Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ll: The Sith Lords
2004 Obsidian, Lucas Arts, Aspyr Media, Inc. Xbox, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ll: The Sith Lords, is a role playing game developed by Obsidian games and published by Lucas Arts. It is the second game in the KOTOR series and while it is a very good game, i would not rank it as high as its predecessor. Firstly, the game itself looks amazing considering it was released back in 2004. Early on in the game I was dissapointed to see the Ebon Hawk (The best ship in Star Wars) as I thought I was going to get the chance to carry on from where the first KOTOR left of as I had already sank a lot of time into and became immersed in the previous story, but when I found out it was nothing to do with the KOTOR I story, I was both upset and pleased. While I would have liked to carry on the story line I was pleased with where this story went as it meant new choices and new outcomes and the idea of shaping the galaxy differently made me forget about the disappointment of not carrying on KOTOR I's story. The story of the game flows very well even with some of the content blocked off to speed up release (However this content is available via mods on the Steam work shop). The only let down with the story is the beginning as it is the same as the first game which felt lazy, however it does give you the opportunity to devise your own backstory. Overall the story was amazing and so immersive when i played this game when I younger and after replaying for this review i've realised it still is today. A downside is the game doesn't offer much replay ability in terms of the story becoming predictable however I must have played every class at least twice and still love and still find new things now and then. With some of the content being blocked off for the early release this caused some issues for example, I noticed the sound was buggy, some of the animations looked weird, sometimes I floated along and other times I would have full conversations skipped for me. If you can look past these minor faults really and save often the game is still brilliant and offers a challenge on both the Light and Dark side of the force at different times in the story. Overall anyone who has not played the game I would highly recommend to try and pick up a copy as it is an amazing game. This game is certainly in my top five RPG’s of all time and second best to come out on the Original Xbox. The Viking 8.5/10
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The Cyber Shinobi
1990 Sega Sega Master System Set sometime in the 21st century, no date is given, the prologue literally gives the date as 2xxx, The Cyber Shinobi follows on from the original game of Shinobi. You play as Joe Musashi, grandson of the original Shinobi ninja – Joe Musashi, do you see what they did there? In the original Shinobi, Joe Musashi destroyed the evil ninja organisation Zeed, however, this was not the case. In the 21st century, a terrorist organisation known as Cyber-Zeed attacks nuclear power plants around the world and steals the plutonium stored there for their evil schemes of world domination. The prologue describes that the world powers sent their forces against Cyber-Zeed and failed. But one man stands definant, (cue montage music) Joe Musashi sets out to accomplish what the superpowers of the world couldn’t and take out Cyber-Zeed. The younger Joe Musashi works a tad differently to his grandad. Musashi attacks with his sword in a shitty half drawn attempt and can also crouch and kick. Musashi is also capable of throwing stars, using a gun and grenades depending upon his power level. His other ability is using Ninjutsu, calling upon the elements of Fire, Tornado, Lightning and Earth to affect all enemies on the screen, not that this is particularly useful, Musashi is capable of overcoming everything without using this. I did however use the grenades, they came in handy. The Cyber Shinobi isn’t a long game, there are 6 levels, 2 of which are extremely short. The game itself doesn’t stray too far from the original Shinobi levels and once more this gives The Cyber Shinobi a sense of unoriginality and a big feeling of ‘couldn’t be arsed with the sequel, so we’ll just release Shinobi set in the future’. The game itself isn’t challenging, it feels clunky, almost like you’re playing with a minor delay. With a little thought and quite a bit of luck, The Cyber Shinobi is easily overcome. This just doesn’t stop with the levels. The bosses are very easy and once again, feel clunky and jittery and because of this, it’s easier to get hit, the best example of this is during the boss fight with Crazy Bull. The bulldozer doesn’t so much as ‘drive’ across the screen as it does stutter and without full concentration, it can be very easy to mistime the leap onto the cab. The music for The Cyber Shinobi is very repetitive, it sounds like a half arsed attempt to recreate a martial arts style theme and once more, it sounds unoriginal, uninspired and dull. This transposes over to the sound effects, these also sound more like damp thuds than actual damaging attacks, either given or received. It’s not just the music that sounds uninspired, graphically, other than changing the background for each level, the enemy sprites don’t change, they appear in pairs and have exceptionally predictable movements. The ‘cyborg’ gunmen are static, making them more of a nuisance to beat rather than a challenge. The Cyber Shinobi is a poor sequel to Shinobi. The Cyber Shinobi is lacklustre, uninspired and massively lacks originality. Compared to other games of similar style released in and around this year, it would be better to stick to the original Shinobi, play Alex Kidd in Shinobi World or Ninja Gaiden. 4/10 Adam Rome: Total War
2004 The Creative Assembly/Activision/SEGA PC/Steam Rome: Total war is a PC strategy game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Activision, how ever since its release the game rights have been passed over to SEGA. Although it is not the first Total War game developed be CA it was the first Total War game I picked up and played so it shall be the start of my Total War reviews. The game its self uses both Turned Base Strategy (TBS and Real Time Strategy (RTS). The TBS part of the game is used on the campaign map whereas the leader of you faction you raise your armies and build your cities and expand your borders. The RTS comes into its own in the battles with you commanding your armies unit by unit. By using both of these features in the game offers a unique playing experience, after coming from just either TBS or RTS not both made the game much more immersive and 12 year old me truly felt like the emperor of Rome. Although the playing of the game is easy to pick up and tutorial covers all you will need there are just a couple of let downs with the biggest one being, not being allowed to play as all the factions in the game in campaign mode. Back when I was first playing I only wanted to build The Roman Empire my way but as I got older and realised that some factions such as Macedon, Thrace and Spain were not playable in the campaign made me feel slightly cheated, however all of the factions bar the slaves or rebels were playable in custom battles which sort of made up for it a little bit. The other thing that bugged me about the game was how small compared to actual Ancient world armies the armies actually were, don’t get me wrong I know even with today’s computers that would be very taxing but it was always there in the back of mind thinking about having all these extra legions against even bigger Barbarian Hordes or the other way round. But overall the fact that losing one single battle or city could open up your lands and you’d have to watch your empire crumble before made up for the faults as the AI on hard was ruthless or I was just bad at the game when I was younger. Or you could play as the Gaul’s and march south a destroy Rome before they got strong and rewrite history made this possibly one of my favourite games of my childhood. Now when I wasn’t campaigning I was busy either doing Historical battles or Custom Battles which even today are still awesome! The fact that the Historical battles were all quite challenging made them fun when I was younger because I wanted to do them even now I must do all the historical battles ever on all Total War games! But unfortunately CA couldn’t get all the historical battles on the game, (CA make this happen please? Just a game full of historical battles please?), so I would head over to the custom battles and try and make some of these happen or even change the outcomes. Overall this will always be one of my personal favourites and I will always look back at this game with rose tinted glasses and no one ever can me this is bad game because they are wrong it was great and consumed most of my childhood along with various other games. The Viking 9/10 Chuck Rock
1991 Core Design/Virgin Interactive Sega Master System Chuck Rock is a 2D platform game and really goes back to basics, human basics. Chuck Rock is set in the prehistoric times and features loveable caveman Chuck Rock. Chuck Rock embarks on a quest, not for fire, but to get back his girlfriend from the evil T. Rex, Gary Gritter. Interspecies kidnapping aside, retrospectively, it’s worth a chuckle noting that Chuck Rock’s main antagonist is named after 70’s pop icon and professional paedophile, Gary Glitter. It’s kind of funny that these days, that just wouldn’t happen. The character of Chuck Rock is pretty cool, he’s not Sonic or Mario, he has no superpowers or special gift. He is a balding, overweight caveman, covering his dignity with a belt of leaves. Chuck Rock does exactly what you expect him to do, he well, chucks rocks, his only two physical attacks are his 90o angle jump kick and his amusing belly bash and this gives the game a very slapstick feel. Timing wise, Chuck Rock took about 2 hours 30 to finish. It’s not exactly a long game, but certainly longer than comparative games on the Master System. There are only 5 changes in scenery, so, let’s call these levels. Each level is split into a few sub levels. Chuck Rock travels from prehistoric wasteland, through caves, through a lake, an ice cave and into a dinosaur? (wtf?) Each level has an a-typical style dinosaur/prehistoric creature as the end boss. These bosses range from the very easy with a charging Triceratops to the annoying, very glitchy feeling Mammoth. The enemies that Chuck Rock encounters are extremely cartoony, each enemy looks as if it has escaped from Fraggle Rock and are obviously meant be that way. This adds to the slapstick nature of the game, most prehistoric creatures die with one kick or a belly bump, each sprite changing to a comical ‘death face’ during its death arc. As a game, Chuck Rock was ported back to 8bit from the 16bit version on the Genesis/Mega Drive and graphically, because of this Chuck Rock is towards the better end of 8bit scale. However, this port causes a lot of the pixels to appear almost stretched and blurred. One thing that I thought was odd, is for this point in gaming, Chuck Rock has no level or background music, the game is totally silent other than your standard 8bit sound FX for jumping, picking up items, causing and receiving damage. Unfortunately for Chuck Rock, the lack of background music causes the sound FX to really stand out. The sound FX are dull, almost lo-fi and sound pretty cheap all round. Chuck Rock was enjoyable, yes, it has its flaws, Chuck Rock isn’t as responsive as I’d have liked him to be when jumping/attacking and it was easily to get stuck in the bouncing cycle of death if you happen to land on brambles. Although, I feel that Chuck Rock has very little replayability, the lack of background music and stretched pixels seem to give little to no affinity for Chuck Rock. However, the character of Chuck Rock is likeable, it’s a shame that Core Design put all their eggs in one basket for Tomb Raider and by 1996, Chuck Rock was consigned to the history books. 5/10 Adam Overview
Developed by Squaresoft in collaboration with Disney, produced one of squares more famous action RPJ’s under the title of kingdom hearts in 2002. Then three years’ latter a new and updated version bosting new features like the ability to skip cut scenes and a brand new hidden boss was released under the title of kingdom hearts final mix. Story Our story follows a trio of friends on an island called destiny islands. Our story mainly focuses on our main character Sora the chosen one of the weapon that banishes beings of darkness known as heartless. One day while building a raft to explore outside the islands their world is attacked by darkness, this allows Sora to call forth the power of the keyblade which he uses to fight a giant heartless. After which Sora awakens in twilight town and learns that he must use his keyblade to seal the worlds protecting them from darkness along with Donald a magician and Goofy they must save various worlds form the heartless. Gameplay Kingdom Hearts is a fairly basic action RPG’s your main avenues of attack are magic, summons and your basic hit things till they die these combos can be boosted with various skills that also use up mana points. You have a basic ability to soft lock on a tragedy and hard lock this can be switched using the R2 bumper. In battel you also have your allies Donald and goofy however they will disappear for most summons. you can also customise a quick select menu with your choice of magic and healing items. The game itself runs at a smooth 60fps so battles are fluid and smooth. The best example of the gameplay are the bosses. Most bosses have multiple health bars and each boss fight is unique in its own way. From the final boss to the very first boss. Your mana is a blue bar this can be refilled with combos which builds up a small orange bar on the outside this can also be used to overcharge your mana giving you and extra mana bar. While your health is represented by an inner green bar. As is standard Jrpgs the mana can be increase by levelling up this also is true for your stats. As for your health these come as bonuses after beating certain bosses. Beating certain bosses will also give you new bonus skills. Sound The sound design on the game is superb. Most cut scenes actually have the English voices despite the fact that it was only released in japan. However, it should be noted that new scenes that were added to further expand on the plot are absolutely soundless. Meanwhile the soundtrack itself from the initial opening is absolutely splendid and even if you don’t like/ have never played is well worth a listen too. In particular the opening and any of the final boss themes. While the sound design is great there is one annoying part of the soundtrack. When your health falls low there is an annoying beeping that won’t stop till you heal. Graphics This was an early ps2 title and this dose show compared to many of the games in the series. While the Cut-scenes look great they are about the only notable exception. Most of the game has aged graphically poorly, particularly the mostly in FMV scenes. While in combat the is not a particular problem outside it can really take away from what is a decent game. Summary pros and cons Pros
Despite its flaws overall it is a fun game, that provided a solid foundation for the series to build on. As such I award the original kingdom hearts final mix+ a score of. 7/10 Andrei Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse
1990 Sega Sega Master System Castle of Illusion is a 2D side scrolling adventure game starring the recognisable Disney mascot; Mickey Mouse. Although also released in 16bit format for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, this review will be focusing on the 8bit release for the Master System. The Master System version of Castle of Illusion contains different levels and scaled down graphics. I will endeavour in the future to review the 16bit version too. As with most games of this era, the story is very simple and predictable. The hero must traverse the land, various landscapes, defeat a host of enemies and finally battle the game’s villain to rescue the girl they love. In this case, Mickey Mouse must collect 7 colourful gems to defeat the wicked witch Mizrabel and free Minnie Mouse. Mickey wanders his way through 5 different levels, 3 on the lower floor and 2 made accessible on the upper floor once the first 3 are complete. The cool thing about Castle of Illusion and very unusual of its time, is that the player gets to choose which level they do first via doorways from a ‘hub’ room in a castle. Through these doors, Mickey can travel to a Forest, Toy Land, Candy Land, an Office and a Clock Tower before finally heading to Mizrabel’s Castle. Because all good villains live in a castle. Castle of Illusion is a great platform game. It was excellent in filling that gap from Alex Kidd to Sonic. The colour palette sticks to what Disney is, it’s bright, colourful with the most friendly looking bad guys ever. The cover image, which you can see above, shows Mickey underneath a green, spooky and evil looking tree. However, in the game, these trees are more cartoon like and smile. There is definitely something sinister about being attacked by a tree or a chocolate drop that has a big grin on its face. Just like the graphics, Castle of Illusion’s musical score and sound FX are lightweight, fun and bouncy and perfectly fits the Disney theme and the bright colours. Even with an 8bit soundbite, you can see where the composers were going, had this been a movie or a more modern game, the soundtrack would have given a feeling of pure classic Disney. I found certain aspects of Castle of Illusion to be a little bit of a pain, gameplay wise, Mickey has a tendency to be slippery on foot, there’s quite a lot of glide when Mickey lands, which can make certain bits of the game quite tricky. Unlike bricks in other games, the bricks in Castle of Illusion are not only destructible, but also throwable. The main problem with this mechanic was that Mickey had to be in the correct place with button 1 pressed at the correct time, which I probably didn’t pick up on 25 years ago, however, after getting used to games with an instant reaction, this mechanic was a little frustrating, particularly in Candy Land when the screen was permanently moving behind you. The final mechanic which got under my skin, was Mickey’s inability to seemingly bounce from one enemy to the next, it seemed that once the ‘bounce’ had been used, then that was it. This caused more than a few star losses and swearing. Castle of Illusion is probably one of the most underrated platform games, forgotten in the midst of time between Mario and the launch of Sonic the Hedgehog. Castle of Illusion is fun, not too long or challenging and can easily be whacked on to pass an hour. 8/10 Adam Black Belt
1986 Sega Sega Master System Black Belt is an arcade style side scrolling martial arts themed game. You play as the black belt Riki, who has to fight through various locations to rescue his girlfriend Kyoko from the evil Wang. Black Belt is a short game, composed of only 6 levels, level 1-5 is divided into two parts, the first being a side scrolling left to right level with endlessly spawning enemies based on a form of martial art, broken up by mini boss fights. These enemies break into collapsing squares with a dull thud and disappear when defeated. The second part is a typical boss battle, where each boss requires different tactics to overcome from dirty street fighters to disciplined ninjutsu and kung fu masters. I have utterly no idea what it says in Japanese when you defeat each boss, but Riki enters turbo mode and goes to town on them with rapid fire kicks and punches, which for its time is pretty cool. It did not take long to finish Black Belt, I usually time myself when retro gaming, but today, I forgot. (Bad Adam). I estimate that in-between uploading screenshots etc. Black Belt took around 40 minutes to complete. One thing that took a little getting used to when playing Black Belt was the fact that button 2 was kick, I constantly expected this to jump. To jump, you have to hit up on the d-pad. This gives Black Belt a more of a beat ‘em up feel to it rather than your typical side scroller. It’s interesting to look back when retro gaming at where gaming was up to and where it was going at the time. Black Belt, although released on the Sega Master System, still has that feel that you’re on a machine at the arcade with each time Riki dies, you expect it to come up saying ‘please insert 20p’. Another reason why it feels that Black Belt is an arcade game is that during each side scrolling level, health, represented by various forms of sushi and a symbol invincibility token fly quickly across the top and requires the use of the ‘special’ high jump of pressing down and then up on the d-pad. Black Belt makes use of simple arcade graphics, a limited colour pallet which is relatively dull during the side scrolling part, only brightening up to be more detailed during the boss fights. Even closer up during the boss battles, the graphics are not great. Some of the bosses such as level 2’s Hawk have the odd googly eyes with an ancient Egyptian lithograph style nose. As with the graphics, the sound and sound FX are dated. The musical score is typically martial arts themed, however, in a game such as Alex Kidd in Shinobi World where the musical score felt bouncy and could easily have been an 8-bit version of a martial arts film score, Black Belt falls sub-par to this. The music is repetitive and borderline annoying and if I was wasn’t playing Black Belt as part of a review, I would have muted the sound. I found Black Belt to be relatively enjoyable at first, however, I doubt its replayability. There are a lot better side scrolling games out there, but granted, gaming designers had to go through this phase to develop and grow. It was only a year later when Shinobi was released and that goes to the show the leaps and bounds made in just one year. 4/10 Adam Alex Kidd in Shinobi World
1990 Sega Sega Master System Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is sadly the last in the Alex Kidd (obviously) saga. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World stays true the Alex Kidd style and is a 2D platformer set in various locations. Whilst doing some research in and around Alex Kidd in Shinobi World for this review, I discovered something that I never noticed as a kid playing this game; Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is a parody of the 1987 game Shinobi. There you have it, not interesting, but true! Alex Kidd in Shinobi World begins with Alex Kidd and his girlfriend making out in a field (aaw), the sky grows dark and the dark ninja Hanzo appears after a 10,000 year hiatus and kidnaps Alex’s girlfriend and plans to use her in his evil scheme to take over the world. Oh no! Luckily, the good ninja also appears and shares his abilities with Alex via possession, because Alex doesn’t need no montage and Alex sets out on his quest to rescue his loved one. As I mentioned above, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is a 2D platformer as was the norm at this time. There are 4 very different levels or ‘rounds’ in this case, each round broken down into 2 levels and a boss fight. Each level follows the standard get from A to B via overcoming various enemies and puzzles. Each round is significantly different and increases in difficulty accordingly. Round 1 is set in city, very few puzzles, it is more about learning the games processes and navigating simple enemies. The most testing of which are the guys throwing knives in a boomerang fashion and the odd ninja throwing stars to catch you off guard, although these are easily deflected with the sword power-up. Round 2 begins in a harbour and introduces many new ideas, such as swimming and annoying barracuda enemies that take two hits to kill. Level 3 traverses a waterfall, gardens and a cave, using all the skills learnt in the first 2 rounds to complete and different the Robster final boss. A boss that is a lobster, that jumps and spits what looks like chips/fries into the air, nope, I don’t know what they were smoking either, but it’s pretty cool if you ask me! Round 4 is mixture of everything that you’ve encountered so far in the game, complete with a zombie at the end of the first level, which 26 years on, still manages to catch me by surprise. Graphically and sonically, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is a vast improvement on Alex Kidd in Miracle World. The sprite for Alex himself is much bigger and clearer with each round much more detailed moving away from the almost fully block colours of Alex Kidd in Miracle World to a detailed pallet using various colours for each pixel to give more detail. A great example of this is during round 3 at the waterfall, each colour moving to give the illusion of running water, something of which wouldn’t be mastered until 16bit a few years later. During my research I found that the music for Alex Kidd in Shinobi World was a remix of the original Shinobi score, which is pretty cool as the music seems to pay homage to the 70s era martial arts movies in all its 8bit glory. Yeah, the tunes are repetitive, yet for some reason, you’ll be humming them for days. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World has great replayability, although, if push comes to shove, I would choose Alex Kidd in Miracle World hands down. I often felt with Alex Kidd in Shinobi World that jumping could at times be challenging, the slide upon landing could be difficult to gauge, which would often leave you taking damage or losing a life entirely. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World contains one of the most annoying end of round bosses – the end of round 2, the Heli encounter can be a pain to do without being hit, especially if you’re going for a perfect run. All in all, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is a great little game, it’s relatively easy and short, a little too short in my personal opinion which brings the series to a bit of an anticlimactic end. However, a little more appreciation for the game was had recently, learning about the parody of Shinobi, which brings a nice smile to my face. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is a fun game that can easily be used to fill a loose hour here and there. 7/10 Adam Alex Kidd in Miracle World
1986 Sega Sega Master System Alex Kidd in Miracle World was the very first game that yours truly ever played. It was built into the Sega Master System II back in 1990. Alex Kidd in Miracle World follows the little 8bit simian protagonist Alex Kidd in a quest to free his brother Prince Egle and free the Kingdom of Radaxian from the evil tyrant Janken the Great. As with a lot of the games from this era, Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a side scrolling platform game based on getting from A to B via overcoming enemies and puzzles to collect rice cakes at the end of the level. Although, for those of us who didn’t emulate the game and played the built in version tried to appeal to the western market by changing the rice cake to a hamburger. This aside, Alex Kidd in Miracle World has held up extremely well, being as fun and fresh as it was 30 years ago. Miracle World doesn’t change templates too many times, generally opting for a land, water and castle template with the addition of a cave, yet, you can’t hold this against an 8-bit game. However, what I can hold against Alex Kidd in Miracle World is the sheer amount of silly deaths caused by my own lapses in concentration or overshooting a jump. As expected with any 8-bit game Alex Kidd in Miracle World is graphically repetitive, using square pixels, as was the norm at this time, but does the best it can with the limited technology of the time. The colour pallet is very vibrant and bright and somewhat still nicely appealing. It was a pleasant change to play something bright and colourful for a change. I think that I’d forgot some of these colours existed with the massive pallet available, plus the shading and rendering of modern games. I think the sounds and FX of Alex Kidd in Miracle World will be ingrained in my memory for all time. The repetitive 8-bit tunes which enter you into an almost trance like state. Although the music does not deviate from the same 3 scores, it does seem to melt away in the background eventually, only noticing it as the level changes or you die. The FX are very of their time, pings of money being collected, the long drawn ‘oooooops’ of a character jumping and the familiar crunch of an enemy exploding and disappearing. What a thoroughly enjoyable experience it was the replay this specific game from my youth as this is where it all started and therefore, this review is biased. It’s funny how little you actually forget at times, during the Janken matches or rock, paper, scissors for us non-Miracle World people, I somehow seemed the remember all the combinations for Stone-Head, Scissors-Head, Paper-Head (see what they did there?) and Janken the Great. Adding time on for screenshots and uploading the progress to Twitter, the clock time for Alex Kidd in Miracle World was 2:07, which may seem short compared to modern games, but Alex Kidd in Miracle World has an almost infectious replayability to it. Of course, Alex Kidd in Miracle World is very of its time, a short game and in all honesty, not as challenging as I remember, but, wow, I had fun tonight, Alex Kidd in Miracle World holds up so well and I could easily play it again tonight, tomorrow and in the future, which I find a lot of modern games lack and even by Alex Kidd in Miracle World’s rivals of the time, I would say it would take Wonderboy III: The Dragon’s Trap or the emergence of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Master System to challenge this almost flawless platformer. 9/10 |
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