Take a Straight Line

For Christmas my brother got me a new game for my 360: Spec Ops the Line. You might have heard of this: Spec Ops the Line has been creating a stir in the gaming community through it being a deconstruction of the shooter genre. That was my first impression at least and being rather sick and tried of shooter games & the 'must kill fifty guys to get it up' players that flock to them, I thought having game that would challenge it all would require a lot of balls. Well, apparently someone at Yager had the balls so that is worthy enough for my attention. Mind you, my brother noted of my 360 games, with the presence of Bishock, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo and the Orange Box, a preponderance of shooters so would Spec Ops the Line be an upset of this?

Well, I like my shooters to be Doom: Fun, exciting and unafraid to place the player in desperado situations against near-impossible odds. That being said I have little to no time for Call of Duty, Battlefield and the like as I find their rigid seriousness/self-importance unappealing beyond basic familiarity. Thus one would I think I would be perfect for Spec Ops the Line.
Well the first thing that struck me about Spec Ops the Line was the use of the menu music: Jimi Hendrix's famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Then there was the unnerving sight of my XBLA name included in the opening credits - obviously this is a game that isn't fucking around.

At time of writing I had made it to Chapter 4 and already some signs have been detected of the game's deconstructive intentions: The shouts made by characters during the fighting, clues made out via the intel drops, use of sixties metal music, and being led on in a linear fashion. There have already been some unsettling moments but not enough to put me off completely. Sure the gameplay may be a bit broken but somehow one suspects that may have been the point...

So I will continue playing Spec Ops the Line and it would be interesting to see what happens next...

Bass in the Place

And we're back.
Welcome to 2013 everybody. The world didn't come to an end (in your face nay-sayers!) and a whole new year has opened up before us all. So lets not muck around - time to go back to work.

So what did I do during my Christmas holidays? Well I took the time to work on my Hall of Shame and had the pleasure of striking another game from it: Goodbye Beneath a Steel Sky.

During the nineties, whereas other kids had a Nintendo or a Sega (or eventually a PlayStation), I however had an Amiga. It was through being an Amiga user that I became aware of Beneath a Steel Sky. I saw some screenshots and it getting excellent reviews from critics who were acting like they'd just found a gold mine underneath their house. Of course I had little access to Amiga games at the time so I never got to play it - until recently, of course, through my good friend Good Old Games where it was available for free. Yeah, a game you wanted to play being made for free - such an endpoint for a journey begun eighteen years ago.....

Anyway, with high expectations behind this game how did it turn out?
Well quite good actually.

From my early impressions with the game, stemming form my Amiga days, I gathered a sense that Beneath a Steel Sky was set in a scifi universe ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship - at the time I'd never heard such a scenario in a game before and I was keen to see how it would play out. Very well as it turned out: I liked the setting of this world and how the oppressive nature of the setting is gradually established as the game progresses (note the message accompanying the game over screen). Like all adventure games I've been playing, the backgrounds were beautiful to behold and, impressively, were drawn by comic artist extraordinaire Dave Gibbons.
But what I found particularly puzzling is the setting being located in Australia. Now I'm all for Australia being a setting for a game - and a sci-fi setting at that - but it is strange to see an Australian setting where everyone speaks in British accents. But the Australian setting does have moments of hilarity to the Australian resident with the totalitarian government and having a revolutionary group operating out of Hobart (!!!!!).
Another aspect that left me scratching my head is the humorous moments. Now with the setting described above, one would think the game would be grim and dour. Not so: there are a lot of nutty characters and witty dialogue. Its an odd choice but  there are times when it seems like the humorous moments seem strained and seem to have got lost whilst on the way to a completely different game (the courtroom scene springs to mind). Granted such moments may add to the idea that everyone's gone insane but to make the humorous moments come across as off-putting. Indeed, it makes me wonder how much Adventure games rely on humor - if anything the inclusion of humor sweetens the deal of having to solve baffling problems whilst the absence of it could prove to be fatal to the game itself (The Dig anyone?).

Still, I enjoyed playing Beneath a Steel Sky. I enjoyed the setting and exploring the world before me and it did lead to some memorable moments (the scene in the cathedral being one). I liked this game and am glad to have (finally!) played it. It's just a shame it ended when it did because I would've liked to have seen more of the world presented in this game.
And sequels have been granted to less deserving games... >:(

That was the year it was: 2012

So this will be my last post for 2012 - Because the festive season is here and there are people who I should spend some time with. And besides, I haven't had a lot to say recently but considering the time of year, it doesn't seem that much of a surprise.

So what does 2012 represent for me in gaming terms? I think it can be easily be boiled down to two things: Online gaming and Good Old Games. It may not sound like much to some of the rest of you but since when I've been concerned with what people think about this blog? I move to my own beat and I like it like that.

But I digress.
Firstly, online gaming. I haven't had much to do with it previously, but 2012 will forever be the time I took my first step into this unfamiliar territory.  And what better way than with the untouchable king of all online games, World of Warcraft. As a newcomer to this I did find a lot to enjoy with playing a game with the same group of people, regular meetings (twice weekly) for questing and making friends. In retrospect, I think I enjoyed the social element of online gaming better than the actual game itself.
But I also found that online gaming does indeed require a large time commitment - even to the point of excluding all other games. And it does seem absurd to have sunk countless hours into World of Warcraft when I have so many other games left unbeaten.
So in the end I did find much to enjoy with online gaming and it's something I would indeed like to return to future - but to do so would require two things on my end: a) a game that is actually heaps of fun to play and b) a lot more strikings from my Hall of Shame.

And then there's Good Old Games. It's not my first foray into downloadable games but it as a source of tracking down classic games it can't be beat. Much of the games I've picked up through GoG have been the kind that slipped my grasp the first time around and it's great to finally play something my gaming comrades experienced years earlier. I like the preservation that GoG offers and one can only wonder how much effort their lawyers went to to make these games available.

Funnily enough, since discovering GoG, along with World of Warcraft, a lot of time has been devoted to my PC as a gaming platform. As such my 360, Wii and even my PS2 have been looking rather unused of late. Needless to say, it would be interesting to see, over the course of the next twelve months, which platform gets the most use.

And that's the end of Game Tumour for 2012. Thank you for reading this blog throughout the past twelve months and I hope to see you on the other side of 2013.
(unless of course the Mayans turned out be right all along....)

Planet of Sound (no.13)

Name: Rick Clarke
Birthdate: 14th December 1979
Instrument: Guitar
Affiliations: Dire Tribe
Bio: An old friend of Spike’s, both Spike and Rick came to know each other through living in the same town. There, Rick was something of a bully but he ended up in the same street as Spike and, by accident, found out they had similar musical tastes. Eventually they began playing together and Rick learnt how to play guitar. In return, he stood up for Spike against the bullies of his school.
Although Rick never quite achieved the success Spike did, there is no bad blood between them – as such, when Rick began writing songs, Spike decided to use his status to get a start for his friend. And thus the Dire Tribe was formed.
Through his background as a bully, Rick’s experiences have left him hardened and cynical. He has a rather morbid outlook on life (he insists this is to keep himself sane) but he does possess a degree of intelligence and the ability to make snap decisions. He is married to a woman named Maria.

Join the DotTs

Hey: 12/12/12

Anyway, Simon the Sorcerer wasn't the only game I beat last weekend: Another game has been struck down from my Hall of Shame in the form of the adventuring classic Day of the Tentacle.

I mentioned earlier this week in that the graphic adventuring games have always been something that has constantly eluded me: In particular, the LucasArts games that have been held in constantly high regard during the nineties (and still do). So, in the name of tracking things down that may have escaped my notice first time around, I was fortunate enough to pick up several titles for a really cheap price. These titles were The Dig, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Grim Fandango and Curse of Monkey Island. As these titles are hard to track down nowadays you wouldn't think that I got these games, in 2006 may I add, for a really good price. And you certainly wouldn't think that I got these games at my local Post Office.
Yet it is only now that I've been able to finally get them working. Needless to say, as this is my first time encountering these games (with the exception of The Dig) it would be interesting to see how these games hold up. Plus, it is always reassuring to know that LucasArts made something that didn't have the Star Wars brand attached to it.

So about Day of the Tentacle. I was fortunate to pick this up online based around the understanding that it was one of, if not THE, finest game of it's genre. Looking back I feel compelled to agree: There is certainly a lot going for Day of the Tentacle: The graphics are nice to look at, the animation is great, there's a lot of hilarious jokes and some real inventive solutions to the many puzzles throughout this game. The time travel element is used to great effect and the voice acting, the first of it's kind may I add, is remarkably stellar. Throw in a surprisingly threatening villain and

All in all, there's not a lot I can add about Day of the Tentacle that hasn't already been said before. The game has endured the passage of time remarkably well and still looks great nineteen years on.
Guess it goes to show that, once again, if it's well regarded it's often for good reason.

Simon Says

On the weekend I had the satisfaction of striking another game from my Hall of Shame. Goodbye Simon the Sorcerer.

Looking back at my previous post about Simon the Sorcerer, there's not really much more I can add: The writing's great, the voice acting is all top-notch and there are moments of hilarity abound (the Woodworm scene had me rolling). And special mention must go to the gorgeous backgrounds  which, in all honesty, are the kind that makes me want to frame them and put them up on my wall.

Having lived through the supposed 'Golden Era of Gaming' - that would be the early to mid-nineties - I did recall Adventure games being something of a big deal. I knew little of this as I was a Commodore 64 user and my experience with adventure games were those of the text base variety (Zork anyone?). Yet I knew that people who regarded the likes of Kings Quest and Monkey Island with a sense of awe. Having grown accustomed to the aforementioned text games, I was puzzled how actual gaming graphics could work within an adventure game context but I did manage to play the Leisure Suit Larry games and was surprised how it worked so well.
Other than that, my experience with graphic Adventure Games has been minimal to say the least. I've played through the Dig and found it a fascinating gem - even if the Dig is the least regarded of the LucasArts canon. Yet it is only recently I've manged to finally play some forgotten classics - both through collecting and GOG.

Needless to say, Simon the Sorcerer is only the beginning - seems there's a whole lot more Adventure games waiting to be explored......

Alterations required

Back from a week off - Real life kinda took over for a minute there.

Anywho, for today, lets talk about Altered Beast: One of the infamous of all the games Sega ever made. Originally an arcade game, it found fame as the original bundled game for Sega Genesis/Megadrive.
I remember seeing this as a kid played out on the Megadrive and me immediate thought was the striking presentation. For me it came across as a game leaden with doom: Your character is constantly fighting a horde of shambling zombies and other monstrosities, the end boss appears throughout the level as if in a taunting fashion, the music was somewhat grim and the Player Character is turning into some beastie to defeat the foes in his path. Embracing some bizarre, potentially irreversible power to defeat the baddies? Now there's a thought!

Of course all of this was largely built upon the imagination of my youthful mind. When I finally got to play it, well over a decade later of course, the game came across as total trash: The gameplay was ghastly with too may cheap deaths and button mashing. And for a game offering the beast modes the time spent using them is sure slim - and indeed painfully slim when one considers the ratio of time spent trying to find the power ups necessary.

I know I've spoken a lot about retro games in this blog and how they seem to have a lot more heart and soul than many of the games around today but not everything can be viewed with rose-tinted glasses. Still, whilst Altered Beast may be crummy game it is interesting to see how my imagination made it look better than it actually was. In fact I would like someone make a game based on my descritpion listed above.

There's a challenge for you. Any takers?