#13 Eamon

Posted: 7th June 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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2

245th played so far

Genre: Interactive Fiction
Platform: Apple II
Year of Release: 1980
Developer: Donald Brown
Publisher: None

And now we truly go back in the ages. Text adventures – interactive fiction – with some strong RPG elements. Its special feature isn’t that, however – we’ve had games like Adventure before and MUD was released in the same year. But it did something similar that MUD did as well, but in a different way.

Where MUD encouraged playing together, Donald Brown, when creating Eamon, went in a different direction. The adventures you play through are user-created and you can build your own. The game came with a tutorial/example, after that everyone could share their own. Possibly one of the first examples of user generated content – certainly the first listed in the book and the first that was built for it, predating games like Neverwinter Nights by decades. The question now is, does it still hold up?

Our Thoughts

I actually feel in two minds about this. The game’s goals are interesting – allowing you to create your own adventures, including stuff like defining your own commands and responses to it. I’ve not really played with the tools to do so, but the adventures I got to play were quite interesting. Maybe not as creative with what people came up with later, but it’s generally quite good quality.

And for what it is, it’s good. Rather than a long, involved and complex adventure, the game plays it light and easy, with a focus on shorter, simpler adventures (although that is also up to the creator). You get treasure, get out, sell it and start again, increasing your stats in the progress. A neat idea, predating games like Diablo by a while, and as simple as it is (get better stats, get better weapons, get better armor, all bought with gold) it gives you enough goals to keep you satisfied.

But then there’s the downside. And I feel like I’m to blame for it. You see, we’re not as used to text interfaces anymore. I don’t mind reading, but it’s nice to have pictures to go with it. I can deal with some typing, but too much gets boring, especially when it’s repeated “attack black rat” commands. It’s the repetition inherent in RPGs like this that makes the interface drag. Yeah, there’s exploration and stuff that’s nice, but the battles don’t work here. It was even more boring to watch… I almost fell asleep.

This will improve in future installments, and it’s a interesting step on the path of gaming and user-generated content, but right now, it might not be worth it if you’re not feeling committed.

Final Thoughts

Two text adventures in and I have to admit that I am yet to be impressed. Then again there is still one text adventure that I am looking forward to playing in the future and that’s the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy game which I really hope doesn’t disappoint.

#72 Deus Ex Machina

Posted: 3rd June 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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0

244th played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: ZX Spectrum
Year of Release: 1984
Developer: Automata UK
Publisher: Automata UK

Sometimes, finding the more obscure games on our list have surprises of their own. This game had one.  In what must be one of the first examples of voice acting in video games, Deus Ex Machina came with a separate audio tape, intended to be played alongside the game.

The book calls it a multimedia experience… I’m sure that must be true, in an early sense, based on those descriptions. Drawing some larger voice actors, such as Jon Pertwee, certainly makes it about more than a game. God, sounds weird, doesn’t it? Yet we haven’t even started talking about the music…

Our Thoughts

Wow. That was trippy. On its own, this game is really a collection of mini games, a number of which (especially early on) are very similar. In a way, progress here rewards you with variety. It still stays simple – keep your cursor over stuff to keep it spinning, protect things shooting ‘you’ and so on. They’re not documented, but that’s not as relevant.

While your score matters in that you are presumed to stay alive if it’s high enough, the game always lets you through to the next minigame. It’s a good thing too – the games are difficult due to some ugly timing and control issues and having to go through them that much more often would be excruciating. Luckily, as said, it matters little for progress except for the score summaries.

During the mini-games the maximum percentage of your life points you can lose is half of them, so there is little to be worried about in the beginning stages when you have no clue what you are meant to be doing. Then again, towards the end of the game we were playing on 0% and the game just kept on going which did lead me to wonder whether you can actually ‘die’ in this game.

With that said, that’s only one of the parts of the experience. The other part is the soundtrack. And that’s where the experience gets… weird. While the tape partially narrates your story (although only vaguely) – a defect in what sounds like a Matrix-like machine, where you’re protecting a baby and human as it grows up and lives its life in what sounds like a rather dark future.

That narration is only punctuation in a longer story, which mostly seems to be actors jabbering on about life and trying to sound too philosophical for a game like this. Add to that the music and singing of lyrics that fit the mood but don’t explain anything more, and it certainly becomes its own… experience. Thanks to this game I have had the refrain “I am machine” stuck in my head ever since… stupid game.

In the end, this is probably one of the earliest examples of a game that tries to be more than just a diversion, but instead tries to create art. Did it succeed? Well, strangely, it feels as if it could fit in with some of the 70s movies and artists. Maybe not that well, maybe not as top art, but then again, we’ve seen stranger.

Final Thoughts

In December 2012 the Museum of Modern Art in New York launched a collection of video games which included titles as diverse as Portal, Tetris, The Sims and EVE Online in with the hope to expand the collection in the future. Whilst I am not sure about how The Sims has earned a position in a Modern Art museum I am surprised to see that this game has yet to be included. It may not be the most famous game in the world but like the similarly left out, Flower, I think it deserves one in the near future.

#862 Top Spin 3

Posted: 30th May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

243rd played so far

Genre: Sports
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: PAM Development
Publisher: 2K Sports

To be honest, I’m not sure whether I’m entirely qualified to participate in today’s write-up, for similar reasons as why I felt my input on Sega Rally Championship were ‘invaluable’. Peter’s mother is a big fan (tennis nut might be a better word for it) and some of that has transferred to him (seriously, where the hell is Novak Djokovic in this game). I’ve picked up bits and pieces from that, but I know my knowledge is still inferior.

Wii Sports, a game we’ll discuss at some point when the numbers say we can go back to playing Wii games, probably brought video game tennis to people’s minds more than any. But, just as Mario Kart is a simplified form of racing games made more complex by the options in a game like Pure, Top Spin 3 goes more for simulation than accessibility.

Our Thoughts

One of the things I’ve noticed playing many games in the blog is that I get better at playing a lot of games. While originally I wasn’t that used to, say, the double joystick with trigger controls of a console first person shooter, and Peter struggled with WASD controls, we are getting used to them. Considering how many games seem to expect you to be at least somewhat familiar with them – giving some time to get used to it, but making your life easier if you don’t need to gain that muscle memory – it’s only natural that way. It’s also a big help – not having to learn the controls means that we can more effectively play the game itself. In fact, when the controls are unnatural – such as Free Running‘s oddly placed jump button – it can be quite detrimental to the game’s experience.

These basic controls work for a lot of games, meaning it’s easy to jump from one game to another and get the basics. Beyond these, arrow keys, mouse controls and many other things work. The one exception where it’s more difficult are sports games. The basics might still be the same – moving around using the appropriate joystick and usually your most important action is under A, X or whatever the appropriate button is.

What Top Spin 3 showed us more than anything is how the same muscle memory applies, but that if you don’t know it, you’re screwed. There’s a tutorial mode, but it doesn’t seem to explain much – just force you to press a button at the right time, with an accuracy that seems incredibly punishing to starting gamers – including us.

We sort of got the basics after a while. We managed to play. We didn’t do terribly in doubles. As in, yeah, the CPU helped us a lot. When we went to try out the career mode, we ran into more of a problem. Or brick wall. You start off with someone with low ratings (yeah, you need to improve your own character) and you start off having to defeat three opponents. All three of them are better than you. So much better that you can’t reach their level even after your defeat all three of them. It’s tough and not as much an introduction as it’s starting you off high and probably just making it harder from there. That’s just speculation, we never got further and didn’t want to break our controllers for this game.

When it comes to the selection of professional players in this game they have decent coverage of male players (despite the notable omission of Novak Djokovic) but the number of top female players is incredibly lackluster. Worse still is the number of retired players… three. Or one if you are playing on the Wii.  I am not saying that Monica Seles, Bjorn Borg and Boris Becker are not worthy or being in the roster but what about the likes of Steffi Graff, Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras and Rod Laver? I know some players don’t want to be immortalized in video game form but more than three should have been interested.

It feels like a fairly good simulation – I suppose, I’ve not played that much tennis and didn’t go too far in – which is nice, but just not very accessible to us. It relies too much on what feels like past experience which we don’t have. I suppose in part you need the same sort of obsession with these games others have with the sport itself (especially true when I look at some of my FIFA fanatic friends).

Final Thoughts

The player licensing aside (something really rectified in follow-up Top Spin 4) this is a good sports game for those who are keen for a challenge. The controls are fairly awkward and the difficulty curve is far steeper than it needs to be. There are other tennis games on this list and I hope they do not have the same control problems this one did.

 

#587 Everquest 2

Posted: 26th May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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0

242nd played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Sony Online Entertainment
Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment

Sequels are fairly common in videogames – if a formula works, why not tweak it and try again? As a lot of engine work and assets can be reused, it can even be cheaper, or cost as much, as making a completely new game.

The only place where we don’t really see this are MMORPGs. Any improvements the creators want to make for them are generally done to the game itself. Especially with a subscription model, it’s there anyway, and people don’t generally want to reinvest the time learning a new game and levelling all their characters.

In fact, the only example, other than today’s Everquest 2, that I can think of is the recently released Guild Wars 2 (we’ve discussed Guild Wars before). It obviously worked for EQ2 though, seeing how it’s still going strong after eight years. Why?

Our Thoughts

First, a comment on timing. Usually, we try to give a game enough time to show us what it’s about and give us a feel for it. We set ourselves a guidelines of five hours for it, which is often enough, but with MMORPGs it’s limiting. At the same time, I must admit I often don’t enjoy them enough to want to play for that much longer. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule such as Guild Wars and Aion.

Everquest 2 really made some of those elements clear to me. First, it suffers from a problem I’ve seen multiple MMORPGs struggle with: The ‘tutorial’ section seems really, really long – I hadn’t left it after several hours of play (six or so). That’s fine if it’s integrated in building up a story and lets you access the cool things as a part of it. Here, it isn’t.

Rather, it’s a long prologue that focuses on story telling and giving you lots of quests and starter items. What it also does, however, is hint at mechanics that, after six-seven hours of play, you don’t have access to yet, while cluttering your inventory with stuff for it. One annoyance here is something related to a pet shop, but the main culprit is housing.

In the game, you can get a house, decorate it and so on – neat thing that’s one of the series’ selling points. You acquire furniture for it fairly soon. At the point in the game we got to, however, you’re not there yet, and actually feel quite a while away from it still. Realistic, possibly, but it really felt like it got in the way. Every time I thought I’d be able to move towards the main game, there was just another batch of quests, and after some time it just made you want to give up.

 Rant over, to the game. The basics are the same as any other MMORPG – run around, click to target, attack and use your abilities. It feels like there are more abilities in the original, with lots more complications in alternative ways of advancement – in fact, you’re recommended to spend half your XP on alternative advancement rather than straight up levels from some point on. Didn’t get to experience crafting, because, well, not far enough in. Lots of stuff you can get for it though. It looks pretty, I suppose. It’s just… yeah, it’s an upgrade. They’ve added abilities, it looks nicer and so on. It just took far too long to get to the point.

Final Thoughts

Potentially good. The game has elements of being fun, and I enjoyed playing it for most of it. It’s just that the feelings of endless introduction missions became a bit much and really put me off in the end. A shame.

This also ends our journey through MMORPGs (and related online games). It’s weird – I’ve always seen the appeal of them but (with the exception of the slightly different Kingdom of Loathing) never really got into them. I’m still not sure whether I’ll be able to make the time and interest investment in them to make all of them worth it, but there’s certainly some I hope I can revisit. And if not, who knows – perhaps there’ll be another one some day that grabs me further.

That isn’t to say that we haven’t enjoyed our voyage through the world of internet gaming. In many ways it has been the defining feature of the 200-250 group of games rather than it being the section where every game is brand new to me.  Sure some have been a bit pants (Ultima) and others have been repetitive (Runescape) but it has definitely been a worthwhile experience.

#517 Panzer Dragoon Orta

Posted: 22nd May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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0

241th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Smilebit
Publisher: Sega

Would you believe this game is made by the same developers as the previous Jet Set Radio Future? Even odder, they’re also responsible for the upcoming, even other edutainment/survival horror Typing of the Dead. Even more depressing is that these days they’re responsible for the far less exciting Mario & Sonic sport games. It feels like a bit of a waste.

With that sad note, we come back to the end of our small XFest, starting with Midtown Madness 3. We finish with our eternal bane, a shoot ’em up. While it’s the second most common genre on the list, the most common one, action, is one we pick up by default a lot more often. With how far behind we get then, having a game like it come up like this, rather than doing a few because we have to, is quite nice.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is the fifth and last in its series, all with the same style of gameplay. The fourth game will be covered in a future Dreamfest 2, but that’s for later. Let’s first see whether it’s as hip as Jet Set Radio Future.

Our Thoughts

First things first – that ‘Dragoon’ in the title – I’m fairly sure this is a misspelling and should be ‘Dragon’. After all, there’s no soldiers in the game, while you do ride around on a big-ass dragon. Yeah. This annoyed us. Apparently this is based more around the German for ‘armoured dragon’ despite the fact that the German for dragon is Drache.

So yeah, that’s the basic game. You are a girl called ‘Orta’ and ride around on a big-ass dragon. You fire lasers and missiles at enemies around you while your dragon flies mostly around a single path (you can adjust it slightly, but as this is a rails shooter, that’s to be expected. It means you can shoot on all sides, which obviously has plenty of use as they attack you from all sides.

This has one big advantage, though, although it doesn’t impact gameplay. As you’re flying around, you’re pulled around many gorgeous vistas. Endless forests, deep caves and marvelous buildings. That combines nicely with the exotic animals you face in some levels as well as the strange ships of the enemies you fight against. It’s colourful and imaginative and the lovely graphics make playing this game worth it.

Which makes something else worth mentioning here – you meet some allies along the way, and your opponents at least announce things to you (although why they’d tell you what weapons they’re going to use is beyond me). As a staple of the series (and probably to make translation easier), this is done in some sort of garbled speech that doesn’t make sense. They still, however, manage to be quite stereotypical with it. Yeah. The good guys sound Japanese, the bad sound Russian. Hmmm…. Actually it’s a made up language that is a mixture of Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek, still… I get props for recognizing the Russian.

The game itself then. One interesting thing – something it feels we’re no longer used to – is that it expects you to read the manual. A nice, big manual. As 90s as it feels, without it you won’t know your controls here, and while firing is on the expected key, Peter can testify that missing out on a lot of the additional options makes the game unnecessarily difficult. Finding out that holding down A leads to a homing attack really was a game changer.

It’s not that complicated, but between homing lasers and missiles, berserk attacks if you build up one meter, and gliding using another, it becomes difficult enough to keep track of it and figure out your tactics. As said, you have some control over your path – direction and speed – and while the former mostly matters for the mass enemy and fly-through sections, avoiding attacks – the latter comes into play with the bosses. One plant-based one requires you to move from its front to its back and vice versa as it keeps turning to avoid you, while the challenge with the ‘Catharp’ (possibly pronounced ‘Cat-Harp’ – an evil combination if I ever heard of one.) is that you need to overtake it to shoot at its vulnerable point.

But that’s where it is. The game starts off quite relentless and steps it up from there. It’s not easy to keep up with and gets incredibly frustrating. But it doesn’t take too much work to keep up with it either, and some stubbornness will see you through it… as long as you find out that one secret to finishing the boss.

Final Thoughts

Another shoot ’em up with a very steep difficulty curve. We know that when we cover Panzer Dragoon Saga the difficulty will probably be amped up again. Great as long as you’re okay with a broken Sega Saturn controller.

#506 Jet Set Radio Future

Posted: 18th May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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4

240th played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Smilebit
Publisher: Sega

I hate playing games out of order in this blog. It’s something we only do if we are unable to get an earlier game or if we are doing something special. So since we are doing X-Fest we are skipping over Jet Set Radio for now in favour of it’s sequel. Oh well, we’ll get to it in our next Dreamfest.

Our Thoughts

Last time I mentioned how it annoys me when games are desperate to be seen as cool. As the old adage goes; to be cool you should not care so much about being cool (which is why Marge Simpson will never been seen as cool by her children). This game goes against this in spades but instead of being groan-worthy it is a whole lot of fun. Although in a way, the reason it’s so fun is because it’s ridiculous enough about it that it doesn’t seem to try to be cool.

The idea behind this game is that you reside in futuristic Tokyo where as part of a graffiti-spraying rollerblading gang you are fighting both the establishment and other rival gangs through the medium of tagging and skating. Due to this fact there is a nice piece of backtracking at the very start as Sega urge us as the games not to randomly tag our neighbourhoods because graffiti is illegal despite having artistic merit (I am paraphrasing here). I know it is Sega just covering themselves in case of graffiti-based lawsuits since we are all mindless sheep who do what video games tell us to. That’s why I eat falling leaves during autumn due to my undying belief that I will gain a tail and the power of flight. Rant aside, this was a fantastically entertaining game.

In order to set the scene there game is equipped with a very apt soundtrack featuring electronic, funk and hip-hop music (a personal favourite being the bonkers song ‘Birthday Cake‘). 

You maneuver around this interconnected sandbox-style city by grinding along rails, bouncing off of billboards and defying graffiti by going up vertical poles with very little momentum whatsoever. Some of these chains of grinding and jumping can be very tricky and picky in terms of timing. It can get frustrating but there is a lot on offer here that you do soldier on. Such as the graphics which, due to their cel shaded nature, still look as vibrant as they did back then, certainly better than how Killer7 looks under the lights of 2011-13. Some of the 3D models look a bit blocky but we are looking at a game 10 years later.

 

To add to the challenge of the game, you can find cassette tapes around the courses. These don’t give you music, as other games would do – not, they unlock new challenges in the area that give you access to glowing alien heads: You are able to collect different tags for your graffiti by collecting glowing alien heads which are in hard to reach places… some are really hard to reach.

To be fair the story is a bit weak and it feels like this game would have still been as good at it if they used a more Saints Row style play where you take on territory and defend it after getting warnings over your favorite pirate radio station (the DJ is frickin’ nuts). Then again, this works. It apparently worked in the original so why mess so much with the original… apart from getting decent sales that would have lead to a third installment. Ah, well.

Of course, half the fun is racing around the city doing tricks and reaching places. The challenges give you great reasons for doing so, but the story behind it is just not as relevant when you’re playing.

Final Thoughts

There’s places where this game is frustrating – it has random spots where the stunts suddenly become a lot trickier and there’s a few cases where, when you expect to lock onto grinding, the game doesn’t pick up on it. On the whole, however, the game plays well and it soon gets very addictive. That’s fun enough.

#600 Def Jam: Fight for NY

Posted: 14th May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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0

239th played so far

Genre: Fighting
Platform: PS2/Gamecube/Xbox
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: AKI Corporation, EA Canada
Publisher: Electronic Arts

It’s official, the drought of fighting games is now over. 50 games since we last covered one (Splatterhouse) and finally we doing our next one as part of X-Fest. The main reason for this is that as part of my 50 a lot of fighting games (as well as Resident Evil) has been off-limits since I played a lot of them… which is great for 8 games time since I can get back to breaking some skulls. I already miss my RPGs and strategy games…

Our Thoughts

I have a thing about games that are trying to be cool (one of the reasons that games like Tony Hawk and Free Running tend to leave me cold) and reading the blurb of this game on the back of the cover really began to get my hackles up. That and a lot of rap and hip hop music… plus Cher Lloyd. This is where I will draw a line under my own personal feelings about the desperation to appear ‘hip’ or ‘street’… I mean what the hell do I care I’m a teacher. Time to focus on the rest of the game.

Character creation is something that we see a lot of in gaming; especially in Western RPGs like Mass Effect and Baldur‘s Gate. It is a bit rarer to see it be such a central element to a fighting game. I mean it’s found in most wrestling games but, again, it isn’t an essential because you can always play as The Undertaker or whatever. In this game you can not only control how your character looks, dresses and sounds but also everything about your fighting. There are a number of key fighting styles and finishing moves you can choose for your fighter plus in true RPG style you are able to decide in what areas your character trains in. It is advisable to not neglect some of them because, you know, your opposition will make mincemeat out of you. It’s actually quite interesting how this game integrates it. While most fighting games go for set characters to preserve balance – great for multiplayer and to master a game, but less ideal for telling a story and make for a replayable solo campaign. The addition of this system made it immediately more interesting for me, both for the replayability and because it means you have your chance to master the inital game while giving you a chance to build up the moves you can use.

On the whole the story mode is very impressive and in depth for a fighting game. Personally I prefer BlazBlue because those sorts of Japanese anime story-lines are more my thing but hey that’s me. In Def Jam: Fight for NY you are in a posse and fighting random guys in bars until you are high up enough in the food chain to fight Foreman from House or that rapper who now has his own reality show. At the time the line-up for this game (and in face now it is still impressive) but playing this 8 years later it is fun to see who was cool enough to be in a fighting game where street cred might as well be currency. Snoop Dogg (now Snoop Lion), Danny Trejo, Lil Kim and Carmen Electra are still known but who remembers Redman? You know the guy who rapped on Christina Aguilera’s song ‘Dirrty’. What about Comp? No me neither.

Aside from the parts of the game that make me feel whiter than a sheet of plain A4 paper this is a game that offers a surprising amount of depth. Depth you would not expect from a fighting game that features a wide cast of rappers (and some casual sexism). Depth that rewards a very long time playing the story mode to work out the kinks in your character as well as the construction of your own crew. Which is apparently a good thing if you want to keep your territory… apparently… I prefer to spend my time watching forties movies on Netflix.

Final Thoughts

It’s not our world. It’s not a world that interests us much. But when you leave that, this is an interesting game whose fighting style is adjusted well through its multitude of options and provides a more interesting curve of improvement thanks to its basic RPG elements. Somewhat unexpected before we started. But it makes for something fun that’s slightly different – appealing enough to me.

#546 Midtown Madness 3

Posted: 10th May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

238th played so far

Genre: Driving
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Digital Illusions CE
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

As you know, we had to obtain an Xbox a while ago to go with our Steel Battalion controller. We didn’t make much use of it since, but knew we’d need it for the games that weren’t compatible with the 360.

When we picked a random game a while ago, Midtown Madness 3 came up, which never gained a backwards compatibility patch either. Combined with us gaining some extra free time over a holiday, we decided to take up the challenge and have an Xfest, similar to our Dreamfest a while ago.

Midtown Madness 3 is a driving game. I’ve played around a bit with earlier games in the series (although it was more my brother who loved it). Let’s see whether it’s a worthwhile start of… XFEST!

Our Thoughts

One of the ever-present questions that plague us at this blog is one of categorization: What is the difference between racing and driving games? They’re categorized separately, some being in both, others more complicated. With this game, at least, the distinction is clear. While you race, the focus on this game is on driving around the cities the game is set in, Paris and Washington.

The basic game, then, is first the sandbox mode. These two cities are fully modeled (fairly accurately for a 2003 game, in face this really was one of the big selling points of this game), with plenty of alleyways and different routes to get to places. This, of course, includes a number of collectables and such for you to find as you’re driving. In many ways this game really did suffer from the better selling Driver franchise which offered very similar gameplay and whose first installment was released within moments of the original Midtown Madness.

There are plenty of challenges still. Most of them are of the race form – go from place to place and be faster than everyone else. These, however, still offer more freedom – there can be multiple ways to get to your destination (even if there is one ‘recommended’ route) and in a number of them you can reach your goals in different orders (even if one is recommended and often faster, if you get lost they can give a way out). This creates a racing game that still takes place in a city, with challenges that aren’t about getting around a track quickly, but have their own goals, even if the basic gameplay is still the same.

These goals are the ones that get a bit odd at times. We started off playing the French missions and found that the voice acting was horrible. Overdone, terrible French accents that would be used as the funny part of a last sketch on a crappy sketch show. Borderline offensive, not very funny and completely unnecessary. What doesn’t help is that the worst offender here is also your main opponent during the Paris section of the game, taunting you as you race against her or she tries to ram into your car as you try to make an important delivery. To be fair the American accents in the Washington levels are just as hammed up, strange for a games company based in San Diego (which is weird considering how authentic their later game, Red Dead Redemption, was seen to be).  

Even so, with that the game plays well. Control is good, with cars feeling quite different between them without any of them becoming too awkward to drive around in it. There’s a nice variety in cars, although most of the more special ones are tied to specific challenges.

The challenge becomes quite large, with the game imposing some quite tight challenges on the time and some good driving from your opponents – despite their general annoyance, they have pretty good AI – making this a tough game to defeat. Not in the impossible range, but if you’re like me, you’ll struggle from the start. Probably not a bad thing, really.

Final Thoughts

The original Midtown Madness game was a pioneer of open world racing and was an influence on the Burnout franchise. It was a lot of fun and is a sad state of affairs that this was not patched for X-Box 360 backwards compatibility… makes no sense to be honest.

#124 Thrust

Posted: 6th May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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0

237th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: Jeremy Smith
Publisher: Superior Software

Now for a return to old style gaming. Games have for a long time tried to mix realism into their gameplay. Early on, Asteroids introduced inertia and related space flight to the games, and Lunar Lander later introduced gravity, as you try to land your ship.

Thrust appears to make use of a similar system, heavily influenced in both looks and gameplay by Thrust. The game seems to strive to go beyond that, though.

Our Thoughts

Sure, in style and basic gameplay, this game resembles Lunar Lander – rotation and speed, making for soft approaches and quick getaways – although the latter tends to rarely be a good idea where the former can be ruind by a single mistake.

Your goals, then, are what make the difference here. You’re not supposed to land – you can’t. Instead, you need to guide your way to an orb, activate your tractor beam to take it with you, and then warp off into space with it in tow. Intergalactic thievery of the rudest kind. This, combined with an uneven landscape that requires precise movements to avoid, is tricky enough. Just getting to the orb, in the first level, requires that you don’t fly into the walls on either side, or sling away at such a speed that you get lost elsewhere on the (luckily small) planet.

That becomes more difficult when you realise that a defense tower is firing at you (it sucks being on the other side of the Fieldrunners fence). Only one in the first level – more in later ones – but enough to make it difficult. You see, you can shoot, but only in the direction you are facing. The same direction you’d accelerate in, meaning that you have to combine avoiding shots, aiming and maneuvering away from all the walls at the same time. It’s tough.

As a last complication, there’s fuel. It’s limited. And all that moving around that I mentioned, trying to stay away from the walls, slowly eats it. Sure, you can refuel, but it does require you to get close to the ground. Tough enough that it’s something you will want to avoid if not necessary.

Written for home computers, this game doesn’t have the graphics of the arcade games of the time – in fact, it barely improves on Lunar Lander in that respect, thanks to a bit of colour and a few different structures on the surface. It’s still a big challenge, though, one that even now is frustratingly addictive, as we noticed in our repeated ‘one more try’. I do hate that computer games manage to trigger such a basic psychological response.

Final Thoughts

This game is easily available on the web if you are keen to play it but one thing I would suggest is to disable the sticky keys on your computer, there was many a time where I was close to hitching my tractor beam and then the sticky keys warning pops up and… well it was game over for me. You have been warned.

 

#43 Xevious

Posted: 2nd May 2013 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , ,
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236th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1982
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

There is a big argument for doing games in strictly chronological order, that way we can see exactly who did what first and who influenced whom. Xevious is the earliest example of a vertical shooting game that appears on this list (yet is actually not the first to do so) but due to it’s early status we can automatically give it the title of influential. (Something that may not apply to all games of such an age. Who remembers Dig Dug or Mr. Do?) But does it still hold up?

Our Thoughts

The fact that iPhone games like Sad Robot are bringing interesting variants to the vertical shoot ’em up shows just how essential this genre this is. We have already covered a few of these (one of the more recent one being Ikari Warriors) so it was interesting to see what was improved on in later years in order to make newer games…  the answer is not much.

Xevious already has pretty much all the essential components in a vertical scrolling top down shoot ’em up (wow that’s a long genre). You have enemies approaching you in the sky which you shoot and then there are enemies on the ground that you bomb into submission. That fact that this game is actually set in a rich (considering the graphics in 1982 games) environment rather than the blackness of space is also a novelty for that era. Earlier game usually relied on a plastic overlay to achieve this effect (such as Boot Hill) but here it is fully rendered and has that simple retro look that we all know and love. It also makes the game feel more alive than the blackness of space. There’s more variety – you’re actually making progress traveling from one place to another, rather than floating in nothingness and no reference to scale.

It’s not exactly the riveting story found in games like Mass Effect but this is the eighties and outside of kill all enemies (we were still in the Cold War after all) there isn’t much driving this game apart from the fun… and the other thing. Other thing? Well, Xevious was one of the first games to include an Easter Egg. In fact, there are a number of Easter Eggs in this game… which neither of us found during our playthroughs but hey it’s amazing that more than 30 years ago this was an idea that was had and remained the bane of every completionist’s life (although the mentions of Xevious in Namco’s later Ridge Racer series is a nice touch).

Final Thoughts

Games and genres don’t usually leap ahead – a lot of it can be incremental growth with each game adding its own bits and pieces. This is especially true in the early years of videogaming, where a lot of different things were tried. When it comes to visuals and interaction with the world, Xevious pushed the genre forward, and that’s something. Beyond that, even now this would be playable on mobile devices, as  casual game, which is something that’s always an accomplishment.

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