Casper (Saturn) - The Friendly Lump

Welcome back, Virtua fans, to The Neptune err Virtua Month of Saturn SPEEEEEWWWWWBOOBOOBOO!!!! Get ready for the worst scare of all! The horrors of the movie tie-in games! Nuu! 

The Sega Saturn was in its hayday during a strange period in gaming history. It was a very experimental period where large corporations and movie studios were a lot less tentative. While movie tie-ins were not new by any means, Casper came out when these games were released on every single port they could get their hands on. Anytime you looked at a game ad in a magazine or a comic book, you would see several different cartridges and/or CD's with the various coverarts for every system. Casper was released on the SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Playstation, Sega Saturn, 3DO (strangely, the final game for the system) and PC! This was the norm for back in those days, but this was around the time when they stopped doing that and started releasing them on just two or three instead. With the 3D era coming in full force, games were becoming much harder and more costly to make. 

Casper didn't seem to have the problem of having an expensive development, though. While it does boast a semi-unique isometric puzzler gameplay, it is still very much considered a 2D game. The graphics do what they set out to do, the graphical art is quite nice and the ambience of the level works, that's about the most credit you can give the whole game. 

Beyond that, this game is a lot of fluff with a whole lot of no content. You fly around the levels looking for puzzle pieces, keys to get to said puzzle pieces and find secrets. While resistance to get these puzzle pieces is rather scant, there are places in the game where you need to contend with the uncles. 

The level with Uncle Fatso, if I may be frank, startled the life out of me, pun intended. After going through rooms of nothing but stillness and finding pieces of a painting, Fatso came out of nowhere and began chasing me. This level became some of the most fun in the game and was something of an iconic moment, because after that, it was more bland, lifeless level. The puzzle pieces take a while to find if you don't know where to go or what key opens which door. This is one of those games where they had to make it cryptic and slow-going to elongate it and make it "worth your while".

If you've read my Top 20 Worst Games of the Saturn list, you'll know that I have placed this game in a rather dishonorable spot. There's really no other way to put it. This game is a slog to get through and playing it over a long period of time can very quickly become the cure for sleep deprivation. Aside from a few places where you need to deal with the uncles, there's very little to get excited about. Even the uncles aren't anything. Aside from Fatso, the others are just slow death traps that follow you around. 

You've got the mansion and you've got the hedge maze in the backyard. Those are the two primary locations in this game and the levels are dizzying. Keeping up with where you've been and what samey room you've been in to get what puzzle piece is enough to make you go crosseyed if this is not your prefered genre. If you're looking for a scary puzzler with lot's of intrigue take this out of your Saturn immediately and put in D. This game is bland, tasteless and reaks of bad punny one-liners and vague ties to a movie that may be nice to watch on Halloween once in a while. This game should be tested before selecting as a common haunt. Virtua Ghost Flies!

AAA Gaming Publishers - An Industry with No Accountability

 

The face of the gaming industry has become bruised and battered over the course of the past few years, and they have no one but themselves to blame. Individuals have come out of their shells, taking to social media in order to berate and shame their own customers in some feeble attempt to guilt them into buying games that are clearly undercooked and under developed. These individuals think that, just because their games feature "represented characters" and "forward thinking ideas for a modern audience", they can hide behind a shield of identity politics in order to shame anyone who would point out their flaws. 

It has been proven time and time again that these people have bought into an idea that has nothing to do with gaming. They accepted money from a certain company or companies that push agendas that have nothing to do with the game and they are willing to steer their titles in some new direction that undermined their previous efforts. The games have become shallow shells of themselves and characters we once loved have become nothing but symbols of a narrative that has no place in escapism. These beloved characters will now gladly step aside for brand new characters to take up their mantles and replace them as the new poster child for their properties while the originals fade into the background. 

Such an idea that games would accept these ill-gotten millions of dollars just to preach a message to the audience is akin to Popeye eating spinach when a fight is going bad, only to start punching himself in the face. Rather than trusting the game designers to push out a decent product, publishers trust that all of this money would bolster their chances of gaining new fans of a new audience that does not really exist. Once the game becomes ill received, it now becomes publishers' and developers' jobs to run damage control. They proceed to call their fanbases and audience names such as "racist", "sexist" or any other word with "ist" or "phobic", in order to play the victim and make people think they are under attack. What is actually happening is fans of the intellectual property are not liking what they are seeing in game trailers and abstaining from buying the games because they have tastes that are not being met. 

It is not a hard concept to hire writers to write a story that goes along with the lore and the plot of the original and continues it in a natural way. It is not difficult to imagine developers working toward a goal of making a game with controls and graphics that suit a certain standard for the game they are creating. In many cases, it sounds more like games either run out of money or do not have the budget they were aiming for, so they turn to people that offer them the money at the expense of the game itself. 

Suddenly, character designs will change to a more watered down version or unappealing rendition of what they once were. Characters that fans loved suddenly needed to cover themselves from head to toe, get breast reductions and gain a holier than thou attitude toward any want of sex appeal. Characters are race swapped in order to go along with trends and many of them are gender swapped, resulting in becoming unrecognizable. This is not because this company actually cares about this demographic, but because they think that they will be praised with sales from pandering to a more widespread audience. Instead of creating something new for their narrative or creating a whole new property, they feel the need to change what is already there to suit the points they didn't need to make in the first place.

The simple fact is that the ones who were once willing to pay for these games are left scratching their heads at these decisions. The more they look into these changes, the more it becomes obvious that companies have gone out of their way to please a minority that never wanted the game to begin with. Then, when sales go bad, it is suddenly up to everyone involved with the project to either to run interference on this trending failure or go completely silent as they struggle to meet expectations with their patches and/or downloadable content in order to try and bolster interest. 

When you stand back and look at the forest for the trees, you can see the blatant detriment that this has had on the industry. Audiences are now left wondering why these companies are not seeing it for themselves. The heads of the company are not listening to their own player base and the ones at the management level take all of the flak because they need to be vocal in their disdain to any opposition and even their own clientele. They are unwilling to have any self-reflection and only look at the numbers as they dwindle into the red, hoping that throwing more money at it will fix the problem. They are only feeding the fire that is burning the industry down while continuously accepting large amounts of money in the name of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Beloved characters have become shells of their former selves. Now they wholly embrace the idea that they talk in ways they never did. They make decisions that go against the very foundation with which they were created. Characters can suddenly be changed however the "creatives" want them to be changed and anyone who questions any of these changes are no longer allowed to speak on the fans' behalf. Fans who question it with logic are instantly labled as "toxic fans".

People once devoted to a gaming franchise are being silenced for their devotion. Their loyalty to a wide spread franchise is being over-looked. AAA Gaming Publishers needed a pay raise and didn't care what kind of commity they were inviting into their writing room. This has caused their games to become unrecognizable in a lineup to previous titles in their respective franchises. The tone deaf beaurocratic big wigs of these companies keep telling their teams to go full steam whilst never listening to a word of criticism from fans who once paid their bills. 

If any of this sounds familiar, then you know what I'm talking about. Audiences are no longer allowed to negatively comment on the look of characters, nor they allowed to comment on any of the changes. Fans of long-running intellectual properties are only supposed to praise them for their physical identities and anything they don't like about their personalities are nothing but white noise in the eyes of whoever is pushing this way of thinking. Whether they're pushing it for money or some shallow need for opposition is irrelevent. This is a trend that is killing brands that fans once loved.

This is an expansion of the previous article that stated you should never bow down to this idea and surrender your sense of standards. If it is obvious that the greed and hubris of a company has stepped in a direction not to your liking, you have no obligation to humor them. Point out what is wrong with these changes. Give your opinions of how a story could have been better and what plotholes they so obviously ignored. If you don't like a character, it does not matter why you don't like that character, reject them. That is your perogotive. You do not need to scream and shout at people who disagree with you. If they are unwilling to coexist with you because of your opinions or your stance on a subject, then they are not worth your time and most certainly do not deserve your hard-earned money. 

Companies will churn out whatever they want in terms of how a game is made and very few of them will compromise with logic and/or reason. If someone is sitting there defending these large corporations in opposition to their middle class customers, that sounds like a big bag full of not your problem. They can cry about people taking to youtube and podcasts, picking apart their obvious agendas all they want. In the end, it is up to you to make the call of what side you're on in this fight, even if that means you are not part of the fight. You don't need to be there to defend either side, you can make your own decisions and pick who you trust. If AAA companies really think online reviews are brainwashing you or controlling your opinions, it honestly sounds like they are bitter because they were unable to do so. Do not accept undercooked games that are below your standards and do not change your mind just because a game publisher says you should do so because, "just trust me". You have a brain and you are fully capable of using it, unlike certain individuals that think they can sweeten your "babyish mind" while hiding behind a coporation. Save your money for the game you truly want and remember to drink water.  

House of the Dead Remake (PC) - Zombie Nightmare Fluff

Next in the Virtua month of Virtua SPEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWKIESOUR! This time we have something new and horribly gory! Please enjoy!

Over the years of posting reviews on this site, there has been one title that has gotten a constant mention throughout. This was not on purpose, but on a small glance at my past articles. It has shown up on multiple top 10 lists and gotten held up as one of the examples of railshooters done correctly. It has been compared to many of its genre and come out looking very favorable, at least in this subjective reviewer's opinion. This subjective reviewer's opinion also seems to gravitate toward keeping the graphics blocky, sketchy and blurry as they were upon their implimentation to the Saturn or Arcade cabinets. 

Guess what, sports fans, this is a very good example of just that. The House of the Dead was remade for modern consoles in April of 2022 and you can count it among the remakes that did its best. It is by no means a terrible remake, nor does it look "bad". The graphics actually look quite detailed, but there is something wrong with them. The movements of the zombies and something about the movements of the screen seem so unattached. It's like they tried to keep the blocky, slow movements of the original port while implimenting them with new, polished graphics and the mixture is like a 1970's movie played on Bluray. It looks off. 

That's pretty much all there is to say about what is really wrong with this port. It seems so out of place. Like they told every single original actor of a movie to wear a full body suit of themselves, with new cameras and equipment. It doesn't wholly affect the gameplay, though. You can shoot zombies and have fun, and there are some nice darker tones to the game. 

There are good things here. I found myself really enjoying shooting things in the background and either finding a secret or just destroying something randomly. They did a very good job detailing the game with breakable stuff. That enhances the game and gives you a good sense of satisfaction. They also added a few more little items that improve the difficulty. Like, with the first villain, the Hangedman. He's also known as "That annoying bat dude that flies around and maybe sics a giant headless armor suit on you". A long title, I know. Instead of just shooting him in this version, though, he has a weakspot on his chest. Since he's slightly larger and more detailed, this actually worked. 

There were little tidbits here and there that made this game more fun. I loved how they made the blade jumper guys much darker and blend in more with the shadows. It made me feel observant when I spotted them and attacked them very early. There's good, grotesque violence to be had here and the game is far more accessible than it was. 

Is this game worth buying now? Yes, very much so. It is not a bad port at all, it simply has its off points and, as always, I am of a mind that the original is just a more fulfilling experience. That being said, the ambience, the higher graphics and the gameplay all have their ups and downs, but overall, it comes out ahead. What would have made this game far more edible is if, like in Nights Into Dreams Remake, they included the original game in its entirety. They didn't do that, but they did add a whole bunch of extra game features. 

The problem I had with these extra features was that Horde Mode could not be played without erasing your save game. That was a very strange decision on their part because it meant I had to beat the entire game to actually test it out. If that were the case, they may as well have made it an unlockable feature. Either way, it's your standard basic affair of minigames and none of them are especially noteworthy. They're not great, but good for a distraction. 

It's easier, obviously, because it doesn't have limited continues. That is actually a good thing, because the finite deaths did limit the original game in many ways. This is especially true whenever they were not getting paid for their labors in our hard earned quarters. Either way, this game is worth getting, playing and enjoying but it is not exactly worth celebrating. If this is your only way to play this game, you could do far worse. It is a game they built from the ground up. Though I question the use of Unity, I will not get into that. Just know that it is a new game from the Saturn and we should be grateful that we're still getting some classics to this day from our old friend of yesterday. Kill zombies, but play nice and drink water.

X-Men Sega Saturn Update! 0.3!

Well, it's good to see that HotRodX is still at it and doing the work we so desire! It's nice to see a programmer who listens to fans and strives to do more work to achieve a set goal. Since we last visited this port of the Saturn version for the X-men Arcade game, there have been two updates! The last update was back earlier in the Spring and Storm was added along with level 2! Storm became a playable character and now Nightcrawler has also been added to the roster. With four playable characters, you can also barge in with 3 whole players to take down the sentinel menace! 

Once again, we find ourselves spellbound by this game's amazing progress as our developer is hard at work behind the scenes, churning out gold! Nightcrawler is definitely a fan favorite character, but I'm personally waiting for Colossus, as he has the power and the brawn to take down these malicious machines with brute strength and a battle cry known to many! 

Until then, though, we find ourselves with a new third level, which is the jungle level! After taking down the sentinel factory, you'll find that the difficulty spikes quite a bit, like the arcade days of old. It's still a real challenge, as you only have three lives to get through all three levels and this is a real chore that gamers will find invigorating and a tiny bit frustrating! It's beautiful! 

What I love the most is that he sees the difficulty and softens the blow a little bit with the first level. Rather than having to take down the sentinels with two beat downs, it only requires one. In the second level, he spikes up the difficulty by requiring you to either beat them twice, or beat them once and stomp them on the ground to make them explode! The explosions hit like they're supposed to and the mutant powers are a potent tool that you can only use in limited quantities. 

Consider us a cheering squad! We're here to make sure that this game gets its due diligence and praise from all who would behold it! HotRodX, we hope you continue the hard work and we wait with baited breath for the next update, whenever that is. Just remember to take breaks and don't overwork yourself. Patience is a virtue that we should have learned long ago, and working as a single developer in a game made from scratch, the workload can be very cumbersome. So, please, all of you X-men and Saturn fans, be sure to give this game a try and give the feedback! Make sure to make it constructive and accept that the game is not finished quite yet. The polish and the full game will come when it will and we need to make sure that HotRodX continues in an environment fit for programming. Just remember to enjoy the game while you drink water!

Horror in Gaming - Survival Checklist of Death (Pt 3)

 Happy Halloween, Gamerheads!!!!! We're almost to the finish line, so here's  the finish of this particular feature on Horror in gaming. I hope you're ready for the season to come to a head, because The Virtua SPEWWWWWWWWWWWWWKINESS is gonna keep on keeping on!

The tropes we know and love/hate from the horror we love/hate have been used and abused to great and terrible effect. What you do and what you don't do can be very situational and very fickle. A lot of things work off of something else. 

Weapons

If you have a gun, being able to shoot every single enemy once CAN make the game boring. How do you fix this? Left 4 Dead made their one-hit zombies extremely plentiful and added very tough zombies sprinkled in among them. That brings about satisfying gameplay as you mow down the small-fries while also filling a Tank Zombie full of bullets to bring it down like a mammoth. It's satisfaction and it's of the good kind. 

Giving the shotgun a good, heavy sound and damage output will make your player happy. The melee chopping and hitting hard with good reaction will make them okay with low ammunition. Making your main character Doom Guy and equipping him to the teeth will require many demons of different types and stages keeping you guessing and looking for secrets. Interesting gameplay and scary strong monsters make awesome guns okay. 

Setting up the Scares

What made PT so amazing was the scare factors and the visuals. You literally have no defenses against these things. If you do one thing wrong at the wrong time, something will kill you and you may get lost and need to backtrack. All of this evokes fear, along with the setting, which grew steadily darker the more you went. Setting off with jump scares from the start is annoying. Waiting it out, keeping the setting dark, foreboding and unsettling, then unleashing the jump scares and other scares will keep your customers happy. 

Throwing a monster and/or body horror guy straight from the first scene is robbing your audience. You are trying to jingle keys in front of their face and it is insulting. This can't be done at the very start, in broad daylight, it simply kills it from the very start. If you start at 10 and keep it at 10, how am I supposed to feel unsettled? Agony had nothing but blood and guts and spurting red stuff everywhere from start to finish. Just because we don't live in that in real life does not mean it is interesting!

Breaking the Tension

Comedy and romance can work in a horror story. In fact, it is good to keep a bit of every genre in your story. The problem is, you need to stick to it and not derail the main draw, which is horror! If you cut the tension with a joke or some sudden girl wanting to be kissed, it kills the suspense completely! Having the horrible creature jump out and juggle eyeballs, without proper context and character concept, is jarring and assassinates any chance of being scared of your horrible creature.

By the same concept, seeing your horrible creature in full view while also cutting and stabbing with gore had better also have some good build up. If we see the creature kill a bunch of people, little by little, come out of the shadows and stare your character down while also attempting to kill them, builds fear of the creature. Nemesis did this to tremendous effect in Resident Evil 3 while Alien: Colonial Marine glitches the Alien Queen while also killing the gameplay by not having the proper gameplay to begin with? What? Build up your villains, get me scared! Stick to your mechanics! It's not a hard concept.

Resources

How much do you starve your player of health, ammunition and other items? What is too much or too little? Some games will get it so right that you will naturally conserve your resources while keeping a steady flow of death. Other games, if you shoot one bullet out of line, you have already used too much and you need to backtrack to get the bullet back into your gun. Deep Fear took this concept and said, "no, I'll just put a place where you can replenish health and ammunition infinitely", this broke the tension as a whole. 

This concept needs to work throughout the entire game the same way each time, or it will not work. This is a very delicate game mechanic, but it can be so beautifully pulled off as to make your game one where the player will return time and time again. 

The Ending

Yes, your game needs an END. It does not need to keep going for decades upon decades upon however long as a series/loosely strung together bunch of games. D took a good way about this, in that each game was a separate concept. The problem there is that some of the games could have benefitted from taking more of the first game's idea. When games have endings, with stories today, you can bet they're either going to retcon the last ending to continue the series or just ignore the lore and continue regardless. Neither of these are a good idea, but happens so wearily often! 

The story is one of the hardest parts to get right. Resident Evil 7 did this concept a lot of justice all the way up until it gave you a choice between saving two ladies. One breaks the story entirely, the other only breaks the story a little bit. The choice should have never been in the game, as the story was already a little convoluted, but that's just how it goes. 

This is also a good place to draw this Saturn SPEWWWWKIES!!!! 2024 feature to a close. It is a lot of fun to explore but it is vast and there is so much to talk about. Halloween is fun to celebrate and fighting off horrific creatures is a fantastic way to spend the holiday. Invite over some friends and play some local multiplayer or LANs. Share some scares this season and remember to jump out when they least expect it! VirtuaAAAAHHHHH!!!!!

Horror in Gaming - Try Not to Die (Pt 2)

The Horror Genre Article continues in the Virtua Month of Horror SPEEWWWKAAAAA!!! Now we're talking about the games that got it wrong and a deeper look at what makes and breaks the concept! Try to keep your brains! 

As amazing a concept as it can be, there can be plenty that can go wrong with Survival Horror at its very core. There are games that get their weapons and the feeling of shooting completely wrong. Sometimes, the targetting system can be awkward on purpose to enhance the scare effect of helplessness. Some games take this to mean they can make the targetting system as rubbish as possible and that will work. No, do not do that.

Where Alien Isolation got this concept to a near perfect, if somewhat languid experience, Agony took the concept of running and hiding and shat it right out. You need to be able to hide. Agony glitches so badly, hiding is utterly useless more often than not. When you are running and hiding from the farmer guy, Jack Baker in RE7, you feel the horror! If you have a knife against his shovel, you feel raw terror when you see him bust through a wall saying "There you are!" That sort of real feeling of helplessness is what you need and it goes so far when you can do nothing but run and hide. If you can't even run and hide, however, what can you do? Die! That's what! Then you'll probably turn off the game!

Running and hiding was a concept that put Five Nights at Freddy's on the map. While it dropped the ball on the concept of jump scares that aren't annoying as all hell, it still garnered a following from sheer gameplay and building challenge. That, plus the lore and the characters. 

There we come to a core that can also make or break a game. The story and the characters can bring your game from good to LEGENDARY and that is no exaggeration. FNAF has a great lore when it's not walking all over itself and forgetting whole chapters. Cut out your own square of Silent Hill's story, if you'd like, because it also gets choppy after the first few games, but what is there is very well crafted with subjects of psyche and the subconscious. 

Even if the story and the characters only work in one game, that can catapult that game into the stars. Doom had the most minimal story and character, but somehow brought Doomguy to the mainstream in a way that cements him there still today. Dead Space, the first and only the first game, has a pretty decent story to pull you along the haunted space corridors to fight space monsters with a space spinal suit. It and Half-life brought about an amazing use of the silent hero because he is you and you are looking for a way out and a way to survive. 

Then there are plenty of games that dropped the ball on Resident Evil. Yes, Resident Evil was a genre all its own, basically, because no one remembers Resident Evil Survivor everyone needed tank controls, slow moving enemies, scarce resources and stupid dialogue. They took all of these elements of the game and spilled them over the pavement. This, plus the fact that there were SO MANY of them! Just look at my Worst Games of the Sega Saturn 2 you will see plenty of them. Not all of them are the worst examples, but there are some very horrible ones (not in a good way). Then there's Countdown: Vampires, Deep Fear, and I could go on for days listing them. Trust me. There are a lot. 

There are so many concepts that go into Horror in gaming, as stated before. I've scratched the surface of games that do this well and not well, but these gameplay mechanics and visual style cannot be overstated. So, let's keep this going and keep these articles from being novels! Virtua SPEEEWWWWWMOOMOOMOO!!!!  

Horror in Gaming - Survive or SurDie! (Pt 1)

 Welcome, one and all, to the month of Virtua SPEEEWWWWKIEKINS!!! Get ready for the scary, the spooky and the monstrous games you know and love! Perhaps, you'll find some you want to try and we are here to endorse this notion! Let the Virtua Spooky Season begin!!!

Survival Horror, Zombie Shooters, and Horror in general can make for some of the greatest and the stupidest games ever made! Hyperbole abound! People will spend their paychecks when they see that you're killing zombies, vampires, werewolves, monsters and sludge creatures. It could be a cardboard monster on a stick. If it's well placed, jumps out when we don't expect it and keeps us on our toes, it can work for this genre. 

                                   

The fact that video games are an interactive medium makes it very, very unique, if you have not noticed. Doing anything more customizable requires schooling and skillcrafting. Video games require practice and that practice is quite often the most fun in one person's life. Teaching your brain to play the game and dealing with the horrors for the first time gives you the horror experience as if you are there and you are facing down Jason Vorhees yourself, then you can BE Jason Voorhees. 

Well that's great! All of the blood and the guts that we want and we can make that happen! Games such as Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, House of the Dead 1 & 2, The Dead Rising Series, CarnEvil and any number of other games have captured us with the concept of mowing down zombies in ridiculous numbers and working with friends and family to do so. These simple shoot'em ups and run and gun games were not "easy" to make, but they were not rocket science in terms of getting the formula. A good, chunky sound effect, a good recoil of your weapon, repercussion of the zombie's reaction and splatter of blood all accumulated into an experience that is real and fake enough to trick your brain into thinking you just blasted something full force with metal shreds. 

The same thing is true for melee weapons on zombies. Half-life captured this concept with the crowbar and Left 4 Dead did it very well with the axe. Then there are the chainsaws from Doom and Gears of War. You need the blood and you need the recoil from the hit. It needs to feel like I have hit someone really hard with the intent to kill. 

Fairly simple if you work at it. In no way is game development labeled as "easy". This is especially true for another very well known of the horror gaming genre, Survival Horror. After Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, this genre exploded with popularity and there is a very good reason for that. This is dynamic, this is also something that can be open to the most creativity and imagination as anyone can put into it. 

PT, Playable Teaser, AKA the failed Silent Hill game that never was, is a well known legend among gamers. Very few people have it on their Playstation 4 and it is well known as one of the greatest demos of all time. The gameplay, while slightly repetitive, draws you deeper into a world of darkness and dread that will keep you in the throes of horror with very little hope of climbing back out. This is mostly because the game was cancelled and this game art of a demo is nothing but a demo. There have been rumors that it will be unearthed some day, but those are just rumors until we see some digital gold and physical nirvana. 

Then came a glimmer of hope that was also quite thoroughly stamped out VERY soon after it was announced. Allison Road was going to pick up where PT left off and the gameplay it boasted was quite similar, along with its horror style and realistic graphics. The public took another hit, but after that, we grew accustomed to disappointment. 

The concept was finally picked up and brought to life by Capcom by none other than the Resident Evil Franchise. For the first time, the RE series got a mainstream first-person survival horror game in the form of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It had the ambience, it had the scares, the gameplay was fun and somewhat challenging and it took the concept to the level we were waiting for. Was everyone happy with it? Obviously not, but it was still a breath of fresh air after some very loud blasts of methane. Though, it doesn't technically take advantage of the zombie concept, it does what it does well with scares and excitement. It had a rather weak third act, but there was plenty of game to love and it brought both the survival and the horror to the table. 

The greatness of this concept is vast and dire, so let's go ahead and say we're going for a Part 2 coming next week for the Month of Virtua SPEEEEEEWWWW all over your dad's shoes!

Doomverse #15 - Brutalization

We have seen so many mods come and go for Doom, and they have kept it thriving throughout the decades since its release in 1993. One of these mods was Brutal Doom. While we will not get into the creator of this mod, given his reputation, you are well within your rights for looking it up. What we are focusing on here is the moderation itself. We're also taking a look at some other mods that have subsequintly come out as a response to this, creating new and exciting experiences for Doom and its many iterations of BRUTAL!

These mods not only bring about new life to the game, but also gave us a taste of what Doom was supposed to look like, according to the original developers. Given PC restrictions back then, they obviously couldn't do everything they wanted. These ports make the game 10 times more violent and has some very amazing weapons to go along with it. These mods, along with GZDoom, transform the game into a full 3D experience with 2D characters. Does that make sense? Kind of?

What you'll notice right off the bat is that they add new flavors to the gameplay in the ways of spectacle. Your guns pack more punch and the blood sprays even harder. Not only that, but their ammo type does different things according to their nature. If you're using the flame-thrower from the Mancubus, the monsters will burst into flame and even begin to panic before they are left a dried, sizzling husk on the ground. Plasmarifles will turn them into a literal pile of dust. Head shots will also have their heads pop off and spurt blood from their neck. Yes, these have "brutal" in their titles for a reason.

There are so many versions of this game, it's kind of hard to review all of them without going into great specifics. It really depends on which one you download and they come with their own features, weapons and even alternate monsters. 

There are black Imps that fire multiple fireballs at once, there are zombies with super shotguns and plasmarifles and there are Cacodemons that spit out smaller Cacodemons. So, now you have some technical Lost Souls coming out and firing fireballs at you as well. They don't do as much damage, but any Doomster will tell you, that adds up. 

Walking up to a monster in the game and hitting the melee button will prompt a cutscene of you basically doing a full on glory kill. You'll punch them or rip them apart until they are splattering blood across the screen. Instead of the predetermined pile of viscera you normally see, they will fall to pieces and those things fly FAR. You even get some gory death animations if a Cacodemon somehow comes up on you and EATS YOU! Hell Nobles can grab you and literally rip you in half with their bare hands. Do not play this game if you are squeamish about gore. You're Doomsters, so my assumption is that we're on the same page. If not, SACK UP!

These mods are also BRUTALLY difficult. If you go up to one of the higher ranking difficulties, you're going to feel the pressure. These monsters are faster and their attacks do more damage, but so do yours! Your guns pack more punch and you can blow apart a lot of them with the supershotgun. There is also the automatic shotgun, which eats up your ammo but also munches some amazing demon flesh. So long as you're moving and circle strafing, you can get out of a lot of situations, but do not stop moving for any reason! 

Project Brutality 8.5 is equipped with a vast array of different guns at your disposal as well. There is one known as the Black Hole Generator and it does exactly what the name implies. Now, it is awesome and all that, but it also comes with its own little pitfalls. The generator takes a few seconds to actually fire, and when it does, it will literally vaporize anyone in its path, especially the smaller mobs. It will suck in all of those around it and even bring the Cyberdemon down to a fraction of his health. Be VERY careful, though, because if you touch or even get near this BLACK HOLE, you will also die immediately, no questions asked. Your death animation will often show you becoming a small pile of dust and it's rather humorous. 

Brutal Pack V10, developed by JTC3, dropped in September of 2024 and it has a very different twist to its mod. The weapons are more grounded with the Doom weapons of old, but they also do a tremendous amount of damage. This, however, is to make up for the absolute ferocity of the monsters within. These monsters are fast and they run at you like a linebacker, ready to break your face on their horns! The Barons of Hell, you can blast rockets in their faces all day and they will keep firing these multiple fireball attacks at you until you burn. This mod earns the name Brutal because sweet mercy! 

The great things about all of these mods and updates are that they are completely free and they can be paired with any facet of Doom. You can create maps of your own and put any of them through the meat grinder! There are mods that pair Brutal Doom with Doom 2016 and you can basically get the more 2.5D experience, if that's what you fancy. The possibilities are limitless and we have barely even scratched the surface! 

Just give it a try. All you need to do is download it, get GZDoom and the Doom 2 pk3, put drag them all to one place and you're set! Look up tutorials for it if you need to, you'll get the experience. It is worth it! Do not miss out on these amazing mods and make sure you tear those demons a new one! The Icon of Sin may come out with mutliple heads, the cyber imps may shoot rapid fireballs at you and they may come at you from all angles! You are the one who grinds them into meat! Show no mercy!

GAMERS! Do not be Bullied, Vote with your Wallets

As much as I hate to step out of the beautiful, nostalgic world of old video games, I feel that there is a current issue that needs to be addressed. There is a plague that has held the industry in some strange new form of relationship with their fans. They seem to think that they are high and mighty enough, and talented enough to come back at the fans who complain about their products. Fans have not been happy with a lot of titles that have been coming out as of late, and they got it in their heads that they can fire back with childish insults. I'm sorry, WHAT?! 

If you really think it is a good business practice to shoot childish names at people who do not enjoy your game, you deserve every single piece of bad karma that comes. Publishers and Game Developers in multimillion dollar companies think that they are untouchable and that they will make their money back regardless. This has been proven to not be the case at all. Fans have far more power than they realize and it has become apparent that they can sniff out bad titles when they come knocking. Fans have rejected these horrible games entirely. 

Concord is a perfect example of the industry not listening to fans. Sony were convinced that they had a real winner on their hands, but then the backlash began to grow louder. They took the criticism and the harsh memes, which are a staple of the internet at this point, and came back with names such as "talentless hacks" and whatever else they could pull out of their hats at the moment. This tactic has never been proven valid, nor should it have been used in the first place. Every single time they have lashed out at fans, they have had a far harder reaction and their products fail after that. Concord lost the company 400 million dollars. Yes, they had that much faith that it would succeed. It did not succeed. In fact its sales were in the 5 digits, which is absurdly low. The game went live for less than two weeks before it was shut completely down. According to one of the developers, they were so certain that it would be a success, that saying anything to the contrary was met with punishment. 

It's hard to see how the fans are "toxic" when developers and publishers have been proven to be just that. Programmers for games have come out of a game, brimming with horror stories about being in a sweat shop and told to keep their mouths shut and keep coloring. Heads of studios are treating these people like garbage and they have the gall to call us toxic fan babies? 

It is time to face the facts and realize that these companies are not our friends and they do not care about our opinions. As stupid as that sounds, it has proven time and time again to be true. Fans have a weapon that they are using to combat this and they are abstaining from these titles. Companies like Ubisoft, Sony, CD Projekt, Electronic Arts, Activision and Warner Brothers are starting to notice a severe dip in sales. These people in their companies continuously take to social media and tell people that if they don't like their game, then don't play it. Then, whenever they do not meet the sales that they thought, they will go back to social media again and insult them for not playing their games. Rinse and repeat. Stop it!

It is very important that we, as gamers, stick to our guns and not accept anything other than what we want to play. They can call us names and tell us we're wrong all they want. At the end of the day, it's our money, we earned it with our sweat and we deserve a product that reflects our interests. At this time, it is very important to do our research and know what we are buying. There are so many times a company will tell us one thing, only to have us find out that it was not only false, but it was a deliberate lie in order to get presales. 

Presales need to be monitored very closely, dear friends. After horrific ordeals, such as Cyberpunk 2077's release, No Man's Sky's release and any number of looter shooters and/or Live Service Games, we need to make sure that we are getting the product we paid for. There are so many examples of when developers were given no time to work on a game, they showcase gameplay that was doctored to look and play better. Once the game actually comes out, it is an entirely different experience than was promised. 

You are not toxic because a game does not look good to you. If you laugh and make fun of a game, that means you have a sense of humor. It does not give companies the right to lump you in with a "toxic fanbase". No, you are a fan of video games and you know what you like. There is no shame in this and they will say anything to get those pennies out of your pocket. Inflation and costs are at an all-time high and we need to be pinching those damn things. When you abstain, you win! We win!

Do not be petty and do not take to social media to threaten or bully these people. We don't need to sink to their level and it's clear they are just blowing off steam. When all is said and done, they are not getting our money and that is killing them just fine. There's no need to threaten others with violence or to wish them dead just because they made a bad game and said some bad things. We need to be civil, while also being tongue in cheek. The memes, the jokes, the playful riffing, all of that is fine, especially when you want to keep each other informed. 

Keeping each other in the know is how we are going to succeed. Communication with our fellow gamers and making HONEST game reviews is how we are going to keep our bank accounts full and bad publishers' coffers running dry. If a review is telling you to go out and buy a game without any further information or trying to make you feel guilty for NOT buying their product, stop and think. They are a gigantic corporation and these people are being paid to get you to pay them. 

Overall, it is very prudent to make sure that you are not guilted into thinking you are less of a person or you are someone you are not. You are not these things they say just because you do not want their title. That simply means you have taste and you want something better. Do not feel bad about wanting something better. Keep in touch with friends, watch your favorite youtube reviewer and listen to those you trust. I can tell you to try out games until the cows come home, but in the end, the choice is yours! The power of no money spent is worth all of the money you saved. Remember what Stan Lee said about power. Nuff said.

The Horde - Facepalm the Game!

 

If there was one constant throughout the fifth generation and any other time, it's that Full Motion Video ruins nearly everything it touches. The problem is, very few actors worth their salt would go near this video game medium because it was always frowned upon by A-list actors. With a track record like this, you would be hard pressed to blame them. Anytime some Joe Schmo got in front of that full motion camera, they would unleash the ham of an overpaid, underqualified, hack Shakespearian actor.

The Horde falls into this trap in many more ways than one. Not only does it give us acting akin to a high school production but it also gives us a nonsensical plot that adds literally nothing to the gameplay. It also gave us Kirk Cameron, which deducts even more points. Sitting through these video segments will cause you to wince in pain, at best.

You are a total wuss who was given the job of defending against the Horde. You have no experience fighting, you are, as mentioned, a total wuss and you can barely lift your sword. This drives up the BS controls and encourages you to play something else, because this gimmick weighs thin very fast.

You have to fight the Horde in order to get paid to pay town taxes. Yes, that is correct. Not only are you handed a job that you suck at but you need to perform it to pay some jackass who tries to act villainous. Problem is, that would require talent. 

The more you fight the Horde, the more difficult these fights are. You also set up traps because to rely on your sword is like trusting your mum to not embarrass you in literally every way ever (Mommy issues? Me? Nooooo). By now, you've either gotten into the game or you've devolved into making cheap Yo Mama jokes out of boredom. Guess where I stand on the matter.

Yes, the game can be considered cute and it's not devoid of charm, it's just hard to give it credit. The FMV segments suck the life out of the title from the get go and the monetary system itself makes no sense no matter how you look at it. It's there to build tension with a deadline but with no real logical story reason for it, it seems tacked on and thick with annoyances. You see? I started this paragraph in order to give this game some pros. Now look where it got me!

This is another playthrough to see if this game still deserves to be on the Top 20 Worst. The answer is yes, if you couldn't tell. Some have stated that they like this game. By all means, take it and keep it. I found it disengaging and annoying in its cheap gimmicks and annoying combat syste.. I would love to share the loving sentiment but an orc ate it... or whatever those things are. Hell, I don't know, I wasn't paying that much attention. Virtua snooze.

Daytona USA and Championship Circuit - Wheels of Love and Hate

 So, if you've been paying attention for the past fifty some odd articles, you may have noticed that I have an attachment to what I like to call the "Saturn Tri-Force" games that came with the system. Among these games came one of the very few racing games that you will likely see me play. Daytona USA was lambasted for its sketchy framerates, lower end graphics, lack of game modes and just overall did not live up to the arcade version. As a ten year old, I did not care about this, I just loved to race in it. 

First off, the music in this game was immaculate. You could listen to all of these songs for hours and they would be stuck in your head for the rest of your life no matter what. The sound effects in general were memorable. Even when the guy in the intercom kept pestering you to "Go easy on the car!" or worrying about you after a crash "Are you alright?" 

Yes, the graphics aren't great. The rendering is pretty bad as you keep racing and the scenery spawns into existence rather than getting closer. The problem is that I really don't care. Graphics are secondary for me at best, unless they directly affect gameplay or are overly distracting in some form or another and there's really none of that here. 

Am I good at racing games? No, not really. I so rarely play them that my enjoyment is mostly out of simple nostalgia and mindless fun. There is not much else to it as far as Daytona USA is concerned. 

Then, of course, they had to screw with it. Enter the Championship Circuit. Here we have more maps, more cars, much cleaner graphics, and more "realistic" driving statistics for the new cars on display. All of this should be a great new package for an already nostalgic, great game, right? I'm sure there are plenty of people who think so, so this may be considered a hot take.

But, no, no this is not a great new package at all. In fact, this game seemed to have sacrificed a lot more than it added. Yes, the maps are cool to have and it's nice to have the new car options. But the big problem here is that the new cars should come with a good ten second warranty attached to some of them because if you go for less grip on the tires, the car handles like absolute garbage. Your tires will continuously peel and you will ride around with a smoke cloud following you like you're Pig-Pen from Peanuts. The stats on these cars are wonky and that's just for starters.

The new graphics on this are cleaner. In fact, they're so clean that they look sterilized. Your car gets a huge dent in its frame after you've crashed more than once and everything just looks saturated. It's like when you play an old movie on 4K, without the film grain, it looks like a soap opera. Sega Saturn is at its best with blocky, blurry polygons. I cannot be the only one who thinks this! 

One good thing this version brought about was making a 2-player version. The graphics chug pretty hard, but it's still plenty good enough to have yourself a good time with a friend and/or family member. Though, I will say that sometimes those sprites in the background get a little choppy and holes in the Earth seem to come out of nowhere because this is a lot of rendering it's trying to do for a 32-bit system. The Saturn definitely had its limits, but I can't get onto Daytona: CC for trying. 

No, what I can get onto this edition for are two things. Everything else has been somewhat annoying or head shakingly bad, but not game breakers. However, these two things are absolutely unforgiveable. There is a lot I can put up with, but when it screws up the enjoyment this bad, we have a real problem. 

No Saturn Mode? Really? One of the huge draws to the Saturn version of Daytona USA was that they had a version where you did not need to keep going through checkpoints to finish the race or feed your paycheck into a coin slot. In this version, you can be in position 10 out of 40 and you can still run out of time between checkpoints and the race is over. Yes, I know I'm not good at racing games, but having this reminder for it is a forehead slapper! You put in a 2-player version and you toss out the Saturn Mode, but you keep the "Arcade Mode"? Are you crazy?! One serious mistake from your threadbare tires and it is over! That is just cutting into the enjoyment and putting a brickwall in front of players that are just there for a little escapism. 

                                                                                (© Penny Arcade)

The worst thing the Championship Circuit Edition did was absolutely atrocious! Why in the hell would you change the SOUNDTRACK?! Of all the things, adding these generic, terrible knockoff Hooty and the Blowfish sounding tracks has to be on the top of my list of arrestable offenses. The versions of the old songs they add to this edition are shadows of the former game and everything else is just heart wrenching. Daytona USA was awesome for its strange, otherworldly soundtrack and it added a personality to it that many of us could get behind! They were so catchy and wonderful, this blatantly ruins everything! 

Once again, I am fanboying it up and acting like an unhappy Saturn-freak who cannot be pleased. By the same token, this is a case of fixing something that was not broken. You may as well have made this game into an entirely different title or a spinoff of some sort. As a remaster, this is fidgety to say the least. There are many of you who love this port of the game and more power to you. This is a subjective review, yes, but I do tell the truth how I see it and sometimes it's just good to stay old fashioned. If you treat these both as separate entities, CC isn't so bad. Whatever your thoughts, just drive safely, remember to leave the beer at home and drink water.

Myst vs D - Point and Puzzlers

 Back in the hayday of our favorite console, there weren't a whole lot of games to fit in each and every genre. Now days, we have games that fit in to just about every niche one could possibly think of and can often find a decent amount in each one. Back in 1995, this was not the case, especially when it comes to consoles. Point and click adventures, on the other hand, were commonplace and there were plenty of them. The Sega Saturn sported two that we will be comparing today. D and Myst were two prominent titles on the system in North America because they were very commonly found in stores. When both sport such similar gameplay but in strikingly different ways. Both have strong cult followings and both have puzzles and explorative features that all can enjoy. 

One difference that a player will notice immediately is the setting. Myst is more akin to a different planet while D is far more like a haunted mansion (aside from the hospital cut scene at the very beginning). Another very noticeable difference is the way you move. This may seem like a cosmetic feature, but it is far more important than one might think. Myst has a fade effect when it comes to the point and click movement. Once you click forward or whatever direction you're wanting to go, the screen goes out then comes back in with your movement progression. D, on the other hand, you actually see yourself move forward. You walk slowly and actually turn in a visible way. The real difference is not only graphical movement, but also atmosphere. 

Atmosphere is one of the key factors that set these two games apart. Where Myst is an otherworldly experience with discovery and puzzles, D is a horror experience with discovery and puzzles. Not only does D sport a more gothic, macabre feel to it, but it also boasts a soundtrack that plays an eerie sound throughout your experience. This background soundtrack keeps you feeling that unsettling creep factor all throughout. 

While Myst does possess a more diverse list of levels, it lacks heavily when it comes to any sort of atmosphere. This is due to there being next to no soundtrack. There are some outside sounds and sometimes that's pretty nice, but after a while, many will find themselves pining for some music or more background noise. 

Another point of comparison is... oh boy... the acting. I'm going to be honest, Myst will always lose when it comes to acting. The voice acting from D isn't great, because it's all just Dr. Harris, Laura's father, popping in and telling her that she shouldn't be doing things. Myst, on the other hand, is some of the worst acting this side of the Sega systems. The brothers you choose to either set free from the books or not set free from the books come to you, say they want pages and they ham it up like they're trying to win a Razzie. It is physically painful to watch. 

To more of D's credit, it also sets itself ahead of Myst in the ways of character. You play Laura Harris, a young woman who is trapped in her father's mind and is forced to work her way through his house of horrors in order to save him from insanity. You are a human being with a clear goal and an emotional connection with the situation. Not only do you know she is trying to save her father, you can also see her reactions to her situation as they happen. We feel her tension and we see how horrific her circumstances are and thus we are engaged. 

Myst has a severe lacking of any of this. We are a faceless person who teleports around to places, collecting pages and putting them into books with psychopathic thespians who apparently couldn't pass Drama 101. There's some sense of awe when we see the scenery, especially if you're seeing these graphics back in the mid 90's for the first time. However, you don't see your character reacting to these events and you don't have any sort of connection to them at all, aside from being the player. This makes all of the difference in the world. 

[Spoilers] D is not a perfect game, it has its flaws and it's got very little replay factors aside from some background beetles that tend to show up at random and the option to either join your father or kill him. Myst has the replay factor where you either want to go the long way through the game or the short way through the game to get the different endings. Both games have different endings and both games have their ups and downs. From a story and atmospheric point of view, D has the goods. Either way, both games will scratch your itch for exploration and both games are rather short in length, especially if you know your way around the puzzles already. Science Fiction nuts will probably prefer Myst while Horror fanatics will probably have more fun with D. It's all up to taste. By the way D stands for Dracula! I SAID SPOILERS! NO TAKE BACKS!