Nukezilla Review: Crisis in The Gulf (Xbox Live Indie Game)

There are often intangibles with videogames that frequently get overlooked in reviews, Crisis in The Gulf from Super Boise Games has a few worth mentioning. Aside from solid tower defense play, this amusing game is getting extra points from me for cleverness, and just plain topical awesomeness for tackling the issue of oil spills and their horrific effect on the environment. After playing this game for a while it really feels like tower defense and The Daily Show had a baby and it became this.

The game opens with a very logical proviso considering the current climate around oil spills; “All logos or corporations appearing in this game are fictitious; any resemblance to real corporations is purely coincidental.” This is followed by a familiar looking logo featuring an oil company named “dp.” The premise is fairly simple, a large “OOOPS!” emblazoned across the screen lets the player know that somebody did something very wrong on an oil platform. To help stem the flow of the escaping oil, the player may use three different classes of ships to prevent oil from rising to the surface. The three available classes are cannons, torpedos, and lasers.

The gameplay itself is fairly simplistic tower defense fare. However, the overall experience is so cleverly done that it is definitely deserving of some attention and your spare micro points. The screen is broken up into thirds and the area where the player can place ships takes up the middle third. Each new level begins with the controller vibrating strongly indicating imminent eruptions of oil and possibly doom for the animals of the area.

I encourage players to start on the easiest difficulty; not because this game is particularly difficult or the play system is challenging to master. After the first several levels on “Lawn Mower Oil Leak” you can rest on some upgraded laser and torpedo ships and read the news ticker from “DNN” that runs across the top of the game. The little snippets of fake news are very funny, and really added to the charm of this game. Furthermore, if the player promotes the game to anyone his or her friend’s list then you are granted extra cash to start the game with. A simple, but pretty good idea in my opinion.

The essentials of the gameplay are very solid for Crisis in The Gulf. Ships go where you place them, they upgrade when you choose to, and they look and sound like one would expect. This is generally an extremely well done game by an independent developer that isn’t afraid to throw a few barbs at oil companies as well as media outlets that purport to cover these disasters professionally. My favourite “DNN” ticker fake-story involves mocking the inane polls that news outlets inevitably launch to seem like they are seeking their viewer’s opinions. In this case it goes; “Do you think that the oil leak is good for the environment?” This is the kind of cleverness that really lured me in with this game. News site polls are always nonsensical and frequently are so inane that they would insult the intelligence of an amoeba. Hardcore tower defense fans should note though, that there are no unlockable ships in this game. The three ship types you strt with are what you have throughout.

The parts of the game that annoyed me revolve around the repetitive music, the inability to turn off the vibrate function that indicates a new level is about to start, and the absence of visible animals that died because the player failed. While I found the background music catchy and the lyrics reasonably well done for an indie game, after several playthroughs it just becomes grating. Also, with the vibration that signals the beginning of a new level it made me want to throw the controller through a window when I forgot about it and placed it on the table beside my chair. The noise woke the baby upstairs it was so powerful. Finally, when your ships are eventually overwhelmed by the oil spill and you fail, you are greeted with the message; “you have failed now all of the animals are dead because of you.” I love this! However, I wanted to see animals covered in oil suffocating to death. It’s a niggling point I know, and maybe Super Boise Games avoided that imagery for legal reasons as that would too closely connect this game with a certain actual oil spill that is irreparably damaging the Gulf and is seemingly being ignored by those that caused this catastrophe. At any rate, the bottom line though is that the purpose of the game is to save the animals from the oil spill so let me see what happens when WE fail to protect our environment. C’mon boys at least give me one seagull heaving it’s last breath covered in oil sludge.

This game really is well done, and at the end of the day we should support anything that mocks oil companies that are this irresponsible.

(What does this score mean?)