Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3

June 30, 2012 by 11 Comments

I never have been huge into Penny Arcade, or comic strips in general for that matter.  I did read it for years, but after a certain point it was done more out of habit.  I suppose it’s the same reason I always check what Garfield is up to every Sunday, even though I don’t think I’ve ever found a single joke in it to be funny.  I’m not sure anyone over the age of six ever has.  I heard a guy somewhere in the South once laughed at one of the endless “he’s a fat cat, get it?” gags, probably something involving lasagna, but that might be an urban legend.  At least Penny Arcade is topical to me, even if it’s really just observational humor with a couple generic stock characters conveying it.  It works, because we notice these things too.  And after going through their recent archives in preparation for this review, I learned that it’s still funny.  I mean come on, who could have watched E3 and not laugh at this?

Having said that, I really didn’t enjoy the first two Penny Arcade games.  And it had nothing to do with developer Hothead Games, who went on to do Deathspank and The Swarm, a couple of my favorite PSN titles.  I have a theory on this, and it goes like so: maybe these characters don’t actually lend themselves well to being in a video game.  Penny Arcade belongs outside the confines of the industry, looking into it and saying “you ever notice how fucked up all this is?”  When you place these characters in a position to drive a complex narrative, it seems like the entire point of their existence has been missed.

The Mario Party series has gotten weird.

I pretty much feel the same way about the latest Penny Arcade game.  Even with a new developer, the insanely talented guys at Zeboyd Games, something about it just doesn’t work.  One of the biggest problems is how married this sequel is to the original two games, the second of which didn’t exactly set the sales charts on fire.  It seemed weird to me that they would do another sequel.  I figured the people had spoken with their wallets and there wasn’t a lot of interest in continuing this particular story any further.  Granted, you don’t need to have played the previous two games to play this.  In fact, they advertise that fact in the game’s blurb on the marketplace.  Again, if we’re going to do that, maybe they should have just started all over with a fresh storyline and new characters.

I actually thought the storyline for On the Oil-Slick Recipe of Blackness Electric Bologna 3 was as dull as a butter knife at times, while downright fucking surreal at others.  The dialog can be sharp and at times very funny, but most of the time I was just like “please stop talking so I can fight something.”  The jokes are hit and miss (emphasis on miss), with the funniest bits not coming until you’re about 75% done with the game.  The best laughs I got were typically from the enemy names, although some of them were pretty damn good.

Ha, Optimus Mime. Classic.

The actual plot of Tycho being some kind of janitor to the universe was confusing and clumsily handled, and I would be hard-pressed to think of a way the ending (the real one, not the bullshit one) could have let me down more.  Maybe if it had advocated the benefits of eating baby seal meat while getting puppies drunk on helium.  I’m still not sure that would be as disturbing as the tone the game took at the end.  It would be like ending a wacky situational comedy by having the lead character suffer a nervous breakdown after watching someone smother a chicken to death.  Only it wasn’t a chicken.  IT WAS A BABY!

(Brian, who actually has watched M*A*S*H*, just told me that the show was supposed to be half-serious, half-comedy.  Yea, fuck that.  It had a laugh track.  It was a comedy.)

I’m not just hating for the sake of hating here, by the way.  If all the stuff you read in the previous 672 words sounded bad, let me reassure you that On the Slick-Dick of District 9 is one seriously amazing RPG.  You can tell Zeboyd spent many of their formative years growing up playing the classics of the genre (which typically included at least one of the following three words: Fantasy, Chrono, or Mana), but knew what could make them better.  So when they were all grown-up, mentally warped, and insane enough to give game production a try themselves, they actually fixed what was wrong with RPGs.  As opposed to most RPG developers who include every antiquated, conventional mechanic, just because that’s how an RPG is supposed to be.  Gone from this game are random encounters, items to juggle, and boring fights that you could win by training a woodpecker to beat on the A button while you go outside for a smoke.

In their place is a simple-yet-deep system involving “pins” that change your character class on the fly.  Each of the four main characters has one default class, but you can equip up to two others, each of which levels up independently as you play the game.  I loved this set-up and was still mixing-and-matching the different pins right up until the last boss.  It never got old, and that is so rare in a role-playing game.  Whenever things threatened to get repetitive, the game will toss out special conditions to change things up, if only for just a fight.  It’s nice that a developer finally recognized the potential for their game to stagnate and put fail safes in to prevent that.

Every mechanic of this game just works.  The combat is fast paced, varied, smart, but complex enough that you have freedom to experiment.  It’s a rare turn-based RPG that feels like more than scrolling through menus.  You truly feel like you are in charge.  Sure, a few stereotypes rear their ugly heads.  The accessory system is more or less the same shit every RPG has, but at least it complements the fighting system well.  Thankfully, you don’t have to stockpile items.  Every item used is replenished between fights, and there’s only six types anyway.  It sure beats dealing with a U-Haul full of potions, mid-potions, high-potions, elixirs, herbs, tents, and bombs.  Instead, you pay to upgrade each item in a shop, or buy the ability to use it more times in every battle.  Having dealt with decades of what RPGs have taught us, that you’re allowed to carry enough health potions that you could practically replace your own blood with the shit, I liked this system.  It kept things clean.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is not perfect.  The dialog can just drone on and on.  When the dialog works, it’s entertaining.  When it doesn’t, that’s usually when it just won’t fucking shut up.  But, as a game?  It’s incredible.  Again, I think most of the problems with it can be tied to the source material.  Penny Arcade is funny.  Penny Arcade as a semi-comedic, semi-dramatic video game is not.  These are characters that make jokes about iPads and E3.  I don’t want to see them dealing with doomsday scenarios and deep introspective soul-searching.  I want to see them taking the piss out of the gaming industry.  Rain-Slick 3 doesn’t do that.  I figure there’s two ways to go around it.  One is to do a straight gaming parody, like Airplane! did for disaster movies.  The other idea is a bit more radical: leave the Penny Arcade characters out of it.  Make Penny Arcade the gaming brand for parody, like National Lampoon or Monty Python do for film.  Oh don’t worry Mike & Jerry.  You guys can still have the ego-inflation you need by inserting yourself into the games, but as cameos.  Hey, some people go very far doing that!  You know that old dude with the sunglasses and the mustache that’s in every single Marvel Comics movie?  Stan something.  Yea, him.  Get this: it turns out THAT GUY actually wrote the original comics those films are based on.  I know, right?  Crazy shit!

Maybe I accidentally didn’t play the right game. Instead, I played a game called “3” that was about the guy from Metal Slug hunting Adam Lambert.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-oh fuck it.

Penny Arcade 3 was developed by Zeboyd Games

400 Microsoft Points thank everyone for an incredible first year.  I love you guys.

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Mystic Forest

June 28, 2012 by 11 Comments

Mystic Forest is the latest steamer from Team Shuriken. It’s a text-based adventure where you play as a dude who finds a buxom fairy in the garden he was growing for his vegan ex-girlfriend and oh fuck it you’re just here to read about the boobies, aren’t you?

Perhaps it’s long overdue that we discuss the dos and don’ts of Xbox Live Indie Games and sex. You see, developers have a set of rules of things they can and cannot do called the “Evil Checklist.” Among those things they can’t do is make a game with nipples. Boobs are fine, as long as they’re covered. No sex either. The best you can get is flirting between the characters.

This still isn’t reaching you, is it? All I have to do is post a screenshot of the game and you’ll be super gluing your mouse buttons with spunk, correct?

I can practically hear the FAP FAP FAP coming from your computers.

Well, for those of you paying attention:

See, 

her,

breasts?

See her breasts?

Those two bumps on her chest?

Notice no nipples.

It’s very simple.

They’re on the evil Checklist!

No sex is allowed.

Among the XNA crowd.

Their accounts will be suspended.

If the rules are unattended.

If you want to see boobles.

Have a stop at Google.

They have breasts!

They have breasts!

THEY HAVE BREASTS!

See this game?

It’s so lame.

Most Team Shuriken stuff is all the same.

A few texty slides and some choices.

They don’t even bother having voices.

It’s so dumb.

It’s no fun.

And it’s over-priced for some.

240 points for some sex.

Being horny is a hex.

How much do Playboys cost?

Think of the money lost.

To see these breasts.

See these breasts.

SEE THESE BREASTS!

It’s fairly transparent why I’m doing this game.  It’s good for page views. And obviously there’s market for shit like this, because otherwise Team Shuriken wouldn’t turn these things out at the rate they do. They’re businessmen. I can respect that. But the writing in these games is abysmal, they often don’t have proper spelling or grammar, and they’re just so half-assed. These guys aren’t total washes as game designers.  Dream Divers was at least an attempt at doing something with actual gameplay in it. I just have to wonder what future generations will think when they drudge through the wasteland we leave behind as a civilization: what will they think of us?

Mystic Forest was developed by Team Shuriken (who else?)

240 Microsoft Points are sorry Cathy, I can’t let you do that in the making of this review.

Thanks to Nate Graves of Gear-Fish.com for the picture. Really sealed this review good. 

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Washington’s Wig

June 27, 2012 by 6 Comments

Washington’s Wig will win no points for historical accuracy.  Hey guys, Washington didn’t have a dog named Dogsworth.  That sounds like the name of a dog that would follow around Scrooge McDuck or something.  Washington in fact had dozens of dogs throughout his life, including ones named Rover, Drunkard, Vulcan, and Captain.  But none named Dogsworth.  For shame, Team2Bit.  If you can’t trust Xbox Live Indie Games for historic.. wait, they actually have “Historically Inaccurate” right on the box art.  Crap.  I had about 500 words worth of complaints about the type of boat used for crossing the Delaware in this game.  Now I actually have to talk about the gameplay and shit.  Sigh.  I really hate those guys.

Washington’s Wig was the game that won for Team2Bit IGN’s Next Game Boss competition.  It was kind of surprising to me, because when I watched it I thought the game looked so fucking stupid.  Well, now the game is out on XBLIG and having finally had a chance to play it, it might surprise you to hear that I think the game is, well, fucking stupid.  Washington’s Wig is an auto-runner where only the A button is required.  You hop across icebergs, collecting coins, stars, and getting assistance from sturgeons and eagles.  It’s a shallow, completely one-dimensional time sink of a game.  One that I burned a couple of hours on.  With a smile on my face.  To all those who say I have no taste, trust me when I say, I question that myself all the time.

To be clear, Washington’s Wig is dumb.  Wearing your socks over your shoes dumb.  But it’s also kind of addictive.  It’s simple even for an auto-runner.  There’s only basic obstacles to clear.  Mostly dogs that are fighting for the Red Coats.  Some of them stand still, some of them charge at you, some of them jump up at you.  This kind of stuff has been done dozens of times before.  If not for the absurd theme, Washington’s Wig would probably be forgotten almost as soon as you turned it off.

It is lacking in some areas.  It’s a game driven by scores, but there’s no online leaderboards.  The game also has no variety in backdrops.  You’re stuck crossing the Delaware, on a freezey cold night, and that’s it.  They could have totally fucked with the source material and had other levels where Washington crosses the Nile, the Amazon, or the Rio Grande.  But no, it’s just the boring ass Delaware.  There is an included two player race mode, but I thought it kind of stunk.  Really, Washington’s Wig would have been a better fit on iPhone, with Game Center support.  Without competing against other scores, there’s really no reason to play it more than once.  You won’t get much out of Washington’s Wig, but I actually still had fun with it.  Even though I’m not sure if that’s because the game is good or because I have some kind of undiagnosed mental illness.

Washington’s Wig was developed by Team2Bit

80 Microsoft Points wouldn’t mind a sequel.  Perhaps some kind of aerobics game for the Wii starring Sally Hemings.  They can call it Jefferson’s Hand-Job in the making of this review.

Whoever put that God-awful “Washington’s—–Wig” music in the game is now on my list.  That is the worst fucking music in game history, and I can’t get it out of my head.  They used to behead people for less. 

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Mambow

June 25, 2012 by 4 Comments

Mambow is sort of the Xbox Live Indie Game version of Donkey Kong Country.  Of course, when a game is the Xbox Live Indie Game version of any established franchise, that usually is a sign the game won’t be any good.  Such is the case with Mambow, which has pretty decent graphics and little else going for it.  You play as Mambow, a lion who is king of the jungle.  I never got the whole “lions are king of the jungle” thing myself.  I would think people would be the kings of the jungle, what with our guns and blood lust and the fact that we kill shit just for recreation.  Lions, you need to step up your game.  Kill a wildebeest and keep the corpse around just for decoration.  Because that’s what we did with your grandfather.  No eating it.  Then you can have your title back.

If you have suffered any recent eye trauma, you really would mistake Mambow for Donkey Kong Country.  Instead of bananas, you collect meat, and instead of a gorilla you play as a lion wearing jeans.  Otherwise, the gameplay is pretty much the same idea.  You make your way across 10 levels, searching for tons of hidden trinkets, swinging from vines, visiting platforming clichés, and jumping on the heads of various wildlife.  It sounds great, and it looks like it will be fun, but the developers of Mambow failed to capture the intelligent level design of the DKC series.  Too much of the platforming centers around leap of faith gaming, which is a pet peeve of mine.  I’m so sick of titles that make you take blind jumps onto platforms with enemies or possibly into pits.  It’s the gaming version of walking around your house in the dark and stubbing your toes.  That is not fun.  It fucking hurts.

The controls aren’t exactly silky smooth, either.  Movement is really sensitive, sometimes forcing you to heel-toe it through sections.  Some of the attacks, or at least I think they’re attacks, seem to be worthless.  You can swat in front of you, but every time I tried it with even basic enemies led to me  taking damage.  Jumping on enemies can be a bit fickle too.  They don’t seem to have a generous enough collision box, leading to times where you do seem to land square on them but still take damage.  You get the ability to roar, but I never did figure out what the fuck its good for, beside getting the attention of enemies.  Couple these with problems in the ascetics where platforms and decor are indistinguishable, and Mambow starts to cross into that “hopelessly broken beyond all repair” territory.

When Mambow launched, it was 400 Microsoft Points.  I originally intended to review it soon after it came out, but the developers asked me to give them time to fix some problems.  So I did.  The biggest problem they fixed was dropping the price to a less insane 240MSP.  It’s still 160MSP too much, but at least it stings significantly less.  I’m not sure what glitches they tried to fix, but I encountered a few annoying moments.  The camera shook violently a few times just from me standing on a moving platform, making it impossible to see what was going on.  I also once got stuck clinging to a fence.  For whatever reason, the dude would not let go of it.  I thought my button had gotten jammed, but the guy remained stuck even after I pulled out the battery.  Maybe it was a Venus Lion Trap.

I got used to seeing this after the character got stuck to the fence while I played it. I could move him. I just couldn’t get off.

Mambow looks really good, but gameplay is all that matters to me.  The graphics are polished to a mirror shine (they reminded me a little of Yoshi’s Story), while the mechanics are as sloppy as they get.  I don’t really care if Mambow is a Donkey Kong Country wannabe, even if I think that series was never good to begin with.  Oddly enough, Shigeru Miyamoto is on my side here.  He once famously said “Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good.”  I agree with him, but I feel that it can also be applied to developers as well.  Mambow is an example.  I’m sure the developers are proud of it, because the graphics are sharp.  But graphics should never trump gameplay.  Mambow controls poorly and the level design is boring, if not terrible.  I think this might have been their first game.  If I’m right, highly commendable effort, fellas.  Just remember: gameplay first, graphics second.  Write it down and hang it up on a wall.  Put it next to one of those “hang in there kitty!” posters.  Meanwhile, the only reason why this lion is sleeping in the mighty jungle tonight is because I just euthanized his ass.

Mambow was developed by Team-Mambow

240 Microsoft Points really suck at correctly identifying the correct developers of these games sometimes in the making of this review.

Gameplay courtesy of Aaron The Splazer.  He’s been providing these videos for the community for a while now.  Go follow him on Youtube.  He’s earned it.

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Compromised

June 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

Have you ever played a game that seemed like you should like it, but you didn’t?  I got that vibe from Compromised, a patch-work of twin stick shooting, wave shooting, space shooting, and shooty shooted shooter shooting.  It’s a typical “aliens invade and you have to save the world” claptrap storyline.  In the case of Compromised, I’m not sure why you would want to save this world.  The environments are pretty dank and depressing.  It doesn’t look like a world any reasonable being would want to live on.  For all the people of this planet know, the invaders are a race of architects and home decorators who are trying to liven the fucking place up.  Maybe we shouldn’t start blowing them up so fast.  I mean, they can’t possibly make this place any worse.

Compromised is pretty high in production values, as far as XBLIGs go.  At a whopping 426MB, it damn well better be.  Sounds, character models, special effects, they’re all top-notch.  And yet, the actual setting of the game offers such little visual stimulation that the game ultimately becomes a little draining.  Bleak works sometimes, but I feel doing so requires characters and interaction.  When you put a ship alone with no supporting characters in a sterile environment, it can be depressing.  I had the same problem with Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.  The reason why galactic stuff like Metroid or Mass Effect offer such a variety of locales is because the alternative is boring.  In Compromised, the only variety is a change in color.  It’s as inviting as a traffic light.

Gameplay is a bit more lively and typically involves moving forward, fighting a few waves of enemies, moving forward a little more, fighting more waves, and then fighting bosses.  It’s a solid design, but there’s so many little mistakes that I ultimately really don’t like Compromised at all.  The best way to explain why that is can be summed up with all the times I had to pause the game to say “Whaaaaa?”

The first instance was during the tutorial, when the game was trying and failing to explain how the special attacks work.  Each of the four face buttons activates such an ability, with some kind of sub-space nuclear anti-matter black-hole creating fuck you unholy universe killing bomb mapped to the B button.  The game told me to try each of the weapons, so I did, and the thing mapped to B detonated and pretty much insta-killed me.  During the tutorial, after the game told me to use it.  Whaaaaa?

That was pretty much par for the course for that weapon, by the way.  It lingers, and once its been let loose, you can’t safely be around it.  It’s like one of my dog’s farts.

You can upgrade your stats by collecting little orange cores that enemies drop.  You can use them to increase your health bar, which sounds great!  The only problem is, when you die and respawn from a checkpoint, you don’t get the bar filled all the way.  Whaaaaaa?  Typically if you die and come back to life, that’s like a universal cue that you could use a full health bar, but the game doesn’t think so.  Also, you can upgrade how much health refills charge you up.  Again, sounds great.  The only problem is that enemies don’t actually drop the damn things.  They only appear during preset intervals.  In a game where enemies absolutely swarm the shit out of you and you might fight waves of hundreds of guys between checkpoints, you have no way to gain health.  Whaaaaa?

Enemies can spawn into a position where they’re instantly chewing your ass, before you have any chance to defend yourself.  Whaaaaa?

Compromised is a TwinkS, but missiles don’t fire the way your aiming stick is pointing.  Instead, they fire whichever way your ship is pointing.  Whaaaaa?  The whole point of TwickS are that you can move one direction and fire in the other!

I’ve never been the type of critic who settles for saying “it just wasn’t for me.”  I didn’t like Compromised, so I can’t recommend it to anyone else.  Even without all the problems, I found it to be pretty dull.  It’s not as if you just fight one wave at a time.  You fight strings of waves, one after another, in the same drab environments.  Fire-fights stick around too long, well after you’re ready to move on to the next section of the game.  Checkpoints are often spread too far apart, and without a traditional method of health drops and enemies that are completely unfair, you’ll end up replaying the same sections again and again.  I had maxed out my gun’s strength, my missile load and their power, and I still died often and had trouble making progress.  After five hours, lots of grinding, and no end in sight, I gave up.  I wasn’t having any fun.  Ultimately, I feel that Compromised is built using top quality bricks, but they’re held together with rancid tartar sauce and dental plaque.

Compromised was developed by Super Soul

240 Microsoft Points have a friend who really enjoyed the shit out of this game and spent last night telling me I have no taste at all because he’s a big meanie in the making of this review.

 

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Manic Miner 360

June 21, 2012 by 10 Comments

Let’s travel back to 1983.  It was a dark time in the world.  A time when people lived in fear of communism, nuclear annihilation, and Walter Mondale.  A time when kids had to play their Ataris in three feet of snow, and do their math homework using solar-powered calculators like savages instead of their cell phones.  A time when the most high-tech consoles had “vision” in them instead of “box” or “station.”  A time when “playing with your Wii” sounded like a shameful act, as opposed to today where.. nevermind.  Most importantly to me, it was a time where I wasn’t born yet.  Thus, I’m not particularly nostalgic for what the early 80s had to offer.

Party like it’s 1983! Let’s all freebase cocaine and watch Knight Rider!

So Manic Miner 360, an XBLIG port of a 1983 ZX Spectrum game, isn’t something that would make me get all warm and gushy.  My reader base might feel otherwise.  Oddly enough, the average reader of Indie Gamer Chick tends to be about ten years older than I am.  In a way, I’m tickled pink over that.  I mean, it’s pretty cool that so many older people are interested in what I, some snooty little shit who wasn’t weened on Space Invaders and text-based RPGs, thinks about gaming.  On the other hand, it can be a bit of a curse at times, especially when it comes to nostalgic releases like this.  When I started to complain about the flaky controls and unforgiving design, I was immediately hit with several “it was good back in the day” tweets.  Somehow, I’m guessing a response of “this isn’t back in the day!  It’s today!” won’t be a sufficient explanation for why I’m not having fun.

I guess there’s no point in debating whether people who liked this game thirty years ago will still enjoy it today.  They obviously do.  I do question whether they really enjoy it on the same level they did as kids.  You mean to tell me that all the evolution gaming has gone through in 30 years doesn’t change your perception of Manic Miner?  Look, I can’t see things your way on this.  Without the perspective of nostalgia, I kind of have to take games like this on face value.  It controls like shit.  Movement and jumping are very stiff.  The levels are frustrating.  The game centers around “gotcha” game design, where you can’t possibly know about a hidden trap until it activates.  Manic Miner isn’t really a platformer or a punisher.  It’s a trial-and-error memory test.  Each level typically has one specific path that you have to follow, and enemies have predictable patterns that you have to memorize.  Once you have that shit down, it’s just a matter of keeping it all together and fighting with the abysmal controls.  Some people liked it.  A few people told me they knew of people who could beat it without the infinite lives cheat (which is thankfully built-in and optional).  Yea, that is impressive.  So is being able to fart the Star-Spangled Banner on command, but I don’t want to take the time to learn how to do it.

Mind you, I’m told this is a truly faithful port, so if you loved the broken controls and restrictive design thirty years ago, nothing has changed here.  Same graphics, same sound effects, same clunky jumping, same dick-moves.  For some people, that’s all they want.  This is a game made for them.  Can a new audience from my generation get behind this game?  Some weirdos might, in the same way there are people my age that have Pac-Man tattoos and dress like Don Johnson.  I’m not saying everything from the 80s was terrible.  I can’t think of anything that wasn’t off the top of my head, but I’m sure there’s something from that decade didn’t suck.

After beating a level that featured things that were certainly not Pac-Man, I entered a stage that featured something that was definitely not Donkey Kong.

I know it’s aggravating for older people to have to listen to people my age say intolerant, obviously erroneous statements like “everything from the 80s sucked.”  The 80s probably didn’t suck any more or less than the 90s or whatever the fuck the last decade was called.  Did anyone ever come to a consensus on the name for the last decade?  If not, may I suggest the Goobers.  No reason why, I just think that would be funny.  My point is, nostalgia is whatever you make of it.  Like any form of entertainment, one Indie Gamer Chick’s trash is another geriatric’s treasure.  Maybe people my age need re-releases like Manic Miner to show us whippersnappers just how lucky we are.  Lucky that we didn’t grow up in an era where games had bad control inputs, shoddy design level design, load times of six minutes, install times upwards of hours and, uh, nevermind.

Manic Miner 360 was developed by Elite Systems

240 Microsoft Points should have probably been 80 Microsoft Points instead in the making of this review.

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Dead Pixels (Second Chance with the Chick)

June 19, 2012 by 7 Comments

It’s been just over nine months since I reviewed Dead Pixels, the #2 game as of this writing on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard, and the former king of the mountain.  Despite really enjoying my time with the game, I never really got around to playing the two extra modes that launched months after its release.  With less than two weeks to go before my first anniversary as Indie Gamer Chick, I figured I should finally take a look and see if the content would be enough to elevate Dead Pixels back into the #1 spot on the board.  Of course, my expectations that it might do just that were somewhat dashed by the developer outright telling me that it would not reclaim the spot.

You get more characters to choose from in The Solution, all of whom have been bad little boys. Lord knows that when you have an emergency situation, the only solution is to send in hardened criminals to do all the heroics. I know how it works. I saw Pitch Black too.

He wasn’t being coy.  In fact, he’s right.  The two new modes of Dead Pixels are swell extras, but they ultimately add nothing to the experience.  First up is The Solution.  It’s kind of like a survival mode, where you have to run X amount of streets (depending on the difficult level) and then back again.  You have even more limited resources, and the city is vacant so there are no humans to negotiate goods with.  You can still loot empty buildings for goods, but you don’t want to get bogged down by carrying too much weight.  I had that happen to me when I played the main quest, and I think I would have moved faster if I had waited for plate tectonics to push me to the goal.

I ended up carrying only the default shotgun, and only stocking up on shells for it.  If that doesn’t sound like the most exciting way to play the game, that’s because it wasn’t.  I ended up just holding down left and avoiding enemies.  This did come in handy on the final part of the “walk left” section of the game, when the lights started flickering on and off.  Due to my epilepsy, this was a high-risk section of the game for me to play.  I decided to walk up to the top of the screen, hold the stick left, and not do anything else.  Boring but effective, because it worked.  However, this mode proved to be dull, and not really worthy of the excellent main game.

Last Stand worked better.  It’s a wave shooter where you play as a couple of twats named Hurley and Nate (no joke) as they lock themselves in a mall with a bunch of zombies.  I doubt they would actually do something like that, because I know I wouldn’t do that.  Since they exist only to steal my ideas, their zombie plan would probably involve some kind of elaborate suicide, because that’s what I’m going to do.  If the zombies attack, I’m going to kiss the end of a shotgun that has bullets soaked in cyanide while wearing a vest made of dynamite and the timer set for five seconds from now.  I am taking NO chances of surviving the outbreak.  Among other things, I never see a working Taco Bell in these games or movies, and I will be damned if I’m going to live out the rest of my life without a Chulupa.

I ended up playing as Hurley. And no, that doesn’t mean I ended up with blisters on my hands and a craving for bacon. It’s just a game, not a transmorphic body swapping thingie.

So Last Stand.  The wave shooter part.  Well, you shoot a bunch of zombies and they drop money.  Then between waves you can upgrade your stats, buy different guns, more ammo, health kits, etc.  Every round the zombies grow in numbers.  That’s pretty much it.  This mode is more fun, but then again I’m predisposed to enjoying wave shooters, which is why such a game could overthrow Dead Pixels for the #1 spot on the leaderboard in the first place.  However, I didn’t love the wave shooting mode the way I did the main campaign.  Part of that is there’s no online leaderboards to show off how far you’ve made it.  But it’s mostly because I already got all the value out of Dead Pixels that I could.  The game rocked in single player mode, rocked harder in co-op (even if Brian didn’t like the game as much as me and thought I was out of my mind for putting it #1 in the first place), but its time has come and gone.  Dead Pixels is still an amazing game and will probably hold onto a high spot on the leaderboard for a long time to come, but I’ve moved on.  Granted, what I moved on to has been mostly inferior games, negating my point.  I’m just going to shut up now and leave this review.  Buh-Bye.

Dead Pixels was developed by CSR Studios

80 Microsoft Points have an alternative zombie plan, but it requires duct tape and a steamroller in the making of this review.

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Monster King

June 18, 2012 by 6 Comments

Monster King is the second RPG that I’ve played this month that’s missing some key ingredients.  When the core mechanics of your game involve scrolling menus, you have to really jazz things with witty dialog, a compelling story, or charismatic characters.  If you have none of that, it’s like serving a customer a bowl of warm water and calling it the Soup of the Day.

Today, I ordered a big bowl of Cream of Void because Monster King has the personality of a mannequin.  You play as a dude who has to, um, do something.  If it was explained, I forgot it.  Probably save the kingdom.  It’s always about one dude saving the kingdom.  Don’t these kingdoms ever have a standing army?  Here’s a thought: since in these classic RPGs, the “kingdom” usually consists of a dozen or so towns, each populated by between 4 and 10 people, why not just gather everyone up and move to a new kingdom?  One with better infrastructure, a standing army, and monsters not camping just outside the border of every town?  Come to think of it, why are there never monsters in the towns?  You’re a lone hero who is attempting to save the entire kingdom, armed to the teeth, and you still have to stock up on potions and regenerative magic.  The towns are populated by five idiots who say the same line of dialog every time you try to converse with them.  The monsters should be able to steamroll over them in like five seconds.  These games never make any sense.

It would have been cooler if he was standing by the dock of the bay, even though there’s nothing to do there either, besides watching the tide roll away.

The hook of Monster King is that you can capture enemies when they’re weakened and then use them during battle.  It’s not exactly Pokemon, because you can only use each monster once during a battle.  However, the magic and monster system are basically the same idea.  Use fire against things made of wood, water against things made of fire, Bengay against things made of old people, etc.  Figuring out which enemies work on others is a little trickier, and most enemies pack a pretty decent punch, so you don’t have time to experiment.  Your defense never upgrades when you level up, probably to keep the game from getting too easy, so you have to camp out near towns so you can refill your health and magic points every-other battle.  Are we having fun yet?

Monster King does make an effort to have some form of humor in it, but it really doesn’t work all that well.  Here, humor comes in the form of jokes from the towns people.  The one that stuck with me is “people ask me if I’ve lived here my whole life.  I tell them no, not yet.”  That’s about as sophisticated as it gets.  For the most part, it’s just go to town, buy weapons, fight monsters, level up, slap yourself in the face to prevent yourself from falling asleep, explore caves, and fight bosses.  However, Monster King is more stripped down than Mortal Legacies in some other aspects.  Weapons and armor are automatically equipped, you can’t hock any old ones, and stores do not sell potions.  After playing for over an hour, I never found any item stronger than the standard potion, which can only be got out of treasure chests.  MP can only be restored by sleeping at an inn or leveling up.  Thus, the already boring gameplay is really taken to its most basic level of design.  I don’t get why people make games like this anymore.  This doesn’t feel like a game someone made because it was something they wanted to play.  It seems more like a game that someone made to see if they could.  That’s fine.  That’s how you learn.  But maybe it’s best to not attempt to sell that game.

Status? Sleepy, getting sleepier.

I was ready to write off Monster King as competent and functional, but as shallow as refrigerator condensation.  And then, it happened.  What happened?  Well, I was fighting snowmen and grinding up my XP.  I had just fought a boss, had leveled up a couple of times, bought some new armor, and was about to buy a new sword.  Then I got a message from a friend asking if I could check to see how much something on the Xbox marketplace cost.  I scooted over to the town, slept in the inn, saved the game, and turned it off.  I returned just a few minutes later and loaded up my game.  Only my game was from about twenty minutes before my last save, meaning I had to fight the boss again and make up for the five levels I had climbed and then lost.  I am not sure how this happened.  I typically save XBLIG files to my memory card.  Hang on, let me check and see if I accidentally saved it to the hard drive.

Nope.  No save file found on my hard drive.  Mind you, I’m hyper-compulsive about saving in games.  When I was a kid, I went a little too long between saves playing Kingdom Hearts, and a power-outage resulted in my first legitimate gaming rage moment.  My SpongeBob pillow suffered one lost limb and three stab wounds of unknown origin (pssss, it was from a nail file).  Since then, I’ve been vigilant about saving.  And so I did save after every level-up.  But, come to think of it, the game was a little weird about when the save happened more than the one time.  I did die after a battle or two.  Sometimes I would go back to my previous save spot, but more often I would go back further.  Obviously something is not working here.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have recommended Monster King anyway.  Like Mortal Legacies, it seemed like a good first-attempt, but not a game I could recommend spending actual money on.  But, I’m sure there are people out there who are looking for bland, one-dimensional time wasters.  If that’s the case, and the save thing doesn’t discourage you, knock yourself out with Monster King.  Or, here’s a better idea: go see a fucking doctor because you obviously have no pulse.

Monster King was developed by NickB

80 Microsoft Points wondered why the tree that is brandishing a gun is called the “Tree Killer.”  Wouldn’t “Killer Tree” make more sense?  I mean, I guess it could be killing trees when it’s not attacking professional monster slayers like a dumbass.  But if that was the case, why does it have a gun?  Guns aren’t very effective at killing trees, unless it’s a gun that fires big bullets.  Like a cannon, but that really isn’t a gun.  It should have been brandishing a chainsaw, which would have been a good chance to add humor to the game.  I mean, a tree that uses a chainsaw?  Ironic comedy.  A tree with a gun?  Just weird.

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Superdimension Iliad

June 15, 2012 by 10 Comments

Fuck Superdimension Iliad.  This game pisses me off, because it’s a really great idea.  You play a little Fez-looking thing that has to travel through all stages of gaming history, shooting at enemies Mega Man-style.  Apparently, you can even get weapons from beating bosses, just like in Mega Man.  Sounds great!  And it really does do a remarkable job of having graphics that invoke each era  you’re traveling through.  This should have been one of the best titles on Xbox Live Indie Games.  But it’s not, because the game’s difficulty reaches new levels of delusional expectations on players.

Behold, the only stage I could beat.

I only made it to the first branching path of the game.  Which is a nice way of saying that I beat the first level.  I then spent about an hour trying to get past either of the next stages, one of which is based on Atari graphics and the other Intellivision.  I really, really wanted to, because I wanted to see what would be next.  Again, the concept is fricken awesome.  But I couldn’t get past either of these stages.  There are too many enemies firing too many projectiles at you.  You have a health bar, but it fades quickly.  Enemy bullets move faster than you do, and you often don’t have enough space to avoid them, because if you jump over a bullet you’re probably going to come in direct contact with an enemy.  In the Atari stage, I was being bombarded on all sides by shots, plus a slow-moving dot that follows you around and is an instant-kill if it touches you.  The space you have to navigate this gauntlet is just a few character-lengths high.  If you stop moving, the dot will catch you.  Oh, and there’s also instant-kill landmines to jump over.  Does this sound fun to you?  It sounds like corporal punishment to me.

The Intellivision level (or is it Coleco?) is even worse.  After doing Mega Manish “hop on the disappearing blocks” for a few sections,  you end up in a meteor shower.  The meteors move faster than you do, plus there are these little instant-kill UFO thingies that move WAY faster than you.  They take more than one shot to kill, so by time you’ve put enough bullets into them, chances are they’re probably already celebrating over your corpse.  This is a game with difficulty so extreme that I seriously doubt anyone who play-tested it actually finished it.  Did the developer get too good at their own game and lose track of reality?

There’s more problems.  There’s a lives system in place and you only get three of them, upping the frustration factor to such a degree that NASA’s computers crashed trying to calculate it.  Check-points are too far apart.  And for some reason there’s a modern techno-soundtrack.  They nailed the graphics almost perfectly, and the sound effects are spot-on too, and then they ruined the illusion of it by sticking in a generic metal/techno soundtrack.  That would be like Eminem doing the soundtrack for Schindler’s List.

Boy, that stage inspired by Super Mario 3 sure looks fun. It’s too bad that the game is damn-near impossible and thus it’s unlikely most players will ever reach that far to appreciate it.

I’m so disappointed in Superdimension Iliad, because it really has a great idea.  It’s an idea I wanted to see through to the end.  If it had worked, it might have been one of the best games on the platform.  But it doesn’t work, and the only reason it doesn’t is because the developer wanted to make it as difficult as possible to enjoy his creation.  Imagine if the only way you could view the Sistine Chapel was to walk around on a floor covered in bear traps, because that’s what the developer did.  He murdered his own idea.  Bravo.

Superdimension Iliad was developed by We Love Hamsters Software

80 Microsoft Points couldn’t locate a trailer or the website for the developer in the making of this review. 

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Apple Jack 2

June 15, 2012 by 8 Comments

It’s been almost a year since I played Apple Jack.  Judging by the reaction to my review of it, it would seem that was the most disagreeable of all my reviews.  That, or birds were turning into rocks and dive bombing my windows.  Do birds turn into rocks?  Either way, many people genuinely liked the game.  I didn’t.  I thought it was too hard, the levels too sprawling, and the design rather bland.  I didn’t hate it, but I certainly couldn’t endorse it.  At least not without a kickback from the guys who make high blood pressure medication.

A Super Meat Boy like “run from the big baddie” chase, only your character is about half as agile. Yes, this game hates you.

Apple Jack 2 is now out.  Despite having a pretty good idea that I wouldn’t like the game too much, I have to admit I thought it looked pretty good.  Sure, it’s still a punisher, but there’s now a Prince of Persia (or Braid if you’re the artsy-fartsy type) style rewind feature for the hopeless stumblefuck gaming population.  The graphics look more colorful too.  What could go wrong?

Well, about that.  I guess I can say without reservation that Apple Jack 2 is a better game than the original.  But I still didn’t like it.  I still don’t get the appeal in punishers.  Even with adjustable difficulty levels, I found Apple Jack 2 to be fucking maddening.  The rewind function, which was put in place to give you chances to undo fuck-ups, mostly just increased the aggravation factor.  I often rewound missteps, only to immediately die because I didn’t let go of the button at the right time.  You can only use it every six seconds, so it doesn’t really work as the immortality-granting super power I was hoping it would be.  I guess the argument was supposed to be “we didn’t want to make it too easy.”  To which I counter back “there are adjustable difficult levels.  I picked the pussy mode.  Obviously I wanted immortality, you jerks!”

So I didn’t get to live forever.  Or for more than twenty seconds at a time on average.  What I did get to do was enjoy the significantly improved level design.  Oh, it’s not easier.  Don’t get me wrong.  The game wants you to feel humiliated at your ineptness.  But stages are much more clever this time around.  Some have you trying to get to an exit.  Some have you trying to kill enemies.  Some have you running from things.  Some have you on giant platforms that auto-scroll.  Every new stage seems to be original in concept and execution, which is a big departure over some of the monotone stages of the original.  Unfortunately, originality didn’t extend to the enemies.  You’re still fighting the same pandas, washing machines, eyeballs, owls, and little spiky thimble thingies from the first game.  The only major addition to the enemy roster (as far as I could tell, rage got the better of me about half-way through) is giant saw blades.  As a result, Apple Jack 2 feels more like Apple Jack 1.5.  More of an expansion rather than a continuation.  It’s weird because the box art is a homage to Super Mario Bros. 2, which was a huge departure from the original game.  Despite improvements, Apple Jack 2 is pretty much the same game as the original.

Another change: enemies drop fruit instead of coins now, no doubt some kind of anti-capitalism subtext.

It’s a shame, because I think the developer has got to be oozing talent out his rear end.  The graphics, sound, music, and level design all suggest that.  I just don’t want a game that cheerfully holds my head underwater.  Some people do.  Weird people, sure, but they’re out there.  I do question if the market for these games is as big as people make it out to be. There have been punishers that are huge hits, but how often do those pop up?  Of the 90 top-selling XBLIGs as of this writing, only two are punishers: the Impossible Game and the Impossible Game Level Pack.  The market is trying to tell you developers something.  If you weren’t so busy dumping salt on slugs and blowing up frogs with firecrackers you would have noticed by now.

Apple Jack 2 was developed by My Owl Software

80 Microsoft Points said to debate which of the remaining 88 games are also punishers in the comments section in the making of this review. 

 

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