Games

An interesting short film I ran across over on one of Surfer Girl's blogs.  For those those don't know, Surfer Girl is the secret identity of a games industry insider who has been blogging some incredible info about past and future games, as well as political related material...  Great stuff!

This particular short film inspired an attempt at a new game by American McGee called Oz.  Based on the Wizard of Oz books, it was intended to be similar in nature to the Alice game, dark and scary, but was going to use cardboard cut-out graphics similar to the video.  At any rate, it's a pretty cool little film.  Check it out.

Anticipation : 10
Expectation : 8
Initial Reaction : 10
Overall : 10
Genre : First Person

Way back in 1995, 3D Realms announced that they were creating a game called Prey.  Key to Prey's gameplay was the use of portal technology.  Portal technology is a way to create "rips" in space that be moved around in real time.  Portals allow the player to move from area to area by creating artificial doorways between them.  Unfortunately, Prey wasn't to come out until 11 years later.

In 2005, students from the DigiPen Institute of Technology wrote a game, Narbacular Drop, for their senior game project.  Narbacular Drop revolved around a princess named "No-Knees" who is captured by a demon.  She is placed in a dungeon which turns out to be an intelligent being named "Wally."  Wally can create portals, which the princess uses to escape the dungeon and defeat the demon.

Valve Software hired the Narbacular Drop programmers in mid-2005, and the team set to work on Portal.  Portal, built on the Source engine, is essentially the spiritual successor to Narbacular Drop.  In Portal, the player, Chell, is placed within the Aperture Science test facility and informed that she must complete a series of tests using the new "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device."

I won't go any further into the plot because you really need to experience this game for yourself.  The commentary from GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), the computer controlling the facility, is definitely worth checking out.  The computer informs, taunts, cajoles, reassures, and lies to you.  And all with the promise of cake, when you finish!

The game is excellent.  It is exquisitely polished from the environments to the controls.  The game mechanic itself is quite simple, very easy to learn.  Gameplay consists of completing a series of puzzles to find the exit, using portals along the way to move from place to place, move boxes, disarm weapons, and more.  Included are a series of advanced puzzles and challenges that you can complete once you have beaten the main game.

This is definitely a game worth checking out.  Go..  Now..

But remember: The cake is a lie.

Anticipation : 10
Expectation : 9
Initial Reaction : 8
Overall : 8
Genre : First Person

Back in 2003, Rockstar released called Manhunt.  The basis for the game is that a man on Death Row, James Earl Cash, is sent for execution, but is injected with a sedative instead.  Apparently, a director, Starkweather, bribed the doctors to not kill him.  The director is filming snuff films, and wants Cash for his latest movie.  Using his contacts with the corrupt police force and various gangs, he forces Cash into killing the various gang members to stay alive.

The controversy surrounding the game is the game mechanic itself.  The object is to sneak through the levels undetected and perform the most outrageous kills you can.  A variety of weaponry is available, ranging from plastic bags to knives and bats.  The player is "graded" on the style and number of kills.

Fast forward to 2007 and the sequel, Manhunt 2.  Manhunt 2 centers around a character named Daniel Lamb.  Lamb was part of an experiment, referred to as "The Project."  During the experiment, something went wrong and Lamb was shipped off to an insane asylum.  Lamb escapes during a lightning storm and, working with a friend, Leo Kasper, he attempts to uncover the truth about what happened.

The gameplay is similar to that of the original Manhunt, but dispenses with the scoring screens.  The scoring screen was primarily removed to appease the ESRB, but Rockstar claims it distracted from the story as well.  The game was also altered slightly to obscure the kill scenes in accordance with ESRB requests.  Prior to these changes, the game was rated AO, the highest rating available for video games.  Unfortunately, AO rated games are not permitted to be release on any current console hardware.  As such, Rockstar worked with the ESRB to reduce the rating to M by making the aforementioned changes.

The game itself is pretty compelling, though it seems to be a little on the easy side.  The storyline seems to be pretty decent so far, though it can be hard to follow.  The story jumps occasionally from the present, back to events from the past.  Regardless, the game is quite fun to play.

There are a number of different kill styles, some of them pretty gruesome.  Rockstar also added a number of new kill styles and weapons.  For instance, there are environmental kills now, allowing the player to use objects in the environment to dispatch an enemy.  New weapons such as the circular saw and a number of new guns are available.

I have enjoyed my time playing so far.  Some of the levels are definitely a challenge, while others are incredibly easy.  To be fair, I'm not playing on the insane setting, yet.  I expect that the insane setting, however, merely increases the hardiness of the enemies, and possibly the number.

Overall, I'm pretty happy that I picked this game up.  I plan on picking up the Wii version of the game as well.  It's definitely a controversial game, though well worth checking out.

Note : This is *NOT* a game for children.  Parents, please be responsible.

Anticipation : 8
Expectation : 8
Initial Reaction : 6
Overall : 4
Genre : Puzzle

Well, it's been a while since I did a review.  I held off on reviewing this particular title with hopes that the developer would release a patch to fix some of the problems with the game.  Unfortunately, they have not.  With that in mind, on to the review!

Puzzle Quest was designed by Infinite Interactive and ported to the PSP by Vicious Cycle.  It was ultimately published by D3 Publisher, who, incidentally, purchased [pdf] Vicious Cycle on June 20, 2007.  Puzzle Quest received the "Best Puzzle Game" award at IGN's Best of E3 2007 awards for the XBox 360 Live Arcade version.

The game itself is quite fun to play.  The player navigates a large world map, detailed with a number of destinations that open up as the story progresses.  Each location has a variety of options such as retrieving quests, purchasing items, and listening to rumors in the tavern.  Quests lead you on through the story, ultimately aiming to save the land of Etheria from the evil Lord Bane.

You can choose from four player classes, Druid, Warrior, Knight, and Wizard.  As the game progresses, you gain levels and invest points into a variety of skills.  There are four primary "mastery" skills, earth, air, fire, and water.  In addition, you can choose to increase other skills such as cunning, morale, and battle.

The four primary skills determine how much of each mana type your player can collect, as well as various bonuses for collecting it.  Battle skill increases the amount of damage you inflict when you match skulls.  Cunning increases the effects wild cards have, amount of gold you gain for matching coins, and determines who goes first when battle starts.  Finally, morale increases your life points as well as various bonuses for collecting the purple experience stars.

Your character also has a citadel that can be upgraded to gain access to additional spells, skills, and items.  As you gain gold, you can build additional portions of your citadel.  A dungeon allows you to capture enemies and even ride them as mounts.  The mage tower grants you access to learn spells from captured enemies.  The stable allows you to train your mount, allowing additional bonuses during battle and increasing the likelyhood of bypassing creatures on the map.  Still other features unlock the ability to train your character, forge items, and capture other cities.

When a battle begins, you are shown an 8x8 grid of symbols.  The red, blue, green, and yellow gems represent the fire, water, earth, and air mana.  The skull icons are used to inflict damage.  Matching coins increases the gold you character has, allowing you to purchase items and skills.  Purple stars are matched to increase your experience, helping boost you to that next level.

The battle is played in a similar manner to the popular Bejeweled game.  The player simply swaps the positions of two adjacent symbols.  If the symbols cause a row of three or more symbols to match, the symbols are removed and the appropriate reward is obtained.  Additional symbols fall in from above, often causing chain reactions which can result in additional bonuses.  If the player matches five or more chains, they receive an experience and gold bonus.  Matching four symbols in a row results in a free turn, while matching five results in a free turn and a wild card.  Wild cards can be used to match any of the four mana types.

In order to win a battle, you must reduce your opponents hit points to zero.  This can be accomplished by matching skulls, or casting spells.  Skulls come in two flavors, a normal skull, and a +5 skull.  The latter cause explosions, destroying any symbols around the skull and inflicting additional damage on the enemy.  Spells are obtained through leveling your character, as well as capturing enemies.  Spells come in a variety of forms.  Some spells can heal damage inflicted on you, some inflict damage on the enemy.  Other spells can change symbols on the board from one type to another, while other spells can steal or reduce your enemies mana.

As the game progresses, you can capture enemies and gain additional spells from them.  Some captured enemies can also be used as mounts, allowing the player to move quicker through the map, gaining a chance to avoid some encounters.  Capturing creatures occurs after you have battled a given creature at least three times.  To capture a creature, the 8x8 game board is displayed and you are tasked with clearing the board of all symbols.  In this version of the game, no symbols will fall from above.  But don't be fooled, some of these puzzles are quite difficult.

Once a creature has been captured, you can learn spells from it.  Again, the battle board is shown and you match symbols to gain access to the spells.  In this form of the game, you must match a specific number of symbols to progress.  If you reach a point where no more matches are available, you fail to learn the spell and must start over.

Similarly, you can forge new items using runes found throughout the land of Etheria.  This time, you must match the forge symbols on the board.  As with learning spells, when no more matches are available, you fail to forge the item and must start over.

Overall the game is quite fun to play and can keep you occupied for hours on end.  Additionally, you can choose to battle specific creatures through the battle menu, or play wirelessly against friends.  Sorry, only ad-hoc multiplayer is available.

There are, however, a number of issues with the game.  During the game, you have the opportunity to gain companions.  Each companion adds bonuses and skills to your player that are used while battling.  Unfortunately, a bug in the PSP version of the game prevents your player from actually gaining these bonuses.  You still gain the companions, they just have no effect whatsoever on the gameplay.

Worse are the freeze bugs.  I'm not entirely sure what causes these, but they have been reported by a number of users.  There are a few different versions of this bug, all causing the game to freeze and the PSP to turn off.  Some are avoidable while other can result in needing to completely restart the game.  For me, I first encountered this while using the Druid character.  After playing for some time, I noticed that browsing through my spellbook caused the game to freeze and lock up.  I found no workaround for this and, as a result, was not able to use any spells above level 10.  I have also seen the game freeze during various battles, though this seems to be a random event.  I have seen additional reports of repeated battle lockups, causing the player to have to restart the game.

According to the Gamespy review, there is yet another bug that prevents settings from being saved.  Personally, I haven't noticed this particular problem, but I haven't really played with the settings much.

I have emailed both Infinite Interactive and D3 regarding these bugs.  Infinite Interactive directed me to D3 explaining that they did not write the PSP code and had no control over it.  D3 responded with what seemed to be a canned response that they would "look into the issue."  That was six months ago.  I have since emailed them twice.  I have received no response from them, thus far.

This lack of customer service has me quite upset.  What could have been an excellent game has been marred by bugs.  The lack of response on the part of D3 has forced me to reconsider buying any additional D3 and Vicious Cycle titles.  I highly recommend you check all reviews and forums regarding any D3 titles before you decide to purchase.  While Puzzle Quest is still a great game and I do enjoy playing it, it is quite frustrating to reach a point where the game becomes unplayable due to a bug.  I'm still holding out hope that D3 will address these bugs, but as time goes on, it seems less and less likely.

Anticipation : 7
Expectation : 7
Initial Reaction : 3
Overall : 5
Genre : Various

EA Replay is a collection of old "classic" games.  Included in the collection are the following :

• B.O.B.
• Budokan
• Desert Strike
• Jungle Strike
• Haunting Starring Polterguy
• Mutant League Football
• Road Rash
• Road Rash II
• Road Rash III
• Syndicate
• Ultima: The Black Gate
• Virtual Pinball
• Wing Commander
• Wing Commander: Secret Missions

In addition to these classic games, EA decided to add some extra content such as multiplayer, collectible cards, and mid-game saving.

Unfortunately, this collection falls well short of being fun and entertaining.  My primary interest was the Wing Commander and Syndicate games.  I remember playing these on my PC and thoroughly enjoying them.  In fact, the Wing Commander series is still one of my all time favorites.

It's not that the games don't live up to present day expectations.  I'm realistic, I know that these aren't next-gen multi-million dollar megahit games.  I realize we're not talking about the latest in graphics and gameplay.  But I do expect them to play the way they did back when they were new games.

Wing Commander falls way short of this goal.  The WC games included are apparently the SNES versions.  The controls are just too quick!  It's extremely hard to identify and target incoming ships and the controls are confusing.  Unfortunately, this killed the entire experience for me as I was very much looking forward to playing WC again.

Budokan and Syndicate are a little better.  For the most part, they're what I remember from years past, although the Syndicate they included was the SNES version.  The gameplay seems to be identical to the originals and while not the best games in the collection, they're not the worst.

The rest of the collection is actually pretty new to me.  I've heard of Road Rash, but never truly played it.  After taking a look, it reminds me of Pole Position, but with a bike.  The controls are responsive and the games seem to play pretty well.

B.O.B. is pretty fun to play.  I vaguely remember hearing about this game, but never played it.  B.O.B. is a side-scrolling platformer game.  It's pretty neat, actually, and I had some fun playing it.  Worth checking out.

Jungle Strike and Desert Strike are pretty fair games.  I'm not a huge fan of games like this, so I don't have much to say.  They're worth playing if you're fans of helicopter shooters, but if not, avoid them.

Mutant League Football is actually pretty fun.  Apparently this was a play on the Madden series of the day and they did a pretty good job with it.  Definitely worth a look.

Haunting Starring Polterguy is a very odd game.  The idea is to scare a family out of their home by screaming, making noise, and haunting items.  It's a fun game to try out, but I don't think it really stands the test of time.

Ultima is just plain horrible.  Again, this is not the original Ultima series from the PC, but a  port from the SNES version.  This game is simply horrible, just avoid it.

And finally, Virtual Pinball.  Not much to say here, it's a pinball game.  Fun for a little bit, not much beyond that.

Overall I was extremely disappointed with the collection.  If I knew that most of these were ports from the SNES version, I would have passed off the collection altogether.  While I have had some fun playing Road Rash, B.O.B., and Mutant League Football, the game has mostly collected dust.

If you really need that classic-gaming fix, however, pick up the Sega Genesis Collection instead.  I'll be reviewing that in the near future.  Definitely worth looking into.