Face-Plant Adventures

September 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

I once said Portal had ruined an entire generation, at least creatively.  I was only half-serious when I said that.  At the end of the day, I’ll still insist that Portal was worth all the lame test chamber settings, cake jokes, and sarcastic AI antagonists that indie gaming has used in lieu of creativity.  But I’m not sure the same could be said about Super Meat Boy.  Look, I kind of liked it.  I wouldn’t give it a glowing recommendation or anything (at least not without a full psychological screening first), but I appreciated the fast-paced, devil-may-care attitude of it.  Plus it’s one of the only punishers that made failure rewarding, by showing replays of all the little Meat Boys you sent to Hell while trying to clear the gaps filled with buzzsaws.  When you finally beat a tough level and got to see all the dozens of ways you die play out, it was awesome.  It was something other than a counter telling you how big a fuck-up you are, and I was grateful for that.

Now I know that not every punisher is trying to be a clone of Super Meat Boy.  That would be ignorant to believe.  But the connection between some games and SMB is undeniable.  Take today’s game, Face-Plant Adventures, for example.  It’s a character-themed punisher where you have to take an Audrey II like carnivorous plant across various stages where you have to jump over spikes.  It’s pretty much all spikes, all the time in Face-Plant Adventures.  I’m not sure I fully grasp the logic of why spikes are so dangerous.  I mean, are they sharp on all ends, or just the pointy tip?  Try thinking of a sword here.  Now if you jump anus-first onto the blade of a sword, you’re going to be in for a world of pain.  However, if lean the sword up against something and put some rails on it, it would make a slide safe enough for a children’s playground.  Well, it would have to be a big sword.  Like Cloud Strife’s.

Take my word for it: set the brightness to 150% in the options. The game is ridiculously dark in many sections, making spikes almost invisible.

Wow, off topic.  Okay, so my point was that you can see Super Meat Boy influences all over Face-Plant Adventures.  The character is acrobatic, with an emphasis on wall jumping.  The game is designed around dying.  A lot.  When you die, you make a gooshy splat.  There are stages where everything is obscured in darkness and you are in control of a silhouette, navigating around the silhouettes of spikes.  Clearly there are SMB fans on Face-Plant’s team.  But those elements that it borrows from, like most games that do this, ultimately feel muted.  Less than the standards they’re aping set.  Your character isn’t as nimble, as quick, and the controls aren’t as responsive.  None of these aspects are bad, mind you.  I felt the play control was mostly adequate, with only some aspects below acceptable.  But again, a standard has already been set, and when you fail to live up to that standard, you’re not going to have a successful product.  Let’s say that everyone’s first car they had was a Ferrari.  And then someone comes along and offers you a Toyota Camry.  The Camry isn’t a bad car, but you’ve already got a Ferrari.  And you’ve already had something that is so much better than Face-Plant Adventure, at least in terms of how it plays.

To Face-Plant’s credit, it’s not just a by-the-numbers Super Meat Boy rip-off.  I almost wish it had been.  One thing I did love about Super Meat Boy was the level design.  It was designed around harrowing jumps, near-misses, and “I can’t believe I did that!” moments.  Face-Plant has those, but not as much.  Instead, the game’s pace slows down to a crawl when you have to solve button puzzles.  They’re not mind benders or anything.  Really, some of them feel kind of like busy work.  And some of the early levels of the game are sprawling, overly long, and dull in their design, with a big over-reliance on backtracking.  The effort to be different is appreciated.  I just feel in this case like one of those parents whose kid decides the best way to be different is to get a shooting star tattooed on their cheek.

I hated Face-Plant Adventures early on.  It does not hook you in quickly.  And I apparently wasn’t alone in that.  The game has online leaderboards that track the time you take to complete the stage.  The first stage had sixty names on it, including mine.  For the second stage, it drops off to forty.  Forty!  One-third of the players had such a good time playing the first stage that they didn’t bother to finish the second.  It doesn’t help that the first two stages, the ones that should be getting you excited, are so boring, and many of the elements of the game haven’t even been included in them yet.  You can’t double jump.  You can’t glide.  And they’re too long as well.  It would be like going to a Metallica concert and having to sit through Swan Lake as the opening act.

Alright, that’s it. Someone get the word out to Obama and Romney: the first one of them that pledges to outlaw water levels in platformers gets my vote. I’m not joking. Fuck the economy. Fuck foreign policy. I have my priorities.

But, BUT, it does get better.  The stages actually get shorter as you go on, which completely eliminated the “oh God, please just be over with” feeling of the game.  And there are some really fun levels, like one that centers around grinding on rails.  It was unexpected, but it was also a blast!  It almost made me forget about some of the nit-picky problems, like how sometimes you can’t tell the difference between a spike and a non-spike.  Or how sometimes there’s a piece of flat-looking terrain on a cliff’s edge that counts as a spike for some reason.  The graphics are good in a first-gen PlayStation 2D game kind of way, but sometimes Face-Plant Adventures puts more thought into being pretty than it does being playable.

By time I beat Face-Plant, I had gone from hating the game, to kind of enjoying it, and then back to hating it.  There’s one final boss fight that is hugely annoying, both in the layout of the level you fight him on, the AI of the boss (the only character you “fight” in the game), and the collision detection of it.  It flushed any remaining joy I felt out the window and I was just happy the game was over.  I then spent the next few hours having an internal debate with myself over whether or not it would go on the Leaderboard.  In its favor, Face-Plant Adventures has some genuinely wonderful moments, and does sometimes stand on its own, out of the shadow of Super Meat Boy.  And against it?  Most of the levels are boring, it’s too slow-paced (by the way, a game that challenges people to do speed-runs absolutely needs to have faster resets than Face-Plant does), the graphics obscure too much, and the last boss is so annoying that only eight people have ever bothered to finish it, on any difficulty setting.  So ultimately, Face-Plant becomes the “close but no cigar” standard for XBLIGs.  Almost worth it, but not quite.  The “if you’re better than this, you’re on the Board” game.  You know that poor schmuck who is the last cut of Spring Training?  That’s Face-Plant Adventure.  Has talent, but not good enough to ride the bench of the Houston Astros.

Face-Plant Adventures was developed by Oddworm Games

I had no idea my mother was modeling for indie game cover art.

80 Microsoft Points made it a whole review without making a Little Shop of Horrors joke in the making of this review.  Which is weird, because when I asked my mom what I should be when I grow up, do you know what she said?

♫You’ll be a critic! 

You’ll have a knack for causing things pain!

You’ll be a critic!

People will pay you to be inhumane!♫

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Entropy

September 19, 2012 by 8 Comments

Entropy received a Second Chance with the Chick.  Consider this the definitive review, but check here to see what they fixed.

Here’s irony for you: I played about half-way through Entropy yesterday.  Now, I know the game was making track of my progress, because at one point I left the game and checked the level-select on the menu.  I just wanted to know how far I had made it.  Then, I went back to the game.  I played for a while, got bored, hit Borderlands 2, and figured I would finish Entropy today.  Instead, I found that my save file was gone.  So a game called Entropy experienced entropy.  Awesome.  Thankfully not all games do what their names say.  Wargasm for example.  Shudder.

*Note: I’ve talked with many players and nobody else has had this happen, and in fact it didn’t happen to me when I tried to recreate it.  It’s unknown what happened, but this is not expected to be anywhere remotely a common issue. 

Hey look! Writing on the wall. Just like that one game!

Perhaps it was somewhat merciful that I lost my progress in Entropy.  I was downright bored by it just a few stages in.  Maybe I’ve over-loaded on puzzlers as of late.  More likely I’m just sick of test-chamber games that have the personality of a sea cucumber, which is the perfect way to describe Entropy.  The setting is so lifeless, grim, and dark that it’s exhausting to experience.  Games like this need something entertaining to drive the player forward.  So many games seem like they want to be Portal, yet their developers completely missed the point of why Portal turned out the way it did.  Portal was given personality out of necessity, because the game would have been tiring without it.  I think this is why so many players succumbed to Gateways!  As cool as the puzzles in that were, there was nothing but the promise of more puzzles to drive the game, with no reason for players to stick around and “see where they’re going with this.”

Entropy does have some kind of plot.  I guess.  But things are kept too abstract and minimalistic to get a feel for what’s going on.  You have no character yourself.  You’re just a camera that hovers five feet off the ground.  The antagonist is a pink ball of light that leads you around from room to room.  There’s no dialog, so all you get to go by is the rare pop-up hint, or a sketch on a wall that points you in the direction of a puzzle’s solution.  Forget about seeing where they’re going with this.  I don’t even know what they’re doing right now.

The hook of Entropy is that it’s a first person puzzler.  On XBLIG.  That’s pretty much it.  It doesn’t sound like much, until you remember that your average first-person XBLIG would qualify as the worst game ever played by your average gamer.  My expectations were set so low that Satan himself had to do the limbo under them.  I figured the controls would be unresponsive and the jumping mechanics would be crippled.  I was wrong about both.  Entropy actually handles reasonably well, and features the best first-person jumping physics on XBLIG.  Of course, that means absolutely squat.  It would be like being the best arm wrestler at the Center for Arthritis.

Entropy looks better in screens than it does in motion.

Unfortunately, the well done mechanics are let down by puzzles that are really a chore to solve.  Most of them revolve around pushing balls around a room.  There’s four kinds: rock, water, fire, and acid.  Your goal is typically to get these onto a scale that measures heat, pH levels, or weight.  Unfortunately, there’s no way to pick up a ball, so moving them around means clumsily shoving them around and hoping they don’t roll into a wall, off platforms, or into each-other in ways that cause them to vaporize.  It’s not totally broken, but the process is slow and clunky and makes you wish there was some other way.  I wouldn’t exactly sell my soul for the right to pick up the ball, but if I was negotiating it for a long and healthy life, I would have that thrown in.

The slowness factor really kills Entropy dead.  When a gun that sucks the orbs up in a bubble is added, it just further slogs down an already snail-like pace.  It’s kind of sad, because Entropy really is the best controlling first-person game on the platform.  It even looks good too, chugging frame rate not withstanding.  And I like how you can undo mistakes with a Prince of Persia style rewind.  It’s just too bad that the actual game here is just not fun.  Remember developers, that’s your ultimate goal: give players something entertaining to pass time.  A game should be at least as entertaining as throwing paper airplanes at the seniors waiting at the bus stop.

Oh don’t look at me like that.  It’s safe.  They’re seniors!  They all have glasses on!

Entropy was developed by Autotivity Games

80 Microsoft Points said the scoring for Airplaning Old People (aka Greatest GeneRAGEtion) is as follows: 1 point for making them flinch, 2 points if they look cross at you, 3 points if you get it stuck in their clothes or hair, 4 points if they threaten to get up at you, 5 points if they actually get up, or 10 points if you get a direct hit and they do nothing in the making of this review. 

Also reviewing Entropy: Clearance Bin Review and TheXBLIG.com

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Diehard Dungeon

September 13, 2012 by 15 Comments

Update: Diehard Dungeon now costs 240 Microsoft Points. 

After Diehard Dungeon, it’s safe to say the Uprising is back on track.  Comparing it to Sententia is like comparing flying in a private luxury jet to having your head stuffed up the ass of a burrow and trotted across country with your legs dangling the whole time.  And here’s the funny part: unlike the Sententia, the argument of “it’s just not for everyone” is actually valid here.  Roguelikes are not for everyone.  And I’m generally among those that they’re not for.  So it might surprise you to hear that I actually kind of enjoyed Diehard Dungeon.  Then again, the only other Roguelike I tackled this year was Spelunky.  Double D wasn’t nearly as sadistic.  If both were school bullies, Diehard would be content to wedgie you and move on.  Spelunky would trap you in a locker with live tarantulas while stealing your date to the Prom.

Which is not to say that Diehard Dungeon is all sunshine and lollipops.  It’s got a mean-streak that might be the result of some design flaws.  The idea is “Roguelike-meets-Zelda.”  Only instead of an obnoxious fairy following you around, you have a mute treasure chest.  Sure, why not?  Levels are randomly generated, but all adhere to the same principle: fight enemies, find key, go to next room.  Occasionally you’ll pick up items or spin a slot machine for upgrades, but really, Diehard Dungeon is all hacking, all slashing.  The mechanics of this were done well enough that somehow the part of my brain that knew I was playing a Roguelike shut off.  As a result, I was practically euphoric during my first play-through.  I had built up twelve hearts, was having good luck with the slot machines, had absolutely slayed all three “upgrade” minigames that play out like a really shitty version of Pac-Man (these have GOT to go), and had the smuggest of smiles plastered on my face.

And then something that looked like an armed Cabbage Patch Kid knocked me into a corner and drained my entire stockpile of life in about four seconds.  I had gone from not taking any damage to being dead before I could even process what was going on.  There’s no temporary “immunity” when you take damage, so if you get pinned into a corner, you’re fucked amigo.

Games give you immunity for a reason: because the other way isn’t fun.  Imagine if Mario didn’t blink after taking damage in the original Super Mario Bros.  If you went from being big Mario, getting shrunk, and then dying because of the lack of blinking, that game does not become the all-time classic that it did.  Hell, you might as well not have a life system and make all hits instant-death.  But since you numbskulls can’t seem to grasp that, I’ve arranged a deal with Microsoft.  From now on, all XNA starter kits will come with ankle monitors that must be worn to use the program.  If you even think about allowing enemies to gang-bang you in the corner without having any means of defending yourself, you get a 50-volt shock.

Of course, word is this is already getting patched out, along with a few of my other complaints.  The game frequently skips.  This formed a “fuck me over” tag team with the aforementioned killer Cabbage Patch Kids.  Well, it’s being fixed.  Keys slow you down too much when you have them.  That’s getting fixed.  Bonuses don’t stack.  That’s getting fixed too.  Grumble.  You guys are kinda ruining my schtick here.  Oooh, I have one that I don’t think is getting fixed: you can’t slash diagonally.  What the fuck is up with that?  Do we live in a world where diagonal doesn’t exist?  Bullshit.  I saw something that looked like a triangle.  You can’t have triangles without having diagonal.  But I’m being nitpicky.  Even in its present, non-patched state, Diehard Dungeon is pretty fun.  It’s not only one of the best hack-and-slashers on XBLIG, it’s also one of the best twin-stick shooters too.

Wait..

Huh?

Yea, as it turns out, the developers tacked on a seemingly half-assed (at least compared to the main game) TwickS minigame as an afterthought and it could very well be the most fun TwickS on the entire marketplace.  Go figure.  It even has online leaderboards, which is more than qrth-phyl had to offer.  I’m not complaining or anything, but it’s kind of weird.  It would be like if Lord of the Rings had 1996 Chicago Bulls highlights play over the credits.

I’m guessing they never got over the whole Garbage Pail Kids thing.

Diehard Dungeon could very well be in a Beta state right now.  Other planned changes include improving the graphics (which I had no complaints about, besides not being able to tell blood apart from hearts), fixing some of the cheap trap placement issues that happen when shit is random, improving the odds of getting the rare “gold keys”, and  a whole slew of other things I never even thought to complain about.  Mind you, Diehard Dungeon is already pretty damn good and well worth your money, but that’s not enough for the developers of it.  They want it to be better.  As opposed to deflecting critiques back with “It’s not for everyone, and I wouldn’t change anything.”  It’s actually encouraging to see a developer so much on the ball that the ball can claim its personal space is being violated.

Diehard Dungeon was developed by Tricktale

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points refuse to not capitalize the “T” in “Tricktale” even if they won’t do it in the making of this review. 

Diehard Dungeon is also available for PC on Desura for $4.99.  This version is unverified by Indie Gamer Chick.  The XBLIG version is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Check out what the rest of the dorks are saying about Diehard Dungeon: TheXBLIG.com, Indie Theory, and more to come!

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Sententia

September 11, 2012 by 25 Comments

As I noted in my review of qrth-phyl, I get called out a lot for picking on developers. I really try to avoid this and focus on the game, but sometimes my methodology on criticism can seem like I’m going after someone when I’m not. If I say a developer’s game sucks, it’s taken to mean I think the developer sucks. And if I’m especially harsh on a game, it’s thought that I need to lighten up and look for positive things to talk about and “quit being so personal.” It’s never personal. Ever. So hopefully I’ve cleared that all up and can now focus on writing a balanced review.

Sententia is the worst Xbox Live Indie Game of the year.

I spent a few hours slogging through it, including accidentally scrubbing my save file while attempting to show someone how the game began, which meant I got to start over. Of all the critics who are covering the Uprising, I’m pretty sure I made the least progress in the game. I know there are people who say that a review doesn’t count if you don’t finish the game. To that I say, unless it has a magical stop-being-crappy section, I don’t think there’s anything I can possibly miss discussing about it.

The idea is you’re some kind of demon monster thingie (I think) who is coming of age and learning to use magical connect-the-dots to um, do something. I honestly have no clue. Which is odd because there’s certainly enough writing that I would hope to grasp what is going on. Instead, a kid just kinda wanders off on the woods, sees giant-sized devil thingies, and doesn’t turn around and run home to his daddy.

Sententia describes itself as an art game in its marketplace blurb. I’m not a huge fan of games that label themselves as such, because most that do so use it as an all-purpose bullet-proof vest for criticism. It gives a developer or a game’s fans the ability to deflect any valid complaints by saying “it’s art house, it’s not for everyone.” I got this vibe when I interviewed Michael last month. I came away liking the guy and admiring his amazing effort in organizing the Uprising. I also looked at his game, compared it to the other eight games, and figured it didn’t belong. And it doesn’t.  I get no pleasure from saying that, but it’s true. It probably should have been the last game to release, so as to not taint the event.

Let’s picture non-regulars on the XBLIG scene catching wind of the Uprising through some of the big time coverage it has got. Sententia is the second game in the promotion, after the very good but also very weird qrth-phyl. Maybe qrth-phyl looked too weird to sample. Thus, Sententia becomes the first game that many people sample in this promotion that purports to show off the best XBLIG has to offer. Within fifteen minutes, everything wrong with Sententia becomes evident. Bad graphics. Annoying sound effects. Horrible play control. Sloppy interface. Bad writing. Cheap level design. Those people who think XBLIG is a joke and avoid the channel like the plague who decide to take a chance because of the hype say “this is the best Xbox Indies are capable of?” They don’t know that Sententia, and this will really sound harsh, only got in because it’s the game created by the guy who ran the promotion. So those people play this, are completely turned off by the scene, and they never come back.

And for the record, I feel like a total bitch for saying that.

Guys, next year I’m picking the order.  

Sententia’s hook is that you occasionally have to pause the game and do a connect-the-dots puzzle. Every dot has little slash-marks on it, signifying how many lines will extend from it. This is actually a cool idea for a standalone game, assuming it’s done right.  Sententia doesn’t do it right, mostly owing to the clumsy building interface. It’s slow-moving, awkward, and accident-prone. If you make a mistake, deleting a line can be an exercise in frustration. There were times where the cursor simply refused to highlight the line I wanted to delete. I had to delete all the other lines that it wanted to highlight instead before I could correct the mistake. There’s also no “clear-all, start over” button. So if you’ve totally cocked-up a puzzle (and you will do that a bunch, trust me), your punishment is to slowly clean up before starting over. I asked Michael if anyone had pointed this stuff out to him, and he said no, the play testing went well. So going off that, good job play testers! Given the nearly universal negative reaction to Sententia I’ve seen today, I can’t believe none of you thought “maybe I should say something.”

This is where I quit. The smaller, hard-to-see blocks in the center of the level drop quickly after you land on them. Because of the timing of the controls, you don’t have enough time to shoot the enemies or defend yourself in any way against them. It’s one of the most horribly conceived layouts I’ve ever seen in any game.

So the hook was botched. The rest of the game pretty much plays like a run-of-the-mill platformer, assuming the run was given to a recently lobotomized goldfish. The controls are horribly sluggish, with movement and jumping being slow. There’s a noticeable delay in responsiveness. So naturally the game has several sections that require timed-precision platforming with respawning enemies. The enemies are typically placed on narrow platforms, and will fire at you if you are on the same plane as them. Since you can’t jump and fire at the same time, you pretty much have no choice but to rely on luck and hope the game glitches out and the enemies get respawned on the wrong platform. That happens. And thankfully the enemies can’t possibly respawn on the wrong platform in a way that makes it impossible to proceed. Oh wait, that happens too. Don’t worry though, it won’t matter, because you’ll get stuck trying to walk past two respawning enemies on platforms that drop out from underneath you almost as soon as you step on them. Or “get as close to the edge as you can before jumping” platforms that are scattered all over the game. I honestly can’t come up with a single positive thing to say about the gameplay. It’s abysmal in every way a game can be.

I’m not sure how Sententia was released in the state it’s in, or how anyone, even the creator of the game, could be delusional enough to think this should have been included in an Xbox Live Indie Game showcase. A theory kicked to me on my Twitter feed is that Sententia made it in as a matter of convenience, because it was a game that was available and done. If that’s the case, I object to the use of the word “done.” Unless we’re using the “stick a fork in it, it’s done” context. Simply put, you don’t stick a game that is total and complete uncompromising and unapologetic garbage in a lineup of games designed to showcase the potential of a game platform on the grounds that there was nothing else available. It would be like not having enough food to cover a reception, so one lucky guest gets the honor of eating a plate full of shit. Again, not trying to pick on Michael Hicks. He’s a cool dude. But his game could very well be the worst game on the entire XBLIG platform, and should not have been used in a promotion designed to lure in new fans. Michael, I commend you for your efforts in the third Indie Games Uprising. You busted your ass hard for your fellow developers and you should be saluted for that. You spread the gospel of Xbox Live Indie Games like a modern-day John the Baptist. And, like John, your head ended up being served on a silver platter.

“Where the Mild Things Are”

Sententia was developed by MichaelArts

80 Microsoft Points had no fun writing any of the above in the making of this review. In fact, I feel pretty dang rotten about it. 

Also check out the reviews of Sententia from my associates at Indie Theory, Clearance Bin Review, TheXBLIG.com and more to come.

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qrth-phyl

September 10, 2012 by 15 Comments

Last year’s Uprising started with Raventhorne.  It took me about fifteen minutes to realize that the promotion was in trouble.  When I played qrth-phyl, I took an instant dislike to it and thought “oh shit, here we go again.”  But, while the reality of Raventhorne’s badness slowly sunk in, I didn’t even begin process how entertained I was by qrth-phyl.  I’m not sure how many hours passed before I realized it was good.  It was probably around the time that I told my dog “oh just go on the carpet!  Can’t you see I’m busy here?”

Speaking of dogs, doesn’t this look like an advertisement for worm medication?

qrth-phyl does a lot of things right.  Not the name though.  I’m not even sure how to pronounce it.  Probably just by clearing your throat.  No really though, come on.  qrth-phyl?  What is that?  Mr. Mxyzptlk’s pet snake?  Sure, it obeys the Google Rule in a major way.  But it doesn’t exactly lend itself to word-of-mouth advertising.  I could picture the following conversation taking place:

Gamer A: I just found this really cool version of Snake on Xbox Live Indie Games.  It’s in 3D and it has some of the most bizarrely hypnotic gameplay I’ve ever seen.

Gamer B: Really?  What’s it called?

Game A: It’s called, um, qarrrrr.. qerrrrrrth.. fuck it, have you ever heard of Dead Pixels?

It’s such a pretentious name, to the point of distraction.  I get flak for calling artsy games as such, but what else can you say about it?  If you give your game an unpronounceable name that doesn’t seem to connect to the actual gameplay at all, you probably smell like stale vaginal run-off on account of being a douchebag.

But, enough about the name.  Let’s talk about why qrth-phyl has set the perfect tone for the Uprising.  First off, the concept sounds ludicrous: Snake in 3D.  Insanity I tells ya.  Unless you account for the roughly six million (give or take) versions of Snake already on XBLIG.  Suddenly, a 3D, single-player version seems like the perfect way to say “see, we can be different” that the community so desperately needs.  Of course, that point would be lost if qrth-phyl sucked.  Thankfully, that’s not the case at all.  In fact, it’s pretty dang good.

Remember in the late 90s to early 2000s, back when every classic was getting a bastardized modern remake?  I had them all, from Robotron 64 to Centipede to Defender.  Well, qrth-phyl is probably better than any of those.  However, it’s not as strong as the reigning champion of retro classic re-imagination on XBLIG: Orbitron.  What qrth-phyl does right is the atmosphere.  The bright, colorful, trippy graphics and electric soundtrack make this feel like what someone in 1976 imagined games of the future would be like.

But gameplay is king, and qrth-phyl does this well too.  It reminded Brian of Rattler Race, a game that anyone who had early Windows computers probably wasted a little bit of time with.  Gameplay starts on flat playing surfaces set on a cube or rectangle, but shifts to a fully 3D environment once you meet certain scoring benchmarks.  You’ll continuously bounce between the two play styles, with the transition between the two typically a little rough around the edges.  Disorientation was the main problem I had with qrth-phyl, especially in the 3D environments.  The levels seem randomly generated, including the color schemes.  Depending on the layout, I couldn’t get a good feel for things like depth or scale.  Even playing on a TV large enough to double as the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man’s iPad, I was constantly braining on walls without realizing that I was close to them.

Raise your hands if this picture reminded you of Cubixx HD.

I’ve never been super comfortable endorsing any game where I can say “the controls take getting used to” and literally mean “it takes more than a couple of hours to really get the hang of them.”  However, in qrth-phyl’s case, it almost seems appropriate.  I went from being constantly frustrated to not even noticing that I was making hairpin turns and squeezing between tight spaces with honest-to-goodness ease.  I almost wish I had never realized I was doing it.  Once it stuck me that “hey, I’m doing bad ass at this!” my mojo went the way of the dodo and I could barely press start without losing a life.  I wish I was kidding.  I never did beat that cunt Hurley’s score either. 

Yea, I busted the developer’s ass for being a fart-sniffer, but I don’t deny that he’s created something very special here.  It’s not perfect, but qrth-phyl outranks all but one of the games from last year’s Uprising on my leaderboard.  I would say that’s a hell of a start to the promotion.  I don’t know if qrth-phyl will be the type of game you go back to.  Still, I got over three hours of playtime with qrth-phyl and was totally hypnotized by it.  It’s a perfect time waster, especially if you’re waiting for the carpet cleaners to come clean up the mess the, ahem, dog made on the carpet.  Yes, that was the dog.  I wouldn’t, say, just take a dump right on the floor because I’m too absorbed in a game to walk ten feet to the bathroom.  Come on now, I’m totally civilized.

qrth-phyl was developed by FUCK YOUR ACCUSING EYES, IT WAS THE DOG!  BAD DOG!  BAD BAD DOG!

*cough*

qrth-phyl was developed by Hermit Games

80 Microsoft Points ztkpty jqwbcv psld in the making of this review.

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

Check out these other qrth-phyl reviews from The Indie Ocean, Clearance Bin Review, The Indie Mine, TheXBLIG.com and Indie Theory.

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Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep. 4

September 7, 2012 by 3 Comments

And that’s a wrap on Oozi.  One game.  Four chapters.  $4 spent.  Four boss fights that made me question the existence of evil on this Earth.  Zero attempts at originality.  But is the overall experience worth it?  Kind of.  Let’s start by recapping the previous chapters.

Part One: AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!  Well, that sucked.

Part Two: AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!! Oh hey, wait a second, it stopped sucking.

Part Three: Not bad.

Part Four: Still not bad.  Oh wait, I have to feed this thing fruit?  AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!  This is boring.

Best as I can see, this fucking thing has legs, so why do I have to feed him? I think this is what the Republicans have been warning us about.

Oozi’s problem is and always has been how unambitious it is.  It does the graphics thing really well, but does everything else so much by the book that the book is now claiming royalties on the series.  Oozi is the poster child for generic 90s platforming mascot.  Like Serpentor, its creators borrowed the DNA from such soulless, design-by-committee, me-too cash-ins as Aero the Acro-Bat, Bubsy the Bobcat, or Crash Bandicoot.  I was going keep that going all the way to Z, but I figured you guys would hire ninjas to insert burrowing cockroaches into my ear canal after I listed Donkey Kong Country and Earthworm Jim as soulless.  Which they are, but I probably shouldn’t say it.  Fans of those games take it too personal.

I’ll grant Oozi this: it’s not original, but it does what it does well.  Paint-by-numbers levels, almost too easy platforming, hop-on-heads cruelty to animals, double jumps, butt stomps, and every other stand-by of the genre.  If the subject is anything but sound effects, Oozi is decent.  Not spectacular.  Not memorable.  Not something you’ll enthusiastically tell your friends to try.  Just a good solid waste of 90 minutes per chapter.  All four chapters are more or less the same, with the same scaling of difficulty, same principles of level design, and a hugely tedious boss fight to cap it off.

That’s probably the thing that pisses me off the most about Oozi: so many of the tasks of the game are busy work.  In chapter four, there’s a couple of sections where you have to feed fruit to a monster.  To get the fruit, you have to butt-stomp the ground by the fruit.  Then, you have to carry the fruit, tossing it between enemies, over gaps, and up platforms.  You move slow when carrying the fruit, and you can’t jump.  If anything touches the fruit, you get to start over.  It’s sooooooo boring, not at all difficult, and takes way too long to accomplish.  But, and this is the thing that almost drove me towards taking up genocide, these sections don’t immediately place checkpoints after completing them.  So let’s say you spend ten minutes getting this entitled mother fucking critter its food.  Then, a random volcano spits up a fire-ball and you die.  Guess what you get to do?  That’s right, start all the way fucking over.  And that happened to me.  Twice.  After the first time, I almost rage quit.  The second time, I seriously wanted to personally strangle a species into extinction.  I don’t care which one, but something fluffy and adorable would have been swell.

“So my agent says to me “Bob, baby, we have a part for you in the next Simpsons Halloween Special.”  But nooooooo, I have to take the starring villain role in some dry ass independent video game.  Way to go, Bob!”

Oozi did end on a bright note: the very final boss was probably the least annoying of the series.  As a result, Oozi 4 finds a spot on the leaderboard.  It’s not as good as parts two or three, but it’s way better than part one.  Then again, so is gonorrhea, so that’s not saying much.  Ultimately though, if Oozi is remembered for anything, it will be for being the ultimate uncanny valley of XBLIGs.  Oozi is a game you’ll swear you played on your SNES back in the day.  Depending on your level of gibbering nostalgia, that might be a better thing than I experienced.  As a child of a different era, I would like to put out this challenge to Awesome Games Studio: you guys are better than this and you know it.  You created a series that is amazing to look at, but when it came to gameplay you settled for functional.  I’ve seen artwork made out of feces that is more inspired.  So next time, try something new and weird.  Think of every fucked up thing you ever thought of doing with a platform game and give it a shot.  The best case is you’ll have a game that people talk about as something other than a lifeless 90s platforming clone.  The worst case is, well, you end up with a pile of shit.  But hey, your mascot already looks like the bastard offspring of the Great Mighty Poo, so the status quo remains intact!

Oozi: Earth Adventure Episode 4 was developed by Awesome Games Studio

80 Microsoft Points don’t really think the final chapter takes place on Earth in the making of this review.  Well, maybe in Oakland.

Three out of four games in the Oozi series are ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Where do they fall? 

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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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Warp Shooter

September 3, 2012 by 6 Comments

To make a game that is a local-only four player top-down 2D arena shooter on a market like Xbox Live Indie Games takes guts.  That’s because you’re making a game with the full knowledge that it will be a tougher sell than a steak house in the middle of Mumbai.  I’ve played a few multiplayer-only games on XBLIG and they tend to range from solid hit to complete miss.  Nothing so far has really found the middle ground.  Well that’s over with, because Warp Shooter stubbornly refuses to be either awesome or horrible.

Warp Shooter is the product of a group of students from Indiana.  Their story is a fascinating one that will be told in an upcoming edition of Tales from the Dev Side.  This is the third student project I’ve reviewed, following Mr. Gravity and Heroes of Hat, both out of the University of Utah.  The relatively simple puzzler Mr. Gravity, despite becoming impossibly difficult in later stages, was good enough to make the leaderboard.  Heroes of Hat, a more ambitious title, was plagued with various technical glitches, unfair level design, and bad control.  Obviously simpler works better for students.

This is what happens when George Lucas runs out of ideas: Rainbow Brite joins the Rebel Alliance.

I guess that’s why it’s weird to see a relatively simple concept turned so overly complex.  Warp Shooter plays like a modernized version of Combat.  I gathered three amigos (sadly not THE Three Amigos, although I hear Martin Short is insatiable) and asked them kindly to help me with my latest review.  When they refused to do it out of kindness, I offered to bribe them.  Finally, I had my goons take their families hostage.  Hey, I have a duty here, and they were fucking with it.

Things got off to a slow start when nobody could figure out how to move.  There’s no tutorial, so the four of us fumbled around, doing our best to pretend like we knew what we were doing.  Most firing was done from a stationary position, until Chevy figured out that movement was done by pressing the right trigger while pointing the right stick in the direction you want to go.  Mind you, the right stick also controls your firing.  Thrust is limited, so you’re never in full control of your vehicle.  You do have the ability to aim a little dot thingy that causes damage to an opponent if it touches them, or you can warp to the spot the dot is on.  It’s supposed to provide an alternate means of movement, but it’s slow and clunky and it doesn’t provide the element of being unpredictable that other movement means has.  You can see where the person is warping to.  It’s like drawing a diagram for your enemies.  “I’ll be moving here.  Take aim and fire at your leisure.”  It would be like the army replacing fatigues with tee shirts supplied by Target.

The best party games tend to be self-explanatory.  Warp Shooter is regrettably missing that.  We never did get the hang of it, but after about twenty to thirty minutes, it did provide moderate fun.  The absurd amount of options provided assures that you would have to be actively trying to not have fun to, well, not have fun.  When we turned on three asteroids and death rays, we were whooping and laughing and high-fiving each other, even though we could barely move.  It was like watching the Narcoleptic Olympics.  I can barely squeeze out something resembling a recommendation for Warp Shooter, but chances are when it only makes the Leaderboard on the grounds that “well, it’s playable!” that’s a sign that maybe some aspects of the game should be rethought.  Starting with the movement controls.  I can’t imagine anything that is more awkward or dangerous to use.  Maybe a B-52 which has their weapons mapped to their intercom button.

Warp Shooter was developed by Hoosier Games

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points reserve the right to murder the next person from Indiana who uses a lame “Hoosier Daddy” joke in the making of this review.  I’m looking at you, Kenneth.

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

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AvatAAAH!!!

September 1, 2012 by 5 Comments

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around how a game like AvatAAAH!!! comes into being.  It’s one of those games where the concept is too simplistic.  Don’t get me wrong: simplistic is good for gaming on a commercial scale.  It’s why Tetris was an international mega-hit the likes of which may never be seen again on this Earth, while Yoshi’s Cookie is all but forgotten.  My theory is the most successful games require the fewest words to explain.  Tetris can be summed up with “use blocks to build lines.”  Pong can be explained fully as “video table tennis.”  Angry Birds can be explained as “Knock over buildings to crush pigs.”

Get it?  Good.  Now watch as I burn down this theory and piss on its ashes.  AvatAAAH!!! can be explained as “let go of rope, land on platform.”  That fully explains the game, rules, and plot, and why the game sucks so hard that it could reverse the flow the of the tides with its sucking power.  You play as your avatar, you swing off a rope.  The rope sways back and forth without needing you to control it.  At the opportune time, you press A to let go of the rope in an attempt to land in the center of a stump below you.  Do this a few dozen times and that’s the game.

Really, a review of this is redundant. All you need is this screenshot and the trailer below to learn enough to know this game isn’t worth $1.

To be fair, AvatAAAH!!! throws twists at you in the form of altering the gravity physics or changing the size of the stump you’re landing on.  However, it doesn’t really make the game all that harder.  I was able to make it pretty dang far into the game and land a decent spot on the online leaderboard just by letting go of the rope at the very end of its swing.  I didn’t even need to wiggle the control stick to get “good” or “perfect” landings.  That’s really the problem here: AvatAAH!!! doesn’t ask enough of players.

But while the single player is minimalist, the multiplayer is just lazy.  All players swing at the same time, with the closest person to the bullseye getting points.  The only problem is it doesn’t really measure who is closest to the bullseye.  It just measures by zones.  Perfect, Good, OK, and Phew if you barely land on the stump are the only four scores.  That’s sooooo seven years ago.  The player who does the best gets a point, while the player who does the worst loses a point.  At least that’s how I think it goes.  But let’s say all players hit the large section that scores as “OK.”  And let’s say one player is clearly much more OK than everyone else on account of being closer to the center.  It doesn’t matter, because nobody gets a point.  Somehow, that just strikes me as lame.  It can also make games drag on and on, especially once players get the hang of the physics.  Even novice gamers can hit Good or Perfect with absurd consistency.  For what it’s worth, Brian didn’t have a problem with the scoring.  Brian also thinks Chronicles of Riddick was a good movie, so it shows how low his standards are.  Well, this is my obscure gaming blog and so I say that AvatAAAH! would have been better if it scored based on who actually got the closest to the bullseye, and that the game can feel free to tie the rope around its neck and swing away.

AvatAAAH! was developed by Milkstone Studios

80 Microsoft Points thought AvatAAAH! was the sound George Lucas made when he saw how much money Avatar grossed at the box office in the making of this review.

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Drinkards Beer Pong

August 29, 2012 by Leave a comment

I’m not a drinker, and thus I’ve never indulged in the frat house pastime known as Beer Pong.  It’s a relatively uncomplicated game: all you need is some plastic cups, a ping-pong ball, and alcohol.  Total cost is, what, $5 + booze?  An 80MSP digital version of it might be more cost efficient, but isn’t something lost in translation when you take such a simple concept and convert it to a video game format?  I touched base on this in my review of Kick’n It, which was digital hacky sack.  Some things just don’t need to be video games.  I figured beer pong would be one of them.  Still, the extremely friendly developers of Drinkards Beer Pong assured me of two things.  First, unfamiliarity with the sport of beer pong wouldn’t be a problem because the game is pretty self-explanatory.  Second, you don’t have to be a drinker to enjoy beer pong.  Maybe that’s true, but I’m guessing you would have to be completely shit-faced to enjoy Drinkards Beer Pong because the game sucks.

To the developer’s credit, they loaded this version of beer pong down with plenty of options and house rules.  However, this is wasted on really fidgety aiming mechanics.  It’s hard to get a good perspective on depth and angles, even with a cursor that shows the entire trajectory of the ball.  This is hammered home by the fact that I was often throwing what looked like a perfect shot into one of the cups, only to watch the ball miss the cups completely and fly off the table.  The aiming rocks back and forth, but honestly the whole physics of it seem slightly tipsy.

Well, thank God that they gave us this shot of the menu. It’s good to know this isn’t one of those non-menu having games.

I was unable to try Drinkards Beer Pong online, which is probably fine seeing how the game outright warns you that many of its features won’t work on Xbox Live.  Instead, I arranged to try this using the local four player co-op.  The teams would be two people who have never played beer pong versus two beer pong veterans.  Representing the non-beer-pongers, my father and I.  Representing the veterans, two of our newest interns: Dustin and Ryan.  Hi guys!  I told you I was Indie Gamer Chick!

With the multitude of options the game offers, we left it to the vets to decide what rules would make for the most fun experience.  We played with six cups, unlimited re-racks, and a lot of other stuff that I’m still not clear on.  Despite what the developers insisted, their game is not going to be highly accessible to non-pongies.  Not that it matters, because why on Earth would someone that’s not a fan of it even want to play a digital version?  But we pressed on, and many shots were missed.  Even after almost an hour, nobody could get the hang of the aiming mechanics.  Sure, we made a shot or two, but as Dustin pointed out, you would actually have enough time to sober up between shots.  Which defeats the whole purpose of a game that’s designed to get you good and blitzed.

All four of us agreed that better, clearer aiming mechanics would greatly improve the game.  Also, we all agreed, and I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this,  that Drinkards Beer Pong is one of those extremely rare games that would be more fun to play with Wii-style motion controls.  But, my intensive review was not complete.  Like I did with Kick’n It, I wanted to compare the video game to the real thing.  So we actually played a couple of rounds of “real” beer pong.  Only without alcohol.  My excuse is I literally can’t drink, thanks to my seizure medications.  Also, we used Styrofoam cups instead of plastic, because that’s all we had handy.  I guess plastic is supposed to work better, but you have to make due with what you have.

Even our ghettoized, using water instead of alcohol and the wrong kind of cups brand of beer pong was so much more fun than the video game version.  I could see how this could be so popular among the college-going population.  And I don’t think anyone would choose the fake digital version over the real thing.  It’s something so fundamentally simple to set up that it doesn’t get the benefit of being more convenient to play on a console.  Even if Drinkards Beer Pong was absolutely perfect, it wouldn’t be better than the real thing.

For those of you looking to get drunk using this thing, I recommend moonshine. Anything lighter than that will result in not-getting drunk on account of it taking so many tries just to make one simple shot.

It’s not absolutely perfect though.  Even with pretty dang decent graphics, the sound effects are repetitive, the voice overs are annoying and repeat themselves too often, and the shooting mechanics are really brutal to get the hang of.  There is obvious talent on display here, but I would advise the developers to give up their plans on refining what they’ve built and move onto something else.  And that something else better be something that can only be done in a video game.  If you guys turn around and make Video Tetherball I’m going to saw your heads off and re-purpose them as jack-o’-lanterns.

Dude, two hands? How fucking big is this ping-pong ball? Or how fucking small is the guy playing?

Drinkards Beer Pong was developed by The Unallied

80 Microsoft Points have just been informed that there are versions of beer pong for Wii and that they are absolute shit in the making of this review.  Well, there goes that theory. 

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