In 2000 Id Software's last game had been Quake 3 Arena, the company was trying to decide what to do next. They knew they wanted their next game to be singleplayer focused as both Id's fans and the gaming press had complaints about Quake 3 being a mutiplayer only title. John Carmack had built up a legendary reputation for his programming skills, even earning himself the title title 'God' by the gaming press. Carmack started researching modern computer technology to figure out how far he could push his next graphics engine. Carmack had researched bump mapping and was sure he would be able to use this relatively new technology to give his new engine the edge over the competition.
Id's project manager Graeme Devin proposed the company should make an action roleplaying game called 'Quest'. Kevin Cloud and Adrian Carmack liked the idea, but John Carmack hated it. He felt that a roleplaying game would not push the engine he was thinking up to the limit, and that id software's fans would be expecting another action game not an RPG. Carmack decided he wanted to make a sequel to Doom. Id's fans had been begging for a new Doom for years and it was the companies strongest IP. What was more Carmack believed with new technology he would be able create hyper-realistic looking monsters that would scare players like never before. But Kevin and Adrian didn't want to make another Doom. The original games where legendary. Kevin and Adrian considered the original games to be perfect and they didn't want to mess with perfection.
John Carmack ignored Kevin and Adrian and decided to speak to Trent Raznor. Carmack asked Reznor a question. If Id software was going to create a new Doom game would he be on board to create the soundtrack? Reznor said yes. Carmack then with the help of Paul Steed, Trent Raznor and some other employees at Id software confronted Adrian and Kevin on the issue of a new Doom game. Carmack gave an ultimatum, that is if Doom 3 wasn't id softwares next project they would all leave the company. This was not the first time Carmack had given an ultimatum like this. During the production of Quake him and and other members of Id Software had confronted John Romero over differing creative ideas for the game. Carmack had managed to get his way then and he was going to get his way now.
On June 1st 2000 John Carmack wrote a .plan file and uploaded it to the internet. He announced to the world that Id Software's next game was going to be Doom 3. The game industry had changed a lot since the days of the original Doom. Story was now an expected element in a first person shooter. John Carmack had once said 'Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important'. But times had changed since the first Doom. While some of Id's previous games had featured a story with Quake 2 being the prime example it was never especially detailed.
For Doom 3 id software decided to hire Matt Castello to come up with the games story. Castello had previously worked on the 11th Hour and 7th Guest for Trilobyte. Castello put together a nintety page design document for the game. There would also be a complete set of storyboards detailing all the game's actions. All this was a first for Id Software. To make his new graphics engine truly revolutionary Carmack would use unified lighting and shadowing. Games prior to Doom 3 had used fixed light sources. Carmack would also use advanced animation that would allow enemies to move twenty four frames per second the same as Hollywood films.
Carmack would also have Graphic user interfaces on particular surfaces. He wanted the player to be able to actually interact with a console realistically instead of just pressing the 'Use' key like so many games had done before Doom 3. Id Software went dark on the production of Doom 3. Carmack didn't want to waste time on press releases or interviews he wanted the team to have total focus on making the game. In May 2002 at E3 a demo of Doom 3 was finally unveiled. The press where amazed and described the game as having a quality of presentation on par with Pixar. Carmack proved to the World once again that he was a programming god. The Id Software crew running the booth for Doom 3 told the press that the game demo was completely in real time. The game looked so amazing that the press didn't believe them.
In 1962 Steve Russell creates Space War on the PDP-1 computer. It was one of the world's earliest video games and was years ahead of it's time. In 1978 Cinematronics releases Space Wars in the arcade It was based on Steve Russell's game. Space Wars used Larry Rosenthal's vector graphics technology. Vector graphics was a huge innovation in game graphics. It would allow for images drawn to have sharp edges, and crisp shapes. It would also allow elaborate line art and stark contrast. Other game designers had been using raster-scan which would only draw crude shapes, for instance if you wanted to show a car it would just look like a rectangle.
PDP-1 computer
But early vector graphics could not generate colours.So game companies would place coloured plastic overlays on the top of the game screen to create an illusion of colour. In 1980 an engineer at Atari named Howie Delman creates a more powerful vector graphic generator for coin op games. The first game to use this new technology was called 'lunar lander'. In that game players had to dock a lunar lander on the moon using limited fuel. The game was incredibly innovative as it had realistic simulations of the physics of lunar gravity. 'Lunar Lander' was not particularly successful but the technologly behind it would later be used in Atari's game 'Asteriods'.
Lyle Rains, vice president of Atari's coin operated games division had an idea for a game in which players cleared an area of space by shooting asteriods whilst flying around in a small ship. Rains also came up with the idea that the asteroids should get smaller every time you shoot them with your ship. Ed Logg the programmer behind 'Super Breakout' was assigned the task of creating Asteroids. Ed Logg decided to make Asteroids use vector graphics because at that time it's high resolution was 1024x768. At that resolution you would be able to make out the tiny ship perfectly. Logg believed that at normal resolution the game would look ugly.
Asteroids arcade gameplay screenshot
In just one week Logg had a preliminary version of Asteroids made on his workstation. In just six weeks the game was nearly finished.The inspiration for it's control scheme came from the original Space War game from 1962. Asteroids released in November 1979. In the game there was a button that when pressed would jump the player into hyper space making them appear on a randomly selected spot on the screen. This was another idea that was also taken from the original Space War game.
After Asteroids release it became so successful it toppled the hottest game of the time: Space Invader. 70,000 cabinets of Asteroids where sold worldwide. The game was so in demand that some of the game cabinets came with extra large coin boxes. Asteroids was so successfull in fact that it's revenue combined with the sales of the VCS home consoles meant that Atari accounted for one third of the income from it's parent company: Warner Communications. What set Asteroids apart from games like Space Invaders was it's realism. It had realistic physics, complete with inertia and momentum. The game looked and played better than anything on the market. This was the start of the golden age for video games.
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In 1986 the Nintendo Entertainment System was doing very well thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong game franchises. The NES had become a powerhouse in gaming easily rivaling the lucrative arcade industry. However Gunpei Yokoi and his R&D1 team who previously had made some successfull games for the NES such as Duckhunt, Excitebike, and Ice Climbers wanted to show they could make a game that would rival Miyamoto's. Yokoi put together a team of four people, including Yoshio Sakamoto as art director, Hiroki Kiyota as art designer and Makoto Kanoh who would create the scenarios and concept. Yokoi would the producer. Yokoi wanted to do something completely different than Miyamoto. So rather than making a bright colourful family friendly game like Mario brothers, Yokoi would make something dark and gritty. Metroid would become a symbol of Nintendo's abilty to make adult-oriented games. It would also be one of Nintendo's first games to feature a female hero.
For the game Yokoi took inspiration from Ridley Scott's film Alien. He wanted his game to have a non-linear design. Something that was unheard of at the time. Metroid was released exclusively for the famicon Disc Systsem on August 6th 1986. However just 2 months before Metroids release 128k cartridges where released. These had much more memory than the famicon floppy discs. In 1987 Metroid was ported to a catridge. Originally it had been on a floppy disc. Metroid didn't sell badly but it was overshadowed by a much bigger hit: Legend of Zelda which had an enormous marketing campaign. Yokoi's R&D1 team moved onto other projects after Metroid. However in 1991 Yokoi would be responsible for one of the most important innovations in video game History: he created the Game Boy.
Gunpei Yokoi with Game Boy
The Game Boy quickly became the most successful console in the World! Even outselling the NES!
Yokoi became a very powerful figure in the gaming industry when he decided he wanted to make a sequel to Metroid on the Game Boy no one was in a position to tell him no. The fact that Metroid had sold fairly well in the West hadn't hurt either. For Metroid 2: The Return of Samus. Hiroji Kiyotake would be directing, Hiroji had been the original artist on Metroid. The Game Boy's hardware and monochrome display was a lot more limiting than the Famicon's had been. So the game designers decided to use visual cues to show Samus's different suits. The distinctive shoulder pads introduced in the Game Boy game have remained in the series ever since. Kiyotake gave Metroid 2: The Return of Samus a much more linear design than in the previous game. However the game did introduce several new features to the franchise including wave beams, bombs, and a wall crawling morph ball. Metroid 2 the Return of Samus sold well enough although gamers had mixed feelings about the game due to it's more linear design. It would be R&D1's next game that truly have the bigger impact on the gaming industry.
After Metroid 2 on the Game Boy was released. Gunpei Yokoi's R&D1 team was split into two divisions: Intelligent Systems who would make the console games and another team who would make the handheld games.Intelligent systems was then split into more teams. One of these teams was formed by Yoshio Sakamoto with the intention on making a sequel to the original Metroid on the NES. The Third Metroid game recieved continual budget cuts from Nintendo and was even cancelled three times as it was the biggest game on a cartridge at the time and so a big finacial risk. Metroid 3 was a very ambitious game it had huge set pieces, bosses and a more elabourate story. Metroid 3 would have a non-linear design. This meant it ended up being one of the earliest games players would do speed runs on. Players would see how fast they could get from the game start to the end credits. While Skipping areas or exploiting bugs help give them a better time. The soundtrack in Metroid 3 was composed by Kenji Yamamoto. It was his debut game score and is often regarded as being one of the best video game scores of all time. However like with the previous two Metroid games in the series. Metroid 3 did not sell particularly well in Japan. This was not because it was a bad game. It was due to the stiff competition of the day. It was overshadowed by Donkey Kong Country which had beautiful pre-rendered graphics, also the PlayStation and Sega Saturn consoles where soon to be released.
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In 1985 the MSX2 computer was released and was fairly popular at the time. In 1986 Hideo Kojima joined Konami to work on games for the MSX2. Kojima had problems creating games due to his lack of familarity in programming. One day his bosses told him to create a combat game for the system.
In 1986 combat games where very popular in the arcades due to the influence of films like Rambo First Blood part 2. In that same year the game Nemesis, also known as Gradius was ported from the arcade to the original MSX computer.
In that game due to hardware limitations you could only place 32 sprites on the screen at one time. Also horizontally you could only place 8 sprites. The 9th sprite would simply disappear. These restrictions where the standard for games of the time. For the MSX2 it would take one sprite to create a character and a second sprite to colour that character. Basically one character would cost you two sprites. If you wanted to show a bullet that would take up an additional sprite. And every 9th sprite placed on the screen would disappear. Kojima had some serious limitations to tackle if he was going to create a combat game for the MSX2. The first idea he came up with to try and counter this problem was that he would make a combat game without any fighting.
Microsoft MSX home computer
The second idea he had was to make a combat game that was just about escaping. His third idea was to have a combat game about hiding from enemies. This would mean it was no longer a combat game but a stealth game. However this would not mean it would be the worlds first stealth game. The origins of the genre go back at least as far as 1981 with the video game Castle Wolfenstein from Muse Software. However what Kojima would do differently is that he would have a game that was not about escaping but instead about infiltration. Once he had this idea in place he began writing the characters and story to flesh out the game concept.
The character of Snake was inspired by John Carpenter's 1981 film starring Kurt Russel as the anti-hero Snake Plissken. Kojima even wrote a letter to John Carpenter asking for his blessing to use such a similar character in the game metal gear. Carpenter happily agreed.
Kojima then decided to add a game mechanic that meant the player had to avoid enemies in order to stay hidden and once the enemy spotted you their algorithim would change. Simply put as soon as they saw you, the enemies where programmed to chase you. They where given dynamic artificial intelligence. Metal Gear was released in July of 1987 in Japan, and September of 1987 in Europe. It was not released in the US.
Escape from New York film art
A reprogrammed version of Metal Gear was released on the Famicon in Japan in December of 1987. In June of 1988 the game was also ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System and released in North America. The port of Metal Gear for the NES was not designed by Hideo Kojima and was not as good as the original. Kojima said the NES version of Metal Gear was
'A crap game'. However thanks to these ports Metal Gear was successful enough to warrant a sequel.
When development on Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake began Kojima ran into another problem. He wanted to create a deeper stealth game but it still had to run on the MSX2 system which was quickly becoming outdated.
The first thing Kojima did was to improve the enemies line of sight by giving them a wider field of vision. This would make the game seem more realistic.
Kojima also allowed enemies to follow Snake from one screen to another. But the MSX2 did not have the ability to scroll. To solve this Kojima decided to place a radar in the upper right of the screen so that the player could track enemy movements off screen.
In Metal Gear, Kojima had added an alert phase when the player was spotted by an enemy. In Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake Kojima added an evasion phase after the alert phase ran down. Kojima also gave enemies the abilty to hear, for instance if Snake walked on a particular surface he would give off a sound that would draw attention. The game also had more focus on story where as the original Metal Gear had very short screens of text when other characters spoke to you on your codec, Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake had much longer conversations and more developed characters.
All these changes added more depth, strategy and tension to the game.
Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake released on July 1990 on the MSX2 in Japan and did not see a release elsewhere.
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Solider of Fortune is perhaps the goriest game ever made it even had a special warning label on the box. Made on the Quake 2 engine (id tech 2) and released by Raven Software, this game was not a forward thinking shooter by any means. It was linear, and had simplistic game mechanics. However it had fun gunplay, satisfying weapons and a lot of gore. Enemies could have specific areas of their body targeted for dismemberment and the game boasted surgical precision in the damage with it's GHOUL engine. The game came out in 2000 and handles like a typical shooter from the late 90's, so if gore is your thing and you like old school first person shooters you should defintely check it out. Solider of fortune cheats included Floating Explosions, God Mode, Noclip, and level warping.
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In 1987 Square put a trademark on the name 'Seiken Densetsu'. The english translation of this means 'Holy Sword Legend'. They where working on a project called 'The Emergence of Excalibur'. The game was under the guide of Kazuhiko Aoki. The game was being developed for the famicon disc system, and it was intended to be 5 discs long. Which at the time would have made it the largest game for a nintendo system. Square thought the game was going to be very successful. They started allowing the game to be pre-ordered before they even began programming. However due to finacial problems and market failures square was facing bankrupcy and several projects had to be cancelled including 'Emergence of Excalibur'. Fans received a letter from Square annoucing the games cancellation and giving them a refund for their pre-order. In this same letter Square detailed a new RPG they where developing which was called 'Final Fantasy'. In 1990 Koichi Icchi, Yoshinori Kitase, and Goro ohashi began work on a new game boy adventure called Gamma nights.
The emergence of excalibur cancelled NES game
Rather than being a turn based RPG it would be an action RPG like Zelda. For the game Koichi Icchi was inspired by works such as Alice In Wonderland, lord of the rings and Moomin. However Square wanted to add more to the game so they decide to incorporate elements from the scrapped project 'Emergence of Excalibur' into the game. When released in Japan the game was called Seiken Denesetsu Final Fantasy Gaiden. It was in fact the first title in the mana series.
When the game came to the US it was called Final Fantasy Adventure simply to give it stronger branding. As Final Fantasy was Square's most successful brand in the US at that time. Final Fantasy Adventure was the first game in which US players encountered Chocobos and Mogul. The game released in the US on November 1st, 22 days before the release of Final Fantasy 2 which came out on November 23rd in the US.
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Silent Hill 3 box art
Silent Hill 3 released in 2003 for the playstation 2 is in my opinion the best game in the Silent Hill series, even better than the classic Silent Hill 2. In Silent Hill 3 you play as Heather, a spunky, witty and bitchy teenage girl. They heather's character rather interesting, deep and detailed. For instance throughout the course of the game when you look at a carton of cigarettes or interact with another object you'll learn more about the character. Heather will say something like I used to smoke and now I don't anymore. This is a little bit more detail that we had missing from the previous games.
Gameplay wise Silent Hill 3 sticks to the typicial formula that is that in order to progress you must locate specific items at key points in the game in order to progress. Sometimes these items will be keys, and other times it will require you to combine particular items in your inventory in order to solve a puzzle.
Silent Hill 3 gameplay screenshot
In Silent Hill 3 the monsters are much more difficult that thin the previous two games, in a lot of cases it's actually easier to avoid them altogether than to try and fight them. As with Silent Hill 1 and 2 the monsters in the game are deeply symbolic, some representing maternity and such as the insane cancer, and others representing something about the main characters past. The design of the monsters is just as detailed and well thought out as with the previous silent hill games.
What makes Silent Hill 3 stand out for me is the attention to details in the characters progression throughout the story. For instance Heather starts out as being somewhat defensive and spikey but after the death of her father becomes deeply vunerable and self destructive.
Overall while Silent Hill 3 is not as deep, or symbolic as it's predecessor it is far more engaging on a human level and in my opinion is the peak of the series.
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Hey all today I'm going to look at a horror classic. Silent Hill for the playstation. This game was a response to the highly successfuly Resident evil. However unlike resident evil this game is all about tension subtley and psycological horror rather than jump scares. The game starts with you Harry Mason waking up after a car crash in Silent Hill. You quickly learn that your daughter Cheryl is missing and so descend into the hellish fog filled streets of the town in search for her. You will soon pick up a pistol, flashlight and a town map this is still a survival horror game after all.
So this brings us to the core game mechanics.
Firstly you will find it damn near impossible to navigate the town without reffering to your map this has helpful markers showing you where you must next head. You will however find yourself reffering back to your map every 10 goddamn minutes for the entirity of the rest of the game. Secondly your flashlight whilst obviously useful to light your path will expose you to enemies so as you progress through the game you will have instances in where keeping your flashlight off will be of a tactical advantage to you allowing you to slip by certain enemies un-noticed. However by doing this you will be left literally in the dark with nothing but the sound of howling,moaning and creeking of the enemies sending shivers down your spine as you attempt to navigate stealthily past them. Thirdly you will find a radio which emits static when enemies are near which sounds like a heap of gravel being put through a blender which really provides a sense of unease as something creeps towards you from out of the fog. Fourthly you will soon find the game is all about locating certain items to help you progress through the levels. Primarily you will be looking for keys, you will find these by navigating to the marked areas on the map and exploring them. You will then need to solve riddles and experiment with combining objects at specific points in the game in order to progress.
silent hill rubber ball
Some of these puzzles are bastard hard. For instance one of the games most challenging puzzles while have you decoding a complex riddle in order to learn what notes to play on a blood stained piano. Personally I found sequences like these where not possible to complete without some kind of walkthrough. Anyway let's move onto the weapons. Silent Hill only has a limited assortment of weapons. Such as the knife, steel pipe, pistol, shotgun and hunting rifle. And out of those you will probably find yourself conserving shotgun and hunting rifle ammunition for the toughest enemies and boss battles.
silent hill piano puzzle
Harry is kind of dousche when it comes to combat as he does not know how to handle the weapons. The melee weapons he flails around in some vain attempt to hit the enemies. and the ranged weapons that is the guns he often can't hit anything from more than four feet away. But this is kind of the point, Harry is an ordinary guy and will have to really on blind luck and careful timing to survive the enemy encounters. The level design of silent hill is as you would expect you must explore the town and it's interior areas such as schools,hospitals, churches and so on in search for your daughter. When outside you can't see more than ten feet in front of you from a thick fog so you are always wary. Inside you are often exploring narrow corridors or small rooms in total darkness. So you are always on edge as to what might be around the next corner. You will also come across a lot, and I mean A LOT of jammed doors. The game knows how to build tension masterfully for instance when you explore the local school you will find yourself wandering corridors in darkness with nothing but freakish burnt children to greet you and ghosts lurking ominously out of sigh pushing books out of desks and onto the floor.
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After the release of Quake, John Romero was been forced out of id software. He would soon be forming his own games company: Ion Storm. Romero wanted to make new kinds of games, whereas John Carmack wanted to continue making doom like shooters and id software's next game was certainly not going to break much new ground in terms of concept. In 1996 a musician named Sascha Dikiciyan sent id software an audio cd called 'Methods of Destruction' it was an alternate soundtrack to Id's game 'Quake'. The cd caught id software's attention and they decided to hire Sascha and his associates who are known better under the name 'Sonic Mayhem' to make the soundtrack for Quake 2.
Sascha Dikiciyan (musician)
'Sonic Mayhem's' soundtrack for Quake 2 would be much faster and louder then Trent Reznors soundtrack for Quake had been. Although the graphics engine John Carmack had created for the original 'Quake' had been simply stunning at the time, allowing for full 3d graphics, which where light years ahead of games like 'Duke Nukem 3d' Carmack wanted something even better for 'Quake 2'. During the production of the Id tech 1 engine used for Doom there where was one thing Carmack had wanted to incorporate but couldn't due to technical and time restraints, and that was a 'hub system' that would allow players to go back and forth between levels. This feature was actually in one of the early alpha versions of Doom but later had to be cut due to difficulty Carmack had with saving and restoring level state properly. In Quake 2 Carmack finally managed to incorporate a 'hub system'. Carmack would also add coloured lighting, and translucency to 'Quake 2'. The game would also make use of hardware accelerated graphics from it's release, and have improved networking.
Whilst the original 'Quake' had a gothic look that Carmack described as Cthulhu-ish, Quake 2 would have a science fiction look and feel to it. Quake 2 was the first of id software's game to feature any kind of story beyond text screens. The game included cut scenes and mission objectives that update during game play as you complete old ones and are assigned new ones. The games 'hub system' meant you would sometimes have to travel back and forth between levels to get items and complete mission objectives to progress. Subtle touches like this added extra depth to the game, and made the universe of the game seem more real to the player. Perhaps the biggest draw for Quake 2 in 1997 was it's multiplayer. If you want to get the game running online today you'll first need an IP address for a server then you'll need to go to the 'address book' in Quake 2's Multiplayer menu and paste the ip address there to get a server.
The community for Quake 2's multiplayer is not as strong as it was in 1997, but thanks to Steam there are still a few people around to play and the game is just as much fun now as it ever was. So if you happen to bee in a death match game see a player called 'comicconreviews' be sure to point out there a total n00b.
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Video Game History : Wizardry Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord!
Wizardry box art
In 1974 Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson publish the tabletop role playing game dungeons and dragons. It isn't long before people start making there own versions of the game on computers.
In the early 1970's access to computers is very limited due to there high cost. one of the only places you could get public access to them was on University campuses. It's during this time that people would begin to program their own role playing games on mainframe computers such as the PLATO system. Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood create the game 'dnd' on the PLATO system it is heavily based on dungeons and dragons. As the 1970's draw onward there would many more computer role playing games programmed on the PLATO system such as 'Oubliette' & 'Moria'. Because the PLATO system was designed for educational purposes however there are many computer role playing games created on it that would be deleted when found by an administrator and so have been lost to time.
In 1979 Richard Garriot creates 'Alkalabeth' the prequel to his ultima series. Garriot had been making games since High school where he wrote 28 games called 'D&D1' through D&D28' with Alkalabeth being 'D&D28b'. 'Alkalabeth' and Richard Garriots following 'Ultima' series would go onto become very successful on the apple II and many other systems over the coming years. His games would become hugely influential in the computer role playing games genre.
Akalabeth box art
Alkalabeth like games on the PLATO system before it had been heavily influenced by Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson's tabletop role playing game Dungeons and Dragons even using the same game play mechanics such as turn based combat, character classes and attribute points. In the late 1970's a man called Robert Woodhead began to work on a game called 'Galactic attack' it was a single player version of a game Woodhead had played on the PLATO system. The game would be released in 1980. 'Galactic attack' was a real time space combat game in which you could control the speed and direction of your ship as well as fire torpedoes and phasers at your enemies.
Woodhead's was dungeon style rpg called 'Paladin' it was during the early production of this game that Robert Woodhead met Andrew Greenberg. Greenberg had himself written a game in BASIC and had named it 'Wizadry'. What would set Woodhead & Greenbergs game 'Wizardry' apart from Richard Garriot's Akalabeth was the fact that Wizardry was the first computer role playing to feature a party system. On it's release Wizardry was very successful. The game was praised for it's depth, innovation and game play. At the time it was one of the best selling role playing games in North America.
Many ports of Wizardry would be made over the coming years the one shown in this video is the NES port of the game that sports improved graphics and sounds. Both Wizardry and the Ultima series would also see a release in Japan on systems such as NEC PC-8801 and MSX. The influence of Wizardry can still be felt in computer role playing games today. Simply put it is one of the most important games in video game history.
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Scott Miller had been making games since 1975. Some of Millers early games had been The Computer Quiz, Astronomy Quiz, and BASIC Quiz. Later he started to make more complex games such as 'Kingdom of Kroz'. In that game the player had to collect gems, and avoid monsters. When a monster touched you the player would lose one of his gems. The player also had a whip attack they could use a limited number of times as a defence. The whip could also be used to break down walls that sometimes blocked an exit. The game had a focus on conservation of gems and whips as part of the strategy. Kingdom of Kroz remake footage from the Cruz engine.
The Computer Quiz - Scott Miller
While Millers earliest games had used a donation model whereby gamers could download the entire game for free and then choose to donate money. His later games like 'Kingdom of Kroz' would start to use the shareware model whereby gamers could get some of the games levels for free, but to get the rest they would have to pay. Scott Miller made a series of Kroz games and he started to make a lot of money from them using the shareware model. His games was distributed on BBS boards and gamers would get a message pop up on screen after they finished the shareware version of his game offering them more content for a price and giving them an 800 number to call.
Millers shareware games proved very successful. Kingdom of Kroz was one of Millers first games to be credited under his company name 'Apogee software productions'.As the 1980's started to draw to a close a new game was in development at Apogee software. This game was called 'Metal Force' and it had a protagonist in the game called 'Duke Nukem'.
Working on the game was Todd Replogle, Alen H Blum III, George Broussard & Jim Norwood. With Scott Miller acting as boss & producer. It was Millers decision to change the games name from 'Metal Force' to that of it's hero: Duke Nukem. Millers team collaborated to define Dukes character. They took inspiration from comic book heroes and 1980's action movie stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Duke Nukem was a typical side scrolling action game, similar to many titles that where available on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game released in 1991. It could only scroll by shifting 8x8 blocks. Unlike Id software's 1990 game 'Commander Keen' which had parallax scrolling. Both Commander Keen and Duke Nukem were distributed through Scott Millers company: apogee, as Shareware.
The games story was simple: you had to stop the evil Dr Proton and his army of 'techbots' from taking over the world. In the game you had only one weapon: the 'atomic pistol' however it could be upgraded using the in game pickups to have a faster firing rate. There where also boot and health pickups throughout the game that you could usually find by destroying coloured boxes.
The actual level design was good for the time because it allowed the player to take multiple routes to the same exit. There was room for exploration, and the game play itself was very fast.
After the release of the game the team learned that there was a cartoon show called 'Captain Planet' and in that cartoon there was a character called 'Duke Nukem'. To avoid legal trouble the 2nd release of the game was renamed 'Duke Nukum'. Despite this Duke Nukem sold well. The game implemented Millers philosophy: that is, if you create a good character there is no end to the stories you could tell using that character. This philosophy would work well for Apogee, as Duke Nukem would receive numerous sequels over the coming years.
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In January 1996 Duke Nukem 3D was released and at the time it sported revolutionary new graphics using Ken Silverman's Build engine. First person shooters had become incredibly successful thanks to games like Duke Nukem 3d and of course Id software's games Wolfenstein 3d, and Doom. In June 1996 Quake was realised and once again revolutionized the already very popular genre of first person shooters. Not only did it feature jaw dropping full 3d visuals but it sported a multi-player component that took the world by storm. Even though the Build engine was now outdated other game companies still wanted to capitalize on the success of the first person shooter genre. Duke Nukem 3D had taken inspiration from classic action films with Duke quoting lines from Evil Dead: Army of Darkness,Die Hard, terminator. John Carpenters film 'They Live' and a host of others.
After the success of Duke Nukem 3d. 3d realms started work on two new first person shooters using the build engine. Blood and Shadow Warrior. 3d realms would later sell off the rights to the game Blood to Monolith who would finish production. Both games would take inspiration from classic films just as Duke Nukem 3D had done. With Blood's hero Caleb referencing horror films like the shining, and Shadow Warriors hero Lo Wang referencing martial arts films. The build engine although now outdated had been enhanced for Blood. It now featured Voxel graphics, which essentially allowed the weapons, keys, ammo and other pick-ups throughout the game to appear in 3d. As the name suggests, Blood is an extremely gory game. It featured blood and gore all over the walls and floors and there was even a physics element to the games gore. The most noticeable of which is that not only can you dismember certain enemies. But the Zombie for instance once you dismember his head you can kick it around by walking over it. Delightful.
Blood also featured another fairly innovative aspect a secondary fire mode to the weapons. This was pretty unusual for 1997. An example of this is that the sawed off shotgun inspired by evil dead allows you to fire a single shot with the primary fire mode or give the enemy both barrels with the secondary fire. Other guns in the game included the pitchfork as your starting weapon, flare gun, Thompson machine gun,a voodoo doll and rocket launcher. My favourite was the shotgun unsurprisingly. Enemies in the game featured rats, flying gargoyle demon type things, cultist members with machines, zombies and the like. And they where all surprisingly deadly, for instance the zombie if you don't finish him off will get back up and drive his axe into your back. This is one of those classic first person shooters where death is literally around every corner so get ready to save often unless you're truly hardcore.
Blood Pc Dos gameplay screenshot
To progress in the game you had to turn switches, blow up explosive barrels to access new areas and of course find keys. Unlike previous first person shooters you had to find up to six keys not 3 in order to complete a level which can become quite a chore especially as you delve into the later chapters of the game. The story of the game Blood isn't told through occasional text screens like in Doom but rather cut scenes. The plot is not very fleshed out and is very forgettable it has something to do with a cult named 'the cabal' who worships the god Tchernobog who was voiced by Monolith's CEO Jason Hall. There's something in there about betrayal but really nobody buys a game like this for the plot. the time period isn't very specific, personally I would of guessed the game had to be set in the late 1920's, or 1930's or 40's because of the fact it has a Thompson sub-machine gun in it. But Blood was retroactively dated in 1928 in it's sequel Blood 2:The chosen. Not that it really matters.
Throughout the game you'll visit haunted mansions, sewers, lumber mills, mortuaries and just about every cliché' horror location you can think of. The game is very tongue in cheek to say the least. Blood released in 1997 and did not sell particularly well despite being a blast to play. It received two expansion packs: 'cryptic passage' that was developed by Sunstorm Interactive and published by WizardWorks Software. and Monoliths own expansion 'plasma pak'. Until recently tracking down a copy of Blood and it's expansion packs was a little tricky due to the poor sales of the games. But it's now available with it's expansions from good old games.
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In the 1950's the cold war between the East and West raged on. The US invested massive amount of money into technology. Money was poured into the development of new missiles, aircraft and of course computers amongst many other things. In 1958 Willy Higginbotham was working at the Brook haven National Laboratories. Higginbotham had been a designer of electronic circuits for the Manhattan project and was a renowned physicist. He wanted to create an interactive game for the Laboratories annual vistor day. The result is he would end up creating the world's first video game: 'Tennis for two'.
To make this game he used an oscilloscope, and analogue computer and some push buttons. The visitors where very intrigued by Higginbotham's invention. For the game he created a 2d view of a tennis court with a single horizontal line on the middle being the centre. To control the game each player had a small box with some controls on it. The ball in the game was affected by both gravity and wind resistance. The game only had a 5 inch monitor. The game was later re-showcased in 1959 but this time with a larger 17 inch monitor.
Tennis for Two (World's first videogame)
Despite the attention Higginbotham received for his invention he did not make a single penny from it. For one thing he never tried to market it, and for another had he tried to patent the invention it would have become property of the US government.In the mid 1960's Nolan Bushnell was attending the university of Utah it was there he learned about computer games. One of the games at the University was called 'Spacewar'. Bushnell learned to program so that he could start making his own games. With the help of other students Bushnell created several games including tic tac toe, 3-D tic tac toe and a game called Fox and Geese. All of these early games where very primitive.
However in 1969 Bushnell was hired by an engineering firm called Ampex Corporation. It was there that he was able to get hold of some parts to help make his next game 'Computer Space'. 'Computer Space' was heavily influenced by Steve Russell's game Space War from 1962. What Bushnell would do differently is that he would make it a coin operated game, the first of it's kind. The original space war game had been made on a PDP-1 a computer that cost $120,000 dollars meaning it was completely unmarketable. It was Bushnell who would take games out of universities and make them marketable to the public.
Bushnell partnered with Bill Nutting to manufacture 1500 computer space machines. Not all of the machines sold and there was another problem. Bushnell had made a complex instruction manual for the game. This put a lot of potential players off as not many people wanted to have to learn all the instructions just to play the game. It was 1971 and there simply wasn't anything on the market like Computer Space. The game was distributed in bars, bowling alleys, and college campuses but it did not do very well. After the failure of Computer Space Bushnell decided it was time to form his very own games company. He partnered with Ted Dabney who had been an engineer at Ampex. Ted Dabney and Bushnell put in the modest sum of 250 dollars each to form their games company: Atari. Bushnell didn't know it yet but he was about to become the father of the multi-billion dollar industry of video games.
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In 1994 Rise of the Triad Dark was released. The game was originally intended to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D that id Software had asked Apogee Software to make for them whilst they focused solely on Doom. But when id Software changed their mind about the sequel, Apogee had to re-tool the game into something new. That something new featured a heavily modified version of the Wolf 3D engine, members of Apogee where digitized into the game. A new physics mechanic was introduced for the jump pads. The gore was turned up to 11 with the introduction of ‘ludicrous gibs’. ROTT:DW also featured some brilliant power-ups such as god mode and dog-mode. It also featured some hair-pulling frustating power-downs such as shrooms-mode. where-in an unlucky player would be handicapped by a psyhadelic trip complete with extreme head bobbing, echoes, and brightly coloured enemies.
Rise of the Triad 2013 - 'ludicrous gibs'
In 2010 a company called Interceptor Entertainment was busy working on a game called ‘Duke Nukem 3D Reloaded’. It was a straight up remake of the original Duke Nukem 3D from 1996. To avoid legal issues the game was being developed under a non-commercial license, meaning it would distributed for free upon release. Production of the reboot continued into 2011, when the project finally hit a snag. Gearbox had acquired the IP for the long anticipated ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ and they didn’t want a fan project to damage their future sales. Several executives Gearbox made the decision to demand that under no circumstances could work on the fan project be shown to the public and that development had to cease. Sometime after the cancellation of DN3D:R, Terry Nagy the CEO of Apogee Software, contacted Interceptor Entertainment with an offer to ROTT’s license. At Quake-con 2012 Interceptor announced that the ROTT reboot.
Quakecon 2012 (Dallas)
ROTT was developed virtually, meaning team members for the project would not meet but would work from home and development would be managed through a private phpBB forum. Andrew Hulshult who had worked on Duke Nukem 3D reloaded took on the role of musician for ROTT. It would be his job to recreate the iconic soundtrack of the original game, for Hulshult it would be a trial by fire as it was his first job on a professional project. His first task to make a cover of the classic ‘Going down the first way’. This would be no small order since the original had been composed by the now legendary videogame composer Lee Jackson, who had worked on the original ROTT, Duke Nukem 3D, and Shadow Warrior. Lee would return to aid Hulshult in Interceptor’s bid to recapture the magic of the original game.
Interceptor Entertainment also wanted the level design to remain faithful to the maze-like style from first person shooters of old. However upon release ROTT suffered from a variety of bugs and glitches, including serious performance and frame-rate issues even on high-spec machines. Mouse acceleration also made the game unplayable for some and required a tweak of the .ini file to fix. Additionally the added login for multiplayer was particularly unfavorable amongst many, seeing as steam players already had a usable account. It seems that in the modern era of pc gaming it is becoming more and more acceptable to release a game with multiple serious issues. But Initial teething problems asides ROTT is very faithful to its source material. You still have to find keys to open doors to progress through the levels, jump-pad platforming remains a big component in gameplay and the original cast of playable characters are back. This time around their catchphrases have been updated to modern pop-culture references, whilst the juvenile humor remains in-tact. Just how I like it. One of the playable characters even quips ‘suck it down’ an obvious reference to John Romero’s now infamous advertising campaign for ‘Daikatana’. If you’re willing to overlook the glaring release bugs then ROTT serves as a fine throwback to the golden-era of first person shooters.
Dodd, R. (2013). ComicConReviews: Video Game History - Rise of the Triad (2013). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/video-game-history-rise-of-triad-2013.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Video Game History - Space Invaders
space invaders flyer
In 1977 the videogame market was flooded with clones of the game ‘Pong’. Pong which released in 1972 had been such a huge hit that many other game companies had tried to produce their own version of the game. This led to a glut of pong consoles hitting the market meaning videogame companies had to sell their systems at a loss and consequently go out of business.
Intersoll Electronics pong clone
In 1977 the videogame market had its first crash. Even Atari and Magnavox the two biggest videogame companies at the time suffered heavy losses. Fortunately in 1978 ‘Space Invaders’ was released in the arcade and the game was so successful it managed to rejuvenate the video game industry. In 1977 Tomohiro Nishikado starts to work on ideas for an arcade game that involves a wartime setting. The Taito Corporation who he was working for at the time, isn’t happy with the idea of a realistic violent game. Thus Nishikado changes the setting to space, and he took inspiration from the 1976 arcade game ‘breakout’. In breakout players had to destroy all the rows of bricks on the screen by ricocheting a ball against the walls using a paddle. To do this the player could move horizontally across the bottom of the screen.
Nishikado had an idea, he had the setting and he set forth not only on designing what would become ‘Space Invaders’ he also developed the microcomputer that would be used by the game itself. He also did all the art and sound work himself. When space invaders released in Japanese arcades in 1978 it was not an instant success. But after a slow few months it starts to catch on. Over time the game would become so successful in Japan that it caused a national coin shortage of the one hundred yen piece. The number of space invaders cabinets produced in Japan at this time isn’t clear because the game had so much demand that many counterfeit versions of the arcade cabinet where developed.
Space Invaders finally hit the shores of North America in October of 1978. Over there it became an instant hit. The arcade game itself was monochrome meaning it only had black and white colors. Strips of orange and green cellophane where overlaid onto the screen, therefore creating the illusion that the game itself was in color. The aim of the game was simple, you had to stop an incoming wave of aliens with your canon whilst avoiding being shot. The enemy waves would never end but you could get extra points by shooting down a flying saucer that would appear at the top of the screen once every 25 seconds. Since it was impossible to beat the game, players would compete to see who could get the highest score.
space invaders gameplay screenshot
Space invaders had helped to save the arcade but it would help the home console market as well. In 1980 the Atari 2600 was facing stiff competition from the Mattel Intellivision and Magnavox Odyssey 2. So Atari created a cartridge of space invaders for their Atari 2600 console. This game cartridge became so successful due to the frenzy of that surrounded the arcade version that sales of the console quadrupled. People would buy an Atari 2600 just for space invaders. Space invaders helped popularize the high-score in videogames and is considered by many historians to be the first true blockbuster videogame in history.
Dodd, R. (2013). ComicConReviews: Video Game History - Space Invaders. [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/space-invaders-flyer-in-1977-videogame.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Retro Review - Clive Barker's Undying (Pc)
Clive Barker's Undying box art
Clive Barker’s Undying is a survival horror game that has a deeply gothic look and feel to it. While I’m not all that familiar with Barker’s work apart from his most iconic book ‘The Hellbound Heart’ and the film adaption ‘Hellraiser’, I am very familiar with the works of H.P Lovecraft. Lovecraft is my favorite horror writer and someone who greatly inspired Barker’s writing. Starting Undying you’ll find yourself in this huge gothic mansion, which of course has a lot of locked doors that require hunting for the key through copious amounts of backtracking. This first impression of the game might make you believe it’s going for the classic puzzle route for survival horror in ode to classics like ‘Resident Evil’. But this first impression would be wrong as there a number of things that set Barker’s Undying apart. First off you dual wield weapons in this game. A trusty firearm like the pistol in your left hand and magic in your right.
Magical abilities get gifted to you throughout the campaign and can be quickly toggled through depending on the situation. At points you can use your magic to uncover the truth behind certain objects throughout the mansion, and you’ll even be able to resurrect dead foes to fight for you. You can check up on the specifics of your magical abilities in your journal which also logs objectives and holds all the cryptic clues you’ve picked up. Journal entries are written in a typical Lovecraftian style, all in first person detailing every horror as it happens in real time from the perspective of the note writer.
Clive Barker's Undying gameplay screenshot
Unlike classic survival horror games, the puzzles and level layouts in Undying are usually pretty straight forward and won’t require a razor sharp mind to decipher. Personally I found this a refreshing change, but then again I always found games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil to burden you with frustratingly abstract puzzles that I had no luck solving without peeking at a strategy guide.
After you brave the mansion starting area, you’re then free to explore the lands using a boat. You’ll also use your magic to cross barriers to other realms. These other realms feature the richest atmosphere in the game. The sound and art design there is absolutely top-notch. Although these realms are often a cliché’ version of a gothic hell they still remain very enticing. Deep rumbles of thunder, red hellish skies and warped broken architecture all floating in some strange inter-dimensional plain make for some truly unique levels that are a lot of fun to wade through. Platforming in first person games of this time tends to be a pretty teeth grinding affair but in Undying, It really isn’t all that bad.
Outside of these other realms your eyes will always be picking out some creeping noise in the background, be it the whistling of the wind, the distant shrieks of a demon, and your own footsteps echoing throughout the twisted gothic buildings. Human enemies can break this creepy atmosphere though, there just isn’t anything all that terrifying about a monk yelling at you. Otherwise the bestiary is pretty great, with all kinds of gothic monsters and demons that look like something from the front cover of a H.P Lovecraft novel.
Clive barker's Undying - platforming
The combat is probably the weakest part of Undying. Combat can get very repetitive very quickly as the game seems keen to throw something at you around every other corner. But you can sometimes break up the monotony getting creative, combining defensive weapons is offensive magic. For instance resurrecting a dead enemy to pit against your remaining foes as you retreat firing a gothic Chinese ice canon at any stragglers left in your path. It’s a shame that you all too rarely get a break from the combat, because the scrolls you pick up in the game make for a fine read and give clues as to the lore of this game World. Picking up this game you’ll need to account for the fact it’s a bit dated graphically. But if you think about it in context of its release date in 2001, it holds up fairly well. The Unreal 1 engine whilst now very creaky looking, provided some of the best lighting and shadowing at the time, which gives off just the right atmosphere when you’re indoors. The real age of Undying starts to show in some of the outdoor sections however. Whilst I wouldn’t say they look terrible for the time, they are in stark contrast to the more lively interiors. Clive Barker’s Undying is a compelling game, not least for the fact that Barker not only had a hand in writing it but also got to make some of the design decisions during production along with voicing one of the characters. My biggest complaint would be how repetitive the game becomes as you get closer to the end but if you’re willing to endure a little tedium than this game is definitely worth going back too.
Dodd, R. (2013). ComicConReviews: Retro Review - Clive Barker's Undying (Pc). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/retro-review-clive-barkers-undying-pc.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Gabe Newell started his career at Microsoft. He worked as a programmer on the Windows 1, 2, and 2.1 operating systems. In December of 1993 id software released Doom. Doom is a mega-hit and in late 1995 it is thought that more people have played the game then own the Windows 95’ operating system. This forced Bill Gates to recognize the potential of video games and he decided to endorse Windows 95’ as a gaming platform. Newell heads the team tasked with porting Doom to Win95.
Michael Abrash an old colleague of Newell’s decided to leave Microsoft and work id software on their next game ‘Quake’. Newell and another ex-Microsoft employee decide that it’s their turn to enter the burgeoning market of Pc games and form their own company ‘Valve. In the summer of 1996, Mike Harrington and Newell visit the already legendary John Carmack at the id software offices. It there that they discuss ideas for Valve’s first game. After the meeting Carmack is convinced to give them the source code of Quake’s engine so they can get to work.
Bill Gates promoting Doom on Windows 95 - Gaming Promotion screenshot
Inspired by Quake, Newell wanted to create a fast-paced first person shooter which is called ‘Quiver’. Quiver would feature aliens and a military base, but later in its development it would be renamed to ‘Half Life’. Many of the employees taken on at Valve had experience modding Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Valve’s release date for Half Life was initially set for November 1997, but as the team got closer to that date they released the game had serious problems. There was an array of technical issues, levels where only loosely connected and the biggest problem of all it was just wasn’t fun to play. Rather than releasing the game in an in-perfect state, valve decided to do a complete rework.
During the development of Half Life Valve would end up rewriting the majority of the Quake engine source code Carmack had given them. Valve would make its own ‘GoldSource’ engine that would feature advanced physics. Valve’s music and sound designer Kelly Bailey lent his likeness to Half Life’s silent protagonist Gordon Freeman. Throughout the game the player would be able to interact with the Non-playable characters, namely scientists and the security guard Barney. These NPC’s would reveal aspects of the game’s story as the player went through the levels. In the late 90’s this was ground-breaking for a first person shooter.
Quiver creature concept art
A near complete version of the first fifth of Half Life referred to as ‘Half Life Day One’ leaked onto the internet before the game was complete. This incomplete slice of the game drew the attention of John Romero who was busy working on Daikatana at the time, and Tim Sweeney who had worked on the Unreal engine. When Half Life finally released in November of 1998 it was a mega-hit. Gaining over 50 game of the year of awards and eventually selling over 9 million copies Worldwide. It was even cited as ‘the best game of all time’. But that isn’t the end of Half Life’s story. There is also the active modding community that has spawned countless hundreds of mods. Since it would be impossible to talk about all these mods I’ll just talk about the most successful: ‘Counter Strike’. Whilst Minh Le and Jesse Cliff where still in school they were modding games. Le’s first mod was called ‘Navy Seals’ it was developed for the Quake. When Valve released the source development kit for Half Life, Cliff and Le worked together to create ‘Counter Strike’ using these new tools.
Minh Le (left) Jess Cliffe (right)
It took the pair around 4 months to develop the first iteration of Counter Strike. After which they expanded the project by taking on the aid of other keen modders to help them develop more maps and improve the overall quality. Valve recognized the success of Counter Strike and bought the rights to it to release the mod commercially. This once humble mod worked on by the crack team Minh and Le would go on to become the most popular multiplayer game in North America and to this day there are still thousands of people Worldwide who still play it. Counter Strike itself had a simple but hooking premise. Players could choose from one of two teams, the terrorists or the counter terrorists. The goal of the game was to either eliminate the other team or complete an objective such as setting up a bomb.
The many mods made for Half Life boosted sales of the game and gave people even more reason to buy it. Even today there are still keen modders making their own total conversion using the SDK. A prime example being the recently released ‘Cry of Fear’, a survival horror mod. Half Life itself was a revolutionary shooter upon release, it added more immersion and depth to the genre than any first person shooter had managed before and it remains one of the most influential games in history.
Dodd, R. (2013). ComicConReviews: Video Game History - Half Life. [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/video-game-history-half-life.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Elexis sinclair (hyper-sexualized villainess of the SiN franchise)
SiN Episodes: Emergence has all the elements that could have made a great game. Bombastic characters, comical gratuity both in gore and in partial nudity and a much laid back if not heavily generic storyline. If you take the final product for what it is, one 9th of a much larger game with multiple plot strands, a sprawling Universe and an internal lore, emergence comes off as rather disappointing. There are clearly sections where you could see the developers had planned to make a cohesive Universe with this rather sloppy first chapter just acting as an introduction. So when you play emergence it’s kind of difficult to take any of it to heart. Technically emergence is a sort of sequel or at least expansion of the 1998 SiN series.
SE:E may as well be a reboot taking a few things from the original Sin with it, such as the iconic handgun, and the teasing villain Alexis, who probably wouldn’t even be allowed if the game was made today, due to outrage merchants with nothing better to do then ban fun. But that’s a thread not worth pulling on at this point. The game is about 3 hours long your first play through, and that includes time to deal with a few very Half Life 2-esque physics puzzles and intractable segments that are pretty much either about pushing button, or blowing something up. The gunplay is solid but since emergence is a slice of what was to be a designed to be a much bigger pizza.
In SE:E You only get 4 weapons. Blade’s trusty handgun that is perfect for head shots early on, a magazine fed shotgun, and a scoped assault rifle and incendiary grenades. The weapons handle similarly to Half Life 2’s just with a different damage scaling. The gore in SE:E however is considerably ramped up when compared to HL2. Head shots are now much more satisfying. The flying solider and the big guys will explode when killed and generally speaking weapon feedback is more responsive. The enemies AI is pretty bad regardless of difficulty, as they will walk toward you and fire without bothering with any flanking, regrouping or cover tactics The only way difficulty gets increased is by adding more enemies. SE:E is very old school in its gameplay but I honestly didn’t mind that. The game’s narrative is perhaps unsurprisingly rather perhaps. It focuses on a single pro-longed chase sequence as the player is tasked with following the villains through no more than 3 locations. Firstly a shipping port, then an underground lab, and lastly a high rise building. No points for story originality can be given here. SE:E’s campaign serves as a very weak first episode to what was clearly intended to be a much more expanded universe.
You can see some pretty big corners where cut during development. Underwater sections are missing tones of detail, some areas have basically no proper lighting, and wherever they could the developers either repeated textures or just didn’t bother to add much detail. There is also a few glitches where you’ll see a villain who is meant to appear in a cut scene later on just sort of appears in partially textured form and disappears. Design wise the game is pretty sloppy. And yet I still feel compelled to defend it.
SE:E was a throwback to 90’s shooters, and although the end result feels like a bit of mess that leaves the player with more questions than it answers the game is still fun to play. The various quips from our heroes add a much needed sense of humor to it all and act to distract you from the games glaring flaws. Nowadays SE:E serves as a relic to a different era in Pc games and one that is likely to be only enjoyable to fans of old school first person shooters due to the game’s throwback nature.
Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. (2016). ComicConReviews: Retro Review - SiN Episodes: Emergence (Pc). [online] Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/retro-review-sin-episodes-emergence-pc.html [Accessed 16 Aug. 2016].
Review - Hyperdevotion Noire Goddess Black Heart (PS Vita, Pc)
Hyperdevotion Noire cover art
In Hyperdevotion Noire many of the previous characters from the Hyperdimension Neptunia series return, with Noire taking the lead instead of Neptune. As with the previous games there are several hours’ worth of visual novel style cutscenes in between missions. The fourth wall breaking and whacky comedy of the previous games returns. Going so far as to put the player directly in the game as a secretary to Noire. Some of cutscenes are just plain badly written relying on dull jokes that take too long to tell and don’t go anywhere. But there are also some hilarious meta-references to games like Metal Gear Solid and Street fighter during the story sections. And the quality overall remains on par with previous instalments of series. The user interfaces, and visual style of the cutscenes is virtually unchanged from the Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth series so there is isn’t much I can say about it that I didn’t already cover in my last review. As for the game’s maps they tend to be a little on the small side which is strange given the power of the Vita. Rather than having huge scope the maps utilize multiple height levels, environmental hazards such as bombs that must be destroyed or pits that your characters can fall into.
Hyperdevotion Noire battle gameplay screenshot
You’ll also notice they switched from the standard anime style to a more chibi look, I’m not crazy about the transition but I can’t say it really bothers me. Nearly all of the music and plenty of the sound effects are taken from previous games. I only counted four new tracks out of several dozen that play through every part of the game. Admittedly Hyperdevotion Noire’s original score is great but there simply isn’t enough of it. Die-hard fans of the franchise who have played every previous game are probably going to be sick of hearing the same old music they have heard in multiple games already. And frankly I think most of the people playing this game won’t be newcomers since it’s already a very niche’ series. Voice acting is as good as it’s ever been for the series. Since I’ve heard the English voice actors in several of these games already I opted for the original Japanese audio track which I ended up slightly preferring. Regardless, either voice track is nearly flawless in its execution. Each character can move a set number of tiles per turn and like Disgaea grouping your party to adjacent tiles allows for more powerful attacks. The crux of Hyperdimension noire is its Lily Points system. Using a special attack with one to three other party members adjacent will greatly increase the amount of damage you do and raise your Lily points at the same time. Gone is the guard break system of the main series, weakening enemies is now about attacking them from the flank or from behind to deal the maximum damage. Once you have enough Lily points you can access Hard Drive Divinity. HDD form not only allows for a stronger character but also the ability to float over traps. These mechanics reward you playing aggressively but many battles can still go on for a solid 30 minutes or longer. Fortunately you have the option to turn off battle animations or skip individual ones in game.
Hyperdevotion Noire lily points system
Like the main series your characters can have different affinities such as fire and thunder. They give you a rock paper scissors style advantage over enemies who are weak to a particular affinity and they also allow you open chests that contain rare items. That is if you can remember to equip all of your characters with the relevant affinity before every single mission. Crafting is back so instead of hoarding around a ton of vendor trash you can actually make new weapons, potions and armor. The whole process feels automatic and there isn’t any tedious micromanagement. In other words you don’t need to do tons of extra grinding in side missions in order to get the particular items you need to make a craft a more powerful axe of whatever. Buying items in shops nets you SIM points which you can then use to upgrade Noire’s apartment. This system has absolutely no bearing on anything but you’ll find yourself doing it anyway because it’s oddly rewarding. Hyperdevotion Noire gives you plenty to do in between missions be it crafting or upgrading Noire’s apartment. Even the disc dev from previous games is back allowing you to customize your characters perks at any time.
The gameplay strategy however is a little blander than it ought to be, and past the first few hours you’re going to find yourself repeating the same basic tactics again and again. Even as someone who isn’t adept at strategy Japanese Role Playing games I still found Hyperdevotion Noire to be mechanically shallow.
Dodd, R. (2015). ComicConReviews: Review - Hyperdevotion Noire Goddess Black Heart (PS Vita, Pc). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/review-hyperdevotion-noire-goddess.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Review - Fairy Fencer F (PS3, Pc)
Fairy Fencer F box art
The story in this game is in one word ‘fairies’. You see, you have a fencer who controls the fairy when wielding them in battles. Naturally you have some evil villains who want to control all the fairies for World domination or some such thing. But all you really need to know is that this game is trying to be kind of edgy, which doesn’t work out at all, because it’s about fairies. Anyway the characters are pretty 2 dimensional as you might expect and although the art style is nicely detailed, the actual character design is kind of anodyne, and the main protagonist in the game called ‘Fang’ is a bit on the tiresome side. As for the rest of the characters, they do have some vaguely witty dialogue in cut scenes sometimes but the rest of the time they spend reminding you of what cardboard cutout their personality is supposed represent. When you stack up the visuals of Fairy Fencer F to say Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 you can see they look pretty similar. This is because Compile Heart is still using the same game engine in 2014. Considering that this game looks like a PlayStation 3 launch title, this is not good at all.
Fairy Fencer F(left) compared to Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2(right)
Now mediocre visuals don’t really bother me but tin his case it reminds of when Fallout 3 came out on the old Oblivion engine and everyone bitched about it, and then when New Vegas came out on the same tired old engine people where even more pissed off. The difference is that Compile Heart have released 4 games on their now archaic engine, to add insult to injury, even if you decide to do the optional 3.5gb install for the game it still chugs. That’s right a game that looks like in 2014 cannot manage a consistent 30 frame per second. In the positives for the visuals department, the special attacks in this game are glorious, you will feel like your power level is over 9000 guaranteed. The biggest strength of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series was in my opinion the sound. However the soundtrack in this rather less successful in this game. While the battle music is usually quite upbeat and fitting, for some insane reason compile heart decided that using songs with lyrics was a good idea, and this really takes away from the experience. The voice work is passable to fairly good, the female voice actors tend to do a slightly job than their male counterparts although this seems to be almost always the case in video games for some reason. Early on cut scenes will be interesting, the ones that are voiced anyhow but because the plot is dull and edgy you’ll probably ending up skipping a lot of the cut scenes later on.
Fairy Fencer F cutscene
As for the gameplay itself, well the battle system in this game is basically a polished version of that seen in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series. Only now you don’t have to worry about using buffs and de-buffs all the time in order to defeat the enemies. This game uses an active turn based battle system so whilst there is clearly a turn order you can move around during your turns in order to line up Area of effect special attacks and the like, you’ll also be able to pull off lightening combos where you get to attack with all of your party though this feels mostly random. The biggest aspect of battles is to build up your combo meter, the little purple bar at the top. This will allow you to ‘Fairize’ which gives you hyper powerful attacks and better combos. You can also use spells to deal extra damage to enemies who are weak to certain elemental based attacks, although the enemies with the exceptions of bosses are generally pretty easy so you’ll end up mashing buttons far too much of the time. It only takes a couple of hours before what, I would like to call ‘battle fatigue’, sets in. This is where you pretty much aren’t paying any attention to stats, and are reliant on audio cues to tell you when it’s time to use a potion to heal or whatever the case may be, this because you’ll be so damn bored from having played out 100 similar battles in a row.
Fairy Fencer F gameplay screenshot
Outside of battles you can explore the map using world transform which is basically where you stake fairies you’ve gained through the campaign. It’s very basic, and you can even pay for the information on where to get fairies. It’s really pointless since all you’ll end up doing is beating dungeons in an order that is pretty much pre-set. The game does allow you to customize your characters stats to by using WP points, so you’ll be able to increase your attack, defines and learn stronger spells through the menu as you progress, there is also an option to synthesize potions and other items in the main towns shop but it’s not exactly a big part of the game. Lastly you have side missions, and sure they do add more game time, but they always consist of either killing X number of this monster, or fetching this random item from dungeon Y. Half of the quests are even labelled ‘fetch’. Ultimately I found Fairy Fencer F to be incredibly shallow, and whilst the battle system was improved over Compile Heart’s Hyperdimension Neptunia series, the gameplay is still so similar it feels more like an update patch then its own thing.
Dodd, R. (2014). ComicConReviews: Review - Fairy Fencer F (PS3, Pc). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/review-fairy-fencer-f-ps3-pc.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Review - Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 (PS Vita, Pc)
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 cover art
If you’ve been a fan of Japanese role playing games in the last 5 years chances are you’ve heard of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series. To date there is a trilogy of games on PS3, a manga series, an anime series and another manga series based on the anime. It also has 3 spin off games, 3 remakes the first two of which are already out in the West, and more games currently in development. Needless to say the franchise has become pretty popular. Re;Birth 1 overhauls a lot of problems with the original Hyperdimension Neptunia. For one it uses an enhanced battle system from Hyperdimension Neptunia: Victory. The story sequences in the original game used 3D models whereas in Re;birth they have been completely redone in 2D animation. The story itself focuses around the fantasy land of GameIndustri. A place divided into 4 kingdoms ruled by goddesses who gain there powers from share energy a sort of metaphysical equivalent to the democratic process. The Moe goddess Neptune loses her memory and so the bulk of the plot centers on exposition. Tonally the game is very light, the series is about meta humor, breaking the 4th wall a lot and of course being kawaii, and yes there is plenty of fan service that should go without saying. There are a lot of references to otaku culture in general in this game even which includes discussions of ‘2d-husbandos’. Since I started this review the game has since been ported to PC. However the move to PC doesn’t have any graphical advantages except higher resolutions .Which Given that this game was designed for the limitations of the Vita this shows, whilst the dialogue sections look great no matter what you’re playing on; The low resolution textures of the environments are going to look pretty rough on PC.
Hyperdimension Neptunia - 3D models cutscene(left) Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 - 2D animated cutscene (right)
Where the visuals shined at least on the Vita was the character models they were nicely detailed and the animations for special attacks are the high point even if they did cause the game to did cause a few dropped frames. First off this game does feature dual audio so you hardcore RPG fans aren’t going to have a problem with the voice acting. I’d wager the English dub is of a high enough quality to warrant using. Even as someone who doesn’t consider himself an elitist I must concede that my jimmies get pretty rustled if I don’t have the option switch to Japanese. The advantage of the original Japanese is that Neptune’s character sounds far more believable as Moe whereas the English voice actress sounds much older. Also the soundtrack is flat out incredible, all the main characters and locations have their own theme. One of the most used tracks called 100 dollars is so damn addictive that I’m not kidding when I say I’ve spent hours listening to it when not even playing the game. The soundtrack manages to encapsulate the high technology meets fantasy vibe of the game, and I’d be hard put to try and find any fault with it. Rebirth 1 has completely overhauled Hyperdimension Neptunia’s battle system making the movement more fluid. The game using an active turn based battle system, it’s actually more or less identical to Fairy Fencer F which I previously reviewed.
There is one serious gripe I have with the game and that is one of its core mechanics that is the EXE drive does not become available until you are over 10 or so hours into the story by which point you would have done some serious grinding since the game is mostly focused around this. The EXE drive is a gauge that fills every time you get a hit on an enemy the more hits you combo the faster it fills. Once the gauge is filled you can use some very powerful one hit attacks. The problem is that the EXE gauge is on screen being filled for at least 10 hours before it’s unlocked for use. Now with the EXE drive you may be thinking big deal who cares? Well put it this way battles in this game are very freaking repetitive. You combo your standard moves, you break the enemies guard then maybe you finish them off with more powerful special attack linked to your MP; All very standard fare.
If you want to get fancy during harder battles you can use buffs, and de-buffs but it’s impossible to claim there is much variety during the long hours of grinding you’ll need to do in order to beat the end level boss and progress to the next hilarious story cut scene, EXE drive adds that much needed variety.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth gameplay screenshot
Outside battle you can take on fetch quests for more money which you can spend on buying better weapons and buffs for your characters. There is a decent amount of customizability here I was able to more than double some of my party’s HP using the more expensive items bought in shops, and of course give them some kawaii accessories because why not? You can also change your individual characters move sets allowing basic attacks to inflict elemental damage, or vary the total damage done and effect radius of a move-set. It’s a great little system and a lot of fun to use, it helps to give your party some much needed customizability. The last feature worth mentioning is ‘Disk Dev’. Which allows you to change data in dungeons which in turn can modify enemy types, enemy levels, and items found in dungeons. You will probably find yourself earlier on in the game more than later where it begins to feel more like window-dressing. There are plenty more little systems I could talk about in Hyperdimension Neptunia that would bog this review down with some serious technical jargon. So instead I’ll just wrap it up here. Re;Birth brings a much needed update to the battle system and facelift to the tremendously ugly original game and makes for a decent starting point for newcomers to the series.
Dodd, R. (2015). ComicConReviews: Review - Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 (PS Vita, Pc). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/review-hyperdimension-neptunia-rebirth.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
Review - Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (Ps3, Ps4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Pc, PS Vita)
Resident Evil Revelations 2 cover art
The Resident Evil franchise has often relied on tongue-in-cheek horror cliché’. Unsurprisingly RE: R2 continues this trend by placing all our protagonists on a tiny island full of spooky locales, a psychopathic villainess and hordes of flesh eating monsters. This time around however our heroines are just as tough as the heroes, even the little girl Natalia manages to slay a few monsters throughout the game. In a somewhat contrived twist, Moira Burton, daughter of Barry refuses to use any guns throughout the campaign. A political critique of North American gun crime this is not. Rather it’s a bit of a cheap trick by the developers to force the player into some melee combat. This design decision is also mirrored later on when the player later takes control of Natalia. The melee combat is a lot more fluid in this iteration of the franchise. So you’re AI partner never comes close to delivering the same sort of frustration that Ashley did in Resident Evil 4 when you had to coax her through a series of dustbins.
Disappointingly RE: R2’s musical score didn’t have any particular tracks that stood out. The score during the more survival orientated sequences is actually rather bland, which takes a lot of the tension out. That isn’t to say the overall soundtrack is terrible but it is far from memorable. RE:R2 was a late cross-platform release for both old and new gen along with Pc. So graphically the game does really show its age in places. Muggy low resolution textures can be found all across the environments. These low-res textures become especially noticeable outdoors. Cliff faces have some seriously ugly and under-detailed designs. Indoors isn’t much better either. The same door, hallway and environmental assets seem to be copy-pasted everywhere. This cookie cutter look is made even worse by the fact you have to revisit the same locations as both Claire and Barry throughout the game.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 gameplay screenshot
Contrarily the character models are pretty decent. Animations and facial movements including lip-synching whilst not exactly pushing the envelope do stack up just fine for a cross-gen game. What isn’t so good is the frame-rate. Even with a beast of a gaming computer RE:R2 is still poorly optimized. Random framerate dips from 60 into the low 40’s where not at all uncommon throughout my play through. Mechanically it’s more of an action game with a handful of survival elements then it is a straight up survival horror. During my play-through there were only a handful of times when I ended running out of ammunition or healing herbs. So over-burdened did I get with items that I frequently used my AI coop partner as a mule. Even after I upgraded the carrying capacity. As a predominately action-orientated game RE:R2 manages to hold its own so I wouldn’t count any of this as a negative.
In Resident Evil 5 solving puzzles cooperatively was a rather cumbersome affair but this has been streamlined for RE:R2. Character switching is pretty dynamic and most of the time your AI partner manages to keep up. Co-op puzzles range from moving boxes, pulling switches, turning levers, and generally just having to hunt for items. New to RE:R2 is the lock picking mechanic which revolves around moving your cursor until you find the right spot. The simplicity of this mechanic does make it a bit tedious after a while.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 gameplay screenshot - solving a puzzle (Moira Burton top-left, Claire Redfield bottom-right)
Outside of RE:R2’s main campaign is the game's 'raid' mode. This consists of taking on a set number of enemies in a very small cookie cutter location from the main campaign. The aim is to get enough points through these raid to pay for weapon and item upgrades. This hunt for points becomes very bland very quickly, and your points can only be used on one character a time making it even more a grind for completionists.
As for the somewhat controversial pre-order DLC bonuses there is one which is a massive fetch quest: ‘the Struggle’ and one which is a sneaking mission ‘Little Miss’. In ‘the Struggle’ the aim is to gain meat by killing animals. In it you play as Moira who in a plot-breaking twist conveniently decides to use a gun. This is despite her adamantly refusing to throughout the entire main campaign. The gameplay consists of running after and shooting various animals. ‘Little Miss’ is a stealth mission that gets automatically failed if the player is spotted by an enemy. It features an AI partner who can scout for you without being noticed. The gameplay for both DLC’s is in a word: garbage. That said the campaign of RE:R2 is definitely worthwhile. It manages to deliver dynamic and entertaining co-op gameplay even though it falls short on acting as a return to form for the series.
Dodd, R. (2015). ComicConReviews: Review - Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (Ps3, Ps4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Pc, PS Vita). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/review-resident-evil-revelations-2-ps3.html [Accessed 9 Aug. 2016].
Review - Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea (PS3)
Atelier Shallie Alchemists of the Dusk Sea cover art
The Atelier series unlike other JRPG’s doesn’t focus on combat. Instead the games are about gathering items and synthesizing them using magic. Another unique aspect to the franchise was the clock. If you let it run down before completing all your tasks it was game over. Atelier Shallie removes the time aspect entirely giving you as long as you want to finish objectives, which must off put some hardcore fans of the series. In Atelier Shallie you can play as either Shallotte, or Shalliesta. No seriously there is a playable character named after a type of onion. Shallotte is the obvious choice since Shallistera has about as much character as a plank of wood. So if you picked best girl your story will revolve around learning the basics of alchemy, gathering items, synthesizing them and some typical RPG battling and exploration although I assume it isn’t much different with Shallistera. Shallotte has a lot of scenes where we get to hear her thoughts which is actually adds a little bit of depth to an otherwise fun yet predominately one-note character. Otherwise the narrative won’t surprise you, it’s very much by the numbers for a Japanese role playing game.
The soundtrack in Atelier Shallie is terrific. You’ll hear some of the same tracks dozens of times as you explore the hub that connects everything in town or explore the World map. The last atelier game I played was Rorona plus on the Vita and I found the English dub to be pretty poor so far Shallie I just stuck to the original Japanese language for the whole game and found it to be good Shallotte especially so. Like with every other Atelier game on the PlayStation 3 way more attention is payed to the character designs then to the environment. The series didn’t even embrace full 3 dimensional graphics until 2009 so this is hardly a surprise. That said Atelier Shallie has some definite improvements over past games in this series. Whilst the environments are still under-detailed there is some half decent lighting and shadowing. This is put to especially good use in the mid ground and background, giving us a pretty clear delineation of space. Instead of having the playable area just sort of disappear into a fog like it did in some of the earlier games. Battle animations are also better than they have ever been. The animation for lip synching could be a whole lot better, mouths just kind of open and close without a variety of different movements to express particular sounds. I wasn’t expecting anything realistic and I have seen worse but you can’t help but notice this during the cutscenes.
Atelier Shallie Alechemists of the Dusk Sea gameplay screenshot
The in-game environments are still under-detailed but there is some half decent lighting and shadowing. This is put to especially good use in the mid ground and background, giving us a pretty clear delineation of space. Instead of having the playable area just sort of disappear into a fog like it did in some of the earlier games. Battle animations are also better than they have ever been. The animation for lip synching could be a whole lot better, mouths just kind of open and close without a variety of different movements to express particular sounds. I wasn’t expecting anything realistic and I have seen worse but you can’t help but notice this during the cutscenes. The battle system is paired down in this game compared to other JRPG’s. You can’t customize your parties’ attacks and spells in anyway whatsoever, you just have to rely on what abilities you get given when you level up. To mix things up a little you have a burst meter which builds up for every attack you make. This can give you the edge in longer battles by increasing your damage when the meter is filled. You also have some quick time style events in battles where you can swap the character about to receive a hit from the enemy by using an on screen button prompt. Basically this comes down to allowing one of your party members to tank more damage. The battling is completely turn based, there is no movement so the burst and QTE mechanics are extremely important for strategizing.
Atelier Shallie Alchemists of the Dusk Sea - synthesis
The meat of the game is synthesizing. For every item you pick up in the game World the item meter fills. Once this meter is full you can choose what special item you receive such as a relic from the past, increase the number of a particular item and so on. It cuts down on the item collecting and adds a bit of a random element to which is much needed since you will collect many hundreds of similar items. Atelier Shallie does a good job of explaining all the nuances of synthesis through its in-game tutorials and you’re never expected to learn too much at once. Even so a lot of synthesis is basically tedious grinding to increase your alchemy level, and there will be times when you’re number-blind from going through the same steps ad-nauseum. Even so by removing the time aspect and including in-depth synthesize tutorials, Atelier Shallie sets itself up as a good entry point to newcomers who may have been intimidated by the difficulty of the previous games in this franchise.
Dodd, R. (2015). ComicConReviews: Review - Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea (PS3). [online] Comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://comicconreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/atelier-shallie-alchemists-of-dusk-sea.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2016].
The alpha of my Doom II mod is now ready to download.
Hope you enjoy, any feedback on what needs to be changed for the final build of the map is highly appreciated (^-^).
Mod download:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/extramana/downloads/extramana-alpha-085
Early video preview of the Doom II modification I'm working on.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x33axpm_doom-ii-extramana-mod-work-in-progress_videogames
