Torin's Passage

The Short


Pros
- Funny, bizarre story by Al Lowe of Leisure Suit Larry fame
- Hand-drawn art and animation looks good, made by an animator who later quit Sierra to work at what is now Pixar
- Voice acting is well done throughout
- Sidekick "Boogle" adds some flavor to interesting puzzles
- Weird, hilarious characters. Nobody in this world is freaking normal.
- Travel into the planet through five unique worlds
- Standard adventure-game fare at a time when the genre was coming to an end

Cons
- Some puzzles have stupidly obscure solutions
- Love story is tacked on and completely dumb
- Two of the worlds (three and four) consist almost entirely of puzzles with no story elements whatsoever
- Was touted by Sierra as a new series, never saw any games past the first one

Strata is a weird planet. TO THE CORE!

The Long

1995 was a weird year for adventure games. King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (which would be the last true adventure game title in the King's Quest series) had come out a year before, touting great hand-drawn animation and a simpler style. For a genre that had started with sentence text commands, it had then moved on to point-and-click but with lots of options (think LucasArt's Secret of Monkey Island games), then was streamlined further by Sierra to have simply "speak," "look," "walk," and "use." King's Quest VII dropped this all for a simple, one button interaction interface, which has remained in use to this day with the adventure games revival.

The point of that history lesson was that King's Quest VII essentially marked the final attempt of adventure games to modernize, and despite being a good game it essentially failed. Adventure games died out, never to be seen in full force until TellTale would pick them back up just a few years ago, bringing back a genre that was both beloved and completely forgotten.

Torin's Passage, created by crude-humor master Al Lowe as a game his 9-year-old daughter could play, was essentially the game that turned off the lights and shut the door on the way out with regard to its genre. Released almost a full year after King's Quest VII, it had similar graphics and interface, and was intended by Sierra to be a new game serious. However, since the market for adventure games crashed, it took whatever hope Torin's Passage had for a sequel down with it. That's too bad, because Torin's Passage is a pretty dang good game. 

It even had a full-on parody of black-and-white, awful sitcoms in the middle of it. Yes, this game is weird. 

The story is a simple one. Torin, a blonde-haired dude with a popped coller and questionable attire, lives on a farm with his parents. One day the evil Lycentia, a sorceress from "the lands below" shows up and freezes them in carbonite (essentially), whisking them away beneath the planet's surface for unknown reasons. Torin, not one to take this sitting down, grabs his purple, shape-shifting pet Boogle and goes on a world-delving adventure in an attempt to rescue his parents. Simple enough stuff.

The game's interface is unique. You have two sets of inventory: Torin's, which contains expendable items, and Boogle's, which (as seen above) contains everything he can shapeshift into. Boogle's antics are entertaining and goofy, though in truth you don't really use him as much as one would hope. This is Torin's story (and his "passage," apparently), so most of the game will be spent using, well, Torin. 

Each world has a distinct flavor about it, and while you carry a few items between worlds, most of them are self-contained with regards to items and the puzzles you use them on. A weird trick is that if you play the game straight through (rather than warping to a particular world), you keep an axe you get on The Lands Above throughout the entire game, though you never use it past the first world. Huh, alright. 

"RAWR I'M TORIN LOOK AT MY POPPED COLLER AND DESPAIR!"

The game looks pretty decent, even running at just 256 colors. While Torin and co. do look a bit like they were drawn in MSPaint, the animation is fluid and the characters delightfully odd. The animation was handled by James G. Murphy, who now works at Pixar, so it's quality stuff throughout. The long movie sequences that start off each chapter are also well rendered, a mix of CG and art that could have come straight from a 1995 Disney movie. Every object can be rendered and looked at in 3D, adding a little depth to some puzzles, and while the UI box at the bottom is freaking massive (look at it! It takes up 1/3 of the screen!) it doesn't hinder gameplay any.

Speaking of the characters, there are loads, and they are weird. From a King whose wife badmouths him constantly, to an insane "borderguard" who has been waiting twenty years for a replacement, to two talking snails who engage in leaf-boat races around a moat, to a depressed tree that cries sap, just about everything in this game is totally off the rails. It makes sense why nobody wants to go down to the lands below; as the borderguard warns: "Them worlds is filled with nutsos, psychos, malcontents... politicians!"

And this guy, who complains that he only has "10 meg" crystals to hold his sound clips in

The funny characters really help bring the game to life, which is why the third and forth worlds are so disappointing. World three has little plot aside from a horribly tacked-on "love" story that both starts and ends in that world, and aside from that simply shuttles you from puzzle to puzzle. World four is even worse: an uninhabited lava world that is essentially a massive maze with nobody to talk to or interact with save Boogle (who can't actually talk). Considering worlds one, two, and five are so completely nuts and hilarious, it's odd that they totally skimped out on putting any interesting characters in two entire chapters of their game. It really hurts the games pacing, and makes it seem like it was rushed out the door unfinished (which it wasn't, oddly enough).

The gameplay itself is standard adventure game fare, with a few tricks to keep it from getting boring. As you can see on the pictures, there is a timer on the right with a question mark. If it is down, you can click it for a "hint" at a cost to your overall score. It normally is on a timer (every five minutes or so), but you can have it so hints are always on or off if you so desire. 

My bane of adventure games - walking everywhere - is also fixed by two very simple options. You can up Torin's walking speed to an insane level, making him look extremely goofy as his animations show him leisurely walking but he is hauling around the world. Or you can simply right click anywhere and Torin will "warp" there, cutting down all walking completely. It's an appreciated gesture, though it does mean on repeat playthroughs I sort of just warp everywhere. 

The back of the box even has Al Lowe's face on it. And there's a totally secret death message you can get personally from him, but I'm not going to tell you how to get it, mwahahaha!

The puzzles are a mixed bag. Some are very straightforward, with what item you use on what making perfect sense. Others are completely random. For example, you need to find the biggest leaf in a group of leaves to give to the (previously mentioned) speedboat moat-racing snails. There's an area full of leaves, but how do you measure which one is the biggest? The solution is...obscure. You go back to your house, where an inchworm is hiding in a basket. After finally catching him you use it on the leaves until you find the biggest leaf of all (get it? Because it's an inchworm, it knows which one is biggest. That...makes total sense). What?

This difficulty fluctuates frequently. That puzzle I just mentioned was in the first world, but many in the second world are pretty straightforward. Though there is a part where you are supposed to climb down a cliff face that gives no indication that you are supposed to go down it (since it has a different path on the top of it that is more straightforward), where my poor eleven-year-old brain got stuck for days until somebody at school was nice enough to drop me a hint (we didn't have internet until Windows 98, and even then I had no idea sites like Gamefaqs existed, even if they were sort of bare-bones). Then you have the third world, which is basically a "romantic" cutscene followed by some really easy puzzles you can just brute-force your way through if you don't like to think. This sort of fluctuating difficulty is a staple of the genre, I suppose, but it also shows why these games fell out of fashion as game design became more refined.

This world sucks. No questions. 

Despite these many complaints (which only indicate that the genre this game was a part of hasn't aged gracefully), I still have a lot of love for Torin's Passage. I played it around the same time I played King's Quest VII, having just gotten off what many consider to be the greatest adventure game of all time, King's Quest VI: To Heir is Human. I liked this game a lot more (probably because it had a guy main character and a purple transmorphing dog vs King's Quest VII, which stars a bunch of ladies) even though both share a similar art style and approach to puzzle mechanics. As an end to an era, Torin's Passage wasn't the best note to end on, but it was certainly a passable one. The weird humor of Al Lowe makes up for a lot, and I still find myself awed by both the great animation and the funny, adult jokes that went completely over my head when I was eleven. So in that respect, the game certainly has found new life in my older, more dirty-minded self.

I don't know what this guy is on, but I ain't touchin' it. 

This is one of the few retro PC games I've reviews that isn't on Good Old Games yet. I still have my original disc and manual (though not the box; this was back when PC games came in those massive paper boxes) and you can actually get it to run on Windows 7 if you do a lot of compatibility changes. Used copies go for about $5-10 on ebay, which if you loved these old-school adventure games and thought Al Lowe was a funny guy, that's certainly worth the price. Despite some niggling flaws I'd give this game a well deserved four out of five, which I admit is rose-tinted by my nostalgia, but if I gave it any less I'd be doing my entire childhood a disservice.

Yes, that's Darth Vader and Yoda over there. Copyright infringement much? 

Lords of the Realm 2

The Short


Pros
- Hybrid turn based / real time strategy
- Part country sim, part resource management sim, part siege sim, and more
- Music is fantastic
- Battle against AI or over "Modem Network" (works on modern networks, too)
- Tons of scenarios, adding the "Siege Pack" throws even more into the mix
- Lots of unit types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses
- AI opponents are fully voiced and say some pretty great stuff

Cons
- After a few games you can figure out exactly how the AI works
- "Autocalculating" battles can be influenced if you know what units count for "more"
- Knights and macemen are stupidly overpowered. Crossbows during sieges are as well
- Sieges against AI opponents are too easy; capturing the flag to win instantly breaks it (the AI never guards their flag)
- Alliances are totally useless with AI opponents
- While financially ruining somebody is a viable strategy against other humans, you can never out an AI opponent by burning all his fields and starving him out. It just doesn't work.
- The sequel, Lords of the Realm III, was so awful it killed the franchise. Thanks a lot, Sierra.

Your county, my lord. Don't screw it up. 

The Long

The king is dead, and he has left no heir. You are one of a handful of lords vying for the throne, and stuff is about to get bloody. You all start with the one county you ruled over while the king still lived - the rest of the counties claiming neutrality - and now is the time to raise an army, build a castle, and conquer the land. Oh, and make sure your people are getting fed, staying happy, paying taxes, and gathering resources to make more weapons for the ongoing war effort. That's important, too!

Lords of the Realm 2 is an interesting hybrid of county management and real-time battles and sieges. The general gist of the game is simple: build up a powerful county, form an army, and crush all opposition. The difficult part comes in managing all the resources required to pull this off, and that is where Lords of the Realm 2 really shines. It's neither too hard (Civilization) or too easy (Command and Conquer) to figure out, and it fits its unique groove very well.

Sieges can be bloody affairs. Sorry for the blurry screenshot. 

Lords of the Realm 2's county simulation can be either as complex or simple as you want it. You basically are given a group of peasants (the number you have is based on population), and you can designate where exactly you want them to focus on. Some can work the fields. Others can tend the cows (boo cows! Go straight grain from the first season!). Some might work on reclaiming fields your enemies have burned, or work on the castle. Others can cut wood or mine metal or stone. They could forge weapons from your resources, and then you can enlist them into your army. The game gives you the ability to pick and choose exactly how many go in which spot.

Or, if this is too complex for you, you can use a slider to auto-assign. Again, only as hard as you need it to be (and when it's endgame and you have 20-odd counties, the slider comes in real handy to prevent hour-long turns). 

Every turn is a season, meaning you plant in winter (or spring, but your harvest will suffer for it) and harvest the following fall. You'll have to make sure you have enough food to feed your people between those two points, or else they'll lose faith in you and drop in happiness (taxes also make them pissed off). Drop happiness too low and they'll kick you out and start marauding other counties for food in a bloody, violent swath. Crazy stuff.

This game looked pretty good back in the day, and still holds up

Once you think you have all that stuff under control, you have to build an army and go kick the other nobles right back to where they came from. Army building hurts your county's happiness, but you can recruit from any county you own, making each a sort of self-sustaining city-state (though you can send supplies to and from your counties, but they have to make the trip there safely and over several seasons). You can pick from a lot of unit types: swordsmen with armor, macemen with IMBA attack power, archers, high-defense pikemen, crossbowmen, or the super-elite knights. You can also just enlist peasants to fight if you don't have the weapons, though they'll suck worse than archers in melee.

The game is a weird mix of turn-based and real time. Once you enter a season, the game proceeds in real time until everyone is finished. Armies move, changes to counties are made, etc. The battles are also in real time. However, once everyone is finished the game waits until everyone is done with the turn, and then it proceeds to the next season and the cycle repeats. It's an interesting mix, and I think it works well.

You have to have the resources to make different weapons, or you can just buy them from a merchant

Essentially, that's the game. As your empire expands it gets harder and harder to keep everything well defended, so castles are required to give you an edge. AI opponents can be bribed, complimented, or insulted, and often times they'll ally with you if they like you enough. Don't expect them to help you out ever, though, since form alliances basically means they just won't attack you (and some of the more devious opponents, like the Countess, will stab you in the back when she thinks it benefits her). The AI have four different personas: The Knight (who is aggressive and abandons county building), The Bishop (who focuses on building castles and obtaining wealth), The Baron (who is probably the smartest opponent in terms of military might and county stability), and The Countess (who is sort of a mix between the other three, and the most annoying ally of all). You unfortunately can't determine exactly who is in your scenario with you (it is all pre-determined based on the map), but the variety is enough to keep things somewhat fresh.

The game has lots of maps. The only way to get this game currently is through Good Old Games, which includes Lords of the Realm 1 (which isn't that great) and the Siege Pack expansion for Lords of the Realm 2 (which is awesome). The expansion adds scenarios that are basically just battles for you to attempt with pre-set rules, as well as a bunch of new maps including some silly ones. Ever want to battle across the United States in a medieval setting? No? Well, too bad, because it's in the game, and it's hilarious.

The multiplayer has a plethora of options available

If you think the game is too easy, you can change it up with a bunch of options. Want it so armies have to forage in the counties they are currently occupying? You can do that (and starve your enemies out by camping out on their lands). Want everybody to start with destroyed fields and no money? You can do that. Want to be forced to employ crop rotation, least your fields fall barron? Yep, that's an option too. There's a lot of cool bonuses that ramp up the complexity of the game, and doing an Impossible run (where all fields are barron and your counties start off starving to death) with everybody starting with Royal Castles (basically the biggest, most impenetrable castle in the game) is a fantastic challenge. 

There are a few issues, though. While the AI opponents are unique, they tend to employ similar strategies. Once they start losing they'll make 10 man peasant armies and just run around burning your crops out of spite, which is especially annoying since you can do that to them but they never seem to suffer any consequences. While the army mix is useful, you can also just go "all knights" if you are good at resource management and basically sweep through most battles. The "autocalculator" for battles (which you can employ if you don't want to fight them) can also be broken: it counts crossbowmen, swordsman, and knights way higher than other units, so if you stuff those in a castle you'll basically win any auto-calculated siege. When you are besieging, you can win the battle instantly by capturing an enemy's "flag" (usually in the middle of a base), but they don't do a very good job of defending it; bash down the gate, send a speedy knight, and end the battle with minimal casualties. 

Maceman are also super-powerful if you choose to fight out a battle. Their low armor is easily compensated by their insane attack power. 

The music is also a standout. Harkening back to the day when RTS games actually cared about their soundtracks, every song in the game is moody and memorable. I used to extract the .wav files from the CD, convert them to mp3s, and burn them onto CDs for my Discman (back when a CD burner was 2x and cost like $400). The battle and siege music is particularly memorable, but what was neat was the overworld songs: they changed as the situations got more and more dire, the songs getting darker and more foreboding. It was a neat touch, and really helped ramp up the excitement as you knew you were finally going to knock the stupid Baron from the game.

The early music is nice and quiet. It gets crazier later. Also, awesome CG!

I love this game, not going to lie. It was pretty much this and The Incredible Machine 2 that made up the bulk of my childhood. I still remember arguing with my mother that she should let me buy the "T" rated game (it's been re-rated to "E" now) since I was only 10. I won the battle for this game (and lost it for Warcraft 2. I might be singing a different song had that been the case) and am so glad I did. Lords of the Realm 2 is one of my favorite strategy games ever, and I still go back and play it all the time. 

It's available from Good Old Games, right now, with the expansion and the (mediocre) first game for $6.  You should go buy it right now. No, I don't get commissions off of it or anything, but I really freaking love this game and you will too. Look, I'll even provide a link; I never do that in my reviews: Click me!

Five out of five stars. Seriously, did you expect any less? Now to go punch Sierra who got bought by Vivendi who got bought by Activision right in their stupid face for releasing that atrocity that was Lords of the Realm 3 and killing one of my favorite series ever. How could you mess this up?

They won't win any awards for boxart variation, though. Did they seriously just take the original picture and Photoshop the backdrop red? I guess Warcraft II did that too, but come on...lazy!

Dead To Rights: Retribution

The Short


Pros
- Lots of totally over the top kills
- Stealth sections where you play as the dog, Shadow
- Can command your dog to go all feral on dudes
- Cover based shooting is satisfying, slow-mos for headshots
- Story is so completely stupid it's hilarious

Cons
- Looks terrible
- Controls are just barely passable; Gears of War this ain't
- Voice acting and story are awful, so if you hate B-Movies you will hate this
- Single player is short but feels way too long
- Kills are awesome but there are only about six of them
- Not enough sections where you play as Shadow
- Gets boring really fast
- Gratuitous cursing isn't "edgy," it's just obnoxious
- No multiplayer (not like anybody would be on it...)

Have a nice trip! See you next...you know what? I can't do this. 

The Long

Dead to Right: Retribution feels like a game stuck in a time bubble. Way back on the PS2 games, two Dead to Rights games were released. They were pretty decent, where the biggest hook was the fact you had a big, angry dog to run around and kill people and that was pretty brutal. The series then fell off the face for a long while, and now it's back on this generation and is ready to kick butt and be all up in your face with its bad attitude in a "gritty" reboot. Too bad stuff that passed off as "decent" on the PS2 is not acceptable nowadays, because Dead To Rights: Retribution is an ok ride, it just wears out its welcome super fast.

The story is so completely horrible I really have to mention it. You know this is good stuff when the very first scene is the main character (a hard-boiled cop who plays by his own rules!) literally sticks his badge in the face of his superior officer, then slams it and his gun down on a cop car before snarling and stalking into some skyscraper where a hostage situation is going on. Jack Slate plays by his own rules, son, and he dont' take no crap from some paper-pushing wash-up! It only gets more absurd from there, with (spoiler?) Jack's father being offed by some gang leader (right before a convenient rainstorm), Jack kneeling above him as his girlfriend/paramedic tries to bring him back to life, and Jack looking up at the sky and screaming he'll get revenge. Seriously, this game's story is completely, unbelievably awful. Which is why I sort of enjoyed it. Sort of. It's so stupid I can't help but cringe and laugh at the same time, which means I actually gleaned some sort of enjoyment out of it. I guess? 

"I AM THE LAW!" Ok, no more Judge Dredd jokes this review, I promise. 

The amount of swearing, however, should be noted, because I'm fairly certain 50% of this game consists of the word "f***" (or some variation on it). I don't really care either way when it comes to swearing if it is used as an effective storytelling device, but considering the story is butt-freaking awful, the cursing got obnoxious for me really fast. It was just cursing for the sake of cursing, so any impact it might have had was quickly swept away for general annoyance.

That describes the game itself pretty good, actually: starts off impactful and with a lot of punch, quickly degenerates into something totally uninteresting and obnoxious. It's a traditional third-person, cover based shooter, with a few stealth elements mixed in (that's your dog; I'll cover that more later). Enemies start off easy and quickly get cheap, though you can basically cheat by shooting them, staggering them, and then running up for a free and easy instant kill. In fact, it was actually way easier during most of the game to just completely ignore taking cover, bum rush the nearest enemy, punch him once and get a free finisher. You can even have finishers where you steal their weapons if you really need them, so this one-two combo is essentially the easiest way through generic thugs. The fact that your character has a pretty robust melee system actually makes the game easier, since I can combo thugs into oblivion if needs be.

Which is nice, I guess, if you like doing the same thing over and over, and watching the same half-dozen kill animations over and over. They are hilariously over the top the first couple times (like the swearing. And the story. And basically this whole game), and then they - you guessed it - get repetitive and annoying. This tends to happen with just about any game that uses a "kill animation" liberally, which makes me wonder why developers just don't add more animations. It's like in JRPGs and the battle songs;  you know they are going to be playing your game for 60+ hours, why don't you have like six different battle themes? Legend of Dragoon freaking did that, and it was perhaps the only good thing about that game! Come on, SquareEnix! This isn't hard.

I really need to stop going off on tangents during my reviews

Anyway, the game also quickly goes from "too easy" to "stupidly hard" fast. Regular thugs, as mentioned, go down easy but pretty soon they send a billion dudes at you (and those freaking snipers, like in that picture above) and on hard (which is what I played on) it gets obnoxious. Checkpoints are liberal and all, but I hate dying in games in general, so frustration hit pretty hard. I almost didn't finish it I got so pissed off, but like Viking: Battle for Asgard I persevered, and was rewarded with...well, a stupid ending. What a surprise.

There honestly isn't much to say about playing as Jack. Headshots come easy, and the fact it gives you a more precise reticle when blind firing from cover (with the pistol, anyway) than when you actually aim is pretty stupid (and hilarious when I headshot people from behind some box without even looking). The fact that it slo-mos every time I headshot is rewarding, but again...gets old fast. 

Shadow, which reminds me of Shadow from Final Fantasy VI, who also had a killer dog. COINCIDENCE?!?!

My favorite parts in the game were (again, like Viking...this is sort of uncanny, actually) the tacked-on stealth sections where you played as Jack's kick-ass dog, Shadow. Shadow can only take a few hits and (obviously) can't use guns, but he can use "dog senses" to see through walls, insta-kill enemies that don't see him, drag bodies to keep from getting found out, and sneak through small areas. These sections are actually really fun to play, because Shadow's insta-killing (one of which involves biting a dude in the nuts...ouch...and it give an achievement for that) keeps things fast, though the graphics are so bad that when he's dragging and enemy nine times out of ten his mouth isn't actually on the arm, just sort of...floating near it. Oh well.

Anyway, these sections are a good break up from the monotonous shooting and executions as Jack, which is why it sucks that they are both few and far between as well as super short. I don't think the concept of playing as Shadow could support an entire game to itself, but it was certainly a good enough diversion that they should have put more of it in. 

That isn't motion blur. The game actually looks this fugly. Ok, maybe it is motion blur, but the game still looks bad. 

The graphics look...just passable. Locations are bland and uninspired, the guns all look like boring old guns, you fight the same batches of enemies over and over, and everybody looks like they are made out of plastic or something. Faces are particularly horrifying, and Shadow doesn't look like he had any hair, just one big texture. Lighting is boring, costumes are boring...has my point been made? This game looks like an up-resed PS2 game, which sort of fits the fact that it plays like...an up-resed PS2 game. Seriously, all those years you put Dead to Rights on the backburner, and you picked the laziest way to reboot it? For shame.

Not to mention it's made in the Unreal Engine (like every game this generation), so you get texture popin up the wazoo, even when the game is installed on the 360s HDD. You thought the game couldn't look worse? Oh, think again, silly consumer!

Hooray for graphics. 

This game really drags. With no multiplayer and a single player that feels too long, I see no reason for anybody to pick it up unless they are really hurting for a violent, third person shooter that isn't Gears of War. While some parts of it are decent, and the hilariously awful story makes up for a lot, there is just too much here that feels half-baked to give it a hearty recommendation. If you can find it for $10 or under, and again...are really hurting for a third-person shooter that isn't, you know, good, then I have got the game for you. 

And, continuing the similarites between this review and my Viking: Battle for Asgard review, I'm "rewarding" Dead to Rights: Retribution with two out of five stars. Why two instead of one? Because despite myself, I did have a pretty decent time the first couple of hours, and all the Shadow parts were enjoyable. It's a guilty pleasure (my brain was protesting against my having fun the entire time), but one that only lasts a short amount of time. 

And since seeing the takedowns for the first time is one of the best things about the game, I will now ruin it for you by embedding this video with all the takedowns. What? Now you don't have to play the game! You'll thank me later. 

Roller Coaster Tycoon (Deluxe)

The Short


Pros
- An expansive theme park sim
- Build shops and rides, hire entertainers and handymen, and much more
- Actually build your own coasters in "design" mode
- Dozens of missions (more with expansions)
- Loads of coaster types and rides
- Insanely addicting

Cons
- The formula for building a good coaster can be difficult to figure out
- Easy to "cheat" your way through the game with cheap exploits
- Ride depreciation is a bit unrealistic
- Micromanagement eventually gets to insane levels on the bigger maps
- No true "sandbox" mode (though an expansion has a map with unlimited money)

Just looking at this screen shot makes me want to boot the game up again

The Long

Not going to lie: Roller Coaster Tycoon is one of my favorite old PC games. If you'll allow a moment of personal indulgence: Roller Coaster Tycoon was the game that headed off my "second wave" of PC gaming love (the first starting with The Incredible Machine 2, and the third with Warcraft III). I spent hours playing this game with my brothers, trying to design the perfect park, and salivating as we awaited for the next expansion pack to come out. Now, thanks to Good Old Games, you can pick up this game on the cheap (as well as it's ok-but-not-vastly-improved sequel), and so last Christmas I jumped on it. I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years.

Guess what? It totally did. This game is awesome.

Things are gettin' crazy

The game is basically like that really old game Theme Park, but improved in nearly every way. Essentially the game has a plethora of missions for you, staring with simple ones (here's a blank park and some money: have fun!) and getting to harder ones (get a certain park rating and guest # in this extremely limited space, etc.). Each park layout is unique and since you can't change where your park entrance is (which is too bad), you have to work around the landscape. You can always use your shovel to raise and lower land, add water, and do all sorts of crazy stuff, but since everything in this game costs a bit of money you'll nickle and dime yourself to death if you are a perfectionist.

It's a pretty simple set up at first: keep your guests happy. You start with the basics: food, drinks, and bathrooms. You can then build simple rides: bumper cars, a ferris wheel, some go-karts (those go-karts are money makers) . Once you've earned enough you can then start constructing roller coasters (beginning with basic steel ones with no loops, and eventually getting to crazy, twisting monstrosities) and that is when the game gets crazy. 

Even the main menu screen is exciting

The game comes with a handful of pre-build tracks (not enough, honestly, but if you have the expansions it adds a lot), but the real joy comes in making your own coasters. The sky is essentially the limit as you can build banks, curves, loops, corkscrews, and anything else. You can even add in-ride photos (and the price gouge the heck out of them) in an attempt to generate more revenue. If you make a mistake on coaster construction, the game refunds you completely (unlike paths, where if you mess up you are out the $2 difference), and you can make coasters that go really high, twist around other rides, go underground; seriously, you can do anything if you can afford it. Creating some wacky (and stupid) roller coasters is a blast. They don't even have to be complete; you can have those ones that just sort of shoot you forward and then let you fall back.

And you aren't just limited to coasters. Want a steam train that encircles you park like in Disneyland? That's there. How about a monorail? Got that. What about some simpler, smaller rides that just fill up the extra space? Can do that too (even if it's a cheap way to earn money). The number of coasters, concessions, rides, and options is staggering, especially with the expansions installed. It's never overwhelming, because the game unlocks things in increments (you have to "research" new ride types in each scenario, and the rate you get new stuff is equal to how much you fund research), giving you time to figure out what you want. You can even focus your research on different things, so if your park is too full of coasters you can instead research food or smaller rides (like slides or hedge mazes) instead. 

"The Purple Puker"

There are some issues with designing your own coasters, though. While the pregenerated rides are somehow immaculate with their ratings (each is given an excitement, intensity, and nausea rating. You want to raise the first one without raising the other two), whenever you build your own you seem to fall flat. Mine always are too intense, even if they seem tamer than the prebuilt ones. This can be frustrating, but it also can be very satisfying when you finally make the perfect steel coaster. You can also save the rides you make so you can build them again in later scenarios, which means your "Rat Race Armageddon" ride can grace every single park you build.

The goal of the game is to get rich and keep your guests happy, which (as stated above) starts simple and gets hard. You have to provide them with benches and trash cans, or else they'll just throw their garbage on the ground and puke everywhere. You have to hire handymen to take out the trash, clean up the puke, and generally keep things looking good. You need mechanics to make sure your rides don't break down or randomly blow up. You need security guards to prevent your stuff from getting vandalized. And you need entertainers to keep people happy while they wait for hours in line for your latest coaster abomination. 

Despite your best efforts, stuff can quickly get overwhelming.

And that is where the game gets tricky. After a while your park gets so big that micromanaging everything becomes a near impossible task. Guests tire of rides after a while, meaning you'll need to drop the prices in order to keep them coming. It's easy to box yourself in if you aren't careful, as you need pathways in order to get to other rides (and you have to keep it somewhat organized or your guests will get lost). You have to keep on hiring people proportional to how much you are expanding, and make certain you have enough freaking bathrooms and food. It gets crazy, and when all you really want to do is design wacky coasters, sometimes the financial micromanaging (especially when advertising gets into the mix) can get in the way of just enjoying the game.

Luckily there are ways to "break" the game. Since you can sell stuff back for almost as much as you paid for it, if guests are starting to get super cheap (like thinking ten cents is still too much to pay for freaking bumper cars!) then you can simply bulldoze a pre-made attraction and put the exact same one in its place. They'll all think it's a new ride, and you'll profit. This kind of feels like cheating, but the fact that rides depreciate in value so quickly (though the coasters tend to work better) makes it seem like that's what the game wants you to do. 

Once you figure out the specifics of the mechanics, you can essentially "break" the game in terms of earning money. Aside from bulldozing rides and replacing them with the same ones to regain interest, you can also make short, crappy, custom coasters (that only last 10 seconds) with reasonably low stats and still make mad bank off of them (when your down payment was substantially lower than the amount people value the ride at). It's unrealistic - who would want to ride a coaster that just goes around in a circle and stops - but it is totally feasible. You can also make pretty much any go-kart coarse and people will line up for miles to ride it, even if it is total crap.  

The game also lacks a "sandbox" mode, where it would basically just give you a huge lot of your choosing, unlimited money, and all the rides upfront. It does have "Arid Heights" in one of the expansions, which gives you a big desert and tons of money (and the charge to never let your park rating drop below 650), but that's just one scenario. It would have been great to have had a "custom map" option with your own rules and details, but it isn't that big of a loss.

You can even color each coaster segment different parts...if you are a total lunatic

I've played every Roller Coaster Tycoon game, and despite the later ones having better graphics (and the ability to "ride" your own creations), I still think the original is the best. With the expansions installed it has way more than enough options for even the craziest park manager, and the massive number of scenarios ensures dozens of hours of gameplay. If you have any interest in simulation games, you should really check this game out. It's one of the best. 

You can buy this game right now on Good Old Games for $5. I picked it up during the Christmas sale for $2.50, and they have the second game (which is essentially the same game but with slightly better UI and a few more rides) on there for $10. Good Old Games makes it so even these ancient games will run smoothly on modern machines (runs great on my Windows 7 64 bit), so you don't have anything to worry about if you get it from them. It also comes with all the expansions, which is the way the game should be played. 

If I were to give it a star rating, it would certainly be five out of five. Now would somebody please turn the sound off on the ferris wheels? I hate that music. 

And as a bonus, you can make deathtraps! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!

Halo 3: ODST

The Short

Pros
-  All new single player set during Halo 2 but on earth
- Play as somebody other than Master Chief (finally)
- Handful of new weapons
- New Firefight mode
- Story is a very different approach than the other Halo games
- Nathan Fillion does a voice in it
- Includes a disc for the complete Halo 3 multiplayer experience

Cons
- Story is stale and doesn't pack promised emotional punch
- Firefight is friends only; no open matchmaking
- Not much different from Halo 3
- While it's nice to have a Halo 3 multiplayer disc with all the maps, it's still the same old multiplayer
 - Doesn't do much to expand the Halo mythology or improve the Halo formula
- Short; only a few hours long
- Graphics are in the Halo 3 engine and look dated
- Halo Reach basically made this entire game obsolete

Welcome to New Mombasa

The Long

Halo 3: ODST sparked a lot of talk leading up to it's release. Originally titled Halo 3: Recon, it was slated as a sort of discounted expansion pack to the original Halo 3. As it came closer to its release, however, Bungee announced they had added a significant amount to the game, and therefore would be charging full price for it. People were pissed, even though nobody had actually played the game yet. So, in the end, is Halo 3: ODST worth it, or is it just as we all thought: a glorified expansion pack?

Halo 3: ODST takes place during the events of Halo 2. While Master Chief and the Arbitor were off blasting aliens on other planets, back on Earth stuff was getting crappy. The Covenant showed up and started off an invasion, leading to most of the Earth getting blown up and Master Chief having to come back and save the day again (which is how Halo 3 starts). You assume the role of an unnamed rookie soldier who is a member of the ODST squad (which stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, basically marines that drop in from orbit to kick butt), whose drop pod has a malfunction and results in him being knocked unconscious for most of the battle. The game is evenly split between playing as the rookie and as other members of your squad who, unlike you, actually landed and did useful stuff rather than sleep in their pod for several hours.

And your captain is Nathan Fillion. That's not the character's name, but I never bothered to learn it. 

As the rookie the game sort of turns into a weird, pseudo-open world experience, where you explore the ruins of the now-overrun New Mombasa and find objects relevant to the battles that your squadmates experienced a few hours previous. You then relive those experiences (which usually involve the standard Halo fare of riding vehicles, blasting dudes, and pressing "B" to melee) before jumping back into the rookie. Near the end of the story, it makes a (rather jarring) jump from the past to the present, where the squad reunites for the final battle and the game ends with the Covenant still blowing up the planet, but Master Chief about to show up. Yay; everything we did was for nothing!

Bungee pushed that this story was better than any of their others, and I can at least agree that it is different than the other Halo games. Halo has always been a power fantasy: you play a super-soldier who can jump ten feet in the air, duel-wield impossibly large guns and base enemies in the face or run them over in purple space jets. Because of this, the set-pieces have always been appropriately over-the-top and goofy. Compare the end of ODST, where you are essentially driving down a freeway (wee?) to the end of Halo 3, where you are driving across the surface of a crumbling planet as it explodes around you, making sweet jumps and finally launching your Warthog off the side of a ruined planet into the hanger bay of a spaceship. 

Yeah, I can make that jump, no sweat. 

This is what Halo is, and it's what Bungee is good at. They aren't good at hamfisted "emotional" stories or slow, plodding exposition. This is also evidenced in Halo Reach, which should have been the best Halo story ever, but instead ended up being incredibly boring and shallow, but this isn't a review of Halo Reach it's a review of Halo 3: ODST, so I'll shut up about that now. Point being: Halo 3: ODST plods along for most of the game, with the flashback action sequences a decent saving grace but still dwarfed by anything that happened in Halo 3. Because Bungee isn't that great at actual writing (especially dialogue), I never felt attached to any of the characters (besides the fact the main character was Nathan Fillion, and I kept pretending he was Mal from Firefly), and so I was never motivated to see what happened. The fact that the single-player is incredible short just seals the deal, leaving it as an interesting experiment but a failed one never-the-less.

So the single-player is unique but uninspired; what about the multiplayer modes? Halo has always been about it's super-hardcore multiplayer following, and on the surface ODST is everything you ever wanted. It comes with two basic modes: Firefight (which is on the ODST disc) and the complete Halo 3 multiplayer (which is on its own disc). Let's talk about Firefight first. 

Suffer not a beastie to live...wait, I said that in my Metro 2033 review. Oops. 

Firefight is basically Halo's answer to Gears of War's "Horde Mode." Basically you grab four human players, and you try and hold off wave after wave of computer-spawned baddies. Every few waves "skulls" are added, basically difficulty modifiers (giving enemies better grenade throws, better aim, more health, etc) to keep the whole thing from becoming a cakewalk. You have to stick together to survive, sharing health and weapons and ammo. It can get very difficult very fast, and it works like it did in Gears with the whole "frantic desperation to survive" once the battles really get heated.

It still has problems, though, first and foremost being there is no public matchmaking. At all. And since you are inexplicably limited to two people split-screen per box (unlike regular multiplayer, where you can have four people at once), you have to play online in order to get a full four player-team, meaning you need at least two actual friends to play with. Yeah, you could tell me to "go find some friends, loser" but having to get the crew together whenever we want to play is inconvenient and annoying. The fact they took this out for Halo Reach only proves they knew it was a bad idea, and makes this mode feel like some weird beta for that new, better version. 

The other problem is that it...just isn't particularly engrossing. I really got sucked into Gears of War 2's horde mode; I probably played it more than any other online shooter's multiplayer up to that point. But Halo 3: ODST's Firefight mode just seemed...basic. It was like they knew they should make a "Horde" mode (around this time everybody was doing it) but the only put the bare minimum into it. It's still decent, and if you have four people on system-link where you can scream at each other it's a hilarious blast, but when you tear it down to its core, Firefight on ODST is a really shoddy attempt. This is only further exacerbated by the fact that the Firefight mode in Halo Reach is really good, which again makes me think the whole Halo 3: ODST experience was Bungee experimenting before releasing their actual finished product a few years later.

I suck at Halo 3 multiplayer, but I still enjoyed playing it for some inexplicable reason

The other multiplayer experience is "The Complete Halo 3 Multiplayer Experience," which essentially means they took the same Halo 3 multiplayer you've been playing for years, throwing all the expansion maps on a disc, and calling it good. There is no actual new multiplayer with Halo 3: ODST. At the time it was released I had no problem with this; I owned Halo 3 but hadn't played the multiplayer much, and something I hate about console FPSes is the fact there never seem to be enough maps (unless you shell out like $50 for the expansions). So this disc was actually pretty awesome, if a bit basic. But if you were somebody who loved Halo 3 (which I'm pretty sure that's who Bungee was marketing this game to), then you probably owned the expansions already, meaning the whole "multiplayer" aspect of ODST was wasted on you.

I can't say much about Halo 3's multiplayer: either you love it or hate it. It's heavily weapons based with a hint of vehicular combat, allows for some totally nuts game modes and maps, and everybody on it is way the crap better than me. Regardless, if its your cup of tea then this is the best place to get it, though I'm going to tell you right now that Halo Reach's multiplayer is basically a billion times better.

Bungee still knows how to make a hell of a trailer, though

So...the verdict? Despite what I've said Halo 3: ODST isn't a bad FPS, it's just a bad Halo game. The standard of quality set by the series demanded better than what was given, and the lack of anything new in the multiplayer department (save a mediocre Firefight) really makes this package seem incomplete. Add to the fact that now, years later, I can look back and say Halo Reach did literally everything that Halo 3: ODST did but better, and I see no reason to pick this game up instead of that one. 

That being said, it is still an extremely solid shooter, because while the extra bits may fall short, the core of these Halo games is the shooting, and that holds up. Because of that, I'm going to tack on an extra point to my original two out of five score, giving it a final score of three out of five.

However, I really can't recommend buying it at this point in time unless you really love the Halo universe, have to own every game in the series, or think the Halo 3 multiplayer is somehow better than the Halo Reach multiplayer (it isn't). You can get the game pre-owned for $10, though if you love Halo you could probably go as far as $20. Just know that you are looking at the weakest entry in the Halo franchise. 

Oh look, now I've gone and made Mal sad. :(

Earthworm Jim

The Short


Pros
- Goofy, zany platformer
- Excellent animations and art design
- Lots of crazy levels with tons of variety
- Launch cows

Cons
- Some spotty and floaty controls
- Water level is stupid difficult
- SNES version is missing a level that was in the Genesis version

COW LAUNCHED

The Long

Earthworm Jim is the 90s. Spawned from a generation infatuated with Animaniacs and The Tick, Earthworm Jim is a goofy, weird take on the platforming genre that sports excellent animations, a bizarre sense of humor, and a boss that burps fish at you. Yep, burping fish. This is that kind of a game. 

On its most basic level, Earthworm Jim is a platformer that quickly goes from "cakewalk" to "tough as nails" in just a few levels. You are given two attacks: a gun dependent on ammo and a whip (which is actually your suit whipping your earthworm body). The whip can be used to latch on to various hooks to reach secret areas (or just progress the game) or to kill enemies. Simple stuff.

Groovy!

This game got a lot of praise when it was released, if only for its great art design and animations. Made by professional animators, all the characters and enemies look really good for an SNES game. It's colorful and would fit right in with the Saturday morning cartoons of the 90s. In fact, it did, because they made an animated series based off it (with Jim being voiced by the same guy who does Homer Simpson. Who would have thought). 

Coming soon to a TV near you. In the 90s. 

The weirdness of this game is just...way out there. The first level is a junkyard full of crows, mutant dogs, and you jumping on tires and climbing on conveyor belts to avoid fishtanks and...more tires? It is then followed by the boss that burps fish while dropping tubas on you. Yeah.

You then race a crow through space, dodging asteroids in some attempt to not have to fight him. After that, you go to hell.

Yep

Or "Heck," rather. Fight demons, lawyers, snowmen, and some totally loony cat. And then you go underwater, where you ride a giant hamster to eat cats. And the boss is a fish in a bowl. And then you have a bungee-jumping competition against a sentient ball of snot. And you have to save a little dog who walks forward from ramming into anything for a whole level, or he turns into a massive dog and eats you.

Yep. Bungee jumping snot. Quality. 

 The game keeps mixing stuff up so often you'll probably not notice the fact the game is actually pretty short. The Genesis version had an entire extra level (which was super difficult) that the SNES version didn't have, which is too bad for us Nintendo enthusiasts. We did however, keep the horrible water level, where you have to drive a poorly-controlled pod through hairpin turns, where you only get something like five hits and are on a timer. And then it makes you do it again. And again. And again. 

This is seriously not fun anymore

Eventually, the humor can't stave off the frustration. The bungee-jumping snot is funny, but it just throws you into it with no instruction and you hope for the best. The "save the dog" level is cool in concept but awful in execution: it pretty much requires you to completely memorize the dog's path and when to force it to jump, etc. The fact the regular controls, while serviceable, are not as precise as they should be adds another layer of difficulty and frustration.

You'd better duck, dog, because I am not doing this level again

This game has also been re-released in HD on the Xbox Live marketplace for $10, which is a good deal if you have memories for it, but its difficulty and controls mean it hasn't aged well. While I still think this game is a really fun, unique experience, there is only so much the weirdness can account for. I'd suggest picking it up for your SNES or Genesis for your collection, but not for more than the $10 also asked for on XBLA (get the demo).

If I were to give it a score rating, it would be a close four out of five. Despite it's flaws, I personally think this game is great (and years of playing it have put most of the difficult segments into the "muscle memory" area of my brain), but if you don't have any history with it feel free to knock a point off the final score. 

A face only a mother could love