Nintendo Switch

Sep

2019

A Gummy’s Life

Turning a Sweet Tooth into a Cavity

God bless the guilty pleasure. We know it’s bad. We know it’s bad for us, and we still love it. We love it so much we can ignore our shame. So what if “Barbie Girl” by Aqua sucks? You’ll still lip-synch to it. We also know everyone steals extra samples on the sample tray. It’s a special type of sin, but God forgives us. And just think of the last time you watched the Notebook while drowning in a tub of ice cream and tears? Never? Liar.

A Gummy’s Life is my guilty pleasure. It’s beautifully mediocre, and I adore it. I grow bored after 15 minutes, but I show it to almost anyone who comes over to play video games. It unabashedly preys on the gamers who crave couch multiplayer, and its presentation waffles between half-baked and r/CrappyDesign. I don’t regret buying it, but you might. It’s disgustingly magical, like how school bathrooms always smell like urine despite how frequently they’re cleaned. And that’s my review on school bathrooms.

What is it?

Only A Gummy’s Life could get eight players in one small room, have them beat the juices out of each other, and still make it out with a T rating. Across 15 stages, your one goal is to be the last one standing. You will kick, punch, and head-butt your opponents into unconsciousness and then throw their bodies out-of-bounds before they wake up. Alternatively, you can bash them until they’re bled dry. If you don’t finish the job, the stage often will, whether it be death by zombies or centrifugal force.

Each stage acts as a round, with the last three remaining players earning points. Both Free for All and Team Death Match play out as you would expect, and a sudden death option ensures your gummies start losing juice if the contenders overstay their welcome. King of the Hill tasks you with collecting the most candy and is about as appetizing as the Fun Dip dipstick (incidentally, known as “White Hard Candy Sticks” elsewhere). Meanwhile, Hot Potato has you passing around an STD through physical contact which causes the carrier to explode, and whoever doesn’t get exploded wins.

Outside of these modes, you have a training option which puts you and three computers in a lobby to duke it out forever. Online play looks very similar because you’ll be stuck in this lobby until someone shows up. A Gummy’s Life’s online community was pretty much dead on arrival, although you may catch a random player every month or so. There is no separate single-player mode on offer, so bring your buddies or learn to love bots.

You can also infinitely dab, so there’s that.

What’s good?

Anyone can enjoy the mayhem, and inexperience and idiocy increase entertainment value. If you play with the full eight players (as you should), each round devolves into chaos. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to play. Run, button-mash, and pray, and you might just win anyway. A Gummy’s Life mixes absurdity and violent catharsis for a gratifying experience, at least initially.
The stages bring variety to how you die, adding that special zest to the gameplay that we so sorely lack in our everyday lives. One stage finds you climbing up a set of stairs while lava rises and rocks crash down upon you. Another features a honeycomb floor which drops out from under you if players occupy one spot for too long. A third lays out conveyor belts and is pretty bland, but if you die, you come back as a box, so that’s nifty. Most arenas have a unique gimmick, and learning to work with them is one of the few reasons to keep coming back to a Gummy’s Life.

As we will get to later, this stage’s gimmick is crashing.

What’s bad?

The controls are awful. At first, it’s funny how difficult it is to control your gummy, but funny turns to frustrating when you try to develop any sort of mastery. Each button has a different action based on whether you tap or hold the button, but the action can change based on how long you hold. For instance, each trigger button controls an arm. Tapping causes you to flail your arms feebly, but holding the buttons briefly allows you to charge harder punches. Hold for too long, however, and now you’re grabbing whatever is closest to you. The controls are overly complex and frequently unresponsive, and for a game this simple, they’re not worth the effort to tame.
A Gummy’s Life becomes stale as quickly as a Peep left on the counter. Interestingly, each character has different stats, and you would think this would incentivize players to master a certain gummy. However, the aforementioned control issues discourage true competitive play, and the stage hazards often place more emphasis on luck rather than skill. As for content, you can experience all that is offered in under an hour. There are unlockable characters theoretically, but I never came across one during my playtime.
The presentation is wildly inconsistent. Although the stages and characters look fine, the menus appear hastily drawn and colored with a garish palette. Poppy melodies last far less than 30 seconds but loop continually, recalling your fondest memories of “It’s a Small World,” but the sound effects squish and splort well enough. Winning results in little fanfare before your booted back to the menu. I don’t expect red carpets to be rolled out for me, but this suspiciously stained motel floor could use some sprucing up.
The game is buggy. Slowdown pops up sporadically, characters die inexplicably, and one stage (“A Frog’s Life”) will crash the entire game 90% of the time. For a game this small, a bug that big is egregious.

What’s the verdict?

You’d be forgiven for thinking a Gummy’ s Life is barely palatable, and to an extent, I want you to think this. For the large majority of gamers, this game is the equivalent of savoring used gum from under a desk (seeing how it is a poor man’s Gang Beasts, which isn’t that great either). However, if you have a good selection of victims (i.e. friends and family), the first 15 or so minutes of playing with new gamers is a blast. No one knows what they’re doing; they’re laughing up a storm; and it’s just fun. If you can space out your play sessions, a Gummy’s Life could make for a great party game.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 6
Time Played: Over 5 hours
Number of Players: 1-4
Games Like It on Switch: Human: Fall Flat, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Scoring Policy

Jul

2019

Spacecats with Lasers

From Executive Producer Michael Bay

When I was 16, I finished writing my one and only novel. At over 300 pages of single-spaced, 12-point-sized text, it was a behemoth achievement for me, two years in the making. It also sucked. My mother—bless her—couldn’t get past the first fifty pages. I will forever treasure my deformed, malnourished book baby, but I will never self-publish it, let alone charge money for it. Even if I reach Stephen King levels of popularity, my first book will never see the light of public eye, much like the erotic retelling of Care Bears I penned for Netflix.

Spacecats with Lasers feels like a programmer’s first video game. He tried his darned hardest, but his skill could not match his ambitions. The final product ended up being amateurish. Sure, the game may mark the first step in a remarkable career for the programmer, but unfortunately, this first step landed in the litter box. Maybe we could accept it if it were free, but it’s not. I know this is not Bitten Toast’s first game, but unlike the commendable Rocket Fist, Spacecats with Lasers would have done better to remain in the developer’s unpublished portfolio than with the rest of the eShop’s shovelware.

What is it?

After years of feline oppression, the pug king has rallied all of the mutated mice scattered across the universe and has launched a war against the cat species. You control Meowsky Tongue-Catcher, the Puss Empire’s ace pilot, who must destroy wave after wave of mice forces to ultimately assassinate the pug king and quash the last of the resistance. All seems to be going smoothly for Meowsky until he realizes he has single-handedly caused mass genocide. In an act of retribution, he allows the mice forces to decimate his ship with him inside. Spacecats doesn’t actually contain any of this plot, but it makes for a great rough draft for my second novel.

As I dramatized, Spacecats is a multidirectional shooter, tasking you with killing ever-growing waves of mice, with the pug king making an appearance every ten levels. You shoot with ZR, reload with R, and dodge with ZL. Between levels, you choose a permanent upgrade (increased fire rate, more health, larger lasers), and enemies can drop temporary powerups. Lose too much health or hit an enemy directly and you die. Lose all three lives, and it’s game over.

You can choose from one of three difficulty levels at the beginning, and different hats and ships can be purchased with trinkets you earn from playing. If you’re feeling frisky, you can even look at your high scores. If you’re feeling super frisky, you can close out of the game altogether.

What’s bad?

Much like the life of a moon, Spacecats’ gameplay is slow, dull, and based predominantly on moving in big circles. Your enemies largely gravitate toward the middle of the level, so circle-strafing will help you dodge almost all bullets and bogeys. This may make waves easy, but it sure doesn’t make them go quickly. Your ship moves through space like it’s lard, and enemies soak up several hits before blowing up. Add a small ammo clip and a long reload time and Spacecats is only one half of the bullet hell it wants to be.
Upgrades barely impact gameplay. They typically improve your ship’s capabilities by five or ten percent, but these raises account for little more than cost-of-living as each wave brings more enemies. In another game, these upgrades would make for cool offensive or defensive builds, but for Spacecats, the upgrade screen only offers a change of scenery.
Spacecats’ bugs can kill you, as if even they know you shouldn’t be playing. One glitch causes you to be stuck reloading, and another prevents you from respawning after you die, forcing you to quit out.

A bug captured in its natural environment.

What’s also bad?

If the bugs don’t kill you, poor design choices will finish the job. The camera sits at a tilt rather than directly above you. This allows you to see more space above you but leaves little room below you, allowing enemies to creep up on you before your floaty controls can guide you to safety. Your dodge is unintuitive because you dodge toward where you’re aiming, not where you’re moving. This may seem innocuous until you realize you’re typically shooting at enemies when you need to dodge suddenly. Two enemy types further mess up gameplay. Shield mice provide impenetrable barriers to their neighbors until they’re destroyed, and these neighbors tend to cluster and create a forcefield around your target. Killing them will try your patience more than your skill. Yellow laser mice somehow prove more annoying. Sometimes their lasers barely follow you; other times they cling to you like sweaty skin on leather, destroying a third of your health.
If the presentation were a space ship, it would be a cardboard cut-out of a PT Cruiser with “UFO” painted on it. The character models seem like free downloadable assets designed for the Wii, and the backgrounds of each stage are no more than static images of faraway galaxies. The cliché electronica soundtrack attempts to create a heart-thumping beat but comes off as a toddler pounding at a keyboard. Hitting mute is recommended, followed by power.
Spacecats is a sickly kitten with no meat on its bones. New enemies stop at the tenth wave, and the hard difficulty only emphasizes the game’s faults. With no online leaderboards, there is absolutely no point to continue playing past an hour unless Spacecats is your final trial before achieving Zen.

What’s the verdict?

Spacecats with Lasers earns the dubious award of being the worst game on my Switch, a feat which I hope stays with it. With games of this caliber, I would love to read a review written by the developer. Would they criticize their game as viciously as I do? Could they honestly recommend their game to anyone? We all have rough patches in our careers, but ideally, others don’t have to experience them.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 2.5
Time Played: Over 3 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Assault Android Cactus+, I Hate Running Backwards

Scoring Policy

Jun

2019

Arena of Valor

You Have Been Defeated

Just like everyone poops, everyone will die, and so it is with video games. Cart batteries short out; virtual shops shut down; and nostalgic hits become entombed in copyright claims, never to be ported to a newer console. However, with ROMs and some skillful pirating, most games can be revived in some form. When online-only games kick the bucket, they’re just dead. You’re only left with memories and probably some other games which are better anyway.

Rumors suggest that Chinese mega conglomerate, Tencent, intends to abandon Arena of Valor in the Western markets. Updates and new content will stop, and the company will allow the game’s audience to naturally shrivel up. To the mobile player base, this news strikes a painful blow. With nearly 80 characters, numerous promotions, and a competitive scene, the game seemed like a mainstay. For Switch owners, we knew the end was near when updates stopped this last February, leaving the game a store-brand imitation of its mobile cousin. Together, we cannot prevent AoV’s demise, but I can milk it for a review before we sell off its organs.

What is it?

Arena of Valor is a MOBA, which means it’s one team against another in a race to destroy the other’s base. I think. I haven’t played any others, but I am told AoV is simpler and faster compared to League of Legends. Focusing on what I do know, you and four other teammates (be it strangers or friends) choose from 52 characters, split into six class types. Assassins are skilled at killing enemies; tanks soak up damage; warriors don’t know if they want to be assassins or tanks; marksmen shoot from afar and everyone wants to be them; mages do the Harry Potter things; and supports cheer on the other players and bring orange slices for halftime. Some characters can have multiple class types, and a good team will include two warriors, a tank, a marksman, and a mage. A bad team has four marksmen who all wonder why they’re losing so quickly.

The battlefield is split into three lanes, each marked by three towers on each team’s side. It is vital for you to destroy these towers, but if you’re without minions, these structures will make short work of you. The minions are CPU-controlled fighters which spawn from your base and march toward the other side, attacking other minions or towers. You can support your minions by eliminating opponents and their henchmen, which will gain you experience and gold. Experience allows you to level up and upgrade one of your three unique abilities whereas gold buys equipment which bolster your stats. Your normal attacks can do some work, but your abilities provide most of your destructive force. However, cooldowns prevent you from spamming these attacks. If you die, you face another cooldown counter before you’re back in the fray.

Although each battle has the same playing field and set of rules, how you pursue your victory is up to you. You can try to stick with a lane, fighting off all opponents and steadily chipping away at their towers. You can roam from lane to lane, ambushing enemies while relieving your weakened comrades. You can team up with an ally whose skills complement your own. You could also spend your time killing monsters in the jungle, contributing nothing to your team while gaining experience in the hopes of one day being helpful. Hell, three of you can do that, why not?

These battles constitute your main matches which can be played casually or ranked. You also can create custom matches with your friends or hop in the lobby for AoV’s equally interesting alternative modes. No one ever joins these lobbies, so you’ll never actually play a game, but they’re there. No, I won’t explain them.

Not the worst team, but it stinks of too many marksmen. And I was disconnected this game.

What’s good?

Arena of Valor’s relatively fast pace showers you in instant gratification. Matches typically last between 15 to 25 minutes, and if that’s too long for you, you can always disconnect and abandon your team to die. Like disconnecting, each of your failures and successes feel like you’re actually turning the tide of battle. Each kill earns more experience, and each destroyed tower bolsters your team. One or two players are all you need seize victory. A single person can also lose the game if they die too much, so stay back where you belong, scrubs.
The variety of heroes and level of customization creates an individualized experience. Unless you’re Valhein, and then you’re just like everyone else. For everyone but Valhein (and maybe Butterfly and Tel’Annas), your character’s tactics will change based on how you select your equipment and arcana (which also impact stats). For instance, Kil-Groth’s default is to overwhelm opponents with his attack speed and life-steal. You can customize him as a tank instead, lowering his killing power but ensuring he will distract opponents while your teammates dispatch them. Conversely, you can rob him of all defense to transform him into a killing machine who falls to cardiac arrest when opponents so much as sneeze in his direction.
The Switch rendition of the game has its perks, including better graphics. Being able to play with a controller also offers more precision. Most of all, the community is considerably less toxic. I previously swore off the mobile version because the players were such ass orchards, and I felt myself slowly growing a part of them. With the Switch version, people don’t have time to type with a controller, so fewer mean comments are said. Even if someone does say something, you can report them. It doesn’t do anything, but it feels good.

What’s bad?

The Switch version is also much worse overall than its mobile counterpart. There are fewer heroes, play modes, UI options, promotional events, perks, and updates. The character roster has not been as finely balanced as it has been on mobile so certain heroes (like Violet) can steamroll the rest. Most importantly, the player base isn’t on consoles, and there is no cross-play. As a casual player, you’ll rarely wait longer than two minutes to find a standard match, but if you want to play alternative modes or with high-skilled players, you’re best off taking your phone to the toilet rather than your Switch.
The game reeks of free-to-play stinginess and bugs. Although Arena of Valor offers temporarily free characters week-to-week, you will only permanently unlock five to use. The rest have to be purchased, and unless you empty your wallet, it will take 20 or more hours to collect enough gold to buy a hero. As for the bugs, the game crashes roughly every 6 or so matches, forcing you to scramble to re-enter before the match begins. Arena of Valor doesn’t know how to make targeting work for warriors either, so you’ll find yourself killing the little minions while an opponent cheese grates your face. You may also find your character mindlessly wandering into chaos because you can’t cancel out of an attack.
Arena of Valor lacks creative distinction. The battlefield looks like your typical fantasy affair, and the characters could be sued for plagiarism. You have a King Arthur character named “Arthur,” a hulking demon which revels in bloodshed, a big-boobed chick with a bow, an evil jester, a big-boobed chick with a hammer, a centaur with big boobs, and several others fighter girls who put the “cleave” in “ample cleavage.” What’s worse, they all speak in meme-fueled catch phrases. Unless the internet hasn’t satiated all of your desires, Arena of Valor lacks an appealing presentation.

What’s the verdict?

Arena of Valor is a solid, free game. It also has leprosy and will dump players like rotted flesh as the year progresses, if rumors are to be believed. Both veterans and newcomers can enjoy the game, so if you’re interested, board this dying horse while you can. Otherwise, join the mobile audience where its prognosis is a little better. Just don’t blame me when the cruel player base makes you wish the game died sooner.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8
Time Played: Over 70 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Paladins, Nine Parchments

Score Policy

Apr

2019

Flat Heroes

A-Cup in Dimension but A+ in Execution

Simple yet deep gameplay. Easy to pick up but hard to master. Couch co-op multiplayer for wacky fun. This is how you advertise the generic party/arcade game from an amateur developer. Perpetually on sale for 90% off, these games form the bargain bin of the eShop. Even if they do deliver on the three features, these games lack the polish or extra features to make them noteworthy. They’re plain hot dogs in a world of brats. Theoretically, a hot dog only needs ketchup and buns to be serviceable, but no one wants your lazy wiener unless it sells for under 25¢.

Flat Heroes ticks all of the checkboxes for your generic indie game but makes them true selling points instead of buzzwords. You must simply keep your square alive, yet doing so requires Matrix-level gymnastics. New players can pick up the controls within minutes of playing, yet weaving your character through the projectile hell requires dexterity, quick reaction times, and a level of strategy. On top of this, almost every mode in Flat Heroes can be played with up to four players for wacky local multiplayer fun. Flat Heroes shows what all indie games could be if other developers strived for more than the dirt floor bare minimum.

What is it?

With its lack of heroics, Flat Heroes would be more appropriately titled, “Agile Square Avoid Game.” As a basic square, your heroics amount to little more than running away and surviving an onslaught of attacks, from simple bullets to missiles to homing arrows to rotating lasers. Your character can roll on the ground just fine, but its true maneuverability comes from being in the air. You can jump, cling to walls, wall-jump, and suspend yourself in place or dash mid-air. Additionally, you have a pulse attack which either breaks through projectiles or propels them away from you, and that’s the closest you’ll get to Superman.

The game’s campaign features ten worlds, each with fifteen levels, including a boss stage. Each level throws a set of enemies at you, and as long as you or a teammate survives until the end, you’ll progress to the next level. If you all die, you reform at the start and retry immediately. The bosses, conversely, typically require the magical three hits to fall in battle. Beating bosses unlock the next world and occasionally a world in “Hero Mode” which features harder versions of the levels in the main campaign.

Survival and Versus modes provide more of an arcade experience outside of the campaign. In the Survival stages, you must simply live as long as possible, and if you play as a team, you can revive exploded allies. Except for the Daily map, each stage follows a predetermined pattern of waves, so memorization and practice will help you ascend the online leaderboards. In Versus, it’s an all-out bloodbath as you play variants of King of the Hill, Death Match, Keep Away, and Get to That One Thing First.

What’s good?

With its tight controls, you’ll feel like the coolest parkouring square on the X- and Y-axes. Enemies will overwhelm the screen quickly, but your agility allows you to duck and dodge with precision. With the B button controlling both jump and dash, you don’t need to memorize complex button sequences to revel in the adrenaline-soaked action in front of you.
Flat Heroes delivers a smooth difficulty curve. Each world in the campaign adjusts you to new enemies without holding your hand, and respawning takes only a second, allowing you to practice particularly hard stages without wasting time on load screens or elaborate death sequences. Survival levels follow a similar format, so newcomers can learn the basics in the early stages and still support you in achieving the high scores, even within their first attempt. For veterans of precision platforming, the Hero Mode campaign amps up the difficulty considerably, especially if you’re playing alone.
Whether you’re alone or with three others, Flat Heroes provides a good deal of content. Altogether, you have 300 campaign levels, seven endless survival stages (including the ever-changing Daily level), and four multiplayer modes. The game’s longevity mostly comes from its survival leaderboards, but with its pick-up-and-play nature, Flat Heroes capitalizes on the Switch’s gimmick of playing a game anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

What’s bad?

The pulse mechanic can feel imprecise and ineffective. You can often dodge projectiles instead of shielding, but certain enemies will hound you until you blow them up. The pulse seems to have a split-second delay before it activates, so it feels just unintuitive enough that you’ll find yourself hitting the pulse too late too often, resulting in your death. Against some of the final bosses, the pulse mechanic is supposed to shine but more comes off as a throbbing headache.
The music and visuals feel more simplistic than minimalistic. Neither detract from the gameplay, and in the case of the soundtrack, you might not notice it at all. The clean art design allows you to admire the small visual flairs when enemies die or your particles scatter everywhere, but stages can feel barren and static, especially after replaying a specific level multiple times.
The Versus multiplayer is the black sheep of the modes, better left ignored and to develop attachment issues. Although each mode presents a different goal, all of them devolve into a chaotic frenzy to explode everyone else. With no stage select, AI difficulty settings, or gameplay options, multiplayer feels like a vestigial organ kept for sentimental reasons. If Flat Heroes adapted its Survival mode into a last-man-standing contest, its competitive multiplayer would actually be attractive.

What’s the verdict?

Anyone can make a great idea. For instance, toilets should flush automatically when they detect a possible clog. It’s a fantastic idea. However, it takes a creative and hard-working person (or group of people) to translate that idea into a great product. Whereas other small-time studios present slapdash concepts, Parallel Circles fleshed out Flat Heroes. They took a simple concept and married it with precise controls, fluid gameplay, and a clean presentation. This polygamous relationship results in an engrossing experience with depth and variety to entice the single-player score chaser and the multiplayer partiers. Even if you abhor the platforming genre, this one may sway you.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8.5
Time Played: Over 5 hours
Number of Players: 1-4
Games Like It on Switch: N++, Super Meat Boy

Apr

2019

Solomon Rambling’s Top 10 Saltiest Nintendo Switch Moments of 2018

When Solomon Must Admit He Is Not Better Than Editor One

In my last video journal, I commended myself for my improved video editing skills. This week, I acknowledge I have nothing on Editor One.

I’ve discussed how I’ve seen incremental progress in my video skills. If we compare my growth to that of mold, Editor One’s growth it on par with my chest hair: unnaturally fast and luxurious. Compare this video to his first or even to our Namco Museum exposé, and it shows just how amazing quick this kid learns. With his current skill set and editing eye, I feel like we could compete with the dedicated YouTube creators out there. If you asked me if we could do that when we first started, I’d probably say we could, but that’s because arrogance fuels my creativity. Now, acknowledging we could compete fills me with excitement and massive amounts of anxiety. I just have to get my commentary to match his skill to get us there.

I enjoyed his jokes, smooth transitions, and visual flair, all of which made the video engaging throughout. That’s quality work done by a guy who edits as a hobby.

So here’s to you, Editor One, and your continued creativity and growth. We’ll work on your punctuation and capitalization later. Winky face.

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