Seeing as this blog is going to content plenty of
articles about video games before long, I may as well start with a list of some
of my favourite games. You can agree or furiously disagree with these, but they
are ultimately my opinion so shouldn't affect you too much.
This list will only be made up of games from previous
console generations, so don’t expect Call of Duty, Forza 4 or Uncharted.
Actually, don’t expect Call of Duty at all.
Half-Life 2
(PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3)
Let’s get the main one out of the way. If I was going to
do these in an order, there’s no doubt in my mind that Half-Life 2 would sit
proudly in that number 1 position.
Valve has done something only id Software has done
before, which is push the first person shooter genre forwards massively with
two different releases. Whereas Half-Life showed that shooters could be more
than just run and gun affairs by integrating a well-executed and subtle story,
it’s sequel really made you feel like the catalyst of significant events with
believable and well-crafted characters with a full range of facial animations
and fully implemented physics.
Taking place years after the first game you take on the
role of Gordon Freeman again, being sent to City 17 after spending time in an
unknown location and state. You soon find yourself joining a resistance against
the oppressive regime set up by the mysterious ‘benefactors’ and desperately
running from the sinister Overwatch, followed by sneaking through a zombie
infested town with nothing but the famed gravity gun before breaking into a
high security prison and finally assaulting the Sentinel that towers over City
17. The whole thing is a well-paced, exciting ride that never actively pushes
you down one path in the way most modern games do, allowing you to organically
find the way and mess around at your leisure.
Even now, Half-Life 2 looks gorgeous with realistic faces
that truly look human, beautiful water effects and fantastic animation (Aylx’s
pet robot ‘Dog’ is something to behold), making the game highly likely to stand
the test of time from a graphical perspective as well as a game play perspective.
These days, the Modern Warfare bug has almost fully
infected the first person shooter genre, but if you ever want to get away from
the continued madness of those games, just step back and play this gem. You’ll
then know just how amazing a shooter can be.
Samus Aran deserves to be more of an icon then she is.
Seeing as the Playstation was the first major hit mainstream console, Lara
Croft became the female icon of gaming. Samus, however, was the lead of what is
considered one of, if not the best Super Nintendo game there is: Super Metroid.
Samus missed the N64 before it was announced the young
Retro Studios was developing an entry on the Gamecube. Confusion quickly spread
throughout the fan base (which I wasn't part of) over the idea of this unproven
American studio handling one of Nintendo’s big franchises, followed quickly by rage
when screenshots showed Metroid Prime would utilities a first person viewpoint,
causing many to jump to the conclusion they were turning the claustrophobic,
lonely exploration series into a full blown first person shooter.
Metroid Prime came out to well-deserved critical acclaim
as Samus joined her Nintendo comrades in making the successful jump from side
scrolling 2D action to a fully realized 3D world.
Playing in a manner I find akin to a first person Zelda
game, Samus finds herself on the planet Talon IV, a former home of the Chozo
alien race and the current home for both the sinister Space Pirates and the
mysterious mineral Phazon. With no assistance but her wits, skills and power
suit, Samus must explore the world to find out what she can of these elements
and put a stop to the Space Pirates’ plan. The whole game is beautifully
executed, retaining everything that made Super Metroid great such as its
claustrophobic and lonely nature, bombastic action and epic boss monster
encounters and effortlessly brings it into a new, expansive world that
genuinely feels huge.
If you’re ever sick of NPCs telling you exactly where to
go and want to be left to your wits alone in a huge, beautiful yet hostile
world, there’s no better place to go.
Mashed: Drive to
Survive (PC, Xbox, PS2)
Micro Machines was one of the best multi player racers
ever made back in the days of the Sega Megadrive (or Genesis, if you've found
your way here from the States). Several players looking down on their cars as
they raced around kitchens, gardens and pool tables was every bit as fun as
playing with toy cars as a child.
Step forwards to the naughties (a name I can’t take
seriously) and step in Mashed, a game with the same premise by the same guys
who made Micro Machines, now blown up to full size with a mean variety of
weapons. Use missiles, mines, flash bangs barrel bombs and machine guns to get
ahead of your opponents to win the round and go onto win the race if you can,
but watch out for your opponents ganging up on you and sending air strikes your
way if they’re knocked out of a round.
While not all the tracks are winners (I almost
exclusively played the icy oval track), the laughs and cries of four people sat
together as they attempt to screw each other over can’t be rivalled, especially
when you find yourself hit just enough to spin you around, forcing you to
reverse up the track. That particular revelation will go down in my best gaming
moments ever!
Although I never owned one, the N64 was the first console
I really wanted. Nintendo’s third
home console had so many great, revolutionary and genre defining games, but
there was only one game I truly wanted one for: F-Zero X. Zipping along at a
smooth and crisp 60 frames a second through twisted and rolling roller coaster
like circuits with 29 other racers was a thrill beyond belief, made even more
awesome by the fantastic rocking soundtrack.
Jump forwards to the Gamecube and Nintendo got together
with former rivals and masters of the Arcade racer Sega to make F-Zero GX.
Whereas X had to sacrifice quite a bit in terms of graphics to keep up with the
game’s pace, GX could go wild with the increased power of the Gamecube,
combining the fast pace and number of racers with dazzling environments and
even more complex tracks that shot by at supersonic speeds. Keeping up with
everything was as much of a challenge as the actual racing.
With the lack of weapons that WipEout and Mario Kart
boasted, F-Zero GX had a difficulty that was more reasonable than its
competitors. If you failed, it was due to your own mistake rather than getting
hit by a leader seeking power that costs you the win on the last bend. The
story mode was the highlight of that difficulty, with even the ‘normal’ mode
proving a hell of a challenge and if you wanted to unlock the F-Zero AX content
without finding the arcade cabinet, then you’d have to beat everything on the highest
difficulties.
F-Zero GX was packed with other features, such as a
simple car builder and the aforementioned story mode, but it’s the racing that
keeps you coming back again and again. Hurtling through a futuristic city with
cranes working and space ships flying around as you race at supersonic speeds
never gets old.
Before the glut of shooting games that currently makes up
mainstream gaming, there was a variety of strange, quirky games. Bullfrog, one
of the UK’s greatest game developers, was famed for its ‘god games’ which are
basically management games on fairly large scales. Populous, Theme Park and
Theme Hospital stood as fantastic examples of PC gaming, but Dungeon Keeper 2
is my favourite out of all of them.
Your goal is simple. Build an underground dungeon, lure
monsters to your employ and then send them against the goody goods on the
surface or against rival dungeon keepers. Nice and simple but still beautifully
deep as not only do you need to protect your dungeon and build new rooms, you
need to keep gold coming in to pay your monsters and make sure squabbles don’t
break out between creatures that don’t like each other.
A sense of twisted humour also infects every aspect of
the game, ranging from the Mistresses who love to have themselves tortured to
the farting Bile Demons and your constant ‘Mentor’ dropping quips and remarks
as you go (voiced by Richard Ridings, who’s appeared in Who Framed Roger
Rabbit? and Red Dwarf, one of my favourite films and TV shows respectively.
Funny how the world works sometimes).
Since EA ‘merged’ Bullfrog with their UK studios,
effectively shutting the legendary studio down, the Dungeon Keeper Intellectual
Property has been sat in whatever vault EA has for IPs they have no intention
of using or selling. Thankfully, they did go so far as to allow sale of both DK
games on GOG.com, so if you ever want to see what management games were like
before the current glut of smartphone and Facebook games with a million hidden
charges, go and check this out.
Sam & Max: Hit
the Road (PC)
Lucasarts was very different in the 90s. While they did
make Star Wars and Indiana Jones games, they also dominated the market for the
point and click adventure game genre with zany games such as Day of the
Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island and the infinitely bizarre Sam & Max.
The adventures of the anthropomorphic dog in a suit Sam
and his insane rabbity thing partner Max range from the downright ludicrous to
the totally insane as they track down a missing pair of circus freaks across
various tourist traps in America while also perusing the plot of a power mad
country and western singer. The World’s Largest Ball of Twine, an Alligator
infested driving range and a vortex controlled by underground magnets became
the backdrops to the lunacy as the adventure continued to get stranger and
stranger.
Despite its success, Lucasarts cancelled a planned sequel
to focus on Star Wars, almost bringing an end to the point and click adventure
genre until the mid naughties when Telltale Games, a company built up of former
Lucasarts developers revived the series with a new, equally mad set of
‘episodic’ adventures that made up a full, equally insane story line. Even with
such a small number of products within the franchise, it goes to show how far a
quality product can go with fans.
Chrono Trigger
(SNES, PSone, Nintendo DS, iPhone, Android)
Square-Enix is best known for one series of games: Final
Fantasy. The most popular Japanese RPG series has made it to 14 numbered
entries and a mass of spin-offs, but only one or two reach the heady heights
that this SNES wonder of theirs reached and remains at.
Created by both the creator and composer of Final Fantasy
and the creator of Dragon Ball, Chrono Trigger follows the almost fairy tale
quest of Chrono and his friends as they travel back and forth through time to
stop the intergalactic parasite Lavos from destroying the future.
Like Final Fantasy, the core game play involves roaming an
over world to find the next objective or opponent, but rather than jumping into
random encounters on a separate battle screen, you take part in deliberately
placed battles that keep you on the over world screen as you fight which at the
time was quite a technical marvel. The combat system itself is very simple with
various normal, magical and team based attacks to use against a wide range of
enemies but retains a level of complexity that keeps you challenged against the
many challenges the game throws up across its 7 expansive time zones.
Graphically, the 2D sprites still look wonderful and the
musical score is among the best in the business, bringing the world to life in
a way many modern games simply can’t match. Chrono Trigger did gain a sequel on
the original Playstation in the form of Chrono Cross and the three lead
developers worked on a sort of spiritual successor Blue Dragon on the Xbox 360,
but nothing really stands up to the original.
Story telling is an interesting beast when it comes to
video games. Some of them just hang the story, hand you a massive gun and set
demons on you, while others can spend hours filling you in on exposition.
The Legacy of Kain games walk an interesting tight rope
where your aims are always reasonably simple, but the world around you contains
so much wonder and history that your character is learning of along with you as
you play, making you consider your mission and what destiny truly is.
This entry in the series which marked the middle part of
the journey of the wraith Raziel as he seeks revenge on his former master Kain,
bringing to light the manipulated destinies of Nosgoth and its inhabitance by
the mysterious Elder God. Throw in some intense combat with demons and vampire
hunters as well as mind twisting puzzles that take advantage of Raziel’s
ability to shift into the twisted spirit world and you've got a game that could
offer everything.
While there are games with better combat and exactly
where you need to go can be as clear as mud, Soul Reaver 2’s well executed
story keeps you coming back to see what happens next every time.
Carmageddon 2:
Carpocalypse Now (PC)
Some people may think there were no games that allowed
you to aimlessly drive around a large world, occasionally running over some
pedestrians if the mood struck you before the Grand Theft Auto series (or GTA3,
if you want to be awkward). In the 90s, a team from the Isle of Wight of all
places developed what was originally going to be a title based on the tongue in
cheek Death Race 2000 movie before the license was taken away and they had to
do their own thing.
The original Carmageddon was at the time a step forwards
in its open world racing and destructive driving, but as one of the potential
methods of winning a race was to run over every pedestrian in the level (quite
the task as there’s usually 200 of them) brought the attention of the tabloids
and the house wives with little to do and the game very nearly got banned
before the pedestrians were replaced with zombies.
While fun, the tracks felt dull and unimaginative after a
while and the method of unlocking cars was a chore (destroy an opponent and cross everything hoping it was one you were allowed to unlock), but Carmageddon 2 came and fixed not only that but a few other
annoyances with the original. Whereas before you had a few city blocks, an
industrial plant and a few valleys to explore, Carmag 2 gave you better
realized cities and industrial plants, a theme park and a fully functional
airport to name but a few locations. Refinements to the car physics and general
career design with additional challenges to break up the normal races made this
sequel everything a sequel should be.
Thankfully, the Carmageddon IP has returned to the
rightful hands of the original creators and they’re busy remaking the original
game, though they’d have to go a long way to top their second creation.
I'm going to set you a challenge. When you wake up
tomorrow morning, try and recite as many of the games on this list as possible.
You’ll likely remember the first entry on the list and maybe one or two games
you love yourself, but hopefully you’ll also remember the last entry on the
list. Why? Because in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game genre,
a brand of games that’s dominated to the point of stagnation by an almost
endless stream of fantasy games all trying to be the next World of Warcraft,
this absolute gem did its own thing and forged a path into brave unknowns other
developers simply refused to.
Based on its own super hero mythology that became as
expansive, interesting and slightly plot holed as anything Marvel and DC can
create, City of Heroes allowed you to be just about any hero and later villain
you wanted to be. Want to be a fire ball throwing pixie? Go ahead. Want to be a
muscle man who can throw chunks of the ground at enemies? You can do that too.
Want to be an anime inspired, spikey haired, enormous sword swinging angsty
type? To each’s own, but go ahead. Want to be a permanently grinning, hulking
clown man in a bright pink leotard who heals his allies with hugs? You’re
really messed up but you can do that as well, just don’t expect many people to
come near you.
With City of Heroes pre-dating World of Warcraft by about
half a year in the States, the then developer Cryptic went its own way in terms
of character power and game design. While in WoW and most other MMORPGs your
general effectiveness is mainly dictated by your gear, in City of Heroes your
powers and how you enhance them dictate your strength. Other features included
a wealth of badges to collect for exploration, defeating enemies and completing
tasks, scalable difficulty so any mission could be attempted by anyone with any
character build, genre leading ‘sidekick’ system that allowed players of vastly
different levels to play together in the same team without either being
penalized and a mission creation tool for creating and sharing your own.
City of Heroes had its fair share of faults. The huge
number of indoor ‘instance’ missions were in some cases lengthy and repetitive
and made the city itself feel a bit empty, Player versus Player combat was very
much an afterthought (though I've never been into PvP myself), most of the
powers caused the player to be rooted to the spot during its animation and the
graphics engine was dated even before its release, but the developers at
Cryptic and later Paragon Studios worked wonders within its limits to give the
players all sorts of new features, including a massive graphics overhaul and
the ability to change alignments as well as one of the better examples of in
game stores.
Sadly, despite 8 years of continuing success, the game
was shut down very suddenly by its publisher, NCSoft. City of Heroes made
enough money to support itself very well but not to satisfy NCsoft in the face
of Aion, Guild Wars and Lineage, CoH’s age and the fact it was rarely to never
advertised beyond word of mouth not helping. When the servers were shut off
without even a thank you for playing from NCSoft, the genre lost something
truly special in not just an accessible and imaginative world, but it also lost
an inviting and caring community of players. For the time being, the
Intellectual Property has been resigned to the same dark vault as Tabula Rasa,
Auto Assault and Exteel, but I still hope there will be a day when NCSoft realizes
that sitting on properties that people want only makes them look like clueless
fools. While I’m at it, I also hope for a device that will instantly generate a
Full English Breakfast on demand at any time of day.
Random note: Images scrounged from sources on Google Images
Re-imagining classic stories is hardly new in any form of
media. The Lion King was loosely based on Hamlet, Too Human was looser still
based on Norse mythology (and was rubbish, if you're interested) and if you squint hard enough (or look in the other
direction), the Mass Effect trilogy does have a few parts of the story of Jesus
mixed in.
Throughout the game, you play as Monkey, for whom both
voice and motion capture was provided by Andy Serkis (Gollem in Lord of the Rings). Rather appropriately, he
is effectively ‘enslaved’ to help Trip (who I refer to as Cleavage, thanks to
her overly tight tube top) who was captured by the Mechs and needs Monkey’s
help to return home, though he was really just the overly muscular, unfortunate mug Trip/Cleavage
happened to find rather than a mischievous god being taught discipline.
Throughout their journey, Monkey keeps seeing visions of the past thanks to the
head band Trip/Cleavage uses to keep him helping her, many of which look like
they were pilfered from Andy Serkis’ holiday photo album and hint to a later
revelation.
Chunks of the gameplay hold up well. Basic combat can be
fun but your shield and dodge rolls aren’t always responsive and trying to
fight ranged and melee enemies at the same time is an exercise in frustration
while exploration is held back by a huge number of invisible walls and
contextualised jumping which prevent you from deviating from the pre-defined path,
not to mention leaving you rolling against walls or refusing to jump down 3
foot because you’re not quite in the right place. The head band Trip/Cleavage
put on you also occasional decides to kill you if you weren’t meant to go off
in one direction when Trip/Cleavage is waiting for you to do something for her,
though that particular pain disappears later in the game.
Speaking of which, the entire game’s plot ultimately
revolves around what Trip/Cleavage wants to do or does to get herself in
trouble. You really have no choice in the matter and the fact you die if she
does due to the head band at least gives you a good reason to stick with her,
rather than throw her in the nearest ravine (there are sections where you have
to throw her across gaps, but you can only throw her directly at whatever she
needs to get to, much like normal jumping). Throughout the adventure you do
warm up to both her and Monkey and Pigsy when he’s introduced later in the game
and they are all well characterised voiced and animated and help bring the post-apocalyptic
world to life. Even simple things such as what they call things help make you
realize that they can’t quite cope with the scope of what used to exist. While
there are plenty of cut-scenes (some of which are awkwardly right after
checkpoints so you have to re-watch or skip them if you die), the game never
goes nuts on its exposition as the now silent, overgrown landscapes convey
enough of the story and if they do need to talk, there’s plenty of times when
Monkey and Trip/Cleavage just converse while traversing the world.
Sadly, Enslaved does have plenty of faults, such as the
already mentioned visible walls and occasionally awkward level geometry, but
there’s also the camera which draws in too close during combat so you can’t
keep an eye on enemies that might be circling you and even glitches out
completely sometimes and remains in a place where you can’t see yourself.
Combat isn’t exactly perfect and the shooting can be a little clumsy, but these
faults can be overlooked to a degree thanks to the story and characters. 
