Re-Review: Art Style PiCTOBiTS (DSiWare)

Back in the days when I was writing for that other site I would post snippets of reviews here and link to them. As they’ve disavowed any knowledge of me I figured it’s fair game and since I just transferred PiCTOBiTS to the 3DS and reminded myself of this review, here ya go:

For a simple downloadable title there’s a lot of history behind Art Style: PiCTOBiTS. Developer skip started things on the Game Boy Advance with the ‘bit Generations’ series and have evolved the hallmark of simple gameplay coupled with arresting visuals into the Art Style series for the WiiWare and DSiWare stores. To date PiCTOBiTS is the most original and worthwhile investment on the fledgling DSi downloadable service, but it’s not quite enough to warrant upgrading from a DS Lite on its own.

That’s not to say it isn’t mind bending, puzzle game fun because this is some of the most frantic, perplexing and rewarding action I’ve yet encountered at the end of a stylus. In traditional fashion big colorful pieces come marching down the screen and it’s your job to turn their pokey angles into squares, rectangles and lines to clear them before they reach the bottom. You do this by touching a colored block at the bottom of the screen and then placing it along the downward path of the larger megabit pieces. Each stage starts you out with a few rows of blocks to work with but once they’re gone you’ll have to decide which megabits you clear and which ones you let fall down the screen to provide more color coded ammunition.

Clearing the megabits as fast as possible is challenging enough but to play the game well takes incredibly quick hands, and an even quicker intuition. Once you take out part of a megabit the game freezes while the pieces fly up to the top screen, giving you only seconds to line up more blocks underneath before the remainder of the megabit plummets to the ground. The quicker you clear megabits the higher your multiplier climbs, doling out more golden Super Mario coins in the process. Using the megabits strategically combined with the ability to place blocks anywhere on the screen (instead of simply stacking them up as in most other puzzle games) is half of what makesPiCTOBiTS so unique.

Holding true to the Art Style formula, the retro presentation is the other half of the package. With a cartoon cast or uninspired visuals the game would be little more than a forgettable knock off of 1989′s Quarth, but PiCTOBiTS packs as much Nintendo fan service as Super Smash Bros., both in its visuals and soundtrack. Each of the fifteen stages is based on an NES game, ranging from the ubiquitous Super Mario Bros. and Zelda to the more obscure Devil World, Baseball, and Wrecking Crew. The colored blocks that fill the screen represent little chunks of a pixel image from the game and also serve as your goal. Unlike the never ending flow of Tetris, once you’ve cleared enough megabits to fill in the image on the top screen you’re done. Colored blocks and a gray backdrop are all the graphics you get but combined with the music each stage inexplicably becomes the game it represents.

Remixing a song is a delicate balancing act; maintaining the sound that made the tune memorable in the first place while adding elements to make it a standalone piece. Japan’s chiptune group, YMCK, has done it perfectly here inPiCTOBiTS, adding nothing but equal parts 8-bit “blips” that fall right in line with the source material. It’s also interactive and as you progress through each stage new layers of melody build over the basic beat until the tune is in full swing, ratcheting up the excitement and drawing you beyond the puzzle game. On one of the final stages I found myself thinking of the massive green, white, and yellow megabits as Koopa himself, not just parts of the image I was creating. I was right there with Mario, jumping over fireballs and hammers even as my hand was moving colored blocks around the touch screen. It’s a sense of immersion that you very rarely ever get from a puzzle game and totally justified the $5 price tag for me, even if it’s not the most content-rich experience on the DS.

As good as it is, Art Style: PiCTOBiTS isn’t going to drive anyone to spend $170 on another Nintendo DS system. Playing straight through the fifteen stages is only going to take a few days of bite-sized play sessions and though there’s a lot of unlockable stuff, it’s not going to appeal to everyone. The music player, with seventeen tracks to unlock (each with alternate renditions) is only for the truly geeky and the Dark versions of each stage are so frantic and challenging that most players are unlikely to struggle through more than one or two. However, it’s pretty much inevitable that we’re all going to upgrade to a DSi at some point and no matter what has hit the service in the meantime, Art Style: PiCTOBiTS will always be one of my top recommendations on the DSiWare store.

Done Playing: Domino Rally (Wii)

Up until the moment I started playing Domino Rally I had convinced myself that it would be a sequel to No One Can Stop Mr. Domino. That game had you rapidly and strategically dropping dominoes behind the unstoppable Mister in order to trigger all of the stage’s bizarre surprises in one flawless go. It was a demanding bastard of a game and I really loved it. Domino Rally packs the same kind of peculiar surprises and expects a similar speedy precision but thanks to the ever-unreliable Wii Remote it turns out only mildly fun and mostly a bastard to play.

Leaning heavily on Katamari Damacy, Domino Rally’s stages are backed by catchy J-Pop style tracks and open with low-rent cutscenes of bizarre characters in mundane peril. Minon is the “everyday superhero” that they call on in their time of need, be it retrieving a lost balloon, sinking a critical putt, helping an overburdened father answer a contest-winning phone call, or getting elephants to fall in love. The scenes are short and barely animated but they have just enough style to be charming which is the only thing to soften the blow after you take indirect control.

Minon is always moving but instead of dropping dominoes behind him as in Mr. Domino you lay out a swath of holographic Minon Blocks to keep him moving forward. You can go straight or curve to the left or right and… that’s really all the control you have. With an incomprehensible map and a too-close, overhead view of the world you’ll fumble out a path of holo-minoes to bridge rows of stationary objects that speed up Minon and refill his Minonaide energy. This is anything but automatic, though, as you’ll have to shake the Wii Remote in time with Minon’s quickening steps and then steady your hand to set the next piece before he runs out of room to move. If that happens you’ll play a little balancing game until you can get things moving again but will also lose all your momentum. Along with the Minonaide and speed that steadily deplete as you play there’s also a timer forcing you to play as flawlessly as possible.

This would all make for a fine ‘perfect run’ challenge if the game had reliable controls but the Wii Remote can’t deliver. Going from wild, rhythmic shaking to one of three precise on-screen positions isn’t easy or fun and as Minon speeds up the process only gets more annoying. By the end of each stage my right arm was sore and I was ready to quit but — damn! — those cutscenes are cheeky! The stages escalate in complexity and you’ll retry many of them as you divine the correct sequence of events but there are only eight in total. There’s a token Versus mode and loads of astonishing “memory poems” to find but I’d feel pretty let down if I’d paid more than $10 for what was three hours of playtime.

Outside of my hopes for a Mr. Domino sequel I think what’s most disappointing about Domino Rally is that it never feels like you’re playing with dominoes. Minon could just as easily be bounding across little magical clouds or, hell, he could simply be running on the ground. For a game that puns the word ‘domino’ so excessively there are precious few actual dominoes to be found and that just doesn’t feel right to me. Domino Rally is only entertaining during the parts where you aren’t playing it and by my last check no one has posted all that stuff to YouTube. You’ll have to suffer some punishment to see it yourself and if that’s a dealbreaker for you then skip this outright. If it’s not I’d still recommend hunting for the lowest price you can find.

Done Playing: Trine 2 (Xbox 360)

For my money the original Trine was pretty close to perfect. It taught its character-swapping gameplay and let you focus on the clever physics puzzles, it was absolutely gorgeous to look at and — most importantly — it didn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a lean, focused indie classic whose only fault is that its boring combat is mostly there to break up the puzzle sequences. Trine 2 doesn’t stray far from that formula and starts out strong but the additions to the gameplay managed to kill my excitement in the end. According to Steam and Raptr I’ve played both games for around eleven hours each but Trine 2 might as well have dragged on for an eternity.

Let’s start on the highest of high notes, though, with Trine 2’s presentation. The images here may look nice but they can’t begin to capture the wondrous sight of the game in motion. The title screen alone has more artistic majesty than the entirely of two or three contemporary games combined. My words do it even less justice so I’ll skip the descriptions and sum it up as whimsical. Whimsical as hell! There is never nothing to be amazed about while looking at this game. Seriously, this is what it looks like when unicorns dream!

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Dinosaur Hunting: Complete

The “review” after the break pretty much tells the story but to sum it up: I am officially the foremost expert on Dinosaur Hunting that doesn’t speak or read Japanese. The video above is the first part in what wound up being a 15-part series on Youtube, a complete playthrough that’s garnered way more views and interest than I could’ve hoped for. The review below will give it to ya straight but if “dinosaur” and “hunting” sound like an intriguing adventure you might as well get started with the videos. Oh, and there’s much more at the Giant Bomb page for the game which I also created.

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Done Playing: World Gone Sour (Xbox Live Arcade)

World Gone Sour is another one of those increasingly common games that I buy not for its apparent quality but because of how it revolves around real people I know online. When certified real person Adam Boyes (from co-developer Beefy Media) plays the game alongside equally real Giant Bomb co-founder Jeff Gerstmann, their banter is more than just a PR dude trying to sell a press guy on the game. They’re friends and though they may not call me the same, I feel a friendly connection to the two from years of Giant Bomb podcasts and tweets. It was during this quick look that Boyes mentioned a Giant Bomb logo hidden in the game which further blurs the line between things I like. If that wasn’t weird enough context to come into this review I also just earned enough free Microsoft Points from Bing to cover the cost of the game. Let’s just qualify it as “individual results will vary”.

World Gone Sour is a game about Sour Patch Kids candy but like in the days of Cool Spot and M.C. Kids it doesn’t shove candy or soda or happy meals down your throat. The licensed property is just there to set the scene, in this case a world where candy that doesn’t get eaten goes crazy and builds contraptions and obstacles out of everyday junk. You’re a saintly sour patch candy whose quest to rescue his friends has suppressed the madness. What that sets up is a Pikmin-lite system where you find other Sour Patch Kids and hurl them at switches, precariously placed pick-ups, or absorb them to grow bigger and enable new powers.

Those powers include growing and shrinking in size, doing a ground pound move and using your buddies like a bowling ball to take out enemies and explore the side-scrolling levels. It’s nothing cerebral like Fez or daunting like Super Meat Boy and paired with the mellow music and narration of Creed Bratton the whole game feels largely subdued. I’d even call it a nice change of pace from other platformers of late that feel like they’re out to prove something. World Gone Sour is also subdued (in a bad way here) in its visuals with textures that almost look out of a PlayStation 2 game. I like the Toy Story scale of things and the depth of field effects but I didn’t expect to be squinting at blurry objects to make out the gag labels in a modern game. That Giant Bomb logo looks crisp though, oh, and so do the Sour Patch Kids themselves. You can practically taste the crystals of high fructose corn syrup that cover them.

World Gone Sour is aware of what it is — a platformer based on a licensed piece of candy — and it tries to make it special. The narration is clever in spots and the Method Man video takes itself perfectly seriously but it doesn’t go far enough to be really memorable. If you don’t also have a strange meta connection to those involved with its production I can only call it a palette cleanser that isn’t as sour as you’d expect from a pun that bad. It’s cheap, lasts for a couple of days, has local co-op play and you’ll likely get all of the Achievements without much extra work. I hate to call it a throwaway diversion between bigger games but given the sugary nature of the source material that may be the most fitting way to put it.

Done Playing: Disassembly 3D FREE (iOS)

There’s something appealing to me about interacting with real world objects in a virtual space beyond the typical violent interactions of most games. I’m a big fan of Secret Exit’s Zen Bound series in which you attain enlightenment by wrapping rope around wooden blocks. Disassembly 3D scratches that same itch for me only the enlightenment and reward comes from taking apart consumer electronics.

There are loads of similar apps on iOS to replicate the field stripping of guns but it’s the more mundane nature of Disassembly’s objects that grabbed me. For free you can disassemble a dresser, a desk lamp, and a speaker with paid unlocks for objects ranging from desk chairs to bicycles all the way up to a house. Pinching to zoom and swiping around to move the camera you’ll remove screws and switches, pull things apart and toss them around the room, and watch them animate. There isn’t a lot to see in the free objects but on the more advanced stuff you can simply watch doors and levers operate, mess with the fluid physics of a shower head, figure out the combination to a safe and poke at the gears and pedals of a bike.

Completing each “stage” unlocks bomb mode that lets you explode the object at will the next time you load it up. I derived an immense sense of satisfaction from gently opening the dresser drawer, putting a lit bomb inside, closing it and watching the thing disassemble itself in slow motion. I then derived that same sense of satisfaction four or five more times in a row.

Manipulating the camera is a little finicky at times and I had to zoom way, WAY in to get some of the parts out but for free it presents a fun and unique experience for anyone who likes to play with real-time physics or putting furniture together. I enjoy both so maybe I got more out of Disassembly 3D than most will but I still say it’s worth checking out if you’ve got an iDevice.

This review was originally posted at PEGreviews.com which is currently on hiatus

Done Playing: Scarygirl (XBLA)

My first exposure to Scary Girl — the gothic storybook creation of Australian artist Nathan Jurevicius — came in 2009 with the official Flash game. Part platformer, part adventure game I loved looking at the 2D art but didn’t care much for actually playing it. Three years later and I’m surprised to see a Square Enix published follow-up as a full-fledged side-scrolling 3D platformer. Finally, I’ll get to enjoy a Scarygirl game for its looks and its gameplay… I thought.

While it starts out pedestrian enough with short levels, a handful of enemies and some pick-ups Scarygirl secretly aspires to be a hardcore old school platformer: precision timed jumps, crystals that are just out of reach, waves of enemies with fast attacks, and punishing boss encounters with multiple patterns to memorize. Oh, and don’t let those patterns flutter too far out of your mind because in the last level you’ll be fighting them over again.

I haven’t undertaken that kind of platforming challenge in a while but I’m still certain that Scarygirl’s frustrating difficulty comes mostly from its clunky controls. Not even jumping feels right as Scarygirl goes straight into a helicopter-tentacle hover if you hold the button at all. That hover move also sends her slightly higher than a normal jump and you’ll frequently have to hover into the sides of ledges before she elevates enough to land on top. Combat grows more complex from the basic light and juggle attacks at the start but I never found it reliable enough to be any fun. Spamming a powerful combo to keep enemies at bay or running past them altogether was what kept me sane as they line up to take potshots while you attempt to block and counter. You also have a grapple move that’s used to swing from hooks and the ability to grab dazed enemies and throw them around but those too felt unreliable and twitchy.

In starkest of contrasts to the gameplay, Scarygirl is a downright joy to look at! The hand drawn characters from the online comic and graphic novels have been transmutated into splendid 3D form. They lack the 2D charm that I love but I was constantly enamored with the way this game looks and moves. There’s plenty of depth-of-field effects and the camera moves pretty frequently, keeping the perspective fresh. The music and sound effects aren’t as exceptional but they fit in fine with the whimsical presentation.

Scarygirl embodies a love/hate formula that had me both desperate to be done with the game but also yearning for more to see. Funny, then, that the game checks multiple times for DLC when you load it up. Whatever that content may be I have a hard time recommending a full price purchase. Six hours of frustrating (single or co-op) platforming for some pretty visuals is a tough sell. The only reason to slog through it again is to find secrets and buy collectibles and that’s not incentive enough for me. I say save yourself the pain and go right to the source: buy the graphic novel.

Done Playing: Prope Discoverer (iOS)

Interesting enough of a place to start

I am not your typical App Store consumer. I weigh a $0.99 purchase with the same careful consideration as a $60 investment. It takes something entirely special to move my hand for anything higher than that which is why I put off Prope Discoverer for so long. One day not long ago, though, it was briefly marked down for sale and I finally got to discover(er) the game for myself.

I was originally intrigued by the game because so many sites were having a hard time conveying just what it was. Clearly this was more than another ‘Angry Farmville HD Defense‘, one of the overworked genres that everyone seems to get stuck in on iOS. No, this looked more like Epic’s Unreal tech demo, Epic Citadel, with a mysterious 3D world to explore. I’m all about exploration at this point in my gaming life cycle and so I put it on my short list of iOS games to price watch.

Straight away I got a Myst vibe from the otherworldly contraptions I first saw from my spherical cage. Using a pair of virtual sticks to move and look around, I found and tapped on a small tarot-like card which served as the requirement to escape. But was I really free or simply let loose into a larger cage? This is the kind of poetic musing the game initially inspired. The courtyard you step into looks pleasant enough with bright clouds, butterflies flitting around in the air and manicured topiaries. But at the center is a large opening that lets you gaze down into the darkness below where torches light up a peculiar zodiac clock. It’s whimsical, but only just.

Not exactly poetic... or memorable... or fun

To reach this subterranean area you have to find three more cards scattered around the courtyard. They’re not big enough to simply pick out by running in circles so three podiums guide you with cryptic hand drawn clues. This is the gimmick to get to each of the three areas in the game, culminating in a romp around a quaint (though vacant) medieval village that reminded me a little too much of Epic Citadel. You ultimately have to figure out a cryptic steampunk computer puzzle in order to fire up a dirigible and then it’s over. You fly away into the distance, free… or something. Figuring out that last puzzle has remained a game of trial and error for me but whether you succeed or fail it always ends the same by dumping you back to the title screen.

It turns out that there are multiple hiding places and corresponding clues for the cards in each area so repeat playthroughs are supposed to be totally unique. The problem turned out to be that after my first time through — which amounted to about thirty minutes — I didn’t really care to ever go back. Some of the clues are frustratingly vague and there isn’t very much to see. No little notes to pick up for backstory, no secret lizards to find. In fact, the free Epic Citadel demo is probably twice as large in size and much more interesting to walk around in than what I paid for in Prope Discoverer.

Prope Discoverer is different, something that’s getting harder and harder to say about iOS games in general. As one of the first 3D games built on Epic’s iOS engine I suppose it may be worth a look if it ever hits $0.99 again but there are much more interesting and atmospheric (not to mention lengthier) experiences out there. With new titles piling features on top of Prope Discoverer’s meager offerings it won’t be long before it’s lost to the dark annals of the App Store.

Not to be forgotten: A Kinect demo of Leedmees

See how long it’s been since I’ve done this writing thing? I totally forgot a whole other Kinect demo I played the other day and it’s not for the game’s presumed forgetability. Leedmees is exactly Lemmings-meets-Kinect. Not that any of us were growing up, pining for the far-flung future date when we’d be able to move clueless imbeciles around by leaning back and forth, but it’s an application of Kinect’s technology that hasn’t been focused on until now.

Really, there’s not much more to say. Like The Gunstringer, the action is dialed way back to account for any lag or flakiness of the Kinect sensor so nothing in the demo’s handful of stages was particularly challenging or rewarding. Neat describes it best, a pleasant use of the hardware with a decent art style carried out over what looks to be an appreciable number of levels with a two player co-op mode to boot. For $10 it doesn’t seem like a bad deal at all and I’ll keep it in mind for the next time I’ve got Points to spare and I’m in the mood for a puzzle game.

Hole in the Gunstringer: A few Kinect demo impressions

DisKINECTed for what feels like months now, I had one fleeting day recently where I felt well and able enough to plug the motion sensing black box in and try out some demos.

Hole in the Wall
Based on the American TV show (based on the superior Japanese original) Hole in the Wall takes the perfectly hilarious concept of contorting your body to fit through holes in a rapidly-approaching wall and manages to make it lame. It doesn’t take much effort to fill the various silhouettes with enough of your body to get a Perfect score and the shapes were quick to repeat, even in the demo. Your Avatar is also poured into a skintight silver body suit which, while accurate to the show, gives me the creeps.

If you simply must have a game where you play human Tetris, this is the one to settle for. It’s one of the rare $10 games these days and it’s at the ready as an Xbox Live Arcade download. Your only alternative is the similar minigame packed into Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do. It’s a little more fun than Hole in the Wall but the rest of that package is a slow-loading and annoying pain. Sad to say, Hole in the Wall is the lesser of two mediocre human Tetris evils.

The Gunstringer
Much ballyhoo has been bandied about around Twisted Pixel’s The Gunstringer. The team are notorious for insane FMV and quality humor and this game was once the fabled first downloadable title for Kinect. Now it’s a $40 retail release and even bundled with a free copy of Fruit Ninja Kinect the value seems to be more in the experience than in the playing. Ultimately, Youtube may be the best place to experience The Gunstringer’s inventive marionette Western world without the hassle of controlling it yourself.

That’s a bummer to this retro-loving heart of mine because I get a surprising Sega Saturn vibe from the demo. The colorful visuals and 2.5D platforming sections remind me of Clockwork Knight and the on-rails target-painting immediately feels like Panzer Dragoon. Only every shot, jump and “surprise” is telegraphed well in advance to account for any lag and to not grow overly exhausting. The mechanics worked well for me and, as advertised, you can even play sitting down but that only made me wish this were a faster, harder and controller-based homage to those early 3D games of the mid-90′s.