#215: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003, GCN)

I made a recent realization that if you are a platformer, you pretty much should have a level of quality and preciseness to your control that is somewhat on par with the Mario series. For example, you have Sonic, whose jumping never quite feels right when he is running (feeling like it is lagging just slightly with a looseness to the ability to control him in midair), and controls absolutely terribly when he is starting from stopped point. The older (two-dimensional) Prince Of Persia likewise suffered from some pretty awful control, though here the looseness and slow response time is attributable to the use of rotoscoped animation - movements cannot be properly canceled. To jump, for example, one needed to press up while there was a window in the prince's run animation. The use of up to jump is bad enough, that it is a timing game (where the 'error' results in death or severe damage from falling) makes it very near unplayable.

The problem with these, however, is not that their control is imprecise, but rather because their design and structure do not work with their imprecise controls - each places an emphasis on speed yet has controls more well suited to a slower and more thoughtful game. The original Prince of Persia was indeed largely a puzzle game - built around navigating the environment and obstacles presented to the player, but there were also time limits present which, like Pikmin, have the effect of rushing the player even if the limit is well above what is actually needed to finish. The controls, to be honest, wouldn't even work if there was no time limit - it is simply too obtuse to use for basic locomotion - but the updated version seen on the Xbox Live Arcade (using assets from the Sands of Time trilogy) illustrates this rather perfectly. The controls are plenty competent, but lack the level of precision one would want to feel truly comfortable. Comfort is very important for a more speed based platformer, as it allows one to be able to not pay attention to the controls and instead focus on navigating the environment through their intuition. That the classic Prince of Persia seems to be designed for navigating through thinking simply underlines how the time limit ill-suits the gameplay.

Sands of Time, in addition to bringing this series into three dimensions, also manages to alleviate this problem by encouraging the player to focus on thinking their way through the environment. This is not even to say that the controls are terribly imprecise - but they do do a lot of the work for the player. In other words, the emphasis is not on execution but planning. The net result is that the player gets to enjoy thinking of a way to navigate the environment, and is then rewarded while executing their route with some entertaining animation (via the Prince's acrobatics). What difficulty in execution there is typically comes down to timing to avoid obstacles - in these instances it is precise (with none of the canned-animation lag seen in earlier entries in the series), and typically sees the timing coming down to when one starts their move (for example, a series of traps will be easily navigated if one starts their run through at the the right time) rather than in the middle of a sequence (these typically being only the need to push off a wall after a wall run at the proper time).

And here comes the master stroke that elevates this whole deal to the level of greatness - the sands of time themselves, which let players rewind time if they screw up. Not only does this render what difficulty in execution there may be somewhat moot, but it encourages the player to, when trying to judge a route through the environment, to be much more open to ideas and simply put, more reckless. That I know I can just push a button to roll back a few seconds before seeing if I can pull off some risky maneuver is, needless to say, going to encourage me to go ahead and try that out. This ability is limited to a maximum of 6 or so rewinds at a time, so one does need to be able to judge if a mistake was due to execution error (in which case, try again) or because that route was not intended to be taken at all (in which case, look elsewhere).

Some time should be spent on what foibles Sands of Time has. It's length and linearity are often criticized - for me I didn't mind the latter (I rarely do when it is in the context of the path being a puzzle) and the latter bothered me only because I would have liked to see more, not because I felt at all cheated. Looking back, in fact, I actually respect their decision not to try to pad it out and risk making the experience tedious (as Warrior Within nearly veered into being). The tedium is unfortunately reserved for the combat which, while not being offensive in any way, is simply too simple for as much of the game it takes up, with a good couple minutes of combat being sprinkled in between every 5-10 minutes of platforming. That each enemy has basically a single move or combo they are weak to makes it largely a rote experience. The last boss, for example, is just a regular enemy with more health who blocks most of your attacks - luckily the real last boss is actually the trip to meet him. Later entries in the series would have the sense to develop the combat to the point where it became somewhat fun in a button-mashing sense - adding a level of variety to your move set that let one simply move to another style of attack once one becomes stale.

The later entries in the series would rather dramatically improve on the core gameplay, but none would match the quality of the story and presentation here - featuring a rare blend of interesting characters and an interesting plot, with the time travel mechanic being used in both a very clever way and as a means to a legitmate emotional payoff, while also sporting some very witty dialogue. Combine this with the fact that it uses a legitimately interesting and (by videogame standards) original setting, and I think the Sands of Time movie could actually turn out to be pretty good (in a Pirates of the Caribbean sort of way - helps that the same production team is behind it).



See, the problem with most video game movies has been mostly due to the sorts of games being adapted - a good adaptation needs good characters, a good plot that can easily be condensed into about 2 hours, and a good, original (or more aptly, distinct) setting. Most adaptations to this point have contained usually none of these and none that I can think of had remotely interesting characters, which is probably the most important piece to the puzzle. Instead game adaptations have been used as titles with accompanying high-concepts which fit neatly with the sorts of mid-budget movies aimed at teen and young-adult males - Doom and demons/mars, Resident Evil and a zombie virus, Alone in the Dark and Tara Reid as a scientist, Dungeon Siege and Jason Statham fighting Ninjas, etc. That Prince of Persia brings with it good characters, a unique setting, and a good plot should help it turn pretty good - at the very least the license is finally bringing some tangible benefits to the production such that if it doesn't turn out good, we can say it was because of some other reason than it being a game adaptation.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Developer: Ubi Soft Montreal
Released: 11/18/2003
Obtained: Christmas 2003

9.5/10

#181: SimCity 4 (2003, PC)

I've gone over how the increasing complexity of the SimCity games winds up being more off-putting than engaging, as it went from being an appealing simplification of city management which was easy to familiarize oneself with all the aspects of, to something that winds up trying to be an in-depth simulation of every aspect of real city management. SimCity 4 basically takes the latter to its farthest possible point to the point where I feel it completely misses the point of simulation games entirely.

That point is that, basically, people don't necessarily want to be the mayor of a town, but rather want to feel like they are acting like the mayor. It doesn't sound like much of a difference, but consider which sounds more fun - having to manage the entirety of a city's infrastructure, down to negotiations for the importation or exportation of resources like energy, water, and trash while also managing a budget that has been itemized down to every detail while also planning public transformation from top to bottom - or building a city and watching it grow? The original SimCity managed to capture the latter perfectly - the focus was always on city building, with side-emphasis in managing infrastructure, and those were always abstracted enough so as to be pretty easily managed.

SimCity 4 is not easily managed, like, at all. It feels more like Microsoft's Flight Simulator than it feels like a real Sim game, despite the addition of things like Sims whom you can follow as they take their commutes. And, even if one can't embrace the depths of detail present the way needed to build cities to their maximum potential, there is still a lot of fun to be had just screwing around and making small villages and towns.



Now, I can certainly see a more detailed city management sim appealing greatly to some - the strength of SimCity 4's online community speaks to this - but for me, I prefer to keep things a good deal simpler than this. This is a real shame, especially because SimCity 4 is also far and away the most fun entry in the series to watch your city grow in - the level of graphical detail is quite stunning, and the cities produced are far more realistic (in terms of layout and the way they affix to the classic SimCity grid) than any of the predecessors. If only producing a city in this engine weren't so intimidating.

SimCity 4
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Maxis
Released: 1/14/2003
Obtained: 2/7/2003

8.0/10

#119: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (2000, PC)

Age of Empires (II and III) are really the only RTSs I actually really like. I respect the hell out of StarCraft, of course, but given the choice to actually play something for fun, I'd take either of the former. It probably has to do somewhat with the way I play RTSs - I'm simply not at all good at doing things quickly in these. This means I'm not very good at defending rushes, much less initiate them myself, so I like to basically turtle along until I can have fun overwhelming the opponent in the endgame (I'm also not exactly very good at that either, so I'm usually playing against an somewhat easy computer opponent, rather than some online opponent). Age of Empires luckily happens to lend itself very, very well to my style, and as a bonus it sports a medieval theme (since I'm something of a fan). It's really right up my alley.

Strange thing about this expansion pack - I can barely recall what Age of Empires II is like without it. Now this has happened to me with other expanded titles - but usually in cases where I got the expansion and the original in the same package (like Roller Coaster Tycoon Gold, or Age of Empires Gold - the first Age of Empires, that is) - not a case where there was a 9 month gulf between my having the original and the expansion during which I was actually playing the hell out of it.

I remember The Conquerors so fondly in large part because the improvements it offers are so complete and helpful, that it makes going back to the original something of a pain. Little details like allowing for farms to be queued so that they can be automatically replanted upon their exhaustion - removing the need to go back late in a match to rebuild them - turn out to be a tremendous help. Other improvements are similarly subtle - expansions to the unit and technology lists enhances gameplay, that villagers tasked to build a lumber mill will, on finishing, automatically go about collecting lumber rather than await a new command removes a lot of the annoying micromanagement. New map types (and some very cool real-world maps - like the English Islands) make for more varied general gameplay, and there is an entirely new (and excellent) soundtrack.



The new civilizations, I should note, never did much for me - I had been well settled into my groove of using either the Byzantines or the Teutons for everything, and some Eagle Warriors or Friars or Turtle Ships weren't going to sway me there (funny since, new civilizations would seem to be the main draw of a RTS expansion, but for me the above improvements were the draw).

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Ensemble Games
Released: 8/24/2000
Obtained: 9/2/2000

9.5/10

#69: Mario Kart 64 (1997, N64)

I find it interesting to go back and see that Mario Kart 64 got pretty distinctly mixed reviews back when it was originally released, while I considered it pretty immediately to be one of my favorite titles on the system (well that doesn't mean that much, since it was only my third N64 title), as well as probably the first game ever where I found myself really embracing multiplayer. What stands out most to me about Mario Kart 64 is both how dramatically it improved on the original Super Mario Kart, and how dramatically it was itself improved upon by both Double Dash and Mario Kart DS, to point of feeling unplayable until after a proper acclimation period.

The improvement over Super Mario Kart was pretty easy - the original, while great in its own right, is still a mode 7 racer played on a digital control pad - meaning it lacked both anything resembling vertically as well as meaning it lacked some precision in its control. Battle mode was still very fun, but only for 2 people at a time. Mario Kart 64's move to 3D wound up - much like Star Fox's transition to 3D - feeling more like a return home than a move into some new world like it was with something like Mario 64. Four-way battles meant less time was spent searching and also meant that attacks could come out of anywhere. The move away from the more maze-like battle maps to simpler ones which utilized vertically also meant both that there would be less opportunity to hide and better ways to sneak up on opponents. Just an all-around total improvement.

Racing itself was also greatly aided in part to less difficult computer opposition. Whereas the original could see opponents on higher difficulties able to blow the player away (in addition to increased aggression via weaponry), Mario Kart 64 does a good job of keeping things closer. This does mean that rubberband AI is extremely prevalent, but it also means one is not likely to find themselves so far out that the race ceases to be interesting.

The most important addition to the racing and the star of the show winds up being power sliding, exactly the sort of simple skill move an otherwise simple kart racer like this needed as it means that the player is rarely simply accelerating - even when alone at the head of the pack - as they are instead looking for opportunities to gain a quick speed boost via a power slide.



The flaws become most exposed only after coming back after spending time with the superior sequels on the GameCube and DS - each of which further enhance the quality of control (dramatically) and eliminate the bugs and quirks present here (track exploits are surprisingly wide-spread here).

Mario Kart 64
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Released: 2/10/1997
Obtained: Early 1997

9.0/10

#59: SimCity 2000 (1993, PC)

SimCity 2000's greatest value comes in that it allows you to create cities that look a lot cooler then the ones in SimCity. As I went over in my earlier review, the original manages to actually play better on account of being so much less demanding of the player - but when evaluating a true sandbox, does that really matter? That is to say, if I'm playing a SimCity game because I want to make a cool looking town, or because I want to watch a town grow, then why wouldn't I just use the cheats available for money and do just what I want to?

SimCity 2000 manages to just surpass that threshold between the comfortably complex and interesting and the taxing and difficult to manage. I think one could argue that this is owed almost entirely to the inclusion of elevation - through it we have now to deal with uncooperative terrain and with the hassle of running water to our towns. Yet while these additions mean playing SimCity as SimCity has become more of a chore, the increased possibilities they allow so far as expressing ones creativity in town design pretty much cancels it out, at least if that expression is what one wants out of it. Other additions aid dramatically in this appeal - cities can be planned as things other than a series of 3x3 blocks (less roads and the occasional park), and things like education can be planned for. More detail is available for managing the Sims themselves, such as a much more detailed approach to the budget. The presentation is dramatically improved, sporting appealing sprite-art that holds up well to this day, and including various ways to better personalize ones city (allowing for signs signifying landmarks, the ability to name numerous buildings).

The best part for me, however, lied in the way SimCity 2000 cities could be imported into the excellent SimCopter and the 'interesting' Streets of SimCity - allowing one to explore their creations in real-time. It's kind of hard to get across how cool this is, other than to compare it perhaps to being able to build your own cities for Grand Theft Auto IV. Enhancing this ability was the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit, a toolkit that let you build cities completely to ones own specifications, down to choosing individual zoned buildings rather than hoping that the desired one would be built randomly. The sprites themselves could also be edited at will - this effect wouldn't transfer to SimCopter, but it could be transferred to SimCity 2000.



The only downside came in the city building tools for SCURK being significantly more unwieldy than those in regular-ass SimCity 2000 - the best approach that I found was to do most of your terrain design and basic road layouts in SimCity 2000, then jump over to SCURK for placing buildings, although even there it could be tedious to develop a pleasing variety of buildings - there was no 'residential wash' option that would just paint in random residential buildings of a certain style, meaning that large sections would either wind up with a lot of identical buildings next to each other - or take a long time. For the purposes of building maps for SimCopter however, such redundancy is not very noticeable and dense cityscapes make for poorer gameplay than a city with a lot of open space.

SimCity 2000
Publisher: Maxis
Developer: Maxis
Released: 1993
Obtained: Early 1996

9.0/10

#483: BioShock (2007, X360)

BioShock is perhaps best described as a tale of two different games. One is the competent first person shooter, perhaps a bit light on enemy variety but big on providing a lot of fun ways to do combat, and with some good character building elements to boot. Now, this game is, by itself, pretty damn good for roughly the same reason that Gears of War and the first Halo succeeded, namely the 15 seconds of fun principle. The 15 seconds of fun principle holds that, basically, if your core gameplay mechanics are fun, it doesn't really hurt you all that much to not spend much time shaking up the gameplay. In Halo this meant that since it was simply a lot of fun to go around tossing grenades and thwacking grunts and elites and whatever, it didn't matter that it turned out that that was all you'd be doing for the next 8 hours (and it didn't matter, at least not to me).

For BioShock this means that, in large part due to the huge number of plasmids at your disposal, you are bound to find at least a few combat methods that you find yourself enjoying the hell out of and this fun is enough to pretty much carry you through to the end of the game, despite the enemies being all very similar and there being very little in the way of big changes to the core gameplay (nothing even at the level of Halo's vehicle segments). For me specifically, it was a combination of telekinesis and using plasmids to boost my wrench power to the point where it became the only weapon I needed (of course, when all you want to use is a wrench, it becomes pretty damn useful). Others I'm sure liked to use the alternate ammunition for their guns (like setting tripwires with the crossbow), or to use a wider variety of active plasmids (like fire, or ice, or BEES). The point is, there is enough available to the player that they can adjust things to suit what methods they are finding the most fun to play. Furthermore, if the 15 seconds of fun begins to wear out, it gives them the option of switching things up. So, again, by a purely gameplay centric perspective, BioShock has a whole hell of a lot going on for it, and we haven't even touched on the setting, story, and characters that actually wind up making the game what it is (that being the best game of 2007 this side of Super Mario Galaxy).



The second game here is the one featuring one of the most compelling settings I've ever seen in a video game - alternating beautifully between the disturbing and frightening and the majestic and inspiring. It's important not to underestimate how something like setting can dramatically enhance a title. BioShock could very easily of been set in some space station manned with space marines (like, oh, Halo) - the excellent gameplay would remain pretty much unchanged, Big Daddys could be robots, Little Sisters could be little Salacious B. Crumb type creatures or space imps or something, the pistol could be a space pistol, etc. It could still look pretty damn amazing too - Unreal Tournament 2004 and Gears of War showed that you can still do really interesting things with game architecture amongst a horde of space marines. All that said, to say that having as incredible and unique an environment as Rapture wasn't probably the single biggest factor in its success would be pretty disingenuous. Rapture's pull, such as it is, mostly comes from the way it manages to highlight at nearly every turn both how spectacular this world was (and still is) and how far this world has fallen. The player is presented at nearly every turn with gorgeous art deco architecture while simultaneously offering visions of the horrors that has befallen it. Perhaps most incredible is how beautiful this horror can be - in its own way - and this coming from a guy who is normally genuinely turned away from the grotesque - BioShock makes it work by having it seem to be so fitting amongst the splendor one sees.

The setting manages to, in its own way, tell a story and become a character which is itself more compelling than about 95% of what is on the market. The player feels compelled to explore every nook and cranny - not for the hope of discovering some new item or upgrade (not that these don't exist, but they are fairly sparse - except for the huge amounts of disposables like ammo laying around) - but for the hope of discovering some new hint towards explaining the background of this environment, in the form of an audio book diary, or perhaps some secret area used by Rapture's saner denizens before they too were attacked by the splicers who've taken over.

The audio books deserve a special mention - in general, I don't care much for cut scenes in video games. They strike me as a surprisingly lazy way to go about telling story - that rather than embracing the medium itself, developers are simply using the storytelling conventions of film. On the same plane of the uninspired is the scrolling text box (taking cues from books this time). Now, I'm not saying that having story told through these means is bad, of course, countless great stories have been told in these fashions - but I greatly prefer games that can tell their stories in ways that don't stop the gameplay dead in its tracks. The gold standard here is of course, the Half-Life series, but BioShock comes up with some interesting solutions as well. This is where the audio books come in - allowing for the rich backstory of rapture to be brought to life for the player without ever actually pausing the action - they simply play in the background. Add in some excellent voice acting, and you got yourself a stew going. Compare this to the likely alternative - written diaries, likely confined to some submenu or something. Not only would you lose the acting and the sense of the writer/speaker being brought to life, but more importantly, no one would ever read them - why pause the action to read some text?



Special mention should also be made of Andrew Ryan as a character compelling in his conviction and dedication to his strict moral code as well as in how this makes him at once both the most sane person in the city and the most insane at the same time.

BioShock
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
Released: 8/21/2007
Obtained: October 2007

9.5/10

#28: Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (1993, SNES)

You won't see me review many traditional fighting games because, simply put, I don't like them very much (and thus own very few of them). While I certainly respect the sort of dedication exhibited by fighting game fans - the dedication needed to master combos and special moves (I liked to use this programmable controller I had, which had all the special moves mapped to buttons for me) and the investment in joysticks and all of that, these things hold very little sway with me. I prefer (greatly) the sorts of titles I can just jump in and play - and acquit myself pretty well without exerting much of an effort into improving my 'skills'.

Now, I am a pretty quick learner. When given a new game, I can get up to speed quicker than most - meaning in the early rounds of a new competitive type game, I'll probably be ahead early. My lack of patience for intricacies or for improving my skills, however, usually means I stagnate at that level and find myself pretty quickly surpassed. Now, with some genres with which I am deeply familiar (first person shooters, platformers) I am actually able to develop some skill - the skills which tend to be common amongst differing titles in these genres. In other titles where there may not be a lot of depth or advanced skills to learn (Bomberman, Mario Kart) my difficulty in advancing to a more elite level is also not an issue.

I'm saying all this to basically set up the fact that it is difficult for me to properly review something like Street Fighter II Turbo because it just isn't a genre I play or enjoy much. In other words, I'm disclosing that I'm pretty biased against it. Objectively I can recognize that it does a lot of things right - precise control, strong presentation. I can also recognize that it is a pretty dramatic improvement over the first edition of Street Fighter II on the SNES - more options, and the addition of the 4 'boss' characters for use by the player. It's a game that I can recognize the craftsmanship involved, and one that I've certainly had fun with (especially matched with equally unskilled opponents) - which given that I just don't care for this kind of game is about as hearty an endorsement as you're likely to get from me.



I want to make a special note of the soundtrack, specifically as it pertains to the game music remix community. You'd be hard pressed to find a 16-bit era soundtrack that was more... in the background then that of Street Fighter II (or fighting games in general) - it just isn't something one really hears while playing - there is too much going on on screen. Yet it has berthed some of the better remixes out there - witness the excellent Blood on the Asphalt album. Meanwhile, the Final Fantasy series has excellent music, yet hasn't lent itself nearly as well. Part of this is surely that Final Fantasy's music - light on beat and heavy on melody - doesn't lend itself to the styles of music commonly seen in the remix community. But a big part of it for Street Fighter II would be, if I hazarded a guess, that in part because it is so low-key in terms of what you hear while playing, and so lacking in terms of strong stand-out melody, that it provides the remixes an excellent jumping off point. The same thing is seen in comparing Sonic music remixes and Mario music remixes - Sonic's low key melodies, combined with the Genesis hardware's problems with producing sounds that sound like something other than the Genesis hardware provides the perfect jumping off point for remixers (witness the also excellent Hedgehog Heaven or Project Chaos).

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Released: August 1993
Obtained: Christmas 1993

8.0/10

#34: Super Play Action Football (1992, SNES)

Interesting to think that whereas today it is considered appropriate to have separate football games for the professional and college games, at the SNES launch one was deemed sufficient. I'd dwell more on this if I had ever really touched the pro or college modes in Super Play Action Football, but I didn't. Why? Because in the High School Mode, I could name my own team and pick the colors of their uniforms, that's why.

When it comes to sports games, I'm pretty much completely a create-a-team junkie. Despite the fact that I follow professional sports extensively, I never feel compelled to control real players when playing sports games. There is just something about the fact that they are real players that turns me off - there is no room for me to invent characteristics, like playing style or role on the team, around someone that actually exists and for whom those traits are already in place. This has pretty much always been the case with me. On NBA Showdown, one of the first sports games I played extensively, I played most of a season using a Charlotte Hornets team after first swapping many of their starters with starters on other teams, then by promoting some of their bench players to the starting lineup (specifically Kenny Gattison). The result was that I was left with a squad with so little resemblance to anything real that I could then effectively call it my own. Thus Kenny Gattison averaged 38 ppg and Scott Skiles led the league in assists.

Now, while Super Play Action football may have sparked my love affair with creating my own team, unfortunately the game itself is somewhat... lacking. For starters, you have a very zoomed in perspective - fine unless you want to say, pass the football. This isn't a problem on easy mode (high school mode), but good luck spotting the open receiver in collegiate or pro modes. Yes, you have a nice little mini-map showing your targeted receiver and indicating if there are any other little dots near him - but to expect the player to be following this map while also looking for the rush is a bit much. Also, it is so zoomed in you can't even look at your receivers coming off the line to see if they've been picked up by a defender (unlike in say, Tecmo Bowl). The result is that, unless you want to see yourself get picked off a lot you'll be doing a lot of short passes, or a lot of keeping yourself exposed in the pocket. The harder difficulties also resulted in a pretty dramatic increase in the complexity of the playbooks - again, a good idea for a game that allows you to exploit these complex routes and schemes, not as good an idea in something that throws barriers in front of you on the most rudimentary gameplay levels.



Now, this isn't to say it wasn't fun to run up the score in easy mode - it was. But compared to say, the Tecmo Bowl series (of which I was unacquainted with at the time), these sorts of qualifiers aren't necessary.

Super Play Action Football
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D 1
Released: August 1992
Obtained: Sometime in 1994

5.0/10

#509: Solar Jetman (1990, NES)

I don't know what happened to Rare in high school, but for a development house that would eventually turn out the Banjo, Donkey Kong Country, and Perfect Dark games, they seemed hellbent on showing everyone that western developers could clobber the Japanese when it came to making the most impossibly frustrating games imaginable. Now, I could just as easily have been setting up a review for Battletoads there, but at least Battletoads has an easy first level - Solar Jetman is stupid-hard from the get-go.

The shame here is that, if one were to just tweak the difficulty here, you would have a rather excellent sort of space sim/shooter here. The idea is that you, Sol "-ar" Jetman (I'm making that name up), have to travel from planet to planet exploring and collecting spaceship parts (the titular Golden 'Warp'-ship) in your little pod. Along the way you fight robots and aliens, and also have to make sure you don't run out of fuel and such. Sounds a lot like Pikmin, which was awesome, right? The problem begins when it was decided that there would also be super-realistic physics modeling at play.

This sounds good - gravity will behave like real gravity, momentum must be considered and factored into movement, but the thing is they went much to far with this. In the earliest levels it is a rather large problem, especially whenever you're trying to tow something. By the end of the game, when the gravity is something like 6 times Jupiter, it becomes ridiculous, taking minutes to move vertically. Compounding this is that any contact with anything (including the swarms of enemies which are seemingly unaffected by gravity) pretty near instantly kills you. Basically, the fun exploration game goes out of its way to make this exploration as frustrating as possible.

The cruelest joke is the final-final level - after completing the most difficult planet yet, the player is instantly sent into a poor Gradius clone where a death (quite likely since this stage is also pretty hard, and importantly, completely unlike anything the player has just spent the last several hours playing) sends you back to the beginning of the previous planet. It's like the final bosses of Ninja Gaiden, if those last bosses consisted of dirtbike racing or Burgertime or something.



Luckily for all of us (or at least those of us that kind of like Rare, like myself) Rare would eventually learn the value of applying their gifts for making good looking games with good concepts to gameplay that actually worked (as opposed to say, Battletoads, which was literally impossible to complete in 2-player).

Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warpship
Publisher: Tradewest
Developer: Rare
Released: September 1990
Obtained: March 2008

6.0/10

#508: Guerrilla War (1988, NES)

The idea of difficulty in video games has come a long way from the 1980s. Then, it was pretty hard to find a game where you didn't have a shitload of stuff flying at you at absolutely all times, in addition to having relatively weak attacks, limited life (or no life), and a very limited set of lives - the net result being that without either cheating, or a lot of patience and practice, you'd typically never see anything beyond the second level of most games. Later, as the idea of playability was emphasized and the idea of challenge was deemphasized, these tropes have fallen by the wayside. Good luck finding a game that expects you to play the whole thing in one sitting with one set of lives, for example. Hell, good luck finding games that still use lives at all.

So what makes Guerrilla War interesting is its surprisingly liberal approach to difficulty (or as surprisingly liberal anything in a game about Che Guevara can be). It is, basically, the same game as either Ikari Warriors or Commando - a straight forward top down shooter where you (the hero) shoot down hordes of enemies. Maybe you'll throw a grenade or something. These games are very hard, and so is Guerrilla War. But whereas those games will kick your ass back to the title screen when you've died enough, Guerrilla War lets you keep going without so much as making you start the level over. Literally the only thing stopping you from slugging your way to the end is whether you get bored halfway (luckily, it's pretty fun - and pretty short).

The idea of unlimited continues was pretty unheard of at that time, which is what makes it so refreshing to come back to this now. We, in these modern times, have little patience for things like lives or punishing difficulty, we want to play a game for as long as it takes for us to get bored of it, then toss it to the side. By removing the impediments to this approach, Guerrilla War feels almost like it was designed with the modern gamer in mind - down to the Cuban Revolution backdrop which is sure to please anyone in search of ironic entertainment.



Now, the game itself? Infinite continues aside, I still prefer Iron Tank in the world of top-down shooters, mostly due to Iron Tank's sense of scale and its boss fights, but when it comes to looking for some quick NES fun (with 2-player co-op, no less)? It's hard to find much to fault here.

Guerrilla War
Publisher: SNK
Developer: SNK
Released: 1988
Obtained: March 2008

7.0/10

#160: Team Fortress Classic (1999, PC)

I imagine it must be pretty hard to make a online-multiplayer title that can be fun to play even when you're completely and utterly overmatched by your opponents. Take something like Gears of War, which is excellent, and consider how boring it can get when one finds themselves completely overwhelmed by the opponents - I know I tend to feel a bit flustered in this situation and cease to enjoy myself. Yet I can play Team Fortress Classic, die roughly 30 times for every kill I make, and have a pretty good time doing it. My theory as to why this is I think lies in the relative amount of responsibility placed onto the player - Gears has small teams and lacks specialization, as such I know that I am supposed to be taking down my opponents at a roughly 1:1 pace, and I also know that if I don't, that puts a lot of pressure on my teammates (being at most 4 on 4). By comparison, in a 10 on 10 TFC match where I, being a Pyro or a Medic (as I usually am), have a pretty specific role or task I suddenly feel a lot less guilty if I do poorly. Suddenly I'm in a position where I know there are a lot more guys to cover my ass, and I'm in a role where I know my primary task is not to rack up kills, but rather to wreck havoc (pyro) or help out others (medic).

I'm not sure which of these two factors contributes the most to this feeling of liberation from the usual responsibilities of a team-shooter. On the one hand, I'm sure that the crowd factor is big, since I also enjoy playing Counter-Strike, where I consider my role as being that of a meat shield for my more talented teammates. On the other hand, the presence of roles, with the expectations for performance or style that come with them provide me with an excellent way to style my play in a somewhat guided fashion.

TFC also promotes a fast and imprecise style of play that makes it rather well suited for casual play. Unfortunately, it also boasts a number of quirks and glitches that lends itself just as well for obsessive and hardcore play - the exact kind that tends to intimidate novice players and discourage casual play. These same hardcore players insistence on limiting themselves to a single map (the relatively boring 2fort) which lends itself the best to these glitches also tends to discourage casual play.



Complaints about the hardcore TFC crowd should carry the caveat, however, that it is this same crowd that has kept the game relevant through the years, essentially keeping it alive for its exposure to new blood. Also, like I said at the start, I manage to enjoy myself pretty well in spite of the huge talent gulf - the core game itself is simply a fun way to waste some time.

Team Fortress Classic
Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Valve
Released: 5/30/1999
Obtained: Early 2002

8.5/10

#110: Mario Tennis (2000, N64)

The Shining Force series was a fairly prolific tactical RPG series released across several Sega systems in the early to mid 1990s. The developer behind all of them was a Camelot Software Planning, they did do a sports game (Hot Shots Golf), but it still strikes me as odd that Nintendo would seek them out to head up their entire Mario-sports series, rather then handling them in house or something. Even more incredible is that Camelot would wind up doing a far better job then Nintendo themselves probably would have managed (well, there isn't much to back this up, since Nintendo has passes off all their sports games).

What's most remarkable is that Camelot, an RPG developer, understands perfectly the need for rock solid control in a game like this - as a result, Mario Tennis winds up being incredibly easy to pick up and play while remaining really precise, resulting in gameplay that can stand up to hours upon hours of playtime. Mario Tennis quickly became a N64 multiplayer staple, alongside greats like Bomberman 64, Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye 007/Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros. and uh... I suppose that was the list (there really weren't a lot of games for it, you know).

I find there to be something ingenious about the swing mechanics here - A for topspin, B for slice, A+B for smash - with A then B for lob and B then A for a drop shot - or maybe I have those backwards - the point is, that is the list of shots, and basically then the extent to which you can actually do anything in the game. It is because of this simplicity that the games can then be more about things like movement and rhythm than an exercise in control - you can even survive pretty well just using the slice or the topspin, turning Mario Tennis into essentially a one button game.

It's remarkable how well suited for multiplayer tennis is, by the way. Both sides are always more or less equally involved in the proceedings - or more specifically, the time spent on 'defense' (waiting for the ball) is so short as to be unnoticeable - by the time you've seen your shot through, you get to set up for the next. Compare this to football where the defensive time can be interminable, or even to something like basketball where it is short but noticeable. And another big plus is that even when the score may be lopsided, the losing team never really feels out of it, especially in something like Mario Tennis where the learning curve is low enough that there will never be that huge of a gulf between the experienced and the novice.

The Mario Tennis series, because of its engaging simplicity are probably my favorite sports games out there in terms of actually enjoying the game itself (Tecmo Super Bowl notwithstanding) - I may enjoy the hell out of a Madden, but this is because of the things that I bring into the proceedings - my love of sports statistics and my desire to manipulate rosters - when I play Madden itself, I'm mostly concerned with wanting to put up crazy numbers with the roster of guys I've spent time assembling. With Mario Tennis, however, its a simple case of picking a character I like to play as (aka Yoshi) and playing.



Fun fact, this game is not called Mario Tennis 64 - shocking only because that makes it one of about maybe 10 games ever released on the N64 without the number '64' in the title. I also would be remiss to not mention how shockingly crisp the texturing is in this game - spend time with basically any other N64 game - texturing was not its strong suit.

Mario Tennis
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Camelot Software Planning
Released: 8/28/2000
Obtained: Fall 2000

9.0/10

#60: SimCity (1989, PC)

Funny how much an opinion of a game can be shaped by how experienced one is with other games. In this case, I happened to play SimCity sometime after I had been exposed to SimCity 2000 - no offense to SimCity but this really isn't a comparison. Furthermore, I first played SimCity sometime after I had played it's sibling on the SNES which was basically the same game, with an overlay of Nintendo polish (although the SNES control pad couldn't hold a candle to a mouse for this kind of game).

What's funny is that, insofar as I actually play SimCity games (i.e. building a city as suggested by the rules outlined by the game), SimCity is probably my favorite - the same complexity that makes the sequels better sandboxes also makes them less accessible. As I've said before, I enjoy complexity only so long as I can get a really good grasp of the entire system and thus exploit it to fit my will - the gold standard here, for me, is Final Fantasy V, whose job system has depth and complexity, but is straightforward enough that I could enjoy the hell out of exploiting it to suit my whims. Here, exploiting SimCity for maximum efficiency is just as straightforward. Rails solve traffic and pollution problems, police and fire departments don't require road access to be effective, and thus can have zones built around them to maximize the use of space. There isn't elevation to contend with, water pipes or sanitation to worry about, zones are all the same size. This simplicity makes for boring looking cities, but for a better game from a casual perspective.

But! Even while SimCity may make for a better game, that simply isn't what I look for when I come into these titles, instead I'm looking to make something cool (especially since, even when playing the 'game', there isn't a real objective anyway). Those tools and features that make SimCity 2000 harder to play - terrain adjustments, adjustable zone sizes, etc. also allow for one to make a much more interesting cityscape. Do I find myself needing to use money cheats to make the city I want to make? Sure, but I'm having a really good time while I'm doing it, so I hardly see much to fault in that approach. Additionally, because I know there are specific things one can do in SimCity to make a city efficient (at the expense of aesthetics), I find it hard to avoid doing those things (like following set block patterns when laying zones, or especially in using rails in place of any and all roads). Because SimCity 2000 closes these loopholes, I find myself feeling freer to experiment in city design, even if this means also operating without a net in terms of trying to get the city to operate within the game rules.



Comparing SimCity here to the SNES version also exposes another rather large flaw in the original, its lack of dynamism. No music, not terribly dynamic graphics (the SNES version adds seasonal effects as a nice flourish), no Dr. Wright to help advise the mayor, less flashy disasters. SimCity really works best when seen as the seed for later titles that it really was.

SimCity
Publisher: Maxis
Developer: Maxis
Released: 1989
Obtained: Early 1996

7.5/10

#10: American Gladiators (1991, NES)

American Gladiators sucks (this game, not the wonderful show, of course). It's pretty much a perfect storm of bad graphics, terrible control, terrible design, and unbalanced difficulty. An American Gladiators game should be pretty easy to pull off. I would expect some 2-player alternating game built around some minigames inspired by events in the show. Such a game has been pulled off 'successfully' many times, like with Nickelodeon GUTS which, while far from good, at least wasn't this broken (well, it sort of was).

The whole structure is goofy - for being based on a competition show, there is very little competition here. Just a series of events set up like stages - imagine a basketball game where the score is kept, but instead you proceed to another court after every made basket. If you somehow manage to complete the game, you get a quick congratulations, then are sent off to repeat everything again on a harder difficulty. I could extend some sort of break on account of the NES being pretty rudimentary from a hardware perspective, but Tecmo managed to fit stat tracking and a 16 game NFL schedule into Tecmo Super Bowl around the same time and on the same hardware - the American Gladiator developers (all 4 of them) just didn't seem to care (not that I would blame them).

We haven't even touched on the gameplay, which can be pretty well summarized as broken. That may be slightly harsh, many of these games are functional, after all, but I have a hard time spotting where in them any sense of pleasure may be derived. Human Canonball is built exclusively on timing without giving the player opportunity to learn from his mistakes (short of dying and starting over) - bad design. The Wall is ludicrously unbalanced, expecting the player to navigate a maze while hitting a & b as fast as possible, but never so fast to be more than half as fast as the scores of gladiators swarming around you. Joust seems to do whatever it wants regardless of what buttons you press, provided you do so fast enough. Assault could have been ok, but like with most of the other events you are made to repeat the same act over and over, progressively harder, until you can't actually complete it (and it isn't fun). Why not use the more difficult mode unlocked on completing the game to unleash such horrors? Powerball is probably the closest things get to decent, owing mostly to it being the only event where you can't die, thus providing the means to learn and adapt to the everything going on. The Eliminator I've never seen, but I'm sure it sucks too.



Everything is built on the idea that the best way to extend game length is to make the player do everything in successively harder waves, which I thought had gone out of fashion by the time the Legend of Zelda came out, not something I would expect to see in a NES game released early in the 16-bit era. Granted, I'm maybe being a bit too hard on it, but seeing as it was my first exposure to a truly crappy game as a child, it's always held a special spot of contempt in my heart.

American Gladiators
Publisher: GameTek
Developer: Incredible Technologies
Released: October 1991
Obtained: Sometime from 1991-1992

2.5/10

#251: Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (2004, GBA)

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is so appealing about the Final Fantasy series - many would say story and characters, and that may well work as an explanation for the more modern entries, or for Final Fantasy's IV and VI, but the NES titles were pretty damn popular as well, and they sure as hell weren't so thanks to a rich plot or characters (witness Final Fantasy I's nameless avatars, or its bizarre and confusing time traveling villain conceit).

The appeal lies, I think, in how the gameplay provides the player with the ability to customize a team of characters, while keeping this customization restrained enough to remain accessible. Remember, being able to select and equip a party of 4 characters from 6 classes is pretty restrictive for the RPG genre - more directly Dungeons and Dragons influenced titles (like Ultima or Wizardry - really any western RPG) pretty handily blew Final Fantasy out of the water on that front. But none of those other titles was as easily picked up and played. And none of those titles allowed for the sort of character based storytelling that these early Final Fantasy titles would attempt and which later Final Fantasy titles would achieve. These simplified mechanics also mean that there is none of the intimidation factor that I feel undercuts modern RPGs, although in this instance, things may be a bit oversimplified - the SNES-era Final Fantasy's struck the best balance of having something complex enough so as to be interesting, yet simple enough as to be readily understandable.

It should also be said that level grinding, though often criticized as being lazy game design (because, let's be honest, it is) can still a pretty compelling force, appealing in the same sort of 'killing time' fashion of a good puzzle game. There is a palatable sense of reward in fighting a boss and knowing that because you put in that time earlier, you're having an easier go of things now. It's the sort of thing that doesn't quite work on a console since it can't quite hold one's attention for the length of time it demands (at least it can't hold my attention), but works perfectly on a handheld where it can be done simultaneously with other semi-passive activities, like watching TV.



The version present on the GBA here pretty dramatically simplifies much of the gameplay mechanics here - gone are spell uses, replaced with magic points, for example. These changes have been pretty roundly criticized for dumbing things down, but I look at how stilted and awkward the mechanics were in the original, and how much grinding was required, and I have a hard time getting that upset. Taking something that is pretty obtuse and inaccessible and making it more playable is a pretty noble pursuit in my book.

---

Final Fantasy II gets beaten like a red-headed stepchild because it pretty much deserves it. Should we give some credit to Square for changing things up so dramatically here? Sure, I suppose, but what little brownie points they earned there is offset by the fact that the new system kinda sucks.

For the uninformed, Final Fantasy II changes things up by ditching experience points entirely for a system that doles out attribute and skill points based on how much you use those skills or attributes? Want to build up strength? Attack more. Want to build up magic? Use magic. Sounds like a cool idea, right? Well how bout, want to build defense? Get attacked. Want to build up hit-points? Lose hit-points. The version on the GBA here at least managed to make this system more tolerable than in the original - no longer can you lose your skill points through under-use, but the core problem still remains - that being that the style of play this system encourages feels so unnatural.

Take building magic skill here: the general Final Fantasy style encourages the player to conserve their magic - magic points are more difficult to recover, after all - leading players to have their mages mostly stand aside (by defending, or using some ineffectual, but free attack) for regular battles. Magic points are saved for difficult enemies, bosses, and general healing. That style doesn't fly here - do that and your mages will become so underdeveloped as to become useless. So instead one has to go about casting spells for every generic encounter. The whole system just feels very restrictive - because every in-battle action directly affects how your characters develop, the player begins to obsess over their every move in battle.



Ironically, the rest of the game is a pretty strong improvement over the original - the story is much stronger, featuring real and defined characters rather than the avatars of the original. Also the plotline isn't derailed by the dumb time travel premise. An interesting keyword system acts to liven up dialog and quests in general - yes, this is little more than taking the 'talk to this person' quest and turning it into a 'say this keyword to this person' quest, but for a 8-bit RPG? That's a pretty big change, furthermore, one not really ever duplicated again in the series.

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Square-Enix
Released: 11/29/2004
Obtained: Christmas 2004 (Gift)

7.5/10

#220: Metroid: Zero Mission (2004, GBA)

I can't think of another game remake I approve of more heartily than Metroid: Zero Mission. The reason for this lies in looking at the title it is remaking, the original Metroid. To put it simply, when compared with every other title in the Metroid series, the original Metroid kind of sucks. Like, really sucks. Whereas every other Metroid has displayed tight control, interesting and varied environments, and exploration based gameplay that veers closely towards being aimless and arbitrary without actually being so, the original eschews all of these. The environments are ludicrously repetitive, objectives are obscure and inscrutable enough to make Simon's Quest blush, the controls are loose, and the way enemies spawn endlessly must have been a big inspiration to Ninja Gaiden. Now, all is not all bad there, Metroid did more for establishing atmosphere as a tenet of game design than any other 8-bit title I can think of, it established the wonderful Metroid formula, and as far as NES titles go its problems aren't especially damaging. Still, in the grand scheme of Metroid, the original had been relegated to the not really worth going back and playing pile.

So along comes Metroid: Zero Mission, which does a brilliant job of merging the excellent gameplay of Super Metroid with the general world and plot of Metroid (well, plot-wise it merges in the story built around the original, seeing as the original did not really have a plot in-game). The result is a pretty much perfect blend of of nostalgia (such as when one recognizes moments from the original) and fresh new ideas (like the excellent stealth sequence near the end of the game).

It's not a 1:1 remake, the order one acquires items has been jumbled around, the player is provided general waypoints to help overcome some of the more arbitrarily hidden tasks of the original, the level layouts have been pretty totally overhauled - the general structure is kept, but now individual areas actually look unique as opposed to the originals ludicrous repetitiveness. Now, this makes things feel somewhat smaller, but this works to its benefit - what good is a large world when each hallway is identical to that before it?

Metroid's excellent sound design loses some of its charm in the move to the GBA - the tracks are mostly the same, but they just don't feel quite right being orchestrated over being 8-bit - some of the sense of atmosphere is left behind in the transition from sparse to lush. The graphics, while obviously being a hell of a lot more detailed likewise undermine that sense of atmosphere - again, there is something to be said for sparseness over lushness. Also not helping things on the graphical front is the GBA's seeming inability to produce graphics that don't feel washed out (actually, it can produce them, it's just the original's lack of a light source forced developers to use a washed out style). One could actually make a strong case that Zero Mission here has the weakest atmosphere in the series.



Luckily for it, atmosphere isn't what makes Metroid great, gameplay is, and Zero Mission - despite the inclusion of waypoint assistance - does about the best job of letting the player loose to explore and discover since Super Metroid (well, discounting the Prime series).

Metroid: Zero Mission
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D1
Released: 2/9/2004
Obtained: February 2004

9.0/10

#366: Star Fox Command (2006, NDS)

So, you know, all-range mode being probably the worst part of Star Fox 64 (it's either that or the sub and its sucky lasers), the natural answer to how to properly reinvigorate the series (after the dreadful Star Fox Assault) was obvious - make a Star Fox game that is nothing but all-range battles! And not the boss fights that actually worked, but the fights against dozens of targets, all spread out and hard to find. That's a brilliant idea, isn't it?

The funny thing is Star Fox Command, despite doing exactly this for some inexplicable reason, actually damn near succeeds. Yes, it's nowhere near as good as Star Fox 64, but it at least controls really well (stylus-only, in fact), which one certainly couldn't say about any time Assault left the damn Arwing.

What is so wrong, though, with going all-all-range? The answer lies, in level design. In short, Star Fox Command doesn't really have any. Yes, the 'strategy' sessions in between missions are well, levels that have been ostensibly designed, but the missions themselves? All variations on a single theme - shoot down enough enemies (and collect their delicious, delicious stars) to proceed. Occasionally there'll be a mothership or something, which means you shoot down enough enemies, then basically fly through some rings. Hoo-ray.

The strategy sessions deserve more discussion, basically the campaign is broken down into a series of 'worlds', basically maps where you dispatch your arwings (and missiles and the great fox &c) to attack bases and enemy fighters. It's turn based and it, while decent enough, just doesn't fit well with what I imagine anyone wanted out of a Star Fox game (I think people wanted like, levels). There's also a time limit for some reason, putting in a arcade racer style checkpoint/added time system that, again, doesn't fit.

Story-wise, someone decided that what Star Fox fans wanted, as opposed to say, Star Fox 64 style gameplay, was a hell of a lot more background on these beloved characters. So now we get, between every 'world', lengthy Golden Sun style blathering between our main characters. Also Slippy gets a love interest. Again, Hoo-ray (though I'm sure furries are ecstatic).



I'm being a bit hard on it here, again, it really does kind of work - it just doesn't work in any way one would expect a Star Fox game to work. Some credit must be given for reinventing the series into something pretty good, it's just such a development isn't that exciting when the original style had been so under-used to begin with.

Star Fox Command
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Q-Games
Released: 8/28/2006
Obtained: October 2006 (Gift)

7.5/10