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)

It's 1996 all over again

This looks insane... and awesome, too. A Greek Tex Murphy clone!
I hope it's better than the previous one.


Do you miss those 1990's games with actors in the middle of your 3D-generated world? Then you'll be pleased to know that GOG just released the amazing Realms of the Haunting.

But if you prefer old-school 2D, then go this way. Hey, no problem. I love both styles.

Guess who's back?

No, I'm not back. I'm just taking off-time to deliberate on our choice for GOTY 2010 (yet!). But SuperViv is back from Australia! We hope she'll resume playing where she left one year ago so we can keep chatting about games.

And big bad EA is also back as a major villain. Last week I played lots and lots of Mirror's Edge and Dead Space (both amazing games) and I was thinking "I definitely liked where EA was going a couple of years ago". Now, I'm not so sure I even like them anymore, after the evident watering-down of Bioware's games (just look at the recycled rush job they did with Dragon Age II), the Call-of-Dutization of their shooters, etc. With Activision completely out of control and Ubisoft acting crazy like a videogame-world Charlie Sheen (why would you want to sell a sexless sex game?), I don't know who can deliver us from video-game evil now. Valve? The indie developers? We will see.

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.

Kane & Lynch 2 - Dog Days

The first Kane & Lynch game was a barely acceptable 3rd person shooter which was harmed by its relentless grimness. The story tried so hard to be dark that it didn't even make sense. Why did Kane endure Lynch's non-stop unreliability? I can only think of one reason: because both their names are in the title, so they must work together. But Lynch was directly responsible for most of the bad things that happened to Kane in this game. To add insult to injury, the player was forced to choose between a bad ending and a worse ending. This was like a lesson in how to punish the player.

Curiously enough, the second Kane & Lynch kind of "fixes" those problems: the story follows none of those endings (Kane still has his daughter and Lynch's friendship). Also, Lynch is now directly responsible for his misfortune after a big single mistake (OK, or maybe two...), and Kane and Lynch stick together by plausible reasons (so they can make an arms deal and then escape). The story is straightforward and is concentrated in a short period of time.

The biggest change from the previous game is in the mechanics: Kane & Lynch 2 is a typical current-gen cover shooter, and never strays from that formula. Thankfully, the game is intense and just long enough so it never gets really boring. The levels are well done and varied in their sameness. If you think about it, you are playing in the usual settings you can see in any other game ("office", "street", "warehouse"), but here they looks different... and appropriate. All's happening in Shanghai, which is amazingly rendered here, putting Army of Two: The 40th Day to shame.

But the most original feature in the game is the "cellphone camera" effect. The whole game looks as if we were watching a badly made video of the events. This effect is really unique, and the thing is, it just works. Combined with great acting and level design, the results are terrific.

For some stretches of the game, you really feel you are playing something special... but then you remember that you are playing just another cover shooter. I couldn't pinpoint what keeps this from being a classic... Probably the lack of polish in certain aspects (the multiplayer modes just didn't work in my PC... though maybe it's just that nobody in the world is playing this game), or the unlikeability of the characters (even if they've come a long way since the first Kane & Lynch). Certainly, Uncharted this ain't.

Honestly, I don't know if I should recommend this game to you... I loved it, but I'm aware that it's not a game for everybody. If you like gritty cover shooters, you may like this. Oh, and it's a great co-op game.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 watch

The chairman of Ubisoft says they are trying their best to make Beyond Good & Evil 2 the best game possible.

If you read the Kotaku article, you could believe he's serious and Ubisoft is still the same company it used to be, choosing innovation and quality above the "iteration method" (running a franchise to the ground with yearly sequels, like they did with Prince of Persia). But remember, until it's proven otherwise, Ubisoft is still the same company that ruined Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell not long ago. And don't forget about their really evil DRM scheme, which always makes me think of this joke.

Lost Planet 2 sucks?

Lost Planet 2 is a multiplayer co-op experience, disguised as a regular game. But even if you play it with other people, it's still mediocre. That's the word on the street. And a few reviewers are also aware of that. Other reviews just hop on the "big game, big scores!" chain that allows bad stuff like Rebellion's latest Aliens vs Predator to be considered a 70% or even 85% game by some people (even when those reviews still use expressions like "dated" or even "mediocre").

And I believe it! I couldn't even finish the Lost Planet 2 demo, because it was just... tough on me. Just consider this:

-No real story. It really feels like a regular multiplayer-only game.
-Brain-dead squad AI. If you aren't playing with friends, you are still supposed to do the work of four players, but the bots filling the other positions won't do anything.
-Unfair one-hit kills. Like, prepare to die. A lot.
-Awkward, slow controls.
-Infuriating design choices. You can't even pause the game, even during the single-player campaign. Wait, WHAT?! Also, just plain bad execution. Brad Shoemaker's review makes it quite clear:

At one point in the back end of the campaign, I was playing an online-enabled game, on the off chance that someone might randomly jump into the action. My Internet connection dropped out for a second and disconnected me from Xbox Live, at which point the game abruptly cut to a black screen with a "Disconnected from host" error message. In a single-player game. That set me back at least 30 minutes of progress and incidentally made me never, ever want to play Lost Planet 2's campaign again.

That is not admissible in 2010.

UPDATE: Destructoid is even more unmerciful, describing the game as "downright frustrating" and "a shell of a potentially great game, brought down by bizarre, dated and counterintuitive design decisions". Jun Takeuchi offered a good co-op experience with Resident Evil 5 (though many gamers who loved RE4 found it lacking) mostly by not changing anything, but in this case, he took what was good of the first Lost Planet and he has turned it into a pathetic mess.

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.

Modern Warfare 3? "Too soon!!!"

Atomic Horizons, the recently-formed company created by former Infinity Ward heads Zampella & West, has just announced their first game, which will be published by EA in 2012. Code of Valor: The Future of War is a FPS title which will allow players to control a rogue team of three soldiers, from England, Scotland and Russia, who have been betrayed by an evil general so they have to lose their names and go underground, performing mercenary jobs to survive. More details will be announced soon, but Zampella has already advanced: "this time the PC version will have dedicated servers". Let's keep our fingers crossed!

(OK, guys, this is our April Fools' joke! Sorry!)

The two sisters

Imagine you meet a very nice girl... Let's call her "Jade". She's very beautiful, and you just love being around her... but then you start to get bored. You love her conversation, but she always comes back to the same themes, and she repeats the same things. You are even tempted to ask her to shut up. Finally, you can't stand being with her anymore.

But then you meet her younger sister. She's not as beautiful, but her conversation is much more involving. She talks about the same things, but you realize that now you actually care. She's not dull, and you love every minute with her...

Well, that was my experience with the first and the second game of the Assassin's Creed series. The first game looks nice, but runs out of gas very soon, and you even want the game to end as soon as possible because it keeps forcing you to keep killing people for unclear reasons instead of running straight to the main bad guy.

Assassin's Creed II is basically the same game, but now filled with content. Oh, boy, what a surprise... It actually makes you realize how the first one was painfully unfinished and empty. The story is actually involving (a revenge plot), there even are cutscenes with close-ups (and not the floating "select your CCTV camera" long-drawn dialogues), and you even feel your missions are actually useful and not a laundry list of to-be-killed persons.

The developers wisely realized that the gameplay of the first game was good enough, so the basic gameplay hasn't been changed, but only improved on. Now, there are a few indoors platform sections that feel like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time outtakes (which is a good thing!), a couple of vehicle sections and some surprises. There's also a series of weird puzzles which are at times a "clever use of historical figures" and some other times just "ludicrous namedropping", but they are quite atmospheric and feel appropriate to the overall story.

Something that I don't like about this game is that there's too little Desmond in it. It looks like during development somebody said "hey, players hate Desmond", but Assassin's Creed is after all his story. I'm sure players of the first AC hated having Desmond doing nothing in two rooms, but I'm quite interested in the "long battle of assassins vs templars" plot and its repercussions in the present/future. For that reason I'm disappointed that Ubisoft isn't keeping their original "a new character for every game" approach and their next AC game is an "Assassin's Creed 2.5" instead of a true Assassin's Creed 3.

DLC:
My full 36-hour long playthrough (with a 100% synchronization) included all the DLC available for the game, including all the extra locations from the "deluxe" edition, and the family crypt that is made available after spending "Uplay" points. There are also two chapters that were seemingly excised from the game during development, "12: The Battle of Forli" and "13: Bonfire of the Vanities". Well, "The Battle of Forli" is decent enough, because it has flat-out-hilarious lines with Caterina Sforza swearing heavily and the possibility to get a missable achievement (kicking a guard while piloting the flying contraption made by Leonardo Da Vinci), but then this chapter ends with a stupid cliffhanger introducing a villain that is completely unrelated to the main plot.

On the other side, "Bonfire of the Vanities" is truly awful. Just avoid it like the plague, for two reasons: First, there's no story at all. You have to kill nine guys for no reason, and you feel again as if you were playing the first Assassin's Creed again (which is NOT a good thing). Second, this sequence breaks the mechanics of the rest of the game. Normally, you kill people and that's it, the mission ends and you can look for another thing to do. Here, after you kill every target, you have to escape and avoid detection. But if that's not annoying enough, now there are black guards who can outrun you. So during this chapter you "lose your powers", as it were, and you feel unnecessarily frustrated. It just feels like "padding" and it doesn't add anything to the game. The only good thing about this DLC is that they offer a (more expensive) version which includes a few more Prince-of-Persia-like locations taken from the "Black" edition, but if you don't really need them, just steer away from this awful piece of DLC.

Of course, I'm talking about the PS3 version. The DLC is already included in the PC version, which also has the dubious honour of using the worst DRM method to date.

Assassin's Creed II is one of the best games of 2009, no doubt about it. In a way, it's a shame that it's best for you to play the first game to understand fully what is going on, but even without that, the story is great, and the gameplay is solid and really enjoyable. This is a must-play title.