Minigame Marathon

June 7, 2012 by 6 Comments

I seem to have given many of my readers the wrong impression about me.  Believe it or not, I’m not here to trounce bad games.  My goal should be the goal of any game critic: find the good stuff.  Admittedly, that can be hard on Xbox Live Indie Games, but there is plenty of good stuff to be had if you look.  Take Minigame Marathon.  These days, whenever I hear the word “Minigame” I think of a Wii and go into convulsions.

Alas, I had nothing to fear from Minigame Marathon.  The concept is simple: take 26 small game types, string them together, and time how long it takes you to complete them all.  And guess what?  It’s fun and addictive!  Many of the games are modeled after classics such as Pong, Frogger, Snake, or Breakout.  Others involve simple tasks like staying inside a box, hoping across platforms, or collecting coins.  The game uses an easy-to-decipher color system.  You’re green.  Anything yellow is good.  Anything red is bad.  It gives all games an immediate pick-up-and-play quality that is often not found in XBLIGs.

Last Mother Fucking Brick Syndrome is back and trying to cost me the #1 spot on the high score leaderboards.

There are four difficulty levels to choose from, plus you can select whether or not you want to play the games in random order or not.  Each game starts with a brief explanation.  The timer only runs when a game is in progress, so these won’t slow you up too much.  I do wish that it gave you the option to turn off the help-screens once you had a feel for all the games included, but it’s not a deal breaker.  You get three attempts at each game.  If you fail at a game, you have to wait until you’ve finished all other games before getting another crack at the stuff you died on.  Again, it’s a smart design, and super addictive to boot.  About an hour into my play session, I declared to Brian that, to my shock and his, Minigame Marathon was in contention for a spot on the Indie Gamer Chick leaderboard.  If only the multiplayer could hold up.

Sadly, it doesn’t.  Minigame Marathon’s only option is split-screen local multiplayer, which requires the games to be shrunk to fit each box.  On some of the games, that’s fine.  But in stuff like Maze or Mine, which involves navigating tight spaces (especially on high difficulties), seeing which way to move is extremely tough.  I have a television  large enough to double as God’s surfboard and it still wasn’t enough for many of the games, crippling the fun.  Considering that the previous game by his developer was Avatar Grand Prix 2, which had a pretty decent and robust online mode to it, this feels even more like lost potential.

By time a four-player session has ended, your eyes will be permanently disfigured into a squint. Just tell people you were swimming in a pool with too much chlorine in it.

In the nit-picky department, I wish the controls had been a lot tighter, and also I think some of the games are downright impossible on the high difficulty levels.  In “split” you have to avoid touching walls while the room you’re in continuously divides into smaller sections.  Your character does not stop moving, so it requires you to press left and right repeatedly, in fast order, or die.  The problem is there’s a slight delay in the game’s reaction that makes timing this much harder than it sounds.  My gut tells me that the developer probably tested this using a keyboard instead of a wireless Xbox controller, which I hear is actually a common problem during development.  I’m not sure why developers wouldn’t test their game using the controller everyone will play it with.  It makes no sense to me.  It would be like training a Formula 1 driver by making him ride a Spider-Man Power Wheel.

Even with all the faults, I had a great time playing Minigame Marathon.  It reminded me a lot of Nintendo’s Wario Ware series.  Instead of trying to do something too ambitious, the guys at Battenberg Software took the concept of “keep it simple” by using old, worn game types and practically weaponized their addictive potential.  Games that last ten seconds?  Not fun.  Making you play all those games in a row for a high score?  Digital heroin.

Minigame Marathon was developed by Battenberg Software

igc_approved180 Microsoft Points are the girl living next door in the haunted mansion, so you better learn her name because it’s Kai-ri in the making of this review.

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Microbial

June 3, 2012 by 5 Comments

Microbial is a dexterity tester that fans of 48 Chambers who recently huffed paint fumes will find familiar.  When I originally learned of that title through Indies in Due Time, my biggest concern was that it would control like arse with difficulty centered around fighting the control stick.  That never happened.  48 Chambers handles about as well as any similar game could.  If you want to know how bad it could have been, try Microbial, because it handles like you’re playing it during a gas leak.  No, I’m not entirely sure what that would be like.  Brian is even more befuddled than I am about it.  I imagine it would be comically (or tragically) bad.

You play as a white blood cell that has to navigate its way past viruses to cure a tumor.  Well, that does make this game somewhat topical.  Along the way, you pick up items that allow you to break through walls, or red blood cells as they’re called in the game, even if they look like Jolly Ranchers.  The majority of the levels are spent running from viruses that lock onto you and chase you around.  Unfortunately, they do their job a little too well, and they happen to be situated in levels designed to favor them.  Since they start moving as soon as a level fades in, you have no time to get a lay of the land and chart a path or build a strategy.  By time I was fifteen boards in, Microbial was downright sadistic in its design.

But, as annoying as the stages can be, play control is what sinks Microbial for good.  Movement physics try to have realistic inertia, but it makes changing direction or inching through close quarters to be slippery and slow.  You know those annoying stages they have in every single Mario game that are set on ice, causing you to slip and slide around?  I hate those stages.   In fact, I don’t know anyone who likes them.  My theory is that they put them into the games to avoid winning a Nobel Prize for Awesomeness and thus being forced to deliver a speech in front of scientists and smart people and shit.  Well, Microbial controls like one of those Nobel-proof ice stages.  It feels like you’re controlling a hockey puck by remote control, which I suppose is what you’re doing.  I guess the real question is “does that sound like fun?”  It doesn’t to me.

There’s a few other little annoyances in Microbial.  If you collect an item, you lose all your built up momentum and have to slowly start to move again, which is really aggravating when you have dozens of enemies chasing you.  The environment isn’t always stable either.  There were a few times where I was hugging the wall as I moved and ended up getting stuck in it.  Ultimately, I just played a game like this that had much more sound level design, better controls, and better graphics.   Maybe Microbial would have seemed much cooler if I had played it before I played 48 Chambers.  I doubt it though. Bad is bad no matter when you play it.  Even with decent controls, the level design is too damn cruel to leave much room for fun.  If Microbial were a person, it would be one of those creepy kids that was reared from the age of four on Friday the 13th movies and only laughs when he’s pulling the wings off of bugs.  I suppose that makes the developer the shell-shocked parent who people say “well, he did the best he could, but some things are just born bad.”

Microbial was developed by Net-Savant

80 Microsoft Points think Microbial was meant to be played with a mouse in the making of this review.

No trailer could be found, or game play footage for that matter.  Where the F is my man Aaron the Splazer at?

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Bureau: Shattered Slipper

June 1, 2012 by 6 Comments

I’ve played a few games on Xbox Live Indie Games that cater to the gentlemen who like to play tug-of-war solitary if you catch my drift, but Bureau: Shattered Slipper is the first one that doesn’t make my skin crawl.  Coincidentally, it’s also the first one that isn’t a total waste of time.  You play as an FBI agent on the mend who is tasked with solving the murder of a young Stanford student.  It’s not exactly a riveting mystery.  I actually picked who the killer was the second I laid eyes on him.  But the way to get there is kind of novel.  Think of this as the grown-up version of Capcom’s Phoenix Wright games, with a touch of Carmen Sandiego’s time-management mechanics mixed in.  I never actually got in trouble for incorrectly guessing anything.  My one and only failure was related to mistiming one of the narrative’s two quick-time events, which happen seconds apart.

“So we meet again, Lara Croft. Only this time, my tight, revealing clothing is even more impractical than yours!  Mwahahahahahahahaha!”

Oddly enough, the training session in the game makes out like the quick-time stuff will be a regular feature, instead of just popping up for a quickie during the game’s climax.  Seems like it’s hard-ly useful at all.  Excuse me, I just blew up the pun machine.

Most of the gameplay, a term that should be applied loosely here, revolves around listening to conversations so long and dry that I wouldn’t blame the chick for whipping out her gun and firing it into the air.  Just to shake things up.  Instead, you occasionally just have to answer questions like you’re paying attention and shit.  Depending on who you’re talking to you, you either have to avoid pissing them off, or avoid sending them into hysterics, or try to intimidate them, or try to get them to fuck you.  And no, to you guys looking for the newest single-arm workout on the indie scene, there is no nudity or actual fucking here.  Everything you want happens off-screen.  I know, life is cruel.

After piecing together various clues, you have to solve the mystery.  This is done by watching a cut-scene, then identifying three items (or locations) shown in it.  No really, it’s like one of those “are you paying attention” things.  Once you identify the three items, you have to place them in the correct order you saw them in.  And that’s it.  That’s the entire game.  You do that a few times, then you do a couple of quick-time events, then you get a teaser for sequel, credits.  Honestly, Bureau: Shattered Slipper isn’t bad or anything.  I just wish there was more to it.  The whole thing takes an hour, and although the solution is pretty obvious, the writing isn’t embarrassing (mostly) and the main characters are interesting, enough so that I bought the original Bureau game and plan on playing it just for fun.  I don’t do things like that a lot on here, so I guess that says something.  It even features semi-decent graphics for an XBLIG.  My boyfriend was really impressed by how realistic the cars looked.  And that damn well better be the only thing that caught his interest.  I did have to shy my eyes away from them from time to time due to having flashy effects.  That is to say, flashy as in it had strobes and could set off my epilepsy, not flashy as in she shows you her boobs.  For real, there are no boobs.  Sorry if that killed the bulge in your pants.  For what it’s worth, her bulge is just fine.

Not convinced?

Hey, I’m not judging.  Maybe the poor girl has a hearing disorder and thinks that underwear is where you keep your clips.

Bureau: Shattered Slipper was developed by Twist-EdGames

240 Microsoft Points said “I know in video games starring girls, the heroine typically has the biggest balls of the cast, but this is ridiculous” in the making of this review. 

Yea Cyril, it was the low-hanging fruit.  What can I say, this game is full of things that hang low.

Hurley, whom I anticipate will suffer significant shrinkage when he sees those pictures, also reviewed this at Gear-Fish.

Trailer courtesy of ClearanceBinReview.com

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The Chick’s Monthly Update – May 2012

June 1, 2012 by 4 Comments

One month from today, Indie Gamer Chick turns one year old.  It’s hard to believe it’s already been one year since I opened this site.  Even more crazy is how much I’ve been able to keep things up.  With over two-hundred games reviewed, dozens of editorials, and commentaries from developers, this has turned into quite the place for your Xbox Live Indie Game needs.  But I’m not resting on my laurels.  I’m not even sure why anyone would want to rest on one’s laurel.  Unless laurel means couch, or chair.  Or ass.  I often rest on my ass.  It’s comfy.

Well, my laurel will be untouched, because some additions are coming to Indie Gamer Chick.  Starting on July 1, the leaderboard will be supplemented by additional genre-based boards.  By the end of 2012, there will be around a dozen of them.  Not all will be debuted on July 1, either because I haven’t played enough games to fill all the spots, or because there aren’t enough good games to do so.  But, at some point, you can expect me to name what I feel to be the top 3 games in each of the following genres:

  • Adventure – This will include action-RPGs, point-and-clickers, and any other game that features a narrative and isn’t covered by one of the other categories.  I would call stuff like All The Bad Parts, EvilQuest, Tourist Trap, Trailer Park King, or Astroman to be adventures.
  • RPG – Turned-based role-playing games.  Pretty self-explanatory.
  • Shooters – Whether it’s a side-scroller, first person, TwickS, or a wave-shooter set inside the stomach of a pterodactyl, games that are primarily about shooting things will be covered here.  Except bullet-hell, which are covered elsewhere.
  • Traditional – Anything that wouldn’t feel out-of-place in an 80s arcade, or possibly early computers or home consoles.  Games based on achieving a high score and nothing else I consider to be traditional.  Stuff like We Are Cubes, Chain Crusher, Who is God?, and even Orbitron: Revolution fit in here.
  • Strategy – Again, mostly self-explanatory.  This will also include tower defense games, or action-defense games like Video Wars or The Cannon.
  • Sports and Racing – I’m sure some will argue that racers should not be lumped in with sports games, but they do cover Formula 1 and NASCAR on ESPN, so phooey.
  • Simulation – Stuff that tries the realistic approach, like Flight Adventure 2 or Train Frontier Express.
  • Puzzle – Games that primarily are about solving puzzles.  Stuff like Escape Goat, Cute Things Dying Violently, Alien Jelly, or HACOTAMA.
  • Platformer – Stuff about jumping from platform to platform.
  • Punishers – This is the big debate.  Why give punishers their own category?  Well, they are over-represented on Xbox Live Indie Games.  Second, they have a very specific fan base.  People who want typical platformers don’t necessarily want games that will swallow their souls.  I define a punisher as a game that’s sole purpose is to be difficult to beat.  These are typically platformers or bullet-hells.  There’s obviously a market for these games (although if there isn’t, that really does explain the lack of popularity on XBLIG), so they should get their own category.
  • Everything Else – An all-encompassing “best of the rest” that fits music, fighting, and whatever the fuck Remote Viewer is supposed to be.

My original plan had been to just go by what games are listed as on the marketplace.  Unfortunately, developers seem to have an issue listing stuff accurately.  Some examples: Cute Things Dying Violently is listed as a platformer, Dead Pixels is listed as an RPG, and lots of other stuff falls into a very vague “action-adventure” category.  I get why they do it.  RPGs are probably a more viewed genre than shooters.  ANYTHING is probably a more searched genre than puzzles.

At the same time, stuff like this is probably among the many reasons Xbox Live Indie Games have not caught on.  Imagine the frustration of a consumer who searches for games by genre and has to deal with title after title that is in no way the type of game he or she is looking for.  If I search for a platformer, I’m looking for a platformer, not a physics-based puzzle game where you play as a crosshair and take no direct control over a character.  It makes the entire platform seem undisciplined, unregulated, and too risky to buy games from.  Maybe.  Or maybe I’m looking too much into this.  You guys can debate this among yourselves.

Either way, all my plans with the genre leaderboards are subject to change.  Brian and myself plan on sitting down and figuring this stuff out.  Obviously, some games fit in with more than one category, while some don’t really have a place in any of them.  We’re open to ideas.

By the way, the Top-10 is not going anywhere.  In fact, it has a brand new member: Chompy Chomp Chomp.  The quirky, hugely addictive party game was played multiple times by myself and my friends over the week and landed at #6 on the board.  This bumped off Pixel Blocked!, which spent four months on the board, and is the only game to fall off the board once and land back on it via a Second Chance with the Chick.

And so another month has come to pass.  June will be a huge month for Indie Gamer Chick.  I’ll be revisiting two leaderboard games that have had significant content added to them, plus I’ll be trying to find the best XBLIGs I haven’t played yet.  Why?  Because on July 1, I’ll be posting the Top 25 Xbox Live Indie Games of All-Time, a special one-shot article to mark the first birthday of Indie Gamer Chick.  Many games that made the leaderboard would have NEVER made the list today.  On the flip side, lots of games game very close to making the board, but didn’t.  If I made a top 25, this is how things would fall.  This is coming July 1.  You can also check back next week for special editions of Indies in Due Time: E3 edition, which will cover the best games from smaller studios that are shown.  Also in June, Brian and I will be teaming with Armless Octopus to do a special Indies in Due Time: Dream-Build-Play edition, covering games entered into that contest.  It sounds like a great way to close out the first year of Indie Gamer Chick.

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The Deep Cave

May 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

When I recently announced at Twitter that I was adding supplemental genre-based leaderboards to the existing top 10 list, I caught a little flack for saying punishers would be segregated into their own little list.  I guess the argument is that punishers are typically either platformers or space shooters, and as such belong in those categories.  I say phooey to that.  Phooey says I!  Phooey on the whole lot of you!  Punishers need to be kept separate, lest they corrupt those games that try to be fun without the sadomasochistic undertones.

I reject the argument that most old-school platformers were in essence punishers before such a thing existed.  Yea, some games were undoubtedly too hard for their own good, like the stuff you see on GameCenter CX.  But were those games really any good?  To put it in this perspective, I have plenty of people tell me that the original Super Mario Bros. was one of the pivotal games of their childhood.  They can describe the first time they played it like someone recounting where they were when they heard that Kennedy got shot.  In contrast to that, I don’t recall hearing anyone start to reminisce about the good days spent playing Ghosts & Goblins out of the blue.

I refuse to make the obvious Jonah joke.

Then again, I don’t recall hearing games from that era taking a running count of how many lives you’ve lost.  So much for nostalgia.

I died 633 times over the course of four hours spent playing The Deep Cave, another fucking punisher that is only hard because the controls are shit.  In the case of Cave, the movement physics are looser than the village whore.  They’re so sensitive that even the act of lightly tapping the d-pad in an attempt to heel-toe your way across a stage is not really possible.  Mind you, the level design is set up in a way that requires the utmost precision in every step and jump you make, but the game doesn’t have any of tools to make the experience anything other than miserable.  This is like asking you to win the Daytona 500 while riding a horse.

I had actually planned to play something else, but I realized I was one month away from my site turning one-year-old.  I have a “Top 25 Xbox Live Indie Games of All Time” feature planned for this, but realized that I needed to get to as many classics that I missed as possible.  The Deep Cave has been a game people have pitched me on ever since I reviewed LaserCat and saddled it with the original #1 position on my leaderboard.  After playing Deep Cave, I’m now going to just assume that many of my followers message me directly from their local opium dens, because you have got to be high to compare them.  That, or they have the most dead-pan sense of black humor ever.  How is Deep Cave even remotely like LaserCat?  Other than retro-style graphics and screens that are given quirky names, the two have nothing in common.  LaserCat is a Metroidvania with smooth play control.  The Deep Cave is a linear punisher where a violent sneeze pointed at the controller is enough to send your dude scooting along to his death.

A few stages into Cave, I figured I had found the game’s hook.  I entered a stage where the gravity reversed and I had to platform across the ceiling for a few levels.  It wasn’t really the game’s hook, as the game was more or less the same from a different angle.  Later, you do switch between the floor and ceiling, which breaks up the monotony of walk and die somewhat.  Kind of like how a protestor lighting himself on fire is a good way to liven up a hunger strike, in that the whole thing is still horrific to go through.

It’s so harmless looking, but The Deep Cave will eat you for lunch and skip out on the check. And no, I don’t even know what that means.

A lot of the guys who sold me on trying The Deep Cave swore that they got used to the controls at some point.  I never did.  Props to them if they could, the fucking weirdos.  I just never could get the hang of having to compensate for such utterly busted play control.  Granted, as we’ve established, I’m not the most coordinated of people.  I would have probably had a tough time with The Deep Cave if it controlled absolutely perfectly.  Plotting a course to take on each stage and memorizing enemy patterns already gives you enough problems to juggle.  Tossing in super-loose control was one thing to deal with too many.  I guess what I’m saying is I’m not dexterous.  By the way, dexterous means “having coordination” not “stalking people, tying them to a table, and plunging a knife into their chest.”  But I’m not that either.  As far as you know.

The Deep Cave was developed by Pennybridge Indie Game Studio

80 Microsoft Points juiced a blood orange ominously in the making of this review. 

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Chompy Chomp Chomp

May 28, 2012 by 14 Comments

Update: Chompy Chomp Chomp received a Second Chance with the Chick, which improved many of the problems I had with this game. It was already considered one of the best XBLIGs ever made, but now it’s just phenomenal. For my continued thoughts on it, click here. 

The first arcade video game was a title called “Computer Space” by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. A remake of the 1960s computer game Spacewar!, it featured an insanely cool looking cabinet and complex space dog-fights. It was a total flop, commercially speaking. It was more expensive than pinball machines, so most amusement route operators refused to take it. Among the ones that did, word quickly spread that Computer Space offered little or no return on their initial investment. Undeterred, Bushnell and Dabney founded Syzygy, then changed the name to Atari when they found out a bunch of hippies owned the name Syzygy and were using it to sell candles. They figured the problem with Computer Space was that it just wasn’t complex enough. That was wrong, of course. People didn’t play Computer Space because they were intimidated by it. Meanwhile, they had hired a young engineer named Al Alcorn and gave him an assignment to build his game building skills: an electronic version of table tennis. They didn’t intend to sell the game, but once they saw what he had made, they realized it was way more fun than Computer Space. They called it Pong, and the rest is history.

The lesson learned: keep it simple, stupid.

I was reminded of that story while I played Chompy Chomp Chomp, the new benchmark for me when it comes to party-type Xbox Live Indie Games. Granted, I haven’t played a lot of games that specifically target four-player competitive play on the platform. With that in mind, allow me to  say that Chompy Chomp Chomp’s gameplay holds as much appeal as many mainstream party games. It’s really well done. Oddly enough, the idea is just so simple that I’m honestly baffled that nobody has done it yet.

Think of Chompy Chomp Chomp as a game of cat and mouse where you are simultaneously the cat and the mouse. You play as an alien thingie that is either red, blue, purple, or orange. Under your feet is a ring that indicates what color opponent you can currently eat. All you have to do is touch that person and you eat them. Of course, the entire time you’re chasing that person, another person is on the map trying to eat you. It’s such a smart design that succeeds in creating an almost cartoon like sense of fun. Lots of rounds play out like that Looney Tunes short where Tweety drinks the Jekyll & Hyde potion and takes turns running from and chasing Sylvester. The person you are targeting changes at random, and that actually led to hilariously comical situations where someone was chasing someone else that was supposed to be trying to eat them. The best part about that? It never failed to crack up the entire room when it happened.

The previous high mark for me in the XBLIG party game department had been Hidden in Plain Sight. But there’s a stark difference between the two games. Hidden in Plain Sight is very much the Computer Space to Chompy’s Pong. The learning curve is steeper, play sessions are typically more serious, and the game is missing that feeling of almost contagious joy that the best party games carry. Chompy Chomp Chomp has that. Whether I was playing with my friends or with some casual associates, everyone smiled. Younger kids liked it, teens did, and my much older colleagues did too.

You know what? I did too. I never did shake the feeling that Chompy Chomp Chomp felt more like a really great multiplayer afterthought that was tacked on to a full-release at the last second, but it doesn’t matter. 80MSP for one of the best party games of this generation is a no-brainer. I don’t really have anything big to complain about. The game handles awesome, the power-ups work, and there are plenty of maps to play with. Thank God there’s enough little things to bitch about that I won’t lose my edge.

For starters, the spawning in this game can be incredibly cheap. You spawn randomly, and I swear to Christ the game can be downright vindictive about it. It can even spawn you right next to someone at the very moment the color changes to that person, leading to a no-chance kill. Or there are times that someone will activate a gas bomb that saps away your points if you linger in it. If we could have just turned off this specific item, we would have. Because, almost without fail, if there’s a gas cloud located in one of the corners and you die, you will spawn in it. You lose points every time you die (a concept I’m not in love with), so getting hit with the double whammy of dying and then spawning inside a gas cloud is so aggravating. Hell, this one time I spawned in a gas cloud WITH a sticky floor (another item), causing me to go from 1st place to 4th place with zero points in a matter of two seconds. Jolly laughs were had by my friends, while I sat there and stewed in my chair, contemplating how many Xbox controllers they could each fit up their asses.

Also, some of the levels are just not very well conceived. One stage had very narrow corridors, yet the spawns are still random. This led to situations where someone would get eaten, then spawn in a location where they were essentially cornered from the get go, with no hope (or room) to escape. This can happen several times in a row, before the roles get reversed. Mind you, this only happens in one or two stages, but when it does, it just totally kills the mood. It’s that dreaded “parents walking in on you having sex” buzzkill that games have desperately got to avoid.

But that stuff really is nit picky.  Chompy Chomp Chomp is one of the best Xbox Live Indie Games for those of you with a social life. It has very good graphics, quirky music, pick-up-and-play design, and the best online menus I’ve seen on XBLIG so far. Actually, I really have to tip my hat to the developers for how well the online stuff worked. I played it for two hours and had only one single network glitch, where I got dropped from a game. It’s shocking because every single online XBLIG I’ve played up to this point has been riddled with game-killing bugs and various other annoyances. I can’t even say for sure if Chompy’s one and only fart was because of it or because of something on my end. Kudos. Yea, I know most of you come here to read me bust a game’s balls, but if you’re actually looking for something new to try with your friends, surprise them with Chompy Chomp Chomp. Sorry if I don’t have a good laugh line to go out on, but I think I blew up my cerebral cortex trying to decide if (well, actually where) it falls on the leaderboard.

Chompy Chomp Chomp was developed Utopian World of Sandwiches

80 Microsoft Points said their next game better be about a utopian world of sandwiches in the making of this review.

A review copy of Chompy Chomp Chomp was provided by Utopian World of Sandwiches to Indie Gamer Chick. The copy played by Cathy was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points. The review code was given to someone else to provide her with a proper online experience. That person was not involved at all in the writing or editing of this review. For more information on this policy, please consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

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Indies in Due Time 4-27-2012 Scent of the Indie Ocean Edition

May 27, 2012 by 9 Comments

We’ve got trailers, yes we do, and we have a special guest, Mr. Alan C with the Tea, the operator of the Indie Ocean.  He has assured us that he actually wants to participate and he’s not here just to hide from the army of half-naked women that Team Shuriken sent to kill him after his review of Avalis Dungeon.

Read more of this post

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Avatar Falls Down Stairs and This Is Hard

May 26, 2012 by 6 Comments

I’ve met a few developers who don’t totally hate my guts.  Or at least I don’t think they do.  One is a dude named Daniel Steger, who has made a couple of games I’ve reviewed here that, while I didn’t detest them, I didn’t actually love them or anything either.  They were just sort of there to exist.  I get the impression that Steger has the talent to do better than he actually does, but sort of just falls in line and pushes stuff out.  He’s had a couple successes on the XBLIG market.  He’s the proud developer of the #8 all-time selling game on the platform, Baby Maker Extreme.  Haven’t played it yet, and I don’t intend to.  I have played a couple of his non-hits, Blow Me Up and Lots of Guns.  I’m noticing a theme with his games: they tell you exactly what they are, right there in the title.  Blow Me Up involved blowing a dude up, Lots of Guns involves shooting lots of guns.  Okay, so I don’t think Baby Maker Extreme involves a sperm bank and a turkey baster, which is the only true way to make babies in extreme ways.  Well, besides parachuting while having sex, but I hear the rights to that are tied up by MTV, who plan to include Parahumping in the next X-Games.  Of course, no actual babies will be made during it, because I’m sure they’ll enforce a strict “condoms only” rule.  MTV is all about the safety of its competitors.  Jesus, this has gone off topic.

The graphics are colored at random and sometimes completely match the flooring in a way that you can’t see them unless you tilt the camera the right angle. Just like that third test from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, only not as fun.

Today’s “truth in advertising” games are Avatar Falls Down Stairs and This Is Hard.  Well, I guess in the case of Avatar Falls Down Stairs, it only falls because you push it.  Otherwise known as “murder.”  Details.  It’s sort of an XBLIG version of the popular game Stair Dismount.  I liked Stair Dismount.  It was good fun for the whole family, and by that I mean I took pictures of my family, stuck their faces on the ragdolls, and pushed the ragdolls down the stairs.  It was cathartic, and a good way to blow off steam.  Steam that accumulates from playing horrible XBLIGs, like Avatar Falls Down Stairs.  The concept is just not as good.  Stair Dismount awarded points based on the total physical damage you inflict upon the doll.  AFDS (sounds like a football league) awards points based on hitting orbs on your way down.  It doesn’t really work well, because you really can only hit so many of them.  Once you shove, you can’t move your avatar anymore.  And, unlike Stair Dismount, you can’t target a specific area of your avatar to shove.  You can angle it around the midsection, but that’s it.  It feels so stripped down and half-assed that you can’t help but shake your head.  Graphics are horrible and the physics are pretty weak too.  Stegs told me he built the game in only a week, and I believe it.

I figured that while I was talking about Stegs, I would get to this week’s way late Katch-Up and use it on This Is Hard, his punisher from two years ago.  I’m not a huge fan of this genre, and This Is Hard doesn’t really change my mind about it.  It’s got a lot faults to it.  It is one of the loosest controlling games I’ve ever played.  It almost feels like he was trying to achieve a Super Meat Boy sense of speed and jumping, except that, as Brian just pointed out to me, that came out AFTER this did.  Either way, it becomes one of those punishers that’s really only difficult because it controls like shit.  Once you get used to that, the levels are just typical trial-and-error, memorize the layout type of stages.  It’s not a total abortion, but there’s much better punishers on XBLIG, both in playability and in looks.  If you’re desperate to get your ass kicked, you’re probably better off going to a screening of the Avengers and screaming out “Where’s Batman?”

I will give This Is Hard this: it’s playable.  Avatar Falls Down Stairs is only playable in the sense that it doesn’t make your organs shut down.  I still like Stegs, but there’s something missing to his games.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s that sense that I’m playing something special.  He’s had some best-sellers, but he hasn’t quite had that game that just is overwhelmingly fun.  He makes stuff that is good enough to entertain for thirty minutes, maybe an hour, and then toss away and forget about it.  I actually enjoyed Blow Me Up and Lots of Guns, but they wouldn’t be high on my games-to-recommend list.  I’m willing to bet he’s capable of doing better.  It’s like watching a bad Al Pacino movie (which is pretty much everything he’s made after Insomnia) where you can totally tell he’s like “you know what, fuck it, I’m not even trying.  I’ve got boat payments to make.”

Avatar Falls Down Stairs and This Is Hard were developed by Stegersaurus Games

80 Microsoft Points apiece think Steg needs to start getting trailers up in the making of this review.

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Heroes of Hat

May 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

Do you know what Heroes of Hat needs?  Some anti-psychotic medication.  With level design centered around over-powered enemies bombarding you with unavoidable attacks, dick move leap-of-faith jumps, and over-reliance on overly-slow special abilities, it feels like the gaming version of climbing a water tower with a telescopic rifle and going to town on the townspeople.  It’s a game that needs help, the kind of help that involves a straight jacket and a padded room.  You have to be off your fucking rocker to think anyone would find this type of utterly unfair, annoying gameplay fun.  And they expect four people to do it together!  It makes me wonder if this was really designed by the University of Utah’s game design program, or was it really by their sociology department as some kind of “how far can someone be pushed before they start killing and eating their fellow humans?” hypothesis.  If that’s the case, the answer is 51 minutes.  Don’t ask how I know.  *burp*

If there’s a storyline, I missed it.  You’re a little monster dude thingie that has to hop around levels looking for a goal.  Along the way, you’re given a variety of hats that allow you to do various special attacks.  The hats don’t really mean anything.  Once you reach a certain point, you just have the new ability and can use it as much as you want, whenever you want.  The first one is being able to fire arrows.  You just press X to release an offensive shot, or charge X for a couple of seconds and release it to create a barrage of slow-moving arrows that you can then use as a platform.  The second one is a bomb, which you can detonate under you for an extra boostie or chuck at enemies.  You can’t aim the arrows upwards, so bombs are your only option.  I have no idea what the third hat is, because I didn’t bother playing past the fourth stage, but whatever it is, I’m willing to bet it’s slow and useless.

Either way, enemies soak up damage and keep coming at you, rendering attacking moot.  I only encountered three enemies.  There were bees, which took something like eight arrows to shoot down.  They dive bomb you AND they fire projectiles at you, and you can bet your ass they’ll be strategically placed in the worst possible sections, which are typically right above narrow ledges.  There were bomb throwing guys who are unfairly accurate and don’t leave enough time between attacks.  You can kill them by lobbing three bombs at them.  Mind you, in the time it takes you to load up a bomb, charge it (you have to charge it to be able to aim it, otherwise you just drop it), aim, toss, and detonate (you have to detonate every bomb you throw), the enemy has lobbed either two or three at you, and probably killed you.  Fair?  No.  Fun?  No.  An example of developers getting too good at their own game and losing track of reality?  Probably.  I also fought one or two snails that soak up arrows and fire spikes at you.

The level design is just one instance of dick movery after another, like they went through a checklist of things an asshole would do when designing a game.  Leaps of faith?  Check.  Enemies situated in places that you can’t possibly fight them?  Check.  Needlessly confusing level layouts?  Check.  I’m half-shocked they bothered with checkpoints, but I guess those were there for the benefit of the co-op mode.  I didn’t bother with it.  I play video games to make friends, not lose them.  Even with friends, most of the things that are bad about Heroes of Hat would still be the same.  Overpowered enemies that are out of reach are still overpowered and out of reach whether you’re alone or with others.  Leaps of faith are still leaps of faith whether solo or in a group.  Actually, they tend to be worse, because if just one fucker doesn’t jump, everyone else has to wait for him.  Assuming the screen scrolls with the three and doesn’t stick with the one hold-out, which would lead to everyone else dying.  Again, I didn’t play Heroes of Hat multiplayer, so I don’t know how much better or worse (I’m guessing worse) it is with friends.  They do say misery loves company, but I want to go on the record of saying that company is rarely eager to join in on being miserable.

If you gave me all day, I could not think of one positive thing to say about Heroes of Hat.  The graphics are ugly even by the standards of 1996.  The controls are too loose.  I fell through the geometry at least once and I was only four levels in by that point.  The mechanics are clunky.  The enemies too powerful.  The level design is abysmal.  This is one of the worst games I’ve played this year and I would sooner recommend you pay someone a dollar to kick you in the face than play this.  What’s really weird is that it looks just so damn innocent.  I mean, look at it!

Adorable, isn’t it?  But, make no mistake, Heroes of Hat is horrible.  This is like the type of game that evil doers who run orphanages would give their children, just to complete the sense of being downtrodden.

Heroes of Hat was developed by Utah Game Forge

80 Microsoft Points give this game an F, tells students to write “we will not make crappy games that make Indie Gamer Chick want to cut herself” on the blackboard 100 times in the making of this review. 

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5 Minutes RPG

May 24, 2012 by 3 Comments

UPDATE: 5 Minutes RPG is now $1.

5 Minutes RPG, or 5MinRPG as its known on the marketplace for reasons that baffle me, is a little misleading in its name.  It’s not really an RPG in the strictest sense, nor does it only last for five minutes.  It plays more like an action-based dungeon-crawler.  At least I think it does.  This is one of those “tough love” games that mostly leaves players to figure things out on their own.  There’s a couple help screens, but they’re not much use.  The first level acts as a sort of tutorial, but ended before my head scratching did.  And trust me, I don’t have head lice.

Anymore.

The idea is you’re a wizard (or wizards, but I didn’t get a chance to play co-op, more on that later) who has to work his way through a series of randomly generated dungeons, fighting monsters, opening treasures, and slaying bosses.  There are six levels and one final boss fight.  I didn’t even make it half-way through the quest without giving up, so I can’t tell you what you fight in the end.  I will say that you better hope it’s not straight above you, because otherwise you’ll be in big trouble.

I get the impression that 5 Minutes RPG started out as a turn-based strategy game and devolved into the sloppy hack-and-slasher that ended up on the marketplace.  Screens are broken up into hexagonal segments that limit what direction your character can move and shoot.  You can go straight in a horizontal line, but you can’t move vertically up and down, only diagonally.  This makes no sense at all in an action RPG.  It makes all movement feel clunky, and lining up to attack enemies a chore.  I quit on the third boss, because I was getting surrounded on all sides by enemies.  Even with a weapon that could attack in all six directions, it didn’t really work as advertised.  I could still only damage the one enemy I was pointing at.  While the enemies on the other five sides could leisurely chew on my ass, my attack (of which the animation did seem to touch them) had no effect.  What is the point of even having something that attacks in all six directions in a hexagonal based game if the developers didn’t take the time to make sure its range actually covered all six directions?

If it wasn’t for that, I could probably recommend 5 Minutes RPG.  It wouldn’t be stellar or anything, but it would probably be a decent waste of time with a few friends.  I really do get the impression that you need to play in co-op to have a fighting chance.  Even when I took the time to kill all the enemies and level up my weapons, I couldn’t get past that third boss because I was being absolutely gang-banged on all sides by the boss and minor baddies.  If someone had been there to take the load off, I might have been able to fight off two or three guys.  By myself, I would enter the boss chamber and watch my health go from full to empty in just seconds once all the enemies spawned around me.  And this was on the normal difficulty.  I’m guessing on anything higher, the enemies would have raked my face across the pavement and then poured quicklime on my quivering body.

If 5 Minutes RPG was an experiment, let’s call it a failed one and move on.  It’s not the biggest conceptional stillbirth I’ve seen here, but it’s close.  The combat system just doesn’t work, and never really had the potential to.  I like the idea of bite-sized, randomly generated dungeons that I can complete in a couple of minutes while I wait for my bagel to get toasted.  Do you know what I like more?  Being able to move in a straight vertical line.  I find it to generally be an important aspect of gameplay.  I never liked how Q*Bert controlled either, but at least I’m young enough to say I think that game sucks and have old timers pass it off as being a smart-assed whippersnapper.  Of course, comparing Q*Bert to 5 Minutes RPG is unfair.  The only thing they have in common is you need some kind of inner-ear disorder for the controls they use to feel intuitive.

5 Minutes RPG was developed by Andreil Game

Points of Sale: Xbox Live Indie Games

$3 still have no clue what the point of having enemies drop gold was in the making of this review.


Video courtesy of Alan at The Indie Ocean

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