Schizoid Impressions

Well the weekend is here, and seeing as I am finally getting a chance to stay in the city this weekend, I can try out some new games. However, my cousin, who doesn't play games not named Magic: the Gathering, is also in town, which may dampen my efforts somewhat. Not that that's all a bad thing.

I did talk him into playing the Schizoid XBLA demo with me though. Schizoid is billed as a simple coop game in which a team of two ships, orange and blue, team together to fight hordes of alien monsters. The twist is that unlike other monster slaughtering games, there are no weapons. Ships can merely ram into one another. The orange ship pwns all the orange monsters, but gets pwned by the blue monsters, while the blue ship pwns the blue monsters, but rolls to the orange monsters. Pretty simple stuff.

Anyways, the game has something like 136 levels. We had a pretty good time playing the XBLA demo, but not good enough to make me want to slap down the money for the full game. Schizoid is overall a pretty intense experience, if the last few levels of the demo were any indication. There are tons of mobs all over the place, and it will take some pretty coordinated teamwork, but the game feels a little simpler than it could have been. The power-ups that I played around with were definitely fun, and I wish I could have seen some more. However, I wanted Schizoid to prove to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it a great, arcadey, coop experience, and it didn't quite get there.

If I had another dedicated player who wanted to really give this game their all with me, I would probably get it, but given that I don't have anyone living with me that would be willing to make the sacrifice, I suppose Left 4 Dead will have to do for now.

-Jon