As you know we are unofficial GoG.com mouthpieces because they sell loads of great games, but this is a particularly special one.
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. $2.99 USD. You know what you do.
As Pike and Mister Adequate are together “in real life”, to use a term, we shall be co-writing today’s blog post! Obviously one of the first things we decided to do upon meeting up was to play some vidya, and we opted for a game that Mister Adequate brought along, called Earth Defense Force 2017, for Xbox 360. It was the first time I’ve played it, but Mister Adequate has played it quite a lot, so we will start with him giving us some background on the game and his experiences with it.
Mister Adequate
I first heard of Earth Defense Force in an old issue of Edge magazine, which was reviewing the second one in the series – 2017 being the third – and though it was Japan-only at the time I was instantly taken in by the review which glowed with positivity. Some years later I saw EDF 2017 on Amazon and after confirming it was indeed the same series, I quickly purchased it and found it was even better than Edge had felt its predecessor to be.
EDF 2017 is a B-game. It is low-budget in every respect, from graphics to voice acting, and there is no reason for it to be considered anything other than a second-rate effort from a studio who had neither the budget nor the expertise needed to meet their ambitions.
Except, of course, that it is a sublime piece of brilliance that is incredibly difficult to put down. Despite (perhaps because of?) the low-budget nature of the game it is gaming in a classic form. There is little outside of the main point, which is shooting gigantic aliens with stupidly powerful guns, and what is there is so hilariously bad that it endears rather than repels. The core gameplay however is just immense fun, and the desire to collect all possible weapons drives you to keep playing and playing, as any good system of rewarding players does. In years of enjoying this game I’ve never grown bored with it – it is for all intents and purposes the progeny of classics shooters like Galaga and Space Invaders, and gaming is better for it.
Now I shall turn you over to Mrs. Pike Adequate for her opinions on the game, which she has only first played a couple of days ago!
Pike
The beauty of EDF 2017 is that it puts entertainment first and… well, I’d say it puts everything else second, but it really doesn’t because everything else just doesn’t exist in the game. Powerups appear as flat sprites, the in-game physics are ridiculous, vehicle controls are about as terrible as you can get, and yet the game never ceases to be fun.
There is no story here because the game doesn’t need one. Giant bugs are attacking. So are giant robots. And giant cyborg dinosaurs. You have guns and your job is to go shoot them so they can drop more guns. That’s it. You do this for 56 levels or so and it’s beautiful. This is gaming in its very purest form; a shooter without a big fancy budget or any semblance of realistic guns. It doesn’t attempt to be anything other than what it is, and what it is is unabashedly fun. Especially in multiplayer.
In other words if you’re looking for a simple, fun, and gloriously mindless multiplayer game, look no further than this one. It is worth far more than the couple of bucks it will probably cost for you to pick it up.
Pike here! Mister Adequate has made it all the way over here to the colonies and we’re busy gathering up some games to play. We went to GameStop the other day and picked up several classics for cheap, including TimeSplitters and Shadow of the Colossus, and then we went to another GameStop and… were promptly turned away because apparently we don’t look like we’re over seventeen and Mister Adequate didn’t have his passport with him.
I mean, maybe it’s good that we look young, but anyways. We’ll go back today with proper ID and scoop those games up. In the mean time we played some Metal Slug and Crazy Taxi and an arcade. Anyways, we do apologize for the lull in blogging, but we’ve been… well… preoccupied. Ahem.
Fillies and gentlecolts, we’ve got something we need to talk about. There’s a game on the horizon known as Endless Space, a 4X game that I had previously heard of but only kept half an eye on. Well as it turns out it was very recently put up on Steam and pre-ordering, as is becoming something of a norm for games from non-major publishers, gives you alpha access.
To bluntly not put too fine a point upon it, the alpha is as good as most gold iterations of other games. It is incredibly smooth, clean, and lovely to use. It obviously still needs work, but even as a late alpha game it seems to be entirely playable and thoroughly enjoyable so far, and I’ve been playing it for a couple of hours solidly now. As regular readers will know by now both Pike and myself are ardent fans of the 4X genre, playing stupid amounts of Civilization for example. Pike rates Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri as the single best game ever, and I rate it in my top three. And on the SMAC note, Endless Space has a very pleasing quasi-homage to SMAC in the tech tree icons.
Endless Space hits the usual list of items that a 4X should, the whole 4X part of it that is, but it’s doing so in a way that is clear and making a lot of sense, providing a sense of rapid, but controllable buildup as you discover new technologies, unlock new buildings, and acquire new resources. In many ways it also takes after MoO2, for example in letting you colonize planets within a system once you’ve got one colony in it, without the need for new colony ships. Building your infrastructure is also a curious affair; you choose an area for each individual planet to focus on, like enhancing farming or being a trading hub, whilst you build your more typical improvements on a system-wide basis. It’s an interesting hybrid as a solution to the problem of the appropriate scale on which to handle this side of the 4X genre and so far I have to say it’s a fairly effective one; systems are the main basis of your empire, but your planets are still more than just completely interchangeable or indeed entirely invisible subunits; they have their own character and you can influence this.
Combat is the part of the game I’m not yet 100% sold on, though I’m not sure how much remains to be done there I hope there’s a little tweaking. It plays out as a video, rather like GalCiv 2’s combat scenes, but in ES you have the ability to choose actions for each of the three phases of combat; for example you can choose to deploy nanobots to repair your ships, to divert all spare power to weapons for a risky offensive, and the like. It’s a sound idea and could be a great halfway point between the full control of, say, Homeworld and the completely hands-off nature of GC2, but I think a few more options are needed in the early game to really ensure this works, and combat needs to be a bit more… I’m not sure exactly, visceral? It feels a bit like it lacks in impact. Still, it’s a commendable effort that is, as with everything in this game, very well presented.
There is also the standard 4X element of ship design, and this seems like a very good effort with a wide and increasing array of options as you progress through the tech trees; there’s not a huge amount to say except that there are no complaints whatsoever from me.
The thing that’s really getting me into this game, however, is the sheer level of polish that is present. As I’ve said it’s an alpha, but it acts nothing like one in most regards. Everything is fast, clean, smooth, obvious, and I actually turned the tutorial off because the screens and their tooltips provide more than enough information anyway. The music is atmospheric and suitably grand as well. Never underestimate the power of a good interface and a solid atmosphere – it’s the difference between a good game and a classic one, and it can make even a mediocre game enjoyable.
If you are a fan of any of the following things:
Then this is a great little site that focuses on making flags for alternate history nations and the like: http://hoiflags.blogspot.com/
Yes, that’s all I have to say today. Boring, I know. Okay, okay, have a picture of Stalin purging the military in Darkest Hour:
When you settle down for a nice long session of gaming, is there anything in particular you like to have to eat or drink along with it? Myself I love a drink of Dr. Pepper to go with my videogames (And it is starting to show on my waistline, sigh) whilst our dear Pike can’t do without her Mt. Dew. I love Mt. Dew myself but good luck finding it over here in England! When I was a kid it was 7-Up all the way, I even played that Cool Spot game, which was surprisingly good!
I tend to actually prefer fruit like satsumas and bananas to anything candy-esque these days, but still a bar of chocolate or a bag of crisps (Potato chops for you rebel types) is always welcome as well! A Crunchie bar, or a bag of Cheese & Onion. Tasty way to fill up without needing to turn away from the game!
What about you, readers? Do you guys have any particular things you like to eat or drink while gaming? Tell us in the comments!
Okay guys! We’ve got two important things this morning.
Firstly, Syndicate is on GoG for $3 USD.
Secondly, thanks to some happy surprise events that caught both of us off guard, Mister Adequate is going to be coming to the USA for a few weeks early next month! This means that Pike and Mister Adequate are going to be together for a little while. Hotseat Civ, Hotseat SMAC, and hotseat… um, other stuff are already in the plans, but what else should we do? Give us ideas for all your best multiplayer games for PC or Xbox 360. Heck, if we can get a hold of more GameCube/PS2 controllers, give us all of your best multiplayer games for those, as well.
And now comes the hard part; the impatient waiting for the next twelve days to pass. Oh, and also talking myself into cleaning and tidying up instead of playing Victoria 2. Perhaps I can do both at once…
Yesterday I realized it had been released and so purchased Trials Evolution for the 360. I’d played Trials HD at my friend’s house a bit, and had enjoyed it thoroughly but never got around to actually picking it up for myself. With the sequel freshly out of the gate I decided to get on board right away, and it has so far proven to be a wise and judicious purchase.
This video is both very loud and very sweary, and it encapsulates the Trials Evolution experience perfectly:
In Trials, your task is, well, time trials. You’re riding a bike and you’ve got to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. Sounds easy enough right? And at first it is. But Trials is an incredibly cunning game that soon ramps up the difficulty to an absolutely insane degree; later tracks are some of the most sadistic things you will ever experience in videogaming. Let me elaborate.
The B button puts you back at the last checkpoint to try again. For a fair portion of the game you’ll only be using this occasionally, the first time through a track to learn it before you go for a decent time. By the end of the game you will be pressing that button several dozens, or hundreds, of times, in order to get through the excruciatingly difficult levels.
Because of one immensely insidious feature. The game unsurprisingly has global leaderboards, all well and good, but it provides ghosts of your XBL friends and their best times on any given level. And you have absolutely no freaking IDEA how much this impels you to play again, to try that level once more, to get the hang of that jump, because that bastard Barry Manilow has a better time than you and THIS WILL NOT STAND. So you play. And you play again. And again. And again. And again. Until you beat the fucker and you make sure he knows his place. You have never felt so much envious hatred for your friends when they are doing nothing at all and aren’t even around at the time.
It’s brilliant.
Yesterday Mister Adequate and I were reminiscing about quirks in older video games that wouldn’t exactly work today. He mentioned inputting code into your computer from a booklet and getting a complete game out of it (I wonder if this is a Britfriend thing because I don’t recall that on this side of the pond), and I mentioned amusing anti-piracy devices in game booklets (“To continue, enter the code on page 24.”)
Obviously these aren’t exactly the types of things that could be replicated today, to much effect– most games are much, much too big for the code to fit into a small booklet, and any anti-piracy devices of the earlier type could be completely negated by the internet. Still, it’s neat when games take that as inspiration to push themselves outside of the confines of their digital world– getting Meryl’s codec code from the Metal Gear Solid box comes to mind.
What are some fun or interesting quirks that you guys remember from earlier games?
It bears mentioning that Theme Hospital has very recently become available on Gog.com and I urge you all to purchase it at your earliest convenience. I did and have barely been able to put it down since, it is if anything even better than I remembered it being.
Theme Hospital is the sequel – after a fashion – to Theme Park, two of the games Bullfrog put out in the 1990s during their golden era, a short but incredible catalog that I’m not convinced any other developer has ever matched; Populous, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper; it’s a truly illustrious list of games that are not only classics, but that in some cases defined and defied genre. In Theme Park your job was, as the title suggests, to construct a profitable Theme Park. Theme Hospital is obviously a preposterous notion, but that gives a good indicator of the humor at the game’s core. Your job as manager-god is to design, staff, and run a profitable hospital, dealing with such absurd conditions as Bloaty Head and Uncommon Cold, keeping your staff and patients happy (And alive), and coping with the sometimes rather restrictive layouts you are given.
It’s a management game of the kind that became so widespread in the years after Theme Park/Hospital and Railroad Tycoon were successful, but make no mistake, this is the genuine article. We are not talking about Waste Management Facility Tycoon here (though you do need to build toilets), we are talking about an exceedingly clever, enjoyable game that gets challenging fast, all with a strong streak of humor running through it, from the perfectly bored tannoy announcements to the amusing descriptions of staff.