workplace policies
a là Loverboy's design?
work for new romance
Additional Comments:
It wasn't until my struggle through the last dozen or so rooms that I learned this game - contender for most ridiculous title of all time - is based on an early Japanese puzzle game called Sokoban. Oddly enough, I was well aware of Sokoban for a number of years and knew it to be a puzzle game of sorts but never knew that the basis of Shove It! and Sokoban were one in the same. Really puts a dent in my assumed gaming trivia knowledge. Ouch.
On an unrelated note: whereas 2014 appears to be the year of running through my backlog of uncompleted games, Shove It! is the first game that didn't come from said list.
Unfortunately, there isn't very much to speak of when it comes to Shove It!. It's a simple - in appearance - puzzle game that can become frustratingly difficult in the higher echelons of abstract warehousing. Essentially, move a set number of boxes into a marked area. The catch: you can only push one box at a time; keyword is push. No pulling allowed - which will help prevent back pain at least.
There is an amazing adherence to a proper difficulty curve throughout it's 160 levels, which I have to applaud. Most puzzle games like to throw out a few freebies as training material and then immediately turn it up to eleven; staying there for the remainder of the game. Shove It! kept a nice, linear progression. Sure, a few head-scratchers were thrown in the mix here and there, but the truly brain-warping puzzles didn't appear until the last dozen rooms or so.
Was it coincidence that I learned of Shove It's! (wait, how exactly is a possessive shown when an exclamation mark is part of the phrase in question?) heritage around the same time? Nay. Twas a search for an opening move after staring inquisitively at the TV screen for nigh on a hour or more. But I will say, out of 160 puzzles, I only had to seek an opening move on five rooms, and they were all rooms that required a ton of setup work before you could even begin to attempt putting any boxes away. Perhaps it's shameful to admit that, but turning to the evils of guidance for roughly only 3% of the game - not too shabby considering how evil some of those final setups were. And honestly, I'm sure I would have figured out that one move that brought my work to a grinding halt if I didn't have to suffer ten rooms before the next password was doled out. In the latter levels where I was averaging thirty minutes or more to solve a puzzle, ten rooms quickly ate up a good chunk of time.
Puzzles that required hefty amounts of setup work killed a lot of the fun. For me, the smaller, more difficult puzzles is where the game shines. I loved all of the small, simple setups, or at least what appeared simple upon first glance but proved diabolical in the end. Several of these rooms left me thumping my brain for a good while as well. However, the frustration within these rooms didn't irk me the way some of the larger rooms did. Rooms that contained over a couple dozen boxes; requiring you to maneuver each one through long sections of cramped, twisting corridors just ended up being tedious. The idea that I was solving a puzzle felt lost within these rooms. Instead, the manual labor connotation of the game's title became far more apparent. Less a puzzle than actual work. Bleagh!! Luckily, these rooms were few and far between.
Still, Shove It! occupies a genre of games I enjoy. I'm always up for a good brainteaser and this game delivers, although I should likely thank Imabayashi's Sokoban as Shove It! is essentially a clone. I think Shove It! brought a few original levels to the table, based on some of my research, but I wouldn't quote me on that. It did, however, offer up a worthless soundtrack. Actually, as lame as the soundtrack is, I never found it to be grating. I found myself letting the background music run its course without bother, though it would have been nice if they had at least offered up one or two alternatives to help mix it up a bit.
Nano-What?
Every now and then, you learn useless but fascinating information thanks to video games. My initial intent of this section was to admonish the protagonist's name, Stevedore. What a ridiculous name, I laughed. But then I thought to myself, it must have been chosen by design. Sure enough, my criticisms are moot as there is sound reasoning behind the name. Synonymous with dockworker or longshoreman, Stevedore would be right at home moving boxes.
Now if only the warehouses where he works weren't of such ridiculous design. I have a feeling the architect that designed the impossibilities in Dark Alliance II may have drawn up these organizational abominations as well. I feel for the guy, I really do.
Rating: 4 L.A.-centric passwords out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment