#580 Cave Story

Posted: 6th April 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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1

320th played so far

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Studio Pixel
Publisher: Studio Pixel

Following our recent few familiar games, today we move on to a smaller indie game. Cave Story feels like an unexpected entry on the list. Not a game I had heard of before the blog, it appears to have be a twist on the standard platformers, with some adventure elements.

For our purposes, we’ll be playing the enhanced version Cave Story +, with updated graphics, sound and so on. And while the game allows us to switch back, we’ll be using them – it doesn’t seem like much of a difference anyway.

Our Thoughts

Even now I’m finding it difficult to fully wrap my head around Cave Story. It’s not that it’s an unclear game, there’s no guessing what’s involved or anything being vague. It’s just that it’s difficult to point at what the game is or what it’s doing.

The game starts off playing as a fairly straightforward Metroid-style game. Jumping puzzles and problems feature fairly heavily, although you have a fairly large jumping distance. You’re soon collecting your basic upgrades – weapons, health and so on – as well as solving puzzles to get to other secrets. A level or two in however, this seems to expand. You come across a village and the story kicks off. Rather than just having these be ‘reach the end of a few corridors’, however, they seem to need more interaction. Talk to the right people, chase after others, that sort of thing.

The story itself, though, as well as (related to this) its setting, seems a bit more out there though. There’s these bunny-like creatures called Mimigas living in the village. Each of them seems to have their own position and you’re helping some out while obstructing or confusing others. You also meet a few other non-bunny-like characters who play a further role in the story.

What makes this confusing is that the characters are put down using very broad strokes, with what seem to be shortened texts – it’s almost the sort of plot that assumes you’ve read a manual, similar to the SNES-era games Cave Story appears to be inspired by. You know you’re going around saving people and helping, but the exact reasons seem unclear. This isn’t helped by some of the characters being thrown in seemingly at random. At one point you help Santa – a character named that for no apparent reason, as he doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the red-clothed Christmas fellow.

The game feels very old school, with its variety of weird enemies and strange setting. The book makes a big deal of it being free and the quality it still has, which is not something I can really see as being as important. A better justification than this would have been nice.

Final Thoughts

The game is good. It’s tough, there’s plenty to explore and find. The graphics are… well, their quality is intentional. It’s fun to play – fairly addictive in fact.

However… with everything else, the game just doesn’t have that wow-factor for me. There’s no hook, there’s nothing interesting, there’s nothing special it’s offering over other games like it. If the game’s main draw is that it’s free (which it wasn’t entirely for us), it doesn’t convince me.

#158 Super Mario Bros. 2

Posted: 2nd April 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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0

319th played so far

Super_Mario_Bros_2Genre: Platform
Platform: NES
Year of Release: 1988
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

Speaking of old favourites – after Doom last time we now get another old favourite (although I’d dare say more mine than Peter’s this time). It’s the memories of our old NES, as well as the memories of playing it with friends before then. While we first all played the original Super Mario Bros., its sequel was such a big jump that it barely seemed like the same game.

There’s a reason for that – the US Super Mario Bros. 2 was actually a Japanese tie-in game called Doki Doki Panic. With the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 (or Lost Levels to us) being deemed too difficult (and to be honest, fairly similar to the first), we got this colourful world with some Mario theming added.

But despite all the missing elements – which didn’t feel missing at the time, as we didn’t know what the standard was for Mario games and what would change – the improvements were brilliant, the design inspiring, and the game as a whole so much fun…

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

Our Thoughts

Yeah, sorry, the above said quite a bit. But that’s because it still applies. The game is a bit dated in graphics, perhaps, but beyond that so many things work nicely. Character switching, with each of the four having quite distinctive characteristics, differing in jump height, tightness of control and digging speed (and the Princess’s levitation as her own special power).

The true contribution the game makes, then, isn’t necessarily any one of its particular features – in fact, a number of the more interesting ones, such as standing on enemies and lifting were half-forgotten or only partially adopted afterwards – but the imagination put into the world and the experiments with the formula it introduced. Again, it’s not its own, but it’s hard to imagine the colourful, varied worlds of Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario 64 or others to exist without this game doing it first.

Not just that, but as much as the aforementioned improvements weren’t always fully adopted, they introduced an idea of experimenting with gameplay fare more than the leap between the first two Super Mario Bros. games had. It doesn’t feel afraid to try and see what works, what sticks, and what is a good diversion for this game.

Probably one of the largest things that lasted through the generations, however, is the cast the game introduced. While some of the bad guys – bosses in particular, including the big bad Wart – never show up again, a lot of the smaller fries stay around. The Bob-Ombs return almost immediately, in this game’s sequel, but others come through later, with Shyguys in particular reaching recurring character level, and (gender-flexible) Birdo (originally mislabelled in the game as Ostro too…) being a friend more than an enemy in more recent games.

Even so, that’s all in the future – as said, when we originally played the game, we didn’t know this. Instead, we thought this was normal for a Mario game. It was magical, a different journey from what we were used to. One that feels as special and (more important) well executed even today.

Final Thoughts

Alright, I’ll admit it – there’s no real way I could be objective about this, as it’s too tied up in my memories of it two decades ago. Even so, even playing it now – used to so much more from games – it’s as brilliantly put together as ever. Its strengths has endured and I’m still happy this is what we got to play here.

#237 Doom

Posted: 29th March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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5

318th played so far

DoomGenre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1993
Developer: id Software
Publisher: id Software

One nice advantage of playing this blog are the excuses to go back to old games from our childhood, that we hadn’t played for ages, and give us a chance to play it again (I was 6 when I played this last, probably goes a long way to explaining why survival horrors petrify me).  Doom is one of the first FPSes – the first on the list, although Wolfenstein got there earlier (and was far less sophisticated… and more controversial) and it’s a game I played several rounds off, while we (friends, family and myself) were amazed at the possibilities.

As it stands, the game still captures the imagination – one of those often-discussed games that started a long chain of more and less worthy successors, explaining why the more recent Doom 3 launch was such a big deal. We’ll get to that in a few years – for now it’s the first in the series we’ll play.

Our Thoughts

So yeah, that was good fun. Clearly, I’ve played the game before, we knew what was coming, the game was as we remembered.

Doom is an interesting game. Not entirely the first to do a game like this, it’s probably the first that did it well as a shooter – and more importantly, did so seamlessly. If you know what to look for, you can see the cheats – paths can’t cross, you can’t go under and over a bridge at the same time, you’d only get one of the two. Beyond that, it’s good at hiding the nature of the map, with differently angled maps and surroundings (something you didn’t see as much in earlier games) with what feel like more varied surroundings than seen before (or even often afterwards).

But as much as it laid the groundwork for a genre that was often imitated, Doom is also a good entry in the genre. Sure, the graphics don’t always live up – even if they’re not that bad even for several years later – and later games had a chance to play around more with weapon variety (and often imitating the Doom stalwarts such as the shotgun), but the basic gameplay still stands and still makes for a solid FPS. The controls are tight, there’s the right amount of enemies and a challenge that slowly ramps up. There’s more of an emphasis on finding secrets and raising your score than in later games – again a sign of the times – but that’s not as important when playing through the game.

Then there’s the small touches that – for better or for worse – weren’t really seen afterwards. Doom is one of the very few games – certainly one of the very few FPSes – showing your character’s face getting bloodied and battered as your health goes down. As minor as it is – as you can tell from in not being seen at any later point – it does aid identification slightly in a mostly generic ‘you’re a space marine, kill the aliens’ storyline. And yeah, it’s a clearly copied storyline that (I suppose) many others have done before, but it gives you just enough context – together with the maps that link the levels in each act – to give you a reason to do what you’re doing. It’s just enough that it’s worth looking at.

One of the things that I could do now that I couldn’t do when I was younger was playing the later acts. Being released in the shareware era, we only had access to the first act, while our current copy had all of them unlocked. What only becomes visible at that point is how versatile the game really is. From a simple start to end tour of some fairly standard levels in the early first episode, later acts put you inside teleporter mazes, sending you hunting for different switches while immediately putting you up against bigger, more diverse enemies. The increase in challenge is noticeable, but at the same time remains a lot of fun – I had a blast trying to get through them. It’s weird thinking most players would have never seen them.

Final Thoughts

Forget the graphics and the limitations of the game. Even now, Doom is fun to play, has some good map design, and is engaging enough to lead you through the game several times. It does everything right, in a way that sets an example that even now seems rarely followed. You don’t need interactive cutscenes every five minutes or gritty dark realism. Some demons and guns is good enough most of the time.

I never understood just how groundbreaking this game was until an episode of Bones featured someone being murdered when someone stole their code for the episodes equivalent of Doom. This really is one of those keystone games like Body Harvest where the gaming world was never the same again afterwards.

#93 Gradius

Posted: 25th March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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4

317th played so far

gradiusGenre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1985
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami

Our original plan for today was actually to play Salamander, but on further reading we found out that it had a prequel, Gradius (or Nemesis in most non-Japanese arcade versions), and is a part of a longer series. As we had the chance anyway, we figured we might as well start with it.  A few more months of waiting never hurt anyone…

Gradius’ claim to fame is apparently its weapon selection bar, although graphically it was advanced for its time as well. Beyond that, I’ll be honest – not a series I know that much about. We’ll see what happens.

Our Thoughts

Going through my (admittedly sparse as always) notes for this game, the main thing I wrote down was ‘awesome music’. Which it was. Let that be noted. To address a similar subject – yeah, the game looks pretty good for its age. The 16-bit (style) sprites are colourful and actually nicely detailed. It’s a grimy environment and it feels like the enemies could do with a slightly better design, but there’s certainly a nice base here.

Let’s get to proper gameplay then. The proper manic sidescrolling shooter stuff is something we’ve seen a dozen times before – games like 1943, Gunstar Heroes and Forgotten Worlds are all fairly similar, even if the scrolling direction is sometimes different. While the game is (apparently) an early fast scroller, that is not as notable as a genre now. It does show in its slight clunkiness, with the controls being a bit too slow and the game not responding fast enough to really battle the waves of enemies.

More interesting are the weapons. Not only are they upgradable – one of those standard features – but you have more control than you normally see. Where normally you either have a single chain of upgrades, one after the other, or you have to wait for the right item to drop, Gradius gives you a lot more control. As you collect more upgrade ball items (thingies), the cursor on a bar moves from left to right. At any point, you can pick the upgrade you selected, which then applies, while your upgrade meter resets to upgrade again. This way you can spread out your upgrades between different options – shields, additional laser shots or missiles – or upgrade the options you have. There’s also more of a balancing act – do you upgrade for something sort of useful now, or do you wait, risking going without the extra help.

For all its difficulty though, the game stays playable, and while you can get a lot of enemies on the screen at once, it never becomes overwhelming. Sure, you need to practice and figure out the game’s patterns, but it feels fair enough that that’s mostly what it’s about. Just practice. Lots more practice (and quarters)

Final Thoughts

Aside from the arcade-level difficulty, the game is a solid shooter. It’s manic, but patterns can be memorized. It’s difficult, but doesn’t feel unfairly so – any failure in keeping up and surviving the game was down to me. It can seem like a pretty tough balance, but Gradius managed to pull it off.

As we are getting closer to the third-way point in this blog I can not help but wonder if writing these posts would have been made a lot easier if we had just played these games in the order that they came out (which is different to book order since that runs on a mix of alphabetical and year). Who knows maybe we’ll switch at some point.

#38 Dig Dug

Posted: 21st March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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0

316th played so far

Dig_Dug_FlyerGenre: Maze
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1982
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

One of the more… interesting entries on our list of genres is the maze genre. Half of it are different Pac Man entries, there’s the previous Mr. Do, and then two other digging-based games. The old Boulder Dash, pretty well known (surely?) and then there’s today’s game, Dig Dug.

Another game where you dig to defeat enemies. More than that… yeah, let’s see.

Our Thoughts

As is often the case with these early games, there are only a few game mechanics at work. The pre-requisite for these maze games is (obviously) the maze, and in particular the making of them here, digging through the ground. As a prelude (almost) to later games like Boulder Dash, you can get boulders to drop, crushing enemies, or yourself if you’re not careful. Still, your usual weapon will be your pump (well, I guess that’s what it is), inflating your enemies to the maximum possible so they pop and die.

From there, the game adds in some additional difficulties. The main thing is that the enemies, after (as normal) walking up and down the corridors, sometimes turn into just their eyes and travel through the dirt. You can still take care of them once they become real in the tunnels, but this does give them a chance to escape. The final enemy will always do so, making finishing a level an even trickier affair.

The game is simple to play, and the game certainly starts off pretty easy, with the first few levels being a cakewalk (your pump really is by far the most useful at this point). Beyond that, the difficulty actually ramps up pretty slowly – more so than I am used to from most arcade games.

In the mean time, the graphics are nice and cute. Sure, the usual version of pixelly, but mostly cute and colourful enough to appeal. It’s just not something that’s really outstanding here, just good for its time.

Final Thoughts

As a game, it feels like Dig Dug just… is. A next step in maze games, showing the power of physics (and gravity) as a gameplay mechanism, but not offering a lot of gameplay that truely wooed me.

A solid gameplay experience, but not much more. I’m just waiting for the chance to play Bubble Bobble… not really relevant but I had nothing else to say here.

#52 Dragon’s Lair

Posted: 17th March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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0

315th played so far

Dragons_lairGenre: Adventure/Interactive Fiction
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1983
Developer: Advanced Microcomputer Systems
Publisher: Cinematronics/Taito

Today, again, we play one of the games we (or I) have been most curious about since the start of this blog.

Dragon’s Lair is an early adventure games, but using the Disney animation style we know from the 80s and earlier – a style you didn’t see in video games for about another decade. We couldn’t really realistically pull it off before then.  Yet here, in a Laserdisc-based arcade cabinet, a lot more is possible – thanks to the ability to switch between video tracks (a lot of this based on playing the right video bit).

Our Thoughts

Now this was a surprise. Based on the vague descriptions we saw, as well as the screenshots, we were expecting something more conventional to an adventure game – follow hints, solve puzzles and explore the area.

Instead… well, these days you would see the game as (literally) a sequence of QTEs, or some sort of rhythm game. You basically go through scenes, pressing the right move buttons to proceed (directions and sword). I’ll be honest, I had two advantages, both from playing the Steam updated version rather than the original arcade cabinet. First, you got button prompts – I have no clue how you would have worked out what to press and when without them. Second, unlimited continues meant that we had unlimited attempts to finish the game. Without it, I’m not sure I’d have made it past the second screen.

On the whole though, it feels mostly like a rhythm game. Get the timing right, press the right buttons, play the game. You’re just playing to a cartoon rather than to a music track. Beyond that, though, it’s mostly just fun to watch the graphics. Ideal, then, is that the Steam version included a ‘Watch game’ mode, which basically runs through all the scenes at optimal speed. It takes 9 minute 35 by the way – not bad for a quarter (once you mastered it). What becomes disappointingly clear then, though, is the lack of story. The scenes don’t link to each other (displayed by how they randomly repeat as you play the game) and the only bit you’ve got is rescuing the princess at the end – a fairly generic affair.

Talking about the ending of this game brings me to the topic of the damsel in distress. Whilst we all know the big reveal of Samus was a watershed moment in terms of women in gaming watching the exchange between our hero and Princess Daphne was pretty uncomfortable. Here we have the stereotypical blonde airhead armed with girly squeals and a vacant expression. I am not a feminist but more of an equalist, so this character got under my skin a bit. Nowadays a character like this would be more explicitly tongue in cheek (out of necessity to avoid controversy more than anything)… or at this I’d like to think so.

That’s not to say the game isn’t fun, but the depth that it seems like it should have isn’t really there. As a setup and setting it shows promise, but video game storytelling just wasn’t there yet. A shame really.

Final Thoughts

The game looks nice and there’s some interesting puzzles in the game, but on the whole it just doesn’t work out as interesting. You can see where the arcade appeal comes from and how it works out as an engaging challenge, but for casual play now it gets repetitive – having to do the same jumping puzzles five times (with the platform falling down) was a bit much. A shame, really – and a shame they didn’t make more games like this where they could expand on the idea.

#633 Civilization IV

Posted: 13th March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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3

314th played so far

CivIVboxshotGenre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2K Games

Welcome to our new apartment! By the time you read this, sure, we’ll have lived here for over five months, but this is the first game we played and wrote up here, so it’s a bit special for us.

Of course, the Civilization series isn’t new to use – we played through the first and second installment for this blog before and took a break for the third earlier this year. Today, we play the fourth installment.

For me, it’s one of the games in the series – and not the one I played most, with Civilization II being my major addiction back in the days and having played plenty of Civilization III – but for Peter it’s his one main game in the series he’s played. Familiar territory for us then. Let’s go!

Our Thoughts

A (semi-)addiction to a game or series often makes it more difficult to judge its qualities and compare it to others.

Clearly, the game is looking better, with more 3D things, and sounds better. Aside from most of this being natural, there’s some minor gameplay effects. The cities can have their buildings show, rather than some generic icons – a small change, but making it a bit more real. In the mean time, a number of units are now actually formed of multiple warriors/explorers, which means you have a more visible indication of health and, to be honest, more exciting battles as they actually fight each other. Not majorly so, but it’s there.

Still, as with every installment, Civilization IV adds its own concepts. The main big item is religion – you can be the civilization to found them, adopt them (or not) and promote their spreading – both to make people happy and to insidiously take over other cities.

The absence of culture in the earlier games really threw me for a loop since it was something I really used a lot during my original games of Civilization IV. I have very fond memories playing as Catherine the Great and pissing leaders off as I captured my city through religion and culture rather than through military action. The best reaction? Isabella of Castille and her pout.

Its influence extends to other areas. You now build a temple per religion – but only in cities where at least one religion has taken hold. Part of your government structure depends on how you deal with it – whether you have a state religion or not, and if you do, how it influences your politics.

This also leads to another change, that of civics. Where previous games in the series had you pick a single form of government, reducing this element to a few options (with a few government being clear upgrades of earlier ones), Civ IV drops it in favour of civics, several main policy areas where you pick your stance, similar to Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri‘s social engineering choices. Each has its benefits, balanced by their drain on your income, and your decision between them will just as often be based on your play style.

There’s further upgrades that mostly only make sense when you know the games – happiness isn’t as immediate a stat, instead being derived from luxuries and culture. There’s new buildings with new effects. It’s all balanced slightly differently. It plays out well though – while some areas become a bit more complex from these changes, others have been streamlined, meaning that on the whole the game remains as playable. More important though, the game does a good job of easing you into it so you don’t deal with everything at once.

I’m not sure this is the same experience if you’re a completely new player. There’s a lot of things involved, and a lot of it is intuition to the experienced player.  You know why you need science and what happiness is for. However, for a new player this seems like it must soon become overwhelming and trickier to follow. It’d be interesting to see how a player new to the series would cope.

Final Thoughts

It’s a shame we’ve nearly finished this series, and with that most games in its genre – there are only two or three left, one Civilization game and few other similar strategy games. Aside from feeling these are genuinely good games, we enjoy playing them together – well, I play, Peter watches (and gives the names of cities to be built). And although you tend to lose your entire day to it, it’s worth it for the fun of it all. Truely addictive, with a real ‘just one more turn’ feeling.

#500 Metroid Fusion

Posted: 9th March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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1

313rd played so far

Metroid_Fusion_boxGenre: Platform/Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

It’s been a while since we played the surprise discovery (for us) Super Metroid. While we knew some things about the series, we weren’t entirely expecting it to be this much fun.

As one of the larger series on the list, it’s one we’re actively keeping track of, and yet for some reason we’ve fallen behind in covering the series (partially because the next few platforms don’t work for our stats… trying to keep track of it all for you!). It really is time for another game, though, and Metroid Fusion is a good next game.

A cheap ‘purchase’ for us to. As early 3DS adopter, I got the game for free for being a ‘Nintendo 3DS Ambassador’ – an exclusive downloadable too as it will not be released on the e-shop. Easier for us though!

Our Thoughts

One of the most addictive parts of the (Pre-Prime) Metroid series is probably that it taps into the ‘one more…’ mindset. In a giant space ship with its large setting, dividing it into smallish rooms that takes only a minute or two to get through, there’s always the rush to explore one more, find its secrets and get a bit further.

The main story, explained in the introduction, is related to our warrior Samus having fused with an odd alien virus called the ‘X-Parasite’. Although she is cured with the help of Metroids, making her immune to the parasite and even being healed by it, she is also tasked by investigating a large space station where an infection of it has broken out.

Your travels go on in typical Metroid style. Starting off with just your blaster, you slowly gain more attacks and abilities to reach new places and defeat the bosses that are scattered around the area.

From there on out, the story also develops quite nicely. A lot of exposition follows from Samus’ thoughts during the elevator rides, with your more immediate objectives coming from your ‘superior’ briefing you every time you reach a navigation room.

The graphics are decidedly GBA quality. Just a tad blocky and pixelly in places, but colourful and detailed. Even if the backgrounds don’t always make sense (I’m sorry, why are there caves inside a space station?) they look lovely, as do the weird alien creatures you encounter.

The game spreads a fairly large amount of save points across its world, and while it may seem generous at time, you’ll soon find you need it. So far I haven’t encountered a situations I couldn’t handle after some trial and error. The save points were necessary for that, but didn’t get in the way as much.

What I find interesting with a series like Metroid is how they play with chronology. Despite being the fourth game in a series of ten (eleven if you count Metroid Prime Pinball) this places last in the Metroid world behind the most recent installment Other M. There are not many games that would jump around like this with such ease (with Zelda being the other that comes to mind with a far more complex timeline) but stands to make a franchise more interesting. Especially if you choose to play it through by fictional date rather than release date.

Final Thoughts

It feels difficult to judge a game and genre like this when you haven’t had much contact with it. Not by active choice, I just never played them often.

With that said, the game is difficult, but fun. It takes some time to get used to the game and to figure out the ways deal to with each enemy. It looks good and has an interesting story – and an interesting way to tell it.

#300 Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

Posted: 5th March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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2

312th played so far

Broken_Sword_1_coverGenre: Adventure
Platform: PC/PlayStation 1
Year of Release: 1996
Developer: Revolution Software
Publisher: Virgin Interactive/SCEE

While last time’s Pac-Man was a game we’d played because, well, everyone had played it, Broken Sword is a bit more of a coincidence. One of us had the PC version, the other Playstation, and we both got far in it (I think I even finished it. I got stuck in the Syria section).

An adventure in the LucasArts mold, Broken Sword takes you on a more serious adventure (though not too much so) following in the footsteps of… well… the Templars.

Our Thoughts

This game’s start alone is memorable. While the main character, George Stobbart, is having a drink at a cafe, a clown rushes past inside. Moments later, a bomb goes off inside the cafe and our hero starts his investigation into what happens – leading him from Paris (where the game starts) to Ireland, Spain, Syria and further abroad.

The story underlying these journeys is interesting, as is appropriate for a game like this. The story takes templar history and many of the conspiracy theories surrounding them, linking it into many of the interesting characters you meet along the way.

And the writing for them is good. While some start off from a cliched place (and a number of the smaller characters stay there), they feel quite well rounded. Almost all are nicely written into the plot, while feeling like more than just ‘puzzle-givers’ – they have opinions and comments on more than just the bit they’re concerned with.

The puzzles themselves are mostly sane, with few really not making any sense. The main problem here tends to be its reliance on the small areas that can be impossible to click at times unless you really go pixel hunting. It took me quite a while to figure out you pick up a piece of cloth the first time because it was too small for sweeps of the screen to find it, while later stealing some pieces of wire for a trap can almost only be done when you know what you’re doing. And then there’s the infamous goat’s puzzle. It’s possible to get it to the right place, it makes sense that what happens to it… happens, but the process is too fiddly to really make sense.

The main problem that I remember having with Broken Sword was that the Playstation version was still a mouse-oriented point-and-click game rather than something more controller friendly. This meant time sensitive puzzles took multiple attempts and that I had to do a lot of pixel-hunting to find solutions. It was a lot easier (and enjoyable) to play this again on the PC some 15 years later.

The graphics themselves are gorgeous. The style is a bit simple at times, with an intentionally cartoonish bent (making George look like far less of a hunk than he’s meant to be). There’s quite a bit of character in them though, which makes a lot of the characters even more recognisable and add to the personality we mentioned earlier. It makes them a lot more inviting.

Then there’s the voice acting. While most of it is good, with the main character especially bearable considering how often you listen to George, some of the French accents turn a bit too over the top and are exaggerated to the point of distraction, at times when the game is meant to be serious. You sort of get used to it, but a bit less would have been welcome.

Final Thoughts

The game draws you in far enough that it is entirely suitable for marathon sessions of adventuring – for the blog, I believe Peter finished it in two or three 3-4 hour sessions (It was awesome.)

The puzzles are clever and not too difficult, while the story is involving enough to keep playing. Probably one of the top series of its kind.

#18 Pac-Man

Posted: 1st March 2014 by Jeroen in Games
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6

311th played so far

PAC MANGenre: Maze
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1980
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Midway

Pac-Man is probably one of the most recognised gaming characters out there – in fact, he probably is the most recognised out of all of them. His simple shape and early mascot status seems to make this all but certain, really, especially with how much we saw him in marketing.

And of course Pac-Man, the game, is a game most everyone will have played (or, anyone who calls themselves a gamer at least. Tetris is similar in that respect). We both have, with fond memories. In fact, one of my courses at uni was 2D/3D programming, where we created a 3D Pac-Man game for our final assignment. We managed to do it complete with authentic AI… and user-created maps if you knew the basic format. It was awesome.

Our Thoughts

Of course, this leaves us with a simple problem. What can we say about a game that everyone knows and plenty has been said about? There’s always the Google Doodle. That was a cool way to celebrate 30 years of Pac-Man.

The gameplay is simple, as is your goal – eat all the power pellets (dots) to advance to the level, while avoiding the ghosts who will kill you when they touch you.

Part of simple to learn, difficult to master, the game starts off easy enough with few ghosts chasing you (making them easy to avoid), but as you gather more pellets in the first level, they all start going after you. With the right powerup thing (big dot, really), you can eat them for a short while as they run away, but that time gets more and more limited.

As you proceed, the game speeds up, and even with some practice I can’t make it much further than three or four levels. It’s commendable, then, that some did make it further – level 255 for some, in fact, at which point the game breaks. The developers clearly never tested that far. It’s probably one of the bigger known bugs in games, and more impressive as giving an absolute limit to the score in the game.

So yeah, the graphics are simple, but the abstract look works for it, and somehow still manage to give the ghosts enough personality to matter as well. It’s simple, but their scared look is just enough, adding a bit of personality that would otherwise be lacking. Another bit of this are the cutscenes, which happens after you complete certain levels. They’re simply variations of the characters chasing each other, but fun enough anyway.

Final Thoughts

With all that has been said, Pac-Man remains a great game. Its simple gameplay, as many older games, is addictive, and it’s got its own legacy. It has gotten as recognisable as anything else for a good reason. Then again, if you’re here, shouldn’t you know that anyway?

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