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What's New in Indie |
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Each month GameTunnel Editor-in-Chief Russell
Carroll plays dozens of new downloadable games, and then opines away
to bring you the best and worst of what's new in independent gaming.
This month he looks at the easy to love Noitu Love 2, the truly singular Singularis, a platforming puzzlefest of death and life in Skin &
Bones, and the physics driven motorcycle stunt simulator Trials 2. |
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Scoring Scale |
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A game to check out if you have nothing
better to do during lunch |
A game worth
breaking a date to play (and it'll be more fun anyways!) |
Call your boss, close the shades
and turn on a great game! |
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May 2008: |
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Noitu Love 2 |
Noitu Love 2
($20.00)
by konjak
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A robot army lead by professor Darnacus Damnation is attacking the city. As Xoda Rap you must protect
the city as parts of it are strangely turning into places out of the past. Using keyboard + mouse for
quick dash attacks, you must destroy everything in your path in the name of peace.
The
Verdict:
Shooters have been using keyboard + mouse controls for seemingly ever, so can't a side-scrolling action
brawler?
What initially seems like a strange control scheme quickly becomes intuitive as you play Noitu Love 2, and was the main reason that I heart Noitu Love. During the first few minutes of playing
you really feel like the game is just a different take on button mashing. However, as you get a feel
for your character's abilities to essentially teleport to a specific spot, hang weightless in the air
while pounding an enemy, and then dash away quickly before being hit, the sense of button mashing
disappears.
In its place Noitu Love 2 gives players the ability to slash and slice like a
surgeon,
zero-ing in on enemy weakpoints and zooming out of trouble with the blink of an eye. The game mixes in
a lot of survival puzzles and creative bosses that both reminded me of the better parts of the original
Viewtiful Joe. If you've heard about the game, but not checked it out, do yourself a favor and do so.
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Tank Universal |
Tank Universal
($17.95)
by Dialogue Design
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Strapping on a virtual device George disappears into a computer world where he finds himself fighting
alongside the resistance in powerful and massive tanks.
The
Verdict:
Do you remember the first time you saw Tron? If you could take that moment and repackage it, it would
probably come out something like Tank Universal. I say that not just because the graphics in this game
are very similar to the visuals created for the world of Tron, but also because Tank Universal does a
really good job of making you feel like you are in another world. In fact, I'd say it made me feel
like I was in another world better than any game has since
Cellblock
Squadrons, and that was 3 years ago!
The game
play is simple and straight forward. You won't need to memorize a dozen keys to play, just the
standard movement WADS, plus a few extras for dealing with the tank and you are ready to go into
combat. The combat is done well, giving you everything you could hope for out of a FPS. In fact my
only complaint of the game is that the graphics strongly set of my motion sickness, so those who find
themselves getting sick as they play FPS games will want to beware. However, if that
doesn't describe you, I
strongly recommend checking out this game!
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Singularis |
Singularis
($14.95)
by Okashi Itsumo
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An ambitious Protozoa wants to become the most powerful being in the universe. Maneuvering your
floating protozoa through 300 levels, players will improve their abilities with evolutions and take on
amazing end bosses.
The
Verdict:
When I first saw this game I thought it looked a bit like
Aquaria meets
Gish, and so I was intrigued.
While there are certainly some similarities, playing the game reveals it to be a bit more like Thrust.
In the game you move about avoiding baddies while exploring an organic world that makes you feel like
you are cell inside a living thing. Though you are not penalized for colliding with walls, you lose
health for colliding with anything else, making a big part of the challenge of the game
trying to control the
character.
The levels are varied and despite the color palette for each level
being based on different
shades of a single color, each of the levels shines and the graphics really are pretty to look at.
It's an interesting game that might be the best game this month though neither of the control schemes
really suited my taste, leaving me feeling like I was missing out by not going further into the game,
but too frustrated with the character controls to play any more.
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Battle Of Tiles |
Battle Of Tiles
($4.95)
by Bimboosoft
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A tile game where players take on seemingly endless hordes through 5 levels. You can get up 70 players
in your party, by recruiting the enemy with gold. Characters have different abilities and will level
up based on individual and party combat.
The
Verdict:
I was not even going to take a second glance at Battle of Tiles after seeing the screenshots, because
let's face it, the game is ugly.
Then I saw that the developer was Bimboosoft, who brought the
beautiful and amazing
Dream Match Tennis, so I decided to give it a try anyway. Three hours later I
realized just how much time had passed.
Battle of Tiles is simple, but very addictive, focusing on
leveling your characters and building out the best battle formation possible using a variety of
characters from your starting army, and recruited enemies. It's simple, but it really works. For the
game's $4.95 price tag you'll get a lot more entertainment than you would out of most movies, and
you're likely to enjoy it more as well. Check out the demo, but beware. You're likely to find
yourself wondering where the time went.
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Skin & Bones |
Skin & Bones
($19.95)
by Addictive 247
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Skin and Bones are two unlikely friends thrown together in an even unlikelier situation. A wizard
wants gems, and in order to be set free, Skin and Bones must retrieve the gems. Using their unique
abilities, Skin's ability as a living person to collect things and jump a bit higher, and Bone's
invulnerability to water, fire, spikes and all mater of enemies, they set out on a grand quest.
The
Verdict:
Like last month's
Jasper's Journeys, Skin & Bones is a brilliant platformer with a capital 'B.'
The
puzzle mixed with platforming, requiring you to interchange between two characters to get through
enemies, tough jumps, switches and all matter of mind-benders is truly fantastic.
Unfortunately, also like
Jasper's Journeys, the game is extremely difficult, and unlike that other platformer, you don't have
the ability to go back to an earlier save point to fix the problem of not having any health left on a
later level. You just restart and die over and over again.
With that one frustration fixed I'd put
this game as a must-own title instead of just a must-checkout title. Great pixel work and a solid
soundtrack round off a great package...at least until you make a few silly mistakes and find you have
to start over again...from the beginning!
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Wild Earth: African Safari |
Wild Earth: African Safari
($29.99)
by Super X Studios
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The 2003 IGF Game of the Year winner is completed and on the Wii. Players take to the African Savannah
to photograph some of nature's rarest and most awe-inspiring animals. Your photographs become part of
articles that will educate you on the wilds of Africa almost as much as your naturalist companion.
The
Verdict:
Wild Earth is a game that's always hit my soft spot. The game plays something like an interactive
nature documentary with running commentary giving you information on the places and animals that you
are to photograph.
The game is VERY similar to its PC counterpart with the same missions and dialogue.
The biggest differences are in the addition of Wii-specific mini-games and 4-player co-op. The Co-op
takes a minute to get used to, but in the end, it's really a nice addition that turns the game into a
family affair. The mini-games, well, they're mini games.
The big (only?) negative here is the
graphics. Clearly they weren't going to be on par with their PC counterpart, but the draw distance is notably poor.
Objects will often pop-up unexpectedly, which when mixed with some rough smoothing when you zoom in and
out with your camera (something you do quite a lot) will leave those with weak stomach's unable to play
for too long. Still, it's a fun ride and if you love Nature shows as much as I do, you'll find the
game a fascinating adventure.
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Pop |
Pop
(700 pts ~$7)
by nnooo
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Pop was created to give players the fun of bubble-wrap on their screen. Players aim and blast away at
bubbles, matching colors or shapes for combo multipliers, popping large bubbles to increase their game
time and racing to power-ups through 16 stages and multiple bonus stages.
The Verdict:
Pop looks like a flash game. Still I've been intrigued since I first saw this game and it has been one
of the WiiWare games that I've found myself most excitedly returning to play
again.
The simple, but smartly
balanced, rules of popping large bubbles for time and small bubbles for points mixed with chain combos,
the ability to blow up bubbles into big bombs, and the entrancing reactive music make the game a winner.
The game also sports XBLA-like achievements, online leader boards and multiplayer play, which gives the
game a lot of long life...as long as you play in short sessions.
That leads to the few places the
game falls short. Single-player is great, but you come to realize just how long a single game can go
(over 30 minutes). It's a bit long for how much button pressing you have to do. Multiplayer typically
ends VERY quickly unless you have people playing who are really working together and avoiding some of
the power-ups that get old really quickly (electricity I'm looking at you!).
Still for 7 bucks, nnooo
has created a can't miss game that mixes the abstract goodness of electroplancton with the fun of an
on-rails arcade
shooter.
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Trials 2 SE |
Trials 2 SE
($9.95)
by RedLynx
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Similar to
Motorama, our Sports Game of the Year from a couple of years ago, Trials 2 Stunt Edition, puts
players in the seat of a motorbike in a world of extreme physics. Players attempt to complete tracks
while pulling off cool maneuvers and trying to avoid graphically fatal crashes.
The
Verdict:
Trials is game that straight up I can tell you isn't for everyone. Physics based games come in three
varieties for me.
There are fun sim/building games (such as World of Goo,
Blast Miner and
Bridge
Construction Set), cool platformers (such as
Gish,
Gumboy and
Wik) and then there are the more true to
life game sims that are very difficult, include a high level of failure, require a lot of patience, and
in the end are incredibly rewarding when (if) you succeed. Trials is in the later of these categories for better and for worse.
Maneuvering your motorbike takes a tremendous amount of skill and
this will lead many people to just give up despite the stunning graphics that really bring the world of
jumps (and severed heads when you miscalculate) to life. If you love physics-based games, I'd
recommend checking out Trials just to see the physics in motion. Though I left
wishing I could turn Trials 2 into a crash simulator, at $9.95 it's a
good, though challenging, experience that shines at times.
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Crime City |
Crime City
($19.99)
by Games2Gaze
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Thugs and criminals on the streets have a new force to deal with in Crime City. Controlling an elite
police force, you will direct your police units, just like an RTS game, to trap and bust the bad guys.
The Verdict:
Crime City has great style! So much so that I was really ready to give it a higher rating. The
graphics and sound are solid.
However, playing the game reveals fairly hollow game play that is
unfortunately not very well tuned. The general gist is that you control 4 police cars.
These cars are used as individual units to capture the evil of the city. This is done by
corralling the
cars driven by the bad guys. When you have police cars on either side of the bad guy's car for several
seconds, blocking off both sides of a street, the villain is apprehended.
It's an interesting concept, but the game
play needs some further attention before it will be really enjoyable. One issue is that you can't
control your cars from the mini-map. You can click on the car and have the screen move you to that
where the car is, but you then have to click physically on the car and then on the actual map (not the mini-map) to
direct the car. Any RTS user will find that the most difficult problem, though there were a couple of
other issues that nagged me (like my cars driving right past the villain...b/c the game requires
trapping the enemy instead of engaging him, and my time running out even though the
villain had been
trapped between two of my cars for more than 3 seconds). It's much more thoughtful than your typical
high-speed chase, but not well-enough thought out for me to really dig it.
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Master Kick |
Master Kick
($9.95)
by INDUSTRY Entertainment
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Take soccer back to the table with this foosball simulator. Play against the computer in a single game
or attempt a tournament. Multiple boards, configurations and computer difficulties make it the
ultimate foosball package.
The
Verdict:
You know what is really fun about
foosball? That sensation of really ripping off a good hit as you spin
the little football players and score from the other side of the board.
Unfortunately that feeling
doesn't transfer well to button pushing and that is really the key complaint that I had with Master
Kick. It's a fun little game, and it feels good when you score, but overall it doesn't have that same
sensation of playing at a real table.
The computer difficulty is pretty high, even on the lowest
level, which makes it hard to score from close and near impossible from across the board. Unlike a
real table you won't find your opponent with his pieces in mid-spin when you shoot,
which makes getting through multiple lines more difficult. A last issue is
that the resolution is really small and there is no full-screen option, making it tough to play on
today's high resolution monitors.
However, the game is also available for Palm and PocketPC, and I've
got to think that where it comes up a bit short as a PC game, it probably is a lot more exciting as a
game played in short bursts on the go.
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Next Month - The return of The Illustrious
Panel! |
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By: Russell Carroll Posted: Wednesday May 28, 2008
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Action
Adventure
Arkanoid
Fighting
Platform
Puzzle & Casual
Hidden Object
RPG
Shooter
Simulation
Sports
Strategy
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