Viewing all posts by Stephen Thomas

Horsez 2: Equestrian Knights

Posted September 20, 2009 by Stephen Thomas
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EKOne of the most intense and violent games made for the Wii, Nintendo DS, PS3, PSP, PC, and Xbox 360 was released on November 14th, 2007. Its release, however, seemed quiet and unnoticed. Even though the game seemed unpopular, it had gained a large fan base, and for a good reason too. This game is one of the best I’ve played, and it’s because of the awesome graphics, gameplay and story.

The storyline is that Emma, the main character, is sent to France to become a veterinarian via taxi from her small ranch in the countryside. Then, the taxi breaks down, forcing Emma to go back to her ranch and get to France via horse, however, she encounters violent and epic battles on the way with equestrian knights. After battling these knights, you pick up a certain item after each battle, whether it be a sword, shield, money, or arrows. With money, you can buy upgrades for your items. Some of the swords you can purchase are the Mucro of Nex or one of the most powerful swords, Vicis Quod Tractus. You can also buy shields, like the un millier d’âmes.

The gameplay is unmatched by any other game out there. One thing that must be mentioned is the realtime multiplayer physics. It makes the players to feel like they’re in the game, and of course allowing other players to play from all over the world. If you think that’s cool, there is so much more. This game is the first ever that uses ICMP (Inter-Console Multiplayer) technology. In a nutshell, it allows players to play from different consoles. So if one player wanted to play in multiplayer and had a Wii, while the other had the game for the PSP, usually, games wouldn’t allow that, but Horsez 2’s new ICMP technology can make it happen. In multiplayer mode, you have the choice to play as Emma or one of the equestrian knights and fight with weapons you have collected in single player, so it’s important to try to collect as many weapons as possible before going to multiplayer.

A screenshot of a cut scene before battling one of the bosses. As you can see, the knight is holding the Vicis Quod Tractus sword.

A screenshot of a cut scene before battling one of the bosses. As you can see, the knight is holding the Vicis Quod Tractus sword.

The graphics are the best that I have ever seen in a video game. With 1024 bit graphics, playing Horsez 2 feels like you are watching a movie. These graphics are 10x better than any other game ever made, graphics so good it puts Crysis to shame.Not only are the graphics good, but the physics makes playing this game worthwhile. Every tiny movement from objects falling to swords and arrows flying in battle, the detail is 100% perfect.

And just when you thought the excitement would end, it hasn’t. Horsez 2 has a 3D option. If you turn it on, you can play the game in 3D, and not the awful red-blue glasses, but polarized 3D.

Overall, to wrap up this short, yet powerful review, Horsez 2: Equestrian Knights is, in my opinion, the best game yet. It challenges the senses. When I played, it seriously felt like I was the one riding the horse and slaying knights. It blew my mind on how detailed games can be nowadays. For one of the first times, Ubisoft has shocked me with one of its games. I totally recommend buying it for its $175 price.

Hydro Thunder!

Posted September 7, 2009 by Stephen Thomas
2 comments

HydroThunderN64coverHydro Thunder was the only racing game that I played where you’re racing boats. It came out on the N64, Dreamcast, Playstation, and was also in arcade machines. Usually when you play it in the arcade, the screen is faded, but it’s worth playing it because it has a steering wheel and a thrust thing. Only one place that I have been to had a widescreen LCD arcade version of Hydro Thunder. Anyway, you can play multiplayer in this game. In the arcade, it was usually two players because it depends on how many machines are hooked up to each other. On the N64, you can play up to four players, but playing with three or four players required an expansion pack, otherwise, you N64 would explode in awesomeness.

So playing it is real simple. You race 16 players to the end of the level, and there are about 14 levels, which include Lake Powell, The Far East, Greek Isles, Arctic Circle, Lost Island, and others. Only a few levels are short and are in the style of 3 laps. In the levels there are boosts. When you get them, you hold down a button and you go faster, but you only get a certain amount of boost before it runs out, but always keep a little boost, because you can jump but only if you have a small amount of boost (boost + brake). Jumping can get you into shortcuts in levels. Other times, shortcuts can be behind waterfalls or in areas only accessible with a ramp. The graphics were good and the music was awesome. Apparently, the Dreamcast version had slightly better and more detailed graphics than the arcade or N64 versions.

Super start.

Super start.

One cool thing about this game is that you unlock levels. There are 4 “bonus” levels and boats that you can unlock by beating certain tracks. Some of the tracks include Nile Adventure and Hydro Speedway, and some of the boats include Tinytanic and the Armed Response, a police boat with mounted guns. One flaw with the N64 version is that in order for the game to remember your levels, you needed the Controller Pak, however, if you don’t have the Controller Pak, you can still play it arcade style. By that I mean you play it the way it is in the arcade: by beating levels in order to unlock levels in one sitting. In the arcade, if you unlock levels and you walk away from the machine, it forgets that you unlocked them. Also, this is a game you can beat in one sitting, unlike Toy Story 2. Also like Toy Story 2, Hydro Thunder is compatible with the Rumble Pak, so forget about the Controller Pak, plug in your Rumble Pak and get ready to play.

Toy Story 2 for the N64

Posted August 28, 2009 by Stephen Thomas
1 comment

ts2When I was about 7 years old, the movie Toy Story 2 came out, and it was awesome. In the same year, the Toy Story 2 video game for the N64 came out. At this time, other popular games were already out for the N64 like Starfox 64, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Banjo-Kazooie. Not a lot of people remember this game, let alone played it at all, and that’s because it was such a bad game. It was one of the worst games I played when I was a kid, and it caused nothing but frustration and regret.

What made this game so bad? Well, pretty much everything about it. The gameplay, the music, the graphics, and the story. Even though the story was the same as in the movie Toy Story 2, the way it was linked with the gameplay just didn’t make sense. For example, you have to collect Pizza Planet tokens in order to advance to the next level. How would that make sense? In the movie, the only time they referenced Pizza Planet is when the toys drive the Pizza Planet truck, which had nothing to do with Pizza Planet tokens. Also, the story is told before each level through screenshots of scenes from the movie. Apparently, other game systems which had the same game had full motion video, but the N64 was incapable of that.

So the story is the same as the movie. Woody, who was trying to save another toy from being sold at a yard sale, is stolen by Al, a toy collector. So, Buzz Lightyear and his friends have to save Woody, but a bunch of robot toys lead by Zurg(I assume, it never really explains it) are out to kill you. This is another example of why the story is screwed up, because this didn’t happen in the movie. They should have had you like solve puzzles and get through obstacles or something like that, it would have made more sense.

Oh come on!

Oh come on!

As for the gameplay, it was okay, but it was very repetitive. You play as Buzz Lightyear and basically hop on platforms and kill enemies and try to find Pizza Planet tokens. There are five of them in each of the 15 levels. Usually, the tokens are obtained the same 5 ways in each level: a race, a boss battle, finding 5 objects, collecting 50 coins, and finding a hidden one. Some parts of the game are incredibly easy while other parts are next to impossible. For example, there’s a part in the first level where you have to hop on an incredibly thin nail and then hop on a platform above. First of all, this nail is a sprite. Similar to the trees in Super Mario 64, the same sprite follows the camera, so it’s not a 3D object. It’s hard to explain, but this makes it incredibly difficult. Then if you are even able to get on the nail in the first place, you have to stay there for a long enough time to adjust your jump so you can get on the platform above. So, you find yourself slipping off nails and missing a jump towards the platform.

In the game, you have to do things for the other toys such as Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and the race car in order for them to give you the tokens. Why would they make you do things such as racing, finding coins, and finding body parts in exchange for Pizza Planet tokens? Don’t they want to get Woody back? Instead of getting tokens, they should have made it so that you collect batteries in order to have energy to get to Woody and save him from Al.

In the game, you get music for each level, but you tend to spend about half an hour to an hour in each level trying to get all the tokens you can, so having a looped music track in the background soon makes you go insane. Also, since one of the only songs in Toy Story is “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, this was the only song used in the game that was in the movie. Actually, no it wasn’t. This song wasn’t in Toy Story 2, only in the first one, so I can’t really blame the people who made the game for this because there wasn’t much of a soundtrack in Toy Story 2, however, the music that was made for the game was bad.

There seems to be no sign of intellegent life anywhere.

There seems to be no sign of intellegent life anywhere.

The graphics were a major problem in this game too. Games like Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda had better graphics than this game did, and they came before this game did. You might say it’s because those games are first-party game, but even Banjo-Kazooie had better graphics than this and it was a third party game. What made the graphics bad was the fact that everything seemed choppy. It wasn’t smoothed out and the animation itself wasn’t a smooth motion, and it just made the game look messy. On top of that, the draw distance was awful, so you couldn’t see about 20 feet ahead without it being cut off. Playing this game after awhile gives you a headache, because not only the graphics but the fact that this game is a piece of shit, and trying to figure out how to get to that platform that is just out of your reach.

I am almost done, but I saved the worst for last. When you play this game, you can’t beat it all in one sitting. Like Super Mario 64 or Legend of Zelda, you can’t beat the whole game without taking a break or taking several days to do so, so you have to save your progress and continue later. You’ll find that saving in this game is impossible unless you have a controller pak, a device you plug into the back of a N64 controller to hold extra data. When I was a kid, it wasn’t easy finding one of these controller paks, so most of the time, I would have to force myself to try to beat the game within one day without getting sick of it, but it was impossible, so turning off the game resulted in having start all over. Eventually I got one and I was finally able to beat it, but I lost it years ago haven’t been able to beat it since.

But what other games have you seen that requires you to have a controller pak to save? Mario Kart and Tony Hawk Pro Skater use the controller pak too, but you can still save on the cartridge, it’s only for saving optional things. They should have had the option to save on the cartridge or on a controller pak, so if you wanted to play this shit at another friends house, you can bring your controller pak to their house and play it. Unfortunately, the idea of using a controller pak to bring to other houses for this game failed because no one else owned this crap. If you owned this game, I guarantee that no-one else you knew owned it as well. I thought that maybe they didn’t give you the option to save on the cartridge because the outstanding graphics and awesome levels took up all the room available on the chip to save your game, but then I thought about Ocarina of Time. It actually has good graphics and a ton of levels such as dungeons, temples, fields, as well as awesome music and cut-scenes that moved, and it gave you the option to save on the cartridge.

There is no other explanation as to why Toy Story 2 had to make it so you saved on a controller pak, the only other reason I can think of is so that it would be more convenient to carry around a controller pak like an asshole, rather than carrying the enormous 3 ounce game cartridge that can fit in your pocket. I guess the creators knew if someone saw their friend bringing Toy Story 2 to their house, they would automatically end their friendship. Overall, this game sucked and it could have been hugely improved.

Oregon Trail Deluxe

Posted August 14, 2009 by Stephen Thomas
1 comment

In 1974, the very first Oregon Trail game came out on the computer. This game was very popular amongst elementary school students and it later became popular on the internet. Today, almost every student who grew up in elementary school in the 80s and 90s remembers playing this game. In 1992, a version of this game was released which was the same sort of game play as the first one, except the graphics were improved. It was called Oregon Trail Deluxe and the same company that released the first one, MECC, also released this version, but what made the game play so memorable that made this game become a cult classic?

As you can see, the title screen shows a woman in a bonnet pointing a gun at a snake. Now that's hardcore.

As you can see, the title screen shows a woman in a bonnet pointing a gun at a snake. Now that's hardcore.

First, you start off learning about what the Oregon Trail is, because remember this is an educational game, but no-one cared about this part, they just wanted to play. You first started by selecting which month you want to leave, whether it be March, April, May, June, July, or August. Selecting an early month like March or April was important because if you left too late, you could hit winter near the end of the game and die. Then, you select your occupation (Doctor, Banker, Teacher, etc.) which may become vital in the game, for example, if you were the doctor, less people would get typhoid fever, or if you were a carpenter, you would break less axles.

This is the screen that monitors food, your load on the wagon, rations, pace, etc.

This is the screen that monitors food, your load on the wagon, rations, pace, etc.

Anyway, it also depended on how much money you start with. Bankers have the most, while teachers have the least. Then you can start buying stuff such as food, oxen, clothes, bullets, axles, and other goods. Then the game begins. You start in Independence, Missouri and head west. As you go along the Oregon Trail, you stop by landmarks and forts. You can also get sick and die (as well as the other four people with you), have people rob from you, find berries and abandoned wagons, and hunt.

Stopping by forts and landmarks was a vital part of the education that was in the game. If you never played Oregon Trail, how else would you be aware of places such as Chimney Rock, Fort Walla Walla, Fort Laramie, or the Kansas River? The only way is if you actually pulled out a book at the time and read about it, which no kid obviously wanted to do. Stopping at forts was also very important in the game. It was the only time you could ever buy more supplies after you left Independence. Besides stopping at landmarks and forts, it was a real bitch when you came across a river. At that point, you have three choices: Walk through the river (suicide), caulk the wagon, or pay $5.00 for a ferry. It was about a 50% chance that you could get across the river by caulking your wagon, otherwise, you could sink in the river, resulting in a loss of items, or sometimes, the lives of some of your companions.

Uh-oh, Jonas got typhoid fever.

Uh-oh, Jonas got typhoid fever.

Besides rivers, forts, and landmarks, you usually had to stop all the time because of sickness or anything else. You could hit a blizzard, fog, or a bad storm, which mostly stopped you for a day or two. It’s a pain in the ass when you “went on the wrong trail and have to return” (I quoted that because it’s not YOUR fault, it’s the computer). That usually takes like four days. Even worse is if you find an impassable part of the trail, which takes like ten days for some reason. One thing that made this game is how people get sick and sometimes die. Sickness range from typhoid fever, dysentery, measles, cholera, and sometimes snakebites. If you don’t feed your companions enough food, the chances of them getting sick are higher, and if you don’t rest for a while, they could die.

Hunting.

The hunt is on for this thing.

There is no doubt that the most fun part in Oregon Trail is when you get to shoot animals for food. One strategy in this game is to buy practically no food but hunt the whole way there. The problem with doing that is sometimes, the animals in the area can only consist of tiny squirrels and rabbits, resulting in tiny amounts of food. While you hunt, you may find larger animals such as elk, deer, bears, and buffalo. Buffalo are the best animals to hunt, since they are large and walk slow so its easier to shoot, and the fact that they are large provides you with more food. Sometimes, you don’t have to hunt to get free food. Occasionally, you come across berries, or if you’re low on food, an Indian can bring you a dead rabbit, but what’s more fun than shooting a gun and getting a lot of food for it in an educational game that you play in school?

Bat-Country

Eventually, after about a half hour from starting, you near the end of the game. You have a choice of going to Fort Walla Walla or going to The Dalles. The easier way is taking the shortcut to the Dalles. When you get there, you caulk your wagon to go down the river (I’m guessing the Columbia River). As you head down the river, you have to dodge large rocks otherwise your wagon sinks. It is the most amazing and epic end to a video game yet, and when you finish riding down the river, you get to see the Oregon Trail ending, which is equally as awesome.

Afterward, you get to put your score on the scoreboard. Your occupation that you chose in the beginning becomes important yet again, because depending on what you chose, it adds an bonus multiplier to your final score. The teacher provides the largest multiplier. Since being a teacher in the game gives you the least amount of money and no special skill(s), they make it up to you in the end if you actually care about the score you got. What makes this game awesome is the fact that everything you do matters, such as how much food you eat, how fast you travel, how much food you got over oxen, and many other factors, making this the most strategic game that you played in elementary school.

The ending to Oregon Trail.

The amazing ending to Oregon Trail.