Thursday, March 30, 2006

The First CD-Based Console - The PC Engine

The PC Engine was released in 1987 by NEC, a large information-technology company who make everything from super-computers to Mobile Phones. around the same time a Nintendo's Game Boy and NES systems were in full swing and not long before the SNES and Mega Drive Dominated the computer games industry too and had a fair stab at it. The brightly coloured graphics of its games and the relatively high level animation was at the time ground-breaking and led to many major releases on this title. As mentioned in the title it was also the first console to use CD's.
I have reviewed a few games here that i have played. Given my 5 minute demo time on the emulator i used i didn't really have the chance to really get to grips with some of the more likeable titles I tested so i chose the simplest games, with the quickest learning curve;

HUDSON SOFT

Hudson was created in 1973 by Yuji and Hiroshi Kudo, and they were lucky enough to be the first company to create and market games in Japan. They were also the first 3rd Party games supplier for Nintendo, and helped create the PC Engines most famous games and technologies, by creating the first CD-ROm games for consoles as well.

BOMBERMAN, 1991

Bomberman is an institution in itself, and has been released on nearly all the major platforms of the nineties. Basically the idea is to use bombs to detonate blocks in the sort of lattice-shaped room you are entered into. The bombs are also intended to be used to detonate enemies too, and even yourself unless you have your wits about you. Various powerups to increase then number of bombs available to you and the strength or blast radius appear, all by destroying blocks.
Bomberman really shines in its two-player mode, which in later releases extended the action to up to four players with the ability to throw bombs over walls and even steal powerups and status abilities.

CHEW MAN-FU, 1990

This is a very obviously Japanese designed puzzle game that seems to borrow elements from the previously mentioned Bomberman games, the action (?) being placed in a static square room and your character moving around it.
The goal of the game is totally different however, you have to grab different coloured orbs and moved them onto the corresponding covered squares. There are enemies present you will attack you, and there can be engaged by either squashing them between orbs or kicking the orbs at them. A particularly clever aspect of this game is its similarity to Pac-Man in that if an enemy comes up behind you, you are particularly vulnerable. You can't turn round when holding an orb and so you actually have to perform a sort of three-point turn in a corridor entrance.

KEITH COURAGE IN ALPHA ZONES, 1989

This game is an American title that is very similar to The Battle of Olympus on the NES. So similar in fact that they are almost the same game, with a few different differences.
The bulk of the action is a Zelda 2 style 2D - platform slasher, with your basic sword, jump and duck abilities and the option of entering rooms and warp portals. When entering said rooms, the characters speak to the various friendlies inside, involving buying weapons, items and health power-ups.
The bizarre thing happens when you enter a portal and turn into a large robot! Armed once again with just a sword, and engaging much bigger but still un-necessarily difficult
enemies.
I found this game needlessly difficult to be honest, the enemies apear from nowhere and the control responses are very slow. To be fair, i couldn't get very far in this game due to my time limit, but i have completed Battle of Olympus so I know what sort of stuff to expect.

SEGA

Sega was originally founded in California as Standard Games, desinging arcade games for
Americna Military Servicemen. They later became Sega and were massively popular with arcade-goers. Their big break came with 1989's Mega DRive (aka Genesis) which batteld with Nintendo's Super Famicon (SNES) for over eight years for console supremacy.
Sega have now been reduced to making software for other consoles and formats, due to their recently unsuccessful efforts in the next generation console market.
However, Sonic the Hedgehog will never be forgotten.

2) FANTASY ZONE, 1986 (SEGA), 1989 (NEC AVENUE)


Fantasy Zone is a sort of Cute-Em-Up game similar to R-Type in that it is a side scrolling shoot-em-up. The bad guys aren't particularly menacing and there is little actual crazed blasting involved and so has more of a puzzley feel to it. Of course there are the arbitrary power-ups to get different guns (albeit for a limited period) and status such as invincibility, but nothing particularly interesting.
The main difference between this game and others similar to it, is the ability to switch direction from left to right and control the direction you travel, and therefore change the enemies you engage. This adds a different dimension to the side-scrolling shoot-em-up but i felt in this title it just made it more frustrating, you can't move backwards and fire (it'll just make you turn your back on the enemy you want to shoot)

VICTOR MUSICAL INDUSTRIES (aka Victore Interactive Software)

This little known company were primarily a music company (as implied by their name) and have been occasionally branching out under the name Victor Interactive with famous titles such as Super James Bond on the SNES and even assisted int he development of the first FIFA international on the SNES also. They have created some lesser-known title on the Sega Dreamcast and even as recently as the SOny PS2, but have yet to make a significant impact on the games market (hence their lack of presence on the internet).

VEIGUES TACTICAL GLADIATOR, 1990

This is another side-scrolling shoot-em-up with a few nice touches I felt. Firstly it appears to be one of the first and few side-scrollers that don't involve spaceships (as such), but rather a large robot. Also instead of flying up and down the screen, the character runs around the screen, and has a power-assisted jump. Your two forms of attack are a forward firing gun and and a blast punch close-range attack.
The problem i mentioned in Fantasy Zone, above, was that the option to change directions led to difficulty properly manoeuvering the screen. This problem is addressed in Veigues, but not necessarily solved. You can move forwards and backwards, and by pressing down you can change the direction of fire. However just couldn't seem to get my head round this and constantly kept turning my back on enemies by accident again - maybe I should leave the guns to the real heroes.
Also there didn't appear to be an option to shoot down, or even duck (hence the constant spinning on the spot due to my instinctive pressing-down motions) and so i found my self getting jumped by spaceships under my feet.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Nouns, Verbs and Rules for Reviews


For this task i have taken a review of Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation (1) and i have highlighted the relevant verbs, nouns and rules. This review was taken from

http://www.gamespot.com/ps/adventure/metalgearsolid/review.html


Metal Gear Solid is the game that has been sending chills down the back of this industry for over two years. Konami leaked bits of information about it here and there, but there was no hiding the notion that Metal Gear Solid would be an adventure of epic proportions. Now, all the waiting has ceased, and the game is finally upon us. But does Metal Gear Solid live up to the years of hype? That really depends on your perspective.

At its core, Metal Gear Solid is truly a lesson in stealth. Forget about running into rooms with your gun blazing, leaving nothing alive but an occasional rat. Here, living by the gun readily equates into dying by the gun. Why bother fighting the guards when you can just sneak around behind their backs, crawl along walls just out of the sight range of surveillance cameras, and hide behind boxes?

Unlike most other games, Metal Gear Solid really knows how to tell a story. You, as retired supersneaky agent Solid Snake, must infiltrate a base that has been overrun by terrorists. These terrorists, however, are members of your old unit, a top secret organization known as Fox Hound. The hounders are sitting on a supersecret new weapon and enough nuclear warheads to send the planet back to the Ice Age. Your mission (no choice here - you're forced to accept) is to infiltrate the base carrying nothing but a pair of binoculars and a pack of smokes, check up on a couple hostages, find out if Fox Hound even has the ability to carry out its apocalyptic threats, and if it does, stop it. The storyline unfolds in a seemingly never-ending collection of cutscenes, all extremely well rendered using the game engine. The game doesn't need FMV to clog up the process (given the amount of time spent watching cutscenes, FMV probably would have made MGS a three- or four-disc game), although it does use video in a few isolated cases and uses it reasonably well. When you first start playing the game, you truly do feel like you're constantly in danger. There are so many ways that guards can be alerted to your presence. The most dangerous, of course, is sight. If you enter the line of sight of a guard or a camera, you've got a fight on your hands. Luckily, their lines of sight are represented by big cones on your radar. Simply stay away from the cones, and you'll never get spotted. If you stomp through a puddle of water or across a metal catwalk, fire off a weapon, or knock on a wall (great for luring the dummies to their doom), nearby guards will hear the noise and check it out. They'll even follow footprints in the snow. If you're spotted, a bunch of guards come out of nowhere and start playing target practice with you. This also starts a two-part timer. The first part of the timer is the danger timer. During this time, guards are extremely alert, and they scurry around, hoping to find you. If you can manage to stay out of sight, the second timer starts. During this time the guards don't look for you quite as actively. If you can stay hidden during that time, the guards stupidly assume that you must have run away, and simply return to their posts. No increased patrols, no manhunts. They just forget they ever saw you and continue to wander aimlessly. While it's understandable that this had to be done for gameplay purposes (getting spotted once and playing the rest of the game with tons of guards on your tail wouldn't exactly be fair), it comes across as more than a little silly. Plus, all of these guards are badly in need of some corrective eyewear, because they can only see about 20 or so feet in front of them. Heck, you can even shoot a guard in the back of the head (it takes multiple shots to kill), and he'll just look around, not see anyone, and go back to standing there like an idiot. When you're not running behind the backs of the foolish guards, you're encountering various puzzles and bosses. Most of the puzzle aspect is totally ruined by your radio, which allows you to check in with different people throughout the game. They'll also frequently call you, sometimes to advance the story, and they'll always tell you exactly what to do next. Your colonel frequently drops you a line to lay heavy concepts like "Snake, push the action button to climb down the ladder" on you. Also, after most major encounters, your buddy, the colonel, checks in and basically recaps what you were just told. Usually it takes the form of "Didn't (party x) just tell you that (item y) is kept in (location z)? Hurry, Snake! We're almost out of time!" It needlessly interrupts the game and makes you feel as if you're an eight-year-old with attention deficit disorder instead of a trained killer. All this really sucks any difficulty the game could have had right out. While none of the puzzles are really hard in any way, having them spelled out to you before you've even started on them is just plain stupid. Even though the game has multiple difficulty settings, they all suffer from this problem.

The difficulty settings weren't in the Japanese version of the game, and they really have a "thrown in at the last minute" feel to them. The game's easy setting is equivalent to the Japanese version. Normal difficulty changes the game a little bit, but not enough to really make a difference. Hard steps up the amount of damage you'll take and also disables your radar. Extreme difficulty is locked until you beat the game once, and it also is sans radar. Now, the trouble with this is that the gameplay was really designed around using the radar system effectively. Without it, the only way to see guards is to use the first-person view or to peer around corners. Unfortunately, you can't move while in the first-person view. The time you take to stop and look for guards may be the time that one of them turns around and sees you. Meanwhile, you're in a viewpoint where you can't even hide, let alone fire a weapon. This wouldn't be so bad if the view was pulled back a bit, but most of the guards you shoot or avoid won't ever be on the screen. If they make it onto the screen, chances are they're already shooting at you. While the game surely has its share of problems, it must be said that the game presents itself extremely well and really is fun to play, even if it is almost completely devoid of challenge. The control is extremely well conceived, and inventory selection is especially elegant. But don't even think of playing Metal Gear Solid without the Dual Shock controller. This game is probably the first to really make perfect use of the vibration functions and really goes a long way to maintaining the suspension of belief in both its timing and its subtlety. Once immersed in the world of MGS, you honestly do feel like the star of a spy-styled thriller. Whether you're silently breaking the necks of guards or merely pounding the circle button while strapped into a torture device, you really do feel like the fate of the world hangs in the balance. It's a great ride and a reasonably captivating story, which, considering you spend more time watching the story unfold than actually playing the game (it's been said that the game has ten times as much dialogue as the average movie), really helps the game. There are so many cutscenes and other stops in gameplay, that the game itself almost seems like a collection of minigames, inserted to keep you from tuning out the plot. The storytelling is not perfect, though. About halfway through the game, the storyline takes a dramatic turn, and the rest of the dialogue is basically one big antinuke, antiwar message, peppered with lots of "How could I have involved myself in such an evil scheme?" speeches. If I wanted to be preached to in such a way, I'd go to a rally. Still, there are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep it interesting in spite of its obvious and annoying antinuclear agenda. From an audio/visual standpoint, Metal Gear Solid is truly incredible. While the game's textures may be on the grainy side, the detail with which everything is rendered is truly amazing. There's no 2D trickery here - everything is rendered in 3D, right down to the littlest details, like items residing on desks and maggots festering on rotting corpses. Everything looks real and acts in an extremely realistic way. The animations are very well done and run at a nice, smooth rate. A touch of slowdown pops up when multiple enemies are on screen, but it really isn't too noticeable. The soundtrack and effects are totally unmatched. The music has an ominous feel that perfectly sets the mood of the game. The sound effects are extremely well done, from gunfire to the little click you hear when picking up an item. The effects also vary depending on your surroundings. If you're out in the middle of a snowstorm, shots will sound muffled. If you're in a tight room or ventilation shaft, effects take on an appropriately echoed sound. Also, unlike most translations, the English voice work in Metal Gear Solid is surprisingly good. What they're actually saying may be a bit hokey and cliched at times, but at least they deliver the dialogue with the right amount of conviction.

To say that the length of the game is disappointing is generous at best. Even if you were to watch every single cutscene and fumble around a bit at the beginning while learning the controls, you would still finish the game in around 15 hours. Once you know exactly what to do and skip as much plot as possible, you can run through the game in three hours or less. Konami attempted to add value in the form of the various difficulty settings, as well as incentives to play through the game again, but no amount of special items and visual tweaks (Gee... the cyberninja is red this time. Yea. Ooh, now I'm wearing a tuxedo. How... exciting) make Metal Gear Solid worth playing through more than twice, and even playing it through a second time just to see both endings is stretching it a little bit. Its brevity is simply appalling. While the game is definitely worth purchasing, you could easily rent it for a couple days and see everything that is worth seeing. Five years from now, when we look back upon Metal Gear Solid, what will we see? The game definitely is revolutionary in many ways. It breaks new ground in gameplay and truly brings the video game one step closer to the realm of movies. It is, without a doubt, a landmark game. But the extreme ease with which it can be mastered and the game's insultingly short length keep it from perfection. Plus, do we really want games that are more like movies? If Hideo Kojima, the game's producer, was so set on this type of cinematic experience, he should really be making movies instead of games. While Metal Gear Solid currently stands alone, it stands as more of a work of art than as an actual game. It's definitely worth purchasing, but don't be surprised if you suddenly get extremely angry when you finish the game the day after you brought it home.


Thursday, March 23, 2006

Fearin Paradise - FarCry ( NOT FOR ASSESSMENT PURPOSES)

2004's FarCry saw a new development in First Person Shooters in terms of the dynamics of the genre. Take an ordinary tourist, steal his girlfriend and steal away to tropical island to continue your evil genetic experiments. Simple.

Whilst most FPS titles have placed you attacking evil super-enemies in insane blast-away confrontations, blasting shotguns in their faces in a blood-splattered mess, FarCry delivers a lot more finesse and style than any before it.

Titles such as Doom III, Quake and Unreal have often relied on fairly simple mechanics to please the FPS fan, long corridors and space-station style environments, large guns and larger foes. FarCry takes a different approach, trading in futuristic space-ware for lush, jungle environments (with the occasional command centre with all the trimmings) and losing the super-weapons in favour of (for the most part) ordinary real-life weapons

(ABOVE) Some of the scenery in FarCry is genuinely beautiful, the scenes thems are brutal

The enemies you are squared up against are ordinary merc-style hired gunmen, though they are decidedly more observant and clever than your typical goon. Included in your on-screen display is (a first for FPS) a monitor that shows how, among other things, how alert the enemy are to your presence, similar to stealth-style games. However the element of stealth isn't that significant, enemies still have to be killed with standard 3 in the chest or 1 in the head marksmanship.

The firepower you are up against takes more of a touch on realism too, a few bullets is enough to end your adventure unless protected by armor.
To aid you in your acquisition you have binoculars to identify the enemy around you through electro-tags they all wear for identification, and they then appear on your stealth-o-meter in the corner. This element shows off one of my favourite features in the game - the seemingly inifinite draw-distance in the game. You can see enemies that are so far away that you can't see them at all without the use of binocular vision.

(ABOVE) The binocular vision is used to identify and 'mark' potential targets

Despite that, your weapons have very long range too and weapons such as your trusty M4 Carbine can shoot enemies so far away that the appear only as pixels, and when playing an earlier level I managed to accidentally shoot someone so far away it took 10 minutes of running to get him (this was totally by accident i will admit).

The aiming system in this game is also physically accurate, the four pointers around the crosshair approach or retract depending on your aiming poisiton and how fast you are moving - if you are lying down in the undergrowth your shot will be almost 100% accurate, running backwards from some guards holding fire will mean many bullets miss the target. Also to make your shots even more accurate you can hold right-click to 'zoom' on your target and hold your weapon up to eye level and aim more accurately. As aforementioned, there are three firing positions - standing, crouching and prone. Standing is obviously best for running and movement, but less so for accuracy. Crouching is about average, and obviously lying prone makes it harder to move and easier to aim.


'Blood'


Blood was one of the first FPS games i owned, before i found my 'niche' so to speak in 3rd person adventure games. I don't really like the way FPS's have gone recently, except for FarCry but there's a reason i can't discuss that :)

This game uses the Duke Nukem Build engine for its graphics and rendering, and follows the standard 'W,A,S,D and mouse' controls (not mandatory, but highly recommended and functional in this way), and was released in 1997 by Monolith.

In keeping with my horror theme mentioned earlier, this was the first FPS to actually approach the true 'classic' horro theme, with hanuted houses and scary ghosties and long-leggetty beasties all over the shop, and a suitable macabre storyline to plot.
Basically your character, Caleb, have been decived by a demon (and the help of its handmaidnes) into following his cult, then slain with the rest of the cult for some unkown reason. 100 years on and Caleb rises from his grave and wants revenge. With your help, he will get it. At least i count it as revenge; this is one of the most nasty games of its time and adds a much more unusual feel to a very popular genre.


(ABOVE) Caleb is one of the most sinister looking 'heroes' of his time.

Instead of your standard 'pistol, shotgun, machine gun then laser' upgrade routine, Blood employs somewhat more realistic tools of the trade. Instead of grenades we have dynamite, instead of a flame thrower we have a simple aerosol can and a Zippo! There is a standard pistol (that can be angled to the side for that 'gangsta' feel) and probably the most creative, the Voodoo Doll. Yes, stab it in front of an enemy and they will know about it.

This gives the game a much more rustic feel, as you can relate better to the weapons involved because chances are you have actually seen them, as opposed to looking at them and thinking 'thats big, what does it do?'. Also there are different fire modes that can dispose of enemies quicker, but at greater cost to ammunition or accuracy meaning that marksmanship tactics are encouraged, as well as overpowering and positioning your character.

(ABOVE) Enemies ignite and run around screaming 'It burns!! It burns!!'


The plot thickens pleasnatly throughout, and the levels are organised well and have all the characteristics of your gothic horror movie, dangling lights and looming stiarcases, freaky fair-ground and spooky castles. Couple that with the extreme gore and the agressive frenzied enemy attacks (and they DO get you eventually) makes for a solid and rather disturbing FPS experience.

There is little improvement available for this title, I feel it took advantage of the gaming world rather well, in terms of innovation, technological capabilities and creativity. A sequel, Blood 2, was released in later 1998 in full 3D. I have yet to play this other than a brief demo and would be interested to see how they have improved on this title. However, 8 years later and no sign of a sequel, i doubt it was anything significant.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Games under Fire - The Moral Boundary

So violence in games is now an acceptable (or at least too established to Kombat [sic]) aspect. However, a new beast quickly emerged to shake down the conservative West in the form of Grand Theft Auto.

At this point the Grand Theft Auto franchise needs little introduction, but for the benefit of the unsuspecting audience, it contained car theft, gang murder and random wanton attacks on criminals and innocents alike. The biggest bee in the bonnet of the press, however, was the fact that the option was there to wander aroudn the games large maps killing anyone and everything, anyhow and anytime. The darkest depths of a players creativity were tested in that you could just kill people and destroy things for fun, without being penalised or credited!

The original Grand Theft Auto was a bird's Eye 2 1/2D game, with little devoted to graphical realism due to the technological constraints of the time. It spawned a similar sequel, GTA2, with a similar layout but with the introduction of Gangs (which you have to co-operate with or attack depending on your choice of mission).

The GTA series really escalated with the 2001 release of Grand Theft Auto III. This shook up the previous titles conventions by providing the player with a fully 3D, interactive, living city - with little areas and pcokets of information and missions at the players grasp. It really was like palying in a different world and there was always a multitude of things to do to occupy your time - whether they were relevant to the storyline or not.(ABOVE) Grand Theft Auto III screenshot from the PC release
This game categorised the 'free-roaming' genre, or at least brought it to the attention of the hardcore gamer.

One of the most notable British titles to kick up a stink in the media is (as aforementioned) definitely the sickest and most twisted game i have ever owned, played or even heard of - Manhunt.

This game was released in 2004, ironically by the notorious Rockstar North ('responsible' for Grant Theft Auto: Vice City), the sister company of Rockstar (of Grand Theft Auto fame). It took the gorey game idea even further to place a character inside a derelict, abandoned city. A voice in a headset tells you that you are the star of a snuff movie, and there are gangs all over the place trying to kill you.

Obviously, you have to kill them first and as the 'director' watches every move, you carve, garrot, strangle and suffocate your way to the director's chair. This involves some VERY graphic depictions of death i have never seen elsewhere, even in the worst films released to the general public.

(ABOVE) One of the early kills in the game - the carrier bag!
Sadly;

'Three months later, in a deserted park in the British city of Leicester, a seventeen-year-old boy repeatedly battered a 14-year-old friend with a claw hammer and then stabbed him with a knife. The vicious and brutal assault left the other boy dead; his assailant faces life in prison. The killer, say the victim's parents, was "obsessed" with Manhunt, a copy of which was found in his bedroom.'
(from http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=3916 - 'Comment: Do we Really Need Games like Manhunt?')

The young boy in question, Warren LeBlanc, had been playing this game frequently before the murder, it seemed. I myself can't help but notice similarities with the way the murder was carried out and with the way you 'proceed' through the game.(ABOVE) A baseball bat is a common weapon in fighting games, but never used to such horrific extent as in Manhunt

LeBlanc had alledgedly coaxed the victim to a secluded park and waited for him to arrive, then had snuck up behind him and murdered him with two weapons. Manhunt, being a stealth game in essence, requires the player to lurk in the shadows and attract the attention of enemies. When they are distracted, you sneak up behind them (weapon in tow) and murder them by holding the action button. The longer you hold the button, the more brutal the murder (this is a nice effect as you have to be walking or standing behind the target for quite a few precious seconds to get the 'red' level kill.

After this, the director congratulates you, egging you on with glee.

I am normally one to defend the influence of computer games, however i feel that i could not morally allow a child to play the above title. It encroaches on the darkest depth of your imagination and despite not having a single scary monster in sight (aside from 'Piggsy', a strange-looking obese man wearing a pig's face as a mask) this game is one of the scariest games i have ever played.

Violence and Gore

The 'survival horror' range relies quite heavile on using violence, or more particularly gore, to accentuate the atmosphere and evnironment encountered. Resident Evil has never been afraid to delve deep into the gruesome and garish, with exploding heads, decomposing enemies and sickening sound effects.

This could be looked at as being gratuitous to an extent, it isn't quite necessary to the games playability afterall.


However the horror genre in general uses violence, gore and scare tactics frequently across all forms of media. Books, films and TV programmes associated with horror all use these conventions to frighten the viewer, hence it would seem obvious and therefore acceptable to use violence and gore in computer games.

The game that brought graphic violence to the fore is un-doubtedly Midway/Akklaims merciless beat-em-up Mortal Kombat. Released across all major platforms in 1993 and in the Arcades in 1991, it not only contained the first realistic depiction of blood and guts, but revelled in it further with the creation of the 'fatality' - a move encouraging players to actually murder their opponent upon victory, to add further shame on their foe.
(ABOVE) A particularly 'colourful' fatality from Mortal Kombat II (arcade)

Also to add to this blood'n'guts foray is the fact that this was the first game to use actual actors as the sprites, rather than just using sprites drawn up by computer. This created a never-before-seen element of realism to a beat-em-up genre that at the time was dominated by Manga-style cartoons.

The press tore the game to pieces and resulted in the Super NES version containing no blood whatsoever, however 1994 saw the release of Mortal Kombat II - probably the most over-the-top, gruesome and gratuitously violent game i've played (until Manhunt - see later post). This time the risk of poor sales and bad press couldn't stop the Midway team from splattering all major consoles with the fuly un-censored game, with several fatalities per character and an even wackier cast of monsters and super-humans.

As Mortal Kombat became the success story of the early 90's, more and more violent games added gorey details to their credentials, and by the late 90's blood was almost a pre-requeisite to realism in most games that had any depiction of violence at all!

Graphic depiction of violence was now a well-established convention in video games, but peoples moral values were to be tested even further........




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