Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP)

Developer:

Kojima Productions

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Release Date:

2010

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Systems:

PSP, PS3, Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the fifth of the main Metal Gear Solid games, Peace Walker on the PlayStation Portable! Or maybe sixth, depending on whether you count Portable Ops (creator Hideo Kojima doesn't). In fact it was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid 5 and it pretty much still is in everything but title, as it continues the story of the fall of Big Boss.

I've never been keen on handheld exclusive sequels to console exclusive games (or the opposite) as unless you're playing on a Switch it's going to really change the experience. Plus it means you have to get extra hardware to continue the story, which kind of sucks if you've spent all your money getting a PS3 to play Metal Gear Solid 4 and don't feel the need to take games outside with you. (Personally I had a PSP in the house before I had a PS3, but that's just the same problem backwards!) Ideally I'd want developers to port everything to everything, but if that's not possible and they really want to make a portable game, then they should make it a spin-off like Metal Gear AC!D that doesn't continue the storyline. In my opinion.

Part of the reason they went portable with this one is because Monster Hunter Freedom did really well on PSP, hitting a broader demographic, and they wanted some of that for MGS. Peace Walker was aimed towards a younger school-age audience and in Japan they found it, making the game a big hit. Outside of Japan, not so much. In fact the game sold so poorly in the West that they took one of its characters off the cover of the international versions of Ground Zeroes because no one knew who he was. The game did pretty well in reviews though, as it's one of the highest rated PSP games on Metacritic (sharing third place with Lumines and Persona 3). In fact it's actually way higher than Monster Hunter Freedom. It's also a pretty late PSP game as it came out a year before the release of the PS Vita. And a year before Peace Walker HD Edition was released on consoles.

Okay, I'm going to play this for an hour or two and hope that gets me past the first cutscene at least. Either way there's going to be a lot of SPOILERS here for both this game and earlier Metal Gears, so please don't accidentally ruin a game for yourself by reading something here you didn't want to know.

Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has returned and he's brought you the perfect game for Halloween. I wrote about Sanitarium a few days ago so I thought I had Halloween covered this year (the game even has pumpkins in it), but mecha-neko's choice literally has the word in the title. I can't compete with that.

Developer:

Interactive Binary Illusions Sub Zero

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Release Date: Halloween Harry: 10th October 1993 Alien Carnage: 2nd November 1994 Freeware: 24th May 2007

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Systems:

PC

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Spooky greetings to you all! Fancy looking at some classic Apogee shareware?

As Robbie Coltrane might say: it's 'alloween, 'arry!

Sanitarium (PC)

Developer:

DreamForge Intertainment

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Release Date:

1998

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Systems:

Windows, iOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about the critically acclaimed 1998 PC horror adventure Sanitarium! They were going to call it Asylum before learning that the name was taken, but I think it worked out better this way. 'Sanitarium' is definitely a more distinctive title; you won't find a second one on MobyGames.

This was one of the last games developed by DreamForge Intertainment: the company that put the 'in' into 'entertainment'. I recognise the names of some of the other games they developed, like Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession and Menzoberranzan, but the only one I've written about is Veil of Darkness and that was ages ago. If I remember right it was some kind of isometric horror adventure game, which makes sense because so's this.

I've only got the CD version of the game so I expected it'd be a struggle to get it running in Windows 10. I was ready to start hunting down fan patches and messing around with processor affinities. But all I did was add '-w -e' to the exe's arguments to put it into windowed mode and it was happy, which makes me happy as well.

Okay I'm going to play through a couple of chapters and start taking screenshots, but first I feel like I should let you know that this is a horror game dealing with horrible things (and horrible things happening to children) so please be aware of what kind of rabbit hole we're going down here.

Super Adventures in the Humble Choice Bundle

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about some games from the Humble Choice bundle (formerly known as Humble Monthly). Not because I'm getting any money for it, in fact they're not even from the current bundle. I just felt like writing about a few games at once and needed a theme to tie them together. It seemed like a better idea than "games with 11 letters in the title" or something, plus this way there's more chance you already own some of these games and haven't gotten around to trying them yet.

I'll be showing off seven games, but I assure you that I played each of them for as long as I usually do; they got a full hour, sometimes even two! You might not think that this is long enough to properly judge a game and I don't really disagree, but it was long enough to finish a couple of them. So I'll be able to give you a proper opinion on those two at least.

Valkyrie Profile (PSX)

Developer:

tri-Ace

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Release Date:

2000 (JP 1999)

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Systems:

PSX, PSP

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This week on Super Adventures, I've got some screenshots from Nordically-themed PlayStation JRPG Valkyrie Profile for you. Maybe even a couple of GIFs as well! That's the original PlayStation by the way, though you'd forgiven for being confused by this atypically high resolution menu screen. I suppose they needed the extra pixels to fit in all those choices (there are two separate 'play intro' options there!)

The game's by tri-Ace, makers of the Star Ocean series, among other RPGs. I was going to list a few of the ones I've already written about and give you some links to click but when I went looking I couldn't actually find any. 1200+ games on Super Adventures so far and this is my very first tri-Ace title!

I'm sure I must have at least tried the game before, but it would've been in ages past so if I seem like I'm surprised or clueless about something, that's because I am. I really don't know what this game's going to be like. Well okay, it's a platformer with an unusual turn-based JRPG battle system, I know that much. I also know that I have to play the US version because there isn't a European version of it for me to show off. Us Europeans had to wait for the PSP version, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, which came out seven years later. That's an entire console generation!

SPOILER WARNING: JRPGs typically have a fair bit of story in them and I'm going to be going through the first couple of hours of this one, so be aware that I will reveal and ruin any twists up to that point. There's still 30 or 40 hours of it I won't be spoiling though.

Electronic Popple (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Byteshock

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

PC

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Electronic Popple, a DOS game by Byteshock released in 1997.

I went searching the internet looking for any kind of information about the game to write up here, and it seems like Byteshock were a bunch of Korean college students who disbanded soon afterwards. Plus it seems like 'popple' might be a mistranslation of 'purple'? Also the game apparently has multiple endings. That's all I could find out about it though I'm afraid! I'm all out of trivia now.

Man, that's a pretty pitiful amount of text for an intro, I need to think of some more words. Uh, it seems to have a two player mode, that's probably worth mentioning. Plus there's lots of anthropomorphic computer people exploding on the title screen. Poor guys.

Super Adventures in Face Editors II

This week on Super Adventures, I've decided that what my site really needs is more screenshots of faces. It's been exactly five years to the day since I published my Super Adventures in Face Editors article comparing different character creators in video games, so I figured it was time for a sequel. Last time I tried recreating Metal Gear Solid protagonist Solid Snake in games like Skyrim, Dark Souls and Mass Effect, but this time around I've got brand new games and a brand new video game star: Tomb Raider hero Lara Croft.

I don't mean the pointy polygon-head Lara with the painted-on face, I mean the more realistic version you can see in the picture above. Though I'll be going through the games in chronological order again, to observe how the visuals and the editors become more sophisticated over time, so you'll be seeing a horrifying low-poly head soon enough.