February 2014 – Page 2 – Obsolete Gamer

There was something cute about those twin dragons Bub and Bob that hooked me into the game. Plus I loved the simplicity of the graphics and the background music. This was the 1st game that I became obsess with getting both a high score and trying to complete the game. I would blow bubbles against the wall in between moving up levels and killing enemies to get max points. I would restart the game if I missed any bonus food items on a level to max my score. Bubble Bobble is also the 1st game that I stayed up all night long, so I could make it to the 100th level to complete the game. It is the only game that I have fully completed on Nintendo and I was 10 years old!! I like to say it’s the game that made me a hardcore gamer!!

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

Warner Bros. Games delivers a slap to the face of gamers

What worries me is there have been companies that have been known for releasing great games and if there needs to be a fix it is addressed quickly. As much as people used to complain about Blizzards long development times, their RTS games were worth the wait, but look what they have become now. They still make good games, but you see the differences between now and before Activision. If we allow these practices to continue then we have to expect other companies to also slack off. If they can save money by releasing a striped down game and selling more DLC’s or rush a game out and patch it later then why shouldn’t they do so if it won’t hurt their bottom line. In the end, only new IP’s and independents will try hard because they have to prove themselves and win us over while fan favorites can do as they please because we will by their game anyway

Hardware

J.A. Laraque

The Logitech G19s

So let’s get right into it. One thing about any review be it video games or hardware is the question of, how can the reviewer give an honest review if their job is to continue to review products and maintain relationships with companies. I found after a lot of trial and error, that the key is to recognize the different aspects of people’s decisions in purchasing a specific product. For the Logitech G19s, a big issue is price and at $199.99 it is completely understandable. What you have to do is really look at all the features and then your own needs, wants and budgets and ask yourself is it all worth it.

PlayStation 2

Adam R.

State of Emergency

While GTA gave you the freedom to do anything, you’re limited by a good bit in State of Emergency. There’s two modes and frankly their both boxed-in areas where you rack up points by taking down police guards, gangsters, and breaking all kind of things like glass, cars, and other kinds of property.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Warhammer 40k: Fire Warrior

The problems with Fire Warrior, you see, are firmly rooted in its dirty console past. The game sports an incredibly annoying auto-save/checkpoints feature that forces you to replay levels again and again (only to be killed seconds before beating them), has pretty clumsy controls, very poor AI, astonishingly few tweaking options and an obviously tacked-on online multiplayer side. Then, it doesn’t even try to add anything new to the genre and its sole innovation is a rather failed copy of HALO’s shield system. And don’t get me started on the extreme linearity of the thing or the truly archaic need to collect color-coded keys…

PlayStation Portable

Nick Herber

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Sometimes deaths feel cheap. The actual action-oriented combat works well; certainly better than I expected. My biggest complaint from this department though was the camera. Sometimes I just could not get it into a good position, especially in narrow spaces. Also, the combat was a bit predictable in terms of how it was triggered. In earlier games, most combat occurred at random while walking. In later Final Fantasy games you are on an active field with enemies you can engage or try to avoid. Here? It’s things like intersecting hallways that trigger the usually-random group of monsters you fight. You find yourself hugging the walls awkwardly, battling the camera angles if you’re in an area where you don’t want to fight. It’s not all bad though.

DOS Games PC

Dan Epp

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

The answer is multifaceted, but the first step was retaining Jane Jensen as the author of the entire storyline. The first Gabriel Knight game was lauded for not only being fun to play, but having a deeper story than most adventure games. Ms. Jensen had majored in computer science, but also had a deep fascination with creative writing, evidenced by her work on the Gabriel Knight series. Interestingly, she did not become a published novelist until well after The Beast Within, with her novelization of the first Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers book in 1997, and then Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within’s novelization in 1998. Her first non-computer game related novel, Millennium Rising, was published in 1999, the same year her last Gabriel Knight game was released.

Xbox One

Eric Hollis

Killer Instinct

All in all, Killer Instinct is pretty disappointing for a next-gen release, especially since the game is a glut of microtranscations. If you want the full game, it’s a standard twenty bucks. You can also just buy the individual characters if you want, which would be really cool if there were more than seven to choose from. If you want everything the game has to offer, which basically boils down to a couple of aesthetic character accessories and a playable version of the original KI, prepare to double-up on that Andrew Jackson. The only thing I was interested in besides the core game was the original that, unlike everything else, isn’t available separately. This fact, my friends, is worthy of ire right there.

Commodore Amiga

Ian

Rise of the Robots

Rushing home we inserted the first disk and were confronted by a very impressive intro. ‘This is going to be great’ we thought. Then, after an hour or two, we both felt something was wrong. Could Rise of the Robots be… rubbish? Neither my brother or myself could believe it. In fact I remember assuming that we were playing it wrong, that it was our fault that you could beat every robot by doing a flying kick. That there was a way of turning round and jumping over the other fighter we just hadn’t worked out how. That you could pick a fighter who wasn’t the blue cyborg, you just had to complete it or something. How could all the hype be wrong?

SNES

Adam R.

John Madden Football

There is one fatal flaw with the game, and that’s the technical limitations of the SNES. The framer ate does not run smooth which really effects gameplay when you’re in a heated moment. Also when you pass you get a zoomed-in view of the players around you. Doesn’t sound too bad, but it kills your view on defense. It’s a shame really, because it seems like EA put a lot of effort in trying to make this the best football game ever in the early 90’s.

Game Boy

Simon Reed

Tweety’s High-Flying Adventure

To do this you can’t just walk up to them and get the prints though, oh no – you have to take them down with weapons you pick up throughout the stages. There’s nothing too violent in terms of you arsenal though – just plunger torpedos, slippery jam (?) and the like. Levels are therefore structured a little more expansively than in most platformers, and you have to check out both the higher and lower reaches of every level to find all the pesky felines.

Month: February 2014

Gamer Profile: Carrie Swidecki