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'Crypt of the NecroDancer' is a rhythm based dungeon crawler that can use a 'Dance, Dance Revolution' pad for a controller. The next Twisted Pixel game for Xbox One stars a sentient. Community Hub. Newly self-aware, I.R.I.S. The martial-arts wielding assassin motorcycle, has begun a cross-continent escape to freedom. I.R.I.S.’s only ally is her engineer Pablo, who gets conscripted into the quest after his pant leg gets caught in her chassis.
Lococycle is an Xbox One launch title from Twisted Pixel (it's also coming on Xbox 360, but we reviewed the X1 version). The studio that had previously delivered The Gunstringer and has created a game that, on paper, sounds really interesting.
So much so that it was one of the first games downloaded to the next-gen console after it arrived, with our interest piqued due to the unique premise. Sadly, the promise and premise of Lococycle is about as good as it gets, from there on in it's a slippery slope downwards.It starts off with a live-action introduction. B-list actors stand around at a party; we're introduced to badly dressed generals, hammy villains, and the two super-bikes that feature most prominently in the game. The whole introduction felt a little on the cringeworthy side.
It's trying to do homage to B-movies, the kind of films that revel in their low-budget origins and flirt with viewers via tongue-in-check humour and ropey visuals. It didn't work - in trying to ape something that's beautifully bad, Twisted Pixel has inadvertently made something that's not very good.Perhaps if it were just a live-action film, one of those two quid jobs in HMV or with a two star rating on Netflix, it'd be different. We'd be celebrating that crapness with friends as part of a terrible movie marathon night. We'd no doubt extract some twisted pleasure from the atrocious acting, the rickety plot, and the horrible script.Instead, the honky live-action scenes are punctuated by playable missions, and rather than being able to endure and laugh at a ninety minute movie, we're forced to play through several hours of monotonous gameplay bookended by low-budget, low-quality cutscenes.Players assume the role of I.R.I.S., a newly sentient motorbike (she was struck by lightning, if you can believe that). Following the incident with the lightning bolt it appears as if the bike is in need of repair.
The mechanic tasked with fixing this heavily armed super-bike is called Pablo. During that introductory scene in the garage, an advert comes on the television for a motorbike rally, and I.R.I.S. Decides that's where she wants to go. Pablo, who's ankle somehow gets stuck on the side of the bike, is dragged along after her as the bike starts its journey to the event in Scottsburg, Indiana. Along the way I.R.I.S.
And Pablo race down a number of roads, avoiding oncoming traffic and dodging a stream of incoming attacks from angry enemies seeking to reclaim the valuable self-aware military-grade motorcycle. At our journey's start the first thoughts were: 'why isn't he turning into a bloody pulp as she drags him along?' , and it's not long before you realise this whole debacle could be averted if Pablo just took his trousers off. It's a paper thin plot with more holes than a colander, but Twisted Pixel knows this and doesn't mind.
After all, they're keeping the spirit of the B-movie alive, so we let it pass and get on with the game.As the pair zip down roads and dirt-tracks in five different stages, various enemies are thrown at you and must be dealt with in several ways. The most immediately obvious method is via the underpowered cannon at the front of the bike. Over time you can level it up using credits earned in-game, and by the end of the game it's a relatively effective weapon, but only if you've maxed out the upgrades. Also has a missile attack, but she can only use it in certain sections that play out from a different visual perspective.When she's not firing projectiles at her enemies, I.R.I.S. Is engaging them in hand-to-hand combat. Forward attacks are done via a swipe of the front wheel, where rear attacks involve swinging Pablo as weapon. At certain sections I.R.I.S.
And Pablo get stuck into melee combat with several combatants, and these battles take place in the air above the tarmac, and attacks can be linked together to create long combos. The are multiple QTEs that must be triggered along the way, either to boost your score for the level or to keep a combo running without interruption.Pablo can be temporarily detached from I.R.I.S. And used as a deadly discus, spinning into enemies before returning to his place by the bike's rear wheel. Boss battles involve on-the-rails shooting sequences, aiming at moving targets, and taking out weak points (that are clearly signposted). In theory that sounds silly, but fun. In practice it's monotonous and boring.
The underpowered cannon takes an age to whittle down enemy health bars and is tricky to aim. The melee combat starts off fine, but it soon becomes clear that it requires absolutely no skill whatsoever (at one point I managed to string together a 500+ hit combo just by mashing buttons - I wasn't even looking at the screen for most of it). The QTEs break up the flow of the other combat scenarios, but it's not long before animations are being reused. Using Pablo as a discus provided some variation, but almost zero challenge. Likewise, the boss fights aren't particularly difficult, and most were bested at the first time of asking.There's several sections that change up the formula in someway or another, but none of them really improve the overall offering. In certain battles you must dodge enemy attacks for a time, before hitting a QTE/counter-attack and then engaging in a short burst of melee combat.
There's sections in the water, in the air, on road, off road, from the side, all providing a change from the vanilla on the track third-person view. A couple of times the road rage stops momentarily, long enough for Pablo to pull off a series of vague QTEs (in one such section we had to stop I.R.I.S. From being crushed by a train by fixing her engine in four separate tasks), but even with these changes of pace and a passable amount of variety in other areas, it's never particularly exciting. Perhaps the introduction of harder game modes would've provided additional challenge and longevity, but as it stands there's no option to increase the difficulty. You can, if you're desperate to get your money's worth, try and beat previous scores through repeat plays, but that's about it.During the five different stages you'll come up against a selection of different enemy types, but not anywhere near as many as one might like in a game such as this. Challenges often repeat themselves, and there's only a few moments of genuine originality, and these sections generally get recycled later on. For the most part it just ends up being monotonous and boring.During the different sequences, Twisted Pixel aims to spice things up via dialogue between I.R.I.S.
And Pablo (he doesn't speak English so his lines are subtitled), whereby the bike misunderstands practically everything her human sidekick says, and insists on spewing out a constant stream of movie quotes, very few of which were able to elicit a laugh. One highlight is the character Spike, played by Robert Patrick, but even his solid voice work and the absurdity of his character isn't enough.Visually, Lococycle isn't particularly strong. There's a playful, colourful palette to the art style, but it feels very cartoony and juvenile. Some of the enemies faced along the way are interesting (there's a definite Matrix agent feel to some of the characters), but none are particularly original and the lustre comes off after we see them constantly reappearing.
All in all, it comes across as tired and uninspiring. There was some interest in finding out what happened at the end, much as there is in staring at a car crash to see what happened, but even our morbid curiosity wasn't enough to prevent the second half of the game feeling like a chore.
There are plenty of reasons to pick up a next-gen console, Lococycle isn't one of them.
Share this story.Like a doting parent on Christmas morning, we can't help but make sure the two newest game systems receive equal treatment. Just as we wrote at length about the launch of PlayStation 4 and, so have we babbled about Xbox One:, the, and the. Then we did a of the two consoles.Of course, no next-gen launch is complete without a rundown of exclusive downloadable fare—who goes to stores anymore, anyway?—which brings us to the biggest Xbox Live-only games at launch. Xbox One has ushered in the $20 starting point for downloadable games (with one kinda free-to-play exception), but from the look of these three games, that $5 hike might have come a little too soon. Killer InstinctThe original Killer Instinct managed to somehow stand out from the slew of also-ran Western fighting games that rose and quickly fell during the mid-'90s. Amidst cartoony, violent, and weird experiments like Primal Rage, Clayfighter, Eternal Champions, and Mace: The Dark Age, Killer Instinct was a rare glimmer of so-called maturity from Nintendo, complete with fancy-for-the-time, pre-rendered 3D characters.It was the combos: so many 15-hit explosions dropped arcadegoers' jaws to the ground, while an amped-up announcer growled about 'cah-cah-cah-combo breakers.'
But that flash also hurt the game's balance: the original arcade edition had glitches that, among other issues, allowed TJ Combo to easily win by way of infinite combo.After a decade of corporate mergers, Killer Instinct is now a nostalgic ball of dynamite for Microsoft to dust off in the hopes of attracting old fans to a new console. If they do come flocking, they'll delight in the old KI guard remaining mostly firm—what little of it there is on offer, anyway.In this download-only game, only five KI veterans return, along with a single newcomer, and two more fighters have been promised in the future. In a cost-to-content sense, that might suffice; $20 is the starting price for the eight-fighter pack, compared to about two-dozen fighters in a standard $60 game, right? (There's also a $40 version with more costumes and an emulated version of the 1995 arcade classic.)The trouble is, KI doesn't offer six particularly distinctive fighters at the moment. New character Sadira drives that point home.
She comes equipped with hand-mounted blades and sticky spiderman webs, and she brings a few new aerial attacks to the series; hop in the air, then pull yourself toward your target with some sticky blades to slice and open combos. In practice, though, she's more useful as an on-the-ground hybrid of Thunder's brutal, spinning attacks and Orchid's super-quick kicks.But Thunder and Orchid don't differ from each other, either, in terms of speed, power, and how they link 'quick' and 'fierce' moves to combo-smack the heck out of opponents. Most of the other characters (including low-floor sweeper Sabrewulf) also lack such fight-changing distinctions, and the omission of sluggers like Fulgore or TJ Combo is deeply felt. The only real distinct fighters are Jago—the series' Ken/Ryu clone who can create space by way of fireball attacks—and ice-alien Glacius, who owns the entire screen with Dhalsim-like extendo-kicks and other warping moves.New developers Double Helix certainly can't be faulted for their efforts.
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The small roster is at least tuned for high-octane fighting at all times, which feels decidedly KI-like. The online battles have thus far been lag-free (at least in the pre-release period), and the fights are full of sharp character designs and screen-filling particle effects at a consistent 60 frames-per-second.To their credit, the developers also worked out some longtime kinks in the series. You'll be more likely to break combos this time around, reducing the number of buttons required to stop a seasoned expert. Also, a new “instinct” meter fills when you pull off things like combo breakers.
Riding a dragon through giant fantasy worlds while shooting fireballs, lightning bolts, and other elemental attacks at giant, airborne creatures. How can anybody screw up such an obviously winning concept, especially when the design team in question is famous for delivering that exact formula in the classic '90s series, Panzer Dragoon?Leave it to Crimson Dragon to answer that question. Between slippery controls, sloppy looks, meager content, and a forgettable plot made worse by its delivery, this Xbox One launch exclusive does everything it can to drag the next generation of consoles backward by at least a decade.The game sees you trying to colonize alien planets while wiping out creatures who've caught a virus known as Crimsonscale—an obvious allegory for Christopher Columbus and company wreaking smallpox on Native Americans, but replace the Santa Maria with a dragon. The plot, which at least had some hope of elevating Crimson Dragon beyond its lousy gameplay, is delivered in walls of uninspired, confusing text, spoken aloud by characters who have neither animation nor anything resembling personalities.What remains, then, is an arcade shooter, broken into a series of brief, on-rails flying missions, in which you pilot your dragon with one joystick and your weapon's aim with the other. Both parts move sluggishly and ineffectually, and both have further issues. Your dragon is confined to only a small portion of the screen, for instance, and dodging enemy attacks is as simple as tapping a bumper.You don't really need to pilot your dragon, up until the moment a mission has a “dodge random structures” passage, and your pre-defined flight path makes it hard to gauge where you need to fly.
Aiming, meanwhile, requires dealing with your pre-defined camera swooping around for no good reason, not to mention your giant on-screen dragon often blocking your view at the worst times.You receive a “wingman” helper pretty quickly in the game, and it's a bad sign that Crimson Dragon has to dole out this auto-locking helper to compensate for its aiming awkwardness. The game also includes some RPG-styled progression, including dragon upgrades and per-mission perks, but they're mostly a lure to keep players grinding through older missions for higher scores (grind being the operative word here).The beasts you blast and the worlds you fly over won't seduce anybody with next-gen shimmer. Low-poly, blurry-textured, uninspired, buggy creatures fly over ugly worlds that explode in color, at least, but not in legitimate next-gen geometry. There's a JRPG-worthy soundtrack behind all of this gunk, but Crimson Dragoon doesn't even have the courtesy to isolate that quality tuneage with a sound test mode.In an early mission, as a lifeless soldier pleads for your help, she implores you by saying, “Look, I know you didn't choose this life; none of us did.” Luckily, Xbox One buyers have a little more free will at their disposal than Crimson Dragoon's lowly protagonist.Verdict: Avoid like the Crimsonscale plague. For the past few years, Twisted Pixel Games has edged closer and closer to fulfilling its dream goal: becoming a film production company.
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