Let’s Get Fiscal

It happened again.  I ran into another overly wrought and pretentious brawler for XBLIG, Let’s Get Fiscal.  What is it with Xbox Live Indie Game developers shoehorning excellent storytelling into the pure concentrated realm of boredom known as the brawler?  It would be like a movie studio taking a script guaranteed to win Academy Awards (something involving World War II and homosexuality, no doubt) and handing it over to Michael Bay.  I have to give credit where it’s due, for making me almost regret rage-quitting this piece of shit, costing me a chance to see how the story would conclude.  I even went back and tried it three fucking times.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s Get Fiscal is a Double Dragon style brawler.  You play as an accountant going on his tenth year of sobriety, but that seems like it’s coming to an end.  Throughout the adventure, he slowly falls off the wagon.  Oh, and he’s not really an accountant, but some kind of hitman.  As far as stories go, it’s not that bad.  I actually wanted to press on, but the game bored me to no end.

There’s only two buttons in Let’s Get Fiscal.  A punches, B jumps.  That’s it.  There’s a few combos you can pull off and a small handful of enemies to fight.  In games like this, you have to find ways to amuse yourself.  I did so by trying to imagine why there are hundreds of identical dudes running around.  A cloning experiment gone haywire seems a bit too obvious.  So I went with the idea that all these dudes were the result of some wacky prop bet involving five fraternity brothers and a sperm bank.

The Curtis pictured here has a large health bar. The actual Curtis in the game dies if you breathe on him.

Oh, and for some reason there is a black dude named Curtis who only takes one punch to kill.  It seemed a bit odd.  Since I’m guessing the developer isn’t just being casually racist, I figure this must be some joke that I’m not getting.

Really, as a brawler it’s nowhere near as terrible as All the Bad Parts was.  The normal enemies are easily dispatched and don’t have life bars the size of an airplane hanger.  The first two bosses gave me a hint that the difficulty curve is all kinds of fucked up.  The first boss, or should I say bosses, are annoying fucking guys who shoot lasers out of their eyes like Cyclops.  And then the second boss is some dude  that I can’t even describe because I was able to beat him in about five seconds.  It wasn’t just luck either.  Because after I rage quit on the third boss, I restarted the game and was able to beat him again in the same amount of time.  I’ve seen straight lines with better curves.

And then there was the third boss.

This mother fucker.

He has the ability to regenerate his own health.  If you get him down to his last half-healthbar, he puts on a protective shield and brings all his health back.  None of the basic attacks or the combos seem like they’re able to break the shield.  I spent three separate sessions fighting this guy, trying every tactic that seemed possible, and I couldn’t get him.  I rage quit, then restarted the game from scratch (there’s no saving) a few hours later and I still couldn’t get him.  I asked the developer if this was some kind of joke, and he assured me it wasn’t, but he didn’t offer any help.  He wants to see if anyone will figure it out themselves.

Somebody might, but it won’t be me.  Compelling as the story may be, the game itself is incredibly tedious.  There’s no saving, so if you make it as far as I did and get bored after twenty cock-guzzling minutes fighting this cunt, you’ll have to start over again too.  I didn’t bother going on.  I tried twice, failed twice, and I don’t care to try again.  A quick conversation with a few other befuddled players leads me to believe that nobody has yet quite figured out the special secret to this guy.  Or even worse, what the fuck is next in the game?  I mean, the first boss was a bitch.  The second boss literally was a bitch.  The third boss is impossible.  If this pattern continues, the fourth boss will commit suicide and the fifth boss will teleport into your room and fuck your mother.

This art has almost nothing to do with the actual game.

Let’s Get Fiscal was developed by Baller Industries

80 Microsoft Points are reviewing Sonic CD next in the making of this review.

My friends at GameMarx are giving away over FIFTY Xbox Live Indie Games as part of a huge contest.  Click here for the Youtube announcement video, and then click here to enter.

Gameplay footage courtesy of http://indies.onpause.org/