Category: Reviews

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Retro Monday: Haunting

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Another week of retro goodness with Retro Monday. This week I was given the game Haunting: Starring Polterguy to play, by Hyperion from the forums. I’ve have never heard of this game, let alone played it.

Haunting is a game for the Sega Mega Drive, it came out in 1993. Having never played this I had no idea what to expect going in, turns out I didn’t have to worry if the game was bad, as it turns out it really is good. Firstly I’ll get the negatives out of the way. The controls are somewhat loose for a start, and sometimes when collecting green Ecto it seems like you have to be really precise as touching it doesn’t work, you have to go on it in a specific spot and the dungeon/underground levels aren’t as good as the main part of the game.

That’s my negatives. On the positive side of things we have a game that oozes charm and fun. You as Polterguy have a family that you haunt, you follow them from house to house scaring them silly. You literally have to jump in and out of objects for the family members to then get scared by. The different animations are great and it was  always fun to try and get them scared in different ways. Even the way in which the family reacts is amazing, sometimes – for example – Mimi Sardini ( the little girl) will have her hair stick up on ends and where she gets really frightened she literally wets herself, or with Vito Sardini (the Father) he jumps in the air screeching, or opens his mouth to extortionate proportions or even just flat out passes out with a big thud.

The aim of the game is simple enough, scare 4 people so much that they all leave the house, collect Ecto that drops from the Scaries to keep scaring longer without going to the dungeon and have loads of fun doing it. With one thing being clear EA, yes EA, used to make really unique and fun games.

Verdict: Highly Recommend

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgWutWmadPs[/embedyt]

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Retro Monday: Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man.

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This week for Retro Monday, I played Chalkitdown’s pick, “Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man”, an action platformer released in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I’d never played this before, but I had heard good things about it. Well, lets start with how it looks. The style of the game is pretty great. The visuals are well done with the colour palette used being very effective. The sprites are all good also.

Now on to the gameplay and it’s got an interesting twist. You shoot your enemies, but that won’t kill them. You shoot them to stun them, which then allows you to walk up to them, and either jump on top of the enemies and press down and fire to spear them or up and fire if they are in the air above you. It’s a really cool mechanic, and it would be interesting to see something similar in more games.

The level design is also on point for the most part. The levels are side scrolling but some have verticality to them also. One issue I did have was in the water level (I think level 2-2). This was all vertical, which would be fine, but it scrolls downwards, causing you to drop into enemies you couldn’t possibly know were there.

Now as with most Retro Monday games, this is another I didn’t complete so I can only rate it on what I have played. I’ll be honest I really enjoyed it apart from a few things. The water level and a couple of the bosses, which can be a pain in the rump. All in all I’d say this is definitely worth a look and you could do a lot worse than this. Give it a try, you have nothing to lose.

Verdict: Recommended.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDOSw0EF2Oc[/embedyt]  *Warning Contains Explicit Language*

 

 

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Retro Monday: Desert Strike

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In the 90’s EA used to make a variety of games that they don’t seem to make now, one of those games series was the Strike games. There were 5 in total, but today we’re looking at Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, which coincidentally is also the very first game in the Strike series.

As a kid I remember sitting in my room, blowing up buildings, gunning down enemies and saving some good guys, basically I have fond memories of Desert Strike and really enjoyed it back in the day. Playing it again Monday though, I felt the game just wasn’t as good as I remembered, I only played the first level – honestly the game is tough – and the game could improve from the second level on wards. Don’t get me wrong the controls are good and tight, the level design is fine. It’s just that the game seems to have too many things happening at once. By that I mean you’d be in the middle of a battle with some AAA’s and then your fuel will run low, you missiles will run out, you then have to leave the fight to go and find fuel barrels and ammo and go back to carry on. You also take damage really quickly, so to replenish your armour you need to rescue soldiers that are M.I.A and safely deliver them to a raft, it’s all good in theory, it just, to me, spoils the flow of the game. Now that’s said it’s still a good game, it’s great when you take out a reaper, or a load of AAA’s and few vehicles with rockets on them and a couple of grunts before taking out an airfield of its planes and buildings all while leaving craters in the desert sand, and as I have previously said the controls are spot on. I would definitely recommend playing the game if you’re interested in retro titles, it’s a good game that is quite difficult to master, but taking down the enemy is extremely satisfying.

Verdict: Recommend.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW01UtD9ECw[/embedyt] *Warning Contains Explicit Language*