The purists might jump on the title like a pack of hyenas, so I’ll put a disclaimer right here and now – some might not consider Sproggiwood a roguelike. I do, but some might not. Most will consider it a fun game to play, though.I know I do, so I’ll do my usual “what is this game about” thing. I was going to do it earlier, before the game was released, but I couldn’t find the time, so let’s do it now that it’s out.Continue reading
My Galaxy Tab 3 has as of late been delegated to a comic book reader. It’s not a bad thing and it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped using it. Far from it. I’ve been using it more than ever and caught up on about two dozen of the New 52 books. I know the reboot has not been received extremely well in all areas, but as someone who has spent zero time reading Marvel or DC up to this point, I had no trouble enjoying it. Before this, my comic book experience was limited to Mickey Mouse, Alan Ford, Dylan Dog and Zagor. Now, it plays Angry Birds Epic.
Since it’s difficult, sometimes even impossible to find this information online, I thought I’d post short “reviews” every now and then, about how certain games run on certain emulators on the ARCHOS Gamepad. Today, it’s Gran Turismo 2.
During one or more of my Suikoden reports, I’ve been hinting about a potential purchase I’ll be making. Now I can safely say it happened. I bought an ARCHOS GamePad and, spoiler alert, I’m very happy with my purchase. I’ll give you a sort of review.Continue reading
Here’s what happens when you read about a game and how good it is for months, and then finally end up playing it after getting it for cheap on the Humble Weekly Sale. The first two episodes of the Walking Dead did not impress me.Continue reading
After Might and Magic Book One, I wanted something light. Offspring Fling fit the bill nicely. It’s cheerful and colorful, short and not too hard on the noggin, though it is a puzzle game at heart. In fact, it was so fun for me that I managed to beat all 100 levels in one day (or about 4 hours).
Let’s get that out of the way. As I said, I beat all 100 levels. Out of those 100, I got gold or better in 75 levels, and four of those actually got the rainbow flower. As soon as I was done, I also beat a few of the early levels again to earn the gold flower, which got me to 80 gold flowers total.
So, I have 80/100 gold flowers and obtaining all of them seems pretty reachable. I also have 4/100 rainbow flowers and at this point, I’m not at all hopeful about getting all of those. All of that got me 51,5% completion of the game.
Of course, in my blog, this sort of completion counts as 100% Completed, which is a whole separate category to just Completed. For now, Offspring Fling is Completed. Will it ever be 100% Completed? Probably not. I do, however, intend to aim for the gold.
Now for the game.
Offspring Fling is a platforming puzzle game with the aim to aesthetically emulate old SNES games, all the way to the fake box art the game is marketing with.
A Super Pretendo Game.
The plot is that you’re a mom with a lot of babies and some weird monster things scares off your babies while knocking you out. You wake up and now you have to find your babies.
The plot is told in a cute slideshow at the start and the end of the game.
Most levels are single screen, though some stretch a bit further. Your goal on each level is to find your babies and carry them into the exit. The thing is, they usually aren’t in very convenient spots. You can carry up to four of them at a time, but with each additional offspring, it gets harder to move and jump around, so your goal is to figure out how to fling, drop and move your babies to get all of them to the exit, all the while avoiding natural obstacles and monsters.
This is a typical early level. You need to figure out the fastest order to get the chicks out and get them through the door.
Each level also has a gold time, which gets you the Gold Flower, as well as an even more difficult developer time, which gets you the Rainbow Flower.
A Gold Flower is realistically obtainable, most of the time.
On Steam, the game supports badges and cards and boasts a total of 10 achievements. I only unlocked three of those after completing the game, so if that’s how you want to get to 100% Completion, it won’t be easy.
As I said, Offspring Fling is relatively short, but the point is to repeat the levels in order to master them and finish them as fast as possible. Basically, the game is a puzzle at first, but once you figure out the solution, it’s mostly about executing it perfectly. There are exceptions, though. Some levels require you to find an alternate, not as obvious solution in order to break record time.
This was my thought for the first fifteen or so levels. The controls felt stiff, the solutions were too simple and there was almost no danger to the level. Basically, I didn’t find the game very fun, but I decided to stick with it, because I thought it must be extremely short, based on the level list I had.
After a while, I figured out I can pick up multiple babies. In hindsight, the level design did try to show me this, but I wasn’t interested, so I wasn’t paying enough attention. This realization made the game slightly less annoying.
Then I started getting used to the controls…
This thought slowly started to set in around level 15, but gained a lot more ground around level 30 or so. I got used to the controls and I realized that, while they aren’t very precise, they do work well with muscle memory.
I started repeating levels at this point, because I realized the Gold Flower wasn’t as unobtainable as I though and I actually do want to collect them.
You can see all your flowers and chicks in your garden.
Basically, I started to get hooked, and it was only getting worse.
At this point, I was about 2 hours in, but my nephew got interested to, so I let him play for a while from level one. He actually managed to get a few gold flowers I skipped on my first run because, well, he apparently has an easier time figuring it out, even though he’s six and I’m 26.
After about an hour, he had enough and I had to satisfy my itch for more. Yup, I was now hooked.
Thinking about it, it has the looks, the music and the humor, so aesthetically, it’s close to perfect.
The puzzles make you think, but it’s not slow and methodical. You need reflexes as much, if not more than you need your brain. This, for me, is absolutely great, because It wasn’t mentally as demanding as I thought it would be, but it was demanding enough not to feel like a waste of time for me.
There’s actually a boss battle, but it plays mostly like a skill-focused level.
Once muscle memory started to set in, I was doing insanely impressive moves, flinging my offspring left, right and center, using them to push switches, knock out enemies, catching them in mid-air just to throw them again…
The boss battle doesn’t take too long.
Basically, I did everything any good mother would do to save her babies after putting them in harm’s way.
As much as I would like to excuse it, I can’t. The controls aren’t responsive enough and it gets frustrating sometimes. Muscle memory simply cannot compensate for it completely, especially when you need precision, such as when you have to jump onto a narrow ledge, or through a narrow crack in the ceiling. You end up moving left and right to hit the correct spot, which wastes your time, which frustrates you because it really wasn’t you who messed up – it was the game.
You get a head count at the end, based on how well you did.
Still, those moments aren’t too common and they can definitely be forgiven. Overall, Offspring Fling is a fun and mostly fair game.
There’s one more thing, though. Some of those developer times are simply too perfect. There have been several levels where I did everything perfectly and I’m still 2 milliseconds short. I can even repeat my perfect result as many times as I want, to the millisecond, but I simply have no idea how to do better.
I’m not completely sure, but there might be some fourth wall breakage going on here.
The game gives you a ghost replay of the developer run when you get close enough, so I know he isn’t doing anything special. He’s just a millisecond or two faster than me. Maybe this is also an issue with the controls. Maybe the game would work better on a gamepad, which I admittedly haven’t tried yet, because I don’t have a decent one available at the moment.
Offspring Fling is a great puzzle platformer, not to heavy on the puzzle, but definitely heavy on the technical skills. It also has charm and atmosphere which not many games have. I recommend it and I’ll be playing it until I at least reach the gold, which I don’t think will take too long.
After completing the 100th level, this is where I was.
And one more time, I can’t stress this enough – the game looks amazing. It has that washed out color palette and beautiful animations of some of the very best-looking SNES games, except the animations are ever so slightly more detailed, so it actually improves the retro look.
Now, the thing is, everything you read up to now was written on the day I played the game for the first time, so I was heavily under the impression.
A day later, it seem that the process of being annoyed and then gradually loving Offspring Fling repeats itself. I tried getting a Gold Flower on the level Tight Fit and I was extremely, extremely annoyed. After about 20 minutes of repeating this 16 second level, I got gradually better again and managed to get the Flower. After that, I was in the zone and easily got three more Gold Flowers, and now I love Offspring Fling again.
It’s weird how that works, isn’t it?
Pixel Dungeon is another Android game I’ve been playing recently. It’s a roguelike made specifically for this platform, so the interface makes it very playable. Is it good, though? I think it is, and there’s plenty I can say about it.
While the Final Fantasy series holds a special place in my heart, there’s room in there reserved for Grandia as well. It was the first JRPG I played that wasn’t Final Fantasy. I played it in German, didn’t understand a big part of it, but loved it anyway. Why?Continue reading
I get it. I finally get why so many people consider Final Fantasy IX to be the best of the era. This is a game that did an insane amount of things right. It looks and sounds great, plays amazingly well and it actually fixed a lot of things people complained about in Final Fantasy VII and VIII.
A lot of the story and talking is optional, so those who don’t feel like going through it on their second play through, or even on their first, can easily skip it. As for myself, I enjoyed every moment of the story, and probably would do so again.
The part I did make use of are the optionally long summoning animations. Apparently, there was a lot of understandable complaining about the long summoning animations in Final Fantasy VII and especially VIII, so Square did what was probably the best solution. The first summoning of an eidolon shows the full length sequence. Future summoning only show the short version, unless the Boost ability is enabled on Dagger/Eiko. In that case, the full sequence is played, but the summon also does more damage. This way, people who are willing to wait through it get rewarded a bit, but most of the time, the extra damage is not needed.
It’s a classic happy ending, but it’s a classic game, so it works.
In one of my earlier posts about this play through, I complained about the frequency of random encounters, but over the course of the game, I’ve noticed it really isn’t a huge issue. Most of the time, the encounters are frequent only in areas where your characters could probably use some training. Other than that, I only rarely had trouble with to many encounters.
As I said, the game looks and sounds great. It’s probably one of the best looking games of the era and the soundtrack is something I often listen to as part of my regular playlists. It’ not just about the quality of the graphics, though. It’s design that makes it timeless and provides the atmosphere and charm. Everything just blends and works together perfectly.
Yes, Final Fantasy VII still is my favorite, simply because the story and the setting are probably the most developed (or the most familiar to me personally), but would have to agree that overall, Final Fantasy IX is probably the better game. Any fan of what JRPGs used to be should play this one.
Some people might crucify me for saying this, but I believe Final Fantasy VIII is definitely one of the better Final Fantasy games overall. Sure, it isn’t the best one out there, and you might argue it’s the worst one on the PS1, but it’s definitely an extremely good game.
The junction mechanics of Final Fantasy VIII are complex and interesting. The way the various items synergize with the junction system makes the whole thing even deeper and more interesting. The GFs add to it even more, so overall, it’s an amazing package for everyone who loves playing JRPGs for the ability to make overpowered characters if you’re smart and persistent about it.
There’s a lot of melancholy as the game nears the end, but it lands well.
The story of Final Fantasy VIII is… different. That really is all you can say about it. The story is very different compared to the rest of the series around that time and before it. I’m guessing this is the main reason so many were turned off by it, but if you give the game a chance and keep an open mind, it really is a very enjoyable story. The ending leaves a lot of things open to interpretation, but it does so in a good way, unlike, for instance, the recent Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco.
Emotions are quite well portrayed for the time the game was released in.
The music is memorable and on par with any other in the series. At this point, I’d still say that Final Fantasy IX has the best music overall, while Final Fantasy VII has the most memorable song (One-Winged Angel), but the music of Final Fantasy VIII is definitely very, very good.
The only beef I have with Final Fantasy VIII, really, is the whole idea of monsters leveling as you level. No game should encourage you to run away from fights and avoid leveling at all costs. Sure, the game is beatable even if you don’t take care of not leveling to early, but for anyone who wants to feel powerful later, it just isn’t going to happen on the first play through without some serious grinding in the late game.
The leveling thing is a major flaw, in my opinion, but as I said, it’s still an amazing game overall. It breaks some molds, does a lot of things differently and provides a great experience in spite of its flaws. In addition to this, the technological advancement it brings compared to Final Fantasy VII is alone enough to give it a chance.
I didn’t realize the year was 1999. I thought it was earlier.
Any fan of JRPGs should absolutely play this game.