CO-OP Review - World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat

I'm a little late on posting this video, but I figured that those of you who follow CO-OP have already seen it by now and those of you who haven't should see it before they release their special GDC episode on Rev3 this evening. In this episode, the Area 5 folk bribe me with some delicious kumquat poppy seed ice cream from Humphry Slocombe and then keep me around to discuss World of Goo by 2-D Boy. You'll recognize my enthusiasm from the very start of the discussion, but World of Goo is truly a fantastic game, so buy it if you haven't!

After our ice cream was finished, we head to the Area 5 headquarters where Ryan tosses a Wiimote in my hands to give me have a first stab at the new game Bit.Trip Beat. The game is an exhilarating mash-up of pixelart, chiptunes, and old-style pong paddle game mechanics, and while I had a tricky time getting used to it at first (hence, the frustrated "That pixel was a dick." exclamation), I'll likely be downloading it for my own Wii to try it out again.

So what's next? Who knows! I've played a ton of new games in the past week because of GDC, so I'll probably be posting about those in the next few days. But who knows!

This just in: Offworld has just posted watchable recordings of both the IGF and GDC Award shows, where in the IGF video you can see a wild .tiff appear a few minutes in, sitting at a front table with Mr. Paladin and grinning like a little kid. We were sitting at a table with the Fallout 3 team, but only came to realize this when they went up on stage to accept their award.

Comments

[Daniel H.]

The amount of cussing has increased in my apt since I dled Bit.Trip Beat. But I love the game. I've tried thinking if a better direction to hold the controller could have been implemented, but in the end I realized I just need to learn how to have a steadier hand and better hand eye coord :P

Enjoyed your reviews on the recent Coop! RSS subscribed to your blog too, great stuff!

[.tiff]

Hah! Both my roomate and I are rather atuned to in-game cussing, as she and I shout out quite a lot of expletives when playing Left4Dead. Yeah, the controller was the one thing that threw me off... but I'd like to get past lvl. Mega (and beyond Hyper!) so I should probably get it.

Thanks for subscribing, and for watching CO-OP! They do great stuff that I'm proud to be a part of (even in the slightest way :)

[Daniel H.]

Yeah, Left4Dead is no joke. I can never get my mouse sensitivity right. Not good when headshots are so important. ;_; I often find myself the victim of a Smoker. I think in that case, my online team mates are doing most of the cussing.

Good luck with BTB. Pattern memorization at its finest.

[MIKE]

Bit.Trip is all up in my eyes like big'ole freaky SPIDER MONKEY!

[beethy]

Hey just wanted to let you know that because of this review I actually ended up buying World of Goo.
I used to be crazy about indie games about a year ago... but yeah like the guys said, that game just got released in the middle of a lot of shit that was kinda more delicious to look at.
Back when the game came out I had no idea it had such an interesting narrative and this innovative way of slowly evolving the gameplay. I'm actually playing this with my best friend (the asian chick in my photos) and she loves it... she's actually better at it than I am :<
But hey thanks for recommending it. I'll probably do a little video review of it on my youtube channel once I'm done with the game.

[.tiff]

Fantastic! Yeah, it's actually a really fun game to play with another person. My friend and I spent an evening trying to play it together and it was fun taking turns and giving advice between each other. I'm glad you're enjoying the game, it's a great piece of work.

[beethy]

LOL I just noticed Ryan said windMEALS instead of windmills a little after 16:20
It made me hungry, like he must've been