More old games

Hay there. In recent days I've been experiencing long periods of uncreative boredom, resulting in much playing of old games at random. These have included such classics as The Getaway, which is unfortunately still fried. An attempt to play the game seems to result in a successful if slightly lengthier than usual loading time, but when it comes to actually play, the experience dies. After about a mile or so of driving, the game gives up trying to load the city off the frazzled medium and you drive into a white wall planted squarely across the street. The queer thing is, you cannot actually collide with this wall, your vehicle continues to drive, but without actually moving. The traffic also ceases to appear, leaving you alone on a single block surrounded by white, at which point you are forced to quit the game or die of boredom. That entertainment exhausted, I changed discs to Sky Oddyssey, a rather fun but rather old flight game. I still have sweet memories of piloting a nitrous-boosted Spitfire around the skies of its fictional locations, and flying inverted at over the speed of sound with an altitude of a couple of feet in a bright pink stealth bomber. Takeoffs were usually rather tedious in the non-jet aircraft, as you had to trundle along the runway gaining speed until you finally got enough lift to take to the skies (albeit only gradually or you'd fall out of the air and die in fire). My customised Spitfire however did not suffer from this problem. You would simply start the engine, get it moving, then wallop the large red nitrous button. The whole craft jerks slightly, then accelerates to over 170 miles per hour in about a second, causing all of the tyres to scream and smoke with the speed, and indeed it's going so fast you don't even have to pull up, it takes off itself. You're then free to use your limited fuel to fly around and graze mountaintops with your undercarriage to demonstrate to any spectators what big cojones you possess. Actually, forget that bit, the phrase 'graze mountaintops with your undercarriage' in a sentence mentioning cojones brings tears to my eyes. Anyway, I procured the CD-ROM from its case, and prepared to load it up and perform some aerobatics. But alas! The memory card containing my mostly-completed Sky Oddyssey savegame had disappeared, and as you start off with pretty much bugger all, and the starting biplane has as much accelerative power as half a dead bee with a hangover, I gave up and put it away. Next up was the classic Zone Of the Enders, yes, that mech one which came with a MGS2 demo. It holds the title of quite possibly the shortest game ever, taking approximately 3 hours to complete on super hard mode by someone who's never seen a games console in their life. Pretty much. I slapped in the disc, and was greeted by the unusual starting music, some sort of Japanese chillout which I can not for the life of me decide is either excellent or utterly crap. I started a new game, and just in time realised how soppy, lame and bad the cutscenes are. Skipping them, I prepared to 'kick some ass' in a giant mechanical Japanese fighting... thingy. You get fairly few moves, slash, shoot and a energised and moving version of each, and a shield. You get some totally useless side weapons too, and the all-conquering hilarious throw. The gameplay itself is pretty ordinary, see other mechs, fly over to other mechs, beat other mechs into an oily pulp. The only challenge you get is when the 'mummy' mechs get to a skill level of 3 later on, they have some sort of super-uber-omgsuppwnage-all-conquering-monster-power dual laser beam which vapourises anything near it (and is also THE best weapon to whore in multiplayer on any game ever). Thus, your only chance is to sneak up to it and bray it from behind until it falls to bits. The other plan is to grab one of its mates and throw it at it, causing a nice explosion and either seriously damaging or smashing to bits the both of them. If you're in the sort of mood where you disregard all the warnings about not destroying buildings which kill civilians, it's fun to find a nice tower block and put some ho right through it and out the other side. The entire game runs like this, with a little break in the middle where you pilot an enemy mech for a little while, which is pretty much the same as yours but lamer, having even less attacks. Blah blah, etc etc, weepy cutscene, blow up more stuff, end of game.

What next now? It depends what I dig out which hasn't lost its fun over the years. Aha, Parappa... (PS: Beard Master owns you all).



As a final note, today's quote for the day:
'Oh, proverbial pants, please not again!' - The Dewaele Brothers