GSoC 2013 pushes SuperTuxKart forward!

If you follow our planet, this is no news, but the recent advances in graphics, networking a other stuff from SuperTuxKart are quite nice. This is basically a result of them being accepted to this years Google Summer of Code.

Not showing most of the new features yet is this nice video featuring the mascot of OpenGameArt.org as a new player character:



But their blog has many interesting technical details (and other screenshots + videos) to show off the new features.

So if you like to also contribute, or just want to praise the great work, have a look at their FreeGamer hosted forums :)

Stunt Rally 2.1 released

My luck... I do the reluctant once in two weeks post to keep the blog alive, and almost the next day is an unexpected big new release of a cool game ;)

Ahh well... Stunt Rally 2.1 seems to have ventured into even less realistic spheres now:

Awesome alien worlds in Stunt Rally 2.1

A lot more (mostly more conventional) new screenshots can be seen here.

All I need now is a nice unrealistically spongy arcade style vehicle handling, and I am happy :p

Assorted news #1024

*hrmmpf*

• New FreeOrion 0.43 release.
• Unvanquished Alpha 18.
• Some news from the standalone idTech4 Hexen remake.
• Open-source reimplementation of Caesar3 engine picked up again.
• OpenMW 0.25.0 released.
• New Ya3dag 1.42 release.
• Files of the Open(GameArt)Bundle released under CC0.

tl;dr: Just click on the links above :p

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

The Short
Pros
- Back to the linear Castlevania format
- Graphics are a hybrid between the first Castlevania and Simon's Quest, and look fantastic
- Music is kickin'
- Four playable characters (three of which you have to discover) help mix up the gameplay
- Branching and split paths
- Some of the levels are ingenious

Cons
- Really, really hard
- Like, absurdly hard. You won't beat it. Ever. Unless you have Game Genie
- Seriously though, sometimes I think this and the Mega Man games were invented solely to sell Game Genies.
- Not nearly as tightly designed as the first Castlevania game was

This looks really familiar.

The Long

Castlevania III: Breaking Dawn Part 2 feels like a compromise. It's as if the people who made Simon's Quest were insistent that Simon's Quest wasn't all bad, but it was clear that people really just wanted more of Castlevania's linear style. "But you go outside the castle!" the Simon's Quest fans cried. "That's cool! And you have options to go different places and in a different order!"

Castlevania III: Dracula's Purse is a good Castlevania game, unlike Simon's Quest. But it should have been the best one on the NES, and instead it's just in second place. And it's a game that goes to show that even if you add a bunch of stuff to a tried-and-true formula, if you don't nail the "tried-and-true formula" part, you're going to screw up your game.

What I'm trying to say is Castlevania III is too hard. 

It does have a pretty sick intro, though. 

Castlevania III is a prequel to the first Castlevania, though with these old NES games you really have to rely on the manuals or Nintendo Power to know that. It stars Trevor Belmont, who looks exactly like Simon from the first game except Trevor has a cape, and he's on a quest to whip Dracula into shape. As in kill him. Not jazzercise him into shape, if that was confusing.

On it's surface it looks like a return to form from the series. Hearts again are used for subweapons, not as an economic staple. Levels are linear and challenging and are chock full of enemies ready to murder you. Stages end with a challenging boss fight (though the bosses have a tendency to be recycled) and give you a glowing orb thing that refills your health. It's Castlevania again, hooray!

With a few twists that should make it better, and...sort of do?

Finally, a female playable character in a Castlevania game!

First off, after every stage or two you're given an option to branch to a split path. A little background image on the far right shows you the general gist of what you're getting in each excursion, so you can easily identify the clock tower level and avoid it. Some paths contain hidden characters (like Syfa above) which you can then swap out for at any time in your journey. Others give you nothing but death and an empty feeling inside. All eventually get to Dracula's castle, but there is very distinctly a "right way" to get through the game, and the game doesn't tell you what way that is. You'll have to find out by playing it through a half-dozen times or going to Gamefaqs (or grabbing a Nintendo Power).

The extra characters, of which there are three (Grant, Syfa, and Alucard's first appearance) are all surprisingly unique and yet can all tackle each stage. I imagine that's why the stages don't feel as "tight" as they did in Castlevania 1: Eclipse; they had to be designed so that four distinctly different characters could beat them. That bit of "looseness" in the levels is a bit of a downer, as I'd imagine if they'd cut the characters back they probably could have made the levels feel more designed for the specific characters rather than a "one size fits all" thing.

Except that size is hard, and the fit is your death.

This seems fair. 

Castlevania III is infamous for it's absurd difficulty, and I'm just going to prove to be the echo in the Grand Canyon in that regard. The game is hard, really hard. About the time you hit the ghost ship you'll be thinking, "man, was Castlevania this hard?" When you hit the Red Keep (or that's what I call it anyway) you'll wonder if the game developers are sadists. And if you ever make it to Dracula...good luck. That's all I'm saying.

Since the game community is such a nonjudgemental and supporting one, I feel obligated to give this disclaimer: I like hard games. I'm not a "casual" or a "noob." One of my biggest draws to old-school gaming is the lack of handholding and the sometimes malicious difficulty curve. It's gaming at its purest, when it's pulled off successfully, and gaming at it's most frustrating when it isn't. Castlevania III skirts the line in that regard: it's a lot of fun for a good portion of the game, and it's very frustrating for another portion. As such, you'll probably play it for about half an hour before getting stuck, and only the elite will continue to bash their heads against the brick wall of whatever level it is until finally persisting through. That or they'll grab the Game Genie. 

See if you can find Trevor. Here's a hint: he's totally boned. 

The game still looks quite good, sort of a graphical hybrid of Simon's Quest and Castlevania (and probably another compromise between the Simon's Quest apologetics and the Castlevania purists). While Castlevania relied heavily on color contrasts, Castlevania III does as well...for the most part. In some instances it's impossible to tell the background from the black-outlined flight of stairs you're supposed to take down, and the dark-outlined enemies can often feel mashed into the background. It's still an incredibly gorgeous game and a monument of pixel art, and while it's certainly one of the best looking games on the system it doesn't have the "pop" that Castlevania had.

The music is some of the best in the series, top to bottom, though still pales in comparison to the first game. The opening theme, however, is killer.

Here's just the whole soundtrack because why not?

Castlevania III: Dracula's Quest is a fine decent game, but one few people will ever actually see the end of. If you're a collector then you've obviously got your eye set on it, but if you're browsing the Wii Virtual Console and needing a Castlevania fix, there's better options (not Simon's Quest, mind). If you want an absurdly hard challenge to bang your face against for the next few weeks (or months. Or years) then this game is an excellent example of "Nintendo Hard" for you to get all nostalgic over and then be glad they don't make games this difficult anymore. 

It's still one of the better Castlevania games, and since they don't make 2D linear ones any more your options are forever limited. Plus that cover art is just incredible. I guess the point I'm trying to make is in the compromise mentioned at the beginning, in the end the Castlevania guys won out. But that doesn't stop some bad decisions from Simon's Quest to nearly spoil the experience. 

Get this game if you hate yourself. Three out of five stars. 

Purple tombstones are what I want to be buried in. 

Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest

The Short

Pros

- Feels like a grand adventure

- Adds a leveling/currency sense of progression to the series

- Attempts to give an open world, which oddly enough is believable

- Has phenomenal music

- Looks decent enough

- Has a day/night cycle that actually changes how the game is played

Cons

- Level design is a joke

- Bad translations and obscure puzzles are a poor mixture

- Next to no bosses to speak of

- The game turns into farming for hearts (currency) to continue

- Graphics lack the visual "pop" from Castlevania

Say what you like about the game, I love the way this forest background looks.

The Long

If there's one thing I can really say that's positive about Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest it's that it made me realize how much time and care had to have gone into the original Castlevania. That or the first game was a total fluke, in which case I am sad.

Simon's Quest is universally scorned by gamers, and is considered one of the "unholy trinity" of odd game sequels to come out of the NES (the other two being Mario 2 and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, both of which I think are great games). More than a few people have made videos about it, and honestly it seems you can't be a frustrated gamer on youtube these days without covering Simon's Quest at some point. But what it boils down to is this: Simon's Quest clearly meant well, it was just misguided. And in an industry where gaming journalists scoff and scorn at the lack of innovation only to criticize a game a moment later for not fitting their review criteria, Simon's Quest probably deserves another, fresher look.

The game is still pretty rotten, don't get me wrong. But there's a good deal to still enjoy here.

There's a Death Cab for Cutie song about this, I think. 

Simon's Quest is rare as it is a direct sequel story-wise to Castlevania, something they didn't really do until Dracula X --> Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow --> Dawn of Sorrow later down the road. Simon has killed Dracula, but he seems to be under a curse. Not Dracula's Curse (that's the third game), but some sort of other curse. Anyway, the only way to fix it is to gather up various parts of Dracula's anatomy, put them all in a pot, and revive him. And then kill him again. No, I don't get it either.

Story doesn't matter, what matters is the game objectives. You start by finding yourself in a town, not Dracula's castle, in fact his whole castle seems to be missing in this game and is instead replaced by a variety of mansions. It's almost as if the developers played Legend of Zelda, realized that they liked the puzzles, items, rupees, and dungeons on that game and wanted to make it in a 2D platformer sense. Which, now that I've typed that out, sounds pretty great. Too bad Simon's Quest isn't. 

Well, at least I know my neck is safe. 

Simon's Quest differs from Castlevania so dramatically I hesitate to even call it a Castlevania game. Gone is the linear platforming, the obvious tight level design and arcade-style points system. Instead we're on an adventure, or a "quest" if you will. Simon murders various Halloween-style monsters to procure hearts, which have gone from ammo to currency in the weirdest economy known to man, and then spends those bloodbags on powerups he needs to beat the game. Shields, flame whips, holy water, and so forth. Most of the sub weapons are now used for specific objectives rather than primarily as weapons (again, this is Zelda-esque) and can be employed to uncover secrets.

The world itself is also quite nice to look it. It does fall into that "everything has a black outline so the game looks darker than the back of the moon" vibe that many third-party NES games fell victim to, but the sprites are well detailed and the backgrounds especially are large and feel detailed. The forest is genuinely claustrophobic and the open mountain spaces feel as real to me as the planes of Skyrim, if that's saying something.

So for the first ten to fifteen minutes of Simon's Quest you're probably going to have a great time, just soaking in the atmosphere, great music, and the familiar controls. It's when you try to progress in the game that the big deep problems emerge.

Thank you. That is very helpful.

Simon's Quest, first off, is heavily dependent on grinding. Stuff costs lots of hearts, and so you'll be bashing monsters left and right for them. Seeing as dying to a Continue causes you to lose all your hearts, you'll quickly realize the best way to get hearts is to stay close to whatever village has the item you want and just murder easy werewolves or skeletons outside. Which means running back and forth over the same two or three screens for half an hour to buy the item you need. Strike one.

The next problem comes with knowing where to go. While you may brave out past the three safe screens near town to explore this monster-ridden world, odds are you won't find much in ways of guidance. The village people aren't much help - it appears English is their fifteenth language - and signs and even hints you can buy a cryptic or flat out wrong. While finding the first mansion is certainly possible by simple exploration, will you know you need a wooden stake to destroy the orb at the end? Well, you do. Just FYI. You can thank me later. Strike two.

Pray all you want, it won't fix their bad translations.

Lastly, the dungeons themselves. Obviously meant to be the best parts of the game (or at least, I'd imagine that's the case) even they're rather unfun. There's a handful of reasons (bad enemy placement, having to backtrack back out after completion) but what really buttered my biscuit was the invisible drops. Some blocks you can walk on. Others, you can't. How do you tell them apart? By lobbing holy water at them like a deranged priest. Since there's no visual indication whatsoever without seeing of the water jar passes through, you'll have to lob every single square of floor in these mansions just to be certain you don't fall down and get impaled on spikes or something. Whomever thought that idea up should have been fired on the spot and slapped, not necessarily in that order. It's a load of rot and an absolutely unforgivable waste of gamers' time. Strike Three.

Now, I am going to be fair here: Simon's Quest did lay a framework for what would eventually become games like Symphony of the Night and the GBA and DS Castlevania games. Persistent leveling, a non-linear world, money to buy stuff with, dungeons to explore; all of these things carried over in one way or another. And I applaud them for at least trying to experiment with it. But while I can commend them for their attempt, I can't reconcile the final product. Simon's Quest just isn't fun, and is designed with systems that exist only to waste your time and provide frustration. While much of this game could be a good idea in theory, little of it transitions over to being ok in practice. 

At least the music is great. Or this song, anyway. 

Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest is the only one of the unholy triforce of NES sequels that I think is a rotten apple, and even then it isn't...horrible. It mean, it's totally playable. It controls decently enough, looks fine, and has...a lot of...content. 

Who am I kidding? This game's rubbish. Though it does go to show one thing: many of the design choices in this game developed solely to waste your time are being actively used today. Providing minor rewards to give the illusion of progress, an open world with a whole lot of nothing actually in it, and other such "advances" are usually given high marks in reviews these days. The difference is that modern games have done a lot better at hiding the fact that these elements are there to waste your time, either by upping the immersion factor (which is almost enough to save Simon's Quest for me, if I'm being totally honest here) or making them so addicting you just don't notice the fact you're being abused. And I realize now I might have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'm going to shut up.

Point being: Simon's Quest isn't good. It exists to waste your time, and as such playing it will...waste your time. Bet you didn't see that one coming. 

It's not completely irredeemable, but it sure tries its hardest to be. Though I will say you may get some enjoyment booting it up clean and just wandering about for a half-hour or so with no actual intent of getting anywhere. Just soak in those great graphics and sense of adventure. Then put it away and repeat the process in a few months when you need to justify having bought it.

Two out of five stars. 

Sorry Simon, your quest is in another castle.

Much activity for Zero-K and some other news

Zero-K, the probably coolest fully FOSS offspring of the SpringRTS engine has seen at least two new releases since it last crossed my mind to check their page... a pity actually as the new features of version 1.1.7.0 (and prior) seem quite nice.
And for those not into the game (yet), there is now a channel with commented multi-player matches like this one:



Just a pity that the game-play doesn't really allow much zooming in to see the graphically really nice units ;)

In unrelated news:

• New release of Arx Libertatis (1.1.1)
• Tesseract is getting its own "base game" it seems
• There is a constant stream of new betas from Octaforge
• The Unvanquished summer tournament is under way, but matches so far have been a bit one-sided ;)
• Check out the new 3.8.0-beta1 version of MegaGlest

Hmm, there is probably much more... so please comment below :D

DevCorner: Open (Game Art) Bundle

An interesting mixture to "pay what you want" and "ransom funding" has recently surfaced with the Open Bundle:



You can buy all the offered game art and use them under the CC-by license and if the total threshold is reached (10k, 1 day remaining, 9.3k already pledged) all the game art (2d sprites and music) will be officially released under the CC0. A split of the funds is btw. shared with the EFF and Creative Commons.

For those wondering: no, it is not done by our friends of OpenGameArt.org, but they think it is a good project anyways. Interestingly the creator is also thinking of expanding the idea:

Do you want to host your own "public domain ransom"?
I'd love to help you! Email me at nick@commonly.cc

P.S.: While we are on last day notices: Today ends the registration period for the Unvanquished summer tournament. Also check out their latest Alpha 17.