DAY 120 / GAME 120 Stacking

DAY 120 / GAME 120

Stacking

          After Double Fine got turned down by publishers for Brutal Legend 2, they had to fall back on 8 other pitches for smaller games, hoping one or more of them would get picked up in order to stay afloat.  Thankfully, four of the eight demos found interest with publishers; Costume Quest, Once Upon a Monster, Iron Brigade and Stacking.  

        Created and directed by Lee Petty, art director from Brutal Legend, Stacking is one of the most unique platformers I've ever seen.  Released as a downloadable title for Steam, PC and Xbox 360 Stacking is a most bizarre game where you take control of a tiny Matryoshka doll.  In this case, you control the youngest and smallest child of the Blackmore family, a family of chimney sweeps, as you work to free your brothers and sisters who were bound into slavery by the evil Baron.  

          The whole idea behind the game is that each doll has a individual set of skills.  This ranges anywhere from having a key-head that can open doors to being able to belch extremely loud.  Charlie can hop into any doll that is the next size up from himself and become that doll, taking advantage of the skillset as well.  You can only jump into a doll that is one size up from what you are in at the moment, so you have to use a bit of strategy to make sure you can acquire the doll you need for a particular task.  

          As you can see there are a ton of different dolls throughout the games different levels.  Over a hundred actually.  The whole game, dolls and all follow this beautiful Victorian era theme with levels that suggested the whole thing was part of a diorama style silent movie set.  Cutscenes in particular really reinforced this idea with their piano music and text plaques.  The writing is fantastic and the whole thing is perfectly silly.  Popping into a mummy doll and scaring the museum staff, taking over a large gentleman doll and clearing out a room with farts, the whole thing has a great Double Fine feel, but not necessarily just a Tim Schafer feel.  Although he assisted in writing some of this game, it works well as the creation of a smaller team.

             Although it's not a long game, it sits at a cheap price of under $15.  It also features multiple methods in which to solve each puzzle, some easier than others.  This means you're going to want to play through each puzzle a few times if you really want to see the whole game.  It even features a small piece of DLC available if you want to spend even more time in this world.  And since it's so fantastically unique and beautiful, who wouldn't.

DAY 119 / GAME 119 Super Mario Land

DAY 119 / GAME 119

Super Mario Land

          Although I had an original gray brick Nintendo Gameboy, I never owned a copy of Super Mario Land.  I borrowed it once and played it on a friend's Gameboy once, but never bought a copy up until recently.  (Actually, I just remembered Denise still has her copy and her original Gameboy.)  It was such an odd take on the Mario games, perhaps because it was the first one that didn't involve Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.  
         Those whole thing feels a lot closer to the first Super Mario Brothers game for the NES, but is as wacky and bizarre as Super Mario Brothers 2.  Now, Mario 2 had an excuse; it wasn't originally a Mario game at all and was simply rebranded for North America.  So, all the non-Mario themes and overall gameplay (Picking up plants, keys, nighttime alternate levels.) is explainable, but Super Mario Land is weird for seemingly no good reason.


         This isn't to say Super Mario Land isn't a great game.  I had a ton of fun with it.  And although most of it didn't really feel like a Mario game at the time, some elements have carried over into newer releases, similar to Super Mario 2.  Though, the only real example I can think of is that Daisy character that Mario is trying to save.  Similarly Birdo from SMB2 seems to be the only thing they carried forward with that game. 
        Instead of the Mushroom Kingdom and Bowser's castles, the whole thing seems to take place in a weird mish-mash of ancient civilizations.  You start out in what feels like Ancient Egypt, pyramids and all.  You run into Easter Island statues everywhere, Sphinx, strange bugs, columns, boulders, torches and dragons.

        The resolution of the gameboy was only 160x144.  Which wasn't bad for the time and the size of the display, but still meant that visually it didn't quite match up to the 8-bit NES titles.  Enemies like the Goombas and Piranha Plants aren't very recognizable and even Mario and Daisy look pretty rough.  They really cleaned a lot of this up in Mario Land 2, but they did this by scaling everything up so sprites contained more pixels.  The result is that you didn't see as much screen, so each game kinda had it's own benefit.  Regardless of it's few downsides, Super Mario Land was still a pretty awesome game.  It was bizarre, but played well; featured a neat soundtrack and made good use of what was one of the first true portable gaming consoles.



          Eventually I ended up getting a copy of this for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console system.  It was somewhat easier than I remember and I actually tore through it in about one train ride home.  It was just as bizarre as I remembered.  It even features a submarine level which is basically just a side-scrolling shooter and a final level that is similar only you're flying a plane instead.  It's also the only Mario game I know that doesn't use the typical theme when picking up an invincibility star.  You also fight an alien in a UFO as the final boss and fly away in a rocketship.   As weird as it was though, apparently it's sales helped launch the Gameboy ahead of the NES home console as it's best selling unit and also just barely beat Mario Brothers 3 in sales.  

          The original Nintendo Gameboy may seem like some kind of typewriter or Sony Walkman compared to nowadays' handhelds.  160 by 144 resolution is practically that of an Ironman LCD watch, but Nintendo sure managed to bring forward some inventive games within those limits.  Super Mario Land may have been an oddball game, but at the time it was fantastic and even now, it's a great little game to pick up and get a feel for where it all began.

DAY 118 / GAME 118 Far Cry 2

DAY 118 / GAME 118

Far Cry 2

          I remember seeing info on the latest installment of Far Cry 2 and for the time it was released it looked ridiculously good.  I never tried the first Far Cry game, I heard it was fantastic but I also wasn't really sure what it was about or how it played.  Ubisoft really showed Far Cry 2 as a real Africa Simulator.  They published videos of it's fantastic day/night cycles, weather simulation, fire and destruction as well as great looking wildlife.

        I remember being really impressed by everything I saw, but I still didn't jump on this title for a while.  In the end, it dropped in price pretty quickly and Denise ended up grabbing this for me for about $10 as a Christmas stocking stuffer.  I had got a few other games that year around the same time so I didn't get to this one right away.  But when I did finally decide to give this one a go I had a very hard time putting it down.  

       Far Cry 2 is fantastic.  Set in Central Africa, you roam free in 50 square kilometers worth of deserts, jungles and savannas.  You act as a gun-for-hire while looking to take down the infamous Jackal gun runner, picking up jobs across the landscape and collecting lost briefcases full of blood diamonds to trade for weapons and gear.  The whole collecting part is one of those things that really drove me in that game.  Pushing to unlock all my favorite weapons so that I could create the perfect loadout for missions kept me coming back for more as I would sometimes play for hours without actually completing any story missions, just hunting for more diamonds and completing jobs that would give me access to the latest grenade launcher or rifle.

       Being a proper sandbox game, you really could just take from this game whatever you wanted.  The story allowed for you to side with one of two factions, fighting for either the UFLL or the APR as a mercenary, or even pitting each of them against each other as you made your way through.  Taking down camps of enemies could be done with stealth or out-and-out firepower.  I had a great moment where I needed to assassinate a particular leader and so I had found a perfect spot up on a hill as he rallied a small band of soldiers.  After taking him out with my rifle, I had given up my position on the hill and so I quickly tossed a molotov cocktail at the group.  And since all the dry grass goes up in flames so quickly, that's all it took to reduce their numbers to zero.  Though violent, it felt like a pretty awesome accomplishment.  

     Other than just looking good and featuring fantastic gameplay, Far Cry 2 also had some great other features that just rounded the whole thing out.  The A.I. worked out quite well, responding to time of day and other environmental factors.  Getting hurt and healing yourself is always great.  When hurt, you may end up having to dig out a bullet with a knife and dressing it, resetting a broken finger or dislocation, all in a first person perspective.  You can drive a variety of vehicles to get across the map, all of which will break down from time to time, especially if shot at.  In order to continue you have to get out, pop the hood and do some wrenching to get it rolling again, sometimes while you are under fire.

     I've almost definitely missed something about this game I loved.  The main point is that Far Cry 2 was the kind of game I really sunk my teeth into and spend hours in.  The world begged to be explored and everything was very solid and tangible.  Guns jammed, cars broke down and wildlife roamed around you.  Someone hiding in the bush?  Burn it to the ground.  Collect weapons, gear and vehicles, make friends and enemies.  Like Grand Theft Auto, only for me, more enjoyable since I actually wanted to complete the story.  Which I didn't.  Funny thing is, what I thought was the end of the game, was actually the mid-way point.  So I ended up putting it down and never finishing it.  Still, got my $10 worth.

DAY 117 / GAME 117 Mario Party

DAY 117 / GAME 117

Mario Party

          I'm going to lump all the Mario Party games into one post, simply because the experience is generally the same across the board (no pun intended) and although they differ, I'd really end up writing about the same thing.  

Confusingly enough, this was Mario Party 1, not 3.

          Mario Party was a perfect release for the Nintendo 64 system.  A system that really stood alone as a 'party system' allowing up to four people to play simultaneously.  Previous systems offered controller multi-tap devices to support more than the typical two-players, but since it wasn't system-standard hardware very few games use it.  But with the N64 including 4 ports standard, a large number of developers kept that in mind and so there were a ton of 4-player games released on that system.  We played a bunch of great 4 player N64 in highschool; Mariokart 64, Smash Bros, Super Bomberman 64, F-Zero X, Goldeneye, Forsaken, South Park and a ton more.

         Mario Party, if you haven't played it, is very much a digital board game.  You pick your player, roll the dice and make your way around a selection of boards with various Mario themes.  The ultimate goal is to collect more stars than the other players.  As you make your way across the board you run into various mini-games that give you a chance to switch coins, stars and locations with the other players.  At the end of each round (once each person has taken their turn once) there is another big mini-game that includes everyone as you fight to screw each other over for a chance at the win.


         Now, if you've played Mario Party and are still good friends with those people consider yourself lucky.  Though it varies from game to game, a consistent theme in Mario Party is that you can be in the lead at one moment, but if someone lands on the wrong square suddenly the player in first and the player in last can switch places.  There's a ton of opportunity to steal other player's stars and sometimes stars are given out seemingly at random.  You can be doing very well in the mini-games throughout and leading the entire night and then, like a blue turtle shell homing in on first place in Mariokart, you can end up switching with last place right before the finish line.  Strong friends are friends who survived Mario Party.

          I've spent a good deal of time playing Mario Party back in day with old friends.  Back when I first bought a CD writer drive for my PC (they were 450$ at the time) we used to sit down and play rounds of this while we burned copies of PS1 games.  The process took 1 hour and didn't always work, so we really needed something to do in the meantime.  We also figured at one point that perhaps Nintendo actually built this game to sell controllers.  A lot of the mini-games required you to mash buttons repeatedly or rotate the analog stick with such fury that you were lucky to still have the same controller a year later.  
          I haven't played this game in a very long time, but they are still releasing new versions.  I can't actually recall the last version I've played but they were certainly improving since the first.  I think I'd ought to sit down sometime and try one of the newer ones.  So long as it doesn't mean buying a new controller. 

DAY 116 / GAME 116 Burnout 3: Takedown

DAY 116 / GAME 116

Burnout 3: Takedown

          The car racing genre has a pretty wide spectrum of different kinds of games within it.  All of which I love.  I've put numerous hours into games like Forza and Gran Turismo and an equally large number of hours into Need For Speed, Test Drive and Split-Second.  One of the more ridiculous but equally amazing over-the-top racing games I loved was Burnout 3 for the original Xbox.  This game offered some of the absolute best sensations of speed in an auto racing game, loose arcade controls that allowed you to dart around traffic and insane collisions that were immortalized in fantastic slow-motion.




          Burnout 3: Takedown earn it's 'takedown' title from the primary goal of the game.  Burnout may be a racer, but it's also a car combat game in a sense.  In two of the four modes of play the primary goal isn't to place first so much as it is to cause the most damage.  In the Road Rage mode, you aggressively cross the map trying to smash into other cars with your own.  When done right you cause the other car to flip, spin out or smash headfirst into oncoming traffic, destroying the car and earning you a higher score.  Whoever walks away with the highest score in the time (or lap?) limit wins.  

            Takedowns are the kind of thing you go out of your way to accomplish even in the regular race mode.  There's no much better than making your way to first place, all the while smashing opponents cars out of the race (and trying to avoid a similar fate.)  Takedowns are also something that Criterion has included in every Burnout title after this one and even in a recent Need For Speed game that was released.  (Most Wanted, which is very similar to Burnout: Paradise.)  
           Now, if you enjoy wrecking your car and creating mayhem, Burnout 3 also included a extra race mode that includes no racing at all.  Instead, you are placed at different  traffic intersections with the goal of biggest, most expensive accident possible.  The idea is to time your entrance best in order to collide with the most traffic, causing as large a chain reaction as possible.  Additional cars that enter the intersection almost never brake, so creating as big a pileup in the center as possible really helps keep it all going.  It's fantastic fun and great at parties.

           Takedowns aside, Burnout 3 is still a fast, beautiful racer with great controls and a decent soundtrack.  I really don't remember many 6th gen console games looking this fantastic.  As you increased in speed you eventually reached the point where the view around you becomes blurred and your focus is drawn to the horizon.  The already very high speed of the game now appears even more than it already is.  And it really is a fast game.  Near the end you unlock an F1 style car that reaches top speeds that are so high that I'm always surprised if I can go for more than a few hundred meters without getting into a massive wreck.  it's times like these however that really have a zen feel to them.  Darting in and out of traffic, unleashing your nitro boost and blasting across the asphalt, making each move perfectly, for a short amount of time you are above it all and nothing can bring you down.  Except the cement barrier you just hit.  And then it all comes down, you hit the accelerator and start it all again.

         My in-laws got this for me for Christmas one year and it was the best.  I've plugged countless hours into this game.  The arcade stylings of it all meant it was easy to pick up and play with ease.  Like a few other racers before it, even after losing my savegames I've picked it up and started from the beginning all over again and blasted through the whole thing without a hint of repetition.
             As much as I enjoy the newer Criterion games, I still like this one the most.  There's something great and mindless about race after race of crazy action racing with hardly realistic physics and the crash cash intersection mode is hours of fun.  I think I'm going to have to dig this one out again for old time's sake.

DAY 115 / GAME 115 Surgeon Simulator 2013

DAY 115 / GAME 115

Surgeon Simulator 2013

          With the advent of the Steam digital delivery service and other ways of now publishing and purchasing independently created video games, more and more experimental games have had the opportunity to become available.  

           The upside to this is that developers can now circumvent the typical big-budget release process, selling their games for less.  Cheaper indie games means that people are more likely to purchase something silly.  Something silly like Surgeon Simulator 2013.  Silly, and a TON of fun.

            Surgeon Simulator 2013 is absolutely ridiculous.  The game itself is borderline broken.  The controls are terrible on purpose and yet the goal is still to complete various surgeries, including a heart transplant, double kidney transplant and brain transplant.  Built for the PC, this game uses a combination of mouse and keyboard for controls.  The QWERTY keys each control the grasping of each individual finger on your hand while your mouse moves your hand around on the X/Y axis and a click of the right mouse button controls wrist motion while the left mouse button raises and lowers your hand.  So basically it's like doing surgery via a marionette.

             The very fact that you can complete these surgeries, even with the ridiculous controls, makes the game challengingly intense.  Especially in my case, since I was playing this game on a laptop with only a trackpad instead of a proper mouse which is much slower to use.  When your patient is bleeding out because you nick'd his aorta with a bonesaw, you really need to be able to address the situation quickly.  Thankfully I discovered that there are two syringes on your table and one of them stops the bleeding.  Though, if you stab yourself with it, (and you will) your vision goes to hell and good luck trying to complete surgery with a marionette's hands while looking through a kaleidoscope.

    So, initially there are three surgeries to complete.  It's pretty damn tough, as I previously described.  I played this game on the couch nightly while Denise watched TV and every once in a while she'd look over and exclaim 'I hope no one thinks to preform real surgery after playing this.'  She's also come out from the kitchen only to find me hunkered over her laptop, trying to complete a double kidney transplant and asked why I was sweating profusely.  My forehead was seriously dripping with sweat as I tried so hard to yank out that last kidney from deep inside my patient.
     So then, you complete the first three surgeries and a new list of the same 3 open up.  You load it up and realize you now have to preform the same 3, only inside a moving ambulance.  At one point I watched in horror as the back doors swung open and my replacement heart flew out into the street behind us.  This was an all new kind of hard.  I completed the first heart transplant, even after the alarm clock flew up and into the open chest cavity, blocking my way.  But after this, I've yet to complete any more.  I've heard that the next chapter of surgeries takes place in outer space in zero g.

      I think I payed a total of about $2.50 for this game on a Steam sale.  Heck, I bought an extra copy to gift away because it's so much fun.  This brings me back to the start, I payed $2.50, the price of a coffee and had a hilariously good time playing the kind of game that wouldn't have existed in the same capacity years ago.  Developers may have had something like this published for full retail release, but it would have been $60 and I highly doubt I would have purchased it.  (Then again, I did buy Seaman..)  If this is ever on sale again, I highly recommend picking it up, even if you only plug a few hours into it.  Who knows, maybe one day you'll have to perform brain surgery.

DAY 114 / GAME 114 Bart's Nightmare

DAY 114 / GAME 114

Bart's Nightmare

          There were Simpsons games and then there was Bart's Nightmare.  This was, in my opinion, the best Simpsons game made to date.  (Though, I never did try Simpsons Hit and Run and I hear that's pretty good.)  I only ever knew of it on the Super Nintendo, which is part of why I never actually own a copy, but turns out it was available on the Sega Genesis as well.  Which is too bad, because I would have bought this for sure and right about now I wish I had a copy.
      While taking a quick review of the game to write this, I realise now it seems like it was a super short game.  But I guess since I never did get very far in completing it it felt as if it could have been a much larger game.

          I'm not sure what it is about the Simpsons games but they always seemed overly tough.  Bart vs the Space Mutants was absolutely impossible, Escape from Camp Krusty was not easy in the least and neither was Krusty's Super Funhouse.  This was no exception to that rule.  Bart's Nightmare was basically a collection of mini-games, each of which were, I guess, a dream within a dream.  The game starts with you as Bart, falling asleep while trying to write a paper for school.  In your dreams you wander about a bizarre and twisted version of Springfield; a windy overworld that gives you access to the dream mini-games.  You try your best not to wake up by avoiding pretty much everything.  This includes Otto's bus, mailboxes that twist into monsters, Jimbo's gang, Principal Skinner and Zzz's.  

       The mini-games are equally as twisted and cool.  The game now had the opportunity to play with all the different aspects of the Simpsons world.  There was an Itchy and Scratchy dream, where you fight your way through their cartoon world using various pickups, my favorite of which is the giant mallet.  There was a cellular scaled level, where you float around in Bart's body, fighting off germs using an air pump, over-inflating and blowing them up.  (We also get a cameo from Smilin' Joe Fission in this level.)  There's also a BartZilla level where you destroy Springfield with your laser eyes and battle with Mom-thra and Homer Kong.  A level where you dream you are Bartman, flying across the sky shooting down various Springfield residents and an Indiana Bart level.

         The whole game was just so neat.  With the whole concept revolving around Bart's overactive imagination meant that the developer, Flying Edge, could really just go nuts with the property.  I really enjoyed the entire charm of the game.  It looked pretty great and sounded awesome.  As I recall it had a pretty neat soundtrack.  
         Bart's Nightmare also had some interesting inside baseball.  Apparently it was designed by legendary Atari game developer Bill Williams and moreover this was his very last job in the industry.  'Meddling' within this game development process drove him to leave for good and he was not happy at all with the final product.  He at one time referred to the game, lovingly I'm sure, as 'Bill's Nightmare'.  He then, unfortunately passed away 5 years later at age 38 from cystic fibrosis.  Now, despite Bill disliking the final product so much, I still enjoyed it quite a bit and I'd like to think I'm not the only one and perhaps he heard some good review after it was released.  I'd certainly like to think so.  

DAY 113 / GAME 113 Diablo II

DAY 113 / GAME 113

Diablo II

          I remember everyone being pretty excited about the launch of Diablo 2.  Now, at the time I didn't really know what Diablo was and I hadn't really played anything like it before either.  So with the launch upcoming a friend of mine lent me his copy of part 1 while I eagerly awaited for my preorder to be fulfilled.  So, shortly after, Diablo 2 was released and I popped by EB to pick it up.  I got home, started the install and flipped through the case and instruction booklet as I waited for the progress bar to reach 100%.  Then, the fated moment arrived.  I went to start up the game and it prompted me for the 'play' disc and the serial number, neither of which were in the box where they should be.  Good job EB.  
        I went into the store and explained the situation.  Luckily they didn't dispute the convenience of it all, but unfortunately they were right out of stock and I had to wait a week for a replacement copy.  So, in the meantime I made my way through part 1 until it came in.


        Diablo 2 was just this solid solid title that both chewed through your mouse and your free hours.  At a time when a lot of games were moving into realtime rendering engines, Diablo 2 instead stuck with prerendered backgrounds and sprites.  Since the isometric 3rd person camera was fixed and the sprites never had to scale, this worked perfect.  It meant Blizzard could use high quality sprites that looked fantastic, but didn't have to worry about them loosing fidelity if the camera zoomed in closer, or the characters moved in towards the camera.  But of course, the only issue with that method, as always, is that you are limited to a particular maximum resolution.  In this case 640x480 pixels, which is terribly low-def, or 800x600 with the Lord of Destruction add on, which is a much more acceptable.  

           Regardless, it still stands the test of time in my opinion.  When Diablo 3 was released, it came with a copy of Diablo 2 on a custom flash drive.  Since it turned out I couldn't run 3 without a video card upgrade, I ended up reinstalling Diablo 2 to play while I waited for my new hardware order to show up.  Though I don't have the biggest screen out there, (19.5" Widescreen LCD) I still found that the SVGA graphics held up and my romp through Tristram brought back old memories.  Heck, for a game released in the summer of 2000 it sure plays great.  Everything worked out quite well.  The inventory system was solid and simple, the game offered a myriad of different classes and skill trees to level into and the soundtrack by Matt Uelmen is in my opinion better than that of Diablo 3.  

             There was so much that was fantastic about this game.  The Battle.net online mode was nice and separate from the single player offline mode.  Playing with other friends was quick and easy, plus, spamming my one friend with hydra spells that brought his computer to a halt because of his video card, was always more fun that it should have been.  The different locations of the 4 acts were full of personality.  The rainy plains near Tristram, the dangerous tombs of the eastern desert, the creepy shamans and demons of the tribal jungle and of course facing off with Diablo himself in hell.  Blizzard of course has some of the finest artists in the industry and Diablo 2 shows this well.  The creature design is absolutely fantastic and is only limited by small sprite size and resolution.  The location design is unique and memorable, showing both care for visual style and playability.

          Diablo 2 represents the height of Blizzard games for me.  I certainly appreciate other releases since then, but I've always felt that this was their finest hour and that it best represented the brand throughout it's long lifetime.  I still absolutely adore the soundtrack and the game's playability almost 15 years after it's release.  I haven't even beat Diablo 3 yet, I put it down and haven't picked it back up yet.  I'm not sure if there's something about it I don't like, or if it just came about at the wrong time in my life.  Either way, I've always got more time for some Diablo 2.

DAY 112 / GAME 112 Terminator 2 Judgment Day

DAY 112 / GAME 112

Terminator 2 Judgment Day

          I've said it before, I never really did spend very much time in the arcade.  The times that I did primarily consisted of myself, my brother and my dad pumping quarters into the Terminator 2 arcade game.  This was the on-rails light gun shooter with two gun controllers mounted on the cabinet with a pivot.
           I think most people my age remember this game.  It seems to me that it was in pretty much every arcade around and of course, T2 was still fairly new at the time so it was pretty relevant.  My brother especially loved this game, so I found that it was usually my brother and my dad playing it while I watched, which was fine because it was pretty much impossible anyway.

          Seriously though.  This game was designed to eat quarters.  Even with two people going at it there was no getting past the first level.  The only reason I knew any other levels existed is because the demo screen showed them when no one was playing.  Which is too bad because all of the other levels looked way more interesting than the first level.  The first level was simply the introductory level where you have to escort the T-800 Terminator to the time machine and send him to the future.  This is part of what made it so tough.  Escort missions are always overly difficult in past games and this one was no exception.  There was a portion of the game early on where you have to protect a pickup truck while trying to stay alive yourself and the whole ordeal was almost impossible.  

          Still, each time we tried.  There's a good chance that in total, we spent the cost of a console game in quarters on this one.  All in the hopes we could make it to the later levels; which included the labs at Cyberdyne Systems, an escort level where the T-1000 is chasing the police van in a helicopter and the final levels in the steel mill.  Graphics on the arcade version were pretty good too.  They even shot footage for this game during the making of the movie.  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eddie Furlong and Robert Patrick all appear in this game as sprites based on this footage and end up looking pretty awesome.

            When the Sega Menacer was released for the Sega Genesis, which was a light gun unit made to compete with Nintendo's Super Scope; there was only a handful of games available to use with it.  6 of them came as a bundle in one cartridge and there were about 7 more, one was an adaptation of the Terminator 2 arcade game.  With how much we played this in the arcade, you can be sure we picked this up to go with our Menacer.  It looked pretty close to the arcade cabinet graphically, but it was equally as impossible.  In fact, even though we owned it, we still never beat that first level.  

DAY 111 / GAME 111 Resident Evil 4

DAY 111 / GAME 111

Resident Evil 4

          Resident Evil has been a fairly long running series which started on the PlayStation and has had 8 games in a consecutive storyline and at least 5 or 6 other side games, an interactive attraction in Japan, a number of live action movies and a series of animated movies.  It's really hard for me to pin down exactly which title was my favorite, but if I had to choose, it would probably be Resident Evil 4.  
         It seems to me this is a pretty common choice among fans, most people I talk to feel this was the best of the series.  Resident Evil held it's formula pretty tight throughout the anthology until this one.  The game used 3D renders overtop of pre-rendered backgrounds, a fixed cinematic camera and controls locked to that perspective.  This was the case with Resident Evil 0, 1, 2 and 3: Nemesis and only changed slightly with Resident Evil 3: Code Veronica which offered realtime rendering, but stuck with static cameras and controls most of the time.

            Resident Evil 4 made some major changes in design and ended up leading the charge in action game design.  Instead of the fixed camera Capcom decided to move the camera over the shoulder of the protagonist and had it follow in a similar field of view as most FPS games.  Of course, with the power of the next generation consoles, everything could now be rendered in realtime while producing very similar quality to what was previously pre-rendered.  This all new setup allowed for a much more fast-paced and action oriented game with quicker and more accurate aiming and more elaborate levels.

              Everything that was at all clunky about the earlier games had been cleaned up.  The inventory system was improved, level loading is considerable faster and the game itself was easier to navigate and complete without getting stuck on puzzles that were difficult simply due to low resolution graphics.  Some people complained that this game was far too action oriented and lost it's roots as a survival horror.  And although this complaint has some merit, some people would also complain that any survival horror with big guns really lost that 'survival' and 'horror' aspect.  But I always felt that mood and design are more important and that Resident Evil was due for a change since really, the original design was more or less a product of what was available in terms of console power at the time.

              Resident Evil 4 may have changed a ton about the series, but what I love about it is that Capcom still managed to capture everything that is so special about these games.  Just like the older titles, you manage to find yourself a part of much larger operation than what you initially encounter.  You start out in a small European village, the victim of the Las Plagas parasite and it goes from there, building and building until as per usual you end up in a high-tech laboratory.  RE:4 offers an amazing soundtrack, absolutely fantastic creature design and levels that drip with mood and personality.  On top of it all, it offers a fantastic game+ mode.  When you complete the game, playing over again offers benefits including wild game-breaking weapons that would be terrible on a first playthrough, but are a blast on subsequent runs.  An option I wish was added to more and more games.

            I remember seeing an E3 announcement for this game back when I was in college.  It featured Leon making his way through a bizarre haunted mansion while being chased by some odd tentacle creature.  After that it was a while before I actually picked up the game, I'm not sure why but I never did buy into this right away.  When I finally did borrow it on a friend's recommendation I realized none of what I saw in the E3 demo was in the game.  I guess it turns out it was part of a completely scrapped version of Resident Evil 4 that never made it to the market known as 'Hookman RE4'.  Either way I'm more than happy with how it eventually turned out and I must have played it through a number of times.  If anyone wants a copy it's now available dirt cheap in an HD remake available on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

DAY 110 / GAME 110 Super Mario 64

DAY 110 / GAME 110

Super Mario 64

          When the Nintendo 64 was released, as a Sega boy I was hesitant.  For those of you who owned consoles back when you were younger, you remember the 'console wars'.  See, when you were a kid and couldn't afford to spend all your money on games, you had to make a choice.  You had to decide between Sega and Nintendo, because your parent's sure weren't going to buy you a Genesis and a Super Nintendo and when the next generation was released, you had to decide between Sega, Sony and Nintendo.  On the upside, since I had a brother, we managed to each end up with our own console.  My brother sided with Sony and got a Playstation, but I was still a Sega diehard and got a (and to a certain degree regretted) a Sega Saturn.

               Now, the Nintendo 64 was still new when we had our consoles and neither of us were big on any Nintendo properties outside of Mario so we didn't push for an N64.  But I remember people talking about Mario 64 when it was released.  Unlike any other game at the time it offered a true free-roaming 3D world including, best of all, flight.  PlayStation had Crash Bandicoot, but it wasn't released yet and wasn't full free-roaming 3D.  Sega had Nights, which offered a bundled controller that included an analogue stick to match N64's, but most of it was 'on rails' and so also not true free-roaming 3D.  

               Eventually my brother saved up enough money and bought himself a Nintendo 64.  I can't remember if he actually owned Mario 64 or not, but at the very least I borrowed a copy from a friend and made my way through as much of it as I could.  Like Super Mario World before it, this was a launch game for Nintendo's new console and with it the number 1 selling point.  The Super Nintendo was the console you bought so you could play Super Mario World and the Nintendo 64 was the console you bought so you could play Mario 64.  

             As far as I was concerned, Mario 64 did a proper job of translating a classic 2D game into a 3D world.  Nintendo created a new world that took all the right elements from past games and pushed them into these perfect new adventures as you made your way through Princess Peach's Castle.  Hopping into various paintings and other portals that led you into a wide variety of bite-sized worlds each with a number of different goals to complete.  Some of the most interesting and memorable worlds came from this game including the swirling sands of the desert levels, the floating levels in the sky, the foggy sunken pirate ships, snowy mountains and the Hazy Maze Cave, (ok, I just really love that name.)

              There's so much that's enjoyable about this game.  It's just a real fun game that's full of hidden bits and pieces and is just a blast to roam about in.  There is a ton of available levels to find in the castle, which is something I felt was lacking in comparison with Super Mario Sunshine.  It also included a memorable score some of which made it's way into Super Mario 3D Land; in fact, it may even be my favorite Mario soundtrack.  I don't still own an N64, but luckily I am able to own this in a couple versions.  Both the remastered copy for the Nintendo DS portable and a copy on my Wii through the Virtual Console system.