How are the two games similar?

Let me count the ways…

-A visually striking 2D platformer with 2 player co-op? Check.

-Presentation framed around a man reading a storybook? Check.

-Protagonist equipped with a whip-like weapon used to lasso enemies into spheres that can then be tossed at other things – as well as being used to grapple and swing from hooks? Check.

That isn’t to say that this game is simply Epic Yarn starring a decomposing octopus girl. The combat system, while not more refined, is much deeper. Also, it is possible to die in Scarygirl, and it is possible to die a lot.

Therein lies the most noticeable mechanical difference between Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Scarygirl; while the former wants you to make it to the end of the game with little effort and explore arts and crafts projects they call levels with minimal consequence, the latter starts out with a similar philosophy, but at some point decides that it instead wants to see how much crap you’ll put up with for a chance to get a glimpse at the next colorfully macabre landscape.

Granted, Scarygirl presents a series of beautiful landscapes – the kind you wouldn’t expect to find in a downloadable title. For the sake of comparison, I took a peek at the game’s 2D source material, and I was amazed at how well the developer was able to add an extra dimension to that work within the game.

Sadly, Scarygirl suffers from a problem shared by many pretty games; the graphics often get in the way of the gameplay. On many an occasion, objects in the foreground will completely block a generous portion of the screen, leaving you blindly mashing the attack buttons, hoping you’re hitting whatever enemies are hiding behind them.

Blindly mashing the attack buttons, by the way, is a perfectly viable way to get through most of the game, whether or not you can see the enemies, but I’ll elaborate more on that later.

Sound is a curious and mixed bag deserving attention here, varying between good, serviceable, and entirely non-existent. When the game begins and players are collecting mass quantities of gems, the action sounds like you’re running your fingers across a wind chime – a cool effect that supplements the ambiance of the game.

The narrator also has a generous portion of gravitas, spending the time it takes for the game to load to further the story in a pleasantly organic way. Unfortunately, the further you make it into the game (nine words that could begin many statements about Scarygirl), the more objects you encounter that are inexplicably silent in the play and interaction.

When you’re fighting a giant mechanical dragon for instance, and it approaches you to shoot flames in your direction, you’d expect those flames to make some sort of roaring and/or crackling sound, not a silent and/or nonexistent sound.

There are also a few airships with huge cannons that are apparently enchanted by some sort of sound-cloaking spell, because when it fires said cannons, which shoot out balls twice the size of Scarygirl, they make not so much as a peep. Also, I have no idea what an axe getting reflected by a force field sounds like, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not total silence.

All in all, Scarygirl is a game that confuses the ears.

For the most part the platforming in Scarygirl is competent, but it has its hiccups, particularly when navigating the game’s ubiquitous rotating platforms; if you land on a platform while it’s rotating, the game has a really hard time deciding whether or not you actually landed on it. There are also moments where you’ll really lament the fact that no matter how hard you press the jump button, Scarygirl will always jump the same height, especially in some of the later parts of the game where if you jump too high YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY DIE.

Fighting the bad guys in Scarygirl is an experience that starts out similarly tolerable, if not somewhat delightful; the tentacled protagonist has a series of combos of light and heavy attacks at her disposal, and can buy more of them using the gems collected throughout the game.

However, that potential is undermined and essentially tossed into the dustbin given that, for the most part, players can just mash the two attack buttons and kill anything; the only motivation you have to not do that is that Scarygirl is able to use near-dead enemies as weapons by grappling them. Unfortunately, unless you know the precise number of hit points an enemy has, and are meticulously counting the numbers flying off of their heads, you will more than likely kill the enemies mid-combo.

And when the game flips the switch from a “fun little button masher” to “frustrating fights with those damn blue guards armed with poles and swords twice as long as your reach,” you’re going to need to grapple as many enemies as you can, leaving you chipping away at half-beaten enemies with light attacks until the purple grapple icon shows up, giving you the “OK” to do so – a terrible strategy when there are TWO OR THREE MORE DAMN DIRTY BLUE GUARDS BEHIND IT WHO CAN REACH YOU FROM BEHIND THE STUNNED ONE.

Sorry, I just had to vent – there’s this one level near the end where the game just drops a crapload of some of the strongest enemies onto this small flat surface, and you fight them 3-9 at a time, and after you die on that a couple dozen times, the game just stops being fun. That being said, there are difficult enemies in this game that are actually pretty interesting to fight – particularly the bosses, who each have a unique weakness that you have to figure out, rendering them stunned and ready for an open can of button-mashing.

In addition to the several hours of gameplay that you’ll experience going through the game the first time, there is some replay value to be had. Several of the levels split off in multiple directions, adding some variety for revisits. Counter-intuitively, there are also bonuses to be had for accomplishing certain feats in each level, such as finding every gem, and if you want to do that, you’ll probably have to take both paths each stage offers. There’s also an online leaderboard, if you want to show off your combination of sick fighting skills and obsessive gem collecting.

Maybe in the end, this game isn’t that much like Kirby’s Epic yarn after all. Scarygirl is like a rainbow puppy making stool on your carpet; you want to get angry at it because it’s so hard to control, but then you see its adorable eyes and colorful coat, and can’t stay mad at it for too long.

Also, the puppy is missing one arm and has a tentacle for the other.

Also, I am not good at similes.

Scarygirl

Developer
TikGames

Publisher
Square-Enix

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), Xbox 360 (Xbox LIVE Arcade) (Xbox LIVE Arcade Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local Co-op

Release Date
January 18th, 2012 (Xbox LIVE Arcade) / January 24th, 2012 (PlayStation Network)

Price
$9.99, 800 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

InXile Entertainment’s HD revival doesn’t detour from this core formula that made the most of technical limitations, offering a sidescroller that asks you to travel from one end of the screen and back again, again, and again. Despite what I consider a premium price point for the privilege, Choplifter HD is also a game of cheap and immediate thrills that doesn’t beg for more than a minimal time commitment, satisfied with whatever little bit of time you have to spare here and there. But aside from the explosions and burst play style, it’s not so easily written off either.

Plus, trying to squish people hoping to be saved is still a guilty bit of fun.

Choplifter HD’s mission structure digs for variations on the core theme of back and forth gameplay that is easy to fall into, but hard to spend anything more than ten minutes at a time with. Rescuing hostages or trapped civilians is a key activity, but so is escorting soldiers, evacuating people by crossing a warzone, hitting key military targets, and yes, even rescuing people from the zombie horde when the game takes that last inevitable move toward throwing in everything plus the kitchen sink – and a Duke Nukem cameo to boot.

Saving people, defeating enemies, and doing these things within the allotted amount of time rewards players with stars after each stage, unlocking alternative helicopters for stages – there was at least one instance where unlocking a different ride was the only way I was making it through the midway point of this game.

As light and fluffy as that sounds, there’s a level of strategy that creeps into the mix. Resource management becomes the major focus of play, with players burdened by a need to monitor the damage level of their helicopter, their fuel supply, and a machinegun that loves to overheat when your trigger finger gets too heavy – this is complimented by a limited number of missiles as well.

Fueling stations are often scattered throughout longer areas, but repairs and missiles can only be gained by returning to the original launch point. While on the one hand this means that it’s easy to stay alive by simply retreating back to base for repairs and fuel, that pace proves continually aggravating and forces a different approach that favors crawling ahead through stages, attempting to take out soldiers firing bullets and deadly RPGS in addition to AA guns and all manner of light and heavily armored vehicular opposition.

Adding some unique difficulty is the fact that there are two positions of attack. As players fly across the screen, they point an analog stick in the direction they wish to fire and to gain missile lock, either weapon activated with a tap of the shoulder button. But the helicopter can also pivot, and will need to in order to face the screen to attack enemy positions on a secondary plane. This means that players need to get quick at switching angles in order to face and deal with enemies on both planes, making it deadly to blaze ahead versus the cautious crawling approach, poking ahead to spot enemy positions only to back off again to dodge a wave of missiles and gunfire that could quickly send players packing back to base.

But one can’t ignore the ridiculous dare that exists, particularly aided by a bust ability that will add speed at the expense of more fuel, allowing players to attempt suicidal runs through fortified areas. There are plenty of times where I was able to survive when my patience demanded a faster pace of play – though just as many times where that approach saw me crash and burn.

Somewhere in this mix I keep walking away from something disposable only to return to a game that really is quite clever in making the most of a limiting play focus. There’s certainly more than the cheap exploitation of the Choplifter title I expected, but also plenty of enjoyment to be had in that very idea. It’s fun to blaze a trail of destruction through the game, at least for a few minutes before falling back into the frustration of methodical play necessary for success.

The dry hidden objectives, thirty missions, and helicopter variations invite modest replay but really leave me hanging on the $15 price point, which is unfortunate given that there really is enough here to merit some light distraction. I just can’t shake the feeling that compared to other titles in the same price range, and others selling for even less, you’ll feel a pinch of buyer’s remorse before too long.

Choplifter HD

Developer
inXile Entertainment

Publisher
inXile Entertainment, Konami

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), PC, Xbox 360 (Xbox LIVE Arcade) (Xbox LIVE Arcade Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
January 11, 2012

Price
$14.99, 1200 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

The game involves claiming bounties on “them outlaws”, a task that can be accomplished A) by sucking their unconscious bodies into some kind of… thing… or, B) by murdering them horribly and sucking their corpses into the same kind of…thing…

To this end, Stranger employs an eclectic mix of tricks that, in a lesser game, might not fit together. Primarily, the bounty hunter is able to switch between the first and third person perspectives, granting him some different abilities tied to those modes.

In third person, Stranger will break out into a four-legged run that can smash obstacles and enemies, and he’s able to employ some quick melee attacks for crowd control. Though it may immediately seem like a mode used chiefly for navigation and platforming, the sprint and melee attacks can be critical for defeating enemies and escaping dangerous situations if the player learns to smoothly coordinate the two modes.

In first person, Stranger wields a double-barrelled crossbow loaded with an assortment of critters in the place of traditional ammunition; animals and insects that create different effects when fired. These can be employed to create traps, incapacitate, delay, or simply annihilate enemies—and, in an unexpectedly obvious twist, ammo must be hunted rather than collected.

Requiring that small colonies of critters be zapped with an infinite supply of electric flies, it’s not a complex or time consuming element of the game, hardly more complicated than a standard pickup—but it creates an interesting layer of challenge in many of the game’s scenarios. Ammo capacity is fairly low, making it entirely possible that the player will run out of an important ammo type during a skirmish, requiring that he then scour the battlefield and quickly zap and scoop up critters right in the middle of the firefight.

Especially refreshing is how much Stranger’s Wrath teaches the player about its own mechanics without resorting to hand-holding. Though there’s a fairly comprehensive opening tutorial, once the game is rolling the player is largely left to his own devices—and it works, with a comfortable learning curve even as the missions pile on increasingly difficult enemies that require particular tactics to defeat.

Experimentation and combining the right kinds of firepower in the double-barrelled crossbow can yield some interesting results and significantly speed up the pace of combat. It’s not merely a matter of the ammo best suited to the job, but also the ammo you can spare; though an enemy-ensnaring spider is easily the cleanest way to subdue lesser enemies, it’s not the most efficient—as spiders can be hard to find, and might best be employed for higher level bad guys. Combining more plentiful (if messier) ammo can be used to down foes just as quickly, allowing rarer ammo types to be conserved.

As a byproduct, the pacing of any battle can vary wildly. A methodical, stealth oriented approach can disintegrate quickly into a spray-and-pray shootout and back again, simply by virtue of the ammunition equipped.

As the battles become more and more demanding, Stranger’s Wrath requires quicker thinking and a better understanding of enemy weaknesses. It’s not long before enemy types with opposing weakpoints begin to travel together, requiring that the player employ limber tactics to dispatch them.

Later levels stack more interesting environmental scenarios with an exponentially increasing number of dangerous enemies, and it can be punishing—but finding the right groove, switching to all the right ammo and shooting at all the right times is invigorating.

Missions are capped by boss encounters, and this is where things get a little messy. Bosses, understandably, cannot be felled with the same simplicity of their rank and file goons; one can’t expect to launch a single skunk-bomb at a boss and bounty him while he’s puking.

One of the few communication failures of the game is that it’s never quite made clear that bosses can be subdued, without lethal force, by draining their stamina bars rather than their life bars. Players are likely to capture the early bosses alive without much difficulty, but find that later bosses seem to respond only to lethal damage—when in fact what’s required is careful observation regarding which weapons drain which bars.

Perhaps the boss strategy is obscure by design. The first instinct of any gamer is going to be to fixate on the life bar of a boss, and the difficulty to discerning a non-lethal strategy for bosses does add an element of challenge that demands a break from such traditional FPS thinking—making it difficult to write this one up as a flaw.

Stranger’s true flaws are few and mostly technical. The HD upgrade has been handled nicely, though there remains some of the visual harshness and darkness characteristic of titles from the previous generation of consoles. Additionally, some audio flops see some dialogue clipped awkwardly—especially when Stranger dashes through an occupied town, while the soundtrack often can’t decide exactly which track it would like to play.

Meanwhile, the art and production values have stood the test of time. The slow-speaking Stranger makes every line fun to listen to, operating alongside a cast of fun characters and illustrated with fluid, satisfying animation.

The title drips with humor and personality, with even the cartoonish weaponized critters offering quips before being flung into the fray.

What’s more, while many modern games seem to think they have much more of a story than they actually do and spend an inordinate amount of time fixating on a narrative that just isn’t there, Stranger’s Wrath knows exactly how much time its story warrants and doesn’t waste a second more. It’s a tight, straightforward tale, and there’s a lesson to be learned there about knowing what kind of property you have on your hands.

Stranger’s Wrath, like a lot of HD updates, isn’t going to offer much for existing fans of the title and probably won’t warrant a revisit, but it’s a perfect opportunity for those who missed the game on its first pass. The game has withstood the ravages of time well, which is no small feat in an medium that moves so quickly, and holds up better than some other, higher profile titles to see the HD upgrade.

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD

Developer
Just Add Water

Publisher
Oddworld Inhabitants

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), PC (PlayStation Network Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 27, 2011

Price
$14.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

We can only hope you fare better as you navigate this enchanted wood…

Where Is My Heart? puts players in control of a family of three monsters. The inspiration for this scenario came from a real experience in the life of creator Bernie Schulenburg, when he went on a Sunday hike with his mother and father and saw the worst qualities of all parties come out. A bossy father, a depressed mother, and a regretful child made for a troubled trio, but Schulenburg’s takeaway was to make a game about it, in a “clumsy effort to understand his family,” as he calls it.

The forest you explore is brightly colored and beautiful, but it’s not just displayed on a single, plain screen. Instead, you will view each locale as a series of square segments. One of the unique points of the game is that nothing is quite where it appears to be; for instance, walking into one segment may find you in the next, but in a spot you would not have expected. This mechanic alone would make for some interesting puzzle-solving, but as soon as you get adjusted to it, the game will give you something new to deal with.

In each level, your goal is to lead all three characters to the tree at the end, something easier said than done. Changing control between the three monsters is easy enough, and at first all you seem to be doing is finding a block with a heart on it and activating it to fill in or remove heart blocks in each level.

These blocks need to be arranged to create pathways toward the tree at the end of each level, which sounds simple enough. Once you’ve mastered this however, the game introduces its key mechanic (and one that is sure to drive you crazy): special abilities for each family member. For instance, the orange female member of the family can transform into a winged creature called the Rainbow Spirit, and has the ability to rotate the panels of each level around and “hover” so that she can appear in any of them.

If you know the story about how the game came to be, one can’t help but see this mechanic as a metaphor for the confusion and emotional dissonance Schulenburg’s own family suffered during their exploration in the woods, attempting to convey that personal experience through the play mechanics.

From there on out it’s up to you to best figure out how to use the characters, their skills, and the placement of the board’s pieces to make your way. I can’t deny that Where Is My Heart? presents a decent level of difficulty at times, but if this thoughtful little platformer is anything, it’s innovative, taking a basic play mechanic and giving it an extraordinary twist.

Where Is My Heart? is a Playstation Minis release, so you can load it onto your PSP or play it on your PS3. I preferred the latter, as the game’s later stages present increasingly complicated puzzles that seem easier to solve on a larger screen.

There are very few games that you can describe as elegantly executed enough to be like a love letter or a poem, but Where Is My Heart? is certainly one of them.

It trades action for contemplation, never setting a timer or rushing you through the levels in hopes of a slightly better score. The game wants you to think, and it wants you to take your time. It’s easy to get drawn in by the cute look of the game, but what it houses within is a much more complex experience — and one that feels no need to brag about the layers of depth it contains.

Where Is My Heart?

Developer
Die Gute Fabrik

Publisher
Die Gute Fabrik

System
PlayStation Minis (Digital Distribution PlayStation 3 / PlayStation Portable)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
November 22, 2011

Price
$6.99

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

I’m guessing no given that if that had been the case, I sure as hell wouldn’t be wistfully mentioning RE4 at the beginning of a review once again.

Alas, my bizarre question is rooted in reality with the release of Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale’s newest episodic movie-to-adventure game adaptation. Events unfold around the time period of the first film courtesy of a new cast of characters; some of whom work on the island, some of whom are mercenaries flying to the island to evacuate that first batch of people, and still others are sneaking onto the island to retrieve the million dollar Barbasol can full of dinosaur embryos that Nedry was trying to steal at the epicenter of this dino-disaster. In fact, ol’ Newman himself is the only character from the movie to appear in the game, though only as a mangled and faceless corpse.

For the record, there actually is a QTE-driven knife fight between one of the mercenaries and a Velociraptor, which turns out to be pretty awesome.

The characters may be different, but the park is the same, and the game is chocked full of moments and landmarks that will be familiar to fans of the film. The camera angles are dynamic enough to make this seem like a movie – a movie casted entirely by decent-looking polygon models with facial expressions that rarely express the range of emotion you’d expect from a group of people running from dinosaurs and constantly betraying each other. That being said, the game is very generous with the bump mapping on the dinosaurs and faces of the more grizzled men.

As can be expected, staying on an island full of genetically unstable dinosaurs leads to turmoil, and characters are evading hungry dinosaurs from the very first scene of the game.

How is a mere human supposed to evade and escape a violent lizard-induced death you may wonder? Why, the answer is quick time events, of course!

A directional prompt will show up somewhere on the screen, abstractly tied to some sort of action that a character could perform, and it’s your job as the player to press it, or face the dire consequences of having to repeat the last 15 seconds of the game.

I have to admit, I somewhat liked how sneaking around was handled by rhythmically alternating left and right, with circles closing in on the prompts a la Ouendan or Elite Beat Agents. But more often than not, a prompt will appear out of nowhere, and you’ll probably end up memorizing those ones after getting eaten by the same dinosaur a few times. Worse still are the game’s rather liberal use of the “mash this one key” prompts; sometimes they make sense, like if one of the characters is running really fast, but there is one point where somebody is investigating dino tracks, and a slow sweep of the ground is performed by erratically tapping a key, as if the game is some sort of slideshow, and pressing the key moves it to the next frame.

Heck, this is even during one of the parts where you can’t die – yes, unless there is a medal in the upper right corner grading your QTE-detecting abilities, the game is less “press X not to die” and more “press X to incrementally progress at your earliest convenience, thank you very much”.

Failure to properly input the right key at the right time isn’t penalized too much – unlike Dragon’s Lair or similar games, making a mistake isn’t always penalized with death, but sometimes with a slight trip-up of a character, resulting in him or her having to adapt and wrestle away a dinosaur or steady his or her nerves a la Fight Night (by the way, the “line up these two gliding circles” parts in this game are absolute dogballs).

In a way, I appreciate not only the forgiving nature of the game in that regard, but also how it adds slight variance to the game’s otherwise linear story, no matter how inconsequential it winds up being. Additionally, it is a bit amusing that the game’s medal system penalizes you equally whether you trip over a branch or get eaten by a T-Rex; in fact, getting eaten by a T-Rex is somewhat better of an outcome, because then you at least get to watch someone get eaten by a T-Rex (albeit in minimally gory detail).

The game isn’t entirely about running from dinosaurs though. Jurassic Park also offers exciting moments of conversation moderation.

Don’t let the rhyme or the use of the word “exciting” fool you; this also does little to improve the game. In much of Jurassic Park, the dialogue is selected by the player using a dialogue wheel not unlike that of Mass Effect. Unlike Mass Effect, however, the decisions made never alter anything. Instead of thinking of what would be the best way to persuade other characters, you simply have to choose the line you’d like to hear, then there will be a short exchange of words related to that choice, and then everybody goes on to the next portion of the game, which is the same either way.

You’re also left selecting trivial crap like which wisecrack you want the character to say just before some dinosaurs attack. Mind you, I play a lot of Nintendo games, so I’m fine with being offered choices of dialogue that have zero effect on the game’s outcome, but aside from the QTE marathons and a couple of simple-yet-convoluted logic puzzles, the gameplay is nothing BUT selecting dialogue; if a game is based around talking to people, I’d expect it to branch out better than a Christmas tree bound up in twine.

Jurassic Park: The Game is a lot like a tour through Jurassic Park itself; there’s a lot of sitting still, being guided around, listening to people, and observing things – all accompanied by the sinking feeling that you’ll soon regret embarking on the experience. Taken for what it is, a mildly thrilling interactive Jurassic Park movie, it might be worthwhile for those die-hard fans who have been pulling their hair out for the last 18 years wondering what exactly happened to that can of Barbasol, but for anybody who wants to watch a Jurassic Park movie, I’d recommend just going back and watching the actual films. Not only do they look better, but they don’t require you to constantly mash a single button.

Jurassic Park: The Game

Developer
Telltale Games

Publisher
Telltale Games

System
PC, Mac, iPad2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (PC Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
November 15, 2011

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Perhaps something along the lines of, “and on the eighth day, Michel Ancel and company created Rayman Origins”.

Whilst tripping through the Glade of Dreams with Rayman and friends, I was reminded of a recent documentary, Walt & El Grupo. The film details the 1941 goodwill trip Walt and a team of artists took to South America, and the primary thread captures the cultural inspiration and artistic influences that would take shape in future Disney creations as a result. I mention this because there were plenty of moments where I wondered where Ubisoft had sent the folks from Montpellier – what cultural exposure might explain the environments and creative madness of Origins.

As pretty as that thought is, the roots likely aren’t so mysterious. Plenty of the environments within the game tread the familiar, from thick jungles to snowy peaks – we’ve just never seen them captured with such vivid detail and organic flow. In many ways, Origins looks the way I remember games from my childhood to look, finally realized in the here and now when so many 2D games offer cheap and dirty visuals with bland palettes.

It only takes a few moments with the game to appreciate what a kick in the teeth this is to an industry largely devoid of color, and certainly short of concerning itself over minute details that gamers might never notice, but are certainly invited to linger with here. Feel free to dive into the water as bright schools of fish scatter for the simple joy of it and tell me I’m wrong. Where the focus of so many games remains the satisfaction drawn from a singular event, achieving X results in Y, Origins takes the road less traveled, layering visual and audio cues that blur against the foreground action, offering a painting in motion one could spend forever picking out details from.

The worlds Rayman visits range from robot filled factories to a Mexican themed hell, not striking new ground so much as taking familiar templates and then seasoning them with fantastic oddities – sausages that sit in roasting pans as if at the spa and forks with moustaches come to mind. In many ways Origins reminds me most of the bent that made Earthworm Jim and ToeJam & Earl such delightful oddities in their time, particularly when I’m swinging from the beards of meditating monks. As with those two franchises, Origins creates a bold and distinct world of humor and awe that isn’t easily compared to any other title. Black blob creatures with teeth are fashionable occurrences in other titles of course, but there are still more creatures to encounter that look like brilliantly mad sketches come to life.

Looks aren’t everything however, and there has certainly been no shortage of fine looking games that leave plenty wanting in the play of them this year. While the visuals demand attention, Origins’ real achievement is the delivery of controls that convince a sense of tactile fluidity matching the character animation, allowing for an equal share of rewarding platforming and awe struck sight-seeing. The controls are just loose enough to revel in the playfulness of that animation as players jump from vines and stretchy blue hands to jump off walls, but not so loose that you’ll blame them for repeated deaths while trying to accomplish what the game asks – a fine line few games earnestly tackle with the level of success seen here.

Rayman gains moves after freeing imprisoned fairies, granted the ability to punch, hover on the air, run up and along walls, change size, and dive into those aforementioned blue waters. There’s no great challenge to using these abilities to reach the end of the game, but plenty to master in recovering every medallion by acing stages. That typical two tier level of challenge makes it easy for up to four friends to slap each other in local play, and leaves plenty for single players to pull their hair out over.

Enemies are a great example of two tier challenge. Whenever an enemy is hit or crushed, their body balloons (bubblize’s), at which point they are harmless and can be ignored or hit once more to cause them to explode, or they can also be used as leverage for gaining a bit more altitude on a jump to reach tricky peaks.

While Origins isn’t an especially hard game, you can expect to die plenty during speedier sequences, because there’s very much something to needing to know where the game wants you to be at points – driven home by a borderline infuriating final chase sequence of falling debris where the slightest delay of timing will see you trying again – perhaps fifty times before the credits finally rolled in my case. There’s a strange sort of trust you need to have in the game, particularly during chase sequences, where you simply sprint, shut your brain off, and tap the jump button, trusting that some helpful arms will grab you and hurl you toward the next landing, which they will. But there’s also a frustration, because Origins hasn’t resolved how to continually capture the seamless action it strives for hand-in-hand with the player.

Origins also subscribes to a one hit equals death equation, save for a heart Rayman can pick up that will allow him to take one more. The game liberally spreads hearts throughout areas, which comes in handy because I got pretty antsy whenever I didn’t have one for insurance.

The primary platforming concern is collecting Electoons, happy pink dudes that have been caged up throughout the various worlds. They tend to sing and dance excitedly when set free, and also need to be collected to unlock extra features. Finishing stages rewards an Electoon, and several hidden areas within stages offer the chance to free additional ones – you can hear them calling for help when you are near their hiding spot. Players also collect gold Lums throughout stages – just think of them as coins that have a penchant for swaying and humming happily. At the end of each stage, those Lums are tallied up to offer the chance for more Electoons as well as a completion medallion to signify the player’s domination of a stage. A special larger Lum will even temporarily turn others pink and double their value. Treasure chest chase sequences found throughout the various worlds require a certain amount of Electoons for access, but the game itself isn’t too demanding about progression.

When players aren’t chasing treasure chests or jumping for Lums, the gameplay is broken up by a series of side-scrolling shooter stages where Rayman rides on the back of a mosquito, which can fire shots but also suck in enemies to spit them back out at others. There’s a basic shooter structure at work, elevated at later points by skies of debris and intense projectiles, and yet the shooter by numbers approach yields a better experience than I’ve had recently with some full-scale efforts in that genre.

Ryman Origins delivers six worlds of stages along with four additional worlds where players will face some formidable bosses to open the pathway to the finale. By the time the game asks you to accept that challenge, you’ll have seen the bulk of what the game has to offer and be familiar with the formula on hand. That said, the remixing never left me feeling like I was making that final grinding push to complete the game for the sake of doing so, with the scenery, action and challenges maintaining the wildly organic and chaotic rhythm that makes me ridiculously happy this game exists, because it’s just the refresh of color and bizarre creativity needed from studios like Ubisoft.

Aside from the slight repetition that can set in and the absence of any sort of online play features, my only earnest complaint about Rayman Origins is that the ride inevitably comes to an end.

Rayman Origins

Developer
Ubisoft Montpellier

Publisher
Ubisoft

System
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii (Xbox 360 Reviewed) (Nintendo 3DS / PlayStation Vita TBD)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local Multiplayer

Release Date
November 15, 2011

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Lording over your Assassin minions is much as it was in Brotherhood, with a few quirks. Assassin’s are recruited in small sidequests and can be deployed at the touch of a button to emerge from the shadows and nail enemy targets.

These disciples see upgrades through combat and can still be sent away on missions to gain experience, but the missions now have more tangible rewards—in that completely freeing a city of templar control yields continuing income and bonuses, much the way renovating shops does.

Additionally, Ezio’s Assassin forces wage a war for control inside Constantinople, whereby Ezio’s captured dens can be contested by Templar forces—resulting in Revelation’s most curious offering: a tower defense mini-game.

This is an interesting step for the series, if not as refined as it needs to be. Winning a battle largely involves stacking a crapload of units on the right rooftop and the liberal application of cannon fire, but I admit some visceral satisfaction in being able to look over Ezio’s shoulder as he commands the army I’ve assembled for him.

These mini-games are technically optional; they can be avoided entirely by keeping a close watch on the Templar awareness meter and keeping it low. This feels like an experiment, and though I wouldn’t describe it as a full success, my interest is piqued, and I’ll look for future entries to refine the formula.

Assassin training culminates in a two part quest whereby the Assassin student will become a master, and his assigned den will become impervious to further attack. An optional but nicely satisfying avenue, the training system lends some resolution and legitimacy to the concept of controlling a league of Assassins, and blends rather organically with the events of the core game.

By contrast, Altair’s side-missions don’t fair quite as well. The earlier Assassin’s interludes should have been played as an opportunity to provide unique missions, but instead are the least engaging of the campaign. Logically, Altair cannot possess the abilities and technology of Ezio, and thus playing as Altair is a more limited experience with a more limited Assassin, and the uninteresting scenario design doesn’t help. Besides the potential to drop a few plot elements, these missions offer little to look forward to.

The title distinguishes itself from its predecessors with a series of curious puzzled-based missions, revolving around the game’s third protagonist, Desmond Miles. These puzzling interludes are a comfortable change of pace, sitting the player down and telling a story during the solving of some simple, organic puzzles—and finally shedding some light on the character of Desmond. These, too, are clearly experimental, and can be avoided if the player chooses—but I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s the odd little touches like these missions that make it clear Ubisoft is still seeking to make progress in a game that can sometimes feel very “samey.” It’s also worth noting how impressive it is that the game switches between the viewpoints of these three core characters organically, without breaking down the narrative.

Back on Ezio’s side of things, the increasingly aged guild master employs a couple of new tricks. Climbing is sped up by the addition of a hook to extend Ezio’s reach—also providing some combat applications—while a fairly robust bomb-crafting feature provides a wealth of new options for distracting, luring, and engaging guards.

Bombs can be customized for effect, area, and detonation—from timed grenades to trips wires, and smoke bombs to amusing loot grenades that eject fake coins to lure crowds.

Like anything in Assassin’s Creed, bombs are only as satisfying as you make them. Four games into the series, there’s a truly ridiculous number of ways to engage and escape enemies, and you’re unlikely to see all the options at any given time. It’s easy to find a niche, and maybe a little too easy to get comfortable in it; those players who experiment will find themselves the most rewarded. My advice? Try assassinating an enemy while parachuting off a tall building. Not because it’s an especially practical kill, but because this is a videogame, and because you can.

All things considered, the annual schedule appears to be wearing on the franchise somewhat. Brotherhood, despite also being an annual release, was a game-changer that introduced multiplayer and expanded and refined the core gameplay experience in such a way that it was leaps and bounds beyond its predecessors—and against that standard, Revelations doesn’t quite measure up.

That’s not to say Revelations is a poorer game; it isn’t. It’s just not an obviously superior game; it hasn’t taken the steps that say “Yes, I deserve to be here, as a sequel.”

Revelations is comparable in its scope to Brotherhood—expansive on its own, but notably smaller than Assassin’s Creed II. Additionally, though there is a great deal of content to be had, it is mitigated by the fact that much of it is the same basic content as the last two entries. Many concepts and scenarios recur (such as Ezio’s dungeon-crawling interludes), unfortunately creating the sensation that one is playing the same game rather than a sixty-dollar sequel.

Some areas remain ripe for improvement; Revelations still doesn’t always communicate well with the player (critical in a game with so many play options), while the graphics engine is showing its advanced age, and a few bugs and quirks may crop up. At this point in the series, one expects details such as these to be ironed out.

Where revelations picks up the slack is in its multiplayer component. Two years ago I never would have guessed it, but multiplayer has become the purest, most satisfying expression of the core gameplay goals of Assassin’s Creed. It’s where you’ll find the unpredictable, unscripted, and above all, adaptive gameplay that the franchise originally promised, only infinitely better realized by the addition of a human element.

At first glance, multiplayer is fundamentally the same as it was in Brotherhood, with the same careful, intelligent design—but some subtle and deliberate improvements have been made.

New modes are at the forefront of this effort. In addition to a handful of novelty objective game-types, Revelations includes a handful of unique spins on the core “kill or be killed” game mode. Specifically, these modes tune out certain elements of hunt, allowing players to choose a mode tailored to their particular goals. If you feel the target compass or special abilities obfuscate that raw hunt-and-kill imperative, there are game modes to omit those features.

My favorite variation is the assassination mode, where targets are chosen by the player rather than assigned by the computer. With a vague awareness of the positions of other humans, the player can spot, target, and kill anyone on the field—and the real thrill is that the player you’re stalking may also be stalking you. It’s important to be aware of other humans, even if they aren’t tracking you—because if you kill your own target while they lurk nearby, they’re likely to spot and pursue you next.

Regardless of the variant you choose, Revelations will remain a game that rewards patience, cunning, and quality over quantity. There’s nothing so satisfying as rocketing to first place after spending several minutes lurking in a haystack for a perfect, devastating kill. The game is designed to punish impatience and run-and-gun players and reward the careful and deliberate, in a wonderful inversion of multiplayer norms.

For those players who fell in love with multiplayer in Brotherhood, Revelations is an excellent (if subtle) refinement of the formula that may warrant your attention. Meanwhile, those who skipped Brotherhood have even greater reason to give Revelation’s exemplary multiplayer component a try.

On the campaign side, long time series adherents may find that three games set in the same time period (in a series that could instantly redefine its experience by moving to, say, the industrial revolution) has worn on some of the appeal, but Revelations remains a solid entry for those looking for another go ‘round. As for those new to Assassin’s Creed, this entry is easily the most well-rounded in the series and an obvious choice from a gameplay perspective.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Developer
Ubisoft Montreal

Publisher
Ubisoft

System
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC (Xbox 360 Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, Online Multiplayer

Release Date
November 15, 2011 (PS3, X360); November 29, 2011 (PC)

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Philosophical detours aside, I’ve been thinking that a rosier tint might also assist me in playing Naughty Dog’s latest release in the Uncharted series the way they intended me to.

Over the last few days, I’ve watched Nathan Drake die a thousand deaths, all of them unnecessary if I’d only been capable of knowing exactly what the developer required of my admittedly awkward hands. As Nathan is chased across rooftops, there’s a very direct path toward the cinematic cut-scene I’m meant to reach, and dark suited adversaries do their best to herd me toward the point. But despite those efforts, I continually seem to make mistakes, take the wrong turn, plunge to my death or get caught for being too slow to deduce the way forward within the proper window of time. And this is problematic, because it breaks apart the cinematic flow of action in a game meant to be witnessed as an unbroken chain of seamless action sequences.

I can’t help feeling broken, like a child in the middle of a very important and carefully arranged production, underfoot and tripping up the performance. And it’s frustrating, I don’t want to ruin Naughty Dog’s shiny game, and I certainly don’t want to be driven into a corner where I must conclude that at times Uncharted 3 is the Dragon’s Lair of its day. That’s entirely too simplistic an appraisal of the work here, but there are occassions where I must repeat a sequence so many times over that such comparisons bear some fruit.

I’m not entirely interested in harping on the linear direction issued to the player, or complaining that the game often makes the player a mere passenger tapping buttons like a monkey to connect cinematic sequences. Such assessments are humorous at times, but also a tad dishonest, for while Uncharted 3 certainly runs players through a very narrow series of hoops to achieve its narrative goals, it never degrades into a series of button prompts allowing players to press X to win the game.

Uncharted 3’s narrow demands are a necessary evil that gamers accept for moments in which the pacing achieves harmony and flow, where the rollercoaster ride of events connects the escalating series of sequences, the cause and effect that spoils Nathan’s initial plans but quickly provides new alternatives rich with cliffhanger fantasies of clinging to airplanes, leaping from exploding boats, and working to escape a burning mansion as it crumbles.

Occasionally Naughty Dog offers set-pieces for the action that are wondrous beasts of twisted industrial design, playgrounds of detailed dilapidation, such as a graveyard of rotting boats or the chaotic interior of a sinking ocean liner. The game certainly delivers more standard battlefields, but with a palette of colors that seeks to remind the games industry that shades beyond brown and grey exist.

But insofar as refining the way players are directed through the chaos in a game with one very tightly controlled path to success, Uncharted wants for fresher ideas that don’t materialize here.

Uncharted 3 can survive and even find space to still thrive retreading the ground covered by Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – that critical and retail darling that makes “more of the same” an entirely acceptable state of affairs.

Uncharted has long garnered praise for the overall aims of its narrative, and particularly for characters that separate the series from other games, largely owing to their ability to emote, to say as much with words not spoken as those lines delivered between characters during cinematic sequences and within the game proper – convincing a certain level of humanity through writing that does more than simply react to the action driven gameplay. In short, Uncharted convinces players that there is an actual script that someone wrote with a semblance of enthusiasm.

Uncharted 3 offers warmth in the writing unfettered by genre obligated characters chained to template roles. That warmth comes through the camaraderie of characters, with lines that give me pause to chuckle at times, and through a strained romance that the script treats loose but carefully, recognizing the complex nature of it.

But the overall narrative hits a wall here in this latest outing, setting off on another adventure for the sake of doing so, because the adventure can never really end, and these characters can never really achieve resolution.

In a way I rather like that. Life is not so easily wrapped up in the final moments of an adventure. In many ways Nathan is simply trying to survive the events that unfold when he seeks to uncover Sir Francis Drake’s most guarded secret. Players are tossed all over the globe, and plans are continually derailed and readjusted in spectacular fashion. But then it’s difficult to understand the reckless obsession other characters accuse Nathan of possessing given that he is more often reacting to events, though I can sympathize with that condition and the point becomes muddled in the murky waters of life.

It’s the overall narrative that suffers most for want of reason, with a generic cast of villains seeking a rather vague goal, the inevitable finale never really providing insight, leaving a thin exploration of the relationship between Sully and Nathan as the primary justification for the trip.

That might be fine but for where Naughty Dog wants to get more poetic, where Nathan suffers some isolation and madness, but scrapes the bottom of the emotional barrel for material toward such ends. Wandering across a desert, compelled to look inward, no crucial character insights emerge. The same genre trappings that enable moments of narrative success can leave an empty feeling when one attempts to dig deeper than the source material can provide for. There is an emptiness to these characters, confined to their roles, chained to their shtick, and always better for setting off on another adventure than spending too much time contemplating their journey to date. It’s an element forgiven and overlooked in exchange for further adventures, and perhaps a bear Naughty Dog would be best not to poke.

The puzzle-solving elements suffer a familiar simplicity, with ancient mysteries requiring players to either check a notebook offering the bulk of the solution, or use a codex that essentially shaves the challenge down to pressing X to solve a puzzle. This isn’t exclusive to Uncharted, with other recent releases such as Arkham City as guilty of simplifying puzzle solving elements in order to ensure the player is never intolerably stuck. But it’s curious that Naughty Dog is so concerned that the game will even offer to solve the puzzle before long, and yet the developer risks so many other bottleneck situations with chases sequences and a few key gunfights.

Playing with guns in Uncharted 3 remains a loose affair that focuses more on mobility and speed rather than grace and finesse. The variety of weapons and environments offer plenty of choice, presenting battlegrounds that never play out quite the same way for the amount of options and terrain available – though some tight rooms and frustrating deaths are unavoidable. Memorable battles owe plenty to the outright aggression of enemies, who utilize cover and the full arsenal of weapons on hand, but will also run up and eagerly slap Nathan in the face before unloading bullets into his chest at point blank range. But it is possible to continually switch strategies, using cover to carefully pick off enemies, and/or running and gunning opponents with heavy short range weapons.

Drake can engage enemies in fisticuffs, which relies on button prompts, not entirely unlike Arkham City, but certainly lacking the same smooth combo style and efficiency that makes those particular battles a dance. Drake’s fighting style is as loose and dirty as the gunplay, and best reserved for moments where picking a fight doesn’t leave one vulnerable to bullets from other adversaries not polite enough to wait their turn.

Stealth is an ideal alternative and opportunity to offer players even more choice, but is entirely undermined and undervalued within the game. If one enemy spots you, all enemies spot you, and suddenly possess the ability to know where you are forever after. It’s also the case that your supporting cast members will continually blow your cover by waltzing out into the line of sight while you work to stay concealed.

But I do love the situations that arise at times, even when I’m hesitant to enter a room that has grenade launchers on the floor, a clear signal that the fight ahead will be merciless. Enemy aggression encourages speed, reflex, and fast thinking – and every so often shooting an enemy at just the right time causes them to drop a live grenade, and the moment is a joyous one. That reminds me, this is the most grenade happy game in existence, and while players can often throw them back in time, this is yet another reason Nathan is encouraged to move from cover and frequently adapt strategy.

Guns and grenades lay the foundation for an increasingly robust suite of online multiplayer features, that range from team and all out death matches, to more objective based options like treasure hunting. Additional co-op story missions that can be played online or locally provide more insurance for longevity, as well as a natural fit for the episodic nature of Nathan’s lifestyle and profession.

As archaic and stiff as the gunplay can be, I’m hopelessly addicted to it. It’s the one real freedom in the game, though Naughty Dog does do their best to direct it as well, particularly when deciding when you can shoot and when environments are destructible. But every time a room or field of enemies is present, I feel engaged, constantly moving for the advantage, constantly changing weapons, constantly tossing back grenades, and constantly dying.

There are times these battles are infuriating, but I keep coming back for more, which leaves me wanting to compare Uncharted 3 to Modern Warfare for the way the online features no longer pad the release to justify the investment, but rather serve as the primary invitation.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

Developer
Naughty Dog

Publisher
Sony Computer Entertainment

System
PlayStation 3

Modes
Singleplayer, Co-op (Splitscreen and Online), Online Multiplayer

Release Date
November 1, 2011

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

R-Type requires players to methodically conquer each stage one small step at a time. Getting just a tiny bit further in a level is cause for celebration. The more I played, the further I eventually progressed, learning exactly where on the screen I needed to position my humble spacecraft at any given moment. I can’t think of any other shooter in which so much trial-and-error, memorization, and perseverance is required to succeed.

“But Mister Raroo,” you might wonder, “Why are you spending so much time talking about R-Type in a PixelJunk: SideScroller review?”

Because, dear readers, playing SideScroller is very much like playing Irem’s masterpiece. SideScroller is clearly a love letter to the classic horizontal shooter genre of yore, and it contains elements that bring to mind games like Gradius and Darius, though more than anything, I couldn’t help but think it would fit most comfortably in the R-Type family.

But we should maybe back up a bit here and bring everyone up to speed on just what PixelJunk: SideScroller is. For those of you scratching your heads, SideScroller is a horizontal 2D shooter created in the vein of classic arcade games, particularly from the late 1980s and early 1990s. You take control of a small spaceship (or two spaceships, if you elect to play in co-op mode) and face overwhelming odds as you pass through a series of stages that are filled with enemy ships, turrets, and environmental hazards. SideScroller is actually an offshoot of Q-Games’ PixelJunk Shooter series, and it brings along some of the elements from those titles, which I’ll discuss further in just a moment.

Your modest craft is equipped with three weapons: a machine gun, a laser, and bombs. You can cycle between these weapons to your heart’s content, and picking up power-ups left behind after destroying certain enemies allows you to improve your firepower. Just like Gradius, deciding how to boost your armaments is completely in your hands, through certain weapons work best depending on specific situations. You can also charge up a spin attack that sends you careening into enemies with reckless abandon, but I rarely chose to make use of it. The spin attack usually caused my craft to end up in a more precarious situation than if I would have left well enough alone, so I usually just stuck with the core weaponry and my reflexes.

The machine gun is the weakest of the bunch, but it has the most coverage and fires an incredible amount of bullets. At first I relied heavily upon it, as I imagine most players will be inclined to do, but as I became more proficient at reaching the ends of the stages, I better understood the strengths of the other two weapons. The laser deals out serious damage and can carve through some obstacles like walls of ice, but the time between shots is lengthy, so players will need to be precise in order to be effective. Bombs are actually my favorite way to dish out damage, and I love watching them lumber forth both above and below my ship like depth charges, though they move in a somewhat erratic manner, making them almost impossible to fire with precision and more than a little unreliable in the game’s trickier spots.

Players will need to be patient and accept the fact that they’ll see their little ship explode a lot. Quick reflexes are definitely required, but perhaps even more important is memorizing each stage’s layout and positioning your craft in just the right spot needed for survival, quite like R-Type. Some areas require the navigation of extraordinarily tight pathways, and knowing the placement of obstacles like enemy turrets is instrumental so you can plan your route accordingly. Success, then, stems just as much from being able to learn from one’s mistakes and make necessary adjustments the next time around as it does from having quick reactions and a steady hand. Even on Normal difficulty, the game is anything but a breeze, and some areas were thorny enough that it took a couple dozen tries to clear them.

However, especially when compared to R-Type’s almost insane difficulty, SideScroller is very player-friendly. Developer Q-Games obviously wants players to succeed, and the number of checkpoints peppered throughout the stages is generous. Sometimes there will even be a recurring 1up found right after a checkpoint, which players with a decent amount of knowhow should be able to take advantage of in order to avoid seeing the Game Over screen. However, even if you run out of lives, you can choose to continue from the last checkpoint reached, though your craft will be stripped of all its power-ups.

In that sense, players used to “credit-feeding” shooters and coasting their way through to the end will be in for a shock. SideScroller may be more lenient than many of the classic arcade shooters it references, but the game still expects you to do your part and actually demonstrate some ability.

There is an admirable amount of diversity in the stage design, with each level coming across as unique. Veterans of the PixelJunk Shooter games will enjoy that SideScroller brings with it some of the trademarks those games are known for. For instance, in one level there are a number of volcanoes that can spell doom for your craft if you don’t find a pool of water to dip in after being doused with lava. Another stage has you avoiding spinning blades and walls of spikes. One of my favorite sectors features clouds of gas that will be lit ablaze if you aren’t quick enough to take out the fire-spouting turrets positioned nearby. But even with all these neat environmental hazards present throughout the stages, Q-Games used just the right amount of restraint to ensure the action never gets bogged down and the focus of the game remains on the classic shooter gameplay above all else.

Though the game’s levels are grouped together into sets of stages, each with a daunting end boss, you can actually tackle them out of order. For example, sectors 2-1 and 3-1 were unlocked before I finished the first set of levels (which is a good thing because I was stuck on 1-3 and needed to take a break from it for a little while!). In fact, the levels are actually akin to standalone challenges, especially when considering that weapon upgrades are taken back to square one each time you begin a new sector. I think this is a smart idea, as it forces players to discover the most efficient path through each level, and it ensures consistency and fairness in the online leaderboards.

Speaking of score, SideScroller has a combo meter that you keep active and refill by destroying an enemy before the timer ticks out. Therefore, not only do players need to memorize each level’s layout in order to simply survive, but they’ll need to factor in how to best progress through the stages without letting the combo meter run down. There are also small score bonuses to pick up as well as three hidden PixelJunk icons to find on each level that are usually tucked away in hard-to-reach locations, so some degree of exploration is necessary. SideScroller is the type of game that is ripe for replay, and the most dedicated players will no doubt run though each of the game’s levels countless times to try to improve their scores and find all the secrets.

Some of the most entertaining sections to revisit are the boss battles, which are extremely well executed and pose fair but intimidating threats. The boss overseeing the first set of stages, a massive fish that unleashes streams of missiles and causes debris to fall from above, is an obvious tip of the cap to the Darius series. It took a few tries before I was able to pulverize him, and it turns out he was just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the pack is much more menacing. My favorite boss is found in sector 3-4 which, without spoiling too much, definitely seems like it belongs in an R-Type game. And for those players that can make it through the game on Normal difficulty, there is yet another challenge waiting…

I absolutely adore the visuals in SideScroller. The game bears more than a passing resemblance to the developer’s wonderful DSiWare release, Trajectile, yet beefed up considerably to take advantage of the Playstation 3’s horsepower.

SideScroller is designed to look as if it is running on a washed-out CRT monitor, and the minimalist vector-like backdrops add to the retro factor. Yet behind this curtain of nostalgia lies some remarkable programming, as there is nary a hint of slowdown even when the stages are overflowing with enemies, projectiles, and special effects like volcanic eruptions made up of too many particles to count. Very impressive!

The amazing art direction comes at a price, though. Each sector is modeled with a dominant color scheme, and enemy fire follows suit. For example, on a level where everything is shaded with a green tint, the bullets fired at your craft are also green, even if their specific hue is unique. This sometimes makes it difficult to discern enemy fire from everything else on screen, especially when you’re using your peripheral vision. On numerous occasions my ship met its end by colliding with a projectile I hadn’t noticed, which my neighbors probably heard me yelling was unfair. The issue lessened significantly as I became comfortable with each stage’s layout and knew just what to expect, but I feel the problem is worth mentioning.

The game sounds just as good as it looks, featuring music that comes across as haunting, alien jazz mixed with bits and pieces of hip-hop. The often mellow soundtrack doesn’t always match the frantic action happening on screen, but somehow that’s what makes it all the more intriguing. I just wish every sector could have had its own music, as some of the tracks are reused a couple of times. Players are aurally rewarded at the game’s final showdown, which features what I consider to be the best track in the entire game.

Oh, and I laughed at the credits screen, with its pumping club-worthy rap jam blazing away while you take control of one of the little spacemen from the PixelJunk Shooter games and blast at the names of everyone involved in the creation and release of SideScroller.

The audience for PixelJunk: SideScroller is likely a limited one, which makes me all the more delighted that Q-Games put so much care into a game that the bulk of Playstation 3 owners will probably pass by without even a second thought. Obviously, the development team has a reverence and respect for classic horizontal shooters, and their attention to detail shows in every conceivable aspect of the game. You’ll need to bring your skills to the table and be willing to put in the time needed to study and master each stage, but if you’re up for the challenge, you’re in for quite the treat. And who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to apply the skills I’ve gained from SideScroller and use them to finally finish R-Type!

PixelJunk: SideScroller

Developer
Q-Games

Publisher
SCEA

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)

Modes
Singleplayer, Co-op

Release Date
October 25, 2011

Price
$9.99

*A copy of this title was purchased by Gamesugar for review

The core concept of the title is simple, and in the end, the core concept is really all there is to it. Mow zombies, keep moving. There’s little nuance and little window dressing, and the title makes no effort to disguise this fact.

The hokey, tongue-in-cheek story features the grown-up equivalent of a 13-year old Call of Duty player, Ned Flanders with a shotgun, the obligatory angry rapper and doubly obligatory hot girl, all making bad jokes as they stroll through the blackened streets of an anonymous city and paste zombies.

Each character has a pair of unique tools; a throwable (such as a Molotov or a zombie-baiting boombox), and a special “Pwnage” ability that can be activated when the appropriate meter is full. If there’s anything akin to strategy in this game, that’s where you’ll find it: there’s a degree of interplay between the abilities that can be taken advantage of by intelligent players, but by and large the core tactic here is simply to deploy abilities at the right time.

The characters also have unique melee weapons, though to be honest I could discern no gameplay difference between them, nor any particular usefulness for them.

More interestingly, characters have a number of stats that level up as they’re used—though new levels must be bought after being unlocked. Strangely, character progression (and also story progression) does not carry over between modes; if you level up a character in single-player, you’ll have to do it all over again in multi-player.

Equally, if you are not the host of the multi-player game, don’t expect to be afforded your upgraded characters or story progress. This is made slightly more frustrating by the fact that the only way to guarantee that you’re the host of a game is to invite your friends. If you choose matchmaking, the option to host a game will only appear if no other suitable games are found. The inevitable result is that you’re pretty unlikely to play a game on a map of your choice, lest you select single-player.

On the plus side, single-player play (as well as the two-player local co-op and any online game with less than four players) affords you the opportunity to switch between characters on the fly. This is essential, as the AI will simply refuse to use special abilities (or even shoot with reasonable frequency). Playing wither fewer than four players noticeably increases difficulty, and demands more active management of squad powers.

Still, online co-op remains the optimal way to play the game, and despite my assorted criticisms, Never Die Alone is fairly un-terrible. The title carries itself on frantic, four player action, and though four player co-op will lock players into their character choice, it dramatically increases gameplay speed and excitement.

There are—at maximum—three hours of playtime in the campaign, short even for a download title, but levels remain entertaining on subsequent playthroughs by virtue of the simplicity of the core gameplay. That said, with the character progression being largely unnoticeable, there won’t be much incentive to replay, except for those who wish to grind out the games various optional objectives.

I found myself comparing NDA to Dead Nation, Housemarque’s own entry into the crowded zombie market. Another top-down shooter, its gameplay goals were decidedly different (providing a slower and more nuanced game), but ultimately it proved to be a more well-rounded and exciting experience. Though both titles are characterized by some similar weaknesses, Dead Nation remains the superior choice—and though Zombie Apocalypse is a fair title in its own right, it’s difficult to recommend while Dead Nation is available (to PS3 owners, anyway).

That said, players searching specifically for a four player download title could do worse.

Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone

Developer
Backbone Entertainment

Publisher
Konami

System
Xbox 360 (XBLA), PlayStation 3 (PSN) (XBLA Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local and Online Co-op

Release Date
October 25, 2011

Price
$9.99, 800 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review