About Author: Gerren Fisher

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Skulls of the Shogun: Comedy is the Best Revenge

By
Gerren Fisher
– Posted on September 28, 2011Posted in: Previews

Video games have long made life after death a very diverse drag to say the least. From the loose, graphic interpretation of Dante’s Inferno to less disturbing (yet no less tragic) fates of those in Final Fantasy X doomed to monsterhood without a summoner’s sending. Haunted Temple Studios thankfully is making death a lot more enjoyable.

The tone is set very early in the demo build here at Fantastic Arcade. Fallen samurai general Akamoto finds himself missing one of his swords and waiting in a line outside a temple for entry into the afterlife like a Jersey Shore cast member awaiting for entry into an A-list Hollywood party. His prospects look about as promising as he discovers most of whom he’s in a crowd with will never get in and are being tricked into calmly waiting what will never happen to maintain order. This revelation predictably angers the deceased general whom sets off in recruiting other to fight their way into the underworld and also confront a mysterious imposter. The story it its core taps inspiration from revenge tales but mixes that serious storytelling into a more light-hearted universe.

Continue reading “Skulls of the Shogun: Comedy is the Best Revenge” »

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Fantastic Arcade: A World of Keflings Preview

By
Gerren Fisher
– Posted on September 26, 2010Posted in: Previews

[Editor's note: This preview is based solely on the single player component of the game. Gerren did not get a chance to try the multiplayer.]

Set to release sometime before the end of the year, Ninjabee’s A World of Keflings continues the construction-oriented, avatar-enabled gameplay A Kingdom of Keflings brought to Xbox Live Arcade two years ago. The series involves story-based kingdom-building to house, appease, and please the titled-inhabitants of the world.

The Fantastic Fest demo starts with the Keflings and an avatar freezing a bit in an ice setting. The Keflings are quick to make their desire to build a fire pit for warmth apparent, which launches a bit of a tutorial of the basic mechanics of the game. Simply put, you’re given a blueprint of items needed to construct a requested building or structure and are immediately off to mine resources to store in a work house. From there, those resources can be taken to a work house for storage. A person can do all of this themselves or enlist Keflings to the task by picking them and dropping them by the mining locations. Once they’ve mined a resource they will take them to the work house where a needed item made.

Creation of the buildings and structures is a very basic pattern-following. Basic to the point, one wonders if it’s even necessary for the game to hint toward where specific items need to be placed within a tiled-pattern as you are placing them as it does. One assumed this was put in place for young children and frankly shudder to think my 6-year-old nephew would have any problems with that level of memorization. Certain twists in the process do come in needing to find certain objects in the environment, (like snowmen and love, shown as hearts), in the first level of the demo.

Also there are moments requiring the use of avatar emoting. At a certain point in the demo, a dragon appears endangering a building which requires a special emote being used to scare away the creature. Again, it is a simple process using the D-pad, but it does add to the story element being presented to the game. Emoting isn’t just available in story-specific situations. Certain emotes can be done at anytime to have the avatar express some emotion. One can also be a complete jerk by kicking the small defenseless Keflings if one should choose.

What level of complexity available in the game as it progresses remains to be seen, but so far it masters its fairly simple mechanics well and appears well put together as a more basic kingdom-building and crafting game.

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Fantastic Arcade: Super Meat Boy Preview

By
Gerren Fisher
– Posted on September 26, 2010Posted in: Previews

There have been many games in recent years that have opted to go for retro-style in art and design, whether out of pure vision or financial realities. Super Meat Boy aspires for that in presentation, its platforming, and old-school arcade punishing difficulty.

So far, Team Meat is succeeding on all fronts.

The demo available at Fantastic Arcade starts setting an 80’s arcade feel from the start. There’s the arcade-style title screen complete with “Insert Coin” prompt. There’s the very basic premise (Bandage Girl loves Meat Boy. Meat Boy Loves Bandage Girl. Dr. Fetus hates Meat Boy, beats him up, and kidnaps Bandage Girl. Meat Boy must save Bandage Girl) set-up in a series of brief animated scenes before the main menu.

The game itself is a brutally-hard and challenging platformer. Meat Boy has the simplistic, at  least in theory, task in every level to navigate his way to Bandage Girl, whom is inevitably snatched away by Dr. Fetus as soon as you get there. Early on in the demo, the task comprised solely of mastering basic platforming and wall jumping to avoid pits and climb vertical ground to get to Bandage Girl. Eventually, traps such as buzzsaws, fans (which also serve the purpose of propelling Meat Boy further into the air in jumps), fire, salt, and other obstacles appear along the way.

Precision is key, as there is little room for getting lucky. This is not to say one can’t luck onto the hard to reach platform they are trying to reach, but one late or early button press usually means floating off target and hoping you can guide Meat Boy’s remaining momentum to safety and not into one of the awaiting death traps.

I admittedly died a lot as the demo progressed. An awful lot. But at no point was it ever frustrating as an experience. I felt enough reward in finding and getting to Bandage Girl and every level seemed to be reasonably beatable with a little thought and some skill, so it never became a grating experience; a clear mark of a game that’s balanced even in its difficulty.

With less than a month to go, things look promising to the follow up to Meat Boy. If things continue along this path, October 20th may prove a day celebration for fan of old school style and difficultly in games.

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Fantastic Arcade: Hydrophobia Preview

By
Gerren Fisher
– Posted on September 25, 2010Posted in: Previews

[Editors Note: At the time of publication, we have already started our review of the final build of this game, which will be published on 9/28. This submission comes from a staff member who played the game at Fantastic Arcade.]

The Hydrophobia demo represents a rather frustrating experience in gaming. On the one hand, it’s a game with a load of potential and does things I haven’t seen done quite the way the game does them. The concept is one of those one I enjoy and really want to get behind as an advocate of using tech to create new experiences. However, it has the nagging problem of the game mechanics getting into the way of that experience.

On the plus side, Hydrophobia really comes through on the promise of the HydroEngine. The water looks amazing and the physics push both in the use for water in the game as a dangerous force and a helpful ally for protagonist Kate Wilson. The set up and use of environmental traps using the sonic gun with electrical boxes, gas pipes and the surprisingly ever-present exploding barrels works fairly well and offers some sense of power against the Malthusian terrorists’ guns. Small taps of the right trigger do enough to push some objects forward. Holding down the trigger unleashes a full on sonic blast that can knock over terrorists, cause electrical shorts that result in a water filled area becoming an electrical death trap, and cause explosion from the aforementioned barrels and leaky gas pipes.

Yet the camera and controls chip away at much of the potential fun of the game. The controls I don’t actually find to be necessarily bad. The cover and shooting mechanics are just fine. They’ve been done better. Tap-shooting a barrel into the position you want with the dynamic water physics isn’t always ideal, but they mechanics get the job done mostly.

Swimming on the other hand is a bit of a chore which can’t be the case in a game that requires so much of it. I felt the power swim didn’t respond several times I attempted to use it and struggled at times to get Kate to enter the water. Also, I often found trying to swim vertically frustrating as my natural instinct was to try and power swim vertically; however, holding down the respective surface and dive down buttons works better. The camera helped the cause very little, as I found myself needing to recenter it before it getting going in a direction. Which costs precious seconds as Kate can drown. I’m not sure if this can be fixed in the next week before released, but I felt I’d likely had given up on the game much earlier because of it if I weren’t playing it for work.

Again, there’s still some time before the 29th release for some issues to be worked out. I really hope some of them are because there I honestly feel Hydrophobia has a concept and world in which I want to play. And as the kickoff for XBLA Game Fest, Mircosoft needs it to be live up the promise it exhibits.

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