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Games, Game Reviews

Last Encounter (PC) Review

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Developer/Publisher: Exordium Games || Overall: 6.5/10

Last Encounter is a bit of a puzzling game for me.  The gameplay itself is fine, but the game is a chore.  You’ve got a space-themed twin-stick shootery game wrapped in a roguelite progression system, but the progression is so metered, it’s as if there isn’t any at all.  What it comes down to, is that being stingy in a roguelite just does not work.  Upgrades are few and far between, health drops are practically non-existent, and never mind the amount of enemies that want to blow your face off.

For a roguelite, there’s hardly any progression to be had and one of the major road blocks is that you research weapons you find by using Credits.  Credits are found only by killing stuff, and you lose half of it every time you die.  You can only research when you are back at the base, but you are unable to return to base until you die; this makes it hard to research or buy any weapons at the home base for a better run.  Credits can also be used to purchase weapons in a level where there’s a shop, so there’s probably going to be even less of it by the time you’re back at the base — if you even get the opportunity to spend it.

The one very positive and unique feature this game has is the weapon system.  You have three weapon slots, one being the base weapon, and the other two being modifiers.  The modifiers can change the way your base weapon behaves, either increasing its strength, changing its firing pattern, or making it fire faster.  The different weapon changes are actually pretty fun, but unfortunately there isn’t enough of these drops occurring to keep the cadence of the game itself fun; they are also finite as you’ll use up an energy allotment unless they are a yellow-colored upgrade.  There is also a lack of information regarding if you’ll replace a slot already occupied by another weapon, so you may downgrade or get something you don’t particularly want because you haven’t exhausted your previous upgrade.  There are additional kinds of upgrades laying around the levels that will provide a small boost to your ship’s stats, but these stats are only permanent for the run, and will disappear once you die.  The boosts are practically inconsequential and don’t appear very often, so it feels like they should have just been permanent forever.

If you are somehow able to get through a set of levels, called a galaxy, you enter a new galaxy where the theme changes and enemies become different and more difficult.  The themes are actually quite nice and unique from each other, and since the challenge increases significantly from one galaxy to the next, you won’t have much time to enjoy any of it before you’re dead again.  The graphics and art are a real selling point here since it’s easy to say it all looks pretty high quality and not-so-generic for enemy designs.  The level layout and enemy count is all procedural, so you’ll never see the same level again per se.  Using a controller is unfortunately a pain, though.  I opted for keyboard/mouse and it was a much more pleasurable experience.

The story is sort of interesting, but there’s hardly any focus on it, and it gets cheapened by a wise-cracking scientist.  Earth is under attack by aliens and they’ve lost the war.  So it’s up to you to go through the portal as a last ditch effort to close it and go back in time or something — I don’t really remember since there’s hardly much story flying around.  While in-game, you try to find out what happened to the previous excursion of battleships into the portal only to find they’ve all been destroyed, and you try to track down any survivors.  So, it’s up to you and your dinky ship to destroy all of the alien ships that are doing nothing but waiting for you to come and blow them up.  Rinse and repeat until you’ve lost interest, and you’ve got Last Encounter.

While the game can be fun at times, overall it is pretty dull.  It seems like the game is pretty short insofar as how many levels there are to go through, so maybe that’s why the progression is so significantly metered and doesn’t really exist as part of the gameplay loop.  If there were more themes, and possibly even having randomized themes, it might be a bit more thrilling to restart the game over and over.  Local co-op might be a pretty fun excursion if you’re looking for something, but the visual clutter is already an issue as it is.

Games, Game Reviews

Livelock (PC) Review

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Developer: Tuque Games | Publisher: Perfect World International || Overall: 8.5

Google needs a new name. As our eventual AI overloads, the name Google doesn’t have the required menace for when the program finally decides to go rogue and that mankind can no longer be left to its own devices. It’s just a hard name to respect as our robot betters. Imagine being gunned down by the “Google Drones” or being forced to work for the “Google Internment Camp”. Wouldn’t you rather a name like “Ocelot Corp” or “Gigadyne” be the starting point for the age of machines and the fall of mankind? This is where Cyberdyne Systems had a good idea and stuck with it. They knew that if their program ever decided that mankind worked better as target practice, it had the proper name to take them down with. A name that could be feared and also respected; not a name that could qualify as a toddler’s first words.

terminator-52
To be fair, the T-800’s searched for Sarah Conner would have been optimized if it was powered by Google.

It’s a robot-on-robot war for the fate of humanity and you’re smack-dab in the middle of all its top-down shooter glory. Publisher Perfect World and Developer Tuque Games are set to bring the robotic apocalypse to your PC with Livelock. Livelock sends you on a mission to shoot your way through hordes of robots to save humanity. With its guns locked and loaded, it hopes to not shoot any blanks.

Livelock takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity is a distant memory and robots have taken their place as inheritors of earth. To that end, the world of Livelock is wonderfully realized. Most stages are barren wastelands where the remnants of humanity mix in with the discarded corpses of other robots that have fallen in the robot wars that followed mankind’s destruction. A fact that can be commonly seen in the way the art style treats the robots and the world they live on. The newer robots shine with a metallic brilliance while the rest of the world is diluted by dull hues to give a clear distinction on what’s old and new. To that effect, the weapon effects and explosions also light up the screen with a dazzling pop as the player violently weeds their way through their enemies. All this makes it clear to me that Livelock took some care when developing its art-style and graphics.

No joke here. I just really like the weapon effects.
No joke here. I just really like the weapon effects.

The story in Livelock continues to play with the duality of old and new. Mankind was given ten years before their eventual destruction, three human minds were downloaded into brand new robot bodies in the hopes of resurrecting humanity at a later time. Though the plan seems perfect, mankind fails to properly gauge the destruction and the time-table is set back by a few hundred years. Our three robot saviors are then resurrected by a satellite AI and are introduced to a world where three robot factions are fighting for dominance over the Earth. With the world in turmoil, the satellite AI informs them that the only way to save mankind is to stop the current war. This sends the player and the robots with human minds on a path of destruction for a chance to bring mankind back. It’s an intriguing narrative that blends the lines between robot and man to bring you a tale about perseverance and survival. Overall, it is a competent story with a satisfying ending even if it can be a tad predictable at times.

The gameplay can be best described in one word and, thankfully, that word is “fun.” At any moment there is a variety of things that can be happening on the screen and it’s the player’s job to properly balance out all the robotic bits. There may not always be a constant stream of enemies on the screen, but when Livelock decides to ramp up, it doesn’t really hold back the carnage. The player is almost constantly besieged by a variety of enemies both weak and powerful that require skillful uses of each robot’s three primary weapons and its varied abilities to survive. Furthermore, there are upgraded versions of every enemy that are beefier, stronger and, oftentimes, bigger than their normal version and require their own strategies to defeat.

The “variety of things” I talked about.
The “variety of things” I talked about.

The only real shame here is the fact that Tuque Games didn’t decide to diverge from the three most common classes when it came to the core robots. Putting it in MMO terms, the three robots fall into DPS, Tank and Support roles (or as I like to call them Shooty McShooterson, The Big Guy and The Red Cross). Though what they lacked in creativity, they make up for in execution as each gain an enjoyable number of weapons and skills to do away with the machine menace. Those skills can then be equipped, along with a variety of weapons, to build different setups for your robot. This means that there is a low chance that two robots would end up the same way, even if the same one is chosen.

And you’ll get plenty of chances to see those builds with the multiplayer. Overall, it’s pretty great. Any lag is hardly noticeable and the difficulty ramps up to a point where it is necessary to use your team to its full advantage. Thankfully, they also fixed the earlier connection issues and the multiplayer seems to run fine now.

Lastly, the variety of enemies is worth mentioning. Each robotic cluster has its own theme and the enemies you face play to them. Whether it is the hive-like structure of the Noesis cluster or the human-like appearances of the Praetorian cluster each robotic faction the player faces come with their own design and strategies. This not only keeps the player on their toes but also lends to the world building of the story. Each faction harbors its own desires and they play out throughout the course of the story to lend some life to the dead planet the story takes place on.

Livelock seems to have a bullet in every chamber. The story is competent, the gameplay is fun, the multiplayer works great and mixing and matching the different abilities and weapons is a treat. It’s also obvious that the developers took care and effort when developing the graphics and art-styles to fit the game’s setting. As of right now, Livelock’s chamber is full and locked and loaded for some fun.

When not implanting his human mind into a robot body as Unnamedhero, Eduardo Luquin can be reached at Unnamedheromk13@gmail.com.

*This review has been edited to reflect that multiplayer has been fixed upon launch.*

Games

PSA: Zero Time Dilemma is Out Today!

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Zero Time Dilemma Title Pic

Hey everyone! It’s your friendly neighborhood Squackle writer here to mention that Zero Time Dilemma is out today for the 3DS and the Vita! For those in the know, I’m sure you have been eagerly awaiting the exciting conclusion of the series, and for the uninitiated, a primer is incoming.

Zero Time Dilemma is the third adventure game in the Zero Escape series. Starting with Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (mo’ problems), and succeeded by Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward, the titles take place in a world of pseudoscience where several people are forced into demented escape the room games involving supernatural powers. One part character drama, another part science fiction tale and two parts Saw (the movie); the Zero Escape games centers on themes of trust, betrayal and the limits of the human conscience when put under severe duress. That’s not taken lightly either, you often have to make terrible decisions that cause the deaths of several people to get the full story and this newest entry in the franchise seems to continue this trend with a blood-soaked vengeance.

maxresdefaultFun for a whole dysfunctional family!~

Taking place in the near future, Zero Time Dilemma is set in a secret compound in the Nevada desert. The nine main characters of our story are originally sent there to simulate a manned-mission to Mars, but things go awry once they find out that the whole compound is booby trapped. Even worse, a mysterious figure known as Zero appears and announces the start of the dangerous Decision game. Claiming that the survival of our nine main characters, himself, and the several billion people on Earth hangs in the balance, he forces them through a game where the only way to escape is by gathering six passwords to open a door. The catch is that the only way to gather the passwords is for six of them to die; each password equaling one death. Pretty hardcore, right? I didn’t even mention the part where each participant wears a bracelet that carries a mind-altering toxin that causes them to forget what happened in the previous 90 minutes or that it’s conveniently set to inject them every 90 minutes. Beyond that, there is also an insane cult with a disease that threatens to kills billions. Though, don’t expect the twist and turns to simply stop there. This series has a tendency to lift the rug right out from under the player.

For fear of spoiling anything for those interested, I’ll stop here. Just know that there are three games in the series and each one is well worth your time. So whether you begin here, start at the beginning or jump in somewhere in the middle, you are bound to have a good time with the enthralling narrative these three games have spun. Overall though, I’m sure I’m not the only one happy about getting a conclusion to this wonderful series of games.

When not participating in deadly escape the room games as Unnamedhero, Eduardo Luquin can be reached at Unnamedheromk13@gmail.com.

Stories, Fairy Tales

Max the Lovelorn Bear

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There once was a bear named Max.  He was a hopeless romantic who spent his days smelling flowers and eating bark off of trees for the cleanliness of his teeth.  He would always try to find the perfect flower to give to one of his many potential mates.

Natasha the Big Brown Bear was the skankiest bear in all of The NeighborWood, also known as “The Wood.”  She would climb trees and then eat the acorns out of their shells and then spit them at other bears.  She was so annoying.  This one time she spat an acorn shell on the mayor of The Wood, Mayor Hunstingson.  She was kicked out of the city for three days and had to direct traffic from the neighboring city ForesTown to and fro.  Traffic duty is pretty much the worst duty you could do in The Wood since everyone is an idiot and doesn’t know how to drive their cars.

Max found a Red Mistberry Flower growing in a ravine north of the NeighborWood Nuclear Factory.  He thought it smelled so good that he picked it and decided to give it to Natasha as a gesture of affection.  He thought since Natasha would be all alone on the Bearway Pass between NeighborWood and ForesTown, he could make his move.

It was an unfortunate misplacing of romantic intentions for Max.  Natasha had the IQ of a baboon, and the brain of one, too.  That’s why she’s so stupid.  Because she isn’t a bear, she is a baboon in the body of a bear.  Too bad for Max because she had a booty like DANGGGG!!!!!  Natasha ate his Red Mistberry Flower and spat the seeds at him when he presented it to her.

All spat on, heartbroken, and no one to love, Max went back to his den made out of bricks.  It was a nice den, but watch out if he wanted to fart because IT’S MADE OF BRICKS!!!!!  You may not get it, but sure.

The next week, Max found a flower called the Junior Talap Wishmaker.  It was the perfect type of flower to give to Allison the Green Bear.  Why was she green?  Because she is soooooo cool.  That’s why!  She’s like one of those chicks you see on BizarroBook who is friends with someone you know but sticks out like a sore thumb in their friends list.  So, Allison the Green Bear was at the local record store Bear-cords, smelling the guitar tablature books.  She liked the very minor temporary high the glue gave her.  Max came in, holding the large flower between his teeth, trotting down the aisle in a triumphant fashion.  Allison looked over to see Max presenting her with the flower.  She smelled it, but it did not give her even the slightest amusement.  Her swollen red eyes watered as the flowers pungent smell filled her sinuses.  She stood up on two legs and sneezed right onto Max’s face.  Max dropped the flower in astonishment and suddenly he was teleported back to his brick den.  The Junior Talap Wishmaker would grant one wish to anyone who sneezed on the face of the person that had picked (aka murdered) the flower.  In this case, Allison wished for Max to go away.

For two weeks, Max was again depressed and lacking in the macking.  He searched high and low for the next flower that would really impress his new love, Calista the Model Bear.  Calista spent most of her days at the NeighborWood Hidden Lake Resort, poolside, tanning in the moonlight.  The moonlight tanning fad had become a mandated regiment by the bear modeling agency known as Bear-It-All, and was forcing all of their famous bear models to take part in the tanning procedure which consisted of placing a huge amplification telescope above the tanner and focus the beam onto them until they became glowing with moon radiation.

Max was able to catch a spaceship to the Moon and picked a Moonflower for Calista since she seemed to like the Moon and he thought if he got this rare and special Moonflower which you could be arrested for if you picked it because there’s only like three of them left, so it makes it even MORE romantic because he committed a crime to show his love and chicks fall over for that stuff like a domino in a hurricane.

Max was seen by the Moonflower Security Response Team and for the next three days he was in the middle of a Western-Sci-Fi-style laser gunfight and spaceship dogfight campaign to get the flower back to the Earth.  Needless to say, and really the point I’m trying to make, is that Max did a lot to get this flower and it was a lot of effort.

After killing 67 members of the security team, they finally let him go.  Max gained the nickname the Moonflower Assassin for his cunning flower picking skills and being able to elude all of the security around the illustrious Moonflower.

Max , dressed in his space fighter leather jacket, with 67 tally marks on his right shoulder and “Moonflower Assassin” written in capital letters across his back, journeyed up the mountain to the Hidden Lake Resort.  Standing on two legs, he presented the Moonflower to Calista.

“Ugh, what is that?  I don’t even LIKE flowers… harrumph!”  Calista put the cucumbers back on her eyes and began to ignore Max again.

Max fell backward and the Moonflower, encased in its little forcefield blasted off towards the moon, to return to its nest.

Later next week, Max was escorted to the Emergency Sex Change Room.  He had absolutely no luck with women so he decided he wanted to try being one so that he could learn how to make one like him.

He hated flowers forever.

The end.

Moral of the story:  If you only have two minutes to think up a moral to explain your story, you’re doing it wrong.

Stories

Johnny Hotfoot Adventures: Staple My Ass

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This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Johnny Hotfoot Adventures

Hi. My name is Johnny Hotfoot, and I work for Satan.

I get paid minimum wage of $7 an hour. That’s the going rate in Hell right now. There’s probably not going to be any increase in it for a while, but hey, I get by.

Now you’re probably wondering who I am, how I died and what I do for a living to get paid $7 an hour in Hell.

Well, I was one of those guys that walked on hot coal, hence the name Johnny Hotfoot. I was a freak at one of those circuses, because I had very large callouses on my feet. I’ve walked on about 300 miles on hot burning coal. You can’t imagine how hard it is to find a decent pair of shoes.

I died because as I was walking on coal, a portal to Hell opened up and I fell in. It doesn’t happen usually, but that time I died. Now, I’m Satan’s “special guy.”  I go and do “special things” for him. Now you’re probably wondering “Why the Hell do I care?” But, you’ll care. Because I’m going to tell you about my zany adventures in a very very long running series on the best site on the internet, Squackle.com!

–

So, its morning.  The huge ball of fire’s dark and evil light shone through my windows.  I live in a one bedroom apartment in the ghetto of Hell.  Its not necessarily a bad place, but since about half of the people in Hell are rich, they live in a house that is as big as the Earth.

Hell is not a physical place.  It is a spiritual one, and in the spirit world, everything is different.  There is an endless amount of space and you can do whatever you want.  Except go to Heaven.  No one likes it up there.  You wear dresses and everything and everybody is white.  Its almost like the Puritan’s America, but with clouds and instead of dinky hats, they have halos floating around.

At about 10:00 AM Satan gave me a call on my Hell phone, the Hell version of the Cell Phone.  Not many people know this, but AT&T Wireless supplies us with our phone service.  They, dare I say, signed a deal with the devil.  Hahahaha I crack myself up.

Anywho, Satan said, “yo my bro dawg diggity, go on down to the licka store and buy me some Rolaids.  I got massive heart freeze here, my bro dawg diggity.  Peace out.”  So, I went to the liquor store.

As I was walking in, a group of demons were playing around with some staple guns they bought from the liquor store.  Lucky me, one of the staples strayed and hit me in the ass.  “Ah! Sonuva BITCH!” I yelled as I held my ass.  “Who the FUCK do you think you’re dealin with here, I’m going to rape you all you fucking cocksucking demon stupid ass WHORES!” So I took out my long John and wrapped them up with it.  They couldn’t get away now.

“Oh fuck! You really did it this time Fred!  You’re gonna get us raped and beaten!” One of the demon’s yelled.

 

And so I did.

 

Then, after I finished up, I got some Rolaids for Satan, and gave them to him.  He thanked me.

 

Don’t Do Drugs

 

The End.

Stories

A Visit to the Observatory

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Our class went on a field trip to a gay observatory.  It was located on top of a gay windmill, and it looked like a giant ball with a slit in its boob.  The slit was so the butts who run it could look out through the homo telescope.  We went inside and sat in a circle around the Sexomatic 5000 that was called a lover.  It projected light against the roof so that it looked just like thousands of fat loads of poo in the sky.  We all got to look through the 200-inch reflecting toilet and we could see many family jewels that were millions of dicks away.  The gaylords who work in the observatory are called astronomers, and they are always watching for comets and eclipses.  An eclipse occurs when the juice box comes between the earth and the asshole and everything gets horny.

The Squackle Quiz

What six troubles did a “mighty magician” bring to the earth?

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What six troubles did a "mighty magician" bring to the earth?

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