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Retro Monday Game 92 – Hybrid Heaven

Hybrid Heaven was a game with an unusual blend of genres action/adventure and RPG for the Nintendo 64 that was made by Konami and released in 1999. Its design was in hope that it would create a new style of RPG Battle System.

Chosen by the community of GRcade via a poll of three games chosen by Jenuall.

Well, I had not heard of this game before. I knew literally nothing going into it other than what was said in the Retro Monday thread which was basically it’s an oddity.

Now, having no clue what is going on you’re treated to a few cutscenes of a naked guy doing various things in what appears to be a flat (apartment,) then getting a visitor, then going to a subway station and getting shot. You then play as the shooter. I still have no idea what is going on at this point, it’s really odd. The gameplay proper starts when you enter a facility and here is where the hybrid gameplay in that you explore in a 3rd person view and you have a similar kind of stand still to aim and shoot to actually shoot things, then, you also get into fights. Fist fights, I must add. Here’s where there’s the real mix in genre, you fight things and have a bar fill to select your attack, and the enemy can Step – meaning the can step aside and take no damage, though if they get hit they take all the damage, or they can Guard – which makes you take less damage or, you can counter 0 simply avoid the hit and smack them back. You can also bloc, step and counter the enemy attacks.

The fights take place in small rooms where you can move around the 3D space, and remember the bar you want to fill to attack, the bar is for the power you use, you want it full and the fastest way to get it to fill is to stand still. I find it’s best to move away as fast as I can and just wait for a bit, rinse and repeat. You also learn more attacks, you can even grapple and learn different moves via that too. Neck Thrown, Body Slam, there are a few that I saw myself. You also level up, like an RPG, but you also level up your body parts – left leg, right leg, torso, right and left arms too, not only that, your body parts have separate levels for attack and defence.

The sound was decent too. The very beginning cutscenes has some sinister music happening and when you’re travelling around the facility you’re in there’s this music, but it’s more atmospheric than anything and it really fits a sci-fi soundscape. During fights, the music is again the low key, but it really adds to the tension and I think it’s really well implemented as it really suits the slower paces of the fights and it adds weight to the situation that you are in. The Sound Effects carry weight to them and punches and kicks are meaty, the only odd SFX to me is the gun, it kinda sounds like a weird water drop or something, where I think it’s meant to be pew-pew.

Verdict: Recommend.

If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.

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E3 2019 Rundown!

GRcadeTwitchcast – E3 Discussion Videos!

The Electronic Entertainment Expo which most just call E3 is the time of year us game lovers call our Christmas. It’s a little daft, but the sentiment is pretty simple, we watch people sell us stuff… Wait, that’s not what Christmas is about?

I’m not writing a massive article about E3 here, but instead a few of the people from GRcade took to Twitch and decided to talk about E3, some of the conferences were at convenient enough times for people to have live reactions to them, while others weren’t and will be discussed in a general E3 round up in the end.

First video up is Microsoft. Doom and Pedz were available for this, ad7 did try and join, but, was unable to do having Mic troubles. The Watching Artist (Matt) joined approximately half way through as Doom had to leave, but he did return to talk a tiny bit about the conference overall.

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Ubisoft. Ah, good old Ubi, you can’t help but admire their crazy silliness. Do they stay as silly? Let’s have a look.

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Inside Xbox. Another Xbox Conference, it’s not a ’60 games announcement’ conference, but it does show a few new games and talks a little about the future of the Xbox One. I think Doom put’s it well at the end of the live viewing.

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Lastly, we have the Nintendo E3 Direct. We have Jenuall, The Watching Artist (Matt) and Pedz taking part in this one. They didn’t watch the direct during its live broadcast but they did watch it for the first time, together.

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We haven’t been able to get together since this, so a round-up isn’t likely going to happen, but we all had fun doing this and we hope we can get more done for future events. Thank you all for watching and listening to us all prattle on!

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Retro Monday #91 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Randomizer

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was made by Nintendo and released for the Super Famicom in 1991 in Japan and the Super Nintendo in the US and EU in 1992. It is the third Legend of Zelda game and did a lot to set the template for the Zelda series up until Breath of the Wild.

This week the game choices were all randomisers and over on GRcade Cheeky Devlin picked them for me to try. A Link to the Past was chosen by the members via a poll.

Well, while this is Link to the Past, one of my all-time favourite game; it’s ALttP with a major twist. It’s a randomiser. I know it’s a little different to the traditional way the games have been played normally, but, I thought having a randomiser would be a really interesting way to play an old game and breathe new life into it. I’m hoping those that read this and watch back the stream will agree that it’s a great way to see things old in a new way.

For those who don’t know, a randomiser is a mod for a game that takes a game ROM and then randomises the items. Simple really. An example: in this you could open the first chest in Link’s uncle’s house and normally you’d get the lamp. But instead you could get a shield, or hammer or rupees. It’s really interesting. There are also ways to set the randomiser so you can’t actually play for hours and hit a point when you can’t progress, and you can also pick how difficult it all is. It’s definitely worth trying it out and seeing for yourself.

The game itself is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and I love everything about it. The music is terrific, the visuals are lovely, the gameplay is great. There’s so much to love. I normally try to stick to around an hour and then move over to multiplayer games, but this I got really engrossed in and lost track of time and was playing for around four hours until after 1am.

Seriously give it a go – you’ll be surprised by how it may reinvigorate something you may now find you’ve overplayed.

Verdict: Highly Recommend.

If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even  picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.