Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Ateroid Base - 2015 - XboxOne/PC

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is the mouthful of a title given to developer Asteroid Base's inaugural game. I actually got to preview this at PAX Prime earlier this year and it was one of the most popular titles in the indie area and with good reason. Lovers is a cooperative space exploration game where two players must cooperate to man various stations on a spaceship to navigate through space and rescue little space critters. In order to complete a level, a certain number of little space critters has to be rescued for the exit to be unlocked but if you and your partner are feeling like completionists, you can collect all of the critters in each stage to get access to different model ships and unlock other powerups faster. The locations of the critters and the entire world as a whole are totally differently systematically generated on each run, giving every playthrough a fresh feel. Once you find a critter, usually some small challenge has to be completed before you can rescue them. For example, you may have to fight several waves of enemies, escape an explosion or fight a mini boss. 

There are various stations to man on each ship including weapons, shields, engines and a powerful yamato cannon weapon. There are several campaigns that are made up of 4 levels and a final boss fight. Each level offers upgrade crystals that you can install in your systems that will persist throughout the campaign. Deciding which crystals to place in which systems is initially a fun experimental learning process, but I've found once you know what the crystal combinations do, you usually fall into a pattern of upgrading that results in a familiar ship layout each time. But there are also several ship layouts to unlock in the game, each with their own stats and quirky gameplay rules. For instance, there's one unlockable ship that constantly rotates around while you play, making locating and controlling your character within the ship quite a challenge, but as a tradeoff, the ship is also immune to terrain damage. I'm a sucker for these kinds of unlockable gameplay variations and this game reminded me a bit of my favorite FTL from the space exploration and battles right down to the unlockable ships. Obviously the gameplay is nowhere close to the same, but there are similarities to be drawn between the two roguelike space exploration games

There are only two crew members, making coordination and teamwork a key to success in this game. Communication with your partner is necessary and coming up with a good strategy is vital so that you and your teammate aren't running to the same stations to man the same systems. Once you get that strategy established and you and your partner know how to run the ship like seasoned space travelers, it's a really neat feeling. But it's also just as fun to yell and scream at your partner when things are going horribly wrong and your ship is about to explode

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime Video Review

Summary
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime offers the best experiences for couch co-op play. It's conceptually simple to learn and easy to pick up and play. But there's still a decent amount of strategy, skill and depth to be found here as well, and applying these strategies skill and depth of understanding of the game is especially necessary in the later levels where the difficulty gets ratcheted up quite a bit. I really enjoyed this game; it's one of the best couch cooperative experiences I've had. If you and a friend are looking for something to play, you can't go wrong with Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

BattleBlock Theater

The Behemoth - 2013 - X360/PC

BattleBlock Theater is the third game from developer The Behemoth whose previous games are Alien Homnid and Castle Crashers. It was designed by Dan Paladin (aka Synj) and Tom Fulp, both of Newgrounds.com fame and features the same art style and sense of humor you'd expect if you've played The Behemoth's previous games or are aware of their Newgrounds submissions. BattleBlock Theater is a cooperative 2D platformer that requires two players, connected either online or played locally to navigate through a series of levels that require players to be good platformers, puzzle solvers, and beat-em-up-ers. 

The core gameplay in BattleBlock is mostly good, but what makes this game stand out is the humor. In a bizarre but funny opening cutscene, a narrator (voiced by Will Stamper who is also an active Newgrounds contributor) explains that several friends have been shipwrecked on an island full of cats, because this game's roots are in internet culture. The cats have captured the surviving members of the shipwreck, including Hatty Hattington, the former captain of the ship. The cats, now lead by Hatty Hattington who appears to be the victim of mind control, are forcing the survivors to participate in gladiatorial like challenges in a theater for the cats amusement, which is the very ridiculous context to the actions you're performing throughout the game. The narrator is the real star of BattleBlock Theater and will chime in frequently to comment on the actions you're performing during each stage. When an entire level is complete, you'll be treated to another cutscene featuring the narrator sometimes explaining what's happening in the plot, but mostly just being funny with this game's uniquely weird sense of humor.

Each stage requires both players to cooperate to navigate through a series of traps and enemies, all the while collecting green gems. When enough gems are collected, the stage exit is unlocked, allowing you to advance to the next one. But if you really want to be a completionist, you can try to search for all of the gems in each level. There are two difficulty settings on BattleBlock theater, "Normal" and "Insane", both of which I think are very flawed. On normal when a player dies, they instantly respawn next to their partner. There's pretty much no challenge with this difficulty and because there's practically no punishment or consequence for dying, players are free to be as careless as they want while progressing through each level. This may be fine for some, but I personally need a little more tension and challenge while playing, so I opted for "Insane" mode. In insane mode, when either player dies, both players are forced to restart the entire level. From the beginning. Now this is fine for the first few handfuls of levels, but when the number of enemies and difficulty of platforming starts to rise near the middle of the game, this mode starts to get really frustrating, especially when you pull off a difficult section perfectly, but your partner dies and both players are forced to start the entire level over. I think BattleBlock could have really benefited from some different difficulty settings here. Either a checkpoint system or a number of lives other than just one would have been very, very welcome. This is a relatively simple thing that I think unfortunately really hamstrings BattleBlock Theater

BattleBlock Theater Video Review

Summary 

Overall though, this is still a pretty solid game. It's another good couch co-op game, a type of game which I personally love and have been enjoying its recent resurgence. There are also several competitive mini games included here, most of which I actually didn't mess around with much, but they look like they could be fun if you're into competing rather than cooperating. There's also a built in level editor if you want to make your own sinister stages for your friends to navigate through. All in all BattleBlock Theater is a good game to share with friends, and features the most absurdly weird, yet still funny sense of humor you'll find in a video game

Super Mario Maker

Nintendo - 2015 - WiiU

I think this game along with Minecraft would have been the two most amazing games for me to have as a kid. These are the kinds of creative games that would have captivated me for days and weeks. As it stands they're still quite captivating to me, but I simply don't have the free time to pour days and days into these games. For the uninitiated, Super Mario Maker isn't really a Mario game as much as it is an official Mario level editor. You can post your levels online to share and also play levels others have created. So it's either not a Mario game at all, or it's an infinite amount of Mario games, depending on how you look at it

The editor is functionally easy to use and create levels. You simply drag items from the toolbar and place them on the stage. It's a nice use of the WiiU tablet and is finally something first party from Nintendo that makes the WiiU tablet feel justified. Although the editor is functionally easy to use, figuring out its strange hidden quirks and odd UI design can be baffling at times. In what I can only imagine was a need to conserve UI space, certain items are hidden under other items, requiring you to shake item A to reveal item B. But not all items are shakable, and there's no way to tell whether or not they are other than trial and error. Furthermore, menu options and menu navigation are obfuscated in the UI by labeling them under random animals. How do I save my level? Do I click the dog? The robot? The frog? I know Super Mario Maker is somewhat of a spiritual successor to Mario Paint and Mario Paint used some of these UI oddities, but that doesn't make it any easier for people like myself who didn't play a ton of Mario Paint and/or don't remember what the various animals mean in relation to the UI. It may sound like I'm nitpicking, but I really did find this UI totally unintuitive.

When designing levels, you can do so under the original Mario template, the Mario 3 template, the Super Mario World template or the New Super Mario Bros. template. Choosing which template you want also dictates what abilities Mario will have when playing the level. For instance, Super Mario World Mario can spin jump and use Yoshi and the cape powerup. New Super Mario Bros. Mario can do all of these things as well as wall jump.

Once you dig in and start messing around with building levels, it really starts to bring to life how awesome the level designers at Nintendo are. Once you build a few things yourself and realize how hard it actually is to make a good level, it gives you an appreciation for how good the Nintendo level designers are at what they do. This is further exemplified when playing other creator's courses online. Unfortunately, I'd have to say the majority of the levels I've played online aren't that good and some are just downright garbage. There are some levels that are quite good, but finding them is a difficult task. The level filtering, searching and discovery options that exist in the game right now leave a lot to be desired. Nintendo has said they're working on a web portal that would partially solve that problem, but at the time of writing this review, that solution doesn't exist. Another thing I'd really like to see added is the ability to upload multiple levels together to make a "world" or a series of levels as opposed to uploading single standalone levels. Hopefully this is something they're working on as Nintendo has seemed willing to patch in additional content for this game already with the addition of checkpoints and conditional powerup items being added after launch

Super Mario Maker Video Review

Summary
Although the UI is confusing and there are a few features missing that I'd like to see added, Nintendo has otherwise succeeded in creating a tool that lets anyone with an imagination create a Mario level, bring it to life and share it with others. The drawback to this is that anyone with an imagination can create a Mario level, bring it to life and share it with others so there's a lot of, shall we say, not so great levels to sift through when looking at random stages online. Still, I've already spent many hours playing others' stages and have enjoyed making a few of my own and I look forward to spending more time in the future doing both in Super Mario Maker.

P.S. Here's a few of the stages I've made if you have the game and want to give these a shot:

James' evil castle: E1F2-0000-0034-E50A
The first level I ever made in Mario Maker. It's in the style of Mario 3. Not by best level; it was mostly me experimenting with the editor

P Switch Shenanigans: 6446-0000-003F-A95E
A difficult level in the style of Super Mario World designed for expert Mario players

Look Closely: 9244-0000-008C-61AD
I made a puzzle game in the style of Mario 3. See if you can figure out how to get through it