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Jun 24th, 2012 at 12:54:54 - Bag It! (Other) |
Briefly, I had this on my Android, but I had to wipe it and have the phone serviced, so bye-bye all mobile games. I had been playing this on trains for a long time. It's amusing, but not something I'll download again. Basically, you arrange groceries in a grocery bag. There are several modes. In the main game, the food moves across the top of the screen, and you have to pack the grocery bag as full as you can without squashing too much food. There are different foods like bread (which is tall and skinny, light and weak), watermelons (which are short and long, heavy and strong), milk cartons, orange juice boxes, egg cartons, etc. They're different sizes and you can rotate them as you see fit. Some are strong and can support a lot of food being placed on top of them, like watermelons, and others, like the egg cartons, are weaker and break easily, so you'd want to place them on top or stack bread or something light on them. I had fun trying to arrange the food and trying to get the bonus objectives. Other game modes had you trying to squish a lot or doing a time attack. Each food is kind of like a character too. The egg carton was my favorite. He had a mustache and a monocle.
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Jun 24th, 2012 at 12:46:29 - Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (PC) |
I totally caved to all the praise this game got and it was one of the reasons I bought that Humble Indie Bundle. But I gotta say I didn't really enjoy it on the whole. It just seems to have this 'cool retro indie' thing going for it that everyone is loving these days.
Pros: excellent pixelated visuals, soundtrack & sound effects, zelda love
Cons: boring gameplay, mood feels wrong mostly thanks to weird writing and language, illogical puzzles, TWITTER
For the pros, yeah it looks all retro which is very cool these days. But it's not just old school looking, it does sweet things with pixels. They animate ever-so-subtly to add apparent motion to the background. These visual throwback games should take notes because for me it's the difference between rolling my eyes at it and dropping my jaw at it.
The music is great and fits the game perfectly. The sound effects are enchanting and remind me somewhat of 'calming' games like Osmos, these airy blips and synthesized droplet notes. I loved everything about the sound, except the voiceovers, which fall under con category 'mood feels wrong.' A neat thing about this game is that it's also an EP for this musician, John Guthrie. I don't know who he is and I don't particularly care, but he did a nice job here, and it's something I'd like as standalone music too. It's also a neat way to distribute your music, wrapping it as an EP/game. He's in the game as himself briefly too, which is cool one time and just weird another time (again, see con: mood feels wrong).
For the cons, let's start with the worst. Twitter. This game really wants you to tweet about it and it's annoying and intruding as hell. Every time there is dialogue or any text whatsoever, this little Twitter tag pops up the top right of the screen. If you mouse over it, it asks "Tweet this?" No I don't want to fucking tweet this. Every single line of text! Which on one level is impressive that each piece of text is 140 characters or less. I applaud brevity, but I enthusiastically boo the devs insisting that I should tweet "The girl named girl and Logfella are sitting in the cabin." I can't think of much that people on my SNSes could care less about. BOOOOO!
Second, as you can tell from the girl named girl and Logfella, the writing is a mix of clever and irreverent. I actually like the girl named girl. But I didn't like Logfella...until I realized the dog was named Dogfella. Then I thought it was funny. There's a lot of alliteration, especially with the letter 'S.' It becomes over-the-top silly. I'm sure I didn't get a lot of the references in the game, but the main quest is most obviously and unabashedly Zelda's. You recover the Triforce for God's sake. And I said that the language and the writing make the mood feel off. The character says things like "There are three graves and we wondered what was up with that" or "We were totally jazzed about the awesomeness of that deer we just saw." Jazzed? Awesome and cool? What's up with that? I don't think it fits. I mean it fits, but I don't think it SHOULD fit. It's a fantasy game, but it has this modern bro-nerd-trying-hard-to-be-hip-and-ironic language. The visuals are cool and the sounds are cool, and the language just doesn't mesh. Also the voiceovers are weird. It sounds like the devs just leaned in to their laptop microphone in their bedroom and started talking "Hey...So uuh, you don't say much do you? Yyyyyep." It's not funny and it sounds out of place.
Finally, gameplay. The game was first released on touch devices and ported over to PC, but it's still obviously for touch devices first. If it had standard adventure game controls it would be fine, but they're below par. You play the whole game with the mouse just clicking and holding left-button for everything. It's just really boring. The fighting is boring and the wandering is boring if you're not busy marveling at the visuals or the sound, interacting with objects and things is tedious, especially the puzzles. Puzzles in this game stumped me completely at first. They all have to do with using this sworcery spell and just figuring out which order/which things in the environment to click on. It's not usually logical, just kind of start clicking on stuff and see what lights up.
I quit playing halfway through in the beginning of chapter 3 because I was stuck and when I looked up what to do in a FAQ, I couldn't believe the solution. I won't say it in case someone reads this and wants to play the game because it will totally spoil it. But I will say, study that book very carefully and you might figure it out. Let's just say that even if I wanted to continue, I'd have to wait until next week. Like the character names, I think this solution is both clever and stupid. Like, I enjoy the IDEA of it, but I don't enjoy being on the receiving end of it.
So, in the end, I can understand why this game got a lot of praise, especially looking at it as a mobile game. It's clever and innovative, and has a great style to it. But it's also got a lot of flaws. I'd like to see its strengths used and improved upon, perhaps in a more serious offering. Also it is Supershort. But I guess it's an EP, so it's forgivable.
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Jun 22nd, 2012 at 15:35:48 - Super Meat Boy (PC) |
Just a quick one here. Came home from a night out, not tired, sitting at my computer eating some prata and drinking tea, needed something to do to kill time until I got tired, found my way into my 'games to play on my laptop' folder and clicked Super Meat Boy. I had 0 interest in this game, as I generally dislike platformers, especially these retro ones that seem to be very twitchy and rely on lots of developed skill and memorization. But, it came along with a Humble Indie Bundle I bought, so what the hell, I thought, I'll give it a spin.
First impressions: Okay, this isn't as hard as I thought it would be. [fast forward nearer to the end of chapter one, 10-15 minutes later] What the freaking hell is this madness? The game ramps up difficulty like you wouldn't believe. I got frustrated enough to quit on the first boss battle. I'm sure I could have beaten it and kept going a bit, but I didn't like the direction the game was headed, i.e., I invest a significant amount of effort to master new bits to move on in the game, die an outrageous amount (final tally: 152 deaths in chapter 1, 1/2 an hour's play time), and just get frustrated enough to quit farther down the line. Best to quit while I'm ahead...or stuck bad the first time...which is kind of like being ahead.
The game is super fast-paced. You're a little meat square and each level you have to save your girlfriend from the evil Dr. Fetus who slaps her and takes her away to the next level whenever you reach her. You can run, sprint and jump (so far at least). There are increasing obstacles. I got as far as buzzsaws.
Here's the kicker though. After I quit, I went on Youtube to see how the hell people played this and I found a gold mine, a series called "Until I Rage," where this user plays difficult, frustrating, and crappy games until he can't stands it no more and rage quits. So I watched him play Super Meat Boy for a long time. There are absolutely hilarious moments in his videos. He makes comments as he plays, makes a lot of 'jumping' noises that sound like constipation, pleads 'why?!' quite often to a god or jesus or unnamed watcher who most certainly abandoned him to the Sisyphean fate Super Meat Boy imposes. And every now and then, he goes into a mild expletive-laced rage. I applaud the guy. He made it 2.5 hours and into chapter 5 of Super Meat Boy in one sitting.
Besides the rage, I find his video series fascinating because he tries games that he's never played before. So what we have is video and audio footage of a noob. This guy thinks out loud a lot, so I can watch and listen to him making sense of Super Meat Boy. When he comes upon something new, he says out loud like "what the fuck is this? looks like a jelly. yeah, some kind of jelly. bet i die if i touch it. [touches it and dies] yep! ok, don't do that again" or "what the hell, where am i supposed to go now? buzzsaws above and below. i guess i'll just drop down. [drops down and dies but sees his platform] whoa! down, but not there. need to fall left." You can watch and listen to him developing an understanding of what he needs to do to overcome obstacles, how to deal with new information, how he deals with time and space in the game, and so on. It's pretty cool stuff to think about, and it's all just sitting right there on YouTube, him and who knows how many other gameplay videos like his.
Anyway, here's a link if anyone wants to check out the stage that finally did him in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8RstHfzO_w
I played Bastion over the last couple weeks, and this appears to be another example where a controller is superior to the keyboard. I played with the keyboard, and though I didn't encounter any real issues, I know I would have when it got more complex. So when I watched this YouTuber playing with a gamepad, I was thinking how much smoother his movements were. Also quite fascinating how different input affects player performance. You can read 1000 comments where players sound off on gamepad vs. keyboard for this game, and others.
I've no plans to load Super Meat Boy ever again, but there is a cool feature here: user-created levels. Actually that's what I found first, somehow stumbling upon them before I found the story mode. Let me just say, people are insane! I loaded a bunch of user maps and I just don't have any words. Nothing makes you feel old and 'behind the times' when you can't keep up with a game like the ones you used to play when you were a kid. Super Meat Boy vs. Super Mario Brothers? Ehh, same same but different. I think an NES would explode if you fed it a Super Meat Boy.
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Jun 21st, 2012 at 02:33:42 - Bastion (PC) |
Bastion is a remarkable game. First of all, it's very pretty and the soundtrack is fantastic. Thanks to the most recent Humble Bundle, I have it too! Much has been said about the narration in the game, and I vouch it's every bit as awesome as you heard. The narrator is a character in the story and he tells it, paraphrasing what other people say and always commenting on what you, 'The Kid,' are doing. It's dynamic, which blew my mind. I thought he was going to stop with the dynamic narration, like that was only in the beginning, but it's the entire game and so so so well done. So you come upon a new gun -- "The Kid sees his old friends, the twin repeater pistols." I mean he narrates the story as you move along and narrates significant things that happen and that you see and even makes little remarks about things you do. So I started a New Game + after beating it and I was rolling through the beginning (literally rolling) and he commented "The Kid just rolls right on through." Stuff like that. It's really neat. I would recommend everyone play this game just to hear the narration and experience the presentation of the story. Luckily the rest of it is great too.
Another unique thing this game does is handle its difficulty. You invoke different deities that grant enemies power/handicap you and it's your choice which ones to invoke when. There are 10 total (8 on the first play through) and they do things like make enemies hit harder or have more life, make them drop a grenade when you kill them, make them faster, etc. If the game's too easy (which is most certainly is without a few idols!) then pick a challenge. It's a freaking brilliant system, and to reward you for added difficulty, each idol you use grants you 5-10% bonus crystals and experience. One reason the difficulty system works so well is that when you level up, you get a spirit slot. You can add drinks that give you passive bonuses, 1 for each level. These include +15% damage reduction, +10 health, +100% shield counter damage, etc. The spirits and the idols sort of counterbalance one another. Like the more spirits you have, the more idols you'll be able to handle. And the more idols you use, the more experience you get, so the faster you can level and use more spirits.
I finished the game at level 7. When I got my first idol, I was thinking "haha, you must be crazy, why would I make this harder on myself?" and then I saw the bonus and I tried it out, and it was actually really nice to play with the sped up enemies (which I did first). So every time I got an idol, I added it. I was up to 5 or 6 the first time I ran into trouble. I accidentally made it so I couldn't kill this one boss because I'd turned on the enemy health regeneration idol (in addition to +enemy damage, +enemy defense and all the rest), and I couldn't attack this boss fast enough. He just regenerated faster than I could damage him. That's the first time I took an idol off. Then I just kept with 5 or so because some of the enemies got a bit harder. There is an achievement for completing a 'Who Knows Where' level (which is like a dreamstate with lots of waves of enemies where you can train and get crystals and xp) with at least 1 idol. I figured I'd try it with 1 instead of 5 so I took all of them off. It was then that I realized how crazy easy the game is without idols and how crazy better at the game I was from playing with idols the entire way than if I'd not used them. Like I spent the entire game with enemies moving way faster, taking way more damage, hitting me harder, and dropping grenades. When I took all that stuff off it was just like 'lol wow, really?' It's like how you run faster if you're following someone just faster than you, or you do better at a task when you're told that other people perform at this higher level. Really really great way of handling difficulty! And then once you beat the game you can do a New Game + where you keep all your weapons and upgrades and spirits and idols, which allows you to try and use more idols and keep leveling up for more challenge.
The fighting is pretty basic, feels fairly hack and slash with perhaps a bit more precision than usual since a lot of weapons involve careful aim and timing to pull off power shots. It's a fun system, and you can upgrade your weapons a lot with crystals. There are these weapon challenge areas where you can practice and beat times or scores and unlock some rewards, usually weapon upgrades or special attacks. Those were fun and I actually mastered all but 2.
The only thing I didn't love about the game were the controls on the PC. I think a game pad would be better for moving about the map. The mouse was fine for attacking, but the WASD just lacked precision for rolling and moving around the map. I fell off the map plenty of times. But minor gripe.
Wholeheartedly recommend Bastion.
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