Parteibuch Aggregator Feed - Items from date 2010-07-18

The Old Bits: Skate It

The Old Bits — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:37:00 +0000

All right lets jump or Olie, haha four words in and I have a bad joke, new record! right into this, skateboarding games did, for a long time suck ass, with the exception of 720 on the NES there wasn’t much to keep our videogame skating needs at bay, that was until of course until the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, the game was a complete revolution in gaming, something brand new and fresh that skaters and those who had never picked a board up in there life got behind and said, damm this game is awesome. But after 9 years of annual installments the franchise was starting to feel stale and bloated with features that no one really cared about, that took away from the core gameplay. It seemed that with each new installment that came after about Pro Skater 3 the series felt like it was taking backwards steps in terms of the enjoyment gamers got out of there skating sessions.

Skate brought something new to the world of skating games in much the same way the Tony Hawk series did. By reinventing the control scheme, the game flowed much more smoothly and more importantly gave the user the feeling of freedom that comes with skating. The game never saw a release on the Wii but a spin off title, Skate It was released, can the little white box actually have a good skating game? Let’s find out.

Gameplay 8.5 out of 10

Kick it off with the controls, there are 3 control scheme to the game, which is awesome you can pick the one that best suites you right. There is Wii Remote, my least favourite, its really too much on the one controller. Its nice the option is there but steering, spinning and doing tricks with the one hand is a bit much. Then we have Wii Remote + Nunchuck, this is the one that I used to playthe game through, you could actually skate in the direction you wanted to twisting the Wii Remote by itself to turn is never that accurate and hurts your wrist after awhile and the general ability to control what you want to do is a lot easier than the other two, when I talk about controls inthe game this is the scheme I am talking about as in my head its the 'default' way to play skate it. The third and last is with the Wii Balance board, its a great idea in theory but its a pain in the ass at times. You do tricks in the way you would expect to, to ollie you lean hard on the tail, nollie hard on the nose, kickflip you put weight on you right side if you skate Goofy , etc. I found it pretty hard to just skate around on the board, and I don’t think its because I am a complete retard because I have Shaun White snowboarding and I have almost finished that game with its Wii Balance board scheme. I just constantly found myself banging into walls and objects ingame, and it got to the point that halfway through the first level I just put it away and restarted the game with the Wii Remote + Nunchuck scheme, maybe some people enjoy the board more, but for it I found it a pain in the ass.

Doing big air feels pretty good with the Wii controls.

Now to quickly talk about the actual controls rather than the different schemes, basically to olie you whip the Wii-Remote up, every flip trick then comes from doing a certain motion with the Wii-Remote before doing the Olie, such as, making a U shape, then doing a olie will perform a pop shuvit. Grabs are as simple as using hte B button and a direction, and grind happen when you land on a rail with the Wii-Remote pointed in the grind you wish to grind, hold the Wii-Remote with the nose down, you do a nose grind. Pretty simple and it is leaps and bounds better than the slapped on controls we saw in Tony Hawk Proving Ground on the Wii, in which they mapped the regular 4 buttons used in the THPS series to different buttons on the Wii-Remote and made a shitty game, pretty much unplayable, as far as controls go, Skate It gets it right minus the frustration when you sometimes pop tricks you didn't want to.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way we can talk about the game itself, at first, being a big THPS fan I Have completed all Console releases to date and 100%'ed the first 4 and a skater myself I was looking forward to this game hitting the Wii. Once I got the controls down which actually takes awhile the game just flowed. Doing lines of tricks rolled and just like in real skating you felt really frustrated at time trying to do lines, but it was a good frustration. The game is full of the usual challenges, such as 'manual from a to b', 'kickflip the 5 set' and so on, each challenge has a easy and hard option such as, the easy version may allow you to just kickflip over a gap, while the harder version is to do a kickflip and a grab, its nothing new to THPS fans, but its a nice feature. While much of the core gameplay is similar to past Tony Hawk outings the controls set it apart, Its no longer a fast paced arcade style game. The game is much more realistic and strategic. Leaps and bounds not only over Tony Hawk Proving Ground on the wii and the Tony Hawk series in general. My only complaint is I felt the game was far too short, but I will get into more detail with that later.

I’m not going to talk about the multiplayer aspect of the title at all as I didn’t / don’t really have the urge to play with the game with other people, want to know about it, read it elsewhere, IGN is a good start.

Graphics 7 out of 10

It seems that when it comes to the Wii developers have decided since it cant look as realistic as other consoles, trying to make anything look realistic is a waste of time and we are left with cartoon style graphics, while it was great at first it is starting to become a pain in the ass now, being straighter than a arrow I don’t enjoy the pain. Its not to say they don't look good but I would have prefer something that looked similar to the Tony Hawk games on the last gen consoles, its just a personal preference but what we got was graphics that while not jaggard like many Wii titles are very bland and simple with a ‘bloomish’ effect. It does the job but we all know the Wii is capable of better graphics than these crayon drawings we keep getting.

You better hope you don't stack, or your gonna crack the shits HARD!

One of the most annoying things graphically, I don't know if you disable it, I know I couldn’t! Is the stupid ass 'Hall of Meat' cutscenes every time you bail, while its a 'ok' concept of gameplay to break bones on stacks, making me have to watch a 5-10 second scene every time I bail becomes so annoying I often turned my Wii off when I bailed. It wasn’t needed, its retarded. When your trying to do a challenge it is a pain in the ass that it takes no less than a minute to have 6 tries because you are forced to watch this stupid screen that serves as nothing, even if you don’t break a bone you still have to watch the stupid thing. Its retarded, its useless. I have no idea how a tester missed the annoying factor on it. Get rid of it, its bloody stupid.

Sound 8 out of 10

You usually assortment of rock, punk and a few hip hop songs you would expect from a skating game, while not on par with the soundtracks of the earlier Tony Hawk titles, it is far better than the more recent installments. The only thing that annoyed me about the music is that there is not a lot of different tracks, something near 20 if I remember correctly, but there are 3 or 4 songs that you can only listen to in free skate, this blows my mind. If you are going to have a modest selection of songs, at least let us listen to them all while we play the main game, stupid and unexplainable choice.

The sound effects are pretty standard, nothing really stands out, what you expect, skate over gravel, its sounds like it, skate over metal and so on. Solid effort.

Replay Value 7 out of 10

It is kind of hard to comment on the replay value, a lot of the main replay value would come from playing the game through again completing challenges you only completed on easy, on hard. However since I did them all the first time around I found the only 'real' replay value was the 'Hall Of Meat' challenges, such as 'break 10 bones' in a stage. Ok, so they took one of the most annoying parts of the game and tried to add to the length of the game by making it challenges, I think I would break my Wii if I tried to do all these stupid ass challenges, so they don't even really add to the 'replay value' to me. There is also the Milestone challenges which are all like "Manual for 80 years", none of them are an actual challenge it is just if you can be bothered doing the same thing for long periods of time, no idea what happens if you complete them all because this gamer could not be assed to waste my time.

As for the main reason to come back and pick up the controller again in the Tony Hawk series, Unlockables, I have no idea what the unlockables are, I finished the game and don't recall unlocking a anything, no new levels, no new skaters, no skate videos. Skate Videos, if I am wrong and there is a way to unlock them, please someone tell me, it is one of the only reason I ever played the THPS series to much, to unlock those awesome videos, but nothing. SUCKS!

Overall 7.625 out of 10

While its a good game, other than its control scheme which turns the genre on its ass it has nothing we have no seen before, but so strong is its control scheme that you feel like you are playing a completely new genre of game and not just a rehash of the Tony Hawk series, which is a great thing. Solid effort in the audio department, if it wasn’t for the 'Hall Of Meat' screens the game would have flowed much smoother, but even so it was enjoyable to play through.

Destructoid: Retro City Rampage will sabotage your thunder hats

Destructoid — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:30:00 +0000

There was a time when there was an endless list of WiiWare games that I was looking forward to. Now, that list is shrinking, as many of the games that I wanted have come and gone. All that's left is Super Meat Boy, Bit.Trip 5 and 6, And Yet it Moves, La-Mulana, and Retro City Rampage. That list may be smaller, but it's still packed with power.

Out of all of those games, Retro City Rampage is one of the most exciting, though it's also one of the least well known. Hopefully that will change soon. The game was chosen as one of the PAX 10, and it even has its own website. Its own website, people. This is serious business.

There isn't too much on the site right now, but in the future, there will be downloads and development blogs. For now, there's this wallpaper and some new screens, which feature homages to the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," Capcom's Commando, Konami's Contra and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto, and many others.

I'm still a little afraid that the super-scaled out camera will make the game too hard to manage, but I'm still excited. Comedy is a big selling point for me, but how about you?

You scheming on a thing that's sabotage?

Ugly gaming clothes: Space Invaders IRL

Ugly gaming clothes — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:30:00 +0000

You know, for every amazingly totally superbly fantastically awesome piece of gaming clothing we post about here at Destructoid there are probably about a million crappy gaming t-shirts we don't post about. I'm changing that here and now with this Space Invader t-shirts from artist Jimiyo and Tee Fury.

These are butt ugly. Not only is the "in real life" space invader not that cool or original looking, but the size and placement of everything is far to large. And that neon green. I know it's supposed to be repping the original game, but that is not a color anyone should really be wearing that much of unless they're going to some sort of 80s party. I'm sorry, but shirts like this are why people think that gamers have no fashion sense.

And before you go ahead an call me a douche for simply posting about something so I can tear into it, I will just say that if you like the shirt now you know about it and you can buy it so free advertisement done. And, yes, it was kind of a dick move on my part. I'll buy them some White Castle.

Spectrum Analyzer: Future's Past

Spectrum Analyzer — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:11:12 +0000

From the Atari 2600 to the NES to the Sega Genesis, you thought you've experienced everything there is to know about retro. Don't get too cocky though, Americans! There's a whole other chapter of classic gaming you've likely missed. Pack your bags... 1UP is taking an extended trip to England to discover:

We’re nearly finished with our Spectrum analysis here at 1UP… there are just two weeks left before the series wraps up with a feature detailing the history of Britain’s favorite home computer, including interviews with both fans and leading developers. However, we’re not done just yet! This week we’re going off the beaten path and reviewing a pair of Xbox Live Indie Games that were either directly inspired by the ZX Spectrum, or would have been right at home on the machine.

First up to bat is Crosstown, an overhead view shooter with similarities to… heh, take your pick! There’s a little bit of nearly every classic arcade game you can imagine hidden in this release, from Wizard of Wor to Robotron: 2084. The developer even paid homage to the queen of psychological trauma, Portal, with Crosstown’s villain, a nasty pink square named Piggy who does everything he can to get inside your head and wreck up the joint. Part of the fun of playing Crosstown is in reading his demeaning insults and rarely helpful advice!

The rest of the fun comes from wandering the cramped corridors of each stage, picking off tiny foes while collecting the local currency. The Qreds are your ticket out of the current stage, but collecting these pulsing rings tends to be rather difficult when the playfield is crawling with creatures, each with its own purpose for existing. Some meander aimlessly through the stage, others try to take the Qreds for themselves, and still others camp in the corners and pump lasers into anything foolish enough to walk past. When there are fifteen different enemies on the screen, the stage explodes into chaos and you’ll have to think quickly to survive. Firing at anything that moves is stupidly reckless, as some creatures will send those lasers right back to you, and stray shots have a habit of drifting through the passages until they collide with something… typically you.

Crosstown was based on a game published in Compute!, a computer magazine that was popular in the 1980s*… yes, games were small enough back in the day that they could be squeezed into a few pages of text and typed in for the amusement of the reader. Although the original was actually designed for the Commodore 64, one of the ZX Spectrum’s fiercest rivals, it’s not hard to imagine Crosstown working on the Spectrum thanks to its small, mostly monochrome characters. The crude visuals are also why Crosstown wasn’t as successful as it probably should have been, but don’t let that stop you from trying one of the better, and certainly one of the most reasonably priced, titles on the Xbox Live Indie Games service.

While Crosstown looks like it could have been released on the Spectrum, Leave Home is quite deliberately inspired by the beloved British computer, with an introduction and stage transitions that bring to mind loading games from a cassette recorder. When you finish one area and enter the next, bright colors strobe in the background and harsh noises spill out of the speakers, giving you just a taste of what the average Spectrum owner had to endure while waiting for his copy of Underwulde to boot.

Beyond these tips of the hat to early British gaming culture, Leave Home is a thoroughly modern experience, borrowing much of its gameplay from horizontally scrolling shooters but with a visual style that will likely remind you of Rez. Every onscreen object is constructed from a handful of glowing, translucent polygons, giving the game a look best described as “retrodelic.” The sharply rendered geometric shapes are simple yet breathtaking, and while vapor and particle effects are frequently used, they rarely obscure the action.

As a shooter, Leave Home is a bit of an oddity. Lives are unlimited, so you can’t really lose the game, but if you’re anything like me, you can really suck at it. Like Compile’s excellent Zanac series, it’s designed with a dynamic difficulty level, but unlike Zanac, this actually means something… the game is built around your performance and each level will drastically change depending on your skill level. If you crash your ship, the number of onscreen enemies thin out and any nasty surprises the game had planned to spring on you remain hidden. If you crash a lot, the challenge is significantly toned down, with wider gaps between obstacles and fewer of them to block your path.

Leave Home only increases in difficulty if the game thinks you can handle it. The challenge doesn’t come from just blasting enemies and picking up the tiny blue dots they leave in their wake, but rather from holding your feet to the fire and keeping them there as they burn to a crisp. Playing flawlessly grants you access to all the game has to offer, but refusing to die only makes Leave Home more determined to humiliate you. Although the game may seem short you’ll only need a few minutes to “finish” it , it will take hours of dedicated play to get the full experience. It may take even longer to get used to your ship's fanning laser cannons, which can't be locked in place...

Next week is Last Call, a special installment of Spectrum Analyzer with capsule reviews of games requested by our readers. If you’ve got a personal favorite that we haven’t already covered in the last two months, now’s the time to speak up!

Images courtesy of Xbox Live Marketplace.

* Until OMNI mucked it up with that horrid redesign and took out all the fun stuff. What were you people THINKING?! Twenty years later, I’m still holding a grudge. I’m currently keeping old issues of OMNI in the bathroom closet as emergency toilet paper. God, I hope I’m almost out of Charmin.

DOS Month Day 18: Ancient Land of Ys

DOS Month Day 18 — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 07:39:00 +0000

Another title that has been resuscitated multiple times with a lot of success. It's for a very good reason that this game has come back to different platforms as well as handhelds. Ancient Land of Ys is a very memorable game with lots of interesting concepts. This game reminds me of the Zelda games early ones and delivers with success with a very rewarding gameplay and story. With lots of challenges along the way, I am sure this title will keep you interested in till the end. Enjoy!

DOS Month Day 17: Bio Menace

DOS Month Day 17 — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 07:23:00 +0000

One of the games I could never get to work in my Pentium 77mhz computer was Bio Menace. As kewl as the game looked I couldn't get it to work, the computer would always crash and I was left with nothing! Finally, one day I went to my friends house to play some PC games and guess what game he had? Bio Menace and guess what more? It worked. I was in heaven and I wouldn't let my friend play it with the excuse of "you have this game to play all the time" It always worked. Years went by and I found out that the computer problems with Bio Menace were very common which made me feel good and bad. Good because I wasn't the only one in pain but bad because I was never able to play it. Now with DOSBOX and my sexy classic PC I am able to enjoy it everywhere and it was worth the years of wait didn't got to play it at my friends house that much especially after I got into a fight with him oh well . The game is outrageous and a lot of fun. Apogee sure got things right with all these amazing titles we enjoyed, well at least some of us.