Rise of the Dragon

One of the most ambitious adventure games of its time. Released as early as 1990, Rise of the Dragon offered a somewhat primitive yet immersing cinematic gaming experience. For me.

The plot is not really that complicated (Legacy of Kain came much later) - the setting is the futuristic Los Angeles, looking awfully similar to the futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner. Here, however, the year is 2053 instead of 2019 - apparently the game's creators came to conclusion that 2019 was much too early for hover cars, video-telephones, etc... Anyway, the city is on the verge of being torn apart by a malevolent underground Chinese mafia planning on taking over the world by selling a powerful, mutagenic drug. You know, a typical Elexis Sinclair syndrome. Or should I say, SINdrome. After the mayor's daughter falls victim to the organization, a veteran cop-turned-private-eye, Blade Hunter (the name sounds familiar) is called to investigate.

Most of the time, you'll watch the ROTD's rotten environments through Blade's own eyes, or so it seems. You get the general overview of the area and the opportunity to click around an interact with objects and characters. The latter are usually very talkative and once a conversation starts, you'll see close-ups of their faces (their expressions change, depending on what mood they are in), along with available dialog options. Needless to say, your performance as a conversationalist will directly affect the relationship between Blade and a given character, so if you piss somebody off, he or she won't be willing to help you later on, and you'll get stuck. The objects are much easier to handle - through the simple inventory.

Rise of the Dragon also features a time limit. You have precisely three days to solve the case and bring the bad guys down, or you'll loose. The game is especially unforgiving with transportation. Traveling from one location to another obviously takes much time, so you cannot just move around freely, like in, let's say - Broken Sword. You have to plan ahead.

There are also some arcade sequences, where Blade finally uses his gun. Two of them are simple side-scrolling shoot'em-ups, with the opportunity to dodge enemies' bullets by ducking or jumping on platforms; and one is an even simpler mouse-aiming shoot'em-up. Fortunately, if you happened to suck at these, the game offered to skip them - very thoughtful of the developers.

A word about conversions. In 1991 the game made its way into Amiga (10 floppy diskettes) and in 1993 into SegaCD, in a very deformed shape. For once, it featured voice acting with Cam "I'm you! I'm your shadow!" Clarke himself voicing Blade Hunter and all of the subtitles got removed. Yet, the consoles of that time were less capable than home computers, so the color palette got narrowed down to 64. Apart from that, Rise of the Dragon was one of countless victims of early nineties video-game-brutality paranoia. Many things, from lap dancers in night clubs to ammo clip innocently lying on Blade's desk, were removed. Strangely enough, you couldn't skip the arcade sequences this time.

If you already know Rise of the Dragon, you might know Heart of China - a very similar adventure game, this time borrowing heavily from Indiana Jones series, released one year later. Both games are very important classic titles, offering a much more sophisticated approach to adventure genre than their predecessors and being an inspiration for many great later titles. For all of you vintage-fans out there - simply must-plays.

Norse Mythology...

To tell you the truth Too Human wasn’t on my „Most Wanted” list. Actually, it wasn’t even on my “Interested in” list. Ok, it wasn’t on any of my lists, because it was one of those games I couldn’t care less about. Even though Silicon Knights is one of my favourite companies (Twin Snakes – yeah!, Legacy of Kain – Yeah!, Eternal Darkness – YEAH!) my initial thoughts about their new game were less than favorable. I don’t like the art design – all the screens and videos look way too colorful for a game of the type (action RPG…or is it a hack’n’slash?) and seem motley. I feel a particular distaste for the main protagonist – Baldur who is probably the worst character since Johnny Cage. Deprive him oh his blue face-tattoos and he could be a random goon in a GTA game. His design is so mediocre and boring the person responsible for it should be dressed in a silly suit, given a fake, red nose and a mustache and hung upside down as an example. When I think that I would have to play through three games (Too Human is almost certain to be a trilogy) with that monkey-man I can’t help to flinch. Also, the HUD is terrible in design. It looks like it was taken from a plastic watch for small kids. It should have a friggin’ Mickey Mouse on top of it.
Fortunately the locations look much better although there are some bland textures here and there (the ground in grassy sections – yuck). I particularly like the lighting that isn’t as over exaggerated like most of the art choices in this game. You can see that the game is made on the Unreal Engine; there is no doubt about it.
Next thing I’m not too sure about are the enemies designs – the main mechanical goblins look like a cross between DOG from Half-Life 2 and the Geth from Mass Effect. Actually, to me they look like a total rip-off, but whatever. In the demo the only other enemy (although there are a few types of the goblins) is some sort of a robot giant. Enough to say it looks silly.
Oh, I have to mention that I really like the sound in this game, especially during combat – swords clashing with metal enemies and energy weapons sound really cool. On the other hand the voice acting is not very impressive – it’s a bit too much a B-movie class which doesn’t fit the game.

Ok, I guess I’m done bashing the design, so I should move to the game mechanics. I must say that this game’s presentation is top notch. There are great camera angles not only during the well directed cut-scenes, but also during exploration and combat. Ok, that wasn’t about mechanics. Now I’ll tell you about mechanics.
From the playstyle point of view this game is a bit of like Diablo. You have a choice of five character classes which are supposed to be different from each other, but during the demo I couldn’t see much difference between them. Keep in mind though that the demo if relatively short so you can’t develop your character enough to see his more advanced skills.
The combat is fairly simple, but deep enough for a hack’n’slash to prevent itself from being boring. A word of warning - you won’t realty appreciate the combat unless you play the demo at least two or three times. At the beginning the combat seems very awkward and somehow “fake” and you’ll be constantly trying to change the camera angle with the right analog stick… which you can’t since the right stick is responsible for attacking. The concept seems strange at first, but once you get used to it you’ll be able to pull off some nice combos. Also, the camera might seem unruly at times, but it’s actually designed to give you more dramatic shots during combat, which it does. And you can always manually re-center it.

The item system is also similar to the one from Diablo. You’ll be collecting various pieces of randomly generated armor (which is nice) and many types of weapons – also randomly generated. There are two types of the latter ones – melee and projectile. The melee weapons include swords, hammers, staves, etc. and the ranged ones include pistols, shotguns, rifles and so on. Some of the projectile weapons even have alternative fore modes, which is great.

The demo itself is about 40 minutes long if you skip all the cut-scenes. You may thing that is a lot of time to get to know a game, but in case of Too Human it’s not. You will barely scratch the surface. I think it would have been better if Silicon Knights made the demo from a later portion of the game, with Baldur at a higher level as it would give more insight into the mechanics and combat.
Still, after checking all the character classes and playing through the demo a total of six times I must say that I am pretty interested how the final product will turn out. I won’t say that Too Human will find a place in my games collection, because I will wait for some reviews before I decide to buy it, but the demo did boost my hopes and interest.

I encourage you to check it out. And do not be discourage with your first few minutes with the demo. This game requires some getting used to. I’m sure this game will the “love or hate” kind, but maybe you will actually be the ones to love it.

Oh, one more thing. Most of the character classes are on a timer, and are currently locked (right now you can play two), but there are ways to play all five. Try to google it and you’ll find it.

Games Make You Say "Ouch"?

Nasty things can happen to you while playing games and I don’t mean destroying something with your Wiimote when you forget to put the “safety strap” on your hand. I mean injuries, sickness even death. Ok, Ok, I know the death part is overly dramatic and that only the Chinese MMO players can get to a point where they die from playing. Still, it happened a few times, so it’s worth noting.

Playing a game is generally a pleasant experience. Sure, some games cam be stressful or frustrating, but even those bring you a bit of happiness in the end. However, there are some games that can bring you pain and suffering. Those epilepsy warnings are there for a reason you know.
I bringing this up because one particularly good game that I have finished recently made me feel really lousy. Condemned 2 is freaking amazing, but I just couldn’t play it more than one hour at a time. Why? The answer is motion sickness. Motion sickness is a particularly nasty side effect of some 3D games. Condemned is in 1st person and features a lot of changing camera angles to represent Ethan’s (the game’s protagonist) view. That includes falling down the stairs, being hit with heavy objects and landing on your back after falling from high places. It all looks realistic and great, but add motion blur to that and some screen filters and you get something that your brain my find too “unpleasant” to process.
Not all people suffer from motion sickness during some games, just like not everyone gets seasick on a ship (which is also motion sickness). Also, not all games of a particular type make you sick.
I’ll make me my example. I get sick while playing Condemned 2, but didn’t playing Condemned 1, Halo 3, Call of Duty (any) or Doom 3. The worst case was with Alien Trilogy. I couldn’t play it for more than 30 minutes. I did finish it, but it was a very painful process. I even had motion sickness with the first Spyro (I know, it’s ridiculous) – I guess it was just too 3D for me back then :D

So, how do you know if you’re getting motion sickness while playing a video game? The first symptoms are heat waves. If you’re getting hot for no apparent reason you can be pretty sure in a few minutes you’ll be feeling dizzy, nauseated and in some cases you gonna get a headache. Ignore those symptoms and after a while somebody will need to hold your hair while you puke out your lungs.

I would really like to play Mirror’s Edge when it comes out, but after my “adventure” with Condemned I’m not sure my organism will tolerate my hobby.

Of course, motion sickness isn’t the only thing that can happen to you during your gaming sessions.
All dancing games are potentially dangerous not only for your health, but for you life as well. If you want to play in cluttered room full of sharp-edged furniture better go out with your dog, because you may be paving your way to ER.
Dancing games are cool, but the mats in most cases are fairly small (which makes confide your movement to a smaller space which can be awkward) and slippery. I myself fell a few times while playing Dance Dance Revolution and many of my friends sprained their ankles on Paranoia. Sure, you can buy a metal platform to lower the risks, but not many of us can afford that kind of commodity. And I can imagine that even fewer would have a place for it.

PC gamers are prone to hand and arm injuries. Let’s just say that the mouse and keyboard may be perfect to kick ass in Unreal Tournament 3, or make that tank rush in Command & Conquer, but you can be sure your wrists like it less that you do. Those kinds of injuries are quite common for pro computer scientists and designers but many gamers tackle with that problem as well. The biggest problem with using a mouse and keyboard is that you don’t see the negative effects of using them right away. It takes a few years to develop and then it’s much harder to fix. Still, having a proper position while playing and a keyboard and a mouse pad that support your wrists lower the probability of any dysfunctions.

This article is not supposed to scare you or discourage you from playing games. I’m not saying that you gonna get a heart attack after a five hour session with Samba de Amigo and I’m not saying that you’ll use your are while playing Wii Sports. All I’m saying that playing games, just like any other activity, should be approached with common sense. Play your games, play them a lot, but don’t do it at a cost of your health of well being.

A side note.
You know how all the hardware and software manuals tell you to make a fifteen minute break every hour? Common sense aside – I would like to see anyone who actually does that. If you do and are reading this, leave a comment. I would like to congratulate you and ask you some uncomfortable questions.

"Gitaroo Man" Original Soundtrack

This is a game I've always wanted to play, but never had a chance. The thing with me is, I never really liked the Guitar Hero craze, complete with the Fisher-Price-Baby's-First-Guitar PS2/3 controller. I realize not everyone is able to operate the extremely complicated six-string instrument called "the actual guitar" but spending money on a fancy plastic miniature good for only one game is maybe a little beyond my comprehension. Now, Gitaroo-Man is how I actually imagine the music simulation video-game. All you need is a pad.

Okay, let's talk some music. The soundtrack is a mixture of the trademark Japanese light-hearted rock, with some trademark Japanese light-hearted electo-sound and The Legendary Theme. I can't really tell you how, but in most cases the commercial Japanese music has this very distinctive joyful, "don't take it too seriously" feel. The chords are not too sad, the melody is very lively and simple and the singing... Bleh, maybe my brain is rotting, but I just can't accept Japanese singing, sorry, I can't. :-) Things get even worse, if they throw in some English words like "Oh, baby, baby..." Well, whatever. Listen to Soft Machine and 21st Century Boy and see how you like them yourself.

Twisted Reality is pretty much what the rock-part of this whole disc is all about. Simple and strong, I believe this would be pure joy to play with your garage-band friends as a warm up. Once you do that, go ahead and play the wild Tainted Lovers next. And call me!

The electro part is pretty much covered by maybe VOID, a great usage of guitar in a crazy world of synthesizers. Speaking of great guitar usage - Born to be Bone will blow you out. I've never heard Latin music and techno in one song. Works great!

One little fill-in before I get to the true glory of this disk. Resurrection, which I believe is the final boss duel theme in the game is just... smooth. Drives right into your bowels and warms them up immediately. One simple chord sequence repeated over and over with every necessary rock instrument present, and the single guitar buzzing around like a mad hornet in a jar.

Ah, the beautiful Legendary Theme (I mean the acoustic version)... This is the song that I've first heard, fallen in love with and can't really live without playing it on my own guitar every now and again. The scene in the game is very fitting - the protagonist playing the tune to his girl next to the little campfire. Wouldn't be quite possible in the real life, because the song is played by two guitars, but who cares? If you haven't heard it, go ahead and search it out of youtube and listen (I'm sure about five hundred videos of people playing it will pop up as well). I guess one may start learning how to play guitar just after hearing it...

Okay, a quick summary. Gitaroo Man OST is full of curious musical experiments backed up the excellent instrumental workshop. As such, I would recommend it to every guitar, base or drum player out there as a moment or refreshment from the mainstream; and to you, my dear fellow gamers, I recommend it just the same.