1. It seemed to be semi-controversial that this game was priced at ten bucks at release. This is just fine. In the nineties, we payed the
equivalent to today's AAA prices for a game w/ this much content. AND WE WALKED
TO SCHOOL IN THE SNOW, UPHILL BOTH WAYS.
2. While there is a lot
of stuff like this for free and cheap, I don't think a race to the
bottom price-wise is good for indie games.
3. I got this as part of a bundle so I'm no one to talk.
4. 10 Second Ninja is a pretty great concept, decently but not perfectly executed.
5.
The art is a bit basic even by indie game standards but the music is
great and its funny enough that it got a chuckle or two out of me, which
is next to impossible because I am an old, cranky man.
6.
Gameplay is just fine. Controls are simple and responsive. You basically
just have to beat short platforming levels really, really fast, and
that is pretty fun.
7. You will accidentally hit the restart level button nearly as often as you actually die. It turns out this is just fine.
8.
Remapping controls just prove it's actually hard to manage three
buttons plus a d-pad plus the restart button at the speed this game
demands.
9. This is a sincerely hard game. It strikes me though
that almost all of the levels would be rather easy were it not for the
strict time limits opposed.
10. Number 9 is both cool and
frustrating. I think I would prefer if this upped the puzzle aspect by
making it more of a challenge to find the best path through a level.
This really is, for the most part, part just having to really nail a
series of perfectly timed button presses.
11. Having to nail a series of perfectly time button presses is just fine.
12.
I played this for an hour and feel like I honestly got the full depth
of what it has to offer. This is really a game dedicated to people who
like tough platformers and who are completists as far as collecting
every last achievement. This is where most of the replay value is. If
you like this sort of game, congratulations, you found something that
was made for you.
13. GET OFF MY YARD!
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Friday, October 20, 2017
13 Points on Hook - Maciej Targoni, Wojciech Wasiak - 2015 [PC]
1. My life is inundated w/ millions of disparate cables which are always in various states of disarray and tanglation. About once I year, I grab all my numerous boxes of knotted cables and sit down w/ a couple more beers than maybe I should drink in one sitting and untangle the lot of them systematically. Playing Hook is very much like doing this.
2. This is the sort of puzzle game that frequently gets damned w/ the casual tag. Fine. Hook is a casual game. You are not going to spend five hundred hours honing your skills on this game. It's simple. You can play it on your phone if you want. Is that a horrible thing?
3. What it does give you is one hour of gameplay that is really good for a buck.
4. The graphical presentation here is extremely minimal. It's all black and white lines and circles and dots. The puzzles look like stylish circuit diagrams. I personally found this quite alluring and picked this up mostly because I saw the screenshots and wondered what it was all about.
5. The sound is similarly subdued. Slowly played electric piano notes sprawl and reverberate. The switch-flip clicking effects from your gameplay provide the percussion. It fits together cohesively and fits the graphics well.
6. Hook teaches you how to play just by presenting the puzzles in the right order. You start it up and are immediately presented w/ the first puzzle. You sit there huffing glue and drinking grain alcohol, waiting for the title menu to pop up but it never does. Eventually you click a few times on the most obvious thing to click and off you go.
7. Basically, what you do is untie knots. The little stylish circuit board traces are laid out such that they are in great tanglations w/ each other. You need to unravel this disorder by clicking on them.
8. As per puzzle game standard, you start w/ just a few elements and it grows more complicated from there. At first you spend a few levels just click, click, clicking away in whatever order you chose. Eventually, there are wires that hook around other wires that must be removed first. Then there are wires that cross through other wires. Then there are little turny bits that let you rearrange the wires and after that there are little symbols which are interconnected through magic and cause wires to be connected in strange and complicated ways.
9. When solving the puzzles, your next move is always just to remove any unencumbered piece of the puzzle w/o disturbing anything else. You spend a bunch of time turning turny bits and tracing traces and making sure this is all set up correctly before you make your move. There are no time limits, no turn limits and no limits to how many times you can change things in the puzzle.
10. The result of a wrong move is you have to restart the puzzle and have to redo your first couple moves again. No big deal. The more complicated puzzles later in the game give you three chances.
11. The end result of 9 and 10 is Hook never gets seriously difficult but this also makes it unique. Most puzzle games require you to do some mental gymnastics and lateral thinking to beat them. This just requires plenty of patience, which keeps the puzzles satisfying w/o requiring too much mental energy. It works.
12. I feel like there was some missed opportunity for replayability after your first playthrough here. It seems like the developers could have added some extra layers of challenge by adding a timer, having a no mistakes mode where you return to the beginning of the game if you screw up once and/or challenging players to solve the puzzles w/ the fewest moves possible. Then again, part of the beauty of this game is its simplicity so perhaps that would be too much.
13. Hook provides a lot of what people find appealing in walking sims--that ability to just drift along and enjoy the game w/o having to tense up and challenge yourself too much--in a much different format. It's a puzzle game that only kind of has puzzles and still manages to be engaging moment to moment. It's worth a dollar and, more importantly, it's worth an evening of your time.
2. This is the sort of puzzle game that frequently gets damned w/ the casual tag. Fine. Hook is a casual game. You are not going to spend five hundred hours honing your skills on this game. It's simple. You can play it on your phone if you want. Is that a horrible thing?
3. What it does give you is one hour of gameplay that is really good for a buck.
4. The graphical presentation here is extremely minimal. It's all black and white lines and circles and dots. The puzzles look like stylish circuit diagrams. I personally found this quite alluring and picked this up mostly because I saw the screenshots and wondered what it was all about.
5. The sound is similarly subdued. Slowly played electric piano notes sprawl and reverberate. The switch-flip clicking effects from your gameplay provide the percussion. It fits together cohesively and fits the graphics well.
6. Hook teaches you how to play just by presenting the puzzles in the right order. You start it up and are immediately presented w/ the first puzzle. You sit there huffing glue and drinking grain alcohol, waiting for the title menu to pop up but it never does. Eventually you click a few times on the most obvious thing to click and off you go.
7. Basically, what you do is untie knots. The little stylish circuit board traces are laid out such that they are in great tanglations w/ each other. You need to unravel this disorder by clicking on them.
8. As per puzzle game standard, you start w/ just a few elements and it grows more complicated from there. At first you spend a few levels just click, click, clicking away in whatever order you chose. Eventually, there are wires that hook around other wires that must be removed first. Then there are wires that cross through other wires. Then there are little turny bits that let you rearrange the wires and after that there are little symbols which are interconnected through magic and cause wires to be connected in strange and complicated ways.
9. When solving the puzzles, your next move is always just to remove any unencumbered piece of the puzzle w/o disturbing anything else. You spend a bunch of time turning turny bits and tracing traces and making sure this is all set up correctly before you make your move. There are no time limits, no turn limits and no limits to how many times you can change things in the puzzle.
10. The result of a wrong move is you have to restart the puzzle and have to redo your first couple moves again. No big deal. The more complicated puzzles later in the game give you three chances.
11. The end result of 9 and 10 is Hook never gets seriously difficult but this also makes it unique. Most puzzle games require you to do some mental gymnastics and lateral thinking to beat them. This just requires plenty of patience, which keeps the puzzles satisfying w/o requiring too much mental energy. It works.
12. I feel like there was some missed opportunity for replayability after your first playthrough here. It seems like the developers could have added some extra layers of challenge by adding a timer, having a no mistakes mode where you return to the beginning of the game if you screw up once and/or challenging players to solve the puzzles w/ the fewest moves possible. Then again, part of the beauty of this game is its simplicity so perhaps that would be too much.
13. Hook provides a lot of what people find appealing in walking sims--that ability to just drift along and enjoy the game w/o having to tense up and challenge yourself too much--in a much different format. It's a puzzle game that only kind of has puzzles and still manages to be engaging moment to moment. It's worth a dollar and, more importantly, it's worth an evening of your time.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
13 Points on Earthbound - Ape/HAL Laboratory - 1994 [SNES]
2. Graphically, it is cute but not exactly beautiful. It works.
3. This is a humorous RPG but it's not just a RPG w/ jokes. It's a pretty subtle send-up of the genre, while still being a very good game in that genre.
4. The story is ridiculous. A young boy assembles a team of other children to save the earth from the ultimate evil. Even the main character's parents don't really take it seriously. This gives the whole thing an air of just being a child's fantasy. I mean, seriously, if your kid was actually on a mission from God or whatever, wouldn't you follow along and try to help?
5. There is zero customization available in this. Equipping your party goes as follows: find a better piece of gear, equip better piece of gear. There is almost no choice in how you chose to build your characters.
6. Number 5 keeps you out of menus and focused on playing so it's fine I guess.
7. This gets pretty tough at times but the penalty for your whole party being KOed is pretty minor so you can just keep cracking at the tougher dungeons and don't have to backtrack and grind.
8. Every time you save your game you have to click through like ten boxes of text. Actually, basically everything you do in menus requires an excessive amount of diving through options. This is not the most charming thing about the game.
9. The middle of this drags a bit, not gonna lie. It is not a terribly long game but there is still some fat to be cut. Basically, it's a console RPG.
10. Even at its worst though, Earthbound is sprinkled w/ enough little jokes and charm to keep things palatable. moment to moment.
11. You get to pick your favorite food. I picked pizza. I also named my party after a bunch of dudes I know. It's chill.
12. Using the first teleportation spell you get is the most annoying thing in the entire world. You have to find an area where there is enough space to run around in circles. I suppose this serves the purpose of those aggravating "you can't teleport here" pop-ups you see in other games w/ a gameplay mechanic, which is a good thing on paper but just doesn't work.
13. This ends on a teaser for another game... which they never released in the West. Booo!
Monday, October 16, 2017
13 Points on Capsized - Alientrap - 2011 [PC]
1. This game proves how important sound and music is to games. It's a
solid run and gun platformer but the sonic aspects turn that into a
truly engaging and immersive experience.
2. The soundtrack is by a one man project called Solar Fields from an album called Movements. Buy it!
3. People are saying this game has puzzle elements. That's dumb. The puzzles are on the level of "There's rocks in front of this pathway. Move the rocks." Seriously, people, if you have trouble figuring that out, just give up. You are going to live w/ your parents forever.
4. I guess some of the boss type battles require you to figure out how to beat the boss. This puts it in line w/... every game ever.
5. Graphically, it is a good match for the music. It is kinda cartoony, kinda flash style. It is nothing special really but the palate choices are nice and it looks excellent overall.
6. The levels on the first half of the game are dirt simple and easy but the seem to start sprawling kinda randomly towards the middle of the game.
7. Number 7 is no big deal.
8. This does not really play like Metroid but when you are low on lives and health and just know you are about to beat a level if you can just hang on, it sure feels a lot like Metroid.
9. There is some local fauna in the backgrounds that is not hostile but sure as hell looks hostile. If I was a less forgiving man, I would find whoever did this and kill them.
10. I generally don't like playing platformers w/ mouse and keyboard but I felt this one justified it pretty well. I just didn't feel chained to it and some of the functions felt natural to have on the left hand rather than on the right where they would be w/ a controller.
11. The final boss on this is super annoying and long. He's hard and hard final bosses are good but they made him hard by just padding his HP and that is a bummer because the game ends on a down note for that reason.
12. Oh well.
13. Seriously. Awesome soundtrack. Solar Fields. Movements.
2. The soundtrack is by a one man project called Solar Fields from an album called Movements. Buy it!
3. People are saying this game has puzzle elements. That's dumb. The puzzles are on the level of "There's rocks in front of this pathway. Move the rocks." Seriously, people, if you have trouble figuring that out, just give up. You are going to live w/ your parents forever.
4. I guess some of the boss type battles require you to figure out how to beat the boss. This puts it in line w/... every game ever.
5. Graphically, it is a good match for the music. It is kinda cartoony, kinda flash style. It is nothing special really but the palate choices are nice and it looks excellent overall.
6. The levels on the first half of the game are dirt simple and easy but the seem to start sprawling kinda randomly towards the middle of the game.
7. Number 7 is no big deal.
8. This does not really play like Metroid but when you are low on lives and health and just know you are about to beat a level if you can just hang on, it sure feels a lot like Metroid.
9. There is some local fauna in the backgrounds that is not hostile but sure as hell looks hostile. If I was a less forgiving man, I would find whoever did this and kill them.
10. I generally don't like playing platformers w/ mouse and keyboard but I felt this one justified it pretty well. I just didn't feel chained to it and some of the functions felt natural to have on the left hand rather than on the right where they would be w/ a controller.
11. The final boss on this is super annoying and long. He's hard and hard final bosses are good but they made him hard by just padding his HP and that is a bummer because the game ends on a down note for that reason.
12. Oh well.
13. Seriously. Awesome soundtrack. Solar Fields. Movements.
Friday, October 13, 2017
13 Points on Call of Juarez: Gunslinger - Techland - 2012 [PC]
1. This is one of those games where you shoot at people until you are almost dead and then hide behind a rock for five seconds while your health regenerates so you can pop out and shoot at people again.
2. It's great fun! Fast, arcade-like levels, numerous checkpoints and waves and waves of human beings hell-bent on being murdered keep the action flowing.
3. The developers, Techland, have about three hundred employees and their games are distributed by Ubisoft but it still has something of an indie feel to me. In this case, that's good thing. It feels streamlined and too-the-point. It doesn't wallow in over-the-top cutscenes and boss intros but lets you just play.
4. Not that there isn't a story. It is told through brief comic-book inspired cut scenes and narration over gameplay. It works really well, esp. w/ the game's gimmick.
5. The gimmick is the storyteller, Silas Greaves, is an extremely unreliable narrator. He tells the story of his bounty hunting days to a group of people at an old timey western saloon and you play as him in his reminiscences. Frequently, Silas changes the story as he goes or another patron in the saloon will recollect the story as they heard it and you play through many of the scenarios once getting different sides of the story. It's just a little wrinkle in how a game's story is normally told and it helps draw you into the western themed world.
6. The gunplay is also excellent. You can only carry two weapons at a time plus have the option to double-fist it w/ handguns. No particular situation requires a given weapon and there is almost always ample ammo to be found so you really just get to have at it. While there is something to be said for a more methodical approach to combat--and I am glad there are games that do this--the thrill of just getting to aim and kill enemy after enemy is something I can appreciate. If you get shot up and have to pop behind a rock to heal yourself, well, it is your own fault for slowing down the fun.
7. I would up playing this mostly w/ a controller because I'm just not a mouse and keyboard kinda gaming nerd. The setup was effective but I did find myself wishing for greater precision a few times. Specifically, there are some enemies that throw dynamite that you can shoot out of the air if your aim is good enough and there are some sections where just so many enemies come up on you at once that better twitch shots would be huge.
8. This game abides what I feel should be considered a rule of thumb: if the player comes upon an enemy firing a Gatling gun, the player gets to use that Gatling gun at some point.
9. This game is mostly a cakewalk on the default difficulty but there are a few annoying spikes. Specifically, some of the boss encounters are kinda over-the-top w/ the amount of BS they throw at you all at once. I don't mind tough boss battles and actually some of them here are quite good. The issue is they are tough just because they are so frantic they make the cover mechanic nigh worthless. It is not a matter of finding a pattern and exploiting it; you basically just have to memorize what's going to happen and then shoot the lights out.
10. In addition to regular boss battles, there's these dual scene mini-games to finish levels. These serve as an initial difficulty spike as well but that is just because the mechanics are poorly explained. Once you have it down, they aren't too hard but still the slow concentration based pace of these duels breaks the flow of the otherwise action-oriented gaming.
11. The treatment of Native Americans in this game is not the best. The rank and file Native Americans are just blood thirsty idiots which is the same as the white mobs so I suppose that's fine. But the only one who is any kind of character at all and he is portrayed as a mystical shaman who speaks of ill omens and so forth--sort of a magical Native if you will. I get that this is in keeping w/ Western genre tropes but I still feel it's a bit problematical. There was honestly no reason to have any Native Americans at all and the one story bit that includes them is outside of the general scope of the narrative so it seems almost like they were thrown in just because they are part of a genre trope I'd be happy to be rid of.
12. Playing through the story mode in this is going to be under a dozen hours in the best of cases. If you need more, there's several collectables on each level you can go back and get and also a hard mode that disables the HUD which really lends a different gameplay experience. If you just want to get to the shooting, there's an arcade mode that has you try to string together combos for a high score and if you want to replay the worse part of the game there is also a mode where you only do duels.
13. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger delivers. If you like Westerns, if you like shooters, this is a game for you. It is not the longest or most immersive experience on the market but w/ little exception, the time you spend playing it will be fun.
2. It's great fun! Fast, arcade-like levels, numerous checkpoints and waves and waves of human beings hell-bent on being murdered keep the action flowing.
3. The developers, Techland, have about three hundred employees and their games are distributed by Ubisoft but it still has something of an indie feel to me. In this case, that's good thing. It feels streamlined and too-the-point. It doesn't wallow in over-the-top cutscenes and boss intros but lets you just play.
4. Not that there isn't a story. It is told through brief comic-book inspired cut scenes and narration over gameplay. It works really well, esp. w/ the game's gimmick.
5. The gimmick is the storyteller, Silas Greaves, is an extremely unreliable narrator. He tells the story of his bounty hunting days to a group of people at an old timey western saloon and you play as him in his reminiscences. Frequently, Silas changes the story as he goes or another patron in the saloon will recollect the story as they heard it and you play through many of the scenarios once getting different sides of the story. It's just a little wrinkle in how a game's story is normally told and it helps draw you into the western themed world.
6. The gunplay is also excellent. You can only carry two weapons at a time plus have the option to double-fist it w/ handguns. No particular situation requires a given weapon and there is almost always ample ammo to be found so you really just get to have at it. While there is something to be said for a more methodical approach to combat--and I am glad there are games that do this--the thrill of just getting to aim and kill enemy after enemy is something I can appreciate. If you get shot up and have to pop behind a rock to heal yourself, well, it is your own fault for slowing down the fun.
7. I would up playing this mostly w/ a controller because I'm just not a mouse and keyboard kinda gaming nerd. The setup was effective but I did find myself wishing for greater precision a few times. Specifically, there are some enemies that throw dynamite that you can shoot out of the air if your aim is good enough and there are some sections where just so many enemies come up on you at once that better twitch shots would be huge.
8. This game abides what I feel should be considered a rule of thumb: if the player comes upon an enemy firing a Gatling gun, the player gets to use that Gatling gun at some point.
9. This game is mostly a cakewalk on the default difficulty but there are a few annoying spikes. Specifically, some of the boss encounters are kinda over-the-top w/ the amount of BS they throw at you all at once. I don't mind tough boss battles and actually some of them here are quite good. The issue is they are tough just because they are so frantic they make the cover mechanic nigh worthless. It is not a matter of finding a pattern and exploiting it; you basically just have to memorize what's going to happen and then shoot the lights out.
10. In addition to regular boss battles, there's these dual scene mini-games to finish levels. These serve as an initial difficulty spike as well but that is just because the mechanics are poorly explained. Once you have it down, they aren't too hard but still the slow concentration based pace of these duels breaks the flow of the otherwise action-oriented gaming.
11. The treatment of Native Americans in this game is not the best. The rank and file Native Americans are just blood thirsty idiots which is the same as the white mobs so I suppose that's fine. But the only one who is any kind of character at all and he is portrayed as a mystical shaman who speaks of ill omens and so forth--sort of a magical Native if you will. I get that this is in keeping w/ Western genre tropes but I still feel it's a bit problematical. There was honestly no reason to have any Native Americans at all and the one story bit that includes them is outside of the general scope of the narrative so it seems almost like they were thrown in just because they are part of a genre trope I'd be happy to be rid of.
12. Playing through the story mode in this is going to be under a dozen hours in the best of cases. If you need more, there's several collectables on each level you can go back and get and also a hard mode that disables the HUD which really lends a different gameplay experience. If you just want to get to the shooting, there's an arcade mode that has you try to string together combos for a high score and if you want to replay the worse part of the game there is also a mode where you only do duels.
13. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger delivers. If you like Westerns, if you like shooters, this is a game for you. It is not the longest or most immersive experience on the market but w/ little exception, the time you spend playing it will be fun.
Thursday, October 12, 2017
13 Points on Lone Survivor - Jasper Byrne - 2012 [PC]
1. This game is worth starting but not really worth finishing.
2. The standout quality of this is sound design, which is simply as good as it gets. The sound effects almost feel like a natural extension of the music, which is excellent in its own right.
3. The art style, I am not in love with. It is just sort of a pixely blur. It works well enough but something about it just looks like you have resolution on your monitor set incorrectly.
4. The atmosphere--see number 3--is enticing at first. Very immersive. This isn't really scary exactly but there is a menacing quality that is both foreboding and alluring.
5. Gameplay is a survival horror boiled down to 2D. While the giants of this genre are rotting away into AAA action games, it is nice to see an indie dev do something that stays true to what people love about survival horror.
6. 2D survival horror works fine. The third D is overrated in gaming.
7. Number 5 is why I really, really wanted to like this game and why it's been on my to-play list for years. Unfortunately, this works only as a proof of concept. See number 6.
8. Once you absorb the atmosphere, the gameplay starts to wear thin. There is nothing wrong w/ it inherently but the whole thing seems to lack polish. You are backtracking all over the place. You have to rest and go through the same little clip scenes over and over. There is a mild puzzle solving element but it's just like, "You need to cook? Find a pot, I guess."
9. Yes, backtracking and an overall slower pace are hallmarks of survivor horror and I just praised this game for being a true survivor horror game. What can I say? This game is both good and bad. It's a paradox.
10. *the sound of minds blowing*
11. There are multiple endings. Multiple endings are overrated in gaming.
12. Like, seriously, are you so full of yourself that you think your game is worth playing like five times over and over? Sorry, I got things to do.
13. In all honestly, I didn't finish this thing even once. I played a couple hours one day and was just bored to death after picking it up a second day for another hour. Tried again on a third day and still bored, I set down my trusty Steam controller and thought, yep, that's all I'm ever playing of this game for the rest of my life and I feel good about it. I will totally buy a sequel or preferably a new IP in a similar style if the developer makes one though. This game shows promise but its ultimately unfulfilled.
2. The standout quality of this is sound design, which is simply as good as it gets. The sound effects almost feel like a natural extension of the music, which is excellent in its own right.
3. The art style, I am not in love with. It is just sort of a pixely blur. It works well enough but something about it just looks like you have resolution on your monitor set incorrectly.
4. The atmosphere--see number 3--is enticing at first. Very immersive. This isn't really scary exactly but there is a menacing quality that is both foreboding and alluring.
5. Gameplay is a survival horror boiled down to 2D. While the giants of this genre are rotting away into AAA action games, it is nice to see an indie dev do something that stays true to what people love about survival horror.
6. 2D survival horror works fine. The third D is overrated in gaming.
7. Number 5 is why I really, really wanted to like this game and why it's been on my to-play list for years. Unfortunately, this works only as a proof of concept. See number 6.
8. Once you absorb the atmosphere, the gameplay starts to wear thin. There is nothing wrong w/ it inherently but the whole thing seems to lack polish. You are backtracking all over the place. You have to rest and go through the same little clip scenes over and over. There is a mild puzzle solving element but it's just like, "You need to cook? Find a pot, I guess."
9. Yes, backtracking and an overall slower pace are hallmarks of survivor horror and I just praised this game for being a true survivor horror game. What can I say? This game is both good and bad. It's a paradox.
10. *the sound of minds blowing*
11. There are multiple endings. Multiple endings are overrated in gaming.
12. Like, seriously, are you so full of yourself that you think your game is worth playing like five times over and over? Sorry, I got things to do.
13. In all honestly, I didn't finish this thing even once. I played a couple hours one day and was just bored to death after picking it up a second day for another hour. Tried again on a third day and still bored, I set down my trusty Steam controller and thought, yep, that's all I'm ever playing of this game for the rest of my life and I feel good about it. I will totally buy a sequel or preferably a new IP in a similar style if the developer makes one though. This game shows promise but its ultimately unfulfilled.
Monday, October 9, 2017
13 Points on The Bridge - The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild - 2013 [PC]
1. This game is The Bridge, not to be confused w/ the game, bridge.
2. It is pretty obvious the folks who designed this played Braid and were like, "Yeah, let's make something like that." It's all good though. For what it's worth, I liked the puzzles in this better than in Braid.
3. So, yeah, 2D puzzling is the name of the game here. I'd call it a platformer but you can't jump. You can rotate the game world and walk and that's about it. There is a mechanic that reverses time (you know, like Braid) but it is not used to solve puzzles, just to let you back up and try something again w/o having to restart the whole level.
4. The Bridge has been released on every platform possible. I won't list them all but it's on the Wii U and Ouya in addition to things normal human beings own. This is a game that gets around. It seems like it may have been designed for mobile first as it constantly reminds you to give it a rating and to check out the developers' other game, Tumblestone--which I happen to already own, making it all the more annoying.
5. The hand drawn art here is truly gorgeous and as much of a selling point as the gameplay. The style alone would be enough if it was just straight forward scenes but it matches particularly well w/ the M.C. Esher-style perspective twists that are central to both story and gameplay.
6. As per puzzle game tradition, this starts out w/ just a couple mechanics and gradually expands the gameplay palate as you go. It is a good system and it works.
7. Some of the instructional early puzzles don't really do a good job of explaining what does what. There is one device that does some sort of gravity flipping thing that I never really understood how it worked until the last couple levels in the game--and even then my grip on its exact peculiarities was tenuous.
8. Puzzle design is frankly a bit patchy. Some were spot on, easy to see what your challenges were but tough to figure out the correct solution. After a while though, I noticed you could solve most of them fairly easy by sort of random trial-and-error. I solved at least one puzzle accidentally. Whoops!
9. After playing through all levels, you get the opportunity to play again through tougher alternative versions of the levels.
10. I suppose this is just personal preference but I have a bit of a pet peeve in puzzle games: I hate it when a solution is pretty obvious but then requires really tricky timing to actually execute. The Bridge commits this sin a few times and a lot of the difficulty later on is through having to get everything just so. It's just not my thing.
11. The score works wonderfully here. Somber chamber orchestra pieces add a palpable edge to the ethereal atmosphere.
12. I feel like they put effort into having a cool, quirky story but it just seemed to fall to they wayside beside the rest of the the presentation. Not to spoil everything but it's basically: Isaac Newton and M.C. Esher are friends. Weirdness ensues.
13. Unlike the game, bridge, The Bridge does not offer much in the way of replayability. Once you've solved the puzzles, you've solved them. The game offers some achievement for additional challenge but, really, this is just a pleasant enough of a way to wile away a half dozen hours over a couple days or a weekend and that is good enough for me.
2. It is pretty obvious the folks who designed this played Braid and were like, "Yeah, let's make something like that." It's all good though. For what it's worth, I liked the puzzles in this better than in Braid.
3. So, yeah, 2D puzzling is the name of the game here. I'd call it a platformer but you can't jump. You can rotate the game world and walk and that's about it. There is a mechanic that reverses time (you know, like Braid) but it is not used to solve puzzles, just to let you back up and try something again w/o having to restart the whole level.
4. The Bridge has been released on every platform possible. I won't list them all but it's on the Wii U and Ouya in addition to things normal human beings own. This is a game that gets around. It seems like it may have been designed for mobile first as it constantly reminds you to give it a rating and to check out the developers' other game, Tumblestone--which I happen to already own, making it all the more annoying.
5. The hand drawn art here is truly gorgeous and as much of a selling point as the gameplay. The style alone would be enough if it was just straight forward scenes but it matches particularly well w/ the M.C. Esher-style perspective twists that are central to both story and gameplay.
6. As per puzzle game tradition, this starts out w/ just a couple mechanics and gradually expands the gameplay palate as you go. It is a good system and it works.
7. Some of the instructional early puzzles don't really do a good job of explaining what does what. There is one device that does some sort of gravity flipping thing that I never really understood how it worked until the last couple levels in the game--and even then my grip on its exact peculiarities was tenuous.
8. Puzzle design is frankly a bit patchy. Some were spot on, easy to see what your challenges were but tough to figure out the correct solution. After a while though, I noticed you could solve most of them fairly easy by sort of random trial-and-error. I solved at least one puzzle accidentally. Whoops!
9. After playing through all levels, you get the opportunity to play again through tougher alternative versions of the levels.
10. I suppose this is just personal preference but I have a bit of a pet peeve in puzzle games: I hate it when a solution is pretty obvious but then requires really tricky timing to actually execute. The Bridge commits this sin a few times and a lot of the difficulty later on is through having to get everything just so. It's just not my thing.
11. The score works wonderfully here. Somber chamber orchestra pieces add a palpable edge to the ethereal atmosphere.
12. I feel like they put effort into having a cool, quirky story but it just seemed to fall to they wayside beside the rest of the the presentation. Not to spoil everything but it's basically: Isaac Newton and M.C. Esher are friends. Weirdness ensues.
13. Unlike the game, bridge, The Bridge does not offer much in the way of replayability. Once you've solved the puzzles, you've solved them. The game offers some achievement for additional challenge but, really, this is just a pleasant enough of a way to wile away a half dozen hours over a couple days or a weekend and that is good enough for me.
Thursday, October 5, 2017
13 Points on Super Mario 3D Land - Nintendo - 2011 [Nintendo 3DS]
1. When this came out, it was due to be the grand savior of the 3DS and the
only game to fully use its 3D capability if early reviews were to be
believed. Specifically, the notion that the 3D effect helps you judge jumps is brought up over and over. Boy howdy, is this ever not true! 3D platforming has just as many perspective problems here as it does on every other 3D platformer on the face of the planet.
2. Actually, they are worse here as there were no real camera controls on the 3DS. Nothing like randomly shifting and zooming cameras for a barrel of laughs!
3. The way I judge of the quality of a Mario game is by how long before I get sick replaying levels until I collect all the dragon coins or red coins or whatever on each level before moving on, which normally comes at world four or five. The collectables are called star coins here and I was tired of getting all of them by the second world. This is to say I don't exactly think this is the cream of the crop as far as Mario goes.
4. Not coincidentally, this is also the first time ever I've used the New Super Mario Brothers style invincibility leaves to cheese past levels like the rat that I am.
5. While I'm complaining: lots of these level are in side scrolling style where the third dimension still applies like a beat-em-up or Little Big Planet. Hooray for having to fiddle around to get lined up to hit a question block! This also adds my least favorite aspect of Little Big Planet: missing jumps because you held the analog stick at a slight diagonal rather than directly right. I wish they'd have just flattened those levels to pure 2D. Or the whole game.
6. I also wish Nintendo would go back to what they did w/ Super Mario Land on Game Boy and keep setting handheld games in non-Mushroom Kingdom locations w/ different villains. This Bowser shit is getting old.
7. Speaking of old, Nintendo decided to bring back the tanooki suit from Super Mario Bros. 3 in an obvious bid to cash in on nostalgia. It functions the same as the racoon tail or the cape in other Mario games but you turn into a statue upon doing a ground pound which is useful approximately zero times in game.
8. Tanuki are totally a real thing, by the way. Nintendo just changed the spelling. You can go to Japan and see a real, live tanukis walking around. If you like, you can kill and skin them to make a suit that briefly turns you to stone when you do a ground pound. They also have really large testicles.
9. For some reason, Mario games still have a lives system. Most levels have a checkpoint and all you lose is progress to that checkpoint if you get a game over so no big deal... So why have the system at all? Thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to bounce on a turtle shell as per Mario tradition and earn effectively infinite lives... So why have the system at all?
10. After playing through the main levels, you are presented w/ a set of alternate versions of levels and these are honestly much better. They are much tougher and mostly in a good way. There's a few w/ blind jumps and artificial difficulty spikes but they very often reach into that "okay, one more try" level of difficulty which can draw you in for hours. I also found that quite of few or the areas I taht were most difficult for me were followed by an easier, more fun level which provided a much needed respite.
11. Unfortunately, these extra levels are not only walled off by having to beat the main game but by needing to collect star coins on other levels. You don't need every last one but you will definitely have to spend some extra time on some of your least favorite levels to play some of the best parts of the game.
12. For all my complaining about the 3D-ness of the game, I do like it better than New Super Mario Brothers 2 on the same system and that is pure 2D. This is likely the only thing you wanted to know from this review and I hid it all the way down in point 12. What a dick!
13. It is fair to say that Super Mario 3D Land does actually give you everything you want in a Mario game: there are levels that range from fast, fun gimmicks to white knuckle reflex tests; most of the levels are fun and it gave me an excuse to mention tanuki balls.
2. Actually, they are worse here as there were no real camera controls on the 3DS. Nothing like randomly shifting and zooming cameras for a barrel of laughs!
3. The way I judge of the quality of a Mario game is by how long before I get sick replaying levels until I collect all the dragon coins or red coins or whatever on each level before moving on, which normally comes at world four or five. The collectables are called star coins here and I was tired of getting all of them by the second world. This is to say I don't exactly think this is the cream of the crop as far as Mario goes.
4. Not coincidentally, this is also the first time ever I've used the New Super Mario Brothers style invincibility leaves to cheese past levels like the rat that I am.
5. While I'm complaining: lots of these level are in side scrolling style where the third dimension still applies like a beat-em-up or Little Big Planet. Hooray for having to fiddle around to get lined up to hit a question block! This also adds my least favorite aspect of Little Big Planet: missing jumps because you held the analog stick at a slight diagonal rather than directly right. I wish they'd have just flattened those levels to pure 2D. Or the whole game.
6. I also wish Nintendo would go back to what they did w/ Super Mario Land on Game Boy and keep setting handheld games in non-Mushroom Kingdom locations w/ different villains. This Bowser shit is getting old.
7. Speaking of old, Nintendo decided to bring back the tanooki suit from Super Mario Bros. 3 in an obvious bid to cash in on nostalgia. It functions the same as the racoon tail or the cape in other Mario games but you turn into a statue upon doing a ground pound which is useful approximately zero times in game.
8. Tanuki are totally a real thing, by the way. Nintendo just changed the spelling. You can go to Japan and see a real, live tanukis walking around. If you like, you can kill and skin them to make a suit that briefly turns you to stone when you do a ground pound. They also have really large testicles.
9. For some reason, Mario games still have a lives system. Most levels have a checkpoint and all you lose is progress to that checkpoint if you get a game over so no big deal... So why have the system at all? Thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to bounce on a turtle shell as per Mario tradition and earn effectively infinite lives... So why have the system at all?
10. After playing through the main levels, you are presented w/ a set of alternate versions of levels and these are honestly much better. They are much tougher and mostly in a good way. There's a few w/ blind jumps and artificial difficulty spikes but they very often reach into that "okay, one more try" level of difficulty which can draw you in for hours. I also found that quite of few or the areas I taht were most difficult for me were followed by an easier, more fun level which provided a much needed respite.
11. Unfortunately, these extra levels are not only walled off by having to beat the main game but by needing to collect star coins on other levels. You don't need every last one but you will definitely have to spend some extra time on some of your least favorite levels to play some of the best parts of the game.
12. For all my complaining about the 3D-ness of the game, I do like it better than New Super Mario Brothers 2 on the same system and that is pure 2D. This is likely the only thing you wanted to know from this review and I hid it all the way down in point 12. What a dick!
13. It is fair to say that Super Mario 3D Land does actually give you everything you want in a Mario game: there are levels that range from fast, fun gimmicks to white knuckle reflex tests; most of the levels are fun and it gave me an excuse to mention tanuki balls.
Monday, October 2, 2017
13 Points on Tearaway - Media Molecule - 2013 [Playstation Vita]
2. Its artstyle is quite eye catching and stylish. This is a really beautiful game no matter how you tear it. Yeah, I went there.
3. The soundtrack is amazing and I would buy it if I could get it anywhere other than on iTunes or the PlayStation national storefront or whatever they call it.
4. There is really no challenge to this. You can die a million times and you restart like two seconds earlier in the stage. This is kind of a good thing given:
5. Platforming in this is freaking terrible. There are no two ways about that. The camera angle is constantly awful and/or changing at inopportune times which makes any tricky bits frustrating for reasons other than that they are simply difficult on their own.
6. Additionally, while I admire Media Molecule's efforts to include touch controls in this, it can be a real pain in the butt to hold the Vita such that you can do the rear panel presses and move your character about. I feel like this dynamic could be a little more refined.
7. This is kind of a nitpick but for some reason the lack of a high, flipping jump when you jump as you changed directions drove me nuts. I'm not saying all 3D platformers must control like Mario 64 but, let's face it, just because I'm not saying it doesn't meat it's not true.
8. You can breeze through this a half dozen or so hours. Replayability is based on the fact that you can go back and search through the levels and find a bunch of extra crud if you feel like it. To me, this is equivalent to the game being repayable only if you are really, really bored.
9. This said, even w/o real challenge or good platforming, Tearaway's world is fun enough to rip through and explore for the first time. It's cute and you can take pictures.
10. The story is kinda corny and simple but it works. For some reason, halfway though the game, they are just like, "forget it" and just abruptly switch to another sort of plot which is only tangentially related to the first half of the game. This is fine.
11. The monsters in this are called scraps and are just about the least intimidating enemies I have seen in a game. I couldn't help but wonder why the main character didn't just get a leaf blower and blow them away... Then eventually the main character gets a leaf blower and can blow them away.
12. One thing I think this game needs is an interactive piano keyboard level that brings to mind Tom Hanks in Big.
13. I can't help but feel this awesome looking game was a bit of a missed opportunity. Whoever put together the art direction, created the makings of a timeless classic but the level design and gameplay just don't hold to that high standard. This is worth a gander but is really better to look at than it is to play.
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