Magnetic By Nature

April 27, 2013 by 11 Comments

Update: Magnetic By Nature recieved a Second Chance with the Chick.  Click here for my continued thoughts on it.  In short: the framerate issues were fixed. 

Magnetic By Nature is the latest game from students attending the University of Utah.  I know what you’re thinking.  “Hey, wait a second.  What do people from Utah know about having fun?  Didn’t they ban their only form of that in the 40s?”  Actually, inappropriate polygamy jokes aside, they know plenty about fun.  Atari founder Nolan Bushnell discovered the medium of games as a student at the University of Utah.  So in essence, we owe the gaming industry as it exists today to their beautiful, boring, Pac-10 devaluing institution.  It makes me happy that the science of creating games is taught there to this day.  It would be wrong otherwise, like if Harvard stopped teaching law, or Fresno State stopped teaching binge drinking.

In M-B-N, you play as a robot who has to make his way across levels by using magnetic powers.  I played a game with a similar hook last year, the beautiful but frustrating to the point of not being so fun Lumi.  Magnetic features more intuitive controls and faster-paced gameplay than that disappointing Dream-Build-Play winner.  I actually expected nothing more than a glorified sampler here, because the team behind it is actively using crowd funding to prepare a larger PC release.  Combine that with the XBLIG version coming in at 80MSP and featuring the subtitle “Awakening.”  Which, by the way, is about as unimaginative a subtitle as you can get.  I look forward to the sequel, which will no doubt be called “The Return.”  Or, if they’re feeling frisky, “The Revenge.”

Show of hands: who is sick of games wit the Limbo-like silhouette thing? Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4..

Show of hands: who is sick of games with the Limbo/Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet-like silhouette thing? Let’s see, 1, 2, 3, 4..

Anyway, the XBLIG version of Magnetic most definitely does not feel like a sampler, even if the devs say that’s what it is.  You’ll get a complete experience that will take about sixty to ninety minutes to complete.  Levels range from dexterity-based platforming challenges to physics-based puzzles, the latter of which there aren’t nearly enough of.  Mostly, the game centers around precision flinging of the protagonist.  And it really is flinging.  Even by time the game ended, I had never gotten fully used to the physics, or had a comfortable feel for trajectories and speed.  In essence, your character is a guided missile and you’ll often feel a sense of luck rather than accomplishment when clearing a tricky stage.  In many games, that would be annoying.  In M-B-N, it seems fitting.  I had a little magnet play set when I was a kid and I remember how tough it was to push stuff across a table in a straight line using them.  I thought of that while playing this game.  It gives it an authentic feel.  By the way, I had that magnet set for about a week, but then Daddy took it away after I showed him the pretty rainbow I made on the television using it.  True story.

But, other control issues rear their ugly head.  Movement without the magnets feels too touchy.  Sometimes this combines with the magnetic gimmick to cause extra frustration, like a stage with a moving magnet and increasingly narrow rows of spikes that requires you to simultaneously feather the joystick and the magnetic circle.  But at least stages like that are manageable.  A pair of auto-scrolling stages with a deadly beam of light that I called the Kill You Bar were bungled about as bad as they could have been, simply due to the bar moving too fast.  I’m also of the belief that these stages were in the wrong order.  The last one of these was a brainless trial-and-error reflex tester.  The first auto-scroll stage seemed to combine the best ideas of the game’s physics and had a climatic feel to it.  In fact, it probably could have been the final stage of the whole game.  Sadly, both these sections (the second one especially), were hampered by frame rate hiccups that seemed to get worse the more times you died. The lag became so bad that it rendered Magnetic By Nature completely broken.  Then something weird happened.  I found out that if you hit restart and have the game reload the level instead of just respawning after death, the lag becomes tolerable and I was able to finish the stage.  It’s still inexcusable to exist like this, but the game is strong enough that you’ll want to finish.

..1,947,685, 1,947,686, 1,947,687, 1,947,688.. you know what, I think they get the picture.

..1,947,685, 1,947,686, 1,947,687, 1,947,688.. you know what, I think they get the picture.

On the bright side, the developers are aware of a couple of the more frustrating issues and are working on fixes.  But even before they’re done, Magnetic By Nature is a surprisingly solid game.  I’ve played several student projects since starting Indie Gamer Chick, and while some have been decent enough, none have outright impressed me.  Magnetic By Nature does.  I guess the reason for my surprise was, despite a cool looking trailer, I had low expectations going in.  Physics puzzlers on XBLIG are typically disasters.  Plus, I’m completely burned out on the whole silhouette-hero in a dark world thing, which is about as common a feature among indie platformers these days as the ability to jump.  But I had no need to worry.  Magnetic By Nature, despite problems, is genuinely fun and refreshing and you should expect to enjoy it.  Bravo University of Utah guys and gals who made this and carry the legacy of the founding fathers of the gaming industry.  But please, for God’s sake, stick with making games.  Don’t open a chain of arcade-pizzerias with singing rats and shitty food.  That’s a legacy you can live without.

xboxboxartMagnetic By Nature was developed by Tripleslash Studios

80 Microsoft Points wonder why so many former Utes end up stinking up the sporting scene where I live in the making of this review.

Magnetic By Nature is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  The presence of University of Utah in the Pac-12 is most certainly not Chick Approved.

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Indiemon: Earth Nation

April 13, 2013 by 12 Comments

I have an idea for a children’s game.  In it, you’ll play as a pre-pubescent lad who will wander the world making animals fight for sport and for fame.  You’ll start with one enslaved creature (possibly an adorable mouse-lightning bolt thing, something that just oozes cuteness) and then randomly fight other adorable creatures along the countryside.  During a fight, right at the moment before your huggable little animal buddy delivers a merciless death-blow to the creature it just beat into a pulp, you’ll capture the creature in a cage way too small for it to possibly live comfortably in.  You’ll then force it to fight creatures that you wish to enslave, with your ultimate aim being to capture one of every creature like some deranged, asexual Noah.

And I’ve just been handed a cease and desist order, as apparently someone else already had this idea and has made billions off it.  Huh.  You know, I thought I paid a lot of attention to gaming.  I’m not sure how that one slipped me by.

Actually, more than one person had this idea.  Sort of.  A wild XBLIG just appeared before me called Indiemon: Earth Nation.  Quick thought: if you remove the word “Indiemon” from that name, would it not sound like a reality show you would expect to see on Discovery Channel?  No?  Just me?  Okay, never mind.

Thank God they used up one of their four marketplace pics for a splash of the game. By the way, unless it looks different in an encounter, I don't remember ever fighting the monster shown here. Unless it was one of the final two boss monsters the last guy you fight pulled out, both of which I killed in a single hit after about two seconds.

Thank God they used up one of their four marketplace pics for a splash of the game. By the way, unless it looks different in an encounter, I don’t remember ever fighting the monster shown here. Unless it was one of the final two boss monsters the last guy you fight pulled out, both of which I killed in a single hit after about two seconds.

So Indiemon is just like my hypothetical game would have been, except you’re a dude dressed like a knight instead of a baseball cap and parachute pants wearing child.  Well, that just saps the whimsy right out of the concept, does it not?  I mean, why does a knight need to make animals fight his battles for him?  Wouldn’t he have, like, something pointy and deadly?  A sword perhaps?  A spear?  No?  So this guy in his fancy armor and  sequined cape is making animals fight his battles for him?

What an asshole.

Well, being a friend to animals (I make a point of eating under six a day), I decided I wouldn’t be a jerk about it.  Instead, I would only keep one Indiemon, a fuzzy cute little rabbit thing called Bunnidusk in the game and “Peter Cottonmurder” by me.  When I engaged in battles with Peter, I decided to forgo any unnecessary violence against those innocent creatures that I so cowardly refused to fight myself.  So, instead of going through all the fancy attacks that Peter had acquired through the leveling up process (which happens roughly every three to four minutes), I would just spend every battle selecting attack from the menu, then selecting the most basic attack I had available.  Of course, such a brazenly lazy tactic would lead to failure in my hypothetical cockfighting game for children, where battles would be based around a rock-scissors-paper style strategy, probably something incorporating elements or living environments.  But, in Indiemon, it worked.  I never once had to use any attack except the weakest one I had open to me.  I never had to capture a creature.  I never came close to dying.  I never once had to use any item to save a fight.  Eventually, Peter Cottonmurder evolved (totally stolen from my hypothetical cockfighting game for children concept) into a giant, muscular, humanoid rabbit thing, sort of like Bucky O’Hare’s roided up cousin, Stucky O’HGHare.  Tougher, stronger, and probably now possessing erectile dysfunction.

That's him on the left. Who's a cute little blood thirsty slayer of God's creatures?

That’s him on the left. Who’s a cute little blood thirsty slayer of God’s creatures?

Not that it changed the game much.  I could still breeze past any encounter just by mashing the A button until the battle ended with me standing over the bloody, comatose body of some helpless animal.  I was amused that the game took time to note that any animal you beat-up is not dead, but rather “unconscious.”  Well, that’s a moralistic weight off my shoulder, I can tell you that.  Otherwise, you just walk from town-to-town, then go through a cave, and then meet an old dude at a dock, then the game ends, presumably to be continued at some point in the future.  Yep, there’s not even a proper ending here.  It just ends.

And thank God for that.  I sound like a broken record this week, but Indiemon is so awful that I am almost at a loss for words.  Thankfully, I have a thesaurus, and shall now list every synonym for awful: abominable, alarming, appalling, atrocious, deplorable, depressing, dire, disgusting, distressing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, ghastly, grody, gross, gruesome, grungy, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrific, horrifying, nasty, offensive, raunchy, repulsive, shocking, stinking, synthetic, tough, ugly, unpleasant, and unsightly.  Well, besides raunchy or synthetic, I think all of those work.

Really, the biggest sin of Indiemon is just how fucking dull it is.  There’s no original ideas on display here, which gives the game a boredom handicap right out of the starting gate.  But once some of the technical flaws of the game begin, it really starts to fall apart.  While going through the cave at the end of the game, it took me about five to ten minutes to find the dude who I needed to launch me on a ship in what turned out to be the “wait, that’s it?” ending sequence.  Once I got him, I think something in the game must have crapped out, because I got stuck in the cave for over an hour dealing with non-stop “random encounters.”  For a while, every single step I took led to a battle.  It took me over an hour to make my way to the exit of the cave.  Considering that this was the end of the game, I figured this was done intentionally to be the big finale gauntlet.  However, I talked to another player of Indiemon who experienced no-such diarrhea of the random encounter.  Huh.  You ever get the feeling a game was intentionally trolling you?  Happens to me all the time.

No, I don't know why the pictures are cropped this way.

No, I don’t know why the pictures are cropped this way.

So Indiemon is boring and unoriginal and technically problematic.  That’s not even mentioning how loose and busted the movement controls are.  Whatever you do, don’t use the analog stick to walk.  You’ll zig-zag around like a drunken knight who makes animals fight his battles for him like a total pussy.  Character design is, well, I suppose no more lazy or absurd than your average new Pokemon is these days.  But, I can’t even recommend Indiemon as the cheap dollar store knock-off that I suppose it has positioned itself to be.  It’s just too bland.  It actually manages to completely miss the point of what made Pokemon work.  Remove all strategy from that series, make the artwork more crude and amateurish, and take away the childlike sense of wonder, and you would have a game ill-suited towards teaching kids the kind of skills needed to be the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

xboxboxartIndiemon: Earth Nation was developed by RicolaVG

80 Microsoft Points think a Pokemon parody, similar to Doom & Destiny or Cthulhu Saves the World, could work as an XBLIG in the making of this review.

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Seeds of Ralark and Rise of the Ravager

April 12, 2013 by 2 Comments

Oopsie.  Last night, I meant to download Rise of the Ravager by Gentleman Squid.  Instead, I downloaded Seeds of Ralark.  The reason for that was I wasn’t 100% sure what the title was, except it had the word “of” in it and the cover art looked a bit generic.  You could see how I might make such a mistake.

Could be twins!

Could be twins!

Well, I plunked down 80 Mystic Syrup Ponies for Seeds of Ralark, so I figure I might as well play it.  Or attempt to at least.  Seeds is the type of game where you almost wonder if it’s meant to be played at all.  It’s a platformer without jumping.  I think the aim of the developer was to be like Bionic Commando, because gameplay revolves around walking around as a gecko, moving from platform to platform by way of a grappling hook.  Or, in the case of Seeds, a sticky tongue.  Positive thing out-of-the-way first: the graphics are pretty.  That’s the only nice thing I can say about Seeds.  The play control is atrocious.  Aiming the tongue is too loose, and the physics don’t want to cooperate.  In a short play time, I even found some little quirks that make me wonder.  Like, how come platforms don’t swing back and forth once you’ve moved them?  You can use the tongue to grapple onto a platform, but move the platform you’re standing on by using sticky feet.  However, when you let go with your tongue, the platform goes back to its starting position and locks into place.  That’s just nonsensical.

I can’t really squeeze a full review out of Ralark because I didn’t even finish the tutorial.  I put about thirty minutes into trying, but Seeds of Ralark had already become one of the most painful gaming sessions I had ever experienced.  I guess this is being passed off as “difficult” by the developers, and I suppose that is the case.  Of course, piecing together a broken statue with super glue might also be difficult, but even if you manage it, that doesn’t change the fact that the statue is broken.  If Ralark handled better, it might be fun.  Might. As it stands now, it’s one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Seeds of Ralark offended my platforming fandom, and also gave me a desire to dump Geico as my insurance carrier.

Seeds of Ralark offended my platforming fandom, and also gave me a desire to dump Geico as my insurance carrier.

How does a game this bad come along, and how does a developer not realize it’s a problem?  In the case of Seeds of Ralark, I’m guessing this is a simple case of a developer becoming the best at their own game, not realizing that others are going to find it to be a frustrating, joyless chore to play.  After all, they had no problem with the controls.  The ones they designed, and know all the stupid quirks of that nobody else in their right mind would take the time to learn.  And then you have a game like Rise of the Ravager, where the difficulty spikes so dramatically that any lingering fun is sapped away.

Ravager is a decent concept.  A gallery shooter sort of like Galaga, only with the colored-bullets gameplay of something like Ikaruga.  Sounds good, and at first, it is.  Of course, Ikaruga is insanely difficult with just two colors of bullets.  Ravager has four colors to worry about.  For the less coordinated of the populace (raises hand), that alone could be enough of a turnoff to make Ravager easily skippable.  But, the action was decent enough and showed enough promise that I felt I should continue.  This lasted until I encountered the first boss, which was too spongy for its own good.  I tried reshuffling my experience points into other categories (by far the smartest move the guys at Gentleman Squid did here) but still struggled.  After roughly a dozen attempts, I finally beat it.  But, by this point, I was fatigued by this less-than-exciting sequence and was just anxious for the game to be over.  I call this Steven Seagal Syndrome, because I feel the same way when watching his movies.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with giant colored heads raining down from the sky. Just like the Mayans predicted.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with giant colored heads raining down from the sky. Just like the Mayans predicted.

My boyfriend would like me to note that I’m not this game’s target audience.  I try to be as unbiased as possible, but I also generally dislike shmups and have a tough time warming up to them.  Having said that, Ravager has problems that extend beyond its genre.  The color system requires skills that are typically a cut above what an average gamer possesses.  I can handle it up to a certain point, but when you have different-colored enemies coming at you from different sides, with a couple of waves following right behind them, it really can be a bit overwhelming, to the point of being demoralizing.  I also thought there were a few flaws in the upgrade system.  Some of the upgrades are too expensive.  You also get upgrade points by not taking damage on levels.  However, to do so often requires utter perfection.  If you could go back to previous stages and attempt to earn those points you missed (just the missed points, so as to avoid mindless grinding), this would be a great feature to have.  But you can’t go back.  Thus, those upgrade points that the majority of the gaming population really could use will be unobtainable.

Put it this way: let’s say you put me in a foot race with Usain Bolt.  He would absolutely smoke me the first race.  Now let’s say that because he beat me, I have to run the next race with my shoelaces tied together.  Hey wait, shouldn’t HE be the one running with his shoelaces tied together?  That would make for a closer, more exciting race, and I, the person ill-equipped to do well in such a task, would have a better chance of staying competitive.  And that’s what is wrong with Ravager.  Those upgrade points are out of reach for those who are in need of them the most.  Being able to go back and get those points would take the edge off, but the developers are worried that their game might get too easy.  So I guess that’s that.  If only gaming was a medium where, and I’m speaking hypothetically here, you could have adjustable difficulty levels to cater to players of all skill levels.  I know, there I go again, spouting off pure fanciful crazy talk.  I still hold out hope that my insanely absurd “adjustable difficulty” crap will become a reality.  Maybe the 720 or PS4 will have the processing power to pull of such a radical space age innovation.

I probably should also put out there that the developer was anxious for Brian and I to experiment with the co-op stuff, so we did.  Brian jumped in at level 13.  Again, not wanting their game to be “too easy”, the game features what they claim to be “scaling difficulty” that increases with the number of players.  Thus, once Brian jumped in, the game suddenly had what seemed like three times the amount of enemies you would normally encounter, and those enemies took more bullets to kill.  The dudes at Gentleman Squid based this off Diablo 2.  Which you’ll note is a dungeon crawling hack-and-slasher, not a single-screened gallery shooter with limited movement.  Scaling difficulty they say?  I say the amount of shit two people had to deal with seemed more in line with something meant for four players.  I actually shudder how much shit could be in a four player game.  This was not well thought out.

Rise of the Ravager didn't do much for me, besides make me want to go back and watch Legends of the Hidden Temple. I'm partial to the Orange Iguanas myself, although the Silver Snakes were not without charm.

Rise of the Ravager didn’t do much for me, besides make me want to go back and watch Legends of the Hidden Temple. I’m partial to the Orange Iguanas myself, although the Silver Snakes were not without charm.

I’m sure there is an audience for Rise of the Ravager.  It has decent enough play control, pretty graphics, and a nice hook.  The fact that I came close to enjoying it might speak volumes of its quality.  But, based on my own subjective opinions, I can’t recommend it.  It’s just not for me, in the same way that hiring someone to tie me to a bed and beat me with a bullwhip isn’t for me.  Some people are into that kind of shit.

Seeds of Ralark was developed by Escapism Entertainment

Rise of the Ravager was developed by Gentleman Squid

80 Microsoft Points apiece noted that the Leaderboard’s ranked percentage is the lowest now that it’s ever been in the making of this review.  Pick it up, guys.

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Retro Arcade Adventure Remade

April 11, 2013 by 1 Comment

It’s been a little over a year since I reviewed Retro Arcade Adventure, a hack-and-slasher that was sort of like Smash TV for the dark ages.  I didn’t really like the game.  It was short, repetitive, and boring.  You could see potential in the developer, but the experience was tedious.  So I was skeptical when I saw that they had decided to remake the title instead of patching the original.  Ballsy for sure, since the first wasn’t very good.  It would be like burning a steak and trying to correct it by throwing it back on the grill for ten minutes.

Right away, I noticed the game was somewhat improved.  Enemies still come out you in boring, mindless waves, but they hack up pretty good.  Levels felt shorter, power-ups more plentiful, and boss battles were fun if unspectacular.

And then I encountered this fucking thing.

screen3

It could very well be the most boring boss I’ve taken on in an indie game.  It very much reminded me of the final boss in Sonic 4.  Too spongy, takes too long to open itself up to attack, and made me question whether or not I had died in a horrific traffic accident and had gone to gaming hell.  The first time I fought it, I was low on health (I seemed to be taking unaccountable damage in the stage leading up to it), but it took me a full ten minutes to slip up.  The second time around, after over 15 minutes hitting presumably the weak spot on the boss, it still wasn’t dead.  I was though.  I paused the game, casually got up, turned the power off, and decided to go watch some TV.  I think it was a documentary on tape worms.  Vastly more entertaining than that boss was.

In short, this needs to be fixed.  And it will be.  The developer assured me of it, under penalty of torture by honey and fire ants.  Until then, you can spend your time with the two minigames included.  I just realized I never actually played them.  Let me give them a shot.

(15 minutes later)

Oh dear God, what horrible shit.  I’m not waiting.  Break out the honey and fire ants.  This developer needs a good torturing.

xboxboxartRetro Arcade Adventure Remade was developed by SIACTRO

80 Microsoft Points liked Smash TV years ago but don’t think it’s possible to be good in this day and age so prove me wrong indie developers in the making of this review.

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Quiet Christmas

April 6, 2013 by 1 Comment

It’s been about a year since I reviewed Quiet, Please!, a pleasant little mix of puzzles and point-and-click adventures.  I enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t exactly the deepest game.  It was also a shorty at around thirty minutes.  To this day, I still get people complaining that I didn’t give a thumbs up to City Tuesday, yet a game like Quiet, Please! got my recommendation, even though they were similar in length and style.  The difference between the two is Quiet felt finished and fully realized, while City Tuesday felt like it was just starting at the moment it ended, making the overall impact of the game unsatisfactory.  It would be like going to a bakery and asking for a dozen cookies, six of them the Quiet cookies and six of them the Tuesday cookies.  First you’re handed the Quiet cookies, and they’re decent, if not memorable.  Then you anxiously await for the Tuesday cookies, only to have the baker throw the uncooked dough at your face.  And then call you a cunt for not being happy with the dough.  Even if the dough was delicious (it was), you can only imagine how good the finished cookie would have been.

Extending that analogy further, Quiet Christmas is an overcooked cookie. If it had been bundled with the original as a freebie, I could have appreciated it more and probably bumped up Quiet’s standing on the leaderboard.  But it’s not, and I can’t.  The real problem with Quiet Christmas is it’s very much the same game, only with a small handful of new puzzles.  It takes place in the same house as the original, features the same cast, and the logic of the puzzles is largely the same as before.  It would be like buying a DVD for $20 and being told that you can get the alternate ending for an additional $20.  No, that should have been on the DVD in the first place.

Once again, my warped brain conceived horrible things to do to my family. I figured I would grease the floor with butter to cause my hyperactive brother to slip and knock himself unconscious. Not making that up. I watch too much YouTube.

Once again, my warped brain conceived horrible things to do to my family. I figured I would grease the floor with butter to cause my hyperactive brother to slip and knock himself unconscious. Not making that up. I watch too much YouTube.

If you played the first Quiet game, you’ll breeze through this expansion.  I used a stopwatch.  Ten minutes, thirty-seven seconds was my time.  And, because it’s the same location, there’s no surprises here for players.  I think this could possibly become a series of games, but not like this.  Keep the family around (I suspect the parents are both drunks and the brother is hyperactive) but send them to new, exotic locations.  That works!  Look at Home Alone 2.  Same movie.  Same plot.  Same characters.  Different location.  $360,000,000 at the box office.  By the way, I didn’t actually know how much that flick made until just now.  Wow.  I think I’m going to start cutting myself.

xboxboxartQuiet Christmas was developed by Nostatic Software

80 Microsoft Points got a lump of coal in their stocking in the making of this review.

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How to Get a Girlfriend

March 29, 2013 by 10 Comments

Correction: There are apparently more than six questions in this “game”. I played through this four times and got the same six questions in the same order, than I played again to make sure and again got the same six questions in the same order, so you can see how I would think there are only six questions. But, I’ve heard from playtesters that there are apparently more than six questions. Does that make the game better? Um, no.

The bible thumping wackos are right: the only thing keeping me, a well-adjusted heterosexual that is very much in love with a member of the opposite sex, from engaging in full-fledged lesbian orgies straight out of Caligula, is shit like the Defense of Marriage Act and Prop 8. Really, I’m only as straight as the law forces me to be. Of course, I’m a plan-ahead type of chick, and if the Supreme Court rules that I can marry anyone, including a fellow toilet-sitter, I’m going to need tips on how to court them properly. Thank God for How to Get a Girlfriend. Which is ironic when you think about it, because it basically spits on His divine plan. Just think, for the low price of 80 Microsoft Points, someone like me, an introverted autistic girl who took 20 years to get her first boyfriend, can learn the secrets that only the most debonair of ladies men would know. This will certainly give me a leg up on all those house wives that will almost assuredly leave their husbands as society as we know it crumbles around us.

How to Get a Girlfriend presents players (and I sure plan on being a player if you catch my classy drift) with six questions related to picking up women. And it is the same six questions every time, because men who seek dating advice from Xbox Live Indie Games featuring malformed anime girls on the cover art are notoriously slow learners.

The first question asked what you do if you see a cute girl in a bar. I went with the option that most suited me: look really thirsty so that she would buy me a drink.

Shows what I know.

Girlfriend 1

Of course! It all makes sense. So women are parasitic beings whose love, attention, and affection needs to be bought? Oh my God.  I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME! I can’t tell you what it means to find out that we’re all really this simplistic and shallow.

The next question hypothesized that you would encounter a girl dancing, but you yourself are not a good dancer. Wow. This game really knows me. Well, I’m an American and I was on Xbox Live at the time, so I figured I would call her a loser and tell her dancing sucks. Wrong again. As it turns out, dancing is vital, because if you can’t dance, you won’t know what to do with a girl in your arms. Duly noted. It would have been nice if it had been more specific about the type of dance you need to learn. The closest I could find was square dancing lessons at the local Y. Chicks dig that, right?

Next up, what do you do if you have a crush on a girl but she only considers you a friend? I admit, this was a head scratcher. Ultimately, I figured the right thing to do would be hit on her best friend to make her jealous. But no, as it turns out, you should instead keep a distance on her.

Girlfriend 2

That.. makes sense to me. I mean, mysterious is way in vogue right now. Think about it.  Those Twilight movies grossed like a bagillion dollars! Sure, I’m not a hundred-plus-year-old-pedophile on the prowl for subservient chicks who can’t think or act for themselves, so those movies weren’t all that educational. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m not sure how the whole “mysterious” thing works with someone you’re already good friends with, but I guess that’s why I’m not the dating expert.

Next up: where do you take a girl on a first date? I decided not to go with carnival. Worst case is the girl really doesn’t like me and tells them I escaped from their sideshow. Next thing you know, I’m stuck on the road, going to places like Sheboygan, watching meth producers pay two bits a gander to see the Amazingly Ugly Girl. No thanks. As it turns out, coffee is a good first date. Not the movies. Or ice skating. Oh thank God. So a first date won’t involve me falling on my ass repeatedly. Weird, because if I met the chick at a bar, she would already be used to seeing that.

The next question deals with a subject matter important to all people in the hypothetical end of civilization homosexual apocalypse dating scenario:

IMG_1082

With no option for “hire a hitman and have that bitch whacked”, I decided to go with the laxatives. Not only was I wrong, but as it turns out I’ve been using the totally wrong descriptive language towards the women I’ve been courting.

IMG_1083

I admit it. I wouldn’t have thought to call (or even think of) any women I was trying to pick up “broads.” But this is 2013. Maybe it’s time we all embrace aggressive, obnoxious flirtation.

Finally, what do you do if a girl comes up to you and tells you she’s not really interested? I actually know the answer to this, but my lawyer has advised me against going into detail here. At least before the jury comes back with a verdict.

Final score? 0 for 6. Well fuck, I guess I really did buy the right Xbox Live Indie Game dating guide, because I had a lot to learn. With the knowledge I have acquired, I’m in an even better position now to commit a crime against nature. Which I sort of already did when I paid $1 for this absolutely unfunny, unlikable, useless, sexist piece of shit game that was developed by a douchebag who wouldn’t know pussy if it sat on his mouth and queefed.

xboxboxartHow to get a Girlfriend was developed by Fusion Gaming

80 Microsoft Points are waiting for the Supreme Court to legalize working on the sabbath so that I can do that without fear of being put to dea.. wait, what do you mean you can already do that? But the Bible says not to! You’re all a bunch of sinners and you’re going to Hell in the making of this review!

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Dead Sea II: Mutation

March 24, 2013 by 1 Comment

Imagine a game centered around quick-time events where pressing the correct button doesn’t always work.  Sounds fucking terrible, right?  But wait, what if I told you that if you fail (or if the game determines you fail even when you don’t), the load times can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds before you get a chance at restarting?  Or what if I told you the frame-rate can stutter right as the enemy that will touch-off the quick time event draws near you, causing the quick-time-event to only appear on-screen for a small fraction of a second?  What if the graphics are choppy and the enemies have issues clipping when interacting with your character?  What if your character moves as slow as a snail encased in liquid nitrogen?  What if the text was so small that you have to physically get out of your chair to read it, even when you possess a television large enough to cover an active volcano?  What can you say about a game where nothing seems to have gone right?

It’s really strange because the first Dead Sea was not God awful or anything.  I ultimately didn’t recommend it, because the gameplay was boring and repetitive.  But I think with some work, the concept of being stuck in the middle of the ocean with sharks out to turn you into the catch-of-the-day might be a good one.  When I heard the guys at Brave Men Games were working on a sequel, I was hoping they would try to mend the concept, which I think is salvageable.  The developers seemed to disagree with that assessment, because Dead Sea II is completely different from the original, with no real connection besides starring the same chick.  Actually, I think the “mutation” part refers to the girl, because that’s the only explanation for why she has the spray-on-tan from Hell, making her look like the love child of Courtney Stodden and Hulk Hogan.  How did she get that tan?  Didn’t she just spend, like, days bobbing around the ocean?  That wouldn’t have bronzed her.  That would have had her peeling a human onion.  A pickled human onion.

It's also possible she's in need a liver transplant. In which case, I'm sorry.

It’s also possible she’s in need a liver transplant. In which case, I’m sorry.

My biggest disappointment with Dead Sea 2 is that the original was a bad game merely because the mechanics were not fun.  It did give me hope that the developers were on the right track.  Instead, the sequel is broken to the point of being nearly unplayable.  Being attacked by giant mutant-shark-people-things might not be the worst idea, but the execution here is awful.  I searched around for viable pathways to make stealth kills on the enemies, but couldn’t find any without being detected.  When an enemy charges you, you have to perform a quick-time-event to escape.  However, sometimes I would push the correct button almost immediately and still die.  It seemed completely random when it would work.  Combine this with excruciating load times and I didn’t really feel the urge to press on.  I tried to finish one floor that had two mutant dudes for a good solid hour, but a combination of stuttering frame rate, broken quick-time-events, and demoralizing load times made me give up.  Maybe without technical hangups, Dead Sea 2 could have been decent.  Instead, it’s dead in the water.  Ba-ba-baaaaaaa.

Dead Sea 2Dead Sea II: Mutation was developed by Brave Men Games

80 Microsoft Points said this series has jumped shark in the making of this review.

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Loot Grinder

March 21, 2013 by 4 Comments

How to Please Indie Gamer Chick

  • Step one: make sure your planned video game is actually a video game.
  • Step two: Send a bribe to P.O. Box…………..

Actually, Loot Grinder didn’t make it past step one, so there’s no need to continue.  What it does manage to do is be one of the most baffling “games” I’ve ever played.  It’s menial data-entry from Hell.  Who would see the potential in taking a genre, removing the aspects of it that are most important to gamers, and then releasing it for mass consumption?  Dirt-eating insanity!  But that’s exactly what Loot Grinder is.  No story.  No characters to interact with.  No world to explore.  No hidden treasures.  No dungeons.  No plot twists.  No real dialog at all.  Thus, all that’s left is the grinding.  Also known as the least fun part of any game.  That’s why they called it “grinding” instead of “super fun happy time!”

I don't remember any game making me yawn more. No, I didn't finish it. I quit saving my progress and the first time I died after that, I decided I had seen enough. Two hours of utter tedium.

I don’t remember any game making me yawn more. No, I didn’t finish it. I quit saving my progress and the first time I died after that, I decided I had seen enough. Two hours of utter tedium that should be avoided at all costs by anyone looking to have a good time.

They didn’t even get the whole grinding part right.    Without a world to explore, there’s no way you can hang out in a specific area, fighting guys you know you can beat.  That’s what I consider grinding to be.  Here, you could very well end up fighting guys who are well out-of-bounds for your party, get smacked down, and have to start over from your last save.  Money is too slow to be acquired.  Potions are way over-priced, and so is use of the inn.  Progress feels slow.  Upgrades are expensive enough to seem well out or reach.  And then there’s weird moments, like buying a spell only to find out that your particular dude can’t actually use that spell.  I bought a spell called Fire 1, but it turns out that’s for diamond wizard things, and my guy was a pearl wizard thing.  Unless I missed something, and I was looking very closely, there was no way of knowing that until I had already spent a large chunk of money on the spell.  It’s like buying a used car and not getting to know if there’s a dead body in the trunk until you pass your first police checkpoint.

Worst of all, the game only leaves in battles, but the battles are slow, basic, and boring.  Gaming traditionalists might appreciate them, since they’re lifted liberally from the 16-bit era.  Of course, those battles were palatable because they had the benefit of advancing the narrative.  Without that, the gameplay has no sense of achievement.  This is one of those “sounds like it might work” on paper concepts that probably shouldn’t have made it out of the planning stages.  Loot Grinder is one of the most boring ideas in gaming history and should only be put to use in weeding out which interns at the office are unsuited for redundant filing work.

xboxboxartLoot Grinder was developed by Pixel Polish Games

80 Microsoft Points said this game should come with one of those “may cause drowsiness” warnings in the making of this review.

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DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die

March 18, 2013 by 12 Comments

DLC Quest was one of those rare games that exists strictly to parody the industry, did everything right, and ended before the joke stopped being funny.  It did real well, even taking home the Official Xbox Magazine’s XBLIG of the year award. I really liked it too, to the point that I wrote my single most boring review ever because I was dead afraid of spoiling the game.  I wanted people to play it.

I also did not want there to be a sequel.  I just figured that there was no way the joke could be stretched any further.  DLC Quest is pretty much a game without flaws, in the sense that it gives you just enough gameplay to not get too bored while waiting for the next gag to hit.  It gave players one hour worth of genuinely funny jokes, and ended before they started going flat.  It really felt like the joke had gone as far as it could.

Zombie sheeps. Also known as Sega's fanbase.

Zombie sheep. Also known as Nintendo’s fanbase.

Still, everyone clamored for a sequel.  Not me.  I did everything I could to discourage it.  I asked creator Ben Kane nicely to not do it.  Then I asked not so nicely.  Then I made threats.  Then I blackmailed.  Then I  held his parents hostage.  Then I left a horse’s head in his bed.  Then I burned his house down.  Then I found out I was talking to the wrong Ben Kane.  Then I had to explain to the cops that I hadn’t grossly over-reacted to an ultimately trivial situation.  Then I had to make with the bribes.  By time I had tracked down the real Ben Kane, it was this morning and the sequel was already out.  Grumble.

Guess what?  My fears were for not.  DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die is still quite funny, briskly paced, and offers genuine laughs.  Having said that, the best jokes clearly came in the original, where you had to get “DLC” just to be able to pause the game, or walk to the left.  It took absurdity to a new extreme.  The punchlines in Live Freemium feel more like run-of-the-mill gaming humor.  Well done, mind you, but still the type of jokes that can be done in any type of game.  Stuff like making guys speak with Canadian accents, or having a token NPC character that adds fuck-all to the game.  If the writing wasn’t so damn good, it would have really been a letdown, because this shit has been done before.

As a game, DLC Quest 2, like its predecessor, is as basic as buttered bread.  Jump around, collect coins, find the occasional secret room that contains more coins, and that’s pretty much it.  I’ve reviewed dozens of games at Indie Gamer Chick that have minimal gameplay and focus on the writing, but platforming is much more preferable to scrolling through menus, or pointing and clicking.  And I have to stress, the writing is sublime.  As an example, there’s a section of the game that focuses on fetch quests.  Such events in any game are guaranteed to induce cringes, and this was no different.  Then, just as tedium was about to settle in and make of mess of things, a brilliant punch-line to the whole sequence instantly defused me.  It was the biggest laugh of the whole game.  I actually shook my head in disbelief.  I can’t believe he made that part work the way he did.  He got me.

Add an extra thirty minutes to the playtime to find everything if you so wish.

Add an extra thirty minutes to the playtime to find everything if you so wish.

Like the original, Live Freemium takes about an hour to finish.  Unlike the original, it doesn’t stay fresh to the end.  It doesn’t really get annoying or boring.  In fact, I didn’t think the game had run out of steam until right before the finale.  But, yes, the joke has officially ran its course.  It’s nothing short of remarkable that Ben Kane stretched it for over two hours before it grew stale.  His talent as a game designer is remarkable.  At the time of this writing, he has three games on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard, ranked #19, #20, and #31.  That’s pretty damn impressive.  Thus, I officially proclaim Ben Kane and his Going Loud Studios the first recipient of the Indie Gamer Chick Certified Developer Who Doesn’t Suck Award.

dont_suck2

Congratulations Ben.  But for God’s sake, don’t make another one.  I don’t care if this earns you enough money to buy a small nation.  Don’t make me put a horse’s head in your bed.  This time I’ll get it right.  How many Ben Kanes can there be?

xboxboxartDLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die was developed by Going Loud Studios

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points said “no seriously, I know I doubted you before, but there is no possible way you can stretch out this joke for another episode.  Think of Naked Gun 3.  That shit was unwatchable” in the making of this review.

DLC Quest: Live Freemium or Die is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. 

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Battle High 2

March 16, 2013 by 7 Comments

In this edition of Second Chance with the Chick, I take a look at a game I played way back in August of 2011.  A game that was a participant in the 2011 Summer Indie Uprising.  A game that..

Huh?  What do you mean this is a different game?  No.

Really?

(checks notes)

Well I’ll be damned.  It really is a sequel.

Awkward.

Even more awkward is the original Battle High that I played I sort of took a big dump on.  Perhaps an undeserved dump.  I was only on my second month as Indie Gamer Chick at that point, and the game was prominently featured in the Uprising event despite being completely unoriginal.  I think my expectations for the types of games in the Uprising (and XBLIGs in general) were misguided.  I thought I would be playing dozens of weird, exotic, experimental games.  Why?  Because I was (some would say “still am“) fucking stupid.

The beautiful truth about Xbox Live Indie Games is that the best titles typically are directly inspired by classic games and formulas.  So was I overly harsh on Mattrified Games?  Yes.  I’ll eat some humble pie and admit that I was wrong, and that Battle High was better than I said.  Their primary goal was to pay respectable tribute to a beloved genre, and I can’t deny they succeeded with Battle High.  I didn’t like it all that much, because I didn’t grow up with an endless stream of 2D fighters that were practically indistinguishable from one another.  I imagine if I had, I might have been more receptive towards it.  Sort like how my father keeps trying to sell me on the new Dallas.  I gave it a shot and thought that it was total crap.  My father watched the original and eats the shit up with a spoon.  The point being whether it’s crap or not is irrelevant to the target audience.

Not that I think Battle High 2 is crap.  It’s not.  If you’re into fighters, I seriously doubt you’ll find a better one on Xbox Live Indie Games.  It controls well.  I guess.  I mean, I would bet it controls much better on an arcade stick.  I had difficulty imputing even the simplest of moves.  Neither the standard Xbox 360 controller or the transforming d-pad one I have are suited for fighters.  But I already learned that lesson years ago when attempting to play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on XBLA.  I can hardly blame the developer for that.

Calling it a sequel is a bit of a stretch though.  It has basically the same graphics, same characters, same bonus games, same setting, and same controls as the original.  Maybe a new move here, or more emphasis on plot there, or a small handful of new characters.  But, it just doesn’t feel like an evolution.  Maybe more like a special edition, sort of how there were five fucking versions of Street Fighter II before they brought out Street Fighter III.  Put it this way.  If you looked at the two screenshots below, could you tell me which is the original and which is the sequel?  Is it this one?

1 or 2 2

Or this one?

1 or 2 1

The top shot is the new one.  The bottom one is the original.  See what I mean?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Capcom made millions re-relasing the same game with minor tweaks.  If it’s good for them, it’s good for XBLIGs.

I guess there is one major difference I could point out: I had fun this time around.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing about XBLIGs for nearly two years, so I have a better understanding of the platform.  Originality is not the goal of every developer.  I imagine if you were a kid who played fighters and dreamed of making your own fighting game, your first goal on a platform like XBLIG would be to do just that.  That’s what Mattrified Games did with Battle High, and they did a damn good job.  Maybe Battle High is a glorified patch disguised as a sequel, but I enjoyed it, and I have little love in my heart for 2D fighters of the 90s.  I was weaned on Soul Caliber, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and God-awful 3D Mortal Kombat games.  I chalk my dislike of SNK-style fighters to a generational thing.  To me, they’re boring.  Just like how you guys hate the contributions of my generation, like um.. uhhhhhhh.. we had that thing where that guy did that thing that one time and um.. this review is over.

xboxboxartBattle High 2 was developed by Mattrified Games

Seal of Approval Large80 Microsoft Points thought this game was about Matthew Riddle.  That dude always battled high in the making of this review.

Battle High 2 is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  No, I’m not retroactively putting Battle High 1 on there, unless you count Battle High 2 as Battle High 1.5, which I do.

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