Reviews written by pwnophobia

As original reviewed by modeps on Evil Avatar

Despite being around for quite some time (1990's Rampart was probably the first example), there really aren't too many retail titles in the Tower Defense (TD) strategy niche of gaming. Instead, independent developers have released free mods for existing titles and Flash games to fill the void. Recently though PixelJunk Monsters and Ninjatown have stormed the scene and acquired many a rabid fan, making the viability of a retail TD style game plausible. Now, Hidden Path's newest PC offering titled Defense Grid: The Awakening hopes to capitalize on this addictive genre with an excellent out of the gate entry.

The premise is fairly simple in Defense Grid: You're in charge of trying to stop an alien race from completely destroying the last remnants of civilization. Among each of the twenty levels you get a map with entrances and exits, locations where you can build towers, some starting cash, and a stockhold of power cores to protect from being snatched from wave after wave of the alien horde.

At the beginning, you're able to build fairly basic towers along a set path. Done in a very nice learning curve, each level of the game presents new abilities for you to learn and master and different challenges to face. You're not just thrown into the fray and forced to figure out which towers work best in what situation, but instead given time to become versed in the ways of each tower. Additionally, levels can become segmented forcing you to manage two separate paths of attack or give you the ability to shape your enemy's walking route. Protip: The longer it takes the bad guys to get in and out, the better.

You can't just build your towers ad nauseum, you've got to pay for each tower and upgrade so there's a bit of resource management needed. Each destroyed alien unit yields resources for you to continue building more towers and your AI partner-in-crime (an omnipotent voice that talks you through and provides some witty banter as well as helpful tips) can more effectively 'process' resources the more you have, making it prudent to not just spend every penny you have in your pocket as you'll get some free resources for whatever's in your wallet.

When all is said and done, you get ten types of towers to construct, each with three upgrade levels indicated by a color (green, orange, red). They run the gamut from basic gun towers, energy and barrage weapons, and mortar fire. Similarly, there are a variety of enemy unit types each indicated by the same colors to show their strength. When you see red units coming in, watch out, those are effectively the boss units which can take quite a lot of concentrated firepower and keep on going. Seeing reds on your radar approaching can be quite nerve-racking when you realize you can't take on a Red Crasher and have no money to build or upgrade. It's wonderfully maddening.

Getting back to the power cores, about 95% of the time they're held at one point on the map. The bad guys will need to walk or fly past your towers to pick them up, then exit the map. If the units are destroyed while carrying one, the glowing core slowly makes it's way back along the same path it traversed to the holding square. This is particularly annoying because aliens can play bucket brigade with the cores, allowing their friends to pick up a core and make a break for the exit. Taking out your foes prior to them ever touching the cores is of course the best plan, but it rarely works out that way. The waves of enemies often take this brute force relay into account when attacking and expect you to not be completely prepared to save all of your cores. This again puts your brain to the test to try and figure out just what you have to build and upgrade to keep your stash.

Along with just simply beating a level by destroying all baddies while not losing 100% of your cores, the game provides three medals to achieve. The bronze can be obtained by just finishing a level with 1 core remaining, the silver and gold however, with the exception of the first few levels, both need all your cores to be safe and a score to be achieved. I kind of feel that the silver medal should be able to be obtained without having 100% of your cores, maybe 75% instead. This is one very minor quibble I have with the game as doing it the way they did, you've got to be really good just to get the silver and you may be good enough to get the gold as well. More often than not, you'll be getting the bronze the first time through a level.

Another small beef I have with the game is it's soundtrack. The voice-over work by your AI friend is great but the music to go behind everything is generic and repetitive. While it doesn't get in the way or become annoying, it is clearly not anything to write home about.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is deep, challenging, compelling and pretty darn good looking for a 'budget' title. In addition, it also has an addictive chemical reaction with the human brain, making you think about playing even when you're not. With twenty levels, three difficulty modes, leaderboards, and a high level of replayability, I can't help but recommend Defense Grid to any fan of the strategy genre.

As original reviewed by modeps on Evil Avatar.com

You will curse at your television... and possibly your family.

Something has gone wrong in a mad scientists' laboratory. They've created an uncontrollable, maniacal creature who glows red and has a strange fascination with Arnold Schwarzenegger movies... Oh, and he can make himself detonate at will and has escaped. You are this creature, and its your job to make those scientists pay for... I guess creating you?

The story isn't the strong point of this game. In fact, it's barely there. So if you're looking for the next Godfather movie, move on. Instead, this game is all about the platforming. 'Splosion Man could just as well be played with an old school NES controller as there's really only two things you can do: Move and 'Splode. You can also suicide but most of the time you'll just die. As long as your feet are on the ground, you can explode just about whenever you want, but once you go airborne, you're limited to three blows which equates to triple jumping.

Most of the time, you're running (or being propelled) from left to right, trying to get through 50 increasingly complex levels of death. Reaction time is critical and you need to be as precise as possible, or you die. Miss one detonation? Die. Blow up a hair too late? Die. Forget to pick up the fat scientist? Die. In fact, you will die in this game more than you'd probably like to... but don't worry too much. While you'll have to re-try sections of the game numerous times, the developers have crafted the levels beautifully, throwing down checkpoints in all the right places so you never have to repeat too much over and over.

The game is broken up into three worlds, each with its own quirky and entertaining final boss battle. While you blow through the game, you'll learn new mechanics pretty much right when you just begin feeling like you need a new mechanic to learn. Each of the levels is setup as a mini puzzle and has a "par time" that you can attempt to hit (and probably fail doing so). Optimally, you'll shoot for the fastest time through a level and that info is posted to the Xbox Live Leaderboards, but at first you're probably just going to work at trying to get through a level without quitting or lobbing your controller through your LCD.

In an effort to reduce the feeling of platforming fatigue, Twisted Pixel have injected 'Splosion Man with plenty of charm and whimsy (and gasoline probably). The lead character is memorable, maniacal, and magical with plenty of hilarious animations and voice work. Sometimes he'll throw his arms out to the side and pretend he's an airplane, other times he'll hunch over and pretend he's a gorilla complete with gorilla sounds. The levels are full of frightened scientists who both try to stop you, and run away from your explosiveness. If they get too close to a boom, they'll comically turn into steaks and hams (no blood, just comedy here). There's even a big, fat, donut eating scientist that comes with his own donuts theme song. If anything bad can be said about the artwork, its the backgrounds. Each world has a specific tileset that never deviates too far from the generic. A bit more variety would have been welcome.

In addition to the lengthy single player campaign, there's a whole separate co-op multiplayer focused set of levels that are designed to be less about pinpoint precision, and more about working together as a team. You can take up to four folks (both online and offline) and try to traverse the levels with your own colored version of 'Splosion Man. In addition to the new levels, you even get a few more mechanics to play with, like super jumps off of one another, and even a way to coordinate timed explosions.

'Splosion Man is a classic platformer with changes made in all the right places. It's a great looking, sometimes hilarious, often frustrating game, but its a hell of a lot of fun. Hearing 'Splosion Man yell "GET TO THE CHOPPAH!" in a chipmunk inspired voice while blowing the meat out of a scientist makes the hair pulling seem not so bad and honestly, who doesn't like explosions OR meat? Bad people, that's who. Having the single player alone makes this game worthy of the price tag, but throwing an entirely separate cooperative mode makes it an incredible value. If you've got any love for the old platformers and want to see what a well done, more recent entry can pull off... go buy this game.

Other developers take note - this is how an 80 point game should play! Very well polished, graphically appeasing with a quirkiness that is hard to match; Your Doodles Are Bugged is an amazingly charming game. The level of difficulty ramps up quickly put really puts your brain to the test, a lovely way to play a quick level (2 minutes) and then move on to something else.

As originally reviewed by modeps on Evil Avatar

Jason Flemming: he is no one, and he his everyone. He is also your main character in Shadow Complex, the last title in the Summer of Arcade line of games for 2009. Created by Chair Entertainment (part of Epic Games and of Undertow fame), Shadow Complex actually takes place within the Empire universe made famous by Orson Scott Card... although there's little here that makes that apparent.

After a brief "Look at all the stuff you'll be able to do later!" segment, the real game kicks off while you are on a hike with a pretty young lady. She goes on ahead then disappears while you follow her trail. Jason is presented as your normal, everyday fellow... thrown into an extraordinary situation and takes it upon himself to stop a rogue group of terrorists, called the Progressive Restoration, from starting the second Civil War (somehow). The story here is not spoon fed to you, and you're always left without that omniscient feeling. You only see and hear what Jason sees and hears and are better off for it.

Jason is so ill-equipped for the task that he doesn't even start off the game with a gun... but why would you if you're on a hike? Instead, you get a flashlight and some climbing gear while you head into the enemy base tucked away in a underground cavern. The only superhuman thing about Jason is that he doesn't take damage from long falls. Instead, as you progress and explore Shadow Complex's rather large map, you'll find new gadgets to make yourself a little better here and there. You'll find numerous gun upgrades, secondary fire modes, a mini booster jetpack and more. Most of these upgrades will allow you to access previously unavailable areas of the map. Additionally, exploring and taking down enemies earns you XP in-game, and at each level increase you'll improve even more with accuracy and health upgrades among others.

The combination of gear pickups and experience based leveling is really one of the strong points here. It never feels like a grind to get to the next level, instead you are always improving yourself in a more gradual progression instead of a stepped one. Furthermore, you can earn achievements for performing a specific number of enemy takedowns which are all tracked on the game's leaderboard system. Once you hit the "achievement" level, sure you'll unlock the achievement, but you're still competing with your friends to see who can melee the most baddies, or get the most headshots. It's a great little meta system.

Using the Unreal Engine, Shadow Complex is really quite a great looking Xbox Live Arcade game, and arguably the best looking out of them all. The mountainside are lush, animations are smooth, and there are no load times once the game gets going. Additionally, while at it's core is a 2D platformer, every bit of the game has some depth to it, some of which force you to attack enemies that are in the background.

While it looks good, SC lacks much of the character found in the games it borrows from... you're just running and gunning like some generic dude. There are also several glitches which really detract from the immersion, like running up to an enemy to melee him, and clipping through the wall, or not having a specific animation kick in when you're trying to wall jump. I even had one point where I had to restart the game thanks to an audio loop getting stuck. There are other points as well where the 3D elements don't seem to make sense... Why do I have to jump off a landing when there are stairs right there?

Shadow Complex borrows just about everything it has from the 15 year old Super Metroid, the exploration and map, to the carbon copy weapon and ability upgrades. It does little to innovate on the formula, but that doesn't make it bad at all. Shadow Complex is a solid, great looking "Metroid-vania" game that could have spent some more time in the cooker to iron out some weird glitches that take place. Most importantly, it is a fun game. If you've ever played post-Symphony of the Night Castlevania titles, or Super Metroid, you know what you should expect here and can decide if you want to do it again or not. Those of you who haven't, give it try and see why exploration games of this ilk has become beloved by many over the years.

As original seen on Evil Avatar (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98425)

The adventure game genre is a beast that many developers try to tackle. It has spawned many great 2D and 3D games from the side scroller to the sandbox shoot 'em up that many people enjoy on Xbox Live Arcade. Before those type of games took off we had the point and click adventures where you tried to solve puzzles and advance through a linear story. Telltale Games has taken on the task of trying to revitalize this series with the Sam & Max franchise, releasing both seasons as separate downloadable games. Each game comes with at least five episodes telling their own unique story and sticking true to its PC origins. However, originally released in 1993, this formula is one that does not port well from mouse and keyboard to joystick controller.

Sam and Max: Beyond Time in Space is the second of two in the series and if you played the first Sam & Max game then you'll be all too familiar with the characters and controls of the second as you find clues, talk to other characters, and combine everything together to finish the story mode. Controlling Sam is simple; you use the joystick to click on an area of the screen and Sam will walk there. Use the same controls to find an object and watch Sam & Max interrogate a character with quick one liners and crude humor and then combine the objects that you find throughout the world to progress through the story. This is where the game falters the most. The joystick controls are extremely inaccurate and hard to control. Trying to point the cursor at a very tiny object that is buried behind other scenery is almost impossible because the controls never seem to flow. I never felt as if I was Sam or Max, more like I was narrating the story rather than taking a part in it. Had Telltale games added the functionality to move Sam around with my second joystick or even allowing me to open the inventory and scroll through it with the d-pad, I would have felt more like I was playing a game rather than watching a movie.

As I previously mentioned the game is split into episodes, five in total, and each has their own unique story. Without divulging too much of the only good thing the game has going for it, the original creator of Sam & Max took the time to piece each episode together and wrap them up in the end. After the second episode, however, the one liners started to feel forced and reused attempting to illicit snappy humor that is only funny when used sparingly. Conversations are still handled in a dialog tree but no matter what options you pick you will always end up hitting the question that allows you to move on, you cannot fail. The same goes for any of the clues as you are allowed to travel throughout the world without any punishment for missing an important object, this feature is great however if you missed something you may find yourself visiting six or seven different venues to find that off-the-wall item to progress the story further. It may be the way I think but Sam & Max provides a great challenge because you have to try and figure out the clues by thinking WAY outside of the box which can cause serious frustration and force you to be stuck in one area until you realize that you were supposed to click on that random figure behind seven different Christmas presents in the very first room you stepped into.

When I play a video game I need to feel engaged, like I am the main character. What Sam & Max fails to do is make you feel like you are a part of the game and while doing so forces useless and uninspired dialog that usually prompts skipping to be able to progress the story. Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space has its place in gaming history but it has not aged well in an era of joystick controlled characters. Before you purchase this game I would highly recommend trying out the demo to see if you have the patience to sit through a few hours of dialog with little interaction between you and the on-screen character.

As originally seen on Evil Avatar (http://www.evilavatar.com)
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98841

As a once avid pool player I've ran my fair share of tables and played around with pool games on Yahoo! but have never quite found that one definitive pool simulator. Inferno Pool uniquely blends 8 and 9 ball with their own "Inferno" mode that allows you to rub your pool prowess in the face of your friends over XBOX live or 4-player split screen co-op. All the tools are present to keep the casual player engaged and to give the hardened veteran a few good hours of enjoyment as you find the perfect English for your cue ball to land a 10,000 + point combo and sky rocket to the top of the leader boards.

The game menus are designed to get you into a match quickly giving you the option to pick between Single Player, Multiplayer or Help & Options. The Help screen is a text based guide on what each mode does and once you jump in you'll see that Inferno Pool takes a page out of other pool game books. By pointing the cue stick at the cue ball a white line appears and shows where the cue ball will land. When you move the cue stick to an angle where the cue ball will bump into a regular ball then a line associated with the color of the ball will go off in the direction that that ball should go. You're given a 360 degree view of the table and you can look top down by pressing the right bumper or at eye level by using the left joystick. By holding down the left trigger your cursor slows down so you can be extremely precise with your shots which helps to set up awesome jumps, kicks and banks. Ball English can be set by using the d-pad and an on-screen indicator appears showing you where your cue will land on the cue ball.

Inferno pool offers 3 game types: 8 ball, 9 ball and Inferno mode. 8 ball offers your traditional pool experience where the first player to sink a spot or stripe continues to sink the first color as they play around the table and at the end sink the 8 ball to win the game. 9 ball plays similar to 8 ball however you have to sink balls 1 to 9 in chronological order so sinking the 8 ball early doesn't penalize you like it does in 8 ball.

Inferno mode allows you to play against up to 3 other players on a split-screen and your objective is to clear your balls from the table before your opponent clears theirs. Sounds simple, right? Well Dark Energy decided to take it a step further and force players to play strategically against each other. This mode is not for someone who likes to take their time, its fast paced action demands that you constantly scan your opponents screen and find an opportunity to unleash your fury on their table. Every time you sink a ball it gets deposited in a bazooka in the lower left hand corner of your screen. The bazooka can store up to 5 balls at a time and is used to send those balls you sunk to your opponents table. You can set the bazooka to launch just one ball or save them up to do them all at once. If you are playing against more than 1 opponent than each player will receive a designated color and the face buttons coordinate with that players color so you can send a ball to each of you're team mates by pressing their associated button on your controller. Inferno Mode doesn't let up because while you're going around sinking balls you are also scoring points that help fill up your Inferno Meter. Performing trick shots (banks, kicks, jumps) nets more points and fills this meter faster. When full, your table and balls turn red and the announcer screams "Inferno!", and you become a table master. For every ball you sink while in Inferno Mode another ball is taken off helping you clear your table quicker. When the allotted amount of time is up the game ends and you're given ranks, 1st - 4th, based on your performance and shown the stats for the game.

Beyond Inferno mode, Inferno Pool doesn't have much to offer for the single player. With a lack of a tournament style play you are forced to go online or play against the computers, and if you miss one shot on anything above Novice the computer is more than likely to run the table on you. Making up for this is the fact that you can have up to 4 players playing at a time locally or online. The graphics and presentation go a long way to keep you entertained and the ball physics mimic a real pool game almost flawlessly. Taking into consideration the low price tag, Inferno Pool offers a great experience for anyone who enjoys pool or are thinking of taking it up as a hobby.