Year: 2010
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Puzzle
Review Date: 12/18/10
Rating: **

For whatever bizarre reasons, I decided to browse through all of the Indie games that were available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and "The Adventures Of Captain Becky" stood out as something that might be interesting. It certainly looked much better than most of the other games, as it features a fully rendered 3D character and some interesting graphics. The $1 price point combined with my interest in female action games made it definitely worth checking out. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, it's pretty poor. But the most annoying aspect of the game isn't with the game itself, but rather Microsoft's policy regarding Indie games. Even after you download the game, you are required to be logged into Xbox LIVE in order to play. This is inexcusable. I contacted one of my friends in the Xbox LIVE division to shed some light on this seemingly insidious situation, and learned that it's Microsoft's way of protecting people from offensive content. Since Microsoft doesn't rate, monitor, or control the content of Indie games, it relies on the community to determine if something is offensive or inappropriate. As a result, when you log into LIVE, if someone has marked a game as offensive, it will delete it from your system and give you your money back. This is very annoying, and especially if I want to keep that particular game. They don't even give you a choice. Anyway, as a result of this silliness, I probably won't be buying any more Indie games.

But let's get back to the game at hand, which is Captain Becky. First of all, the game is basically a fairly deep character editor that just happens to have a gaming element attached to it. The most fun is had in the editor, where you can modify dozens of Becky's features and come up with some truly horrific abominations. Naturally, her breast size varies from gigantic to enormous. Then you can watch her perform an awkward dance while her mouth enthusiastically sings along to some unheard music in her head. Either that, or she's obnoxiously chewing bubblegum and talking to herself. After you get your fill of this bizarre exhibition, you can actually play the game, which puts Becky in a room full of obstacles where you have to get from point A to point B in a certain amount of time. Coming into contact with an enemy results in sudden death, and the combat controls are so sluggish that it's best to avoid confrontation altogether. As you progress through the levels, Becky obtains different outfits to augment her bikini top and cut-offs combo. Naturally, one of these outfits is a Playboy bunny suit, which looks great when she's swinging her mace around. There are several dozen levels of increasing difficulty, but I gave up about halfway through. I just don't have the time or patience to bother with difficult puzzles if they don't interest me, and sadly, Captain Becky isn't that interesting.