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First up, I have ported my Random Games applescript over to powershell, so you can get the same random game functionality without needing to use an OS that can't play most of them! I know powershell comes with Win 7, if you are using an older Windows OS you might need to download Powershell.
 Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 2 - The Last Resort:
This the second episode of a game series released by Telltale Games, who are the current leaders of the episode release model. Telltale games have previously released 2 seasons of Sam and Max adventures and 1 season of Strongbad's Cool Game for Attractive People, they are currently releasing a season of new Monkey Island games called Tales of Monkey Island. I enjoy these games enough to preorder each season directly from Telltale games in order to get the games on disc once the season is through for just the price of shipping.
Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures was released on both PC and Xbox Live Arcade, as a result of this the control scheme is not quite the same point and click that I expect. It is instead a mix of point and click to investigate and interact and WASD for the movement. I'd much prefer a pure point and click interface but the one used in the game suffices.
The series is voice acted by the normal Wallace and Gromit voice actors and manage to continue the same kind of humour as used in the movies and shorts. One of my favourite touches in this game though is that you can see finger and thumb prints on the models just as you can when watching the movies and shorts.
I realise I've not said anything about the plot, I suggest that you grab a copy of the game and try it out yourself, you can get demos of each episode which will give you the start of the plot and an early part of the game.
Naruto Rise of a Ninja:
Naruto Rise of a Ninja is a game for which I don't have a proper screenshot as it is one of the games I own for the 360. It is a fighting game based on the Naruto series from the start up to Naruto's big fight with Gaara.
The single player mode is a mix between a standard one on one fighter and a 3D platformer with RPG elements. That is to say there is a mission hub of Konoha, where you can run around collect coins, do minor challenges and get the primary missions. These missions consist of running around another location collecting things and fighting enemies in the one on one brawl mode.
In doing these things you earn points that can be spent on learning (read unlocking) new moves for Naruto and upgrading his stats. It's a fairly attractive game that fits pretty well with the style of Naruto, it uses a mix of in game cutscenes and animation lifted directly from the anime series.
My primary issue with this game is that I am not very good at it, this was exacerbated during the week when I played it because I had not played in several months and was attempting to relearn how to play whilst trying to beat a major bad guy. Needless to say I got my butt kicked repeatedly. After a while the game asked me if I wanted to try the fight again with all of Memory Orbs restored, basically giving me 4 extra lives during the fight. With those aiding me I eventually prevailed, only to have a cutscene and have to fight the same guy AGAIN. Not cool, and the same formula was used with my next fight.
Still the sequel is out and you can get the game pretty cheap on JB Hi-Fi or EB on the preowned shelves. If you like a series about obvious and loud ninjas then you might want to pick this up.
 Bookworm Adventures Deluxe:
Bookworm Adventures is one of the single player games to pull out at a gathering, it is a very simple game in concept. It is a linear RPG game where in order to attack you need to create words from a pool of 16 random characters in order to do damage. Some letters do more damage than others, and the longer the word the more damage you do. As you play the game you pick up items that change some of these rules, make some letters more valuable, make words associated with metal more damaging, etc.
If you play this game with a group of friends around you end up with everyone around the screen shouting out various words you can use in your combat. Sadly common swear words are removed from the game dictionary but you can still do things like managing to kill a Siren with "Venereal". It is a great game if you have people around sadly it does not manage to hold my interest quite so well solo. This may something to do with having lost my saves multiple times and thus having had to play through the early game too many times.
I got Bookworm Adventures Deluxe as part of the Popcaps Favourites collection on Steam in November of 2007. It is currently available for $9.99 on Steam and a sequel was recently released.
Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse
Sadly I was unable to get proper screenshots for this game either. In Stubbs you play a zombie in a 1950's zeerusty city of the future complete with hovercars and dinky robots on the streets.
Stubbs is certainly an unusually dangerous zombie, whilst he moves at a slowly accelerating shamble he is able to raise weaker zombies from the people he kills (done automatically after a brief delay), eat brains, fart noxious gases, throw exploding organs, possess people with detached hands and bowl his head into groups of enemies where it will then explode.
Stubbs uses these abilities to work his way through a variety of areas in this city causing havoc and panic along the way. At some stage he got a motivation to rampage in a particular direction but that section of the game was long enough ago and irrelevant enough for me to have forgotten it.
The controls on the PC are okay but not brilliant and could be refined a bit, fortunately you can do this yourself. The game also does not support widescreen resolutions beyond 1600x1200 and does not play nice with multiple monitors, it fails to keep the mouse inside the game window, so you will need a third party app to lock it down or constantly be alt tabbing.
Other than that, the game is very entertaining and I do enjoy trying to steadily grow a horde of zombie to rush into combat with me. It is currently $9.99 on Steam and is also available for purchase on the Xbox 360 and an Xbox original title. I bought it in
September 2008 during a weekend sale.
 Wolfenstein 3D
This is one of the earliest first person shooters. You play William "B.J." Blazkowicz is attempting to escape from Castle Wolfenstein, at least in episode 1. The game is extremely threadbare by modern standards. You cannot remap the controls, the resolution is tiny, the game engine does not allow for vertical movement, you cannot jump or duck, there are only 4 different weapons and all ranged weapons use the same ammo.
However it is certainly a piece of gaming history and due to the control restrictions it is surprisingly hard, you cannot circle strafe and you turn very slowly, I died to one of the basic guards, backed up next to him and was unable to turn in time to kill him. Enemy damage is at least partially based on distance it would seem, 2 shots were enough to kill me.
It is interesting to see some of the ideas that were still in play when Wolf3D was made, you collected treasure for points and had a limited number of lives, both features I can't really recall seeing in first person shooters released after Doom. I am pleased to note that I both still remember one of the cheat codes (which drops your score to 0 if you use it, but gives you all the guns, full ammo, health and keys) and the entrance to the secret level in episode 1 though.
Wolf3D is available on Steam for $4.99, I bought it was part of the id Super Pack back in August of 2007.
 Red Faction:
This is a first person shooter with ideas I don't actually recall being reproduced in later games. That being of course, the Geo-Mod engine which allows for real time terrain destruction in a first person shooter.
There were two points where I thought about what had just occurred and marvelled at how awesome that concept is.
The first was when I manned a fixed gun to take out a large number of guards and saw the damage to the walls that I had caused when I missed the enemy.
The second was when I was about to head up a lift to follow a slightly meandering path back to where I was going when I decided "Stuff that" grabbed a det pack and blew open the wall, stepped through and continued on my merry way.
The plot is fairly so-so, big bad evil people exploiting the miners and generally not being very nice, so you take part in a riot turn rebellion and take them down, calling in Earth to help along the way. The overall game though I found to be really enjoyable especially when you realise that in most cases if you can see some area just beneath you that you want to get to you don't need to find that hidden entrance, you can just make your own entrance into that service tunnel.
It's certainly something that makes level design harder, but I would really welcome seeing a new first person shooter being made with that kind of idea. Even the latest Red Faction game has swapped terrain destruction for building destruction.
It is a little unstable on a modern system, I'd recommend grabbing Pure Faction to help fix those issues.
Red Faction is $9.99 on Steam, it is also part of the prepurchase deal for Red Faction Guerilla on most digital distribution services.
In the US all of the prices for getting Red Faction Guerilla through those methods are pretty much the same ~$39.99 with Red Faction 1 & 2.
In Australia, Steam is charging $69.99 for that bundle, Impulse is charging as close to $99.95AUD as they can, despite charging in US dollars, both Gamersgate and Direct2Drive are charging $39.95 for that deal, so I'd recommend going with them instead unless you have a friend in the US who is willing to gift the game to you. That said, I do want to say THQ stop fucking around the prices it is really insulting when I can see that I am being charged $30 or more over what the US is paying despite both using the same site. |
RANdom Games Week 3
