Volley

September 5, 2012 by 4 Comments

Xbox Live Indie games release in streaks.  Whole weeks will go by with nothing coming out.  Then Zeus will declare “unleash the Crapan!” and a flood of sewage-saturated indies will hit.  Honestly, it’s not that bad.  It’s just always a little overwhelming in a “where do I begin?” sort of way.  Starting with a game like Volley seems like a good warm-up act, until I remember that well-meaning, not at all horrible games that have little in the way of gameplay can be just as soul-crushing for me to write about as a terrible game is to play.

Volley is the second game I’ve played this week that was created by students, only these ones come from Munich.  Smart people they have in Munich.  They all speak German fluently.  Crazy impressive, huh?  Volley is similar to a previous XBLIG I encountered: Bug Ball, a game that both myself and Brian really enjoyed.  Volley tries to play like an evolved version of it.  There’s more power-ups and you’re given more control over the ball.  So how come I didn’t like it as much as Bug Ball?  Perhaps the games are too similar.  Both are 2D, arcade-oriented versions of volleyball.  Both are pretty heavy on the glitchy side.  Both can be played with up to four-players, although Volley skimps on online play in favor of not having online play.

What makes Volley different is you play as a circle that grows a bulge in it when you fiddle with the stick.  And I just realized that did not come out right.  I meant to say that if you tug on the right stick, it grows an erect extension that can be used for smacking the balls that come at it.  I mean, you know what?  Fuck it, here’s the trailer.

Okay, see what I’m talking about?  It does that.  But honestly, that appendage thing isn’t that big a deal, as most of the time we just jumped up and bopped the ball without swinging at it.  You can use it to create  a power shot, but none of us could quite get the hang of it.  The physics of using the bulge seem to be lacking a bit of oomph.  Speaking of oomphless stuff, the power-ups are mostly worthless.  All one of them does is turn the lights out, which might make a difference if all the players and the ball didn’t suddenly light up like they were dipped in plutonium.  Other times, it will put up little water-fall blocks that you have to hit the ball over or under.  Or it will put a bomb on the table.  No clue what the point of that is, since it never once detonated anywhere near a player.  Finally, it will sometimes drop multiple balls onto the table.  This is fine for 2 v 2 play, but one-on-one it’s simply a dick move because you can’t possibly keep both balls alive.

Even with all the problems, Volley is perfectly decent waste of a one dollar, provided you haven’t already played Bug Ball.  Volley did make me wonder if I would have liked it more if I hadn’t already played such a similar game.  Nah, I don’t think that’s the case.  Bug Ball was also slightly more fast paced, had a bigger variety of courts, and the grab-mechanics were more fun than the appendage thing that Volley has.  Yea, this is really unfair.  Volley is a pretty fun and should be rated on its own.  But I can’t.  This is like trying to decide if Zack or Cody is hotter.  An absurd debate, by the way.  It’s clearly Cody.

Volley was developed by Glassbox Games

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points sprained their wrist twice trying to play volleyball in the making of this review. 

Volley is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Click here to see where it landed.

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Mirror

July 29, 2012 by 2 Comments

Mirror is one of those types of games where you play it and then wonder why nobody has done anything like it before.  For all I know, maybe someone has, but I’ve never played anything quite like it.  The idea is there is a dot on one side of a barrier, and you have to place a dot on where you think the exact mirror image side of that dot is.  It’s so simple, and yet it’s potently addictive.  I wish it was on iPad, because using a joystick to line up the dots is a bit clumsy, but otherwise I thought it was a perfectly good waste of an hour or so.  It was either that or watch Water Polo during the Olympics.  I asked Brian if they’re allowed to drown each-other.  He said no.  Mirror it was then.

Not my most in-depth review, I know, but it’s not exactly a game that lends itself well to my style.  I would like to point out that Mirror is by Silver Dollar Games, who I once kind of scorched on this site back when I first started.   It’s an editorial that I’m not really proud of, and one that I probably shouldn’t have done.  Don’t get me wrong: I think Silver Dollar squanders its talent more than it shows it, but they shouldn’t have been singled out for it.  Of course, the thing about squandering talent is you actually have to have talent to be able to do so.  If you count No Luca No, I’ve played three of their games, and I’ve placed two of those on my leaderboard.  Compare that to Team Shuriken.  I’ve reviewed five of their games, and not one of them has come remotely close to the board.

Sure, their percentage would drop like a rock if I played stuff like Who’s The Daddy? or Cassie’s Animal Sounds.  But if I review stuff like that, I’m sort of missing the point of why I started Indie Gamer Chick.  It might be fun to pick on the stuff you know is bad, like throwing water balloons filled with blue non-non-staining food coloring at the kids from juvenile hall as they do highway litter clean up, but at a certain point it loses its zing.  I don’t think I’m at that point yet, as evidenced by the blue stains on my finger tips, but the time is coming where I’ll get there.  Silver Dollar hasn’t put out a whole lot of new games lately.  They’re focusing on their Dream-Build-Play title One Finger Death-Punch, which looks pretty decent.  What I really hope from these guys is that they have one transcendent, platforming defining hit.  One that doesn’t involve trying to hold a fart in.

Mirror was developed by Silver Dollar Games

80 Microsoft Points want to know when they can take their foot out of their mouth in the making of this review.

Mirror  is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Click here to see where it landed.

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Murder for Dinner

July 26, 2012 by 6 Comments

When I heard the name “Murder for Dinner” I thought “Oh great, PETA made a game about McDonalds.  Just what we needed.”  But no, it’s actually a first-person murder mystery game.  First-person, 3D XBLIGs are a rare beast, so I had to ignore the fact that it was a point-and-click adventure and give it a try.  Even if said graphics looked like early first-generation PlayStation stuff.  Again, I am starting to understand where you old farts are coming from on this whole nostalgia thing, but how can anyone in their right mind be nostalgic for PlayStation 1 era graphics?  That’s my generation and I don’t understand why someone would remind people of that horrible shit.  It would be like reminding someone about the time that they had to sit and watch while the Blair Witch drowned their mother.  At least Daddy said it was the Blair Witch.

Note: My Father, who shall henceforth be known as Indie Gamer Killjoy, would like me to state my mother is alive and happy and was not murdered by the Blair Witch, or anyone.   I choose to remain skeptical until the DNA tests come back showing that really IS my mom.  Nobody who watches The View can possibly be related to me.

Of course someone would get killed in a place that looks like that! The only other thing that could possibly happen there is Dracula would come back from the dead and we’d have to send the Belmonts in.

The idea is an old crone calls a dinner party where everyone present is worried that their deep dark pasts will be revealed.  Yea, I’ve seen the movie Clue too.  Unlike Clue, Murder of Dinner is unfortunately played straight, without the slightest tinge of humor.  Ironically, this makes the game cornier than all of Iowa.  The writing in this game is all kinds of fucked up, like one character who outright confesses to you that they murdered someone, but it’s not the actual victim, and that’s good enough for you to clear them as a suspect.  I love that logic, and now I’ll spend the rest of my days wondering why more murders don’t use the “Oh I’ve totally killed people for sport and/or profit, but I just didn’t kill THIS guy” defense.  It’s fucking genius in its insanity.

Actually, it’s funny that the logic of that confession-slash-alibi is so demented, because the actual puzzle logic of the game is somewhat grounded in reality.  This was done by eliminating puzzles all together, but that still counts.  Instead, Murder for Dinner relies on hide-and-seek gameplay.  First, you talk to all the house guests.  Then you walk around the house looking for places that allow you to search for stuff.  If you find something, you take it around and show it to the house guests.  This will typically eliminate a suspect or two.  Then you search the grounds for more stuff, find it, and show it off.  Just keep repeating this until you reach the credits an hour later.  If this all sounds dull, it is.

Alright, I believe you when you say you didn’t bump off the old lady. Now let me ask you this: where were you the night Mr. Body got killed? Why, is that a candlestick in your hand? You’re coming downtown with me.

I’m not a big fan of point-and-click games, but that had nothing to do with why I dislike Murder for Dinner.  The characters, dialog, and setting are all just so boring.  I’m way into murder-mysteries.  I want to do one of those cheeseball “Murder Mystery Weekend” thingies at some point before I die or grow senile.  But this was just lifeless and bland, with a cast of unlikable characters and an ending I figured out thanks to one way over-played line of dialog about three-quarters of the way through.  The ending didn’t even make any sense!  And do you know what I have to say about that?  Red ties make great zebra traps, Joey!

Murder for Dinner was developed by Detroit Game Studio

240 Microsoft Points tilted the camera downwards and then shook the stick around as I descended down the staircase, to make it look like I had tripped on it and was falling to my death, because by golly, sometimes you have to figure out ways to amuse yourself in the making of this review.

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Compromised

June 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compromised was developed by Super Soul

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

 

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Arkedo Series

April 5, 2012 by 10 Comments

Thankfully the code-giveaway portion of this feature is over with.  I had a total of nineteen entrees.  Nineteen.  That’s over the course of a month.  Well, like the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him vote for a chance to win Microsoft Points.  Sigh.

Well, I’m not going to let you non-voting types spoil my fun here.  Oh no.  The voters already did that themselves with all the mediocre games they picked for me.  Sure, I liked Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World, but the thing is, I already liked them, on account of having played them before I started Indie Gamer Chick.  On the other hand, I thought Lumi was fucking terrible and the Decay series was kind of a mixed bag.  A mixed bag containing dead plague rats and tampon run-off.  This week, we have the Arkedo Series.  Three games with nothing in common except they’re all XBLIGs by the same developer and they cost 240 Space Bucks each.  Oh, and they’re boring as fuck.

Well actually, JUMP! isn’t.  The first game of the series is also probably the best.  It’s a neo-retro platformer where you play as a guy that in no way resembles Indiana Jones.  There are various bombs scattered throughout the stage and you have to collect them before the timer on them reaches zero.  Once you have all the bombs, you make your way to the door.

Despite JUMP! priding itself on being old-school, it has a modern-style of pixelated graphics that looks really slick.  It also seems to want to feel like an old timey punisher, but it’s not overly difficult.  Maybe it gets that way later, but I won’t be around to find out.  You see, JUMP! also brings over a couple antiquated game mechanics, such as a lives system.  I didn’t think much of it, until I ran out of lives and the game popped up a message that said something like “Doesn’t it suck how old-school games don’t let you continue?”  At which point I sighed and declared to Brian “call for a penis-shaped U-Haul because I believe a dick move is coming.”  Indeed, JUMP! has no continue system.  When you run out of lives, you get to start the whole thing over.  And thus it can officially go fuck itself.

The second game is SWAP!  It’s a Pokemon Puzzle League sort-of clone where blocks rise from underneath the screen and you have to clear them by lining up four of them.  That’s pretty much it.  I have to say, SWAP! is well made in terms of graphics and controls (mostly), but it’s just really boring.  This same kind of game has already been done better for decades now.  Because you need to line up four blocks, it doesn’t leave you enough room to set up the types of insane combos a game like this needs to hook me in.  It doesn’t even have a versus mode.  I’m not sure why so many people assured me I would enjoy SWAP!  Yea, like all the games in this series, it has a level of sophistication typically unseen on Xbox Live Indie Games.  I just feel that it’s dull compared to other puzzlers.  Hell, it’s dull compared to that annoying kid that lives next door.  The one that chews the plastic tips of his shoelaces.

Finally, there’s PIXEL!  Before trying it, I figured I already had played it on account of it having the same character and graphics style as a PSP Mini called Pix’n Love Rush, but the two games aren’t similar at all.  Love Rush was neat variation on the endless-runner genre.  PIXEL! is an incredibly generic platformer that’s only original idea is ruined by shitty play control.  You play as a cat that has to hop and bop enemies.  The actual platforming follows every convention of the genre, stupid or otherwise.  Like SWAP! the game is competent but boring.  You’ve played dozens, maybe hundreds of games like this in your life.  PIXEL! has no potential to land itself anywhere near the top of that list.

The one original idea is being able to freeze the game with the left trigger to open up a magnifying glass.  If you click special blocks with it, you enter a maze mini-game, where you steer a cursor around looking for an exit.  Typically, you have X amount of seconds to find it or you return to the main game and lose a tick of health.  This would be fun, except the cursor is so damned sensitive that it’s easy to skip right past the exit and hit a block that will push you away from it and back to beginning.  Even as I got late into the game, I never quite got the hang of it.  Other mystery blocks involve silly things like press the A button to cut a tree down, or answering questions to get to the next area of a stage.  My gut tells me PIXEL! was meant to be a Nintendo DS game (the developer had made some games for that platform) and these were supposed to be touch-screen events.

Either way, PIXEL! is completely boring.  It’s slow-paced, it’s repetitive, the levels are clichéd, the enemies are stock, and it just isn’t any fun.  Yes, it looks really good, sounds really good, and plays really good (outside of the mazes), but it’s less than the sum of its parts.  That’s pretty much true of the series as a whole.  JUMP! might have been worth recommending, but the one problem it has is big enough to be a deal breaker.  As far as SWAP! and PIXEL! go, all I can say is they are good-looking, well made sleeping pills.

Arkedo Series – 01 JUMP!, Arkedo Series – 02 SWAP!, and Arkedo Series – 03 PIXEL! were developed by Arkedo

240 Microsoft Points apiece do recommend Pix’n Love Rush on both PlayStation Network and iPhone in the making of this review. 

Thank you to all my readers for helping to keep me motivated.  This marks the 198th, 199th, and 200th games reviewed at Indie Gamer Chick!  Here’s to 2,000 more!

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Super Ninja Warrior Extreme

April 2, 2012 by 4 Comments

Usually when people accuse me of having a bias against punishers, I point to Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes, the second game I ever reviewed here and an original member of the leaderboard.  Of course, that review was done on July 2, and I haven’t been exceptionally kind to any of its kin since then.  Well, now I have another one I can point to and say “I didn’t hate it.”  Well, except the name.  It’s called Super Ninja Warrior Extreme.  Thankfully they tacked on “Extreme” to the end of the name, because I can’t picture myself playing a game called Super Ninja Warrior.  Maybe if it was just Ninja Warrior, but I think we’ll all agree that a ninja warrior who is super but not extreme must be some kind of pussy.  The whole point of being super is so that you can also be extreme.  Of course, the flip side of that is being an extreme ninja warrior that is not super is just needlessly reckless and wrong.

The only explanation I have for why the dude has a beehive on his face is he's EXTREME!

Actually, I think the “super” part of the equation is misleading.  If your ninja dude brushes up against a spike, he explodes instantly into a mass of limbs and blood.  Yeesh.  I would hate to think of what would happen to him if he used a back scratcher.  Actually, all enemies and projectiles result in instant death.  To balance things out, you have a sword with a decent amount of reach and the ability to wall jump.  And, well that’s pretty much it.  Thirty levels, go.

I’m not really sure if being a punisher was the aim of Hyper Samurai Soldier Supreme.  I say this because most of the 30 levels aren’t really all that hard to beat.  More than half of them I finished on my first try, and that doesn’t just include the opening stages.  There were levels that left me temporarily agitated, but they are immediately followed by levels that can be solved in around fifteen seconds.  This happens even late in the game, resulting in a difficulty curve with more dips than a roller coaster.

I saw this same scene when I took that tour of the jerky factory.

Otherwise, it’s not a bad game by any means.  It’ll take an hour to finish, and that’s fine.  That means it doesn’t stick around long enough to wear out its welcome.  The controls are pretty good.  A touch sensitive, maybe.  In a few later stages, you’ll have to nudge the stick with a degree of delicacy that rivals giving CPR to a butterfly.  Oh, and every stage ends with the same boss that takes two hacks to kill, no more, no less.  Even the final stage has this dude in it, and thus things end without feeling climatic in the least bit.  I had planned on bitching about Super Ninja Warrior Extreme using a four-digit password system instead of saving, but given how quickly it can be finished, any save system at all is as unnecessary as a driver’s manual written in Braille.

Super Ninja Warrior Extreme was developed by Ho-Hum Games

80 Microsoft Points wonder why there is no game called Tepid Ninja Warrior Mild in the making of this review.

Did you know I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points on Thursday?  Oh, you did.  You don’t care.  Sigh.  Well, you can at least humor me and vote for next week’s game.  Just follow the link for a list.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

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