Have you ever thought “Man, I’d love to play a version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that is exactly like the original except with updated graphics and great reimaginings of the music?”
If so, you’re in luck. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD is a fan project that is setting out to do exactly that, and judging by the alpha demo released yesterday they’re going to succeed. All fans of classic Sonic the Hedgehog need to download this demo right the heck now. Being an alpha, there are a couple of bugs and glitches here and there, and only Emerald Hill Zone is available, but if you’re anything like me you won’t care and you’ll just play it over and over.
Look you guys, it even comes with Flaily Arms Sonic. FLAILY. ARMS. SONIC.
Okay, so maybe I’m a little overly enthusiastic about this thing. Maybe I’ve done nothing but play old Sonic games for the last week so I’m all hyped about it. But seriously, check it out. aslkgh;aslkhg;lakha I can’t wait for Chemical Plant Zone.
A criticism I often see leveled at games and gaming is that it’s an “escape”. The idea is that, by immersing yourself in a game, you’re removing yourself from real life. Usually– though not always– there is often a sort of “hiding from your problems” undertone here. And is there a valid point here? Of course there is. One can escape into anything and games are not immune from this.
But what if an escape is good, sometimes?
Let me tell you all a little personal story. As you may or may not know, I have an anxiety disorder, and it’s one that is bad enough that I’m on meds and therapy for it. This disorder manifests itself in a few different ways, including panic attacks that strike at random and a never-ending undercurrent of worry. Aside from these, I’ve pinpointed a couple of specific triggers as well, one of which is being surrounded by people and having no escape route. I wish I could express how terrifying this is to me. I guess I’ll just say that when that feeling strikes, I’ve never felt more like the rabbit species that I frequently compare myself to.
I'm certainly not a very terrifying one.
To make things worse, I currently work in retail, where being surrounded by people is a given. Working weekends– the busy days– is hell, but nothing is more hellish than working during the holiday season, which basically feels like a neverending stream of weekends.
Where am I going with this? Well, let me tell you a bit about this last holiday season. It was about halfway into December and with just a couple of weeks left before Christmas, things were really starting to pick up. Going into work every day was utterly terrifying. We were understaffed, overworked, and I was surrounded by hundreds of squirming, loud, and demanding bodies coming from every direction. I think my anxiety must have been emanating from my brain and pouring out my ears. It was pretty rough. There is one thing that really kept me from completely losing it, though:
Skyrim.
See, Mister Adequate, sweetheart that he is, got it for me as an early Birthday/Christmas present, so I started playing it at right about the time that work was getting really bad. And for those few anxious weeks, it became my escape. I could come home from the worst, most anxiety-inducing day at work and bury myself in a beautiful world of near-solitude, wandering around and harvesting herbs and listening to the gentle flow of the rivers that crisscrossed Tamriel. Sometimes my mind would start to wander back to real life and to the impending next work day, but I soon learned to keep my mind “bounded” within the confines of the television screen, so to speak. If my thoughts wandered, I’d catch myself and refocus myself on the crisp visuals of the game and lose myself in them again. Skyrim taught me this skill, and I was able to use it to calm myself and keep my anxiety levels down even after the very worst days.
The game’s story, too, was therapeutic; this will sound remarkably cheesy but the truth is that thinking of myself as Dragonborn and of every day of work as a dragon to slay made going in so much easier than it would have been otherwise.
Just like this.
Well, to make a long story short, I survived the holidays and came out none the worse for wear. It’s March, now, and Christmas is long gone. I haven’t played Skyrim in a little while. In fact, I sort of fizzled out on it not long after the holidays were over. I’ve returned to my strategy games. In a way, though, I think of that game as a digital guardian angel which descended from the gaming gods to make sure I got through a rough period in my life alright, and then stepped back into the shadows once it saw that I’d be okay. It’ll be there if I need it again, just like all the other games which held my hand and guided me through rough and uncertain times in my life: Final Fantasy 6. Yoshi’s Island. Ocarina of Time.
Gaming is an escape, but sometimes it’s an escape you need more than anything else. And that’s a truth that this little bunny knows very well.
Last night Mrs. Pike Adequate, co-blogger and better half of mine, were discussing the future possibility of creating, through arcane and unholy science, progeny of some manner. As is our wont the conversation turned towards videogames, and specifically how we would best go about educating Adequate II (Electric Boogaloo) in the history thereof. The thing is that yes, anyone can just pick up a game today and have a good time, but this is an important artform and cultural expression to us, so we would want them to have a comprehensive and informative education. There are a huge number of classic games from back in the day, but unlike other artforms the constant advancement of gaming technology means some of them won’t be so readily picked as others; this is something we intend to avoid.
So far we have come up with the following policy. Beginning 1985 with the C64, the child will play every major console from the successive generations. They will be assigned a number of classic games of particular importance, and be allowed to choose a handful of electives per system as well. Once they have completed these, they will move on to the next console, until they reach the current generation of the day. They will also be playing PC games throughout this time, of course, keeping rough pace with the console generation they have reached. Only when they have achieved a sufficient knowledge of how gaming has developed, and of the classics of yesteryear, will they be getting any kind of contemporary system or game.
Now, the thing is that we want to demonstrate games that are important as well as ones that are good. It’s all very well making them play Strategy Games Throughout The Ages, but that’s not going to be broad and rounded enough – how will they understand why DooM was important, for example? So Pike and I need to come up with a list of games that had significance in the history of gaming, not only because they were good but because they were important, for whatever reason. And this is where you all come in, readers!
If they don't know Vvardenfell geography better than real-world geography, they're no child of mine!
What would you consider the canon required for a comprehensive gaming education? Not just those that are the best, or personal favorites, but ones which can be identified as important to the development of the field – perhaps even ones that can be argued to have harmed it? No matter how obvious it might seem, tell us what you would call essential, and if you feel inclined, tell us why!
Lately I’ve been playing Super Mario RPG. This game is, as I’ve written before, one of my all-time favorites, and it gladdens me to see that, replaying it years later, I still love it.
One of the things I’ve noticed about it is how relentlessly upbeat the game is, between the happy music, happy visuals, and overall way that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The result is a game that, almost unfailingly, cheers me up and puts me in a good mood. It’s really been helpful during these last couple of weeks where work is stressful and piling more hours on me. At least I can come home and play some Super Mario RPG and cheer up a bit.
Yesterday the latest offering from Paradox Interactive was released, the expansion for Victoria II known as A House Divided. As you may surmise from the name, the expansion’s centerpiece is the American Civil War (As a Brit all I can say is we had our Civil War before it was cool). So let’s get this out of the way immediately; the Civil War scenario entails a new starting date, which seems to be reasonably well put together, and just about nothing else. If you win as the CSA, there’s nothing much that makes them a unique nation. There are no events to, for example, remove the USA’s cores on your territory. So every few years they will take another swing at reabsorbing you.
It is strange that the expansion’s centerpiece would be its weakest element, but there it is. The scenario is anemic and underdeveloped, and doesn’t really add a great deal that you wouldn’t have in the normal starting point of 1836.
On the other hand, “Loads of Small but Great Improvements” wouldn’t make for a very snappy expansion title, now would it? But that’s what it contains. I played an entire game yesterday as Persia and it was the most fun I’ve had with Vicky 2 by a fair way. The new elements work extremely well. The new method for modernizing countries that don’t start out that way seems very arduous at first, but soon reveals itself to be a very well-judged mechanic that is a lot more involving than the previous system. Similarly the new way you generate Casus Belli before you’re allowed to declare war (most of the time) was something I was very wary of, but in practice it’s a really clever mechanic that not only helps you feel involved, but becomes something rather tense as you hope you manufacture a war goal without being detected. It also helps keep the AI on a sensible path. Their need to make CBs means they seem to be acting rather more sensibly than they did beforehand, which is good!
The economic changes are similarly positive, or at least they seem to be, because Vicky 2 is rather hard to wrap your head around in that regard. Money is definitely scarcer, and you need to make decisions about what you are funding and how much. No more can some podunk middle-rank power field a first-class army, navy, and civil service all at once!
The Persian Empire shall again rule!
The one other negative thing is China, or more properly China and the new Substates system. See, in vanilla Vicky 2 China was something you really wanted to get into your Sphere of Influence. They were huge in every way, and getting first dibs on their market was immense, it would single-handedly keep you on top in industrial terms. To counter this we’ve got the new Substates system, where China is divided into six or seven different entities who are locked together as unbreakable satellites. Ahistoric nonsense. And it’s not like the 19th century was a time of unconstrained positivity for China! Where is the Taiping Rebellion for example? It’s a lazy and strange way to work around the problem. That said, using the substates system for, perhaps, the Confederacy, might be a very interesting way of doing things!
So overall I would say that if you only care about the American Civil War, this expansion probably won’t prove to be very interesting. However, every other aspect of the expansion is pretty much golden, and I highly recommend you get a hold of it if you’re a Vicky 2 player! Oh, and it runs far more smoothly and never really seemed to slow down for me.
Having finally bothered to set aside some time to play through Batman: Arkham City, I have to say it’s a fantastic game whose story (Or rather the last fifth of the story) is a little bit of a letdown, but that doesn’t bother me because holy. Christ. This game has one of the best boss fights I can ever remember enjoying.
Also dat voice HNNNNNGGGGGG
The fight with Mister Freeze is superb. It is brilliant. It is genius. I’m almost tempted to leave it there because saying almost anything could begin to spoil things, but that would make for a rather short blog post so I’ll take that risk. The core of the fight is that Freeze’s suit is a giant-ass super-awesome thing that even Batman can’t damage directly, because if he tries Freeze will just shoot him with his ice gun or something. (I want an ice gun.)
So you need to figure out how to attack him. Only here’s the thing; everything you do he will adapt to. You cannot use a single tactic more than once, because he will sabotage anything you could use to repeat it. This is not a gimmick or anything, it is brilliantly executed and it genuinely felt like I was in a battle of wits to try and figure out new tactics to try against him, whilst he was hunting me down and I was trying to avoid him. It took me several goes to win the fight, and I did not mind one bit. In fact I loved every second of it. It is, for my money, a quintessential example of how to stage a boss fight. He is entirely unique in the game, requires a wide array of Batman’s abilities, and engages the player completely. Every other developer should take notes on how this whole thing is conceived and formulated.
So I’d like to throw the question out there to y’all about this topic. What are some bosses you’ve found particularly enjoyable and engaging in your gaming?
Taking after my co-blogger Pike, I thought I would take a look back on my year in gaming!
January
I started the year in the middle of a huge Civilization IV kick, and it was by far the most played game of that month I am sure. I sampled a multitude of mods for it, such as Caveman 2 Cosmos and Fall From Heaven 2.
February
Feb was still plenty of Civ IV, but there was a great deal of Dwarf Fortress mixed in there as well. At the end of the month I also fired up my good old WoW account, a little before Pike did likewise.
March
There was plenty of WoW this month, at least for a couple of weeks. Once that was done I believe I started a huge SimCity 4 kick that lasted for a couple of months.
April
In April the new fan version of Hearts of Iron 2, known as Darkest Hour was released. I pretty much immediately fell even more in love with HoI thanks to this and played little else.
Sadly I did not play any Pony Alert 2
June and July
I didn’t spend terribly much time on any particular game during the height of summer, I was more concerned with not melting! A wide variety of things were dabbled with here. I think there was some Minecraft.
August
In August I sat down to replay an old favorite on the PS1, Breath of Fire III. It really is a wonderful, charming game with all kinds of hidden depths, and it was time well spent.
September
September was when I played the majority of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which surprised me as much as anybody else by not only being good, but by being a worth successor to the original DX!
October
In October I started on a long-lasting space 4X kick, which includes Galactic Civilizations 2, Master of Orion 2, Space Empires IV, and Star Ruler.
November
November was when both Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third landed, and I spent a huge amount of time with both!
December
I’ve spent most of this month with the Kaiserriech mod for Darkest Hour, and I’ve just now started up Dwarf Fortress again.
And so we come to the close of 2011. It’s been an exciting year filled with things like, well, this blog starting up, for one. I’ve also played quite a lot of games, of course. Here’s a look back at some of the things that have struck my fancy this year:
JANUARY: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was what I was playing at the beginning of the year. I’d never actually played a Phoenix Wright game before and I borrowed this one from my sisters, who are big fans. I regret to say that I didn’t finish the game because I got sidetracked by other things, but the first three-quarters or so were an enjoyable, if somewhat benign, romp. The whole gameplay premise was new and interesting and the fun characters kept you interested during parts that may have otherwise lagged. I did have to give the game back to my sisters after a while but I hope to finish it some day!
Dashie gets things done.
FEBRUARY:
February is when I started playing Civilization IV, which I had somehow never played before. Shameful, I know. Regardless, life would never be the same.
MARCH:
March was the month that Mister Adequate and I started this blog! I was also still playing a lot of Civ IV. I think this was also the month where Mister Adequate and I, both old World of Warcraft vets who had since quit, resubbed for a month to give it another whirl. There were a couple weeks of fun as we ran around as Tauren paladins, but those couple of weeks only lasted, well, a couple of weeks and then it was back to Civ.
APRIL:
I played a lot of games on-and-off throughout April, including Hearts of Iron 2 and X-Com: UFO Defense. There was, I think, still a lot of Civ going on.
MAY:
May was when I finally got around to playing SimCity 4. Considering that I grew up with SimCity, it’s pretty terrible that I didn’t actually get around to the fourth installment until now, but there you go.
JUNE:
Ah, June. The month that I finally sat down for a proper playthrough of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and was immediately smitten. I don’t know if a game had ever captivated me quite the same way that SMAC did that month, and I feel safe telling you six months later that there will always be a special place for this game in my heart.
JULY:
This was the month that I finally let myself be consumed first by Minecraft and then by Terraria. I’d resisted for so long and finally could resist no longer, and I spent most of this month derping around with a mining pick. I haven’t played either game in a long while, but I won’t lie: they were nice to spend long, lazy summer nights with.
Yours truly, having been caught in the act of playing Minecraft for hours on end.
AUGUST:
In August I headed back to Civ IV, because I just can’t quit it. Many, many multiplayer shenanigans happened involving Mister Adequate and I, partially because we both love Civ and partially because we can’t seem to get any other games to work with multiplayer.
SEPTEMBER:
September was a busy month that involved me moving back to my home state and getting a new job. Still, there was enough time for a lot of old favorites, as well as enough time for Mister Adequate and I to discover that Sid Meier’s SimGolf is a thing.
OCTOBER:
In October I played all of Final Fantasy. The one with no numbers after it. It was definitely neat to look back at an older JRPG like that and see just how much the genre has changed (or stayed the same.) Mister Adequate and I also gave WoW another spin, which lasted all of about two weeks. Ah well!
NOVEMBER:
This was the month that I jumped right into Final Fantasy 2 and also fell in with a lot of other great games, such as Space Empires IV and The Binding of Isaac. Somehow, though, between all of this, I still managed to win NaNoWriMo. Oh, I published a book, too. Guess that’s worth a mention!
DECEMBER:
December has been a month of two things: Paradox games (Darkest Hour and Europa Universalis 3, specifically), and Skyrim. The Paradox games come as no shock to anyone, I’m sure, especially because I’ve played them before, but Skyrim really took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as engrossing as it is. Great way to round out the year, though!
My response to the end of the video-game-playing-year. Also, this post is apparently Rainbow Dash Edition, which I'm okay with!
So, I recently won NaNoWriMo by writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. Glorious, no?
You may be wondering what this has to do with video games. Well, for starters, games played a major role in my novel (everything I write is something I’m passionate about. In 2009 it was steampunk, in 2010 it was creativity, and in 2011 it was games.) But, much more importantly, my finishing up NaNo coincided nicely with three days off from work. Do you know what I am going to do for the next three days?
This.
I am going to play nonstop video games. Yes. Yes. It’s going to be glorious. I’ve already warmed up with some Civ this morning and now that I’ve sorted out some chores I’m going to launch into some delicious Space Empires IV and whatnot. I’ve got quite a backlog built up largely for similar reasons that Mister Adequate went into earlier, and of course there are classics to be played!
Thanks in no small part to the beneficence of Gaben, I’m currently drowning under a cavalcade of games. I’ve finished Saints Row The Third, and by finished I mean done one ending without getting close to 100% so I’ve not finished it at all (Hypershort review: Exceptional game filled with awesomeness and hilarity but what happened to the great cutscenes you did in SR2 this is a disjointed mess Volition?), there’s Skyrim, which is just stupidly huge, and now I’ve gone and picked up Star Ruler, Space Empires IV, and Portal 2, and I’m hungrily eying the new Legends expansion for Distant Worlds.
And this isn’t even counting the games I’ve not got around to yet, such as twenty years of classics that GoG insist on foisting upon me, or Arkham City for example, NOR does it count the games I have but that I’ve not yet managed to give sufficient time to like Jagged Alliance 2 or Master of Orion 2, or SMAC, though the latter is here mostly because it is literally not possible to give enough time to SMAC. I’ve still not finished Human Revolution.
Plus of course there’s all the regular stuff I play that demands time and attention; Darkest Hour, SMAC, SimCity 4, GalCiv 2, Baldur’s Gate, EU3, Vicky 2, Dorf Fort, Open TTD, Project Zomboid, the list goes on and on! Thank Talos that I’ve shaken the WoW bug for the time being.
Ouch, my wallet
Busy weekend! What about you all, do you ever get overwhelmed by all the games that need to be played? How do you deal with it? What are you playing this Thanksgiving weekend?
Finally I am taking altogether too much enjoyment in watching Notch act like a petulant child. I’m not even a fan of the Yogscast, it’s not my thing, but dang if one side in this debacle isn’t being a lot classier than the other. Which is double amusing because the classy side is a couple of lads who mess around doing silly voices and getting into vidya hi-jinx on YouTube whilst the one being an entitled imbecile has a multi-million Euro business!
