Monst is a point and click adventure game by BeGamer.com.The player's objective is to bring the people out into the open somehow and then scare them.
Summary of analysis
Two-words define the tutorial element: use mouse, simple and disappointing gameplay, mouse controls external links interface, graphics that seem to indicate the game's target audience, decent background music and sound effects.
Tutorial/New player experience
There's very little to learning how to play the game. Click on objects in the game's environment, every level's going to have its own mini-objectives and likely a few decoy objects that do nothing to aid progression.
Gameplay experience
There's very little challenge to this game, just clicking randomly a player is likely to eventually figure out how to accomplish every level's objectives. Personally, I felt it was lacking in entertainment value, but perhaps there is an audience more receptive to the game's themes and gameplay difficulty.
Interface & Controls
Completely mouse-driven control scheme, almost non-existent user-interface.
Graphics
Judging from the game's graphics, I'd say the game is most likely meant for a much younger audience. The characters are virtually caricatures and there is an overarching cartoon-style theme.
Music & Sound
The background music is okay and there are plenty of entertaining sound effects.
Commentary
It's always a little difficult to go about reviewing games which seem to be designed for a very different target audience than oneself. Possibly the best way to go about such a thing is to have access to someone that fits the game's demographic, watch them play it and ask them a few simple questions about their gameplay experience later. Trying to get into an alternate mind-set is another way to attempt to give an audience-fair review, but it is still likely to be merely an interpretation from one's point of view.
Had I to guess, I'd estimate the game's appeal would be best with an audience pre-grade school based on the complexity of the games that my nephews and nieces are playing at slightly older ages than my guess. But then again, perhaps there's also an appeal with a much different mindset than my own and one should never underestimate the value of a low difficulty game after stressful days.
Showing posts with label Adventure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adventure. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Game review: Kit and the Octopod
Kit and the Octopod is an action-adventure flash game by Jay Armstrong Games. The game's premise is that the "Bad Mood Bear" has kidnapped the beau of the octopod and the player takes on the role of Kit, a helpful, random individual who decided to befriend the octopod.
Summary of analysis
Simple new player experience, amusing though occasionally jarring gameplay experience, simple control scheme and virtually ignorable interface, glaring contrast of graphical elements, decent music and sound.
Tutorial/New player experience
The game's new player experience is easily accomplished through pop-up background elements which are placed at contextual points in the first few levels and indicate which controls to use to progress. The wall jump mechanic seems to have either been redesigned or an overcomplicated variation as a bit of experimentation revealed an easier method of accomplishing the same goal.
Gameplay experience
Judging from the game's graphics and introductory cut scenes, one of which featured a cephalopod participating in the bro-fist of friendship, I had come to expect a light-hearted romp through a countryside... but it was veiling some dark humor and grit. Upon encountering the first enemy opposition, I wound up knocking out a soldier by tossing a barrel at them, the second, however, I fought using Kit's wrench and was shocked to see blood spurting off of them and taken aback when they exploded into gore. I soon gained a preference for eliminating opposition by means other than the wrench to try and avoid further jarring moments.
Aside from the elements of gore and some occasional reminders of how a level can be designed to entrap a player with optional objectives, the game was largely fun and amusing. There's even a mild degree of replay value by getting to play as a pirate after the first time beating the game, but the parrot trades off offensive utility completely for free-range exploration (pretty much only good for getting coins that would result in suicide normally).
Interface & Controls
Minimal interface elements which can almost all be ignored in the course of play and a similar control scheme. If the game had the ability to customize the control scheme , I'd think it would do a lot better as many players are accustomed to a significantly differing layout from other games (wasd movement) and may occasionally wind up paying for it when trying to adjust to this game's control scheme.
Graphics
The game's graphics is where the jarring element of gameplay comes in. The player character is a very happy and friendly individual and the whole game is rendered in a cartoon style graphical theme, yet the blood and gore elements contrast heavily with what the player is likely to come to expect in the first minutes of gameplay. Falling down a bottomless pit or knocking an opponent out follow the lines of slapstick well-enough, but the sharp death traps and exploding character gore put dampen what could have easily been a fully humorous game. To put it another way, there are more ways to accomplish an active opposition element than to incorporate character to character violence and when a game sets a player's expectations up for betrayal, it's going to have a negative affect on how fun it is.
Music & Sound
For the standard duration of gameplay, the background music keeps the mood of the action-style pacing and the sound effects go along to the game's events proficiently.
Commentary
I can imagine that there is a certain sort of personality that would appreciate this game's dark humor far better than I. Along the lines of one lesson during my college education was to limit the attempted scope of player appeal and this game does just that. The lacking replay value was a disappointing feature to see, but there is a certain fan appeal to following a meme and under the right circumstances is a reward unto itself.
Summary of analysis
Simple new player experience, amusing though occasionally jarring gameplay experience, simple control scheme and virtually ignorable interface, glaring contrast of graphical elements, decent music and sound.
Tutorial/New player experience
The game's new player experience is easily accomplished through pop-up background elements which are placed at contextual points in the first few levels and indicate which controls to use to progress. The wall jump mechanic seems to have either been redesigned or an overcomplicated variation as a bit of experimentation revealed an easier method of accomplishing the same goal.
Gameplay experience
Judging from the game's graphics and introductory cut scenes, one of which featured a cephalopod participating in the bro-fist of friendship, I had come to expect a light-hearted romp through a countryside... but it was veiling some dark humor and grit. Upon encountering the first enemy opposition, I wound up knocking out a soldier by tossing a barrel at them, the second, however, I fought using Kit's wrench and was shocked to see blood spurting off of them and taken aback when they exploded into gore. I soon gained a preference for eliminating opposition by means other than the wrench to try and avoid further jarring moments.
Aside from the elements of gore and some occasional reminders of how a level can be designed to entrap a player with optional objectives, the game was largely fun and amusing. There's even a mild degree of replay value by getting to play as a pirate after the first time beating the game, but the parrot trades off offensive utility completely for free-range exploration (pretty much only good for getting coins that would result in suicide normally).
Interface & Controls
Minimal interface elements which can almost all be ignored in the course of play and a similar control scheme. If the game had the ability to customize the control scheme , I'd think it would do a lot better as many players are accustomed to a significantly differing layout from other games (wasd movement) and may occasionally wind up paying for it when trying to adjust to this game's control scheme.
Graphics
The game's graphics is where the jarring element of gameplay comes in. The player character is a very happy and friendly individual and the whole game is rendered in a cartoon style graphical theme, yet the blood and gore elements contrast heavily with what the player is likely to come to expect in the first minutes of gameplay. Falling down a bottomless pit or knocking an opponent out follow the lines of slapstick well-enough, but the sharp death traps and exploding character gore put dampen what could have easily been a fully humorous game. To put it another way, there are more ways to accomplish an active opposition element than to incorporate character to character violence and when a game sets a player's expectations up for betrayal, it's going to have a negative affect on how fun it is.
Music & Sound
For the standard duration of gameplay, the background music keeps the mood of the action-style pacing and the sound effects go along to the game's events proficiently.
Commentary
I can imagine that there is a certain sort of personality that would appreciate this game's dark humor far better than I. Along the lines of one lesson during my college education was to limit the attempted scope of player appeal and this game does just that. The lacking replay value was a disappointing feature to see, but there is a certain fan appeal to following a meme and under the right circumstances is a reward unto itself.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Game review: Depths of Peril (Demo)
Depths of Peril is a ambitious action-adventure game combining elements of hack and slash action, roleplaying-style character equipment and stat management, tower defense game's home outpost with defenses, factional real-time strategy, and a rich backstory narrative all with an explorable world. Depths of Peril was developed by Soldak Entertainment and is available to run on Windows and Mac PC platforms.
Summary of analysis
Poorly implemented new player experience, fast-paced and challenging gameplay with hordes of monsters, the lurking threat of factional warfare but the most frightening element is the narrative elements, complicated but rewarding interface and controls, well-detailed graphics with minor obstacles of object distinction, mediocre music with mostly satisfying sound effects.
Tutorial/New player experience
I imagine that the one thing that got me through this part of the game was an abundance of comparable game experience, the new player experience was bordering on painful.
After creating a character I was dropped into the game without a clue about the controls and considerable curiosity about what I was supposed to do first. Within the first ten minutes of gameplay, I was over my head with a long line of tutorial help windows waiting for my attention and in need of industrial machinery to deal with all the walls of text I was expected to read through. If you're new to this style of game, I recommend its competition first, they'll ease a player into the game much better than Depths of Peril does.
I can understand that there's a lot to teach the player as there's a lot to manage in the game and quite a bit of mechanics and interactions that they'll need to learn (kind of quickly, too, lest they fall behind the opposition), but more succinct explanations and walking a player through things is an art, not a chore list.
Gameplay experience
After getting the hang of everything, things ran much more smoothly, though the feeling of having to outrace impending doom never went away. Personally, I love being able to multi-task in a hardcore style game and managing a constant flow of quests, preparing for invasion from opposing forces, managing a main character and companion, and slaughtering hordes of monsters in exploration really let this game shine after the grueling new player experience. This game appears to be designed to keep a player going, unrelentingly, so keep an alarm handy if you have any upcoming plans while playing.
Probably the major detractor to ongoing gameplay are the tomes, which are an interesting read and show that the designers really wanted to draw players into the game's world, they're just cumbersome and out of place given the game's pacing and themes. If they could have implemented a telling of these narratives through high-level or epic quests in which the player character is transported back to participate in the events depicted, I would applaud the narrative, but they wound up being the most dreaded usable item a player would come across (whatever you do, don't right click the tomes... just stuff them in the bookshelf for their bonuses) and did more to break immersion than was really tolerable.
Interface & Controls
Complex interface relying on a sizable number of windows to manage (thankfully some of them pause gameplay while active). Primarily mouse-driven controls with abundant, and life-saving, keyboard hotkeys. It takes a significant investment of time to master the gameplay and the interface interactions, but it pays off exponentially with ongoing gameplay and especially in higher difficulty levels.
Graphics
2.5D top-down, angled, third-person perspective with moderately detailed character, object, and environment artwork. While certainly more visually appealing to a seriously-themed game, the interactive elements' graphics have a tendency to blend in with the non-interactive elements causing the targeting system to be an unnecessarily high level of nuisance (in fact, there's a whole keyboard hotkey just to highlight objects that can be picked up and it's probably going to be used more than any other). But even without the distraction-prone environment elements, a mouse-based targeting system in third-person perspective is clumsy at best. Thankfully, death by camera-angle or targeting system never became an issue (so far).
Music & Sound
I think there was background music, but between the rapid pace of gameplay and the sound effects, it may as well have been turned off for all I ever noticed it. The implementation of sound was quite a lot more satisfying, save that damnable knocking of factional management that honestly tempted me to embrace savage massacre of my in-game neighbors.
Commentary
Diablo-esque and it shows; the interface, controls, quite a lot of mechanics, and even some bits of narrative and premise illustrate a high likeliness of inspiration by the works of Blizzard Entertainment. There were also a number of moments where I felt the need to pause and question a few of the game's elements, such as a factionally-divided tribe of barbarians which somehow valued hefty (though abridged) tomes of lore in a hostile environment nearly pouring in on them from all sides. It was also a bit jarring to see the most-used currency was actually a coin-based economy as opposed to the frequently cited crystals of the tutorial and help windows.
To the game's credit, it was mostly well put together and it excels as a hardcore-style game by how it manages to keep a player engaged with only moments of downtime to give the player breathing and strategy time, eventually aiding in the desired player skill development rather than letting inventory management and spreadsheet-planning to detract from the pace.
Summary of analysis
Poorly implemented new player experience, fast-paced and challenging gameplay with hordes of monsters, the lurking threat of factional warfare but the most frightening element is the narrative elements, complicated but rewarding interface and controls, well-detailed graphics with minor obstacles of object distinction, mediocre music with mostly satisfying sound effects.
Tutorial/New player experience
I imagine that the one thing that got me through this part of the game was an abundance of comparable game experience, the new player experience was bordering on painful.
After creating a character I was dropped into the game without a clue about the controls and considerable curiosity about what I was supposed to do first. Within the first ten minutes of gameplay, I was over my head with a long line of tutorial help windows waiting for my attention and in need of industrial machinery to deal with all the walls of text I was expected to read through. If you're new to this style of game, I recommend its competition first, they'll ease a player into the game much better than Depths of Peril does.
I can understand that there's a lot to teach the player as there's a lot to manage in the game and quite a bit of mechanics and interactions that they'll need to learn (kind of quickly, too, lest they fall behind the opposition), but more succinct explanations and walking a player through things is an art, not a chore list.
Gameplay experience
After getting the hang of everything, things ran much more smoothly, though the feeling of having to outrace impending doom never went away. Personally, I love being able to multi-task in a hardcore style game and managing a constant flow of quests, preparing for invasion from opposing forces, managing a main character and companion, and slaughtering hordes of monsters in exploration really let this game shine after the grueling new player experience. This game appears to be designed to keep a player going, unrelentingly, so keep an alarm handy if you have any upcoming plans while playing.
Probably the major detractor to ongoing gameplay are the tomes, which are an interesting read and show that the designers really wanted to draw players into the game's world, they're just cumbersome and out of place given the game's pacing and themes. If they could have implemented a telling of these narratives through high-level or epic quests in which the player character is transported back to participate in the events depicted, I would applaud the narrative, but they wound up being the most dreaded usable item a player would come across (whatever you do, don't right click the tomes... just stuff them in the bookshelf for their bonuses) and did more to break immersion than was really tolerable.
Interface & Controls
Complex interface relying on a sizable number of windows to manage (thankfully some of them pause gameplay while active). Primarily mouse-driven controls with abundant, and life-saving, keyboard hotkeys. It takes a significant investment of time to master the gameplay and the interface interactions, but it pays off exponentially with ongoing gameplay and especially in higher difficulty levels.
Graphics
2.5D top-down, angled, third-person perspective with moderately detailed character, object, and environment artwork. While certainly more visually appealing to a seriously-themed game, the interactive elements' graphics have a tendency to blend in with the non-interactive elements causing the targeting system to be an unnecessarily high level of nuisance (in fact, there's a whole keyboard hotkey just to highlight objects that can be picked up and it's probably going to be used more than any other). But even without the distraction-prone environment elements, a mouse-based targeting system in third-person perspective is clumsy at best. Thankfully, death by camera-angle or targeting system never became an issue (so far).
Music & Sound
I think there was background music, but between the rapid pace of gameplay and the sound effects, it may as well have been turned off for all I ever noticed it. The implementation of sound was quite a lot more satisfying, save that damnable knocking of factional management that honestly tempted me to embrace savage massacre of my in-game neighbors.
Commentary
Diablo-esque and it shows; the interface, controls, quite a lot of mechanics, and even some bits of narrative and premise illustrate a high likeliness of inspiration by the works of Blizzard Entertainment. There were also a number of moments where I felt the need to pause and question a few of the game's elements, such as a factionally-divided tribe of barbarians which somehow valued hefty (though abridged) tomes of lore in a hostile environment nearly pouring in on them from all sides. It was also a bit jarring to see the most-used currency was actually a coin-based economy as opposed to the frequently cited crystals of the tutorial and help windows.
To the game's credit, it was mostly well put together and it excels as a hardcore-style game by how it manages to keep a player engaged with only moments of downtime to give the player breathing and strategy time, eventually aiding in the desired player skill development rather than letting inventory management and spreadsheet-planning to detract from the pace.
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