Indie Games on Steam
Steam has continued to have amazing sales every weekend, with last week's being every Ghost Recon game for $20, and the week before being a big discount on Left 4 Dead that
reportedly increased sales by 3000%. This week's sale gives gamers a chance to support the little guys by offering five indie titles for a mere $10. Naturally, I wouldn't be writing this post if I didn't succumb to the temptation to take Steam up on their offer.
I've already tried all five games and they make a nice little ensemble. Four of the games are well suited for playing in a window, which can be a nice feature if you want to grab a quick game while doing something else on the side; I exclude Multiwinia in this regard because, well, it's a pretty freakin' intense RTS and really deserves to be played fullscreen. The overall verdict is that the package is definitely worth $10 if you feel like trying something new, and there's even a chance that one or two of the games will strongly appeal to you. Read on for particulars.
Trials 2Trials 2: Second Edition is one of the strongest titles of the bunch, in my opinion. It's a motocross stunt racer--a cross between Excitebike and Trackmania. There's a pretty steep learning curve involved, and I didn't make it very far in the roughly 30 minutes that I played, but it seems like a worthwhile game if you stick with it. I'm likely to revisit this one from time to time and may even get hooked on it.
EetsEets is a Flash-based puzzle game that's a little bit like Lemmings crossed with The Incredible Machine. I only played this one for about 15 minutes because it didn't particularly grab me. The concept is good, but unoriginal, and the visuals are on the loud side, although the fun animations are certainly a plus. It's not a bad game, but I can't see myself investing much time in it.
Gravitron 2Gravitron 2 must have started out with somebody writing their own clone of Lunar Lander and deciding to throw guns into the mix. It's a fun concept and reasonably executed, but this is easily the lowest budget title in the mix and it shows. I had fun with it for about 10 minutes, but I'd be hard-pressed to play this game for very long even if it was free. On the plus side, I'm glad that I tried it, and it's not a bad option for some quick, simple fun.
MultiwiniaI didn't expect much from Multiwinia because I played the Darwinia demo years ago and decided that it wasn't for me. Since then I haven't paid much attention to all things Darwinia related, so it was surprising for me to see how far the series has come. The controls are still awkward but not as bad as I remember, and the variety play modes and levels is appealing. I easily lost an hour to this game without batting an eye. So far this is the strongest game in the package and possibly worth the $10 on its own.
I-FluidWTF? There's another game? Shit... I forgot to play this one. Well, I can't very well review it without even having seen the damned thing, but check out
the trailer video for some idea of what I-Fluid is all about. It shows promise. If I'm strongly impressed by it, I may even post a follow-up about it. Right now the Steam servers are complaining about being too busy, so I can't install it.
Time to go play Street Fighter IV. :)
Street Fighter IV
I sat down to play Street Fighter IV yesterday thinking that I'd get in an hour or two before moving on to something else... some Warlords III: Darklords Rising, some Final Fantasy VII, some Skate 2, some Bully... something else. My gaming focus has been spread out of late. But it turns out that Street Fighter IV had other plans for me: I played pretty much four hours straight.
Initially I was put off by SF IV's visual style. It didn't look as good on my home TV as it did when I first saw trailers of it on the web last year. But the solid gameplay was enough of a hook that I stuck with it, and as the hours went by the visuals bothered me less and less. They've even started to grow on me.
Two massive hooks kept me glued to my
Hori Fighting Stick EX2 last night: the first was the variety of play modes available, and the second was how rapidly I found myself climbing the learning curve. Initially I tried playing a standard Arcade game on Normal. I have some Street Fighter experience--although not a lot--so I figured I could handle it, but I was wrong. In order to beat the final boss, I had to dial the difficulty back to "Very Easy," which was discouraging.
Once I got warmed up, I decided to try the online play. SF IV has a great idea on how to manage online matches: you can configure the options to let you play a standard Arcade game and interrupt you when an online opponent is available. These options are accessible using the RB button from the main menu, and at first I was rather confused by them. Turning this mode on basically means "interrupt me every 10 seconds with a new online match," although it did once happen that I went about 15 minutes without a new match coming up, which made me wonder if the matchmaking servers were experiencing an outage.
I also found that going into the Xbox Live Game menu and trying to join an existing game lobby was futile. Every game I tried to join was gone by the time I selected it, which suggests to me that most of the players online are in this menu hammering away on existing game lobbies rather than using the option to play Arcade mode while they wait for an opponent to challenge them.
The other thing I found, unsurprisingly, is that there aren't a lot of Street Fighter noobs on Xbox Live, at least not by my rather low standards. Out of about twenty matches, I had about two opponents of clearly lesser skill (these would be your basic noobs), and maybe five others of comparable skill (relative noobs). All of the others beat me easily.
After the online play, I ventured into the Challenges mode, which is really where I should have started. The challenges essentially teach you how to play the game, with the lowest level ones being extremely easy. A combination of it being bedtime and finding myself losing my focus stopped me from playing challenges for what could have easily been another couple of hours.
The most frustrating thing about stopping is that I was just getting good enough to be able to beat Arcade mode on Normal difficulty.
In other news, I borrowed a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition, which is great because I've wanted to try it but find it hard to justify buying since I already have the PS2 version. Scholarship Edition is roughly the same excellent game, but at higher resolution and with a better framerate. Bully really is a terrific game: the writing is excellent, the concept is novel, and the gameplay is as solid as GTA IV's. It has that "just one more mission" quality that keeps me playing for hours, and in some ways I find the smaller setting (compared to GTA games) and carefree theme (schoolyard pranks) to be a liberating change of pace.
Bully is also a good length. I've played maybe 10 hours of it and only finished a third or so of the game. By the time I've hit 100% completion--if I even get that far--I'll be ready to shelve it indefinitely. I will be nagging Fritzkrieg to play it, however. :)
R-Type: Dimensions, FF VII
At the price point of 1200 MS points, I was wary enough of R-Type: Dimensions to try the demo before buying it. It didn't take long for me to decide that it was worth the 1200 points, but then I am a sucker for classic shoot-em-ups, and R-Type is one of the most classic there is.
R-Type: Dimensions offers two features in particular that make it worthwhile. The first is the ability to toggle between updated and original graphics at any time simply by hitting the Y button. The updated graphics look fantastic and are very true to the source material, which creates a neat effect when you toggle between them. The toggling uses a cross-fade effect rather than an instant switch, so right before your eyes you see the next gen R-Type engine morph into a retro title.
The other great feature is the ability to choose between "Infinite" and "Classic" game modes. Infinite mode gives you unlimited lives and has you respawn immediately when you die rather than going back to the last checkpoint. How many times you die in each stage gets posted to the leaderboard along with your score, which gives you a strong incentive to improve at the game. At the same time, having unlimited lives allows you to easily experience all of R-Type's brilliant stages without having to become a slave to the game. Players who want to play R-Type with the traditional rules can use "Classic" mode for that.
Overall I am very impressed with R-Type: Dimensions. It's exactly the kind of remake that I wanted, and failed to get, from Galaga Legions and 1942: Joint Strike. Perhaps the only better XBLA titles in the same genre are Ikaruga and Geometry Wars 2.
In other news,
Battlefield 1942 is getting a remake using the Battlefield: Bad Company engine. So far, BF42, BF2, and BF:BC are the only entries in the series that I've enjoyed, and I am hopeful that this one will be a goodie.
I should mention that I've started a long overdue (about ten years overdue) play-through of FF VII. When I originally played through the game, I got within a few hours of the end and then watched the ending when my brother beat the game, so I never actually finished FF VII. Additionally, I was a university student at the time, which made it difficult to focus on the game's story. I've been on a strong RPG kick lately while simultaneously being on a World of Warcraft break, which makes this the perfect time to revisit FF VII. So far I am twelve hours into the game and thoroughly enjoying it.
Fritzkrieg and I often discuss how way-ward JRPGs have become, and it comes up from time to time on this blog. The general trends we've noticed include the spread of gimmicky combat systems that aren't much fun, characters becoming shallow and/or jaded to the point of being uninteresting, and plots becoming vapid and pointless. The stereotypical JRPG these days would be about a young man with a head full of haircare products who is chasing his ambition to become more powerful for power's own sake in a troubled world where people are generally only out for themselves. Also the combat system would likely involve something like spinning slot machine dials or awkward button combos, while lacking tactical challenge.
Twelve years ago, the stereotype I just described did not exist, although JRPGs were very much alive. Then came games like FF VII and Grandia, and it's been a continual downward spiral from there. For years I resented FF VII for that, and for years after the resentment faded, I just didn't care about FF VII. The thing that surprises me going back to FF VII now is just how much heart and soul are in it. Compared to some of the major JRPGs before it (like Chrono Trigger and FF VI), FF VII comes across as jaded and a little shallow. Compared to the decade's worth of JRPGs that have followed in FF VII's footsteps, FF VII is bursting with creativity and feeling.
One factor at play here is certainly that I only now finally have the attention necessary to truly appreciate FF VII, but there's also definitely something to be said for the fact that so many JRPGs these days try to copy the superficial elements of FF VII while missing out on the core of the game. Taking the time to go back and revisit FF VII has been a very interesting experience for me in that context.
