Winter 2011 Dualstream Day of Zeux Scoresheet: Wervyn
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/= INTRODUCTION ================================================================ | Well that DoZ sure sucked, but I guess we all understand now why it's | | necessary to have some build up and for people to feel like someone's in | | charge, right? Right? Eh, who am I kidding, MZX is dying. The one shining | | light in this mix for me is Lancer and Lachesis and their rather awesome | | game. And even that game wasn't that great by Lancer standards. But onward | | march we anyway, into the breach again. It's no secret that I didn't want to | | write up these scores, but I wrote them anyway, so you have to read them! | | Let's take a look shall we? | ===============================================================================/ /= -0001 = All That Violence ====================== VIOLENCE/HEAVY = [166/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 81/100] - | In a shocking twist the combination of mindlessness and gore actually makes | | this game an excellent candidate for theme adherence, since what says | | violence like mindless gore? I know _I_ wanted to hit something when I was | | done playing this, anyway. Perhaps this is symptomatic of a problem in the | | scoresheets, but I'm not sure I think so, since the game ends up right about | | where I think it should be in the lineup. Excellent gaming of the system, | | though! | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 17/ 90] - | Wow, I really hated this game. I mean it was seriously just excruciating to | | play, and is a perfect example of how to do a mouse aiming system exactly | | wrong. Now, I'm not as dead set against these as I once was, seems to me a | | year ago I made a DoZ entry with one of them myself. But they HAVE to be | | done right, or they're just going to suck. For example, the mouse needs to | | stand out and should never, EVER blend into the background. Where I click | | ought to have a pretty close correlation with where I shoot (hello | | shotgun?). And if you were going to give me a knife to start out with why | | even bother? I mean, do you realize how much less sucky this game would be | | if you had just stuck the traditional space + direction = death in your | | direction of choice formula? Do you realize how much time you wasted | | programming an engine that wasn't any fun to play? Shame on you. The only | | weapon that even slightly made sense under this system was the RPG, and | | that's next to useless when you're in a big open field shooting at enemies | | flipping around like epilepsy victims. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 31/ 70] - | I think my real point of contention here is that there's just too much | | going on, and that makes it really hard to see what you're doing. The game | | is actually quite vibrant in its use of color, and even though the character | | graphics are simple I think everything would work if it didn't look like a | | random explosion party all over my screen. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 17/ 60] - | There are some engine concept ideas put forth here in the mouse aiming and | | different weapons, but unfortunately in practice they all SUCK. I keep | | harping on this, but the limitations of your various weapons as applied to | | your mouse engine reveal the limitations of your ability to program a solid | | engine. The shotgun is limited to firing in four discrete directions | | because, I assume, you couldn't figure out how to make shotgun blast out of | | anything other than a template. And here's an idea for the RPG in the | | future: burst on arrival at the target point. That'd make it much more | | useful as a weapon, don't you think? | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 18/ 50] - | Some rather flimsy nonsense about a homicidal maniac murdering a bunch of | | people. Granted, what excuse do you really need for violence, right? But I | | can't say I was really drawn into this narrative, so much as forcing myself | | to experience it through the gameplay. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 2/ 30] - | No music, and quite honestly the ever present chorus of explosion noises | | became pretty obnoxious after a few seconds, so your sound effects were | | mostly a bust to me. For the most part the game just gave me a headache. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [166/400] - | Well I can't say it didn't amuse me, though it did leave a bad taste in my | | mouth. And the game part of it, seriously awful. | | | | "There's gotta be an easier way to get blood." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 00000 = Violence Makes You Stupid ============== VIOLENCE/LIGHT = [ 95/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 24/120] - | Well when you flat out tell me up front that your game is an unfinished | | mess what am I supposed to think? It shows, anyway. There's a little bit of | | tactics in figuring out how to navigate a river of dragons like that without | | getting hurt to much, and I guess your ferryman's dilemma puzzle did WORK, | | but still, as advertised the game is an unfinished collection of ideas that | | don't really fit together anyway. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 25/ 90] - | I will grant, the graphics on the ferry puzzle were not god-awful, and | | managed to be just bleh. Everything else looked like a combination of | | hitting tab and spazzing out a lot, and using the fill command. And I guess | | you get a couple pity points for doing something kind of neat on the title | | screen. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 13/ 80] - | Again, for the title screen, though I won't give you that much credit for | | that, and for implementing the logic behind your puzzle, which while butt | | simple still required at least a little programming know-how. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 13/ 50] - | Well there's something going on here, but as far as I can tell it just | | boils down to Some Girl Named Amy does a lot of drugs and goes crazy and | | then the men in white coats catch her and take her away. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 16/ 40] - | Mostly just a number of tracks in there for the lulz. I mean really, the | | game is written, produced, and presented like a joke, so I'm naturally | | inclined to judge it like one too. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 4/ 20] - | It's presented in such a way that I could sort of read in domestic | | violence, but what this game really says to me is "on drugs". No dice. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 95/400] - | The first in a long (or actually depressingly short) line of half-hearted | | entries this time. No way for me to respond other than a Kiffian "ugh." | | | | "But spiders don't even like yummy stuff!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 3.142 = Demons Demons Everywhere =============== VIOLENCE/HEAVY = [202/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 64/100] - | As violence goes, this is pretty plain vanilla. Presented with hordes of | | monsters, your job is to kill them for as long as you can. There's nothing | | in the presentation that makes this all that much more violent than a | | classic arcade game like Centipede, really. Sure it's about killing stuff, | | but beyond that there's nothing really violent about the killing, and so I | | can only award so many points. | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 44/ 90] - | This is one of those mindless diversions that fits somewhere right in the | | middle of everything. There's nothing terribly compelling about it -- fight | | off the hordes of demons until you're finally overwhelemed -- but neither is | | there anything really wrong with the premise. Ultimately that rates a pretty | | average score from me. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 34/ 70] - | Again, serviceable without being anything more. We can tell what's going on | | well enough, and in particular I commend you on your understanding of | | CONTRAST, allowing us to easily tell the GREEN player out from hordes of RED | | demons. But in the end they're all just smileys in an empty arena, and | | that's all the game has to offer. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 18/ 60] - | Basically, this game showcases an enemy spawner, for enemies that run | | around and shoot various projectiles at you, most of them built in. Now this | | is pulled off just fine, but it's not exactly hard to do, and the game as it | | stands could probably have been written in an hour or two. This is a BKZX | | entry more than a DoZ. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 23/ 50] - | What story, you're killing demons! The point here is, the game doesn't try | | to justify its bullshit to me, it knows exactly what it is and doesn't try | | to dress up as anything else. And while I suppose you could make the same | | argument for a joke game like 0, I happen to like this game better, and | | therefore it did a better job of engaging me emotionally, even if that | | emotion was "I feel like killing stuff for a couple minutes". | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 19/ 30] - | One song, but a host of sound effects that did what they were supposed to | | and fit the game's aural niche. Hey, it's a shoot-em-up, works for me. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [202/400] - | A great way to waste a few minutes, and thus probably the third strongest | | entry in this sad DoZ. This game knew exactly what it wanted to be, and was | | that. And while it may not have done much, at least it didn't overshoot | | itself. | | | | "I'm ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all outta gum." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 07865 = Anger is an Energy ===================== VIOLENCE/HEAVY = [273/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 78/100] - | The game had pretty good theme use, I will say. Focusing on "anger" as an | | operative emotion for "violence" is a bit of a liberty, but not one that I | | don't follow, so I'll buy that connection and concede that it was at least | | used as an integral game mechanic, whether I thought it made the GAME better | | or not. Really though, I think you could build a game around an anger meter | | just fine, if you tweaked and balanced the concept a bit more and had it | | make more of an impact than just Hulk Smashing through doors. And of course, | | the game was rather unrepentently violent in the carnage you made of | | everyone; good show chaps, just what I like to see. | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 56/ 90] - | There's a decent action game in here, but it doesn't really gel and there | | are a number of things about it that drag it down. The anger mechanic is a | | good concept but especially right at the beginning makes it too easy to get | | trapped, since if you don't make directly for the two locked doors you can't | | get enough anger to break them open and snatch the key card later. Balancing | | that is the ability to see what's going on; if you're too angry, it's | | practically impossible to see where you're going or even distinguish live | | enemies from dead ones, which I guess is part of the idea, but the game | | forces you to walk a tightrope that's far too difficult to control. And | | there isn't really any benefit to being angry as far as I can tell other | | than being able to get through locked doors. The weapons are mostly just a | | linear power upgrade, and the lack of an auto reload feature makes the | | shotgun next to useless, and all of the weapons a pain to use in general, | | especially when it gets hard to tell what's going on and whether your fire | | is effective or not. And finally, it felt like the game could have been a | | good deal longer than it was, for as simple as it was. But, all that | | negativity aside, it was fun at least. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 47/ 70] - | Simple without being too dull, and worth decent marks. My main complaint | | probably goes along with the gameplay one of having a hard time seeing | | what's going on when you get angry, which as far as I can tell was | | intentional. The retro Atari whatever pastiche was worth a laugh. But | | overall, these are really just the high end of "okay". They're functional, | | they get the job done and don't look bad doing it, but there's nothing | | really knockout about these graphics. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 35/ 60] - | I count: Basic message box engine, a weapon reload system that works but | | sadly wasn't thought all the way through as a gameplay mechanic, some | | weapons that have different numbers using a rudimentary line of sight | | engine, and some fairly braindead enemy AI. So, good enough for a nod, but | | not good enough to really wow me. This is all fairly simple stuff and | | shouldn't have taken that long to do. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 34/ 50] - | So we have the British government performing experiments on putting anger | | in a bottle because, I guess, they're generally evil (those Brits are), and | | you're the test subject that got away. I'll buy it, it's nothing special but | | it wasn't completely half-assed at least. Though if you were going to the | | trouble of setting the game in 1984, I think you really missed an | | opportunity to drop a bunch more references than you did. Ingorance is | | Strength, baby! | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 23/ 30] - | I found the music serviceable and the sound effects adequate for telling me | | that I was shooting something, and occasionally I could hear the click when | | I was out of ammo. The most important audio innovation was shifting between | | music tracks when going from angry to not-angry state. Or, I say innovation, | | but really I'm just glad you guys were smart enough to realize this was | | necessary. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [273/400] - | In the end, I found this game at the high-end of mediocre. It's pretty | | decent, certainly not bad, but I'm unlikely to remember it in six months, | | except maybe as "the game that got second place last time". And given the | | competition that's not really all that much of an accomplishment. | | | | "Man I feel great! I'm pumped and ready to go off to the Hate Rally!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 47238 = Mission: Most Likely Horribly Incompl = ESPIONAGE/LIGHT = [145/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 42/120] - | The engine here has some promise, but it's not really polished enough to be | | anything other than moderately irritating to play on. Single character | | sidescrollers really suffer from accuracy issues, as has been pointed out so | | many times in the past, and this one is no different. Also for the love of | | Pete, can I please get some sort of instruction that tells me I'm supposed | | to use WASD to shoot? This is a perfectly valid approach to a weapons engine | | (although ammo is too scarce to make bullet spam while moving a truly valid | | tactic), but you have to TELL me. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 23/ 90] - | Bare minimum effort here. Yes, this actually counts as worse than team | | zero's, in that game there were actually some elements that had graphical | | thought put into them, even though the whole thing was a mess. This is just | | a bland mess with no thought or effort. It looked like for a brief moment | | you had started texturing the main level, before deciding "you know what, | | I'll just do everything in gray breakable". Blech. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 47/ 80] - | There's a fairly decent side scroller engine and projectile physics engine | | in here somewhere, even though the game they comprised wasn't all that | | great. The jumping physics are pretty good, and it's mostly suffering from | | the general issues with single character sidescrollers that are all but | | impossible to avoid. The projectiles, too, show a solid grasp on what is, if | | not a super complicated engine anymore, is at least one that everyone ought | | to be able to know how to do but apparently doesn't. Still, that's all you | | had to show, and the degree to which the game was incomplete when it didn't | | need to be (boards not linked up properly and all that) docks a considerable | | amount of points. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 18/ 50] - | One of those rather forced affairs to get us from the intro to the action | | and the "hey look at my engine". BLU spies hate the RED spies, go get those | | documents and pick up my dry cleaning while you're at it. Whatever. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 5/ 40] - | No sound or music. At least that makes my job easy. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 10/ 20] - | Touched on the basics of the espionage theme (i.e. go into this place | | sneakily and steal stuff), but not much beyond that. In the concept of its | | presentation, it works, but this game isn't really selling the theme of | | espionage through a sidescroller where everything is randomly shooting at | | you. It's a shame it's the only espionage game in the pack, really, I | | thought that was a pretty good topic myself. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [145/400] - | Not complete crap, but suffering a lot from being clearly incomplete. What | | this looks like to me is an engine with a justification tacked onto it at | | the last minute, and the engine isn't even that great. I could be wrong | | about that of course, but still, pretty blah game. | | | | "Oh wow I get to pick my own name!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 98485 = Thanatos Insignia ====================== VIOLENCE/LIGHT = [291/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 97/120] - | This was very well polished as a game, and in particular I'm impressed | | (though not surprised) by the length. On the one hand, there's not a lot of | | variation in the gameplay mechanic -- you go up to things and press WASD | | until they're dead, while dodging shots, rinse and repeat. On the other, the | | delivery of the various elements of the game, parceling out story and new | | level design every couple minutes, and a level-up completionist quest, kept | | the action from getting too dull. This is a pretty formulaic game, and of | | course Lancer's fingerprints are all over it. But it's a good formula, so | | it's not like I'm complaining or anything. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 65/ 90] - | This game has a lot going for it visually, and so the real missing element | | to me is coherence. Symptomatic of the core problem with this game, the | | graphics just don't make much sense, they don't mean anything. They're | | pretty, sure, and I think the level design came off especially well, but | | looking at this game, I really have no idea what the tone is supposed to be, | | and the constantly changing graphics aren't making that job any easier. | | Still, they are pretty well executed. I may not know what any of the enemies | | are supposed to be, or why I'm in a barren wasteland one moment and some | | sort of temple the next, but at least they look good. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 72/ 80] - | An engine game through and through, I guess if I'm leaving anything off | | here it's because I would have liked to see more. A game like this lives or | | dies by the strength of its engine, and so I'm happy to report that the | | engine seems to be really solid. The only potential glitch I noticed is that | | you could hide behind a wall in a fight, which would trigger your short | | range weapon, which for some reason would clip through the wall, thus giving | | you a fairly big advantage when the enemies couldn't shoot back. Other than | | that, it was just about perfect, and as one can see, having a solid engine | | makes it easy to throw together a bunch of levels to play it on and make a | | pretty long game. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 20/ 50] - | Lancer keeps pushing the edge on incomprehensible stories and I think he | | may have crossed it. Now it isn't that the story text about the hospital and | | Amelia and the HELL SYSTEM didn't make sense to me, since I thought I was | | following that just fine. It's that the story there really had nothing to do | | with the game I was playing, so far as I can tell. The closest connection I | | could come up with was that fighting random hippos and vagina dentata babies | | and giant flans and evil Jimbo Wales had something to do with navigating the | | HELL SYSTEM. But even I stop giving the benefit of the doubt after awhile. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 24/ 40] - | As with the story and the graphics, the music suffers not from being BAD so | | much as being incoherent. A mishmash of random J-Pop and classical | | orchestra, I really have no idea what this music is trying to say. Perhaps, | | I want to be a popstar? The sound design was pretty good, at least, in the | | fighting and in the interludes. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 13/ 20] - | The story here did make an effort at tying things into a general theme | | about violence, and of course it was a game whose primary motif was running | | around killing everything that moved, but in the end the story didn't really | | tie together, and the action didn't feel that much more violent than your | | average bloodless space shooter. There was something here, at least. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [291/400] - | Definitely the favorite of this competition, and it's kind of a shame | | there's not more to compete with it. This is a good game, but it's not quite | | a great game, and Lancer has certainly done better in the past; some | | competition here would have been really nice. It's nice to see him and | | Lachesis in cahoots, though, I can't say I dislike the result. Just wish it | | made more sense. | | | | "You won't get away with your nefarious deeds this time, Jimbo Wales!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= FINAL SCORES ================================================================ 1. 98485 - Thanatos Insignia ---------------------- VIOLENCE/LIGHT - [291/400] - 2. 07865 - Anger is an Energy --------------------- VIOLENCE/HEAVY - [273/400] - 3. 3.142 - Demons Demons Everywhere --------------- VIOLENCE/HEAVY - [202/400] - 4. -0001 - All That Violence ---------------------- VIOLENCE/HEAVY - [166/400] - 5. 47238 - Mission: Most Likely Horribly Incompl - ESPIONAGE/LIGHT - [145/400] - DQ 00000 - Violence Makes You Stupid -------------- VIOLENCE/LIGHT - [ 95/400] - ===============================================================================/