#290 Wipeout

Posted: 27th January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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398th played so farWipeout_CoverartGenre: Racing
Platform: Playstation/PC
Year of Release: 1995
Developer: Psygnosis
Publisher: Psygnosis

Wipeout was one of the Playstation’s launch titles (the PC doesn’t ever matter in these discussions), a fast and slick racer that found its place through its association with the dance and house music culture that was big in the nineties. While a few of its sequels are on the list too, based on how the game was developed – using some interesting tricks and a lot of waiting as tracks were compiled, it seems interesting enough to look at now anyway.

Our Thoughts

If you want to understand the difference between Sony’s Playstation games line and that of Nintendo’s consoles, you need to look no further. Compare Wipeout to its Nintendo equivalent, the Mario Kart series (Mario Kart 64 was released around the same time). Both racers setting you in a limited field, racing around a track for three rounds while limited powerups are available. Others have done the same (in some ways Wipeout resembles the F-Zero series more closely in speed and aesthetics), but these are the two that have lasted.

Where Mario Kart uses mascot characters in open kart, focusing on their personality, Wipeout using at times abstract flying ‘racers’ that technically have racers, but without any real personality. Mario Kart has a friendly, manageable speed – you need your reflexes, but it’s not impossible to keep up. Wipeout feels fast and sleek, and while your round times may be similar, the curves and speed make it feel a lot faster, including making it easier to get stuck. Even the jumps feel bigger and scarier, even if I think I fell down holes in Mario Kart more often.

Even the powerups give this feeling. Mario Kart‘s are themed and often obvious if you know the franchise – banana peels, shells and stars are obvious. Even mushrooms become easy to work out.

(As a quick aside, the book claims there are no powerups in this game. We’re not sure where this claim comes from – Wipeout clearly has the weapons you gather as you drive over flashing panels)

What it comes down to, in feel and play, is that Wipeout feels more grown up. As tough as Mario Kart can get, it can feel quite frivolous and family friendly. Wipeout instead carries an edge, clearing aiming at the teenagers and twenty-something who were part of this culture, courting them in looks and music. It seems to permeate the game and it becoming a minor symbol of the culture at the time seems to make perfect sense.

As a game, it plays well. It took me some time to get to grips with the different speed of the controls – something you’d always have – but it mostly felt responsive and fast. I wasn’t going to finish first any time soon, but I did start overtaking quite early on.

The tracks, too, contribute to this feeling. Looping, with large drops and jumps, they take advantage of your gravity-suppressed flight. They lead through a variety of environments – cities and mountains, the Grand Canyon and Antarctic clearly featuring – that have been adjusted to feel like they take place a century in the future. The game is meant to resemble the world of tomorrow, and while it relies on cliches, it uses them well. With that, the work on the tracks paid off – while these days you might want an HD update, they still look nice and at times easily recognisable, getting the broad strokes right even if sometimes the details seem to be missing. Fact is that there is a great HD Wipeoutgame on the Playstation 3, one of the first games I ever got on that console… as well as one of the first I ever actually downloaded.

Mostly though, this game provides the thrill a racer with this concept promises.

Final Thoughts

It’s difficult to explain the impact Wipeout had when it first appeared on our consoles. There’s a thrill to the game, an edge that isn’t there in other franchises that played it safer at the time. There’s nothing necessarily bad in the game, it just seems more grown up and unforgiving.

Even so, it has its elements of looking gorgeous, and while the game doesn’t give you much time to stare at your surroundings, you get the idea from the different tracks and their wildly differing surroundings. It adds to the pumped up atmosphere, creating something unforgettable on its own.

#545 Astro Boy: Omega Factor

Posted: 23rd January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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397th played so farAstro_Boy_-_Omega_Factor_CoverartGenre: Action/Fighting
Platform: Gameboy Advance
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Hitman/Treasure
Publisher: Sega

I don’t really know manga or anime. I’ve been exposed through some things (mostly through Peter), but it has never been a major focus of mine. Astro Boy seems like it’s a fairly major franchise – 4 seasons and nearly 200 episodes of the anime and 17 years of continuous publication since 1951, as well as various attempts afterwards to continue it. I would like to take this moment to say that I in no way apologize for exposing him to anime since it can be amazing and I need to show him a lot more of it.

Astro Boy: Omega Factor is one of the video games based on the series, apparently linked to a revival of the anime. To be honest, I have no clue what to expect.

Our Thoughts

The basics of Astro Boy are quite clear – 2D beat ’em ups like Viewtiful Joe or earlier Kung-Fu Master. You arrive at a screen, enemies swoop in and you get to fight them off. Your goal is to fight your way through various levels, rescuing characters and generally doing plot things.

The fighting is pretty standard group of foes swarming in, one wave at a time, and you beat them up – strategy and types vary, the area has some effect, but that’s what it comes down to. Some areas mix it up – there are a few hub-like levels where you spend more time exploring tunnels with static enemies, and a few others where there are more jumping puzzles, which at least add some variety. These exceptions basically have a greater Mega Man feel (in particular looking at the Zero series here), which seems to have a related setting (robot boy saving the world!), although there’s no weapon upgrade game at play here.

There are upgrades still, although they’re a bit less conventional. You gain them by getting to know people. It’s not entirely clear what the connection here is. The idea is that you gain a point to invest in one of seven stats, some improving specific weapons, defenses and other generic categories. You do this by helping out characters. Sometimes this is just meeting them and talking to them, in other cases you rescue them from some danger. There are a few characters that have a small quest to do – in one hub level this was finding another character for them, which seems indicative of the general quality. Mostly you seem to get there through just playing the game (making it a decent gating mechanic) but there are probably a few secret ones. One shame was that replaying levels doesn’t seem to be a thing (or else I didn’t get far enough to do so), making it easy to miss out on some of these.

The game clearly looks like a GBA game – an odd thing to say perhaps, but the sprite work, with some bright colours, has that feel to its palettes. It’s nicely done – the decades of manga will undoubtably have made that easier – but the enemies and looks were in parts bewildering to someone like me who doesn’t know the franchise.

Probably the nicest thing is that the beat-em up parts of the game aren’t just hand to hand, as often seen in similar games. You have a few ranged weapons (under the name of supers) that can be easily charged and allow you to either shoot around you or shoot the line ahead of you. When overwhelmed, they’re a lifesaver, and they’re strong enough to be useful anyway. It makes the game easier, true, but in a way that feels necessary. These powers come back in some side scrolling shoot’em up levels as well, playing like you’d expect them, again making for a more varied mix than most beat-em ups would be.

Final Thoughts

Astro Boy is a strong game. It might have its flaws, and it’s not the strongest in the genre, but in a crowded field it holds up well. The upgrade mechanics are interesting. Easily faked of course, and not meaningful in the long term, but ultimately very enjoyable to play with. It’s varied enough to hold your interest too, which helps a lot – although a lot of it is beating up enemies, enough of it isn’t that you are happy to do other things.

The game undoubtably caters more to fans of the series, which is fair enough. What it proves most of all, though, is that you don’t need to rely on it to make what still seems a recognisable game.

#81 Pac-Land

Posted: 19th January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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396th played so farPac-Land_arcadeflyerGenre: Platform
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1984
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

Time for a bit of catch up! In 1984, after gaining fame in his maze, Pac Man breaks out into his own platformer. Normally these genre shifts tend to be, at the best, dicey, but its presence on this list would indicate that this time, it worked out. We shall see.

Our Thoughts

It’s interesting to see how the platforming genre was ramping up for the next step in its evolution. This game was released a year earlier than Super Mario Bros., which was, in many ways, the template for later games. One of the big differences here, then, seems to be that Pac-Land seems to lack some… verticality? Does that sound like the right word? Pac-Land feels close to a modern infinite runner like Canabalt (although not forcing you to run), only rarely having real platforms, and even then it’s really a choice between . You need to jump to avoid enemies and water (which kills you), as well as gathering some bonuses.

It doesn’t make the game bad, but it does make it feel oddly dated as a game – even the runner association doesn’t match due to the lack of required running. But with a platform game, you do expect some platforms, some jumping up and down, and some related puzzles, while here it comes down purely to your reflexes when you jump and guessing whether, in specific areas, you need to go up or down to get a key or open a door. It still makes for a good fun game, but it feels simple as often. Not easy – there are a number of tricky segments and a few jumps that are incredibly difficult to make later on, with a water jump I still haven’t figured out yet. The controls feel a bit loose too – not as predictable as would be good.

Despite the name, Pac-land‘s only link to Pac-man comes through its character. The gameplay is obviously quite different, switching from collecting pebbles in a maze to moving through a level to (it seems) rescue your family. Pac-man the character even gained legs in this game, making him feel a bit unfamiliar when you’re used to just eating pellets. The ghosts, too, make a return, although without their different AI and in general being less aggressive. Even with them being eaten, the link isn’t clear. If I can give one criticism here – it seems as if the game could have easily been made without Pac-man tie-ins, and that their characters were just inserted later, and adjusted to fit the game.

What felt as notable were the graphics. They’re not outstanding compared to what we have now, true. They have a feeling of being simple MS Paint sprites, as if it were some sort of fan game put together – including some occasional seeming wonkiness. Still, it makes the game seem colourful and fun, bright enough to keep your interest in your environments. What feels as notable is that the game looks better than the first Super Mario Bros. game, already having a graphical quality that Nintendo needed a few years more to achieve in its flagship series.

Final Thoughts

While the game was fairly quickly outpaced by others in the genre, and the original Pac-man game is probably better remembered for a reason, this game is not without merit. It looks good – as good as it should in a way – and plays nicely for the most part, ramping up difficulty at a good speed (except for those spring boards). It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Super Mario Bros. hadn’t come in a year later… especially since the leap from Pac-man to Pac-Land is similar to how Mario leapt from 2D to 3D.

#924 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Posted: 15th January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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395th played so far256px-Modern_Warfare_2_coverGenre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision

“No Russians”

As might have become clear from our earlier writing, Call of Duty is a decently done series, with the first Modern Warfare title holding up better than the first game we played. There’s just not much that stood out for us (and now, three years later, that effect has gotten greater through ignorance). For that reason, this write-up may be a bit less about gameplay, and a bit more about controversy.

Our Thoughts

Because to be honest, it mattered to us. Those who haven’t heard of it yet – an early level has you undercover in a Russian terrorist cell. As part of that group, you attack an airport – walking through the building while civilians are being shot. Depending on your international version, you can also shoot these civilians (in a few, that is a game over). These react realistically – begging for their lives, crawling away and hiding. You have no way of stopping it – the terrorists are immune to harm at this point.

We played for less than a minute, then decided to skip this level. It felt too real and too in-your-face to be comfortable. I don’t want to say that should immediately mean this shouldn’t be featured for that reason (and it should not be up to me), but for me, as a player, it’s simply not a level or game I want to play.

This did lead us to a discussion why we felt this way. When you think about it, we do worse in other games. In a Saints Row or Grand Theft Auto game, we probably risk killing more people. An RTS like Command & Conquer has you send far more characters to their death. In Assassin’s Creed you can get even more specific in your kills. Yet it bothered me more here. It felt like it came down to realism. First of all, Call of Duty is set in – and prides itself on being set in – a realistic, (near-)contemporary version of our world. The reactions, too, are realistic, not just cartoonishly running away or just being dead, but people being crippled, others acting traumatized, and it all doing its best to affect you more closely.

In that sense, our disgust is (hopefully) the wanted result – you’re not meant to be okay with it – but you don’t really get an early enough resolution. In fact, the infamous Breivik shootings in Norway were stated to be in part staged using this game, which I suppose both shows its realism and how a game like it can influence those already susceptible. It’s a pretty uncomfortable idea.

The game itself plays much like the previous games. There are a few interesting scenarios – the game relies a lot more on stealth than before – but feels like it lacks a couple of clear goal signposts on places. Some outcomes required guesswork as the game never really made it clear what we should be doing.

It might be that the one level has changed things, but overall the game just didn’t feel as strong as the previous entries in the series we played. Exhaustion might have played a role as well – since then we’ve played better – but on the whole it didn’t entirely feel like it was worth bothering with the game. At least there’s something to talk about though, right? The thing is, these games are some of the biggest sellers around even when they choose not to change much from year-to-year.

Final Thoughts

Ignoring the moral outcry, while there were some unique fun bits in the game, they were also quickly linked to the more annoying ones – a stealth mission is fun, but left you with little indication on what to do.  The whole time I was playing it, it felt like the game was pandering to a Call of Duty audience – and that’s just not me. It seems like there’s better shooters out there (hey, have you heard of this little game called Halo) and even a Splinter Cell game gave us more interesting scenarios to play through.

#312 Marathon Infinity

Posted: 11th January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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394th played so farMarathon_Infinity_game_boxGenre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: Mac
Year of Release: 1996
Developer: Bungie Software
Publisher: Bungie Software

Some games on the list draw our eye simply because of its lineage. Before they became famous from the Halo series (and before they were bought by Microsoft), they worked on two series. The strategy series Myth feels less relevant to their later games, and will be coming back later, but the Marathon series seem more important.

An initially Apple Macintosh-only series (we played on Windows thanks to a later fan port of the engine, while the game is available for free now), this FPS should hopefully show part of the development of the original system seller Halo.

Our Thoughts

Recently, when discussing Aliens vs Predator, we talked about storytelling in FPS games. Marathon Infinity here feels like it has some links to the Marine campaign in that campaign, although (if possible) using even more inference and smaller clues. It starts off with you arriving on a space station or space ship (it’s unclear which – and the System Shock reference almost feels deliberate, considering how up to a point, the settings feel the same in this prologue).

The game is, of course, quite tricky, with a few non-standard behaviours for its genre (as it is still early) and some odd choices for mechanics. As odd as it sounds, at this point jumping in FPS games hasn’t been “invented” and the fix to allow for it here is to allow you to walk on air – run and the game just lets you bridge gaps in the air to an unrealistic-seeming extent, as long as they’re on the same level. Although there may have been an explanation (the game itself doesn’t really do them), but here is just seems like a bad way to handle an annoying problem.

On the other hand, the documentation mentions some levels have different physics, so they may change this. Here, though, it would be badly communicated, as there seems no in-game reason for this facility.

With a general lack of text or long exposition, the jumping between game levels is somewhat disorienting – the first two levels move you from a spaceship to a cave system. While there’s probably a reason explained in the manual – apparently there’s time travel involved – at this point it felt rather arbitrary.

What it comes down to – with the graphics still being relatively simple compared to what we’re used to – is that the game has an interesting setting and sets a step forward in storytelling, but it seems like Bungie is still taking its time figuring out how an FPS should work, what you can do and how you set a story in this world. Its branching paths and indirect story are commendable, but it still feels like it’s missing something.

Final Thoughts

An absolute oddity, Marathon Infinity is an interesting experiment in world building and story telling using the limited means the design affords it. While it makes for an occasionally impenetrable game – finding my way took quite a while from early on – the wonder and mystery work incredibly well.

As a shooter, it’s an early enough example that it feels like it has its flaws. There’s a general lack of vertical movement – sure, you go up and down, but rarely it matters going over, and shooting up and down is tricky. The jumping is especially weird. Playing the game, then, is worth it mostly because of the experience its world provides, less so its mechanics.

#42 Q*Bert

Posted: 7th January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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393rd played so far

q-bert1Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1982
Developer: Gottlieb
Publisher: Gottlieb

We have many reasons why we pick a game, something we sometimes expand on – whether it’s random or genre-focused. Q*Bert has a clearer, more frivolous reason: We were watching Wreck-It Ralph again and Q*Bert characters have a small but adorable part in it.

I hadn’t played the game in close to two decades, so it felt like it would be fun to play it again!

Our Thoughts

Q*Bert takes a simple concept – jump on blocks to make them change colour – and does its best to take it as far as is feasible within the constraints of the game. Requiring multiple jumps on a block, blocks changing back as you jump on them again and possibly most annoying, enemies that change the colour of those blocks back as they jump on them. This is explained quite well, through a simple short cutscene showing how the blocks change as you jump on them, there’s never any real doubt.

While the level doesn’t change, these variations make the level different enough. The enemies also move randomly, making the puzzles far more about how to work around all these limitations.

Luckily, the enemies aren’t all block changing annoyances. Some start chasing you (the snakes, which are pretty annoying but can be tricked into jumping off the pyramid), while others move around and generally get in your way.

One of the big reasons the game works so well for me, though, is because of the graphics. In comparison, sure, they’re nothing major to write home about, but at the time of playing, the illusion of depth created by the different colours was extremely effective and works effectively even now. Added to that are the cartoonish, effective single-colour characters that give the entire game a lighter touch. Even Q*Bert, with its odd shape and round head, feels likeable while not really being notable. Then again, it’s not a game that actually has a story to follow on that to make you feel any different.

This feeling extends to other aspects as well. The music is nice and cheery – comparable to Bubble Bobble. Another part is the silly language Q*Bert speaks – it’s random symbols in a speech bubble, similar to cartoon swearing (although that’s supposedly not what it actually is). It’s, again, part of the same fun.

Final Thoughts

Thanks to Wreck-It- Ralph this cute long-nosed puffball has had a bit of a resurgence (I mean who wouldn’t fall for a sad and homeless Q*bert) which is fitting because this is a really fun game. It has a really steep difficulty curve at times, and can feel really unfair at other times. On the whole though this is still fun to this day, and we can not say that about every older game we play.

#198 Loom

Posted: 3rd January 2015 by Jeroen in Games
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392nd played so far

LOOM_Cover_ArtGenre: Adventure
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1991
Developer: Lucasfilm Games
Publisher: Lucasfilm Games

Loom has been on my radar for quite a while. As a Lucasarts game, it should be something I’d want to play after the likes of The Secret of Monkey Island or Sam & Max Hit the Road. It’s got a more serious bend and otherwise is unconventional (in ways better discussed in the meat of today’s post), but it still feels like a gap.

Because of that, I have been looking forward to playing this game since the start of the blog, as I’d have a good reason to. It took a while – we have been focusing on some others – but now we finally got around to doing it. A good new adventure.

Our Thoughts

That was an amazing experience. While not entirely without flaws, especially when it comes to length, it takes you on a fascinating journey through a fantasy world.

Playing as Bobbin Threadbare, you are part of the guild of weavers, living on their island, who controls or manipulates the world through their weaving of the pattern of the world. After the members of the guild are transformed into swans as punishment, Bobbin sets out into the world to find them and figure out what happened to them. As he does so, he travels to the realms of other guilds – glassmakers, shepherds and blacksmiths – discovering some of their secrets and rescuing some of them. You even get to defeat a dragon.

A large part of this feeling comes from the interface. Unlike contemporary adventures, which used keywords or text input to enter commands, the mouse control is limited to walking somewhere and looking at it. Instead, any other actions are done by casting spells. You do this by playing (short four note) songs on your distaff. Progress here is limited in two ways – first, you slowly unlock more notes as you get to later points in the game. Second, you need to learn the songs, which you do during the game. It doesn’t prompt you – you have to write down the sequence of notes yourself – but that’s a small burden if you’re prepared. Harder difficulties give you less hints here, removing the notes and forcing you play by ear.

Although it’s little more than unlocking the keywords in a game’s command bar one by one, it adds a lot more flavour to the game. At the same time, it also allows the game a lot more flexibility. While a spell for open (and close – you reverse a spell by playing it backwards) give you access to something fairly standard in most games, that spell can be used in less typical ways as well – such as opening the heavens. Others are more magical, such as a spell to turn straw into gold or one that sharpens (or blunts) objects.

Some spells are optional, giving you access to alternative ways to solve an issue or giving you extra scenes. For example, in the glassmakers guild, being able to fill a chalice gives you some additional exposition.

The system means you get access to a lot of spells – although not entirely true, it feels as if some only need to be used once or twice in the entire game. One advantage that the game gives is how small the playable area is each time. Restricted to (usually) only about five or six screens at a time, they usually have some pretty clear goals, restricted to one or two things to accomplish. There’s no backtracking – with one obvious story exception, no going back to the start of the game to use a spell you picked up near the end. It keeps the game solvable and your options minimal, without providing many distractions. It makes the game easier to solve, even if you were curious what you could have done with some of them earlier.

If there’s one downside this leads to, it’s the game’s brevity. It probably took us about two hours to finish the game, and while some sections were tricky, none really stumped us. There are just not enough options, and with no inventory puzzle, there aren’t too many other things to try. Beyond that, it feels like there’s more to the world than we’ve seen. Word is that there was meant to be a sequel that would explore that further, but due to a change in priorities this never happened. It’s a shame, really, but some kindred Lucasarts titles are yet to come up – perhaps The Dig may give us another glimpse of this type of world.

Final Thoughts

The nice thing about a game like Loom is that we were easily able to rattle it off in an afternoon with the help of a pen and paper (no way we would be able to remember all the spells off by heart as we played to be honest). I enjoyed it in a similar way that I found enjoyment in The Path or Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor it’s a game where the idea behind it really comes out of the left field. It is a real pity that we never got to see the sequel because it was left wide open with a bizarre (and rather fitting) ending.

#394 Aliens Versus Predator

Posted: 30th December 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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391st played so far

AvP1

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Fox Interactive

Alien is an amazing and suspenseful movies. Its first sequel, while switching genres, stays as interesting, followed by some mixed later movies. The Predator series felt a tad trashier, but worked as a great action flick. Through an Alien alien skull cameo in the second Predator movie, the two fictional universes somehow became one, something the studios grabbed on through in comics, a few films and, most relevant here, some games.

I actually remember the previews for this game coming out, including explanations on how different the three factions were to play – something new to the genre at the time, and I’ve been wanting to at least try it since then. Let’s go!

Our Thoughts

It’s true, the three groups/races/factions/campaigns play quite differently, and it makes the game a lot more interesting. Although we didn’t have a chance to try multiplayer, it became clear these would reinforce each other.

The marines are straightforward, sneaking into survival horror. While the other two groups have some element of stealth built into them, marines have less ways to hide, instead having a radar to find the enemies hiding around you. Still, knowing little of what’s actually coming, whether a blip is behind a wall, somewhere ahead… or on the ceiling above you. Combined with the darkness of some levels, it’s a tense experience, not to the point of Resident Evil, but reminiscent of the milder parts of Dead Space.

The Alien parts of the game felt more confusing. Aside from not really having ranged attacks, your main advantage comes from your mobility. You can climb walls and ceilings, pretty much ignoring gravity. It means that you’re treating the space in the levels a lot more differently – through ducts and passages, many more routes open up, while you can far more easily sneak past a number of your enemies and backstabbing them when most convenient. It becomes a stealth game more than anything. The one downside is that while this mode of navigating is interesting, it is also disorienting, and with the speed you travel at, every once in a while you’ll simply have no idea where you are.  Only after playing the levels for a while you really get a feeling of where you are.

Playing as the Predator, then, is slightly more straight forward. As the most powerful character of the three, in a way, you work far more on your own. You have a stealth field that makes it easier to get into position, creating a slightly different type of stealth from the Alien game, with some pretty powerful weapons. Marines can still find you at times – thanks to their radars – but if you’re careful you can often get the drop on them, making it easier to get through. At the same time, your energy levels still need to be monitored, so it’s not a strategy you can always rely on.

Most of the storytelling, while simple, is done in game, as was becoming the style at the time – Unreal being a prime example of this as seen a year earlier. It’s effective, although that’s in part because it can rely on what you know – in large parts similar to the stories of other games. Especially for the marine though, the disjointed communication works well to communicate your goal without becoming intrusive.

There are lots of shades of brown in the game, and the textures used in some places (especially alien spaceships) make it difficult to find your way sometimes and it felt an odd reason to get lost sometimes – sometimes tunnels were simply impossible to find. A lack of minimap didn’t help here, with the levels being just confusing enough to make that a problem.

In the end though, this rarely becomes a major problem (except in case of the aforementioned Alien campaign, where it adds to the difficulty). The three different game modes, and the way they mix, is interesting and really makes for a fun game, still worth the wait.

Final Thoughts

To be honest, remembering its contemporary write-ups, I wouldn’t have expected Aliens vs Predator to end up on this type of list. Playing it now though, the reasons do become clear, with some compelling gameplay in each of the three modes of the game. The closest example I can think of is Starcraft, another science fiction focused RTS where its three races can be mapped to the three in this game with relative ease.

In effect you get three (shorter?) games in one, with crossover between the enemies and in multiplayer. That seems quite enough already to hook you into the gameplay. The other details are just (delicious) icing.

#512 Grand Theft Auto Vice City

Posted: 26th December 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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390th played so far

Vice-city-coverGenre: Action
Platform: PS2/PC/Xbox
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games

The Grand Theft Auto series comes in at specific points for us – when we’re approaching the 100 mark, or a few times on it. With ten of them on the list, it’s the natural point, while they’re important enough for us to want to spread them out and look forward to.

Vice City is the first non-numbered GTA game in the list, and the first that is more than an expansion pack. Made with the same engine as Grand Theft Auto III, it tells the story of another body involved in criminal pursuits, in a different city and a different time.

Our Thoughts

Because of how the list works, we rarely see multiple examples of the same series. Even when we do, it’s rare that the different entries share such similar gameplay – series like The Legend of Zelda or the Mario series diverge enough in gameplay and concept that while there are similarities, the gaps are too big too much seems to diverge intentionally. On the other hand, while some may want to debate whether all ten games of GTA listed should be on there (some really are expansion packs, which we have an issue with), one of the things it does do is show the evolution of a series and, due to the influence of the games, the evolution of a genre. That means that while you see the flaws, at this point we also see a succesful series slowly being put together. It’s a list that few other game series could get away with while still seeming interesting and different in each installment.

While I’ve seen bits of the later games – mostly really Peter playing GTAV soon after its release – and I’ve seen notes on the different entries go around, for the most part the games are new to me. This also means that a number of changes made between games are as surprising.

The first big thing that jumped out at me – worthy of comment after about ten minutes of playing – is how much more character the game has. There’s a few things where this comes out, but this is most notable in the characterization. Most important, the PC is far better developed. Rather than just a silent protagonist, he comments on proceedings, looks for helps, and makes cutscenes more than a talk from a gang boss. It’s not that major yet, but already adds a lot more flavour and interesting characters to keep track of to the game.

It feels like this extends to the rest of the game too. It takes place in a notably brighter environment, with a more colourful world and more interesting architecture as you expect from a big city. Riding around the world is already interesting for that alone.

What certainly aids here is that the game is intentionally and obviously set in the eighties. It comes back in the dress and music, but seems to have had an effect on the style as well. Because it’s distant, and because of the way we remember the era, it’s not as gritty as a game set in a more modern era needs to be. Instead, thanks to a bit of self awareness and playfulness, the game can occasionally play with your perceptions of the decade and get a bit of humour out of it.

Then there’s the other touches where the game adds to that. Losing your notoriety can be done by going to one of your safehouses and changing your outfit (these are pre-defined, not the mix-and-match from some other games). It works on its own level, already having some extra fun with conventions. Even the in-game sections (sort of) have it – when being caught at a weapons deal, they start running and you’re chasing some weirder characters, and the original GTA3 doesn’t feel like it would ever have a mission requiring you to infiltrate a building site with a small helicopter.

If there’s one criticism I have for the game, it’s the difficulty. Obviously, you gain notoriety, and fair enough, that’s something you need to deal with. Compared to other games in the series though, it can feel a bit too much, too soon. For anything that happens, you seem to be immediately surrounded by police cars, and considering the additional damage you need to do to get away from them, and their ferocity in chasing you down, it seems impossible to lose the notoriety. In fact, no matter what, it seems near impossible to get away without being arrested – and losing all your weapons and a lot of money. While realistic, it is also frustrating (and feels ‘unfair’ from a game perspective), and the loss of weapons, already difficult to get early on, feels like it can easily end a game. It was such an incredibly harsh penalty, I resorted to cheating the level away if it got too bad. It simply seemed to save a lot of bother. Unfair? Maybe, but too much too soon, you know. It’s a balance they did better with in later games.

But god, it really makes me want to pick up the next game. Looking forward to next year!

Final Thoughts

Of all the Grand Theft Auto games on this list (which is pretty much all of them) it was a chance to return to Vice City that I was looking forward to the most. This is in part because it is the only one of the 3D games not to get an HD revamp (GTA VI to be set in Vice City please!) but also because, of all the games, this is the one I feel has the best atmosphere. Grand Theft Auto III was basically ‘present day’ as are IV and V, but Vice City went full blown into the 1980s.

It is for this reason that I think that Vice City is the best GTA game made taking into account technology available at the time. By this I mean that if the same idea was made at the same time as GTA V it would have come out as the superior game. Yes at times the difficulty level can feel a little bit lop-sided but overall this is an amazing game which rewards players not too spoiled by the current dumbing down of difficulty.

#282 Command & Conquer

Posted: 22nd December 2014 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , , , , , ,
4

389th played so farCommand_&_Conquer_1995_coverGenre: Strategy
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1995
Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Virgin Interactive, Sega, Nintendo, Electronic Arts

Woo, Command & Conquer! Taking the gameplay found in Dune II, which turned out to be fun, Westwood continued to create another game like it, but now not using a licensed property.

One of the big things I remember from these days is that Command & Conquer was in competition with Warcraft II at the time. The two series widely diverged afterwards, but looking at it, this is where the RTS genre really kicked off. Time to take a look at one of the originators.

Our Thoughts

As much as this was originally a landmark game, playing Command & Conquer now really feels like we’re playing an inbetween game in the development of the genre. You can select an arbitrary number of units to send around using context-sensitive commands, building being a quite simple process. At the same time, you can’t queue build orders, with no real upgrades (beyond building other buildings).

The result is that the game feels a lot less building- and economy-dependent than the Warcraft series, instead allowing you to focus on building large armies (the aforementioned lack of queueing being the only thing standing in your way). It’s easy to send in fifty troops of varying types, making your success mostly based on selecting the right ones and getting the cash to be able to afford it.

The last part is the focus of the story. A new substance called Tiberium has appeared on Earth. It gathers minerals and other valuables, making it worth selling and controlling. In the game, it means that you need to harvest it to pay for your buildings, while in the story, it’s what the GDI (army) and Children of Nod (terrorists) want to control and get it to serve their own needs beyond the war they’re fighting, and use it to control the world.

This last part also explains the level select screen. You get a map of Europe (for GDI) or Africa (for Nod) showing which territories each side controls, with arrows to indicate where you attack next. There are often a few options available, each direction having a different mission, giving you some extra options if you can’t finish one – another might be easier or suit you better.

In a way, this is really Dune with the serial numbers filed off – tiberium instead of spice, Earth instead of Dune‘s titular planet. The interface certainly fills different though, as well as all the other trappings, feeling more modern and army-like, befitting the real life setting. This comes through in the story as well. The basics are quite simple – two factions in opposition – but it has its own style.

Command & Conquer was released at an interesting point for story telling. With the rise of CD-ROMs, more space was available for video and graphics, and the options had increased. At the same time, 3D models and graphics were not advanced enough or available enough to use (most of the game’s graphics are sprite based). For storytelling, models might give a vague indication of who and what, but they were too static and rough to show emotion or add anything to what’s being said. Because of this combination, using real actors, often standing in front of blue-screened photos or early 3D renders, were used more often. We recently saw this with Gabriel Knight, The 7th Guest was the first to do it and we’ll see more of it in the Myst series. C&C, too, uses video cutscenes, often with a minimum of actors and mostly talking heads. Clearly, they wanted to keep costs down – a lot of the actors seemed to have been Westwood employees doing other work on the game. A number of them stuck around though – Kane, the leader of Nod, is in all the games, as well as a number of games in the spin-off series Red Alert (which we’ll describe further at the time), and is always played by Joseph D. Kucan. He is now apparently the longest recurring actor in any videogame franchise.

It’s still a tricky game, and graphically hasn’t aged well, but aside from being the blueprint many others following, Command & Conquer provides its own improved experience that made it far more compelling than earlier RTS games did. If Warcraft is where you went for the story, this is where you went for the interface and pure strategy.

Final Thoughts

When you compare it to the games that follow it, Command & Conquer feels incredibly bland. Even so, though, there’s something exciting about the feeling of sitting down in front of a computer and playing a game that, to the best of its ability, try to sell you being the godlike commander of an army, from the installer to changing the GUI when you get disowned by your faction.

Plenty of it feels a bit low budget, especially the acting, but the mix is that of a game confident in doing what it feels it needs to. A great example of the strategy game, stripped down to the bare basics that started the entire genre, it shows why an RTS is so compelling.

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