Archive for the ‘PC/Mac’ Category
Retro Game Night: Fahrenheit Indigo Prophecy Remastered
This week we take a look (in glorious 1080p) at the remastered edition of Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy). After recently booting this up for our review, I’m not quite sure who this particular port is for. It looks just like Fahrenheit, plays just like it too, and I could be wrong but I think the original could be pushed to 1080p on PC (where this version is currently exclusive to) so I think they just did some re-rendering of textures, glossed it up, and slapped it online. Perhaps that was all we should expect, I don’t know. Anyway, check it out for yourself in the video below.
Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) Review
Platform: Xbox, Playstation 2, PC (both the original and the just released Remastered Edition)
Released: 2005 (worldwide)
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Atari
Digital Release? Yes – Available on Xbox 360 as an Xbox Original and Remastered is on Steam ($9.99 for all versions)
Price: $8.00 (disc only), $10.99 (complete), and $46.97 (new/sealed) per Price Charting (prices are for PS2 version, Xbox/PC versions a bit lower due to re-release)
Jam’s Take
Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy in America) is one of those games that attempted to create a interactive film experience. Some excepted this concept with open arms, some people frowned on it proclaiming it technically wasn’t a game. Well several years has passed since that fateful release in 2005 so lets see if Fahrenheit is still worth investing in.
Fahrenheit’s story has you following three character Lucas Kane a 9-to-5 IT worker who has a fondness for reading Shakespeare in diners, Carla Valenti a young cop who is claustrophobic and Tyler Miles, Carla’s police partner and your typical comic relief in a cop duo but he likes basketball, which is ok in my book. Essentially New York as well as the world is starting to get cold, really cold and bizarre murders are occurring round the city where normal folk are killing innocent people then themselves. I won’t spoil the story too much as it is the games strongest draw. What I will say is the game is filled with a fair few twists and turns playing out very much like a film, if it hooks you from the beginning it is very likely you will play through to the end.
Woah Dave! Review
I first experienced Woah Dave! At EGX 2014. It was being demoed on the 3DS at the time and it was one of the few games that didn’t have a crazy long que. I enjoyed what I played but like a lot of the smaller indie games at the show I just forgot about it. Fast forward to today and we are given the game for free through Playstation plus. It’s surprising that this has released on the Playstaion Network before the Nintendo eshop. [Woah Dave! was released on the eshop in the US back in October 2014 – ed.]
Woah Dave! takes its inspiration from the original arcade classics like Mario Bros and Joust. You play a small pixel man and your objective is to collect as many pennies as you can, which then act as your overall score. To find the pennies you have to defeat enemies that start out as little eggs but soon hatch into alien looking baddies. To kill these enemies you have to pick up eggs or skulls and throw them at the target. But you have to be quick as the skulls explode after a short time and the eggs hatch. If this happens while your holding it you will loose a life. If the enemy manages to reach the lava below it will evolve into a stronger enemy. Each time the enemies reach the bottom they change into a faster and more difficult enemy until they become a flying eye ball which will literally pursue your character unless you defeat it. There is a lot of risk reward with the game. You can play it safe and destroy the eggs as soon as they drop but you will receive a minimum score. But, if you wait for the enemies to get stronger, they will drop more coins. You have to collect the coins to bank them into your score, so unless you play carefully your coins could end up in the lava and be useless. There is a single powerup which resembles the power block from Mario Bros (except it says Woah on it) that occasionally falls from the heavens. Picking this up and flinging it will destroy everything on the screen in a satisfying shower of coins.
Resident Evil HD Remaster Under 3 Hour Speedrun
Completing a longer game in a speedrun can be not only an accomplishment but also quite rewarding. In the case of Resident Evil, completing the game in a speedrun is literally built into the programming with the expectation that after you’ve explored the game a couple of times you will jump right into it. The recent Resident Evil HD Remaster came out and while I found the game quite difficult in my recent playthrough and it took me over 11 hours to complete, I dared leap into an under 3 hour speedrun (albeit with the gracious help of a guide from GameFAQs). I also decided to capture it and offer voiceover so that you can not only enjoy watching a speedrun, but see what is done and why to somewhat bend the timeline of the game to be as short as it is. I’ve embedded the first video below and you can see the entire playlist here.
Mini Podcast: The Pages of Myst
For this special episode Fred flies solo to discuss Myst, it’s concept, and it’s rightful place as one of the “killer apps” for the CD-ROM format. Logic puzzles not included.
Resident Evil HD Remaster Review
Fred’s Take
After long last it appears that Resident Evil, specifically the Gamecube remake from 2002, is making a widespread appearance on modern consoles complete with increased resolution, performance, and controls. This is significant because the number of people who owned a Gamecube was relatively small and the Wii port had such a limited print run it was a bit difficult to find. Not only that, but at 12 years old, the game itself has plenty of dated setbacks that most gamers I talk to refuse to put up with. Thankfully this new version is digital only (no need to hunt down copies), adapted for today, and relatively inexpensive ($19.99 on all platforms). With all the tweaks made to this game it is so close to being worth the money I can’t see any fan of horror games or the original series not wanting to pick up this new version. Besides, it’s January, what else is coming out?
If you played the original to death – and pretty much anyone who owned the game back in 1996 did as we waited two whole years for the sequel – it’s a pretty rudimentary journey at this point. You know where everything is, you probably know most of the tricks, you don’t need to save often, and your completion time will be somewhere in the 3-6 hour mark. On the other hand, the limited release of this game and the cumbersome systems it can be found on means that you probably aren’t that familiar with it. This is no graphical coat of paint over the original design, it’s a brand new experience. The mansion’s layout has been changed, most of the puzzles are different, there are new enemies, and everything is scattered in completely different places. That doesn’t mean that experts of the original can’t jump in and easily conquer this title from start to finish, but it’s going to take you some time. Even more impressive is the fact that despite me completing the original at least once a year since it released, this version was able to get some tense and great jump scare moments out of me along the way. It’s a new Resident Evil and it’s worth replaying.
Retro Game Night: Crypt Killer and Mad Dog McCree
This week for Retro Game Night we go all light gun shooters (yes, they can be captured and streamed).
First up is arcade 3D shooter Crypt Killer, which was horror themed and moved from arcades to Saturn and the PS1 (Saturn version shown). Sorry about the sound on the game being much louder than my voice, it was live and no one told me.
Next up is the 1990 “classic” Mad Dog McCree, one of the first laserdisc arcade games that was almost perfectly ported to the Nintendo Wii. Here it is in all its glory (and in 720p!)
If you want to check out Retro Game Night, we do it every Friday night at 11:30 pm est on our Twitch channel (twitch.tv/gh101). You can also follow us for random live broadcasts and check that page for our ongoing replay of Resident Evil HD Remaster on the PS3, which comes to the US on January 20.
Podcast: Tabletops and D20s
Oh yeah and it’s Fred’s birthday and listener SieOne was kind enough to send a card.
This week we ring in the new year with guest Gary Butterfield from duckfeed.tv and the Watch Out For Fireballs podcast to discuss video games based on tabletop games. Of course the big one, Dungeons & Dragons, takes up a chunk of the conversation but there are others that make their way in. We also track the history and progression of taking earlier stat-based games and being able to integrate them properly onto the screen.
Rock Boshers DX Director’s Cut Review
Jam’s Take
With the ever increasing improvements to video games – top of the range PCs with graphics cards that are able to show realism that get closer and closer to the real thing – as a gamer you really start to question how games could get any better. Then comes along a game called Rock Boshers that shows us that the evolution in gaming of not necessarily going forward, but backwards.
Rock Boshers is very much a love letter to the ZX Spectrum gaming days. The game happily advertises that it pulls from a palette of just 15 colours and even mimics the music the old micro computers from the eighties was capable of. Rock Boshers is not the first game to give love to the old microcomputer, the ZX Spectrum still gets a lot of love to this day with homebrew games being regularly released (Retro Gamer magazine which is a popular read in the UK, discusses popular homebrew released every month). Rock Boshers is one of the few ZX Spectrum inspired games as far as I am aware that has made it to Steam and even the PS4 and PSVita (the latter being the version I’ve reviewed).
Primal Rage Retrospective and Comparison Video
Primal Rage was one of the more notable Mortal Kombat clones in arcades in 1994. The popularity of this Atari Games fighter secured multiple ports to the home consoles of the time, a true cross-gen title that was on most portable, 16-bit, and 32-bit CD consoles. GH101 looks into the history, gameplay, and home console versions of this dinosaur brawler.
Gaming History 101 