23 reviews: Lugaru

Name: Lugaru: The Rabbit’s Foot
Author: David Rosen (Wolfire Games)
Version: Final
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux
Price: $20
Players: 1
Website: Lugaru page on Wolfire
Video: Quicktime Video posted on the site

Intro
Lugaru is 3rd person, anthropomorphic, adventure/fighting game. With a solid story and unique and intuitive fighting system, this game stands out in the indie world for quality, playability, and a fun, but difficult to master fighting system.

Game Modes
The game has two modes; campaign and challenge. In both modes the goal is to kill all the enemies on the level. In the campaign mode you play as a rabbit, named Turner, whose world is being taken over by wolves and corrupt rabbits. I won't ruin the story too much, but I will reveal that it's a tale of honor, revenge, and betrayal. Also your whole village gets brutally murdered at some point. The story is told via dialog with semi-cut scenes, and levels of combat.

The other mode; challenge, is where you can improve your skills (and your score) in story-less challenges which you progress through one-by-one. In challenge you can go back to any level and play it as many times as you want (unlike the story mode). With 14 challenges, each with increasing difficulty, there’s great replay value and the opportunity to go back to any particular challenge and try to complete it flawlessly.

Game play
The game play is defined by the engrossing fighting system, as well as the challenging AI (Artificial Intelligence) to pit your skills against. The whole fighting style is based on the context of button presses. The controls use WASD for directional movement in relation to the camera, which is controlled by the mouse. The left mouse button controls all your standard attacks, but don’t think that this is “the attack button”, the fighting system is controlled by timing, button combinations, and the context in which they are used. This makes the controls feels less like attack buttons and movement buttons, and more of a streamlined, intuitive system. For example crouch (default shift) is not only used for crouching and sneaking around, but also for fast running, flipping midair, and blocking, all of which are defined by the conditions used. This may sound kind of confusing, but once you go through the simple tutorial it becomes much clearer.

You also have weapons at your disposal on some stages. The weapons include a short dagger, that you can throw at enemies for one hit kills (on most of them) or use to cause extra, permanent, damage, a staff, which has a very long range and is pretty powerful, but breaks easily, and a sword, which is the most powerful weapon in the game, it is unbreakable, and one good hit on an enemy can potentially kill them. The AI can also use all these weapons to their full potential (except throwing the dagger).

The AI in this game, while being confined to mapped out paths, is well built. The AI is very challenging, which can be viewed as a downside or a perk. Fortunately the game is designed so when you start (for both your campaign and the challenges) you fight against a small number of basic opponents. Later these opponents change to become harder and they are more numerous.

Knowing how to fight well isn’t the AI’s only expertise; the NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) have a fairly instinctive alert system, as being able to rely on each other. The alert system is mostly visually based, so if they see you, or a dead body, within a certain range, they will start attacking, but they also can be alerted through ‘sound’, and ‘smell’. NPCs will also alert other enemies; if they are close to death in a fight with you they will potentially run off and get others (if there are still some un-alerted enemies on the stage).

Another neat feature is that the AI actually punishes the player for using the same attack too much. While the AI does get a chance to block/counter your attack normally, if you use the same attack 3 times in a row it is guaranteed to be blocked, and possibly countered, which really forces you to be a master of the fighting style.

There are 3 main fighting styles to this game. You can creep about, trying to score stealth kills, which are triggered by sneaking behind an enemy, undetected, and attacking them with either a knife or no weapon. You can also decide to charge in and take on everyone at once, which is helped by the fact that your attacks have the potential to hit more than one enemy at a time, but hindered by the pounding you’ll receive from everyone on the stage. Then there’s the main style of fighting that seems to be promoted most in Lugaru, alerting one enemy, having them chase after you to a more private location, and killing them, then repeating with all the enemies until you win, because if you can get into a 1 on 1 fight, you have more of a chance at winning and less of a chance of dying. By the way, there is also no visible health bar, although your character does accumulate scratches and scars over the course of fighting, also when you’re low on health the screen will start to blur.

Art style
The visuals on this game are decent for an indie made in 2005. While not nearly comparable to any of today’s games (especially mainstreams), it still is not hat bad. The music is what is really timeless about this game, it provides a subtle background when needed, but kicks into a fight track when you alert an enemy, which is very useful because otherwise knowing when an enemy sees you can be very subtle, or they might even be out of your camera angle. Even though this game features anthropomorphic animals as the characters don’t expect a kidsy Disney style feel, this game is very graphic (for it’s graphics) and mature (I’d give it a Teen rating). The blood is animated and the deaths can be gruesome, so, be prepared if you where expecting something a little more light hearted.

I admit that this game isn’t perfect, the gameplay can get annoyingly difficult, the game doesn’t have a huge campaign, the graphics aren’t perfect, and there are some glitches occasionally with a flying camera after death, and disappearing enemies, but these are very few and far between. The game play is very enjoyable game if you have the time to get good, and the replay value can be more then doubled if you take the time to download some of the mods.

End
Now, with all this in consideration, would you believe me if I told you that it was made by one guy, in high school? Well, it was. David Rosen made the whole thing, back in 2005, as a hobby, so the graphics are more than forgivable. Team Wolfire has grown out of that, now on the alpha stage of their first game together; Overgrowth, the sequel to Lugaru, and it already looks great. Lugaru is absolutely amazing considering all of this, and truly is worth the $20 (although their free promotions are a great deal, and if you use that (or even if you don’t) I advise pre-ordering Overgrowth for $30 to check out the alpha and support Wolfire). With an expansive development blog with great posts on gaming in general and game development it'd be a good idea to check out their blog too. So try the free demo, see if you like it, and maybe buy the game, which is money well deserved.

Lugaru has a huge fan base, so I highly advise checking out the wiki for some great advice on playing the game, as well as on how to mod the game and even some mods for download. I really look forward to Overgrowth and expect me to post my interview with Wolfire, once it’s finished.

23 reviews: World of Goo

Normally I would save reviews for these larger and more well known (and not completely free) games for later, but, seeing how they just released the soundtrack for free i thought i should stay on the ball and link to the soundtrack as well as review the game. Anyway I hope everyone watches the inauguration today and I hope you enjoy my second review!

Name: World of Goo
Author: 2D boy
Version: Final
Platform: Windows, Mac, and Wii (via WiiWare) (Linux coming soon)
Price: $20, free demo
Players: 1 on PC, up to 4 on Wii
Website: http://2dboy.com/games.php
Video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k10vs5hKabZJgMNNRc

An engineer's dream, that's simple enough to be picked up by anyone. 2D boy presents his first game, a real time physics/engineering game with interesting puzzles and an amazing art style. When I first saw this game, as Tower of Goo (http://www.fun-motion.com/physics-games/tower-of-goo/ ) I was impressed by the design and how fun it was. The game has taken leaps and bounds since that (although it did keep a side game that is somewhat similar to that game). Although it kept the same basic game play the art is much more beautiful, the puzzles are much more challenging and the game has tons more personality.

In WoG you play as, well, it's not exactly clear, but your job is to manipulate goo balls that stick to each other to create structures to get to the pipe at the end of the puzzle. Originally you start out only using the black goo, which has no special properties; they just stick to each other when put together and stays there, and moves around when free. Eventually you get many different types of goo which you have to use in order to solve each puzzle.

The puzzles always have the same end goal; get as much goo (sometimes of a specific type) to the pipe as possible; the way of doing this, though, varies dramatically throughout the game. Although most puzzles require you to build some sort of budge or tower you have to use the right goo in the right situation. The puzzles are varied enough to keep you interested, and challenging enough to keep you engaged. The challenge level of this game can waste a lot of your time, but it's not anymore challenging then it should be, so it is highly advised for both avid games and casual gamers with some time to play, be prepared to actually think about each puzzle though.

The art style in this game is amazing. I absolutely love the intentionally imperfect yet still awesome, unique art style. The music for the game fits well, with tracks long enough and ambient enough not to get on your nerves, even if you are stuck on a puzzle for a prolonged period of time. Each song has a unique personality to go with the just as unique level. Speaking of the sound track 2D boy is offering it for absolutely free at: http://kylegabler.com/WorldOfGooSoundtrack/ and it is defiantly good enough to download and listen to even if you haven't played the game, and if you have played it it's a great way to invoke those friendly memories.

The story telling is great, it meshes seamlessly with the music and art style, it just goes well with the whole feel of the game. The game is split up into different chapters, each with slightly varied styles and feels, this provides a great way to add a little cut scene at the end of each to move along the story as well as providing the player with a sense of accomplishment. Other then the cut scenes (which are short and sparse, nothing more then whats required to tell the story), level design, and music, the story is told through signs posted in each level which give you hints on how to complete the puzzle, tidbits to unravel the story, and a little humor, all of which are signed by "the sign maker". The plot has many twists and turns to keep you engaged, so I wont ruin any of the story, as well as a lot of meta comedy to keep you smiling.

World of Goo is intuitive, fun, unique, and extremely enjoyable. I highly advise this game for anyone who wants to face some serious puzzles (each one with an "OCD" challenge for, well, the OCD people who just NEED to finish the whole game, or anyone looking for more difficulty), which can be solved multiple different ways , or just looking for a fun game with a great design and story where you get to make some cool stuff. Defiantly at least download the demo (available off the site) and give the first chapter a spin, it should be enough to have you fall in love with the game, and it is well worth the $20. Let's hope that 2D boy continues on their path of greatness, because this is definitely one of the best indie games of 2008.