#161 Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Posted: 12th September 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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455th played so far

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Genre: Adventure
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1988
Developer: Lucasfilm Games
Publisher: Lucasfilm Games

Time for another Lucasarts adventure! Although another early one, and the last pre-Monkey Island adventure. Happily so, as Maniac Mansion showed they didn’t seem quite as good.

Zak McKracken‘s protagonist is a journalist… for a gossipy myth-chasing publication. It sounds like something that would suit an adventure game, which is a good start already.

Our Thoughts

So I don’t really know. This is undoubtably a Lucasarts adventure. The game looks and feels like an early game. There’s no real death – other than running out of money and a few very specific scenarios. It’s funny enough in places.

Its structure probably gets me most. Aside from having very little signposting, there’s a bit too much to get and do – something that seems like it could go wrong easily, as you need to buy a lot of items with an initially limited budget.

The street to this shop isn’t that easily found, by the way – it’s a pavement beween the initial street you’re on and the bus to the airport, and you can still walk to the background without reaching the street. It’s just doesn’t seem to work.

What doesn’t help is the awkward interface.ย  The version we played didn’t use the conventional verb-object method that feels pretty intuitive, with decent default options. Instead it’s an awkward, partially feedback-less verb-object-confirm interaction that feels trickier. Not helping – especially as it removes clues – is that there’s no ‘Look’ option, just a ‘what is’ that indicates the hotspots without giving less information.

It’s still fun, most of the puzzles can be solved without too much effort (once you find the places to go), with the frustrating combinations being less common. At the same time, even the effectively simple systems get marred by odd implementation. For example, there’s a dark cave you can navigate with a lighter. However, the lighter can only be on for a limited time before it gets to hot (and you have to uselessly wait for a while as it cools down) and it only lights up a small part of the screen, adding a lot of frustration to finding out what to do.

Final Thoughts

While an improvement on Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken is not entirely there yet, not as high as we’d hope. It all plays fine, but we struggled with the interface a bit too much, and while the story is interesting, it didn’t draw us in quite far enough. There’s something interesting with character switching, but so far it didn’t seem to have mattered yet.

#355 Tekken 3

Posted: 8th September 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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454th played so far

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Genre: Fighting
Platform: Playstation
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

Tekken is, I believe, one of Peter’s favourite fighting game series – he certainly always managed to tell me a lot about it. We played the first game some time ago, that time, too, playing from the Tekken 5 disc.

From that I already found out that this game mostly has a new cast of fighters, because of story line reasons. It won’t matter to me, but I can see how it would have an influence on most players who’d play it.

Our Thoughts

Reading back our Tekken review, that game didn’t feel quite there yet. Graphics were off, it felt slow, it didn’t sit right with us.

Many of these issues are fixed in this game. I’ll have to admit – that gives us less to talk about, but it made the game more playable, competently so.

As a new player, the game actually plays pretty well. While the combos are there, they don’t feel like ones I needed to rely on too much, with some good ‘overwhelming’ fighters. I’m sure that wouldn’t work against other players, but they meant I could get decently far into story mode.

The nice feature there, as well, is that you’re not married to one character. On loss, you can switch to another character to try again, allowing for different strategies if a character isn’t working. They also feel distinct – some faster, some heavier, with a few gimmicks. Those aren’t as big as some games get – mostly they play pretty straight forwardly.

The version we played seems to have removed some of the more ‘exploitative’ elements, such as a volleyball mode. All I can say is that really, it is what it is – fighting games seem to have had that expectation. I’ll happily stick with the fighting.

Final Thoughts

A noticeable improvement, Tekken 3 is good and very enjoyable fighting game. That may make it less noticeable, but it works better as a good game. Without further comparison (something I more and more feel the need to rectify), I could see how this would be the superior Tekken entry of its era, and based on its lack of future entries, possibly the series.

I’m looking forward to what comes next as well.

#414 Mario Golf

Posted: 4th September 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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453rd played so far

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Genre: Sports
Platform: Game Boy Color
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: Camelot Software Planning
Publisher: Nintendo

In general, we like Mario games – they are done well, whether it’s an RPG, a platformer or a racing game. A branch that we haven’t really covered are his (semi-)sports games. We’ve also covered enjoyable golf games – at least in Golden Tee Live.

The combination then, while not entirely natural, seem like they should work together. Well enough to end up on this list at least. We shall see.

Our Thoughts

This did not work. Unlike Golden Tee‘s trackball, cursors and swinging bars to have different rules for each implementation just don’t work well. It doesn’t feel like real golf and it doesn’t feel like it’s more than a puzzle reflexes game that has no bearing on anything.

With that said, if the game was just like any other golf game, we could judge it as such and accept the limitations of the genre. The other part of the title, however, adds to the aggravation. In a game in the Mario franchise, one named after the main star, you’d expect him to show up. You’d expect to play as him, or otherwise at least have him show up in a major part. What shows, however, is that this was an existing title with the Mario license inserted. He’s talked about as one of the best golfers (the end boss of sorts) and would show up as that in some capacity, but for the most part he just isn’t there.

Graphically it looks pretty standard, nothing special. It’s all pretty bland really – as the entire game, unfortunately.

Final Thoughts

This game, despite what everything should suggest, is just pretty bland and uninteresting. As a Mario title, it should at least look better and feel more interesting, even if the basic gameplay stays the same. Such a waste.

#344 Diablo

Posted: 31st August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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452nd played so far

Diablo_Coverart

Genre: Action/Role-Playing
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Blizzard North
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Time for another big name – although arguably its successor Diablo II was that even more. Diablo is the other side of Blizzard’s empire. While the Warcraft/Starcraft series provided the strategy games and, indeed, the world for World of Warcraft, Diablo is the RPG that, to some extent, introduces the RPG part of the MMORPG.

On its own, Diablo was already a huge success. I’ve never quite gotten into it, though. Perhaps this time will be different.

Our Thoughts

It’s difficult to go back on some of these games, and with Diablo it shows. The graphics are sprite based and, overall, a bit clumsy. Too easily it becomes a pixel mess. Even so, it doesn’t feel quite necessary. The game is structured as a rogue like, showing its Rogue and Nethack roots readily with randomly generated dungeons and loot, often just a few pre-planned rooms, and a lot of what happens in the game coming down to luck. Even features like the random affect granting fountains are present.

As much as we struggled (and damn, an inventory this limited makes it very tricky to keep up with everything in the game), the addictive elements showed as well. There is the constant buzz of killing enemies and finding the loot they dropped – something still made difficult because of the graphics – and hoping for something special in there.

The story is almost equally irrelevant. There are a few plotdumps in the city – ones you’re almost compelled to skip – and there are a few listed quests to lead you on that really just have a line or two to describe them.

Character development options feel very limited. A part of it is item based, but there’s a limited number of stats and not many skills to speak of (one per character plus spells which can be of limited value). It’s okay, but not very interesting.

Final Thoughts

Diablo works well enough, but there’s nothing here that we haven’t seen done better in later games. Diablo certainly set the (non-ASCII-based) trend for all of these games and it feels solid enough, but it’s as much interesting from its historical place and archetypal role as it is from its direct gameplay.

#999 Chime

Posted: 27th August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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451st played so far

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Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2010
Developer: Zoe Mode
Publisher: OneBigGame

Shout out to Peter P., you know why!

We got this game recommended from a few sources, the above being one, while seeing the sequel at EGX earlier this year was another.

Chime is a puzzle game originally created for charity, the proceeds going to Save the Children. It’s heavily music based, already inviting the first comparison to Lumines.

Our Thoughts

This game is addictive, as a good puzzler should be. There’s a nice tie-in to the music, which partially dictates the flow of the game, is more formed by how well you do in the game than that it really influences the puzzle.

The main idea is to fill the board with tiles and cover as much as possible (100% is the ultimate goal). To do so you need to form rectangles and wait until the music bar reaches them after they’ve properly filled up.

It’s a fairly simple concept, Tetrissy in initial execution but with longer term consequences. The blocks soon sprawl, in part because the wrong pieces show up and in part because that’s just how big the earlier rectangles get.

The delay that triggers the rectangles can get frustrating. They’re nice early on to expand the rectangles, but it effectively means the game ends play about twenty seconds before the timer runs out – you just don’t have a chance to expand much further before then.

Although the game can seem disorganised, it’s addictive enough to keep you playing. Beating the percentage goal becomes the big goal and, so far, we’re still trying to get to that 100% on one level…

Final Thoughts

This is the right sort of puzzler – simple concept, complex play, addictive and fun.

50 Game Round Up: 401-450 (Jeroen)

Posted: 25th August 2015 by Jeroen in Round-Up
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450! It’s weird – on one hand we’re already starting to plan the halfway point, while on the other hand it still seems far away – probably about six months at our current rate. Still, it’s all coming up, exciting times for the blog are ahead!

For now, however, we look back. How were the past fifty games?

Best Game I Had Not Previously Played

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I’m not sure whether I’ve become more forgiving or whether we’ve focused more on better games, but looking back, it feels like we’ve played a lot more good games in this run, and more often in general. A lot of these games actually ending up in the most surprising category for me, as there were several titles where I wasn’t expecting it, but some still clearly stood out.

I’m not going to make a choice between these because they feel equally worthwhile, but my best new games are Fable and Final Fantasy X. The former offers an openness of play and magnitude of choices that’s amplified by an large, interesting set of mechanics. It looks good and invites exploration and gaming a great deal and became addicting, even if it needed some work with checkpoints and save points.

Final Fantasy X offers all those things a Final Fantasy game offers, but it feels executed really well. Where our previous entries into the game made them feel a bit overrated at times, this one (possibly in part because it generally didn’t get as much buzz) worked far better. Even beyond the looks and tropical feel of the environments, leading to a very engaging world to experience, the characters are build nicely and fun to hang out with.

Worst Game

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While other games were disappointing, there was one in this 50 that just felt objectionably bad. Space Giraffe retreads game concepts that worked twenty years earlier, without adding anything new, instead adding an obnoxious layer of self indulgence. It feels completely unnecessary and not one that I would have expected on this list.

Most Surprising Game

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As I said though, a lot of games surprised us this fifty. They seemed like a game we want to do because it’s in the list and to get the numbers right, fine but not something outstanding. When we continued playing, however, we got into them so much that we want to put them on our permanent playlist.

Survival horrors aren’t our big genre, but Silent Hill worked incredibly well, with some jump scares but mostly working by slowly building tension and focusing on the exploration and puzzle solving. There were some issues with how that worked, but on the whole it felt like one of our better entries in it. Trackmania: United Forever was another racer, supposedly with some puzzle elements, but that felt vague. It would probably be fun, but again it turned out to be a lot better than we thought. That was a lot of fun.

The one that fits the bill best, however, is No One Lives Forever 2. Sure, FPS games are good and engaging and we had a bunch of fun ones, but this didn’t seem exceptional – similar to how Goldeneye never really wowed us. When we really got into it, however, it was fun – the charm of James Bond, RPG mechanics with interesting effects and just enough Kill Bill setting and value to go for an interesting twist.

Biggest Disappointment

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The other side of the coin, other games just didn’t work out. Metropolis Street Racer was a bland, dull racer. Sega Bass Fishing didn’t offer the twist and engagement we thought it would – too much like fishing, without the physical presence.

The one that bothers me more than anything, though, is ArmA: Armed Assault. It has a major pedigree, with some of its predecessors still forthcoming on the blog. There are a lot of interesting features. It feels like it should be good. It tries to. Yet we couldn’t get on with it, starting with the initial tutorial, and never getting there. It’s maddening and doesn’t seem to be what the game deserves, but it feels linked to what the developers made of it. It was just such a shame.

Best Blast From The Past

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ย It hasn’t been intentional, but this set of fifty seems to have had a limited number of games that I played before. Looking at it, I think Warcraft III was the game I was most looking forward to replaying.ย  The story, the looks and the design are all good.

The one that was most memorable, however, was The Settlers. Sure, my original experience was with the sequel, but both playing this – still easy enough to follow with what I remembered of the game a decade earlier – and the sequel, which I had to play a few levels of after we played it for the blog. I need to get back to it.

Games We Kept Playing

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Still, that isn’t the game we really kept playing. As it stands, we are probably about a third of the way into Dragon Age: Origins and playing – we are slowly doing our best to finish the game. While you can find some issues with it, it’s a well done game with some interesting and compelling characters and as we’ve been drawn deeper into the game, it’s gotten better. Zevran is amazing. That is all.

On to the 500!

#435 Deus Ex

Posted: 23rd August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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450th played so far

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Genre: First-Person Shooter/Role-Playing
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2000
Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: Eidos Interactive

Here we go! 450 games, the last minor landmark before our big one.

Deus Ex has been on the list of games I’ve wanted to play for a while. We’ve come across FPS games with RPG elements a few times now, to a greater or lesser extent, and in a way Deus Ex was the first game to really (notably) do so. Aside from me always having enjoyed the game for this (even if I didn’t necessarily get deep into it, having watched it just as much), it’s felt like a benchmark I’ve wanted to refer back to.

Plus, not havingย  played it for a while, seeing how the game’s RPG elements to other games seemed valuable too. How much does Borderlands‘ systems tie into the RPG system? How does Bioshock‘s system of choices apply? And how much of a link is there really between this and Mass Effect, who share the same genre? It’s about time we played this.

Our Thoughts

Where to begin? The game still holds up in most ways. Graphically, the game looks dated (although I believe there are mods to fix that), but they are functional enough. The colours can be a bit samey and hide parts of the world from time to time, meaning you have to pay some attention to what’s going on sometimes. Even so, it’s pretty clear most of the time. The character models have similar issues, but they are pretty distinctive, which is enough to create the personality needed in the game.

The game has several characters that pay this off, characters that feel distinct from the start, with even the grunts you encounter having some personality. Although a number of them respond only with one liners, there are several longer conversations to be had, often interactive, making the game feel more RPG-like, as well as giving your character some direction.

The game’s structure shows this even more. The game feels incredibly reactive – more so than even seems common within RPGs. On the first mission, you can rescue one of your future partners. It’s an optional mission goal – getting the bad guy is more important. If you don’t free him, however, he will keep bringing it up – not only will your pay be docked (in a real conversation, not just an end of mission screen) but people reference it. In later levels, recurring characters you kill stay dead and your choices continue to matter. There are several sidequests, not required but useful to play through.

Completing the RPG elements are skills, leveled as you gain experience in a way similar to No One Lives Forever 2, as well as having slots that force you to choose between upgrades. There’s an inventory system. It’s not the most in depth system, but as you get into it it’s clear this is a true RPG, not a game with some elements like, say, Bioshock. The game also offers several different approaches to most missions – stealth and combat usually being two major options, but also often having some hacking making your missions easier – disabling a big bot in the first mission helps a lot.

Still, the game remains an FPS as well, and that shows in places. For a large part of the game, shooting is a definite option to make it through the missions, and your own skill is still a driving force when it comes to accuracy and such. To me, the FPS options add to it in this game. Your inventory has enough of an impact that the mixing of guns and ammo and other modifications add a lot of strategy.

Final Thoughts

Deus Ex holds up. It may not always look the best, but the mix of RPG and FPS works really well – there’s a good reason it set such a high standard for sequels. As good as its production standards are, Mass Effect‘s world doesn’t feel half as reactive in total as Deus Ex feels in its first few missions.

It’s a game where being ambitious paid off, even if few games after it got quite as far. A good pinnacle – engaging and fun.

#175 Strider

Posted: 19th August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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449th played so far

Strider_Hiryu_arcade_flyer

Genre: Action
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1989
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom

I’ll admit, before playing Strider was categorized, in my mind, as a general samey-seeming group of games. Somewhere between platform, beat ’em up and action game, I would have easily confused it with something like Forgotten Worlds if I had to say so at the time. Forgettable is the right word.

Looking at the book, it sounds like Strider‘s titular main character was an early, now forgotten Capcom mascot, like Nintendo’s Kid Icarus until his recent revival. The question stays though, what value does it offer in this day and age? The book doesn’t say much about it, beyond a general description of the game. We’ll have to figure it out for ourselves then.

Our Thoughts

And it’s true – I still struggle trying to find the hook that Strider has. It’s a competent beat ’em up action game, with some difficulty sections and, to aid, frequent checkpoints, but in gaemplay it’s similar ‘attack enemies before they hit you’ gaming we see elsewhere.

The setting – mostly Russia, at least for as much as we played – is interesting and the backgrounds look pretty good, but again, it’s not that remarkable.

It’s decent enough as a game of its type, even if its difficulty is very arcade focused, not something that works for home playing. Perhaps that’s what held us back – we didn’t really feel the need to dive into it. But it didn’t grab us, and perhaps after 449 games that’s where we’re at. Some games are just what we’ve seen so often before.

Final Thoughts

Strider is competent for what it is. If you’re into these games, you’ll probably enjoy it and see far more nuance than we do. For us though, it just is. Good to have experienced it, but not something we’re likely to get back to.

#221 Super Mario Kart

Posted: 15th August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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448th played so far

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Genre: Racing
Platform: SNES
Year of Release: 1992
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo

It feels like it’s time for something fun! Well, most of these games are, but the Mario Kart series always offers that bit extra. We played the direct successor of this game, Mario Kart 64, a long time ago and Mario Kart Wii was one of the first games we played for the blog. More recently we also played Mario Kart WiiU together a lot.

The series started with Super Mario Kart on the SNES, and I still remember playing it from a long time ago. It was good then, and great for multiplayer. Let’s see whether it has held up though…

Our Thoughts

Going into this, I was worried about the controls. One of the less pleasant things I recall about Super Mario Kart – reflected in some sequels’ throwback track, but adjusted in others – are the turns. Presumably due to the nature of the graphics system, large parts of the tracks run at 90 degree angles to each other. It’s presumably a memory-saving device or to work with the fancy semi-3D rotation used, but they make for some awkward bends that felt difficult to pull of.

Replaying the game though, it isn’t that bad. There’s a few tricky turns, but my added Mario Kart experience makes it a bit easier to get around it – some drifting and adjusting your speed makes a bunch of them easier to make. There are still some 180 degrees turns, which get more annoying, but overall the game feels incredibly playable.

It helps that a lot of the important elements are in play already, even with some of the oddities still there – coin collecting went out soon after, but the bonus items are mostly already there. Oil spills also seem more common than they were later.

The graphics are the biggest thing that make the game look dated. Although there are a few different track graphics, they are reused more across levels (some tilesets have four or five tracks associated with them) and are mostly fairly flat compared to the 3D modelled tracks of later games. There is still a lot of variety in tracks, but visually it can be a bit more samey. Even so, the mode 7 rotations add quite a bit to it, adding a lot of depth to the tracks that seem impressive for the SNES.

Final Thoughts

I suppose this is something we should be expecting from a Mario series game anyway, but considering the impact its successors made (even amongst less hardcore gamers – Mario Kart Wii feels like something everyone played), the fact that it holds up as well amongst its competitors says a lot of good things about Super Mario Kart. I’m actually tempted to replay it again and try to go for a proper play now.

#223 Flashback

Posted: 11th August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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447th played so far

Flashback_cover

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1992
Developer: Delphine Software
Publisher: U.S. Gold

Flashback, contradicting the above description, is described by Wikipedia as a “science fiction cinematic platform game”. To me, that sounds a bit pretentious, but I assume there’s a way in which it has earned this distinction.

That description reminds me a lot of Another World, which was also a platformer that tried to mix in heavier storytelling – although I’m not sure how well they’d overlap.

Our Thoughts

Right, first, this is a pretty tricky platformer. The controls, as they are, feel inaccurate and didn’t always trigger properly, making jumps far harder than was needed. While the game resembled Prince of Persia in its controls, it has some awkward choices in when you jump or step forward and how far you jump. A lot of it comes from stance, whether you’re croaching, standing or have your gun drawn, but they aren’t intuitive, instead feeling frustrating. We struggled with it for as long as we played.

The level design is decent – looking like an interesting jungle setting initially – but it is easy to miss stuff if you’re not looking out for it. What can and cannot be interacted with is unclear, as is whether a passage is a dead end or a tunnel leading further. The controls play into this again, making it more awkward.

The story bits are compelling, however. Leading off with the well-worn amnesia excuse, you head off to explore an island you crashlanded on. The first bit of story is one screen down, a log that gives you the basics, making for some nice in-game storytelling. This is done by changing from in-game graphics (the quality of which differs based on your platform) to a semi-FMV recording. It’s a nice touch, showing the game’s scope.

Final Thoughts

When paying, it was hard to see this game as something other than a clumsier Prince of Persia. There’s potential here, and if we’d played this game two decades ago, trying over and over to get further, it would have been worthwhile. As it is, however, the game doesn’t always feel playable enough to get that far in.

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