Bot Arena 3
Every time I see a game involving battling robots, I secretly hope it'll be something like RoboWar or RoboSport, which are two of my favorite games of that type. And certainly it's not too difficult to envision a vastly-improved version of either. Sadly, Bot Arena 3, while not a bad game, is a bit disappointing, in that it doesn't quite live up to either of those two.
The basic premise of Bot Arena is very simple. In career mode, you build a team of bots -- each bot has a chassis, armor, and a weapon. (Technically the weapon is optional -- you can send out unarmed bots as decoys -- but in practice this is never a useful tactic.) Every armor and weapon has a weight, and every chassis has a certain maximum capacity, so you can't necessarily load up your robot with the best of everything. Once you've built your team, you can enter them in an event. Most events have a weight limit, so you can't just continuously upgrade your robots -- you have to pick and choose how best to build a team within the weight limit. (You can have as many or as few robots as you'd like on your team, as long as you're within the weight limit, but in general you tend to end up with two or three bots.) As you win matches, more parts become available to you, and you can enter the correspondingly higher-level matches. (Not all weapons are weapons; some repair tools are available also, which allows you to, at least theoretically, build a team of robots that works well together.) The shop interface is a little unwieldy at times -- it would be nice if you could just drag and drop parts rather than the somewhat complicated mounting/unmounting system.
Once in the arena, however, the bots are largely out of your hands. They have a very basic AI, which can be very frustrating at times (often, one bot will wander out of the conflict for no apparent reason, leaving the rest of your bots to get pounded on). You can also issue direct orders by either commanding your bot to move to a specific location or to follow a specific bot. However, this task requires pretty much all of your attention for a single bot, so you're leaving the rest of your bots up to the AI, and your bots don't even necessarily follow your orders particularly well. So while there is a fair amount of randomness, and you can slightly improve your odds (in theory) with good ordering, in the vast majority of cases, the outcome of the battle is decided even before it begins, by the outfitting of the bots. And since this is not a particularly difficult task once you get the hang of it, this kind of limits the ceiling of interestingness of the game. The game also offers a challenge mode, in which you and your opponent have preselected teams, and you have to lead your team to victory; this mostly serves to highlight the inadequacy and annoyingness of the in-arena controls.
The graphics are not bad, but they're pretty basic. There's a nice variety of sound effects, which help to give each robot a distinctive feel, but they do get a little tiresome. The music is serviceable, although it's on a very short loop, so you don't want to spend too much time shopping or in the arena.
Overall, much though I like the idea of robot combat, there's just not quite enough in Bot Arena to make this a really interesting game. The career mode is not a bad way to spend a few minutes, and it definitely is fun to work your way up the ladder, but the weight limit actually kind of makes the strategy easier, since it's just a matter of figuring out how best to meet the limit exactly and going from there. The challenge mode is quite frustrating. It's not a terrible game, but it doesn't quite live up to what I hoped it could be.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Friday, September 05, 2008
Seven Deadly Sins
Seven Deadly Sins is a cute little adventure game where your character, an ordinary British fellow in a small Kentfield village, must complete the seven deadly sins within a fortnight (that's two weeks for you less-literary types) to win.
The game works with your basic point-and-click setup; there are also a few action-based minigames interspersed throughout the game. The difficulty of the sins ranges from very easy (I managed to get one sin entirely by accident) up to quite involved (the Lust sin has a very elaborate plotline, which requires quite a bit of effort invested to get a girl into bed with you). None of the puzzles is particularly difficult, but some of them can be tricky simply because things which are usable objects or locations are not always obvious, as is often the case in games of this genre. The game's logic is also very simple, and often ridiculously simplistic (for instance, you can just keep getting haircut after haircut to continuously improve your appearance), but it manages to get things done without tying you up too much in mechanics. The game, as you might expect from the title and goal, has a pretty light-hearted feel and a good sense of humor.
The art is pretty basic, but it has a nice hand-drawn feel. Surprisingly for a game of this simplicity, there is actual voice acting for the dialogue, which is a nice touch. While the music is probably not licensed, it's deployed well and not repetitively in the game, and also adds a nice feel to the game. The sound effects, while basic, are also used well.
Overall, Seven Deadly Sins is neither a particularly long nor a particularly difficult game, and it's by no means perfect, but it's still a fun and funny enough game that you should enjoy playing through it.
Seven Deadly Sins is a cute little adventure game where your character, an ordinary British fellow in a small Kentfield village, must complete the seven deadly sins within a fortnight (that's two weeks for you less-literary types) to win.
The game works with your basic point-and-click setup; there are also a few action-based minigames interspersed throughout the game. The difficulty of the sins ranges from very easy (I managed to get one sin entirely by accident) up to quite involved (the Lust sin has a very elaborate plotline, which requires quite a bit of effort invested to get a girl into bed with you). None of the puzzles is particularly difficult, but some of them can be tricky simply because things which are usable objects or locations are not always obvious, as is often the case in games of this genre. The game's logic is also very simple, and often ridiculously simplistic (for instance, you can just keep getting haircut after haircut to continuously improve your appearance), but it manages to get things done without tying you up too much in mechanics. The game, as you might expect from the title and goal, has a pretty light-hearted feel and a good sense of humor.
The art is pretty basic, but it has a nice hand-drawn feel. Surprisingly for a game of this simplicity, there is actual voice acting for the dialogue, which is a nice touch. While the music is probably not licensed, it's deployed well and not repetitively in the game, and also adds a nice feel to the game. The sound effects, while basic, are also used well.
Overall, Seven Deadly Sins is neither a particularly long nor a particularly difficult game, and it's by no means perfect, but it's still a fun and funny enough game that you should enjoy playing through it.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Hexiom Connect
Hexiom Connect is a very simple, but very elegant, puzzle game which manages to be very difficult without being unfair. The result is a game that (at least if you solve it honestly, like me) can keep you occupied for quite a long time and still remain interesting.
Hexiom Connect is kind of a successor to Hexiom (which, while I have played, I haven't yet reviewed here, and may never, since it's so difficult), but really the only thing the two have in common is that they're puzzle games played on a grid of hexagonal tiles. In Hexiom Connect, you have a bunch of tiles with colored paths on them, and the object is to place the tiles so that all of the paths link up with each other properly. Some levels have some tiles which are already fixed in place (which serve as a handy starting point for your deductions), but some have no fixed tiles. The game contains 30 levels, all of which are very well-designed, as well as a random level generator which lets you generate endless levels of your chosen size and other specifications.
A lot of the earlier, smaller levels can be done by trial and error, but when you get to the larger and harder levels, trial and error alone will not suffice (unless you're very lucky!). You'll need to use logic, which mostly consists of finding places on the grid where only one (or maybe two) tiles can fit, and then building outward from these known tiles. The interface helps to some degree -- you can use shift-click to lock a tile in place if you know it has to be there -- but I found myself really wishing for a couple of features. First, it would be really nice if there was some way to, say, control-click on a hex and it would show you all of the tiles that could be legally placed on that hex. It would also be nice if you could somehow drag tiles off the board so you could get a better view of what you knew and what you didn't.
The graphics are pretty basic -- the paths brighten up when they're connected properly, which is nice, but it also means that the color of the dimmed paths can occasionally be difficult to distinguish. The tiles also get awfully small on the bigger levels -- I spent a lot of time squinting at my monitor before discovering that you can make the game bigger by increasing the text size on the page (at least in Firefox; I can't speak for other browers). I really love the music; it's very beautiful and has just the right feel for the game. Unfortunately, there is only one track, so even though it's great, you will likely find yourself tiring of it on the longer levels.
Hexiom Connect is not an easy game -- some of the harder levels took me more than an hour and required me to keep a lot of notes about the possibilities and things that I'd already tried, but I was glad to complete it without having to rely on any walkthroughs (although I'm sure if you're lazy, you can easily find solutions -- you'll just have to live with your guilt). Overall, it was a very satisfying and enjoyable experience, so if you're looking for a good puzzle game, give Hexiom Connect a try.
Hexiom Connect is a very simple, but very elegant, puzzle game which manages to be very difficult without being unfair. The result is a game that (at least if you solve it honestly, like me) can keep you occupied for quite a long time and still remain interesting.
Hexiom Connect is kind of a successor to Hexiom (which, while I have played, I haven't yet reviewed here, and may never, since it's so difficult), but really the only thing the two have in common is that they're puzzle games played on a grid of hexagonal tiles. In Hexiom Connect, you have a bunch of tiles with colored paths on them, and the object is to place the tiles so that all of the paths link up with each other properly. Some levels have some tiles which are already fixed in place (which serve as a handy starting point for your deductions), but some have no fixed tiles. The game contains 30 levels, all of which are very well-designed, as well as a random level generator which lets you generate endless levels of your chosen size and other specifications.
A lot of the earlier, smaller levels can be done by trial and error, but when you get to the larger and harder levels, trial and error alone will not suffice (unless you're very lucky!). You'll need to use logic, which mostly consists of finding places on the grid where only one (or maybe two) tiles can fit, and then building outward from these known tiles. The interface helps to some degree -- you can use shift-click to lock a tile in place if you know it has to be there -- but I found myself really wishing for a couple of features. First, it would be really nice if there was some way to, say, control-click on a hex and it would show you all of the tiles that could be legally placed on that hex. It would also be nice if you could somehow drag tiles off the board so you could get a better view of what you knew and what you didn't.
The graphics are pretty basic -- the paths brighten up when they're connected properly, which is nice, but it also means that the color of the dimmed paths can occasionally be difficult to distinguish. The tiles also get awfully small on the bigger levels -- I spent a lot of time squinting at my monitor before discovering that you can make the game bigger by increasing the text size on the page (at least in Firefox; I can't speak for other browers). I really love the music; it's very beautiful and has just the right feel for the game. Unfortunately, there is only one track, so even though it's great, you will likely find yourself tiring of it on the longer levels.
Hexiom Connect is not an easy game -- some of the harder levels took me more than an hour and required me to keep a lot of notes about the possibilities and things that I'd already tried, but I was glad to complete it without having to rely on any walkthroughs (although I'm sure if you're lazy, you can easily find solutions -- you'll just have to live with your guilt). Overall, it was a very satisfying and enjoyable experience, so if you're looking for a good puzzle game, give Hexiom Connect a try.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Draw-Play 2
Draw-Play 2 is a clever idea which, unfortunately, is executed with all the skill and cleverness of the maiden voyage of the Titanic. If you're determined to get the badge (as I was), be prepared for quite a bit of frustration. (In Kongregate's defense, you can tell that this is a game from Kongregate's early era, when there were so few games on the site that pretty much anything got badges. There's no way a game this poor would get a badge today.)
So, the basic concept of Draw-Play 2 is really interesting. You have a pretty standard platformer environment, with walls, spikes, turrets, and whatnot, and your object is to get your character from his start point to the flag. But the catch is that there's a lot of things missing. Fortunately, you can draw on the level with your pen, and then your character can walk on what you've drawn, and voila, you're at the flag! What's wrong with Draw-Play 2, then? Probably the simplest way to answer this question is to walk through the first few levels.
"Okay, first level. Let's see, I'll just draw a big ramp. That wasn't too bad. Hmm, second level. OK, there's a wall in the middle, so I'll just draw ramp up to the wall. Now, I'm here, so I'll draw another ramp going back to the left. Wait, I can't jump up onto this new ramp that I just drew? Uh, well, let's draw a new ramp then. Okay, third level. Hmm, there's this really narrow space I have to climb up on. I guess I'll draw a series of platforms. Oops, this platform is a little too low and I can't jump past it. Well, I'll just erase it...wait, erasing erases everything that I've drawn? I guess I haven't lost that much. OK, this time I'll be really careful. Oops, I missed that jump and hit the spikes. Wait, now I can't even jump onto the first platform I drew. I have to restart again? Dammit, now I hit the spikes again! *SMASH SMASH*" And this is just level 3. There are 40 levels.
So, let's go over the sins of the game. As mentioned, there are 40 levels, and nearly every single one of them is frustrating. Also, you can't save, so you have to do this all in one sitting (which did not help my rage levels very much). The lack of selective erasing is incredibly annoying -- one minor mistake in either drawing or maneuvering can easily undo all of your work and force you to start all over from scratch. The collision detection is incredibly poor, so even getting near the spikes will result in your immediate demise. The game doesn't deal well with you being near your drawings, so sometimes you can jump through your lines, sometimes they block you, and sometimes you just get incredibly glitchy behavior. And the level design is consistently irritating -- rather than puzzles which delight you with their cleverness, you get instead spikes, rotating spikes, moving spikes, sideways spikes, and then the same but with the lights turning on and off during the level. It's a miserable experience.
There's no sound (I did manage to get a startling scream once when I managed to glitch my character offscreen, but that's about it), and there are four (unlicensed, I suspect) tracks available for music, none of which is particularly well-suited for the game feeling and all of which will drive you batty in short order. Anyway, you can finish this game, but be prepared to part with a fair amount of sanity if you do so. It's a shame because, like I said, I think there's a very interesting idea lurking underneath the game, but it's just such a bad implementation.
(If you're determined, despite reading this, to give it a try, at least heed these two tips. First, change your pen color from black. This makes it a lot easier to cover over spikes that you're walking on without accidentally getting killed by them. Second, more importantly, if you put your pen at your character's feet and draw upward, your character will move up. This is by far the least frustrating way to move up.)
Draw-Play 2 is a clever idea which, unfortunately, is executed with all the skill and cleverness of the maiden voyage of the Titanic. If you're determined to get the badge (as I was), be prepared for quite a bit of frustration. (In Kongregate's defense, you can tell that this is a game from Kongregate's early era, when there were so few games on the site that pretty much anything got badges. There's no way a game this poor would get a badge today.)
So, the basic concept of Draw-Play 2 is really interesting. You have a pretty standard platformer environment, with walls, spikes, turrets, and whatnot, and your object is to get your character from his start point to the flag. But the catch is that there's a lot of things missing. Fortunately, you can draw on the level with your pen, and then your character can walk on what you've drawn, and voila, you're at the flag! What's wrong with Draw-Play 2, then? Probably the simplest way to answer this question is to walk through the first few levels.
"Okay, first level. Let's see, I'll just draw a big ramp. That wasn't too bad. Hmm, second level. OK, there's a wall in the middle, so I'll just draw ramp up to the wall. Now, I'm here, so I'll draw another ramp going back to the left. Wait, I can't jump up onto this new ramp that I just drew? Uh, well, let's draw a new ramp then. Okay, third level. Hmm, there's this really narrow space I have to climb up on. I guess I'll draw a series of platforms. Oops, this platform is a little too low and I can't jump past it. Well, I'll just erase it...wait, erasing erases everything that I've drawn? I guess I haven't lost that much. OK, this time I'll be really careful. Oops, I missed that jump and hit the spikes. Wait, now I can't even jump onto the first platform I drew. I have to restart again? Dammit, now I hit the spikes again! *SMASH SMASH*" And this is just level 3. There are 40 levels.
So, let's go over the sins of the game. As mentioned, there are 40 levels, and nearly every single one of them is frustrating. Also, you can't save, so you have to do this all in one sitting (which did not help my rage levels very much). The lack of selective erasing is incredibly annoying -- one minor mistake in either drawing or maneuvering can easily undo all of your work and force you to start all over from scratch. The collision detection is incredibly poor, so even getting near the spikes will result in your immediate demise. The game doesn't deal well with you being near your drawings, so sometimes you can jump through your lines, sometimes they block you, and sometimes you just get incredibly glitchy behavior. And the level design is consistently irritating -- rather than puzzles which delight you with their cleverness, you get instead spikes, rotating spikes, moving spikes, sideways spikes, and then the same but with the lights turning on and off during the level. It's a miserable experience.
There's no sound (I did manage to get a startling scream once when I managed to glitch my character offscreen, but that's about it), and there are four (unlicensed, I suspect) tracks available for music, none of which is particularly well-suited for the game feeling and all of which will drive you batty in short order. Anyway, you can finish this game, but be prepared to part with a fair amount of sanity if you do so. It's a shame because, like I said, I think there's a very interesting idea lurking underneath the game, but it's just such a bad implementation.
(If you're determined, despite reading this, to give it a try, at least heed these two tips. First, change your pen color from black. This makes it a lot easier to cover over spikes that you're walking on without accidentally getting killed by them. Second, more importantly, if you put your pen at your character's feet and draw upward, your character will move up. This is by far the least frustrating way to move up.)
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Epic War
Epic War is a perfect case study in how just a few small features can make the difference between a successful game and an unsuccessful game. While the basic structure of Epic War is extremely similar to Age of War (review here), it gets right a few very important things which Age of War gets wrong, and as a result, while it's still clearly a flawed game, it's a game which is vastly more fun and interesting to play than Age of War.
So, if you've read my review of Age of War, you'll know the basic premise of Epic War. You have a castle at one side, your enemy has a castle at the other side. You build units, which march across the field and engage the enemy units. When you kill enemy units, you get mana which you can use to buy more units (you also gradually get more mana over time), with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy castle. Epic War doesn't have the multiple-ages conceit of Age of War; rather, it's set in a clearly Tolkien-inspired landscape (as evidenced by the hobbits, dwarves, elves, and orcs, for instance, although it departs somewhat from the Tolkien formula in the higher-end units). At the end of the battle, you can use the XP you got during the battle for killing units to buy upgrades for your units, acquire new traps and features you can add to your castle, and unlock new, more powerful unit types.
What makes Epic War a better game than Age of War, then? Well, the first thing you notice is that it actually gives you something to do during the battle other than simply watch your troops go out and bash the enemy. Epic War places you in control of your castle's crossbow, which, if aimed properly, can be a very effective weapon against enemy troops. Unfortunately, this really only is an interesting challenge in the first couple of levels; as you progress, the enemy density rapidly becomes high enough that you can just keep it aimed at a fixed location, hold down the button(s) to fire arrows, and keep racking up the kills. Still, this is a nice feature to add interest to the first few levels, and it definitely reminds me of why I enjoyed Armor Alley so much -- it wasn't simply the strategy of sending out your troops, but the fact that you could directly influence the action yourself in your helicopter.
(As an aside, you might wonder why I'm always comparing Kong games to classic Mac games. Well, the reasons for this are twofold. First, those Mac games are the ones I remember most fondly from my childhood, so I'm naturally going to compare things tothem. The second, more worrisome, reason is that, while these Flash games undoubtedly have advanced quite a bit in graphics and sound from the Mac games I loved as a kid, the gameplay is rarely any better and is often less polished.)
The other thing that makes Epic War less of a tooth-grinding experience than Age of War is that your units aren't complete idiots. Rather than simply standing in single file and dutifully awaiting their turn to attack or be attacked, they advance sensibly. Shooter units stay behind melee units! Multiple melee units can attack in groups! It's practically a revelation! (Sadly, you can't retreat, even in cases where it would be eminently sensible, but even still, the troop intelligence in Epic War represents a quantum leap forward.)
This is not to say that Epic War is without its flaws, of course. Aside from the crossbow issue mentioned above, the most glaring is that the more advanced creatures are so much more powerful than the lower-level creatures that there's pretty much never any reason to buy the weaker creatures once you've unlocked the better creatures (except for the fact that there's a cooldown timer on buying creatures, so you might have to buy something lower level while waiting for one of your higher-level creatures to become available again). Also, the game isn't quite balanced -- the computer is always able to throw out more creatures, and higher-level creatures, than you can. However, you have the crossbow, as well as a super attack which rains a shower of arrows down on the whole field, so it's not quite as bad as I made it sound.
The graphics are pretty nice, although your units are tiny (well, at least at the beginning -- the highest-level units are pretty huge), and it's often surprisingly difficult to mouse over units on the battlefield to see their status. The sound effects are pretty uninteresting (arrows thunking, weapons clanking, etc.), and the music, while appropriately epic, gets pretty repetitive pretty fast. Overall, this is not a bad game, but I do feel that it dragged a little long -- there are 15 levels, but you've probably figured out pretty much all there is to figure out by level 9 or so. Still, it's engaging enough that you won't find it to be a waste of time to make it through to the end.
Epic War is a perfect case study in how just a few small features can make the difference between a successful game and an unsuccessful game. While the basic structure of Epic War is extremely similar to Age of War (review here), it gets right a few very important things which Age of War gets wrong, and as a result, while it's still clearly a flawed game, it's a game which is vastly more fun and interesting to play than Age of War.
So, if you've read my review of Age of War, you'll know the basic premise of Epic War. You have a castle at one side, your enemy has a castle at the other side. You build units, which march across the field and engage the enemy units. When you kill enemy units, you get mana which you can use to buy more units (you also gradually get more mana over time), with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy castle. Epic War doesn't have the multiple-ages conceit of Age of War; rather, it's set in a clearly Tolkien-inspired landscape (as evidenced by the hobbits, dwarves, elves, and orcs, for instance, although it departs somewhat from the Tolkien formula in the higher-end units). At the end of the battle, you can use the XP you got during the battle for killing units to buy upgrades for your units, acquire new traps and features you can add to your castle, and unlock new, more powerful unit types.
What makes Epic War a better game than Age of War, then? Well, the first thing you notice is that it actually gives you something to do during the battle other than simply watch your troops go out and bash the enemy. Epic War places you in control of your castle's crossbow, which, if aimed properly, can be a very effective weapon against enemy troops. Unfortunately, this really only is an interesting challenge in the first couple of levels; as you progress, the enemy density rapidly becomes high enough that you can just keep it aimed at a fixed location, hold down the button(s) to fire arrows, and keep racking up the kills. Still, this is a nice feature to add interest to the first few levels, and it definitely reminds me of why I enjoyed Armor Alley so much -- it wasn't simply the strategy of sending out your troops, but the fact that you could directly influence the action yourself in your helicopter.
(As an aside, you might wonder why I'm always comparing Kong games to classic Mac games. Well, the reasons for this are twofold. First, those Mac games are the ones I remember most fondly from my childhood, so I'm naturally going to compare things tothem. The second, more worrisome, reason is that, while these Flash games undoubtedly have advanced quite a bit in graphics and sound from the Mac games I loved as a kid, the gameplay is rarely any better and is often less polished.)
The other thing that makes Epic War less of a tooth-grinding experience than Age of War is that your units aren't complete idiots. Rather than simply standing in single file and dutifully awaiting their turn to attack or be attacked, they advance sensibly. Shooter units stay behind melee units! Multiple melee units can attack in groups! It's practically a revelation! (Sadly, you can't retreat, even in cases where it would be eminently sensible, but even still, the troop intelligence in Epic War represents a quantum leap forward.)
This is not to say that Epic War is without its flaws, of course. Aside from the crossbow issue mentioned above, the most glaring is that the more advanced creatures are so much more powerful than the lower-level creatures that there's pretty much never any reason to buy the weaker creatures once you've unlocked the better creatures (except for the fact that there's a cooldown timer on buying creatures, so you might have to buy something lower level while waiting for one of your higher-level creatures to become available again). Also, the game isn't quite balanced -- the computer is always able to throw out more creatures, and higher-level creatures, than you can. However, you have the crossbow, as well as a super attack which rains a shower of arrows down on the whole field, so it's not quite as bad as I made it sound.
The graphics are pretty nice, although your units are tiny (well, at least at the beginning -- the highest-level units are pretty huge), and it's often surprisingly difficult to mouse over units on the battlefield to see their status. The sound effects are pretty uninteresting (arrows thunking, weapons clanking, etc.), and the music, while appropriately epic, gets pretty repetitive pretty fast. Overall, this is not a bad game, but I do feel that it dragged a little long -- there are 15 levels, but you've probably figured out pretty much all there is to figure out by level 9 or so. Still, it's engaging enough that you won't find it to be a waste of time to make it through to the end.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Thing-Thing 2
I was kind of hoping from the name and the promise of beating up lots of enemies that Thing-Thing would kind of be like Xiao Xiao (which, while technically not a game, is undeniably pretty awesome). Sadly, I was disappointed, as Thing-Thing 2 is a relatively straightforward and boring beat-'em-up.
So, there's you, and there's an infinite stream of enemies. You can walk, jump, or punch (pretty ineffectual), or shoot them with one of the wide variety of weapons in the game (point and click). The one thing that makes shooting enemies nontrival is that each weapon has its own recoil, which will pull your cursor away from where you want it to be if you're firing a bunch of shots in quick succession. (It is amazing to read all of the comments complaining about how terrible the aiming is. If you took away this feature, I can't even imagine how pointless the game would be.) Ammo can be annoyingly scarce. Since the enemies don't do very much damage even if you walk amidst their throngs, you might wonder why you need to bother killing them at all. The answer is that there are doors that require you to have killed a certain number of enemies before you can pass through and continue the level.
The game offers a couple of modes. There's the rather-misnamed Story Mode, which offers no story to speak of, but I guess Sequence of Seemingly Unrelated Levels Mode might be a little long to fit. (To be fair, you do gain weapons as you move from level to level, so it's not completely unconnected.) Survival Mode is pretty much what you'd expect.
The graphics are pretty basic -- all of the characters are just built out of spheres, although the game gets credit for making a lot of unique enemies. The sound is pretty much your average boring gun effects, while the music is OK -- it's at least somewhat less boring and repetitive than a lot of Flash games, but it's not great either. However, none of this changes the fact that the fundamental gameplay is simply pretty boring. I didn't really enjoy playing this game all the way through, so I'm glad it was short and I was able to earn the badge in a reasonable amount of time.
I was kind of hoping from the name and the promise of beating up lots of enemies that Thing-Thing would kind of be like Xiao Xiao (which, while technically not a game, is undeniably pretty awesome). Sadly, I was disappointed, as Thing-Thing 2 is a relatively straightforward and boring beat-'em-up.
So, there's you, and there's an infinite stream of enemies. You can walk, jump, or punch (pretty ineffectual), or shoot them with one of the wide variety of weapons in the game (point and click). The one thing that makes shooting enemies nontrival is that each weapon has its own recoil, which will pull your cursor away from where you want it to be if you're firing a bunch of shots in quick succession. (It is amazing to read all of the comments complaining about how terrible the aiming is. If you took away this feature, I can't even imagine how pointless the game would be.) Ammo can be annoyingly scarce. Since the enemies don't do very much damage even if you walk amidst their throngs, you might wonder why you need to bother killing them at all. The answer is that there are doors that require you to have killed a certain number of enemies before you can pass through and continue the level.
The game offers a couple of modes. There's the rather-misnamed Story Mode, which offers no story to speak of, but I guess Sequence of Seemingly Unrelated Levels Mode might be a little long to fit. (To be fair, you do gain weapons as you move from level to level, so it's not completely unconnected.) Survival Mode is pretty much what you'd expect.
The graphics are pretty basic -- all of the characters are just built out of spheres, although the game gets credit for making a lot of unique enemies. The sound is pretty much your average boring gun effects, while the music is OK -- it's at least somewhat less boring and repetitive than a lot of Flash games, but it's not great either. However, none of this changes the fact that the fundamental gameplay is simply pretty boring. I didn't really enjoy playing this game all the way through, so I'm glad it was short and I was able to earn the badge in a reasonable amount of time.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Scope: First Blood
Scope: First Blood is another assassination-based game, much in the style of the Tactical Assassin series (reviews here and here). The concept is pretty much the same -- find the target, shoot the target with your sniper rifle. There's no upgrades or anything between the levels, just seven missions.
Scope: First Blood has a couple of touches which make it a little nicer than the Tactical Assassin games, in my opinion. First, not all of the missions involve simply shooting your target in the head. (In fact, only two out of the seven missions require you to directly kill your target. The others are more subtle.) The game also has a bit of a sense of humor (albeit a bit sophomoric at times), which is a nice touch. Finally, the missions require somewhat more clever thinking to solve; this is not to say that any of them is particularly complex, but there are at least a couple of steps that you have to work through in most missions.
The graphics are the basic stick-figure style that seems to be standard for this genre. There's not much sound beyond the rifle sound and the computer blips at the end of a mission. The music is not bad, although perhaps a little overdramatic for a stick figure game. The game also includes six achievements, which give it a slight amount of replay value, although the game itself is so short that even replaying it a few times is not going to add up to a lot of time. Overall, it's not a bad game, but there's just not very much substance to it. Still, it's worth a playthrough.
Scope: First Blood is another assassination-based game, much in the style of the Tactical Assassin series (reviews here and here). The concept is pretty much the same -- find the target, shoot the target with your sniper rifle. There's no upgrades or anything between the levels, just seven missions.
Scope: First Blood has a couple of touches which make it a little nicer than the Tactical Assassin games, in my opinion. First, not all of the missions involve simply shooting your target in the head. (In fact, only two out of the seven missions require you to directly kill your target. The others are more subtle.) The game also has a bit of a sense of humor (albeit a bit sophomoric at times), which is a nice touch. Finally, the missions require somewhat more clever thinking to solve; this is not to say that any of them is particularly complex, but there are at least a couple of steps that you have to work through in most missions.
The graphics are the basic stick-figure style that seems to be standard for this genre. There's not much sound beyond the rifle sound and the computer blips at the end of a mission. The music is not bad, although perhaps a little overdramatic for a stick figure game. The game also includes six achievements, which give it a slight amount of replay value, although the game itself is so short that even replaying it a few times is not going to add up to a lot of time. Overall, it's not a bad game, but there's just not very much substance to it. Still, it's worth a playthrough.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Achilles
Achilles is a very simple beat-'em-up in the classic tradition of such games as Final Fight. You play the titular Greek hero, and move along an endless beach featuring a plentiful quantity of people to stab and slash. You begin armed with a spear, which you can poke at enemies or throw at them; once you've thrown your spear, you start using your sword. You can pick up more spears (only one at a time, though) from fallen spearmen. You can also kick enemies to stun them, and you have a shield which can block most of most blows. A single enemy is generally not much of a threat (although if you give him an opening, he can do a fair amount of damage), but if multiple enemies jump you simultaneously (especially since they can approach from both directions), you can very quickly be overwhelmed.
Your character's attacks are somewhat unpredictable. Pressing forward + attack yields a different attack than simply pressing the attack button, but each has several different possible attacks which can happen seemingly at random, and the damage that these attacks do ranges from minimal to instant decapitation, so there's a lot of randomness in how quickly you can dispatch an opponent, and since this speed is critical to surviving, you'll end up with a fair amount of randomness in your outcomes.
The game offers two modes: in the story mode, you face a finite number of enemies per level; at the end of every stage (each stage contains three levels), there is a boss. In survival mode, you simply face an infinite number of the three basic types of enemies (swordsman, spearman, and archer). Since the basic gameplay is exactly thes same (as you pass through the five levels of story mode, the appearance of the opposing soldiers changes, but that's about it), this doesn't add that much to the game.
The graphics are pretty basic, with lots and lots of blood spurting from your enemies as they are impaled with spears, decapitated, or suffer other gruesome deaths. The sounds are also pretty basic, and the background music (during the levels) is just drums, which gets awfully repetitive and wearying pretty quickly.
Anyway, Achilles is a fun way to enjoy hacking up people for maybe a minute or so, but the repetitive and very limited gameplay coupled with the extreme randomness mean that this just isn't a terribly interesting game in the long run.
Achilles is a very simple beat-'em-up in the classic tradition of such games as Final Fight. You play the titular Greek hero, and move along an endless beach featuring a plentiful quantity of people to stab and slash. You begin armed with a spear, which you can poke at enemies or throw at them; once you've thrown your spear, you start using your sword. You can pick up more spears (only one at a time, though) from fallen spearmen. You can also kick enemies to stun them, and you have a shield which can block most of most blows. A single enemy is generally not much of a threat (although if you give him an opening, he can do a fair amount of damage), but if multiple enemies jump you simultaneously (especially since they can approach from both directions), you can very quickly be overwhelmed.
Your character's attacks are somewhat unpredictable. Pressing forward + attack yields a different attack than simply pressing the attack button, but each has several different possible attacks which can happen seemingly at random, and the damage that these attacks do ranges from minimal to instant decapitation, so there's a lot of randomness in how quickly you can dispatch an opponent, and since this speed is critical to surviving, you'll end up with a fair amount of randomness in your outcomes.
The game offers two modes: in the story mode, you face a finite number of enemies per level; at the end of every stage (each stage contains three levels), there is a boss. In survival mode, you simply face an infinite number of the three basic types of enemies (swordsman, spearman, and archer). Since the basic gameplay is exactly thes same (as you pass through the five levels of story mode, the appearance of the opposing soldiers changes, but that's about it), this doesn't add that much to the game.
The graphics are pretty basic, with lots and lots of blood spurting from your enemies as they are impaled with spears, decapitated, or suffer other gruesome deaths. The sounds are also pretty basic, and the background music (during the levels) is just drums, which gets awfully repetitive and wearying pretty quickly.
Anyway, Achilles is a fun way to enjoy hacking up people for maybe a minute or so, but the repetitive and very limited gameplay coupled with the extreme randomness mean that this just isn't a terribly interesting game in the long run.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Brute Wars
Brute Wars is a tough game to categorize. It's part RPG and part turn-based strategy, I suppose. The result is not a bad game, but it's very simple -- it's much less complex than your typical example of either genre, and consequently you'll find it doesn't have quite enough depth to be able to sustain your interest all the way through.
So, the basic principle of Beast Wars is pretty simple. You move along an overland map consisting of a number of linked circles. Most points are simply combat, but a few circles have item shops (some which offer basic healing items, and some which offer various upgrades), and each screen has one castle fight. Once a combat circle has been cleared, moving back onto it is still not entirely safe -- there's still a chance (although not 100%) that you'll be thrown into another fight if you try to move back through that circle, so you can never move around the map completely freely.
Fights are quite straightforward. You have six creatures arrayed in a three-wide, two-deep formation, and your enemy has the same. Each creature is characterized by five properties -- its HP, its power (the amount of damage it does per attack), its counter (the amount of damage it does to enemies who attack it), the number of actions per turn it has, and its attack range. A creature can either attack or switch places with another creature using an action. Creatures with only one action per turn, then, are less flexible since they can't both move and attack (at the outset of the battle, of course, there'll be plenty of creatures to attack, but as the battle progresses and creatures get knocked out, you'll have to move them around), but their attack power tends to be stronger appropriately to compensate. The attack range is probably the trickiest point -- some can only attack the creature directly ahead of them, others can attack all three creatures in front of them, and some can attack two spaces away (useful for your back row). Some creatures even attack randomly. There's also a magic system -- as the battle progresses, you gain magic points, which you can then later use for spells. Most battles don't even last long enough for you to accumulate enough points to use the most powerful spells (and the points don't keep from battle to battle), so I ended up not using the magic very much (just an occasional heal).
At the end of battle (assuming you win), creatures that survived gain a level, while creatures that got knocked out lose a level. This provides an irritating kind of feedback -- your weak creatures are more likely to get knocked out and stay weak, while your strong creatures get stronger. (Note, however, that "gaining a level" doesn't mean that every level you get more HP or power. You gain HP or power only very gradually. When you reach level 50, which is the maximum, you generally gain another action, which can be extremely powerful.) You then have the opportunity to heal up and revive downed monsters, which requires the items you bought at the item shop, so make sure not to run out when you're far away from the shop, because then you might have to engage in some fights on the way back. Usually you'll want to rearrange your forces back to their starting lineup at this stage; irritatingly, you can't rearrange your creatures before battle, only after, so if you forget you'll have to start out with a suboptimal arrangement.
You can also switch out your creatures, if one of them just isn't working for you. This requires you to buy randomizers from an item shop, which (as the name suggests) replace your creature with another random creature (its level is kept, though). I don't understand the purpose of this mechanic -- it just forces you to keep clicking until you get the creature you want. (I suppose it gives you a chance to look at some creatures you wouldn't otherwise.)
As is so often the case with games of this nature, the beginning is entertainingly challenging -- not only do you want to win a battle, but you want to take as few casualties as possible, and your HP replenishing resources are scarce, so you have to fight carefully. Unfortunately, as time goes on and your creatures become more and more powerful, the battles become easier and easier, so that by the end of the game, its length definitely becomes somewhat of a drag. (Though I should say that Brute Wars is not really terrible as far as length goes -- there are certainly far worse offenders -- but it does drag towards the end.)
The sound is very basic, and the music also has a very generic RPG feel -- it's not great, but it's not terrible, and it does a good job of keeping itself unobtrusive so you're not heartily sick of it by the end of the game. The interface could use a little work -- I often found myself switching creatures and then hitting the "end turn" button instead of the "go back to attacking" button, which was awfully annoying. The game also does not autosave, so you have to remember to save frequently. This is kind of unusual in a Flash game, and it definitely is a minor irritant.
Overall, Beast Wars is an interesting little concept -- there's definitely a lot of fun to be had at the beginning of the game. However, the lack of depth means that you'll probably finish all of the excitement to be had before reaching the end of the game.
Brute Wars is a tough game to categorize. It's part RPG and part turn-based strategy, I suppose. The result is not a bad game, but it's very simple -- it's much less complex than your typical example of either genre, and consequently you'll find it doesn't have quite enough depth to be able to sustain your interest all the way through.
So, the basic principle of Beast Wars is pretty simple. You move along an overland map consisting of a number of linked circles. Most points are simply combat, but a few circles have item shops (some which offer basic healing items, and some which offer various upgrades), and each screen has one castle fight. Once a combat circle has been cleared, moving back onto it is still not entirely safe -- there's still a chance (although not 100%) that you'll be thrown into another fight if you try to move back through that circle, so you can never move around the map completely freely.
Fights are quite straightforward. You have six creatures arrayed in a three-wide, two-deep formation, and your enemy has the same. Each creature is characterized by five properties -- its HP, its power (the amount of damage it does per attack), its counter (the amount of damage it does to enemies who attack it), the number of actions per turn it has, and its attack range. A creature can either attack or switch places with another creature using an action. Creatures with only one action per turn, then, are less flexible since they can't both move and attack (at the outset of the battle, of course, there'll be plenty of creatures to attack, but as the battle progresses and creatures get knocked out, you'll have to move them around), but their attack power tends to be stronger appropriately to compensate. The attack range is probably the trickiest point -- some can only attack the creature directly ahead of them, others can attack all three creatures in front of them, and some can attack two spaces away (useful for your back row). Some creatures even attack randomly. There's also a magic system -- as the battle progresses, you gain magic points, which you can then later use for spells. Most battles don't even last long enough for you to accumulate enough points to use the most powerful spells (and the points don't keep from battle to battle), so I ended up not using the magic very much (just an occasional heal).
At the end of battle (assuming you win), creatures that survived gain a level, while creatures that got knocked out lose a level. This provides an irritating kind of feedback -- your weak creatures are more likely to get knocked out and stay weak, while your strong creatures get stronger. (Note, however, that "gaining a level" doesn't mean that every level you get more HP or power. You gain HP or power only very gradually. When you reach level 50, which is the maximum, you generally gain another action, which can be extremely powerful.) You then have the opportunity to heal up and revive downed monsters, which requires the items you bought at the item shop, so make sure not to run out when you're far away from the shop, because then you might have to engage in some fights on the way back. Usually you'll want to rearrange your forces back to their starting lineup at this stage; irritatingly, you can't rearrange your creatures before battle, only after, so if you forget you'll have to start out with a suboptimal arrangement.
You can also switch out your creatures, if one of them just isn't working for you. This requires you to buy randomizers from an item shop, which (as the name suggests) replace your creature with another random creature (its level is kept, though). I don't understand the purpose of this mechanic -- it just forces you to keep clicking until you get the creature you want. (I suppose it gives you a chance to look at some creatures you wouldn't otherwise.)
As is so often the case with games of this nature, the beginning is entertainingly challenging -- not only do you want to win a battle, but you want to take as few casualties as possible, and your HP replenishing resources are scarce, so you have to fight carefully. Unfortunately, as time goes on and your creatures become more and more powerful, the battles become easier and easier, so that by the end of the game, its length definitely becomes somewhat of a drag. (Though I should say that Brute Wars is not really terrible as far as length goes -- there are certainly far worse offenders -- but it does drag towards the end.)
The sound is very basic, and the music also has a very generic RPG feel -- it's not great, but it's not terrible, and it does a good job of keeping itself unobtrusive so you're not heartily sick of it by the end of the game. The interface could use a little work -- I often found myself switching creatures and then hitting the "end turn" button instead of the "go back to attacking" button, which was awfully annoying. The game also does not autosave, so you have to remember to save frequently. This is kind of unusual in a Flash game, and it definitely is a minor irritant.
Overall, Beast Wars is an interesting little concept -- there's definitely a lot of fun to be had at the beginning of the game. However, the lack of depth means that you'll probably finish all of the excitement to be had before reaching the end of the game.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Last Canopy
The Last Canopy is, as you might be able to guess from the pattern so far, the last game in Kongregate's Buried Treasure Week, and it does a much better job of fulfilling the goal of the week than most of the other entrants -- it's got a very kind of indie feeling, and has a couple of interesting game mechanics which are worth looking at.
At its root, The Last Canopy is a standard old-school top-down shooter -- waves of enemies come at you, and you shoot them. In true old-school fashion, there's none of this being able to absorb multiple hits nonsense -- one hit destroys you. You can move with either the keyboard or the mouse, which is a nice touch. However, the one special feature that, in addition to your main ship (which is actually, I believe, a fairy), you also have five brightly colored spheres trailing you. Using your special power, you can absorb the powers of your enemies and store them in your spheres, which will then shoot back at your enemies with their own powers. With clever maneuvering, you can position yourself so that your spheres do the attacking while you stay out of harm's way. However, the charge on a sphere only lasts for a limited amount of time, so you can't just absorb some powerful attacks and then be done with things -- you have to be continuously acquiring new powers. (You can absorb anything -- even boss attacks -- but the more powerful attacks take longer to absorb.)
This is a difficult game -- there are lots of shots to be avoided, and even though the default allotment is 20 lives, you'll find them going pretty quickly. One thing which contributes to the difficulty is that when you die, you lose all of your stored powers, which means that it's very easy to get killed several times in rapid succession when you're weak. The game is not very long overall; there are 4 stages total, and none of them is particularly lengthy, although the obligatory boss fights generally do take a little while.
The game has a rather unique aesthetic -- as I mentioned, you seem to be playing a fairy, which is rather nonstandard for a game in this genre. (The enemies, though, are mostly your standard mechanical assemblies.) The graphics and sound play well into this feeling -- the graphics have kind of a soft pastel feel, and the sound is pleasantly environmental (although this varies in the different levels). The level 3 boss is actively painful, though -- my eyes really hurt after finally making my way through the fight, since it got kind of psychedelic.
Anyway, beating this game is definitely an accomplishment (unless you're playing on a really slow computer, in which case it shouldn't be terribly difficult). Overall, though, I ended up being a little disappointed. While the central mechanic is creative, it doesn't quite flow perfectly into a top-down shooter. I'd say this game is worth a look, but it didn't quite hook me in the way other Kongregate games have.
The Last Canopy is, as you might be able to guess from the pattern so far, the last game in Kongregate's Buried Treasure Week, and it does a much better job of fulfilling the goal of the week than most of the other entrants -- it's got a very kind of indie feeling, and has a couple of interesting game mechanics which are worth looking at.
At its root, The Last Canopy is a standard old-school top-down shooter -- waves of enemies come at you, and you shoot them. In true old-school fashion, there's none of this being able to absorb multiple hits nonsense -- one hit destroys you. You can move with either the keyboard or the mouse, which is a nice touch. However, the one special feature that, in addition to your main ship (which is actually, I believe, a fairy), you also have five brightly colored spheres trailing you. Using your special power, you can absorb the powers of your enemies and store them in your spheres, which will then shoot back at your enemies with their own powers. With clever maneuvering, you can position yourself so that your spheres do the attacking while you stay out of harm's way. However, the charge on a sphere only lasts for a limited amount of time, so you can't just absorb some powerful attacks and then be done with things -- you have to be continuously acquiring new powers. (You can absorb anything -- even boss attacks -- but the more powerful attacks take longer to absorb.)
This is a difficult game -- there are lots of shots to be avoided, and even though the default allotment is 20 lives, you'll find them going pretty quickly. One thing which contributes to the difficulty is that when you die, you lose all of your stored powers, which means that it's very easy to get killed several times in rapid succession when you're weak. The game is not very long overall; there are 4 stages total, and none of them is particularly lengthy, although the obligatory boss fights generally do take a little while.
The game has a rather unique aesthetic -- as I mentioned, you seem to be playing a fairy, which is rather nonstandard for a game in this genre. (The enemies, though, are mostly your standard mechanical assemblies.) The graphics and sound play well into this feeling -- the graphics have kind of a soft pastel feel, and the sound is pleasantly environmental (although this varies in the different levels). The level 3 boss is actively painful, though -- my eyes really hurt after finally making my way through the fight, since it got kind of psychedelic.
Anyway, beating this game is definitely an accomplishment (unless you're playing on a really slow computer, in which case it shouldn't be terribly difficult). Overall, though, I ended up being a little disappointed. While the central mechanic is creative, it doesn't quite flow perfectly into a top-down shooter. I'd say this game is worth a look, but it didn't quite hook me in the way other Kongregate games have.
Labels:
action,
Buried Treasure Week,
Kongregate,
The Last Canopy
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Jumpcat
Jumpcat is the fourth entry in Kongregate's Buried Treasure week, and sadly, it's another mediocre dodger. You play the titular cat, and as the screen scrolls, a variety of obstacles comes at you, and you have to (surprise!) jump over them. The obstacles include rocks, trees, and a surprising number of low-altitude helicopters.
The game is not at all easy -- you have to hold down the jump key to charge up enough jump power to get over the higher obstacles, which often takes nearly all of the time you have. But you can't just hold down the jump button as soon as you land, either, because some obstacles are on both the top and bottom of the screen, so you have to jump through them. And, as if that weren't hard enough, fairly early in the game, another helicopter will start dropping bombs on you, which have a way of hitting you in places where you can't easily maneuver away from them.
The graphics and sounds are both very basic. The background music is kind of catchy, and I can imagine a lot of games it would be a good addition to, but this game is not one of them -- it seems completely inappropriate for a light game (bombs notwithstanding) like this. One nice feature of the game is that, at the end of the game, it tells you how many points you had at the end of each of your lives. This is kind of a neat way of showing your progress.
Overall, this is an exceedingly frustrating game; despite its short length, you'll still find the ease with which the game can kill you quite annoying. There's neither enough depth nor enough balance to make this a really entertaining game; it definitely ends up in the class of games which stopped being fun before I reached the final badge, which was very tricky to get and required a lot of luck (and some skill, admittedly). I'm not quite sure why this was selected for Buried Treasure Week, other than that it's got a cat -- it really doesn't have anything unique in it.
Jumpcat is the fourth entry in Kongregate's Buried Treasure week, and sadly, it's another mediocre dodger. You play the titular cat, and as the screen scrolls, a variety of obstacles comes at you, and you have to (surprise!) jump over them. The obstacles include rocks, trees, and a surprising number of low-altitude helicopters.
The game is not at all easy -- you have to hold down the jump key to charge up enough jump power to get over the higher obstacles, which often takes nearly all of the time you have. But you can't just hold down the jump button as soon as you land, either, because some obstacles are on both the top and bottom of the screen, so you have to jump through them. And, as if that weren't hard enough, fairly early in the game, another helicopter will start dropping bombs on you, which have a way of hitting you in places where you can't easily maneuver away from them.
The graphics and sounds are both very basic. The background music is kind of catchy, and I can imagine a lot of games it would be a good addition to, but this game is not one of them -- it seems completely inappropriate for a light game (bombs notwithstanding) like this. One nice feature of the game is that, at the end of the game, it tells you how many points you had at the end of each of your lives. This is kind of a neat way of showing your progress.
Overall, this is an exceedingly frustrating game; despite its short length, you'll still find the ease with which the game can kill you quite annoying. There's neither enough depth nor enough balance to make this a really entertaining game; it definitely ends up in the class of games which stopped being fun before I reached the final badge, which was very tricky to get and required a lot of luck (and some skill, admittedly). I'm not quite sure why this was selected for Buried Treasure Week, other than that it's got a cat -- it really doesn't have anything unique in it.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Parachute Retrospect
Parachute Retrospect is the third entry in Kongregate's Buried Treasure week, and it's another jmtb02 production (man, that guy is prolific); like many other jmtb02 games, there's good graphics, a very silly premise, but one which provides solid gameplay, and not a lot of depth.
The basic premise is very simple: you have a helicopter, and below you, trucks pulling trailers full of hay (or possibly cotton) pass by. When you click, a person drops from the helicopter and hopefully lands in the load of hay. If this reminds you of the Mac classic StuntCopter, then you're not alone -- that was my first thought as well (and I was pleased to see in the comments that I wasn't the only one who recognized that premise, too). However, unlike StuntCopter, which adds difficulty by changing the wagon speed and gravity, Parachute Retrospect adds a much different degree of difficulty -- for every five people you save, a nasty anti-person measure is added; you'll have to deal with (among others) missiles, lasers, and trucks which have inconveniently decided to carry a load of spikes rather than soft hay; by the end of the game, you'll probably be killing more people than you save. Fortunately, the game is quite generous with lives, giving you 99 in all. (Another important difference is that you can drop multiple people at once, which is definitely helpful in the later game to make the most use of the often narrow windows you get. Of course, if you mistime, it's also a very quick way to lose a bunch of people at once.)
After you save 50 people, the game shifts to an entirely different mode -- now you're a helicopter which has to rescue people being dropped out of some...thing. This part of the game really doesn't make much sense, and it kind of feels tacked-on; I can't help but feel that the game would be better without it entirely.
The graphics are pretty simple (and, surprisingly, star-free), and the sounds are quite basic. The music is not bad, and definitely lends an air of excitement to the proceedings, although you'll probably get tired of it after a while. Overall, this is a silly little game, and it can be surprisingly frustrating -- in the later game, it's quite difficult and you'll have to do a lot of waiting for the few moments that the coast is clear. Still, it's short enough that you're going to finish it before you run out of fun.
Parachute Retrospect is the third entry in Kongregate's Buried Treasure week, and it's another jmtb02 production (man, that guy is prolific); like many other jmtb02 games, there's good graphics, a very silly premise, but one which provides solid gameplay, and not a lot of depth.
The basic premise is very simple: you have a helicopter, and below you, trucks pulling trailers full of hay (or possibly cotton) pass by. When you click, a person drops from the helicopter and hopefully lands in the load of hay. If this reminds you of the Mac classic StuntCopter, then you're not alone -- that was my first thought as well (and I was pleased to see in the comments that I wasn't the only one who recognized that premise, too). However, unlike StuntCopter, which adds difficulty by changing the wagon speed and gravity, Parachute Retrospect adds a much different degree of difficulty -- for every five people you save, a nasty anti-person measure is added; you'll have to deal with (among others) missiles, lasers, and trucks which have inconveniently decided to carry a load of spikes rather than soft hay; by the end of the game, you'll probably be killing more people than you save. Fortunately, the game is quite generous with lives, giving you 99 in all. (Another important difference is that you can drop multiple people at once, which is definitely helpful in the later game to make the most use of the often narrow windows you get. Of course, if you mistime, it's also a very quick way to lose a bunch of people at once.)
After you save 50 people, the game shifts to an entirely different mode -- now you're a helicopter which has to rescue people being dropped out of some...thing. This part of the game really doesn't make much sense, and it kind of feels tacked-on; I can't help but feel that the game would be better without it entirely.
The graphics are pretty simple (and, surprisingly, star-free), and the sounds are quite basic. The music is not bad, and definitely lends an air of excitement to the proceedings, although you'll probably get tired of it after a while. Overall, this is a silly little game, and it can be surprisingly frustrating -- in the later game, it's quite difficult and you'll have to do a lot of waiting for the few moments that the coast is clear. Still, it's short enough that you're going to finish it before you run out of fun.
Labels:
action,
Buried Treasure Week,
Kongregate,
Parachute Retrospect
Monday, August 25, 2008
Intrusion
Intrusion is a difficult game for me to review. There's a lot of things which are good about the game: it's clearly the work of a talented programmer, and it does an excellent job of creating a difficult challenge without being unfair or frustrating. And yet, it feels like there's something missing, like it's not quite the sum of its parts. There's something which is just, for lack of a better word, sterile about the game-playing experience. And the tough part is that I can't quite put my finger on what's missing. (But I do have a few theories.)
Intrusion is a straightforward shoot-'em-up sidescroller in the proud tradition of Contra, though it's a bit more modern in some aspects -- for instance, it uses the "keyboard to move, mouse to shoot" control scheme. Also, one bullet won't kill you; you have a life bar (and the occasional health pod to refill it), and you'll definitely need it. However, there are some old-school features, like save points -- you can always choose to continue at the beginning of any level you've opened, but the levels are long enough that you'll appreciate the need not to have to go all the way back to the beginning every time. You start the game with your pistol, which has infinite ammunition, and as the game progresses you acquire 3 other weapons, each of which has a limited amount of ammunition which you can replenish by looting your defeated enemies. Naturally, there's a number of bosses sprinkled throughout the game, including the particularly lethal final boss.
Anyway, technically the execution is quite solid. The graphics, especially the background graphics, are very high quality, and the game does a good job of creating a variety of interesting environments, from a mountain base to a moving train to a flying missile (not quite as insane as in Contra 2, but still pretty ridiculous). The ragdoll physics is also a step up from what you see in a Flash game, but it's a little loose -- enemies will tend to fly around an unreasonable amount after they've been killed, and they also have a tendency to land doing the splits, which makes them look faintly ridiculous. The sounds are pretty nondescript. There's a number of nice little graphic touches (watch the missile closely when it's taking off, for instance) which also make the game feel more well-crafted. (The graphic quality does come at a price, though; the game noticeably slows down on slower computers.) The comments complain about occasional glitches, but I didn't notice anything major; all I encountered was dropped ammo ending up in inaccessible places sometimes.
As I mentioned earlier, the game is definitely challenging. There are a few very simple puzzles, but they're quite obvious and quickly solved. Mostly the challenge is just in avoiding enemy bullets (and other things that can harm you), and since there's often a lot of them and they can move pretty fast, this is not an easy task. So you'll definitely get a feeling of accomplishment when (or if) you manage to beat the game; while there is a little bit of luck involved, largely this is going to be dependent on your skill. Still, with persistence I managed to beat it, and I certainly don't consider myself particularly good at this genre, so I don't think it's out of reach for anyone, either.
So what's missing from the game? First, it doesn't do a very good job of immersing you in its environment. For starters, there's no background music; I know it sounds shallow, but I think some good music would help draw you into the game more. Also, there's absolutely no plot or backstory -- you just start out arriving at the enemy base with no explanation, just the assumption that you're supposed to kill everything. Finally, the last thing that I noticed is that the pace is a little bit off. In Contra, for instance (sorry to keep going back to Contra, but it's a useful measuring stick, despite its age) there's pretty much always something to do. In Intrusion, though, there's a fair amount of dead time when you're moving from place to place, and this gives the game a kind of empty feel. I think that's what's missing most from the game, but like I said, it's hard to put my finger on it.
Anyway, there's clearly a lot of skill that went into Intrusion, and I think if the creator teamed up with a really good game writer, they could produce a truly excellent game. As it is, while this is a fun and well-crafted game, if you're like me, you'll walk away feeling like there could have been a little bit more.
Intrusion is a difficult game for me to review. There's a lot of things which are good about the game: it's clearly the work of a talented programmer, and it does an excellent job of creating a difficult challenge without being unfair or frustrating. And yet, it feels like there's something missing, like it's not quite the sum of its parts. There's something which is just, for lack of a better word, sterile about the game-playing experience. And the tough part is that I can't quite put my finger on what's missing. (But I do have a few theories.)
Intrusion is a straightforward shoot-'em-up sidescroller in the proud tradition of Contra, though it's a bit more modern in some aspects -- for instance, it uses the "keyboard to move, mouse to shoot" control scheme. Also, one bullet won't kill you; you have a life bar (and the occasional health pod to refill it), and you'll definitely need it. However, there are some old-school features, like save points -- you can always choose to continue at the beginning of any level you've opened, but the levels are long enough that you'll appreciate the need not to have to go all the way back to the beginning every time. You start the game with your pistol, which has infinite ammunition, and as the game progresses you acquire 3 other weapons, each of which has a limited amount of ammunition which you can replenish by looting your defeated enemies. Naturally, there's a number of bosses sprinkled throughout the game, including the particularly lethal final boss.
Anyway, technically the execution is quite solid. The graphics, especially the background graphics, are very high quality, and the game does a good job of creating a variety of interesting environments, from a mountain base to a moving train to a flying missile (not quite as insane as in Contra 2, but still pretty ridiculous). The ragdoll physics is also a step up from what you see in a Flash game, but it's a little loose -- enemies will tend to fly around an unreasonable amount after they've been killed, and they also have a tendency to land doing the splits, which makes them look faintly ridiculous. The sounds are pretty nondescript. There's a number of nice little graphic touches (watch the missile closely when it's taking off, for instance) which also make the game feel more well-crafted. (The graphic quality does come at a price, though; the game noticeably slows down on slower computers.) The comments complain about occasional glitches, but I didn't notice anything major; all I encountered was dropped ammo ending up in inaccessible places sometimes.
As I mentioned earlier, the game is definitely challenging. There are a few very simple puzzles, but they're quite obvious and quickly solved. Mostly the challenge is just in avoiding enemy bullets (and other things that can harm you), and since there's often a lot of them and they can move pretty fast, this is not an easy task. So you'll definitely get a feeling of accomplishment when (or if) you manage to beat the game; while there is a little bit of luck involved, largely this is going to be dependent on your skill. Still, with persistence I managed to beat it, and I certainly don't consider myself particularly good at this genre, so I don't think it's out of reach for anyone, either.
So what's missing from the game? First, it doesn't do a very good job of immersing you in its environment. For starters, there's no background music; I know it sounds shallow, but I think some good music would help draw you into the game more. Also, there's absolutely no plot or backstory -- you just start out arriving at the enemy base with no explanation, just the assumption that you're supposed to kill everything. Finally, the last thing that I noticed is that the pace is a little bit off. In Contra, for instance (sorry to keep going back to Contra, but it's a useful measuring stick, despite its age) there's pretty much always something to do. In Intrusion, though, there's a fair amount of dead time when you're moving from place to place, and this gives the game a kind of empty feel. I think that's what's missing most from the game, but like I said, it's hard to put my finger on it.
Anyway, there's clearly a lot of skill that went into Intrusion, and I think if the creator teamed up with a really good game writer, they could produce a truly excellent game. As it is, while this is a fun and well-crafted game, if you're like me, you'll walk away feeling like there could have been a little bit more.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Cirplosion
Cirplosion, the second entry in Kongregate's Buried Treasure week, is a game which manages to overcome its terrible name and be quite an interesting game, requiring both quick puzzle-solving skills and quite a bit of manual dexterity.
At first glance, Cirplosion looks very similar to filler (review here): you have a playfield with a bunch of orbs bouncing around, you click and hold to cause a circle to expand, and can move while the circle is expanding, but if the circle hits an enemy orb (or, in Cirplosion's case, a wall), it is destroyed. However, what happens after you let go of the mouse button is entirely different from filler -- once you let go of the mouse button, the circle becomes a targeting circle, which you can now move freely over the board; when you click, all orbs within the targeting circle are destroyed. (There are also large orbs, which are blown into three smaller orbs.) So the advantages of trying to get your circle as large as possible should be obvious. Whenever you set off a Cirplosion, orbs outside of the circle's radius are affected, too, in that they are blown with the force of the explosion. If you're careless, this can give orbs very large momentum, which makes them very annoying; however, you can also use it strategically to clear up some open space to give you some more room to operate in.
In each level, you'll have to clear all the orbs given a limited amount of time and total number of Cirplosions. (You don't have any lives, so getting your circle destroyed doesn't cost you anything directly, but it does cost you precious time.) Generally, both of these limits are pretty tight, so you'll need to be sharp in order to destroy all of the enemies without running out of one or more resources. Some levels also have freeze orbs, which will freeze all of the enemy orbs if your circle touches one when expanding (not when you shoot it, confusingly enough), which can be very useful in setting up good shots.
Cirplosion offers three modes: normal mode, which contains 20 levels of the typical frenetic action that you'd expect; challenge mode, which has 12 more puzzle-like levels which require very careful thinking; and finally, cirvival (sigh) mode, which is pretty much what you would expect. Somewhat irritatingly, normal mode doesn't have a save feature, so if you want to beat it, you'll have to do all 20 levels in one go. The challenges do save, so you can beat them piecemeal if you'd like. Neither normal nor challenge mode is easy, but they are quick; a given level may take a lot of tries (and some of the harder levels may get quite frustrating, since there is some element of chance involved), but since a single level only takes 20-30 seconds, you can still play the whole agme in one sitting without too much difficulty.
The graphics are pretty basic -- you have enemy orbs of one color and your circle; there's not much in the way of special effects. The background music is very ambient and lends a nice touch, but (like so many other Flash games) it does get rather repetitive eventually. The sounds are also pretty basic, but they're not bad, either.
Anyway, Cirplosion clearly does a much better job of fulfilling the Buried Treasure ideal -- it's definitely a game that's deserving of a look. It's by no means a perfect game, but it'll provide a half hour or so of interesting gameplay, so give it a try.
Cirplosion, the second entry in Kongregate's Buried Treasure week, is a game which manages to overcome its terrible name and be quite an interesting game, requiring both quick puzzle-solving skills and quite a bit of manual dexterity.
At first glance, Cirplosion looks very similar to filler (review here): you have a playfield with a bunch of orbs bouncing around, you click and hold to cause a circle to expand, and can move while the circle is expanding, but if the circle hits an enemy orb (or, in Cirplosion's case, a wall), it is destroyed. However, what happens after you let go of the mouse button is entirely different from filler -- once you let go of the mouse button, the circle becomes a targeting circle, which you can now move freely over the board; when you click, all orbs within the targeting circle are destroyed. (There are also large orbs, which are blown into three smaller orbs.) So the advantages of trying to get your circle as large as possible should be obvious. Whenever you set off a Cirplosion, orbs outside of the circle's radius are affected, too, in that they are blown with the force of the explosion. If you're careless, this can give orbs very large momentum, which makes them very annoying; however, you can also use it strategically to clear up some open space to give you some more room to operate in.
In each level, you'll have to clear all the orbs given a limited amount of time and total number of Cirplosions. (You don't have any lives, so getting your circle destroyed doesn't cost you anything directly, but it does cost you precious time.) Generally, both of these limits are pretty tight, so you'll need to be sharp in order to destroy all of the enemies without running out of one or more resources. Some levels also have freeze orbs, which will freeze all of the enemy orbs if your circle touches one when expanding (not when you shoot it, confusingly enough), which can be very useful in setting up good shots.
Cirplosion offers three modes: normal mode, which contains 20 levels of the typical frenetic action that you'd expect; challenge mode, which has 12 more puzzle-like levels which require very careful thinking; and finally, cirvival (sigh) mode, which is pretty much what you would expect. Somewhat irritatingly, normal mode doesn't have a save feature, so if you want to beat it, you'll have to do all 20 levels in one go. The challenges do save, so you can beat them piecemeal if you'd like. Neither normal nor challenge mode is easy, but they are quick; a given level may take a lot of tries (and some of the harder levels may get quite frustrating, since there is some element of chance involved), but since a single level only takes 20-30 seconds, you can still play the whole agme in one sitting without too much difficulty.
The graphics are pretty basic -- you have enemy orbs of one color and your circle; there's not much in the way of special effects. The background music is very ambient and lends a nice touch, but (like so many other Flash games) it does get rather repetitive eventually. The sounds are also pretty basic, but they're not bad, either.
Anyway, Cirplosion clearly does a much better job of fulfilling the Buried Treasure ideal -- it's definitely a game that's deserving of a look. It's by no means a perfect game, but it'll provide a half hour or so of interesting gameplay, so give it a try.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Duck: Think outside the flock
Duck: Think outside the flock is one of the few games on Kongregate that I played in its entirety without a badge to reward me. I saw it on the New Games list, and noticed that it was by the same designer as Factory Balls (review here), and hoped that it would be, like Factory Balls, a fun if somewhat insubstantial diversion. And indeed, that is exactly what it turned out to be.
Duck consists of 25 duck-based logic puzzles. Figuring out exactly what the puzzle is is part of the challenge, but generally the puzzle itself is pretty straightforward and self-evident. Some of the puzzles require a bit of careful mouse movements, while some require only brainpower, but none of them is particularly difficult -- you may get hung up on one (perhaps the last one) for a few minutes, but there aren't any particularly sneaky tricks that you need to employ.
The presentation is nothing special -- the ducks are cute, but they all look the same (or almost so). Similarly, the quacking that you get on a successful puzzle completion is cute but repetitive. The music is a selection of tunes from the Nutcracker (why not Swan Lake, I wonder?), which is definitely a step up from the typical Flash game music. Overall, this game is neither difficult nor long, and I wouldn't say it has a huge degree of replay value, but it is charming and fun enough that you should enjoy playing it through once.
Duck: Think outside the flock is one of the few games on Kongregate that I played in its entirety without a badge to reward me. I saw it on the New Games list, and noticed that it was by the same designer as Factory Balls (review here), and hoped that it would be, like Factory Balls, a fun if somewhat insubstantial diversion. And indeed, that is exactly what it turned out to be.
Duck consists of 25 duck-based logic puzzles. Figuring out exactly what the puzzle is is part of the challenge, but generally the puzzle itself is pretty straightforward and self-evident. Some of the puzzles require a bit of careful mouse movements, while some require only brainpower, but none of them is particularly difficult -- you may get hung up on one (perhaps the last one) for a few minutes, but there aren't any particularly sneaky tricks that you need to employ.
The presentation is nothing special -- the ducks are cute, but they all look the same (or almost so). Similarly, the quacking that you get on a successful puzzle completion is cute but repetitive. The music is a selection of tunes from the Nutcracker (why not Swan Lake, I wonder?), which is definitely a step up from the typical Flash game music. Overall, this game is neither difficult nor long, and I wouldn't say it has a huge degree of replay value, but it is charming and fun enough that you should enjoy playing it through once.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Dog Eat Dog
Dog Eat Dog was the first game in Kongregate's Buried Treasure Week, a series during the week of August 11 created when Greg (the Kongregate person who creates badges for games) decided that it would be a good idea to shine the spotlight away from the highly-rated popular games which normally get the lion's share of badges, and give some less-popular games that were still interesting and deserving of attention a day in the sunshine. Apparently, though, Greg has a weakness for mediocre dodgers, since that's what Dog Eat Dog is (Tangerine Panic, which was also considered for the week, also fits into this category). By the reaction of people in chat, you'd think that he had picked Hitler's Bunker: The Game [*] as his selection; it's certainly not that bad, but aside from the silliness of the central concept, there's absolutely nothing that makes this game stand out.
Anyway, Dog Eat Dog is a very simple game -- you are a dog, and your job is to eat (i.e. run over) smaller dogs while avoiding being eaten by larger dogs. One plus for this game is a feature that I wish more dodgers would have: the choice of keyboard or mouse control. The dogs always move in horizontal or vertical straight lines, so avoiding them (or eating them, depending) is not exactly the world's hardest task; however, they can eat you even without coming into direct contact, which can be rather unpleasantly surprising the first time it happens. As the game progresses, your dog becomes larger, and eventually it becomes large enough to eat dogs that would have eaten it before; however, since there's not any clear visual indicator that you've now gotten bigger than other dogs, and trial and error is out of the question given that you only have one life, this feature is not as useful as it could be.
The graphics are pretty basic -- the dogs are not particularly detailed, and what I assume is the grassy field is pretty blah. There's only two sounds, a bark when you eat a smaller dog and a whine when you get consumed, and you'll get pretty tired of the first. The background music is a bit of techno which isn't bad intrinsically but which feels a little bit out of place in this setting -- it seems more suited to something involving clouds.
Anyway, you'll hopefully be glad to hear that the rest of Buried Treasure Week contained more interesting games, because this game simply didn't bring anything new to the table. Fortunately, getting the badge was pretty easy, because it meant I didn't have to play this game any more.
[*] I'm imagining a simple point-and-click adventure, where you have one room (the bunker, obviously, which shakes periodically as bombs and artillery impact above) and a few things you can click on: you can rant at your staff, draw up fancifully unrealistic battle plans, and canoodle with Eva. When each of those options loses its pall, you can click on the pistol in the corner, and then it's Game Over. Sounds like fun, huh?
Dog Eat Dog was the first game in Kongregate's Buried Treasure Week, a series during the week of August 11 created when Greg (the Kongregate person who creates badges for games) decided that it would be a good idea to shine the spotlight away from the highly-rated popular games which normally get the lion's share of badges, and give some less-popular games that were still interesting and deserving of attention a day in the sunshine. Apparently, though, Greg has a weakness for mediocre dodgers, since that's what Dog Eat Dog is (Tangerine Panic, which was also considered for the week, also fits into this category). By the reaction of people in chat, you'd think that he had picked Hitler's Bunker: The Game [*] as his selection; it's certainly not that bad, but aside from the silliness of the central concept, there's absolutely nothing that makes this game stand out.
Anyway, Dog Eat Dog is a very simple game -- you are a dog, and your job is to eat (i.e. run over) smaller dogs while avoiding being eaten by larger dogs. One plus for this game is a feature that I wish more dodgers would have: the choice of keyboard or mouse control. The dogs always move in horizontal or vertical straight lines, so avoiding them (or eating them, depending) is not exactly the world's hardest task; however, they can eat you even without coming into direct contact, which can be rather unpleasantly surprising the first time it happens. As the game progresses, your dog becomes larger, and eventually it becomes large enough to eat dogs that would have eaten it before; however, since there's not any clear visual indicator that you've now gotten bigger than other dogs, and trial and error is out of the question given that you only have one life, this feature is not as useful as it could be.
The graphics are pretty basic -- the dogs are not particularly detailed, and what I assume is the grassy field is pretty blah. There's only two sounds, a bark when you eat a smaller dog and a whine when you get consumed, and you'll get pretty tired of the first. The background music is a bit of techno which isn't bad intrinsically but which feels a little bit out of place in this setting -- it seems more suited to something involving clouds.
Anyway, you'll hopefully be glad to hear that the rest of Buried Treasure Week contained more interesting games, because this game simply didn't bring anything new to the table. Fortunately, getting the badge was pretty easy, because it meant I didn't have to play this game any more.
[*] I'm imagining a simple point-and-click adventure, where you have one room (the bunker, obviously, which shakes periodically as bombs and artillery impact above) and a few things you can click on: you can rant at your staff, draw up fancifully unrealistic battle plans, and canoodle with Eva. When each of those options loses its pall, you can click on the pistol in the corner, and then it's Game Over. Sounds like fun, huh?
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Bubble Tanks 2
Bubble Tanks 2 is a sequel to Bubble Tanks (review here), in case the name didn't tip you off. The gameplay is nearly identical to its predecessor -- it's a pretty straightforward shooter (keyboard moves, mouse shoots) where you move from bubble to bubble defeating enemies and picking up their bubbles to add to your own tank to make it more powerful. Being hit, on the other hand, will cause you to lose bubbles.
As far as I can tell, Bubble Tanks 2 adds three features to the original. First, there's a map, which is quite convenient for telling where the heck you're going. Second, there's one huge overall boss (which is quite an epic battle), and then also four fairly powerful subbosses, which appear randomly from time to time, so that occasionally you'll get a pretty severe challenge (especially if you're just starting out; it seems like they can appear anywhere, although the boss doesn't seem to pop up until you've already upgraded your tank a fair amount). Also, the enemy bubble menagerie has been expanded somewhat, as there are now minelayers and enemy bullets which slow you, but they're still all basically built along the same lines. Third, instead of your tank just randomly gradually getting more powerful as you collect bubbles, you have a bubble progress bar at the bottom, and when it fills up, you can choose the next form for your tank. Generally you get two or three choices, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. This is a nice feature and adds a tangible feeling of accomplishment to your bubble conquest. Unfortunately, once you've chosen, you can never change your mind -- even if you lose enough bubbles to knock you back to your previous level, you still go back to the form you chose the first time around the next time you level up again. This is kind of a disappointment -- if you choose an upgrade and decide you don't like it, the only way to change is to restart the whole game.
The background music is is still very peaceful and unintrusive, and the sounds are still pretty basic. The graphics are just bubbles, though clearly whoever drew the tank models was having a lot of fun, since there's a lot of creativity in the tank designs -- as a practical matter, it doesn't affect the game much, though. Overall, this is a little more substantial than its predecessor, and it's fun to play for a little while, but I still feel like it's lacking a bit in the way of goals to encourage you to keep playing for longer.
Bubble Tanks 2 is a sequel to Bubble Tanks (review here), in case the name didn't tip you off. The gameplay is nearly identical to its predecessor -- it's a pretty straightforward shooter (keyboard moves, mouse shoots) where you move from bubble to bubble defeating enemies and picking up their bubbles to add to your own tank to make it more powerful. Being hit, on the other hand, will cause you to lose bubbles.
As far as I can tell, Bubble Tanks 2 adds three features to the original. First, there's a map, which is quite convenient for telling where the heck you're going. Second, there's one huge overall boss (which is quite an epic battle), and then also four fairly powerful subbosses, which appear randomly from time to time, so that occasionally you'll get a pretty severe challenge (especially if you're just starting out; it seems like they can appear anywhere, although the boss doesn't seem to pop up until you've already upgraded your tank a fair amount). Also, the enemy bubble menagerie has been expanded somewhat, as there are now minelayers and enemy bullets which slow you, but they're still all basically built along the same lines. Third, instead of your tank just randomly gradually getting more powerful as you collect bubbles, you have a bubble progress bar at the bottom, and when it fills up, you can choose the next form for your tank. Generally you get two or three choices, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. This is a nice feature and adds a tangible feeling of accomplishment to your bubble conquest. Unfortunately, once you've chosen, you can never change your mind -- even if you lose enough bubbles to knock you back to your previous level, you still go back to the form you chose the first time around the next time you level up again. This is kind of a disappointment -- if you choose an upgrade and decide you don't like it, the only way to change is to restart the whole game.
The background music is is still very peaceful and unintrusive, and the sounds are still pretty basic. The graphics are just bubbles, though clearly whoever drew the tank models was having a lot of fun, since there's a lot of creativity in the tank designs -- as a practical matter, it doesn't affect the game much, though. Overall, this is a little more substantial than its predecessor, and it's fun to play for a little while, but I still feel like it's lacking a bit in the way of goals to encourage you to keep playing for longer.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Amorphous+
Amorphous+ is a game with much in common with Dino Run (review here). It's a game with relatively simple basic mechanics, but with those mechanics very well crafted, and with lots and lots for you to do, so that you can play for a very long time without getting bored. Like Dino Run, there's a huge set of achievements and an Impossible badge for getting them all; at first I thought there was no way I was going to remain interested long enough to get the badge, then I found myself continuing to play and accumulating more and more achivements, and then pretty soon I was almost there, so I went through and got the last few that I was missing, and it was an enjoyable experience all the way through.
Anyway, Amorphous+ is, at its base, a pretty simple game. You have a top-down view of yourself and a variety of nasty enemies (called "Glooples"). You also have an incredibly huge sword; clicking the mouse will swing the sword and splat most things in about a 120-degree arc in front of you. It's a pretty basic formula, but the first thing that makes Amorphous+ an engaging game is the bestiary. A game like this needs a variety of well-distinguished, interesting enemies, and Amorphous+ provides these in spades. (I tend to think of Crystal Quest as the gold standard for this, if you're curious for a reference point.) The enemies range from the simple green Glooples, which are almost entirely harmless -- if they bump into you, you can be knocked off-balance for a moment, which provides an entry for another, more harmful gloople to get you -- up to the fearsome Razor Queens, which are an incredibly challenging boss, but each enemy brings its own abilities and dangers to the table -- there aren't any thinly-disguised carbon copies of other enemies; each is quite unique.
The game modes are quite simple -- first is the single nest; nests come in three sizes, each with a certain fixed number of Glooples to kill. The smaller nests also don't include some of the most difficult Glooples. The other main play mode is the bounty mode, where the goal is simply to survive as long as possible and accumulate as many points as you can. There's also a practice mode, where you can face off against Glooples you've already seen; this is very useful for the Glooples that you encounter later in nests, so you can get some experience in fighting them so you don't always just die whenever you encounter them again. Again, though, what makes Amorphous+ engaging is that there's so much to do beyond simply try to beat the nest or survive. There's a total of 110 achievements (called "awards") for accomplishing tasks from the very simple (splat a single green gloople) to the silly (change the music five times in a level) to the quite difficult (clear an entire nest without being touched by anything). The variety of these awards mean that you'll always have something to do, and (with a few exceptions) they tend to be pretty tedium-free.
There's a tangible bonus for picking up awards, too -- for every 10 awards you accumulate, you earn a reward (the nomenclature is rather confusing), an item that you can take into battle with you to help you out on your quest. Indeed, to get some of the harder awards and beat some of the larger nests, these rewards are pretty much of a must-have. Once you reach 55 awards, you can take two rewards into battle with you, which is even more useful, and careful reward selection is obviously an important part of strategy in trying to accomplish a particular goal.
There are two and a half things that I find frustrating. First is the mouse control -- this is always a problem in a Flash game that involves fast movements, since it's very easy to click outside the Flash pane, and then you will almost certainly meet your demise while frantically trying to scroll back or hit your original tab (and God save you if your missed click happened to hit a link on the page). I'm not sure if the game would necessarily adapt well to keyboard control, but it would have been nice to at least have the possibility available. Second is the fact that the game doesn't tell you what the awards or rewards are until after you get them. For awards, this is not an uncommon practice, although it's one I kind of deplore -- why not tell people what they need to shoot for? It's true that a lot of the awards you'll get in the course of normal play anyway, but there are definitely some you simply won't get unless you know what to look for. But for the rewards -- they're hard enough to earn in the first place (the first few are easy, since there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in the award list, but they get progressively much more difficult to earn); why should you be forced to pick your reward blind without any idea of whether it'll be good or not? Really, the only effect of this decision is to drive people to FAQs, and that's kind of pointless. The half complaint is that you only get one life (there is one reward which gives you a second chance, but only sometimes) -- it's frustrating when you're working your way through a long nest to make one small mistake and be dead in short order. I think the game would overall be less irritating if you had multiple lives (with presumably a corresponding increase in difficulty). This would represent a pretty major game change, though, so it's not something I would demand.
The graphics are pretty simple, but when you're just dealing with different shapes of blobs, it doesn't really matter all that much. The sound effects are not bad, although the sound for the box gun can get kind of grating after a while. The one thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb is that the author always uses "it's" even when "its" is required. This is extremely grating to me. The music is very good -- it's nice background music, and there's a variety of tunes (yay!), most of which are good, and you can always switch if you don't like the current music, so it does an excellent job of providing accompaniment.
Anyway, overall Amorphous+ is an excellent game -- it's a perfect illustration of how to get a lot of depth out of relatively simple gameplay concepts, and the bestiary is so well-crafted that there's rarely a dull moment while playing -- there's always a dangerous Gloople ready to spring out and cause trouble, and dealing with each kind will require you be on the top of your game and well-prepared. An entertaining game from top to bottom.
Amorphous+ is a game with much in common with Dino Run (review here). It's a game with relatively simple basic mechanics, but with those mechanics very well crafted, and with lots and lots for you to do, so that you can play for a very long time without getting bored. Like Dino Run, there's a huge set of achievements and an Impossible badge for getting them all; at first I thought there was no way I was going to remain interested long enough to get the badge, then I found myself continuing to play and accumulating more and more achivements, and then pretty soon I was almost there, so I went through and got the last few that I was missing, and it was an enjoyable experience all the way through.
Anyway, Amorphous+ is, at its base, a pretty simple game. You have a top-down view of yourself and a variety of nasty enemies (called "Glooples"). You also have an incredibly huge sword; clicking the mouse will swing the sword and splat most things in about a 120-degree arc in front of you. It's a pretty basic formula, but the first thing that makes Amorphous+ an engaging game is the bestiary. A game like this needs a variety of well-distinguished, interesting enemies, and Amorphous+ provides these in spades. (I tend to think of Crystal Quest as the gold standard for this, if you're curious for a reference point.) The enemies range from the simple green Glooples, which are almost entirely harmless -- if they bump into you, you can be knocked off-balance for a moment, which provides an entry for another, more harmful gloople to get you -- up to the fearsome Razor Queens, which are an incredibly challenging boss, but each enemy brings its own abilities and dangers to the table -- there aren't any thinly-disguised carbon copies of other enemies; each is quite unique.
The game modes are quite simple -- first is the single nest; nests come in three sizes, each with a certain fixed number of Glooples to kill. The smaller nests also don't include some of the most difficult Glooples. The other main play mode is the bounty mode, where the goal is simply to survive as long as possible and accumulate as many points as you can. There's also a practice mode, where you can face off against Glooples you've already seen; this is very useful for the Glooples that you encounter later in nests, so you can get some experience in fighting them so you don't always just die whenever you encounter them again. Again, though, what makes Amorphous+ engaging is that there's so much to do beyond simply try to beat the nest or survive. There's a total of 110 achievements (called "awards") for accomplishing tasks from the very simple (splat a single green gloople) to the silly (change the music five times in a level) to the quite difficult (clear an entire nest without being touched by anything). The variety of these awards mean that you'll always have something to do, and (with a few exceptions) they tend to be pretty tedium-free.
There's a tangible bonus for picking up awards, too -- for every 10 awards you accumulate, you earn a reward (the nomenclature is rather confusing), an item that you can take into battle with you to help you out on your quest. Indeed, to get some of the harder awards and beat some of the larger nests, these rewards are pretty much of a must-have. Once you reach 55 awards, you can take two rewards into battle with you, which is even more useful, and careful reward selection is obviously an important part of strategy in trying to accomplish a particular goal.
There are two and a half things that I find frustrating. First is the mouse control -- this is always a problem in a Flash game that involves fast movements, since it's very easy to click outside the Flash pane, and then you will almost certainly meet your demise while frantically trying to scroll back or hit your original tab (and God save you if your missed click happened to hit a link on the page). I'm not sure if the game would necessarily adapt well to keyboard control, but it would have been nice to at least have the possibility available. Second is the fact that the game doesn't tell you what the awards or rewards are until after you get them. For awards, this is not an uncommon practice, although it's one I kind of deplore -- why not tell people what they need to shoot for? It's true that a lot of the awards you'll get in the course of normal play anyway, but there are definitely some you simply won't get unless you know what to look for. But for the rewards -- they're hard enough to earn in the first place (the first few are easy, since there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in the award list, but they get progressively much more difficult to earn); why should you be forced to pick your reward blind without any idea of whether it'll be good or not? Really, the only effect of this decision is to drive people to FAQs, and that's kind of pointless. The half complaint is that you only get one life (there is one reward which gives you a second chance, but only sometimes) -- it's frustrating when you're working your way through a long nest to make one small mistake and be dead in short order. I think the game would overall be less irritating if you had multiple lives (with presumably a corresponding increase in difficulty). This would represent a pretty major game change, though, so it's not something I would demand.
The graphics are pretty simple, but when you're just dealing with different shapes of blobs, it doesn't really matter all that much. The sound effects are not bad, although the sound for the box gun can get kind of grating after a while. The one thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb is that the author always uses "it's" even when "its" is required. This is extremely grating to me. The music is very good -- it's nice background music, and there's a variety of tunes (yay!), most of which are good, and you can always switch if you don't like the current music, so it does an excellent job of providing accompaniment.
Anyway, overall Amorphous+ is an excellent game -- it's a perfect illustration of how to get a lot of depth out of relatively simple gameplay concepts, and the bestiary is so well-crafted that there's rarely a dull moment while playing -- there's always a dangerous Gloople ready to spring out and cause trouble, and dealing with each kind will require you be on the top of your game and well-prepared. An entertaining game from top to bottom.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Tangerine Panic
Tangerine Panic is another very simple dodger where you play a man suddenly attacked by a shower of tangerines and have to avoid them as long as possible. The tangerines come out of a pipe at the top left of the screen and bounce entirely unlike tangerines -- more like solid orange balls (which, perhaps, not coincidentally, is also what they sound like when bouncing). In contrast to a normal dodger, you actually have multiple lives, which is kind of nice -- it makes the overall outcome of the game a little less random and more skill-dependent.
I find the mouse control to be a poor choice for a dodger like this -- I think keyboard control would have been better. The music is nice and peppy, while the sounds (as mentioned above) are a little incongruous with the alleged theme of tangerines. In a cute touch, your character will spout various phrases of exasperation while he's running around, complaining about the tangerines. This is mildly amusing for at least a little bit, although it wears off pretty quickly.
Anyway, this is a very silly game, and you should have no trouble quickly getting the badge, but like so many other dodgers on this site, there's really not enough substance to make you want to keep playing after acquiring your shiny prize.
Tangerine Panic is another very simple dodger where you play a man suddenly attacked by a shower of tangerines and have to avoid them as long as possible. The tangerines come out of a pipe at the top left of the screen and bounce entirely unlike tangerines -- more like solid orange balls (which, perhaps, not coincidentally, is also what they sound like when bouncing). In contrast to a normal dodger, you actually have multiple lives, which is kind of nice -- it makes the overall outcome of the game a little less random and more skill-dependent.
I find the mouse control to be a poor choice for a dodger like this -- I think keyboard control would have been better. The music is nice and peppy, while the sounds (as mentioned above) are a little incongruous with the alleged theme of tangerines. In a cute touch, your character will spout various phrases of exasperation while he's running around, complaining about the tangerines. This is mildly amusing for at least a little bit, although it wears off pretty quickly.
Anyway, this is a very silly game, and you should have no trouble quickly getting the badge, but like so many other dodgers on this site, there's really not enough substance to make you want to keep playing after acquiring your shiny prize.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Pandemic 2
Pandemic 2 is an interesting study in contrasts. As a sandbox, it's great fun -- who amongst you hasn't wanted to try to give everyone in Western Europe bloody vomit with some horrible new disease? But as a game, it's a miserable failure -- if you try to play to win, you'll be bashing your head against its design limitations in no time.
I'm going to digress a moment and talk about the original Pandemic, which I played long before I saw Kongregate (indeed, it's not on Kongregate even now). It was an interesting little germ (ha ha) of an idea -- you controlled a disease with the goal of wiping out humanity. You gained points by infecting more people, which you could use to increase your transmission (for instance, by making yourself airborne) or increasing your lethality (for instance, by adding hemorrhaging as a symptom). It was a cute little game, but very simplistic, egregiously so in its geography (there's a total of 8 regions, including an "Eastern Europe" which stretches from India to Burma), and the optimal strategy becomes blindingly obvious early on: don't develop any lethal symptoms until you've infected everyone, and then once you do, bring the hammer down with as much lethality as you can and patiently wait for everyone to die. (That's right -- once you develop new symptoms, everyone who already has the disease also gets them. Don't ask me how that makes sense.) Anyway, it was a neat idea, but a little too simple to be much of a real game.
Pandemic 2 attempts to address many of these shortcomings and make the basic idea into a more substantial game. The result is a product which is vastly improved in some areas, retains some of the flaws of its predecessor, and takes a very large step back in one respect. Let me talk about the last of those items first. In the original Pandemic, there wasn't that much that happened in the very early stages (when your disease had only infected a handful of people) and the very late stages (when you have already infected everyone and were just patiently waiting for humanity to hurry up and die). That was OK, because you could just hammer the "next day" button until something did happen. Pandemic 2 has basically the same dynamic, except that the designers decided to make it a real-time game. This means that you can see the airplanes and ships niftily flitting about the globe. Unfortunately, it also means that you spend an inordinate amount of time (even with the game speed set to its fastest) just sitting around and waiting for something interesting to happen. This is not fun at all.
So, in Pandemic 2, you have a relatively detailed world map, with 21 different regions. Many regions have one or more airports and seaports (although, realistically speaking, every region should have an airport and seaport, but I suppose the designers took some artistic liberties), which can very quickly spread your disease from region to region. The game seems to overemphasize these modes of travel as opposed to overland travel, though -- is it really the case that a disease is more likely to make it from the US to Mexico via an airplane than a car? I doubt it, somehow. Your disease can be a virus, bacterium, or parasite, each with its own advantages and disadvantages; as time goes on, you acquire "evolution points", which you can use to buy new symptoms, means of transmission, and resistances. (Somewhat perplexingly, you gain evolution points very quickly early on, when your disease has only infected a few people, but the rate decreases sharply as time goes on, which can leave you just sitting around waiting for points to accumulate in the late game.) The symptoms are a double-edged sword: they increase your infectiousness and lethality, but they also make your disease more visible to authorities who can take countermeasures. Some symptoms are, on a net basis, more trouble to your disease than they're worth, and it actually costs more evolution points to get rid of these symptoms than to acquire them. Your disease can also have some traits, which are generally entirely random and affect your disease in various ways. There's also a wide variety of natural disasters which can hit countries, which may speed or slow the progress of your disease.
Now, for the two big flaws in Pandemic 2. First of all, the aforementioned authorities have a dizzying array of countermeasures they can take to combat your disease, ranging from handing out bottled water to declaring martial law. As far as I can tell, none of these countermeasures matters one whit once you've infected a region. They may slow the progress of your disease, but I have never seen a case where a disease has gotten a toehold in a region and then been stopped by these countermeasures (with one exception, which I'll discuss below). Conversely, countries can close their borders, seaports, and airports, and these measures are 100% effective at keeping your disease out if it hasn't yet gotten in, which is just as unrealistic. If you're trying to kill everyone in the world, then as soon as Madagascar closes its seaport (which is the only way in), you might as well pack up and go home.
The other flaw arises from the fact that, to avoid the easy win strategy for the original Pandemic, countries will crazily overreact. You can have a virus which is entirely asymptomatic and nonlethal, and yet as soon as it's infected a few hundred million people, countries will start shutting their borders, declaring martial law, and so forth. This is obviously quite unrealistic; from a gameplay perspective, it arises from two basic issues: first, that lethality and transmissibility are completely decoupled, and second, that when your virus acquires more lethal symptoms, that everyone who already has the virus will get these symptoms too. The obvious solution from both a gameplay and realism perspective is to eliminate these -- if you have a virus that infects 200 million people, some of them are going to die from it regardless of how harmless your virus is. The symptoms having good and bad aspects is already a step in the right direction; the game just needs to take it a bit further. And maybe make it so that your virus acquiring new symptoms isn't retroactive? It would change the game greatly, but I can't say it would be for the worse.
OK, last complaint. After a while, the humans will start working on a vaccine. Usually, you kill people too rapidly for them to finish the vaccine in time, but occasionally they'll finish and deploy it. When this happens, you get a coin flip! Sometimes it works and you lose. Sometimes it doesn't work and they'll try again (almost certainly they won't have enough time, though). And sometimes your virus mutates and becomes invincible to all vaccines. This is a hugely random swing (it can be affected by your acquiring drug resistance, but there's still, as far as I can tell, a coin flip underneath), and adds another element of annoyance to the game.
On to the presentation. The graphics are clear and crisp, though the automatic messages displayed in the information panel (which could really use a scrollback bar) occasionally are kind of nonsensical; a little editing would have helped. The background music is pretty good, and makes for a nice complement to the game. The game offers two different modes, "realistic" and "relaxed", which in practice aren't terribly different; your disease appears to be faster in relaxed mode, and a few things aren't included, but most of the gameplay is entirely the same.
Anyway, if you're just messing around with the game, it can be fun to see how much of humanity you can kill. But when you're trying to beat the game, you'll get very, very frustrated when you play 20 times, Madagascar closes off every time, and then finally on the 21st time (without you changing your strategy at all) you manage to get in before the close and win. This amount of dependence on luck results in a very frustrating game. While Pandemic 2 is definitely an improvement on its predecessor, it still has a way to go to really turn its potential into an enjoyable challenge.
Pandemic 2 is an interesting study in contrasts. As a sandbox, it's great fun -- who amongst you hasn't wanted to try to give everyone in Western Europe bloody vomit with some horrible new disease? But as a game, it's a miserable failure -- if you try to play to win, you'll be bashing your head against its design limitations in no time.
I'm going to digress a moment and talk about the original Pandemic, which I played long before I saw Kongregate (indeed, it's not on Kongregate even now). It was an interesting little germ (ha ha) of an idea -- you controlled a disease with the goal of wiping out humanity. You gained points by infecting more people, which you could use to increase your transmission (for instance, by making yourself airborne) or increasing your lethality (for instance, by adding hemorrhaging as a symptom). It was a cute little game, but very simplistic, egregiously so in its geography (there's a total of 8 regions, including an "Eastern Europe" which stretches from India to Burma), and the optimal strategy becomes blindingly obvious early on: don't develop any lethal symptoms until you've infected everyone, and then once you do, bring the hammer down with as much lethality as you can and patiently wait for everyone to die. (That's right -- once you develop new symptoms, everyone who already has the disease also gets them. Don't ask me how that makes sense.) Anyway, it was a neat idea, but a little too simple to be much of a real game.
Pandemic 2 attempts to address many of these shortcomings and make the basic idea into a more substantial game. The result is a product which is vastly improved in some areas, retains some of the flaws of its predecessor, and takes a very large step back in one respect. Let me talk about the last of those items first. In the original Pandemic, there wasn't that much that happened in the very early stages (when your disease had only infected a handful of people) and the very late stages (when you have already infected everyone and were just patiently waiting for humanity to hurry up and die). That was OK, because you could just hammer the "next day" button until something did happen. Pandemic 2 has basically the same dynamic, except that the designers decided to make it a real-time game. This means that you can see the airplanes and ships niftily flitting about the globe. Unfortunately, it also means that you spend an inordinate amount of time (even with the game speed set to its fastest) just sitting around and waiting for something interesting to happen. This is not fun at all.
So, in Pandemic 2, you have a relatively detailed world map, with 21 different regions. Many regions have one or more airports and seaports (although, realistically speaking, every region should have an airport and seaport, but I suppose the designers took some artistic liberties), which can very quickly spread your disease from region to region. The game seems to overemphasize these modes of travel as opposed to overland travel, though -- is it really the case that a disease is more likely to make it from the US to Mexico via an airplane than a car? I doubt it, somehow. Your disease can be a virus, bacterium, or parasite, each with its own advantages and disadvantages; as time goes on, you acquire "evolution points", which you can use to buy new symptoms, means of transmission, and resistances. (Somewhat perplexingly, you gain evolution points very quickly early on, when your disease has only infected a few people, but the rate decreases sharply as time goes on, which can leave you just sitting around waiting for points to accumulate in the late game.) The symptoms are a double-edged sword: they increase your infectiousness and lethality, but they also make your disease more visible to authorities who can take countermeasures. Some symptoms are, on a net basis, more trouble to your disease than they're worth, and it actually costs more evolution points to get rid of these symptoms than to acquire them. Your disease can also have some traits, which are generally entirely random and affect your disease in various ways. There's also a wide variety of natural disasters which can hit countries, which may speed or slow the progress of your disease.
Now, for the two big flaws in Pandemic 2. First of all, the aforementioned authorities have a dizzying array of countermeasures they can take to combat your disease, ranging from handing out bottled water to declaring martial law. As far as I can tell, none of these countermeasures matters one whit once you've infected a region. They may slow the progress of your disease, but I have never seen a case where a disease has gotten a toehold in a region and then been stopped by these countermeasures (with one exception, which I'll discuss below). Conversely, countries can close their borders, seaports, and airports, and these measures are 100% effective at keeping your disease out if it hasn't yet gotten in, which is just as unrealistic. If you're trying to kill everyone in the world, then as soon as Madagascar closes its seaport (which is the only way in), you might as well pack up and go home.
The other flaw arises from the fact that, to avoid the easy win strategy for the original Pandemic, countries will crazily overreact. You can have a virus which is entirely asymptomatic and nonlethal, and yet as soon as it's infected a few hundred million people, countries will start shutting their borders, declaring martial law, and so forth. This is obviously quite unrealistic; from a gameplay perspective, it arises from two basic issues: first, that lethality and transmissibility are completely decoupled, and second, that when your virus acquires more lethal symptoms, that everyone who already has the virus will get these symptoms too. The obvious solution from both a gameplay and realism perspective is to eliminate these -- if you have a virus that infects 200 million people, some of them are going to die from it regardless of how harmless your virus is. The symptoms having good and bad aspects is already a step in the right direction; the game just needs to take it a bit further. And maybe make it so that your virus acquiring new symptoms isn't retroactive? It would change the game greatly, but I can't say it would be for the worse.
OK, last complaint. After a while, the humans will start working on a vaccine. Usually, you kill people too rapidly for them to finish the vaccine in time, but occasionally they'll finish and deploy it. When this happens, you get a coin flip! Sometimes it works and you lose. Sometimes it doesn't work and they'll try again (almost certainly they won't have enough time, though). And sometimes your virus mutates and becomes invincible to all vaccines. This is a hugely random swing (it can be affected by your acquiring drug resistance, but there's still, as far as I can tell, a coin flip underneath), and adds another element of annoyance to the game.
On to the presentation. The graphics are clear and crisp, though the automatic messages displayed in the information panel (which could really use a scrollback bar) occasionally are kind of nonsensical; a little editing would have helped. The background music is pretty good, and makes for a nice complement to the game. The game offers two different modes, "realistic" and "relaxed", which in practice aren't terribly different; your disease appears to be faster in relaxed mode, and a few things aren't included, but most of the gameplay is entirely the same.
Anyway, if you're just messing around with the game, it can be fun to see how much of humanity you can kill. But when you're trying to beat the game, you'll get very, very frustrated when you play 20 times, Madagascar closes off every time, and then finally on the 21st time (without you changing your strategy at all) you manage to get in before the close and win. This amount of dependence on luck results in a very frustrating game. While Pandemic 2 is definitely an improvement on its predecessor, it still has a way to go to really turn its potential into an enjoyable challenge.
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