Zombie Estate 2

May 6, 2013 by 17 Comments

Sigh.  You know, despite having played literally dozens of games just like this, when I saw screens for Zombie Estate 2, I got excited.  I know that I sometimes bitch about being fatigued by the endless zombie games on XBLIG, or the endless twin-stick shooters, or especially combinations of the two.  But, just the prospect of a decent one gets me excited.  Yea yea, I’m supposed to be too hip for this kind of stuff and not admit what I just said.  It would be like admitting that I’m a fan of nose-picking.  Which I’m not, even though there are few things in life quite as satisfying as picking your nose.  Especially when you get a particularly stubborn booger that’s lodged way up there.  When you finally yank it out, it’s practically nirvana.

I’m guessing all those invites I get to gaming conferences just dried up.  It’s just as well.

It didn’t take too long into Zombie Estate 2 to realize the game would have big, big problems.  Not among them are the graphics, which offer some charming 2D visuals.  Can’t get enough of those.  Okay, so the text is too small, which is about as common a problem as you’ll find on the XBLIG scene.  My television is so big that God had to first move it out of the way before creating light, and yet I practically had to sit on top of the screen to make out some of the words.  Still, games with graphics that do this good a job of putting a modern twist on blocky, low-resolution 80s pixel art are typically pretty high in quality.  Maybe Zombie Estate 2 would be no different, but it has one very glaring issue: the difficulty is so intensely out-of-bounds past the point of reality that it simply can’t be enjoyed.

There are a ton of goodies to unlock in Zombie Estate 2. I just wish the game you have to play to unlock them was fun. It's just frustrating.

There are a ton of goodies to unlock in Zombie Estate 2. I just wish the game you have to play to unlock them was fun. It’s just frustrating.

ZE2 is a wave-shooter with enemies that are spongy and move much faster than you.  And it’s not just a few zombies either.  It’s having large portions of the screen saturated with the fucking things.  The game doesn’t send out just enough zombies to make up the wave.  Oh no.  Let’s say that the object of a level is to kill 100 zombies, and you have 99 killed.  How many zombies would you expect there to be on the screen?  Just one, right?  Try dozens.  All of which are grouped together.  When you kill the last one, the rest just vanish into thin air.  This gives you a chance to pick up those items.  Unless they’re about to blink out of existence themselves, which they do too quickly.

In order to better fight off the hoards, you can buy new weapons or upgrade existing ones.  Sounds, great, except picking up item drops (such as money) is a chore itself.  When you kill a zombie, chances are it’s part of the pack that’s closing in on you.  As soon as it drops something, whatever it is gets immediately covered up by dozens of enemies.  Your character sucks up items, but the range and speed it does so is so negligible that it might as well not do that.  And besides all that, enemies rarely drop valuable money or health packs.  Mostly, they drop ammo.  This would be fine, except they mostly seemed to drop ammo for guns I didn’t have.  It’s around this point that you realize if there’s such thing as a game that is an asshole for the sake of being an asshole, it’s Zombie Estate 2.  It’s not lovable or fun to be around, nor does it make any effort at doing so.

I played with one friend, but we quickly grew tired of the spongy enemy spam that made item-drops unobtainable. Not alone either. People on Twitter are alerting me that with four players they couldn't make it past the fifth wave either.

I played with one friend, but we quickly grew tired of the spongy enemy spam that made item-drops unobtainable. Not alone either. People on Twitter are alerting me that with four players they couldn’t make progress either.

Over the course of 48 hours, I played Zombie Estate 2 three separate times, and ended each session in utter frustration.  How can a game with all the fundamental mechanics for a pretty good time be so thoroughly destroyed by reckless design?  For God’s sake, there are fire enemies that can spawn right on top of you with no warning right in the middle of the fucking map!  No matter how much I bobbed and weaved around the level, they would appear on me, and I would start to lose health.  What the fuck, Zombie Estate 2?  Were you abused as a child?  Mind you, this is on the easiest difficulty setting.  You can go ahead and call me a shitty gamer too.  I think if I’m defined as being a bitch because I don’t think you should have a game where enemies randomly spawn on top of you, I can live with the label.  Or the tired “you just suck at games” label that is the be all, end all excuse horrible game enthusiasts throw at me when I say “this game is not worth buying.”  And Zombie Estate 2 is not worth buying.  Too difficult.  Too concerned with making the game excruciating instead of entertaining.  It resists being fun.  It looks like it will be good, and it sounds like it will be good, but it just is not good.  It’s the Kwame Brown of video games.

xboxboxartZombie Estate 2 was developed by, um, some guys that made a game called Zombie Estate 2.

80 Microsoft Points figure it’s yet another case of a developer getting to good at their own game but didn’t mention it in the body of the review because they don’t want to sound like a broken record in the making of this review.  Seriously though, why is the game so fucking impossible on casual mode?  And why do the flame guys spawn on top of you?  And why doesn’t the game drop more money?  These questions should probably be answered since they all make the game less fun than it can be.  Games are supposed to be fun, right?  If not fun, entertaining.  Difficult can be fun.  Unfairly difficult never is.

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Avatar Trials: Ninja Uprising

May 3, 2013 by 22 Comments

Avatar Trials: Ninja Uprising is another University of Utah student game.  It’s really hard to believe it comes from the same pool of classmates that ultimately gave us Magnetic By Nature, one of the year’s best and most refreshing games.  Avatar Trials is one of this year’s worst XBLIGs, and one of those rare games where my biggest challenge with it is trying to find anything positive to say about it.  After having a few days to think about it, I couldn’t come up with a single nice thing to comment on.  Avatar Trials is without merit in every way possible.

Starting with the graphics.  Not only are they ugly, but they get in the way of gameplay.  Because of the colors selected for backgrounds, it causes severe problems in judging distance between platforms.  As a result, Avatar Trials comes across like an evil eye exam developed by an unscrupulous optometrist who wants to pad his wallet by making every patient he sees think they’re going blind.  Combine this with one of the most spastic, uncooperative cameras I’ve encountered in years.  At the most inappropriate times, it will swing around and zoom in on a wall.   Not even a pretty wall, either.  I mean, if it was a close-up of the Great Wall of China or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, I could understand why the camera would focus on it.  It would be pretty fucking cool to see.  These walls?  They look like someone threw a box of crayons and a blank piece of paper into a cement mixer and scanned the results into the game.

None of the screen shots from Avatar Trials selected from the market seem to show actual gameplay. Just shots of the map.

None of the screen shots from Avatar Trials selected for the market seem to show actual gameplay. Just shots of the map.

These problems might be worth looking past if the controls were well done.  However, movement is extremely loose and jumping is too floaty.  In a game where judging distance is already an issue, having anything less than pin-point precision in movement would be a fatal blow.  That’s the case here.  Platforms will be overshot even when you feel you’re being conservative in jumping.  Or sometimes you’ll get right up to a ledge and leap for it, only to completely short what looked like a small distance.  Plus, the that damn camera never stops being a bastard, so sometimes you’ll make a straight across jump only for the camera to swing wildly to the side, throwing off your angles and causing you to fall to the ground, or sometimes to your death.  And, if you manage to somehow get past all these issues without swearing off games in disgust, Avatar Trials will throw some nifty glitches at you.  The most common one seems to getting stuck hanging on walls that aren’t there.  It happened to me several times, and apparently it happened to Timothy H. Hurley Esq. as well.  But, I have Hurlmeister topped, because sometimes when I was hanging on the invisible wall, I would let go and get stuck, or outright fall through the world geometry.  I’ve played some truly inept 3D games on XBLIG, but I can’t think of one that is this bad on this many levels.

Look, it’s a student project.  I get it.  And believe me, I get no pleasure pulling this thing apart like a vulture does with carrion.  But, Avatar Trials: Ninja Uprising was dead on arrival and my job is to explain why.  Also, regardless of whether this is a student project or not, it’s also a commercial game that costs real money for people to own.  Maybe I expected too much from this, on the grounds that it comes from students who apparently took the same courses as the team behind the increasingly better looking Magnetic By Nature.  I’m not sure why the quality is so low that it can only be reached by submarine.  I would think maybe the team behind this partied too hard and studied too little, but we’re talking about the University of Utah here.  I think their idea of a party is sneaking a caffeinated beverage into the dorms.  Perhaps I’m completely wrong about the intentions though.  Maybe the assignment was to create the most broken, unplayable game possible, and then after it was released, fix it.  If so, A+ on the effort for part one.  Having said that, I would sooner believe the Titanic could be seaworthy again before anything could be salvaged from Avatar Trials.

xboxboxartAvatar Trials was developed by Stunt Bear Games

80 Microsoft Points noted that all the students and educators involved in the University of Utah’s Entertainment Arts and Engineering program have been class acts and are deserving of encouragement and support in the making of this review.  Just don’t buy this fucking game.

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Magnetic By Nature

April 27, 2013 by 11 Comments

Update: Magnetic By Nature recieved a Second Chance with the Chick.  Click here for my continued thoughts on it.  In short: the framerate issues were fixed. 

Magnetic By Nature is the latest game from students attending the University of Utah.  I know what you’re thinking.  “Hey, wait a second.  What do people from Utah know about having fun?  Didn’t they ban their only form of that in the 40s?”  Actually, inappropriate polygamy jokes aside, they know plenty about fun.  Atari founder Nolan Bushnell discovered the medium of games as a student at the University of Utah.  So in essence, we owe the gaming industry as it exists today to their beautiful, boring, Pac-10 devaluing institution.  It makes me happy that the science of creating games is taught there to this day.  It would be wrong otherwise, like if Harvard stopped teaching law, or Fresno State stopped teaching binge drinking.

In M-B-N, you play as a robot who has to make his way across levels by using magnetic powers.  I played a game with a similar hook last year, the beautiful but frustrating to the point of not being so fun Lumi.  Magnetic features more intuitive controls and faster-paced gameplay than that disappointing Dream-Build-Play winner.  I actually expected nothing more than a glorified sampler here, because the team behind it is actively using crowd funding to prepare a larger PC release.  Combine that with the XBLIG version coming in at 80MSP and featuring the subtitle “Awakening.”  Which, by the way, is about as unimaginative a subtitle as you can get.  I look forward to the sequel, which will no doubt be called “The Return.”  Or, if they’re feeling frisky, “The Revenge.”

Show of hands: who is sick of games wit the Limbo-like silhouette thing? Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4..

Show of hands: who is sick of games with the Limbo/Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet-like silhouette thing? Let’s see, 1, 2, 3, 4..

Anyway, the XBLIG version of Magnetic most definitely does not feel like a sampler, even if the devs say that’s what it is.  You’ll get a complete experience that will take about sixty to ninety minutes to complete.  Levels range from dexterity-based platforming challenges to physics-based puzzles, the latter of which there aren’t nearly enough of.  Mostly, the game centers around precision flinging of the protagonist.  And it really is flinging.  Even by time the game ended, I had never gotten fully used to the physics, or had a comfortable feel for trajectories and speed.  In essence, your character is a guided missile and you’ll often feel a sense of luck rather than accomplishment when clearing a tricky stage.  In many games, that would be annoying.  In M-B-N, it seems fitting.  I had a little magnet play set when I was a kid and I remember how tough it was to push stuff across a table in a straight line using them.  I thought of that while playing this game.  It gives it an authentic feel.  By the way, I had that magnet set for about a week, but then Daddy took it away after I showed him the pretty rainbow I made on the television using it.  True story.

But, other control issues rear their ugly head.  Movement without the magnets feels too touchy.  Sometimes this combines with the magnetic gimmick to cause extra frustration, like a stage with a moving magnet and increasingly narrow rows of spikes that requires you to simultaneously feather the joystick and the magnetic circle.  But at least stages like that are manageable.  A pair of auto-scrolling stages with a deadly beam of light that I called the Kill You Bar were bungled about as bad as they could have been, simply due to the bar moving too fast.  I’m also of the belief that these stages were in the wrong order.  The last one of these was a brainless trial-and-error reflex tester.  The first auto-scroll stage seemed to combine the best ideas of the game’s physics and had a climatic feel to it.  In fact, it probably could have been the final stage of the whole game.  Sadly, both these sections (the second one especially), were hampered by frame rate hiccups that seemed to get worse the more times you died. The lag became so bad that it rendered Magnetic By Nature completely broken.  Then something weird happened.  I found out that if you hit restart and have the game reload the level instead of just respawning after death, the lag becomes tolerable and I was able to finish the stage.  It’s still inexcusable to exist like this, but the game is strong enough that you’ll want to finish.

..1,947,685, 1,947,686, 1,947,687, 1,947,688.. you know what, I think they get the picture.

..1,947,685, 1,947,686, 1,947,687, 1,947,688.. you know what, I think they get the picture.

On the bright side, the developers are aware of a couple of the more frustrating issues and are working on fixes.  But even before they’re done, Magnetic By Nature is a surprisingly solid game.  I’ve played several student projects since starting Indie Gamer Chick, and while some have been decent enough, none have outright impressed me.  Magnetic By Nature does.  I guess the reason for my surprise was, despite a cool looking trailer, I had low expectations going in.  Physics puzzlers on XBLIG are typically disasters.  Plus, I’m completely burned out on the whole silhouette-hero in a dark world thing, which is about as common a feature among indie platformers these days as the ability to jump.  But I had no need to worry.  Magnetic By Nature, despite problems, is genuinely fun and refreshing and you should expect to enjoy it.  Bravo University of Utah guys and gals who made this and carry the legacy of the founding fathers of the gaming industry.  But please, for God’s sake, stick with making games.  Don’t open a chain of arcade-pizzerias with singing rats and shitty food.  That’s a legacy you can live without.

xboxboxartMagnetic By Nature was developed by Tripleslash Studios

80 Microsoft Points wonder why so many former Utes end up stinking up the sporting scene where I live in the making of this review.

Magnetic By Nature is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  The presence of University of Utah in the Pac-12 is most certainly not Chick Approved.

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Itano Alpha Flight and Heart Breaker

April 23, 2013 by 1 Comment

Here’s some quick thoughts on a pair of recent XBLIG titles, Itano Alpha Flight and Heart Breaker.

They suck.

xboxboxartMy boyfriend says I’m not allowed to leave it at that, so I guess I’ll explain why.  Itano is a third-person air combat/wave-shooter.  Enemies appear and try to kill you.  You have to kill them first.  Well, you don’t have to.  Presumably you can do nothing in retaliation, and just peacefully let the enemies shoot at you for all eternity.  But that would be a tough selling point for a game.  My problem with Itano is that it’s almost impossible to follow exactly what is going on.  The screen is cluttered with lock-on boxes, spiky balls, and enemy fire.  You can apparently only fire on enemies when you lock-on to them, but the screen is so messy that figuring out what’s an enemy and what’s a projectile shouldn’t be this difficult.  I have a TV so large that it has its own gravitational pull and I still couldn’t tell what was going on.  By three waves in, Itano completely deteriorates into an incomprehensible mess.  I tried for thirty minutes to find some semblance of design here, but it’s too messy.  I’ve had people explain quantum physics in less daunting ways.

Footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer, who made it about as far as I did.

heartbreakerNext, I tried Heart Breaker.  Here, you play as a rogue cupid who tries to break up relationships.  Sounds like it would be a cool hook for an adventure game.  Instead, it’s a very poorly designed shmup.  And, by poorly designed, I mean it looks and plays like a cheaply made, free-to-play flash game.  The graphics are terrible, with enemy projectiles being hard to see.  You also don’t “blink” when you’re hit, so your life can drain from full health to no health in under a second.  For the second time this week, I found myself saying “why do they still make games like this in 2013?”  The first time being when I played horrible XBLA/PSN brawler Sacred Citadel.  I love that indies strive to pay homage to games of the past.  But, I really don’t need to reminisce about the glory days when insurance companies used shitty games in banner ads to shill their products.  Really, all Heart Breaker needed was a product to shill and it would have been just that.  Probably Facebook, in keeping up with the “break up couples” theme.

Itano Alpha Flight was developed by Dusk and Dawn Interactive

Heart Breaker was developed by Random Saturdays

80 Microsoft Points each really phoned it in with today’s reviews in the making of this review.  I’ll try to get back up to speed tomorrow, folks.

Once again, thanks to Aaron the Splazer for this footage.

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Zombie Compound

April 17, 2013 by 2 Comments

If I were to go mad and rechristen Indie Gamer Chick as “XBLIG Zombie Game Chick” with the intent of reviewing games with a zombie theme, there are enough zombie games on XBLIG that I would be able to have a daily review of a different title for over two years.  It strikes me as odd that, on a platform like XBLIG, where there’s almost no limitations on how you can theme your project, so many developers choose to regurgitate the same shit day after day.  To some gamers, the over-saturation of zombie games (and this is hardly exclusive to XBLIG) is insulting and comes across as almost lazy.  “Gamers are sheep.  Shoehorn zombies in any game and they’ll line up to buy it.”  It’s cynical.  Does it generate sales?    Yea, maybe.  Does it generate respect?  Probably not.  Now if you put effort into your title and try to make it stand out, you can have both sales and acclaim.  Look at The Walking Dead.  If your game is just a generic shooter that was rushed through production to capitalize on a fad and generate sales off marketplace confusion, you might just get neither.

Cough.

Anyway, I thought of this while playing Zombie Compound on Xbox Live Indie Games today.  It’s a twin-stick wave-shooter with upgradable stats that’s main selling point is “shoot zombies.”  There are two notable things I can say about Zombie Compound.  #1: The game is moderately fun.  #2: Zombie Compound is more than moderately lazy.  It could have been so much better than it turned out.  I’ve played dozens of TwickS since starting Indie Gamer Chick, and my heart as grown cold towards the vast majority of them.  They’re so samey and safe and commonplace, it’s hard to warm up to them.  So I was shocked when I immediately started to enjoy Compound.  The upgradable stats angle was a good move.  It’s too bad that the developer didn’t take it further, giving the game a lifespan that even a mayfly would take pity on.

screen2

If my count was accurate, Compound has four enemies.  None shoot projectiles, and the most advanced attack any possess is to split into three worms when they die.  Of course, once the worms are present, they behave just like a normal zombie.  The only way the game ramps up difficulty is by slightly increasing enemy speed and by shoving more and more enemies on screen.  This is negated by how easy it is to upgrade your stats.  By the tenth round of Compound, I had purchased and fully upgraded a ray gun, which can take out rows of enemies.  I had also upgraded how much money I got from each kill, which allowed me to abuse the ammo refills.  Any danger of me dying was completely lost before the game was halfway over.  Then I bought the rocket launcher, and was clearing out waves of hundreds of dudes in under a minute.  The game abruptly ends after wave 25.  No ending, no reward, just “You Win!”  And that’s where the real problem with Zombie Compound lies.  There’s no real point to it.  Each level is fighting the same four enemies over and over again with no reward to be found.  There’s no high score leaderboards, no variety, no bosses, nothing.

Of course, it ends so quickly that you really don’t have too much time to get bored.   You can also play it with up to four-players in local co-op.  In this mode, buying upgrades is significantly slowed down, which might add to the challenge a bit more.  I don’t know, because I rage quit on the idiots I was playing with.  All players share lives here, and if you choose partners who don’t grasp the idea of trying to avoid enemies, it can be frustrating.  Otherwise, I guess Zombie Compound is worth a buck.  Barely.  You’ll play it once, enjoy yourself for a bit, never touch it again, and only vaguely remember it a few days from now.  That’s sad because talent was on display here.  But the developer had the talent to make a great game and settled for making a tolerable one.  I probably shouldn’t let that bug me so much, but I hate seeing the talented show a complete lack of ambition.  Aim high, people.  It’s better to aim high and miss than aim low and barely hit the target.  Just ask this guy.

xboxboxartZombie Compound was developed by Smoodlez

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points said “why zombies and not clowns?  They’re way scarier and they’re REAL” in the making of this review.  No, seriously, I mean that.  Why?

Zombie Compound is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  But, it could have easily been ranked much, much higher with just a couple more features.  Shame.

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Indiemon: Earth Nation

April 13, 2013 by 12 Comments

I have an idea for a children’s game.  In it, you’ll play as a pre-pubescent lad who will wander the world making animals fight for sport and for fame.  You’ll start with one enslaved creature (possibly an adorable mouse-lightning bolt thing, something that just oozes cuteness) and then randomly fight other adorable creatures along the countryside.  During a fight, right at the moment before your huggable little animal buddy delivers a merciless death-blow to the creature it just beat into a pulp, you’ll capture the creature in a cage way too small for it to possibly live comfortably in.  You’ll then force it to fight creatures that you wish to enslave, with your ultimate aim being to capture one of every creature like some deranged, asexual Noah.

And I’ve just been handed a cease and desist order, as apparently someone else already had this idea and has made billions off it.  Huh.  You know, I thought I paid a lot of attention to gaming.  I’m not sure how that one slipped me by.

Actually, more than one person had this idea.  Sort of.  A wild XBLIG just appeared before me called Indiemon: Earth Nation.  Quick thought: if you remove the word “Indiemon” from that name, would it not sound like a reality show you would expect to see on Discovery Channel?  No?  Just me?  Okay, never mind.

Thank God they used up one of their four marketplace pics for a splash of the game. By the way, unless it looks different in an encounter, I don't remember ever fighting the monster shown here. Unless it was one of the final two boss monsters the last guy you fight pulled out, both of which I killed in a single hit after about two seconds.

Thank God they used up one of their four marketplace pics for a splash of the game. By the way, unless it looks different in an encounter, I don’t remember ever fighting the monster shown here. Unless it was one of the final two boss monsters the last guy you fight pulled out, both of which I killed in a single hit after about two seconds.

So Indiemon is just like my hypothetical game would have been, except you’re a dude dressed like a knight instead of a baseball cap and parachute pants wearing child.  Well, that just saps the whimsy right out of the concept, does it not?  I mean, why does a knight need to make animals fight his battles for him?  Wouldn’t he have, like, something pointy and deadly?  A sword perhaps?  A spear?  No?  So this guy in his fancy armor and  sequined cape is making animals fight his battles for him?

What an asshole.

Well, being a friend to animals (I make a point of eating under six a day), I decided I wouldn’t be a jerk about it.  Instead, I would only keep one Indiemon, a fuzzy cute little rabbit thing called Bunnidusk in the game and “Peter Cottonmurder” by me.  When I engaged in battles with Peter, I decided to forgo any unnecessary violence against those innocent creatures that I so cowardly refused to fight myself.  So, instead of going through all the fancy attacks that Peter had acquired through the leveling up process (which happens roughly every three to four minutes), I would just spend every battle selecting attack from the menu, then selecting the most basic attack I had available.  Of course, such a brazenly lazy tactic would lead to failure in my hypothetical cockfighting game for children, where battles would be based around a rock-scissors-paper style strategy, probably something incorporating elements or living environments.  But, in Indiemon, it worked.  I never once had to use any attack except the weakest one I had open to me.  I never had to capture a creature.  I never came close to dying.  I never once had to use any item to save a fight.  Eventually, Peter Cottonmurder evolved (totally stolen from my hypothetical cockfighting game for children concept) into a giant, muscular, humanoid rabbit thing, sort of like Bucky O’Hare’s roided up cousin, Stucky O’HGHare.  Tougher, stronger, and probably now possessing erectile dysfunction.

That's him on the left. Who's a cute little blood thirsty slayer of God's creatures?

That’s him on the left. Who’s a cute little blood thirsty slayer of God’s creatures?

Not that it changed the game much.  I could still breeze past any encounter just by mashing the A button until the battle ended with me standing over the bloody, comatose body of some helpless animal.  I was amused that the game took time to note that any animal you beat-up is not dead, but rather “unconscious.”  Well, that’s a moralistic weight off my shoulder, I can tell you that.  Otherwise, you just walk from town-to-town, then go through a cave, and then meet an old dude at a dock, then the game ends, presumably to be continued at some point in the future.  Yep, there’s not even a proper ending here.  It just ends.

And thank God for that.  I sound like a broken record this week, but Indiemon is so awful that I am almost at a loss for words.  Thankfully, I have a thesaurus, and shall now list every synonym for awful: abominable, alarming, appalling, atrocious, deplorable, depressing, dire, disgusting, distressing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, ghastly, grody, gross, gruesome, grungy, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrific, horrifying, nasty, offensive, raunchy, repulsive, shocking, stinking, synthetic, tough, ugly, unpleasant, and unsightly.  Well, besides raunchy or synthetic, I think all of those work.

Really, the biggest sin of Indiemon is just how fucking dull it is.  There’s no original ideas on display here, which gives the game a boredom handicap right out of the starting gate.  But once some of the technical flaws of the game begin, it really starts to fall apart.  While going through the cave at the end of the game, it took me about five to ten minutes to find the dude who I needed to launch me on a ship in what turned out to be the “wait, that’s it?” ending sequence.  Once I got him, I think something in the game must have crapped out, because I got stuck in the cave for over an hour dealing with non-stop “random encounters.”  For a while, every single step I took led to a battle.  It took me over an hour to make my way to the exit of the cave.  Considering that this was the end of the game, I figured this was done intentionally to be the big finale gauntlet.  However, I talked to another player of Indiemon who experienced no-such diarrhea of the random encounter.  Huh.  You ever get the feeling a game was intentionally trolling you?  Happens to me all the time.

No, I don't know why the pictures are cropped this way.

No, I don’t know why the pictures are cropped this way.

So Indiemon is boring and unoriginal and technically problematic.  That’s not even mentioning how loose and busted the movement controls are.  Whatever you do, don’t use the analog stick to walk.  You’ll zig-zag around like a drunken knight who makes animals fight his battles for him like a total pussy.  Character design is, well, I suppose no more lazy or absurd than your average new Pokemon is these days.  But, I can’t even recommend Indiemon as the cheap dollar store knock-off that I suppose it has positioned itself to be.  It’s just too bland.  It actually manages to completely miss the point of what made Pokemon work.  Remove all strategy from that series, make the artwork more crude and amateurish, and take away the childlike sense of wonder, and you would have a game ill-suited towards teaching kids the kind of skills needed to be the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

xboxboxartIndiemon: Earth Nation was developed by RicolaVG

80 Microsoft Points think a Pokemon parody, similar to Doom & Destiny or Cthulhu Saves the World, could work as an XBLIG in the making of this review.

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Seeds of Ralark and Rise of the Ravager

April 12, 2013 by 2 Comments

Oopsie.  Last night, I meant to download Rise of the Ravager by Gentleman Squid.  Instead, I downloaded Seeds of Ralark.  The reason for that was I wasn’t 100% sure what the title was, except it had the word “of” in it and the cover art looked a bit generic.  You could see how I might make such a mistake.

Could be twins!

Could be twins!

Well, I plunked down 80 Mystic Syrup Ponies for Seeds of Ralark, so I figure I might as well play it.  Or attempt to at least.  Seeds is the type of game where you almost wonder if it’s meant to be played at all.  It’s a platformer without jumping.  I think the aim of the developer was to be like Bionic Commando, because gameplay revolves around walking around as a gecko, moving from platform to platform by way of a grappling hook.  Or, in the case of Seeds, a sticky tongue.  Positive thing out-of-the-way first: the graphics are pretty.  That’s the only nice thing I can say about Seeds.  The play control is atrocious.  Aiming the tongue is too loose, and the physics don’t want to cooperate.  In a short play time, I even found some little quirks that make me wonder.  Like, how come platforms don’t swing back and forth once you’ve moved them?  You can use the tongue to grapple onto a platform, but move the platform you’re standing on by using sticky feet.  However, when you let go with your tongue, the platform goes back to its starting position and locks into place.  That’s just nonsensical.

I can’t really squeeze a full review out of Ralark because I didn’t even finish the tutorial.  I put about thirty minutes into trying, but Seeds of Ralark had already become one of the most painful gaming sessions I had ever experienced.  I guess this is being passed off as “difficult” by the developers, and I suppose that is the case.  Of course, piecing together a broken statue with super glue might also be difficult, but even if you manage it, that doesn’t change the fact that the statue is broken.  If Ralark handled better, it might be fun.  Might. As it stands now, it’s one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Seeds of Ralark offended my platforming fandom, and also gave me a desire to dump Geico as my insurance carrier.

Seeds of Ralark offended my platforming fandom, and also gave me a desire to dump Geico as my insurance carrier.

How does a game this bad come along, and how does a developer not realize it’s a problem?  In the case of Seeds of Ralark, I’m guessing this is a simple case of a developer becoming the best at their own game, not realizing that others are going to find it to be a frustrating, joyless chore to play.  After all, they had no problem with the controls.  The ones they designed, and know all the stupid quirks of that nobody else in their right mind would take the time to learn.  And then you have a game like Rise of the Ravager, where the difficulty spikes so dramatically that any lingering fun is sapped away.

Ravager is a decent concept.  A gallery shooter sort of like Galaga, only with the colored-bullets gameplay of something like Ikaruga.  Sounds good, and at first, it is.  Of course, Ikaruga is insanely difficult with just two colors of bullets.  Ravager has four colors to worry about.  For the less coordinated of the populace (raises hand), that alone could be enough of a turnoff to make Ravager easily skippable.  But, the action was decent enough and showed enough promise that I felt I should continue.  This lasted until I encountered the first boss, which was too spongy for its own good.  I tried reshuffling my experience points into other categories (by far the smartest move the guys at Gentleman Squid did here) but still struggled.  After roughly a dozen attempts, I finally beat it.  But, by this point, I was fatigued by this less-than-exciting sequence and was just anxious for the game to be over.  I call this Steven Seagal Syndrome, because I feel the same way when watching his movies.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with giant colored heads raining down from the sky. Just like the Mayans predicted.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with giant colored heads raining down from the sky. Just like the Mayans predicted.

My boyfriend would like me to note that I’m not this game’s target audience.  I try to be as unbiased as possible, but I also generally dislike shmups and have a tough time warming up to them.  Having said that, Ravager has problems that extend beyond its genre.  The color system requires skills that are typically a cut above what an average gamer possesses.  I can handle it up to a certain point, but when you have different-colored enemies coming at you from different sides, with a couple of waves following right behind them, it really can be a bit overwhelming, to the point of being demoralizing.  I also thought there were a few flaws in the upgrade system.  Some of the upgrades are too expensive.  You also get upgrade points by not taking damage on levels.  However, to do so often requires utter perfection.  If you could go back to previous stages and attempt to earn those points you missed (just the missed points, so as to avoid mindless grinding), this would be a great feature to have.  But you can’t go back.  Thus, those upgrade points that the majority of the gaming population really could use will be unobtainable.

Put it this way: let’s say you put me in a foot race with Usain Bolt.  He would absolutely smoke me the first race.  Now let’s say that because he beat me, I have to run the next race with my shoelaces tied together.  Hey wait, shouldn’t HE be the one running with his shoelaces tied together?  That would make for a closer, more exciting race, and I, the person ill-equipped to do well in such a task, would have a better chance of staying competitive.  And that’s what is wrong with Ravager.  Those upgrade points are out of reach for those who are in need of them the most.  Being able to go back and get those points would take the edge off, but the developers are worried that their game might get too easy.  So I guess that’s that.  If only gaming was a medium where, and I’m speaking hypothetically here, you could have adjustable difficulty levels to cater to players of all skill levels.  I know, there I go again, spouting off pure fanciful crazy talk.  I still hold out hope that my insanely absurd “adjustable difficulty” crap will become a reality.  Maybe the 720 or PS4 will have the processing power to pull of such a radical space age innovation.

I probably should also put out there that the developer was anxious for Brian and I to experiment with the co-op stuff, so we did.  Brian jumped in at level 13.  Again, not wanting their game to be “too easy”, the game features what they claim to be “scaling difficulty” that increases with the number of players.  Thus, once Brian jumped in, the game suddenly had what seemed like three times the amount of enemies you would normally encounter, and those enemies took more bullets to kill.  The dudes at Gentleman Squid based this off Diablo 2.  Which you’ll note is a dungeon crawling hack-and-slasher, not a single-screened gallery shooter with limited movement.  Scaling difficulty they say?  I say the amount of shit two people had to deal with seemed more in line with something meant for four players.  I actually shudder how much shit could be in a four player game.  This was not well thought out.

Rise of the Ravager didn't do much for me, besides make me want to go back and watch Legends of the Hidden Temple. I'm partial to the Orange Iguanas myself, although the Silver Snakes were not without charm.

Rise of the Ravager didn’t do much for me, besides make me want to go back and watch Legends of the Hidden Temple. I’m partial to the Orange Iguanas myself, although the Silver Snakes were not without charm.

I’m sure there is an audience for Rise of the Ravager.  It has decent enough play control, pretty graphics, and a nice hook.  The fact that I came close to enjoying it might speak volumes of its quality.  But, based on my own subjective opinions, I can’t recommend it.  It’s just not for me, in the same way that hiring someone to tie me to a bed and beat me with a bullwhip isn’t for me.  Some people are into that kind of shit.

Seeds of Ralark was developed by Escapism Entertainment

Rise of the Ravager was developed by Gentleman Squid

80 Microsoft Points apiece noted that the Leaderboard’s ranked percentage is the lowest now that it’s ever been in the making of this review.  Pick it up, guys.

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Retro Arcade Adventure Remade

April 11, 2013 by 1 Comment

It’s been a little over a year since I reviewed Retro Arcade Adventure, a hack-and-slasher that was sort of like Smash TV for the dark ages.  I didn’t really like the game.  It was short, repetitive, and boring.  You could see potential in the developer, but the experience was tedious.  So I was skeptical when I saw that they had decided to remake the title instead of patching the original.  Ballsy for sure, since the first wasn’t very good.  It would be like burning a steak and trying to correct it by throwing it back on the grill for ten minutes.

Right away, I noticed the game was somewhat improved.  Enemies still come out you in boring, mindless waves, but they hack up pretty good.  Levels felt shorter, power-ups more plentiful, and boss battles were fun if unspectacular.

And then I encountered this fucking thing.

screen3

It could very well be the most boring boss I’ve taken on in an indie game.  It very much reminded me of the final boss in Sonic 4.  Too spongy, takes too long to open itself up to attack, and made me question whether or not I had died in a horrific traffic accident and had gone to gaming hell.  The first time I fought it, I was low on health (I seemed to be taking unaccountable damage in the stage leading up to it), but it took me a full ten minutes to slip up.  The second time around, after over 15 minutes hitting presumably the weak spot on the boss, it still wasn’t dead.  I was though.  I paused the game, casually got up, turned the power off, and decided to go watch some TV.  I think it was a documentary on tape worms.  Vastly more entertaining than that boss was.

In short, this needs to be fixed.  And it will be.  The developer assured me of it, under penalty of torture by honey and fire ants.  Until then, you can spend your time with the two minigames included.  I just realized I never actually played them.  Let me give them a shot.

(15 minutes later)

Oh dear God, what horrible shit.  I’m not waiting.  Break out the honey and fire ants.  This developer needs a good torturing.

xboxboxartRetro Arcade Adventure Remade was developed by SIACTRO

80 Microsoft Points liked Smash TV years ago but don’t think it’s possible to be good in this day and age so prove me wrong indie developers in the making of this review.

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Quiet Christmas

April 6, 2013 by 1 Comment

It’s been about a year since I reviewed Quiet, Please!, a pleasant little mix of puzzles and point-and-click adventures.  I enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t exactly the deepest game.  It was also a shorty at around thirty minutes.  To this day, I still get people complaining that I didn’t give a thumbs up to City Tuesday, yet a game like Quiet, Please! got my recommendation, even though they were similar in length and style.  The difference between the two is Quiet felt finished and fully realized, while City Tuesday felt like it was just starting at the moment it ended, making the overall impact of the game unsatisfactory.  It would be like going to a bakery and asking for a dozen cookies, six of them the Quiet cookies and six of them the Tuesday cookies.  First you’re handed the Quiet cookies, and they’re decent, if not memorable.  Then you anxiously await for the Tuesday cookies, only to have the baker throw the uncooked dough at your face.  And then call you a cunt for not being happy with the dough.  Even if the dough was delicious (it was), you can only imagine how good the finished cookie would have been.

Extending that analogy further, Quiet Christmas is an overcooked cookie. If it had been bundled with the original as a freebie, I could have appreciated it more and probably bumped up Quiet’s standing on the leaderboard.  But it’s not, and I can’t.  The real problem with Quiet Christmas is it’s very much the same game, only with a small handful of new puzzles.  It takes place in the same house as the original, features the same cast, and the logic of the puzzles is largely the same as before.  It would be like buying a DVD for $20 and being told that you can get the alternate ending for an additional $20.  No, that should have been on the DVD in the first place.

Once again, my warped brain conceived horrible things to do to my family. I figured I would grease the floor with butter to cause my hyperactive brother to slip and knock himself unconscious. Not making that up. I watch too much YouTube.

Once again, my warped brain conceived horrible things to do to my family. I figured I would grease the floor with butter to cause my hyperactive brother to slip and knock himself unconscious. Not making that up. I watch too much YouTube.

If you played the first Quiet game, you’ll breeze through this expansion.  I used a stopwatch.  Ten minutes, thirty-seven seconds was my time.  And, because it’s the same location, there’s no surprises here for players.  I think this could possibly become a series of games, but not like this.  Keep the family around (I suspect the parents are both drunks and the brother is hyperactive) but send them to new, exotic locations.  That works!  Look at Home Alone 2.  Same movie.  Same plot.  Same characters.  Different location.  $360,000,000 at the box office.  By the way, I didn’t actually know how much that flick made until just now.  Wow.  I think I’m going to start cutting myself.

xboxboxartQuiet Christmas was developed by Nostatic Software

80 Microsoft Points got a lump of coal in their stocking in the making of this review.

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How to Get a Girlfriend

March 29, 2013 by 10 Comments

Correction: There are apparently more than six questions in this “game”. I played through this four times and got the same six questions in the same order, than I played again to make sure and again got the same six questions in the same order, so you can see how I would think there are only six questions. But, I’ve heard from playtesters that there are apparently more than six questions. Does that make the game better? Um, no.

The bible thumping wackos are right: the only thing keeping me, a well-adjusted heterosexual that is very much in love with a member of the opposite sex, from engaging in full-fledged lesbian orgies straight out of Caligula, is shit like the Defense of Marriage Act and Prop 8. Really, I’m only as straight as the law forces me to be. Of course, I’m a plan-ahead type of chick, and if the Supreme Court rules that I can marry anyone, including a fellow toilet-sitter, I’m going to need tips on how to court them properly. Thank God for How to Get a Girlfriend. Which is ironic when you think about it, because it basically spits on His divine plan. Just think, for the low price of 80 Microsoft Points, someone like me, an introverted autistic girl who took 20 years to get her first boyfriend, can learn the secrets that only the most debonair of ladies men would know. This will certainly give me a leg up on all those house wives that will almost assuredly leave their husbands as society as we know it crumbles around us.

How to Get a Girlfriend presents players (and I sure plan on being a player if you catch my classy drift) with six questions related to picking up women. And it is the same six questions every time, because men who seek dating advice from Xbox Live Indie Games featuring malformed anime girls on the cover art are notoriously slow learners.

The first question asked what you do if you see a cute girl in a bar. I went with the option that most suited me: look really thirsty so that she would buy me a drink.

Shows what I know.

Girlfriend 1

Of course! It all makes sense. So women are parasitic beings whose love, attention, and affection needs to be bought? Oh my God.  I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME! I can’t tell you what it means to find out that we’re all really this simplistic and shallow.

The next question hypothesized that you would encounter a girl dancing, but you yourself are not a good dancer. Wow. This game really knows me. Well, I’m an American and I was on Xbox Live at the time, so I figured I would call her a loser and tell her dancing sucks. Wrong again. As it turns out, dancing is vital, because if you can’t dance, you won’t know what to do with a girl in your arms. Duly noted. It would have been nice if it had been more specific about the type of dance you need to learn. The closest I could find was square dancing lessons at the local Y. Chicks dig that, right?

Next up, what do you do if you have a crush on a girl but she only considers you a friend? I admit, this was a head scratcher. Ultimately, I figured the right thing to do would be hit on her best friend to make her jealous. But no, as it turns out, you should instead keep a distance on her.

Girlfriend 2

That.. makes sense to me. I mean, mysterious is way in vogue right now. Think about it.  Those Twilight movies grossed like a bagillion dollars! Sure, I’m not a hundred-plus-year-old-pedophile on the prowl for subservient chicks who can’t think or act for themselves, so those movies weren’t all that educational. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m not sure how the whole “mysterious” thing works with someone you’re already good friends with, but I guess that’s why I’m not the dating expert.

Next up: where do you take a girl on a first date? I decided not to go with carnival. Worst case is the girl really doesn’t like me and tells them I escaped from their sideshow. Next thing you know, I’m stuck on the road, going to places like Sheboygan, watching meth producers pay two bits a gander to see the Amazingly Ugly Girl. No thanks. As it turns out, coffee is a good first date. Not the movies. Or ice skating. Oh thank God. So a first date won’t involve me falling on my ass repeatedly. Weird, because if I met the chick at a bar, she would already be used to seeing that.

The next question deals with a subject matter important to all people in the hypothetical end of civilization homosexual apocalypse dating scenario:

IMG_1082

With no option for “hire a hitman and have that bitch whacked”, I decided to go with the laxatives. Not only was I wrong, but as it turns out I’ve been using the totally wrong descriptive language towards the women I’ve been courting.

IMG_1083

I admit it. I wouldn’t have thought to call (or even think of) any women I was trying to pick up “broads.” But this is 2013. Maybe it’s time we all embrace aggressive, obnoxious flirtation.

Finally, what do you do if a girl comes up to you and tells you she’s not really interested? I actually know the answer to this, but my lawyer has advised me against going into detail here. At least before the jury comes back with a verdict.

Final score? 0 for 6. Well fuck, I guess I really did buy the right Xbox Live Indie Game dating guide, because I had a lot to learn. With the knowledge I have acquired, I’m in an even better position now to commit a crime against nature. Which I sort of already did when I paid $1 for this absolutely unfunny, unlikable, useless, sexist piece of shit game that was developed by a douchebag who wouldn’t know pussy if it sat on his mouth and queefed.

xboxboxartHow to get a Girlfriend was developed by Fusion Gaming

80 Microsoft Points are waiting for the Supreme Court to legalize working on the sabbath so that I can do that without fear of being put to dea.. wait, what do you mean you can already do that? But the Bible says not to! You’re all a bunch of sinners and you’re going to Hell in the making of this review!

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