Loot Grinder

March 21, 2013 by 4 Comments

How to Please Indie Gamer Chick

  • Step one: make sure your planned video game is actually a video game.
  • Step two: Send a bribe to P.O. Box…………..

Actually, Loot Grinder didn’t make it past step one, so there’s no need to continue.  What it does manage to do is be one of the most baffling “games” I’ve ever played.  It’s menial data-entry from Hell.  Who would see the potential in taking a genre, removing the aspects of it that are most important to gamers, and then releasing it for mass consumption?  Dirt-eating insanity!  But that’s exactly what Loot Grinder is.  No story.  No characters to interact with.  No world to explore.  No hidden treasures.  No dungeons.  No plot twists.  No real dialog at all.  Thus, all that’s left is the grinding.  Also known as the least fun part of any game.  That’s why they called it “grinding” instead of “super fun happy time!”

I don't remember any game making me yawn more. No, I didn't finish it. I quit saving my progress and the first time I died after that, I decided I had seen enough. Two hours of utter tedium.

I don’t remember any game making me yawn more. No, I didn’t finish it. I quit saving my progress and the first time I died after that, I decided I had seen enough. Two hours of utter tedium that should be avoided at all costs by anyone looking to have a good time.

They didn’t even get the whole grinding part right.    Without a world to explore, there’s no way you can hang out in a specific area, fighting guys you know you can beat.  That’s what I consider grinding to be.  Here, you could very well end up fighting guys who are well out-of-bounds for your party, get smacked down, and have to start over from your last save.  Money is too slow to be acquired.  Potions are way over-priced, and so is use of the inn.  Progress feels slow.  Upgrades are expensive enough to seem well out or reach.  And then there’s weird moments, like buying a spell only to find out that your particular dude can’t actually use that spell.  I bought a spell called Fire 1, but it turns out that’s for diamond wizard things, and my guy was a pearl wizard thing.  Unless I missed something, and I was looking very closely, there was no way of knowing that until I had already spent a large chunk of money on the spell.  It’s like buying a used car and not getting to know if there’s a dead body in the trunk until you pass your first police checkpoint.

Worst of all, the game only leaves in battles, but the battles are slow, basic, and boring.  Gaming traditionalists might appreciate them, since they’re lifted liberally from the 16-bit era.  Of course, those battles were palatable because they had the benefit of advancing the narrative.  Without that, the gameplay has no sense of achievement.  This is one of those “sounds like it might work” on paper concepts that probably shouldn’t have made it out of the planning stages.  Loot Grinder is one of the most boring ideas in gaming history and should only be put to use in weeding out which interns at the office are unsuited for redundant filing work.

xboxboxartLoot Grinder was developed by Pixel Polish Games

80 Microsoft Points said this game should come with one of those “may cause drowsiness” warnings in the making of this review.

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DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die

March 18, 2013 by 12 Comments

DLC Quest was one of those rare games that exists strictly to parody the industry, did everything right, and ended before the joke stopped being funny.  It did real well, even taking home the Official Xbox Magazine’s XBLIG of the year award. I really liked it too, to the point that I wrote my single most boring review ever because I was dead afraid of spoiling the game.  I wanted people to play it.

I also did not want there to be a sequel.  I just figured that there was no way the joke could be stretched any further.  DLC Quest is pretty much a game without flaws, in the sense that it gives you just enough gameplay to not get too bored while waiting for the next gag to hit.  It gave players one hour worth of genuinely funny jokes, and ended before they started going flat.  It really felt like the joke had gone as far as it could.

Zombie sheeps. Also known as Sega's fanbase.

Zombie sheep. Also known as Nintendo’s fanbase.

Still, everyone clamored for a sequel.  Not me.  I did everything I could to discourage it.  I asked creator Ben Kane nicely to not do it.  Then I asked not so nicely.  Then I made threats.  Then I blackmailed.  Then I  held his parents hostage.  Then I left a horse’s head in his bed.  Then I burned his house down.  Then I found out I was talking to the wrong Ben Kane.  Then I had to explain to the cops that I hadn’t grossly over-reacted to an ultimately trivial situation.  Then I had to make with the bribes.  By time I had tracked down the real Ben Kane, it was this morning and the sequel was already out.  Grumble.

Guess what?  My fears were for not.  DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die is still quite funny, briskly paced, and offers genuine laughs.  Having said that, the best jokes clearly came in the original, where you had to get “DLC” just to be able to pause the game, or walk to the left.  It took absurdity to a new extreme.  The punchlines in Live Freemium feel more like run-of-the-mill gaming humor.  Well done, mind you, but still the type of jokes that can be done in any type of game.  Stuff like making guys speak with Canadian accents, or having a token NPC character that adds fuck-all to the game.  If the writing wasn’t so damn good, it would have really been a letdown, because this shit has been done before.

As a game, DLC Quest 2, like its predecessor, is as basic as buttered bread.  Jump around, collect coins, find the occasional secret room that contains more coins, and that’s pretty much it.  I’ve reviewed dozens of games at Indie Gamer Chick that have minimal gameplay and focus on the writing, but platforming is much more preferable to scrolling through menus, or pointing and clicking.  And I have to stress, the writing is sublime.  As an example, there’s a section of the game that focuses on fetch quests.  Such events in any game are guaranteed to induce cringes, and this was no different.  Then, just as tedium was about to settle in and make of mess of things, a brilliant punch-line to the whole sequence instantly defused me.  It was the biggest laugh of the whole game.  I actually shook my head in disbelief.  I can’t believe he made that part work the way he did.  He got me.

Add an extra thirty minutes to the playtime to find everything if you so wish.

Add an extra thirty minutes to the playtime to find everything if you so wish.

Like the original, Live Freemium takes about an hour to finish.  Unlike the original, it doesn’t stay fresh to the end.  It doesn’t really get annoying or boring.  In fact, I didn’t think the game had run out of steam until right before the finale.  But, yes, the joke has officially ran its course.  It’s nothing short of remarkable that Ben Kane stretched it for over two hours before it grew stale.  His talent as a game designer is remarkable.  At the time of this writing, he has three games on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard, ranked #19, #20, and #31.  That’s pretty damn impressive.  Thus, I officially proclaim Ben Kane and his Going Loud Studios the first recipient of the Indie Gamer Chick Certified Developer Who Doesn’t Suck Award.

dont_suck2

Congratulations Ben.  But for God’s sake, don’t make another one.  I don’t care if this earns you enough money to buy a small nation.  Don’t make me put a horse’s head in your bed.  This time I’ll get it right.  How many Ben Kanes can there be?

xboxboxartDLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die was developed by Going Loud Studios

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points said “no seriously, I know I doubted you before, but there is no possible way you can stretch out this joke for another episode.  Think of Naked Gun 3.  That shit was unwatchable” in the making of this review.

DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. 

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Battle High 2

March 16, 2013 by 7 Comments

In this edition of Second Chance with the Chick, I take a look at a game I played way back in August of 2011.  A game that was a participant in the 2011 Summer Indie Uprising.  A game that..

Huh?  What do you mean this is a different game?  No.

Really?

(checks notes)

Well I’ll be damned.  It really is a sequel.

Awkward.

Even more awkward is the original Battle High that I played I sort of took a big dump on.  Perhaps an undeserved dump.  I was only on my second month as Indie Gamer Chick at that point, and the game was prominently featured in the Uprising event despite being completely unoriginal.  I think my expectations for the types of games in the Uprising (and XBLIGs in general) were misguided.  I thought I would be playing dozens of weird, exotic, experimental games.  Why?  Because I was (some would say “still am“) fucking stupid.

The beautiful truth about Xbox Live Indie Games is that the best titles typically are directly inspired by classic games and formulas.  So was I overly harsh on Mattrified Games?  Yes.  I’ll eat some humble pie and admit that I was wrong, and that Battle High was better than I said.  Their primary goal was to pay respectable tribute to a beloved genre, and I can’t deny they succeeded with Battle High.  I didn’t like it all that much, because I didn’t grow up with an endless stream of 2D fighters that were practically indistinguishable from one another.  I imagine if I had, I might have been more receptive towards it.  Sort like how my father keeps trying to sell me on the new Dallas.  I gave it a shot and thought that it was total crap.  My father watched the original and eats the shit up with a spoon.  The point being whether it’s crap or not is irrelevant to the target audience.

Not that I think Battle High 2 is crap.  It’s not.  If you’re into fighters, I seriously doubt you’ll find a better one on Xbox Live Indie Games.  It controls well.  I guess.  I mean, I would bet it controls much better on an arcade stick.  I had difficulty imputing even the simplest of moves.  Neither the standard Xbox 360 controller or the transforming d-pad one I have are suited for fighters.  But I already learned that lesson years ago when attempting to play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on XBLA.  I can hardly blame the developer for that.

Calling it a sequel is a bit of a stretch though.  It has basically the same graphics, same characters, same bonus games, same setting, and same controls as the original.  Maybe a new move here, or more emphasis on plot there, or a small handful of new characters.  But, it just doesn’t feel like an evolution.  Maybe more like a special edition, sort of how there were five fucking versions of Street Fighter II before they brought out Street Fighter III.  Put it this way.  If you looked at the two screenshots below, could you tell me which is the original and which is the sequel?  Is it this one?

1 or 2 2

Or this one?

1 or 2 1

The top shot is the new one.  The bottom one is the original.  See what I mean?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Capcom made millions re-relasing the same game with minor tweaks.  If it’s good for them, it’s good for XBLIGs.

I guess there is one major difference I could point out: I had fun this time around.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing about XBLIGs for nearly two years, so I have a better understanding of the platform.  Originality is not the goal of every developer.  I imagine if you were a kid who played fighters and dreamed of making your own fighting game, your first goal on a platform like XBLIG would be to do just that.  That’s what Mattrified Games did with Battle High, and they did a damn good job.  Maybe Battle High is a glorified patch disguised as a sequel, but I enjoyed it, and I have little love in my heart for 2D fighters of the 90s.  I was weaned on Soul Caliber, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and God-awful 3D Mortal Kombat games.  I chalk my dislike of SNK-style fighters to a generational thing.  To me, they’re boring.  Just like how you guys hate the contributions of my generation, like um.. uhhhhhhh.. we had that thing where that guy did that thing that one time and um.. this review is over.

xboxboxartBattle High 2 was developed by Mattrified Games

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points thought this game was about Matthew Riddle.  That dude always battled high in the making of this review.

Battle High 2 is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  No, I’m not retroactively putting Battle High 1 on there, unless you count Battle High 2 as Battle High 1.5, which I do.

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Laser Fry

March 15, 2013 by Leave a comment

Laser Fry has the feel of a twitchy 80s arcade game.  I can and have gotten into those.  Most of them are based on existing games.  We Are Cubes is like a mixture of Tempest and Buster Bros.  DecimationX3 was a souped-up version of Space Invaders.  There’s been new takes on Defender, Contra, Frogger, Qix, Pac-Man.. pretty much every vintage coin-op under the sun.  Laser Fry is apparently an original idea.  You’re a dude, and there are lasers and balls.  Avoid the balls, or destroy the balls with the lasers.  Just don’t be standing in the path of the laser when you activate it.  Basic stuff they teach you at Testicle Removal School*.

I figured when I started Indie Gamer Chick, I would be neck-deep in original game concepts.  That’s not the case, of course.  Entirely original concepts are as rare as a Yeti.  Developers, even gutsy ones, tend to stick to what they know works, only making minor tweaks on established formulas.  Still, the occasional game centered around a new idea does pop up from time to time.  Such is the case here.  I asked around, and nobody had played anything like it (there were some games on the Commodore 64 that looked similar but turned out to be much different).  Great!  So how does this original idea fare?

No, you can't make sense of this. I think you have a better chance of deciphering the Voynich manuscript.

No, you can’t make sense of this. I think you have a better chance of deciphering the Voynich manuscript.

Not so good.  The main gameplay problem is the background is simply too noisy.  On easy mode, you only have to keep track of the yellow balls and yellow lasers.  This by itself is a decent challenge, especially once the action speeds up.  On higher difficulties, you have three different colors of lasers, three colors of balls, and lots of background shit for those to bleed into.  If you can actually follow the action, your super vision could probably be put to better use in the fields of espionage or Lex Luthor foiling.  Despite decent enough play control, the action in this game is incomprehensible.

But, even if it wasn’t, I don’t think the concept lends itself well to a good game.  That’s the biggest sin Laser Fry commits: it simply is not fun, and probably doesn’t have the potential to ever be fun.  So, like most original ideas that flop, I’ll chalk Laser Fry up to being a worthy experiment that produced an undesirable product.  Sometimes you simply can’t know what will and won’t work until you try it.  It takes a brave person to begin with, who sees a void in innovation and says “I’m going to give this a shot!”  Like an egghead with a chemistry set.  Sometimes you accidentally cure cancer, and sometimes you blow yourself up.

xboxboxartLaser Fry was developed by GGGames

80 Microsoft Points thought the game would involve one of these and a random dude’s hair in the making of this review.

*More commonly called UCLA

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妖精冒険記 (Chronicles of the Fairy)

March 14, 2013 by Leave a comment

Chronicles of the Fairy is kind of like a Kirby game.  The protagonist can “fly” indefinitely, levels center around the simple act of reaching a goal, and the game is as easy as a round of dodge ball against a group of senior citizens.  It also features some pretty good 16-bit graphics and decent play control.  If we left it simply at that, Chronicles of the Fairy would be a decent, albeit forgettable game.

Come on, now.  How often can we leave it at just that?

It looks the part, but Chronicles of the Fairy feels unfinished.

It looks the part, but Chronicles of the Fairy feels unfinished.

Chronicles of the Fairy isn’t really terrible, but it’s underwhelming or mediocre in so many ways that I simply have to shake my head in disappointment.  It looks like it should be good, and feels like it should be good.  But the six levels that take all of twenty minutes to complete are boring and uninspired in design.  The music is annoying, the enemies are all but useless, and lives are far too plentiful.  But what’s really awful is the collision detection on the spikes.  Levels are littered with spikes all over the place, with the main challenge being having to squeeze between them.  The problem with this is, the collision box for the spikes is not too generous.  It leads to many moments where you don’t come that close to the spikes and still take damage for them.  Imagine if real life was like that.  Imagine if, in football, getting to the three yard line was considered good enough for a touchdown.  Raving insanity!  Even if replacement referees apparently liked that idea.

Even if that wasn’t the case, 妖精冒険記 is boring.  The whole experience feels like the demo for what should be a larger game, or perhaps an early beta-build or proof-of-concept, as evidenced by the ball-and-chain swinging enemy who clipped right into a wall and got stuck.  There’s no challenge (even the spikes don’t make much difference when you’re tripping over extra lives every two feet), and no real reason to keep playing once you’re past the opening stage.  Then, just as it looks like the game might grow some teeth and ramp up in difficulty, it’s over.  It’s quite disappointing.  I was interested to check it out because it’s rare when a Japanese-developed XBLIG shows up on the marketplace.  It seemed like it might be exotic.  Instead, I feel like one of those chicks who gets a tramp stamp in Japanese characters that she thinks says “Free Spirit” and only later learns that it says “Insert Umbrella Below.”

xboxboxart妖精冒険記 (Chornicles of the Fairy) was developed by Yuwaka’s Soft

80 Microsoft Points said “maybe Kirbys are the tadpole stage of a fairy.  IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!” in the making of this review.

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Investigate This: Scarecrow!

March 11, 2013 by 2 Comments

Before the fiasco with Wright Brothers’ Mysteries, my plan had been to include this title in my review.  Two for one, that sort of thing.  However, Wright Brothers was so embarrassingly horrid that I thought I would be doing a disservice to the guys at Twist-EdGames.  I had reviewed two of their previous “games”, Shattered Slipper and Lucky, and I found them to be decent.  I mean, they weren’t really games.  They were like the end result of a book fucking a DVD menu.  Interactive in the loosest possible sense.  Read a lot of dialog, press A, read more dialog, and then press A some more.  Occasionally a rudimentary puzzle would pop up that would take all of thirty seconds to solve.  Typically, the whole thing would be over with in an hour or so.  Okay, so I wasn’t exactly glowing when I described what their games were like, but the writing was acceptable and they ended before they could bore.  Oh, and they were a little preachy.  I would equate the whole experience to reading a tween mystery novel, pausing only once to fiddle with a Rubik’s Cube, while being lectured by your mother on proper manners.

Actually, that sounds quite horrible.  Bad analogy.

"Hello Ma'am! Can we interest you in a copy of the Watchtower?"

“Hello Ma’am! Can we interest you in a copy of the Watchtower?”

Well, here’s their newest game: Investigate This.  You’re two young private detectives who get hired to investigate this super natural scarecrow that is trying to frighten a woman into selling her farm.  The difference between this and other Twist-EdGames?  It’s fucking boring.  The dialog has a tendency to drone on and on with inane banter that adds nothing to the plot and makes the characters come across like total twats.  The writing is also not up to the quality of previous games, despite the fact that there’s no soapbox this time around.  It just comes across like a really badly done Scooby Doo plot.  In fact, right during the big reveal at the end, just as I said that very line to Brian, the game made a Scooby Doo joke at its own expense.  I also felt the hedge maze stuff was more of a rehash of Lucky’s finale.  The final kick in the pants is the (required due to file size) 240MSP price tag.  It’s simply not worth it.  Thus, this becomes the first game of Twist-EdGames that I can’t recommend.  If I did so, I would need my head investigated for brain parasites.

xboxboxartInvestigate This: Scarecrow! was developed by Twist-EdGames

240 Microsoft Points were hoping this game would star Batman in the making of this review. 

 

 

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Wright Brothers’ Mysteries

March 8, 2013 by 11 Comments

Oh my God.

Oh.

My.

GOD!!

I can’t believe I live in a world where Wright Brothers’ Mysteries exists.  It’s bad.  Bad bad.  Endearingly bad, yes, but endearingly bad is still bad.  Devoid of anything positive to say about any aspect of it’s design.  Hell, there’s really not a whole lot of game here.  Watch cut scenes that were apparently made using The Movies (the opening credits show the intro to The Movies), maybe answer a question about that scene, do the occasional amateurish quick-time-event, and that’s it.  Fifteen minutes tops.  Fifteen unintentionally hilarious, flat-out fucking weird minutes.  Surreal in ways I’ve only heard in descriptions of drug intoxication.

The sad part is, if I squint just a little bit, the dude on the right looks kind of like my boyfriend.

The sad part is, if I squint just a little bit, the dude on the right looks kind of like my boyfriend.

The story?  Incomprehensible.  The dialog?  So disjointed and unnatural that it’s practically alien.  The voice acting?  Awful accents, unemotional tones, and delivery so bad that it sounds like it was pieced together with a sound board.  The game?  There is no game.  Two quick-time events, one of which involves picking a lock and the other which necessitates restarting a heart.  That’s really the extend of any “game” function.  Otherwise, you get to watch horrible cut scenes play out.  I spent the first couple minutes rolling my eyes.

And then the Ninja showed up, and I started laughing.

I didn’t stop laughing for ten minutes.  Every single word spoken, every terribly choreographed fight scene where continuity changes from camera angle to camera angle, and just the overall awfulness of the whole mess.  Wright Brothers’ Mysteries made me fall to the floor in a rolling laughter that made my sides hurt and tears run down my cheeks.  I’ve never laughed harder at any game.  Not in a good way, mind you.  Wright Brothers’ Mysteries is the brand new Worst Game I’ve ever played in my entire life.  It’s awful.  But hypnotically so.  I can’t really say you should buy it.  There’s already videos on YouTube that show you the full game, like this one.  It’s just awful.  I don’t know how far unintentional comedy goes towards redeeming something this bad.  I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.  For me, Wright Brothers’ Mysteries made me laugh until I was clutching my sides and my stomach in agony, not to mention the headache.  I could have probably been trampled by a marching band made entirely of tuba players and walked away in better shape.

xboxboxartWright Brothers’ Mysteries was developed by Archor Games

80 Microsoft Points honestly aren’t sure if this game wasn’t some gigantic gag against the entire XBLIG scene in the making of this review.

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Voxel Runner

March 7, 2013 by 9 Comments

“Foul!” cried the gaming community.  “Someone made an off-brand, generic version of Bit.Trip 2 and released it right before Bit.Trip 2 came out.  A pox on their house!”  You see the same venom directed towards developers of Minecraft clones, or guys like Milkstone when they release cheap XBLIG clones of popular hits like Slender or Binding of Isaac.  The weird thing is, the gaming community seems to treat this phenomenon like it’s exclusive to them.  Um, The Asylum anyone?  Mock if you will, but they’ve made over fifty movies and never once lost money on a production.  They’ve proven that, if profitability is all you desire, clones made without the slightest tinge of shame are the surest fire bet to get there.

Yes.

Yes.

Voxel Runner sounds like it would be The Asylum’s port of a video game, does it not?  None of that coy “Sushi Castle” type of shit like Milkstone does.  “Voxel Runner!  Done!”  The funny thing is, everyone assumed that the game would be shit, myself included.  Timely release.  Blatant clone.  How could it be good?  Surprise, it is good.  Well, good seems maybe too generous.  How does decent sound?  I’ll go with decent.

Actually, Voxel Runner felt more like The Impossible Game, at least to me.  Maybe it was the art style, the pace, the spikes, or the constant deaths.  While the game offers more complex maneuvers (swiped liberally from Bit.Trip Runner) than simply jumping, it just felt like a memory-tester where you have a minimal chance of success on your first run through.  However, I did beat level 22 on my first attempt.  That was the only such level I was able to do that, but it felt fantastic.  It doesn’t matter if I failed 531 other times.  For a few seconds, I was an invincible destroyer of games.

Yes, because "ducking" is one of the most notoriously difficult to master moves in game history. It makes Zangief's spinning piledriver look like child's play.

Yes, because “ducking” is one of the most notoriously difficult to master moves in game history. It makes Zangief’s spinning piledriver look like child’s play.

This is a weird one to write-up.  Everything about Voxel Runner is decent.  Not great.  Not memorable.  I played this three days ago and I barely remember any critiques I had.  It’s possible I didn’t have any.  Well, there was one: the controls are slightly unresponsive at times, which resulted in about 10% of my total failures.  Otherwise, there’s really not a lot to cover here.  Voxel Runner is a shameless rip-off of a popular franchise, but it doesn’t suck.  If that’s all the developer was trying for, congratulations Captain Ambitious.  Take a seat in the dollar store hall of fame, next to a bin of movies starring Lorenzo Lamas and a can of expired off-brand chicken noodle soup.

xboxboxartVoxel Runner was developed by Dizzy Pixels Ltd.

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points look forward to future productions from Dizzy Pixels, such as Super Italian Brothers, Sonny the Hedgehog, and Street Brawler II in the making of this review. 

Voxel Runner is Chick Approved.. don’t look at me like that, it doesn’t suck, I swear.. and is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Seriously, stop looking at me.

Voxel Runner is also available for Desura for $2.99.  This version is unverified by Indie Gamer Chick.

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Castle Invasion, Life of Pixel (Second Chance with the Chick), and Super Skull Smash GO!

February 28, 2013 by 3 Comments

I figured it’s time for another kick at the PlayStation Mobile can.  While my previous efforts to didn’t turn up any original games that I could point to and say “see, PlayStation Mobile is off to a decent start”, I figure it’s worth a second look.  At least it would be, if games weren’t priced like this.

PSM Store 2

Or like this.

PSM Store 3

Or this.

PSM Store 1

Okay.  Just to be clear, you guys want people to actually buy your games, right?  And you also realize that you’re on PlayStation Vita, where a PlayStation Plus subscription can net you AAA games for free?  Or where standard discounts can get you some really great games for around that price?  Hell, you’re also competing directly with Android phones, where you can get some of the best games of this generation for $0.99 or less.  You should make some effort to be competitive.  You already have no demos, making your games high-risk to consumers.  Why make them so out-of-bounds high risk that nobody in their right mind would take a chance on them?  I would gladly fork over $3 for what looks like an FMV fishing game, because that sort of quirky weird shit is right up my ally.  $5?  That would be a tough sell for actual fans of FMV fishing games, which is a large and robust fanbase to alienate.

So instead, I grabbed Castle Invasion for a measly 49 cents.  And I definitely got what I paid for.  Simple concept: shoot dudes before they reach the castle wall.  Gallery shooters like this are a bit relicy (that’s a word as of right now), but I figure there’s all kinds of neat twists developers can slap on them.  Not here.  Dudes run at you, and you shoot them.  Stronger dudes run at you.  You shoot them.  Faster dudes run at you.  You shoot them.  Sometimes you use arrows, sometimes you use spears that can penetrate multiple enemies, but otherwise it’s the same shit over and over again and it’s boring.  Not only that, but it had a tendency to crash.  Spring for the extra penny and sink your money in a gumball.  The flavor will last about 90 seconds, which makes that a longer-term investment than Castle Invasion.

Castle Invasion. The most excited thing since buttered toast. Which I don't find to be particularly exciting.

Castle Invasion. The most excited thing since buttered toast. Which I don’t find to be particularly exciting.

Up next was Life of Pixel ($1.99), which has been patched.  I played it last month, and found the graphics to be authentic, but the control was sketchy and the level design focused a little too much on leap-of-faith gameplay.  That’s mostly fixed now.  Controls are silky smooth, double jumping never failed, the frame-rate never dropped, and some of those leaps-of-faith are now a thing of memory.  Some.  There were a few sections of the game where you simply have to leap blindly and hope for the best.  Some call this “trial and error.”  Bullshit.  The “trial” part suggests you have a fighting chance.  Blind luck is not a fighting chance.  It’s fucking blind luck, and there’s still a lot of it in Life of Pixel.  I call this “gotcha gameplay.”  And I’m sick of it.  It pops up too much on the indie scene.  Yea, I know games used to be like this, but that doesn’t mean they still have to be.  And I’ve got a solution.

I’ve arranged for every indie development kit, across all platforms, to come bundled with a man named Roberto.  Now, Roberto will pretty much stay out of your way.  Just leave some bread and something to drink out for him, but otherwise you shouldn’t notice him.  Unless you start to put “GOTCHA!” moments into your game.  Unavoidable deaths, blind leaps, hidden traps that are impossible to see or avoid, etc.  When you attempt this, Roberto will come out of hiding, place a pot on your head, and bang the pot sixteen times with a five-pound, stainless-steel soup ladle.  After this, he’ll remove the pot, look you in your now vacant, concussed eyes, and scream “GOTCHA!”  Then he’ll slink back into the shadows and allow you to undo the mess you just made of your game.  I think this idea is a good one.

I fucking HATED HATED HATED this level of Life of Pixel, which featured more blind jumps than Lighthouse International's annual hurdles race.

I fucking HATED HATED HATED this level of Life of Pixel, which featured more blind jumps than LensCrafter’s annual hurdles race.

Despite Life of Pixel being my inspiration for the Roberto Policy, I have to say that the game is vastly improved.  By that, I mean it’s playable, and hey, even a little fun.  They even included a soundtrack that, gasp, somewhat matches the classic gaming eras that were the inspiration in the first place.  I mean, it was downright boneheaded to not include such soundtracks in the first place, but I’ll let it slide.  I did just give the team at Super Icon  multiple instances of brain damage by testing the Roberto Policy on them.  They deserve a break.  They also deserve an Indie Gamer Chick Seal of Approval.  They took a shitty, broken game and made it fun.  That’s a sign of a developer with true talent, and I salute them for it.

Roberto, pot their head one last time.  Just out of principle for making me eat my words.

Finally, Super Skull Smash GO!  It’s a retro-style puzzle-platformer that was priced at $3.29 last week, but it’s down to $2.79 this week.  Is that a good price for it?  Hmmmmm not really.  I can get better games on my iPhone or on XBLIG that offer more play value at half the price.  Is it a bad game?  Not at all.  You play as a dude who has to hop on skeletons, grab their skulls, and smash them against a giant, golden cross.  Glad to see Yale’s fraternal initiation turn into a full-fledged video game.

Super Skull Smash GO

I would call the graphics fossilized, but considering Super Skull Smash GO! stars a bunch of skeletons, I’m guessing that was the point.

Despite the primitive graphics, Super Skull Smash GO! is a fairly clever puzzler that keeps throwing new twists in until the end.  Having said that, the collision detection is too sensitive, and the jumping physics are a little heavy.  By far the biggest thing I had to struggle with was jumping through narrow corridors and repeatedly fucking up because the spot you can jump from or to is so small and unforgiving.  Plus, lining up a skull to throw at just the right height can also be troublesome.  The game seems to have issues with following parameters.  I’m not going to be too hard on it for that.  I can relate.  I have the ankle monitor to prove it.

I still recommend it, because it’s a fun little game with puzzle design unlike anything I’ve ever played.  And hey, I’ve now found two original PlayStation Mobile games that are priced to afford and worth your time to play.  It’s a step in the right direction.  I do wish developers would be smarter about how they market their games.  That overhead airplane fighter game thing above, Blue Skies.  For all I know, it might be a good game.  It looks like it’s based on some classic games that a lot of people would be interested in.  You know, the type of games you can routinely buy on platforms like PSN, XBLA, and Virtual Console for under $7?  This is one of those “what were they thinking?” moments.  Without the benefit of demos (and hell, most PSM games don’t even bother with trailers on YouTube), all PSM games are a risk to consumers.  How many people will take a $7 for one game risk when the same $7 can net them multiple games, some of which they’re bound to like.  I got two pretty decent games in Super Skull Smash GO! and Life of Pixel for $5.28.  That’s $1.71 less than the risk of buying Blue Skies and hating it.  Fuck that.  That kind of money buys a lot of gumballs.

Super Skull Smash GO! and Life of Pixel are Chick Approved

IGC_Approved

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

Procrastinating Squirrel (Updated)

February 23, 2013 by 12 Comments

Procrastinating Squirrel put up a fight when I first downloaded it.  From the moment I booted it up, the game started skipping like a DVD that got into a fight with a belt sander.  Thus it was rendered completely unplayable.  I made a video so that others could feel my pain.

After publishing the original piece, I got word from a few players that they didn’t have problems.  Curious, I switched consoles, then switched which storage device I was saving my progress to.  While it didn’t run perfectly, the experience was vastly improved and thus I could write a full and proper review.  Of course, in a way I already did that.  Procrastinating Squirrel is essentially Miner Dig Deep, only not as deep.  Miner Dig Shallow perhaps?  Miner Dig Less Deep?  Miner Scratch the Surface?

Oak Nuts. It's what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

Oak Nuts. It’s what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

How about Toddlers Dig Deep?  Because this stripped down version of one of my former Top-10 XBLIGs is pretty much that.  Miner Dig Deep, sans strategy or most dangers.  Fewer upgrades.  Fewer things to mine.  The boulders are still there and can still cause you to scream curse words you forgot you knew, but that’s the only thing that can kill you.  There’s no need to worry about digging too many tunnels that could cave in, because the game is presented from a top-down view.  That’s the one advantage Squirrel has over Miner: you can mine in any direction.  Every other aspect is less than what is already offered in Miner Dig Deep.  There’s no positive outlook on that.  People who haven’t played Miner would be better served skipping this and playing that.  People who have played Miner can only find Squirrel to be an inferior, watered-down clone.  I kept waiting for the game to present some kind of hook to change things up, and finished it still waiting.  While I still was practically hypnotized by the prospect of digging up new materials, those moments are few and far between.  It even ends significantly faster than Miner Dig Deep.  Miner Dig Deep left me wanting more.  Procrastinating Squirrel left me disappointed, and recommending it would be nuts.

Thirty minutes staring at the screen and that’s the best pun I could figure to go out on.  I knew I should have written this sooner, instead of waiting for the Oscars to end.  That’s what I get for procrastinating.

xboxboxartProcrastinating Squirrel was developed by Daivuk

80 Microsoft Points wondered why every single pet squirrel is named “Penny” in the making of this review?

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