Recent news of Ubisoft being sued for allegedly stealing the plot of Assassin's Creed from a 2002 book brought back memories of a weird episode of my life.

Back in 1997 I was in high school and I designed two Star Wars games (I just designed them, I didn't program anything, mind), one would have been a N64 game, a space combat simulator, I called it "Star Wars - Rogue Squadron", I even drew the control layout and I still have the project in a drawer. One year later Lucasarts came out with "Star Wars - Rogue Squadron", a N64 space combat simulator.

The other was a strategy game called "Star Wars - Supremacy", and sure enough, one year later Lucasarts published Star Wars Supremacy (SW Rebellion in the US).You can imagine my disbelief as I saw my ideas, which I kept to myself, being brought to life by the same company... twice in a year.

Of course they're just coincidences and nothing more, though it is pretty crazy if you think about it.

I just wish Lucasarts had kept stealing more of my boyhood ideas instead of doing... whatever they're doing now

I take a look at the criminally overlooked Alice sequel and discover that the oh so hated Vampire Rain is far from the worst stealth game of this generation.

Wow, first blog post in over 2 years

I was just browsing the web when I found a page talking about Wii technical issues, and they talk about me too. The writer quotes an answer I gave on these very boards back in 2008:

A lot of helpful ideas can be found at GameSpot's Nintendo Wii forum. For example, GameSpot member Black_Knight_00's Gamespot post is more friendly and concise than Nintendo's own support tends to be. explains, "Happened to me too, twice in a day, after two blackouts. Apparently the Wii has an internal safety system that disconnects the power supply to avoid damage in case of power shortage. It turns back on by itself after a few minutes." is his advice from his October 24, 2008 forum entry

It's a small thing, but it's nice to see someone appreciates when one tries to be helpful to another gamer.

Here's the link to the page: http://www.suite101.com/content/wii-troubleshooting-online-help-explains-how-to-fix-wii-problems-a271589

Inter Milan fans can celebrate early, after pursuer AC Milan lost to Udinese, giving Inter the mathematic certainty of the final leadership. This is the fourth consecutive national title for Inter Milan.

FORZA INTER!!!!

Inter Milan official website (in english)

So, I just got on xbox live and I was looking to play some Halo 3 or some other game campaign on coop.

Coop games I have:

- Halo 3

- Gears of War

- Left 4 Dead

- Rainbow Six Vegas

- Perfect Dark Zero

My Live id is GhostSniper2081, if you wanna play, IM me here or on Live!

I'm trying to catch up with my 360 collection, so I'm planning to get one between GTA4 and Fable 2. They both come for about 50 bucks. Which one should I pick up?

I recently started a Let's Play for the great game FarCry and I'm gradually posting it on YouTube. If you want some fun and laugh at my accent, drop by and watch it! You can also find more funny videos in my channel!

GhostSniper2081's Channel

Enjoy.

The game for this week is (oh no...):



Breed

Developer: Brat Design
Publisher: Cdv
Year: 2004
Systems: PC
Links: Trailer - gameplay video

With all the fuss generated by Halo, the years 2000 have seen an explosion of the Sci-Fi shooter genre with literally dozens of similar games released. When Breed was announced and the first screenshots started appearing on websites and magazines, many got hyped by the game's more-than-hinted promises of cloning Halo's gameplay with the twist of tactical team based action. They were in for a big disappointment.

Maybe the unknown developer (Brat Design) should have inspired some doubts, but even Bungie wasn't so well known before Halo, nor was CryTek before Far Cry, so, since everyone deserves a chance...
Ok so, some of the promises were kept: the game was a blatant Halo ripoff, starring a lone freighter called Darwin full of Space Marines fighting against a babylon of alien races called Coven... uhm... Breed. The game featured vehicles including (tell me if it sounds familiar) gun-equipped jeeps, tanks, airplanes, the APCs from Battlefield 1942, and shiny mounted plasma turrets copied and pasted from... you know where. The game allowed the player to take control of a team of four generic marines divided in the three basic unit types: assault (creatively called 'grunt'), sniper and heavy gunner, to which issue a variety of commands (again, a complete ripoff of BF 1942) or even take direct control in real time. All this is good and well on paper, but the trouble starts as soon as the intro plays and with it the first lines of the incredibly corny dialogue, with gems such as: "You [marines] are the success of many failed experiments" and "I stand here, and a tear falls into my handkerchief".



You may think: give it a break, it's a low-budget game, they couldn't get Stephen King to write the script. Ok, I'll forgive the dialogue if the game turns out to be good. Well... it doesn't.
Just let me walk you through the first mission and you'll see why:
The game opens with a human dropship identical to the one in the movie 'Aliens', which inspired, you guessed it, the Pelican dropship from Halo. The dropship is carrying a team of marines who must storm a beach and esplore a tropical island to retrieve something from a secret enemy base (hey, like the third mission in Halo!). Ready-go you have to man a machinegun from the moving dropship to destroy some radar dishes. it's one hell of a first task, you think the game would give something simple to begin with, but no, you have to destroy 20 radar components in less than 30 seconds. If you do it, you're ok, but if you miss even one your commander insults you on the intercom and you get punished with a landing zone filled with enemies.
First thing you notice upon landing is the choppy framerate, even on an adequate computer, the second thing: the enemies are little squeaking critters holding toy guns and tall tall blue aliens with shiny lights (hey, just like Halo!). Oh yeah, the weapons are dramatically unbalanced: you only get a limited supply of ammo for your human weapons and you rarely find supplies, so you're soon enough forced to use the alien weapons, for which you'll likely have 9999 ammo in a minute (where is the justice in that? The human weapons have 100 bullets!)

The vehicles you manage to find handle like drunk rhinos and explode for no reason after a few hits, representing more of a liability than a resource. The worst part is the team AI, though: as I said you can issue commands to your team, but sometimes you'll have to hope they ignore you, since they'll often take the longest, most dangerous path to reach their destination or even commit suicide in the process: I once ordered the idiots to stay put and I went scouting ahead alone. I walked around a lake and got pretty far, then I called them and ordered to regroup. Soon I heard them screaming in agony and requesting for help, I went all the way back but couldn't find them, as the screams continued, then they all died. Confused, I looked down and I saw them dead on the bottom of the lake: to join me, they walked right into the lake and drowned, while screaming they were under attack. Screaming underwater.

Let this episode be the bottom line of my review of Brrrrreed. Yes: Brrrrreed, as in a cold shiver chilling down your spine.

My rating for Breed: 4

So I decided to change my avatar and uploaded the one you can see on the top left.

A special prize to the first who remembers where that awesome sci-fi commando comes from

I may revert to the old one if I get bored with this one, we'll see.

The game for this week is (oh, yes):

Another World

Developer: Delphine Software
Publisher: Interplay, U.S. Gold
Year: 1991
Systems: Amiga, PC, Mac, SNES, Genesis, 3DO... and many others
Links: Longplay video - Eric Chahi interview (french)

When people argue whether games are a form of art or not, many think of this game and say 'yes'. Another World (aka: Out of this World in the US) does not only prove a single programmer can create a fantastic game all by himself, but also sets the standards for all platformers until today.
Created by the talent of young french programmer Eric Chahi and accompanied by an epic soundtrack, Another World first saw the light on the best platform possible, the Amiga 500, and was later ported on every system able to to handle it, and it changed everything: the small, poorly animated spites and limited colors of earlier games were now overshadowed by the impressive vector graphics Chahi managed to design and cinematic cutscenes so beautiful that led many to believe they were three-dimentional.

The story was purely accessory, being a simple struggle for survival by the main protagonist, teleported by a failed experiment on a foreign, hostile world. Such are the emotions the game generates, though, that the lack of a real story is hardly noticed. The opening level is one of the most adrenalinic and breathtaking sequences in gaming history: imagine finding yourself warped under the surface of a deep lake, having to quickly swim to the surface to escape some giant tentacles, then carefully dispatch a pack of poisonous worms that fall from a cave ceiling, then a panther-like creature jumps in front of you and starts chasing you all the way back from where you came, as it's about to catch you and rip you apart it stumbles, allowing you to jump down a cliff, swing on a vine and run all the way back where some black caped hunters gun down the beast... and as you thank them them gun you down as well and capture you.
All this in the first five minutes of play.



The game adopts an instant kill mechanic similar to another great Chahi game, Heart of Darkness, where everything kills you upon contact, making some portions frustrating, but repairing thanks to the infinite lives and functional password system that let you face even the hardest situations in a more relaxed way. The game features many jumping and combat sequences along with some cleverly devised environmental puzzles that require fast reflexes and a good intuition.
All the adventure can be breezed through in less than an hour, like many games of that time, but you'd hardly notice this on the first playthrough, being the game as good as it turns out to be.

Another world inspired many games and several sequels, some of which unofficial, although, except the beautiful Flashback, none of those managed to capture the essence of the original. It is now very hard to find a copy of the game and even harder is to get it to work on todays computers, so, to counter this, Chahi recently released a remake with updated graphics and sound, available for download (for a small fee) on his website. This is a piece of history and a game that heavilly contributed to the evolution of games as we know them and represents the gaming equivalent of a precious painting. For this reason it should be played by everyone.

The game for this week is (oh boy...):

Shaq Fu

Developer: Delphine Software
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Year: 1994
Systems: SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, Amiga
Links: Gameplay Video - Destroy Shaq Fu website

How do you know when a game is tremendously bad? Maybe when it features a great NBA player but jack-of-all-trades wannabe like Shaquille O'Neil. Or maybe when it sheds a terrible shadow over the curriculum of Delphine Software, the guys responsible for legacy masterpieces such as Another World, Flashback, Cruise for a Corpse and Operation Stealth. Or perhaps when a group of people forms an association dedicated to purchasing and publicly destroying all existing copies of the game.
In any case, the game that graces this feature today is, beyond any rational doubt, a terrible mess that we'd all be better off without.



You may be familiar with the Angry Videogame Nerd's short review of Shaq Fu, you probably know about a few of the biggest problems of this title, but let me go the extra mile, by saying a playthrough of Shaq Fu will leave scars. maybe it's the excessive speed at which the game moves, or the irresponsive controls that make it impossible to do anything on purpose, or the pathetic hit detection that will send half your blows punching nothing but air, or the absurd cast of characters that seem to have come straight out of the Power Rangers discarded enemies bin.
The Graphics look pretty good on the SNES with big (though poorly animated) sprites and nice parallax backgrounds, while on the Genesis, they downright stink, with lower-res characters and an even laggier gameplay. The music is boring and repetitive, with constantly looping midis and horrible sound effects, especially the occasional voice sample.



The gameplay is atrocious: all you do is jump around the screen awkwardly trying to avoid taking punishment from the overpowered opponents. Yes, the opponents will wreck you, tear you apart from the very first stage. There is no learning curve to speak of, you start and get clobbered. The best strategy is to jump around, try to kick the opponent once, and then flee for the rest of the round until the timer runs out. Not very fun, you say? Well damn right, I say.
The story mode is demented: basically you can only use Shaq, while all the other characters are only available in the versus mode, dropping the replay value below zero. Even more demented, though the SNES and Genesis versions came out at the same time, the Genesis version had 12 characters, while on the SNES there were only 7 of them! Why? Also, the ending is ridiculous.
As already mentioned, there is a website (linked above) dedicated to finding and destroying all copies of Shaq Fu. Drastic, but we could never blame them. Ever. Don't play this game...

The game for this week is:

Super Star Wars

The game for this week is:

Kreed

Developer: Burut Creative Team
Publisher: Russ Bit, Akklaim
Year: 2004
Systems: PC
Links: Gameplay video - gameplay video 2 - guy destroying Kreed CD (skip to 1:50)

When this obscure first-person shooter by similarly obscure russian developer Burut team was announced, some magazines went berserk over the amazing screenshots and promises of an innovative gameplay. They were in for a major disappointment. Of course the game looked good: part of its textures were shamelessly stolen from Doom 3, which caused a lawsuit to be filed by id software against Burut, halting the distribution of the game outside a few european countries. The game was also plagued by an incredibly repetitive and frustrating gameplay, an imbecil IA, bad sound, useless weapons and items, horrendous voice acting and ridiculous character design. Strap yourself to your seats, because the trip won't be pretty.

First a few positive points: when standing still the game is pretty decent to look at, partly thanks to the aforementioned texture theft, although when you get things movieng trhe trick is revealed as the animations of the various monsters and soldiers are stiff as these things get and the seemingly nice lighting system reveals itself as static. Uhm... didn't I say I'd start with some good aspects? Sorry I did my best but...
Aside from the looks, the game sounds terrible: generic music, boring sound effects and hilariously bad voice acting, with enemies mumbling intimidating threats like "Now you'll get it".
The gameplay is a real torture: the innovation is nonexistent, the game being a jump back to the 90s (the bad side of the nineties) with its interminable dark corridors to tread back and forth in search of a switch to open a door and large arenas in which to participate in long frustrating battles thanks to the abysmal shooting system. Kreed tries to copy both Halo and Doom 3, but miserably fails and its pants fall down in the process.



Everything you'll ever do in the long boring levels is walk around until you find a group of enemies, then start runnig back to find cover since monsters can kill you with just a few hits and soldiers never miss when firing guns, even from a thousand meters away (pop your ear out from behind cover and they'll hit you). They also take forever to kill and headshots don't work, so there's virtually no way to kill them without taking damage. Shouldn't this be frustrating enough, teh health powerups that restore a random amount of health (practically denying any strategy of resource preservation) will likely be, or maybe the malfunctioning mouse-wheel weapon switching, that makes it impossible to switch from, for example, weapon 2 to weapon 4 if you don't own weapon 3, forcing you to use the numeric keys to select weapons (the 90s I tell you). Or maybe the sloooooooooooooow mouse-turning speed that can't be adjusted, unless you manually edit the configuration file with notepad (I pity those who didn't find out and played the game as it is). Add to the mix one of the ugliest and stupidest main characters ever, a bad, incoherent and confusing story, useless weapons that have no reason to be, limited available ammo, monstrously strong enemies that will run you over in two seconds and one of the worst endings in history and you will wonder how could I play through this mess. Maybe because I'm a Sci-Fi supernerd? Who knows, but Kreed can be lethal for any nerd, no matter how big.
The game even had a mission pack released and a sequel is rumored. Surely people like to suffer.

As you may have noticed, the regular updating of the two blog features has been 'fluctuating', meaning there have been several delays. Some are due to downtimes, connection problems or other issues, but some are due to a severe lack of spare time I'm experiencing. To ensure a more regual posting I decided to reduce the number of blog features to one. The Game of the Week will still be posted regularly, while the Videogame Character of the Week will take a little vacation and will probably be be back in the future or occasionally when I'll feel particularly inspired.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!

Technical issues=another delay, still, the game for this week is:

Jade Empire

Developer: Bioware - Gray Matter
Publisher: Microsoft, 2K, Valve, Transgaming
Year: 2005
Systems: XBOX, PC, Mac OS
Links: Official Trailer - Gameplay Video

Sometimes a celebrity has a son that everyone expects to follow his father's footsteps. At times this happens and the son becomes as great as, or even greater than his model; some other times the child doesn't live up to the expectations because of its lack of talent, while in other occasions the son decides to walk an artistic path completely different than his father's, a choice destined to disappoint many, but also to earn him the respect of others.
Something along this line happened with Bioware's Jade Empire, an RPG set in an imaginary world based on ancient China. Upon announcement, the game was regarded by most gamers as a heir to the successful Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR in short) and hype grew instantly high. The final result ended up disappointing those who wished for a total conversion of KOTOR, but exhalted those who were waiting for a new dish to the table.

Instead of being a semi turn-based RPG like KOTOR, Jade empire used a more direct approach with an action combat system based on chinese martial arts. The huge inventory and the ability and power lists were gone, replaced by a fairly reduced number of different fighting techniques and a handul of plot items. It has to be said that several of the many powers, abilities and items from KOTOR were redundant, while all the techniques and skills Jade Empire offers are unique in their use and effects. The combat system turned out being simple and intuitive with just a few buttons allowing o pull off a number of spectacular combos by switching between techniques in real-time. Many complained the system is too simplistic and the combat generally too easy (the latter I find some truth in). A little drawback comes from the fact you can only take a single (non controllable) party member to accompany you instead of KOTOR's two (controllable) characters. The way I see it, the combat is great and it gives a real sense of fighting using martial arts, like no 'pure' beat em up ever did. Outside of combat, the game plays very much like KOTOR, with expansive towns to explore and a million sidequests to perform. Outside of the main plot quests.

What really shines in Jade Empire is the story itself, with a fast pace, interesting characters and continuos plot twists that will leave you wondering what's really going on as you progress. The great dialog system is back and so are the moral choices, so you will again be presented with possibility of taking advatage of the many people in need or help them, either for profit or pure generosity. The light/dark alignment is influenced this way, influencing the way NPCs interact with you throughout the game. The graphics are gorgeous, much better than KOTOR2, especially the character models, now even more detailed and better animated (although not customizable via difefrent armors) and the NPC models, wich no longer present the heavy repetition of the two KOTOR, which generated the 'clone NPCs' effect. The music and voice acting are spot-on: there is nearly no written line to read, since the game in its entirety is spectacularly voiced (like the KOTOR games) and the evocative music score provides a ideal background to it all.

In short, Jade Empire is great and it didn't get the attention it deserved because of the incorrect expectations generated around it. If taken 'as is' without comparing it to KOTOR, Jade empire ends up being a great RPG that confirms Japan is not the only source for quality role-playing.

The characters for this week are:

Sam & Max

A kleptomaniac canid and a maniacal lagomorph. No, it's not something out of discovery channel, it's the self-attributed definition of Sam & Max, two of the greatest comedy characters to ever appear on the gaming scene. Sam, a well-dressed dog (with a splendid necktie, if you ask me) with a talent for conversation and witty one-liners and Max, a not-so-cute bunny bordering psychopathy, form the dinamic duo of private detectives that foiled so many many terrible foes' plans to take over the world (don't roll your eyes: the talking head of Abraham Lincoln can be a pretty heavy menace and so can be hypnotic teddy bears and ambitious Pong consoles).

Their games are famous for always presenting a clever script full of black humour and hilarious situations that will cause laughter even in the most esigent audience.

Sam: "Someone once told me the contents of a lava lamp make an exceptional hand cream"
Max: "That was me!"
Sam: "And that's why I never tried, little buddy".

Game: Sam & Max (series, started in 1987 and still running)

Trivia: Sam & Max also starred in a comic book series and a tv show.

The game for this week is:

Secret of Mana

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Year: 1993
Systems: SNES, WII VC
Links: World map - gameplay video - music medley

After some technical inconveniences, the character for this week is:

Conker

Foul mouthed, drink-loving, greedy, selfish, perverted: is it Heihachi Mishima? No! It's Conker the squirrel! Originally intended to be another one in the line of kid friendly characters for Rareware's excellent 3D platformers series, Conker was later turned into a decadent character for a mature-oriented game with tons of bad language, alcohol, sexual innuendos and violence. If Disney's squirrels would never be seen shambling around drunk puking on talking scarecrows, collecting swearing money bundles as bonuses or brandishing a shotgun to fend off bloody zombie teddies, well Conker will do that.

Although the games he stars in never met a great success, Conker left a trace with its irreverent concept and uniqueness on the kid-friendly Nintendo 64 console. Much less of an impact on the mature oriented xbox.

Games: Diddy Kong Racing (N64) Conker's Pocket Tales (GBC) Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64) Conker: Live & Reloaded (xbox)

Trivia: Conker was the only game to feature, along with the conventional platform game environments, a... poop zone...

I found a mint condition copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for $5.

I'm playing it now on the PS2, I had forgotten how good that game is.

I admit I'm not a big fan of the PS2, but I'll give it this: backwards compatibility works perfectly with every game (shame on you xbox 360!).