VGNG 8: The Penultimate Batch
Discounting at least 2 XNA games that I can’t play with my current software configuration, I have 5 VGNG games left having played this batch, so in order to be able to wrap this up tomorrow; here’s my take on another 6…
Great Magic of the Deep, I’m not really sure of this one. It certainly seems like a poor excuse for a joke game since the third level is impossible to beat, but there might just be some ingenious way of beating it that just didn’t cross my mind. I don’t really see anything amusing with the game or the “ending”, so it sounds possible that I just missed something.
Heavy Metal Ninja Shootout is a vertical shooter. It has some upgrades and is fairly well-made but doesn’t really sport anything unique and isn’t particularly interesting.
Shameful Pachinko Romance allows you to create romances between characters based on how well you play Pachinko. As there isn’t much randomness to the balls and control is exact, you can easily get a perfect game every time so the quest to see every ending becomes pretty monotonous. And I still don’t like GDI graphics.
Small-time Scorched Earth Invasion is a mashup of space invaders and scorched earth in that you control a tank shooting projectiles affected by gravity at the enemies from Space Invaders. The game is made even more interesting since you play on a spherical planet instead of a plane, and given some more variation it could become really great. As it is now, you can just fire projectiles into a constant orbit and they will circle around and shield the planet until there are so many invaders that no other strategy would work anyway.
Twin Hobo Rocket has two hobos flying through the sky in a makeshift rocket, trying to get money attached to balloons. The controls is like a sluggish version of Asteroids and your only obstacle is all the stuff flying in the way, so it becomes repetitive after awhile. The brilliant art direction and voiced comments of the hobos prolong the life of the game, though.
Dynamite Prison Armageddon is a top-down puzzle game where you try to approach birthday cakes that house gremlins who create labyrinths of dynamite around you. While the difficulty is very uneven, the game is varied and presents some different solutions with very few means so it is certainly worth playing.