The Past and Times of Yore: Star Wars - TIE Fighter: Collector's CD-ROM, For the Emperor!

Release date: July 1994
Genre: Space Simulation 
Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: Totally Games
Platforms: Windows and Mac
Modes: Single Player only

When I was younger I played the much loved Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (XvT) though due to a lack of story mode I couldn’t really get into it, I recall just doing the tutorial missions again and again as when I tried the other missions etc it was just too complicated. The problem was that I was starting off one of the most beloved Star Wars game series with a game that was (initially) conceived as a multiplayer-focused version of the first two games, and indeed it was a mishmash of different training exercises, “furballs” and only two “battles” that can’t technically be called Campaigns because they follow no chronological order. I had a vague understanding of the other games in the X-wing series but hadn’t made any particular effort to go back to them as I’m not really fond of flight sims, it was only many years later when I saw my housemate watching some videos of the original X-wing that I got interested again. X-Wing had a storyline as you are actively involved in a number of key battles before, during and after the Battle of Yavin.

X-Wing vs Tie Fighter basic gunnery training, ah the memories

My housemate recommended we purchase our star wars games from the Good Old Games (GoG) which I had not actually heard of at the time. GoG specializes in old games of course and they are different from Steam in the fact that when you purchase from GoG technically you own the game as you download the files and  play using the executable file without using any other program, whereas a game purchased on steam must be played through Steam itself, sort of like a jukebox. I couldn’t actually handle the freedom of GoG i.e. I couldn’t just put the icons on the desktop could I? it would be too messy, so I downloaded GoG Galaxy which is GoG’s own gaming client which is actually pretty cool. It allows you to revert back to a previous version of the game easily, which is a very good feature that Steam does not have. 

Anyway GoG had their usual “May the 4th be with You” sale of all of their classic Star Wars games and I got quite a haul with the following:

TIE Fighter Collector's CD (1995)
X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
X-Wing Alliance™
Rogue Squadron 3D
Star Wars Starfighter™
Republic Commando
Empire at War: Gold Pack
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - Mysteries of the Sith
Jedi Knight™ II - Jedi Outcast™
Star Wars™: Jedi Knight™ - Jedi Academy™
Knights of the Old Republic
Knights of the Old Republic™ II: The Sith Lords™
STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II (Classic, 2005)

Rogue Squadron 3D, originally on the Nintendo 64

And the original Dark Forces which I have previously reviewed, though Tie Fighter was the first I wanted to try. There was then the issue about how to control the game, as you know this would be nothing less than a joystick, I still had my almost 10 year old joystick though without a USB port that thing wasn’t gonna fly so Brok and both chose our joysticks of choice. Being a Logitech fan I went with the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro as it was nice and cheap and suited my needs, Brok being a lefty when it came to joysticks opted for the Thrustmaster T16000M (the names these things have... I know) being an ambidextrous joystick.

The Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, no fuss functionality

So there we were, we had our games and our sticks it was time to get it on, I would have liked to start with X-Wing but Tie Fighter was already released earlier then XvT and X-Wing before that so it was the most basic one and I didn’t want to go that far, plus Brok said that If I played any of them again Tie Fighter would be the one, and so I did. 1994 was a big year for gaming indeed and it’s only fitting that what is possibly the best starfighter game LucasArts ever developed would come out in the same year as classics like Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid, Doom II and the very first Warcraft game, Orcs and Humans. The version of Tie Fighter was the Collector's CD-ROM Edition which was a re-release of the original game which came out in 1994 and it included the Defender of the Empire and the Completely new Enemies of the Empire Expansions.

Whee Tie Fighter!

From the very moment you enter the game you feel nostalgic with the the 8-bit theme music, speaking of which, it’s the only Star Wars game which does not feature the Star Wars main theme in the title crawl, instead using the classic Imperial March theme which is a cool difference. You get to see the Emperor, Darth Vader and the might of the Empire in all of its glory before you seemingly wake up in front of a man at a very tall desk and with a rather brusque tone asks you to “identify yourself pilot!” which is where you create your profile, well at least the stormtroopers stand at attention when you walk in not before aiming their guns at you if you try to do this before registering.

The game intro and one of the in-game missions, I'm flying an assault gunboat in this one.

Tie Fighter had some innovative features for its time, the menu screen was a concourse inside the Star Destroyer Vengeance and you moved your mouse around the various doors to access the menu options. Among these options was the Tech Room where you could view the technical specifications of every craft available in the game which I remember from X-wing vs Tie Fighter. There was also the ‘Film Room’ as the game had a camera capture feature which allowed you to record your flights and view your missions and amazingly jump into them and play at any time which was pretty cool for back then. Setting up the controls wasn’t too hard as you could map everything through the dosbox interface, though I only mapped controls to the immediate buttons on the stick itself I didn’t do any for the controls on the bottom as it was far easier to just remember the keyboard commands as I had the joystick set up on my mousepad with my mouse on the desk and used my left hand for keyboard commands, Brok did it this way and It worked much better then when I tried to only use all the buttons on the joystick base. I think the only other joystick controls I used apart from the trigger to fire were to target any attackers, target incoming missiles and spin my craft around so I was right way up.

The ship's concourse which acts as a menu

Then it was time for the training simulator which I thought was the best choice for starting out. And it was, I became proficient at maneuvering the various fighters though that circular obstacle course that got more complicated with every few laps and shooting those yellow balls for more time. I then tried the combat chamber where you flew your selected craft in different scenarios with some based on historical events, I did actually end up doing them all for every craft which I probably shouldn’t have as I forgot that this version included the expansion and I technically wasn’t going to fly things like Tie Defenders for a while so I got to experience the newer craft in the simulations which I thought was fine hah. Your choice of craft go from TIE Fighter, Bomber, Interceptor, Advanced, Defender, Assault Gunboat, and Missile Boat.  It’s remarkably simple flying a Tie Fighter, there are no shields, no advanced missiles, no beam weapons, it’s almost scary, just your lasers and missiles and flight expertise most of the time, I would have liked to stay with it for most of the game but I found that for most of it you were in the more advanced fighters unsurprisingly but I did get sick of being in an assault gunboat or missile boat. I’m still not exactly sure which is my favourite but it’s possibly still the Tie Advanced with the Tie Defender coming in second.

Tie Fighter Combat Chamber mission 2, oh it was damn simple back then

So after all the training it was time for the real thing, the Tours of Duty! Oh yes we’re getting canonical now and boy I was excited to take part in the historical battles. Of course before you get into the flying you go through the “New Battle” door and choose your first “battle” or “tour of duty” Tour of Duty I: Aftermath of Hoth and then go into the briefing room for your first mission Patrol Jump Point D-34 (Holy shit! Jump Point D-34 I can’t wait!) and there was another one in third tour of duty simply titled “Hold Position” (FUUUAAARR!)  The missions actually have a more exciting name in the wiki “Skirmish at Outpost D-34” and “Second Battle of the Pakuuni system” respectively and I can assure you in none of these missions does everything go exactly to plan or I’d have to start taking shots at friendly ships seeing how much I could piss off the Flight Officer. Speaking of which, you have various options in the briefing room, you can view the mission briefing, you can talk to your flight officer about the mission or speak to a mysterious figure who is actually an envoy of the Emperor, and he gives you hints for bonus objectives in the mission. Then that’s pretty much it, you choose your armaments (missiles, beam weapons) then launch.

Your flight officer near the briefing screen and the masked figure hiding in the back there.

Having played XvT before and practiced on it recently I didn’t have much trouble setting up the controls, I had basically just configured them through the dosbox setup to use the joystick buttons and only used about 3 or 4 of them. The trigger to fire of course and the thumb button to “roll” the craft around to the right way up, the rest were to target nearest fighter and nearest warhead and the hat was for looking around though I never really used them most of the time I just had the joystick on the mousepad and used my left hand for the keyboard controls which worked fine.

Oh no, not those pesky A-wings, this was before they had the red paintjob.

The improvements over X-wing are numerous, the most obvious improvement was the graphics which were much improved and the game engine supported much larger numbers of craft in the missions and higher detail and much more smoothly, the AI was also improved allowing for more challenging opponents. There were many more flight options added like flight dialogue and messages, a message log, a list of objectives, ships' status and behavior, three-dimensional map, and HUD, a sub-target system and other additions such as an option to choose armaments before flying. I swear I took these things for granted as I had started with XvT and watching my housemate play X-Wing just reminded me more of how I didn’t want to start with it hah, the HUD was heaps better as it had a 3D rending of the target craft with stats on their shields, hull, distance etc and you also now had a button to attempt to match speed with the target which helped a lot to stop you crashing into slower craft which I almost did many times trying to take them down (we all know the feeling, just one more lasercannon blast!)

About 3 minutes in I have a squizz at the interactive map, Imperials are red, rebels are green and neutral are usually blue or pink

The initial missions were fairly easy as the craft you were fairly simple (Tie Fighter, Bomber and Interceptor) The storyline was basically the events from the Battle of Hoth to the Battle of Endor though you do not have any direct involvement in each, in fact for many of the missions of the storyline you are fighting off pirates and Imperial defectors such as Admiral Harkov and Zaarin in the Zaarin Insurrection instead of the Rebel Alliance itself though you still fight them on occasion. The game maintains that you are playing as yourself never calling you by any name, the canonical pilot for the game is Maarek Stele an ace imperial pilot whose plight is written in The Stele Chronicles which actually came with the game itself similar to The Farlander Papers that shipped with X-Wing.

Vice Admiral Thrawn from the opening cinematic

I didn’t have much trouble doing most of the missions, just look at the mission briefing, talk to the cloaked figure, check the mission objectives and then go at it, I made myself familiar with the shield, cannon and beam weapon recharge rate and dumped energy into one or the other before the action started. The missions objectives vary from attack this and defend that to more involved things like inspecting and using tractor beams to stop fleeing craft. Objectives sometimes change whilst in the midst of playing: new friendly/enemy craft leave or show up, things get destroyed, people defect mid battle even, I tell you what I press G (the button to show your goals) a lot during a mission. Some of the most difficult missions involve safeguarding a friendly ship which were often very fragile and would be destroyed in a direct assault so you had to keep an eye on them at all times often destroying any threatening craft before they got close enough to launch missiles, I got stuck on a mission like this where I had to defend a freighter while being harangued by a Tie Advanced but apparently I got past it and I’m not sure how. I was up to the last tour of duty before Enemies of the Empire but by then I’d had enough.

New craft alert!

After the mission you can meet with your flight officer and debrief, and then that’s basically it, you go from different battles and the missions in between. There are a small amount of cutscenes to show the storyline and some awards ceremonies showing the medals you receive, the story is actually quite good with the betrayal storylines but then again I’m going from XvT which was basically just a big multiplayer combat sim. You can also speak to the cloaked figure again who after completing enough bonus objectives initiates you into the Secret Order of the Emperor and the more bonus missions you complete the more you gain rank and title in the order though it doesn’t give you anything special apart from an an arm tattoo. In the options menu you can see the medals you have earned, training certificates and gameplay records such as scores and hit rates, you can also see your arm on the left of the screen and when you roll your mouse over you can see how far you have progressed in the secret order of the emperor from the complexity of your tattoo. You change the difficulty level and other settings whenever you like too which is helpful as if you were having trouble with a mission you can change the difficulty to easily to get past it then change back.

Medals, Records and options viewing screen

The graphics although primitive looking now were very nice for back in 1994 and they run nice and smooth on modern machines so the dosbox conversion was done well, pretty much everything has been updated from X-wing, the ships look better, the environment looks better (well it is just space but it still looks looks good) the graphics system supported Gouraud shading which apparently is an effect that makes curves of low polygon objects appear more realistic. I can’t really say much apart from that as I didn’t play X-Wing only XvT in which the major new graphical feature were the  feature were the textured ships. But from what I can see from X-wing anyway the graphics are better on Tie Fighter, the game runs smoother and sort of has this timeless feel like Super Mario World and Yoshi’s island have. I think there was something different about pc graphics compared to console graphics in the 90’s as I was mostly playing console back then and from experiencing the transition from 2D to 3D on consoles (Super Nintendo to Playstation in my case) I think the PC just did it better.

Beautifully rendered Star Destroyer there

 The music of course is one of the best things about a Star Wars game and I don’t need to tell you that taking part in hectic battles with the Star Wars official soundtrack blaring is amazing. The good thing about the X-Wing and Tie Fighter is that they use the iMuse music system which basically is a system that changes the music depending on the events of the game, for example, new ships entering the battlefield, a change in objectives, a craft being destroyed, a mission being complete or simply just going quiet when there is nothing happening at the time. XvT didn’t have this system it just played the music consistently so I could really tell the difference between the soundtrack and it sounds so so much better and  I wish most games had this feature, in fact SWTOR has it to an extent when certain events or player abilities are triggered while in game. The audio was as clear you could expect with the speech being able to be heard absolutely fine and the voice acting done well. You can’t exactly hear everything that goes on in the battle as you are inside your star fighter in space so you mostly only hear your own activity unless you are being shot at or ships are shooting near you but it’s still great.

I have no idea what I'm doing at this point, you can hear the music change when I fail the mission

I’m not exactly a big fan of fight sims, or space flight sims I guess if you can call them that, but Tie Fighter isn’t quite that. At the start you are a bit daunted about all of the controls and functions of your craft (especially the later ones) and all the targeting and wingman orders and recharge rates and HUD information etc but it’s easy to pick up and pretty soon becomes second nature. I’m glad I played Tie Fighter though I didn’t quite get all of the way through up to Tour of Duty X if I remember correctly though that was far enough as I’d done pretty much everything I could in the game. Tie Fighter is one of those games that true classic gamers remember and get all nostalgic when talking about it, I certainly do but it’s for a slightly different game. Anyway it’s currently on Good Old Games but it’s best to pick it up on the May the Fourth sales that happen every year, if you’re a Star Wars fan or a fan of Flight sims or even if you’re not it’s still well worth a go. I remember sometimes going back and playing old games and just being underwhelmed with the magic of it seemingly gone, not so with Tie Fighter, nostalgia is rarely this good.

JD

External view is quite nice sometimes, though you can't swing the camera around yourself

Fighting for the Empire gives me a strange sense of purpose and righteousness

The Past and Times of Yore - Doom 64: The horrifiying last chapter of the original Doom series

Release date: December 2, 1997
Genre: First-person shooter
Publisher: Midway Games
Developer: Midway Games
Engine: id Tech 1
Platforms: Nintendo 64
Modes: Single-player

Yes I know what you’re thinking, another Doom game review? I understand your concern as I have been playing a lot of Doom lately, the reason for this is that I have decided to play through all of the Doom Games first (Including Doom 3 before starting on the latest Doom (2016) though I have already tried out the multiplayer for that one.

Hell is glorious is it not?

I didn’t know there was a Doom 64 until recently, at first I thought it was just a port of Ultimate Doom or Doom 1 or 2 on their own. I gained a lot more interest in finding out that it was actually a new game created by Midway Games (who actually created some of the Mortal Kombat games on the SNES) with supervision from id Software, the game runs on a modified version of the Doom engine which brought a wealth of new features. These features included new sprites, textures, scrolling skies, limited room-over-room architecture, Scripted events, Tripwire booby traps, from poison darts to homing fireballs and more advanced atmospheric colored lighting and effects, such as parallaxing skies, fog, and lightning. The enemies received a makeover with most looking and acting different with rendered 3D modelling being used, most of the monsters from the previous games made a return with the exception of commandos, arch-viles, Spider MasterMind and revenants which were cut due to the limited storage capacity of Nintendo 64 cartridges.

The "Terror Core" level which is a good view into Doom 64

There were only two new monsters which were the Nightmare imp which was a faster version of the regular imp and was also translucent similar to the Spectre and the Mother Demon which is the mysterious final boss of the game meant to replace the Icon of Sin. All weapons from Doom II are present (albeit redrawn), along with a new demonic weapon made of demon bones known as the Unmaker  which according to the Doom Bible is  a “Demon-tech weapon that hurts pure demons a lot, demon-humans very little and tech demons some”. There is also sequences which dramatically transform areas, tripwire booby traps such as darts and homing fireball launchers, and enemies that appear out of thin air, man I seriously couldn’t work out where the projectiles were coming from when I first encountered them.

Nightmare Imps are damn fast

Doom 64 has a more horror-based atmosphere than the science fiction-oriented one seen in earlier games, including darker and more foreboding color schemes used to increase a sense of fear in the player. Indeed this version of Doom was much scarier than the previous games, the new soundtrack was darker and scarier and the satanic imagery was more extensively used. Traditionally the Doom series has started in technological areas such as space stations and planetary bases before going into Hell itself but this time everything seemed scarier, the music was a far cry to the dull midi-techno-boppey tunes of the first levels of Doom and Doom 2 and looking at those again they just look comical compared to the horror that is Doom 64.

I had a lot of fun with this level, there's a lot of noise and shooting going on but the echoing sounds effects and ghastly soundtrack are unbelievable. Also I think I missed the last enemy there but meh.

The story of Doom 64 is nothing new with the forces of Hell trying to invade Earth once again but this time you don’t fight on Earth just the old Deimos and Phobos bases and Hell itself but this times SPOILERS the ending text states that the Marine accepts his fate of eternal confrontation with demons and decides to close the gateway between Hell and our universe from inside, thereby staying in Hell forever to prevent any further invasions once and for all. Which actually created some speculation that the protagonist from the Doom 2016 reboot is the same marine as he is described in the game as an ancient/superhuman warrior that was either banished to hell or chose to stay there and was captured by Hell's forces and sealed in a tomb. There’s no evidence to support this but I like to think this was the case as it makes a lot of sense though Doom 3 will still be next in my list before I can finally play the latest one.

Time to fist some Demons

I must admit I did not play the game on the Nintendo 64 not having the cartridge myself.  I played on PC using the Doom64EX modification which allowed you to play Doom 64 on PC with newer control methods like mouse look, high resolutions and color depth using the original .ROM file. This is somewhat similar to the Skulltag Mod for the original Doom and the DarkXL mod for Star Wars Dark Forces. Though after playing through a few levels I actually found out that the infamous Sergeant Mark IV had created Brutal Doom 64 which had all the goodness from the original Brutal Doom mod and brought it into Doom 64. Changes included the usual overhauling the graphics also adding much more detailed gore effects of course and also new weapons were added including the assault rifle and grenade launcher.

Ah the trusty assault rifle, much better then that useless pistol.

One of the main changes was the addition of all of the content cut from the original game due to the Nintendo 64’s limited Cartridge space, this included the Revenant, Chaingunguy and Spider Mastermind enemies. There was also a new enemy called the Hellhound which is a sort of two-headed dog beast similar to Cerberus of Greek mythology though Cerberus had three heads, the Hellhound is quite fast and shoots fireballs so it’s a formidable foe. The levels have been revamped featuring new decorations, lightning system, fog, light shafts, etc, techbase levels were optimised to have better navigation, new ambient sounds, more security cameras to remove the need of "switch hunting", and having some parts of the levels remade to look like a more plausible place. The Hell levels were also upgraded with new ambient sounds, and more disturbing imagery. 

The Hellhound spewing fireballs from it's two maws

As before you can choose to play with the classic old school gameplay or the tactical gameplay that has an assault rifle and all the weapons deal more damage but need to be reloaded, the tactical gameplay mode also has a ‘fatigue’ number that limits your sprinting which is annoying but makes it a bit more realistic I guess. The chainsaw in Doom 64 is now twin bladed and for some reason in the Brutal Doom 64 it now has “ammo” which I guess is “fuel” or maybe replacement chains I don’t know, I really had no idea even when finishing the game how I picked up more ammo for it, but anyway I think it packed more power than the original chainsaw, it was also useful for the nightmare imps and spectres as they were so goddamn fast you just waited around a corner for them to get close then let er rip. 

I tear it up then get confused by switches in The Lair, one of the secret levels

And so I started the game again with much better visuals and gameplay, this time I don’t think I even bothered trying it without godmode on as it just takes ages and gets too hard. I made sure I checked out all of the secret levels and managed to both get to them and  do most of them without needing to use IDCLIP though the first secret level MAP29: Outpost Omega was kind of complicated the way it worked but I managed to get through them all and collected the Demon Keys which upgrade the Unmaker. This new weapon is also found in the secret levels and man after being ‘fully upgraded’ this thing does some damage, you can take down Hell knights and Cyberdemons with ease, best new weapon in the game.

The Unmaker, now that's what I call being "Unmade"

As I mentioned before compared with the other Doom games, Doom 64 is hella scary which is odd because the Nintendo 64 was regarded as a kids console. The level design, the sights, the sounds and especially the music is dark, foreboding and to be honest makes the game pretty depressing to play, there’s quite a lot of satanic imagery around as well as dead marine bodies though it’s not quite as horrific as the Hell on Earth Starter Pack it was still pretty bad. The Brutal mod for the Doom 64 version is bit more subdued as it does not include fatalities and executions, Sergeant Mark IV addressed this himself saying that unlike the original Brutal Doom, this version is focused on making it as much as disturbing, horror and survival-oriented possible with a much more serious tone, So there won't be such over-the-top stuff. This was good as Doom 64 works well as this kind of game compared to the basic violence of the original Doom and over-the-top gore of the Brutal Doom mod.

This was an area where I first experienced an environmental trap, the blocks in the sky periodically unleash homing fireballs at you, and I was so confused the first time, also wow look at those braziers.

There is a very small storyline to the game, from the very vague introduction in the manual you can glean that after the events of Doom II the old Phobos and Deimos bases have been sealed off due to apocalyptic levels of radiation though the UAC is still monitoring the stations from earth when the receive a very disturbing last message, apparently the hordes of Hell have been revived by the Mother Demon. Doom 64 has 32 maps in total as per usual for Megawad The start of the game is indeed in the planetary tech bases but that is only for the first 9 levels and the rest are set in Hell itself yet again. And Hell has never looked scarier especially with the better resolution, sharper textures and enhanced lighting effects plus a killer soundtrack what’s not to like?

Ahh good old Brutal Doom, this is on the lowest gore setting "realistic" by the way

I never though Doom 64 would be like this, as I said before I wasn’t aware there was a Doom game for the Nintendo 64 and when I found out about it I thought it would just be a port of the older games not this amazing scary great looking whole new thing. The level design isn’t too much of a deviation from the original games though some of the secret levels and ways of getting there were overly complicated, I was glad the was a Brutal version made for the game that included all of the cut content as playing Doom without monsters like the Spider Mastermind and the Revenant and I highly recommend you play it on PC with the mod. Doom 64 was Doom done right and I’m glad that I have finally experienced it, even if it’s wasn’t on the Nintendo 64 itself.

JD

Another secret level, MAP31: The Void, and it was indeed, a level with nothing underneath, and a confusing one at that.

Things I liked:

Great atmosphere, darker and scarier then the original

Good looking improved graphics including monster and weapon models

Includes new enemies

Things I didn’t like:

Finding Secret levels and the Demon keys inside them were often overly complicated.

Unless playing on PC with the Brutal Doom mod the game does not include several enemies due to N64 cartridge space limitations

The Brutal Doom 64 v1 Trailer

Hell hath never been this scary

The Past and Times of Yore - Saints Row 2 (PC): A mediocre console port made better by the modding community

Release date: October 10, 2008 (Console)
February 3, 2009 (Windows) 
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Volition Inc, CD Projekt (Windows)
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Modes: Singleplayer Only

Saints Row, I cannot seem to get enough of it, it was a a while ago now that I saw the whole series on Steam sale and thought “Why not”? I enjoyed the Third installment, why not play the 4^th and the rest of them legit? and so I did, albeit out of order. After playing the excellent Saints Row The Third and the insane Saints Row IV I was ready for more Saints Row but instead of going to Gat out of Hell I thought I would go back to the beginning. Though technically I couldn’t exactly go directly back to the beginning, the original Saints Row was on Xbox only, and although I do have access to an Xbox I really couldn’t be bothered buying the disc. So I decided to play Saints Row 2 which was apparently supposed to be the best one of the series and I admit I wasn’t disappointed but I wasn’t at all blown away either.

Just runnin' down the hood with my shotty

The first thing I noticed about the game as it was similar to Saints Row 3, creating your character in Saints Row 2 was supposed to be better than 3 but it wasn’t really there was about the same level of customization, I made my character pretty basic as usual, I don’t go all crazy as it looks ridiculous and having a fitting protagonist works much better then someone dressed as Ronald Mcdonald. Saints Row 3 had 4 different male voices for the protagonist, a white, black, hispanic and of course Nolan North with his cockney British accent, He is the only one named for some reason possibly because he’s a famous voice actor who has portrayed characters such as Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series, Desmond Miles from the Assassin's Creed series, in Saints Row 3 he put on a cockney British accent not that I played the whole game with it I used the base white male voice which had an American accent which I think suited much better. Saints Row 2 had only Nolan North as the supposed white male voice actor so I couldn’t have the voice I had for Saints Row 3 and 4, though this wasn’t too bad as it was fun to hear ‘Nolan’ cockney mouth his way through the film.

"The Siege" mission where you take down the brotherhood

The picks up a few years after the original Saints Row left off, During this time, the 3rd Street Saints disband, and their legacy is soon forgotten.^[2] With Julius missing and the Saints gone, a power vacuum in Stilwater allowed three new gangs to take over: The Brotherhood, The Sons of Samedi, and The Ronin. You the protagonist and the exiled leader of the Saints are in prison in a coma in the fictional city of Stilwater after being blown off a yacht at the finale of the first game. Together with the wannabe gangster Carlos Mendoza you break out of prison and head for the mainland and shack up in this ratty old basement of the Red Light district and man it is bad, of course you do have the option of sprucing it up a bit which is pretty cool. There are various Cribs in the game similar to Saints Row 3 and these can all be upgraded, your first crib has 3 overall styles ‘cheap’, ‘classy’ and ‘pimp’ which gives each crib a makeover, The classy style was nice for the time being having turned the basement into the best thing it could be for a basement with carpet and painted walls and pictures to make the place look nice and homely.

My first crib, the Red Light Loft, looking better then before

Second Crib the Penthouse Loft, oh yehhh

When out looking for clothes I went pretty basic dressing up in normal jeans and sneakers with a basic tee and a basketball jersey over the top with a 13 on the back, nice and practical, I also added a bandana and a gold necklace for some flair as well as some rings and a knuckle duster and a watch. All of the clothes apart from the jeans and jewelry were coloured purple of course, I was pretty happy with the result.

You talking to me?

 After rescuing the infamous Johnny Gat from custody you all then start rebuilding the 3rd Street Saints gang gaining members and fining a new hideout. The Saints new hideout is an interesting place being an abandoned hotel in an underground area of the city called Old Stilwater only accessible by going down into the basement, Johnny explains that an earthquake destroyed part of the city, and that the wreckage was built over so there’s a whole section of street with shops and traffic lights and a rail car from the time the earthquake hit in the 50’s. This is pretty cool and looks awesome though the area is overrun with bums and Samedi gang Members and you basically just slaughter everyone and claim the place to yourself. You then recruit old (or new) faces such as Pierce, and Shaundi and then basically the progression and gameplay turns into the Saints Row 3 and 4 style where you have the option of doing main missions and side missions and other activities slowly taking over the city.

The "Good D" mission from the Ronin where they attack the Saints underground hideout.

I wasn’t exactly sure which mob to start with so I started with the Ronin Missions. The Ronin were basically were a Yakuza-style gang, as it seems all gangs have a particular colour, this gang’s colour is yellow. I’m not going to spoil the story but this one had a fairly significant event in Johnny Gat’s life that you replay in Saints Row 4 and boy did I love the Katana battles, there’s a few of them in there too and interestingly you side with a Chinese ally. I then battled the Sons of Samedi which are a bunch of African Voodoo dudes who sell drugs, who you choose Shaundi to investigate as per her drug addictions and knowledge of her ex, the DJ Veteran child who is working with the Samedi. Then finally you take on the The Brotherhood‎ where you get very personal with their Leader Maero. The last part of the story revolves around the Ultor Corporation and the young executive Dane Vogel who becomes the game’s final antagonist, by defeating him and forming an alliance with Ultor the Saints become the prominent power in Stilwater hence the references in Saints Row the Third.

The Ronin "Kanto Connection" mission, I get my Samurai on. I like that shot at the start as I realise Pierce also wears a 13 on his shirt.

The activities were pretty usual of the series you had Heli Assault and Insurance Fraud and Escort that I’ve seen before but there was also new ones such as Crowd Control where you are a bodyguard to celebrity and protect them from crazy fans and Septic Avenger where you devalue real estate by driving around in a waste truck and spraying shit on everything, I enjoyed doing the Snatch mission again where you steal hookers from abusive pimps and escort then back to supposedly a better life. A new one I really liked was the FUZZ missions which was like some sensationalistic version of the Cops TV series where you bashed and murdered random criminals from drug addicts to prostitutes and were encouraged to use increasingly brutal weapons such as the chainsaw, as you can probably guess the game had its flair even back then. There were races as well which were fun but overall the extra activities were pretty much like the other games. By doing these activities you can gain more unlockables which include abilities, weapons, homies, discounts and vehicles, I was happy with gaining them as I went along doing missions but as I went on I soon looked at getting particular abilities such as more health or infinite ammo for certain guns and maybe even a certain vehicle I wanted, though there were always lots of vehicles around.\

The FUZZ where you play as a Cop on a  TV show, it's as ridiculous as it looks if the NSW Police weren't happy about the Police Mod then they certainly wouldn't like this.

Speaking of vehicles It was good to get to use them again after playing Saints Row IV for the second time around, for those of you who don’t know there is basically no point in driving vehicles in Saints Row IV. I used my fair share of them and even found a nice Harley-Style bike called the Melbourne and I also added a (Motorcycle) chopper and a Coupe which I thought was pretty cool and I painted them in the gang colours of course. Once you open up the main underground Saints Row crib you can customize what style of clothing your crew wears and also what cars they drive which was fun as you can choose pretty ludicrous things my current setup includes a saints Halberd, Attrazione and Compton all of which are automatically pimped to the saints colours. As you go through the missions you gain vehicles and outfits for both your crew and yourself and other unlockables, specifically when you finish all the missions for a particular gang i.e. the Ronin you get access to their vehicles like the Kaneda for your Garage and the Ninja style gang customization.

The Saints Gang Car version of the Halberd, looks pretty cool heh

Of course as being an open-world game there are dozens of other things you can do apart from the main missions and activities, most of which I didn’t really touch. You can do stunt jumps, you can collect CD’s?, you can fly planes through tight spaces, you can do the classic Taxi, Ho-ing missions and Tow truck missions, you play mini-games like Blackjack and also rob stores and mug people or even play an entertaining zombie uprising minigame, it’s up to you, I actually just did the races if I can remember correctly. There’s also this thing called Respect and Style, respect you gain from killing gang members, completing missions, doing dangerous stunts such as wheelies and driving on the wrong side of the road, there is just so many ways to get it, you pretty much just do anything. Style affects how much respect you get when you gain Respect for example better clothes, upgrading your cars and owning more cribs grants you more style.

Drug Trafficking mission complete, with the respect gained and style bonus

Gameplay is basically the same as in Saints Row the Third but nowhere near as refined, from early on I could smell a console port as there was no mouse support for the main menu so I quickly knew this was going to be a bit wonky for the PC, and wonky it was, it was badly optimized with poor frame rates and jerky movement, it really didn’t play very well. The cars handled awfully and were very hard to control at first, I was wondering why I had such a sore thumb then I realized it was because almost whenever I turned a corner I used spacebar for the handbrake because it worked all the time no matter how fast you were going. I remember I went back to play GTA5 online at one point and tried to drive the same way and boy it did not work at all heh. The controls were simple enough and I managed fine as the movement and shooting was bearable.

Yes that is Shaundi and Carlos hanging from the helicopter landing legs.

Everything is very arcade-like as in the other Saints Row games I’ve played, even the helicopters were easy as you just had buttons for up and down then you pointed them in the direction you wanted to go. The heli assault missions were pretty nuts, you had to blow up enemy vans so your homies could do drug deals. What more was that they could run out of gas then you had to pick them up which was incredibly difficult so I was glad the chopper controls were relatively simple I spent a lot of my time in motorcycles then finished with The General’s Bulldog which is customized with a gun turret on the top which you can freely control, this made doing missions much easier as you were always being chased by an endless supply of gang cars and having the turret there helped immensely as you didn’t have to lean out of the car to shoot all of the time. Of course there were some limitations, the thing was huge and it had a terrible turning circle and wasn’t that fast, but was a choice vehicle for pretty much anything towards the end of the game where you were fighting huge amounts of heavily armed enemies so the durability really came in handy.

Customizing and driving the Military Bulldog, this thing was a beast.

The graphics for this game were not that remarkable and worse than the previous Saints Row games I have played but of course this is an earlier game from 2008 so what do you expect? Yeh some parts looked pretty bad, the terrain in the off-road areas particularly as it seemed like they were just a bunch of brown mush, the character models weren’t too good, some of the cars and explosion effects looked weird. But of course it doesn’t really matter, you don’t play a game like Saints Row to go “AWR LOOKIT DEM GREPHICS!” you play it for the gameplay and the general craziness, Saints Row isn’t exactly famous for its graphics compared to the likes of say Far Cry. As far as music and sound goes it’s got the same radio station setup as Saints Row 3, in fact I think all of the games have the same setup of radio stations for a number of different genres from techno to classical same as Saints Row 3 and 4, I far as music I love the games original soundtrack with its banging hiphop beats you can’t beat the Saints for epic rap, I just don’t know how to explain it, it’s like a blockbuster movie style the whole intro to the game and in the main menu and it sounds great.

On the whole graphics weren't the best but it was the soundtrack that made it

Ultimately if you liked Saints Row 3 then you will like 2, if you liked 2 then you’ll like 1 etc. My only regret was that I played it without realizing there was one particularly huge mod that was made for the PC game titled Gentleman of the Row. This mod added a ton of new features to the game mostly clothes, vehicles, cribs and customization options similar to a Skyrim mod, though it also added new walking animations and taunts. Not only that it added and optional first person mode, increased FOV and an option to remove the HUD for screenshots. I was kinda annoyed that I didn’t play it with this mod but meh it was still good anyway and I had fun with it, next up in the Saints Row agenda is Gat out of Hell which I may play with a friend as it has CO-OP.

I like this shot, it's got all the main players in it except for Johnny Gat

 I’ve found I’ve forgotten to do the score and the “things I like and didn’t like” for the games I review so I’ll start that again now.

Things I liked:

• General Saints Row craziness

• Always Entertaining story

• Vehicle design and customization

• Character customization

• Entertaining side activities

Things I didn’t like:

• Poorly developed console port

• Poorly optimized gameplay and graphics with jerky movement

• Odd handling on vehicles jerky movement

7/10

JD

Saints Row 2 Game Trailer

If this were a TV show I’d watch it

The Past and Times of Yore - Banjo Kazooie, Rare shows it's platforming excellence on the Nintendo 64

Release date: July 17, 1998
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Rareware
Platforms: Nintendo 64
Players: 1

My first experience with Rareware came with Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest which being spectacular games in themselves set the bar quite high for future Rare games I would play. Though I actually never owned a Nintendo 64 myself which has led to my housemate Bro suggesting few to try including Diddy Kong Racing, Star Wars Rogue Squadron and Conkers Bad Fur Day to name of a few, all of which I haven’t quite finished yet. It’s always a hard choice whether to play these games on the original console with the original graphics and controller the way they were intended, or on PC via emulator with much sharper albeit flawed graphics with a Logitech Playstation style controller. The latter now being my preferred choice as it allows you to save anytime, anywhere, which as you can probably guess, makes difficult sections much, much easier. But anyway no matter where you played or what with you had high expectations as Rare was held in very high esteem.

Kazooie and Banjo

I have now fully completed Banjo Kazooie, and I experienced it both on Nintendo 64 and emulator and I’m glad I have. This was one of the most popular Nintendo 64 games of its time along with all of the Rare classics including Diddy Kong Racing, GoldenEye 007, Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day. A sequel titled Banjo-Tooie was created immediately after the first game and is also critically acclaimed. Previously being a staunch Playstation supporter with its excellent Spyro the Dragon platformer being my favorite I didn’t really have much interest in the N64 platformers, especially since I did actually have a go of Super Mario 64 at one point but just couldn’t get into it, I don’t know I just found it a bit dark and soulless and empty (what am I? an emo?) But anyway I decided to try out Banjo-Kazooie and it actually turned out to be quite a good platformer despite my usual distaste of the Nintendo 64 controller.

Banjo's Sister Tooty in Spiral Mountain with Gruntilda's lair in the background. How they can live there with that thing looming over them I wouldn't know.

Banjo-Kazooie tell the story of Banjo a lovable kind-hearted straight-arrow bear and his friend Kazooie a sassy, foulmouthed, wise-cracking red-crested bird of somesort who lives in Banjo’s backpack, why? I will never know. So Banjo has a sister called Tooty and this witch Gruntilda kidnaps her to steal her ‘beauty’ and so you gotta do all this crap to save her and that pretty much sums up the story. Expanding on that a little when you start off in Spiral Mountain where Banjo’s house is located Banjo can’t really do much, most of the moves you can do apart from Banjo’s punching and rolling are done by Kazooie

Banjo's roll move which I used quite a bit

 In order to learn these moves you speak to Bottles the Mole who Kazooie has some problem with and you learn all these different abilities such as the Beak Barge where Kazooie attacks an enemy with her beak and the useful Talon Trot where Kazooie pops her limbs out of the backpack and runs along with Banjo on her back and gives the duo the ability to tackle steep slopes which Banjo cannot jump up. Some abilities require items or level features to use such as the Shock Spring Jump needing the Shock Jump Pads and the Wonderwing ability requiring Golden Feathers to use. Running around Spiral Mountain and learning moves from Bottles was fun as I always like the basic starting areas, controlling Banjo and Kazooie is pretty easy to get used to with a small challenge of remembering the button combinations of each move.

Banjo and Kazooie using a shock jump pad

Having finished learning all of the basic movies available on Spiral Mountain you soon enter Gruntilda’s Lair, a confusing mass of caves and tunnels leading to different areas. Grunty’s Lair is actually the main hub of the game and you access all of the other worlds from this central location. This is also where you receive your first Jiggy, jiggies are Jigsaw puzzle pieces that you can use to complete world puzzle paintings in order to enter them though it seems that it doesn’t matter what size or shape they are any jiggies can be used to finish a jigsaw painting of a certain world. Then once you collect enough Jiggies to finish the painting you need to find the world portal in a different area which is often confusing navigating your way around. You need to collect Jiggies from both Grunty’s Lair and the worlds themselves but this is only one of the collectibles you need, I had a bit of trouble getting my head around all these things you needed to collect so I’ll make a list of them here:

Jiggy’s: Jigsaw puzzle pieces gained from completing challenges in a world, used for completing world portraits and gaining entry to that world.

Musical Notes: which are needed to open up Note Doors to progress through Grunty’s Lair

Jinjos: Imprisoned by Grunty throughout each of the worlds who actually help you in the final battle, collecting all 5 Jinjo’s on a level also gives you a Jiggy

Mumbo Tokens: Given to Mumbo Jumbo in order to be transformed into various creatures related to each world usually required for completing the level and collecting all the items.

Honeycombs: There are two of these on each level and are used to extend Banjo and Kazooie’s health meter.

Witch switches: You find these hidden inside the worlds and you need to hit them in order to uncover the Jiggies inside Gruntilda’s Lair

Extra lives:  Gives you an extra life obviously

A yellow Jinjo in Bubblegoop swamp

So I entered the first main world Mumbo's Mountain and spent awhile playing through the level learning different moves and doing challenges for Jiggies as well as looking for musical notes and other secret including extra lives and Mumbo tokens etc, it was fun doing the Talon Trot and turning myself into a termite in order to infiltrate the termite mound, I’ll admit I had to turn to a gamespot guide in order to %100 the level. The more I explored Grunty’s lair the more intriguing and confusing it became making my way through the caves adorned paintings and statues with Grunty’s likeliness, the world portraits and entrances themselves are in different places so you might get a certain way ahead then have to backtrack and sometimes you need to exit the level as a Crocodile or whatever morph Mumbo has you turn into in order to progress further into the lair or collect extra items or jiggies. As you run around her lair Grunty taunts you with her rhyme-speak but you occasionally run into Brentilda, Grunty’s much nicer sister who is reminiscent of the Fairy Godmother from “The Wizard of Oz”. She tells you various facts about Grunty which you need for one of the final levels and also restores your health.

Mumbo's Mountain level and Grunty's Lair

I began to notice that the world entrances were set in a ‘themed’ area which was a nice touch. For example to warp to Treasure Trove Cove you go through this Pirates of the Caribbean’ themed cave and jump into a treasure chest and the Mad Monster Mansion entrance is appropriately in the middle of a Graveyard. Another nice touch is that the same tunes plays throughout Grunty’s lair but changes slightly depending on when you are i.e. underwater or a level themed area the tune will change slightly to match that area, cool huh? Anyway the rest of the worlds are great to look at with all of your usual themes including a Egyptian level, a snow level and a swamp level though there was one level I particularly liked called Clanker's Cavern which is sort of “sewer pipe” themed level where you run into one of the weirdest and most unsettling of all the creatures I’ve seen in a cutesy platformer. Clanker appears to be this large metal whale with sharp teeth though he doesn’t seem to be mechanical his body looks like a mix of flesh and rusty metal as you can see some flesh showing on the side of his body like he’s cut up or something and you can go inside of him and there’s all these fleshy bits and metal and razors and blergh it’s like what the hell is he doing in this game but it’s fun nonetheless. The level is in this big room filled with water and there are pipes leading everywhere in and out of the water and you get the crap scared out of you by these goddamn monsters which burst out of the pipes.

Clanker himself, it was kinda hard to get a wide shot and the field of view is quite

I enjoyed the levels where you had free reign to fly around like Gobi's Valley and I loved all the activities you did in Mad Monster Mansion as they all seemed really well done. Click Clock Wood was another interesting one as you visit the same large tree 4 times in each season and things are different each time.

The Mad Monster Mansion Organ Room, these were some of my favourite Jiggy activities

Banjo Kazooie is pleasantly challenging, there are easy bits, there are hard bits, man that Jiggy challenge in Bubblegloop Swamp where you compete with Mr. Vile as a crocodile to eat more apples had me sweating, but most of the time the challenges weren’t too hard to complete once you knew what to do, there wasn’t too many times when I wanted to throw my controller hah. Learning the moves and pulling them off correctly was also very satisfying, probably one of the most difficult things to do was swimming underwater, using Banjo you kicked through the water very slowly but could maneuver easily then you could use Kazooie to dart much faster though the camera often faced the wrong way so you were swimming blind sometimes, not to mention that you had limited oxygen so it was always a bit nerve wracking. Controlling Banjo is fine with the N64 controller as long as you have a good one, it’s basically just running and jumping and then remembering which button combinations do what but it works so well.

Swimming is sometimes challenging to maneuver correctly.

One of my few of frustration in this game was dying, your health is listed as Golden Honeycombs that you can gain from defeating enemies, breaking down beehives or simply finding them around the levels, when you lose them all you are transported back to the start of the level retaining the Jiggies you have obtained thank god but you lose all of the musical notes and Jinjo’s you have acquired. This was annoying but bearable, it was actually around the time I go to Rusty Bucket Bay the most challenging level yet and was trying to do the Jiggy in the engine room, this Jiggy is rumored to be the hardest in the game involving jumping and running across moving platforms and an abyss down below. Needless to say I died a lot of times and thinking about what lies ahead I decided to cut my losses and go through the game again on Emulator where I could save whenever I wanted to, and also humorously speed up the gameplay at will.

The engine room of the Rusty Bucket and yes if you fell down you died immediately.

Another thing about playing on emulator is that the 3d graphics look so much better, crisper sharper, much higher resolution, that’s not to say the Nintendo 64 graphics were bad, they just don’t work well with modern TV’s. on emulator the screen is smaller obviously but oh man did it look much better, I could also now use my Logitech Playstation gamepad which you can use absolutely fine with N64 games by the way. Anyway the game’s graphics look great for their time, they are the usual bright and happy Rare style that works so well, the levels look and are almost *ahem* comparable to Spyro from rolling green hills in Spiral Mountain to the rough metal deck and oily water of Rusty Bucket Bay to the magnificent tree in Click Clock Wood it’s all very beautiful. 

Click Clock Wood in the Summer

One of the main things that drew my attention was the sound and music, there is no dialogue in the game the characters all make their distinctive sounds and then their dialogue comes up as text on the screen. It’s hard to explain you’ll just have to watch one of the videos though it kind of works really as cartridges don’t have the best audio reproduction, the other sound effects in the game are fine with all the jumpin’ and the flappin’ and the rollin’ and the slappin’.

Banjo-Kazooie intro video featurin all the talkin' and the squawkin' etc

The music is probably my favourite thing about the game, right from the starting tune with Banjo and the cast jammin’ on their instruments though as I mentioned before the best thing is the way the music changes depending on where you are and what you are doing. When in Grunty’s lair (which has excellent music by the way) the music starts off with a basic tune but when you approach a different area the music changes slightly for example when near the Treasure Trove Cove painting or portal area the music takes a more ‘seafaring’ tone and when in the snowy area of Freezezy Peak it’s suitably more Christmas themed. In fact the music changed even when you were near things for example it changed when you were near the Gorilla in Mumbo’s mountain or when you were near the Sphinx in Gobi’s Valley, it also changed when you dove underwater for a more gentle under-the-sea tone. Another of my favourites was the Gobi’s Valley Egyptian themed music which I could never get sick of, in fact I don’t think I ever got sick of any of the soundtracks even if I was on the level for a while.

The Gobi's Valley Level

 Overall I enjoyed Banjo Kazooie despite the frustration, though that’s just the way games were back then, and I can take heart in the fact that I almost finished it entirely on the Nintendo 64, it was a good experience playing a Nintendo 64 platformer all the way through and I think one day I might actually get all of the way through Mario 64 or even the sequel Banjo-Tooie though I won’t be playing you-know-what anytime soon. I’ve yet to experience the others but the original Banjo-Kazoooie stands as one of the best Rare has to offer.

JD

Banjo Kazooie Original 1997 Trailer

JINJO!