![]() It does help, but all this stuff drains your magic, and later in the game it’s hard to get it. The alternative is using the B button to change the direction that the ball is going. Or at least it does until you encounter a level where the breakable bricks are behind indestructible walls, at which point you might as well use it to light your own farts on fire. Using the A button you can shoot a fireball at blocks or enemies, and this works fine. Wizorb does try to help this, or at least it gives off the appearance of trying to do so, sort of like a Good Samaritan who saves you from a mugger only to run over your puppy with a steamroller afterwards. It just stays there, taunting you like a raven perched on a chamber door, leaving you swearing that you’ll play this genre of gaming nevermore. You clear out a whole level and all that’s left is one god damned brick that you can’t seem to kill no matter how carefully you try to. And that includes all inherit flaws, chief of which is what I like to call “Last Mother Fucking Brick Syndrome.” You know what I’m talking about. You’ve played this game under different names a zillion times before, and they’re all the same thing. Hit the ball with a paddle and break some bricks. So Wizorb really is an Arkanoid-like and NOTHING ELSE! How does it fare as what it is? Not bad. I don’t know what it does, but I’m guessing I would have enjoyed wearing it a whole lot more than I would have enjoyed having some idiot I never met get to sleep under a roof while I’m off fighting monsters by way of ricocheting a ball off my wand. Instead, I felt like a total idiot later on when I found out I could buy some crown-thingie for $10,000 and I didn’t have the money because I was busy acting like the chairman of Habitat for Humanity. ![]() I figured something good would happen if I opened up most of the town stuff. There’s nothing more interactive about it than “go in building, leave building.” So what your hard-earned money got you was essentially parsley on a dinner plate and some arbitrary bonus item, like a free life or a key that you can use in a level to open up a door for a shop or bonus room. Even if you see a treasure chest inside one, you can’t open it. But what can you do in them? Not a God damned thing. If you give them a so-called “donation” you’ll come back to the town later and see that all the buildings that you donated for are fixed up and you can walk around inside them. See, this is always what happens when the democrats get the White House. You give the townsfolk money to rebuild their houses that some evildoer thingie destroyed instead of telling them to get up off their asses and go find a job to pay for their own fucking repairs. The whole town thing is completely underutilized. ![]() That doesn’t make it an RPG though, and if it does than perhaps you’ll like such other titles from the genre like Forza or Mario Party. There’s no exploration, exposition, or any decision-making that has any consequence other than “give your money away, get a free life.” But it does have a shopping element, which is different from any Arkanoid clone. That’s the entirety of the RPG experience. Along the game’s 48 stages you can get cash that you can use to buy items, or alternatively give to the town’s citizens to help them rebuild their houses. Staring at this picture is only slightly less interactive than actually playing in the village is. It’s like saying painting a Pinto red makes it a Ferrari. It’s the same fucking game that has been around for twenty-five years now in a different coat of paint. It’s not an RPG in the slightest bit, nor is it innovative at all. A lot of people are throwing around terms like “it’s Arkanoid mixed with an RPG” or “it’s a whole new take on brick breakers.” It’s not. And it looks like it tries to do new stuff with the Arkanoid formula. Now watch me go all Lizzie Borden on this thing. Not just for an Indie game, but the Xbox 360 in general. Still, for all the muck I’m about to rake up about Wizorb, it’s likely the best Breakout tribute on the Xbox 360. Shatter on the Playstation Network stretched the limits of it, but otherwise this style of game hasn’t changed all that much since Arkanoid back in 1986. There’s really only so much you can do with that genre. Of course, all the credentials, artwork, and prettiness can’t mask the fact that Wizorb is still a brick breaker. Who wouldn’t want to buy a game with flyers that look like that? That’s some sexy ass promotional art there. And third, just look at this fucking promotional art by Michael James Brennan. Second, it has an honest to God gaming pedigree, having been designed by Jonathan Lavigne, who worked on the Scott Pilgrim vs. It’s one of those rare retro games on the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace that tries to look like an NES game and actually succeeds without in some way pulling back the curtain so that you can see we’re still on the Xbox 360.
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