2008)

November 4th, 2008

secret santa

Merry Gear Solid

Being smaller, less riskier endeavors, indie games often surprise us with humorous jabs at the medium itself, because they can. Some of these games push mild insights into the developers opinion, others base themselves solely around the art of parody. Merry Gear Solid does the latter.

Merry Gear Solid as the name suggests is a Christmas themed parody of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Likening itself to the classic 2D Metal Gear games, Merry Gear Solid plays like a small, half hour episode from the series, wrapped in the Christmas décor. You, Solid Santa must infiltrate a house full of children to plant your presents under the Christmas tree. Along the way you will obtain a series of items, all throwbacks to the series mainstays which allow you to progress through the cleverly designed household

It’s very surprising to see just how much care has been taken in developing this title. The sprites and animations all look perfect and would fit in nicely with the Pokemon games. The writing is superb and consistently strong with clever puns and jabs at series staples as well as Christmas culture. The level designs are also excellent and utilize multiple strings of problem solving. The whole package is just top notch and it maintained my interest for the whole pay session. With this game as a template, I think that the potential of an independent installment of the series could easily be done, that I would love to see.

Magical Toy Chest (Demo)

Having developed educational software for children before I can understand the challenge involved in designing a game for this market. The trick is trying to keep the accessibility and difficulty in equilibrium so that the child can grasp the concept of the game easily and then remained engaged for the length of the experience. This means thinking hard about how to introduce the game, what language to use, how to layout the menus, when to provide tips, when to let the child explore on their own, when to throw some education at them etc. This is a tough job to keep up. Magical Toy Chest by Graduate Games in this regard fairs quite well, probably about as well as I did, although that is obviously biased.

Magic Toy Quest is another one of those popular physics based games which require you to orientate objects in a 2D environment to see what happens when you set everything off. These games make you feel like the king of your own small world, self-indulgently lining up dominos and watching them fall over.

magic toy chest

I started off talking about educational games and indeed Magical Toy Chest is one of those. What I most like about the game is how it implements the learning elements. In order to get the toys into the chest you need to first set up a path for the target toy (the toy that you want to get into the box) to travel. This requires placing set pieces (other toys as selected from a side menu) in the environment and then using another toy (yeah it’s all toys!) to nudge the target toy into the right direction. This all amounts to a lot of problem solving and experimentation all of which become pretty engaging.

The game is intended to represent cleaning up your room but feels more like having fun considering that you need to use have to get more toys out to knock the more into the box.

In fact the idea of cleaning your room by creating more mess is contradictory. You’ll occasionally need to start by picking up the keys in the environment to open the chest, despite this you can’t just pick up the toys and put them in the box. Overall it isn’t very organic game design and I found it to form an initial hindrance.

Once you get over these things then the game starts to kick into its own and becomes really quite enjoyable. There are a few hitches like this, mainly to do with those issues of balancing to the audience but at it’s core Magic Toy Quest is fun, and has plenty to offer. It’s hard not to recommend this title as it excels in most areas.

Indie Play Impressions (4/9/08)

October 3rd, 2008

indie impressions

Fractal Fighter

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Fractal - A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry.

Fractal Fighter is a two dimensional, vertical shooter set in a hard line, black and white, vector environment. The crux of the gameplay is orientated around dismemberment of a fractal shape. Each fractal has a series of increasingly powerful turrets layered within it. To completely destroy the fractal you need to clear each wave of mounted turrets until the whole unit is destroyed. From there, the pattern repeats and another fractal surfaces with greater complexity in shape and a multitude of additional turrets.

Your ship has the ability to fire standard bullets and long distance lasers. The rapid fire bullets are the primary mechanic and most useful of the two. These bullets can only pierce the face of the structures though, in which case the laser function - which passes through the whole fractal - is useful for picking off turrets from the back of the creature. As the structures becoming increasingly more elaborate, they grow additional limbs from the back much like sprouting wings, easing your attention onto balancing the rapid and laser fire. Since the laser has a time delay between pulses the power-to-fire ratio of the mechanics are matched and evenly balanced. Furthermore the fractal’s evolution outwards forces you to focus back and forth between the front and back of the shape, ergonomically curving your concentration levels into complete immersion.

$fractal fighter$

The process of identifying constituents and then tactically removing them piece by piece likens itself to the amusing task of pulling the pettles off a lone daisy. Except it’s wrapped within the mechanics of a shoot ‘em up and as such the game feels half like a shoot ‘em up (pattern recognition, strategic ‘twitch’ movement) and half like an amusing way to kill some time (the daisy). Because the game is spun around this idea, much like pulling apart a helpless object, the game feeds into this piece-by-piece satisfaction.

It’s interesting this emphasis of patterns. We all know that the shoot ‘em up genre revolves around pattern memorization, yet Fractal Fighter shows visual proof of this. Each shape, each creature you face is born from a pattern, a pattern which dictates the shape of the fractal and the way in which it behaves. Furthermore, as the fractals become ladened with more complexity, we also have a visual representation of the game’s difficulty curve right in front of us since we can see the number of turrets increasing and how they’re increasing. The two core components; the shooting and the fractual development are both cleanly implemented, allowing the player to focus on the job at hand, distraction free. The evolution of the fractals and way this is visually identified feels organic in design and native. These things make Fractal Fighter a very engaging game to play, the single music track as well comes off very well and aids in pulling you into the experience.

GoldenEye 2D

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GoldenEye 2D is a cute little Game Boy remake of the original Nintendo 64 success; Golden Eye 64. Pening that sentence makes me wonder if people give higher precedence to the movie or the game, I guess it’s just this niche. Anyways I lied, this retro remake is just of the Dam level. Still it’s a pretty tough romp so it’ll take you a while to push through.

goldeneye 2d

As Bond you basically have two primary actions; jumping and shooting. You’re also equipped with a checklist of objectives to complete, although most of the gameplay is about shooting and dodging the heavy onslaught of enemies walking in your direction. As you continue to mow down more agents (and avoid being shot at), your score increases, automatically upgrading you to better weaponry. All pretty simple, run and gun action.

It’s obvious that a lot of care has been taken into making this title very apt and authentic to the canon. The game plays typically like other run-and-gun action games and delivers the same delightful action while it lasts.

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Tags: fractal fighter, goldeneye, indie

DS Play Impressions (Before China)

October 2nd, 2008

ninja gaiden dragon sword

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

Ninja Gaiden is a series made famous by its crushingly tough demands of dexterity and coordination. You need to be one step ahead of your enemy and in full control of the situation at all times. It’s interesting then to observe how this title has been adapted to the most accessible console on the market.

While the PSone-styled, 3D-models-on-pre-rendered-backdrop production is fantastic and covers up alot of hardware limitations, the game design is really where it’s at. Basically Tecmo have taken this teeth-crunchingly difficult franchise, suited only towards hardened players and added some breathing space to the play mechanics so that it can be enjoyed by a wider group of players while still respectable to its roots. All actions are performed with the stylus; you draw a line to slash, tap to throw a projectile etc. Because the physical actions match the moves that Ryu performs on screen, understanding how to play requires little time and once you’ve conquered a few of the initial battles it doesn’t take long to become fluent.

Furthermore, the more complicated constructs aren’t really complicated at all. To perform “magic” you touch an icon on the minimalistic interface and then trace the on screen Japanese character to perform. Additional spells can be selected from the same menu, just a quick tap away.

The camera angle is also fixed and scrolls automatically if you move to the next part of the area. This reduces the player’s dependence on camera control, keeping the emphasis on the action. The other mechanics such as combos, karma and upgrades are all naturally blended into the gameplay and the game eases you in nicely.

Dragon Sword is a short game (8hrs) and you’ll probably not want to play it more than once. There’s a whole bunch of additional content which will please fans of the series looking for an added challenge. I warn you though, you’ll be doing the same thing again and again (room, invisible door appears, beat baddies, next room, puzzle). While this is essentially the formula of the whole game, by the time you get to the end you only then begin to tire of the same repitive process. There’s always just enough spice to keep you interested and the games combat; a wishy-washy-mish-mash of stylus acrobatics feel well honed and just a great way to kill time. Another successful franchise, re-engineered for the DS hardware, worth your gold.

Guitar Hero On Tour

Even though I shared my thoughts on this iteration of the Guitar Hero franchise sometime ago, just recently (as in probably a month ago now!) I managed to get some closer hands on impressions of the game so I wanted to document how my feelings have changed since then.

First things first, no matter how you hold the hand grip, On Tour is still going to cramp your hand, wrist and/or fingers to the point of arthritic torture. There is no way around it – for this game to function you need a peripheral, and that peripheral needs to be of certain dimensions and make up. It isn’t then so much the fault of the peripheral but rather a lack of alternative ways to experience Guitar Hero on a handheld. So when push comes to shove, I recommend that you try the game first.

Guitar Hero On Tour Ad

Peripheral aside, I honestly don’t think that the game itself could be improved to a substantial degree. I’ve heard a lot of negative criticism level towards the empty graphics and short track list but really, how much decent quality MP3 and bitmap graphics can you cram into a 128mb game card? Not much I’d say.

Everything else in the game is authentic to the franchise. The music is definitely teen friendly, which is another reason fans of the serious seem to lose their marbles over this title. Seriously, this game is marketed towards the a younger market, not yet ready for the insane note crunching of the bigger titles. In this regard On Tour is a winner and more than adequately cuts it as a portable rendition of the popular franchise. Fantastic marketing decision too and it shows from the sales.

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Tags: ds, Guitar Hero, ninja gaiden

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