#691 Bully

Posted: 8th September 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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2

177th played so far

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PS2
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Rockstar Vancouver
Publisher: Rockstar Games

Bully, our next game, is an open world-ish action adventure set in a boarding school… Bullsworth Academy. You’re a kid who’s just been sent there, abandoned by his parents. In the mean time, you have to survive against the cliques that have already formed and end up on top, all the time while avoiding detention.

It’s one of Rockstar’s open world games, this time focused on you as a school kid and (potential) bully. If you can’t find the game, it’s also been released as Canis Canem Edit. It was also fairly controversial at the time as it featured… well… bullying. Oh, and boys kissing boys. Yeah. (Pervert)

Our Thoughts

The main disadvantage of a game like this set in a school is that it’s set in a school. This may be an odd criticism to start off with, but it’s the part that struck me most of all. An open world game in this environment is well enough, but having it be restricted by having to take classes feels like it takes away a large part of the openness.

I know this is in part a reaction to my dislike of time-based missions, as discussed in, for example, Ocarina of Time, but while the circumstances aren’t as dire (“Do this or die”), it feels more intrusive at the same time. Quite simple – in a boarding school you’re supposed to get up at 7:30, be in class 9-12 and then 1:30 to 4:30, ending with being in bed after 8PM. This means that you’ve got limited time for missions – yeah, you can skip class, but that just means being even more careful in avoiding the prefects, not always easy, and the end time still stands.

This is rectified later in the game when the world is opened up more and you have access to the nearby town and some areas of countryside. Before this ‘opening of the gates’ things can feel a tad repetitive but with access to a vehicle(ish) and a town without the prefects forcing you to go to art class things feel far more freeing which is what Rockstar is really good at.

Now, that might leave time for a mission (or two if you’re lucky), but it isn’t as easy. Part of this is the need to avoid prefects, but another part is that you start making enemies very early on. Not by choice – just that the early missions you take get you on the wrong side of one major clique, who’ll proceed to beat you up the moment they see you. Don’t expect the prefects to stop them, do expect the prefects to grab you the moment you punch back. As this can even happen during mission, life doesn’t get easier for you early on, and that makes the early game actually quite difficult.

Now those are the early game annoyances that I experienced until we went for the write up, some of which apparently get better later in the game (I believe I already said that). Plenty of it works well too.

First, the setting. Despite some of the issues it causes, a lot of it is set up well. There’s a large amount of interesting characters (some more disturbing than others) and a lot of work has clearly gone into the characterization and planning of this system and the behaviour of some. It’s funny and fairly immersive. The school cliques (nerds, bullies, greasers, jocks and preppies) each have their own character sets, incidental music and motiviations (for some reason the preppies have a rivalry with the greasers… no idea why).

Second, gameplay. While the controls take a moment of getting used to (they’re just different enough from other games that it gets annoying every once in a while), they are mostly quite responsive and quick. It takes a while to learn the different options (you can make peace with or taunt people if you want, which requires you to target them first – yes, as you’d do in combat).

The result of this leads into quite a few things you can match to open world experiences – you have main missions, side quests (some of which are randomly generated) and a number of other distracting activities. There are also plenty of collectibles – partially for the 100%, partially to gain a few advantages such as a rubber band ball weapon.

Most of these have a school flavour. The classes are one of these sidequest type things, having five per subject with each level giving an advantage – gym class gives you more fighting moves, chemistry more weapons to make, and so on – while the collection is more juvenile than most. Aside from the rubber bands, this consists as much of smashing gnomes and pumpkins rather than graffiti or such delinquency.

While the game moves on a bit further, that’s really the theme of the game – be the bully or beat the bully. Despite the name, the former isn’t required entirely – you can do some of it, but mostly you’re just the mischevious school boy who skips class, throws in windows and breaks into lockers. We’ve all done it… or been on the wrong end of having it done to us. Well, not the lockers bit. I somehow never had a locker in school. Just… never happened. But that doesn’t matter now.

It makes for an interesting game that has its annoyances for me, but creates an awesome game in the end – one that makes you wonder about how far you should go.

In terms of how far you should go Bully came under fire from many parenting groups due to it’s depiction of homosexuality and bisexuality. When you (Jimmy) become popular enough you are able to approach girls from each clique and kiss them. You are also able to do this with one boy from each clique. You character, in this way, appears to be more bicurious since there is the trope love interest that runs through a lot of the game. There are, however, exclusively gay characters who are in the closet. This mix of open-word free-choice and the LGBT world really got up the nose of a lot of people even though it is a world away from the full-blown romances present in recent Bioware titles.

Due to this fact (and the whole, you know, beating up school kids) has made Bully one of the more controversial games on this list even though there is still a lot of free choice involved… which I guess is what people had a problem with in the first place. No parent wants to see their child willingly beating up school kids on their PS2… it would really show up their parenting skills.

Final Thoughts

This game will always some of the fondest memories for me. It was the week after the Academy Awards in 2007 when I had some form of food poisoning where I threw up everything I ate or drank but otherwise felt fine (it was the same week where I discovered how awesome Life on Mars was). I was off of school for a week and as such had the time to play this to completion in between toilet visits. It sounds strange but since my mum was off with a similar bug during the same week it was like an extra week of school holiday where you did not have to feel guilty about only watching DVDs and playing on the PS2. I miss that week.

#504 Steel Battalion

Posted: 4th September 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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6

176th played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Capcom, Nude Maker
Publisher: Capcom

As we’ve discussed before, there are some games on the list that worry us. Some games, like Reset Generation, because they seem to be impossible to play now. (Actually, due to several issues, this is currently the only one we currently fear are lost, but it’s a constant threat). Others require us to venture out further, such as recently Final Furlong and at some point in the next few months, Golden Tee Live. Then there’s games like this, where not only the game is rare, but you need a special peripheral. We’ve seen this before with Donkey Konga and DJ Hero, and there’s a few more that’ll follow.

We want to get these done, obviously. They’re the hurdles in our way to finish this – Civilization might be more time consuming, Infamous more complex, Flywrench more… strange – but we can play them, do them in whatever order we want – they’re there or will be there. We need to go through them to finish this project, but we know we will be able to. Steel Battalion not as much.

Steel Battalion, due to its nature, is a rare game. It was limited edition, requiring a special controller, and sells for a lot of money. It’s also a game that’ll stay on the list for a long time. In other words, we need to play it. And experience it… We’re getting it over with.

Our Thoughts

First of all, let me discuss the big special feature, the controller: It is AWESOME. It may sound geeky, but this is a geek’s game anyway (I prefer ‘gaming connoisseur’ to geek). There’s just something awesome about sitting behind a console of 30-something buttons, switches and joysticks, most of which flash and light up when appropriate, moving by using the pedals. The game makes full use of that, every button its own function, no dual use, it is actually copying the cockpit. Starting your mecha alone is awesome – press the buttons, flip switches to start systems, go through the procedure before you’re allowed to start. It’s one of the small touches in the controller, but it’s awesome (the buttons even light up!) Who doesn’t want to do that switches thing?

But in the end, the controller is the major, awesome part of the game that defines its boundaries – or rather, removes them. Few console games can have this number of controls, and even on the PC this might come with an overlay or cheat sheet, something to help you remember them. Here, they’re all labelled and in the right and logical order.

There are also buttons for the fire extingusher and wind screen wipers which, whilst they serve a purpose ingame, are a whole lot of fun to mess around with. It’s just a pity that the ‘open cockpit’ button doesn’t open mid-battle. That had the opportunity to be hilarious. Another great thing about this console is the eject button. We will go into this a bit later but it is the only button conceived as ‘last resort’ that it has it’s own plastic cover that can be flipped open before pressing.

Add to that how the graphics work. Only about a third of the screen is the actual outside world, the remainder is the interface – mostly dynamic, though replicating a few indicators on your panel. It’s surprisingly effective, making you feel you’re inside the action, but it makes it difficult to see what’s going on. The mechas – enemy and friends – can be vaguely identified, while the more minor enemies barely show up. You can use a separate cam to get some information, but it’s limited.

You don’t really need to, though. The screen gives you some information on what to do, but with the tools your mech gives you, you can perform your actions based on your instruments and some vague visual clues. It feels a bit more complicated, but it’s possible.

With that said, that really is part of the learning curve. It’s steep and tough, and the first few times you go out will cost you. There are so many options, things you can and must do, and things to keep track of, that the game will overwhelm you at first and it takes time to get far enough. Not helping here is a rather major addition to up the difficulty of the game: No reloads. If you die, you die, that’s it. There’s sort of a way out: If you are about to crash, you can press the eject button. You lose your mech and have to get a new one, but you don’t have to start from scratch. If you don’t press it on time… your savegame is deleted and you have to start from scratch, who cares how far you got. Yes, that’s brutal. Yes, it’s evil. Yes, I suppose it’s realistic. It makes for something quite interesting.

Another way that this game makes life difficult is the credit system. You get some free ammo to begin every mission but it’s limited, very limited. So whilst there is the temptation to go nuts a la Ripley in Aliens you have to be more conservative whilst you blast enemies out of the sky. Later in the game you are able to order in supply drops of ammo and other such things (I liked the flamethrower) which, again, cost credits. Credits which are required to buy a new mecha if you have to eject at some point… a bit of a vicious cycle really.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t hold your hand (I actually quite liked that). You don’t get a tutorial – you just have the manual to read (quite a tome it is too), hoping you remember it. The missions are tough from the start – good AI from your opponents, you need to hope you manage, and obviously they’ve got piloting skills good enough that they don’t fall over. It is difficult and takes time, you need to learn how to play the game. What also doesn’t help is that the AI of the guys on your side is pretty pants. There was a time that I observed a fellow member of the panzer division caught on the corner of some scenary… idiot.

In the end, this is a labour of love, and a game of love. It’s showing what games can do and be, how far you can go, if you’re willing to spend on it. And it expects you to spend time on it, to understand it, to get to know it, get used to it. You are expecting to invest the time in it – to love it, if you wish – to get in far enough to finish the game. And yes, that’s strangely awesome.

Final Thoughts

The game itself is good, complex, fun. But it’s the controller that makes this and makes it awesome. And you can’t separate the two, they’re so far integrated. But this is the single game that puts you in the cockpit, gives you all the buttons, just cool. It really is an extension of those control panels that you see in movies, the idea where you see a button and want to press it, want to be in front of that machine with all the buttons and play with them. Steel Battalion allows you to, and that’s awesome.

#581 City of Heroes

Posted: 31st August 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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3

175th played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Cryptic Studios
Publisher: NCsoft

Up next in our desperate panic to play certain games before any decent support sees them fall off of the face of the planet (Reset Generation, where are you?) is City of Heroes. Whilst this is a successful MMORPG (as well as the third we’ve now covered) this is a genre that is under threat because, at any moment, there could be server issues or something similar and POOF there is a game we are unable to ever play. At least with Steel Battalion there is a way to play it… it’ll just cost us a hundred quid to do so.

Our Thoughts

Being the third MMORPG out of the block City of Heroes is always going to be in danger of comparisons that have gone before it. We both fell in love with Guild Wars and found World of Warcraft somewhat wanting meaning that there was some middle ground that City of Heroes could fall into. However, this does have the disadvantage of being the older of the three and in some ways it shows.

Before we get into that there is one thing to be said about City of Heroes in that (until DC Universe Online) this stood alone as the only majorly successful MMORPG set in the world of superheroes and supervillains. MMORPGs are usually in a fantasy setting, with this being one of a few exceptions.

The concept of this game is quite straightforward – you’re a superhero (or villain, in later expansions) and you fight many villains – lackeys and proper supervillains – to restore Good To The World. (We’re ignoring City of Villains for the moment – while it’s now included, it wasn’t in the original game, and we couldn’t get ourselves to play through it again).

Let’s start at the beginning, character creation and customization. This part got us quite excited. There are lots of options, both in looks, meaning that how you look depends a lot on what you select, not just on what gear you buy, and in powers. The latter sets you up in a broad archetype, but there are a lot of initial options here that you can rapidly expand to include more. For example, I started with a stalker-type character, who gets a weapon style (of which there are several), with initial powers in each, and a secondary armor type power – I went for hiding, but different elemental armors and regeneration are also options. These are the ones you initially progress in, but a few levels in I could add extra power types to add to those. It’s quite impressive and big.

I hoped this variety and multitude of options would carry over to the game as well. Unfortunately, it feels less so. Combat, one of those central parts of any MMORPG like this, is quite boring. You only have your normal powers to attack – no basic hand to hand or such – and while some of these recharge at an okay speed, you spend a lot of time waiting for them to do rather than staying in the action. Your opponent continues to attack, of course, but at least at the earlier levels, the wait gets boring. While in most fantasy MMORPGs, you get a normal attack instead (hack with your sword, fire your bow) and other genres have similar options, City of Heroes seems to have forgotten. This alone makes World of Warcraft and Guild Wars feel better and faster.

But as an MMORPG, the writing and world would still be interesting, right? Fun missions, good characters and so on? Not really. The missions are boring – pretty much all of them are of the “Kill five enemies” variety, with the differences mostly cosmetic. There’s a few other options – mostly an infiltration to get to a place to do something, possibly fight a proper villain there – but it’s a bit limited.

While I know other games do this too, it feels a bit too obvious here – while there is a clues system, it is almost just a quest item that’s dropped. You don’t have to search them or combine clues to get somewhere, you just go from battle to battle. That makes it a bit boring and it feels like the potential that’s in the system, as well as that of the contacts you gether, isn’t well used. I understand this might come at higher levels, but we didn’t see this in the levels we played and because of that got easily bored with the game. On a whole, the game failed to draw us in on these low levels, making it unlikely we’d be willing to play further – City of Heroes isn’t the crack it ought to be.

The game also seems to encourage grouping at a low-level – just as you start, you already want it (and this may take care of some of these issues). Two problems here for us – first, true, we prefer soloing, and while the game seems to have room for that, it is a lot tougher. But second, as the game’s been out for a while, we didn’t have a lot of people who’d be around at this time. We seemed to have joined the game too late.

Last, the game went freemium about a year to go (go to their website to get the client). While I understand they wanted to sell stuff, it seemed to be a bit too much in your face – some seemingly basic things seem to require payment, including several character types – which is at times fair enough – it seems a bit too much in your face sometimes.

Final Thoughts

It’s awesome to play a superhero. I really loved racing around the town, beating up thugs and using my powers. Long term though, combat got too boring, powers were too sparse early on and we either needed to have played further, or missed out on some options to really enjoy the game.

However, getting to the point where it’s fun enough to play will take too long for us. The missions aren’t engaging or interesting enough to keep going and it all gets a bit too difficult. Sorry.

#299 Sega Rally Championship

Posted: 27th August 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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3

174th played so far

Genre: Driving
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1995
Developer: AM5
Publisher: Sega

Did I ever tell you my father did some rally driving? While he was more often around to repair the cars (for one of the better teams in the country), he also got to be a navigator on a few races. This went a bit beyond just telling where some curves were – I remember him coming home one day out of the hospital – in a tricky bend the car had rolled over and crashed into the glass front of a building. Nothing bad happened, no real injuries, just a lot of damage, but it is one of those awesome stories I now have.

This (of course) makes me uniquely suited to comment on this game. Another Arcade with immersive elements, similar to the earlier Final Furlong, it places you in sort of car, with steer and pedals and all that, and lets you drive around the tracks. Awesome.

Our Thoughts

The mechanics of these driving games are fairly simple, and these systems were later ported to home use, where I remember us having a wheel and pedals connected to the PC for a later game. Even so, it was fun to play them these times, trying to figure out the controls and get used to the sensitivity while racing around.

To the point though, these controls are interesting and good. Normally, when racing, it’s difficult to get much feedback – how far are you going, how sharp’s the bend and how well do you control its speed. This system gives better feedback and control. Even so, it’s tough to find the limits – while the car won’t usually go as far as spinning, it can some time to figure out how far you can push your car.

For the sake of the blog we really needed to play this in the proper arcade fashion… but this really did not work with me. Being over 6’2” half of the seats of the games were so short that I was unable to fit in… and the others meant I had to sit spead-eagled in the middle of Piccadilly Trocadero whilst trying not to drive a rally car into a tree.

The game beyond that is fairly straightforward, and we’ll see more of it in the future in the Colin McRae series, but gives you enough time to draw you in (the first track is quite manageable) but then slaps you down as you think you can do better – just not easily (we both went out 30 seconds into the second track).

Graphics are, of course, flaky – old style semi-3D, with rather fake people – but in the end, they’re not that required. They show you where you need to go, and you don’t really want to look at the environment anyway. Your navigator could be a bit more clear – it’s hard to understand him sometimes – but that’s almost down to the limits they have.

The real fun of this game lies in playing this competitively with a mate. It’s fine to play by yourself against the computer (fun even) but is is so much better to do so against someone else so you are able to sabotage and (possibly) yell abuse at each other. Plus it maked the competition a two-way race instead of a seemingly unfair race against 15 competitors who get one hell of a head start.

In the end, the difficult part here is the accuracy of racing and its controls. Using the proper controls for this works in favour and makes for a better driving game than most.

Final Thoughts

Okay, so the fact that I was unable to play this due to my height may cloud my opinion somewhat but the best thing about this game is that we only have a few games where special controls are required. Soon… this list will be so much easier.

#66 Bank Panic

Posted: 23rd August 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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0

173rd played so far

Genre: Shoot ’em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1984
Developer: Sanritsu
Publisher: Sega

This morning Jeroen accidentally (through a slip of the tongue) coined a term: short ’em up. I thought he was being clever since there are many shoot ’em ups left for us to do on this list that would not take us that long to cover. Turns up it was a slur and he didn’t take credit for this term… therefore I shall. It’s the accent. Nobody understands me 🙁

Time for a short ’em up!

Our Thoughts

If there is a successful arcade game then you know that it will have been replicated to death over the internet. Titles like Breakout and Space Invaders are the more obvious victims but I think most people who have wasted time playing games on the interweb will have come across a clone of Bank Panic. Neopets even have their own version called Trouble at the National Neopian. Then again… if there is an arcade game there is a Neopets version… moreorless.

The idea, as is the case of most of these older games, is very simple. You are a white hatted sheriff stationed at the local bank and your task is to mind it (presumablely until the owner comes back with replacement bit for the jukebox which is stuck on ‘I Wish I Was A Dixie’. You do this by rotating the view of the sheriff and allowing patrons to deposit money whilst shooting outlaws and disarming bombs. There are also midgets under piles of hats which you can shoot for a bonus since we all know the Wild West worked in such a fashion.

You lose lives by shooting an innocent customer, being shot by an outlaw, failing to disarm a bomb in time or just running out of time generally. As the levels progress it gets faster and faster until the time that you are such a bag of nerves that you will probably lose all your lives by shooting customers rather than the criminals. There is also the option of ‘pre-emptive justice’ by shooting outlaws the moment they enter rather than allowing them to draw their gun. Unlike more modern games there is no penalising here since anyone with a bandana over their mouth is automatically a wanted criminal.

This is trickier than it sounds, as these bandits look a lot like cowboys – the bandana really is the only difference. At the same time, outlaws hold the ‘good’ people hostage – you need to wait until the innocent has gotten out of the way before you can shoot the outlaw, who of course now gets the jump on you. It can actually get rather tricky and the game’s visuals do trick you – as nice as their cartoony looks might be.

Considering it’s age this game is still really good fun and makes for a good diversion and would probably make for a good exemplar of an early example of a game involving law enforcement restricted to being the good guy… like Crackdown but not at all.

Final Thoughts

It’s not a game that’ll eat away hours of your time – these arcade games generally weren’t meant to – and it’s not the most complex game out there. However, it’s fun to play and really makes you twitchy – it gets too easy to shoot the wrong guy, and you don’t want to be robbed… Absolutely worth trying, in any of its incarnations out there.

#47 Utopia

Posted: 19th August 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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1

172nd played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Intellivision
Year of Release: 1982
Developer: Mattel
Publisher: Mattel

The Intellivision is one of those consoles that is forgotten, from the ages of Atari, Amiga and ZX Spectrum. Back when everyone was creating consoles, Mattel jumped in as well and created the Intellivision. In a historical context this game was produced the same year of the infamous E.T. game which was a contributing factor to the 1983 video games crash. Makes you wonder what more Mattel could have done in gaming if that hadn’t happened.

I can’t say too much about whetHer it was good or not – not having much experience with it – but it feels telling that there’s only one Intellivision game on the list. While others may fall under the ‘various’ banner, it seems like it has few good exclusives, and looking at the graphics of some ports, I’m not entirely surprised.

To remove this game from our sorting lists and as we felt like trying this apparently underwhelming machine, we decided to give Utopia a try now.

Our Thoughts

Playing this game probably led to the greatest disconnect I’ve ever felt between the games we’re now used to and those of the past. On the first trial run, I started by building a school… thinking it was a windmill. Only after finding a manual online did we get far enough to understand what was going on. Even then it was a bit of a struggle since every now and then your crops would just disappear and we had to dig into that manual again to work out why.

The game gets about as strategic as you’d expect of a game of its time and for a console of limited resources, really, but it has some nice additions. First, it’s worth saying that the game supports multiplayer, and really is just that – the single player ‘mode’ is really just played by ignoring the stuff happening on the second island. In essence this game banked on the fact that you had a mate to play with otherwise the experience is fairly one dimensional. Very few games make that mistake of not having a decent single-player mode. In the end it was probably one of the things that undid Utopia since there is only so long that you will spend trying to one-up yourself.

The basic goal is to develop an island, keep the (invisible) islanders happy to prevent rebels from showing up and (in multiplayer) score better than the other player. You do this by building things that help you grow and defend yourself – factories, forts, hospitals and schools – while also gathering resources, which partially give you gold to build more stuff. The latter is done by harvesting crops and fishing. You also need to avoid and defend against pirates and can use those same ships to destory your opponents fishing boats. There’s a few more interesting aspects to this – crops last longer if they’re in the path of rain and hurricanes can wreck your island.

So it looks pretty crap – part of the items on the map require you to first know what they are – and the sound effects are, sorry, mostly just beeps. It was a nice touch when you heard the rain on the crops as the cloud crossed them, but despite a few nice touches, it takes time to get used to.

When you do, however, you end up with a fun game. Sure, not as deep as any simulations you see these days, while still taking quite a bit of time to figure out what you need to do. An interesting diversion – one of those games that would be brilliant to have on your iPhone for a longer train journey. With variable turns and turn lengths, it works – play as long or as short as you want.

Final Thoughts

Is it a great game? Sorry, not any more if you ask me. It’s no Civilization or SimCity, but these days it’s a neat diversion, which is all you need sometimes. Then again there are plenty of freemium games like CivWorld that scratch this itch… so to brutally honest why bother.

#568 Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Posted: 15th August 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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4

171st played so far

Genre: Role-Playing
Platform: Xbox/PC
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: LucasArts

It’s interesting to see how many Star Wars game have ended up in the list. As much of a bad reputation licensed games have – a result of many of them having been generic platformers with updated graphics and, if you’re lucky, a minor franchise-specific twist thrown in – there have been some good ones. We’ll get to Spiderman 2 later and there’s games like Sam & Max Hit the Road where the game’s more famous than the other parts of the franchise, but I can’t think of another one that’s been as consistent in delivering. From a quick count (that might have missed titles where the Star Wars part isn’t as obvious) there are ten games in the list. So far we’ve only covered Lego Star Wars, but more will follow.

I’m sure that in part this is because LucasArts has its own major videogame arm – responsible for the earlier Sam & Max game, Grim Fandango as well as other great adventures we’ll mostly end up covering (although they’ve unfortunately dropped that since), down to the more bizarre Zombies Ate My Neighbours – but also because they work with great developers. I’ve not made a secret of my love of Bioware games – see our Neverwinter Nights and Baldur’s Gate 2 posts for more on that – so this ought to be good.

Our Thoughts

First admission – we didn’t just play this for five hours, we played for more than that. It took us about six hours to get off Tarsis – the first planet – and it feels like we’ve barely seen anything yet.

The start of the story is incredibly straight forward – amnesiac hero with visions of the past wakes up on a ship under attack and has to escape to the planet before it’s blown up. Find friends, get away, and that’s where we’ll leave it for now. It’s engaging enough, with some nice character interaction with your party member to keep you curious.

Combat is fairly straight forward – at the start, clicking attacks the enemy. You can activate specific abilities and throw grenades and such if you have them, while healing and similar items use a seperate action bar. Most of your interaction with the world uses a similar interface – click to do stuff, while choices between options – pick a lock or blow it up with explosives – are similar to do as abilities. Both are straight forward, but offer enough depth to be interesting. Like with most RPGs of this ilk the default option is to have the game pause the moment you happen across enemies to allow some thinking and preperation before diving in sword-first into a squadron of sewer mutants. Personally I would have this option switched off because I enjoy the adrenaline rush of random encounters (despite what I said about my mental state during Resident Evil).

In the mean time, character customization and options are streamlined from the earlier Bioware games, while still offering enough customization. Gone are the long skill lists, trimmed down to about two handfuls of always useful ones, and feats are similarly limited, while more plentiful – you get more options for choice, but less options to pick from. It still allows for customization, but isn’t paralyzing. At the same time, these choices still require you to know or understand the system – how else to figure out how to-hit factors in or what a round is? It’s clear Bioware is still in the era of extended manuals at this time. I love it, but it’s not for everyone.

In the mean time, the most charming thing is the one thing Bioware does best and probably better than anyone else – characterization. The characters that join you have interesting functionalities and make you wonder what they’re about. The first permanent character – Carth – clearly has trust issues, but it takes time and probing to get to them. In the mean time, you do get to pick how you treat him – hurt his feelings or not – and he’ll react appropriately. You pick up a fairly large number of these ‘friends’ during the course of the game and unlike previous titles like Baldur’s Gate 2 you do not have to dismiss older members to pick new ones up since they just become part of your bag of tricks. The pay off is that you are only able to take two of these allies with you during the missions  meaning that you really need to think what the mission will require before setting off. Usually it meant some combination of Mission/T3-M4 and a heavy to make sure you could break into computer and whoop some serious Sith ass.

This also extends to lesser characters. While it was just a minor character, an alienphobe (is that a word? I would have gone for xenophobe) preaching on a street corner, the conversation we had with him led to Peter calling him out every time we walked past him. It’s simple at times, but it works well and does get to you. These guys feel real. That guy pissed me off majorly. Ass.

Then there’s the moral choices. Star Wars is of a struggle between the light and dark side, good versus evil. This comes back in more places – dialog choices and quest endings both. Most quests have multiple endings, where sometimes one option feels forced in – Oh yeah, we need a dark side option, let’s put it in – but some quests have only one outcome, or it’s played more subtly, which can be fun. Still, the choices rarely seemed meaningful. It’s really just about which side you want. The dialog choices are more subtle there – at times the way you treat people matters, and it’s not an either-or choice. It feels more meaningful and is a really fun extra thing to play with.

Graphics are decent but very much of it’s time. There are some issues (like weird eyelids) but nothing that we haven’t covered in other games from 2003. The sound, however, was very well done and you can tell that every effort has been made to make this game cinematic (same with graphics to be fair but it succeeds more with sound). The voice cast (as you would expect from a Bioware game) are fantastic with stalwarts Jennifer Hale, Frank Welker and Grey DeLisle all putting in appearances with a scripot that could apparently fill 10 ring-binders. Sound effects and music-wise it is fairly obvious that everything sound-related was outsourced to LucasArts since it is pretty epic in every sense of the word.

In the end, however, it’s a nice step up from Neverwinter Nights. Character customization might not be as deep, but the game is still great fun to play and very engaging. More so than previous Bioware games, based on Peter’s engagement…

Final Thoughts

Okay fine I was won over by a Bioware game. Woopty-do. I would have liked to have played this more for myself and will probably do some in the year 2023 when we finish this blog (so far away…) but the Bioware game I am really looking forward to starting is Mass Effect. I have managed to stay away from spoilers about all of these games for years and will continue to do so until we get to play it… and I’ll demand to lead the playthough!

#748 Crackdown

Posted: 11th August 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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1

170th played so far

Genre: Adventure/Shoot ’em Up
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Realtime Worlds
Publisher: Microsoft

This is so strange. Whilst on the train to Brighton we were talking about the possibly upcoming Sony answer to Super Smash Bros. and what characters would be included and we got onto the topic of… well how many Xbox 360 exclusive titles are there? Little did either of us know that Crackdown, which I had been playing for a while before we went on our arcade trek, was an actual Microsoft published game. The fact that it does not contain any named protagonist which would make it perfect for a Microsoft-themed Super Smash title is by the by. Still, weird how these things turn out.

Our Thoughts

When we sit down to decide what games we play next (yes there is a decision process) what we like to do is not just play games we are itching to play (although sometimes they sneak through) but also to have certain games played in some form of order. The reason that we played the god-awful Free Running was because we wanted to play the game that helped to popularise the use of parkour in modern video games. It’s something that has helped to make games like Assassin’s Creed, inFamous and Prototype would not be as loved if it was not for this gaming mechanic. We’re not deluding ourselves that it was the first game with a lot of these ideas (since the sprawling world of freedom found in Spider-Man 2 really seems to be an influence) but Crackdown did something very strange… you play for the hell of it.

That is not to say that the missions are superfluous but you get a lot of fun from the game by shooting villains in the legs before throwing a grenade at them… and that can be done on the streets. The whole ethos of this game is to give you a city to act as your playground as you leap between buildings and throw lorries into the air in order to shoot them like clay pigeons. Having as much fun as possible causing mayhem is the game here… but there are restrictions. In order to have maximum fun you need to level up four times on five key skills: agility, firearms, driving, explosives and strength (not so hard so far) but you only gain points by using these skills to kill villains (not so bad) but you lose points for harming civilians (…oh). Don’t misunderstand us because there is plenty of freedom in this game but unlike games which allow you to play out your benevolent and malevolent sides (e.g. Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row 2) you get penalised… rather severely too.

This restriction does not affect strength, firearms or agility since if you have enough sense you will be able to avoid killing innocents by punching them in the face or shooting them in the knee-caps. The other two are rather bothersome though. The driving controls are sketchy at best (they improve with each level-up… but that first level-up is a bitch) and grenades aren’t the easiest to aim at first so these will take a while to improve. The most important skills for the fun gameplay, however, are strength and agility so no harm done. After all when you first start this game you are only above human capability so it isn’t too fun to start off with. Once you begin to acquire level ups and agility orbs this game really does come into its own despite being repetitive at times.

Repetitive? Well yes it is. Sure there are races you CAN undertake but the missions are all just ‘get in, kill criminal, get out’ with various degrees of setting and difficulty. That was not what began to annoy me though… it was the voice-over. In order to make this have the feel of being a secret agent (wow I hadn’t even mentioned the ‘story’ behind the game until now… shows how unnecessary it is) you are in regular contact with some form of commander. Rather than this having the humour of FX original series Archer the comments are fairly uninspired and begin to grate. I’m all for telling the gamer that they have done a good job… but not at random intervals when you are driving over the road. That leads me to another annoyance… the music is utterly pants as are the battle cries of your opponents.

The thing about missions is that they seem tacked on to give the game a purpose. What you do and want to do most of the time is run around, finding things and killing gangsters. You can take out the generals and kingpins, and that might reducing the gangsters a bit, but there seems little point. You don’t unlock much, you don’t get anything different, it’s just a checkbox exercise so you can get an ending – almost just doing this to get it out of the way. It feels like the game would have worked well without them, and that’s a shame – I’m sure that with a bit more integration, these could have been more fun.

The graphics of the game are interesting. The characters have the same comic-like look as we recently saw in Borderlands, with dark outlines, although the environment don’t feature such here. The buildings look nice, with little repitition on a higher level, but lack the detail we see in later games, instead going something a bit more plain. It really depends on the location too – you often get some interesting designs in a block, surrounded by more boring buildings. Accurate, I suppose, but it does mean that certain parts get repetitive. Ignore the windows with the blinds at same slant everywhere…

The game isn’t going for realism in its looks, and that obviously shows. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but don’t expecting any gorgeous sights. The game just doesn’t work well for eyecandy.

Final Thoughts

The best way to describe this is that Crackdown feels like an engine looking for a game for it. It looks like, plays well, has good mechanics and shows a lot of promise, with some options in how you deal with things and what you can do, but the actual story, goals and such are so open and vague that it doesn’t hold much interest. Being able to kill the gang leader before their generals feels more like an oversight than a design decision and there’s doesn’t seem to be much of a point to what you’re doing. Include the rather uninspired battles – they really are all just straight fights, no special challenges or areas or such – and it feels like they could’ve put a bit more effort into that rather than figuring how much each car weighs and when you can start throwing it.

#334 Final Furlong, #269 Puzzle Bobble

Posted: 7th August 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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6

As you have undoubtedly noticed we are, once again, doing two ames in one post. We did this two months ago after trawling the arcades of Piccadilly Circus so what could that mean?

It was a grey Saturday. Slightly chilly and there was some spits of rain in the afternoon… so of course this is the day I said we should go to Brighton. Why? Well shouldn’t we? So we ate waffles on the pier, fish and chips on the beach, threw stones into the sea, watched as the sea recoiled in terror from Jeroen… yea

Anyway, whilst we were there we perused two of the amusement arcades (would have been three but the one near the SeaLife Centre appeared to be closed down… maybe it’ll be open later). The arcades on Brighton Pier itself  had many wrong editions of games we need to play but also had the original Guitar Hero. Fun Fact: Brighton Pier was the first arcade in the UK to stock Guitar Hero! We got super excited because it would mean many blog games knocked on the head… and then we got home and I saw that the arcade edition is a stripped down version of Guitar Hero 3 which is not on this list… UGH!

The other two games we found in a pretty much deserted amusement arcade on seafront including Final Furlong! In many conversations this game has been referred to as a ‘blog killer’ since it is one that unless we were lucky enough to find an arcade with it… well we would not be able to get to play all 1001 games. There are others… but we’ll let you know about those when we get to them.

Our Thoughts

Final Furlong

168th played so far

Genre: Racing
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

Ah the blog killer. More like the leg killer… both of our legs really turned to jelly after playing this game.

Many readers will have probably seen this machines in arcades years ago but since these are fairly bulky (the one we played was originally four horses long but was cut in half to be placed into this small deserted arcade) a lot of them have either been sold on or gotten rid of in favour of modern machines or an increasing amount of slot machines. Seriously, plenty of slot machines does not a decent arcade make.

This game is on the list because of the very unusual contraption required to play it… namely fairly large horse replicas that can be rocked back and forth in order to simulate the movements of a jockey. After playing this game I can not help but feel more respect for jockeys. There are regular flat races and steeplechase events with some courses being longer than others… I am thankful I went for a shorter course because I kinda found it hard to stand afterwards.

Whether or not we enjoyed this (and in a strange way we did) this is one of those games where you see it and know immediately why it’s on the list. I’m still sore!

To expand a bit on this, the game is mostly just heavy work – you have to physically rock the horse back and forth to proceed. You can whip it to make it hurry (to a point) and courses sometimes have obstacles. In the end, you have to be fast enough to win.

The game is fairly straightforward – though with a surprising amount of tracks and options – and fun to play. Just prepare to be exhausted by the end. If you can find it.

Puzzle Bobble

169th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1994
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito

Okay so this isn’t a game we just HAD to play in the arcade but I was looking for any excuse for a sit-down after Final Furlong. (There was also an arcade version of Street Fighter 2 which was fun). Then again this game was originally an arcade exclusive so no harm.

Puzzle Bobble (known as Bust-A-Move to a lot of us) is a fairly simple game, though its puzzle elements can drag you in for a long time. You shoot coloured orbs at the screen. Once three or more of them are linked, they explode and fall away. If not, they stick to the ceiling or another ball. Any balls no longer glued to the ceiling fall away.

It’s a fairly simple concept, executed with a lot of bright colours and fun effects. The puzzles, at the same time, are actually quite tough, and the desperation that sets in after you’re getting close to having your screen filled is scary. My main beef would be that the controls can be imprecise – it’s hard to know where you’re shooting – but that’s also part of the challenge. Enjoyable and frustrating at the same time.

Final Thoughts

Not really fair to combine these two, but I suppose we want to have something here…

Final Furlong is an enjoyable game, offering a unique concept – I don’t know of any games covering the sport – with unique gameplay – the racing is absolutely different and fun to do, even if you hope nobody else is watching while you do it. Worth trying to find while you can, it might not last long.

Puzzle Bobble is a fun puzzle game – easy to pick up, difficult to master and last long in. It’s available for most platforms and often remade, so even easy to track down. That good enough for you?

#114 Ikari Warriors

Posted: 3rd August 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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0

167th played so far

Genre: Shoot ’em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: SNK
Publisher: Tradewest

Do you know what this game signifies? We have now covered 1 in 6 games on the list! Woo!

This is a bit of a mini landmark so it’s fair that this game is also a mini gaming landmark right?

Our Thoughts

What landmark am I talking about? The fact that the name from this is actually derived from part of the Japanese name for the second Rambo movie? No, that’s just unfortunate. I can see why though – one man, limited resources, going up against an army, Stallone style.

The technological innovation that this game brought in (well it was the first popular game to do so) was something called a ‘rotary joystick’ whereby you could use an actual joystick to turn in all eight directions in order to fire on your opponents. Why is this cool when games like Asteroids had been doing that 7 years previously? Well it’s cool and you have to trust us on that.

Anyway, back to Rambo (four words I never thought I would say). Ikari Warriors sees you playing as a commando trying to make his way to the village of Ikari. What is blocking your path are soldiers, tanks and the occasional vengeful statue. What’s interesting about this game (apart from the whole rotary joystick) is that unlike a lot of these shooters there is a limit on the ammo. True, you can get ammo by blowing up tanks and killing other soldiers but there is the threat of running out of ammo and that isn’t something that was done regularly at the time. Actually interesting how that came up here and Resident Evil, which we covered a few days ago… A large part of the frantic shooters is just jumping in and going for it. Not doing so is actually quite a shift.

Another cool thing about this game is that you can actually get into tanks! Yes, just like most modern shooters there are times when you can get into a tank and blow your enemies into oblivion… true it is VERY easily destroyed with you still inside it but for 1986 this is pretty damned cool.

The enemies themselves are also quite interesting – aside from the generic soldiers that come at you, there are also plenty of structures to destroy, most of which fire at you as well. They create a nice explosion taking out multiple enemies, but require a grenade to target. Their designs, however, are often the most exciting and best-looking as well.

Just like Space Harrier this runs as one long game where the brutality of the thing is that unless you deposit a whole butt-load of quarters there is little to no chance that you will make it to the end in one go. Then again, economics makes fools of us all.

Final Thoughts

In the end, this is a more tactical shooter, simply because of its limitations. You have to avoid plenty of enemies, rather than fighting, and it’s an exciting foresight. You never get a chance to idle or rest, but keep running. Add the changes controls to that, and it makes for a brilliant Rambo rip-off. Worth jumping into for a bit… if you don’t mind not getting too far for not much.

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