Messiah (PC)

Developer:

Shiny

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

Windows

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Today on Super Adventures I'm playing... a PlayStation demo disc I guess. I mean check out the menu theme I'm hearing right now: Youtube link. A Fear Factory soundtrack's not entirely what was I expecting from a game with a cherub on the cover by the makers of Earthworm Jim.

I've actually had a few requests for Messiah, all of them coming after I wrote about Dark Messiah: Might and Magic a few weeks back. I figured that eventually someone might have suggested the Japanese survival horror Dark Messiah (AKA. Hellnight) instead, but nope everyone wants to see the one with the baby angel in it. So a creepy baby angel's what you'll get.

(Click the gameplay screenshots to view them at their original resolution.)

D.D. Crew (Arcade)

Developer:

Sega

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

Arcade

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Today on Super Adventures I'm hoping that D.D. Crew doesn't turn out to be another game about shooting guns on a spaceship, or else I'm going to have to rename the site to 'Sci-Fi Adventures in Gaming'. Which I don't want to do, because... uh... hmm...

Oh right, I bought a bundle of fantasy RPGs a while back that I still need to get to. Can't change the title until I've played all of them, and they're all 18,000 hours long each so you're safe for a while.

I'm not entire sure what D.D. Crew is about yet, it's another name I picked from the request list, but it's an arcade game from the early 90s and that pretty dramatically narrows down what genre it's likely to be. It's not going to be a 18,000 hour long fantasy RPG for instance. Could it be Sega's attempt at an all-female fighting game perhaps? Wouldn't shock me, but arcade titles can be devious and misleading, so I wouldn't bet on it either.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen (PC)

Developer:

The Collective

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

Windows, Mac

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Today on Super Adventures... it's another licensed sci-fi game! Apparently they come in pairs this year. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen comes from the Star Trek gamesplosion of 2000, when a ridiculous amount of Trek games all appeared at once, and some were even good! The 'Deep Space Nine' spin-off itself had actually ended back in '99, but they boldly went forward and gave the fans a couple more games anyway.

You might think your game backlog is bad, but this has been sitting on my shelf unplayed for like 15 years now. Mostly because I could never get the damn thing to run properly. It always came out running too fast, or way too dark, or with unfiltered textures and giant space pixels in place of stars.

This time though I'm using the dgVoodoo 2 Glide wrapper to trick the game into thinking I have a 3dfx card, and it's actually working pretty great... except for the low resolution and 16-bit colour depth. So be aware that the game can theoretically look better than it does in the upcoming screenshots.

Warning: this will likely contain spoilers for the 'Deep Space Nine' TV series. Like the fact that it has one episode entirely about one of the main cast having a sex change to stand in for his mother, and it's still a better series than 'Voyager'.

(Click an image to see the original screenshot, if you're in the mood for disappointment. They ain't HD by a long shot.)

Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast (PC)

Developer:

Raven

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Release Date:

2002

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Systems:

Windows, Mac, Xbox, GameCube (but not PS2)

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Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a look at Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, the third in the Jedi Knight series. Poor Dark Forces: it was the one that started the games off in the first place but Jedi Knight was the name that stuck. Because it has 'Jedi' in it and every Star Wars fan wants to be a telekinetic space samurai.

I've played this before, but it's been so long now that all I remember about it is that the lightsaber combat is a step up from the last game and it probably does the shooting better. I mean you'd expect it have decent gunplay considering LucasArts passed the series on to FPS veterans Raven Software for this one, who were coming off Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force at the time. It seemed like Raven were getting around to all the big space sci-fi franchises in turn and giving them each a shooter, but instead they switched to making Marvel action RPGs weirdly, and now they make Call of Duty DLC.

The game has a 'mods' option right in the menu, which is cool, but I won't be touching any of them. I want the pure, unedited, non-Special Edition Jedi Outcast experience. Well, the single player experience anyway, I won't be showing multiplayer, and I won't be turning it off until I get to a proper Jedi duel.

Warning: This may contain spoilers for the earlier Jedi Knight games, including the fact that the hero becomes a Jedi Knight.

(Click images to expand them into bigger images.)

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic (PC)

Developer:

Arkane, Floodgate and Kuju

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Release Date:

2006

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at Dark Messiah of... hang on, where's the 'of'? Everyone knows the game is called 'Dark Messiah of Might and Magic', that's what it's called on Wikipedia, that's what it's called on Steam, that's what is written in the press releases, so why isn't there an 'of' on the title screen? It's not there on the box either, or the manual, or the official website... huh I guess the game really is called Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.

Though 'Might and Magic: Dark Messiah' would've made more sense, seeing as it's part of the Might and Magic franchise. Just saying.

Anyway, this was actually the very first game I ever bought on Steam, way back in July 2012. It's not that I was still holding a grudge after 8 years for all the bullshit I had to go through to install my DVD copy of Half-Life 2... I'd just stopped buying PC games entirely by that point because companies were in an arms race to see who could develop the scariest DRM, and retail discs had become a minefield. Not that I didn't have a Steam library, but at that point it was basically a handful of Half-Lifes, a Humble Bundle or two and Ricochet. And yet it's still taken me until now to play the bloody thing.

Now I'm wondering what was I playing that month that was so much more worthy of my time. Hmm, my site notes say MDK, Superfrog... and Sensible Train-Spotting? I didn't even publish that last one until June the next year, so I don't know what the hurry there was. It's very annoying how my notes don't include explanations for all my bad decisions. Anyway, I'll be playing this for an hour (or more) and yelling out how it plays as I go. In text.

WARNING: EVENTUALLY SPIDERS.

(Click the screenshots to make them bigger).

Deluxe Galaga (Amiga) - Part 2

Click this link for if you'd rather be reading the first half: Part one.

Deluxe Galaga (Amiga) - Part 1

Developer:

Edgar M. Vigdal

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

Amiga, Windows, Mac, iOS

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I don't play shareware games for Super Adventures as a rule, but I thought I'd make an exception this once, because I'm a sucker for a pretty starfield.

Deluxe Galaga used to be one of my favourite Amiga games back in the day, so I was always going to get around to writing about it eventually. The main thing that was putting me off is that it looks like... well, Galaga. It's not actually a licenced Galaga sequel, it's just inspired by the game, but it still features a lot of tiny alien sprites against black background and that doesn't necessarily make for the most interesting screenshots, or give me much to write about.

But then I learned that the game's creator, Edgar M. Vigdal, had died of cancer a few weeks ago on April 1st, and suddenly I'm feeling that it's been too long since I last gave the game some attention.