Tuesday, February 27, 2018
13 Points on Jamestown: Legend Of The Lost Colony - Final Form Games - 2011 [PC]
1. They've been making vertical scrolling shmups since the beginning of the history--or at least the part of history I actually care about. Jamestown digs deep in that long tradition and provides a familiar rush for fans of the genre in an off-the-wall setting w/ enough new ideas to keep it interesting.
2. I don't think the term existed but Jamestown is done in what's now called hi-bit pixel art. It's crisp art pays homage to the 16-bit games of the nineties w/o letting itself get tied down by technical limitations. The style fits the classic gameplay and it looks great. There's a couple options if you want a pixel perfect reproduction or want the image to fit your screen. I've got no complaints.
3. The story here is fantastical. It re-imagines the colonization of the Americas as happening on Mars. It's completely bezerk and stops making sense if you drink beers while you play. Your role in this saga is to shoot a hell of a lot of stuff.
4. Jamestown's wonderful orchestral soundtrack deserves special notice. It is consistent enough in timbre to hold everything together but varied enough to remain exciting throughout. It's peaceful when appropriate and loud when the action gets pounding. Despite a more modern sound to it, it fits in perfectly w/ the classic pew-pew-pew shmup sound effects.
5. The mechanic that is unique to Jamestown is called vaunt. It replaces the screen clearing bombs common in classic shooters. It briefly flashes a shield around your ship and can be used to get you out of sticky situations. The nifty thing about it is that rather than getting a set number of chances to use vaunt, you get it by charging up a meter from collecting enemy drops. Immediately after using it, you start getting a chain score multiplier which keeps going as long as you can continue to collect enough enemy drops. You can also get one last flash of shield that will end your chain if you need it. This vaunt mechanic adds a striking amount of depth once you start chasing high scores. If you are struggling w/ a level, you can save it up for the toughest parts. If you use it early, you can try to keep it going to get that chain multiplier as high as possible but you lose your one emergency defensive tactic.
6. You cannot beat Jamestown on normal difficulty which is the lowest setting in the game. You can play the first level on normal difficulty and the second but to unlock the third, you need to beat the first two on the next highest difficulty level. This pattern repeats throughout the game. This annoyed me at first but I ultimately felt like it was a savvy design choice. It forces you to ease yourself into the higher difficulty modes and doesn't let you coast through w/o challenging yourself.
7. Rather than just throw all the levels at you in order, Jamestown walls each one off as a discrete entity. After beating one, you are dumped to the level select screen and then get all your lives and continues for whatever level you should chose to play next. There is also what they call gauntlet mode which lets you play through all the stages in order like an ordinary shooter if you think you're good enough.
8. Let's be realistic here: you are probably not good enough. Jamestown is an unforgiving game. There are no powerups aside from the enemy drops that give you vaunt. There are no extra lives. You get three credits w/ three lives a piece and it is hard to get through even one level w/ this many chances let alone the whole game.
9. Win or lose, you will collect an amount of the in-game currency, ducats, w/ which to unlock bonus content. The bonus levels are quite a different challenge than the main game--even more bullet-hellish--and are quite fun in their own right. I probably would like game nearly so much as I liked Jamestown if it were just these levels but they are a worthwhile bonus.
10.You also unlock three new ships, all of which are kind of awesome in their own various ways. Each has not only a different main attack but a different special attack as well. They are all completely usable on every level but some feel suited more to some levels than others.
11. This is one of those games where the final boss is quite a bit more difficult than the rest of the game. I am undecided if this is a good thing generally. I kept coming back until I beat this one so I suppose it is good in this one case.
12. There are only five levels but even w/o bonus stages, these well-groomed challenges provide a longer, more enjoyable experience than a greater number of levels built to a lesser standard would. You can, first of all, play at the ridiculously hard level unlocked by completing your first playthrough. Since each of the bonus ships plays so differently, it is fun to go through w/ each of them as well. Then, of course, you can work to press your high score as far as possible.
13. Jamestown, from start to finish, strikes me as something of a labor of love. There is a personal touch to it that makes it feel really special even though it mostly sticks w/ established genre tropes. Where it does diverge from standard mechanics, it does so thoughtfully and in such a way that creates meaningful new elements without them feeling gimmicky or foreign. Beyond that, it is simply a good, challenging game that looks and sounds great, controls well and is fun to play. Do you like games like this? You do like games like this. Play Jamestown.
Friday, February 23, 2018
13 Points on Pony Island - Daniel Mullins Games - 2016 [PC]
1. Pony Island is one of those metafiction games the kids are going crazy for these days. W/in the game, you play on a simulated CRT upon which the titular fictional arcade game and other computer software is simulated. "Yo dawg, I head you like games so we put a game in your game so you can play your game while you play your game."
2. This is the only game I've ever played where it warns you specifically against playing w/ a track pad. I'm not sure what that's about but I thought I'd mention it. The warning is good one, by the way; this would be tough to play w/ a track pad. I just don't see how that makes it different than, say, Call of Duty or, you know, any other game at all.
3. If you want to boil this down, it is a series of mini-games of growing difficulty that you complete in order. It is not presented as such though. It is presented as a arcade machine that has eaten your soul. Your goal is to get spit out.
4. These mini-games are kind of hit and miss. None of them are really bad but I doubt I'd play any for more than a few minutes on its own. It's more about the overarching premise than the mini-games themselves so it still works overall but, you know, attention to detail is often what separates the great games from the merely good.
5. The titular fictional arcade game itself is one of the main mini-games. In it, your goal is to run right and jump over things. You use a mouse (not a track pad) to shoot things that come at you. The mechanics here are sound but the level design is just kind of weird. Frequently, something resembling a boss will come at you right at the beginning and then the rest of it will be a cakewalk. Anyway, it is sometimes frustrating and frankly passable at best taken on its own merits--even for the short time you spend w/ it.
6. In the other main mini-game, you use programming-type logic to solve quick puzzles written in code. (Don't worry, everything is represented by very clear symbols so you won't have to open your computer science 101 textbooks.) The puzzles never get all that tough but at least some of the later ones are tricky enough to be satisfying.
7. Both of the mini-games mentioned in 5 and 6 come in both light and dark world type variations which play out mostly the same. It is fun to see how these fit in into Pony Island's broader context and especially interesting to see how the programing-logic puzzles translate to being strictly graphical.
8. In one variation of the fictional arcade game, you wind up killing Jesus and it's pretty funny. This is actually during the light world variation so that lets you know about where Pony Island has its heart.
9. In addition to this, working w/ various glitchy computer interfaces is a substantial part of gameplay and challenge. There are options menus and desktops to navigate to find passwords and suchlike in order to gain access to portions of the computer that allow you to shake loose your immortal soul from the arcade machine's vile clutches. This is all a good time.
10. There is one point where Pony Island--the whole actual game not the simulated arcade game w/in the game--repeatedly crashed on me and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not. *shrugs*
11. Pony Island's story is set up through instant-message-like communications in from various entities w/in the fictional soul-consuming arcade cabinet. It is from these you become aware of your situation. It also stitches together the mini-games in a meaningful way that brings everything together in a contiguous whole. These little stretches of storytelling are really what make the gave worth playing overall.
12. This is the only game I've ever played that tells you to uninstall it when you're finished.
13. Pony Island feels a bit slapped together in the end--and I suppose it was being as it was developed initially for a Ludom Dare game jam. Be that as it may, it was slapped together pretty well and will only occupy a few hours of your time so it's well worth playing just to see how cleverly put together it all is--just don't use a track pad and uninstall it when you're done.
2. This is the only game I've ever played where it warns you specifically against playing w/ a track pad. I'm not sure what that's about but I thought I'd mention it. The warning is good one, by the way; this would be tough to play w/ a track pad. I just don't see how that makes it different than, say, Call of Duty or, you know, any other game at all.
3. If you want to boil this down, it is a series of mini-games of growing difficulty that you complete in order. It is not presented as such though. It is presented as a arcade machine that has eaten your soul. Your goal is to get spit out.
4. These mini-games are kind of hit and miss. None of them are really bad but I doubt I'd play any for more than a few minutes on its own. It's more about the overarching premise than the mini-games themselves so it still works overall but, you know, attention to detail is often what separates the great games from the merely good.
5. The titular fictional arcade game itself is one of the main mini-games. In it, your goal is to run right and jump over things. You use a mouse (not a track pad) to shoot things that come at you. The mechanics here are sound but the level design is just kind of weird. Frequently, something resembling a boss will come at you right at the beginning and then the rest of it will be a cakewalk. Anyway, it is sometimes frustrating and frankly passable at best taken on its own merits--even for the short time you spend w/ it.
6. In the other main mini-game, you use programming-type logic to solve quick puzzles written in code. (Don't worry, everything is represented by very clear symbols so you won't have to open your computer science 101 textbooks.) The puzzles never get all that tough but at least some of the later ones are tricky enough to be satisfying.
7. Both of the mini-games mentioned in 5 and 6 come in both light and dark world type variations which play out mostly the same. It is fun to see how these fit in into Pony Island's broader context and especially interesting to see how the programing-logic puzzles translate to being strictly graphical.
8. In one variation of the fictional arcade game, you wind up killing Jesus and it's pretty funny. This is actually during the light world variation so that lets you know about where Pony Island has its heart.
9. In addition to this, working w/ various glitchy computer interfaces is a substantial part of gameplay and challenge. There are options menus and desktops to navigate to find passwords and suchlike in order to gain access to portions of the computer that allow you to shake loose your immortal soul from the arcade machine's vile clutches. This is all a good time.
10. There is one point where Pony Island--the whole actual game not the simulated arcade game w/in the game--repeatedly crashed on me and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not. *shrugs*
11. Pony Island's story is set up through instant-message-like communications in from various entities w/in the fictional soul-consuming arcade cabinet. It is from these you become aware of your situation. It also stitches together the mini-games in a meaningful way that brings everything together in a contiguous whole. These little stretches of storytelling are really what make the gave worth playing overall.
12. This is the only game I've ever played that tells you to uninstall it when you're finished.
13. Pony Island feels a bit slapped together in the end--and I suppose it was being as it was developed initially for a Ludom Dare game jam. Be that as it may, it was slapped together pretty well and will only occupy a few hours of your time so it's well worth playing just to see how cleverly put together it all is--just don't use a track pad and uninstall it when you're done.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
13 Points on Mega Man Maverick Hunter X - Capcom - 2006 [Sony PSP]
1. I have never played the original Mega Man X so I can't compare this PSP remake to the classic SNES game. Skip this review if that's what you want. Or read it anyway. I honestly have no way of doing what you do. Tell you what: how about you just not read this and just tell me you did?
2. I have played through many of the original NES Mega Man titles so I have that much context. I'm not a total loser.
3. This is very much in the vein of those old games. You play as a rightward running ro-bot. You shoot pellets. You kill descriptively named bosses and possess their powers through secret ro-bottical magicks. Doctor Lite is there. There's a bad guy. You're blue. I don't know, people. This is a Mega Man game, whatever that means to you.
4. Compared to the NES games, this is much less platforming heavy. It is mostly focused on shooting. This isn't a bad thing, just know what you're getting into.
5. Actually, really the only difficulty in platforming is done through cheap as stuff like having an enemy right on the edge of ledge just off screen. This is pretty balls if you ask me. If you want to get through levels w/o taking damage, your only recourse is to memorize enemy placements.
6. The levels really aren't the focus here anyway, it's all about the bosses. This formula works in this case because the boss battles are excellent. The bosses are varied in both appearance and form so they play out quite different. They have a way of feeling almost impossible when you first encounter them and then pretty easy by the time you beat them, which I feel is highly indicative of good boss design. Plus there is the standard Mega Man wrinkle of having each boss be vulnerable to a weapon you collect by beating another boss which adds an element of experimentation and strategy to the overall game.
7. There are two difficulty levels: normal and hard. Normal feels like pretty standard Mega Man difficulty, maybe slightly on the easy side for that. Hard is, unsurprisingly, much harder. I appreciate that the hard mode does not just throw enemies w/ more hit points at you. The bosses use different attack patterns which make some tactics that work in normal mode less effective. In other words, they are actually more difficult and don't just take longer because they can tank more hits.
8. One weapon kills basically everything but bosses in one shot and sort of acts as a de facto easy mode if you chose to pick it up early on. I know I did. After that, shooting through enemies was like taking a luxury cruise. Honestly, like most games in the franchise, you can pretty much cheese the difficulty of the whole game if you use a FAQ and look up the bosses' weaknesses and locations of various secret powerups. I did some of this too. Come at me.
9. You are also given the opportunity to play as another character, Vile, after completing the game once on any difficulty. This plays much differently and is much harder--like getting through the first level is more difficult than the final boss on normal difficulty. It practically feels like a whole new game. They even give you a few new cut scenes to watch for your effort.
10. Graphically, I reckon this game looks pretty nice. You character and enemy sprites are nice, clean polygonal models. You can almost always see very clearly what is going on and what can potentially hurt you. The amount of slowdown sometimes seems excessive but that is my only real complaint. I do kind of wish the sprites were a bit smaller to allow more things to happen on screen and potentially make for some more interesting platforming but this all works fine enough.
11. I love the soundtrack. It sounds like old rockin' chiptunes redone w/ electrical guitars and other real instruments. I suppose this is exactly what it is because it is a remake of the original Mega Man X soundtrack. I've never played that though so who knows.
12. Bafflingly, some folks play Mega Man games for the story so I suppose I'd ought to mention it before concluding this review. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X has a story. It is told through badly voice acted clip scenes. The gist of it is some ro-bots are bad and you gotta kill 'em.
13. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X resides in kind of an interesting space as far as the franchise's history. It is a remake of something that was already a 1990s equivalent of a gritty reboot. I am really not sure who would particularly want to play this now aside from dedicated 2000s-era handheld players like myself. Most nostalgia seekers would probably opt for the original Mega Man X, which you can play on a variety of relatively current platforms. Still, taken on its own merits Maverick Hunter X is a great game. Boss battles are tense and exciting and there's plenty of reasons to replay for additional challenge. It will probably end up being viewed as something of a footnote in the grand history of Mega Man but sometimes things like that are the most fun to check out down the road.
2. I have played through many of the original NES Mega Man titles so I have that much context. I'm not a total loser.
3. This is very much in the vein of those old games. You play as a rightward running ro-bot. You shoot pellets. You kill descriptively named bosses and possess their powers through secret ro-bottical magicks. Doctor Lite is there. There's a bad guy. You're blue. I don't know, people. This is a Mega Man game, whatever that means to you.
4. Compared to the NES games, this is much less platforming heavy. It is mostly focused on shooting. This isn't a bad thing, just know what you're getting into.
5. Actually, really the only difficulty in platforming is done through cheap as stuff like having an enemy right on the edge of ledge just off screen. This is pretty balls if you ask me. If you want to get through levels w/o taking damage, your only recourse is to memorize enemy placements.
6. The levels really aren't the focus here anyway, it's all about the bosses. This formula works in this case because the boss battles are excellent. The bosses are varied in both appearance and form so they play out quite different. They have a way of feeling almost impossible when you first encounter them and then pretty easy by the time you beat them, which I feel is highly indicative of good boss design. Plus there is the standard Mega Man wrinkle of having each boss be vulnerable to a weapon you collect by beating another boss which adds an element of experimentation and strategy to the overall game.
7. There are two difficulty levels: normal and hard. Normal feels like pretty standard Mega Man difficulty, maybe slightly on the easy side for that. Hard is, unsurprisingly, much harder. I appreciate that the hard mode does not just throw enemies w/ more hit points at you. The bosses use different attack patterns which make some tactics that work in normal mode less effective. In other words, they are actually more difficult and don't just take longer because they can tank more hits.
8. One weapon kills basically everything but bosses in one shot and sort of acts as a de facto easy mode if you chose to pick it up early on. I know I did. After that, shooting through enemies was like taking a luxury cruise. Honestly, like most games in the franchise, you can pretty much cheese the difficulty of the whole game if you use a FAQ and look up the bosses' weaknesses and locations of various secret powerups. I did some of this too. Come at me.
9. You are also given the opportunity to play as another character, Vile, after completing the game once on any difficulty. This plays much differently and is much harder--like getting through the first level is more difficult than the final boss on normal difficulty. It practically feels like a whole new game. They even give you a few new cut scenes to watch for your effort.
10. Graphically, I reckon this game looks pretty nice. You character and enemy sprites are nice, clean polygonal models. You can almost always see very clearly what is going on and what can potentially hurt you. The amount of slowdown sometimes seems excessive but that is my only real complaint. I do kind of wish the sprites were a bit smaller to allow more things to happen on screen and potentially make for some more interesting platforming but this all works fine enough.
11. I love the soundtrack. It sounds like old rockin' chiptunes redone w/ electrical guitars and other real instruments. I suppose this is exactly what it is because it is a remake of the original Mega Man X soundtrack. I've never played that though so who knows.
12. Bafflingly, some folks play Mega Man games for the story so I suppose I'd ought to mention it before concluding this review. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X has a story. It is told through badly voice acted clip scenes. The gist of it is some ro-bots are bad and you gotta kill 'em.
13. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X resides in kind of an interesting space as far as the franchise's history. It is a remake of something that was already a 1990s equivalent of a gritty reboot. I am really not sure who would particularly want to play this now aside from dedicated 2000s-era handheld players like myself. Most nostalgia seekers would probably opt for the original Mega Man X, which you can play on a variety of relatively current platforms. Still, taken on its own merits Maverick Hunter X is a great game. Boss battles are tense and exciting and there's plenty of reasons to replay for additional challenge. It will probably end up being viewed as something of a footnote in the grand history of Mega Man but sometimes things like that are the most fun to check out down the road.
Friday, February 16, 2018
Sort by Lowest Price: Lumines II - Q Entertainment - 2006 [Sony PSP]
When I came across Lumines II boxed for about five bucks on a certain famous auction site, it struck me that writing Sort by Lowest Price on it would be way more fun than writing about another horrible racing game. And I was right! Lumines II is fun and it delivers exactly what you'd hope for: more Lumines.
This is true in two senses: it has both more of the same mechanically and a lot more content than its predecessor. Two colors of blocks fall in squares of four, you match them up and a little cursor goes around in time to the music that clears every group of four or larger that's on the screen all in one fell swoop. The more blocks you clear at once, the more points you get. It's a simple setup upon which a mighty falling blocks game is built.
The most notable difference from the first game is, Lumines II includes licensed music--straight from 2006! I'm not in love w/ every last track but every one does at least work w/ the game's format. Some tracks include music videos that run behind the game as you play which is maybe a little distracting form time to time but still an entertaining addition.
As far as gameplay, the meat of Lumines II is in the challenge mode which is divided into three difficulties. Instead of making the blocks just fall faster or something for harder difficulties, there's actually entire new levels here for each difficulty which is a nice touch. To be honest, none of difficulty levels seem all that much harder or easier to me but it is nice to have three different sets of songs instead of always starting on the same one.
Lumines games require you to balance long and short term strategies. You have to pick and chose if you need to clear blocks right away or if you want to start lining things up to get a bigger score down the line. I feel like I intuit my way through strategy in Lumines. As I play, I consistently get better but I find it really hard to quantify what I am doing differently. I can't really say this is preferable to, say, Tetris where you absolutely know what you've done wrong but it works quite well w/ Lumines emphasis on music.
In addition, there is also your standard arrangement of versus modes and so forth. Of the extra stuff, the most interesting is puzzle mode in which the game sets you up w/ a set of challenges where you are given tasks like trying to clear all blocks in a set number of moves or to clear an entire column of blocks w/in a time limit. This is much expanded from the original Lumines and an excellent addition. I find completing these really helped get my head around particular tactics to use in challenge mode.
One of the nicer additions is the ability to make your own playlist of tracks that you actually like so you can play through w/o ever having to hear the Black Eyed Peas' "Pump It" ever again. There is even a built-in sequencer to make your own songs. Such a feature could honestly be a future Lumines title in and of itself but here it's so rudimentary it can't be considered much more than a little time-waster in this case.
As welcome as some of the new additions are, this is really more or less the same as every other Lumines game when it comes right down to it. If you are new to the franchise, pick up whichever version is cheapest, whichever one you run into first or the one for your preferred system. It's hard to recommend Lumines II in particular to start w/ but it's equally hard not to recommend it. One way or the other, this is definitely a franchise worth delving into if you are a fan of the genre.
This is true in two senses: it has both more of the same mechanically and a lot more content than its predecessor. Two colors of blocks fall in squares of four, you match them up and a little cursor goes around in time to the music that clears every group of four or larger that's on the screen all in one fell swoop. The more blocks you clear at once, the more points you get. It's a simple setup upon which a mighty falling blocks game is built.
The most notable difference from the first game is, Lumines II includes licensed music--straight from 2006! I'm not in love w/ every last track but every one does at least work w/ the game's format. Some tracks include music videos that run behind the game as you play which is maybe a little distracting form time to time but still an entertaining addition.
As far as gameplay, the meat of Lumines II is in the challenge mode which is divided into three difficulties. Instead of making the blocks just fall faster or something for harder difficulties, there's actually entire new levels here for each difficulty which is a nice touch. To be honest, none of difficulty levels seem all that much harder or easier to me but it is nice to have three different sets of songs instead of always starting on the same one.
Lumines games require you to balance long and short term strategies. You have to pick and chose if you need to clear blocks right away or if you want to start lining things up to get a bigger score down the line. I feel like I intuit my way through strategy in Lumines. As I play, I consistently get better but I find it really hard to quantify what I am doing differently. I can't really say this is preferable to, say, Tetris where you absolutely know what you've done wrong but it works quite well w/ Lumines emphasis on music.
In addition, there is also your standard arrangement of versus modes and so forth. Of the extra stuff, the most interesting is puzzle mode in which the game sets you up w/ a set of challenges where you are given tasks like trying to clear all blocks in a set number of moves or to clear an entire column of blocks w/in a time limit. This is much expanded from the original Lumines and an excellent addition. I find completing these really helped get my head around particular tactics to use in challenge mode.
One of the nicer additions is the ability to make your own playlist of tracks that you actually like so you can play through w/o ever having to hear the Black Eyed Peas' "Pump It" ever again. There is even a built-in sequencer to make your own songs. Such a feature could honestly be a future Lumines title in and of itself but here it's so rudimentary it can't be considered much more than a little time-waster in this case.
As welcome as some of the new additions are, this is really more or less the same as every other Lumines game when it comes right down to it. If you are new to the franchise, pick up whichever version is cheapest, whichever one you run into first or the one for your preferred system. It's hard to recommend Lumines II in particular to start w/ but it's equally hard not to recommend it. One way or the other, this is definitely a franchise worth delving into if you are a fan of the genre.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
13 Points on Titan Souls - Acid Nerve - 2015 [PC]
1. I couldn't beat this game and I am reviewing it anyway. I know, I'm terrible.
2. Titan Souls does retro right. It combines elements from a few classics and molds them into something new. If you could disassemble The Legend of Zelda into little Lego bricks and put them back together as Shadow of the Colossus, you'd wind up w/ something pretty close.
3. The gist of it is,you gotta seek out and kill the titans, which are big and need to die for some reason. You spend a moderate amount time exploring the otherwise tranquil overworld and then face any titans you can find until you can move on to the next area and repeat the process.
4. The simple control scheme in this has me enamored. Two buttons plus the stick. One button let's you dash and run. The other shoots your arrow--you only have one--and draws it back to you. The stick lets you move and aim. This is all you need and it's great.
5. Despite the simplistic controls, Titan Souls really pushes the amount of things you can pay attention to at one moment. You've got to dodge multiple attack types from each boss and additionally need to pay attention to its weak spot, where you are aiming and where your arrow lands. It feels almost bullet-hellish at some points. It's easy to lose track of one or more of these things and find yourself dead in a hurry--esp. since you can't move when you are shooting or retrieving your arrow.
6. After you die--which you will do a lot--you have to walk a few seconds back to the boss and fight it again. I have mixed feelings about this.When you get stuck on a tough boss, it can really get on your nerves but I feel like overall it helps to put you into the game world. It makes it feel more like an adventure and less like an arcade game.
7. It helps that the overworld is gorgeous, done in the game's retro hi-bit pixel art style. It's here that you get just that little bit of pull on your Zelda heart-strings. It is honestly a minor aspect from a gameplay perspective--it's all about those boss battles--but enough to give you a sense of being in a different world. There's a bit to explore, some minor puzzles to solve. It adds a lot w/o being the main focus of the game.
8. The sound is anything but retro. A fully orchestrated soundtrack is punctuated by clear sound effects. Even more so than the graphics, this soundtrack seems to emphasize the size and power of the bosses and contrast it w/ the relative tranquility of the overworld.
9. It's important the presentation gives such a sense of the world as the story is pretty sparse. There's a plot hinted at but it's intentionally opaque, leaving you to fill in the blanks w/ whatever you might chose to glean from what happens while you're playing.
10. The first handful of bosses are great. Tough at first but then they seem almost easy when you beat them. Killing them is as much about figuring out how to kill them as it is mustering up the needed dexterity. You feel like you've solved them as much as you've beaten them.
11. By the midway point though, the strategy starts boiling down to just trying to shoot each boss really fast before it can kill you and hoping you get lucky.
12. I stopped playing after I beat a couple bosses in a row this way and got stuck on the third. I kept trying to find a new pattern and eventually resorted to looking up a video of how it was done. Turns out I was doing the right thing, I am just too enfeebled as a gamer to pull it of w/ any sort of consistency. I said to myself, "Okay, I am going to try this boss ten more times and after that I am never playing this game ever again." I did and... Well, maybe I'll pick this up again in a couple years.
13. In the end, it wasn't so much that I couldn't beat Titan Souls, it's that I didn't want to. I am perfectly capable of sitting there for an hour and grinding to get just the right shot but I've got limited time on this earth--or so I'm told. I do very much admire this game's presentation and core concept so I will eagerly pick up any sequel if ever one is made. I actually even recommend people to go ahead and play this because the good outweighs the bad if you don't let yourself get frustrated. Have at it, folks. Let me know how it ends.
2. Titan Souls does retro right. It combines elements from a few classics and molds them into something new. If you could disassemble The Legend of Zelda into little Lego bricks and put them back together as Shadow of the Colossus, you'd wind up w/ something pretty close.
3. The gist of it is,you gotta seek out and kill the titans, which are big and need to die for some reason. You spend a moderate amount time exploring the otherwise tranquil overworld and then face any titans you can find until you can move on to the next area and repeat the process.
4. The simple control scheme in this has me enamored. Two buttons plus the stick. One button let's you dash and run. The other shoots your arrow--you only have one--and draws it back to you. The stick lets you move and aim. This is all you need and it's great.
5. Despite the simplistic controls, Titan Souls really pushes the amount of things you can pay attention to at one moment. You've got to dodge multiple attack types from each boss and additionally need to pay attention to its weak spot, where you are aiming and where your arrow lands. It feels almost bullet-hellish at some points. It's easy to lose track of one or more of these things and find yourself dead in a hurry--esp. since you can't move when you are shooting or retrieving your arrow.
6. After you die--which you will do a lot--you have to walk a few seconds back to the boss and fight it again. I have mixed feelings about this.When you get stuck on a tough boss, it can really get on your nerves but I feel like overall it helps to put you into the game world. It makes it feel more like an adventure and less like an arcade game.
7. It helps that the overworld is gorgeous, done in the game's retro hi-bit pixel art style. It's here that you get just that little bit of pull on your Zelda heart-strings. It is honestly a minor aspect from a gameplay perspective--it's all about those boss battles--but enough to give you a sense of being in a different world. There's a bit to explore, some minor puzzles to solve. It adds a lot w/o being the main focus of the game.
8. The sound is anything but retro. A fully orchestrated soundtrack is punctuated by clear sound effects. Even more so than the graphics, this soundtrack seems to emphasize the size and power of the bosses and contrast it w/ the relative tranquility of the overworld.
9. It's important the presentation gives such a sense of the world as the story is pretty sparse. There's a plot hinted at but it's intentionally opaque, leaving you to fill in the blanks w/ whatever you might chose to glean from what happens while you're playing.
10. The first handful of bosses are great. Tough at first but then they seem almost easy when you beat them. Killing them is as much about figuring out how to kill them as it is mustering up the needed dexterity. You feel like you've solved them as much as you've beaten them.
11. By the midway point though, the strategy starts boiling down to just trying to shoot each boss really fast before it can kill you and hoping you get lucky.
12. I stopped playing after I beat a couple bosses in a row this way and got stuck on the third. I kept trying to find a new pattern and eventually resorted to looking up a video of how it was done. Turns out I was doing the right thing, I am just too enfeebled as a gamer to pull it of w/ any sort of consistency. I said to myself, "Okay, I am going to try this boss ten more times and after that I am never playing this game ever again." I did and... Well, maybe I'll pick this up again in a couple years.
13. In the end, it wasn't so much that I couldn't beat Titan Souls, it's that I didn't want to. I am perfectly capable of sitting there for an hour and grinding to get just the right shot but I've got limited time on this earth--or so I'm told. I do very much admire this game's presentation and core concept so I will eagerly pick up any sequel if ever one is made. I actually even recommend people to go ahead and play this because the good outweighs the bad if you don't let yourself get frustrated. Have at it, folks. Let me know how it ends.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
13 Points on SolarGun - Machine Boss - 2017 [PC]
1. As per the Game Reviewer Grand Constitution and Bylaws, I am required by statute to claim all first person puzzle games are just like Portal even if they don't have, you know, portals. SolarGun is just like Portal even though it also doesn't have other essential Portal elements like its sense of humor or the impression of some overarching back story.
2. The mechanics here actually most resemble The Turing Test, which was released about a year earlier, the main one being the ability to shoot and collect balls of energy that unlock doors. The energy balls in this can also be used to make platforms, which I haven't seen before, so I say there's enough new here to justify calling SolarGun its own thing.
3. It is set in a very blue and grey world that is low-poly but very clean looking. Imagine the facility in GoldenEye w/ good anti-aliasing and you are just about there. It seems to be set in some sort of place where scientists do science but there is no way to know for sure.
4. As far as puzzle solving, the set of tools you have here is fairly simplified. You have the glove that lets you shoot energy balls that open doors and create platforms and you can place blocks on switches to open doors. That's about it. What makes SolarGun a bit unique is there's a pretty heavy emphasis on platforming on some levels, esp. towards the end of the game.
5. I dunno about you nerds but first person platforming is kind of not my thing. Here, it's just tough enough to be frustrating here. Meh.
6. The puzzles, I suppose, are fine. Nothing was too tough and I don't think many folks are going to be needing much help to get through them but there is just enough to them to give you a quick sense of satisfaction after completing each one.
7. This said, SolarGun is not devoid of frustrating moments. For starters, there's that first person platforming; If you miss a jump, you are forced to redo the whole puzzle. Then there are a few puzzles where you flip switches to open an unseen door and have to do a pretty considerable amount of clomping around to try to figure out what switch does what. It's not horrible but does seem a little excessive at points. It's a little cheap to use obfuscation of a puzzle's elements to create difficulty.
7. There are lots of PCs scattered throughout the facility you are in, all of which are showing a Windows 10 blue screen w/ a frowning emoticon. You run into a Macintosh 128K at one point and that is working perfectly.
9. Instead of a gun to shoot the energy balls, you shoot them from a fancy pants super glove. As you progress through levels, your super glove will have more or less energy balls. Oddly, you do not get an increasing amount of energy balls as the game progresses like you'd expect. You are just assigned however many energy balls you need for the next set of puzzles. This works really well because it prevents the developers from creating additional challenge by making increasingly complex puzzles of the same type.
10. When you die, your fancy pants super gloved arm gets suspended from the ceiling at the spot of death on your next trip through the level. This looks cool but it gets in your way and can trip you up. It is a small effort to shoot it out of the way and you are good to go. This feels like a missed opportunity to me. It'd be kinda cool if it somehow made some of the platforming sections a bit easier but instead it's a slight annoyance.
11. This is a single serving game. You will likely pick it up once and put it down either when you finish it or when you are sick of it and never pick it up again. Either way, this will probably not occupy more than a few hours of your time and, you know what, SolarGun is worth a couple hours of your time.
12. I suppose there maybe some potential in speedrunning the thing but there is relatively little in the way of Easter eggs or secrets that I could tell and pretty much no story to dig into deeper or even revisit.
13. There are a few puzzles toward the end of the game that are much more complex and well developed than the rest, which makes me think the developers learned a lot during the process of making this SolarGun. I will definitely check out a sequel or new IP in the same genre if they every make one.
2. The mechanics here actually most resemble The Turing Test, which was released about a year earlier, the main one being the ability to shoot and collect balls of energy that unlock doors. The energy balls in this can also be used to make platforms, which I haven't seen before, so I say there's enough new here to justify calling SolarGun its own thing.
3. It is set in a very blue and grey world that is low-poly but very clean looking. Imagine the facility in GoldenEye w/ good anti-aliasing and you are just about there. It seems to be set in some sort of place where scientists do science but there is no way to know for sure.
4. As far as puzzle solving, the set of tools you have here is fairly simplified. You have the glove that lets you shoot energy balls that open doors and create platforms and you can place blocks on switches to open doors. That's about it. What makes SolarGun a bit unique is there's a pretty heavy emphasis on platforming on some levels, esp. towards the end of the game.
5. I dunno about you nerds but first person platforming is kind of not my thing. Here, it's just tough enough to be frustrating here. Meh.
6. The puzzles, I suppose, are fine. Nothing was too tough and I don't think many folks are going to be needing much help to get through them but there is just enough to them to give you a quick sense of satisfaction after completing each one.
7. This said, SolarGun is not devoid of frustrating moments. For starters, there's that first person platforming; If you miss a jump, you are forced to redo the whole puzzle. Then there are a few puzzles where you flip switches to open an unseen door and have to do a pretty considerable amount of clomping around to try to figure out what switch does what. It's not horrible but does seem a little excessive at points. It's a little cheap to use obfuscation of a puzzle's elements to create difficulty.
7. There are lots of PCs scattered throughout the facility you are in, all of which are showing a Windows 10 blue screen w/ a frowning emoticon. You run into a Macintosh 128K at one point and that is working perfectly.
9. Instead of a gun to shoot the energy balls, you shoot them from a fancy pants super glove. As you progress through levels, your super glove will have more or less energy balls. Oddly, you do not get an increasing amount of energy balls as the game progresses like you'd expect. You are just assigned however many energy balls you need for the next set of puzzles. This works really well because it prevents the developers from creating additional challenge by making increasingly complex puzzles of the same type.
10. When you die, your fancy pants super gloved arm gets suspended from the ceiling at the spot of death on your next trip through the level. This looks cool but it gets in your way and can trip you up. It is a small effort to shoot it out of the way and you are good to go. This feels like a missed opportunity to me. It'd be kinda cool if it somehow made some of the platforming sections a bit easier but instead it's a slight annoyance.
11. This is a single serving game. You will likely pick it up once and put it down either when you finish it or when you are sick of it and never pick it up again. Either way, this will probably not occupy more than a few hours of your time and, you know what, SolarGun is worth a couple hours of your time.
12. I suppose there maybe some potential in speedrunning the thing but there is relatively little in the way of Easter eggs or secrets that I could tell and pretty much no story to dig into deeper or even revisit.
13. There are a few puzzles toward the end of the game that are much more complex and well developed than the rest, which makes me think the developers learned a lot during the process of making this SolarGun. I will definitely check out a sequel or new IP in the same genre if they every make one.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
13 Points on What Remains of Edith Finch - Giant Sparrow - 2017 [PC]
1. What Remains of Edith Finch commits many of what I consider cardinal sins of narrative game design and yet it is still really good. I have put some considerable thought into this and the only explanation for this is that it's just really good.
2. Game developers take note: if you want a positive review of your narrative game, just make sure it's really good. Simple!
3. The general gist of what's going on: You, Edith Finch, have arrived at your ancestral homestead after some time away. It becomes clear early on that you are the last surviving member of you family and that nobody has been to this house in a very long time. You begin exploring and the strange history of your clan is laid out before you as you progress. This is exactly what you expect will happen and that's fine.
4. Yes, this is a game where you walk around until it is time to stop walking around. It is furthermore almost completely on rails and there is neither challenge nor any real decision making involved. Usually when I run into such things, I immediately dip my proverbial acid pen in its well and proceed to scrawl a massively negative review for my eager fanbase to devour, only temporarily sating their furious appetite for my cerebral game-related blog content.
5. The game is divided almost episodically and each segment is presented differently not only graphically but w/ different gameplay mechanics. As you explore your old house, you come upon each of your deceased family members' bedrooms and learn the stories of their demise from either their own perspective or that of another family member. This provides just enough of a hook to pull you into each bit individually and prevents the feeling you are just wandering randomly for a few hours while the game spoon feeds you a backstory.
6. The section for Barbara Finch impressed me especially w/ its interactive comic book feel--so much so that I am dedicating prestigious point 6 just to this fact.
7. Edith's house is an especially unusual building w/ giant DIY additions jutting out haphzardly above it. Once inside, you are presented w/ boarded up rooms connected by twisted secret passages and the fractured disarray of a place left in a panic. The scene is rather creepy but also quite alluring and the way the game entices you through the house makes it feel like you are making the decisions of where to go next. It is a carefully planned impression of chaos designed to draw you in.
8. The thing I noticed most about the sound design were those segments where there was no music playing. The score was lovely, to be sure, but adept use of silence can be just as important.
9. The world Edith resides in seems much like our own yet there are elements of magic and fantasy that seem to possibly pertain only to her family. You see, much of the Finch's family life was informed by their belief in some sort of curse and that they thought to be the cause of all these untimely deaths. Depending on the perspective each story, the mystical elements are more or less present and they are typically the most present when the story of the death is told from the person who died.
10. After a while, you get the distinct impression that in at least some of the these cases, the curse is not supernatural in nature but perhaps a more mundane but no less deadly hereditary mental illness.
11. In the case of Edith's brother Lewis, it certainly was mental illness and is also the only section narrated by someone who was completely outside of the Finch family. It directly touches on addiction, depression and schizoid withdrawal, all of which are dealt w/ sympathetically and w/ subtlety and respect. It allows you to look at a mentally ill person and an outside observer at the same time, something that would be difficult to achieve outside the medium of games.
12. I would not call this game fun. Indeed, at times it is very much the opposite of that. Several of Edith's now deceased relatives were children when they met their end, for example. This is heavy stuff, folks, but none of it is presented for cheap shock value and it is all woven into the story for specific perspectives and purposes.
13. What Remains of Edith Finch is a narrative game where you are neither provided w/ a skill-based challenge nor given agency in how the story progresses that nevertheless compels you to pay attention to it. It does this w/ engaging presentation, changing it's pace over time, by treating its subject matter and audience w/ respect and using the video game as a medium to make it into something more than an interactive film. In other words, it is very good. Is that pretty pat?
2. Game developers take note: if you want a positive review of your narrative game, just make sure it's really good. Simple!
3. The general gist of what's going on: You, Edith Finch, have arrived at your ancestral homestead after some time away. It becomes clear early on that you are the last surviving member of you family and that nobody has been to this house in a very long time. You begin exploring and the strange history of your clan is laid out before you as you progress. This is exactly what you expect will happen and that's fine.
4. Yes, this is a game where you walk around until it is time to stop walking around. It is furthermore almost completely on rails and there is neither challenge nor any real decision making involved. Usually when I run into such things, I immediately dip my proverbial acid pen in its well and proceed to scrawl a massively negative review for my eager fanbase to devour, only temporarily sating their furious appetite for my cerebral game-related blog content.
5. The game is divided almost episodically and each segment is presented differently not only graphically but w/ different gameplay mechanics. As you explore your old house, you come upon each of your deceased family members' bedrooms and learn the stories of their demise from either their own perspective or that of another family member. This provides just enough of a hook to pull you into each bit individually and prevents the feeling you are just wandering randomly for a few hours while the game spoon feeds you a backstory.
6. The section for Barbara Finch impressed me especially w/ its interactive comic book feel--so much so that I am dedicating prestigious point 6 just to this fact.
7. Edith's house is an especially unusual building w/ giant DIY additions jutting out haphzardly above it. Once inside, you are presented w/ boarded up rooms connected by twisted secret passages and the fractured disarray of a place left in a panic. The scene is rather creepy but also quite alluring and the way the game entices you through the house makes it feel like you are making the decisions of where to go next. It is a carefully planned impression of chaos designed to draw you in.
8. The thing I noticed most about the sound design were those segments where there was no music playing. The score was lovely, to be sure, but adept use of silence can be just as important.
9. The world Edith resides in seems much like our own yet there are elements of magic and fantasy that seem to possibly pertain only to her family. You see, much of the Finch's family life was informed by their belief in some sort of curse and that they thought to be the cause of all these untimely deaths. Depending on the perspective each story, the mystical elements are more or less present and they are typically the most present when the story of the death is told from the person who died.
10. After a while, you get the distinct impression that in at least some of the these cases, the curse is not supernatural in nature but perhaps a more mundane but no less deadly hereditary mental illness.
11. In the case of Edith's brother Lewis, it certainly was mental illness and is also the only section narrated by someone who was completely outside of the Finch family. It directly touches on addiction, depression and schizoid withdrawal, all of which are dealt w/ sympathetically and w/ subtlety and respect. It allows you to look at a mentally ill person and an outside observer at the same time, something that would be difficult to achieve outside the medium of games.
12. I would not call this game fun. Indeed, at times it is very much the opposite of that. Several of Edith's now deceased relatives were children when they met their end, for example. This is heavy stuff, folks, but none of it is presented for cheap shock value and it is all woven into the story for specific perspectives and purposes.
13. What Remains of Edith Finch is a narrative game where you are neither provided w/ a skill-based challenge nor given agency in how the story progresses that nevertheless compels you to pay attention to it. It does this w/ engaging presentation, changing it's pace over time, by treating its subject matter and audience w/ respect and using the video game as a medium to make it into something more than an interactive film. In other words, it is very good. Is that pretty pat?
Friday, February 2, 2018
13 Points on Dropsy - Tendershoot, A Jolly Corpse - 2015 [Android]
1. Do you remember the nineties? Did you play PC games in the nineties? Did you point and click? Did you adventure? If so, Dropsy is going to be some really comfortable territory for you.
2. Dropsy is a truly unpleasant looking clown. The game lets you know this by having an extra realistic portrait of him be the first splash screen you see on startup, before even the developer and publisher logos.
3. The plot is set off w/ a cut scene that shows a circus being burned down by an errant cigar, causing much destruction. Dropsy is blamed for this event despite having no involvement, presumably because he is truly unpleasant looking. Your main objective, as Dropsy,e is to redeem your name, help your father and get people to like you again. You wind up doing more than that.
4. As per genre standard, the way you play this is by clicking on things until it's time to stop clicking on things. Not everyone enjoys this and that's okay.
5. Dropsy's graphics generally take their influence from the same adventure games the gameplay is based on. It is not just on a technical level, not just because it's pixel art. The style borrows quite heavily form the cartoonish look of LucasArts games especially. It does up the weirdness ante by quite a bit though. Dropsy is truly unpleasant looking, after all.
6. Probably the most striking thing about Dropsy's presentation is doesn't use language of any sort. Everything in game is communicated through pictures. It really struck me how this affected gameplay. Some things seemed to be communicated very concisely and clearly by using pictures instead of text. Some things were a lot more obtuse. It seemed gimmicky at first but is actually a pretty powerful mechanic.
7. Another upside of the use of pictures instead of text is some story beats remain ambiguous. Outside of the game, I rather enjoyed going and reading other people's varying interpretations and theories on what everything meant.
8. The music added a lot too. It starts out good enough but as the game progresses, themes and motifs begin to develop and that brings you into both the music and the game. The production quality seemed to fit the overall look and feel too. It struck me as a distinctly small studio affair but it was very skillfully done w/ a personal touch that fit right in w/ the old school elements of the presentation. The whole thing feels very much handmade.
9. The world is mostly open from the very beginning of the game w/ only a few parts locked off. I actually think the early portions of the game could benefit from a little more restriction as it is pretty easy to get confused as far as what you are supposed to be doing.
10. There is an absolute ton of sidequesting available, mostly in the form of running errands for various people in order to get hugs from them. Combined w/ number 9, you sometimes feel a bit like you are just wandering around aimlessly. You are constantly looking for various things indicated only by pictures for people who are known only by their appearance. There are definitely moments in the game where I resorted to random or brute force strategies to try to solve puzzles and it felt like I was spinning my wheels at items. The fact that you can't fast travel until later in the game doesn't help either.
11. If I have a main complaint about Dropsy, it's that various elements in the game world never really seem to link together. In the very best point and click adventures, by the end of the game, you start to feel like the whole thing is a big knot and there is a great deal of satisfaction getting that last bit of string aligned such that the whole thing straightens out w/ one quick pull. This feels like a bunch of discreet tangles you unravel one at a time. Yeah, I think I took this analogy as far as I'm gonna.
12. Number 12 is not that important.
13. Dropsy gets a bit slow at times and I'd be lying if I said I loved every single moment I spent playing it. This is short enough to plow through in an evening if you wish but it's better enjoyed bit by bit over, a few segments at a time so it doesn't drag too much. Dropsy is one truly unpleasant looking clown w/ some serious personality and the moments where everything comes together are worth playing through the ones where they don't.
2. Dropsy is a truly unpleasant looking clown. The game lets you know this by having an extra realistic portrait of him be the first splash screen you see on startup, before even the developer and publisher logos.
3. The plot is set off w/ a cut scene that shows a circus being burned down by an errant cigar, causing much destruction. Dropsy is blamed for this event despite having no involvement, presumably because he is truly unpleasant looking. Your main objective, as Dropsy,e is to redeem your name, help your father and get people to like you again. You wind up doing more than that.
4. As per genre standard, the way you play this is by clicking on things until it's time to stop clicking on things. Not everyone enjoys this and that's okay.
5. Dropsy's graphics generally take their influence from the same adventure games the gameplay is based on. It is not just on a technical level, not just because it's pixel art. The style borrows quite heavily form the cartoonish look of LucasArts games especially. It does up the weirdness ante by quite a bit though. Dropsy is truly unpleasant looking, after all.
6. Probably the most striking thing about Dropsy's presentation is doesn't use language of any sort. Everything in game is communicated through pictures. It really struck me how this affected gameplay. Some things seemed to be communicated very concisely and clearly by using pictures instead of text. Some things were a lot more obtuse. It seemed gimmicky at first but is actually a pretty powerful mechanic.
7. Another upside of the use of pictures instead of text is some story beats remain ambiguous. Outside of the game, I rather enjoyed going and reading other people's varying interpretations and theories on what everything meant.
8. The music added a lot too. It starts out good enough but as the game progresses, themes and motifs begin to develop and that brings you into both the music and the game. The production quality seemed to fit the overall look and feel too. It struck me as a distinctly small studio affair but it was very skillfully done w/ a personal touch that fit right in w/ the old school elements of the presentation. The whole thing feels very much handmade.
9. The world is mostly open from the very beginning of the game w/ only a few parts locked off. I actually think the early portions of the game could benefit from a little more restriction as it is pretty easy to get confused as far as what you are supposed to be doing.
10. There is an absolute ton of sidequesting available, mostly in the form of running errands for various people in order to get hugs from them. Combined w/ number 9, you sometimes feel a bit like you are just wandering around aimlessly. You are constantly looking for various things indicated only by pictures for people who are known only by their appearance. There are definitely moments in the game where I resorted to random or brute force strategies to try to solve puzzles and it felt like I was spinning my wheels at items. The fact that you can't fast travel until later in the game doesn't help either.
11. If I have a main complaint about Dropsy, it's that various elements in the game world never really seem to link together. In the very best point and click adventures, by the end of the game, you start to feel like the whole thing is a big knot and there is a great deal of satisfaction getting that last bit of string aligned such that the whole thing straightens out w/ one quick pull. This feels like a bunch of discreet tangles you unravel one at a time. Yeah, I think I took this analogy as far as I'm gonna.
12. Number 12 is not that important.
13. Dropsy gets a bit slow at times and I'd be lying if I said I loved every single moment I spent playing it. This is short enough to plow through in an evening if you wish but it's better enjoyed bit by bit over, a few segments at a time so it doesn't drag too much. Dropsy is one truly unpleasant looking clown w/ some serious personality and the moments where everything comes together are worth playing through the ones where they don't.
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