Bad Reputation

October 28, 2006 · Filed Under Personal · Comment 

One day, I’ll quit with the Haines references… one day… anyway…

Nintendo Wii Advert

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G-Force (Again)

October 27, 2006 · Filed Under Development Log · 4 Comments 

Had a couple of days off the net earlier in the week so managed to get a fair bit of work laid into G-Force.

Much happier with it now than I was before the weekend, plays and feels a whole lot better now and looks a tad better too. Still loving the end of level sequence though.

Whooshmeup

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Neon Wars

October 26, 2006 · Filed Under Other peoples games · 9 Comments 

Neon Wars is a deceptive little cookie of a game, from a cursory glance you’d be easily fooled into believing it to be your bog standard average Geometry Wars style clone, but people of Bizarre Creations, look away now there is nothing to see here. Yes, it may have those wonderful glowing vectors that you lay claim to creating, it may be *shock* an arena shooter, but in practice its quite, quite a different beast indeed and shares less in common with Huge Euge’s creations than most of the other games doing the rounds on these interwebs we call our digital home.

It could also, quite possibly, be Neon Wars biggest mistake. But more of that later.

Shooters instinct tells me, the first thing you do upon being presented with an arena shooter is to go and hunt out the dual stick options and calibrate your sticks, well, if I were you I wouldn’t waste your time because there is no such option in Neon Wars… and this is where the game sets itself apart from the crowd. Its not a dual stick shooter, in fact - aside from a bomb button which produces various different pretty and deadly particle effects - you don’t have to shoot at all. You see, Neon Wars isn’t really a shooter at all - it just looks like one. The core basis of Neon Wars I’d be happier calling a “dodge em up” and much to my surprise, it turned out pretty fun despite some early reservations about it.

The game has two main segments, the level based game and the main feature, the zone game and I must confess that I found the level challenges a bit dull, not coma inducing dull by any means, but certainly not enough to retain my interests for too long (plus I cleared through them all in no time whatsoever) whereas the zone segments were far more fun and its clearly obvious why this is the main section of the game pushed (and the one showcased in the demo I believe). Once I’d gotten over the initial “hang on, I don’t have to fire” culture shock I’d happily thrown away a few hours to the game and enjoyed it thoroughly…which is all I can ever really ask for from a game.

Now, the problem I believe Neon Wars may find itself up against is what Neon Wars is by design. Its use of heavy particle effects and general look will adhere it straight away to the shmup crowd whilst the control scheme will doubtlessly alienate a fair few of them (”A shooter where you don’t get to shoot? Pifff”) whilst attracting the more “casual” crowd…but will a particle blaze be what the casual crowd is after?

Of course, in an ideal world this shouldn’t even be an issue - Neon Wars is, after all, just a bloody game and you either like it or you don’t, but I’ve ranted about this not too long ago and won’t inflict that upon you twice in a week… but by placing itself on the fence in such a manner may well work against it in the long run. If the hardcore mob don’t want your game and the casual mob feel its too hardcore looking for them then the developers may find themselves hitting a wall faster than something fast that hits walls.

I guess the main thing you have to do with Neon Wars is to switch off any preconceptions of what you feel it should be and enjoy it for what it is, a nice, mindless piece of fun that burns your eyelids in a lovely manner. Wether its $20 worth of mindless fun, I’m still not too sure - but unlike the recently released Polarity (with its carefully chosen and slightly misleading review quotes), Neon Wars contains no time limits, no DRM and a full zone for you to play through so at no point are you being held hostage by Macrovision for your purchase. Which is a good thing indeed, never quite sure why Indie publishers feel the need to go in for such invasive copy protection schemes… but thats for another day and not for this review.

You can find an alternate view on Neon Wars over at Bills excellent site: The2Bears and with thanks to Rich of Reflected/Blitwise for firing over a copy to go under the Gibber microscope.

Send in the lawyers...no wait, the other one...

Anyone seen Kraftwerk?

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