Post by Zenks Renway on Apr 2, 2010 13:26:15 GMT
No, not Yaoi of the nerd from LazyTown, dolts.
Released in 2007, Hot Pixel is a budget title developed by Zslide, a company that normally makes games for Facebook, and an unusual take on the puzzle sub-genre of completing fast-paced mini-games that games like Warioware, Bishi Bashi Special, and even 4 Second Mania have created. Not that those 2 weren't unusual either, but does this game even compete with those 2?
Plot: The game is based around the exploits of a video-game journalist called DJon, who appears in several awfully cheesy live-action cutscenes where he acts like he has Down's Syndrome. Since the plot has no coherence whatsoever I won't be giving a score in this department. (useless info- The guy who plays DJon in the cutscenes really is called DJon, aka Jon Choquel, and he's also the creative director of the game. IRL he has a podcast on his Youtube account, zslide, about 80's culture, which I guess is why they chose him.)
Gameplay: There's not much to explain- it's what you'd expect from Warioware-type games, but while WW is about Wario and Bishi Bashi is very Japanese, Hot Pixel's minigames are all based on 80's stuff- playing re-imagined versions of Atari titles, spraying graffiti and rushing to the toilet in a rock concert are just some of the messed-up things you'll have to do. The first 2 are what you'd expect, The minigames themselves are surprisingly
well-progammed and fun given that this is a budget title. Also like WW there's boss mini-games where you keep playing if you lose till your lives are diminished.
Much like WW's album mode, there's a Training mode where you get medals for beating scores on individual mini-games. You can even get useless toys for beating mini-games like in WW Touched! This is where the similarities end.
You can unlock several mini-game playlists so if you only want to play a certain type, you need only select it from the menu. You can also change the difficulty (5 settings), amount of lives (Infinite to 1) and how long the play session lasts (2-8 mins), useful if you suck at certain mini-games and need to improve. Another difference is that the instead of recording your progress via a score like WW, youre recorded by rank. Only one- Perfect. How to get that rank in each stage? Take a wild guess.
Where Hot Pixel differs greatly from WW is the difficulty. In WW the difficulty and speed increase automatically as you get further into a stage, here however there's 3 difficulty settings- Easy, Normal and Tricky. The first 2 are what you expect, but Tricky is ridiculously hard. It's not as hard as WW Touched's Gnarly Mix, but it's up there, and gettig a Perfect rank on that mode almost requires divine intervention.
Graphics: Mostly good ol' chunky and colourful retro sprites, but different art-styles on certain mini-games (most of them seemingly done is Flash). Like WW, not amazing but they get the job done.
Sound: A bit of 8-bit retro and bit of electronic beats. Infectious but in a good way.
Appeal: There's a ton of stuff to unlock. Like I said, there's playlists, toys, and also more advanced versions of the boss mini-games and a sound test. It'll take around 3 weeks approx to best every stage, not including the 70 extra mini-games downloadable from the game's official website. If you can stand the cheesiness that is.
Overall: To those who'll probably want to stay away from this title due to it being like Warioware- Play the freaking thing first before you say anything about it. Just because it's similar and came after doesn't mean that it's garbage. Saying so without a decent argument would make you no different from the Gaymario rocks-nozzles disregarding Sega Allstars Racing as yet another Mario Kart rip-off. With that said, Hot Pixel is like Kazook's drug-free and coolcat younger brother- it isn't as good as Warioware but it actually tries to be good and does so with moderate success. Given that this is a budget title, they could've done a lot worse. At its current price of £5 I'd definitely recommend this.
Plot: NA/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 8/10
Appeal: 9/10
Overall- 79.5%
yeah you definitely can't grumble at that price
