What a bizarre game this was! I got this one as one of the Games with
Gold which was free for the month. It looked like a fairly straight forward
completion which has taught me that my definition of ‘straightforward’ needs to
be revised.
#IDARB is a 2D Version of...
well, it’s an independent looking sports game quite similar to basketball. You
play as one member of a team of misfits to compete against another team of
misfits. You have to shoot the ball into the opposition’s net/goal and the
further you are away from the goal and the more times it bounces before it goes
in determine how many points you get for the goal.
As you can tell from the title, the game is basically designed to have
live feed in from Twitter. In addition to this, it also has following on Twitch.
I think the idea was that it would develop a cult following. I have no idea how
well it did – I simply played it for the achievements and got the hell out of
there.
Gameplay wise it’s hard to describe if it’s good or not. I personally
thought the controls were a little bit quick but as I said above, I don’t think
I played the game long enough to get fully accustomed to them. It is very quick
and people with more experience than me fully showed it when I was playing
online. I think it’s a mixed bag – a real marmite game, you will either love it
or hate it. I’m in the hate column as it’s not my cup of tea.
Achievements – 12 Achievements –
1,000 Points
There are only twelve achievements
available for the game and bizarrely, only 4 of them directly relate to
playing the game. Despite having a set of challenges in a single player mode,
none of them specifically relate to this.
You have score a 15 point shot, win with a final score of 42, stun 25
players online and score an Alley Oop. Scoring an Alley Oop is bizarre because
you can play against two AI players and they will naturally do this... and it
unlocks the achievement for you.
Winning with a final score of 42 is a secret one, supposedly linking
into the whole answer to the universe and everything joke, the secret being
that no one knows 42 is answer.
In addition to playing the game, there are four achievements for
grinding out teams, characters, logos and songs in the various creators and
three achievements for importing songs, logos and characters by scanning QR
codes using the Kinect’s camera.
That leaves one achievement left which is for using Twitter or Twitch
to get the ‘Achievement Bot’ to give you the achievement. This didn’t unlock
for me on the first go but I managed to bag it on the second along with the
1,000 points and sent out some thanks to achievement gods because I really did
not want to set up a Twitch account.
Multiplayer
This is what the game is all about, other than dicking about on Twitch
and Twitter. I played six online games to get my 25 stuns and I won once. Not
the most impressive stats but they won’t change for the rest of my lifetime. By
now, everyone that still plays online is probably an expert and knows exactly
how to throw the ball into the opposition net in about six seconds from
kick-off to get 18 points per goal.
Downloadable Content – N/A
#IDARB (which apparently
stands for I Drew a Red Box) is an indie game for a very specific taste and
that taste is unfortunately not mine. I do appreciate the gimmick of the
experience and it was also interesting to see another use for the Kinnect
sensor other than ‘Xbox Off.’
