Rispon Avenue

Time now for the last of my gaming history pieces, which is good really because I’ve got other things to blog about!

Well right off the bat you’ve got the release of the Playstation 2 in 2000. This was a huge deal, sold really well, and made DVDs more accessible than ever before for your average household, as the price was better than pretty much any good DVD player out at the time. ‘01 saw the release of both the GameCubeand the Xbox, with Xbox Live launching a year later. In the next few years there were major buy-outs and take over bids, with Microsoft buying Rare, and EA trying to buy out Ubisoft.

The seventh generation of gaming consoles was birthed with the release of the Xbox 360 in ‘05 whilst the Wii and Playstation 3 launched about a year later. The next two years saw dominance by Wii over the gaming market, outselling their rival consoles, but it seems apparent to me that that’s largely due to the reduced price of console and games from Nintendo because of it’s lesser technology.

IGN had the view point that the 00’s made the gaming industry, but it really seems to me that that had already happened in the 90’s, a view which many gamers agree with. The consoles in this seventh generation all seemed to have big issues, whereas the previous generation of the 90’s seemed to have less issues in spite of their lesser capabilities.

So, wrapping up my review of gamer history… It’s amazing to think that we’ve got high definition, motion sensors, and online capabilities, when we came from code being developed on mainframes the size of a room and 8-bit cartridges. I think that gaming is slowly finding it’s footing with entertainment mediums like film and television, and will continue to do so. I’m also hoping that with the visuals of games becoming more and more advanced, so too with story lines and plots development. I think the only thing lacking in gaming is high quality writing on a consistent basis.

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Getting ever closer to modern day gaming with this instalment; the 90’s

The 90’s is an era of growing up in my mind, as that was what I was doing throughout that decade, and so was gaming. At the dawn of the 90’s, gamers were still using 8-bit games with 16-bit pixels. Those graphics aren’t completely terrible, heck, I’d play Legend of Zelda right now if I could find an emulator that didn’t make a very annoying sound every time I moved Link. However the 90’s saw an amazing transition from the NES era of gaming through to the Nintendo 64, the Playstation, and SEGA’s Dreamcast. The 90’s ushered gamers from the cartridge era into the compact disc, and all the data that could be stored on it!

In ‘90 and ‘91 Super Mario Bros. 3 and Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past came out on the SNES respectively, two games which made the console what it was in my mind. Those are still games that I’d happily play today, though I may get bored after a short while and go play something else, but that’s largely because I’ve played both those games so much in the past.

‘95 saw the very first E3 in LA, which has helped enormously to establish gaming as a separate entity from ‘electronics’ at large. ‘95 was also the year which saw the Playstation hit North America, the very first gaming console to use CDs instead of cartridges. The next year the Nintendo 64 shipped with Super Mario 64, one of the best games of all time and a pure joy for gamers to try out with a brand new console. The Playstation was the first console to employ both the analogue and digital controls, however it’s widely acknowledged that Nintendo implemented it better with a more comfortable controller. I’m always amazed that Sony still uses the same damn controller, considering it’s not particularly comfortable.

In ‘98 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shipped, much to my happiness. That was a wonderful game, and also in the same year Half Life shipped for the PC, another fantastic game.

Whilst the debate still rages – mostly by idiots if you ask me – as to the validity of games as a worthy entertainment medium, and not something that will ‘make the children violent’ the 90’s was when this debate was most fierce. I think because there wasn’t the evidence that we have now that there’s no correlation, just a whole bunch of overreacting ninnies. However it was also the decade where gaming really did establish itself as more than ‘toys for children’, so it’s a very interesting decade in gaming.

Oh, and Superman 64 was the worst game of the entire decade.

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The 80’s was a very awesome time for gaming, for many reasons, so now I’ll talk about those that stand out in my mind.

The 80’s saw a very mixed bag for the gaming industry. From the boom of the 70’s, the very beginning of the 80’s seemed set for gaming to remain a huge phenomenon. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are remembered very fondly today, and were gaming sensations, and the very first time we saw Mario!

However, in ‘83 and ‘84 the gaming industry in the US blew itself to pieces, because there were so many poor quality games being put out for too many different consoles that gamers just gave in and stopped buying. This was before there were serious hardcore gamers like there are today, and also before there was the kind of information or access to information that we have today. There wasn’t a dozen sites on the net to tell you what to expect with a game, or three different magazines for each console and the PC waiting near the supermarket check out to give you that same info. No, this was when gamers had to figure it out for themselves, mostly.

So, what happened to turn gaming ’round? NINTENDO!!! The Japanese company Nintendo took a chance in ‘85 and shipped the Nintendo Entertainment System – NES – to America with the first Super Mario Bros., and behold, the gaming industry took off again! Two years later saw the very first emergence of Link and Zelda, one of my all time favourite game series.

In ‘88 SEGA released the Master System, which whilst being pretty groovy and actually being more powerful than the NES, but even with a few really good games, it couldn’t compete with the runaway success of Nintendo’s console and handheld.

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I’ve just read about Atari’s Swordquest contest, and I have to say, it would be pretty awesome to see something like that run today!

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IGN put up a series of articles recently about gaming through the past few decades, so I thought I’d write about it here because I found it an educational read.

The first of the articles outlines the birth of modern video gaming. Most gamers are probably aware that gaming really kicked off in the 70’s with coin operated machines, primarily, with Pong which came out in 1972. Though Pong is often remembered as the original computer game, it was actually very similar to a game which had been released by Ralph Baer who created the Magnavox Odyssey home console, along with a Pong-like game only a few months before Pong hit the market.

In ‘71, Nolan Bushnell created the very first consumer video game, called Computer Space. Apparently the game was overly complex and somewhat abstract, which unfortunately meant that the game flopped, but hey, it was the first cab off the rank and that’s rather important.

There were games that kicked off entire genres in the 70’s, such as simulator games with Lemonade Stand in ‘73. There were also some of the most important advances in computer gaming in this decade. Gaming consoles for the home were first introduced in the 70’s, the Magnavox Odyssey, then a few years later the Fairchild F, and then the one that really made an imprint, the Atari Video Computer System was released in ‘77 for a hefty $US200.

During the 70’s there was at least one arcade game in every pub or gaming room, though towards the end of the decade they weren’t finding the popularity that they had once had.

What amazes me is that from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s, the advances in home gaming were astronomical. The earliest computer games were built on mainframes the size of a room, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop. To look at that mainframe, and then the Atari 2600 in ‘77 which just plugged right on in to your television… well that’s just awesome in the eyes of this avid gamer.

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Though I’ve not tried the first instalment, after watching this review I certainly want to play them both!

When I was looking into whether or not purchasing a PS3 would be a good idea for me, personally, I found the first Uncharted game touted as being among the best on the system. I looked up videos and reviews and thought that it looked like a really great game, it’s on my list of games to get.

I was perusing IGN as I normally do, and then noticed that in the few minutes I’d been on the site, the Uncharted 2 review had gone up. I eagerly clicked on the link to the video review, and watched on rather happily, finding the game was even better than I’d expected.

I’ve yet to play it, so I can only work from the review and my impressions of what I’ve seen in videos, but this game does look really, really good. The graphics are mind bogglingly good, and the story looks to be a heck of a lot of fun. Seriously, trekking around the world in search of treasure? It’s like being Indiana Jones but without the cliché!

The voice acting seems nicely done, and the character models move really well. The locations look to be quite varied and lots of fun, from verdant jungle to icy mountain sides, it all looks really great.

The game received a 9.5 from IGN, a fantastic score, and is currently sitting at 10 even for the reader average. That’s a pretty amazing score, there, and I really hope the game is as good as they say.

My only draw back is that I’m a little disappointed by ten hours of single play. Co-op is fun, I’d like to try that, but I’m not hugely into online play, so this aspect doesn’t make up for only ten hours of actual story-mode gameplay.

Nonetheless I fully intend on picking this game up, after I’ve picked up the first one, of course!

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I’ve never before seen screens or videos of an RPG that looks this good, and with gaming the way it is, that’s saying something!

The storyline is set around the expulsion of a race, called the fal’Cie, by humans, from a floating paradise like city called Cocoon. Originally the fal’Cie created Cocoon for humans, but thirteen centuries later, humans are scared of the fal’Cie, because some of them can become l’Cie, which are people with special destinies, which if they don’t fulfil, become Cie Corpses, which are big scary monsters. The humans are trying to force the fal’Cie to move back to the surface of the planet, called Pulse, which has strange effects on people and the governing body of Cocoon, the Theocratic Sanctum, have a staunch quarantine that anyone who’s been to the surface of Pulse can’t get back into Cocoon.

The story centres around a few characters, which all happen to become l’Cie, even though they didn’t want that to happen, and their fight against the army, called PSICOM, to stop them purging Cocoon of the fal’Cie.

The story line is intriguing, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out. There is a demo and a couple of trailers available to watch here on IGN, which show the game to be just amazing. The most impressive visuals on an RPG yet, in my opinion, and the transition between cut-scene and in-game is startlingly similar.

It’s nice to see the good ol’ Eidolons back, with Odin, Shiva, Ifrit, and Carbuncle, and apparently, not only their respective summoning scenes are amazing, but you can also combine your character with their Eidolon to get some form of… transportation that can do damage during battles. Odin becomes a horse like creature that his summoner, Lightning, can ride, whilst Shiva is actually summoned in the form of two sisters, Nix and Styria, and they turn into a motorcycle that their summoner, Snow, can ride. Carbuncle is summoned by Vanille, and he turns into a disc, and Ifrit, who is summoned by Sazh, turns into a hotrod racing car.

I really can’t wait to get my hands on this game, do yourself a favour and check out those videos on IGN.

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When I have a bit of time to kill, and have exhausted all my favourite humorous blogs, I sometimes set my sights to games on IGN that received very, very, poor reviews. I find it very, very, funny to see what’s been offered up in this select niche part of the gaming market… the ‘I’m not even trying’ part. Both of the following games fall under that category, and both received 1.0s as scores.

First up we have not only Elf Bowling 1, but Elf Bowling 1 & 2! The premise behind this ‘game’ is that you are Santa, and you hate elves, so in the first game you’ve got them set up as ‘Pins’ and you ‘Bowl’ at them. See all those loaded words there? That’s because the sprites look so bad, that calling this a game is really being too generous. All you do is tap once, that’s it. You can’t aim, apparently, or do anything, really. You just have to tap the screen. And that’s just the first title, wait, there’s more! The second title is supposedly worse than the first! In this one, hateful Santa and his elves are in ‘Paradise’ and Santa’s now using the elves to play shuffle-board with. According to the review, there’s no animation of the elves, they just sort of bump about. This game originally made the rounds on the web as a free flash-game. Somehow it was made into a DS title that you’re supposed to actually pay for!? Apparently there are songs in there, too. “Elf, Elf, Baby” and “Who let the Elves out”… I shudder at the thought. Ahh, how funny! Looking at the video, this is, by a very large margin, the worst looking DS game I’ve ever seen.

Second abysmal game is simply called Aquarium. Now, the cover art actually looks kind of intriguing, in a DS game sort of way. When you look at the clean, nice cover, you think this must be an interesting, though perhaps short lived, game, but you’d be so very, very wrong. Aquarium is a, well hang on, is meant – sort of – to be a game where you put fish in a tank and feed them some stuff that they don’t actually eat, just swim back and forth and the food disappears, and you’re supposed to find this relaxing. There are unlockables, though it’s not explained what unlocks them – probably just sitting through more of this horrible little game – and you can ‘decorate’ the tank with scenery and what not, that apparently looks hideous. Wow, this is so bad it may have passed funny and gone right to “Why?” Here are some screens if you would like to subject yourself to the funniness, because the screens to attain that level of so bad it’s bloody hilarious.

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Finally I can look at the final five of the top 25 PC games of all time, according to IGN.

5) Battlefield 1942 – This is another of those famous games I haven’t played and aren’t too interested in playing. These sorts of games often make me think that it’s the experience of playing games with friends that makes them stand out in the people’s minds, rather than the game itself. That’s not to say this game wasn’t good, I don’t doubt that, but the great fondness that the game is remembered with may be brought on by the multiplayer.

4) Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn – This is one of my favourite games of all time. This game had it all! A great story, fun characters, huge array of weapons and armour to be collected, heaps of different environments to explore, and enough hours to keep you playing for months. I really enjoyed this game, the amount of customisation you had for your own character was so refreshing, still many games don’t meet this standard of customisation and I find it frustrating. The expansion was a heck of a lot of fun, too, and I liked where the game ended up.

3) Civilization IV – Another fantastic game, this is a game that I keep coming back to, keep playing every now and then. It is a great game, and has such a strong ‘one more turn’ inducing sort of play. I really like the Civilopedia, its quite enjoyable to see where the inspiration for the units comes from in history. I’ve always found the Civ games fun, but this one is the best, in my opinion.

2) Star Wars TIE Fighter – I never played this game, and neither flight simulators nor Star Wars games are really interesting to me, so even though it’s supposed to be good, I think the previous two are better. :)

1) X-COM: UFO Defense – I had heard of this game, but never looked into it, and totally missed it when it came out. But if the little write up is anything to go by, I would love to play this game. It doesn’t seem like a great game to look at, but I love games that are very in depth, that give a great story, and that keep the player coming back to play even after a decade, much like Excelsior phase one: Lysandia is to me.

So, interesting list, and though there are some that I think should have been in there, there are a lot of great games here.

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Now for the next set of my reactions to IGN’s to 25 PC games of all time.

15) Command & Conquer – This is an alright RTS game, in my opinion, but there are others I prefer. Often the themes are less appealing to me than those you would find in Age of Empires, Total War, or Star Craft games.

14) Company of Heroes – Somehow I completely missed this game, but it looks pretty damn good. I may have to retract what I said in the above comments regarding RTS games with real-world settings.

13) The Sims – I really did enjoy The Sims when it first came out, and, thanks largely to my SO’s enjoyment of the game, had nearly all the expansions by the time Maxis moved onto The Sims 2, and oh, wasn’t that annoying? There’s so much to like about this game, yet so much to dislike about those who market it.

12) World of Warcraft – This is my blog so I get to say what I like. I hate this game, it looks like crap, it lacks depth, character, and respect for it’s players, a startlingly large percentage of which seem to be idiots.

11) SimCity – This was a great game, so much fun, so hard to stop playing in spite of a pretty simple premise.

10) Call of Duty – I’ve never really felt any desire to play any of the Call of Duty games, in spite of the raving reviews the series usually receives. I think it’s the setting, I just don’t find myself interested in it.

9) MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat – I didn’t play this game, and only have a vague recollection of it.

8) Rome: Total War – These games are always just amazing fun, and usually just as amazing (for their time) graphics wise. These games actually push my graphic cards (I always try to have good ones) and that is another fun side to playing them for me, personally.

7) Sid Meier’s Pirates! – I’ve played later versions of this game, but never the original, and from what I’ve read, the later ones don’t stand up to how good the original was.

6) Half-Life – I didn’t play Half Life, but Half Life 2 was a fantastic game. I enjoyed it so much, I thought the game was just the right combination of on foot and vehicle levels, I liked the accuracy of the weaponry and the story-line was fun too. Unfortunately I had a fatal error in my version and didn’t get past the first few areas of Part 2. I think it was a corrupted texture, but didn’t get around to reinstalling and going further.

The last five will be in the next post, because I think they deserve a post of their own.

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IGN posted an article about the best 25 PC games so I will list here what those games are, and what my take on them was.

25) Falcon 4.0 – Whilst flight simulators aren’t really my thing, I like the realism that was attempted here. I also think it was a good turn for game developers to release the source code, as fans have been able to update and add to this game for quite a while.

24) Diablo – This was an amazing game, a lot of fun, a lot of memories. Remember Wurt? That annoying little boy who sold good equipment at ridiculously high prices? I laughed when I saw that his wooden leg was included in the second game, but it was also kind of sad. This was the benchmark game for action RPGs, a genre I still get a lot of enjoyment from. I’m very excited to see the third one of these release in the not too distant future.

23) Doom – I actually haven’t played Doom, I’ve played Doom II on the Playstation, but not this one. The second one was great, and from what I’ve heard, the first was better.

22) Unreal Tournament – Another that I’ve never played, and doesn’t hold the same kind of appeal for me because, in spite of being an MMO player, multiplayer just isn’t a big deal for me.

21) Deus Ex – The sequel to this game is among one of my all time favourites. I haven’t actually played the first one, but I think I may just have to rectify that. I really appreciate games that allow the player to take different, complicated, options in a game. It’s so refreshing!

20) Grim Fandango – This game was a heck of a lot of fun, but also too difficult. Whilst it was good, it didn’t quite achieve the awesomeness of Monkey Island, in my opinion.

19) Fallout – This is another where I have played further along in the series, but in this case I have actually played the original title as well. Fallout is a great, unique, and engaging game, and I’m looking forward to trying out Fallout 3 on the PS3!

18) System Shock 2 – I haven’t played this game before, but from the description given by IGN, I think I may have to go find an old copy.

17) Crysis – This game looks amazing, and sounds like a lot of pick-up-and-play fun. I think I’ll have to give it a go.

16) StarCraft – Real Time Strategy games can be so much fun, but StarCraft and StarCraft II are among some of the most enjoyable. Along with Age of Empires, this is the top of the RTS ladder, in my opinion.

I’ll follow up tomorrow with 15 through 1.

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