Donut County (PC)

Developer:

Ben Esposito

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Release Date:

2018

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Systems:

Win, MacOS, iOS, PS4, XBOne, Switch, Android

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about indie puzzle game Donut County, from 2018. Because who doesn't love doughnuts? Donuts. Whatever.

The game was inspired by a tweet from Peter Molydeux (the twitter parody, not the notorious Bullfrog/Lionhead/22cans game designer and NFT fan), who suggested the idea "You play the role of a hole, you must move around an environment making certain elements fall into correct targets at the right time." He didn't mention anything about raccoons or doughnuts though, so that's all from the mind of creator Ben Esposito.

Oh no, I've looked at the title screen a little too long and now I need to go get a cup of tea and something to dunk in it. Then I'm going to play the first few levels and see what kind of game it is.

Grand Theft Auto IV (PC)

Developer:

Rockstar North

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Release Date:

2008

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PS3

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This week on Super Adventures I'm having a quick go of acclaimed crime 'em up Grand Theft Auto IV. Though knowing what these games are like, I'll have to put 20 hours in before I really get how it works, maybe more! So I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for your entertainment.

Actually I've got a vague memory of playing this once before and not liking it much. I've beaten Vice City and San Andreas (and I came so damn close to finishing GTA 3) but I didn't get on with this one for whatever reason. Probably something to do with the combat; I've got another vague memory of arguing with someone about the shooting being the worst thing ever, while they tried to convince me that the driving physics were worse.

The game came out the same year as sandbox rival Saints Row 2 (which I really liked) and one difference between the games I've already noticed is that Volition know how numbers work. Rockstar on the other hand have given their sixth game the Roman numeral for 'four'. Well really it's the eleventh game on the Grand Theft Auto series, if you include the two GTA: London mission packs, the Stories games on PSP and Grand Theft Auto Advance, but I'm happy enough to consider them outside the main series.

Unlike its predecessors GTA IV has multiplayer, which I'm not going to even try. I'm not going to use iCEnhancer to prettify it either; this is pure, straight out of the box, vanilla single player GTA.

(Screenshots can be clicked to view them in their original resolution, but I'm warning you now it's not great.)

Saints Row (Xbox 360)

Developer:

Volition

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Release Date:

2006

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Systems:

Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures I'm going to fix an obvious omission on my site that's been bothering me for two years. I've written about Saints Rows 2 to IV, but I've completely overlooked the original game in the series! No I'm not talking about Grand Theft Auto 3, but I understand your confusion.

I'm a big fan of the Saints Row sequels but I've only played the first game once back when it was new, and only long enough to think 'wow, this is familiar'. The impression I've been getting from others is that the game was pretty much a practice run for Volition, a generic GTA: San Andreas clone without the personality the series developed later, so now I'm going to play it properly and see how true that is.

By the way, the game's 10 years old this August, and the console it was released on was discontinued in April, so that means it's officially retro! Maybe. Either way it's a pleasure to finally introduce the Xbox 360 to Super Adventures (even if I'm only doing it because this bloody game didn't get a convenient, easy to screenshot PC release like its sequels).

(Clicking the images will make them big, so you can see all the nice H.264 video compression artefacts).

Saints Row 2 (PC)

Surprise! Today I'm playing a second story-driven sandbox shooter starting with an 'S', and it's another one of those Saints Row games. But it's an earlier one without sci-fi jet fighters, spaceships or super powers. It's Volition's 2008 crime 'em up sequel Saints Row 2!

But is such a game even playable anymore to someone who has recently leapt between skyscrapers shooting fireballs out of their hands in Saints Row 4? If you're a PC owner, then the answer is likely to be... no. Well not without a bit of work anyway, as this got a famously terrible port that can run in fast forward if you're playing it on a Windows 7 machine with a CPU clock speed different to the Xbox 360's processor. Windows 8 users are apparently safe from this, in a rare case of a new operating system actually FIXING an old game. That is a pretty amazing bug all on its own, but the game apparently also has problems with prefetching memory that can cause frame rate issues even on powerful PCs. It definitely seems like either the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 version may be a better choice for this one, because damn.

Fortunately I've been assured that the fast forward issue is a fixable problem, thanks to IdolNinja's Saints Row 2 Powertools Mod, so I'm hopeful it'll hammer this into a more acceptable shape for me.

(Click the images to view them at twice the resolution.)

Postal (PC)

Not the prettiest title screen, but at least it's more cheerful than the music collection of sounds playing in the background when it comes up. I figured the game would be leaning more towards dumb comedy than grim psychological horror, but that shows what I know.

Hi, welcome to Super Adventures. I'm Ray Hardgrit and I know absolutely nothing about the first Postal game. I've played a lot of Postal 2 and I've heard that Postal 3 is so bad that developer Running With Scissors basically disowned it (in fact it's so bad that they added the game box into Postal 2 and you get an achievement for pissing on it), but the original Postal remains a mystery to me. I'll soon fix that though.

(Fair warning: there's a good chance I'm going to end up calling the game 'Portal' instead of 'Postal', and it likely won't just be once, so try not to be confused if you catch me screwing up.)

Grand Theft Auto (PC)

Today on Super Adventures I thought that this would be a great time to play the original Grand Theft Auto for an hour or two and type up any stray thoughts that might cross my mind. Not that there's anything special about today, it's just always a good time for a bit of GTA and it's been years since I played it last.

The game is by British developer Rockstar North, who are still producing the GTA games to this day. Though back then they were still known as DMA Design and were more famous for making the Lemmings games. Yeah I know that everyone on Earth knows that already, it just amuses me that both Lemmings and GTA are by the same developer.

The game came out in 1997 for MS-DOS, Windows 95 and PlayStation... and was ported to the Game Boy Color two years later, man I've gotta see how that turned out. I'll be playing the updated PC port given away free from Rockstar's site, which has been tweaked to run properly on modern systems... in theory.

Annoyingly though, this free GTA turned out to be a limited time offer so I can't give you a download link. Well I can link to the download page, that's still there, but at the time I'm writing this the game is "currently unavailable". GTA1 is also currently unavailable on GOG, GMG, GamersGate, GameFly and any other shop beginning with G I could think of. It's not on Steam either I'm afraid.

Saints Row: The Third (PC)

Today I'm taking a look at sandbox gangsta shooter, Saints Row: The Third, released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC way back in 2011. Because I feel like it.

I've barely seen anything of the first two Saints games, but I've played the Grand Theft Auto games so I have a few suspicions on how this is going to play out. Lots of shooting, driving around in cars, shooting while driving around in cars, and prostitutes. With guns.

Click the screenshots to see the full size images, which are in an ancient resolution I'm afraid.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter - Collectors' CD-ROM (PC)

GOOD RETRO GAME WEEK, day 6.

I'm playing the final release of the game, running on the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter engine with texture mapped graphics, and music from the movies instead of the fantastic original soundtrack.

Usually I'm happy when a movie tie-ins feature the music from their films, and the Star Wars soundtrack is awesome, but it is massively overused in the games. Plus TIE Fighter's original music was dynamic, adapting to the gameplay.