Spy Hunter

With its smart weapons, awesome cars, Spy Hunter was viewed as a very stylish game back in the arcades on the early 1980s. It was a title that playing into any boy's fantasies- secret agents, nasty weaponry, and a driving lincese. Make no mistake though, it was the action packed gameplay that kept people coming back for more again, again, and again...

1943

The year that the war ground on may have been 1943, when rationing continued to bite down hard, construction work on the Pentagon was completed, and the Japanese forces were driven back from Guadalcanal, but it's a whole lot more enjoyable if you think of it as this wonderful little vertical-scrolling shooter from Capcom, released for the delight of the arcade-going populas in 1987...

Diablo

The game isn't just a good looking isometric dungeon crawler, it is THE best dungeon crawler. A simple - almost brainless trek through caverns and catacombs filled with vile creatures, not to mention all the loot. Blizzard spent a lot of time working on the generation of the game's spaces, making items, enemies, and geography be different every single time you load up the game...

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls games are best known for the fourth chapter in the series, Oblivion, released in 2006. In comparison,The Elder Scroll's Morrowind is altogether more of a curate's egg, neither as commercially successful nor critically applauded as it's successor. Perhaps because of that, however, it's also a much more interesting game...

Rogue

Rogue first appeared on college Unix systems in 1980. It contains an infinite variety via a series of randomly generated, ASCII-rendered dungeons that must be explored in a bid to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor (Rodney spelled backwards) from somewhere behold the twenty-fifth level -- an unlikely achievement given the imposing difficulty of even the earliest dungeon layers.

28 August, 2011

Baldur's Gate II

7:35:00 AM  D_Homes  10 comments

Release Date: 2000
Platform: PC
Developer: BioWare
Genre: Role-Playing

In 1988, SSI's Gold Box series redefined the Western idea of the RPG genre. They took the single most important set of pen-and-paper rules -- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons -- and tied them to an epic series of campaigns that spanned entire continents and several games, breathing life into Gary Galax's legendary creation. Running out of steam in the early 1990s, however, the D&D franchise was left to languish. Until, that is, BioWare created Baldur's Gate. The effect was like stepping through the rainbow, like moving from black-and-white to colour.

Baldur's Gate was teaming with life in a way that no other RPG had ever been. Where the Gold Box games had provided hack-and-slash gaming supported by blocky graphics, Baldur's Gate offered would-be adventurers an abundance of quests and meaningful interactions across huge playing fields;across intricately detailed, beautifully rendered isometric recreations of a completely convincing fantasy medieval world.

The transition between Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn was every bit as pronounced. The sequel may have streamlined the interface, but it bulked out the playing experience. Like the Gold Box games, players could import their characters and items from a previous game, and as those characters grew in power, so the game changed to reflect their newfound influence. Building up their own strongholds and followers, they were free to lead their own way through a labyrinthine plot that weaved together divergent and mutually exclusive subplots and quests -- indeed, some subquests were as weighty and complex as the entire first game.

As far as gaming goes, it's a satisfying complexity that has yet to be eclipsed. Indeed, Baldur's Gate II is probably still the pinnacle of the Western RPG.


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05 August, 2011

Quake

8:00:00 PM  D_Homes  14 comments


  • Release Date: 1996
  • Platform: PC
  • Developer: id Software
  • Genre: First-Person Shooter


Despite being a pioneer of full three-dimensional graphics in the first-person genre-- or perhaps because of it--Quake is a master class in level design. It's brightly confident in it's grasp of space and solidity; even the difficultly and episode selection is its own memorable environment. The game crams in jumping puzzles, a secret area, and is also capable as serving as an unlikely death match arena. In fact, if you pick any of Quake's two dozen or so levels, you'll find that the critical path is less a line than a rabid dance lesson.

Chiseled into rock or beaten out of metal, Quake's forbidding angles remain unique, haunted by the ghosts of the games it could have been as id's designers fought between a dark fantasy RPG and a science fiction shooter. Though it was the instigator of the "brown corridor" visual treatment, there's art and intention to the oppressive monotone. Its disconnected areas are thick with a sense of place, of eye-catching incidental detail, stranded in crushing blacks: vaults hemmed with silver crosses, the massive embossed metal Jesus, charnel house window settings for apocalyptic stained glass.

All anchored by one of the great pre-music collaborations between developer and composer. Nine Inch Nail's front man Trent Reznor's amazing soundtrack is at turns deafening, oily, and pitiless, and never less than part of Quake's texture. Aural cues sound out environmental hazards and forwarn of enemies well enough to play blind (or a blind panic). In a Quake level, Run isn't a toggle, it's a commandment, and the numerous strengths within this title turn a game that should have been a "what if" into a "this is".



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06 April, 2011

Super Mario Bros.

1:34:00 PM  Kryptik  21 comments


  • Release Date: 1985
  • Platform: NES
  • Developer: Nintendo
  • Genre: Platform


The problem with classics, is that they are old. They usher in great changes and they redifine the landscape, but less influential games perfect the trends they started and end up being a lot more fun to play. For example, StarFox isn't as ground breaking as Asteroids as far as space games go, but anyone stuck in an elevator would undoubtedly prefer it as a means to pass the time.

And yet, while Super Mario Bros. did so much to define the side-scrolling platformer, twenty-odd years on its still one of the best there is. It's colours may seem a little muted by today's standards, and its ironic plumber's mustache lacks definition, but this has excellent enemy design, tricky, secret-packed worlds, and an unforgettable soundtrack.

Most of all, Super Mario Bros. has a sense of believable physics - something still missing from modern day platformers. Set Mario running, and you'll need time and space to get him to slow down; attempt a big jump, and you're going to have to get a running start; bounce on an enemy, and you may still need to fine tune your landing while still in the air. All of which gives the game the precision necessary to allow for a cluster of tightly paced underground and overworld levels, with their gloriously destructable environments and famous power-ups, like the growth mushroom and the fire flower. Super Mario Bros. is venerable, then, but not remotely rickety: a simple delight that can still give far more complex games a comprehensive run-around.


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03 April, 2011

StarCraft

6:46:00 PM  Kryptik  28 comments


  • Release Date: 1998
  • Platform(s): PC
  • Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
  • Genre: Real-Time-Strategy


StarCraft was the first western title to pin it's success on South Korea. There was something about this real-time sci-fi strategy game that touched a nerve, making StarCraft a staple of the country's multi-player PC cafes, which were emerging in the 1990s, leading to the sale of 4.5 million copies in the territory. It also helped to establish South Korea's professional gaming scene.

Of course, with more than 11 million sales worldwide, StarCraft is one of the best-selling PC games ever made. Yet while initial reviews were unanimously positive, it's fair to say that no one foresaw StarCraft as being quite the success that it has become. Despite the isometric graphics, the game isn't especially impressive, and less successful rival games have an edge in RTS innovation with unit control and resource management.

But StarCraft has a very special trick up its sleeve: three completely distinct and playable races. The Terrans (Humans), the Zerg (nasty, swarm aliens), and the Protoss (high tech, religious warriors) all have their own units that don't just look different but play diffferently too. For instance, as Zerg you can burrow underground and attempt to overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers, while as Protoss you have fewer units, but much more powerful weapons at your disposal. Upon release, no reace was blatently over powered, and Blizzard has maintained this balance very well with occasional patches that address multiple tatics.

The combination of diversity and balance is extremely difficult to achieve, Blizzard overcame this challenge with StarCraft and followed it up with a well deserved sequel, StarCraft II.

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30 January, 2011

Harvest Moon

8:53:00 PM  Kryptik  27 comments


  • Release Date: 1996
  • Platform: SNES
  • Developer: Natusme
  • Genre: Role-Playing


What role would you want to play as in a video game? A spaceman? A God? A soldier? A knight on a perilous quest? Okay... How about a farmer? Tilling the land, tending the livestock, looking after crops, and basing your life around the passing seasons. Not so keen? Are you sure?

Harvest Moon is a farming simulation, but a farming simulation in which the nasty bits of farming, such as wrenching chicken's heads off and putting bolts through cow's brains, are taken back a bit to make way for a gentle anime depiction of the countryside lifestyle in all it's glory. The game will have you feeding and looking after your animals, watering your crops, milking your cows(and talking to them while you are at it) and other farming activities in the most timely manner imaginable in order to maximize your farm's potential.

As unlikely as it sounds, the game's agenda will cast a strong spell on you until you are so hooked into the game that you can't escape it. With time management mechanics at it's heart, Harvest Moon is capable of dressing it's bare clockwork up in such a way where you don't really mind being rushed around or sent on a series of what are, essentially, thankless tasks.

Fans certainly don't seem to mind, as they buy near identical sequels by the boat-load. They ensure that every season of gaming has a Harvest moon release or two. While the recent titles in the series are only for the hard-core pretend farmer, the original was a title that anyone could pick up and enjoy. The game is available on the Wii's virtual console service. So what are you waiting for? Give this unique game a try!

When Farming Didn't Involve Facebook

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