Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up

Wow... That was one of the shittiest pieces of shit that ever was shat. Maybe that was a tad harsh...while searching for other reviews to verify my disappointment, I didn't really find any. Everybody claims this game is solid. But hoooowwwww?

As a bit of background on this decree of shittiness:
I've never played Smash Bros, but I'm at least aware of its style of play.
I love Ninja Turtles, have since I was 5.
I only played the single player arcade/story mode of Smash-Up.

I mention Smash Bros. because, while I've never played it myself, I've watched plenty of Smash-Bros, and I know a clone when I see one. That's not a dig, apparently. That's a selling point. They tout that they use the same Smash Bros. engine, and the fact that it's just like Smash Bros. is one of the most positive aspects of the reviews I read. I don't really get the fervor about that franchise, but to each their own.

Secondly, as a Turtles fan, the number of characters available to play or fight are pretty disappointing and sparse. You've got the four turtles, Splinter, Casey, and April to start, and the unlockables include a Foot Ninja, Fugitoid, Karai, Nightwatcher, Shredder, Utrominator, and bizarrely a Raving Rabbid. No Bebop, no Rocksteady, no Tokka, no Rahzar, no Metalhead, no Leatherhead, no Baxter Stockman, no Usagi Yojimbo, no Krang, no...okay, you get the point. Also, of all the ones that they DID include, who the hell wants to play a Foot Ninja?

I only played Leonardo in this little run through, and I only experienced the Arcade Mode, which is the single player story mode, so if multiplayer is somehow life alteringly good, denounce my heresy and play to your little heart's content, but I'll still probably think you've been hitting some manner of Kool-Aid.

In story mode, Splinter decides that he wants to have a tournament to determine who is the best. This is depicted via some old school style art from the comics with really minimal animation of the still images. The art itself is kinda cool, but the overall presentation is pretty weak. You then get into the game, where Smash Bros. vomited some turtles, gameplay is whatever, you progress through different people, and then Shredder attacks, and you fight about three battles with his lackeys and then him. Win those 6 or so fights, and you win and credits roll.

I spent a whopping 26 minutes with this game. I didn't expect much, and I didn't receive much, so I can't be too upset. But still...*sigh*

Psychonauts

The best way to describe my experience with Psychonauts was that it was an opinion rollercoaster. I had heard great things about this game and came in with high expectations, but once I started playing, I careened from bored to enjoying myself to just wanting it to be over and back again.

The story begins at a summer camp for people with psychic abilities. Your character, Rasputin, has managed to sneak into said summer camp with the hope of becoming a Psychonaut. They kindly allow you to stay and participate but only until your dad comes to pick you up. Shit goes downhill before that happens though, and before it's over, you're trying to stop a brain in a tank from taking over the world. It's all very dire.

There are two main arenas of gameplay. With one, you're in the summer camp and surrounding area, running around, talking to fellow campers, finding collectables and whatnot. The second takes place in the minds of various people you come across. You gain access to their mind by slapping a tiny door to their forehead and in you go.

In a person's mind, you'll find figments of their imagination which are harmless, mental cobwebs that you can clear, vaults which hold their innermost secrets, and emotional baggage, which appears as actual baggage, that you can get rid of by finding its baggage tag and reuniting bag with tag. There are also plenty of beasties that will attack you, trying to expel you from the mind.

These different minds are where the bulk of the game is played, and my opinion of the game swung wildly from mind to mind. The first couple are the minds of your teachers. You're just beginning to learn how to move around, that you have powers and what they do, etc.

It didn't take long, perhaps the second mind, to realize that there were things about the controls of this game that I despise. The controls are very clunky and are dependent on the camera angle, which has a tendency to change whenever and however it sees fit. When you're out in the real world of the camp, the camera is controlled via the mouse, when fighting bosses or in various other on-rails segments, the camera does whatever the hell it wants, generally remaining fixed on the bad guy. In these moments, the camera cannot be controlled by you. This wouldn't be so bad if the controls weren't totally dependent on what direction the camera is facing. This causes problems when the camera moves while I'm in mid-jump, when I need to make a precise jump onto a small target, or when I'm on the edge of something perilous. The camera moving often caused the forward direction I'm going in one second to change to lateral movement the next, which becomes slightly problematic when that lateral movement runs me off the edge of a cliff.

This happened a lot...

The camera thinking it knew better than me also gave me trouble when trying to figure out where to go next. I needed to look around, but sometimes the camera angle would be restricted to a few degrees left or right. Most infuriating.

After this second mind, I entered into the "I thought this game was supposed to be good" mode. I was surprisingly kind of bored already. Then it was time to enter another teacher's mind. Teacher Milla's mind is one big dance party. Here we learn how to use the levitate power. There are lots of crazy flashing colors, spinning things, faster run speed, and dynamic camera movements. I don't know what it was about this level, but I think it actively made me ill while playing it. I don't often get motion sickness while gaming. (It happened once during Portal.) But this one screwed up my guts twice. So from bored to sick to my stomach, it wasn't exactly going well, but I pushed on.

The first segment that I enjoyed took place in the mind of a lungfish. In this mind, you are Goggalor, a huge city-crushing giant traipsing about the lungfish city of Lungfishopolis. It took the game in a direction that I didn't expect, it was fun, and was the first bit of writing in the game that I laughed at.

The next area, The Milkman Conspiracy, was also quite good. The level design here is fairly excellent, all twisting, turning, and topsy turvy. Plus, the promise of funny was also delivered here. This area is populated by hidden surveillance equipment and trench coat clad secret agents pretending to be road workers, landscapers, plumbers, etc. by holding an item signifying that role. To get through each marked off area that they're guarding, you have to blend in with that group by holding that signifying item. For example, a member of the road crew would hold a stop sign. There were many good bits of dialogue here, as they matter of fact state what they are supposed to be to maintain their cover. A few examples, if I may...ahem...

"The dead people are underground. And I have brought flowers because...I am sad."
~ Grieving Widow Secret Agent

"Although over time, my husband will desire me less, sexually, he will always enjoy my pies."
"Rhubarb is a controversial pie variety."
~ Pie-making Wife Secret Agent

"Yes, we all work on the road crew. Our backs are killing us."
"Look at that woman's breasts. They're large."
~ Road Crew Secret Agent

While The Milkman Conspiracy section was quite enjoyable, the next one, Gloria's Theater...not so much. It took place in a theater, obviously, and you had to change the set and listen to them perform parts of the play over and over to progress. It was just too wordy. I'll allow wordy if some of those words are funny, but these were just words...and there were a shit ton of them.

The following section pulled it back from "Ugh" and got back into interesting concept land. In Waterloo World, you're fighting the inner crazy of Fred Bonaparte. This inner crazy takes the form of Napoleon Bonaparte, who he is playing in a board game. You hop into the board game and have to round up game pieces to fight for Fred. There were some tedious bits here; there was some obnoxious platforming; there were some bizarre limitations/possible bugs when holding inventory items that I discovered, but overall this one goes into the positive camp.

Black Velvetopia was up next, and I give it points purely on style. It was visually interesting. Using telekinesis during the Boss fight was clunky and pissed me off, but whatever...I give you a pass. Moving on.

Blah blah blah, real world asylum stuff happens, and then we get to the final level...The Meat Circus. I had read that this was horrible online, and they were kind of right. This was where the "I just want it to be over" feels entered into it. There were like 14 different stages to this final level, and once I conquered one that pissed me off, another would show up to take its place. The combination of time-sensitive platforming, plus the camera doing whatever the hell it wants, a stark ramp up in difficulty, and the sheer length of these segments made me want to punch a baby.

There is also a point where you have to fight The Butcher, this hulking behemoth of a man with meat cleavers that I couldn't figure out how the hell to take down. I ended up having to look it up. When his cleaver gets stuck in the ground, I was supposed to run up his arm and punch him in the face. I tried and tried. I could not run up his arm to save my life. I maybe got one hit in on him every 15 tries. I was doing so poorly that every two seconds, Agent Cruller kept repeating that I should run up his arm and sock him in the face. "I KNOOOOOOWWW!!!" If I know what I'm supposed to do, and I still can't do it after numerous tries, that's a bullshit mechanic. Something about that model is wonky or there's a path I'm supposed to take or a place I have to jump over that's just not obvious. That shit's on you, Psychonauts. That shit's on you. I eventually found out, due to a Youtube video, that running up his arm is a suckers game. Bouncing up there via levitation ball is way less bullshit.

I kind of was hoping that was the end but no...now I must show my acrobatic prowess as my dad tries his damnedest to murder me. Water is rising, time is ticking, flaming clubs are being thrown at my face. Ahh...family. The camera was once again my nemesis here. There were points that I'd be walking across a tightrope and jump to avoid a projectile, only to have the camera view change mid-jump and cause me to fall into the abyss. Thanks camera. You sure do know better than me... It also made my life extra difficult when jumping from partially on fire floating fence to other partially on fire floating fence. The place I needed to land was very specific, and for one, I couldn't turn the camera to get a better view of where I was supposed to jump. The perspective made it look like there was no place to jump that wasn't on fire, and two, when I did jump, the camera would rotate and my jump toward the lattice would turn into a jump in the complete opposite direction, sending me to my watery death.

After getting through that gauntlet and two more boss fights, the credits assured me that this hell was over.

Just kidding...just kidding... Overall, I'm more positive than negative about Psychonauts. It had its problems, sure. It pissed me off, sure. But there were some interesting concepts, and I commend them for trying something new. It was refreshing in that regard. Plus, it made me laugh so kudos as well for that. However, don't get too cocky. I'm still giving you a C+ for your shitty ass controls and camera. Those were bad, and you should feel bad... C+

HOARD

HOARD...oh HOARD. My first thought was, I do not like this. This is no fun. ...but then I played all the levels, so there's that.

In HOARD, you're a dragon, and your existence is all about amassing a hoard of treasure and burning to a crisp anybody that tries to keep you from said treasure, or that takes your treasure, or that looks funny at your treasure. If it exists, burn it and get gold for it. If it exists and has ouchy pointy things, burn it without letting it touch you and get gold for it. It's fairly straight forward.

I kept playing, even though I wasn't really enjoying myself all that much at the beginning. I think part of it is that the TREASURE mode levels are in short 10 minute increments. The bite size nature didn't require much of a time commitment from me, which kept me coming back, and once I started rolling, I relented...thinking, "Okay, this is enjoyable."

Once I had a dozen or so levels under my belt, I realized that there weren't all that many single player missions. I could potentially "finish" this game. There were three modes: TREASURE, PRINCESS RUSH, and HOARD. In TREASURE mode, collect as much treasure as you can in 10 minutes; in PRINCESS RUSH, capture 15 princesses as quickly as possible, and in HOARD, just stay alive as long as possible. The princess capturing was the most fun to me (stealing them from other dragons was particularly enjoyable), straight up treasure hoarding was a close second, and not fun to me at all was HOARD mode. Too stressful.

In each level, you could get medal status depending on how well you did. It's a standard gold, silver, bronze affair, but jokes on them. I'm enjoying myself but not nearly enough to give a shit about playing until I get gold status on any of these levels. I'm setting the bar low here. Bronze? Great. Let's move on. That's clearly not the intent of the game, but whatever, I do what I want. I experienced all the levels with mild levels of success, and now I'm done.

I give it a rating of three crispy knights. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I wouldn't warn against it either.

Surgeon Simulator 2013

Surgeon Simulator 2013 seemed like such a horrible idea when I first heard of it. An entire game based around the fact that the controls are shit? That sounds awful. That's why no one's more surprised than me that I really enjoyed this game.

The controls are horrendous, yes, but in a fabulous way. You use the mouse to move your arm around and to rotate the hand, while the keys A,W,E,R, and SPACE each control a specific finger. Even though it looks like you're holding a scalpel like a toddler with a crayon, it's still possible to be...kind of precise.

First, you are tasked with performing a heart transplant. Many tools are at your disposal, including a bone saw, scalpels, a...hammer, etc. Each time you cut the patient, they'll start losing blood. Get a little overzealous in your jabbing, and they'll starting losing it by the bucket. Once they're out of blood, they're dead. Goal: Give them a new heart before making them dead.

Step 1: Remove all those pesky organs and throw em on the floor. Liver? Bah. Who needs that?
Step 2: Grab the shiny, new transplant organ and drop it in the surgery hole.
Step 3: PROFIT

Following up the heart surgery is a double kidney transplant and a brain transplant. Once you have completed those, you'll have the option to perform all three surgeries again...except you'll do it while in an ambulance. Lucky for you, the ambulance driver is a spaz...or possibly on crack. Either way, expect lots of bumps, sharp turns, and cutty tools flying around your face, out the back of the ambulance, onto the floor, and into your patient. I actually managed to get an A++ rating on my double kidney transplant in the ambulance, completing it in 2 minutes 46 seconds. My biggest problem with that one prior was getting the kidneys out once they were loose. It makes life easier when the ambulance hits a bump and throws the kidneys out for you. Swish.

Once you've completed these surgeries in the ambulance, you unlock those surgeries again, but this time you'll be in space. In space, all your tools are floating and plucking them out of the air is horrible. Most likely what will happen is you'll miss, the tool will start spinning, you'll freak out and try to grab it fast but instead you'll just smack the shit out of it, sending it flying and careening into other tools which will then spin and scatter, making life all that more difficult. I don't know why it's fun to perform these same three surgeries simply with different outside forces, but it was for me.

After those 9 official surgeries, there are 7 other secret ones. In one, you're a Team Fortress Medic performing an uber heart transplant on a Heavy. The other 6 are performed on an alien whilst on a spaceship. You'll be replacing its Pewdsball, Birgirspallex, Gobbleshaft, Cubed Trangrifier, Gavichal, or Robbaloraz.

Having completed all of these, I was dubbed Best Surgeon in the Universe. Aww yiss.

While this particular game turned out to be incredibly enjoyable and addictive, I think as genres go, "Horribad Controls" is probably not something that will or should take off. At least I hope not...

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

"Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken" was a tag along I got in a recent Humble Bundle. It's a platformer that follows the story of Hardboiled, a chicken dude with a jetpack and a mission, to eliminate the penguin dictator Putzki and all his lackeys.

I basically started playing this game in the hopes that I would hate it, and then I could just unceremoniously remove it from my backlog and move on. Sorry, bro. I didn't dislike it enough to just quit though, so I finished it, but I still didn't necessarily like it. There were good things, there were bad things, there were...whatever things.

THE GOOD

There are animated cutscenes between levels that are pretty enjoyable. They're well done and have a pretty cool soundtrack by New World Revolution. It was kind of a jarring combo during the first cutscene, but they kind of became my favorite parts.

There was a mechanic too that I liked where you could throw mind control bugs at baddies. When they took effect, you could control the enemy as if he were your character, using him to kill enemies, unlock doors you couldn't get to, etc. It adds new puzzle possibilities, and I enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the segments where you got to fly around outside dirigibles and shoot down enemies that were flying around, swarming you, and shooting rockets at your face. I hated these segments to start because the controls are kind of crummy, but once I got the hang of it, it was actually fun.

THE BAD

The environment is sometimes hard to navigate. The background isn't always immediately obvious as to what is climbable and what is just background. The ledges are sometimes concealed in the middle of what just looks like a floor. It was infuriating at times. There were also times you had to throw a mind control bug through a window or opening, but you couldn't tell it was an opening. It just looked like wall.

I couldn't figure out how to change weapons for the longest time either. Right after I picked up my second weapon, it flashed a symbol to notify me how to swap them out, but I had no idea what the symbol was. I think it must have been a symbol of a mouse. Symbols are supposed to alleviate confusion. That...it did not do.

In trying to figure out the controls, I made my way to the menu system, which is also a variety of terrible. There are Back buttons on the Main Menu that don't even do anything. Let's play "Find the real Back button". Dumb. Also, you couldn't change your control bindings while you were paused in-game. That menu option was just missing. You had to quit out to the Main Menu, and the Controls menu item would be available there. Whhhyyyy?!

Additionally, the sound design wasn't bad in general, but when any cardinal character spoke, it drove me insane. All dialogue is displayed as speech bubbles over a character's head, while some weird speech-like sound is played. The cardinals' in particular had a very annoying sound. I was probably more aware of it because they had the most dialogue, and that sound just seemed to loop for ages.

THE WHATEVER

Combat was fairly easy even with multiple attackers flanking you. It was all about burst firing. Shooting a baddy would throw them up in the air, keeping them from attacking you til they got up. You'd have to shoot them up in the air about three times until they died. If you had one baddy in front of you and one in back, you'd just shoot a couple rounds into one, then the other, back to the first one, and repeat until dead.

This super efficient way of dealing with enemies favored the machine gun. Later, you would get theoretically better weapons, but they would leave you open to getting shot more frequently, so I just stuck with the same weapon 95% of the time. Grenades were also pretty useless.

When you do happen to die, you'll restart at your last checkpoint with full health and ammo. This is great for progressing quickly, but it seems kind of cheating gameplay-wise. In the big wave upon wave fights, you don't need to be that good or conserve ammo, you just have to get to the next checkpoint. There were about 3 checkpoints in the middle of a multi-wave fight. Whether this is good or bad is based on what you want out of the game, I suppose. I just wanted to beat it, so I didn't care that much that it was spoon-feeding me success.


So yeah...it wasn't necessarily that fun, but it kept my interest enough to want to finish it. Quite the glowing review, I know...

Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge Special Edition

I went to 1991, and I liked it there. Might as well set up camp and stick around for Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge Special Edition. This Special Edition had some nice little upgrades from the Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition. In the last one, the new dialogue audio wouldn't play if you were playing in old school mode. This required me to switch back and forth whenever I talked to someone because I enjoyed the new audio but preferred the old graphics. In Lechuck's Revenge, the dialogue plays no matter what mode I'm playing in. Most excellent.

Another neat addition was that of commentary. While playing the game, certain areas would have "Press A for Commentary" text in the corner. Pressing "A" would start a recording of the creators Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer discussing something to do with that particular area. You get interesting little nuggets of where certain jokes or puzzles came from, interesting things about the production process, or fun arguments about such topics as: Guybrush's pants dropping in the cemetery...funny or not funny.

There are so many reasons why I love this franchise. Anytime a game makes you laugh out loud, it's doing pretty good. Each time you grab an inordinately large item and shove it in your coat, I'd laugh. A dog, a ship figurehead, a monkey...each time..out loud. Fabulous. There was also a point where I was just trying to use all my tools on something. I tried a hammer but thought, "What I really need is a wrench." As I said this, I used the monkey I had been carrying around. It worked, and I laughed. I also really enjoyed this one bit where the room was pitch black. In order to see, I figured I'd strike one of my matches. Before I did so, I thought, "This would be the perfect opportunity for a Looney Tunes gag. I strike the match, and it reveals a room full of explosives. If one could high five a game, I would have.

I must not have beaten this game when I played it years and years ago because the ending caught me by surprise. It was kind of cool because they kept you perplexed until the end of the credits. Only then did they reveal what was really going on. All in all, Lechuck's Revenge is a fine installment of the franchise, and if you enjoyed the original Monkey Island, you'll like this one.

Out of This World/Another World

I have once again reached far back into the vault, and this time 1991 fell out. Via Steam sale + extra Steam Wallet monies from selling silly trading cards, I picked up "Another World" for a whopping .56 cents. Back when it was originally released, my brother had it on the Apple IIGS. It was titled "Out of This World" for that version, and that is what I will forever call it. Out of This World tells the story of a scientist who, after an experiment gone wrong, has been transported to another world in which he's just fighting to survive.

Finally playing it myself, it was like a blast from the past. I recall very vividly many of the scenes that played out as my brother played it. I was about 6 at the time. I had watched him play many games, but this one seems to have stuck more in my mind than the others. It had a great art style and looking at it now, it had a very cinematic feel that you just didn't see in other games at the time.

...or even now. This game did so much with so little. It's very impressive.

I like the fact that he, and I say he because I'm pretty sure this game was the work of one dude, Éric Chahi...I like how he used simple polygons to such dramatic effect. The monster at the beginning, for example, is little more than a black mass and a suggestion of teeth, but this suggested form is perhaps more powerful because your imagination can conjure up far scarier things to fill in the visual blanks. In a world where modern games are so obsessed with looking more and more realistic, it's interesting to see a game like this still be so successful at sucking you into this world and evoking emotions of fear, relief, camaraderie, success, and the like.

As gameplay mechanics go, you have a small, manageable quantity at your disposal. You have basic movement of forward, back, jump, crouch, and additionally, you have a gun which, based on how long you hold CTRL, will either shoot, put up a temporary force field, or create a blast powerful enough to break small barriers. The way these limited mechanics are used seems very inventive throughout. I can't recall a game of this period that allowed you to do so much with the environment itself. The environment wasn't just a set piece. It often had to be used. What looked like decorative stalactites actually could be climbed on, a well placed superblast turned a rock formation into a handy ramp leading to freedom, and you learn that sometimes chandeliers are good for dropping on heads.

As a neat addition for the 20th Anniversary edition, there are some extra bonus features included with your purchase. They include two PDFs of design documents and a video with the creator and composer about the making of the game. Each provide an interesting look behind the scenes of this excellent title. It's been 23 years, and gladly, it still holds up. Definitely worth my .56 cents.