Category: Retro Review

Destroy all humans

destroy all humans

I love old time sci fi movies so being able to play in one was kinda great, the raunchy humor and cool weapons and powers just so happened to be icing on the cake. The game is simple really. We play as Cypto, an alien from the planet Furon who comes to 1950s America to kill humanity after a botched incident involving Area 51. Armed with a array of alien weapons, a flying saucer, and the power to use telepathy, hologram disguises, and telekinesis we set off against the cops, military, and Majestic Agents that want to take you down.

First I’m going to say this game is fun. There’s a lot of variety in you’re methods of destruction. Disguise yourself and start throwing cars with telekinesis? Sure. Run through the suburbs of brainless men and scandalous housewives guns blazing while shooting people with you handy dandy anal probe- yes you actually get a anal probe and it is amazing. Guns and powers work really good and fluid for there time. A favorite pastime I have is simply reading the minds of the people around me and hearing the crazy or just plain hilarious and often politically incorrect they are thinking. The spoof of 50’s culture is perhaps my favorite aspect of the game. Realistically though I do have problems. I feel you die awfully easy in either on foot or in your ship; actually weirdly enough I feel you can take more damage on foot than you can in your ship. The saucer I feel could have have used a bit more agility to help avoid damage; the controls for it do feel a bit clunky. It aged decently well from its PS2 era release and it’s definitely a good pick up on the current generation. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Star wars: The Clone Wars (game)

clone war game

Too many things named after Clone Wars. Not saying it was a bad game, not at all, but damn so many damn Clone Wars.

Clone wars, in this instance, is a follow up game to Attack of the Clones. It primarily focuses on Obi-wan, Anakin, and Mace Windu as they try taking down a doomsday weapon. Besides a couple of instances, the game deals around vehicular combat, being able to command tanks, gunships, and speeder bikes and wreck some droids.

This is a really underappreciated Star Wars game I wish got more credit than it did. The vehicles handled solid and never really felt cumbersome except for the droid skiff at times. My favorite was the clone gunships, those things were death machines that were fun as hell to fly. The jedi parts weren’t anything special  but were just fun little bits added in for flavor. I can’t say the game brought a really memorable story, especially given the advantage of the time span to work with. In the end, this Clone Wars experience is a real fun time if you enjoy vehicle combat and blowing stuff up. Best wishes and may the force be with you.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter

bounty hunter

So let’s pretend we cared half as much about Boba Fett’s dad as we did him and gave him a game all his own.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a prequel to Attack of the Clones about Jango Fett and how he got recruited by Dooku. It’s up to us to traverse huge and many times epic landscapes, collect bounties by either taking scum alive or killing them with your famous dual pistols, wrist mounted flamethrower, snare cord, poison darts, missile equipped jetpack, and a bunch of other sweet shit.

This game is a mixed bag. For the time the environment is huge and breathtaking, especially Cloud City and Coruscant. Essentially the game boils down to platforming and run and gunning. At first, you feel pretty legit in your badassery. Around chapter 7 this game unloads a can of Grandma’s cream of whoop ass on you. You’re agility equals old school Tomb Raider, which get used to barrel rolling and flipping like a mad man. Flying is cool but the damn thing burns out quick, and it is really weird that your flamethrower runs on the same power as your jetpack. By the way, that flamethrower is freaking awesome sauce!Shooting feels kinda automated, just hold down square and let Jango do the work. You can manually aim but that requires you to stop and that usually means you’re dead meat if you do. In the end, it ain’t great but worth checking out on sale. May the force be with you and may the gaming gods bring you epic loot and glory.

The day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

download

So I am screwing around on Netflix looking for something to watch and I come across this. Feeling nostalgic around Christmas, maybe because my dad died this year and I used to watch stuff like this with him, or maybe just because I haven’t really had the chance to sit down and watch some classic movies in awhile I popped this one on. I learned a few things. First, it felt weird not watching this on VHS and an old tube television. Second, this movie came out decades before I was born and yet I still enjoyed it more than most modern movies. And possibly last but not least, At least once a week I hear someone say ” I wish people would stop with all the political and social commentary in movies and on television.” Honestly, that has always been there. This movie is about a man from space that shows up with a giant robot. We as humans of course shoot him as soon as he tries to hand us something and his giant robot melts some guns and a tank. Space man gets fixed up and tried to get a meeting with the world and of course the world goes all high school stupid and starts with the if he goes I won’t go stuff.

So what is a space man to do when America locks him in a room and says don’t go anywhere? He leaves to see the city. News of course goes nuts, starts gets people all riled up and scared. See a pattern here? This movie was released in the 1950’s and if you replace the word spaceman with words like “Irish, immigrant, communist, Muslim” or any number of words you can change the year and it would fit the social commentary of a decade. The space man even comments about the media spreading needless fear.

Once we get to the end of the movie we hit another topic of social commentary that could hit any number of decades. Our space man finally gets a meeting, but not with world leaders but with scientist. Whats his message? That giant robot is basically the galaxy police force and they have ultimate power that no one questions or interferes with. They are so feared the rest of galaxy wants to trouble so they simply don’t have weapons. Since earth discovered nuclear energy they will eventually use it in a space ship and join the galactic community. Either do so in peace or the giant robots will destroy the Earth. That is a pretty damn severe message I would say.

All and all I have to say I was surprised by the the amount of social commentary in a movie from the 1950s, but more surprised how much of it actually stands true over 60 years later. Best wishes and  may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter

jedi starfighter

So leading into the premier of Last Jedi, I’m going to cover some Star Wars, including the 7 movies leading into it, I previously covered Rogue One and here’s a link down below to check that out.

Star wars: Rogue One

So Jedi Starfighter takes place after Attack of the Clones and as the title suggests you command one of two ships, one of which is a Jedi pilot as you fight the Trade Federation forces. Adi is a jedi master in a experimental craft that allows her to use the force to augment her ship’s capabilities like slowing time, causing concentrated force lightning, creating a force shield around your ship and a shockwave attack. We also pay as Nym, a freedom fighter who’s ship does heavy damage with an array of heavy artillery.

This game is flawed but fun. You don’t get to choose which character you play as on each level and sometimes its a challenge, sometimes it’s a royal pain in the ass especially if you crank the difficulty. There isn’t much variety but it’s fun to fly around and blow shit up. I like playing Jedi because her ship is more agile and the force powers really come in handy- lightning is badass. I have to say the A.I companion commands actually work surprisingly well, set a command and they get carried out pretty well.  The graphics are great for the time and turn out pretty nice on PS4. If you want a quick retro Star Wars buzz, I recommend picking this up on a PSN sale. May the force be with you and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

san andreas

There hasn’t been a game that made my jaw drop or make me laugh like GTA: San Andreas until I played Borderlands 2.

San Andreas is the story of Carl, a young man returning to the old neighborhood after his mom dies and discovers his old crew is being wiped out by the cops and rival gangs so it’s up to Carl to get the Grove Street Gang back together and retake there hood from shit going down, but in true GTA fashion, is it ever that simple?

While not perfect, the game is pretty damn good and in a lot of ways holds up pretty up well over a decade later. Driving feels really solid and as an open world game it was seriously ground breaking at the time. I love being able to go to the gym and working out to upgrade you’re body and increase you’re stamina, sex appeal with the ladies, and get stronger or eat a bunch of crap and become a fat bastard, that was a awesome feature. The gunplay is hugely improved from the older games. The characters are some of my favorites of gaming, being memorable and also damn right funny at times. Samuel L. Jackson is awesome as Officer Tenpenny.

Overall, it’s a great classic that recommend picking up on sale. May the gaming gods bring you glory and “all you had to do was follow the damn train CJ”

Mickey’s Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse (2001)

images

Oh Mickey you and that contemptible damn duck Donald. Wait this isn’t Kingdom Hearts so the duck is cool. Seriously watching this sense me into flashbacks of him not healing me when he was supposed to so I died. They better make him not a useless jackass in KH 3 or I will be upset.

Anyway on to this movie. It is essentially a series of short Christmas stories for the kids…..that  I watched without my kids. My favorite of course was their version of A Christmas Carol. My capitalistic hero Scrooge and those pesky ghost ruining his life stealing all his cash.

Now that I think about it that wasn’t how A Christmas Carol went, but I am sure someone out there thinks Scrooge was the victim here. The movie is about an hour long and is full of Disney characters from what people my age consider the golden era of Disney when everything was pretty much hand drawn. Cameos galore, over dramatic dancing. Its a great nostalgic blast from the past that everyone should take this Christmas. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Ref (1994)

download (2)

This movie is basically about the worst day a robber could have that didn’t involve the cops unloading 12 clips into your body. Dennis Leary as always plays himself playing a robber that trips and alarm. He then falls down a trap door and escapes as he gets bit by a huge dog.

He then holds up a woman, gets to her car to find that her and her husband are essentially always fighting about everything imaginable. Husband blows a stop sign and he lies about not seeing it just so he doesn’t have to say she was right, that is the level of fighting we talk about.

The movie is funny and hilariously well written. At no point in the movie was I not entertained, and while the story is very basic and you can see the ending coming a mile away most people won’t really mind. When the rest of the family shows up, the movie just gets better.

Christmas dinner being awkward has never been so much fun when it didn’t involve the Griswolds. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sonic 2 (Sega Forever)

download (3)

Sonic 2, one of the first Sega games many children played as a kid. Also one of the newest games released as part of Sega Forever. But does it hold up on a cell phone? Like most of the Sega Forever games it really does. The sound is easily equal or better than its original release, and the controls translate quite well to a touch screen.

The only real issue is for most people there are better options out there for the Sonic games. Most of them can be purchased on the Xbox One or the PS3 and XB360 consoles. They work well on a phone but there really is no reason to play on one if you own one of those systems. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pier Solar And The Great Architects

download (3)

Pier Solar has a complicated back story. Not the in game itself, like the actual development and release of the game itself. It also may be the last Sega Genesis game released.  You can find more info here.

The game itself is a fun old school RPG, but at times offers very little to go on in terms of where to go. People used to this style of game will be fine, but many will just be pissed off and should look up a walkthrough. The battle system is a classic turn based system, and doesn’t offer anything new to an experienced gamer but it is still fun and engaging.

The story while pretty standard is interesting and has enough twist and turns to remain interesting and keep you playing. The game has its faults but for its price any old school fan should check it out, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.