#147 Rainbow Islands

Posted: 7th August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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446th played so far

335px-RainbowIslands(Ocean)FrontCover

Genre: Platform
Platform: Various
Year of Release:1987
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito

Or, as is proper, Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2, making it clear that this game is, in fact, the sequel to Bubble Bobble and not just a standalone game.

In it, our protagonists have changed from looking like dragons to now looking like human boys, something that would have made sense if we finished the previous game (so hard…). They now travel up into the sky, using their rainbows.

Our Thoughts

One of the more interesting aspects of this game, one that I don’t recall seeing in these early games (although the first Mega Man‘s Magnet Beam comes close) is that you can use your weapon to create additional platforms – the rainbows that you shoot allow you to stand on them and jump higher.

It makes for some nice shortcuts, mostly really towards the main goal of each level – climb higher until you get to the top. It’s a fairly straight forward goal, removing some of the variety of the game the game could have. There are apparently secrets hidden throughout the levels, but none that we really saw – in other games you’d probably have one early to show that they exist, here we didn’t notice them.

Although we’re probably just crap at the game.

There are, of course, a bunch of enemies in the level. One issue I had with them is that it was a bit unclear how to kill them. Some could be stomped from above, others had to be shot, I believe I even got some from the bottom. The rules for this aren’t clear and feel arbitrary at times, making it be the main reason we lost lives – we kept getting confused. The lack of sign posting is unfortunate here.

Final Thoughts

Rainbow Islands was clearly initially made for the arcade, offering enough hooks to get you playing, but requiring a lot of replay to really memorize everything you need to do. It’s unfortunate, as it makes it more difficult to jump into the game now and turning it more into a frustrating experience than something to fully enjoy.

#29 Ms Pac Man

Posted: 3rd August 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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1

445th played so far

mspacman01

Genre: Maze
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1981
Developer: Bally Midway/General Computer Corporation
Publisher: Bally Midway/Namco

Pac-Man was a popular game and it seems like it was geetting cloned early on. Ms. Pac Man, as is well known by now, was an early one. It caught the attention of Namco and, instead of suing, they saw the game’s potential and licensed it instead to be part of the official series.

Even so, we haven’t had a chance to play it, so here’s our chance.

Our Thoughts

This game doesn’t start off that different from its predecessor. The first level is layed out slightly differently – most notably with two warp tunnels – but stays fairly familiar. The ghosts start off in the same place and Ms Pac Man is just Pac Man with a bow and lipstick. That defines the game – it’s all very familiar when you know the original, but with enough differences and tricks to keep it fun.

Take the maze for example – where Pac Man‘s was static and did the same thing every time, Ms Pac Man alternates between four different layouts, giving you a different area to play with for each. The ghost’s behaviour have changed, no longer being predictable but instead having some randomness included – something you may or may not find useful. It all adds something new to the game and makes it a fresh experience while keeping the core gameplay the same.

The game looks slightly better – our protagonist is obviously more detailed, and the maze drawing style is slightly improved – but it’s not a big jump. It just tries a bit more and moves away from the abstract.

Final Thoughts

Considering the degrees in which games could and can iterate, this is probably the best example of a good, solid sequel. It has some nice features added, it looks a bit better and a bit more polished, but it’s still recognisably based on the same thing and starts off from those concepts. If you’ve played Pac Man, you immediately get this even if some things seem odd. It’s pretty much exactly what we want.

#313 Quake

Posted: 30th July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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444th played so far

Quake1cover

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1996
Developer: id Software
Publisher: GT Interactive

There were a couple of major steps during the development of the FPS genre that happened, it seems, in fairly quick succession. Doom was the notable one we already covered – the first to really go 3D – but Quake brought in its own thing: nearly everything uses 3D models, rather than the sprites used for monsters and pick-ups in earlier games.

I know how special this was from experiencing it first hand, playing a copy at a friend’s soon after its release, and how amazing it looked. I’m not sure we really realised the model difference at the time – our knowledge might not have been sophisticated enough to understand what was going on.

Our Thoughts

Quake lays out its philosophy before the game even starts. Its difficulty selection is a normal level, and while the easier difficulties are easily reached, the hard level has some lava in front to warn you and nightmare is only accessible by swimming through a tunnel, nicely hidden and making even starting the game a challenge.

The game then leads in its first act to a level that, as you’d expect, introduces the concepts quickly by tying them into a few puzzles. There are a few fairly easy to find secret areas, signposted by areas to jump to and travel towards. That does also feel like the downside of the game. While the level design is good and solid, with plenty of places to explore and secrets to find. It’s done well, but it isn’t that different from what we saw in Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, focused on getting to the end of the level and finding secrets, scoring you on how well you do that. Hiding the game is based on pressing switches, finding keys and finding the right path. There’s little plot or advancement.

The game, then, mostly improves on graphics and sound. The fully modeled graphics work a lot better and despite the relative simplicity compared to what we get now, works well and is surprisingly efficient to make it look good. The areas feel a lot more real than earlier games, and that’s worth it.

Final Thoughts

Quake is a game that, at this point, just is. Compared to normal design, it’s not as good, but at the same time it’s great at the things it’s trying to do. It’s not a lack of ambition – this game pushed what was possible. It just left me a bit cold.

At the same time, the multiplayer, which we didn’t try, is meant to be just as good, so take that as you will.

#199 Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge

Posted: 26th July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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443rd played so far

LeChuck's_Revenge_artwork

Genre: Adventure
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1991
Developer: LucasArts
Publisher: LucasArts

It’s honestly surprising to me that it’s been nearly a year since we played The Secret of Monkey Island – we really enjoyed it and breezed through it, helped with me remembering half the puzzles.

I have also played the second before (and have mixed up puzzles between the two), although it feels a bit less fresh in my mind and doesn’t feel quite as iconic. Still, in we jump again.

Our Thoughts

Some sequels really do seem to improve everything on the base game. The second Monkey Island iteration certainly feels like it did so. The graphics are better, with Guybrush especially having gained better looks and the backgrounds looking better than before, hand drawn and nicer – as well as brighter, the game being set at day instead of night. Characters have a bit more detailed and shading applied (although Stan’s jacket is still the same) and the animation just looks nicer – as gross as it is, Phatt Island’s governor looks really good. It’s not quite as cartoony as, say, Sam & Max Hit the Road, but it’s a clear step in between, focusing a bit more on realism.

Those improved graphics are just the start though, luring you in. The music sounds better – courtesy of a new music system in the game – and everything just feels a bit more alive.

Guybrush maintains his pirating standards – while hunting for his big treasure, he steals (poor Wally), cheats and has to rob a few graves. The area is varied, featuring more areas (and backtracking) than the previous game, and the puzzles feel more substantial. Most are still fairly logical, but with the inane goals you have in the game, there’s not always time for that. Stealing a wig, for example, to get hair for a voodoo doll may not seem quite right (and flakes of dandruff are the final explanation).

There’s also a nice balance of returning and new characters, not all of whom you’d expect to see back. Of course governor Marley is present, ghost pirate LeChuck (something that becomes obvious pretty early) and as mentioned before, Stan the salesman, but also lesser known characters like the three ‘men of low moral fibre’. It’s done well, never indulgent, but always as an extra nod you don’t necessarily need to know much about.

The main thing, however, is that the puzzles are always well-crafted. They’re rarely illogical (or at least not by too much) and there are almost always a few avenues to explore, even if in reality there are more dependencies. There aren’t many red herrings and, mercifully, no way to get stuck. Even in puzzles requiring memorization, brute force will win it for you in the end.

Oh, and with that all it’s still funny, to the point where some of the puzzle solutions even make you smile. All as good as it should be.

Final Thoughts

As said, this is a sequel that improves on all counts. It’s hard to say whether it’s the better classic, as the original Monkey Island has that first time spirit – they both do their job incredibly well. Based on the numbers, in fact, it seems like both are about as well regarded as each other.

Really another Lucasarts classic.

#689 ArmA: Armed Assault

Posted: 22nd July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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442nd played so far

arma

Genre: Strategy/Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Publisher: 505 Games/Atari Games

There are a lot of army-based shooters out there – Call of Duty has, depending on your perspective, either a lot to answer for or set a good example. As we might have intimated, we’re not a fan.

ArmA: Armed Assault comes from the same – in a fictionalized war, you go out into the world as a member of the US Army stationed on an island in the middle of a war. You need to make sure the good guys win…

Our Thoughts

If you want to beat the king of a (sub)genre, you’d better bring something new to the table. As informal sequels to the Operation Flashpoint series, we would presumably see some of that brought to the table as well.

For ArmA: Armed Assault, one of the main differences seems to be squad management. You don’t just go out on your own, but become part of a squad, soon leading it. It adds a different dynamic, although one slightly ruined if, like us, you’re not used to army lingo and spend some time guessing at what’s meant to be going on. In part, the options to communicate give a lot of options, which you can’t necessarily all go through in the midst of battle chaos (which you are thrown into quite early).

And that is an issue for us. We did go through the tutorials (more on that in a minute), but the first proper mission throws you in what feels like a bigger battle which mostly led to confusion the first two or three times – until running away from everything turned out to be the best way to make it out, without engaging anything. A bit unfortunate for a game like this.

Later missions keep ramping up the difficulty – I think, we didn’t make it past a second level. A second level, that is, as you get a choice which ones you do – side missions making the proper missions that follow easier in different ways. One of them involves sniping the drivers of a convoy, which proved to be tricky in how good their aim was without sniper rifles while you were unable to do any damage. Another involves infiltrating a base and doing stuff we never actually managed to do.

We did the tutorial, which sort of helped… but the helicopter one broke quickly because it messed up on us taking off and not sticking to the exact same height… and by getting out earlier. An earlier one, with weapon training, doesn’t explain half of how the picking up of weapons works, giving a lot of awkward fumbling while losing points. The controls felt clumsy, not helped by the incomplete explanations.

Final Thoughts

I can see the quality in this game. When you know it, it feels like there’s a deep game in here, with some interesting choices that will define your campaign and quite in depth play with the squad mechanic. There’s something really good here.

I just couldn’t play the game far enough to really get to experience it.

#860 Rez HD

Posted: 18th July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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441st played so far

RezBoxArt

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up/Music
Platform: XB0x 360
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: United Game Artists/Q Entertainment
Publisher: Sega

Rez is a rail shooter set in a computer, your enemy an AI that has gone crazy because of information overload. You need to hack it, by going inside and playing a rail shooter. Yeah, that’s really today’s story.

Oh, and we’re playing the better-looking version – the HD is specified by the list.

Our Thoughts

The game looks pretty surreal from the start. Set in a faux-hacker setting, diving in deeper, while you have an avatar, is still clear based on the Tron legacy. There’s lasers and colourful flashes and it’s all intentionally surreal. Weirder yet is your character. Extra lifes are rare, only being gotten by gathering several upgrade items. When you do, not only do you gain a life, you also change shapes – evolving as you continue. We were not good enough to really get upgrades, but they are nice touches.

As a rail shooter, Rez feels good at what it does. Enemies appear on every side as you’re floating through the void. Unfortunately hit boxes and directions of fire aren’t always well specified, making it difficult to find out that suddenly a boss is behind you. At other times it can be quite difficult to discern when an enemy can be shot and where, making for some futile attempts of concentrated, useless fire.

One of the more interesting choices is when to end a level. While there is an end point on the level, you can miss it and go by it, floating around a while longer until it comes around again. Partially this makes it a challenge to reach the exit – you have to shoot some specific items before you can lasso yourself in – but it also allows you to kill more enemies while at a slower pace to collect your upgrades so you’re more prepared for what’s next. It feels like an interesting trade-off.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I feel like rail shooters just aren’t interesting enough to keep our attention for too long. The game looks fine, especially with the updated release, creating a trippy landscape that feels uniform but also allows for somehow acceptable canals with ships in them that can form below you. But while the aesthetic parts are amazing, fitting the game well, they don’t necessarily connect with us.

#393 Sega Bass Fishing

Posted: 14th July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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440th played so far

Sega Bass Fishing PAL DC-front

Genre: Sports
Platform: Arcade/Dreamcast/PC
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: AM1/Sims
Publisher: Sega

Up until now, my knowledge of fishing has been theoretical. Conversations with friends who went fishing, some attempted bonding some fifteen years ago, bits and pieces I picked up here and there.

Sega Bass Fishing, then, isn’t my game, as I’m mostly just guessing at what I’ll be doing. For reference, we’re playing the PC version – we also have the Dreamcast one, but the fishing rod controller is broken and, well, this was a lot easier. We are missing some immersion though – no Steel Battalion exploits here, sadly.

Our Thoughts

Inexperience with fishing does have a bit of a downside when setting up this game. You need to select what lure to use – something I can’t judge – and where to look for the bass – something I chose more or less at random.

The main game mode is time limited, which leads to some tougher catching experiences early on. We spent most of our first session just trying to figure out why the lure kept floating and no fish responded. Heavier lures helped finding the fish, but made it more difficult to reel them in. That, too, was tricky – reeling in depends on key presses, but it doesn’t feel like you get quite enough fine tuned control over this – the specialised controller would have helped for this.

Thanks to the time limit – for obvious reason compressing a day’s fishing in about half an hour – the process becomes quite frantic. You want to catch the big fish, but spending a lot of time on a big fish that gets away (something that’s likely when you just started playing and seems to stay a risk for longer) can ruin a session.

Beyond that, a lot of the game comes down to luck too – you can roughly predict where the fish will be, but it feels like often you also have to be lucky enough that they get closer. Sure, realistic, but not something that works as well with the time limit. Still, the fish behaviour feels quite realistic, moving around, occasionally meeting each other and generally seeming to do what fish do.

Final Thoughts

It’s an interesting game in that we’ve tried it and sort of enjoyed it – certainly the time went by fast enough and we went through a couple of rounds. It’s just that as a gaming concept, there isn’t as much to it, and unless (I suppose) you’re really into fishing, a game about it quickly stops being interesting.

As a game, it’s good at what it does, and part of the list because it’s unique in its setting and does it quite well. It’s just still bass fishing though.

#67 H.E.R.O.

Posted: 10th July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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439th played so far

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Genre: Platform
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1984
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision

Time to be a hero… Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation time! It’s an old time platform game, predating the Super Mario Bros. mark, where (according to its lore) you descend into mine shafts using your helicopter to rescue those trapped in them.

Our Thoughts

I’ll be honest – these games can start to feel a bit dime-a-dozen sometimes. A platformer with now-crude graphics, enemies to avoid and generally just having to get to the end of the level, then start over on the next level.

H.E.R.O. is different in that it mostly entails you going down, with no bottomless pits. With the levels being divided into screens, however, you have to be careful not to be trapped, as while the helicopter allows you to fly up, your fuel is limited.

Your goal is to reach the miner you need to rescue at the bottom of the level (no need to fly back up). Aside from the general jumping up and down, however, there are loads of enemies to avoid, several placed where you land on them nearly instantaneously. You can kill them by firing at them, but as is common for the time, you have to be right on the level with them, no ducking or shooting up or down.

It leads to a lot of memorization. Although several rooms in the levels are repeated, helping a bit, a lot of trouble in finishing the game comes from you having to know which route to take, which walls to break through and where an enemy will pop up. The game, then gets easier once memorized, but it stayed a tricky affair.

Final Thoughts

H.E.R.O. is not a game I’ll go back to. It’s good for its time, with some interesting ideas – the levels mostly leading you down is a nice subversion of what’s normally seen in these games, and destructible walls that you can break through with explosives is the type of flexibility in level designs makes the game feel more interesting. In later games you might expect these to use to find secrets, but unfortunately this seems to miss that mark.

And that’s where it falls down. The game has plenty of great ideas, but it’s all slightly ahead of what can be pulled off, whether it’s down to controls, graphics or ideas. More modern versions feels like it would work better.

#914 Dragon Age: Origins

Posted: 6th July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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438th played so far

Dragon_Age_Origins_cover

Genre: Role-Playing
Platform: PC/Playstation 3/XBox 360
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Bioware
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Ah, Dragon Age! The last Bioware game on the list. We went pretty fast through their list of games… Yeah, I really just wanted to play them, that’s the entire reason.

Dragon Age is Bioware’s new fantasy world, created in part to have a fantasy franchise they have control over, rather than the license they needed for Baldur’s Gate II and Neverwinter Nights – a similar reasoning applied to Mass Effect‘s world after Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. We’ve seen they did this well with Jade Empire, so I’m looking forward to this.

Our Thoughts

One of the downsides of an epic story can be one of slow starts. The game wants to set the scene, make you familiar with its mechanics while showing you your backstory – something that’s especially important with a lot of Bioware games as, on some level, its stories are about the player character as much as his surroundings.

Bioware partially tries to resolve that for this game through different backgrounds – based on your class, race and choices you’ll start in a different environment, with a different introduction to the game. It adds a fair amount of variation to what can otherwise be repetitive tutorials, but on the whole it’s still a bit dissatisfying. It feels like it takes a long time before you get to the good bits – the worlds to explore, the NPC characters to interact with, and the freedom to quest and develop as you want.

After the introduction stories, which are excellent and offer a nice amount of variation – one of us found the secrets of the mage’s tower while the other explored elven forests – but after that there were times it almost felt to drag a bit. The pre-world map story can drag a bit, with you going out in the wilderness being fine, but the dungeon-y tower that followed got a bit boring and lengthy.

What follows does shine. The next fifteen minutes can add four characters within fifteen minutes (some based on your choices) and five minutes later you get four or five different directions to go in to finish the main quest, together with a bunch of smaller quests. The sense of freedom is immense and wonderful to dive into.

Character development is decent, with power and skill development split well enough that one doesn’t affect the other. Powers mostly affecting battles, with skills ‘on the field’ and in conversations, mean that neither really bother each other and you’ll always have both options. The game is set up with a pretty large list of powers, providing plenty of chance to experiment.

Graphics and sound are both good, as you’d expect. Special effects aren’t always as flashy as you’d expect, with a lot of magic kept low-key and so far constrained to proper magical area like the aforementioned mage’s tower.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately there’s a few bits of the game that feel a bit constrained due to the game’s requirements of the day – voice acting constraining how many dialogue can be used, cutting the quirkier characters of games like Baldur’s Gate and the expanses of that game. At the same time, the game undoubtably looks better and the mechanics are stronger.

Ignoring the successor part, though, the game is enjoyable despite the slow build-up, and we’re looking forward to playing more and continuing to the next parts (even if this blog won’t cover them).

#884 Trackmania: United Forever

Posted: 2nd July 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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437th played so far

TrackMania - United Forever 1

Genre: Racing/Puzzle
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Nadeo
Publisher: Deep Silver/Enlight

So today we’ve got a game that has one of the stranger genre combinations so far – racing/puzzle doesn’t feel like a natural combination. As it’s a series of games (the DS version will follow at some point in the future) it seems even odder. You can imagine a few ways in which it could work, but it will be interesting to see what they decided on here.

Our Thoughts

That was interesting, in a good way. The puzzle aspects of the game come into play with its built in track editor, similar to my oh-so-beloved (a decade or two ago) Stunts (aka 4D Sports Driving) – although obviously more advanced, with prettier graphics and more crossing over points. It’s not as much of a focus of the game anyway, with the track builder mostly being useful to share with friends and the main puzzle modes – connect thesewaypoints in the way that allows you to go through fastest.

Even if you don’t use the track editor though, its presence still seems to suffuse the game. The first track you’ll likely race on is based on a circuit, though not in a loop (racing goes from start to end instead, more like a rally). There’s a big stadium, but you feel more like you’re in a Hot Wheels toy ready to go around a race track built on the floor. There’s a lot of common elements that are placed together, with some scenery in between, but more scenery coming from the surroundings outside the track area. Later environments and cars feel more real, but the underlying sentiments stay there.

Beyond that, the goals are time based – the most basic mode has you go around the track trying to beat a time, with multiple tiers for different results – bronze, silver and gold medals. Other modes can vary on that, with one, as mentioned above, having you create the optimal track through checkpoints to finish fastest, another a stunts run that keeps track of how often you die (fall off the track) rather than how fast you do the lap.

The multiplayer features are as much fun. You can create your own challenges of all types and share them, with a large collection of tracks online. As much fun though is racing against each other. You take your turn, until you lose to the other player.

Final Thoughts

Trackmania works on multiple levels. It’s fun to race around, just trying to beat your records, but all the extra modes add a lot of fun challenge. Probably the best for me was the stunt mode, which required careful jumps and tricks, playing with tracks that would not fit in with any other game. And with the slightly toy-like aesthetic it never feels like it gets too serious or forcing you to progress. It’s just plain fun.

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