Gish is a beautiful platform game currently available on Valve’s Steam. You control Gish, a ball of tar, on his journey through the sewers and underground to save a girl. Besides the arrow keys, used for movement, there are four buttons; ‘a’ makes Gish sticky, ‘s’ makes him slippery, ‘d’ makes him heavy, and space bar makes him jump.
The stages and characters all use great art. At first glance, much of the game resembles Loco Roco, but the actual game is quite a bit different. There is a lot of detail in the environment as well as the enemies. Each new enemy I come across has me thinking how cute it is before thinking about how to kill it. Each world has a different theme and look to it, including a sewer, a hellish world, an Egyptian world, and an indoors world reminiscent of Castlevania. The ground, ceiling, and walls are all nice looking and thematic, and the background are quite pleasing. Besides the gameplay mechanics, I think what I like most about the game is the audio. Background music is great and fitting to the theme, while the sound effects are also awesome. The “splat” sound of squishing enemies always leaves me feeling happy.
The controls are a bit odd. Jumping feels clunky at first, but only before you learn how to correctly jump. Jumping from rest will hardly do anything at all; however, jumping while compressed (holding down, falling from a previous jump, etc) will yield actual jumping, the more compressed you are, the greater the jump. To get through small spaces, you will have to become slippery, and to drop through water, smash blocks, or refrain from being squished, you must become heavy. Stickiness lets you roll across the ceiling or up walls, although it’s tricky with gravity pulling you down. It also lets you grab blocks, usually used to press switches. In the later levels, you must master the ability to grab a block, roll until it’s above you, and jump to launch it through the air.
I’ve already played Gish for almost six and a half hours. To really get a feel for it, you would definitely need to give at least an hour. I’ve explained jumping, but you won’t truly get it until you play for a while. Gish won the Grand Prize at the 2005 Independent Games Festival; while I don’t know what else competed, I do know that Gish is a fun game with a twist on the usual platformer.
It retails for $9.95 on Steam but is only $4.95 until the Thursday, the 17th.

Portal has been out for months now, and I’ve been meaning to write about it since the day of its launch. The main point that I want to get across about Portal is that it’s one of the greatest games ever created. At the very least, tied with Tetris for best game.
First, the portal gun is just so cool. It has two modes of fire – blue portal and orange portal. Once both portals are placed, you can walk into one and come out the other. Your speed is conserved, which makes for interesting puzzles involving flying into one to fly out of another one. The difficulty curve of the game was superb. I never really felt annoyed at any hand holding, yet things were introduced one at a time so I never felt overloaded. By the end of the game, I was able to do very complex things with the portals that seemed impossible and amazing when I first saw them done in a trailer.
The atmosphere and plot are both wonderful as well. And yes, the game definitely has a plot. By the end of the game, other characters emerge as well. The way the plot unfolded was amazing, but I don’t want to say much about it out of fear of spoiling it. The game also slowly becomes a bit eerie in a very cool way. The music and sound is perfect for the game. The dialogue, while limited, consisted of each line delivering the perfect amount at the perfect time. Every element of the game was carefully thought out and placed exactly where it needed to be.
That leads me to my final point about the game: it’s short. Even without trying to fast, you’ll still complete it in about four hours. Many people have complained about this, but I won’t be one of them. As I said before, everything was placed perfectly. The game couldn’t be any longer. Sure, they could have just added more puzzle rooms, but as it stands, there weren’t any redundant puzzles. Each room introduced another part of the game. Adding more would have just made the game tedious. There’s nothing wrong with a short game. In fact, I wish more games would cut the crap out of them. I don’t want to collect all 150 stars or 200 emblems. I don’t want to play the same levels over and over again in Sonic and the Secret Rings with new tasks each time. I just want to play Portal.

When I found out that there was another rhythm game besides Elite Beat Agents, Ouendan, and Ouendan 2 for the DS, I was very excited. The music is nice, and the gameplay is actually very cool, but the song selection is limited, and all the quirks and character of the Ouendan series are completely missing in Ontamarama.
Unlike the quirky yet cool story in the Ouendan series, Ontamarama had an unexciting story. Ontama are small creatures that allow people to play music and conduct “Ontama battles,” which is some sort of aggressive music playing. Unluckily for the protagonist, someone is stealing all the Ontama; he wants them back. I know that no one expects there to be much plot in a rhythm game, but this isn’t what’s so bad. It’s the way the plot is presented. After chasing an enemy, the enemy says, “I’ve been under control,” and the protagonist says, “oh, okay!”
I really enjoyed the game mechanics. “Unfilled” notes slide across the top of the of the screen. There are four kinds of notes, each associated with their own color and D-pad direction. When the note reaches the little circle on the left, you have to press the note’s corresponding direction; However, there’s a catch: These unfilled notes can’t be pressed until they become filled. To press them, they have to be filled. Under the sliding bar, Ontamas appear and move about the screen. When you touch an Ontama, a note of the corresponding color becomes filled. What’s so interesting about this is that while watching the notes stream across the top (sometimes in rapid succession), you also have to watch for all the Ontamas and tap them quickly enough to fill the notes. Very demanding, and very fun. Luckily, you have three “blows.” When you blow in the mic, it’ll clear all Ontamas on the screen.
I still think that the corny plot elements were by far the biggest downside of the game, but there is one other. There are twelve main songs in the game. It takes about an hour to beat the game. The songs are still fun to play afterwards, but I only thought one song was really memorable. The character art is horrendous, but the Ontama sprites are quite cute. If you really like rhythm games, then this game is probably worth $20. If you’re looking for an Elite Beat Agents replacement, don’t look here, and if you don’t really have an opinion about rhythm games, then this would probably just be a waste of your time.