SPAZ - Review

PROS

• Backgrounds that look better than space itself
• Tons of customization
• Zombies
• Procedurally Generated Galaxies
• Tons of missions
• Infinite replay value
• Continued support from developers

CONS

• Combat can become repetitive
• Mining can be an annoyance
• Lengthy distances between some story missions

Not Recommended For:

 Gamers who dislike a challenge and gamers with little free time.

 Recommended For:

 Everyone Else.

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SPAZ, or Space Pirates and Zombies is a game in space, the end.

What, you actually wanted a review, is space not good enough for you?  Well then you either need to play Portal 2 or you have expectations which are way too high, but fine, whatever you say.

Space Pirates and Zombies is a game about Space, Pirates, and Zombies.  In game you control a single ship within an expanding fleet, while having the overlord-ish ability to hop between them at anytime, as well as to pause the game and issue orders.  While the game mostly has a fast paced, action feel to it, it has a very nice underlying strategy system.  One thing I love is that the tactics are optional, while if you don’t use them you won’t do as well within game and will die more, you don’t need to understand what everything does, since the AI tends to handle itself fine on its own.

Tactics Screen

The game is basically a hybrid between mission based and open world exploration.  You can freely fly between systems, but then you need to choose which mission/station/planet to warp to.  When you aren’t in one of those places, you are at your mother ship, which serves at a mobile base between systems.  While the game does have an overarching story, you tend to forget what it is after playing for a few hours, since while you do have goals pertaining to it, there isn’t really anything story related outside of it, since the game gives you so much freedom you just tend to do missions while doing your story ones along the way.  But basically, you and a group of people created a giant ship, with the hopes of traveling into the depths of your universe to become rich bastards.

The open universe is nice, there are tons of random missions which can help you progress with either experience, Rez (The games currently), or with new blue prints.  I really like how the game goes about giving you new ships, you can’t simply go to the nearest station and buy them, you have to kill a certain number of that ship and reverse engineer it, which makes getting bigger ships a challenge, since the bigger, the stronger.  As far as ship customization goes, it is diverse and works well.  Each ship has a certain amount of turret slots, device slots, missile slots, bomb slots, etc. and you can choose what to put in each one, and as you level up you can put on even better items.  While there aren’t too many different turret/main weapons, each weapon is different so that not having too many differences isn’t that big of an issue.  Each ship also has a build cost, which is how much it costs to rebuild once destroyed, if you aren’t a player who enjoys mining for 30 minutes every hour or two, then you need to be careful not to make the most expensive ships in the galaxy!

Each galaxy in game is procedurally generated, which means each time you play; it will be an entirely different world to explore.  The developers did a good job of bringing these galaxies and systems alive; each game has two warring factions, the military and the civilians.  You need to choose which one to side with, or just not to take a side at all, and many of the missions in game help please one of the factions.  And depending on which faction you choose, will depend on if they give you access to their station or not, which can have items for sale, allow you to bribe guards, or allow you to mine.  There are tons of random missions which can pop up, some connected from earlier ones, which helps give a sense of…life to the systems, though it would be even better if there were neutral factions such as bounty hunters and merchants, who could reward you with rare items or money for helping them, which would in turn get others of their faction to like you.

A Rather Large Galaxy

The combat itself is very in-depth, action packed, and fun, though also challenging.  One thing the developers did very well is balancing combat, while it does feel hard at times, you simply need to try a different strategy, if small missiles aren’t doing the trick, fit all your ships with large slow moving missiles and try that instead.  I love how the game allows you to refit ships in the middle of combat, so you can completely switch strategy, with nothing but a small build time in between.  There are many strategic approaches to take such as cloaking devices, drones, bombs which stall enemies, and many others, allowing the player to choose how he prefers to play, since there isn’t one “win it all” combination.

Combat in an Advanced Ship

My only complaint is that after playing for a while, combat can get repetitive.  Because about 10 hours in, it boils down to “Shoot with missiles, fire laser, get hit by gravity bomb, sit here and get shot at, die, rebuild, repeat”.  Because I came to a point in which I needed to travel halfway across my galaxy, and since to unlock new systems you have to destroy blockades (or you could bribe the guards, but shooting is easier) and some of them were at a level too challenging for me, I had to do other missions to level up while also killing blockades, which were mostly the same fight over and over again, with needed mining in the middle.  I understand that the bigger you make your galaxy, the longer the game takes, but if they could’ve simply condensed missions and not have made some of the story ones so far away, it not only would have helped speed up the pace, but it would’ve been less repetitive.  Speaking of which, I wish exploration was a bit more rewarding, I would have liked if some random missions involved finding wrecks of rare ships to reverse engineer, some rare ship equipment, some mission which involved moral choices which had repercussions (which also would add to the ‘alive’ feel of the galaxy) but instead it is mostly a mix of mining and shooting.

Now there is one thing that does change up combat, and that is zombies.  When fighting zombies you really have to take a different combat approach, which is a welcome change from the usual dodge and gun.  If a zombie spore reaches your ship, your whole ship will be zombified and be taken control of by the zombies, so you need to make sure you keep your distance, but the ships still have weapons so you can’t be too defensive, which makes zombie combat much for interesting.

Zombies

All of the SPAZ ships look very cool and differentiated, along with the systems and asteroids, all the art smoothly works together.  Now the backgrounds are…just amazing, easily the best space backgrounds of any game I have played, since they are multilayered and dynamically animated.  The sound is also good and fits in with the game.

So ultimately SPAZ reinvents gameplay you’d expect from more retro games, mixes in some RPG elements along with procedurally generated galaxies;  which all forms together into one hell of a game.  This game honestly has nearly endless gameplay, and while it is challenging, it is balanced, and above all else, fun to play.  It also has good progression as you play through the game.  You can check this game out on steam with their demo, or get the full game for $15.  You owe it to yourself to buy this game, since it isn’t just an Indie Gem, it’s near Indie Perfection, and one of the best Indie Games I have ever played…hell, it’s one of the best 2D games I have ever played. The developers clearly put a lot of hard work into this game, and they are going to continue to do so with additional content in the upcoming months.  The only thing that would’ve made this game better was if there was a mobile version so I could play a mission or two if I’m bored for twenty minutes.

T.E.C. 3001 - Xbox Indie Game Review

PROS

• Games looks great
• Has good sound
• Varying Levels
• Not your average indie game

CONS

• Many, many bugs
• Limited - No replay value
• Main character doesn't fit within the atmosphere
• Collection of batteries hinders game

TEC 3001 is a robot parkour game.  Your goal is to go through all the levels and collect a minimum amount of batteries before being able to advance to the next level.  The fun lies in overcoming all the obstacles in front of you by jumping, charging, and sliding your way past them to each checkpoint.

The game plays from a 3^rd Person perspectiveve as you control a metallic, terminator-esque robot through the 21 game levels.  The controls are pretty simple, A to jump, B to slide, Right Trigger to charge, and the analog stick to move him left and right.  The controls themselves work pretty well and are pretty responsive within game as you overcome the massive amount of obstacles including hurdles, buildings, ramps, and the lot of it.  Though they do mix things up a bit by giving you multiple paths to choose from, as well as adding in a Sky Diving section every so often, which it fun but has a major flaw, which is if you aren’t going a very specific speed, you can’t gather any of the batteries, and sometimes can’t even land without exploding.  Though while surviving is important, your main goal is to collect batteries scattered along the levels, and this is that part of the game I didn’t like. 

To advance to the next level, you need to complete the level, as well as gather a minimum number of batteries, I believe this really hinders the game because it forces you to focus on not just finishing the level, but making sure you gather batteries, if they took the batteries out and made your only focus getting to the end they really could’ve focused on level design more.  The reason games such as Mirror’s Edge work so well, is because they focus on the parkour aspect of the game, which is choosing your path through the environment, which allows for much more interesting level design.  The batteries hinder the game because not only does it simply make it not as fun, it hinders the amount of paths the developers can add because they need to make sure the player can gather enough batteries before reaching the end no matter what path they take.  Having the player focus on simply getting to the end would not only make the experience more fun, it also would allow them to focus on the environments and level design more.

Now the environments are something that really makes this game shine, because they are awesome.  The game has a very Tron like atmosphere, because everything glows, is based on geometry and just plain looks cool.  I found the environments and levels never get too repetitive since through-out the levels you can run through “RGB Gates” which change the whole color-scheme of the level, which adds variety, and looks cool.  Though you also have the option of choosing whatever color you prefer from the options menu.  The actual items that populate the levels range from streams of circuits and binary, to tech looking palm trees, to animated “tubes” to colored lightning.  For an Indie Game, this really sets the bar for graphics, because this Indie Game has the best graphics out of all Xbox Indie Games I have played.

The audio is also great; I’m not sure if there is a track for each level, but if there isn’t they are at least varied enough so that it won’t feel repetitive.  All the tracks have a techno feel to them and one thing I personally like is how they are high quality loops that actually have bass, a lot of Indie Games that I’ve played have next to no bass, which makes my sound system sad, this on the other hand, has bass.  The actual sound effects in the game sound fine but are nothing special.  But even with the good audio, I still played most of the time with my own music; the game goes well with dubstep, FYI.

The games difficulty will remind you of Super Meat Boy but isn’t as painful as an experience due to Check Points, but the later stages will still take you many, many deaths before you complete them.  I think the difficulty would be fine, if, like I said earlier, the gameplay wasn’t cut back by the batteries.  But the difficulty isn’t helped by the third person view, which can really limit your ability to see ahead of you, as well as having some problems telling just how far away an obstacle really is.

Now on to the bugs….there are a lot of them, I’m not gonna lie.  I believe the developers thought “Well, since we have a deadline and need to be out for the Summer Uprising, people will forgive us for having bugs!” which is complete, utter bullshit; I don’t care if you have a deadline, bugs are bugs.  Essentially the game just need 2-3 weeks of extra polish, there are many occasions of me falling through the floor, hitting something I didn’t actually hit, not hitting something I should have, having Check Points which always lead me straight to death, and etc. I’m not going to list them all, but just know that there are a lot of bugs, and you will die from bugs many times as you play through.

So overall the game is a good looking bug nest, littered with bad design choices and problems, the concept is good, and if you can get past all the bugs you will still have a great time in an awesome atmosphere, but the lack of polish stops me from recommending this game to everyone, if you haven’t played Mirror’s Edge yet, just go play that, it’s much better.

Esoterica America - Indie Game Review

PROS 

• Alright Story
• Has Voice Acting
• Fun Mini-Game

CONS 

• Bad Movement
• Repetative Gameplay
• Pointless "Meditation" Game
• No Actual Story
• Short

Esoterica America is…well I’m not exactly sure how to describe it.  I’m going to go with story based puzzle game.  The game starts out alright by simply giving you a gist of the story with voice acting and still pictures, not the best way to introduce the story, though not the worst.  Then it throws you into the game on the characters 21^st birthday.  But from the start I noticed some problems.

First, the movement is very clunky and can be a pain sometimes.  The moving animation looks bad and navigation is a pain and the angled viewpoint doesn’t help.  Now it would be okay if that was the game’s only problem, but it’s not.  The game is very, very linear.  It allows you to examine items in the world, but there are only about 4 items that you can actually examine.  Beyond that the game just plays out in a very linear way of “Talk to this person, go do that puzzle, go somewhere else, repeat”.  Honestly, the whole game plays out like that.

The game tries to mix it up by adding this meditation mini game which is just flying around and hitting the right controller button color to match any flying objects around you, yes, it is as boring as it sounds.  Frankly it is pretty pointless, I’m assuming they either wanted to try and mix things up (if so, they failed) or try to make their very short game seem slightly longer.  Also, did I mention the game is about 30 minutes or less of “Talk to this person, do that puzzle, etc. etc. etc.” and apparently that was just episode 1.  It probably would have worked much more in their favor to take more time to make the whole story one game, and make the game better in aspects of presentation, gameplay, and polish.

As far as “fun” is concerned, you probably won’t have any.  I was so bored I played through the game while surfing the internet, there is pretty much no actual gameplay, and it is a pretty boring game.  I had more fun playing their mini-game in which you are a stoned hippy shooting at planes and helicopters with dual pistols.

Now, I have to give the game credit, it does have voice acting which I wouldn’t say is good, but it’s not bad, which is usually hard to find in Indie Games.  But, only certain parts of the game are voiced, and it seems completely random which conversations are actually voiced, which is an annoyance.  Also, another annoyance I found was that when watching a voiced conversation/cut scene, you can’t skip that line of dialog, if you, say, read the subtitles, you can only skip the whole conversation.  As far as the story goes, it holds up but the game just doesn’t do a good job of explaining it, ultimately, stay away from this game.

Tacticolor - Indie Game Review

PROS

• Stylish graphics
• Fast paced
• Fun gameplay
• Multiplayer

CONS

• Lack of variety
• Controls aren't the smoothest

The easiest way to describe Tacticolor is that it’s a faster paced version of Risk.  Though it isn’t a Risk copy either; the game is played on a white plain with polygons being the territories you try to capture.  Each territory also only holds a limited amount of troops, so holding a lot of small territories isn’t always best.  The game boasts two modes, a landrush where everyone starts with one territory, and filled in which everyone starts with an equal numbers of territories throughout the map.

The main difference between Risk and Tacticolor is that the game isn’t turn based, and in turn is much faster paced and the games don’t take nearly as long.  You simply gain a troop every 5-10 seconds and can place it on whichever territory you wish.  The strategy comes from the 5-10 second spawn time for each troop after you place it, so you can’t actually use it until it spawns.  Couple that with being able to hold a lot of troops at once and you can choose to either go all out, or wait and then deploy all your troops and go on a rampage.

The gameplay itself is solid and most games take between 5-10 minutes.  The AI difficulty is alright, easy is easy, normal is….still pretty easy, and hard is actually a challenge.  The gameplay itself is a simple as moving pieces and placing down new ones, though despite its simplicity, it is still fun.  Strategy comes into play as far as choosing either to build up or charge your enemies, though you don’t need to actually use a lot of strategy to win.  The real fun comes from the multiplayer though; playing this game with 3 of my friends didn’t only work well, but was also fun.  So if you are looking for a good multiplayer game to play with friends for cheap, definitely check this one out.

The game boasts a nice 2 track soundtrack, they are pretty basic techno tracks but it works well.  As far as graphics go, they are stylish, yet simple, as they are mainly just colored squares.  Besides the two modes and multiplayer, the game also boasts an achievement system, but I don’t really care about achievements so it seems pointless in my opinion, besides those that’s all the gameplay the game offers so it can get boring fast depending on your attention spawn.  The only problem I have seen is navigating between territories doesn’t work all that well, mainly because selection is based on up, down, left, and right and the territories are diagonal, and with a fast paced game like this, simple and smooth navigation is necessary.  Besides that small flaw it is a solid indie game which I recommend for people wanting a cheap thrill.

Hack This Game - Indie Game Review

Pros

• Interesting Idea
• 2 Gameplay Modes
• Menu Design

Cons

• When you're stuck, you're stuck
• When you get stuck, you will get frustrated/tired of the game very quickly
• Menus take time to appear

This game is a game which tries to simulate hacking into a simple puzzle game form.  It works, but not nearly quite as well as it could have.  The way the game does this is giving you a progressive set of puzzles which require answers of 5 letters "A, B, X, or Y", so the 4 Xbox controller buttons.  The game presents these puzzle in ways such as telling you which letters are right or wrong, or in a small game of hangman.  

The problem that arises from this, is that if you're stuck on a puzzle....well that's that.  Because the only gameplay is figuring out the puzzle, if you get stuck you can either figure it out....or quit the game.  So if you don't have a large attention span or are bad at puzzles (both of which apply to me) this game probably isn't for you.

The game does have a second mode which is hidden at the bottom of the menu (which I didn't even find until 10 minutes ago) which makes you push a sequence of buttons within the time given, it starts off slow but quickly speeds up until you're overwhelmed, it is a nice addition but doesn't save the game from its faults.  The game is running an...interesting marketing campaign which is whoever completes the game first gets their avatar on the box art.  I honestly do like the idea and think it is a good way to try and get people to complete the game.

The game does have a nice retro computer menu feel, but that's all you see, the same menu with some different text most of the time.  Though for the menu and puzzles the text loads one character at a time so at times it can get very annoying waiting for the whole menu to pop up (specifically in the instructions) and a way to skip it would have been much appreciated.  As far as audio goes, there are a few different clicks and a buzzer and correct sound, they could have atleast added some background music.

Overall it's a not so well executed concept with annoying menus and barely any gameplay, you can easily find some better puzzle games for your money, so I would advise you to skip this one.