The Big List
These are most of the games that I have/had/like/hate. E-mail me if you want me to do anything about them. I'm getting kinda spread thin as is, but I'll put up some stuff about it if you show intrest.
Here's the quick list:
Rainbow6: Raven's Sheild,
Warcraft III,
Dues Ex ,
Age of Mythology ,
Discworld ,
NetHack ,
Grand Theft Auto III ,
Metal Gear Solid 2: Son's of Liberty ,
Unreal Tournement ,
Myth I and II ,
StarShip Titanic ,
StarCraft,
Armored Core2 ,
Soul Reaver: legacy of Kain ,
Tenchu II ,
Azure Dreams ,
Final Fantasy VII ,
War Hawk ,
Theme Park ,
Magic Carpet ,
Scorched Earth ,
Natuk ,
Final Fantasy Tactics ,
And a quick list of renters:
Dark Cloud,
WarHeads,
Red Faction,
The Devil May Cry ,
Pirates, Legend of Black Kat ,
No One Lives Forever ,
Medal of Honor: Frontlines ,
Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII ,
Gish ,
From New to Old
- X-Com (PC)
- A very unique game. Old-school by this point but nothing every quite like it. A turn-based squad-based tactical firefight game. Now, turn-tactics brings up ideas of FFT and other medival era warfare. Thats cool, but it's been done. The only other game like it out there would be fallout tactics, which also had fairly hideous afterlife. Yeah, two brothers have revolved their lives around this concept, unfortunetly they sold out to make it and the company with the right fumbled it's sucessors. Anyway, the game itself is fun, after you get used to some things. 1: people die. The aliens WILL kick your ass now and then. 2: Specifically, Point men die. Horribly, instantly, for no reason. It sucks, but thats war. The first man out of the tube has a 50% surviving rating, regardless of anything. 3: Fear new things. If you don't know what it does, there is a good chance it won't be friendly, and will proceed to rape you. 4: Logistics are a pain. All the little details count for a lot, and somebody has to do it. This time its you. 5: Killing aliens is a for-profit activity. and of course, 6: The controls. The controls are a bit tough at first, but once you get used to them they're mearly, annoying. After that the gameplay is amazing. It's really great. As far as programs goes, it has a large number of feats like 3-d line of fire, destructive terrain (although nothing falls down), unit damage, fatal wounds, med-packs, day/night, light sources, tanks, doors, elevators, spreading fire, reaction shots, and thats all in the combat. The other half of the game, the geosphere, is where you buy shit, manage resources, hire people, build stuff, and MANAGE the army. Well, that's boring. I don't like it. I love the fact that you essentially ARE you boss for the battles though. You don't have some general dictating your goals for this mission. Couse hell, you don't KNOW anything yet. You don't KNOW what goals there are to get. Playing through the first time is really a treat because you get to learn as you go.
- Rainbow Six: Raven's Shield (PC)
- A lot like the previous installments of the series, of which I've lost count. They up'ed the graphics, they added the "lean" option so you look around corners, snipers can be ordered to take a shot or hold fire. This game suffers from some REALLY basic things that I noticed in the very first game. AI reactions are crazy. They can no longer see out of the back of their head, and they randomly surrender or turn to flee, which are both good things. But they can spot a prone sniper in the brush 500 yards away and take him out in 2 seconds with an AK. Furthermore, while they can hear nearby footsteps and ALWAYS fucking investigate, they don't register grenade explosions on the other side of a house. Thats just wrong. They don't even SEE piles of dead bodies pileing up. Also, while the individual AI has gained SOME sense, they still don't act like a group, ever. I admit, however, that I've yet to play online. This is probably one hell of a multi-player game.
- WarCraft III (PC)
- Build town, gather resources, kill everyone else. It's a real time stratagy by the people who made it popular. What can I say, these people MAKE the RTS genre with warcraft and starcraft. Command and Conquer was a legitamate competitor, and then they fucked it up. oh well. WCIII is fun simply put. The hero aspect is cool for micromanaging, so they get away from simply throwing money (units) in masses like you could with the zerg. Five different races is cool. The camera is not cool, but not annoying. Why couldn't they just use it like Myth did?
- Age of Mythology (PC)
- Build town, gather resources, kill everyone else. They mix things up a bit with the resources. Ha, you can actually go hunt for food, which is a nice touch. 3 basic races, each with 3 sub-groups, so that's good. Fairly realish, not too real though. Well done, but I have to call it a standard 3d stratagy game. It's almost too bad that it's made by microsoft, it might have been really popular if it wasn't
- Dues Ex (PC)
- An old title. Buggy as hell. Basic first person shooter abilities. But one HELL of an open RPG! You are a "special" agent in a world of plauge, desiese, death, trippy tech, corperate conspiracies, and really annoying sercurity bots. As I said, it's combat engine is nothing by today's standards, but it's not bad. As far as the stealth goes, you have to deal with some questionable physics, but the AI is pretty good. Where this game shines is it's open feeling. You want to kill some bums, go for it. Want to help the wreched, have fun. Push drugs or crack down on the pushers, whatever you feel like. You still have to follow the story, (Not quite as free as GTA3) and some details are conviently ignored (you can hack peoples computers WHILE THEY SIT AT IT) but it is a fun game. Unfortunetly it crashes randomly, the sound NEVER worked right on my version, and I appear to have the russian version.
- Discworld (PS1)
- The english can't program worth Shmeg. They have some funney guys over there, but programmers they have not. This game is loaded with bugs; graphic and otherwise. Also the load is terrible, even the loading credits; simple stuff that takes forever and HALF-WAY through the sound kicks in... bloody terrible. The actual game is kinda fun though. Not as ingeinus as Kings Quest 6, but funnier for sure. It's a walk-through game where you gather random objects, apply them in some odd manner and advance through the game. No way to die or screw-up, a good portion of the time you wander aimlessly. It's also got some horrid feature about it, some people you regret ever having to talk to, and pity to the man who clicks too many times advancing through speech. I do really horrible on these type of games, but they're amusing none-the-less. So far I'm on act 2 I think, and have gotten 2 golden items. hmm Found this the other day, free Discworld.
- NetHack
v3.4, v3.1.1, slash v6, slash'EM (PC, availible in any and all formats)
- ok, so it started out as rouge, then hack, then nethack (it's from before there was an internet, so the net part was because so many people were working on it) then it kinda spiraled out of control into an orgy of varients, patches, versions, and add-ons. WHOO0-HOOO!!! PARTY ON DUDES!!!! ok, So I advise starting with the oldest version you can find and gradually work your way up, enjoying each and every transformation. The Rouge style game is a favorite of mine, mostly due to the reality of it. If you die, you're done, no going back to save points. However, the thing that I don't like about rouge dungeons is the layout. There's no ryhme or reason, completely random. Which is good that you don't know what's around the corner, but the location of traps, locked doors, temples, toilets, creatures, and everything else makes no sense. Programming feng shwi into a map generator WOULD be a challenge though. The advances that slash and slash'em have made is in it's size. Super Lottsa Added Stuff Hack, by Tom Proudfoot (Hail!), is basicly the same as nethack v3.1.1, but bloated with new monsters, options, easter eggs(most of which can be used to your advantage or will kill you), color, items, and classes. SLASH is basicly MORE! Slash'EM is blah blah yada yada, Extended Magic. So from the name you can guess that the magic system has been added to, but there's also quite a bit more then that. It's currently being worked on by some demi-god, so whatever I say will be outdated. Regardless, EM had split the classes of slash into classes and races, so you can have two now. (There are restrictions of course, who ever heard of a elven necromancer?) It's added a new screen layout including a radar, inventory screen, messege window, status window, and of course the dungeon. It's also given the classes special moves or "techniques" so there's even more stuff to do. It's even transfered the ansii characters into tile sets and made the ancient crappy graphics into slightly newer crappy graphics. I'm currently still giving v3.4 a test run so I don't really know that much about it. Bloody hell I can't get below lvl 13!
See my own
small temple to NetHack.
- Grand Theft Auto 3 (PS2)
- Great game. Huge game. It got away from the cartoony massacuring and got back to real evil. It's definitly a dirty dark and evil game, but it does it well. Very playable, you won't run out of things to do any time soon. The company's big leap to 3d goes well, except for the foot combat. Camera control while you're on foot could use some work, and targeting is reliant on that, which means it's a bitch to kill them bitches. The missions are sweet, most of them include similar stuff but Rockstar does a good job giving them variety. Things get interesting when the missions involve more then one district. The play is sweet too, most of the time you'll be in a car, luckily the different cars really do act different. The only thing that's odd is how immortal you are when you step inside a car. Oh, and now that I stole a tank, I find it odd that the army doesn't send in bazookas after you... Another note to take is the fact to keep 2 rotating save files just in case one corrupts.......
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Son's of Liberty (PS2)
- Great covert action game. Great 3d control. Very realistic, some parts have that insanely artsy feel to them, but it's still got the action. Excellent work with the camera, only downside is running and shooting is kinda out. So it just has a different ideology for combat, so what if its not doom. It's filled with small things, almost easter eggs. Things like the posters, pulling off the turn wheel, a slew of wierd dialog on the codex thing, and messing with snake, make up the bulk of what to do the second time around. I beat the game in a week though, and turned it back in for 40 bucks. The first one was the ultimate renter, and the 2nd one fixes that a bit, but it's still a renter if you've got some serious time to play it. The ending is so trippy, wierd and disconnected it's kinda dissapointing. And the decision your character makes in the end to fight Solidus is pathetic. AND HE GOES BACK TO HIS GIRLFRIEND!?! oh, and instead of 100 years ago, the people from the patriot list should have died around 40 years ago, when acutal computers were around.
- Unreal Tournement (PS2)
- Blood and guts galore! Not as good of a FPS as red faction, (below) but it was only $20 because its not new. The AI, as for most games, is pretty frelling stupid, but that doesn't make much difference here. Run around and shoot stuff. Whats fun it is to unload 200 bullets from a minigun into someone, or to take down someone with a rocket laucher by only using your pistol. As a matter of personal choice, I like to snipe in deck 16. I've gotten 20 kills and no deaths on the hardest level. (i.e. they bots wern't made to deal with snipers)
- Myth I and II (PC)
- Squad based tactical combat. Real 3D Graphics terrain, 2D sprites. Fairly nice control. Myth one and two are games that focus on troop tactics, anywhere from 5 to 50 units. They use melee units, archers, and a few units of mass destruction. Fairly expansive storylines. Myth II is a quality real-time troop tactic simulator. These deserve far more praise then I can give them. Also, this follows Tim Sweeny's example and has a map and unit editor, so random people have made some kick-ass conversion on it. I've got several plugins which make it spiffy-cool.
- StarShip Titanic (PC)
- Wander around and try to do stuff. A very pretty game. Talking with the characters IS spooky. The best I've ever seen in interaction, but it's not fool-proof yet. Due to my own stupidity and computer crashes I've yet to finish the game. ARG!
- StarCraft (PC)
- Real-time war stratagy game. Collect resources, build a base, prouduce units, kill the other guy. It's pretty much warcraft in space. I've got to say though that the majority of what Blizzard sells is it's art. I mean, if you put the story, opening movies, music, sound, and all those sprites on one side, and put the game engine, stratagy, and gameplay on the other, the art wins out. I'd really like to know what the ratio of programmers to artists are at Blizzard My site
- Armored Core2 (PS2)
- I love the Armored Core series, and this new one is purdy. Knowing the different parts is kinda time consuming, but it's great to specialize your own mech. One of the great things is the ability to have preset different designs = easy to switch mechs. I don't like the story, or how some of the game is setup, the control setup just plain sucks, but the combat is ok. I wish I had their 3d models for this!
- Soul Reaver: legacy of Kain (PSX)
- A spiffy game for PSone. Undead vampire runs around killing everything and getting better at it along the way. Good story, good control, a bit heavy on the puzzles, but NO LOAD TIME!!!!!!!! yeah I didn't even notice it until I read about it, and then, BAM! I realise it was true. They hide the load time as you run along passages and stuff. Yeah, too bad it's a puzzle game. I FINALLY GOT THROUGH ALL THE PUZZLES!
To be continued? WTF! Those dirty rotten bastards.
- Tenchu II (PSX)
- It's an addon to the first. The graphics are crap, even compared to other games from it's age, but it's just so fun to sneak up on people and slice thier head off. There are sevral things that I would change in the game, and was hoping would have changed, but it's still a great game. A lot longer than the first one, which is one of the good changes. I've written a bit about the points it lacks, I might put it up.
- Azure Dreams (PSX)
- This is, for all intents and purposes, just like pokemon. You manage creatures to fight for you (Although you can whoop ass fairly well yourself) and you go around a maze getting handy items, more monsters, killing lots, and running away after awhile. There's also a lame "social life" of you character. I don't really know why, it's a japanese thing. Also to note: The dungeon is RANDOM! Its a rouge-like game so it instantly kicks ass.
- Final Fantasy VII (PSX)
- Everyone should know about this game. Huge story. But I was actually disappointed with the combat system. Pretty game, wonderful story, that's it. Oh yea, for it's time 3d characters were kinda cool.
- War Hawk (PSX)
- A nice fighter jet/hovercraft type game. Lots of missiles. Hard to die. Fairly run on the mill, but well done. It's a launch title after all. I like all the different endings it has.
- Theme Park (PSX)
- Like SimCity but with a park. A good lite game. Not as serious.
- Magic Carpet (PSX)
- Whoa! This game was great. Flying around in 3d while blowing the hell out of stuff was really amazing whenever it was when it came out. Also probably the first game to actually morph the terrain ingame. Red faction, a game I rented, bragged and bragged about how it could change the terrain. Complete hype though, just a gimik. but for Magic Carpet it was damn cool. 10-3: I FINALLY BEAT THE BLOODY THING! and to note, the end cinima is not worth the large portion of life that it has taken from me.
- Scorched Earth (PC freeware)
- A classic. A very addictive game. Escpecially for any physics loving people. The first, and best of the artillery games. Not as loony as worms, not as patheic as that gorilla thing, Scorched Earth was very sweet with the variety of weapons, physics options, land formation, wind, defensive techniques, and did I mention the weapons? Even Worms doens't have as many weapons as this game. A 3D re-make has been made for free. It's actually pretty good.
- Natuk (PC Shareware)
- Aw geez! I forget to get this one up here! Natuk is an orkish game where it's good to be bad. Take revenge, pilage the countryside and slaughter whelps. An RPG from the darkside. I can't stress enough the skill of the combat engine for this game. It's so frikin SWEET. A truely deep look on the representation of combat. And the item system! So much stuff, so many modifiers, so friggin cool. Tom Proudfood is my emperor! He made a character editor, so some people have put up some stuff. If he made a level editor, now THAT would get used quite a bit. Seriously, if you just happen to own sony, nintendo, microsoft, or any of the PC game developers; BUY HIS ENGINE (and employ him).
- Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX)
- FFT is a wierd mix. It actually made by a company named Quest, (they made ogre tactics) which was eaten in part, and later wholely, by Squaresoft. It has a story worthy of Square, a marvelous engine by Quest, and horribly messed up details that no-one felt like fixing. Bad translations and grammer errors. Things like how the JUMP attack doesn't register on the time list. Also, some battles are horribly uneven. I love it though, the battle engine, and unit build up is fun and enjoyable. The battle system is turn-based. The field is set up like a chess board, but terrain elevation, slope, and water add a good deal of strategy to it. Even if you have a godsquad you can have fun poaching monsters, stealing stuff off humans, even scourging the floor for random items. There are also side jobs, things to send your spare units off to do (the mad-lib fixed response system is utterably laughable) Square always has to go off and make wierd things on the side of their games. Some are cool like the battle on the condor mountain (FF7), but this one is pretty much a waste of time. Also in this game, you get a lot of unique characters. These are people who do special stuff with the story and can't really expand to different jobs (not that you'd want to) They take up most of your army if you don't kick some of them. Don't kick the engineer, Orlandu, or Beowolf. I have dreams about making models of the classes and stuff in poser. Ah, just added: FFXI, that's right eleven, will have the different Job/classes that FFT has. Sweet, if the online actually works that is. Also added just now, People keep saying that FFT is simply a Ogre Tactics clone. They're right in the fact that Squaresoft can't claim credit for it (they do get the cash though, it sold/sells great) but I've played Ogre battle, and it's not even close. Ok, a lille guy walks around on a world map, when it hits a hostil enemy it jumps to battle mode. But Ogre Battle had real-time movement with terrain factors and MOVING HOSTILE FORCES! on this side FFT sucks ass. But when it jumps to battle mode, FFT own OT's ass. OT (Ogre Tactics for all you abbreviative-deficient people) is hardly better, or worse even, then the standard Final Fantasy game. They don't even move around, it's just a bunch of different attacks! FFT takes into account distance, movement, weapon range, charge time, adjusted stats, hurtful/helpful states (although OT probably has that) and in FFT, your support units can hide in the back. OK, so the class system. I didn't play OT enough to see it's class system in it's glorious whole. I belive it has MORE classes, but I'm sure that FFT did a better job of explaining it. OT did nothing to tell you the names. And as far as the ability of the classes, I'm going to have to say that FFT did a better job. Also, OT handled a lot more units, more warish versus squad tactics. Finally, (although it's more because it's on the ps1) FFT had some KICK-ASS pre-game demos and CGI. I was kinda pissed that the end-game cgi was covered with the bloody credits. erg! I mean, that beutiful CGI just covered up!
yeah, there are more. Many more. but I'm lazy, and of late, work is busy sucking out my lifeforce. sorry.
I also decided I can review the games that I rent and/or get the demo of. This is most likely a storage spot until its big enough to present. So, starting now, working backwards and forwards and all around.
- Gish (PC)
- It's a game off the net. I only played the demo but it actually looks pretty cool. Its a platform game where you jump around collecting shit, killing some bad guys but mostly avoiding death. Well doesn't that sound boring as all hell? The catch is that you're a blob.... and you can change your form..... Totally unlike the game "a boy and his blob". totally. ok, no really, it's fun. You can move around, jump, squish, become "smooth", "heavy", or "spikey". It's a lot of fun if you're a physics nut like I am with my games. (but you have to ignore some basic physics, like the 3rd dimesion) I guess in short, it's a solid platformer.
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII (PS2)
- This is definatly a niche series. ROTK, as it's refered to everywhere it has to be mentioned more then once, is actually a book. A really freaking huge book that covers a period of war and strife and whatnot in China. It's really old too. Think Illiad. Hmmmmmm..... Anyway, the Dynasty Warrior games are also set to this. However, this IS NOT a hack and slash. It is any BUT a hack and slash. This is a series of games where you command a kingdom, build up your cities, your army, plot behinds everyone's back and eventually rule all of china. This will take FOREVER! ROTK is a historical game, meaning that some japaneese historians will get a kick out of overthrowing He Jin, and matching Lu Bu on the field. The emphasis is on realism, which kinda hurts gameplay. If you've played the previous versions let me say this about the new one. The combat sucks. No way around it, the combat sucks. It's quasi-realistic for army-size battles, but not that fun. Freedom has been granted though. You can jump in at any point at any level of the system: Leige, warlord, petty officer, or even a ronin. What's more, if you get bored, you can cut loose and go ronin at any point. You can even customize your very own officers before starting out. Also with this is an entire relation game that you play with other people, more then just LOYalty. And even though I just rented it, I got a fairly good story in the 3-4 days I had it: I started out in the yellow turban revolution era as a lowly officer. After many long and boring month, my liege (Sun Jian) goes on a war spree and takes out the yellow nation. (I think they're the rebels) So I become a prefect and get a kick-ass city going. I've got some good friends in the nation like Hua Tuo, and (damn, all those bloody chinnese names...). anyway, He Jin pronounces himself emporer and attacks everyone else pretty much. He attacks us as well, we give some land, but we counter and take it back. Sun Jian dies in the attack and I'm voted into power over his own son! So I make a big freakin army and take one of his cities. In this I capture 15 some officers along with He Jin himself. So off with his highness's head. I end up with a glut of officers, a huge army, some really fancy weapons (towers, canapults), and a hell of a lot of homework I've been putting off.....
- Medal of Honor: Frontlines (PS2)
- The first mission is very good. VERY good opening scene. Truely excellent for the first 10 minutes. (put it on HARD on the very first try, trust me) once you cross over the minefield though, the game turns to crap. the 2nd mission isn't that bad. Helping the scattered troops in the city is a nice touch. But as it goes on it just gets crappier and crappier. It degenerates into walking around solo through an enemy stronghold, standing in front of people while they shoot you with your finger holding down the fire button until they die. The nice bits they try to incorperate utterly fail after the first mission. It might as well be "no one lives forever" with a WWII twist and good graphics. So, my advice in the end is play the first mission at a friends house, and leave it at that.
- No One Lives Forever (PS2)
- DON'T BUY THIS GAME EITHER! Unless it's like 5-10 bucks. It's a pathetic attempt by amutures to make a game like metel gear solid. Seriously, these executives see a kickass game that sells well and they try to make cheap copies to generate cash. Fox made this, yup the TV channel. It's supposed to be a 60's style spy game of infiltraion and espionage. It's a bad spy game to start, practically wolfenstein3d, except the guards are passive until you kill them. The british 60's spin just makes it look like it's either trying to copy Austin Powers, or make a parody of him, I can't tell which. The first few parts of the game are compleatly, just, BAD. I mean really really terrible, I was ready to quit on the 5th room. Walk here, open that door, walk slow, this is a gun. This is the button to shoot. Oye. Even when you get to the actual mission it continues to sell to the idiots. The end of the first mission get's better thankfully, it gave me some hope. But the 2nd mission is REALLY bitchy, as soon as I got the assult rifle, I just ran through it, screwed the stealth, and shot everything on the way by. I can't believe anyone would be a fan of this game, if you are, you really need to get out once in a while. Or a least get some better games. hmmmmm There seems to be a lull in the quality of PS2 right now... OH DEAR GOD NO, THERE'S A SEQUAL!!!
- Pirates, Legend of Black Kat (PS2)
- DON'T BUY THIS GAME AT ALL! It stinks, the 3rd person part is boring as hell, VERY linear, and sometimes a bitch. The boat part is decent. (vs. on foot, on the islands. The two are really sperated) I even like to sail around in the boat and shoot the others. They give you lots of optons on camera control, and with some practice I could have gotten used to it. The shooting set up was useable but I wouldn't be real proud of it. I hate the special shot though, and why does it depend on what animal you have up front? Just plain Stupid. But the load time is so bloody long it's not fun to play the boat game it has. Plus it's made for kids. The main character isn't even a pirate, she doesn't steal anything! Over all it's a stupid game that doesn't deserve to be associated with anything piratey.
- The Devil May Cry (PS2)
- DO NOT BUY IT FOR THE STORY! The fighting engine is kick ass though. Really nice. Enemy unit descriptions come out once your character experiences that aspect of it. This is a really nice touch, very unique. Made by the people who brought us Resident Evil, this one also has camera angles that are just a bitch to get around. Most of the time it's ok though, they've had practice. The game incorperates demons with ease, which is nice. And it goes to lengths to include firepower AND sword-power, which is nice too. Bottom line is this: Wonderfully thought out combat engine and advancement, but no rhyme or reason. a.k.a. 3d platform game.
- Red Faction (PS2)
- A first person shooter. (FPS) PS2 launch title I think. And it's fun. Running around killing is cool. The "covert and sneaky like" mode is crap though, they're wishing they were metal gear. Cool weapons, though many are not really used much. The multi-player is fun even with the AI. The single player mode has a story, but I wouldn't pay much attention if I were you. When the mercs come in though... oye. It's just not cool the way they can kill you with one shot. Nice control. Nice play. and NO! Your gimik is NOT going to revolutionize the FPS genre! Sequals a' commin'
- WarHeads (PC shareware)
- A fun artilary game set in space with stationary planets. lots of fun (and handy!) weapondry to play with. a "light" game I guess, easy to learn, catchy. It'd make a good game for the arcade.
- Dark Cloud (PS2)
- It's a rouge game for PS2!. I didn't get real deep, but it looks fairly extensive. Hear it's easy to get really screwed up in it also. Although you don't actually die and start over, you break your sword which can be built up. The first level is definatly a dungeon crawler, standard let's say. I also hear that the later levels get more interesting. It has a kooky bit outside the dungeon, not terrible, but kinda sad. A lot like Azure Dreams. Very pretty, a bit of action, but it's no NetHack.
Back to the real site