10/07: Quit messing around, Rik
Despite never having watched the TV show, or displaying any kind of predeliction for poking around with dead bodies, I've recently found myself playing CSI: Deadly Intent - The Hidden Cases on the DS.
In the game, you play through four cases as a rookie CSI, joined by famous faces from the show (none of which - with the exception of Larry Fishburne - I recognise, of course). Most of the time, it's simply a case of, sweeping around the crime scene with your stylus, solving a few mini-games, and then sitting back and enjoying the story.
It's certainly a pretty passive experience in which it's pretty hard to get stuck, but all the same, I rather enjoyed it. Any game that allows you to enter your own name so that it crops up in all the dialogue is okay by me - it makes any 'amusing bollocking' scenes all the more entertaining.
So now, I want more, but apparently the last CSI game wasn't much cop on DS.
So what else is there to do? I find myself suddenly wanting to watching the show. But wait! There's a whole host of CSI games for the PC! To Amazon!
tags: csi, ds
In the game, you play through four cases as a rookie CSI, joined by famous faces from the show (none of which - with the exception of Larry Fishburne - I recognise, of course). Most of the time, it's simply a case of, sweeping around the crime scene with your stylus, solving a few mini-games, and then sitting back and enjoying the story.
It's certainly a pretty passive experience in which it's pretty hard to get stuck, but all the same, I rather enjoyed it. Any game that allows you to enter your own name so that it crops up in all the dialogue is okay by me - it makes any 'amusing bollocking' scenes all the more entertaining.
So now, I want more, but apparently the last CSI game wasn't much cop on DS.
So what else is there to do? I find myself suddenly wanting to watching the show. But wait! There's a whole host of CSI games for the PC! To Amazon!
tags: csi, ds
16/04: I sent them a message
Last night, on ITV4 (at an hour when I should have gone to bed, but was willing to watch anything to avoid doing so) I caught a few minutes of the ridiculous Michael Winner/Charles Bronson vigilante-fest, Death Wish 3.
Which reminded me that there was an Amstrad CPC game (also on other 8-bit systems, I presume) based on the film. At the age I was at the time, I didn't have a clue what the film was all about, but I was quite bemused by this game in which you reduced handbag-toting grannies to smouldering piles of flesh with a rocket launcher.
And this was years before GTA...
tags: death, wish
Which reminded me that there was an Amstrad CPC game (also on other 8-bit systems, I presume) based on the film. At the age I was at the time, I didn't have a clue what the film was all about, but I was quite bemused by this game in which you reduced handbag-toting grannies to smouldering piles of flesh with a rocket launcher.
And this was years before GTA...
tags: death, wish
03/03: Objection!
These days I probably get to spend more time playing on the DS on the way to work during the week than trying out more recent releases on the PC.
Although my favourite game genres are probably sport and racing, I've come to realise that these areas aren't where the DS really excels. So rather than buying watered-down versions of well-known console releases, I've tried to find games that work well on DS.
I've recently finished a couple of DS adventure games that I've really enjoyed. Their merits have been well-documented elsewhere, but for what it's worth I'll add my own endorsement.
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 sees a down-on-his-luck former cop check into a hotel with nothing more than the hope of flogging some office supplies in his mind. As the (extremely eventful) evening progresses, it turns out he'll have to turn detective once again to unlock the mysteries of the hotel and its guests. Despite one or two gameplay flaws, the story is genuinely engrossing, and though the script isn't perfect, I found myself almost missing my stop on more than one occasion to find out what happens next. One you won't put down until you've finished it (and that'll take a little while, too).
Once I was done with that one, I also had Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations to go at. It's the third game of a trilogy that was originally released on the GameBoy Advance, but it works well on DS (which has since seen a couple of further titles in the series). I started with the third game because, well, it was the only one I could actually get hold of a copy of. As with Hotel Dusk, there are one or two gameplay annoyances, but there's no arguing with the fact that there's 15 or so hours of gameplay that'll keep you engrossed until the very end. I've managed to get the first of the trilogy second-hand, and I'll certainly be trying out the others as soon as I get the opportunity.
What's striking about both games is that they have memorable characters that you can really warm to. While I like a nice gravelly-voiced action hero as much as the next gamer, after a while they largely become interchangeable. Hotel Dusk's Kyle Hyde is the kind of reluctant protagonist you can get get onboard with: he's got a certain skill for unpicking a mystery, but he's also a flawed character with a drink problem and plenty of regrets to carry around with him. At the start of the game, he doesn't want anything more than to just get through the night, but as things progress and unfold, he finds that some of the questions from his past can be answered if he gets involved with some of the mysteries involving his fellow guests.
Phoenix Wright is a slightly more light-hearted game, but it still has the capacity to involve you in a way that's all too rare these days. Although there's a faint sense of ridiculousness about the whole enterprise (not least in its interpretation of the legal system) the main characters are all pretty well rounded, and there are themes of loss, regret and redemption which permeate the story and make you care about what happens.
Oh, and if that doesn't impress you, then how about the fact that, during the courtroom scenes you can alarm everyone on the train by shouting 'OBJECTION!' into the DS microphone? Don't worry - you can also just hit the touch screen if you're easily embarrassed.
tags: phoenix, wright, hotel, dusk
Although my favourite game genres are probably sport and racing, I've come to realise that these areas aren't where the DS really excels. So rather than buying watered-down versions of well-known console releases, I've tried to find games that work well on DS.
I've recently finished a couple of DS adventure games that I've really enjoyed. Their merits have been well-documented elsewhere, but for what it's worth I'll add my own endorsement.
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 sees a down-on-his-luck former cop check into a hotel with nothing more than the hope of flogging some office supplies in his mind. As the (extremely eventful) evening progresses, it turns out he'll have to turn detective once again to unlock the mysteries of the hotel and its guests. Despite one or two gameplay flaws, the story is genuinely engrossing, and though the script isn't perfect, I found myself almost missing my stop on more than one occasion to find out what happens next. One you won't put down until you've finished it (and that'll take a little while, too).
Once I was done with that one, I also had Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations to go at. It's the third game of a trilogy that was originally released on the GameBoy Advance, but it works well on DS (which has since seen a couple of further titles in the series). I started with the third game because, well, it was the only one I could actually get hold of a copy of. As with Hotel Dusk, there are one or two gameplay annoyances, but there's no arguing with the fact that there's 15 or so hours of gameplay that'll keep you engrossed until the very end. I've managed to get the first of the trilogy second-hand, and I'll certainly be trying out the others as soon as I get the opportunity.
What's striking about both games is that they have memorable characters that you can really warm to. While I like a nice gravelly-voiced action hero as much as the next gamer, after a while they largely become interchangeable. Hotel Dusk's Kyle Hyde is the kind of reluctant protagonist you can get get onboard with: he's got a certain skill for unpicking a mystery, but he's also a flawed character with a drink problem and plenty of regrets to carry around with him. At the start of the game, he doesn't want anything more than to just get through the night, but as things progress and unfold, he finds that some of the questions from his past can be answered if he gets involved with some of the mysteries involving his fellow guests.
Phoenix Wright is a slightly more light-hearted game, but it still has the capacity to involve you in a way that's all too rare these days. Although there's a faint sense of ridiculousness about the whole enterprise (not least in its interpretation of the legal system) the main characters are all pretty well rounded, and there are themes of loss, regret and redemption which permeate the story and make you care about what happens.
Oh, and if that doesn't impress you, then how about the fact that, during the courtroom scenes you can alarm everyone on the train by shouting 'OBJECTION!' into the DS microphone? Don't worry - you can also just hit the touch screen if you're easily embarrassed.
tags: phoenix, wright, hotel, dusk
26/02: denied
Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection
For PS3, Xbox and not PC.
Dammit!
Oh well maybe i'll get a Wii one day, then I could legally get such classics via the Virtual Console. Er except I'd need a TV first.
tags: megadrive
For PS3, Xbox and not PC.
Dammit!
Oh well maybe i'll get a Wii one day, then I could legally get such classics via the Virtual Console. Er except I'd need a TV first.
tags: megadrive
19/11: console wars
Recently i've been wasting a lot of time on TV Tropes, a website primarily dedicated to cateloguing recurring themes and ideas that turn up in fiction in all kinds of media, including gaming. t into related topics in various forms of media though - there's a lot there and it's it's almost like a more light-hearted Wikipedia without the directive to be rigidly neutral.
I thought this quick overview on The Console Wars was quite fun. It briefly covers each generation and gives a pretty fair guess at who "won" in terms of sales and popularity. (short form: Nintendo in the early days, then they lost it in the late nineties, now they're leading again due to the embracing of casual gaming)
I've never actually owned a console, and only recently picked up a handheld (the DS). Still I have followed developments on and off from the sidelines. I'm too young to remember the first two generations, but have been a Nintendo fan since the third (ie the NES). Even tho, now I'm actually in a position to buy their games, I find it a depressing exercise in flicking past boxes entitled Are you smarter than a 10 year old, All Star Cheerleader and Imagine Dream Wedding. PS and Xbox meanwhile have never attracted me - not to say there's anything wrong with them, just little of interest to me that the PC doesn't do better.
sidenote: I'm quite determined to try and get into the habit of more regular updates to this blog. Twice-weekly perhaps? The flow of new reviews is going pretty slowly right now, but i really should at least be able to think of something brief to say here every few days.
tags: consoles, nintendo
I thought this quick overview on The Console Wars was quite fun. It briefly covers each generation and gives a pretty fair guess at who "won" in terms of sales and popularity. (short form: Nintendo in the early days, then they lost it in the late nineties, now they're leading again due to the embracing of casual gaming)
I've never actually owned a console, and only recently picked up a handheld (the DS). Still I have followed developments on and off from the sidelines. I'm too young to remember the first two generations, but have been a Nintendo fan since the third (ie the NES). Even tho, now I'm actually in a position to buy their games, I find it a depressing exercise in flicking past boxes entitled Are you smarter than a 10 year old, All Star Cheerleader and Imagine Dream Wedding. PS and Xbox meanwhile have never attracted me - not to say there's anything wrong with them, just little of interest to me that the PC doesn't do better.
sidenote: I'm quite determined to try and get into the habit of more regular updates to this blog. Twice-weekly perhaps? The flow of new reviews is going pretty slowly right now, but i really should at least be able to think of something brief to say here every few days.
tags: consoles, nintendo
23/07: Enter your initials
Spending hour after hour on a game that never ends just to achieve a high score isn't something I've ever been particularly interested in, but it has to be said that my recent dabble with pinball reminded me that occasionally such an obsession has taken a hold.
Some time ago I spent a not-unreasonable amount of time playing a game called Major Motion on the Atari ST. Although times (and games) were simpler then, it has to be said that a Spy Hunter clone with fairly dreadful graphics didn't represent the cutting edge of 16-bit gaming and as a relatively early release, it was doomed to a life on a mail-order budget label being ordered by those happy to make a purchase based on a game's name and a postage stamp sized picture of the box cover.
Luckily, my Dad was one such person and my obsession with driving up a never-ending road smashing evil blue cars into the grass verge was born. For years I toiled to finally knock the names of the programming team off the top of the high score charts, an achievement I was proud of until I downloaded a copy of the disk image for my ST emulator and saw my best efforts failing to register on the high-score chart, for they had easily (and repeatedly) eclipsed by whoever had owned that particular copy of the game. The bastard.
If there's no new content from me for several weeks, you'll know what I've been doing. Now, even though this journal has never been the most active (or 'interactive') place, I'll ask anyway, for the hell of it: anyone out there got a favourite high-score type game? Anyone else had their feelings of supremacy on an oldie shattered by the entries on the high-score table after downloading from an abandonware site?
tags: spy, hunter, atari, st, gaming
Some time ago I spent a not-unreasonable amount of time playing a game called Major Motion on the Atari ST. Although times (and games) were simpler then, it has to be said that a Spy Hunter clone with fairly dreadful graphics didn't represent the cutting edge of 16-bit gaming and as a relatively early release, it was doomed to a life on a mail-order budget label being ordered by those happy to make a purchase based on a game's name and a postage stamp sized picture of the box cover.
Luckily, my Dad was one such person and my obsession with driving up a never-ending road smashing evil blue cars into the grass verge was born. For years I toiled to finally knock the names of the programming team off the top of the high score charts, an achievement I was proud of until I downloaded a copy of the disk image for my ST emulator and saw my best efforts failing to register on the high-score chart, for they had easily (and repeatedly) eclipsed by whoever had owned that particular copy of the game. The bastard.
If there's no new content from me for several weeks, you'll know what I've been doing. Now, even though this journal has never been the most active (or 'interactive') place, I'll ask anyway, for the hell of it: anyone out there got a favourite high-score type game? Anyone else had their feelings of supremacy on an oldie shattered by the entries on the high-score table after downloading from an abandonware site?
tags: spy, hunter, atari, st, gaming
First up - (genuine) new content is coming very soon. In the meantime...
Back in the mid-eighties, the big argument among computer-owning kids was whether the Sinclair Spectrum or the Commodore 64 was 'the best' machine to own. Frankly, I always found this a little bit baffling - Speccy games only ever seemed to feature about two colours, and while the Commodore 64 was supposed to be technically superior, I didn't think much of its washed-out palette either.
Our family had an Amstrad CPC - possibly the least celebrated of the three major 8-bit home computers - and while it may be wrong to focus on graphics, with virtually every major computer release appearing across all three formats (CPC, Speccy, C64), on the old 'comparing the screenshots on the back of the box' test, the CPC came out on top every time.
Okay, I may be a little biased, and admittedly the more colourful CPC graphics occasionally seemed a little more chunky than the others, but on the other hand, I never came back from an afternoon squinting at my mate's Spectrum games thinking, 'cor, I wish I had one of those...'
By the time the Amigas and Atari STs of this world started emerging, we'd built up a collection of some 350 games, a total boosted somewhat by the presence of quite a number of £2 budget titles. At that price, it didn't really matter if they were rubbish, but quite a lot of them weren't. Codemasters may now be a respectable publisher of endless full-price Colin McRae titles, but back in the 80s their business was cranking out fun-size little arcade games that were cheap as chips.
It has to be said that these were the games that I played and enjoyed most. Other titles had a surprising amount of depth, but they were usually hard as nails, too, and I recall my Dad being forced into constructing several labyrinthine home-made maps in a vain attempt to complete Gargoyle Games' Marsport.
Meanwhile, I was busy enjoying the likes of Codemasters' Twin Turbo V8, a cheap knock-off of Outrun which actually looked pretty good when compared to the CPC conversion of the arcade classic (pictured below - and no, that isn't a reverse view, I just crashed the bloody thing, okay?). Recently I got the urge to pick up a CPC emulator specifically to have a go at this game - an experiment which took up roughly ten minutes of my time. While I don't for a second imagine I'll be forsaking my PC oldies for a CPC emulator, I'd still like to give some of my old collection a go - perhaps it could even be a semi-regular feature on the journal (whoop-di-frickin'-do - a reader).
In the meantime, if you're at all interested in anything CPC related, you could do a lot worse than check out the following:
Caprice - A top CPC emulator that'll do pretty much everything you could want, er, CPC-wise.
The Amstrad CPC Games Resource - There's a ton of CPC games available for download here, with links to reviews, too.
Back in the mid-eighties, the big argument among computer-owning kids was whether the Sinclair Spectrum or the Commodore 64 was 'the best' machine to own. Frankly, I always found this a little bit baffling - Speccy games only ever seemed to feature about two colours, and while the Commodore 64 was supposed to be technically superior, I didn't think much of its washed-out palette either.
Our family had an Amstrad CPC - possibly the least celebrated of the three major 8-bit home computers - and while it may be wrong to focus on graphics, with virtually every major computer release appearing across all three formats (CPC, Speccy, C64), on the old 'comparing the screenshots on the back of the box' test, the CPC came out on top every time.
Okay, I may be a little biased, and admittedly the more colourful CPC graphics occasionally seemed a little more chunky than the others, but on the other hand, I never came back from an afternoon squinting at my mate's Spectrum games thinking, 'cor, I wish I had one of those...'
By the time the Amigas and Atari STs of this world started emerging, we'd built up a collection of some 350 games, a total boosted somewhat by the presence of quite a number of £2 budget titles. At that price, it didn't really matter if they were rubbish, but quite a lot of them weren't. Codemasters may now be a respectable publisher of endless full-price Colin McRae titles, but back in the 80s their business was cranking out fun-size little arcade games that were cheap as chips.
It has to be said that these were the games that I played and enjoyed most. Other titles had a surprising amount of depth, but they were usually hard as nails, too, and I recall my Dad being forced into constructing several labyrinthine home-made maps in a vain attempt to complete Gargoyle Games' Marsport.
Meanwhile, I was busy enjoying the likes of Codemasters' Twin Turbo V8, a cheap knock-off of Outrun which actually looked pretty good when compared to the CPC conversion of the arcade classic (pictured below - and no, that isn't a reverse view, I just crashed the bloody thing, okay?). Recently I got the urge to pick up a CPC emulator specifically to have a go at this game - an experiment which took up roughly ten minutes of my time. While I don't for a second imagine I'll be forsaking my PC oldies for a CPC emulator, I'd still like to give some of my old collection a go - perhaps it could even be a semi-regular feature on the journal (whoop-di-frickin'-do - a reader).
In the meantime, if you're at all interested in anything CPC related, you could do a lot worse than check out the following:
Caprice - A top CPC emulator that'll do pretty much everything you could want, er, CPC-wise.
The Amstrad CPC Games Resource - There's a ton of CPC games available for download here, with links to reviews, too.
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