I didn’t expect to enjoy ‘Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse’ this much, but I did. Unlike many AD&D-licensed games at the time, ‘TGC’ is an action adventure game with VERY light RPG elements. It could have dropped its D&D foundation and the game would have been just as fun, if not more. In fact, you have so little control (if any at all) over your character’s customization and progression that ‘TGC’ ends up being very similar to ‘The Legend of Zelda’ games. Its similarity to ‘Zelda’ is not a bad thing. The game’s emphasis on action adventure and showcasing its game world makes it very accessible. Still, it isn’t an easy game, mostly because the combat is somewhat clumsy. Unlike ‘Zelda’, there’s very little visual feedback on whether or not you’ve hit your enemy, and when you’ve been hit. When a large part of the game involves fighting, this can get pretty frustrating. (You’d think that ‘TGC’, being a 1994 game, would have benefitted from studying what made the three ‘Zelda’ games that had been released by that time so great.) Thankfully, you can save your game anywhere. Once you’ve got past the slightly clunky combat, ‘TGC’ is quite fun. The adventuring and puzzle solving are what make this game so memorable. Most NPCs have something to say, even if you aren’t meant to interact with them further for side quests. The story is simple (restore family’s honour and rescue the princess/bride-to-be), and the ‘Arabian Nights’-inspired setting of Al-Qadim is refreshing even by year 2020 standard. While I think ‘TGC’ would have been a tighter game if it dropped its D&D foundation altogether (or at the very least hide it better), it’s great game overall. It may not be close to being perfect, but the large-scale adventuring surprisingly makes it one of my favourite games. Extra notes: Try hitting the left Alt key to see how it affects movement. You may need to slow down DOSBox to complete one of the side quests.
‘The Dig’ is one of the lesser known LucasArts adventure game for a reason – it’s not very good. But I’ll say this: this game establishes its setting very well. The alien planet in which the game is set is beautifully imagined and drawn. For the most part, the terrain, technology, and logic behind how some things work are unusual enough that you’ll believe you’re exploring a new world. It’s a shame then that ‘The Dig’ is generally devoid of life and interesting things to do. The planet is barren, and you’ll spend much of your time finding items and solving many puzzles that require much trial and error. While those may be in line with the characters guessing their way around an alien planet, they don’t make an adventure game fun. I often found myself not sure of what to do next, or how to if I happened to know. That’s because the game rarely presents puzzles in ways that you’ll know what you’re working with, or gives you sufficient context to figure it out. Solutions can be frustratingly inelegant, too. You’d think that with three characters stranded on the planet, there’d be plenty opportunity for some teamwork in solving puzzles. There isn’t. You’ll spend most of the game exploring alone. Although you can chat with your teammates at times, they’d usually want you to leave them be. Overall, it feels like that the puzzles were more of an afterthought, with exploration of the planet being emphasized instead. ‘The Dig’ is a serious game, which isn’t a bad thing if the drama, tension and suspense are properly presented. Unfortunately they’re not. In one tense moment of the game, in which a character’s life is on the line, the other two just saunter and talk. The game’s pacing is too slow, with more backtracking and repetition than I cared for. While the graphics are colourful, other aspects of the presentation are flat. Sadly for me, ‘The Dig’ is a disappointing game. You may be better off watching a Let’s Play video of it on YouTube if you’re curious about it.
‘The Adventures of Willy Beamish’ was the Dynamix adventure game that I had wanted most. The ads for it back in the day suggested it to be a game like a Saturday morning cartoon. It turned out it was anything but. ‘TAoWB’ is really for grown-up audience. It’s filled with references and parodies that only adults at the time would understand. The puzzles can be difficult and obtuse, and they’re often timed. Mistakes often lead to immediate failure, meaning much trial and error is needed to complete the game without help. The cartoon aesthetics belie the game’s mature content, yet the tone is inconsistent. One moment there’d be fart jokes, frog jumping contests, and ninjas, the next there’d be busty nurses, shady businesses, and references to West Side Story. Early parts of the game may suggest there’re multiple solutions to problems, but the game is quite restrictive overall. It may seem like you can carry out much pre-teen mischief, but you really must behave to win. The story doesn’t make sense even if it’s written for adults. ‘TAoWB’ would be easy to hate if it weren’t for the graphics. It’s great looking game, with detailed, hand-drawn, and painted backdrops; and characters DO look like they’re from Saturday morning cartoons. I’ve played both floppy disk and CD versions, and I think the former is superior. The static art of the former fit better with the game, than the lip-synced animation of the latter. The talking animation looks off enough to show that they’re an afterthought. The CD version also has bad voice acting. The sound quality is inconsistent, the narration and voice acting are annoying, and some actors were clearly miscast. While the flaws of ‘TAoWB’ are glaring, I still recommend it. Before ‘TAoWB’, there wasn’t any mature adventure games that looked quite like it. Where it failed was later done much better by games like ‘Day of the Tentacle’ and ‘Full Throttle’. ‘TAoWB’ is a pioneer in that regard, and that itself makes it worth checking out.
Of the three Dynamix adventure games, I have the vaguest memory of ‘Rise of the Dragon’. I remember playing it, but I don’t recall much about its story or characters. Having just replayed it, I can understand why it didn’t leave a very strong impression on me. First, I must state that ‘RotD’ is a great looking game. It captures the cyberpunk aesthetics very well, and the art reminds me of some science fiction comics curated by Heavy Metal magazine. Even visual artifacts that came from scanning the hand-drawn art using early generations of scanners didn’t take away its beauty. ‘RotD’ is also a fine adventure game. While you do race against time, it’s not punishing, for small missteps don’t mean immediate failure. Yet, if you know what you’re doing, ‘RotD’ can be a very short game with moments of waiting for time-triggered events. It has a mature story with multiple possible endings, but it’s rather formulaic. If it weren’t for the art, I’d have forgot about ‘RotD’ all together. The game is also problematic in other areas. These include the annoying action sequences, which can thankfully be skipped upon 5 failed attempts; a frustrating puzzle that requires exact placement of items down to the pixel; and portrayal of Chinese as either wise oracles or evil gangsters that’s borderline offensive even back in the day. ‘RotD’ is a product of its time. Yet, some clichés that are less cool nowadays can be a bit charming when viewed through a nostalgic lens. It’s amusing that the hero is named William “Blade” Hunter, when the game’s aesthetics is clearly inspired by ‘Blade Runner’, the movie. Even his girlfriend calls him “Blade” instead of “Bill” or “Will”, likely because anything but will make him seem less masculine! ‘RotD’ is a game held back by its triteness and short length, but elevated by its aesthetics. While its flaws become more apparent with time, it’s still a fun adventure. It’s worth checking out as part of exploring Dynamix’s adventure game library.
For this installment of A Casual Fighting Game Player Reviews..., I’ll be reviewing ‘The King of Fighters 2002’. Having recently played ‘KOF 14’, I decided to dig this game out of my backlog and try it out. This version of ‘KOF 2002’ is an arcade ROM running on an emulator. GRAPHICS: ‘KOF 2002’ is not an ugly game, but it’s not a great looking one either. Compared to its peers at the time (e.g. ‘Street Fighter III’, ‘Guilty Gear X’), the graphics in this game seem behind the times. While I like the game’s detailed and atmospheric backgrounds, they’re a bit static for my taste. GAMEPLAY: ‘KOF 2002’ is a fast-paced 3-v-3 fighting game. Given it’s an arcade port, there’re no command lists for you to refer to, no tutorials, and no training stages. There’s a steep learning curve given how fast the game is. Some trial and error will be needed to learn the game, and you may need to refer to a list of special moves somewhere on the Internet. That’s not hard to do if it weren’t for the controls. This game is made worse by the emulator that runs it. Setup options for it aren’t clear, and you can’t remap keys. The keyboard controls shown on screen are also incorrect! Whoever suggested mapping the 4 action buttons to Q, W, X and C keys should be fired. GOG support clarifies that the keys should be, Z, X, C and A? A?! Why not V? Whoever mapped those keys should be fired, too. At least the emulator allows for game state saving. That made the game more tolerable given how challenging the final boss is. Nothing that came before in this game prepared me for the boss fight. Thankfully, the game offered merciful continue options (e.g. lowering difficulty, reducing enemy’s health to 1/3) that helped me to finish the game. FUN FACTOR: This game is honestly not that much fun, mainly because of the emulator. The sharp increase in difficulty for the boss fight was done to trick you out of your money at the arcades. SHOULD YOU PLAY ‘KOF 2002’? No.
‘Covert Action’ may be 30 years old at the time of this review, but it’s still a captivating game to play despite its age and flaws. In it, you play Max Remington, THE ONLY freelance secret agent in the (ENTIRE) western world. You’ve been called in to complete a series of important missions with the CIA. You’ll need to infiltrate enemy buildings, tail suspects by car or escape from being followed yourself, decrypt coded messages, and install wiretaps to gather intelligence. The game is played out via 4 types of mini-games. How much you enjoy ‘CA’ will greatly depend on how much you like them. They’re either action-oriented (combat/infiltration, driving) or of the puzzle/strategy variety (cryptography, wiretapping). I enjoyed cryptography most, and I eventually got used to combat/infiltration despite it being clunky and slow even by 1980/90 standard. Make sure you have a full-size keyboard or joystick for the latter. The ultimate goal is for you is to capture 26 (not a more manageable 5 to 10) Masterminds who devise evil plots. The game randomly generates the specifics of each mission, so that it’s more replayable and unpredictable. Yet, ‘CA’ also ends up not having an overarching story, and the missions don’t really mean much when the villains and criminal/terrorist organizations are literally interchangeable. For a game presenting the incredible and romanticized notion of an incorruptible, legendary western spy who can do it all, it’s disappointing that it lacks drama to propel itself forward. In the end, it’s your personal determination to foil criminal/terrorist plots, and your appreciation for the mini-games that drive the game. I had a great time playing ‘CA’ and I was resolute in capturing a Mastermind, despite ending up thwarting the same plot twice by chance. Once I’ve caught my first one, I felt accomplished and empowered. At the same time, I was also happy to call it day. The CIA will need to find another Max Remington to catch the other 25 Masterminds.
‘State of Mind’ has the ingredients for a great cyberpunk game, but they never come together in a way to make it one. The developers lacked restraint in using them properly to turn ‘State of Mind’ into a focused experience. By the end, I was still wondering what they were trying to say about transhumanism, and the impact of AI on humanity and society. I was initially absorbed by the deliberate pacing of the story as it built toward the first climax. Yet, the ideas presented during the first part never came together cohesively. A few plot points that were introduced were either rushed to conclusion, or never properly resolved. I was surprised when the game just ended without satisfactory resolutions to the heroes’ journeys. In this game, you mainly control protagonists Richard Nolan and Adam Newman, whose fates are intertwined in ways they didn’t expect. Richard is an unlikeable character, and his main mission is to find his missing wife and son. Yet, I never understood his motivation for finding them, and the game is so unfocused that much of it is spent doing other things. I actually found Adam’s incentives to be more believable. It’s not a good thing when the secondary protagonist outshines the primary. Throughout the game, I tried to redeem Richard by improving his relationships with the supporting cast, but the ending never delivered the payoff. It seemed like Richard, in spite of his trials, couldn’t evolve as a character. Narratively, that’s unacceptable for a broken protagonist like him. This brings me to the most annoying part of the game: why was I also playing as a prostitute, an android, and Richard’s son at various points? It added nothing to Richard and Adam’s growth and journey, and only made the game drag on. If anything, ‘State of Mind’ is a great looking game. Too bad that it’s a beautiful mess that could have been a great game if the ideas were more focused, the gameplay more honed in, and the character development better thought out.
Larry Laffer has always been a man stuck in time. Even in ‘Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!’ (1996), he continued to embrace his 1970s fashion and sensibilities wholeheartedly despite his long history of misadventures with women. The world has changed a lot since 1996. The brand of humour that Al Lowe is known for aren’t as appealing or widely acceptable anymore. So even if Lowe continues to make ‘LSL’ games, you’ve got to wonder if they’d be as popular as the ones in the 1980s/90s, let alone survive the current sociopolitical climate. So, it was VERY surprising to see Larry make a comeback with ‘Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry’, a soft reboot of the series. It acknowledges and honours past ‘LSL’ games, but forges its own new path without Lowe’s involvement. While there’re fewer sexual innuendos than the first five ‘LSL’ games, ‘WDDD’ can be as raunchy as ‘Love for Sail!’. It’s thankfully also funny, though the humour may not be so tongue in cheek. You’ll still get to see Larry screw up his encounters with women by chance or by his own doing. Having Larry waking up to find himself in the 21st century (for some reason), trying to make sense of modern technology and dating practices, celebrating gay love as much as his being titillated by lesbian love, and the game mocking hipsters and social media culture are amusing. However, while ‘WDDD’ certainly doesn’t shy away from the naughty bits, it’s nowhere as sexy as ‘LSL3’ or ‘Love for Sail!’. This may be an unpopular opinion, but departing from Lowe’s style of humour from the 1970s/80s helps ‘WDDD’ from being seen as old-fashioned. This game won’t win the approval of all fans of classic ‘LSL’ games, but I think it’s an admirable, competent soft reboot. It’s really worth giving a chance, especially now that it’s getting a sequel. Who knows? This just may be the start of a ‘LSL’ renaissance.
‘Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded’ is really made for fans of the original ‘Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards’. These are PC adventure gamers of the 1970s/80s who grew up with a particular type of humour about sex and stereotypes. I’m one of these gamers. Anyone outside of this demographic will likely find the classic ‘LSL’ games, let alone ‘LSLR’, unappealing and offensive. I played ‘LSLR’ when it first came out in 2013. Back then I had my nostalgia goggles on and thought it was a great remake. Seven years later, I still think ‘LSLR’ is a great looking game, with its art style in line with 1996’s ‘Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!’. The jokes in ‘LSLR’ are understandably dated since it’s a remake. Now with my nostalgia goggles off, I can also see how this game’s modern aesthetics and dated contents are in dissonance with each other. Larry is a funny character because he’s a man stuck in time, who ignorantly thinks his old-fashioned style and attitude hold up in the modern world he inhabits. Similarly, ‘LSLR’ is a game with dated sensibilities that landed in the 2010s. The difference is that Larry dresses like the age of his manners, but ‘LSLR’ looks like it should be more contemporary. Because of that, the mismatch between the game’s visual presentation and attitude isn’t all that funny. Let’s be honest, giving Larry a makeover won’t change who he is inside. In the same vein, ‘LSLR’ is meant to have the sensibilities of the original ‘LSL’, even if it has been given a modern look. I can see why it may not appeal to modern audience, or fit in in the gaming market of the 2010s/20s. Yet, just as Larry has his Passionate Patti, who understands him in spite of his imperfections, ‘LSLR’ has fans who understand the historical context from which the game originated. This is the target audience -- those who will appreciate ‘LSLR’ what it is even though its looks don’t reflect what’s inside.
“When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight,” ‘Love’s Labours Lost’ (5.2.23 – 26) I started playing ‘Flower’, thinking it’d be a relaxing game for me to relieve stress. And why wouldn’t I? Look at those screenshots and videos of flying petals and swaying grass! Check out the dreary, monochromatic landscape transforming into lush, colourful terrain as the petals swoop by! For a while, ‘Flower’ was indeed relaxing, washing away the stress that weighed down on my shoulders. I love how, beneath its floral veneer, the game really just has you flying through “rings”, with the rings being flowers. This is really not a bad thing because this simplicity – along with no time limits and no deaths – makes ‘Flower’ easy to play and enjoy. Then I realized there’re secrets to discover in the game, like finding a secret flower and a hidden path. After that, ‘Flower’ was no longer the relaxing game I anticipated, for I was constantly looking for secrets, and hunting down the next achievement. But, as I hunt down the achievements with great anticipation, I once again find my spirit being lifted by the floating petals and blooming flowers. No wonder I find ‘Flower’ such an appealing game.
