Robert
Yeah, I know Final Fantasy XIII is not an indie game or anything, but hey, we’re making an RPG so it’s on topic in that respect.
I picked up the XBox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII at midnight last night. It was my first time going to a midnight release and it wasn’t as creepy as I was expecting. Sure, there was one loudmouth in line who just kept going on and on about everything that popped into his head, but for the most part, it was just a few dozen 20-something year old men quietly waiting in the cold to pick up a videogame (a few women and a teenager or two rounded out the crowd). When I picked up my copy of the game, I saw that they had a lot more PS3 copies in stock. I expect the 360 version will end up selling more in the long run to the casual crowd, but I’m not surprised that more of the hardcore enthusiasts are picking up the PS3 version.
I played through the first chapter of the game before deciding that I’d better get some sleep since I had work the next day. Here are my first impressions on Final Fantasy XIII.
The 360 version looks awesome. There have been several reports on how the 360 version of FF13 is inferior to the PS3 version, but honestly, unless you’re really picky or are playing the two versions side by side, I have a hard time imagining anyone noticing.
The music in Final Fantasy XIII so far has been excellent. I can see why so many people have been importing the soundtrack.
The dialogue is still firmly in JRPG mode. It works, but you can tell it’s a translation. Voice acting seems decent.
Combat seems like it’ll be really fun, although it’s still pretty basic. Timing is important despite being a menu-based game – use an area attack at the right moment and you could hit everything whereas 1 sec earlier, the enemies might have been spread too far apart. Even though things are easy and simple so far, the fact that you get graded in each battle and higher grades result in better item drop rates encourages you to play your best at all times.
The maps are very linear so far, but they have still managed to hide some extra treasure chests here and there.
Anyway, Final Fantasy XIII has lived up to my expectation so far. I’m looking forward to playing it some more (when I’m not working on Breath of Death VII)
VVVVVV
for PC & Mac
When I saw my first screenshots of VVVVVV, I was a bit incredulous. Someone wants to charge $15 for a platformer with graphics that even I could draw? There’s retro and then there’s RETRO and VVVVVV definitely falls under the latter category. Still, I was willing to give Distractionware the benefit since I enjoyed one of their earlier freeware titles (Don’t Look Back) and I’m glad I did, because VVVVVV is one of the finest platformers I’ve had the pleasure to play.
The premise is simple – you’re the captain of a spaceship, something goes wrong, and you have to rescue your scattered crewmates, using only your ability to run and flip gravity whenever you’re standing on a solid surface. The game is part exploration game (in addition to your main goal, there are twenty trinkets hidden throughout the game), part puzzle game (one optional puzzle in particular really impressed me as being very creative), but mostly it’s a reflex-driven action game where you’re trying to avoid spikes (hence the name) and enemies. It’s very hard, but more importantly, it’s very fair. Respawn spots are littered generously through the game, teleporters to get around the map are frequent, and all of the game mechanics were very obviously presented to the player so if you can’t solve a puzzle, it’s your own fault.
VVVVVV’s level design is masterful. Rarely is there a wasted moment and the player is constantly being introduced to new challenges. The game is largely non-linear, although there are a few levels in set points like the beginning and end. Generally non-linear games suffer from uneven difficulty, but here it works out just fine. Each level has its own unique feature (like gravity reversing trampolines or automatically scrolling rooms) with each level starting out easy and getting more and more difficult the further you get in.
Despite my initial hesitation, the graphics grew on me. Sure, it’s low tech, but it’s got style and reminded me a little of ZZT (an old favorite of mine). The music, on the other hand, was simply fantastic and would have done even the best NES game proud.
The game took me a little over 2 hours to complete and about 30-60 minutes extra to acquire all twenty trinkets. That’s admittedly short, but after beating the game, there are some extra modes like time trials and a very difficult action-packed survival mode so you could end up spending far more time if you like chasing high scores.
Is VVVVVV worth your money? That depends. If you’re low on cash and looking for a game that will last you a long time, then probably not since there are many games that are much longer or have more replayability. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a great memorable experience like Braid or Portal, then I highly recommend VVVVVV. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish and I’m sure I’ll return to it later this year to work on my time trial scores.
Hi guys. Sorry for not posting much lately. Christmas was distracting as expected. This week, when I was planning on getting back in the game, I not only got fairly sick, but fairly injured (head injury – bloody and painful, but thankfully not a concussion).
XBLIG have been pretty quiet as far as interesting games go of late. I guess it makes sense – if you had a game that was almost done, you probably wanted to release it before Christmas rather than right after.
Anyway, here are a few games released recently that I thought were worth checking out:
Tobe’s Vertical Adventure – Here’s a platformer where you descend into caves, grab the treasure and then have to hurry back out before the cave collapses. Fun with cute graphics.
Twin Blades – This sidescrolling action game where an anime nun runs around killing zombies with melee & gun attacks has some of the most gorgeous graphics I’ve seen on the service. Gameplay seemed a bit repetitive, but the developer has said that they plan on adding to the game so it might be worth keeping an eye on.
Pixel Whirled – It’s basically playing 2 games of Space Invaders at the same time. Kind of fun, but what really got me was the pitch perfect replication of the 8-bit NES era in the presentation (check out that box art!).
Arkedo Series 03 – Pixel! – Arkedo is the XBLIG developer to watch IMO. This 2D platformer has a unique minimalist look, a good sense of humor, and fun run & jump gameplay.
I’m not sure when it’ll go up, but Samurai vs. Zombies was quite the fun 3D brawler when I played it in playtesting. Hopefully, it’ll go up soon so that all can enjoy it.
Anyway, that it’s for tonight. In my next entry, I’ll be talking about my current game project. Stay tuned!
We’re at the end of 2009 so I thought I’d present my top 10 favorite games of the year (parenthesis indicates the platform I played each one on). In no particular order…
1 – Batman: Arkham Asylum (360) – This game reminds me a lot of Persona 4 in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Persona 4 was a decent dungeon crawler combined with a decent anime life sim, but when you put the two together, you got one of the best games ever. Similarly, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a good brawler, good stealth game, good exploration game, and good Action/RPG, but put it all together and you get one of the best games I’ve ever played.
2 – Plants vs. Zombies (PC) – A unique take on the tower defense genre that also happens to be one of the funniest games of the year. I loved the game, even though I found it overly easy, but it quickly became my wife’s favorite game ever. For a game to thoroughly entertain both of us, despite our vastly different tastes in games, is no small feat.
3 – Defense Grid: The Awakening (XBLA) – Great graphics, excellent gameplay balance, and well designed levels all make this the tower defense game to beat for hardcore strategy.
4 – Splosion Man (XBLA) – Another hilarious game that also ends up being one of the most enjoyable fast-paced platformers ever. Forget New Super Mario Bros. Wii, this is the game you want for both single and multiplayer platforming action.
5 – Torchlight (PC) – Titan Quest has long been my reigning champion for Hack & Slash RPGs since it’s arrival in 2006. Torchlight doesn’t overthrow it, but it’s nearly as good and different enough to be worth playing.
6 – Devil Survivor (DS) – A great branching story combined with an unusual take on the Strategy/RPG genre made Devil Survivor my favorite DS game this year. In the end, I grew tired as the battles became more tedious than fun, but for the first 20 hours or so, I was completely captivated.
7 – Half-Minute Hero (PSP) – Best RPG parody I’ve ever played. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do a great mini-RPG since the start of XBox Live Indie Games and Half-Minute Hero finally showed me one way to do it. Take all the essence of a standard RPG, cut out the filler, and speed the whole thing up about 100 times and you’ve got one frantic game that’s a blast to play.
8 – Rock Band Unplugged (PSP) – When I first heard of this game, I thought it sounded like a waste of space. Then I tried it and was instantly hooked. Whereas Rock Band on the home consoles is a great multiplayer game, Rock Band Unplugged is a far better single player game. Having to control all 4 instruments throughout the course of a song makes for much more interesting gameplay and a good deal of immersion.
9 – LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival (PSP) – I never got into the first 2 LocoRoco games because they seemed far too slow and easy. LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival fixes all that by being one of the hardest games on the system. At first, the controls were confusing and unintuitive (couldn’t do wall jumps consistently) but after messing around a bit with the demo levels, everything clicked and I was hooked. If you’re the kind of person who liked Mirror’s Edge for its time trials & speed runs, this is the game for you.
10 – Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP) – At first I held off on this one. $40 for a game I’ve already played where most of the graphics are still the same? I’m glad I finally decided to get it. Despite the old graphics, this version of Persona has been drastically improved in many ways. The music is fantastic, the new cutscenes gorgeous, and the translation drastically improved, but what really got me was the increased speed. Load times on the PSN version are next to nothing and with the option to skip animation in combat, the whole game is a much faster and more enjoyable game. I’m really looking forward to trying out the restored content (Snow Queen Quest) once I finish with the main game.
Honorable Mentions – FF4: After Years, Droplitz.
Best Pre-2009 game that I finally got around to playing this year – Tales of Vesperia
Most Disappointing Game – Resident Evil 5 (Adding multiplayer really threw off the delicate mixture of excellence that RE4 had going for it. Still fun, but I expected more. Oh well, at least Mercenaries was better than ever)
Herman has a lot going for it. The beginning (which parodies Braid) made me laugh. The graphics have a lot of style (alternating between cartoony and surreal), the music is good, and the story is amusing. The problem is that the game just isn’t very fun.
Herman wants to escape the drudgery of his life, but various office staff stand in his way. The gameplay is reminiscent of old arcade maze games like Lode Runner or Popeye. Each level has 4 floors connected with ladders and full of a whole lot of enemies. Using jump kicks, a shovel, and tangerines, Herman needs to get through each level to the door at the end. At the end of each level, you’re graded on your performance and gain points which can be used to upgrade your stats.
Herman isn’t a very capable hero. Herman is slow. Really slow. There’s an upgrade to speed him up, but it’s the most expensive upgrade in the store so you’re looking at several levels of skipping other upgrades to save up for it. Herman is also weak. There’s an upgrade to improve the power of his jump kicks, but that’s the second most expensive upgrade in the store and if you purchase it, you’re not purchasing the speed up upgrade. Even if you do power-up the jump kick, the hit detection isn’t the best up close so it’s not as useful as it could be. And as far as I can tell, there are no upgrades for the tangerines (which do little damage) or shovel (which is slow) so they’re going to stay meh the whole game.
Herman’s clunky controls and general weakness are all very frustrating, but what’s especially frustrating is that the game feels like it’s on the verge of being fun but never quite makes it. Despite its flaws, I felt compelled to keep playing the game even though I wasn’t having much fun. The real shame is that with a bit more work, we might have had a game worthy of the hype here. Tighten the controls, increase the speed, add some more variety in level designs, lower the cost of upgrades, and make some tweaks here and there, and you’d have a good game, but as it is now, I can’t recommend purchasing Herman, especially at a 400 point price tag.
A Ten Step Guide to Creating Awesome Indie Shmups.
Step #1 – Make sure that the hitboxes for enemies don’t match their visuals. Players love it when they die merely from getting close to enemies.
Step #2 – Give the player 4 weapons, one for each button on the controller. Fill your game with enemies that can only be killed by using the appropriate colored weapon. Other than that, make each weapon exactly the same.
Step #3 – Give the enemies very straightforward AI like “Go straight” ensuring that the only way that a player could possibly lose is if they’re trying to shoot enemies instead of just getting out of their way.
Step #4 – Give all enemies machine guns that track the player. To counteract the difficulty in dodging, give the player a ton of health.
Step #5 – Give all enemies a ton of health. Players don’t like to mow down grunts with their superior firepower so ensure that every single enemy is a juggernaut. If an enemy is especially agile and hard to hit, give them even more health.
Step #6 – Give no indication of how much health boss enemies have or if the player is even successfully damaging them. Players like to be surprised like that.
Step #7 – Take away all power-ups whenever a player dies. Make the game ridiculously easy when fully powered-up and ridiculously hard right after dying. Players will enjoy the fluctating difficulty.
Step #8 – Use every button on the XBox 360 controller including both thumbsticks & all of the face buttons. The buttons are there for a reason, after all.
Step #9 – Players care more about length than variety. Take a level, change the background, and voila! Twice the levels!
Step #10 – Garish programmer art involving outer space is what sells shmups. If your title’s name is mostly illegible, that’s a plus.
“Molly the Were-Zompire is the best game on the XBox Live Marketplace that stars me.” – Molly the Were-Zompire
Molly the Were-Zompire is now available for your downloading pleasure. Experience life as a werewolf-zombie-vampire-girl hybrid firsthand! Eat brains! Don’t eat brains! Choose what kinds of brains to eat! The choices are endless! Top-notch hand drawn art that looks like it was drawn by an 8-year old! Text! More text! All this and more can be yours for a mere 80 MS points!
Since they’re both platformers, both cost 240 MS points, and both came out at almost exactly the same time, I thought I’d do a double feature and review Chris Unarmed and Johnny Platform Saves Christmas! together.
First up, let’s take a look at Chris Unarmed. I wasn’t too impressed with Chris Unarmed at first – the graphics & music were merely serviceable and the moveset was barren with wall jumping being the extent of your special abilities, but I kept with it and I’m glad I did. As the game progressed, it started adding all sorts of interesting things like doppelganger enemies that copy your every move, wind current mazes, treadmills that let you defy gravity, and more. One part that I thought was particularly neat was towards the end of the game, where you had to make your through some remade versions of earlier levels but in reverse – it was fun seeing how different the levels felt due to the changes.
Chris Unarmed took me about two hours to complete, but keep in mind that I skipped most of the bonus rooms and didn’t even try to get most of the coins. I daresay that unlocking the best ending (gained from getting all of the coins, most likely) would take a lot longer. The game has many difficult segments, but since you have an unlimited number of lives and respawn points are generous, it never becomes too unfair.
Moving on, let’s talk about Johnny Platform Saves Christmas! or JPSC for short.
The first Johnny Platform game was one of the early XBox Live Indie Game gems, a fun vertical platformer with well designed levels that were often as much puzzle as they were reflex challenges. If you liked the first game, you’re going to love the sequel, because it’s a huge improvement in almost every way. Want more levels? JPSC has 100 of them. Want more modes? JPSC has the main game mode as well as a time trial mode where you play as a different character who has an additional power (wall jumping). The levels are bigger and better designed. The new moves are fun to use and the graphics are noticeably better. In short, it’s fantastic. Really, the only way where the JPSC isn’t an improvement is in the price which is higher than the original game, but I’d say it’s more than worth paying a little extra for a game this good.
Both games are worth playing, but if I had to pick between them, I’d go for Johnny Platform Saves Christmas as it’s the more polished of the two titles (understandable since it’s a sequel). On the other hand, at a mere 240 MS points a piece, it wouldn’t break the bank to pick up both of them which is what I’d recommend if you have any love of 2D platformers. They’re some of the best examples of the genre on the service to date.
Microsoft’s Dream-Build-Play Challenge is coming early this year…and it’s joined by a second contest as well.
The Standard Challenge is the same as previous challenges. Register before January 18th and submit your game between Jan 19th & March 3rd of 2010. Games will be judged by a panel of judges based on Fun factor (40%), Innovation (30%), and Production Quality (30%). There are 4 prizes – Grand Prize ($40k), 1st place ($20k), 2nd place ($10k), and 3rd place ($5k) with the winners announced in March.
The second challenge is the Microsoft Old Spice Challenge. Basically, you make a game utilizing and advertising some new scents from Old Spice (Matterhorn, Fiji, Denali, and Cyprus). Same deadlines as the standard challenge. Games will first be judged by a panel of judges based on Branding Integration (50%), Fun Factor (25%), and Production Quality (25%). 5 finalists will be chosen. The games by those finalists will be placed on the XBox Live Marketplace Dash for about 3 weeks in April for public voting. The entry with the highest votes will win the Grand Prize of $60k. The other 4 finalists get nothing.
You can enter both contests if you want and use the same game for both if appropriate.
I’m rather excited at the chance of actually submitting an entry to one of these contest this year. I just finished Molly the Were-Zompire and was starting work on my next game so this should help give me an extra incentive to work hard on it.
Hexothermic was one of the best and most original puzzle games on the service when it first came out nearly a year ago. It recently dropped in price down to 80 MS points so now you all have no excuse for not owning it.
Likewise, I really enjoyed the demo of Ninja Guardian but at 240 MS points, I thought it was a little more expensive than I’d like. However, at 80 MS points, it’s quite the steal, so I’ll definitely be grabbing it sometime soon.
In other news, the excellent Halfbrick Echoes & Halfbrick Blast Off games have recently been ported to the PSP Minis service. They’re great games at low prices and perfectly suited for portable play so be sure to give them a try.