Cherry Poke Prison

June 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

Cherry Poke Prison is a spin-off of the popular Trailer Park King games, which are popular because they have digital boobs.  And no, for you guys coming here from Google, there is no nudity or sex acts in this game.  Sorry, you’re going to have to settle for one of the three trillion, two-hundred and forty-eight billion, six-hundred and thirty-three million, two-hundred and four thousand, five-hundred and one other options you have out there.  Yea I know, life is cruel.  You know what else is cruel?  This is the only point and click series on XBLIG I actually give half a squirt about, and developer Sean Doherty dropped the ball here like it was lubricated in Crisco.

In Cherry Poke Prison, you play as Clyde, the cousin (hopefully just cousin and not also brother or something) of King.  He gets sent to a women’s prison because he’s a womanizer and um, yea.  Have I mentioned the stories in these games are the most outlandish, incomprehensible, brain-rotting, yet somehow charming pieces of shit ever?  I hate saying anything is “so bad that it’s good” but that really does apply to the Trailer Park King series.  As one-dimensional, crude, and quite frankly stupid as the writing in these games are, they’re kind of endearing.  I like the characters.  I think this would make a great webcomic.  As a game, it’s not as good.  It’s just typical point-and-click crap.  Only the logic has to be insane enough to match the writing, which leads to things like needing to stick tweezers in an electrical outlet, which causes the TV to turn on and not kill you.  Thus the game devolves into rubbing object A against object B and hoping it works, practical reasoning be damned.  I wish someone would make a  clicker where the logic is actually logical.  Actually, no I don’t.  I just thought about it and it still doesn’t sound fun.

But, I’m willing to slog through something that barely qualifies as a game if I’m entertained by the plot.  Like the previous two games, I admit that I was satisfied with Cherry Poke Prison.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad.  Oooh, yes, very bad.  I have to wash my ears out with bleach just for listening to it.  But, I wanted to see what happens next.  So I pressed on for a half-hour or so, and then I got a sliding puzzle.

What?

Actually, “Why?” is a better question.  I don’t get why game developers insist on including boring elements into their games.  Sliding puzzles are boring when they’re corporeal objects made from cheap plastic.  In video games, they’re fucking busywork and nothing more.  They’re certainly not fun.  Of the endless options the developer had to choose from, why did he pick this?  I love puzzles, but I hate THIS kind of puzzle.  It really has no place in a video game.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same stuff.  The absurd banter between the characters still provides a few smirks, with maybe a small “muuhuh” type of laugh for the ending gag.  I wasn’t a big fan of Clyde, mostly because his personality isn’t really distinctive from King.  It might as well have just been him.  I was half-expecting a weird “it really IS King” twist at the end, but that didn’t happen either.  So the main character wasn’t really needed all that much, and I won’t be sad if he is absent from the rest of the series.

I’m not going to take the easy way out and say that Cherry Poke Prison isn’t really any better or worse than the previous games.  The truth is, it is worse, because the chosen “minigames” are not as strong.  Both the slide puzzle and the weight lifting crap feel like chores, and they don’t fit in with the overall theme or tone of the game.  It’s not terrible or anything, but it’s not really good.  Not that it matters what I think.  I’m guessing most people who read this review got, ahem, stuck, after the first picture.  Hey guys, there’s more review down here.  Guys?  GUYS?

YO!  Over here!

Okay, now that I have your attention.

Cherry Poke Prison was developed by Freelance Games

80 Microsoft Points said “hasn’t anyone ever told you guys that doing that so much makes you go blind?” in the making of this review. 

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SHOOTING CHICKENS Brutal Suckers

June 13, 2012 by 11 Comments

From the guys who brought you The Houchi Play (shudder) comes a game about shooting chickens, hence the title.  The game is also unreasonably difficult, again hence the title.  And actually it sucks too, hence the title.  Fuck it, my job is done.

SHOOTING CHICKENS Brutal Suckers was developed by Kohei

80 Microsoft Points said wait, that’s not enough?  Fine.

So the idea is you’re this chick with a shotgun who has to run through levels blowing away poultry.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe KFC fucked up her order and gave her coleslaw instead of baked beans, and the only appropriate course of action she could take was hunting their product to extinction.  Either way, she has a gun and the chickens are chickens.  In theory, this is hardly a fair fight.

The graphics are actually pretty decent.

Theories can be a fickle thing.  The chickens prove to be a little overwhelming.  This is a war of attrition, where your only resource is patience and the chickens have numbers to spare.  My “not a fair fight” theory was correct.  I was just wrong about which side had the advantage.  The chickens smother you in brutal numbers, sometimes on both sides, and you simply cannot avoid taking damage.  Health fills are scarce, weapon pick-ups have very limited ammo, and grenades are sparse as well.  You do get unlimited bullets with the shotty, but it’s not much help when enemies go from not being on-screen to causing you damage in a fraction of a second.

I struggled for over an hour just to reach the first checkpoint on the first stage.  After a while I started to question whether it was the game’s fault or mine own.  Maybe it was mine.  Maybe I was sick.  Maybe it was bird flu.  Get it?  Sigh.  I’m so sorry.

I did get to the first check point, but after a few tries I couldn’t make it to the next one.  What happened?  Chicks.  As in baby chickens.  Tiny little things only a couple pixels tall.  They take THREE point-blank shotgun blasts to kill, and they can absolutely gang-bang you while you try to hit them.  Mind you, most of the enemies in this game are ready for shaking and baking after only one shot.  Why are babies the toughest, and the most resilient?  Is this some kind of pro-life metaphor?  If so, it doesn’t work.  Hey, I don’t like the idea of abortions either, but if something is shot from a distance of one inch in the head with a shotgun and it doesn’t die, we’re no longer talking about God’s will.  In fact, I believe that would be the work of Satan, and you should call an exorcist.

Nope, never made it this far.

I was kind of hoping that SHOOTING CHICKENS would be more like Bird Assassin.  Just a run and spray shooter with an insane body count.  Although it has the body count, it lacks in the fun factor.  It has decent graphics and the controls work.  In fact, I like how it has the control scheme at the bottom of the screen so that you don’t have to pause the game if you want to know how to do something.  That’s smart design.  I just wish they had toned down the difficulty.  It’s inaccessible, to the point of being a bullet hell with chickens replacing artillery.  You can try to have fun with it, but you’ll just end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  What?  Oh come on, that wasn’t so bad.

SHOOTING CHICKENS Brutal Suckers was developed by Kohei

80 Microsoft Points used to think Popcorn Chicken was made from baby chickens in the making of this review.

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Mortal Legacies

June 9, 2012 by 14 Comments

When I first heard the name “Mortal Legacies” I thought it sounded like someone left out the word “Kombat” on an iPhone port of the series.  I mean, doesn’t Mortal Kombat Legacies sound like a crappy iPhone version of Mortal Kombat?  It does to me.  Something that uses digital controls and plays like shit.  Well, Mortal Legacies isn’t an iPhone version of Mortal Kombat.  It does play like shit though.

Okay, so the term “play like shit” is a bit harsh.  Utterly pointless, clunky, and containing less personality than a sea sponge is probably a better description for Mortal Legacies.  It’s a traditional turn-based RPG, where you play as a dude who has to kill a demon and return the king’s crown to him.  Why?  I don’t know.  Mortal Legacies does a decent job of recreating early 16-bit era graphics, but skimped out on stuff like storyline, characterization, and any sense of urgency to the situation.  Let’s face it, straight-laced RPGs are fucking boring as hell.  The only reason to play them is if they contain an absolute dynamite storyline that can keep you from zoning out while you navigate menus.  The guys at Zeboyd realized this, which is why they took copious amounts of laughing gas when it was time to write the batshit insane scripts for their games, or at least that’s my theory.

Okay, early-early-early 16-Bit era. I’m talking Beta stage here, people.

Mortal Legacies has five characters that join your party, but none of them have any back story, or even dialog beyond an introductory sentence.  Characters in towns typically speak only one fragmented sentence at you.  With no story and no characters, what is the point?  Maybe this was a learning-curve game for the developer, who frequently posts here as Ivatrix.  Cool dude he is.  But he has a long ways to go as a game developer.  Ignoring the lack of narrative, Mortal Legacies has all kinds of mechanical problems.  First of all, it’s a time-honored tradition in RPGs that you press A to talk to someone.  Here, you just walk up to them.  Early on, this created annoying situations where I missed dialog from my mother that I couldn’t repeat.  Maybe I missed something that would give the main protagonist something resembling a personality.  Probably not, at least outside of being a pussy-whipped momma’s boy.

Leveling up is fairly easy in Mortal Legacies.  I was easily able to max out all the stats of my party on normal difficulty in fairly short order.  It helps that you get experience points for completing objectives, like for example, talking to your mother.  You level up for that.  I’m not joking.  If that’s too easy for you, you can fight in random battles.  However, enemies shit out so much XP and Gold that they might as well shove a spigot in their ass and call themselves a tap.

You use gold to buy items, even though enemies hemorrhage those as well.  Chances are you’ll never actually need to buy any potions, so you can save up all your money for weapons and armor.  Equipping them is a bit tricky.  The menus are unintuitive, slow, and clunky, but thankfully the game only lasts a little over an hour so you won’t have to deal with them for too long.  Then again, there really is no reason to play Mortal Legacies.  When I say it has nothing to offer, I’m not being coy.  It literally has nothing to offer.  If this was Ivatrix’s babysteps into game development, bravo for the effort.  It’s too bad he missed the first lesson of RPG creation: have a fucking plot.  Do you know what you call an RPG that doesn’t have a plot?  That’s right: Final Fantasy XIII.

Mortal Legacies was developed by IvatrixGames

80 Microsoft Points said this should have been the ironic theme song of Mortal Legacies in the making of this review. 

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A Pixel Escape

June 8, 2012 by 9 Comments

There’s nothing wrong with ambition, and there’s especially nothing wrong with trying to be original.  However, in the land of video games, you have to tread lightly.  Not every idea is capable of working, no matter how ambitious or original.  For example, A Pixel Escape combines puzzle-platforming with first-person gameplay.  Despite moderately decent graphics, the result is the biggest disaster in “it sounded good on paper” since the Lakers landed Steve Nash and Dwight Howard.

The idea is you’re a single pixel trying to escape from a monitor.  Gameplay takes place on an entirely 2D plane, but you control the pixel from a first person view.  This was not a good idea.  Movement feels loose, jumping feels imprecise, and judging distance can be tricky.  Overshooting and undershooting platforms is a common hazard, and the landing is slippery enough that sometimes you can hit your target and still coast off it and into your doom.  I have never been a fan of first person platforming, because even fully funded major studios can’t seem to get it right.  A Pixel Escape feels like the Frankensteined version of all previous attempts.

Unfortunately, bad play control isn’t the only problem with A Pixel Escape.  The game has a problem with being overly complex.  There’s thirteen different colors you can change into.  You can create blocks with each color or use a color-specific super power.  This gives you dozens of different things you have to keep track of over the course of a game.  Brevity would have served this game well.  The developer should have limited the amount of colors to four, chose the best powers to center puzzles around, and refined the way those powers were used.  Having so many powers all at once makes the game feel overwhelming.  It doesn’t help that activating powers is clunky as hell.  You have to hold both triggers to use block related powers, Y to use the power on yourself, I think one of the bumpers to pitch the powers out, you have to click the left stick to change the map, X knocks on the glass, just one trigger to throw a punch at enemies.. you know what?  Thank Jesus Christ Almighty that XBLIG developers aren’t given Kinect support, or the guys behind this game would have probably made you hop up and down on one leg while doing all of this.

If that doesn’t sound bad enough, just wait, because there’s more.  Every power you use takes up Red-Green-Blue energy.  You have to constantly keep your source of this replenished.  Every color tells you how many points of each prime color is required to activate it.  If you fuck up just once, chances are it will necessitate a level restart.  With the controls as poor as they are, requiring this level of perfection is guaranteed to raise your frustration level through the roof.  The only way to refill the R-G-B energy is to destroy blocks.  However, doing so causes darkness to appear where the block was destroyed.  If that happens, enemies start to spawn in.  The enemies tend to move faster than you do, and they hone in on you like flies on shit, quickly draining away your health.  Your only defense against them is a clumsy punch that seems a bit hard to line up.  Granted, the enemies aren’t overall too bad.  Most of the your deaths will come from missteps in platforming, but with all the crap this game makes you go through, this bit seemed a little like overkill.

This shot comes later in the game. Not sure if you can go deeper or not. I actually gave up playing the tutorial, tried the main puzzle mode, quit that due to flaky controls, and then got a third Code-3 game crash. I took it as a sign to walk away. FYI, the developers are working on the crash issues. Not sure how they’re going to fix everything else, but I’m keeping the faith.

If something about A Pixel Escape could go wrong, it probably did.  Even with all the large problems above, it’s the little things that really drive a stake through it.  Some of the colors look too much alike, like Red and Orange.  Or the fact that the exit isn’t more clearly marked on the map.  In order to find out where it is, you have to knock on the glass and wait for the computer user to tell you which direction to head.  Why?  It’s cutesy, but it makes the game less fun.  Besides the fact that the graphics are not horrible, I can’t think of anything nice to say about A Pixel Escape.  Somewhere in here is the germ of a really cool game.  The idea of a pixel trying to escape a TV is solid, but the execution of this concept was completely botched.  It’s a shame because I really wanted to love A Pixel Escape.  I actually feel that it wanted to love me back, but could only express that by giving me half-eaten chocolates and kisses that tasted like an acidic fart.

A Pixel Escape was developed by Kunga Brothers

80 Microsoft Points said “oh well, still better than anything shown at E3” in the making of this review.  I bet that one gets quoted out of context.

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Minigame Marathon

June 7, 2012 by 6 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minigame Marathon was developed by Battenberg Software

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

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Microbial

June 3, 2012 by 5 Comments

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

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

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

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

Microbial was developed by Net-Savant

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

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

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Bureau: Shattered Slipper

June 1, 2012 by 6 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

Not convinced?

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

Bureau: Shattered Slipper was developed by Twist-EdGames

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

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

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

Trailer courtesy of ClearanceBinReview.com

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The Deep Cave

May 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

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

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

I refuse to make the obvious Jonah joke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Deep Cave was developed by Pennybridge Indie Game Studio

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

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Avatar Falls Down Stairs and This Is Hard

May 26, 2012 by 6 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Heroes of Hat

May 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heroes of Hat was developed by Utah Game Forge

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

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