Towerfall: Ascension

Matt Thorson - 2013 - Ouya/PC/PS4

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

I can't remember the last game I played that was this much pure fun. And I don't think I've laughed and screamed at the TV with any game this much outside of Smash. Towerfall is a fast paced brawler/platformer/shooter game. It guess it kind of defies genre classification. I suppose you could file it under party game? It plays best multiplayer, that's for sure.

Towerfall is kind of like Smash, except every hit is a one hit kill. And the levels wrap around Pac-Man style. And every player has projectiles. So I guess not really like Smash then, but it's similarly as fun. It's easy to pick up and play, the only buttons are jump, shoot and dodge. Moving your character around and learning the game is quick and easy, but like any good game, there's a deceptive amount of depth. You don't always want to shoot when your opponent is expecting you to because then he will dodge and catch your arrow. You also don't want to mindlessly fire away arrows at your opponent because ammo is limited and your opponent can pick up any stray arrows that miss and fall on the ground. You also have to be mindful of opponents that get up close to you as jumping on an enemy's head is also a one hit kill.  You also have to be aware of the edges of the screen and remember that the level wraps around. It's possible to get easy kills on unaware opponents by shooting back across the screen at an enemy on the other half of the level or jump down the bottom of the stage to head stomp somebody on top

There are also powerups that appear throughout the match that can give you arrows that explode on impact, bounce off walls or cut through the stage. Matches are quick, usually averaging about 30 seconds per round, so you'll want to race to pick up powerups as you see them. There are also powerups that can grant you invisibility, flight or trigger arena traps to try to kill your opponents. There's usually a lot happening on screen all at once and matches can get a little hectic, but I mean that in the best way possible. At the end of each round, there's an instant replay system that shows the final kill of the game. This is actually a pretty cool feature because things often happen so quickly that you'll miss how someone died. There's also a good variety of levels that have different powerups, different layouts and different terrain. You can also randomize the rules of Towerfall each round for maximum ridiculousness. One of my favorites was playing under a rule that doesn't show you how many arrows you have left combined with another rule that instantly kills you if you try to fire an arrow when you have no ammo left. The amount of customization and variety in Towerfall is a huge plus

As stated before, Towerfall definitely plays best with friends. The single player is alright for what it is I suppose, but if you're buying Towerfall, you're getting it to play with other people. Towerfall supports up to 4 simultaneous players and I found that 4 seemed to maximize the fun, hilarity and craziness of the games. Towerfall doesn't support online play of any kind which is really unfortunate because I think a game like this could really be fun online. At the same time though, this game is really fun to share with other people in the same room, yelling, laughing and screaming at the TV and at each other. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this game eventually gets some sort of online support though, I would imagine that's going to be an often-requested feature. The only other thing that might be limiting this game is the hardware. This game plays best with 4 people. I happen to have 4 USB controllers for my PC, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority. And I don't think a whole lot of other people have 4 Ouya controllers or 4 PS4 controllers lying around either.

Towerfall: Ascension Video Review

Summary:
If you've heard the positive buzz about this game, it's true. Believe the hype. This game is well designed, fun and fast paced. It's the early leading candidate for my 2014 game of the year. Yes, I know this technically came out last year on the Ouya. But now it's out on platforms that people actually widely own and use, so I hope this game gets lots of exposure in the near future. Check it out if you want a good, fun party game to share with friends

Risk of Rain

Hopoo Games - 2013 - PC

Risk of Rain is a 2D side scrolling roguelike shooter. Imagine if Spelunky had a bigger emphasis on combat. The object of Risk of Rain is to complete all six of its levels without dying. All of the levels in Risk or Rain are pseudo randomly generated and the monsters and powerups in the level are also randomly generated. In order to advance to the next level, you must find and activate the teleporter hidden in each level. Activating the teleporter summons the level's boss monster, which is also random, and many hordes of enemies. You'll want to be sure you've found enough powerups in the level so you're adequately prepared to fight the boss when you activate the teleporter. But don't spend too much time wandering around looking for powerups because every five minutes or so, the game's difficulty level automatically increases, spawning more tougher and stronger monsters. It creates a nice little time management risk/reward metagame similar to the one that's present in Spelunky. There's also light RPG elements in the game where killing monsters gives you EXP and money. EXP is used to level up your character and get stronger while money can be used to unlock containers scattered around the level to obtain new powerups and items.

Risk of rain can be tackled solo or cooperatively and co-op mode can be played over the internet or couch co-op style. I played the game all three ways, and I must say I enjoyed playing the game co-op more than single player, but the co-op exposes some of the game's flaws. First off, the game doesn't seem to adequately balance the difficulty to account for the extra player(s). It seemed noticeably easier to me co-op as opposed to single player. The other problem is that when one player dies, the other player is left to fend for themselves which isn't really that fun for either player. When one of us died, we usually just restarted the game.

I usually prefer playing games like this couch co-op style, because it's easier to share the experience with another person when they're actually physically present in the room. But the couch co-op mode here has a few problems. The game in general can become a bit hectic with bullets and powerups and enemies flying all over the screen. But when 2 or 3 players all share the same screen, it can become a bit hard to follow and tell what's going on. Also because there's only one camera in the couch co-op mode, all the players have to make an effort to stick together which can be hard to coordinate. The preferable way to play this game seems to be the over the internet multiplayer so that each player has their own camera and is free to explore as they please. Although even the internet multiplayer was a bit tricky to set up initially. You have to figure out your IP and share it with your friends and all that. I had to change some firewall settings and forward some ports as well. The actual implementation of the internet multiplayer here seems a little bare and clunky. It kind of reminded me of how internet gaming was in the late 90s. Maybe I've become spoiled by all these games that handle internet matchmaking with friends very gracefully and smoothly

The controls for Risk of Rain are pretty simple. The default character can jump, shoot, dodge and has two special shooting abilities which are on a cooldown. There are other characters in the game that are unlockable and a slightly different moveset, abilities and statistics.

Summary:
Boiled down to its simplest mechanics, the game is just shooting enemies, looking for powerups and waiting for your cooldowns to recharge. But Risk of Rain is a game that really does feel like it's greater than the sum of its parts. Always competing against the clock gives a constant sense of urgency. Leveling up and unlocking new powerups and items lends a real sense of power and progression throughout the game. Somehow surviving against an impossible number of enemies on screen gives a great sense of accomplishment. Risk of Rain is a mechanically and graphically simple game, but you may end up spending more time than you would think playing it once it gets its hooks into you. Check it out

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Chunsoft - 2012 - Vita/3DS

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is the sequel to 999, which I played for the first time last year. If you're not familiar with these games, just imagine the Japanese anime interpretation of the movie Saw made into a graphic novel/videogame. And then sprinkle some puzzles on top. Basically 9 people wake up together locked in a room with no memory of how they got there and are forced to play a game riddled with deathtraps in order to find a way out.

Despite my grievances with 999's game design, the quality of the writing enticed me enough to play its sequel. Thankfully, VLR corrects most of the frustrating game design from predecessor. Like 999, VLR has a non-linear story with branching decision points and multiple different endings are required in order to get the "true" ending. VLR implements a much needed "time travel flowchart" where you can skip to any decision point or puzzle you've already encountered in the game, so you don't have to completely restart the game every time you get an ending. Honestly, if 999 had this feature, I could and would have forgiven a lot of that game's faults.

There are numerous UI enhancements to VLR as well. In 999, if you needed to consult your notes when solving a puzzle, you had to flip back and forth between menu screens. I can remember sarcastically thinking "If only the DS had two screens and I could look at both of these things at the same time...". Thankfully, the developers have now taken advantage of the DS' hardware and corrected this annoyance.  There's also now a built in note taking feature which allows you to doodle or jot down quick things that you think may be important later in the game. All puzzle solving sections are now fully three dimensional rooms with a rotating camera rather than a 2D screen, which allowed me to get a better sense of the rooms I was in. Nearly all of the text in the story sections has been supplemented with voice acting. When I first heard this, I was kind of nervous because I've found that bad voice acting can take me out of a game really easily. But I found that the voicework in VLR to be pretty good quality. It really enhanced the game and added more flavor to the characters. I kind of wish 999 was voice acted after playing this.

Where this game stumbles a bit is with the puzzles. They're not really bad puzzles, but they don't give the profound "Ah Ha!" moments like puzzles in games like Portal or Braid. Some of the logic behind the puzzles isn't communicated that well and you kind of have to trial and error your way into what the game wants you to do. Solutions to some other puzzles seem random or ambiguous or arbitrary. It almost reminded me a bit of To The Moon. I loved the writing in that game, but the puzzles didn't mesh with the narrative. They feel like an afterthought, as though some video game police would come by and arrest this game for not being "gamey" enough. The puzzles' only purpose seem to be to ruin the excellent pace set by the narrative. The game seems to grind to a halt at each puzzle section, and I felt like I couldn't get past the poorly integrated puzzles fast enough and get back to the story.

Where 999 made the terrible mistake of forcing the player to repeat puzzle sections, VLR makes the mistake of blasting the user with the same dialogue they've already heard a bunch of times before. If you're going to make a game with 24 endings or whatever it is, at least make each of them different from another. So many of the "false" endings feel like copies of the same thing and a lot of them repeat dialogue verbatim. I think I may have the dialogue telling how the main character initially gets captured committed to my memory for the rest of my life. It's told to you exactly the same way 8 or 9 times verbatim. Whyyyy??? Would it be that hard to write it slightly differently each time in order to keep the player engaged? Or drop slight little tidbits of knowledge or tell the player interesting details or facts not found in the other sections where the same story is told?

If I were to be able to give the director of this game some feedback/advice, it would be to redesign or eliminate the puzzles, don't repeat dialogue and cut back on some of the false endings. There's just too many. More is not always better. This game is really too long, it's significantly longer than 999 and I was ready for this game to be over long before it actually was. But man, the director, Kotaro Uchikoshi, really has a talent for writing compelling sci-fi murder mysteries. The ending to VLR is even more mind blowing and well executed than 999's ending. It's really top notch suspenseful writing. My only criticism is that the game's attempts at humor often miss the mark. But maybe that's a Japanese to English translation thing. Also why must all of the female characters in this game be hyper-sexualized? It's out of place in a murder mystery and doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the writing. It's just seems juvenile and sophomoric. It's a bit hard to buy that the main character would really be thinking about undressing one of the other girls moments after witnessing someone else die, which happens frequently throughout the game.

Summary:
Despite this game's flaws, I still enjoyed it a lot. I think even more than 999. But if this series or this type of game interests you, I would start with 999 first. It's a bit shorter and there's several very important references to 999 in VLR that you won't get if you don't play it first. I recently read that Uchikoshi said he's having trouble securing funding to make a third game in the series due to poor sales of the first two. I hope somehow, someway another game like these gets made. Uchikoshi is an excellent writer and if the kinks in his game design get worked out, Zero Escape 3 would be an instant buy for me

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

Rare - 1995 - SNES

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

This game is my childhood. Which is ironic because I never actually owned this game. I can remember riding my bike down to Blockbuster video on the weekend and spending my allowance on renting this game again and again. I'm sure I probably spent enough money renting this game that I could have just bought it. I was a huge fan of the original Donkey Kong Country and this game was an excellent sequel. I remember how mind blowing it was when I found out there was a secret bonus world as a kid.

As an adult, I still love this game and I may have replayed it more now than I ever did as a kid. The platforming is excellently done. It requires a mix of skill, timing and precision and is very satisfying when pulled off correctly. In DKC2, Donkey Kong has been kidnapped by the vile Kaptain K. Rool and it's up to Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie to rescue him. Dixie can float and hover after her jumps while Diddy has a longer cartwheel attack and is a bit faster than Dixie. I remember as a kid loving the safety of Dixie's slow floaty jumps. Now I much prefer blasting through the levels as fast as possible with Diddy's speed.

Of course you can always play the levels more slowly, finding all of the bonus rooms, hidden DK coins and Kong letters. But to me, the satisfaction of perfectly speed running a DKC2 level is unmatched in any other platformer, even a Mario or a Sonic game. The level design in most levels is really excellent and lends itself to be a good challenge for speed running.

DKC2 was the first video game soundtrack I really fell in love with as a kid. I can remember putting a tape recorder up to the TV's speakers and recording the soundtrack on cassette tape so I could listen to it later. Even as an adult I love listening to it at work and David Wise is one of my favorite video game composers next to Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy) and Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger). Stickerbrush Symphony, Hot Head Hop, and Disco Train are some highlights, but the whole soundtrack is really solid from top to bottom.

One interesting mechanic in the game that I don't think I've seen in any other platformers is that DKC2 actually kind of discourages you from saving too much. Each time you find a save point in a world, the first save is free. But each time you save the game after that, it costs 2 coins. If you're not playing the game on an emulator, it sort of makes you think twice before mindlessly and habitually saving after every single level. Kind of an interesting risk/reward mechanic, I think it like to see that implemented in modern games. I mean I've played this game enough times that actually beating the levels has become trivial and I rack up quite an abundance of extra coins, but a beginner to this game will likely find it quite challenging.

There's a really good difficulty curve in this game that teaches you the mechanics in the easier early levels, but then nicely matches your skill progression with more difficult levels as you advance through the game, which I feel is difficult to do in game design. Then the final levels and the secret world are a great and challenging test of you platforming skill and reflexes. There's also great variety in the level design between horizontal/vertical levels, climbing levels, underwater levels, barrel levels, minecart levels, animal levels and so on. The game can be played solo or tackled cooperatively although both players can't play simultaneously unfortunately.

Summary:
Check it out if you enjoy platformers, difficult games, or excellent soundtracks. To me, DKC2 stands shoulder to shoulder with Mario 3 and Sonic 2 as one of the best all-time platformers.