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August 30, 2012

Review – They Bleed Pixels

Review They Bleed Pixels
From the jagged teeth of buzzsaws to the spiked walls and floors beneath and above every slim bit of ground players will grasp in the search for some small space to breathe, They Bleed Pixels. Toronto developer Spooky Squid has crafted a platformer without pity, where the typical spiky pitfalls of the past are only the opening to a world of malevolently placed enemies and obstacles guarded by blades of precise timing – eager to spill the blood of opponents and players alike in gathering an offering for whatever dark Gods of old are in league with the design of its stages.

But this isn’t a game that’s hard for the sake of being so, nor some attempt to simply join other recent titles that wear difficulty as the primary incentive and reward to be bragged about at some They Bleed Pixels survivors meeting later this year.

They Bleed Pixels examines the space of traditional platformers, and knowing the habits of those that have grown up playing them, challenges players to make more of the wasted space around said platform. It does this by often providing very little solid ground to stand on, but also forces a new perspective on old habits by offering new spaces to cling to.

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June 11, 2012

E3 2012 – Hands On with Mark of the Ninja

Filed under: Features — Tags: , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 12:56 pm

Mark of the Ninja E3 2012
Few years slip by in the gaming industry without a healthy dose of Ninja themed releases, offering familiar means to slice through enemies, run up walls, and embed a few shuriken in the skulls of adversaries. But for those gamers looking to romance the more stealthy elements of the ninja lifestyle, there’s rarely much to chew on aside from minor moments, most recently illustrated by Ninja Gaiden 3, which introduced stealth kills only to promptly drop the feature.

If this depresses you, one hot minute with Klei Entertainment’s Mark of the Ninja should put the jelly back in your donut with an experience built entirely on emphasizing the stealth skills of the silent ninja.

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March 14, 2012

Notes On The Robocalypse

Shoot Many Robots
“Chairmanlove, buy some equipment!”

Those were the first words of wisdom another player offered to me as I started my multiplayer session of Shoot Many Robots. And I was admittedly feeling underdressed for the occasion as we waited for the stage to load, still wearing the standard clothing while others were thumbing their noses at the Tsars of fashion with all manner of ridiculous headgear, belts, and heavy weaponry.

If I’d never jumped online, I’d have likely missed the point entirely because from a disinterested distance, Shoot Many Robots seems to simply replace the tired zombies of other party shooters with chainsaw wielding mechanical fiends and trailer park humor. There’s certainly some awe in how many bloodthirsty robots can fill the screen, exploding with bursts of oil and scrap metal as you fill them with lead. But watching others rack up kills in the hundreds while I nabbed twenty or so left me certain I was doing it wrong, which I was.

Between stages players can access their inventory along with a store, where items discovered during play become available for purchase via exceedingly large amounts of bolts earned whilst crushing the robot uprising. And that is the point at which a game that visually resembles a 2D Borderlands taps the comparison far deeper to produce spiraling lists of weapons and equipment that opens a vortex of customization opportunities.

There’s plenty of work creation going on here, earning bolts to buy items that help you earn more bolts, marching on in the quest to unlock ever more ridiculous toys before returning to playgrounds that split between short stages and survival arenas. My scores improved dramatically when I returned with a cowboy hat and jetpack, holding my 110%-American machinegun – a primary weapon that offers unlimited firepower. There’s also a secondary ammo-conscious heavy hitter weapon – everything from rocket launchers to Gnoming missiles.

The results are delightfully ludicrous with a party of four, filling the screen with bullets and scrap metal as the waves of mechanized terror endlessly crowd the screen. Shoot Many Robots can’t escape the limited appeal these types of quick party shooters offer, but the vanity options and depth of experimentation raise the bar significantly, begging for plenty of time in finding the ideal balance of stat raising items and range versus power weapons. If you happened to be playing the game alone, the value falls of fairly quick – this is about joining others and arguing about the perfect tools for surviving the robocalypse after all. And while that emphasis isn’t necessarily at the top of my agenda, I’ll certainly tip my cowboy hat to a game in that vein that merits the ten dollar pricetag with an immense amount of toys to unlock and talk about.

Of course, you can give the demo for the full game a shot and let me know what you think.

September 11, 2011

Review – BloodRayne: Betrayal

Review BloodRayne Betrayal
I am fail.

While that conclusion will come as no surprise to some, the suspicion was finally confirmed for me after clearing the first of Betrayal’s stages, wherein I was awarded an “F” grade, and the designation of “wormfood”. That the same reward awaited me at the end of every stage would seemingly suggest that WayForward’s resurrection of Majesco’s dhampir vixen is a difficult affair. And while plenty of voices across the Internet support this argument, it’s simply not accurate.

The near infinite supply of health, unlimited lives, consistently well placed checkpoints, wide-sweeping attacks, and even a laser cannon that spreads across the entire screen, make it ridiculous to suggest that Rayne’s 2D debut reaches anywhere close to the difficulty of nostalgic side-scrolling titles that kept gamers grinding their teeth and stores selling a steady supply of replacement controllers back in the day.

Betrayal does liberally sprinkle stages with cheap trickery however, situations that depend as much on luck as a mastery of the controls – split evenly between platforming sections that unleash floating projectiles while requiring precision jumping, and arena areas where waves of enemies work to drain the blood with the advantage of restricted space.

The real difficulty of Betrayal is in reconciling the shortfalls that leave a promising release far less the experience it could have been, delivering a digital title where every element that makes it excel also directly causes it to disappoint – where the high point of Betrayal causes direct gameplay hiccups that undermine the effort and expose the under-developed nature of the entire game.

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