Really busy trying to get Breath of Death VII ready, but in the meantime, here are a few quick review.
Shoot 1UP (80 MS) - Fantastic vertical shmup with the gimmick being that you control a squad of ships instead of just one. By the Weapon of Choice developer.
Soulcaster (240 MS) – Like Gauntlet except instead of directly attacking your enemies, you summon a warrior, mage, or archer. Like an Action/RPG crossed with Tower Defense. Well worth the money.
Missing Reel (240 MS) – Pretty but shallow arena shooter. AI allies bugged out the first boss preventing me from being able to finish it. I was sufficiently bored to not want to restart.
Cyborg Mice Arena (240 MS) – Competent but uninspired arena shooter. Lots of upgrades to buy, but there are better arena shooters on the service (like Echoes+) that you could be spending your money on instead.
With a name like Yet Another Zombie Defense, I was expecting something subversive like I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1, but no, you get exactly what the title promises. Yet Another Zombie Defense is yet another zombie defense game.
That doesn’t mean that it’s bad though. You shoot zombies, collect money, and then spend money between rounds to purchases walls, buy weapons and ammo, and buy turrets (which you can then outfit with any of the weapons you’ve purchased). It’s a winning formula and there’s some fun to be had. The graphics are decent, the music is nice, there are leaderboards to compete on, and the whole thing is wonderfully cheap at 80 MS points.
On the other hand, Yet Another Zombie Defense doesn’t excel. The enemies lack variety, the AI is really stupid (even for zombies) and will actually go out of their way to attack walls instead of you, the weapons lack oomph, and there’s no multiplayer. So it’s a decent game, but not a great one. It’s the very definition of its name.
If you want a good, relatively cheap zombie shooter game, I highly recommend Zombie Shooter 2 for the PC – it looks nice, there are a ton of weapons (many of which are awesome), there are some minor RPG elements, and a few different modes to play. Great, mostly mindless fun. Alternatively, Zombie Apocalypse on XBLA is rather entertaining, especially with a couple of friends. Both of these games are only $10 full price and you may be able to find them on sale for less. Yet Another Zombie Defense may be cheaper, but I’d recommend the higher priced alternatives – they’re worth the extra money if shooting zombies is your thing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.