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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to My week in gaming. I'm starting feel much better then I was last week as will be evidenced by the large assortment of crap I finally got around to playing this week. To be fair though most of what I played this week was all loaded into just Saturday due to the simple fact I got stuck out of town for a good hunk of the week. Now, on with the show.
After having heard good things about it on Podtoid I thought I would check out CarneyVale Showtime. I went into it expecting a lot less then was actually there. It was described as a really good flash game and I had that thought stuck in my head all the while I was playing it until I managed to nail down what it really reminded me of, DK: King Of Swing. And the more I thought about it that's exactly what it was with prettier visuals, and I was okay with that, especially considering the price.
Alright, next victim. Here we have another XBLA Community Game, Groov. I started playing it and was noticing a theme here. Almost all the XBLA Community Games are extremely derivative. Now the problem with the term derivative is that the word typically carries a negative connotation and that shouldn't be the case. Like Groov you can derive your primary gameplay mechanic from another game and still come out with something wholly different and that's what has happened here. At first glance it would appear we have a straight up Geometry Wars knock-off. Upon further inspection, I realized there was another element present that I was enjoying and it's the Q effect. By Q effect I mean Q Entertainment. Q Entertainment has this nifty trait going for them where everything you do in the game has the delightful side effect of making music, and I like that. Because of the Q effect present in this otherwise straight up Geometry Wars knock-off turns this game into a rather enjoyable slightly slower paced very zen inducing game with Geometry Wars mechanics and I dig it. Once again the price tag isn't to bad either.
Now I know I just talked about the fact that the word derivative shouldn't be stuck with such a negative confutation but it's games like this that give it that negative connotation. Instead of taking something and building on it the just shamelessly took Robotron and lazily re-skinned it and couldn't even be fucked to give it a name that even attempts to hide the fact that they just stole another game and tried to make a quick buck off it. Ugh. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So on that note, onward and upward.
Okay so maybe I lied. I know I said Onward and upward but after Ultratron I'd settle for just onward and in this case I'm gonna have to. Here we have ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse. After suffering through he demo I can confidently say that we have nothing more then the poor man's Smash Bros. with some decent hand drawn sprites that unfortunately can't be appreciated because the camera is always yanked so far back you can't see what the fuck is going on. I'm leaving it at that.
What the hell did I just play? Weapon of choice strikes me as Contra on one hell of an acid trip. Maybe if I had actually bought the game I would be more inclined to figure out what the hell was happening on the tv while I watched it but as it stands that demo was not convincing me that I should be buying it any time soon.
now I want to end my romp through XBLA community games on an upbeat so I'm gonna bring in Machiavelli's Ascent. Taken for game play alone it's nothing that couldn't have been done years and years ago. The real draw to the game however is the rather stunning art and very stringy music. Taken all together Machiavelli's Ascent straddles that fine line of game and art. If the game mechanics itself were more involved I would have no problem what so ever adding it to the list of games that gets pointed to whenever the games as art discussion comes up. But as it stands, the mechanics here barely rise above that of a run of the mill mini-game but the minimal price tag combined with the enjoyable art style and music makes it a reasonably good buy.
Now for the obligatory mention. As a few of you are already aware I got the King Pack on Friday and spent a fair amount of time Friday evening playing it and working on getting my King started. The King Pack is a great buy at only two bucks despite the fact that it was missing two of the rumored things I was really looking forward to but they may be coming in the second dlc pack that was confirmed to be coming at some point on The Behemoth's website.
I would like to put out an additional tidbit this week in regards to some of the tunage I have been rocking out at work. For those that don't know, Reserve Tank: VARIAtions came about as a get well gesture for a very sick and bed-ridden member of the OCRemix community. I think it was a rather amazing gesture and a beautiful case of a community coming together in support of one of its own. A link to the website with all the tracks available for download can be found here All in all it's an amazing album. I love putting it on and envisioning Super Metroid getting the full on remake treatment and looking like this all the way through and set to this soundtrack in place of the original.
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I tried weapon of choice actually, I would say it's more of a Doom Chronicles rather than anything else.
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