Platypus is a fairly standard sidescrolling space shooter with an unusual visual style – the entire game is done with claymation. I’m a big fan of claymation so I got a real kick seeing it in shooter form, watching ships explode into fountains of clay over the colorful countryside.
Unfortunately, games aren’t just about visuals and in the gameplay department, Platypus is nothing special. It has the full assortment of features you’d expect in this sort of game like different weapon powerups, ways to boost your score, and screen filling bosses, but the game suffers from being overly repetitive. There are a few interesting level ideas here and there like a minefield where reckless shooting might not be your best idea, but the whole thing feels drawn out with too many sections where you are just shooting the same enemies over and over. I think the game really would have benefited if it had concentrated the game into fewer, but more intense levels.
The game starts out rather tame on all three difficulty levels, but the difficulty goes up at a steady pace. Unfortunately, cheap deaths are common. Not only does your ship’s hit-box seem to be a little too large, but there were several instances where I died due to a surprise attack from behind or when a cloud obscured an enemy. One particularly annoying segment involving a volcano shooting lava rocks – a good idea in practice, but less than enjoyable when most of the difficulty comes from having a hard time distinguishing between the deadly foreground rocks and the harmless background rocks.
Happy Birthday to Zeboyd Games favorite gamer, Robert! Robert is 29 years old today and will most likely celebrate by shooting things (probably zombies – we can’t let them get the upper hand, can we?)
Robert and his beloved PSP Go (really it’s there, look closer).
The XBOX controller has become a part of him.
Robert and ‘Splosion Man teaching the baby very important life lessons.
The Impossible Game is an extremely infuriating game because it doesn’t seem like it should be that hard. You have a block that is moving right at a consistent speed and you tell the game when to jump so as to avoid spikes & pits. That’s it.
You don’t even have to manually jump each time – if you hold the jump button, it’ll automatically jump immediately upon landing. There are no moving obstacles or random elements in the game. If you knew what you’re doing (mostly through memorization) and had great reflexes, you could beat the game in about two minutes.
And yet despite all this, I thought it was interesting to see the subtle tricks that the game would use to mess the player up. Like having long strings of jumps periodically interspersed with parts where jumping would kill you. Or having the music and the action slightly off-synch. Or having long rows of pits that you needed to jump over. Okay, that last one wasn’t so subtle.
I’m not sure that I can recommend The Impossible Game since it is, after all, extremely infuriating, but if you’re a masochistic gamer with a love for simple challenges (you know who you are), then give it a try.
Nintendo has F-Zero and Sony has Wipeout, but Microsoft is without a futuristic racing series to call its own. When I saw Antigrav Racing Championship and its shiny graphics, my heart skipped a beat. Could this be the futuristic racing game that 360 owners have been waiting for? Sadly, no.
The first indication of trouble occurred when I hit another player. Rather than bounce around like I’d expect in this sort of game, my craft instantly did a 180 and began to zoom through the course in reverse. A bit of experimentation proved that this was not a fluke occurence. Crashes feel more like glitches – you might start going backward, you might go straight into a wall, or you might just slightly nudge the other guy and keep going. The developer obviously realized this was a problem by their inclusion of an automatic “self-destruct/get placed back on the track” button, but this is a slapdash fix at best.
Beyond the glitchy crashes, a bigger problem quickly arises. The game just isn’t very exciting. Sure, they tried to give the game some personality with various fantasy courses like zombie & ninja themed tracks, but the tracks are all fairly bland, regardless of their appearance. Extremely fast speeds are the hallmark of the futuristic racer and they are nowhere to be found here. Likewise, the fun power-ups and weapons found in the Wipeout series are similarly absent outside of a similar speed boost.
Between the glitchy crashes, average speeds, and limited power-ups, there’s not much fun to be found here. Perhaps, a futuristic racer worth playing will show up on the 360 eventually, but Antigrav Racing Championship is not it.
The first Headshot was about as simple as games get. Stick figures walked slowly across a field until one of them turned into a gunman causing everyone else to flee. Your goal was to shoot the gunman before the timer ran out. Rinse and repeat. It was mildly fun for a level or two, but it grew old fast. Thankfully, the sequel is much more involving.
The graphics are noticeably better, but it’s the gameplay that has improved the most. Instead of stick figures, colorful characters in a variety of costumes walk back and forth various stages. When you’re ready to begin the level, you’re given a target and you need to quickly find that individual and then shoot him or her. The addition of a scoring system (more points for speed & accuracy) does much for infusing the game with the focus that the previous game lacked.
The game isn’t perfect. Sometimes your target will become obscured by an innocent who is moving at almost the exact same speed which makes things very frustrating as you pray for a clean shot before the timer runs out. More game modes would have been nice. Still, despite these shortcomings, Headshot 2 proves that a simple concept, done well, can be quite enjoyable. At a mere 80 points, it comes strongly recommended.
The Week in Review for Nov. 1-7 is up for your viewing enjoyment.
The latest Week In Review is up!
Junkyard Battle is a 2-player competitive physics-based puzzle game. Junk falls from the sky. You use a crane to move the junk around in an attempt to create the tallest tower of junk. Periodically power-ups appear that can give you an edge, like a cement power-up that freezes junk in place. Maintain a taller tower than your opponent for a set amount of time and you win the match.
Junkyard Battle has a nice visual style going for it with a purple sunset in the background and an almost cell-shaded look to its objects, and I have to give it credit for trying something different, but I’m having a little difficulty in figuring out who the target audience is here. Aside from a single-player tutorial, the only other mode available is local 2-player versus play. If you’re a fiercely competitive puzzle game player like myself, I would have to think that the imprecise nature of physics-based games would drive you nuts and you’d prefer a more precise game like Lumines or Tetris for your competitive puzzle gaming. On the other hand, casual players would probably prefer to have single-player and co-op modes which are nowhere to be found.
I had a few other issues with the game. The cement power-up never seemed to do what I wanted. I understand why it wouldn’t freeze that precarious perched item on the top of my tower, but does it really need to freeze items that are nowhere near my tower that I’m intending on using next? And I understand that programming netcode is a big hassle and might not seem like it’s worthwhile for an Indie game, but having a multiplayer-only game on the XBox 360 with only local play just seems wrong somehow.
On the other hand, there is some sort of primal fun in trying to build precarious towers out of junk so if you have a few minutes free and a friend on hand, give the trial a whirl. It didn’t quite click for me, but it may for you, and if it does, it’s quite the deal at a mere 80 MS points. In the meantime, I’ll stick with World of Goo for all of my tower building gameplay needs.
When you get up close, SFG Soccer features quite possibly the most disturbing human heads I’ve seen. With their strange shapes, soulless eyes, and exaggerated smiles, these re-imaginings of the human form make a mockery of all that is good and holy in humanity. My only guess for how this came to be is that Stir Fry Games initially wanted to make a horror game and switched genres midway through development.
Luckily, disturbing head designs aside, SFG Soccer is a fun and enjoyable game. The graphics are pleasing to the eye and the camera is zoomed out enough in most of the camera modes that the freak heads don’t cause any problems. The controls are responsive and easy to pick up. The audio sounds like I’d expect a soccer game to sound. The computer AI is respectable and did a good job at thrashing me at the higher difficulty levels.
There are two main modes in the game – exhibition & career mode. Exhibition mode lets you play a single game, alone or with up to 3 friends – perfect for some quick fun or parties. Career mode is a little more in-depth and gives you a persistent team as you try to work your way up through the rankings. There’s some RPG-style leveling-up in the career mode but it’s bare bones at best. Upgrades are limited to only stat increases with no unique traits or skills to be found and so was a bit of a disappointing to me, the RPG min-maxer.
If you want a serious and in-depth soccer game, you’d probably be better off with the latest EA FIFA game, but if you just want a quick soccer game that you can play for a few minutes at a time alone or with some friends, SFG Soccer is a good choice. Just try not to stare at the character heads too intently.
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