms and reach a small shrine that bestows upon that person the power to rule. The father of these kids, apparently a bit of a dick, only gives each of the older brothers one special tool that can help them reach the summit and become king. But their hearts don’t seem quite into it. They pull such bullshit excuses as “ouch, sprained my wrist” or “twisted my ankle” like they’re trying to get out of jury duty. The youngest brother, aka you, collects their tools, allowing him to double jump, climb vines, and fire slingshots. You know, the kind of tools found in a real world monarchy litmus test. Psssssh, diplomacy? Economics? Fuck that shit. That’s for democracies.
As a game, what can I say? It’s alright. The movement physics are a bit loose and the double-jump sometimes didn’t seem to work. Level design is very basic, no frills, no surprises. There’s one section that features a timed jumping puzzle, and I hate that if I get to the top and screw up, I have to wait any amount of time before hitting the button to start over. But, the game is so brief that you can’t really get bored with it, and it ends long before any amount of frustration over the various control foibles can settle in. I guess what I’m trying to say is I had a decent enough time playing Ascent of Kings to say it’s worth a buck. It’s not the most enthusiastic recommendation, but hey, it’s not the most ambitious game! One hand washes the other!
Where have I been the last two days? Well, I’ve been working, hanging out with Brian, going to church (that’s right, Indie Gamer Chick goes to church), and while I’m doing all that, I’ve been utterly hooked on an iPhone title named Infectonator. Day and night for the last 48 hours. And it’s all Brian’s fault. He bugged me for a while, saying “I found this game on my phone that’s really fun and pretty addictive and I think if you liked that OMG-Zombies!, you’ll really like this.” Spot on he was, although on reflection, he might have been looking for a way to get a break from me. If so, another point for him, the crafty bastard. Infectonator is an utterly addictive time sink, sort of like OMG-Zombies! on steroids.
And it’s free.
Really, this scene could have been done without the zombies. Make a game called “Black Friday” and instead of unleashing a virus, you throw the year’s hot Christmas item into a crowd of people. Would probably have a bigger body count too.
Oh sure, the game offers you a chance to pay cash in lieu of grinding, but I never found it necessary. I didn’t really play it totally non-stop. In truth, I put about six hours and change into Infectonator this weekend, but it felt longer. In a good way. The concept here is the opposite of OMG-Zombies! Instead of trying to exterminate the undead, you’re trying to create them, and wipe out humanity in the process. In the beginning, you’re given a single dose of a virus. Tapping the screen, you place the virus near humans, causing them to turn into zombies. They run around and kill humans, who may or may not turn into zombies. Every time you kill a person, you get coins that you can spend on upgrades, new zombie classes (that’s classes of zombies, not classes on zombies, but I think I’m onto something there if you’re short on game ideas), or special powers. Unlike some games like this, even the smallest upgrades feel like they make progress, which makes the gameplay very rewarding. An average game will take you about two hours to play-through.
I can sum up how potently addictive Infectonator is by saying that I played through it four times. Do you know how many games I’ve ever played through four times before this? None. Never once. Nor have I ever played through a game even three times. At most, I’ll play through a game once on one difficulty and once on a harder difficulty, then move on to something else. For whatever reason, I had trouble putting down Infectonator. A second play-through became a third. Then I realized I still hadn’t played the game with the super power-ups, so I saved up my cash in the third play-through and rolled it over to the fourth, immediately bought the super power-ups, and then beat the game a fourth time. I will admit, by this point, I wasn’t really having fun.
The first time around? Sublime. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face (or the time-sink-induced drool from my mouth) with a jackhammer and dynamite. The second time around, I was waiting for “harder” mode to be, you know, harder, and it never came. But I was still having a good time. The third time around, I was just playing to save money to see how over-powered the super power-ups were. The fourth time, I was shaking my head at how easy the game was now that my virus spreader was passing through people and walls. Not only that, but I had so much money saved up (over $500,000) that I was also fully able to upgrade the amount of directions the virus spread in and beef up my zombies to the point that they were practically indestructible. I’ve always said I enjoy abusing leveling up systems, but I think I took it to a new extreme here and consequently ruined a game I had been having a damn good time with. I’m ashamed of myself, I really am.
This scene is begging to be made into a movie. Just don’t fuck it up by making the star Jack Black or Will Ferrell.
My only other complaints are the typical ones associated with iPhone games. Infectonator crashed every single time that I tried to “report” my score. The way they implemented Game Center support is among the worst I’ve ever seen on an iPhone title. Infectonator also bogged down several times. Never once did I have a problem on my first play through, but each subsequent game had slow-down issues. Plus I seriously question whether “hard” mode actually was hard, considering that I beat the game with fewer upgrades on my third play-through then I did the first time. I also found the endless mode to be quite dull. Of course, all these complaints are slightly muted by the fact that Infectonator is free. Free is a good price. Considering how horrible the values for Infectonator’s micro-transactions are ($9.99 nets you 100,000 gold coins, which isn’t enough for even one of those super power-ups that only works in one play-through), I wonder why they didn’t just slap a $0.99 price tag on their game? Maybe indie gaming really is a race to the bottom. If that’s the case, the guys behind this game strapped anvils to their backs and flung themselves down the Mariana Trench. No word on whether they waved to James Cameron on the way down. Or maybe they turned him into a zombie while they were at it.
I still enthusiastically recommend Infectonator. It’s free on iOS and Android. Are you one of those troglodytes that doesn’t have a phone? Well then you can play it for free online too. If I ranked non-XBLIGs on my Leaderboard, Infectonator would be somewhere near the top. It’s a glorious little time sink that does what any good time sink does: ruin your fucking life.
Probably the biggest misconception about me as a gamer is that I’m anti-retro or anti-old games. I’m not. I’m simply of the opinion that some games age better than others. I wouldn’t want to play Space Invaders or Pac-Man as they existed back in the day. I’m perfectly fine with modern remakes of them, like Space Invaders Extreme or Pac-Man Championship Edition. On the other hand, some of those older games have aged pretty gracefully. Centipede is one such game. In fact, it’s one of the few golden age coin-ops that I feel blends in perfectly with the current generation. Its twitchy, fast-paced gameplay lends itself perfectly to ten minute portable sessions. It released recently on the Vita’s Home Arcade platform, and I snagged it for $1.49 in preparation for today’s review. That’s about what I would have spent to last 15 minutes on the coin-op if I had been alive in 1983. Did I mention I really suck at it?
Centipede on PlayStation Home Arcade (Vita)
So what do I think of Home Arcade? Um, hmmmm.. you know, in the four years its been around, I never have really used PlayStation Home too much. I would rather just be able to launch games straight off my Vita’s dashboard without having to open Home Arcade. The interface is clunky and half the time I’ll be stabbing the ever-loving shit out of the “your games” button and nothing happens. Having said that, the prices are pretty good ($1.49 each) and it has the advantage of being portable and on the coolest gaming gizmo in years. I don’t even have Home installed on my PS3, and I don’t plan on it, but you don’t need it to use Home Arcade. I can’t speak for the rest of the games (get back to me the next time an Asteroids clone hits XBLIG) but Centipede controls well. I guess you can’t ask for more. Which is a good thing, because what you get is a bare-bones port of the arcade original. They could have thrown in ports of the Atari home versions, but hey, it’s called making a lazy dollar.
I picked up Centipede on Vita because I wanted to compare it to Bad Caterpillar, a new Xbox Live Indie Game from Kris Steele. I like Kris, but the dude fucking aggravates me to no end. His games always have something glaringly off about them. Volchaos would have been fun if the movement physics weren’t so damn loose. The same goes for Hypership: Out of Control on XBLIG. If a gnat so much as farts in the direction of the analog stick, it sends your ship flying. In a game that involves lining up your character to shoot smaller targets, precision control is kind of needed. Hypership is actually sublime on iPhone, and very addictive. Of course, that has the advantage of having drag-the-ship touch controls for extra-accurate firing. His track record of acceptable controls on XBLIG is about as good as THQ’s record with bankruptcy avoidance. Considering that Bad Caterpillar looked really close to Centipede, a game which requires precision movement so much that the arcade original used a trackball, I braced for the worst.
Bad Caterpillar on Xbox Live Indie Games.
As it turns out, my worries were misplaced. Bad Caterpillar handles pretty well. Not perfect. No joystick-based Centipede can possibly be perfect. But, I can honestly say that it plays better than any other version of Centipede I played today. That’s a lot of versions. For the sake of comparison, I also bought Centipede & Millipede, a 2-for-1 Xbox Live Arcade port of the arcade games. Movement for these is too loose to be acceptable. I’ve always had a difficult time in Centipede lining up shots correctly, especially when the last segments of the Centipede are near the bottom of the screen. That’s not a huge problem in Bad Caterpillar. It’s a fucking chore in the XBLA arcade ports. If it was any looser, it would hang out on dimly-lit street corners and be considered a bio-hazard.
The “evolved” version of Centipede & Millipede on Xbox Live Arcade.
The biggest disappointment with the XBLA ports (besides the awful controls) is how the “modern” versions are really just the same old Centipede with some new (re: 15 year-old) special effects added. On the flip side, Bad Caterpillar looks old, but it features some nifty new ideas such as power-ups and bombs. Should probably clear this up: by new, I meant “new for Centipede.” My problem here is that they don’t get spit out often enough. I played full games where the item drops were nothing but points. The game should go nuts with them. I mean, I can already play a Centipede-like game that doesn’t offer power-ups. It’s called Centipede.
Centipede Origins on iPhone.
I guess I should bring up that I also played the iOS update, called Centipede Origins. It’s a micro-transaction oriented shooter that tries to controls like Kris Steele’s Hypership does on iPhone. But I found the drag-the-shooter controls to be too glitchy, with the cursor being unable to keep up with my finger, even as I dragged it slowly across the screen. Only played it for like five minutes, would never want to play it again. I also dug around and found my copy of Centipede for the Sega Dreamcast, but decided against spending any time digging around for the actual machine to play it on. Honestly, I’m all Centipeded out. So what are my thoughts? Well, the Vita version is a worthy use of money for a solid portable version of a masterpiece. The iOS version is just about the worst thing to happen to iPhone since Siri. The XBLA ports of Centipede & Millipede come across like quick, effortless cash-ins and should be avoided like the clap. Finally, the XBLIG update Bad Caterpillar is actually a decent game with a few problems. The moths are unfair, there’s no online leaderboards, and the heavy metal soundtrack is so out-of-place. It would be like going to Ozzfest to listen to country music. But I do recommend it, because it’s the best (and cheapest) version of Centipede you’ll get on your Xbox. Kind of sad that an XBLIG port made by a guy I consider to be a bit of a twat completely slays the official versions of Centipede. Just kidding, Kris.
Dynasty of Dusk is a JRPG made by three college students. It’s an early contender for Worst Game of 2013. When a game is putridity bad, it usually is because the developer bit off more than he could chew. That’s not entirely the case here. Dynasty of Dusk is so stripped down and minimalistic that it’s shocking there’s enough here to be classified as rancid. But what really startled me is this very much comes across like one of those “getting your feet wet” type of games. Those usually are bad, but not THIS bad. I actively looked for something, anything, I could praise, and came up empty-handed. Now I know how Amanda Bynes’ agent feels.
I’ll start with the story, which apparently revolves around an evil king kidnapping spirit animals to try to gain immortality so that he can rule the world forever. I’m not sure why you would want to rule a world that has like ten people living in it. Despite what Tears for Fears would have you believe, I have no interest in this world at all. The writing could not possibly be any more bland. It’s so boring that a big screen adaption would star Kristen Stewart and end up making like $300,000,000 at the box office. Okay, bad analogy.
My point is, the only thing a throwback, turn-based RPG can possibly do to grab attention these days is have an absurd story hook and/or snappy writing. Without those, you probably shouldn’t bother. Yea, I know games like this used to be this badly written and completely lack characterization, but RPGs aren’t exactly like platformers. A story is all they have. Without that, you’re just playing a glorified menu simulator. Being just like the old school games doesn’t work in RPGs because retro charm doesn’t translate to them. It wasn’t the retro graphics that made people like Breath of Death, Cthulhu Saves the World, or Doom & Destiny. It was the writing and the characters. The retro graphics were just good set dressing to take the piss out of the classics. That’s why they worked.
I try not to pick on bad graphics too often, but let’s face it, Dynasty of Dusk looks awful. But it’s the music that’s really bad. Even Gitmo won’t use it for Enhanced Interrogation.
Ignoring the story (you know, sort of like the developers did), Dynasty of Dusk is a complete mess. Right off the bat, I want to gripe about how fucking unresponsive the controls are. Far and away, the least responsive of any game I’ve ever played in my entire life. It’s the menus. Not necessarily the ones you use during fights, but sometimes they’re stubborn too. I’m talking about the between fights menus. The ones you go through by, you know, just pausing the fucking game. You have to navigate them using the bumpers and the triggers. I swear to Christ, at best the game recognized a button press once every five times. I would be trying to scroll through the various characters to check and upgrade their stats, but the game couldn’t keep up with such simple actions as pressing the bumper once, indicating that I wished to move to the next menu. It was like having an argument with a hard-of-hearing geriatric.
“Okay, now I wish to see the Warrior’s stats.”
“HUH?”
“I said I wish to see the Warrior’s stats.”
“WHAT?”
“The Warrior’s stats!”
“You need to speak up, child!”
“FUCKING HELL, LET ME SEE THE WARRIOR’S STATS RIGHT NOW YOU GOD DAMN BROKEN DOWN PIECE OF SHIT!”
“The Warrior’s stats?”
“YES!!”
“Why didn’t you just say so?”
And this goes on and on. It got to the point that I physically got out of my chair to check and see if something was blocking my controller’s signal. Nope. I checked my controller’s battery. Full charge. I switched packs anyway. Didn’t help. I changed what controller I was using. Still no good. Hell, maybe some other signal in the house is causing interference. Not that either. I got more exercise trying to fix Dynasty of Dusk than I have from three years worth of Kinect ownership. As it turns out, the game is just an utterly broken piece of shit.
And it gets worse once you’re actually playing the fucking thing, as opposed to arguing with menus like you’re the star of Bravo’s newest reality show, The Spreadsheet Whisperer. I’ve always enjoyed abusing level-up systems in games. Indie Games are often prone to this. Pour all your upgrades into one stat, throw the game completely off-balance, then spend the next couple hours mowing down enemies like they’re dandelions and you’re the world’s most efficiently built weed-whacker. Crazy as this sounds, I usually have a better time when I can do this. It gives me a chance to feel all smug, wondering how the developers never saw the potential for someone to do this. Well actually, I do know why. It’s because they have a specific logic in mind when they build the game, and operate under the assumption people will play their game exactly the way they would. They won’t. It’s like those competitions they have where people have to create the most elaborate Rube-Goldberg machines that only serve to make toast, and I’m the one person who says “fuck it” and shows up to the party with a loaf of bread and a flame thrower.
Yea, it’s as boring as it looks.
Here’s how abusive you can be towards Dynasty of Dusk. The game starts with you quickly acquiring the four different attack forms, Warrior, Archer, and.. you know what? Fuck it, you don’t need to hear any more. The archer has a nifty move called “pierce” and that’s all you will need for the rest of the game. It does massive damage and goes through every enemy. Battles consisted of me selecting the archer, selecting pierce, and winning in one shot, two tops. I poured all my upgrades into letting me level up faster, and then spent the next five minutes grinding, because you can force battles with a simple press (or multiple presses, fucking piece of shit game) of the X button. In the span of five minutes, I took my archer from level 1 to level 20. I’m not joking. Before I was even out of the opening caves of the game, the main dude had leveled several times and my archer was a level 20. Later, when I found enemies that paid off even better, I did it more and got him up to level 30 within just a two or three minutes.
And you know what? For once, I didn’t feel that satisfied about it. I felt downright horrible, like one of those assholes that kicks over sand castles for jollies having a sudden, sharp attack of conscience. I vowed to play the game on the straight-and-narrow from here on out. Sadly, not too long after this, the game crashed and kept crashing. Because saving is the most clunky of all the clunky menus, I didn’t give it too much attention and subsequently lost all my progress. Not that it matters, because there was no potential that anything was going to come along and save it, but I still felt bad. Yea, Dynasty of Dusk is among the worst games I’ve ever played in my life, but I did kick over their sand castle and I want to apologize for that. Sincerely. Stick with it guys. Build another sand castle, and I promise I won’t kick it over. I’ll just let the tide come in and wash it away.
Dynasty of Dusk was developed by Tropic Tundra Games. Hey, wait a second. You guys are from Wisconsin. How do you even know what a Tropic is? The rest of the country has gone to great lengths to keep you cheese-eaters in the dark about them.
80 Microsoft Points would have been more interested in a game called “Dysentery of Dusk” in the making of this review.
XNA, which my non-developer readers will note is the development framework of Xbox Live Indie Games, is being put out to pasture. It’s not quite dead yet. Put it this way: the family has been notified and doctors are starting to determine what organs are viable for transplant, but the plug is not completely pulled yet. Although I’m confident indies will exist in a similar (but hopefully better) form on the next generation Xbox, creating games for the platform will be a much different experience. I’ve been seeking out possible XBLIG alternatives. MonoGame isn’t necessarily what I had in mind, but the more I read and heard about it, the more I saw the potential in what they offer.
I should probably preface this editorial by noting that I have absolutely no clue what any of this means. Like traveling in a country with Romance Languages, I’m at best picking out an odd word here or there, but otherwise it’s all Greek to me. Which is weird because Greek is not a Romance Language and doesn’t fit into the metaphor at all.
Last year, I tried for a while to write a review of Clear Vision, a sickeningly addictive iPhone title that I ultimately didn’t write about. Part of that is the game is fairly one-dimensional, takes only thirty minutes to beat, and I feel that praising a game that involves violently assassinating unsuspecting victims will get me listed on some type of government watch list. Since then, a teeny tiny bit of DLC was released for the original, and this month a sequel hit, and I can’t turn it down.
So here’s the concept: there’s a world of stick figures, and you’re an assassin for hire. Someone will slip a request for murder under your door. You then murder that person. Rinse and repeat around twenty or so times each game. Murders are typically done with a rifle, but occasionally you’ll interrogate someone in a car crusher, or make a murder look like an accident. At the start of each game, you simply line the person up in your sight and fire. Later, you have to account for distance and wind resistance. It’s the same thing over and over again, but it never gets old. In fact, the splatter of blood and slumping body are pretty dang satisfying to watch and an indication of a job well done.
Hold on. A self-realization and reflection moment just overcame me.
I make no apologies for the fact that I had a good time playing these games. I would have had a better time, if not for some glaring technical issues. No matter which iDevice I was using, both games tended to crash. Last year, the original Clear Vision, at times, crashed nearly every mission. This year, Clear Vision 2 not only crashed on both my new iPhone and iPod, but would also have the occasionally stunted-frame rate that would require me to completely exit out of the game and reboot it. Obviously this can be patched out, since I had to go through the original Clear Vision all the way from the fucking beginning just to play a measly five-minutes worth of DLC, and the game never once failed. Crashes are not infrequent on iOS, for whatever reason. This is one of the major reasons why I quit reviewing iPhone games. On Apple platforms, even major titles (your GTAs, Dead Spaces, and Angry Birds) crash if you so much as attempt to play them. I can’t really complain about indies doing so frequently. But it craps up the play experience. Clear Vision 2 was one of the worst offenders of this ever. I counted it out: the game had seven hard crashes and four instances of game-killing frame rate issues on my fifth gen iPhone alone, plus several more while attempting it on my iPod. Not even XBLIG puts up this big a fight when you attempt to use it.
I fucking HATED this mini-game in the sequel. It took me about twenty tries to get it right. I felt like an ignoramus.
If you can get past the crashes, Clear Vision is fun. You need both parts to get the full story, but they will only run you a combined $1.98. You can also play half of the first game (or fifth game, depending on how you look at it) for free online. Though there’s probably no harm in waiting a year to pick up Clear Vision 2, or at least waiting long enough for all the bugs to be cleaned up. I do recommend both, but remember something before each time you pull the trigger: stick figure dudes have stick figure families too.
How hard can it be to make a semi-decent Punch-Out!! knockoff? You create an over-sized monstrosity, slap some boxing gloves on it, have it telegraph its moves at you, give your avatar accurate dodging controls, and tada, you have a Punch-Out! knockoff. There should be dozens of these scattered throughout the gaming spectrum. For all I know, there might be. Steel Champions is only the second one I’ve encountered on XBLIG. The first, Honey Badger: Slayer of Memes was a total piece of shit. The gimmick being Punch Out!! if you beat up long-since unfunny internet running gags. Well, now we have Steel Champions. Its gimmick is Punch-Out!!, only with robots and anime boobies. It also is a total piece of shit, but boobies will always trump the Star Wars Lightsaber dude. Who, ironically, also has boobies.
Honestly, it doesn’t look bad. And it’s not. It’s terrible.
Let me be clear: I fucking love Punch-Out!! And this love isn’t based on nostalgia. I played them in reverse-order. The Wii version first, Super Punch-Out!! second, and NES Punch-Out sans pre-crazy Mike Tyson last. Enjoyed each and every one of them. And they’re all so simple when you get down to it. This should be one of the easiest games to clone out there, but nobody can seem to get it right. Steel Champions is no different. Oh, it looks like Punch-Out!! High and low punches, dodging, and ginormous opponents that telegraph their moves. But it just doesn’t work. The dodging feels imprecise and floaty, and the telegraphing becomes so fast that it’s damn near impossible to dodge. Plus, I couldn’t find any noticeable pattern that allowed me to consistently dodge-and-stunlock opponents. That’s the most rewarding, satisfying aspect of Punch-Out!! Here’s a game that has all the ingredients that makes that game work, except the most important one. It’s like making a cake without sugar.
I only made it to the third fight, which I had trouble finishing because the game kept randomly dumping me back to the Xbox Dashboard. No Code 4. No crash screen. Just “back you go to, to your game library.” This happened twice, and it won’t be happening a third time. By the way, this happened to other people too. Not that it matters much. Even if it didn’t crash too often (some would argue that once is too many), what we have here is a pitiful button-masher that’s only selling point is there are anime boobies on the box art. A selling point so utterly transparent that it’s practically a poltergeist. Actually though, I think we’re getting past that point. Interest in your Don’t Die Dateless Dummies and Team Shuriken crapola and assorted other titty games are circling down the drain. My site is getting far more searches for “Best Xbox Live Indie Games” instead. Sorry, smut developers. You’ve got to step up your game now. Consumers are more interested in GOOD games now, so step up and give them what they’re looking for. Sweaty palms, not blistered ones.
Update: Arcadecraft received a Second Chance with the Chick, where many problems talked about in this review were addressed, and new gameplay features discussed. The price is also now only $1 instead of $3. Continue reading this review and then click here for my updated thoughts.
Arcadecraft is brought to you by the guys who did the incredibly awesome Orbitron: Revolution. What was Orbitron: Revolution? Why, it was an insanely fast-paced modern take on the classic Defender formula that featured arguably the best graphics in the history of Xbox Live Indie Games. It will undoubtedly go down as one of the most professional-quality, vastly entertaining games ever on the platform.
Total bust. Sold fewer copies than an 8-track of Gary Busey belching into a microphone.
What went wrong? Well, I think the name was way too generic. Orbitron sounds like an off-brand anime that would air at 4AM on Cartoon Network. The graphics might have also been too good. Hear me out on this one. I’m of the belief that XBLIG consumers are conditioned to associate good graphics with bad gameplay. Unless those good graphics are of the 8-bit or 16-bit variety, “modern” graphic decency in an Xbox Indie means shitty play control, glitches, and typically rushed game design. Trust me, I’ve reviewed over 300 of these. The better the graphics, the shittier the game. Orbitron is one of the rare exceptions to that.
There are other possible explanations that are beyond my scope of understanding. Perhaps the demo doesn’t hook players in. Or maybe the general gaming populace is indifferent to Defender. Hell, I would actually believe some kind of Gypsy Curse is in play. Either way, the guys at Firebase took no chances with their follow-up game. It’s called Arcadecraft. The presence of the word “craft” in the title alone is probably good for at least 2,500 units sold on XBLIG. Kraft could put out a game where you build stuff out of macaroni called Kraftcraft and it would probably sell a gillion copies. But Arcadecraft isn’t a “build stuff out of stuff” game at all. A more accurate title would have probably been “Sim Arcade” or “Arcade Tycoon.” But Sim Tycoon isn’t trendy on XBLIG right now and Craft is, and Firebase are capitalists first and foremost.
Face it guys, you’re going to hear people keep asking if they can play the games. Better get cracking on making it happen.
Sadly for me, lots of the things I planned on complaining about Arcadecraft are already being fixed. Although the patch isn’t live yet, it covers nearly every problem I had. So I’ll just focus on the gameplay. Honestly, the shocking thing about Arcadecraft is that nobody has thought to make this game before. Build your own arcade during the Golden Age of CoinOps? How is this not already something that exists? You have to buy games, set the prices, set the difficulty, place them, empty the coin boxes, buy more games, pay off your loan, kick out hooligans, buy more games, sell old games, upgrade the power supply of your building, allow world champion players to attempt to break records on your machines, unjam coin doors, buy more games, survive the gaming crash of ’84, stock soda machines, and buy more games.
So yea, it’s a time sink.
A lot of stuff I disliked about Arcadecraft is being patched out. The hooligan won’t appear while you’re in menus anymore, and a more satisfying animation will appear when you boot him. Not too satisfying. If I owned an arcade and someone started kicking my machines, nothing short of Joe Pesci taking a nail gun to his temple would please me, and it would serve the little fucker right. It would be totally justified too. The kid starts kicking machines, somehow teleporting from machine to machine, disabling them before I can clearly identify him and eject him. A better indicator of where he is would be nice, given the fact that he’s powered by the mystical forces of Satan and all.
And the power goes out a lot. Like, at least every three game months, or about six minutes . Where the fuck is my arcade at that the power keeps failing every three months? There’s no “turn on every game” master switch. You have to pick up and slam every machine against the ground. Individually. When you have 30 machines, this becomes a pain in the ass, especially when you’ll inevitably have the hooligan show up to start shit while this is going on. I did find it mildly amusing that jammed coined slots are unjammed in the time-tested tradition of banging the machine repeatedly until it works again. See, who says Armageddon wasn’t factually accurate?
I swear to Christ, every time the dude came by with the premium machines, my arcade was full. The game totally needs to give you the option to make him wait while you hock a machine to make room.
My biggest gripe with Arcadecraft is how fucking slow a start it gets off to. A lot of time sinks are lethargic in the beginning. Arcadecraft is practically in a fucking coma, sort of like I’ve been over the last four days. A common theme among players is one itty-bitty mistake forces them to start over. I never had to myself. I guess I had as perfect a run as anyone could have, but I still only finished 99th on the Leaderboard (now like 118th or some such shit). I could see why others would die though. You’re given too little of seed money and new games cost too much money early on. In theory, you can set a machine to 50 cents a play, but that causes its popularity to plummet. Here’s a hint: sink a soda machine pretty much anywhere and set the price to $1 per can. Occasionally a “hot spot” will appear in the arcade that increases a machine’s popularity, but they’re typically in the least convenient spot. Like in front of the bathroom door, where you then trap a helpless little shit inside, not to mention the kid that made it.
With all the planned changes, plus future expansions, Arcadecraft feels more like a really good beta than a finished game. That’s okay, because it’s a really good beta, sort of like Lexiv was. You can see the potential. If Firebase plays its cards right, they could probably make this a hit iOS game with microtransactions up the ass for years to come. Think of all the stuff they didn’t include this time around. There’s no novelty games, no redemption games, no pinball machines, no skeeball, no air hockey, no cigarette machine in the corner (you know, for the adults, wink), and only a limited supply of larger cockpit games. Arcadecraft has a chance to be a full-blown franchise, and we’re getting in at the ground floor.
You also don’t get enough info on each game. Again, there’s lot of patchwork needed here.
And by the way, in case you’re wondering, it’s fucking awesome as hell. For all the problems, of which there are numerous, Arcadecraft is one of the best sims on XBLIG. But, let’s face it, it doesn’t belong on XBLIG. This should be on PCs, with the convenience of a mouse and keyboard. This would also allow the expansion packs I mentioned above. Plus, let’s face it, we all want to play the actual games. Dead serious when I say that I would pay the full disc-based retail price of $60 for a version of Arcadecraft where you could play the games. Assuming they didn’t suck. Which I’m guessing they wouldn’t. I mean, Firebase did make the coolest modern version of Defender on the market. This would give them a chance to make the coolest versions of EVERY vintage game. Which they should be doing right now. They’re capitalists after all. Don’t believe me? Their next game involves making stuff out of feces. It’s called CrapCraft. And it will be fucking awesome.
Procrastinating Squirrel was developed by Daivuk 
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