Atomhex
[I've been meaning to comment on Atomhex for a while now, truth be told I was holding out to do an interview with Mark Incitti for Rodent before commenting. Fear not, the interview is something I still intend to follow up with once the Emulation issue and my interview with Ooki Bloks coder (and co-creator of the glorious and essential Fren-Ze) MattV has gone live. Having recently reminded myself of the game in a recent RPS comments thread I figured a few "wise" words upon the game were long overdue.]
Create your own retro shooter
Ever wanted to create your own ZX Spectrum shooter but like me, lacked the know how? Fear not because the ever prolific Jonathan Cauldwell and Cronosoft have just released SEUD for the ZX Spectrum. Well, I say just - it was about two weeks ago but I’ve only just got round to having a proper look at my copy. In case you’re a bit thicky and haven’t worked it out yet, SEUD stands for Shoot Em Up Designer. Genius!
Space Invaders Extreme (DS)
I seem to go long periods of time whereby I manage to blank out commercial games, however a while back friend of Mersey Remakes, Rich, dropped a trailer into the RR forums of a new Space Invaders game for the DS. After the colossal disappointment of the previous iteration, I feared the worst. Well, dear reader - I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when after viewing the trailer the only thoughts running through my tiny brain were “Holy Crap! They’ve made Space Invaders *good*”.
Of course, it’s quite often the case where a trailer for a game turns out to be immensely misleading and when the final product lands within your grubby mits, you’re left with nothing but a few quid down the pan and a sense of disgust at how the tardy product ever managed to escape from whatever studio responsible. And so, even with the trailer blowing your reporter away, there’s still that inescapable nagging doubt beavering away at the back of the mind. “But what if it is shit?”, the voices say.
I’m incredibly happy to say, Space Invaders Extreme (affiliate link there, Chaps) is anything but shit. In fact, it’s so far from shit they haven’t invented a superlative quite appropriate enough just yet. You see, I’ve never been a great fan of Space Invaders. Sure, I appreciate it’s heritage but it wasn’t really until Majestic Twelve came along that it managed to tickle my gameybones in an excitable manner. After that, things got pretty bleak for a while and I’d all but given up hope of finding an “official” Space Invaders game that made me a very happy bunny.
Now then, look at that! How could you not be impressed? It’s bright, it’s colourful and it’s definitely Space Invaders… but for the first time in many years it actually looks like a *modern* game. Now I know I’m easily impressed by flashy visuals at the best of times, more so flashy visuals made of purest pixel goodness but there’s nothing more iconic to me in gaming than a Space Invader so I’m allowed to drool. Mind you, all the glorious pixels in the world are for nowt if the game doesn’t hold your attention, and as I said above - Space Invaders Extreme manages that perfectly well. A bit too well, in fact. I’m running out of skin on my thumb.
By throwing in a myriad of combo systems (you can see some displayed on the screenshot up there, just in the background) - knocking off invaders of the same colour goes towards your combo’s, knocking them off in rows and columns (not always easy as the formations shift on each stage) adds towards your combo’s and getting those combo’s is really, really recommended - it’s one of the few ways that you’ll see the precious extra lives that the game really dislikes doling out to you. If you’re going to plough through all the stages, then you’ll need all the help you can get…
…because there’s bosses too. Each of the boss stages throws a different big bad ass invader at you, as you’d expect pushing the difficulty up a tad on each one and requires differing tactics to knock the buggers out. Normally, the boss scenes wouldn’t be anything too special but the nice use of the DS top screen for bosses to float around on adds a nice extra challenge to the proceedings.
There’s more to the game, of course, I haven’t even discussed fever time (which you dip into when you manage to knock out the right saucer and then complete a little mini-wave challenge), the roulette wheel, multiple weapons and different game modes. To be honest, any words I put down are likely to come across sounding much more boring than the game deserves. On paper, it probably does sound a bit gash but Space Invaders Extreme is one of the best examples of sheer wide cheese eating grinnery in games this year. Like XBLA’s Pacman CE and Jetpac Refuelled, Space Invaders Extreme makes you forget how long in the tooth the game you’re playing is but reminds you of why the game design is utterly wonderful to begin with.
If you’ve got a DS and even have a passing interest in shooting things up a bit, you owe it to yourself to pick up this game. If nothing else, maybe it’ll show companies that *this* is how you do it, not this. Best of all, it’s perfectly import friendly and as far as I can see, all in English.
Earth Defence Force 2017 (360)
You know the problem with a lot of games, dear readers? They go out of their way to pretend they’re not actually games.
Whilst budgets soar into the stratosphere, sandbox worlds to play around in get bigger, plots get thicker and more complex and developers stroke their beards figuring out the best ways to utilise every single button on the controller, whilst they ponder whether the budget can stretch to getting Patrick Stewart in to narrate whilst the player cubs rats indiscriminately or whether they’ll have to get David Duchovney in again for 50p and a Crunchie Bar, with the emphasis firmly placed on creating artificial worlds to immerse yourself within it’s easy to forget the roots of gaming.
Now, I’m one for a fine story as much as the next man. Sometimes I want to lose myself in a game world, perhaps explore an underwater kingdom such as Rapture, perhaps put myself in the shoes of a silent scientist mishandling a crowbar. I know some of you readers even enjoy pretending to be a Level 28 Orc (bless your souls) but sometimes, y’know - I just want to have some fun. Like gaming used to be before we lost track of what’s really important.
If I were to write down the things you’ll see in EDF on paper, it sounds epic. A giant alien mothership hovers over a Japanese city, unleashing hordes of giant insects, robots taller than buildings, dropships hover over the skyline as masses of spacecraft swarm amongst the clouds devastating the surrounding cityscape, cyborg creatures stomp amongst tower blocks their metal feet rocking the Earth below. It all sounds oh so terribly exciting doesn’t it? Well, it is. Very much so.
There’s a catch, of course. Sandlot Games (the developers) evidently didn’t even have enough money or stray chocolate lying around amongst their production budget to even afford David Duchovney. Rather than wallow in low budget hell, they’ve played to their strengths and created one of the silliest, most hilarious and crucially fun gaming experiences one could ask for. And at a stupidly low price too. EDF 2017 is the epitomy of a b-game and it’s all the better for it.
The genius of EDF lies in not what it doesn’t or can’t do - you could form a list a mile long of wonky “features” within the game, but if you’re the sort of person who dwells upon perfection within a game world, requires things to interact as though they would in the real world or to make even the remotest bit of logical sense - I suggest you stop reading now because EDF is obviously your worst nightmare. The AI would politely be called dumb, the physics laughable (no, really laughable - not in a metaphorical sense), the plot verging on non-existent, the camera cuts off at points in the game to focus on action elsewhere but leaves the player completely in control of everything but the camera, there are times when things slow to a crawl, the items left lying around by the alien swarms are 2d within a 3d world… yet, there isn’t a point in the game where you’ll want to stop playing because of them. If you really can’t cope with its quirks, I humbly suggest that you are, to all intents and purposes, dead inside.
EDF is fun with a capital FUCK YEAH. It’s the Spinal Tap of gaming, the sort of game where ten is just never enough, it always has to be one louder. Why bother having the player attacked by five enemies when you can throw one hundred at them? Explosions? EDF has them by the bucket full, so much so that at times it feels like being at the epicentre of a nuclear blast. Everything in EDF is big and incredibly silly.
Giant ants? Check. Giant bouncing spiders? Check. Big fuck off motherfucking big robots with big fuck off motherfucking big lasers? Check. Big motherfucking mothership with more lasers than you’ve ever seen before in your life? Check. Big fuck off mecha-Godzilla beast with a big fuck off tail? Check.
Weapons? EDF has around one hundred and eighty of the things! We got guns, big motherfucking guns, guns that spit acid, guns that roast the enemies to the core, shotguns, grenades, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, multiple rocket launchers,turrets, bombs, sniper rifles - you name it, we got it.
Tired of going on foot? How about a helicopter? Tank? Airbike with a machine gun? Mech suit with lots of motherfucking guns? Sir can take his pick.
You may think that perhaps the developers are compensating for something, given everything in the game is big - and you’d be right. They’re compensating for 30 years of gradually sucking the life and the fun out of gaming by bringing it back in spades. Big spades. Big motherfucking spades, at that.
Earth Defence Force 2017 is the bastard spawn of Robotron, Rampage, Serious Sam, Independence Day, Starship Troopers, Terminator and fuck knows what else and by the time you reach the Mothership to bring the son of a bitch down, you’ll have mown down thousands upon thousands of enemies in a sea of green goo and massive explosions. You’ll have smiled so hard your face will hurt, and then you’ll get down to business of trying to see through the masses of lasers to save the Earth from this alien menace the EDF have called “Ravagers”. And when you’re done, you’ll want to go back and do it all over again - because it doesn’t stop being fun.
EDF is a very silly game. It’s also glorious. More games should be like EDF.
Tempest Evolved
Synaesthete
“I will sit right down waiting for the gift of sound and vision” - David Bowie
Ok, I was going to have a bit of a discourse on synaesthesia itself, but to be brutally honest with you - I’m full of cold right now and frankly, I can’t be arsed. You’re on the internet, so I guess if you’re really not sure what synaesthesia is it won’t take you 30 seconds to look it up by simply following one of the hyperlinks below.
For the purpose of this review though, you need to know and understand a few basic things.
1. Synaesthesia has been used to great success in games, art and even poetry before now.
2. Synaesthete is one of four games entered into the IGF which blends music and gaming. (I’m not counting Ooki Bloks, as fucking ace as that looks - the musical element appears to be tenuous at best)
3. Synaesthete is described on its homepage thusly: “Synaesthete creates a harmony between player actions and in-game music, in a way that each influences the other. The rhythm and flow of the music is expressed in every detail of the game, so that the visual and audio are not two experiences, but one.”
4. I have no idea how the other three games play as there’s nothing out there for the public as yet.
So, Synaesthete is pretty much describing itself as an experience in synaesthesia. Here’s a list of what Synaesthete really has in common with synaesthesia:
1) The name of the game is Synaesthete.
Yes folks, I’m afraid that’s really where it ends. Unless you count the fact that the game has both music and graphics - in which case you’d count every single game under the sun as a synasthetic experience. In reality it has as much to do with any sort of fusion of the senses as me flashing a light at you whilst kicking you hard in the bollocks would.
Y’see, whilst I’m loathe to slag the game off because it’s actually quite a nice game to look at, listen to and play, none of the elements are really truly brought together to make one “experience” like you’re led to believe. In a nutshell, all Synaesthete really does is add an element of that popular genre Rhythm Action (careful with that googlemobile, Batman) to the arena shooter. Which is no bad thing. What the blurb on the website should read, if it were accuracy we’re seeking, is this: “Synaesthete is a Dance! Dance! Robotron! with one eye on the pretentious” or perhaps “Synaesthate is Dance! Rez! Robotron!”, I dunno. I prefer the former because at least Rez goes a long way towards providing a proper synasthetic experience.
Ok, so I’m being pretty negative up to now about the game, and perhaps that’s a little unfair. After all, despite the blatant visual steals from the likes of Rez it’s generally a beautiful game to look at, the ingame music is incredibly fitting and works to set the mood for the game (sadly, that’s pretty much where the audio/visual binding ends)and although a tad on the easy side it plays pretty nicely. It’s really polished and best of all, it’s free to download and free to play so it’d be rude to not at least take a gander at it.
I do have one thing I’d really beg of the designers, and in fact any designers thinking of including a similar thing in their games - please, please, please leave the cod philosophical bollocks at home. That is, unless you actually have something to say with it and it works in context with the game. It’s not big, clever nor any more “art”, it’s just shit meaningless drivel clogging up screen space..*
*unless you’re aiming to produce a stream of meaningless drivel then obviously that’s alright. Phew. Clambered out of that one!
Geometry Wars Galaxies (DS)
Ok, this is me. Eating a hat. It’s not my hat, it’s my kids - but as I don’t own a hat, it’s the closest we’re going to get to me eating my hat. If it really bothers you that it’s someone elses hat - then just pretend. It’ll make life easier in the long run.
You see, I think I owe Kuju a slight apology for saying that there’s no way on Earth that Geometry Wars would translate well to the DS. They’ve not only managed to pull off a fine portable version of the game, but managed to make a game that shames both the original and RE versions as shallow, empty and hideously unbalanced games. Ok, so they’re not the first to do that - Mark Incitti managed that with his excellent Grid Wars but we all know what happened to that, this is - at least - the first commercial and official version of the game to get everything pretty much right.
Instead of now taking place over just the one arena, Galaxies presents you with 60ish worlds over 10 galaxies, so unlike the original PC release of Retro Evolved which weighed in at a hefty £10+ (now at a far more reasonable £2.50~ish on Steam or £2 from MSN Games, fact fans) you’re actually getting some serious value for money from this release from the offset. Naturally, it doesn’t matter how many levels you throw into the game if it’s a piece of uncontrollable, unplayable bland shit - luckily for us, dear readers - it’s rather fucking excellent.
From the very first level, you begin to realise that they’ve nailed the gameplay down really well and adapted the concept of both Geometry Wars and the arena shooter as a whole perfectly for the handheld. As much as I had doubts originally, I’d heartily recommend playing with stylus control for shooting unless you want your hand to end up resembling the spaceship that you control after 5 minutes. You’ll be shooting frantically as the levels progress and having to use the dpad and buttons will leave you an arthritic cripple in no time. We don’t want that now, do we?
Each level has its own unique twist on the formula, and this is where GW:G really excels itself. Not only does it plunder the Geometry Wars universe for inspiration, but in the same way that Space Giraffe brought together 30 years of tube shooting arcade brilliance into one package - GW:G does the same for arena shooters. About the only thing the game is short of is a level in the shape of a kitchen sink.
Along the way you’ll find yourself fighting amongst your standard rectangular arenas against the standard Robotron-esque grunts of Geometry Wars, battling black holes - at first your bog standard suck-everything-in style, then later, ones that double as spawn points pissing enemies onto the screen at a rate of knots, massive enemy spawners appearing at every corner that break down Asteroids-style until your left with a pair of containers ready to unleash hordes of nasties at you, craft drifting into the screen from outside the boundaries, fighting around tight corners and small rooms Gauntlet style and for the icing on the cake, dealing with supermassive black holes (thanks Muse, you’ve got that stuck in my vocabulary now) acting like whirlpools in the centre of the screen spinning both you and the enemies around. In short - there’s an absolute wealth of concepts spread over these levels. One thing the game rarely gets is boring.
You’re aided and assisted by drones which you can purchase using “geoms” (small splinters that float around the screen after an enemy is destroyed - also doubling as things you use to up your multiplier) - the more you play the game, which if you’re a high score fiend will be a fair bit, the more you increase the power of your drones. You can choose from a selection of defense drones, attack drones, drones that spin around you taking out any enemies in close proximity… sometimes picking the right drone for the right level can make an absolute world of difference to your scores and help you come away with that gold medal for the level you know you really want.
The great thing is, you always feel like you’re making progress. Even if you flunk a level badly within 10 seconds, you’ll likely come out with either a more fortified drone or at the bare minimum more of those geom thingies to help you unlock the next world or galaxy. Everything in the game is about risk and reward, and you’re constantly rewarded just for playing. Play well, and you reap (on most levels anyway) extra lives, bombs, geoms galore and an increase in your chosen drones power as well as a gold medal and the satisfaction of reaching a rather nice high score. It makes it worth your while, and that’s to be commended. Not at any point does the game berate you or punish you, you have to work really hard to come out of a stage empty handed no matter how badly you play.
Mind you, it’s not all sweetness and light in the GW:G universe. Sometimes the balance flies way out of whack. Orbeis is a tedious grind, I ended up killing myself on Vareis with 9 lives, 9 bombs and 300+ million on the clock as by the time you hit gold medal status the stage stops getting any more difficult and becomes a breeze. Even losing a life had little consequence as one brief charge through the spawning enemies netted you a 150x multiplier and in no time at all, another extra life. These levels though, are thankfully few and far between. For the most part, you’ll be far too swept up in the chaos and carnage of a screen exploding around you to notice.
Geometry Wars Galaxies is the arena shooter done right. Not since Wild West Hero or Robotron before it has a developer managed to nail the essence of the arena shooter down quite so well and I’m happy to eat my hat, your hat and the hat of anyone in the world if it means that I’m so stupidly wrong about something that eventually turns out so right.
Ok, so there may be no warping grid, the included version of Retro Evolved is pointless and on the rarest of occasions, the level design is a bit skewiff in the balancing stakes, but none of that is worth getting in a hissy fit over because the entire package is put together so beautifully and really, the game should be an essential purchase for blaster fanatics.
It’s fucking ace, it is and proof, if ever it were needed, that gameplay rules over a million and one fancy particle effects anyday.
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Retro Remakes
Mersey Remakes is the home of Retro Remakes administrator Oddbob.
Here you can find his rants, freeware retro remakes, development blog and game reviews.
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