Scribendus

January 22, 2013 by 1 Comment

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

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

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

xboxboxartScribendus was developed by Pygmalion’s Box

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

 

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Platformer from Hell and Little Acorns Deluxe

January 20, 2013 by 9 Comments

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

Where's Waldo? causes less squinting.

Where’s Waldo? causes less squinting.

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

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

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

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

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

xboxboxart1IGC_ApprovedPlatformer from Hell was developed by Hoosier Games

Little Acorns Deluxe was developed by Team Pesky

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

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

Gameplay footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer.

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Light Fighters

January 10, 2013 by 21 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s cool.  We’re not though.”

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

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

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

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

“The one you’ve been complaining about?”

“Yea.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“But, I need to try this multiplayer.”

“Your dad is home, get him.”

“Oh come on, please?”

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

“Because, um, I’m Indie Gamer Chick!”

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

“Um, misery loves company?”

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

“It probably won’t be THAT bad!”

“But you think it will be bad.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, but no.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll give you a back rub!”

“Your hands are too tiny for it.”

“I’ll take you out for a rib dinner!”

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

“I’ll blow you.”

“I’ll get that anyway too.”

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

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

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

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

xboxboxartLight Fighters was developed by Deviant Spark

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

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

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

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

January 8, 2013 by 3 Comments

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

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

Trivia Or Die

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

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

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

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

Trivia or Die: Movie Edition

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

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

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

Avatar Trivia Party 2

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

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What The?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avatar Trivia Party 2 was developed by Red Crest Studios

What The?! was developed by Social Loner Studios

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

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

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Shark Attack Deathmatch

December 27, 2012 by 11 Comments

Oh yea, this one will cause controversy.  No, not the fact that you’re killing realistic-looking depictions of the majestic and noble great white shark.  Personally, I don’t get why that’s such a big deal.  It’s not like someone is going to be motivated by playing this game and arm him or her self to go shark hunting like they’re fucking Brody or something.  The world doesn’t work that way, unless you’re one of those people who desperately needs to find proper medication.  The fanatical types will note that Super Mario Bros. didn’t breed a generation of children who ran around stomping turtles to death.  And where is this outrage when games depict dinosaurs being killed?  What’s the difference between that and killing deer in a hunting simulator?  Dinosaurs used to be animals, right?  And according to some people, that was just 4,000 years ago!

In all seriousness, I don't consider myself an animal-rights aficionado, but I'm agast at the Shark Fin Soup industry. You should really see this documentary by Gordon Ramsey on it. It's on YouTube, and I've linked to it here. Just click the picture.

In all seriousness, I don’t consider myself an animal-rights aficionado, but I’m disgusted by the Shark Fin Soup industry. You should really see this documentary by Gordon Ramsey on it. It’s on YouTube, and I’ve linked to it here. Just click the picture.

No, the real controversy is going to be about how much I liked Shark Attack Deathmatch.  Because I really did.  Opinion on it is fairly split, with some calling it good fun, and others calling it a steamy shit mountain.  I lean towards the good fun crowd, on account of actually having fun playing it.  But I could certainly see why so many people would call it Mount Crapmore.

It’s a weird idea: a slow, more methodical first-person-shooter set underwater.  And with sharks.  But killing the sharks is not the focus.  The idea is to kill the other scuba divers.  You’re armed with a spear gun and a knife to do this.  You’re given a decent-sized arena to fight in, but there are no boundary markers and I sometimes would swim out-of-bounds.  When you do, the game goes ape shit and demands you return to the play field, with a big arrow pointing you in the correct direction.  This was probably not a the best idea.  I would think having actual walls there would be preferable.  Like you’re in a giant lake.  A lake with great white sharks.  Okay, so it wouldn’t be authentic, but come, we’re in a video game where you can refill your health by picking up a giant red cross.  I think realism was thrown out the door at that moment.

You can't shoot the eels or turtles that float around. They only seem to be there to cause the occasional (actually quite rare) frame-rate hiccup. They should have been put there to give you powers or something. Maybe for the sequel.

You can’t shoot the eels or turtles that float around. They only seem to be there to cause the occasional (actually quite rare) frame-rate hiccup. They should have been put there to give you powers or something. Maybe for the sequel.

I think most of the hate for Shark Attack Deathmatch comes from those who stick exclusively to the demo.  Without getting to play the game online, you’re really missing out.  The single player Survival modes are pretty lame.  One of them involves zombie sharks, although I’m not sure what difference it made besides making them look scabbier.  If it’s not the single player mode, it’s the aiming of the spear gun.  I admit, I hated it at first too.  There’s a learning curve to it, and you can’t possibly get it down pat in the amount of time the demo gives you.  I’ll admit, even after a couple of hours of playtime, the aiming was never that good.  Even if you adjust the sensitivity, at best it can be described as barely satisfactory.  I found I did best when I centered my aim with the cross hairs and then switched to views with the left trigger.  Cumbersome?  Yea, but it was the only way I could seem to shoot accurately.

Of course, the one thing everyone says that’s nice about Shark Attack Deathmatch are the graphics are seriously stunning.  And yes, while you have to pull the old “good for an XBLIG” card, it looks really, really good.  For an XBLIG.  Easily the best looking first-person shooter on the platform, with nothing coming close.  And the audio cues are well done too, with a Jaws-like “daaa daaa DAAA” whenever a shark draws near you.  Of course, the sharks really aren’t the focus of the game.  They’re more like window dressing, if window dressing was sentient and out to kill you for no reason.  You can even turn off the sharks when setting up an online game, although I didn’t find anyone willing to do it.  The only way I could use the sharks was to feed myself to them if I was in danger of dying, thus depriving an opponent of a point.

I enjoyed most of the matches I played of Shark Attack, but there are tons of little annoyances.  Spawning is horrible.  I’ve spawned and died in less than five seconds because an angry shark was pissed off that I had blinked into existence on their watch.  Or there was one time where I spawned literally between two guys who were having a knife fight.  In the couple of hours I played, there were nearly a dozen instances of the “you’re alive again, you’re dead  again” spawning.  Brian once came back to life right in the path of an oncoming spear someone else had already fired.  Hilarious if it’s not you, but fucking annoying as hell when you’re on the receiving end of it.  To defend yourself, you can run for it, or you can drop a flash grenade.  The problem with this is it takes so fucking long to activate that by time you’ve removed it from your holster, pulled the pin, and dropped it, you’re probably either dead or dying, and all lined up in the sights of whatever is trying to end you.

"Running out of air? Don't worry, in a few seconds you'll have a fresh set of gills, and perhaps a blowhole in your back too!"

“Running out of air? Don’t worry, in a few seconds you’ll have a fresh set of gills, and perhaps a blowhole in your back too!”

Aggravations aside, Shark Attack Deathmatch is really fun.  And unlike a lot of games with online multiplayer, it has a full community.  I never once had a problem getting a full slate of players into a match.  Typically, if someone quit, there would be someone there to replace them in just a few seconds.  It didn’t matter if it was 11PM on Sunday or 4AM on Christmas morning.  Someone was always there.  Sure, it’s a totally different beast than your typical shooter, but that’s part of the charm.  I don’t really want to play a poor-man’s version of Goldeneye or Doom.  I want to try something original, and Shark Attack Deathmatch is that.  When I played with friends, we all had a hooting and hollering good time.  And hey, Sharks!  Who doesn’t love sharks?  It gives new meaning to the phrase “hanging out with chums.”

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedShark Attack Deathmatch was developed by Lighthouse Games Studio

80 Microsoft Points noted that when you die from a shark, it says “you were murdered by sharks.”  I don’t think what Sharks do is technically murder, unless they’re killing us for shits and giggles.  Dolphins do that, not Sharks in the making of this review. 

Shark Attack Deathmatch is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  See which games it put a scuba tank in the mouth of before shooting them with a harpoon. 

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Project Gert: Recon

December 23, 2012 by 60 Comments

Oh Lord.  Where do I begin with this one?  First off, how the FUCK is this chick not freezing to death?

That snowman started off life as her sister, Helga. Maybe you should put some more clothes on girl. Hint hint.

That snowman started off life as her kid sister, Helga. Maybe you should put some more clothes on girl.

If I tried stepping outside in 1/10th the amount of snow as that, my body would have said “fuck it, that’s it’s.  This bitch is nuts, and now we’re going to die.”  Then I would have died.  And I would have deserved it.  Even in the Tomb Raider movie that was designed primarily as an excuse to give teen gamers a less blocky representation of Lara Croft to jerk off to, they had the decency to bundle poor Angelina Jolie up when they filmed in the snow.

There’s exactly one good thing I can say about Project Gert: Recon.  The paintings featured in the game’s cutscenes are beautiful.  So at least one person involved in this project has an amazing talent.  Seriously, watch the trailer below.  The actual in-game graphics are spoiled by awful animation and piss-poor collision detection, but the paintings are spectacular.  I would totally commission this guy to do a portrait.  But that’s where any complements end.  Project Gert is yet another December entrant to the “potential worst game of the year” category.

See? Pretty cool.

See? Pretty cool.  Even if any rational person would be thinking “I really should have put more thought into my attire.”

The idea behind Project Gert is it’s part platformer, part physics-puzzler.  Neither part is done particularly well.    The platforming sections are slippery.  As mentioned above, the game is set in an ice world, and I have to wonder if that was done to excuse the poor control in this game.  All movement is loose, to the point that you’ll inevitably slip off into pits and die.  The funny part is, enemies are affected by this too.  There were some machines on slopes that were slipping and sliding along with me.  Actually, it’s not so funny, since a few times this led to cheap deaths where they would slide directly into me.  And fighting back was sure an adventure unto itself.  Collision detection is spotty as hell, so you practically have to be on top of an enemy to cause any damage to it.  The line between where you can hit and enemy and where an enemy is hitting you is blurry, so I found just avoiding them seemed like the best strategy.  Again, maybe the ice setting is the reason, and the poor girl is frozen numb and can’t properly swing a sword.

The main draw of Project Gert is supposed to be physics-based puzzles.  The concept is “figure out a way to get a special block to sit on a special platform.”  Solid idea.  Shitty, glitchy physics.  Once the special block starts moving, it slides like it’s sitting on a skateboard.  Granted, the game has a habit of saying “good enough” when the block is barely on the platform and probably bound for falling off it.  That’s generous of it, but sometimes it asks too much of the players, like a gas station offering 10¢ off a gallon but only if you siphon it by mouth.  An example is requiring you to fire a stone to push a block one way, then resetting the crosshairs, lining it up, and firing it the other direction to push the block onto the special platform.  Timing this is bad enough, but the physics for it are unstable and often it didn’t really push the block in the opposite direction.  It just made it fall slower, which is remarkable considering how slow it was already going.

And then there’s the times when the game engine just said “fuck it” altogether.  I would fail at a puzzle, restart it, and the blocks would not be stacked correctly.  Once, a block was aligned too far to the right.  This was one of those “fire the rock at it to move it” puzzles that presumably required pristine timing and placement, so having everything out of alignment from the start was aggravating.  This happened more than once, and sometimes I couldn’t even restart the puzzle to get the blocks realigned properly.  Or sometimes I would restart a puzzle and entire blocks would be missing.   About the best thing I can say about the puzzle system here is that the game gives you the option to skip them.  When being able to skip stuff in a game is the best thing it has going for it, it is a truly awful game indeed.

It really doesn't look that bad in still pictures. Just watch the trailer.

It really doesn’t look that bad in still pictures. Just watch the trailer.

Besides the still paintings, there’s nothing here remotely appealing.  Bad platforming.  Bad puzzles.  Boring setting.  Terrible writing.  Awful animation.  Glitchy physics.  It’s not quite as bad as Halloween Pie or Sententia, but it’s close.  Quite frankly, I’ve never been happier to see a game crash and dump me back to the dashboard.  Which this one did.  It was right after I cleared a pit after finding out there was a flimsy wall-jump in the game, which isn’t mentioned at all during the tutorial.  Once I got past that, I encountered another glitchy puzzle that I ended up skipping.  An explosion animation went off and then the Code 4 screen appeared.  At this point, I did the only thing I could do: jump out of my chair and scream “I don’t have to play Gert anymore!  Hallelujah, it’s a Christmas miracle!”

xboxboxartProject Gert: Recon was developed by Modern Intrigues

80 Microsoft Points were so excited, they had to sing!

♫Hark the imperiled Gamer Chick sings:

Glory for the Code 4 screen!

Piece of shit that boils my bile.

Gert and physics won’t reconcile.

Joyless crap with cheap ways to die.

Puzzles can be skipped so why should I try?

Like Tom Selleck’s agent proclaimed:

It’s over dude, this shit is dead.♫

Um, in the making of this review.

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8BitsRetroZSurvivals

December 21, 2012 by 7 Comments

Yea, that really is the name of the game.  I thought maybe some spaces were missing and that’s just how the game had to be listed on the marketplace due to length issues, but no.  8BitsRetroZSurvivals is the title.  Not that it matters.  The game could have been called Captain Bunghole’s Anal Cavity Shave Simulator and I wouldn’t give a shit as long as the game was good.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case here.

8BRZS looks like it might be a neo-retro take on Wolfenstein or Doom, but it’s not.  It’s actually a wave shooter where enemies come at you from all directions and you have to unload clip after clip into them.  Again, that could be fine if it was fun, but 8BRZS is a chore of the most boring order.  A dish-washing simulator might have been more exciting.  Nothing about this game is fun.  Enemies soak up your shots like Chris Christie soaks up cholesterol.  And here’s the weird part: the same enemies get spongier the further you are in the game.  In the first level, enemies take three shots to kill.  This was probably done to sucker people who play the trial into thinking the game wasn’t a total and complete piece of shit.  During the second wave, the same enemies take seven shots to kill.  Same enemies, same gun, but more than double the sponge.

It looks sweet. Do you know what else I hear is sweet? Antifreeze, but I wouldn't recommend you drink it.

It looks sweet. Do you know what else I hear is sweet? Antifreeze, but I wouldn’t recommend you drink it.

Weapons are sold in a couple of stores in each setting.  In the second stage, I upgraded to the next highest gun, the rifle.  It downed the first enemy I shot in two bullets, ending the second wave.  For the third wave, enemies now took three bullets to kill with the rifle.  I’m not sure how many it took with the starting pistol, because I only have nine bullets left and that wasn’t enough to kill one single enemy.  The same enemy that I had killed with three shots in the first wave.  The next wave, they took four.  And these are head shots, mind you.  If you don’t hit the head, it takes about triple that amount.

The real fun starts on the fifth wave.  Here, the enemies are invisible, except for a pair of red eyeballs.  These bastards take thirteen headshots with the rifle to bring down.  Mind you, you have a limited supply of ammo and have to buy more with money earned from shooting enemies.  Older weapons become obsolete quickly.  That starter pistol that took seven shots to take an enemy down now takes twenty-four headshots by time you reach wave 7.  This is bad game design.  It would be like if Space Invaders replaced your turret with a super soaker filled with air while suddenly the aliens start throwing napalm down on you.  And the aliens were invisible.  Except their eyes, which are bright red.  Only there’s a bunch of bright-red, eyeball-shaped things littering the scenery.  Wave 10 brings dudes wearing cloaks that shoot fireballs at you.  Wave 15 brings alien zombies who cause radioactive fogs when they die and require you to wear a gas mask.  Wave 20 sends the invisible guys back.  What, no zombie soldiers brandishing zombie guns that shoot zombies at you?

But the really, really weird part is, despite how slow the upgrades are and how absurdly spongy the enemies get, 8BrainCellBoringZComa is actually pretty fucking easy.  Once you get the best weapon in the game, enemies are still spongy (on Wave 28 they took something like 9 bullets to the head to kill, give or take), but money was so plentiful (you get it just by landing a shot with any gun) that I was able to keep my health refilled, my gun fully loaded, my grenades stocked, and still have enough dough left over to stock up on Super Bombs which clear all enemies present and those still walking up their corridors.  At this point, I only game-overed for two reasons.

#1 – I was afraid the game would crash and I would lose my high score.  The game never did crash, or even hint that it would, but this is an XBLIG and you can never be too cautious.

#2 – I was so fucking bored by this point that I figured it was conceivable that observers would declare me clinically dead and start to arrange for my organs to be donated.  I already woke up once in a bathtub full of ice with my left kidney missing and I’ll be damned if I allow that to happen again.

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A game that stinks so bad you’ll have to wear a gas mask.

The real shame is 8BitsRetroZSurvivals looks good enough to get any fan of 3D 90s shooters excited.  The graphics do an excellent job of aping that art style.  It sounds good too, I guess.  I mean, every time you clear a wave you hear what sounds like Dr. Claw saying “this is your worst nightmare!”  What, being stuck in a shitty wave shooter?  Yea, actually it is.  It controls really well too.  And it offers perks like a decently populated global leaderboard.  This would all be great, but the gameplay itself is shallow and boring to the point of exhaustion.  I finished 34th on that board out of about 240 people and I feel like I should donate for Red Cross relief to those 33 poor souls who put more time in this than I did.

xboxboxart8BitsRetroZSurvivals was developed by Games Brothers

Point of Sale: Xbox Live Indie Games

$1 wondered how these fuckers became zombies in the first place?  I mean, if a person took 40+ rounds worth of a pistol to the face to kill, presumably any zombie who attempted to bite them would break its teeth.  Since when does becoming a zombie turn your skin into Kevlar in the making of this review?

Gameplay footage via Aaron the Splazer

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Heavy Recoil

December 20, 2012 by 5 Comments

Heavy Recoil harkens back to the good ‘ole days when games would kick your ass with a steel-toed boot.  This is also known as the period before I was born, so the nostalgic value of Heavy Recoil does absolutely nothing for me.  And yet, when I see a game that does a pretty convincing job of looking like an 8 or 16 bit era title, I usually get excited.  That’s typically because such games seem to go that extra mile towards having good level design and awesome play control.  So does Heavy Recoil succeed?  Yes, at least when it comes to looking like a Super Nintendo game.  If I hadn’t known it was on XBLIG and saw a trailer for it, I would have thought for sure it was an SNES title that I had never heard of.  And after playing it, I would have guessed I had never heard of it because it was shit.

Heavy Recoil really does look the part, which is commendable. But the gameplay is boring, limited, and frustrating. Retro doesn't have to mean shallow.

Heavy Recoil really does look the part, which is commendable. But the gameplay is boring, limited, and frustrating. Retro doesn’t have to mean shallow.

Heavy Recoil is a 2D platformer/shooter where you play as a robot that must shoot other robots.  While I’ve recently developed a love for robot-on-robot violence (courtesy of Brian introducing me to reruns of Robot Wars), I question the logic of building a weapon that is so damn limited or worse than what the enemy is using.  The protagonist robot can only shoot whatever is straight ahead of it.  I’ve had a lot of people say “some games were like that!  Would you call Mega Man shit?”  Apples and oranges, people.  Mega Man was more nimble than the robot you play as here, which wasn’t given a name or any back story at all so I’ll just call it “Phil” because that’s about the most boring name I could think of on five seconds notice.  Phil can barely jump, unless you get a power up that allows him to do it.  Given the fact that many valuable items are placed well above your normal jumping range (along with plenty of enemies), this was a bit of a dick move.

In order to get jumping, you have to pick it up in an item drop.  This in and of itself is a problem.  The item that has it rotates between it and a useless dash upgrade, requiring you to time when to pick it up.  Typically, that’s not too hard, but sometimes it’s obscured by something in the foreground and you can’t see it.  It’s frustrating enough that the game considers decent jumping to be a bonus that players have to pick up without having to deal with blind-man’s bluff.  I had the same problem with the secondary weapon upgrades.  There’s four: grenades, lasers, homing missiles, and rockets.  No matter which you have, they’re weak.  They can’t even break apart the barrels that you pluck them from.  Grenades are probably the most useless of the bunch.  They’re good at blowing up annoying landmines, but otherwise everything they can kill is already right in front of your gun anyway.  Of course, your bullets can only travel about four or five character-lengths in front of you.  Why?  I have no fucking clue.  I can fire rubber bands further with my thumb-and-index finger pistol than Phil can shoot ballistic weapons.  To fix this mistake which should have been corrected out of the fucking gate, you can pick up a laser that shoots all the way across the screen.  Well la dee dah!

Rockets and homing missiles are more useful, because they can attack things above you.  They still mostly suck on account of them doing about as much damage as popping an inflated paper-bag next to your target.  What really sucks is, like the jump-or-dash upgrade, you can only have one.  Why?  I don’t know.  Using these items doesn’t require a special button press.  They just fire when you shoot your gun, which has to be repeatedly mashed because holding down the button would be too convenient.

I get that games like this used to be a big deal and people long for the days when you had three lives and if you lost them you got to start all the way back at the beginning.  But even then, sometimes those games could be fun.  Contra for example.  I could never quite put my finger on what exactly made Contra fun, but now I’m guessing being able to shoot upwards might have something to do with it.  And mind you, Contra had that whole “shoot in directions other than straight forward” innovation down three fucking years before I was born, so Heavy Recoil can’t really claim the retro-mandate for pretending that upward mobility doesn’t exist.

The two boss fights that I encountered were downright easy. I didn't encounter more because I got sick of single-hit deaths, no continues, bad jumping, lame items, and dick-move level layouts. Over an hour put into Heavy Recoil and not once did I have any fun. Unless the game has a magical "get better" section, I'm guessing that wouldn't have changed.

The two boss fights that I encountered were downright easy. I didn’t encounter more because I got sick of single-hit deaths that take away all your weapons, no continues, bad jumping, lame items, and dick-move level layouts. Over an hour put into Heavy Recoil and not once did I have any fun. Unless the game has a magical “get better” section, I’m guessing that wouldn’t have changed.

But even if you could, it wouldn’t be very fun.  Everything here is just so bland.  The levels, the enemy design, Phil.  That’s why I said Heavy Recoil would be remembered as a bad lost game from a bygone era.  I’m not saying I expect neo-retro games to be better than the classics they were inspired by.  What I’m saying is don’t make a retro game in a retro costume.  Make a modern game in a retro costume.  Take advantage of what we’ve learned over the last twenty-five years of consoles.  Some concepts are more popular than others.  Firing in more than one direction is such a concept.  Do you know what happens when you forgo technological innovations in favor of rehashing old shit that nobody cares about?  That’s right: you sell 400,000 units of your latest hardware on launch day.

Okay, bad example.

xboxboxartHeavy Recoil was developed by Wide Pixel Games

80 Microsoft Points admit Heavy Recoil is an awesome name for a game in the making of this review. 

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Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains

December 15, 2012 by 14 Comments

Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains sounds like a joke. And it is. Just not a very funny one. This is one of the most glitchy, broken games on XBLIG. But it has the word “Strippers” in it, so it will get attention. It’s transparent and shameful, but that’s how the market works. I played it for about thirty minutes and noticed the following things.

  • No matter how centered a zombie is in your cross-hairs, bullets can and will completely miss their targets. Even from a distance of two inches away from you, with your gun centered completely on the enemy, bullets might miss. It seems completely random. This includes times when I shot zombies I wasn’t pointing at. That happened a few times as well. As in, I shot at a zombie that was two inches away from me, and the bullet hit a zombie twenty feet behind me and three feet to the right.
  • Assuming you get lucky and manage to shoot a lot of zombies, you still have to deal with limited ammo. It does respawn, but not fast enough. When your bullets only work by random chance, being conservative with your ammo isn’t helpful.
  • All the guns that look like they might be fun to play with are locked, leaving you with a weak starting pistol that hits a target maybe one in four times.

screen1

I didn’t put much time into this one, but it doesn’t seem the developer did either. Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains is the worst first person shooter on XBLIG (and, thanks to the option menu, the worst third-person shooter as well) and the guys behind this should hang their heads in collective shame. There are no excuses for making games this bad.

xboxboxartZombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains was developed by Strange Games

80 Microsoft Points have a boyfriend who, in a state of confusion, resented being called a Zombie Stripper when I told him the title of this game in the making of this review.

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Bleed

December 15, 2012 by 40 Comments

Hey, there’s this game on XBLIG and it looks kind of neat and the demo was okay but I’m not sure if its worth the money. Would you review it?

Sure! Anything for my fans. What game is it?

It’s called Bleed.

Just Bleed?

Just Bleed.

Huh. No funny accents on the letters?

What do you mean?

Well, I mean they could call it BleƐd with a Latin style E. You know, to add a touch of class? Or perhaps Bl€€D with two Euro signs. You know, just to change things up?

Um, no. It’s just Bleed.

Oh. Okay. Seems like a generic name that’s about as memorable as a cup of instant soup, but whatever. I’m duty bound to review games when fans request them and OH SWEET JESUS it cost 400 Microsoft Points?

Yea.

Seriously?

Hey, why do you think we want you to review it?

And that’s where the conversation was left off at. I can see why so many of my readers were requesting a review of this one. The opening level, which I’m sure is as far as the demo goes, is a bit on the generic side. And although the game seems like it could be pretty good, there’s enough unanswered questions that Bleed really is a bit of a high-risk investment, at least as far as XBLIGs go. I mean, for the price of it you could get all five of the top games on my Leaderboard. Survey any number of people and ask them if they’re willing to buy a new product one-for-the-price-of-five with the five being the top five competing products in whatever field. People would look at you like your eyeballs just grew their own noses. They would bill you for the seven seconds of their life you just wasted. And if they’re going to do that, those seven seconds ought to be spent coming up with a better name for your fucking game, especially since you didn’t take seven whole seconds to think it through.

In short, the name sucks and the price sucks harder.  Are we clear on that?  Good.

Bleed is fucking awesome.

Update, November 20, 2018: Remember, context is everything. In 2012, Bleed was on Xbox Live Indie Games, where 90% of games were 80 Microsoft Points, or $1 each. Games that cost more, unless they were Minecraft clones, didn’t do well. I advocated for a universal $1 price for XBLIGs so as to complete with Xbox Live Arcade games and drive attention to the platform. My position on this has greatly evolved since 2012.

I almost didn't get to play it. The lightning effects in the opening stage nearly put the kibosh on this review. Thankfully they weren't as bad as Fez.

I almost didn’t get to play it. The lightning effects in the opening stage nearly put the kibosh on this review. Thankfully they weren’t as bad as Fez.

Seriously, this is one of the best Xbox Live Indie Games of the year. I didn’t get that vibe out of it at first. The opening stage is, maybe not exactly dull, but it’s not awe-inspiring either. The corny (but delightfully well-written) story centers around Wryn, a spunky pink-haired chick with dreams of being the biggest hero in gaming history. She decides the best way to go about becoming this is to go around killing all the previous top heroes. It’s funny, but it’s not as cool as it sounds. Obviously the guys at Bootdisk Revolution couldn’t use all the real biggest stars in gaming, nor did they even try to make close facsimiles. So you won’t see Wryn bust a cap in a fat Italian plumber named Angelo, or an elfish adventurer named Lenk. The actual bosses seem more like run-of-the-mill bosses that you would expect to encounter in a 2D platformer. It’s a bit disappointing, like hearing about an epic sounding movie and getting all excited only to find out it’s being broadcast on Syfy and starring Billy Zane or Tim Curry.

The first thing you notice about Bleed is movement is smooth and responsive, and that the jumping is going to be a bitch. It’s mapped to the right trigger, because shooting is done TwickS-style and thus having A jump would be impossible. Still, I kind of wish it had been mapped to the less bulky, more analog right-bumper. But what really is awkward about it is how double jumping works. Instead of just flinging yourself in the air a little higher, the character launches like a jet. You can do this twice before landing.  It reminded me of Pikachu’s return-attack in Smash Bros. I could never do that fucking thing right either. It’s certainly not a deal breaker, as evidenced by the blow-job I’m about to bestow upon Bleed, but it never felt quite right at any point during the 90 minute main quest.

screen4

The jumping physics really are my only complaint. Everything else about Bleed is really astonishing. Levels are fast-paced, well designed, and full of twists and surprises. Retro-nerds will get their jollies from elements borrowed liberally from such games as Mega Man 2. The shooting really is so well done. You have unlimited ammo and no range-limits, giving your character full 360 degree control over firing upon enemies. The starting weapons, a pistol and a rocket launcher, are probably enough to finish the game with. However, you earn points in every level that you can spend in a shop to unlock alternative guns. For some reason, only two can be equipped at a time, which is lame. Also lame is the flame-thrower, which was the first weapon I bought.  Go figure.  It’s the only weapon of the lot that I found to be ineffectual. Everything else not only works, but experimenting with how to best use them is entertaining and rewarding. And there are just enough guns to unlock to stretch the play time without overly padding things out.

Ultimately, Bleed is a worthy purchase because it’s focused on generating fun. Levels never feel too long. Bosses never feel too spongy. Design never feels unfair. And there’s so many clever ideas at play here that it’s amazing they could keep them all so balanced. Even the writing is sharp, and the big plot twist towards the end was hilarious and awesome. Once you beat the game, extra play modes open that might squeeze more value for your 400MSP. I still think the price is a bit insane, but Bleed is unquestionably a cut above most XBLIGs. But seriously, what the fuck is up with that name? I could find no connection at all with the name and the game. Would it have been better if it had been called Adventures of Pink-Frizzy Haired Homicidal Crazy Chick? Yes, actually it would have. It’s sad that the awful name and prohibitive price will turn off most potential gamers who spot it on the marketplace. It’s enough to make you cry tears of blood.

Ohhhhhhhhhh. So that’s where the name comes from.

IGC_ApprovedxboxboxartBleed was developed by Bootdisk Revolution

400 Microsoft Points said “shave 160 MSP off the price and it might have had a chance” in the making of this review.

Bleed is very much Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

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