The Great Playthrough - Game 75: Soulblade

Hi everyone!

In a bit of a different move, I tried doing this review as a video blog - so take a look! (Hopefully I've successfully embedded it below)

I know there are several issues (most notably the bloody aspect ratio - don't get me started) - but let me know what you all think!

The Great Playthrough - Game 44: Worms World Party

Worms World Party
Released on: Dreamcast, Playstation, Game Boy Advance and Windows
Played on: Sony Playstation 2 (Don't you just love backwards compatability?)

(Before we get started, I would like to apologise for the lack of photograph on this blog - I am finshing up writing this not at home, so I don't have a picture. If anyone really wants me to include one, I'll add one later. But for now, no picture, so you won't get to see me holding the Worms World Party case - poor you!)

There are games that you know you like, and there are games that you remember that you like, but are disappointing when you go back to them. And then, there are games that you forget quite how amazingly pant-wettingly good they are. The last game in this playthrough where a game surprised me positively was Flashback, and as you can tell from my overtly enthusiastic introduction, Worms World Party belongs in this category.

(And yes, I know that I have broken all of the rules of any kind of review, by telling you how I feel about the thing I am reviewing in the first paragraph, but sod it, it's my blog!)

I have had many good times playing various iterations of Worms (at least in 2D) - starting with the original which I used to play on the PC, through to the the two iterations that I have for the Playstation - and it has provided many hours of entertainment both in single player and multi-player (and indeed, I have spent many hours sitting on a canal boat playing this game while drinking my own body weight in alcoholic beverages).

But why is it such a good game Brawny? I hear you all ask... OK, I didn't hear you ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

When it came out, I remember it being a rather new type of game, best described as "Lemmings with Guns". And if you try to describe it in genre, it sounds the dullest thing ever. A turn based game where you control a team of worms attempting to fight others. But it works, and it works so very very well.

But having not played it for... ooh, nearly 10 years or so, I did wonder if newer games would have sullied my memories of Worms. So imagine how delighted I was when I booted up the game and began to play. Firstly, it gives you ridiculous levels of customisation. You can name your own individual worms, choose which weapons are used, choose a landscape, special features, weapons drops etc - I spent a good ten minutes of my playthrough on the customisation screen, but unlike other games that have this sort of customisation / statistical options (and yes, I'm looking at you sports games, and particularly Speedball 2) - I didn't get bored at all, and that's pretty rare in an options screen!

Once I had my team and my setup, then I jumped into the game itself, and immediately took great delight in bombing and bazookaing (and yes, I have decided that IS a word, because I want it to be) the opposition until they were all satisfyingly dead. And then, I did it again. As well as the normal weapons (Uzis, Shotguns, Grenades etc.,) there is also the selection of idiotically stupid ones that are always available in these games. The Sheep (which runs across the terrain before exploding), the Concrete Donkey (which is exactly what it sounds like) and the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch. (Python alert!) And it's all couched in silly music, cartoony graphics and stupid sound effects.

But (and I know I have said this before) - it is FUN! Loads of fun!!

I'm not really sure what more to say. There are only minor downsides to the game - it can be awkward to enter names etc when you have to do so with a joypad, scrolling VERY slowly from letter to letter, and almost all of the labelling on menu screens is done with cartoony graphics, rather than text, so it can be a bit hard to figure out what you are selecting, unless you have had experience of the game before.

But if that's the worst I can think of? Then it's really not a bad game in any way whatsoever is it!

In conclusion then, I would much rather spend an evening playing Worms World Party with a group of friends, rather than any of the FPS's people seem to happily go around each others houses to play. Speaking of which - anyone fancy a Worms Tournament evening?

Rating: 9/10
Time Played: One Hour Ten Minutes
Would I play it again?: Of course!

Next time - The Megadrive gets dusted off for some platforming action! (And no, it's not a Sonic game)

The Great Playthrough: Game 34 - The World is not Enough

Wow - I look like Mr Drunken McSquinty-Eyes in this picture!

The World is Not Enough
Released on: Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Colour
Played on: Sony Playstation 2
Release date: 2000

OK. Let's address the elephant in the room. Not only is this a licensed game, which means that it, by rights, ought to be a pile of droppings that the elephant in the room has left in the middle of the rug, but it is also a Bond game that comes after Goldeneye - one of the most successful licensed games of all time - so comparisons are going to be made, which will probably be unflattering, right?

Well yes. Of course they are. But my first statement in regards to The World is Not Enough is - "It's not that bad." (And I feel that is a review that they should have put on the cover.)

As I have mentioned before, my history with FPS's is that I believe they've now got way too complicated for old gamers like me - but luckily, The World is Not Enough is very simple. It's like Goldeneye but without the analog stick.

*NOTE - I had no analog stick as I was playing the Playstation version of the game. The N64 version may have been better, but I don't own that!*

The game is obviously based on the Bond film of the same name - do you remember that one? Bond drove a boat really quickly down the Thames, then fought with Begbie from Trainspotting and eventually ended up cavorting with a nuclear physicist played by Denise Richards in a submarine.

So - as far removed from reality as most Bond films then!

When developing this game, EA obviously looked at the success of Goldeneye, and decided that they didn't want to change anything in order to make the game as successful. So it's a very familiar-feeling game. However, there are a few changes to the established Goldeneye format.

The first (which I assume is primarily on the Playstation version due to the lack of an analog stick) - there's a little bit of auto aiming that helps you out. If you are close enough to an enemy and you point Bond in roughly the right direction, a little red cross appears over the enemy and when you fire, you will hit him straightaway. Now this may be sacrilegious, but I quite like this as an addition to the game, because it means that you can run down corridors shooting people without having to stop and aim side to side because your bullets are just whizzing past his left ear.

The other change from Goldeneye (apart from the pointless, badly rendered cutscenes from the film playing between levels) is the level design. It's not as good. In fact, it's nowhere near as good. The layout of the levels just seems dull - certainly there's nothing as awe-inspiring as the opening level from Goldeneye.

But it is fun - it's always fun being James Bond, and this is no exception. But it's nothing outstanding. And while I played it for the full hour, I don't see myself picking it up again anytime soon, as even if you put aside the pedestrian levels, there are a few minor faults as well - some bad collision detection, strange puzzles and levels that seem linear until one moment, at which point you have to backtrack all over the place once again.

So, it's an average game, which would do better if it wasn't compared with Goldeneye. But it always will be...

(I apologise for the short length of this review, but I didn't really have much more to say...)

Rating: 5/10
Time played: 1 Hour
Will I go back to it?: I don't see it happening to be honest...

Next time - Yet more 2D platforming - but this time with the most unsubtle use of product placement ever. It's Cool Spot on the SNES!

The Great Playthrough: Game 33 - Gran Tourismo 2!

Gran Tourismo 2
Released on: Sony Playstation
Played on: Sony Playstation 2 (Because otherwise I'd have had to dig out and plug in the Playstation, and since our PS2 has complete backward compatibility, it would have been silly to do that...)
Release date: 2000

Going back to GT2 was a big unknown for me. I remembered very little about it, although I do know that some of my friends at the time insisted it was the greatest game ever, which I was unsure would be the case, but I fired it up, expecting some fun driving times.

And then?

Well there was driving, but not a lot of fun...

Let me backtrack a little. On the front cover of the game it states "The Real Driving Simulator". Well, it's not real is it. It's a computer game, that you are controlling with a D-Pad. Yes, it looks very impressive for the time it is from, but it just didn't grasp me as fun.

My biggest fundamental issue with the game was the controls. If I wanted to attempt to drive around a racetrack in something that steers with all the precision of a shopping trolley then I'd buy myself a Sinclair C5 and head off to Silverstone! The problem is that the steering is erratic and, because this is a game from the pre-Analog controller era, there's no gradual steering, meaning that it's very hard to tell how much or little you need...

Well, it is for me anyway. And then there's the other thing. The first race I played, I lost. Therefore the game only gave me the options to retry the race, or quit out of the whole thing and start again. OK, I thought, maybe it doesn't let you proceed without ranking. The second race, I also lost - and fairly obviously the same thing happened again. The third race, I came second! (God knows how!) And guess what? Same options again... now come on GT2. I know I'm playing the Arcade version rather than the massively in-depth and hugely complicated GT Version, but let me proceed track by track won't you?

And then there's my pettiest complaint of all. When you finish the race, before it lets you choose whether to replay or not? It automatically shows you a full replay of the race. Er, why? I played the race, I lost the race, I don't need an instant reminder of it!

So to sum it all up, I didn't really enjoy Gran Tourismo 2. It's one of those games that started the trend of bringing "realism" to computer games - Realistic driving games, realistic sports games, realistic war games.. where does it end? The whole reason I play video games is to AVOID realism, why on earth would I want to play something that has a passing similarity to the dull rules that affect our everyday life? I guess some people must do, and for those people I proudly announce my new game:

"Call Centre Simulator 2012", for all major platforms, in which you get to answer complaints from angry customers for 8 hours at a time. And you can't stop it. Once you load the game you have to play for eight hours, to provide that realistic environment. Play every day and then, in several years, you might get a promotion! - Only £40!

But in all seriousness, Gran Tourismo 2 was not the best game played in this playthrough so far. Maybe I'm just still bitter that I can't play Outrun 2. Now there was a driving game..

Rating: 3/10
Time played: 15 Minutes
Would I play it again?: Nope.