Welcome to RETRObituary: June Edition
Written by @VertigoDC
Welcome one and all to this week’s edition of The Geek Beat, your weekly shot in the
arm of gamma-powered geekness. This week heralds the return of the RETRObituary
and although I’ve somehow managed to just miss the boat because June is gone,
we’ll be looking at classic releases of yesteryear, all released in the sunshiney
month of June. Traditionally, the summer months have been a dry season for
video game releases; publishers have historically shied away from releasing
blockbuster titles during the summer – conventional wisdom dictated that this
was the season where plucky young rapscallions were out in the sunshine,
getting into scrapes and adventures whilst drinking lashings and lashings of
ginger beer; these days however that’s proven to be something of a myth:
today’s average gamer is in their thirties and is way past the young
rapscallion stage… and as for the sunshine theory, the actual teenagers of
today are far too busy flaming each other on Zoella’s YouTube comments page or maybe
sending each other pictures of their naked body parts on Snapchat to have time
to actually go outside or play video games.
Not that it matters – in many ways the youth of today are
just ahead of the curve: in a few years virtual reality and 3D printing will
have progressed to the point when nobody will need to go outside anymore, not
even for a bottle of milk; you’ll simply simulate the trip via a virtual
interface and print the milk through your food synthesiser, which presumably
will sit proudly atop your kitchen work surface next to your Mr Fusion and the
tractor beam that keeps the robo-cat from jumping on the worktop.
You may notice that Mr Fusion is actually just a coffee maker...
...that first starred alongside John Hurt in 'Alien'. Can you spot it?
We all know the digestion problems that coffee gave him...
...which is why Elisabeth Shue had to fill in for Claudia Wells, who opted to go decaf and AWOL.
Speaking of quasi-futuristic gadgets, I was seriously
considering selling my Xbox One this week to make a little loot that I could
put towards an Apple Watch. The Xbox One is little more than an expensive brick
that sits squat and hulking atop my entertainment centre, watching me with a
baleful, unblinking eye like some Orwellian nightmare machine (as a friend once
coined it) as I cavort instead with its hated rival, the PlayStation 4. Apart
from the rather future-feeling voice controls which I’m pretty adept with now
(I can’t believe I used to pause Netflix by actually pressing a button, ugh,
how primitive.) the Xbox One serves
pretty much zero purpose in my house. It didn’t start out that way: I brought
it with the intention of picking up some of the Xbox exclusives and trying out
some of the next generation Kinect games; most of my buddies are on PSN so I
knew that I’d be picking up any multi-platform titles for the PS4 – but I
figured that something’d come along eventually for the Xbox that’d float my
boat… that was eighteen months ago and still I’m waiting.
Anyway, finally something did.
Kind of.
Only not really.
I’m quite interested in what’s happening in the VR space at
the moment. I’m old enough to remember Virtuality’s ill-fated attempt to bring
VR into the commercial sector back in the early nineties. Along with my
RETRObituary co-collaborator Mr Shaune Gilbert (who has left me to it this month
- cheers mate) I remember queuing for what felt like (and probably was) hours
to experience the mind-blowing future that VR promised to be whilst at the
GamesMaster show at the NEC back in 1992. Stephen
King’s The Lawnmower Man had just
released that year and blown our tiny minds as to the possibilities offered by
virtual reality. If you haven’t seen it (and why would you? Even King
successfully sued to get his name taken off it) it’s a pretty lame movie attempt
to harness the short-lived craze for virtual reality experiences. I was no more
impressed with my actual experience at the GamesMaster convention. The graphics
were terrible, the controls unresponsive; perhaps given more time and more
realistic expectations Virtuality would have lived up to its massively
overhyped potential; instead it fell prey to the exciting generation of
consoles that were launched into homes around that time such as Sony’s first generation
PlayStation. Although these machines couldn’t do VR, they did take 3D gaming to
exciting new levels and that was for most gamers, enough. Perhaps if Virtuality
had had just another couple of years to tweak the hardware they’d have had
something ready for the home market but alas, it wasn’t to be.
In the nineties, this was how we saw the future.
Yeah, I know.
And now we have the second coming of virtual reality.
Sony’s Project Morpheus isn’t setting my world on fire so
around E3 time when I heard that Microsoft and Oculus had partnered up and were
bringing the capability to stream Oculus’ virtual reality system through an
Xbox One I got quite excited. Maybe this would be the reason to keep the Xbox
that I’ve been looking for? Then I actually read the article and realised that
all it lets you do is create a virtual living room and virtual TV to play your
original 2D Xbox games on. Boring… and faintly ridiculous if you ask me. So as
yet, I’m watching proceedings with interest whilst the Xbox One is watching me…
probably with disinterest (I’m not terribly exciting to watch; I fall asleep randomly,
find food in my beard sometimes) and for now it’s earned a stay of execution.
But for how long? That Apple Watch is still singing its sweet siren song…
Anyway. On with this month’s games – I’ll keep ‘em short
this time as I’m flying solo this month and it isn’t even June anymore!
2010: Alpha Protocol (Multi)
Full disclosure up front: I’ve never played this game
although I kind of wish I had. I did find it once in a bargain bin at GAME or
somewhere and considered it, intrigued by its RPG approach to the
globe-trotting spy genre but after a quick Google on my phone decided it wasn’t
worth a punt. It makes you wonder how game developers make any money at all
these days now we can access critical opinion anywhere.
I remember when I was a kid, the only real access one had to
video games reviews was through gaming magazines: you could spend three quid on a copy of C&VG and check out what was worth picking up but this was the
era of the budget title; a glorious time for Spectrum, Amstrad and Commodore
owners where the princely sum of two or three pounds could buy you an entire game! For three quid! That
doesn’t even buy you an alternate hairstyles DLC pack for most games these days.
Bear in mind however, this was the age of the bedroom programmer so quality
control in games was non-existent. You pretty much either brought licensed
games based on movies or whatever (although that was no guarantee of quality
and by the time a licensed game dropped to budget status you knew through a
primitive sort of pre-internet form of communication called ‘the grapevine’
whether it was decent or not) or you scrutinised the one or two paltry
screenshots on the back of the cassette packaging to try and divine some higher
understanding of the game’s purported qualities. On a few occasions I made the
schoolboy error of choosing a game after being seduced by the box art and lived
to rue the loss of my precious cash. Anyway, being forced to choose between
buying a magazine that talked about computer games or actually buying a game itself
was no choice at all. As such, every kid had a stack of crappy budget games
sitting on some dusty shelf whereas each game magazine was a rare and precious
tome, a sacred codex containing precious information to preserve your stash of
pocket money.
But I digress.
Despite not investing in the game due to pretty shocking
critical opinion, I was (and still am) intrigued by its bold premise. As you
know, RPGs tend to focus almost exclusively on fantasy or sci-fi games so a
title centered around modern global espionage was a fresh twist on a pretty
narrow genre. Osbidian, the game’s developers have actually got a pretty great pedigree
when it cones to RPGs – they released Fallout:
New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2
and Knights of the Old Republic II, all
of which are considered good to great entrants into their respective
franchises… of course, all of them also build upon original intellectual
properties and proprietary game engines created by other studios; when it came
to creating a fresh IP using their own engine, reviews of Alpha Protocol suggest that Osbidian dropped the ball. Whilst the
story is supposed to be engaging enough, the gameplay was deemed by most
reviewers to be sub par with enemy A.I. being a major issue – I don’t know
though… dopey guards wandering blindly into your line of fire? Foolhardy
opponents charging you with naught but a blade whilst you gun them down from
range? Sounds exactly like a James Bond action sequence to me.
'Alpha Protocol' means 'First Protocol' right? Shouldn't shooting, spying & espionage be at least the second resort?
Another 007 influence that’s present and correct in the game
is the ladies. Alpha Protocol’s
protagonist Michael Thornton may owe more to Jason Bourne than James Bond but
that doesn’t stop him from getting into some hilariously ridiculous scenes of
intimacy, just like everyone’s favourite double 0 agent. Actually, come to
think of it – the poor guy is a victim of non-consensual sex perpetrated upon him
by a woman wearing pink-lensed sunglasses: clearly she’s a dastardly villain as
she’s committing two serious transgressions of the law at the same time, one being some serious sexual molestation whilst the other is a crime against fashion.
Not a lot else to say here except I really wish this game
had been good. Ambitious failures in one of my favourite genres are encouraging
to see but ultimately only diminish developer’s appetites to take further
risks. Whilst a new-gen espionage-based RPG would be something I’d love to see,
critical failures like Alpha Protocol only
decrease the risk of us seeing such brave endeavours.
Honourable Mentions: Transformers: War for Cybertron (Multi)
2005: GTA: San Andreas (Multi)
This game proves that there definitely are benefits to age. The
youth of today may have their skinny jeans and possess the possibility of being
alive when hoverboards finally become a real thing but they what they don’t
have, what they’ll never have? Whenever I stick on a Grand Theft Auto game, I dig it not just because of all of the many
merits that it possesses individually, but having been there since the series’
bird’s-eye beginnings back in 1997, I can really relish tracing the game’s slow
evolution.
Not exactly a hoverboard but you take what you can get,
right?
Every GTA title
attempts to broaden horizons; innovation has become one of the franchise’s
hallmarks throughout the last couple of decades, but never was the series so
stretched to the limits of its creative possibilities than with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Understanding why GTA:
San Andreas holds such a special place in the series’ canon needs an
appreciation of the creators’ intentions. San
Andreas marked a turning point in the series; a shift in tone that would
define future instalments irrevocably. Previous GTA titles had used the cities in which they were set as
protagonists: it could be argued that GTA:
London 1969 and GTA: Vice City used
iconic cities during celebrated eras as their central characters. Even the
modern-day New York, lampooned by Rockstar into the crime-ridden Liberty City
in GTA III uses a seminal location
that has more character than Claude, its mute protagonist. The idea behind this
was simple – the central tenet in those earlier GTA games was freedom; Rockstar really wanted you to feel like you
could go anywhere and do anything (as long as it was ultra-violent): wanna be a
cabbie with little or no regard for your own safety and even less for your
passengers? Go do it! Wanna run around a shopping mall in your pants with a
chainsaw carving up terrified shoppers? No problem!
Just another day in the hood.
The problem was that as Rockstar sought to bring more and
more of their filmic influences to bear, the disconnect between the tighter
narrative structure they were trying to develop and the randomness afforded by
player agency grew. Put simply, they’d be trying to create an angst-ridden
moment where Tommy Vercetti, the game’s protagonist would be struggling
emotionally with the betrayal of his closest friend whilst the player would be
running amok and punching hookers before dressing in their best golfing outfit
to go steal a tank. I mean, it’s possible that this dichotomy was the result of
Rockstar wryly commenting on the role of anarchy in easing the paradoxical
duality of man’s nature, fragmented as it is by the onslaught of post-modern
American-centric, symbiotic/consumerist cultural imperialism.
Or it could have been that they just really wanted you to
have that tank.
In GTA: San Andreas this
contradiction became more pronounced than ever. Set in Los Angeles during the
nineties to a backdrop of gangsta rap, gang violence and race riots, the city
and the era were an ever-present character in the game’s narrative; this time
however, Rockstar aimed to tell a much tighter, more ambitious story using CJ
the game’s protagonist as the central focus. This was reflected within the game
in a number of ways: RPG-like elements were introduced – if you ran a lot, you
gained stamina; if you ate too many burgers, you character got fat. More so
than ever before, the player was encouraged to understand that there were
consequences to their choices, a gentle nudge towards immersing one’s self into
the character’s world, seeing things through their eyes and becoming more
involved in the narrative. In addition to this, Rockstar creator Sam Hauser
also ruled out casting a Hollywood star to voice the lead character (as had
been the case with Vice City where
Ray Liotta had brought Tommy Vercetti to life); reportedly, this is because he
wanted no barriers between player and character – all the better to create an
immersive story.
This didn’t mean that San
Andreas didn’t want you to go bananas though – it totally did. Rockstar
were pushing the limits of their virtual sandbox further than ever before and
created a world that dwarfed anything that had come before it. Better still,
there was so much insane stuff to do… base jumping from an airborne mountain
bike launched from the peak of Mount Chiliad; taking wing in a Harrier Jump Jet
and soaring into the skies; endless character and vehicle customisation; jetpacking
around Las Venturas whilst wielding twin UZIs, always one step ahead of the
law.
And then there was Hot Coffee,
And then there was Hot Coffee,
The only way to fly.
Personally, my favourite activity after a long, hard day of
living CJ’s angst-ridden life trying to restore the Grove St. gang to their
former glories was to become Justice Gimp, a leather-besuited, sex toy-wielding,
police-bike riding crusader of the night – I’d take on Vigilante missions from
my stolen Interstate Patrol motorcycle, chase down criminals by moonlight and
dispense righteousness with the purple Dildo of Justice whilst moralising on
the ill-gotten gains of a life of crime, CJ’s true voice muffled not by a
ridiculous Batman growl but presumably by the unyielding resistance of a ball
gag. Or something.
In short, the game was a hot mess… but it was the most beautiful of hot messes and perhaps
that’s why I remember it so fondly. Tonally it was all over the place and
ultimately, that’s why Rockstar, when presented with a new generation of
consoles to work with, opted to go for something much more focused and stripped
back with its successor, Grand Theft Auto
IV. That game was all about mood and the journey of Nico Bellic’s character
and as such, a lot of the incongruent craziness departed the franchise before beginning
to slowly creep back in during the latest addition to the series, GTA V, where Rockstar one again took us
back to the state of San Andreas. The persistent rumours of a jetpack secreted
within the game are a nod to fans’ desire for the return of some of the
franchise’s zanier elements.
So remember, the next time you and your buddies are breaking
the law with impunity on GTA Online,
pancaking cop cars in your tank or fleeing some heist astride a stolen Sanchez,
don’t get too cocky because atop that skyscraper you’re barrelling past or
maybe pulling from a shadowed side alley right in your blind spot is Justice
Gimp.
He’s out there.
And he’s watching.
Unless the zippers on his eyeholes are done up. (Insert joke
about blind justice here.)
He likes to watch.
Honourable Mentions: Tekken
5 (PS2), Killer 7 (PS2, PC), Battlefield 2 (PC), Destroy All Humans! (Multi),
Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition (PSP)
Note: Did I say I was gonna keep ‘em short this month? These retrospectives are longer than ever! Must try harder!
2000 – Excite Bike (N64)
Flippin’ awesome.
Honourable Mentions: Mortal Kombat 4 (N64), ISS Pro
Evolution (PS1), Rampage Through Time (PS1), Vampire: The Masquerade –
Redemption (PC), Iron Soldier 3 (PS1), MDK 2 (Dreamcast), Omrikon: The Nomad
Soul (Dreamcast), South Park Rally (Dreamcast), Vagrant Story (PS1), Deus Ex
(PC)
1995 – Super Return of the Jedi (SNES)
Okay, perhaps that last review was a smidgeon too short. 1995’s
Super Return of the Jedi was the
concluding title in JVC’s Star Wars trilogy
for the SNES. It used the same brand of platform-based mayhem as the two
preceding games, only this time you got to play as Leia too. Although I
remember playing this game first time around on my friend’s Magicom and loving
it for all of its little Star Wars flourishes,
having gone back and played the games again for the purposes of this review, it
strikes me that whilst clear efforts were made to make the game seem as Star Wars as possible, the core gameplay
experience just doesn’t feel that way. Being attacked en route to Jabba’s
palace by a crazy assortment of aliens I can kind of accept, but Leia doing
spinning, double jumps and becoming an acrobatic whirligig of death just pushes
the envelope a little too far.
...and still with the sexual perversions. This month's blog is going to some dark places.
Still, the sound and graphics are gorgeous and the
presentation is as slick as you’d expect from a title of this magnitude. The
platforming levels are augmented by vehicle sequences using the SNES’ Mode 7
chip to create that faux-3D effect that was so impressive back in the day – in
fact the very first level sees you speeding towards Jabba’s palace in a race to
save Han Solo form the clutches f the vile gangster. Like in Super Star Wars where Luke slaughters an
entire sandcrawler’s worth of jawas for daring to defend themselves as he
trespasses upon their property, the early levels of this game see you leaping
through levels, decimating the local wildlife of Tattooine for the sole crime
of defending their natural habitat. Makes me wonder why Luke and the gang
didn’t just pilot the speeder a little further and preserve the Dune Sea’s eco
system.
Young Skywalker and his fellow rebels sure are a
bloodthirsty lot in this game. Makes me wonder if it’s actually some sort of
Empire propaganda game they make prospective stormtroopers play to indoctrinate
them into somehow thinking they’re the good guys. “Play this, see how your
enemy slaughters the natural habitants of this peaceful planet: go do the
galaxy a solid and blast him.” “What? Shooting practice? No, you don’t need
that – you’ve got eyes haven’t you? A finger to pull the trigger? How hard can
it be?”
Honourable Mentions: Virtua Racing (Saturn), Earthworm Jim
(SNES)
1990 – Paperboy (Sega Master System)
Hmmm… not sure if this is a case of bad Googling on my
behalf but apparently, it took five years
for this game to port over from the arcade machine original to Sega’s lil’
Scrappy-Doo of a console. Apparently, it also holds the honour of being the
first Master System game ever developed here in the United Kingdom so perhaps
that explains its late arrival. Nothing moves fast in this country: we invented
test cricket which can take five days per match and still have no winner; our broadband speeds are the laughing stock
of Europe, to the point where our Prime Minister walks into an EU meeting in
Brussels and all the other European leaders stop talking; he thinks it’s
because he’s important and it’s an awed hush but it’s actually because moments
before, they were mocking him for only having just got 4G. The rebuild of Wembley,
our national football stadium took four years longer than it should have… and
since then they’ve struggled to grow grass on the pitch… that’s right - grass.
You know, that green stuff that grows frickin’ everywhere?
Still, at least it set up a platform of failure that our national team could go on to endlessly perpetuate endlessly. Did I mention endlessly?
Still, at least it set up a platform of failure that our national team could go on to endlessly perpetuate endlessly. Did I mention endlessly?
Pictured: Fail
So like I was saying, the wheels turn slow around here but
that’s not the case for the titular hero of Paperboy,
an American anarchic, free-wheelin’ free spirit, a bit like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, only with less drugs and
more newspapers. Viewed from above in a sort of isometric perspective, the game
had you quickly pedalling Paperboy through the picket-fenced suburb that
comprised his daily round. The object of the game was to deliver papers to the
houses that subscribe to it whilst vandalising the ones that didn’t. Our hero’s
round was further complicated by all sorts of dangers such as cars backing out
of driveways, wasps, and general neighbourhood weirdos.
Pretty rad. (Surely it's time to bring 'rad' back. Vastly underrated adjective.)
I didn’t actually get to play the Master System version, I
could only lay hands on the arcade original but the isometric graphics are
clean and colourful and still hold up nicely thirty years later whilst the
occasional burst of digitised speech is a nice addition too. Unsurprising
really as the game was developed for the arcades by Atari – although the
company was collapsing in on itself due to the great E.T debacle and the subsequent North American video games crash,
the games division was the only part of the business running in profit. From
1983’s Star Wars through to 1987
Atari Game Inc. released a glut of arcade classics including Paperboy, A.P.B, 720°, Marble Madness, Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom, Road Blasters and Gauntlet
II. Makes you wonder what they’d be making if they were still around today…
E.T. has a lot to answer for – he killed Atari, showed up uninvited in The Phantom Menace and continues to fill
my heart with childlike wonder every time I see his stupid, little face. Thanks
for nothing you little monster.
You ruined 'Episode I' you little shit! Wait... no, it was screwed well before you showed up.
Honourable Mentions: Chip’N’Dale (NES), Thunder Force 3
(Mega Drive), Twin Hawk (Mega Drive), Well Trix (Amiga), Columns (Mega Drive)
That's all from The Geek Beat this week folks. This has been a Vertigo production.
Head back this way next week for something else... maybe Celluloid Saturday.
Until then be sure to follow me @VertigoDC but know that I don't roll on Shabbos. Peace Out.
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