Xeodrifter

Xeodrifter was a game I knew nothing about going in.  I received it for free on my Vita as part of my subscription to PS+ and I finally got around to playing it recently.  What I got was actually really fun and I feel like it's one of those games that everyone should have a go at.

Developed by Renegade Kid in 2011 and released on a whole bunch of systems and PC, Xeodrifter is basically Metroid and because of that this review of the game will probably be quite short.  Don't get me wrong, it's not an exact clone but for the most part it's the same deal where you fly around different planets, fighting these big alien creatures that look similar to each other and collecting power ups that allow you to explore the world and collect upgrades.  But being a clone of Metroid isn't a bad thing, Metroid is a great game so if there's anything to use as a template for your indie release then that's a good idea.

When the game starts out you have a map with 4 planets and a small space ship that gets messed up and needs a new warp drive or something.  It's then up to you to explore the 4 surrounding planets, collect power ups and find a new core for your ship so you can go home.  The game starts you off with 3 dots of health and a little pea shooter gun and just lets you explore freely.  What you'll find rather quickly is that a lot of the areas are off limits due to your lack of abilities and it's also really easy to die.

Very quickly though you fight a boss, get a power and the world starts to open up a little.  From there you can find secrets that will lead to health upgrades and gun upgrades which will make your shitty little gun shoot faster, stronger, in a spread or in a wave.  The only upgrades for the gun that I actually used were the speed and power upgrades and once they were maxed I felt like a complete power house but I'm sure people with different play styles could make use of all the other upgrade paths as you can add and take points from them freely at any time.

While it's a fun game there are a few complaints that I have, the length being my major issue.  The game is REALLY short, you could probably finish it on a lazy Sunday afternoon if you were willing to sink that much time into a single session and it's a little lacking in replay value.  Backtracking through levels can also be a little tedious as well and it's easy to lose concentration through an old area with weak enemies and end up dying because you're just not paying attention. My final complaint is that all the bosses are the same

Just this alien thing that comes in a different color every time. 

That said though, these complaints aren't enough to spoil what is actually a really fun little game.  While Metroid can feel a bit oppressive in its design Xeodrifter feels comfy and relaxing.  If you want an intense alien killing, exploration focused experience then maybe stick to Metroid but if you're looking for something fun and relaxing to kill some time with the Xeodrifter might be the game for you.

Castle In the Darkness

Castle in the Darkness is another one of those games that I loaded up for the first time with absolutely zero expectations.  I don't even remember buying it but I'm sure as hell glad that I did because this game is really awesome.

Castle in the Darkness is a retro style metroid-esque game for PC.  Aside from the clear inspiration from Metroid in the design, there are also some pretty clear influences from Castlevania and I Wanna Be The Guy games.  Don't let that last one put you off though, while the game is quite challenging it's not insane like those games are.

There isn't much of a story to speak of when it comes to Castle In the Darkness.  To be brutally honest with you I beat the game a few weeks back and I forgot what the story was.  From what I do remember there is a big bad guy fucking things up and he's killed basically everyone in this royal army but you, so gear up and go kick his ass.

This is one of those games that's short on the story but strong on the game play.  So you play through each level killing dudes for gold and beating bosses to upgrade your life but in every stage there are offshoots that you can explore and find hidden items.  This game has a FUCKTON of stuff that you wont find just playing the game through normally since I played it getting a few of the secrets and my clear percentage when I beat the final boss was less than 50. 

Word of warning though, this game is tough and I feel that the difficulty presented here may turn some players away.  In terms of game play style its pretty standard 2D side scrolling fare but some of the platform segments are pretty rough and the 1 hit kill death spikes will make you want to punch your monitor a few times.  Not only this but the game also is completely void of a map which is weird considering how much exploration there is to do.  It was part of the reason my clear percent was so low because I'd fucking forget where certain things were and then found myself being too much of a lazy shithead to go get it.  If you are up for the challenge of this game then keep a pen and paper handy and make some fucking notes.  I would also like to point out that upon dying 50 times you unlock an easy mode but I didn't bother to try it out so I'm not sure what changes.

Aside from it's simplistic but challenging game play the game also boasts a pretty awesome pixel art style some great music and a surprisingly fair bit of replay value if you're a little bit of a masochist.  The game also has a decent amount of length even if you just play it normally considering it's cheap price point and has an exceptional amount of value if you try to go for 100% completion. 

So if you're a fan of difficult platformers or you enjoy a bit of the old Metroid style 2D exploration type thing then I'd say you should give Castle in the Darkness a try.  You may need to put your serious game face on a little bit but don't let the games challenge and unwillingness to hold your hand deter you from trying a great little indie title.

Guacamelee: Gold Edition

If there's one thing I love it's a good Metroid type game and Guacamelee just happens to be one of those.

The story follows the adventures of Juan who is on his way to some kind of festival in his nearby town.  When he arrives the presidents daughter gets kidnapped and Juan is killed by an evil skeleton dude called Calaca.  Juan wakes up in the world of the dead and is gifted a legendary luchador mask and is revived in order to save the presidents daughter and bring an end to Calaca's evil plans.

The story isn't exactly all that but the game play is really fun.  Like every Metroid-esque game you start with not much and as you explore the map and defeat bosses you gain access to new powers which allow you to reach new areas.  Combat involves punching skeletons in the face until the explode and you can do all sorts of fancy shit like juggle them or give them a suplex to make them explode faster.

The game play for Guacamelee really shines in it's platforming though.  The game is fast paced and controls really tightly so the platforming sections are really fun to play.  There's no unfair jumps or anything I found that one could consider bullshit so if you mess up it's YOUR fault.  The game does a good job of making you feel like a massive badass as you navigate your way through it's areas with some segments that look difficult but are actually rather simple.

I do have a few problems with this game though but none of these are enough to ruin the experience.  First, the game seems a LITTLE buggy.  When I first fired up the game after installing none of the characters or backgrounds loaded in properly but this was fixed after a restart.  There was also a problem with the frame rate where if I had the V-Sync turned on the game would run at a million frames per second and be uncontrollable. 

The combat is also a bit boring.  They make an effort by giving you all these powers that assist with creating combos and the game teaches you how to juggle enemies for days but none of the enemies are actually a threat at all and being fancy doesn't really net you any reward.  However usually after a dull combat segment you are rewarded with a fun platforming section and those alone are worth slogging through the games combat.

Also the game is really fucking easy.  There are checkpoints all over the place so if you die you don't get sent all that far back.  Falling off a ledge into an abyss just sends you back to the last piece of solid ground you were on but with no penalty.  You don't lose any health and just zip back to where you were to try again which kind of kills any tension in the platforming sometimes.   There is a challenge area that's genuinely difficult and requires you to do things under certain conditions but that's just one special area. The game also has a hard mode but this is only available after you beat the game one time so you have to play through the easefest before you can get any kind of challenge.

That said, Guacamelee: Gold Edition was a really fun game and I'd suggest anyone who is into Metroid style exploration games give it a go.  It's got a great style and plays really well and the difficulty, while I personally dislike it, is great for people new to the genre.  There is another version available on Steam that has 4 player co-op or something but I don't have any friends that want to play this stuff with me.  If you did though you'd probably have a grand old time

Sweezy Gunner

What the fuck is a Sweezy? Does not knowing that make me stupid?  Well I'm sure someone will tell me.

Sweezy Gunner is a game I bought during the Steam summer sale for exactly £0 thanks to DotA providing me with large amounts of Steam credit and this game being really goddamn cheap.  I didn't really know what to expect when I first started playing other than that the game was sort of a shmup but not really.

So what is Sweezy Gunner?  Well, it's like of a mix between a shmup game and Metroid.  You have a big world to explore and as you go around you collect power ups like life containers, huge coins, badges and other things to make yourself more bad ass.  After some exploring you'll eventually come to a dungeon and when you get to the end of a dungeon you'll fight a boss.  Upon victory you'll get a power that will let you cross water/lava, smash gates or break boulders which in turn opens up more of the world for you.

As you explore you have plenty of things to shoot at which are also shooting at you.  At first it's not too bad but after a while it starts to get really hectic so you better make sure to grab those life-ups because catching a stray bullet to the face is extremely easy.  There are also other temporary power ups to make dying less of an issue or special guns that make murdering hordes of enemies just a little bit easier.

The game also has a few side quests to do which give decent rewards and don't feel merely like busywork.  The first side quest is monster cards which is a system where every monster has a card that it has a low percentage chance to drop.  When the card drops and you kill a certain amount of that monster then you can use your money to buy a badge to upgrade your ship.  This sounds like it would be mindless grinding but there is so many enemies in a given area that you can play normally and get the card AND the required number of kills for the badge.  The other are these fetch quest type deals where it tasks you to collect X of a certain item from a certain enemy.  Once again this sounds like it would be complete bullshit but you don't actually have to hand them in.  Once you get the items the quest is done and the reward is just dumped into your inventory which saves you the hassle of going back and forth so I have to give them props for that design choice.

The game can get a little monotonous if you play it for long stretches of time but it's the kind of game where you can save absolutely anywhere so if you do suddenly end up getting bored you can quit without having to worry about save points or any of that crap.  My biggest complaint is with the final dungeon where I kept taking damage from bullets that I couldn't fucking see.  The bullets are either red or bright blue and while the bright blue ones were easy to avoid the red ones would sometimes blend into the background and you couldn't see them properly, it's bullshit.

But apart from that Sweezy Gunner is actually a pretty good game.  It's cheap on Steam and takes up barely any disc space so if you like shmups or Metroid clones then I suggest that you give this one a go.

3 Game Concepts That Need To Fuck Off

I've spent a while doing playthroughs and streams now and there are certain things about certain games that really really piss me the hell off.  So today, since I came home late from work and feel like having a vent about some stupid bullshit on the internet, I'm going to share with you 3 things about games that especially piss me off.

NUMBER 1! THE SEWER LEVEL!

You may have gathered from the image at the top of the page that I dislike sewers a lot.  I'm not the only one to have this view on sewer levels, it's an opinion held by any person who has enjoyed games for any amount of time, these things are the fucking worst.  But why are they the worst? 

Is it because they are hard? No
Is it because that they are full of bullshit puzzles involving levers and keys and other crap? A little but not really, we can deal.

It's because that when you include a sewer level in your game it screams "WE RAN OUT OF IDEAS!".  Every sewer level ever made is the same brown or gray series of bland corridors with a stretch of water running down the middle.  It's always the point in any given game where the fun comes screeching to a halt and you have to just deal with a shit boring area for anything between 10 minutes to an hour.

Silent Hill does it kind of right by keeping it short and simple but there are games like Legend of Lagaia 2 that have really long and stupid sewer sections that make me want to kill myself.  Doesn't matter if you do it "right" or not, the sewer level needs to fuck off out of gaming forever.

NUMBER 2! ESCORT QUESTS!

Can anyone on Earth name a single game that has an enjoyable escort quest?  Every single time one of these things pops up it makes people just want to put down the controller and never touch that damn game again.  Doesn't matter how good the game is, an escort quest WILL make people rage quit as they just don't want to have to deal with terribly programmed AI and having to restart because your partner walked themselves into a group of enemies and got their dopey arse killed.

The worst game for this example off the top of my head is Dead Rising

Famous for it's terrible partner AI but most hated because you weren't tasked with just one escort, you had to take large groups of brain dead twats around a zombie infested mall.  Luckily it was mostly optional so it didn't ruin the overall game but it was still really annoying. 

The game that did it "best" was Resident Evil 4 because Ashley had the decency to sit in a bin for long stretches of time, but this just made the whole thing feel pointless and was just a stupid preparatory step you had to take before engaging in combat.  Either way, escort quests need to just fuck off forever.

NUMBER 3! EXCESSIVE BACK TRACKING!

There are two kinds of back tracking to be found in games.  The first kind is the kind found in games like Metroid.

This is the good or acceptable kind of back tracking.  As you progress through a level bits of it are cut off since you don't have the right tools to get through, then when you have those tools you go back so that you can go see what was behind that locked door or small hole or whatever.

This is an OK form of back tracking because it's kind of exciting.  You get your new toy and then you get all this build up as you make your way back through because you know for a fact that there's going to be something new after making the short trip.

But then there is the terrible kind of back tracking, forced and samey.

Silent Hill 4 is a great example of what I mean.  You play through 4 levels of the game and then after that you have to play through them AGAIN but with a stupid escort quest tacked on and bullshit ghosts trying to kill you.  Nothing new to look forward to, just pain and suffering as you fight your way through the same subway, prison, forest and town, it's garbage.

Devil May Cry 4 did the same kind of thing, where you played through a bunch of levels are Nero and then AGAIN with Dante but backwards.  It was crap but at least the game was good so we could focus on that but there are plenty of games that have this kind of thing but not the good gameplay to make it worth suffering through.

Give a decent reward for having to back track or don't include it.  Making me replay through half a game I already played is a thing that absolutely needs to fuck off.

So yeah, 3 things that piss me off about games and that ain't all of them so maybe I'll do another one of these another day.