Puzzle Quest 2 exists

Looks like GamePro has a neat little scoop waiting in the January 2010 issue. The magazine claims to have exclusive information on Puzzle Quest 2, a game that looks to be continuing the simple formula the original Puzzle Quest introduced. No more angled boards, no more space gimmicks, and no more Gyromancer. *shudder* Details won’t be available until the magazine hits, but I’m happy just knowing its on the horizon. The best part is if the game somehow tanks, the original Puzzle Quest is still as great as ever.

Stay away from Gyromancer…

The match-up sounds like every gamer’s dream: stick Square-Enix with PopCap and create an RPG/match-3 hybrid similar to Puzzle Quest. Epic win, right? You’d think. Unfortunately, after a lot of hype and excitement, the product of this unholy union, Gyromancer, is little more than a cheap attempt to cash in on the casual gaming craze. The whole experience is hollow and unfulfilling, leaving me not only disappointed but feeling a bit cheated by two companies that consistently deliver above-average gaming experiences.

Gyromancer takes the “new” matching mechanic introduced by Bejeweled Twist and applies a light RPG skin on top. As you wander around an overworld path, you come across a few events to digest along with the occasional enemy encounter. When battle begins, a grid of gems falls into place with you and your opponent on either side. Your character totes around a few beasts he uses to engage in combat, each of which has its own set of spells that are activated during the course of matching. The enemy has its own spells, too, and as you twist 2×2 sets of gems around to make matches, you try to stall the enemy while charging up your own beast’s attacks.

Here’s the catch: there’s nothing entertaining about doing any of this. Puzzle Quest was all about gathering mana by matching colored gems, then unleashing one of many spells you selected for your customized character. Gyromancer is about trying to match red gems to stop red-gemmed foes from attacking while attempting to create matches of your own creature’s color. Attacks, bonuses, setbacks and such all feel so random and out of your control, and making combos and big matches give you practically no reward. Gyromancer is attempting to create a role playing atmosphere around your game of Bejeweled Twist. It doesn’t give a hoot about integrating any of this into the gameplay, just add some experience points, throw in some spells, make up some connection to the gems you’re matching, and people will buy it.

Both PopCap and Square-Enix missed the point, here. If you’re designing a game for casual players, keep things simple, don’t add anything unless it’s an integral part of the experience. If you’re designing a game for mainstream gamers, take the time to write a real story, make the gameplay thick and fun to chew on, and don’t cut corners in the presentation department. Gyromancer doesn’t walk the line between casual and mainstream, it ignores them both and succeeds in neither. It feels like it was designed by a committee. A committee that took a spreadsheet of the most popular features from Bejeweled Twist, Puzzle Quest, and your generic Square-Enix role playing game, skimmed the top ten off and handed the whole mess to a team of programmers and artists. The result is a hollow shell of a game that’s too sterile to be interesting.

I realize I’m probably coming across as a shade too negative against Gyromancer, but when my expectations were lifted so high, it hurts to be dropped to the ground. Maybe the whole Bejeweled Twist thing is new and exciting for many gamers, but I played and reviewed it a year ago, and tacking on a fantasy novel plot along with a few uninteresting spells doesn’t make it any more ground-breaking than before. I will say one good thing about Gyromancer: I dig the artwork. There. Now it’s not a completely scathing review!

Thanks for trying, Square-Enix and PopCap. I hope you two get together and give it another shot sometime. Really, I do. But next time, drop the bullet point design docs and make something we’ll want to play.

Trolling the EDGE troll

While the trademark troll Tim Langdell keeps sticking his nose in every EDGE he can find, a handful of indie developers have decided to do a little trolling of their own. More than half a dozen studios, many with games on the iTunes App Store, have announced name changes for their well-known releases. Fez is now Fedge, CritterCrunch is now CritterCredge, Closure is now Closure on the EDGE of Reality, and Canabalt has become Canabedge. A few other games now have announced sequels, such as Eliss and its follow-up, EDGELISS and Dismount getting LEDGE Dismount, and we now have a curious little chap known as Edgeward McEdgington.

I have one word of commentary on this topic: EEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDGGGGGGGGEEEEEEE. Oh, and Touch Arcade has more info on the topic.

Kickstarter, indie games, and you

There’s a new way to help out the indie gaming community: fundraising website Kickstarter. Built around the idea of the community supporting artists, Kickstarter lets you contribute to projects by donating any amount of money you see fit. Most projects offer rewards for your donations, which is usually incentive enough for me to part with a few bucks. Available projects range from books to CDs, films, events, technological pushes, and yes, video games.

A handful of indie game developers have seized the opportunity and posted their in-progress games on Kickstarter. Thanks to a recently-introduced tagging system, you can check out all game projects with a single click. I’ve supported a few games so far and have also lent a few bucks to a little thing called KILL SCREEN. I love the idea of Kickstarter, the site pulls the concept off much better than the competition, and I hope more indie devs successfully use it in the future.

Deeply atmospheric adventure game A Second Face

This game really caught me by surprise. Mechanically, A Second Face – The Eye of Geltz is Watching Us is your standard adventure title, but in reality, it’s a brilliantly conceived experience that deserves a lot more recognition. Created by Jospin Le Woltaire (artwork, design and all), it’s the first episode of a promised multi-episodic series, and I really hope the rest of the story gets told.

In a world divided between light and dark, the kingdom of the Ugeltz is in rapid decline. You play the son of the king who sends you out to investigate the legendary Kingdom of Light. The story sounds generic, but once the characters and world gets fleshed out, you’ll realize there’s some great philosophical storytelling going on here. Things start out rather bland with some long cutscenes, less-than-perfect voice acting, and a stretch of time when you don’t really do much. But then, oh, then things get great. Suddenly the plot becomes so thick you have to chew it, and the adventuring becomes secondary to the story that’s unfolding in front of your eyes.

Almost every scene in A Second Face becomes its own little vignette, and that’s part of the massive draw of this quiet little game. It’s been nearly two years since its release, and with no word on part two, who knows when/if it will see the light of day. Even with its cliffhanger ending, A Second Face is still worth getting into. Clear a few afternoons so you can really absorb the plot.

Risque Evony ads continue!

Oh the drama! Oh the sensationalism! Oh the stolen images! Oh the pointlessly-featured half-naked ladyfolk! As mentioned a few weeks back, the browser game Evony has resorted to using sexy images of models to draw clicks to their otherwise run-of-the-mill Civilization clone. The campaign is obviously working, as any first year marketing student could tell you, and the company has decided to branch out and use a few new pics to entice teenage boys to visit their sign-up pages.

Before, Evony’s modus operandi was to nab images from anywhere they could, including costume site CostumeCraze.com. Now, instead of stealing photos, Evony has turned to iStockPhoto for its sexy content. It’s a step up, I suppose, but a practice that’s not without danger. As Negative Gamer recently noticed, a new Evony sign-up page features a few bikini-clad ladies who appear on the cover of a low-budget porn DVD from a few years ago. So, in other words, playing Evony is a similar experience to watching Girls playing with Girls 102, right?

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a kick out of this whole thing, my Lord.

The Dark Spire soundtrack

Released back in April, The Dark Spire is a hardcore RPG grindfest similar to Etrian Odyssey II. The neat thing about this game is it comes in two styles: retro and modern. The former looks like it came off an Apple ][ with stark visuals and a complete chiptune soundtrack. Modern mode, on the other hand, comes with an updated musical score and gorgeous stylized artwork. Both are so awesome I had a hard time deciding which mode to play it. That didn't last long, though, as the game is so tough, I gave up after a few hours of dying death after horrible death. Yeah, that's right, I'm a lapsed hardcore gamer. Easy mode FTW!

Atlus shipped Dark Spire with a nice bonus: a soundtrack CD. The disc includes scores from both versions of the game, and it's one of the better soundtracks out there. Below are a few samples from the CD. It's a bit quirky at times, but the unusual nature of the music is what makes it so great.

7th Floor (arranged)
7th Floor (classic)
Battle (arranged)

Be an old man in Home!

Ever wonder what it’s like to be an old man? LOL ME NEITHER! And, since growing old is so 1900s, I need a way to conveniently experience what my forefathers did in their declining years. Thanks to Increpare, that experience is now less than a megabyte away.

In Home, you live the life of an old man shuffling back and forth in his home. Four bars at the top of the screen show your basic needs: happiness, sleep, eating food, and releasing the digested remains of food into the proper receptacle. As you slowly walk around, stop at each station to refill these bars. If you don’t, what happens? You’ll have to find out. A short game that takes a second to download, a minute or two to play, but supplies several mildly poignant emotional moments that are definitely worth experiencing.

Borderlands impressions

Ok, so, Borderlands. The first person “shooter” who was bitten by a Diablo werewolf and developed RPG powers. Set in the distant future on a planet called Pandora, the gritty but gorgeous game puts you in control of one of four unique characters, each with skills to develop, weapons to equip, and acts of badassery to accomplish. The setup isn’t anything groundbreaking, so if you’ve played an RPG and an FPS at any point in your life, you’re ready to roll. It’s a game you’ll really want to experience, though, as the sum of its parts add up to something way more than FPS + RPG.

Borderlands is built around missions, allowing you to accept, complete, and cash in on quests however you see fit. Most earn you a handful of experience points and gold, but a few give you new items to play around with, such as a new gun or a better personal shield generator. You’ll spend most of your time running around the sandy landscape dispatching enemies as efficiently as you can. Weapons are plentiful and come with a lot of stats you can fret over, such as accuracy, reload rate, raw power, zoom, etc. I found myself sticking with a standard arsenal of a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, a shotgun and some sort of rapid fire scattergun, just to cover the bases.

In addition to weapons, grenades, and a melee attack, each character in Borderlands has a skill tree you can develop as you level up. The character I started with, for example, has a berserk rage ability and is keen on building his defenses and close-range combat skills, but this varies with each class. Vehicles also make an appearance, and they’re endlessly useful for running down weak enemies when you’re out for joyrides.

It wouldn’t be possible to discuss Borderlands without gushing over how good this game looks. The artwork is highly stylized yet realistic, cel-shaded in appearance but still quite detailed. The world of Pandora is filled with all sorts of details, from dry grasses growing in corners to junk scattered around all over the place. There are many areas where you’ll want to sit and stare at the landscape, gazing at the horizon and wondering what kind of oddities rest beyond your reach. Screenshots don’t do the game justice, you need to see it in action to appreciate how stunning it really is.

One of the reasons I was so interested in Borderlands was the promise of four player co-op. The only problem is multiplayer is horribly, horribly broken. How so? Imagine basing your game’s online experience around technology that was cool back in 1998. Then smash it with a hammer. Borderlands uses GameSpy for online matches, so I probably don’t need to say any more than that. If you want to play a private game with your buddies, everyone needs to either open a dozen ports or mess with a third party app like Hamachi and set up a virtual network. Yes, folks, it’s that broken. And it’s a shame, too, as the game would be so very good with a party of real people running around.

Item management is very stubborn. It feels like your inventory was put into a straight jacket, and you really can’t do much with what you pick up. And forget about stashing extras in containers around the world. For a game that’s so heavily loot-driven, I was disappointed to see the limitations imposed upon, you know, doing stuff with your loot.

Even with a lame multiplayer option, Borderlands presents an engaging single player game. There are plenty of missions to complete, so many weapons and items to find you won’t know where to start, and plenty of interesting environments and encounters. It’s a truly enjoyable grinding optional RPG, and one that I’ve come back to again and again. Now, Gearbox, get multiplayer working and I won’t scowl at you the next time we run into each other at the grocery store…