Doc Logic

Okay, so I’ve busted on so called “retro-poser” games once or twice here at IndieGamerChick, but I do admit that I greatly prefer that style of graphics and game play over samey generic platforming or twin stick shooting.  It’s not lost on me that six of the games currently on my leaderboard have that old-school flavor to them.  But you’ll also notice that all six of those games also try to do something original and the retro graphics are just the garnish.

The advantage of a game like Parasitus over a game like Oozi: Earth Adventure is that one captured the feeling that it was a lost treasure that couldn’t find a developer.  The other seems more like a game you’ve heard of and maybe even played, but it just wasn’t memorable enough to leave an impression on you.  All the best retro-themed games manage to hit that sweet spot of familiarity mixed with originality.  The bad ones are those where the entirety of game play has already been stale for decades, like the buns they use at McDonalds.

Doc Logic is the latest game I’ve purchased off the marketplace, and it wants to be 80s style old-school so bad that it wears it’s hat backwards and listens to the New Kids on the Block.  You play as a dude-thingie who looks like the long-lost fifth Ninja Turtle that I affectionately nicknamed Raphaelotradio.  Using him, you run around shooting things and grabbing envelopes.  There’s five envelopes scattered on each stage at one time.  When you grab all five, you “level up” and more enemies appear.  When you level up five times, the map expands.  You do this until you reach level 15 in the normal game mode or level 20 in the “Turbo” mode.  And I use the sarcastic quotes for the word “Turbo” because it pretty much is just the same game at the same speed.  Why call it “Turbo Mode” then?  Wouldn’t “Same Shit Only Slightly Longer Mode?” be more suitable?  The game has a time limit, which increases by a few seconds every time you pick up an envelope.

Doc Logic almost hits the sweet spot for originality in an old school suit.  It has fast paced and very frantic game play.  But there’s quite a few things off.  The biggest problem is the collision detection sucks.  Sometimes it works to your advantage, like when you stand several platforms above an enemy and swing your weapon in any direction but where the enemy is facing and still kill it.  Of course, this means that when you’re on a mad dash from point A to point B, you have to make sure you don’t come within spitting distance of any enemies because if you do, you’re bound to take damage.  It seems to vary from enemy to enemy too.  I could kill the guys who fire projectiles at Raphaelotradio if I so much as glared at my television.  But some baddies I would hit at close range and they would pass right through my bullets or sword swinging punch weapon thingie and still inflict damage on me.  Trying to keep track of which glitches are helpful and which will screw you over is rarely a sign of a good game.  You don’t have a health meter.  Instead, getting hit causes you to sit there and convulse while seconds tick away, as if you’re trying to shake off cooties.

Honestly, I still liked Doc Logic.  It’s not a great game by any means, but its a decent waste of an hour, and the $1 price tag certainly makes it attractive.  It does manage to do a good job of creating a sense of urgency, although it’s not always fair about it.  As the map expands, the amount of time you get from envelopes should expand as well.  The amount of additional time you get from them seems almost random.  But the controls work and the graphics are nice in an Amiga sort of way.  Yea, the glitches are a huge pain in the ass, but in this case it’s not a deal breaker.  Besides, I learned a valuable life lesson: if a giant turtle thingy is standing ten feet above me and waving it’s arms at random, it means I’m likely to blink out of existence at any second.  Either that or someone spiked my Pepsi with peyote.  Again.

Doc Logic was developed by Cosmic Logic

80 Microsoft Points said that a giant turtle thingy who can kill enemies ten feet away by waving its arms in random directions is the most logical thing I’ve heard of all day in the making of this review.

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