Category Archives: Indie Games
Ninja Madness
A Ninja themed set of 3 quickies available from the Indie Xbox Live Arcade.
Ninja Stole My Bike
Ugh. This game is such trash. I won’t go into much detail about the gameplay, because there really isn’t much. Take an impossible game and make it more boring and then you have Ninja Stole My Bike. They took a genre of game where all you really do is press one button and found a way to make it less interesting. There are two redeeming qualities to this game however. For starters, it only costs 80 MSP, which is most likely more than what it cost to make the game. The other, which is probably already obvious to fans of YTMND.com, is the games namesake. Basically, your playing the cut scene from Punch-Out!! But instead of an up and coming boxer chasing a fat black man on a bike, you’re a pizza delivery boy chasing a ninja. So aside from the little chuckle I got from the connection to an overtly racist internet meme, this game is only worth it for those who have a major crush on these types of games and have played every other one in existence.
Developer: NinthDimensional
Released: 02/10/2011
Ninja Sneaking
Has that annoying chibi style of art, but that’s really the only negative thing I have to say about this game. It’s honestly pretty good for what it is. It’s a weird hybrid of a side-scrolling action platformer and stealth game, with a little bit of impossible game thrown in. Think if Solid Snake was storming Dr. Wily’s castle. The game has a much quicker pace than any Metal Gear though; you won’t be sitting there for more then a few seconds waiting for an enemy to turn away. You’re given two basic instructions at the onset of the game: Don’t be seen, and don’t murder anyone. The don’t be seen part was a given, I was expecting that considering the title and all. But the second part – no killing?! You’re a ninja and ninjas use swords and a swords sole purpose is to kill. Instead your sword is relegated to a glorified door slasher. The music’s not so bad either. I set my standards low for indie games, so I won’t say it’s good, but it’s catchy and goes with the pace of the game pretty well. This one’s also only 80 MSP and you could do much worse with a dollar.
Developer: Winglay
Released: 08/27/2011
Akane the Kunoichi
Kunoichi = female ninja
Definitely the most visually appealing of the three games reviewed. The 16-bit art style took me right back to the days of the SNES, with bright and vibrant sprite animations and backgrounds. This is a straight up action platformer. Akane performs as you would expect a ninja to – doing wall jumps, throwing projectiles at enemy ninjas, and harnessing her potent ninja magic. Although, the whole stealth aspect of being a ninja is thrown at the window. It kind of reminded me of Shinobi, but far more colorful, like if Nintendo had made Shinobi instead of Sega. The only real complaint I have is the noise she makes EVERY TIME you jump. I could really do without that, or at least some variety in effects. That aside, it was a pretty solid game. Controlled well, aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, and a halfway decent soundtrack. I’m not a particularly big fan of platformers, so for that to be my only gripe shows that there was a good degree of effort put into developing this title. At only 80 MSP, it’s definitely worth the dollar.
Developer: Haruneko
Released: 05/28/2011
Since this is my top pick of the three, it deserves a video.
Don’t forget to share this post!
Thanks for reading!
By the way, if you’re still wondering about where Ninja Stole My Bike go its inspiration, GO HERE. But I warn you, it IS racist.
Retro City Rampage
If you haven’t heard of Retro City Rampage yet, you either didn’t grow up with a NES or you’re one of those people that doesn’t play anything but Madden. But if your gaming library consists of more than just the past 3 years of EA sports titles, please, read on.
Retro City Rampage is a Grand Theft Auto open world style parody, but done in glorious 8-bit! In development now by Vblank Entertainment, a process which has almost reached completion after 7 long years. I had a chance to chat with Brian Provinciano, the founder and lead developer, briefly via email. He’s a busy man and has already done a handful of interviews with people far more important than myself, plus I didn’t want to hamper production of this game any further, so I kept the questions short.
Greg – Clearly there were many influences you had going into this game; Mega man, Duck Tales, Metal Gear, Grand Theft Auto, Bionic Commando, Jackal. You didn’t seem to stick to just games either, I see Back to the Future* in your logo. Did I miss any? What else was on your mind?
Brian – I got into games because of the games I loved growing up. Retro City Rampage is an homage and celebration to pretty much everything that I’ve held a controller to and enjoyed. I’ve lost count!
Greg – How did you find ways to fit all the parodies* in? Was there a massive brainstorming sessions or just work them in as they came to you? I feel this is a pertinent question because every time I watch a video, I notice another little easter egg.
Brian – There were some brainstorming sessions, mostly in the beginning, but otherwise it’s mostly me. Maxime (the other artist on the project) has some great ideas though too when we’re adding some extra cherries on top.
Greg – I know Grand Thefttendo was the original title. I hear it was even originally supposed to be on a cartridge. What other major changes have taken place since? Are there things that have been taken out of the game that couldn’t fit?
Brian – Grand Theftendo was an entirely different game, but same end goal –an 8-bit Grand Theft Auto style open world game. I developed that on the NES, whereas Retro City Rampage is running on current platforms and does far more than an NES actually could. It still retains the same feel but packs are more punch, fun and is dosed with more sprinkles.
Greg – I guess with the cost of production, I can see why you chose to go digital, but will we ever see a physical copy?
Brian – It’s possible, but I wouldn’t expect something like that to happen for over a year if it did. Digital is far better in many ways. It costs 6-7 figures to release a retail game. Some XBLA games gross less than that. We may sell retro boxes/manuals with download codes though. It’s still up in the air.
Greg – Can you make just one? Or two. One for me, one for you of course. I’ll pay for both.
Brian – Unfortunately you can’t just start the presses for a couple copies of a console game.
Greg – The soundtrack fits perfectly with everything I’ve seen so far. What kind of direction, if any, did you give to your composers? It all seems to be very reminiscent of NES Konami games.
Brian – Konami’s been a great influence, but they’ve been very focused on experimenting with every style, from those of different NES games to music genres that didn’t even exist in those days. The soundtrack covers everything! Some of the songs were designed to be specific homages or fit specific missions, but I also told them to just have fun and play around for many others. In both cases we ended up with amazing tracks.
Greg – I remember last year hearing that Retro City Rampage was coming out holiday 2010. It was then set to release this summer. Any final words on a release date?
Brian – Likely mid-late January 2012. For business reasons I need to wait until the AAA and holiday season craziness is over.
Greg – This has clearly been a labor of love, taking you 7 years to complete. How do you feel? What are your plans afterwards?
Brian – It’s absolutely a labor of love. I’m very happy with how it’s turned out and all of the extra time I spent polishing it makes all of the difference. I was just playing it last night and a cutscene happened which I’d polished last month. I stopped for a moment and said to myself “Wow, those little extra touches really make it feel extra special”. I’m still polishing things as we speak. That’s what makes a game great.
I have a half dozen ideas for games I really want to make, but we’ll see which ones come to fruition, as games take a long time to make.
Greg – Do you still have a classic gaming collection of your own?
Brian – I do. I think I collected about 1/3rd of the NES library. However it’s all in boxes at my parent’s place. I don’t have room for it at my place, or money to continue collecting. Every last penny these days goes directly into funding RCR.
This game is parodies within parodies. They really threw everything into a blender with this one. My personal favorite I’ve seen so far is when the player gets bitten by a radioactive plumber and gains the super stomp ability. This is the type of genius you’ll encounter throughout the game.
Retro City Rampage, coming out early first quarter 2012 for XBOX Live Arcade and Wii Ware. You can check out Retro City Rampage‘s homepage for updates as the game nears its final stages, check out the developer blog, and watch some trailers. Being a big chiptune fan myself, I really dig the soundtrack. If you like that old 8-bit style of music you can download the tracks from the game there as well. The artists do an awesome job putting together a soundtrack that feels completely retro yet altogether something new. I strongly recommend checking out each of their own sites for some rockin’ tunes.
Retro City Rampage Soundtrack Demo Mixtape from Vblank on Vimeo.
As always, don’t forget to share this post. And don’t forgot to drop Brian and his crew a line as well. They’ve put a lot of work into this game. Let them know what you think.
Thanks for reading!
*I know Back to the Future was a game too, but does anyone really care about that awful thing? Let’s forget it existed, ok?
Cthulhu Saves the World
First off, you have to love the box art, reminiscent of Capcom’s NES days. I’m immediately reminded of Little Nemo the Dream Master, though Cthulhu and Nemo have naught in common. Cthulhu Saves the World is the second game developed by Zeboyd Games. Much like its precursor, Breath of Death VII (also an awesome game to check out), Cthulhu is imagined in amazing 16-bit graphics, taking us back to a time when RPGs ruled the home gaming console.
Games don’t really seem to fit cleanly into one specific genre anymore. Call of Duty is the most popular FPS ever, but it does have RPG elements to it. You level up, acquire new skills and weapons, gain experience points. Then we have the biggest RPGs like Fallout and Mass Effect, which are basically RPGs turned shooters. The line that used to so clearly define the genre of a game has been blurred, almost completely erased even. Not that I have anything against any of those games, but I like my turn based RPGs dammit! Alas, they are a dying breed. Developers don’t really make them for consoles anymore, because unless you’re a Square Enix fanboy/girl, you want immediate action and swift gratification, which has been the standard for this generation of consoles. I get it… I mean there’s a completely valid reason; video games are more of a “business” now than they’ve ever been so they only push what sells. But that’s exactly why I wanted to review indie games in the first place; As much as I love video games, the artistic endeavor is often cast aside for the commercial product. Over commercialization of anything will ultimately cheapen it. It’s all about how much money they can squeeze out of a franchise. How many Tony Hawk games are there? How many are actually any good? So where have the good traditional RPGs gone? They’re out there, just not so mainstream as they used to be.
Cthulhu has definitely been one of the most undersaturated monsters in the media. Vampires and Zombies are so commonplace, they might as well be a friendly neighbor. How many about Cthulhu? Aside from that one South Park episode, I can’t think of any. Though he has been a familiar face in the gaming culture for years. There have definitely been games about him, but never with him as the star. Cthulhu could not slumber forever. Through the unfathomable power held by the Great Old Ones, Cthulhu has risen from the murky depths and stepped into the limelight. I think once you have a plush novelty doll of yourself, you’ve made it. Would H.P. Lovecraft approve of this game? Is this a bastardization of the Cthulhu mythos? Yes, and it’s good.
The first 5 minutes of the game introduce you to one of the most ingenious plots a god could muster..but not really. Allow me to explain. Residing in his underwater realm of R’lyeh, Cthulhu finally awakens to embark upon his destruction of the world. His plans are immediately thwarted as a mysterious stranger appears somewhat arbitrarily and easily strips Cthulhu of his power. Only by becoming a true hero and saving those in need will he be able to regain his lost power in order to destroy the world. Sounds kind of counter productive doesn’t it? Anyway, thus we are thrust into the game. I really don’t want to give anything of the story away because afterall, RPGs are mainly about the story anyway. Trust me, it is truly entertaining, humorous and just a solid good old school RPG. The dialogue is particularly light considering the cosmic greatness that is Cthulhu, and consists mostly of witty banter. So don’t expect a convoluted adventure, question the meaning of ones existence, like most of the Final Fantasy games. Gameplay is pretty much straight out of NES and SNES Dragon Quest, though with more leveling up options. Depending on your playing style, the game will take somewhere between 6 – 10 hours. Also, it seems a main battle mechanic is to make things insane. I for one am totally for anything that promotes insanity.
I would also like to quickly address the games credits. In the “special thanks” section of the credits, they list Kainazzo, a boss from Final Fantasy II, and the lowercase letter ‘e’. Maybe they thought they could sneak those in there because no one ever reads the credits. But I do!
Available for XBOX Live Arcade at 240 MS points, or on Steam you can get the Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World bundle for just $2.99. You cant go wrong. So do it. If you don’t, you’re basically admitting that you don’t like good games.
Of course I wouldn’t leave you without a chance to see the amazing theme song trailer.
As always, please don’t forget to share this post.
Thanks for reading!
Swords & Potions
Holy fudge I am so hopelessly addicted to this game right now. Usually I’m very outspoken about how much I hate garbage like this. And yet here I am, unable to stop playing it. Swords & Potions is basically like Farmville, and if you don’t know what that is then how did you ever even find this blog? In this game, instead of running a farm, you are “ye olde shoppe keep” and you have to hire craftsman and buy and sell goods to turn a profit, hopefully successfully running your business (into the ground if you’re like me).
Look, there’s no way I can explain this game and make it sound exciting. You’re either into games like this or you’re not. Either way, if you’re even remotely interested, here’s a direct link to Swords & Potions. Check for me there, send me a message. Name is hypergorilla there too.
It’s available to play for free on Kongregate, where they have tons of other games as well, most of them worthless dribble, no better than most of the nonsense you can download for free for an iPhone.
And as always, share this page, give me a like, and thanks for reading!
Metroid Cubed
No it has nothing to do with a Metroid themed Rubik’s Cube, though that would be cool too. This is about a game that’s been around for awhile that’s definitely worth a mention and shouldn’t be passed up. Metroid Cubed is a modded version of the original NES Metroid game. The creator, whose name is inconveniently never mentioned, took the 1986 classic and painstakingly took all the pixels and turned them into voxels. Basically a voxel is a 3d pixel and using his own voxel sculpting tool, he reformatted the game into a volumetric 3d environment. He explains it in greater detail on his own site. I’m impressed to say the least and I always appreciate to see someone’s work of passion come out so well.
Aside from the obvious graphical overhaul, there are a few slight changes. The first being a tweaking of the music. For the most part, the sound effects remain faithful to the original, but the soundtrack has been given a slight “earlift” (It can’t be a facelift. I mean, you can’t see sounds… Shut up, I made up the term and I can use it if I want). It’s been remixed in such a way that the music itself sounds like it has more volume; as if it too was given a 3rd dimension, not volume as in louder. The other change, a bit more major, is that the difficulty of the game has been radically altered. That is if you want to cheat. All the upgrades are available to you right from the onset. It’s optional if you want to turn them on or not, but seriously, who has the time or patience to go through all of Metroid again? You still have to find extra energy tanks, though you do start with two automatically.
Be sure to visit the site for Metroid Cubed.You can play the game there straight from the website or you can download it, both choices free. Most importantly be sure to share this link with others. Too many artists go unappreciated throughout their lives. That’s what supporting indie gaming is all about, making sure they don’t go unappreciated. But then again, Square Enix is very appreciated and look what happened to them. Maybe we should appreciate less…or knock off a few Final Fantasy fan boys… but I digress.
ANYWAY, http://pages.infinit.net/voxel/ incase you missed the link above.
Thanks for reading!
Impossible Threesome
Issue #3
I figured since this was my third review, I would do three games at once. They’ll be short though so that I don’t take up too much of your time. All 3 are what could be considered impossible games.There’s really not too much to say about these type of games other that they never end and they’re impossible and they’re impossible because they never end. For the most part, they follow basic platforming principles. You go right and jump over or onto things that are in your way. The main difference between these and a traditional platformer is that you don’t stop moving. The game progressively gets trickier and timing becomes more and more precise. There is no respite like a normal platforming game. You just go until you lose.
The Impossible Game
Released in ’09, I think it might have been the first game of its type on XBLA. It might have been the first of its kind in general, but I’m not sure. I can’t find evidence of one and my memory fails me aside from maybe Adult Swim’s Go Right, but that one was hardly impossible. Even if it wasn’t the first though, The Impossible Game is one of the the most notable, jumping from XBLA to iTunes and Android, making it the namesake of the genre.
This is the most basic impossible game. The “characters” consist of triangles and squares. You are a square and you can use other squares as platforms to jump onto, but if you hit them sideways, you die. You don’t get along with triangles at all. Any contact with a triangle and you die. You jump over triangles, or jump onto squares to give you extra height to clear a gap or jump over more triangles. That’s pretty much it. I know that sounds really simple but you need to be super precise with this one. There is very little margin for error. Your timing and reaction skills get severely taxed even just 30 seconds into the game.
I have reason to believe that, despite what I said earlier, this game does have an end. It is perhaps also the most rewarding since, even though you might never reach the end, you at least get the feeling of making some progress. There’s a pattern to the shapes that come at you, so through patience and memorization you at least accomplish a section which you will then have to repeat when you die moments later. The fact that they have released a level pack for it further lends credence to this theory. But I’ll never know for sure. I certainly don’t have the patience to find out.
Techno Kitten Adventure
For a mere 240 Microsoft points you can be harassed by obnoxious techno music! I refuse to spend much time on this game. I feel I was swindled by my love of kittens. Just look at that cute, fat, smushy, little thing. Yup, that’s what drew me into this one. Kittens, I love ’em. I would be that crazy old cat lady if I were old… or a lady. Anyway, this game isn’t a writhing mass of cuteness like I thought it would be. Instead it was a hated impossible game wrapped up in a flashing, seizure-y, techno-infused, package. Yes I’m aware that “techno” is in the title, but the kitten blinded me of its existence.
Positive points for this game: It has the widest variety of options, stages, kittens, etc, that I’ve ever seen in an impossible game, which would give it significantly more replay value. Also, all the menus make kitten noises.
Negative points for this game: Everything else.
Instead of playing this game, you could easily just go to a rave and pretend your a kitten and randomly rub against strangers. But you shouldn’t, because raves are for idiots.
Zombie Accountant
The most memorable part of video games, for me, is the music. There’s a reason why 20 years later we still hum the Sonic the Hedgehog theme. So if a bad game has good music, it might still be worth playing. Zombie Accountant isn’t necessarily a bad game but I really can’t stand these impossible games and my thoughts of, “Ugh! Another zombie game?!” almost had me passing this one over completely. I’m glad I didn’t. If for nothing else, it was worth it for the music alone. It’s got a pretty rockin’ chiptune soundtrack that comes from “The Factory” by Multifaros, whose website can be found here.
Zombie Accountant was developed by Going Loud Studios, and it follows your basic impossible game formula. Things are in your way, you have go jump over them, all while it continually gets faster. However, they’ve injected a fair blend of humor to give this game its own flair, the fact that you are an accountant that is also a zombie for starters. There are a few other details that make this one stand out in the impossible game crowd. For example, there are actually TWO commands rather than the ubiquitous jump button; you can also duck! You must duck under the other accountants. DON’T JUMP! You have no idea how many times I keep trying to jump over them. It’s just a reaction. It seems like you would be able to, but don’t bother, you can’t. The sooner you learn that the better.
Your job is to collect files which are haphazardly floating around for some reason. The more you collect and the less filing cabinets you bump into, the faster you go and the higher your score multiplier gets. I don’t seem to be able to get more than a x3 multiplier, so good luck. Score enough and you can get a promotion, which negates one of the brains you’ve accidentally removed from an accountants cranium. After your 3rd infraction, you are awarded with your Termination of Employment scorecard. Apparently eating too many brains can get you fired.
Whether you were hired by this accounting firm as a zombie, or being an accountant turned you into a zombie (which could be an intended pun), is never revealed.
END
I hate these games. They’re so mindless and I find they’re hard to walk away from once you’ve started. They’re quick enough where you can jump into a 2nd, 3rd, 76th, playthrough before you realize how much you hate yourself for sucking at it. I find parents complaining about their kids playing “mindless” games like Call of Duty, but I bet there’s a bunch out there that have downloaded these or games like this that are far more mindless, but they don’t think that way because there’s no violence in it. Ok, off topic a bit…
Please feel free to leave any comments/suggestions/ideas/yell at me.
Like me on facebook if you enjoyed any of these posts.
Thanks for reading!
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1
Issue #2
Perhaps the best dollar I’ve ever spent was on this game. Now go ahead, think about that. When was the last time you said you spent only a dollar and were completely satisfied. Even a bottle of soda generally will cost $1.25 or more and those are only temporary. 16 oz. only lasts so long and if you share it with someone, your reducing your satisfaction level; however, sharing this game actually brings your satisfaction level over 9000! Unless I was in the middle of the desert, dehydration enveloping me in its death grip, that dollar could be no better spent. But there’s no vending machines in the middle of the desert anyway, so I maintain it was my wisest dollar purchase ever.
There’s no doubt that the zombie apocalypse is coming (see ref. Zombie Survival Guide) Or in some cases is already here. I’m pretty certain that everyone in Canada is a zombie. Beware our neighbors to the north! But I digress. So with everyone’s rising interest in the oncoming zombie hoard, pop media in all its forms became flooded with zombies. Call of Duty: World at War and Left 4 Dead weren’t the first games to include killing tons of zombies, but they were perhaps the most influential of this generation. Thus opening the gateway for Ska-Studios to develop, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 Around the same time, another game simply named, Zombie Apocalypse was released. They both offer a similar style of gameplay, but IMaGWZ1i is by far the most gratifying shoot ’em up out there. Especially if you use a cost vs. fun ratio. Please refer to chart A-1 which I made using MS Paint.
*A-1
As you can see they are pretty close in fun factor, hovering somewhere between a 7 and 8. However, Zombie Apocalypse costs 800 Microsoft points ($10) and IMaGWZ1i is 80($1), IMaGWZ1i has an astoundingly high positive CvF (cost vs. fun) differential of +6.5, while ZAs CvF is actually negative. That means IMaGWZ1i is nearly 217% more fun per dollar!
Even though Zombie Apocalypse came out only a month later, I’m going to claim that they completely copied IMaGWZ1i, and with their larger budget, were able to work on it an accelerated schedule to get the game released in just over a month. They both share the same concept; kill wave after wave of zombies. They both have a similar weapon loadout; machine guns, flamethrowers, shotguns, etc. IMaGWZ1i just executes it better.
Now despite what I may have lead you to believe, this game really isn’t about the zombie apocalypse, but there are definitely zombies in it, and you must kill them, all of them. You get thrown in without any explanation of what to do, but do you need one? Controls are simple, left stick is movement and right stick shoots. I really like this control scheme. It’s been around awhile but more and more games are using it now. The ease of its style makes it easier to just get into the combat and have fun without being bogged down with too many commands. There are plenty of powerups to help keep up the fight against the hoard; there is almost never a moment when there isn’t a new powerup popping up somewhere on the screen, often there are a dozen or so, and they are all necessary because there is also never a moment when the screen isn’t littered with things that want to kill you. And thats pretty much how you play the game. You spend your time running from powerup to powerup, dodging and killing as many zombies as you can in between.
Taking graphics out of consideration, the visuals are quite amazing. That is to say, if you were ever uncertain if a game could give you a seizure, this is the game to play. Seriously, this is a warning. If you have any friends with epilepsy and you want a good laugh, invite them over to enjoy up to 4 player co-op. Without giving too much away, there are far more enemies in this game than just zombies. After the first wave, everything becomes complete nonsense and it only gets worse as time goes on. Confusion takes center stage pretty quickly; you’re not sure what’s happening and are rarely able to accurately locate yourself on the screen and if you are playing with 4 people, it’s utter chaos, especially when anger mode starts.
The soundtrack is awesome. You can check it out yourself here. It’s a catchy little ditty about the game itself and often I find myself playing just to hear the song. On a side note, an odd point about the game is that the soundtrack is as long as the game itself. The game just ends. You either die or survive the predetermined time limit and are awarded your final score. This is by no means a strike against the game. It has just the right amount of gameplay to not get annoying or boring. If it dragged on any longer than it does, it would become sorely tedious. Whether it was because the developers had the keen sense to see ahead, or because of budget concerns or what have you, this is the most neatly wrapped up game you can buy for a dollar. And you should buy it…now… it’s only a dollar.
Please feel free to leave any comments/suggestions/ideas/yell at me. A like on facebook would be awesome, but subscribing would be more awesome!
Thanks for reading!
I Wanna Be The Guy
Issue #1
For my first official game review on this blog, I’ll be talking about one of the most infamous indie games out there. Those of you who haven’t heard of I Wanna be the Guy yet, it was created by a complete sadist, Michael “Kayin” O’Reilly, in 2007, and it is perhaps the hardest game I have ever played. No, strike that. It’s DEFINITELY the hardest game I’ve ever played. Just saying that phrase, the hardest, doesn’t even really give you the scope of its complete and unrelenting evilness. It is the epitome of unfair. I am reminded of Street Fighter II, fighting M. Bison for the first time, and complaining that the computer cheats. That pales in comparison to the defeated, quivering, lump of fail that IWTBG leaves in its wake. Be careful not to use a control pad to play this game or it will, with utmost certainty, get thrown across the room in anger. Mainly because IWBTG breaks all conventions that have been by now practically hard wired into us by classic platforming games. Oh look, there’s a ledge I can jump onto for safety. NOPE! IT WAS A TRICK! Oh and what about the fruit in the tree? It’s gonna fall on me, better jump over it. WRONG AGAIN! They fall UP too! This game’s not fun and for those who think it is, they have a serious masochistic streak that probably requires professional treatment. It’s kind of like Two Girls One Cup in that you don’t really enjoy watching it (please say you don’t really enjoy it), but you’ll make your friends play it so you can behold the horror on their faces.
Ok, so maybe that all sounds entirely too hyperbolic for some of you or maybe even like I’m whining, but I do in fact enjoy games with a challenge; this game is just completely out of control. Now I come from a generation when video games were more about skill, when storylines and graphics were generally not even considered. The deepest plot of my youth was, “But our princess is in another castle.” So when they start you off in this game, absent of directions or hints of any kind, it was nothing new to me. Usually games like this still follow similar patterns and even if you’ve never played it before, you can still usually get the hang of it in a few moments. Then IWBTG comes along and gives you, and what you think about platformers, the big ol’ middle finger. At the very beginning you start, much like many other platformers, standing on the left side of the screen facing towards the right. I spent about 20 minutes trying to go this direction only to figure out that no matter what you try, it’s the wrong direction. It leads to certain doom. One of three spiked walls come slamming out of nowhere and after finally successfully navigating those, the floor below is littered with spikes with NO WAY IN HELL to get to the only safe looking ledge in the room. Then, only due to jumping relentlessly out of frustration, I jumped up the hole which I initially fell through to start the game, and there’s a whole different direction to go! It’s all bright and happy looking, with trees and fruit.
With untold elation, my smiling Kid joyfully plodded his way again towards the right and DEAD, another splatterization caused by the unassuming fruit. I was furious, but the curiosity caused by discovering the new room would not allow me to quit yet. After a few more tries I got past the fruit and was about to loop back around, onto the ledges above, towards what would appear now as an easy victory to the next screen, but no. The fruit came right off the tree and flew UP at me. Eff that game, I was done. And that was only the beginning few screens of the game.
There are 4 difficulty settings with the default setting as HARD. You can then pick between medium, very hard, or impossible, though they don’t give you an easy setting. And don’t start thinking that medium is easy, it’s still just as unforgiving and no matter what difficulty you pick, if you get hit even just once, even the slightest little tap, you’re dead. Additionally, if you do try on medium, they taunt you by putting a pink bow on your sprite. The only redeeming quality this game has is that you can hit ‘R’ at any point to retry and the reload is instantaneous. Though you may have to go back quite a ways and redo some stroke-inducing series of jumps. On impossible they don’t even offer this nicety though. Just one death and that’s it, it’s over.
This may all seem like a negative review, but I assure you it’s not. On some level, I am quite fond of this game. I mean it’s better than cutting yourself right? It plays very well for a game controlled by a keyboard. The controls are quick and responsive, the movements are very precise, and there’s no momentum on the character from jumping so you don’t slide around when you actually do land safely somewhere. And of course there’s the obligatory double-jump, which is imperative to your survival.
IWBTG plays up some fan service to various classics, including Punch-Out!!, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Mega Man, and Zelda just to name a few. It’s worth playing through just to see how these get introduced throughout the game.
I definitely think it’s more fun to watch someone else shorten their lifespan with IWBTG than to actually play myself. Because you can find anything on YouTube, there’s a video of someone doing a complete run of the game in five parts. I’m disgusted with these videos though because of how easy it makes it look. You may not even want to play after watching and seeing some of the bullcrap the game throws at you. The first of the five videos is posted below and should link to the others.
Seriously though, if you enjoy a good challenge, or you want to irritate your friends and make them play it, download I Wanna Be The Guy. You can check out the official page of I Wanna Be The Guy below. The download is free, and they do welcome donations.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you agree/disagree with me about anything, please feel free to leave a comment. I’m very welcoming to harassment. And if you haven’t checked out my trip to E3, it’s under the uncategorized section.
Thanks for reading!
gameblorg 