Um... Nah. ...Maybe...
No. I could... Uh... Meh.
There's only so little
I can say about a game devoid of all creativity. This WiiWare
title... is not devoid of all creativity, there was a good idea at
first... but then you see how it's handled, and... Urgh. Look. Bad
ideas can be done in a way that they seem fine. You can't make
something amazing out of something awful, but you can still do
something of very relative quality if you are careful.. On the
opposite side of the spectrum, there's ideas that seem creative at
first, but which are handled so damn poorly that the results are just
not very good. This... fits in the second category.
This is Bit Boy. It
reminds of many different things, notably Pac-Man. I'm not a Pac-Man
fan, though its influence on the gaming world is undeniable. However,
Pac-Man wasn't bad, it was challenging, but you had to be really
persistent if you wanted to beat all 255 levels. Sadly, not all
imitations are good. This one is... indeed, bad. But it's hard to
describe... I'd say the best way to show how bad it is... well...
it's to describe how the game goes, as usual.
I hope you enjoy this review. Took me way long to find pics for it. I mostly got images of "Meat Boy". No, really. |
Should you buy it? Or
should you skip this one? We'll see.
So, we follow the story of Kubi (pronounced Kyuu-bii). He's... a cube character, not a tailed demon. He lives in the "present", but one day, a machine appears in front of him: A time machine! From it comes a little video game creature who seems to be from an old generation. As in, its resolution is lower than the one Kubi lives in, The nasty creatures (who look like the Space Invaders a little) kidnap Kubi's friends and send them through time. Willing to save his friends, the cube protagonist decides to jump on it and winds up... In the past! ...Not any past, either: The past of video games. Literally, when he comes to his senses, he finds out that he's not a cube anymore, but a square in a grid. A 4-bit grid, to be precise.
One Kubi, four monsters in a small grid. Count 'em. |
His friends are scattered all over the levels, and Kubi has to pick them
all up in order to progress to the next level. There's actually five
levels for each generation, and Kubi must complete all the levels of a generation in order
to unlock the next one. I guess collecting all the friends in
a gaming era makes the time machine work to bring Kubi to the next
era. ...Somehow. Also, as the game progresses, Kubi gains something
that proves very useful: Attacks! He can defend himself now! However, his laser shots are VERY limited.
You have to spare them for when you're in big trouble, as your number
of shots will ALWAYS be smaller than the number of enemies there can
be on the screen. If anything, I really suggest you just use them
when Kubi is cornered and monsters are coming towards him in all the
directions he can go.
And... that's it for
the plot. It goes on for six generations of gaming, and not much else is known of anyone in there.
And that's it. I
covered most of the game in 500 words. Guess the rest will be filler,
huh? Better stop there, right? Maybe I should have kept this for a
Demo Review, even if this is not actually a Demo Review? I should end
this now, shouldn't I?
Also of the 16-bit era: No refunds. |
Okay, excuse me... Did
we skip the freaking GameCube generation? Oh wait, I think I get it.
Bit Boy is already a cube in a game, so it was pointless to insert
the GCN gen? No wait, I think I got it. Between the Super Nintendo
and the Nintendo 64, 3D had started becoming commonplace for video
games, as some late Super Nintendo games had 3D graphics (even if the
game was actually in 2D view, such as Donkey Kong Country) and the
Sega consoles at that time were also using more and more 3D graphics
with their games. And then it became commonplace, if not a total
necessity, for video games to be in 3D when the N64 came around. Or
wait, the more plausible explanation for this odd detail in Bit Boy:
The developer, Bplus, just didn't care. Yeah, I'll go for the third
explanation, even if the second one has more proof.
Before you enter a
generation of games in Bit Boy, you're brought to a screen that
explains the details of that gaming generation. As an example, the
4-bit era claims it has “Only a hand full of colours” (and
apparently no intent on correcting basic spelling mistakes), “low
frame rate”, “no background music” (Oh, Joy), and “joystick
control”. In other words, this is as basic a cheap Atari game as
you can get. And every next generation also tells the new details
that are added in this new world.
And that star, nothing new? .......Nnnnnnnnnnnope! |
Another big problem
with the gameplay (there sure is a lot of them, huh?): In some cases,
the mazes are poorly-designed, leading to a lot of dead ends –
which Kubi will have to visit if there is one of his “friends” at
the end of it. In that case, Kubi CAN get followed by an enemy who'll
then block his way. You can, of course, waste an attack on the
monster, but that also means you have one less bullet for the next
time you're cornered. And if you get cornered too often, you'll lose
all your shots. Great.
As if that was not
enough, the amount of monsters to be roaming the mazes is just too
big. For later levels, there can be up to twelve monsters roaming,
and guess what? The mazes aren't as big as the ones in Pac-Man.
Therefore, Kubi WILL get cornered pretty damn often. Again, comparing
to Pac-Man: You know how there were only FOUR ghosts in very level in
that one? There's a good reason. More would be too many. Well, guess
what happens here. There's way too many monsters in the freaking
mazes of Bit Boy, and you cannot protect your character sufficiently.
This is very bad programming. Very bad choices.
What else... what
else... Oh, right. To give the full arcade game feel, you need a
scoring system. Yeah, there is a score system for every generation in
this game. You get points every time you pick up one of Kubi's
bajillion friends, when you destroy an enemy, or when you pick up a
fruit (another idea taken from Pac-Man) or another power-up. On the
other hand, you will lose points if Kubi gets hit. Sounds like any
normal scoring system to me. When you've completed he five levels of
a world, you are brought to the score table. It's your chance to see
how well you did. Of course, in order to get the highest score, you
need to pick up everything in the level without losing a life.
Considering how many enemies will roam the levels later on, you
sometimes have to rely on dumb luck. ...Have I mentioned that I was
as lucky as a man stepping on a black cat on a sidewalk crack under a
ladder on Friday the 13th? Personally, I'm not a score
chaser. I can't stand games that stay the same for too long, things
have to change, there has to be something, an innovation, a little
element that makes it better, that will bring me back to play it. I
hate repetitions, I really do, I hate repetitions, I tell ya, I hate
repetitions, such as this one, I hate repetitions.
And in fact, I think
this is the target public for this game: Score-chasers and
arcade-nostalgic gamers. If you're not either of those, I strongly
recommend you don't pay the five dollars to play this game.
It's just as I said at
the beginning. The basic idea is fine: What if we were to see the
main generations of gaming, all within the same game? And every world
would represent an era of gaming, with the elements that represent it
better, such as the quality of the graphics. However, the more it
changes, the more it becomes painfully obvious that it's still the
same. Yeah, the graphics get better with time, but the gameplay is
always the same. Same old. Nothing is different. Go around a maze,
avoid the enemies, collect the mini-cubes, rack up a score. Gosh.
And even if you kind of
enjoy the game based on this short description, there are major
design flaws that will eventually decrease your enjoyment. The mazes
aren't done so well, as there are too many ways you can lose a life
simply by ending up in a dead end. Which brings me to the other
detail I kept repeating: There's way too many enemies for such small
mazes. As you progress through the worlds, it becomes too difficult
to avoid all the critters.
Also, I think I should
point out the big deal breaker for me: You know how the whole point
of this story is that Kubi is saving his friends in order to go home?
Well, once you beat the final world, there's no closure to the plot.
No ending cutscene, no way to know if he succeeded, no way to find
out if it ends well. I know the story in this was just an excuse plot
in order to explain why the game works the way it does... But this
just sucks. I know, I know, arcade games never really had endings, but for
a video game that pretends to go through the many generations of
gaming, it could at least have given us some sort of final word on
the whereabouts of our hero. Also, most arcade games had no end
because they had infinite levels; that, or their last level ended
with a kill screen because the game wasn't programmed beyond a number
of levels. But this one does, it has thirty levels! It could have
given us something more. But no!
Add to this some
loading screens that take a while (and this is "supposedly" part of the
concept, as it gets mentioned in the info screen for a few worlds), and
you get a game that I just don't recommend to gamers. Or rather, as I
said earlier, I recommend it only to those who like to try and beat
the high scores. The only way to enjoy this game is to treat it like
an arcade game. Don't go in hoping a story, or an easy difficulty.
This game is HARD, like a lot of arcade games from the good old days.
Really, buy it only if you have an interest in this sort of thing.
And even then, you could still dislike the game because of its other
flaws. So... yeah. I didn't like it.
Gosh, I need something
happy now. Just checking TVTropes a little... I might go read a few
pages about the funny moments in Nintendo games... Or maybe... Hey,
what's this little heart for? Crowning Moments of Heartwarming? That
will do, I guess. Read you next week.
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