This is only the second edition of “Minus the Pudding,” but already I find myself wondering if, instead of playing these games, I’d be better off playing with actual pudding. Actual pudding may not have the solid AI of the day’s top videogames, and it certainly has less replay value (eww), but it is delicious, and it’s a lot more entertaining than most of the Xbox Live Indie Games I’ve been playing over the past several weeks.

For example, I played a game called Goblyn Stomp. Its name is apropos, which is a French word whose literal definition is “the absolute only thing that you do in Goblyn Stomp is stomp goblins.”  It’s kind of like the original Super Mario Bros., except that the only enemies in the game are Goombas, the entire game takes place on one screen, and seriously, all you ever do is stomp goblins.

I also played another game whose entire purpose, apparently, was to flash horrifying imagery at you from out of nowhere. As in, you’re wandering along a dark corridor and then BAM THERE’S AN ALBINO WITH BLOODY EYEBALLS MISSING HALF ITS FACE THROWING UP ON YOU.

At least, I assume that’s what the game’s entire purpose was—after peeing myself, I wasn’t really in the mood to play that game anymore, so I can’t tell you if it gets any better, or if it continues to be a total jump-out-at-you-athon.

It’s because of experiences like those that a little game called Office DisOrders was a total godsend for me. Office DisOrders changed my life, inasmuch as it reminded me that it’s not completely impossible for these Indie Games to be anything but a waste of hard drive space—it reminded me that, very occasionally, you can get your dollar’s worth from them, and then some.

But more on that later. First, I’m going to talk about some of the other games I had to slog through before discovering Office DisOrders. Enjoy!

Pixel Whirled

Pirate and Ninja—mortal enemies, owing to the fact that Ninja simply cannot accept Pirate’s clear and total supremacy in every way—team up in this game to bring disappointment to the masses.

The graphics and music of Pixel Whirled will appeal to fans of Mega Man 9 and other new-age retro videogames—in fact, the entire reason I decided to check this game out was its awesome faux coverart. The gameplay, unfortunately, will only appeal to those few gamers who often think that, gosh, the one thing keeping our world from reaching a state of utopia is the total lack of Space Invaders clones; MORE SPACE INVADERS, PLEASE!

In this game, you shoot bullets out of your head until all the monsters are gone. Then you flip the screen over, and you shoot ninja stars out of your head until all the other monsters are gone. That’s pretty much it. There’s no 2D side-scrolling, two-by-four-swinging, president-saving beat ‘em up action like the coverart implies; it’s seriously just Space Invaders with killer apples. Not even Pirate can save this one from Yawnsville.

Dreams of Witchtown

Dreams of Witchtown promotes itself as a side-scrolling action RPG. Now, when I think of side-scrolling action RPGs, I think of games like Zelda II, or Legend of the Mystical Ninja, if I’m feeling particularly obscure. This game, however, has less in common with Zelda II than it does with: soccer. You know, the one from gym class, where the point is to get as far away from the ball as you possibly can, lest some overly aggressive sports-minded bucket of hormones yells at you for kicking it the wrong way. Boy, I hated gym class.

Anyway.

You’re a witch on a quest to travel from left to right in order to destroy the ultimate evil. You have magical fire spells, sure, but your primary attack, so far as I can tell, is soccer balls. No, seriously! You’re a witch—you know, zap zap, zap, BOOOOOM!!—and your primary means of defeating (defeeting?) your enemies is to kick soccer balls at their heads. I don’t know if that’s terrible or freaking amazing, but I’m leaning toward the latter. Especially since you can kick them from mid-air.

Here’s how the soccer balls thing makes sense in terms of the game’s story. (Yes, there is an explanation.) Our heroine was flying on her broom to Witchtown in order to destroy the ultimate evil, when suddenly, she was hit in the head by an errant soccer ball, no doubt kicked by some No Good Kids These Days. She came crashing down, and—this is a direct quote from the game’s intro—she was “saved by a bag of soccer balls.” I don’t know about you, but I found that line to be incredibly evocative, conjuring an image in my head of a dangerous but lovable bag of soccer balls that becomes your companion and friend throughout the duration of the game. However, I’m pretty sure the game just means that the bag broke her fall.

Anyway, she gathers up the soccer balls and continues her journey on foot. And that’s why your primary attack is soccer balls.

XMAS Taxi

The best videogames, with no exception, are the ones in which you can kill yourself and/or innocent bystanders in a hilarious fashion. This is the primary reason SimCopter was so much fun: because you can pick up a passenger, fly high into the sky—well beyond the height of the game’s tallest skyscrapers—and push your passengers right the hell out of your helicopter. …In fact, this is the only reason SimCopter was so much fun.

XMAS Taxi is entertaining for more or less the same reason. The game is a direct sequel to another Xbox Indie Game, called Astro Taxi, in which you fly around a one-screen stage, pick up passengers, and zoooooom them over to their destinations. This game is basically that game, except with snowmen. My favorite part of the game was when I’d pick up a passenger, push the analog stick to the side as far as it’d go, and “accidentally” go flying at warp-speed into a brick wall.

Playing this game the real way is also fun, too, and more than a little challenging. It’s a simple, retro kind of fun that’s great for all us old fogies who just don’t know what to do with all these damn bits that today’s consoles have.

Office DisOrders

This game is all of the fun of the office—not The Office, the one with all the wacky hijinx, but your actual office—in your Xbox 360. All the fun of making copies, checking your e-mail, and pretending that you’re being productive when you’re really just watching videos of alpacas on YouTube. All the fun of filling out paperwork. All the fun of making coffee. All the fun ofzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sorry, must’ve dozed off. Anyway, that’s what the game seems like, if all you play is the demo. In a pretty unfortunate design flaw, the game doesn’t get good until the very end of the free trial, at which point everyone’s already quit and gone back to playing Mass Effect 2, and trying to figure out which alien species they haven’t slept with yet. It’s a shame they did that, too, because Office DisOrders—despite initial appearances—is one of the most fun Xbox Live Indie Games available today. They really should have stuck with it.

Office DisOrders is, kind of bizarrely, an adventure game slash The Sims. There are meters you have to maintain, like bladder, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, but there are also puzzles you have to solve by picking up items, using items, giving items to other people, and peeking inside of boxes to see if anyone’s hiding inside them. Also, there may be explosions involved at some point, and people may or may not remove their pants. If you’ve always wished that your Sims had more storyline, more puzzles, and more, you know, actual point, then you should check out this game.

This game improves upon The Sims in another way—perhaps not in terms of realism, but in terms of actual entertainment. There’s no time stress in this game. You know how, in The Sims, there’s only so many hours in the day for you to work out, paint a picture, stare at your fish tank, and beg your sweetheart for “woo-hoo”? There’s nothing like that in this game. You have all the time in the world to do everything you need to do, which I found made the game much more relaxing to play.

And the game’s also funny! This is at the core of what’s wrong with its trial, because nothing at all funny happens until the last scene of the trial, and the humor—as well as the weird genre-mashing gameplay—is what makes this game so entertaining. There are visual puns. Visual puns! And there is, in fact, plenty of wacky hijinxing, especially as you get further and further into the game. I don’t want to spoil any of it, so I’m just going to have to hope that, at the total cost of $1, you can take my word for it and check out this game.

Games from early in a console’s life often feel a tad like they’re missing something. Have you played Red Steel? Of course you have, and you’re scarred for life because of it. This pain is nothing; deal with it.

Red Steel didn’t feel refined enough. A good vodka has been filtered many times, as has a good game. Take the epic Ocarina of Time: triple distilled. We’ve all played games we’ve regretted buying. It’s part of the console launch, and you were suckered into Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. Enjoy your softcore pornography, jerks.

What usually makes these launch titles awful is just that they’re very primitive, or, rather, they just aren’t breathtaking enough (if such a thing can actually be decided). That is why we were all shocked when Nintendo released Super Mario 64. They weren’t laying down in some office on their arses. Prowess like that shows—Super Mario 64 is absolutely huge, with an outrageous 120 stars to obtain. (Which I never have. Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride’s 100-coin stars mock me from within the SRAM of the cartridge. I hear them snickering as I pass by.)

From the beginning, Nintendo 64 games had a lot to live up to. Super Mario 64 introduced the possibility of having a large 3D in-game world brimming with possibilities, secrets, hidden levels, and penguins. I hadn’t even seen a penguin in a videogame before the glorious day I ripped open the packaging of Super Mario 64 (James Pond 2 notwithstanding).

After Super Mario 64, there were an abundance of platformers released on the Nintendo 64. And they were all, as platformers tend to be, kiddy and stupid. Mario had opened the pen, and all the toddlers waddled into the Nintendo 64 games library. Oh great.

Despite the mustachioed, ravioli-guzzling Italian plumbing the way, however, it is clearly Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon that really shines through. This game isn’t exactly “kiddy”—although it is cute, colourful and has cheerful music. FINE. IT IS A KIDS GAME. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

So Goemon is not a mystical ninja, but actually  a small-time thief. He is based on the Japanese equivalent of Robin Hood, who, instead of having Merry Men, had Scantily Clad Schoolgirls. Goemon does harbor a slightly odd obsession with pipes; make of that what you will.

Tackling climate change some insidious threat, alongside Goemon the Great, is a supporting cast of equally oddball followers: a fat guy, a small robot, and someone actually worth mentioning.

Ah, yes. Amongst Goemon’s impromptu dysfunctional family is the sweet and nimble Yae, Ninja Secret Agent (or something equally as awesome-sounding). She is loyal to king and country, and is awfully good at slicing enemies into halves. She is mysterious, with her long, flowing green hair that mesmerizes the player.

Also, our delectable kunoichi heroine can turn into a mermaid at will—complete with clam shells covering her breasts as if they are some kind of seafood buffet.  This would be a good time to move onto another subject before this review becomes a declaration of affection for a bunch of polygons, which, in previous drafts, it did.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (or Goemon 64) is pretty much a platformer-adventure hybrid. There are no levels, as it were—just exploration of Japan and various creatively designed dungeons. For those who have only been born in the last ten years, it’s like Fallout 3, in that it contains a world, quests, and various items you will need. Oh, and you hurt the developers when you download from a torrent tracker, you detestable pirate!

Goemon 64 also draws parallels to the creepy Castlevania and the messianic Metroid. You do not have a hub area in which you unlock levels, no; the whole of Japan is your hub area. In the nature of these well-known adventure titles, there are a number of puzzles with a rough order, and there are a number of abilities that help you solve these puzzles. Along the way, like in the aforementioned games, you unlock new equipment and better skills for completing harder challenges. We needn’t go into more detail about that. Next slide.

Each of Goemon 64’s multiple heroes has their own abilities and traits. Particular puzzles call for specific characters, so it becomes a mental game of Twister as you associate which character has right hand on green, and left leg on red. The characters themselves are introduced such that, as your current characters are dried up, another is added, whose skills and abilities are necessary to continue. What starts out as a small roster of abilities is maxed out across the space of the game, with necessary skills and secret unlockable powers to be obtained.

So far, I’ve tackled the platforming and the adventuring, which is most of what this game comprises. But let it be noted that, during this journey through Nippon, you will encounter a few minigames. Minigames that wouldn’t feel out of place in Mario Party. And besides these, when Goemon calls upon the gigantic clockwork robot Goemon Impact, you have a small section unlike anything I’ve ever played.

Then, after you have smashed a small Japanese town to pieces, you are thrown headfirst into a boss battle that puts you in command of said gigantic clockwork robot, with the goal of beating ten levels of shit out of another, stronger-looking robot.

It doesn’t take more than a single brain cell to see that what we have within this cartridge is an epic, harking back to the good old days of tongue-in-cheek adventure games.

In 1998, it seems that we still cared about how fun games were. If a videogame turned out a bit rough round the edges, but the whole production was fun from the first five minutes to the staff roll, it was forgiven for its flaws and loved. I don’t see many people who can hug Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. And you know what? Screw them.

Goemon 64 is text-heavy, with lots of clues and hints that, when thought over rationally, lead you to your destination. If you never paid attention in class, and you can’t read, you can’t play Goemon 64. Take that,  you educationally challenged individual! Also, if you’re not capable of reading, then why are you here?

The script for Goemon 64 is a laugh-like-a-drain experience, with satisfying dialogue that is both witty and genuinely brilliant. And if you don’t understand what a joke is, the canned laughter will indicate when you should laugh. (I see this happens a lot in sitcoms. Someone walks in, and they say “It’s me!”, and everyone laughs. A good sitcom need not rely on this!)

But all good things must come to an end, such as this review, or when your favourite sitcom is axed because the cast isn’t interested in a third season. So, therefore, despite the sheer size of the game world, and the large number of goals to be completed, Goemon 64 can easily be beaten over a week in 4-5 sittings. A lot of backtracking helps lengthen the game, but once you’ve stepped foot anywhere, to get back is just a single whistle blow from Yae, and then you’re swept away.

There is very little in replay value—a major downfall for what I consider to be the best platformer on the Nintendo 64. Once you have beaten the game and found all the hidden fortune dolls, you have successfully put Goemon 64 to bed.  Collecting all the dolls does unlock a consecutive boss fighting mode, but I have never completed it, as it is so difficult that it made me cry. You can get more replay value by beating the game again perhaps a year or two after the last time. Nevertheless, you’re not going to be picking the game up that often after defeating it.

If you wish to experience something magical that you most likely didn’t even know existed, dig out your Nintendo 64. I order you to blow the dust out of your Memory Pak. I demand that you get a hold of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon. What you witness may just change your outlook on videogames forever.

You are excused. Now, go. Go to your local retro game dealer. You know what to do.

So she’s a mermaid? Yeah, I “cod” be in with a chance!