The Past and Times of Yore: To all the games I've played before‏

Just a note on the new post title: The past and times of yore will refer to any post I make related to a topic that would be considered in any way old so in regards games that I review under this title be could be as far ranging as the 90’s shock horror! 

This minor change to post titles comes from when I decided I would do reviews of my older games that I have come back and re-played which is a large part of my gaming experience. I think I played through Grand Theft Auto 3 about 6 times I was that infatuated with it, another of my favourites was Star Wars: Jedi Academy which as the only game I have played of the whole Jedi Knight series but for good reason, the gameplay features and storyline speak for themselves and not to mention the modifications you could download that made it that much more fun.

GTA3: a timeless classic

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: you're the new Jedi, go have some fun with lightsabres

 I’ve never understood people who rush to beat a game then exchange it for another at the store, though I would suppose you could save a bit of money that way. I prefer to keep my games around whenever I might want to play them again, often multiple times as sort of a way of feeling I have got my money’s worth, though I digress that this is some games rather then others for example as much as I liked Driver 2 when I played it on the original Playstation. I’m not really able to play through it again partly because of the now quite pixelated graphics, partly because I have played it through one or two times before and partly because it’s a PS1 game that runs on a PS1 which is old and slower then newer consoles. The latter excuse can be forgiven as it was a very good PS1 game but the main thing is the graphics and graphical interface.

Driver 2: How was it for you?

There’s some imaginary threshold with console and PC game graphics over the years (on a side note I can’t talk for handheld devices cause I don’t use them and I don’t know whether I will in the future, I don’t travel far much at all and time on the train is usually spent with music, the newspaper or a book, I’m happy where I am and any handheld device would be an additional expenditure). It seems that I can accept one old games graphics but not the other. I think the reason for this is what type of game it is for example with Driver 2 or Metal Gear Solid, their games set in the (supposed) real world so back then we wowed at the realism of the graphics, but now it seems what we accepted or even praised before now makes us cringe with repulsion, however this is only true if the game is promoting realism such as a driving or shooting simulator, things that are set in a fantasy cartoony world change our view entirely.

Bomberman Ultra

The original Spyro the Dragon

Games such as Bomberman and Spyro the Dragon are both based firmly in fantasy not realism so our views the quality of for example an elemental water monster or a troll are not skeptical because these things don’t exist in real life, but this isn’t the only reason. In cartoon fantasy world we don’t expect water to look or behave correctly, we don’t expect human characters to have proper bone structures and move realistically and when we look at the level of detail of the environment and characters we accept that they may only be plain or pixelated textures because that is just the ‘look and feel’ of the game, I can remember when I thought “hey I should play Tenchu 2 again because I gave it so much love in the past”, but when I actually start it up and gaze upon it with my modern-computer-graphics-and-speed-appreciating eyes my brain (or emotions tell me that maybe I don’t want to after all , not counting the fact that there was Tenchu 3 on the PS2 at the time.

Tenchu 2: You can be a ninja, how could I resist?

This makes an interesting view that I have even more interesting. I still regard certain Super Nintendo games such as Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country as still having great graphics despite their considerable age, it’s probably because that particular Mario Bros. game (as well as the revamped older ones from Mario All-stars just looked so crisp and clean sure it was pixels but the pixels were great too look at compared to the pixellated human figures we saw on the Playstation 1 games. Not being an owner of a Nintendo 64 I can’t really speak for that side of things but it did take quite a different approach to the Playstation and most prominent being the 64-bit aspect giving a quite blocky feel to the whole thing but otherwise a cleaner way of putting the pixels out there. 

Super Mario World, how do I love thee?

Donkey Kong Country: A gorilla riding a rhino? check

It’s hard to say that I prefer the graphics of some Super Nintendo games to ones that came years after its prime, but it’s just a matter of what looks good to our eyes. Doom and Quake were examples of PC games that just never get old, I have been playing them at home, school, tafe and LANs throughout most of my life it didn't matter that the graphics were outdated, the fact was that they were awesome, will always be awesome, they worked well, played well and most importantly were easy to copy and distribute much less to today's standards of copy protection thesame goes for Warcraft 3 a major player in the RTS genre which as well as it's Starcraft counterpart, held a brilliant storyline which made for a very enjoyable singleplayer not to mention multiplayer with not only an excellect basic multiplay but an incredibly versatile editor invoking the rise of custom maps which became very popular, namely tower defense, naval combat and Defence of the Ancients the single most popular Warcraft 3 custom map which spawned it's own clones. Another prime example is Minecraft, some people who don’t play say they agree that it’s an awesome and somewhat original concept, but can’t get over the the pixellated graphics and blocky nature of the game whereas some are deterred by the graphics at first but then are reeled in once they start to play the game .

Doom and Quake, ultra playable classics for the PC

Warcraft 3: Great singleplayer, great multiplayer, great game

 I feel that this is the major factor attributing whether I myself go back for another foray into one of my old games as I’ve stated before it could also be the amount of times I have played the game as you can only play it so much before losing interest, it could be that the game is mostly multiplayer and there’s a newer better version or not enough people playing which brings me to another topic. “Multiplayer” as it is most commonly known or the multiplayer aspect of a game most of the time, has a limited life, one of my friends is an avid fan of Battlefield 1942 (and the two world wars in general) and enjoyed playing on a certain 3FL server, but after six years of the game being released (which is quite a decent amount of time) the interest has eventually died off. With today’s latest and greatest special price indie steam etc games available and with more and more being churned out each month, there are plenty which have an online multiplayer aspect (which is almost mandatory these days). it often seems that unless a particular games multiplayer aspect is a major hit, it can die out after the initial buzz in quite a short time even after only a month or two or sometimes even less and you will have a smaller base of players to play with. But often this is of little worry cause these types of games akin to Motostorm and Magicka while not always having a strong singleplayer base, will still have legs to stand on with splitscreen and LAN based multiplayer.

Battlefield 1942: Oldschool FPS at it's multiplayer best

I will always be a supporter of playing old games, not just for the whole "get my money's worth" argument, a very wise friend said to me recently that you should never play a game out of spite neglecting the one you truly want to play for fun, as this was once the case for me with World of Warcaft and Minecraft (yes they both end with craft). I will also be reviewing my old games too maybe not being as skeptical as I would usually.

Well that was one longwinded post, so dust off those old games and machines and get playing not matter how old they may be, you might just have some old-school fun.

JD

And so the journey continues....

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, off-road fun and frustration

Well good day (or night) to all all of you out there I just wanted to clear things up before I get into this week's review, these reviews that I do are of games I have recently played, which could be anything from any platform it could be Battlefield Bad Company 2 one week and Spyro the Dragon the next. The games I review are mostly new though I am currently deciding whether to review games that I'm going back to re-play. I'll also be adding some extra info to the top of the post to give you an idea of what I played it on (PC/Console), when it was released, who made it etc. 

Exclusively on: PlayStation 3
Genre: Racing
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Evolution Studios
Screenshots from IGN.com

Motion Blur!

Indeed yes Motorstorm: Pacific Rift is an offroad racing game and is the sequel to the PlayStation 3 launch title Motorstorm  which was set in the real-life Monument Valley. I would have considered buying the first one as I had wanted it for awhile and it was relatively cheap now, but when I realised that it had no splitscreen multiplayer at all then that was the end of it. Pacific Rift  is set inside the pacific ocean, no just kidding it is set as you would expect on a fictional remote pacific island with everything a remote pacific island has to offer, beaches, forests, mud, water, waterfalls, mountains, active volcanoes and lava in other words not quite a very safe environment for a race. The "plot" of Motorstorm: Pacific Rift much like the last game is the Motorstorm Festival where you enter different race and compete with cpu players for points, these races can either be Normal Race, Eliminator (every 15 seconds last placed vehicle will be eliminated) or Speed (single vehicle slalom through a pre-determined course). There is also a few factors that each race can have whether it be finish in the allotted time or a wreck limit where you can only completely fuff it 3 times both for extra points. A good feature that I like is that each race you are restricted to a single or up to 4 types of vehicles per race, making things interesting where one race I had to go the off-road bike only to find that every other cpu opponent was a monster truck.

Hmm traffic's bad today

The selection of vehicles is plentiful ranging from small: Bikes, ATV's, Buggies, medium: Rally Cars, Racing Trucks, Mudpluggers and big: Big Rigs, Monster Trucks. All have their strengths and weaknesses, terrain handling, speed, maneuverability etc and it often takes some though as to what would be best for the situation. Most of the time there's a variety of different vehicles in the race at once but the game tends to keep the size scale even, though sometimes you find yourself on a bike or ATV then end up mercilessly pounded into the dirt by a big rig or monster truck. There's a good amount of customization as you can choose between different models and paintjobs of each vehicle as well as different drivers. The vehicles handle reasonably well there's a bit of mid-air rotation to help set yourself up for the landing but and some vehicles are quite hard to turn any kind of corner which is sharper then 45 degrees and often you have to do a powerslide to face yourself in the right direction then use the boost button to catch up but it's all in learning I suppose.

Ironic that the track their about to race is not at all suited to trucks

The tracks and environments is where the game really shines, the singleplayer game is divided into 4 zones Earth, Air, Fire and Water each with it's own tracks based around that theme. I really enjoyed this feature and each zone did live up to it's name, you can be in a buggy zooming through mud in dense jungle or flying through the sky on an ATV after jumping off a mountain or working out how you're supposed to travel over an active volcano in a semi trailer or maybe even smashing through a river trampling everything in your path with a monster truck. Racing on the tracks themselves needles to say take a bit of getting used to, playing for the first time measures from hectic to insane especially with 12 other kinds of vehicles around you, and often you do find yourself wondering "where the hell am I supposed to go" primarily because of the many different routes each track offers.

Dangerous? of course not, all those insurance forms were just routine

 There's some advice in the game though you should go on the track that best suits your vehicle i.e. motorbikes and ATV's go the high road with lots of jumps and mudpluggers and big rigs stay low on the flat track and power through the mud but this isn't always obvious and many a time I found myself crashing into a rock or a fence or falling off the track and getting respawned because I thought it was another route. I'd like to say these problems can be overcome with 'practice' but it's more often then not trial and error which makes things difficult for casual players or your friends joining in for multiplayer. I have to say though that Pacific Rift has some of the best looking and most exciting tracks I've seen in a racing game, if you can overcome the chaos of the other racers hindering you the track really reward the player for doing it right, landing that jump, activating that boost at the right time, or even taking out that other racer.

oh right, so you can't go that way after all

The multiplayer I would say is where the games really shines, there's nothing more fun than getting some friends together and having a bash with splitscreen, even if you're cruising around with your vast knowledge of what to do with each track and vehicle while their crashing every 10 seconds it's all in good humour. Online is ok if you're up for a challenge, the game isn't exactly a new title but there are still others playing, mostly from the US though, one particular person I was playing with had a voice which resembled a non-robotic "BonziBuddy" or "Sidney" from the Microsoft Speech API 4.0 One of the only things I don't like about the multiplayer is that you can modify the look of your driver and which type and paintjob your selected vehicle has but they can't as the selection of which type and paintjob of the rally car they select is randomized. The main problem I had with playing singleplayer is that it was immensely frustrating, you need to come in the top 3 in order to progress and in a game where there's about 20 different things that can go wrong and you can go from last to first or vice-versa within a matter of seconds you can understand why. I sometimes dreaded playing the game out of fear of what would happen but generally patience and dedication paid off.

Trouble brewing

Fun in a foursome

In conclusion Motorstorm Pacific Rift is a great affordable racing game for you and your friends, the singleplayer can be frustrating at times and the levels can be confusing, but the gameplay, visuals and the experience is worth the effort, and with the online aspect still reasonably active and a healthy amount of extras, unlockables and DLC packs this game is well worth it's cheap price.


This is a fairly long video but it showcases a lot what the game has to offer, I especially like the opening movie

Thas all for now, keep racing and keep your cool heh. And if you're into something slightly more post-apocalyptic Motorstorm: Apocalypse is now availiable.



If this was a real racing event I would be quite the fan.

Alice: Madness Returns, a slightly different foray into old territory

 I have recently completed the rather exquisite Alice: Madness Returns (take note of the semicolon) and to get this out of the way I'm partly annoyed and partly glad it's over.

Though I shouldn't get ahead of myself, this is the second incantation of the the original Alice, both created by American Mcgee, being a fan of the original I had heard that a film adaptation of the game was in the works, which got me quite excited ( for a few years at least as this was announced in 2000) and I'm not going to mention the new Alice in Wonderland film by the venerable Tim Burton which is an entirely different story. Then one day I heard good ol' 'American' had a new game studio and had made a sequel to his original Alice, this made me quite pertubed as I was under the impression that the the original American Mcgee's Alice did not need a sequel as it was meant to be a dark, twisted and abnormal version of the disney film and thats what it was. Having played it through though the ending was acceptable (and predictable enough) but the story of Alice Madness returns does answer a lot if questions certain skeptical types may have, and to be honest the story was one of the only things that kept me going.

Alice in the dark and dreary fictional english town that is her real-world life

  The storyline in Alice Madness returns is very intruiging, it explains what happened after Alice had supposedly rid herself of her inner demons and her path to full realization of the events that led to her families death, this is helped by the 'memories' you find hidden along the way which unlock quotes from various people in Alice's life. I must say that it was actually the scenes in the victorian-era England where Alice now lives that were my favorite to play as it shows what Alice's life is like now, something which you never got to play through in the last game. These short levels show what happens to Alice between the environments in wonderland that Alice goes in and out of and while they don't exactly explain why Alice is in a particular section of Wonderland they still are a welcome addition to the game.

The first level in the game, 'The Vale of Tears', one thing that is obvious as soon as you start is how good the game looks.

Once starting the game and falling into wonderland for the first time it was easy to see that the game had been quite graphically updated with stunning detail for eatch environment that you travel through over the course of the game. These 'environments' change at certain points within the game and I have to say my favorite was the 'Oriental Grove' world which had a great eastern theme to it as well as 'Cardbridge', and the screenshot below speaks for itself, there's still the usual scary places like Queensland and the freaky Dollhouse but I found as in the last game the not-as-scary were the most beautiful to look at. I also found (after finishing the game) that the costume changes Alice goes through when changing worlds actually changes gameplay elements (i.e. the original costume allows to regain health while using the shrink ability) and you could also change the styles of the weapons, which would have been great to know beforehand but anyway.

Cardbridge... something that would a nightmare in the last game but one of my favorite sections in this one.

With the last game the the platform element was quite tricky and because there was quite a large amount of it I ended up getting frustrated and ended up using a flying cheat just so i could finish the game and see what happened, this has been fixed to a major degree by introducing a triple jump and also a floating ability which makes probably the largest aspect of the game quite manageable. In the first Alice weapons were ofen crude and slow and fighting got quite annoying and the changes to this were very welcome, the action is now very smooth and looks spectacular the way the game slows to a crawl for a split second when an enemy strikes almost telling you to use the dodge ability, or when you finish off an enemy and are rewarded with a slow motion blood splatter, the range of weaponry is very satisfying to use with every noise you know that you have oir haven't hit your target, the only thing I can think of is that I now cannot throw the Vorpal blade at my enemies which was my favorite move of the last game, but nevertheless slicing and smashing through enemies quickly has never been more fun.

The Vorpal Blade, still my favorite weapon....

Unfortunately while playing through the game and enjoying the beautiful scenery and the edgy fast paced combat things inevitably started to get repetitive and I found that some chapters lasted forever and I just wanted to see what happens. This happened in the last Alice and I was well aware that it was going to happen again, I felt that some worlds were just too long but I guess having played the last game once I met all of the old characters again and saw the scenery and the new enemies I had little pateince for the rest of the world and just wanted to end it soon, as I said before It was the story that kept me going most of the time the parts where Alice gets pulled back to reality helped quite a bit but at the back of my mind I just wanted to know what happens to Alice in the end primarily because I do have a a lot of sympathy for her having been through two games of a playable version of a young girls mental torture. But unfortunately Alice madness returns has one of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever come across, so I left it half glad that I had finished it and half annoyed at my un-fullfillness.

The "Eat me" cake makes a return

In conclusion I would say that for fans of the original it's a great experience to see an old game re-created with new graphics and better gameplay elements and for newcomers it's a good delve into the twisted mind of American Mcgee's Alice and with the original Alice game included with this one free of charge it's well worth the purchase. As for coming back and playing it again I am afraid to say this game does have quite a big lastability issue, I would have gladly settled for a feature length movie of the last game but something tells me I may be able to have my cake and eat it too.

Well thats all for now, I leave you with the fabulous launch trailer.





Is it me or is Alice incredibly beautiful in this game...