Shulamit reviews Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia.
(This is absolutely terrible, I have some work to do if I want to make the next one enjoyable)
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One 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.
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.
If you saw “no comply” in the title and you thought “⇧+A”, then guess what, you’re a fucking champ. You don’t take shit from no one because you play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Everyone had to play this game, it got released on every fucking system. It was on the Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Dreamcast, PC, Mac OS and you bet your fucking ass it was on the Xbox. If you haven’t nostalgia’d already then get out the Mountain Dew and get X-treme, ’cause we’re goin’ back to 2000.
Kickflip+Manual+Nosegrind+ZA WARUDO
Let me tell you what this game had that others didn’t. This wasn’t a skating simulator like Skate is, or what Madden is to football. This is a skating video game. Chances are most skaters can’t do an Ollie McShit to a revert to a pogo to a manuel to a darkslide kickflip darkslide to WRYYYYYYYYYYYY. But Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 can. Activision realized that they’re a video game company, not a simulation company. This ain’t no Second Life Madden Bullshit, this is video gaming at its finest; fast frenzied attacks on the X and Y button to make massive combos past the 2:00 minute mark, shit that we gamers live for. The game was short subject too, none of this Open-world-look-for-objectives bullshit. You had stated objectives, and 2 minutes to get whatever you could done. I preferred this, it made it a lot easier to pass around the controllers on those late nights where your your stomach had nothing but Doritos and coke inside it
I want to describe the sound effects. The sound of hitting a rail in a darkslide is “CLANK BU-WHEEM!” Do you know how satisfying that is? They made every single sound effect in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 extremely satisfying. (So satisfying that I spent several hours looking for soundclips of it).
Another beautiful thing is the sheer amount of bonuses Activision gave the players. you could unlock a ton of secret characters, INCLUDING Spiderman WITH A VENOM SKIN OMGWTFBBQ. Do you remember the Mexico Bullring level? It had a friggin’ LOOP in it. Way to go, Gringo!
It’s the late ninties, was level construction a big thing? No! Unless the phrase “.wad” gives you a woody of nostalgia, you had no experience in level construction, especially in a console game. In THPS 2 you could build your own skate park. Let that sink in. So wonderful.
I’ve given a sample as to the wonderfulness of THPS2, and this article is for the webpage-weary web wonderer who was wondering with … water… alliteration
TONY HAWK.
This is for nostalgia. This is for the glory days of Activision. This is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
(also this article’s total crap for the amount of time it took to make it but the whole time I was going OH GOD THIS ARTICLE SUCKS BUT I HAVE TO FINISH IT D:)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 amazing ending to Oregon Trail.
Life On Monkey Island: A Dionysian Overture
Monkey Island 2 burst back onto the scene recently. We’re going to discuss that.
Whether you love or hate the Adventure genre, whether you prefer jogging onto the battlefield, guns rattling, or spelunking some dismal ruin in quest of a bizarre cuirass or tinny helm, the gravity this genre bears is striking. Every instant of choice in gaming can be traced sidelong down the history spiral, backward from The Last Express, to Myst, to Monkey Island 2, to Zork. Zork came first, untouchable and byzantine, a monster of a game.
The best thing I can compare it to is Shadow of the Colossus, where the world itself bears down on you, swollen with hostility, but I’d be caramel glazing the apple if I said SOTC had anywhere near the amount of cruelty that Zork once brandished. It’s a fairly player versus environment gambit, but in both cases the level is sort of its own monster, lingering to be gutted.
The labyrinth in the first Zork is perhaps the cruelest lock ever devised, genius but vicious. No wonder quality control overcompensates for puzzle difficulty; if we still had those conundra to deal with, the market would evaporate. We still have roguelikes to suck that kind of joy from, and they do the cartography for us!
A Slightly Flawed Map Of The G.U.E.
Boffo segue, that. Monkey 2 is in the long and short of it, a game about a Map. You get the feeling, with Monkey 1, of being adrift in an aimless sea, bereft of conciousness. It’s the most dreamlike thing. Melee contains its own, goofy ecosystem, channeling a small town vibe. But once the story kicks in, you’re cut loose, and out of port you sail. Rambling around has a dreary, sleepy feel to it, puzzles are scarce and simple, contained more often than not. Like a fish in an ornate tank. But there’s freedom enough for the newcomer.
Monkey 2 pares down that ideology, to a brittle point. There’s a world here, a moist, funky world. A world with dancing jives and undead musicals and slick voodoo smog. There are places to go, and people north of parody and south of reality, content to belt out a razor edged ballad in the blink of firelight, or sling a homely one-liner your way. It’s a magical place. You’re deeper in than Monkey 1; down and out on the shore of a dark nether, swapping stories with vagrants. The choice is overwhelming, and how can I describe? The abodes go further down. Monkey 1 was more about ascension. You scaled the cliffs of the titular isle, the ropes of Melee. Lights all abound.
Monkey 2 is a game of descent. Even breaching the canopy of high trees feels otherworldly. Every environment hides crevices beneath its surface, dim libraries with horn-rimmed Medusa, dank crypts brimming over with bloated cadavers. It’s a game that hides much. Chapter 1 has you dredging the hidden rooms of an old ship town, shadows of what looms. I remember feeling curious, delving for once. Every new room uncovered, a glistening catacomb to be pillaged. Locked kitchens, submerged bars with jangling simian pianos. There is much below the surface, and all of it, ALL of it is crucial.
The Only Limit Is Yourself
Ron Gilbert might not have known what he was getting into with Monkey 1. They threw in injokes, baffling puzzles and strange dialogue choices. It was an excersise in amusement; that it sparked a following was unheard of. Somewhere along the line, they channeled that carefree spirit into genuine intellect. And the greatest of theme parks was spawned.
Now, a word on the Special Edition. Say what you will about coy ending PSAs, they botched the product. The art no longer drips with thick Purcell lines, the music sings but key tracks are slurred, the blare of a trumpet somehow inferior to haunting golden era midi, the crescendo of an electric violin almost wicked in its peal. The dialogue’s been altered, and not for the better, although the ones intact are as a rule poisoned by inept voice acting. Armato is least fitting for MI2’s bum Guybrush, but Phil LaMarr excels as Captain Dread, although I’m biased toward that man as the premiere Jamaican. Boen broke the ending.
But the classic MI2 is one of the few games I will always call art, regardless of discrepancies in definition. It is the best adventure game, one of the best games ever, and whirrs with Zork’s hostility while evading its violence. This is a Caribbean thick with atmosphere, peril is present but restrained. Guybrush’s journey is guided, although loosely. Nobody’s telling you what to do. Chapter 2 drops you in an organic Disneyland and says “Explore.”
The ending ties all this together. But it is not a boon visited on the faint hearted. That is a journey you must undergo alone.
And the reward shall be just as tasty.