Marvel's Avengers: The Definitive Edition (PC)

Developer:

Crystal Dynamics

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Release Date:

2020

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Systems:

Win, XBOne, Series S/X, PS4, PS5, Stadia

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Marvel's Avengers, because it's about to be delisted on Steam and is super cheap right now. Honestly, this fell off my radar the moment I learned they were going the games as a service route with it, so I was very surprised to find myself handing over actual money for it and now I own it I guess!

My curiosity got the better of me when I learned that they'd given players the entire shop's worth of content and freed it from its microtransactions. Plus I had to buy it now or I'd never get another chance, as they've gone and delisted it from online shops. I hate it when they do that.

I was only intending to put the game on for a few minutes and see how it plays, I wasn't expecting to use my screenshots/video to write about it for the internet. In fact, I wasn't even expecting it to run. So the graphics have been left at their absolute lowest to squeeze the maximum FPS out of it. This is as bad as the game can possibly look, at least without some extra effort messing with INI files or whatever. I know people work horrifying miracles sometimes.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to be playing the first few hours, so you may learn a lot of stuff here you might not want to know about the story.

Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)

Developer:

DMA Design

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Release Date:

2001

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Systems:

PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Fire OS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to legendary sandbox crime simulator Grand Theft Auto III! I wrote about GTA 1 in 2014 and GTA 4 in 2016, but since then the site has suffered 7 long years of GTAlessness.

A few things have happened during that time, like GTA 3 getting reverse engineered by fans so they could enhance it for modern hardware! Take-Two weren't keen on this though and shut the RE3 project down. Then they delisted the game from online stores and replaced it with the Definitive Edition Unreal Engine remake, which was hilariously half-assed and broken. At this point you can't buy either version in Steam, as they're selling it for the Rockstar Games Launcher instead.

I've played GTA 3 before, but I've never actually finished the game and it wasn't for a lack of trying. I beat Vice City, San Andreas, GTA 4, The Saboteur, Sleeping Dogs and all the old Saints Rows, but this was just a little too tough for me. Back then anyway. Can I actually manage to reach the ending this time and finally get some closure on the GTA that got away? The answer is... no, because I'm only going to play it for an hour or two. Sorry!

Also, I'm going to be playing the classic PlayStation 2 version of the game, so if you were hoping to see some hilarious Definitive Edition screenshots I'm going to have to disappoint you. I ain't paying that much for a bad version of a game I already own. But is the PS2 game the good version? Is any version of the game still worth playing in 2023? I'm probably the wrong person to answer that last question as I'm obviously unstuck in time, but I'll see what it's like and share some screenshots as I go.

Oni (PC)

Developer:

Bungie

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Release Date:

2001

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Systems:

PC, PS2, Mac

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing third person action game Oni, by Bungie, the developers of the Marathon, Halo and Destiny franchises! You can tell they're the ones who made it as their name is right there in the corner underneath the title.

Though hang on, it says 'developed by Rockstar' all over every copy I own, and there's no one from Bungie credited in the manual. So that's kind of weird.

It was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Rockstar Canada, so it makes sense that the logo would be on that version, but I'm not sure why it's on the PC game. I get that the credits were complicated by Take-Two acquiring the rights and Microsoft acquiring the company, but that doesn't mean it was retroactively developed by someone else! It might explain why it never made it to digital stores though.

Unfortunately Windows 10 didn't want to install it off the CD, so I ended up having to use Universal Extractor to get the files out of the installer and then run it with the fan-made Anniversary Edition. The thing includes a bunch of fixes and a huge list of mods to install, so it seems like the game has had a lot of support from its fans over the years. But it also stuck the words "Anniversary Edition" on my title screen, so I switched to playing the OniX rebuild instead. They both seem pretty authentic though from what I can tell.

I wish I could warn you about SPOILERS, though I don't think I'm going to make it that far to be honest. I remember the game having some serious difficulty spikes, mostly involving lasers. I also remember it looking kind of bad for its time, though that's maybe less of an issue 20 years later.