#882 Edge

Posted: 11th April 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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1

137th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: iPhone
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Mobigame
Publisher: Mobigame

The games featured on this list are not without some element of controversy. Reviewers of the actual list are not too happy that 10% of the list are dedicated to 2009-2010 and there is always the question of what games should be on there and which should not.

Edge is controversial for a different reason. Much like the recent battle initatied by Bethseda over the forthcoming game Scrolls there were similar problems with the name Edge. In this case the agression came from games developer Edge Games who are more known for their willingness to sue rather than their games. They kicked off over SoulEdge, they kicked off over Mirror’s Edge and they kicked over today’s game.

After a few years of litigation Mobigame thankfully won out and the word ‘Edge’ can now be freely used in the title of games without toys being thrown out of prams. Thank you Mobigame for fighting this battle.

Our Thoughts

The touchscreen of the iPhone really opened up the doors to a whole new style of gaming. True the Nintendo DS had gotten there first but that still had buttons to fall back on when developers were not too sure how to fully integrate the touch screen into the game. What the iPhone has also lead to is the increased prevalence of casual games where levels can be played in the same time it takes to travel between train stations. Games like One-Dot Enemiesย  were able to do this by making a simple game that can go on seemingly forever. Edge does this by having levels that are challenging (and somewhat epileptic fit enducing) which can be played in about 3 minutes and then turned off. With that said, ‘challenging’ is a relative term, and while there are some headscratchers in there, like any good puzzle game you’re never left wondering what to do for too long – a bit of exploration goes a long way.

Still, Edge was nowhere near the first game to do this so why is it on the list? Well, puzzle games where you have to move a procariously perched object around a series of platforms in order to gain rewards have been around for a while. They exist in the forms of Mercury Meltdown, Kula Word and even Super Monkey Ball. One thing that is different here is that rather than controlling a spherical object that is in peril of falling down if your attention wanes for the fraction of a section you control a rainbow cube.

Also, in a move different from other games, you can climb up objects with ease (as long as they are not too high). In fact, you climb your own height. This means that until later levels, when the terrain starts to move beneath your cubic feet, there is no real feeling of peril and Edge takes on a more cerebral role. This works well as a commuter game because you are never in the situation of sitting next to a frantic man (or woman) who is in danger of throwing their iPad out of the train window in frustration.

Final Thoughts

This game is different enough to make the list but it is one of the many games that does make you wonder how safe they will be if the list is remade in ten years time. On pure merit and originality this game is more convincing than some others we are due to cover but if this list wants to take history into account then the ground this made in terms of gaming trademarks should cement it’s place in gaming history… even as a footnote.

#851 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Posted: 7th April 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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1

136th played so far

Genre: Stealth/Action
Platform: PlayStation 3
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Kojima Productions
Publisher: Konami

The Metal Gear Solid series has never been a favourite of ours, whether it’s the first, second or third game, or a rather disappointing remake. There’s been a few that were better than others, with an increase as we got further into the series, but the series never really grabbed us.

To get through the games we borrowed quite a while ago, however, we do need to play this, and having left it until the end it’s become an obstacle. We haven’t felt much like it, and so have been dreading starting this game.

Our Thoughts

I’ll be the first to admit that we have been very harsh critics of the Metal Gear Solid series. We were always able to see why some others are fans of the series but it not only left us cold but also tired and mildly pissed off. This game has been sitting in our to play pile for months and months and not just because we played Sons of Liberty and Twin Snakes so close together… fun fact: there is only one Metal Gear Solid game left on the list for us to play. It’s already in our PSP game pile… supporting many others at the moment, with very few in the stack under it.

When we started this game the first that really struck me were the graphics. With memories of the original game sketched in our memories these realistic graphics looked amazing. What was even better was that these graphics have actually made the cutscenes bareable but fairly immersive. In previous games we bitched and moaned about the number of cutscenes in this game since they felt intrusive and so incredibly long since whilst they were tied to the story it was still a hell of a lot of padding. In Gun of the Patriots they were amazingly cinematic and particular phrase has to go to the team who were in charge of facial movements. In all other games of this franchise your main line of communication is a talkative portrait… now there is proper humanoid movement and it makes it so much more relateable. Okay the story is still the crazy work of a madman but it’s more fun to follow now (even if there is a villain called Laughing Octopus).

What helps here is that the radio/audio link from earlier games in the series have been replaced by a video link. You can see your advisor, not just hear him, and he’s moving around and vaguely mobile… as much as a guy at a desk can be. It also adds some personality. This is helped by the cute (and very stealthy) helper robot who follows you around and provides that video link, amongst other things.

Another great feature is the camouflage. Apparently based on the reflex of an octopus (I see a pattern here) this quickens the gaming pace compared to the systems previously in place so there is no need to constantly switch in and out of the menus. You can still do so if you want, but a one-button solution is a lot easier. And it saves the pattern you’ve tuned into before… It’s another collectable! Speaking of which…

It is also the first game where I can see the drive for replayability. Unlike previous games where the play was pretty straight you can now rack up points to buy guns (and for some reason porn) at a remote vendor. This then leads to high scores for each act which can then be bested the next time you play.

Another thing I must commend here is the AI. The basics are still there – guys walking around, giving alerts when they spot you… but it feels more polished. Enemies do more of their own thing – they don’t just walk their rounds, but go from location to location, lounge at times, and these activities cover their alertness. When the two enemy factions fight, they’re distracted enough that sometimes you can walk right by them without them spotting you, or you can hide behind a corner and they won’t even turn to look.

On the whole everything just feels far more natural and immersive. The parcelling off of some stealth elements in favour of an action-based play allows for a greater deal of choice in how you play the game. Between the two of us we used both of these with Jeroen hiding in corners and skulking behind sandbags and myself headshotting the guards and rolling barrels through NPC-riddled territory in a blaze of glory.

Final Thoughts

I think, with this game, we’ve found our first Metal Gear Solid game we really enjoyed playing. True, some cutscenes still ran a bit long, but they were a lot more fun to keep up with, with a far more interesting story – it feels far less like you’re just being led from fight to fight, there’s actual characterization!

It might be a fluke, and other games in the series may turn away from these elements, but so far Metal Gear Solid 4 has been a pleasant surprise, and is actually making me look forward more to the final game in the series. Possibly in about two year’s time.

#86 Summer Games II

Posted: 3rd April 2012 by Jeroen in Games
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1

135th played so far

Genre: Sports
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1985
Developer: Epyx Inc.
Publisher: Epyx Inc.

Epyx’s Games series – aside from this game, at some point in the future we’ll also cover World Games and California Games – is not the first collection of minigames (even in our book Tron comes first), but it’s probably one of the first that made a succesful series out of it.

Its concept is simple – you’re participating in the Olympic Games in several events, and you have to win for your country.

Our Thoughts

Right, let me explain why this game came up at this point, as there’s a (small, but present) story behind this. You see, this is what we call a catch-up game in our game picks – a game we play because we need to catch up on a genre or year (or as in this case, both). This time, however, it was also triggered by memories. Both Winter Games and California Games were a larger part of my game playing memories from my youth, back in the days when I just had a 286 to play with. This installment came first, though.

As said, this is really just a collection of minigames. Eight different sporting events coming from those seen in the Olympic Games. As the game implies, this is the second game, which means that some of the more obvious events – such as hurdles or running – aren’t present. This is, in this case, a good thing – the first game had a lot of button mashing for these types of event, an aspect that’s greatly reduced in this game, with only cycling and rowing really featuring these.

Instead, we get a lot more timing-based games (two times of jumping, javeling throwing as well as vaguely similar equestrian events), a slightly more complex strategy-based fencing game and a real avoid the obstacles race in kayaking.

For a game this age, sound and graphics really don’t matter – 4-colour CGA really is nothing to write home about – but the main fault we have are with the controls. I’ll be honest – this might be our failing, as we couldn’t get any joystick to work with this game – but I know that far from everyone in these days had one anyway, so that shouldn’t matter.

Instead, the keyboard controls are fiddly and inconsistent. Some events are straightforward, and therefore fun to play – javelin is a simple run right, then press left to aim – but others seem to have forgotten to support the keyboard when it was ported. Cycling, for example, is done by rotating the arrows, and that’s just not easy to do on a keyboard.

Final Thoughts

Are there fun bits? Yeah, there’s a few games like that. But I’m hoping California Games really holds up better and doesn’t disappoint me now.

#166 SimCity

Posted: 30th March 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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5

134th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1989
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Maxis

It is hard to really remember a time before the market was completely saturated with managament simulation games. Whenever you go to a Game (or even a Morrisons) to peruse a special offer for PC games you will see everything from hotel builders to tractor-based farm simulators. Although categorised by the list as a strategy game (seriously?) this really marked the dawn of the modern management simulator.

So far we have only covered a really modern one in the form of The Movies which in terms of scope is truly worlds apart from this now 23 year old game.ย  From what can be seen in our evaluation of games like Tekken and Grand Theft Auto is that once you have fallen for a sequel, or if a sequal was the first of a franchise that you played, it can be weird going back to the start.

Our Thoughts

It is so incredibly hard to give this game a fair write-up. Both of us are on the same footing since the first game in this franchise we both played was this one dressed up in different ports. However, I quickly moved onto SimCity 2000 and as such most of my first fond city-building memories lay there. In fact, I might have started with SimCity 2000 and played this game only later. If anything the best way to tackle this is how we did with Civiliztion in that we sat down and have a good playthrough and see how it makes us feel.

When you sit down to play this having played later games (although the cap on later games pretty much ends with SimCity 4 released in 2003) the first thing that really struck us is how basic this plays. Where Civilization stil had intricate complexities that kept you interested SimCity incredibly stripped back and very much like one of the many clones you find on the App Store. In fact this game has made it’s way to said store and has done rather well for itself… although thinking about it this game was really a perfect title for the touch screen generation.

Not just that. Fairly recently, the game was made available (with some slight modifications) as open source, retitled Micropolis, and used as one of the default software packages in the One Laptop per Child project.

And that’s where this game still shines, in a way. It’s incredibly simple, but these days it would almost be better to qualify it as edutainment. Yeah, you don’t have many different options in the simulator – it’s incredibly straight forward – but it sitll provides a simple, easy to understand model where you need to balance the needs with wants, make decisions between low taxes (which draws people in), police and fire coverage, roads and public transport, and so on. Later games added a lot more, but its simplicity makes it an effective way to learn as well. In a way, as with so many earlier games we covered (such as, recently, Breakout and One-Dot Enemies), its simplicity makes this game more addictive.

Something that is still rather enjoyable about this game over the sequels are the live-action videos. Whenever there is a disaster (or something more mundane like raised crime rates or a traffic issue) there is a short clip featuring people with eighties-style hair which may or may not be on fire depending on the emergency. It’s a small touch but enjoyable nonetheless.

Final Thoughts

These days, you can probably find the sequels for this game as cheaply as SimCity itself. Go and get those if you can. Seriously. They are better. But now that this game is open source, it might make for a nice diversion. It doesn’t compare to the later experience, but this time that doesn’t matter. More of these games are on their way, and there’s a whole universe of games under the ‘Sim’ brand we won’t cover – SimTower, SimFarm, SimIsle, SimLife and many more that are nice simulations, but just not as big.

On the other hand, if you want a bit of videogame history, one that would play well on the mobile devices we have now as what we’d call a casual game, this is a good one to go for. It’s complex but fun, deep but not too deep. And it can be commended for that. Just understand it’s a relatively simple game.

#372 Xenogears

Posted: 26th March 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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0

133rd played so far

Genre: Role-Playing Game
Platform: Playstation
Year of Release: 1998
Developer: Square Product Development Division 3
Publisher: Square

The internet is great for many reasons. It allows us to order pizza without people laughing at your accent, it contains all the FAQs you could ever want and it brings people together. There is no better example of the internet bringing a community together than Project Rainfall.

Like most people I have always hated that some games are not released in all regions. I know that there are some financial reasons that when stated in a smooth baritone (not unlike Morgan Freeman) that I will understand but in the end it prevents games from reaching possible fans. Xenogears (like WarioWare Twisted) is one of those games which never made it to Europe. To this day this lauded RPG has yet to even find it’s way onto the PAL PSN system. However, you can always do what Play magazine (issue 213, p40) suggested and set up an American account using a ZIP Code from a sitcom. Tee hee hee.

Our Thoughts

As the resident RPG expert (of sorts), you can say that this was initially my game to play (although Peter did get plenty of input, even earlier on which was mostly in the vein of “I’m bored”), so I guess it’s my turn to start…

Xenogears is one of the many JRPGs on the list, and one of many made by Square. It shows, as there’s plenty of similarities, on a high level, to its Final Fantasy games. It has the usual large amount of cutscenes, little interaction and just sit there as people talk at you – not even fully voiced. Some of these, here, are actually ‘FMV’ anime sequences that are fully voiced, giving (almost random) more interesting, different-looking sequences.

Starting with those, the cutscenes got us swearing and cursing quite early on. We were happy to have our laptops near, so we could spend some time doing other stuff while we clicked through the continued text boxes and waiting for the animated scenes to end. The latter are more tolerable – better to watch and listen than slowly appearing text – but I swear that half the time spent ‘playing’ was actually waiting for these cutscenes.

As the resident anime fan (woo!) I enjoyed the proper cut scenes. They were proper anime cut scenes that reminded me a bit of Planetes. The opening sequence was brilliant and emotive with a wonderful art-style that made me tear up a little bit. I have always had a thing about helpless people meeting their doom… it gets to me and the spaceship’s demise was wonderfully storyboarded.

Now, I can see how this would make for a brilliant game, if you’re willing to get into it and take the time to learn all the details and names. When you’re playing the game more casually – like we do for this blog – it’s tedious. I must admit that we forgot half of the plot while going through it and I could barely tell you what goes on. Something about giant robots known as ‘Gears’ that your main character magically already knows how to pilot (probably involved with his amnesia – yeah, that’s a new plot, Square…). Japanese games really do have a thing for mecha, then again Drill Dozer was fun.

Still, the other part that I mentioned is more interesting to discuss. Xenogears uses a version of the by now well known Active Time Battle method seen in most Final Fantasy games, as well as other related games like Chrono Trigger we’ll get to at some point. You have item use and magic, here known as and done through ‘Ethos’ (it’s not clear to me what ethics or such have to do with this and it seems like they wanted to use ‘ether’ but call it different… creating a weird unnecessarily unclear term). This time, however, it’s the simple ‘Attack’ command that’s different.

You see, usually, attack is just that. Jump up, hit, jump back, done. Here, there’s more to it. You can combine three attacks, each taking one, two or three points, and perform a certain number of these each turn – first for three points, but this goes up by a point every five levels. It’s a nice unobtrusive way to add some extra power and strategy to the game.

This system is enhanced by ‘Deathblows’, which are basically combinations attacks. If you execute a certain combination of moves (the first you get is triangle-cross), it becomes a combo that does some extra damage. You can’t use them straight away though – you need to ‘practice’ them first before you get them.

(A note on the cutscenes… Peter is playing as I write this. I quote him: “What the flying hell is happening?”)

The strategy added here is quite awesome and make the whole thing more strategic and fun.

Add to that the Gears. You obviously fight in a Gear every once in a while (which is supposed to become after what is, I guess, about 25 hours of cutscenes (quote Peter again: “I wanna fricking play”) permanently part of the arsenal, but is now still a device that shows up only in scripted battles and breaks after each use. Its attacks are powered by fuel, and using too much means your gear powers down or something. Never happened to us, to be honest, just yet.

The game sounds good – nice music, and good enough voiceovers – and looks nice. It’s a bit blocky in places, but good enough for a PS game. A rarity at this point is that you can freely rotate the world 360 degrees, so you can see everything and don’t have to worry about items or doors inconveniently hidden out of view or getting in the way. A simple thing in a fully 3D world, but one even more recent games like Lego Star Wars struggle with! The characters and such are 2D sprites, which only have a few orientations – they change direction, but not too much. Nice, but not great.

It combines nicely. Just make sure there’s something else to do while you wait for the cutscenes to finish.

Final Thoughts

I was pretty much silent for the majority of this write-up because it was trying to get to the next play bit under the vast ocean of ‘click X to continue to the next piece of dialogue’.

In our criticism of games like this, Tales of Symphonia and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes it looks like we take joy in hating games that are loved by many but the wonder of critique is that it’s opinion based. As we said this is a game we know many would love but in the end it was not for us.

#311 Harvest Moon

Posted: 22nd March 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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0

132nd played so far

Genre: Role-Playing Game
Platform: SNES
Year of Release: 1996
Developer: Pack-In-Video
Publisher: Natsume

If you have been gaming for a number of years you tend to accumulate a lot of the games on the ‘would like to try’ list. These are not necessarily blue ribbon titles like Xenoblade Chronicles and Gears of War, in fact so many will fall into the category of “this looks strange I wonder how it plays” (for this reason only I will be buying a copy of Naughty Bear when it is sold for under a fiver).

I have been wanting to play a game in the Harvest Moon series since I saw a positive review for Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life in a copy of a long defunct Gamecube magazine. The fact that it looked like an Animal Crossing (for those who remember this was the only game that I ever imported before the blog) with the addition of farming and the removal of the evil capitalist tanuki Tom Nook just made me want to play it all the more. Time passed as it does and now nearly ten years later I will be trying a game of Harvest Moon for the very first time.

Our Thoughts

Sweeping statement of the month: This is the biggest disappointment I have yet to suffer at the hands of this blog.

Long have we wanted to talk about how we choose games. For the most part we work on a cycle which usually goes like this: Random Game, Jeroen’s Pick, Genre Catch-Up, Borrowed Game, My Pick. Some games enter randomly because we give it a go and suddenly hours pass and it’s time for bed (that’s the sole reason Cogs made it onto the blog already). The discerning reader will guess that Harvest Moon was therefore my pick and by Jove they would be right.

Thanks to Jeroen’s mother I have become addicted to online game Farmerama and I am still not entirely sure whether I am glad she did this or whether I should curse her name to the stormclouds above… anyway. As this, and my love of Animal Crossing, will show I am not opposed to games that have a repetitive and routine-like play style. As a pair of gamers I am surprised we have not egged each other on towards unlocking all the achievements for a game since we really are those sorts of players. Lego games like Lego Star Wars exempted of course – that’s probably the one game series where we both fall squarely into the trap of completionism.

The fact is that we went into this game expecting to be enchanted and won over to the country life with our little yellow dog and cows that demand to be talked to in order to obtain milk but this game just left both of us rather cold. About an hour in I was getting so desperately bored with talking hoeing the fields and answering questions from NPCs about my religious beliefs that I begged Jeroen to take over whilst I got to thinking about lesson planning. Yes, I got so bored that I would rather have done lesson planning! Having looked over Peter’s shoulder while he was playing (partially because he was the one who so desperately wanted to play), I already was less keen about that. I made it through about one in-game week, but that was simple stubbornness as much as anything else.

Why didn’t this game win us over? For a game with such a repetitive premise to work there has to be some form of validation that the game was going somewhere… and this just did not happen. If anything by the time we farmed our first turnips I just looked at the screen expecting some form of fireworks saying “Congratulations you just harvested your first crop!” with some form of anime panda dancing in the corner. Racist? Not when you’ve played as many Japanese games as I have.

ย The game does have an end, where your score depends on how well you tended your farm, how much you got out of it and how happy your character is (marriage mandatory!), but as it’s 2.5 years in, getting there requires a lot of playing. A big ask for how boring this game gets.

Final Thoughts

You know what? There is a good game in here. With some tweaks and adjustments to make the controls less awkward, the graphics more fun and the game a bit more interesting and versatile, this is a game you could enjoy. I wouldn’t even look at Animal Crossing as the best example – that game, while superficially similar, has quite a different focus. But there are so many other simulations with vaguely similar goals that this is now done better. The many sequels probably improve on this (and we know there is one in the list), but with this series, it just doesn’t seem worth starting from the beginning.

#931 Halo 3: ODST

Posted: 18th March 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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2

131st played so far

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft

There are games where you know the moment you start playing that they are going to be enjoyable but they never live at the top of your list. Whilst this may sound odd for someone who loves to game but the Halo franchise are some of those games for me personally. Then again this is the way both of us feel about FPSs… which doesn’t really make much sense when we suddenly look up and it’s two hours later.

Again we have skipped ahead a few games in a series so we can eventually give my mate his games back… just one more.

Our Thoughts

This game almost takes me full circle. You see, one of the first games (if not the first) I played on an Xbox 360 was Halo 3, co-op multiplayer through the campaign. My main focus then was coming to grip with the controls and learning everything while playing through the game and learning the story at the same time. One thing I can see now is that I’ve certainly improved, more so than a certain other blog writer’s mouse+WASD skills… thanks for that I will make sure to bring up the total embarrassment that was your first go at Mass Effect.

My big annoyance at that time that also applies to this game is that it uses split screen. This game does too, but it restricts your view quite a bit. If you get attacks from the sky or look far down, it unfortunately gets annoying and in the way. Another issue with multiplayer split-screen is that the font used to offer instructions becomes incredibly small where even wearing my glasses make it borderline unreadable.

Anyway, as most people will probably just as often play this single player, that’s not something to worry about for too long – you get used to it fairly quickly, and they don’t really have any other options. Still interesting is that the cut scenes still use a full screen, even as the HUD comes up during it.

For your reference, we played through half the game. That didn’t take us as long as it sounds – we were actually surprised we got that far ourselves. The game’s singleplayer is actually fairly short, eight missions of 20 to 30 minutes each. They’re quite good to play through – fun, with some good action – but very linear (no exploring necessary) and a few areas felt a bit too empty for me. However, they do well at setting the story and creating something to play through. It’s just short, and that’s with quite a bit of filler already added to the game.

A lot of critics really took issue with the short length of the game and wondered whether a campaign with an average playthrough length of 6 hours is really worth the full ยฃ40. This is something that I have begun to think about considering how length of a game for games like Bayonetta can be around 10 hours. Personally I am not even half-way through Saints Row 2 and I have played for 23 hours… now that is value for money.

We found out about the timing since the game records you as you play the level so that you can later play it back. presumably this is to allow later playback of the amazing bloodbath caused by a rogue plasma grenade. For me it was reliving the fun of flying around in a Ghost… I wish Ghosts were real, I would ride it to work with the wind in my hair and a song in my heart.

Leaving that aside, the game itself is lovely. There are some beautiful environments, with quite a bit of variety between missions (I loved the nature reserve with benches covered in zebra head stickers). One of the things that grabbed me most was that, at one point, there was a police car with its alarms sounding and lights flashing. The detail on this was so unexpectedly good, that we could see the different coloured lights flashing on the weapon we were holding, showing off the lighting effects in use. Even the visor system, which lights up the area and gives indications of who’s on your side and who’s the enemy, allows for a lot of options here, as well as adding some additional minor visual cues.

One thing that is really praiseworthy is that although this is clearly set in the Haloverse they went for a completely different approach and instead of the regular storyline involving The Flood and The Covenant they leant more on creating a mystery surrounding what happened in the now wrecked city of New Mombasa.

In the mean time, the sound is quite immersive, and often the chatter of your enemies is the first warning you get that you have to be careful. The casting of Firefly’s Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk was music to my ears… they even made the characters look like them!

Then there’s the multiplayer mode, Firefight. Basically survive waves upon waves of enemies until you spend all your lives. You get scored on how often you die, how many you call and more such stats. Simple, straightforward, but good fun.

With that done, the game is good, a solid shooter with an interesting story that ties in with the other games. With that said, though, it’s short, making it feel more like an expansion pack than Halo 3. You just don’t need the original game for it, that’s it.

Final Thoughts

It was nice playing a game in the Haloverse without Master Chief which makes me look forward to the eventual playing of the strategy game Halo Wars but considering we are (technically) ahead with Halo games we probably won’t be playing that for a good while. It just feels like there’s a bit more game in here, and we’d be served well by being able to have a bit more to do playing the campaign of this game.

#575 Gregory Horror Show

Posted: 14th March 2012 by Mulholland in Games
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3

130th played so far

Genre: Survival Horror
Platform: Playstation 2
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Capcom Studio 3
Publisher: Capcom

When you have fallen for a lot of bad games there are a number of rules that you know to be true. One of them is never to buy a tie-in game because they universally suck… well almost.

Things are nowhere near as bad as they were in that respect. I mean sure every new big film has to have a game but they are nowhere near as publicised as they used to be which is probably down to their being so many great games dropping in recent years.

On the list there are four or five games that break the rule of ‘tie-in games being crap’ (for the sake of arguement we are not counting The Warriors since it was made too long afterwards to be considered a tie-in) and Gregory Horror Show is the first of these rule-breakers that are featuring on this blog. Based on the anime series of the same name this survival horror game remains fairly unknown in the UK.

Our Thoughts

To be fair, not knowing the anime, I have little to be disappointed with – I went in not knowing what to expect, only knowing this was a survival horror featuring a rather cubic-looking mouse. The only warning that he had was my playing it nearly ten years ago and some of the characters (namely Lost Doll) giving me the creeps.

Now, in my mind, when I think of survival horror games, I think of games like Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark. Scary, freaking you out, with a lot of sneaking and possibly even more shooting and other fighting. Running away when necessary (there’s limited ammo), but you’ll have a faithful baseball bat or something like that.

This game isn’t like that. If we call the aforementioned games survival shooters, this is a survival puzzle. You have no weapons and spend your time checking your map for the more violent guests staying in the hotel the game is set in. And you try to run away, assuming you’re fast enough to get away, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. If they catch you, you’re subjected to a horror show. A psychedelic attack on you using the weapon the guest prefers to use – a giant syringe, revolvers or a freaky second face. These rather twisted attacks are the eponymous horror shows. What’s interesting about them is that none of them are really THAT scary… in fact some of them are downright silly.

This takes away your sanity, which is your HP in the game. It also slowly reduces as you wander around the hotel for too long as well and losing it all means the worst fate in these sort of games – being stuck in the hotel… FOREVER!

Your way out is to collect lost souls. These are held by the same violent hotel guests and to get them, you need to solve the right puzzle, which often involves chasing around the place and waiting until the right time to strike, so you can grab the soul when they’re distracted. When you collect all 12, Death will free you from this fate.

Death is an interesting character himself (sporting a Swedish flag for a hat in a nice nod to the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal) because he is one of only three characters in the game (and I am including a fortune telling frog who acts as a save point) who are remotely helpful. The other helpful character is the incredibly sad character Neko Zombie who had his eyes, ears, nose and mouth sown shut in a terrible act of revenge.

Supporting this is one of the neat features of the game. The NPCs are mostly on rails and have a schedule throughout the day. While for some of them this just means they wander through the hallways, others go for different activities in the different rooms, meeting with people (and meeting with different people as more guests appear in the hotel) and it becomes important to make sure you’re out at the right time to catch them at their weak point, while avoiding them when they do their rounds through the hallway.

The voice acting is also lovely, and for an anime that I’m not sure ever made it to the English-speaking world, the voice actors are chosen well and really get into their parts. It makes some of them sound suitably creepy… and others just strangely crazy.

The characters look, as I mentioned earlier, blocky (as was the style of the anime). While I realise they might have originally made the choice to fit the system specs, by the time this game came out more was already possible, and the characters just look more unreal because of it. This is set, however, in a scary and lovely hotel, that might not be as detailed as elsewhere, but has so many dark corners and nooks that it makes the whole thing more creepy… especially with some of the brightly coloured characters standing out in it.

This blocky style has enabled this games graphics to remain almost timeless. It is something that we say so so SO often though that when you stylise your graphics and you do it well (as is the case with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, No More Heroes and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles) then you could have a timeless looking game on your hands.

Describing the game though, I wouldn’t call it horror-type scary. Nothing in there is going for the horror sense other games have. However, the game is crazy, absolutely out there at times. Deranged is the best word I’ve got for it and that makes it work better. It’s scary because you have no idea what to expect and the mismatch of styles and dialogue makes it more frightening. It may not look it, but this game will make you jump.

Final Thoughts

Although Dead Rising was technically the first survival horror game that we covered for the blog I really do feel that this was the first real title of that conforms to what most would think of the genre… apart from the lack of weapons.

Fact is… we are still behind on survival horror games since these were the only two we currently own (apart from Dead Space on the PC) but theoretically we should cover a Resident Evil game soon. Anyone want to lend it to us?

A Store-based (and slightly self righteous) Acquisition!

Posted: 10th March 2012 by Jeroen in Acquisition
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For those of you who’ve been keeping up with recent events in the games industry, you may have read about the financial issues Game (and subbrand Gamestation) is having. They already can’t reach an agreement with Electronic Arts to stock Mass Effect 3, with other titles probably (soon) similarly affected – this was the first we saw.

Blockbusters already has a sign up to get Mass Effect 3 there, also reading “Not available in Game or Gamestation”.

Now, as we like physically owning games and thought it would be a shame to see them go out of business, and because we still need more games for this blog, we went for a visit.

Yeah, it was a sale, we wanted bargains, if it saves the company, then why would you complain.

To be honest, when we were in there, the atmosphere seemed quite relaxed. Yeah, the games were cheaper (with some good deals), but there seemed no worry. Having discussed it, things felt moderately positive to us – we theorized that they were more looking to get rid of stock to get some money and consolidate some stores (as they seem to often have two or three closer together, such as our local shopping centre having both a Game and a Gamestation, and a place like Bluewater having two Game stores very near each other).

Still, we would miss the stores not being there – both from being able to do the browsing (having the quick flick through the stacks down to an art) and the bargains that seem common there and make you feel better. Yeah, the instant gratification factor is there… even if it can be a bad thing for our wallet.

So we went and bought a few games for the blog…

As we said to each other – no matter what, whenever this is done, we will be allowed to complain about the store closing, we’ve done our bit – aside from these, we picked up a few other games we were desperate for and wanted to play some day for ourselves.

So yeah, you can try to puzzle them all out – there’s some great games in there – back to Professor Layton and Legend of Zelda, and new series like de Blob, F.E.A.R. and Uncharted… Expect some of these soon, others… probably four years from now. Awesome times!

Of course, to explain, we’ve been slowly adding other games as well, although less at a time so we’ve not mentioned it as much, so we’ll be using PS Move games too and have plenty of other awesome things coming up.

But aside from everything else – if, like us, you also like your physical copies, you prefer a nice box over a downloadable PNG screenshot and you get childish excitement (we get giddy) from going through shelves and finding that special title you didn’t expect, then this is the time to go out. Visit your local gaming store and make use, right now, of the sales that are on in some of these stores. Buy a game or two you like but haven’t played yet, or get a new game you haven’t heard of yet. Get our recommendations and find a game or two from the blog. We know these stores might not last forever and we’ll start seeing less of them, but we can try to at least make sure there’s some. Go for it.

And even if you don’t care about those – most of the prices are slashed far enough that you won’t find these games cheaper anywhere. Surely that would be worth it on its own?

#987 Cogs

Posted: 10th March 2012 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , ,
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129th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Lazy 8 Studios
Publisher: –

We’ve been avoiding puzzle games a bit more than normal recently, having done too many of them in the early days of this blog. It’s always a marvel to get back to them.

Cogs was part of a previous Humble Indie Bundle, the brilliant packs of good games we always enjoy perusing. In its most basic form, it’s a form of sliding puzzle that we’ve seen in many other games, including the 7th Guest. It comes with twists though – sometimes you need to make gears turn, sometimes you need to line up steam pipes, sometimes you need to rotate a cube to get to all sides of the puzzle – including puzzles where both sides of the puzzle pieces have their own part of the solution.

Our Thoughts

In the past few years, indie developers have been making a comeback. While the name may invoke crude graphics and simple games (even with good gameplay), this isn’t always the case. Unlike Flywrench which is a game that really does embody both of the indie game stereotypes.

Cogs, to start off with that, is beautiful. The gear rotation, interlocking nicely, makes the goals often immediately clear, but beyond that provide for something beautiful to look at. When you finish a level, it rewards you with a slow rotation, giving you a good look at the final mechanism. If ever there was a game that embodied the spirit of steam-punk then Cogs would definately be more at the forefront than games like Planescape: Torment where the influence is far more subtle in how the world works. We have many steam-punk games left to cover since it was especially in vogue during the nineties.

At the same time, the puzzles are as elegant as they are beautiful. They come down to simple sliding puzzles, but rather than the usual version of having to make a specific picture, it serves as a background to some basic but fun engineering-type problems. You need to not just always line up gears of pipes of steam – at times the pipes carry gas of different colours that need to be matched up with the right balloon, or one gear should be made to turn without another turning. Sometimes you have to use all sides of the cube to make it fly off as a helicopter.

With that said, the game isn’t just about solving the puzzles – that’d lead to you trying it once and then leaving it as you’ve solved them. To unlock later puzzles, you need to gain stars. You gain stars by finishing the level normally, but also by doing so in a short amount of time andย  in a low number of moves. There’s also a challenge mode where you get a time or move limit on solving the puzzle.

The puzzles get tough quite soon, but remain solvable. Getting stars to unlock more puzzles gets harder though – it’s still quite a bit of work. Tough, but fun and beautiful. Absolutely worth trying.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to say bad things about games like this – it does what it wants to do and does it well, that’s all there really is to it. A beautiful game with some intricate mechanics that just works well. Great fun, absolutely worth a go.

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