DAY 49 / GAME 49 Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

DAY 49 / GAME 49

Enslaved:  Odyssey to the West

           Enslaved was one of those games I remember seeing incredible pre-release screen shots for, drooled over them and then never heard anything about the game ever again. 

           I found it one day cheap, not too shortly after it's initial release.  I'm guessing it didn't do too well so far as sales go and I'm certain it was due to the lack of marketing.  Enslaved was one of those 'top most amazing games you've never heard of' games.  From it's exterior, it's a basic post-apocalyptic third-person action/adventure title.  But at heart, Enslaved contains some of the finest characters backed up by some of the best voice and facial acting.

           It takes a little bit to kick in, like most stories.  But the relationship between Monkey and Trip quickly becomes very tangible and the shallow looking brute and princess become two very likable characters.  And when Pigsy shows up, Ninja Theory shows you what they are really capable of.  Imperfect characters are always the most interesting; especially those who are both physically and emotionally imperfect.  And Pigsy, the overweight pig of a man whose most recent goal in life is to build himself the perfect girl; is the kind of great character I want to see more and more of in the games I play.  

              On top of it all, Enslaved featured some of the best facial animation and acting I've ever seen in a game.  They stylized the character designs just enough so that they don't look out of place in the gorgeous detailed world, but lend well to proper over-expression and easy readability. 

              I absolutely loved this game.  And although I do recommend it, especially for the price you can find it at now, I can't guarantee everyone would love it.  Because this is the kind of game where the story and characters are so great that I tend to completely overlook other flaws.  But I totally don't remember any in Enslaved.  So play it!

DAY 48 / GAME 48 Soul Calibur

DAY 48 / GAME 48

Soul Calibur

           I can't remember why I bought this game.  I've never really been into fighting games, but for some reason I bought both this and Dead or Alive 2 for my Dreamcast at the same time.  Maybe it was a Penny Arcade review or something else I had read online; either way it worked out quite well.  

              Previously I had enjoyed Mortal Kombat, but that was about as far as my fighting game experience really got.  Even then, I only played it because my brother bought it.  Soul Calibur felt different from the rest though.  First and foremost it was a weapon based fighter where each character had a different fighting style with different hand-to-hand weapons like swords and staffs.  This was the biggest draw for me.  This gave each of the characters very distinctive differences in the manner in which they fight.  Attacking, counter-attacking and blocking; weapon reach and stances all really gave your character choice more personality, which is important because there is little story in a fighting game to help build up each individual.  

             This was another thing that made Soul Calibur great.  The single player missions were much different than usual.  Single player in most fighting games are simply a ladder climb, where you fight your way to the top through increasingly more difficult opponents.  But in this game, you made your way through a story and as you did you had different kinds of fights unlike your typical rounds.  And for once, I actually had a fighter that I had really mastered.  I played enough of this game that when friends were over, I was pretty much unbeatable.  Not just with one character either, I made sure to perfect my skills with most all the available options.  

              I love this game.  It's solid, responsive and had this real tangible feel to it that made the fighting feel less cheap and impossible than other games.  The characters were interesting and the 3D/2D arena style really felt less restrictive than the usual fighter.  It was another great game that reinforced how great it was to own a Dreamcast.  I never did really get into any of the newer ones, but I think they just updated the graphics and made the clothing more revealing.  So I'm happy to just hook this one up again instead.

DAY 46 / GAME 46 Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

DAY 46 / GAME 46

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

           If someone made a game like this nowadays I'd probably toss it in the garbage.  

     But seriously; I mean, if they managed to make an action game based on Justin Timberlake I doubt I'd give it the time of day.  When Moonwalker came out though, it was unique, inventive and exciting.  Or at least, my 10 year old self figured as much.  

      Now, at the time I actually quite enjoyed Michael Jackson.  I remember having watched Thriller and other music videos.  We had a vinyl of his I'm sure.  So this wasn't unfamiliar territory when I first saw the game.  A game that, yes, you guessed it, my uncle brought over one day for us to try out.  

        I had never seen the Moonwalker movie.  But this game had everything.  I mean, there was a monkey, you danced, there was zombies, you turned into some kind of robot or flying car or something in the end; it was very over the top.  But I thought it was just amazing.  At least half of it was the music though.  The Genesis did a great job of emulating a whole bunch of Michael Jackson tracks for this game.  It set this great mood for the game and when you performed dance move attacks the whole thing felt like a 16-bit music video.  

         In the end though, I can't really imagine a game like this ever being made again.  I could see people like Justin Bieber wanting this kind of immortalization.  But this really was a product of it's time and only an insane madman would try to see this through production.  Actually, I take it back.  If Justin Timberlake wanted to make a 16-bit action dance game with zombies and robot cars my interest would definitely be piqued.

(I know I shouldn't have used two Justins in this writeup, but it was just what was in my head.)

DAY 47 / GAME 47 Half Life

DAY 47 / GAME 47

Half Life

           When I first saw the box for Half Life in 1999 I immediately dismissed it as a cheap Alien rip-off.   Right on the back of the box even featured facehugger equivalents.  But one day, when I was at a computer hardware shop picking up some new parts, I caught this incredible game on display.  The intro sequence for Half Life, which looks very cinematic and felt very fresh and smart at the time, was playing on a bunch of computers.  I couldn't believe how wrong I was, how I judged a 'book' by it's cover almost literally.  

           This was back when I was no stranger to game piracy.  And very shortly after first seeing it, someone had produced a copy of this game for me.  I started into it and I was hooked.  It was incredible, but the soundtrack wasn't playing properly and I really wanted an excuse to purchase a real copy, so I ran out as soon as I had the opportunity and bought it.  (Turns out, I somehow had the music turned off, I discovered after buying a real copy.)  But this was a purchase well worth it's price and more.  Half Life, which turns out is based off of the Stephen King short story The Mist, is an incredible advancement from the usual FPS format.  It was scary, eerie and a solid piece of sci-fi.  Level puzzles were much more complex and the story was fantastic.  Not to mention, the Half Life source engine made way for Team Fortress and CounterStrike.  Some of the best online FPS games to date.

            Half Life is absolutely iconic to gamers at this point.  Gordon Freeman the silent protagonist of the ages, one who made the Crowbar a symbol of 'smart' FPS gameplay.  Half Life is another one of these games that started everything.  It wasn't taking itself very seriously to begin with, but when they realised what they had created, Valve turned that around.  Without Half Life there would be no Half Life 2, no Portal, Portal 2, Team Fortress 1 or 2, Counterstrike and no Garry's Mod.  Think about that.

DAY 45 / GAME 45 Neocron

DAY 45 / GAME 45

Neocron

           I always really enjoyed the idea of a Massively Multiplayer Online game, but most of what was available prior to World of Warcraft didn't really appeal to me for the most part.  I think my choices pre-Neocron were Everquest and Ultima Online.  Both were pretty tame visually, which was most of the drawback for me at the time.  So when Neocron came out, I was pretty impressed that a MMO could look this good.

             Neocron was shown to me by a classmate when I was studying at Toronto Film School, so it was around 2003ish.  As soon as it launched a few of us hopped on and tried it out.  We only played for a few months, but it was a pretty awesome experience for my first MMO.  Neocron was a FPS design, which was unique for an MMO.  It basically ends up looking a lot like System Shock or Deus Ex.  You equip yourself with weapons and cybernetic upgrades to battle your way through a post-apocalyptic world.  You find safety in the city and have to traverse the dangers of the outer-wall in order to really discover anything of the world.

            Combat was a little more fun than your typical MMO since it wasn't turn based, or had to rely heavily on cooldowns or other means to slow the pacing of a fight.  You could build hoverbikes and trucks with mounted guns so you and your friends could go into a fight together outside the wall.  But the real appeal for me with this game was the whole experience of a persistent world full of other real players.  Hanging out virtually and conversing seemed like such a neat thing back then.  Keywords in conversations triggered animations in the characters, so when walking by groups of people it looked like they were having real life conversations.  

           I had a couple really cool moments in this game.  I also had some terrible ones.  Ideally at a certain point you want to traverse the badlands from the city to an outpost across the map.  It's pretty difficult and you really need a vehicle to do it.  So I finally get a cheap bike and I almost made it on my first try, but I got destroyed by some huge monster.  Second time around, (It takes a good hour to get there.) I finally make it to the outpost and I'm about to hit the save-point station so I can start up there from now on and some player goes on a rampage and wiped out every low-level player in sight.  So then I had to try again.  This time I make it there no problem, but for some reason I make a wrong turn and quite literally fall into an open elevator shaft, to my doom.  On my fourth try I finally get there unscathed.  It was quite the experience.

             Games like this are all about the little quirks and moments and experiences that make your play unique; quite often caused by other player's interactions and influences.  It seems to me this game is still around in it's updated form.  (Neocron 2:  Beyond Dome of York.)  I'd seriously love to load it up again.  For old time's sake.

DAY 44 / GAME 44 Alice: Madness Returns

DAY 44 / GAME 44

Alice: Madness Returns

           I have a very special place for properties that treat Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with the respect it deserves.  When American McGee and Shanghai's Spicy Horse studios returned to the Alice property, they created one of the best visualisations  of his material since Disney's 1951 film.  In Madness Returns, Spicy Horse faithfully delved into the content of the Alice novels and really fleshed out all the great elements of the stories and the world that surrounds them.

                Madness Returns was just beautiful.  So many elements drawn from the original Carroll illustrations, so much moreso than the Disney version.  (For obvious reasons.)  I'm convinced that the majority of the staff must have taken this project on as a labour of love.  Everything from the level design, weapon designs, costumes, characters and promotional posters were no more perfect than I could have asked for had I control of the project myself.  Being a sequel as well, it gains all the advantages of being on a more powerful system and having had all the bugs worked out from trying to build a game out of this property once before with American McGee's Alice back in 2000.

               This game is such an absolutely fantastic, completely gorgeous romp through the twisted combination of both the minds of Lewis Carroll and American McGee.  It's quirky, haunting, whimsical and terrifying.  I just love it.  It's hard to describe exactly what makes this game so great.  I wonder if noone else would agree with me on this one.  I mean, it's clear that the art direction is beautiful, that the gameplay is solid and that the whole game is polished overall.  But perhaps it's all about being a huge fan of Alice in Wonderland and that's really where the appeal comes from.  

              Really in the end that's it.  I absolutely love Alice: Madness Returns most simply because as far as I'm concerned, it's the best adaptation of the Lewis Carroll property I've ever had the chance to enjoy.  And being a videogame, it allows me to enter and wander around in my most absolute favorite storybook. One I've enjoyed since I was very young.

DAY 43 / GAME 43 Doom II

DAY 43 / GAME 43

Doom II

           I think I read somewhere that Doom is the single most installed piece of software to date, possibly surpassing Microsoft Windows.  Of course, Doom 1 was 'shareware', available for free with the option to mail-order the rest of the game.  Doom II was the first, proper retail version of Doom, which I promptly purchased from my local computer hardware store when it was released.  

             Virtual Reality was a big thing in the 90's.  It seemed like it was going to be the future and with the FPS genre just starting up it seemed like it was all coming together.  And so games like Doom felt like they were about as close as I was going to get to proper VR while I waited for it to become commonplace.  In the end all that fell away and the gimmick that I put together in my head was long gone.  Instead I was just absolutely absorbed in this dark, sci-fi, paranormal horror, action first-person-shooter.  

Few video game weapons rival the simple Chainsaw.

             Doom II came on 5, 3.25" floppy disks.  I installed it so many times the disks ended up failing on me.  It was a good thing I had never lost the original install files because I played this game a ton.  Doom, like a lot of earlier FPS games were very basic and had a certain simplicity to their fun.  You can speed run games like Doom 2, powering through it, running past most of your enemies and just grabbing the keys you need to continue.  But back when I first got it, it was a pretty scary game and I most certainly hobbled my way through it.  Frightened to go around the next dark corner, because it probably had a Hellbeast or a Cyberdemon or a Mancubus waiting to murderize me.  

             Doom II had an actual bit of a story that was kinda neat.  You made your way through various levels on Earth, saving humanity from demons that made their way over from some kind of Hell from the first game.  After saving humanity you discover a way into this same alien hell.  I don't know what it was about being a teen in the 90's, but any visualization of hell, especially in a videogame, was pretty cool.

            Doom II may have been the game that really started the FPS genre.  Doom 1 and Wolfenstein were not really big enough commercially.  It wasn't until Doom II exploded into the market that it really added this whole new angle to the action games of the 90's.  After Doom, we got Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Half-Life, Serious Sam and even more I can't think of.  Some of which really took the genre to new places.  But it all started here and I enjoyed it from the very beginning.