DAY 319 / GAME 319
Batman, Sega Genesis
(Batman, Batman Returns, Batman and Robin)
I'm going to do another multi-title post here. There's a few reasons for me lumping these titles together. Partly that I hadn't played enough of each of them to justify a whole post for each, but also because within each of them there's enough nostalgia that they're worth bringing up. Batman and Batman Returns specifically only saw a small amount of my time since they were both a.) very difficult and b.) my Uncle's games that I only played at this place on a brief occasion. Regardless, both titles always stuck with me as being extremely great representations of the Burton films. Everything was perfectly dark and gritty, plus Batman does do well as a side-scrolling brawler. If only they didn't decide to toss in oddball treadmill platforming elements and other oddball bits just to make things difficult. Regardless, your use of the great Batman gadgets; baterangs, grappling hooks and being able to glide down at your enemies using your cape made these two games exactly what I would expect in a Batman movie game adaptation.
Batman and Robin was released much later, near the end of the Sega Genesis' lifetime actually. Though it's different enough that perhaps I shouldn't lump it together with the other two, it's still essentially the same game. Though graphically far advanced, using rendering techniques that were developed at the last minute when the new 32-bit systems were starting to come out, it was still at heart the same Batman brawler of the early 90's. This time around though, I did purchase this title. I found it cheap at K-Mart in a bin out of luck and enjoyed the crap out of it. Even if it was also quite difficult. Thankfully not as difficult as the other titles though.
Unlike Batman and Batman Returns however, Batman and Robin was not based on the films, but rather the popular animated series from the time. The upside was the the entire game featured a wider range of enemies and some much more fantastic, colourful designs that go a long way to make it one of the better looking titles ever released on the 16-bit console. The game used a fantastic new engine that allowed for curved scrolling and a unique, almost top-down perspective on the buildings as well as a number of other new effects that included being able to tilt and roll the entire level, like what was previously capable on the SNES.
Batman is a property that really lends itself well to videogames. These certainly aren't the only great ones in the past, but these were certainly the three that I played when I was a kid and the ones that always stuck with me forever. In fact, I'm pretty sure I hadn't touched a Batman game until the glory that is Arkham Asylum was finally released. I'd certainly like to dig up an old copy of Batman Returns though, I remember it looking fantastic.
DAY 318 / GAME 318
Dirt 2
One of my favorite racing series of all time peaked with this title. Dirt 2 from Codemasters, is an extension of the Colin McRae rally series first released in 1998. Codemasters, who in my opinion, does rally better than anyone else out there, released this ultimate rally racing title in 2009.
Dirt 1 was a strong success in my opinion. One of the finest rally games I'd ever played with incredible, realistic controls and pace notes that you could actually rely on. Not to mention classic WRC stages that were utterly beautiful. Dirt 2 took all of this and simply made it better in each respect. Tweaked controls, a larger number of cars with some additional race diciplines and some pretty new liveries. It was exactly what I wanted to see in a sequel. Nothing removed, only great stuff added. (Unfortunately the opposite of Dirt 3.)
Dirt 2 boasted some incredible rendering that made shooting across the sand, snow and mud look and feel like the real thing. Your cars and other off-road vehicles were true-to-form and included some of my absolute favorites including a Pike's Peak Toyota Celica and a tribute to the past Colin McRae with a properly liveried 1998 Subaru 22b STI. They even included a special tribute course in his honor.
Unfortunately there isn't much more to be said. Like Dirt 1 this is simply one of my most favorite racing games ever made. I've never quite connected to a virtual racing world quite like this one and enjoyed the perfection that comes from a games learning curve like in Dirt 2. Dirt 3 was a little dissapointing for me as it strayed from what made Dirt 1 and 2 so great, in the future I can only hope they understand this and bring back it's legacy.
DAY 317 / GAME 317
Alien Isolation
Normally I don't post about games I just finished playing. But Alien Isolation is a real exception. The past month I spent completing the main campaign has been a harrowing one that left me with both nightmares and moments of complete awe. With no hesitation I can say that this is not only the best Alien video game by far, but also one of the best expansions on the Alien lore since James Cameron's Aliens.
After the epic failure (or so I hear) that was Aliens: Colonial Marines, I was surprised to see Sega publish yet another Alien title. The difference was that where Colonial Marines focused on all the same things ever other Alien game has in the past; hoards of Aliens, loads of weapons and ammo and generally trying to turn Cameron's Aliens into a video game. Isolation however, is one of the first games to focus solely on the first Ridley Scott film. In fact, Alien Isolation pulls not one trope or element from the films beyond the first. Everything from the makeshift, lo-fi technology, rattled and unprepared characters, and the entire look of the world resembles Scott's Alien down to a "T".
Alien Isolation isn't your typical Alien game. Instead of gunning your way through the halls, splattering acid-blood on the bulkheads, you are a rodent in a 20 hour game of cat and mouse. You play as Lt. Ripley's daughter, who, after the events of the first film, has been trying to find out what happened. Getting lucky, she ends up on a mission from Weyland-Yutani to recover the black-box of her mother's ship the Nostromo which is being held at a Segson run space facility. You end up stranded on this station, which has gone straight to hell thanks to a number of factors, one major one of which is an Alien which has managed to make it's way on board. The Alien hunts you and the other surviving members of the station as you attempt to escape back to your ship the Torrens and try to find the black box which contains the answers you are looking for.
As you make your way through the game pick up a motion tracker, in style with the one used in Alien, not Aliens. You also craft a number of tools for distracting the Alien and other humans who are so scared of what's going on they'd rather shoot first and figure it out later. This means you are sneaking and hiding your way through most all of the game. Make too much noise and the beast comes looking for you. You get a gun, but using it could cause you more trouble than it's worth. The entire game is full of increasingly tense moments where you could get hauled into a vent at anytime by the nasty creature and for the first few days I got terrible sleep because I was literally having nightmares about this game.
Alien Isolation is not for the weak, it's non-stop tension and a generally frightening game where you typically feel helpless. Mimicking exactly what Ridley Scott did with his Alien film. There's also so many fantastic moments I simply can't get into without spoiling what is a very new game that I know many people have yet to, and will, play. This game looks gorgeous, is gorgeous and is an absolute feat in a world where noone seems to be able to create a great Alien game. I can only hope for a sequel, with how well this worked out. In fact, with how well this turned out, I would love to see them apply this formula to the Alien 3 movie.
DAY 316 / GAME 316
Borderlands
Borderlands, once referred to by Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulic as the 'arrow game', a title that rings true with me for certain. You see, Borderlands is a lot like Diablo in the sense that you are consistently coming across new weapons which are basically the same weapons with slightly different specs (and colour skins). When you pick them up they show a comparison view between your current weapon and this new one, with arrows pointing up or down depending on whether or not that particular stat is better or worse. Instead of simply going through the game and enjoying it, I end up spending needless hours debating which weapon I should use, leave behind or sell. Not to mention how badly this plays on my need to hoard items in video games. So badly at times that I'm one of those people who will fire off a shot in order to now be able to pick up ammo that I would otherwise have to pass over because my cache is full.
That being said, I do actually love this game. I simply haven't finished it because it did end up dragging on for a bit and I left it to play one of the many other games I had waiting to be played. Borderlands is a fantastically unique first-person RPG that is a lot deeper than I had time to enjoy. The game itself is quite expansive and plays out much like an MMO with a lot of missions and leveling as well as different classes available to start from. And so, since you can play as a Hunter, Siren, Sniper and Berserker, each playthrough can very quite a bit. Maybe one day when you know, time stops or something, I'll go back and try out each of them.
Borderlands also wins due to it's beautiful graphics. In a time when cel-shading has been overused, Gearbox managed to take advantage of this style and create a visually unique FPS game with characters and designs that will stand the test of time. Not to mention a nice wide range of characters, a huge list of weapons which is thanks to swapping out colours and mixing-and-matching small components to make no two of the hundreds of guns look the same. Not to mention, wielding an electric green revolver or a sleek red shotgun puts that extra oomph into the overall visuals of the game.
Take all this and add in optional drop-in multiplayer and this becomes one of the most fantastic games I've never fully taken advantage of. Just another loss in the great war for me between which games I will play and which games get lost at the wayside. I have hopes that I will put more time into Borderlands 2 though. I've been told the level design is a little bit less repetitive and I recently picked it up on sale for about $5. Plus, the new character classes look a lot more interesting. I mean, they've added a Mecromancer.
DAY 315 / GAME 315
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Probably the only other Zelda game I put any real time into aside from Ocarina of Time and Windwaker would have been Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS portable console. After finishing Ocarina of Time I decided to delve into the long list of Zelda titles I'd missed over the decades. Since I had just recently purchased a 3DS console and had never previously owned a regular DS, I decided to hop over to EB and pick up a few older DS titles that I never got around to trying. One of those was a title I heard lots of good things about: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
Having not known about Windwaker at the time, this was my first introduction to the 'toon Link' design that is more stylized than the previous games and in some ways a lot more likable. It's also Link's first game on the DS portable system and so it takes advantage of all the tech that isn't available on the home consoles at the time. Character movement is all done using the stylus, using the top screen instead for your maps and other menus or special uses. The game also insists you use the microphone for some elements of the game. Which can be real embarrassing when you're stuck on the commuter train and it wants you to yell at your console. (In actuality, I closed the game and refused to play it until I got home and could yell all I wanted.)
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I really did have an absolute blast playing Phantom Hourglass. The dungeons were a ton of fun, the use of the stylus for movement was a bit of a pain but using it for actions like throwing a boomerang or using your hookshot tool was neat. Phantom Hourglass simply has all the great makings of a Zelda game, from what I've experienced in the series so far at least. It's formula is strong and enjoyable. Only time is keeping me from both completing this game and playing the many more Zelda titles I've yet to try.
It's tough, loving games. When there isn't much you don't like you have to really dedicate time to get to all of the great ones out there. Even after I finish listing these 365 games, I know there are even more out there I've enjoyed. And nothing feels worse than missing out on a great experience.
I do plan to play the majority of the series as soon as I can. But first and foremost, I want to finally play through A Link to the Past.
DAY 314 / GAME 314
The Legend of Zelda: the Windwaker HD
As I've mentioned before, I never did play any of the Legend of Zelda games growing up. Partly because I didn't own an 8-bit Nintendo growing up and partly because for one reason or another, it just didn't appeal to me. That all changed after I bought a Nintendo 3DS handheld along with the remastered version of Ocarina of Time. 'Where had this series been all my life?' and 'How could I have overlooked a series this great?' were the questions in my mind.
So after completing and thoroughly enjoying Ocarina of Time 3D, I started asking around. 'What other Zelda games should I try?' I knew there were a lot of them, where to begin? My query was divided amongst those I asked almost down the middle. Half felt that Ocarina of Time was the best Zelda title and the others felt strongly about the Windwaker. Among those two other suggestions included A Link to the Past and Majora's Mask. Before eventually purchasing the Wii-U bundled with the new HD remake of Windwaker, I had tried out The Phantom Hourglass on the Nintendo DS as well as A Link to the Past on the Wii's Virtual Console.
Windwaker really was the best suggestion.
I had never tried the original release of the Windwaker when it was first published on the Nintendo Gamecube. In fact, I'd never really caught proper wind of it. If I did, I would have probably picked it up back then and it would have been my first Zelda game. In this case, Nintendo decided to take a stylish approach and paint everything with beautiful rich colours, very defined and limited colour palettes and the addition of cel-shading for a 2D animated look. Now, I never did see the original GameCube version, but I'd imagine with a smart design like this it would have looked far better than what you'd be used to seeing on that unit. (Not that it wasn't a powerful console.)
Like when my first experience with my 3DS console was with the Ocarina of Time rebuild, my first experience with the Wii-U console was with the Windwaker rebuild. Even though the original was released ten years prior in 2003, this new Windwaker looks as if it had been fashioned this year. It's one of the most gorgeous looking games I've ever played and I simply cannot stress that more. All this and throw in the fact that it's got all the makings of a perfect Zelda game; with it's typical tropes, dungeon style level layouts and smart puzzles that leave you lighting up when you finally figure them out. The only thing I can say bad about Windwaker is that I simply haven't finished it.
As it turns out, I'm just no good at Zelda games. Having never played them from the beginning, I just don't have the built-in knowledge of how they work and they simply don't play naturally for me. Ocarina of Time is the only one I've beat to date. But I will make it a very strong point to return to Windwaker, even if it means bringing a strategy guide with me and play it to the end. The game deserves it and so do I.
DAY 313 / GAME 313
Quake 2
I may have enjoyed Quake, with it's demonic and brutal stone castles, pits of fire and demons; but Quake 2 hit me right in the pants. Dark Forces aside, I hadn't played any good sci-fi first-person-shooter games at the time. Unless you count Doom, which was sci-fi, but sided more on the supernatural horror aspect of things; especially when you arrive in Hell. Quake 2 however is specifically focused on being a science fiction story, right from the very beginning when you drop in on an alien homeworld as part of a strike force in an entry capsule.
Not that story was ever a big part of the Quake series, but as it goes in this installment, you play as Bitterman, the only surviving marine from a Earth strikeforce. Attempting to counter-attack an alien invasion under the radar by dropping individuals in pods, the plan was thwarted when the cybernetic civilization the Strogg fought back by firing an EMP weapon. Disabling the incoming pods and leaving only one yourself as a fluke survivor. Also leaving you as the one marine who will have to single-handedly take down the Strogg empire. In classic video game fashion.
Quake 2 had the advantage of being the second generation of id Games' fully 3D rendering game engine. Resolution was higher, as was polygon count and the quality of particle effects. It still had that punch of being fully 3D that put it above games like Dark Forces and Doom. Your weapons reacted to the changing lighting and were fully animated. Weapons like rocket launchers fired (albeit blocky) particle trails down hallways, lighting up everything as they pass by. Everything felt so tangible and so much more virtually real than the rasterized elements of older FPS games. I enjoyed it immensely, even if I never made it much past the first level and really just played that one over and over and over again.
Quake 2 is another one of those games that simply ushered in an era of properly imagined 3D worlds. If only released as an experiment, or show of what is possible on a PC at the time, it still had a huge impact on the gaming community. It was rock solid all around, it simply didn't try to do anything the engine wasn't designed for; the engine was built and the game around that.
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