Sands of Time: zOMG NEAR-PERFECT GAME ALL MUST PLAY
Warrior Within: Technically better gameplay, much improved fighting, but a total change of atmosphere makes this one a turn for the worse.
The Two Thrones: Good enough to actually redeem WW's break in atmosphere! Only two -count 'em, two - areas of truely bad annoyance. Not quite the same joy as SoT, but still a very, very good game.
And of course, the whole trilogy, seen as one piece, is a perfectly-told story that ties itself together in a complete, self-enclosed circle of excellence.
__________________
WARNING: The above post may contain sarcasm and/or sophisticated satire. Any psychological damage sustained is purely your fault.
Ok, Summer is here, so are my holidays, so I can get onto some reviews. So we’ll kick off with this one as it has been awaited… but you will see that it is dangerously lacking in bite. I’ll try my best to make the review insightful and interesting but it’s going to be pretty mainstream really…
SUPER MARIO GALAXY (Wii)
I don’t like 2d Mario games. Sorry! I’ve never been a huge platform game fan in general, even back in my Spectrum/Commodore days. Now, my general disdain for console based stuff has been challenged many times, and I have been won over to many causes, from Final Fantasy to Zelda to, most recently, Castlevania (which I resisted on the DS for a long time on the idea it was a platform game, but ended up loving). It’s not a 100% success rate though. Animal Crossing has tried and failed with me and don’t even try to talk about Pokemon.
It’s not that I rabidly recoiled from them; my earliest Super Mario experiences… well, actually now I think about it, I probably played the Game Boy version when the Game Boy came out because the Game Boy was the hottest new thing in the world and because people could bring it to school (unlike consoles which, of course, stayed at home) just about everyone got a chance to play one, and at release that means just about everyone played Tetris and Mario… but in general it was because I was playing the alternating two player versions of Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World on the SNES, my friend who owned the console needing someone to play Luigi. So I know how it all worked and the general make up of the world. With a patience that surprises me, I seem to remember we finished Super Mario World, but I got too frustrated with SMB3. It’s the one hit kills (yeah yeah, the mushroom/fire flower/whatever, the PRINCIPLE is still one hit kill), unforgiving nature of the jumps you have to make, and the amount of times you have to redo long sections that have no purpose other than to annoy you. Just NOT my sort of thing, though the amount of effort I have put into ”I wanna be the Guy” might say otherwise (if you have not played IWBTG, Google it and do so, to see what I mean. I am not a masochist so I am playing on Medium). The same thing happened with New Super Mario Bros on the DS; I didn’t want it, everyone said it was great, so I got it and… meh. Still meh. Finished it but didn’t really enjoy it.
I am sure you can see where this is going, then. Because in contrast, and along with most of the gaming world at the time, I LOVED Super Mario 64. This was the exact point in my life that console gaming really became an affixed part of my existence. It was Mario and Zelda together that did that, but if you really want to trace the starting point it was when Mario’s 3d head popped onto the menu screen and proudly announced that proper 3d gaming was actually here (though to be fair on Tomb Raider, it did it at the same time). Mario and Zelda together made me consider, for the first time, whether I should actually own a console. As it is, I would just borrow my friend’s one at the time, and I didn’t get around to my own console until the Wii, but that’s just how life pans out.
I played SM64 like a man obsessed. I’m not great at that sort of game so it was a REAL effort but, with much shouting, aggravation, high blood pressure and what I am sure would have been some broken controllers had I not been mindful that these were not my things, I got all 120 stars. I got the last one on the 100 coin challenge on the Rainbow Ride; a mind-numbing nightmare as it was AMAZINGLY easy to die on that level and you had to visit just about everywhere on it to get 100 coins; on the last coin, part of the magic carpet ride, I slipped on the stick right at the end and fell off the carpet. Just as my brain aneurysm started, I bounced off the tower that forms the pinnacle of the level, somehow landed on the window sill, still out of control then side-somersaulted upwards, falling down now towards certain death, but on the way having accidentally clipped the final coin and then, in turn, the final star just before I would have plunged to my death. The joy was great but it was hard to pretend it was worth the horrible aggravation that had preceded it, and I swore I would never make myself do something so horrible again.
But other than trying to achieve that level of perfection in finishing it, everything about SM64 was amazing. The controls were perfect, the presentation was flawless, the game pacing was spot on, the difficulty curve was excellently judged, and the game was challenging enough- satisfying, but basically if you worked at it you WERE going to complete it (though, of course, getting every star was a tad different). The whole style and setting (if you can call it that) of Super Mario is not to my taste but everything about the gameplay was so spot on that I didn’t care. But I think it was the approach they took that really won me over the most- the castle full of paintings that lead to a different world, each world is own fully contained piece of brilliance, and exploring each one, looking for those Stars, and appreciating the small changes as you moved onto the next ‘version’ of each world when you finished a Star. It was awesome stuff, and it was just as awesome when I played through the revamped DS version years later.
Talking of which, enough nostalgia, so let’s flip on a few years- I never played Super Mario Sunshine, in case you are wondering. Super Mario Galaxies is coming and everyone is as stoked as can be for it; the big, top, no doubt must-have game for the Wii, hyped about as hard as it could be, and pegged as the true successor to SM64. So it was unlikely I was going to pass it up.
Right, I am going to try and sum this up as quickly as possible- Mario is not really an area I can analyse as deeply as other games, especially RP related ones; with less crunchy game mechanics I have less to comment on, and it’s very hard to say things that people don’t already know.
The game, at base, really is a sequel to SM64. It once again involves, instead of a literally linear slog, the accumulation of enough special objects (stars again, though funny sentient stars, as part of the game’s plotline, such as it is). The more such things you get, the more levels become open for you to explore, until you have enough to take on the final boss level. The amount you need for that is significantly less than the amount available, so for bonus points you can try and get the entire set. All of this is to rescue Princess Peach once more from Bowser- who this time is working with space aliens and has taken her entirely away from the planet… which is incidental detail, really.
The game has an exceptionally strong opening, back at Peach’s castle from SM64, though at night. You are bombarded with quality from all angles. The music- the highest quality seen yet on the Wii- is what hits you first, shortly followed by the visuals (likewise)- bright, colourful, and incredibly smooth. For an SM64 vet the controls are a breeze, with the Nunchuk presenting no additional difficulties- although there was less help for players new to the franchise than I thought there would be. The poace is very good; Bowser is attacking the castle almost immediately, and from there on in you are taken through the game’s opening challenges at breakneck speed before you finally arrive at the game’s hub. This opening journey was one of the most exhilarating half hours of my life. From therein the game settles down a bit as you begin the process of gathering stars and opening up new levels.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jul 24th, 2008 at 09:25 AM
Probably the best way to tackle this is to mention all the new things that this game has brought to the fore- not only to the world of Mario, but also to the Wii in general. First of all, there id the gravity thing, which was the game’s central appeal- the concept that you play in spheres (though not always spherically shaped) attracted towards a middle, so that you are basically running around a very small planet. This easily and often leads to you playing upside down on-screen, but you quickly get used to it. This simple concept is easily expanded and used in many areas- super jumps between different gravity areas, reversed gravity so you are running, in the inside of a sphere, on its outside, or even simulations of the game’s platforming past, with reversing gravity making the side-scrolling platforming more interesting. It’s actually pretty hard rto explain without demonstration, but as the most fundamental change to the gameplay it works very well.
The second change is the pointer. Although SMG was a little motion-based stuff involved- mostly for spins whilst jumping- it has reigned back on waggle as a central game mechanic, and in a VERY nice piece of work it has made used instead of the Wii’s pointer functionality, integrating it fully into the game instead of just using it as a menu selector or occasional gunsight (though it is used as a ‘gun’ sight as well, for the ‘star bits’ you can pick up during the game and then fire back at bad guys in-screen). Basically, with the nunchuk controlling Mario in one hand, the Wii remote is free in the other- for its buttons to perform some functions, yes, but also for the pointer to roam the screen and act as an additional control mechanism. Objects can be shaken, gravity points can ber hooked onto and pulled towards, and stuff can be shot at. The integration of the basic control mechanics and the pointer feature is amazing and is one of many attributes of this game that are an object lesson to EVERYONE making Wii games as to just what is possible of you actually put your mind to it.
In fact, for quite a lot of the game, everywhere you go there is something new to do, from discovering all the early gravity tricks, to the mentioned pointer functionality, to little things like controlling a giant ball you are walking on by holding the wii remote straight up and moving it as a pivot, or blowing a giant bubble you are within around by using the pointer as the source of air blowing on that bubble. It just overflows with brilliant ideas.
As another example of the diligent programming excellence going into this game, a quasi-co-operative function where a second player can join the game with a second remote acting as an additional pointer, allowing another firer of star bits, getting some unique extra interaction with environments, the ability to stun some monsters, and also to propel Mario a little further when jumping… all seems a bit added on late in, but is STILL excellent. In fact, this kind of casual drop-in co-op bonus to a game is a fantastic idea and there are LOTS of franchises that could use it- Metroid and Zelda spring to mind (in fact, Zelda tried something similar with Wind Waker but you needed a GBA and link cable. More of that kind of thing please, now it is so much easier!).
The general gameplay is good, the boss fights are good, the levels have great imagination about them- the gravity thing allowed the designers to make the weirdest wide-open environments of many different types. The power ups are good (and unlike some others, I thought Spring Mario worked well- difficult, yes, but not actually flawed). The only general criticism I have- something that I actively didn’t like- was the lives system. They serve almost no useful purpose at all in this day and age; if you run out of lives you just have to start from the hub again, which is just a needless irritation to climb back through the hub get back into the level to where you were. Ok, there is a small chance that lives make a difference as the levels contain some checkpoints, but really that’s a tiny irrelevant thing. If you took lives out of the game entirely, nothing would be worse, and some level of irritation at a difficult point would be removed. No contest as far as I am concerned.
Ahh, so much to say, but I don’t want to waffle. Where does it all get us? Well. Objectively speaking, it is the best game on Wii- best production, best design, best effort, best use of tech, the list goes on. It doesn’t have to be your favourite- heck, it’s not even MY favourite, as it is not, stylistically, my sort of game, but it’s still the ‘best’, as far as you can get any objective measure of that. So… why am I only giving it the same mark as Zelda?
Well, if I was marking out of 100 I would probably give it more, but marks out of 100 are fiddly. There are indeed many ways in which it is a better achievement than Zelda (to be fair on Zelda, that was a Gamecube conversion, whilst SMG was Wii from the ground up and the better for it). My main accusation in Zelda (which, just to confuse you, I had more fun with than SMG) was how the very basis of it was running out of steam. Zelda was bright, pretty, well-animated, well made and well done but couldn’t add enough new to actually be considered as good as Ocarina of Time.
Well, SMG has got that problem in the bag- it added enough new stuff to be considered a genuine evolution of Super Mario, to the point where they are now discussing the possibility of SMG sequels in the same vein (two or three down the line they’ll have the same problem again, but that’s an issue for another time). It’s solved it in a way Zelda didn’t (but as I say, it has en excuse- so let’s keep a careful watch for the next Zelda; Nintendo already say it needs a new approach; they often know their stuff with gameplay, do Nintendo (I wish they knew their stuff with on-line functionality though)).
The problem is this. Despite not evolving enough for the same impact as Ocarina, Twilight Princess was still an excellent, excellent game- and BETTER than Ocarina in every way. That might sound odd, but what I mean is, everything Ocaraina did. TP also does and often improves upon in some way, be it graphically or in scope or with the number of things to do. I suppose some may disagree with me on this, but I feel there is nothing TP did that was actually WORSE than Ocarina. It’s not moved on far enough, but it never went backwards.
There’s just one tiny thing in Super Mario Galaxy, however, that simply is not as good as Mario 64. It’s the scope of the levels. Whilst they are exciting, imaginative, fantastically designed, they are also somewhat limited. Instead of SM64s open worlds that I had loved so much, what you actually have here are very linear experiences. You are actively pushed towards the star to get- 99% of the time there is only one stat to get at a time, and the world has to literally re-make itself to change things once you get a star to make another accessible. SM64 has small changes between star runs, but mostly you could explore the whole world behind the painting at your leisure, and normally three or four different stars at a time could be got according to where you looked. Not here- it is just the one. In fact, you are literally propelled towards just the one star- the levels tend to consist of a number of very small areas, like a part of an obstacle course, and when you complete one you fly to the next, in order, until you reach the star. Very few levels indeed have anything like the open feel of the SM64 ones, and it is telling that those ones are my favourite ones. It really is disappointingly linear.
It’s a very small niggle in a fantastic game- and despite it, I must stress the levels are still very good indeed, and part of it is due to the base design of the gravity mechanic so it may have been unavoidable. But, for me, it created a slight dip in enjoying the game that denies it that extra mark; the levels often felt ever so slightly sterile and contrived, and I couldn’t get ‘into’ them like I did with SM64. Oh well.
Eventually I completed the game, and at first I found fewer frustrating stars than in SM64, but that seems to be because they save all the really harsh ones for after you beat Bowser. I swore I wasn’t going to let myself dragged into this nonsense again, but in the end I slogged through it again and get all 120 stars. The post-Bowser purple coin stars were tedious irritations, akin to the worst 100 coin quests, but actually the one that caused me the same irritation as the rainbow ride star before was one where you had to complete an entire star grab on a fiery world without being hit even once. Man, that one sent me absolutely round the twist. Like all of them, I got it in the end; you always do if you keep at it, but it seems to become more of an obsession than a genuinely enjoyable experience. What worries me now is that having done it when I said I wouldn’t do it again, and with so much aggravation, that I’ll keep on doing it with future games and I will, as a pensioner, die trying to get Star 1200 in Super Mario Multiverse (the one played with thought control, where Bowser has a sex change). Darn it.
Just to make it worse, apparently to get the secret 121st star, I have to go through the whole game again as Luigi. Bugger THAT…
CARDINAL SINS: None- definitively none. None of the small issues I raised are at all cardinal.
SCORE: 9/10
COMMENTS: The best designed and executed game on the Wii, that everyone can learn from. A great step forwards in the base Mario premise, but just a tiny bit lacking in level design to truly take the crown
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jul 24th, 2008 at 01:13 AM
Yeah, I feel the same way about the scope of the levels. When I feel like having a quick replay on SMG, I always choose the ones that are a little less hoppy. I hope the next incarnation is a little more open. Also, I miss the really good secrets that the old Mario games had - the level skips, secret doors, beanstalks, etc.
As for the Purple coin missions, I gave-up on them around 108 stars, I think. The one that was doing my head in was the stretchy tree one.
Anyway, good review. I agree with most of your points.
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Sorry for resurrecting this, but I greatly enjoyed the reviews you gave so far, and, you said you were working on one for Neverwinter Nights 2 (like...two years ago)...so, I wanted to respectfully urge you to accept your reviewing duties...maybe with NWN 2
Hmm, I really should do more. I will probanly do a mini-review on NWNII, especially as it wa sso long ago now. Besides, these days I am all into Guild Wars...
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Ok, do want to do more of these soon. Problem is, time and burning out my brain playing Guild Wars has sapped my memory of a lot of stuff. Still, i want to impart my opinion on a variety of games I have either been requested to do or that I have played over the last few years.
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NEVERWINTER NIGHTS II (PC)
There was a period when Bioware were king of the roost- a title various developers acquire periodically. It was Beyond when I was just getting into gaming, then it was Epyx (a company that actually went broke because, accoridong to an insider, they didn't actuially understand what had made their earlier games any good), then hewson was the company that people would buy games from just because of the name... and so on and so forth. It looked like Blizzard would get the title in perpetuity for a while but they ground to a halt releasing games after WoW of course.
Anyway, back in the 90's Bioware had this amazing gaming run stretching from Baldur's Gate to Knights of the Old Republic, which I have of course already reviewed. Baldur's Gate itself, and its sequel (not to be confused with the action games on the PS2, swhich were simply reasonable Gauntlet clones) actually rate as some of the best games I have ever played. The graphics may have been primitive but the gameplat fantastic, the implementation of 2nd Edition D&D rules about as goof as you could get on a computer, and for that matter even the feel of a D&D game pretty well translated to computer gaming, with a plot that was about as flexible as a computer game could be (especially the sequel). David Warner voiced one of the finest video game baddies there has ever been in the sequel. Add to that that you could do it all multiplayer (with one person being the story subject and others being his adventuring mates) and there was a whole load of 9/10 awesome around for both games.
I never actually played their other games from this period, two ice-set ones whose names escape me and the very well received Planescape Torment, a game I often see getting plaudits. But even as these games came out, Bioware were working on their next big project, a D&D experience with the Dungeon Mastering built in, where you could design, create and run your own games. It had been tried before of course, most notably with the first Vampire computer game (nice try, but didn't work out) but now BIOWARE were trying it, and with an all new 3-d engine too.
Well, Neverwinter Nights came out and... hmm. It was noticably not as good as Baldur's Gate was the thing,. The base engine, whilst prettier and updated to 3rd edition, was just niot as engaging or interesting or flexible. A lot of effort had gone into the game creation sdie of things but... ahh, I dunno. Some people did good stuff but in the end you always got the feel that generally speaking, player produced content was just inferior re-hashing of the real deal. And for real-dealism they did produce, well it was easy to do as the scenario creator was built in but it always got middling reviews and left players with a feeling of "Yeah... but it;s not as good as it used to be".
And it never was; the storyline was boring, you could only travel with one henchman, the areas were dull, there was none of the great interpersonal interaction and plot setting... none of it was BAD, it still gets 7/10, it was just a relatively dull disappointment and the scenario creator didn't really go anywhere.
The sequel came out in the wake of KOTOR (gah... no multiplayer in KOTOR... such a shame!) and tried to fix a lot of the shortcomings. Party sizes were back up, proper unique storylines for individual classes were back, the engine was improved, the graphics better (but still not great), more effort was made on the plot and... ah. All that, and it still seemed less inspired, less detailed, less enjoyable... just not as good, especially for tis time, as the games they were making in the days of Baldur's Gate. KOTOR was betetr than NWNII frankly, though I guess NWNII scores back for multiplayer and the scenario creator.
Now, the whole Bioware saga goes on, and I think there is now a feeling that the idea of letting players have their own scenario creation stuff is one of those things that sounded far more awesome in theory than it was in practice. It was a lot of time and a lot of trouble and in the end reduced the quality of the final product in return for mostly suib-standard fan offerings- a poor trade off and I doubt think they will try it again for a while.
I played through it, it was ok, I never wanted to play it again. Simple as that really.
(I should also point out that I was one of those affected by NWNII's notorious glitchiness. Other than many minor bugs going on, I got hit by a major plot-quest breaking bug at one point that necessitated the loading of an earlier save and hence loss of gameplay hours. Poor!)
CARDINAL SINS: Insanely long load times and game-breaking bugs
SCORE: 7/10
COMMENTS: Nice try and a literal improvement on the original but in the end you feel a lot of effort has been wasted for little gain- there are better RP games out there.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jul 10th, 2009 at 11:49 AM
There is a concept in America known as the video games 'crash'- after Atari self-destructed in the 80s and the home gaming market fell to pieces in the States, leaving Nintendo and Sega to move in and claim the market leading to the total dominance of the NES and Master System, leaving homegrown talent out in the cold until, for better or worse, the XBOX came along.
In Europe this never happened. The homegrown strength of the Sinclair company and the betetr performance of the Commodore company meant that home computing (as opposed to consoles) were the dominant focus. NES and Master Systems sold here, but were in difficult competitiion with the home computong market. This carried on all the way through the days of the Atari ST and Commdore Amiga (Sinclair's Spectrums sadly went out of business earlier on) and the situation on both sides of the Atlantic did not harmonise until the rise of the PC as a gaming platform.
There is a reason I am saying all this. For a lot of American gamers, the root of role-playing was in console games, most notably of course with Final Fantasy and its weird release schedule in the States. But in Eruope, consoles had a much lower profile and the roots of role-paying were in home computing, with the likes of Dungeon Master, Wizardry, Bloodwych (2-player! Blimey!) and, my personal favourite, Bard's Tale (not to be confused with the crappy recent Bard's Tale game, which ahd the rights to the name of the series but nothing else).
(Now, of course, American players played Bard's Tale and Eurpoean ones might even get a PAL versrion of Final Fantasy... or maybe not... but the general vibe is that FF was in the States much more strongly than Europe).
But here is the ironic thing- these days we draw this large and apparent distinction between Western and Japanese role-plays, an argument I don't intend to play out here. But when you compare the early FF games and these early home computer games I mention- they are almost exactly the same The only difference is that the home computer games favoured a first-person perspective, btu what you tended to do in having a party and exploring dungeons for turn-based combat was scarily alike. Definitely my first impressions on playing my first Final Fantasy game many years later is "this is like a modern version of Bard's Tale!").
Bard's Tale involved you creating a party of characters, choosing from a variety of classes, and mapping out large (for the time) dungeons filled with random encoutners against static images of enemies in turn-by-turn combat. There was no in-dungeon resurrection, and dead characters stayed dead unless you could egt them back to the surface and to a freidnyl temple, and then pay up a huge load of cash. If your party died down in the dungeon you lost all your progress since going in (there was no literal game saving,. just your characters' status saved whenever yuo got back to safety). All plot, such as it was, was done purely in text. And this formula worked so well as to span three games (and a Construction Set, Neveerwinter Nights style, natch...) that you could even port over characters between games from- and in these oldpre-hard drive days, that was quite something. The first game was the best, though, as there was a terrible power inflation problem by game III (actually an issue Baldur's Gate II eventually got into too, as you did become too powerful by the end).
So...
Imagine my surprise when, many years later, someone decides to do a DS game based, basically, on Bard's Tale. The same perspective, the same turn-based gameplay, the same combat system, and pretty much the same classes. Consider my surprise doubled when the developer is Japaense, not American.
Calling themselves 'inspired' by these games of old, hardcore deisngers Atlus published this game that is ABSOLUTELY in the oldstlye mode, just as harsh and unforgiving as games from that era ever where. Basic presentation, basic plot (evil thing in Labyrinth threatens town; go deal with said thing), and only the adsditin of some additional 'go somewhere and do something' quests to distinguish the gameplay from the originals at all. Oh, and the navigable town areas of Bard's Tale and such games has been changed into a single screen with the temples and item shops accessible from a menu- fair enough.
Except for one big and inspired change. See, Bard's Tale was really about the mapping. You couldn;t survive an extended run into its dungeons and casltes, so you had to slowly get a feel for the shape of these large layouts. You needed grid paper, a ruler, a pencil, a lot of patience and a lot of time, sending in expedition afetr expedition as you mapped it out, slowly daring to go further and further as you got that feel you needed.
Etrian Odyssey is the same- except you use the touch screen to create the map. They provide the grd and a coloured track of what squares you have walked on, yuo fill in the walls and details of plot points, switches, traps, bosses and the like. I know that sounds underwhelming, but is's amazingly compulsive in a convenient way!
So... I was in heaven when I got this game. It's hard as nails, but if you are persistent and determined you'll crack it, and I eveentually did. Question is, is such old-school gaming still viable today? Well, they made a sequel (not out in Europe yet) and I just saw a review of ANOTHER such game, with even the same art style as Bard's Tale (Etrian is anime styled) called 'The Dark Spire' so... I guess enough people are buying them!
I think it;s great people want to make games like this. Trouble is... I don't know how many people would actually enjoy something as retro as this. These games were unforgiving and occasionally bad game mechanics would kill you and wipe out hours of progress; it is at once amusing and annoying that Etrian Odyssey retains this part of the past as well.
CARDINAL SINS: Instant wipe-out and large wasted gaming time due to game mechanics rataher than user error.
SCORE: 8/10
COMMENT: Fantastically realised throwback to old school hardcore gaming on a portable platform that suits it very well... but I honestly cannot recommend it to all of you. Many people will hate this.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Planescape Torment was not literally theirs either (though it was still Black Isle/Interplay as Baldur's Gate was, and trying to work out who was who and doing what back then was darn tricky.)
They were all Bioware licensed, is the thing.
Note- just looked it up- 'Icewind Dale' was the other series whose name escaped me.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Apr 24th, 2009 at 08:54 PM
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
It seems that way, I couldn't find a rule against it and also not a collected review thread (which I thought might exist), so you probably can...or you could make such a collected version, if perhaps you think you will not update it very regularly or do a lot of reviews, so it's not just a thread that goes to waste.
I am dead serious when I say I just read the entire thread.
Work is slow.
I find myself agreeing with Ush 90% of the time. Which is good.
The only thing I disagree with you, Ush, in a significant way, is the original Half-Life. I just couldn't get into it. This was in my hey-day when I lived with my parents and was in Middle-School and had TONS of time to play games. Tons. I couldn't get passed 2 hours into the game. I got tired of it. I really can't put my finger on it, or why I got bored with it. It just seemed "meh" and the controls seemed average, as well as the story being old and recycled. But...then again, I played quite a few games at the time and it could have been my immature "I want it now" attitude that caused the boredom with it. I may give it another chance between the summer and fall semester.
Also, whle Zelda: TP was great, I just got plain tired and bored of the game. And executing the special movies you learn from the ancient skeleton soldier were the most difficult part of the game...fer realz. One of the moves, I had to retry at least 20 times. Just like your Metroid Rage moments, it was Zelda Rage moments. I learned all of the special moves, and I got to about the end of the game. But...I just plain jane got bored with it. It wasn't very fun, after a while. I guess I am wanting some sort of leveling system in the game...No need to throw in tons of items as it already has a nice amount, but a leveling system would be nice. I want an incentive to go out and explore. I want a reason to fight the same bad guys, over and over. I caught all of those special insects and, just like every Zelda game, I worked my ass off trying to collect every heart piece and I think I was doing well. I am slowly getting tired of puzzle action games like zelda. Too much meh.
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Mar 25th, 2008 10:09 PM
