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Areala

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Blog Entries posted by Areala

  1. Areala
    No, seriously, ignore the hype Sony and Microsoft have been dumping into the press about their new motion controller Wii-toos for a minute, and think. Do you care about this? Do you know anybody who does? The answers you come up with, after careful consideration, are more than likely, "No," and "No," respectively. I'm not hating on either Sony or Microsoft (I own a PS3), and I'm no Nintendo fangirl (I don't own a Wii). I'm simply asking the question that nobody else in the gaming media seems to be asking: why should we care?
    Going back a few years, we can see that both Microsoft and Sony, when asked about Wii's motion-sensing controllers, dismissed them outright. "Gimmicks," the Nintendo controllers were referred to by both companies. In a certain sense, they were right: Wii's motion-sensing controllers are gimmicks, in the same way that the touch screen feature of the Nintendo DS is a gimmick, and the SIXAXIS controller is a gimmick. The main difference is that without those gimmicks, it is impossible to actually play a game on the systems mentioned. The fact that history has borne out repeatedly in regards to video game hardware is that if you want your hardware to be successful, you must bundle it with the system, and then you must have developers who continue to support it with new and interesting software titles.
    This is why the Wii-mote works: you get it with the system, and it is the primary way of controlling nearly every piece of current-gen software being sold for the Wii. Game developers don't make titles for the Wii that don't use the motion controls on the Wii-mote because they have no reason to do so. It is hardware that ships with the console, everyone has it, and therefore everyone will use it. To support it is a no-brainer.
    Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, don't have this working in their favour. They both face a long, tedious, uphill battle where they are going to attempt to first sell developers on the hardware, then sell the hardware itself, then games that utilize the hardware, and then continue to sell developers on the hardware to encourage them to make more games in support of it. The problem is that from a developer's perspective, if you don't sell enough copies of your first title to use the new hardware, you won't recoup enough money to develop that second title. And when developers notice studios like Capcom or EA dropping their support for future titles using the peripheral, the other guys start seeing the writing on the wall and pull their support as well; it's amazing to see how fast one can go from having 38 games in development in one year to having 3 in development next year, to zero in development six months later. This is when the hardware fails, and gaming journalists everywhere hold round-ups and interviews with various industry heads to ask, "Why did this happen?" The answer to which is always, "Because it didn't make money, and it didn't make money because nobody cared."
    So, instead of waiting for this point in time a year or two down the road, I'm going to make a preemptive strike here on my blog, and state, firmly and decisively, that both the Move and Natal will crash and burn after they are introduced. I don't care how many studios have signed on to develop games, I don't care how much money Sony and Microsoft spend marketing this thing, and I don't care how many demo kiosks get set up in Wal*Mart, Best Buy, or your local game store, Move and Natal are both bound for entries in the Great Video Game Encyclopedia as subsections under the heading of "FAIL".
    We can look at virtually anywhere else in the home video game timeline to see cases of hardware that looked amazing and got marketed as the next big thing, only to see it crash and burn. Sega themselves nearly ceased to exist as a company after pulling this mistake one too many times with their very own consoles; after the Sega CD, 32X and Saturn all failed to live up to anything remotely close to their potentials, people were understandably leery about putting their stock in Dreamcast. Not even the mighty Nintendo is immune from this sort of thing: take a look back at R.O.B. and the Power Glove. The Power Glove even had what amounted to a speaking role in a feature film built around video games, and it still failed spectacularly. The failure of the Virtual Boy console itself cost Gunpei Yokoi (creator of Metroid, producer of Super Metroid a.k.a. "The Best Video Game Ever", and the guy who invented the original Game Boy itself for crying out loud!) his job. Nobody at Sega is even allowed discuss what happened to the guy who managed to talk them into developing the Activator (the records will officially be unsealed in 2031).
    The problem with innovating hardware is that you have to offer gamers a solid reason to use it, and developers a solid reason to support it. A firm, 100% guaranteed install base with that hardware is the best scenario you can provide devs with. Like the DS touch screen, or the Wiimote, it guarantees that their game can be marketed to anyone who owns the console. Unless you make this the primary means of interacting with the console, you still aren't going to have many titles that utilize that hardware as its lone control mode. Don't believe me? The Zapper lightgun shipped with every incarnation of the NES, but games like Operation: Wolf still allowed you to play using the control pad. Revolution X didn't require that you have the Menacer to play on the Genesis. Operation Thunderbolt for the SNES let you play with pretty much anything you wanted, supporting the control pad, the Super Scope lightgun, and even the SNES Mouse. Konami offered one way around this problem by offering the Justifier lightgun used for playing its Lethal Enforcers as a pack-in with the purchase of the game on both the Genesis and Super Nintendo, and even included a mail-in coupon that allowed the owner to send in a small fee (I'm thinking $10, but I don't have the coupon in front of me, so correct me if I'm wrong) and receive a second gun so two players could shoot at the screen.
    Of course, you can overdo it as Capcom discovered with Steel Battalion, their $200 video game experiment which managed to not only price itself out of virtually every player's pocketbook, but also required the use of its special controller in order to play it. The controller itself accounted for $150 of the game's cost, was every mech-geek's wet dream, and insured that nobody with anything less than a complete and utter devotion to hardcore game playing would ever so much as think twice about taking it home. Despite creating a sequel to the game which also required the controller to play, Steel Battalion barely broke even, and Capcom probably considers themselves lucky to have made any money on it at all.
    Occasionally there are exceptions to the rule that show hardware introduced later in a product cycle becoming successful, and the best examples of this come from both Sony and Microsoft in the form of new controllers. When the Playstation debuted, the controller was a simple design that pretty much ripped off the Super NES pad, added a couple more buttons, and that was that. Three years after the release of the PS1, Sony came out with the DUALSHOCK controller, which updated their regular pad with a pair of analog sticks and a rumble function. It didn't take long for developers to fall for this sucker, and Sony began packing a DUALSHOCK pad with its systems instead of the original digital controller. Ape Escape proved that you could both market and sell a game that required the dual analog sticks to play, and Sony's been doing their thing with the same controller design for three successive generations. Microsoft's success in this area also came from their controllers, as the original Xbox pads were enormous and uncomfortable to use when gaming for extended periods of time. Sales of their "Controller-S" in Japan, a smaller, more ergonomic controller with slightly different button layout, proved to be so successful that they adopted it here as well, and it is the new S design as opposed to the original pad which became the default for the Xbox 360.
    So, it can be done. The problem is that the Move and Natal go far beyond simple controller refinements. They don't simply add a tilt-sensor or force feedback, they completely change the way a controller itself works and the way a user interacts with the system. Traditionally, it has been impossible to produce a peripheral that functions in this fashion that has become a success among multi-party developers, especially third-parties, and still make money. Nintendo made it work because the Wiimote shipped with every console they sold. Unless Sony and Microsoft are now planning to bundle the Move and Natal in with their new hardware and offer substantial discounts on pricing for those who were earlier adopters, the penetration level for this new technology simply won't reach a point where developers feel confident in throwing money at it.
    I hope I'm wrong. I'd love nothing more than to see Move and Natal make it just as big as Nintendo's Wiimote. And maybe the experiment won't be a complete and total failure; even if the hardware doesn't succeed on this generation, there's nothing stopping either Sony or Microsoft from including it with their next generation of consoles. But to be honest, I don't think there are enough people who will care about Natal or Move. And unless third-party developers make money on the games they want to make for the peripherals right out of the gate, they'll put the kibosh on any further projects that utilize the technology, no matter how cool it may look or what stuff it may let them do. By all means, Sony, try and get me excited about Playstation Move. Just understand that if you can't get me to care about it, then it isn't going to work.
  2. Areala

    Computers Learn to Abuse

    By Areala,

    Most people who have spent any significant portion of time around computers are aware of the style of program known as a "chatbot". This is a simple piece of software programmed with some degree of artificial intelligence that can "interpret" what a user is typing, and then attempt to carry on a conversation with that person. Really good ones can often fool the general public, and every so often, someone will write one and unleash it on some unsuspecting chatroom and then sit back and watch the hilarity that ensues as people get very drawn into conversations with their new-found friend. Often, people won't accept the fact that they had been speaking to a simple computer program, even when presented with direct evidence, and will demand to know who the person behind the keyboard really is.
    Of all the chatbots ever programmed, perhaps the most famous one was ELIZA, a sort of computerized shrink who would interact with a user by replying in various ways to questions and statements asked of it with vague responses, requests for clarification, and turning questions asked back on the user asking them. ELIZA also had the propensity to scold people who swore at it, making for some rather amusing reactions. Unlike a shrink, however, ELIZA really couldn't be "shocked". Confessing something to ELIZA never elicited so much as an electronic eyebrow raising: slept with sheep, murdered your family, enjoyed robbing the elderly at gunpoint? ELIZA just wanted to hear more about it, but she'd never scold you, no matter how badly you berated her.
    Enter Randy Simon, who decided that computers everywhere should be able to defend themselves from the vile insults hurled at them by their human users. Mr. Simon's response to users to insulted their machines was to give the machines a way to fight back, and thus was born Abuse. Abuse was a simple chatbot, much like ELIZA, except that it was meant to trade insults instead of draw out your inner psyche. Hurl abuse at Abuse, and it threw back any number of assorted taunts, insults, and jibes. My personal favorite? "Go moon a flock of geese!"
    For sure, Abuse was pretty limited in its application. You had to load it into memory every time you wanted it to insult you, so it wasn't like you could just install it on someone else's computer then sit back and watch the fun. But still, a computer that could fight back against a torrent of expletives on its own was pretty darn funny back in 1981. Come to think of it, it's pretty funny even in 2009. And if you don't think so...then your mainframe wears army boots.
  3. Areala
    Fair warning: Spoilers abound from here on out. If you haven't played the game, leave now or suffer the indignity of having one of the best Game Boy games ruined for you without playing through it yourself.
    The appearance of the beloved "Legend of Zelda" series on the Game Boy was a reason to rejoice for many series fans, giving gamers hours of entertainment while they explored the little island of Koholint, a place that was but a dot on the Hyrulian map, and yet seemed to contain far more secrets than any full-sized kingdom should. There were plenty of differences, to be sure, but perhaps the most significant was that unlike every other previous Zelda title, one fairly important thing was missing: Zelda herself.
    In her place, though far from being the easily-kidnapped stereotype that Link's favorite princess fell into in previous titles, was smart-talking, strong-moraled, smooth-singing Marin. What's more is that instead of being content to be simple window dressing as Zelda was, Marin had no problem going on adventures with Link himself, pointing out the error of his ways, hustling shopkeepers, scolding Link when he accidentally (we hope) smacked a chicken, and using her singing talents to (I am not making this up) scare a walrus.
    While it's never outright stated, it seems like there's a pretty good chance that Marin and Link wind up having a vibe of sorts going: he cares for her, and she cares for him. At one point, Marin and Link sit on the beach together, watching the tide come in and listening to the songs of the seagulls, while she regales him with tales of her life to this point, her belief that something must exist beyond the waters that surround the island, and that if she could have one wish granted, it would be to be a bird with wings so that she could fly out beyond the island and sing for all the people of the world.
    She's not just taking an ego trip: Marin has a beautiful voice, and her "Song of the Wind Fish" is one of the most peaceful and calming compositions ever to appear in a Zelda game, despite the restrictions of the simple, tinny Game Boy speaker.
    As (hopefully) every Zelda fan knows by now, as the story of Link's Awakening unfolds, it becomes more and more clear that Koholint Island and its inhabitants do not technically "exist," at least not in the physical sense. It seems that the people, monsters, dungeons and animals of Koholint may be nothing more than the disturbed dreams of a creature known as the Wind Fish, a sky-sailing whale-like creature who is being plagued by nightmares. Waking the Wind Fish is essential to free it from its torment, and this is why Link has been summoned into the dream of this majestic animal. But what then of the island's inhabitants? If they are all simply dreams, won't waking the Wind Fish cause them to disappear forever? It's a question Link has to wrestle with as he assembles the eight instruments he needs to wake the Wind Fish, knowing that by doing so he will be dooming the inhabitants to an eternity of non-existence, but also knowing that unless he succeeds in driving away the Wind Fish's nightmares, he himself will never find his way back to Hyrule and his own home.
    Of course, all great quests come to an end, and Link rounds up the instruments he needs, destroys the final incarnation of the Nightmares, and wakes the Wind Fish. And just as it was predicted, Koholint Island and everything on it and under it vanish into the ether, including Marin.
    Or does she?
    If Link manages to finish the game without dying, achieving a perfect run, there's a special surprise awaiting our intrepid elf after the ending credits roll: Marin appears, sporting a brand new pair of beautiful wings, and flies slowly off the screen, presumably to other worlds where she will fulfill her own dream of singing to the people of other lands, and the Song of the Wind Fish plays once more to remind the player that she is not truly gone as long as Link remembers her. I can't remember another time I have smiled so widely at a video game ending surprise as I did after a perfect run of Link's Awakening. It's a beautiful ending to a storybook adventure, and it ensures that the player will remember the plot long after the cart itself has stopped working. And that deserves a little smile, don't you think?
  4. Areala
    Let's Read: Nintendo Power #1




    You've probably seen on YouTube or other internet video sites the "Let's Play" idea, where one person sits down with a game, a microphone, and a screen capture utility and proceeds to play through an entire game while offering running commentary, pointing out secrets, and in general just showing off what the game has to offer. Well, I'm not cool enough to have a video capture device or a microphone or the desire to sit and blabber my way through hours of games. What I am cool enough to have though, thanks to Retromags, is access to untold gigabytes worth of classic magazine goodness, and an inability to keep my mouth shut about such things. So I decided on a slight modification to the idea of Let's Play, and instead I plan to read through a particular game magazine (or series of magazines if this idea takes off and gets enough support) and offer commentary on everything from the layout of the magazine, the artwork, the letters printed inside, the games that are reviewed or previewed, the editorials, and everything else from cover to cover in a given issue. If nothing else, it will keep me out of trouble for a little while.
    Of course, having the idea is all well and good, but then I began to wonder where on Earth I should begin. After all, the site archives over six hundred items for download. It didn't take long to realize that, really, there was only one choice for me, and that was the first magazine devoted to console gaming that I ever read: issue #1 of Nintendo Power. What follows are my thoughts and observations as I page through this little piece of Nintendo history. Let me know what you think.
    Nintendo Power, July/August 1988 - 110 Pages - $3.50
    Ah, nostalgia. You really cannot beat that feeling, and I was only one of thousands of kids who opened up his or her mailbox in the summer of '88 to find this little gem in there, courtesy of Nintendo themselves. And back in 1988, there was no bigger news than the arrival of Super Mario Bros. 2 - cue the claymation cover art featuring Mario, Wart and some assorted vegetables. It may not look like much now, but wow was this awesome at the time.
    Interestingly enough, right inside the cover is an ad for the Nintendo Help Line, showing a group of kids reading a copy of Nintendo Power #1. Take a look at the cover of that NP#1, though, and you'll see that it's an artist's mock-up of the cover and not the real thing. No wonder they're calling Nintendo...someone gave them a prop instead of the actual magazine.
    The Welcome editorial gives an overview of what the magazine is and who it is for. Right now Nintendo is offering it bi-monthly, but in the future this will change. Presumably they're still getting their feet wet with magazine publishing and aren't sure how well it will take off. The table of contents also does a staff roll for both US and Japan, and gives the subscription rate at $21 for a year, which is the exact same as the cover price for all six issues...not much of a savings there yet. (Edit: I made a mistake here; the subscription card in the back shows a rate of $15 for six issues, which is a savings of $6 off the cover price. My bad!)
    Super Mario Bros. 2 - This was easily the meat of the issue, being a full-fledged overview of one of the most-anticipated NES games of the time. Details the playable characters, the enemies, the game mechanics, and provides complete maps, hints and secrets locations for World 1-1 through World 2-3 as well as a cute two-page spread illustration of the various characters engaged in a track and field day. One thing to notice is that Nintendo Power is very liberal with their exclamation marks! They want to make sure you are suitably excited about everything that is Super Mario 2! As a kid, this isn't so annoying! As an adult, it gives me a migraine!
    Zelda: The Second Quest Begins - By this time, the fact that the Legend of Zelda contained a second quest after beating Gannon the first time was pretty common knowledge. NP gives us the code to start directly on the second quest right at the start of this nine-page section (enter your name as "ZELDA"), explains what is different about it from the first playthrough, gives complete maps for the first six dungeons, and a fold-out poster that shows the entirely new overworld. At the end, they can't resist throwing in an ad for the soon-to-be-released Zelda II. The back of the poster contains a nice "Illustlation" (gotta love the Engrish there) by Kaz Aizawa advertising Bases Loaded, R.B.I. Baseball, and Official License Major Leage Baseball, all for your NES.
    The poster is a nice lead into Baseball Roundup, which is nine pages of information about the three afore-mentioned baseball games. Ho-hum for me as I'm not a sports fan, but anybody trying to decide which of the three to buy at the time would have loved this side-by-side-by side.
    Counselors' Corner - The place to have your questions answered by people who had the coolest job in the 1980s: Nintendo Video Game Counselors. One call solves 'em all, but in case your parents won't let you dial a 900 number (for those of you who don't live in the US, numbers with a 900-area code charge the caller per-minute, making it possible to rack up an obscene phone bill if you don't get off quickly) the Counselors are nice enough to answer some of your letters in this column. In this case, it's some questions about the presence of a stage select in "Ghosts 'N Goblins" and strategy for beating the Red Devil, what the 'P' that occasionally flies into the ring in "Ring King" is for, a fairly comprehensive map of "Metroid" showing the locations of most of the power-ups in the game, the reveal of the infinite 1-Ups trick and what the fireworks mean in "Super Mario Bros.", how to beat the boss Hewdaw in "Kid Icarus", what to do with the Pegasus Flute in "Rygar", tips for beating the five boss characters in "Castlevania" (presumably the giant bat doesn't merit 'boss' status?), the continue and stage select codes for "Ikari Warriors", and some general strategy for beating Mike Tyson in "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!" (note that at no time do the counselors advocate standing in front of your TV with middle fingers raised screaming expletives; this concerns me because an awful lot of my game-playing friends seem to swear by this method). All in all, pretty good general info to know, especially if you don't have to pay the per-minute rate for a call.
    The comic Howard & NESTER premiers in this issue, though it's not terribly funny even to a younger kid with Nester (personal aside: it took me years to realize why Nester was named NESter...yes, I really was that dense...) trying to come to terms with the fact that Howard Phillips, the President of Nintendo of America, knows everything about the Legend of Zelda. Well, they can only go uphill from here, right?
    Classified Information - Be honest: this was why you wanted a subscription to Nintendo Power. Sure the reviews were nice and all, but Classified Information was where it was at, with secret codes printed that would allow you to break your games wide open, including the now-infamous "Konami Code" which debuts in this issue as the 30-life code for "Contra". All other secret codes bow in majesty and awe of this mighty weapon of the gamer's arsenal. Compared to that, a code to remove the goalies from "Ice Hockey" or a stage select for "Rad Racer" just can't match up.
    Double Dragon - An 8-page sort of mini-guide to the game, including stage maps for the first four stages, a breakdown of the enemies and your special moves, and some little previews of stage 4. Very useful for what it provides.
    Now Playing - This feature takes a look at newly-released games and provides a very general overview and introduction. "Gauntlet", "Contra", "Wheel of Fortune", and "Jeopardy" get write-ups. This is wasted on the game show games, as everybody who had a TV in the 80s knew what they were all about, and an extra page each to the other games would have been a much better use of space in my opinion.
    Video Shorts - Just like "Now Playing" only shorter. Mini-previews of about 2-3 paragraphs and a couple of screenshots for upcoming titles. This time, "Legendary Wings", "Iron Tank", "Gun.Smoke", "Rambo", "Dragon Power", "Metal Gear", "Bionic Commando", "City Connection", "Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road", "Star Force" and "Freedom Force" get write-ups. There's not really enough to do more than whet your appetite, as the writing and screenshots is about what you'd get on the back of the package, so it's unlikely to add any fuel your desire to buy the game.
    Pak Watch - Because "Video Shorts" wasn't short enough. Little one-paragraph ad copy for eighteen more games that you need to know about. "Golgo 13" and "1943" get a single screenshot apiece; the other sixteen aren't so lucky. At least all of these games are eventually released in the US; later on we'll see titles mentioned here that subsequently drop off the face of the earth.
    Player's Poll - A little poll/contest all rolled into one that Nintendo can use to gather a crap-ton of demographic data on their readers.
    NES Journal - "Dragon Quest III" releases in Japan, and society as they know it comes to a grinding halt because of it. Keep in mind that at this point in time, the first "Dragon Quest" (or "Dragon Warrior" as it became known over here) had yet to release in the US, so this was pretty big news. A mini-review of the Vindicators arcade game, an ad for the Official Nintendo Players' Guide and Zelda Tips & Tactics booklet, and the finalists and winner of the "Top Gun Video Game Shoot-Out Contest" are announced ($5,000 just for playing a video game...you could show this to a parent who tried to use the argument that video games never got you anything...). Also write-ups on the movies "Vibes" (Cyndi Lauper starred in it...that's all you really need to know, trust me), "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" (this has been out for 3 years already...why is this news now?) and "Eight Men Out", and gaming profiles for teenage actors Kirk and Candace Cameron, stars of the TV shows "Growing Pains" and "Full House" respectively. The "as-of-yet-untitled movie co-starring Roy Scheider and Jamie Gertz" referred to in the article is 1989's college debate-themed "Listen to Me" in case anyone cares.
    Then we come to the Mail Bag...we get some letters that read like they were written by ad execs themselves touting "Legend of Kage", "Rygar", "Metroid" and "Double Dribble", a revelation that Howard Phillips has over 300 Nintendo games of which only around 100 are available to the public at this time, a letter from a woman who had to get an NES after her grandson introduced her to it, and a request for information on how to get one's own Official Nintendo Player's Guide ($11.95, from Nintendo). Oh, this was painful, but we'll get through it eventually, won't we...?
    NES Achievers - Think you're bad enough to make it into the annals of NES gaming history? Check out the scores from other players around the USA and start crying. There's something of historical significance to note here, though: future game designer Cliff "CliffyB" Blezinski set a top score of 99,999,950 points in Super Mario Bros. This man's path of destiny was clearly set early in life. Also, check out the top score in Kung Fu, because that's a girl that just kicked all your asses. Suck it down, Scott, Erik and Brian...suck it down! Heidi rules, boys drools (or something).
    Video Spotlight - Face it, when you were a kid, this was where you wanted to show up in Nintendo Power. Today, of course, this is comedy gold for the likes of SomethingAwful and Seanbaby, but back in the day, if you got your picture in Nintendo Power, you were the baddest of the bad in your city. One wonders where the likes of "Ace Ebb" (who has "no pets, instead he plays Nintendo all day") are now in the world.
    Top 30 - A ranking of the hottest NES games as determined by answers to a poll from the last issue of the "Nintendo Fun Club" newsletter. Not surprisingly, "Legend of Zelda" sits on top, where it pretty much has been since it was released. "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!" will come around and dethrone Zelda eventually, but for now it's number 2. "Metroid", "Super Mario Bros.", and "Kid Icarus" round out the rest of the top 5. My only real question is, "Why does the illustration under the Pros' Picks column look like a redneck lumberjack instead of a (presumably) video game reviewer, the likes of whom are being asked to tally their favorites?"
    And then it all ends with a preview of Next Issue and a little note from Howard Phillips about what subscribers can look forward to in issue #2, as well as the revelation that he's working "real hard" on Zelda II (doing what, Howard? You're the President of NOA, not Shigeru Miyamoto here...). Our mock-up of the magazine joins us one last time in a back-cover ad for a subscription in which it appears a television set is ruthlessly devouring three callow and innocent youths, and...we fade to blue.
    * * * * *
    So, what did you think? Enjoyable? Sucked? Want to see more, or should I not bother? And if I do continue, should I keep going with Nintendo Power? I've had fun with it, but did you? Your comments will drive my blogging, so don't be shy - let me know!
  5. Areala
    Some of you may not be familiar with Scratches, and if that's the case, then I pity you because you missed out on one of my favorite graphical adventure games of all time, and one of the creepiest games of 2006. It casts you as Michael Arthate, a horror novelist who hit paydirt with his first book and is now looking for a suitable atmosphere in which to complete his sophomore effort. His idea? Buy the oldest house he can find, and live there to let the atmosphere surround and penetrate him to bring out the true depths of his horror writing skills. And to that end, he has purchased Blackwood Manor, one of the last mansion-style homes in the British countryside.
    All, as they say, was not well at Blackwood. Mr. Blackwood himself vanished several years ago. The story in the local town is that he went insane and murdered his wife. The house has been in the care of Blackwood's physician for years, and only just recently came up on the market. Arthate's real estate agent was able to get it for a song, and Michael has moved in early to get a start on his writing. There's just a few snags to work out, like getting the electricity turned back on, and the mansion will be just right.
    Well...just right except for those bizarre scratching noises that seem to come from the cellar during the night...
    Michael is all alone in the house, but he knows that if he ever wants to sleep again, he'll have to figure out what's causing that noise. It means uncovering the horrific history of Blackwood Manor. It may mean he'll succumb to the insanity that gripped the original owner. It may mean that he'll be lucky if that's all that happens to him...
    Scratches was the brainchild of Agustín Cordes, a game designer and programmer for the now-defunct Nucleosys studios. But though Nucleosys is gone, Cordes isn't done making games. Not by a long shot. And his new development house, Senscape Interactive, is dropping some very tantalizing tidbits about their new game, currently known only as "Unnamable Project" until more details come out in a few months.
    Those who want to see more can visit Face The Horror, an interactive preview with some excellent graphics and spooky music to set the tone.
    Agustin himself is on Twitter, and Senscape has a presence both on Facebook and their own website, so by all means, check them out if you're into PC adventure games with a darker side.
  6. Areala
    This is not your typical Areala blog entry, as will readily become apparent when you keep reading. I know that normally my writings deal with video games of some kind, and occasionally books, but today I decided that I have neglected music long enough, and it was time to fix that. And what better kind of music to write about than the kind that has been relegated to the clearance bins of history but that is still deserving of your attention. There's certainly plenty of it out there, especially for those of you who were not alive in the 70s to understand the genius of artists like "The Phantom" or his release of the vaguely Doors-esque album, "The Phantom's Divine Comedy, Part 1" from 1974. Alas, there was never a part 2 which is a shame because the album is seriously one of the best in my collection. The Amazon Page for the album has samples you can listen to and enjoy. If you're at all into 70s rock with a fantasy twist, you pretty much need to know about The Phantom, especially now that this album has been released on CD (for the longest time, you could only get it on vinyl). Capitol Records certainly did nothing to discourage the rumours that "The Phantom" was actually Jim Morrison, despite the fact that Morrison was already dead, and milked it for all it was worth.
    Post Phantom comes the equally obscure Klaatu, a Canadian band comprised of two guys who left their biographical data off the album. Despite the fact that it was 1976, their music certainly sounded like something the Beatles might have recorded in their later years. One reviewer postulated that Klaatu actually was the Beatles releasing new material, and voila, instant success despite the fact that the Beatles never titled any of their compositions anything close to "Anus of Uranus" which was track three on their first album.
    Is this as far as it goes? Absolutely not. For while Klaatu never intended themselves to be mistaken for a reunited Beatles, another group had made all sorts of waves almost a decade before within the hallowed halls of Rolling Stone magazine itself. "The Masked Marauders" were a super-group composed of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger, who all got together to record a record full of goodness. Recorded in secret up in Canada, the album was released in 1969 after a rave review praising its virtues was published in Rolling Stone magazine. Except that, in this case, the joke was on the people who bought the album. The Masked Marauders were not celebrities, they were a bunch of impersonators, and the album review was nothing more than a joke by one of Rolling Stone's own editors. In this case, the singers and players were actually another group, the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, who were local to California. The liner notes of the album offered some clues to its inauthenticity, and as if that wasn't obvious enough, the last track on the album flat-out announced that the record was nothing more than a sham. This didn't stop it from selling over 100,000 copies and spending some twelve weeks on the Billboard charts, topping out at #14. The CD itself was released in 2003, though in a limited supply, so those of you interested in hearing the weirdness for yourselves can check it out at Amazon and decide if it's worth pursuing.
    One final group deserves mention in this blog for their contributions to the 70s prog rock scene that are now virtually forgotten, and that is "Slumlord Toilet". Originally conceived as a one-shot song performed to antagonize a particularly crummy landlord and his seeming inability to fix the plumbing problems plaguing his apartment, Timothy McFadden (listed in the album credits as "Studs Crapper") performed the guitarwork while Ed Regis helped with synthesizer programming. After recording several varieties of the song to their satisfaction, McFadden and Regis released the 12" single under the joking moniker of "Stool Sampler" and sent it to a variety of record companies in the hopes of getting noticed. It took two years, but "Slumlord Toilet" was finally picked up by Deity Records, who were intrigued by the possibility of a concept album as a "me-too" answer to the likes of Pink Floyd, and five months later, Slumlord Toilet released their first, self-titled album. Sales were favourable, and Deity asked for more.
    Long months passed as Regis and McFadden wrote more music, and enlisted the assistance of a third member, Kyle Anderson, who could do drum programming. With Anderson lending his talents, Slumlord Toilet returned to the studio and emerged with their second album, "Same Sh*t, Different Toilet", the title taken from the first track, which received considerable play on the west coast and became a hit among college students and pirate radio jockeys. The B-side of this LP also contained a hidden track of sorts, as the record was double-grooved. Putting the needle down in the proper place revealed the secret song, "Me Toilet, You Jane".
    April of the following year saw their third album, entitled "...And The Toilet You Rode In On". This work produced two singles: "Life Sucks, Get A Plunger", " and "Corncobs and Assh*les." While the second single (for obvious reasons) never received mainstream radio play, "Life Sucks, Get A Plunger" became the overall best-selling single by the group, with sales in excess of 25,000 copies. Spurned on by their success, their next album contained no new material, but was instead an eight-song exclusive cover album. "Cheap Seats" featured the first actual photograph of the band members on an album cover, all of them wearing obviously-shoddy white plastic toilet seats around their necks, with Regis sporting a particularly large (unlit) cigar protruding from the corner of his mouth. Unfortunately, "Cheap Seats" did not sell particularly well, failing to chart anywhere, and is the band's worst-selling record. Ultimately, this lead to Deity dropping their support for the band, and contract disputes forced Slumlord Toilet from the scene for almost five years.
    Fools though the managers as Deity might have been, they were not entirely to blame. Anderson by this time had discovered heroin. Regis and McFadden fired him from the band and brought on Paul Gramm as a replacement. After another year of searching for a label, Slumlord Toilet found a home with Handmade Records. One of the things Gramm brought with him to the band in addition to his ability with a drum was an enjoyment of Gregorian-style chant, and working with the St. Ann Choir released their final studio album, "Toilet Lo Volt!" (Latin for "The Toilet Wills It!"). Much of this album is free of lyrics, including the first track, "Frequency and Urgency," but the band did manage to chart another single (with the rather disturbing title "Dump of Death") on the "Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles" area of the Billboard charts. Unfortunately, Handmade Records was not pleased with this performance, and dropped the band from their lineup. Rather than attempt to find a new label, McFadden, Regis and Gramm decided to all go their separate ways and in the summer of 1986, Slumlord Toilet disbanded after nearly a decade of performance. Their music is now all but impossible to find except in the vaults of LP collectors, and has never been distributed on CD.
    Joke all you want about the afore-mentioned bands, but they are some of the most enjoyable, fun, amusing and downright trendsetting talents of the 1970s. Anyone with even a mild interest in obscure 70s music of the prog rock genre owes it to himself or herself to track down some of these gems and give a listen. I guarantee, it's an experience that will open your eyes once and for all. In fact, I've even decided to emulate the 70s music scene and included a hidden message in this blog post. If you find it, PM me and don't spoil it for others, please.
  7. Areala
    Presumably at some point Phillyman will find a better blog entry to feature on the front page than mine about why I care about old magazines and it will no longer be featured so prominantly. Since this is a sort of follow-up to the original entry, I thought I'd better make sure that I pointed to the original which can be found right under this rock here. While it is a follow-up, it's not a direct sequel, and you can easily read this entry without having read the other. I just love shameless self-promotion. Go on, give me the views I so desire.
    With that out of the way, let's turn to the meat of the posting, which is about another gaming magazine, but not one focused on video games. This time, we're pre-dating most home consoles and looking at one of the single greatest investments that I (or rather my mother, considering it was a present) made in my lifetime. It is fair to say that without knowing of this product's existance, the idea of scanning or owning digital copies of old magazines might never have occured to me. Leave it to TSR and Wizards of the Coast to open my eyes to some new magic yet again.



    Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, two guys named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (both now deceased, unfortunately) got together and created a little fantasy gaming experiment that they introduced to the world in 1974. Published by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (or TSR), the game went on to become a sensation with followers even today numbering in the millions worldwide. Dungeons & Dragons set the world ablaze as a way for normal 9-5 Joes and Janes to go from reading about the exploits of heroes like Gandalf, the Grey Mouser, and Conan the Barbarian, to creating entirely new stories starring their own fictional personas. It was a hit, and in 1975, TSR began publication of a quarterly newsletter devoted to D&D, wargaming, and miniatures called "The Strategic Review". Strategic Review didn't last terribly long, running only seven issues, but it didn't fail. Instead, in June of 1976, it was folded over into a brand new publication from TSR known simply as "The Dragon" and a smaller sister publication devoted specifically to miniature wargamers called "Little Wars".



    The Dragon was created to be the premiere fantasy and wargames-related periodical, directed towards hardcore enthusiasts and wet-behind-the-ears novices alike. And while it was published by TSR as a sort of house organ, The Dragon didn't hesitate to publish reviews, rules enhancements, and advertisements for other gaming companies or systems. And it wasn't uncommon for D&D co-author Gary Gygax himself to contribute content, editorials, rebuttals, reviews and other bits of info in the early issues. What started as a simple newsletter and evolved into a 30-page bimonthly magazine gradually grew to a monthly glossy-paged sort of catch-all for players of all flavours of D&D, Advanced D&D, and every campaign setting across multiple complete rules updates and two changes of publisher for a total of 359 issues before Wizards of the Coast pulled the plug on the printed magazine in September of 2007, continuing it in a limited form of digital distribution that, while interesting, just wasn't quite the same.
    But let's back up a moment. It isn't 2010 but 1999. And Wizards of the Coast, who purchased TSR lock, stock and barrel just a few years earlier, decides that it's time to give people access to all those long sold-out and out-of-print issues of Dragon. And to that end, they release the Dragon Magazine Archive. For $50, you got five CDs containing scanned PDF-format issues of the first 250 Dragon magazines as well as all seven issues of The Strategic Review; all the covers, all the ads, all the articles...all of them are OCR'd and the program comes with a fully-searchable index based on keywords in article titles or body text that will take you straight to the issue and page number featuring the content you were looking for. Being an enormous D&D geek, as soon as I saw it, I asked for it as a present, and I got it for my birthday. As luck would have it, it was a good thing I did, because it didn't take long for Wizards of the Coast to get into some serious hassles with the reprint rights for all the different articles, cartoons, editorials, maps and artwork that were contained in the archive. It went out of print very quickly, and now commands an obscenely high price (used ones will routinely go for $150 or more; brand new ones can top the $300 mark). But this was my very first experience with the concept of a digitally-archived version of a magazine. And what an eye-opener!



    I collect Dragon (and its sister publication, Dungeon), but this just seemed unreal. I could literally browse through twenty-five years worth of content right on my hard drive, compile a bookmark listing of my favorite articles, even cut and paste text into Word so I could print it out if I wanted to. Issues that I swore I'd never read in my lifetime (the earliest issues of Dragon had such small print runs that they command very high prices even today) were suddenly made readily available to my greedy little mind. Of all my gaming-related items, this is one of my most prized treasures for all it contains.



    So, why read old issues of Dragon? Like anything else, for its history. Many of the people who were big-name designers in 1999, like Jim Ward, Monte Cook, Len Lakofka and Ed Greenwood basically got their start writing for Dragon. Artists like Larry Elmore, Boris Vallejo, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, Jim Holloway, Phil Foglio, and Denis Beauvais contributed covers and interior artwork which was some of their earliest exposure. It's absolutely fascinating watching the magazine grow through its initial pains of the UPS strike, problems with the cost of printing materials, and a procession of editors starting with Tim Kask and ending with Dave Gross (who was editing on issue 250; there were more editors after Gross, but we're only concerned with the ones presented in the Archive itself here). Many ideas taken in by later editions, including how magic worked, the idea of specializations with weapons, and a variety of new PC and NPC classes came about first from the pages of Dragon before being officially incorporated into the new rulesets. Dragon reviewed other RPGs and advertised play-by-mail games that are long defunct in the twenty-first century. It published fiction and short stories by such Fantasy industry luminaries as L. Sprague deCamp, Gardner Fox, Fritz Leiber, and George R. R. Martin, as well as other amateur writers who were making their first (and sometimes only) sales of their careers, including a one-shot anthology called "Dragontales" featuring nothing but short, fantasy-themed fiction.



    When personal computers began to become a staple of everyday life and began receiving RPGs of their own, Dragon added a column entitled "The Role of Computers," offering reviews and hints for RPGs that could be played without a flesh-and-blood Dungeon Master. A special Forum was opened up for reader discussion and debate on anything pertaining to the FRPG genre, including previous articles. Errata was often printed in the pages of the magazine, allowing players to fix broken rules or update charts with mistakes on them that hadn't been corrected prior to going to press. There were features on painting miniatures, the best way to prepare for an outdoor adventure, generating random dungeons with personality, in-depth looks at various creatures of the D&D world, suggestions for DMs on how to portray memorable non-playable characters (NPCs), speculations on what would happen if gunpowder were introduced into a campaign, special supplements for the game like an actual "Deck of Many Things" artifact or poster maps of the world, short printed adventures, and even full-fledged boardgames printed on cardstock and stapled into the binding, many the product of veteran game designer Tom Wham. Comics such as "Knights of the Dinner Table" and "Order of the Stick" have been featured within its pages. If you were any kind of gamer, Dragon had it all.



    So all the way back in 1999, I was starting to realize the feasibility and desirability of complete digital archives of products with such enormous amounts of back-history. Wizards once again worked their magic, and I fell in love with the idea of the PDF magazine. I started to realize what a boon such an offering would be to comic collectors, or enthusiasts of other magazines, to be able to store entire boxes of information on a single disc, and I saw the future. Today, perhaps that future is very much embodied in the fact that you can find full or partial archives of such magazines as Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Mad Magazine, Time, the Harvard Lampoon, and compilations of comic books featuring the likes of the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, and Captain America all for sale. Playboy has compiled a complete digital archive of their magazine covers. And now, Retromags has collections of all manner of microcomputer, PC, and console-related gaming magazine content available. I may have found a piece of heaven in 1999, but ten years later, the skies are the limit, and history seems to be in good hands. What will 2019 bring in terms of new ways to preserve our past? I've no idea, but I can't wait to find out.
  8. Areala
    November of 2009 saw the release of a new roleplaying game on the Nintendo DS (at least here in the US) entitled "Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", developed by Big Blue Bubble Inc. and published by Aspyre. In it, you take on the persona of an adventurer who is very interested in getting his (or her) hands on the loot inside the previously-abandoned Dwarven mountainhome of Firetop. Legend speaks of treasure troves of gold coins, sparkling gemstones, and magical trinkets galore. Unfortunately, legend also speaks of Zagor, the titular warlock who now possesses not only the exterior of the mountain but also the passages, mazes and dungeons that twist through its dark depths. And Zagor, like all Really Bad Guys™, has taken great pains to stock his underhalls with all manner of grotesque creatures and lethal traps to bash, hack, slay, dismember and incinerate any would-be adventurers who decide that they would like a part of his treasure horde. Naturally, you're too quick-witted and fleet-footed and strong-armed and lucky to run afoul of any of these little problems, so dashing in and nipping off with a bit of Zagor's wealth shouldn't pose any problems at all. Of course, that's what the last few dozen explorers thought as well, and nobody has seen or heard anything from them in years...



    So, why is the Retrochick writing about a brand new DS game? Truth is, I'm not except to introduce the reason for this blog post. Because before there was "Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", there was "Fighting Fantasy #1: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.
    Confused? Well, don't be. Unless you grew up in the 1980s, it is entirely possible that you have no idea at all what I'm talking about. The concept of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" story has been around for quite some time, and is familiar to almost everybody these days: take one book and write it in such a way that the reader can decide the outcome for him- or herself by taking one of several branching paths through the story. What Jackson and Livingstone did with this idea was to add an additional set of game mechanics on top of it, so that instead of just taking a passive role of moving your protagonist around in the book, you actually took on the role of the protagonist and using a very simplified set of roleplaying rules involving combat, healing, magic and so forth, played through the story. A pair of six-sided dice served as your randomizer element, used for determining if you hit an enemy in combat (or were hit yourself), if you got lucky or unlucky when trying to perform a certain action (like jumping across a deep chasm, for instance), or when the game required a random outcome (say a teleportation spell that could dump you in one of several possible locations). Your character had stats for Skill (weapon prowess), Stamina (how much damage you could stuffer) and Luck (self-explanatory) which were determined with dice rolls at the start of the game, so each playing experience was different as you created a new character.



    "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" became an instant, overnight success when it was first published in 1982, selling out its initial print run in a matter of weeks. Jackson and Livingstone realized they had something of a hit on their hands, and began working on new ideas for books in the series, writing solo now so as to maximize output. After writing six more entries in the Fighting Fantasy series, they opened the doors to other writers, and the series went on to spawn some fifty-nine entries in the UK. Unfortunately for American readers (and gamers), only the first twenty-one books in the series managed to wind up printed in the US so even gamers familiar with the Fighting Fantasy brand are often unaware that they missed out on over half the series. Thanks a lot, Dell Publishing...



    The Nintendo DS incarnation of "Warlock" is not the first time the Fighting Fantasy series has arrived in digital format either. All the way back in 1998, Eidos Interactive (the games publishing studio formerly owned by Ian Livingstone himself) published a video game version of the sixth (and arguably most popular) book in the FF series, "Deathtrap Dungeon". Released on both the PC and the PS1, the game was far from being anything close to an accurate port of the game book, choosing to take only the backstory from the book while creating an entirely new adventure for the would-be heroes Chaindog and Red Lotus to explore. Unfortunately, what Asylum Studios wound up producing was almost universally lambasted by reviewers for having clunky controls, boring level design, and an often absurdly-high difficulty level due to the presence of "deathtraps" which would mercilessly kill players without warning and without any way for the player to bypass the trap without falling prey to it at least once. Level designers in one interview cackled gleefully about a trap that lowered the player on an elevator down a long shaft, then opened up with unavoidable flame jets when it reached the bottom, roasting the player with no means to escape. When the interviewer asked how the player avoided this trap, the designers just laughed and said that avoiding death was impossible; they would have to save and reload and then use the knowledge they had learned to not make the same mistake twice. Note to potential designers reading this blog: never in the history of gaming has this idea resulted in a game that was fun for people to play. As if that wasn't bad enough, the game's ending made absolutely no sense (yes, I actually took the time to beat this game...I paid $40 for it on the PC and by golly I was not going to let miserable design stand in the way of me conquering the hell out of it). Poor reviews and lacklustre sales put the "death" into Deathtrap Dungeon, and thankfully, the world was spared any further Fighting Fantasy mockeries.





    The Deathtrap Dungeon opening cinematic


    We can go back even further in gaming history to find Fighting Fantasy games though. Actually, all the way back to 1984, when "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" and two other books in the series, "The Citadel of Chaos" and "The Forest of Doom" were released on the ZX Spectrum. Warlock, in this case, was a 2D adventure game in the style of Rogue, where the player entered a randomly-generated dungeon and attempted to survive. The other two were more straightforward text-adventure-style adaptations with some graphics thrown in for good measure. Three other books in the series were adapted for the Spectrum, the Commodore 64, and the Amstrad in the same way: "Seas of Blood" in 1985, "Rebel Planet" in 1986, and "Temple of Terror" in 1987. And, as recently as 2004, "Warlock" received a release as a Palm Pilot title, as nearly a word-for-word dump of the gamebook that incorporated much of the artwork from the original as well. The Palm, in this case, served mainly as your automatic dice roller and inventory tracking system.
    How good is this new DS release? I've no idea; I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. My hopes are that it's been given the treatment it deserves, and that a whole new generation of gamers are introduced to Fighting Fantasy. Because if there's one thing I really want to play, it's a good incarnation of "Deathtrap Dungeon." Oh, and "House of Hell" too, if Big Blue Bubble Inc. is out there somewhere and taking requests...
  9. Areala
    Quick: when is a Final Fantasy game not a Final Fantasy game? Answer: when Nintendo decides to rename a different Squaresoft RPG in the hopes of capitalizing on the fame of the Final Fantasy name. This was the case with a series of games released in the US on the Game Boy. In the US, we know them as Final Fantasy Legend I, II and III, and Final Fantasy Adventure.
    In Japan, however, they're two completely different series. Final Fantasy Adventure is actually Seiken Densetsu, the precursor to Seiken Densetsu 2, which was released in the US as "Secret of Mana" for the Super Nintendo. The three games in the "Legend" series were really based on a completely different RPG series that has only recently gained popularity in the US under it's true title: SaGa. That's right: Unlimited SaGa on the PS2 can trace its roots all the way back to 1989 on a little monochrome handheld. Pretty impressive, when you think about it.
    For gamers thinking that they were buying Final Fantasy games, though, the SaGa and Seiken Densetsu titles were quite confusing. Weapons that could only be used a limited number of times? No visible XP gauge or level listings? Monsters as playable characters? This bore little resemblance to the Final Fantasy that US gamers knew from the NES, and some were downright irritated at having been sold a game that was so clearly not a Final Fantasy title. Others looked beyond the differences and found that despite the changes, they still had a solid little game for their portable system, and Legend developed a small but devoted following resulting in two solid sequels. All three are decent enough titles in their own regard, but my favorite has always been Final Fantasy Legend II.



    At its heart, FFL2 is a story of children growing into adulthood, a search for a father, the confronting of evils in the world that don't always take the form of hideous monsters, and a race to save the world from a power that no one person should possess. For a game released in 1990, it tackles a number of surprisingly mature subjects despite Nintendo's strict censorship policies of the day forcing it to tone itself down for an American audience. That it does so on a portable console with a cartridge size of 256k is all the more impressive, and it proves that a good RPG doesn't need fancy 3D graphics or million-dollar FMV sequences to be able to tell a damn good story.
    So listen to the music from the title screen as we start our journey into my favorite Game Boy RPG of all time...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIFBRfYbmU


    Our legend begins with a legend of its own: the Magi. Relics of a time long forgotten, the legacy left behind by the ancient Gods who created the world, they are symbols of great power. Seventy-seven pieces of Magi exist, and over the years, many wars have been fought to find, control, and use their strengths. A few through the years have succeeded in their ambitions. Far, far more have died in their pursuits, consumed by darkness and their lust for power. Thus, it is only fitting that our story begins at night.
    Awakened by your father one evening, he tells you that he is leaving for a bit, and asks you to guard something for him while he is gone. Without explaining what it is or why he is heading out, your father climbs out the window and disappears into the night. He never comes home again.
    As the years pass, you grow into a teenager who is bitten by the desire to find your father. And one day, you decide that it is finally time to answer the question. Your mother is worried, but supportive, as is the rest of the village where you live. Unwilling to let you leave alone, three of your friends from childhood also volunteer their services, and your teacher offers to serve as your escort until you reach the next town. So, having selected your friends and said your goodbyes, you set off into the world to discover the whereabouts of your father and learn why he left you with the mysterious gift so long ago: one piece of the Magi.



    Building your party is one of the most critical aspects of FFL2, as it will determine how you play the game, how quickly you advance in power, and how ready you are to tackle the challenges that you will face. Your choices of characters, including the main character, are varied: Male and Female Humans (who are skilled at combat but lack magical talents), Male and Female Mutants (who are weaker than their Human companions but are capable of learning a multitude of spells and abilities), Robots (powerful artificial life forms whose strengths and defenses are decided by what equipment they are given as opposed to performance in combat), or a variety of Monsters (who cannot use weapons or spells, but have their own innate talents and abilities, and level up by eating the meat of defeated foes after combat). Party construction is left completely to the discretion of the player, so you could play as a mixed group (1 human, 1 mutant, 1 robot and 1 monster), a specialist party (4 mutants, or 2 humans and 2 mutants), or any bizarre combination you like (4 robots, 4 monsters, etc...).



    It doesn't take long for trouble to find you in the world. After reaching the first town away from home and visiting the shrine protected by a cute Cleric named Ki, you'll find that there are some ruins you can investigate to learn more about Magi. While visiting the ruins, you learn that somebody named Ashura has beaten you to the punch, and is collecting Magi for his own vile purposes. Voila, you have your major nasty identified, and your quest takes you to the Pillar of the Sky. This is a magical column that connects the physical world with the celestial realm.



    Normally, the door cannot be opened, but collecting Magi allows you to override the lock on the door and travel between the worlds. Following Ashura, you find yourself in a barren, arid world where Ashura has built himself a tower and proclaimed himself ruler, and it's clear what you have to do...



    Taking down Ashura, though, is just one small step in your quest. Along the way, you run into NPCs who will join your party for one reason or another, and discover that there are far worse beings than Ashura in the world. In fact, there are a whole group of would-be New Gods who would like nothing more than to collect all the Magi for themselves and dethrone the Old Gods. You'll find a city full of nothing but the most beautiful people, who have relegated all those with imperfections to life outside the city walls. You'll deal with a group of people who are smuggling that most illegal and dangerous of items: bananas (wacky Nintendo censorship strikes again; in the original game, they were drug smugglers not banana thieves) in a world based on Edo-period Japan. You'll meet Odin (most likely several times), one of the last of the remaining Old Gods. And you'll never stop looking for your father, even in the face of the world's destruction.



    Final Fantasy Legend II has a very cute but detailed graphical style, especially when you consider that this is the Game Boy; just check out the screenshots posted throughout this entry. And the music, as you can hear from the embedded title screen theme, is some of the best that ever graced the speakers of the small portable system. While the mechanics take some getting used to, and the translation isn't the best (mostly due to Nintendo of America's bizarre policies on not discussing things like death, religion and criminal behavior in their games but also due to the fact that it was not polished by native speakers), the gameplay itself is solid and the storyline compelling enough to merit at least one playthrough. Altering your party makeup allows for some solid replay value, and there are a few hidden goodies to hunt for as well as a majorly challenging dungeon towards the end of the game which is optional but contains some of the very best equipment for your characters.



    Square Enix released an updated version for the Nintendo DS entitled "SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu" (SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny) in Japan in September of 2009. Alas, there don't seem to be any plans for them to translate and release it here in the US. That leaves you with just your Game Boy, a cartridge, and the will to discover a classic RPG for yourself. Are you game...?
  10. Areala
    I will level with you by starting this blog with the caveat that I am in an incredibly foul mood at the moment. But rather than doing something constructive with my rage, like tossing small children into deep wells or drugging really ugly men at the bar and leaving them in my neighbor's front yard without their clothing again, I decided I might be better served (and avoid inconveniences like court dates and prison sentences) to compile a list of horrible Star Wars games. I'm aware that this is something akin to both a blogger's rite of passage in making silly lists about truly inane topics and taking a shotgun to your uncle's fish tank and being amazed that it was impossible to miss, but tough luck. If you want a more unique topic, go read a better blog and don't let the Cascading Style Sheets hit your ass on the way out.
    Now that I've completely alienated 97% of my potential readers, the two of you who remain are in for a rambling, pointless list of a blog where I run down games that have been run down everywhere else in print and online since before George Lucas was even born (there was a slight malfunction with a time machine, an Atari 2600, and the New York Post which I am not at liberty to discuss until 2060). Please accept my apologies, keep all arms and legs inside of the AT-AT walker at-at all times, and pay no attention to the man in the black mask who appears to have a breathing problem as he's been lurking about here for weeks now pretending he's making a one-sided obscene phone call.



    Star Wars, as we all know, is one of the single largest movie franchises in history, and the success of its 1977 theatrical release guaranteed that George Lucas received his own printing press from the US Mint and the authority to use it as he saw fit. Not content with only having two licenses to print money, Lucas very gamely used his merchandising rights to allow companies to pay him for permission to play in his sandbox, and thus were born a wide variety of Star Wars titles, starting with Parker Brothers own "Empire Strikes Back" game on the 2600, which managed to not suck at all, meaning that things could only go downhill from there.
    Now unlike many other blogs of this type, I'm not going to turn this into a "top whatever" list because quite frankly I cannot be bothered to rank games in order of suckitude (except for Masters of Teras Kasi, which is utter Bantha poodoo in any galaxy), so much like Han Solo in the real version of A New Hope, I am going to simply begin shooting whatever I damn well please and only apologize about the mess as I'm walking out the door.



    Look over there! It's Star Wars Galaxies! No, wait, you don't have to worry, it's been forcibly castrated, had its innards replaced with a bunch of RROD'd Xbox 360s, and reassembled to look like the podrace stadium from Episode I after the crowds had left and the poor clean-up crew was saddled with disposing of all the beer cans, snack wrappers and mangled Rodian corpses. Star Wars Galaxies is what you get when you take a perfectly good idea (ie: "Let's make a massively multiplayer online game based in the Star Wars universe!") and proceed to beat it with a garden hose until it puts the lotion on its skin without you even asking. The concept was solid, the graphics were decent enough, and it featured all the music you could hear just by playing the much cheaper film score. Really, all you needed was to re-skin Everquest with a space theme and you were nine-tenths of the way there. But then Sony for some reason decided that letting players play the kinds of characters they wanted to play was a bad idea, and proceeded to spend the next two years utterly destroying everything that people had gained so much weight and cut so many classes to accomplish. Suddenly, everybody could be a Jedi, concepts of "good" and "evil" lost their meanings entirely, and new content was taking longer and longer to arrive. If the idea was to allow people to live in the Star Wars universe, it was probably pretty accurate. The problem was that players were thinking "Luke Skywalker" while the developers were clearly thinking "Owen Lars," and despite a number of expansions that introduced things like space combat (rather problematic when your game entitled "Star Wars" doesn't include any sort of fighting among those stars without paying extra for it), it didn't take long before the servers began to resemble the Jundland Wastes except that in this case, players were not travelling them lightly, they were not travelling them at all.



    As we proceed down the corridor, I shall now direct your gaze to the left, where you will see the crashed and burnt husks of the acting careers of the C-level would-be stars of the Rebel Assault series. In all honesty, if you're going to blame anyone for this headache, blame Sega because of their complete and utter dedication to making certain that no titles were released on their CD system without a handful of grainy, basement-production level full-motion video sequences inserted into the game at times that were clearly chosen by rolling a bunch of dice, ignoring the results, and taking the whole crew out to get plastered during lunch breaks (which judging by the production values, were offered about every 90 minutes or so). Now to be even more honest, you have to shoulder your share of the blame as well, because if all of you scruffy-looking Nerf herders hadn't ignored the warnings of every magazine reviewer in the world and bought the thing, we wouldn't have had to suffer through part two. Rebel Assault's problem is that it has absolutely no idea what it wants to be, combining elements of lightgun games, corridor shooters, flight simulators and point-and-click adventure titles into a sort of Frankenstein's monster that is composed of nothing but assholes and Wampa teeth. Sure it looks like the dopiest thing in the world, but it will chew off your neck and shit down your head if you get within five feet of it, and everyone else will point and laugh at your misfortune.



    Turning away from the carnage at hand, I can safely say that you have never played Masters of Teras Kasi, and I know this because everyone who has had the misfortune of sticking it into their Playstation consoles was rounded up and forcibly lobotomized so they could live with themselves after suffering such acute trauma. The only proof we have that this game actually existed are some screenshots that can still be found in the magazine archives here at Retromags, and the copious notes taken by psychiatrists who were hired to deal with the increase in mental health issues following the release of this game that wanted to be Street Fighter II but forgot that Street Fighter II was fast-moving, fun to play, and had excellent controls. They don't even have the decency to provide you a way to get Arden Lyn out of her clothing, so you can't fall back on polygonal porn to get you through this steaming pile of Tauntaun entrails. And you thought they smelled bad on the outside.



    Marching along, you will soon find yourself face to face with an entire bevy of titles based on the prequel trilogy. Rather than subject you to them one at a time like an IT-O Interrogator Droid would, I shall take a page from a slightly older history book and merely shoot you in the face with all of them at the same time like HK-47. Veiled Threat: Unless you would prefer me to do both. Part of the problem is that The Phantom Menace was released solely on the PS1 (and yes, there was a PC version, but it was the exact same game), Attack of the Clones was only released on the Game Boy Advance (a decision I hope resulted in a long sentence in the Kessel spice mines for whoever thought that was a good idea) while Revenge of the Sith was released on virtually every system known to man. Releasing a trilogy of games that requires the would-be gamer to own a multitude of competing systems to experience them all is really poor marketing, but the cardinal sin of these titles is that they make being a Jedi seem like the most mind-numbing job in the entire galaxy. If Obi-Wan Kenobi controlled himself in the films the way he behaves in these games, his first encounter with the battle droids on the Neimoidian ship would have been his last, and Ewan McGregor would have been back on the junk before you could say "Trainspotting II." At least Episode I Racer (the one on Nintendo 64, not that awful "Super Bombad Racing" Mario Kart wannabe) had the courtesy to be somewhat enjoyable to anyone with more intelligence than your average Ewok, but considering that it was a video game based on a film version of what was basically a video game sequence to begin with, this isn't half surprising. While the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are approximately 3,720 to 1, the odds of you enjoying any of the games based on playing through the plotlines of these films are quantifiable even without an easily-accessible protocol droid: none at all.



    Finally, we end our trip through this train wreck of franchise history by heading over here to the Jedi Arena area. Jedi Arena is sad for a number of reasons, foremost being that it was made by Parker Brothers, who as I previously mentioned created the very playable and enjoyable (if simple) 2600 version of The Empire Strikes Back. While ESB chose to focus on an event that actually happened in one of the films (the assault on Hoth by the Imperial AT-ATs), Jedi Arena chose to give some sort of Mandalorian obscene hand gesture to the movies and set up a confrontation between two generic characters who the instructions claim are Jedi knights, but who actually appear as a couple of obese stick figures that stand in place while waving their schlongs at one another (without letting them touch, as that would be a little too, you know, homoerotic...) and occasionally suffering the indignity of being shot by the little remote training device that Obi-Wan used to train Luke in the ways of the Force on their journey to Alderaan. Note to the designers at Parker Brothers: Han was being sarcastic when he said that garbage was a really wonderful idea.
    I think that's enough for now. Those of you who read and actually enjoyed this screed are welcome to comment on it, while those of you who think I'm being too harsh to the games on this list are welcome to join the Gonk droid in Jabba's torture chambers after which you will be cast into the belly of the almighty Sarlaac, where you will discover a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over...oh, forget it. I'm going to kill zombies for a while. Leave a comment, eh?
  11. Areala
    "Anxious" does not even begin to describe my feelings when I discover that there is a new survival horror game coming out. As you've no doubt figured out by now if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, horror games are something I simply cannot get enough of. And while there are a number of franchises that compete for my attention, none is more apt to receive my gamer girl bucks than the perversely fascinating titles in the Silent Hill series. Having played through every entry in the series that has thusfar been released in the States (and even that little Play Novel adventure on the GBA), I have seen the highest and lowest points the series has to offer. When I heard that Climax Group was being given the reigns again, I have to admit I was a little worried. While I do not count myself among the legion of haters who believe that Silent Hill Origins should never have been made, one has to admit that it feels vastly different from the ones actually made by Konami and Origins did little to update the formula that Konami had been using for eight years previously. In addition, not only was this new title being made by Climax but it was also going to be a reworking of the very first game; cause for concern no matter how you look at it. As if that wasn't enough, the game was also being developed primarily for the Wii and ported to the PSP and PS2, so how it would stand up on the comparably weaker systems was up in the air. What was Konami thinking?



    As far as I am concerned, though, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a brilliant reinterpretation of the original story, one that can stand on its own without tarnishing the great story that the original Playstation version delivered ten years ago. This is "Silent Hill" as though it happened in the twenty-first century; while the original Harry Mason of 1999 stumbled through the dark armed with a pocket light and a static-prone radio, collecting maps off the walls to chart his progress and requiring his guide (you) to write down significant clues in order to solve puzzles, the Harry Mason of 2010 comes fully armed with a flashlight and a handy swiss army cellular phone that includes a built-in camera, voice-mail recording device, txt reader, GPS unit and mapping functionality. Today's Harry relies on the interference to his phone, generated by nearby enemies, to keep track of when trouble is rearing its head. And, in the most radical departure from the original, today's Harry really is a complete wimp. No knives, no 2x4s, and no guns for this would-be writer. All that Harry has to face the demons of the town are his legs, his stamina, and hopefully a really good sense of direction and a little luck. Oh yes, and a little help from the man who is helping him to work through all of these memories, a psychologist named Dr. K...K...well, it's probably not that important what his name is, now, is it?
    Shattered Memories takes an entirely different track when it comes to gameplay than those who came before it. With the element of combat completely removed, the game is now almost completely story-driven. A plethora of (mostly easy) puzzles force you to stay on your toes and really use your flashlight to examine your surroundings and pick out the important things you need to find. Initially this may seem like a shock to players more used to the old way of doing things: when Harry is exploring Silent Hill, and getting thwarted by all the severe weather that has moved in, he's actually not in any danger. Bizarre, flesh-covered creatures or strange flying imps do not appear to harass our hero, and the most menacing thing he'll have to encounter is the occasional ghost who leaves behind a fleeting impression of why the energy containing it has been trapped there. An air of menace and abandonment follows and preceeds Harry wherever he goes in this town, but surely it's just because the blizzard-like conditions outside have shut everything down, right?
    Sometimes, though, the forces of darkness gather sufficient power. And that's when the Nightmares start to intrude, when Harry Mason discovers that Hell is not hot, but rather very, very cold. The world freezes over, blocking off exits, cutting off paths, and transforming the very terrain before your eyes, casting everything into a pale-blue haze of dementia populated with hordes of creatures intent on doing you terrible harm. It is now that Harry must run, jump, crawl and occasionally hide from his dogged pursuers in order to reach safety. Navigating the nightmares is often akin to running in a maze, with passages that double-back on one another, and multiple routes to get to the same place - the trick is to remember where you came from and try to avoid winding up there again. If grabbed, Harry has only a few seconds to hit a button (or two, or more depending on just how overwhelmed you've gotten) to toss the demon off his arm or leg or shoulder before he gets dragged down and killed. The Nightmares are an adrenaline rush like nothing you've ever really experienced before in a horror game, and truly bring home the notion of helplessness. You thought it was bad in Fatal Frame when you were given nothing more than a camera to defend yourself? Harry gets exactly one saving grace: the occasional emergency flare which he can light and use to keep his would-be attackers at bay for a limited time. Being creatures of cold and darkness, they dislike the light and heat given off by the flare, which can be dropped to keep them from taking a certain path, or held tightly to keep them from grabbing on to you. Flares don't last forever, though, and it's best to use them to put a serious amount of distance between you and them.
    Finally, in a twist that is nothing short of brilliant, the story and gameplay adapt themselves to your habits and quirks as you progress. Characters (including Harry) are rendered differently depending on how Harry handles himself, both in Dr. K's office and in his own adventures, and the town itself changes in ways both overt and subtle depending on his behavior. A player who takes the time to check out sexy posters, call phone numbers written on walls and oggle the female characters of the game will find that other characters begin to take on overtly sexual tones themselves, by dressing provocatively or making off-colour comments. Players who are assholes to other characters will find themselves treated likewise by law enforcement. Ignore or pointedly lie to Dr. K in the sessions between "chapters" of gameplay, and the game will likewise reward you with complete nonsense and assume that you really don't want to be helped. At one point, the player will be called on to colour a picture of a "happy family" in the good Doctor's office. The picture includes a house, and whatever colours are used to render the house are instantly applied to a certain house in the game (colour the mailbox purple, and the in-game house has a purple mailbox; give it a brown porch and the in-game house's porch is constructed out of wood planks). The warning before the game starts says it all: the game plays you as much as you play it. The possiblities for replays are endless, and there are a huge variety of postures and mannerisms that Harry can adopt on his adventure.
    The point of all this is that Shattered Memories actually manages to remain more true to the Silent Hill name than any of the games that have been released since Silent Hill 3 (my personal favorite in the series) by returning to the psychological horror elements in the story. Eschewing combat completely makes for a game that is both easier and more difficult at the same time, but once you've experienced it, you will never view the games the same way again and, in fact, might even find yourself wishing that Climax would remake (or reinterpret) a few other games in the series in such a way.
    For all the good things I have to say about Shattered Memories, it is still far from a perfect game. While I've yet to complete it, friends who own it for the Wii tell me that it is very short; a guy with no experience with survival horror titles at all managed to complete it in eight hours, then managed a full replay in about another six. The good news is that on the PS2, Shattered Memories is only $30 brand new. The better news is that you'll get more out of that $30 game on an old system in seven hours than many $60 games for the PS2 or 360 will give you in twice or three times as much playtime. Being a Wii port, the controls work surprisingly well, with the left analog stick guiding your movements while the right stick serves to steer you from side to side and controls your flashlight. The interactive elements of some puzzles require you to move a hand-shaped cursor around on a screen and hold a button or rotate a stick in order to perform an action like opening a box or turning a radio dial.
    However, being developed on the Wii means that it was toned down graphically for its ports to the PSP and PS2. Graphics tend to show a larger-than-usual degree of jaggies and pixelation when viewed up close, and the game often stutters briefly while it transitions between rooms as your character opens (or bursts down) doors as it dumps the old room from memory and loads the new one. Still, this is leaps and bounds more interesting than showing an animation of a loading symbol or hearing a few footsteps as one trots up a set of stairs. Don't get me wrong, the game is still quite functional as far as graphics go, but it still seems that the PS2 isn't being pushed as hard as it could be in some areas. Then again, I'm not a game developer, so it's hard to say how hard Climax is riding the GPU.
    I guess the short-short way of saying it is that Shattered Memories completely blew away all my expectations in delivering a brand new style of survival horror game chock full of replayability with a storyline that manages to be just as menacing as the first without being so brain-numbingly convoluted as several of the past entries have been. Don't let the lack of combat mechanics bother you: after experiencing it, you'll wish that more games took this daring step instead of loading down their "non-fighter" protagonists with a Bag of Holding stuffed full of swords, knives, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades and lasers. If the non-combat aspects especially intrigue you, then I would like to point you to the Clock Tower series of survival horror games that have been released on the SNES, the PS1, and the PS2 - all of these games cast you in the starring role of a horror-film-style victim and only give you the option to evade and hide from your pursuer(s).
    So take it from someone who has been there since the start: Shattered Memories will redefine your perception of just what a survival horror title can be without completely screwing up your opinion of the original story that it is "retelling". Thank you, Climax, for making Silent Hill fresh again!
  12. Areala

    Lost In The Move

    By Areala,

    Often when a game is ported from one region of the world to another, significant changes are made, not least of which is usually an attempt to translate and localize the game for a new audience. Sometimes things are removed or altered for sociological reasons; a rather famous example is the graphical changes that accompanied Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI for the Super NES thanks to Nintendo of America's stricter policy on drinking and sexual themes in their games as compared to Nintendo of Japan. This was the case in Final Fantasy VI where the "Siren" esper was given some pants to cover up her bottom, and the signs reading "Pub" were changed to "Cafe". Final Fantasy IV saw the loss of the hidden Developer's Room in its US release, as well as a large number of items, spells and abilities being "dummied" out and the difficulty toned down to make the game more palatable to an American audience that was assumed by the Japanese to not enjoy challenging titles.
    Sometimes things are cut for reasons of space; an awful lot of RPGs in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras lost an enormous amount of text in the conversion from Japanese to English, and in some cases as much as 1/3rd of a game's script was utterly lost due to insufficient memory on the cartridges. Differences in console hardware often necessitate cuts and changes in games as well, with a prime example of this being Contra on the NES vs. Contra on the Famicom.
    In the Japanese Famicom Contra cartridge sits the VRC2 Memory Management Controller (MMC), which was an additional chip used to provide extra oomph to the system while playing the game. Because of this extra chip, the Famicom version of Contra includes a map of the game and the players' progress that is displayed at the start of each level, a number of between-level cut-scenes including an extended ending, and extra visual effects on some levels (swaying trees on the first level, and falling snow in the fifth). To wit:



    The NES version of Contra did not ship with this chip installed to save money, so the game omits these little bonuses.
    Other times, stuff is removed from games for different space-related reasons. The downloadable version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the Xbox 360 fell victim to this when Konami decided to strip out all the FMV from the game in order to shave roughly 25 megabytes off the total size of the download. For some reason, this was only done in the American release; the Japanese version retains them. Also inexplicably, the US version was patched after its initial release to remove the ending credits song "I Am The Wind". It was replaced by the ending theme from the PS2 title, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. Presumably, this was done in order to avoid having to pay royalties to Cynthia Harrell who provided the vocals on "I Am The Wind".
    Symphony of the Night also receives cuts between versions from its original release. In what could only be called a bizarre happenstance, Konami actually took the pains to re-record a version of a Japanese song with new English lyrics, only to then remove from the game the ability for players to hear this track by removing the familiar that triggered the effect (sitting in a chair with the Sprite familiar active caused her to sing the song "Nocturne" to you; this can be done in the Japanese version but cannot be triggered in the American release because the Sprite and Nose Demon familiars were excised from the game). The Sega Saturn port featured new musical compositions and areas to explore, as well as the ability to play as Maria in a subsequent playthrough. And the PSP version that can be unlocked in "Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles" includes the ability to play as Maria and returns the Sprite and Nose Demon familiars to the game, but replaces the ending theme with a different song entitled "Serenade of Sympathy". In addition to these changes, the game's entire script was re-translated and new voice actors and actresses were hired to read the lines.
    Have a listen to the music that we in North America missed out on with the removal of the Sprite:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSnSttTxpA4


    Note that it isn't always non-Asian releases that miss out on things. When Squaresoft released Final Fantasy VII in the US, it featured some gameplay updates (most notably the presence of arrows denoting exits on the overhead maps and the inclusion of the Uber-boss-class Ruby and Emerald Weapons), a cranked-up difficulty, and a lower encounter rate for random battles as well as additional FMV sequences that were not in the original Japanese release. This caused some consternation back in the Land of the Rising Sun, and prompted a re-release of the game under the title "Final Fantasy VII International".
    Naturally, all this is just scratching the surface of what has been an ongoing issue with video games for over twenty years. So the next time you sit down to play an old favorite, take some time afterwards to do a little research or track down the original if that's feasible. You might be surprised to discover some stuff about that classic title that you never knew before.
  13. Areala
    Yes, you read the title correctly: 'Survival Horror without the horror.'
    "What the hell are you talking about, Areala?"
    Glad you asked. You'll note that if you remove 'horror' from 'survival horror' you are left with just one thing: survival. And while this description could apply to a great many games since nearly every video game has "not dying" as one of its prerequisites for winning, there's something to be said for a game that tries to take a different approach to things. Disaster Report is just one such example.



    Irem and Agetec are known for developing and publishing a number of often-quirky titles that are all too often consigned to the bargain bins without being given the chance to succeed. Sometimes, this is well-deserved (DT Racing and Felony 11-79 spring to mind as obvious contenders). Where Agetec usually succeeds wildly though is their desire to publish offbeat Japanese games that otherwise would never see the light of day outside of Japan. We have them to thank for the fantastic Armored Core series, for instance, as well as the phenomenally underrated Clock Tower on the PS1. Agetec specializes in the sorts of things most other Western publishers won't touch with a ten-foot pole, so it's only natural that they snapped up the rights to "Zettai Zetsumei Toshi" and released it in the US as Disaster Report, while Eurogamers would know it as "SOS: The Final Escape". And the concept is quite simple: you have to survive.
    It's the year 2005, and man has turned to creating artificial landmasses in the oceans to help combat the burgeoning overpopulation problem that plagues the planet Earth. Stiver Island was a dream come true, a masterful feat of engineering that suspended and entire metropolis (the somewhat blandly-named "Capital City") above the waters of the Pacific. Capital City attracted people from all walks of life, including Keith Helm, a Joe Everyman who has come to Capital City to be the editor for the local newspaper. Keith never manages to make it to his first day on the job, though, as while he's travelling to Capital City, disaster strikes. An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale rocks Stiver Island, demolishing buildings, smashing railroad tracks, collapsing roadways, and undermining the structural integrity of the island itself: Stiver is now slowly singing into the ocean! Keith wakes up a short time after the initial quake, laying in an abandoned train car, feeling the aftershocks. Now, you get to play Keith, the star of your own disaster film, and see if you have what it takes to survive the catastrophe.
    This means using your wits as opposed to using your fists, because Disaster Report isn't teeming with zombies, aliens, spectral abominations or any other form of evil creature. It's just you against nature, in a race against time to get off Stiver Island before the ocean consumes it entirely. To do this, you'll have to get help from some of the other survivors you'll run across, use ordinary, everyday items like ropes, helmets and bandages to traverse dangerous areas of the city, and avoid falling to your death, getting crushed by buildings, or even overexerting yourself and dying from dehydration.
    One of the nice things about the game is that despite the presence of an AI companion throughout most of it, you never find yourself getting upset about it. The AI characters are smart enough not to go falling off ledges, and mercifully have no health bar so you need not concern yourself with their personal well-being. Think of Ico and Yorda's AI relationship in Ico, and you'll understand what I'm talking about.
    The save points used by the game are water fountains, which serve multiple purposes. First of all, you can save your game at one. Second, you can drink water from them to replenish your dehydration meter. Overexert yourself by running and jumping everywhere, and you'll dehydrate. Lose enough hydration, and you start burning through hit points until you collapse. Third, though, you can help prevent your untimely demise by using the fountains and spigots to fill any stray bottles you may have found with untainted drinking water, perfect for giving you a boost any time you need. It's a unique system that doesn't overcomplicate things, but adds just a little bit of resource management stress. You'll feel far more stress from the knowledge that space in your backpack is limited, so gameplay sometimes comes down to deciding what you can throw away and what you should keep. Just like a real disaster, anything could be useful, and anything could be worthless...it's all up to you what you take.
    Finally, while the game's story never really changes, the game does sport some serious replay value because how you respond to the NPCs you meet along the way will ultimately determine the ending you receive. The plot branches at one point, allowing you to follow one of two primary NPCs, and this too will affect the outcome of the game. It's a neat little addition to the game, making your decisions and tone actually mean something instead of just being there for flavour.
    On the down side, Disaster Report is pretty easy despite having two difficulty levels, and the graphics are nothing to write home about. The characters look like upscaled PS1 models, and the surrounding areas of the disaster zone are all well-laid out but blandly rendered. Cut-scenes are all rendered using the in-game engine, so don't expect to see the visuals improving either. In a game like this, the graphics aren't the be-all, end-all of the experience, but it still seems that a game released in 2003 for the PS2 should look better, and it's a shame this doesn't.
    On the other hand, it would be wrong to condemn the game for graphics alone, because it's so darn good at doing everything else that it sets out to do. The storyline stumbles a couple times, introducing a conspiracy sub-plot that seems completely out of place (I'm sorry, but if the island I am on is slowly sinking into the ocean and succumbing to structural failure, you might forgive me for just wanting to get the hell to a helicopter instead of wandering around trying to make sense of why this earthquake hit), but the fact that the game watches how you interact with the other survivors and lets the plot branch to follow the one you choose to help serves to offset this.
    Most importantly though, Disaster Report is fun. It's a survival game that can genuinely make your heart beat with the stress of trying to get your character across the exposed support beam before it snaps, or trying to outrun the giant stone globe that has broken off the top of a fallen skyscraper and is now heading in your direction. Puzzles are more of the cerebral, 'how-do-I-get-there' variety as opposed to the 'which-random-item-in-my-inventory-do-I-use-now?' sort, and the game is very generous with putting you back just a few steps away from where you died should the unthinkable happen.
    Two sequels have been made to Disaster Report. The first was released in the US as Raw Danger for the PS2, the second was just released in Japan for the PSP and so far there don't seem to be any plans to localize it anywhere else in the world. So that's the bad news. The good news is that the PSP is region-free, so only the language barrier is preventing you from playing it right now.
    So, best game ever? Hardly. But that's not what this blog is here for. If you're a bit tired of blowing zombies in half, if you'd prefer to be able to close your eyes without seeing scary black-haired Japanese girls, or if you can't bring yourself to chainsaw one more mutant but you still want all the adrenaline-pumping excitement of a good disaster flick without having to pay $11 to watch 2012, Disaster Report will foot the bill quite nicely (a used copy cost me a whopping $5 at the local GameStop, instructions and all).
  14. Areala

    Natalie Portman + Diablo = ?

    By Areala,

    Another one of my favorite Easter Eggs.
    Boot up Diablo (the original) and use Print Screen to grab a copy of the title screen where you can start a new game and whatnot. Now, close the game, open up your favorite image editor program, and use the Paste command to dump the screen image into the program. You should get something that looks like this:



    Looks innocuous so far, right? Big red demon, some title screen junk, and nothing at all about Natalie Portman. As a wise Jedi once noted, however, "Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them." Take your image, select the "Paint Fill" option, and dump any non-black colour (blue seems to work best) into the area between Diablo's horns on the upper part of the image.
    Hello...what have we here?



    Why...yes...yes she does. Thank you for reminding us, Blizzard!
    Also, check out their other little bit of subliminal advertising: a subtle suggestion that one should purchase their other mega-hit title at the time, Warcraft II. Oh, you sneaky, sneaky artists...you knew we'd have to find it eventually, didn't you?
    On a slightly unrelated note, there's another bit of silliness hidden in Diablo. Upon entering level 16, Diablo greets you with a hellish-sounding demonic taunt spoken in a long-dead language. What on earth could he possibly be saying...?
    Diablo1.wav
    Those who are familiar with backwards masking (as used by John Romero in my last Easter Egg entry) might just recognize that sound for what it is: a reversed sound file. Would you like to know the truth? Do you think you can handle it?
    Last chance...I'm telling you, you don't want to hear this.
    *sigh* All right, if you insist...
    Diablo1Reversed.wav
    Well...that was certainly a surprise. Who knew Diablo was so conscious of his enemies' health and well-being?
    *huggles*
    Areala
  15. Areala
    The safety of children online is not just my responsibility or your responsibility or the parents' responsibility. It is everyone's responsibility. Online, children are exposed to things that were never meant to be seen or heard by the young or the old. As an example of this, and a reminder to all of our Retromags readers to take this kind of thing seriously, I give you the following public service message in its entirety.



    Use this image. Keep this image. Post it on your break room wall at work. Save it to your hard drive and make it your desktop wallpaper. Forward it to all your friends, your relatives, even your parents. Remind them that online safety is everyone's business, and they should get involved too. Because when it comes to the Old Ones, your sanity is no laughing matter.
    Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
  16. Areala
    Released in 2003 to very little fanfare by a company that was known only for producing driving simulators, Kya: Dark Lineage came out of nowhere as a 3D platformer that was ambitious to make itself heard in a world that was already overcrowded to the point of bursting. No doubt, many gamers looked at the simple cover art and the fact that it was developed by Eden Games (who?), and dismissed it outright as being unworthy of their attention without even the respect of a rental.



    This is a shame of epic magnitude, because while it is not perfect, Kya: Dark Lineage was an utterly beautiful entry into the platforming world that managed to incorporate the standard elements of running, jumping and climbing with a minimal application of stealth techniques, long-range fighting, puzzle solving, up-close fisticuffs (with upgradable combat moves), and the ability to ride about the world on currents of air and even slip-and-slide through levels on the back of a helpful dinosaur-type creature or hop on your own magic board to traverse the kind of downward-sloping terrain that would have given the entire cast of SSX a case of vertigo. The surprise here is that Kya successfully uses ALL of these gimmicks in ways that are fresh and enjoyable and unique to create a very complex and yet easy-to-learn game with a world that is constantly expanding and opening itself to new means of exploration for the titular heroine of the story.
    And while the story isn't the most original plot in the world, it still manages to hold its own. Kya is your typical blue-haired teenager, angry with the world because her father left her a number of years ago without saying goodbye. She now lives with her half-brother Frank in the city, but one evening, Frank makes a startling discovery: Kya's father left behind some of his work, hidden in a secret room that was walled off until Frank broke into it. And as Kya and Frank explore the room, looking at the books and charts and weird stuff he left behind, they accidentally activate one of the relics. This creates a portal that draws Frank and Kya into an alternate dimension.



    Kya is found by the friendly critters of the realm, the Nativs. They save her from an ambush by the nasty bad guys, known as the Wolfen, and lead her back to their village where the Nativ elder has some alarming news for her. Frank has been found as well...but not by the Nativs. The cruel master of the Wolfen, known as Brazul, has found her half-brother and is determined to commit a number of heinous acts upon his person. Just as Kya is reeling from the knowledge of her half-brother's capture, the elder drops the other shoe. Brazul is none other than the man who walked out on Kya years ago, warped by some dark power that has led him to create the army of Wolfen that have pushed the Nativs nearly to extinction. But with Kya's help, maybe, just maybe, the Nativs can push back, defeat Brazul, and rescue Frank. Kya's game. But are you?



    This world is beautifully rendered, with a European flair for pastels and lightly blended colours, and a draw distance that seems to go on forever. Indeed, an early item you can acquire is a telescope that allows you to zoom in on distant locations and see just how much detail has been devoted to the game's setting. The world of the Nativs and Wolfen is composed of large "island" landmasses, free-floating in the etherical sky of the dimension, and getting from one area to another often requires a lot of jumping, climbing, hanging off of ledges, free-falling, riding your magic board, or even flying through and riding on the currents of air that rush through various points of the land. Frequently, you'll crest a hill after a long climb and have to stop to admire the vista that's just been revealed to you. Frequently, you'll also enjoy flying through the air while trying not to slam into the spiked vines that grow out of some of the walls and attempting to land on one of the large, explosively-soft plants that will break your fall at the end. Bungie jumping without the bungie cords scares the crap out of me, but Kya takes to it as effortlessly as the Nativs do, and the introductory sequence of the game does a very good job of introducing the mechanics of sliding through tubes, sneaking past Wolfen, and riding the air currents as well as your basic running and jumping. A later tutorial shows you the ropes of hand-to-hand combat. Kya: Dark Lineage never shows you your goal without giving you an idea of the means to succeed, so if a new gameplay mechanic is necessary to proceed, you'll always know what you need to do. Knowing what you need to do and doing it right are often two different things, and it's not uncommon to go flying off the side of a sliding sequence or find yourself crashing into the walls while in free-fall. Thankfully, Kya operates on a strict policy of no lives and automatically returns you to the start of whatever challenge you failed. This is a nice change from the "load the last save" mentality of many platformers (especially Tomb Raider), and with practice it's quite easy to master these segments and reap the rewards of advancing the plot.



    The magic of Kya isn't so much that it is a perfect game, because it's not: the voice-acting is slightly better-than-average, the story is quite derivative of the "only you can save us" plot bunny that has been hopping around since the days of Super Mario Bros., and it suffers from the occasional glitch like accidentally clipping through a wall that can grind your play to a halt and force a section restart. What is magical about Kya is the fact that it so successfully pulls together so many of the various tropes of the platforming genre (running, jumping, smashing boxes, puzzle solving and fighting) then adds the additional elements of free-falling, magic boarding, and stealth into the mix without becoming a game that is a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. Kya does everything it sets out to do, and it does it quite well. Anybody who is a fan of the likes of Rayman, Crash Bandicoot, Prince of Persia or Super Mario 64 owes it to himself or herself to at least try Kya out. And I'll bet you dollars to Nooties that you'll have just as much fun with it as I did.
    Sadly, though not unsurprisingly, there was meant to be more to the Kya franchise. The ending leaves our heroine facing an enormous cliffhanger that was clearly meant to be fleshed out in a sequel that was never greenlit due to lackluster sales, much like the similarly criminally-overlooked classic, Beyond Good & Evil. What does exist though is a very well-done project that everyone involved with should have been quite proud of, and a shining example of how it is still possible to create magic within the "all-been-done-before" platformer genre. Because while platformers began with an overall-clad, moustachioed Italian plumber, Kya proved in 2003 that they don't have to end with him. It's just a shame too few of us took notice of that fact.
  17. Areala
    If you don't remember the third-person action/survival horror title "Run Like Hell: Hunt or Be Hunted," don't be too disappointed with yourself. It's understandable. After all, the game was in development for five years, went through producers, artists and programmers like wood chippers going through storm-tossed trees, and saw a 100% code rewrite starting 10 months from its shipping date. The fact that it even landed on the market in 2002 is a wonder in itself.
    RLH, as it is most commonly abbreviated, was not a successful game by any stretch of the imagination. What started out as a simple concept of "Do Resident Evil, only in space, with nasty aliens!" was later on switched to "Do Aliens, in space, with copious amounts of ammo to blast the nasty aliens with!" It truly is a pity that RLH wasn't better received, because it had some killer voice talent behind the characters: Lance Henriksen, Kate Mulgrew, Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown, and Brad Dourif all lent their distinctive vocal stylings to the production. Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin contributed music for the soundtrack. The storyline was well-plotted and executed, with a cliffhanger ending that revealed all was not well with the survivors and hinted at a forthcoming sequel or two (needless to say, Interplay canned this project after lackluster sales of the original). But RLH had one other interesting thing going for it: product placement. Specifically, RLH had Bawls.
    Now, Bawls alone couldn't have saved (or killed) this project. But it really didn't do the story any favours. Nobody in his or her right mind believes that an energy drink from the 21st century would still be around hundreds of years later, much like nobody really believed that Taco Bell would be the sole survivor of the "fast food wars" or considered "fine dining" as we saw in Demolition Man, and yet vending machines filled with the stuff (which serves as a way to regain a little bit of lost health) abound on the space station where RLH is set, and posters advertising Bawls can be found all over the walls. In another amusing nod to a different Interplay property, you can also find "Pip-Boy"-brand Protein Bars to restore a bit of health as well. Looks like the post-nuclear holocaust isn't completely forgotten after a few centuries either.
    Interplay had a pretty large obsession with real-world product placement back in this time, as Bawls also managed to show up in the regularly-maligned Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. While the presence of the energy drink in RLH didn't cause too much of a fuss (mostly because so few people played the game, I suspect), the inclusion of it in a Fallout product, replacing the standard Nuka Cola, raised the ire of a good number of fans who were irritated at what was clearly an attempt to just grab some cheap cash on what was already viewed as a sub-par entry into a beloved series. To this day, BoS is not considered cannonical to the Fallout universe, and as we all know, Bethesda returned Nuka Cola to its rightful place in Wasteland beverage history with Fallout 3.
    With EA and many other companies looking to use in-game advertising to drive in money over the lifetime of a product, it's important to remember that it's been tried in the past, it's almost always been amusingly bad, and the games involved have never been huge hits. And while Interplay isn't the first studio to learn this the hard way, I guarantee you that they won't be the last either. Then again, maybe I'm biased...what would a woman do with Bawls anyway?
  18. Areala
    Combing through the archives, I thought it would be fun to review some classic games here in the blog, and since adventure games have always been enjoyable to me, I decided to write about a quirky and unique but often frustrating and entirely too short one from the DOS era. "Daughter of Serpents" (also released later on CD-ROM and re-titled "The Scroll") is a point-and-click graphics adventure along the lines of King's Quest or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. But while those titles were masterpieces praised by virtually all who played them, Daughter of Serpents is virtually unknown even to most gamers who grew up during the DOS age, and while it is far from the best adventure game ever created, it's nowhere near the worst, and deserves to be better-known than it is.



    The first thing Daughter has going for it is the theme: this is one of a very few computer games released under license of the Cthulu mythos, a fact you might have gathered from the developer's name (Eldritch Games). Unlike many of its contemporaries, Daughter doesn't take place in a galaxy far, far away or in a fantasy realm populated by dragons and unicorns and talking chesspieces. Daughter is set squarely in the 1920s, in Egypt to be exact, where some unearthly rumblings have begun to cause some consternation among those who watch for that sort of thing. The game embraces this aspect wholeheartedly, and contains plenty to read on the subject of Egyptian mysticism and mythos should a gamer desire to immerse himself or herself more fully.



    Daughter also enjoys a limited form of RPG crossbreeding, in that instead of just playing as the protagonist as the developers have set out for you (Prince Graham, Indiana Jones, Roger Wilco or whoever), you are free to create your own character and customize his or her personality and interests using a skill point system which lets you determine things like how versed you are in Egyptology, what languages you know, what areas of the occult you have any knowledge in and so forth. In addition, you can add such traits as name (which the other characters in the game will actually refer to you by), gender, and even age. If creating your own character seems boorish, you can pick from one of the pre-made ones that the designers included. But based on your skill selection, you will encounter and play through the story in different ways. The basic outline of the plot is that you have come to Alexandria to inspect an archaeological dig. Before you can get too much done there, though, you are contacted by a mysterious woman who offers you an ancient scroll that seems to be filled with genuine Egyptian magical spells. Reading the scroll also reveals the plottings of an ancient evil force that is dead set on returning to prominance and enslaving all of Egypt once again. Naturally, it's going to fall to you to stop this malevolent being, with the trick, of course, hinging on how exactly a mere mortal is supposed to stop an Old One from manifesting on the Earth. All told, there are roughly six different variations on this scenario that you can experience, though on the downside the ultimate mystery remains the same, so once you've beaten the game there won't be very much left in the way of surprises the next time through.



    And speaking of beating the game, it's almost impossible not to do. Daughter of Serpents has got to be one of the shortest adventure games in history; even first-time players will (once they have mastered the tricky control scheme) get through everything in around an hour. Despite the fact that the game is based on the Cthulu mythos, there's very few ways that you can actually wind up dead in the game which is a complete 180-degree turn for anybody who has ever played "Call of Cthulu," "Arkham Horror," or any other RPG or boardgame based on Lovecraft's creations. That's not to say it can't happen, but it's a very rare occurance. Another reason for the game's ultimate brevity is the fact that there's very little hunting to do. Objects that you need to solve the puzzles (when the puzzles even show up...I played through one game where I encountered a grand total of 1 puzzle once) are rarely more than one room away or are already in your inventory, and NPCs within the game seem to go out of their way to make sure they've provided you with every clue you could possibly need to pass your next test. In a way, it's nice to play an adventure game without the need to consult a walkthrough every five minutes to figure out what the designer was thinking. On the other hand, though, there is something to be said for having some measure of challenge and brain-bending. It is an "adventure" after all, and nobody ever just handed Indiana Jones his prize (at least without a fight).



    Daughter of Serpents looks very pretty: the graphics are extremely beautiful, especially for 1992, and convey the setting and tone perfectly. There's a bit of blood here and there, but nothing outright vile or over-the-top in terms of violence. It's Lovecraftian horror, so you know people are gonna bite it just going into the game, and the text seems to catch most of Lovecraft's rhythms. It's just a pity that it's over so quickly. And while they re-released on the CD format as the re-titled "The Scroll," the only major difference between the two versions is that the CD version apparently includes a few more screens but nothing more in the way of an expanded story, better music or added puzzles. It's a shame, because game developers don't often get the opportunity to re-release their work and this would have been an ideal way to add some value to what, unfortunately, manages to only be a mediocre effort.



    Make no mistake, Daughter of Serpents is worth experiencing. It's just a shame that from such a great beginning, Eldritch Software wasn't able to do more with the game engine they developed and the license they had acquired. The thought of a Mass Effect-style Lovecraftian-themed game done today brings tremors to the knees. In 1992, they gave it a shot, and it's worth playing to experience it. The ideas and storyline were there, and the method of generating a character to get a different look at things during different playthroughs was genius. Unfortunately, it is far from the epic game that Lovecraft so richly deserves, and is only worth about 2 1/2 stars out of five.
  19. Areala
    I was very nervous picking up Borderlands. Sure, I'd read all the reviews that said what a fun game it was and all, but after all, I already have Fallout 3. Did I really need another game set in a post-nuclear style area where everybody is searching for a Vault?
    I plucked up my courage, deposited my money at the local game store, drove home and discovered that, yes, I absolutely did need another post-nuclear style game that has 87 bazillion different types of guns.
    Keep in mind, I'm playing this on the PS3, so everything I say revolves around that console; I have no idea how the game plays on the PC or the 360. Suffice it to say that Gearbox and 2K Games have figured out how to reinvigorate the FPS genre by letting you build your character as you progress, picking and choosing the skills you want, so even two people playing the same "class" will wind up with vastly different types by the end of the game.
    Borderlands takes place on Pandora, a desert world where might makes right, raiders and bandits control the pathways between fortified outpost towns, and very few people have any compunction about putting a slug into your face...or your back. Think about the Australian outback shown in the Mad Max films, and you'll know the sort of thing I'm talking about. Into all of this drops...you. Pandora's own guardian angel. Ostensibly, you're there to find the Vault just like everybody else. But before you can go about finding the Vault (and the water, food, women and wealth it contains), you need to find your bearings. You're a newbie in the world, nobody knows you from Adam (or Eve), and while you can shoot people, this isn't the best way to get them to part with much-needed information and money. So, you start doing favours for people...a little of this, a little of that, and pretty soon you start getting cash. And guns. Lots of guns.
    The box is not lying: there seriously are 87 bazillion weapons in the game, and every last one of them is different. Even two weapons with the same name will have vastly different stats, or at the worst will look graphically different: one may have a longer stock, one might be painted bright yellow, another might shoot flame rounds, etc... There are a multitude of pistols, revolvers, assault rifles, sniper rifles, submachine guns, rocket launchers and shotguns to be pried from the cold, dead fingers of your enemies, purchased from vendors, or looted out of footlockers, and you'll have tons of fun finding each and every one of them and putting them to good use, mixing and matching your inventories, and deciding what you want to get better at using vs. what you'd like to ignore for a bit. Using a certain kind of gun gives you more experience with it, so as you get better with pistols, for instance, you'll get more accurate and be able to fire faster and hit for more damage. As if that wasn't enough, you can also haul around grenades and apply various effects to them, giving them properties like Bouncing Bettie (hops up and explodes at waist-level to cause more damage), MIRV (explodes and releases more grenades that then also explode), Sticky (sticks to any surface for a few seconds before detonating) or Rubber Bounce (rebound them off walls, floors, ceilings, around corners, etc...). You can also purchase upgrades for your weapons that increase the size of the magazine you can carry, webbing to let you carry additional grenades and so forth.
    And then there's your choice of characters: Borderlands isn't for wussies at all. Unlike Fallout 3, most of the denizens of the world recognize only the language of hot, screaming lead, so there won't be any would-be politicians wandering the wastes. If you want somebody to hand over their gear, you're going to have to kill them and take it. And since all your buying and selling needs are done via machine, there's no haggling for a better price: you pay what they tell you or you don't get it. Fortunately for you, it's very simple to acquire money: if you aren't taking it out of the pockets of some masked gimp you blew in half with a shotgun, then you're looting it from boxes and lockers that some idiot left unattended. Karma be damned: there's no such thing as stealing in these wastes, so loot like mad if somebody was dumb enough to walk away and leave their footlocker unlocked. All four of the character types are hardcore sociopaths with their own likes and dislikes and skill trees. The soldier loves his combat rifles, and can deploy a shielded turret for help in a firefight. The hunter loves his long-range sniper weapons, and has a bloodfalcon buddy he can unleash to harry foes. The siren can turn invisible with her light-bending camouflage and attack while in stealth mode, preferring to add elemental effects like Fire to her weapons. The berserker pretty much loves to fight with anything and has no trouble tearing apart the bad guys with his bare hands if it comes down to it.
    For all the emphasis on combat, Borderlands has a surprisingly simple armour system. Unlike Diablo, where you might find a "Godly Plate of the Whale" falling off of a demon or a "Loincloth of Thorns" in a barrel, Borderlands has only one thing: shields. Your shields function just like Master Chief's did in Halo: they absorb the damage before it gets to your health. Once your shield is depleted, your health bar becomes fair game, and it takes your shield a bit to recharge. Shields can have different effects: some will have more energy to deplete, others will recharge faster, some will heal you over time or grant you resistances to elemental effects like Fire or Corrosion. It's up to you how you use them in the game, but they are a majorly important part of surviving on Pandora. Even if you croak, though, there are two things in your favour.
    First of all, the game gives you a chance to redeem yourself when you lose your last bit of health by entering into a special "Death Cry" mode. In this mode, you are immobile save for the ability to turn in a circle. If you can manage to kill an enemy while you are in this state, you'll pop back up with a portion of your health meter intact, earning a "Second Wind," which is a nice change from just getting splattered all over once your life bar reads zero. If, despite all your effort and ammo expendature, you cannot manage to kill anything, you will fall down and go boom, but even this won't stop you for long as the nearest New-U station will reconstitute a completely New You from the stored fragment of DNA, right down to your full arsenal at the time of your demise. When not being reborn, you can also use a New-U station to rename your character, change their physical look (hair colour, clothing colour and so forth), or even reassign all the skill points you have earned so far if you decide that you'd like to build your character differently without starting the game over. This final option does cost money, which makes it impractical to do over and over again, but it's invaluable if you discover a given skill not helping you out all that much, or if you just want to try playing the game as a different type of character for a while.
    All in all, Borderlands is showing itself to be wildly addictive: several hours of playtime will go by and you won't even notice that the time has passed. I was worried that the cel-shaded graphics would be a turn-off, but for some reason they just work very well with this type of game and I don't even notice that they are that way once I'm immersed in the world. The voice acting is a hoot, especially the "Claptrap" helper robots that assist the player with various tasks but also get bored very easily in a world where they were clearly programmed to be over-the-top optimists and will attempt to call attention to themselves by dancing, falling over things, or other slapstick improv. Injured ones whine pitifully on the ground, asking if they are leaking, and wimpering, "I...I can see the Code...". Quests so far have been pretty much of the "Go here and kill/shoot this" or "Go here, get this, and bring it back to me" variety, but it's difficult to do anything much beyond that in a first-person shooter. Don't expect Fallout 3 or Oblivion-level dialogue tree options, it's all pretty simple fare. Your enemies tend to level up as you do, and you get fewer and fewer XP for killing lower-levelled enemies so once you hit level 10 or so, it's usually not very judicious to waste ammo on a level 2 enemy. Damage numbers pop up every time to show when you have hit something, and the game displays the enemy's total HP and shield energy (if any) in graph bar-style above their name. Your level is very important, however, because the higher your level, the more damage you dish out. The same is true of your opponents though, and the game is nice enough to show you via a little skull by the enemy's name that something is way out of your league. If you start shooting at something and see a plethora of 1's start popping up, you know you're in over your head and it's time to run like hell and hope you don't get cornered.
    Those of you who enjoy FPS games like Bioshock or Resistance: Fall of Man will get a bang out of it. Those of you who like action RPGs such as Fallout 3 or Diablo II will likewise have a good time. People who prefer more "pure" RPG experiences like Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate may not be as impressed with the twitch-style combat mechanics and the lack of tactical options or role-playing opportunities, but for everybody else, Borderlands is at least worth a rent. You can tackle it alone, with a friend in split-screen, or online multiplayer in both co-op and deathmatch formats, and everything your character does will carry over into your save file, so playing in multi-player will give you items and experience you can apply to your single-player campaign mode. In addition, just like Diablo, having more players in a game makes the monsters that much harder to fight, but makes the loot drops that much more powerful and bumps up the XP value for critters.
    I don't normally blog about current games, but Borderlands is an exception I am willing to make for the good of all. Take it from a girl who wasn't sure: this game is a ton of fun, and it belongs in your collection.
  20. Areala
    Let's face it - if you've been gaming for as long as I have, it's quite likely that your first exposure to a game that threatened to actually make you change your underpants was Resident Evil. And if there's one area in Resident Evil that is more likely to have actually made you need to change your undies than any other, it was one of the most infamous jump-scares in video game history: when the dogs break through the outside windows and into the narrow hallway. Even if you suspected something was going to happen, you walked down the hall, and nothing did. It wasn't until you walked through it again that you heard the shattering of the glass, and the two bloody dogs made a beeline for Chris or Jill and made you jump so badly that you dropped your controller. If you were really unlucky, you had to make some excuse about going to the bathroom for a minute, after which you zipped off to your room to snag a new pair of tighty-whities and tossed the old pair into the laundry hamper. This also had the added effect of showing that unlike most previous games, the boundaries that the player's character were constrained to were not applicable to the bad guys. In Pac-Man, both Pac-Man and the ghosts couldn't move through the solid walls of the maze. In Resident Evil, however, it rapidly became clear that just because Jill Valentine couldn't break a window and jump into the zone on the other side, this in no way affected a monster's ability to do just that. When bad guys don't play by the "rules", this increases the stress level on the player, who now must take into account things that he or she didn't have to worry about before the event. It's a dirty trick, and gamers absolutely love falling for it again and again.
    Ever since that moment, horror video games have been relying on a technique perfected in cinema decades earlier: the jump-scare. The concept is simple. The characters on the screen, having been lulled into a false sense of security by the goings-on around them, are suddenly assaulted by something that comes right out of left field. And because the audience has been identifying with the characters this whole time, when they are scared, the audience shares this reaction and shares a bit of the fear as well. Video games, building their techniques for storytelling on Hollywood, have followed this path. The only problem is that video games, like films, have adopted a number of rules over the years that make it possible for fans to see a potential event coming a mile away.
    Consider that in a standard horror film, if someone sees a sharp instrument like a pitchfork hanging on a wall, it's a no-brainer that at some point during the ensuing carnage, somebody is going to get impaled on the pitchfork. In the same vein, if the camera is tracking with a killer shark underwater, swimming for some frolicking children in the ocean, you can be pretty certain as an audience member that some unlucky sod is going to lose a leg at the very least. Likewise, in video games, it's getting harder and harder to surprise gamers with a jump-scare in horror titles. Thus, when it is executed effectively, a video game jump scare is something of a pleasant surprise to me. And the earliest example I can think of in my own personal experience with thinking I was smarter than the game came from another one of Capcom's horror classics, Dino Crisis.
    In Dino Crisis, the player takes control of Regina, a special operative who is part of a team sent to inflitrate a science compound on an island and to apprehent a scientist named Dr. Kirk. Kirk has been working on something called "Third Energy," and unbeknownst to the team at the start of the game, his experiments have produced a very, very terrifying result: the Third Energy singularity has phase-shifted the island back in time to the era of the dinosaurs. Essentially, the island now occupies two points in time simultaneously, and the installation and the surrounding area has taken on the properties of the past. This has resulted in it becoming infested with dinosaurs, which are more than happy to stalk and kill you, and Regina finds herself fighting for her very life as she searches the base for Dr. Kirk in the hopes that he can somehow reverse the process.
    At one point early on, Dino Crisis plays havoc with your nerves by showing that the rules you learned playing Resident Evil will need to be re-learned. The velociraptors are not zombies: they will happily scale fences, leap over obstacles, and even open doors in order to get at you; in short, they will hunt you down and there are no such thing as safe places. And you know, from Resident Evil, that monsters are going to break windows. It's just inevitable. So when you're walking down a hallway, and the camera shifts to show you from outside, with two large plate-glass windows between you and the exterior, everything instantly goes on full-alert. Those stupid zombie dogs got you the last time, and you'll be damned if Capcom fools you a second time. Heck, you can even hear the snorting and snuffling of the raptors walking around outside, and you walk through the hallway, gun drawn, muscles tense for the confrontation you know will be coming any second now...
    ...and you walk through the hallway completely unscathed, with no attackers and completely unharmed glass. You open a door, move around, explore a bit, and nothing ever once comes through those windows. So you laugh to yourself, seeing exactly what Capcom did there: they put those big windows in the game knowing that it would stress the hell out of you to walk by them, and even made it seem like the raptors were just on the other side, waiting to get you, and then nothing happened. Evil, evil, evil. They got you again, you chuckle, give them a mental nod for managing to creep you out, and continue on with the game.
    Everything is, in fact, hunky-dory. The problem is that by the time you have to retrace your steps through that corridor, you've managed to brainwash yourself into thinking that Capcom pulled one over on you, and you don't think about it anymore. Which is why when the two raptors blast through the windows and run at Regina, you still crap your pants and while Regina is running for her digital life you realize that Capcom has gotten you a second time with the same gimmick. The bastards...
    But Capcom isn't finished. Not content to merely scare the effluvia out of you with the "smashing window" gag, they realized that they could only grab a player with that once. So the next time around, they have to top that. Regina, in this case, has just beaten the group of raptors congregating in a waiting room-style lobby, and walks into the interior office, confident that nothing is going to follow her. Inside, she finds a badly-wounded scientist, who managed to lock himself inside the room to escape the raptors. He's lost an awful lot of blood, but he can still talk, and Regina gets him to spill his story rather easily.
    Of course, just as things get interesting, and Regina is listening to the guy chatter away during a cutscene, Capcom pulls their second dirty move of the game and introduces an entirely new rule: now, not even buildings are enough to keep you safe, because a T-Rex's head smashes its way through the wimpy drywall, snatches up the scientist in its jaws, and proceeds to try and make mincemeat out of you while you have no way of running away from the beast. You manage to pump enough lead into the T-Rex to make it rethink its plans to make you a second appetizer, and finally it retreats with a defiant roar. At which point, the smell hits you and you realize that it's once again time to change your underwear. This is getting both disgusting and expensive, and it's right about now that you consider never picking up the controller again and just leaving the console all alone to collect some dust while you compose yourself.
    You won't, of course. After all, you're a gamer, not a quitter. But the thought still manifests. Capcom got you again.
    The bastards...
  21. Areala

    A Little October Fright

    By Areala,

    Note: this is a cross-post of an editorial that I wrote for Intelligent Gamer, another gaming site that I contribute to on a semi-regular basis. I figured it was gaming related, though not video game related, and deserved a spot here on my blog. And actually, as of about 5:30 today, the article hasn't appeared on IG's website, so you get a sneak preview of it here first!
    Who loves ya, babes?
    * * * * *

    Thirteen Little Scary Story Starters


    At a loss for something to creep out your roleplaying group this October? Intelligent Gamer has some ideas for you...
    So it's October, and the Halloween spirit has you firmly in its icy grasp. You're dusting off copies of Ravenloft, digging out your creepy sound effects CDs, and scattering fake cobwebs and black candles all over your gaming space. Your players are up for the idea of a good scare, or maybe they just want a little bit of spookiness in their campaign for the next couple of weeks. We doesn't want to leave you hanging, so enjoy an unlucky baker's dozen suggestions for ways to spice up your campaign dropped into your trick or treat bag.
    Also remember that while these suggestions are being written for fantasy-themed campaigns, a little tweaking can make them fit into a modern-day or futuristic setting very quickly. An incident that happens to someone in a tavern in a medieval campaign can easily happen to a smuggler in a spaceport or a regular Joe average in the local bar. A horse and carriage can be replaced by a limousine or a land-speeder. A deserted island could just as easily be a large asteroid. So take these suggestions and run with them, and if you've got other ideas, feel free to comment and discuss to your hearts' content!
    1. The local tenders of a lighthouse are always woken up at the same hour every night during foggy weather. A disembodied voice can be heard crying with dismay in various parts of the lighthouse, objects move about the rooms, and hurried footsteps rush up and down the staircase. The disturbance is being caused by the distressed spirit of an old keeper who fell asleep one foggy evening and failed to keep the lights burning, causing a ship to run aground many years earlier.
    2. Upon hearing a rumour that a local cemetary is sitting right on top of a vein of valuable ores, a local businessman has begun to prey upon local superstition and is setting up elaborate ruses to make the locals believe the place is haunted in the hopes that they will relocate the interred bodies which will allow him to purchase the land for a song. Considering that many of the dead would prefer to be left in peace, it's possible that this could stir up a number of REAL hauntings should his plan succeed.
    3. A local tavern appears to be haunted; mugs will often upend themselves as though the liquid inside is being consumed, darts will fling themselves at the dartboards, upstairs doors slam without anyone being near them, and decks of playing cards have been known to shuffle themselves as the mystified players stand and watch. The culprit is a local wizard who felt he was overcharged for his services, and is now plaguing the tavern with annoying cantrips and an aereal servant who is having a blast playing all kinds of "games" with its new playmates.
    4. Riders on horseback traversing the countryside now studiously avoid crossing a particular bridge between two regions. Those who have crossed the bridge in the past report feeling a presence sitting behind them on their horse and icy hands clutching their shoulders or sides for support, but riders brave enough to turn and face their unauthorized occupant see nothing behind them. The feeling leaves when the rider has passed a small grove of trees, but no one has been able to determine why or even if there is anything special about the grove.
    5. After spending the night in a comfortable countryside hostel, the party awakens in the morning to the smell of smoke and smouldering wood. A quick inspection shows that while none of the party's belongings or bodies have been harmed, it appears that the entire building burned to the ground around them while they slept; even the sheets beneath them and blankets that covered them are now nothing more than charred scraps of ruined cloth.
    6. A man suffering from dreadful injuries and dressed in the armour of the local government's security forces or military staggers towards the group of players as they are leaving a border town. In a frantic state, he tells the group that he is the last surviving member of a scouting party that was ambushed by an enormous army of orcs approaching from the direction the players are currently heading, and begs for them to ride back to town and warn the locals before collapsing and dying in a pool of his own blood. Assuming the players carry out the dying man's wish, the townspeople merely chuckle to themselves and tell the players not to worry about it. A visit to any of the local information sources tells the players that this has happened many times over the last fifty years, but there is nothing they can do; the man is the apparition of a real scout who died five decades earlier with his warning message undelivered. He is still trying to deliver it to this day. Returning to the area where he was last encountered shows no sign of the scout or of the bloody trail left in his approach.
    7. A constructed creature (a golem or some other form of magically-animated statue) created by a long-dead wizard who perished while out of the country trudges to the entrance of the city its former master inhabited every morning with a fresh robe and travelling shoes, then returns mechanically to the wizard's old tower at night, forever waiting to greet and serve the one who created it. Attempts to remove or destroy the construct have been tried, but every day it returns to the city gates with a fresh robe and shoes to await its master's return again.
    8. At night by the riverbank of a small town, two sets of lights can be seen, one on either side of the shore, bobbing and weaving about as though searching for something, and an occasional giggle can be heard. According to local lore, the lights represent two children who were friends from neighboring towns: one died in the water while awaiting her playmate from the other town one night, and the next night, the other child drowned as well as she searched for her missing friend.
    9. The spirit of a cranky old woman inhabits a chair recently purchased by a member of the party; the woman died while rocking on her porch, and refuses to let the chair be used by anyone else except herself. Those who sit upon it feel as though they have been violently shoved from behind, and quiet mutterings can be heard afterwards as the chair slowly begins to rock itself.
    10. Sentries at a local castle have begun to avoid a particular section of wall during their night shifts. At the same time every evening, the spectre of a female dressed in dark clothing attempts to scale the wall, then lets out a piercing scream as she slips and falls to her death. Since it doesn't physically hurt anyone, dealing with the spirit is low on the castle owner's priority lists, but it is doing fearful harm to his soldiers' morale.
    11. The party's ship is damaged in a storm and forced into the first port they can find for repairs. Unluckily, the port and the entire town has been quarantined by the military as a bizarre disease that kills people in their sleep and re-animates the bodies as zombies ravages the populace. Until those outside the town receive proof that everyone inside is dead or the plague has been cured, no one in the party will be allowed to leave; those enforcing the quarantine include battle-hardened veterans and skilled snipers who have orders to kill anyone who attempts to escape.
    12. A travelling carnival is doing a booming business in a town where the players are staying. The main attraction is a mirror that purports to show the true nature of anyone who looks into it; it's a simple illusion rigged up by the carnival's owner that makes the person who looks into it reflect a "prettier" version of him or herself. That is, until one of the party members stands before it and his or her reflection shows that of a vampire or other malevolent creature.
    13. A man who was hired to help demolish a building is accidentally killed while on the job. The demolition proceeds as normal and a new building is erected, but the ghost of the man still returns every day for his shift to work at knocking down the structure. Whether or not the ghost is actually harming the new building is up to the game master.
  22. Areala
    I've gotten a few PMs since I joined up at Retromags from other members asking me what my name means, or where it came from, so I figured it would be a good idea to answer that question out in the open, once and for all.
    First of all, Areala is not a misspelling (intentional or otherwise) of "areola". One is my user name, the other is a part of the body. Just figured I should get that out of the way.
    Those of you who were reading small-press comics in the mid-90s may have guessed where my nick came from; those of you who think comics begin and end with Marvel and DC, I can only shake my head in pity . In December of 1994, Ben Dunn (creator of Ninja High School and head of Antarctic Press) wrote the story and drew the art for a comic entitled "Warrior Nun Areala". Areala, in this case, is really a nun by the name of Shannon Masters who (in an alternate version of our reality) serves the Catholic Church in its ever-present struggle against the forces of Hell. The Warrior Nun caste is a group of holy women who have been trained in combat so they can repel a demonic invasion of Earth should such a thing come to pass. And in 1994, it very nearly happened as a man known as Julius Salvius strove to make the sacrifices necessary to release Lucifer upon the planet. Shannon Masters fell in combat against a creature known as Demon Foster, but was denied entrance to Heaven by the original Warrior Nun Areala, who informed Shannon that she was going to be the avatar of Areala on Earth and work against the forces of Hell in her name. And thus, Areala returned to Earth in all her butt-kicking glory to have many more adventures over the next several years.



    Sure, it sounds cheesy, but it was fun to see a kick-butt female given a prominant role in a comic book, and like me, Areala had red hair. I decided to use her name in my online interactions on the first MUD I played on, and as such it has carried over into more than a decade's usage on a variety of online games, discussion forums, UseNet, and other websites. I am not the only Areala out there, but I feel confident that I was the first since I started using it in 1995.
    Warrior Nun Areala is no longer being run as a comic series, but Ben Dunn and a number of other AP-affiliated artists still will draw her on commission. Dunn himself has a DeviantArt account under the name DogSupreme, and you can see some nifty illustrations of her there too.
    So that, ladies and gents, is where your Mod Raider gets her username from. For more information on Areala, you can read her character bio at the Comic Book Database, or check out the Warrior Nun Areala page at Wikipedia!
  23. Areala
    Spoiler Alert: This blog entry describes the plot and final battle of Super Metroid on the SNES. If you haven't played this game to completion and do not want the ending spoiled, you shouldn't read any further.
    I grew up gaming. One of my earliest memories, in fact, is of my father holding me up in front of a pinball machine (the Gorgar table) and helping me hit the buttons on the flippers so that I could bounce the silver ball around. I think I lasted all of about twenty seconds, but wow, what a great twenty seconds they were! I can also remember pulling up a chair so I could stand and watch him move the little yellow mouth around the maze, eating all those bright little dots and running from the ghosts in Pac-Man. Every so often, he would let me move the joystick, and again, I would last about 20 seconds. But again, what an awesome twenty seconds! Here was something that actually responded to me, a little three year old. I told Pac-Man to move left, and he went left. You've no idea how much that bit of control means to a child who has no control over anything else in her life. I was hooked.
    I'm not giving a history lesson, just a simple note that when I say I've been gaming pretty much my entire life, you know I'm not kidding. Joysticks and buttons are as familiar to me as my favorite Sesame Street characters were back in the day. So one would think that with nearly three decades of gaming under my belt, and so many great memories involving so many different games from so many different eras in gaming history that I'd have trouble picking out one game as the "best of all time". But this is not the case. Ask me what my favorite movie of all time is, and the answer is apt to change depending on what kind of mood I'm in. Ask what my favorite video game is though, and the answer has remained the same since 1993: Super Metroid.
    As far as I'm concerned, Super Metroid is sheer perfection that has yet to be matched by any platformer before or since. There have been great action games, great platformers, and great 2D side-scrollers, and many of them rank up there as my favorites. But Super Metroid exists, for me, as the single greatest shining achievement of video game design in history. Maybe later, I'll try and list out all the reasons why it has obliterated the competition even now, fifteen years after its original release. But this post is about the single most important reason in my mind: the battle with Mother Brain and the return of the baby Metroid.
    Super Metroid picks up immediately after the end of Metroid II: The Return of Samus for the Game Boy. At the end of that installment, Samus is witness to the birth of a Metroid hatchling, who imprints upon her as its mother. Not having the heart to wipe out the defenseless creature, Samus instead coaxes it into a stasis tube and delivers it to the scientists at Ceres Station, an orbital science facility where it can be studied to see if its propensity to drain the life energy from creatures can in some way be reversed. Just as Samus is leaving Ceres, however, she picks up a distress signal: the station is under attack, and she returns to find the place devoid of life save for the Metroid hatchling, and Ridley, one of Mother Brain's lieutenants who she assumed had perished in their original encounter. Ridley grabs the baby Metroid, and dashes off to Zebes with it while Samus hops into her ship and gives furious chase in the hopes that she can rescue it before it falls into the hands of Mother Brain.
    Mother Brain and Samus go way back to the original NES version, when Samus first invaded planet Zebes and blew up the Space Pirates' lair. In the end of Metroid, Samus smashes the protective enclosure around the Mother Brain (which literally is just that: a big brain) and proceeds to pump missile after missile into the overgrown cerebrum until it bursts in a fiery pyrotechnic display and she is forced to evacuate before the base goes up in flames. Did I mention she has to do this while dodging other creatures, avoiding incoming fire from gun turrets, while balanced precariously on small ledges and trying not to fall into the molten lava underneath said ledges? It's not a simple proposition.
    In Super Metroid, the designers bring back the small platforms, the gun turrets, the fire rings, and the big glass enclosure with the Mother Brain inside. And then, just when you think you've seen this all before, the real battle begins. The brain is revealed to be only part of an enormous creature, with eyes, arms, a mouth and legs. Mother Brain is no longer just some defenseless blob of grey matter: she's a fireball-spewing nightmare all her own, and she's just too much for Samus. A vicious laser attack saps Samus of nearly all of her power, leaving the bounty hunter kneeling weakly on the floor waiting for the final blow to come. Mother Brain charges up again, and you watch, helplessly, knowing that Samus is about to be vapourized and preparing to reach for the reset button to give it another go.
    Except that there's a slight change of plans. Before Mother Brain can unleash her laser, in swoops the largest Metroid you've ever seen, and with a speed borne of determination and single-minded purpose, the Metroid attaches itself to Mother Brain and begins to ferociously drain the boss of energy. Mother Brain wails and spits and cries out and thrashes, but the Metroid will not let go, and slowly but surely, Mother Brain ceases to move and collapses to the floor. Afterwards, the Metroid chirps, then flies over and attaches itself to Samus. But rather than finish off the wounded warrior, something completely different happens: the Metroid begins to pump energy back into Samus, filling her primary and reserve tanks slowly but surely. Baby Metroid has come to the defense of its "mother" and is gradually bringing her back to life.
    But all is not well. Mother Brain stirs. The eye opens. There's a hint of movement, a gutteral gurgle, and the monster that will not die begins to come back to life. And while Samus is defenseless, the Mother Brain is not concerned with her at the moment: she wants the Metroid. Over and over and over she attacks the hatchling as it continues to transfer its stored energy into Samus until finally, after it disengages, weak and near death, Mother Brain blows it out of midair in a vicious final attack that Samus can only watch helplessly unfold. The hatchling Metroid is dead, and in one brutal moment, the game has shattered the player's emotions forever. This is one of the few times in my life when I have actually yelled at the TV set: "NO!" Despite this terrible sacrifice, the game isn't over. Oh no. Now, you as the player are seeing red. There's an ass-kicking coming, and Samus gets to her feet to discover the tremendous overload of energy in her suit has translated into the ability to fire obscenely powerful blasts from her arm cannon. Mother Brain doesn't stand a chance, and the player gets to wipe the floor with the final boss almost with impunity.
    It's true, Mother Brain is one of the easiest final bosses in video game history. But at this point, the player doesn't care. She wants revenge, she wants it hard, brutal, and fast, and the game delivers that request in spades. When Mother Brain goes down for the count, there's no sense of remorse, no thought that maybe it could have ended differently. With the death of the hatchling, Mother Brain has assured herself of both Samus's and the player's undying wrath. The subsequent escape from the planet as it starts to implode upon itself is little more than an afterthought, a simple task for the player to perform post-smackdown and pre-ending sequence.
    The kind of game design required to tell a story like this with no dialogue, no FMV sequences, and virtually no text of any kind save for the opening sequence which just sets up the backstory from the first two games, is impossible to describe: it just happens through careful planning and execution. No other 2D sidescrolling platformer has ever been able to elicit this kind of emotional reaction from me, and very few other games in general have come anywhere close to it outside of the role-playing genre. Super Metroid stands head and shoulders above the competition in this regard, and it's why my first post about memorable fights had to be about a bounty hunter, an evil boss monster, and a little greenish, pulsating alien creature that rose above its station to become so much more.
    People talk about great games. Super Metroid rewrote what it meant to be a great game all the way back in 1993, and designers today are still working from its example. So when you ask me, "What's your favorite game of all time?" and I answer, "Super Metroid," the reasons should be a little more clear.
  24. Areala

    Another Nifty Easter Egg

    By Areala,

    The last Easter Egg-themed blog entry that I wrote was about the weirdest secret I had ever seen in a video game. This one isn't quite as bizarre, but it is a fun story that you may have heard before and in my opinion, is worth telling again.
    So, when was the last time you got to kill your own boss (without fear of legal repercussion)? The short answer for all of you is (hopefully) "Never." For the members of iD Software circa 1994, however, the answer was, "As often as we want to." It was originally intended as a gag, a trick played on John Romero by one of the artists. The final level of Doom II features an enormous demon that spawns other monsters and is indestructible save for rocket attacks against its exposed brain. Pump enough rockets into the brain, the demon dies, and you win the game.
    To achieve this effect, the programmers had to perform a bit of a workaround. The "giant demon" was really just a very large wall texture, with a hole on top, covered by another texture that appeared to be a large brain. Since they needed an object to be the target of attacks, because textures could not be designated as targets or have in-game stats such as hit points, they constructed a unique object behind the wall and just under the brain "hole". This object is what would get hit (by the rocket's splash damage), and when it was out of hit points, the game would play the ending animation of the large demon exploding, and skip to the closing story screen.
    Originally, the object was just a large yellow circle; it didn't matter what it was, because the player was never going to see it, since it was hidden behind the wall. However, one of the jokers at iD at one point replaced the skin of the big yellow circle with a sprite of John Romero's severed head on a stick. The prankster even gave it two different states: one for not taking damage, where it looked normal, and a second for when it takes the damage, where it appears to be screaming in pain. The joke was supposed to be that Romero wouldn't know it had been done until after the game had been pressed and shipped, where it would afterwards be revealed to him as the ultimate joke: in order to beat Doom II, the player literally killed John Romero.
    As luck would have it, however, Romero needed to tweak the sound code for what was played when the object behind the wall was struck. When he booted up the level, he put in the no clipping code which allowed him to walk through the walls, and about did a double-take when he came face to face with his reflection. Figuring out that one of the game artists was playing a prank on him, he decided that he wouldn't let on, but would instead throw it back in their faces, so that when they played the finished version, the joke would be on them. He went to Bobby Prince, the music composer, told him what had happened, and had him record Romero saying, "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero!" Prince then tweaked it to sound very low and dark, and reversed the sound sample so that it was completely unintelligible. He gave the sample to Romero, who went back to the game code and inserted it to be played as soon as the player entered the final level of the game. It was going to be their little joke, and the two of them would have the last laugh on the people who thought they were putting one over on their boss.
    But of course, the story isn't as funny if someone else doesn't find out what's going on. Enter American McGee, a level designer who wanted to make sure everything was working properly in the last level. The next day, McGee warped himself to the final level of the game, and as soon as he heard the sound sample, he recognized it as backwards masking, grabbed it, reversed it, and discovered the joke. Neither side got the final laugh of having the game go gold with the other party unknowingly mocked, but both sides were gracious enough not to just remove the offending material, and the final jokes of Doom II are still with us to this day. Given the number of avid Doomers over the years, it stands to reason that John Romero is probably the single most-murdered game developer in history.
    And you thought your boss had it rough.
  25. Areala
    Here's the situation: you've been anticipating a title for months. The hype has been extraordinary, the press coverage relentless, the previews have all been favourable, and you, by golly, have just got to have it. So you went to the local shop where you satisfy your gaming itch, picked up your very own copy, got home, threw it into your system, and...
    ...boy did it suck.
    Seriously, you think to yourself, what the hell were they thinking? Then, you turn the blame inwards. What the hell were you thinking? It's not the first time it's happened either. You're a gamer. You're smarter than this. Where did everything go wrong? And more importantly, now that it has, what are you going to do about it?
    I'm so glad you asked. Because while buying a crappy game sucks, there are often a number of things you can do to either completely or partially salvage the situation, and that's the purpose of this blog.
    First and foremost, let's be realistic: I'm not in any way, shape, or form claiming that crappy, unplayable games don't exist. They do. By the thousands of titles. Shovelware is, sadly, a fact of life, and no blog post or editorial will ever change that fact. Secondly, let's continue to be realistic and say that if you are a PC gamer, you are generally out of luck. Thanks to modern-day DRM practices, issues with licensing codes and digital distribution mediums such as Steam, generally speaking, you are out of luck both in terms of trying to return it (most stores only exchange for like titles, and you cannot return software purchased via digital distribution) and in terms of trying to resell it or give it to someone else. For that reason, the following ideas will apply more to console games as opposed to PC titles. With that out of the way, let's get to the meat.
    The single best way you can avoid this feeling is by being truly realistic about a game in the first place. Even if every website and press outlet in the world is heralding "The King of Street Kombat VI: Special 'Your Mother' Hyper Edition" as the Second Coming, keep your expectations in check. If you aren't a fan of fighting games, chances are that even the best one on the planet isn't going to change your mind. And even if you are a fan of that genre, there could still be things about it that don't strike your fancy. So be realistic, and even when the reviewers are handing out 10s like crack dealers giving out free samples, keep your expectations in check. Expect a good game, and you can be surprised when you get a great game. Expect a great game, and you can be disappointed when you get "only" a good game.
    An obvious workaround in every situation is to never purchase a game before you've rented it, but this isn't always feasible. The newest titles are always the hottest titles, and unless your local rental establishments stock thirty or forty copies of the game at a time (and most don't), the chances of you being able to try before you buy on something new is minimal at best. Waiting can sometimes work in your favour, but if the game is truly sought-after, it can be a frustrating gamble even after a few months to find an available copy at Blockbuster. Also, renting games can be expensive. Renting ten games at five dollars a title means that you've just forked out $50 that you could have used to buy another game. If you're so hardcore that you can beat every game you rent in 3-5 days, then you're saving money. If you're mostly into RPGs that have 80+ hours of gameplay, you're not going to be able to use this route. Renting isn't for everybody, so this is a personal decision you'll have to make for yourselves.
    OK, so your expectations were firmly in check, you bought the game, and it still sucks. Now what? Well, first and foremost, it may not be the most exciting thing to do, but read the instructions. Yeah, I know, I know, the instructions are for sissies and your momma didn't raise no sissy. I don't care: read the damn book, nancy-boy. You'd be amazed at how often this provides results that turn an unplayable game into an enjoyable experience once you realize that there are control options and moves that you didn't realize existed. There may be ways to lower or raise the difficulty level to your tastes, reconfigure the controller options to something you are more comfortable with, and notes of abilities that the in-game tutorials (if they exist) may not explain adequately enough. Imagine finding out that the button you thought was useless at first because it didn't do anything when you pressed it wasn't doing anything because you weren't currently in combat or weren't fulfilling some condition that allowed the button to do its job? Maybe that "unplayable" game with the "unfair" enemy AI gets a lot easier once you realize that you can take cover behind an obstacle and blindfire from there. But you didn't know that because you didn't read the instructions. Now you can go online and pop all the nancy-boys who didn't read the instructions. Feels good, doesn't it?
    Well, what happens if you read the instructions and they don't answer all of your questions? That's OK, it happens. All is not lost. If you're playing a PC game, the first thing you should do is look for a patch. These days, it's almost an anomaly if a commercial title doesn't have a patch for a game within days (or even before) the game releases. If you're playing on a modern console, (PS3, 360, etc...) hook your system up to the internet and see if the game downloads an update. If this happens, try playing the game again and see if anything has changed. Maybe those controls that sucked before were fixed by the patch, or the difficulty was toned down and you only have to face one Giant Mutant Lettuce at the end of the first level instead of two.
    No patch available, or the update didn't solve your problems? Take another look at what, specifically, you don't like about the game and see if maybe you can look at it differently. Understand that often times, sequels of games can do things differently than earlier titles because of new features that developers add or a different engine being used. I personally experienced this problem with the second Mercenaries game. The original Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is one of my favorite games of all time. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames does things an awful lot differently from the first game. But instead of trying to play and enjoy it as a completely different title, I was attempting to play it as "Playground of Destruction with prettier graphics." This was a losing proposition, because Mercenaries 2 is not the original Mercenaries. Once I got that through my head and started playing Mercenaries 2 as its own game, I still found some things that annoyed me, but nothing that was truly game-breaking in terms of making me want to get rid of it. This won't always be the case, but if you can re-adjust your views, you will sometimes find that you can salvage a game that you originally thought of as unplayable.
    Let's assume you just can't salvage it though. It's not a sequel, you had no preconceived notions, and the patch only added trophy support. It's time to get a second opinion. Find a friend who likes the kinds of games that you like and invite them over to play it while you watch, or watch while you are playing. Another pair of eyes can often help you spot deficiencies in your own personal playing style that you overlook, or give you assistance in solving puzzles. Give your buddy the controller and watch how he or she goes about playing the game and adjusting to the situations that arise. If your friend can put a new spin on things ("Hey, I never thought to use a grenade like that..."), then all is not lost. Try incorporating that playing style next time you give the game a go and see if maybe your experience changes. If you can't find a buddy to play with, you can always try going online with games that offer that as a feature and observing how the other players do things, especially in a cooperative game like the co-op campaign in Resistance 2. If the game doesn't offer online play, or only offers it for deathmatch style and you're more interested in learning the single-player ropes, head over to YouTube and look for anybody who is making "Let's Play..." or "Walkthrough" videos for the game in question and watch them play a level or two. Many gamers run commentary as they play, either by voice or through captions, that explain what they are doing and why they are doing it so look for those and give the game another shot once you've picked up some tips.
    Maybe all of this isn't your cup of tea though. Let's assume that the game really is terrible. In fact, it's so awful you just cannot imagine how it ever got out of the studio in the first place. Now it's time to call over your friends, but for a completely different reason. If the game sucks, you might as well get a few hours' worth of enjoyment out of how bad it truly is. "Dude, you cannot believe how bad this game is...you've gotta see it for yourself." Words of magic to any gamer's ear. Get the gang together, haul out the pizza and Mountain Dew, and have an hour or two of enjoyment playing to see just how badly one of you can suck ("You know, I never saw Scott the whole time we were playing that death match." "Yeah, I think he fell in the lava at the beginning..."), or how cheesy the voice acting is, or how terrible the AI is programmed, or anything else you can get a laugh out of. Sure, it won't get you your sixty bucks back, but time spent laughing with friends is time well-spent any day of the week.
    But now you really, really don't want the game. If you purchased it new, or from a place like Wal-Mart, chances are you're out of luck. Many places won't accept opened software or video games for a refund, even with a receipt. Most big box stores will only go so far as letting you trade the game for a copy of the same game, which prevents you from getting stuck with a defective product, but that's about all they are in for. Video game chain stores such as GameStop and the like, usually will let you return the game within seven days, but again only for a like title. If you don't want it, they'll still buy it back from you, but you won't get back anywhere near what you paid for it, and even less if you opt for money instead of store credit. Any way you look at it, you're going to get boned, and it'll suck. The best thing you can do is chalk it up to experience, try not to dwell on it, and look around for something good to play while you work through your frustrations. If the game sucked for you because it was too simple, see if you could instead sell or trade it to a friend for a game they thought was too hard or have already beaten, or use it as a birthday gift for a younger gamer who may not be as elite as you are (keep in mind the ratings...just because you are 25 and can play Virtual Criminal Simulator: Icepick Sociopath without giving yourself nightmares doesn't mean that your 12-year old cousin can, and his mommy and daddy might not be terribly pleased with your choice of gift). Another perfectly acceptable option with most titles is to try and resell them yourself on the internet via eBay, Amazon, or some other auction site. Selling a brand new, hot game for $10-15 below the retail price is a great way to recoup nearly all of your investment in cash, and it's a lot easier to suck down a $10 loss on a game than it is to stomach a $30+ one.
    If you purchased the game used, your choices are usually a lot better. Places that deal in used merchandise almost always have return policies that allow you to bring the game back, for any reason, and receive a full refund, if not in cash then at least for full value in store credit. You did keep your receipt, right...? If you didn't, you're hosed. If you were smart though, pretty much every store will take it back and at the very least let you apply the purchase price towards something else. So maybe Murderzone 2 didn't quite life up to the hype, but when you bought it you were deciding between that and Silent Space. Give the other one a go and see what happens. In gaming terms, you're just burning an extra life, and it's not the end of the world.
    Lastly, there is one final option...you can go nuclear. Maybe this game sucked so badly that you are willing to eat the money you spent on it just so that nobody else will be stuck with your copy of it. In your mind, $40 is an acceptable price to pay for not inflicting this torment on another soul. If that's the case, then all the rules go out the window, and it's time to lay the smackdown on the game itself. But don't just throw it away. C'mon, you're more hardcore than that. Just tossing a game in the ol' circular file is the n00b's path. Pwn that sucker in style! Gather the group and make an event out of it: build a sacrificial bonfire, see how many times you can drive over it with your car or bike before it breaks, drag out the pliars and blowtorch, see if you can train your dog to retrieve it as a flying disc, put it in the microwave and watch all the pretty blue fireworks, incorporate it into your Backyard Wrestling routine somehow (not recommended or endorsed by myself or this website!), execute it in effigy in front of the developer's or publisher's studios (only works for locally-produced games, but make sure somebody's got the camera for a post-execution YouTube upload), Zerg Rush (use your imagination), or have it die the death of 1,000 cuts where each of you takes a turn scratching the disc in some minimal fashion and see how many rounds it takes before the game can no longer boot up in your system. Whatever method you choose to dispose of your craptacular purchase, make sure that there's no alcohol involved unless you are over 21, no fires involved unless you are over 18 or have adult supervision, and nothing but the game gets the crap beat out of it in the end.
    Buying a crappy game sucks. There's no two ways about it. But it's something that even the most cautious gamer will experience at least once in his or her lifetime. When you do, just keep in mind that it doesn't have to be the end of the world and it can still be the catalyst for some great future stories and memories. Who knows...it might not turn out to be as bad as you originally thought. And that's the best outcome of them all!
    *huggles*
    Areala
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