Riff gave me his old iPad after buying a shiny new fancy one with a retina display, which is some sort of technology thing that he is very excited about and I have only the vaguest concept of what it is. I have taken to calling the magic retina iPad “the one with more pixels,” which leads people to assume I know what a retina display is and am feigning ignorance to be hip and funny. This is great and all, but I find it a little irksome that my fake fake stupidity yields better results than my real fake stupidity (I might be from the Midwest, but I still know you don’t ask for chopsticks at an Ethiopian restaurant.) What was I talking about?
Oh, right, so I have this iPad with all this stuff on it, and I need to clean it off so I can put different (and most likely incredibly stupid) stuff on it. I hate to delete a game without playing it, though, and I hate to play a game without blogging about it (that is not at all true), so, well, you see where this is going.
Here is part one of the breakdown.
King Cashing: Stripped-down RPG where the combat mechanics consist entirely of slot machine. The trappings are very satisfying — there are random loot drops and interesting decisions to be made about what weapons and bonuses you want on your reels, and completing a speedrun or earning a unique weapon from a harder boss fight actually feels like an achievement — but I can only recommend it to people who enjoy luck-based gaming. Personally, I loved the shit out of it, but I’m the kind of person who wishes they televised pachinko.
Keep or scrap: Got 46 out of 50 achievements, then deleted for my own sanity.
Groove Coaster: Fun, challenging rhythm game with, God help me, I am about to use some phrase like “funky fresh retrofuture aesthetic,” and awesome music, which is what really makes or breaks a rhythm game.
Keep or scrap: Keep, at least until I have mastered the levels and obtained all the songs to play in my car.
Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP: This game is beautiful and amazing and everyone should play it. I spent more time with no idea what I was supposed to be doing than I generally have patience for, but the environments are so gorgeous and the sound is so perfect that I didn’t mind very much. Also, the writing is hilarious.
Keep or scrap: Beat the game, bought it on Steam (primarily for the soundtrack), still can’t bring myself to delete it.
Puzzle Quest 2: RPG with Bejeweled for combat. I had trouble wrapping my brain around a game of Bejeweled where you and your opponent take turns, therefore if you line up some sweet juicy four-way action, it is your opponent who gets to reap the benefits, which for a four-piece include going again, so that they can further beat your ass into the ground. My barbarian had a theoretically sweet skill that turned glyphs red, which in practice turned glyphs red in a way that got me murdered by rats. I feel like there might be a better way to do an RPG with Bejeweled for combat. Also, the writing is super phoned-in fantasy template stuff. Art is nice though.
Keep or scrap: Sayonara, Puzzle Quest 2. My love to Zetsubou Sensei.
Star Walk: This turns out not to be a game, but an app that shows the constellations and gives you information about planets and things.
Keep or scrap: You know, this is one of the larger apps on my iPad, and I will probably never use it, but somehow I really enjoy having something that gives percentages along with the moon phases. I have always been slightly nervous around analog clocks, and I never realized I was longing for a digital moon.
Lightopus: One of those games — is this an actual genre? — where you are an aquatic creature or a paramecium or both, and you are swimming around collecting the right bits and avoiding the wrong bits. A swimmer? A Spitz? The instructions for it, in addition to being incomprehensible in a tl;dr way, use Comic Sans. Fortunately, there’s a tutorial, which makes me wonder why they bothered foisting the instructions on new players and scaring them out of their wits.
Keep or scrap: I may let this one live for a bit, but I’m not sure I’ll get a lot of play out of it. Not super into Spitzes. (That term is so not going to catch on.)
Corpse Craft: Strange Edward Gorey-style tower defense/puzzler where matching tiles collapse-style earns you resources that can be used to reanimate armies of prostitutes (et al) to battle your fellow necromancy students, who have gone all Lord of the Flies since the headmaster was murdered. (Granted, they didn’t have far to go to reach Lord of the Flies.) I am terrible at collapse games, but I found this compelling.
Keep or scrap: Keep, preferably in a jar of formaldehyde. (Do they make informaldehyde?)
Stay tuned for part two! I mean, don’t actually put any effort into staying tuned; I’d feel terrible. Just try not to delete this blog from your RSS feed where you have undoubtedly put it to placate Riff, who gets kinda foamy at the mouth about RSS feeds.
Tags: corpse craft, groove coaster, ipad, king cashing, lightopus, puzzle quest 2, star walk, sword & sworcery
