Terrascape
Terrascape is another game by NegativeONE, the developer behind Newgrounds Rumble (review here), and the two games share quite a bit of similarity; while Terrascape bills itself as a "Adventure-Platformer-Brawler hybrid", let's just say that as an adventure platformer, it's a very good brawler.
Anyway, so the basic brawling action is pretty much the same as in Newgrounds Rumble -- you move, jump, and have strong and weak attacks; these can be nicely chained into combos, but apparently only in the air. You can also pick up items which give you magic spells. The game offers a couple of modes; there's a couple of variations on straight fighting, and then the story mode, in which you have to battle your way through three different stages to claim an ancient artifact. Each of the stages is quite short and simple, though, so most of the content in story mode is still pretty much beating people up. Most of the rest of story mode consists of falling off platforms and having to start over again, which is kind of annoying. There's also hidden coins in story mode which you can collect to unlock the full power of the artifact; however, when I tried collecting them, it seemed kind of glitchy -- it would sometimes fail to record coins I was sure I had gotten. Some of the coins are also extremely difficult to find -- they require taking a leap of faith off the edge of the screen into areas that aren't automatically revealed by scrolling, which is really annoying.
Overall, the brawling action is solid -- your characters have a variety of moves and the animation is good, but you don't need to be particularly skilled to triumph; since there's not a lot of different things you can do, a pretty straightforward button-mashing strategy can carry you through the game without too much difficulty. The graphics are good; the characters are each well-realized and each of the four different story mode worlds does a good job creating a distinct feeling. The sounds are pretty run-of-the-mill; the music is nicely varied, but does get a little repetitive.
Terrascape isn't a long game -- you can probably complete story mode in 15 minutes or so, simply because there just isn't too much substance there. While the core fighting action is not bad, the adventure components of the game just aren't well-developed enough to be really interesting. Overall, it would probably benefit from a stronger focus on one aspect of the game rather than trying to be several things at once.
Showing posts with label platformer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label platformer. Show all posts
Monday, January 05, 2009
Friday, December 12, 2008
SeppuKuties
At first glance, SeppuKuties looks a lot like Lemmings...you have cute creatures trying to get from point A to point B, and sometimes, some of them may perish; indeed, sometimes some of them need to perish for the greater good. Sounds pretty similar, right? But, in fact, SeppuKuties is pretty much an entirely different game. It's another game by Antony Lavelle (creator of the SHIFT series, as well as Shore Siege -- oh, and I recently discovered that he's also behind the IndestructoTank series, which I was completely unaware of before), and has many of the hallmarks of his games -- it's a clever concept, it's entertaining without being too long, and the level design is solid.
So the basic premise is that you are a band of ragtag but adorable creatures forced by deforestation and other nasty things to traverse a series of hazardous levels in order to reach Paradise Meadows. In each level, your goal is to reach the Golden Acorn. The action is pretty standard platforming fare -- jump across pits of spikes and lava, collect keys to open doors, that kind of thing -- but the twist is that your characters occasionally have no choice but to meet their demise. When one of your band perishes, you start with another animal, who can pick up where your last one left off. Sometimes you'll have to sacrifice yourself to get important items (e.g., bravely leaping into lava to get a key), while sometimes your corpse can serve as a useful stepping-stone for your comrades. However, your band only starts out with 30 animals, and it only gets smaller as you progress through the levels, so you can't be too reckless in throwing your creatures' lives away.
Anyway, that's about all there is. There's five worlds, each with four levels, and one final level. In each level, you're graded by how many deaths you suffer (compared to a par), and how many acorns scattered around the level you can collect. If your goal is to just beat the game, then this is pretty easy, but getting a high grade on all the levels or beating the game with only a few deaths are more difficult tasks that can keep you occupied for a while.
Overall, the level design is very sharp; there's lots of clever puzzles, and the levels do a good job of being relatively easy if you're willing to sacrifice a lot of cute, cuddly, adorable creatures, but much harder if you're trying to save as many animals as possible. The physics is pretty good, although occasionally it does seem to be a little loose; this doesn't really harm the gameplay (and indeed may help), so it's forgivable. The graphics are pretty good -- they're nicely decorated for a basic 2D platformer, and the animals are cute (maybe a little too cute, even...). The sound effects are pretty basic, but the music is very nice, and gets bonus points for there being a different theme for each of the five worlds, so you don't get completely sick of it. Yay!
Anyway, SeppuKuties is, overall, quite a bit of fun to play. It's a clever concept, and a well-implemented one. Like SHIFT, it does a good job of making you wish there were a few more levels you could play (unlike the scores of Kongregate games that make me wish there were fewer levels I had to play), and while it's not too difficult by itself, it offers enough added challenge to make you feel it's not a complete pushover. It's not a long game, but you should enjoy playing it.
At first glance, SeppuKuties looks a lot like Lemmings...you have cute creatures trying to get from point A to point B, and sometimes, some of them may perish; indeed, sometimes some of them need to perish for the greater good. Sounds pretty similar, right? But, in fact, SeppuKuties is pretty much an entirely different game. It's another game by Antony Lavelle (creator of the SHIFT series, as well as Shore Siege -- oh, and I recently discovered that he's also behind the IndestructoTank series, which I was completely unaware of before), and has many of the hallmarks of his games -- it's a clever concept, it's entertaining without being too long, and the level design is solid.
So the basic premise is that you are a band of ragtag but adorable creatures forced by deforestation and other nasty things to traverse a series of hazardous levels in order to reach Paradise Meadows. In each level, your goal is to reach the Golden Acorn. The action is pretty standard platforming fare -- jump across pits of spikes and lava, collect keys to open doors, that kind of thing -- but the twist is that your characters occasionally have no choice but to meet their demise. When one of your band perishes, you start with another animal, who can pick up where your last one left off. Sometimes you'll have to sacrifice yourself to get important items (e.g., bravely leaping into lava to get a key), while sometimes your corpse can serve as a useful stepping-stone for your comrades. However, your band only starts out with 30 animals, and it only gets smaller as you progress through the levels, so you can't be too reckless in throwing your creatures' lives away.
Anyway, that's about all there is. There's five worlds, each with four levels, and one final level. In each level, you're graded by how many deaths you suffer (compared to a par), and how many acorns scattered around the level you can collect. If your goal is to just beat the game, then this is pretty easy, but getting a high grade on all the levels or beating the game with only a few deaths are more difficult tasks that can keep you occupied for a while.
Overall, the level design is very sharp; there's lots of clever puzzles, and the levels do a good job of being relatively easy if you're willing to sacrifice a lot of cute, cuddly, adorable creatures, but much harder if you're trying to save as many animals as possible. The physics is pretty good, although occasionally it does seem to be a little loose; this doesn't really harm the gameplay (and indeed may help), so it's forgivable. The graphics are pretty good -- they're nicely decorated for a basic 2D platformer, and the animals are cute (maybe a little too cute, even...). The sound effects are pretty basic, but the music is very nice, and gets bonus points for there being a different theme for each of the five worlds, so you don't get completely sick of it. Yay!
Anyway, SeppuKuties is, overall, quite a bit of fun to play. It's a clever concept, and a well-implemented one. Like SHIFT, it does a good job of making you wish there were a few more levels you could play (unlike the scores of Kongregate games that make me wish there were fewer levels I had to play), and while it's not too difficult by itself, it offers enough added challenge to make you feel it's not a complete pushover. It's not a long game, but you should enjoy playing it.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
SHIFT 3
If you've read my reviews of SHIFT (here) and SHIFT 2 (here), you know that I would eagerly anticipate the arrival of SHIFT 3. So when I first saw it appear on Armor Games, I was delighted. But I wanted to wait for it to appear on Kongregate, so I could get all of the badges in one place. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I expected I'd have to wait a couple of weeks; instead, it took several months for the game to arrive on Kongregate. Not surprisingly, that kind of wait tends to take the excitement out of a game. It's certainly not the game's fault -- it delivers pretty much exactly what you'd want from a sequel. There are a few interesting improvements to the game, but the core gameplay experience remains unchanged -- mostly it's just more of what you've come to love.
Just to recap for those of you too uninterested to play the first two and too lazy to read my reviews, SHIFT 3 is a pretty straightforward platformer -- your goal is to reach the exit door in a level by jumping on blocks and avoiding spikes. Keys will move barriers around, hopefully to your benefit, and lightbulbs remove checked squares that impede your progress. At the beginning of the game, you are a black figure standing on a white background. However, by pressing Shift, you can shift into the black block you're standing on and become a white figure on a black background. This opens up all sorts of creative puzzle options. There also exist buttons which can rotate the screen 180 degrees (or even 90 degrees) without the need to shift.
Anyway, the biggest change in SHIFT 3 is that the game is no longer completely linear; you don't just do one room after another until you reach the end. Rather, some rooms have multiple exits, and you'll often need to backtrack to a previously-visited room. Keys can also affect barriers in other rooms, meaning that you'll often move to another room, grab a key, and then return to your previous room and take advantage of the change you've just effected. While this definitely adds an interesting new feature, the designer thankfully does not go overboard; the overall layout is not too complicated, and the game thoughtfully provides a map to help you navigate your way through.
As in SHIFT 2, there are two possible endings; to get the better of the two, you need to collect various newspaper clippings strewn throughout the game. These are kind of an effort to give the game a Portal-like hint of a backstory, but there's not really enough to make the plot terribly interesting. These usually require finding various secret doors, but the game isn't too cruel about hiding these -- generally, their presence is pretty well indicated, so you just need to pay attention when looking around to find them. Unfortunately, because what you need to get the good ending is just a series of numbers, it's easy for people to get the good ending without doing any of the work, which I naturally disapprove of.
In addition to the main adventure mode, SHIFT 3 also offers three "player packs", collections of six levels from various sources to give a quick "classic SHIFT" experience. These are quite short, and range in difficulty from quite easy to moderately head-scratching. They're a nice little addition to the main game, but, being only six levels, they're not going to take you too long to get through. The game also has a wide variety of achievements, like SHIFT 2, although it seems to have embraced the annoying trend of not actually telling you how to get the achievements. What is the purpose of this?! All it does is drive people to FAQs. Fortunately, I was able to figure out how to get all of the achievements by myself without too much difficulty, since most of them are pretty sensibly named; still, it's a needless irritation.
The graphics are the same as in the first two; the music has been changed again, although when you play the player packs, you get the original SHIFT music, which I think is still my favorite of the three. The game also includes a level editor, which is a nice addition to the game content. Thankfully, despite being an Armor Games product, the Kongregate version of SHIFT 3 isn't crippled in any way, which is a relief.
Overall, SHIFT 3 is a fun experience. It's not going to offer much you haven't already seen if you've played the first two, but like its two predecessors, it's good, well-designed, entertaining fun which doesn't overstay its welcome.
If you've read my reviews of SHIFT (here) and SHIFT 2 (here), you know that I would eagerly anticipate the arrival of SHIFT 3. So when I first saw it appear on Armor Games, I was delighted. But I wanted to wait for it to appear on Kongregate, so I could get all of the badges in one place. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I expected I'd have to wait a couple of weeks; instead, it took several months for the game to arrive on Kongregate. Not surprisingly, that kind of wait tends to take the excitement out of a game. It's certainly not the game's fault -- it delivers pretty much exactly what you'd want from a sequel. There are a few interesting improvements to the game, but the core gameplay experience remains unchanged -- mostly it's just more of what you've come to love.
Just to recap for those of you too uninterested to play the first two and too lazy to read my reviews, SHIFT 3 is a pretty straightforward platformer -- your goal is to reach the exit door in a level by jumping on blocks and avoiding spikes. Keys will move barriers around, hopefully to your benefit, and lightbulbs remove checked squares that impede your progress. At the beginning of the game, you are a black figure standing on a white background. However, by pressing Shift, you can shift into the black block you're standing on and become a white figure on a black background. This opens up all sorts of creative puzzle options. There also exist buttons which can rotate the screen 180 degrees (or even 90 degrees) without the need to shift.
Anyway, the biggest change in SHIFT 3 is that the game is no longer completely linear; you don't just do one room after another until you reach the end. Rather, some rooms have multiple exits, and you'll often need to backtrack to a previously-visited room. Keys can also affect barriers in other rooms, meaning that you'll often move to another room, grab a key, and then return to your previous room and take advantage of the change you've just effected. While this definitely adds an interesting new feature, the designer thankfully does not go overboard; the overall layout is not too complicated, and the game thoughtfully provides a map to help you navigate your way through.
As in SHIFT 2, there are two possible endings; to get the better of the two, you need to collect various newspaper clippings strewn throughout the game. These are kind of an effort to give the game a Portal-like hint of a backstory, but there's not really enough to make the plot terribly interesting. These usually require finding various secret doors, but the game isn't too cruel about hiding these -- generally, their presence is pretty well indicated, so you just need to pay attention when looking around to find them. Unfortunately, because what you need to get the good ending is just a series of numbers, it's easy for people to get the good ending without doing any of the work, which I naturally disapprove of.
In addition to the main adventure mode, SHIFT 3 also offers three "player packs", collections of six levels from various sources to give a quick "classic SHIFT" experience. These are quite short, and range in difficulty from quite easy to moderately head-scratching. They're a nice little addition to the main game, but, being only six levels, they're not going to take you too long to get through. The game also has a wide variety of achievements, like SHIFT 2, although it seems to have embraced the annoying trend of not actually telling you how to get the achievements. What is the purpose of this?! All it does is drive people to FAQs. Fortunately, I was able to figure out how to get all of the achievements by myself without too much difficulty, since most of them are pretty sensibly named; still, it's a needless irritation.
The graphics are the same as in the first two; the music has been changed again, although when you play the player packs, you get the original SHIFT music, which I think is still my favorite of the three. The game also includes a level editor, which is a nice addition to the game content. Thankfully, despite being an Armor Games product, the Kongregate version of SHIFT 3 isn't crippled in any way, which is a relief.
Overall, SHIFT 3 is a fun experience. It's not going to offer much you haven't already seen if you've played the first two, but like its two predecessors, it's good, well-designed, entertaining fun which doesn't overstay its welcome.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Meat Boy
Meat Boy is a platformer with some things that I like and some things that I hate. It's also the easiest impossible badge on Kongregate, so if you're looking for (relatively -- it's still not exactly trivial) fast points, give it a try. (I don't mean this as a criticism of either the Kongregate badge-awarding process or the game; after all, some impossible badge has to be the easiest.)
The plot, if it can be called that, is extremely simple. Dr. Fetus has kidnapped Bandaid Girl and you, Meat Boy, must rescue her. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the weirdness of the characters, but it doesn't affect the game at all. Anyway, the game consists of pretty standard platforming action, with extensive use of wall-jumping, as you fight your way through the various levels. There are three worlds, each with 15 levels in them, but you don't have to finish all of them -- you only need to finish three levels out of every five to advance to the next set. This is nice; if you're completely annoyed by a level (and believe me, this will happen), you can just skip it and try another. (The final level is not skippable, but it's also not particularly rage-inducing.) Each level features a wide variety of you-killing machinery -- sawblades, spikes, flaming pits, you get the idea.
The controls in the game are simple, but frequently irritating, particularly since the game's collision detection is very unforgiving and will zap you if even a pixel of yours comes into contact with something unpleasant. It's especially difficult to accurately control your character in midair; I must have died a thousand deaths by jumping and flying over the space I was trying to jump to into a wall of fire, or a bottomless pit, or something else unpleasant. However, each given level is quite short, so it doesn't feel too oppressive to have to try repeatedly in order to actually pass the level. Some (but not all) of the levels feature band-aids, which can be collected to unlock various secrets (which are just cute little addons, nothing affecting gameplay). Getting these band-aids can often be an exercise in persistence, since they tend to require pixel-perfect jumping.
The graphics are in the low-res, slightly pixelated style that seems to be the fashion these days (although not to quite the extent seen in, say, Dino Run). In my opinion, at least, it's kind of ugly -- it doesn't quite work here in the same way that it does in other games. (Really, this might just be because the main characters are kind of ugly -- the rest of the graphics are fine.) The sound effects are pretty minimal. The background music gets points for at least being different for the three different worlds -- it's pretty catchy at first, but it repeats on too short a loop, and so it gets kind of irritating eventually, alas.
Overall, Meat Boy is a game which is fun and enjoyable at times and annoying and frustrating at other times. It's quick, so even though it takes a while to actually finish the game, you'll never feel hopelessly stuck or anything, and there is a nice feeling of achievement from getting that impossible badge. Still, in the end, I'm not quite sure whether I'd recommend the game or not. Give it a try, I guess -- it won't take you long to decide whether you like it or not, I'm sure.
Meat Boy is a platformer with some things that I like and some things that I hate. It's also the easiest impossible badge on Kongregate, so if you're looking for (relatively -- it's still not exactly trivial) fast points, give it a try. (I don't mean this as a criticism of either the Kongregate badge-awarding process or the game; after all, some impossible badge has to be the easiest.)
The plot, if it can be called that, is extremely simple. Dr. Fetus has kidnapped Bandaid Girl and you, Meat Boy, must rescue her. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the weirdness of the characters, but it doesn't affect the game at all. Anyway, the game consists of pretty standard platforming action, with extensive use of wall-jumping, as you fight your way through the various levels. There are three worlds, each with 15 levels in them, but you don't have to finish all of them -- you only need to finish three levels out of every five to advance to the next set. This is nice; if you're completely annoyed by a level (and believe me, this will happen), you can just skip it and try another. (The final level is not skippable, but it's also not particularly rage-inducing.) Each level features a wide variety of you-killing machinery -- sawblades, spikes, flaming pits, you get the idea.
The controls in the game are simple, but frequently irritating, particularly since the game's collision detection is very unforgiving and will zap you if even a pixel of yours comes into contact with something unpleasant. It's especially difficult to accurately control your character in midair; I must have died a thousand deaths by jumping and flying over the space I was trying to jump to into a wall of fire, or a bottomless pit, or something else unpleasant. However, each given level is quite short, so it doesn't feel too oppressive to have to try repeatedly in order to actually pass the level. Some (but not all) of the levels feature band-aids, which can be collected to unlock various secrets (which are just cute little addons, nothing affecting gameplay). Getting these band-aids can often be an exercise in persistence, since they tend to require pixel-perfect jumping.
The graphics are in the low-res, slightly pixelated style that seems to be the fashion these days (although not to quite the extent seen in, say, Dino Run). In my opinion, at least, it's kind of ugly -- it doesn't quite work here in the same way that it does in other games. (Really, this might just be because the main characters are kind of ugly -- the rest of the graphics are fine.) The sound effects are pretty minimal. The background music gets points for at least being different for the three different worlds -- it's pretty catchy at first, but it repeats on too short a loop, and so it gets kind of irritating eventually, alas.
Overall, Meat Boy is a game which is fun and enjoyable at times and annoying and frustrating at other times. It's quick, so even though it takes a while to actually finish the game, you'll never feel hopelessly stuck or anything, and there is a nice feeling of achievement from getting that impossible badge. Still, in the end, I'm not quite sure whether I'd recommend the game or not. Give it a try, I guess -- it won't take you long to decide whether you like it or not, I'm sure.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2
In case the name didn't tip you off, The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2 is a sequel to The Fancy Pants Adventures (review here). By and large the game engine is the same, and the whimsical sense of humor very much intact, but World 2 adds a few features to add a little more flavor to the game.
In case you're too lazy to click on the link and read about the first one, World 2, like its predecessor, is a charmingly hand-drawn platformer. It adheres to pretty much your standard Mario platformer conventions (even down to Fancy Pants Man falling asleep if you sit idle at the keyboard too long), but its well-crafted levels and general cheerfulness more than compensate for any familiarity in the basic gameplay principles.
World 2 adds a few additional features. First of all, it's longer, with six levels, plus transitional levels between and a small introductory scene at the beginning. (Alas, there's still no level indicator.) A skeletal plotline has been added; there's not much to it, but it's cute, and it's definitely a nice addition, given that the original had no plotline at all. There's still a bunch of hidden trophies (none of them particularly hard to find, but each requiring you to go at least a little bit out of your way). More music has also been added; the new music provides welcome variety but is also excellent, so this is a quality addition. Also, the backgrounds have been spiced up, with lots of cute little tidbits hidden in the background of many levels, amking the game much less static. Furthermore, a whole new side game has been added: in addition to the normal progress of the level, each level now has a snail shell and a hole somewhere in the level; knocking the snail shell into the hole will grant you a new color for your pants! This is kind of a neat little addition, though as a game, it can be extremely frustrating getting the shell to go where you want it to go.
Anyway, this is still a very entertaining and charming game, and I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it. While the snail shell may not be a great addition, the basic gameplay is still wonderful. Like its predecessor, it's not a terribly long, nor a terribly difficult game; it's best enjoyed as a simple, well-crafted morsel.
In case the name didn't tip you off, The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2 is a sequel to The Fancy Pants Adventures (review here). By and large the game engine is the same, and the whimsical sense of humor very much intact, but World 2 adds a few features to add a little more flavor to the game.
In case you're too lazy to click on the link and read about the first one, World 2, like its predecessor, is a charmingly hand-drawn platformer. It adheres to pretty much your standard Mario platformer conventions (even down to Fancy Pants Man falling asleep if you sit idle at the keyboard too long), but its well-crafted levels and general cheerfulness more than compensate for any familiarity in the basic gameplay principles.
World 2 adds a few additional features. First of all, it's longer, with six levels, plus transitional levels between and a small introductory scene at the beginning. (Alas, there's still no level indicator.) A skeletal plotline has been added; there's not much to it, but it's cute, and it's definitely a nice addition, given that the original had no plotline at all. There's still a bunch of hidden trophies (none of them particularly hard to find, but each requiring you to go at least a little bit out of your way). More music has also been added; the new music provides welcome variety but is also excellent, so this is a quality addition. Also, the backgrounds have been spiced up, with lots of cute little tidbits hidden in the background of many levels, amking the game much less static. Furthermore, a whole new side game has been added: in addition to the normal progress of the level, each level now has a snail shell and a hole somewhere in the level; knocking the snail shell into the hole will grant you a new color for your pants! This is kind of a neat little addition, though as a game, it can be extremely frustrating getting the shell to go where you want it to go.
Anyway, this is still a very entertaining and charming game, and I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it. While the snail shell may not be a great addition, the basic gameplay is still wonderful. Like its predecessor, it's not a terribly long, nor a terribly difficult game; it's best enjoyed as a simple, well-crafted morsel.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Amberial: Nebulosa Realms
The somewhat incomprehensibly-named Amberial: Nebulosa Realms is, as you might guess, a sequel to the original Amberial. The basic rolling-based platformer gameplay is pretty much unchanged from its predecessor, but the game adds enough flashy features to make for a lengthier and more engaging playing experience, albeit not one without its flaws.
The gameplay elements in Nebulosa Realms are pretty much identical to the original -- your ball, which can only roll left and right, and various springs, trampolines, moving platforms, spikes, red balls of destruction, and so forth. There are a few more levels which play around with gravity, which has the potential to add a lot to the puzzles but which is still not really explored to much extent in Nebulosa Realms. A few of the more irritating features of the original have been fixed: the scrolling is now continuous, so it's more obvious where the edges of the level are; dying now brings you a dialog box offering you a chance to retry rather than going straight back to the level select screen; and the music (which is not bad, although not anything great, either -- like so many other Flash games, the msuic gets very irritating in large doses) now plays continuously throughout the level.
The game also now has considerably more content. There are now 22 levels, most of which are much larger and more difficult than the original levels. In addition to the normal finish and Ace finish options present in the original, you can now also get a "thunder finish" for finishing the level in a certain amount of time. Collecting Aces and thunders allows you to unlock hidden levels, including the quite difficult Tower of Glory 2, a sequel to the difficult hidden level in the original which is even more difficult and insane.
Overall, this game is a worthy sequel, but it still lacks a lot of that polish that you need for a really great game, and the level design, while not bad, isn't quite up to the standards of a great game, either. It's entertaining for a while, and frustrating for a while when you're trying to get some of the more difficult achievements, but I fear you'l run out of entertainment before finishing the game.
And now, I have to mention one very, very serious complaint. As I've mentioned before, many Flash games have the problem that they're easier if your computer is slower. And, in general, time measured by the game is tied to your frame rate, so that if you have to, say, survive for 5 minutes, that 5 minutes might actually take longer on a slower computer. This can be somewhat irritating, but obviously there's no simple solution to this either. However, Amberial: Nebulosa Realms chooses the wrong solution. See, I was trying to get the thunder finish on a given level. It seemed like I was doing everything perfectly, but I was still a good second and a half slower than the required time. I spent quite a bit of time racking my brains to see if there was some kind of shortcut I was missing, but I couldn't find anything. The problem was that at one point you have to wait for a moving platform to arrive, and it simply didn't arrive soon enough for me to get to the end of the level in time. Finally, in frustration, I turned to YouTube to see if there was anything I was missing. The YouTube video, though, did it exactly as I was doing it. And it's not like they were just a little bit faster, since they were constrained by that platform -- rather, when I watched closely, I could see that the moving platform was arriving at an earlier time than it was for me. I could only conclude that the timer was not tied to the frame rate, but rather running asynchronously, which meant I was basically screwed by having a fast computer. So, I started playing a movie in the background, tried the level again, and my time instantly improved by two seconds, allowing me to claim the thunder finish. This is really, really poor programming and it strongly negatively impacted my opinion of the game.
The somewhat incomprehensibly-named Amberial: Nebulosa Realms is, as you might guess, a sequel to the original Amberial. The basic rolling-based platformer gameplay is pretty much unchanged from its predecessor, but the game adds enough flashy features to make for a lengthier and more engaging playing experience, albeit not one without its flaws.
The gameplay elements in Nebulosa Realms are pretty much identical to the original -- your ball, which can only roll left and right, and various springs, trampolines, moving platforms, spikes, red balls of destruction, and so forth. There are a few more levels which play around with gravity, which has the potential to add a lot to the puzzles but which is still not really explored to much extent in Nebulosa Realms. A few of the more irritating features of the original have been fixed: the scrolling is now continuous, so it's more obvious where the edges of the level are; dying now brings you a dialog box offering you a chance to retry rather than going straight back to the level select screen; and the music (which is not bad, although not anything great, either -- like so many other Flash games, the msuic gets very irritating in large doses) now plays continuously throughout the level.
The game also now has considerably more content. There are now 22 levels, most of which are much larger and more difficult than the original levels. In addition to the normal finish and Ace finish options present in the original, you can now also get a "thunder finish" for finishing the level in a certain amount of time. Collecting Aces and thunders allows you to unlock hidden levels, including the quite difficult Tower of Glory 2, a sequel to the difficult hidden level in the original which is even more difficult and insane.
Overall, this game is a worthy sequel, but it still lacks a lot of that polish that you need for a really great game, and the level design, while not bad, isn't quite up to the standards of a great game, either. It's entertaining for a while, and frustrating for a while when you're trying to get some of the more difficult achievements, but I fear you'l run out of entertainment before finishing the game.
And now, I have to mention one very, very serious complaint. As I've mentioned before, many Flash games have the problem that they're easier if your computer is slower. And, in general, time measured by the game is tied to your frame rate, so that if you have to, say, survive for 5 minutes, that 5 minutes might actually take longer on a slower computer. This can be somewhat irritating, but obviously there's no simple solution to this either. However, Amberial: Nebulosa Realms chooses the wrong solution. See, I was trying to get the thunder finish on a given level. It seemed like I was doing everything perfectly, but I was still a good second and a half slower than the required time. I spent quite a bit of time racking my brains to see if there was some kind of shortcut I was missing, but I couldn't find anything. The problem was that at one point you have to wait for a moving platform to arrive, and it simply didn't arrive soon enough for me to get to the end of the level in time. Finally, in frustration, I turned to YouTube to see if there was anything I was missing. The YouTube video, though, did it exactly as I was doing it. And it's not like they were just a little bit faster, since they were constrained by that platform -- rather, when I watched closely, I could see that the moving platform was arriving at an earlier time than it was for me. I could only conclude that the timer was not tied to the frame rate, but rather running asynchronously, which meant I was basically screwed by having a fast computer. So, I started playing a movie in the background, tried the level again, and my time instantly improved by two seconds, allowing me to claim the thunder finish. This is really, really poor programming and it strongly negatively impacted my opinion of the game.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Amberial
Amberial is a very minimalist platformer which is elegantly executed, but which is relatively short and simple. You'll enjoy it, but there's not quite enough depth to make it feel like a truly engaging game.
Amberial veers from the normal platformer conventions by eliminating something which is normally a staple of the genre: the jump. In Amberial, you control a ball, and all you can do is roll left or right, so handling the vertical dimension becomes much more tricky than in your conventional platformer. Naturally, there's a wide array of springs and trampolines so that you're not always headed downward, but it does add an interesting constraint to the game. You have to reach the exit while avoiding your normal array of hazards -- spikes, moving balls, lasers, and so forth.
Each level features a normal exit and an Ace, which is supposed to be harder than the normal exit but is often as easy, if not easier than, the regular exit. Collecting all the Aces will give you a badge. Some levels require you to press a switch to make the exit appear, and others have a switch for the Ace, which adds a bit of difficulty. Still, the levels tend to be pretty straightforward. There are 12 levels, which form a sequence with several branches, so you don't have to do all of the levels to reach the end, but as none of them is particularly difficult, there's no real reason not to do them all. There's also three bonus levels, accessible by collecting Aces; the last bonus level is not an easy one, especially to get the Ace. One awkward feature of the levels is that they tend to comprise several distinct screens, and it's not always easy to tell if the level continues off an edge or just ends there other than experimentation.
The graphics are simple, but they're not bad (although a little bit dark), and the sound effects are serviceable. The music is kind of strange -- the little snippets that you get aren't bad, but they only repeat for a short amount of time at the beginning of the level, leaving you in silence for the rest of the time. I don't know if this is a bug or a design decision, but it definitely feels a little weird. The interface is also very spartan -- dying immediately returns you to the level select screen, which can be kind of annoying if all you want to do is immediately retry the level (which is almost always the case).
Overall, Amberial is not a bad game, and you'll enjoy playing it, but it does feel a little sparse and unfinished -- it could use a little bit of sprucing up, and a little more substance, and a little more content. Still, it's an enjoyable way to kill 20 minutes or so.
Amberial is a very minimalist platformer which is elegantly executed, but which is relatively short and simple. You'll enjoy it, but there's not quite enough depth to make it feel like a truly engaging game.
Amberial veers from the normal platformer conventions by eliminating something which is normally a staple of the genre: the jump. In Amberial, you control a ball, and all you can do is roll left or right, so handling the vertical dimension becomes much more tricky than in your conventional platformer. Naturally, there's a wide array of springs and trampolines so that you're not always headed downward, but it does add an interesting constraint to the game. You have to reach the exit while avoiding your normal array of hazards -- spikes, moving balls, lasers, and so forth.
Each level features a normal exit and an Ace, which is supposed to be harder than the normal exit but is often as easy, if not easier than, the regular exit. Collecting all the Aces will give you a badge. Some levels require you to press a switch to make the exit appear, and others have a switch for the Ace, which adds a bit of difficulty. Still, the levels tend to be pretty straightforward. There are 12 levels, which form a sequence with several branches, so you don't have to do all of the levels to reach the end, but as none of them is particularly difficult, there's no real reason not to do them all. There's also three bonus levels, accessible by collecting Aces; the last bonus level is not an easy one, especially to get the Ace. One awkward feature of the levels is that they tend to comprise several distinct screens, and it's not always easy to tell if the level continues off an edge or just ends there other than experimentation.
The graphics are simple, but they're not bad (although a little bit dark), and the sound effects are serviceable. The music is kind of strange -- the little snippets that you get aren't bad, but they only repeat for a short amount of time at the beginning of the level, leaving you in silence for the rest of the time. I don't know if this is a bug or a design decision, but it definitely feels a little weird. The interface is also very spartan -- dying immediately returns you to the level select screen, which can be kind of annoying if all you want to do is immediately retry the level (which is almost always the case).
Overall, Amberial is not a bad game, and you'll enjoy playing it, but it does feel a little sparse and unfinished -- it could use a little bit of sprucing up, and a little more substance, and a little more content. Still, it's an enjoyable way to kill 20 minutes or so.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Platform Racing 2
If you've read my review of Platform Racing (here), it probably won't surprise you to learn that I was somewhat dreading playing Platform Racing 2. Fortunately, the good news is that Platform Racing 2 has improved dramatically on its predecessor. I still wouldn't call it a great game, but at least playing it doesn't make me feel like a total idiot who's wasting his time.
The basic concept of Platform Racing 2 hasn't changed much from the original -- it's like a platformer, and you have multiple characters racing to the end. So what makes it better? Well, first, there's more building blocks in the toolkit (is that a mixed metaphor? I'm afraid it is). In addition to the basic blocks, there's ice blocks, blocks that can be pushed, blocks that disappear after a little while, water blocks, and even blocks that rotate the entire playfield 90 degrees, which can make for some very confusing levels. (This is used to very interesting effect in some levels -- for instance, there's one level in which two players rotate left and two rotate right, so that one pair ends up on the top and the other pair ends up on the bottom.) The levels also look much less drab -- in addition to the new blocks, which help to add splashes of color, there's also nicer backgrounds, which makes looking at them much more enjoyable. The music is also vastly improved, courtesy of the Newgrounds music portal. Also, more items have been added (most of which don't add very much, but the more variety is always welcome), and you can customize your character a bit more.
The real improvement that makes Platform Racing 2 vastly more enjoyable, though, is in the level design. Remember how I said how important level design is in a game like this? If you're not convinced of that fact, just compare these two games. Wisely, Jiggmin selected many levels not designed by him for Platform Racing 2, and this substantially improves the game -- the levels now have interesting features, and cute touches, and other sorts of challenges than just "jump from this one block to this other block". It is perhaps no coincidence that the last level, which is designed by Jiggmin, is by far the worst, most frustrating, and least enjoyable level -- it is clearly designed to be hard, but it isn't hard in a fun way; it's just mindlessly hard. There's also a thriving community of player-submitted levels, though I tried checking a few of the top-rated ones out and was not terribly impressed; I would expect that there are some good ones lurking, but I wasn't able to find any.
The multiplayer is pretty much the same -- the flaws of the matchmaking system are still present. There are a couple of improvements, though; you don't have to wait for everyone else to finish before receiving your points and leaving, and (much to my relief) the ability to jump on other people's heads and stun them is now gone. The silly system where you have to gain rank before you can play the rest of the available levels is still present, alas. Winning races gains you body parts which you can use to customize your appearance, which is a nice touch; races with more people tend to bring you the best stuff. Cheating also appears to be much less of a problem, which I am grateful for.
Overall, the game has improved enough that it's moderately fun to play. The basic concept, to be honest, is still a little lacking, but at least the level design is interesting enough to make this a game that's worth playing again.
If you've read my review of Platform Racing (here), it probably won't surprise you to learn that I was somewhat dreading playing Platform Racing 2. Fortunately, the good news is that Platform Racing 2 has improved dramatically on its predecessor. I still wouldn't call it a great game, but at least playing it doesn't make me feel like a total idiot who's wasting his time.
The basic concept of Platform Racing 2 hasn't changed much from the original -- it's like a platformer, and you have multiple characters racing to the end. So what makes it better? Well, first, there's more building blocks in the toolkit (is that a mixed metaphor? I'm afraid it is). In addition to the basic blocks, there's ice blocks, blocks that can be pushed, blocks that disappear after a little while, water blocks, and even blocks that rotate the entire playfield 90 degrees, which can make for some very confusing levels. (This is used to very interesting effect in some levels -- for instance, there's one level in which two players rotate left and two rotate right, so that one pair ends up on the top and the other pair ends up on the bottom.) The levels also look much less drab -- in addition to the new blocks, which help to add splashes of color, there's also nicer backgrounds, which makes looking at them much more enjoyable. The music is also vastly improved, courtesy of the Newgrounds music portal. Also, more items have been added (most of which don't add very much, but the more variety is always welcome), and you can customize your character a bit more.
The real improvement that makes Platform Racing 2 vastly more enjoyable, though, is in the level design. Remember how I said how important level design is in a game like this? If you're not convinced of that fact, just compare these two games. Wisely, Jiggmin selected many levels not designed by him for Platform Racing 2, and this substantially improves the game -- the levels now have interesting features, and cute touches, and other sorts of challenges than just "jump from this one block to this other block". It is perhaps no coincidence that the last level, which is designed by Jiggmin, is by far the worst, most frustrating, and least enjoyable level -- it is clearly designed to be hard, but it isn't hard in a fun way; it's just mindlessly hard. There's also a thriving community of player-submitted levels, though I tried checking a few of the top-rated ones out and was not terribly impressed; I would expect that there are some good ones lurking, but I wasn't able to find any.
The multiplayer is pretty much the same -- the flaws of the matchmaking system are still present. There are a couple of improvements, though; you don't have to wait for everyone else to finish before receiving your points and leaving, and (much to my relief) the ability to jump on other people's heads and stun them is now gone. The silly system where you have to gain rank before you can play the rest of the available levels is still present, alas. Winning races gains you body parts which you can use to customize your appearance, which is a nice touch; races with more people tend to bring you the best stuff. Cheating also appears to be much less of a problem, which I am grateful for.
Overall, the game has improved enough that it's moderately fun to play. The basic concept, to be honest, is still a little lacking, but at least the level design is interesting enough to make this a game that's worth playing again.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
The Fancy Pants Adventures
The Fancy Pants Adventures is an utterly charming platformer. It doesn't have anything particularly new, I must concede, but it is so well executed and thoroughly whimsical that it is still a joy to play. The only disappointment is that it's a relatively small game, and when that's the worst I can say, you know it's a good game.
The game will look and feel instantly familiar to anyone who's played a Mario game. Sure, you have Fancy Pants Man instead of Mario, squiggles instead of coins, and patrolling spiders instead of Goombas, but the basic scheme is pretty much the same. In some ways, it is more in the spirit of the old 2D Mario games (down to the control scheme where up arrow is used for entering doors, while a separate button on your other hand is used to jump, which in some ways feels downright archaic), but there are touches of newer Marios as well, as can be seen in Fancy Pants Man's backflips and wall jumps; also, your character has a life bar, which can be replenished by collecting more squiggles. There's even a little bit of Sonic in Fancy Pants Man. Like I said, there's a lot of familiar elements.
But what makes this game still fun to play, even for someone who's spent countless hours playing all sorts of Mario, is the attention to detail. The artwork is lovingly hand-drawn, and the animation is excellent. The level design is solid -- there are three levels, with two little transitional levels in between and the final boss at the end, and each is enjoyable. My only complaint is that it doesn't actually tell you what level you're on, so if you're not paying close attention it's easy to lose track of how much you have left. Each level is pretty short if you're just aiming to get from beginning to end, but there's some other things scattered about -- you can find trophies, and there's also a hidden feature, as well as a few coin -- I mean, squiggle -- rooms. Overall, the levels do a good job of keeping you entertained; there's usually something else to be explored or optimized, but the game doesn't frustrate you, either.
The music is also excellent. To repeat an all-too-familiar complaint, the loop is a little short, but it's good music, and there are a few different themes (there's separate music for the transitional levels, as well as the final boss) so you don't get completely tired. Anyway, it's perfectly appropriate for a light little platformer like this.
Like I said at the beginning, this is not a particularly long game (even if you're looking for all the trophies), nor is it a particularly difficult game (though achieving the speed required to get the hard badge will require a bit of practice), but it is still a lot of fun to play. It's a game I would have no problems recommending to anyone, partially because it's not horribly violent or bloody or gory like so many games you'll see on Kongregate, but mostly because I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it.
The Fancy Pants Adventures is an utterly charming platformer. It doesn't have anything particularly new, I must concede, but it is so well executed and thoroughly whimsical that it is still a joy to play. The only disappointment is that it's a relatively small game, and when that's the worst I can say, you know it's a good game.
The game will look and feel instantly familiar to anyone who's played a Mario game. Sure, you have Fancy Pants Man instead of Mario, squiggles instead of coins, and patrolling spiders instead of Goombas, but the basic scheme is pretty much the same. In some ways, it is more in the spirit of the old 2D Mario games (down to the control scheme where up arrow is used for entering doors, while a separate button on your other hand is used to jump, which in some ways feels downright archaic), but there are touches of newer Marios as well, as can be seen in Fancy Pants Man's backflips and wall jumps; also, your character has a life bar, which can be replenished by collecting more squiggles. There's even a little bit of Sonic in Fancy Pants Man. Like I said, there's a lot of familiar elements.
But what makes this game still fun to play, even for someone who's spent countless hours playing all sorts of Mario, is the attention to detail. The artwork is lovingly hand-drawn, and the animation is excellent. The level design is solid -- there are three levels, with two little transitional levels in between and the final boss at the end, and each is enjoyable. My only complaint is that it doesn't actually tell you what level you're on, so if you're not paying close attention it's easy to lose track of how much you have left. Each level is pretty short if you're just aiming to get from beginning to end, but there's some other things scattered about -- you can find trophies, and there's also a hidden feature, as well as a few coin -- I mean, squiggle -- rooms. Overall, the levels do a good job of keeping you entertained; there's usually something else to be explored or optimized, but the game doesn't frustrate you, either.
The music is also excellent. To repeat an all-too-familiar complaint, the loop is a little short, but it's good music, and there are a few different themes (there's separate music for the transitional levels, as well as the final boss) so you don't get completely tired. Anyway, it's perfectly appropriate for a light little platformer like this.
Like I said at the beginning, this is not a particularly long game (even if you're looking for all the trophies), nor is it a particularly difficult game (though achieving the speed required to get the hard badge will require a bit of practice), but it is still a lot of fun to play. It's a game I would have no problems recommending to anyone, partially because it's not horribly violent or bloody or gory like so many games you'll see on Kongregate, but mostly because I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Platform Racing
Imagine Mario Kart, which I hope we can all agree is a fine game. Now, take everything out of it that makes it a fun game. You've now got a pretty good idea of what playing Platform Racing is like. It gave me a horrible feeling that I had just wasted three hours of my life and all I got to show for it was 50 points in badges.
The basic concept of Platform Racing is, hopefully, conveyed by its title -- it's like a platformer, except you have many characters racing to get to the finish first. There's not much in the way of variety -- you have ordinary blocks, arrow blocks, which give you a boost in the direction the arrow is pointing (either sideways or upwards), mines, which give your little stick figure a nasty jolt, and the obligatory item blocks, which will give you one potentially-useful item.
So, what makes this such an uninteresting game? Well, first of all is the pace. Your characters are fairly slow to begin with, and in matches with multiple players (more on this later), you're constantly being lightninged or shot at or simply stomped on; like Mario Brothers, stomping on someone's head will stun them for several seconds, which is excruciating when you have characters all grouped in an area trying to make a jump and they all end up jumping on each other. This means that, even though the individual courses are relatively short, they still take what seems like forever to complete. You can customize your racer by allotting 100 points among speed, acceleration, and traction, but even when I weighted my racer heavily towards speed, he still seemed aggravatingly slow.
But the area where this is really a spectacular letdown is the level design. As in any racing game, the quality of the tracks is really what makes or breaks the experience, and the levels are simply not interesting. Part of this is undeniably a consequence of there simply being so few elements to work with, but the game seems to have only one trick in its toolbox for adding difficulty, and that's to have you jump from single block to single block over bottomless pits. This gets tired and annoying fast. Even worse is when the single blocks are up-arrow blocks, so that you get boosted up and you can't even see the block that you're trying to land on. This results in you plummeting to your demise approximately 10 million times on average, which is simply not fun. There's nothing particularly creative or interesting in the level design; the one attempt to make an unorthodox level, in which, instead of racing, you fall down and have to avoid various obstacles as you fall, I thought was pretty clever until I realized you could just go off to one side past all of the obstacles, fall almost the whole length of the level, and then come back in just in time for the finish. Brilliant, huh?
The items are also horribly unbalanced. (One thing which I will give the game credit for -- unlike Mario Kart, where it's possible for the lead driver to hog all of the items, in Platform Racing, each player can hit each block precisely once, so everyone has a chance at items.) Some items are ridiculously powerful, and some are very weak, and unlike Mario Kart, there's no attempt to balance them with your current position, so you can easily get lightning while leading the race. In one of the levels, if you get a certain item you're basically guaranteed to beat anyone who doesn't get that item -- in fact, I don't think in all my playing, I ever managed to even finish that level within the time limit without getting the item. Other levels have similar, if not quite as serious, problems.
The graphics are very bland -- the racers themselves are stick figures, with the parts not even connected, and the animation consists solely of your feet moving back and forth. You can "customize" your appearance, which only consists of changing colors. The levels themselves are similarly uninteresting in their appearance. The music is also solidly subpar, although at least there are multiple mediocre melodies, so you don't have to listen to the same thing the whole time. The sound effects are OK.
Now, on to the multiplayer. This is a racing game, after all, so while you can race by yourself, the entire point is to race against other people, so I was unable to avoid multiplayer play, as is my preference. The game is hosted on many non-Kongregate locations, so everyone connects to one of three central servers; there's also a chat room inside the game, which is the usual cesspool of awfulness that nearly any unmoderated chat room devolves into. (It also appeared that most of the people playing the game were about 14, which made me wonder if I would enjoy the game more if I were that age. I don't think so, though. There were better games around even when I was 14.) The matchmaking system is pretty terrible (and not at all intuitive); basically, you click on an open slot and hit "play" when you're ready. The game starts 15 seconds after the first person clicks "play", or when all players currently in the game have clicked "play"; this means that oftentimes you end up waiting 15 seconds for the fourth person to hit the button, they don't, and so you end up playing with three. This is important, because the more people you beat in a race, the more rank you get, and rank is important to unlock the last levels so you can get the badge and stop playing the game already. The game is also not so good at keeping players synced -- I'll often see a player behind me jump ahead thanks to lag, and cheats are also rampant, judging by the number of players I saw with over 20000 rank who were magically able to finish any level in 10 seconds. Also, you have to wait until everyone has finished the level to get your points, which just adds insult to injury.
Anyway, if you haven't guessed yet, I found playing Platform Racing to be a thoroughly unenjoyable experience, and I was quite happy when I finally finished grinding my way up the rank ladder to unlock the last level so I could finally earn the last badge. It's not even particularly hard, just very, very tedious.
Imagine Mario Kart, which I hope we can all agree is a fine game. Now, take everything out of it that makes it a fun game. You've now got a pretty good idea of what playing Platform Racing is like. It gave me a horrible feeling that I had just wasted three hours of my life and all I got to show for it was 50 points in badges.
The basic concept of Platform Racing is, hopefully, conveyed by its title -- it's like a platformer, except you have many characters racing to get to the finish first. There's not much in the way of variety -- you have ordinary blocks, arrow blocks, which give you a boost in the direction the arrow is pointing (either sideways or upwards), mines, which give your little stick figure a nasty jolt, and the obligatory item blocks, which will give you one potentially-useful item.
So, what makes this such an uninteresting game? Well, first of all is the pace. Your characters are fairly slow to begin with, and in matches with multiple players (more on this later), you're constantly being lightninged or shot at or simply stomped on; like Mario Brothers, stomping on someone's head will stun them for several seconds, which is excruciating when you have characters all grouped in an area trying to make a jump and they all end up jumping on each other. This means that, even though the individual courses are relatively short, they still take what seems like forever to complete. You can customize your racer by allotting 100 points among speed, acceleration, and traction, but even when I weighted my racer heavily towards speed, he still seemed aggravatingly slow.
But the area where this is really a spectacular letdown is the level design. As in any racing game, the quality of the tracks is really what makes or breaks the experience, and the levels are simply not interesting. Part of this is undeniably a consequence of there simply being so few elements to work with, but the game seems to have only one trick in its toolbox for adding difficulty, and that's to have you jump from single block to single block over bottomless pits. This gets tired and annoying fast. Even worse is when the single blocks are up-arrow blocks, so that you get boosted up and you can't even see the block that you're trying to land on. This results in you plummeting to your demise approximately 10 million times on average, which is simply not fun. There's nothing particularly creative or interesting in the level design; the one attempt to make an unorthodox level, in which, instead of racing, you fall down and have to avoid various obstacles as you fall, I thought was pretty clever until I realized you could just go off to one side past all of the obstacles, fall almost the whole length of the level, and then come back in just in time for the finish. Brilliant, huh?
The items are also horribly unbalanced. (One thing which I will give the game credit for -- unlike Mario Kart, where it's possible for the lead driver to hog all of the items, in Platform Racing, each player can hit each block precisely once, so everyone has a chance at items.) Some items are ridiculously powerful, and some are very weak, and unlike Mario Kart, there's no attempt to balance them with your current position, so you can easily get lightning while leading the race. In one of the levels, if you get a certain item you're basically guaranteed to beat anyone who doesn't get that item -- in fact, I don't think in all my playing, I ever managed to even finish that level within the time limit without getting the item. Other levels have similar, if not quite as serious, problems.
The graphics are very bland -- the racers themselves are stick figures, with the parts not even connected, and the animation consists solely of your feet moving back and forth. You can "customize" your appearance, which only consists of changing colors. The levels themselves are similarly uninteresting in their appearance. The music is also solidly subpar, although at least there are multiple mediocre melodies, so you don't have to listen to the same thing the whole time. The sound effects are OK.
Now, on to the multiplayer. This is a racing game, after all, so while you can race by yourself, the entire point is to race against other people, so I was unable to avoid multiplayer play, as is my preference. The game is hosted on many non-Kongregate locations, so everyone connects to one of three central servers; there's also a chat room inside the game, which is the usual cesspool of awfulness that nearly any unmoderated chat room devolves into. (It also appeared that most of the people playing the game were about 14, which made me wonder if I would enjoy the game more if I were that age. I don't think so, though. There were better games around even when I was 14.) The matchmaking system is pretty terrible (and not at all intuitive); basically, you click on an open slot and hit "play" when you're ready. The game starts 15 seconds after the first person clicks "play", or when all players currently in the game have clicked "play"; this means that oftentimes you end up waiting 15 seconds for the fourth person to hit the button, they don't, and so you end up playing with three. This is important, because the more people you beat in a race, the more rank you get, and rank is important to unlock the last levels so you can get the badge and stop playing the game already. The game is also not so good at keeping players synced -- I'll often see a player behind me jump ahead thanks to lag, and cheats are also rampant, judging by the number of players I saw with over 20000 rank who were magically able to finish any level in 10 seconds. Also, you have to wait until everyone has finished the level to get your points, which just adds insult to injury.
Anyway, if you haven't guessed yet, I found playing Platform Racing to be a thoroughly unenjoyable experience, and I was quite happy when I finally finished grinding my way up the rank ladder to unlock the last level so I could finally earn the last badge. It's not even particularly hard, just very, very tedious.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
SHIFT 2
Although SHIFT 2 is one of my favorite games on Kongregate, I'm afraid this review is going to be rather short because I've already said nearly everything there is to say in my previous commentary on SHIFT.
Both the gameplay and the spirit of SHIFT 2 are quite similar to the original. The gameplay does have a few interesting additions, though. There are now buttons which can rotate the screen 180 degrees without needing to shift, and even buttons which rotate the screen 90 degrees, adding another dimension to the puzzle solving. These buttons make it surprisingly easy to end up going around in circles in some levels, though, so you'll need to pay a little more attention to what's going on. There's also checked squares, which cannot be shifted into but can only be removed by hitting the appropriate trigger. However, while SHIFT 2 may require a bit more thinking, it's still not a difficult game by any means.
The music is different from (and perhaps not quite as good as) the original, but provides a nice background. One welcome addition is a set of achievements, which gives you some goals to shoot for in addition to simply completing the game. Collecting the medals unlocks some additional bonus material (one thing that is promised, for instance, is the option to play as the "classic character" from the original SHIFT). There is also a level editor, which is a nice addition, and comes with a few extra sample levels that you can try out. On the other hand, the proofreading in the game is awfully poor -- there's a lot of typos in the game text (and there's not that much text, so fitting a lot of typos into it takes some work).
Overall, SHIFT 2 doesn't feel that radically different from the original -- it's still a very entertaining game, but still awfully short. But better a small addition than no addition at all, given how much fun it is.
Although SHIFT 2 is one of my favorite games on Kongregate, I'm afraid this review is going to be rather short because I've already said nearly everything there is to say in my previous commentary on SHIFT.
Both the gameplay and the spirit of SHIFT 2 are quite similar to the original. The gameplay does have a few interesting additions, though. There are now buttons which can rotate the screen 180 degrees without needing to shift, and even buttons which rotate the screen 90 degrees, adding another dimension to the puzzle solving. These buttons make it surprisingly easy to end up going around in circles in some levels, though, so you'll need to pay a little more attention to what's going on. There's also checked squares, which cannot be shifted into but can only be removed by hitting the appropriate trigger. However, while SHIFT 2 may require a bit more thinking, it's still not a difficult game by any means.
The music is different from (and perhaps not quite as good as) the original, but provides a nice background. One welcome addition is a set of achievements, which gives you some goals to shoot for in addition to simply completing the game. Collecting the medals unlocks some additional bonus material (one thing that is promised, for instance, is the option to play as the "classic character" from the original SHIFT). There is also a level editor, which is a nice addition, and comes with a few extra sample levels that you can try out. On the other hand, the proofreading in the game is awfully poor -- there's a lot of typos in the game text (and there's not that much text, so fitting a lot of typos into it takes some work).
Overall, SHIFT 2 doesn't feel that radically different from the original -- it's still a very entertaining game, but still awfully short. But better a small addition than no addition at all, given how much fun it is.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
SHIFT
If I asked you what game on Kongregate is most like Portal (the real Portal, that is), your first guess might be Portal: The Flash Version. But, as I mentioned earlier, Portal: The Flash Version doesn't actually share all that much in common with its parent. In fact, it's SHIFT (or perhaps SHIFT 2, but we'll get there in due time) which is far closer to the spirit of Portal. It's got a simple but intruiging and creative concept at its core, it's very playful, and overall a very short game, so that you can play it in a single session but still feel that you would like to try more.
The basic concept behind SHIFT is very simple. At first, it looks like an ordinary platformer-type game with platforms and keys and deadly pits of spikes. However, the twist is simple, but very interesting -- when you find yourself stuck, you can press Shift, and suddenly the screen rotates 180 degrees and instead of a black figure on a white background standing on black floors, you're a white figure on a black background standing on white floors. With up and down now switched, it's a piece of cake to get to the high ledge you couldn't reach before. (Or maybe it isn't...)
The game teases you in much the same way that Portal does (indeed, the parallels between the timer and the cake are obvious, and the author makes no secret of where exactly he got his inspiration from), and the whole thing has a very light-hearted feel, which makes it an enjoyable experience to play.
That said, the game is somewhat limited, first simply by the fact that the size of the Flash screen means that the puzzles remain pretty small and hence nothing is too complicated, and second by the fact that there just aren't many levels in the game. (Also, the last level seems a bit misplaced in a game which otherwise is pretty cerebral.) So when you finish, you'll definitely be surprised at just how short the experience was. Still, it's much better to have a game which provides a quick, pleasant experience than one that overstays its welcome (Areas, I'm looking at you...).
The presentation is appropriately sparse -- the graphics are very simple black and white (the better to survive the inversion, I suppose), and there's no sound, though the background music is a nice touch. Like many other Kongregate games, there's no way to go back to specific levels, but since playing through the game is so quick, it doesn't take particularly long to get to any level anyway, so this isn't perhaps as much of a handicap as it might be in other games.
Anyway, there is a SHIFT 2 out, and a review for that coming up soon, so if the game does leave you with a thirst for more, you can get more! But if not, it's still a fun way to spend 20 minutes, and something that really shows the spirit of good game design at work.
If I asked you what game on Kongregate is most like Portal (the real Portal, that is), your first guess might be Portal: The Flash Version. But, as I mentioned earlier, Portal: The Flash Version doesn't actually share all that much in common with its parent. In fact, it's SHIFT (or perhaps SHIFT 2, but we'll get there in due time) which is far closer to the spirit of Portal. It's got a simple but intruiging and creative concept at its core, it's very playful, and overall a very short game, so that you can play it in a single session but still feel that you would like to try more.
The basic concept behind SHIFT is very simple. At first, it looks like an ordinary platformer-type game with platforms and keys and deadly pits of spikes. However, the twist is simple, but very interesting -- when you find yourself stuck, you can press Shift, and suddenly the screen rotates 180 degrees and instead of a black figure on a white background standing on black floors, you're a white figure on a black background standing on white floors. With up and down now switched, it's a piece of cake to get to the high ledge you couldn't reach before. (Or maybe it isn't...)
The game teases you in much the same way that Portal does (indeed, the parallels between the timer and the cake are obvious, and the author makes no secret of where exactly he got his inspiration from), and the whole thing has a very light-hearted feel, which makes it an enjoyable experience to play.
That said, the game is somewhat limited, first simply by the fact that the size of the Flash screen means that the puzzles remain pretty small and hence nothing is too complicated, and second by the fact that there just aren't many levels in the game. (Also, the last level seems a bit misplaced in a game which otherwise is pretty cerebral.) So when you finish, you'll definitely be surprised at just how short the experience was. Still, it's much better to have a game which provides a quick, pleasant experience than one that overstays its welcome (Areas, I'm looking at you...).
The presentation is appropriately sparse -- the graphics are very simple black and white (the better to survive the inversion, I suppose), and there's no sound, though the background music is a nice touch. Like many other Kongregate games, there's no way to go back to specific levels, but since playing through the game is so quick, it doesn't take particularly long to get to any level anyway, so this isn't perhaps as much of a handicap as it might be in other games.
Anyway, there is a SHIFT 2 out, and a review for that coming up soon, so if the game does leave you with a thirst for more, you can get more! But if not, it's still a fun way to spend 20 minutes, and something that really shows the spirit of good game design at work.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Portal: The Flash Version
(I actually played this game long before finding Kongregate, but on Kongregate, it has badges attached to it! So naturally I had to play through it again to get the badges. Fortunately, this didn't take too long.)
The next time someone says to you, "Games of today really don't need their fancy 3D graphics and voice acting; all that really matters is the underlying gameplay concept" (and yes, I know that sounds like something I might say), have them play this game, then have them play the real Portal, and then patiently wait for them to admit that they were wrong. (Since I'm going to be doing a lot of comparison between the original and the Flash version, if I say "the original" or just "Portal", I'm talking about Valve's original product. The Flash version I'll call "TFV". Hopefully this will at least somewhat reduce confusion.)
Portal is the perfect example of a game which pairs an innovative gameplay concept with excellent writing (and the voice acting implementing that writing) in order to make a truly great game. TFV totally lacks that deft writing touch; the writing (which appears in floating text boxes at the top of the screen rather than in a disembodied GLaDOS voice) is functional rather than amusing (compare, for instance, how the two games introduce the concept of player death to the player). And, of course, it's hardly accurate to call the gameplay concept in TFV "innovative" when it's been, ahem, borrowed directly from Portal (which, in turn, got it from another game, but at least they paid for it).
The gameplay in TFV is pretty much identical to that in Portal, although the perspective shift from first person to two-dimensional third person side view naturally affects game play significantly. Because of the limitations of Flash, the simple two-button interface of Portal is absent; instead, the left mouse button alternates colors, and you can use keys to open portals of a specific color. There's also a button to close both your portals, which is quite useful and something I found myself wishing for occasionally when I went back to the real Portal. Most of the elements in Portal (cubes, buttons, turrets, doors, and Aperture Science High-Energy Pellets, though not fizzlers or the Weighted Companion Cube) are present in TFV; TFV also introduces a few new elements: blue plasma fields, which are solid with respect to you and cubes, but which the portal gun can shoot through; red plasma fields, which can also be shot through but result in instant death; crushers, which pretty much do what they say; and electric fields, which zap you when they're on. As you can see, many of these elements are focused on killing you, making TFV a much more deliberately hostile environment than Portal. (Yes, I know that there are crushers in parts of Portal, too, but those are just pieces of machinery designed for other purposes; the crushing is just incidental. The ones in TFV are covered with person-crushing spikes, and are clearly designed for one purpose only: to stab the unwary or slow test subject.) The game is also somewhat glitchy, especially (but not only) when you're carrying boxes around; they can end up in the weirdest places if you're not careful.
The presentation is average. The graphics are OK but nothing special, the sound effects seem somewhat, um, familiar, and the music is OK but not really quite appropriate. The interface is minimal but has pretty much everything you would want an interface to have; the one thing that can be somewhat frustrating is that there's no way to save your progress in the middle of a level (either voluntarily or with some kind of checkpoints), which can get really, really annoying in some of the later, longer levels.
As for the level design -- I will be the first to admit that, for all that I love Portal, the level design is only fair, at least from the perspective of requiring you to think creatively. Although the portal gun opens up all sorts of crazy possibilities, if your goal is just to get through the game, variations on the Fling will be nearly everything that you need. (The challenges, on the other hand, do require you to deploy more of your arsenal.) Unfortunately, TFV doesn't really take advantage of this opening; the levels in TFV are pretty well thought out (and there are more of them than in Portal, which is a plus, although since the levels are limited to the size of the screen in TFV, the total amount of puzzling you have to do is probably the same or possibly even less), but there's not anything which requires a really insightful solution. Because of the greater emphasis on things which can kill you, there's also a greater demand for being able to execute complicated maneuvers quickly and precisely than in Portal; this definitely makes the game harder, but not in a way that I would consider as much fun. I would prefer the game being harder in terms of requiring more thought than more dexterity. There are also a few levels which are just super-frustrating in requiring perfect timing and execution.
Since it might sound like I'm totally ripping on TFV, I should point out that falling short of Portal, which is a great game, is nothing to be ashamed of, and the gameplay concept is still a lot of fun. Overall, TFV is a fun way to spend an hour or two, but after you've played the real thing, it will feel like a pale imitation.
(I actually played this game long before finding Kongregate, but on Kongregate, it has badges attached to it! So naturally I had to play through it again to get the badges. Fortunately, this didn't take too long.)
The next time someone says to you, "Games of today really don't need their fancy 3D graphics and voice acting; all that really matters is the underlying gameplay concept" (and yes, I know that sounds like something I might say), have them play this game, then have them play the real Portal, and then patiently wait for them to admit that they were wrong. (Since I'm going to be doing a lot of comparison between the original and the Flash version, if I say "the original" or just "Portal", I'm talking about Valve's original product. The Flash version I'll call "TFV". Hopefully this will at least somewhat reduce confusion.)
Portal is the perfect example of a game which pairs an innovative gameplay concept with excellent writing (and the voice acting implementing that writing) in order to make a truly great game. TFV totally lacks that deft writing touch; the writing (which appears in floating text boxes at the top of the screen rather than in a disembodied GLaDOS voice) is functional rather than amusing (compare, for instance, how the two games introduce the concept of player death to the player). And, of course, it's hardly accurate to call the gameplay concept in TFV "innovative" when it's been, ahem, borrowed directly from Portal (which, in turn, got it from another game, but at least they paid for it).
The gameplay in TFV is pretty much identical to that in Portal, although the perspective shift from first person to two-dimensional third person side view naturally affects game play significantly. Because of the limitations of Flash, the simple two-button interface of Portal is absent; instead, the left mouse button alternates colors, and you can use keys to open portals of a specific color. There's also a button to close both your portals, which is quite useful and something I found myself wishing for occasionally when I went back to the real Portal. Most of the elements in Portal (cubes, buttons, turrets, doors, and Aperture Science High-Energy Pellets, though not fizzlers or the Weighted Companion Cube) are present in TFV; TFV also introduces a few new elements: blue plasma fields, which are solid with respect to you and cubes, but which the portal gun can shoot through; red plasma fields, which can also be shot through but result in instant death; crushers, which pretty much do what they say; and electric fields, which zap you when they're on. As you can see, many of these elements are focused on killing you, making TFV a much more deliberately hostile environment than Portal. (Yes, I know that there are crushers in parts of Portal, too, but those are just pieces of machinery designed for other purposes; the crushing is just incidental. The ones in TFV are covered with person-crushing spikes, and are clearly designed for one purpose only: to stab the unwary or slow test subject.) The game is also somewhat glitchy, especially (but not only) when you're carrying boxes around; they can end up in the weirdest places if you're not careful.
The presentation is average. The graphics are OK but nothing special, the sound effects seem somewhat, um, familiar, and the music is OK but not really quite appropriate. The interface is minimal but has pretty much everything you would want an interface to have; the one thing that can be somewhat frustrating is that there's no way to save your progress in the middle of a level (either voluntarily or with some kind of checkpoints), which can get really, really annoying in some of the later, longer levels.
As for the level design -- I will be the first to admit that, for all that I love Portal, the level design is only fair, at least from the perspective of requiring you to think creatively. Although the portal gun opens up all sorts of crazy possibilities, if your goal is just to get through the game, variations on the Fling will be nearly everything that you need. (The challenges, on the other hand, do require you to deploy more of your arsenal.) Unfortunately, TFV doesn't really take advantage of this opening; the levels in TFV are pretty well thought out (and there are more of them than in Portal, which is a plus, although since the levels are limited to the size of the screen in TFV, the total amount of puzzling you have to do is probably the same or possibly even less), but there's not anything which requires a really insightful solution. Because of the greater emphasis on things which can kill you, there's also a greater demand for being able to execute complicated maneuvers quickly and precisely than in Portal; this definitely makes the game harder, but not in a way that I would consider as much fun. I would prefer the game being harder in terms of requiring more thought than more dexterity. There are also a few levels which are just super-frustrating in requiring perfect timing and execution.
Since it might sound like I'm totally ripping on TFV, I should point out that falling short of Portal, which is a great game, is nothing to be ashamed of, and the gameplay concept is still a lot of fun. Overall, TFV is a fun way to spend an hour or two, but after you've played the real thing, it will feel like a pale imitation.
Labels:
Kongregate,
platformer,
Portal: The Flash Version,
puzzle
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