Outcast: Second Contact (PC) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, I've managed to drag guest poster mecha-neko back again so I get to take the week off! This also means that he's the one who'll be checking out the first few hours of that semi-recent Outcast remake, which makes sense seeing as he's the one who wrote about the original game way back in 2014. It's possible he's even remembered enough about it to make comparisons.

Hello there!

Five years ago, I wasn't as kind as I could've been to a game called Outcast, a PC action-adventure game about a man with a shiny visor and the orangest shirt in the multiverse travelling to another dimension to stop the Earth blowing up.

Developer:

Appeal

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Release Date:

November 14th, 2017

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Systems:

Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

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Now, for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, Commander Cutter Slade is back! Why? I honestly have no idea.

Fancy a look?

Judge Dredd (Arcade)

Developer:

Midway

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Release Date:

Never

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Systems:

Arcade

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing an arcade game that never made it to arcades. They came really close though, had four prototype cabinets built and everything. Unfortunately the responses from people who played it weren't great and the game was scrapped instead of reworked because the developers didn't have much faith in it either.

I bet the guy who made that Judge Dredd head was happy with his work though, as it's impressing the hell out of me. First I assumed it must have been a sculpture, as you can imagine what a 3D rendered Dredd face would've looked like in 1992, but it's apparently an actor wearing prosthetics. You can see a better photo of the makeup (and the other side of his face) on the artist's DeviantArt page if you're curious.

I thought about playing this one ages ago when I was trying out all those other Judge Dredd games, like Judge Dredd, Judge Dredd and Judge Dredd, but I wasn't really keen on writing about an unfinished prototype back then so I skipped over it. I figured I had enough on my plate trying to play every video game that exists without also worrying about the ones that don't. But the game didn't go away, it got into the back of my mind and made itself comfortable, so here I am doing my past self's job for him to finally cross it off the list.

Sorry the screenshots aren't very sharp this time, they were too tiny at the original resolution and too big doubled. Not that they're supposed to be sharp, you're supposed to be viewing them on a fuzzy CRT. In fact this is the most authentic my site's ever looked!

Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut (PC)

Developer:

Access Games

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Release Date:

2013  (original 2010)

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Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

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Good news! Super Adventures has finally returned to give you a new game post every week for the next two months. Unless you're reading this two months after it was posted, in which case I'm sorry but you just missed it. Go read Sci-Fi Adventures for a bit instead.

This week I'm playing Deadly Premonition, which is a game I bought for money just so I could write about it for you! Then I forgot all about it and left it sitting there in my Steam library unplayed for four years, but that just means it's even more retro now. It's also fairly notorious and I've heard a lot about it. Well, I've seen it mentioned a lot anyway; I've tried to avoid exposure to any actual info on the story or how it plays.

Though I did read on Wikipedia that it currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most critically polarising survival horror game, which is a really specific world record. Plus it also spoils that the game's a survival horror! I'd gotten the impression it was some kind of adventure game, a bit like Shenmue maybe. I checked Metacritic and the review scores do go all the way from 20 to 100, so now I'm curious what I'm going to think of it. I don't typically enjoy survival horror much, partly because I don't give a damn about horror or survival mechanics, but if survival horror fans dislike the game then maybe it's more my kind of thing? I am the world's biggest and only Resident Evil 5 fan after all.

I already like the rainy title screen, despite the annoyingly short guitar loop. I'm less keen on crashes though, so I've installed the DPFix patch by game fixing legend Durante in the hopes that it solves more problems than it causes. It does at least give me some graphics options to play with, but I've decided not to push the visuals too far above vanilla.

The game is pretty story driven and features a mystery, so I should warn you there'll be SPOILERS below as I go through the first few hours of the gameplay writing text under screenshots. Though I won't give away anything major, because explaining a detective's deductions in my own words seems like effort.

Super Adventures in Amiga Fighting Games

This week on Super Adventures I'm writing about fighting games on the Amiga! Lots of fighting games, a dozen in fact! Why? Because I'm taking a two month break from Super Adventures after this and I wanted to give you something that takes at least that long to read.

Plus the more of them I play, the less I have to write about each of them, which is good because I am the last person who should be writing anything about fighting games. The only technical terms I know are 'special move' and 'block' and I've had really limited success ever doing either. Though Amigas and I have something in common, as they suck at fighting games too! And not just because of the one-button joystick and floppy drive.

So far this sounds like a lot of reasons why I shouldn't be playing these games, but I think there must be some good screenshots hidden in them somewhere, maybe even some good gameplay. Plus it's given me an excuse to create that nightmare crossover between IK+ and Human Killing Machine's title screens up there.

Anyway, here are 12 fighting games in vaguely chronological order:

SiN Episodes: Emergence (PC)

Developer:

Ritual

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Release Date:

2006

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Systems:

PC

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This week on Super Adventures, I am finally getting around to playing SiN Episodes: Emergence! To be honest the only reason it took me this long is because I decided to hold off buying it until it was really cheap on Steam, and then that never happened. Until it finally did. I even got a free copy of SiN with it, which I fully approve of. More sequels should include the first game as a bonus... even if it is a little bit censored and doesn't include the expansion (unlike the version sold on GOG).

The first thing I noticed when I put the game on, aside from how cheap that menu text looks, is how good the opening theme is. It's like they swiped it from a Bond movie; it has vocals and everything! It's a bit disappointing that they didn't awkwardly work the word 'Emergence' into the chorus, but they found a place to include 'sin' at least. Here, have a YouTube link so you can listen to it yourself: What's the World Come To?

SiN Episodes also managed to disappoint console owners by never being ported, and PC owners by only ever getting the one episode. The mid-2000s episodic gaming experiment really didn't work out so great for first person shooter sequels built on the Source engine. That said, I'm sure Valve's Half-Life episodes sold a hell of a lot better than this did.

The original SiN had the misfortune of being released just two weeks before before the groundbreaking Half-Life and being entirely overshadowed by it, then the exact same thing happened with Emergence when it came out three weeks before the massively hyped Half-Life 2: Episode One! The game launched on Steam back when the store was practically empty and still didn't sell enough for even one more of its nine planned episodes to enter development. But the SiN series truly died when developer Ritual was acquired by MumboJumbo shortly afterwards and sent to casual game development hell for eternity instead.

Content warning: this article contains a screenshot of a model in lingerie. A 2006-era real-time 3D model.

Super Panda Adventures (PC) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has returned to write about a game with the best title. It's literally 'Super Adventures', except with a panda in it! Now I just need to find a science fiction movie called Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Cat Adventures so I can manipulate him into to writing my other site for me as well.

Also I realise that this was published on a Wednesday, not a Monday, but mecha-neko has a fondness for his banner and I didn't have the heart to tell him he couldn't use it. I guess you could read it on a Monday if that works better for you.

Hello everyone! I hope the new year is treating you well!

Hmm... hands up who'd like to see a brightly coloured platform game about a loveable panda!

Developer:

Paul Schneider, BlueEagle Productions

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Release Date:

23rd April 2013

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Systems:

Windows

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With a title like that, how could I possibly resist?

Space Station Silicon Valley (N64)

Developer:

DMA Design

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Release Date:

1998

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Systems:

Nintendo 64, PlayStation

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Spacestation Silicon Valley! Or Space Station: Silicon Valley, as it's written in the manual. The PlayStation version claims that it's called Evo's Space Adventures but I think it's lying.

The first thing I've noticed about the game is that there's an inflatable spaceship on the title screen, not a space station, and I don't appreciate this blatant attempt to mislead me. Plus it keeps orbiting the letters and I couldn't decide on the best time to take the screenshot. I tried to catch it in good place but I'm not sure I managed it.

I feel like I should pad this intro out with some interesting trivia taken straight from Wikipedia, so here's a couple of Space Station Silicon Valley facts for you:

First, the game's by Scottish developers DMA Design (now called Rockstar North), who are famous for the Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto series. In fact a lot of the people who worked on the game went on to create Grand Theft Auto III and kick off the 3D sandbox mayhem genre, so I guess it was a good thing this didn't sell enough to get a sequel. We could've ended up in the bad even worse timeline where we didn't get Sleeping Dogs, The Saboteur or Saints Row.

Second, it's no surprise it didn't sell well considering it came out in 1998: The Year of Good Games. Sure the N64 didn't get ports of Resident Evil 2, Unreal, Half-Life, Thief, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2, Pokémon Red/Blue, Starcraft, Grim Fandango, Sonic Adventure, Metal Gear Solid etc. that year, but Nintendo fans did have Banjo-Kazooie, Body Harvest, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Turok 2 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time competing for their pennies (and Nintendo's marketing budget).