Pong and Beyond

#162 The NewZealand Story

Posted: 29th December 2012 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: 1988, platform, taito, Various

205th played so far

Genre: Platform
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1988
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito

There are times that we (okay mostly me in this case at least) see a game in this book which intrigues us to the point that we really want to play. Nothing interesting there right? Well this game has been on and off our “to play” list for well over a year.

The reason it kept being taken off of the lists is because we would then end up with a pile of games from a friend of ours (thanks Kat and Chris!) so it would go on the back-burner, be forgotten and then be re-discovered during a random flick through the book. Was it worth it?

Our Thoughts

Taito. They are better known for producing a rather cute green dinosaur that features in games such as Bubble Bobble and Puzzle Bobble. This game, The NewZealand Story, is not a particularly well known but we need to cover it anyway. (Don’t worry, it’s not that much of a chore. Not this time.)

This platformer follows the very common story of making your way through a variety of levels in order to rescue your brethren. In the case of this your friends (a large group of kiwi birds) have been carried off by a seal and it is your task to save them.

Graphically this game is absolutely adorable. The central character is equipped with little blue sneakers and can be equipped with scuba gear, a flying duck and even a mage’s staff that spits fire. Aside from the fact that one of the kiwis is seen smoking in the beginning sequence (that’s how they did it in the eighties I guess) the whole thing is disarmingly cute.

This even extends to the levels and layout. They’re brightly coloured (the kiwis are bright yellow, rather than their more usual brown) and feature a lot of variety in designs. The levels have some darker parts, but they are subtle – the restaurants selling kiwi meat are a nice touch you won’t notice straight off. The enemies themselves, too, are nice. They’re funny and over the top, but work in a game like this – one that isn’t too serious.

I say ‘disarmingly’ because this game is hard. Really hard. We talked about the difficulty in Kid Icarus and this game can really match it. The enemies spawn randomly and have a tendency to swarm you if you are unable to take them out. A lot of the platforming sections require near pinpoint accuracy to prevent you plummeting to your death made more difficult by the platofrms often being less than half your width. Also, there are sections where you need to hijack an enemies aircraft (all well and good, your character looks ridiculously cute in a hot air balloon) and you may find yourself trapped if you kill the enemies in the wrong way.

Honestly, there are times where this game is exceedingly frustrating. I am all for a game that is difficult but a lot of the trappings in The NewZealand Story due to the game’s design. It’s not as bad on a home console but I can only imagine the utter annoyance this caused when it was in an arcade cabinet.

Part platformer, part shooter, part game that involves you fighting your way out of the stomach of a boss and all slightly nuts. It’s a good game but not one for the impatient.

Final Thoughts

While this game has ended up on a few compilations, it never gained much more traction. It’s probably because we had plenty of platforming heroes around the time this was released, while the game’s difficulty wouldn’t have helped much either – Super Mario Bros. is still more accessible. However, with its colours and design, it’s fun to play, with plenty of challenges. Thankfully, the learning curve is shallow – learning a few tricks gets you far, and a few deaths in it becomes a lot easier.

Still, not for the faint of heart, this is a game from a time where they pulled no punches. And that, in a way, makes it brilliant.

#983 Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Posted: 25th December 2012 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: 2009, adventure, DS, Level-5, nintendo, puzzle

204th played so far

Genre: Adventure/Puzzle
Platform: DS
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Level-5
Publisher: Nintendo

First of all, merry Christmas to all our readers! We hope you have a great time with family, friends or other people you want to spend time with, and that your presents were good (and filled with great video games).

Those of you who’ve kept with our blog for a while now (assuming someone’s out there) may remember we’ve covered the charming Professor Layton’s first game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, some time ago.

During our recent trip to Disneyland Paris (discussed in Ferrari F355 Challenge), we needed something to occupy us with the train trip to the park and back home. While we’re delightful company, three hours each way meant that we needed more to do than chat all the way there. Peter picked up a few handheld games for his picks, and settled down on another Professor Layton. And yeah, we got stuck in it again. For anyone who is interested the other game was the puzzle/RPG Puzzle Quest.

Our Thoughts

The basic formula of the game is unchanged from Curious Village: Walk around, solve puzzles, unlock areas and solve the mystery plaguing the participants in this plot – in this case, some happenstance on the Molentary Express, a cross-country train. After you exit the train you find yourself in the mysterious town of Folsense which in itself is macarbre with reports of ghosts and vampires being abundance… as well as the townsfolk’s thirst for tea.

Starting with a mysterious letter and suspicious death, mysteries soon include a missing ‘child’, torn up photographs and, most important, the titular box. It’s an intriguing plot, with some outcomes telegraphed beforehand, but most still cleverly plotted and drawing you forward step by step. We didn’t get far enough in to give a full judgement – that’s something we’ll probably get to – but so far it’s been great fun. Speak for yourself, due to issues with builders forcing me to spend the day in my bedroom I completed the game whilst watching some episodes of Dr Katz Professional Therapist on YouTube. In total the story takes around 10 hours to complete since many of the puzzles will stump you to the point that you may shed a tear on a crowded Eurostar.

The puzzles themselves are mostly good. A good mix of difficult and easy (though some we find easy are judged difficult, and vice versa, and there have been a few we nearly got stuck on). Some can be argued with, still, with reading the creator’s mind more than it being about solving the puzzle, although to be fair that’s not as bad as it was. The main problem faced with a franchise like this is that you will eventually run out of puzzles, which is something that we felt here. There were an abundance of block-moving puzzles which are less about logical reasoning and more about trial and error. As Jeroen mentioned there is a problem with the puzzle difficulty to reward ration with myself finding 60-rated puzzles a breeze whilst many 20-rated puzzles really gave me trouble.

The game looks as gorgeous as before, nicely hand drawn backgrounds and characters, similar as to what we praised before. In the previous game I wondered whether the angular looks of the villagers were a reflection of French animation a la Les Triplettes De Belleville but no this really is the animation style they have chosen and it really does serve them well. Some of the best parts of this really are the beautifully illustrated cutscenes (although the British accents are a little bit strange)

On the whole, it’s similar to the previous installment of Professor Layton, which is overall a good thing – it’s fun, difficult and with an interesting plot. It’s just difficult to say what’s there without repeating – it takes the same strong formula, and evens it out slightly in difficulty, but still has the same exploring, puzzle solving and plot following. It’s good, but I think it’s best we leave the game series here where this blog is concerned – it’s already in danger of becoming formulaic – in the good James Bond sense, true, with nice twists and new stuff, satisfying your need for puzzles, just without anything new to be found there that’d make it worth it. There is nothing wrong with finding a formula that works (Lego did it for years) but there will come a time where they need to shake things up a bit… and I look forward to seeing how Level-5 plan to do so.

Final Thoughts

I suppose it’s rather appropriate we got our first Professor Layton game during Christmas… Anyway, that’s not as relevant. Again, this is a fun and charming puzzler. The formula is still holding up!

#894 Assassin’s Creed II

Posted: 21st December 2012 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: 2009, action, adventure, pc, playstation 3, ubisoft, xbox 360

203rd played so far

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft

The way we find out about games can really vary depending on the person and the game itself. It may be a magazine, a billboard poster or a meme depicting a gang of chicks attacking a dinosaur. For me a number of big games were discovered sitting at the foot of my mate’s bed during my time at university. These included Fallout 3, Civilization IV, The Witcher and the original Assassin’s Creed.

In a more unusual move in the history of this list they have decided to only include the sequel rather than the original game… is this a good move on the part of the list-makers?

Our Thoughts

Actually yes… we were surprised too.

Well I was since I own a copy of the original game for the Xbox 360 (bought it from Argos don’t cha know) and I was not too impressed with it. I found the gameplay rather repetitive and the mechanics slightly off base. Also I took real umbrage with the main idea of the game’s central machinery… well improvements in two out of three isn’t too bad.

So the basic story is this: Templars are trying to control the world and their big enemies are the assassins (aka you). In order to gather artefacts that can control the minds of the population the Templars have kidnapped you and are using the memories of your ancestors stored within your DNA (seriously Ubisoft!?) to find them. Not just that, the in-game interface shows you exactly which bits of DNA contains which bits of memory. Yeah. Really.

In this incarnation of the game you take the role of a young Florentine named Ezio Auditore who [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER] okay so if you want to know more about the game you can go on Wikipedia as it really is not our place to spoil… but that is not the realm of this blog. Needless to say, unlike the premise that memories can be stored genetically, the storyline of this game is complex and well written… and has been stepped up since the original.

Whist the setting in the original game looked good it never felt ‘rich’ to me. Desert cities are beautiful but they truly pale in comparison to the wonders of Renaissance Italy depicted in this game. Games tend to take a gamble when they try to successful bring a real city to life. Prototype was never able to capture the vibrant nature of New York, likewise The Getaway‘s London lacked warmth. Assassin’s Creed II, however, really brings to life the worlds of 15th century Florence and Venice… something I can attest to having visited both of these amazing cities… not in the past mind you.

This sort of carries over to the characters too. The models themselves are a bit wooden – the faces not as realistic and fancy as we’ve seen in some contemporary games, which bothered me in particular, with at times quite hollow eyes. The characterization, however, is more wonderful – in-depth, making you get a good feel of them early on (in part based on good voice acting) and connect with them – in a good or bad way, as can be found by our early discussions over the likeability of Ezio as a character.

The main ways that this game has improved on is the controls and the variety in the gameplay. The climbing controls now feel more intuitive, although there are many times I forgot to press B after falling from a great height. Then again, in inFamous and Prototype you never lose health for this due to your superhuman status… here you are very very human.

Like those games Assassin’s Creed II has really stepped it up in terms of open-world exploring where, apart from the constraints of ‘memory’, the hunting for collectables and other such lovely things are a real joy. Even something as mundane as courier missions and treasure hunting feel less monotonous.

In general the world feels quite expansive. While constrained to just a single city (and just a part of it at times) there’s a multitude of items to collect, but also shops to go to fill what you’ve got. Doctors and outfits are the more basic things you can buy, but then there’s also treasure maps to aid your exploration and paintings to… ehmm, I’m sure they’ll have a point somewhere.

One nice thing about the whole experience is that it isn’t just you exploring Florence. If you ignore the ridiculous concept that allows you to do so, the game actually quite nicely ties the present day (or really near future) with the past most of the game plays in. Aside from the bits actually playing in the current day, setting the scene, your companions living in the now have a presence in the world. They constantly provide you with information – filling the database with this is a seperate task – but they also give commentary and guidance. With some different characters, this adds some welcome perspective and fun to the whole ordeal. It’s part of what teaches you about the history of the people and area – why you’re here, what you’re doing, and where these characters end up in the future, which makes the whole world a bit more real.

While the plot is obviously not real, these historical details, the very real world, and the way people live in it, make it seem like it could be, and with so many historical characters in it, it’s one thing that almost could be possible. Unlikely, but close enough. Just as amazing a thought and experience.

Final Thoughts

A fully living world, in which you have to sneak through, performing your tasks, doing your assassinations, and staying anonymous. Or, if you have a less bloodthirsty day, collect eagle feathers and lookout points and more quietly figure out what’s going on and find out more about Florence, its history and the people that have lived and may have lived in it.

As a game, it takes a bit of time to get used to the controls and move around – something that can always be a bit difficult – but this is relatively minor. Overall it’s a fun game and a great experience – one that can lead you to lose a few hours of your life, as happened to Peter. More than once.

#403 Ferrari F355 Challenge

Posted: 17th December 2012 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: 1999, arcade, dreamcast, driving, sega

202nd played so far

Genre: Driving
Platform: Arcade/Dreamcast
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega

So a few months ago (at the time you read this, that is), we went to Disneyland Paris. A nice diversion that turned out to be an amazing time off. The stories about that are for another time, but one thing we found is that they have a lot of arcades there.

We checked, of course, out of curiousity mostly, and mostly didn’t find much. Until, that is, we exited Star Tours and (OMG) saw a surprising Ferrari F355 Challenge game! We, of course, immediately got our tokens and (after waiting for the five year old Italian girl to get out), sat down to play it. For most of it we did so being observed by that same five year old girl. I like to think we converted one.

Our Thoughts

I’ll be honest – we probably could have played this slightly more, but Disney was just too distracting (SPACE MOUNTAIN AT 11 PM YO!). At the same time, while I don’t want to say all driving games are the same, they do have many things in common.

So let’s look at the differences. First, like Sega Rally Championship, you are in the car. This time, this is displayed with three screens and a slightly more immersive surrounding, which is quite cool (which is as close to feeling that you are in an actual car that has ever really been done… motion controls included). There’s an optional gear change and steering wheel that pushes back. There’s also a few nice helpful buttons – ABS can be enabled or disabled with a push on a button. It’s quite nice and cool, something we’ve seen in arcades before, but it feels a bit better executed here.

The game’s quite difficult to play and complete, where you’re expected to finish races within a very tight time limit that we couldn’t afford to achieve in the time and money limitations we had. One helpful money waster is the tutorial mode. Rather than having opponents to race against, you get an empty track with the ideal route marked out. A good way to practice (a token at a time, each one priced at €2).

Still, the quality of the simulation is quite good, feeling accurate (I did feel like I was driving again, which was slightly unnerving), but the helper options helped a lot with that. Worth a try for that… just not to go to France for.

A year after the arcade release this saw an acclaimed release on the Dreamcast (the then the PS2 two years after that).. so we could have actually made it easier on ourselves but we wanted to play the original.

Final Thoughts

One reason we were overjoyed to find this game was that it means that there are only 1-2 games that we absolutely have to play in an arcade setting due to specialist arcade cabinets. This may not seem like a big deal really but it really does now mean that there is only one that we have a possible chance of never finding… DAMN YOU NOKIA!

Still, as part of the Peter 50 it is nice to cross off a few more of these difficult games like how we did with Steel Batallion and Beatmania in the last batch. So if any reader knows of a decent pub containing a Golden Tee Live machine is…?

#992 Time Gentlemen, Please!

Posted: 13th December 2012 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: 2009, adventure, pc, zombie cow studios

201st played so far

Genre: Adventure
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Zombie Cow Studios

Here’s a difference: We pretty much stopped this time not because we were done with the game, but because we wanted to play it seperately. We got a good idea of what the game was like… but are excited to play on. The whole reason I wanted to play this was because the picture of the game in the book showed a number of deceased dinosaurs in what appeared to be Nazi uniforms (turns out it was) and it looked so wacky that I wanted to give it a try.

Time Gentlemen, Please! is a point and click adventure in the style of Sam & Max Hit the Road, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and other games we haven’t played yet. By different people though – this is as much an homage as a game in the series. It is also a sequel to the freeware game Ben There, Dan That… which neither of us have played.

Our Thoughts

While the subject comes up on this blog occasionally, we don’t often talk about the issues with the list on this blog – in general we accept it and go along with it. This, however, is a game where I feel it’s sort of waved in my face.

We’ll get to quality in a bit, but don’t worry – this is a good game. It’s fun. That’s not the problem. The issue why it feels… odd is due to the group who compiled the list.

While there were many people creating point and click adventures in the 1980s and 1990s, two of them grew above it and became the big household names that are seen as the pinnacle of the genre. One of them is LucasArts, who’ve been discussed before and will be coming back plenty, as the majority of their adventure games is on the list. The other is Sierra, whose output was larger than LucasArts but whose contributions to the book, in the genre, consists of one game… and that’s one that doesn’t come to mind when you think about the series. King’s Quest was a major release, three years before Lucasarts started in the genre. They’ve had accurate police procedure in Police Quest. There’s not a single old-time gamer who hasn’t heard of Larry of Leisure Suit Larry fame (the line of ‘old time’ must be between 1984 and 1989 because the reason I had heard of Leisure Suit Larry was the poorly received Xbox 360 game… then again I was always more of a console gamer). Quest for Glory is a brilliant fusion of adventure and RPG – and one of the first that allowed you to import characters from previous save games, with small bits and pieces of later games not being accessible if you haven’t finished the first. There is not a single mention of any of that in the book. Sure, LucasArts is influential, and they’ve made some brilliant games, but it feels like it misses out.

The reason I bring up that lengthy point is that the person who compiled the list seems to have a love affair with LucasArts, one shared with the creators of this game.

That’s not the fault of Zombie Cow Studios. They created a game in the style they loved, something apparent, aside from anything else, from the large number of references to their games they added in. While I’m sure there are ones to the other series too (some of which I’m sure I have missed), its game mechanics – always a solution, no way to really die or permanently lose – clearly comes from LucasArts. I just hope that it wasn’t the main motivation this game was included.

With that said, the game does live up to its heritage. While its graphics don’t live up to the LucasArts standard, they’re mostly unambiguous enough and, well… charming seems the best word (I think the word you are going for is ‘indie’). It’s clear it’s not the priority when creating the game, and they’re functional enough that it doesn’t matter much. When it comes to sound, they do so even less. I noticed exactly one sound clip, beyond that they’re mostly fairly simple music and sound effects. Suitable, yeah, for the early 1990s we discussed earlier (I reiterate… indie).

No, the real star here is the writing. The plot is insane – in a good way – featuring lots of actually quite complicated (and seemingly researched) time travel and more important, cloned dinosaurs under the command of Hitler searching for a golden coathanger. The reason our heroes are in this predicament leads on directly from the previous game which is handily recapped at the beginning of the game… needless to say their plan of saving the world by preventing the invention of the coathanger… and somehow they end up messing with the fabric of space-time and causing the early invention of robots because they traded a Tamagotchi for a beer in the 1600s.

More important, though, there’s the dialogue. The banter between our main character – Ben and Dan, named after (and quite possibly representing) the creators of the game – is amazing and incredibly extensive, making it so much more fun to try everything and observe every option. There’s a few stock responses, but they’re actually surprisingly rare. In many ways the relationship between these two is modelled on the dynamic of Sam & Max, to the point where there is the opportunity to ‘use Dan’ as a possible interaction alongside the traditional observe, speak, walk and interact.

The puzzles are quite possible. They’re quite simple at the start (though with unexpected outcomes even early on) and stay quite possible – not always obvious (although the solution to making a corkscrew is incredibly abstract), but still playable. Pretty much the right amount of challenge for a game like this to keep it fun… with the occasional bit of frustration that’s always your own fault. Very little unclear guesswork here. This is a great thing because my patience for the adventure game puzzles is not as much as it really should be…

For an indie point-and-clicker this game had it’s fair share of controversy due to the inclusion of Hitler as a comic villain. Then again this is a game where the Nazi army is a bunch of cloned dinosaurs that execute prisoners by shooting them in the crotch… creative licence an’ all. Still, there is the feeling that they could have made him a generic German villain or (heaven forfend) an American villain? Come on guys you’re British… why do the stereotypical villain!

Final Thoughts

As games go this is not an entirely original one but it goes to prove that the art of the point-and-click adventure game is nowhere near dead. The secret now is really to put your own spin on it whether is be with surrealist humour or unique story. One thing is that in terms of pricing these can never contend with the major releases… which is a shame since games like Time Gentlemen, Please end up getting unfairly overlooked.

50 Game Round Up: 151-200 (Peter)

Posted: 11th December 2012 by Mulholland in Round-Up

With Jeroen’s summary post looking back over the previous 50 I guess it is apt that I look to the future for when we reach our next big landmark of 250 games… or 25%!

Well, we have jumped around a lot between games and for the next 50 we are going to have more of a united theme of games that I have never played myself. This will mean games like Grand Theft Auto III, Okami and Theme Park will have a wait a good while until we even think about playing them. Oh well.

Best Game I Had Not Previously Played

As usual my favourite pick is one of the more recent ones that we covered. In fact I had a bit of a tough decision between two very different games. As can be seen by the picture above the game that won out in the end was the interactive drama Heavy Rain. As with films and albums I feel that in order for me to really love a game it has to connect with me on an emotional level somehow. Sure Borderlands was able to inspire bullet-powered glee but this story of the Origami serial killer, more specifically the sections told through the father’s narrative, won out. No other game in a long time has been able to inspire all the primal emotions from the joy in the prologue to the sheet tension and fright in the chapter where we first encounter Madison. Sure, it had it flaws but nobody’s perfect. I am now looking forward to when we get around to playing Quantic Dream’s other title on the list; Fahrenheit.

A close second to this was Flower the original game by thatgamecompany where you are charged with bringing colour to a drab world with your trail of petals. Few games have been able to enrapture me with the sheer aesthetic beauty as this gem. The story, told through the dreams of five flowers on an urban window ledge, also leads you through many of the emotions and has a strange replay value.

Worst Game

This is a bit unfair since I can see a lot of the merits in this game (plus Utopia was already taken) but weakest game in this 50 for me was John Madden Football but a lot of that really was that neither of us actually get the concept of American Football…

To be honest though this has been a hard group of games to pilfer a ‘crap’ game from since there has not been a stand-out bad one. Nothing to complain about though, it’s always good to have too many good games.

Most Surprising Game

Surprising is a bit of wide avenue to go down when choosing a game. The Path was surprising for me because of the reaction I had to it. Even the next day I felt guilt for the fate that befell one of the girls because our decision to go in search of the wolf. It then lead to me being constantly on edge trying to avoid the wolf at all costs and even feeling slightly sick. No survival horror has yet to make me feel this dread because I was never able to fully make the emotional connection I made here.

In terms of games being better than I expected a lot of credit needs to go to Pinball Dreams where I was shocked how well this game has weathered the ravages of time. Sure it is now the quality we would come to expect from iPhone games but since those games (like Flight Control and Fieldrunners) are so enjoyable then no harm no foul. I was also surprised at how freaking hard Kid Icarus was… I mean gees.

Biggest Disappointment

Since we began this list one of the games I was most looking forward to playing was City of Heroes. I envisaged a game which was the realisation of my dream of being Iceman from X-Men. However, this really was not the case since whilst it did have an interesting comic book slant it was not what I was expecting… it didn’t help that I loved Guild Wars so much and this really did pale in comparison to the depth of that game.

Another big disappointment of mine was Crackdown. Jeroen already covered everything that made this a disappointment so I’ll move on.

Best Blast From The Past

Plenty of games have inspired memories of the past. The Sims reminded me of the first amazing computer I ever had. Grow reminded me of university-related boredom. Worms was just… Worms.

However, the game that sent the most memories flooding back in my direction was Space Harrier. I mean they weren’t exactly great memories but there was an awful lot of them.

Games We Kept Playing

A lot of games were played after we finished the write up. Games like Heavy Rain, Borderlands, Flower and World of Goo.

The best of these, however, has to be Fat Princess since this has no real point where you can complete the game and yet the online multiplayer is just… intoxicating.

50 Game Roundup: 151-200 (Jeroen)

Posted: 10th December 2012 by Jeroen in Round-Up

Fifty more games since our last summary post. Wow. For those keeping track, we’ve now played and written about 200 games for this blog, so we’ve done one in five games – looking at the book we made it from 1971 to 1991. Here, we’ve randomly jumped around and created patches and connected sections… the list really looks like a mess now. We’ll get there soon though, trust me.

It’s been an interesting fifty. Aside from probably being our most varied so far, we’ve covered a number of difficult games. They’ll probably come up later as well, in my write-up or Peter’s, but we’ve played a few games that seemed almost impossible to get. There’s been Steel Battalion and Beatmania in the ‘annoying and expensive peripheral’ category, and Final Furlong and Dance Dance Revolution in the ‘good luck finding it in an arcade’ category. And with how few are remaining (Reset Generation and Golden Tee Live being the remaining worries) we are even more confident we can finish this. It is awesome!

And with that, on to the next fifty!