A Lesson in Patience
Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is enormously entertaining and incredibly original... perhaps too original.
Published: August 8, 2009
Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? has a lesson to teach its prospective players, and your ability to learn that lesson will have a direct impact on how much fun you're able to get out of things. Though it features elements of monster rearing, Dig-Dug-like tunneling, dungeon creation and even some whiffs of unit-based tower defense, the core of the game is actually less about having a direct impact on the events unfolding on your PSP than it is just learning to observe and nudge things.
For someone like me that will fully admit to being a control freak, it's an axiom I didn't fully comprehend until I'd poured hours into the game. Take it from someone who's hard-headed: learning to go with the flow will lead to plenty of fun, and trying to force your way through Badman's particularly hands-off approach to developing a dungeon ecosystem to protect the God of Destruction from do-gooder interlopers will only end with incredible frustration.
That's because nothing really happens the way you'd probably like it to. When most of the conditions for creating and managing new monsters depends a bit on chance (and a lot on how you build the labyrinthine tunnels and switchbacks of your dungeon), it can seem impossible to get things to go the way you want. Guess what? Chances are they won't, which is why Badman is such a quirky take on what would otherwise be fairly familiar territory.
Crafted by Acquire, the same folks behind the original Tenchu games, with the help of Sony Computer Entertainment, the game finally sees US publisher NIS America getting back to the top of their localization game. The sense of humor comes almost exclusively from their handling of the text, including some absolutely hilarious descriptive bios on the heroes and monsters that find their way through your subterranean abode. Interestingly, this is the first purely downloadable PSP effort, something of a launching pad for Sony's new in-PSP Store, and it's actually a very ingenious little $20 download.
The basic concept is fairly easy to explain: as the God of Destruction, you have free rein to essentially tunnel your way through the various layers of block-like strata under a bucolic kingdom to make it increasingly difficult for would-be heroes to slay your demonic baddie buddy the Overlord. As you break through each of the blocks, you'll release simple blob-like creatures and wayward spirits that gobble up any nearby resources and deposit them elsewhere in the dungeon. As this is the cornerstone of the game, it becomes important to have those resources pool in strategic locations to help birth new, more powerful monsters to combat the invaders that also become more powerful as the levels go on.
This is where explaining things gets a little more hairy. For one, the creatures moving about the dungeon don't really follow precise behaviors. You can kill them to force a drop of resources somewhere, but it's better to just guide things by properly constructing pathways (H- and T-shaped hallways help), then sit back and hope things turn out the way you'd hoped. You're always doing something; extending the maze, creating new monsters, thinning the herd a bit, working to slow an approaching invader and so on, but you're rarely directly interacting with things, and that's something you really only learn the hard way.
Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman? What Did I Do to Deserve This? also sports an art style as charming as the title is at filling space in a review. The simple, blocky sprites harken back to the 8- and 16-bit days, but the actual depth of the game is miles beyond what most of the stuff from more than a decade would dare attempt. Things like tutorials and Challenge Mode objectives add further depth and experimentation leading to far more replay value than one would gather from the rather small file size. That you're rewarded for saving up your Dig Power (a counter that limits how many blocks you can tunnel through per level) and can pour that into upgrading your monsters means there's plenty of strategy to be found from level to level too, which is great. The game's delightful little bleeps and bloops also keep the feeling decidedly retro, music-wise, but that's definitely not a bad thing.
I wish I could say more about things, but this really is a fairly difficult game to properly describe. I can tell you that, once you clear the hurdle of realizing you're not supposed to be micro-managing every little critter and resource in the dungeon and you use the tutorials as loose guides rather than iron-clad rules, the game becomes incredibly addictive. I'd often play the game while on the train to work, and the normally 45 minute-long ride would practically vanish while playing this game. It's a fantastic go-to title that is cheap even by PSP standards and takes up very little on your Memory Stick (or, if you're the go-owning type, your internal storage).
The learning curve and relatively disconnected pace and flow of the game isn't for everyone, but any time invested in getting into things will pay dividends for those willing to tough it out. At the very least, go download the demo from the Store and you'll see exactly why it was so hard to properly convey the quirky weirdness of this downloadable gem. Kudos to NIS America for not only recognizing the charm of a decidedly off-kilter strategy game, but for giving it the kind of localization love and humor that I've know they had in 'em for a while now. Nice work, boys 'n girls.
For someone like me that will fully admit to being a control freak, it's an axiom I didn't fully comprehend until I'd poured hours into the game. Take it from someone who's hard-headed: learning to go with the flow will lead to plenty of fun, and trying to force your way through Badman's particularly hands-off approach to developing a dungeon ecosystem to protect the God of Destruction from do-gooder interlopers will only end with incredible frustration.
That's because nothing really happens the way you'd probably like it to. When most of the conditions for creating and managing new monsters depends a bit on chance (and a lot on how you build the labyrinthine tunnels and switchbacks of your dungeon), it can seem impossible to get things to go the way you want. Guess what? Chances are they won't, which is why Badman is such a quirky take on what would otherwise be fairly familiar territory.
Crafted by Acquire, the same folks behind the original Tenchu games, with the help of Sony Computer Entertainment, the game finally sees US publisher NIS America getting back to the top of their localization game. The sense of humor comes almost exclusively from their handling of the text, including some absolutely hilarious descriptive bios on the heroes and monsters that find their way through your subterranean abode. Interestingly, this is the first purely downloadable PSP effort, something of a launching pad for Sony's new in-PSP Store, and it's actually a very ingenious little $20 download.
The basic concept is fairly easy to explain: as the God of Destruction, you have free rein to essentially tunnel your way through the various layers of block-like strata under a bucolic kingdom to make it increasingly difficult for would-be heroes to slay your demonic baddie buddy the Overlord. As you break through each of the blocks, you'll release simple blob-like creatures and wayward spirits that gobble up any nearby resources and deposit them elsewhere in the dungeon. As this is the cornerstone of the game, it becomes important to have those resources pool in strategic locations to help birth new, more powerful monsters to combat the invaders that also become more powerful as the levels go on.
This is where explaining things gets a little more hairy. For one, the creatures moving about the dungeon don't really follow precise behaviors. You can kill them to force a drop of resources somewhere, but it's better to just guide things by properly constructing pathways (H- and T-shaped hallways help), then sit back and hope things turn out the way you'd hoped. You're always doing something; extending the maze, creating new monsters, thinning the herd a bit, working to slow an approaching invader and so on, but you're rarely directly interacting with things, and that's something you really only learn the hard way.
Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman? What Did I Do to Deserve This? also sports an art style as charming as the title is at filling space in a review. The simple, blocky sprites harken back to the 8- and 16-bit days, but the actual depth of the game is miles beyond what most of the stuff from more than a decade would dare attempt. Things like tutorials and Challenge Mode objectives add further depth and experimentation leading to far more replay value than one would gather from the rather small file size. That you're rewarded for saving up your Dig Power (a counter that limits how many blocks you can tunnel through per level) and can pour that into upgrading your monsters means there's plenty of strategy to be found from level to level too, which is great. The game's delightful little bleeps and bloops also keep the feeling decidedly retro, music-wise, but that's definitely not a bad thing.
I wish I could say more about things, but this really is a fairly difficult game to properly describe. I can tell you that, once you clear the hurdle of realizing you're not supposed to be micro-managing every little critter and resource in the dungeon and you use the tutorials as loose guides rather than iron-clad rules, the game becomes incredibly addictive. I'd often play the game while on the train to work, and the normally 45 minute-long ride would practically vanish while playing this game. It's a fantastic go-to title that is cheap even by PSP standards and takes up very little on your Memory Stick (or, if you're the go-owning type, your internal storage).
The learning curve and relatively disconnected pace and flow of the game isn't for everyone, but any time invested in getting into things will pay dividends for those willing to tough it out. At the very least, go download the demo from the Store and you'll see exactly why it was so hard to properly convey the quirky weirdness of this downloadable gem. Kudos to NIS America for not only recognizing the charm of a decidedly off-kilter strategy game, but for giving it the kind of localization love and humor that I've know they had in 'em for a while now. Nice work, boys 'n girls.
