Wednesday 29 October 2014

Saints Row IV (PC)

Saints Row IV logoSaints Row IV logo
Sometimes on Super Adventures I play ancient retro games, sometimes I play obscure indie titles, but for the next two weeks I've decided to play nothing but semi-recent story-driven sandbox shooters beginning with the letter 'S', because I can. First up is Saints Row IV.

There was a bit of a incident in early 2013 where the game's original publisher (THQ) kind of exploded, and seeing as they also owned the developer (Volition), that could've been the end for Saints Row right there. Fortunately Deep Silver stepped in to save the day, purchasing Volition and ensuring that the Saints Row saga continued with the developer's vision intact.

The game was released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows, and I'm playing the PC version. If the graphics look a little blocky around the edges, that's because I had an issue with the anti-aliasing and decided to turn it off entirely. It's probably the fault of my ancient graphics card rather than the game itself though, so don't judge it too harshly. All other settings are on the highest they go up to, surprisingly

(Click the images to view them at 1280x800).

Sunday 26 October 2014

Rocket Knight Adventures (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Rocket Knight Adventures title screenRocket Knight Adventures title screen
Today on Super Adventures I'm spending an hour or so playing Konami's Rocket Knight Adventures, released exclusively on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. This is the first game of a series, though Sparkster here wasn't really the most well loved mascot hero of his time. Sure three games is a lot better than many of his rivals managed during the Anthropomorphic Mascot Wars of the early 90s, but after 1994 he was left forgotten for sixteen years before landing his fourth (and possibly final) starring role in Rocket Knight.

I've seen his other games but I've never really had a go of this one before, so I can promise that I'm coming at this entirely unburdened by nostalgia or foreknowledge. Though I admit that I'm always going to be a little biased towards liking games with 'Super' or 'Adventures' in the title.

This is the final 'R' game I'll be looking at this year before I move on to the letter 'S', and to be honest it's one more than I'd originally planned to play. But it was requested, and I felt bad for not having one single 16-bit Sega game on the site since early February, so here's a bonus platformer for you. Though of course this does mean that one of the other letters is losing a game.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Rise of the Triad: Dark War (MS-DOS)

Rise of the Triad: Dark War title screen logoRise of the Triad: Dark War title screen logo
Here's a genuine classic first person shooter for you: Rise of the Triad: Dark War (probably no relation to Rise of the Robots). I have to stick that 'Dark War' bit on the end or else you might assume that I was talking about the 2013 remake with the same name, as that's the kind of thing that happens when two things are labelled the same.

This was the last game developed by Apogee before they switched to using the name '3D Realms' for their first person shooters with 1996's Duke Nukem 3D. In case you're wondering, the last title that 3D Realms finished creating themselves before letting the development team go in 2009 was apparently the original 1997 Shadow Warrior game. But in a strange case of serendipitous timing, the company was officially relaunched today by the new management, so chances are good that they'll be able to finish a third game under the name someday!

So Rise of the Triad is definitely old, but is it any good? I don't know, I've barely played it and can't remember, but I'll put it on for a bit and find out for you. One episode should be long enough to form an opinion I reckon... assuming that the game even has episodes. I know, I'll just keep shooting things until I hit a boss fight.

Monday 20 October 2014

RoboCop 2 (NES)

Robocop NES title screenRobocop NES title screen
Okay, that's how you do a title screen. Shame they had to squash up the title a bit to fit it all in though; that poor letter 'B' has ended up overlapped and mangled.

Today I'm taking a look at RoboCop 2 on the NES, obviously, and I'm amazed that it's taken me this long to get a RoboCop game onto the site. Well okay my associate, mecha-neko, wrote a guest post a few years back about the 2003 PC game, but that thing's more of an eldritch abomination trapped in a crude video game form, and knowing too much more about it could drive you mad.

I've played a couple of the old RoboCop platformers in the past, but I've never seen this one before so it's all going to be new to me. If it's anything like the others I've seen though... we're not going to get on.

Friday 17 October 2014

Star Wars: Rebel Assault (MS-DOS)

Star Wars: Rebel Assault logoStar Wars: Rebel Assault logo
Today's 'R' game is Star Wars: Rebel Assault, part of my ongoing efforts to get a few more Star Wars games onto the site so the Trek games can't be so smug.

This may well have been the very first game I ever bought for PC, I honestly can't remember. It was almost certainly this or some other LucasArts game like Sam and Max or TIE Fighter, because back when I got my first rig those guys pretty much defined PC gaming for me. So yeah I think there's a fair chance I'm going to be incredibly biased by nostalgia here, but then again it's been a few years now since this disc has been anywhere near a disc drive.

Wikipedia claims that the game also came out on Mac, 3DO and Sega CD, and I can believe it. This is definitely one of those interactive multimedia kind of action game experiences only possible due to the power of the compact disc (ie. it's got a lot of video in it).

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Realms of the Haunting (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Realms of the Haunting logoRealms of the Haunting logo
Today on Super Adventures I'm switching over to 'R' games, starting with a look at classic DOS adventure/shooter game Realms of the Haunting. Because someone asked me nicely (and paid for it).

Often when I play a game blind I'm coming into it with some foreknowledge; maybe I've seen someone else play a bit of it, maybe I've read a review, maybe my friend won't stop sending me gifs from it etc. But this time around I have absolutely no clue what I'm getting out of this beyond the flash of spoilers I got downloaded into my brain when I made the dumb mistake of glancing at the wikipedia page for half a second (I just wanted to know when it came out, damn you wikipedia!) I've definitely heard the title before but beyond that this is all new to me.

I'm guessing it's closer to Myst than it is to Quake, but then I haven't played Myst either so I should just shut up and put the game on.

Realms of the Haunting (MS-DOS) - Part 2

Click to journey back to part one.

Saturday 11 October 2014

Donald Duck: Quack Attack / Goin' Qu@ckers*! (PSX)

Donald Duck Quack Attack title screen
Alright, the last 'Q' game I'll be looking at this year is the Playstation version of Disney's Donald Duck "Qu@ck Att@ck"?*! (AKA. "Goin' Qu@ckers*!" in North America). Seriously, that's what it's called, you can see the title screen right there. I'm going to assume the bonus punctuation is standing in for unintelligible angry duck swearing, because it totally is.

Today's game is a request... uh, a suggestion... well okay someone basically just pointed out in a comment that the thing exists and begins with 'Q', but that's good enough for me. It turns out that Q isn't the most popular letter for video game titles, so I appreciate the help. R, S and T on the other hand I've got covered (and then some), so I wouldn't recommend recommending anything beginning with one of those letters for the next four months or so.

I've never even heard of this one before by the way, so I've no idea what kind of game it is or what the critical response to it was. Somehow though I don't expect to be impressed, but I'll give it an hour or two to surprise me.

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Quake 4 (PC)

Today, at last, I'm taking a quick look at the first few hours of Quake 4. Though it should really be called Quake II-2, as it breaks the series' long tradition of each game having basically nothing to do with each other, and instead continues the tale of Quake II.

The game came out a year after Doom 3 and is built on the same engine, but it was actually developed by id's sidekick Raven Software, who've used id's tech in the past to bring the world first person shooters like Heretic, Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. But not Return to Castle Wolfenstein, that was actually someone else (though Raven did make the next Wolfenstein game... called Wolfenstein.)

Anyway I've played (and finished) the game once before, but thanks to my superpower of being able to completely forget pretty much anything and everything (aside from bad pop songs and 16-bit game tunes), it'll be just like I'm seeing it all for the first time!

(Click the images to view them in a larger resolution.)

Saturday 4 October 2014

Super Adventures's Disappointing 1000th Post Spectacular!

When I realised I was getting close to the 1000th article posted to the site, I figured that I'd do something interesting for the occasion. But nothing came to mind, so I gave up on that and decided to just show every single title screen, box shot or logo added to the site in the last four years, in one absurdly long alphabetically organised grid of thumbnails.

No commentary this time, just several big images containing hundreds of tiny ones.

Quik the Thunder Rabbit (Amiga)

Quik the Thunder Rabbit title screenQuik the Thunder Rabbit title screen
I'm done with those 'P' games now for the year so today I'm finally moving onto 'Q', starting with 1994 Amiga platformer Quik the Thunder Rabbit; not to be confused with other Amiga games like Quik n' Silva or Qwak. Or the Nesquik Bunny for that matter.

The logo up there's kind of weird as it implies Quik will be a mechanical construct with a red helmet, the Mega Man of lagomorphs, but he's nothing like that. I've only played the game before very briefly, but I know enough about it to know that I won't be playing as a robot rabbit. He's called 'The Thunder Rabbit' because he's fast as lightning (or a well known console mascot hedgehog), not because he runs off electricity or has the powers of Thor or anything like that.

Wednesday 1 October 2014

Probability 0 (PC)

Hi, I'm Ray Hardgrit, I play games, and today I'm taking a brief look at Probability 0, a "downward-scrolling infinite arcade platformer" by Droqen, the maker of a bunch of other indie games I've never heard of: www.droqen.com. Starseed Pilgrim sounds a little familiar though.

I'm playing this one though because I kind of know the composer and I ended up with a copy, so disregard anything nice I have to say about the soundtrack. In fact it's probably safer to just ignore everything I have to say entirely.

Alright there's apparently two modes here, Beginner and Expert, so I'll go with Beginner for a bit and show you what happens next via the medium of screenshots.

Semi-Random Game Box