2012 In Review 023 - Universal Wars

[Gizmog]

Pre-Thoughts:

I think this was one of the last games released in 2012, it's at least one of the last alphabetically, no idea what the hell it's going to be about. I assume some kind of Space Opera which could be fun, never enough Sci-Fi RPGs. I think JCEnterprises is the guy who made Escape From Tall Tower last year in the 48 Hours contest and that was an okayish game. Hopefully he's learned a little from that and we're gonna be lookin at something cool that he's had time to polish out. Yeah, I'm gonna be optimistic about this one!

During-Thoughts:

Why do I suddenly feel like I played this...

...and the game just crashed in the second frickin house. Probably midis.

UGH, everytime I try to go to the menu to save it crashes. Had this same problem is Strong Tower.. was gonna replace/delete the music but file is passworded.

*AS OF RIGHT NOW I AM USING BEELZEBUFO AND NOT THE INCLUDED GAME.EXE. YOUR EXPERIENCE MAY DIFFER FROM THE ONE PORTRAYED HERE, BUT IT DOESN'T CRASH WHEN I TRY TO SAVE NOW. THIS REVIEW IS UNCANCELLED*

Cows are apparently going to be a running theme.

Came back, used the wrong game.exe and crashed when I hit escape after beating Moolar and the Alpha Mad Cow.


Post-Thoughts:

Kinda pissed off that technical issues are keeping me from going further in this one, but I've seen enough and think I'll quit while I'm ahead. The graphics are awful, the music is super low quality and repetitive, you can hold down enter to win every battle I ran into. Universal Wars is a game with absolutely terrible presentation. I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone. But in spite of all that, it does get a few things right that other games like it haven't, and that gives us something good to look at.

The story in the part of the game I played was simple. Two boys and a girl, whom you name, live in a town, which you name. They're watching TV one night when they hear about a wild bull on the loose... a few minutes later they hear some bull like noises outside and decide to go check. Sure enough, they get into a fight with a bull. Before they can catch their breath, three more show up.. and then a mysterious man (From the future?) shows up and dispatches the cows easily. They ask him who he is, and he says basically "Just stay home and don't worry about it". So the next night, they decide to go on an adventure to find out who the hell he was and what the hell he was talking about... starting at the dairy farm!

Pretty soon there's madcows and infections and crazy stuff going on, but the nice thing about this game that say, Ar Puh Guh or Final Dragon Legacy lacked is that it tells you WHERE TO GO. You know "Go north and investigate the dairy farm." "Go norther still and investigate the next clue." "The person you seek is in the barn", etc. It's a tiny thing, but it gives you a sense of what you're doing and doesn't ask you to wander all over the damn place trying to figure out who you are or what your motivations are. I also approve of the fact that the characters generally arrive to the point quickly and don't dawdle, unlike say, Illusions where the opening scene would've involved the three characters deciding not to play video games, not to put together a jigsaw puzzle, that none of them are hungry, and that maybe they could turn the TV on and watch something, and FINALLY after a pointless debate over which channel, see the required news story of a wild bull. The story might be stupid, but at least it gets you from place to place pretty easily.

Not a big fan of the "Name every character, name every town" slime, but I guess it makes the game more about you and adds a mad-libs kind of quality to it. Like I said before the battles were pretty terrible, you hold down enter and win all of them. There's an option to "Defend" but it's totally pointless, the main character has an option to flee which is also mostly pointless. Only other option is fight, so fight you will. The speed was excellent though, you can hold enter down and be out of the fights pretty quickly, or try to run away if that's what you're into. Everybody averaged pretty decent damage so that was also cool.

If it were a TGC Entry, it'd earn my vote. It's amusing in a terrible sort of way and I would've liked to see more of the story even if the gameplay portion had been pretty lame so far. I wouldn't mind some kind of special attacks or moves to take the place of defend, just some kind of simple buff or heal kind of thing, to add just a little variety to battle. Like I said earlier, it gets a lot of stuff right for being as "terrible" as it is, and it might be worth a look if you like silly games and don't mind battles that tend to the shallow-side. Just don't use the enclosed EXE, which for some reason crashed everytime I hit escape. Beelzebufo 20130410 worked fine for me, minus a textbox or two that seemed to be using the "Button Strings" for Android. Keep on goin' jcenterprises, you're learning just fine.

[jcenterprises]

I used a nightly for this demo, that's why it crashed when pressing Esc, but a new demo is up and it no longer crashes when pressing Esc.