#810 Audiosurf

Posted: 9th January 2011 by Mulholland in Games
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3

17th game played so far


Genre: Puzzle/Music
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Dylan Fitterer
Publisher: Steam (online), Ascaron (hard-copy)

Many games have been released that have tried to capitalise on visualisations of music. We will be covering a bunch of these later on but Audiosurf already does something that they can not; create a puzzle that is truly customisable based on the song that you put in. With this comes a large online community of leader boards where almost all songs are somehow covered.

Even though I have written this introduction without yet having fully played the 5 hours it is already obvious that this is a must-have game for any musical fanatic.

Our Playthrough

We went through my iTunes folders and tried a wide variety of music using all the characters available. Music that we covered included the likes of ABBA, Sleigh Bells, Lady Gaga, Utada Hikaru, VV Brown, Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire.

Our Thoughts

I believe that we have finally found a game which accurately simulates the feeling of driving when on an acid trip while the strangest music plays (ha ha I have odd music tastes).

It is quite possibly the best visualization of music you can have. I agree wholeheartedly. As mentioned before we are still to cover games such as Frequency and Amplitude but this will surely blow them out of the water in every conceivable way as it allows the use of ANY piece of music. Of course you need to have an mp3 or one of several other audio formats, to be fair. Yes that was a bit of a disservice to the game. Many audio files (such as iTunes’ favourite) are also compatible. Yeah

So in other words, have music, select it in the game, and get going. But there is a lot more to it. The visuals are astonishing for an independent game. It looks good; strange, but good. It’s, as said, psychedelic, and with the shifting colours, turns and blocks sliding past while shapes turn in the background, it’s interesting and colourful experience although while it looks odd, it’s not distracting from the actual gameplay.

Agreed. The gameplay is helped by the number of different cars you can play around with; each with their own powers. Yeah and when you get beyond the psychedelic track, the actual gameplay is worthy of any other puzzle game: You go forward following the beat of the music and have to collect blocks that are placed based on the music. If you line up at least three, you get points and they disappear. Collect too many and you crash and need to wait to re-spawn and depending on your character you can then shuffle these around, push blocks out of your way and even launch your car over them.

 

You could also spend the entire track sitting in the hard shoulder whilst watching the dazzling racetrack… if you really wanted to. But what’d be the fun in that? Get someone else to play while you look at the marvels something I enjoyed doing whilst we experimented with various genres.

 

If you want a really fast game that’s challenging I would recommend either ‘Rachel’ by Sleigh Bells or ‘evolution’ by Ayumi Hamasaki. (Trust him, he’d know) but it makes you want to try out other songs as well, just to see what they look like. It’s amazing what slower songs can look like on there too.  ‘Devil’s Spoke’ by Laura Marling was surprisingly complex.

Another nice feature is the leaderboards. Rather than playing on your own, your point total gets compared to other people who played the same song and you can see who did best on it. By developing a nice little online competitive community they have been able to really extend the game’s longevity. Aside from the obvious trying out of new music after it plops onto the doormat.

Making this a game not just worth trying, but keeping up with for some time, whenever you want to combine colourful graphics, good music and a nice puzzle to make it more worthwhile.

Final Thoughts

This may be too early to call it (seeing that we are only 17 games in) but with the exception of the games with the little plastic instruments (I am eagerly anticipating a DJ Hero set at some point in the future) I can not think of a music game that will come close to beating this one.

#494 Uplink

Posted: 6th January 2011 by Mulholland in Games
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3

16th game played so far


Genre: Simulation
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: Introversion Software
Publisher: Introversion Software

Ever wanted to feel like one of those hackers in the movies? Well now you can in Uplink; a hacking simulation which was the first release by the UK-based company Introversion Software.

Whilst I am personally more drawn to being a hacker in the style of Matthew Broderick in WarGames rather than Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix this game is more the more interesting as it is set… last year. That’s right people this is a futuristic hacking simulation that is set in 2010 which, when we remember some of the stories surrounding Wikileaks a month ago, they appear to have gotten the timeframe perfectly right.

The truth of hacking may not be as glamourous… but (and this is important children) this is a better way to scratch that hacking itch rather than try to bring down Mastercard.

Our Playthrough

If it was possible to play this via a montage featuring the music of some unknown band then we would have… but we did it the only logical way. Play through the missions given by the games and attempt to bring down various multi-national companies. Nanananana-MONTAGE!

Our Thoughts

I’m not sure whether we should be having this conversation now. They might be on to us. Just remember to delete the logs afterwards and I’m sure we’ll be safe. Good thing there’s some open servers around.

Uplink is a very convincing game, and while it doesn’t look like much, that makes it seems more real. To the point that your heart starts to race the closer you are to being traced by those poor suckers you’re hacking. And you shout at people trying to help you out. Nerves of steel help with the game.

One thing that adds to the atmosphere is that the game never breaks character, not even during the tutorial, where you would usually get some comments that wouldn’t fit. You also have to try and hit the ground running. If you do not take enough time to figure out how to avoid getting caught… you’re dogmeat. And caution pays – in our play, we focused more on easier missions we knew we could do, rather than shooting for a bigger one that we might not be able to take on, and that meant that we could actually get more protection in when we went for the larger rewards. If you make enough money in missions where you either copy or delete files then you will be able to afford more high-tech gubbins such or better versions of your technology. Another way to try and make life easier for yourself is connecting to as many intermediate servers as possible, that really does increase the time it can take for them to trace you.

As you can see, there’s a lot to learn about the games, and many options are open pretty much from the start. Yea this is beginning to sound like a walkthrough. The best way to do this is really through trial and error. Just make sure you have your wits about you. Yeah, the good thing is that, at least at first, it’s easy to stop early when you need to, so you can try again. While it can be tense, it doesn’t feel too difficult. But it’s still got enough of a learning curve that the occassional mission can still feel VERY tense. Yeah, it has hit a sweet spot there.

Which is all the sweeter because there is not really another game quite like this one. There’s not, or not that I know of.  And that’s what makes it interesting. It’s a game that simplifies how it works, but does make you feel like you’re hacking systems and going around deleting or stealing important files and finding out financial details of all sorts of places. The graphics or sounds may not look like much… but would it be anyway? Hacking is the realm of command line tools and similar interfaces, not flashy 3D environment where you defeat programs by racing on a virtual motorcycle. A world map filled with connection links and flashing numbers and letters are all you need. And the more you know of these systems, the more this fits.

Final Thoughts

This game makes you feel like you’re in the middle of things, hacking systems and doing missions that are morally dubious. It also is quite long – we never reached the few ‘storyline missions’ that are supposed to be in there, although we’ll be playing more and will undoubtably reach it down the line. Worth a try, because of how unique it is, but also because of the wonderful presentation and completely sense of, well, fitting in.

Epic Acquisition of the N64 Variety

Posted: 4th January 2011 by Mulholland in Acquisition
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2

Anyone who has given our demented task about 15 seconds thought (which was probably about 12 more than we did in the beginning) will realise that unless we stumbled across a couple of gold bricks buried in the back garden (we live in hope) we would need to garner the help of our *coughmycough* friends.

In the fashion befitting a genius of the Nintendo variety my good friend Kat quickly answered our non-existent call and has let us borrow a large pile of games (with a second batch to be borrowed around Easter time). I mean look at the treasure trove below!

Amongst this pile is nearly half (that’s right people) of all the Nintendo 64 games featured on the list. This includes Super Mario 64, Goldeneye 007, Banjo Kazooie and Lylat Wars (aka Star Fox 64). We also received three games from the Final Fantasy franchise for the PS1 as well as the original Metal Gear Solid and the Gamecube exclusive The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Our cups truly runneth over *drools*… excuse me.

Because of the rather time-sensitive nature of these games we will be prioritising these over other games we had scheduled to play (sorry fans of Second Sight you will have to wait a little longer). However, when you see the sheer amount of gaming history classics available in this rather neat pile organised by yours truly can you really blame us?

#650 Meteos

Posted: 3rd January 2011 by Mulholland in Games
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1

15th game played so far


Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Nintendo DS
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Q Entertainment
Publisher: Nintendo and Bandai

Most puzzle games are hard to describe, no story, gameplay that doesn’t make sense outside of the puzzle, and just general weirdness… but here goes nothing.

Meteos is a puzzle game where blocks fall down. Rather than making them disappear by lining them up in some way, you have to line them up so they launch them back up. If they go above the screen boundary, they become missiles that fire at planets that, as far as I can tell, have done nothing wrong other than being in your way.

Planet-specific gravity and other rule changes means that there’s quite a bit of variety, and that it can be easy or hard to launch the blocks high enough or that you wait ages for the blocks to fall down so you can make more combinations.

Our Playthrough

We’ve played through a few of the different campaign modes and other options to get a feel for the game. Enough to get it, but it feels like it’ll take ages to really get all the nuances.

Our Thoughts

Aah Aah Aah I’m an alien from outer space! Let me throw random coloured blocks at you which become missles after passing through the ionosphere. PEW! PEW! PEW!

 

Yeah… and I’ll die after you throw some indeterminate number of missiles at me… either that or a random axe will appear on screen and demolish things. Or a bomb.

I’m going to be honest from the off… I love this game. It’s pretty good, a very interesting twist on the usual block-dropping games with a nice modern twist – this wouldn’t have worked on any DS predecessor.

It plays very well into addiction theory too. Sorry for the next few lines but out comes my inner psychologist (Please excuse me, I’ll get a drink and here’s me who sat listening intently during your Dune rant while you went off and did your own thing too. It balances out)

Addiction theory dictates that a task becomes more addictive when the rewards are distributed randomly rather than every time you complete a certain task. They found this with rats and humans in experimental conditions and it is believed to be a contributing factor in why video games can be addictive. Meteos falls into this category as in the first hour or so of playing this game it is basically ‘stylus mashing’ until you get a desired result which goes a long way to explaining why this game is particularly gripping. After you actually work out the combinations and tactics needed to make this game work for you… all the better. (Back)

Ah, yes, that’s one thing – I don’t think we’ve figured the game out completely yet, and that’s one of the bonuses. There’s a lot more to it and you keep getting that feel. Not that it’s difficult, it’s just that it seems like there’s more around the corner.

One thing that I love is how the game changes based on which planet you are battling. Such as gravity and which combinations work better and sometimes combinations that simply don’t work. The one where vertical combinations didn’t do anything seemed especially brutal. It helps when you work out multiple combinations where you can actually clear an entire board in about 4-5 well placed movements. Yeah, but you keep trying and basically learn again for every level, at least when you haven’t played for long yet.

Another thing that helps this game’s charm and differences are the graphics. The pieces change every level, based on the theme of the meteor you’re attacking, and while it matters little, the graphics add to making every game feel more distinctive. For the most part the most distinctive differences are between the ocean, forest and volcano planets where the look of the blocks follow suit. Personally those found on the forest worlds are the most beautiful and varied. Yeah. And the boss level ones add to the evil atmosphere, being ugly monsters whose movements can actually get quite distracting. Especially when that giant hammer comes out…

 

It’s an evil game, in its gameplay, ever so slightly changing rules, fun looks and sheer addictiveness.

Final Thoughts

For a fairly newish gaming developer it’s great to see that there are 6 games by Q Entertainment placed on this list… and I can not wait to try them all. Especially Lumines.

#231 Dune II

Posted: 31st December 2010 by Jeroen in Games
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5

14th game played so far


Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1992
Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Virgin Interactive

Three houses fight for control of Arrakis, or Dune, the only planet in the galaxy where the elusive Spice can be found. In the mean time, they also have to avoid sandworms and deal with the emperor.  Take over the planet, and you may as well rule the universe, with the power the spice, which is necessary for space travel, possesses.

Our Playthrough

We each played part of a campaign – the sinister Ordos for Peter (very unsurprising) and the noble Artreides for me (as if you didn’t know).

Our Thoughts

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

Artreides, Harkonnen and Ordos are the three houses fighting for control of the only planet where it exists naturally: Dune. It’s sort of the way it stayed with all subsequent games from Westwood – gather one significant resource (spice here, Tiberium in Command & Conquer, and I think gold found in, say, New York in Red Alert). Strange to think that if taken out of this space age setting Dune II is essentially about wars being fought over drug trafficking. Sort of like GTA without the option to have sex with random prostitutes. It’s just some fantastic in joke for those who know about the Dune mythology that what you are essentially mining is the equivalent of LSD. Which explains the scary eyes of everyone you encounter in the game. Except that the hallucinations are actually true visions of the future. That’s what all addicts say. Yeah, well, read the books before you judge them. I saw the film… and have since judged it heavily, even Sian Phillips couldn’t save it.

For those who don’t know, Dune is a science fiction series by Frank Herbert that’s about the planet named Dune and the politics and adventures to keep it in noble hands, as well as the ways to save humanity afterwards. It’s a bit complicated, but the book is a good read. It makes the film more bearable and interesting, which can be difficult to understand when you don’t know anything else from the story. To continue the history lesson and move on to our game, a video game was released in the early 90s, based in part on the movie and book, which has you travelling around Dune as Paul Artreides, the main character of the book, and drive the Harkonnen away while keeping the emperor happy and keeping up spice production. It’s an interesting game that gradually turns from adventure to a strategy game. For the sequel, Westwood ripped out the adventure elements and refined the strategy elements to what we have today.  And Dune 2, which is on the list and which we’ve played, became the RTS that was one of the major blueprints for the genre, for example being the direct predecessor to the Command & Conquer series mentioned above.

(Well done to those who stuck with the history lesson, it was touch and go on my part)

The main problem with this game is that old father time and his grandson master technology have taken a jackhammer to it. It is incredibly fiddly to control and at many times is just plain annoying.  However, you can see how it formed part of the blueprint for almost every strategy game that followed it. Basically, the game was one of the first, and certainly the first major game to be playable using the mouse (and in fact requiring it) and things like selecting multiple units at once wasn’t thought of yet. This makes the game extremely tedious to play to us.
(Side note: A semi-remake was released by Westwood in 1998 called Dune 2000. While the storyline differs somewhat, a lot of the unique features and the setting stays the same, just using a more modern engine similar to what we saw in the likes of Command & Conquer. While not loved by the critics and not being a great success, it might be just enough of a step up to make a similar game be more playable. I know I liked it) … I concur?

Seriously though (as much as I love pissing off the boyfriend) nowadays it is a game mainly for historians or Dune fans.  For those of us under the age of 25 this is not a game we could really get that excited about. Especially in a world populated with the likes of Total War and Age of Empires/Mythology. Because we’re too used to what are simple interface improvements now (such as multi-select and an interactive cursor, instead of clicking orders), this is hard to play. The graphics and sound being lackluster can be overlooked, but the gameplay makes it too frustrating to play too long and makes me wonder how we managed back in the day when this game was special and exciting.
I think what we are trying to say is that when viewed in relation to its contemporaries it was a revelation, but it’s like comparing the graphics of Jason and the Argonauts with those of Avatar. You can appreciate how groundbreaking the work put into Jason and the Argonauts works but due to us being spoilt with better technology we are less willing to suspend disbelief.  This is doubly so with the original King Kong. (For the record, he means the movie ‘Jason and the Argonauts‘, not the original Greek myth. And Avatar is the recent hit movie going by that name featuring odd blue creatures) (Way to underestimate our readers Jeroen) (I’d say that knowing a Greek myth is more highbrow than some semi-cartoon based on it) (It was live action you little… you know nothing about film. Shove off and let’s conclude this!)

So, not a good game to play because you’re bored, but a very interesting game in terms of history and to see how strategy games have developed. The granddaddy of them all.

Final Thoughts

As you can tell I was not that impressed with the game. The thing about this list that we all need to remember that this list it not about the 1001 best games but it  is meant to consist of a wide variety of games that are both fantastic and have helped shaped the industry into what it is today… to be fair Dune II was one of those games. It may not be great to look at now but you can not deny how influential it was.

#356 The Last Express

Posted: 28th December 2010 by Jeroen in Games
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3

13th game played so far


Genre: Adventure
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Smoking Car Productions
Publisher: Brøderbund

“The best game nobody ever played”, a commercial failure, and yet it’s found in the book. What’s up with that? Well, The Last Express is an adventure game that takes place in real-time. You’re Doctor Cath, who’s been asked to help out with a secret sort of mission on the Orient Express.

The characters all have their own schedules and interaction and life goes on regardless of what you do – although your actions do influence this. The graphics are based on live recordings, edited to create animation that suit the game’s atmosphere.

In other words, a special game.

Our Playthrough

We’ve done our best to play through the game. We’ll see how we do with the game, but with some luck we’ll make it quite far through the puzzles, enjoying the environment at the same time.

Our Thoughts

Here’s to the first game on the list (other than Peggle) that we actually completed *raises glass*. Cheers! Cheers! Yeah, and an interesting one too, very immersive. (forgot about Bayonetta… but I only completed it after posting it.) Yeah, the second completed while actually playing it for the blog, rather than afterwards.  Not that it’s a simple game. Quite the opposite really.

The time-dependent events, people living their lives on the train around you while you try to solve the mystery and the sometimes quite devious solutions make it interesting and quite complex at times. And makes you wonder what does and does not happen. Exactly, the great thing about it IS that you could be extremely lazy and sit in your cabin and do nothing whilst murders, bombings and concerts go on around you. You really have to get stuck in. Not entirely true, as the police event shows, you need to get out. Granted… the only time in geek history where hiding in the toilet is not to escape the local bullies… That depends on your definition of bullies and your overall experience. Yeah (Never have)

I love the complex storyline involved, it shows a true love of history. And that alone makes it replayable, as a second playthrough might be welcome to help you understand more of what’s going on. That’s one of the issues with everything being so time sensitive. You feel that you need to speed through things in order to get everything done that you need to do. Yeah, even though the pacing allows you to take your time anyway. Further helped by the ability to rewind the clock whenever you want incase you missed something. Yeah, up to a point. It’s easy to catch up if you have to.

Something else is the art and animation. The procedure is interesting and worth reading up on in other places, such as Wikipedia. It’s when you get to certain cut scenes (or when people pass you in the corridors) that it looks really impressive, especially when you consider it was all rotoscoped. Yeah, It looks nice and works really well for the game and it has been a lot of work.

The budget for this game was huge, in part because of the art, for the time… and for the number of games sold. So much so that is basically bankrupted the studio. Yeah, apparently only 100 000 games were sold, on a development cost of a few million (6 million, it’s rumoured). Kinda sad really. There is one thing bankrupting yourself with shit… but not with a really impressive title. Yeah, it should’ve done better with the game’s quality.

I’d love to be able to play more games like this. Since we have a lot of adventure games to cover I am sure that your adventure itch will be scratched… unlike my beat ’em up itch… which is yet to be tackled. I’m sure we’ll get to many more of those. While there will be more adventure games, one as complex like this, with the amount of work and AI that has gone into this, including all the possible interactions that take place and can take place, will not be as common. I think the closest we’ll get is that fantastic Gregory Horror Show… which is like this if it was set in a haunted hotel with strange anime animals. That sounds like it will be a great deal of fun! 🙂 Just remember it’s a Survival Horror Adventure 😉

Final Thoughts

The game itself plays like a thriller made in the 1940s (unsurprisingly there are rumours of a film adaptation) and does make you feel like one of those old fashioned heroes in the Alfred Hitchcock style. Although point and click adventures are not usually my cup of tea this somehow ticked all the right boxes. It is just such a pity this was not a big success at the time… it could have been the beginning of a rather promising series.

#683 Line Rider

Posted: 25th December 2010 by Mulholland in Games
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3

12th game played so far


Genre: Action
Platform: Online
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Boštjan Čadež
Publisher: N/A

So far we have had serious games, casual games and those where it is questionable whether they can be considered games at all. Line Rider falls easily into the last category.

Although it was designed by a university student (from Slovenia) this game took the internet by storm a few years ago. In fact I greatly doubt that there is anyone who was computer literate in 2006 that did NOT play this game.

This also stands as the perfect game for Christmas seeing how it’s central (doomed) character is on a sledge whilst wearing a scarf… I originally thought him to be a penguin but that’s by-the-by.

Our Playthrough

There  really is not much to do with this game except fart around with different courses and enjoying making our little scarfed boy suffer as he falls headlong into empty space.

Our Thoughts

You are a cruel man. “Yeah, I want to make people slide down lines and be thrown off and beaten in brutal inhumane ways… and then go again!” Wait until we hit GTA… then you’ll see my cruel streak. Don’t worry, I’ve seen quite enough of that already.

 

Here is the $64,000 question… is Line Rider a game? In the sense that it’s an environment limited by rules (gravity and so on) that you use to enjoy yourself …in a strict sense so is a yo-yo. Not as much an environment as an item, and not so much limited by its own rules as it is with outside ones. But still they are both opportunities to inflict pain… when used correctly.

Seriously though… I actually question Line Rider being a game instead of a physics simulation or toy. It’s certainly more the former and it does remind me a little bit of the simulations we used to use during physics lessons. Back when Java applets were modern. The fact this is done for fun rather than to learn is the only thing pushing it closer to being a game.

I guess, but it reminds me of a K-Nex rollercoaster I got as a kid. Lucky you; something from before my time to be fair, and Lego wasn’t that complicated.

But does it earn its place on the list? I’m not entertained that much by it. Yeah, nice for five minutes, but then you ask yourself what the point is. It’s not my kind of game

 

Once you’ve made a successful loop-the-loop with a trap door so he can shoot out the other side… you’ve pretty much done it. Yeah.

Final Thoughts

Line Rider is available online for free, so that shouldn’t stop you from trying it out. And it can be fun to try out, especially with a major cruel streak. Don’t expect it to keep you obsessed for hours and days.

#540 Bookworm

Posted: 22nd December 2010 by Mulholland in Games
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11th game played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Popcap
Publisher: Popcap

This was not a game we actively scheduled this early on (since we rely on a mixture of a random number generator and personal choice) but it came out of a rather slow evening when I had a fancying for playing Scrabble. I never know why I go through these Scrabble phases… I start playing it and then get bored within 10 minutes.

Bookworm is very similar to Scrabble in many ways, you try to make as long a word as possible out of the tiles provided…. however there are flaming tiles involved which change the game somewhat.

Our Playthrough

This is the victim of some late-night playing resulting in both of us feeling rather tired and disorientated the next day… totally worth it.

Our Thoughts

Bookworm. So you have a worm, a grid of letters, and you have to make words using the letters and impress the worm. And if you do not impress the worm then he tries to set the library on fire with the flaming letters… Apparently, then, it’s an evil worm that hates words, and you stop him by making words. Then again he does give the opportunity to play with golden and diamond letters… so he’s an evil worm with a love of bling.
In other words, there’s no story and what happens doesn’t make much sense, but the game is good fun, even though it did not seem to be our kind of game. Well, like I mentioned before, Scrabble is as dull as dishwater. And English isn’t my first language. Yet you can swear like a pro, even if you can not use swearwords in the game. I’ve learned the important words. And yeah, that’s the one vocabulary part that surprised us. But I guess it makes sense, if it included all members of the swearing rainbow then you would have to have an age restriction present. ‘Crap’, though? To some people ‘hell’ is incredibly offensive.
Anyway, it looks pretty, the gameplay is good, but it’s a puzzlegame – while we can explain the gameplay, and say it gets addictive – the last game took over an hour and that was ended simply because we had to write this bit. You can easily play this for hours on end… as long as your eyes don’t go square first. And you can stand all the Y’s and J’s that start filling up the bottom of the board

Final Thoughts

This is a nice word-based puzzle game, simple, yet challenging, it looks good and is a lot of fun to play – like a lot of the Popcap games. And the trial is available for free, so no reason not to try it.

New Game Approaches: The First Flush

Posted: 21st December 2010 by Mulholland in Acquisition
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It was always destined to happen wasn’t it? Even though we were already in possession of more than enough games to keep us blogging well into 2011 (as you saw in our introduction) the sheer amount of excitement at seeing the amount of games yet to try would lead us to making a few purchases.

The majority of these (meaning Dead Space, Spider-man 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, Little King’s Story and Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis) all came from an impulse buy that the two of us made on a trip to York over the weekend (which lead to severe train-based delays and my contracting stomach flu; at least it was good to see my friends again). 3 of these were found after my spending ages flicking through the preowned section of GAME in order to find some bargains. The other two were in a special offer alongside other non-list games such as Legoland (which I am really looking forward to trying soon).

Freak Out was a purchase of mine over eBay since the description sounded so weird… a game involving demons and scarves; whatever next?

#189 Columns

Posted: 19th December 2010 by Mulholland in Games
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0

10th game played so far


Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Arcade and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis
Year of Release: 1990
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega

This is a game from my youth here. My first console was a Sega Mega Drive and Columns was one of the first games that I had on it (alongside Cool Spot and Sonic The Hedgehog) so there are a lot of memories involved here.

As games go this bares all the hallmarks of a Tetris clone, but there is some more to this game than just that. It was one of the (if not the) first falling block puzzle to include gravity. By this I mean that when you got your three-in-a-row there were consequences as pieces would fill in the holes rather than the floating pieces that we had come to know and love. Also matches were done by matching three of the same colours in a row (be it horizontal, vertical or diagonal) which introduced an extra element of colour matching alongside the usual spatial reasoning.

I may be waxing lyrical about Columns but there is a reason this on the list. It isn’t just a clone where the pieces look like boiled sweets, there is quite a bit more to it.

Our Playthrough

This is a puzzle game so there is only way to properly play it… in competition with each other. This also has a 2-player mode which is always good to peruse.

Our Thoughts

I think that we may have found the game that prompted manufacturers to advise gamers to take rests during gaming. Unlike what we did on the last game played.

 

First things, what did you think on your first exposure to Columns?

Well, first, this is a game that’s been imitated and modified often, so the basics are familiar. But this being one of the basics, it was interesting. It needs quite some getting used to as it can be rather tough. But once you get into it, it’s very addictive.

I think one thing that really extended its longevity was the introduction of ‘gravity’. It was such a game changer, literally. It was, and allowed for far more combinations to take place which made it easier in some ways and more challenging in others since you really had to think multiple moves in advance. Yes. All in all, there was more to the gameplay, and while the simplicity of Tetris can also be fun, this makes it more fun.

The 2-player co-op mode was a nice addition too. That was so much better than the general head-to-head match. And it’s what lost us over an hour today. We kept going and had to force ourselves to wind down which really did not work, as you can see, since we both got to over a million points. Yeah, unfortunately, but we managed it by forcing each other to lose. Which I think may have been the point…

 

Either way it really made me fancy some Cherry Drops… I suppose they look similar.

Still, it’s probably not the best of all puzzle games, but it’s a lot of fun, and the multiplayer adds a lot to gameplay. Considering when it was made, I can see why it was ported to every console going.

Final Thoughts

Like I said, Columns has a lot of good memories tied up in it. It would make for a good addition to a retro games night… but I am sure there are many more recent puzzle games on the list that will run rings around it. It’s still great fun though.

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