Category Archive: Review

Feb 06

Kashi Takashi

The Performance Review of Cards

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660Ti

This Little Puppy has a Big Bite

Hey guys Kashi here. I know a long time ago I talked about Nvidia’s tech Physx, and today I’m here to talk about what makes Physx work on your computers.  More specifically, I want to compare the gaming standard years ago, the 9800 GT, and the upcoming standard for gaming today, the 660 Ti. I’m also going to add my old card, the 550 Ti, to the comparison as a good in between.

I will be up front about this, I vastly prefer Nvidia over ATI if I have the choice between the two products. Don’t get me wrong, ATI cards do have many great points, but if you want the best bang for your buck, go with Nvidia (for the same reason you go Intel over AMD). In fact, the origin of AriaBlarg.TV came from an Intel/Nvidia computer, and my own streaming rig is a Intel/Nvidia computer (my gaming rig, however is an AMD/Nvidia combo).  One of the largest reasons that I think Nvidia is better is due to the fact that developers have access to all of the Nvidia technology, which includes CUDA, 3D Surround, SLI, and Physx.  AMD, on the other hand, only has Crossfire and Eyefinity.

Enough of all the long talk though, let’s get down to the meat of things. The test rig I’m using to test all the graphics cards is an AMD motherboard, the Gigabyte 78LMT-S2P with an AMD Phenom (t) II x6 1045T clocked at 2.7 GHz, and a relatively fresh Windows 7 installation. After installing the 9800GT, I checked out its Windows Experience Index and while it wasn’t anything astounding, it does offer a baseline to compare other systems to. The 9800GT was at a 6.9 on graphic processing while both my 550 Ti and 660 Ti both hit a 7.2 and 7.3, respectively. Next, I wanted to run 3D Mark11 on all of cards. 3DMark 11 (if you do not know) is a software developed by Futuremark (a company that develops benchmarking software), that pushes the limits of your hardware and software, and aggregates that performance into a score. The test was performed at 720p, which is pretty much the standard for broadcasting. 3Dmark11 requires DirectX11 compatibility with the card, which the 9800 GT did not have, so it couldn’t compete in the test, but the 550 TI scored a P2618 overall with a graphic score of 2404, Physics score of 4725, and a combined score of 2622, while the 660 TI vastly beat the 550 TI with a score of P6976, a graphic score of 8205, physics score of 4846, and a combined score of 4767.

 

Test Rig
Motherboard: Gigabyte 78LMT-S2P AMD3+
CPU: AMD Phenom (t) II x6 [email protected]
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GBx2 1333 Mhz
OS: Windows 7 SP1

 

Testing Results
Graphic Card Window Experience Index 3D Mark11 Overall  Graphic  Physic  Combined
9800 GT 6.9 Could Not Test  Could Not Test  Could Not Test  Could Not Test
550Ti GTX 7.2 P2618  2404  4725  2622
660 Ti GTX 7.3 P6979  8205  4846  4767

 

For my personal tests, I used Borderlands 2, a game that I had previously written an article about (the article focused on the Physx aspect of the game). Part of the test was going into an area with all the settings as high as possible at 720p, with Adaptive V Sync on or capped at 60 frames, depending on the card.   The benchmark I use during the in-game sessions was fraps, to measure how many frames the video card is producing while I play. In the game while I’m in the area previously mentioned, I unloaded the entire clip of shotgun shells on the ground forcing the card to spew out rocks that Physx can understand. Then, I used an explosion grenade to toss all the particles away, forcing the card to calculate all the projectiles, which could be seen as a miniature stress test using the borderlands 2 engine. The scores below shows how well each card did in their average, highest, and lowest FPS.

 

Borderlands 2 FPS Result
Graphics Card Average FPS Max FPS Min Fps
9800 GT 32.391 49 25
550 Ti GTX 45.453 61 36
660 Ti GTX 55.555 62 41

 

I mentioned above that there was something called Adaptive VSync, which is included in the 660 Ti.  Basically, what AVSync does is that it helps the video card properly give out all the frames correctly.  For example, if it over performs and produces more than 60 frames, it will cap it at 60 frames, and likewise if it under-performs it will turn off VSync.  Why should this matter to you? VSync, if you don’t have it on, (and if you graphics card is very powerful) can cause what we call tearing, where the game produces so may frames that the display might accidentally split the display with half of one frame and half of another.  On the flip-side, if you have VSync on but your computer under-performs, it sets the game to a frame rate divisible by 60 (or whatever the frame rate of your monitor is). This means if it’s perfect it could run at 60 frames, but if it drops anywhere below that, then it goes to 30 frames and vice versa.  Both choices have their positives and negatives but now there is a nice in between with Adaptive VSync.

Now that we got all the technical stuff away, it’s time to talk about my personal preference for the cards.  While stress testing in Borderlands 2 with the 9800 GT, the card’s fan ran so loud that it would’ve been noticeable with my microphone, making it unusable during streaming under heavy gaming.  Also, it was completely unable to complete the 3D Mark11 test, which really shows its age (although to be fair, it is a 5 year old card).  With the 660 Ti, I have more room for multiple monitors  while still keeping my setup for streaming in 720p.  Now, the  only thing that the 660 Ti has left to prove is that it can keep up with the games coming out in the future, which I believe it will not only be able to do, but be able to do so well that it will become the new standard.

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Dec 06

Savarin Song

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

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Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

A couple of weeks ago I was scanning Steam sales and came across Chivalry for $12.49 so I bought it right away. Basically this game is like Counterstrike with swords. It’s a multiplayer medieval battlefield with two teams of knights, archers, and swordsmen frantically stabbing, chopping, shooting, and smashing each other.  The catch is that you fight in first person view.  And the first person view gives you a very personal and gruesome experience.

Chivalry does take a bit of skill.  You really can’t mash keys and expect to win.  If you frantically swing your sword like a madman you will hurt, and possibly kill, your own teammates.  Each type of attack takes time to execute, so you must plan your movement accordingly.  The attacks are directional and each weapon swings and jabs differently.  Blocking is active and directional as well.  You can even kick to discourage enemies from turtling behind shields.

This game is pure chaos, but chaos in a fun way.  You never know what you’re gonna get.  Epic sword fights are quite common as more and more players are becoming skilled with block & parry. Once I saw a fully armored knight take out 3 people with one mighty swipe of his warhammer.  Seconds later he was beheaded from behind by a noobie that was at the right place and the right time.  I’ve seen archers keep their cool as the frontline breaks and a flood of swordsmen come running in.  Some stoically shooting arrows until the very end as I run away like a coward.  I’ve been on the winning and losing side of a slaughter.  And they’re both equally fun to experience.

This is a very unique and fresh take on team based first person combat.  It’s very entertaining.  The combat mechanics are deep.  There are a ton of servers and players.  After a few weeks of playing I can safely say:

This game is amazing.  Buy it when it goes on sale again this holiday season!

 

 

 

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Oct 08

Kashi Takashi

The PhysX Standard: Borderlands 2

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I have the wonderful opportunity with Borderlands 2 to talk about what I love talking about: Tech. As a gamer and a person that loves to find new technologies and finding the bleeding edge of what is possible, Borderlands 2 integrates a key technology from Nvidia that makes your gaming experience more realistic and enjoyable and its called PhysX.

Borderlands is epic in proportions but with Physx it makes it a larger game

PhysX, a real-time hardware-accelerated physic engine, calculates all the little particles that you wouldn’t think of seeing but when you see them it makes the world much more immersive. Objects such as bullet casings, small and large debris, liquid effects, and force field from all the unique gun combination, grenades, rockets, and other explosives is only possible to see with PhysX. While any computer in the last 5 years is capable of doing all the physics calculations on its own, it would come at a cost of FPS, a lot of FPS. To remedy this Nvidia, since the 8800 GT, built-in the PhysX chip into their graphics card. With this chip all the physics calculation that would normally be done by the CPU gets offloaded to the GPU leaving the CPU more room to do it’s job give you the game that you are playing.  There will be 4 major systems that makes up the PhysX Engine for Borderlands 2 that I am covering over this post and they are the Debris System, SPH Fluid, Cloth Simulation, and the Force System.

The debris system lets Borderlands 2 shoot out debris from the ground when you or your co-op partner or the enemy shoot at the ground, or when you finish off that explosive robot and all of its part fly all over the area, that is all done with the debris system in PhysX. Not only will the particles fly around the area, each particle is self-shadowed and dynamically shadowed meaning it will look and feel like each robot part and dirt that gets flown around is part of the world.  All this means is when you destroy that Flaming Barrel or that Slag Barrel PhysX takes over and calculates where and when the barrel’s contents hits you or your enemy or even your Co-Op Partner the the content stays in the world telling everyone that whatever was in there is now on the flow or on you.

Water is notorious for being not very realistic in video games because of the way water works around its environment and how it conforms and bends around uneven surfaces and SPH ( Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics) Fluid is a way to fix all of it. SPH creates fluids for many type in the game such as your regular water, Slag, Corrosive or even blood and makes each type interact with the world with the other particles and debris. With each type of fluid it was its own unique type of viscosity, friction, and density making each type of fluid as unique as each particle in the world.

Cloth Simulation are an oddity as mechanics go, it just floats there but it gets affected by gravity and gets ripped up through bullets and grenade.  While it serve no mechanical reason like water and the particle physics it serves to  look good in the sky or on top of a container.  Also when you “cut” the cloth down it works like a normal particle getting tossed around with rockets and grenades.

The Force System is the one that brings all the other system together as it ties together how everything works together.  When you get debris from the debris system it as its own properties that it has and using those properties it allows it to interact with the world and other effects like grenades and Rockets and speaking of grenades there is a specific sets grenade that takes in the full use of Physx for its effects and makes explosion very pretty.

As general performance goes PhysX can work at the bare-minimum with the 8800 cards but obviously you would be sacrificing a lot of potential performance so I would recommend not turning on the PhysX unless you have a GTX 460 or better at 1920 by 1080. As a quick reminder to update your Nvidia drivers if you have not, as they would have special performance tweaks for various games.  Also there is an interactive guide on how things look with and without Physx located here (the comparison is at 1080p so if you don’t have a monitor that large you can only see a portion of it)

PhysX Low PhysX Medium PhysX High
Debris No GPU PhysX effects shown. Debris particle-count reduced, resulting in fewer pieces of debris per effect. Max-quality Debris.
SPH Fluid No GPU PhysX effects shown. SPH Fluid particle-count reduced, fluid effects no longer on or emitted by four enemy types, and SPH water removed from all scenes. Max-quality SPH Fluid, full range of enemy fluid effects, numerous uses of SPH water.
Cloth No GPU PhysX effects shown. Lower-quality cloth and fewer instances of cloth per level. Max-quality cloth.
Particles No GPU PhysX effects shown. Fewer general particle effects, e.g. sparks and embers. Sparks, embers, and more, shower each scene.

In the Physx settings above shows you what you gain and lose with each setting you can set in the game. In my couple of hours playing through Borderlands 2 I’ve tried playing through a couple of mission with and without PhysX and I can say it isn’t quite the same without it and I will say from now on when I stream, I’ll stream with PhysX set on high.  Physx is one of those things that sets the standard for PC gaming and one of the many reasons why I play and stream PC games.  Additionally if you are looking to upgrade your graphics card Nvidia is offering for any graphics card that you buy that is a 660 Ti or better, you get Borderlands 2 for free.

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Sep 29

Tagros’ Reviews: Borderlands 2

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Each of the classes plays largely different, but they are all viable, which I really like

I wasn’t sure how to react when my friend first asked me if I was going to get Borderlands 2. While I did play a fair amount of the first, my impressions of it were not necessarily the same as many of those who were cult followers of it, and so my excitement leading into 2 was quite a bit lower than others. Throughout the first game I largely played by myself as Mordecai, so my experience was let’s just say, less than fulfilling. I didn’t actually beat the first game all the way through, but I came into Borderlands 2 with an open mind, a few friends that I could play the game with (so that I didn’t have to play with online folk), and I went in to get the game. I really didn’t know what to expect from it, as my feelings were pretty average on the first, but after getting the game at a midnight release, me and my three friends went back and proceeded to play for 6 and a half hours straight until it was light outside. In sort, Borderlands 2 is one of the most entertaining games that I have played all year, and it is made even better if you can get 3 friends to join in your struggle to save Pandora from the perils of Handsome Jack.

Story

One thing that I think they (Gearbox) did very well with this iteration is that they made the story accessible to new players, while still catering a bit to the veterans of the first game. Essentially what happens is that you are a vault hunter that goes out to search a vault as a task for the leader of the Hyperion Corporation, who is named Handsome Jack. Yet when you get to this vault and open it, Handsome Jack tries to kill you, and it is implied that he has done this ploy with many other vault hunters before you. Well, where he succeeded in killing the other vault hunters, he fails with you, as you end up surviving in the middle of the tundra, and are dug up by Claptrap, who brings you back to safety in what is the prologue of the game. The whole story revolves around you, the vault hunter, getting back at Handsome Jack for trying to kill you, while also trying to figure out why he is so vehemently searching the world’s vaults for some mystery item. Handsome Jack is one of those bad guys that you love to hate, as some of his lines and the things he does are terrible, but in an odd way really funny, which is nice to see. Many of the other characters that you run into are also very personable, so running quests for each of them is very fun and unique. I found the ratio of story to side missions to be really great, as the side missions really let you explore the world of Pandora, while the story missions do the job of taking down Handsome Jack, while also visiting some unique locales.

Gameplay

As far as gameplay goes, it is quite similar to Borderlands, but the tweaks that they have done from the first are enough to be really interesting. One of the big things that they have changed up is the AI, which was quite lackluster in the first iteration, but has really stepped up in 2. In the first game, many of the enemies would just lock onto the character and run straight at you, which would make it quite easy to take them out, as they would be straight in your line of fire. What I have noticed in this game is that enemies will take cover much more often, and even the psychos that run straight at you will side roll out of the way so that your shots miss. This makes targeting enemies quite a bit harder, but the reward of killing an enemy is much more thrilling when you have been fighting for it, and you finally get them down to that last shot. One of the big problems that I had with the last game was that the soldier class was extremely unbalanced compared to some of the others (to the point where you could solo the last boss fairly easily), and in this game, I think that they did a much better job of making each of the classes have a stronger active ability so each feels viable. When my friends and I picked up the game, we all played different classes, and each felt powerful, but not powerful to the level of the soldier in the first game, which is quite nice. Also the “tank” character is totally viable in this game, so hurray!

Graphics

I don’t want to go a ton into the graphics side, as we have another review from tech guy Kashi_Takashi that focuses on graphics and the PhysX engine, but I will say that the cel shaded graphics are back, and they look absolutely tremendous. When you teleport into an area, it does the same thing (that was present in the first) of phasing in the detail, but the time that it takes is not too long, and the detail is really quite great. All the guns and locations look really nice, and it even supports up to 1080p on the Xbox 360, which is always nice.

When I came into Borderlands 2, I really didn’t know what to think about it, regardless of whether I would have a good time or not. The first did not tickle my fancy as much as it could have, but I stuck around for the second, and man I am glad that I did. 2 is quite a romp single player, but the real joys come when you can get together with 3 of your buddies, as the enemies get harder, but the loot gets a lot better. I may not have known about it before, but after playing Borderlands 2, my Game of the Year list just got another title added right near the top.

Tagros’ Review of Borderlands 2: 9.5 out of 10

The mechromancer, which comes out on the 16th of October, should add quite a bit to an already incredible game

 

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Sep 25

Annie

Review: Torchlight II

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TL2 Logo
 
        Title: Torchlight II
        Platform: PC
        Genre: Action/ARPG
        Developer/Publisher: Runic Games
        Price: 19.99$ USD
        Release Date: September 20th, 2012
 
  
 

Torchlight II has a lot of history and serious pedigree backing it up.  The Schafer brothers (Erich and Max) were part of the original Diablo team.  Travis Baldtree was the creator of the first Fate game.  Other staff within Runic Games have worked on titles from Borderlands to Fallout: New Vegas.  The first Torchlight was a bit of a marvel: developed in a scant 11 months, a team of two dozen scraped together a classic action-RPG experience much like its predecessors.  Lacking only one feature that players requested again and again — multiplayer — it only made sense for the team to take a more typical development period and tackle a bigger game with more content, quality, and the oft requested multiplayer. Can the second Torchlight chapter, a throwback to olden days, stand up to its current day brethren? The easy answer is yes, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Gameplay
Torchlight is an easy game to pick up and play: create a character within one of the four classes available, customize their looks, select a pet and difficulty, then off to a world where magic energy (called ember) permeates everything. While every class can equip every weapon, most have some sort of specialty which may guide a player’s choices. Berserkers are the master of melee with claw attacks, yet can also make a formidable build wielding two unassuming wands. Outlanders are strong ranged weapon characters, but don’t shrug off their group damage potential. Embermages are the master of arcane, wielding ice, fire, and lightning — sometimes all at once through prismatic magic! Engineers may choose between massive two handed weapons, or take up sword and shield as the ultimate defender. There’s plenty of enemies to slaughter, loot to be gathered, fame to be won, and stat points to be spent; players have a huge amount of choice in build and character design.

The game’s UI is crisp, clean, and has every piece of information a player needs at their fingertips, accessible with only one or two button clicks.  Enemies drop copious loot — green items are magical, blue are rare (and are frequently part of a set), unique are orange with fixed attributes, while Legendary (only available past level 50 in New Game+) are a bold red.  Some equipment is class-specific, but most won’t be.  Pets can also be equipped with a pair of tags and a collar.  Both the player and their pet can equip scrolls, which range from passive bonuses to active summon spells and abilities.

With 100 levels rewarding 500 stat points, and 50 levels of fame granting a total of 150 skills, players can build a character to their own desires.  All stats — strength, focus, dexterity, and vitality — are beneficial to every class.  Among other benefits, strength increases weapon damage and physical skill damage; focus increases magic and elemental damage and skills; dexterity increases crit and dodge chance; vitality increases hit points.  Every skill can have a maximum of 15 points invested.  At each tier — 5, 10, and 15 — an additional bonus is unlocked.  These can be everything from adding to a portion of the damage, increasing the time an effect lasts, to reducing the cooldown of a more powerful ability.

Story
Torchlight II is divided into four acts: three large and sprawling, with a fourth short and intense final act. With the destruction of Ordrak underneath the town of Torchlight, a mysterious disease is ravaging what the Alchemist, former hero, has not. It’s up to the player to both resolve the damages caused by the disease and the protagnist-turned-antagonist, which is the main drive of the story.  Along the way, players will be treated to a variety of mini-quests which flesh out the lore of Torchlight.  The irony is, because these side stories are short and contained while the main story is woven through the game in varying intensities, the side quests become the more interesting stories.  It’s not poorly written, but it is awkwardly paced.  Ultimately, ARPGs are generally not played for their stories, and Torchlight II is no exception to this trend.

Music & Sound
The dulcet tones found in Torchlight II should sound hauntingly familiar.  Not only was Matt Uelman responsible for all of the music in the first Torchlight, he’s also orchestrated of both Diablo and Diablo II.  To say it’s stunning and gorgeous is a grievous understatement.  The music is fitting for every environment, from the deepest jungles to the most arid desert, surrounded by crawling spiders to towering Manticores.  Conversely, there’s a lot of voice over that can become extremely irritating — low mana notices, pet injury warnings — that could have been resolved simply by having a way to turn these specific voice-overs off.

Closing Thoughts
Perhaps the most important, and the toughest to define, is a game’s “fun factor.”  In that, Torchlight II delivers in a variety of ways.  The speed of play is exhilarating, and being able to second your pet to town to sell excess loot means the action never slows down — unless you die.  With four difficulty levels (easy, normal, veteran and elite) there’s a challenge suitable to everyone.  Feeling more or less adventurous?  Join a multiplayer game with a different difficulty to experiment with what challenge level you like best.  Choose to be a Hardcore character, where one death means the end of your adventuring career.  Completing the game unlocks both New Game+, where you restart the game with more challenging enemies, or tackle the Mapworks, with more randomly generated dungeons that enforce boons and restrictions on characters and enemies.   Play solo, over a LAN, or online with friends or in a random game.  Torchlight II is the game you play your way.  If you’re not playing it yet, you should be!

 

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Sep 15

Tagros Reviews: Tiny Troopers

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A look at the character models, where you can also see that the specialists are quite uniquely garbed

Sometimes, being similar to other, well-liked games is not necessarily a bad thing.  Over the past few weeks, I have been playing through a game called Tiny Troopers, which is an iOS game that has been ported over to Steam.  Now you young’uns may not get this reference, but straight from the time that I booted up the menu, I got a very strong vibe reminiscent of the old Army Men games developed by 3DO, and while some of those games may not have been the best, Tiny Troopers did end up being very reminiscent of the games that I played as a kid, and was so in a very good way.  While the controls may be fairly simplistic, I think that the port of the game is very quality, and in the upper ranges looks pretty good on a computer, despite the fact that it was originally on a platform that was less hardware intensive.

Gameplay

The way that the game is structured out is that you, the player, are in control of a set number of Army men (that varies in size depending on the mission that you undertake).  One of my favorite parts of the game comes in the fact that each of these Army men have names and they each build up ranks through completed missions. If they die, they are replaced by new characters with the most basic rank, so it really rewards you for playing skillfully and keeping your high rank characters alive, as the only way to reload health is through sparse pickups in each of the missions or a one time (per level) health drop from a helicopter.

At the beginning of a level, your characters get dropped out of a helicopter, and the camera takes a top down view (similar to the old Army Men games) as you are given the mission objectives.  Moving is done with the left mouse button, where you click to control where your characters go, and firing your gun is done with the right button,  which allows the game to really be played without much fancy equipment (such as a gamepad or a special mouse).  Over the course of the game, you can get other special weapons (like grenades or missiles), which will appear in the bottom menu, and can be accessed by holding the control key (at which point the mouse turns into a reticle), and right clicking to fire.  Once you get into the later levels, these extra weapons are necessary, so you will either want to have them purchased before the mission in the debriefing area, or save up enough money where you can helicopter them in.  I found the gameplay to be pretty simple, but for what I was expecting, I was very much surprised, which was quite nice.

Sound

If there were a weak point in this game, I would have to say that it is the sound.  Upon opening the main menu, you are greeted with a very generic military tune, and that is about the extent of the music.   There is a little tune that plays upon completing a mission, but most of the sound comes in the form of the dialogue that the characters say while they are fighting, which gets very repetitive.  Not only was I rehearing things even after one mission, but each character has the exact same voice, which makes me realize that they probably only had one voice actor come in and do maybe 15 lines of dialogue for the whole game.  This being said though, it is a mobile game, and this game is the Kukouri Mobile Entertainment’s first release, so the budget was probably not necessarily the largest.

Graphics

Because the game was developed for the mobile platforms, the graphics are not necessarily the greatest thing you have ever seen, but I think that they are still quite good.  The character sprites look similar to kidrobot toys, where they have a large head and a smaller body, but I think that this choice for character sprite works very well, as it makes the characters look detailed, but still somewhat cartooney, so that they look good no matter the platform that you are playing on.  The worlds that you go to look really nice, and although the settings may look similar between worlds, each of the individual levels has a very unique layout, which I thought was really cool.  I found myself constantly checking the map to see where my objectives were and how to get there, and was even finding new assets in the later levels.  Overall, I was really impressed by the way that they handled the graphics on the port, and it actually intrigued me to go out and try the game on the native platform (iOS).

As you can see in the water, the graphics can actually look extremely good for a mobile originated game

The two main qualms that I have with Tiny Troopers are the sound (as I mentioned before), and that the controls can sometimes be a little frustrating.  While it didn’t happen often, there were times where I was trying to do a cone of bullets, but it didn’t register the full arch, but once again, I reasoned that this was because the native platform did not have the greatest control fidelity, which when carried over to the mouse can be a bit startling. The game is a $9.99 release on Steam, and is definitely worth that much, but if you are curious to try it out, there is also a 99 cent version for the iOS family (including iPad), so there is a bevy of ways to get your hands on this product.  It may not redefine the way that military shooters are made, but I found it to be a very entertaining romp that kept me occupied and very enthused.

Tagros’ Review of Tiny Troopers: 8 out of 10

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Jul 02

Review – Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers

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As is the case of many indie games such as Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers, I didn’t hear much press coming into its release.  With larger, triple A titles, there is usually some sort of grandiose ad campaign, and if there is not, footage of these games is often shown off at many of the “big” press conferences, such as E3 or TGS.  Yet Tiny and Big lacked all of this, and the first that I really saw of the game was in the form of a quick look on a site I frequent, giantbomb.  Now I know and trust the writers over at that site, so the fact that they did a quick look piqued my interest a little bit more, and being the hipster gamer that I am, seeing a fairly unknown developer (Black Pants Game Studio), and seeing the size of the team that made the game (6 people), added immensely to the intrigue that I had for this game.  This being said, I tried my hardest to stay away from many of the review scores and press that this game had, as I intended to review it myself, and I can say safely now that I am not only glad that I did that, but also that Tiny and Big hit all the right notes, and is a very tremendous game.

The games tutorial system uses a largely different color scheme, which I thought was very cool.

Story

The story of Tiny and Big is actually quite simple. You find yourself in the role of Tiny, who is going after Big, because Big stole Tiny’s pants, and gosh darnit, Tiny wants them back! Not too much back story is really fleshed out, outside of the fact that the pants (which are actually a pair of whitey tighties that Big wears on his head throughout the game), were given to Tiny by his grandfather (hence, the grandpa’s leftovers), and these pants have a large enough amount of sentimental value to the point where Tiny will essentially bounty hunt Big in order to return them to his possession.

Gameplay

As far as the gameplay goes, it breaks down to the use of three tools that you acquire and must use for traversal. The first tool is the gripping device, which allows you to grab onto blocks and pull them to make more accessible platforms.  Tiny can jump, but the jump distance that he has is not that great, so the gripper is largely utilized to grab a block and make a bridge over a chasm that may not have been crossable before.  If a reticle appears over an item, you can use any of your tools on it, but if you try to use the gripper on large items or items that are attached to the world, you will just start moving in place after the grippers rope has become taut, and you must use another tool in order to make the large block into a much more reasonable size.

PULLING THINGS IS NEAT

This other tool that I am referring to is essentially a ray cutter, which allows you to cut blocks or parts of the world into sizes so that you can utilize your gripper to pull them, or use your third tool to get rid of them.  The ray cutter can also be used in battle, as there are times when big will be throwing large stones at you, and if you cut them in half in the air before they reach you, you won’t die, and not dying is a really fun thing to do!  I personally found the ray cutter to be one of the most useful tools, as you have a ton of control as to how and where you can cut certain parts of the world, and because of the way that the ray cutter works, the block that I cut in order to climb a wall may be completely different from the way that you cut the block, yet both can get us to the destination in the same amount of time.

The use of the laser is key if you ever want to see those pants again

The third tool that you get is a rocket attachment gun, which essentially shoots out a rocket that attaches on to wherever you are pointing your reticle, then when you press the rocket button again, the rocket takes off, carrying the block the has the rocket attached to a further location.  I used this tool mainly to clean off “rubble” or parts of a block that I had cut that I didn’t need.  For example, there was a puzzle where there was a platform that was above me, but I couldn’t jump up, yet there was a block that I could pull down from the upper platform. So from the lower platform, I pulled the block down, used the ray cutter to cut the block in half (because it was a bigger block, and I wanted to make it the size as to where I could use it as a step), then attached a rocket to the top half and shot the top half off the platform, so that I had a step which I could use in order to get to the upper platform.  Almost all of the platforming requires you to utilize at least one (if not more) of your three tools, and one thing I think they did a very good job at is making sure that each of the tools seems useful.  What I mean by this is that if I were to break down the usage of each of my tools, I think it would be very close to 33.3% for each of them, whereas in some other games, there are some tools that you get that are used once and then just sit in your inventory for the rest of the game never being used again. In this sense, Black Pants Game Studio did a very good job.

Soundtrack

The way that music is handled in this game is actually quite unique.  The first thing that you pick up right off the bat is a radio, which in addition to being the players impromptu guide, is used as the main music for the game through the use of tapes that are scattered through the levels. Each tape provides a new “track” that you can listen to, and while some of the tapes are either hidden or in hard to reach places, the game does place enough tapes in visible sight to the point where less experienced players will still be able to hear most of the games soundtrack, which is oddly difficult to explain. I think that the closest phrase that I can come up with is Eastern European, but even that seems to be taking away from some of the other tracks.  As a fan of indie, folksy, music, I found the soundtrack to be very enthralling, and even after I finished the campaign, I wanted to go back and try and find the tapes that I missed.

Graphics/Style

One thing that I was a really big fan of throughout the game was the art style.  Both Tiny and Big have very interesting character design, and I thought that the outfit (in Tinys case) was very fitting considering the surroundings.  Not only do the characters look nice though, as the world around the characters is absolutely stunning.  There is a shading effect in many of the areas reminiscent of a game like Borderlands, but there are also a few levels that reminded me very much of movies like Tron. Overall, the art style really hooked me, and each of the 6 main levels is different enough to the point where you feel like you are in the same universe, but in a far different area in that universe, which I enjoyed.

Final Thoughts

So this game is right now $9.99 pretty much anywhere where digital media is distributed.  For the amount of content that you get, including the unique soundtrack and interesting artistic design, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, if not for a few problems.  One of the main problems that I had was that the ray cutter really feels like it should be used with a mouse, and I was using a controller. The game does have built in controller support, but it just feels like you could get much more control with the use of a mouse.  Because of this fact, I found myself often dying just because I couldn’t get the cursor to do what I wanted.  Considering what this game is though, I would also not be surprised to see it go onto some very good deals on Steam, and if you see it on one of these deals, I would definitely suggest that you pick it up, because the qualms that I have with it may be completely nonexistent for someone playing with a mouse and keyboard.

Look at that smug guy…

In summation, I think that there was a very valiant effort put forward by Black Pants Game Studio, and while this game certainly is not perfect, it did pique my interest for future works from this studio, and I hope that they can learn from their mistakes in this game and use them to make an even better second effort!  With a $9.99 price tag and a campaign that lasts roughly 4-6 hours, I think that this game is definitely worth recommending if you liked Borderlands, Tron, or are just looking for a fun romp that ends up having quite a bit of replayability.

Tagros’ Review of Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers: 8 out of 10

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