Tag: movie

Core mechanics

A concept almost as old as Pong, the Godfather of nowadays gaming. You climb up and down little ladders, collecting various forms of loot. And guess what - you’re being chased by blood thirsty (well yeah, sort of) eurhm, red humanoid shaped *things*. On your way through each puzzle, there are multiple ways of dealing with them. From digging a hole and watching earth grow as fast as it can, squashing the enemy, to picking up little and very big bombs. Of course, the objective in each level is to collect all loot displayed and get the hell outta there.

Simple, yet effective and above all: very addictive if served right. And believe me, this one is. Based on the classic “Lode Runner” principle explained above, Lode Runner: the Legend Returns indeed returns to keep you occupied for as long as needed. The game improves and extends the core game mechanics with extra tools to get rid of enemies (and friends by accident when playing cooperatively, whoops!). Every few levels, the big “tileset theme” changes, together with a very nice soundtrack. The area’s differ from jungle to cave and icy mountains. All enemies stay the same though: red and hungry.

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Did you ever encounter enemies in a video game, raging with madness, wanting to hurt you so bad they forgot they’re on a bridge and cannot reach you? Their fury blinded them, walking - no, running - towards you and then… *THUD*. Bye bye enemy. I’m pretty sure this is one of those little things that makes the new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess a bliss to play. Among with flying chickens, fishing, destroyable signposts which float in the river since they’re made of wood (wow, nice catch!), and much more little touches here and there.

Yes, the bleeping sound indicates I’m low on life hearts, and it’s still annoying. The less hearts you have, the faster the bleep pulse. Those two monkeys chasing me all over the first Forest Dungeon level grow annoying pretty fast too, especially when you’re figuring out where the heck you’re supposed to go to. Sorry for the bad quality, it’s rather a test than a real capture. The video has been recorded with DScaler and processed with VirtualDub.

Not only heaven, but the Mandate of heaven. Also known as Might & Magic VI. Also known as “oh noes, shitty engine, let’s rate it below 80%”. Also known as “oh noes, can’t move in battle!”. Also known as “oh noes, realistic portraits are ugly!”. Also known as “oh noes, VII and VIII are cheap rip-offs!”. I can keep this up for a few more hours, but I’ll spare you that. So I recently bought the original Might & Magic VI box with a lot of goodie contents (reference, thick manual, cloth map!). I do have to admit I like VII a little bit better, or maybe even VIII for that matter. I started playing Might & Magic thanks to Day of the Destroyer, the 8th revision, which everybody seems to despite.

Well Look at that. A cardboard box! Golden Age.

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Not many first person action Roleplaying games are well known, except the Ultima Underground series and of course the Elder Scrolls games. FP RPGs date back from Wizardry, Eye of the Beholder and Might & Magic, but none of those games actually enable you to swing with a sword in a real time fashion. The Gothic games utilize the third person camera angle, so the only games which might get remotely close to being Arx Fatalis are Daggerfall/Morrowind and Ultima Underworld.

What does Morrowind share with Arx Fatalis? Arx is a FP RPG, combat is basically hit- and run tactics, eurhm… I guess that’s it! Not quite a lot indeed. It is safe to assume Arx Fatalis was meant to be Ultima Underworld III. As Wikipedia states, Arkane Studios couldn’t get the proper license for the name, but in the end that doesn’t really matter. Arx is a pure dungeon crawler, you will never see big open (and mostly empty) spaces as seen in Morrowind. You will never see more than 5 cities with enourmous amounths of NPCs without any realistic conversations. And that’s good.

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RPGs aren’t that rare anymore (good ones are), especially not on the console. Developers like to copy previous used techniques and concepts as it reduces the effort needed to finalize their own product, ànd this gives a familiar look which mostly means guaranteed sales. But are these mechanics good enough? Do they work? Are you roleplaying or watching a scripted scene full of soulless characters? Let’s have an in-depth look at nowadays Roleplaying Games with their biggest strengths and weaknesses.

There is so much to be seen and done in a typical RPG, it’s impossible to write a short article about. Instead, let’s review some of the basic and most used aspects of computer/console Roleplaying games. Below is a short breakdown of several concepts. They will get updated regulary, hopefully.

1. NPC interaction techniques | Watch NPC reaction videos! >>
2. Correct Item Placement
3. (Over)world systems and travelling
4. party building
5. member customization
6. battle sequences: random or not?
7. do’s and don’s of level grinding

I should warn you however, before you continue to read one of the article’s contents. Some negative criticism can be rather subjective. If you disagree and would like to enlighten us further, please do leave a comment as everything is of course open for discussion. Oh and there could be slight spoilers present without my direct knowledge. Sorry about that.

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Goblin Princes are Ugly

Am I the only one wondering what the heck the lead artist ate the day he created Goblins? Uh oh, did I spell this wrong? Not really. In Gobliiins, the prequel, you can control three Goblin creatures, hence the three ‘i’-s. This game comes with two wacky dudes and the sequel with only one.
Every year an article pops up about Adventure games and the death of the genre and every year a fantastic game gets released to counter this myth. Sadly, only a few of those games are really worth playing trough. That’s why I’d like to take a look at the past with you to games wich are worth mentionning. How did this genre fare in the DOS era, when pixels ruled the world and nobody shouted like hell oh no these graphics suck!. Retro is in.
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Another gameplay video - or rather bits & bolts glued together - I didn’t want any of you to miss.

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In the year 1999 the then-existing company New World Computing released version seven of their honored Might & Magic series, subtitled “For Blood and Honor“. Most Might & Magic (MM) fans were quite happy since VII is by many people marked as (at least one of) the best in the series. Sadly, even New World Computing disappeared in 2003 and Ubisoft the gaint looking evil company bought all NWC rights. The Might & Magic VII Publisher, 3DO also closed their doors. What’s up with that? Is this some kind of bad disease, creating a brilliant game no-one cares about and thus nobody likes to play except hard-core fans? Let’s not try to blame it on EA again.

Anyway, welcome to a world of furious Power, angry Magic, dirty Politics and above all: a big pixel fest!

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Ah, 2D platformers. This genre disappeared after the DOS era on the PC. Also the consoles liked more the 3D platform games like hundreds of Mario 64 clones. There was almost never an attempt to revive the classic 2D sidescrolling action and add a few modern elements to it. Except for Monolith Productions of course! We know Monolith mostly from First Person games like the recent F.E.A.R. and of course the No One Lives Forever series. Claw was one of their first titles wich proved Monolith was quite capable of putting together a complete game package, even including a level editor and multiplayer options, in the PC world. Blood is probably the oldest known game from these devs. Hungry 2D platformes wich refuse to buy a decent handheld system to ease the pain will likely enjoy Captain Claw. Let’s see what the game has to offer. (Or had…)

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Simon the Sorcerer II: “The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe” is an adventure game from the British game company Adventure Soft who also produced the prequel, Simon the Sorcerer. The Simon adventure games are well known for their absurd and mostly weird British humor. If you do not like Blackadder and company, don’t bother installing this game. Simon 2 features many references and funny jabs to to popular literature, pop-culture, fantasy and other adventure-games. You can clearly see the subtitle is being borrowed from The Chronicles of Narnia, and there are plenty of references to Lord of the Rings, Monkey Island and even Dungeons & Dragons. However, do not expect this adventure to be over in a couple of hours since Simon the Sorcerer 2 is actually quite hard.

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