Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2023

It's that time of year again when I have to update that picture up there to change the number. You've reached my annual Super Adventures Screenshots of the Year 2023 article, where I look back through the hundreds and hundreds of screenshots I've taken over the past year to find the absolute best. Or the least rubbish, depending on your point of view.

I have to be honest, this isn't the best selection I've put together as I just didn't cover many games this year. It was easy to find something worth showing off back in 2011 when I had 500+ games to draw from, but it's been a lot more challenging for me in a year with only 500+ screenshots on the site.

Uh, what I mean is that this is going to be an awesome article full of amazing pictures and they'll even have writing underneath. Plus some of them will be GIFs!

Super Adventures: Game Over - Continued

This week on Super Adventures, I'm back with another set of game over pictures that weren't quite good enough to make the cut when I wrote my first Game Over article!

Yeah, I know it seems like filler, and it kind of is. But I worked really hard getting all the pictures! You think it's easy to lose in this many games? I had to train for years to be this bad. Also it's been three years since the last Game Over article and like three months since my last post on the site, so I feel like I've left you waiting long enough for this.

Marvel's Avengers: The Definitive Edition (PC)

Developer:

Crystal Dynamics

|

Release Date:

2020

|

Systems:

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

---

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.

Universe (Amiga CD32) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still playing 90s point-and-click adventure Universe, because I want to be done with it. I played the demo years ago, when I was young enough for it to be imprinted into my brain and stick there. But I never played through the full game so I have no idea how the story ends and I'm just as clueless about the middle.

I mentioned in PART ONE that I wasn't going to spoil the ending, but I've changed my mind. Because we all deserve closure on this. That means I should give you a SPOILER WARNING. Oh, you should also know that despite what it says in the title, most of these screenshots are from the MS-DOS version of the game, as I switched systems. Not that it makes much difference.

Universe (Amiga CD32) - Part 1

Developer:

Core Design

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Universe, by the makers of Rick Dangerous, Curse of Enchantia and later Tomb Raider. But Curse of Enchantia is the most relevant, seeing as this is a point-and-click adventure game.

Universe got fantastic scores from magazines back in the day, lots of 90s and high 80s... well, except for Amiga Power and Amiga Format, they both totally trashed it. Amiga Power gave it 21%! I've played the demo before so I have an idea of what my opinion's going to be, but I'll see if it changes as I get further into the story.

I should give you a SPOILER WARNING, as I'm going to be playing through a lot of the game. In fact, I'm going to try to finish it, though I'll try not to give the whole thing away. I'd suggest YouTube if you want to see the ending, I'm just showing off things that catch my interest and whining about the things that annoy me.

Crysis 2 (PC)

Developer:

Crytek

|

Release Date:

2011

|

Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Crysis 2, the second game in the Crysis trilogy. (Warhead's a stand-alone expansion so it doesn't count.)

I also played the original Crysis this week so you might be wondering 'Why the rush?' Well, the game starts on the 23rd of August 2023, so it actually takes place today. So I should really get on with writing about the game and stop wasting time with this intro.

Actually, there are a couple of things I should mention here. First, the game's story was written by Richard K. Morgan, author of the novel Altered Carbon. He also wrote the Syndicate shooter that came out the following year. Second, I want to mention how the game's theme is kind of one note. Well, two notes I suppose. It's like an alarm. It's one of a handful of songs on the soundtrack by Hollywood composers Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe, and honestly I prefer Lorne Balfe's theme to that new Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves.

Alright, I'm not going to be able to get away with just playing an hour or two of this like I usually do, so expect SPOILERS for the entire first half of the game.

Crysis (PC)

Developer:

Crytek

|

Release Date:

2007

|

Systems:

PC, PS3, Xbox 360

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to the notorious Crysis!

I thought about buying the game a while back, but I was put off by its pain-in-the-ass DRM and I just didn't think about it again until now. These days though it's a non-issue, with the DRM-free GOG release and the Steam version getting patched. Also, there's that Remastered edition... that I won't be playing. I want to play the legit original experience! Though just getting it to run at all would be nice.

Crysis is infamous for two reasons and the main one is its system requirements. Back in 2007 it was supposed to be the prettiest game ever made, and I can believe that. The catch was that people had to wait until PC hardware had caught up to it before they could put the graphics settings up.

There will be SPOILERS here for a significant amount of the game's story and they start right now. That's because the second thing that the game's infamous for is the twist that the gameplay takes in the second half. I'm usually happy to show off the first hour or so of a game and then quit, but it doesn't seem right for me to write about Crisis and not bitch about the alien levels.