Four games in one post! How could this be? Did I just play the games really fast? Did I get bored of them rather quickly? Are they all intensely low effort and thus not worthy of each being given their own blog post? The answer to all those questions is yes, absolutely. You see, all of these games are a special kind of low effort, in that all of them are the exact same game. I don't just mean that as hyperbole, I mean that they are literally the same game with the same mechanics with only a few models and levels occasionally changed between them. If you're wondering how exactly they got away with doing that, the game's development is weird enough to where it could serve as its own write-up.
See, Data Design Interactive, the company behind these games, was already starting to become known for their quantity over quality approach to game design, highlighted by their flippant asset re-use and their games coming out within weeks or even days of each other. During that process, they created a private tech demo for a new 3D entry in the Zool series, originally a series of 2D platformers meant to promote the Commodore Amiga. Zool's rightholders saw the demo and rejected it based on its low quality, after which you'd think they'd just try to build off what they had. This is the point where I assume some executive applied the caffeine patches from Meet the Robinsons and said “hey, I know! How about we take this platformer with four worlds in it, and make each world its own game so people have to pay twenty bucks for each! We'll also change the player character model each time to make people think they're buying different games!”
So yes, that means there's four games, with about three to four levels in each one, all of which play identically to each other and can all be beaten in about half an hour once you know what you're doing. That would be nutty enough, but even if they were released as one game, that wouldn't save it. For one, the controls are truly arcane: the fact that jumping is mapped to a flick of the Nunchuk is mystifying on its own. Thankfully, you can jump with just the Z button instead, although the game doesn't tell you that and it doesn't change the fact that your melee attacks in all these games rarely ever connect and your movement is atrocious. In almost any other 3D platformer I can think of, when you push an analog stick in a direction, your character immediately starts running in that direction. Here, there's a slight bit of wind-up with your character moving incredibly slowly before awkwardly switching to a sprint, and that combined with the weird motion control mapping means that there's a lot of aimless flailing to try and get your bearings.
Each of the levels in these games requires that you find eight objects within them in order to activate a teleporter at the end of the level, and how difficult of a process that is depends on how well thought-out the level design is for each, which they usually aren't. A constant between all of them, though, is the sheer amount of enemies spammed everywhere. They aren't that much of a threat on their own, as they'll just stay still before suddenly bolting towards you when they see you, like middle-aged moms towards daytime medical dramas. However, often they'll be placed in groups of five or more, and with how unreliable your attacks are, your only reliable option will be to just sprint away as an entire conga line of enemies trail behind you. Good luck if they manage to corner you, because even though the five hit points you start with seems generous, it means nothing when you have almost no invincibility frames and your character decides to start clipping into a wall.
What's the “best” between the four of them? If I squinted, I'd say Anubis II probably had a slight bit more effort put in; the level design is the most sensible out of the bunch, and there's a couple small mechanics unique to it, like using magic spires to manipulate objects in the environment. Make no mistake, though, these are all cash grabs and the very definition of shovelware. It's no surprise that even though this business strategy worked short-term, people weren't fooled for long and company ended up going defunct in 2012. These aren't even really the kind of games where their abhorrence is something you can laugh at with your friends, because there's so little even in these games that they may as well just be an empty void. Do not play any of these games, devote your brief time on this Earth to literally anything other than these soulless husks of discs.
See, Data Design Interactive, the company behind these games, was already starting to become known for their quantity over quality approach to game design, highlighted by their flippant asset re-use and their games coming out within weeks or even days of each other. During that process, they created a private tech demo for a new 3D entry in the Zool series, originally a series of 2D platformers meant to promote the Commodore Amiga. Zool's rightholders saw the demo and rejected it based on its low quality, after which you'd think they'd just try to build off what they had. This is the point where I assume some executive applied the caffeine patches from Meet the Robinsons and said “hey, I know! How about we take this platformer with four worlds in it, and make each world its own game so people have to pay twenty bucks for each! We'll also change the player character model each time to make people think they're buying different games!”
So yes, that means there's four games, with about three to four levels in each one, all of which play identically to each other and can all be beaten in about half an hour once you know what you're doing. That would be nutty enough, but even if they were released as one game, that wouldn't save it. For one, the controls are truly arcane: the fact that jumping is mapped to a flick of the Nunchuk is mystifying on its own. Thankfully, you can jump with just the Z button instead, although the game doesn't tell you that and it doesn't change the fact that your melee attacks in all these games rarely ever connect and your movement is atrocious. In almost any other 3D platformer I can think of, when you push an analog stick in a direction, your character immediately starts running in that direction. Here, there's a slight bit of wind-up with your character moving incredibly slowly before awkwardly switching to a sprint, and that combined with the weird motion control mapping means that there's a lot of aimless flailing to try and get your bearings.
Each of the levels in these games requires that you find eight objects within them in order to activate a teleporter at the end of the level, and how difficult of a process that is depends on how well thought-out the level design is for each, which they usually aren't. A constant between all of them, though, is the sheer amount of enemies spammed everywhere. They aren't that much of a threat on their own, as they'll just stay still before suddenly bolting towards you when they see you, like middle-aged moms towards daytime medical dramas. However, often they'll be placed in groups of five or more, and with how unreliable your attacks are, your only reliable option will be to just sprint away as an entire conga line of enemies trail behind you. Good luck if they manage to corner you, because even though the five hit points you start with seems generous, it means nothing when you have almost no invincibility frames and your character decides to start clipping into a wall.
What's the “best” between the four of them? If I squinted, I'd say Anubis II probably had a slight bit more effort put in; the level design is the most sensible out of the bunch, and there's a couple small mechanics unique to it, like using magic spires to manipulate objects in the environment. Make no mistake, though, these are all cash grabs and the very definition of shovelware. It's no surprise that even though this business strategy worked short-term, people weren't fooled for long and company ended up going defunct in 2012. These aren't even really the kind of games where their abhorrence is something you can laugh at with your friends, because there's so little even in these games that they may as well just be an empty void. Do not play any of these games, devote your brief time on this Earth to literally anything other than these soulless husks of discs.
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