If it wasn’t for a friend of mine’s obsession with Mortal Kombat, I probably wouldn’t have given War Gods a second look. But he rented it one weekend and brought it over, because it was hyped as being a bigger, badder, and bloodier version game. Now I wake up every morning thankful that the experience is over.
The game was so bad that I don’t remember that much about it. I’m pretty sure it’s my brain’s selectively blocking out the atrocious game to save my sanity.
The story? I don’t remember and can’t be bothered to look it up. You just need to know that there is a variety of fighters all trying to pummel each other to death for an unknown reason. Then they get to perform progressively more ludicrous ‘finishing moves’.
Play control was horrible. The game looked like someone vomited on my TV. The characters and story were completely ridiculous. I’m sure there were some reasons to like this game buried in there somewhere, but I was unable to unearth them.
The Mario Kart game on the GameCube was just about perfect. The only thing really missing from it was online play (though there are unofficial ways around that). So when the DS version came out, the way Nintendo was hyping its wireless online matchmaking system, online play was almost a given. I could finally play against, and lose to, folks from all over the world who were much much better than I was. It was like 1996 all over again.
Yeah, it’s Mario Kart. Run around tracks, shoot things at your opponents, yadda yadda. What’s kind of cool about this version, though, is that in addition to being able to play online you can also unlock courses from previous games in the Mario Kart series. It’s almost as though Nintendo is saying, “No! Being able to play a goofy kart racer online is not enough! We must also cash in on the nostalgia aspect to solidify the hardcore players!”
And that kind of crap totally works on me.
I could gush about this game and the series in general some more, but I think I’ve done that quite enough already.
Sports games here you have to be the fastest or jump the highest are kind of hard to translate to a medium where you have to press buttons and waggle joysticks. So you mostly end up trying to press the buttons as fast as you can. And if you can press the buttons the fastest, then you win. Though, with the pulled muscles you’re going to get playing games like this, there are really no winners.
So you, and up to one other person compete in a bunch of athletic events by mashing the buttons as fast as you can. Playing this game made my forearms ache mightily. Your stamina and fortitude will be tested. Play it enough and you might get Popeye-style forearms, but I didn’t play it that long.
Double Dash is a lot like the older games in the series. It follows the gameplay laid down in the firsttwo games. Race guys around a series of Nintendo-themed tracks. Nothing too groundbreaking here. But it seems that the older games were just practice for this one.
It’s still in 3D, but it looks less… ‘chunky’ than the N64 offering. The cars and characters look like actual cartoon characters instead of blocky messes. The courses are bigger, more detailed, and all unique.
But where this game really differs from the other games in the series is that it allows for two characters per kart. You have a driver, and you have a ‘gunner’ (someone in charge of using the special items). You can switch up between them at any time, and, yes, you can have another human player take control of the other driver. This makes for some interesting strategy, and some interesting shifting of blame in the event of poor performance. It really requires cooperation and teamwork between the pilots.
Another really neat feature of this game is that is uses the GameCube LAN adapter to allow you to set up two GameCubes, two copies of the game, and two televisions to allow eight people to play at once. Eight! Eight people playing Mario Kart in teams of two (or piloting their own karts) makes for quite the party game.
I absolutely loved the original Mario Kart game. I played it until my controllers wore out. So it was pretty well a given that when a new game in the series came out, but this time in glorious 3D, I was all over that action.
The game is a lot like its 2D predecessor, you take your favorite Nintendo-themed character around some courses in a race against other Nintendo characters. The better you finish, the more points you get, and after the circuit is over, the racer with the highest score wins. It’s all pretty straightforward, and nothing’s really changed that much.
I didn’t like this game as much as the original. Sure, the 3D was great, but the control left a bit to be desired. When I turned left or right the back end of the kart would kind of slide instead of a hard turn. But the power slide was refined a bit, which was a bit of a tradeoff, I suppose. I still got some enjoyment out of it, though, which is the important thing.
I mentioned that I played Final Fantasy XI for a time. I really liked the concept, but ran into some issues. Mostly going to school full time, working full time at a retail store in the evenings, and trying to not fail catastrophically at either of those things. This left precious little time to play games of any sort, much less games that take a massive time investment. So, after I shelved my character, I realized that it would be a scant couple of months before the next new hot thing in massively multiplayer online role playing games was getting much much nearer to completion than I was aware of.
So I did some digging, signed up for the ‘open beta’ and gave the game a try.
And I liked what I saw.
World of Warcraft follows the story laid down in the Warcraft series and picks up just after the conclusion of III. But it’s nothing like other games in the series. You, an adventurer, have decided to venture out into the world. What do you do? Well, quite a bit. You can slay monsters, craft and sell items, do quests, socialize, or some combination of those. And there are thousands upon thousands (though now millions) of other people doing the same thing in the same game world. It’s pretty crazy to think about.
What makes this game a bit more accessible than Final Fantasy XI is that it’s quite a bit more friendly to the casual player, the solo player, and the casual solo player. There’s plenty of cooperative content, too, but if you’ve only got a bit of time at odd hours to squeeze in like I did, then this game might be for you.
I invested a lot of time into this game, but my odd schedule meant that the group of regulars I played with often were unavailable, so I did most of it solo. And a game like this has a certain amount of fun for the soloers, but that wears thin after a while.
I played in a few ‘pick up groups’ to lengthen the game’s appeal, but I had a bit of trouble finding folks that I could deal with. I’ve mentioned before that I like playing multiplayer games like this, even though I don’t really like using them to make new friends; I prefer to play with people that I know in real life. So, after about eight months, I retired my character. I still keep up with the game a bit, with the happenings and the changes. The game now only partially resembles the game I left, so I hear the call to come back occasionally. And since Blizzard’s character retention policy is quite a bit less restrictive than Square’s is for their MMO offering, I may try it again someday.
A few months after I bought the original Warcraft III I played through most of the single-player mode, in between savage beatings at multi-player. The story actually gets kind of interesting. It deals with the rise and corruption of a young prince and the world-altering consequences of his actions. It’s pretty typical Greek tragedy stuff. The Frozen Throne picks up pretty well where the original game left off, you, in control of the corrupt prince scheming with a more powerful entity in a ridiculously circuitous plan to get even more powerful.
I had a hard time following the story after a while, but I got the highlights.
The game is pretty well identical to the base game, but just with more. Which is the whole point of an expansion, I guess. It also closes the story arc started in the first game, answers some questions, and raises still more.
Oh, there’s gobs more added to the story, I can’t hope to convey it all in the space I have here. But this game also really shines in the multi-player arena, just like the base game did. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t get this game primarily so I could enhance my multi-player experience. Although I still took my losses straight up the poop chute, I still got my money out of it.
I never actually played Warcraft II, even though I did play and like the original game. I suppose that’s because II looked like it was very similar to the first game, and I didn’t think it was worth my time.
Several years later, I was working with a gentleman who was affiliated with a large Blizzard fansite. As such, he had access to the beta of Warcraft III, which he brought over and demoed at a LAN party I threw at my house. I was then immediately interested in the series again.
Warcraft III, like its progenitor, is a strategy game in which you and your opponents all work in real time. This is to say, you don’t take turns. So it really tests your speed, reflexes, and ability to change strategies on the fly. And once you get really good, it can get a little tough to follow what’s going on.
The story in this game is far more fleshed out and in depth than it was back in the Orcs and Humans days. In fact, you could just play through the single-player mode and get quite a lot out of the experience.
Although the single player mode of this game is pretty good, I really spent my time playing (and losing horribly) multiplayer games. Trying to out think, outmaneuver, and out strategize an actual person is usually pretty tough. And though it turns out that I’m really bad at it, I still enjoyed it. I also was intrigued by the seemingly endless possible strategies. Even though I never really executed them, I still liked watching other people do them, which is some kind of victory, right?
Last night I had my first opportunity to play the latest game in the Guitar Hero series. I’d been intrigued by the games since they first appeared, and since I do like the odd, or sometimes very odd, rhythm game.
Guitar Hero III is about being a, well, it’s about being a rock star, a rock star with a guitar. You’re presented with a song, and lights come down the impossibly-long guitar neck in the middle of the screen. You have to press the corresponding buttons on your guitar and strum the… strummer… in time to the music to actually play the song.
The couple of songs that I did play were quite a bit longer than I remembered them being. They sounded reasonably good and everything, so I suppose that’s a plus. The main problem that I had with this game was that since I’m a neophyte my hands started to cramp up after about 10 minutes or so, so I gave up for the day.
The game was a competent rhythm game. I don’t think I’ll be buying it or anything, so there’s very little chance that I’ll be getting good at it in the near future. Or that I’ll build up my faux-guitar playing muscles to a point that I alleviate the fingers nearly permanently crooked around a plastic guitar neck.
Castlevania III is a whole lot like the first game in the series with a few key differences. You’re still thrust into the role of a vampire hunter, ancestor of the guy in the other game, as it happens. You still have to kill Dracula with little more than a whip and your reflexes. But this time the world is huge… Well, huger than the original one.
At several points through the game you can choose alternate paths, and the game changes slightly depending on which path you choose. Which is kind of nice, really. The other main difference, and this is the big one, is that you can now take a ‘companion’ along with you. Through the game you’ll meet up with up to three different partners. You can take these partners with you to help you take down Dracula.
Each of the partners has a distinct ability that makes them useful to have around. Grant the pirate can stick to and climb walls and ceilings, Sypha the wizard can use fire, ice, and thunder spells (ice is really handy for freezing and then breaking enemies into lots of little pieces), and Alucard the son of Dracula can shoot fireballs and turn into a bat (he’s not really that useful). You can switch between your characters on the fly which makes the game quite a bit more interesting, even though they both share the same life bar.
Then you have the graphics, music, and story all improved over the first couple of games in the series and you have a winner. A particularly tough and unforgiving winner, but a winner nonetheless.