#0006 - Assassin's Creed - 2007- Multiplatform - Ubisoft Montreal - Action/Platforming

Assassin's Creed was so hotly anticipated that it seems almost impossible that it could have met expectations. The scope was huge, the promises were equally so, and the hype matched both. What we expected was a sort of Grand Theft Auto: Crusader Edition - mission structure set within a dynamic ancient world with its own life cycles. More importantly, we were supposed to have choice. (Choice, of course, being the great illusion in video games.) We were promised the ability to interact with a living, breathing city population. What we got, and this is of course no surprise to the jaded gamer, is a game that was basically a prototype for the mirage that was the Assassin's Creed concept.

I still had fun with it, and it seems impossible to not even have a little bit of fun with a game where you can roam around cities killing targets at will. But it only takes an hour in to see that it's all a sham. Behind the Anvil-powered glimmer lies a puppet show where NPCs have only one line recorded with at max two different voice actors, there are only two or three real approaches to combat, and the entire six-hour length only offers about five different mission types. This is literally the progression that Assassin's Creed follows every thirty minutes: enter a city, go to mission hub, complete three of six available submissions that are always drawn from the same handful of types, and complete the final assassination. Engage in a cutscene, repeat. And that's it.

There was an idea that was Assassin's Creed, but it was lost somewhere amidst corporate deadlines. The game needed more time in both pre-production design and development. As I said, there is an element of fun here, and I certainly didn't gripe much on my way through the campaign. The story is original and compelling - a breath of fresh air in a generation of console gaming that is wildly derivative. The characters are realized in a powerful way, and the ascension of conflict to climax is about as well done as could be asked for. There's even some great twists on the way. I have no complaints with that.

The problem is that there's not enough of a compelling reason to stay in the game world for even the length of the campaign. After the first 'chapter' you've seen everything that can be done in the game. It's mostly downhill from there. Sometime in the future I'll cover Assassin's Creed II, but you can't talk about one without the other. Creed II is the game that the first was supposed to be. It delivers on the promise for a near-real world that drags you in and changes up the pace enough to keep you there. It's a symphony of varied experiences and free choice - the first Creed in contrast is a two-note Phillip Glass piece that just doesn't last.

What's great is that - more than almost any other developer I know of - Ubisoft Montreal demonstrates an ability to learn and modify their games to meet criticism. They refashioned Prince of Persia twice in the Sands of Time trilogy to result in Two Thrones, arguably the most refined iteration of the formula. They tried something new and unique with Assassin's Creed, accepted what was wrong with it, and moved forward with a bigger and better sequel. That's the sort of flexibility that I respect, and the sort of development dynamism that I think the game industry needs going forward.

#0005 - Night Slashers - 1994 - Arcade - Data East - Beat 'em Up

Seriously, this is what video games used to be about. It's hard to think of a genre that's more dead and gone than the side-scrolling beat 'em up, but in the late 1980's and early 90's they were super popular - Data East and Capcom alone must have cranked out about a hundred each for the arcades and home consoles: Final Fight, Double Dragon, Dungeons and Dragons. Later in the decade, a little studio called Treasure reached a climax of gameplay depth and innovation with Guardian Heroes for the Sega Saturn, but after that it became clear that there wasn't much wind left in the genre's sails. Versus fighters had won the arcades and 3D was starting to loom over the home market.

It's hard to really put God of War, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta in the same category. 3D changes the formula too much to retain any of the feel of the retro arcade originals, and the new focus on character progression is certainly the antithesis of the arcade philosophy. In that sense, I think it's fair to repeat that the beat 'em up is dead. Thanks to technology, however, we can say in the same breath "long live the beat 'em up".

Really the best place to get your groove on with some old-school bruising is with a MAME emulator. That's how this started for me - I was browsing around and saw that CoinOps Reignite had gotten support for Night Slashers from R4 onwards - I believe the very first emulator on Xbox to do so. I'd been waiting for the OpenBoR imitation project Night Slashers X to get ported, but after two years of waiting and with the original suddenly avaliable I couldn't say no. They're all the way up to R10 now on CoinOps (officially called X - confusing enough?) - search around on Snesorama and you should be able to find the thread.

It'd been a long time since I'd played the arcade cabinet. Years, in fact, and if I'd forgotten anything it was definitely how massive the sprites were. The game is gorgeous and the hand-drawn animations are detailed. It was those little touches and that larger-than-life scale that used to make arcade games stand out from the home consoles, and I have to say it put a smile back on my face. With my most recent experience on beat 'em ups being Streets of Rage 3, the three-character selection on Night Slashers is a little restricting but at least all the choices are fun.

You've can select a brawny American cyborg, a lightweight Japanese chick, and a middle-ground dandy-man with a good balance of speed and power. The cast of enemies is an eclectic mix of every horror trope out there: vampires, werewolves, zombies, marionnetes. Name it and it's there, with huge amounts of gore and blood in the Japanese revision or the typical "sweat" for the US and European gamers. What's funny was that I played this as a kid I thought that the white junk was intestines, guts, bile, and brain matter - making it just as awesomely gross for me and my friends as buckets of plasma.

To be honest it's hard not to become nostalgic when you play Night Slashers. It represents an approach to gamemaking that is only really replicated in the indie and arcade titles on XBLA and PSN - an approach that obviously doesn't favor story or features or depth, and really doesn't focus on gameplay too much either. I mean face it - Night Slashers is pretty simple compared to Guardian Heroes. But what it does right is just giving you a ton of action from the getgo. You can enjoy yourself without any investment (well, on an emulator at least) and without any commitment - there's no tutorial, no difficulty curve, no noobie-friendly stages. Just pedal-to-the-metal right out of the starting gate - a junk food fix in a video game format.

In a generation that is obsessed more than ever with an hour-long front end before you're really set loose inside the game world, Night Slashers is a retro beam of light that just treats you like an adult and dumps you into what matters without holding your hand. I respect that, and I wish more games today would cut the babysitting and bring the pain.

#0004 - Prey - 2006 - Multiplatform - 3D Realms - First Person Shooter

It seems as if video game history rewards the cautious as often as the bold. Half-Life 2, for instance, suffered from delays but eventually released to worlwide acclaim. But for every Half-Life 2 there is a Prey - a game that became victim of its own bloated development cycle and missed its moment to shine. 3D Realms began work on the game back in 1995, and it finally saw release over a decade later in 2006 after being restarted from scratch several times on different engines. Obviously, tech changes a lot in a ten year span.

There was, however, a sweet spot in 1998 when Prey was nearly complete and looking fantastic by the standards of the time.It should have hit the presses right then - Prey would have made a huge splash with its destructable geometry, portal technologies, and impressive detail textures. Regrettably, instead of going gold it was delayed again and was forced back to the drawing board to take advantage of next-gen tech. When gamers finally got their hands on Prey in 2006, the destructable environments were gone - and had been done in Red Faction already, anyway - and the texturing was nothing special in comparison to contemporaries Quake 4, Half-Life 2, and Far Cry.

As it is, you can pick up the 360 version for $4.99 at any Gamestop. The multiplayer networks are dead, and the game is never mentioned, even in a negative. It has been, a mere four years after the long-awaited release, completely forgotten. It doesn't seem right to say that a game can become less 'good' over time - after all, it's either good or it isn't, right? Well, you've got me. To be honest, the actual gameplay mechanics and theme are nothing to be excited about. One has to wonder if it really needed to take eleven years to come up with a theme so unremarkable. So you can't really blame anyone except for 3D Realms for the way Prey has rotted in bargain bins.

But damn, if Prey had only beaten the new wave of FPS games to the punch back in '98, we'd probably be remembering it as a milestone in technical achievement. Watching the old E3 interviews you really get a feeling for how amazing the portals and environments were for the day - back when a Voodoo 2 was considered a solid graphics card. The programmers and design staff were clearly talented to come up with implementations for this stuff before Portal and Red Faction, and it's just sad that their achievements were delayed from the public eye so long that they became old hat.

To elaborate on the gameplay, Prey is pretty generic. After the awesome opening sequence which sees alien suck up a gas station, you're armed with a crowbar...uh, lead pipe...and eventually an assault rifle, heavier assault rife, and directed energy weapon. The guy you play as, Tommy, comments on the proceedings occasionally, and in the first few stages you gain access to a 'spirit walk' mode where you can fire a 'spirit bow' and pass through energy fields while your physical body remains transfixed.

For the people who brought us Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior, this is pretty dull. Where are the zany, badass weapons? The hilariously crude quotes? Gone - sacrificed to the modern wave of realism and drama that has become necessary in first person shooters. Prey would have done well to stick to the formula that made 3D Realms' 1990s offerings so well-loved. At any rate, what's left is a game that's almost identical to Quake 4 in theme and visual presentation, with some mind-bending gravity tricks as the only really defining difference.

Somewhere out there is an executive or design lead who's kicking himself for not getting Prey out sooner. I feel for him.

#0003 – Beyond Oasis – 1995 – Sega Genesis – Ancient Co. – Action RPG

The 16-bit era was a golden age for action games featuring fantasy settings and minimal RPG elements. The Genesis was actually well versed in this genre. In addition to the classic turn-based JRPGs, the Genesis was home to classics such as Crusader of Centy, Light Crusader, Landstalker, Beyond Oasis, and the Wonderboy games. Today's game, Beyond Oasis, has to be one of the best entries.

The first thing you notice is the stunner of an opening cutscene. The animation is so fluid and colorful that it rivals anime FMV intros on the Playstation 1, and the world it establishes is an instantly unique take on the classic Arabian Nights stories. You play as Prince Ali, a treasure-hunting teenager who stumbles across a magical Golden Armlet. This relic gave a long-dead wizard his power, and unfortunately you are informed by that same wizard’s spirit that the armlet’s evil counterpart has also been activated. Ali returns home to find that his father’s kingdom is being invaded by dark forces, and what starts out at a reconnaissance mission rapidly turns into a struggle for the future of the island of Oasis.

It’s a good premise, though plot is definitely on the back burner in this game. The focus is on exploration, combat, and puzzle solving, with the story and characters existing as a plausible foil for the action. And that’s okay, because those mechanics are deep and refined enough to make the six-hour playtime far too short. Ali has a range of weapons to use – bows, swords, bombs, a knife – and each has its own techniques, properties, and uses. The system is a blast to mess around with, and supporting your weapon set are four elemental spirits, one for each of the classic elements.

There’s a water sprite who can freeze enemies, pound them with waterspouts, and douse fire. There’s a flame genie that can crush heads and turn into a bomb. There’s a plant creature than can chew up gates and dig for treasure, and a mysterious ghost that can save you from falls and protect you from damage. It’s almost unbelievable that so much content and so many different distinct gameplay elements were in one game as far back as 1995 on the consoles, but it’s true, and it makes Oasis a strong sell, whether on the original hardware or the Wii VC. Back in high school I started an obsessive guide to the game, and if anyone wants to argue that Oasis is shallow, just go check it out. You can’t write a guide that fanatically long about a shallow game.

Incidentally, these mechanics are presented amidst some of the richest and visually striking 16-bit landscapes I’ve ever seen.  Does it sound ahead of its time? I think it was, and in many ways the game still hasn't been copied or improved upon. Its sequel/prequel, Legends of Oasis, tried hard but was ultimately mired in the folly of late 90s design fads (prerendered sprites) and the desire to one-up the original game (more stuff is not always better). Honestly I wish Ancient Co. would return to this IP. The modern company is essentially a fractured group of game mercenaries hiring themselves out a game at a time, but while they’re still around there’s hope. The digital distribution trend of recent years certainly opens up a new arena for a third Oasis game to do well. I would love to see a true sequel to Beyond Oasis on XBLA at PSN, but short of that I’ll keep retreading the original.

One thing that's worth noting is the amount of flak this game takes over its soundtrack. People's complaints range from it being boring to actually offensive to the ears; it's a gripe I just don't get. My guess is that the laid back orchestral OST is just not what people expect when they see Yuzo Koshiro in the credits. They expect, of course, rolling breakbeats a la Streets of Rage or neo-Asian synth rock a la Shinobi. But would those styles really fit in a world about magic and sorcery, daggers and monsters? Of course not. Still, I'll admit that the themes Koshiro used were mostly forgettable, especially as 16-bit tunes go or even compared to his work in ActRaiser. Take my word for it that they're better than what he put out for Legends of Oasis.

As my original cartridge disappeared a long time ago, I play this one on NeoGenesis v25 for the original Xbox. Madmab's done a great job with the skin on this one. Check out my Progear post for links that will take you to a download. Once you're done with the game, send Koshiro and company a letter. They seriously need to dig this one up.

#0002 - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - 2004 - Multiplatform - Ubisoft Montreal - Platforming

After seeing the new Prince of Persia film over the weekend and burning through The Forgotten Sands in six hours (glad I rented), I thought it was time for some old-school (used to be new-school, I guess) Prince of Persia. More specifically, I thought it would be a good time to finally face that dark spot of the trilogy: Warrior Within. I skipped the game when first catching up on the Sands of Time franchise, and since then I've tried to play it maybe two or three times without much luck. It's telling that I was able to do this and still appreciate the trilogy - mostly because Two Thrones pulls an Alien 3 and (spoiler alert) undoes all of Warrior Within in the first twenty seconds of the game. Seriously, it's like the entire second installment didn't even happen; the logic of the plot can flow easily from Sands of Time to Two Thrones. I empathize with the decision.

Warrior Within at first blush is a perfect storm of turn-offs, from the female villain's full moon in the intro video to the Godsmack soundtrack to the Prince's angry quips to the fatality moves. None of it is something that would be out of place in, say, God of War or any other number of brawlers and action adventure titles. But as it was in the day, coming off of the dreamy escapism of Sands of Time, the dark vibe is jarring. Two Thrones, the final installment in the Sands of Time trilogy, dealt with the disparity by fusing elements of both games into a fairly cohesive whole that stayed fantastic but had some hard-hitting action as well. That leaves Warrior Within as the unbalanced black sheep.

I don't want to hate on the game completely. It has the classic platforming mechanics I love. The stylistic choices aren't something you can really criticize objectively (I'll go on record as agreeing that the changes suck), and there were some definite attempts to improve on the original with regards to presentation and combat. The game looks good on all the platforms, but probably the Xbox gets an edge, espcially if you're running a modded system with XBMC as your dash. With it you can turn the built-in flicker filter down to zero and then apply that setting to all games - it gets rid of the vaseline-smeared look and restored much of the clarity to the model textures and environments. This is especially enviable with LCD and Plasma televisions - levels pop and the special effects look great.

The combat, however, is another story. I feel as if the combat is designed to force the player into taking damage. There's a couple of reasons for this: first, the standard attacks cause almost no damage. The enemies gradually turn to sand as you attack them, and even once they're down to a few grains of snad attached to brittle bone it takes - count them - 8 to 12 attacks with the normal slash to take down a mid-level enemy. What?!! Add to that the way the enemies love to block these standard attacks anyway, and that when they begin attacking you there is no way to cancel their combo until the first hit (usually two) has landed. During this time you usually take a fourth to a third of a lifebar in damage. Basically the only way to cause real damage to the enemies without being cheesed to death a quarter at a time is to use the acrobatic attacks.

For some reason, flipping over an enemy and throwing them against a wall causes more damage than cutting them in the face, and the Prince is typically invunerable during that period as well. The drag is that this style basically looks stupid, in addition to being unintuitive, and the dynamics of grabbing, throwing, and vaulting are inherently wonky when dealing with three or more enemies. Of course the catch is that water spouts that refill your health and save the game are quite common. It's combat from the Ninja Gaiden II style of thought - the point is to get through with a sliver of health left, not to get through without taking damage. Take that as you will, but I find it frustrating and unrewarding. I certainly don't feel like a badass Persian fighter.

On the plus side, Warrior Within is more native to the gameplay choices of the last-gen trilogy than the 2008 reboot or Forgotten Sands. It's just stylistically rough - perhaps a period of learning for Ubisoft as they explored how far they could play with the formula established in Sands of Time. Now that this period of the franchise is done and over, it's a bit easier to forgive Warrior Within than back when the messageboards were bridling. As an aside, both Forgotten Sands and Battles of Prince of Persia struggled to explain the Prince's attitude reversal from the first game. Neither did a convincing job.

#0001 - Progear - 2001 - CPS2 - CAVE - Horizontal Shmup

For a company known almost exclusively for its ball-busting vertical shmups, CAVE sure got it right with Progear, their first horizontal shooter. The thing that strikes you instantly is the artwork - the backgrounds and enemies are a delightful steampunk tribute to Hayao Miyazaki's eternally sunny anime films, and it definitely helps Progear (プロギアの嵐, literally "Storm of Progear") stand apart from the grittier space shmups.

The premise for the action concerns the children of a small village using a renovated superplane in sorties against a power-hungry, immortal aristocrat and his goons. You choose a pilot and a gunner to specify the behavior of your plane. The different characters have unique spread and tracking properties for their weapons, and this diversity adds something to the replay value of an already charming shmup.

Another draw is the scoring system, which rewards you for switching up your tactics. Tapping the fire button is your normal shot; holding it down slows movement but gives you auto-targeting. Enemy bullets turn into jewels or rings when the enemy explodes, and switching fire modes automatically collects all the jewels/rings on screen. It makes the game a sort of fast-slow ballet of alternating fire methods. Neat.

As with most of the later CPS2 games, Progear is loaded with the little details: powerups are crates that float on parachutes to the ground, and the backgrounds are laden with stuff you'll have to play the game several times to notice. What's even more surprising (for a CAVE game) is that the difficulty for the first set of stages is actually pretty fair. I'm not anything special but I can 1cc the first half of the game with relative ease. You rarely get killed by cheap bullets and the formations are not wholly impossible to navigate for us mortals. It's just too bad that this one didn't get a home console release. As it stands, Progear is virtually unknown outside hardcore circles. It's accessible enough that it probably deserved more.

I'm playing this on my original Xbox via CoinOps Reignite, using component cables for an HD signal on my 42" Panny plasma. You didn't really think I owned the PCB board, did you? I used to run FBA-XXX Pro 1.28, but after a few weeks of I have to say that I'm very pleased with CoinOps. It supports 720p beautifully and features a bunch of slick pre-configured settings. You can download it at the ever-reliable EurAsia if you don't want to hassle with the 'usual places'.

Tell you what, something that really increases the experience is the Magic Box. With it you can use PS2, Saturn, and Dreamcast controllers on your Xbox. This is pretty sweet if you have an arcade stick for those systems. The only trick is that it's out of print and fairly hard to find. Be sure to jump on it if you ever see one for less than $30. For shmups I have the Sega Saturn HSS-0136: a Japan-only arcade stick with real microswitches instead of the usual bullshit we got in the USA. It's not as good as the HSS-0130, which was basically chopped off of an Astro City arcade cabinet. Then again, I got it MIB from Japan and it didn't cost me $150+, either.

So yeah, that's Progear. I definitely recommend it if you're into shmups, and especially if you have a soft spot in your heart for the horizontal kind. The breed has mostly died off with the rise of CAVE's own manic verts; a hori of this quality with such modern presentation is rare. Grab it for your emus if you don't already have it and get ready for walls of bullets and glorious, full-screen bosses.

#0000 - The Why

You may wonder what the hell is the point of playing and writing about a thousand video games. Well, it sure isn't for your sake. If you're a hardcore gamer or even a collector, then you know what a backlog is. You also know that as women and jobs come and go, the backlog is a constant presence that just gets heavier with time. I realized I was screwed when I looked at my own "to-play" list and saw that it had hit the big G. Yup, a thousand freaking games I'd never played. My first instinct was to panic, crap my pants, and consider selling the entire collection. Instead I did the logical thing and forgot about the list and just went back to acquiring more games. Because, you know, that's what's important.

Until one night I was lying awake in bed and it hit me like a gold-plated World Championships cartridge that there was really no point in owning all those games if I never played them. I was acting like a glorified pack rat, hoarding games for all those systems for no reason other than to enlarge my e-dick. That's pretty dumb, not to mention something of a slap in the face to all those forgotten game developers who slaved long hours to create the cartridges that held my bookcases to the floor. Right then and there I vowed that I would not only saw down my backlog, I would keep myself honest by running a blog to tally the progress. To do this right, however, I needed a couple of rules. Or really, one rule.

Beating the game is optional. You've got to understand, my voyage is more about a mass rush of diverse stimulus than playing 'delete the cells' with an Excel spreadsheet. This is about seeing what the gaming world has to offer. It's about jumping out there and floundering in a sea of cartridges and discs and forming a bigger picture of the gaming world of the past thirty years. It's about gathering to myself the collective vision of countless artists, directors, programmers, and technicians. I don't need to see the final credits for every game - I've got Moby Games for that! More practically, I don't have the time to spend six hours at the minimum for a thousand different games. I'm pretty sure the Internets will explode before I get that done. As it is, even if I play a game for an hour or two a day I'm still looking at three years. Three years! Cut me some slack, man!

So here I am. Poised at the entrance to the arcade of dreams with a credit in my sweaty fist. By the time I come out I might be a changed man, I'm not sure. But it's a fact I will have shot, cut, punched, and kicked a whole bunch of pixels and polygons.

Wish me luck.