Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition (PC) - Part 2

Today on Super Adventures I'm just playing a bit more of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (Enhanced Edition). Well actually I'll be playing a lot more, but I wouldn't worry too much about spoilers as I'll just be skipping through all the interesting parts to whine about things that bother me.

I'm sorry I can't be as in-depth or insightful as the CRPG Addict, but it seems like he's going to take another decade or more to reach the 2000s, so why not read my words while you wait? I mean I'm assuming you've probably read part one already. If not you can get to it by clicking here: PART ONE.

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition (PC) - Part 1

Enhanced -	Developer:	Overhaul	|	Release Date:	2013	|	Systems:	Win, OS X, iPad, Android, iPhone, Linux, Switch, PS4, XBOne
Original Game -	Developer:	BioWare	|	Release Date:	2000	|	Systems:	Win

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the Enhanced Edition of the gigantic Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. This one's a titan of RPGs, an absolute classic, and very similar to the original Baldur's Gate... which I've already written about. In fact you might be wondering why I'd spend so much time trying to play and then summarise something so massive and complex (and yet also so well known) when I've basically done it already, but it's too late for you to talk me out of it.

Baldur's Gate II was BioWare's fourth title, after mech action game Shattered Steel, Baldur's Gate, and misc action game MDK2, and this is the point where they cast away all distractions to fully devote themselves to the RPG genre. But they only make blockbuster AAA titles these days, so Beamdog (their Overhaul Games division to be precise) got to be the ones to update this game for modern systems 13 years later. They updated the Throne of Bhaal expansion as well, and even threw in a bonus battle arena called The Black Pits II (which I'm not gonna play).

The Enhanced Editions apparently sold well enough, as a few years later Beamdog also got to make a new expansion for the first Baldur's Gate, called Siege of Dragonspear, which fills you in what happened to your hero in the time skip between the two games. So Baldur's Gate II is now following on from content made 16 years after it. You can import your character from that expansion into this and start off way overleveled... by like 2 levels (Dungeons & Dragons can be incredibly stingy with the level ups it seems).

I never played pen and paper D&D and I haven't read any Forgotten Realms books, so I'll have no idea how faithful Baldur's Gate II is to the lore and gameplay. I have played a few of the videogames before though... including this one. In fact it was probably my first D&D game after Eye of the Beholder, and I completely bounced off it the first time I installed it because I had no bloody idea what I was doing. I don't even think I knew I was supposed to rest occasionally. But then I gave it a second go later and made real progress. Tons of progress. I didn't actually beat the bloody game though and it's been tormenting me ever since.

I'm thinking that I got about two thirds of the way through on my last time, but it's a bloody long game so I'm not really sure. All I know is that it's going to take more than the first hour to really get an idea of how it plays, but I'll try to skip through without really spoiling anything beyond the prologue. Expect lots of zoomed out images of tactical combat and beautiful shots of menu screens.

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (PC)

Developer:

Sega Studios Australia

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Win, PS3, Xbox 360, iOS, Windows Phone, Android, OS X

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Castle of Illusion! Again!

I didn't mean to, not originally. I just wanted to grab a couple of screenshots for my article about the Mega Drive game, to show what the remake looked like by comparison. But it turns out that they've remade a lot more than just the graphics, so I decided to give it its own article instead.

I've had this one lying around my in my Steam library unplayed for three years now, ever since they cunningly manipulated me into buying it by announcing it was going to be taken off the store. Sure it was almost certainly going to be put back on eventually, but what if it wasn't? I could've missed my chance to ever play the game! (It came back seven months later).

This Castle of Illusion first came out in 2013, 23 years after the original (and 6 years before now) and it was the last game to be made by Sega Studios Australia. They'd been around for about 10 years by that point and had been known as Creative Assembly Australia for most of it, developing games like Medieval II: Total War and London 2012 - the officially licensed game of the 2012 Olympic Games. Not a whole lot of platformers though, unless you count a port of the 2D Sonic games to the DS, so that's not massively encouraging. But hey the other Creative Assembly came out with Alien: Isolation out of nowhere and everyone loves that except me, so maybe this is actually really good!

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 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?

Batman: Arkham Origins (PC)

Developer:

WB Games Montréal

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Win, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U

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This week on Super Adventures, a game about punching people at Christmas!

It's been ages since I've played a Batman game, in fact I think the last one on the site was probably Return of the Joker for the NES, back in April 2015. Though it still seems too soon to play Batman: Arkham Origins, because of how similar it is to the other two. In my Batman: Arkham City article I joked that I'd be able to copy/paste parts of my Arkham Asylum post and save myself some work, and here that's doubly true! But it's a Christmas game and I feel like playing it again, so I am.

I love these beautiful tableaux of frozen Batviolence behind the menu by the way. Batman's so gritty in this one with his tactical Bat-armour and his permanent bad mood, that I keep expecting the camera to pan across blood and displaced teeth flying through the air.

This used to be the black sheep of the franchise, due to it not being developed by Rocksteady, and the bugs, and the fact that they prioritised releasing paid DLC instead of fixing them all, but I think Arkham Knight's claimed that position now (at least on PC). There's still a bit of an issue with the multiplayer, seeing as it was switched off forever earlier this month, but I didn't even know it had multiplayer, so that shows how much I care about that.

(Click on the images to view my original full size screenshots. DX11 mode, all settings on full... resolution at 1280x720).

Redshirt (PC)

Developer:

The Tiniest Shark

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Win, Mac, Linux

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This week on Super Adventures I'm celebrating the 50th anniversary of 'Star Trek' by playing a new Trek game each and every day! Or at least that was the plan, until I remembered that a: most of my readers don't want to see seven Star Trek games in a row, and b: I don't have seven Star Trek games I haven't played already. Also most Star Trek games are crap anyway!

So instead I'm playing seven games with a some kind of tenuous connection to the venerable sci-fi franchise, mostly just games with 'Star' or 'Trek' in the title to be honest, starting with recent indie game Redshirt by miniature microstudio The Tiniest Shark (aka. Dr Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris).

I know next to nothing about this game, but one thing I do know is that it's a sci-fi themed satire simulating Facebook... in space! So I'm not exactly the target audience, as I quit the site about the same time it started asking me what schools I went to. I ain't got no time for nosey websites. These days the closest I come to social networking is occasionally remembering to put site updates on Twitter (follow @RayHardgrit on Twitter for site updates!!)

I've seen a few of them 'Star Trek's though, so that's got to help.

(Click the screenshots to expand them to exciting new dimensions).

Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC) - Part 2

Click the highlighted text to return to the horror of part one.

Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

Gearbox, TimeGate, Nerve

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

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Last year on Super Adventures I decided that April 1st would be the perfect day to give a critically mauled Duke Nukem Forever a fighting chance to win me over. Because if I ended up liking it I could always pass my opinions off as being a joke and escape with my reputation intact. So today I’m going to pull the same trick with the hated Aliens: Colonial Marines and see if I can find the good in it too.

Like DNF, this is a first person shooter famous for taking ages to make and impressing absolutely no one by the time it finally came out, though it wasn't in the oven for quite as long before it got rushed out and served undercooked. It started late 2006 and finished early 2013, with folks saying that it spent 4 years at Gearbox, then around 18 months outsourced to TimeGate, and then 9 more months at Gearbox. Apparently huge chunks were reworked each time it swapped over, which left Sega agreeing to pay out $1.25 million to settle a class-action suit when people discovered to their dismay that the demos they'd been shown were demonstrating content and visuals that hadn't survived to the final product.

Anyway I'm playing the PC version here, which I've heard is the least crap of them. I usually only play games for an hour or two to get an impression of what kind of game they are, but this time I’m going to keep playing the single player campaign until either I start liking it or I really can’t take any more. I even watched both 'Alien' and 'Aliens' in preparation so I can nitpick about every tiny thing it gets wrong! I could end up spoiling elements of any of the films in the series though (plus a decent amount of this game, obviously), so if that's an issue you should get out now while you're still safe.

(Click screenshots to view them slightly bigger.)

Tomb Raider (PC)

Today on Super Adventures, I'm putting a few hours into the original Tomb Raider! Uh, I mean I'm playing the original version of the 2013 reboot/prequel instead of the 2014 'Definitive Edition' of the 2013 game, I'm not playing the original ORIGINAL Tomb Raider. Oh fuck it, I'm calling this Lara Croft's Tropical Torture Island Vacation.

I suppose I could also call it Tomb Raider 9, though they got bored of numbering the games somewhere back around 3, and that doesn't include things like the Game Boy games and the isometric Lara Croft series. Or the remake of Tomb Raider 1 that came out a few years back called Tomb Raider Anniversary. Man there's a lot of Tomb Raider games in the world right now, and I've barely played any of them. I was scared off years ago when the reviews for each new game reported that it was more of the same, except worse.

Tomb Raider 2013 isn't more of the same though, and while that may have worried the faithful (especially after the early trailers), it caught my interest. I'm the asshole who liked Resident Evil 5 more than Resident Evil 2, and Fallout 3 more than Fallout 2 you see, so there's reason for me to approach this with a bit of optimism... though to be honest I actually kind of played and finished the entire game a year ago, so I won't be coming in blind and utterly clueless like I usually do. Sorry.

(Click the screenshots to open them up into a slightly less pathetic 1280x720 resolution. You should be grateful for that much, seeing as the game was far more interested in giving me a completely unacceptable 1272x720!)

Saints Row IV (PC)

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).

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.

Paper Sorcerer (PC)

Well this isn't a good sign: it looks like they've taken the title screen from an Apple II game. I do like the candle effect, but that has to be a contender for the worst looking game logo on the site so far.

Hi I'm Ray Hardgrit and this is Super Adventures, I play games for an hour or two and try to figure out what they are and if they're any good. Today game is indie RPG Paper Sorcerer, the debut title by UltraRunawayGames (aka. Jesse Gallagher), and no relation as far as I'm aware to Paper Mario.

I realise the game's been out for almost a year now so it's perhaps a bit late (or half a decade too early) to show it off, but it was gifted to me by a kind and hopefully patient reader, and I promised I'd write something about it. So that's what I'm doing.

(Click the pictures to open up a bigger version and get a better look at the art).

Fez (PC)

Hi, you've found yourself on Super Adventures, where I play games for an hour or two to figure out what they are and show off some screenshots. I'm bored of 'E' games now, they've gotten old, so I'm moving up to exploit the untapped potential of the letter 'F', starting with puzzle-platformer Fez.

I realise that everyone else on Earth already knows everything about the game already, but it's all completely new to me so I'm playing it anyway. The game debuted on the Xbox 360 in 2012 and for a while seemed happy enough to just stay there and shun the outside world, though it did eventually make its way over to PCs and PlayStations over the next couple of years. I'll be playing it on Windows as that's the version I've got, but I don't expect there'll be any noticeable differences between the systems.

(Click the screenshots if you feel expanding them to their orginal res, though you won't be missing out on any details by leaving them small.)

Evoland (PC) - Part 2

Click to jump back to part one.

Evoland (PC) - Part 1

Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a look at indie RPG Evoland!

I've been curious about this one for a while, as the premise is pretty much genius. To quote the official site:

"Evoland is a game and a story. The story of action adventure gaming as seen in the Zelda or Final Fantasy series, starting with the early age of action RPGs, when a few pixels were enough to make us dream for hours. New players will discover a bit of video game history and a very fun gameplay, and veterans will also enjoy a host of references to legendary titles scattered along the game."

It's an action RPG about the history of action RPGs, though judging by that bright pixelly title screen and the '1986-2013' copyright, I'm guessing it's going to be leaning towards the Japanese console RPG side of the genre.

The Evoland I'm playing is actually based on a browser game of the same name created for the 24th Ludum Dare contest in just 30 hours. That might not sound so encouraging, but Evoland Classic managed to beat 1400 other games in the end to take first place, so I'm taking it as a good sign. I mean I'm not getting my hopes too high, I had to give the game administrator privileges before it'd even recognise my controller, but c'mon this could be cool.

Eldritch (PC)

Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a look at another request: indie first person... video game Eldritch.

The word 'eldritch' is closely associated with H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories and is defined as meaning "unearthly, alien, supernatural, weird, spooky or eerie". I'm just trying to pad out this introduction a bit to be honest, because I've haven't even got a clue what this game is about. That suits me just fine though really, as it's been weeks since I've been able to come at a game armed only with absolute ignorance and be able to share my true first impressions of it afterwards.

Like always I'll give it an hour or two to impress me, then document my findings in the form of screenshots with words underneath them.

Dust: An Elysian Tail (PC)

Today the 'D' titles continue with a game request: indie platformer Dust: An Elysian Tail. It comes with a subtitle attached because when you're not id software it can be hard to make a one-syllable common word title show up in search results (especially when games like Dustforce and From Dust are already out on virtual shelves). If you're wondering what the symbols mean by the way, they're Korean and they spell out... 'Dust'. I was as shocked as you are.

This was originally an Xbox 360 game, but I'll be playing the PC version as I still haven't found the screenshot key on my 360. I'll get the hang of this game capture thing some day though.

(Click the images to view them at 1280x800. Might not be all that impressive, but you'll get a better view of them than at 640x400 res at least.)

Antichamber (PC)

Alright, now that Replay Week is finally out of the way I can at last reveal my true master-plan for Super Adventures: Year Four. This year the site has a dumb gimmick you see: I'm going to play games in roughly alphabetical order; 3-4 of them per letter, one letter every fortnight, and this is going to carry on for the next 51 weeks (or until I get bored of the idea).

This tiny change should help me clear out my current backlog as there'll be an average of 96% less games around to distract me, while also giving readers a clue of what to expect for once. If you're hoping I'll play a game starting with K, they'll be showing up in July. If you're dying to see me play, I dunno... Zeno Clash, then that could happen next January!

I realise that chronological order would make more sense for so many reasons, as it'd put the games in context and let me examine how they've evolved over time. But knowing me I'd likely still be talking about the Master System and the NES five months in and this site ain't Chrontendo so I'd doubt I'd get away with it. Maybe next year though!

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I'm starting this off with another game from my long list of requests: first person indie puzzle game Antichamber.

I've heard that this is a game about discovering the rules and gameplay for yourself, so that even showing you how it plays would be a spoiler. But I'm going to go and do it anyway, so if you have an interest in playing through the game yourself and and you haven't already, you might not want to read any of this. Not that I'm likely to be able to get very far into it.

I'm not going to show you the title screen though, because the game doesn't have one.

(Clicking these screenshots will unfold them to their original size.)

Saturday Morning RPG (PC)

Today I'm having a quick look at Saturday Morning RPG released on iPhone, Ouya, Linux, Mac and also Windows! I don't know much about it, but I'm 90% sure from the title that it's likely to be an RPG.

I should probably mention upfront that I'm friends with one of the people who worked the game, so my opinion of it is in fact worthless and should be disregarded.

(Click the screenshots to expand them into more reasonable resolutions.)