The moai, the merrier, I always say.

Here’s the premise, summarized from the instruction manual for the sake of the illiterate: Gradius, a peaceful Earth-like planet (a contradiction in terms, I know), is under attack by the eeeeeevil Bacterions. (It’s written like that in the manual: “eeeeeevil Bacterions.”) You, the person holding the controller, have blasted off in the direction of the Bacterion superfortress in a prototype space fighter called the “Warp Rattler,” a name no doubt derived from the nauseating motion of OH GREAT GRADIUS WHY DIDN’T WE TEST THIS FIRST!? Evidently someone forgot to install a guidance system before liftoff, because instead of plotting a safe course around all the hazards between you and the final boss, you pilot the last hope of your people directly through the densest concentrations of Bacterion forces in the galaxy, pretty much guaranteeing the utter annihilation of your civilization.

These turrets look like they’re howling at the moon to mourn my passing.

The game itself consists of virtually nonstop sidescrolling space-shooting action, and the learning curve is excellent. By the end of the first stage, you’ll have mastered the basics of dodging, shooting, and collecting/using powerups. By the end of the second stage, you’ll have gained some exposure to maneuvering your ship through tight spaces and tackling enemies with more unique attack patterns. By the end of the third stage, you’ll be dead. Perfect learning curve. Still, progress is not impossible; it just requires the right balance of reflexes, practice, and strategy. However, if you want to actually beat the game, you’ll need Game Genie and dumb luck.

You’ll also need to shoot at the enemies from time to time instead of taking screenshots.
But that’s an advanced tactic.

Aiding you in your mission to at least get as far as Stage 4 are the power capsules left behind by certain defeated enemies. With the exception of the rare green capsules that obliterate everything on the screen (except you; that would be stupid), each power capsule you collect advances the powerup meter on the bottom of the screen. At the press of a button, you can activate whatever ability is highlighted, instantly upgrading your ship to drop missiles, fire lasers, or speed up enough to turn off your four-way flashers and pull out of the breakdown lane. Your spacecraft is woefully inadequate against the forces of galactic domination at first, but each stage begins with a relatively tame “hunting ground” where you can mow down enemies to snag powerups before entering the main part of the stage where you’re just going to die and lose everything anyhow.

Fortunately, the explosion noise you make when you die is pretty sweet. For all you know, I did this on purpose.

Rounding off the powerup list are glowing orange doodads called Options that follow your ship and copy whatever attacks you make, a protective force field that delays your unavoidable Game Over for a few more seconds, and a multidirectional double shot that you’ll only ever activate by accident. In concept, the ability to fire bullets in two different directions is pretty neat, but the fact that you cannot combine Double with Laser makes for a sad decision between the mighty beam that tears through entire rows of enemies, and the dinky double shot, which reduces your rate of fire and occasionally flicks a bullet toward the ceiling at a funny angle.

Battles fought with Double simply aren’t that exciting, no matter how hard the boss tries
to liven things up by firing exclamation points.

I’m exaggerating the difficulty of this game to a certain extent, but only because it’s utterly impossible; things don’t necessarily get easier as your power increases. Oh, sure, eventually you can tear through enemies like a bazooka through potato chips, but the game is balanced so that even the beefiest Warp Rattler isn’t so unstoppable that it can’t be…stopped. Enemy projectiles are easily obscured when your Options are littering the screen with missiles and laser beams. Too many Speed Up uses, and you’ll find yourself redecorating the walls with pieces of you and your ship at the slightest twitch. Grow too powerful, and you’ll suddenly discover that the bad guys have way more ammo at their disposal than they’ve been letting on. I had no idea that adaptive difficulty was even a concept back in 1986, but here it is, still kicking my butt.

Ongoing efforts to teach these creatures to do “YMCA” have been met with limited success.

Gradius is a solidly planned and challenging-yet-fair shoot-’em-up that should at least hold a minimum appeal for any fans of the genre. The powerup system adds a level of complexity to the gameplay that’s perfect for players with more of an interest in strategy and customization—the fun of Gradius isn’t just from reaching full power and blasting everything apart (except yourself; that would be stupid, unless you’re doing it for the cool explosion noise); it’s also from nurturing your sitting duck into a graceful bird of prey. For those of us with an appreciation of noises like “browmp,” “tik-tik-tik,” and “kuh-foom-foom-foom,” Gradius offers a bevy of satisfying sound effects. The visuals are no less enjoyable, with a respectable amount of creativity and detail going into every memorable stage. From erupting volcanoes to upside-down erupting volcanoes to doughnut-vomiting Moai heads, this game has everything I just mentioned in this sentence, and more.

I would like to retract the phrase, “doughnut-vomiting Moai heads.” Now this image just looks gross.

Not only is Gradius a strong game in its own right, but it’s a game that stays relevant amidst sequels and spinoffs that might already have condemned it to obsolescence in the hands of another company. Whether through sincere reverence or abject creative poverty, Konami has continually brought back enemies, weapons, and locations from Gradius in the games that followed and as Easter eggs in other titles such as Blades of Steel and Castlevania: The One In Which You Kill Dracula. The ideas set forth in this game have become an institution, and you can’t swing a photon torpedo around without vaporizing a hilariously undefended final boss that can trace its roots (or brain stem) back to here.

Because an unarmed brain makes a credible final boss.

Fans of the sleeker, more customizable follow-up games might argue otherwise, but I say Gradius is a classic. I’ve played the original Metroid enough times to know that being the first game in a series shouldn’t automatically qualify you for “classic” status—the great concepts that define a series aren’t always polished or cleanly executed in the first installment. However, in the case of Gradius, I’d argue that any improvements on the game have been to modernize and expand on a foundation of solid gameplay—not to fix anything that was broken.

This is so cool. I have no idea what this is, but I will kill it, and it will be so cool.

If you enjoy relentlessly difficult space shooters, or if you just enjoy smashing spaceships into big rocks, Gradius should absolutely make its way into your Backloggery. Whether you play it long enough to discover every hidden 1-UP and warp zone or whether you’re totally lame and give up before making it to Stage 4, it’s a memorable experience thanks to the iconic enemies, the nifty scenery and sound effects, the pulse-pounding challenges, and the catchy, energy-filled soundtrack that I’m only just bringing up now in my concluding paragraph. Nostalgia or no, Gradius still holds up against its oft-superior successors…even the ones with adjustable difficulty settings.

Screenshot from the popular spinoff, Metroidius.

Deathsmiles has only just come out where I live. For a game first released in 2007, that’s pretty bad going. But to be fair, Dead Island is currently in the spotlight, and I first saw prototype screenshots for that game around about the same time, too. Even four years in development ain’t as bad as Duke, who’s finally arriving in May.

As a citizen of an unimportant country (i.e. any country that isn’t your country), I have found that it has taken a hard toil of petitions and prayer to get Deathsmiles a release here. As an apology for the belated release, the game comes with the complete soundtrack (in WAV format—grr, that means converting and tagging before it can be iPod’d) and a collection of desktop accessories, wallpapers, pointers, and everything else that would have been cool back in 1998, but isn’t now. It’s not much, but it makes me feel loved, even if Europe got a game last, again.

First key thing to note about Deathsmiles is that it’s yet another game in a long line of shooters, a genre so saturated it makes Guitar Hero (God rest its soul) look like a one-shot TV comedy of only six episodes. It’s no joke—there’s a shooter everywhere you go, and Japan’s got it bad; almost every Xbox 360 game that originates from over there is a dating sim, RPG, or shooter. They’re running out of ideas, or rather, they ran out of ideas whilst the Super Famicom was still top-spec.

But being a shooter doesn’t necessarily weigh Deathsmiles down any—it’s just that if you’ve played a lot of shooters recently (like I have), it makes appreciating the little features a very difficult task.

Deathsmiles has a rather interesting storyline. Like many other shooters, the story makes Noby Noby Boy look normal. The story focuses around several young girls who are transported to another world by blinding white flashes of light. The world they travel to, Gilverado, has some kind of phantom feature causing everybody who winds up there to develop magical powers.

There are four playable characters, and as luck would have it, the first character I chose to play as was the weakest. Don’t care, Casper has an awesome name. They all have particular abilities and different types of bomb attacks, which makes playing the game through as each character, which is required to get both endings, relatively painless.

The game consists of six levels (seperated into three chapters), then a fourth chapter, which can usually consist of only one or two stages. Each stage has a single boss, with the exception of bonus stage, Gorge, which has a miniboss part-way through.

While you are playing, you get to choose your difficulty level, indicated as either Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3. As you turn up the difficulty, the enemies spew out more bullets, and that seems to be the only real difference between the settings.

The DLC Japan had to pay for, which is integrated into all releases outside Nippon, adds an extra character (who can only be selected within the new modes that the DLC adds). It also adds an extra stage within the new Mega Black Label modes, with a new boss battle, which can also be played before facing the final level.

Bonus marks go to Deathsmiles for its soundtrack, and its redrawn high-definition sprites in the spruced-up added console modes. Marks are lost, however, due to only the non-background graphics being redrawn, and the game itself  remaining in 4:3 resolution (meaning that to get it full-screen on a HD TV, you need to stretch it).

Deathsmiles does the job, and it fills the occasional half-hour to an hour lust to kill people with laser beams. It offers enough modes to make it  replayable, but as far as games go, this is definitely one you won’t enjoy if you don’t enjoy shooters. If you do, and you can play them as relentlessly as I can, then you pretty much want this game, ’nuff said, really.

I continue to support Cave in the hopes that future games of theirs eventually make it outside of Japan. The upcoming NIN2-JUMP looks like it might be interesting, and like all Live Arcade games, it’s bound to see release across the world. Cave’s first Live Arcade title, Guwange, is well worth a shot if you enjoyed Pocky & Rocky 2, which I have previously implored you to play.

So long as Deathsmiles sees a decent worldwide success, Deathsmiles II: Hell’s Christmas has a pretty good chance of getting a release outside of Japan, too. Double hopefully, this will speed up Otomedius Excellent’s American release and trigger interest in a European release, too. Otherwise, I’ll have to permanently move to Japan.

Hello everyone, and welcome to “Minus the Pudding,” where I have to get this intro out of the way now, because I have friggin’ fourteen games to talk about today.

Why’s that? Because today, we’re going to be talking about all of the games featured in the “Indie Games Winter Uprising.” The Uprising (or, maybe THE UPRISING, because how much cooler does that look?) is an attempt on the part of certain XBLI developers to make sure everyone know that, hey, sometimes, good XBLI games are released, too, in addition to all the penis massagers. The way they’re doing this is by flooding the service with a whole bunch of good games, all at the same time, which is pretty much the opposite of what normally happens.

Do they succeed? Let’s find out ASAP, because I’m not really sure if I have the attention span for this. (I mean, seriously…fourteen games!? The most I’ve ever talked about here before is five! What a nightmare.) To make this column more digestible, I’ll be including a “PUDDING” or “NOT PUDDING” rating for each game, with “NOT PUDDING” meaning that it’s an excellent game. I know that’s counter-intuitive, because pudding itself is excellent, but to compensate, I’ll use pretty colors. Don’t worry; you’ll pick it up.

Anyway, here’s videogames!

Epic Dungeon

Really? We aren’t finished with the “Epic” thing yet, Internet? We really aren’t? That cake sure is a lie.

(…In case you didn’t notice, that was me cleverly using one tired, overused phrase to make fun of another tired, overused phrase. And it was hilarious.)

Anyway, Epic Dungeon is a roguelike, just like Castle of the Winds, Castle of the Winds 2, and Powder, which are literally the only other roguelikes I know anything about, including Rogue itself. You have four different classes to choose from in creating your character—Berserker, Shaman, Tinkerer, and Gambler— each with their own individual background stories of how they ended up in The Dungeon. I want to give them a “NOT PUDDING!” rating just for that alone; I love that the devs didn’t just go with the standard Warrior/Mage/Ranger trifecta. I chose the Tinkerer, because, seriously, how can you not pick the Tinkerer. He comes with a little robot friend that can zap enemies for you, and his story is this:

“Goodness! It looks like Mother has drugged me and buried me alive again! Oh, how she loves to play tricks on me! Teehee!”

Later in the game, I came across a woman who was looking for the “Toe of Tinkerer.” I admitted to her that I knew a Tinkerer who had toes, and it was me, and she asked if I could have one. I obliged, because the game let me. I gained a small amount of XP for my trouble/horrific pain.

For its sense of humor, and for the fact that I guess roguelikes (though, not rougelikes) are kind of OK, this game gets an official GameCola rating of: NOT PUDDING!

Break Limit

Well, it’s a space shooter, which already comes pretty close to pudding territory for me personally, but it has a few neat gimmicks that separate it from the rest of the Specialty Shops. For one, it’s not sure if it wants to be a vertical space shooter or a side-scrolling space shooter, so it opts for both. At varying points in the game’s levels, there are branching paths you can take that switch your layout from landscape to portrait (or vice versa), allowing you to both experience vertigo, and then have a lie down, after you’ve experienced vertigo.

For two, if you’re good at the game, you get to spend the majority of your playtime zooming through the universe at warp-speed, destroying everyone and everything in your path muahahahahaha!! And also you’re invincible. But only if you’re good. To fill up your invulnerability slash hyperdrive meter, you need to collect these floating blue orbs that are scattered all throughout space; with a little practice, you can play such that you’re constantly running into these blue orbs and constantly destroying everything and you never have to die!

I’m not really one for space shooters, but, since I am a literal baby, I am one for games that actively prevent me from losing. SO! This game gets a rating of NOT PUDDING!

Hypership Out of Control

It’s…another space shooter, although it’s a little more retro-looking than Break Limit. I think that’s supposed to be its entire hook, actually—”it looks like an old game!” You know what also looks like an old game? Actual old games, and they don’t cost me anything, because they’re in my attic.

Like I said before, I don’t really like space shooters by default, and this one doesn’t do anything super-exciting like make me invulnerable to death; so, while I’m sorry to say it, we have our first PUDDING.

Ubergridder

It was kind of a bad omen when I tried watching the trailer for this game online, and my brain immediately started glazing over, as though someone was telling me about this weird dream they had last night. You play as Wall-e (see: the game’s faux-art), and it’s your job to repair a broken space ship, piece, by piece, by piece. By piece. By piece. That’s what the dressing is, anyway, and if you think that sounds boring, you’re one of the lucky ones. You have no idea what boring is.

You see that grid in the above screenshot? In Ubergridder, the entire gameplay is just you traveling along every. single. individual. line. on. the. entire. grid, until you’ve traveled along them all. Then you get to move on to the next level, and you do it again. AND THAT’S IT! THAT’S THE ENTIRE GAME! No, I’m serious! Someone released a game in which your ultimate goal is to just touch every single line on a graph. AND YOU HAVE TO PAY MONEY TO PLAY IT! This game’s not just “meh”; it’s the complete opposite of happiness.

After just a few minutes of Ubergridder, I had to call my fiancee over to see it. That’s right: this game is so bad that you’ll feel compelled to call people over to show them how bad it is. Ubergridder? More like…stupid…gridder. This game has ruined my brain.

PUDDING. Yikes. Wasn’t the point of THE UPRISING to show how great XBLI games can be?

Decimation X3

Yes, it’s really called Decimation X3, and I don’t think that’s supposed to be ironic. It’s another friggin’ space shooter, though this one’s much more Space Invaders than the above two Gradiuses. In fact, it pretty much exactly is Space Invaders. Your ship is anchored to the bottom of the screen, and you fly back and forth horizontally while wave after wave of enemies attack from above. There’s a whole bunch of power-ups you can collect—items that increase the spread of your gun, items that give you a shield, etc.—and it’s four player, but…it’s still just Space Invaders. What’s the point? All the particle effects in the world don’t make this any less an Atari 2600 game that’s been remade and re-released more times than the wheel. PUDDING.

Asteroids Do Concern Me

YES! Would you just look at that screenshot?! YES YES YES YESYESYESYES is what I was starting to write, before I actually played the game. And then I actually played the game.

Asteroids Do Concern Me isn’t a space shooter, but that’s only because there isn’t any shooting. It’s actually just a space floater. You hold A to float, and you hold not-A to not-float. The world passes you by as you do this, both figuratively in the game, and literally, in real life, as you think about all the things you’d rather be doing than pressing not-A to not-float. Nothing interesting ever happens in Asteroids Do Concern Me until you hit something, at which point you explode, and you’re rewarded by not having to play this game anymore. It’s kind of addicting, but so is plastic surgery, and just like plastic surgery, if you play this game too much, your face will cave in. PUDDING.

OK. So. Remember a few games ago? Those were the Good Times, back when I thought THE UPRISING had a point. Now, I’m just kinda wondering how these games are supposed to make me want to play more. What the hell is going on? Shouldn’t somebody have vetted these? These are the kinds of games I don’t even bother demoing, because nothing about them sounds at all interesting. How are they supposed to draw in new players, when they can’t draw in current players?

If the next game isn’t any good, I quit. Videogames. Forever.

Chu’s Dynasty

Ugh. It’s just Smash Bros., with characters no one’s ever heard of. PUDDING PUDDING PUDDING. If you have a Wii, GameCube, or Nintendo 64, there’s no point to this game.

Anyhow, welcome back.

Shoot.

Fine, so I unwelcome you to “Flash Flood,” a column dedicated to reviewing Flash games and videogame-related Flash animations. I do extensive research for this column (read: I doodle around on the Internet for hours at a time), and I like to keep things fresh by picking a different theme for each installment. When GameCola was still in its monthly newsletter format, I wrote about potentially addicting Flash games, dinosaurs, Final Fantasy, and Mega Man versus everyone else. This time I’ll be reviewing Flash games…IN SPAAAAACE!

OK, so you got me. I’ll actually be reviewing Flash games from the computer in my bedroom. But let’s just pretend I’m IN SPAAAAACE!

5 = Outstanding! You will love this game. Resistance is futile.

4 = Very good. Totally better than going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.

3 = Good. Like the toy surprise in a Fun Meal at Monolith Burger.

2 = Somewhat decent, I guess. Like a stale Fruity Oaty Bar.

1 = Eh, don’t waste your time. Go back to gathering your vespene gas.

0 = Utterly terrible. Even more repulsive than a Silicoid.

Creator: KyleMKP

Interface: Mouse (point and click)

Description: Fly a spaceship…through space! Collect powerups! Dodge and shoot enemies! Novelty, thy name is space shooter.

Review: Though the faux 3-D graphics are pleasingly inoffensive and blasting things is initially fun, the fact that this game is a parody of dime-a-dozen space shooters is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the name Generic Space Shooter is funny. On the other hand, navigating through an endless swarm of rectangles in an attempt to collect something like 50 powerups—which, by the way, appear somewhat infrequently, are usually just out of your reach, and can be destroyed by a single errant laser shot—with absolutely no variation in gameplay whatsoever, with no extra lives, and with the grand prize for winning being a “CONGRATULATIONS!” screen that is otherwise indistinguishable from the title screen…uh…makes for a very long sentence.

Verdict: 2/5: Not enough of a parody to excuse the dull gameplay, but too well-designed to be jettisoned out the airlock as junk.

Creator: PixelJam

Interface: Keyboard

Description: Fly a spaceship…through space! Collect powerups! Dodge and shoot enemies! Novelty, thy name is space shooter.

Review: Screenshots don’t do justice to this game. Sure, it looks like just another space shooter, but, in reality…it is. However! Perfect controls, solid gameplay, variety, a charming retro feel, and myriad little touches make this an outstanding space shooter. You can fire in four different directions, regardless of which way you’re moving. You can periodically buy powerups from a cute little alien merchant with the money your enemies drop. Enemies come in a number of different shapes and colors with very different attack patterns. Your teammate (there are two of you—Gamma Bros., remember?) swings by when you’re in trouble and can be seen flying around in the distance when he leaves. Between the music and the backgrounds that change as you progress, this game just oozes atmosphere, which is pretty impressive considering there is no atmosphere out in space.

Verdict: 5/5, except when I remember that I’m no good at space shooters and game over on the first level, in which case it’s a 4/5.

Creator: HeroInteractive

Interface: Mouse (point, click, and drag)

Description: Defend your space station from enemy attack! You specify where to fire (naturally) and how large the blast radius will be (hence the “boom” in the game’s title), but your cannon works on a constantly recharging battery that can only fire big shots when there’s enough energy. Occasional powerups appear that give you a significant advantage over the enemy, such as temporarily unlimited firepower, which allows you to fire willy-nilly all over the battlefield and destroy EVERYTHING (except your own space station, ‘cuz that would be dumb). Between levels you can upgrade your space station into a technological monstrosity that blots out the sun (and your pitiful foes).

Review: The learning curve is perfect. The amount of customizability makes for a high level of replayability, along with the fact that there’s an endless Survival mode (which technically does end when you fail to survive). The graphics—particularly the lush space vistas in the background—are appealing (at least, to a guy who’s used to playing 8-bit games all day long), and the ambient Epic Space Battle sets the mood quite nicely. The game mechanics are brilliant—dragging your mouse to create a blast radius is simple, but prioritizing your targets and carefully judging how big an explosion you can afford to make add a layer of strategy to an action game that is ostensibly about mindlessly blowing everything to smithereens (except your own space station, ‘cuz that would be dumb).

Verdict: 5/5: What’s not to love? Hey, now; don’t go answering that question, or else I’ll start drawing circles around you with my mouse. Big circles.

Creator: Tim McDonald

Interface: Keyboard

Description: Fly a spaceship…through space! Collect powerups! Dodge and…actually, you don’t shoot anything at all. Huh. How ’bout that?

Review: Remember that “Mass Meteor” minigame in Mario Party 6 where you’re swimming through space and dodging all the asteroids? I love that one! Asteroid Miner is essentially the same game, but with 100% fewer Mario characters who should probably be dead from direct exposure to the vacuum of space. Therefore, it’s great. The game sports three difficulty modes and three different playing speeds, catering to people of all different ability levels and masochistic inclinations. Unfortunately, the game is over too quickly. Well, at least when you’re too busy taking screenshots to pay attention to the big HUGE ASTEROID THAT’S COMING RIGHT AT…!!! Aw, phooey.

Verdict: 5/5: Actually, I’m pretty sure the game doesn’t end until you die, which gives Asteroid Miner the potential to be as addictive as Tetris. You’ve heard of Tetris, haven’t you? Therefore, by association, this is a fantastic game.

Creator: Gaming Ocean

Interface: Mouse (point and drag)

Description: Yuri the cosmonaut, who apparently attended the same Outer Space Survival course as the Mario Party crew, is leaping through the stars without a spacesuit…or clothes, for that matter. Evidently the Russian space program had some serious budget cuts this year. Help Yuri bounce from one star to the next so that he can stay in the air long enough to assemble a spacesuit without falling to Earth in the attempt. However, given that Yuri’s bare feet can withstand the heat of a star, I seriously doubt he’ll burn up in reentry.

Review: This game is fun for a little while, but it space jumps the space shark pretty quickly once you realize that all you need to do is swing the mouse left and right. Sure, there’s a bit of edge-of-your-seat excitement if you stay in the game long enough for the stars to move faster and become farther apart, but you’ve essentially played the entire game after the first 15 seconds or so. The achievements system doesn’t do much to boost the replayability, either; if you go long enough without dying—which is basically the premise of the game, anyhow—you’ll unlock virtually all the achievements. In other words, they give you achievements for playing the game longer than 15 seconds. Heck, even if you quit after three seconds, you’ll still nab an achievement or two. Sheesh.

Verdict: 2/5: Judging by the score I gave Asteroid Miner, it’s way more fun to avoid running into objects than it is to deliberately run into them.

If you’ve got any suggestions for themes you’d like to see me cover in future articles, or if there’s a specific Flash game or videogame-related Flash animation you’d like me to review, feel free to e-mail me, and my mail service will ensure that your message gets caught up in the spam filter.