Lethal League

Team Reptile - 2014 - PC

Lethal League is what would happen if you crossed baseball and dodgeball and then sprinkled in a little bit of Super Smash Bros. Sound crazy? It is a little bit. Allow me to elaborate: The point of Lethal League is to hit the opposing player(s) with the ball without getting hit yourself. The ball starts off slowly, then gains speed through continuous hits and bouncing off of the walls like in Pong or Arkanoid. You can alter the trajectory of your hits by holding the corresponding direction on the joystick when you hit the ball. You can greatly accelerate the ball's speed by jumping in the air and performing a "slam" which rockets the ball back down to the ground. Each of the 6 playable characters in the game have special traits and abilities that can alter the ball's velocity, timing or trajectory to fake out opposing players. The game can be played 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2 or free for all style, similar to Smash Bros.

This game also reminds me somewhat of Divekick. The game is very accessible, fun and easy to pick up and play, but I'm a little skeptical about it's long term playerbase retention. I confess I haven't played too much of this game, but I'm suspicious that Lethal League may not have the mechanical depth to keep players coming back for more. Even if it may be somewhat lacking in staying power, Lethal League is still a fun and fast-paced game to pick up and compete with friends or strangers online.

Also of note is the game's awesome soundtrack which falls musically somewhere between Hotline Miami and Jet Set Radio. Like Hotline Miami, the soundtrack is a compilation from several artists that still manages to have a unified sound. Of note is "Scream" by Bignic, "Ordinary Days" by Klaus Veen and "Urabon" by Grillo. I know I've said this before, but I love when game soundtracks have a unique sound like this. Not enough games do that.

Lethal League Video Review

Summary
Lethal League is a fun, fast-paced and accessible spin on the fighting game genre. I'm a little skeptical about this game's lasting depth, but you should play it yourself to decide where this falls on the scale between novelty and legitimate deep competition. At least I hope you'll be able to agree it has an awesome soundtrack

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS (Smash 4)

Sora Ltd. (Nintendo) / Bandai Namco Games - 2014 - 3DS

I am huge, huge fan of the Smash Bros. series. I've poured literally thousands of hours into the first three Smash games and love them very dearly. I first played Smash 64 at a friend's house and instantly fell in love with this series' accessibility and wacky party game-like zaniness that all came wrapped in a package of Nintendo characters I already was familiar with. After dozens of hours of play, my friends and I found that we really enjoyed playing with the items off and on the more neutral stages, and we started playing the game from a more competitive angle. When Melee came out, its faster game speed and emphasis on combos and juggling nicely facilitated this playstyle and I fell deeper in love. Brawl didn't have Melee's speed, depth or balance, but Brawl mods like Project M have quenched my thirst for playing Smash competitively and I actually recently competed in a national Project M tournament earlier this year. (Don't bother looking for my name among the finalists, although I did manage to take 3 stocks off of one of the guys who tied for 7th). Anyway, I wanted to preface this review with my history of competitive Smash so you know where I'm coming from here when I talk about Smash 4.

As of this writing, the WiiU version of Smash 4 has yet to be released, so the version of the game I'm reviewing is the 3DS one. This is the first iteration of Smash that has appeared on a handheld platform, and I'm glad to say it's made the transition about as well as it possibly could have. Any complaints I'd have about the mobile version of the game would be more against the 3DS' hardware than Smash 4's software. The circle pad feels a bit flimsy for a quick reflex based fighting game like Smash, but other than that, the game plays fine. I still don't like looking at that tiny screen and my hands do start to hurt after after a few matches of gripping that un-ergonomic surface of the 3DS, but those are more complaints against the 3DS than Smash 4. Speed wise, Smash 4 plays somewhere in between Melee's speed and Brawl's speed, although Smash 4 retains Brawl's "floaty" feel when characters are airborne. I actually think this "game feel" is a good fit for the 3DS version of Smash 4. I don't really want to have to press a million buttons really quickly on the tiny 3DS gamepad. I think the game speed of Smash 4 is appropriate for the mobile hardware and I don't think it would work if Nintendo tried to put a game as fast as Melee or Project M on the 3DS, even if they could.

I know most players treat Smash as a party game, but I'm going quickly discuss how Smash 4 plays as a competitive fighter because I belong to that small subset of hardcore Smash players who are interested in such things. I know some fellow competitive Smashers may disagree with me here, but I don't think Smash 4 really works as a competitive game. At least not in the same way Melee or Project M do. I know Nintendo has made concessions to competitive players like "For Glory" mode and the neutral "Omega" versions of each stage, but I don't think the actual game engine quite facilitates deep competitive play. While the slow speed and floaty feel makes the game feel appropriate for the 3DS, it also de-emphasizes combos and technical skill. In Melee and P:M, once you win the situation that is referred to in fighting games as the "neutral position", you can use combos, prediction and technical play to rack up as much damage as possible while your opponent uses mix-ups and DI (Directional Influence) to attempt to escape your combos and counter your efforts. These deep and complex systems are what I love about Smash. Almost none of these systems are present in Smash 4. In my experience, once a player wins neutral in Smash 4, they can get one or maybe two hits - that's it. Then the situation is reset to neutral again. I recently competed in a local Smash 4 tournament and I found it to be...well... not really that much fun. Games took nearly 8 minutes to finish, even when we played with only 3 stocks (competitive smash is normally played with 4). Systems like "auto-sweet spotting the ledge", "multiple air dodges", and blast zones being too far away all contribute to Smash 4 just not feeling quite right when played competitively.

But alright, enough comparisons to Melee and Project M. As a party game, Smash 4 is just as fun as ever. Once my friend and I stopped trying to play this game competitively, turned the items back on and played on some of the non-omega versions of the stages, the game became very fun for me again and I found myself enjoying Smash's wacky "anything can happen" feel all over again. The roster of selectable fighters has been expanded from Brawl's 39 characters to 49 (50 if you count the Mewtwo DLC) and you can additionally play as any Mii character found on your 3DS. You can also customize your fighter's movesets which is something I admittedly haven't played around with much yet. Old game modes from previous iterations make a return and are joined by new ones like "Smash Run" which is the sort-of successor to Brawl's "Subspace Emissary" which can also be played multiplayer in Smash 4. Speaking of which, the multiplayer on the 3DS works pretty nicely. It's quick and easy to set up and we never had a problem with connectivity, even when there were tons of 3DS's in the room at the local Smash tournament. I've only ever played one Smash 4 game where I experienced any lag as opposed to Brawl's online multiplayer which was a borderline unplayable laggy mess.

Summary:
Smash 4 may not be the competitive successor to Melee like I foolishly hoped it might be, but it's still a really fun party game. I think it's great that tons of people will now be able to play Smash together on-the-go now. It'll also be nice to have something to do now when waiting at Melee/P:M tournaments in between matches. Also if you're interested in learning about competitive Smash, I would highly, highly recommend this documentary on YouTube. It's an 8-part series and is kind of long, but it's really well made and provides a window into why players like me have fallen in love with playing the Smash series competitively. Also if you own Brawl, go download Project M.

Nidhogg

2014 - Messhof - PC

Nidhogg is what would happen if you took a fencing game, a tug-of-war game, and Towerfall and blended them all together. It's got the positioning and strategy of fencing, the back and forth momentum swings of tug-of-war, and the frenzied pace of Towerfall. Just like Ken Griffey Jr., it's a great game to check out if you and a friend want a quick laugh and to yell obscenities at each other while playing a fun game.

The basic goal of Nidhogg is to get from one end of the screen to the other. There are always two players, yellow and orange. The yellow player wants to move to the right, and the orange player wants to move to the left. But in order to progress to the left or right, your player has to have control of the camera. The game will always begin in a neutral position. The camera is initially in a fixed position and camera control is rewarded to the first player who gets a kill. You can kill an opponent by stabbing them with your sword, throwing your sword at them, snapping their neck while they're knocked down, or by pushing your opponent into a stage hazard. As soon as you get control of the camera, you'll want to frantically run to the left or right, depending on which color player you are. But your opponent will be constantly respawning in your path to try and kill you, take control of the camera and push back in the opposite direction. Once you reach the end of the stage, you win, and are rewarded by being eaten by the giant flying worm known as the Nidhogg. Yeah.

The pace of the game is very fast, and matches will usually last under a minute or two. Even though battles with your opponent happen very quickly, there's a little bit of rock-paper-scissors strategy with each encounter. You can approach traditionally with your sword, go in high for a divekick, or go in low and try to sweep the leg and snap the neck. There are also three fencing elevations you can hold your sword: low medium and high. Holding your sword low will protect against leg sweeps, but leave you open to divekicks and sword throws. Holding your sword high will protect against sword throws, but leave you open to leg sweeps. If you get disarmed or throw your sword, you will be able to run faster, but you will have fewer options. You can only attack with divekicks or leg sweeps, so often the best option is to just try to jump over your opponent. You can try to strategically analyze each of these options and try to predict what your opponent will do, but everything happens so quickly that you barely have time to think before one of you is already dead. You never really get a sense of negative punishment though, the quick respawning and fast pace of the game will only allow you to shout one quick profane phrase at your opponent before you're right back in the game to try again.

The art style and music perfectly complement the gameplay of Nidhogg. There are four playable stages and each have frenetic and constantly changing background artwork. The artwork really serves to highlight the frantic and urgent pace of the gameplay. Same with the soundtrack. Most of the songs in the soundtrack have an eerie synthesized sound accompanied by an unpredictable and wild drum track. It really is the gameplay expressed through music. Each time a character dies, they explode into puddle of orange or yellow paint which flies all over the level at the point at which a character was killed. If you really get a deadlock where each player keeps pushing back and forth at the same position, you get a crazy looking orange and yellow bloodbath. It's pretty cool looking. The pixelated animations of the character models are great too. Some of the death animations are especially funny and they're accompanied by great over-exaggerated death screams. Great example of simple but awesome design in the audio/visuals

Nidhogg is an excellent example of a great game that will probably only ever get made in the indie space. The elevator pitch for this game is way too insane to be taken seriously by an executive and the scope of the game is too small for a large company to bother spending resources developing it. I'm really happy that there's a huge boom of really interesting and creative ideas coming from all of these amazing indie games like Nidhogg right now.

Summary:
Nidhogg is a weird, fast and crazy good time if you and a friend are looking for a game to play. There's even a bunch of crazy bonus setting like low gravity mode or hyper-speed mode you can toggle in the settings if you get tired of the basic game. The scope of Nidhogg is small, but the gameplay is good and the replay value is high. I'd recommend checking it out.

Super Smash Bros: Project M

PMDT - 2013 - Wii

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

(Author's note: I originally reviewed this game at the end of 2013 when Project M 3.0 first launched. The review contained some outdated information and I wasn't too happy with what I wrote begin with, so I rewrote it as of 9/21/2015. You can read the original review as a comment below)

What is Super Smash Bros: Project M? No, Nintendo didn't sneak in a fifth Smash title without you noticing, Project M is a fan-made mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii to make it play more like Super Smash bros. Melee for the Gamecube, hence the M in Project M. But this isn't to be confused with Nintendo's most recent Smash title, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U which fans have just taken to calling Smash 4 because the former is a mouthful. Confused yet? Let me start over from the beginning. In 1999, developer HAL labratory and Nintendo launched Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. It featured all of the most well known Nintendo mascots in a fighting party game where emphasis was on knocking the opponent off of the stage. There were no health bars in the game; there was only a damage counter. The more damage you dealt, the farther your target will fly the next time they're hit. Super Smash Bros, henceforth referred to by fans as Smash 64 to avoid obvious confusion with other Smash titles, was a critical and commercial success. It was intended to be a fun party game, but some people (myself included) enjoyed playing it with friends competitively with its wacky items turned off.

Then in 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube was released. It was amazing. It was more full featured, faster and had more depth than Smash 64. But more importantly, its game engine better facilitated the competitive playstyle that I enjoyed from the previous game. 15 years later, Melee still retains a large competitive audience and the Melee tournament scene is still active and growing. There's an excellent documentary on YouTube if you'd like to learn more about Melee and its top players, but we're here to talk about Project M - and I'm almost there. In 2008, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released for the Nintendo Wii. It featured, by far, the largest playable roster of fighters, more stages and more items and a more fleshed out single player mode. It was a fine party game, but most fans of competitive melee didn't care for Brawl. The Brawl physics engine didn't allow for the fast-paced, combo heavy gameplay of Melee. Furthermore the perceived balance of Brawl's roster was so lopsided that one character, Meta Knight, started to be banned from use in some tournaments.

So now enter Project M. It was designed by a collective of Brawl modders now known as the Project M Development Team (PMDT) to be a complete overhaul of Brawl to make it play more like Melee, changing everything from the physics engine to character balance and movesets. Fighters from Melee were mostly reverted or approximated to their Melee counterparts while Brawl newcomers were reimagined in the Melee engine and in most cases given new animations, movesets and playstyles. New gameplay modes and features, new characters, and new stages were added as well. I think there's more that sets Project M apart from Brawl and the PMDT have made so many changes that in my eyes, Project M really is its own game and not just a mod of Brawl. It's relative ease of installation is also a huge plus, only requiring its users to have a copy of Brawl and an SD card with custom files (which you can find here for free) loaded onto the Wii. No other permanent modifications need to be made to the system or the game.

In addition to approximating the physics engine of Melee, Project M has several other features that benefit competitive play like built-in stage striking and debug mode with hitbox displays and a frame advance feature. So now some of you may be thinking "That's cool and all, but I have no interest in competitive play. Should I still check out Project M?" Yes. There's lots of really cool and unique new features in Project M that make it worth checking out on its own. Ever want to play a different character on every single stock? Project M's all-star vs. mode has you covered. Ever wanted to play Smash like a traditional fighting game with hit points and death boundaries turned off? You can do that too. If you really want to get ridiculous, check out Project M's turbo mode which allows any move you do to be on hit canceled into any other move.

The attention to detail is another thing that's really nice about this game. When character's movesets were being reimagined and tweaked to fit competitive gameplay, homages to the various series each fighter is from were worked in. For instance, Snake can now use his tranquilizer gun and survival knife from Metal Gear Solid, Lucas can use "Offense Up" from Mother 3, and Samus can switch between ice beam and fire beam, like in Metroid Prime. Brand new stages have also been created with a high level of fidelity and detail. Some even include cool easter eggs and other visual secrets. A brand new announcer was added to the game along with new music tracks and imported sound effects from Melee. Actually, if you're a little more technically inclined, it's not too hard to figure out how to replace the music files for the game yourself and create your own tracklist for this game.

Super Smash Bros. Project M Video Review

Summary
I really enjoy Project M. It's my personal favorite Smash game to play due to all of its competitive-friendly features and roster balance which the PMDT maintains through semi-frequent patches. I know Project M has been struggling to stay in the spotlight recently, due to the release and popularity of Smash 4 in conjunction with Nintendo sponsoring Twitch streams of Smash tournaments and obviously not having an interest in promoting a game that's not their own. But I hope the audience for this game will continue to grow cause I really enjoy playing it with other people. I'd say it's worth finding a copy of Brawl and dusting off your Wii if this looks interesting to you. It's a blast to play whether you're a competitive or casual player, newcomer or Smash veteran.

Divekick

One True Game Studios/Iron Galaxy Studios - 2013 - PS3/Vita/PC

Divekick is a two button fighting game. Just two buttons. No joystick, no d-pad, no other buttons, just two. One for jump and one for kick. Each hit in Divekick is a one-hit-Knockout, so games go pretty quick. The game has a roster of 13 characters which all play surprisingly differently. At least I was surprised how much character variety can be had with a two button game.

Because there’s only two buttons, Divekick is also very accessible; there’s no memorizing combos or movesets, so anyone can jump right in and start playing. The game also has a very ridiculous sense of humor. There’s lots of poking fun at other fighting games, pop-culture references and internet humor references. There’s a character in the game who just quotes Will Smith lines from all of his movies. It’s quite silly.

Summary:
Overall though, I’d say there’s probably not a whole lot of depth or replayability with Divekick. It’s a fun novelty to have in your game collection, but it’s probably not going to hold anyone’s attention for very long.