» June 24, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Five
Well, after a long hiatus, Awesome Game Numero Fiveo is here. And that game is StarCraft. Yes, you might be wondering why I ended up picking this amongst classics like Red Alert, Warcraft, Age of Empires, or even the badass Warhammer 40k.
Simply put, StarCraft has the best characters and plot of all of those games, save for maybe Warcraft 3. All three playable races are stunningly awesome in their own right. The Terrans are sweet, the Zerg are sweeter, and the Protoss? Oh man. Dark Templars. Carriers. Archons. Fucking awesome, people. The storyline is pretty depressing but the voice acting is nice, and the characters are actually pretty damn cool.
With the one complaint that you can’t put AI players on your team in multiplayer, StarCraft is a fine game indeed. Sure, it’s hard as fuck. Sure, the computer is cheaper than shit. And yeah, it’s dated to beat shit. But come on. Every race has bad-fucking-ass units that most people would enjoy commanding in real life. I wouldn’t mind going over to Trotwood and finding those little shitbags that jumped me with a couple Hydralisks in hiding. And I think we can all agree that sending a squadron of Mutalisks or Guardians to Iraq would pretty much shut everyone up over there. A couple Yamato cannon blasts would really take care of our current government setup as well. Take that as a hint, future Democrats to be: Battlecruisers are our future, not some “no child left behind” bullshit. Fuck that, bitches.
Well, that’s all the time we have for today, because I need to go watch Star Trek: TNG. Bye.
» April 07, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Four
Long ago, gamers thrived on 2D platformers, because that’s all there were. Sure, there were some psuedo-3D games in the forms of flight simulators and rpgs, but let’s face it: 2D was the best. VGA graphics were state of the art, and the internal speaker on your 386 had the best sound quality you’d ever heard in a game. Even CGA yellow-and-black games were still good, and your computer was slow enough to play them all the way they should have been played. Now, of course, a 286 won’t play much of anything, but it will play the best old-timey PC platformer of them all: Commander Keen.
Billy Blaze, child genius, battles the Vorticons on Mars, their mothership, and their homeworld in the Commander Keen trilogy, alongside pretty rough-sounding audio and relatively choppy scrolling. In Commander Keen IV: The Secret of the Oracle, Keen was upgraded with Soundblaster-quality music and sound effects, as well as a complete visual upgrade. Backgrounds resembled something of an MSPaint masterpiece. New abilities, like looking up and down, improved controls, and the ability to use switches and fireman-style poles were thrown in for good measure. Bizarre enemies and the ever-present theme of candy as the point items got better and better as the series went on. After all was said and done in Commander Keen VI: Aliens Ate my Babysitter!, another company published “Keen Dreams,” a completely different and not-so-great episode that took place between Keen 3 and 4. Instead of a ray gun, you use Flower Power Pellets. Great. Instead of bloodthirsty aliens, you fought vegetables. Awesome. Nonetheless, it was still a solid platformer by yesterday’s standards. Besides a Keen game released for the Game Boy Advance some years ago, the Apogee classic hasn’t seen any action, save for a cameo in Doom 2’s super-secret hidden level, “Grosse”.
Nowadays, very few games are able to stick to a 2D format and keep their popularity, what with the explosion of FPS’s, fighting games, and (barf) sports games. Thankfully, sites like www.dosgames.net and www.alex-soft.net preserve the shareware and freeware unpredictability of olden games, where graphics didn’t matter for shit – all we cared about was how fun it was.
But, uh, Timesplitters 3 is still pretty sweet.
» March 23, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Three
The third game on my list is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. Because it’s awesome, that’s why. Really, as far as arcade experiences go, this game is by the far the best one that has ever existed, and if you’re really lucky, you can still find it in pretty derelict arcades. What could compare to playing as all four turtles with your buddies and not even making it to Rocksteady in the first level before you run out of money? Besides maybe a three-way with two hot chicks, nothing.
Two buttons and one big-ass stick were all you needed in the good old days. Press both buttons for a super attack. None of that L and R bullshit. You were either attacking something, or jumping and attacking something. And that was the best. The levels themselves were pretty fucking difficult, but nothing was sweeter than getting to the end, fifty dollars poorer, and then losing to Krang on your last quarter. Wait. Why do I have nothing but losing memories of this game? Probably because I sucked at it. Still, I dare you to find a better arcade game, old or new. Because you can’t.
» March 08, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Two
The next game on this prestigious list is one that I pretty much guarantee none of you have ever heard of. Spellforce: The Order of Dawn, is a relatively old PC game, maybe two or three years old, and I believe made in Britain. Anydangway, this game is pretty fucking weird, because it is both an RPG and a RTS. You make a character at the start, picking from a set of pre-made male and female models and naming him or her to your liking. My guy was called “Bob.” So you go and travel around, doing some tasks and trying to get some bad guys, but as you travel you’ll come across shrines of sorts (forgive me, it’s been quite some time since I’ve played this game) that produce the three good races - humans, elves, or dwarves. Each character set has different buildings to build, and new units to produce after the technologies are researched, like in any typical RTS. They also have Titans, which are the unique elite unit that pretty much fucks everyone else up.
After some time, you get to control the three evil races: the weak Dark Elves, the hordes of Orcs, and the cannibalistic Trolls. In some areas you can control both good and evil races, but they will attack each other if put together, so you have to go into some serious strategizing to get attacks to work with clashing groups with the same goal. You still get to control your main character the entire time, and if he or she dies, you get resurrected immediately, but minus some stuff. I don’t remember.
I don’t know what it is about this game, but it is without a doubt in the top three best games I have ever played. Even though there is no music and a lot of running around, the interactions with NPCs in towns and throughout the battlefields a real treat. It’s a game that doesn’t necessarily make you want to play it all day and night, but every time you play it’s very enjoyable. Spellforce 2 comes out very soon and I can only hope it’s as good as this game.
» February 23, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number One
Before we start off this video game list, I’d like to mention that these games are in no particular order. Trying to order them is very difficult, and if they’re all good, then who really cares?
The first game I’m going to talk about here is also the most recent one I’ve bought: Timesplitters: Future Perfect. While the genre of console first person shooters has come a long, long way since Wolfenstein 3D was on the Jaguar, it still ran into dead ends and problems aplenty for years after. Games like Hexen and Doom had many translation problems from pc to console, which killed the replay value of almost all of them. Even one of the most celebrated FPS’s, Halo 2, had quite a few problems. But then came Timesplitters: FP, the third in a series of games from the folks who made Goldeneye (or so I’ve been told.) Timesplitters 2 was okay, nothing fancy, but obviously paved the way for this fantastic shooter. T:FP has every fucking thing you could ever want in a shooter: multiplayer bots, co-op story and arcade modes, time travel, bizarre and silly humor, lots of guns, one hundred and fifty playable characters, and a plot that goes all over the place. Really, I can’t find a thing about this game that I don’t like. Curling monkeys? Blasting butchered cow carcasses come to life in a kitchen after decapitating the zombie cook? Hot animated chicks with plenty of sexual innuendo? Driving an old-school Warthog while the guy on the machine gun is fucking shit up? Teaming up with yourself from the past to kick ass? A level on a speeding train just like in Blood? Robots that leave you fubar’d pretty damn hard? Oh man.
The story focuses around Sergeant Cortez, back from the fuck-up in Timesplitters 2, and on a mission to remove the evil Timesplitter race from existence, thus ending the war between the race and the humans, which has escalated to a near Starship Troopers-like level. He has to travel to key points in the past, chasing the diabolical genius in charge of the wrong-doing, Jacob Crow. What really gets me going is the drastic change of scenery in between the levels. First off, you get a futuristic desert war level, then a 1940’s evil lair on an island, then a 1960’s evil lair in a military base, then a zombie-infested mansion, and so on. The missions are great and the specific character you get paired with on each one adds great personality to each mission. Great shit.
So why did I pick this game that I just bought for one of the top five or ten best games ever? Because it’s just so fun without being annoying at all. It has everything that I ever wanted in a game of this genre with none of the bullshit you get in any other game. Great. Well, I’m going to go play it now.
» February 04, 2005
Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War
With so much regurgitated crap being thrown on the table and sold as a Real-Time Strategy nowadays, its awesome to see a game like Warhammer 40k reinvent the standard and raise the bar of RTSs to come.
Warhammer brings about this self-proclaimed revolution by several means. First, when you make on military unit, it actually creates four of them, which act as a single unit, but with four times the firepower. The units will never separate, but can be added to until they are ten in number, and you can even add a sergeant. You can outfit each member of the squad with a personalized weapon like the badass flame-thrower, or the ever more badass rocket launcher. Each weapon and unit is great against a certain other type of unit, so you have to use certain things for certain fights. When you have eight groups of ten guys, and you throw them at the bad guy, who has eight groups of ten weaker guys, it sure makes for some sweet carnage. The races are well balanced too; check this out:
Space Marines fucking sweet guys with major ass-stomping guns and shit.
They also have Dreadnoughts, which pick people up with their blender hands and fucking shred them.
Chaos Space Marines fucking sweet guys with horns, demons, and big-ass guns.
Everything about them is cool, but not as cool as the Space Marines.
Eldar Wussy aliens who are weak and few in number, but somehow made it into the game. Lots of lasers means not enough bullets.
Orks British-accented green guys who are pretty sweet indeed, but obviously nowhere near as sweet as the Space Marines.
As you can see, the Space Marines are the pick of this litter. The single-player campaign focuses on the Blood Ravens, the ass-kickinest squad of Marines, and their fight to fuck up some other peoples shit. Warhammer 40k is also a tabletop miniature game, so it feels a lot like Warzone, in real time anyway. So buy this shit, I dare say its better than Warcraft 3.
» December 17, 2004
Doom 3
While its not the best game Ive ever played, Doom 3 is still a very worthy addition to your FPS collection if you have the computer power to run it.
In this installment, rather than in the previous series entries, Doom 3 places you at the Mars station before all hell breaks loose (excuse the pun.) You calmly traverse corridors, talking with people, while all the while, a quiet voice pages employees and tells you to have a nice day. Then, you are sent on a quick mission to find a missing scientist, and after that, well, its not so nice. Whats cool is that when youre walking around, youre thinking man, this is gonna suck when I have to fight shit in here later, and youre right, because every person you talk to becomes a zombie, and every little thing you see in the beginning youll be quickly seeing again, only with a lot more peril the second time around.
The guns are decent, but nothing to get your panties in a bind about. It's your standard fare from the original: a pistol, a shotgun, a really difficult-to-utilize machine gun that works most of the time, a super-powerful chaingun that takes a bit to warm up but mows down the opposition, hand grenades that do nothing but bounce back next to me, and a badass plasma gun that really makes you feel like you have the advantage. There are more weapons but I haven't gotten to them yet in the game. The controls were extremely annoying, mainly because theyre set up in a way that anyone who has played Serious Sam or Unreal Tournament will not be used to. For some reason, the left and right arrow keys couldn't be bound to "strafe left" and "strafe right", respectively, so I had to bind almost every control key to the numeric keypad, which was more than a little annoying, but dammit, when I want the left arrow key to strafe, then it fucking better, be it on the keypad or nothing!
Other than that, it's a blast. You get into it, thinking "This is pretty cool," but then you start seeing new things, new monsters, and then you're hooked. Four hours of playtime will really get you into the swing of things. What sets the mood so well is the flashlight, a weapon/item that you will end up using most of the time. What sucks is you have to use EITHER the flashlight, or a gun. So either you can see in the pitchblackness, or you can shoot what you can't see in the pitch blackness. Now, you may be thinking you're hot stuff, toting around a Maglite, but let me assure you, when a massive dog-like beast comes lumbering around the corner, you will notice it takes more than a tap on the head to even make it think about running away. So expect lots of fumbling around with the weapons to shoot what you just found.
Your character, a quiet but badass marine, quickly finds himself tailing a counsler and his bodyguard throughout the Mars complex, with only the orders of his marine commander occasionally coming through on the radio frequencies. Besides a very few stray survivors, you will not exactly be talking much after Hell makes its way into your life. Sometimes, you will encounter a security drone, a little spider-like machine equipped with a machine gun and a light that will become your best friend after you see what it does to the infestation. Unfortunately, once they reach their destination, they shut down, and once again you are alone.
There are mods for this game, ones that allow for multiplayer co-op, among other things, but the story is certainly one of lonliness. That, and a whole lot of fear. So indulge yourself (or make someone buy it for you) and have a fucking sweet time with this awesome remake.
» September 24, 2004
Fable
Sometimes, you just have a change of heart.
Case in point: Fable, Lionhead Games newest release for the Xbox. I bought it mainly because Erin wanted to play it, and partly because I wanted to give a shot. I mean, whats $50, less than four hours at work? Thats nothing. Anyways, I get this bad boy home and fire it up. Erin plays a little, I play a little. She loves it. Im just not impressed. The game has great graphics, interesting characters to interact with, a multitude of customization options. Other than that, nothing. But to be fair, I play just a little tiny bit longer and
BAM!
Just like that, Fable goes from lame to badass in no time flat. After you get past the initial stages of your character, who remains nameless and speechless (save for a grunt here and there) for the entire game, you will find yourself not only becoming deeply immersed in a rich storyline, but engrossed in the character development as well. Fable features unprecedented features in making your character, the Hero, your own. Hairstyles, beards, mustaches, tattoos for all parts of the body, and five different places on your body to wear whatever clothing suits you best is just the beginning. Each of the aforementioned customization options has the ability to make you terrifying (like with a set of dark plate mail) or friendly looking (sporting mutton chops.) Additionally, you can make yourself more attractive by sporting a well-groomed beard, or totally disgusting, by having your face covered in a demon face tattoo. You can also make your character good by defeating bandits, the undead, and winning the hearts of the local ladies, or evil, by slaying every passing villager and contributing to the continuation of evil everywhere. Do good deeds and you will have a golden sheen; do evil and your hair will fall out, horns will protrude from your forehead, and your eyes will develop a red glow.
Your experience comes from killing enemies, as in any action-rpg. It can be used to upgrade your Strength (for physical combat), your Skill (for ranged combat, speed, and stealth), and Will (for magic.) Eat right and upgrade the right abilities and you will become toned. Eat too much junk food and you will be fatter than I used to be.
The fighting system is very much like Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Even though its an rpg, you will fight in real-time, using a bow, a melee weapon, or your magic. The melee combat is the only option at first, simply because you cant win using a weak bow or spells, but as time progresses, you will be able to change back and forth to optimize and level out your abilities.
And thats not even the start of it. In each town, there are houses to be purchased where you can simply have a place to have mad crazy sex with any lady who will follow you (seriously), or you can rent them out for some extra money. Having a woman in the bar who you just bought a beer for keep asking if you two can head to the inn is devilishly refreshing in the role-playing genre. You can become married as many times to as many women as you can afford rings for, and you can become divorced just as easily. If they catch you cheating, thats all it takes. You can partake in the local fight clubs, or buy and sell beer and cider crates for profit. You can go fishing in the lake, or use the treasure clues to search for the buried treasure that is hidden somewhere in the game world. You will visit more than 15 different locales, each with its own laws and citizens for your entertainment.
The storyline is somewhat standard at the beginning, but it throws and twists itself all over the place pretty quickly, as you begin to realize who your final enemy is going to be. No matter what you turn out to be, you will be kind of railed along on a set story that doesnt really change. Little things do, but the ending is still going to happen in the same area, whether youre a goody two-shoes, or a plain mean nogoodnik.
Now, Fable isnt without its flaws. About half of my playing time consisted of loading screens, followed by at least one or two more loading screens. This is an Xbox, people. This is top-notch hardware, and you dont make a game that outperforms the Xboxs capabilities. But several times the graphics became fuzzy for periods of time, and the game would stop and skip for some time before it was able to catch itself back up. I even had to reset the system after it froze, following my hitting the pause button! It just feels like it was too much for the system to handle.
Also, the game is way too short, and way too easy. Side quests aside, I beat the game with 8 hours of playtime, and I died zero times. Once I was able to buy the Master Greatsword and the Ebony Longbow, and well as find my Plate Mail suit and upgrade Fireball and Lightning, the only two spells I needed, I couldnt be beaten. Health is more than plentiful; it comes in the varieties of veggies, meats, potions, and even tofu! After I bought one hundred and sixty apples, I figured I would be set. And I was. Sure, there are nearly 40 spells to learn, but I only needed two. When I got to the last guy in the game, I had no trouble at all beating him. He was incredibly easy. Whats worse, the person I fought before him was actually much harder!
Lastly, I found the targeting system to be problematic sometimes. Accidentally killing a villager who is under attack by bandits when youre trying to be good is really annoying. Also, the law-breaking penalties are frustrating when you dont know what is illegal. Sleeping in an empty house, apparently, is.
With all the ups and downs, Fable probably isnt for everyone. But its worth a rental, at least, to see if the deep storyline and devoted character advancement is something that may interest you.
» August 24, 2004
Warcraft III
A lot of people all over the world wonder if there is indeed a god. A god to govern the universe, a god to love and advise, and most importantly, a god to see people through. As people continue to ponder this, I go out and buy the Warcraft III Battle Chest, which includes Warcraft III, the expansion, and two strategy guides for $40. Ive never played it, but heard good things.
There is no god. Why? Because, if there was a god, he would not allow this game to exist, because there is no fucking way he can even compete with it. This is the best, coolest, and sweetest game I have ever played on the computer. If youve played Starcraft, Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, or anything like that, then this is that sort of game. Mostly, it resembles Starcraft, partly because theyre both made by the same company, but mostly because of the way the game is played.
There are four races: the sweet Undead, the weak Humans, the weird Night Elves, and the mighty Orcs. All you do is build an army and kick the other armys ass. However, instead of massive armies that dominate the world of Starcraft, Warcraft places a tax on you for having too many units, so you must focus on utilizing each races strengths to succeed. That alone brings a new dimension to the strategy genre that I have not seen. Additionally, to find new sources of income, you must fight random creatures that populate the maps, which can make it frustrating-or profitable-to find new gold mines and forests.
Clearly though, the best part of the game is the Hero system. Its like a little Diablo, in which you can summon one of three Heroes unique to each race. When you use them, they can build experience, use spells, and carry items dropped by other monsters. They max out at Level 10, and if they die, you can resurrect them, often for a hefty price. It can suck losing your guy, but having a nasty Undead Lich leading your gang of Ghouls into a battle can definitely turn the tides if you know how to use their abilities correctly.
Its clear that Blizzard put much detail into the games structure. Things balance out very nicely, and although each race plays totally different from each other, each has a pretty standard method of winning that can easily be learned through simple practice.
Anyways, this game is great. So go buy it.
» March 15, 2004
Worms World Party (Game Boy SP)
I traded in my fine and dandy Game Boy Advance for an SP the other day, mainly because the old Advance is difficult for me to use with my giant paws. With it, I bought Worms World Party, because I had played all the other Worms games and figured that a portable one might be fun. For those who have never heard of the series of strategy games under the Worms banner, I will give you a little explanation. On a 2D playing field, you control an small army of worms, anywhere from 1 to 5 or so, and play against up to 6 or 7 other teams, who also have their own set of worms. When its your turn, you pick the worm you want to use, choose a weapon, and blast the hell out of everyone elses worms. The hard part is not making craters out of your own worms in the process.
Anyway, I figured since the game cost me only fifteen bucks, it couldnt hurt much, even if it sucked big time. My first challenge upon playing the game was the options screen. Many of the options that I require to play the PC version of Worms, such as repeat swings and other things that mean nothing to you, are mysteriously gone. Where did they go? I dont know. I hope somebody knows though, because while Team 17, the makers of Worms, is busy finding these options, they could stand to go ahead and fix the piss-poor reincarnation of the ninja rope, which is totally useless, and change a hell of a lot of other things as well. No Salvation Army? No MB Bomb? Fuck, no Concrete Donkey? What do you mean I cant name my own worms or my team for the matter? They dont even TALK?! What is a Worms game without these staples?
Not a terribly good one, I might say. But before I completely trash this game, which it looks like I may have already done, let me state a few positive things about it. For all its drawbacks, it is really a pretty close rendering of the PC game that I have grown to love. The worms have some animation, enough so you know when theyre breathing and when theyre pissed. Once you figure out the control scheme, you will probably find that the ninja rope, for all its usefulness, isnt necessary to kick ass in this pint-sized version. All the other weapons, from the dastardly Prod to the devious Shotgun, perform very impressively. The enemy worms can be adjusted from 5 levels of difficulty, and you can choose from several missions at the start, rather than having to play each one to advance to the next. And there is an option at the beginning to play the game in 5 different languages. Why that would even matter to anyone, I dont know, but dammit, its there. Theres really very little difficulty that someone unfamiliar to the English language would have in figuring out how to maneuver the options screens. Whatever.
So, in closing, I probably wouldnt recommend this to anyone who isnt a diehard fan(and I mean DIEHARD as in you own a pair of Worms Underoos, yell at the old lady wandering down the street not to blow up close to you, and wish you had your own Banana Bomb) but, if you give it a chance, its not so bad. It could be worse, you know. You could be dead.