November: it’s dull and grey outside, so you may as well stop feeling guilty about playing videogames. Thus we’ve been unusually active these past few weeks.

A while back we were thinking that the Sports section looked undernourished; Rik has been working steadily over the past year to rectify that and his latest offering is Tennis Masters Series. Also he’s reviewed another adventure: Flight of the Amazon Queen. Meanwhile I’ve added my own thoughts on Clive Barker’s Undying, and waded through several hours of iD’s slightly brown milestone in first person shooters, Quake.

Good evening.

One new review for you this evening – of EA horror shooter Clive Barker’s Undying.

My plan was to have this review ready for a Halloween update, so it would be kind of, er, topical. Unfortunately this didn’t happen, although round my way the scares aren’t over until the shops have flogged the last of the fireworks.

Enjoy!

So here’s a question – I’m keeping it hypothetical for now.

Game A is released, and it’s awesome, gaining both critical and popular acclaim. The publishers see dollar signs, and demand a sequel as soon as possible. With no time to develop an entirely new title, Game B is thus virtually the same except for cosmetic changes and a few tweaks.

Now, how is a reviewer to respond to game B? Do they criticise it for being just a re-tread of a Game we’ve already played, and a cynical cash in? If B is the same as A, however, doesn’t that by default mean that it’s awesome too?

In the context of reviewing brand new games, I think the issue is resolved fairly easily: you can assume that many potential fans will already have paid £30 for A, and question if a second helping is really worth another £30. Looking back on A and B from years later, though, it’s a bit different. We’re talking games you’ll probably either get cheap on ebay or scrounge off an abandonware site. Also, even if you already slogged through A, that might have been 8 years ago, so you might be more open to the idea of that second helping.

Because of this, I’m wondering if the mindset of “same as the original, we’ve already been there and done that” is really a valid comment when reviewing oldies. How much weight should we place on similarity to predecessors when assessing a game?

So I’ve finally played Half-Life 2. And it’s awesome! The trick is, Valve sat down and and thought up a whole bunch of set-piece scenarios to put you in. So it’s not just running from one room to the next shooting people, and you never feel like you’re doing exactly the same thing twice. The gravity gun adds a lot too – Valve’s strategy seems have an emphasis on thinking of clever things you could do with it, rather than adding a huge arsenal of guns.

Classic moments!
-Flinging saw blades at zombies
-Charging around the beaches on a buggy, looking for safe spots from the Antlions
-Arranging a safe path over sand with bits of debris, again to avoid antlions
-Bitter shootouts with scaring looming tripods in the city streets

No Xen section, for those of you who hated it first time around. Also, the urban environments are very well done – I’m out of touch with the latest graphics but to me the Source engine looks really awesome in action, even in locations that don’t sound too promising like ruined warehouses.

The story is minimalist in some regards – by the end you still don’t really know much of what’s going on – but still quite gripping. And there’s a strong element of human drama thanks to the characters you meet. They really are brought to life in a convincing manner – animation, choreography and voice-acting are the best I’ve ever seen in a game. More on that point in a future post.

Anyway I’d like to replay the original but have lost the CD, godammit. However, I’ve already shelled out on the (confusingly titled) Episode 1. Steam is insidious like that, it’s so easy to spend money!

Howdy.

Is it October already? It’s getting cold, the nights are drawing in…all the more reason to not bother going outside and enjoy some classic gaming in the warm comfort of your home. You could tidy the place up a bit though – how about recycling some of those empty Dr Pepper cans instead of leaving them scattered around your PC, huh?

Content from myself has ground to a bit of a halt recently. Luckily, Jo decided it was time she did another piece for this site – check out her review of Maniac Mansion.

Stoo, meanwhile, recklessly shelled out £40 on the ID Super Pack on Steam. To justify the expenditure he’s now forsaking all other forms of entertainment in favour of ageing 3D shooters a-plenty. First up is the one that started it all (kind of) – Wolfenstein 3D.

Finally, I managed to recover sufficiently from minor brain damage incurred while attempting to comprehend all the different stats in Fallout to add a review of Viva Football to the Sport section.

So a week or two ago I went out and got the ID Super Pack on Steam. It covers pretty much iD’s entire back catalogue, bar a few obscure titles, from Commander Keen to Doom3. Plus there’s some of the iD-engine-powered titles from Raven, like Heretic and Hexen. Total cost is $69.95 – far less than the combined cost of the separate components, which comes to $213.90.

As it happens a good half of the bundled items are either multiplayer-centric (like Quake 3), or expansion packs, and thus not of much interest to me. Going back to the original Quake to see what I missed is one thing, but I doubt I’ll bother slogging through 3rd-party mission packs. Also I already own a couple of the games and, er, have been borrowing Rik’s copy of Hexen 2 for about 8 years now. Still, I did the math and the pack still works out as decent value for money, albeit by a smaller margin.

Anyway, is this the way forward for keeping oldies alive? I appreciate people would sometimes rather have a copy on CD. Also there are legitimate concerns about what happens if Valve go out of business and steam shuts down. However this is a quick and easy way for companies to make old favourites available to consumers. They don’t have to worry about printing or distributing copies, or extensive advertising campaigns. Just stick the games on Steam and let word-of-mouth do its work. With the process made relatively painless, there’s more incentive for them to give it a try, when they probably wouldn’t bother if only the traditional methods of distribution were available.

Hello all.

Rik is trying something new and tackling an RPG. He’s currently spending hours every night shooting rats and mutants and grinding his way through endless quests, and reckons he might be finished sometime around 2014. So in the meantime you’re stuck with me. And I’ve reviewed a charming old Lucasarts adventure, huzzah! So take a look at Loom.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, The Abandonware Blog is back in business.

Which is clearly a good thing, I’m sure you’ll agree. So anyone who’s been missing their semi-regular dose of abandonware-related news can now head over there and get it…

Okay, so having steadfastly ignored RPGs since Dungeon Master (can’t remember much about that apart from that ‘oof, I’ve hit a wall’ noise when you, er, hit a wall), I’m currently making tentative progress through Fallout.

It’s such a well-loved game I’m feeling under a bit of pressure to really love it. It’s slow going at the moment, but it’s perhaps best to reserve judgement for now.

My lack of RPG nous is pretty obvious. One thing I clearly didn’t understand at the outset is that RPGs allow you a hell of a lot of freedom to go to different places and embark on different quests. When you think about the kind of song and dance people make about a bit of choice and multiple pathways in other genres, it’s nothing compared to the likes of this. And that kind of thing usually spells danger for me.

Another RPG trait, apparently, is having to kill lots of small creatures right at the beginning. In Fallout’s case, it’s rats. After the first few I actually started feeling sorry for the little critters. Not the giant pig-rats though – they can go to hell.

Hi all.

Been a fairly quiet summer, but we finally stirred ourselves into action and have two new articles for you. Having now lost my soul to World of Warcraft (troll hunter at level 69), I thought it fitting that I play through and review Blizzard’s earlier Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.

Meanwhile, continuing in his role of champion of all things adventuring, Rik has reviewed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.