Rewind Review: Journey

With it’s PS4 update recently released, I thought I would take a literal journey back to one of my favourite Playstation 3 titles of all time,  Journey.  Brought to us by the astonishing minds at Thatgamecompany, creators of Flower and Flow, Journey left quite the lasting impression on me.

It’s beautiful right?

Not unlike Thatgamecompany’s previous efforts, Journey is as much an interactive piece of art as it is a game.  The game drops you into control of your nameless, speechless hooded figure amongst an endless seeming desert, your only real indication of what to do is a short opening sequence showing a falling star crashing into a distant mountain.  With that single action and not a peep of dialogue, the game has already set you on a course to discover exactly what that star was.

Resting in the beautifully detailed sand dunes, and I mean beautiful, the distant mountain shines to give you a focal point to lead your epic quest.  The 3d environment is gorgeous, and seems to go on forever, and you can choose to explore freely at your whim, or plot a direct course for the moment if you so choose.  Movement through the world is smooth as ice.  Your character treks through the sand leaving footprints as signs of his passage, swooping down drifts of sand and trudging up hills.

No caption required

As you explore through this dusty region you discover long forgotten ruins of some ancient society.  Here you will learn the ability to jump, collecting pieces of cloth that lengthen your scarf, allowing you not only jump but glide at points to reach higher areas, or cover large gaps.  You’ll have to solve simple puzzles as you proceed from here to find your way forward, or to free up the magical cloth pieces trapped around the area.

As you continue to explore the world you’ll find new areas.  These areas may be filled with vegetation, or be cavernous areas deep below the earth.  Ancient cities can be found along your Journey as well.  All of these areas have their own features, and points of interests.  Every area leaves glimpses of what seems to be the remnants of a long lost civilisation.  Stones remarking as tombstones, empty buildings, all you give you the feel that these lands used to be filled with life and people, but some strange occurrence transpired to leave it in it’s barren state.

Quiet moment of reflection

As you pass from one to another, you are shown small glimpses of the game’s story through short cut scenes.  These cutscenes make you nothing but more curious to continue, showing you small pieces of this beautiful world’s history and story through hieroglyphic like scenes.

To go along with the beautiful look and feel of Journey comes the amazing soundtrack.  The subtle instrumental tracks flow in the background.  Each area’s music ads gravitas and emotion to your situation.  As you proceed farther into the story and the trek begins to get harder, and harder on your character, this stunning mix of music and visuals helps you to feel everything your character is enduring as if you too were there with him.

Though Journey is primarily a solitary story, there is still a multiplayer aspect to the game.  This is done through an entirely unique approach as each journey you start is open to anyone else who happens to also be journeying to potentially encounter you along the way.  This can happen randomly at any point of the game as you just happen to stumble across someone else.  Though you can use a type of emote to draw attention to yourself when another player is around, there is no chat, or any other type of communication, nor can you identify the person traveling with you by more than a randomized symbol they are represented by.  This creates a truly unique interaction, as you can choose to try and communicate somehow with the other player to help them find the right path, or to seek assistance if you are stuck.  There are also benefits to sticking with someone else as you if you stay close together you gain speed and jumping ability, and can also resist some of the wear of the later areas.

making friends

Each journey is unique, and you can replay as often as you like.  There are several different routes that you can take to your goal, and several hidden gems to find along the way.  Each time you play you may encounter one other player, several or none.  These sometimes fleeting moments of interaction with others adds even more emotion to the game as certain points of the story are extremely heartfelt, and the sight of another person potentially experiencing the same emotions on their journey is quite an unheard of feeling in most modern gaming.

The game’s ending wrenches you from the lowest emotional state, and does a remarkable job of literally launching you and your character on a voyage you will never forget.  This full ark of emotions and senses is so hard to find outside of more grounded places like theatre or a live music event, and is completely welcome within a gaming experiencing.

Can’t show enough of this brilliant game.

Journey looks gorgeous on both PS3 or PS4, regardless of what system you have, so no harm in grabbing the PS3 version to just experience this one in a kind piece of gaming art.  Not taking the time to play this game however would truly be something to regret later on.  Journey remains one of the best games to ever be released on PS3, and is sure to remain one of the better games on it’s new release with the PS4.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s Rewind Review, and be sure to comment and like below and let me know about your Journey.

Check out last week’s Rewind Review.

Rewind Review: Doom

With Doom being re-released, reimagined, remade, whatever in 2016, I thought it would be cool to take a look back at the original in this week’s Rewind Review.

Doom was originally released in 93, and is considered one of the early originators for both modern first person shooters (FPS) and horror games.  Assigned to a post on Mars after being not so nice to your commanding officer, you take the role of, well, Doomguy I guess, for the main character lacks an actual name.  A dull, leisurely duty on Mars is of course interrupted when the massive conglomerate UAC does some experiments deep inside Mars’ moon Phobos that go horribly wrong.  You of course, are sent to investigate and hilarity ensues.  I mean horror, horror ensues.

Come at me braaa!

From here on in, it’s an endless assault on your senses as you confronted by terror after terror, and you must proceed to kill them all as quickly as possible.  The gameplay is fairly simple, use your fists and guns to kill the demons as you explore the complicated maps, picking up new weapons, items, and precious key cards along the way.  This game was intense, even to today’s standards.  Monstrosities pop out at you from everywhere and grow increasingly more difficult to kill, and appear in more numbers as the game advances.

Set over 3 chapters, you will fight through Phobos, Deimos, and then Hell itself as you k ill countless demons.  Though you start off with fairly recognisable weapons like a trusty pistol, or sawed-off shotgun, later weapons become more unique and often copied in games to come.  Most notably the marine’s trusty saw which can cut creatures in half in seconds, and of course the BFG (Big F$%*ing Gun), both becoming series mainstays.

Hmm, this is a big f&*%ing gun!

One of the earliest games to be presented in pseudo-3D, the visual depth of Doom adds both visual uniqueness as much as it adds to the gameplay itself.  For the date of release the graphics themselves are great, and way over the top.  Each demon pops with blood and guts when shot or killed, or exploded.  Your character’s face is pictured in the HUD and acts as a visual cue of how badly hurt you are, a trick developer ID took from its first foray into the FPS world, Wolfenstein 3D (which you can play right now online here!) .  The sounds and music also fit right in as you explore increasingly more bizarre levels searching for the exit door.

Doom also introduced tons of new tech in it’s design.  It’s pseudo-3D environments added not only depth but height to their design.  This coupled with the stereo sound made for stellar gameplay allowing not only the player to hear noises all around, but for the A.I. to also hear the players distant gun shots and be drawn to them.  Doom also introduced online multiplayer and modding with it’s WADS feature, allowing players to alter gameplay and character models in the game, giving all new complexities at the time of it’s release.

Doom spawned a ton of sequels, clones, even a movie featuring The Rock.  With it’s later sequels being regarded as disappointing at the least, but still graphically amazing, it will be interesting to see if this next generation version will be able to compete with what was then next gen with the original Doom.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this weeks Rewind Review.  Be sure to let me know by liking or leaving a comment below, and check back often for more content!

Check out last week’s Review Rewind here!

 

Rewind Review: The Legend of Dragoon

Rpg’s were my thing growing up, and The Legend of Dragoon was an exceptional one.  Released in 2000 for the classic Playstation, The Legend of Dragoon is full on innovations, both rewarding, challenging, and sometimes puzzling.

I have the power!!!!

The Legend of Dragoon takes you to a fantastic world, where dragons exist, and of course much political drama ensues, Endiness.  Broken up into various nations defined by their varying climates you start your quest in the temperate jungle of Serdia.  You take control of Dart, a young adventuring returning home after unsuccessfully searching for the creature that killed his parents and destroyed his birth home.  Quite coincidentally his new home is then destroyed and sets him on a quest to save his friend who was captured during it’s destruction.

The story unfolds traditionally here, as you explore new regions, you meet new companions that help you along the way, or require your help.  The story is quite long and expansive, and stays relatively linear throughout, but there is still a fair amount to explore as you go.

Designed during the early years of 3D Rpg, The Legend of Dragoon, mixed 2D backdrops with 3D characters creating a very interesting look.  The backgrounds are detailed and well drawn, and the 3D characters, though somewhat pixilated are still bright and pop out at you.  Battles take place in a more 3D environment, against also 3D pixelated enemies.  There are various cinematic camera swoops and close ups during the action to help keep you entertained as you play through the turn based battles.

Full of life, yet not quite alive

These battles feature all of the usual RPG features, though The Legend of Dragoon does set itself apart with it’s Additions feature.  Additions are basically timed combos that are initiated whenever you choose to a physical attack.  Hitting the correct quick time buttons with the right timing results in not only increased damage, but potentially different status affects, as well as building up you ‘sp’ bar.  As you explore more of the world this sp bar comes of more and more importance.

Wait for it…

Each character eventually finds themselves attuned with a particular dragon spirit.  As your sp bar builds during battle, this gives you the ability to transform into a Dragoon, and use various special abilities unique to each dragon.  This adds a great deal of power to your attacks and magic, but limits your defensive options, so a balanced attack is still prudent.  The Additions feature remains active as you use your Dragoon’s attacks to add critical damage to your targets.  This style of combat adds a load of interaction and difficulty to each battle especially later on when the enemies hit hard.

Though the random, non-boss battles do get repetitive after awhile, what with grinding for more levels, and items, the overall story holds enough charm and heartbreak for you to ignore this.  For the time, this massive 4 disk game gave enough content and story to compete with the then juggernaut of Rpg’s Final Fantasy a run.  In the end however, it didn’t bring enough innovation to truly become more than a very solid Rpg during the age of awesome Rpg’s.

Thanks once again for reading, and be sure to comment, like and share below.  Let me know about your experience with The Legend of Dragoon!

Check out last week’s Rewind Review

Rewind Review: Earthworm Jim

Who’s going to save Princess What’s-Her-Name from a bunch of power grabbing mutants and a flying cow?  None other than Earthworm Jim of course!  This side scrolling Sega Genesis classic is hard to forget for anyone who’s played it.  Inspired by other classic games like Sonic, and popular comics and toy lines like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this 1994 release is a bizarre but great blend of both.

Wait are we underground or not?

Imagine your life as a simple earth worm, eating dirt, and avoiding feet during a rain storm, when suddenly a super powered suit falls on you, giving you the power to save princesses and fend off wave after wave of crazy mutants.  That’s the plot in a nutshell.  There’s no deep seeded reflection, or violent beginnings here.  Just enough exposition and explanation to get us started on an adventure.

It’s the quirky nature of the game that really helps this game stand out.  The levels are comic like and colourful, and full of enemies.  Most of these levels have a stranger, eerie, alien like subterranean feel to them.  You’ll encounter mutant frogs, birds, and grannies along the way.  Yes, mutant grannies.  With a rogues gallery that includes the likes of Queen Slug-For-A-Butt, Psy-Crow, and Major Mucus, you can imagine some of the artistic leeway the developers were given here.

Have a cow man

Gameplay here is really similar to another classic of the previous era Bionic Commando.  Jim’s power suit gives him the ability to think and act like a human.  Besides the usual running and jumping, Earthworm Jim’s suit also happened to come with a handy gun that can fire off several rounds in quick succession.  When in a pinch, Jim can take advantage of his still elasticity worm body to whip across the screen and grapple from point to point.  If that doesn’t work, he can blow his head up into a balloon and float down to platforms, or use the buoyancy to float up through water.

This side scrolling adventure is broken up by various different levels.  Some levels are basically rail shooters, where you have to pilot Earthworm Jim around on obstacles on increasingly ridiculous devices as you fire at enemies along the way.  One level in particular has you protecting Peter Puppy, a seemingly harmless pup with Jekyll and Hyde tendencies that often get Jim in trouble if he should happen to run into harm’s way.  These different levels break up the pace well, and keep you doing different things along the way.

What do you mean you’ve never seen an earthworm in a super suit riding a hamster before?

Boss battles are common to encounter at the end of each level, and are pretty classic patterned events.  They are of course set aside by Earthworm Jim’s overly clever sense of humour, and completely over the top villains mentioned earlier.

Wait. Is this really fair?

Consider among one of the best games to ever come out during the 16-bit era, and one of the best characters ever, Earthworm Jim brought a lot to the table.  Though later sequels would eventually show a decline in character, charm and gameplay, the original game still stands as one of the best.  With it’s quirky sense of humour.  Literally down to earth protagonists, and smooth easy to get into gameplay it’s very hard to argue.

Thanks for reading, and as always leave a comment or like below, and let me know what you thought of Earthworm Jim.

Check out last week’s Rewind Review too!

Ghouls and Ghosts: Rewind Review

Welcome to Rewind Review, this week we are going 8-bit!  Let’s adventure into one of the best ports of the 16-bit era, Ghouls and Ghosts for the Sega Genesis.  Originally released in 1988 in arcade’s, the grueling hard platformer made it’s way to the SMS in 1989.  The sequel to Ghosts ‘n Goblins continues the saga of Knight Arthur as he fights off the undead in side scrolling fashion.

I don’t need no stinking armor!

Knight Arthur’s quest takes him through various eerie and quirky levels as he fights to release the soul of his love, Princess Prin Prin, captured by Loki among many other souls.  The usual left to right jumping and platforming from this point on are familiar traits, though there are several twists added in.

Starting off in a full suit of armor Arthur can fire various weapons in four directions to fight off skeletons, undead and yes of course, ghouls and ghosts.  As he takes damage pieces of his armour fly off, till you’re reduced to fighting in your tighty whities!  As you proceed through each level, you’ll find enemies throughout, as well as obstacles that need to be avoided through jumping, scaling ladders or the like.  Though the difficulty for the 16-bit version is also scaled down from the arcade original, there is still a lot of though areas, and precise jumping skills required to get through each level.  Not to mention of course giant boss battles at each level end.  These generally demand you hit a boss 4-6 times in a particular hit box while avoiding fireballs as usual.

I guess I had this coming….

You’ll find more layers to Ghouls and Ghosts in the form of various weapons and armour that can be collected, or bought in each level.  These items are hidden in chests, or secret doors that you activate by jumping in certain locations.  As an added bonus, some of these chests hold an evil magician who will fire a magic bolt at you once the chest is open.  get hit and look forward to spending several seconds as a helpless duck, or an old man with a cane.  These affects make you killable in one hit, but they don’t last long.

You can also call upon limited magical abilities to help you clear the screen of enemies.  These vary depending on the armor you are wearing.  Silver arm throws a blue wave in front of you, red armor summons fire to your side, and the ultimate gold armor gives you control over lighting itself.  These abilities are limited, and you need to bide your time before using them to avoid wasting them on only a few enemies on the screen.

Thor ain’t got nothing on me!

Ghouls and Ghosts consists of five levels with a sixth boss level, but just to add to the charm and difficulty, you’ll have to play through the first 5 levels twice before getting to the real ending.  You’ll also be tasked with finding the gold armor, and the only weapon that can kill Loki along the way before you can proceed to the final phase.  This is a good one to remind us just how hard games used to be.  Though the levels are not actually that long, the difficulty means you will spend hours trying to complete the full game, and get the true ending.

A very awesome full playthrough to enjoy, via SaikyoMog

This game became a great early example of how hardcore games could be ported and dumbed down in a sense for a broader audience.  The core of the game was still maintained very well, but Ghouls and Ghosts became open to a much broader audience after it’s arcade port.  It’s a situation that often vexes modern publishers that port, or re-release games to more modern technology, or to a bigger selection of consoles.  Ghouls and Ghosts still stands as one of the better conversions to date, and remains very playable.  It’s unique setting, simple but challenging gameplay and quirky humour stands the test of time extremely well.

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and like below, and let me know if you have tried Ghouls and Ghosts!

And while you are at it, check out last week’s Rewind Review