Gaming Zone

Developer:

Obsidian

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Release Date:

2011

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Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm taking a look at the last of the Dungeon Siege games, unless they suddenly announce a new one out of nowhere again.

The first two Dungeon Sieges were developed by Gas Powered Games, but Square Enix decided they wanted a western RPG series and bought the franchise from them, putting Obsidian in charge of making the third game. Personally I'd be more curious to see the game would be like if Square Enix made it themselves, but games like Knights of the Old Republic 2, South Park: The Stick of Truth and Fallout: New Vegas have shown that Obsidian are masters at taking other people's properties and making magic with them.

It seems they're also pretty good at making pretty main menus. It doesn't look so great in a screenshot, but in game it's all animated, with birds flying by in the background, sparkling moonlight reflected in the water, and the logo flag gently blowing in the breeze. In fact I don't even want to start the game any more, I'm just going to sit here and listen to the music and the rain for a bit. It's not the classic Dungeon Siege theme but it'll do.

Also I just noticed that the statue is of the protagonist of Dungeon Siege 1! Well the amber-haired woman with the flaming sword from the box anyway, as you can make your own characters in the DS games.

(Screenshots can be viewed at their original resolution by clicking on them. Not that their original resolution is all that great.)
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Developer:

Interdimensional Games

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Release Date:

2014

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Systems:

Windows

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This week on Super Adventures I'm celebrating Star Trek's 50th anniversary by playing games with some connection to the series. Today I'm sharing screenshots from the first few hours of CONSORTIUM, a game that likes to SHOUT its name all over its Steam page. What does this have to do with 'Star Trek'? Well... I've read a few people say it's a bit like 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', except on a plane. And that's pretty much the only link.

Consortium's one of those Kickstarter success stories, though they didn't quite bring in millions. Or even hundreds of thousands. But what they got was apparently enough to finish an ambitious first person, guns and chats, RPG type of game, which is cool because that's one of my favourite genres.

This is a heavily story based game so I'm inevitably going to be spoiling a lot of things you might not want spoiled here. Though its description claims that "the story unfolds based largely on your actions," so if that's true I'm only spoiling one possible outcome! I won't give away the answer to the game's big mystery though, assuming I even manage to solve it.

(You can make screenshots moderately more visible by clicking on them.)
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Developer:

Mighty Rabbit

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Release Date:

2015

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Systems:

Win, Linux, Mac

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This month on Super Adventures, I'm playing Unity 5-powered special forces sequel Breach & Clear: nF?nLIN?. Uh, I mean Breach & Clear: DEADline, or perhaps just Breach & Clear: Deadline; I'm getting conflicting information on that and as usual the logo's in all caps so it's no use.

As the name hints, this is the follow up to tactical counter-terrorism game Breach & Clear, though I'm sure it has very little to do with tactical counter-terrorism game Deadline, and I'm doubly certainly there's no connection to "authentic hotel maintenance simulation" Breach & Clean. I can detect a little Call of Duty influence though, as the game's gone from modern warfare straight to... hnng... zombies.

Zombies man, it's always the fucking zombies. Why is it never wizards? Breach & Clear & Dragons: Origins, it could totally work!

I'm coming into this entirely blind, as I've never seen the game, I didn't play it in Early Access, and I know next to nothing about it. In fact I went to do my normal research, looking for some stuff to write up here, and it seems that neither Wikipedia or MobyGames have an entry for it. So if you've ever wanted to add a game to either site and leave a semi-permanent mark on history, now's your big chance!

But one thing I do know about the game, and this is something you should definitely be aware of, is that a friend of mine worked on it. So I can't promise I'll be entirely fair in my assessment of the game. But this site's about showing games off as much as it is about my opinions, and I can still do that while being biased. So if you decide to carry on reading, keep repeating to yourself "This guy's predisposed to be nice to the game," in your head the whole time, and then ignore all my conclusions.

(Click any screenshot to expand it to twice its current size!)
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Developer:

Raven

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

Windows, Mac

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This week on Super Adventures I've finally gotten around to replaying some of Hexen's slightly more three dimensional successor, Hexen II! It's been ages since I've played this one so I should be coming into it reasonably clueless. Plus it's a Hexen game so I likely didn't get anywhere in it the first time around anyway.

Hexen II is the last of the 'Serpent Riders' trilogy, following on from Heretic and Hexen, so there's apparently a story here to resolve and this game finishes it off. But just to make things confusing, Heretic actually branches off to another sequel, Heretic II, which tells the tale of the original game's protagonist returning home and fighting a plague. Plus there's the expansion packs like Deathkings of the Dark Citadel and Portal of Praevus which slot in somewhere.

But this is definitely absolutely the final Hexen... until Raven Software gets bored of making multiplayer modes for Call of Duty games and decides it's time for Hex3n: Beyond Heretic II.
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Developer:

Larian

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Release Date:

2002

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Systems:

Windows

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This week on Super Adventures I've decided to look at another RPG, even though they take forever to play and write up. Because I am an idiot.

First though I have to talk about the name, because the title of Divine Divinity is famous for its redundancy. But is it a contender for the worst RPG title ever? It doesn't have 'chronicles', 'origins', 'prophecy', 'legacy', 'book' or 'Eragon' in there, so I'm thinking... no. It's distinctive and memorable so it gets the job done, even if it is dumb. The game was originally going to be called Divinity: The Sword of Lies, but their publisher was apparently fond of alliteration after doing well with Sudden Strike and I guess Divinity: Deceitful Dagger didn't do it for them.

Riftrunner on the other hand would've been a terrible title for a sequel in my opinion, and Larian were wise to eventually change it to Beyond Divinity. Now they just need to change it so that the damn game works on my PC so I can play that too.

Speaking of the developers making things that work, I'm liking this theme music: Divine Divinity theme (YouTube link). It's more melancholy than your typical heroic RPG music, with harpsichord in place of chanting Vikings.

(Click screenshots to inflate them to their original dimensions.)
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Hi, I'm Ray Hardgrit and the following words are not written by me. They were put there by some guy called Jihaus who wants to show off the first hour or so of a game called Ys Origin and infect my site with his opinions.

I've never seen the point in asking guest posters to stick with my rating system though, as everyone's got very different taste and it seems like it'd be misleading somehow. You can only really trust a rating when you know the critic and can compare it against their other reviews. Basically what I'm saying is don't flip out if this doesn't get a 'gold star' badge at the end, as Jihaus doesn't hand the things out.

Developer:

Nihon Falcom

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Release Date:

2012 (WW)

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Systems:

Windows

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Today I'm finally playing Ys Origin on PC, an action RPG with platforming elements and fast-paced combat. I've played my share of Ys games so I'm no stranger to their brand of anime-style characters combined with rockin' music combined with crushing difficulty, and this one in particular uses the same engine as its last two predecessors so it should be relatively familiar territory. I always did find it extremely amusing that the correct pronunciation of "Ys" sounds a lot like "ease", because that is entirely the opposite of what these games tend to be.

Unlike the other games in this series which deal with the adventures of the red-haired swordsman, Adol, this game instead goes in a different direction - specifically, 700 years before the first Ys game in the chronology. Despite the the huge departure, it treads a lot of familiar territory, and fans of the first and second Ys games will see familiar people, places, and terminology. In particular, most of not all of the game takes place in the enormous demon tower of the first game, which has changed little on the outside but got a serious renovation on the inside. That's about the extent of what I know going in anyway, so I can't wait to see what we'll find.

I've heard horrifying things about the difficulty in this particular installment but I will proceed to flagrantly disregard such warnings and play on its hardest difficulty, nightmare. Without further ado, time to die!

(Click images to view them at their original weird-ass 1024 x 578 resolution)
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Developer:

Arkane, Floodgate and Kuju

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Release Date:

2006

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at Dark Messiah of... hang on, where's the 'of'? Everyone knows the game is called 'Dark Messiah of Might and Magic', that's what it's called on Wikipedia, that's what it's called on Steam, that's what is written in the press releases, so why isn't there an 'of' on the title screen? It's not there on the box either, or the manual, or the official website... huh I guess the game really is called Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.

Though 'Might and Magic: Dark Messiah' would've made more sense, seeing as it's part of the Might and Magic franchise. Just saying.

Anyway, this was actually the very first game I ever bought on Steam, way back in July 2012. It's not that I was still holding a grudge after 8 years for all the bullshit I had to go through to install my DVD copy of Half-Life 2... I'd just stopped buying PC games entirely by that point because companies were in an arms race to see who could develop the scariest DRM, and retail discs had become a minefield. Not that I didn't have a Steam library, but at that point it was basically a handful of Half-Lifes, a Humble Bundle or two and Ricochet. And yet it's still taken me until now to play the bloody thing.

Now I'm wondering what was I playing that month that was so much more worthy of my time. Hmm, my site notes say MDK, Superfrog... and Sensible Train-Spotting? I didn't even publish that last one until June the next year, so I don't know what the hurry there was. It's very annoying how my notes don't include explanations for all my bad decisions. Anyway, I'll be playing this for an hour (or more) and yelling out how it plays as I go. In text.

WARNING: EVENTUALLY SPIDERS.

(Click the screenshots to make them bigger).
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