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Games I Have Watched: Indie Quick Hits
The impetus for my video game playing revolution came from watching the BF play games for my entertainment. I want to give my impressions of the game he played for me, but it's been long enough for these games that I don't remember much. So, quick hits.
Cave Story is a really cute platformer where you play as an amnesiac robot who makes friends with some bunny people and go on a quest. The story is entertaining and fun and there are multiple endings. I adored the graphics; all the sprites are super cute so I really enjoyed watching the BF play. The platforming elements seemed well done to my untrained eye: some tricky bits but nothing impossibly hard assuming you can play platformers, with the exception of the requisite platformer hell bonus level.
An Untitled Story is another cute platformer where you start out as an egg exploring your world. As you explore, you gain new abilities allowing you to explore previously inaccessible areas. Gradually you also discover a story. The graphics all look like they were drawn in MSPaint but have a surprising amount of character for their simplicity. The exploration elements are a lot of fun. There are lots of different areas, each with its own distinct feel, and the areas all have reasons to revisit them multiple times because there's so much in each one to explore and discover. By the time the plot finally kicks in, it adds this amazingly menacing and suspenseful air to everything you do. I could never ever manage to play this game on my own, but I was enthralled with it from the start.
La Mulana is also a platformer, this one done by fans of the Sony MSX computer. You play an archeologist exploring an ancient temple and discovering its secrets. In a lot of ways, La Mulana is similar to An Untitled Story: both are non-linear, exploratory platforms with a slow-developing plot. However La Mulana delights in tricking the player, and hardly anything is what it seems. I found the graphics to be pretty meh. They're well done, but I don't respond to them. My biggest problem with La Mulana is that the player ends up traveling in circles a lot trying to find the new area or unlock a talent or otherwise move things along. (This feeling is not helped by how tricksy the game and its puzzles are.) People who are fans of Metroid and Castlevania (a.k.a. the game's main audience) probably think of this as a feature, but it makes for boring watching. The plot was interesting and I enjoyed watching when stuff was moving along, just there were a lot of times when stuff wasn't moving along.
Super Meat Boy is a platformer where you're constantly trying to rescue your kidnapped girlfriend. Unlike the previous three games, Super Meat Boy does not have an involved plot. But the levels are generally short enough that watching the BF try multiple times was fun - yay, he made it past this tricky bit! oh, he just barely missed this other bit! - rather than sleep inducing. This is very much a platformer designed for platformer nerds. As a reward for completing a level, you get to see a video of all your tries at once, which was my favorite bit. The graphics are a weird combination of gory and cute, and that probably goes a long way to explaining why I was less bored by this than La Mulana.
In conclusion: The BF really likes platformers, and I really like cute graphics.
Cave Story is a really cute platformer where you play as an amnesiac robot who makes friends with some bunny people and go on a quest. The story is entertaining and fun and there are multiple endings. I adored the graphics; all the sprites are super cute so I really enjoyed watching the BF play. The platforming elements seemed well done to my untrained eye: some tricky bits but nothing impossibly hard assuming you can play platformers, with the exception of the requisite platformer hell bonus level.
An Untitled Story is another cute platformer where you start out as an egg exploring your world. As you explore, you gain new abilities allowing you to explore previously inaccessible areas. Gradually you also discover a story. The graphics all look like they were drawn in MSPaint but have a surprising amount of character for their simplicity. The exploration elements are a lot of fun. There are lots of different areas, each with its own distinct feel, and the areas all have reasons to revisit them multiple times because there's so much in each one to explore and discover. By the time the plot finally kicks in, it adds this amazingly menacing and suspenseful air to everything you do. I could never ever manage to play this game on my own, but I was enthralled with it from the start.
La Mulana is also a platformer, this one done by fans of the Sony MSX computer. You play an archeologist exploring an ancient temple and discovering its secrets. In a lot of ways, La Mulana is similar to An Untitled Story: both are non-linear, exploratory platforms with a slow-developing plot. However La Mulana delights in tricking the player, and hardly anything is what it seems. I found the graphics to be pretty meh. They're well done, but I don't respond to them. My biggest problem with La Mulana is that the player ends up traveling in circles a lot trying to find the new area or unlock a talent or otherwise move things along. (This feeling is not helped by how tricksy the game and its puzzles are.) People who are fans of Metroid and Castlevania (a.k.a. the game's main audience) probably think of this as a feature, but it makes for boring watching. The plot was interesting and I enjoyed watching when stuff was moving along, just there were a lot of times when stuff wasn't moving along.
Super Meat Boy is a platformer where you're constantly trying to rescue your kidnapped girlfriend. Unlike the previous three games, Super Meat Boy does not have an involved plot. But the levels are generally short enough that watching the BF try multiple times was fun - yay, he made it past this tricky bit! oh, he just barely missed this other bit! - rather than sleep inducing. This is very much a platformer designed for platformer nerds. As a reward for completing a level, you get to see a video of all your tries at once, which was my favorite bit. The graphics are a weird combination of gory and cute, and that probably goes a long way to explaining why I was less bored by this than La Mulana.
In conclusion: The BF really likes platformers, and I really like cute graphics.