Spritemaster On: Blade Kitten
As many here know, converting one medium of entertainment to another is a slippery slope indeed. There are a few success stories, such as the Lord of the Rings movies, but there are just as many failures. I'm looking at you Harry Potter. (Films of course, the books are fantastic) This is true with just turning a book into a movie, but what about a comic? Once again, there are successes (Iron Man, Watchmen) but just as many done incorrectly (Fantastic Four, Superman Returns). Now, with this in mind, let's take on the game, Blade Kitten.
Based on the webcomic Blade Kitten, by Steve Stamatiadas, this game comes to us from KROME Studios. Now first off, I need to make it quite clear that I hadn't read the webcomic before I'd bought the game. The premise seem good enough, and the comic's following seemed enticed enough the game, and so I decided I may as well give it a shot. However, as blanketed statement, I'd like to say that the game has not impressed me thus far.
The story goes as Kit Ballard, a breaker (bounty hunter), has landed on a planet to take a breaker key and go after someone for their bounty. After obtaining said key, a blonde girl blows up Kit's ship, steals her key, and runs away. Kit follows in pursuit, but the local law enforcement attempt to stop you from entering an unauthorized area, whereas you pummel them with a floating sword... yes, things were going downhill in my mind from that point.
While we're on cutscenes, I may as well admit that the voice acting is pretty atrocious in this game. Lip syncing is often off by a few words, once or twice a whole sentence, and the facial expressions of the characters are often set in place when you first look at them in each cutscene. Not only that, the writing is pretty awful. And yes, I do realize they have to cut down the amount of time allotted per story, but the lines are very awkwardly delivered, and often feels like the simplistic writing of children's book, and not the apparently rated teen comic that it's supposed to be portraying. And this isn't even on the ingame dialogue. Whenever Kit dies, she'll make a quip like "Fail" or "OMG," and if your reeling from the incredible flexibility of the writing now, then you'll love the lines spouted by her pet... thing, Skiffy. Yes, he's an animal without major speech abilities, but this is one of the things he spouts, often for no reason. "Sskreeeefa!" was the closest I could translate it to. If anyone knows what it actually is, please tell me, because I can't discern any of it.
But a game does need some gameplay, and if I had to give this one a few words of description, I'd say simplistic, but annoying. You are able to climb on most rock and wood surfaces, although the game does put up some kind of volcanic rock in some areas just that you aren't able to climb, or even touch for that matter. You can hold the analog stick to move, farther to run, and for a limited amount of time, you can use up your sprint meter to get past certain obstacles. Along with that, every once in awhile, you'll need to stop and press the 'action' button to access an new area, have your pet destroy some machinary to open a door, or talk to some locals. However, there is also the combat to inspect, like the gaming P.I. that I am. Essentially, you swing your floating sword around (how this is, I'm not sure) and can press another button for long range attacks, which annoyingly enough, also take energy from your sprint gauge, meaning you're only allowed a certain number of them for any ten second period, as that is the amount of time necessary to refill the sprint gauge. You can imagine how this can be rather annoying, seeing as you don't actually 'hold' the sword, and therefore are exerting no physical power to move it! Which begs the question why it needed to be set to the sprint gauge, instead of adding an identical gauge, painting it a different color, and going on your merry way! And that isn't even getting to the health bar, if it can called so. Enemies have many cheap attacks, often making you unable to move if their hitting you, and so if you're surrounded by two melee enemies, you'll have to wait until they're done attacking for you to fight back. But, back to the health meter. The designer's must have noticed that the attacks of the enemies can be a tad overwhelming if surround by many at once, and so opted to make your health REGENERATE! This is a combat platformer, and is therefore not exactly supposed to be prone to being easy, but alongside the regenerating health that takes literally less than twelve seconds to go from almost dead to full health, there is a checkpoint after almost every combat encounter. The game is just mindless jumping and mashing of the attack buttons.
I do however find praise for a game at some point, which would most likely be the collector's aspect of it. You can literally spend hours collecting hex (the game's currency) and finding data disks, along with trying to buy the incredibly expensive stat boosters, weapons, and outfits at the shop, whose shop keeper, mind you, is at least bearable if you mute the game when in his vicinity. The levels are very pretty, and rather varied in look if not design, although most character's can be caught not even touching the ground when moving.
As my final word, I have to say the game is most definitely not worth 15 dollars ( Yes, I am the moron here). If you desire the game that badly, wait for it to drop to 10, or even five if possible. Unless you want to listen to a bunch of middle school girls fight over whose got the coolest outfits, and a story that wants to be Star Wars so badly it even has a bunch of red clone troopers, then by all means, pick it up.
Side note: This is not a review of the comic series, only the game. I've yet to read the comics, so keep that in mind when reading this review.
Overall: Bad premise, should have stayed in the panels, wait a few months if you really want it that badly.
As many here know, converting one medium of entertainment to another is a slippery slope indeed. There are a few success stories, such as the Lord of the Rings movies, but there are just as many failures. I'm looking at you Harry Potter. (Films of course, the books are fantastic) This is true with just turning a book into a movie, but what about a comic? Once again, there are successes (Iron Man, Watchmen) but just as many done incorrectly (Fantastic Four, Superman Returns). Now, with this in mind, let's take on the game, Blade Kitten.
Based on the webcomic Blade Kitten, by Steve Stamatiadas, this game comes to us from KROME Studios. Now first off, I need to make it quite clear that I hadn't read the webcomic before I'd bought the game. The premise seem good enough, and the comic's following seemed enticed enough the game, and so I decided I may as well give it a shot. However, as blanketed statement, I'd like to say that the game has not impressed me thus far.
The story goes as Kit Ballard, a breaker (bounty hunter), has landed on a planet to take a breaker key and go after someone for their bounty. After obtaining said key, a blonde girl blows up Kit's ship, steals her key, and runs away. Kit follows in pursuit, but the local law enforcement attempt to stop you from entering an unauthorized area, whereas you pummel them with a floating sword... yes, things were going downhill in my mind from that point.
While we're on cutscenes, I may as well admit that the voice acting is pretty atrocious in this game. Lip syncing is often off by a few words, once or twice a whole sentence, and the facial expressions of the characters are often set in place when you first look at them in each cutscene. Not only that, the writing is pretty awful. And yes, I do realize they have to cut down the amount of time allotted per story, but the lines are very awkwardly delivered, and often feels like the simplistic writing of children's book, and not the apparently rated teen comic that it's supposed to be portraying. And this isn't even on the ingame dialogue. Whenever Kit dies, she'll make a quip like "Fail" or "OMG," and if your reeling from the incredible flexibility of the writing now, then you'll love the lines spouted by her pet... thing, Skiffy. Yes, he's an animal without major speech abilities, but this is one of the things he spouts, often for no reason. "Sskreeeefa!" was the closest I could translate it to. If anyone knows what it actually is, please tell me, because I can't discern any of it.
But a game does need some gameplay, and if I had to give this one a few words of description, I'd say simplistic, but annoying. You are able to climb on most rock and wood surfaces, although the game does put up some kind of volcanic rock in some areas just that you aren't able to climb, or even touch for that matter. You can hold the analog stick to move, farther to run, and for a limited amount of time, you can use up your sprint meter to get past certain obstacles. Along with that, every once in awhile, you'll need to stop and press the 'action' button to access an new area, have your pet destroy some machinary to open a door, or talk to some locals. However, there is also the combat to inspect, like the gaming P.I. that I am. Essentially, you swing your floating sword around (how this is, I'm not sure) and can press another button for long range attacks, which annoyingly enough, also take energy from your sprint gauge, meaning you're only allowed a certain number of them for any ten second period, as that is the amount of time necessary to refill the sprint gauge. You can imagine how this can be rather annoying, seeing as you don't actually 'hold' the sword, and therefore are exerting no physical power to move it! Which begs the question why it needed to be set to the sprint gauge, instead of adding an identical gauge, painting it a different color, and going on your merry way! And that isn't even getting to the health bar, if it can called so. Enemies have many cheap attacks, often making you unable to move if their hitting you, and so if you're surrounded by two melee enemies, you'll have to wait until they're done attacking for you to fight back. But, back to the health meter. The designer's must have noticed that the attacks of the enemies can be a tad overwhelming if surround by many at once, and so opted to make your health REGENERATE! This is a combat platformer, and is therefore not exactly supposed to be prone to being easy, but alongside the regenerating health that takes literally less than twelve seconds to go from almost dead to full health, there is a checkpoint after almost every combat encounter. The game is just mindless jumping and mashing of the attack buttons.
I do however find praise for a game at some point, which would most likely be the collector's aspect of it. You can literally spend hours collecting hex (the game's currency) and finding data disks, along with trying to buy the incredibly expensive stat boosters, weapons, and outfits at the shop, whose shop keeper, mind you, is at least bearable if you mute the game when in his vicinity. The levels are very pretty, and rather varied in look if not design, although most character's can be caught not even touching the ground when moving.
As my final word, I have to say the game is most definitely not worth 15 dollars ( Yes, I am the moron here). If you desire the game that badly, wait for it to drop to 10, or even five if possible. Unless you want to listen to a bunch of middle school girls fight over whose got the coolest outfits, and a story that wants to be Star Wars so badly it even has a bunch of red clone troopers, then by all means, pick it up.
Side note: This is not a review of the comic series, only the game. I've yet to read the comics, so keep that in mind when reading this review.
Overall: Bad premise, should have stayed in the panels, wait a few months if you really want it that badly.
