The Future of Indie Gamer Chick

January 31, 2013 by 11 Comments

It’s been 580 days since I started Indie Gamer Chick.  In that time, I’ve reviewed 352 games, 327 of which are for Xbox Live Indie Games.  My participation in the XBLIG community has been nothing short of life changing for me.  Sometimes my reviews aren’t exactly nice, so being embraced by developers was not something that I expected.  I feel like I’ve been adopted by a loving, nurturing family.  Yea, Xbox Live Indie Games don’t always produce the highest quality of titles, but that’s the price you pay for having an open platform.  For all the bitching people (including myself) do about some truly abysmal games that were intended to be bad from the get-go, it’s all worth it.  It created a place where talented, enthusiastic dreamers could create and market their very own video games.

Proof that XBLIG isn't dead: there's some very exciting looking titles still on the horizon. This is Ring Runner, coming this Summer. Click the picture for a trailer.

Proof that XBLIG isn’t dead: there’s some very exciting looking titles still on the horizon. This is Ring Runner, coming this Summer. Check out their YouTube channel by clicking the picture.

Unfortunately, word from Microsoft leaked this week that XNA, which is the sole development language of Xbox Live Indie Games, has begun to be phased out.  While not discontinued, XNA is now classified as “no longer under development.”  Along with this, all current XNA MVPs will be relieved of their duties on April 1, 2014.  This has caused widespread mourning among the XBLIG community.  Mind you, we’re over a year away from the date that MVPs are being let go.  Still, the future of Xbox Live Indie Games, which was always shaky at best, now seems downright bleak.

To clear-up some misconceptions for those non-hardcore XBLIG fans that read me, Xbox Live Indie Games are, to the best of my knowledge, not being removed from the Xbox 360 Marketplace at this time.  In fact, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be around for at least another year.  If the time comes where membership to the App Hub is stopped, then you can feel free to panic.  However, there’s no question that XBLIGs as we know them today will cease to exist sometime in the future.  Hopefully some questions will be answered with the next generation Xbox is unveiled in the coming months.

Another reason to stay excited about Xbox Live Indie Games: DLC Quest has a sequel on the way. It's called Live Freemium or Die and it's coming "very soon" says creator Ben Kane. Click

Another reason to stay excited about Xbox Live Indie Games: DLC Quest has a sequel on the way. It’s called Live Freemium or Die and it’s coming “very soon” says creator Ben Kane. Okay, so I’m the one and only person who begged him to NOT do a sequel, but if anyone can prove me wrong, it’s him.  Click the picture for the trailer.

The end of XNA is not the end of Xbox Live Indie Games.  Indies will factor into the next generation Xbox.  Not because Xbox Live Indie Games was a rousing success, because it wasn’t.  It’s because the game industry is trending this way.  iPhone has become one of the most successful gaming consoles in history.  Sony has created its own open-to-anyone platform.  This is the direction the industry is heading.  Microsoft won’t keep indies around because they’re trendy or because they’re artists.  They’ll do so because it’s sound business sense.

In the meantime, my fans on Twitter want to know what this means for Indie Gamer Chick.  Well, since Xbox Live Indie Games aren’t going anywhere in the immediate future, I’m not going anywhere either.  Yea, I suffered from a bit of burnout earlier this month, but then a couple of games came along that reminded me why I’ve stuck by this platform for the last eighteen months.  Of course, I can’t say what the future holds once XBLIGs begin to roll out on the next generation platform.   Whether they remain the focus of my site will depend on how open the platform is and the volume of games released on it.  If it sees the same amount of games as PlayStation Mobile, I obviously wouldn’t be able to center my site around it.  Thankfully, my name is Indie Gamer Chick, and thus I’m not tied down to anything.

Heh, sorry Tim.

Escape Goat 2 might not come to Xbox Live Indie Games, which is exactly why I need to start paying more attention to other avenues of indie gaming.

Escape Goat 2 might not come to Xbox Live Indie Games, which is exactly why I need to start paying more attention to other avenues of indie gaming.  You can head to the developer’s website by clicking the picture and threaten bodily harm if he doesn’t release on XBLIG.  Or, you know, ask politely.

I am announcing that I’m going to include more coverage of non-XBLIG platforms.  Until recently, reviews of games on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS, and Wii U eShop were rare here.  That’s going to change.  Xbox Live Indie Games will remain the primary focus of my site until Xbox Live Indie Games cease to be.  But I’ll also make a good effort to have one non-XBLIG review weekly.  Along with this, you can also expect features like Indies in Due Time (returning soon) and Tales from the Dev Side to look outside of Xbox Live Indie Games.  In fact, the MonoGame Team will be doing an editorial sometime in the near future.  There might also be changes in the Leaderboard in July in time for my second year anniversary, so that it includes iOS and PlayStation Mobile titles.  I’ll keep those elitist PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade games off it.  Snooty bastards.  And don’t even get me started on Wii U’s eShop.  It seems to have suffered some kind of gaming version of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

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Squadron Scramble

January 29, 2013 by 6 Comments

I hate reviewing local-only multiplayer games.  First, you have to round-up players.  Then you have to tell them what we’re playing.  Then they leave, because they thought they were coming over to play something they’ve heard of, and you have to round-up more players.  Writing these reviews makes me sound like a broken record, because there’s only so many ways to say “it’s tough to sell non-indie fanatics on playing these games.”  Even when they turn out to be exceptional, like Hidden in Plain Sight, the real challenge is finding interested parties to play.  I think I would have an easier time finding people who want to watch a video of me having my appendix removed.

Squadron Scramble ups the ante by offering eight player local support.  Uh huh.  Excuse me for one second.

(Ahahahahahaha!  Eight players?  Wahahahahaha yea right!)

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Seriously, I even don’t know eight people by name.  There’s Brian, Mommy, Daddy, and everyone else is Whatshisface.  And this is one of those games where you get eight players by sharing controllers, with one person using the left stick and trigger and the other person using the right one.  It’s the gaming version of a three-legged race.  Finding three other competent players would be tough enough, but seven more?  Tee-hee, right.  Plus, I’m quitting smoking right now and nobody wants to be within assault-and-battery distance from me, let alone sitting right next to me, getting their hand-sweat all over MY controller.

Thus, I only found three other suckers to play Squadron Scramble with, and surprise, we had a damn good time playing it.  Actually, it’s not that surprising.  As long as the game is fast-paced, user-friendly, and not broken, any four player experience is bound to be jolly-good entertainment.  Such as the case here, where you have 2D dog fights with all actions reduced to one stick and one button.  Anyone can pick it up and play it.  Whether they play it well is really irrelevant to the amount of fun you can have.  That’s the mark of a good multiplayer game.  At first, Squadron Scramble does that.  It just doesn’t last.

The first thing you have to do in Squadron Scramble is move a little dude into a hanger.  Once you enter the hanger, you take off in a fighter jet.  Each player gets a team of four dudes.  You get a point for every plane you shoot down.  If you’re in the sky and get shot, your dude parachutes down.  You have two options from this point: you can return the dude to the hanger, or you can switch him out for another dude.  Since points are tied to dudes that are alive, switching out is meant to add an element of strategy to the game.  Switching out dudes “banks” whatever points are made and protects them, since you lose all points scored with a dude if he dies.  Sounds like a good idea, but actually this was a game crippler for my session.

The game goes by rounds, with the person who has the most points winning each round.  You need three rounds to win.  Here’s the problem: points carry over between rounds.  So if one player builds an insurmountable lead, they can spend the next couple rounds stalling, with their highest-scoring guys grounded, and never worry about losing.  It’s an utterly brain-dead decision and it ruined more than one session of Squadron Scramble, because it was too easy to protect a lead.

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This is one of those times where the developers lost track of the fact that not everyone who plays their game will be as highly knowledgeable or skilled as they are.  They forget that they, you know, made the fucking thing and thus know how to play it best.  It’s not exactly the same as making a punisher too hard and losing track of that, but it’s a common theme in multiplayer games.  I’ve had five developers who make such games send me detailed instructions on how to best play their games to ensure maximum entertainment.  The developers of Squadron Scramble did this too.  Nice guys, mind you.  And very patient, considering that I’ve delayed and delayed this review.  I like their game.  I’m putting it on the Leaderboard.  But it’s time for a reality check, fellas: unless you’re going to personally contact every person who purchases your game and give them the same instructions, which obviously you can’t do, you should recognize that maybe your game has a problem.  If you need to explain to people the best ways to make your game fun, you’ve screwed up somewhere along the line.  The best multiplayer games are self-explanatory.  Choppy Chomp-Chomp, the only multiplayer game to reach the top 10 on this site, requires no hand-holding.  Squadron Scramble shouldn’t need to, but the developers wanted to hold my hand anyway.  Personal space, guys.  Don’t make me break out the pepper spray.

It’s still fun though.  Very fun, in fact.  It’s hugely satisfying to shoot down a guy on a scoring-streak, watch them parachute to the ground, and then Kamikaze your plane into them before they can duck into the hanger.  The controls have only a slight learning curve.  The action is incredibly fast-paced.  I wouldn’t at all recommend trying eight players though.  We played with four players and four AI planes, and the game became an unmanageable clusterfuck that nobody could follow.  Also, there’s not a ton of depth here.  While games like Hidden in Plain Sight might be dusted off from time to time, you’ll get one, maybe two, sessions out of Squadron Scramble and then mothball it for good.  Not because it’s bad, but because it wears thin after an hour or two.  Once a player emerges from the group as the unquestioned God of the session, the rules skew too much in their favor.  This either leads to everyone ganging up on them, or the leader stalling, none of which produce exciting gameplay for anyone involved.  Squadron Scramble’s first hour will be the best, and then it will all fall apart after that.  That’s fine.  That’s how every Will Smith movie plays out, and people still watch them.

xboxboxartSquadron Scramble was developed by DepthCharge Software

80 Microsoft Points stabbed their boyfriend in the ribs for humming Ride of the Valkyries in the making of this review.

IGC_ApprovedSquadron Scramble is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  With online play, it might have been a top-10 contender.

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Scribendus

January 22, 2013 by 1 Comment

Did you know that when they tested the first atomic bomb, those involved took bets on what they thought might happen?  Mostly it was about the amount of kilotons the explosion would be, but there were also side bets such as whether or not it would kill all present, cause the fault line to collapse, knock the Earth off its axis, or blow up the entire planet.  I’m not sure how the winner would have collected if the last option had won out, but it’s true and well documented, and only some of those bets were tongue-in-cheek.  Smart guys who, truth be told, had no fucking clue what would happen.  With some experiments, you can’t know until you push the button.

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Scribendus attempts to combine Scrabble and Tetris.  I’m sure this has been attempted before (someone steered me in the direction of a Tetris-craze era title called Wordtris) but I’ve never played one.  It’s a concept that seems like it should work, but in this case, it doesn’t.  The idea is two letters at a time drop from the ceiling and you have to stack them in a way that forms a word.  You can build a word (minimum four letters) diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.   The problem of course, is being given two random letters at a time doesn’t leave you a whole lot of room for strategy or versatility.  I consider myself pretty dang good at word games, but I couldn’t make Scribendus work for me.  The only strategy that seemed to work was trying to build one decent sized (six letter or so) word across the bottom and stacking all other blocks on the side, but even this didn’t work.  I got my best score by completely ignoring the letters all together and just stacking the blocks randomly, spacing the vowels apart from each other.  Using this technique, I scored big points and multiple combos.  And I don’t even know what words I made.

I can’t really slam Scribendus too much.  It looks good, sounds good, and controls good.  It feels to me like a worthy experiment that failed.  That will happen in the land of indies.  While my enthusiastic fans might want to me to shred every game that isn’t good, now might be a good time to remind readers that it’s okay to try something new and not have it succeed.  Sometimes you can’t know if something will work until you create it and market it.  Look at Lexiv, the Scrabble-meets-Sim City game.  That could have just as well been a disaster too.  I admire creator Dave Turka for giving it a try.  His particular Manhattan Project simply failed to detonate, and now he become derp, destroyer of words.

xboxboxartScribendus was developed by Pygmalion’s Box

80 Microsoft Points noted that a man named Isidor Isaac Rabi won the Trinity test betting pool with a guess of 18 kilotons (actual explosion was 18.6 kilotons) in the making of this review.  His opponents overbid, allowing him to take both showcases. 

 

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Platformer from Hell and Little Acorns Deluxe

January 20, 2013 by 9 Comments

Platformer from Hell comes from Hoosier Games, a group of academics from Indiana.  I know, I know.  Academics?  In Indiana?  I went “Hah!” too, but upon further research, they do have institutes of higher learning there.  I’m not sure what is considered higher learning in Indiana.  “Cow Tipping 101” or “Why you can’t pork your sister” I would imagine are on the agenda.  I’m kidding of course.  Actually, I’m quite friendly with project manager Derrick Fuchs (I hope that’s pronounced the way I think it is) and I ranked their previous effort, Warp Shooter, on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  It was flawed but functional and fun.  I applauded their efforts and looked forward to their next game.  Which is here.  And it sucks.  A lot.

Where's Waldo? causes less squinting.

Where’s Waldo? causes less squinting.

It’s a punisher, of course.  But it’s one of those tedious, excruciating punishers where dying and restarting levels is more of a chore than an acceptable part of the gameplay.  This is partially because levels are overly large and pathways to victory are sprawling, convoluted nightmares.  A good punisher, if there is such a thing (there is) should be fast paced and frequent deaths need to be handled in a way that doesn’t make them feel like a chore.  Well, Platformer from Hell feels like a chore, with me cast in the role of Cinderella and bad jumping physics and boring level design co-starring as the wicked step-sisters.

And then there’s the graphics.  The characters and some of the traps in Platformer from Hell are practically microscopic.  I have a TV large enough to double as King Kong’s monocle, and yet the star of the game is a teeny-tiny little spec of pixels that vaguely resembles a person.  Although this does allow you to see more of the stage and plan out which routes you’ll take faster, the drawback is you’ll suffer eye-strain and end up needing a monocle yourself.  Another problem with the graphics is sometimes the background is overly bloomy and it drowns out the ability to properly see the hazards, especially spikes.  Ultimately, it’s a game that’s intent is to frustrate and anger players, not entertain.  Derrick noted to me that any faults with the game are his fault, not his team of students.  Duly noted.  That’s why I’m teaching the next lesson, which will be “how to tar and feather a fellow human being.”  Alright guys, we’ll need 5 old feather pillows and some tar, or honey if no tar can be found.  Trust me, this will be fun.

Actually, a better lesson could probably be learned from Little Acorns Deluxe by Team Pesky.  It’s a platformer that does ramp up in challenge, but in a natural way that gives players room to grow instead of throwing them straight into the deep end on their first day of swimming lessons.  Here you play as the patriarch of a family of chipmunks.  No, not Dave Seville.  An actual chipmunk, who must go through stages collecting acorns for winter stock-up.  At first, Little Acorns might seem a tad bit on the easy side.  Enemies don’t really kill you.  They just turn you green and slow you down.  The only way to die is to drown in water, but that doesn’t show up too often.  The real challenge is the time limit in each stage, but it’s fairly generous.  As you go along, you’re given new abilities like a rope to swing on special platforms or crash through bricks with.  It’s alright.  I guess.

It’s never really too difficult.  I never had to repeat a stage more than once.  Part of that is Little Acorns got its start as a Windows Phone game.  You can’t really ramp up difficulty too much in a phone game, where players have to spend the majority of the time fighting the crappy digital-controls.  With a proper controller, the game plays relatively smoothly.  I found the rope physics to be somewhat goofy, but not a deal breaker.

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Why I’m having a hard time getting excited is Little Acorns is a little on the dull side.  Whether you’re gathering acorns or rounding up your children, the game never really feels original or engaging.  There’s no real original hook to sink you into the experience, and no storyline or big twists in the gameplay to keep you going once you’ve started.  Not that games need such devices, but they go a long way on the indie scene.  Little Acorns is not outstanding on the grounds that it does not stand out.  It is a decent, solid game that will give you four to six hours of platforming that you’ll be satisfied with once it’s over and forget all about in a day or two.  The reason I reviewed it here is because the contrast between it and Platformer from Hell couldn’t be more jarring.  One game gathers up all the nuts and isolates them in a cold, hollow place.  The other is a game about chipmunks.

xboxboxart1IGC_ApprovedPlatformer from Hell was developed by Hoosier Games

Little Acorns Deluxe was developed by Team Pesky

80 Microsoft Points each can’t tell their squirrels from their chipmunks in the making of this review.

Little Acorns Deluxe is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  If I was a rodent, I would be a Chickmunk. 

Gameplay footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer.

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Storage Warfare

January 16, 2013 by 1 Comment

I had never seen Storage Wars on A&E before I picked up Storage Warfare on XBLIG yesterday.  I got it because the concept seemed weird and different.  When I tweeted that this was the next game up for review, I had a few people ask questions like “is there an annoying guy who screams “YEAAAAAH” when he bids?”  Mostly people just bitched about how this was obviously a lazy attempt to capitalize on a semi-popular, semi-obscure cable-based reality television show.  Obviously schlock like Storage Warfare will usher in the fall of gaming as we know it, rendering all previous games obsolete, and burying your Zeldas, Metal Gears, and Skyrims under a mountain of games based on Dog the Bounty Hunter or Honey Boo Boo.

I guess that means the guys behind Storage Warfare must be especially diabolical, seeing how it’s been on iPhone and Android long before it’s XBLIG release yesterday.  Not content to toil in obscurity on iPhone, they had to port to XBLIG, where their title is certain to sell at least 73 copies.  Greedy bastards.

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Who in their right mind would keep a safe with stacks of cash in a storage locker? Wouldn’t that cash have been put to better use by, I dunno, using the cash to pay off the debt to the facility so that they didn’t auction off your shit?

In all seriousness, who gives a shit what the game is based on?  Is it fun should be the big question, which oddly enough, only one person out of twenty asked.  Everyone else moaned in disappointment like they just got done having fellatio performed on them by a dust buster with a broken motor.  Shouldn’t the “is it fun?” question trump all?  I’m open to a game based on pretty much any TV show, as long as it’s fun.  Dead serious.  It could be a game based on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show and I would slap my seal of approval on it if I had fun playing it.  So is Storage Warfare fun?  Kinda.

The concept is you have one year to make as great a profit as possible by bidding on storage lockers.  You start with $1,500 in seed money.  Every month, there’s three auctions, each with three lockers to bid on, and each has a different level of wealth associated with it.  The first auction every month is a skid row style storage unit, the second is the middle class one, and the third is the ritzy one.  You don’t actually get to inspect the items beforehand.  Instead, you see a graphical representation of what is found in each unit.  You bid on the whole locker, not individual items.  If you win, you get to see what you’ve won, and it tallies whether you turned a profit or lost money.  After you’ve completed one full year (36 auctions, 108 total lockers to bid on) the amount of money you have left is ranked on a local-only leaderboard.  That’s the whole game.

I like the idea and I had fun here, but the concept certainly doesn’t go as far as it should.  Among other problems, there’s not a huge variety in items.  Barely halfway through the “year” and I had seen off all but two or three items on the checklist.  Of course, the phone version has had a couple stand-alone expansions, which I’m sure will make their way to XBLIG sooner or later.  A bigger problem is how much luck factors into things.  I tried to play the game smart and cool, passing on some auctions that I felt were getting bid-up by the AI too much.  I finished the year with a profit of about $20,000.  And then I fetched my dear mommy, a fan of the source material, to let her have a go at it.  Unlike me, she bid on EVERY SINGLE LOCKER.  And she won.  She beat me by about $5,000, even though she employed nothing remotely resembling strategy or skill.  I hate that bitch.

It kind of turns Storage Warfare into a video scratch-off ticket.  No skill needed, success is totally based on chance.  The best strategy seems to be figuring out what the average bid the AI opponents will top out at and trying to hit just under that mark on your first bid.  But even then, you’re at the mercy of dumb luck.  Plus, the gameplay is shallow and the replay value is too limited.  Not to mention they missed out on an obvious local-only multiplayer mode where friends and family bid against each-other.  Even my Mom questioned why they didn’t include that.  It’s such a no-brainer that someone without a brain couldn’t understand why such a mode is not included.

I guess comic/guitar/

I guess comic/guitar/samurai sword/Rembrandt collectors have trouble paying their bills.

For all those reasons, I should have probably hated Storage Warfare.  But I didn’t.  It takes about a half-hour or so to run through an entire year and I had fun with it.  Once it was done, I wouldn’t want to play it again, but I don’t feel I wasted my dollar.  What’s here is limited, but undeniable enjoyable.  They probably could go a lot further.  My mother noted that the show (which has an official game on Facebook) is more about conflicts and possibly artificial drama than the actual auctions, none of which is really present here.  Maybe they could make a deeper, character-driven RPG-like experience, but they didn’t.  Storage Warfare is the perfect poster-child for casual gaming: a shallow, stupid time sink that you’ll ultimately ask others to join you with, like some kind of cult indoctrination.

xboxboxartStorage Warfare was developed by 24KT Studios

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points noted that a Charlie Rose game could be okay if they did it L.A. Noire style in the making of this review. 

Storage Warfare is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

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Genix

January 12, 2013 by 3 Comments

Damnit.  Damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit!!

sad-puppy

How did this happen?  Early on in my play through of Genix, I felt I was playing a pretty good game.  I tweeted that it was “fucking awesome.”  I joked about having a “chick-boner” over it.  I probably should have put more than an hour into it.  What started as a fun neo-retro space jaunt ends up turning into a tedious, sprawling mess riddled with unfairness and frustration.  It’s one of the most disastrous turns I’ve seen an XBLIG make.

Genix’s hook is centered around its unique presentation.  The free-floating line graphics over a static background gives the game a holographic look similar to “floating image” games of the 70s and 80s like Sea Wolf, or especially Asteroids Deluxe.  This effect is also known as the “Pepper’s Ghost” and is used to create the special effects in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland.  While playing this, my boyfriend commented that Genix, more than any other XBLIG covered at Indie Gamer Chick, belongs in an arcade.  Imagine a cocktail cabinet hosting Genix, using the Pepper’s Ghost effect.  It would be spectacular to look at.  Hell, it’s pretty damn nice to look at now on a television.  Even better was the amount of restraint shown by the developers to never allow the graphics to get in the way of gameplay, which is such a common mistake on games this stylistic.  It’s too bad this restraint didn’t extend to level design.  It’s like an alcoholic who triples his cigarette intake to quit drinking.

Screen shots don't do Genix justice.

Screen shots don’t do Genix justice.

Genix is all about navigating labyrinthine stages, looking for keys and doors to mate with the keys, shooting enemy ships and searching for an exit.  It’s certainly a different concept on the space shooter genre.  It’s probably been done before, but being a whippersnapper, this was new to me.  And at first, I enjoyed it.  Levels were well-organized, the mazes were clever, and the combat was.. well, that was always a bit tedious, but never annoyingly so.  The problem with the shooting is the enemies are pretty dang spongy.  Getting past early enemies isn’t so much a challenge as it is a device for killing the game’s pace.  The spongy enemies also combine with limited ammo to create a sort of puzzle effect on the game.  Although totally optional, Genix keeps track of how many enemies you take out in each stage.  It seems to give you just enough bullets in each stage to defeat every enemy.  This could have been a clever device to extend the game’s shelf-life, but the problem is it’s just not implemented in a fun way.  Enemies take so many bullets and firing them is so loosely done (even a snap-pull of the trigger fires multiple rounds) that you end up having to pump the fire button, shooting one round at a time in hopes of not wasting a single bullet.  It stretches the combat beyond boring and into the realm of torture.

But, the well designed stages more than made up for this, and I never grew tired of the beautiful graphics.

And then something happened.

About ten stages in, Genix gets teeth, and not in a good way.  Enemy turrets that fire quickly and are dead-on every shot are placed around corners in a way designed to guarantee you take damage.  Enemies are also placed just around corners in ways that force you to take damage rather than being able to strategically take them out.  Levels become more sprawling, sometimes taking ten minutes or longer to complete.  Your health drains relatively quickly and there are no checkpoints, so imagine putting ten minutes into a stage just to die because a boss appears out of nowhere and you’re trapped in close-quarters combat with a sliver of energy remaining.  That means you get to replay those ten minutes again.  Sometimes I don’t mind it, but Genix’s design doesn’t really lend itself well to forced-replays.  It also doesn’t help that weapon upgrades are dull and don’t really help so much with the sponge factor.  In early videos of the game, enemies don’t seem to be such bullet-eating bastards, so what happened?  Why do I get the feeling this is yet another example of a developer getting too good at their own game and beefing it up for their personal benefit, to the detriment of others?

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An hour into Genix, I had it pegged as a top-20 game, but it’s not.  I can’t even put it onto the Leaderboard.  It has too many problems, chief of which is the game ramps up the difficulty by being a dick instead of being a fair challenge.  This dissolves the early sense of awe and makes the problems that were always present stick out much more.  Control is too loose, firing is too loose, the levels have too much needless backtracking, enemy design is basic and boring, and the game has serious pacing issues.  Like sometimes a tiny box-shaped stage with no maze elements appears at random that feels totally out-of-place.  Or sometimes you’ll get a new gun (like the plasma cannon) and realize that maybe it DOES kill enemies faster, but it also uses ammo faster, thus maintaining the status quo.  Let me stress that Genix has all the potential in the world to be something special.  Not by tearing it down and rebuilding it from scratch, but just by using some common sense and a little bit of patchwork.  This could very well be a top-10 game, but I can’t recommend it.  Like the crater that enjoys eating donkeys, Genix is too in love with being an asshole.

xboxboxartGenix was developed by Xpod Games

240 Microsoft Points (160 points too much) are practically begging for this game to get patched and ask for a Second Chance with the Chick in the making of this review.

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Light Fighters

January 10, 2013 by 21 Comments

I admit, I haven’t been very productive as of late.  I think I’m suffering from some sort of XBLIG-related malaise.  Part of that comes from getting so many review requests for games that just don’t seem that interesting.  I’m not talking about games that look bad or play bad, but just the type of stuff anyone (besides those that made it) would have a tough time getting excited over.

Take Light Fighters by Deviant Spark for example.  It’s not an awful game by any means.  It’s not really good either, but what’s wrong with it is so insubstantial that trying to get a full review that’s also entertaining to read is like trying to dig a canal using a plastic spoon.  The main focus of the game is local-only multiplayer combat.  This is almost never a good idea on XBLIG.  Even really great party titles on the platform, like Chompy Chomp Chomp or Hidden in Plain Sight, are tough sells for non-indie-loving nerds.  You developers really need to meditate on this fact.  Close your eyes and try to picture someone like me pitching a game like Light Fighters to my friends.

“We’re spaceships.  We try to shoot at each-other’s spaceship.  This goes on until one of us dies.  Here, look at the trailer.”

“Uhhh………huh.  And you think we should play this over Borderlands 2, why?

“Because, um, because I’m Indie Gamer Chick?”

“That’s cool.  We’re not though.”

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By the way, this doesn’t include Brian, who is really supportive of this whole Indie Gamer Chick thing that I’ve fallen into.  But his support has limits.  Especially when he’s listened to me whine about how bad the single-player modes of the game are for hours.  The AI in the tournament mode is just too good at shielding shots, which can make matches drag on for ten, fifteen minutes with no progress being made.  And the meteor mode is awful too because it’s slow, your bullets get used up too fast and take too long to reload, power-ups are too slow to arrive, and yet it’s somehow still too easy.  By time it’s his turn to jump in, he knows better.

“Okay Brian, let’s try this multiplayer.”

“Is that the game you’ve been having a chick-boner over?”

“No, that’s Genix.  I’m writing that review tomorrow.  This is for Light Fighters.”

“The one you’ve been complaining about?”

“Yea.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“But, I need to try this multiplayer.”

“Your dad is home, get him.”

“Oh come on, please?”

“No.  Cathy, if you’re not liking it at all, why would you attempt to subject your friends to it?”

“Because, um, I’m Indie Gamer Chick!”

“And I’m Nippy Nuts the Car Guy.  What’s your point?”

“Um, misery loves company?”

“I’m not really feeling like being in the company of misery today.”

“It probably won’t be THAT bad!”

“But you think it will be bad.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, but no.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll give you a back rub!”

“Your hands are too tiny for it.”

“I’ll take you out for a rib dinner!”

“See, now that you’ve said that, you’ll be craving a rib dinner and I’ll get it anyway.”

“I’ll blow you.”

“I’ll get that anyway too.”

Okay, so such a conversation didn’t really take place.  I wouldn’t offer to blow Nippy Nuts just to get him to play a game with me, and he actually would step up if I pressed the matter.  But do I really want to?  A game’s goal is to grab you from the get-go with an interesting hook and fun gameplay, and the two hours I spent with it were, while not outright painful, pretty damn dull.

I did end up having a bit of a go with multiplayer and it was just as bland and exhausting as I suspected it would be.  Mind you, this is a perfectly functional game that features decent (if somewhat primitive) graphics and solid play control.  It’s just not fun.  It wasn’t fun to play, it wasn’t fun to explain to my friends so that I could squeeze in some multiplayer rounds, and it wasn’t fun to write about.  It took me a few weeks to get to this review, in part because Brian was on vacation, but also in part because I promised the developer I would review it and immediately had buyer’s remorse.

I would like to say that the developer of Light Fighters has been nothing short of classy, and quite patient considering that I had to put his review on hold for a couple of weeks.  So hopefully he takes the news that I didn’t enjoy his game at all with good grace, instead of accusing me of being a lying crackwhore who has failed to comprehend the genius of his game.  I’m guessing he won’t be a poo thrower though.  He actually has talent and class.  Typically it’s only the completely talentless that resort to flinging poo and making themselves a total clown for the bemusement of the community.

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There is nothing really wrong with Light Fighters besides not being fun.  The game didn’t crash.  There weren’t physics glitches.  Everything wrong with it can be boiled down to “this game probably had no chance of being entertaining from the onset and the developer should have recognized that and tried something else.”  Even if the ships were more interesting, or the bullets they fired more exotic, or the AI less unfair, or the reload-rates less painfully slow, or if multiplayer matches didn’t all boil down to glorified button mashers that leave little to no room for strategy, or if it had something to keep track of what your best times are in meteor mode, or if the meteors weren’t so fucking spongy, or all of the above, Light Fighters still would have been boring.  Don’t forget to ask play testers “is this fun?”  Because that’s just as important as whether the game is functional or broken.  Don’t just ask if it’s fun, but ask follow-up questions too.  “Why is it fun?”  “Why isn’t it fun?”  “What could make it more fun?”  Which, I’ll admit, will put your fellow developers in an awkward position.  It’s the equivalent of your girlfriend asking if this dress makes her look fat.  And it does.

xboxboxartLight Fighters was developed by Deviant Spark

80 Microsoft Points would be interested in playing a game called Deviant Spark in the making of this review.  I bet it would be about a Transformer who enjoys streaking and showing people his collection of nude playing cards. 

“Ha, good one Cathy!  Hey, isn’t that.. is that Michael Bay taking notes?”

“Huh?  What?  Oh fuck, hey, NO!  DO NOT PUT THAT IN THE NEXT MOVIE!  DIDN’T YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM MUDFLAP AND SKIDS?!!”

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Trivia or Die, Trivia or Die: Movie Edition, Avatar Trivia Party 2, and What The?!

January 8, 2013 by 3 Comments

I’m into trivia, and I would like to think I’m pretty good at trivia.  How good?  I’m banned from playing any and all trivia with friends and family.  The last attempt at doing so was playing Trivial Pursuit 5 on 1, with me being by myself, plus I was banned from getting to continue my turn if I got a question right.  I still won three games to zero, and suddenly people were more interested in playing Sorry! or Uno instead.  I was also asked politely to abstain from participating in trivia night at our country club.  They said I was single-handedly responsible for a drop off in attendance, and since trivia night was one of their most profitable events, I would be doing them a big favor by not showing up.  Then they advertised that trivia night was Cathy-free.  I’m kind of proud of that.

So reviewing some trivia-based XBLIGs would be a chore, but thankfully, all of today’s games could be played single-player as well.  I then simply observed my parents play a round of each game to make sure they functioned as multiplayer efforts.  Of course, a little piece of me died every time they missed a lay-up like “how many colors are on France’s national flag?”  Sigh.  I must have been adopted.

Trivia Or Die

Like all the games featured today, Trivia or Die is pretty basic.  The only real hook is if you miss a question, the host of the game insults you.  Not only is the insult kind of poor as far as insults go, but it’s done by what I think is meant to be a stereotypical Japanese game show host.  It’s as bad as it sounds.  The other gimmick is once a game ends, the losing players are killed by being dropped into a pit of fire.  Not as cool as it sounds.

The first one of you to say "TOASTY!" is getting bayonetted right in the fucking eyeball.

The first one of you to say “TOASTY!” is getting bayonetted right in the fucking eyeball.

As far as the game goes, everything you need to know about Trivia or Die can be summed up with saying the first answer to the first question of the game was wrong.  What kills the most people: lightning strikes, earthquakes, or hurricanes?  The game says lightning strikes.  Sounded wrong to me, and a quick check on Google finds numbers for all three scenarios to be all over the board.  There doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer that has statistics and shit to back it up.  So it probably should have been left out of a multiple-choice trivia game.  It wasn’t, so I can’t recommend it.  Though if someone can find multiple sources to back up the lightning strike claim, I’ll change this to a mild recommendation.

Trivia or Die: Movie Edition

This is the exact same game as Trivia or Die, only it features movie-themed questions.  And it’s better on account of having no answers be inaccurate.  However, I should point out that there’s still some writing mistakes.  A quick example that gave me a chuckle: Goodfellas is called “Goodfellows.”  Somehow, Goodfellows is not such an interesting sounding movie.  Goodfellows sounds like it would star Woody Allen as a carpet salesman or something.  Oh, and there are issues with how questions are worded.  “What was the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar?”  Well, that would be the Flowers and the Trees from 1932.  But, that’s not an answer, so I’m guessing they meant “What was the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.”  That would be Beauty and the Beast.  Yea, I knew what they meant, but it’s still lazy.  And now I’m just being nit-picky.  Trivia or Die Movie Edition will serve as a semi-competent time waster that might barely be worth $1 if you have three friends of equal skill.

What kind of fucking moron would answer Y to tha.. DADDY HOW COULD YOU??

What kind of fucking moron would answer Y to.. DADDY HOW COULD YOU??

Avatar Trivia Party 2

It’s exactly the same game as the first one, only there’s different questions and a different board.  It’s like Mario Party, only with trivia.  Of course, actual trivia skills are not required to win.  In the original game, I lost a match to Brian where I never missed a single question and he missed significantly more than a single question.  What followed I think is legally classified as domestic assault.  Either way, I like the board in this one better than the original, and it is fun.  You can read my original review for more detailed thoughts on it.

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What The?!

And I close out with the worst of the four games, which really sucks because it also had the most effort put into it.  It has full voice acting, which would be cool.  It would be, if the actors didn’t totally half-ass the whole thing.  There’s two guys: a host, and an announcer.  The announcer is actually the guy who reads the questions, and he at least seems to put some effort into his work.  It’s still awful, and the guy sounds like he’s so bored that he might fall asleep.  But he has the right voice for an announcer, so we’ll give them a half-point on it.  And then I’ll subtract a billion points for the host, who sounds like he would rather be dead than participate in this shit.  I’m not joking.  He sounds like he’s either coming out of a coma or going into one.  I’m sure some people will say they deserve props for having voice acting at all, but if it’s worth doing, is it not worth doing right?  Or with enthusiasm?

Otherwise, it’s just another bare-bones trivia game.  It’s set up to look like a 70s game show, but it doesn’t take advantage of this.  The hook here is you can occasionally “win prizes.”  They’re all gag prizes, but the weird part is, there’s no gag to go with them.  You can win the Moon as a prize, but there’s no joke or punchline to go with it.  Again, it’s another effort to give the game some personality that fails miserably.  And the bare-bones setup with the actual questions and answers, the lack of punchlines for the gag-products, and the ultra-slow pace really cripples What The?!  It has what should be the best feature of any of the games: a system in place that prevents you from being read the same questions more than once.  But that’s completely negated by how boring the overall experience is.  It would be like listening to Harry Potter’s book-on-tape and finding out the reader is Ben Stein.

Ho ho ho ho, this is so funny. After we're done with this episode, I'm going to go sit in my garage with the car motor running and the door shut.

The host has that “I’m going to sit in my garage with the engine running and the door shut” look on his face.

So I’ve tallied it as follows: Avatar Trivia Party 2 is the best of the bunch, but if you’ve already played Avatar Trivia Party, it offers nothing new besides a new board.  Trivia or Die: Movie Edition is competent but quite bland.  The original Trivia or Die is also bland but lacking in competence so you can feel free to pass on it.  Finally, approach What The?! only as a drug-free alternative to NyQuil.

xboxboxartTrivia or Die and Trivia or Die: Movie Edition were developed by Fun Infused Games

Avatar Trivia Party 2 was developed by Red Crest Studios

What The?! was developed by Social Loner Studios

80 Microsoft Points each dug a hole in the armrest of my couch with my fingernails while watching my parents miss question after question.  I tell you, it was worse than torture in the making of this review.

xboxboxart1IGC_ApprovedTrivia or Die: Movie Edition and Avatar Trivia Party 2 are Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  The other two games probably couldn’t tell you who is buried in Grant’s Tomb.

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Arcade of Neon

January 5, 2013 by 2 Comments

Other than a really annoying soundtrack, Arcade of Neon seems like it would have fit right at home on the Atari 2600.  This is one of those “dodge most everything, except the stuff you’re not supposed to dodge” games.  It’s loaded with play modes and can be addictive in a hypnotic “am I really having fun or am I being brainwashed into buying products I don’t need” kind of way.  It reminds me of my parents while they watch the Vampire Diaries.  Yes, my parents, ages 63 and 44, watch the Vampire Diaries.  Shame of my life, obviously.

It's not much to look at, but really, it can be fun.

It’s not much to look at, but really, it can be fun.

The concept is you’re a circle that has to dodge other circles.  Alternatively, you can absorb like-colored circles for points.  In the main mode of play, switching which color you are is handled with the face buttons and their corresponding colors.  So Y would be white, X is black, B is like a dark grey.. hey wait a second.  Oh, that’s right.  I have one of those controllers.  Well if you have a normal controller, you can look down for reference.  For whatever reason, my brain refused to retain that Green = A.  The other colors I could use fine, but for whatever reason my personal wiring refused to allow me to adjust to green with quick reflexes.  There’s probably some complex reason for that, but I’ll just save everyone some time and say that I’m an idiot.

There’s a ton of modes here that change-up the formula, including a game that I think was funded by SPECTRE with the aim of creating the ultimate weapon of boredom.  It’s like Pong, only it’s single player, you can’t possibly hit the ball past the computer, and the object is to keep returning the volleys.  Sometimes when the AI hits the ball back, it changes color, and you have to match the color with your paddle.  The problem is, the paddles are huge and the ball NEVER GETS FASTER!  I played it for like ten minutes and it was the most excruciatingly boring ten minutes of my entire life.  That’s not hyperbolic.  I’m dead serious.  We need to get scientists off the Hadron Collider and have them study this thing.  It’s the most remarkably bad game mode I’ve ever seen in my entire life and after ten minutes I was temporarily insane from it.  I set off a small fire in my office and had an extended conversation with my coffee table.  How does anyone come up with a game like this in 2013?

Avoid having sharp objects within reaching distance when attempting to play the Pong mode.

Avoid having sharp objects within reaching distance when attempting to play the Pong mode.

The rest of Arcade of Neon isn’t nearly that bad.  In fact, it’s a perfectly acceptable waste of a few minutes and at times fun.  But there’s a couple gigantic problems here.  There are ten modes of play available, but only one hi-score slot is present.  This is one of the biggest brain farts I’ve seen from a developer in a while.  Ten unique modes, one hi-score space that they all share together.  It’s really disappointing because I know the developer reads me and I figured I at least had enough influence (ha!) to make people second-guess such no-brainer choices.  Apparently he got no feedback from people saying “you know, if there’s ten unique game modes, people might want to know what their best score in each mode is.”  I’m so pissed about this that I’m banning him from further game development until he writes “I will use my head for something other than a hat rack” 100 times on a blackboard.  I don’t think I actually have that authority, but I don’t know if he knows that.

Another problem is I sort of already played a game that’s very similar to this, called Dot Dash Episode 1.  Although Arcade of Neon offers more play modes and a larger variety of objectives, Dot Dash had better graphics and play control for the same price.  Considering that Dot Dash barely landed a spot on the Leaderboard, I guess Arcade of Neon ought to miss the cut.   But my only real criteria is having fun, and I did have fun with Arcade of Neon.  I’m into twitchy arcade-style games, and it offers that.  It offers that in a no-frills, shitty package that doesn’t even offer more than one hi-score spot for ten modes of play, which I can’t stress enough is about as dumb as asking a narcotics officer for directions to the nearest opium den.  So yea, I guess I do very, very, very mildly recommend Arcade of Neon.  Just not the Pong mode.  Seriously, don’t touch that thing.  Don’t even think about it.  The Chinese are replacing their infamous water torture with it.  True story.

IGC_ApprovedxboxboxartArcade of Neon was developed by Ivatrix Games

80 Microsoft Points heard Devil Blood and Send in Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief in the making of this review.

Arcade of Neon is Chick Approved, even though in its case the Seal is affixed with the rancid snot of a walrus with the flu, and it’s ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Barely.

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Awesome Pirates

December 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

Awesome Pirates seems to be designed primarily with multiplayer in mind.  I had intended to use our holiday office party as an excuse to try it.  Forgot that people go to that party to like, drink and open presents and shit, so the game got passed over.   Well, a couple of days ago I had a chance to play it with three other people.  Those people were ages 5 to 8 too, which is fine.  It’s not the most complex title in the world.  You’re a pirate ship.  You shoot other pirate ships.

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The kiddies grasped this just fine, and after a small learning curve with the controls, we had some nice sea battles.  We put nearly an hour into this, and at one point I asked them what they thought.  The reply probably should have been expected.

“Can we play your Wii U instead?”

Hmph.

“But this is an Indie game!  You kids don’t understand!  You’re supposed to appreciate the pluck and devil-may-care attitude of this whole new generation of game developers!”

“Oh.  Hey, do you have Nintendo Land?”

At this point, I figured I had lost them.  I was fine with that myself.  Awesome Pirates isn’t really technically flawed, but it’s kind of boring.  This type of game has been done so many times now that unless you have a really good twist on the formula, it won’t hold anyone’s attention for long.  I did put an extra hour into single player, which is especially dull.  Decent graphics, good play control, and again, nothing really wrong here.  The game just isn’t fun.  The kids didn’t like it either, and that’s only partially because there was a Wii U staring them down.  The action is kind of slow, the power-ups pretty dull, and there’s just not a whole lot to this one.  Props to the developers for making a fully functional game that’s only sin is being boring, but now you guys have to make something that anyone can enjoy.

Oh, and I totally kicked the shit out of those little kids in Mario Chase.  Ha, yea, serves you little pricks right for making fun of me for not being able to throw a dragon punch!

xboxboxartAwesome Pirates was developed by Cheeky Mammoth

80 Pieces of Microsoft Eight walked the plank in t’ makin’ o’ this review

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