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Review: The Spiteful Dead
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Hi everyone.
Ixion asked me if I wanted to do a review for him, so..here I am! Since I got to pick which game I review here, I decided to go with Xisthruous' The Spiteful Dead. Many of you may have not seen Xisthruos around..or even heard of him. Well regardless of how well-known he is or not, he has made a great game.
I have heard Terrorist420x mention this game a couple times when people ask "what game should I play?", so that's originally what made me want to try this out. There's violence, swearing, more violence, bunch'a mini-games, and just a whole load of fun. Even the battles have a certain element of fun and strategy to them, which is extremely rare for RPG Maker. You do fight quite a bit, but not a single battle is random. Avoid or fight as many as you like.
If I had to categorize this with any genre..I might say <u>The Spiteful Dead</u> would go along the lines of a Horror RPG. You won't get scared (This is RPG Maker, I mean come on), but you won't be saying "this is cheesy" either. The dialogue is another thing that is great about this game. It's fluent, and much easier to believe that someone would talk/think that way. It used to work with the old RPGs, but the traditional 1400's medieval "Everything is going according to plan" and "Truly thou'rt a worthy hero" talk isn't cutting it anymore.
Xisthruos, I'm not sure if you're ever going to read this, but great job man. Seriously, I wish more games were like this.
I think this is the part in the review where I move to the fragmented parts and talk about things in a fragmented sort of way to give a fragmented impression about what I thought about this game. Run-on sentences are best fragmented as well to form smaller sentences, too. Here we go:
Presentation:
Well, I would say it was pretty darn good, because I can't quite remember thinking at any point "Hey, this is a pretty good presentation" while I was playing. The custom sprites that were used were put to use quite well, and nothing ever really became redundant. Some of the custom sprites weren't the best quality, but still pretty good. We're not all Misled Jeff, after all. However, when it came to the parts where you got to blow the sh*t out of zombies with the tank, that, was awesome. Lots of blood, quick death, move on to more killing! Good fun. You would have to play this game to know what I'm talking about, and I suggest you do play it. And...stuff. Mindblanks are awesome when you're on a roll with trying to type something.Some things could have been polished here and there (the sprites), but there's really nothing to complain about. However, it can't get a perfect score either. I personally don't have any real complaints, but I'll try to avoid any bias to give a more accurate score..
Features:
Killing zombies. Running over zombies in a car. Shooting zombies from a tank. Dropping explosives on zombies. Re-enacting the Mario end-level pole jump. It's all fun really. I think though, that the biggest feature of all in this game is that it breaks away from the annoying RPG Maker stereotypes and just presents itself as a game that is fun to play instead of a chore. No worries about glitches and junk, that itself is also very nice. When I usually run into a bug in RPG Maker games, I'm constantly put on guard for other bugs to look outfor, and I'm concentrating more on just getting further in the game and avoiding bugs than I am actually enjoying the game. (DEBUG YOUR GAMES PEOPLE -- THIS GOES TO EVERYONE). So Yeah, I'm not good at listing features, but there are many here, and they are definitely worth checking out. This game makes me somewhat irritated that the majority of people can't even come close to the quality of this game. Seriously.
Debugging:
There was never a glitch that would stop me from continuing, which is very nice. You can go back and forth to wherever you would like, and have no fear of events repeating themselves that might cause those dreaded I-have-to-reset-now-and-pray-I-don't-run-across-these-again bugs. The mini-games are flawless in this as well, and that's where many people just happen to screw up when making these sorts of things.Um, sometimes there was a spelling error here and there..and on a rare occasion some words would accidently be together likethis. But in all honesty, who cares? I personally feel that given how RPG Maker's room for displaying text is horridly small and you have to use a controller to input everything... it would be stupid to judge a game based on how the text is laid out. THEREFORE -- I will not be marking down anything in this category because of that. And if anyone wants to complain to me because about this...too bad, I'm not staff.
Fun:
Gameplay always comes first. Even if a game has a plot as complex as The Wheel of Time series, it's gonna suck if the gameplay sucks. <u>The Spiteful Dead</u> has as much fun gameplay through minigames as it does story, which I see as quite an accomplishment. From driving a car around, blowing up zombies in a tank, and playing a form of capture the flag with zombies, it's all creatively related to the story. There are also a bunch of references and spoofs on old games such as Mario on the NES and...a couple others I can't think of at the moment. Well anyways, the mini-games are fast-paced and bug-free, so have fun blasting away and solving puzzles.If you happen to get trigger happy with making the text go by quickly, you may miss some important, so that can sometimes lead you to wandering around thinking about where you should be going next. When I played I ran into this sort of thing once or twice, but always found out what to do sooner or later. Be careful with the battling also...some people might consider the fights in The Spiteful Dead hard, but it's more or less just being careful. It's easy to introduce yourself to the game over screen if you're careless. This of course, would just be slip-up on the player's half, not on the game.
Overall:
Xisthruos, this was really a fun game. The only thing that really disappoints me about it, is that the majority of people with RPG Maker don't know about it. I'm not sure when exactly this game was made, but from the style (and by style, I mean quality), it seems this game was made quite a long time ago. Like, back when Robot Go Home (I hope that was the name) and Remote Control were just made. Funny how RPGM games seem to have gotten worse over the years rather than better. Perhaps it's just a thing of perception when it comes to quality and the like? I really don't think so, but I could be wrong...but anyways, great game. I certainly enjoyed it, and I hope more people will play it. So... that is that.
Ixion asked me if I wanted to do a review for him, so..here I am! Since I got to pick which game I review here, I decided to go with Xisthruous' The Spiteful Dead. Many of you may have not seen Xisthruos around..or even heard of him. Well regardless of how well-known he is or not, he has made a great game.
I have heard Terrorist420x mention this game a couple times when people ask "what game should I play?", so that's originally what made me want to try this out. There's violence, swearing, more violence, bunch'a mini-games, and just a whole load of fun. Even the battles have a certain element of fun and strategy to them, which is extremely rare for RPG Maker. You do fight quite a bit, but not a single battle is random. Avoid or fight as many as you like.
If I had to categorize this with any genre..I might say <u>The Spiteful Dead</u> would go along the lines of a Horror RPG. You won't get scared (This is RPG Maker, I mean come on), but you won't be saying "this is cheesy" either. The dialogue is another thing that is great about this game. It's fluent, and much easier to believe that someone would talk/think that way. It used to work with the old RPGs, but the traditional 1400's medieval "Everything is going according to plan" and "Truly thou'rt a worthy hero" talk isn't cutting it anymore.
Xisthruos, I'm not sure if you're ever going to read this, but great job man. Seriously, I wish more games were like this.
I think this is the part in the review where I move to the fragmented parts and talk about things in a fragmented sort of way to give a fragmented impression about what I thought about this game. Run-on sentences are best fragmented as well to form smaller sentences, too. Here we go:
Presentation:
Well, I would say it was pretty darn good, because I can't quite remember thinking at any point "Hey, this is a pretty good presentation" while I was playing. The custom sprites that were used were put to use quite well, and nothing ever really became redundant. Some of the custom sprites weren't the best quality, but still pretty good. We're not all Misled Jeff, after all. However, when it came to the parts where you got to blow the sh*t out of zombies with the tank, that, was awesome. Lots of blood, quick death, move on to more killing! Good fun. You would have to play this game to know what I'm talking about, and I suggest you do play it. And...stuff. Mindblanks are awesome when you're on a roll with trying to type something.Some things could have been polished here and there (the sprites), but there's really nothing to complain about. However, it can't get a perfect score either. I personally don't have any real complaints, but I'll try to avoid any bias to give a more accurate score..
Features:
Killing zombies. Running over zombies in a car. Shooting zombies from a tank. Dropping explosives on zombies. Re-enacting the Mario end-level pole jump. It's all fun really. I think though, that the biggest feature of all in this game is that it breaks away from the annoying RPG Maker stereotypes and just presents itself as a game that is fun to play instead of a chore. No worries about glitches and junk, that itself is also very nice. When I usually run into a bug in RPG Maker games, I'm constantly put on guard for other bugs to look outfor, and I'm concentrating more on just getting further in the game and avoiding bugs than I am actually enjoying the game. (DEBUG YOUR GAMES PEOPLE -- THIS GOES TO EVERYONE). So Yeah, I'm not good at listing features, but there are many here, and they are definitely worth checking out. This game makes me somewhat irritated that the majority of people can't even come close to the quality of this game. Seriously.
Debugging:
There was never a glitch that would stop me from continuing, which is very nice. You can go back and forth to wherever you would like, and have no fear of events repeating themselves that might cause those dreaded I-have-to-reset-now-and-pray-I-don't-run-across-these-again bugs. The mini-games are flawless in this as well, and that's where many people just happen to screw up when making these sorts of things.Um, sometimes there was a spelling error here and there..and on a rare occasion some words would accidently be together likethis. But in all honesty, who cares? I personally feel that given how RPG Maker's room for displaying text is horridly small and you have to use a controller to input everything... it would be stupid to judge a game based on how the text is laid out. THEREFORE -- I will not be marking down anything in this category because of that. And if anyone wants to complain to me because about this...too bad, I'm not staff.
Fun:
Gameplay always comes first. Even if a game has a plot as complex as The Wheel of Time series, it's gonna suck if the gameplay sucks. <u>The Spiteful Dead</u> has as much fun gameplay through minigames as it does story, which I see as quite an accomplishment. From driving a car around, blowing up zombies in a tank, and playing a form of capture the flag with zombies, it's all creatively related to the story. There are also a bunch of references and spoofs on old games such as Mario on the NES and...a couple others I can't think of at the moment. Well anyways, the mini-games are fast-paced and bug-free, so have fun blasting away and solving puzzles.If you happen to get trigger happy with making the text go by quickly, you may miss some important, so that can sometimes lead you to wandering around thinking about where you should be going next. When I played I ran into this sort of thing once or twice, but always found out what to do sooner or later. Be careful with the battling also...some people might consider the fights in The Spiteful Dead hard, but it's more or less just being careful. It's easy to introduce yourself to the game over screen if you're careless. This of course, would just be slip-up on the player's half, not on the game.
Overall:
Xisthruos, this was really a fun game. The only thing that really disappoints me about it, is that the majority of people with RPG Maker don't know about it. I'm not sure when exactly this game was made, but from the style (and by style, I mean quality), it seems this game was made quite a long time ago. Like, back when Robot Go Home (I hope that was the name) and Remote Control were just made. Funny how RPGM games seem to have gotten worse over the years rather than better. Perhaps it's just a thing of perception when it comes to quality and the like? I really don't think so, but I could be wrong...but anyways, great game. I certainly enjoyed it, and I hope more people will play it. So... that is that.
- tags:
- the-spiteful-dead
