The Big Bullshit Outrage of the Day

January 15, 2013 by 18 Comments

Something that I never realized until I started Indie Gamer Chick and started reading people on Twitter and Facebook and shit is, get this, video games can be sexist or misogynistic at times.

The hell you say!

Although, to the game industry's credit, you could probably get more teenagers interested in history if you told them Joan of Arc dressed like this.

Although, to the game industry’s credit, you could probably get more teenagers interested in history if you told them Joan of Arc dressed like this.

I generally try to stay out of gaming politics, because you really can’t win.  It’s just like real politics.  If I was to go on here and say that I think Barack Obama is a socialist twat, I’ll have liberals mad as hornets.  If I say I think Barack Obama is a moderate pussy with no backbone, it will piss off the moderates, who would then go so far as to rip their own backbones out of their body and raise them up triumphantly to say “see, we’re not like Obama, we have backbones.”  And then they would die because you can’t live without a backbone, the fucking idiots.  And if I say I support Comrade Obama and his socialist paradise, the conservatives would lock and load and ask me to present my birth certificate to prove I’m not a Cuban socialist who plans to enslave mankind with such evil acts as health care and healthy food.  Like I said, you can’t win with this shit.

There’s been a few “games are anti-XX chromosome” controversies in the short time I’ve been writing this shit.  One involved a girl who got some threats because she wanted to do a Kickstarter to raise funds to do a study on how women are portrayed in a sexist way in games or some such thing.  People asked for my opinion on the matter.  I honestly didn’t have one, except “you needed money to study this.. why?”  She could have accomplished the same thing by being blindfolded, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey style, turned loose in a Gamestop, and then have her pick any random game off the wall.

Oh sure, the one female character is a pig!

Oh sure, the one female character is a pig!

Here’s a thought: list every person you know that owns, say, a dedicated gaming console that belongs to them and nobody else, and has at least five games for it.   Alright, how many of them are men?  Write it down.

Now, how many of those people are women?

No, you don’t really know her.  Has she ever said more than five words to you?  No?  Then don’t list her.

Hey you, I said gaming console, not cell phones.

Yea, I guess you can count PCs, but NO expansion packs.  If she played the Sims for 10 years and only bought expansions for it, that’s one game, not 30.

Okay, got a number?  Now subtract that from the number of men you know who fit the same category.  Pretty big number, huh?  And that is why gaming caters to men.  It’s just smart business.  Me?  Not only am I very much a minority as far as gaming goes, but I don’t even feel I represent a demographic with the potential to own more than a 20% market share within the next ten years.  (Edit: According to the ESA, 40% of all gamers are female. Doesn’t really sound right. I’m more curious how many of those are console gamers, but I’ll give that point up). I’m not looking to change the world here.  All the economic and social studies show that gaming is a man’s world.  That’s not very women’s lib, but it is reality.

The most successful “girl games” are really fairly gender-neutral stuff, while games that I would think cater 99.9% to guys do whatever is necessary to get sales, and often do get said sales.  Not every idea is a winner, such as today’s Big Bullshit Outrage of the Day: a pair of plastic tits.  Oh thank God, you mean guys are no longer okay with fake boobs?  Well that’s a good thi.. oh.  Oh this.

Zombie-Bait

Seriously?  This is what’s causing guys to flip the fuck out?  And it typically is guys, because you know, the gaming industry caters to men as we previously established and thus girls are busy doing other things like, I dunno, watching awful romantic comedies starring Katherine Heigl or something and thus aren’t checking game sites for the latest Big Bullshit Outrage of the Day.

I don’t get it.   I don’t get why anyone would want to own that God-awful piece of shit.  I’m talking about Dead Island, not the bust, though I don’t know why anyone would want to own that either.  Then again, I’m not really into having gaming clutter piling up.  Some people are.  Some people collect the shit.  But, I also don’t get the outrage.  What else are you going to have represent a game like Dead Island?  The most fitting thing I could think of is a colostomy bag on account of it being a steaming slurry of liquified turd.  But then people would probably be outraged at how anti-geriatric games have gotten.

So while it’s not my personal taste, I could see how a developer could figure that most gamers wouldn’t be offended by it.  Look at what gamers are into.  What are the three most popular shows among gamers?  Well, going off the 700 or so people I follow on Twitter, 99.9% of which are men who play a shit load of games:

-Walking Dead.  While my non-horror loving boyfriend was on vacation, his non-zombie loving girlfriend finally broke down and watched the pilot of the show.  It was alright, but I would like to point out that the first thing that happens in the first five minutes of the first episode of the series is a little girl (can’t be older than 10) gets her head shot off by a police officer.  Oh, but that doesn’t count, because she’s a zombie now.  Well, whose to say that the chick in the torso wasn’t a zombie too?  Or maybe the girl wasn’t a zombie, but just in really bad need of dental work.  Ever been to the UK?  That little girl would have blended in just fine there.

This is the picture you show children that are scared to get braces.

This is the picture you show children that are scared to get braces.

-Wrestling.  Every fucking day with the wrestling on Twitter.  And wrestling typically includes scantily clad women who stage play fights for the amusement of men.  Where are the positive female role models there?  What message does this send to young girls?  You get ahead in life if you paint hand-prints on your tits and strut out naked in front of fifty thousand live people and millions watching at home?

-Mad Men.  I’ve never seen it, but a critic from the Los Angeles Times wrote that, exact quote here, “the sexism, in particular, is almost suffocating, and not in the least fun to watch.”  Again, never seen it, don’t really think it would be my thing, have nothing against it at all, but it’s a very popular series among gamers.  How come this form of sexism for entertainment is alright but gaming sexism for entertainment isn’t?

And that’s not counting other ultra-violent, blood and guts movies and television series.  Because I have no life, I went through some of the twitter feeds of those who are bizarrely outraged by a plastic bust of a pair of boobs and saw fanboy gushing for such properties as Dexter, Saw, or gaming properties like Mortal Kombat.  Mortal Kombat, where you can actively do this to a woman:

Jesus fucking Christ dude!!  I mean, holy shit, that’s awful!  Where was the outrage for that shit?  Not that I was personally offended.  I wasn’t.  I wasn’t offended by that, or by the bust, or by Walking Dead, or by wrestling, or by Mad Men, or by Dexter, or by any other thing that people could be outraged by.  I wasn’t even offended by the E3 footage of Lara Croft getting the full torture-porn treatment.  Was it a little unnerving?  Yea.  Actually a lot unnerving.  I’m not really sure I want to play that game.  But I honestly don’t see the difference between that and a slasher movie.  I don’t know what that says about me or society, that we’re that desensitized, but I’m not going to fake outrage that I don’t personally feel.

I started playing games when I was seven years old, but I only started writing about games within the last two years.  And to be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever truly been offended by a game.  Alright, maybe the Houchi Play, which was a game where you played as a horny Japanese guy trying stalk and goose unsuspecting women.  That was creepy and extraordinarily fucked up, and I truly believe anyone who could find it fun is probably a giant-sized creeper with a microscopic pecker.

I can’t explain why that makes my skin crawl, yet I don’t wince at the thought of guys laughing their asses off at blowing away hookers in Grand Theft Auto.  I would like to say that, yea, it’s kind of disappointing that there aren’t more positive female characters in games, but you can’t say that the industry doesn’t cater to the right (IE profitable) demographics.  Grand Theft Auto sells boatloads.  So does Mortal Kombat.  That next Tomb Raider game is going to make so much money they could build a fifty-foot tall statue of Lara getting impaled on a wooden post out of the stacks of cash it will earn.  I’m not even interested in it (seriously Crystal Dynamics, that video was pretty fucked up), but I’m not offended by it.  Do you know what offends me?  It’s always guys who squeal the loudest and rush out to defend womankind when the Big Bullshit Outrage of the Day happens.  As if we can’t speak for ourselves.  That is so sexist.

Filed under Editorials Tagged with ,

Life of Pixel

January 14, 2013 by 9 Comments

Update: Life of Pixel received a Second Chance with the Chick and is now Chick Approved.  Click here for the updated review. 

Indie gaming fans keep asking me to look outside of Xbox Live Indie Games for material to do my reviews on.  However, my loyalty remains with XBLIG, so I only hit up other platforms when I’m suffering from complete and total burnout of XBLIG due to the endless mountain of shit that populates the platform.  That’s the only time I look elsewhere.

So um..

Let’s see what’s on PlayStation Mobile this week, shall we?  What have we here?  A Super Meat Boy-esq punisher with the hook being you’re a pixel who journeys through gaming history?  Interesting.  Of course, I’ve already played a game where you journey through game history, and if that one had been any bigger a disaster they would have to scrub the Titanic from history books just to make room for it.  However, as a concept, a stroll through gaming history is not only sound, but enticing.  That’s why I chose to pick up Life of Pixel, even though it’s one of those godforsaken punishers.

Life of Pixel

Looks Atarishi, I guess.

I want to start by saying that artistically, Life of Pixel is mostly a triumph.  The eight worlds presented authentically capture the look of each era they pay tribute to.  I’m guessing at least.  Some of the platforms covered are vintage UK-only PCs such as the Spectrum or the 2X81, along with such American relics as the Commodore 64.  As an American born in 1989, I have never touched those platforms, nor do I plan on it.  But, comparing screenshots to games from those devices, they look spot-on.  However, no effort at all was made for the games to sound like their respective platforms.  There’s a single awful chip-tune that plays no matter which era you’re in, and all stages make the same bleeps and bloops.  Why go so far to look authentic but not sound authentic?  It makes no sense at all.  It would be like having the most accurate-looking Elvis impersonator on the planet performing hip-hop.

Where the game falls apart completely is level design.  There is cheap design, and then there is Life of Pixel.  Every bad possible design choice is given center-stage here.  Leap of faith platforming, blind jumps, no checkpoints in slow-paced large levels, erratic enemy movement, and an overall sense that the game really wants you to not have a good time playing it.  It ultimately comes across like a poor Super Meat Boy clone.  The main character even looks like Super Meat Boy.  But this is yet another case of a developer not grasping why that game was so popular.  Nothing in Super Meat Boy was unfair.  It required little to no guess-work from the player.  And dying wasn’t so bad because levels were fast paced and respawning was quick.  Plus, death was sort of rewarded by the fact that you got to see a replay of all your failures play out simultaneously at the end of each stage.  The only reward in Life of Pixel is seeing a new graphics style when you open a new world.  A novelty that wears off on average in about 11.3 seconds each time you get a new world.

Actually, this looks slightly different from the Spectrum ports I've seen on XBLIG, so I'm not sure how close this is to the real thing.

Actually, this looks slightly different from the Spectrum ports I’ve seen on XBLIG, so I’m not sure how close this is to the real thing.

I can’t even complain about the controls really.  They’re mostly accurate, and offer non-slippery controls and decent jumping physics.  100% of Life of Pixel’s problems are level-design related.  The game is cheaper than a dime store whore and seems to revel in that fact.  There are one or two other design flaws.  Early stages are single-screen affairs, and during these the game is quite fun.  But once you get to the Spectrum era, the game does that thing where you have to walk to the edge of the screen to scroll the level over, and it scrolls a full screen at a time.  The game doesn’t pause while it does that scroll thing, and so if you have to jump to a platform, it’s a forced blind jump that often will result in your death.  It’s something that is horrible and cheap for the sake of being horrible and cheap.  Later stages avoid the “scroll a full screen at a time” design in favor of smoother scrolling, but the level design never strays away from “be as cheap as possible.”

There’s also spikes that retract into the walls only to pop out again.  These are weird because you can walk over them as long as they are like 75% buried in the ground.  It makes getting the timing down of when you can make a run for it nearly impossible.  I’m not sure why they didn’t just have the spikes retract and pop up faster than they did, except again, because it’s aggravation just for the sake of being aggravating.  Finally, sometimes dying is a slow process.  In the best punishers, death and respawning happen quickly.  Here, if you land in water (or quicksand), you slowly sink down and have to wait for your character to reach the bottom, linger for a bit, and then blink out of existence.  It’s absolutely amazing that a game that so clearly wants to be Super Meat Boy could end up getting wrong every single thing that made Super Meat Boy the beloved cult hit that it is.  Bad level design, lack of rewarding gameplay, blind jumps, slow deaths, and boring, sprawling levels.

Don't worry. Nothing about Life of Pixel gets me wet.

Don’t worry. Nothing about Life of Pixel gets me wet.

Yea, maybe trial-and-error platforming was a big deal thirty years ago, but we’re in 2013 now.  100% authenticity was obviously not a priority for Life of Pixel, as evidenced by the half-assed sound, so why make the game so cheaply frustrating?  I’m so pissed off because these guys obviously had talent.  There’s no way they could make a game that looks this good and controls this acceptably just by sheer fucking luck.  So what happened guys?  Why did you choose to make your game so unfair and unlikable that it’s almost certain to never catch on by word of mouth?  The amount of potential squandered here makes me want to cry.  And by the way, my friends are disappointed that there’s no Life of Pi reference here, but I disagree, because this game proves there is no God.

logoLife of Pixel was developed by Super Icon Ltd

$1.99 searched for a Life of Pixel trailer on YouTube and instead found a video series about a little girl named Pixel in the making of this review.  Who the hell would name their daughter Pixel?  I look forward to meeting her siblings, Polygon and Bit-Mapping. 

In all seriousness, I couldn’t find any gameplay footage of this on YouTube.  If someone finds some, give me a heads up.

Filed under PlayStation Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Genix

January 12, 2013 by 3 Comments

Damnit.  Damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit!!

sad-puppy

How did this happen?  Early on in my play through of Genix, I felt I was playing a pretty good game.  I tweeted that it was “fucking awesome.”  I joked about having a “chick-boner” over it.  I probably should have put more than an hour into it.  What started as a fun neo-retro space jaunt ends up turning into a tedious, sprawling mess riddled with unfairness and frustration.  It’s one of the most disastrous turns I’ve seen an XBLIG make.

Genix’s hook is centered around its unique presentation.  The free-floating line graphics over a static background gives the game a holographic look similar to “floating image” games of the 70s and 80s like Sea Wolf, or especially Asteroids Deluxe.  This effect is also known as the “Pepper’s Ghost” and is used to create the special effects in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland.  While playing this, my boyfriend commented that Genix, more than any other XBLIG covered at Indie Gamer Chick, belongs in an arcade.  Imagine a cocktail cabinet hosting Genix, using the Pepper’s Ghost effect.  It would be spectacular to look at.  Hell, it’s pretty damn nice to look at now on a television.  Even better was the amount of restraint shown by the developers to never allow the graphics to get in the way of gameplay, which is such a common mistake on games this stylistic.  It’s too bad this restraint didn’t extend to level design.  It’s like an alcoholic who triples his cigarette intake to quit drinking.

Screen shots don't do Genix justice.

Screen shots don’t do Genix justice.

Genix is all about navigating labyrinthine stages, looking for keys and doors to mate with the keys, shooting enemy ships and searching for an exit.  It’s certainly a different concept on the space shooter genre.  It’s probably been done before, but being a whippersnapper, this was new to me.  And at first, I enjoyed it.  Levels were well-organized, the mazes were clever, and the combat was.. well, that was always a bit tedious, but never annoyingly so.  The problem with the shooting is the enemies are pretty dang spongy.  Getting past early enemies isn’t so much a challenge as it is a device for killing the game’s pace.  The spongy enemies also combine with limited ammo to create a sort of puzzle effect on the game.  Although totally optional, Genix keeps track of how many enemies you take out in each stage.  It seems to give you just enough bullets in each stage to defeat every enemy.  This could have been a clever device to extend the game’s shelf-life, but the problem is it’s just not implemented in a fun way.  Enemies take so many bullets and firing them is so loosely done (even a snap-pull of the trigger fires multiple rounds) that you end up having to pump the fire button, shooting one round at a time in hopes of not wasting a single bullet.  It stretches the combat beyond boring and into the realm of torture.

But, the well designed stages more than made up for this, and I never grew tired of the beautiful graphics.

And then something happened.

About ten stages in, Genix gets teeth, and not in a good way.  Enemy turrets that fire quickly and are dead-on every shot are placed around corners in a way designed to guarantee you take damage.  Enemies are also placed just around corners in ways that force you to take damage rather than being able to strategically take them out.  Levels become more sprawling, sometimes taking ten minutes or longer to complete.  Your health drains relatively quickly and there are no checkpoints, so imagine putting ten minutes into a stage just to die because a boss appears out of nowhere and you’re trapped in close-quarters combat with a sliver of energy remaining.  That means you get to replay those ten minutes again.  Sometimes I don’t mind it, but Genix’s design doesn’t really lend itself well to forced-replays.  It also doesn’t help that weapon upgrades are dull and don’t really help so much with the sponge factor.  In early videos of the game, enemies don’t seem to be such bullet-eating bastards, so what happened?  Why do I get the feeling this is yet another example of a developer getting too good at their own game and beefing it up for their personal benefit, to the detriment of others?

screen3

An hour into Genix, I had it pegged as a top-20 game, but it’s not.  I can’t even put it onto the Leaderboard.  It has too many problems, chief of which is the game ramps up the difficulty by being a dick instead of being a fair challenge.  This dissolves the early sense of awe and makes the problems that were always present stick out much more.  Control is too loose, firing is too loose, the levels have too much needless backtracking, enemy design is basic and boring, and the game has serious pacing issues.  Like sometimes a tiny box-shaped stage with no maze elements appears at random that feels totally out-of-place.  Or sometimes you’ll get a new gun (like the plasma cannon) and realize that maybe it DOES kill enemies faster, but it also uses ammo faster, thus maintaining the status quo.  Let me stress that Genix has all the potential in the world to be something special.  Not by tearing it down and rebuilding it from scratch, but just by using some common sense and a little bit of patchwork.  This could very well be a top-10 game, but I can’t recommend it.  Like the crater that enjoys eating donkeys, Genix is too in love with being an asshole.

xboxboxartGenix was developed by Xpod Games

240 Microsoft Points (160 points too much) are practically begging for this game to get patched and ask for a Second Chance with the Chick in the making of this review.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Light Fighters

January 10, 2013 by 21 Comments

I admit, I haven’t been very productive as of late.  I think I’m suffering from some sort of XBLIG-related malaise.  Part of that comes from getting so many review requests for games that just don’t seem that interesting.  I’m not talking about games that look bad or play bad, but just the type of stuff anyone (besides those that made it) would have a tough time getting excited over.

Take Light Fighters by Deviant Spark for example.  It’s not an awful game by any means.  It’s not really good either, but what’s wrong with it is so insubstantial that trying to get a full review that’s also entertaining to read is like trying to dig a canal using a plastic spoon.  The main focus of the game is local-only multiplayer combat.  This is almost never a good idea on XBLIG.  Even really great party titles on the platform, like Chompy Chomp Chomp or Hidden in Plain Sight, are tough sells for non-indie-loving nerds.  You developers really need to meditate on this fact.  Close your eyes and try to picture someone like me pitching a game like Light Fighters to my friends.

“We’re spaceships.  We try to shoot at each-other’s spaceship.  This goes on until one of us dies.  Here, look at the trailer.”

“Uhhh………huh.  And you think we should play this over Borderlands 2, why?

“Because, um, because I’m Indie Gamer Chick?”

“That’s cool.  We’re not though.”

screen2

By the way, this doesn’t include Brian, who is really supportive of this whole Indie Gamer Chick thing that I’ve fallen into.  But his support has limits.  Especially when he’s listened to me whine about how bad the single-player modes of the game are for hours.  The AI in the tournament mode is just too good at shielding shots, which can make matches drag on for ten, fifteen minutes with no progress being made.  And the meteor mode is awful too because it’s slow, your bullets get used up too fast and take too long to reload, power-ups are too slow to arrive, and yet it’s somehow still too easy.  By time it’s his turn to jump in, he knows better.

“Okay Brian, let’s try this multiplayer.”

“Is that the game you’ve been having a chick-boner over?”

“No, that’s Genix.  I’m writing that review tomorrow.  This is for Light Fighters.”

“The one you’ve been complaining about?”

“Yea.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“But, I need to try this multiplayer.”

“Your dad is home, get him.”

“Oh come on, please?”

“No.  Cathy, if you’re not liking it at all, why would you attempt to subject your friends to it?”

“Because, um, I’m Indie Gamer Chick!”

“And I’m Nippy Nuts the Car Guy.  What’s your point?”

“Um, misery loves company?”

“I’m not really feeling like being in the company of misery today.”

“It probably won’t be THAT bad!”

“But you think it will be bad.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, but no.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll give you a back rub!”

“Your hands are too tiny for it.”

“I’ll take you out for a rib dinner!”

“See, now that you’ve said that, you’ll be craving a rib dinner and I’ll get it anyway.”

“I’ll blow you.”

“I’ll get that anyway too.”

Okay, so such a conversation didn’t really take place.  I wouldn’t offer to blow Nippy Nuts just to get him to play a game with me, and he actually would step up if I pressed the matter.  But do I really want to?  A game’s goal is to grab you from the get-go with an interesting hook and fun gameplay, and the two hours I spent with it were, while not outright painful, pretty damn dull.

I did end up having a bit of a go with multiplayer and it was just as bland and exhausting as I suspected it would be.  Mind you, this is a perfectly functional game that features decent (if somewhat primitive) graphics and solid play control.  It’s just not fun.  It wasn’t fun to play, it wasn’t fun to explain to my friends so that I could squeeze in some multiplayer rounds, and it wasn’t fun to write about.  It took me a few weeks to get to this review, in part because Brian was on vacation, but also in part because I promised the developer I would review it and immediately had buyer’s remorse.

I would like to say that the developer of Light Fighters has been nothing short of classy, and quite patient considering that I had to put his review on hold for a couple of weeks.  So hopefully he takes the news that I didn’t enjoy his game at all with good grace, instead of accusing me of being a lying crackwhore who has failed to comprehend the genius of his game.  I’m guessing he won’t be a poo thrower though.  He actually has talent and class.  Typically it’s only the completely talentless that resort to flinging poo and making themselves a total clown for the bemusement of the community.

screen1

There is nothing really wrong with Light Fighters besides not being fun.  The game didn’t crash.  There weren’t physics glitches.  Everything wrong with it can be boiled down to “this game probably had no chance of being entertaining from the onset and the developer should have recognized that and tried something else.”  Even if the ships were more interesting, or the bullets they fired more exotic, or the AI less unfair, or the reload-rates less painfully slow, or if multiplayer matches didn’t all boil down to glorified button mashers that leave little to no room for strategy, or if it had something to keep track of what your best times are in meteor mode, or if the meteors weren’t so fucking spongy, or all of the above, Light Fighters still would have been boring.  Don’t forget to ask play testers “is this fun?”  Because that’s just as important as whether the game is functional or broken.  Don’t just ask if it’s fun, but ask follow-up questions too.  “Why is it fun?”  “Why isn’t it fun?”  “What could make it more fun?”  Which, I’ll admit, will put your fellow developers in an awkward position.  It’s the equivalent of your girlfriend asking if this dress makes her look fat.  And it does.

xboxboxartLight Fighters was developed by Deviant Spark

80 Microsoft Points would be interested in playing a game called Deviant Spark in the making of this review.  I bet it would be about a Transformer who enjoys streaking and showing people his collection of nude playing cards. 

“Ha, good one Cathy!  Hey, isn’t that.. is that Michael Bay taking notes?”

“Huh?  What?  Oh fuck, hey, NO!  DO NOT PUT THAT IN THE NEXT MOVIE!  DIDN’T YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM MUDFLAP AND SKIDS?!!”

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trivia or Die, Trivia or Die: Movie Edition, Avatar Trivia Party 2, and What The?!

January 8, 2013 by 3 Comments

I’m into trivia, and I would like to think I’m pretty good at trivia.  How good?  I’m banned from playing any and all trivia with friends and family.  The last attempt at doing so was playing Trivial Pursuit 5 on 1, with me being by myself, plus I was banned from getting to continue my turn if I got a question right.  I still won three games to zero, and suddenly people were more interested in playing Sorry! or Uno instead.  I was also asked politely to abstain from participating in trivia night at our country club.  They said I was single-handedly responsible for a drop off in attendance, and since trivia night was one of their most profitable events, I would be doing them a big favor by not showing up.  Then they advertised that trivia night was Cathy-free.  I’m kind of proud of that.

So reviewing some trivia-based XBLIGs would be a chore, but thankfully, all of today’s games could be played single-player as well.  I then simply observed my parents play a round of each game to make sure they functioned as multiplayer efforts.  Of course, a little piece of me died every time they missed a lay-up like “how many colors are on France’s national flag?”  Sigh.  I must have been adopted.

Trivia Or Die

Like all the games featured today, Trivia or Die is pretty basic.  The only real hook is if you miss a question, the host of the game insults you.  Not only is the insult kind of poor as far as insults go, but it’s done by what I think is meant to be a stereotypical Japanese game show host.  It’s as bad as it sounds.  The other gimmick is once a game ends, the losing players are killed by being dropped into a pit of fire.  Not as cool as it sounds.

The first one of you to say "TOASTY!" is getting bayonetted right in the fucking eyeball.

The first one of you to say “TOASTY!” is getting bayonetted right in the fucking eyeball.

As far as the game goes, everything you need to know about Trivia or Die can be summed up with saying the first answer to the first question of the game was wrong.  What kills the most people: lightning strikes, earthquakes, or hurricanes?  The game says lightning strikes.  Sounded wrong to me, and a quick check on Google finds numbers for all three scenarios to be all over the board.  There doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer that has statistics and shit to back it up.  So it probably should have been left out of a multiple-choice trivia game.  It wasn’t, so I can’t recommend it.  Though if someone can find multiple sources to back up the lightning strike claim, I’ll change this to a mild recommendation.

Trivia or Die: Movie Edition

This is the exact same game as Trivia or Die, only it features movie-themed questions.  And it’s better on account of having no answers be inaccurate.  However, I should point out that there’s still some writing mistakes.  A quick example that gave me a chuckle: Goodfellas is called “Goodfellows.”  Somehow, Goodfellows is not such an interesting sounding movie.  Goodfellows sounds like it would star Woody Allen as a carpet salesman or something.  Oh, and there are issues with how questions are worded.  “What was the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar?”  Well, that would be the Flowers and the Trees from 1932.  But, that’s not an answer, so I’m guessing they meant “What was the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.”  That would be Beauty and the Beast.  Yea, I knew what they meant, but it’s still lazy.  And now I’m just being nit-picky.  Trivia or Die Movie Edition will serve as a semi-competent time waster that might barely be worth $1 if you have three friends of equal skill.

What kind of fucking moron would answer Y to tha.. DADDY HOW COULD YOU??

What kind of fucking moron would answer Y to.. DADDY HOW COULD YOU??

Avatar Trivia Party 2

It’s exactly the same game as the first one, only there’s different questions and a different board.  It’s like Mario Party, only with trivia.  Of course, actual trivia skills are not required to win.  In the original game, I lost a match to Brian where I never missed a single question and he missed significantly more than a single question.  What followed I think is legally classified as domestic assault.  Either way, I like the board in this one better than the original, and it is fun.  You can read my original review for more detailed thoughts on it.

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What The?!

And I close out with the worst of the four games, which really sucks because it also had the most effort put into it.  It has full voice acting, which would be cool.  It would be, if the actors didn’t totally half-ass the whole thing.  There’s two guys: a host, and an announcer.  The announcer is actually the guy who reads the questions, and he at least seems to put some effort into his work.  It’s still awful, and the guy sounds like he’s so bored that he might fall asleep.  But he has the right voice for an announcer, so we’ll give them a half-point on it.  And then I’ll subtract a billion points for the host, who sounds like he would rather be dead than participate in this shit.  I’m not joking.  He sounds like he’s either coming out of a coma or going into one.  I’m sure some people will say they deserve props for having voice acting at all, but if it’s worth doing, is it not worth doing right?  Or with enthusiasm?

Otherwise, it’s just another bare-bones trivia game.  It’s set up to look like a 70s game show, but it doesn’t take advantage of this.  The hook here is you can occasionally “win prizes.”  They’re all gag prizes, but the weird part is, there’s no gag to go with them.  You can win the Moon as a prize, but there’s no joke or punchline to go with it.  Again, it’s another effort to give the game some personality that fails miserably.  And the bare-bones setup with the actual questions and answers, the lack of punchlines for the gag-products, and the ultra-slow pace really cripples What The?!  It has what should be the best feature of any of the games: a system in place that prevents you from being read the same questions more than once.  But that’s completely negated by how boring the overall experience is.  It would be like listening to Harry Potter’s book-on-tape and finding out the reader is Ben Stein.

Ho ho ho ho, this is so funny. After we're done with this episode, I'm going to go sit in my garage with the car motor running and the door shut.

The host has that “I’m going to sit in my garage with the engine running and the door shut” look on his face.

So I’ve tallied it as follows: Avatar Trivia Party 2 is the best of the bunch, but if you’ve already played Avatar Trivia Party, it offers nothing new besides a new board.  Trivia or Die: Movie Edition is competent but quite bland.  The original Trivia or Die is also bland but lacking in competence so you can feel free to pass on it.  Finally, approach What The?! only as a drug-free alternative to NyQuil.

xboxboxartTrivia or Die and Trivia or Die: Movie Edition were developed by Fun Infused Games

Avatar Trivia Party 2 was developed by Red Crest Studios

What The?! was developed by Social Loner Studios

80 Microsoft Points each dug a hole in the armrest of my couch with my fingernails while watching my parents miss question after question.  I tell you, it was worse than torture in the making of this review.

xboxboxart1IGC_ApprovedTrivia or Die: Movie Edition and Avatar Trivia Party 2 are Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  The other two games probably couldn’t tell you who is buried in Grant’s Tomb.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Arcade of Neon

January 5, 2013 by 2 Comments

Other than a really annoying soundtrack, Arcade of Neon seems like it would have fit right at home on the Atari 2600.  This is one of those “dodge most everything, except the stuff you’re not supposed to dodge” games.  It’s loaded with play modes and can be addictive in a hypnotic “am I really having fun or am I being brainwashed into buying products I don’t need” kind of way.  It reminds me of my parents while they watch the Vampire Diaries.  Yes, my parents, ages 63 and 44, watch the Vampire Diaries.  Shame of my life, obviously.

It's not much to look at, but really, it can be fun.

It’s not much to look at, but really, it can be fun.

The concept is you’re a circle that has to dodge other circles.  Alternatively, you can absorb like-colored circles for points.  In the main mode of play, switching which color you are is handled with the face buttons and their corresponding colors.  So Y would be white, X is black, B is like a dark grey.. hey wait a second.  Oh, that’s right.  I have one of those controllers.  Well if you have a normal controller, you can look down for reference.  For whatever reason, my brain refused to retain that Green = A.  The other colors I could use fine, but for whatever reason my personal wiring refused to allow me to adjust to green with quick reflexes.  There’s probably some complex reason for that, but I’ll just save everyone some time and say that I’m an idiot.

There’s a ton of modes here that change-up the formula, including a game that I think was funded by SPECTRE with the aim of creating the ultimate weapon of boredom.  It’s like Pong, only it’s single player, you can’t possibly hit the ball past the computer, and the object is to keep returning the volleys.  Sometimes when the AI hits the ball back, it changes color, and you have to match the color with your paddle.  The problem is, the paddles are huge and the ball NEVER GETS FASTER!  I played it for like ten minutes and it was the most excruciatingly boring ten minutes of my entire life.  That’s not hyperbolic.  I’m dead serious.  We need to get scientists off the Hadron Collider and have them study this thing.  It’s the most remarkably bad game mode I’ve ever seen in my entire life and after ten minutes I was temporarily insane from it.  I set off a small fire in my office and had an extended conversation with my coffee table.  How does anyone come up with a game like this in 2013?

Avoid having sharp objects within reaching distance when attempting to play the Pong mode.

Avoid having sharp objects within reaching distance when attempting to play the Pong mode.

The rest of Arcade of Neon isn’t nearly that bad.  In fact, it’s a perfectly acceptable waste of a few minutes and at times fun.  But there’s a couple gigantic problems here.  There are ten modes of play available, but only one hi-score slot is present.  This is one of the biggest brain farts I’ve seen from a developer in a while.  Ten unique modes, one hi-score space that they all share together.  It’s really disappointing because I know the developer reads me and I figured I at least had enough influence (ha!) to make people second-guess such no-brainer choices.  Apparently he got no feedback from people saying “you know, if there’s ten unique game modes, people might want to know what their best score in each mode is.”  I’m so pissed about this that I’m banning him from further game development until he writes “I will use my head for something other than a hat rack” 100 times on a blackboard.  I don’t think I actually have that authority, but I don’t know if he knows that.

Another problem is I sort of already played a game that’s very similar to this, called Dot Dash Episode 1.  Although Arcade of Neon offers more play modes and a larger variety of objectives, Dot Dash had better graphics and play control for the same price.  Considering that Dot Dash barely landed a spot on the Leaderboard, I guess Arcade of Neon ought to miss the cut.   But my only real criteria is having fun, and I did have fun with Arcade of Neon.  I’m into twitchy arcade-style games, and it offers that.  It offers that in a no-frills, shitty package that doesn’t even offer more than one hi-score spot for ten modes of play, which I can’t stress enough is about as dumb as asking a narcotics officer for directions to the nearest opium den.  So yea, I guess I do very, very, very mildly recommend Arcade of Neon.  Just not the Pong mode.  Seriously, don’t touch that thing.  Don’t even think about it.  The Chinese are replacing their infamous water torture with it.  True story.

IGC_ApprovedxboxboxartArcade of Neon was developed by Ivatrix Games

80 Microsoft Points heard Devil Blood and Send in Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief in the making of this review.

Arcade of Neon is Chick Approved, even though in its case the Seal is affixed with the rancid snot of a walrus with the flu, and it’s ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Barely.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Unfinished Swan

January 3, 2013 by 1 Comment

I’ve spent the last couple days attempting to write a game of the year piece, and when I tweeted that I was ready to name Journey my game of the year, I had a few skeptics say “what about Unfinished Swan?”

Oh yea. Forgot about that one.

Well, now I’ve played Unfinished Swan. It’s fun. It’s original. It’s got a very cool narrative. And it’s not a game of the year contender. Not even close. It would be lucky to catch a sniff of the game of the year’s stale fart.

But it’s really cool though.

TUS.E3.2012.001

What stands out about Unfinished Swan is how good a job it does of making the player revert back to childhood. It does feel like you are a child whose imagination while being read a fairy tale is running wild. This could have been mishandled so badly, but instead it comes across as totally authentic and charming. I could see why so many people would name this game of the year, especially those that put a premium on story and emotion over gameplay. My only real complaint with the story is Unfinished Swan, which seems very suited for young children, takes a bit of a dark turn during the final chapter, which doubles as the end credits. This includes a scene where you’re at a funeral and see a body inside a coffin. Jeez, guys.  Even Disney had the good taste to not show Mrs. Bambi’s bullet-ridden corpse.

So the story is really good. Not as emotionally exhilarating as Journey, or as likely to make you think deep, introspective thoughts. Instead, the game invokes a relaxing innocence. This is the first game I’ve played in a long time that feels like a sophisticated family game. No joke. Unfinished Swan seems like it would be great for little kids. Nothing here is too challenging, and even some later spooky scenes set in a dark forest aren’t too scary for young children. If you have kids, I couldn’t strongly suggest any game more. Any form of media that’s narrative can appeal to very young children or adults is rare, but such stories in video games are really, really rare.

Uniqueness extends to the gameplay as well.  In fact, the experience is so unique that if you don’t already know what it’s like, I suggest you quit reading now and just go buy it. You won’t regret it. My verdict on the gameplay? Fun, very simple, puzzles aren’t exactly puzzles, some frustrating elements, but everything here is light and breezy and could be finished in under four hours. There is absolutely no challenge at all here. None whatsoever.  

TUS.E3.2012.014

Still reading? Okay, let’s talk level design. So the game starts you in a stark white room with no indication of what to do or where to go. A common experience among people I’ve talked with about Unfinished Swan seems to be people not realizing the game has begun. But it has. Each of the three chapters has a unique take on what exactly you have to do to navigate them. In the first world, everything is white, and you find your way around by throwing water balloons filled with ink. They splatter on objects, revealing their shape and size. Using these, you paint the terrain until you can find the path to move on. It’s quirky and neat, but sometimes annoying. Often times, I had to rely on spinning around in a circle and throwing ink at everything trying to figure out where I was supposed to go next. I called this the “octopus caught in a centrifuge method” and it did work, but seemed like it shouldn’t be necessary. Occasionally, you’ll spot swan tracks on the ground that point you in the right direction, and thank Christ for that, because otherwise I think I would still be trying to find my way out of the first stage.

In the second stage, objects finally have shadows, and thus you don’t need to heel-toe your way around anymore. Your ink balloons are also replaced with water balloons. The idea here is to navigate a vast city and castle with all kinds of tall buildings and exotic locations. And actually, this is the part of the game where I did get bored at times. The design here is fairly bland. The gutsy stylized gameplay of the first stage is almost completely gone, and in its place is the type of navigation puzzles that have been done to death in games, only these ones are much easier. Later in the stage, you have to use the water balloons to grow vines used for climbing walls. The problem with these are they tend to be a bit stubborn. Sometimes I couldn’t get them to go where they were supposed to go at all.

In one spot, you’re given a fire hose that you’re supposed to use to saturate a wall to grow the vines towards another platform. I spent several minutes trying and failing to get the vines to grow in that particular direction. They simply refused to do what they were told. So I said fuck it and made a mad leap for the platform, missed, and fell to my death. When I respawned back on the platform, not only were the vines willing to cooperate, but they had already grown where they needed to go. No clue at all what happened there. I’m guessing the game’s engine crapped out on me. That, or this is the developer’s way of advocating suicide to solve all your problems.

TUS.E3.2012.010

The final proper stage is set in a dark and spooky forest where you’re attacked by spiders if you don’t stay in well-lit areas. You deal with this by hitting lights with your balloons. At one point, you need to push around a little glowing ball of light (a moment that gave me Entropy flashbacks) to keep yourself safe. Later, you have to follow the ball of light down a river. After this, you have geometry puzzles that require you to create platforms by throwing the water balloons at specially marked walls. I have to say, the efforts to change-up the gameplay are well done in general, but no one mechanic seems to reach its fullest potential. After all this, you’re given a brief epilogue where you relive past moments in the game, while the credits appear on the walls. Afterwards, you can go back and look for hidden balloons that open up various unlockables.

I really liked Unfinished Swan, and other than some dead points in the second chapter, the gameplay here is fresh and well-paced. I ultimately recommend it because there’s nothing quite like it, and because it plays well. But there’s no challenge here. After telling a friend to get this for their six-year-old kid over the weekend, I found out that the kid easily beat the game in roughly the same time I did. I hear he totally loved it too. So yea, it’s not challenging. But neither was Journey. I would say both titles would be better described as game-like experiences. Where actual gaming elements almost seem to distract from the unfolding narrative. Both could also easily ride the art-house label if they so wished, but they don’t need to. They let their art credentials speak for themselves without battering you over the head with a copy of Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception. If Unfinished Swan has any real failings, it’s that it feels like they didn’t do enough with the visual gameplay concepts. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe the whole “you can’t see anything” direction of the first level could have been maddening without the type of restraint the guys at Giant Sparrow showed. Maybe. But I can’t shake the feeling that this could have very well been called the Unrealized Swan.

The_Unfinished_Swan_logoIGC_ApprovedThe Unfinished Swan was developed by Giant Sparrow

$14.99 never did hit that blasted swan with a water balloon in the making of this review.

The Unfinished Swan is Chick Approved, but only Xbox Live Indie Games get ranking on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  For now. 

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Awesome Pirates

December 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

Awesome Pirates seems to be designed primarily with multiplayer in mind.  I had intended to use our holiday office party as an excuse to try it.  Forgot that people go to that party to like, drink and open presents and shit, so the game got passed over.   Well, a couple of days ago I had a chance to play it with three other people.  Those people were ages 5 to 8 too, which is fine.  It’s not the most complex title in the world.  You’re a pirate ship.  You shoot other pirate ships.

screen3

The kiddies grasped this just fine, and after a small learning curve with the controls, we had some nice sea battles.  We put nearly an hour into this, and at one point I asked them what they thought.  The reply probably should have been expected.

“Can we play your Wii U instead?”

Hmph.

“But this is an Indie game!  You kids don’t understand!  You’re supposed to appreciate the pluck and devil-may-care attitude of this whole new generation of game developers!”

“Oh.  Hey, do you have Nintendo Land?”

At this point, I figured I had lost them.  I was fine with that myself.  Awesome Pirates isn’t really technically flawed, but it’s kind of boring.  This type of game has been done so many times now that unless you have a really good twist on the formula, it won’t hold anyone’s attention for long.  I did put an extra hour into single player, which is especially dull.  Decent graphics, good play control, and again, nothing really wrong here.  The game just isn’t fun.  The kids didn’t like it either, and that’s only partially because there was a Wii U staring them down.  The action is kind of slow, the power-ups pretty dull, and there’s just not a whole lot to this one.  Props to the developers for making a fully functional game that’s only sin is being boring, but now you guys have to make something that anyone can enjoy.

Oh, and I totally kicked the shit out of those little kids in Mario Chase.  Ha, yea, serves you little pricks right for making fun of me for not being able to throw a dragon punch!

xboxboxartAwesome Pirates was developed by Cheeky Mammoth

80 Pieces of Microsoft Eight walked the plank in t’ makin’ o’ this review

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Little Inferno

December 28, 2012 by 12 Comments

UPDATE: Little Inferno’s default price now seems to be $9.99.  For that reason, I’m bumping up my enthusiasm to recommend it to “moderately decent.”  I also bumped it 30 spots up the Leaderboard.  Yes, $5 does make a difference.

Looking for the solution to the four things you need to burn?  I posted them under the trailer below. 

Tis the season of gifts.  Or, if you want to be a killjoy, the season to burn toys in a fireplace.  That’s the idea behind Little Inferno, an independent game for the Wii U.  It’s by the guys behind World of Goo, which was probably the best digital-download game on the original Wii.  But World of Goo got by on being a quirky, addictive physics-puzzler.  Little Inferno, on the other hand, feels like the type of time-sink you would find on the iPhone market.  In fact, there are lots mechanical issues with Little Inferno that make me think it started life as a micro transaction-oriented mobile game, like Doodle God for arsonists.  Only such games typically cost $1 or less and make their money by nickle-and-diming you to speed up the gameplay.  Little Inferno charges you $15 upfront, and keeps the action nice-and-slow.

Good fun for the whole family.

There is a bit of a story here.  You’re a kid that lives in a snowy world.  You receive an Inferno Entertainment Center.  With it, you place toys in it and then burn them.  Once you burn a toy, it spits out more money than you paid for it.  You then hit a catalog to order more shit to burn.  While you’re doing this, you get a barrage of messages from a creepy neighbor girl who asks you to send her gifts.  There’s a few twists and turns along the way, one of which genuinely made me feel bad.  But the plot goes way too far.  Once you finish all the catalogs, an obnoxious ending unfolds over the course of the next twenty-plus minutes.  I’ve heard it described as “bold” or “social commentary” or the ever-dreaded “art!”  And of course, art here is meant to mean “criticism proof.”  As always, art is in the eye of the beholder, and while I held Little Inferno, my eyes started to get a bit droopy while I watched the ending.  It didn’t feel connected to the game.  I had someone tell me that Little Inferno actually gives you visual clues as to what is really going on, but the visual style kind of masks those clues unless you’re outright looking for them.  And besides, the gameplay is downright hypnotic, and after a while any and all interruptions were about as well received as a fart to the mouth would be.

The gameplay itself is really too simplistic for its own good.  Yet, it’s still oddly addictive.  Beating the game only requires you to purchase and burn each item in the catalog once.  Things are kept fresh by a having a list of 99 combos that you have to figure out on your own.  It sounds neater than it is.  Achieving a combo is done by buying each item, putting them in the fire together, and burning them together.  For example, you might see a combo listed as “Movie Night.”  To clear this, you have to buy an ear of corn (which of course turns into popcorn when you burn it) and a television set.  Unfortunately, this is about as deep as it gets.  Although some of the items have moving parts or unique sequences while they burn, you never have to create a Rube-Goldberg-style setup to get a combo.  Despite having a sophisticated physics engine, it’s not really put to use here.  It’s like one of those douchebags that buys a Lamborghini and then keeps it in his garage without ever driving it.

And getting those combos can be fucking agonizing because the game has needless item-refill times.  When you purchase an item, you have to wait for it to be “delivered” to you.  This can take quite a while.  You can erase the time by spending stamps, but they spawn infrequently and combos generally don’t spit out enough of them.  This is annoying, but what’s REALLY annoying is then the shop takes time to restock the item.  I’ll give you an example: Combo #73 requires you to burn one of those spring-loaded snakes in a canister with a thing of protein powder.  The powder requires you to wait two minutes for it to be delivered.  BUT, the very next combo requires the protein powder and a statue of a guy doing an Atlas pose.  This means you have to wait at least three minutes before attempting each combo.  This isn’t a phone game, assholes.  I think you meant it to be one, but these wait times are ridiculous.  Especially when you consider we’re playing on a game machine that’s battery life is shorter than the average Lord of the Rings movie.

Weird part is, this is exactly how my abuela Maritza died.

Weird part is, this is exactly how my abuela Maritza died.

To be clear, there’s something undeniably fun about Little Inferno.  I think.  I mean, with time sinks such as this, it’s tough to tell.  But the story is ruined by some boneheaded twists that take it from potentially a dark, macabre tale into a bullshit deep introspective journey of growing up.  I would love the game more if not for two things.  #1, it shouldn’t have been on the Wii U.  There’s no need for it to be on the Wii U.  The game can be played entirely on the Wii U gamepad, but this type of game lends itself more to “knock out a few minutes while waiting for the cashier to get a price check on a gallon of milk” sessions.  Not being tethered to a game console.  And, #2, it’s too fucking expensive.  $15 for this?  Yea, it’s on sale right now for $10, but that only lasts for a few more days.  And by the way, idiot that I am, I got this sucker on my first trip to the eShop and never actually played it until now, after Brian left for his vacation.  Stupid, stupid me, I paid the full price for it, and it’s not even close to worth it.  It’s not even worth the $10 sales price.  $5 seems like a good price.  $1 on iPhone and not a penny more.  Maybe that’s really the gag here: the biggest thing you burn with Little Inferno is your own money.

Little InfernoLittle Inferno was developed by Tomorrow Corporation

$14.99 said this was like Toy Story meets the Spanish Inquisition in the making of this review.

IGC_ApprovedSigh, can’t believe I’m saying this, but overpriced as heck Little Inferno is Chick Approved on the grounds that I had fun with it.  Only Xbox Live Indie Games get ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  By the way, remove the “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but overpriced as heck” part if the price is $10.  And if they ever drop it to $5, you can remove the “Sigh” too. 

The four items you need to burn are the magnet, the firefly jar, the exterminator, and the sunglasses.  You’re welcome.

Filed under Nintendo eShop Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Shark Attack Deathmatch

December 27, 2012 by 11 Comments

Oh yea, this one will cause controversy.  No, not the fact that you’re killing realistic-looking depictions of the majestic and noble great white shark.  Personally, I don’t get why that’s such a big deal.  It’s not like someone is going to be motivated by playing this game and arm him or her self to go shark hunting like they’re fucking Brody or something.  The world doesn’t work that way, unless you’re one of those people who desperately needs to find proper medication.  The fanatical types will note that Super Mario Bros. didn’t breed a generation of children who ran around stomping turtles to death.  And where is this outrage when games depict dinosaurs being killed?  What’s the difference between that and killing deer in a hunting simulator?  Dinosaurs used to be animals, right?  And according to some people, that was just 4,000 years ago!

In all seriousness, I don't consider myself an animal-rights aficionado, but I'm agast at the Shark Fin Soup industry. You should really see this documentary by Gordon Ramsey on it. It's on YouTube, and I've linked to it here. Just click the picture.

In all seriousness, I don’t consider myself an animal-rights aficionado, but I’m disgusted by the Shark Fin Soup industry. You should really see this documentary by Gordon Ramsey on it. It’s on YouTube, and I’ve linked to it here. Just click the picture.

No, the real controversy is going to be about how much I liked Shark Attack Deathmatch.  Because I really did.  Opinion on it is fairly split, with some calling it good fun, and others calling it a steamy shit mountain.  I lean towards the good fun crowd, on account of actually having fun playing it.  But I could certainly see why so many people would call it Mount Crapmore.

It’s a weird idea: a slow, more methodical first-person-shooter set underwater.  And with sharks.  But killing the sharks is not the focus.  The idea is to kill the other scuba divers.  You’re armed with a spear gun and a knife to do this.  You’re given a decent-sized arena to fight in, but there are no boundary markers and I sometimes would swim out-of-bounds.  When you do, the game goes ape shit and demands you return to the play field, with a big arrow pointing you in the correct direction.  This was probably not a the best idea.  I would think having actual walls there would be preferable.  Like you’re in a giant lake.  A lake with great white sharks.  Okay, so it wouldn’t be authentic, but come, we’re in a video game where you can refill your health by picking up a giant red cross.  I think realism was thrown out the door at that moment.

You can't shoot the eels or turtles that float around. They only seem to be there to cause the occasional (actually quite rare) frame-rate hiccup. They should have been put there to give you powers or something. Maybe for the sequel.

You can’t shoot the eels or turtles that float around. They only seem to be there to cause the occasional (actually quite rare) frame-rate hiccup. They should have been put there to give you powers or something. Maybe for the sequel.

I think most of the hate for Shark Attack Deathmatch comes from those who stick exclusively to the demo.  Without getting to play the game online, you’re really missing out.  The single player Survival modes are pretty lame.  One of them involves zombie sharks, although I’m not sure what difference it made besides making them look scabbier.  If it’s not the single player mode, it’s the aiming of the spear gun.  I admit, I hated it at first too.  There’s a learning curve to it, and you can’t possibly get it down pat in the amount of time the demo gives you.  I’ll admit, even after a couple of hours of playtime, the aiming was never that good.  Even if you adjust the sensitivity, at best it can be described as barely satisfactory.  I found I did best when I centered my aim with the cross hairs and then switched to views with the left trigger.  Cumbersome?  Yea, but it was the only way I could seem to shoot accurately.

Of course, the one thing everyone says that’s nice about Shark Attack Deathmatch are the graphics are seriously stunning.  And yes, while you have to pull the old “good for an XBLIG” card, it looks really, really good.  For an XBLIG.  Easily the best looking first-person shooter on the platform, with nothing coming close.  And the audio cues are well done too, with a Jaws-like “daaa daaa DAAA” whenever a shark draws near you.  Of course, the sharks really aren’t the focus of the game.  They’re more like window dressing, if window dressing was sentient and out to kill you for no reason.  You can even turn off the sharks when setting up an online game, although I didn’t find anyone willing to do it.  The only way I could use the sharks was to feed myself to them if I was in danger of dying, thus depriving an opponent of a point.

I enjoyed most of the matches I played of Shark Attack, but there are tons of little annoyances.  Spawning is horrible.  I’ve spawned and died in less than five seconds because an angry shark was pissed off that I had blinked into existence on their watch.  Or there was one time where I spawned literally between two guys who were having a knife fight.  In the couple of hours I played, there were nearly a dozen instances of the “you’re alive again, you’re dead  again” spawning.  Brian once came back to life right in the path of an oncoming spear someone else had already fired.  Hilarious if it’s not you, but fucking annoying as hell when you’re on the receiving end of it.  To defend yourself, you can run for it, or you can drop a flash grenade.  The problem with this is it takes so fucking long to activate that by time you’ve removed it from your holster, pulled the pin, and dropped it, you’re probably either dead or dying, and all lined up in the sights of whatever is trying to end you.

"Running out of air? Don't worry, in a few seconds you'll have a fresh set of gills, and perhaps a blowhole in your back too!"

“Running out of air? Don’t worry, in a few seconds you’ll have a fresh set of gills, and perhaps a blowhole in your back too!”

Aggravations aside, Shark Attack Deathmatch is really fun.  And unlike a lot of games with online multiplayer, it has a full community.  I never once had a problem getting a full slate of players into a match.  Typically, if someone quit, there would be someone there to replace them in just a few seconds.  It didn’t matter if it was 11PM on Sunday or 4AM on Christmas morning.  Someone was always there.  Sure, it’s a totally different beast than your typical shooter, but that’s part of the charm.  I don’t really want to play a poor-man’s version of Goldeneye or Doom.  I want to try something original, and Shark Attack Deathmatch is that.  When I played with friends, we all had a hooting and hollering good time.  And hey, Sharks!  Who doesn’t love sharks?  It gives new meaning to the phrase “hanging out with chums.”

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedShark Attack Deathmatch was developed by Lighthouse Games Studio

80 Microsoft Points noted that when you die from a shark, it says “you were murdered by sharks.”  I don’t think what Sharks do is technically murder, unless they’re killing us for shits and giggles.  Dolphins do that, not Sharks in the making of this review. 

Shark Attack Deathmatch is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  See which games it put a scuba tank in the mouth of before shooting them with a harpoon. 

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