Retro gaming: Who Dares Wins II

Forget about Dragon Age II, because today we'll talk about Who Dares Wins II, an old game by Steve Evans (credited in the C64 version as Tommy Atkins). Who Dares Wins was initially a shameless Commando clone which was released two weeks before the real Commando. Elite sued WDW developer Alligata, so the game was immediately pulled from distribution... until Evans rearranged the content and the game was re-released as Who Dares Wins II.

WDWII was one of the first games I ever played, renamed for Spain (in the cover art, not in the game) as "Mercenario". The 8-bit Commando was a much more visceral experience, and insanely enjoyable, but WDWII was a great piece of design. Let's see why:

Amstrad CPC version < --- The one I played back then

Commodore 64 version < --- It looks similar, but it had scroll!

At first glance it looks like another Ikari Warriors-type shooter. You push forward with your soldier shooting all the enemy soldiers and throwing some grenades. (You can't ride a tank here, though) But after a while you realize that you are expected to make some tactical thinking.

-Enemies are limited. No infinitely spawning baddies, which is actually good. You can memorize the enemy placement so you won't suffer a nasty death. That was great to get a little further each time you played.

-There are some special rules: trenches stop bullets, water and almost invisible quicksand (you can see how it looks here) will drown you, you can only shoot entrenched enemies while they are peeking out (like in a modern cover shooter!), soldiers behind barricades and tanks flee when you are close to them, and you have to clear the last screen of enemies before reaching a new stage. It feels fair and it motivates you to plan your advance. Staying for a couple of minutes in a single screen trying to get rid of a few strategically-placed enemy shooters is as Un-Commando as it gets.

-I love the extra touches like the possibility of saving prisoners who are about to be executed or destroying passing vehicles. That was completely optional, but at the time you had to do that to "play right" (also, the extra points were useful to get more lives). I don't care about that style of playing too much anymore, but back then it was really important, probably because games only offered gameplay and not much else.

WDWII was an unexpensive game (being released seemingly as a cheap Commando knock-off), but it was legitimately great, and I would play it again in a heartbeat. Maybe I should try the C64 version to check out the scroll!

Sources:
Retro Gamer Magazine
Retroview (Spanish)

Call of Juarez 3 - Modern Cowboys

For months I've been trying to find some time to write something about the great Call of Juarez games, but I've failed. Just this: play them. Start with the second game (Bound in Blood) and then continue with the first one, which has the best story and design; it's better this way in terms of story (even if the first game is technically inferior).

Now we learn that there will be a third game, but... it has a modern setting. The only thing I can say is... WTF? I don't think it's a change justified by the story, but who knows... I'm afraid maybe Ubisoft asked Techland to do something "more like Call of Duty", and this weird concept is the result. We'll see. But it really looks weird.

Uncharted is so screwed!

WTF?!

http://kotaku.com/5698269/mark-wahlberg-will-be-nathan-drake-deniro-could-be-drakes-dad

Max Payne was probably the worst movie I watched in the last two years (my wife even fell asleep during the first act). When you think of Mark Wahlberg, "likeable" and "funny" are not the first adjectives that come to your mind.

I have nothing else to say about this. I'm depressed.

Pest Patrol - Shellshock 2: Blood Trails

So I had a weekend to spare and I decided to play this fine mess of a game. I had bought Shellshock 2: Blood Trails dirt-cheap, and I wanted to be sure that it was as bad as they say.

Well, it's not as bad, but almost. I get that old feeling you get from some cheap games, when you feel "oh, this would be a decent game... five years ago". So this is not exactly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but "it used to be fun when we didn't know better" material.

This is also one of those "in name only" sequels, like Far Cry 2. The original title was a third-person shooter made by the Killzone developers which tried hard to be disturbing by showing the toughness of the Vietnam war (even if many think they failed). Rebellion, your go-to guys for cheap shooters (ask Sega or Bethesda), said to Eidos, "OK, we'll do a sequel", they started developing a Vietnam-themed FPS, and then they filled it... with zombies.

So this is just an excuse to create a Resident Evil rip-off. Of course, they don't come even close to the great original, but still, the best part in Shellshock 2 is the part when you are in a mansion (in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle?!) and the realization sinks in... "This is just like the first Resident Evil game!". And later I saw a hooded guy with machetes, and you remember the scary chainsaw guys from the recent RE games. The game is then not a complete waste, just as the mediocre Wii reality-based FPS Red Steel, which included a truly great level in which you had to fight your way through an insane amusement park-like maze where weird stuff happened. It was worth to play that game just to experience that.

Apart from that, there's not much to recommend. Lots of scripted scares that aren't scary anymore after the third repeat. A worthless, cliched story. The old-fashioned "all the people you meet die almost immediately", which seems a left-over from the old "we don't know how to program decent squad AI" times.

Still, the mansion level is fun to play, if you don't mind suffering horrible graphics with too few character models and ugly textures. You don't have much ammo and you suddenly realize that those slow (but deadly) zombies won't go down unless you shoot them in the right place (not just the head: you can stop them blowing off one of their legs with a well-placed shotgun blast). That is a good "survival horror" feeling, but sadly it doesn't last too long because of the repetition and overall lack of quality. So I guess the game is acceptable, but not much more, if you are a horror fan and you are not sick of zombie games yet.

Don't be fooled, though. It still is a bad game.

Breaking news! Those two guys...

Well, it's not really news, is it? Zampella & West have formed a new company. Yes, with some help from EA. Anybody surprised? No? OK.

Nothing about this is surprising. We knew the guys actually making the Modern Warfare games would leave the rotting carcass of Infinity Ward as soon as possible, and of course that has already started.

Well, maybe I'm too harsh. Infinity Ward it's not dead yet after all. They are pumping out those expensive new maps! Well, not really new, but you know. They may become another Treyarch. But then Activision will realize that they can't afford to have the same developer twice, so they will close down one of them.

Come on! It's not easy to have talented people on your team. And if you have them, you don't force them away. See what happened to now-in-name-only Guns'n Roses. Did Axl Rose really think that he was going to replace Slash and the other guys just like that?

...


UPDATE: From now on, I hope we can forget about this whole mess until Respawn releases their first game (or maybe if there's something really big happening). If you are really interested, I recommend you to follow Kotaku's great coverage.