BTTF2's a Lie!

Seriously! Where's our hoverboards? And not those segway wannabes that someone's trying to pawn off as the next new toy. The mere fact that you're riding around on wheels goes against the very definition of hover! Who's the fucking idiot that took the name for something that's clearly amazing and applied it to something that's clearly stupid and duped the shopping masses into buying this hazardous piece of crap!? Your idea's bad and you should feel bad.

And the way I see it, there's really anything else 2015 to talk about? Oh wait! Games! But, of course. How obvious. Not many games, but enough. Eighteen to be precise. Eh, it's enough to scrap together a top ten for good measure.

It feels like it's been a long year since it seems like eons since I checked off a few of the games on this list. Meanwhile, some of the more recent games failed to make an impression, or rather, made the wrong impression. There's been a good variety of games beaten this year including a personal heavy hitter, and likely my wildest trip into childhood nostalgia. Very few games, if any, will ever invoke the kind of nostalgia that Zork I did. The only games that may have the faintest glimmer of hope: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Smurf in Gargamel Castle, and the almighty River Raid. Except, I played a brief few minutes of Smurf in Gargamel Castle several years ago as well as running through a couple segments on River Raid so the excitement level will never compare to that of Zork I's when I realized it truly was the same game from so long ago. Sadly, for as much as it was a keynote experience this past year, it narrowly missed this year's list. Oh! Spoiler, for those keeping track.

How can that be, you may ask. But alas, as always, my list is an expression of many factors; most importantly, what game would I genuinely return to for some additional game time? For as much as Zork I amazed me as a general experience, the likelihood of powering it up again is slim to none. Perhaps in another 25 years.

What games did make the list then? Well, let's find out.

10. Tengami
-Ok, maybe the game has little to no replayability, it was far too easy, and ended prematurely, but the overall presentation and experience left me wanting more. Not just more in the game, but more Tengami in general. If a sequel ever came out, I'd be all over it.

9. Ecco the Dolphin
-If there was ever a game that epitomized a love/hate relationshp, it would surely be Ecco the Dolphin. There's so many reasons to throw my arms in disgust, but at the same time, so many reasons to marvel in the aquatic antics of that spry little dolphin.

8. 12 Labours of Hercules
-Proof that casual games can be a blast. I expected a meager amount of enjoyment, but instead I got a game I just couldn't put down until I managed Gold across the board.

7. Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious
-There's no reason for this game to exist as a standalone, however, considering I don't own Forza Horizon 2, I did thoroughly enjoy the arcade-like antics that only the Horizon series can deliver for the few brief hours it took me to finish this.

6. Eighth Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest
-I've gradually lost interest in ROM hacks, namely SMW hacks over the years, however, compilation hacks have always managed to pique my interest as a wide variety of approach and experimentation blossoms within. These VLDCs certainly do not disappoint.

5. Me & My Katamari
-It may have lost some of its luster compared to the original, or even the sequel, but at the same time, it's a Katamari game. As long as the basic principle hasn't changed, I know I'm going to have a blast playing through them.

4. Abobo's Big Adventure
-And here I always thought I Wanna Be The Guy was a fantastic mashup. Abobo's Big Adventure clearly defines what a video game mash up should be. Everything else likened to the genre has mighty big shoes to fill - Abobo's shoes.

3. Mega Man 3
-Long been my favorite among the original NES Mega Man games, and for that matter, all Mega Man games, the Doc Robot stages have always been the standout feature. Many games have tried stage remixes over the years, but I've always believed this is the only game to get it right.

2. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
-I'm not sure what I expected from this game, although it looked like a fun and interesting puzzle-like game. Captain Toad absolutely blew me away and I think it's one of the better games Nintendo has come out with in a loooong time (discounting obvious MK and SSB material).

1. Fallout 3
-For me, Fallout 3 is in the running for greatest game ever, which is something because over time I've lost interest in open world games and have generally never enjoyed FPS titles of any kind. Even with its bevy of bugs, crashes and general programming incompetence, everything in this game just managed to click perfectly. And I'm certain there's still an enormous amount of secrets I've managed to overlook throughout the Capital Wasteland.

FDS - Super Mario Bros. 2

Haiku-Review:

we'll change bricks to stone
and give most everything eyes-
voilà! a new game!

Additional Comments:

Traditions, traditions. Honestly, I didn't think I'd manage another Mario Christmas. But here we are!

My original intention was to run through Super Mario 64 this year, but due to various reasons, that never materialized. Reason number one being I have zero interest in playing that game. It just feels so alien whenever I play it. Mario game? What's a Mario game?

I thought of a couple other possible kooky titles to hit up, but in the end, I wanted to tackle a game that falls directly in the line of sight of a Mario platformer. Ooh! Wait! What about that one game that was an actual sequel according to Japanese Mario lore but was nothing but a mythical Nessie to the rest of the world? After all, I somehow skipped over it in order to play Yume Koujou: Doki Doki Panic...er, Super Mario Bros. 2. But...this is Super Mario Bros. 2. No. Wait...what? Could be worse. Could be Final Fantasy III...I mean VI...I mean... Wait. If it's VI, then where are the three unaccounted Final Fantasy games? Ah, Japan, you sneaky little devil you, keeping everything to yourself.

I played Super Mario Bros. 2 years ago as part of Super Mario All-Stars where it was cheekily dubbed, The Lost Levels. Nice save there, Nintendo. I remember very little of the experience except for the newly implemented wind feature being doubled up with some disgustingly stupid jumps and the overall increased difficulty compared to the first SMB. I think I quickly put that game down and returned to SMB3 - my personal favorite. The Lost Levels felt like a sour pang. It was so cool to see this "lost," to the Western world at least, Mario game, but at the same time, I was hugely disappointed. Not just because of the difficulty or the lack of noticeable improvement over the first game, but something just felt off. It felt lazy; unnecessary. Nothing grabbed my attention other than the mystique behind the game's existence itself. Then again, maybe it was just those god forsaken wind jumps.

This is the first time I've returned to this game since that experience. I've always wanted to return to give the game a proper chance, but I always knew in the back of my mind that the game would feel like nothing more than cutting room scraps. After completing it, my opinion on the matter barely deviates from my original thoughts. It feels like a lazily slapped together game shoveled out with the intent to make a few extra yen. In today's terms, it feels equivalent to some thoughtless DLC created to make a quick buck because everyone loves the base game so much, they'll buy any old horse shit that we decide to pack on. I know this is likely a controversial viewpoint on the matter and people likely think I'm just butthurt over the difficulty, but I'm not. I simply believe I played through a poorly designed game.

You don't have to venture far on the internet, or amongst gamers in general, to know that this game has acquired a reputation for being notoriously difficult compared to the first. But what makes it difficult? In the first game, the difficulty was progressive on a fairly linear scale. New enemies were introduced as well as more complex structural patterns and jumps in fairly forgiving ways. The sequel, however, appears to take the position that players of SMB2 will be players who have already conquered SMB, therefore there's no need to potty train them all over again. They're aware of everything we're going to throw at them so let's pick it up from right where we left off. This is a ridiculously stupid model. Granted, we're talking about the early days of platforming and few if any sequels existed. So it was all very much up in the air as far as how games were designed moving forward. Why reinvent the wheel all over again when we can just pick up where we left off?

The argument can be made that the game is simply introducing what sort of challenge to expect. Instead of starting at the ground floor, this game starts you on the tenth floor and gives you a royal kick in the arse saying, "Have at it (you foolish idiot)," as you go hurtling through challenges never before imagined over the course of the first few floors. Only, as the game progresses, the difficulty curve is all over the place, like a highly turbulent day on Wall Street. This alone pisses me off in regards to starting the game at such an extreme level compared to the original game. There's no sense of learning. Instead, there's often a sense of relaxation or stagnation, or simply, we ran out of ideas so enjoy this long stretch of flat land with very few enemies.

But what makes the game difficult is the poor design. Looking back on Super Mario Bros., the levels appear to be well made, as though there was purpose to every brick, every pit, every goomba etc. Here, it seems like the designers blindly slapped the levels together in the dark. So much of the game feels like a bad YouTube hack. No other official Mario release, at least that I can think of, carries such a comparison. It feels like there's no rhyme or reason to anything here. Instead, it's like someone had a handful of bricks, question blocks, platforms, enemies, etc. and nonchalantly splattered them across a giant canvas. Voilà, level 3-1, or 4-2, or 7-4, or what sort of level did we need? Underground? Ah yes. Just add a bunch of random pipes. That'll do. What? The piranha plant is dipping into the ground? Who cares?

A result of the slapdash design is incredibly dickish jumps. This mostly revolves around wind or the more infuriating, green springboard. More than anything else in the game, I abhor the green springboard sections. Unless I'm just flat out misunderstanding moon launch physics, Mario's return to earth is total guesswork. I died far too many times because I misjudged where Mario was going to drop from the top of the screen. Every time I expected him to be relatively center, he'd somehow drop on the far left. How is that happening? In an attempt to correct, I'd overcompensate and Mario would suddenly drop center screen. Far too many Marios lost their lives to these blasted devices. And it's such a shit way to die because I felt like I had no control over the situation. If I die because I fall in a pit while attempting a particularly tricky jump or run straight into a koopa because I mistimed something, I can totally accept that because the game got the better of me and I made a mistake - sometimes a stupid mistake. But to die over what's essentially a blind jump is pure bullshit. Frankly, it amazes me that a game that has zero vertical scrolling somehow managed to introduce blind jumps. That's brilliant minds at work right there.

Even the old staples of annoyance like fortress mazes make an unwelcome return. That was one aspect of the original I never liked and this game somehow made the concept just that much more frustrating. The first game at least had mazes that felt intuitive, but here, there were a couple maze that kept throwing me for a loop because there were a couple blocks I never would have guessed were part of the design. I think one of them I solved by sheer accident. Another maze, I'm not even sure what the intended method is, but if it's how I eventually solved it... *Facepalm* There's nothing more to be said. More incredulously, backwards warps were added. If the game couldn't troll you enough - backwards warps. Wow!

It's not all bad, however. There are some improvements over the first game that I enjoyed. As much as I hated the wind sections, I found the wind to be a very unexpected, and rather genius addition. Eventually, through the NSMB series, we came to see the wind gimmick being used with proper intelligence and we have SMB2 to thank for that. Additional types of moving platforms were a highly appreciated improvement. We even find the precursor to the platforms that move infinitely to the right in later games like SMB3. So yes, along with poison mushrooms (though I hesitate to call that a worthwhile improvement - it actually adds very little to the game in my opinion) or elongated fire bars, there's is a handful of new elements to help freshen up the gameplay so it's not a completely stale rehash of the first game. Unfortunately, most of the welcomed improvements are far outshined by everything that's wrong with this game.

I can't convince myself to recommend this game under any circumstances. I suppose if you like shitty SMB hacks, sure why not? But if you want to play a quality product, this is not it. Even if you simply like a good challenge, I can't recommend this game in good conscience. To me, it's a poorly made mockery of everything Super Mario Bros., and that's rather depressing because it's such a mythical game in the early days of the Super Mario franchise. People often say the game was never brought to the Western world because Westerners can't appreciate a good challenge like the Japanese gamers can. I've never understood that as we had a number of stupidly difficult game here in the Western world. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, The Adventures of Bayou Billy actually saw an increase in difficulty for its Western release in comparison to its Japanese counterpart, Mad City. In my opinion, the whole notion of Westerners hate a good challenge is nothing but a crock of shit. Yes, remarks have been made that NoA didn't wish to bring the game to the Western world precisely for the above reasons, but I call bullshit on that. I wholeheartedly believe this game never saw a Western release because its crap. I'm glad we got a hastily converted game about a family in a strange Arabian setting as opposed to this poor excuse at level design. What came to be "our" Super Mario Bros. 2 is a vastly superior game in the platforming and design departments. I wouldn't say it's a superior Mario game as I still don't find it Mario-esque at all and if there's anything the Japanese version is, it's undeniably a Mario game. But as far as everything else is concerned, the Yume Koujou: Doki Doki Panic ripoff that we got is a game of far greater caliber.

Nano-Rant:

I actually have two things to rant about - one short one long.

First, my true nano-rant: floating bloopers. This is yet another reason why I can only compare this game to juvenile YouTube hacks. It just screams unprofessional.

And now for my more serious complaint: Worlds A-D. I have nothing against Worlds A-D themselves, and rather enjoyed them a bit more compared to the rest of the game, except for the sections that were blatant copypastas of previous levels. My issue is with the hoops you need to jump through just to access them. Beat the game eight times? What a ridiculously arbitrary number and what an unbelievable way to pad out gameplay in hopes of replayability. World 9, on the other hand, has a totally sensible method of unlocking: beat the game without warps. That's completely fair. But beat the game eight times? What kind of third rate award tactics is this?

I hated the game on my first playthrough, so there's certainly no way I'm playing another seven times. Even if I loved the game, I'd likely play it two maybe three times through completion in a relatively reasonable time period (few months to a year?) at least to experience the full game with both Mario and Luigi. Additional playthroughs would be sporadic at best over the span of years because it still doesn't have the same exact type of replayability as say Mega Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3 where you can impose a number of challenges upon yourself to make things more interesting. Needless to say, there's no fucking way I'm ever going to play this game through to the end eight times, even if I just ran the minimalist route. A sensible solution would be to beat the game twice, once with Mario, once with Luigi. I could totally accept that since there are some slight differences in physics between the two brothers so the experience would be ever so slightly different across each playthrough. And then, ta-da! Bonus world!

As is, I'll use Game Genie, thank you very much.

Rating: 1.5 peace pavers out of 5

GEN - Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball

Haiku-Review:

Mr. the Hedgehog!
It was inevitable
to play some pinball

Additional Comments:

After the sheer disappointment that was Soldier Girl Amazon, I had to crank out something I knew I'd enjoy. Something I loved in the distant past that I've been itching to return to after all these years. Something carrying the name of excellence. Without wishing to venture into Sonic the Hedgehog 3 quite yet, Sonic Spinball sounds like the perfect candidate for the job. Besides, outside of a quick ten minute refresher a couple of years ago, I think it's been close to twenty years since I sat down with this beauty.

From the very beginning, Sonic screamed pinball as he rolled through loops at dizzying speeds and bounced recklessly about from bumper to bumper. And if these little prophetic mechanics weren't enough, whole stages echoed the magnificence of pinball within their 2D platform design such as Spring Yard or Casino Night. In fact, Casino Night Zone had pockets of pinball-esque areas where you could use a set of flipper to send Sonic bouncing about racking up points or hopefully dunk him in a roulette where he could score big. It felt a natural evolution to further Sonic's forays into pure pinball platforming, perhaps minus the platforming?

Sonic Spinball managed to fulfill that step to a T. Obviously, many liberties have been taken in regards to actual pinball chicanery with a good bit of platforming still present, though squashed to a extremely minimal amount. Still the walking and jumping mechanics are prevalent enough to remind you that Sonic Spinball isn't quite a full on pinball emulation. If anything, it's like the developers said what if we take the most action packed segments of Spring Yard or Casino Night and made a whole game out of them. Add a little extra pinball-esque pizzazz and that's essentially what's here.

At times, however, I wish the developer would have gone in a full pinball direction as the platforming mechanics are a little clunky. Compared to Sonic 2, they feel rough around the edges. The jumping, for instance, instills very little confidence. There's an odd directional delay that can hinder a jump's height. This is most noticeable in The Machine where there's a wall near the top of the stage on either side that you need to jump over. Because of the narrow opening, I always found myself jumping at a bad angle either preventing the jump altogether or retarding the height. Additionally, the walking and turning feels a bit spongier than in the various 16-bit Sonic games.

Then again, to strip the game of the minimal reminders of platforming could potentially alienate Sonic fans altogether. While erratic pinball behavior may be a brilliant step forward in the series, we still need  that simple memento to help us remember why we loved the series to begin with. Although, does it really matter in a spin-off? Probably not, but it certainly helped the case as I think despite the slightly cumbrous controls at times, the platforming adds a much welcomed uniqueness to the overall game that emphasizes the mesh between typical Sonic platforming and furious pinball action., bearing the pinball side of the tale is a bit more heavy handed.

Despite having only four stages, I remember this game holding my attention for days on end in my younger days. Really, I only ever played the first two stages, making it to the third on very rare occasion. Even now, I think four stages, while sounding minuscule in today's standards, is just enough playable material. Any more and I believe the game would begin to lose its charm. My main reason for believing this is with the increasing complexity over each stage, it eventually plays to the detriment of the game. I personally find that the game peaks with the third stage. While the fourth stage, Showdown, is still fun and interesting, I think the sheer size and labyrinthine design steps away from the allure of the first three. Maybe it's just the final boss that reminded me of how arduous a task it is to traverse that particular stage. Even the ridiculous, and surprisingly mandatory, cluck bounces in Lava Powerhouse don't curtail that stage from needless convolution. Lava Powerhouse, as a whole, is still packed tightly enough that you never feel overwhelmed, disoriented, or annoyed with having to repeat the same sections over and over again because you accidentally slipped into one of the previous areas. As much as I hated Mario Pinball Land, that is something that game did right. Even if I fell from an upper board to a lower board, it never felt like a chore to regain ground. And in a game where luck plays just as much of a hand as skill, that's a tough pill to swallow.

Fulfilling the definition of chore or not, I cannot deny the ingenuity behind these stages - The Machine especially. Though it bordered on being too complex for its own good, The Machine was an interesting mishmash of ideas and of the four stages, felt most reminiscent of something that could potentially appear in a traditional Sonic platformer. Parts of it made me think of Scrap Brain, Star Light, or even Death Egg. And while Toxic Caves and Lava Powerhouse teeter on that line, Showdown felt a little too foreign. Yes, I can find similarities here and there - there's no denying it's Sonic in its roots - but I think again it became a case of too complex for its own good to the point it begins to lose the identity shared by the rest of the game. Maybe the stage just annoyed me that much without realizing it and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

The good news, however, is there's nothing else I can pick apart. From here on out it's nothing but unicorns and rainbows. Sonic Spinball is a brilliantly fun game. You just need to realize you're getting Sonic's brand of pinball and not true pinball. But you know what? I love 'em both. In my book, Sonic's unique take on pinball is just as enjoyable as the real thing. Besides, one thing the real deal doesn't have is wildly bizarre takes on Dr. Robotnik for some truly intriguing bosses. Robo-Scorpion has always been one of my personal favorites, and Robo-Boiler? What's not to love about that freakishly insane machine filled with four of Dr. Robotnik's disembodied heads spewing pools of liquid hot magma?

Another thing the real deal lacks is some seriously awesome 16-bit pure Sega crunch. I've gone on the record numerous time declaring my love for the sound engine used by the Genesis, and sure as beans, Sonic Spinball plays up my opinion with more of that beautifully jarring growls that we come to expect. Although short, Theme is a classic, but for some of that raw Sega sound, tunes like Toxic Caves or Boss are definite recommended listens.

Nano-Rant:

Ok, I have one last sour note to end on. After playing through normal speed, I began playing the game on the fast setting. I made it as far as Robo-Boiler and the game came to a crashing halt. For some inexplicable reason, Robo-Boiler lacked any sort of collision which meant I couldn't harm him which meant I couldn't proceed any further in the game. By this point, I was a littler worse for wear as it felt like I had played the game straight for hours, not to mention Showdown along with the final boss began grating at my nerves on my previous playthrough. I had no real particular interest in restarting, at least not at the time.

I looked around on the net to see if this was a known glitch, or at least one that's been reported but extremely rare. Unfortunately, I found nothing on the subject. This disheartened me even more. Frustrated with how the game came to an end, lack of confirmation that this has ever happened to anyone else, and the knowledge that speedruns of Sonic Spinball use the fast setting (obviously), I had to make a second attempt just for the sake of peace of mind. After another attempt, all I can say is that it appears to be a fluke. Just unfortunate that that fluke happened to be a pretty game breaking bug when it occurred.

Nano-Win:

Scratch that! I can't end such a great game on the down and out.  I do have an additional testament of joy to add. For all the years I've owned this game and for as much as I played it years ago, I never knew there were additional bonus stages (stage, singular, really) for collecting all the rings. It just blew my mind that not once did I ever manage to collect all the rings on at least Toxic Caves. There's not that many and they're all pretty damn easy to obtain so....

Rating: 4 mad doctors demanding you smell their socks out of 5

ARC - Soldier Girl Amazon

Haiku-Review:

in the face of war:
blonde on a motorcycle
seeks male idiots

Additional Comments:

I've been so caught up in a few specific games for what seems like months with no foreseen end in sight - games like Fallout: New Vegas, Mad Max, and the surprisingly fun yet not so surprisingly addictive, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, along with several other noteworthy titles that I'll cheekily fail to mention at this time. However, with the year coming to a close, I felt like tackling something different, something lacking complexity, and hopefully, something quick. Arcade games usually fit the bill as their purpose has always been to traverse a world filled with incredible challenge from point A to point B on a perfectly linear path. Beyond that, the game heralds little to no depth. After all, who wants to feed a machine twenty bucks in quarters just to read an hour and a half worth of eye-rolling context? Certainly not I. Though I must be grateful that those quarters are only theoretical thanks to emulation. Still, no need for time wasting plot lines mucking up an exquisite action shooter. A blonde, a bike, and a mission to.... A mission to what? Maybe just a smidge of story? No? Ok....

Soldier Girl Amazon is a typical top down shooter in the sense that you're shooting the crap out of some fantastic other-worldly lifeforms while they retaliate with their own barrage of machine gun candor. Yet, the game doesn't exactly feel like a typical shooter. It's more akin to the slightly misguided genre rebels, Jackal or The Lost Castle in Darkmist. Maybe it's because instead of the usual aerial machinery, you play as a bodacious babe out to kick some ass, all the while struttin' her stuff - at least until you hijack a futuristic motorcycle, that is until you lose it exactly three tenths of a second later. Perhaps, but at least she has a gun, so the feel of an aerial shooter isn't far removed. Or perhaps it's that awkward scrolling that I've seen before.

Much like Jackal, Soldier Girl Amazon places scrolling within the player's hands making use of a unidirectional manual scroll. When it comes to top down shooters, or any shooter for that matter, I've never been a fan of manual scroll. Unlike any other genre where auto-scrolling typically introduces a faux brand of difficulty, I find this to be the case for manual scrolling in shooters. Maybe it's the unnatural flow to the levels since you usually have to remain in constant motion. Unforeseen pitfalls always seem to prevail during manual scroll, especially when large obstructions may come into play. One such incident nearly occurred here where I thought I backed myself into an inescapable corner. True, the same could happen with autoscroll, but at least you'll be crushed to death by the invisible barrier within a few short seconds as opposed to spending an eternity in a tiny hollow.

Scrolling, however, may be of personal taste and isn't the true detriment of the game. Controls and difficulty easily win those honors. The controls are solid for what they are; unfortunately, they're far too clumsy for this particular title. Maybe if the difficulty wasn't turned up to eleven, I could overlook the lack of rapid fire or the use of a single stick handling all of the aiming routines. Except the severe difficulty only makes the frustration with the controls all the more noticeable.

How developers choose to ignore a rapid fire button in these kind of games is beyond me. Sure, I love hammering my thumb on the fire button incessantly for an hour or two without break. Ok, if I was on an actual cabinet, I'd be slamming my palm or tapping my finger on the fire button - not as aggravating a chore as thumb Olympics. Still. But what's more infuriating is the aiming physics. You shoot in the direction you face. In theory, it makes sense, and in a number of shooters, it works perfectly. However, when every enemy has the ability to home in on you and enemy fire appears to travel at a rate equal or greater than your walking speed, it needlessly complicates play technique. If anything, it forces you to go on the defensive more often than necessary because you consistently find yourself boxed in, preventing you from aiming at your enemy lest you walk headlong into their wrath. It's bullshit and nowhere was this more of an issue than the first boss, or rather after defeating the first boss and having to then kill off four of the most annoying enemies I think I've ever come across in any video game. First off, let's think about what I just said. The largest problem area is with the very first boss in the game. That's not a good sign for things to come. Level 1 - fuck it, we're done. Secondly, why do these little adjunct shitheads even exist? I killed the boss and rescued the first of many mysterious men (actually, I didn't, but more on that later). And why are they harder to kill than the boss itself? Can I only harm them by firing into their open mouth? I don't get how these little yellow fuckers function. Let's just move on to the next level already! Oh, it's just more of the same uninspired background and freak-show inhabitants as it is ten levels down the line.

Thing is, those now affectionately labelled "little yellow fuckers" are the sole reason why I hate the way the controls work in this game. After a short time of fumbling around trying to figure out how to kill them, they suddenly began to frenzy, rattling off quick-fire spurts of deadly energy so fast that I had no time to reciprocate my due hatred. All I could do was run circles around them; the slightest hesitation instantly killing me. How the hell am I supposed to aim any sort of return volley when I can't even pause for a nanosecond? If I had the ability to aim with a second stick, the game would actually be playable, but as is...forget it. Oh, I have a few bombs - maybe, if I didn't waste them yet - but they're next to useless.

Somehow, I bullied my way to the boss of the second level where I finally declared the game worthless trash given the insane difficulty. Thing is, there are games out there with insane difficulty that are genuinely fun to play. Any of the Touhous, or hell, most bullet hells in general come to mind. Yes, they're frustrating, but they're playable and have a certain Zen quality to them as you try to carefully work your way through a myriad of beautiful fractal patterns of death. Soldier Girl Amazon, on the other hand, is just amateurish design building proposed challenge with slapdash varieties of mutants with no real ounce of thought to placement. In fact, to create increasingly difficult levels, the game just creates more varied mobs with overall increased numbers. Why not? A group of gigantic bees wasn't enough to aggravate me; let's add some floral mouths, scurrying androids, and most surprising of the bunch, some human soldiers to the mix. The bullets will fly! And to top it all off, make sure the player suffers one-hit kills and we'll send him packing when he dies.

Honestly, it doesn't matter. If you can survive one level, you've essentially survived the game. In many respects, Soldier Girl Amazon reminds me of Exed Exes - in overall style at least. Difficulty, not so much as Exed Exes essentially had an infinite lives mechanic built in. But most everything else, it reeked of the same level of ineptitude. There's really only one level and you just repeat it over and over and over again. There'll be some additional enemies to heighten the action and a couple of new bosses, but there's really no point in venturing forth. There appears to be a rescue scenario at work, except it seems to be perpetual. Soldier Girl Amazon's work is never done, and as such, the game appears to be endless. Granted, an 80s arcade game, endless is appropriate. There's no reason to whinge over that, however, an endless game that's comprised of the same goddamn level over and over...what's the point? High Score? Yea, that is the point of most arcade games, so consider me eggfaced. Except, Soldier Girl Amazon doesn't seem like the game that would rely on such a petty design, and that's what bothers me about it. There could be additional backgrounds or enemies. Why manufacture a couple extra bosses only to recycle everything else? It makes no sense. It's nothing more than a grand illusion to trick idiot kids out of their middling funds injecting the idea that the game is filled with a vast selection of levels.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I can't attest to Soldier Girl Amazon being truly endless, but I'm 99.9% sure it is. After failing miserably at the boss on the second level, I succumbed to extreme measures to further investigate this game. Some people may find cheats immoral in the face of gaming, and most would likely express the use of cheating strips one of the right to call themselves a proper gamer. I could care less. Perhaps I should feel some guilt, but every once in a while a game comes along that's squarely giving you the finger right to your face. Soldier Girl Amazon is one such game and I don't feel a shred of guilt performing any sort of cheats. Frankly, the game doesn't deserve the time of day to play it legit. Thanks to cheats, I suffered through 20-something levels of repetitive tedium and rescued another 20-something jackoffs from the forces of who-the-fuck-cares. While I experienced ever increasing mobs throughout the levels, nothing else ever changed. I figure a simple equation was put in place to create the increasingly difficult mobs. Otherwise, why put in the effort to make several dozen levels only to change so little, if anything? Eventually, after 20-something levels, the game crashed on me mid-level. My first suspicion was something overflowed and began to eat into some additional data - the score perhaps? The way the crash occurred, it sounded reasonable except the Dec->Hex didn't exactly play ball with my hypothesis. Whatever. I consider it a fitting end to a shitty game.

Nano-Rant:

Is there even a point to having a nano-rant? Pretty much this entire post has been nothing but one giant rant. So what shitty thing can possibly top all the other bullshit? You can completely fail what I can only assume is your mission objective. Granted, it doesn't affect the game in any physical sense, but the sheer fact that it can happen and how it happens is just the icing on the cake.

When the game initially starts, nine futuristic soldiers run off into the distance to fight the good fight. Your mission, so I assume, is to rescue all these asshats as they somehow got themselves imprisoned immediately - quite possibly as soon as they negotiated the upper thresholds of the TV screen. Once you defeat a boss, a single captive is released. However, you have roughly two seconds to move Soldier Girl Amazon on top of the rescued prisoner before he decides to run off into the wilderness. Either he's an ungrateful fuck or duty calls. If this happens, you fail to rescue him. At first, I figured once the captive is shown on screen, everything's right in the world. Intuitive game mechanics for the win - yea. This isn't that big of a deal on the latter bosses, but on the first boss, thanks to those little yellow fuckers, you can't exactly focus on collecting the prisoner.

In the grand scheme of things, none of this matters since there's no ending and no real objective. They're just score fodder - 5000 points a pop. So honestly, there's no point in getting my panties in a wad over a device that is only there to further the overarching premise of a high score mechanic. I'll give it that, but it's little things like that that act as a reminder that Soldier Girl Amazon tried its best to be an actual game with actual substance but rather stick it's big ugly toe in the ocean instead of taking a plunge while giving the impression of the latter.

It's a pointless game. I can't even enjoy it for the simplicity of high score functionality. If that's what I'm looking for, I'll turn to Pac-Man or Fast Food or other such games that pander to the high score arcade phenomena. Soldier Girl Amazon, on the other hand, is nothing but a misleading Two Face.

It's been a while since I've had a game piss me off to such a degree. I suppose it was time for one such nightmare to come along. So much for hoping something from my arcade library would be a quick, enjoyable diversion from my working stock.

Rating: 0.5 wasted powerups out of 5*

*Yet another comparison to Exed Exes - powerups that you pretty much lose immediately because the game exists in a one-hit universe against the player's favor. Yet treasure boxes take a half dozen bullets to break apart. What the fuck is that about!?

SNES - HyperZone

Haiku-Review:

flying in circles
is the only way to fly-
no, seriously...

Additional Comments:

Hot off the tail of a couple quick games just days after contemplating the future of both Beat All Games and my will to put genuine effort into the project at large, I've downed yet another title. All my words are lies! (If it weren't for the fact it's taken nearly two months to post this.)

Truth be told, I have an ever increasing list of half finished games that I'm consistently losing interest in which has effectively snowballed into my lackluster finishing ratio and growing gaming malaise. Meanwhile, games that I've been itching to play sit idly by. There's reasons why I keep adhering to a list of games I have little to no interest in; why games I want to play do nothing more than collect dust. Main reason is knowing what the hell is going on. Both Shenmue and Fable are great examples: games that fell off my radar for a year or two and when I finally came back to either of them I had absolutely no idea what was going on anymore and in both instances had to restart from the very beginning. Certain games, knowing what I had to go through to get where I was, I'm not exactly keen on the idea. C'est la vie.

But then comes a time when it's time to move on. Play something fun, something exciting - hopefully - something that I've had my eye on for a while. There's a few games on my shelf that fall in that category and HyperZone happened to be one of them. I've only ever known about HyperZone by picture for years and years, but the screenshots I've seen captivated me with its F-Zero facsimile art direction and strange vertically mirrored backgrounds. However, I've never been completely certain of the game's direction. Because it copied F-Zero graphically, I expected it to be another arcade racer set in the far future, though I was aware of the game possessing some sort of shooting element. F-Zero with missiles! Seems a natural evolution of the genre given the setting. Alas, that's not exactly what HyperZone turned out to be.

HyperZone is an odd take on the forward shooter. I've seen numerous comparison across the web to Star Fox, but I find that while the viewpoint is similar, it's nothing like Star Fox. For one, Star Fox has a far greater sense of freedom even if you're still within a controlled environment. A better comparison, based on titles I've played at least, would be Star Strike for the Intellivision. The claustrophobia of being contained with a tight space is far more recognizable and constricting on the craft. There's a sense that you're not only battling an army of geometric peculiarities but also the boundaries of the stage itself. The F-Zero track boundaries, however, are merely a gentle reminder that you're about to drift off into oblivion - or at least ship-damaging conditions - as opposed to the force field like border from whence they originate. Despite feeling constricted, this at least allows leeway; risking damage for a little extra room if the situation is dire enough. It also allows the ship to "jump" from one track to another when the main route begins to splinter into smaller fragments. But in some ways, I prefer F-Zero's approach even if it would only further the feeling of general constraint. As is, I find it counter-intuitive to use a track system to begin with. Let us use the freedom of space at the risk of removing the one key element that sets this game apart from most shooters or let the track define exactly where the ship can be piloted. Of course, being able to move on a Z axis further complicates the mess.

Whatever the best approach may or may not be, as is, I find it has far more influence on the gameplay than it probably should. Maybe that's the point, but in Star Fox, for example as it's often cited as the closest comparison, I never had any fear of approaching the edge of the playable area or generally making use of the entire field. Even in Star Strike I have no fear of where I can and can't place my ship thus allowing the enemies and their weapons dictating where I should point the controls. Then again, it doesn't even matter since the entirety of HyperZone can be played by constantly circling your ship around the playing field. I don't know if I find this embarrassing on Hal's behalf or outright depressing. As a whole, this detracts from the gameplay more than anything.

It seems everything is equipped with an aiming routine which really kills the gameplay. Because of this, you just need to make sure the ship is constantly moving. Nothing ever takes on the role of an obstacle. Sure there's Board Bs and Board Rs floating around in rigid formation pretending to be an impenetrable wall, but they're easily defeated. That's not to say that all the enemies are merely static drones. There's plenty of movement on all three axes by a variety of enemies, only pretty much everything can be casually avoided as long as you stick to your endless revolutions as you barrel down the course.

The bosses proved far more tedious than difficult. In fact, I'd hesitate to call them difficult at all. Akin to a Mario game, the stages themselves proved to be much harder than each of their respective guardians. I'm of the belief where if a stage or level can stand on it's own merit, a boss may not be necessary, especially if the boss adds nothing and/or feels like a step backwards after all the hardships leading up to it. There seems to be a school of thought that bosses must exist because...well, bosses. At the same time, that doesn't mean bosses have to be these horribly difficult monstrosities that need to outplay it's stage. They just don't need to be banal chores that can possibly outplay the stage in regards to time. Some of these bosses did exactly that. Now maybe I just used glaringly incorrect strats on some of them, and that's highly possible, but on a blind playthrough, I don't think my strats were any more obscene than anyone one else's who would attempt the same. Even on my New Game+ run (which was a ridiculous waste of time), I still found a number of the bosses boring to tackle. And to make matters worse, the final stage is the unequivocal boss gauntlet. Sigh. Outside of the Mega Man series, I have yet to experience a boss gauntlet that actually adds something to a game.

The worst offense in HyperZone though was the aforementioned final stage, and not because it was a boss gauntlet, but because the entire stage is a black track on a black background. That's fucking genius. Now, after watching some footage of the game on YouTube since I played this myself, I'll admit that perhaps my brightness settings were a bit on the dark side on my TV. It's still pretty rough in the video, but I can at least see the track. When I played the game, I was completely in the dark - flying blind, if you will. I never thought to adjust the brightness because it just seemed appropriate given the variety of other shortcomings the game suffers from, not to mention, it isn't that far of a cry from any other number of dick moves made by various other 8bit/16bit developers. A gauntlet of bosses with zero inkling of where the track breaks off into a nebulous oblivion? Sure, why not?

But it's not all bad. It's just unfortunate that all those "not bad" parts have very little to do with actual gameplay, i.e. graphics and music. I love the backgrounds in this game: bright, flashy, neo-futurist canvases of wonder. Add in the mirrored effect and it really does carry the sense of wonder and wild imagination. The backgrounds give a sense of locales never before explored in other games, even if Blast Furnace is remarkably similar to Fire Field. Material Factory, on the other hand, is final frontier territory. What the hell is this? Lest I fell into an acid nightmare on the dance floor of Studio 54.

The highlight of HyperZone is by far and away, the music. From the chilling Hal opening to the epic sounding stage themes, HyperZone may easily have one of the top regarded soundtracks on the SNES. Certainly not the best, but a fantastic, at times funky, and rather unknown breakaway from the typical highly praised fare that charts most listeners' lists. Few standouts include Old Capital, Ripple Field, and Credits.

Sadly, HyperZone is not a game I'd recommend. It's unfortunate as I was really looking forward to it for so many years. Maybe if I had originally played it as a kid all those years ago when I first saw a few snapshots of its strange and futuristic worlds, seemingly presented as an F-Zero clone, I might have enjoyed it. Maybe it was the mystique that the imagery built up in my head. As I said, who wouldn't want more F-Zero style racing? Was I lied to? Not necessarily, but I did feel slightly cheated. HyperZone is a game I really wanted to enjoy, even despite the few bad reviews I read going into the game. Typically, my opinion differs wildly from the norm so I shrugged off what I read as blithering nonsense. For once, maybe I should have listened.

Nano-Rant:

Something I will never understand is the idea of New Game+. People seem to love the idea. I was first introduced to the idea though Chrono Trigger years and years ago, if memory serves. Didn't care for the idea then and still don't now. I find it self defeating - the sense of playing as an overpowered egomaniac. B games, on the other hand, seem appropriate such as those found in Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda - essentially a second quest that is much harder. Maybe I've just always read too much between the lines when it comes to New Game+.

Point in case, New Game+ for HyperZone is utterly pointless. Honestly, I feel stupid even calling it as such. You're just replaying the game with the final ship. Eh, I guess it fits the definition, but still, feels like a complete waste of time in my book. Oh well.

Rating: 2 lazily named enemies out of 5*

*Or are they just lazily drawn?

Flash - Anika's Odyssey: Land of the Taniwha

Haiku-Review:

girl's wild journey
to fetch a pail of water
(also, Mr. Bun!)

Additional Comments:

Finding a good Flash game can prove to be a difficult task. Sure, you can be guided along by sticking to sites like Newgrounds or Kongregate and adhering to their best of the best as promoted by the general user base. Except, like most of my video gaming ventures, I want to find an interesting title because I find it interesting; not because it's top rated. There's times when I'm specifically looking for a top rated game, and this isn't just for Flash games, but games in general, as I'm intrigued to see what the latest craze is. That's how I originally came across stuff like VVVVVV, the Touhou series, and even Abobo's Big Adventure. But most of the time, I want to see what sort of rarefied gems I can find lost in the forgotten trough of gaming. And unlike professional games, there is a metric ton of Flash games hidden away in the bowels of mediocrity. The problem? About 99% of them are lost in the digital ether with good cause.

On my latest quest to dig up a quirky little specimen from the forgotten unknown, I came across Anika's Odyssey. Since it was the first game out of a dozen or so randomized picks that looked and sounded mildly interesting, I decided to try it out. Plus it was point and click, a genre that I feel works in the Flash realm just as easily as any other medium, or at least should in theory. Unfortunately, I find myself at a loss of words. Anika's Odyssey is one of those games that just sort of happened. It wasn't exactly a waste of my time, yet it failed to enrich my continual gaming repertoire with good reason. It left me straight-faced; neither dejected nor elated. An odd balance of good and bad manages to let the game rest in a perpetual limbo of inquest - attempting to uncover the root of gaming deliberation on behalf of a young girl's journey after her stuffed toy. Is it really a game when the choices made by the end user have literally zero impact on the overall outcome?

The same argument can be made for the entire visual novel genre, except highly regarded visual novels are ripe with choice allowing the player to experience a wealth of tangential story lines. Same can be said for any point and click or hidden object game, except most of these games promote exploration and experimentation. Outside of the vine "puzzle," Anika's Odyssey fails in that department. In many respects, Anika's Odyssey reminds me of elements of Tengami - elementary, almost primitive game design where the player is lead by a leash in an extremely focused direction. I remember how heavily I harped on Myst's lack of gameplay, but looking back, I find myself sorely mistaken. If anything, Myst should be an entry level model for the point and click genre. Anything less feels futile and plays...well, barely plays at all.

The problem with Anika's Odyssey is how straightforward the game plays. As the screen moves, you're really only offered a single clickable element at any one time and that element is glaringly obvious. Though, I'll admit, the steam machine tripped me up for a couple minutes only because breaking a machine to make it work defies logic. Didn't I break the cloud machine in Paper Mario to purposefully make it malfunction so the sun can shine again? Why would I use the very same technique to make a machine sputter back to life? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the preeminence of cogs and wheels. Still, despite this hiccup, the answer wasn't that hidden when you realize the entirety of your surroundings more or less direct you to the machine for the answer. That is, unless after scratching what I assume may be the embodiment of Māui (or so I'd like to believe, but may actually be a more amicable representation of a Mohoao, what I imagine to be the Woses of Maori mythology) enough times, he might just carry you up the mountain. Alas, that is not the case. He's just appreciative of a comforting back rub.

It's unfortunate the game suffers from such a lack of genuine gameplay because the scenery is fucking gorgeous. But looking at the outlandish landscape dreamt up from the fantastic mythology of New Zealand, I can't help but feel the aesthetics may be one of the leading factors to the game's weak play. It becomes a question if too much effort was put into creating a living, breathing piece of artwork as opposed to a magnificent background that is both beautiful and functional - at least far more functional than it is. As is, the amount of clickable objects seems to be subject to the artwork in a way that game design feels more like an afterthought, i.e. make the game work around the architecture. It reminds me of how I perceived much of Ocarina of Time's basic composition compared to other Zelda games in that the puzzle elements had to be shoehorned into an already developed landscape. Any hope of flummoxing the player is vastly reduced since slapdash puzzles typically fail to uphold serious effort on the player's part.

Maybe I'm just overthinking Anika's Odyssey. Perhaps the game is meant to be nothing more than an entry level attempt at the point and click genre, but even then I feel robbed of what I believe could have been a marvelous game. It's possible the game's length may be partly to blame, but I don't think that's the case. Going in, I expected a shortened experience only because it was a Flash game, and I safely made a prediction based on Hood Episode 1's length. Perhaps it's the rather barren story, except I find the story works for the product. It can be considered a little goofy or outright preposterous at points - wings? Really? But it fits the overall style; sort of has that innocent Aesop quality to it. Like the Tortoise and the Hare, here we have Anika and the Falcon - though I'm sure it's meant to be a representation of one of the mighty tapu who's come to steal Anika's Mr. Bun.

The sound, the looks, the story - everything else falls into place like a perfect little puzzle. Unfortunately, the most important element: gameplay, failed to round out the equation and I find it a tragedy as I think Anika's Odyssey could have been a fantastic, if quaint little point and click game. It managed to conjure some incredible wonder but sadly turned the journey through a scant slice of Aotearoa into an act of embarrassing stumbles ending with an elaborate score of egg on the face. Sorry, Anika. Next time, just leave Mr. Bun inside when you're sent to fetch a pail of water.

Rating: 2 stone-rolling goats out of 5

PC - 12 Labours of Hercules

Haiku-Review:

curious, the tasks
you can complete with these tools:
gouda, gold, and logs

Additional Comments:

To reflect on a myriad of Herculean tasks, first I must reflect on that of which I've stubbornly opposed for so many years. That which would prove to be my portal to a number of games I salivated over as I watched various Let's Plays or general reviews on YouTube, yet remained as games that would stay out of my reach as long as I stood my ground on the premise of spite and pure bullheadedness for my loathing of digital downloads, DRM, and a vast assortment of bullshit that has unfortunately become the norm in the realm of gaming these days. It's time to admit my long enduring personal battle is for naught; that times have changed, and I can either get with the program or resort solely to nightly YouTube viewings as my only means to experience some of these gaming wonders. Crap. You win, Steam.

Most people, nay, everyone would likely call me an idiot for purposefully giving Steam the cold shoulder for so many years. That's fine. Frankly, I don't care. But I also don't care for the idea of leasing; be it games, music, books, whatever. I've long been an opponent of everything existing in the digital realm, plain and simple. However, slowly accepting the inevitable, the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One have helped guide me towards this abomination to material goods. Ok, maybe Steam has suddenly opened up a truly impressive library of games for me, and that's fantastic, but I still despise the medium with all the hatred my black, twisted, little heart can muster.

Eh, if I'm still so livid over the whole concept, why'd I finally concede? Two reasons. The first is a marvelous little city builder called City: Skylines. This game blew my mind when I chanced across it on YouTube. Immediately, I sought it out and fell downtrodden after learning that you could only get it via Steam (although days later I learned it would be coming to Xbox One in 2016). Still, this was the first game I had come across that put enough of a fire in my belly to finally stand down and accept all the wonderful bliss that Steam has to offer, even if it goads my principles with its digital BS. The second reason, which coincidentally occurred just a few short days after discovering Cities: Skylines, I came to possess a free Steam gift card. It's as if a shining beacon lay before me, cajoling me with all the tools necessary to venture forth. Yet at the same time, it simply said to quit my bitching and accept this window into a wonderful realm of gaming. Fuck it.

So how do I find myself here? The game was ninety-something cents, and quickly viewing a clip over on YouTube proved convincing enough that the game's well worth the tiny price...I hope. The 12 Labours of Hercules is a simple time management game that plays either as a casual time waster or as a brutal test in multitasking depending on the mode. To be honest, I've never played a time management game, at least that I'm aware of as I assume they all more or less play out exactly the same. Had the genre been described to me in full detail beforehand, I'd likely pass on the game. It sounds boring, and in many respects, it is. However, a funny thing happened. I found myself completely wrapped up in the game within just a few short levels. I'm not sure why as there is very little to the game. It's equivalent to a mobile game, which isn't surprising since it eventually found its way onto iOS and Android devices. Essentially, it's something to pass the time.

There's something to be said for games that act as tools to pass the time though. There's obviously some element of enjoyment stuffed in there, otherwise even boredom itself would prove gangbusters in the face of this stuff. Perhaps they're simple at their core, but often enough, simplicity can prove to be a wonderful direction in gaming. A number of my favorite games rely on some of the most rudimentary mechanics. VVVVVV and Katamari Damacy are two prime examples. At the heart of it all, there's really nothing to either of those games, yet what the developers manage to concoct with such an elementary premise is nothing short of magnificent. In a way, 12 Labours of Hercules is in a very similar boat. I wouldn't call the game magnificent, but it is a joy to play, and kept my attention long enough to try and get three gold stars on every single level in Expert mode. Hell, it convinced me to download the sequel, and unless the developer just completely missed the mark, I foresee the third title to follow suit. Very few games make me want to rush into the sequels, and I believe it takes a special amount of wonder, joy, and excitement to manage such a feat. Surprisingly, 12 Labours of Hercules did just that.

I have to admit, the game screams of mobile relations. The overly lavish yet lighthearted cartoon graphics had me on the fence. I typically shy away from games dressed up in this particular graphical style - a style that feels too contemporary, but not exactly cutting edge. It's a style that feels like a safe middle ground used specifically to attract the casual crowd. Usually, I consider that a red flag; at least in regards to those games I have a genuine interest in. But then, as I amble tenderly through my workload clearing debris, collecting cheese, and chopping down trees, I find the graphics to be the perfect choice. The game is so happy-go-lucky at heart, so it's only appropriate to present it as such. Otherwise, how else would we still find Hercules endearing despite wasting his days sleeping in a hammock while a subdued Cerberus, Medusa, Pegasus, and a bevy of slaves do all the dirty work. I'm sorry, servants, but we know what they really are. Or dare we suggest such a lighthearted game depict an eromenos (i.e. boy lover)? How foul of me to suggest such a thing. Servant it is then. Nevertheless, it's ok, great hero. We'll call for you when we need a giant boulder lifted, or.... What the hell else did that lazy bastard do? But we can't truly be mad at Hercules. Look how adorable he looks catching Zs, perhaps dreaming about how he's been miraculously sucked into a twisted time flux where he's somehow performing his dozen famous labors before the need ever arose out of penance for Megara's murder at his hands.

Wait. If Megara's still alive, then... What the hell is going on here? Who am I kidding? With such a playful tone running rampant throughout the game, should I have ever expected the game to be faithful to the events as commonly told in Greek Mythology? That would be equivalent to accepting any number of Disney movies as canon. Sure, the wondrous retelling of Pocahontas is entirely authentic in that made for family, Disney sort of way. As is the case here. There's no need to be gruesome and demoralizing. Megara was simply kidnapped.

In truth, I'm only snide and sarcastic because I can be. There's no real need to pick apart the story, or poke holes in the obvious mythological faux pas. But at the same time, the casual nature and retelling of Hercules' mighty deeds is ripe for ridicule only because there's nothing else to complain about. The sum components come together to make a brilliant game that proves highly addictive. And what I found to be the icing on the cake is the difficulty. Whether you play on Casual or Expert, the difficulty grade is perfect. Casual is clearly manageable but still tight enough on time to at least keep a relative sense of impetus whereas Expert really piles on the anxiety as you constantly eye the timer trying to best lay your strategy along the deteriorating Greek roads. Run, you stupid fools, run! For such a simple game, the tension is real, yet incredibly exhilarating.

Expert mode especially grabbed me because that's where the game comes into its own. The amount of laborious permutations is enough to make your head spin and the final world can really rattle your nerves as you try and figure out the best course of action. Several levels griefed the hell out of me as I worked toward the triple stars. Questioning and constantly second-guessing the workload proved to be a test in insanity as I often found myself repeating the same pattern yet for some reason, expecting different results. It's as if I wanted to prove the game wrong. I just know the workshop and farm need to be built before the store. My stubbornness got the best of me and I found myself repeating levels far too many times. Like an idiot, I somehow believed Expert could be played similarly to Casual as far as strategy was concerned. At least I realized the importance of the Horn of Plenty, though I still jumped at the opportunity for a bonus worker even when it was clear as day that a bonus worker was the worst possible option to strive for. Ah well. Through our mistakes we learn. Even if we make a few dozen of the same exact mistakes. Eventually...we'll learn.

Another element that added just enough variety to the game was the final stage, known as mini-games, in each area. Essentially they take the role of bosses. They're not exactly difficult. If anything, the levels themselves are far more difficult than the mini-games, but then, I don't think that's the point. Carrying the appellation of mini-game should be clue enough that they're simply a device to break the trend of time management throughout the rest of the game. Now, they're not great, at least compared to the core mechanics elsewhere, but they're appreciated. The healing of Chiron may be my personal favorite only because it broke the mold from simply power clicking the mouse button over the boss by adding a pharmaceutical scavenger hunt.

Finally, 12 Labours of Hercules continued its trend of salivating addiction with its music. Much like the game itself, there's really nothing special there, yet I found it oddly satisfactory; fitting even. The music never exactly insisted upon itself as exemplary aural candy attempting to draw attention away from the task at hand, but played the part of background enjoyment to a T. Tunes like BGM2 or BGM3 demonstrate exactly that.

Unfortunately, 12 Labours of Hercules is a game that I don't think I can recommend, in good conscience, at least to everyday gamers, only because it plays as a guilty pleasure. To fans of the genre, I totally recommend the game, otherwise I feel as though I should wash my hands of the game, like Hello Kitty: Happy Party Pals or the two Pokémon Pinball titles. But I think that's the tragedy of casual games in general. Even the best of the best are hard to pass along only because few sensible gamers would ever wish to admit enjoying such endeavors. So, in hopes to avert such tragedy in the name of brilliant gaming, I hereby decree 12 Labours of Hercules a fantastic gem of a game that, if anything, proved to me that Steam was totally worth the hit to personal principle, and I have to applaud it for that alone.

Rating: 3.5 lazy, pederastic heroes out of 5

Expect More of the Same Old Gobbledygook

As in, more of the same anniversary nonsense already spoken over the last few years. So instead, forget it. Go read one of the old anniversary posts if you actually have an interest in any of that baloney. Consider me the cynical codger of Beat All Games - well, have I ever been anything but?

Game completion has rather fallen off in the past few months, and motivation to write these long winded opinions has slowly grown tiresome. Proof in the pudding is my last update regarding the Eighth Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest. I finished the game back in early May, began writing the post shortly thereafter, and...here it is three months later and the post is finally published. Truth be told, I doubt I really hit up all the details I originally outlined as I'd forgotten a number of them as time passed. Does it really matter? I'm not going to kid myself. It doesn't.

In a way, Beat All Games is a site for me as opposed to anyone out there who may actually stop by. Consider it a log. I suppose I could just use GameFAQs' database to accomplish the same feat, similar to Goodreads or Discogs, but through Beat All Games, I feel like I can put a far more personal spin on everything - like a literary interpretation of a YouTuber's means of logging and reviews. I'll stay with the channels I'm most comfortable with as a means to personalize my tiny foothold in the already over-saturated market of video game impressions, judgments, and all around critical opinions - the written word.

But with my growing apathy towards continuing Beat All Games' 5000 word essays - actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration; my longest post to date has been 4228 words while my average is still hovering around 1260 words; silly Batman and it's meek 187 word prototype - does that spell doom for this project? I doubt it. I'm fairly certain I'll keep hammering away as long as I'm completing games. Only, since early May, I haven't even come close to completing a game. I've ventured into material that's held my attention for a long time and has no sign of letting up, and unfortunate for this site, end game is sort of a precarious concept. Games like Project Cars, Neverwinter, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Fallout: New Vegas, and Cities: Skylines have all managed my undivided attention, and though I have set goals to signify job well done, I doubt I'll see them for a long long time. But these aren't the only games I've been tackling on an on/off basis. I have a number of games I bounce back and forth between, but my attention span comes and goes. I haven't found a game that's kept my undying attention from beginning to end in a while. Maybe I'm just picking the wrong games. Or maybe the above games have sucked up so much of my time my mind's become fickle when it comes to playing a title in which I could potentially manage completion sometime in the foreseeable future. Ah well.

Maybe I just need to bounce over to something quick and easy, like Mega Man 4 or Sonic the Hedgehog 3 instead of all these lengthy RPGs I somehow find myself playing as of late. Maybe I need to finally do the last few necessary goals I've set in New Super Mario Bros. U, Limbo, or Super Time Force so I can finally write about how great those games are. Or are they?

Maybe I realized Beat All Games has taken some of the fun out of video games for me, and maybe, for the sake of pure, casual enjoyment, it's time to shy away from OCD completion - at least for the purpose of this site and any hope for its future. Shy away from OCD completion altogether? I doubt it.

Anyway, hats off to five years of completionist gaming and unnecessary dissertations.

SNES - Eighth Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest

Haiku-Review:

impressive travels
through a level potpourri
thanks to the Central

Additional Comments:

Another year, another Vanilla Level Design Contest. After the well deserved accolades of the 7th, I couldn't wait for the 8th. Much like the 7th, I chose to distance myself during the contest and afterwards as much as possible so I could let the finished product sink in as a worthwhile surprise. Am I ever glad I did because there's some genuine jaw-dropping moments mixed in there.

Again, for those unfamiliar, the Vanilla Level Design Contest is an annual event held by one stop shop for all your Super Mario needs of yore, SMW Central. What's it say? 'The Super Mario World hacking site.' Fun. The point is to design a one off level using the primary tool used for slicing Super Mario World to pieces, Lunar Magic, and nothing else. And despite being the 8th in a long running series, this years entry is only the second to be plastered together as a singular game - a collaboration in some respects, but more precisely, a masterful compilation of ingenuity and creativity that can give the game's original level set a serious run for its money.

Truth be told, I paid little to no attention to the first six VLDCs. Scratch that! I paid literally zero attention to the first six VLDCs. To this day, I've seen maybe a small handful of levels scattered across YouTube from a smattering of links throughout SMWC used as reference points for level design theory, or standout entries for one reason or another - and not necessarily always on the favored side. I've seen a level or two that made me say, "Good job," but nothing ever grabbed me to the point that I wanted to go back and hunt down all the entries from a given year - if that's even possible anymore. I think a good number of levels have been permanently lost in the abyss of time since they were all presented as single .ips's as opposed to the now canon compilation ROM. Again, I'm unfamiliar with how the first six contests worked, but if there's one innovation the VLDC has seen during its tenure that I fully support, it's the compilation ROM.

The idea of bringing all the levels together into a single work helped to springboard my own efforts to actually have an interest in the contest. By interest, I don't just mean designing a level myself to throw out there and see how it fares with SMWC's fantastic cast of designers, but to envision playing a selection of high quality levels that had no worry of being burdened by superfluous "necessities" of modern gaming, that is plot, and cohesion, and the general gloss of paint and sparkle used to make games appeal on a more casual level. Here, the results, trimmed to the bare bones of platforming design theory, we're left with an almost more cerebral product as we experience a multitude of micro environments attempting to analyze why so many of us simply enjoy run and jump Mario mechanics, and how to best make use of them. Nearly everything else is thrown out the window; even difficulty.

As expected, VLDC7 did just that. Sure, there were a few pitfalls here and there, but that's to be expected, be it beginners to the scene, designers who just don't quite have the vision to put a cohesive, working design together, or simply trolls out for a laugh. But then you have those who know their craft and build some stunning levels. In many respects, VLDC7 exceeded my expectations.

Therefore, it's only natural to expect so much more with the subsequent contest. After all, we've had a chance to see what works and what doesn't in the collaborative, or compilation aspects of the hack. And designers looked to step up their game, whether it was to exceed their previous scoring, or merely outshine the best of the best from the previous contest(s). (For those interested, I was one of the few...eh, probably only, who didn't go into VLDC8 with that mentality. Well, I did at first, but decided to move forward with an extremely experimental concept which ended up ranking far higher than I expected. I was pleased.)

VLDC8 did not disappoint...that is, to a point, but more on that later. Some of the designers not only upped their game, but came out swinging. Akin to VLDC7, several levels managed a wow factor due to clever graphical manipulation. Cakewalk Cavern, Peachpuff Peaks, and Waterflow Temple come to mind. Waterflow Temple is especially noteworthy only because I felt it necessary to take a magnifying glass to the screen trying to figure out from where half the graphics hailed. Sadly, the level design didn't quite match the intricate detail put into the visual presentation, but then again, that usually turns out to be the case.

Regarding generally accepted level design principles, the usual suspects rose to the top. For me, the standout level was once again, Morsel's. Municipal Swimming not only proved to be a fun and exciting level to play through, but it stretched the boundaries of "vanilla" to the very edge. In fact, it was the only level that left me scratching my head wondering how he pulled off a single trick - the leftward autoscroll. All the other interesting tricks in the level I'm well aware of thanks to the VIP series, but before VLDC8, I had no idea that a leftward autoscroll was possible without resorting to external code. Then, to top it off, the level is an underwater level, the bane of nearly every gamer out there, yet manages to articulate general gratification at every turn to the point where you begin to forget you're having to tread water the entire time. Even Crystal Reef Garden proved that underwater levels need not be a chore, and much like Waterflow Temple, expounded wondrous atmosphere throughout. Maybe not through devilish MAP16 trickery, but through color and general level architecture.

Other than Municipal Swimming, I can easily find discerning issues in the other levels mentioned thus far; be it Cakewalk Cavern's incredulous length or Peachpuff Peaks' excessive sense of bombardment, but overall, these are the types of levels that put me in awe. These are the levels that made me believe VLDC8 took a victorious step forward from VLDC7, along with the game's marvelous post game content. Yet somehow, the remaining majority of the levels felt so blasé compared to the previous entry. Maybe it's that VLDC7 introduced me to the overall best of the best, regarding innovation and imagination compared to a lot of the stuff typically produced. Having been around SMW hacking for a number of years now, the sense of excitement has slowly dwindled. There's still some amazing stuff that comes along and completely knocks off my socks, but the frequency or amplitude of that feeling has become few and far between. VLDC7, for the most part, managed that with stuff like One Sunday Morning, Snake Eater, and the secret area of Cavern of Pandora, but even a good deal of the mediocre material gave me hope for a pioneering continuum.

Understand, mediocre material must always exist, otherwise, how would be ever spot the great or the terrible. There has to be a middle ground. Problem is, the middle ground of VLDC8 felt like it took a step backwards which in essence, felt like it made the project as a whole retrograde. Not significantly, but enough to be noticeable. It may be hypocritical to grouse over such a matter when my own level was, on the surface, an uninspired run-and-jump characteristic of those scattered throughout YouTube by Lunar Magic noobs further adding to the idea that so much of the game feels pedestrian. I'll accept such judgment, except under the condition that people at least understand the premise of the design.

Then there's the stuff that just makes you claw your fingernails into the arms of your chair. Sure, there's facepalm material, after all, that's the purpose of the Worst World. Scoop up all the garbage. But there's no point in ranting over any of that. The levels speak for themselves. It's the levels that honestly try, or so I hope they do, and somehow just fuck it up. Variety Path is that level. I found Variety Path to even outshine some of the idiocy or nonchalance running rampant in the Worst World. The level of frustration this one level gave me was unparalleled. Even attempting to tool run MarioYOLO's Adventure was more fun.

Second to Variety Path's total failure in design theory was free rein graphical insanity. This includes using foreground objects in the background in such a way that they can easily be mistaken as foreground. There were two or three levels that abused this and frustrated the hell out of me. I don't mind graphical trickery when it's relevant to the design, but it need to instill a proper sense of depth. Once the two layers become a disorienting mess, you lose all sense of confidence in any of the architecture. Needless deaths to pursue. And then there's the madness that is Fez 2. I understand the subject matter - it's just not for me.

But Variety Path, Fez 2, or any of the bottom feeder shit didn't fit the description of culprit when it came to why the game as a whole felt weaker than its predecessor. It was the middle ground. There was just way too much of it and somehow took a bit of a stumble in comparison to VLDC7's middle ground. That's not to say the game isn't amazing. It is, and compared to 99% of the SMW hacks floating around in internet land, it's a superior model of gameplay and level design and still exuded incredible amounts of fun and excitement. Despite my personal reflections compared to VLDC7, I'd recommend the game just as much as I would the former to anyone interested in seeing just how far vanilla hacking has come in the world of Super Mario World.

Nano-Controversy:

Just like VLDC7, I strongly disagree with the winning entry. Subterranean Canal is impressive - a definite top ten level - but it's not a winning level in my eye. As I already mentioned, Municipal Swimming should have nabbed that prize, but whatever. Opinions. We all have them. My issue with Subterranean Canal is after seeing some of the brilliant Kaizo-esque innovation in parts of Cavern of Pandora, as we all know worldpeace is more than capable of, Subterranean Canal felt a bit flat to me. Instead, it merely felt like a contemporary take on The Horrifying---- from the first VIP game. Didn't care for it much there; didn't care for it much here. Suppose the RHYTHM section's impressive in design, but even there, the execution feels off.

Rating: 3.5 P's in the swimming pool out of 5

WU - Tengami

Haiku-Review:

a game with haiku's;
so befitting to review
through my own haiku

Additional Comment:

I love getting those little mail blasts on my Nintendo account listing the latest releases to the eShop. However, very rarely am I ever intrigued by anything shown. First off, anything available via retail will always be purchased via retail - if a physical copy exist, then a physical copy I shall have. Secondly, I can care less about Virtual Console games since I own all those actual systems and would just rather have the real thing, although a free gift of Earthbound versus  dropping $150 on the real thing. Ooh, that's a tough call. Fortunate for me, the Mother series has never interested me, so screw it. That's $150 saved and a free gift I can use on something else like Dr. Luigi or Pushmo World, two games that I can tell I'm going to have more fun with just by looking at them, even if I do own the original Dr. Mario which Dr. Luigi barely seems to be an improvement on. And thirdly, well most of the downloadable only games released to the eShop never seem that impressive. Most of the ones that really grab my attention, like Chariot, I've already got elsewhere. Every so often, however, something interesting nudges its way into the ongoing yawn-inducing titles. From the few snapshots provided and the brief summary, Tengami proved to be one of those rare games that gave me hope in an otherwise vast sea of possible inadequacy. And after watching the trailer, I was sold. Well, actually I wasn't sold until Nyamyam decided to have a little sale. Then I was sold.

Tengami's art direction clearly had me hooked. The paper thin graphics, reminiscent of the Paper Mario series, already had me, but it was the idea of the entire game being represented as a pop-up book that completely enamored me. Wrapping that all up in a skin of beautifully hand drawn classic medieval Japanese flair was simply the icing on the cake. And the music - oh... Let me lie down for a bit. I was utterly amazed when I found out the compositions were thanks to David Wise, but then considering two-thirds of Nyamyam has their roots in Rare, is it really that surprising? Listening to some of the pieces like, The Awakening or Ocean Breeze, though admittedly, that does have a very DKC feel to it, nope, still pretty surprising.

All of this beauty and wonder and rampant adoration was entirely based on some screenies and a trailer though. Like many, I passed judgment well before I had time to get down to the nitty gritty, which can be a dangerous. Graphics and music make for a fabulous façade, but if the gameplay, i.e. foundation, isn't capable of supporting all that beauty, it can become a tragic affair. And to be honest, based on what I saw in the trailer, I was a bit skeptical; after all, that's why I didn't purchase the game until a sale came along. It was easy to gather Tengami was a puzzle game, but based on the puzzles showcased in the trailer, I worried over how elementary they appeared.

There's definitely some game play issues with Tengami, however they're not all Tengami's fault. Much like several titles I've already dealt with on the Wii U, especially Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, the GamePad decided to enter the mix with some of its gimmicky features. However, given the nature of Tengami, I can sort of give it a free pass. Coming from an IOS background, it's expected touchscreen mechanics - ah, those dreaded touchscreen mechanics - are going to factor largely in the gameplay. Oh, who am I kidding? Touchscreen controls are the only controls available. I find myself torn over this though. Again, like Captain Toad, I'm playing this game on a console that hooks to a TV, and I'll clear the air right now, this game looks incredible on a big screen. Only, I don't ever get to experience all that beauty exploded to incredible scale filling half of my living room wall. Instead, I'm stuck face down with my nose in the tiny screen of the GamePad poking and prodding the screen to solve puzzles and move our protagonist across the landscape. Needless to say, I'm totally disheartened over this turn of events. If I was on a tablet or some such nonsense where I had no visual alternative, I wouldn't care, but on the Wii U, I find myself feeling rather apathetic towards the game. All that initial adoration has washed away because I'm forced to use the butt end of the Wii U to enjoy this game.

But it's a touchscreen game. What do you expect? You're right, and maybe I should have read through the game's description a bit more carefully as opposed to simply finding myself awe stricken over some hand painted imagery. I'd still have a strong urge to play the game, but if I was fully aware that I'd never get to experience anything outside of the title screen and end credits on the big screen, I would have passed it up for something else. Maybe that makes me a shallow gamer, but then again, I've enjoyed my time playing games on a tiny screen with the Game Boy years ago. That time has passed.

Like I said, the touchscreen issues aren't Tengami's fault. If anything, they're personal issues I have with the Wii U and how developers choose to use the GamePad. Difficulty and game length, on the other hand, are far more related to Tengami itself. Tengami, presumptuously by design, is easy. The game's general lack of extended play only adds to the assumption that Tengami is built as a casual game and nothing more. I'd say the trade in difficulty was made for an engaging story, which given the pop-up book premise, sounds like a reasonable hypothesis, but unfortunately, the story is far more conceptual as an overall art piece. What I mean is that instead of a story in the conventional sense, we're instead treated to a profound haiku about loss and offered an opportunity to conjure our own interpretation of story based on the imagery or the act of the protagonist's journey. Otherwise, at face value, we're left with a tale of restoring a sakura - not exactly compelling content for an expansive work of fiction in this format. However, the game accomplishes its goal by setting in motion a chain of events that drives us though a few varied settings allowing us to solve a variety of puzzles.

Unfortunately, those puzzles span only three stages and I hesitate to call any of the puzzles in the first stage puzzles. The puzzles in the second stage live up to their name a bit more but are still on the easy side except for the last one, which isn't that it's difficult, but isn't exactly clear on what it wants you to do. On top of that, it took me a while to figure out that one particular location sported a different symbol than what I kept thinking it was. The puzzles in the third area began to feel like true puzzles with a couple of them forcing me to put on my thinking cap. This excited me as I began to have new hope for the game, but then, the game was over. I felt betrayed. Finally, Tengami was proving it's worth as far as gameplay was concerned and then simply decided it had enough. Again, considering the game comes from an IOS background, I probably should have known better, but this... This just reeked of disappointment. I can't remember the last time I felt robbed by the length of a console game. I'd say I hope they make a sequel because I genuinely want more Tengami, but then, I'm afraid they'd just make another twenty minute game.

Granted, my first playthough lasted approximately four to six hours because there were three puzzles that slowed me down to a crawl. However, on my second run - which I only did to collect the one stamp I somehow missed on my first run, which irritatingly enough was the very first stamp in the game - I completed the game in twenty minutes. And if the protagonist didn't amble along at a snail's pace, I'd probably have finished it a lot faster. In a way, I'm both happy and sad that I ran a second run because I got to see how little content there really is in this game. The same could be said for any NES game where speed runners can manage sub tens in optimal conditions, except speed runners are a rare breed and not everyone can master NES difficulty with such grace. Plus, puzzles are a completely different beast when it comes to game padding, except even with padding, Tengami is shockingly short.

However, I think Nyamyam had every means to create the illusion of length with the material presented if they allowed for more collectibles or at least made a better effort at hiding the ones available. As they are, the stamps are way too easy to find. The only reason I missed the first one on my first run is because I wasn't aware there were collectibles beyond the sakura blossoms until it was too late. I also believe if Tengami wasn't so insistent on holding our hand throughout the entire journey by showing us where all the interactive locales were, the game's difficulty wouldn't  seem so rudimentary. The puzzles would still be a breeze, for the most part, but it would cause us to better analyze our surroundings. Tengami feels like an evolutionary step in the point and click genre, except the sleuthing and experimentation elements have been stripped away. Instead, little bubbles constantly detail the path to victory: pull this tab, or poke this spot. I'd rather they have the pull tabs look the part, but blend as much as they can so they're not readily noticeable.

Tengami's a tough game to rank. I adore the aesthetics and the premise to no end but I find the technical side of it weak. Maybe it should have stuck to its IOS roots and never made the transition to the Wii U. Of course, then I'd never even know about it, and I do find the game to have sufficient merit. I think, despite it's IOS origins, Nyamyam should have done much more for the Wii U port. As is, it feels...I don't want to say an incomplete game, for it definitely feels complete, but maybe an inadequate game? It just seems like there should be more; like the game ended prematurely. I want to love this game, I feel I should love this game, but I can't, and I feel exactly the same way in regards to recommendation. In good conscience, I couldn't recommend it, not for purchase at least. Maybe if someone was at my house and I had the Wii U running I'd say, "Hey! Check this interesting little title out." I would, however, recommend that boss David Wise soundtrack.

Rating: 2.5 haikus out of 5

APL - Zork I

Haiku-Review:

1: It is pitch black.
2: You are likely to be
eaten by a grue

Additional Comments:

Zork - what a fascinating glimpse into the archaic years of video game adventuring. I remember owning Zork as a kid on an IBM Compatible, though to this day I have no idea how we came to own it. It was the family's first computer primary used by me, to play this mysterious and convoluted text adventure that I had very little to no understanding of, and my then step-dad for, I can only surmise, work related data processing...maybe? I know he wasn't playing Zork considering he's always been pretty anti-video game. Which is all the more curious as to why or how we had the game to begin with. All I know for certain is that whenever I booted it up, I'd first have to work my way through a lengthy directory tree while knowing next to nothing about DOS beyond a few simple commands - enough at least to start up Zork and I think to use a fairly simple word processor of the day.

So there I was, wide-eyed in front of a screen filled with yellow-ocher text set against a black screen pretending I understood these strange input commands that eventually led me to game far different from anything I had ever played on an Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, or even the few dust ups I've had with computer games in the past such as Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and Oregon Trail. After executing the file, I'd find myself standing in a clearing facing a lonely mailbox and the iconic white house. The sheer magnitude of loneliness was overwhelming, and yet, it was expressed simply through text. I was left to my own devices to visualize the scenes as best I could using pure imagination since all I had to work with were brief, almost plain speak passages. Despite the graphical splendors of the NES, I was mesmerized by this simplistic approach to storytelling and gameplay. But I think there was more to Zork's mystique that enthralled me and kept me coming back for more.

Much like my lack of knowledge when it came to DOS, or hell, computers altogether, I was utterly clueless when it came to Zork. Furthering the whole cloud of confusion surrounding Zork's inexplicable appearance on our computer is that we had neither a box nor manual of any kind to support that this product ever existed outside of the computer itself. I've long had a theory that the game was pre-installed by whomever we got the computer from, a crackpot hypothesis in and of itself since I'm not entirely certain of the history regarding how the machine came into our hands as well. My best guess is that the whole setup came from one of my then step-dad's co-workers. It's all a dubious fog really. But it makes sense, considering, if my memory serves, I stumbled upon Zork by sheer accident wondering what some of the more exotic files were listed along the tree's various branches. Point is, here I had this game that relied completely on input commands and intelligently parsed text yet didn't have the slightest clue on how to operate anything within the game. Having no manual and no friends who were even remotely aware of the game several years before internet would even become a known thing outside of small societies of collegiate tech wizards spells nothing but hopeless disaster.

The only commands I could deduce from the simple paragraphs before me were the four cardinal directions - I'm not sure if I ever knew this was actually expanded to eight cardinal directions, let alone up/down or in/out - look, take, and that may be it. One of my bigger revelations may have been when I accidentally discovered you could shorthand the four directions with their respective initials: N, E, S, and W.  Unfortunately, and anyone who's familiar with Zork, or any text adventure game, knows that four directions, along with the ability to look or pick something up, is going to get you all of nowhere.

As a result, my adventures through The Great Underground Empire consisted of losing my bearings in the forest surrounding the lone white house. I remember making simple maps, but the most I remember is House -> N to Forest and possibly some forest to the west. Hmph. I never managed to get inside the house or even see the cliffs and rainbow. I just kept wandering endlessly in some stupid forest. And come to think of it, I'm not entirely certain how I ever figured out that take was an acceptable command considering there are no items within the areas I could access that I could take, unless I was aware of open to open the mailbox, which the more I think about it, I think I was, or I figured out how to climb the tree to get the egg, which I'm far less certain I ever figured that out. Only reason I question open is that I never realized you could open the window, but then again, I don't recall ever finding the window. Sad, I know, considering all you need to do is N and W, and voilà: window! However, I vaguely recall the pamphlet inside the mailbox, so I must have known open, which would then lead to take.

So let's see: mailbox, white house, pamphlet, forest, and a clearing. That was the extent of my fabulous quest through The Great Underground Empire. Scratch that! I never even made it underground - Great Underground Empire... Ridiculous.

Twenty-five years later and I have finally returned to one of the gems of my childhood. I played the Apple II version instead of an old DOS version like what I grew up with, but it doesn't matter. There's literally no difference between the various versions. Only reason the Apple II version was chosen was because it was the first version I ran across for which I had a working emulator. Immediately, my first question was whether or not this was the game I believed it to be. After all, my memories of Myst were fallacious, so there's a good chance my recollections of Zork were highly erroneous as well.

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

Holy shit! It's exactly as as remember. Exactly as I remember! After twenty-five years and having nothing more than gray snippets of recollection, everything I ever experience in this fantastical world suddenly came racing back clear as day. And there I go again getting lost in the same goddamn forest without a clue. Same white house, same mailbox, same goddamn confusing forest, and same fucking sense of hopelessness in a confounded world of text. Except... Except something different happened - something monumental, something...important. I opened the window. It should be noted that despite the passing of twenty-five years, I've gained zero knowledge as far as Zork goes. I have, however, gained meager knowledge in the realms of text adventures thanks to an old MUD I frequented back in the day call Medievia. As a result, I had at least upped my simple, accepted verb-noun nomenclature typical to text adventures, except that too was a long time ago. I think the only text based adventure I've played in the last fifteen years is Reign of Grelok, the mini game based around Grognak in Fallout 3. I wish I was joking, considering Reign of Grelok is to text adventures as TWERPS is to pen and paper RPGs, but I'm not. That's a sad state of affairs as far as I'm concerned, but then text adventures don't exactly beckon when you have nearly four decades worth of games utilizing a little thing called graphics to paint the scene. That's right, video games have completely ruined our imaginations. Why would I want to draw my own map when I can have a radar in the corner of my screen. Be serious, Infocom.

One of the toughest obstacles to get around when it comes to Zork is definitely the map, or lack of. As I said, I recall drawing rudimentary flow chart style maps as a kid. Did it help? Who knows? Considering I eventually quit after running in circles throughout the forest, I suppose not. Once I made it into the true underground this time around, it was inevitable that progress was unlikely without a map. Good old fashion paper and pencil sketches to the rescue. Sheesh. I think the last time I did that was when I tried to track the exit destinations in Kid Chameleon back in the late 90s. After mapping the overworld and making an absurdly slapdash build of the underworld, I decided to check my cartographic skills against some of the finer made maps found on the internet. I realized two things. First, despite the disheveled look: lines crisscrossing to and fro, lines having to wrap the edges of the paper, and creating what appeared to be extra rooms but were just duplicated areas due to space issues or certain rooms preventing other rooms from lining up correctly, my homemade map of the underworld was correct. And secondly, the maze was a bitch to map out without a helping hand thanks to returning passages and other such nonsense. Surprisingly, I did a fairly decent job, but some rooms failed to account for the incredible amount of backtracking that was actually taking place. Thankfully, the coal mine was far more linear in layout.

The next biggest obstacle that slowed me down was knowing the list of commands. While Medievia may have improved my text adventure vocabulary, that was long ago. However, with added commands such as turn on/off, attack, kill, drop, tie, move, inventory, and possibly a few others, I could make actual headway into The Great Underground Empire. Some I picked up from deduction: rope, railing, and a 50 foot drop? Obviously, I'm being nudged in the direction to scale down the wall. Tie rope. Tie rope to what? Fughjekh!!! Tie rope to railing (you stupid, patronizing piece of machinery). Huzzah! I figured out a trivial puzzle. Now, if only I can figure out how to turn the fucking bolt on the dam, you worthless, piece of shit wrench!

Between the dam and the cyclops, it was time to expand my vocabulary because my limited knowledge is seriously holding me back. To the internet to find a pdf of the original manual. Thank god for the internet and viewable pdfs. Not only did I instantly bolster my rather lackluster vocabulary (Seriously? Wave is an accepted command? Okay...?), but after reading through the back story behind Zork and a good portion of the manual, I learned what the object of the game was. Up until that point, I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. I figured the point was to get through this twisted labyrinth of an underworld and maybe battle some great monster. Never on my life would I have suspected the point of the game is to collect a bevy of treasures and fill some trophy case in a decrepit old house. I suppose I should have inferred that from the presence of the case to begin with, but considering after 25 years of trophy cases typically being auto-filled by the game as a sense of accomplishment, I never suspected it was focal in my quest to apparently liberate great wealth.

I think the main reason this knocked my socks off, so to say, is because I'm used to the paradigm of the selfless adventurer, at least in my own personal experiences from early adventuring games. Rescuing princesses, saving kingdoms, or generally questing to achieve something for the "greater good" has become so ingrained that the idea of a selfish hero (would hero even be an applicable term in this instance?) is so foreign to me. I'm really just another thief along for the ride. That's not a bad thing by any means, and personally it parallels my preferred morality when it comes to role playing, but it just completely caught me off guard.

After finding out Zork's primary objective, I decided to restart the game since up until that point I had been haphazardly taking and dropping items all over The Great Underground Empire. I accepted everything as tools to be used in a variety of puzzles; not trophies to show off to...nobody. Oh, it's really all just another puzzle - the penultimate puzzle if you will. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Turns out I had to revisit my trusty old friend, Mr. Internet for two more things: defeating the cyclops and traversing the gate to the Land of the Dead.

The cyclops flat out stumped me, but it turns out if I gave my initial theories about 30 more seconds of thought, I would have figured it out on my own. I forgot to open the fucking bottle. Oh my god, I felt so stupid. Interestingly enough, the internet didn't exactly brief me on the solution since the only solution I came across was an entirely different solution that turned out to be the sort of puzzle a madman would concoct. Made sense once I put it all together, but who's going to glean the magic word from an obscure acrostic? I guess Lewis Carroll and his 1001 acrostics taught me nothing. However, after briefly seeing food mentioned in passing, I realized my faux pas with the bottle.

The Land of the Dead is a different matter altogether. Unless there's a script or piece of writing I overlooked somewhere along the line, I don't know how anyone would figure out all the required steps to repel the spirits. Oh, look! I can finally make use of wave for the one and only time. I'm glad we made proper use of that command.

After The Land of the Dead, though, the game was smooth sailing. It rather surprised me how easy the puzzles became thereafter, unless I finally picked up on the level of deduction required to defeat each puzzle. No. I think the puzzles just befell a more straightforward solution from there on out. At least nothing remotely rivaled the lunacy behind the exorcism of the spirits. Even the dam's bolt turned out to not be as frustrating as I was making it out to be.

Pick up the last few treasures, receive the final note giving me one last puzzle, and I'm off, bounding my way down some forgotten barrow towards the magic of Zork II, or so the game suggests. Not right now, but soon. And to quickly wrap up the final puzzle, I stared at my homemade map for a good ten or fifteen minutes scratching my head, saying to myself, "Huh? There's already three paths...or is there? Wait. No. Um...wait. What?" I still don't get it. Reminds me of the compass puzzle in Myst; I figured it out, but I don't know how I figured it out.

Zork enthralled me now just as it did when I was a kid and I'd gladly trudge forth through any additional wonders of The Great Underground Empire. I find text adventures to be a joy since they force the use of imagination like no other game can. By being a clever word sleuth, you have nothing more than your wits and perhaps a pen and piece of paper to help you, and that's fascinating. Text adventures are a dead form in today's world of gaming. To be fair, dead's not entirely accurate, but I have to imagine the market for them is nearly non-existent. Visual novels may be the most comparable format going today on the mainstream market, or heck, even the indie market, but even they're worlds apart. Nothing apart from a cold, lifeless screen filled with innocuous text and a static prompt can ever instill the same magic as that of a text adventure. It's similar to Pong where the absurdly primitive quality gives us a glimpse into an entirely different era where we not only get a chance to appreciate the forerunners of modern video games, but we get to experience a completely different mindset when it comes to presentation, theory, and simply, why we game. While it may be the birth of the visual novel, it's so much more as it forces the end user to create the world within his mind or on a piece of paper as a crudely drawn map. As Tom Hanks' Josh Baskin describes in Big when he plays off the idea of a graphical text adventure to create his electronic comic book proposal, "You see it won't be like these where you just follow the story along. You would actually make a whole different story appear... And when you get down to the bottom you have to make a choice of what the character's going to do..." And as long as your choice of words can be parsed, the options are fairly diverse.

Zork's not for everybody, probably not even for the vast majority, but for those who want to experience a piece of history, put their minds to work, and just have an all around enjoyable adventure, Zork is a truly fascinating game. It may have taken me 25 years, but I'm glad I finally returned to one of my fondest gaming memories of yesteryear. Now if I could only get around to River Raid, my trifecta of early, standout, game defining titles would be complete - the other being Super Mario Bros. which obviously I listed some time ago.

Nano-Rant:

Fighting the thief is absurd. I must have reloaded my save several dozen times before the RNG decided to play nice. And yet the troll went down like a sack of potatoes.

Rating: 4 Dimwits out of 5