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.

Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts

08 August, 2012

EverQuest

4:38:00 PM  D_Homes  No comments


  • Release Date: 1999
  • Platform(s): PC
  • Developer: Sony Online Entertainment
  • Genre: MMORPG


In the 1990s, role-playing games already had a solid and devoted fan base, with opportunities to imagine great fantasy worlds while acting out the life and times of any class, race, or even sex of choice. By late in the century, multi-user games of increasingly cutting-edge visuals were braving the fledging Internet. it wasn't until the arrival of EverQuest, however, that the entire experience of online role-playing was elevated and thrust into the true 3-D age.

Requiring a quick, consistent Internet connection and an expensive 3-D graphics card, EverQuest occupied a niche of a niche in 1999. But such technology is used to its full potential, the classic fantasy world of Norrath coming to life in a way that captured gamers' imaginations and kept them coming back for more... and more... and more for a surprisingly long time.

Oh, sure, the svelte elves aren't outfitted to survive sprawling plains, mountains, and cavernous dungeons, but hell if they don't lure leering players to unload a few precious gold pieces to aid a fawning damsel in undress. Or you can take on a noble paladin role, vanquishing this and dispelling that; or skulk with the rogues; or cast with the mages; or so many other options that the world experience appears endless. You explore, learn trades and skills, as well as languages and even a whole new shorthand vocabulary (including the oh-so-appropriate moniker, EverCrack).

No doubt building a world and game mechanic from scratch brings attendant teething problems, imbalances, and even straight up breakages, but between the zone exploration, the ambition, and opportunity for socializing with fellow gamers, the overall experience compels any RPG fan to commit for a long, long haul.

Read More

20 November, 2011

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

9:46:00 AM  D_Homes  6 comments


  • Release Date: 2004
  • Platform(s): PlayStation 2, PC, Xbox
  • Developer: Rockstar
  • Genre: Action

With sales of more than 20 million copies since ts launch in 2004, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the biggest-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time, and not without reason. Though initially a game about gang bangers and turf wars in a fictional Los Angeles (Los Santos), channeling scenes from Menace II Society and Boyz N the Hood, it blossoms into an ode to the entire West Coast. Three whole cities -- the others being San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas) -- create a game four times bigger than Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, home to just about every idea from Rockstar's whiteboards. Weight gain, pimping missions, robberies, drive-bys, swimming, clothes shopping, martial arts, casino games, horse racing -- the list goes on and on.

The hero this time is Carl "CJ" Johnson, a Los Santos native who returns for his mother's funeral after five years in Liberty City. Chaos greets him, his neighbourhood falling to gang violence while rivalries and suspicions break up his family. Blackmailed by the crooked Officer Tenpenny (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) and distracted by girlfriends, hippies, and everyone in between, he gradually unearths the secrets behind his mother's murder, following the clues to the far ends of the map.

Just as important as the urban centers of San Andreas are the spaces in between: the rural
retreats and vast open roads that turn the game into a road movie. No Grand Theft Auto before or since has let you point toward a random horizon and just keep on driving, capturing that post-Woodstock spirit of movies like Easy Rider and Vanishing Point. None has featured a more star-studded cast, either, or so many ways of getting from point A to B via X, Y and Z. Though it lacks an occasional dab of polish, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an embarrassment of riches.


Read More

16 September, 2011

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

1:18:00 PM  D_Homes  3 comments


  • Release Date: 2001
  • Platform: PlayStation 2
  • Developer: Naughty Dog
  • Genre: Platformer


Jak and Daxter's own precursor was Crash Bandicoot, a character who became something of a mascot for the original PlayStation and an example of Naughty Dog's technical skills. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is similarly demonstrative of the developer's talents when it comes to character design and the manipulation of Sony's hardware: players are treated to a high level of detail, charismatic animation, and a streaming world with no loading screen in sight. The game also paved the way for Nolan North's later proliferation of vocal appearances by caster Max Casella (an actor who nowadays also has The Sopranos and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony on his resume) as the voice of Daxter.

As 3-D graphics had been well exploited for the previous generation of consoles, standing out from the crowd in the 128-bit landscape required new tactics. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy's main innovation is the aforementioned lack of loading. Before this, games were predominantly discrete experiences lacking in holistic permanence, but here players could travel to locations visible in the distance, and challenges begun would remain in the state they were left, rather than requiring restarts. The stage props used by preceding platform games had been transformed into a living, breathing world.

That the mechanics of the game are heavily evocative of classics like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie is simply another reason to recommend it; the polished, fluid controls ensure that simply moving Jak around is a joy. Thought is also put into the reinvention of genre cliches: The collectibles here aren't as abstract tokens but energy orbs, which make sense in the context of the plot, setting a new bar for consistency and motivation.

Read More