Doritos Crash Course 2, now with free-to-play gimmicks

Over the years, I’ve stepped away from Doritos. It all really started when I got seriously ill the day Obama was first sworn into office–not because, just using that day in history to place you in the moment–and ended up vomiting a lot back in my teeny, tiny studio apartment before passing out for hours in bed while FX continuously played Troy for like six to eight hours. It was a nightmare. And I had eaten some Doritos Cool Ranch chips earlier for lunch that day, and well…they weren’t any better coming up. Ever since then, I’ve fully stayed away from all things Cool Ranch–called Cool American in Sweden, something I learned recently from Giant Bomb–but have, on occasion, enjoyed a Nacho Cheese chip now and then.

But I’m not here to just talk about chips. Doritos does other stuff, too. Like videogames. Well, they support folks making games and use their name to brand it. If you’ll recall with me, back in late 2010, a game called Doritos Crash Course was released for free on the Xbox 360. It was surprising, for sure, an energetic mix of timed platforming and region-related spectacle, but fun all around. As well as free. It’s now been a couple years, and we’re getting the sequel for free too, though it has changed quite dramatically, even if it looks and–for the most part–tastes the same.

Instead of having levels based around specific regions like the United States or Japan, they are now built thematically. The first one is a jungle, maybe Mayan-based. And the second one appears to be snowy. Don’t know what the other two look like. Originally, your goal was simply to get to the end of the course in the best time, avoiding pitfalls along the way; now, as you run left to right, you can collect Stars, tackle secondary objectives, and use alternate paths to get to the end faster and much more successfully. Stars are used to purchase things outside of the level–these can be Avatar accessories, which do come with a stat and flavor text, or additional levels, side paths, and jinxes. And then this is where Doritos Crash Course 2 shows its free-to-play side, with you being able to buy additional Stars with real money. Well, real money that you turn into Microsoft Points. But still: microtransactions.

Just like in Happy Wars, I can easily ignore all the FTP gimmicks until it gets in my way of actually playing the game. So far, that hasn’t happened, though it looks like I’ve have to return to previously completed courses to find hidden stars if I want enough to unlock more levels. No big deal. I just don’t want to have to pay for power-ups or extra Stars in hope of progressing forward. The game suffers from tiny text syndrome, which makes reading some of the level requirements and secondary objectives dang difficult, but when in full screen, the game is pretty and runs smoothly. You can now run up walls, too, which I don’t remember being in the original, and it can be tricky, though Tara found a way to squirrel hop from wall to wall which is pretty effective. Hey, we also played some local multiplayer, too, which zooms out extremely far, but we were still able to run and climb with the best of ’em.

Looking forward to checking out more. Oh, and it is still a ton of fun to slide down a slope, jump to a trampoline, and fly over some deadly obstacle to finish in first place. Mostly because my Avatar whips out an electric guitar and jams.

Kingdom Rush convinces me to like the tower defense genre

For those that don’t know, I’m not very much into tower defense games. I find the gameplay often stale, with too much setup and not enough involvement during the action. Of late, the only tower defense game I’ve really tried is Happy Wars, free for the Xbox 360 and more on the action side of things, but not very good. Unless Microsoft has fixed all the server connecting issues, which I’ve not gone back to check on.

Also for those that don’t know, I’m on a 10-day juicing fast. It’s for health and mentality reasons and mostly so I can fit into all my now-too-tight XL shirts for the spring and summer, and I’m going to be drawing some wee journal comics along the way, like so:

You can check out more comics by following my Tumblr or Facebook page.

Anyways, what does building towers and drinking vegetable juice have to do with one another? Not much, really. I just needed a game to play on my lunch hour to distract me from the hungry grumbling coming from my stomach. Enter Kingdom Rush. Which is, for all intents and purposes, a tower defense game, but one with enough style and cartoonish behaviors that I found myself enraptured in it, getting up to level 6 or 7 after an hour of clicking around. I’m playing the free browser-based version, by the way, which is available here.

In this one, you construct towers in specific locations to try to stop waves of enemies that move on a linear path from reaching the other end of the map. There are four types of towers–archery, magic, barracks, and boulder-tossing–and each tower itself can be upgraded multiple times in several different ways. This allows for quick customization and flexibility in how you want to slay the line of bandits and spiders heading your way. Coupled with that, you have two special abilities that come with cool-down timers: sending in reinforcements and summoning a meteor shower attack. These are vital for stalling enemy units or even wiping the map clean at the very last second.

Each map I’ve played so far in Kingdom Rush has had more waves of enemies and introduces newer enemy types and mechanics in a satisfyingly gradual way. I’ve never felt overwhelmed or even out of control, and of the seven levels, I only ended up letting a few guys past on two or three of them. If you gets three stars on a level, you can replay it to earn more stars, but only under specific restrictions, like no archery towers and so on. These kind of modifiers are great for replaying old levels in new ways.

I dunno. I’m digging it. Especially its look and sound, and any game that gives me a beastiary is on track to being amazing in my book. There are other aspects I’ve not yet gotten to experience, like proper boss battles and hiring heros and exploring the skill trees more, but there’s no rush. Well, there’s Kingdom Rush. But I’ll see it all in due time, especially if it keeps me from not eating bad food during this juice fast. Especially then.

You can play Happy Wars for free, but it might not make you happy

In a dramatic twist, Happy Wars came out over the weekend with little promotion from Microsoft. Considering it’s a free-to-play tower defense game, where the real income stems from players buying new weapons, armor, and accessories with actual money–well, real money converted into Microsoft Points ridiculously converted a second time into Happy Tickets–you’d think they’d want to let people know the thing exists. Instead, I learned about it from a forum post on Giant Bomb, and then had to sift through menus (and submenus!) to figure out where to download it from. Not ideal, I assure you, and considering I just watched Indie Game: The Movie the other night, placement on the e-marketplace is vital. Especially around launch time.

Happy Wars is a free-to-play tower defense game, with a single player story and online multiplayer matches. War has broken out between…uh, people that dress in white, and people that dress in black. Or something like that. That’s the overall gist, but some story-based missions focus on other topics, like a stolen princess or a mad scientist and his army of crazy red robots. Cute, cartoony graphics help emphasize the happy part of these wars, as does most of the loot, such as a sword made from a dead fish, a flower petal shield, and a stat-boosting pencil you can stick in your avatar’s hair. The look of the game is not going to astound you, but it won’t also annoy you, being just right for this sort of experience of capturing spawn points, building deadly turrets, and using class-based action skills. Reminds me a bit of Quarrel and Costume Quest and something else.

If you don’t remember, tower defense is not one of my favorite gaming genres. It’s a lot of building and waiting until one side tips the scale just enough to wash over their forces. So that part is kind of boring to me, but there are some aspects here that I do like. Such as leveling up items, earning loot, and completing mini challenges during a match. Of the three classes–warrior, cleric, mage–I prefer being a warrior, rushing into the thick of things and using thrown stones to stun opponents before I cut them to pieces. The other classes all have their uses, but I’m not terribly comfortable with them just yet. Give me time. Plus, of those three, I have the better equipment so far for the warrior. Also, the roulette wheel called the Spinner is a wonderful way to spend all your hard-earned Happy Stars; just like in Borderlands 2 with their slot machines, I can’t resist testing my luck. It is a nice feature for those that don’t want to spend really money on item packs to try and get something better for their characters.

There are some problems though. The single player experience is severely hampered by a strange level rank restriction. You beat the first story mission, and you are immediately slapped in the face with a note that says you can only play the next story mission once you’ve achieved a rank of 6 or higher. You can only increase your rank, from what I can tell, in multiplayer matches. Seems simple enough; however, the problem continues from there. Not sure if it just had to do with server issues or initial launch problems, but connecting to an online match or getting one started from the ground up was extremely hit or miss for me. My system kept trying to “connect with Xbox Live…” over and over again before ultimately booting me out of matches that looked promising. I did eventually get a few games in after many attempts, but once you beat the second story mission–made up of two smaller missions really–you are again told you can’t continue playing solo stuff until your rank is 11 or higher. Eep. Back to multiplayer, I guess. Either way, this experience is fairly frustrating, only softened by the fact that I did not pay any more for this game or give it any money so far. Maybe the online matchmaking will shake itself out over the next week or so.

Oh, and free game means free Achievements, none of which have been too tricky to unlock:

First Victory (10G): Get 1 victory in any game session

The Legend Begins (10G): Receive mention in Hero Pop-up in a Quick Match or Co-op mode

Mod 0 (10G): Level-up an item

Rich Man (10G): Get 30 items

I’m not having a great time or a terrible time, but I’d also like to see more of the game before calling it quits. Especially the single player missions, as I don’t have to rely on anyone but myself to get the job done. If you’re on Xbox 360, definitely give this a try, as it won’t cost you anything but a download. Just be aware that after the tutorial and training missions, you’ll be locked out of most content until you can up your rank, and getting online matches to connect is consistently wishy-washy at the moment.

As Happy Wars is the first dip into free-to-play games for Microsoft’s platform, it’ll be interesting to see just how long this war really lasts. I think there’s promise here, some good and bad, but maybe not enough hooks to really keep a crowd coming back. Or I could be completely wrong. Again, these sorts of gaming experiences are generally not for me. Time will surely tell.