The Impossible Game

June 24, 2012 by 6 Comments

The Impossible Game is, as of this writing, the biggest selling Xbox Live Indie Game of all-time that isn’t a Minecraft clone. It’s a punisher, sure, but since you can’t improvise anything and every jump you have to make is predetermined, it’s more akin to trying to ace a Guitar Hero song set on expert. I’m not really into those kind of games, and my early experience playing the demo of this long before I founded Indie Gamer Chick left me feeling self-mutilatious. And no, I don’t care if that’s not really a word. It is now.

I’m guessing anybody that has hung around the XBLIG scene has probably at least played the demo for Impossible Game. Until last month, that was my only experience with it. Now that I officially do not play demos, I sprung for the full version, with the intent of catching up to all the top-selling games. The first thing I noticed about it? How clunky the jump button is. It’s slow. There seems to be a slight delay in the game’s reaction time. In a game that requires perfect precision with no room for error, I found the control scheme unacceptable. I found it baffling that this was a top game. #3 all-time selling and #10 in total rank.

Part of the problem is the only way to jump is with the A button. None of the other face buttons are used at all. What it could have used was jumping mapped to the bumpers. The least resistant buttons should have had jumping on them, which would have allowed for quicker actions and smoother play. Alas, it was not to be. I said to myself “the idea for this game isn’t bad or anything. If only there was a platform that did not have clunky buttons and inputs were almost completely instantaneous. Too bad such a device is purely hypothetical.” And while I was doing this, Brian was waving my iPhone at me. Weeks later, I figured out why he was doing so.

So I bought Impossible Game on iPhone, and it worked just swell. First off, the layout of the level is completely different from the Xbox version, which is a nice touch. There’s no “push here” area. You can pretty much push anywhere there isn’t some kind of overlay to cause the cube to jump. There was no delay in the jumping, leaving the only challenge as the actual challenge the game is meant to have. Fancy that. I still wasn’t convinced the game was anything special. You jump a cube over spikes. It scrolls quickly. You need to memorize the layout. Whoopee do. Then I noticed that over an hour has passed. Okay, so maybe it’s a little addictive.

This was back in late April. Since then, the Impossible Game has factored into my bathroom time, smoke breaks, TV watching, waiting rooms, and traffic jams. Every time I made it one space closer than my previous best, I would check the stat bar to see what percentage of the first stage (we’re only talking the first of five stages here) was finished. Finally today, after 603 total attempts (it keeps track), I fucking did it. I beat it. I beat a shallow, one-dimensional, total time-sink of a game. Brian asked me if all the time I had put into it was worth it just to get this:

Totally.

The Impossible Game on Xbox 360 and iPhone was developed by FlukeDude

80 Microsoft Points and $0.99 said this is the biggest case of false advertising since the Neverending Story in the making of this review.

My intent had to go without placing any practice flags down, but I slipped at one point. Damnit all, oh well.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews, XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Indies in Due Time: Dream-Build-Play 2012 Episode 3

June 23, 2012 by 9 Comments

Kairi and Brian here.  No Dalek today.  No Nate, Hurley, or Alan either.  Don’t worry, the Dalek isn’t really set to kill.  Doesn’t mean it can’t kill, just that it will only do so if it wants to impress me.  However, I do have Mike Wall, editor at Armless Octopus, as a guest.  I’m guessing Dave will pop in as well.  To the trailers!

Read more of this post

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , , , , , ,

Compromised

June 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

Have you ever played a game that seemed like you should like it, but you didn’t?  I got that vibe from Compromised, a patch-work of twin stick shooting, wave shooting, space shooting, and shooty shooted shooter shooting.  It’s a typical “aliens invade and you have to save the world” claptrap storyline.  In the case of Compromised, I’m not sure why you would want to save this world.  The environments are pretty dank and depressing.  It doesn’t look like a world any reasonable being would want to live on.  For all the people of this planet know, the invaders are a race of architects and home decorators who are trying to liven the fucking place up.  Maybe we shouldn’t start blowing them up so fast.  I mean, they can’t possibly make this place any worse.

Compromised is pretty high in production values, as far as XBLIGs go.  At a whopping 426MB, it damn well better be.  Sounds, character models, special effects, they’re all top-notch.  And yet, the actual setting of the game offers such little visual stimulation that the game ultimately becomes a little draining.  Bleak works sometimes, but I feel doing so requires characters and interaction.  When you put a ship alone with no supporting characters in a sterile environment, it can be depressing.  I had the same problem with Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.  The reason why galactic stuff like Metroid or Mass Effect offer such a variety of locales is because the alternative is boring.  In Compromised, the only variety is a change in color.  It’s as inviting as a traffic light.

Gameplay is a bit more lively and typically involves moving forward, fighting a few waves of enemies, moving forward a little more, fighting more waves, and then fighting bosses.  It’s a solid design, but there’s so many little mistakes that I ultimately really don’t like Compromised at all.  The best way to explain why that is can be summed up with all the times I had to pause the game to say “Whaaaaa?”

The first instance was during the tutorial, when the game was trying and failing to explain how the special attacks work.  Each of the four face buttons activates such an ability, with some kind of sub-space nuclear anti-matter black-hole creating fuck you unholy universe killing bomb mapped to the B button.  The game told me to try each of the weapons, so I did, and the thing mapped to B detonated and pretty much insta-killed me.  During the tutorial, after the game told me to use it.  Whaaaaa?

That was pretty much par for the course for that weapon, by the way.  It lingers, and once its been let loose, you can’t safely be around it.  It’s like one of my dog’s farts.

You can upgrade your stats by collecting little orange cores that enemies drop.  You can use them to increase your health bar, which sounds great!  The only problem is, when you die and respawn from a checkpoint, you don’t get the bar filled all the way.  Whaaaaaa?  Typically if you die and come back to life, that’s like a universal cue that you could use a full health bar, but the game doesn’t think so.  Also, you can upgrade how much health refills charge you up.  Again, sounds great.  The only problem is that enemies don’t actually drop the damn things.  They only appear during preset intervals.  In a game where enemies absolutely swarm the shit out of you and you might fight waves of hundreds of guys between checkpoints, you have no way to gain health.  Whaaaaa?

Enemies can spawn into a position where they’re instantly chewing your ass, before you have any chance to defend yourself.  Whaaaaa?

Compromised is a TwinkS, but missiles don’t fire the way your aiming stick is pointing.  Instead, they fire whichever way your ship is pointing.  Whaaaaa?  The whole point of TwickS are that you can move one direction and fire in the other!

I’ve never been the type of critic who settles for saying “it just wasn’t for me.”  I didn’t like Compromised, so I can’t recommend it to anyone else.  Even without all the problems, I found it to be pretty dull.  It’s not as if you just fight one wave at a time.  You fight strings of waves, one after another, in the same drab environments.  Fire-fights stick around too long, well after you’re ready to move on to the next section of the game.  Checkpoints are often spread too far apart, and without a traditional method of health drops and enemies that are completely unfair, you’ll end up replaying the same sections again and again.  I had maxed out my gun’s strength, my missile load and their power, and I still died often and had trouble making progress.  After five hours, lots of grinding, and no end in sight, I gave up.  I wasn’t having any fun.  Ultimately, I feel that Compromised is built using top quality bricks, but they’re held together with rancid tartar sauce and dental plaque.

Compromised was developed by Super Soul

240 Microsoft Points have a friend who really enjoyed the shit out of this game and spent last night telling me I have no taste at all because he’s a big meanie in the making of this review.

 

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

Indies in Due Time: Dream-Build-Play 2012 Episode 2

June 22, 2012 by 15 Comments

Sorry for the delay.  You see, my boyfriend ended up being occupied watching videos for Ring Runner for four days, while I had Dave, Tim, and Nate chanting “one of us” at me, which is just bizarre.  Since they wouldn’t stop, I had no choice but to unleash the Indie Gamer Chick Dalek on them.  Long story short, Nate is dead.  My condolences to his loved ones.  Well, onto this episode’s four Dream-Build-Play trailers, as selected by Tim Hurley of Gear-Fish.

Hurley: Actually, I also have my own site now: TheXBLIG.com

Kairi: Wait, you left Gear-Fish?

Hurley: No, but I mean, you did kill Nate.

Kairi: I didn’t.  The Dalek did.

XBLIGERNATE! XBLIGERNATE!

Hurley: Sure, always blame the Dalek.

Dave: Is it gone yet?

Kairi: Wait, you’re still here?

Dave: Yea.  What did I miss?

Brian: Nate Graves is dead and Tim Hurley has his own site now.

Dave: Wow, betrayed Gear-Fish, huh?  Nate must be spinning in his grave.

Hurley: He would be if there was anything left of him.

Kairi: Okay, well we have Tim and Dave Voyles of Armless Octopus.  Let’s roll.

Alan: Not without me you don’t.

Kairi: Fuck.  Okay, the Indie Ocean dude is here too.  On with the trailers.

Read more of this post

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Manic Miner 360

June 21, 2012 by 10 Comments

Let’s travel back to 1983.  It was a dark time in the world.  A time when people lived in fear of communism, nuclear annihilation, and Walter Mondale.  A time when kids had to play their Ataris in three feet of snow, and do their math homework using solar-powered calculators like savages instead of their cell phones.  A time when the most high-tech consoles had “vision” in them instead of “box” or “station.”  A time when “playing with your Wii” sounded like a shameful act, as opposed to today where.. nevermind.  Most importantly to me, it was a time where I wasn’t born yet.  Thus, I’m not particularly nostalgic for what the early 80s had to offer.

Party like it’s 1983! Let’s all freebase cocaine and watch Knight Rider!

So Manic Miner 360, an XBLIG port of a 1983 ZX Spectrum game, isn’t something that would make me get all warm and gushy.  My reader base might feel otherwise.  Oddly enough, the average reader of Indie Gamer Chick tends to be about ten years older than I am.  In a way, I’m tickled pink over that.  I mean, it’s pretty cool that so many older people are interested in what I, some snooty little shit who wasn’t weened on Space Invaders and text-based RPGs, thinks about gaming.  On the other hand, it can be a bit of a curse at times, especially when it comes to nostalgic releases like this.  When I started to complain about the flaky controls and unforgiving design, I was immediately hit with several “it was good back in the day” tweets.  Somehow, I’m guessing a response of “this isn’t back in the day!  It’s today!” won’t be a sufficient explanation for why I’m not having fun.

I guess there’s no point in debating whether people who liked this game thirty years ago will still enjoy it today.  They obviously do.  I do question whether they really enjoy it on the same level they did as kids.  You mean to tell me that all the evolution gaming has gone through in 30 years doesn’t change your perception of Manic Miner?  Look, I can’t see things your way on this.  Without the perspective of nostalgia, I kind of have to take games like this on face value.  It controls like shit.  Movement and jumping are very stiff.  The levels are frustrating.  The game centers around “gotcha” game design, where you can’t possibly know about a hidden trap until it activates.  Manic Miner isn’t really a platformer or a punisher.  It’s a trial-and-error memory test.  Each level typically has one specific path that you have to follow, and enemies have predictable patterns that you have to memorize.  Once you have that shit down, it’s just a matter of keeping it all together and fighting with the abysmal controls.  Some people liked it.  A few people told me they knew of people who could beat it without the infinite lives cheat (which is thankfully built-in and optional).  Yea, that is impressive.  So is being able to fart the Star-Spangled Banner on command, but I don’t want to take the time to learn how to do it.

Mind you, I’m told this is a truly faithful port, so if you loved the broken controls and restrictive design thirty years ago, nothing has changed here.  Same graphics, same sound effects, same clunky jumping, same dick-moves.  For some people, that’s all they want.  This is a game made for them.  Can a new audience from my generation get behind this game?  Some weirdos might, in the same way there are people my age that have Pac-Man tattoos and dress like Don Johnson.  I’m not saying everything from the 80s was terrible.  I can’t think of anything that wasn’t off the top of my head, but I’m sure there’s something from that decade didn’t suck.

After beating a level that featured things that were certainly not Pac-Man, I entered a stage that featured something that was definitely not Donkey Kong.

I know it’s aggravating for older people to have to listen to people my age say intolerant, obviously erroneous statements like “everything from the 80s sucked.”  The 80s probably didn’t suck any more or less than the 90s or whatever the fuck the last decade was called.  Did anyone ever come to a consensus on the name for the last decade?  If not, may I suggest the Goobers.  No reason why, I just think that would be funny.  My point is, nostalgia is whatever you make of it.  Like any form of entertainment, one Indie Gamer Chick’s trash is another geriatric’s treasure.  Maybe people my age need re-releases like Manic Miner to show us whippersnappers just how lucky we are.  Lucky that we didn’t grow up in an era where games had bad control inputs, shoddy design level design, load times of six minutes, install times upwards of hours and, uh, nevermind.

Manic Miner 360 was developed by Elite Systems

240 Microsoft Points should have probably been 80 Microsoft Points instead in the making of this review.

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

Aqualibrium

June 20, 2012 by 6 Comments

For the first few months of my site, my goal was to try to finish every game I played for review here.  I didn’t really take into account that most games I’ll be playing either won’t be very good or will be so insanely hard that any semblance of fun will have evaporated long before the game’s conclusion.  Some people say that means I lose integrity.  To which I say, fuck integrity.  I play games to have fun, not to not have fun.  If a video game can’t provide entertainment, what is it good for?  With that in mind, here’s my review of Aqualibrium, a game that I quit after only finishing four stages.  Oh, I tried to play it.  I spent well over an hour with it.  I gave up because I have no interest in playing a game that doesn’t seem to be finished.

The idea is really good.  You play as a dude with a jetpack and.. wait, you’re sold already?  See, that’s how good an idea it is.  I say jetpack and you’re already heading to the marketplace to pick it up.  Well actually, the idea is even better.  At the bottom of each level is a funnel.  You have to cause water to pour from various pipes down through the stage and into the funnel.  To do this, you have to remove blocks, place blocks, and strategically choose the best way to move the water.  This is a great concept for a game, way better and more ambitious than Archifishal Software’s previous effort, Inferno!  But once you actually start the game, it quickly becomes apparent how poorly executed this concept is.

Let’s start with the controls.  They’re terrible.  Movement is super loose, making it almost impossible to accurately line up in a spot you want to be in without having to wiggle your dude back and forth.  The character’s speed is just too damn fast, among other things.  Oddly enough, you can hold the right bumper to make him move faster, which is pure insanity.  A self-destruct button would have probably been more useful.  Mind you, this is a game which demands precision movement.  If you walk over a block you’ve laid down, you automatically pick it back up.  Because the controls are so clumsy, you will inevitably pick up blocks on accident, causing water to flow the wrong direction.

If water spills outside of the funnel, a pressure meter fills up and you die.  This was really the only challenge the game needed.  Smart level design (and the stages are quite smart) is really all a logic puzzler needs.  Of course, those don’t really sell all too well, so Archifishal tried to spruce things up with enemies.  The enemy movement patterns are extremely annoying, in that they have no preset rhythm.  This typically led to them walking back and forth over the spot you must pass by, with no room to actually get past them.  They also don’t seem to react to what you’re doing, so you can’t manipulate them into going a different direction.  This is absolutely brain-dead game design, and it almost totally cripples Aqualibrium.

Mind you, you do get a gun at some point to fire at these guys.  I know it’s in the game somewhere because it showed me it in the tutorial.  But, you have to pick it up, and it’s not in every stage.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe because that would have been too fun.  Or too easy.  Yes, it’s probably another game where the developer lost track of reality after getting too good playing their own game.  I’m not sure why a game that is a puzzler has enemies that behave like you’re in a punisher.

The final nail in Aqualibrium’s coffin is the cannons.  They pop up in the fifth stage, and they are fucking brutal.  You have no life bar, so it’s one shot and you’re dead, and death means starting the stage over again.  The game doesn’t ease you into anything.  First stage with the damn things and, bam, cannons everywhere.  They only shoot when you try to pass them, so you have to “tempt them” and then dash after they shoot.  Not all of them shoot straight.  Some of them shoot in arches that seem to vary at random in trajectory.  Here’s the problem: the game then sets up the water in ways where you need to step in front of the cannons to place blocks.  Because the controls are so flaky, chances are high you will charge past the spot you need to be in to place the block.  If you need to stagger the blocks to aim the flow of the water, you’re also likely to accidentally pick up a block you already laid down.  Perhaps that block was also serving to shield you from the cannon.  Perhaps then you will get shot for the 400th piss-guzzling time.  Perhaps then you will realize you’re playing a game that wasn’t ready for the market.  Perhaps then you will weep for the $1 you just utterly murdered.

The pink things are the cannons. You will grow to hate them.

There’s a couple little problems too.  My TV is big enough to stand in for Jabba the Hutt’s dress form, but objects on-screen are still too small and not detailed enough.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell what is a gate that only you can walk past and what is a gate only an enemy can walk past.  They’re supposed to be distinctive based on color, but the colors are not bright and different enough.  I’m pretty sure I’m not color blind, and I’m pretty sure my television isn’t fading.  I know I’m not the only one who felt that way about the game either.  How did this thing make it this far along with so many problems?  I wasn’t aware XBLIG has a no-child-left-behind policy.  Not that it should have one.  If said child is born without working limbs, proper vision, or brain activity, that fucking kid needs to be left behind to ripen up a bit.

This is the second time in a week that I’ve played a game that is awesome in concept but miserable in execution.  Aqualibrium should have been fun.  It should have contended for the leaderboard.  But it wasn’t ready for the marketplace.  The controls are horrible.  The AI is too stupid.  The cannons are too unforgiving.  And because those three things are so bad, you can’t enjoy the puzzles, which again, seem pretty well constructed.  Aqualibrium suffers from an identity crisis.  It wants to be a puzzler, but it also wants to be a punisher, and on top of all that, it wants to be a bullet hell.  I don’t think those three genres are compatible.  You know, developers?  Prove me wrong on that.  I really do want you to.  I’m just saying it sounds like mixing oil and water.  And a lit match.

 

It’s too bad I, I mean the Microsoft Points, fucked up making that video or else I would have had room to rip on the cover art. I know the developer is capable of better, because the cover art for Inferno was well done. What happened to this game?

Aqualibrium was developed by Archifishal Software

80 Microsoft Points can’t really talk about being an idiot, because they filmed a video of Kairi trying to point out how the brain-dead enemies don’t move or give you room to get past certain sections.  Only they filmed her playing against the wrong enemies, ones that you can walk past without getting killed.  I’m not sure why those are in the game, other than as a waste of digital memory, but that’s not the point.  All the other enemies in the game behave the pretty much the same way and will stop and camp in front of places you need to walk past and you have no hope of getting between them.  But, the particular enemies we filmed her with are the exception to that.  And yes, she’s blaming the Microsoft Points on the mistake instead owning up to it herself.  What a bitch, in the making of this review. 

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

Dead Pixels (Second Chance with the Chick)

June 19, 2012 by 7 Comments

It’s been just over nine months since I reviewed Dead Pixels, the #2 game as of this writing on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard, and the former king of the mountain.  Despite really enjoying my time with the game, I never really got around to playing the two extra modes that launched months after its release.  With less than two weeks to go before my first anniversary as Indie Gamer Chick, I figured I should finally take a look and see if the content would be enough to elevate Dead Pixels back into the #1 spot on the board.  Of course, my expectations that it might do just that were somewhat dashed by the developer outright telling me that it would not reclaim the spot.

You get more characters to choose from in The Solution, all of whom have been bad little boys. Lord knows that when you have an emergency situation, the only solution is to send in hardened criminals to do all the heroics. I know how it works. I saw Pitch Black too.

He wasn’t being coy.  In fact, he’s right.  The two new modes of Dead Pixels are swell extras, but they ultimately add nothing to the experience.  First up is The Solution.  It’s kind of like a survival mode, where you have to run X amount of streets (depending on the difficult level) and then back again.  You have even more limited resources, and the city is vacant so there are no humans to negotiate goods with.  You can still loot empty buildings for goods, but you don’t want to get bogged down by carrying too much weight.  I had that happen to me when I played the main quest, and I think I would have moved faster if I had waited for plate tectonics to push me to the goal.

I ended up carrying only the default shotgun, and only stocking up on shells for it.  If that doesn’t sound like the most exciting way to play the game, that’s because it wasn’t.  I ended up just holding down left and avoiding enemies.  This did come in handy on the final part of the “walk left” section of the game, when the lights started flickering on and off.  Due to my epilepsy, this was a high-risk section of the game for me to play.  I decided to walk up to the top of the screen, hold the stick left, and not do anything else.  Boring but effective, because it worked.  However, this mode proved to be dull, and not really worthy of the excellent main game.

Last Stand worked better.  It’s a wave shooter where you play as a couple of twats named Hurley and Nate (no joke) as they lock themselves in a mall with a bunch of zombies.  I doubt they would actually do something like that, because I know I wouldn’t do that.  Since they exist only to steal my ideas, their zombie plan would probably involve some kind of elaborate suicide, because that’s what I’m going to do.  If the zombies attack, I’m going to kiss the end of a shotgun that has bullets soaked in cyanide while wearing a vest made of dynamite and the timer set for five seconds from now.  I am taking NO chances of surviving the outbreak.  Among other things, I never see a working Taco Bell in these games or movies, and I will be damned if I’m going to live out the rest of my life without a Chulupa.

I ended up playing as Hurley. And no, that doesn’t mean I ended up with blisters on my hands and a craving for bacon. It’s just a game, not a transmorphic body swapping thingie.

So Last Stand.  The wave shooter part.  Well, you shoot a bunch of zombies and they drop money.  Then between waves you can upgrade your stats, buy different guns, more ammo, health kits, etc.  Every round the zombies grow in numbers.  That’s pretty much it.  This mode is more fun, but then again I’m predisposed to enjoying wave shooters, which is why such a game could overthrow Dead Pixels for the #1 spot on the leaderboard in the first place.  However, I didn’t love the wave shooting mode the way I did the main campaign.  Part of that is there’s no online leaderboards to show off how far you’ve made it.  But it’s mostly because I already got all the value out of Dead Pixels that I could.  The game rocked in single player mode, rocked harder in co-op (even if Brian didn’t like the game as much as me and thought I was out of my mind for putting it #1 in the first place), but its time has come and gone.  Dead Pixels is still an amazing game and will probably hold onto a high spot on the leaderboard for a long time to come, but I’ve moved on.  Granted, what I moved on to has been mostly inferior games, negating my point.  I’m just going to shut up now and leave this review.  Buh-Bye.

Dead Pixels was developed by CSR Studios

80 Microsoft Points have an alternative zombie plan, but it requires duct tape and a steamroller in the making of this review.

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

Indies in Due Time: Dream-Build-Play 2012 Episode 1

June 18, 2012 by 7 Comments

Originally, Brian and I planned to look at ALL the trailers for the 2012 Dream Build Play competition.  And then nearly 400 people entered.  Yea, so plans have changed.  Although Brian and I will be getting to as many of these trailers as we can in the coming weeks, our planned alliance with Armless Octopus to do so is semi-on-hold.  Yes, Dave Voyles and Mike Wall will be joining us this week.  But we’re also now pairing up with Alan of Indie Ocean, and Tim & Nate from Gear-Fish.  Nate is up first, fresh off the first anniversary of Gear-Fish, so you should all head over there and check their site out.  They’re way better writers than me, so you should have been doing that all along.  All four of today’s games were selected by Nate.  Off we go.

Read more of this post

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , , , ,

Monster King

June 18, 2012 by 6 Comments

Monster King is the second RPG that I’ve played this month that’s missing some key ingredients.  When the core mechanics of your game involve scrolling menus, you have to really jazz things with witty dialog, a compelling story, or charismatic characters.  If you have none of that, it’s like serving a customer a bowl of warm water and calling it the Soup of the Day.

Today, I ordered a big bowl of Cream of Void because Monster King has the personality of a mannequin.  You play as a dude who has to, um, do something.  If it was explained, I forgot it.  Probably save the kingdom.  It’s always about one dude saving the kingdom.  Don’t these kingdoms ever have a standing army?  Here’s a thought: since in these classic RPGs, the “kingdom” usually consists of a dozen or so towns, each populated by between 4 and 10 people, why not just gather everyone up and move to a new kingdom?  One with better infrastructure, a standing army, and monsters not camping just outside the border of every town?  Come to think of it, why are there never monsters in the towns?  You’re a lone hero who is attempting to save the entire kingdom, armed to the teeth, and you still have to stock up on potions and regenerative magic.  The towns are populated by five idiots who say the same line of dialog every time you try to converse with them.  The monsters should be able to steamroll over them in like five seconds.  These games never make any sense.

It would have been cooler if he was standing by the dock of the bay, even though there’s nothing to do there either, besides watching the tide roll away.

The hook of Monster King is that you can capture enemies when they’re weakened and then use them during battle.  It’s not exactly Pokemon, because you can only use each monster once during a battle.  However, the magic and monster system are basically the same idea.  Use fire against things made of wood, water against things made of fire, Bengay against things made of old people, etc.  Figuring out which enemies work on others is a little trickier, and most enemies pack a pretty decent punch, so you don’t have time to experiment.  Your defense never upgrades when you level up, probably to keep the game from getting too easy, so you have to camp out near towns so you can refill your health and magic points every-other battle.  Are we having fun yet?

Monster King does make an effort to have some form of humor in it, but it really doesn’t work all that well.  Here, humor comes in the form of jokes from the towns people.  The one that stuck with me is “people ask me if I’ve lived here my whole life.  I tell them no, not yet.”  That’s about as sophisticated as it gets.  For the most part, it’s just go to town, buy weapons, fight monsters, level up, slap yourself in the face to prevent yourself from falling asleep, explore caves, and fight bosses.  However, Monster King is more stripped down than Mortal Legacies in some other aspects.  Weapons and armor are automatically equipped, you can’t hock any old ones, and stores do not sell potions.  After playing for over an hour, I never found any item stronger than the standard potion, which can only be got out of treasure chests.  MP can only be restored by sleeping at an inn or leveling up.  Thus, the already boring gameplay is really taken to its most basic level of design.  I don’t get why people make games like this anymore.  This doesn’t feel like a game someone made because it was something they wanted to play.  It seems more like a game that someone made to see if they could.  That’s fine.  That’s how you learn.  But maybe it’s best to not attempt to sell that game.

Status? Sleepy, getting sleepier.

I was ready to write off Monster King as competent and functional, but as shallow as refrigerator condensation.  And then, it happened.  What happened?  Well, I was fighting snowmen and grinding up my XP.  I had just fought a boss, had leveled up a couple of times, bought some new armor, and was about to buy a new sword.  Then I got a message from a friend asking if I could check to see how much something on the Xbox marketplace cost.  I scooted over to the town, slept in the inn, saved the game, and turned it off.  I returned just a few minutes later and loaded up my game.  Only my game was from about twenty minutes before my last save, meaning I had to fight the boss again and make up for the five levels I had climbed and then lost.  I am not sure how this happened.  I typically save XBLIG files to my memory card.  Hang on, let me check and see if I accidentally saved it to the hard drive.

Nope.  No save file found on my hard drive.  Mind you, I’m hyper-compulsive about saving in games.  When I was a kid, I went a little too long between saves playing Kingdom Hearts, and a power-outage resulted in my first legitimate gaming rage moment.  My SpongeBob pillow suffered one lost limb and three stab wounds of unknown origin (pssss, it was from a nail file).  Since then, I’ve been vigilant about saving.  And so I did save after every level-up.  But, come to think of it, the game was a little weird about when the save happened more than the one time.  I did die after a battle or two.  Sometimes I would go back to my previous save spot, but more often I would go back further.  Obviously something is not working here.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have recommended Monster King anyway.  Like Mortal Legacies, it seemed like a good first-attempt, but not a game I could recommend spending actual money on.  But, I’m sure there are people out there who are looking for bland, one-dimensional time wasters.  If that’s the case, and the save thing doesn’t discourage you, knock yourself out with Monster King.  Or, here’s a better idea: go see a fucking doctor because you obviously have no pulse.

Monster King was developed by NickB

80 Microsoft Points wondered why the tree that is brandishing a gun is called the “Tree Killer.”  Wouldn’t “Killer Tree” make more sense?  I mean, I guess it could be killing trees when it’s not attacking professional monster slayers like a dumbass.  But if that was the case, why does it have a gun?  Guns aren’t very effective at killing trees, unless it’s a gun that fires big bullets.  Like a cannon, but that really isn’t a gun.  It should have been brandishing a chainsaw, which would have been a good chance to add humor to the game.  I mean, a tree that uses a chainsaw?  Ironic comedy.  A tree with a gun?  Just weird.

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

Breasts, Avatars, Crafting, and You

June 16, 2012 by 14 Comments

Sex sells.  It’s an expression as old as the concept of mass-marketing.  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my year as Indie Gamer Chick, it’s that the expression is absolutely true.  I’m closing in on nearly a year of having this site, and I’m on the cusp on having 200,000 lifetime views for it.  This will be the 300th item I’ve posted on my site since launching on July 1, 2011.  As tough as this is to admit, I would have just over half of those 200,000 views if not for three game reviews: Don’t Die Dateless Dummy, Temple of Dogolrak, and Trailer Park King.  What do these three games have in common?  Well, they’re graphic adventures.  They all are kind of lame.  The writing isn’t particularly good.

Oh, and they are about tits.  Or space twats. And this really infuriates other developers of Xbox Live Indie Games.  There is an undercurrent of bitterness among developers who work hard on their fine-tuned platformers or RPGs who have to sit and watch their games get buried on the sales charts by games that offer little more than static-pictures of anime breasts.

Although I can’t blame those developers for being sore, I have to side with the smut peddlers on this one.  Yea, I haven’t exactly loved the quote-unquote “sexy games” I’ve reviewed here, but that’s on account of the games being no good.  If the gameplay was decent, I would have probably cracked a joke or two about the content, but I’m certainly not offended.  I know that there is a market from them.  I’ve had over 40,000 views come from search engines, the top-10 of which are as follows:

don’t die dateless dummy 2,707
temple of dogolrak 2,506
indie gamer chick 2,190
trailer park king 2,159
indiegamerchick 747
dont die dateless dummy 491
dead pixels game 373
trailer park king review 286
dlc quest 272
trailer park king game 248

As you can see, the top-10 is dominated by those three games.  If I ignored all other search results, the six hits off “boob games” account for over 20% of all search terms in my site’s history.  Oh, but it’s actually far more.  In fact, it’s around 25,000 of those searches, or over 60%.

Pictured: the game that has generated 10% of my total views.

But you didn’t need me to tell you this is what sells on Xbox Live Indie Games.  When I reviewed Apple Jack 2 yesterday, I pointed out that only 2 of the 90 best-selling games Xbox Live Indie Games were punishers.  Although I admit that what constitutes a punisher varies (Alan pointed out to me that Soul, which I have not played, would count as a punisher in his book due to extreme difficulty).  Still, I think my point is valid: punishers are an over-represented genre on Xbox Live Indie Games.  For all the bitching people do about Minecraft clones, avatar games, or raunchy stuff, you can’t say that the market hasn’t spoken, and spoken clearly.  Minecraft clones dominate the top of the charts, while games with the word “avatar” in the title represent 21 of the top 90.  Meanwhile, stuff featuring women on the cover (including pregnant women) account for 14 of the top 90 sellers.

The people have spoken, and they’ve done so with their wallets.  So while I sympathize with those developers who feel they can’t compete with Avatar Boobcraft, I would like to point out that you asked for this.  This is what all real artists go through.  You don’t think there’s some dejected filmmaker out there who poured his time, money, and life into his project only to watch in agony while something completely shallow and empty like Transformers 3 out-grossed it by over a billion dollars?  You don’t think talented singers started measuring themselves for the noose when Ashlee Simpson’s albums went triple-platinum?  Artistic success is rarely a measurement of talent or effort, which is why the average person my age can name all of the Spice Girls but none of the Three Tenors.

Yea, I don’t like it when these games totally half-ass it, but I don’t like it when ANY game half asses it.  Also, I find it obnoxious when games put women all over the cover, yet the game has little or nothing to do with sexuality.  This was the case with my latest review, Superdimension Iliad.  The actual game starred a blocky avatar and was about platforming and shooting your way through gaming history.  The game looked like this:

The cover looked like this:

In cases like this, I’ll side with the crybabies.  There should be some kind of “cover art that actually represents the game” rule for Xbox Live Indie Games.  If you allow developers to shameless pander to the pocket-pool enthusiasts even when their game is about as erotic as watching an old man sleep on a hammock, the results could get ugly.

Oh who am I kidding?  This would be on the top 90 in a week or two.

Thanks to Michael Wilson for the (completely fictional) box art above. 

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →