If I pulled out a gun and shot myself right now, then reincarnated, I’m pretty sure I would be running in my new body faster than I would as my Xbox Avatar if I just stayed alive and kept trying at Avatar Physics: Running. Based on the popular (and free, and slightly less impossible) flash-based game QWOP, Running is a simple 100 meter dash, only you have to manually work the legs of your avatar to get there. Of course, doing so is complicated in a way that makes the Impossible Game look like a preschool admission test. After over thirty minutes of playing, the furthest I had made it was a little over two meters past the starting line. Mostly, my character just stiffened up and fell down, like she had simultaneously suffered a stroke while catching a glimpse of Medusa. Take a look at this video from my amigo Splazer Productions.
Splazer did better than I did. Hell, I typically ran further backwards than I did forwards. The only value Avatar Physics: Running has is bemusement at your own failures. This is obviously meant to be the primary draw of the game, as evidenced by the one and only marketplace picture featuring an avatar that has cocked things up about as bad as you can. The problem is, laughing at how hard this game is only lasts about, oh, two minutes. After that, it’s just frustration and tedium. I’m certain someone out there can finish the full 100 meters. I’m also certain someone out there knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. It doesn’t make him any less dead.
Games like Fishy Warefare have historical importance. The Atari 2600 launched with Combat (based on the arcade hit Tank), a game where players stood on opposite sides of the screen, taking shots at each other. The first video game to have a microprocessor (as opposed to discrete logic) was Midway’s 1975 hit Gun Fight, which was later upgraded to a similar game called Boot Hill (which hit the Atari 2600 as Outlaw). You’ll notice these games all came out in the 70s and really don’t hold that much relevance today. I’m not saying you shouldn’t attempt to reinvent this formula that existed a decade before my father was a US citizen. I’m saying that you have to give it some kind of hook to make it relevant today. Or at least attempt to be better than those moldy oldies.
Fishy Warfare is a worst XBLIG of the year contender based entirely on uselessness. It looks ugly. There’s no multiplayer. The AI is brain-dead. The gameplay is boring. The upgrades are dull. The final nail is the insulting 240MSP price tag. All this for a game that was hardly ambitious in concept to begin with. You’re on one side of a screen. Your AI opponent is on the other. You shoot until one of you is dead. Then you upgrade your ship and do it again. The game presents nothing resembling a challenge until you fight a giant alligator thing that has some kind of laser-firebreath thing that can kill you in one hit. Until I got to it, I never needed upgrade my ship. After dying against this, I had enough money to get the best weapon, ship, hull, and propeller. So I did. Then I had to fight my way back to the Alligator, because the game sends you backwards and makes you replay previous fights when you lose (just to make sure maximum boredom and repetition is achieved). At which point, it instakilled me again. Grumble.
This is the instakilling Alligator instakilling a dude piloting the frog. Familiarize yourself with this, because it will happen to you too. You know, assuming you don’t spend your Microsoft Points on THREE better games that have actual polish to them.
Despite what people think, I do look for good things to say about even the worst games. But, I couldn’t find one for Fishy Warfare. The graphics look like they were drawn in MS Paint. The backgrounds are a bit on the loud side, which sometimes makes the projectiles hard to see. The highest upgraded weapon is also the most visually uninteresting of the whole lot. That’s extraordinarily nit-picky, but for some reason that stuck with me long after I finished playing. Maybe because it sums up everything wrong with Fishy Warfare. Everything feels so rushed and not handled with care. I don’t know what else to say. Boring. Bad. Overpriced. You could probably buy a couple actual fighting fish for the same price and make them fight to the death, then eat the loser. And then eat the winner too, because it probably is meatier and yummier.
240 Microsoft Points could buy the top three games on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard for the same price as this in the making of this review. I don’t have a joke to go with that, just thought I would state the obvious.
Dark Quest is based on the early 90s cult board game hit HeroQuest. I’ve never played the game, but after asking around on Twitter, I had a few fans of it confirm that it’s a very close facsimile of the real thing. If that’s what you’ve been looking for over the last twenty years, this review is irrelevant to you. Go get it. This review is for those who missed out on it when it was played using cheap plastic characters, dice, and cardboard.
In the interest of professionalism, I looked up the original rules to the game. And by that, I mean I watched a four-minute long video by the Angry Video Game Nerd that kind of, sort of explained the rules. I thought “ugh, looks complicated. Well, at least I’ll be able to learn how the game plays in the tutorial they no doubt took the time to meticulously craft.” Which again proves that the whole Cuban women having clairvoyance thing is hogwash. There is no tutorial for Dark Quest. You’re thrown into the first dungeon immediately, which offers things that are sort of pointers, but not really. Fighting enemies, discovering hidden traps, and using various weapons are mechanics the player is left to discover on their own. I suppose if you’re familiar with HeroQuest, this might not be so bad. For people like me, it’s clear that we’re unwelcome guests at the Dark Quest party.
Yea, to be perfectly frank, I had no idea what I was doing.
After somehow stumbling through the first dungeon and picking up a couple secondary characters, I shamefully succumbed to boredom and ignorance in the second level. Here, you have to find hidden jewels, insert them into statues to activate a door, and then fight roughly five million skeletons, give or take. The problem here was my previously established “worst random luck in gaming” status was confirmed about ten fold. I would swing at the skeletons with my barbarian and miss. Then my dwarf and miss. Then my wizard and miss. Or, if I didn’t miss, something would pop up that said “CHEAT DEATH” which I think is basically a fancy way of saying “missed.” Then, the room full of skeletons would attack. Funny enough, they would also miss more often than hit, no matter which of the characters they attacked. But, they had numbers on me, and slowly I would drain away until I was reduced to a pile of bones. I either was killed by the skeletons or I died of boredom. Not sure which.
I tried this level a few times. There is a small instruction card, which noted that the dwarf was the best defender. So, on my second attempt, when I would enter a room that I knew was filled with baddies, I would lead with him. Which made sense, since he has the largest movement. Now, here’s where it gets weird: the dwarf, the guy with the alleged best defense, was the character that the enemies missed the least. It was un-fucking-canny. I’m not blaming the developers for me being unlucky, but I would ask them “are you sure this guy has extra points of defense?” What am I missing here? Besides 3 out of 4 of my attempts at attacks? To make matters worse, every once in a while the dungeon master would spit out a random effect, which includes such things as “lose some gold” or “lose your turn.” What did he hit most often? “Lose one health.” Of course that’s what he did. Meanwhile, I was getting my will to go on sapped by the game’s snail-like pace and unintuitive control scheme. After giving that second dungeon a fourth go and dying in the same fucking room, I’d had enough. Yep, I couldn’t even complete the second stage. Shame on me, I suck as a gamer, yada yada yada.
You know what? In this case, I don’t think it was just me. I’ve heard from at least one other player that they were the victim of missing far too often when they went to attack. Or sometimes a character can be next to an enemy and they can spend multiple turns swinging at each other and missing every time. Each stage has a time limit in the form of a limited number of turns the player can take. I never came close to the limit, but the sheer number of turns that a battle can drag out could be problematic in later levels. Maybe.
Why the fuck do I not automatically pick up whatever gold or items I step over? Why does this game seem to go out of its way to be inconvenient? Grrrrrrrr!
I know I’m not who this game was made for, and that’s fine with me. It looks good. It sounds good. I know HeroQuest fans are satisfied with it. Although they’re a little puzzled by the lack of dice. However, non-fans will find a slow, newb-hating dungeon crawler in board-game form that is about as exciting a watching paint dry. On top of that, I also think fans of HeroQuest will find things to be disappointed in it. There’s no multiplayer. Granted, eliminating a player controlling the enemies is probably a logical and reasonable thing to hand off to the AI. But, not having the option for four players to take control of the heroes is kind of silly, especially since board games such as this are built entirely around social interaction. I guess you could hypothetically just pass the controller off to other players after making your move. It’s not really convenient, but hey, it’s a chance to play a moderately popular game twenty years after it dropped off the face of the earth. I mean, it wasn’t popular enough to last more than a couple of years on store shelves. And you would think fans of the game would still own the corporeal board and game pieces. Okay, so I have no fucking clue at all why this game exists, since it takes almost no advantage of things that can only be done in the realm of video games. H.i.v.e. demonstrated they can at least be used to ease people into learning a new game, but Dark Quest doesn’t even do that. Nor does it have online support. This was a weird one to review. A really well produced homage to some vintage thing that I’d never heard of. I can’t recommend it to non-fans of the thing it’s based on, but even fans might find little to get excited about. Don’t get me wrong: there’s an audience for Dark Quest. Twitter already confirmed that for me. What I’m saying is, if you want to properly pay tribute to a classic gaming property, here’s a thought: use some of this space-age technology we have these days and make the original concept better. Otherwise, it’s less a tribute and more like grave robbery.
80 Microsoft Points wouldn’t mind some kind of version of Don’t Break the Ice for Wii U, but only if it involves using the touch screen and an actual mallet in the making of this review.
You can file Monkey Poo Flinger.. again, no really.. under novelty games. It has no real value as a game. On my most generous day, I would call its gameplay mediocre. On a less than generous day, I would probably just flip the bird and make fart noises with my mouth. But seriously, you don’t buy a game called Monkey Poo Flinger expecting the next Spec Ops – The Line. You get it because monkeys are hilarious, poo is hilarious, and monkeys throwing poo is the greatest comedy goldmine of all time.
BUT, if your game is going to be themed around a monkey throwing poo at people, it has to at least look good. Covering some gawking human with feces should be a visually satisfying experience. That’s not the case here. The graphics look crude, so any successful shot doesn’t have any zing to it. I mean, you just absolutely plastered some asshole in the face with a handful of shit. When I do that to Brian, it’s the highlight of my day. Here, it’s just hollow. I mean, look at it.
It looks horrible. It’s actually not as bad as it appears from a gameplay perspective, but it’s still not fun. Monkey Poo Flinger is a pretty basic gallery shooter. Press the right trigger to shoot. Targets walk in front of you and you shoot them. Sometimes there are barriers between you and then. Sometimes they throw stuff back. Sometimes the game forgets to take its brain pills and takes away your ability to shoot altogether in a level that is, I shit you not, themed around being constipated. Not that I’m offended. I’ve played games where you have to feed cows prune juice to give them diarrhea and games where you use yellow snowballs as weapons. Do you know what all those games have in common? The novelty wore thin pretty fast, and you’re left with a game that was average at best (Conker) or pretty terrible (South Park 64). The novelty is a non-factor in Monkey Poo Flinger because the graphics just don’t do the concept justice. Thus, it’s boring right from the get-go.
I’ll say this: I thought I would be playing something utterly broken, and that’s not the case. There’s a real game here. It’s just not fun at all. There’s other problems too, like projectiles (especially from the seagulls) being too hard to see, or the targets not being large enough. Probably the best thing about the game is the dialog, which is like saying the best part about getting hypothermia is you get a souvenir blanket. The between-the-levels banter offers, at best, a smirk and a shake of the head. But you have to play a dull as dirt game to get those meager crumbs of entertainment. So I can’t really recommend Monkey Poo Flinger. I also have to ask a couple of questions that really ought to be addressed: where the hell is that monkey getting all that shit from? Does his anus contain a fucking zip-drive? And why does the zoo leave this monkey in such a high foot-trafficked area? I think a better concept would have been a mad monkey won’t stop throwing shit at people and we have to stop it, with the ultimate goal of dropping it off at the state department so that we can send it to North Korea as a, ahem, diplomatic gift.
It’s strange how Defender, one of gaming’s iconic titles of the Golden Age of arcades, hasn’t been cloned to death by modern indie developers. I’m cool with that. Having played an endless supply of uninspired-inspired neo-retro games, I’m not keen on seeing Defender done wrong. Still, how did Defender fall through the cracks? Here’s a game that was predicted to be a huge bust, but went on to become the seventh-best selling coin-operated game ever. Maybe it’s because it was eclipsed by Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Or maybe because Defender’s track record since its original release has been mediocre at best. It got one of the laziest sequels of all time (which was called “Stargate” because of some legal posturing by Williams. James Spader was unavailable for comment). There was an unofficial sequel by Midway that nobody I’ve spoken with has ever played. There was an all-but-forgotten update to the format on Atari Jaguar of all systems, which means it probably sold like six copies. And finally, there was a 2002 3D remake for sixth-generation consoles that quickly found its way into clearance bins. Your average child actor has a more graceful flame-out than Defender has had as a franchise.
You know, for a spry young whippersnapper with a reputation for hating classic games, I sure do seem to have a love for Defender. I even have a Defender homage in my top 25. Then again, Orbitron: Revolution only mimics the flight and shooting mechanics of the arcade classic. You’re actually not defending anything So I guess it’s not really Defender More like Aggressor. Was there a game called Aggressor? No? Well, there ought to have been.
Aqua Kitty on Xbox Live Indie Games. AKA the really good version.
If you’re looking for a modern Defender-based indie, Aqua Kitty is probably a closer knock-off. I still prefer Orbitron’s faster pace and modern graphics. But let it be said, Aqua Kitty is a damn fine game. You’re a cat in a submarine that must defend little aquanauts while shooting wave after wave of enemy. And the cat smokes a pipe, which means he’s one cultured pussy. But, other than the setting and a couple of power-ups, this really is Defender.
Despite being a bit on the bare-bones side, Aqua Kitty is really well produced. I played both the XBLIG and PlayStation Mobile versions. I prefer the XBLIG port, which plays faster. The Vita version has the advantage of being mobile, but it seems clunkier in both framerate and controls. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still a pretty good game. But I would go with the XBLIG port.
It’s not perfect by any stretch. What really bugs me about Aqua Kitty is the total lack of ambition. Defender is an old formula in need of renovation. Aqua Kitty does some things to smooth that over, but it’s just not enough. Turbo shots? Good idea. But only have one type of turbo shot? Not so ambitious. Power-ups? Good idea. But having only three power-ups, one of which is a bomb, one of which is a health-up, and one of which adds flankers to your ship? Not so ambitious. Plus, the flankers are time-limited. This was presumably done to preserve the difficulty. Given that the screen gets utterly spammed with enemies and projectiles in later levels, this was unnecessary, as those guys really aren’t that effective at combating it. So where’s the wild, more modern weapons and items? Nowhere to be found, and that’s a shame.
The PlayStation Mobile version. Which, as it turns out, I could have got for free a few weeks ago but I mistook it for another, less epilepsy-friendly title. Instead, I ended up paying more for this version than I did for the superior XBLIG port. Smooth, Cathy.
Don’t let that all discourage you. Aqua Kitty is probably the best pure Defender clone in years and a genuinely good game. Near-perfect difficulty curve. Distinctive enemies. Cutesy themes. Solid play-control. What’s not to love here? I’m not sure why the inferior PlayStation Mobile is priced $0.50 higher than the XBLIG version. Some kind of temporary insanity brought on by the awesomeness of a pipe-smoking kitten perhaps. Happens to the best of us. I saw the pipe-smoking kitten and totally blacked out. The next thing I know, I’ve got a tattoo and I attempted to marry my Wii U.
240 Microsoft Points (XBLIG) and $3.49 (PlayStation Mobile) were unaware of the existence of a Defender song until some bastard sent it to me. It shall never leave my head now in the making of this review.
Both versions of Aqua Kitty are Chick-Approved, and the XBLIG version is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. Even the developers admitted to me that they prefer the XBLIG port. Go with that one.
Boob games. They’re all over Xbox. They make more money than most of the top-ranked games on my Leaderboard do. Other XBLIG developers hate them. I’m tolerate of them, and sometimes even award them my Seal of Approval. All I want to do is be entertained, which isn’t as hard as people think. Take the Trailer Park King series. The three main releases (Trailer Park King 1, 2, and 3) all made the Leaderboard. The first spin-off, Cherry Poke Prison, did not. In part, because of burnout on the, ahem, humor, which is exactly what hurt Trailer Park King 3 as well. DERP of Duty is the second spin-off, and now I’m so burned out that I need a fucking skin-graft.
Ha, BB! That’s a gun too! Brilliant! And the place has Bazookas in the name! That’s a euphemism for tits! I haven’t seen this many plays on words since I last played Scrabble!
DERP of Duty was developed by Freelance Games (80 Microsoft Points still think Trailer Park King is begging to be made into an animated series in the making of this review)
I want to say something in defense of Sean Doherty, the developer of the TPK games: he’s a genuinely cool dude. He was the first developer I ever talked directly with as Indie Gamer Chick. I also think he’s probably as burned out on this series as well. DERP of Duty feels like it’s trying too hard. As cringe-inducing and skin-crawly as the dialog could be in the early TPK games, at least it felt somewhat organic. Maybe Sean felt the need to top those efforts with even more shocking banter, but this time it feels hollow. Without a compelling narrative, the overly-simple pointing and clicking simply can’t carry the game. I think even the most staunch fans of Trailer Park King will be letdown by DERP of Duty. It’s time to retire this series. Sean has established he has the talent to make, ahem, interesting characters and accompanying mythology. Now, I want to see him apply all this towards a more involved game.
And I don’t mean more involved as in getting guys to spank their monkeys harder than they already do. XBLIG has enough games that do that, as seen in this collage by Mount Your Friends developer Daniel Steger. Which I’m sure he compiled for market research and not as part of his newest cardio-vascular workout routine.
But, the real question is: how well do they sell? Really, boobs seems like no more a sure bet than recent Minecraft clones do. Judging by the success of Mount Your Friends, it would seem there’s an emerging market for penis-themed games that you guys are missing out on. So stop being boobs and start dicking around.
And while I’m on the subject of boob games, Team Shuriken is back. The guys behind such classics as Temple of Dogolrak and Mystic Forest return with a game that has, gasp, actual gameplay! I know they’ve tried that in the past with Dream Divers, but I still thought the gameplay felt sloppy in execution. Here, Team Shuriken took no risks. Uncraft Me ! is a bare-bones punisher with the hook being instead of just jumping, you use a jetpack to thrust around. And this is Team Shuriken we’re talking about, so beating levels means unlocking risque anime girls with breasts so large I believe they’re medically considered cancerous.
It’s also their first game to win my Seal of Approval and get ranked on the Leaderboard.
Yea.
Pretty sure this was spoken of in Revelations.
Or maybe it’s not a jetpack and the main guysis hovering around using highly-pressurized urine. Which I’m sure is another fetish but I’m too cowardly to Google it.
Look, all I’ve ever cared about is being entertained. If a game is 50.000001% entertaining and 49.999999% shit, it wins my seal of approval. On balance, I had more fun with Uncraft Me ! than not, so it gets it. Sometimes the levels have clever design. Other times they go for precision-platforming involving, simultaneously mind you: buzz saws, missiles, and timed-barriers that stay closed permanently if you’re not fast enough. There’s no margin of error for these sections, and the controls aren’t exactly perfect enough to validate their existence. I had Uncraft Me penciled in as yet another Team Shuriken failure when I played it last week. As often is the case when I dislike a game by a razor-thin margin, I boot it up one last time just to make sure. And, what do you know, I was able to finish the nearly-impossible stages. Barely. My amigo from TheXBLIG.com Tim didn’t like it it, but I thought overall it was Shuriken’s first decent game. Not spectacular, mind you. I could probably name thirty better platformers for XBLIG off the top of my head. But your money isn’t totally wasted here, nor is Team Shuriken’s talent.
Uncraft Mewas developed by Team Shuriken (80 Microsoft Points recommend these girls get a mammogram ASAP in the making of this review)
I guess that’s the most gratifying part. Yes, they have talent. Not just talent to lure in the horny teenage demographic. Actual game design talent. They’re like Larry Flint. Peel away the filthy exterior that makes you feel like you need a shower and you discover something downright decent in them. Do I expect them to focus on gameplay instead of mammary glands? No. Then again, I don’t expect to get struck by lightning while holding the holy grail in one hand and a winning lottery ticket in the other.
Do you know what the very toughest thing I have to do as Indie Gamer Chick is? Find people to play XBLIGs with or against. It’s my fault. My friends.. well Brian’s friends actually.. have had to deal with nearly two years of complaining. They have bad timing. They never bump into me when I’m playing really awesome games. Oh no, they run into me when I’m playing stuff that would better be used during enhanced interrogation. So when the time comes to say “hey guys, I have a shiny new XBLIG party game” they all seem to have better stuff to do. Wash the car. Run a marathon. Return over-due library books. It’s total bullshit of course. None of my friends read books.
But, sometimes I can wrangle them together. The results aren’t always pretty, but every once in a while a game provides us with a level of entertainment that we can’t get from a movie or, quite frankly, some mainstream games. Take Chompy Chomp Chomp. It was a smash hit last year during a Memorial Day party, and since then, has been on the top ten in my leaderboard. But it wasn’t without issue. The game could spawn players unfairly, and some of the maps were poorly conceived. It’s been a year since I last sat down with it. I know the game got patched, but I never got around to trying it again. Well, on Sunday I had the chance. And guess what? Chompy Chomp Chomp is better than ever. It is, unquestionably, the best party game on Xbox 360, indie or otherwise.
Pictured: absolute multiplayer bliss.
First off, go check out my original review. Nothing has changed with the core gameplay. What’s different is nearly every complaint has been fixed. For starters, spawns are significantly more fair. Before, it wasn’t rare for you to spawn too close to someone that’s designated to eat you. In a couple hours of playtime, that never once happened. Nor did the game ever spawn me or anyone else playing into a live trap. That alone makes Chompy Chomp Chomp so much more fun to play. In our previous play sessions, fits of laughter and general happy chatter would occasionally be interrupted by the random scream of “that’s bullshit!” when the game would screw you with a shitty spawn. Now, it’s all happiness all the time. The only other way that could have been accomplished was with laughing gas, but that wouldn’t have been cost efficient. Fixing it was much easier.
Chompy Chomp Chomp was developed by Utopian World of Sandwiches (80 Microsoft Points admit that the Xbox 360 hasn’t exactly been the best platform for party games, but regardless, this is still the best on it in the making of this review.)
Yea, there’s still some really horrible levels where you can get cornered with no hope of escape. The guys at Utopian World of Sandwiches insist that there are people who swear those are the best stages. They’re not. They’re unfair and stupid. Thankfully, they made up for their continued existence by throwing in more stages. These new levels, based on classic gaming themes, are fricking awesome. Finally, some of the dumber traps, such as gaseous time bombs that drain your score away, can outright be turned off. Previously, turning off items was an all or nothing type of deal. Now, you can select which ones you want to use. That’s perfect. The online play was totally hiccup-free as well. I can’t stress how amazing this game is. You simply have to play it, whether you do it locally or online. Make sure you’re playing with real players though. The AI goes from being too easy to too hard. When I was playing with my buddies, it was probably the single best multiplayer experience I’ve had since I’ve known them all. Chompy Chomp Chomp is Fuckity Fuck Fuck excellent.
But, if the whole “no shooting, cutesy characters” stuff is an affront to your heterosexuality (seriously, at least one moron on Twitter said of Chompy Chomp Chomp that it “looked like gay children’s shit”. How this guy is an expert in gay children’s shit is beyond me), you can try Blocks and Tanks instead. In a way, it’s getting a bad shake here, because I’m comparing it directly to Chompy Chomp Chomp. Both are simple party games for XBLIG with online play. But while Chompy’s gameplay reminds me of old school arcade games, Blocks is more like a Nintendo 64 era arena-shooter. Not a whole lot to it. Aim and shoot, one shot kills (with the cannon), most kills wins. The fact that it revels in its simplicity is part of the charm. It’s a shooter stripped down to its purest, most refined fun.
Of course, Blocks and Tanks is also a voxel game. When I announced that this game was on deck and next to be reviewed, people immediately dismissed it as yet another Minecraft clone. It’s not. But, the voxel angle is a neat one, as the environments are destructible and it opens some pretty neat strategies. In addition to the tank shells and machine gun, you can shoot blocks from your turret, which immediately cling to the environment and change colors to fit that. In a way, this crippled one versus one multiplayer, as whoever was able to get the first kill could immediately burrow a hole and fill it in to remain hidden until time ran out. Of course, only a total coward would do that.
Don’t shake your head at me, Brian. You’re only mad because you didn’t think of it first.
Pictured: the developers of games I was less than kind to waiting for my car to get within range. It’s a Honda Fit! Do your worst!
Blocks and Tanks is a lot of fun and does a lot right. The controls are very responsive. There is a bit of a learning curve to aiming, but once you get over it, it does the trick. It also has some very well designed arenas, many of which take after famous locations. It handles eight players online. I was never once able to get into an eight player game, but when I had six players going, it was super fast-paced and very enjoyable. But, the game has more problems than an algebra book.
We’ll start with the spawns. They’re among the most unfair I’ve ever seen. Sometimes the game will respawn you right in front of someone else. You’ll literally die immediately upon respawning. More often than not, you’ll be put back to life in the thick of a battle. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. The game needs to place you away from the action. Movement speed is decent, and maps are not that big, so there’s no reason to have to drop people in the middle of a firefight. It gives the game an unpolished feel.
But the biggest problem, as of this writing, is online stability. The developer is aware of the issues and asked me to go forward with this review, as long as I note that he will continue to improve the game. Duly noted. Over the course of seven play sessions and about three hours of total play, I experienced a magnitude of connectivity problems. Players would be dumped at random. Brian got a rare “code 3” error on his Xbox, while mine simply froze solid. Again, the developers are on top of it, and the current build is easily the most stable yet. The first time I played, we had problems with synchronization, where shots would register as a hit and a kill on my end, but on my opponent’s side of things, they would still be alive and actively fighting. This is no longer a problem. Actually, the weirdest problem is totally out of the hands of the developer. It’s the type of people playing. I kept finding myself in sessions where players were not trying to kill each other, but instead building stuff. When I would go in to attack, they would boot me out. Huh. I mean, sure. It’s not like there are different, more appropriate voxel-based games on XBLIG that cater to that type of gameplay.
We had a ton of fun on stages that had cliffs, trying to blow the ground out from underneath each-other. What would have been really neat is if the game had to rely on structural integrity and you could cause massive cave-ins. Hint hint Maximinus Games.
Blocks and Tanks was developed by Maximinus Games(*NOW DELISTED* 80 Microsoft Points wish the build-gun worked better on water in the making of this review. Yea, that’s not a joke, but I had to squeeze that in somewhere.)
Having said that, if you look around enough, you should be able to find a real game where people have the courtesy to kill each other like civilized people. It’s not as supported as, say, Shark Attack Deathmatch, but Blocks and Tanks does seem to have a growing community. There’s a reason for that. It’s quite good. I feel bad for the guys behind it, that it’s going to be ignored by a lot of people who feel it’s just another generic Minecraft clone. It’s almost unbelievable that such an art style can now be considered a handicap on XBLIG, but that’s what it is now. If Blocks and Tanks had come out three years ago, it would probably be one of the biggest sellers on the platform. Talk about bad timing. It’s a genuinely good game that is worth your time and money. Unless you want to use it to build stuff. It’s not made for that you block heads. Tanks for nothing.
Blocks and Tanks is Chick Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. Chompy Chomp Chomp already was, but hey, it moved up five spots!
Review copies were provided for both games by the developers. The copies played by Cathy were paid for by her with her own money. The review copies were given to a friend to test online play. That person had no feedback in this review. For more on this policy, consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.
Update: Mount Your Friends received a Second Chance with the Chick. Click here for my updated thoughts. Consider this review to be for the XBLIG version and the Second Chance to be for the Steam version.
Okay, so the name is as absurd and juvenile as a title can possibly get. But, we are talking about a game by Daniel Steger here. His previous hits include a game called Baby Maker Extreme (the ninth all-time selling XBLIG), This is Hard, and Blow Me Up. But the really weird part is, his games tend to be pretty decent. Blow Me Up and Lots of Guns both are Chick Approved and ranked on my Leaderboard. And now we have this, a game about building a human pyramid. In keeping with Steg’s tendency towards gratuitousness, it features Team Ninja-like jiggle physics.. for penises. This is a game tailor-made to generate scorn and ridicule from the XBLIG scene.
It’s also Daniel Steger’s best game by far.
Schwing!
This is exactly the type of weird, experimental game that I had in mind when I started Indie Gamer Chick. Okay, maybe I didn’t picture those games having dicks that behave like bobbleheads. But I figured I would play a lot of games unlike anything I’ve seen before. Mount Your Friends does that. It’s like a video game version of the popular Catalonian pastime known as Castell. In other words, people climbing on each other to build the tallest human-building they can make. Only here, there’s no worries about the laws of physics or structural integrity.
The way you go about moving at first seemed like it would be overly complicated. Each limb is controlled by a separate button. You move one limb at a time, with limbs automatically clinging to the bodies already placed. Each turn, you must climb higher than the highest body on the stack. Once you’ve above the line, you can press start to end the turn and start from the bottom with a new body. In the normal mode, you have 60 seconds to get above the line. It sounds dull, but it can be exhilarating. Especially when time is running short. There were multiple situations where the timer was nearing zero and I just barely got my hand over the line. This always resulted in hooting and hollering. Well, just from me, while my friends told me to sit down and shut up. But hey, I was excited!
Simpsons already did it!
Where Mount Your Friends really shines is in the multiplayer mode. Here, each player takes a turn trying to cross the bar at the highest point in the stack. Play continues until one player can’t make it to the top in the time limit. I’m shocked to say this, but this is one of the best multiplayer experiences to ever hit XBLIG. It even has online play that went off without a hitch. My biggest overall complaints relate to the movement physics. Flinging yourself instead of moving one hand at a time feels loose in terms of gravity and imprecise. I also had issues keeping limbs I didn’t want to use from going limp and getting stuck to one of the guys on the stack. I mean, wait, probably shouldn’t use the term limp in relation to this game. I mean they had trouble staying stiff. NO, erect. NO! God damn, this is tough to write about.
Okay, so the Mount Your Friends might be embarrassing to pull out to show friends and.. FUCK!! See what I mean?
Stegs, I fucking hate you. You make this really awesome game that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen or played before, but it’s almost impossible to describe without receiving an awkward stare. You know what? I don’t care. Mount Your Friends is fun, plain and simple. It’s not very deep. The best concepts rarely are. But you simply have to try it, because there’s nothing else like it. I’m not the most athletic person in the world, and I’m afraid of heights, so this is probably the closest I can come to climbing a rock wall. Well actually, this is probably more like one of those walls where you hold a peg in each hand.
Don’t do that Cathy. Just don’t give him any more ideas. He’s incorrigible enough as is.
When I first saw the cover art and heard the name, I figured it was going to be a professional wrestling game.
$1 (Steam version $3.99) asked if you heard the one about three guys laying in the same bed? They wake up in the morning and the guy on the left says “I had the best dream! I dreamed I was getting a wonderful handjob!” The guy on the right says “that’s weird, *I* dreamed *I* was getting a wonderful handjob!” The guy in the middle goes “I dreamed I was skiing!” in the making of this review.
A review copy of Mount Your Friends was provided to Indie Gamer Chick to test online functions. The copy purchased by Cathy was paid for by her with her own money. The review copy was given to a friend to test out online components. The person receiving it had no feedback in this review. For more on this policy, consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.
I wasn’t very nice to Hop Til You Drop when I briefly covered it a couple of weeks ago. It’s a twitchy single-screen punisher that involves dodging random hazards the game spits at you. I immediately grasped what the game’s schtick would be and thought “this could be addictive.” But then I died and found out that replaying the game meant going through a seemingly endless series of menus. After just a couple more plays, I decided my time would better be spent brow beating the developer for being such a dummy. My hopes were that he would fix his game. He did. Good thing too, because SWAT was closing in on my house. I admit, taking his family hostage might have been going too far, but at Indie Gamer Chick, we like to take that extra step towards improving the game industry.
None of these screens will make sense. Just look at Aaron the Splazer’s video at the end of this review.
A lot of developers seem to take my advice on aspects of game design, which I have to say is more fucking cool than you can imagine. But a lot of the advice I give them is stuff that they should have come up with on their own. In that spirit, I’m going to offer makers of punishers the biggest no-brainer advice you’ll ever get.
Make your game addictive.
Sure, addictive gameplay varies from person to person. But there are steps you can take to maximum the potency of a game’s addictive potential. It all boils down to the speed and downtime. If you’re making a game where players will die a lot, keep the time between death and rebirth at a minimum. Look at some of the most successful punishers in recent years. In Super Meat Boy, when you die, BAM, you’re back to life. It’s a game that could offer a lot of frustration, but because the game skips theatrics and bullshit in favor of gameplay, you don’t notice it. Who has time to be frustrated when that giant saw you’ve been trying to jump over for the last ten minutes is right fucking there? Spelunky did this too. When you die in it, restarting the game is done with a single button press. The lack of downtime is what gives those games their hypnotic “just one more try” quality.
Now imagine if Super Meat Boy’s failures resulted in theatrical death animations followed by a menu. It would have been relegated to gaming purgatory. Nobody would remember it today. Super Meat Boy is famous for many things. It’s art style, historical gaming references, and challenge. But its success probably hinged on how accessible it was. It’s a game that wanted to be played, and so it cut the bullshit out. Gameplay was continuous with minimal interruptions. This is something all punishers should have. And yet it’s among the most common things bad punishers have wrong with them. I know you guys have all played these games. So how do you miss such an obvious thing? It’s not about the insane challenge. It never was. Those games succeeded because they were addictive. When a person can lose time to a game and not realize it, that’s a game that is more likely to spread by word-of-mouth.
In a way, it sucks that I won’t have Hop Til You Drop to point to as the poster child for that particular problem. But I’m happy this simple problem was fixed. Now, the game is genuinely fun. Controls might be a bit too loose, and sometimes the random traps are just plain not fair. The biggest problem by far with Hop Til You Drop is that it’s on the wrong platform. It’s the perfect micro-session game, suited more for playing on Vita via PlayStation Mobile. Because it requires precision movement, I wouldn’t want to play it on a touch device like iPhone. But on Vita? This would be the perfect game to bust out on a break. It doesn’t lend itself well to extended play sessions, which is what a platform like XBLIG is better suited for.
But fun is fun, and Hop Til You Drop is fun. There’s even a couple nifty new additions like bullet-time effects that kick in when you have a close call with an enemy. Or a moderately amusing time attack mode. So I do recommend Hop Til You Drop. It won’t have a lasting effect on you. Without online leaderboards, there won’t be a lot to keep you coming back. But it’s a worthy waste of a dollar and probably fifteen to thirty minutes on your Xbox. Congratulations go out to Chris Outen for saving his game. By the way, your mother’s pinky finger should arrive by Fed-Ex tomorrow.
80 Microsoft Points said this game was one “S” away from being a video game version of a gameshow I watched as a kid in the making of this review. Though I usually only watched it because I was too lazy to change the channel after Supermarket Sweep.
Hop Til You Drop is Chick Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. On July 1, the Leaderboard will go multi-platform to include indies from all consoles and handhelds.
From the studio that brought you the Oozi games comes an utterly generic, avatar-based punisher with bad level design. Can’t get enough of those. This is also one of those annoying auto-scrollers. Hate those in general. Especially hate them when they’re done vertically. I probably should have researched my game selection better, because there was almost no way I would have enjoyed Deadly Tomb from the get-go. Yea, it was a bit of a dick move for me to pick it. And if you’re expecting some Planet of the Apes style “it was a good game all along!” twist, think again. I played Avatar and the Deadly Tomb on the easy difficulty, because I’m shamefully bad at punishers and blunt in my admission of this. Even then, I found it to be beyond frustrating.
So boring I can’t even muster the humor to make a funny caption.
But, I think I must stress the difference between a fair challenge and an unfair challenge. I feel a fair challenge means you have a realistic (if far-fetched) shot at getting past an obstacle on your first attempt, using nothing but your reflexes and gaming acumen. When a player of any skill level has no remote shot of clearing some spots on their first try, that’s when a game crosses the line for me. It’s the difference between “smart-difficult” and “asshole-difficult.” Auto-scrolling punishers almost always fall into the asshole-difficult category, and Tomb is no exception. Things like timed-trap platforms combined with vertical auto-scrolling are just cruel, since your vertical field of vision isn’t as large as your horizontal vision. Not only that, but some sections of the game require you to clear timed sections, then drop down to a lower platform before climbing up. This is while a column of fire continuously rises. Unless you are 90% flawless in your run (which you probably won’t be), you have no reasonable chance of clearing these sections on your first attempt. By time you drop to those lower levels, the fire is probably already there and you’re doing your best impression of Frollo.
I’ve had this review sit unfinished for nearly a week now. I’ve made several attempts to finish it, but as of yet have been unsuccessful. Part of that has to do with the utterly generic theme. Whether or not I thought the Oozi games were ambitious, at least they aspired to look good. Avatar and the Deadly Tomb features a bland theme and boring graphics. It doesn’t exactly control that well either. The biggest problem is the wall-jump is handled the same way as the ledge-cling. Sometimes for those timed puzzles you’ll need to cling from a ledge. But most of the time you’ll just want to do wall jumps, but the clinging will get in the way of that. Screw it. I give up. There’s no way to describe my experience with Avatar and the Deadly Tomb in a stimulating way. The game was dull as a book on cooking with tofu, although I would recommend reading that over playing Deadly Tomb. At least you’ll get something to eat out of it.
80 Microsoft Points noted their avatar would never actually have the guts to explore a deadly tomb so the game made no sense from a story perspective either in the making of this review. Then again, my avatar wouldn’t snowboard, do parkour, or run across the top of a moving train either. It’s kind of a coward.
Avatar Physics: Running was developed by Bwoot Games (blog hasn’t been updated in over a year, always a good sign)
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