PixlBit

Today began with a lot of NES games, culminating in a Wizardry campaign that saw The Super Friends turn into Super Fiends; and ended with an earfull of potty mouth poetry from the characters of Bulletstorm. Here's the breakdown

First I had to play some more of Little Nemo: The Dream Master. I got past the Mushroom Forest by opening my first door and then got beaten up a lot on the next jungle world. There was a gorilla there I could ride which gave me the abilty to punch things and climb. I punched a lot of darn things. But, inevitably, it frustrated me with its recurring deaths. Sometimes when I thought I'd jumped on an enemy just right, I didn't, and lost a life. Very frustrating, but that's platformers for ya.

Then I tried Swords & Serpents. This is a first person dungeon crawl. You roll up a party of four and run around a maze with random encounters. If you need health, go to the temple; and if you need equipment, go to the armory. If you want to learn a new spell, just explore and there will be a new one written on a wall somewhere in the level. Once you've read it, you know it. I found the game interesting but slow moving. I got kind of bored before I even finished level one. 

Then I popped in Batman. This is a 2D brawler. You fight as Batman with your fists until you pick up weapons from killed enemies like a batarang, a spread shot thingy, or a gun. You can switch them on the fly once you have them, and they're all pretty fun. The platforming works well, but the boss on the first level was a pain. He flies around daring you to hit him. It's difficult to hit him and not get killed, but, I liked the game. The graphics are suitably dark and it's fun to wield the batarang. 

Then in went River City Ransom. This game has some of the best fighting in an NES game that I've played. You can punch and kick and do diffrent attacks depending on which direction you have pressed on the d-pad. You can throw items too. There's also a dash move but I never figured out just what triggers it. I think it might be double tapping the d-pad in the direction you want to move. The game feels like a 2D open world game. You walk along the streets and fight, but then you can enter alleyways that lead to a marketplace or a park (there are probably more places later in the game). The market place has doors you can enter where you can buy food for ability boosts, books to learn skills, and deserts, which I couldn't figure out what they did. Maybe you give them to a character somwhere along the way? I liked I could could go into the park and pick up a rock which I could throw at things in the environment or use as a weapon. It made it feel like you could do whatever you wanted in the game. I was enjoying the game but it eventually came down to the battles against the AI baddies and their penchant for dashing onto the screen and knocking whatever weapon you have out of your hand that got to me. I picked up one of these punks and used him as a weapon on another punk, but eventually they surrounded me and beat me to a bloody pulp. I think if I spent some time with the fighting controls, I could get somewhere in this game. The controls are good. 

Now for Wizardry. This game is a port of the Apple Ii/PC game from 1981, but a very faithful one that I love. It's a first person dungeon crawl but it plays much faster than Swords and Serpents and has a U.I. that lets you see the dungeon full screen with no menus. I created six characters and named them after The Super Friends TV show. This was the Justice League of 70s TV and included Superman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman and Wonder Woman. There were guests too like Plastic Man, Flash, and Green Arrow, and some non super powered sidekicks: Wendy, Marvin and their dog, The Wonder Dog. By the time I'd gotten to dungeon level 2, half the team turned evil, and I'd lost everyone in the party at least once and one permanently - my thief, Robin. Only my mages, Aquaman and Wonder Dog, survived it all unscathed. When I ran out of characters to make at least a party of 5, I stopped. I could've probably done better, but I didn't want to grind on level 1. I just wanted to see how far I could get by visiting each room no more than once for every new character, and limiting the number of characters to The Super Friends of the first TV show. Clearly you have to grind a lot in this game to truely beat it, but that wasn't my goal. 

Then I'd had enough of 1990s gaming, so it was back to Xbox 360 and Ticket to Ride until Mark and I decided what game to play co-op. It was initially going to be Gears of War Judgement, but I had to download it again, and it's 7GB size would take a while.

So we played Bulletstorm. I believe there's a co-op mode in the game called Anarchy that's like a Gears of War Hoard Mode, but for the time being, we played singly the campaign: me for the first time and Mark for probably the second. This game's mechanics are fantastic. You can really move around the screen quickly and do all sorts of crazy mayhem to enemies. Basically it's a lot like Gears but with a stong arcade feel to it. You want to execute kills in the most crazy ways possible to score points which you use to buy ammo, or upgrade your weapons. The environments are very detailed and gorgeous. Progress is farily linear until you get to an area with enemies and then it opens up into big spaces that you can approach any way you want. It's a ton of fun to chuck enemies into spikes, or off ledges, or launch them high in the air. The dialog is hilarious. It a huge cuss fest of the dirtiest sort. I call it "potty mouth poetry". It's so over the top, it makes you laugh. I played through a good chunk of the campaign before I had to reluctantly stop for the night. I'll be playing more of this next weekend for sure as soon as I finish whatever 1991 game, or games, I choose.