#879 Tomb Raider Underworld

Posted: 4th July 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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974th played so far

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
Publisher: Eidos Interactive

It’s hard not to feel that the Tomb Raider franchise has been overtaken. They are still decently well regarded, but after the most recent entries it seems like the series has lost it a bit. It doesn’t help that Uncharted seems to do what it does better, without as much of a veneer of misguided English imperialism, while I don’t think the series has really had a reinvention as we saw in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

All that is to say that with the last game in the series, I am not running out to play a new entry any time soon just yet, although we’ll see how this entry holds up.

Our Thoughts

I have to say that this game managed to put me in a bad mood early on. The PC port of the game, which I played because – well, why not, right? – is troubled and was released with some clear problems. If nothing else, you need to enable vsync for the game to work. It’s off by default, and by the time I found out I had already moved some boulders to an unwinnable state. It’s poor form considering that cost me 45 minutes of game time as I wasn’t expecting that, forcing me to restart the first proper level from scratch.

And there are some other issues as well. The controls feel like they’ve lost their shine since the earlier games, I died several times because the camera angle isn’t quite right, which felt unfair, and the only way I felt okay with it is that the deaths didn’t set me back that far. The combat is just as bad, not supporting stealth that well despite trying to set up levels for it and generally becoming firefights where aiming doesn’t work that well. There’s no joy in it.

The story is fine, although I didn’t get to see too much that really became interesting, but the paranormal elements it introduces seem interesting. The game really shines in its levels, which feel bigger and more open than others, with some very interesting, different worlds and settings that I know I’ve only scratched the surface of. It’s pretty neat and if the game felt better to play around it, it feels like they could really shine.

Final Thoughts

This might be the worst game in the Tomb Raider series I played – it felt like it’s backsliding when the Uncharted series is going in the other direction. It sounds like the later games picked it up somewhat, and it probably would have been on the list instead of this if it was released at the right time, but at this point Tomb Raider Underworld feels like one to avoid.

#1005 Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Posted: 1st July 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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973rd played so far

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2011
Developer: Eidos Montreal
Publisher: Square Enix

I’ve always had Deus Ex on my list of beloved games, since seeing it for the first time. Withย Invisible War making for a disappointing sequel, I didn’t expect to see the series again. Seeing a sequel be announced and released was good enough, hearing that, to some extent, it held up to the legacy was just as amazing. It ended up in the second edition of the 1001 video games books list, which means it really seems to be worth it.

Our Thoughts

The original Deus Ex set quite a bit of its tone – a larger area with a lot of routes into the Statue of Liberty, a few side quests to play through them and a lot of moments where you can try and it works. Applying the same standards to Human Revolution doesn’t come out quite as well. The start was pretty strong – I took the time to explore the office before starting the first mission, took too long, and… yeah, I didn’t have any hostages to save and got plenty of flak from everyone around. That was a mistake, and I deserved it, but it was clearly different from how it normally worked.

After that, though, I felt that I was more limited than in the original game. There were places where stealth was an option, but there were a lot less hacking options. There are meant to be stealth options, but I found them a lot harder to find and follow, and instead I ended up doing a lot more fighting. I probably messed up a few times there as well, but the game and levels didn’t feel as open as the first game, more leading you room by room in that first chapter with a few different runs. It’s still pretty fun to work out how to do it, but that original simulationist feel is missing somewhat.

Once you finish that first level, with the last boss being beatable through conversation alone – a neat touch that nicely carries through the game even though I wish I could do it earlier, it changes quite a lot. This is the point where I should have explored the office, with some nice skill upgrades to break into your colleagues’ office. Then the first hub opens up, you get a pile of quests to chase, and it feels a lot better. You don’t get all options to solve all problems, but there are enough routes to do them and if you don’t finish all the quests, that’s fine. They’re not the biggest areas, but I feel it outdoes the first game in size.

Final Thoughts

The original Deus Ex followed a specific vision, with Warren Spector bringing his Looking Glass experience in from games like Ultima Underworld II and the System Shock series. Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes inspiration from that set up, but it doesn’t feel like all of its routes are quite as planned out and polished as they were in the originating game. Even so, with modern sensibilities added and determined to take some less from that game, it does its own thing well enough to make it feel similar, even if on the whole the differences and linearity drag it down a bit for me.

#771 Mercury Meltdown Revolution

Posted: 28th June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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972nd played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Wii
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Ignition Banbury
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment/Atari

Remember Mercury Meltdown? We’re finally playing its Wii-based sequel!

Our Thoughts

The Mercury Meltdown series is an odd one. While there are several different entries in the series, they are all versions of the same game for different consoles. Controls aside – more of that in a second – there aren’t any new features in the game – no apparent new obstacles or mechanics, and it uses the same level structure as before. The levels are different and slightly adjusted to the game, and I understand that the graphics are improved, but it is more of the same.

What helps is that the controls of the game are really natural. As we have the Wiimote to use, you can tilt the stage by tilting the controller and roll your mercury that way. It’s a lot of fun and works better than the PSP bit. The levels are tough, but I think I could bear it a bit better than I did with the PSP version.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that this is an expansion pack sequel – more of the same, without really bringing something new. That’s fine for a game, sometimes you just need that, but as I’ve said before, I don’t like it for this list. If Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is already a bit much, can you really justify two games of the smaller Mercury Meltdown series for the list?

#257 Breath of Fire II

Posted: 25th June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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971st played so far

Genre: Role-Playing
Platform: SNES
Year of Release: 1994
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom

In the list of RPGs, the Breath of Fire series feels like an also-ran – a decently successful series that never quite got the traction Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest did. It had six entries – one of which mobile – but without gaining quite as much traction. And that’s the downside now – I can’t tell you what makes the series special in comparison to these other entries. I hope I can figure it out today. I generally enjoy JRPGs enough anyway, so I’m sure that’ll be fine.

Our Thoughts

It’s hard to say, at this time, what really sets Breath of Fire II apart. For a large part of it, it is a standard JRPG, albeit with possibly a slightly more hub based approach of going out somewhere, doing some quests, then returning to an ever growing base. It’s pretty well executed, but a formula that I know well, and so far the main change in mechanics are the use of hunting and fishing and some other field effects – a nice idea to give you a bit more to do, but their reliance on items you buy makes them somewhat more awkward than they should be. That and them appearing only after battle, at which point you need to chase them and hope you don’t end up in another random encounter as the encounter rate is sky high… That and the rather mediocre translation gets off putting.

And it’s a fine game beyond that – I did enjoy playing it despite most of it. There’s a decent story here and the grinding was workable enough, especially as the Switch port meant I could play through them with TV on in the background. Some interesting areas come into play, similar to Final Fantasy VI‘s missions, albeit missing some of that title’s subtleties.

Final Thoughts

It’s not that Breath of Fire II is a bad RPG – it really shows some of the strengths of the genre in the SNES era. At the same time, though, that’s all it does, and there’s little here that feels innovative or new. It’s a decent example of the genre, and good to play because of that reason, but I struggle to find much to recommend this over others of the time.

#960 Rhythm Heaven

Posted: 22nd June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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970th played so far

Genre: Music
Platform: DS
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Nintendo SPD/TNX Music Recordings
Publisher: Nintendo

It feels like I’ve always mentally divided music games between instrument-based rhythm games and other rhythm games – possibly with a handful that don’t go either way, like how Singstar technically isn’t. That last instrument based game is yet to come, but as far as I’m aware this game isn’t quite as notable, so I thought I’d get it done first during some light TV watching.

Our Thoughts

In the end Rhythm Heaven is a collection of mini games without a real through line other than its use of rhythm mechanics and line art style. I’ve only seen a small number of them, it sounds like there’s a Warioware-like pile of them in the game. So far I’ve had to open my mouth as part of a choir at the right point, fill up a robot’s fuel to the right level at the right time and do something to make monkeys clap. There were some charming ideas in there, even if the game doesn’t do as much to let you see all of them.

I struggled for two reasons. First, the game relies a lot on a flick move on the touch screen. That seems normal, but I’ve found it quite unreliable when playing – it loses track of what I’ve been doing and I kept losing points because I didn’t get it quite right. The game spends a lot of time introducing the flick as well, which I think shows just as much how the creators knew you had to learn it, and wouldn’t get it right straight away, with a big initial tutorial. The fact that I still didn’t get it that well shows that something kept going wrong there.

Then there’s the tutorials in general. Each minigame so far has had a tutorial and practice section to show what you’re doing. However, while you get enough of a chance to play, the game doesn’t give you any feedback on what you did wrong. The explanations are vague and if you don’t get it… you just don’t get it. The clapping monkey game has a jumping move in it that I never figured out – despite it being described as just a flick it doesn’t work that way.

The game is really charming, with its simple graphics and weird ideas for what you have to do and it’s a delight to see what they come up with after a while. The instructions are just too vague for me to actually get that far into the game.

#291 Virtua Cop 2

Posted: 19th June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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969th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1995
Developer: Sega AM 2
Publisher: Sega

What can I say? I need to get through these light gun games. The CRTs that allow you to play these barely exist anymore, so in this case at least I’m going to play the PC version of the game with some mouse aim – the arcades just don’t exist anymore, and I’m on a timeline that even if they are out there, I’ll be done with those sections of the list before arcades open again. I’ve already covered the genre with my Point Blank and associated bonanza, so I feel the shortcut is justified.

Our Thoughts

There isn’t anything overly surprising in Virtua Cop 2. Like most games like this, you kill your enemies one at a time and avoid shooting citizens (or not, if like me you can’t distinguish quickly enough). You occasionally get a different weapon – I got a machine gun for a section – but it mostly sticks to the one gun, shoot them all gameplay.

The game, too, looks like that. It has mid-90s 3D graphics, nothing that looks fancy. The whole game is that, a good example of the light gun shooter genre, something you never quite get as such at home because of the technological restrictions of modern TVs, but lost with arcades now – I guess it’s VR now. It’s what it is, don’t expect more.

#331 Blade Runner

Posted: 16th June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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968th played so far

Genre: Adventure
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Virgin Interactive

As I’m writing this, Cyberpunk 2077 has been released a few weeks ago and its first big patch failed to make any sort of dent in the bad reception of the game. It’s odd to watch from the sidelines – knowing their history with The Witcher, I figured I’d wait until the game had its expansions released, if any, and until any kinks were worked out.

The game draws from a lot of cyberpunk references and the Blade Runner movie is one of the big influences on the genre. Today’s game comes form the same source – not using the movie’s story for various reasons, but having a story that run parallel with that of the movie. The re-release made it to GoG a year and a half ago, a few months after I bought the discs, which makes the game a lot easier to play in a modern age. I wanted to wait to play it properly though and while a Covid-filled Christmas meant I didn’t get quite the time I wanted, I get to jump in now.

Our Thoughts

At its core,ย Blade Runner is a point and click game. It’s a genre that lends itself well to detective stories of various descriptions. Fahrenheit does a bunch of it and the recent Disco Elysium, despite its RPG elements, draws a lot on the same source as well. Blade Runner really seems like it loads up with these elements, from the many consequential and inconsequential details at crime scenes, gathering information from bystanders and even the high tech “enhancements” on analyzing pictures that’s taken from the movie. It’s a fiddly tool, where you have to find the exact position of what look like random pixels, but it’s quite cool when you find it and it starts to zoom in on a clue.

What adds a lot of tension to the game, as well as replayability, is that the game randomizes a bunch of elements at the start. It changes who are replicants and who are real as well as some other story details that change how some thigns play out. At the same time, there are several other detectives out there solving cases at the same time you are, which means you may not be around to do certain interrogations and checks. None of it completely changed the game for me so far, but it did feel like all of my investigations were more important because you couldn’t just rely on the flow of the game.

While the game has some action elements, I don’t feel like they were really that difficult on the default difficulty – none of them stood out as being that difficult. They just add that bit of tension to the proceedings.

Final Thoughts

The downside of the game’s age is that you have to do a lot of pixel hunting to find clues on some photographs and, with the old 3D prerendered style, it ends up with a lot of clicking of blobs of pixels that may or may not represent anything. Sadly, the downside of the rerelease is that we got what we did since the source art was lost and there’s little to be done. Still, with some hints on these bottlenecks, there’s a great game here to play further.

#611 Pikmin 2

Posted: 13th June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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967th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Gamecube
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo

While I enjoyed playing Pikmin, it was a flawed classic: The controls weren’t great and the time limit was one that made me quite nervous. I was hoping that a sequel would improve on that and although I can’t say much about the controls, I do know that this game drops the time limit. After Battalion Wars, I feel I’ll do better at that anyway. It should be a good one though.

Our Thoughts

I’ll be honest, I really liked the lack of a time limit, it was nice to be able to explore the area and figure out the puzzles without having the feeling I need to rush through. The alternative progression in which you’re tasked to pay off debts works incredibly well, both as a general progression mechanic and as a way to cram in a lot of jokes about the everyday objects that make up their treasures (secretly enforcing the idea of the miniature world this takes place in).

And man, there’s a lot to explore. Aside from the overworld feeling as expansive as ever – I certainly had to deal with the day and night rhythm that still kept going – you also have a lot of dungeons to explore, three or four per area. You need to get the right abilities – or rather, Pikmin – to get to them, which works well to pace them and gives you a reason to return to old areas later on.

There are two new types of Pikmin, both of which are obviously useful. Where the original three are born from the bulb, the new purple and white Pikmin require you to throw another type of Pikmin into specific flowers. Purple flowers give you the heavy purple Pikmin, which have a far better carrying capacity, while the white Pikmin are necessary for the treasure they find and speed they have, even if they are otherwise useless. Luckily you’ve got a second character with you as well to control them so you can split the groups, which really helps getting the different types in place.

Final Thoughts

Pikmin 2 feels a lot more relaxed than the first game, while giving a nice bit more content to play with. It was a lot of fun to see and I kept wanting to see a bit more of the game. Another one for the list I can start in another six months or so.

#870 Soul Calibur IV

Posted: 10th June 2021 by Jeroen in Uncategorized
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966th played so far

Genre: Fighting
Platform: Playstation 3/Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Project Soul
Publisher: Namco Bandai Game

I had a bit of a discussion on what fighting game to leave until last, and between SoulCalibur and Street Fighter, the latter seemed more appropriate – even more when you consider our first covered game was already from the SoulCalibur series. That means that today we’re covering a fighter that includes several Star Wars characters in its roster as guest crossovers, as well as a 3D field rather than a 2D scroller.

It also means it’s been a decade since I touched the series, so good luck to me?

Our Thoughts

I might actually be feeling the effects of playing more fighting games over the years, butย Soul Calibur IV felt quite accessible compared to what I was expecting. It’s a game that plays a lot more slowly and more deliberate than other focus, in part because you’re dealing with deliberately slower equipment, but that allows you that extra time to think, plan and be ready for the attack. It meant that, on the existing save file I was playing, the normal story mode was quite easy. The characters were powered up, sure, which meant that some lesser used fighters were harder, but even so the game wasn’t extremely difficult to get through.

It also helped me see some of the more bizarre characters – even beyond the presence of Darth Vader and Yoda, the gameplay of a character like Ivy or Voldo feel strange and interesting, where I had to get used to a lot of it. It’s been a fun journey that way, with quite an accessible start.

Final Thoughts

I quite enjoyed Soul Calibur IV. Perhaps that’s because the existing save game helped me, but I had a lot of fun playing through the different stories and other modes, even if the later endurance modes got harder. The visuals match this, with some lovely and dangerous looking environments in places (even if some of the beauty shots lasted a bit too long).

#594 Mario vs. Donkey Kong

Posted: 7th June 2021 by Jeroen in Games
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965th played so far

Genre: Puzzle/Platform
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Nintendo Software Technology
Publisher: Nintendo

I couldn’t stay away from platform games forever. I’m running down various lists and this takes care of another double-genre game, while also getting me near the end of the Mario franchise. It’s slight throwback Mario vs. Donkey Kong, a game that takes the feel of the original Donkey Kong but turns it into a complex puzzle game rather than the action platforming of that original title.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever touched this game after I had a look through the 3DS freebies from way back when that was the early buyer bonus, but I’m properly touching it today for the first time. Still, I have a good feeling about it.

Our Thoughts

Like many good puzzle games, Mario vs Donkey Kong has a pretty simple start. Use a switch, grab a key, get some of the optional presents and make your way to the door – a fairly straightforward level that you figure out quite quickly. The game builds from there, relying a lot on blocks being switched on and off, handling enemies and creating safe paths through the level. The aesthetic borrows a fair amount from Donkey Kong, with a lot of elements I recognize from that game and its sequels, although the gameplay only vaguely resembles the game. There are even some really nice moves new to the Mario games, such as a handstand that allows you to “stomp” enemies coming from above.

The game shakes it up quite nicely as well within each world, with the penultimate level being a lemmings-like “guide the toys” scenario that works quite differently. It means that there’s a lot of variety, with there being enough elements that each puzzle feels different, but without overwhelming you at any point.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot at play in this Mario vs Donkey Kong, wrapped in an update of the Donkey Kong style and it’s one of those puzzle games that keeps piling on mechanics rather than giving you a single set that continues to play. The build up really works and it’s a nice way to create a puzzle game in the Mario world that still uses those Mario moves.

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