Something that I find lacking in more recent video games is the quality of names for their characters. Also, the villains don’t say “Barf” when you beat them over the head with a trash can or apply a roundhouse kick to their face.
I recently went back and played some of my old favorites and recalled how amusing it was to face off against Biff, Scab Boy, Lucky Luc, Slag… or to play as Blaze, Haggar, Skate, Guy, Axel, or Radd Spencer. Yes, the quality of the games has gone up , but the novelty of the names has gone down.
Who can forget the lambastings you would get after wrecking your bike in Road Rash?
But the best names, in my opinion, came from the multitude of brawlers on the 8 & 16-bit systems: Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, River City Ransom…
I think that the best way to ensure that your game will have great names, however, is to make sure that you include LOTS of street punks. Everybody knows that criminal masterminds employ hordes of street punks to keep their rackets and stuff in line. Haven’t you ever watched Robocop?
Watch this video for a taste of street punk beat down and ridiculous enemy names.
You can pretty much be guaranteed that any self-respecting brawler that came out of the 80s would include a character or villain named: Blade (or a variation, like “Blaze”), Axel, Guy, Biff, Zack, or Ice.
My question to you, then, is this:
Which is your favorite generic old-school video game name? If you have a better one, feel free to add it in!
You may recall a post I did some time ago about my favorite genre of flash games: Tower Defense. Well, today I have a treat for you that will remind you of those games somewhat, while really being part of another genre entirely. Moreover, it is just as addictive as any good TD game.
While this game does share a couple features with other TD games (towers, obviously, as well as waves of creeps), it fits more closely in with games of the Survival genre. Some other examples of this type are Last Stand (2), Balloon Invasion, and Turret Defense(2).
The defining feature of Survival games is the manual control of one “turret” which can come in many forms (including a human). While TD relies a bit more on strategic placement of towers which shoot based on AI, Survival games require you to aim and shoot with your own skill. A little less brain, a little more brawn.
These games range in complexity. Turret Defense 2, for example, is fairly simple in that you have your main gun and one alternate fire (rockets). You survive as long as possible based upon that.
I like to think that the genre evolved somewhat out of the classic Asteroids game.
Bowmaster Prelude, however, is a rather evolved Survival game.
The premise is rather simple: protect your flag from the oncoming creeps by shooting them with your castle-mounted ballista. If the enemy creeps manage to capture your flag and bring it back to their own flag, you lose. You win the round by defeating all the enemy creeps.
There are some intricacies, however. You can upgrade your tower by buying special kinds of arrows (such as fire, ice, exploding, fragmentary…) as well as hire troops (infantry, archers, cavalry, trebuchet…) to defend your castle and/or try and steal the enemy’s flag. While it might seem like troops are unnecessary at first, in later levels they become absolutely integral (as there are too many units for you to try and deal with by yourself).
Your enemy will also try and destroy your tower. If they are successful, you can no longer use your ballista, but can only manage your troops. If the enemy also manages to kill all your on-screen troops, you will lose the round. This means that you have to worry about trebuchets that your enemy is building.
The terrain can sometimes prove difficult and require quite a bit of precision to get around (not to mention that flying units will cause you endless amounts of aiming frustration).
Micro-managing in this game can be a lot of fun because you need to choose the right units to use at different times, and you can only have a limited number of units on the screen at once. I find that archers, priests, and trebuchets are the most universally helpful as melee units tend to get killed a little too quickly.
There will be blood.
One last merit that this game garners over many of the others is the manageable blood display. You can choose how bloody you want your games to be. This can be a lot of fun if you feel like bringing out your sadistic side. It’s hard to feel empathy for tiny little flash characters, anyways.
Ok, that’s about it. I’ll leave you with a video showing one of the later levels where you’re facing off against a giant monster as well as the tiny creeps.
So, the iPod has taken over another facet of my life–one that I’d been trying desperately to leave behind in the States: Gaming. Aside from some stints of emulation gaming (FFI, II, III, and V were finally taken care of) and tower defense, I had left the majority of my gaming life behind in the US. This is good, because games like World of Warcraft had threatened to take over my life prior to leaving for Singapore.
However, in the last few months (really as soon as I got my iPod) I have discovered a number very captivating games that are available for download/purchase for the iPod. So, here I will discuss a few of the better ones.
Solitaire – You really can’t go wrong with Solitaire. It’s basic, it’s entertaining, it’s challenging, it takes very little battery power… This is probably my second most played game behind Phase (see below).
Phase – This is a really cool game done by the same team behind Guitar Hero. It allows you to upload your own songs into a special ‘Phase’ playlist and then when you sync up your iPod, you can play these songs as if you were playing something akin to Guitar Hero (with only 3 buttons though). This game eats up battery power like crazy, so don’t expect to play this much on your 10 hour bus trip from Vientiane to Louang Phabang. I’ve yet to get through a marathon on the ‘Insane’ level.
Song Summoner – A Tactical RPG put out for the iPod by… SQUARE/ENIX! As soon as I saw what this was, I clicked the download button. However, it’s been a little bit of a let down. You create units for your army through your songs… but that’s the extent that the game uses your music. The scroll wheel can be a little annoying to use as a cursor (c’mon give me a d-pad iPod!). The graphics are pretty great for an iPod game, and as a result, the game is VERY battery-draining. Don’t play this unless you’re going to plug it in soon. Furthermore, the troops are very disposable. One of things that I’ve always liked about Tactical RPGs is the customization of your troops, and this game doesn’t really have that at all.
I haven’t played it enough to give a good longitudinal review, but these are some issues that I have with it.
Pinball – This game is a lot of fun if you like pinball. I LOVE pinball. Graphics are pretty good, so the battery goes down pretty quickly, but the game is very enjoyable and translates well to the iPod’s controls.
Bomberman – I was pretty excited to learn that I could play Bomberman on my iPod. However, it turns out that the controls are really frustrating to use, so I haven’t played this one much. Having a d-pad would make this so much more enjoyable.
There are a few games that I haven’t reviewed because I haven’t gotten around to playing them (Scrabble), they don’t allow you play your own music over the game (automatic disqualification), or the controls would be way too hard for the game (Sonic).
If anybody else has any reviews or recommendations–please let me know and I’ll check ‘em out.
If there’s anything that I’m amazingly productive and efficient at, it’s wasting time. Put me in a room with a good internet connection and I can guarantee that I will manage to do absolutely nothing worthwhile for the duration… and then I will complain about how much work I have piling up around me.
Anyways, if you’re reading this blog, then you’re at least a novice in the department of procrastination, and, chances are, you’re already familiar with the following time-wasting enterprise.
TOWER DEFENSE
Flash games are an integral part of any worthwhile procrastinator’s repertoire. Most of them are terrible. Some are amazing. The simplicity of many of them is the draw, fooling us with the idea that it won’t sap much of our time and then leaving us thinking, “Well, shit, I meant to go to bed hours ago.”
One specific genre of flash games, Tower Defense (or Defence, if you’re British–or illiterate), has sprung up out of the ashes of old RTS (real-time strategy) games like Starcraft and Warcraft III. It crossed over into the realm of flash with the Warcraft III mini-game inspired Flash Element TD:
The objective of the game is to build enough towers around the path that the “creeps” walk along so that none of them make it all the way to the end. There are normally different types of towers: ones that shoot quickly but don’t do much damage, ones that shoot slowly but do large amounts of damage (and often have a splash effect which damages nearby creeps as well), and ones that regularly send out a pulse which slows nearby creeps (or an ice-element tower which shoots creeps with a slow down effect). Generally there are one or two towers that combine these effects but which are more expensive.
Furthermore, you can choose to either upgrade your existing towers or continue to build new ones. Much of the strategy comes from this decision as the creeps come in waves that get continually stronger. If you fail to kill all the creeps, you generally lose life or mana or some other form of health. Every creep you kill gives you money back with which to buy more towers or upgrades (sometimes there are structures you can build which give you more money back per creep or increases the effectiveness of certain types of towers).
Anyways, here I will list and briefly describe the different versions of Tower Defense that I have found worthwhile. I reiterate that these are the good ones. There are some crappy ones out there, and I’ve chosen not to include them:
This is the original flash version of the Tower Defense genre. It’s a great place to start in order to get a feel for the type of game. The creeps are recognizable from Warcraft and the animation is pretty good. Picture
This is one of the most popular TD games. In this version you have 4 directions that creeps can come from and it is your duty to construct your towers in a certain way that they act as both obstacles and death-dealers. You create your path, essentially. Picture
In this version, there is a “circle” (it’s really a square) path that the creeps will run around in and you build towers to keep the number of creeps as low as possible. If you exceed a certain number of creeps on the screen at once, you lose the game. Picture
With this game, the key to winning is to build combinations of different types of towers or “turrets” around each other which will combine (once upgraded enough) to perform special attacks. Figuring out these combinations is part of the fun. It’s especially gratifying when you build the combination which sends out nuclear bombs that spin across the screen and wipe out all your foes. There are a number of different maps you can use. Picture
Defender is based on Ultima Online and its defining feature is that your towers are wizards or lancers. As with all TD games, your wizards have different uses (one does splash damage, one slows down creeps, one does poison damage, and one lowers resistances). Different creeps are also weaker to different elements, so it’s important to take that into consideration. You can level up your wizards so that they either do more straight up damage or so that they are more effective in their special attack (splash, poison, etc.). This one also has multiple maps, and I’ve yet to beat the hardest one. Picture
This version is probably the hardest I’ve come across. It’s pretty basic, but it has a space theme, which is pretty cool, I think. Multiple maps are available. Picture
Ant Buster is pretty cool because the creeps are much more free-roaming and have a bit of an AI. You have to protect your picnic from getting carried away by the ants. Fun upgrade combinations are available for a single tower/turret. Picture
This game is similar to Desktop TD because you have to create the path that your creeps will follow by building your towers strategically. It gets pretty hard on the later levels and requires you to be pretty creative in your maze building. Picture
Gem Craft is really cool because it’s set up as a campaign and you gain experience as you go along with which to buy general upgrades. You create gems of different colors which have different effects and can be upgraded by combining them with gems of the same color or mixing them with others–it’s up to you. It’s a ton of fun, but can get very frustrating once you get to the first epic boss. However, once you figure out exactly how to beat that boss, the rest of the game is pretty easy. Picture
Ok, so that’s pretty much it. There may be other versions that I haven’t mentioned–that’s either because they’re stupid or I haven’t played them. If you feel like bringing my attention to a good one, please let me know in the comments section and I’ll check it out.
