PC

Crayon Physics Deluxe

February 18, 2009

PC / Reviews / by Chris LaVigne Make a comment! / Tweet it!

If Crayon Physics Deluxe were a sport, it would be figure skating. Pulling off a triple-lutz in sequin tights to the beat of the Footloose theme has a similar mix of technical challenge and artistic flourish. Many games let you show off a sense of style while you play, but few require such an injection of personal flair to make the game work like Crayon Physics does. The game’s style-as-substance concept is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. 

Winner of 2008’s Independent Games Festival grand prize, Crayon Physics is a 2D toolbox puzzle game like The Incredible Machine, Lemmings or Xbox Live Arcade’s Eets: Chowdown. Where those other games give you a limited number of components to solve puzzles, in Crayon Physics you have just one: surprise, surprise, it’s a crayon. The trick is you can use it to draw whatever shapes you want. Your creations will interact with each other and the environment according to in-game physics and help you complete the goal of moving a red ball to touch a yellow star. 

Drop a square so it grazes the side of the ball and you can propel it forward. Draw a line between two ledges to act as a ramp. Balance the ball on a lever, then drop a giant rectangle on the other side to produce a crude catapult. Eventually, you learn some other techniques that let you swing shapes around on pins and build pulleys or springs out of string. 

Crayon Physics has dull, repetitive music, but the graphics are bright and humorous–a suitably minimalist art style that looks like the scribbles of some elementary school kids. The game’s interface is clean and simple. Hold the left mouse button to draw. Right-click to erase. The rest comes from your imagination, which is both a blessing and a burden. 

It’s very easy to blow through most of Crayon Physics’ more than 70 levels if your only goal is to “beat the game.” It’s also not very much fun that way. Most levels can be solved by drawing a big enough ramp or tunnel, using pins to keep them in place and then stubbornly wedging shapes behind the ball to inch it forward into the star. These inelegant solutions feel like cheating, even though technically they’re not. 

The game’s creator, Petri Perho, encourages players to find the simplest or most creative solutions to each level. An update in January made this more clear. In the new version, you can only achieve 100 percent completion on each level by satisfying four requirements. Reaching the star in any manner is one. A solution where you don’t draw pins is another and completing a level by drawing only one shape is the third. Striving for these latter two achievements provides a more focused challenge than the simplistic goal of having ball and star meet. They make Crayon Physics feel more like a real game than just an elaborate tech demo. 

The fourth requirement is to build a solution that’s ridiculously elaborate. Watch an example of the complicated ball-transportation apparatuses other players have recorded or download a user-made level and you get a sense of how deep Perho’s seemingly simple shapes-and-physics simulator can get. The question you have to ask yourself is: do I have the motivation and patience to build something like that? 

Games like Line Rider, Spore, Boom Blox and LittleBigPlanet have the same “construction set” philosophy, where the “game” that’s provided is also a set of creative tools. With its video editing capabilities, even Grand Theft Auto IV’s PC release is part of the trend. In the case of Crayon Physics, the base game isn’t as fun as the others. To really enjoy it, you’ll have to put in some time and creativity to build a solution worthy of sharing on YouTube. If that sounds like fun, then this game is for you. If not, you’ll be better off with something more structured. 

ESRB: Unrated—game’s content is just shapes, but with the ability to draw anything, user-generated content will no doubt contain a few, um, depictions of certain body parts

Plays Like: Line Rider, The Incredible Machine, LittleBigPlanet 

Pros: Really flexible drawing system, jolly art style, rewards imagination 

Cons: Dull music, requires a big investment to get the most out of it 

 

Left 4 Dead

November 19, 2008

PC / Reviews / by Michael Walbridge Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Bill, Louis, Francis and Zoey are four civilians who must help each other survive a trek through a simple, normally tame locale in order to reach an evacuation point in order to avoid turning into zombies. The first sign that Left 4 Dead is not a game made for its story or plot is the fact that these same four people are in trouble in various spots and are introduced through a movie poster. In one campaign, they must reach a hospital and be evacuated by helicopter–in another, they must reach a farmhouse and be rescued by the military.

Left 4 Dead will appeal to anyone who likes to have a good time with friends. Single player is fun for a while, but the computer-controlled companions start to feel strange–sometimes they are stupid, but their aim is often flawless, never missing zombies and never hitting teammates.

But in multiplayer co-op campaigns, which is the game’s raison d’etre, the friendly fire mechanism brings tension and meaning, because there can be literally 50 zombies, all who cannot be outrun, all of which will sometimes swarm only one or two players, and knowing when to stop shooting in such circumstances requires precision. To further complicate matters, there are special zombies that almost always need two players to be taken and down and boss zombies that almost always need four; this further forces teams to work well together.

Every single zombie is randomly placed before and during each campaign session, giving Left 4 Dead a sense of chaos and replayability–the well-designed levels are memorized quickly, but if a map starts with say, two or three hundred pre-placed zombies, thirty could be in the last room, first hallway, or neither. Anywhere that appears to lead somewhere, even if it doesn’t, can be a source of a wave, and it doesn’t matter whether it is the side, front, back, or any combination of these at once: your problems and tight spots will almost always vary in location, if not nature.

In versus, you get to be all but one of the special zombies; you have a creator’s vision of the map and can see all your enemies through walls (teammates can see each other that way as well) and can choose to spawn anywhere you want as long as it’s not too close or in plain sight. The other players play the campaign in the exact same way as they would in a co-op campaign against the computer, only with player-controlled special zombies.

Left 4 Dead is traditional zombie shooting with revolutionary gameplay design; one part MMO for its required social teamwork, one part Geometry Wars for its insane, unpredicable chaos, and three parts highly solid and safe FPS mechanics with grenades, molotovs, shotguns, pistols, and automatic weapons give Left 4 Dead the ability to show us how comfortable and standardized the FPS format has become. Left 4 Dead cannot be missed.

World of Goo

November 5, 2008

PC / Reviews / by Matthew Gallant Make a comment! / Tweet it!

With the rush of highly anticipated titles being released this fall, it would be a true shame if World of Goo got lost in the shuffle. While lacking the advertising budget of many of this season’s megahits, World of Goo has been championed by enthusiastic gaming press, indie game developers and PC gaming apologists. Add my voice to the chorus, because World of Goo is a terrific achievement that overflows with creativity and humor.

The crux of the game involves building fantastic functional constructs out of titular goo. The player must drag and drop the goo adjacent to two other goo ball vertices, which will snap new edges into place between them. These connections can bend and eventually snap, as you might expect a viscous material would.  

The puzzles in World of Goo involve transporting the goo to a distant pipe. This is accomplished by building a structure towards it with as few goo balls as possible.  The game begins with fairly straightforward puzzles: build a tower, bridge a gap, circumvent an obstacle. While the solutions require creativity, flexibility and lateral thinking, there is typically only one correct strategy for each puzzle. The only written instructions consist of cryptic clues from the enigmatic Sign Painter. The player is therefore required to discover the fundamentals of goo construction on their own. For better or worse, it’s impossible to proceed without learning things the hard way. Fortunately, the rules that govern World of Goo are logical and consistent. 

Once the player has a firm grasp of the fundamentals, the creativity of the game really begins to shine through. The game introduces a menagerie of goo varieties. Bamboo-like green goo can be repositioned, pink goo balloons float, red goo is flammable, and many more. These new species build seamlessly on the existing mechanics, and introduce fascinating new challenges. Best of all, while the fundamentals always carry over, there is very little strategic overlap between levels. The player must constantly adapt, reevaluating old ideas and developing new ones. 

The strong mechanics and puzzles are backed by beautiful cartoon-like art direction. Backgrounds are painted with broad strokes while people and objects have exaggerated proportions, not entirely unlike a Dr. Seuss book. There is a fair variety in the music, but every tune had a “magical factory” vibe to it that was actually rather grating after a while. 

The game has a loose story told via short cartoon cut-scenes between levels. It’s cute and has nice anti-corporation and anti-consumerism themes, but is ultimately forgettable. Much stronger is the writing presented within the levels themselves. The messages from the mysterious Sign Painter are both humorous and helpful, reminding me quite a bit of the notes left behind by Dungeon Man in Earthbound. There are also some fantastically nerdy inside jokes hidden in the level names and descriptions, especially in the final world. 

It’s tempting to let indie games off the hook sometimes due to their constrained development conditions. With World of Goo no such disclaimer is required; it’s a truly accessible, brilliant, and innovative game. Furthermore, 2D Boy went the extra mile in customer service by releasing the game on all three major operating systems (Windows, OSX, Linux) and completely DRM free. World of Goo is without a doubt one of the must-play titles of this fall.

Plays Like: The Incredible Machine

Pros: Challenging creative puzzles, accessible gameplay, innovative goo physics, delightful cartoon graphics, strong humorous writing

Cons: Music can be grating, learning gameplay fundamentals by trial and error requires persistence

ESRB: E for everyone; with no violence whatsoever, this is less offensive than a Disney game or movie

 

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People: Episode 103 – Baddest of the Bands

November 1, 2008

PC / Reviews / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Episode 3 of Telltale’s Strong Bad series brings back most of the things found in previous installments, but leaves a few behind.

The newest episode focuses once again on Strong Bad’s exploits. This time, his Fun Machine breaks, keeping him from playing his retro-style games. To raise the money to fix it, he decides to hold a Battle of the Bands– a strange leap, but one not unexpected from Telltale and the Brothers Chaps. On the way, he has to get celebrity judges, security and bands for the event.

Everything plays out basically as it did in Episode 1 of the series. Where Episode 2 featured new elements like the Maps and Minions map and a more coherent story arc, Episode 3 is back to random events and in-jokes. Don’t get me wrong–it’s hilarious for fans of the series, but Baddest is just not as good of a standalone title for regular gamers.

Baddest of the Bands is still worth a purchase for most, but it no longer exceeds expectations. Get it, play it, laugh– and move on.

Final Fantasy XI Vana’diel Collection 2008

October 30, 2008

PC / Reviews / by Paul Bishop Make a comment! / Tweet it!

It is hard to believe that Final Fantasy XI has been around as long as it has. Originally released on the PS2 in 2002 and eventually migrating to the PC and Xbox, this groundbreaking multiplatform MMO has seen its share of highs and lows. Its lasting fan base has lead it through an incredible 4 expansion packs of new material that have added a multitude of areas. Following in the footsteps of last years’ Vana’diel Collection 2007, the 2008 edition includes all four expansions to date, in one inexpensive package.

In the world of Vana’diel, five races of beings spread across two continents and four major cities work together to fight the forces of the Shadow Lord. Whether you fight the Zilart Princes, Bahamut, the evils of the Empress Court, or travel back in time before the Crystal Wars to fight the injustices of the era, you must band together with your fellow travelers to overcome great odds and save the future of Vana’diel.

You begin your adventure by choosing a race to play as, each with their own defining characteristics and then choose a Job to focus on. There a total of 20 Jobs that you could peruse, only a subset of which are available at the beginning. Once you reach level 30 and are able to complete some questing prerequisites the entire spectrum is open to you. One of the best features of the game is how it implements the Job system. Similar to Final Fantasy III, you can train in one Job and then change Jobs mid-way through to completely change your playing style. In addition to this, at level 18 you can complete a quest to learn a Support-Job which can help supplement your main Job with a different one that will always be half the skill level you currently are. For example, my Thief had level 20 thief skills and level 10 White Mage skills so that I had a better survivability within the world. And since you pay by the player, having characters who could re-train in a different Job helped lighten the feeling you were stuck with what you initially rolled.

This is essentially the only thing the game has going for it though. Details other than the Job System make the game fall apart, especially considering how much fine tuning MMORPGs have experienced in the same amount of time this game has existed. First off, the game is not very friendly to the new user. The interface is clunky and inaccurate, with the Final Fantasy menu options being the main way you interact and fight through the world. The system was designed for fighting, turn-based fighting, and while it mostly succeeds in getting the job done it doesn’t flow as well for real-time combat, causing me more deaths than I cared for because I couldn’t navigate the windows to my healing spells fast enough. In town the menus only amplify my frustration as seemingly menial tasks such as buying and selling loot were more complicated than they needed to be.

Gameplay is similarly hindered with a bad system. Quests are very scarce, and grinding seems the best way of leveling for the solo player such as myself. Group players should rejoice though as the most effective way to progress through the world is with a party. Players are nice enough and mostly available, but I still had a hard time justifying grouping with others just to progress myself at an even pace. And forget about leveling solo if you are a white mage; certain Jobs are just more uneven than others, showing a blatant disregard for Job balancing.

Graphically the game is okay, but it is showing some serious age. This may have been ahead of its time back in 2002, but now the designs are blocky, bland and generally unappealing. This may have been a product of going more for realism in the graphics than a cartoony feel that some other MMOs maintain, causing that realism to fade fast. An update needs to be made here, one that needs to ignore the system requirements up to this point and start afresh for the next generation of gamers.

This is a game with a lot of potential that has just lived past its shelf-life. A plethora of content and a fascinating Job System just don’t make up for the numerous short-falls this game presents. What is desperately needed is a reboot of the series; maybe the next Final Fantasy online can strike a better balance between casual and hardcore online, building a better house on an already solid foundation. Just, please, please don’t release another expansion.

ESRB: T for Teen, with online interactions varying

Plays Like: Watered down MMORPG

PROS: Expansive world, hours of entertainment

CONS: Clunky interface, outdated, needs to be retired

 

 

 

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