Gunman Clive is the best hand-drawn platformer featuring a cowboy who goes to space and fights robots that I've ever played on the 3DS.
All facetiousness aside, Gunman Clive is pretty great. It's a platform/shooter game where you play as the titular Clive and rescue a damsel in distress. Or, if you prefer, play as the damsel in distress and rescue Clive.
The first thing you'll notice when you start up Gunman Clive is the unique graphical style. Everything looks like a "Wanted" poster in the Old West, which gives it a look that's instantly distinguishable from any other game on the eShop. It uses a limited color palette of yellows and oranges that you would think it would get boring to look at, but it doesn't.
Clive does almost everything right for an action /platformer. The controls are really tight. I never ran into a situation where I missed a jump or got myself killed because of the controls. The levels are varied and interesting, with tons of little surprises along the way.
I only have two complaints. One, the music is a little bland in parts, but it's not awful. I played the whole game with the sound on and I didn't regret it. Two, Clive is awfully short. I finished the whole game in an hour. However, it's only $1.99, so you can't get too angry about the length.
I didn't know what to expect from Gunman Clive, but I'm glad I played it, and you'll like it too.
Developer: Bulletproof Software Publisher: Activision Released: 1989 Yes: I'm really that bad at chess
I am legendarily bad at chess. It's not that I don't know the rules. I know the rules about as good as anyone else. It's not that I don't know that you're supposed to plan ahead, either. I read about chess and look up information about the best strategies, and yet, for some reason I just can't play chess no matter what I do.
Quick story: A friend of mind wanted to play chess against me. I warned him that I was really bad at chess, and his response was, "That's OK, I'm bad at it too." As the game dragged on, it got so bad that he actually said, with some annoyance, "Do you even know how to play this game?" I explained that, yes, I've been playing chess since fifth grade, and no, I have not improved in the intervening twenty years. He quit in disgust.
So that makes me uniquely unqualified to review Archon, a chess variant that was published by Electronic Arts for the PC in 1983 and then ported over the NES. It's clear that Archon was supposed to combine the best of chess and the best of video games into one package. Did it succeed?
Crap, don't revive that piece! It took me forever to kill it!
In Archon, you're given several units that are laid out on the chessboard just like normal chess pieces. In the front row are your pawns, and in the back row are units with more special abilities, like the ability to call forth a fire elemental or teleport. However, here's the quirk: When a piece moves onto an opponents piece, a minigame begins where the two opposing pieces duke it out with magic and weapons. Whomever wins gets the square, and the other piece is dead.
It's an interesting combination of chess and video games, but Archon isn't perfect. For example, the interface in Archon is very clunky. Every time you need to select a piece to play, none of the pieces themselves are highlighted. Instead, the selector icon begins way off the board, and you have to move the selector over several spaces before you can even select a piece. That's kind of inexcusable, since there doesn't appear to be any specific reason that the selector needs to be off the board, at least from what I can tell.
Archon isn't very intuitive, either. It absolutely demands that you have the manual nearby, since it's really hard to figure out what each piece does, what its weaknesses and strengths are, and all of those details that are really important to a game like this. I suppose I can't judge Archon too harshly for that, since that was the way these games typically played back in the day.
A pitched battle between two water elementals. I'm the one who's dying.
Also, playing against the computer is ridiculous. It's not that the computer makes really good moves. It doesn't. The problems start once combat begins. The microsecond that the computer player has you in its line of sight, it's like Liam Neeson in Taken: It will find you, and it will kill you. The computer immediately knows when it can take a shot at you, and frequently fires before you have a chance to move out of the way.
However, Archon is still a pretty good idea. It reminds me of the sport of chess boxing: Whomever wins by knockout or checkmate wins first. For someone as strategy-stunted like myself, it's nice that good strategy alone doesn't guarantee a win, and good action-game skills don't guarantee a win either.
If I was playing this game against a human opponent, I could see getting over Archon's quirks and having a lot of fun. There's a lot of depth to it, and it's the kind of game that would lend itself well to obsessive fans. It's actually the kind of game that would be perfect for a revival, but that's par for the course with a lot of these sort of games.
It takes guts to take a game as storied and steeped in tradition as chess, then ask, "How can we make it better?" I want to make it clear: Archon is not better than chess, and it has numerous flaws. However, it at least tries to meld two different types of game into one in a unique and exciting way. That at least counts for something.
Developer: Midway Publisher: Acclaim Released: 1990 Detroit Melee Joke: On its way
Remember our discussion on sports games that accompanied All-Pro Basketball? If not, here's a recap: In the NES years, you had two choices when making a sports game: You could either try and make an exact replica of the sport (which usually wouldn't work because of the NES' limitations) or make something that felt like the sport but wasn't quite the same thing (which also didn't always work).
All-Pro Basketball tried to make an exact replica of basketball and didn't turn out very well. Arch Rivals tried to just have fun with the concept of basketball, and it was all right. Not perfect, but all right.
Arch Rivals is a two-on-two basketball game where you can steal the ball easily, knock down other players and shatter the backboard with thunderous dunks. If that idea sounds familiar, it's because Arch Rivals was made by Midway, who eventually turned out NBA Jam. Yes, Arch Rivals was NBA Jam before NBA Jam was NBA Jam.
However, there's a little bit more going on than that. The joke in Arch Rivals is that the referee is near-blind and really short, so he has no control over the game. Because of that, the players have resorted to violence and throw punches at each other. It's pretty hilarious to run across the court toward an opponent with your fist cocked and knock them out cold right before they take a shot. It's like a continual Detroit Melee, except without Ron Artest climbing into the stands. It's almost the best idea anyone has had for a basketball video game ever, but Arch Rivals doesn't quite do it right. For example, punching out your opponents is a great idea but in the game it doesn't have much of an effect. Knocking out an opponent in Arch Rivals merely makes them lose the ball for a bit and have them lay on the floor for a split second while they get back up. It doesn't really matter how many punches you throw, you're not going to make your opponent play any worse or injure them in any meaningful way, so that's a little disappointing.
This is how chaotic everything usually is. Fun!
There are also only two music tracks that play throughout Arch Rivals. The main music track acts as the title screen music, the character selection music, and the in-game music. The only other music is played during the breaks between quarters. Also, get this: Every time either team scores, that main track starts over from the beginning.
Don't get me wrong, the main music is good, but there's only so much you can hear the first 10 seconds of it before you start getting annoyed. Why didn't they just let the track keep running instead of constantly restarting it, or, better yet, come up with a new track just to mix it up a bit? Just throwing that out there.
You also don't get to choose your team, but instead have about eight different players that you can choose from. Each player has their NBA equivalents from the 80's. One looks like Dennis Rodman, one looks like Larry Bird, one looks like Horace Grant, and so on. I'm sure that somehow they have their differences, but I've never been able to tell. For that reason, I just pick "Tyrone," who's the Michael Jordan equivalent. It's like, if there's a player who plays like Michael Jordan, why would you pick anyone else?
Finally, Arch Rivals is a game that's designed to play multiplayer, and it shows. The computer opponents can be pushovers if you pay a little bit of attention. They really only have about five different plays that they run, so if you anticipate their moves, it doesn't take much to rack up high scores against them.
Arch Rivals had so much potential, and it's the kind of game that's ripe for a revival. Imagine a two-on-two basketball game where your punches matter, you can knock the star player out of the game, run out of bounds, grab the referee and use him as a shield, dump Gatorade on the court, and run into the stands after loose balls. I can see that being a huge hit as a downloadable game, and I would play that so hard.
As it is, Arch Rivals is a neat precursor to NBA Jam, but it's not much else. It's fun to play, but is much more notable for having a great idea than being able to pull it off.
Dungeon Hearts has a really cool idea at its core: What if battles in RPGs took place entirely via a fast-paced match-three puzzle interface instead of the old menu-based way? It's an exceptional idea, but Dungeon Hearts can't quite pull it off.
In Dungeon Hearts, you play through a series of battles, one right after the other. At the bottom of the screen, there's a constantly-scrolling stream of tiles called the FateStream. The tiles have different colors which correspond to the colors of your four units, and mixed in to the FateStream are tiles that can damage your units or cause various status effects to affect them. When a tile gets to the end of the FateStream, it's gone, so in order to defeat your enemies, you have to quickly match tiles.
Your enemies also get tiles that appear at random in the FateStream, and if the tiles reach your characters, then they apply that effect, whether it's a straight attack, freezing, weakening, or some other debuff. Each unit has its own allotment of hit points, and when they run out, your game ends.
After each battle is complete, you're given another pile of gems to sort through, except that matching the gems in this area enables your characters to gain levels. Gaining levels strengthens your characters and unlocks special skills which can be used during combat.
Got all that? Good. The system itself is great and fairly easy to master, but the way the system is implemented is problematic.
First, the way your characters gain levels isn't very well-executed. If you mess up during the gem-matching portion after the battles are concluded, you may have gimped your characters for good. That's a problem, since levelling the characters unlocks skills, and some of those skills are as basic as a healing spell. If you've made a mistake and somehow not unlocked it, too bad!
There's also a tile that the enemies can use against you that's wildly overpowered: Life Drain. It continually damages the unit it hits while giving that life to your opponent. Now, these sort of spells and effects are in a lot of other games, but usually they have a set duration, like five or ten seconds. However, in Dungeon Hearts, Life Drain just keeps running until your unit dies, making it the most deadly tile in the game. Whenever you see one, you have to drop everything and desperately try and obliterate it or it's all over.
So if you do get hit with Life Drain, how do you stop it from killing you? Well, one of your characters has a skill that heals and clears debuffs. What if you didn't level up enough to get that skill? Too bad! More than likely, though, what will happen is that you used the skill and now have to wait for it to recharge. And what if that happens? Too bad!
How do you recharge your skills? By attacking with the appropriate character. What if no gems show up for that character? Too bad! What if the character who has the healing skill dies? Too bad! He also gets a resurrection skill, and if he dies, too bad! No resurrecting for you!
I don't like whining about fairness in games, but I have to say this: If you tie the strategy of your game into something that's completely random, that's not fair. That changes your carefully-constructed game into something like poker: You can think that you're a great poker player, but if you end up with the wrong cards in your hand, it doesn't matter how good you are. You will lose. That's how Dungeon Hearts feels sometimes.
So how could the situation have been improved? First, what about item drops that you can equip onto your characters, like shields that create immunities or absorb damage? What about a more generalized way of levelling your characters? Say, you match the gems, and then can pick who you want to upgrade and what you want to upgrade on them? That seems fair to me.
When Dungeon Hearts works, it's incredible. It's fun to play, the gem-matching is a ton of fun, and it's an idea that really hasn't been tried before. I would love to see this idea expanded upon and given a narrative so that it's closer to a real RPG. However, as it currently stands Dungeon Hearts feels like 75% of a great idea. The matching mechanics are just fine, but there needs to be more player agency and strategy. Since it's only 75% of a great idea, it gets a score that averages out to... 75%.
Hey everybody, I'm giving away a free Steam key to the pretty decent satire/platformer DLC Quest! Here's how to enter: How Do I Enter? In order to enter, send an email to lee (at) downwardscompatible (dot) com with the subject line of "Giveaway". In the email, write ONE THING that you would like to see the video game industry change.
How Will The Winner Get Picked? The winner will be picked at random. I'll take all the email addresses, put them in a spreadsheet and select a random number from random.org. Whoever gets picked gets the code!
Any Restrictions? One entry per person. Duplicate entries will be removed. The contest will run from 4/2/13 until midnight on 4/21/13. Any entries afterwards will be discarded. I will be announcing the winner's first name and last initial (or pseudonym) so bear that in mind when making your entries.
Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo Released: 1988 That Title Screen: What is going ON
When Nintendo gets an idea, they stick with it.
A lot of recent Nintendo products have come from previous devices that had good ideas but poor execution. Nintendo sat on some of those ideas in hopes that some day the technology would get better and they could do them the right way. For example, the Game & Watch games turned into the DS. The Power Glove turned into the Wii Remote. The Power Pad turned into Wii Fit. The Game Boy Advance/Gamecube link turned into the Wii U.
One of Nintendo's early ideas was that gaming shouldn't be the sole province of children. Everyone should be able to find something to like in gaming, and they felt that the best way to do that is by making a game for adults with no cartoon characters or goofy mascots. Maybe if they just made a game that wouldn't make your mom or dad embarrassed to play it, they could open up a whole new market.
We all know that it turned out pretty well for them with games like Brain Age and Wii Sports, but where did the idea really come from? Anticipation was Nintendo's first attempt with that idea. It was a video game board game that revolves around figuring out what items the computer is drawing. When you've figured out what the computer is drawing, you can stop the computer and try and guess the name of the shape.
It's like watching someone play "connect the dots."
In Anticipation, there are no shoe-horned reference to other Nintendo characters, no indication whatsoever that this game is anything other than Serious Business For Grownups. Even Anticipation's box art eschewed the normal hand-drawn style that other box art used, instead taking great pains to show nothing but adults, having good, clean fun in the 80's.
Is Anticipation good? I really don't know. I mean, I played it, but I played it by myself. Anticipation is supposed to be more of a party game, and playing a party game by yourself makes you feel really sad. From what I was able to play all on my lonesome, though, I can at least say a few things.
The presentation of Anticipation is absolutely horrid. In their attempt to make this game appeal to adults, they used black backgrounds and a minimum of color. By comparison, if you look at more adult-oriented board games of the 80's, like Trivial Pursuit, there's always color. It's understated and tries to look classy, but it's there. I understand that Nintendo and Rare were trying to make something for grownups and so were trying to avoid the happy, cartoon-y worlds of Mario, but at that didn't mean they had to avoid jazzing things up a bit.
The rules of the game are also unnecessarily complex. You have to land on four different colors and solve those puzzles, then move to a new board once you have all four colors filled in, and you have to get through three boards to win, then place a doily on your head and dance the cha-cha, then slaughter a goat under the full moon with your second cousin (twice removed) present. It's like they were trying to think of things they could do in a board game that didn't require an actual physical board and just got carried away.
Still, Anticipation is an admirable first attempt at making a party game, and also a good first attempt for making a game that would appeal to adults. Nintendo would return to the party-game well for the Mario Party series, which was far more successful and they would also make games for adults with the Wii Sports and Wii Fit series of games, which both proved that you could make a game for adults while still using bright colors and cartoon characters.
Here's the big question, though: Since Nintendo never lets go of ideas, the question is: What idea will they come back to down the line? My best guess is the Vitality Sensor. You heard it here first.
