Mutant Storm Empire

October 31, 2007 · Filed Under Reviews · 22 Comments 

If you ever wondered how people advertise a game with alleged old school gameplay (whatever the fuck that is) in this modern age, then for the most part you need look no further than Microsofts Xbox Live Arcade service for the Xbox360. A veritable haven of classic gameplay at cheap as chips prices (unless you have the misfortune to stumble upon one of the cunts charging 1200 points or taking the piss with massive amounts of downloadable content - Q? Entertainment prior to E4 I’m looking at you on both counts there).

If you spend just a few moments browsing the contents of Xbox.com’s Live Arcade section then you can amuse yourself for hours reading the bullet points (yes, I’ve got a bullet point fetish. I’m sorry, but I find them funny) as marketing executives struggle to wrap their head around selling what to my generation is the fundamental game archetypes (are you going for a job at Edge? - Ed). For the most part, I’m glad to report they don’t actually bother to put much effort in - they even manage to make Space Giraffe sound like the most boring game in the universe.

Enjoy the unique graphical appearance of each level due to the use of the Neon engine.

Wow, that sounds fascinating doesn’t it? No wait. The other one.

Truthfully though, I prefer the bland market speak to the absolute utter bullshit that accompanies Mutant Storm Empire.

The art of blasting: Practice the way of “Blastikkidoo” or the art of blasting, as you plow through the different worlds in Mutant Storm Empire. This all-new sequel to Mutant Storm Reloaded ratchets up the competitive challenge!

Christ. You see, here’s the thing. That write up, that one bullet point gratuitously stolen from its game page on Xbox.com is far more interesting and exciting than the game itself. Maybe there’s some sort of inverse law of reality at play here. Space Giraffe - bland bullet point, wild game. Mutant Storm Empire - wild bullet point, bland game. And it’s so very portal. Not “Portal” the game, instead those things that accumulate breakout clones whilst your back is turned.

If someone wants to give me a research grant, I’ll gladly take the time out to have a look into the shit bullet point/good game, exciting bullet point/shit game more in depth. In the meantime, I’m just going to complain about Pompom and Mutant Storm Empire a bit. So brace yourself.

Mutant Storm Empire, in case you’re a bit thicky - is the sequel to Pompoms early XBLA hit Mutant Storm Reloaded, itself a spiritual succesor to their age old PC Robotron steal Mutant Storm. Still with me? Good. Right, here’s the bad news. It’s a bit shit.

Actually, that’s probably unfair - because if you want real shit on XBLA then you can always inflict Yaris or Aegis Wing upon yourself. A pair of games that even at the grand price of zero pounds and zero pence are massively overpriced.

What Mutant Storm Empire is, more than anything, is uninspired and bland.

Unlike recent takes on the twin stick shooter genre, Geometry Wars, Everyday Shooter and their ilk - Mutant Storm Empire plays it safe. There’s no innovations to see here - you’ve seen every part of Mutant Storm Empire in other games, you’ve seen everything in other Pompom games for christs sake, which considering there’s only two and a half of those out there is a bit embarassing.

There’s obviously been a great deal of effort gone in to generating huge amounts of assets for the game, but none of that can mask the fact that the game itself is sorely lacking in the one crucial department it should be playing on.

It single handedly fails to excite.

Mutant Storm Empire is as dull as ditchwater, routine and mechanical. There’s no room for flare, little room for improvisation when most of the game is spent fighting off shitloads of enemies either spawning from generators or pouring out of doors in an incredibly routine manner broken up with the odd bit of dodging or the frequent mini-boss fights. Masses of enemies and big guys that take a ruck of hits feels like a lazy cop out design wise and makes for some serious lack of fun whilst enduring playing the game.

You neither feel that the score you’re getting matters or that any progress is truly worthwile as you’re sheparded through the different rooms in each zone. Despite the multitude of enemy designs desperately attempting to keep things fresh, when every attack follows such tried and tested patterns it rapidly becomes repetetive. As you go from room to room, you know within seconds precisely what is coming next. .

At best, you’ll find you have to run away a bit more to get some distance from the enemies, at worst - you’ll fall asleep with the mundanity of it all. The occasional scrolling Asteroids-levels where you’re enclosed between two beams of magical light of blue glowiness manage to completely avoid instilling any terror or fear of death in the player. Even the inclusion of the lacklustre combo system feels tagged on and an attempt at adding depth where there plainly isn’t any to be found.

Mutant Storm Empire gains the unceremonious honour of being the first game I couldn’t actually be arsed about the leaderboard for. No matter how hard I try, when the game seems like its just going through the motions with the player - it’s hard not to reciprocate the feeling. After all, why should I give a shit about the game, if the designers don’t give enough of a shit to make me care about it?

Essentially, they’ve taken the already dated Pompom take on Robotron and mixed it up with a poor mans Smash TV, bled the gameplay dry of any life, heart or soul and thrown it out the door, taking a shit on the beauty, clarity and brilliance of Eugene Jarvis’ original designs.

Sure, you could argue that if you’ve found a formula why not stick to it, but Empire takes it all too far with its rigid structure and bloodsucking from others past glories. It’s formulaic to its detriment.

Worryingly, there’s an option for downloadable content on the menu screen meaning that in all likelihood we haven’t seen the back of Mutant Storm Empire. I’d like to hope that perhaps the DLC could rescue the game at some point but I can’t shake the feeling that Pompom are one trick ponies and they’ve already flogged the poor pony within an inch of its life, kicked it around a bit, took scissors to its eyes, stapled its ears, set fire to its coat, beat it with a spade and then attempted to bury it alive wrapped in cheap carrier bags, all to the tune of UB40’s Greatest Hits.

To top it all off, Pompom appear to be bringing an unwelcome pester mentality to XBLA with their demo. Repeating the ultra fucking irritating trick also employed in Mutant Storm Reloaded by badgering you constantly to buy the game doesn’t win them any favours. With a system like XBLA where you don’t have to shout so loud to get heard, it’s ridiculous to employ tactics that have become an unfortunate part of PC shareware.

Here’s a clue, you don’t need to pester me. You have an entire weeks release window to yourself. I get the game delivered straight to my hard drive automatically. I’m going to play it. If I like it, I’ll buy it. I don’t need coercing into it. So fucking well behave yourselves, Pompom. There’s no call for the hard sell tactics at the end of every stage in the demo, it’s off putting and offensive given the nature of the delivery method and if anything is likely to turn me off buying the game.

It’s a shame that instead of moving the genre forward, Pompom have decided to stagnate. It’s an even bigger shame that they couldn’t even make the game fun to play.

As it stands, if Mutant Storm Empire were released on the PC, it would make an above average freeware game or a mediocre shareware game. On XBLA, where you’re reaching direct into peoples homes, it’s a wasted opportunity and a depressing waste of time, money and hard drive space.

Mutant Storm Empire: teaching the art of blastikkidon’t since 2007 (You’re sacked - Ed) , and definitely the kind of game you really don’t want to be encouraging, Indie or not.

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MFOR Considerations and Inspirations

October 11, 2007 · Filed Under Development Log · 9 Comments 

To date, the idea’s and concepts behind MFOR have been, shall we say, a little on the nebulous side. When your starting point for the game is little more than “it has to be something a little different”, then whilst on one hand the world is your oyster with where you can head - on the other hand, where exactly do you head?

Over a few long discussions this past week, Gary and myself have been trying to nail the concept down to something a little more specific - and we’ve settled on something thats a little left field, a little bit different and very us. We already had the idea that it would be influenced by a mix of the mundane and the fantastical. We wanted a world where dragons and kettles wouldn’t look out of place together. A world where you wouldn’t blink an eye if you were confronted by a giant fish one minute and an alien the next. This is how we arrived at “Monty Pythons Vertical Parodius” as the starting point for development.

Ok, we’ve had a slight change of plan here. The most important and Mr Staypuft pleasing of these is that we’re ditching the top down vertical viewpoint and going for a horizontal shooter. One of the most important things we want to ensure is that MFOR is filled with its own character and after much contemplation, a straight vertical shooter wouldn’t be the ideal method for us to get the mood and feel of the game across. We’d either have to go with a quasi-3d viewpoint to retain top down elements, which in my opinion is less than ideal from both a coding and playability point of view or bite the bullet and make the shift to horizontal.

The clincher being that Gary believes he could do infinitely better work with a horizontal viewpoint, and I’m inclined to agree. Thus, it’s settled. MFOR will be a horizontally scrolling shooter. When I return to the land of development soon enough, I’m going to have a little bit of engine rewriting to do. Joy is me.

Here’s where things start getting a bit hairy and shmup fans start running for the hills screaming. MFOR will have a story.

I’m sure we’ve all been burnt by arcade games with storylines in the past - some are superfluous and tagged on (see most euroshmups, comic book cut scenes etc…), some are so generic that they may as well not be told and some are more obsessed with dialogue at the cost of gameplay. Obviously, we don’t want MFOR to fall into that trap. We do want MFOR to have a conclusive start and finishing point, we also want you, the player to be a part of the story.

Look away now if you’re already twitching, because you’ll probably really hate the next bit.

The main inspiration behind where we’re taking MFOR isn’t generic science fiction, it isn’t “aliens trying to overthrow the world” - in fact, it’s not science fiction at all really. Inspiration for MFOR is coming from kids picture books. The only place where you can have a legitimate mix of the mundane and the fantasical. The only real medium where everyday things can take on bizarre properties. We want MFOR to feel like you’re playing a shmup inside a picture book. We’re not going for deep and meaningful, or science fiction epic, or cute target marketed to 30 something housewives. To tell the truth, despite the world that MFOR will be set in, it’s not going to be a kids game. Hopefully, we’ll be putting together a game that anyone can play that just happens to be set inside a world viewed through the eyes of a child.

I don’t doubt there’s people now holding their head in their hands thinking I’ve finally lost it. Well, I never actually had it to begin with so I wouldn’t worry. I’m also sure that at this point we’ve probably just put off a proportion of people who may actually be looking to the game with some interest. But that’s OK, because we’re not writing this for you anyway. If you want to blame anyone, blame Oliver Jeffers for writing fucking brilliant kids picture books, alright? Yes, blame him. I am.

So, we’ve nailed down what we’re doing for definite. We’ve got the outline of how the story is going to work, it’s decided that you’ll have library tickets instead of lives. There’s definitely a train, Gary has started work on that already. Things are falling into place. Slowly, admittedly, but this was never going to be a quick project (more so with my enforced sabbatical). It’s going to be fun putting this together and I just hope we can do the concept justice.

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Shit Reviews

October 6, 2007 · Filed Under Articles · 7 Comments 

The internet, it’s fucking brilliant. If ever you wanted to disprove the monkey/typewriter theory it’ll take you five minutes using the internet.

The place is utterly jam packed full of people spouting turd rot. Now, that’s fine to a degree - I don’t for a second claim to be the most sparkling of writers myself. In my defence, at least I’ll come right out and admit this. Every single review I’ve put to zeroes and ones so far could be better. In some cases, a lot better.

Also, in my defence, very few people have the idiocy level cranked up to eleven to take much notice of me. Which is a good thing. Factor in the fact that I tend to sprawl a stream of consciousness out onto the page, I’m not paid to write for a living and I couldn’t really give a flying fuck most of the time… well, anyway, enough about me.

I digress, as usual.

What amazes me about the internet is the depth that alleged professional reviewing sites sink to at times. I was reminded earlier of Kristan Reids infamous review of Sensible Soccer for Eurogamer - something I don’t wish to dwell on too much but for those who have either not read the review, my earlier witterings about it or actually played the game - it got 9/10. The game is a fucking buggy useless piece of refactored poop. So, nowhere near a nine then. The main reason I don’t want to dwell on that review though is at least it was a reasonably literate read. Ok, so it was a massive lie from start to finish, but at least it was a readable lie.

I’m not here today to question journalistic integrity (not much, anyway) - Stu Campbell already did a fine job of this in his Drivergate analysis.

It’s rare you can find a reviewer on the internet that you can appreciate, and even if you don’t agree with them - find yourself nodding along happily or at least still awake by the end of their prose. Perhaps this is why when Graham decided to put his reviewing skills to the test with The Arsecast there were a few months of collective sighs of relief across the internet. At last, someone talking about games and not talking shit. The same, I think, applies to the brilliant Zero Punctuation series being ran on The Escapist. See also Stuart Campbell and Way Of The Rodent. Tim and TIGS and so on.

It’s a shame that there aren’t more quality reviewers out there. Or maybe they are out there and no-one has told me about them. I don’t know - if I’m missing something that doesn’t involve a lot of art-lit wankery or chin stroking coma inducing analysis then I’d be more than happy to have my eyes pointed in that direction.

This subject came up on RR a few months ago and I made the point that what we need are more people like Stu Campbell, Graham Goring and (now) Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. I subscribe to the excellent Rocks Back Pages, an archive of music journalism. The quality difference between even the poorest reviews in the archives and the poorest reviews I’ve read about games is staggering. Yes, games reviewing comes out drastically lacking, in case you hadn’t gathered.

Why? Why do we, the public accept this shit foisted upon us and lap it up like we should be grateful? Surely, it’s not much to ask to ask games reviewers to:

a) have a fucking clue what they’re writing about
b) be able to write about something without resorting to making shit up
c) be able to convey what they mean in a relatively literate manner
d) not resort to thesaurus swallowing wankery, art-lit hardcore criticism or in depth analysis of a polygon
e) entertain me

Instead, we get left with stuff like this priceless paragraph or two from IGN (It’s the Folklore review, in case you wondered)

If the beauty of Folklore could be summarized into one general theme, it would undoubtedly be its nearly masterful execution of stillness and motion, and the interplay between them. Without getting overly technical or poetic, let’s just say that the imagery, sound, and even some of the gameplay mechanics harness these two opposing energies to induce some incredible effects both tangible and otherwise.

We’ll discuss this more as it becomes relevant, but let’s take the real world/Netherworld structure as the first example. The stillness of this particular dynamic is rooted in Doolin, and its unchanging, gray-skied melancholy, while the movement comes from the greatly diverse and kinetic realms of the Netherworld, which are constantly ripe with battle and exploration. This balance is what makes the game so interesting not only from a gameplay standpoint but from a poetic standpoint as well. Even more moving is the chilling reversal of this juxtaposition because the living world is the world that feels deathly still, while the realms of the dead ripple with life.

4 pages of this review, and they’re still wankering on about the importance of the juxtaposition of stillness and motion on every fucking page. How in shitchrist does this crap get published? I realise that it may be a case of paying peanuts, not paying anything at all, rushed deadlines to meet or what-the-fuck-ever but nothing can excuse such flagrant bullshittery from ever being thrust under the public gaze.

Seriously now, what the fuck does that mean to me about the game? It’s got things which move and things which don’t and this is really impressive? Go fuck a duck.

I’m sure at this point there’ll be someone wandering in to say “It’s IGN, what do you expect?” but lets be fair and honest here, it’s not just IGN who publishes shit like this,is it? It’s par for the course with games journalism. For every one well written and thought out review, there’s five hundred pieces of shit like this and in some cases worse.

So, I’ve got a heartfelt request. If you ever find yourself writing a review and feel the urge to make shit up about the juxtaposition of stillness and motion in order to justify a stupidly inflated high score - kill yourself. You’re doing the world a favour and maybe, once the gene pool has been purged of you fuckwits we can start giving some love to the people who can write, entertain and share their love of games with us all.

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