It’s funny when a game from yesteryear pops into your head for seemingly no reason. Well, I say no reason, but actually there was one: I was reading about a game called New Star Soccer, the point of which is to guide a single player from his humble roots as a 16 year-old trainee to the excesses of international stardom.

Innovative as that sounds, there’s no such thing as an original idea in this business, and indeed, Footballer of the Year promised largely the same thing when it was released some 26 years ago. (Sidenote: yikes! I’m old).

The structure of the game was extremely simple: you’d start with a limited amount of money and a small number of ‘goal cards’ – the means by which you could involve yourself in matches. It worked like this: before each fixture, you’d be told how many chances in that game a single ‘goal card’ would offer you (between 1 and 3) and you’d have to decide whether you’d want to spend a precious goal card in order to play in that game.

The taking or squandering of opportunities was then relayed via a fairly simple arcade sequence which basically amounted to lining up a shot and beating the ‘keeper (although if you hesitated too long you could also get tackled). Scoring goals not only helped your team win matches but also boosted your own profile, increasing your chances of securing a transfer to a more glamorous club (although, curiously, you also had to pay for these yourself by buying a ‘transfer card’).

There were also off-the-field ‘incidents’ – usually involving drinking, gambling, or the law – which would crop up every so often.

It was desperately simple stuff, although no less compelling for it. Once upon a time, I was one of a group of pathetic youths gathered around a Spectrum on a rainy Saturday afternoon as we took it in turns to play matches, using our combined skills to guide our player towards the coveted FOTY title (I don’t think we ever succeeded, although we got close).

There was a sequel, although it killed the spontaneous fun of the original by forcing you to memorise the contents of team talks and other players’ movements to have any chance of success in the arcade sequences. It’s odd that the idea hasn’t been revisited much since – although several games have given you the chance to play as one player on the pitch rather than as the whole team, there hasn’t been much that’s focused entirely on the ‘player aims to become a superstar’ angle.

With the football release schedule limited to the annual FIFA/Pro Evo bunfight, it comes down to the indie scene to offer a fresh approach. I’ve only just discovered the charms of New Star Soccer, but from what I’ve seen so far, it takes the core idea of FOTY and drags it into the modern era with some success (more on which, soon, perhaps).

*P.S. The tag ‘8-bit memories’ suggests that I may well write in vague terms about 8-bit games again. Which I might. But I also might not.

**P.P.S. Screenshots are from the Amstrad CPC version. Just because my friend had a Spectrum doesn’t mean I don’t like colours. Plus, sod the Speccy/C64 debate, the CPC was the best, etc etc…

Hello there.

Well, well, what do we have here? After years and years of having precisely zero coverage of the series, here’s our second King’s Quest review in as many months. Just like London buses…(rest of joke deleted)

Jo’s the reviewer this time around, as she takes a look at King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride.

Hello.

It’s fair to say this latest review was rather more hard work than I’d anticipated – just goes to show that picking something that looks like it might provide simple, straightforward fun doesn’t always pay off.

Anyway, enough waffle. Here’s the review of the game in question: Power Drive.

So I finally finished Limbo. My feelings are a bit uncertain.

Gameplay-wise it’s very well crafted. Given some puzzle it’s usually fairly clear what your overall goal is – you just need to figure out how to make that happen, from fairly simple elements (reversing gravity, a bear trap, some crates). The puzzles also feel like a part of the natural environment, not just something arbitray thrown in your way.

As for ambience and atmosphere tho… I dunno. The setting is basically a monochrome hell, a broken world containing little but lurking monsters and a few murderous survivors. Any sort of hope, or effort to survive feel futile in the cloak of damp, soul-sucking greyness. I get that this is quite deliberate – the game is called Limbo after all. But it’s almost too effective in setting the scene – it’s really a bit depressing. The style has plenty of merit, just not sure I want an entire game’s worth of it? Towards the end I found it a bit of a slog.

That’s just my subjective reaction tho, so I’m not going to call this any sort of “review.” Interesting to contrast tho with NightSky. Which is another game of silhouttes and physics puzzles. That one tho is somehow peaceful and restful. And it has some colours, those of late evening. And your “character” is more abstract, just a sphere and there’s no sort of death except for falling off the screen.

Anyways. I sometimes think we should keep more of an eye on indie games, particularly as many of them reference old-school gaming styles. Hipster physics platformers for one, of course. But also we’ve recently seen Legend of Grimrock, a tribute to RPGs like Dungeon Master, which mixes modern graphcs with that old style of flat square dungeon layouts.

Whether or not we’ll get into reviewing indie games, I dunno. Our review schedule is stately enough as it is. But still, if anyone has recommendations for particularly good ones with an old-school style, let me know!

We had quite a bit of fun last year with our series of discussion reviews, looking back at games we’d previously covered over the years. Ideally we’d have liked to have done one or two more, but these things take time, and ultimately we considered that going back and re-playing games we’d already covered, and dissecting what we’d previously said about them, wasn’t the best use of our time, especially considering our already, um, steady update schedule.

Since then, though, we’ve been toying with the idea of returning to the format in some other capacity – one that actually involves new content being posted to FFG. What we came up with, eventually, was the following idea: a regular feature, provisionally called “The Two-Week Review”, which would involve one or the other of us picking a old game (preferably abandonware) to be played over a two-week period, at the end of which an MSN discussion would be convened, hammered into a readable shape, and added to the journal.

Well, we’ve ditched the name, and the two-week concept, mainly to sidestep likely future embarrassment at being unable to keep to it (tellingly, our first attempt took roughly two months, rather than two weeks, to come to fruition), but we’re going to stick with the idea.

It’s not that we’re bored with the standard review format, or are running out of things we want to cover. The general principle is really to try and have a bit of fun looking back at some oldies that we might not have otherwise played, without necessarily worrying about producing a reasonably detailed review at the end of it. Plus, the experience of discussion retrospectives last year was quite an enjoyable one, and it felt pretty good to actually work on something together for a change, rather than simply using FFG as a shared dumping ground for our individual work.

We haven’t really set out any hard and fast rules. In fact, our first effort has actually been added as a review, rather than as a journal entry. In this instance, we figured we’d seen enough of what the game had to offer and covered most of what either of us wanted to say during the discussion. On other occasions, though, it might not be appropriate: it might be that we don’t feel we know enough about what a game has to offer at the discussion stage, at which point one of us might continue work on putting together a review, or we might just decide that it’s not worth any further time or coverage.

Either way, we figure that the worst-case scenario is that we have some new content, even if it’s just a journal post offering some initial thoughts on a previously-untried oldie.

Any thoughts on our first effort, or the idea in general, would be most welcome.

Hello.

We’ve got something a little bit new for you this evening – for the first time ever, Stoo and I have co-written a discussion review.

The game in question is Hardball III – so be prepared to be hit with the combined force of our baseball knowledge.

We’ve also posted a little explanation of what we’re trying to achieve with the discussion format on the journal, if you also want to check that out.

Hello everyone. Our comittment to Sierra games has always been just a bit more lacking than you might expect for old-time adventure fans. Pretty much the only series we’ve played extensively is Police Quest. Rik played one Space Quest and hasn’t been in a rush to go back, I did like the first Quest for Glory but somehow never found time for the sequels. Also we sort of hate Leisure Suit Larry. (sorry, fans!).

Anyway tho tonight we’ve got, if not the game that started the whole genre, at least one of its sequels. King’s Quest 6.

So my most recent holiday game was: Fight Night Round 3 on PSP. (Not that I go on holiday to sit inside and play games, but there are odd moments when the opportunity arises, and the flight, of course).

I’ve been after a boxing game for a while, but options are extremely limited on PC, with EA declining to even knock out half-arsed ports of their console boxing titles (I’m sure they’ve done their sums) which leaves, well, very little actually.

Fortunately, half-arsed ports are what the PSP does best. It’s normally a good bet that you’ll get a cut-down version of an existing PS2 title, particularly if it’s a multi-format sports games from a behemoth like EA, which is probably a bit of a raw deal when you’re putting down £30 a time, but expectations are significantly reduced when it’s a case of hunting the second-hand shelves with a handful of pocket-change to spare.

Graphics and sound stand up pretty well, but it seems as if some compromises with the control scheme have had to be made to allow for the PSP’s lack of a second analogue stick. Which basically means that, here, punching is pretty easy, but blocking and parrying is pretty damned difficult.

So far, it’s been fairly enjoyable stuff, although progress has been pretty trouble-free considering I haven’t got a clue how to defend myself properly (and this is on medium difficulty, before you ask). The controls are partly to blame, although I think it would be also fairly difficult for you to anticipate where punches were coming from in time to pull off the more effective parrying manoeuvres even if you had a joypad at your disposal.

The result is that recent fights have largely resembled the Rocky movies, rather than any real boxing match I’ve ever seen, with huge punches landing left, right and centre, and both fighters taking one hell of a beating before they actually a) get knocked down and b) give up the ghost.

Another problem is that you have to give your boxer a macho nickname (selected from around 15 presets), only to discover that many of your opponents seem to share it with you. This makes for some confusing in-fight commentary: [whirr]…”THE BEAST is taking a beating from…[whirr]…THE BEAST” (yes, I know it’s a silly name, but it’s boxing – there aren’t any modest options).

On the plus side, it does most things a casual fan of boxing like me could ask for, with a lengthy career mode that offers the chance to indulge in some of the more ridiculous aspects of the sport (adding silly tattoos to your chest, paying for fireworks and an entourage to accompany your entrance) as you battle your way up the rankings. One thing I might have liked a little more of is something that does a little more to capture the media pantomime that accompanies real-life boxing – smack-talk in the press and at the weigh-in, post-bout reactions etc.

On the other hand, that might well be a gimmick too far, and there is something to be said for sports games not trying to shoehorn in a narrative in an attempt to add drama to proceedings. If you just leave the player to get on with things, then the events of their own game provide enough of a story – heroes, villains, rivalries – without it being bolted on artificially.

The same argument could be made to explain why sporting films are generally crap. Driven may be terrible, but I’d argue that you’d have a hard time coming up with a non-clichéd script based on any sport. Sporting documentaries, or biopics, on the other hand, do a lot better job by using the real events and stories and re-telling them.

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah – Fight Night on PSP. It’s quite good, although not, I suspect, as good as it could be. Which is a pretty good summary of my feelings towards EA Sports titles in general.

Hello there.

After some time away, we’re back with a new review, just in time for Easter. And what better way to mark the occasion than with the mid-point of a series of car racing games?

So let’s hear it for TOCA Race Driver 2.

As we’ve a few days off, there might be more soon. Or there might not. We haven’t decided.

Those in the UK (and others with access to the internet) are likely to be at least dimly aware of the current plight of the GAME group. With unsolicited opinions being offered left, right and centre, I have no real wish to add another, except for the fact I feel a little bit bad about my post at the end of January (visible on the journal front page at the time of writing) detailing some awkward exchanges with members of GAME staff. The intention was to make fun of my own awkwardness, more than anything else, but with all that’s going on at the moment it might now seem in slightly poor taste, so I’ll just add a brief thoughts as follows:

1) GAME isn’t what it used to be – back in the day their stores were almost always a better option for range and price than rivals Electronics Boutique (until EB ended up buying GAME) – but I still go in and buy games there. Whatever mistakes they’ve made, and if I had an opinion on what they were, I don’t think it would be a particularly informed one, I think there’s still a place for them on the high street.

2) Speaking of uninformed opinions, I’m pretty sure those putting forward the ‘OH ITS THERE OWN STUPID FALT FOR BEING SO SHIT I WENT INTO GAME THE OTHER DAY AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR’ argument (also available in slightly more eloquent and reasonable-sounding forms essentially amounting to the same thing) don’t have the first idea what they’re talking about, no matter how much they claim to know about ‘basic business’. Plus, it’s mean-spirited and nasty, and that’s not called for when people are going to lose their jobs.

3) I’m sure there are good indie and second-hand shops out there (on a related note, Gamestation, also now part of the GAME group, was once but a single second-hand shop in York that I used to frequent quite regularly, until it became a chain, then part of Blockbuster, then a GAME ‘brand’) but anyone espousing the virtues of the likes of CEX might want to head to the Tottenham Court Road branch before claiming that the prices are better and the staff more friendly.