The Great Playthrough: Game 55 - Lemmings Revolution

So it's been an awful long time since I wrote one of these blogs - but in my defence, I've been quite busy. Plus, I intended to try something different and do this as a video review, but then it just seemed like an awful lot more work, so I'm sticking to typing! Besides, none of you want to see my face anyway!

No picture of me today. Mostly because of the following reasons:
1) I can't find the case for the game
2) My phone battery is dead
3) I can't be arsed to fix either of the first two issues!

Lemmings Revolution
Released on: PC
Played on: PC
Release date: 2000

I had thought that I'd played at least one game on every gaming platform I own in the course of this playthrough - and then I got to Lemmings Revolution, and realised that I hadn't actually played a PC game yet!

When I was a teenager, the PC was my primary gaming platform - on which I played such wondrous games as Doom, X-Wing, the Secret of Monkey Island and, of course, Lemnmings. But in recent years I have drifted away from the PC as a gaming platform - because there's always confusion about how to make a game work! If you buy an Xbox 360 game, you know you can just put it in the drive and it will play. PC gaming on the other hand means that you have to tweak settings, make sure your graphics card is up to scratch, create boot disks... (oh wait, that was when I had a 386SX16 - oh well, you get the idea!)

But I obtained Lemmings Revolution from a charity sale a year or so ago and picked it up for the grand price of 50p - so I thought it'd be worth a go!

And then it wouldn't play.....

...

And then eventually, after some messing about, it did. So what did I think of Lemmings Revolution, after all that faffing about to get it running?

Well, it's OK. But it's nowhere near as good as the original - or the sequel for that matter.

The idea is quite good as the lemmings are on cylindrical mazes - so you are working on a 2D plane with 3D graphics - as opposed to the frankly awful 3D Lemmings which came out before this. And the sound is OK, and the graphics aren't bad.

The controls are great - still as intuitive as the original - just point and click. (A practical reason why console ports of Lemmings and it's sequels have never been as engrossing as playing it on a PC).

But the level design just feels a bit.... I dunno... bland?

I played through the first twenty or so levels (I say the first twenty - just like many Lemmings games, you don't have to tackle them in a linear fashion, so my first twenty wouldn't be the same as your first twenty. But then you don't own the game, do you?) and by the end I was just bored.

I didn't feel any particular challenge, and I solved almost all of the levels on my first try. Now I'm not THAT good at Lemmings, so this has obviously been dumbed down a little from the intensity of the earlier games, which is a shame.

Don't get me wrong, there are some funky additions, teleporters, little anti-gravity things that turn your lemmings upside down, switches... all of these are workable additions to the game. But without the excitement of the levels, I just couldn't bring myself to continue.

And yes, I appreciate that there may be some extremely well designed levels further down the line - but I'm not sure I want to waste the time getting there!

So I left Lemmings Revolution feeling both disappointed and let down. These scrappy little blue robe-wearing, green-haired entertainers from the early games feel that they have been replaced by someone in a beige suit, wearing a beige tie, who has recently bathed in a bath entirely filled with "meh". The excitement has gone. And for me, that's the shark-jumping moment for any sequel...

Oh well.

Rating: 5/10
Time played: About 30 minutes
Will I play it again? I'll leave it installed on my PC for years, but I probably won't choose to fire it up anytime soon...

So, what am I playing next? *Has a look at his sheet* Oooh - you'll be in for a surprise!

The Great Playthrough: Game 54 - Duke Nukem 3D

That's right, the pictures of me holding
games and making stupid faces are back!

Duke Nukem 3D
Released on: PC, Sega Saturn, Playstation, Nintendo 64, Mega Drive...... and many many more
Played on: Sega Saturn
Release date: 1996

It's time for another FPS review... no, don't skip to the end assuming that I hated it. It's possible that I didn't... I mean, I know that my track record is that of the four FPS' I have reviewed in this blog, three of them have scored a 6 or under... but that doesn't mean I've written of the genre, does it?

Well, no.

First of all, I must make one thing clear. There is no genre of games which I would completely write off. I'll try anything. Sports games, strategy games, RPGs... hell, I'll even play Sega Bass Fishing to give it a try. As sometimes you can get a diamond in the rough.

And is Duke Nukem 3D that diamond?

Well - sort of.

I remember playing Duke 3D for ages when it first came out on PC, and I thought it was one of the greatest things ever. It was like Doom - but funny! How could I not like it? And that sense of good humour and entertainment swept me up and kept me playing through this review.

Don't get me wrong, as a game it is far from perfect. In fact, if "perfect" was a small island in the outer hebredes, Duke Nukem 3D would be somewhere in orbit around Jupiter.

But for some reason, it's entertaining. Even though it is full of problems (wonky jumping physics, the dodgy sound effects, the difficulty level that isn't so much a curve as it is a series of random, very sharp, unexpected spikes!)  it still kept me smiling all the way through - through the frustrations, through the strange level design - I was always entertained.

And sometimes that's all that you need from a game! It's not a game I shall EVER play to completion, because I suspect it would wear thin after a while, but for the occasional bit of FPS blasting? I could do far worse.

I suppose I ought to talk about how this game, originally designed for PC, fares on a console with a traditional joypad setup - and the answer is, remarkably well! (Apart from the fact that you cannot aim upwards, so if enemies are hovering you need to jump AND shoot - which drives your accuracy down through the floor!)

This has been a very "bitty" review, I know, but I feel like a review should reflect a game, and I feel that Duke Nukem 3D is fun in short bursts.

(Plus, I know that the previous blog was very long, so I thought I'd make this shorter!)

Rating: 7/10
Time played: Just under an hour.
Will I play it again? Not instantly, but probably sometime in the future...

The Great Playthrough: Game 53 - Pokemon Silver

Pokemon Silver
Released on: Game Boy Colour
Played on: Super Game Boy (aka the Game Boy adaptor for the SNES)
Release date: 2000

When you live with someone else who loves games, you end up with games that are yours, games that are the other persons, and games that you both play that no-one remembers who originally bought.

The Pokemon games in our house all belong exclusively to Neety, and as such I had decided that they would not feature in this playthrough. This wasn't just because they were not "my" games, but for another reason as well.

Nintendo in their infinite wisdom (in order for households to buy a copy of each Pokemon game for each child who wishes to play) only allow one save slot per game on Pokemon, and as one of my rules for the playthrough consist of starting a game from scratch, if I had played the three or four Pokemon games we have, then I'd have erased Neety's progress on all of them - which as you can imagine, would not have gone down well.

Then Neety pointed out that we own a copy of Pokemon silver where the internal battery is buggered - so it doesn't remember save games. (Well sometimes it does, but not for long). So with her blessing I (reluctantly) put Pokemon on my list.

"But Brawny, why were you reluctant to play Pokemon, when it's a famous Nintendo franchise, and you are a lover of all things Nintendo?"

Much as I hate to admit it, I was prejudiced. When Pokemon was released, my younger brother was very into them, whereas teenage me declared them "kids stuff" and never picked one of the games up.

Until now....

So I sat down with the control pad in my hand, Neety watching with interest, and powered up the game.

Before I get into the game itself, let me just say a quick word about the Super Game Boy.

If, like me, you own Game Boy games and a SNES, then you should have one of these wonderful converters - because it does make playing those game boy games a more social thing (plus you don't have to go searching for the "right" light to play a Game Boy under, because we all know they're a pain to play in normal light!)

But anyway, back to Pokemon Silver. I would tell you what the plot of the game is, but it's the same plot as that in every Pokemon game (from what I understand) - take your fluffy animal out to battle other fluffy animals. Defeat everyone. Capture all Pokemon. Be great.

But the point is, it's an RPG, (And no, I don't mean a Rocket Propelled Grenade...) and I may have mentioned before what my problems with RPGs are. But I approached it with an open mind, and do you know what?

I really enjoyed it.

Now I'm not necessarily saying that I would play every Pokemon game to completion - but certainly for the hour and a half I was playing, I didn't get bored and the time flew past. The battles are engaging, and the tutorials are subtle - with you learning things as you progress instead of the modern trend of spending the first half hour of the game on a tutorial mission with no real point and that explains everything as if you had the brainpower of a ZX81.

The graphics are well done, with nice big sprites and the few colours used adding to the atmosphere. The music, on the other hand, is more than well done - it is irritatingly catchy! (And, as a side note, apparently my wife can sing every piece of Pokemon incidental music, as I discovered!)

But the biggest thing I can praise this game for, is the wonder of exploration. I am sure that later on in the game you have to backtrack and you get fed up with fighting Rattatta's for the 9 billionth time, but I was forever excited to press onwards and play just to see what I would come across next!

Yes the random encounters get annoying, and there's a lot of walking that goes on - but there's nothing worse about this game than that!

There's not a lot more I can say really - I thought I'd hate it, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Who saw that coming?

Rating: 8.5/10
Time Played: 1 and a half hours
Would I play it again? I probably would - although I might have to bust the cartridge open and replace the battery first!

Next time - It's time to encounter a game my teenage self DID play, featuring a blond chauvinist pig who smokes cigars and damages everything in sight....

The Great Playthough: Game 52 - Sonic Adventure 2 Battle

I would like to start this blog with an apology for the lack of updates. I know I have done this before here, and here, and here... but this time I have a real excuse for the quiet time - Neety and I moved house! And I've only just got my computer back up and running! (And yes, I still use a desktop computer - you know why? Because they are better. Accept it all you laptop-luvvies!)

So without further ado, let me introduce our next game....

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
Released on: Nintendo Gamecube
Played on: Nintendo Wii
Release date: 2002

Yes, it's a Sonic game. I am aware that I've already reviewed quite a few of these, but I have a soft spot for the speedy blue hedgehog - it's not my fault!

(Disclaimer - It may actually be my fault. Sorry.)

This is the second game that Sonic appeared in which was in 3D. The first was Sonic Adventure, which I shall be covering on another blog. Interestingly, the game "Sonic 3D" (which I shall also be reviewing later in this experiment) is not in what we now think of as 3D, as it is an isometric game based around 2D sprites. Confused? I'm sure you are. I am, and I understand what the hell I'm talking about!

Sonic Adventure 2, meanwhile, started life on the Dreamcast, before being hurredly ported to the Gamecube when Sega threw all of it's stocks of Dreamcasts into the sea and pretended it had only ever made games, rather than consoles. (Which is a shame, as I like the Dreamcast!) The gamecube port simply added "Battle" to the end of the title and faffed about with Chao gardens and extra multiplayer modes.

But multiplayer isn't what we play Sonic games for.... Single player high-speed adventure is!

Oh.

Sorry, for a moment there I thought I was talking about a 2D Sonic game.

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle has some of the best moments of Sonic games, and an awful lot of moments that - if they are not the worst, are certainly down at the bottom of the barrel with the mouldy apples and the broken spoons that have previously been used to scrape the bottom of said barrel.

(Again, I must apologise for my metaphors for being so tortured in this article - and I must also give a big shout out to Neety, who was able to remind me of the word metaphor when I couldn't remember it!)

Firstly, I must state that I always have a problem with Sonic games that appear vaguely set in the real world. The original Sonic 2D games have Sonic, other animal friends and Dr Robotnik, (I shall NEVER call him Eggman!) and in my mind, that seems to be a reasonable (if slightly strange) population of the world. Then, when they start to have other humans, and police chasing Sonic, for some reason it stretches the credibility of that world to breaking point for me.

I'm not sure that paragraph made sense - but I'm not rewriting damnit! Now is not the time for re-writing!

But ignoring that, the problems with this game are many. And the big one is that you only play as Sonic for a third of the game! Or if you choose the Dark side, you get to play as Shadow instead. Isn't that what we all wanted?

..... *watches tumbleweed roll past*.....

Anyway, you spend a third of the game as Tails - who for some unfathomable reason has a plane. Even though he has two tails which means he can FLY UNAIDED!! Oh, and sometimes the plane turns into a giant mech. Just, you know, because.

Then you spend a third of the game as Knuckles. Now I have nothing against Knuckles as a character, but his sections are basically a kind of giant treasure hunt for pieces of.. something or other, I forget... using the worlds crappiest radar as your only hope. Seriously, if the navy used that radar, they'd shoot torpedoes at Grimsby thinking that it was a hidden Russian submarine! And even if you can deduce roughly where the stupid thing is, half the time they are buried in the ground, so you just keep randomly sidestepping and digging again until you find it!

So I'm not a fan of these two sections, but what about the Sonic sections themselves?

There are absolutley brilliant moments in them. When you are zooming down a hill, and Sonic is responsive, and you don't have to try and perform any pixel-perfect movements then it's great fun. But then you turn a corner, and the camera fails to do so. Or you have to inch your way onto a pixel-thin bridge, while still running, and the controls are so twitchy it's impossible to keep him running in a damn straight line!

And the difficulty level... oh dear Sega. Have you never heard of a balanced game? One second you are rushing through, the next you are battling for your life! And then, suddenly, you're running through an easy level again...

It's such a divided game - divided within itself. The graphics and sound are up there with others of its generation, and the music in particular is still often catchy (with the occasional monotonous annoying piece thrown in), but it's just a case of too many ideas, not enough game, and a serious lack of polish.

Sorry Sonic, but you go to the bottom of the class...

Rating: 5/10
Time played: 1 hour 
Will I play it again?: Maybe - although the 3D bits of Generations are better, so I might just stick with that...

Next time, I tackle a famous video game franchise that I have NEVER played before - which one? Come back and find out!

The Great Playthrough: Game 51 - Road Rash II

You're going to get box art pictures for the
next few blogs - Neety and I are in the midst of
moving, so photos are impractical!

Road Rash II

Released on: Sega Megadrive
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release date: 1992

If you know me, you would think that this game would be a perfect fit for me. It's an arcade-style-racer (and we know I've spoken about my enjoyment of those before, most recently here) - it's also a 16-bit game, and it involves motorbikes, so I should love it beyond belief, right?

Well......

*Makes awkward noise*

.... I like it. Sort of.

After my recent run of games that are either brilliant (Street Fighter II Turbo, House of the Dead III etc...) or awful (yes, I'm looking at you Sonic the Fighters - I'm looking right into your polygonal face!) it is both a change and a disappointment that I'm back into games that I remember being better than they are.

But that's right where Road Rash II sits, sadly.

Don't get me wrong, it's got some good bits - beating up Policemen on bikes, beating up other people on bikes, stealing weapons from passing bikers so you can use those weapons to beat up people on bikes...

.... oh wait. That's all the same bit isn't it. That's the "beating up" bit.

So how's the racing bit?

Well - it's distinctly average. And yes, this is one of those situations where maybe I have been spoilt by the advances in racing games over the last few years, but the controls feel strange, there's very little sense of speed, and whether you win or not seems much more down to luck than skill. And the less said about the "progression" through the game, the better.

I don't know if you can tell from the segmented style of this review, but I'm finding it really hard to be negative about this game - because somewhere in my heart I know I should love it. You know when you buy an an album that's recorded by a band you really love, years after they are past their best? You are happy to own it, you know you should like it, but every so often you put it on and are disappointed. So it sits on your shelf, and you gain pleasure from knowing it's there, even though it's disappointing? Well Road Rash II is like that.

Sort of.

(Wow, that was a convoluted analogy - I hope you understood what I meant!)

I think the final thing to say about this game is that I think it was massively ahead of it's time. As I played it I just kept thinking

'If someone remade this for current generation consoles, it'd sell by the bucketload!'

And I think that's the first time I've ever longed for a remake...

Rating: 5/10
Time Played: About 45 Minutes
Would I play it again? In a couple of years, when I've forgotten the disappointment of this attempt.

Next time on Brawny's Great Playthrough - you'll laugh, you'll cry, and most importantly you'll wish a certain blue hedgehog had remained in two dimensions.....

The Great Playthrough: Game 50 - Street Fighter II Turbo!

Street Fighter II Turbo
Released on: Nintendo SNES, Sega Megadrive... and almost every other console and home computer ever.
Played on: Nintendo SNES
Release date: 1992

There are many things that are better as a teenage memory. Things that, if you revisit them in  your adult life, are somewhat disappointing. Examples of this include Cadbury's Creme Eggs (which are now smaller than ever before and somewhat sicklier than I ever remember),  Nirvana's Nevermind album (which is OK, but nowhere near as good as you thought it was) and every single episode of the Thundercats cartoon. (Seriously, never go back and watch it - no matter how good you think it is)

Of all the games on my list, Street Fighter II Turbo was the one I was very worried would have been tainted by nostalgia. In other words, I worried that going back to it would make me realise it's not as awesome a game as I remember it being from my childhood.

And this was a seminal game from my childhood. I played Street Fighter II Turbo A LOT with my friends when I was a teenager, and I have incredibly fond memories of it. And as I fired up the game, a lot of those memories came flooding back.

While I'm not traditionally a huge fan of fighting games - preferring platforming and puzzlers (as I'm sure you've established from reading this blog), Street Fighter II Turbo is a game I would classify as one of my all-time favourites. So, I know what you're wondering - does it hold up today?

Abso-bloody-lutely.

It's amazing fun! I may have mentioned a few times that I am a huge fan of 16-bit graphics, and this game is full of some of the best of the era. Detailed sprites and great backgrounds combine to make everything visually stunning. Coupled with the awesome music (I dare you to play any fight on Guile's stage and not end up humming the music afterwards!) this game provides a real treat for the eyes and the ears.

But that's enough about the superficial things. What about the gameplay itself? It is a great game to play. The controls are simple enough to pick up yet complex to master, the collision detection is absolutely superb, and the difficulty? Well, it's got a selection of difficulty settings - which is definitely a good thing. I played it on the middle difficulty level, and the first thing I realised?

I'm really bad at this game.

I mean, I was never great at the game, but I could pull off a fireball nine times out of ten - whereas in the thirty-odd rounds I played during this playthrough, I didn't succesfully pull one off once. And while I'm aware that's quite an embarassing admission, it is true. As is the fact that I got to play as every character - and most of them twice! Which should tell you that I managed to lose nearly twenty-four times...

But in regards to this difficulty level - it's not a game breaker. At no point does it feel unfair - which seems to be a regular discovery whenever I play the retro games - most of the time the games are harder, but that makes you more determined to succeed.

So my conclusion? Street Fighter II Turbo is still amazing. An arcade game that has enough of a single-player mode to keep you interested - a gorgeous treat for the eyes and ears and most of all, it's so much fun!

Rating: 9/10
Time played: Over an hour - and I didn't want to stop!
Would I play it again? Of course!

Next time? It's the SNES' biggest rival, the Megadrive, and some motorbiking fun of Road Rash II. Join me, won't you?

The Great Playthrough - Game 49: House of the Dead III

Firstly, may I say a huge F*** YOU to the blogger app - as I had written half of this blog post and then saved it on there, and it has now decided that it no longer exists. So let us take a moment to mourn the nuggets of well-written criticism and humour that I am now never likely to recover....

*Waits*

And now, let's get on with it!

*Waits for a cry of "Yes, let's get on with it!*

House of the Dead IIIReleased on: Arcade, Xbox, PC, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3
Played on: Nintendo Wii
Release date: 2002

Hands up who likes zombies? I don't mean those of you who actually like zombies (i.e. those who think that zombies are nice) I mean those of you who like zombie-related media (especially games where you get to shoot them in the face!)

Given the demographic of those of you who read my blog (which I don't have any hard or fast data on - I just make things up to fit whichever blog I'm writing) - I'm guessing that a lot of you are entertained by zombie-related media.

Which is good - because, lets face it, House of the Dead III is all about Zombies. No two ways about it. It's not even about a House anymore...

So a more accurate title would be Zombies Zombies Zombies Zombies (Zombies Zombies Zombies) - Or, alternatively, Boom! Make the Zombies heads explode!

As you may (or may not) have guessed - there is a lot of zombie killing that goes on in this game. And just because I'm a 32 year old video gamer, doesn't mean that I think killing zombies is big OR clever.. however, it is fun. Lots and lots of gory head explode-y maniacal fun.

And that pretty much sums up House of the Dead III for me. It is the second best of the House of the Deads that I have ever played (I also own House of the Dead 2, and House of the Dead: Overkill - and I have played House of the Dead as well) - and that is simply because they have got all of the elements perfectly streamlined.

Big guns? Check.

Zombies that explode when you shoot them? Check.

Different type of Zombies? Check - in fact, this game has standard zombies, slimy zombies, lady zombies, FAT MAN zombies and many many more

Zombie versions of other animals (most notably the bloody zombie vultures?) Check.

A completely nonsensical plot? Check.

So as far as this review goes, this game should be perfect, right?

Well unfortunately,there is an elephant in the room. A giant hulking zombie elephant.(Zombie elephants - thats a great idea!) And that elephant's name is "difficulty."

This was designed to be an arcade game that kept you entertained, and then ate your money - which I can appreciate. However, for this home port, did they give you the option for infinite credits? No. When you first boot up the game, you start with five credits. Which, if you are playing two-player, are shared. Then, every time you play through and die, if you get far enough, you earn another credit....

And this wouldn't be so bad, but the bosses are designed to be almost unbeatable... (And I only know this, because in a previous playthrough, I used a cheat for infinite lives, and it took me and a second player about half an hour to kill the final boss - and we died about twenty times each!) - so it gets very frustrating that you slam your way through the level, and then have to deal with the ridiculous boss at the end of each one!

Apart from all that, though, I did enjoy it. And my enjoyment was increased by playing in two-player with my gorgeous wife! Not only does that just make it loads more fun, but also it meant I got to listen to her wonderful comments on the cutscenes.

Now, bear in mind, that both Neety and I have a love for awful cutscenes in games (why else would we play Resident Evil games so much?) but in this game in particular, she came out with some absolutely cracking lines - mostly due to the ridiculousness of the situation in which all the cutscenes happen.

Basically (for those of you who don't know), all the cutscenes show Dr Curien (the mastermind behind pretty much everything in the HOTD-verse) talking to his terminally ill young son, Daniel, in flashback. But what makes it so ridiculous is that he is asking him hugely philosophical questions, which Neety then kept coming up with comedy responses to. But the best was this one.

CURIEN - "Daniel, have I overstepped the boundries of human morality?"

NEETY (IN VOICE OF DANIEL) "I dunno Dad, I'm eight. I like the Power Rangers!"

This made me laugh so much that I had to pause the game, so I thought I ought to share it with you.

As far as the rest of the game goes - there's loads to enjoy (if you like on-rails lightgun shooters, which I most definitely do!). The graphics appear to be an arcade-perfect port, and the controls are accurate and responsive - so it's great fun all the way through - it's just too damn difficult!

But if you've got the game, and fancy a bit of zombie shooting, mindless fun - there's very few games that offer the simplistic visceral thrills of this one.

Rating: 7.5/10
Time played: About 45 minutes - I couldn't bring myself to start again after dying.
Wouild I play it again? Often!

Next time - it's back to the SNES for the wonders of Street Fighter II: Turbo - join me, won't you?