Gunslugs 2

January 26, 2015 by Leave a comment

Gunslugs 2 was one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve had since starting Indie Gamer Chick. The original, which I played on Ouya and PlayStation Vita, ranks #80 on the Leaderboard at the time of this writing. Its run-and-spray gameplay routinely beat the shit out of me, but it was just so damn charming and quirky that I couldn’t put it down. A sequel wasn’t even on my radar, so I got downright giddy when I saw that not only was there a sequel, but it was out now. Then I played it. Gunslugs 2 looks better, plays smoother, is significantly more fair, and I didn’t like it at all. How the hell is that even possible?

The boss fights are much better this time around. Hell, some of them are pretty clever, as far as shooters go. I just wish the rest of the game had such lack of convention.

The boss fights are much better this time around. Hell, some of them are pretty clever, as far as shooters go. I just wish the rest of the game had such lack of convention.

The basic gameplay mechanics are the same as before. Make your way from the left of the map to the right, shooting everything that moves, dodging bullets, collecting ammo and health refills, and blowing-up beacons. The big difference this time around is that, instead of entering the beacon buildings and having them immediately blow up, they now play out like a mini-stage. Inside, you have to make your way past enemies and traps to find a detonator to blow up the building. Hypothetically, this addition should have been enough to make Gunslugs 2 a worthy upgrade. However, the beacons are all straight forward and fairly samey from one to the next. If they had been randomly-generated labyrinths where you had to figure out the correct pathway to the detonator, that would have been something. It’s a gargantuan missed opportunity. You know, I’ve always loved that word: gargantuan. I so rarely get to use it in a sentence.

In fact, all the levels sort of feel the same from one to the next, with just the theme changing. The original threw randomly-generated events, like getting sucked into a mini-stage based on Game Boy, into the mix to break up any potential for monotony. From what I can tell, Gunslugs 2 doesn’t have anything like that. Removing the quirk from the game was a huge artistic mistake. That’s why I’m so weirded-out by the Gunslugs 2 experience: every single game mechanic is done better than the original, but the stuff that goes into that game feels stripped down, with the fun wrung out of it. It feels as if THIS game is the first game in the series, whereas the original is the sequel that takes the first and adds silly and unexpected twists to the formula. I’ve never seen that before. It’s weird.

Most of the beacon buildings have a character inside for you to rescue, giving you control over them with full health and ammo. Now, how cool would it have been if the inside had been a maze instead of a straight path? The character and the detonator could have been placed in separate locations, adding challenge and choice to the game, and also opened up the potential for more hidden stuff.

Most of the beacon buildings have a character inside for you to rescue, giving you control over them with full health and ammo. Now, how cool would it have been if the inside had been a maze instead of a straight path? The character and the detonator could have been placed in separate locations, adding challenge and choice to the game, and also opened up the potential for more hidden stuff.

And boring. Very, very boring. It’s just too damn repetitive. Again, it comes down to the fact that all the stages feel the same from one to the next. The layouts of the interiors of the beacons sure as hell feel like they repeat. I don’t know if they do exactly, but they might as well. If there had been some kind of twist once inside of them, Gunslugs 2 would have probably been one of my favorite games of the genre. It plays really well, especially compared to the first one. Heck, maybe even too easy, which I can’t fucking believe I can say given how well the first one put me and my skills to shame.

It’s like going to your high school reunion and seeing that the class clown  has straightened-up and is now a lawyer or doctor or something. You’re proud for them and what they’ve accomplished, but you’ll always look back more fondly on when he was more fun. And that’s Gunslugs 2. There are hundreds of games that do what Gunslugs 1 & 2 do, in terms of gameplay. It was the charm and randomness that made the original stand out in a tired genre, amongst a crowded field. Games should stand on their own merits, but Gunslugs 2 is a sequel. As a game that is a sequel, I can’t help but miss all the neat little turns and moments that made me remember it so fondly in the first place. That’s why I can’t sign off on Gunslugs 2. Technically a better made game, in the same way a lobotomized serial killer is technically no longer a threat to society.

Gunslugs 2Gunslugs 2 was developed by Orangepixel
Point of Sale: Steam

$4.99 wants to know what the point of a daily challenge is if there’s no leaderboards in the making of this review.

Filed under PC Reviews Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Walking Dead: Season Two

September 7, 2014 by 6 Comments

Every single paragraph below the first picture contains spoilers. If you’re looking for a recommendation on Walking Dead: Season Two, I’ll keep all my spoiler-free critiques on the story and gameplay up here. I had fun with it. It wasn’t as good as season one (you can read my review of that here and here), and I think that’s because my words and actions seemed to be much more inconsequential this time around. One character is on the verge of cracking, and you’re given the option to defend that character or agree that they are about to snap. I went with the “about to snap” option at least a half-a-dozen times, sometimes with the same characters who I had spoken with about it before. As if I had changed my mind on the subject. I hadn’t. I had been consistent from the start: person of interest was going bonkers. I’m guessing the problem is the developers had a very specific way they wanted the players to respond to dialog, and if you didn’t go along with it, they would keep knifing you to do it until you did it their way. It took the “oomph” out of the big decisions I had to make.

Meanwhile, the play mechanics are exactly the same as last season. I did notice there seemed to be a lot less glitches and slowdown, but otherwise, this is the same as pretty much any Telltale game. If you hated the style before, nothing is improved here in the slightest bit. And that’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the whole thing. Walking Dead: Season Two is worth the $20 season pass, but the story was weaker, the emotional weight significantly smaller, and I have no lingering interest in playing the series any further unless I don’t have to pay for it. SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

Awwww, isn't that adorable? She's completely lost her sense of innocence. Well, except later in the game when she thinks a couple that had gone off to fuck were actually "kissing and stuff." Which actually made me laugh, so kudos.

Awwww, isn’t that adorable? She’s completely lost her sense of innocence. Well, except later in the game when she thinks a couple that had gone off to fuck were actually “kissing and stuff.” Which actually made me laugh, so kudos.

 

Meet the cast! This is Clem. Last season, she was Yorda. This season, she was the only person with half-a-brain. She was also a vindictive, sarcastic psychopath. At least she was the way I played.

Meet the cast! This is Clem. Last season, she was Yorda. This season, she was the only person with half-a-brain. She was also a vindictive, sarcastic psychopath. At least she was the way I played.

In Season Two, you take the role of Clementine, the yellow-eyed (so help me God, yellow eyes!) tag-along of season one, and she immediately proves herself to be more capable than last season’s protagonist/sleeping pill, Lee. A scene in chapter one requires Clem to stitch up a dog bite, and she handles it just fine. Lee would have stabbed himself in the eye with the needle, shot off his left testicle, and then knocked himself unconscious on the counter. And everyone in the group would have commented on how clever he was. This time around, your new group sort of recognizes Clem as the only person with her act together, but they’re too busy asking her the same series of questions over and over again to just shut and up collectively declare her group dictator. Which is pretty much why they all die.

There’s no real consistent plot that keeps the story moving this time around. Each chapter feels different from the one before it. In the first chapter, you let the fates quickly thin out any lingering characters you were still with at the end of season one. You get bit by a non-zombified dog, then get rescued by a group of survivors that mistake the dog bite for a zombie bite and lock you in a shed. This is the chapter where you meet all the new future zombie-chow of the season. Among them was a nervous, reckless, itchy-trigger-fingered douche named Nick. He was the nephew of the leader of the group, a dude named Pete.

This is Pete. He's the leader of the group of survivors that you meet up with in the first chapter. He's intelligent, insightful, and the only person holding the group's mental stability together. In other words, he's dead meat.

This is Pete. He’s the leader of the group of survivors that you meet up with in the first chapter. He’s intelligent, insightful, and the only person holding the group’s mental stability together. In other words, he’s dead meat.

I liked Pete. He was cool. He recognized how strong Clem was. So obviously he was going to die, and it would probably be Nick’s fault. Sure enough, that happened. In chapter two, everyone spent half the game talking about how unstable Nick was. How big a danger to everyone around him he was. But, nobody (except myself) was willing to do the right thing: lead him into the woods and shoot him. Or tie him to a tree and let him lure the Walkers away from you with his girly screams. Later, you meet a stranger on a bridge who poses no threat and Nick kills him. Yeah. And again, instead of everyone shitting their pants in terror because they’re dragging this worse-than-useless human wrecking ball with them, they just talk about what a threat he is. Sigh. So I’m starting to think Nick will obviously be the season’s antagonist.

This is Nick. He's the main antagonist of the first two chapters. He's a danger to himself and others. You know, just like all the other characters. Just his prescence alone puts everyone in mortal danger, as if he's trying to get them killed. Okay, yeah, that's exactly what I was doing too. But I wasn't such a dick about. Well, actually come to think about it I was. Move along.

This is Nick. He’s the main antagonist of the first two chapters. He’s a danger to himself and others. You know, just like all the other characters. Just his presence alone puts everyone in mortal danger, as if he’s trying to get them killed. Okay, yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing too. But I wasn’t such a dick about. Well, actually come to think about it I totally was a dick about it. Okay, then. Move along.

But, no. He gets killed at the end of the second chapter by the buddy of the guy who he shot on the bridge. Huh. I mean, okay. Fine. Weird pacing but obviously they had bigger plans for the season’s antagonist. This chapter also reintroduces Kenny, the short-tempered, ignorant, drunken redneck from season one who watched his whole family die. I took the option of hugging him when I met him only because I was hoping there would be a second option that allowed me to plunge my hatchet into his back while doing it. Much like season one, I spent the remainder of the game being as antagonistic towards Kenny as I could. Later, when one of the chicks you’re dragging around shits out of baby, Kenny takes a shine to it and talks about how much he’s going to protect it. At this point, I was cursing the game for not giving me more dialog options. I had been basically spending the last several hours trying to talk Kenny into suicide. If given the option, I would have needled him into kissing the end of his gun right there.

“So you’re going to protect this baby, huh? Well, that’ll be a change. Remember when I met you and you had a family? Where’s that family now, Kenny? Remember when you let your son get bit? Kenny? Do you remember that? Or then your wife shot herself? My sides still hurt over laughing at that. I mean, you totally drove her to it, Kenny. Kenny? Hey, do you think when she blew her brains out, she still had more brains in her head than you? Kenny? Hey Kenny, remember when you met that new wife, and then I showed up and cut her arm off? Kenny? Hey, Kenny, if you want, I can go back there and lend her a hand. Kenny? Come to think of it, that one was totally your fault too. Wow. What’s your body count, Kenny? Seven? Eight? Be honest Kenny, you’re just hoping someone will trade you a bottle of vodka for the baby, right Kenny? Did you drink a lot when you were ignoring your family before the outbreak, Kenny? Kennnnnnyyyyyyyy?”

This is Kenny. His mental instability is the overall focus on the season. Maybe the other characters still had a moral compass and believed killing is wrong. Well guess what? I don't! So don't make me wait five fucking chapters to do what's right.

This is Kenny. His mental instability is the overall focus on the season. Maybe the other characters still had a moral compass and believed killing is wrong. Well guess what? I don’t! So don’t make me wait five fucking chapters to do what’s right.

Eh, not that it would have mattered. Kenny stubbornly hangs around until the end of the game. And in chapter three, you’re held prisoner by a new antagonist named Carver. He’s set up base in a hardware store and runs a tight ship. I actually liked him. I mean, he arbitrarily killed people too weak to survive, which is what I had been trying to do the entire fucking time. My kind of guy. One of the people in your group is a helpless little girl named Sarah. She had been kept in the dark about the whole zombie apocalypse thing, and it was clear once she got a glimpse of the real world, she was going to put the group in danger. So, even though my slate of trying to get people killed was full, I quickly penciled Sarah in for “be as hateful and vindictive as possible to her in an attempt to get her dead.” When we had work to do, I did her work for her, because she was too stupid/spoiled to know how to prune a tree. I was hoping Carver, who had already forced her father to viciously smack her across the face, would throw her off the building. Instead, he threw our supervisor, a Pakistani stereotype, off the roof and to his death instead. Well shit. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was going to attempt to get him killed too. I was pretty much trying to get EVERYONE killed but myself. Well, except Carver. Yeah, the dude was an asshole, but at least he fucking got it. This is the apocalypse. You’re better off keeping the strong around. Not too long after that, I had a sit-down conversation with Carver where I told him exactly that. Except the game interpreted that as me just telling him what he wanted to hear. I wasn’t. I legitimately wanted to join him.

This is Luke. He's one of only two non-Pete characters that I was okay with not killing immediately. He also takes over for Lee in the human train-wreck department. Just looking at him causes his ribs to break. He somehow makes it to the final chapter, where he dies after falling through the ice of a frozen lake. Given that this is one of the only characters that had a proper build-up, his death was very anti-climatic, but hey, we had to have another reason for Kenny to beat up someone while the rest of the group pondered whether he was losing it.

This is Luke. He’s one of only two non-Pete characters that I was okay with not killing immediately. He also takes over for Lee in the human train-wreck department. Just looking at him causes his ribs to break. He somehow makes it to the final chapter, where he dies after falling through the ice of a frozen lake. Given that this is one of the only characters that had a proper build-up, his death was very anti-climatic, but hey, we had to have another reason for Kenny to beat up someone while the rest of the group pondered whether he was losing it.

Shortly thereafter, with my crew of morons having devised a plan to escape, I was asked if I was in on the plan. I was able to answer this in four possible ways. #1: yes. #2: yes. #3: say nothing, which is saying yes. #4: say “do I have a choice?” That’s the one I chose, and then I found out the answer was “no.” Holy shit, choosing your own path is FUN! I mean, there’s just so many options and so little time to choose between them that I had to pause the game and pinch myself. Seriously, Telltale, light switches have more options than you give players most of the time.

Anyway, I figure we’ll end up fucking up the hardware store, opening it to attack by the zombies, and Carver would end up stalking us for the rest of the game, picking our crew off one-by-one as we went along. But no, I ended up shooting him and then watching as Kenny caved his head in with a crowbar. Fucking seriously? Okay, fine. His itchy-triggered lieutenant named Troy is still alive and undoubtedly he’ll be the new antago.. nope, scratch that, he’s dead too. It was then I realized that Walking Dead: Season Two was the ultimate “instant gratification” game for a generation that wants instant gratification right now, or else. Nick was an annoying, dangerous little shit. He dies. Carver was a brute. He dies. Sarah was a terrified, annoying little brat. She dies. Though the way I played it, she died sooner than she did for most people. During a zombie attack on a trailer, I decided to leave her behind. I was shocked it actually worked, though I was a little disappointed that I was not given the option to kill her myself, then piss on her body.

This is Bonnie. She's the only character from the 400 Days expansion that has a significant role in Season Two. All the other characters make very brief cameos, assuming you played the expasion the "right way." Really, what was the point of 400 Days again? I was under the impression that the characters and actions in 400 Days were have some kind of important impact on Season Two. They didn't. Not even Bonnie, really.

This is Bonnie. She’s the only character from the 400 Days expansion that has a significant role in Season Two. All the other characters make very brief cameos, assuming you played the expansion the “right way.” Really, what was the point of 400 Days again? I was under the impression that the characters and actions in 400 Days were have some kind of important impact on Season Two. They didn’t. Not even Bonnie, really.

The final two chapters are mostly spent talking about how unstable Kenny is. I had the exact fucking same conversation about it no less than a half-dozen times. “Do you think Kenny is cracking?” Um, yeah. Just look at him! He’s all wide-eyed, staring off into the void, lips quivering, fingers twitching, WHAT THE FUCK ELSE DO YOU PEOPLE NEED? For him to randomly just spout off “you know guys, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Hitler was right”? Meanwhile, the group keeps getting picked off. Pregnant chick Rebecca gives birth, then becomes a zombie. Again, I cursed the lack of dialog options. When people defended my decision to shoot her with “she had turned!” I wasn’t allowed to answer back “Wait, she did?”

Ultimately, it comes down to you, Kenny, the baby, and some chick that the game kept trying to make you feel some kind of sisterly bond with, but it was so badly handled that I never felt any true connection to her. Unlike season one, where the ultimate fate would either be Lee dies and stays dead or Lee dies and turns into a Walker, season two had multiple, completely different endings. In mine, I shot Kenny, paused the game to go masturbate for a while, then went back to listen to him have his heart-warming moment of redemption where he talked about how I had done the right thing. Oh fucking gag me with a garbage bag full of dog shit, what a crock. I did take solace in the fact that we just let him die without stabbing him in the head, so he’s now walking around as a mindless monster that will undoubtedly kill or wound every human he comes in contact with. In other words, no change. Clem, the baby, and the sister return to Carver’s hardware store, and the season ended with me telling another group of survivors to fuck off.

This is Alvin Jr, or A.J. for short. I only included him in this because my Godfather's name is A.J. and the "A" stands for Alvin. So I showed it to my A.J. and convinced him that I was so popular now that people were naming characters in games after my family. After seeing strangers recognize me as Indie Gamer Chick, he has no reason not to believe it. Well, unless he reads this. Yeah, sorry A.J.

This is Alvin Jr, or A.J. for short. I only included him in this because my Godfather’s name is A.J. and the “A” also stands for Alvin. So I showed it to my A.J. and convinced him that I was so popular now that people were naming characters in games after my family. After seeing strangers recognize me as Indie Gamer Chick, he has no reason not to believe it. Well, unless he reads this. Yeah, sorry A.J.

BUT, it could have also ended with both the sisterly figure and Kenny dying. OR, it could have ended with the girl dead and you and Kenny finding the mythical survivor stronghold called Wellington, where you can either leave his ass and take the baby with you, or you can continue along with the unstated suicide-pact everyone seems to have subconsciously entered into when the apocalypse began and leave with him. The vast differences all these endings offer almost certainly eliminates Clem’s chances of being the protagonist of season three. And that sucks, because she is literally the only character I liked. I even wanted to kill and eat the baby. I mean, it’s the fucking apocalypse. I’m guessing veal has been hard to come by as of late.

I liked Walking Dead: Season Two, but it’s such a deeply flawed game. And I’m not talking about the gameplay. I’ve given up all hope they’ll ever improve it. No, I’m talking about the story. It is a compelling story. That’s why I stuck it out through ten chapters and a still-useless DLC pack so far. But this idea that you have actual power over the course of the story? It’s an illusion. The writers have a very specific way they expect you to play the game. I understand that they can’t branch off the path too far, because it would make development too complicated. That’s fine. But give us a greater degree of control over how the player’s character feels about each person, and then trust our own judgment on it. Telltale wanted us to sympathize with Kenny. That’s why, after choosing to answer how I felt about Kenny with “he’s unstable. I’ve seen him like this before”, the game kept hitting me with the same question, sometimes from the same characters that originally asked me, over and over again. It’s because the writers envisioned this amazing moment of redemption. I didn’t, because I had determined that Kenny was beyond redemption. He was an unstable, psychopathic monster who endangered everyone around him. Any person in their right mind would have clipped him the moment they met him. But that wasn’t their plan. In the ending I got, Clem was tearful as Kenny said his goodbyes. Clem would NOT have been crying the way I played the game. I was as mean-spirited as possible towards him from start to finish. I always answered questions in ways that would piss him off. Yeah, the ending where you leave Kenny behind and take the baby into Wellington felt more authentic than any other bullshit chance of redemption you’re given, but it still lacked the brutal emotional weight that season one ended on.

This is Jane. Her sister basically gave up on life and got eaten. Since then, Jane has been on her own. She was the other character I didn't immediately hate. In fact, I would have been perfectly fine with Clem getting killed and her becoming the main character of season three. That would have at least kept me interested. But, she actually dies in some of the endings, which renders that possibility impossible. Also, if Clem is the star of season three (which is also very unlikely at this point), that means Jane has to die early on in the first chapter. That sucks.

This is Jane. Her sister basically gave up on life and got eaten. Since then, Jane has been on her own. She was the other character I didn’t immediately hate. In fact, I would have been perfectly fine with Clem getting killed and her becoming the main character of season three. That would have at least kept me interested. But, she actually dies in some of the endings, which renders that possibility impossible. Also, if Clem is the star of season three (which is also very unlikely at this point), that means Jane has to die early on in the first chapter. That sucks.

And, the reason for that is the way I played didn’t line up with the writer’s grand vision for Kenny’s character arc. The ending I got essentially rendered my entire experience as nonsensical and irrelevant. What’s really annoying is the game kept trying to give me a chance to recant my statements. It did that when it asked if I regretted watching Kenny cave in Carver’s skull. I had to repeat that I didn’t multiple times in different chapters. The only logical reason why it would keep asking is if the choice I made wasn’t the choice Telltale wanted me to make. When people disagree with my reviews, I’m often told “you must have played the game wrong.” It’s condescending and insulting, but I get that a lot. It’s how snobs come to terms with the revelation that someone doesn’t like the things they like. But, in the case of Walking Dead, I really did seem to play the game wrong. Because the writers wanted me to feel one specific way about the characters. I didn’t, and thus the dialog at the end made no sense at all. Whatever. I still enjoyed the story, even if I had no real influence over it. I still enjoyed it even if Clem’s words and emotional state didn’t reflect the way I had played. Even when a decision had consequences, it still felt wrong because the story had no consideration for why I had made the decision in the first place, and thus Clem and I weren’t on the same page. Then again, if we had been on the same page, she would have been walking around with a necklace made out of ears and a taste for human flesh. You know, maybe I was the monster all along. Sorry, Kenny.

The Walking Dead LogoThe Walking Dead: Season Two was developed by Telltale Games
Point of Sale: PlayStation 3, Xbox Live Arcade, Steam
$19.99 just realized the Walking Dead actually refers to the survivors in the making of this review. Yeah, I’m quick.

IGC_ApprovedThe Walking Dead: Season Two is Chick-Approved, but is not leaderboard eligible.

Filed under PC Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mega Coin Squad

August 12, 2014 by Leave a comment

You’ll forgive me for being skeptical of Mega Coin Squad. Adult Swim Games has a wonderful track record of selecting indies for publication, but their last title is currently my choice for worst game of 2014. Also, the primary focus of the game is local-only multiplayer. For a PC game. No online. Not even LAN play. Local-only. I’m not so pissed about that. At this point, I’m used to indies not stepping up to the challenge of incorporating online play in their games. What ticks me off is that you can’t even whisper a hint of disappointment about an indie that is local only multiplayer without douchebag indie fanboys bitching at you for having the utter NERVE to complain about the lack of online play. They treat you like you’re naive at best, or ignorant at worst. Yes, I get that online is difficult to do. Do you know what else is difficult? Making a good game. If you get to the point of making a good game (like Mega Coin Squad is), why not go that extra mile? And do you know who shares some of the blame for that? The same douchebag indie fanboys who see a preview of a game and then hound the developers every week with “IS IT READY YET? WHEN IS IT GOING TO READY? CAN I PLAY A BETA OF THE GAME? IS IT READY? IT’S READY ENOUGH! WHEN ARE YOU BRINGING IT OUT? IS IT READY?” You guys with your impatience are the reason why they feel the pressure to release it right now instead of taking the extra time to get online play in.

Local-only multiplayer games on PC sounds suicidal to me. Yeah, Sportsfriends has become a staple of Saturday morning meetings at the Vice household, but that’s a casual-driven CONSOLE game. A neo-retro action-shooter-partier on PC is going to be a tough sell to convince friends you’re better off playing that over something like Gears of War.

And then there’s the name. “Mega Coin Squad.” It’s so generic. It sounds like what a 70-year-old scriptwriter for a bad sitcom would call a game. “Timmy, what do you want for your birthday?” “I want Mega Coin Squad!” “I don’t know Timmy. We’re a bit strapped for cash now.” And then the parents try some wacky get-rich-quick scheme to raise the money for the present, get it somehow, and the kid gets bored with it quickly as the punchline to end the show. That’s what Mega Coin Squad sounds like. I mean,  you can practically hear a soulless game design committee stamp this name out, can’t you?

“What’s something you collect in games?”

“Coins!”

“Okay. And what’s a way of describing a group of people participating in an event?”

“A team!”

“No, no. That’s too lazy.”

“Um, squad?”

“Perfect! And finally, we need a modifier. Something dynamic!”

“Super?”

“Nah, too Nintendo.”

“Ultra?”

“That’s not bad. But we better save that for the sequel.”

“How about Mega?”

“Excellent! Mega it is! Mega Coin Squad! Someone call Fox Kids and tell them to we’ve got the cheapest animators in Korea working on the cartoon right now. Oh, someone make sure to actually make the fucking game while we’re at it. Gentlemen, to cynicism!”

By the way, I pictured that being done with J.K. Simmons’ voice. If you didn’t, go back and read it that way.

"Use pixel-art. Kids these days love pixel art. It's retro and hip."

“Use pixel-art. Kids these days love pixel art. It’s retro and hip.”

The thing is, it wasn’t a soulless corporation or some lazy sitcom writer coming up with the name. It was an indie studio. I’m sure the name was chosen on a satirical, sarcastic level. Fine. But, once the joke stops being funny (it takes just under two seconds), you’re stuck with a boring, generic name. When I see games with names like this, I always brace for the worst. I mean, if they phoned in the name, it’s typically safe to assume they phoned in all other aspects of development. That’s not the case with Mega Coin Squad at all, but going off the name, I can’t tell that.

I’ve had a lot of fun with Mega Coin Squad’s single player stuff. The basic idea is, you’re a dude (or a dudette, or a robot) that has to hop around a large room with coins scattered around. There’s also a giant piggy bank. You have to collect a target amount of coins and deposit them in the piggy bank. It’s an original (I think) concept that works wonderfully. You can also throw fireballs, pick up weapons, or hop on enemies to defeat them. Every few seconds, the platforms blink out of existence, only to be replaced with different platforms and more coins. The fast-paced collect-a-thon mechanics are a lot of fun to play with.

There’s up to three random upgrades available between the first three stages in every world. You get one by never taking damage, one by banking all the coins at once instead of banking a few here and a few there, and one by banking all the coins within a target amount of time. One of the upgrades is a double jump, which I recommend you try to get as soon as possible. You can also upgrade your own fireball a few times. Eventually, the fireball gets so powerful that I actively tried to avoid picking up guns. Even as I was upgrading them, they were never as useful at killing enemies or clearing out large sections of blocks like the max-upgraded fireball was. It would pass straight through solid blocks, killing all enemies and destroying all breakable blocks in its path. I started cursing myself every time I accidentally stumbled into picking up a gun and spent the next couple seconds trying to unload all the ammo out of it so I could go back to my good old fireball. By the way, why would someone who can create fire with their hands and nothing else ever even look at a gun? If I could, I wouldn’t. I would hang one of those “gun on premises” signs on my door, only it would say “person that can create projectile fiery death on premises.” I would have the safest house on the block and be the go-to person if you had trouble starting your barbeque.

All quiver in front of the might of a fully-upgraded fireball, which renders all the carefully crafted guns in the game worse than useless. It makes them obstacles to be avoided.

All quiver in front of the might of a fully-upgraded fireball, which renders all the carefully crafted guns in the game worse than useless. It makes them obstacles to be avoided.

The frenzy of pace is also one of the major problems in the game. Some stages have springboards, which launch you quickly to the upper parts of rooms.. and often into an enemy that you couldn’t have possibly seen. I lost count of how many times I brained myself against an enemy with no reasonable way of avoiding it, but over ten or so hours, it had to have been over a hundred times. And the controls aren’t always responsive. Especially the double jump. I would often land, jump, then try to jump again and nothing. This happened a lot, and I talked with other critics who it happened to. It never really caused me to take damage, but in a game where you have a limited amount of time and need precision jumping, everything working spot-on at all times without failure is completely necessary.

Finally, I hated that every world finishes with a stage where you just have to kill a lot of enemies. I can’t believe they made it through development without anyone standing up and saying “compared to the coin-grabbing stuff, these stages are incredibly boring.” Maybe someone did. If that happened, that person was ignored and the game is at least 25% less fun because of it. Bravo. I’m sure those stages were there because indies have an unwritten rule that they must be at least 25% horrible, or else they’re not indie anymore. Whatever the reason, I still enjoyed the majority of my time with Mega Coin Squad. Well, what I played of it. Again, I wasn’t able to enjoy the mulitplayer stuff, which is the game’s primary focus. Probably the best compliment I can give to this title is it’s the first multiplayer-focused indie I’ve played where the single-player stuff doesn’t feel like it was tacked on as an after-thought. Not even close. I’m actually skeptical that the multiplayer stuff could eclipse the single-player campaign. Also, I’m trademarking Ultra Coin Squad. It’s for Big Pixel Studios’ own good. It’ll force them to put three full seconds of thought into the sequel’s name.

Mega Coin Squad LogoMega Coin Squad releases on August 15

IGC_ApprovedMega Coin Squad was developed by Big Pixel Studios
Point of Sale: Steam
$14.99 ($11.99 first week sales price) has a father that always said “do you think I shit money?” Well, I’ll show him the rainbow-colored coin in this game and say “if you had one of these, you would. Can I have my Porsche now?” in the making of this review.

Mega Coin Squad is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard

A review copy was provided by Adult Swim Games to IndieGamerChick.com. A full copy of the game will be purchased by Cathy when it releases on August 15.

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Pressured

July 26, 2014 by 2 Comments

You know, there are a lot of really good games waiting to be Greenlit on Steam. So it’s a bit shocking to me that Pressured got through, because (1) PC is completely the wrong platform for it. It would be right at home on iPad. And (2) this is one seriously boring game. There’s a grid of twelve monitors that cycle through different numbers. You have a target number which you must get to by clicking the numbers on the screen until they add up to it. The last number used to hit the target becomes a bomb. When you hit the target five times, you move onto the next stage. And that’s pretty much it.

This won’t be my longest review, because I don’t have a lot to say about Pressured. It’s a competently made game. Not ambitious in its art style. The whole “indie minimalism” thing is getting out of hand. So many games these days are devoid of personality, and it makes gaming almost exhausting. It’s not novel or cute anymore. Minimalism now reminds me of Kristen Stewart. An actress so utterly devoid of talent, personality, or charisma that it leads me to assume she must be giving the best head the casting couch has ever seen for her career to still exist. You indies are Kristen Stewarting your games. STOP IT!!

This game bored me so bad I think I might have PTSD from it. Just looking at this screen shot made me reach for the power button on my PC.

This game bored me so bad I think I might have PTSD from it. Just looking at this screen shot made me reach for the power button on my PC.

I have nothing against math-based puzzles. I was hooked on Sudoku for a while. But as a game, Pressured just plain doesn’t work for me. It feels more like a bonus round for a larger game that’s been given a full release. I really have no other complaints about it. I don’t even think I could offer any tips to improve the concept, since the foundation alone has all the earmarks of a digital sleeping pill. There’s a lot of fans for Pressured out there, and I’m sure the usual gang of idiots will demand I bestow my Seal of Approval on it because it’s a competent game that didn’t cause birds to fall dead out of the sky. But really, I’ve done nearly 500 reviews and the hour I spent with pressured is the most agonizing one I’ve had ever at Indie Gamer Chick. I’ve played incompetently made games and at least they gave me something to talk about. Pressured bored me AND gave me nothing to work with. I can nit-pick that there’s no leaderboards local or online, but I wouldn’t want to challenge for them anyway. The bland visuals and the dull gameplay just absolutely walloped me into a coma. I’m not picking on Flump Studios. They made Pester, which is one of the only shmups I’ve reviewed that scored my Seal of Approval and a Leaderboard ranking. I think the difference between this and Pester is Pester feels like a lot of time and effort went into it. Pressured looks and feels like one of those games people make in 48 hours at a Game Jam. And no, my dislike of this has nothing to do with the whole “girls suck at math thing.” I’m awesome at math. Well, at least my accountant is, but I pay him so that totally counts for me.

Pressured logoPressured was developed by Flump Studios
Point of Purchase: Steam

$2.39 (normally priced $2.99) whined “nobody said there would be math” in the making of this review.

 

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Super Amazing Wagon Adventure (Second Chance with the Chick)

July 17, 2014 by 7 Comments

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure was a rarity for me on the XBLIG scene. It was one of a very small group of games that I continued to play after I finished reviewing it. Not a lot of time. Maybe a few extra hours, but I couldn’t focus on any other games until I had satisfied my run with Wagon. It happens to me sometimes. I have a term for this: “getting it out of my system.” It’s a term friends, family, and co-workers have come to dread from me. It means my productivity is ground to a screeching halt. Terraria is currently the standard-bearer for this. I reviewed it, hated it, but still felt the need to get it out of my system. Then I realized that I was addicted to it and I had to do a complete 180 and concede that it was something special. I put about ten hours into it before the review went up. Between the time I posted my original review and the time I had to suck it up and admit I was wrong, I put an extra thirty hours into it. And after the second review, I added another fifty or so.

Currently, I’m migrating all my XBLIGs over to PC, and many of them will get a Second Chance with the Chick. Super Amazing Wagon Adventure has the word “Turbo” added to it on the PC build, so I figured I would start with it. I had a few nits to pick in my previous review of it, and I wanted to see if they were addressed.

Nope.

Under the sea! Under the sea! You'll some how not drown, when the wagon digs down, under the sea!

Under the sea! Under the sea! You’ll some how not drown, when the wagon digs down, under the sea!

Of all the games I’ve enjoyed at Indie Gamer Chick, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is the least fair, and it doesn’t give a shit about it. As you make your way through the game, all the events unfold randomly, and many of them revolve around you just plain losing health. Sometimes the game immediately starts with one of your three characters coming down with some hilarious illness and having three of their four hit points get drained. You get them back if you survive a couple of waves, but there’s a chance that if a single enemy makes it past your defense, that character will die. Right off the bat, with almost no chance of survival. What a dick of a game.

If you think that’s bad, try making it all the way to the end of the game with full health (a rarity) only to be forced to sacrifice one team member or starve to death. This can be avoided if you collect 40 animal hides when this scenario comes up. I talked with a lot of players of the game and all of them determined that anything short of perfect shooting with the correct weapon will fail. Many of the weapons in the game completely annihilate the animals you can hunt, leaving no carcass behind for you to chow down on. That happened to me several times. I got so pissed off that I chose to starve once. I figured I would be left with only one heart per person. No, actually, they all died.

You know, Sparsevector, there’s a fine line between making your game challenging and making players want to burn your house down.

As fun as Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is (and make no mistake, it’s really fun), you never feel any sense of accomplishment when you play it. When literally everything comes down to the whims of fate, how can you feel good about it? If you display any skill, the game will bend you over its knee and introduce you to the paddle of “shit happens.”

Wagon 2

Brian FINALLY presents me a flower, which is what initiates a life-restoring ritual known as “fucking each-other’s brains out.” Oddly enough, my original lineup was myself, Brian, and our friend Bryce. Wagon Bryce and Wagon Brian couldn’t stop fucking each-other, much to the real Brian and Bryce’s chagrin, though we all admitted that Nintendo could learn something from their Super Amazing Wagon Adventure’s Brokeback Mountain moments.

Low on life and counting on the fur trader to sell you some health? Fuck you, all he has for sale is the ability to move your wagon faster. Which you will never ever EVER want. All that does is assure you will take more damage, because you have a big moving target and moving faster means moving more recklessly. Having the best run you’ve made in several attempts? Why, here’s syphilis for your characters and also a pack of wolves chasing them. The wolves are the most appallingly overpowered enemies because they move too fast and if you dodge them, they turn around and bite you in the ass. Have the right default weapon to handle them? It might get jammed, or drunk if you’re using the falcon. Shit like this makes me question if I would be brought up on assault charges if the developer was within chair throwing distance of me. It’s the most infuriating good game I’ve played at Indie Gamer Chick.

And it is fucking awesome.

8+ hours into the PC port (with probably around the same amount of time put into the XBLIG version), and I was still discovering new scenarios I had never encountered before. Train robberies. Caves. Aliens.  I had more wagons and even modes to unlock. And the weird thing is, I actually want to press on. I feel like the love-struck school girl trying to catch the attention of the local bully. So, is it a nice game? No. It blows up bullfrogs with firecrackers and pulls the wings off flies. But I’m downright smitten. I also think the guys at Sparsevector are responsible for a 20% hike in my blood pressure. MY PARTY GOT ANOTHER VD? CAN’T YOU GUYS STOP FUCKING FOR TEN SECONDS?

Wagon logoSuper Amazing Wagon Adventure was developed by Sparsevector
Point of Sale: Steam – Desura – Xbox Live Indie Games
Ports played for this review: Steam and Xbox Live Indie Games.

IGC_Approved$2.99 preferred the wagon that lets you use the falcon in the making of this review. Even though the falcon had a big drinking problem.

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

 

 

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Goat Simulator

July 13, 2014 by 4 Comments

How does one review a game that isn’t supposed to be good? That started as a joke project inside a studio, a sort of “get a feel for an engine” project that was never intended for release. Then a video of that joke was posted on YouTube, drawing over 1,000,000 (pinky finger to mouth) views, with fans (and even some press) demanding it become a reality. Because that’s where Goat Simulator comes from.

Me? I don’t give a shit about any of that. I just want to buy and play good games. And Goat Simulator is boring. The idea is, you’re a goat. There’s a couple of maps. Go do stuff. What stuff? Whatever you want. There’s no story. There’s no objectives besides a checklist of things like “fall as long as you can” or “get hit by a car.” I’ve never been able to get into games that have no driving force behind them. Some people like to just run amok in a sandbox. In GTA, they’ll load up on guns and see how much shit they can trash before getting busted by the cops or killed. I can’t do that kind of stuff. I need a reason to keep going. Goat Simulator doesn’t do that. It does have a couple of things that are almost missions, like racing from point A to point B or giving the players a minute or so to score as many points as they can. But those get boring too, because there’s no progress.

It’s also unstable as all hell. Without hyperbole, I fell through the world geometry only two minutes into the game. This was nice in the sense that I was able to check off a couple of the tasks, such as falling from as high a distance as possible, but come on. What’s disgusting is people want these glitches. They demanded them, because it somehow makes the game more charming. Great, so we’re now encouraging a generation of highly impressionable young developers to not bother ironing out bugs in their software, because those give their games personality or something along those lines. No, what we’re doing is rewarding laziness and lack of effort. I can’t even make a joke about it because it gives me genuine concern for the future of the indie scene.

I've never actually encountered a real, honest to God goat. Do their tongues work like a frog's, sticking to everything they touch? Because this goat's tongue is like that. A cool feature, or it would have been if there was any fucking point to it.

I’ve never actually encountered a real, honest to God goat. Do their tongues work like a frog’s, sticking to everything they touch? Because this goat’s tongue is like that. A cool feature, or it would have been if there was any fucking point to it.

In a way, Goat Simulator represents a sort of malaise that’s overcome the indie scene. It shows how little we ask of developers. We don’t even care if a game is fundamentally broken, has any point to it, or even if effort was put into it. By doing this, we’re doing a real disservice to the development community. We’re telling them “you don’t have to try. We’ll still be there for you!” Only, we typically aren’t. Maybe Goat Simulator is doing exceptionally well, but that’s a rarity. As someone who has spent that last three years watching a small portion of the scene ruin their lives making their games, I think maybe I have a better feel for the stakes in play. I have seen developers go all-in with their projects. Mortgaging their homes, cashing out their children’s college funds, selling their cars, cashing out their 401(k)s, or all of the above, for stuff that any rational person would realize has little chance of success. Why? Because people told them it was a good idea.

Not that I think Goat Simulator is representative of that level of recklessness. I assume, from its origin as a joke and it’s short (four weeks) development cycle, that it cost very little to release. Instead, I’m concerned about the idea that popularity comes easily. That quality is irrelevant to success. That a developer can actively talk about how awful their project is and still rake in cash like an armored truck crashed into a diamond truck right in their driveway. Like Flappy Bird, Goat Simulator’s popularity is purely on a sarcastic level. By buying the game, you’re essentially saying “I totally get the joke” and your purchase is simply a pricey way of saying “LOL!” I don’t even blame Coffee Stain Studios for doing it. What would you do if you had an established fanbase, a large portion of the gaming media, and instant backing from the largest digital distribution house on your side? I know what I would do: laugh all the way to the bank.

But, somewhere out there right now, a moron is looking at Goat Simulator and saying “why not me?” Even though he or she has none of the advantages that Coffee Stain had. They only see the money and the notoriety those guys are getting. They’re unable to grasp that Coffee Stain is only able to have this kind of success without trying because they worked so damn hard on every other project they’ve done. So they proceed to quit their jobs, sell their stuff, and ruin their lives making their games. Nobody buys the game, because they have no following, no marketing skills, no contacts to help them get listings, and the game doesn’t have anywhere near the polish that years of experience brings. As bad as Goat Simulator is (and it’s awful, make no mistake), imagine how bad it would have been if it had been their first game.

I’m all for personal accountability. It’s not up to you or me or Coffee Stain or any other developer to watch out for people and make sure they don’t destroy their lives in pursuit of a quick buck and infamy. At best, we can tell those that would go down that path “maybe you should think harder about this.” But when they do it anyway, it’s not our fault. What I am saying is, as a community, we have to come together and say “we’re capable of better than this!” Maybe Goat Simulator is the foundation of something that is possibly exceptional. The alpha stage of a game that, with a proper narrative, a wacky take on traditional sandbox missions, and a stable engine, could be legendary. But nobody asked that of Coffee Stain. They showed off a joke, and people said “we want that, right now, just the way it is. That’s good enough for us.” We gave them the path of least resistance, and they accepted it, just like anyone would. Just like I would.

All my attempts at suicide failed as my goat is unfortunately immortal.

All my attempts at suicide failed as my goat is unfortunately immortal.

But we can do better. Consumers, I mean. We can say “our money is worth more than this.” We didn’t with Goat Simulator. We don’t with a lot of games. And we should. People bitch and complain about the landslide of Flappy clones that have flooded the marketplace, but it’s only because we as a community embraced its awfulness that such a goldrush to clone Flappy Bird happened in the first place. We created this mess. And if we keep demanding that unfinished novelty games be released right fucking now instead of saying “hey, this could be cool! you should build off it!”, it’s what the indie scene will revolve around. No, quality games won’t disappear. Not now. Not ever. Talent and genius don’t disappear because the flavor of the month requires no effort or hard work. There will always be developers that will kill themselves to get it right. To make something new and groundbreaking that sets our imaginations ablaze. No amount of crap can ever bury them or their desire to entertain us. No, this is about protecting our identity as a community. We want people to associate the indie scene as being a high quality, imaginative and creative community. When we say “we’re there for you, even when you phone it in”, we become hypocrites. If EA or Microsoft put out something like this, we would shit on them. You know it. Why does being indie make something like Goat Simulator acceptable? Especially when we damn well know we can do better? I don’t want that to be our identity, where unfinished crap is acceptable because it’s indie. We deserve better.

 

Behold the funniest gag in the game: it has the same font as Microsoft Flight Simulator. There, I just saved you $6 to $10.

Behold the funniest gag in the game: it has the same font as Microsoft Flight Simulator. There, I just saved you $6 to $10.

Goat Simulator was developed by Coffee Stain Studios
Point of Sale: Steam

$5.99 (normally $9.99) is very worried that “Unfinished, Pointless Sandbox Game” is now a popular genre in the making of this review.

 

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Super Comboman

July 11, 2014 by 3 Comments

Sigh. Sometimes I walk away not liking a game and I just know it’s going to get me hate mail. So, it’s with a sense of dread that I say that I utterly hated Super Comboman, the latest title published by Adult Swim Games. I’m a big fan of their label. They’ve been on a hot streak lately, with titles like Volgarr the Viking being pretty cool. Super Comboman looked like it was trying to take a page from Viewtiful Joe’s playbook. I was a big Viewtiful Joe fan as a kid, so I was pretty excited for this one. At first, I thought Super Comboman was going to be something special. And it is. In the same way that someone who can’t remember to put their pants on before their shoes is special.

The idea is you’re a guy named Struggles who has to brawl his way through levels for some reason. I couldn’t really follow the story, except that everything is supposed to be made of stickers. That’s why your character and all the enemies have white outlines. You’re also supposed to have a fanny pack that looks like Pikachu, because that’s quirky and indie or something, but really, it looks more like a dog. I’m not a fan of the white-outlines art direction, which is pretty needless. Hell, many people aren’t even grasping the whole sticker-concept to begin with, nor does the game do any sticker-based special moves from what I can tell. There’s nothing wrong with the concept. They just didn’t do anything with it. Gameplay wise, Super Comboman is about brawling enemies and trying to chain together as large a string of combos as you can. It does have personality and cool character designs. And that’s about where the nice things I have to say about Super Comboman end.

I don't know why they bothered with the sticker gimmick at all. Unless it unfolds later in the game, it never comes into play. Unless getting stuck in a jump animation, unable to move, is part of it. In this picture, my character is doing just that. Stuck. For no reason. Yeah, there are some glitches. Well, quite a few actually.

I don’t know why they bothered with the sticker gimmick at all. Unless getting stuck in a jump animation, unable to move (as if you’re stuck there just like a sticker), is part of it. In this picture, my character is doing just that. Stuck. For no reason. Yeah, there are some glitches. Well, quite a few actually.

Same picture? No. Look at the time stamp.

Same picture? No. Look at the time stamp. The only c-c-c-combobreaker in this game is the numerous glitches.

In the interest of full disclosure, I put seven hours into Super Comboman and couldn’t make it past the first “real” stage. Not for a lack of effort, but I had issues either getting stuck and unable to move (and I mean that literally. More on that later) or would get massacred by the enemies as they sandwiched me between them and pelted me with pick-axes that drained my life what seemed far too quickly. Insult my lack of skills all you wish. I’ll fully agree with you on that front, but I think I can safely blame the game for a lot of it. Having just played three straight games with very good play control, Super Comboman aggravated me to no end. Myself and the small circle of friends that also received pre-release review copies couldn’t pull off a single aerial-based special attack or combo. The timing of it is next to impossible. This is because “popping” the enemies into the air doesn’t throw them high enough, and then there’s a delay in jumping up to catch them. I bought a move called a “piledriver” that only requires you to press down and B midair to execute it. I wasn’t able to pull off the move until five hours after I had unlocked it. That makes me somewhat privileged, since none of my friends could execute it. We all struggled with wall-jumping too. It’s done by holding the jump button and pressing the opposite direction. The timing of it was just so off, we began skipping caches of coins that required you to use it. It just wasn’t worth the frustration.

The controls are just plain not responsive enough for the kind of gameplay the developers wanted. And the fighting itself is boring. Comboman tries to change things up by making unlockable “perks”, of which you can control two at once. There’s a problem though: the first perk you equip doesn’t activate until you’ve hit a THIRTY FUCKING HIT COMBO! Thirty!! And, as soon as the combo’s timer runs out, you lose whatever perk you’ve earned. I don’t know how much it takes for the second perk to activate, because I never got a combo higher than 40 something. One of the reasons for that is, in rooms where multiple enemies spawn, sometimes it takes too long for them to actually do that. You might have to wait for them to blink out of existence before another shows up to keep the combo going, and by time you’re in range of them, your meter has run out. That happened a lot. But, a lot of the time (and I mean a lot), the game glitches out and you get screwed by its busted engine. For example, look at this picture.

Super Comboman 3

See where it says “Workers –> 5” on the wall? That tells you the number of enemies left to kill in this particular room. The two pipes you see with the down arrows spawn enemies. There are only two enemies at a time, and one is defeated and blinks out of existence, another one gets pooped out as soon as you run under a pipe. At least, that’s how it is supposed to work. One time in this same room, I had a fairly large combo going, and I cleared all the baddies. Only, I didn’t. There was one left to spawn. I ran under the right pipe. Nothing. I ran under the left pipe. Nothing. The door was still locked and it said I still had one guy left to go. By this point, my combo was totally gone, but I was still stuck waiting for the douchebag enemy to show up. I ran the full length of the room back and forth, passing under the pipes multiple times. Nothing. I started jumping up and down. Nothing. Finally, after running in place against the locked door for a few seconds, the pipe finally shit out the last guy I had to fight. Over a minute had passed. This happened more than once too.

It’s possible the dude was frozen midair. That happens quite frequently as well. At first, I thought it was only me. Sometimes when you land on platforms, your character gets stuck in the “jump” animation and can’t move (as seen in the pictures above). You can change what direction you face, but you’re stuck. Sometimes you can use a special move to get yourself out of it, but sometimes you can’t and you have to restart the stage. Pro Tip: buy the air dash right away, since that’s the easiest way to get yourself unstuck, though even that doesn’t work every time.

Later, I noticed it was happening to the bad guys too. I took video of it.

It was around this point, seven hours in with even the enemies being screwed over by bugs, that I realized this shit is not finished yet. Yes, I suck at brawling games and I didn’t even finish the first stage. But I think a solid argument could be made that I simply never had an attempt at finishing that damn stage without a glitch happening. Literally the only thing that was consistent was the game doing stuff I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to do. Take this puzzle. I numbered the different sections of it.

Super Comboman 2

You have to take the enemies that spawn at spot #1 and do a “smash” move to them. They should fly into the cement wall at spot #2 and break it. You can’t break it yourself, because the electric fence, which enemy bodies pass through (sometimes at least. A lot of the time they get stuck on it). Then, you have to hit a different enemy at spot #1 and have them bounce off the mattress at spot #3, which is hypothetically supposed to bounce them up into the button next to spot #4. A perfectly fine puzzle, when it works. But the physics just are not consistent enough. The enemy always drops out of the same position in the pipe. Smashing him immediately upon landing almost always lands him on the mattress (when he doesn’t fail to pass through the electric fence), but doesn’t always cause him to hit the button. Trying it in different positions doesn’t make a difference either. It’s really a matter of luck getting the puzzle to work the way its supposed to. I mean, you can’t have a puzzle with that much inconsistency. It’s annoying.

Sometimes it took so long I wondered if I actually had done it right and the button was broken. That actually happened to me twice, where I went to smash a button and it just wouldn’t press in. One time it was with the very first button in the first non-tutorial stage, and I had to immediately restart the level. Now mind you, I wasn’t the only one this kind of shit was happening to. Didn’t anyone play-test this thing? Sprites disappear. Characters get stuck. Buttons don’t always activate. Puzzles don’t always work right. This is the most glitch-filled game I’ve seen since Poker Night 2. I can’t even make a joke about it. It’s so disappointing.

There’s nothing in Super Comboman that can’t be fixed. They can iron the kinks out of the fighting (they really ought to tone down the enemy sponginess while they’re at it) and the glitches can be patched out. But its present release feels like a beta in need of at least six months worth of fine-tuning. The brawling gets repetitive, the enemies are too repetitive, and what the FUCK was the point of the whole sticker thing? Why even have such a novel concept if you’re not going to take advantage of everything being stickers? Why bother to include the perks when activating them and keeping them active is so damn hard? The sluggish controls and frequent glitches push this past the point of being tolerable. I loved the personality of the game, and you can tell real effort and thought was given to the play mechanics. They just didn’t finish it. The foundation for something really good is laid here, but the cement was still wet and now its starting to sink.

Super Comboman LogoSuper Comboman was developed by Interabang Entertainment

Point of Sale: Steam

$11.99 (price raises to $14.99 on July 18, 2014) was prematurely born on July 11 too, but at least I was only a couple of weeks early in the making of this review.

An early review copy of Super Comboman was provided to Indie Gamer Chick by Adult Swim Games. Our policy is that we pay for all of our own games. Upon the release of the game, a copy will be purchased by Cathy. For more on this policy, check our FAQ.

 

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Escape Goat 2

July 6, 2014 by 1 Comment

From July 1, 2012 to July 26, 2013, the top ranked game on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard was Escape Goat, an incredible platform-puzzler by Ian Stocker. I’ve played dozens upon dozens of puzzlers since starting Indie Gamer Chick, and it stood out. It didn’t have the most difficult puzzles, but the ingenuity of the puzzle design left a big impression on me. It was one of the first games I played that made me realize that indies in many ways have eclipsed big studios in terms of creativity and intelligence of design. But, what impressed me most of all about Escape Goat was how this was a puzzler that anyone could play. Compare it to something like Gateways, which is probably the most brainy puzzler ever created. Less than 1% of all people who purchase that game ever finish it, even on it’s “easy” mode. Which is not a knock on it. As of this writing, it ranks #9 on my Leaderboard. The game is genius. The problem is, the learning curve is so steep that you practically have to be a genius to get the most out of it. Escape Goat was challenging enough to give anyone making their way through it a sense of satisfaction, but not so smart that anyone would be likely to walk away and never return. Sort of like what I’ve been known to do with punishers. Damn you 1001 Spikes, you refried bastard of a game, you.

Escape Goat 2 isn’t a revolutionary upgrade on the original by any means. It’s still built around single-screen puzzles that are solved by activating a series of switches that alter the layout of each stage. You still have a mouse helper that you use to squeeze through narrow passageways, transfer places with, or to activate switches. And it still contains equal parts platforming and puzzling, a balance that many of its genre cousins have trouble maintaining. It’s safe to say that Escape Goat 2 is more of an evolutionary step. When this is the case, I typically find the sequel to be satisfactory, but leaving less of an impression on me. Mario Galaxy 2, Kingdom Hearts II, and Arkham City all left me feeling that. That’s what makes Escape Goat 2 such a surprise. It not only feels fresh, but that sense of awe and discovery that hooked me with the original happened to me again and again, as I watched floors and walls shift around to reveal the pathway to victory stage after stage. It reminded me the staircases at Hogwarts, or the some of the elaborate boobytraps from the Indiana Jones franchise. In this sense, Escape Goat and Escape Goat 2 hold a unique distinction for me on the indie scene: they’re the only games that made me totally revert back to my childhood. Not even Journey managed to accomplish this. For this reason, Escape Goat 2 is the first game since Journey that made me debate whether it should go on top of the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

No, my mascot making a cameo did not influence my feelings. Truth is, I'm a little insulted by the lack of stature it was given. It should have been a miniboss, at least.

No, my mascot making a cameo did not influence my feelings. Truth is, I’m a little insulted by the lack of stature it was given. It should have been a miniboss, at least.

As an evolutionary version of Escape Goat, the sequel features new styles of puzzles. Sometimes you’ll acquire the ability to manipulate four mouses at once. Other times, you’ll have to turn the mouse into a block, either to act as a shield or to smash platforms below you. Unlike the first game, levels unfold in a slightly more linear way. One of the fatal weaknesses of the original game was that the levels could be tackled in any order. For this reason, the difficulty couldn’t be scaled. The sequel not only fixed this, but it contains one of the finest difficulty curves the indie puzzle scene has ever seen. Even when you later open up new stages that link off the opening levels, those new levels feature the proper scaling of difficulty. Is it perfect scaling? Of course not. Even big budgeted games by some of the biggest names in gaming rarely nail the curve, and indies never do. Having said that, Escape Goat 2 comes the closest. Considering how bad the first one screwed the pooch in this area, I thought it was worth mentioning.

Like the first Escape Goat, I found the controls to be exceptional. I was actually shocked to learn that people are complaining about them. I’ve reviewed 472 indies as of today, with the highest percentage of them being platformers. Proper platforming controls are among the most difficult things to get right. I never once felt the controls failed me. If I died, it’s because I fucked up, not the controls. The jumping is so natural that your limitations become instinctive almost immediately. Maybe I had an easier time because I enjoyed Escape Goat 2 with an Xbox One controller, but really, even some very good indie platformers struggle with controls. I would rank my experience with Escape Goat 2 second only to Super Meat Boy in terms of how instinctive they become. I can think of no higher praise.

I don’t want this to sound like a digital blowjob. Believe me, I have some bones to pick with Escape Goat 2. My biggest gripe: the lighting effects. Many of the stages are lit in a way where you have to explore them to get a proper lay of the land. It sounds great in theory, but I felt it took away from the majesty of discovery, which is where Escape Goat really shines. It’s the same thrills that make movies like National Treasure and Tomb Raider bearable to watch. Unfortunately, those moments in Escape Goat 2 are often shrouded in darkness (even when you turn the image brightness up in the options), and that’s really a shame. I’m also still not a fan of when the stages center less around puzzling and more around simple precision platforming. Although I argue that Escape Goat 2 does platforming very well, it’s not the game’s calling card, and those stages feel almost phoned in.

Escape Goat 2 also does that annoying thing where one of the unlockable super powers can only be achieved by dying X amount of times (in this case, 400 god damned times). I *hate* it when games do that. Thomas Was Alone did it too. Granted, TWA did it in a way that confirmed my fucking awesomeness, but this shit is like rewarding players for incompetence. Picture if we did this in all walks of life. Did you watch the last Superbowl? Remember when the Broncos gave up a fucking safety right off the bat? Imagine if they followed that up by dousing their coach with Gatorade while the players that fucked up gave each other chest bumps and high fives, all while the beleaguered Seahawks watched on in dumbstruck awe. You wouldn’t give them a fucking achievement for that. And yet gaming now does this on a consistent basis.  STOP IT!! The point is to not die!

Unless you’re one of those games where the point actually is to die.

See what I mean about the lighting? Why is it every game has to be so damn dark and mopey these days? Do you know what the indie development scene needs most of all? A fucking psychiatrist.

See what I mean about the lighting? Why is it every game has to be so damn dark and mopey these days? Do you know what the indie development scene needs most of all? A fucking psychiatrist.

Escape Goat 2 isn’t revolutionary. It won’t change the way you feel about gaming, one way or another. So it surprises me that I actually had to stop and think about whether I enjoyed it more than Journey. It ultimately came down to this: Escape Goat 2 made me do that “revert back to a giggling, wide-eyed child” thing that games like Portal and Super Mario Galaxy did for me. I crave those moments. They’re so very rare. I give the nod to Journey because it’s the only indie I played that took me places emotionally that I never expected any game would do. I hope that doesn’t detract anyone from giving Escape Goat 2 a whirl. After all, I am comparing the best indie I’ve ever played to the second best indie I’ve ever played. Because, as of this writing, that’s exactly what Escape Goat 2 is. A magnificent title from a rare breed of talent. A game that makes me proud of what I do here at Indie Gamer Chick.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to the game and kill myself another 304 times. Because Ian Stocker is that much of an asshole.

Escape Goat 2 logoEscape Goat 2 was developed by Magical Time Bean

IGC_Approved$9.99 is so hungry it could eat a goat burger. I have no clue what that means, but my late partner Kevin used to say that every day in the making of this review. Do goats taste nasty or something?

Escape Goat 2 is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

 

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Magicians & Looters (Second Chance with the Chick)

July 1, 2014 by 5 Comments

Imagine any game you played and didn’t enjoy. It doesn’t matter which game. Just try it.

Now, imagine if you could change one thing about that game. It could be the jumping mechanics. It could be the difficulty level. Are you picturing it? Good.

Is that game now, with that one change, one of the best games you’ve played?

That’s a legitimate question I pose to you. Because I just had such an experience. I played Magicians & Looters back in September, 2013. It’s a game I probably should have liked. It’s a Metroidvania, which is probably my favorite genre. It was highly ambitious, featuring three unique characters that you would alternate between, each with their own skills. It featured a large map with well-executed level design and unique platforming challenges. The humor-based writing was really sharp, with an emphasis on actual comedy as opposed to just quoting old video games and movies. I mean, doesn’t this game sound pretty fucking sweet?

I said sweet, not swine.

I said sweet, not swine.

But then there was the combat. That God damned combat. The guys at Morgopolis Studios wanted a more sophisticated, realistic combat system. Thus, they created an elaborate dodge/counter/block/attack setup that hypothetically should have made their title stand out. Instead, it crippled the game’s pace and made combat such a lethargic chore that it ruined the whole title. At least for me.

Thank God someone was listening. Now, the combat is more in line with traditional 2D games. And that one change alone completely alters how enjoyable Magicians & Looters is. When you’re not worrying about the game grinding to a screeching halt every time you encounter an enemy, you can really enjoy what the developers accomplished here. This is their first game mind you. I’ve long been a proponent of Theurer’s Law, which states that nobody should get their first game published. Well, actually I’m for a variation on it: keep your first project simple. I guess it’s a good thing Morgopolis Studios didn’t subscribe to that theory. What they came up with here is something very special.

Yes, you collect something called a "Red Skull" in this game. Which is actually significantly less half-assed than Hugo Weaving's performance in Captain America.

Yes, you collect something called a “Red Skull” in this game. Which is actually significantly less half-assed than Hugo Weaving’s performance in Captain America.

The map really stands out. You know, when you’re not taken back by how awful the combat is. A lot of indie Metroidvanias either overly simplify the map design, or they bite off more than they can chew and end up with a dull, sprawling mess. Magicians & Looters has a damn near perfect map. The design is so logical, and that’s a rarity in indie gaming. I’m still not sold on the leveling up system, but because the combat mechanics are fixed, it doesn’t feel like I’m underpowered anymore. It helps that the controls are more responsive thanks to the patchwork. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if this is the single-greatest use of a patch in gaming history. Thank God this wasn’t XBLA, or that patch would have been unaffordable and turned the development team into jaded douchebags.

M&L isn’t perfect by any means. Some of the dialog is too smart-assed for its own good. The longer you play, the longer you realize that these characters are damn-near unlikable. If you knew people who talked like this, you would hate them. You would go out of your way to avoid attending parties with them. Or, if stuck at a party with them, you would master the art of choking on appetizers just to avoid conversing with them. By the way, the secret to that is not faking it. Otherwise, you’ll fail to properly turn blue and thus they’ll want to keep talking with you. Nope, just suck it up, literally, and lodge that fucker in your throat. Though I suggest you make sure someone with a ten foot distance knows the Heimlich maneuver before trying this. Actually, don’t try this at all. Or at least don’t tell people you got the idea from me.

Where was I?

Mom?? Oh wait, I made that joke last time. Um, gimmie a second. Um, something about vaginal VDs or something.

Mom?? Oh wait, I made that joke last time. Um, gimmie a second. Um, something about vaginal VDs or something.

Oh, and the boss battles are still a bit tedious. A lot of people complained about the final boss. I actually can’t comment on it. Despite the accolades I’m bestowing upon the game, I had to walk away during the final battle because of epilepsy concerns. But, I tracked down the ending on YouTube and it’s worth a look. Is it disappointing I couldn’t finish it? Sure. But I can’t deny that every single part of the game before it had me shaking my head in disbelief. THIS from a game that originally didn’t even win my seal of approval? Are you kidding me?

I started Indie Gamer Chick three years ago today, and my focus was on Xbox Live Indie Games. It didn’t take me long to realize I had found a treasure trove of underrated, overlooked gems. So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that, three years later, I’m still finding games that can blow my mind. There are precious few games out there that have scared me with the potential their developers display. This is one of them. What really amazes me is, even after reviewing over four-hundred games on the platform, I’m still able to say this about a new game: Magicians & Looters is the best Xbox Live Indie Game ever made. I have no doubt about it. Curly was right: just one thing. Figure that out, and everything else will work itself out.

xboxboxartMagicians & Looters was developed by Morgopolis Studios
Also on Steam

IGC_Approved$2.99 has been holding off on this review for over a month now, because Cathy thought announcing a new best XBLIG ever on her site’s birthday would be more festive. Though we’ve heard the guys at Morgopolis have aged horribly waiting for the announcement in the making of this review.

Magicians & Looters is Chick-Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. Please note, she said “best Xbox Live Indie Game of all time.” Not best Indie of all time.

 

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Rad Raygun

March 6, 2014 by 3 Comments

When people mock the 80s, they tend to mock synthesizers, tall hair, and movie montages. When games mock the 80s, they joke about how we accepted a lot of shit when it came to video games. Strangely enough, it’s not all that common for games to mock the other big event from the 80s, apart from New Coke of course. By that, I mean the Cold War. Finally someone has stepped up to the plate. Enter Rad Raygun.

I previously hadn’t read up on the game much other than to see that it looked like a Mega Man clone. I haven’t played one of those since Vintage Hero so I was ready to give it a shot.

After a few minutes, it was clear that I was wrong in that it isn’t a Mega Man clone but more of a Mega Man-inspired game. It has some similarities in that you’re a robot with a blaster and that it’s a platformer with boss battles at the end of each stage, but there are many differences that make this title stand apart.

White House Down!

White House Down!

In this trek through 198X, you are Ray Raygun, a robot on a mission to bringing the war Soviets have started back to Russia after they attacked Washington DC. In your adventure which takes you to the Berlin Wall, Chernobyl’s nuclear plant, and the Kremlin, you’ll encounter the cutest little Soviet robots and missiles to destroy in this light-hearted look at the Cold War.

Setting itself apart from Mega Man, rather than copying the abilities of the bosses you defeat, you gain abilities as you find them on the ground such as a slide maneuver to sneak under things, a mid-air moonwalk that allows you to cross gaps, and an aimable cannon shot that helps you reach enemies placed at an angle your blaster has trouble reaching.

Poking fun at the 80s era of video games is a tried and true method to get a few laughs. Right away you’re treated to a joke about how enemies will reappear the instant you backtrack even a few pixels. While typically annoying in the games it’s mocking, it’s not a big deal here because none of the enemies are overly difficult and serves its purpose as an amusing quirk.

There is a fun nod to Tetris while inside the Kremlin where you can actually play the classic game in order to, I assume, gain bonuses to your power-ups. I only assume because while it is a cute nod, unless I’m missing something, controls for this mini-game were brutally difficult in that every few seconds, a piece would fall in a certain location depending on where your character was on the board and which direction he faced. If you want a piece to fall where you are standing, you’re out of luck for there is little you can do to get out-of-the-way before the piece comes crashing down. It would have been nice if the player could control when the piece fell rather than let it be a timed event since a game like Tetris requires careful placement of blocks.

The levels are laid out in a fashion along the same vein of Mega Man with a few key differences.

The game makes it a point to simulate the way stages, as in Mega Man, would “scroll” when you reach the border of an area, but it forgets one thing. Enemies and enemy attacks that occur during the scroll should be forgotten by the game and disappear. Something so seemingly minor in text here comes off as quite an annoyance while playing. I encountered a few areas where an enemy was able to fire homing missiles at me off-screen and I would have to flail about to avoid the attacks.

A Tetris minigame found in Moscow.

A Tetris minigame found in Moscow.

While there is never a dull moment in fighting off the sheer number of baddies in Mega Man, many of the areas in this game are devoid of any life at all. These areas are purely for aesthetic reasons such as, “A cooling tower is tall so we will make it tall in our video game.” This is all fine and dandy but give me something to shoot! No one wants to walk through an empty game where they’re encouraged to kill all the things and there are no things.

I encountered a few bugs along the way but nothing game-breaking and not really worth mentioning other than one that was a bit strange. If backtracking and you cross back through one of the “scroll” areas and were hit while the game scrolled, crossing back through that scroll would cause you to take damage again, even if there were no longer enemies there. While I did die to this once, the game is easy enough and lives are plentiful that it wasn’t anything more than a small annoyance.

It may seem like I’m picking on a number of things here but actually, I had a lot of fun with this title and children of the 80s and those with a little knowledge about the global politics of the era will laugh at the nice touches the devs added to make this title stand out. It’s a cute homage to the time of my youth that, for the most part, does what it tried to do well.

At its cheap price ($1), this is a fun title that you can finish in a short amount of time and I highly recommend it. Between the Tetris area mentioned above, Matryoshka Sputniks, and a lone red balloon floating, there was plenty to make me giggle with delight.

title

Rad Raygun was developed by Trufun Entertainment.

IGTlogo-01For 36 rubles, you can pick up this game and beat up Soviet-era commies with capitalism.

Rad Raygun has been awarded the Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval.

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