50 Game Round Up: 51-100 (Peter)

Posted: 18th November 2011 by Mulholland in Round-Up
0

100 games in… where has the time/my life gone.

Best Game I Had Not Previously Played

This is always a very hard one to do. For a while I believed it would be Prototype since I loved it utterly. However, after I played Infamous I was hooked line and sinker. The whole idea of controlling electricity has always been rather appealing and the novel way of moving around the open world charmed me instantly. The fact that this was one of the games I got with my lovely PS3 does not factor into this… maybe.

Other games that charmed me utterly include Skies of Arcadia, Final Fantasy XII, Guild Wars and Shadow of the Colossus.

Worst Game

Although I have been fairly negative when talking about a number of games there have been very few games that I could say that I did not enjoy on any level.

This, however, was not the case with Paradroid which I thought was absolute pants. We actually ended the post being positive since we were not exactly comfortable with damning a well liked game. However, despite the interest that I found in this game it is still not one I would want to return to any time soon.

Most Surprising Game

This is the hardest on to do of the five sections since many have surprised me in positive ways. Skies of Arcadia helped restore my faith in JRPGs, No More Heroes introduced me to the baffling world of Suda51, Super Metroid survived the ravages of time with grace and punch and then there was the awesome puzzlerZack & Wiki.

However, the title for biggest surprise lies with Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. It not only showed off all the GBA to Gamecube adapter could do (apparently similar things to the up and coming Wii U controller) but it also demonstrated how well a multiplayer JRPG could work.

Biggest Disappointment

I loved Guild Wars completely which meant that when it came to playing the Mac Daddy of them all I had such high expectations… but these were not met at all. In fact I did not enjoy it and was unable to get hooked by the apparently magnetic pull of World of Warcraft. I never even thought of playing it again after my original gaming session and for a format that relies so much on monthly subscriptions I was truly disappointed.

Games We Kept Playing

You know what’s coming right? Despite World of Warcraft being unable to bewitch me Guild Wars has caused me to lose plenty of daylight hours to my Ranger/Mesmer avatar and her delightful pet tiger.

Although I actually completed Infamous I still rank Guild Wars as the most addictive of games and I cannot wait until Guild Wars 2 sees the light of day.

50 Game Round Up: 51-100 (Jeroen)

Posted: 17th November 2011 by Jeroen in Round-Up
0

Okay… 1oo… Wow…. We’ve now played (and discussed on here) 1 in 10 games in the book. While there is a niggle in the back of my mind saying we still have 901 games to go, this is where things get serious. Persistence proven, point made… now it’s time for fun.

More ups and downs, I must admit this second group of fifty seems to have featured a broader mix of games… maybe not always as indy, but certainly some of the more interesting games.

Finding the top and bottom games, and what surprised us most, was therefore a more difficult task, there was no Little Computer People in these (roughly) 6 months worth of gaming. Still, I tried my best, and here is my selection…

Best Game I Had Not Previously Played

Another 50 games with at least 40 of them actually being good and enjoyable… how can you pick a favourite from it?

Prototype was quickly overtaken by Infamous and Shadow of the Colossus felt properly epic, as you want sometimes. Final Fantasy XII was lovely, possibly the best of them we’ve played so far.

Luigi’s Mansion is another Mario game I really loved, and our love for the real star of the series is proven here by offering a fun, quite different game that we ended up buying for ourselves after we borrowed it before.

Another game we ended up buying is, however, my definite pick for this category. Skies of Arcadia is a really good JRPG (amongst the best, if not the best), and I must admit I spent more money than I should have on getting it. I was happy with that though, somehow the turn based combat and otherwise fairly simple interface made for a fun game where elements mattered (though not too much) with a level up system that worked well with a seperate skill system and some interesting ideas for characters.

The story was interesting, and was made by the unorthodox sky based setting, and the characters grew rapidly on us. It took us an hour or two to get going, but after that we found it hard to put it down – we were entranced by its opportunities and found it led to a brilliant game. This is helped by its beautiful design (especially for the time) and diversity of side quests and options. Again, if you haven’t yet, give it a try soon if you can find it. It’s worth it.

Oh, and a few games I was happy to get back to were Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (our first Civ like game!) and the Lucasarts adventure Sam & Max Hit the Road, which I’ve finished far too often to not be mentioned now. Grand Theft Auto was, in that sense, the perfect game to end this streak of 50 with… Yeah, I got lost in that again. Brilliant.

Worst Game

 Yeah, not all of these are winners. The Metal Gear Solid game series, as might be clear so far, doesn’t work for me… but they aren’t actually bad games, just not my type. Super Hang-On has been done better since its release. But that’s just time moving on. Tales of Symphonia, however, was quite simply awful and not worth it for me.

If I really want to go worst though, I have to go for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. It might be time here, and it’s very much because I am not great at skating games. But it just didn’t feel like a great game anyway. Aside from dated graphics, the controls were awkward and too difficult to come to grips with. There were goals, but I didn’t get the feeling I really got a chance to do them – some were fiddly, and you didn’t always get enough time to explore to get to them.

I’m sure it’s a good example of a skating game, and it’s certainly not Little Computer People (nothing has lived up… or down to that standard yet), but I really didn’t enjoy playing it that much.

Most Surprising Game

Want to know the shortlist of games that didn’t make it? Well… Rockstar presents Table Tennis is one of those left field games I just never thought about. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is Metal Gear Solid Done Right. DoDonPanchi was just an incredible amount of fun.

In the end, however, Super Metroid wins out. I had only seen bits and pieces of the game series, and that seemed simple. Straight forward. Follow the path and kill the enemies. Maybe some explorations, but hey, action game, right?

No, it wasn’t. Not at all. What I saw (after a first small dungeon) was a large cave complex, where I could explore a number of paths, that grew exponentially as I explored more – finding more paths, hidden and obvious. Add that to a simple, good action shooter game, and you get some addictive… I want to get back to it, but I’m afraid I’d just get lost. HELP!

Biggest Disappointment

Plenty of games on the list get hyped up. Some look worse when we go to investigate them further, where more often than not we end up pleasantly surprised.

Other games, however, seem good at first, get plenty of hype and get us excited about playing. And then when we do it, it… just doesn’t meet our expectations. It’s not as brilliant as they said. The vision… might be there, but hinders rather than helps. And in the end, they’re simply not as much fun. And that, for me, was Killer 7.

It’s not necessarily a bad game. There were some good adventure elements in there, without much tedious shooting. But it was so hyped up. Artsy, special, its own greatness. Western audiences didn’t get it at first… and neither did I. Just not that great. I’m sorry. It just didn’t work for me.

I’d almost give an honorable mention to Sonic Adventure here… except that I knew it had its issues already.

Games We Kept Playing

This is the most obvious one for me. There’s just one game that kept me addicted for longer afterwards, until I finished it and got to 100% (more or less). That’s Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Fun, plenty of puzzle solving I enjoy doing, with a story that I simply wanted to figure out. The very definition of a game that just grabs you.

With that said, there are other games I’ll get back to. I’ve already played more Guild Wars, and as mentioned above, will get back to Luigi’s Mansion and Skies of Arcadia at some point.

Sorry, World of Warcraft. You were fun, but… I found better, really.

#357 Grand Theft Auto

Posted: 15th November 2011 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: , , , ,
9

100th played so far!!!

Genre: Action
Platform: Playstation, PC
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: DMA Design
Publisher: ASC Games

They thought we would never make it this far. They said we were crazy to even start this blog (and by they I mean me) but here we are at Game 100 which means that we have effectively covered 1 in 10 games on the list.

Since this is such a landmark for us it was only apt that we started one of the most successful franchises in gaming history as well as a game which brings back a lot of memories. On a personal level this was the first, and only, game where I was unable to play it because of the 18 rating since no one would buy it from me (and yet I managed to play it on my dad’s Playstation on the rare occasion I saw him).

Whether or not you like the series both this game and subsequent ones changed the face of video games and that is a fact.

Our Thoughts

Peter has already mentioned it, but let me add to this: It’s game 100, a big milestone in our mind, meaning that we’ve done one in 10 games… hopefully representative enough, but we’ll see whether we keep up the same game quality down the line. Starting with this big game franchise, I must say that what we saw in this game was pretty tame. Compared to the realistic death graphics and gore of modern day, today’s gamer is far more used to the idea of stealing cars and driving over a bunch of pixels vaguely resembling a top-down human. At the time I first played this (and saw this played) it was sneakily, making sure our parents couldn’t see, as the furore was great. Not entirely comparable to Carmageddon (a game we’ll sort of be covering down the line), but still the type of game they didn’t want you to play. This, of course, made it even more fun to play, although the gameplay itself was good enough anyway. The joy of this was the thrill of how taboo it was. I mean I only played it when my dad was asleep in the morning or when I was alone in his house. It’s the sort of feeling of when you are reading under the covers with a torch on just so you can stay up passed your bedtime. This strange rush of forbidden endorphins hooked a generation of gamers and secured them for the next 14 years.

What is impressive is that they never rested on their laurels and this marks the first in a series of critically acclaimed games where even spin-offs and expansion packs have been met with positive reviews. Part of this is related to a shift in gameplay between the second and third installments of the series, but it’s teeling that this is one of those series where we will cover pretty much every game in the series.

The game itself is really quite simple. You walk around a fictional city (Liberty City, San Andreas, all the familiar names…), and help out the underworld through stealing cars, performing assassinations and taking care of all sorts of other similar tasks. You can get weapons (including a lovely flamethrower) to carry out these tasks, but the big fun part is what the title implies – stealing cars. Grand Theft Auto indeed. You race around, messing up traffic, running over pedestrians if you want, and generally are a bad boy. Not much sex involved (unlike later games), so no need to worry about any coffee later. They didn’t need that scandal yet. Don’t worry they still have the red light districts we have come to know and love, but it is true that after the turning point that was Grand Theft Auto III it is strange to be playing this, especially since it’s feels so back to basics. In fact I was slightly worried about replaying this because sometimes memories are more liable to be seen as more favourable.

It is true that this has aged but, as we both observed, this is screaming out for a slightly rejigged iOS port for either the iPad or iPhone. The shooting controls would need to be rejigged since they really do make things more difficult than needed (same with Metal Gear Solid to be honest). Shooting is pretty much ‘Hope you’re looking in the right direction and hit the fire button’, which is pretty much what you get at these basic top down games. Luckily you don’t need them as often, making that less important. The main reason you need it is for certain missions, where you can’t get to your target by car, and have to take care of them this way. If you don’t, it’s mission failed, sorry, try again next time.

It is also rather strange that it has an actual scoring system with lives when you consider how later on you have infinite lives. Just one of those many little ways that DMA Design (later Rockstar North) saw fit to improve on an already cracking game. One of the things that’s clear there is that this game came from a traditional background, with a look and feel (scoring included) that goes back to older arcade days, where you’d play to score and would end the game after some time, and you want to beat others. There is a crude save game option, but that only keeps track of the areas and mission groups you’ve unlocked, not how far you did within each. When you restart the game, you need to replay the missions. This doesn’t matter as much, as your final goal isn’t just to finish the missions (which you can’t easily do – if you die you lose the missions), but instead to score enough points to unlock the next area. At first these are just different missions in the same area, with different roads broken up and bridges being build, but later these open up other cities for you to do mayhem in. These cities set a pattern which we would later see repeated again and again (i.e. Liberty City followed by Vice City and San Andreas).  There was also the London expansion pack set in the swinging sixties… but I thought it was kinda pants so we won’t go into that right now.

In the end, however, missions and scores matter little in this game. The real thrill is in the shooting, stealing cars, driving around and, well, getting random pager messages from various exes chasing you.

Final Thoughts

They say that a bridge once crossed should never be revisited… but that is not always the case. Whilst the thrill of the forbidden passion has long since passed it is still one hell of a lot fun and a great way to finish our first 100 games. I hope the next batch are shown to be as entertaining.

#20 Zork I

Posted: 11th November 2011 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: , , ,
4

99th played so far

Genre: Adventure
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1980
Developer: Infocom
Publisher: Personal Software

Much like how The Mighty Boosh promises to take you on a journey through time and space it is time for us at Pong and Beyond to drag you kicking and screaming back to a time when adventure games depended on us actually inputting text in order to progress!

That’s right people, the point-and-click adventures like Maniac Mansion and Sam and Max Hit The Road were just a glint in the milkman’s eye (or whatever the equivalent is for the illegitimate children of game developers) when this bad boy hit the shelves back in 1980… if you actually remember playing this as a contemporary I would like to personally welcome you to this blog and hope to meet you in the comments section after we attempt to share our thoughts.

Our Thoughts

I must apologise to our readers for the short write up. Unfortunately, text-based games take away one main part that we can focus on for games: the graphics. Even so, games like this are supposed to evoke at least some of the imagery from the descriptions it gives you, so we’ll need to see whether they were good enough for us.

The fact it is so easy to get lost despite the fact that you are constantly moving back and forth does not say that much. However, there is only so much you can do with a few sentences of description and (to give them credit) they do a great job at setting the scene. Part of the reason for this is, at the same time, that it abbreviates these descriptions so they don’t get in the way. Good if you have been playing the game for longer (and you will need to), but not as much when you’re still trying to get your bearings. What also does not help is that to do anything you need to input most instructions, with directions being the obvious exception, in basic sentences. It took me a long time to work out the instructions the game would understand to let me climb down and out of the attic.

Of course, the commands are a staple of the text adventure genre, with a number of basic shortcuts being universally accepted and in other cases, some might say figuring out what to do is part of the puzzle. Still, it is something that requires learning, and this is part of the learning curve that makes it so much more difficult to get into these games – it’s a time investment that’s harder to justify. There have been similar text adventures I got into a long time ago, but even I just can’t normally bring myself to do it, it annoyed me too.

Aside from the historical value of Zork I and the fact that it helped inspire and inform the adventure games which followed I cannot think of much to really recommend playing this game. I don’t entirely agree with that. This game is a lot harder to get into than most, especially when you’re not used to these kinds of games, but when you do, you find that there’s a set of complicated puzzles in this game.

There is a large world with many things you can do and try, and responses to many sillier options (they don’t think of everything… but they thought of a lot). Many puzzles have multiple solutions and there are plenty of red herrings leading you around. It’s not a game you can finish in one go – you’ll die often and have to keep retrying to get further, but that’s part of the fun of these games. You need to try to figure out what to do and how to do it. That’s not to everyone’s taste, and is a sign of the times as well (early computer wizards playing the game on their university’s mainframe, who often, after finishing the puzzles, go in and add their own).

This game is the earliest release of Infocom’s long legacy of text adventures, and as such, it’s a bit more disjointed and less story based than their later games. Descriptions will become longer and more in depth and there are more explanations that aren’t as relevant, but give you more of a story. Here, you’re an adventurer who’s collecting treasures – the twenty treasures of Zork – to get a treasure map that will get you to a stone barrow – the barrier between this game and the next. Other games in the series explain more on why and what, and what happens next, but as it is, that’s all there is to do.

Obviously, these twenty treasures are each reached through their own puzzle, only vaguely related at times. I suppose it’s not much… but then again, plenty of more recent games offer less of a story anyway. This doesn’t mean much now, but it’s something to think about when trying out later instalment. If you want to get into the world of text adventures, go for other games – they have more of a story to draw you in, and are usually a bit friendlier. But if you want to get the original, tough enough puzzles, Zork will do you well. Or you can just read a fantasy novel, at least then you won’t spend a lot of time reading your way through circles. But you won’t be the one running away from grues then, not as much…

Still, in order to progress along their way different mediums tend to borrow from one another in order to start the ball rolling. In order to bring adventures into the world of gaming they had to borrow from the old-fashioned Choose Your Own Adventure book series but within a matter of years graphics were up to snuff and the modern adventure game was born. The fact that I had little patience with those books probably says a lot for why I did not get on well with Zork I.

In the end, though it is a trailblazer and I am sure that with some knowledge of the standard language and a decent pad this would have been a better experience. However, for someone whose first gaming memory is Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Game Gear this will never have the sense of nostalgia that many other older gamers will experience. It’s impressive, but really not for me.

The comparison to a Choose Your Own Adventure book gives a limited indication of what the game contains. The options in Zork are many more at any point than the few such a book offers – as said, the game often offers multiple solutions, and makes good use of time based puzzles, such as a lake emptying, as well as NPCs acting independent from you (the Thief might well be the first such gaming character).

It’s something you have to get into, I agree there – whether it’s because that’s where you’re started, or because you got used to it later. But with the multitude of options available, this might be the first game to show how a computer can be used for more storytelling than just ‘kill the enemies’, that shows in adventures, RPGs, MUDs (and through that MMORPGs) and possibly many other games that featured more than a basic plot.

Final Thoughts

As you may have noticed, I’m fond of this. To be honest, this is as much a fondness for the genre – I have plenty of memories of chasing down a vampire lord in a game whose name I don’t even remember. And despite Colossal Caves, this was the first commercial success.

It’s a game that might not appeal to the masses anymore, and playing this without a walkthrough may, these days, appeal even less to most (in fact, Infocom starting offering hintbooks for sale soon after the release of the game, knowing how difficult their games could get). But unlike Little Computer People, a game too boring to appeal to us now, the puzzles are as tough as ever, and I’m sure those who are interested in solving such puzzles will enjoy working it out.

#656 Killer7

Posted: 7th November 2011 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

98th played so far

Genre: Adventure/Shoot ’em Up
Platform: Gamecube/PS2
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Capcom

Suda51 is one messed up dude. Yes, with three years of a psychology degree I have come to this conclusion  that this huge figure in gaming probably has a screw loose somewhere in the depths of his psyche.

By no means is this a bad thing. With his rather… let’s call it unorthadox take on game directing he has become one of the handful of gaming figures (alongside Sid Meier and Peter Molyneux) to not only be known by name but also to be associated with a certain gaming style. Yes, we’re going with “style” to describe his output, such as the earlier-covered No More Heroes, and… yea his love of violence and bathrooms are examples of style.

Our Thoughts

One thing I’m happy about: The only toilet we saw when playing was one that wasn’t in use that we needed to flush… and we didn’t see anything more than the handle to do so. True, but there was a severed head in the tumble dryer. Who was very annoyed you disturbed him and asked you to leave when you were done. Yes, the thing is that after you have played a few games made with Suda51 at the helm there are few acts of gaming strangeness that can surprise you. Then again our experience with Killer7 did not turn out as expected after a rather hard time with the gaming controls during the tutorial.

Yeah. The controls start out feeling very unintuitive and in the way, overblown for what you’d expect of a shoot ’em up. It took some time fully come to grips with them. This is, in part, due to the odd nature of the game. Except at intersection, you can only move forwards and backwards – no turning left or swerving, instead always sticking to the center of the hallway. Shooting has its own quirks, where you need to get your gun out, scan to find the enemies and only then shoot them. Be prepared to wait for a second or two every few shots as you reload, which takes you out of the shooting mode into what is almost a mini cutscene… even though your enemies keep advancing. It was that small reloading cutscene that really confused us in the tutorial. And threw us, as it seemed to interrupt the flow. Yes that and also the unbelieveably long loading times.

Due to the rather menacing nature of the enemies (known as the Smiles) there are some horror elements present alongside the adventure and rail shooter hallmarks. However, so much of the tension was diffused everytime you waited for the next room to materialize. Not helped by the loading screen being some red- or blue-coloured static that froze occasionally.

Despite that annoyance it remained remarkabley atmospheric due to the extremely messed up nature of the side-characters. With the gimp suit helper being the most obvious. Yes, Iwazaru is up there with Tingle as one of the more upsetting effeminate video game characters. His sheer obsession with things that are tight and being hung from the ceiling with what appears to be a gag in his mouth did make me wonder a lot about what did not get passed the censorship process. Same goes with the liberal amounts of blood on display, and the fact that you level up by drinking blood in order to feed your character’s multiple personalities.

That’s right kids, multiple personalities are on show here (the title’s Killer7) each with their own guns, abilities and weaknesses. To those who have never played this game I would advise you to not use Kaede in combat since she is freakin’ useless. Now, one of the interesting things about this game is that, rather than the multiple personalities being, well personalities, you, the player, actually physically change into different characters. Your character ‘explodes’ (for lack of a better word) and reforms into a different body. If that body dies, you still have all the other characters to turn into, and in that sense they also serve as different ‘lives’. The idea behind this is that you are Harman Smith, an assassin, who has absorbed these other assassins and uses them to carry out his kills. There’s also one last ‘personality’ whose focus is not to assassinate, but instead to retrieve soul shells, which are the representation of those characters, in case that one dies. I think that’s more or less it, but I might have missed some cryptic clues to explain that part of the game. These multiple personalities coupled with the unusual convoluted noir-style plot are some of the many reasons why this game received an incredibly mixed reception in the west.

Another thing that took some getting used to by us (and, quite possibly, other western gamers) are the graphics. We were greeted with what seemed like an unpolished, simple menu. Nothing special, just some simple text that’s hard to read and feels thrown together in ten minutes. After that, the graphical style is… strange. It would have looked dated at the time, and the reasons for that aren’t entirely clear. The main thing is that while playing, you don’t notice it as much – not so much that it gets better, but it seemsto fit together more. The graphics are a variation on cel-shaded and whilst it was released a few years after Capcom publishing-mate Viewtiful Joe it has aged a lot worse. It was around this time that Capcom started to experiment with cel-shading in a big way, culminating with the beautifully rendered Street Fighter IV, but I will be honest when I say that this was not their best effort. It’s unclear why this is… I’m not sure whether they wanted to look retro, or weird, or whether they want to look unique, or whether they really thought this looked awesome. I would go for unique, which it does, since it goes with the rest of the game.

When we started Killer7 we are wondering if we could ditch playing it under an hour but I am glad we did not. I suppose. Luckily the game didn’t feature as much shooting as the tutorial suggested, making it far easier to keep up with.

Final Thoughts

It’s one of those games which has endeavoured to get as close as possible to artistic expression.  Whilst this may not rank amongst those we would buy for ourselves (thanks again Chris) it  is a game that really did try to push the boundaries of what makes a game a game. For that reason alone it is not hard to see why this game made the list. I still think we should section Suda51 before he hurts himself…

#624 World of Warcraft

Posted: 3rd November 2011 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , , ,
4

97th played so far

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

Here it is. The big one. The elephant in the room. That one game everyone in the modern day has heard of.

Sure, other games may be more famous. More iconic. But also, to be fair, older. World of Warcraft, however, has reached a level of cultural awareness, however, that few games seem to match, and it’s one of the few games where this many gamers get addicted, losing days of their life to playing, without being the type to do so on many other games.

For what it’s worth, this game isn’t the first of its kind, nor the last, and prepare for some comparisons to be drawn with Guild Wars. What it comes down to is that you’re one of many adventurers dropped into a fantasy world – a very detailed one, considering the legacy the original Warcraft game has left and build on in later games – which you have to defend from many evil creatures, or where you have to support them, unless you want PvP and fight other players like you. Supposedly fun fantasy RPGing together with many other people.

Our Thoughts

Now, I must admit some bias here, as I know the strategy games set in the same Warcraft world quite well and, to be honest… I love them. They were the ones who pushed strategy development as much as the Command & Conquer did, with more of a focus on characters and characterization and far more a quest-like setup. This is an extension of this, which continues the RPG focus while I suppose the MMO angle sort of asks for more strategy. The style certainly matches Warcraft 3 quite closely, in graphics and character interaction.

Where do we start? Graphics first. They’re not too bad (considering this game is from 2004): not too realistic, as you can’t really be when you have a world filled with orcs, walking bulls, elves and the living dead. Slightly cartoony – partially by design, partially because that’s the best we could get then. They are still beautiful, however, especially during the few sequences where you fly around the world to get from place to place… or because your spirit animal allows you to go there, as my Tauren hunter soon discovered.

There is no doubting that with the graphical style that Blizzard employed in this game, which to be fair has been muted  in order to cope with the millions of players, does help to create an atmosphere. Whether it be my avatar running through verdant forests or Jeroen’s minotaur-thing bounding over plains as birds peck at his head. They’re called Tauren. I’ll show you their side mission when we get to covering Warcraft 3. Can’t wait (!)

Yes… what this game does show is that Blizzard (as followers of their work know) know what they’re doing. The games may not always be the most innovative, but they’re great, and every game they’ve made became big in their genre. Whether it’s the single player action RPG, Diablo, or the strategy Warcraft and Starcraft, people will have heard of them. And this, too, shows through in World of Warcraft.

It won’t look or feel as sophisticated as some games. A lot of the quests are simple kill and fetch. But the hours passed fast when we were playing.

It really was a case of looking up and the sun had already set, there is no denying the addictive nature of the game. However, even though I lost quite a bit of time to it I have not had any real inclination to return to my night elf’s quest to deliver owl pelts (or whatever it is).

Everything about this game has the hallmarks of an addict’s nectar. The experience point fly in thick and fast in the first hour meaning that you start customising your avatar’s look and abilities right from the off… yet it is not so easy that it feels like a pushover. The fact that experience required ramps up incredibly quickly goes unnoticed.

It is also a great touch that ever race has their own beginning story so it feels like new experience whenever you want to experiment with new characters. Something that I did enjoy over Guild Wars since there all the characters started off in the same place. However, for me that was the only place where World of Warcraft had a one up over Guild Wars.

I know that there was only a year between they were released but for me the difference in playability was staggering. Part of this feels like a difference in focus. While both games features fantasy elements, Guild Wars feels fairly low key, with some magical abilities, creatures and sights, but mostly fairly natural elements. World of Warcraft, at the same time, is high fantasy. Different, weird races all mingle, especially once you get past the starter village, you use more strange magical abilities and find and deal with more supernatural threats. There seem to be many more fantasy elements in this world when compared to Guild Wars. Also add to that the vastly superior graphics and ambient sounds then I really do believe that Guild Wars should have had an even more widespread appeal compared with World of Warcraft… but it never took off in the same fashion.

In a way, all the MMORPGs released after World of Warcraft were too late. It got the attention, it got the players, and it’s hard to find the time to play more than one. At the same time, World of Warcraft is helped by its relative simplicitly. There’s stuff to learn, but the stories and texts seem to be less than Guild Wars. Less tutorials, less ‘thou must’s and less attempts to be epic. There’s a game here, and fun lore bits in between, but it doesn’t require too much out of the way. Not saying the game is simple – there’s a lot of skill and learning involved – but it starts off being easier to learn. Add to that that in the end, the appeal of an MMORPG is the people who play it (what else would be the point?) and you see that in this genre, players attract more players.

What did not help is that in the wake of WoW‘s success the marketplace became saturated with other MMORPGs just waiting to cash in on the action. So which horse do you back? The big one that already has an established community or a newer one where there is a possibility that the servers could be shut down at any moment. And in the end, I don’t think it’s a bad horse to back. Sure, others have been great, but this, in the end, is addictive, fun and gives you plenty of interaction that you would want. With 11+ million users to go on your quests with it really is no contest is it?

Final Thoughts

At the end, 11 million people can’t be wrong, can they? And if you’re not sure, World of Warcraft is now free up to level 20, so you can just try it for yourself. Can’t hurt you, can it?

In the end, this is the one big MMORPG, the one all refer to now, and it’s a straightforward, fun, high fantasy game. It doesn’t look as great or sophisticated as Guild Wars, and for us it’s inferior, but in the end it’s just as much about where you friends are. You’ll have a good time no matter what.

#484 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Posted: 30th October 2011 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: , , , ,
1

96th game played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: PS2
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: KJEC
Publisher: Konami

Normally I’d like to do a little intro of the game here, give a short summary of what it’s about or what you’re doing. When trying to do it for this game, I must admit that I wasn’t entirely sure, and that the best explanation Peter could come up with was ‘Espionage, sneaking around, giant metal robots, US presidents with tentacles.’ In other words, just like any other game out there.

Metal Gear Solid is the well-known stealth-based action game that contains many people with animal-related nicknames trying to kill each other without letting everyone else on the ship, in the base or in the jungle know. It also gets very wordy and tries to teach you something when you’re saving the game – we’ve heard about old monster movies before, this time it’s proverbs. They even get explained well.

Our Thoughts

Due to this being a series that both of our lenders had in common it is very probable that this will be the first major franchise we end up completing and I think we’ll both say a loud and clear ‘Good riddance’ when we end up at that point. That’s not to say that we hate Metal Gear Solid at all; just that there are hundreds of other games yet to come we know we’ll prefer playing.

Somehow saying this about one of the best loved gaming series of all time feels a bit like sacrilege. It’s like someone owning up to hating Singin’ In The Rain (oh wait, I hate that film). The main thing here might simply be one of time. As the blog says, we’ve got 1001 games to get through, and want to play each for long enough that we get the game and a bit of cooperation from the games would be helpful there.

One of the main faults we find with the Metal Gear series is that the cut scenes and exposition talks are long. Very long. As in, a mission briefing can take, oh, 15, 20 minutes, easily. We timed a few to make sure and when you want to go on and play, that just gets in the way. More annoyingly, it means that it’s hard to remember what you need to do, or at times even how the controls work – the quick summary shown on screen is followed by another five minutes of cut scene, so that any special tricks that might be mentioned will have been forgotten by the time you need them.

What also does not help is that a lot of the cut scenes rely on the gamer’s knowledge of previous titles in the series. It really helped that we have already played Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 3 since the arrival of clones and ill-named antagonists did not confuse us utterly. However, it really is hard for a game to resonate greatly with a newbie when confronted with a gun-toting, spurs-wearing Russian named after a dwarf leopard. For most of it, really, I still had to think back to what happened for a few, and I might have mixed up a few even then.

One thing you have to give this game credit for is that it really demonstrated how a mainstream game could have a complex plot with twists, turns and a few deus ex machina elements. Granted this took it too far with the abundance of clones and an ending battle involving tentacles but some have argued it to be one of the most influential titles of the noughties. Since this really did up the ante in the crafting of complex gaming narratives I really do tip my hat to Sons of Liberty as it has made the gaming landscape a whole lot more interesting.

However, as with the other games, there is still a huge problem when it comes to the aiming system or the lack thereof. Yeah. Now, for a stealth game, the aiming shouldn’t matter much, as you’d be sneaking past most threats, but as there are several boss fights where you need to shoot the enemy, you don’t have much of a choice but to use those weapons. This means that, most of the time, it feels like you’re just shooting in the dark, hoping you hit and that you find ammo soon enough if you don’t. Ammo, however, is usually scarce as well, so you’re not often in luck; which is a shame as, beyond that, the game really works.

Of the three Metal Gear Solid titles we have played so far I honestly do believe that this is the best of them and, as such, makes me rather hopeful for future games in this franchise we are yet to play. One advantage here is that it is the one game that makes use of the newer consoles, without the openness and disjointedness (is that a word?) that Snake Eater had. It will be interesting how Twin Snakes, which we will be tackling in a few weeks time, handles because it features a lot of what made this great.

The fact that so many many people believe these to be amongst the best games ever probably has ended up with us being extra harsh on it since despite all the positives there are still more than enough that could be improved on (quite possibly a west versus east thing, as we discussed in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory).  I love how complex and bonkers the storyline is, the tangential conversations on the radio are great fun plus there are awesome graphics, music, characters and voice-acting.  So I don’t think we should be misunderstood since we can both see how great a game this is… it’s just that there are some awkward elements which jar so horrendously that it makes playing the game rather aggravating.

I hope to be proven wrong when we eventually get to Metal Gear Solid 4 because despite the fact that we have had to cover the bulk of this franchise in a shorter time than others we will approach it with gusto. After all, there is nothing better than a game which exceeds expectation. Unfortunately, I fear that what we see as negatives might be seen as positives by others and be enforced (as we did see longer cutscenes in Snake Eater), but we’ll have to stay positive on this. There’s too many games in the series yet to come for us to do otherwise.

Final Thoughts

So in short? A good game, unless you’re in a hurry because you’ve got 905 more games waiting to play. Still, it meant that we could do some cleaning while we were technically playing the game, which is always a plus – this is probably the ideal game for a stay-at-home dad who needs to do some small chores but wants to feel like he’s having fun as well. Please stop watching Up All Night and get to the point…

I’m sorry for that digression… To be honest, it’s not our sort of game, but it was still enjoyable most of the time. With its many incarnations, I’m sure there are still many options to find, and in the end, this is probably the best Metal Gear Solid game we’ve played so far… there is progress here!

#475 Max Payne

Posted: 26th October 2011 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , , , ,
1

95th game played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: 3D Realms
Publisher: Rockstar Games

Now for another game chosen in part because of our memories of it. In this case, seeing friends play this game a lot, while I was intrigued with the gameplay, options and style. I’ve been wanting to get back and properly try it for some time now.

Max Payne tells the story of an undercover agent (Max Payne) who gets framed for the murder of his boss while simultaneously being entangled in the maffia dealings of a large drugs syndicate he has infiltrated. He gets found out and we end up in a game where the whole world seems against him… except for some mysterious strangers on the other side of the phone.

What follows is a noir-style shooter that tells part of its stories through graphical novel style images, word balloons and all, as you dive deeper into the mystery and kill off all the gangsters that approach you.

(In the interest of full disclosure, we played the PS2 version, as we already owned it.)

Our Thoughts

Let’s get this out of the way first… Max Payne is up there with Jerry Fireball Mudflap when it comes to action heroes. Who? Then again such a name does fit the noir graphic novel feel of the game and as such, once you start playing it, the terrible name is somewhat forgivable. The name really is just a small part of the atmosphere of this game, which beyond this doesn’t rely as much on what would be a bigger pun in other games. Despite the occasional lighter moment, on the whole this game takes itself serious, and you are taken along with it when playing.

The game itself is set in the present day and shows a great deal of inspiration from neo-noir works like those of Frank Miller (300, Sin City) and Alan Moore (V For Vendetta, Watchmen). Just like how Rockstar recently pilfered noir film classics to make the acclaimed L.A. Noire, Remedy Entertainment and 3D Realms have been able to perfectly create the feel of a seedy crime-riddled city with a seedy underbelly.

In fact, I could have seen Batman jumping across the rafters every now and then. Except that, of course, the game takes place in New York, with seedy subway stations and dark back alleys. You won’t feel like there’s a clean spot anywhere in sight. This is further emphasised by the fact that gun-toting drug addicts can be found around many corners. Quietly sobbing to themselves until they realise you’re around (which can take a while). A modern day game would create a karma-based achievement on whether or not you choose to shoot them in the head… needless to say they scream rather loudly. Even so – and it’ll sound strange now – but these encounters are just background flavour; a simple fact of life in this world, rather than another actual encounter.

Anyway, junkie-sadism aside whilst this game is obviously very stylish there is a lot to recommend the gameplay. As with many shooter games you can choose from a nice variety of traditional weapons in your bottomless pockets but you will find yourself leaning more towards the pump shotgun for the sheer finesse of the one shot kill blood spatter. You could always charge headlong with a lead pipe… but I wouldn’t recommend it to be perfectly honest. On the other hand, I can say players with a more… refined style preferring a berretta revolver or sniper rifle, which comes in during later parts of the game.

Although it is, obviously, very graphically dated (since your ‘photorealistic’ character always appears to be grinning inanely) the thing that really makes this seem old is the incredibly linear way that the levels are constructed. Game reviewers talk of a watershed in gaming that can be pinpointed around the release of Grand Theft Auto III which really raised the bar when creating an open world feel and Max Payne sadly resides on the more closed off side of things. Casing point, an early level is set in a hotel yet many of the doors are not only locked (which is fair enough) but actually bricked over. I don’t know what sort of establishment these gangsters frequent but you would think that with their drug money they would be renting rooms in a place without the bricked over doors. Then again there was an abundance of vibrating beds so nobody’s perfect.

I’d say this is more a feature of the game itself rather than a sign of the times. While other similar games of this era aren’t wide open, without any real levels, as sandbox games create, at the same time they provided more side areas and side treks – in fact, many earlier games that kept track of a score included a count of the number of secrets you’ve found in a level when you finished it. One example of this is 3D Realms’ earlier Duke Nukem 3D title. In Max Payne, at least, it stands out as an example of level design that stands out a bit. It happens in other games as well (more recent shooters having been described as ‘follow the story’ instead of ‘explore to find the way’), but this is the most clear example of it that I’ve seen. What does help here is that it helps set up the AI. You move, in a way, from encounter to encounter, where each is set up with its own scripting and options. Sometimes you want to burst in early, to make sure the enemies aren’t prepared for you, while at others if you wait a bit, they mess up and kill off each other before you do anything.

Or you can burst in using a feature from one of the games other major drawing points; The Matrix style bullet-time. This is the thing that makes the game really unique. It probably isn’t the only game that does it, but Max Payne pulls it off well, and it’s what makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a movie. It is pulled off so well that when Enter The Matrix was released 2 years later it was described by some as Max Payne written by Hollywood. Whenever you want (as long as you have the time), you can slow down the time and take more time doing your aiming. You still move slowly, but react faster. When you shoot your enemies, sometimes time slows down and you seem him fly back from impact before he collapses. You can also jump around taking shots like Trinity herself. It’s a pity the bullet-time is so limited as it is tremendous fun. Yeah, the most frustrating part is how limited the bullet time is. You have only limited time (at most 10-20 seconds), and the only way to recharge it is to kill enemies. This doesn’t help if you want to execute some larger epic jumps and rolls.

Just be careful not to fall of a ledge as this causes immediate death even when the distance is about 2 metres; yeah, this lead to possibly our biggest frustration with the game. About halfway through the first part of the game, jumping puzzles suddenly become part of the game, often after you’ve already ventured out some distance from the last save point. The jumping puzzles jar with the general shooter feel of the game, and feel fairly arbitrary – you make it or you don’t, but you don’t get much of a chance to experiment and see what the rules are. Because it takes you two minutes before you go between attempts, you forget why you failed.

The pacing also breaks – from a fast-paced shooter where you want to slow down time to make it, you go slowly and be careful to make sure you can actually pull off the jump. Like when you have to make a leap of faith and jump onto the roof of a passing train, if you do not get it right there are many ways to die… it took me an annoying number of attempts to pull it off. And it took a while before you even see what would go wrong – in the end we needed a running jump and to also carry a light enough gun to make it, apparently.

If you can deal with the light restrictions and annoying jumping physics this game is a joy to play and an absolute classic. I am glad my friend lent us the second entry so that we had to prioritise this and I know I’m looking forward to playing the sequel.

Final Thoughts

As we mentioned, this game is showing its age – as was to be expected. But for me, this game was as good as I remembered it, and I’m glad it’ll continue to be in our gaming pile so we can play it later.

If you want a good shooter, which favours style and story, and don’t mind the flaws we mention – and honestly, most of the time they don’t intrude – then you could do far worse than this game. All I can hope now is that the second game in the series, which we’ll cover in a few weeks, will work out to fix at least some of these flaws.

#275 Super Metroid

Posted: 22nd October 2011 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: , , , , , ,
6

94th game played so far

Genre: Platform/Shoot ’em Up
Platform: SNES
Year of Release: 1994
Developer: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo R&D 1
Publisher: Nintendo

One criticism that has been levied at our blog is that when we review classic games (such as Paradroid and Earthworm Jim) we tend to look at games through modern eyes. Whilst we do realise that this is not the best way to go about tackling the greatest games in history. However, we hope that the further we get into this challenge not only will we get even more used to writing up our thoughts in a perfectly coherent manner but also be able to start drawing more comparisons and speak in more of a gamers’ language.

For now we are about to start on yet another gaming franchise, two more such franchises to go… can you guess what they are?

Our Thoughts

Now the timing of us playing this game is quite fortunate. Up until a few days ago, I had never played a Metroid game. I’ve seen and heard plenty and have been impressed by it, but never had a chance to pick up a controller and play it. And then, as we were getting ready to play Super Metroid, the first Metroid game on the list, the games from the 3DS ambassador program were released, amongst them Metroid, the original NES version. I of course gave all of them a try, which meant that in the end, I’ve managed to have played a Metroid game only days before we played this game, Super Metroid. A coincidence that allows for an interesting comparison. Since my only prior exposure to a Metroid game was the original Metroid Prime on the Gamecube I plan on keeping schtum… at least for a while. You haven’t grabbed my 3DS yet to give the original game a try? There’s not that much of a comparison to make here, considering I played through three screens of the NES original, but the short of it is that the SNES version obviously looks better, has more text and explanations, and seems bigger in general.

Still, Super Metroid is widely regarded as one of the major classics of gaming and I have to admit that it has been a real privilege to try our hands at it. For me Super Metroid stands as an exemplar of timeless game-making since, despite being 17 years old it still plays beautifully in practically every facet. Sure, some graphics get a bit repetitive, because they don’t have the storage space to make it unique, and it’s a game that makes you rely on a manual more than what we’d get in our current tutorial days. True some of the backgrounds are reused much like those in The Flintstones but there is enough variation in both those and the inevitable palette swaps to make every area feel unique. And distinguishing the different map areas well.

When these are coupled with the (obviously dated) soundtrack Super Metroid is able to produce perfectly apt atmospheres. Surprisingly accurate, in fact. The surroundings look, sound and feel alien, and coupled with the strange aliens, you really are walking through caves in a planet far away. This is especially so in the boss fights. An exemplar being the battle with ‘Spore Spawn’ which felt incredibly creepy with it’s muted piano and the small eerie spores floating majestically towards the floor. Not helped by the fact that it easily hurts you and that you need to be careful to avoid him as he swings around, and it took us some time to figure out how to kill him. As well as the little cheat you an employ to avoid being hit completely. That’s called strategy – if a corner is safe, you use it for that.

Probably one of the most engaging features is the size of the world. It’s not huge, with many empty spaces, or requiring long treks, but there are so many places to go, so often where you can go several ways and have to pick one, or where you have to leave a door behind because you can’t open it then. Walking around, backtracking to get to the next place and finding all these places is as much fun as diving in, fighting the bosses and progressing through the ‘story’. Due to the expansive world Super Metroid has become a real favourite with speed players seeing who can play it through the quickest and with fewest power ups. It says a lot for a game where, to this day, a sizeable section of the gaming community are still trying to one up each other. And if you’re not a speed player, you could simply get lost of the mazes of this game for days.

Final Thoughts

That was a surprisingly short write-up… still, if you want to give this game a go and are not fortunate enough to own a SNES and the original cartridge Super Metroid is available on Nintendo’s horse-flogging Virtual Console. It really is worth a spin.

#754 Flywrench

Posted: 18th October 2011 by Mulholland in Games
Tags: , , , ,
1

93rd game played so far

Genre: Puzzle/Action
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Mark Essen
Publisher: N/A

A game so obscure that it doesn’t even have it’s own Wikipedia page? Well I never thought we would actually get this with a list game but here we are with Flywrench, an indie puzzle/action game that takes pride in spinny things and bright colours… ooh bright colours… NO! Focus!

This is not exactly a picnic for those of us who are colourblind but hey that’s not what we’re here for… to the review!

Our Thoughts

I must say that I always look forward to playing these sort of indie games. Sure, they don’t always look like much and don’t seem awesome, but they invariably have some awesome concept that makes them worth playing and very addictive. I guess it’s because they don’t have to make back as much investor backing – they can afford to be different and try something else. As we have seen with the previously played game Quadradius (seriously readers you HAVE to give that a go) as well as other titles such as Braid and Cogs (which I look forward to playing) we really have been seeing the rise of the indie game in the last few years. The fact that you have Steam giving away the so-called Humble Indie Bundle is a sure sign that not only is awareness growing amongst many gamers but distribution sites are really getting behind them since these are the titles that are finding new angles to tired genres. This is probably helped by internet connections becoming fast enough to deal with the downloading of these games, making it easier to distribute these for cheap. Such a business model does not factor into Flywrench since, like Line Rider, Drop7 and Quadradius, it has always been available for free with development paid by internet donations.

Now, was the excitement there for a reason? Was it good enough to make it worth it? I think it was… mostly because the action puzzles allow for a lot of “Oh, I’ll try it once more”. Some of the levels are fiendlishly difficult, but before we get to that I think a brief gameplay description is in order since we can skirt over the framing narrative… which is pretty superfluous. (Escape, infiltrate and/or sabotagefrom the planets through gates. Done) You control the ‘flywrench’ which is some form of vehicle/probe/linethingy and you have to guide it through mazes towards the end gate. The way you move is simple – you can either accelerate upwards (with your ship turning red), move left or right (when your ship is white) or spin uncontrollably (which makes the ship green). In the mean time you have to avoid and pass through barries. There are red, white and green ones – which you can only pass through if you’re the right colour. There are yellow ones, which you can’t pass through and can only be touched when you’re spinning. And then there’s other barriers you should simply avoid. Later in the game you come across barriers that can only be traversed by triggering a time-sensitive switch, cannons which fire green bullets at you, brown patches that alter your speed… and a number of others.

As you progress from the outer planets towards the sun more and more elements are added to the levels allowing there to be a progression in difficulty that, whilst very challenging, never feels impossible to overcome. Even harder here is that most of the time, the solution is there, and failure doesn’t come much from not knowing…. it’s the challenge of getting your movements just right. As the game says, speed is good but timing is the most important. Also, you tend to find that once you successfully complete a level you tend to have the muscle memory required to get through it quicker than previously. However, as with any level, once you hit a mental block on a particular element you can be there for ages. I found this with the helicopter boss in Killzone 2 as well as some puzzles in Professor Layton and the Curious Village and by Jove I found it here in Flywrench. At least you got past the first planet… somehow… by not playing it. There’s one section in the Pluto area that had me stuck for at least fifteen minutes, which is a long time when you’re usually dead within 15 seconds. If that…

But still, you saw how complex some of the levels become and many require substantial forward thinking as well as a light touch. Absolutely, and it’s easy to see how you can get lost in the game. Even more so, the current version of the game features a level editor, so if this isn’t enough, you can make plenty more games to challenge your friends with. For a free game I have to admit that this is incredibly impressive. It IS rather short but due to the level builder there is a huge scope for players to expand the game so not only can you conquer the Solar System but the entire Milky Way.

Final Thoughts

Are you keen on trying this little oddity? Then click here for the free download. This may make me sound like a whore but good God I love freebies.

Older Entries
Newer Entries