Monday, July 30, 2012

Pick up everything and use everything on everything else

Got another point and click coming at you, watch your ass! Today it’s the fan made remake of Kings Quest 2: Romancing the Throne. Romancing the Throne came out in 1985, made by Sierra Entertainment who still owns the Kings Quest franchise, and it looked pretty much the same as the original Kings Quest game that came before it, Quest for the Crown which came out the year before.
Old and busted
When a updated re-release of Quest for the Crown fell flat on its face in terms of sales, no remake for Romancing the Throne was ever made by Sierra. So, in 2002 a fan remake of Romancing the Throne came out, called Romancing the Stones. Complete with new music, art, animation, puzzles, and a deeper plot! Basically the whole game was reworked from top to bottom.
New Hotness
The game has been updated multiple times since its original release, the latest being version 3.1 that came out in 2010, and according to the website where you can get Romancing the Stone, it has been downloaded over half a million times. That should be evidence enough that this isn’t something that was slapped together in a short afternoon, it’s a full game, and it has all the things that make point and click adventure games great (like having a thousand different ways to die). If that sounds like something you’re interested in, then go for it.
Was this made in MSPaint?
You can get Kings Quest: Romancing the Stones over here

Friday, July 27, 2012

You wish you had a robot best friend

Pack your bags and head on over to the time machine because were going to Australia, in the FUTURE. The game this time is an adventure game called “Beneath a Steel Sky”, and with a name like what you know shit is going to get real. Made back in 1994 by the British developer Revolution Software, one of the people who worked on the team being Dave Gibbons, who lends his talent to the game’s art.
"He drew other stuff besides Watchmen?" Yes. Shut up.
The main character of this adventure is Foster (who is named that for a humorous reason), who lived with a tribe that adopted him out in “The Gap”, the space between the massive cities that cover the rest of Australia. Things are as fine and dandy as living in a garbage heap can be until some helicopters shoot up the place and take you to the City for reasons you don’t know, but the helicopter crashes and you escape. This is where the game begins.
This cant be Australia, where's all of the deadly wild life?
You got all of the typical staples of adventure games here: inventory, point and click movement and puzzle solving. Thankfully when you hover the mouse over something you can interact with its name pops up next to the cursor, helping to negate the problem of pixel hunting. The game has a dark setting where corporations run everything and most of the planet is irradiated and polluted (like the immediate future), but still manages to slip in jokes. And any game that gives you a ROBOT BEST FRIEND cant be that bleak.
Beneath a Steel Sky was well received by reviewers when it came out, and is still considered to be among the best today. If you’re a fan of classic point and click adventures then this should be right up your alley.
Good game to teach you the ins and outs of living in a concrete and metal hellhole
There are multiple versions of the game out there on the internet, so here's a multitude of places to download from
Here
Here (if you use GOG)
Here
And here! (if you want to use ScummVM to run the game)

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

You can say that you've PLAYED a Marathon after playing this, but not run one

WATCH OUT, GOT A TRIPLE THREAT COMIN’ RIGHT AT YOU. Today we’ve got the Marathon trilogy, full of aliens, cyborgs, and sentient computers, OH BOY HERE WE GO. Developed by Bungie from 1994 through 1996, the Marathon games were first person shooters and were among the first to have a story beyond “You must fight the demons”. Considered at the time of their release to be some of the best stuff out there, and to show the greater potential of Macintosh computers for games, the Marathon series received plenty of positive reviews, and looking back some people see these games as the predecessors of the Halo series.
"Bungie made games before Halo?" Yes. Shut up.
Gameplay wise aside from the basic FPS styling of the time, the levels had actual objectives rather than being about getting from point A to point B. The levels are also more than a series of hallways with the inclusion of teleporters, computer terminals (that give both information about the level objectives, plot stuff, AND interesting fluff bits that flesh out the game universe) , the traditional “This floor is acid/lava, don’t stand on it” areas, which were expanded in the latter two games in the series which included swimming, and vacuum environments where you need to watch your oxygen. What’s better is that the games have five difficulty settings, which add or remove enemies from the levels, make them stronger or more dangerous, and on the highest difficulty “Total Carnage” you are given unlimited ammunition, because you WILL need it.
Massive understatement
Bungie has officially released the Marathon files to the public for free because you really cant get it anywhere anymore, and its really hard to find. So if you like classic shooters, or feel the need to dive into old classics, or maybe you’re a fan of Halo and wanted to see the older stuff that Bungie’s done, then the Marathon games might be for you. And with the games you'll be able to dive into any mods made from the series, and that
Even in the future we still use sawed off shotguns
Snag the Marathon games and the original manuals and all that neat stuff over here

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Why did it have to be snakes

Grab your whip and temple defiling hat, we’re off to adventure, treasure, and painful frequent death. But first, some music!

Continuing the theme of exploring dark and horrible places is Spelunky, a roguelike released back in 2008 where you delve into a deep cave full of traps, snakes, bats, and other various horrible things out to ruin your day in the search for cold hard cash in the form of gold, gems, and golden skulls. Spelunky was considered so good that it got a XBLA release with updated graphics, multiplayer, and coop, but obviously this post isn’t about that. With sixteen randomly generated levels and numerous items to find and buy from mundane firearms to climbing gloves to ancient relics that allow you to find gems hidden in the ground, the game is deeper than its pixilated appearance would suggest. Its ALSO has the best start menu ever.
Way better than "New Game"  "Menu" and "Quit" buttons
As typical to roguelikes, you will die often, be it from the traps or your own carelessness (or both). However, you don’t need to really commit to a single play through, the game is short enough that even if you die on the last level, while you might end up tearing your hair out because of frustration, but you wont lament the time you spent getting that far. The game has been beaten from start to finish in under three minutes in the case of speed runners, and the game itself sends ghosts at you if you wait around in one level for too long.
Using a shotgun on a ghost? Did Ghostbusters teach you nothing?
Between the “level feelings” which change up the levels by making the darker, or full of a specific enemy type, the boss monsters, the challenges (self imposed or otherwise), the short cuts you have to earn, and the secrets, Spelunky has plenty of offer. The game also has a modding community and player made levels to dive into if you find any that interest you. For a game released more than three years ago, Spelunky has a community that’s still going strong. I’d say its definitely worth a download.
Nothing's perfect, however
 You can get Spelunky from here

Friday, July 13, 2012

Prison Commander

Today, we’re going to step back through the misty curtain of time (or take a delorean) back to the year 1987, the time of Predator and Spaceballs to check out a game that sold forty thousand copies in its first year and was ported to eight different platforms. For its time that was kind of a big deal. That game is DUNGEON MASTER.
"You drew the short straw, so you have to carry the candlestick"
Dungeon Master is a grid based action RPG that takes place in a horrible death pit of a dungeon, full of traps and evil creatures out to kill you. At the start of the game you choose four characters from the twenty four available, all with their own stats and starting equipment, and different ranks in fighter, ninja, priest, and wizard. With your dream team chosen, you have to arrange them in the two by two formation that the game works with, since if your characters get attacked by something, the side they are getting attacked from determines which two characters are getting hurt.
Of course there's only one guy your party REALLY needs
Not only do you need to worry about the usual dungeon crawling terrors such as the undead and spiders, but you also need to keep in mind the last time your characters ate or drank, as each character has a hunger and thirst bar and if you get stuck or waste time, starvation and dehydration can become a real problem, thankfully food can be found in the dungeon, and you can use a water skin that you can refill at fountains.

See this guy? Wasn't prepared
The effort that went into making this game playable is dedicated to say the least, and it was worth it, given that the game is playable on Windows, Mac, Pocket PC, Linux, and MacOSX because of it. Even better, Paul R. Stevens (the guy who did all the work) didn’t just make it so you could play Dungeon Master, he did Chaos Strikes Back as well, the expansion to Dungeon Master. Chaos Strikes Back has 24 new characters to choose from, some of which are hidden! It was possible to import characters to Chaos Strikes Back from Dungeon Master in the original game, though I am not entirely sure if that’s possible with this recoded version of the game. Even so, those games are still considered to this day the best among all of the clones that were made in its wake. So go, form your party, descend into the depths and go punch mummies in the face
C'mon, bring it!
You can get Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back here

Monday, July 9, 2012

WELCOME TO THE JAM

Stupidly long gap between updates there, but that doesn’t matter. Today I’m here to show you something amazing, something you may just want to drop everything and play. Today, I’m here to tell you about “Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden”

Now, this game, this GEM, came out in early 2008, so you might have heard of it before, and that’s great, this post is now an excuse for you to pick it up and play it again! For everyone else, sit down and shut up, I’m about to bombard you with reasons to play this game while trying to be as spoiler free as possible, because you gotta go into this blind, you just gotta.
Get ready to slam
Somehow, a bunch of guys from an amateur game development board came together as the “Tales of Games” team when the planets were aligned or something and struck SOLID GOLD. Made as an unofficial sequel to Barkley Shut Up and Jam and Space Jam (Yes, that movie), you play as Charles Barkley, ex-NBA player in the ruins of Neo-New-York in the aftermath of the great B-Ball purge. This game is jammed to the brim with jokes about basketball, the internet, and video games. Between the enemies (B-BALL SPIDER), items (Tupperware armor), and status effects (Glaucoma) or the dating simulator (if you can find it) you will laugh out loud at least once when you play this, and not that laughing quietly to yourself bullshit people do when they use the acronym “LOL”, I mean actually laughing out loud.
Pictured: intense jamming in progress
Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden was made from the ground up to be both a parody of JRPGs, and a good game in its own right. For a parody game, the combat system, so named the B.A.B.B.Y system, is pretty good, keeping the battles from being boring by rewarding accuracy and timing and in some cases requiring multiple button presses. Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is one of the most well known games made in Game Maker, and for good reason, people wouldn’t keep talking about it, and keep demanding a sequel and remixing other songs with the Space Jam theme song if it wasn’t great. This game is something you need to play, this game is something you need to keep on a flash drive so you can preserve it through the collapse of civilization. This game should make you look at yourself in the mirror and ask the big question: WHY ARENT YOU PLAYING THIS YET?
WELL? GET TO IT
You can get Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden over at http://www.talesofgames.com/barkley/