This is one of those games I WOULD look forward to if I did such a thing. But I tend to try not to look forward to games because I’ve been burned so many times in the past (Invincible Tiger, I’m looking at you). So I saw the trailer and liked the music and the overall style. The end result of the release is a little bit of a mixed bag though.
This, for all intents and purposes, is a Simon game. There are some other games like that in the indie games section, but they’re just very basic boring affairs that you tend not to play for more than a few minutes … even for someone like me who likes Simon games for some reason.
This is much different though in the fact that it has an actual presentation and uses more than just the face buttons on a black background. This particular game uses old style pixel art and chiptunes sampled from a real Commodore 64 SID chip. Which almost automatically makes the music excellent. It’s not without it’s glaring problems … well to be fair they’re not so much problems as just missing stuff, but I’ll get to that a little later.
You play as a cute little robot named Lodestar who has an approximation of an Xbox 360 controller on his stomach. Graphically, while there isn’t a whole hell of a lot to the game, what IS there is actually very good for such a simplistic art style. Lodestar himself has tons of personality in his limited, but very smooth animation. The various button presses on his stomach actually look very good along with his reactions to getting a game over (which tends to happen a lot). And the initial animation of the controller part on his stomach spinning into view is pretty cool. It’s just too bad you only ever see it once. And his eyes move around, he raises his arms up and down and his mouth … it doesn’t so much move as it changes colors when he talks. It all sounds pretty basic in the end, but it’s just those little touches of detail that are great. The backgrounds change throughout each of the levels and get more and more impression with each passing level. Even though you won’t be paying much attention to them in the end because you’re going to be watching and listening to each different button press. But it’s a nice little detail that COULD have been left out but wasn’t. Overall, graphically, while there isn’t a whole lot going on, what IS going on is great.
The sound is really the stand out part here, because of it’s use of the SID chip samples. Which doesn’t mean anything at all of course if the music sucks. But it doesn’t. The music is actually really good and builds the further along you get in the game. Each different button press and movement has it’s own unique sound (as it should) which really helps you get higher into the levels when you figure out what does what. Normally I can’t stand the music in these simplistic games because they tend to get extremely old real quick. But I can’t say that for the music with this game because it’s just very well done. And there is a free play mode that you get after you beat … I believe it’s level 16 … where you can just screw around with the different sounds and make whatever you want. Now, granted, the times I’ve messed with it all I’ve been able to come up with is random noise. But I could see someone who knows what they’re doing really coming up with something mainly because if you hit 2 different sounds at the same time they naturally combine together to make something completely different. It’s a pretty fun little diversion from the rest of the game that can kill a few minutes in the least. Oh, and Lodestar himself is voiced by John J Dick, who voiced Serious Sam, though it’s very hard to recognize for me mainly because I haven’t played the game in years. Maybe I should go a pre-order Serious Sam HD on Steam. ;)
The control is really what kind of matters with this, because the Xbox 360 control is very finicky. Especially that worthless directional pad. And sometimes with the indie games, the analogs are much too sensitive to the actual direction you’re going. Jonny Crush is a perfect example of this because if you don’t have that analog stick DEAD center … you’ll start veering off to the left or right. Which is one of the things that hurts it. But Lodestar 1000 is very forgiving when it comes to that type of thing and more than likely you don’t find yourself hitting the wrong thing with either the analog sticks or the directional pad. And yes, even though this is a family friendly game, the difficulty ramps up quite a bit pretty quick. It uses everything on the face of the controller. Both analog sticks, the face buttons and the directional pad. Luckily it doesn’t use either of the triggers or bumpers, because that’d just be four more buttons to worry about. And the controls are actually very solid and I never find myself doing anything I shouldn’t except when I screw up. And the sound is a big part of the control since each different action makes a different sound. It just gets a little hard to tell the difference between the sounds on the left analog stick sometimes, especially if you’re like me and have some major issues with paying attention to everything. I’ve gotten to the point now where I almost completely ignore the screen and just listen though. And, oddly enough, there is four player support … unfortunately not over Xbox Live. But there’s nothing competitive about it, it’s all cooperative play. Which means you can really rack up your score with the help of your friends. I haven’t tried this because the only other controller I OWN is the Street Fighter 4 Fight Stick … and that definitely doesn’t lend itself to playing this game well. But the controls are actually very responsive, and appropriately forgiving for the type of game it is. Everything does what you want it to do, which is a big plus considering it uses both analogs and that utterly terrible directional pad.
But, as I said in the opening paragraph, there are some things that I personally think are missing … stuff that is fairly simple that, when considering the attention to detail with the character of Lodestar himself, surprises me that they’re missing. There are no other modes (aside from Free Play, but that doesn’t really count) in the game. It would have been great to see SOMETHING else, especially if it used the cooperative aspects of the game. Xbox Live support would have been something cool, or in the very least global leaderboards. And speaking of leaderboards, yes, it does save YOUR high scores. That’s it. There isn’t a high score LIST to see how you’ve progressed, or maybe to see how other people who have played it on your system has done. What you see in the lower right of the title screen is it. Some sort of competitive play could have been done very easily. And difficulty modes would have been a GREAT addition. My 8 year old played it and got sick of it pretty quick just because she can’t keep up with it once it starts using anything other than the face buttons. And the very first time you mess up, take a wild guess what happens. Different difficulties could have made the game MUCH more accessible to a much wider array of people. Like, a beginner mode that just uses the face buttons, or different modes that use different aspects of the controller like maybe only analogs or something like that. Just ANYTHING. My daughter loves the game … but she’s almost thrown the controller without getting real far into the game just because it ramps up pretty quick.
I don't own a camera. I just have the one that's on my phone.
6.0 – It’s a great game for what it is. The care and attention to detail given to Lodestar considering you much you see him is great, but it seems like all that care was concentrated more on the character itself than the game, and the score would have been MUCH higher if it just had more to it. You get that ONE mode and Free Play and that’s it. Don’t let the 6.0 score fool you though, this is a very well done game. If you’re into Simon games, it’s a definite must get at 80 points if for nothing else than to have the music and the cool little robot staring at you. And of course the drunken night of a game of Simon. Because you know if your friends aren’t into it, after a few beers they may very well get into it. These retro style games have a habit of doing things like that. :)
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