Gaming Zone

Developer:

SCE Japan Studio - project SIREN

|

Release Date:

2006

|

Systems:

PlayStation 2

---

This week on Super Adventures I'm having a look at FORBIDDEN Siren 2, or maybe Forbidden Siren 2 depending on whether you're going to trust the box spine or the manual. In North America it's known as... well, nothing actually as it was never released there. The first game was though, under the name of Siren.

I was going to start the article by dropping the bombshell that in five years of the site I have never once played a horror game for Halloween, not even accidentally. But I just checked and it turns out that I have, twice: DecapAttack and Blood. My memory betrays me again.

But the point I was leading to was that I'm not really all that interested in Halloween and never have been. Horror isn't really my thing and I find that horror games often involve way too much creeping around in the filthy darkness with awkward controls, looking for the door/cupboard/bookcase/piano you haven't examined yet. I'll still give the game a fair chance to win me over (I wouldn't have much to write about otherwise) but I can't help being predisposed to despise it.
Read on �

Developer:

IMakeGames

|

Release Date:

2015

|

Systems:

Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android

---

Last week on Super Adventures, I played a game with 'Super' in the title and this time fate has given me one with 'Adventure'. Haven't had one of these on my site since, hmm... Squirt's Adventure around this time last year. Fun fact: through absolutely no effort of my own, 'super' and 'adventure(s)' are actually the two most frequent words to show up in video game titles on my site (with 'final' and 'fantasy' right below them). 'Nubs' on the other hand is definitely down near the bottom.

Nubs' Adventure is the latest indie platformer by the guy who created Rico: A Tale of Two Brothers, which I apparently thought was very playable. I mean I can't actually remember playing it (I've gone through about 150 games in the meantime, my poor brain can only store so many platformers in it), but the article I wrote seems positive enough. This time around I'm playing with a Steam key sent to me from the developer so I'll be wearing my 'serious video game reviewer' hat. Well my 'serious quick look' hat anyway, as I'll only be showing off the first hour or two.

(You can click the screenshots to view them at their original resolution if you feel like, but you'll mostly just get chunkier pixels for your trouble.)
Read on �

Developer:

Daft

|

Release Date:

1993

|

Systems:

Super Nintendo

---

This week on Super Adventures, I've got a 'Back to the Future' game loaded up and it's playing the actual theme from the movie! It's funny how few of them do that.

It's Back to the Future Day today! We've finally reached Wednesday October 21th 2015, the day that Doc Brown and Marty McFly visit in the second movie, and that makes this the perfect time for me to take a look at Super Back to the Future, Part II for the SNES. Other good dates would�ve been November 12th 1955 and October 27th 1985, but I�ve already missed them, so I'm basically on my last chance here.

Weirdly there was never a Super Back to the Future or Super Back to the Future, Part III, despite the fact that SBTTF,PII came out long after the movie trilogy concluded in 1990. There were plenty of other 'Back to the Future' games released for other systems, but this is all the Super Nintendo ever got, and it got it 3 years late. Sorry I mean the Super Famicom, as the game was only ever released in Japan (presumably because it's not very good).

Oh right, I should put a warning here that the game's based on the film, so I'll be spoiling part of the movie's storyline along with the game's. Assuming that the game even has a storyline.
Read on �

Developer:

Obsidian

|

Release Date:

2014

|

Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

---

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing another game based on a cartoon series! It'd be fair to say that South Park: The Stick of Truth is a little better regarded than Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse though, as it's got over twice the score on metacritic.

In fact Stick of Truth gave Obsidian their highest metacritic score since Knights of the Old Republic II back in 2004, beating games like Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol. Which goes to show how broken metacritic is/how rubbish reviewers are, as Alpha Protocol's totally a better game than KotOR 2! It has an ending and everything.

I still can't believe that Obsidian of all developers were working on a 'South Park' RPG, though in retrospect I suppose I should be more surprised that they finished it, seeing as they have the worst luck with their licensed games. The original publisher for Stick of Truth went bankrupt a year before release, Aliens: Crucible and their 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' prequel were both cancelled during development, and in a parallel universe they would've made a 'Wheel of Time' and a 'Star Trek' game as well. We're never going to get a proper single player 'Star Trek' RPG at this rate.

Though we did get a 'South Park' RPG and it's right in front of me, so I guess I should play it already.

(Click the screenshots to examine at their original resolution. It's not a great resolution, but it's bigger.)
Read on �

So, as I sometimes peruse various forums, the occasional gem pops up. This is one of the best hidden gems in Open Source gaming.

Anticube 2 is a map for Tesseract / Cube 2 that is inspired by the game Antichamber and NaissanceE. If you are unfamiliar with those, that means it is an abstract FPS puzzle game where things are not quite what they seem. Or, as the creator Lord Kv probably better explains:

Anticube 2 is a puzzle map for Tesseract. You'll find yourself in an interactive, dynamic, non-euclidean world. Supported by 5000+ lines of Cubescript and GLSL code, this map will do things no other Cube 2 / Tesseract map has ever done before.

Here is the trailer:


There is also a gallery of screenshots for you to check out. I won't include them here because, to be honest, the screenshots won't mean much for this kind of game.

I'm calling it a game, even though it is just a map for a game. You can tell it is worth checking out because of the reactions it elicits from the Tesseract developers (warning: NSFW language). Here's what developer ImNotQ009 had to say about it:

Whoa, I would NEVER have though I'd see anything like this on BARE Tesseract.
This is one hell of an astonishing piece of work, the music is great, the whole atmosphere and the aesthetics are really good as well. With the exception of a little bit lousy looking (compared to everything else) terrain on the very last part but nevertheless I genuinely couldn't stop "wow-ing" through out the whole thing.

Anyway, check it out, let us know how you get on. This definitely deserves more attention than it has gotten up until now - but then again how does this kind of thing get more eyes on it when it is just a game within a game and one which is currently suffering from a severe lack of a player base? Hopefully we can change that starting here. :)

Developer:

Heavy Iron

|

Release Date:

2012

|

Systems:

Xbox 360, PS3, Windows

---

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Family Guy�: Back to the Multiverse! Because suffering builds character.

Actually I'm genuinely curious about the game. I remember that reviewers thought it was terrible, but I don�t remember why. Do the jokes just not land or is the gameplay itself rubbish? I�ve a feeling the answer�s going to be �both� but I�ll keep an open mind.

By the way did you know that 'Family Guy� has been on air for 14 years at this point? It would�ve actually been 15 but the series took 2004 off due to being cancelled. The PC version of the game has taken a year off too, as it suddenly vanished from Steam back in December 2014. It's not alone though, as publisher Activision have pulled a bunch of licensed games over the years, including Deadpool and 007 Legends (it's like they don't even care about my plans to play every Bond game ever). But Deadpool eventually came back, so there�s still hope for Back to the Multiverse!

(Click the screenshots to view them in their original resolution.)
Read on �

Great news for people who like GGGGames ;)

The author of the new action roguelike dungeon crawler kind of darwen mayham game Gorynlich was so kind to inform us his game. It comes with this funny trailer (and some great programmer's art :p ):



The code is licensed under the LGPL, while the assets are only freeware right now. But the author seems to be open to look into replacing the assets with Creative Commons licensed ones if someone is interested in doing so.
Gorynlich is done by the same author as the ASCII game Goblin Hack by the way.

Another nice game starting with G, is the awesome remake of the oldie Megalomania, appropriately called Gigalomania!


The author is still looking for improved art asset contributions, but the game itself is already quite playable (even on mobile devices and a bunch of other rare systems!). Also check out the other two cool games by the same developer: Erebus RPG and Conquests (a Civ like game).