Tower Defense games are the hot dogs of the video game world. And by that I mean that they are readily availible from nearly any source because of their cheapness in both material and preparation. There’s a good reason that the early days of Battle.net were flooded with thousands of variations of Tower Defense games, few of which were very good. But the genre did start to evolve and remained popular with players on Battle.net until DOTA came along and killed all fun. Tower Defense now lives on thanks to its simplicity and easy nature. Its a fun, time consuming genre that translates wonderfully to cell phones meaning its enjoyed by normal people as well as inert gastropods such as myself. This weeks game is actually a port of a cell phone game that was given a slight make over to make it palatable for PC. Defense Technica is its name and towers shooting at aliens is its game.
Just like my beloved grandfather my childhood was filled with dead Nazi’s. His was a little different though, what with the actual guns and the acquisition of a lifelong smoking addiction that would eventually do him in with the help of my grandmothers butter-heavy Swedish cooking. The Nazis I fought were more of the pixelated variety in colorful environments that protected a robotic Fuhrer in “Wolfenstein”. Classic FPS games were a breed of their own. Ask any old nerd about them and they’ll tell you all about games like Doom and Wolfenstein dominating their time between Trig classes.
Being from Minnesota I have been conditioned to think of the word “losers” when I hear the word “Vikings.” But hey, just because a football team is terrible doesn’t mean we shouldn’t force the tax payers to buy them a stadium to continue to lose in! Hell, this state has bought a new stadium for so many losers that I’m surprised they haven’t gotten one for me yet. But Adult Swim Games and new developer Crazy Viking Studios sought to change my negative opinion of the famous marauding people with their retro inspired torture-fest Volgarr the Viking, now available on Steam.
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Now before I go on lets get one thing out of the way. Yes Adult Swim has a relationship with Valve. Yes Volgarr the Viking got preferential treatment on Steam Greenlight and didn’t have it as hard as games typically do there. Yes that isn’t fair. Basically they cut in line and got greenlit. If that bothers you I understand and do not blame you. The game is still pretty damn good and frankly its nice to get something greenlit that isn’t another god damn zombie game.
Seriously people haven’t we had enough zombies already?
Volgarr the Viking is a callback that reeks so heavily of the nature of NES/SNES era games the only thing that gives away the fact that it was made this year is that it runs much smoother than the 8-16 bit era ever did. In a way only old farts like me know, the difficulty comes mainly from Volgarrs slow movement, delayed attack, and jump commitment which is often at odds with the speedier and more agile enemies. For you young ‘uns think of it like a 2-D Monster Hunter where over committing to an attack leaves you open for damage. And speaking of damage, you can’t take a whole lot. Borrowing the health system from Ghouls and Ghosts your health is limited to single pieces of armor you slowly pick up. The challenge in getting health comes from being able to go long periods of time without getting hit. So get used to surviving on a prayer.
Even his jump conveys a level of radical-ness the world hasn’t seen since Conan The Barbarian.
What I’m quickly reminded of with this level of difficulty is how slow progression is. You’ll make it to points like the first boss and most likely die several dozen times just figuring out how to damage them, meaning you’ll be replaying things ad nauseum. There is a certain bent appeal in mastering games like this and being able to impress others with your ninja reflexes but if you are like me the pain will frustrate you greatly and prolonged sessions will actually go worse for you as they go on, like its draining your physical endurance just as much as your mental endurance. All this sounds like it would be a bad thing but the game fully embraces its difficulty and is advertised as “hard as balls” and they aren’t kidding. Please note: If you do have hard balls please see a doctor immediately.
Outside of the game play the game has a delightfully heavy metal aesthetic. Any screenshot of the game looks like it could easily be painted on the side of a conversion van. The whole package sends a clear message that Adult Swim and Crazy Viking Studios knew exactly what they wanted to make and nailed it perfectly. Buy this game if:
You like classic games
You like outrageously difficult games
You like heavy metal fantasy
Don’t buy this game if:
You don’t like hard games
You didn’t start gaming until the Nintendo 64 or beyond
Muscular near naked people and gore offends you
You don’t consume the hallucnigenic drugs nessecery to enjoy anything Adult Swim makes
All of us are on an endless and unstoppable march to the grave. The sad part of that though is as we go we are forced to watch as the worlds we loved slowly fall apart and vanish and are replaced with new ones that we see as terrible. It’s not so much that the new stuff is inherently bad, just that its different from what we grew up with but different enough that we don’t see that, only that our beloved figures from youth are no longer in the spot light. That said there is no denying that video games are as dead as a secondary character in a Joss Whedon production. Everything that comes out now is terrible, watered down crap for idiots who don’t even like video games like we do. And that’s selling in record breaking numbers so there’s no chance its going away. Our only hope for one of our beloved franchises getting a big budget is if Michael Bay decides to make it and I’m not sure we’re ready for the result of that.
Michael Bay presents: Kirby’s Dreamland
So where is the place for us? The old, the bitter, the resentful, the spiteful, the people who want games to have that arcade feel with colorful concepts and are free of bland, brown haired space marine protagonists who brood about their troubled history and kill for redemption? Kickstarter seems to be answering that call and niche games are filling the void within us that just can’t seem to be filled by Cheetos. Of course by being niche they can’t really rise too high but its nice that someone out there is catering to us! While many Kickstarters have been funded only a few have actually seen the light of day so far. But that hasn’t deterred many people from donating to new promises. Many of the biggest known Kickstarters have been for revivals of dead franchises or genres and they usually pass their goals with flying colors. Granted that doesn’t solve all the problems. If you haven’t already track down the behind the scenes documentary Double Fine is doing alongside their game to see the sadder side of game development.
This is not a sad scene at Double Fine.
Former Capcom B.M.O.C Kenji Inafune’s own personal Kickstarter for his reinvention-of-the-wheel Mega Man game called “Mighty No. 9″ just finished the other day and managed to hit all of its stretch goals and clocked in at about 4 million dollars with about 70,000 backers. That’s pretty damn impressive for a concept that Capcom turned its back on years ago along with a big chunk of the market judging by their old sales numbers. But there IS a market out there for this sort of thing, us old bitter gamers who won’t or can’t give up the hobby. We’ve got a lot of time until this comes out and we’ll know if its actually any good. But I like this trend. And I really hope to see it continue and we get more games made out of passion involving genres that have long since fallen out of style. Last week I lamented the Star Fox franchise, but someone out there must also love the on-rails shooter games like Star Fox and Panzer Dragoon. I know I can’t be the only one out there who bought and loved Panzer Dragoon Orta on the Xbox, but chances are I’m the only one who comprehended the games story!
What the HELL is going on here?
Let’s not go too far with this and think that everything’s great from here on out. Things could very easily turn out bad and the final nail be hammered into many a coffin. These niche games need to keep coming out and new developers encouraged. Sure, we’ll get some crap and it’ll be a while before anyone really rocks the AAA world with something truly new and tasty. But the bubble will burst one day for the big names and we’ll fall into the doldrums. It happened before, and its happened to movies and TV. But that doesn’t mean death. At this point video games have been around too long to completely die. It’s through conflict like this that things get better and slime like focus groups and marketers lose their ill-gotten power and the creative come forward.
This is what will save gaming. If you don’t know what this is or did not donate to its Kickstarter you are a dumb.
Nothing stays popular forever, and when something falls from grace that doesn’t mean its gone for good. Trends come back and fade again just like the tide. And while I know the heyday of my video game youth is gone, it’ll live on in the niche market until it gets popular again. And that day can’t come soon enough! The next generation on Xbox One and PS4 looks like it’ll be the blandest and most non-video game generation to date! Get out of my hobby, hipsters! Die-hards and hardcores only!
Star Fox and Metroid are the unloved middle children of the Nintendo Family. Frequently they get pawned off to some other developer with mixed results, sure we got the glory of Metroid Prime but we also got the horror of Starfox Adventures, and also Metroid: Other M. It’s been about seven years since we got a NEW Star Fox game, Star Fox 64 for the 3DS doesn’t count since it’s just a remake. So were left with a DS game that does a few neat things but ultimately pales in comparison to older games. So What went so wrong? Read more …
Gone Home is getting a lot of praise lately and I must know why. Frankly I get suspicious whenever something gets a little too much praise and feel like at that point I can’t possibly enjoy something because it’s been hyped too much. Maybe it’s some subconscious desire to play devil’s advocate whether it’s warranted or not but I had to know what the big deal was. Read more …
Michael Bay presents: Kirby’s Dreamland
This is not a sad scene at Double Fine.
What the HELL is going on here?
This is what will save gaming. If you don’t know what this is or did not donate to its Kickstarter you are a dumb.
