Ouchie. Ouchie. Ouchie.
Load times, then. Shall we talk about them? They’re a necessary evil. In so many cases this is a truth but it doesn’t stop anyone hating them with a passion. I’m sure that some would argue “ah, back in my day we used to have to start the cassette player, go fer a bath, lick the road clean half an hour before we got out of bed and even then we weren’t sure if the game would t’load and our father would beat us till dead etc…” and that’s cool, it’s your right to live a delusional state where somehow by something being terrible in the past makes it acceptable now.
Come on folks, it’s 2009. If you’re making me watch a game loading more than playing – it’s gone absolutely wrong somewhere down the line. Especially if your game looks like this:
Yeah, it’s not the prettiest thing ever is it? I’ll tolerate stupid load times if at the end of it I get Doom 3, if I get that picture there, I’m going to be grimacing. Alright, alright – that’s not strictly true. I’ll tolerate almost anything if I get an amazing piece of work at the end of it. If Space Giraffe took six months to load, I’d probably still be able to overlook its load times. Ok, maybe not…
Now sure, for the initial loading sequence there’s a pretty dull and uninspired game to play whilst you pass the time (if you’re Namco, you ain’t seen this, right?). Thing is, even after that there’s still whopping great pauses. Whether that’s loading something, doing something – anything, I don’t know, but it’s nigh on absolutely intolerable and would put the dampener on pretty much any game.
So yeah, reviewing loading times in 2009 for the Xbox 360 Indie Games service. I never thought I’d see that particular day. Shall we move on? Let’s talk about UnRevolutionary: The Game as opposed to wittering endlessly about UnRevolutionary:The Loading Times. Or umm, well, here’s the thing folks. UnRevolutionary:The Loading Times is the far more interesting aspect to discuss. Yikes!
Quick question for the house. You know when you were sitting down with your controller and blasting gleefully (or swearily) through either of the Geometry Wars iterations did you ever stop and think to yourself “This would be so much better with RPG elements?”*. I’d wager for most people that’s probably a big fat hairy no.
Why is this important? Because sometimes complicating stuff is so the wrong direction to head in and UnRevolutionary hasn’t just took a mild toddle in the wrong direction, it’s currently lost in the woods awaiting someone to sneak up behind it, have its pants down and be found dead in the ditch tomorrow morning. Just like in The Path, then.
Unfair? Maybe. Maybe there is a nice way to marry the arena shooter formula with levelling and classes and I’m sure I’d be in the queue to play it did it come to pass. UnRevolutionary isn’t it though because the game itself is so tepid and dull that after a few minutes shooting bland enemies and bland waves, it could have tickled my backside with a feather and I’d have struggled to raise a smile.
It suffers in many ways from the same issues that Biology Battle does, it sorta looks on the surface like an arena shooter would but gets a bit lost somewhere down the line (we’re back to The Path again here, aren’t we?). Reading through an interview with the grandfather of arena shooters and inventor of the smart bomb Eugene Jarvis in a recent Retro Gamer where he discussed the creation of Robotron, one thing really stuck out for me – it was a very designed experience. The same design philosophy evidently lives on with Geometry Wars – you don’t create something as evil as Waves by accident y’know? Everything has a place as a response to what the player might consider doing. It’s probably the most important part of the formula.
Throw in the elusive shiny and bang, you’ve got yourself a quality arena shooter.
Whilst it’d be remiss of me to try and guess how UnRevolutionary was put together, it’s difficult to see the end product we’re presented with as more than x+x=huzzah!. In this case, arena shooter+RPG elements=huzzah!
There’s certainly no shortage of content here, 50 stages worth at that but when a vast amount of that content consists of spawning large amounts of enemies across the board and asking you to find different ways to mow them down, it’s pretty dull fare. By large amounts, I really do mean large amounts too “up to hundreds” the blurb bizarrely claims. As you level up you’re presented with different ways of helping you clear these vast swathes of enemies – you can slow down time for a short duration, you can watch the worlds least amazing screenwipe effect and well, you get the idea. The problem is, none of it makes it any more interesting. As fellow reviewer Nick pointed out in his XNA Roundup, you don’t really feel like you’re building a ship to your needs or your play style, you’re just slotting stuff on and hoping for the best. I’d add to that by saying that the best never really comes as no amount of armament can turn an essentially bland experience into something stellar.
Quantity over quality doth not a good game make.
For 400 points, you can lay your grubby mits on the leaner, better looking Geometry Wars. Something a commentator recently pointed out is always going to be an issue when releasing an arena shooter on the 360 and I’d be inclined to agree. The bar may be high and there’s certainly gaps for something different out there, let’s just make that something different worth a punt eh?
*Somebody evidently did before now and those chaps were Kuju Entertainment. You might have heard of them, they did a rather fine DS game called “Geometry Wars Galaxies” in collaboration with Bizarre Creations and bugger me, it actually worked pretty well. Why? Well, they kept a sort of levelling up/power up combo thing that wasn’t especially integral to the game. At best, it serves to make the game easier to level up your ship but that’s about it – it’s still fully playable without all that extra guff.
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Reading that had me thinking you were being unusually harsh, but on reflection you’re just highlighting niggles that I found myself so I’m finding it hard to form a reasonable case for the defence.
In theory I like the idea of the RPG elements myself, but how you integrate them into the gameplay successfully and then show that in an 8 minute trial I’ve no idea. I found the movement sluggish, but is that just because it needs to be levelled-up?
I think the full game could be good, however I’ll admit that’s more in hope than based on anything in the all too brief trial experience.
It has to be said the loading times are freakin amazing. The longest I’ve come across in an Indie Game so far and for what? You know they are bad when you try and hide them behind a mini-game. It had me thinking of Delta’s Mix-E-Load, but it’s not the 80’s anymore.
As a huge fan of both dual stick shooters and RPGs, I highly enjoyed this game’s demo and will be buying this game the next time I have points. Yes the action elements aren’t as good as Geo Wars 2 (but what game is?) and the initial load times were pathetic, but the gameplay was solid, the visuals decent, and the game offers plenty of customization for both your abilities and the game’s difficulty.
And actually, Geometry Wars with a full fledged RPG esque upgrade system (and not that pathetic halfhearted system they used in Galaxies) would be practically my dream game. So put me in for a big fat hairy Oh Yeah!
I wouldn’t say Galaxies is half hearted, more streamlined to fit the system – its main beauty is that although the helper stuff is there for you to purchase, you can quite happily blast on through without it. It is bloody imbalanced though, once you’re powered up it becomes an absolute walk in the park and the challenge just disappears. Not that it stopped me chasing the number one spot for a while
One of the innate problems with wedging RPG elements into an arcade shooter is that the game has to sort of bend around how you choose to play and the more variables you introduce into a shooter, the more awkward it becomes to achieve something truly playable.
It’s a genre that works best (IMO) when it’s streamlined – be that to fit a scoring mechanic(s) or to encourage certain styles of play (see Radiant Silvergun for an attempt to meld a certain level of complexity to things).
I’m sure it can be done, mind, I’ve just not seen much that succeeds to date.
Oh, there’s plenty of modern arena shooters different to and as good as GW btw – MattV’s ‘Troid is lovely as is Fog’s Echoes and it’d be totally ignorant of me to not mention either Neon Wars for a remarkable lesson in how to add a casual slant to the genre or on the other end of the scale Mark Incitti’s Atomhex for how to completely weird things out. Oh yeah, and the now long in the tooth but rarely bettered Spheres Of Chaos. All great stuff and all won’t exactly break the bank either
Even most RPGs have trouble dealing with variable levels of player power.
I heard there’s a patent on mini games during loading and fear of litigation is why you don’t see more of that
But then again there’s a patent on ghosts (as in the racing kind)
Yup, Namco have it.
Eh, I really liked this game. The presentation outside of the loading is pretty professional, with a consistent art direction and appropriate music. I actually thought that the leveling helped the game, I wouldn’t call it an RPG but more of just basic ship customization. You can level up different stats (ship speed, rate of fire, etc.) along with putting points into special abilities, which you’ll use quite a bit and will plan your runs around them, which does increase playability since using different abilities will change the way you play the game. Quite often I found myself just wanting to go forward so I could level up and keep getting stronger, it’s pretty satisfying. Hell, even when you wipe you get a free life to keep going so you rarely find yourself hitting a frustrating wall.
The 50 levels also have variety, there are the standard arena levels, levels where you face chokepoints and kill enemies to advance, race levels where you have to hit checkpoints while facing enemies, and boss levels with some clever designs. The later enemies are pretty interesting and require you to move and shoot in different ways, with the later levels requiring a lot of concentration and figuring out priority.
I really thought it was one of the better twin-stick shooters, and I’d almost say that it’s one of the best games I’ve played on the service. I’ve played my fair share of twin-stick games, but this one really had me hooked, and it’s one of the few community games that I’ve spent as much time with as with retail releases.
I thought the graphics were pretty good actually.
Super Stardust HD on PSN did a good job of “leveling up” your abilities while maintaining a fast paced shooting game.
If the pace was slowed down to the point where strategy was emphasized I could see how the RPG elements could have helped out.
I’m not too keen on dual stick shooters that have the enemies hunt you down like no tomorrow (most are like that)…so I had to pass on this. But I have to say my impressions were largely positive when playing the demo. The load times though…the fact that you HAD TO LOAD THE LOADING SCREEN was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen, heheh.
But yeah…I would think that even if the RPG elements didn’t work out that well, you could still play it as a Dual Stick shooter and still have fun with it.
I can’t really comment on how well the actual game handles anything, but the demo makes your ship seem woefully underpowered and 3/4 of your special abilities fairly useless. It’s all about dropping turrets, which seems a bit passive for a shooter.
I liked this game. It’s one of the few XNA games I thought was worth buying. It has a fair amount of depth for a Geometry Wars clone.
I think it’s a great game and I like their additions and tweaks to the Geometry Wars formula; fair point about the load times aside, I couldn’t disagree with your review more. A large part of the appeal here is that action RPG-like gradual build-up of your abilities and power, and it’s quite addictive. But the action isn’t bad, either–there’s a good amount of variety as you progress through the game, and some neat ideas that I’ve never seen before in the genre.
And yeah, I do think it’s worth the 400 MS points in addition to Geometry Wars 2, though not instead of it.