Dead Space Ignition

The Short


Pros
- Bridges the gap between Dead Space and Dead Space 2...sort of
- Multiple endings
- Has a character that shows up (and is killed) in the first few moments of Dead Space 2
- Unlocks some gear and text/voice logs in Dead Space 2
- Was free if you pre-ordered Dead Space 2


Cons
- Actual game is total garbage
- Story is poorly written and poorly voice acted
- Animations for the "active comic" look horrendous
- Only has three "games," all of which quickly get dull and tedious
- Costs $5 if you didn't pre-order. It should just be free.

Dead Space Ignition only has three "games" included

The Long

Dead Space: Ignition is a great example of how to try and ruin an excellent game's upcoming release by promoting it with a crappy one. Made to try and promote the quite good Dead Space 2, Ignition is an "interactive comic" that follows the stories of two people on the Sprawl space station shortly following the necromorph outbreak there (which sets the stage for Dead Space 2). In concept, having a story that (sort of) bridges the gap in story between Dead Space and Dead Space 2 and is provided as a free pre-order exclusive sounds like a good idea. That would have been true, if they'd actually put any time, effort, or care into this "game."

This is some quality art. 

First off, everything regarding the presentation is horrible. The art is hideous. The "animations" could have been done with paper cutouts and moved by three-year-olds. The voice acting is stilted and the script is unrealistic. For a story about a space station being overthrown by rabid zombie aliens, they sure putter around for a good 10 minutes with horrible "romance" and some failed attempt at character development. Once the aliens do show up nobody sounds particularly worried, which is probably more the fault of the voice actors and script than anything else.

As a bonus, the game has a lot of alternate endings, but in order to get to them you have to endure the first horrible bit over and over again. Luckily you can fast-forward through parts you've already seen, which sort of helps if you are burning through it to get all the achievements. But you could just not play this game at all, which would probably be a better idea.

That guy's dead. 

The game has only three minigames, as outlined above, but I'll give you a quick blurb for each. It's worth noting that the puzzles never change between playthroughs, meaning you'll be doing that first puzzle several times for the multiple endings. 

- Hardware Crack is essentially a grid-based, mirror puzzle game. Essentially you have lasers emitting different color lights, and you have to re-arrange the mirrors/splitters given to you in order to have the right colors light up the right nodes. It's actually a pretty decent puzzle, I guess, but isn't particularly exciting. It also gets stupid hard near the end. 

- System Override is a reverse tower defense, where you send out little "viruses" in order to break through a system's defenses (towers). Which would be cool, except it's really easy to just spam specific viruses to easily win. So...this one is cool in concept, total failure in execution. 

- Trace Route is kind of like one of those side-scrolling shooters, mixed with the "survival run" games they love putting out in the iPhone. Basically you are racing through an obstacle course in an attempt to beat the other nodes to the end of a thing. This is the most "game" like of all of them, but there is nothing more frustrating than being right next to the end and having the game cheat to make you start over. 

I sort of light the light puzzle game. I think? Too bad the graphics look so boring. 

If this seems sparse, it's because it is. Each playthrough of Ignition maybe has two of each of these above games, with the games changing slightly when you change "routes" through the story. All in all there's maybe two dozen total unique games which, for a $5 game, is pretty damn awful.

The only positive thing I can think of is that if you have this game and have beaten it on your account, special rooms in the Dead Space 2 game unlock, giving you exclusive audio logs (that relate to Ignition's story, though the game never says which ending is "canon"), some weapons and items, and an exclusive "hacker" suit that is more cosmetic than useful. 

At least you get a pimpin' coat

I bought a code for this game off eBay for $2 because I was getting Dead Space 2 and wanted to be sure I was getting the "whole experience." After playing through the entire game multiple times and finding all the secret rooms unlocked by this game, I can assure you that you are missing out on nothing by completely ignoring this piece of crap. Yeah, having the hacker suit early is nice, and the extra items and money is useful, but is it really worth subjecting yourself to both the hit to your wallet and having to play through this unfun, uninspired prequel? Hint: it isn't. Pretend this game doesn't exist and just play Dead Space 2. It's a lot better.

Since there is hardly a game here, giving it zero out of five stars isn't too difficult. Here's hoping when the inevitable Dead Space 3 comes out their "bonus" to those who pre-order is a bit more rewarding to the early adapters. 

Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley

The Short


Pros
- Over the top brand of humor
- Three unique worlds that emulate the style of different comic books
- Massive amounts of unlocks including themes, movies, etc.
- Mix of platforming, duel-stick shooting, and third-person shooting
- Manga and "Silver Age" Comic worlds are pretty hilarious

Cons
- Overly difficult and unfair
- Extremely repetitive
- Humor gets in your face too fast, too often
- "Conan" world comics are very lacking in the others' style
- Lots of unlocks are great, but it takes a very, very long time slogging through the same levels to get them all

As you can see, there are both comics and jumping in Comic Jumper

The Long

I make no secret in declaring my adoration of Twisted Pixel. I think they are a company that has risen above many other indie studios with a mix of humor, unique ideas, and just general cleverness. The Maw is one of my wife and my favorite games, and Splosion Man was also an excellent, overly difficult platform (ala Super Meat Boy). I also liked their follow up to Comic Jumper: The Gunstringer. 

Unfortunately, though, all my biased love can't argue against the fact that Comic Jumper has a lot of problems, many of which will turn most people off.

The comic eras you go to are very true to the source material. It looks really great. 

Captain Smiley is a washed-up comic book hero. Nobody wants to buy his lame books, people would rather use them as toilet paper than actually read them (as explained in a hilarious FMV video at the beginning), and he's basically about to be out of a job. Luckily, in an incredibly meta twist, Twisted Pixel buys Captain Smiley's comic line, and decide the best way to get him back on his feet is to insert him into different genres of comics throughout time, until he has enough of a following again to launch a new line of comic books starring himself.

It's a silly story (that reminded me a bit of Matt Hazard, with the characters being self-aware of their plight) and as a whole it really just exists to show some interesting version of Captain Smiley and push forward the humor. Which brings me to the first problem.

Nanoc. Get it? It's "Conan" backwards. Like "Alucard" and "Dracula."

Twisted Pixel is known for their humor. The Maw was a mix of subtle and over-the-top humor, expressed through no dialogue whatsoever. Splosion Man, as well, had a hefty dose of humor with no words actually being spoken. Well the voice actors are here in full force in Captain Smiley, and are ready to fill your ear-holes with gobs of humor. And by humor I mean in your face, forced, crass "jokes" thinly connected to what is going on in the world.

The main issue with this is most characters (Star [the annoying star in Smiley's chest], Brad [Smiley's gym-visiting, girl loving arch-nemesis], etc.) are either boring and lame (like the lady above in the "Nanoc the Barbarian" era of comics) or act like obnoxious, loud 12-year-olds who think they are funny (Star being the main offender here). While I can get the jokes are that these characters are annoying (and hence why Smiley's comics stopped selling), nearly everything they say is grating and unfunny. It wears on you quickly, especially since they tend to never shut up. 

It isn't all bad. A few lines are actually decently written and performed, though I'd say 20% would be a decent estimate of the good ones. The actual idea leads to lots of funny, silly situations (including the Silver Age having the main villain be a feminist crow and every offensive word being "censored" and fined) which are then beaten over the head with more crass dialogue. There is nothing subtle here, and when something looks like it is about to be the game makes sure to remind you, like a young child, that it is doing something clever. "Look at that! Ha, aren't we funny!" The game very much screams at you, and you just breath a sigh and pat it on on the head and think "Very good," the magic gone. 

Anime world is pretty funny on its own. No need to beat the joke home, Captain Smiley

I bring up the humor so much because it obviously is supposed to pull the gameplay forward, which isn't very good. The is essentially a platformer with duel-stick shooter controls: left stick moves, right stick aims and shoots, A jumps, etc. As a whole this should work, as it runs a lot like the Metal Slug games (which I love), but there are a few fundamental flaws. First off, your character starts off extremely weak and underpowered. I understand this is supposed to make the game more "difficult," but when I'm spending 5-10 minutes on a miniboss in the first level, something is wrong here (especially when there are three of them in a single level). The game is also not particularly liberal with checkpoints, meaning it's very easy to get to the boss, die, and have to start the whole tedious affair over. Bullets don't stagger or slow enemies, which means they'll just keep coming as you desperately try to get out of the way. 

The difficulty is weird, because sometimes it's stupidly easy (regular enemies die really fast) and other times it's really hard (it switches to "third persion" view, which basically turns into a light-gun style game, meaning you take a lot of hits). Once you upgrade the game becomes almost a total cakewalk, with the exception of the last level which is pretty dang hard. It's just a poorly balanced experience, which jumps between "frustrating" to "boring" very quickly, which is bad. 

Despite only having eleven levels, all of which are reasonably short, the game drags.

Graphically, the game is using the Twisted Pixel beard engine, which means it looks passable technologically and great artistically. The difference between the worlds are drastic, and they really adhere to the theme completely, which works. Manga world was a particular favorite, with Captain Smiley having no idea what was going on in the crazy japanese book (and making you go right to left vs left to right) as stuff just gets weirder and weirder. The art style is probably the biggest and best joke in and of itself: it sells its premise well in hilarious and bizarre ways. If only we could shut Star up long enough to enjoy it. 

And you have the Twisted Pixel guys watching your every move. 

As it stands, it's hard to recommend Comic Jumper. It bounces between being brilliant and being horrible, with its humor both helping and hurting it on every turn. The weak gameplay only makes it harder for me to recommend it, because you'll be essentially playing it just for the story, and as I've said it's pretty much hit-or-miss. 

I paid $15 for it, which I think is a bit too much, especially considering the game is short. It's $10 right now, but I think getting it on sale for $5 is actually a pretty good deal. But I'd recommend watching a few clips of it on youtube: if you dig the humor, jump on it. If you don't, ignore it completely.

As it stands, two out of five is my consensus. At least Twisted Pixel seemed to learn their lesson when they made The Gunstringer. It's just too bad this game stands pretty clear as a dud in their otherwise excellent career. 

TMNT: Turtles in Time Reshelled

The Short


Pros
- Has all the turtles
- You can play four player
- Unlimited continues
- Based on a game that was pretty awesome

Cons
- Total garbage
- Looks horrendous
- Has done nothing to improve the formula
- Super short
- Replaced all the classic 90s goofy turtles with the "modern edgy" turtles
- Missing levels from the SNES version, including the final one and final boss fight
- Cheap deaths, unfun, boring, and just all-around awful

Cowa-sucks-a!

The Long


TMNT: Turtles in Time is an arcade and SNES classic. Basically just a beat 'em up in the vein of Golden Axe or the previously released TMNT: The Arcade Game on NES (which is also good), it still holds up pretty good as some solid, arcade fun. I'm well aware I've ranted about games being simple just to eat quarters, but the fun in these games derives from playing it with friends, which takes away the sting of the games being simple and turns them into a good time. That being said, I'll admit that it puts these beat-em-ups on razor's edge, teetering between being "fun" and being "a total suckfest."

TMNT: Turtles in Time Reshelled is "a total suckfest."

Essentially a remade version of the classic SNES game (or the Arcade game, since the SNES game has more levels and bosses which are omitted from this "upgrade"), Reshelled is an abomination. Everything that makes beat 'em ups fun: the challenge while still feeling reasonably fair, the controls, the interesting setpieces: all are ruined in this remake. It's a horrible, awful reimagining of a game that is a "classic" (though not really the best game in terms of holding up today) that should just not exist.

The original SNES version looks better than the "remade" version above. 

First off, the game looks like garbage. Everything looks like Vaseline was smeared all over the screen, the remade character designs lifeless and boring. I get that in the original game you just fought the same thugs over and over, but at least they sort of looked interesting. These all look like bland pallet swaps, or if they aren't they still look awful. The background are especially big offenders, losing whatever pixelated charm the original had with bland, ugly scenery throughout. Effects are also bad, with enemies dying with bairly a "pop," explosions looking poor and underpowered, and pretty much the whole thing looking like crap. The animations also look janky, the turtles look bad (they are their "hardcore" reboot version, which is stupid) and it is just a crappy looking product all around.

The addition of voices doesn't help the game, either. Since these are the rebooted Turtles, rather than corny lines they instead just repeat the same lines of awful dialogue over and over. As a bonus, I think one guy did the voice acting for the entire thing, since every turtle sounds exactly the same. Nice work. 

The "throw the enemy at the screen" kill is back, and it goes to show just how little effort went into these graphics. 

But hey, as long as the game plays ok, who cares if it's hideous, right? Well, it plays bad. Really bad. First of, they added "eight directional movement" and attacks, but didn't seem to give it to the enemies (who still only attack in four directions) meaning the game is pretty much a total cakewalk. Because of the poor design and zoomed in camera, when you play with four players you can hardly see what is going on due to the massive amount of guys just waiting to be killed. On top of it, the controls are poor. I never really felt in total control, either when moving or attacking or picking my direction. Something was really off, which feels like a lame cop-out description but if you played it you'd know what I mean. The lack of precision makes levels where there are environmental hazards all the more obnoxious.

But perhaps Reshelled's biggest sin is that it's just...boring. It's a monotonous, grinding routine that isn't very fun. The game certainly throws loads and loads of enemies at you, but it does little to pick it up. Sure some levels are on rafts or boards, but the principle of just "mash attack at the nearest guy" is still in full effect. In fact, the more enemies make it worse, with killing guys being completely unsatisfying about half-way through the first stage. Even four player, which is how we played it (and have played plenty of these types of games, including Castle Crashers and the Arcade X-Men game) is just drawn-out and boring. As a bonus, you can beat the whole game in about 45 minutes, with no reason whatsoever to revisit it unless you like playing with less lives for some reason.

It plays as bad as it looks, people. 

I paid $2 for this game on sale. I want my $2 back. Even for the Achievements it wasn't worth my time or hard drive space, much less my money. Apparently Ubisoft realized this game was festering rancid vomit as well, because they completely pulled it from both XBLA and PSN, so you can't even buy it anymore. All for the better: let this game disappear and die forever, thrown away like that week-old pizza that's beginning to grow mold. 

At least we'll always have the SNES version. Zero out of five stars. 

Crackdown 2

The Short

Pros

- Same fundamental addicting orb-grabbing as Crackdown

- Four player co-op leads to some total madness

- Add zombies. That's cool, I guess. 

- Essentially does all the same things Crackdown did, providing you a big city with lots of things to play with

Cons

- Provides literally no change or improvements over the first game

- Climbing is still cumbersome and tedious, especially in a world where Assassin's Creed and Prototype exist

- More agility orbs, including ones that run away and are obnoxious to grab. Levels for these are slower.

- Exact same city, to a "t." No serious new content here. 

- Gameplay is the same repetitive, droll thing over and over again

- The "evolving cars" aspect from the first game is gone, which is too bad

- Less content than the first game

- Graphics are unchanged, which is to say they look pretty bad. Even the "cell shading" style can't save it

- Essentially, this game is the first Crackdown with a step forward (four player co-op) and several steps back, meaning you should just play the first game

Crackdown 2 is Crackdown with beasties. And suffering them not to live. 

The Long

Crackdown is a weird game, for a variety of reasons. It was released with a code to get into the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, which meant a lot of people bought Crackdown just to play some Halo. To everybody's surprise (especially the ones who just considered the Crackdown disc a nice coaster next to their Halo alien blasting beta) Crackdown was actually a pretty good game. Sort of an odd hybrid between Grand Theft Auto, a leveling/rpg system, and cop simulator, Crackdown did a lot of things that were new and interesting to the open world genre at the time. It had a heavy focus on vertical traversal, lots of leveling in different areas (guns, melee, driving, climbing, and explosives) with lots of dramatic changes as you upgraded. Rockets that started off weak eventually had massive explosions, punches that barely scratched a guy were soon launching buses into the air, and while your super-cop at first could hardly jump, soon he was scaling buildings. 

It was a neat little game, and while some parts of it were clunky (the climbing especially) it was good at the time. When they announced Crackdown 2 a while later, promising improvements (and in a world where Assassin's Creed, Infamous, and Prototype had done the vertical traversal much better) and a bigger, more expansive experience, I was excited. Crackdown very much threw down the gauntlet for open-world games like this, and when the others had come to match it, I could only imagine Crackdown 2 would do its best to retake or at least match the competition.

Bad news. It didn't. In fact, it might be worse than the first game. 

They added gliding (aped from Prototype) but you don't unlock it until way, WAY late in the game

On the offset, you might think this game isn't that bad. Booting it up you'll get a serious feeling of deja vu: everything seems almost exactly the same. Your blue armored, helmeted dude. The same five attributes to level up (guns, melee, driving, climbing, explosives) and they level up in the same way as before. There are green orbs everywhere, testing your skill at climbing and jumping and proving extremely frustrating when you leap and just miss one after climbing a stupid building for fifteen minutes. It's even the exact same city, down to every detail! Ok, maybe there are one or two changes, but if you spent a lot of time in the first game you'll easily remember the districts, buildings, and areas of Pacific City. But hey, more of the same is good, right?

No. Not really.

Here's the thing, the first Crackdown was released in 2007, near the start of the Xbox 360's lifecycle. At this point, the biggest open world game out there was the Grand Theft Auto series, with the whole "open world superhero sim" not really kicking off. However, since then Crackdown inspired a bunch of these types of games. I've mentioned a lot before, but specifically Prototype showed how powerful, godlike, and just plain fun being a superhuman badass thrown into a free-roaming city could be. Traversal was fast (you literally held a button and just ran up the side of buildings) and felt clean, and rather than hindering you the city was more of a plaything. This was the direction the genre had moved, improving upon Crackdown's formula to streamline out the annoying parts and add more of the parts people enjoyed. 

Crackdown 2 pretends those games don't even exists, and goes right back to its clunky, 2007 gameplay.

Throwing cars around is still pretty awesome

Climbing is the biggest offender here. Since you start out barely being able to jump, it is imperative you quickly grab a bunch of orbs to power up your jumping. The issue is 1. There are more orbs in this game, meaning you have to collect more to level up and 2. The obnoxious, "I don't know if I can make this jump" is back. The biggest problem with Crackdown's vertical traversal was the fact that you never knew if you could make a jump, and failing just slightly could backtrack several minutes of work. This was slightly remedied once you maxed out your "Agility" stat, seeing as you could jump like 40 feet into the air and leap building to building. But it was still annoying when you knew where you were supposed to go, but the game just didn't give you the handholds (or tell you where they were) to get there. Again, this was remedied in every other game of this type, mostly be providing easier handholds or making it more automatic. Crackdown 2 doesn't streamline it at all, keeping the awful, clunky traversal from the first game. This was fine in 2007, it is not fine now.

Secondly, everything else about the game is the same. The guns are the same. The explosions (while great) are the same (start small, get big). Targeting is the same. Melee combat is as clunky as ever. Driving is also just as loose as before. These are things that, again, were forgivable in 2007's Crackdown, but this game came out in 2011. It's like Ruffian literally did nothing to improve or change the old game, other than add a (slightly) new coat of paint.

Oh, an zombies. Let's talk about those.

Because zombies in video games aren't old or anything. 

So the game has a day/night cycle (as did the first game) but now when night rolls around the "Freaks" (aka zombies) crawl out of the sewers and take over the city! Basically it spawns hundreds of these guys, later adding bigger ones that have the power to knock you over and keep you pinned on the ground (a gameplay favorite), punch you off cliffs or buildings (also a favorite), attack at range to make sure you can't ever climb anything again (yay for bad climbing!) and swarm you so you get stuck in a "getting hit" animation. Awesome!

The Freaks are also the reason for the whole "story" element of the game. Now, granted, Crackdown didn't exactly have the most deep story or mission structure. Basically you went and blew up certain installations, and when you'd blown up enough you'd go to a "safehouse" of a gang member, sack it, and then the area would be cleaned out. It was kind of weak, but since this was 2007 we were more forgiving, and honestly I spent more time dicking around the city than doing the actual missions.

Apparently Ruffian really liked the repetitive mission structure, because they basically tripled it and...that was it. 

Adding turrets to trucks is not a significant enough change, Crackdown 2

Here's how it works. During the day, you go around and mess up game installations, just as before. This consists of marking a place for an Agency (police) drop, then killing everybody in the area while you wait for the chopper to take its sweet time showing up. After they do you've "cleaned out" the area (though it can be recaptured if you don't guard it, which is a major pain in the ass) and you can proceed to the next one. After about three areas in a group the whole section of town is cleared. Hooray. You've won the war on drugs. Now do it fifteen more times.

Then at night you have the ZAMBIES...sorry, "Freaks." Anyway, you'd expect some sort of riveting gameplay innovation with these guys right? Wrong! 

First off you go murder a bunch of dudes around these "light towers," which are scattered at the most inconvenient places around the city. So you climb up there, kill a bunch of dudes or Freaks, and turn them on. Once you have three on, you unlock a "light bomb." Then you go underground to the Freak lair, set the bomb to activate and...wait for the bomb to take its sweet time going off as you defend against waves of zombies. If it fails during it's massive chargeup, you have to start over. So it's almost exactly like the daytime gang wars.

Repeat fifteen more times and you've won the game. 

There are a few small gang establishments to take down and "Freak Spawns" that consist if you defending a point against a spawn until it goes away (how original!) but for the most part, that is the entire extent of the "point" of Crackdown 2. The whole game, the same boring "defend this point" over and over. No mission variety, nothing. Wow. 

Explosions are still cool, though my favorite thing from the first game (going to a freeway and just blowing everything up for fun) doesn't seem to work as well with the whole "freaks" showing up and ruining my fun. 

Crackdown 2 is uninspired at every turn. Rather than improve on an old formula, Ruffian simply took it and gave it a new coat of paint (though even that might be a generous overexagguration of the changes made). Literally nothing is improved, plenty of things are worse, and as a whole it just goes to show how dated these gameplay mechanics have become. It's a lazy attempt to cash in on the original game's "popularity" (which I still don't know if it was because of the Halo 3 beta or not) and it failed miserably. Buy Prototype instead.

If you've never played Crackdown, I'd still recommend the first one over this one, but if you really love zombies then I guess you could get this one instead, since it's pretty much the same game. Don't pay more than $5 for it, though.

One out of five stars. This game's existence is redundant, so it shouldn't even be considered for purchase, play, or anything else besides sitting alone and unloved on a Gamestop used shelf. 

Bad Dudes

The Short


Pros
- Has punching AND kicking
- The intro is now internet-famous
- Every time you beat a level, a horrible, grainy NES voice says "I'M BAD!" That's just awesome.
- Ninjas
- Two player co-op

Cons
- Ugly
- Stupidly difficult
- Controls poorly
- Repetitive
- Can't hold a candle to games like Double Dragon. 
- Arcade version was better.

The screen that sparked a thousand memes

The Long


Bad Dudes is bad. There is no other way around it. I could sugar coat it or try and justify its poor gameplay mechanics, but it would be a waste of my time. It's just a poor representation of an arcade game that was only decent, similar to many other titles released on the NES back in the day.

Here is the arcade version. 

Essentially it's a simple, side-scrolling beat-em-up, but unlike games like Double Dragon you can't move in 3D space; you are limited to the 2D plane (ala Mario or Kung Fu). You fight through a handful of levels kicking and punching ninjas, and sometimes kicking and punching harder ninjas. At the end of the game you win the game. That's essentially how it works.

Here is the NES version. Notice a difference? 

The game looks ok in stills, but in motion it's just awful. The animation is extremely poor, especially the ninjas moving and the punching and kicking. And the walking. Ok, every animation in this game looks like total crap. At least it looks passable when it isn't moving. 

The game itself is a difficult drag. Like most arcade games at the time, it was designed to be a quarter chomper, which makes me wonder why we designed (and still design) games with this sort of unfair quarter-munching syndrome when we bought the stupid game. It was like when Metal Slug 3 on the Xbox was ported and only gave you three quarters, or Ikaruga on Dreamcast/XBLA made you earn more continues through playtime. WE ALREADY BOUGHT THE GAME. GIVE US INFINITE CONTINUES. 

"I'M BAD!" Yes. Yes you are. 

On a tangent here (since if I don't this review is going to be stupid short), at DICE last year they had a speaker who was one of the original arcade game designers. He pointed out that during that time, they didn't really care too much about the quality of the game or depth of the game (minus looking flashy enough to convince you to take a look over), but rather if it was an addicting game that killed you on a regular basis (kind of like modern day MMOs...keep soaking up your money by providing minimal rewards for large time/work investments). He was baffled that this aspect of game design has carried over into the modern age: why do we still have lives? Why do we punish a player by reloading (or having to watch a stupid Valkyrie revive us over and over)? Those were invented to drain quarters, not because they thought they were good game design. The 2D brawlers (like Turtles in Time, The Simpsons, etc.) were also just designed to provide enough reinforcement to keep you playing and dying to put money in. Why are we punishing the player when they've already bought the game, and these elements of game design were used solely to grab more money? Why do we complain with the Prince of Persia reboot axes dying completely (instead instantly restarting you at a checkpoint, where in that game can mean doing a long section over and over, hence there is still the sense of danger [having to redo a stage] without the penalty of going through a "Game Over" screen) but still tolerate crap like Too Human or having games where you die and go back to a distant checkpoint, after a game over and loading screen?

Man, this really went off the rails.

Maybe a burger will calm me down. 

The point is that Bad Dudes is crap, people pretend it isn't because they like the opening (and I'm assuming the ending, and the "I'm Bad!" awful voice sound after each level) and it should give you infinite lives because I bought the stupid game, you jerks.

I feel stupid giving this game a star rating, but I'm not going to break tradition now. One out of five. 

Too Human

The Short


Pros
- Blend of Norse mythology and cyberpunk
- Lots of loot
- Has a distinct art style that looks pretty great
- Online two-player co-op
- Five classes to choose from

Cons
- Controls are a "streamlined" mess, probably the worst I've ever used
- Game is poorly balanced to the point of ridiculousness
- Co-op is broken by above mentioned balance issues
- Story doesn't even come close to its lofty potential
- First of an intended trilogy, and the second one will probably never come out
- Loot is too plentiful to be worth getting
- Unreal Engine hiccups: texture pop-in all up in here
- No healing potions. No healing at ALL unless you play a certain class
- Death has no penalty, aside from watching an unskippable, 45 second animation every. single. time.
- After the first level, this game becomes a frustrating, tiresome chore to play
- Only four levels in total. Maybe five; I don't remember.

An epic tale of a Norse god vs a lot of boring robots

The Long


Too Human is a game that makes a good first impression, then completely fails in every aspect after that. One of my friends owned the game, and in an attempt to convince me to buy it (to play co-op) I tested out the demo. The demo is essentially the first world/level, and when I played it I was...well, I wasn't blown away, but I had a good time. It was basically Diablo with cyberpunk Norse mythology. What wasn't to like?

Well, a lot of it, actually. Because after that first level (which is pretty easy and makes you feel powerful) the game becomes a horrid, torrential cesspool of awfulness. I can't believe Silicon Knights spent twelve freaking years making this game, only to have it turn out so poorly, but that seems to be the fate of games with massive development times (see also: Duke Nukem Forever, and to a lesser extent Alan Wake).

My friend (who I did end up playing the whole game co-op with) requested I point out this game is "total crap," so it has been noted. Ready to find out why? Read on.

The graphics...are pretty bad, honestly. 

The story to Too Human is a glimmer of a promise of greatness, but then quickly is overcome with mediocrity. You play a Baldur, a badass Norse god in mythology, a total whiner pansy in this game. Basically you are the other gods' messenger boy, sent off on their mission to kill "goblins" and "trolls" (which are basically just robots with fake mythological names) and with a hint of a traitor, etc. etc. The game manage to take all the gods (even Odin) and turn them into total losers, which makes me sad because robot-cyborg-cyberpunk Odin should have been the greatest thing ever.

I actually can't comment much on the story because I played most of the game co-op, and for some stupid reason it skips all the story scenes when you play co-op. Gee, thanks. I guess having two Baldurs running around broke the story. Anyway, the same friend above beat it single player, and said that after the last mission "you think stuff is about to get totally awesome, and then the game ends. Thanks, Too Human." So there you go.

The character designs range from "bland" to "total mess"

But who cares about the story, right? Nobody played Torchlight or Diablo for the story, they played it for the loot-driven, level-grinding gameplay! Right guys? Guys? Anyway, if Too Human had managed to ape the formula from Diablo, only with a cyberpunk setting, maybe I would have forgiven a lot of its flaws. Luckily for me and my ability to only forgive one game a year, Too Human sucks in the gameplay department too, meaning I can dedicate my full effort towards hating it.

The controls are "streamlined," meaning they are horrible. You essentially control the game with the two sticks. The left stick moves, and the right stick is to direct where Baldur will fling himself next. So basically you just hold the stick towards an enemy and Baldur will keep swinging until it's dead. Point him towards an enemy a while off, and he'll completely ignore the laws of friction and slide forward a massive distance as if wearing roller skates while covered in grease, on ice. 

That's basically the entire game, holding the stick in the direction of bad guys. You can do special moves (which also use the right stick. We have all these buttons, Too Human. Let us use them.) by tapping the stick a certain number of times, and I think you got other moves later (like...there were guns, I'm pretty sure, except they were stupid weak so you might as well just melee) but the droll monotony of just holding a stick and waiting for an enemy to die is essentially 80% of this game.

I say 80% because the other 20% you'll spend dying and watching the death animation. But we'll get to that.

"Hey guys, I'm not a bald space marine, I'm a bald space god. Big difference."

More problems with the combat: no healing. At all. Unless you play the specific healer class (which basically just means his life regenerates extremely slowly instead of doing more damage) you have to rely on enemies dropping health...things (really, rare) or just fighting until you die. Why the crap are there no health potions? At least then that would add a sort of stupid strategy to the whole "hold a stick and wait for either you or the enemy to die" thing it has going on (now I could press RT for a potion from time to time. INTERACTIVITY).

The five classes aren't too different (minus the healer, I guess?), they just prefer different weapon types. Hint: don't do the gun one. Guns suck. Melee weapons are the only way to go, and then just tech up heavy hammer or swords. Or do yourself a favor and just never, ever play this game, then you don't have to worry about it! That's honestly your best bet. 

But we haven't gotten to the game breaking part of this game: enemy level scaling.

I think they might have had good enemy design. Maybe. I don't know. 

So those unfamiliar with the term, here you go: enemy scaling is where the enemies in the world "level up" with you. It's often employed in open-world games (like Oblivion, Dead Island, or Fallout 3) to ensure you don't turn into a total powerhouse before the end of the game. I personally hate level scaling because it makes leveling completely redundant. In Dead Island, for example, when I level up I see all the enemies nearby (who have their levels displayed over their heads) get tougher. Gee, thanks. Glad all my work just made the game harder. 

Too Human does this to the extreme. Often enemies are a higher level than you, but they at least stay the same level. The issue is I swear they get more stat points every level up than you do, meaning the game keeps getting progressively harder. With no health potions. So you have literally no sense of progression, at all.

This is only exacerbated by the horrid loot system. Yes, there is a lot of it. Yes, it's colored like in Diablo, Borderlands, which should make it addicting. The problem is: 1. There is just too much to organize, sort, and figure out and 2. Because of the constant scaling, you have to switch out weapons constantly in order to even stand a chance. This game is stupidly loot-dependent. Which makes me sound like a whiner, but I loved constantly mixing up guns in Borderlands (which I felt had the best mix of "keeping weapons for a while" vs "being willing to swap them out to experiment/for a better one). But in this one I felt like I had to switch my weapon every five minutes or face certain, overwhelming death. 

Apparently these are what pass as "elves" in the Too Human universe. 

The overwhelming level scaling is worse in co-op, because instead of scaling to the lower level character, they scale to the higher level. And since each enemy level up is a substantial upgrade, the lower level character will do nothing but die, over and over again, while barely scratching the enemies. Actually, I lied; in co-op they not only scale to the higher player, but they usually tack two more levels on as a bonus to make up for there being two of you. So you'd better both be exactly the same level, or else you'll be crushed.

By the end of the game, Too Human in co-op becomes almost impossible, even if you are the same level and have excellent gear. It's a monotonous, horrible grind that was already not fun due to it's poor gameplay, and now has the bonus frustration of you not being able to kill anything without it being a huge hassle. Yeah, you could say I just sucked at the game, but I swear I'm not awful at games. This is just a huge mess. 

Oh, and now we have the best part: the death sequence. You are gonna love this.

And when I say "love" I mean "abhor."

There is no real penalty for death in terms of stats or gear; you are respawned a distance away from where you died and get to go into the fray again. There is, however one massive, massive oversight with this: the death sequence.

When you die, a Valkyrie comes down, lifts you up to the heavens, and then you respawn. Sounds good, right? Little bit of mythology? Only she takes her damned sweet time doing it. Timed, it takes about 30 seconds, thirty freaking seconds. You may not think this is a bad thing, but consider this: you die constantly (as said above) and have to watch the same, boring, monotonous scene over and over again. It's awful. 

Just watching this video reminds me of how frustrating it was.

To add insult to injury, there's an achievement, worth only 5G, for dying 100 times. Let's do the math: 30 seconds, 100 times is fifty minutes. Fifty minutes of watching the same death scene over and over. Fifty minutes of my life I'll never get back. If you are good, you can beat all of Limbo or Braid in less than that amount of time. I honestly believe the developers are just sick jerks. 

Graphically, this game is just ok. It's clearly a game made in a post Mass Effect world, with cinematic camera angles and characters whose facial structures and body shape look a lot like Mass Effect characters. The graphics aren't bad, they are just really bland. It as the whole "Unreal Engine 3" laziness, where they use the bare minimum of the engine and don't bother bolstering it either technically or artistically. I liked the idea of fighting tons of mythological creatures that are now robots, but after you find out there are only about four enemies and then they just color-swap them, this game becomes a boring, ugly mess. 

And there's only four stages. Ok, maybe five, I don't remember. They are super long, don't let you save in the middle, and are just the same grind over and over. It's awful. Plus Baldur (when he isn't sliding across the world) runs stupid slow, making backtracking horrendous. Which you won't have to do much of, because the dungeons are about as linear as they come.

Don't be fooled by the bright colors: Too Human is not a pretty game. 

Too Human is a huge mess, and one that I can't recommend anybody play. I actually sunk way more time in this game than any sane person should, earning about 3/4 of the achievements and beating the game on co-op and power leveling my character. Even in co-op, which could have been this game's saving grace, the combat, leveling, loot, and gameplay in general is just horrid. It's borderline broken with the bad scaling, which means you really, really should avoid this game. 

Don't buy it at any price. One out of five stars, and that's me being generous. Don't make sequels to this, Silicon Knights. I really don't care about the story that much; just make something better (like Eternal Darkness II?) 

Castlequest

The Short


Pros
- The box art is sort of cool
- The copy we bought booted up the first time without needing to be cleaned
- The quest is long. And length = value!
- It has a lot of good ideas and doesn't look completely awful

Cons
- All its ideas are executed horribly
- Controls are a mess
- You can easily break the game beyond fixing
- No save system
- Same one song will make you want to kill yourself
- I lied, the graphics actually look horrible

Let the quest begin

The Long

Castlequest is a game I'm only reviewing because of a long-running joke. My wife's family owned an NES growing up, and one of the game they bought for it was Castlequest. Since then it has always seemed to pop up in conversations about the NES regarding how completely horrible a game it was. I got my brother-in-law a copy for Christmas as a sort of gag gift (we gave him Duck Tales NES as well to make up for it), but not after I booted it up to test it and see what all the smack-talking was about.

So yeah, this game is pretty awful.

The general gist is bland but could still work for an NES game: it's essentially a puzzle/action platformer where you have to gather keys to open various doors to advance. You go from room to room and work your way through the castle getting keys, defeating enemies, and getting treasure. Does that sound like another game? Like...I dunno...

I can't believe I'm comparing this to Castlequest

So at its core, Castlequest might have worked. The problem is every step along the way is a terrible design choice that totally ruins the game. Hey, that sounds like my Fable 3 and Alone in the Dark reviews!

The first problem is the controls. To put it bluntly: they are bad. Jumping feels out of control and imprecise. Attacking is slow, locks your feet to the ground (like Resident Evil 5, hur hur hur) and has a horrible range. You die easily, which exacerbates the bad controls to "I want to destroy this game" levels. So there's that.

Second is that the game is hard, but not in a good way. See, certain key colors open certain doors. Simple enough. Even if the jumping and combat were serviceable, there's one big problem: some of the doors are "red herrings" (duds, essentially), meaning you can use a key on a wrong door and get stuck forever and have to completely restart.

And this isn't a small game. Screw up near the end, and you'll go back to breaking the cartridge again. 

Talk about gamebreaking!

Another massive perk is the fact that the game has pretty much one song, and every time you switch between rooms (either because you picked a wrong one or to check which doors are there) the song restarts. These screens aren't very big; imagine if in The Legend of Zelda every time you switched screens that catchy tune started completely over. I doubt we'd find the iconic tune as enjoyable now had that been the case. How hard could it have been to just make the song continue?

I'd say more but that's pretty much the whole game. Jumping, getting keys, praying you are opening the right door, and dying a lot to bad controls. My brother-in-law pointed out that the original game came with a map and a step-by-step guide on how to beat the game. They knew their game was impossible!

The title screen is the best looking part of the game

The graphics are awful, even for the NES. They aren't completely broken (you can see what stuff is and the main character actually looks like the dude on the box), but it's mostly just a black background with the platforms, enemies, and items. All on black. So boring!

As part of my "review every game" thing, I'm going to probably avoid reviewing games that are completely broken. These exist on the NES, the games that just don't work, are unbeatable, and completely unplayable. Castlequest isn't one of these games, to be honest. It isn't as bad as Milon's Secret Castle or Deadly Towers, but the fact it has so little to offer to begin with and still manages to screw it up is borderline impressive. As stated, plenty of games use keys, doors, and enemies to make something great. Castlequest could have worked (it might have been a but dull, but it could have!) if they had put just a little more time or thought into it.

But they didn't. So it's crap.

Don't buy it. Not worth your collection, unless your brother-in-law gives it to you for Christmas. 

One out of five stars.

I like how the back of the box is basically an essay about the story, and says nothing about the game itself. I'm seriously starting to think they knew their game was awful the whole time.