Thursday, July 12, 2012

Update 7/11 - Rushing Beat, Operation Darkness, Change Air Blade, Pilgrim: Faith as a Weapon, Ghost House/Monster Bash, Universal Theme Parks garbage

If Metacritic was anything to go by, everyone hated Operation Darkness, an SRPG with an interesting premise (werewolves and Nazis) that got lambasted for looking like a PS2 game, amongst other issues. But Sketcz cuts through most of that and finds a game that, while still having some issues, seems far, far better than its reputation might lead you to believe. The Rushing Beat trilogy are some fairly bog standard Final Fight clones courtesy of Jaleco, which were all connected in Japan but released under different names in the US - Rival Turf!, Brawl Brothers and The Peace Keepers. Pilgrim: Faith as a Weapon is one of those rather strange CG rendered first person adventure games, similar to the ones put out by French developer Cryo Interactive (they of Dune, Dragon Lore KGB and a few others.) Change Air Blade is, along with ADK's Twinkle Star Sprites, one of the very few competitive shooters. And Ghost House is an early Sega Master System game that I have a weakness for, mostly because it was one of the first games I got with the system, when I received it as a gift when I was five years old. It's one of those games that hard to justify any praise towards, but like many Sega games it's got a unique personality, a few amusing gimmicks, plus there's a link to the much earlier arcade game Monster Bash.

For the weekly kusoge, I subjected myself to Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure, developed by Kemco for the Gamecube, which is the kind of game you'd give to your kids if you really hated them. And I updated the Guardian Heroes article to include some info and comparisons on the XBLA version. Only about, what, nine months late on that on. Time to catch up on some of the others, I suppose. And this month, Game Club 199X tackles Gauntlet II.

10 comments:

  1. dorkly chair of the institute for space politicsJuly 12, 2012 at 11:46 PM

    To be a little fair to that Uni game I've heard that the Waterworld live show at Uni Orlando was actually kinda cool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, it's here on Youtube:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fg-mRvpk8M

      It actually does like kinda cool, like that Indiana Jones stunt show at Disney MGM.

      Delete
  2. Is Waterworld really unanimously disliked? I've heard from multiple sources that it's regarded as a joke.

    I actually legitimately liked the Waterworld film. It's a great fantasy adventure with some decent effects and set-pieces, and an awesome wacky premise that's totally impossible. Then again, I am rather fond of post-apocalyptic fiction.

    I'm not sure how much credibility this view takes away from my contrarian Operation Darkness article, but there you go.

    I'd probably put WW on my top 100 films list. :p

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's less about the quality of the film and more about its reputation as a huge box office flop. It's the sort of thing that I'd thought Universal would've wanted buried. Its equivalent this year is John Carter - generally known to be pretty alright, but failed horribly and was a huge embarrassment to Disney. I highly doubt you'd see a John Carter attraction at Disney World any time.

      Delete
  3. While I don't agree with Sketcz on everything, I approve wholeheartedly in there being a positive Operation Darkness article. It is a rather clever game with some fantastic depth, and solid voice acting. (And they pronounce the British "lieutenant" correctly as "leftenant".)

    So thanks Sketcz!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sketcz liking a game (and movie) that is widely panned, because he is so much better than the unwashed masses? Welp, colour me surprised.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because we all know that a work's quality is measured by the profits it makes. I bet you think Justin Bieber is some musical prodigy and that Transformers movies are masterpieces of filmmaking.

      Delete
  5. Where did I say I was better than anyone else? I only write these contrarian pieces in the hope of encouraging others to experience and enjoy games they would otherwise overlook because of criticism. I did it with the side-scrolling Zelda games, and I did it here.

    My motivations are entirely altruistic. If absolutely no one chooses to play the condemned games I write about, then there's absolutely no point in writing about them.

    This isn't an elitist point of view. I'm quite sincere when I say, that if I had magical moonbeams to change people's thoughts, I would shoot you all in the face with them, so you thought exactly like me and liked exactly what I like. I don't have moonbeams, but perhaps my articles will subvert the minds of at least a few.

    ReplyDelete
  6. no matter Sketcz's motivation, it was a wonderfully written piece that has opened my eyes to a game I would have overlooked otherwise. I'm adding Operation Darkness to my shopping list. So thanks, Sketcz!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Save/loading for RNG is a strategy. It might be a tedious strategy that heavily reduces the difficulty of a game, you might not like it, but that doesn't mean it's not strategy or a type of strategy. It's not trial and error, either. Trial and error is a normal part of most games where the player makes mistakes and learns more about the challenge at hand, then retries the challenge with more skill or knowledge. The player uses RNG reloading to get around difficulty or having to retry a challenge with more skill or more complex solutions.

    Btw check out my Op Darkness guide on gfaqs if you haven't already.. since you know a lot about the game you've probably read it already.

    ReplyDelete