split/screen co-op

Resident evil dark chronicles by ~MissDawson on deviantART

If the idea for a 100-word review looks like it’s been lifted from the No Added Sugar blog, it’s because it has. I was contemplating joining that site and writing a 100-word review was part of the application process. Unfortunately, it looks like the blog is on a prolonged hiatus. The last post is from February and an email seeking contact went unanswered.

Anyhow, I’ve got the review and it would be a shame if it went to waste as I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Here it is:

This post will be about the Sega Mega Drive side-scrolling beat-‘em-up Streets of Rage. But first this.

As a collector I’m fond of retro games, which I like hoarding. One of the basic principles I agreed to adhere to when I first realised I was building a collection that would cost a small fortune, was that I would only collect games that are worth playing. It is impossible to always know for sure if I’m going to like a game before I’ve bought and played it, but, generally, I’m not inclined to buy a game just because it’s rare. And games I don’t like are destined to leave the collection one way or another.

Retro games are at a disadvantage because new ones are so much better than them in every respect. In fact, the more retro a game, the more likely it is to be shitty by comparison. Yet my intention is not to build a collection of the best video games, but simply to have a collection of games that are good; goodness not being defined by how well they stack up against other games. I like to judge games on their own merit but not necessarily by the standards of their own time. If a 1990s game wants to impress me, it’d better have aged well.

In the series I’m starting with this post, I’ll be playing one retro game each month and sharing my opinion on whether it is worth owning based solely on its quality as a game and regardless of rarity, influence and other typical collector’s considerations.

And now for the feature presentation…

Fallout by UndeadBat

Writing this review for Fallout was hard. I’ve already dedicated a post each to most of the things that made any lasting impression on me for good or bad. I thought there was no need to repeat that here, so I would just give you my final verdict. Right.

Now… that’s the tricky part. I’m not sure what I think of this game in the end. I simultaneously loved it and hated it and I just can’t make my mind up one way or the other.

Read on for more of my dilemma.

The Guild by UltimateHurl

For a while I thought I kind of didn’t mind the first two seasons of The Guild, mostly for being so-so rather than the horrendous tripe they could have been. The series had its moderate highs and far-from-abysmal lows and managed to just keep its nose above mediocrity.

But the third season was really, really good! I was very glad to see the team depart from a world comprised entirely of tired online-gaming cliches to one comprised mainly of tired online-gaming cliches but also not devoid of what actual human beings do, think and feel.

Maybe its just that the show’s matured as its creators have gained experience or maybe popularity and the related surge in funding have played a part. Either way, season four is now looking very promising indeed and I’m looking forward to downloading it already.

I was a little bit disappointed to read that the name of the rival guild was not actually The Asses of Evil, but it’s an unfair world.

The Guild by ~UltimateHurl on deviantART

The Guild official website: www.watchtheguild.com

In Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future the eponymous captain and his band of soldiers are fighting an army of mechanised warriors. Even as a child it struck me as odd that the evil robotic forces were speaking a human language to each other. Language is a fantastic tool but why should machines, which have much more efficient ways of communication, use it when not in the presence of people?

Machinarium is an adventure game that takes place in a world of machines, populated by robots. Everything in it, from the protagonist through his opponents, to stray pets on the streets, is mechanical. As any adventure game, Machinarium has lots of conversations with NPCs, yet not a single line of dialogue. The ideas being expressed are conveyed through speech bubbles featuring masterful drawings that capture the essence of what is being communicated so that the player is in the clear what is going on. As well as adding tremendous levels of realism to the experience, this is also an incredibly clever way to bypass story-driven games’ bane of repetitive dialogue.

Hit the jump for my full review of Machinarium.

ImmorTall is a very touching flash game, which tells the story of an alien who crashes on Earth and is taken in by humans. Later, war breaks out. I won’t reveal any more narrative details in order to avoid spoilers. Anyway, it’s a very short but surprisingly impactful story and you’d do best to go and play it yourself. (Hardly takes five minutes and is completely free.)

The visual style of the game is simply stunning and its arresting piano soundtrack does wonders to set the mood.

In truth, it maybe a stretch to call ImmorTall a game, because it is very simple indeed. Maybe an interactive story is a better description. Yet, this little flash title will affect you in ways many AAA games can only dream of and everybody who is keen to portray games as art will be happy to have that joker up their sleeve.

ImmorTall on Armor Games

I got into playing The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom shortly after completing the excellent VVVVVV (review) and I was expecting more platforming ecstasy. Winterbottom’s lengthy tutorial looked very promising and I had high hopes.

Those were dashed several real-gameplay levels later when I had to accept that this was not a platforming game, but rather a puzzle. Yet this discovery, though a bit disheartening, did not deter me from venturing further into Winterbottom’s misadventures. Before starting the game, I was very impressed with its marvelous retro-movie black-and-white style, and that kept me playing long after I thought I was done with it.

My full impressions follow after the break.

Full Pipe would have been just a quirky odd-looking indie point-and-click adventure in the vein of Machinarium and Samorost, were it not their elder by five or six years. It doesn’t seem to have enjoyed the critical success of those later titles. The news section of developer Pipe Studio’s website claims that during a presentation of the game at the Russian Game Developer’s Conference KRI-2004 John Romero and Tom Hall (of Doom and Quake fame) were so enamoured by Full Pipe that they had to be forcibly removed from the computer. (The news story linked to in this announcement simply says they liked it a lot.)

So there’s that. But the game critics at large seem to have mostly ignored the title. Maybe it came out ahead of its time or maybe it just isn’t that good. I have no way of knowing, because I’ve never played the other two games. But I can tell you what I think about this one after the jump.

An open letter to Terry Cavanagh on the occasion of my completing his game VVVVVV. Hit the jump to read.

To be honest, I couldn't be arsed to remember which one's Ben and which one's Dan

I’m finally playing again! I was on a self-prescribed hold because I needed to make time to read all of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books without distraction. It was a great experience and I recommend you read them if you haven’t, but I missed gaming nonetheless.

And now I’m at it again.

I’ve been amassing a PC game collection for the past two gameless months (The Dark Tower is a long, long story) and started off by firing up Ben There, Dan That!, an indie point-and-click adventure by Zombie Cow Studios.

Read on for my full review.