Tag: Video Game

A Thousand Words: Big Fight

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Big Fight: Big Trouble in the Atlantic Ocean

On one hand, the 1992 arcade brawler Big Fight can be viewed as nothing but a mechanically bland copycat of Final Fight and the like. While this is true, it’s also very hard to deny that the game is also a very weird and bizarre eccentric game with a premise that could have been written by Jon Land, graphics that fit said style perfectly, and translation terrible even by the standards of the day that weirdly adds to the charm.

See, the entire game takes place on a cruise ship/battleship/supervillain base called the “SKELETON CREW”. There are three protagonists with designs that aren’t anything to write home about the standard fast/strong/balanced differences. The normal enemies likewise are standard fare… but then come the bosses. They not only include a sumo-kabuki and an ancient Egyptian mummy-wizard, but the big twist is that after each defeat, everyone except the final boss becomes a playable character.

Every one has the same dialogue, repeated here verbatim: “[boss]: ‘Now I came to my sense. Can you take me into partnership? [character who beat the boss]: Sure.”

It’s not explained if they were mind controlled or whatever, but yeah. The sprites and backgrounds are not ‘good’ in terms of pure detail, but they’re bright and do exactly what they need to do. The ship has a variety of zoos, gardens, gyms, and the like to rival Spaceball One.

Is this a good game to actually play? No better than other ones of its time. Is it fun to look at? Oh yeah.

A Thousand Words: Double Dragon 3

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Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone

Double Dragon basically made the brawler what it was. Unfortunately, its position at the height of beat em ups was very short lived. By the third game, an externally developed one called “The Rosetta Stone” that replaces the postapocalyptic streets with a world tour, it had been left behind by the likes of Final Fight. Really far behind.

If Final Fight has fluid controls that only seem slightly worse or clunky now than they did over thirty years ago, this feels like someone at the time who played both would have noticed it. The characters just move like they’re pieces on grooved slots (maybe it was even programmed like that). On top of it, being able to buy power ups with real quarters made this one of the first games with microtransactions.

So yeah, there’s a reason why Double Dragon fell out of favor. It didn’t make good games, and this was definitely not a good game.

A Thousand Words: Hitman Absolution

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Hitman Absolution

The Hitman series of stealth video games involves super-clone assassin Agent 47 hitting various men (and women). The games are centered around disguises. 47 can be a master of disguise despite being a bald near-albino with a barcode tattoo on his head who’s tall enough to be a viable basketball player. It’s just video game logic. Anyway, Hitman Absolution is regarded as one of the worst in the series, albeit in a way that spawned the absolute best let’s play series I’ve ever watched:

There’s far more focus on story in this game, which would be interesting if it was good, but it isn’t. So let me explain just one series of events:

  • 47 goes to “South Dakota” (the Danish IO Interactive devs do not know what South Dakota is and have apparently mistaken it with Texas). He’s there to pursue a genetically modified girl/hitwoman-to-be who’s been kidnapped.
  • 47 on the streets of the South Dakota town kills several anachronistic greasers who are the friends of the man who kidnapped her. The connection is incredibly tenuous.
  • 47 counter-kidnaps the kidnapper and kills him.
  • 47 goes through an amazingly precarious entrance in an Uncharted/Splinter Cell hybrid that’s nothing like previous Hitman games. He goes this way to get to a supervillain lair.
  • 47 kills three mad scientists in the supervillain lair, only one of which has the most tangential connection to the kidnapped girl.
  • 47 leaves the lair and kills the giant hulking man who doubles as a luchador MMA fighter. While up to the player, he potentially disguises as the man’s opponent, beats him in a semi-fair cage fight to death, and then like every true master of disguise, takes off his mask in front of a large crowd.
  • 47 stays at a hotel and fights off a group of hitwomen dressed as latex fetish nuns.
  • Finally, in an actually sensible plot plan, 47 finds the girl is in the hands of the sheriff and goes to the courthouse/prison/whatever to find her. In this part of the mission you can disguise yourself as a judge and beat people with a gavel.
  • This cannot last for master assassin 47 is (out of player control) surprised and captured by a creepy ineffectual sheriff. Instead of killing them the antagonists leave him tied to a chair like every good supervillain.
  • 47 then escapes (SPOILER ALERT) and battles/sneaks through a wave of stormtroopers sent by the assassin agency. He pursues the sheriff, who has been wounded by said stormtroopers, to a church and finishes him off.
  • Finally 47 leaves “South Dakota” for the final showdown. And thus ends the arc. Somewhere Jon Land is going “uh, I think that’s too absurd”.

All this is punctuated by some of the worst cinematography ever, long after most games had figured out the basics. This gets to the point where one of the lets players reasonably called a cutscene in it the worst ever. What makes this strange is that publisher Square Enix basically invented the use of cinema in games. Or at least perfected it.

As for the actual game, it is a strange combination of cargo culted stealth movement through levels, occasional platforming, and a simplified, often made too easy version of the Hitman formula. It’s not unplayable or broken, but if you want Hitman, either the earlier Blood Money or the later remakes are vastly superior.

A Thousand Words: Rogue Trader

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Rogue Trader

I figured I’d beat all three main paths with the new Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader computer game before I formally reviewed it. Well, now all three are beaten and I can write this.

In short: Rogue Trader is the best and most fun I’ve had with an RPG since Fallout New Vegas. The grid RPG gameplay is good enough, the game does 40k’s setting justice, and the characters are incredibly memorable, from three-eyed princess Cassia to “Team Fortress 2 Heavy Weapons Guy only Scandinavian” Space Marine Ulfar.

So what’s bad besides bugs that have been (generally) fixed by the time of this review? First, one third of the route is tacked on. I refer of course to the Heretic route, which is a shoved-in mess that tries to either ignore or tiptoe around that zero of your characters would follow an obvious Chaos worshiper and where you do 97% of the same things as more heroic Imperial or independent characters without incident. Second, the endgame is a little worse in terms of plot and (more importantly) level design than the first act.

Still, this is an amazing game for those who want to be either uncharacteristically good for 40k or just want to boltgun down everything in their path. Either is possible.

A Thousand Words: Warriors of Fate

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Warriors of Fate

Capcom’s Warriors of Fate is a Final Fight-type beat em up set in ancient China. Err.. except the American translation set it in a fictional place that just happened to resemble ancient China. And the simple and easy Chinese names got turned into complex Mongolian-inspired names. Yeah, it was a little weird.

That being said, it’s a Final Fight successor that plays like a Final Fight successor and has the fun of a Final Fight successor. Unlike Captain Commando, mounts (horses in this case, not mechs) actually are useful and usable. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Battle Circuit in terms of pure technical ability, but there is a lot more depth than many other games of its ilk and it makes up for it in terms of spectacle.

Not a bad slightly forgotten arcade game.

A Thousand Words: Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2

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Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2

Have you ever wished that you could just throw two armies against each other? Have your playthroughs of Command: Modern Operations or other wargames largely just consisted of setting up artificial jousts in the level editor? Don’t want any of that pesky “tactics” or “detail”? Then Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 is the game for you!

There’s a campaign mode and the ability to play it as a makeshift real-time-strategy game, but the true meat of UEBS is to just line up a pair of armies on a map, like a literal million ancient soldiers against an artillery brigade with a contemporary infantry company screen, and watch as they charge at it. It’s not exactly deep but it is very fun.

In fact, it’s weirdly informative about actual battlefield dynamics, because taking away any kind of tactical management means you can see the other factors at play. I was pleasantly surprised to see a small number of melee units I put in making an outsize difference as they fixed the opposition and let the ranged units fire on them more freely. You can see terrain effects as your giant hordes struggle to make it through bottlenecks.

So there are a lot worse things to get than UEBS2, especially since mods mean you make even more fantastical clashes.

A Thousand Words: Eco Fighters

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Eco Fighters

Capcom decided to make an arcade “shmup” with an environmentalist science fiction theme. The result was Eco Fighters, a very well made game with one massive flaw. And no, the massive flaw was not the environmental theme. The massive flaw has to do with how you aim.

See you control a spaceship that has a rotating arm/turret. It sounds good, but in practice it’s a gimmick that’s hard to work and control. This and the fact that you’ll often unavoidably run into a weapon change that you don’t want (which gets rid of something you do) sours it a little.

But only a little. It’s still a good side scrolling spaceship shooter, and the graphics and music are typically excellent for the time period. It just tried something distinct and fell short in that regard.

A Thousand Words: Action PC Football

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Action PC Football

From the same company as Action PC Baseball comes [American] Football. It’s a season simulator that can offer both historical and (my favorite) draft seasons. It has a similar minimal visual interface (that can be enhanced by the player if they add more stuff into the folders) and a similar statistical crunchiness. This later part makes it more interesting than Baseball.

See, in baseball, each plate appearance is basically its own thing. It’s a high variance sport where even having a great shortstop and centerfielder on the other team just makes getting hits a little less likely. But in football, if you have two excellent safeties, a good pass is a lot less likely. Both Action PC games simulate this well.

So Action PC Baseball is more a relaxing “see what happens” game. Action PC Football is a more cerebral and demanding game. They’re apples and oranges, but both are tasty.