#608 Ridge Racer

Posted: 28th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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235th played so far

Genre: Driving
Platform: PSP
Year of Release:  2004
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

There’s several games in this series, with two others sharing the title, and one (the 1993 edition) being on the list for future play as well.

I guess that means it’s a notable, good racing game, but I’ll be honest, for this game, it’s hard to write an introduction. Racing game, techno soundtrack, hard to say what’s special about it before playing it. Similar things have been previously said about Wipeout HD, F-Zero GX and probably about the ghost scene in the second Matrix movie.

Our Thoughts

Let me just prefix this with my first negative bit of impression: I couldn’t beat the first round of the first part of the competition. Yeah. The very first race, where you have to finish third or higher, I couldn’t. It’s mostly my fault, but it seems worth mentioning.

As said, this series (and in fact, the first tracks) dates back to 1993. I suppose this is where it shows. It’s not impossibly difficult once you find out what to do (use the blue car!), but it can stump you, and it’s not the guaranteed first win most other games would give you. Unless you are me and have played a number of racing/driving games then the first level is a bit of a doddle. The place where it begins to get difficult is around the fourth racing tour where instead of just good driving you need to be adept at drifting, something I personally find difficult.

There is one bit of what feels like clearer cheating though. While in most games, you start on a starting grid where all cars are fairly close to each other (you’re usually last, but can still get far simply from a good start), in this game you start several car lengths behind the car before you, and the first car seems to be halfway around the track before you even start. It probably adds to the challenge, but feels like a cheat.

Why drift? Well with every drift and handbrake turn you earn a bit more nitrous to launch your car down a track like a rocket. In tight situations this is very very useful and when well timed is essential to winning the race. Eventually you do get used to these tracks seeing how there are only 12 in the game (24 if you count the same track being mirrored in a similar manner to Mario Kart games). This is a bit of a short-change especially since none of these are originals seeing how they have been lifted from previous games in the series.

In some ways this game feels incredibly scaled down compared to the likes of Pure since it is a (excuse the pun) a pure racing game without many excessive thrills minus graphics, which still look gorgeous on the PSP, but Ridge Racer is all the better for this. Due to this Ridge Racer has a real pick-up-and-playability unlike many portable racing games not set in a futuristic environment.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t a special game, with many flashy features or special tricks. The graphics, thanks to its handheld nature, aren’t great. But this could still rate as a high point of the genre. It’s a good, solid racing game, focusing slightly on the drifting and speed boost, but just as much on pure, quick racing. You need to be accurate, you need to be fast, and you need to pay attention to what you’re doing. Scary, but in the end absolutely fun racing.

#636 Darwinia

Posted: 24th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

234th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Introversion Software
Publisher: Introversion Software

Some time ago – about two years by now, in fact – we covered a lovely game called Uplink. Interesting in its own way, it was a hacking simulation, in a way that felt like it emphasised realism over graphics or flashiness. It worked incredibly well and was very tense.

It is the first of Introversion’s games, who’s other two games (both listed) deal with vaguely similar themes. DEFCON, which we’ll discuss at some later day, is pretty much about all-out nuclear war, while today’s entry deals more with the computer side of things. In Darwinia, you enter a world filled with artificial intelligences that you have to rescue and keep safe.

Our Thoughts

Somehow the description above doesn’t seem right. Yeah, it’s what you’re doing – removing the viruses in a computer system, restoring the Darwinians to life and fixing the connections between parts of the system.

The way to play this, however, is fairly simple. You get a limited number of units – initially three, although this goes up through subsequent upgrades. Until you get the appropriate amount of research, you direct them to attack, first with lasers, later with grenades as well. They learn to defend themselves down the line… this just takes a while.

You do similar micromanagement on other units – while engineers will gather souls (freshly harvested from dead viruses) nearby to be reborn as Darwinians, you still need to guide them in the right direction, especially when you want them to reprogram the control towers and other useful structures in the area.

Similar things apply to other units, requiring you to spend quite a bit of time on each unit. This is one reason why the small group of units works out, but even then the amount of micromanagement can get frustrating. Not so much to direct them for their usual purpose, but because, for example, their path-finding is so simple that they can only go in a straight line, and a two-square diversion around a wall is impossible for them. At best, it may take more time. At worst, it means they waltz through an everything-destroying wall without any regards to their safety, immediately killing themselves.

Once the game gets going, though, it gets quite addictive. Blasting viruses is quite satisfying and seeing the Darwinians regenerate after you collect their souls, it does make you feel better.

At first glance the graphics in this game are pretty simplistic, but they do serve a purpose. With the exception of the trees (which are beautiful) everything looks fairly retro and pixelated. The Darwinians themselves are green and two-dimensional (to the point that they are so thin that they disappear from view if you rotate your view to the right point) to the point of looking like a cool clothing logo. The viruses are very very red and range from arrows lighting up the ground to tentacled UFO things that lay virus-filled eggs. There are even some interesting virus-laying flora which burn in a rather satisfying fashion when you throw a grenade at their roots.

As with Uplink and many games of the early nineties the closest link you have to human contact is slightly moving photograph of a talking head. It’s slightly disconcerting since it is just one step away from South Park’s much beloved Terrance and Phillip with their heads flapping up and down. Don’t get me wrong, your contact is very helpful since they are there researching away in the background to make sure your weapons pack a mean punch and the Darwinians don’t remain completely helpless as the viruses draw near.

In terms of strategy… there is not too much that is too dissimilar to the likes of Populous. Kill the enemies, take over the once-yours bases and escort your people to safety. The real novelty of this game really does lie in it being set inside of a computer (much like the controversial episode of Pokémon where many Japanese children were overcome by epileptic seizures). Due to this the time sink that certain escorting things become bareable. To be fair the idiocy of the Darwinians does put the floating head in Perfect Dark to shame… but it isn’t their fault because (in many ways) they are newborns unlike the head who must, therefore, be brain damaged.

Final Thoughts

This game has its flaws – mainly around its flawed controls and requirement to stay close to a lot of the action even when there is more going on elsewhere you want to attend to. Still, the game’s look and feel are charming, and you do really want to save the Darwinians. It certainly appeals to older gamers in its look and gameplay, but it’s just cool enough that you want to keep going and find out what else happens during the story.

#532 Eve Online

Posted: 20th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

233rd played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: CCP Games
Publisher: CCP Games

Eve Online is an odd game. As I mentioned, I often speak with people who know a thing or two about video games, and today the subject of Eve Online happened to come up. An article about someone who lost over $6000 worth of ingame credits, and while I didn’t know the specifics of the ship class (“it’s a beginner’s ship”), I quickly got what it was about, where the loss came from and how stupid it was. And why it’s something you can expect in Eve Online.

This game has a reputation for being lawless and allowing almost anything. It feels edgy and dangerous. And it clearly proclaims this is not a light game you can just play for a bit. Not something that matches our quickfire way of judging a game, but let’s see how that ends up.

Our Thoughts

Wow. Let’s start with the greatness. We’ve played some lovely-looking games, like Aion, but space has its own set of lovely sight and Eve Online makes full use of them. It makes for lovely travel around the galaxy.

You’ll do that a lot when playing the game. The game makes maximum use of its space setting by setting its missions in different galaxies and solar systems and requiring you to travel through space gates to get there. Although it can, at times, be beautiful, it’s just as obvious that the time it takes can be annoying. That’s why one of the first features the game introduces to you in its tutorial is the auto pilot. Turn it on and go off to do your laundry, and half an hour later you arrive and can continue playing.

This tutorial is a lot more bearable than Runescape‘s, being short before allowing you to play normally and pick your own way, with an interface dotted with help that allows you to learn about the other features as you play.

Still, its mission structure seems almost like a token effort, done because other MMORPGs have it and to set up a structure to the game. I just didn’t get the feeling it mattered as much – the game certainly doesn’t point you to them or encourages their use much. Instead, it focuses on the larger picture.

You start an empire to hang out with and shortly after the tutorial are further encouraged to specialize in one or two roles, doing some specific work – mining, trading, researching or such. From there on you move on to the next step – organizations. These are pushed heavily in the interface, the guilds or clans of other games, and that seems to be the big feature of the game.

As said, the game is very much focused on the social aspect. The economy is open and a lot of what happens in the game is up to players to define – it’s clear this is where the appeal comes from. The fact that this game has a real life economist on speed-dial to make sure it’s running according to real-life models really let’s you know that they mean business. Not being involved in that as much, and not seeking the cooperation, feels dangerous – you wouldn’t want to play this game for the pretty sights and the missions, as it feels like there’s just too much that could threaten you to mess you up.

We’re not the most social players when it comes to these games and I’m sure that removed some of our enjoyment of the game. As cool as the things in the game are, not wanting to invest in knowing people removes a lot of the fun. We didn’t have as much of a chance to, considering the time we spend on each game, so missed out… if we felt more drawn into that at the start, I can see how it might really become addictive.

Final Thoughts

The main thing that prevents us from playing this for very long after the needed time is the price. I know it sounds cheap but freemium games like Aion have more to offer us since we are unable to invest a lot of time over a long period of time into an MMORPG, let alone one with a monthly plan.

Of all the MMORPGs this was definitely the most gorgeous and, arguably, the one with the most in-depth game play. With only one on the 1001 list to go… things are looking good for EVE Online.

#489 Runescape

Posted: 16th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

232nd played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: Jagex Games Studio
Publisher: Jagex Games Studio

 This MMORPG is a bit of a different one. Probably one of the first of free to play, later taken on by smaller and larger MMORPGs including even World of Warcraft – a fact we’ve taken advantage of in some of our reviews so we can play the game more easily.

Runescape started off with that… and I noticed. My brother loved the game – addicted is a big word for it, but I know he played it quite a bit (and for all I know, still does, although Minecraft seems to have replaced it). I’ve avoided it so far, but let’s see whether it works.

Our Thoughts

Right, I have to complain about this. I know this was transient, but it’s left such a bad taste in my mouth that it immediately made me dislike the game more. You see, they have a tutorial in this game, as so many. It’s what you start of with. It feels mandatory and to honest – when I play a new game like this, I want to go through one so I know what I’m doing. Especially when I am going through it for a blog like this, where I want to get to know the game.

So imagine my annoyance when, about twenty minutes in, I got stuck in the tutorial because the game refused to recognise that I mined copper. I tried for about an hour and a half more, googled and found others were having trouble, but no reply and no solution. I came back to the game almost a week later and it was fixed, but I wasn’t happy.

You see, you’re trying to sell a game. The tutorial already contained a lot of ‘this is for paying members only’ stuff – in fact, I believe the whole tutorial area is. Getting people stuck twenty minutes in does not sell the game. If not for this blog, I’d have not  come back.

Even without that complaint, the tutorial is terrible. It lasts a long time – I think we properly played it for at least three hours and didn’t even finish it – and is boring. There’s a veneer of story, but it’s trite, boring, unbelievable and, well, just crap. It’s not compelling and didn’t draw me in further and certainly didn’t make me want to play. It was difficult to remember stuff anyway – they’re introducing thirty or so different skill, most of which I don’t care about, lots of which don’t mix, and really, when they’re only good for healing, and you heal rapidly anyway, why would you have five different ways to make food?

And that is the other part about gameplay. There’s lots of options, lots of skills, but most seem a bit too awkward, unnecessary to use or unnecesarily complicated. The game is a sandbox, and I just don’t find myself wanting to go in. In part because it’s too constrained – you just need to keep getting the same stuff in the same places to make the same thing. It is very grindy and just gets boring real soon. Even the different crafting skills are the same – harvest something, take to place, make it, there’s not much to it.

Beyond that, the game feels unstable as hell. The normal smoothing of action other MMORPGs do are absent, making movement jerky. Clicking a button is ignored sometimes and is instead interpreted as a movement click. Not that you can tell they do half the time, the window is that unobtrusive.

Graphics… dated but okay I suppose, just not as intriguing. I can see why the game appeals to its audience, and when you’re drawn in it would get a lot better, but it’s just not got that appeal. Too complex, too involved, and nothing to look forward do it feels. Maybe if you make it through the tutorial, but I can’t imagine many people would…

Final Thoughts

Normally I would have chipped in before now to offer something (anything) positive is when I would normally try and chip and in and offer something positive about the game but to be honest I could not think of anything to really recommend this game over other MMORPGs. In fact I can not understand how this is still around and City of Heroes is not. Why is this game so popular? Unless you started playing it 11 years ago when it first came out I just don’t understand it. 

#216 Alone In The Dark

Posted: 12th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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231st played so far

Genre: Survival Horror
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1992
Developer: Infogrames
Publisher: Infogrames

Now here’s a game that I vaguely remember. Not as much playing it personally, but I had a friend who had this game and played through it quite a bit. There was shooting and there were zombies and that was all awesome and exciting when you’re twelve years old.

With its early 3D graphics though, the game isn’t going to look that impressive – I remember the 3D to be nice at the time, but I’ve been disillusioned before. 3D just hasn’t always held up.

Our Thoughts

We’ve slowly been making our way through the survival horror games (very slowly because we need to play them when the sun is out). As we did, we noticed an overlap with other genres in each of them. Gregory Horror Show was an adventure. Dead Rising an FPS. Resident Evil, a mix between those two. For Alone in the Dark, we’re back to an adventure again.

This is no real surprise, when you look at the year this game was released. It’s the first survival horror in the book, released in 1992, and one of the first in its genre. While there are earlier games that handle suspense and puzzle-solving, this game set the environment and story telling used by many of the early successors – you can clearly see where Resident Evil took its cues from this game, from the abandoned house to static camera angles and partial overlap in weapons.

While it shows, the game comes together as a suspenseful adventure, with the horror elements you want and some panicky moment, starting with the creatures that creep up on you on the first screen. You can avoid them, but it’s scary – especially in some of the chase scenes. It is interesting how they make sure you can get through this game successfully by only having to kill less than ten enemies. Others can be destroyed by solving puzzles but there are some that you just have to run away from, such as a giant worm inspired by creatures from Lovecraft’s mythology. Possibly the more famous of these enemies are those that can be seen in our screen capture. The ghosts waltzing to Danse Macabre are a nightmare. They move randomly and if they touch you you die. You can get lucky and make it through first time… but more likely you will scream in frustration as these china figurines make your life hell.

That’s true for the puzzles and the small but present story. Other parts have aged enough that they’re not as good. The game is set up as a 3D game – while a lot is pre-rendered with the set camera angle, the character models are all 3D. And while they try, and obviously this predates any sort of 3D acceleration, it does look crap. The werewolf is only recognisable due to vaguely brown fur and the zombies don’t look very human… although probably just as human as the main character.

Where it shows more, however, is a place where it’s less forgivable – the controls. You can play with terrible graphics, but this is where it feels like the game isn’t cooperating. Not working against you to add tension, but just in a way that makes the game less fun. Pushing things, for example, is accurate and it’s hard to push in the right direction. Camera angles suddenly change, in a way that don’t work, because they hide your character or don’t show enough depth. These are techniques that can work if used right, but here feel like a simple gameplay annoyance.

Final Thoughts

One more survival horror and statistically we will back to where we should be… probably doesn’t help that we have been focusing a lot on MMORPGs lately.

Still, this is one of the few survival horrors where I was pretty much guarenteed to not freak out at any given moment. The fact that I have a slight zombie phobia (or kinemortophobia) does not help with this line of gaming.

#562 Planetside

Posted: 8th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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230th played so far

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Sony Online Entertainment
Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment

Here’s a novelty. Rather than an MMORPG, we’ve got an MMOFPS. It’s like an MMORPG, but you run around shooters and such.

But wait, you ask, most FPS games have a multiplayer component, co-op and player versus player. What’s the different?

Well, persistence, really. It seems like there’s limited leveling and your fights are intended to change the balance of areas in the world. I’m not entirely sure how it works out, but it seems an interesting enough mix.

Our Thoughts

The basic principles of an FPS don’t differ much between games. You walk around, shoot and find your way around. In multiplayer, you try to shoot more people, maybe find a flag or do something similar… Still, despite all the differences, you pick up the basics easily and can often use them elsewhere.

It’s quite telling, then, that Planetside gives you a list of 10 tutorial missions you can play through when you want to. This isn’t to teach you the basic controls – they are straightforward and the game expects you to know and use them. No, it’s all the extra complications the game needs to explain. The inventory system is more complicated, meaning there’s some time dedicated to how to switch between items, how to acquire them and the differences between them. It takes some time to go into vehicles (actually quite a bit, as these are fairly versatile) and other concepts, such as experience and travel between planets. In terms of controls this game is pretty solid but nothing exactly groundbreaking or noteworthy.

 

Yeah, planets. The point of the game is that you join one of three factions and together attempt to take over the galaxy. Thanks to experience bonuses for factions that are losing, you end up with a fair balance between them, fighting back and forth over control of bases.

These worlds are large. As another move away from the cramped, frantic multiplayer maps, you instead have large continent you can travel across. These are so huge that vehicles are freely available from bases you control. Take a squad, move out together and you can quickly get to the base you invade. If you don’t have one, it gets more annoying though – a long run from an outpost back to a base can take several minutes, meaning that warping back to base is often faster, even if less realistic.

Still, more important, the game helps you get into the action easily. From any friendly location, you can warp to ‘instant action’. You respawn from a friendly base and can immediately march into battle. Once you’re in that base, it becomes a true FPS game, where you either defend your central point or try to shoot through the others to get to the control room, where if you hack it long enough, you can take over the base.

One big downside is one that is the same worry as so many other games – the player base. While not as dead as MUD, on a world this large you’d expect to be able to see many conflicts. However, we often weren’t able to go to any and didn’t have an easy way to find out where they’d be. Just as telling in that is the server selection – or lack of it. Sony is keeping one server online, but that’s all you can currently find. It’s a shame.

As for the graphics, it’s that double standard. Nowadays, it looks dated and blocky, but I can see how it was good in 2003, with some gorgeous sights. It’s nice, but no longer something I’d recommend. Even so, having just one player model per gender with just slightly different faces feels slightly lazy, which is a bit unfortunate. Considering the circumstances though, it doesn’t matter much.

During my time on this game (and I went through all the training before venturing out into the virtual world) I only came across a handful of other players. I joined their squad and flew into enemy territory… to find that there were no enemies there. They were perplexed, I was perplexed it was a bit of an anti-climax to all that training where you got to blow things up with grenades. Quite sad really.

Final Thoughts

I can see how back in the day this would have been a really fun game to play with mates online (like what Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft are at the moment) since there really is a competitive streak to it that is fairly awesome. The thing is that unless you are looking at a large number of people (since the option of Timesplitter–style bots don’t exist in this world) playing this can feel like wandering through an old ghost town.

You get to admire the architecture and the scope of a community that has begun to neglect it.

#900 Aion: The Tower of Eternity

Posted: 4th April 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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229th played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Aion Team Development Dept
Publisher: NCSoft

 We’ve already covered several of MMORPG publisher NCSoft’s games in the past, with our first MMORPG Guild Wars and more recently the ill-fated City of Heroes. As that last game partially inspired our drive to complete these online games, our quick selection now brings us to one of NCSoft’s more recent offering.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity (or, from now on, Aion) is a more recent South Korean MMORPG. My thought is (based also on earlier bits and pieces) – lovely graphics, trying for bits of JRPG type story… but mostly lots and lots of grinding. That, after all, is what they seem best at.

Our Thoughts

Let me check… okay, Peter managed to get away from the game to do some work. That’s good this time.

There are some similarities here to Guild Wars that will have helped here, as well as some added feature.

Let’s start with the first part that they’ve taken advantage of – graphics. Though not as natural as Guild Wars, the environments are detailed, lush and gorgeous. Added to this are lovely character art and wonderful creatures. I’m not sure how Peter managed – there were too many cute critters around that you had to kill because they were supposed to be evil or annoying – really, just move your farm, right?

The quests are mostly fairly standard – kill five of this, collect eight of that, you know the drill. There’s a few exceptions – one involve you waking up tree guardians, another stealing a nymph’s clothes – but it’s generally quite straight forward quest fare.

That nymph’s quest shows the game’s roots. As suits a Korean RPG (and its players), there’s a lot of grinding. Leveling starts quick but starts to go slower soon, from level six or seven on. It gets a bit tedious and a lesser game would probably struggle to keep your attention through it.

Luckily, the story, as it’s told through the quests, the graphics and environments and all the available options make it bearable, making for an intriguing experience.Add to that the background notes, explanations you can access by clicking on keywords in a dialogue, that may not always be relevant, but add a bit more to the world and a sense of it being alive. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t seem to change much in response to your actions – there’s just not the interactivity other games allow – but it’s engaging nonetheless.

When you leave the first area the game opens up immensely and you gain access a whole new area of expertise and ways to expand your character. One of the more noticeable things is the presence of pets, your first being a cute little frog thing. If you gather enough money (or get even further) the options of pets and familiars increases to include anything from a miniature cow to a strange circular knife thing. These pets have different uses depending on what type of pet they are. Some are able to act as an extra inventory, some eat junk and crap better items, others are just there to be cute and to give love. The final ones are the cutest of them all… apart from the donkeys.

Another big development is the wings. This ties in to the elevation of your character’s status and means that for a limited amount of time you (and your pet) don some wings and can fly high above the world. The best part of this is not just the sense of freedom this affords but also to see the number of weird pets sprouting wings.

This longevity is also achieved by all the options you can see around. One big thing that’ll intrigue you for a while, for example, are the higher level characters flying around. While I’m not sure how it works or where you do it, it’s a promise for a larger intriguing game.

Final Thoughts

By now we have made our way through a large number of MMOs but this is the first one since Guild Wars to really impress us… and considering the next game we played this list of great MMOs won’t be increased for a while.

#969 Starship Patrol

Posted: 31st March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

228th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: DS
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Q-Games
Publisher: Nintendo

Starship Patrol? It doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. We know Q-Games worked on the previously covered Reflect Missile, but beyond that our first sources don’t allow us to look for much. Based on the book, we’re looking at a tower defense game set in space. With spaceships. Yeah.

Our Thoughts

The game is rather interesting. While the gameplay is based on tower defense, it’s a bit more restrained than you usually see. Where you deploy your guns and other items (the towers from other games in the genre) depends on the spaceship you’re patrolling with, with the enemies following set paths around your ship rather than being directed. This makes you focus more on placement and strengths than influencing enemy behaviour, which plays a bit more focused on what you place.

The guns are fairly straightforward, mostly with the usual (slow heavy hitters, quick ranged hitters and such) but some interesting bits. One of my favourites in interestingness (not a word) is the tractor beam, which you unlock later in a level (after you gather enough crystals). It does what it says on the tin, and can be invaluable in dealing with the later boss-level aliens – if you get them trapped in range of your guns, they are almost toast.

The different ship formations for each level and the different paths make for some nice variation and keep you on your toes – even partway through they may come in from a surprise angle that you haven’t covered, leeching away your health.

It doesn’t sustain that interest for too long though – in the end the gameplay here is similar each time, and you have to be in the mood to repeat all those puzzles. It fulfills the promise of a downloadable game in that sense – best played in short bursts of a few levels at a time.

The game feels like it has a similar sort of retro look as Reflect Missile – remarkably clean and simple in its presentation, which means you don’t get distracted. It’s clear what’s going on and what sort of thing you can expect from each enemy, with most of them easily becoming intuitive. It’s a neat way of doing things, and while the sterile look won’t work for everyone, it felt good enough for me.

Final Thoughts

Just like with Reflect Missile this is just one of those games that you can get for free on the internet or on smartphones and they are pretty much as good (sometimes better). I know that this sounds a little bit Scroogey but unless a game is old or groundbreaking I do feel a bit cheated having to pay for it when another title does the same for free.

#868 Space Invaders Extreme

Posted: 27th March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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0

227th played so far

Genre: Action/Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: DS/PSP/XBox 360
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Square Enix

Everyone knows Space Invaders, right? It’s a classic, its aliens even adorning the cover of our book. It’s a game that everyone knows and one of the first people will think of when they think of video games.

The original was hugely succesful, spawning a lot of copies such as Galaxian, but never (really) a sequel until this game. Thirty years later, Space Invaders Extreme was released for various handhelds. To quote the box: “A legend on a whole new level”

Our Thoughts

That… is quite an experience.

The general gameplay remains the same – you move around and shoot the aliens, as well as UFOs flying around for bonus points. While doing this, you avoid the missiles being fired by the enemy aliens and try to get them before they reach the lower edge of the screen. Well, you have one disadvantage – the missile bases at the bottom of the screen are gone, unfortunately. You don’t get that protection any longer. Just that would’ve been boring though – and a bit of a waste of time. Plenty has changed, then, to make the game more worth it and to earn its place on this list.

First, a lot of colour has been added. The background and aesthetics first of all – while playing the game, the patterns and colours reminded me a lot of Lumines or Meteos. It’s pretty neat, although most of the time you don’t get a chance to admire it – it’s there to admire when there’s time. More relevant colour, however, shows up in the colours of the enemies. These, aside from sometimes being white, now show up as red, green and blue. This time this matters, as you can rack up combos of enemies. Get four blue enemies in a row, for example, and your weapon becomes a continuous laser, while four green make you fire four shots at once. These power-ups can be incredibly useful and getting them will be one goal you’ll need while advancing through these stages.

Rather than the set formation that repeats itself at faster speeds throughout the game, Space Invaders Extreme instead mixes up its wave of attackers with different versions (almost Arkanoid-like) to mix things up. Added to that are several bonus stages where you get extra points by killing enough monsters in a specific amount of time, as well as boss levels that feature a giant alien for you to defeat.

Despite the fact that the shelters have been abandoned in favour of a more vulnerable approach the difficulty feels about the same. Everything moves slightly faster and there are kamikaze ships to annoy you but on average each sub-level will see you facing less enemies than in the original. Plus the fact that it is very easy to destroy your enemies missiles with your own means that you are less likely to be backed into a corner. On the other hand… everything is still a hell of a lot faster than the original so if the flashing lights don’t distract you the sheer amount of blur will.

In actual fact there is no reason for this to be a Space Invaders brand game. If anything piggybacking on the brand this way actually detracts from some of the fun. True, it lead to wider notice and seeing gigantic ships firing laser beams is not without it’s charm but I really would have loved to see a more original field of enemies with the same multi-coloured, blurry, Lumines-style experience. In this way it is hard to know whether this is a loving attempt to bring this classic to an audience used to commercial breaks every five minutes or just a good piece of marketing. Everyone with a console will know Space Invaders, hell most will have played it, but creating a fast seizure-inducing sequel feels a bit off. Then again, the restraint it must have taken Square Enix to not sneak in a chocobo must have led to someone developing a hernia.

Final Thoughts

It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, and it’s not like me to get sentimental over the legacy of a computer game released before I was born. Did it need a reboot? No it didn’t. Is it a good reboot? Yes it is. Still, does not make it feel any less cheap than the fourth Indiana Jones film was.

#358 Ultima Online

Posted: 23rd March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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226th played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Origin Systems
Publisher: Electronic Arts

And I suppose it’s about time we start with the granddaddy of them all. Ultima Online is one of the first MMORPGs, and with its rise being at the same time as the rise of the internet, it’s little wonder it was the first to really take off.

For that reason, it’s been a game I’ve always been curious about. Ultima has always been a bit of a magic name (I used to love Ultima Underworld) and playing it online? With other people? That sounds awesome, right?

It’s dated. I know that’ll affect our opinions (it’ll definitely lower my expectations). Let’s see how that goes.

Our Thoughts

Oh my god. Okay, I knew this was an isometric game, on some level. I know that’s what the old Ultima games were like. It’s just almost scary how unused I am to this. No it isn’t, it’s fricking confusing!.

That’s not to say I don’t like isometric in general – I’m loving my current playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 2 and don’t get put off by the graphics, but this feels different. Despite us using the enhanced client, the graphics are dated. Not terrible (I somehow remember worse screenshots) but just unclear enough that they feel off and harder to get into.

The controls don’t help with this either. The left-/right-click choices feel off and unintuitive and the stance mechanic (attack or talk is decided by a toggle on the taskbar, rather than using context) is difficult to get and adjust to. Add to that an impenetrable interface that seems to have grown randomly instead of being designed with some amount of care.  Seriously – a wheel of virtues sort of thing got a main button on the task bar, while getting to some of my skills or abilities or whatever took two or three clicks. Note that ‘some’ – different types were spread out over different pages, with some of my skills having to be dragged out of a book in my inventory. The hotbar seemed a bit random in what it can do, mostly taking experimentation.

There is a brief tutorial in game to help you get used to this, but it’s brief and doesn’t cover even a lot of basic actions. It’ll start you playing, but you’re mostly on your own, hoping you figure it out. This game dates from the time of the manual, and I guess that’s probably obvious in how little it holds your hand (I still don’t buy that you were meant to be killed by the first zombie you meet…).

There are, obviously, many similarities with Everquest. One of the more interesting ones is how it expanded its playing time. As with Everquest, Ultima Online seems to have added a large number of crafting mechanisms. I didn’t really get into it – it’s just not my thing – but I suppose I see how it can keep you interested. Playing these two early MMORPGs so close together means that it is impossible to not make comparisons between these two games.

In the end though, I suspect that by now this game really is only for the most hardcore fans, people returning and those who have the perseverance to go through. For its legacy it’s worth the inclusion in the list, and I’m glad I’ve given it a go. Still, if you want to play more online with others, it’s worth looking for other offerings. Whether it’s World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, many games derive from the formula and made it more up to date. And with there being stories of a new MMORPG in the Ultima world being developed, who knows what else we might find to play?

Final Thoughts

It is not a universal truth that we find older games hard to judge. There are many older games (such as Super Metroid and Railroad Tycoon) where much enjoyment has been derived because there is a sense of timelessness about their elements. As long as a game is tight and well designed it will be immortal; that’s all there is to it. However, like the grinding in Everquest or the menu systems in this game,  flaws become more and more pronounced as time goes by (something felt with Skool Daze) to the point where it is hard not to riff on their seemingly archaic nature. Sorry Ultima Online, I know you were a trailblazer but Everquest was far more impressive.

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