Indie Round-Up (a.k.a - Extra Numbers)

[J4Numbers]

Hello, this thread is going to be me talking games, namely of the indie sort and from wherever I find them. This means that you are as likely to find me posting something about an old game for the Nintendo 64, as you are a new game that has captured my interest on Steam. So keep an eye on this thread for my own thoughts from whatever I find in my Steam library/memory/Backloggery.

First up, I'll talk a little bit about Shatter, a fun game, much reminiscent to the days of Rival ball and the like.

Spoiler! :

I got Shatter when it was included in one of the many Humble Indie Bundles (Possibly 6), and had a game on it that night, planning to see just what I'd bought. Then I played another round... and another... and another after that.

Shatter is a very innovative game in that it took what was good about Rival ball, eg, the power ups and the increasingly frantic skill levels that you needed as you got onto the later levels, whilst still remaining a relaxing game. Alright, maybe Shatter isn't as relaxing as Rival ball, but it's still very addictive.

Your sole objective being to destroy the bricks which litter the playing field, except Shatter gives the player a few new tools to play with, the main thing being that gravity, or rather the lack of it, comes into play and the bricks bounce around the playing field quite merrily as you aim to hit them, but inevitably always aim just to the side of them.

The game gives you the power to manipulate the air-flow around the field, letting you push blocks away and pull them towards you as you see fit and as the game demands. Believe me, when you get to the end of the world, it does get pretty hectic with some of those fields and you will need to utilise that ability very often. The power ups you receive are the standard fare, there's a power to let you control the ball better, there's a power which makes the ball more powerful.

Oh, and one final cliché that the game has... Boss fights!
You know you love them, these one especially, where the boss has a weak point and you must evade his attacks until it opens and you hammer it to death with your trusty ball.

After that, it's rinse and repeat, and it's still so damn enjoyable.

Probably due to the music that is played in the levels, each stage has one track that is played while you go and whack blocks, and each track is a mix of electro and Techno (Maybe, I don't know) which is made to fit the level and really suits the mood of the level.

Now for the grades, all of them are out of five:
Story: 0/5 (There is none so this doesn't really apply)
Atmosphere: 4.6/5 (The music really sets the tone very nicely for this, as do the settings and levels)
Graphics: 3.5/5 (They are clear and very defined, but the screen does get very flashy and hard to see at times)
Controls: 4.2/5 (There are three buttons and a mouse... what more needs to be said?)
Replayability: 3.7/5 (Yes it's fun to play again like I said, but there are only so many different outcomes to be had from hitting a block)
Personal Enjoyment: 4.3/5 (Good fun, mindless enjoyment, and good music. That's all)

Total Score: 20.3/30

[J4Numbers]

Audiosurf ladies and gentlemen:

Spoiler! :

Well I'm on the musical track here, so I'm going to stay that way for a little while.

Audiosurf was a game which rose to fame after a period of 'What the hell is it?' and it is still good for when you are in the mood for split second, so what is Audiosurf?

Audiosurf is a music-oriented game which takes the tracks from your own music library and creates a game from them, the object of the game differs from mode to mode. In all cases it is to score as many points as you can, whether this is from one colour, or from several, that depends on the mode.

As a music game, I think that it's important that you let the player actually listen to the music, and doubly important that the music has some relevance to the game so that the player can predict when the action is going to hot up and when they're going to have a quick break to take a breather.

Audiosurf has managed this, using god knows what translator, they've managed to look at the music and say that there's a gentle quiet bit here, so lets have a nice incline with a few notes to keep the player interested, whereas when the music gets fast and very intricate, that's when the speed increases and you are making split-second decisions to find the block you want in some form of connect three.

It's not without its weaknesses though, often you'll find that the game reaches a level of WTF where it's more waving the mouse around frantically rather than timed, precise and skilful movements. On a computer warning too, if your computer is not up to the graphical intensity, be prepared to curse this game a lot, for lag could lose you that massive score counter you were saving up.

And the scores are in!
Story: 0/5 (No story again)
Atmosphere: 4.5 (The beats set the tone)
Graphics: 4.0 (They be good and simple)
Controls: 3.8 (Split-second decisions, yep, but the controls might lack the fidelity to do it well)
Replayability: 4.8 (More Music!)
Personal Enjoyment: 4.3 (I get hooked on this occasionally)

Total Score: 21.4

[Invunarble]

That sorta sounds like Guitar Hero, just minus the guitar and add the ability to play whatever music you want. Therefore, meh.

[Wildwill002]

It's older than guitar hero to my knowledge and is pretty fun. Plus it comes with tf2 music already and I think still alive. It's cheap so you may as well give it a go

[J4Numbers]

(Nasal tones) Aaaand now presenting Super Meat Boy for public viewing.

Spoiler! :

(Apologies for the bad framerate, I seriously can't record well in Meat Boy)

Super Meat Boy, which was made in 2011 and was one of Humble Indie Bundle 5's offerings. Meat Boy is an arcade style platformer. That's pretty much all there is to it, you have to get from the start to the end of the level as quickly as you can, avoiding saws, blobs, and homing missiles. There is literally nothing else I can say about the gameplay mechanics.

The story goes that while Meat Boy was having quality time with his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, the bad guy of the game, Dr Fetus, decides to crash the party and kidnap Bandage Girl, leaving Meat Boy beaten up in the corner and helpless to stop him... much like a certain game from Nintendo as a matter of fact. And thus begins the chase through a number of levels, stretching from a forest, to Dr Fetus' castle. Each 'world' has twenty Light levels and twenty 'Dark' levels, guess which ones are harder? And after you have completed 17 of the levels in each world, a boss is unlocked and you go and fight said boss.

The levels are often-times hard and unforgiving, the smallest mistake usually resulting in the death of poor Meat Boy... before he spawns up again and promptly dies five seconds later. There is no shame in taking a long breather in this game, especially in some of the later levels as the difficulty gets to 'wut.' levels of stupidity. The level design in itself is cleverly laid out so that there are probably fifty ways to attempt the level that all seem reasonable, but only a few of them actually work, and you still have a few key points where the same combination has to come into play.

The controls and the response for Meat Boy and the other characters that are available in the game are very clean, you get four buttons. One to go left, one to go right, one to jump and one to sprint. The reaction from the characters are always prompt and distinct. Some characters have a larger jump, others can float in the air. And There's even a character that can break through blocks! (Albeit the leaderboards are disabled for him).

Anyway, back to the game. Every level usually has something hidden within it somewhere, whether it's a bandage or a warp portal to unlock a new character. Each level will usually have something for the player to improve on too. If the player completes the level within a certain time, then the dark zone counterpart for that level is unlocked, and the fun begins...

However, after all the unlocks have been found, it's unlikely that you'll ever want to pick up and play this game ever again... insanity lies down that path.

Scores on the doors...
Story: 2.4 (The story is there, but it is told entirely through cutscenes between levels)
Atmosphere: 3.8 (Each world has its own paint coat and soundtrack, giving them definition)
Graphics: 4.4 (Can't complain about what they don't do wrong. Very cut and dry for what is done though)
Controls: 4.8 (Simple controls mean for simplicity in the levels, definitely a good thing)
Replayability: 3.7 (Beating personal times and getting bandages are the only reason to replay this really)
Personal Enjoyment: 3.8 (I can still only play this for a few levels at a time before I need a break)

Total Score: 22.9

[J4Numbers]

Quick Note: I don't look at price as something that should sell a game. A good game should have a fair price, yes, but a crap game for £20 is still a crap game for £1.
Also, if you'd like me to look at a game, say so and I'll trawl the steam and amazons for it.

[Wildwill002]

Space Pirates and Zombies perhaps?

[J4Numbers]

No, this thread isn't dead, it's merely on holiday... or something. Anyway, I decided to look at the bundles again and fell into their traps for people with needs for games.

Let's get this going again: Super Hexagon.

Spoiler! :

Now I know what you're going to say... it's obviously just one of those games where you can only play it for a total of an hour before you rage quit and stomp around the house in a mood.

If you weren't thinking that, you may ignore the previous statement.

Anyway, it is hard, I grant you that, but what's the point of a game without difficulty?

Alright... yes, I know flow is hardly difficult, yes, yes, I've heard that Fez isn't so difficult either, and- Oh be quiet...

Anyway, so what's the point of a game where your only controls are to go left and right and your only goal is to not get in the way of the glowy... things? As it turns out... there isn't much point except to find out what happens when you go past a minute.

Again, there's not really much point to the whole thing, your screen goes flashy and it becomes even harder to survive... kinda makes you wonder how on Earth people manage the last level...

What Super Hexagon does manage to do... despite it's potential to enrage and infuriate, is keep the player focussed and making the player constantly click restart, no matter how close they were to that golden 60 second mark (Not tested for when you reach 59.99).

Another aspect that makes the game un-put-downable is the music, which is some mixture of futuristic, chiptune and electronic, all combined together to make a very appropriate soundtrack (Genres may vary from user to user). Having said that, both times that I've completed a level, I've had to turn the music off as the patterns in the music don't always match that patterns that appear on screen...

And without further ado... have some scores:
Story: 0.0 (No story, no score)
Atmosphere: 4.2 (This game is very good at getting you 'in the zone')
Graphics: 4.0 (Very simple, very clean, what more can I say?)
Controls: 3.8 (Controls are responsive, but can be somewhat oversensitive)
Replayability: 4.3 (Until finishing the game, from there it rockets down...)
Personal Enjoyment: 4.5 (I enjoyed it... I might have lost my mind somewhere, but I enjoyed it)

Total Score: 20.8

Quick summary to a quick review, Super Hexagon is addictive, the music is up for debate, and my current play time on it is 3 hours from getting it on the 8th when all levels are at most, 1 minute long.

[Iron_Fang]

Bastion is the humble of the week, game + drm free $1, soundtrack ect is above average

[J4Numbers]

It LIIIIIIIVES
Sorta.

Let's have a look at a new release from less than 24 hours ago. Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs.

Spoiler! :

http://www.twitch.tv/m477h3w1012/b/459515603
(Sorry, I don't get the footage to link into Youtube for a while and beware the mic gain)

Right, so... Amnesia. It's one of the best horror games of the current age and is pretty awesome through and through. This being Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The successor seems to have lost its way somewhat.

I'd better get the main point out of the way first and foremost... Machine for Pigs is not scary. This is known as a pretty big deal, especially since it's meant to be a scary game. There are potentially many reasons for this, one of them being that you see the monsters more. In the first iteration of the game, if you saw the monster, then you had done something incredibly wrong and you should have been running for the nearest bed or closet. In this, the monsters are kept as sentries that wander the corridors in plain sight. Sure, you might get caught by surprise once or twice, but then there is the other problem in that the monsters are not scary.

There is, at my count, two types of monster in the game, and one of those is a boss-type deal (Please note that I say 'boss' with liberal helpings of salt). Add to that with just how short the game actually is (about 3 hours in my case, could probably put it down to 2:30 in a second run), and the game turns into a routine that is boring. Walk through badly-lit corridor 12 with infinite lantern held aloft, watch a barrel roll by, see a monster, hide the lantern and sneak behind it.

Not scary.

There is another little tidbit of potential reasoning though, of major potential reasoning anyway. Amnesia: The Dark Descent, was made by Frictional games. A Machine for Pigs was made by Frictional games and the Chinese Room, who have also made a game called Dear Ester. A Machine for Pigs plays more like Dear Ester than it's predecessor, the actually scary game. In Dear Ester, you walked around an island with a torch whilst some dialogue occasionally spoke up. That basically A Machine for Pigs without much more added in.

All in all, I'd like my money back from it, it stopped being vaguely fun after the 'brilliant' plot twist about two thirds of the way in that you could probably guess anyway.

Next!

EDIT: And then he forgets the scores...
Story: 3.4 (Good story... ish)
Atmosphere: 2.0 (A very easy way to tell with this is that it wasn't scary)
Graphics: 3.2 (The design of the monsters was lacking when they are not scary face-to-face)
Controls: 3.5 (You can run, jump, walk and crouch, and that's basically that)
Replayability: 0.3 (Once you know the twist, you know the game, it's not long enough to merit a replay either)
Personal Enjoyment: 2.2 (As a horror game, it wasn't scary and it turned into more of a walkathon)

Total Score: 14.6

[J4Numbers]

So I finally got around to figuring out just what the feck was wrong with Vegas that slaughtered its rendering settings (it was something in the encoding bits and bobs), so… good news everyone, I can do this stuff again!

[Insert applause here]

And we’re moving straight on to Rayman Legends, memorable if not for the game, then for the Trailer (seriously, get that song, it’s awesome).

Spoiler! :

Rayman is quite an old IP to a lot of us; it’s something which hasn’t been mercilessly run into the ground in favour of the cash cow machine simply because no-one quite knew what to do with the poor fellow.

The older of us might remember the first, second, and third games of Rayman where he was a jumping… thing with no visible arms or legs. These games went from platforming, to combat, to open world in one case, and they were all… so-so. I mean… the inter-portal travel in Hoodlem Havoc was crazy fun, but that was that… also the doctor scenes were amusing, but I’m getting off topic.

The point is that they were all so… all-rounder-y. There wasn’t really an individual aspect that you could pin the game down to. Then there was the collection thing… collecting lots and lots of small items in a 3D world does not go well. There is always one which just strays outside your reach.

After this little rant… Rayman decided that he didn’t like himself anymore and the Raving Rabbids were invented… and stole the show spectacularly… in a family game nonetheless.

Rayman was allowed to die for a little while as everyone tried to forget about… that, and as he slipped out of memory. Ubisoft, having realised the potential of a character which no-one quite knows what to do with, then made Rayman Origins; a platformer in the purest sense. Combat is secondary to the whole idea of a flowing platformer (See, Mario, this is how you do a platformer).

But that isn’t the game I’m on about. Legends is the second in the pure platformer iteration of Rayman, not that much has changed between that and this. Rayman Legends is a 2D platformer where your simple objective is to get from left to right, getting as many Teensies and Lums as you can along the way (You remember those guys? Little blue fellows in robes where they have a more confusing monarchy than the British do?).

Where Rayman shines is in the level design; from small beginnings where your largest obstacle is a bit of a gap, you go to running up spiked walls and jumping between them when the screen is pixilated beyond viewability (yes, I did just make that word up). The music that is coupled along with the whole thing just sets the game off on a romp through happy-fun-flow-times.

Nothing quite says ‘ruler of the universe’ like a well-executed combo in a time-trial where everything goes smoothly. Other than that, the story (if you can call it that) is that evil Teensie wizards have stolen all the regular Teensie folk (including all... about 100 kings and queens) and locked them away. You must release them and give these Teensie wizards what-for.

Personally, I love the scrolling levels where you’re working on a linear path and you have to get the timing just right for everything to flow. The musical levels are a testament to that; not only is the music something to behold, but the way that it fits in with the level is simply astounding and is oh-so-enjoyable to just predict when everything is going to happen (For a greater challenge, attempt these levels with your eyes shut).

Right… scores:

Story: 3.7 (Not really that much of a story)
Atmosphere: 4.7 (Oh-Jesus-Christ… the nostalgia…)
Graphics: 4.3 (Fairly simple in that 2.5 D kinda way… except this is more 2.1D ish…)
Controls: 4.5 (Walk, run, hit, jump. There… listed)
Replayability: 3.9 (Once you’ve got all the Teensies and unlockables, I don’t really see the need to replay anything but the musical levels anymore)
Personal Enjoyment: 4.2 (Massively fun and I go through chunks of playing all ze levels…)

Total score: 25.3

[J4Numbers]

Okay… If you hadn’t noticed already, I have a better computer. That is to say… recording things doesn’t take the framerate into another room and axe it.

For further entitlement on that part… I produce Sir, You Are Being Hunted. A procedurally generated game about being hunted by tweed-wearing robots.

Spoiler! :

DISCLAIMER: Do not do what I did in that video. That is what is known as suicide.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a survival game if that wasn’t already clear. You are spawned into the central island of an archipelago and you have to return a random number of objects to the standing stones in the middle of the central island.

There’s just one small catch… there are a number of tweed-wearing, stereotypically British robots who are all eager to mount you on their walls.

Having said that… it’s a bit of a horror thing too… There’s nothing quite so tense as watching a number of huntsman stroll by your hiding spot behind a barrel and just hoping that they don’t turn and see you… that’s when you’re kinda screwed.

As you progress throughout the game, getting more and more shards, more robots will spawn in, making it harder and harder to reach the standing stones every time. The current game which I’ve been playing through has managed to reach a nice robot on a horse… I have yet to engage this bugger and I am also unwilling to…

I suppose it’s a little like DayZ; you have inventory management, you can bleed out, you have to survive by eating, things come calling when you make noise… The bonus is that there’s no multiplayer (yet). Just like in DayZ, it’s not impossible to live without a gun, but the addition of such a weapon to your arsenal makes things a heck of a lot easier.

As it stands in late-beta, this is a very nice stealthy survival that’s enjoyable, tense, and pretty damn hilarious too. Seriously… that butler needs a pay rise.

To see a full playthrough of the game, I’d suggest watching this series by SplatterCatGaming.

But enough of that… now for the scores…

Story: 3.4 (The device broke, you’re stranded, get back. Done)
Atmosphere: 4.2 (The creep-factor of crouching behind a barrel and hiding from drones is unparalleled)
Graphics: 3.0 (Fairly basic; they do the job and it’s very… well… British)
Controls: 3.4 (I’m not too fond of inventory management in this… It’d be much better if they had a few nice sorting functions and the ability to eat something on the go without digging through the inventory)
Replayability: 3.7 (It’s different every time, yes, but… eh… all that can differ properly is the play-style)
Personal Enjoyment: 3.9 (Hiding from robots in my own personal habitat? What’s not to like?)

Total Score: 21.6