Something went wrong. Try again later

Video_Game_King

So is my status going to update soon, or will it pretend that my Twitter account hasn't existed for about a month?

36563 59080 830 928
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

Two words: squishy balls. That is all.

By Video_Game_King 17 Comments


No Caption Provided

Gish

( Hey, look at that!) Yet another Humble Indie Bundle game. Fortunately, I exhausted all the mainstream titles in that bundle when I blogged about Braid and World of Goo (and when I never got Penumbra running), so now we're moving into obscure territory. As you should know, I know this territory so well that I know what a Panorama Cotton is. (It's a pretty cool 3D rail shooter for the effing Genesis). As you may not know, however, Gish is an awesome game.

Now then, Gish is about a tar ball on a quest to r..escu...e...his gi...rl...fuck. I'm three games into this, and at least two of them have had some very obvious variation on the "rescue the princess" plot. (I'm saying "at least" because I'm sure that the giant girl goo was suicidal or something.) I thought indie games were supposed to push the envelope on what games could do. You don't see non-indie games doing this. Imagine if games like Fragile Dreams or Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu or Panzer Dragoon Saga decided to....uh....So, anyway, what else does Gish have going for it? What's that? Graphics? Not really. Sure, it looks distinct, even if all the enemies look exactly the same, but oddly enough, it also looks like something ripped straight from Newgrounds. In fact...no, it doesn't look like it was ever a Newgrounds game, but it's not like it's impossible. After all, Super Meat Boy began as a Newgrounds Flash thing, and it eventually became a challenging platformer with bitching music, so why couldn't Gish? Don't believe me? How about this? What? Were you expecting music from Gish? But I put a link to it at the beginning. What more do you want from me?

 Also, the loading screen at the beginning of the game always has some weird movie poster parody. No idea what that's about.
 Also, the loading screen at the beginning of the game always has some weird movie poster parody. No idea what that's about.
Oh, the challenging part? Yea, this game will bust your balls like crazy. It's a very physics based game, meaning that there are going to be tons of times when the physics launch you into a pit of lava or spikes or whatnot. This gets especially bad in the 7 Planes of Can'tspellya. They're the reason why I blogged about Curse of the Sinistrals before I blogged about this. I'd vary between getting stuck on, like, the fourth or fifth level, mainly because you can quite easily stick to things that kill you, and getting stuck on the first level. That last one was usually due to hubris and stupidity. It didn't help that there are no checkpoints in any of the levels. You die in a level, even if it's near the end, you start all the way back at the beginning. What's that? You want checkpoints? Look at you, you fucking pussy. This game's gonna man you up. How, you ask? If you die enough times to reveal to it how much of a pussified pussy you are, you get sent back to the beginning of that world. That'll teach you to be a man. Maybe. More often than not, it means you'll just repeat a world over and over again, sometimes not even getting to the boss for a long time. But eventually, you do get to the boss, only to discover it's more puzzle focused than combat. This sounds cool...until you realize that these puzzles can be fairly obtuse. Perfect example: those 7 planes. To beat the boss, you need to send them straight into the lava by dropping blocks. The only problem is that there's no clear indication that they can be dropped, let alone how you drop them. Even when you do find out how to do it (by looking it up on GameFAQs), there's not enough room to do it through skill alone. Now imagine most of the bosses being like this. It's no wonder that the game kind of expects you to get the crap ending.

Wait, something doesn't add up: the score. Why did I give this an 8.0 if I'm complaining about all that crap I said before? Simply put: the momentum. It saves the game. There's just something really cool about jumping and sticking your way through levels at really fast speeds, especially when you remember that the physics will bounce you all over the place like crazy, probably because it takes a while to adjust to the jumping controls. Hell, the pace of the game even manages to make all the useless turd allegories I can't really link (I guess there's some unwritten rule that indie games need weird allegories for no reason) pretty awesome. It's like a modern day indie Sonic the Hedgehog, especially when you encounter shit they literally stole from Sonic games. But it's not all blatant plagiarism, for Gish has one thing that Sonic doesn't: puzzles. OK, so Sonic 1 had puzzles, but I'm not counting that. Sonic 1 had a lot of elements that didn't belong in a Sonic game, and Gish proves why puzzles was one of those elements. Remember when I said that this game is best when you're preserving the momentum and fucking with the physics? It doesn't work too well when you remove the momentum, which is exactly what the puzzles do. They're OK, if the physics are used properly (I only mention this because of one time when they aren't), but I'd rather launch myself through the levels like Isaac Newton on an insane rampage. Those are the best parts of the game, so why have these puzzles? Wait, they make up a small part of the game? OK, never mind. This game's awesome.

Review Synopsis

  • This game is less forgiving than I am of about half of Cartoon Network's new cartoons (MAD, Problem Solverz, apparently, etc.).
  • However, rolling and squishing (gishing?) your way through the levels is as awesome as about half of Cartoon Network's new cartoons (Adventure Time, Regular Show, etc.).
  • Oh, and there are puzzles. Uh....Nickelodeon's current cartoon line-up, I guess? How did I even get here?




Might as well get this out of the way while it's still relevant.
  
  

Puyo Puyo

( I can't be the only person who thinks that this game has some jealousy issues.) Just by looking at it, this game wants to be the next Tetris. It's had about a billion spin-offs and ports, but it's never going to be as famous as that Russian block stacking game. (Wow, it's depressing as hell to find out that "stacking blocks" was an accepted form of entertainment in Russia. Isn't entertainment an escape from reality?) It's a shame, too, because it's actually a somewhat OK game.

 Maybe it's Geodude.
 Maybe it's Geodude.
I also think it's going to set some type of record for the shortest episode of Renegade Ego. I'd say shortest blog, but I'm pretty sure those assholes who post quest-only blogs beat everybody to it. Anyway, what will make this especially short? Well, there isn't much story to speak of (I'm just going to assume that Puyo is a type of Pokémon or something), and I honestly don't have a lot to say about the gameplay. You just line up four of the same colored Puyos (though they can, scarily enough, be humans) to make them disappear. Obviously, this can lead to decent strategy and combos and it's real fun with other people. You already know all that. You know what else you know? Not much. Come on, you were asking for that, or you would have if you understood language. Anyway, what you should logically know is that I didn't bother playing this with another person. Keep in mind that I beat Dudes with Attitude alone, something that should not be attempted ever, and not just because the game is a pile of shit.

Oh, and the same could probably be said of the campaign mode in Puyo Puyo. Don't misunderstand me and think that I think that Puyo Puyo sucks; it's just the campaign that sucks. In fact, I should probably stop using the phrase "campaign", because there's no story for it. If there was, I probably would have started this blog with a needless summary of it. Instead, it's just a training mode for the other parts of Puyo Puyo. To that end, it does a decent job of training you, even if it lacks the type of meaty substance you find in other puzzle games * AHEM*. You get your combo (building) tutorials, your quick turning/gravity tutorials, and survival levels? The hell? Those don't do anything. They're just really easy wastes of time. And then after those, you usually get some devious level where you have to eliminate all the Puyos with a Puyo that doesn't match any of them. I'm not sure that a yoyo difficulty curve is the best thing to teach people how to play the game. I'd say the same of the yoyo difficulty in the levels themselves, since it can go up for fucking up and down for doing it too much, but that's a good thing, isn't it? You know, unlike the single player campaign. Hell, Mean Bean Machine (or Kirby's Avalanche for the really old Nintendo fanboys in the crowd) is the same thing, only it has some actual substance to its single player mode. In fact, go play that game and forget that this blog is.

Review Synopsis

  • It's a puzzle game with a mediocre single player mode. That is all.
17 Comments
Load Comments