Hypotenuse (XBLIG)

Hit it or Quit it?

Year: 2012 -- Developer: Iamrese -- Publisher: XBLIG

First impression:
Well, it's another fighting game.. but unlike yesterday, these graphics look better.  Except all it looks like is a bunch of rendered.. lines/boxes?  And they fight?   Hopefully there will at least be some sort of AI so I can actually play the game..

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fooled around for:  7 minutes (Indie Game Demo Limit)
That was an interesting little game..  So you play a Samurai "Rectangle".. and you are fending off waves of Evil Rectangles.  You have a sword and a few shurikens, as do the enemies.  At first, I wasn't really digging it too much.  The sword-play seemed clunky and the shurikens were are hard to aim enough to actually hit the enemies.  About halfway through my time, I remembered that I had seem "lock-on" in the controls.  That really turned the game around as far as playability.

Unfortunately, the other side of this is just that there really isn't much to the game.  It says on the exit screen that the full version gives you more death animations, items, and enemy types.  Even a small taste of those might have made the demo a little more fulfilling.  I know they don't want to give it all away, but considering there's a 7 minute time limit anyways, why be so stingy?  Makes me wonder how much more it's really going to add to the game.

The music isn't really music.. It's just some pinking of an instrument hear and there.  In a different type of game, this might work better.  Adventure, puzzle, something like that.  In an action game, it's a little too calm.  Maybe it's on purpose, but it just didn't really work for me.

The graphics are good though, despite being simple.  It's "fancy" simple, with all of the animations on what amounts to be very basic shapes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hit it or Quit it? (80 MSP)
Since it's only a buck, I could almost see myself picking this up.  It might be fun to pick up every now and then.  But the game also doesn't give any indication that it will be keeping track of high scores, or progress or how much the game will actually grow.  For that, I really don't see myself getting too much into this game in the long run.  Despite being a cute little game that is well put together for what it is, I would have to quit it.

Eat my Shuriken and die! (XBLIG)

Hit it or Quit it?

Year: 2012 -- Developer: FlatRedBall -- Publisher: XBLIG

First impression:
Pretty brutal name.. I have to eat your shuriken.. AND die?  Man..

The screenshots show this actually looks like a Smash Bros clone.  Haven't really seen anything like that before.  Granted, it's pretty basic graphics, and I really don't expect the controls to handle very well at all, but that's what they seem to be shooting for.  I should note as well, that I never really like Smash Bros (yeah, yeah.. get over it) in the first place, so I'm especially not looking forward this.

When the game loads, but before it starts, there is some pretty hyper chiptuney techno crazy music.  If that's the music during the game, it might actually be a little distracting.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fooled around for: 0 minutes (!?)

..This wasn't even worth the bandwidth to post, let alone the time it took to actually put this post together.

The game is MULTIPLAYER ONLY WTF?!?!??!  I get that it takes quite a bit of extra time and programming to program AI, especially into a larger scale fighting game, but really?  It should be called Eat my MULTIPLAYER ONLY in the title.  This is dumb.  The game was ugly anyways.  Quit it.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure HD (XBLA)

Hit it or Quit it?

Year: 2012 -- Developer: Capcom -- Publisher: Capcom

First impression:
"Bizzare" definitely seems accurate, the more of the intro screens I see.  After a few seconds, it looked like it might be a beat 'em up, but then it switched screens, and it's actually a fighter.  Haven't done one of these yet.  Let it be known now, that I'm not a huge fan of fighters.  Especially 2d, cartoonly ones.  Just something about them never really clicks with me.  It was surprising enough that the new Mortal Kombat and Soul Calibur 4 grabbed me for as long as they did.

So, yeah, lots of crazy japanese yelling already.  Some of the fighters look like they are just standing behind some sort of being they are controlling, instead of fighting themselves.  Also, one of the still shots shows some guy holding a gun out, except his fingers are coming through the gun in places they shouldn't be.  Someone hand-drew this, and let that slip?  I don't understand.  I have a feeling I'm not going to understand this game in general.  This seems pretty obviously to be a remake, but why, I'm not sure.  Being a Capcom fighter, this probably has some huge cult following I don't know about.  We'll see if they convert me.

-----------------------------------

Fooled around for: 15 Minutes (Played each of the available demo characters)
Again "Bizzare" is definitely right.  And I still feel like I'm missing some inside joke about all of this.  It's just sooo anime and crazy, it has to be from a Manga or show or something.  If not, good job guys back whenever this was made on coming up with such ridiculous material for a game.

The whole guys-controlling-things mechanic I mentioned actually turned out to be pretty interesting.  They are called Stands, and you can summon it during the fight to basically fight in front of you, presumably blocking damage and causing extra damage.  They also come out during some special moves without being summoned directly.  They have their own little health bar, and when it runs out, they just go away.  The bar refills quickly and you can summon them again.  It was cool to have something like that to manage, but when both fighters had Stands out, the screen got a little too chaotic.

Otherwise, it was pretty much a straightforward 2d cartoony fighter.  Light, Medium, Heavy attacks, blocking, dashing, special moves, crazy combos, etc.  The biggest draw was those Stands.  Otherwise the game seemed pretty difficult to me, but I also haven't played many of these that long to really learn any general tactics.

The music was pretty awesome though, definitely kept you pumped.  The stories for each character seemed to weave into each other.  They all definitely seemed aware of their Stands, though one said his was a "demon within".  Crazy animations, crazy expressions, random Japanese here and there.  Again, bizzare.

------------------------------------

Hit it or Quit it? (1600 MSP)
Whoa!  I didn't even noticed how expensive this was until I looked it up for this section.  How did a 2D fighter get priced at 1600 points?  $20!?  Really just makes me think still there is something I'm missing.  Maybe this was the greatest game ever in Japan at one point or something, otherwise, I'm just confused why it needed an HD remix, and more confused at such a high price point.

I wouldn't let my Stand hit this.  I probably wouldn't even hit this for 80 points, let alone 1600.  It's just not my kind of game.  Quit it.