Ah, Terra Nova. So ahead of your time. Such a financial disaster. So, it's sometime around like, 95-96, or thereabouts. Windows 95 has just come out, and a lot of people are adopting it for gaming, because it makes the issue of hardware compatibility (supposedly) easier. No more HIMEM, or that funky DOS layer that was used for a lot of games. The problem, of course, was that Win95 had some compatibility problems with DOS games, and a lot of 'em had some weird compatilibity issues under Windows. As I recall, Terra Nova was one of 'em.

Fortunately for me, I waited on the Win95 bandwagon for a year or so, and as a result, managed to actually partake in the splendor that was Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, when it first came out. It's been ages since I've played the game, so you'll have to forgive the lack of specifics.

Terra Nova was a strange game, to be sure. It was a semi-squad based tactical shooter, from a first person point of view. Movement and looking were controlled by the keyboard, aiming was controlled by a mouse, in a manner similar to one of the old Terminator games. The terrain was made of voxels, while the other characters were billboarded bitmaps. Not a bad looking game, by any stretch of the imagination, at the time, but by today's standards, not particularly good looking.

Still, the use of voxels for the terrain allowed rolling hills, and some dramatic variations in relatively open landscapes - something that, at the time, wasn't possible with polygons. One of the most interesting things about the game was that the game forced you to use the terrain to your advantage. Retreating over the crest of a hill, or jumping out from behind a bluff to surprise your enemies were critical strategies, not just bullet points on the box.

FMV cutscenes weren't terrible, the story was engaging, and most of all, it was a blast to play. The problem was that it was really expensive for Looking Glass to make, the switch to Win95 cut down the userbase by a lot, and as a result, LG never recouped the costs of making Terra Nova. So few people bought it, that the promised multiplayer expansion never came out. But a lot of games are expensive, and don't sell particularly well. Why was Terra Nova so important?

Well, aside from being a stellar game, it was a turning point in Looking Glass' history. Because Terra Nova was such a financial flop, Looking Glass was never able to recover financially, despite other excellent games like Thief: The Dark Project. A few games later, they were in danger of going out of business. Eidos, their publisher at the time, had spent 30 million dollars on Daikatana, and as a result, couldn't front the money to keep Looking Glass afloat.

In part because of an excellent game they made, cursed with poor timing, and in part because of a horrific mistake on the part of John Romero, Eidos, and everyone else involved with Daikatana, one of gaming's best developers closed their doors. Thief lives on, and System Shock 3 may eventually be developed, but Terra Nova's consigned to the annals of gaming history, an extraordinary game that almost no one ever played.
- posted by Seppo @ 5:28 PM

 
Got Dark Cloud 2 in a trade, and Primal finally arrived. Primal's sort of interesting - I'm not sure I'm ever going to really get into it the way I would need to to finish the game. Long cutscenes, and thus far, a pretty radically uncompelling story make it a little touchy. It's a pretty game, no doubt, but the combination of it being really dark, and my TV getting a reasonable amount of glare during the daytime limits the amount of time I can play the game. Not a bad game (yet) by any means, but not as compelling as I'd hoped it would be.

Played a few minutes of Dark Cloud 2 last night. One thing that jumps out immediately is that it's really bright. Which is nice - a good mix of colors, and with the cel shading, it really looks like a cartoon world - not in a cartoony way, even - just a sort of more vivid version of what you'd expect. Like Zelda, with the brightness and detail turned up, in many ways. Gameplay? I dunno - there are a LOT of things in the beginning of the game that I would much rather have been interactive, than non-interactive. The whole escape sequence from the circus was really ... uninteractive. I mean, that's really the only way to put it. There were lots of traditionally "gamey" elements, and I got to do none of them. Sure, that's not what the game's about, but as someone who almost always prefers interactivity to passivity, I'd just like to have *done* more in the first hour of the game. Hopes are high, though - people seem to have really, really enjoyed DC2.

Also picked up some Deus Ex 2 last night, for a bit. The game's got its frustrations, no doubt - the loading times, the stuttery framerate, the periodically stupid AI... Lots of stuff that I wish was better. But my housemate was watching me play, and as I broke into a room, and was describing that, rather than alerting the guards, hacking the door, blowing up the door, or anything of that nature, I used a glass destabilizer to quietly disintigrate the window instead, it struck both him and me that this game *does* have a tremendous diversity in the way you can approach situations. Which basically ends up, in its best moments, being totally unnoticable. You don't think, "gee, I'm glad I had three options to open this door, of which I have chosen option 2," you think, "I need to get into that room. I did it *this* way, and didn't even need to consider others."

The lighting in DX2 is *fantastic*, as well. I don't know how well it would apply in other settings - it's a very harsh, sci-fi sort of lighting - but it works really well, for what it is.
- posted by Seppo @ 10:49 AM

 
I wonder, sometimes, why sometimes I'm in the mood for a game, other times I'm in the mood for TV, other times, I'm in the mood for nothing at all. I can be in the middle of Beyond Good & Evil, be loving every minute of it, then suddenly, put it down and not pick it up for weeks. Same thing happens with xbox Live. Sometimes, I'll play for hours a day, for days on end, other times, go a month and a half without logging in once. It's strange, I guess, just the vagaries of one's mood.

But it's strange, in a way, because games are more proactive than other media. You make the decision not only to pick up and play, but to involve yourself in the game, to whatever degree that game requires. For some games, I simply don't want to make the emotional investment, or the time investment I know it will require to get to the next save point. Sometimes, the perfect remedy is a game of Crazy Taxi - something simple, short. But other times... I dunno. Sometimes just nothing strikes my fancy, short or not.

Guess maybe that's "productivity" calling, or something. Sometimes, I suppose.
- posted by Seppo @ 11:47 PM

 
Murakumo, at $5, is just about a "break even" game - that is, it's a game worth $5 solely for some purpose or another, not directly related to enjoyment from actually playing it. For me, it's an issue of, "Hey, here's a potentially interesting concept, that looks like it's presented in an interesting way, how could they have screwed it up as badly as it sounds?"

And indeed, it's not good. Lousy control, horrible auto-targetting, and most of all, a sort of uncompelling game structure all drag this sucker down. The fundamental problem is that without *context*, it's not really interesting to be chasing down mechs. Heck, because you're moving so fast, it almost doesn't even matter *what* you're chasing down, because it's never more than a couple pixels large on screen.

So, interesting, for the $5, but not something I'd recommend most people get, and nothing I'd want to have spent, say, $6 on. But I like getting a lot of the *really* awful games, just because it's interesting to see how an interesting concept can be so mangled.
- posted by Seppo @ 11:54 PM

 


How do you start talking about a game like Grim Fandango? At the beginning, I suppose...

My first adventure game was aptly titled Adventure, for the IBM PC AT/XT & compatible machines. It was a purely text adventure, and I whittled away a few hours at my grandparents' house one year on it. It was strange, what with a monochrome screen, on what I categorized as a "business computer." At the time, I had a Commodore 64, which in comparison, was a cornucopia of graphics & sounds. At least, if I'm not mixing up my internal timeline, here.

But Adventure had something that many other games did not - it let me use my imagination to fill in the details. Though sure, it's hard to say that Jupiter Commander was a complete graphical representation of Jupiter, it was as much as one needed to play the game. Sure, the descriptions in Adventure were relatively simple, but they were evocative, and compelling. The text parser in the game was frustrating, because it didn't let me interact the way *I* wanted to interact - I had to find just the right word. Shoe, maybe, instead of boot. But that became part of the fun - trying to find the "secret" words that would make things happen was half the fun. Or at least, some part of it.

After Adventure, I played a lot of adventure games. I think the first one I remember purchasing was King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella. I don't know why I didn't play KQ 1-3, and I can't remember whether I'd played other Sierra "Quest" games before that. But I do know that I played them all, after having a taste of one. Space Quest, Quest for Glory (or Hero's Quest, whichever it was that came first), Loom (Lucasarts' first adventure?), Zork, etc. I missed a few I wish I had played, like Planetfall, and a few of the other classic text adventures, but I'd played enough to know how to play these sorts of games.

I knew how to combine every item in my inventory, whether it made sense or not. I knew how to search for every active pixel on the screen, once mouse-based adventure games made their debut. It was almost a skill, knowing how to out-smart the game's designers. Not actually out-smart them, but to figure out their patterns, and learn how to anticipate the next ridiculous puzzle, not the next sensible one.

At some point, of course, Sierra basically stopped making adventure games, and somehow, through their SCUMM-y history, Lucasarts inherited the throne. Rather than King's Quest VIII, which was a terrible attempt to 3-Dify Sierra's honed formula, I was playing Full Throttle, and laughing my ass off. When Grim Fandango came out, I wondered whether it was going to be the spiritual successor to Full Throttle, or would the 3-D characters turn it into Lucasarts' KQ8?

I remember playing a demo of the game before actually buying it, and being completely taken aback by both the interface, and the game's lush art style. The character-centric movement was something that was completely new to the genre - Manny controlled like a character from Resident Evil, rather than a point & click adventure. There were no icons on screen to tell you where the "hot spots" were - rather, Manny would turn and look at an item that he was "interested" in.

While confusing at first, the thought that sticks with me is that the lack of an obvious visual interface made the game seem much more ... natural. Like rather than walking around a bunch of paintings with small interactive spots, this was a legitimate world, in which I'd periodically interact with stuff. The simplicity of the interface took away a large part of the artificiality of adventure games at the time. No longer could I just scan the entire screen, waiting for my cursor to change. Now, I had to run around - explore the *environment*, not the screen.

It seems simple, maybe - but the resulting impact was tremendous. Not only was there no real meta-game-able interface, the puzzles were actually for the most part logical, and seamlessly integrated into the world, and the story. I would never have to combine a needle and a fish to unlock a door in Grim Fandango. What I would have to do to achieve my goals would actually make sense, and tie into the story.

And what a story it was. It's hard to describe Grim Fandango. How do you describe an very film noir-y story set in an art-deco version of Mexico's Day of the Dead festival? Memorable? Your character, Manny, is a travel agent, stuck in essentially purgatory, until he can redeem himself for whatever mistakes he made while still alive. I honestly can't remember too much more of the central plot than that, because I've actively been trying to forget it since the moment I finished the game. Not because I didn't like it - quite the opposite - because I really, really want to play it again, someday when I've forgotten most of the details.

Given that, it's actually kinda hard to discuss Grim Fandango's plot. But the characters are memorable - from Glottis, the giant orange thingie who rips out his own heart (accidentally, sorta) in a fit of remorse, to Meche, whose skeletal leg is the central piece of a shot reminiscent of The Graduate, the entire cast of Grim Fandango is as well-developed and lovable as the cast of a favorite book, movie, or miniseries.

It's sad, honestly, that the adventure genre is more or less dead, in mainstream gaming. Though Escape from Monkey Island took the Grim Fandango game engine, that was the last game of its kind. There have been other point-and-click adventure games since, that have met with critical acclaim - The Longest Journey, Syberia, and others. But the pinnacle of the genre was the story of Manny Calavera & Co. It's sad there will never be a Grim Fandango 2, but there shouldn't be - it's perfect the way it is.

Fortunately, Tim Schaefer, the designer of Grim Fandango, is still working in games. His new company, Double Fine, is working on an original xbox game called Psychonauts. The concept sounds great, and the graphics look incredible. But the thing that has me the most excited about the game, naturally, is that it's by the same guy that brought us the best adventure game ever made.
- posted by Seppo @ 10:34 AM

 
Also picked up Rayman III: Hoodlum Havoc, while I was out picking up light fixtures for the house. The game has the same basic visual style as the other games, but I found Rayman 2 to be instantly enchanting, and Rayman III to be somewhat off-putting. I guess maybe it's just that I don't like to be reminded I'm playing a videogame BY the videogame I'm playing. Particularly when one takes place in as vivid a world as Rayman does. I might be mistaken, here, but I don't remember Rayman speaking English, and if it is indeed a new addition, to me, it's an unwelcome one.

Anyway - I hope to have some impressions of Murakumo up soon, because it's the game of the bunch I'm most curious about. The bits of REMake that I played seemed pretty darned familiar. It's beautiful, no doubt, but the character-centric control may be a game-killler. We'll see.
- posted by Seppo @ 9:13 PM

 
Picked up Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit and Freaky Flyers for the xbox, for <$5 each at Circuit City. Murakumo reviewed pretty badly, so it's sort of a "Train Wreck" purchase - for $5, I'm more interested in why it sucks, than actually really playing it. Also picked up the RE:Make for the Gamecube for $10 - I'd heard about what eye candy it was, so I figured for $10, I'd give it a shot. Not particularly psyched about the RE series of games, but what the hell.
- posted by Seppo @ 1:46 PM

 
What is it about a given game that leads to poor sales? Clearly, you can't equate quality and sales - some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time (Ico, System Shock 2, Grim Fandango, etc.) have sold extremely poorly. Sure, a lousy game might sell poorly, but with the right marketing, and the right hook, it might also be a smash hit. How else would you categorize Superman 64 and State of Emergency?

To say, what's the thing that makes a game sell well, or sell poorly, is obviously substantially oversimplifying the issue. There's no single answer - if there was, all games would be cheap to produce, and sell like hotcakes. It's the same in games as it is in any other situation. Create a social phenomenon, and you'll be rich beyond your wildest imaginings. It doesn't matter if it's as trite as the pet rock, or as brilliant as ... something really brilliant, that also was a social phenom. I can't think of one off the top of my head. Seaman, in Japan, maybe.

My problem, is that whenever I approach this subject, the simplified, condensed conclusion I come to is that the general public is stupid. But that, again, is oversimplifying. The slightly more complex conclusion is this: there simply aren't enough people who understand the vocabulary of videogames to properly appreciate a non-mainstream title.

That might sound odd, but let's take movies as an example. There is a substantial segment of the moviegoing population that goes to movies simply as escapist, thoughtless fun. Let's call them the Bad Boys II crowd. There's also the the super-indie film crowd, that won't see a film with a budget of more than $100,000, or any movie created by a major studio. We'll call them the Winged Migration crowd. Then, you've got the general population, which by and large will go to see Bad Boys II, but would also give a slightly more obscure movie a chance, given positive word of mouth, and a good marketing campaign. Maybe we'll call them the My Big Fat Greek Wedding crowd.

The videogame population is similar in many ways, with one major exception. There's the Bad Boys II crowd. We'll call them the Madden/Final Fantasy crowd, just to cover all our bases. There's the general popualtion, which we'll call the Super GTA Marios. Then, there's the type of people that'll buy Rez, Gitaroo-Man, or something like Ico. We'll call them the Ico-heads. I would have said "Boys with Horns," but I suspect there's a number of female gamers in this niche as well, and I wouldn't want to be exclusionary.

The M/FF crowd drives a pretty large number of relatively consistent sales. You can bank on X people buying Madden every year, or every iteration of FF, regardless of quality. There's the Super GTA Marios, who'll get games because of their cachet - they're not purchasing blindly, but they will stick with brands they trust. Thus, GTA's stellar sales numbers, but say, a game like Manhunt, which tries to capitalize on the genre, might not sell as well. Lastly, there's the Ico-heads.

The Ico-heads are the kinds of people that will give obscure games a chance, just because they're obscure. They'd be willing to try new things, and if a game gets critically praised, it's worth consideration, regardless of its popularity, or its water-cooler-conversation value. Maybe these people own Dreamcasts.

The problem with the game industry is that there is a distribution channel that guarantees delivery of the Super GTA Marios product, and Madden/FF have basically a couple million copies in the bag every year. That sort of brand power insures distribution, availability, and a publishing outlet for the developers. It's financially viable for those games to be made, because in both cases, there's either a guaranteed number of people who will buy your game (in the Madden/FF crowd), or the population's so large that if even only a fraction of the people you expect to purchase the game actually buys it, you're still likely to make your money back.

The problem with the Ico-heads, is that there simply aren't that many of them. While the Winged Migration crowd isn't huge, as a percentage of the moviegoing population, the moviegoing population includes so many people that even a small percentage of that can be profitable. There is such a small channel for non-guaranteed hit games, that it can be deadly to release a risky game these days. As publishers become more risk averse, that channel gets smaller every day.

(more later, wandering around off and on topic, and can't sort my thoughts properly)
- posted by Seppo @ 8:19 PM

 


There was an arcade a short bike ride from my house, where on Saturday, you'd pay five bucks, and you could play all day. They had the original Street Fighter, Outrun (the one with the movable cabinet), and a whole mess of other stuff. I don't remember which of the 2-D shooting games they had there, but I do remember killing hours of my Saturday afternoons making stuff blow up.

There's sort of a rhythm to a good 2-D shooter, whether it's Contra, or Raiden, or 1942 - you shoot a bunch of small fries, some big ships, back to some small fries, a couple big ships, some small fries, then a huge boss that takes up half the screen. There have been games that have deviated from this formula, like Smash TV and Robotron 2084, which just hurled enemy after enemy towards you, with maybe half a second of rest in between levels. But the rhythm in those games was determined by when the enemies floated on screen, or the designers just spewing enemy after enemy at you. Treasure's Bangai-O takes the traditional 2-D shooter formula, and turns it all around.

In almost every other shooting game ever made, the point of the game is safety. You shoot, you kill, because you want to live. You keep the enemy as far away as possible, and you fight to create space around your character. In Bangai-O, you create danger, to become more powerful. You can shoot in any direction with a standard weapon, or you could use a super attack, and release a number of missiles - they can either be homing missiles, or missiles that just travel radially away from your character. But the twist is that the more danger you're in, the more missiles you shoot. If you use your super-bomb from relative safety, you might get 50 puny missiles, that do some damage, but lack any real punch. If you wait, to fire your super bomb, until there are a hundred missiles inbound, while standing next to an enemy who's shooting at you, you might release a burst of hundreds of more powerful missiles, causing such ludicrous slowdown that it looks more like a special effect than a bug.

Bangai-O's about maximizing the danger you're in - walking that fine line between reading the fine print on that incoming missle's nosecone, and having your head torn off by a hail of machine gun fire. The game rewards the player for being as reckless and as risky as possible, in both powerups, score, and accumulation of special weapons. The notion of safety is completely thrown out the window, and you end up searching for ways to put yourself in more danger, yet finessing the timing and movement so as not to ever let that danger come to fruition.

The end result is a game that the player is responsible for making frenetic, and rather than feeling like you've survived insurmountable odds, it's your job to create them. Sure, the localization is "horrible", and the fruit seem out of place. It's almost like a joke, though - as though the developers thought the intensity of action in this game would be too much without a ludicrous and lighthearted plot.

I used to leave the arcade Saturday night, bleary-eyed, with a pretty regular throbbing in the base of my skull. My friend and I would bike home, or take the bus, the bleeps and blorps of the arcade still resonating in our heads long after we'd left the musty confines of the arcade. I wish I remember what it was called. Used to be next to LaVal's, just off Telegraph, by the south side of the UC Berkeley campus. They've been out of business for maybe 14 years, now. But that overwhelming intensity of action, the nonstop barrage of explosions, and danger narrowly averted isn't lost, though the arcades have long since closed. They've just been pressed onto a disc, and made available for anyone with a Dreamcast, and Treasure's Bangai-O.
- posted by Seppo @ 4:28 PM

 
the greatest piece of videogame-related journalism ever written: by tim rogers

The title might strike you as ostentatious, or presumptive. But read the article, and it will strike you as the truth. It's long, mind you, but says what needs to be said about the state of gaming journalism in both print media, and online.

- posted by Seppo @ 11:56 PM

 
http://www.cheapassgamer.com/

A great resource to find some great deals on stuff that people have overlooked. Of course, half the time, stuff is cheap because it's crap, but at the same time, this is the first place you'll find something like the "Buy Prince of Persia, get Splinter Cell free" sorts of things. Mostly good if you're in the US, but there are some Canadian deals on the messageboards.
- posted by Seppo @ 11:54 PM

 


Sometimes, a game is like magic.

It's like playing a dream, or walking through a cloud. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, from Ubisoft, is such a game. But just as dreams are ephemeral, and fade quickly in your first waking moments, what makes PoP:SoT great is difficult to describe. It has both the timeless quality of a great book or film, intuitive and effortless control, and the enduring beauty of great art.

"Time is like an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am, and why I say this; Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none that you have ever heard…"

Prince of Persia is the fourth game in the Prince of Persia series. The original PoP, and PoP2, were side scrolling action games known primarily for their fluid animation, acrobatic main character, and fighting. Prince of Persia 3D was largely blasted for poor control, and lackluster gameplay. PoP:SoT returns to the old formula, mixing seamless and fluid animation with a stunningly acrobatic main character, and a simple yet interesting fighting system.

The development team, in the documentary that is included on the game disc, describe the main character as a "Persian ninja," and it is a fitting description. The prince is easily one of the most acrobatic main characters ever put into a 3-D game. He can run, jump, run along walls, leap from walls to poles, from poles to ropes, and from ropes to ledges. He can do pretty much any acrobatic feat you could want a main character to do, and on top of all that, he can fight like a demon.

The environment he's placed in is a world corrupted by the Sands of Time, unleashed by the Prince himself, duped by the evil Vizier. The Sands have turned anyone not in possession of an "artifact of time" into a sand zombie, and only after the Prince activates the palace's defense systems to fight the zombies does he realize that he's created impediments to his own progress that he will have to overcome.

And overcome them he does. Every room in the castle becomes a puzzle - climb up that, jump from here to there, swing on that thing, bounce off that wall, leap from this ledge to that one, then run down the wall to the opening over there. Every room is unique, and you have to use every resource at your disposal to progress. Fortunately, you are not alone.

One of the other artifacts is possessed by a girl in your caravan - a captive from a kingdom your father overtook several days before. She helps you out, covering your back from the Sand Zombies, activating switches, and getting into places the Prince cannot. Do you trust her? Does she trust you? The relationship between the Prince and Farah unfolds in a natural, and relatively unforced manner - the doubts the game instills are legitimate, and there's always the specter of potential betrayal hanging on every moment you depend on her for your survival.

The graphics in PoP are gorgeous. There is a soft realism to the painterly lighting that casts the world in an almost mysitical glow. It's similar to the atmosphere created in Sony's Ico, and the exaggerated heights in this game mirror the vistas of it, as well. The Prince is spectacularly animated, and has more transition animation than maybe any other character I've seen. You never see the prince "pop" from one animation to the next, even in the midst of fighting five enemies at a time.

The combat is relatively simple, but surprisingly varied. There are only maybe five or six unique enemies, but each has strengths and weaknesses that force the player to consider their actions quickly, lest they become overwhelmed. Fortunately, the Sands of Time are not only your enemy, they are your best friend.

The Prince's dagger allows him some control over the flow of time. He can rewind time, to correct a mistake, such as a fatal plunge to his death, or a beheading by a particularly vicious enemy (don't ask me how - I don't know), he can freeze enemies in their tracks, attack with ludicrous speed, and even see visions of the future.

These powers all come in handy, and are necessary to progress efficiently throughout the game. The "visions" provide hints as to what the Prince needs to do, so the player's never stuck for very long. The "freeze" and "haste" features are integral to success in combat. But the rewind feature is most prominent, as it allows you to quickly correct mistakes that arise from trying things that look to be impossible.

Rather than contemplating whether it's worth attempting a particular jump, because you might have to restart at a save point some ways back, or whether you should try *anything* because you'll potentially die, as long as you have a "sand tank" filled on the dagger, there is little cost to trying something that looks insane. If you fall to your death, simply rewind to the point prior to your mistake.

Blinx: The Time Sweeper tried this same gameplay mechanic, but it's much more refined in Prince of Persia, and much more in the service of the game, rather than vice versa. The ability to rewind time makes every niche of the game explorable, and it makes the player as much of an "expert" as you would expect someone as agile and confident as the Prince to be.

I won't spoil the game for you, but the last 20% of the game is extraordinary. While the whole game is a masterpiece, the final 20% has to be seen to be believed. I thoroughly enjoyed PoP:SoT as I was playing it. By 80% through, I was certain it was excellent. By 90% through, I was in complete awe. By the time I was finished, I knew I had witnessed something extraordinary. Hats off to Jordan Mechner and the development crew in Montreal. I thought for sure that Ico would remain head and shoulders above anything else I would play in years. Though Prince of Persia is still second place, it is a stunning, awesome work of art, and one that everyone who loves games should play.
- posted by Seppo @ 12:12 PM

 
Some of the most unfairly overlooked games of all time:

• System Shock (PC)
  
• System Shock 2 (PC)
  
• Terra Nova (PC)
  
• Grim Fandango (PC)
  
• Full Throttle (PC)
  
• Allegiance (PC)
  
• Battlezone (PC)
  
• Moonbase Commander (PC)
  
• Total Annihilation (PC)
  
• Einhander (PSone)
  
• Incredible Crisis (PSone)
  
• Amplitude (PS2)
  
• Gitaroo-Man (PS2)
  
• Ico (PS2)
  
• Deathrow (xbox)
  
• Panzer Dragoon Orta (xbox)
  
• Mars Matrix (DC)
  
• Project Justice (DC)
  
• Rez (DC)
  
• Bangai-O (N64/DC)
  
• Beyond Good & Evil (PC/xbox/PS2/GC)
  
• Ferrari F355 Challenge (DC/PS2)
  
• Ikaruga (DC(import)/GC)
  
• Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (xbox/PS2/GC)
  
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PC/xbox/PS2/GC)

- posted by Seppo @ 10:04 AM

 


Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is a third person shooter, made by Swingin' Ape Studios, home to some of the people that worked on Midway's Hydro Thunder. At first blush, you might notice that the main character, Glitch, looks sort of ... cute, for a robot, and that he reminds you of Clank, from Ratchet and Clank. That wouldn't be an entirely unfair comparison, as Metal Arms plays out not entirely unlike an all-action-all-the-time version of Ratchet and Clank.

Don't let the character designs fool you, though - Metal Arms isn't a kids' game. It's both extremely challenging, and really damn funny. The action is frenetic from the get-go - though Metal Arms is a third-person shooter, it plays a lot like Halo, and its difficulty level (there aren't any options to adjust it) is somewhere around Halo's "Hard" difficulty. Glitch, the main character, has a variety of weapons to choose from. His right hand serves as an attachment point for most of his shooting weapons, ranging from a circular saw blade firing thingamabob, to a pretty standard machine gun. His left hand can hold grenades, firebombs, and the like.

One of the most interesting things about Metal Arms is that the weapons have a great feel to them. The sound effects have punch, and the visual effects are really neat. You can blow enemies' limbs off, break their waist joints (leaving the upper halves of their bodies still able to fire, but swinging around aimlessly), or just blow them to smithereens. The resulting shower of firey parts is satisfying in a way most games fail to be.

There's an extensive multiplayer element to Metal Arms, but sadly, no networked support for any system, despite the sheer awesomeness that Live support would have brought to a game like this. Still, as a single player game, Metal Arms is quite long, and varied. There's vehicle driving, turret shooting, and the levels are so diverse that the game constantly feels fresh.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is one of the most charming, addictive, and satisfying action games of 2003, and though its sales numbers have been poor, Swingin' Ape Studios deserves your support. They've created a small masterpiece of frenetic shooting, and one hell of a ride.

One note, and my only serious negative comment about the game - on the xbox (and possibly other systems as well, but I only have experience with the xbox version) there is a significant amount of horizontal "tearing" in the screen due to what I can only assume is a problem with the redraw rate in the game. While it's not overly intrusive to the person playing, it is extremely irritating if you're watching someone else play. This is a serious graphical bug, and Sierra should have addressed it before releasing the game. It's not a "deal breaker," but it's still a significant problem, and a bug that should have been addressed before shipping.
- posted by Seppo @ 9:45 AM

 
Yes, I realize these aren't all "overlooked" games - I'm just saying what my favorite & least favorite games of last year were, just to give people perspective on my tastes.
- posted by Seppo @ 12:51 AM

 
My favorite games of last year:

1.) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
2.) Max Payne 2
3.) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
4.) Freedom Fighters
5.) Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
6.) Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando
7.) Crimson Skies
8.) Project Gotham Racing 2
9.) The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
10.) Viewtiful Joe

There's way too many good games from last year. SSX3, Karaoke Revolution, Warioware, Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, and Top Spin Tennis all deserve mention, and I'm sure there's a fistful of other games out there that I'm forgetting.

Worst games of last year:

1.) Enter the Matrix (six more months of polish, and a completely different control scheme, and this could have been good. Instead, it's buggy, plays horribly, and has some of the most awful driving sequences ever put in a game.)
2.) Rainbow Six 3 multiplayer (collision model completely broken in multiplayer, making anything but a headshot nearly pointless. Lack of stagger when hit, and non-variable spawn points caps off an ill-fated multiplayer experience.)

Biggest disappointment (so far):

1.) Deus Ex 2 (ridiculous loading times, horribly implemented stealth system, and an apparently arbitrary upgrade system really castrate the "Deus Ex Gameplay" that I loved so much from the first game.)
- posted by Seppo @ 12:34 AM

 


Beyond Good & Evil, from Ubisoft, is an adventure game in the vein of Zelda: The Wind Waker. You play as Jade, an "action reporter" who becomes embroiled in a plot to expose a government conspiracy. The "Alpha Sections" are nominally your planet Hyllis' defense force, but you find that they seem to show up conveniently just after the invaders, the DomZ, attack. You're not the only one who finds this fishy, and in the process of trying to figure out what's going on.

The plot is relatively straightfoward - you find a secretive group who's working to uncover the government conspiracy, and you face some obstacles and hurdles along the way. There's some stealth, there's some puzzle solving, some item fetching, and some combat. All the standard adventure ingredients are there. But that's not all there is. You drive around in your hovercraft, which you can also enter in races, and you can take photos of the local flora and fauna. You'll also use your camera to photograph the evidence of the conspiracy at hand.

All that adventure-y goodness is wrapped up in a beautiful, and interesting package. Though the "Jade Engine" which BG&E is built upon isn't going to change the world, it is powerful enough to make BG&E a graphically stunning game. The environments are an interesting blend of Jeunet and Miyazaki, and the fact that Michel Ancel also created Rayman isn't lost on the design aesthetic. On top of the beautiful and imaginitive environments, the supporting cast is one of the most interesting aspects of the game.

Your uncle, an anthromorphic pig named Pey'j, is a cantankerous old mechanic, whose affection for Jade really shows through his cranky exterior. Jade has some really novel casual interactions with the patrons of the local bar, from a humanoid shark man who plays a variant of air hockey, to the bartender, who's an eight foot tall cow-man. The casual way she talks to these otherworldly creatures (the shark-man is named "Francis") gives the game a sort of supernatural familiarity that is unlike most games.

Beyond Good and Evil is really the game that's made me really consider Ubisoft both a powerhouse of game development, and a studio that's willing to take some pretty risky moves in order to move the medium forward. Just as Sega did, when they were publishing games for the Dreamcast, Ubisoft seems to be making a wide variety of really interesting, and unfortunately overlooked games. BG&E, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and XIII all tried new, and interesting things. Couple that with bestsellers like Rainbow Six 3, and the Ghost Recon series, and it's hard to argue that Ubisoft doesn't possess a stellar lineup for the discerning gamer. Though not all of their games are excellent (the multiplayer in R6-3 is broken, and XIII, though visually interesting, plays to its weaknesses by including far too much stealth), they're trying new things, and have been hitting quite a few completely out of the park. Prince of Persia is hands down my favorite game of last year, and BG&E looks to be of similar quality.
- posted by Seppo @ 12:19 AM

 
This blog is devoted to finding and extolling games that have been overlooked by the general public. Expect, for instance, to find articles relevant to Gitaroo-Man, Ico, Beyond Good & Evil, and the like, rather than Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto, or Halo. The point is, that if you want news and information on stuff that's overlooked by almost everyone, this will be a resource to find interesting stuff to read about them. Anything good that didn't sell well, or didn't get much press, whether it came out on the Vectrex, or the Playstation 2.
- posted by Seppo @ 11:59 PM