Featured Article Archive

Sick of Sprite Dumps

By
Justin
 – February 28, 2012Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Justin

Few people understand how powerful nostalgia can be as well as I do. I grew up dressing as Luigi (with a fake mustache), drawing new/impossible levels for Mega Man and humming the Fever music from Dr. Mario throughout the entire first half of my life. The 8-bit era left an indelible impression on me, and I can understand why so many young developers would want go back to that well. But to reiterate something I said on the podcast a couple week’s back, the minds behind high-profile throwbacks like Abobo’s Big Adventure and Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2.0 need to take a step back and ask themselves whether or not these old-school mash-ups have anything new to say. This isn’t a popular stance, and I don’t want to sound like I’m picking on these smaller passion projects, but I think we can look at this constructively and figure out a fitting tribute that isn’t just sprite dumping.

Podcast listeners know that my tastes don’t always align with those of the rest of the Pack, but the divide was particularly pronounced with Abobo’s Big Adventure. This game was designed to cram every childhood memory into an ambitious Flash game, with several different genres represented and the most packed roster of characters this side of Super Smash Bros. To that end, mission accomplished. Playing even just the first world, you’d spot more cameos from older games than your eight-year-old self could have ever imagined. But where I take issue is that none of these elements fit together. Each step is accompanied with non-sequiturs disguised as old school sprites, but very rarely does Team Abobo let its own style shine through.  And it’s a shame, too, as I love the premise.

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At Last, Mutant Mudds Realizes the Potential of the Virtual Boy

By
Justin
 – January 31, 2012Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Justin

At the risk of losing all credibility in a single blog post, let it be known that I had fun with my Virtual Boy years ago. The eye-searing red display and neck-cramping visor design ensured that the fun never lasted too long, but for all of Nintendo’s colossal missteps, it at least got one thing right: Virtual Boy Wario Land. As an un-numbered entry on a forgotten system, there’s a good chance that you never were able to play it, and that is a true tragedy. VB Wario Land featured the same clever level design and antihero charm as the GameBoy entries. More importantly though, the game was the most successful (and possibly the first) to ask the player to jump back and forth between the foreground and background. This innovation gave a sense of depth that many “2.5D” platformers only dream of, and until Mutant Mudds launched on the 3DS last week, VB Wario Land remained unmatched.

Sure, there have been some developers that toyed with the idea along the way. The Paper Mario series often features pipes that bring you to hidden items in the background, and Donkey Kong Country Returns features some dynamic set pieces that make frequent use of the temples and trees in the distance. Last year’s Shantae sequel for the DSi and iOS also springs to mind, though the layered levels are too confusing for their own good. I’m sure that you, the reader, can rattle off a few examples as well. However, to see Mutant Mudds in motion is a thing of beauty, and that’s largely because of the way it uses the 3D display and alternating planes.

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Pushmo Review

By
Justin
 – December 16, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Justin, Review

You probably wouldn’t expect it out of a 3DS eShop game, but Pushmo is one of the most satisfying and thrilling handheld games I’ve played this year. At times, it’s the puzzle game equivalent of scaling Everest, or this genre’s take on the epic boss fights of Shadow of the Colossus. The simple presentation and mechanics belie Pushmo‘s uncompromising difficulty and a fantastic level editor that has already spawned hundreds of intricate user-created levels. The game begins with your avatar pulling out basic staircases to reach the top of a small wall; by puzzle 100 or so, you’re moving entire towers and leaping along narrow ledges high above the ground.

As the title implies, pushing walls in is a major element of Pushmo, but just as important is pulling them out. Each levels starts off with a flat surface, and the challenge lies in figuring out which colored segments to move in what order, keeping in mind that there are three different planes along which you can move. Early on, this push/pull technique is used to make basic stepping stones leading to the goal (and a random living puffball in need of your aid). It’s fun, but you’ve seen similar block puzzles in games like Catherine and Cuboid, among many others. However, as the puzzles get taller and wider, the stakes become much greater as well. A handy rewind feature ensures that Pushmo is never too frustrating, but you’ll need to be patient and methodical when climbing up a multi-screen Christmas tree.

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Rumble Fantasy Bowl 2k11

By
ThePack
 – December 14, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, The Rumble Pack

UPDATE: Congratulations to Tom, the official greatest human being ever!

If you’ve listened to some of our more recent episodes, you may have heard about our holiday season video game fantasy draft. At the beginning of last week’s show, some of our Podcast Nation chums joined us in officially selecting from a pool of upcoming blockbusters. Standings will be based on an algorithm devised by Kaz that takes into account each game’s Metacritic score and the number of reviewers.

The notion may be silly, but the stakes could not be higher. The winner will officially be declared “World’s Best Person,” a title indisputable under any circumstances. Our picks are displayed below, and we’ll be updating from time to time so you can follow the rankings along with ourselves.

Game on!

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Wizorb Review

By
Tom
 – December 1, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Review, Tom

Given the current industry climate, claiming a game is “a breath of fresh air” feels like an overused expression. More people are creating independent video games now than ever before, sharing their passion for the medium and introducing new ideas and insightful variations to routine genre themes. Wizorb, a Breakout-style arcade game from indie studio Tribute Games, is no such marriage of clever concepts or daring foray into uncharted territory. Although there are some light RPG trimmings added to the familiar block-breaking action, the basic three-part formula has evolved little since Arkanoid: there are blocks, there is a ball, and a pervading nihilistic credo to eliminate all of the former using the latter.

Instead, Wizorb’s fresh air comes from the fact that every aspect has been crafted to fulfill the purest classic gameplay experience possible. Here is the naked art of the arcade game elevated to the highest level – the challenge of a player’s skills in an arena of singing equations and mathematical variables masked behind attractive, colorful pixels.

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Freakyforms Review

By
Justin
 – November 20, 2011Posted in: Featured Article, Justin, Review

Freakyforms: Your Creations Alive has very modest ambitions. While most games with creation tools hope that you’ll use said tools to serve the play, with Freakforms, there’s very little play to be found at all. Instead, the game is entirely focused on giving life to any creature, inanimate object or idea you can imagine, often in the crudest and goofiest way possible. It doesn’t matter if you create an ordinary, normally-proportioned dog; the moment your “formee” is in motion, he’ll be stumbling and bumbling as if he wet noodles for legs. This is the video game equivalent of Dumpy the Pumpkin or that awful sputtering ketchup bot or any of the other inane-yet-lovable things we frequently bring up on our podcast each week. Freakforms aims to please so much that you can’t help but forgive so many of its failings.

To be fair, the actual creation mode, in which you’ll spend a good deal of time, is incredibly versatile. As you play through the adventure, you’re offered dozens of parts, all of which can be stretched, shrunken, rotated and thickened to suit your needs. As long as your formee has a mouth and a body, the game will find a way to put it into motion, and there isn’t an advanced physics model or anything like that to get in the way. I love LittleBigPlanet as much as anyone, but sometimes I just want to slap some wheels on a brick and call it a car. Freakyforms lets you make things as rudimentary or as complex as you’d like, but you’ll never be punished for ever making something “incorrectly.”

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Top 10 Most-Wanted Red Dead Redemption DLC Characters

By
Tom
 – November 16, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Tom

Now that a few months have passed since the release of Red Dead Redemption, most players have probably completed the main campaign and have ridden into the sunset, or at least arrived at a happy stopping point. Rockstar has continued to support the game for those who can’t get enough rootin’ and/or tootin’ by releasing numerous DLC packs, starting with the free “Outlaws to the End” co-op missions and more recently the “Legends and Killers” pack, which adds new multiplayer maps and characters. The next few downloadable additions have already been detailed by Rockstar and are set to include more free-roam challenges and even a zombie ghost town.

Most players could easily rattle off a list of famous gunslingers who would fit perfectly in the gritty world the game presents: Jeremiah Johnson, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Grizzly Adams, Wild Bill, anyone Clint Eastwood has ever played; the list goes on.  But why stop there? If Rockstar itself is already throwing zombies in the mix, let’s pull out all the stops and consider any character who ever made his home on the range as potential DLC fodder. Here’s my own personal ‘most-wanted’ list of outlaws, banditos, cowboys and quick drawers.

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You Got Your Blockbuster in My Social Media Games

By
Justin
 – October 13, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Justin

A couple weeks back, we had the pleasure interviewing Ryan Schneider, one of the key people involved in building Insomniac brands such as Resistance. You might have assumed that we brought him in to talk about the developer’s latest big shooter, but that evening, we had bigger matters to discuss. There was a battle taking place on browsers throughout the world, a Global Resistance with a player count that far surpassed even the gigantic scope of Resistance 2. Unfortunately, a bad Skype connection cost us most of that interview, but there was one clear takeaway – social media games are no longer exclusively shoddy cash-ins, and developers are only going to get more ambitious in the future with their Facebook/browser tie-ins.

For those of you bombarded with updates about how many times my Sim has gone to the bathroom today (apologies!), it might be tough to see the appeal. These games are traditionally less interactive and more compulsive than typical console fare, and there’s no shortage out there of uninspired puzzlers with popular licenses attached. But I’d argue that just being able to access some part of your game from the office or morning commute is a powerful motivator, and a recent batch of franchise tie-ins actually seem thematically appropriate and ambitious.

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Rumble Roundup: Bad First Impressions, Great Games

By
ThePack
 – September 16, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Rumble Roundup
Tom: Prologues and openings generally tend to be the most memorable parts of videogames. Most players can easily conjure memories of setting foot in the underwater city of Rapture for the first time, getting their starter Pokémon from Professor Oak, or smashing their first headcrab to bits with Gordon Freeman’s signature crowbar. The best introductions immediately involve the player in the world of the game and teach the gameplay mechanics in a clever or non-obtrusive manner.
It makes sense – first impressions are the most important, after all. It’s generally safe to say that if the first hour with a game is frustrating or unrewarding, the rest will usually follow suit. However, there are always exceptions: games that put a stumbling foot forward and end up rewarding the faithful who soldier on despite confusing tutorials, odd difficulty spikes, or boring prologues.

Justin: One of my greatest frustrations within the Pack is that my self-proclaimed Nintendo fanboyism means that my recommendations of that company’s games are usually dismissed. It doesn’t matter if I say that Donkey Kong Country Returns features amazing platforming set pieces or that Super Mario 3D Land looks to be doing some neat tricks with perspective because Justin has his StreetPass hat pulled over his eyes. Given that insurmountable hurdle, I don’t even know how I’d get my fellow podcasters to check out 2006′s Chibi Robo, a late cult classic for the GameCube that gets one major thing wrong at the outset of the game before getting so many things right.

The game is something of an open-world exploration game, in which you play as a tiny robot programmed to make a family of three happier. Later in the game, that means exploring the expanses of the house, interacting with other toys and uncovering secrets throughout. It’s like playing “Toy Story” through a bizarre Japanese lens. However, before you can get there, you’ll have to deal with stupidly menial tasks in order to level up. It’s been a couple years since I’ve played it, but I think this meant scraping dog crap off the kitchen tile with a toothbrush, if memory served correctly. (You’ll also spend a lot of time just picking up trash.) Of course, there are no physical boundaries keeping you from the more desirable content of the game, but without leveling up your battery – via dirt scrubbin’ – your Chibi Robo is basically stuck in one spot, clinging to electrical sockets for dear life until the game’s brutal time limit sends you back to the living room. As you slowly upgrade, you’ll find that the game has tons to offer, but it certainly takes its time getting there.

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The Sims Social Review

By
Justin
 – September 1, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Featured Article, Justin, Review

I love The Sims, but I just don’t have time to mop my virtual house anymore. While the series has sunk its hooks into me numerous times throughout its run, satisfying my families of Sims had become such a daunting experience in subsequent sequels that I just had to get away. The Sims 3 in particular, with its gigantic town and dozens of challenges cycling in and out, was just too much of a good thing. (I don’t know how EA expanded upon such a stuffed package.) Thus, this overwhelmed gamer decided to place his hopes in a proposed Sims game for Facebook, one that promised more reasonable expectations but the same household adventures I had enjoyed over the years. What we ended up with, The Sims Social, is an entirely different beast.


The Sims Social throws out many of the series’ conventions in order to make it work within a browser. Job trees have been reduced to in-home art projects, the town has been reduced to a single “street” of friends and managing a Sim’s needs is no longer the give-and-take tedium it once was. In order to make the experience more manageable for the casual set, energy limits have been put in place so that you’re only doing menial tasks for 15 minutes at a time – Animal Crossing comparisons aren’t too far off. However, while I’m totally in favor of making the experience more approachable, all of the little tweaks mean that suddenly this take on The Sims has lost its creative spark. Social has been reduced to a game of keeping up with the Joneses.

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