Posts from ‘Remakes’ Category

Exile II

By: Guest Reviewer

On: November 13th, 2007

Exile 2

[Guest review by haowan]

Having been dreading the release of this game for some time now, it was with a kind of desperate excitement that I fired up the Ovine fan-sequel. I’m a hardcore fan of the original game so I was worried that I was pre-disposed to hate the game and think that it was a complete abomination and that it urinates all over the original game. Sadly, the game is so bad that I feel that regardless of my bias, I would not enjoy this game. It’s not fit to bear the “”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_%28arcade_adventure%29">Exile" name.

It starts out well, with a nice intro to set the atmosphere. That’s about where the awesomness ends, though. First up is the menus, which, and I realise this is nit-picking, are annoying because they stop recognising your input while they do transitions even between individual menu items, so using them is a slow and frustrating process; the key definition screen refuses to accept bindings to already-bound keys which prevents easily swapping two keys around. The joypad support works.

Into the game, you’re dumped in the player’s craft just like the original game. The jetpack is extremely weak, so controlling your player in the first stages of the game at least is very frustrating. Firing is achieved by pressing and holding the fire key; the shots will be fired in whatever direction is being held and continue to do so in that direction until the fire key is released. You can only fire in 8 directions; this is the first of many gameplay-critical game design mechanics that has been removed from the original gameplay to make this game much much worse than its inspiration.

Exile 2

The graphics manage to be even worse than the weird-but-functional art in the original games. It’s impossible to tell what is a wall and what isn’t. All colours used are garish to the point of being an eyesore: bright, saturated reds, blues and greens are everywhere, and liberal use of cyan and magenta are abundant in most of the man-made structures. The rendered character graphics clash with the enemy graphics, which are pixel art, and much of the particle work is done in primary saturated colours. The particles themselves update at about 3 fps, so they look totally out of place. There are some nice wind and mist effects, although the wind suffers from the particle stutter.

On to sound. The bleepy synth noises seem totally out of place for a modern game, and all of them manage to be annoying. Especially the jetpack noise, which, as you’ll be hearing it on a constant loop for most of the game (a problem exacerbated by the weak jetpack causing much overshooting of where you want to go and having to jet all the way back), is mind-gratingly noisy and audibly looped. I had to turn the sound off after hearing a grenade explode. The intro sequence had nice music.

Gone is the sensible teleportation and health mechanic from the original game. In the original, if you get hurt, your player cries out in pain and your suit starts to heal you – your health regenerates over time. If it goes below a certain threshold, you teleport back to your last stored location. If you have no stored locations, you return to your ship. This is a useful game mechanic as it teaches you to think about what you are doing, place your teleport storage points in sensible locations, and if you “die”, you get to try again after a brief rest. It’s like a mobile continue point system. In Exile II, you have a health bar that does not recharge. You can still store locations and teleport (in this version, for some reason, a gigantic techno warp symbol appears on the screen and the store location key is unusable for a second or so making quick storage of the same location several times a chore), but if you “die”, you are returned to your ship and ALL of your stored locations are removed. So what was, in the old-school, a sensible design mechanic allowing players to think for themselves and plan ahead (and retry if they made a mistake) has been replaced in the new game with a punishment system the like of which I thought we’d left behind with 8-bit computer games. Yes, there are health pickups, which are few and far between and restore half of your health. These are completely unimportant in the face of how much time you lose if you are killed (and indeed how often you will be owing to the silly weak jetpack). It frankly astonishes me that such a sensible and useable system has been replaced with something so cruel and twisted.

Exile

Screenshots from the C64 version of the original Exile, via Arne’s Exile Page

The original game has a carrying system whereby you could pick things up and store smaller ones in your pockets; this has been replaced with a Thrust-style tractor beam that essentially places a stick between you and an object and binds the two of you like a dumb-bell. It makes taking anything anywhere a frustrating chore, particularly as the physics system is glitchy and objects are prone to getting stuck on corners. It’s nearly unplayable.

Saving your game is another step backward; where in the original Exile you could save anywhere, now you have a completely nonsensical “Save Bar” which fills up over time. You are only allowed to save when it’s full. Why would you do this? Why would anyone put this into a game? It’s so utterly stupid that for a while I thought it was a joke. It’s doubly strange because of the step backwards it represents; not only is it a meaningless concept and an annoying idea, but the original game has a better save game mechanic.

This new game also has pickups, for seemingly no real reason other than to populate the landscape with something to do. Some of these pickups give you points. Some, like the red bottle I found (which i was told after I’d picked it up was a bottle of Jack Daniels), reversed my controls or reduced the effectiveness of my jet pack to an even less playable level. It scares me that there are people out there that even think it’s still appropriate to put things like this into a game. I mean, really – reversed controls? Slow down? How is this fun? How does this make my time playing your game more fun?

Another step back: In the original, even in the BBC game, enemies can’t see you through walls. New game: Enemies can see you regardless of where you are. It just doesn’t make sense. In the Amiga game, meteors would fall from the sky at random. In this game, they only appear if you stay still too long – and then a huge flaming rock will appear directly above your head and land on you. Every 10 seconds or so. Right above the head. Never anywhere else. Always right above the head. I even had them appear indoors, although that’s a bug so I can forgive that.

Overall, playing this game, I felt that the creators had not realised the first thing about what made the original so great. Literally all of the gameplay mechanics that made it good have been replaced with something absolutely inferior.

It’s a crying shame.

Wizball Remake

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: November 3rd, 2007

Wizball remake

Graham Goring, renown remaker and host of The Arsecast, has finally finished possibly the last remake of his career. A remake of the C64 game Wizball!

You can expect Graham’s usual high level of polish and even higher level of hardware accelerated effects. Seriously, this man’s love of particles borders on criminal.

The release of Wizball (alledgedly) marks the end of Graham’s remaking career, but also the beginning of his rise to indie gaming superstardom. I know he’s already got some rad projects lined up… but I’m still anxious to hear what he announces. Yay Graham!

Download the remake here.

UPDATE: A new version has been uploaded that fixes some issues with the first release.

Blast Works

By: Derek Yu

On: June 28th, 2007

Blast Works

Don’t tell me this is going to be a trend where American companies take great Japanese freeware and port it to a console, molesting the software as much as they can in the process. “Coming up next, it’s La Mulana! Or should I say: ExploreyTown for the PS3! Just like you remembered, except now in 3d and we got 50 Cent to rap the new theme song for the game!” Cha-ching cha-ching!

Because this Gamasutra report is the only place I’ve seen Kenta Cho’s name mentioned with the Blast Works press release, I’m extremely dubious about K.C.’s involvement in and support for the creation of this new Wii title. Because really, not even a quick name-drop in the release itself?

Also, the name “Blast Works” makes me think about either a steel factory or explosive diarrhea. Or exploding diarrhea in a steel factory. Either way, it’s horribly generic and doesn’t begin to evoke the playful theme of the game.

Fail. Would love to see Tumiki Fighters on the Wii, though. With full support of Kenta Cho with 90% of the royalties going to him.

Download Tumiki Fighters for free here at Kenta Cho’s website.

(Thanks to raigan for the heads-up.)

EDIT: Here’s the actual press release (Kotaku).

Cave Story PSP (now more free and with less Variant)

By: Derek Yu

On: June 26th, 2007

cavestory psp

Some of you may remember the hullabaloo surrounding the legality and morality surrounding Variant Interactive’s Cave Story PSP port (as well as the fatality of originality). It was never verified whether Variant got Pixel’s permission, or if they did, whether he would see any money, but something definitely stank up in there, and it was Variant that was whistling and looking in the other direction. Case in point:

“We want to be as faithful as possible. We are upgrading the graphics and the sound to more ‘modern’ levels, mostly for marketing concerns and platform requirements.” -Christopher Boyer, CEO of Variant Interactive

“Faithful,” “upgrading the graphics and sound,” and “marketing concerns…” which one of these does not belong with the others? So yeah, I find it really hard to believe that Pixel would go for anything like that, and even if he did, I still say fuck ’em for doing it. “Upgrade the graphics and music?” Eat a shit sandwich, asshole.

Which is why it makes me really happy to announce that there’s a fan-made, homebrew PSP version in the works! Yay fans!

“Finally got Pixel’s approval and the source code. It looks doable, but at ~50000 lines of code it’s a little daunting.

This is the preview version that I sent to Pixel, so it’s mostly guesswork and buggy and certainly feels different from the original. Playable up to the first boss fight. Dual-language English and Japanese :) Tested on 3.10, should work unmodified with most custom firmware.”

Word. You can download a buggy, early version of the port from the link above. And while you’re at it, check out this DS port as well (different author).

(Source: selectbutton.net)

Hurrican

By: Derek Yu

On: June 20th, 2007

hurrican01

First, just let me get this out of the way:

Ahem… HERE I AM… ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICAN.

hurrican02

I’m not that familiar with the Turrican series of games, but apparently they’re pretty sweet. Well, if Hurrican is any indication, I can see why the original was so popular. The action is fast-paced, the levels are large and free-roaming, and the word of the day seems to be “MORE”… more secrets, more explosions, more weaponry. This is definitely 80’s era gaming right here, repackaged for new computers. And I’m not really a huge fan of 3d pre-rendered graphics, but it works here.

If there’s one thing I don’t like, though, it’s the way the screen scrolls whenever i hold up or down. It’s really kind of annoying…

But apparently later versions of Hurrican will feature a level editor for sharing and playing user-created levels, as well as the ability to customize the graphics. Nice!

(Source: Indygamer)

Video in the extended.

JSW Online on Sky

By: Tim

On: May 20th, 2007

sorry, if you’re not english then pls skip this and proceed to the next post. ta!

LightForce

By: Derek Yu

On: May 9th, 2007

Box Up

LightForce is a collection of mostly classic puzzle games remade in Flash and Java by Nick Kouvaris. You’ll recognize games like Tetris, Minesweeper, and Sudoku, but there are a lot of obscure puzzles in there, also. I like the very minimal way in which these games are implemented, and even if you’ve played these games before, it’s nice to have them all collected in one place!

Operation Block Preview

By: Tim

On: April 20th, 2007

opblock2

Quote bob: “Operation Wolf meets Lego in a videogame explogasm and its very good indeed. Still a way to go before it reaches the public eye, but having been given a taster of it I can promise its definitely one to keep an eye on. Who would have thought that the Lego-esque stylings would work so well?” [forum thread]

Super Obliteration (Remake)

By: Tim

On: April 6th, 2007

super-oblit1

Caff’s Super Obliteration remake is sort of a cross between Pang, Asteroids, Turrican and Plasma (as Bob puts it). Instead of bubbles you have meteors which break into tiny little pieces when shot at.

The first couple of levels are pretty easy but you’ll find out why your character was given the ability to jump very soon… HAHAHA.

Pixel Artist Wanted for Batman Remake

By: Tim

On: March 29th, 2007

hoh2a

If you can create isometric graphics much like the one pictured above, then do report yourself to this thread. Tomaz (original coder for the Head Over Heels remake) has been looking for someone to take on the task for over a year now and none has replied yet.

Graham (The Arsecast Host) can’t be arsed to do the job, though I’m sure there’s bound to be a pixel artist around here who’s capable enough to replace him.

Game engine and all levels are done. Only graphics are needed.