Gaming Zone

Developer:

Lenar

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

SNES

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing a game definitely absolutely did not ever get ported to the Commodore Amiga, for a change. In fact this one wasn't even released in English, though it did eventually get a fan translation.

I like fan translations, I think they're a fantastic idea and that everyone who's put their time and effort into making games accessible to more people for absolute zero financial reward is awesome. But I don't play fan translations on my site (it's one of the rules written in the box on the right), so I'm going to be struggling through the original Japanese version of the game for an hour or two. Well, unless it's got a lot of dialogue in it, then I'll be struggling a lot longer than that.

The katakana in the title says Ganpuru, so some people call it Gunple and others say it's probably a compound word formed from 'gunman' and 'proof' (like how Pok�mon comes from the words 'pocket' and 'monsters'). Man, if the very first word in the game's giving me this much trouble then that's not a good sign. Google Translate tells me that my two choices beneath it are �From the beginning� and �From the rest�, so at least I don't have an options screen to interpret.

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Developer:

Metropolis Software House

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga

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This month on Super Adventures I'm playing another point and click adventure game! But this time there's a twist: I have absolutely zero idea what this is. All I know is that GOG.com gave it to me for free when I signed up and the graphics looked a bit amateurish in the screenshots.

One thing I'm sure of though is that it's got nothing to do with the 1991 Teen Agent movie (called If Looks Could Kill in the US). This is Teenagent, one word; totally different thing. I'm guessing that it's probably a play on the word 'teenager'. It might also be a play on the word 'newsagent' but I'm kinda hoping it isn't as I'd rather jet around the world immersing myself in international intrigue than sell crisps. In fact I'd better check Wikipedia to make sure...

...oh that's interesting, it turns out that Teenagent was the first Polish game to be released on CD, though it seems GOG's given me the floppy disk version without the voice acting because those voices were all in Polish. I'm not considering that to be a problem. Plus it's running through ScummVM, but that's not a problem for me either.

Wikipedia also tells me that developer Metropolis Software isn't quite as obscure as I thought, as they made games like Gorky 17 and Infernal. In fact it was one of the longest operating game development studios in Poland before getting bought by CD Projekt in 2008 and shut down in 2009. Another fun fact: it was founded by opinionated video games bloke Adrian Chmielarz, who did programming and writing for Teenagent, before going off to make Painkiller and Bulletstorm for his new company People Can Fly, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for his newer company The Astronauts. So that's interesting.

Okay I'm going to take screenshots of the first hour or so and write words under them now.
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Developer:

LucasArts

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

DOS, Mac, Amiga, FM Towns

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing LucasArts' legendary point-and-click adventure game Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge! Or LeChuck's Revenge: Monkey Island according to that logo up there. Either way around it's still going to screw up your meticulously organised alphabetically ordered game library.

Monkey Island 2 is a game that needs no introduction and to be honest it doesn't need any commentary or reviews either. The game's so famous and has been so thoroughly examined that anything I write about it here will be entirely redundant; I might as well just show off some screenshots and call it a day. But I just managed to find a few thousand words to type about bloody Star Wars the other day for my sci-fi site so now I feel like I can take on anything Lucasfilm can throw at me! Though the game development group had firmly switched over to the name 'LucasArts' by this point, making this the first in the series to have the iconic Golden Guy logo (there's no skit though).

I dug out my old Monkey Island Madness compilation CD for this and I'll be playing the game using ScummVM, because it's awesome. The disc also has a version of Monkey Island 1 on it that's been updated with CD quality music, but Monkey 2 only has the original MIDI soundtrack. Which is good, because it'd only screw up the dynamic iMUSE effect. Who'd even want to explore a pirate town without the music seamlessly shifting to give each area its own theme?

Alright, this is an adventure game, so by writing about the first hour or so of gameplay I'm going to inevitably end up giving SPOILERS for the early puzzles. I won't be ruining that ending for anyone who hasn't beaten it yet though... unless you've read my Curse of Monkey Island post, then I already have. Sorry.

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Developer:

Nippon Ichi

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Release Date:

2016 (2004 on PS2)

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Systems:

PS2, Wii, PSP, Win

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing the relatively new PC port of classic PlayStation 2 game Phantom Brave! Because trying to figure out and then explain a complicated turn-based tactics game from 2004 seemed like a smart use of my free time.

The trouble with these 'Phantom' games like Phantom Brave, Phantom Crash, Phantom Dust etc. is that it always takes me a few seconds to remember which is the tactical RPG, which has the mechs and which is the one with the cards. In fact I ended up playing The Phantom Pain for 142 hours before I realised I'd put the wrong game on. (That's totally the right game to put on by the way). To make things more confusing, the next year Nippon Ichi released a similar game with the Japanese title Phantom Kingdom, which then got renamed to Makai Kingdom in the West, despite 'phantom' being an English word already and 'makai' being a Japanese word. A word that just happens to show up in the title of their earlier game Makai Senki Disugaia, aka. Disgaea.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, there's a game that gets it right; no one's going to mix that one up with Phantom 2040. But someone might mix this game up with Disgaea, so I intend to mention the game constantly to point out the differences, and similarities.

Alright I'm going to play Phantom Brave's main story for a couple of hours or until I beat a proper boss, whatever happens first. I've played it before on PS2 so I'm sure I'll all come back to me... though I've never seen that mysterious 'Another Marona' button before. It's tempting, but I'll leave it for now.

(Click the pictures to view them in an incredible 1280x720 resolution, though I'm sure it can do better).
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Developer:

Core Design

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Release:

1992

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Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive, Sega CD, SNES, Master System, Game Gear

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing an Amiga platformer about a werewolf!

Wolfchild is one of those games Core Design came up in their pre-Tomb Raider era when the staff were still allowed to have ideas. I'm sure I must have played this before but it couldn't have been for long and it didn't leave much of an impression. I've been searching through the corner of my brain reserved for Amiga games and all I've dug up are some fuzzy screenshots of a wolf man on a boat... with jet engines.

One thing I know about it is that it's supposed to be a bit like Switchblade II (maybe because it was designed by Switchblade creator Simon Phipps), but that doesn't help me much as I don't remember playing that either. I do remember playing another Core Design title by Simon Phipps though... that bastard of a game Rick Dangerous. But Wolfchild was made in a more modern era, coming out halfway between Rick Dangerous and Tomb Raider, so I'm hopeful that he'd gotten bored of dart traps by then.
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Developer:

id Software

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Release Date:

2016

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox One, PS4

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This week on Super Adventures I'm spending an hour or so playing last year's Doom! I know it's a new game and there's already a million reviews out there to read, but I played the other three so it seemed cruel to leave this one out.

Plus this gives me a chance to go on a rant about them pulling a 'Tomb Raider' with the title, meaning that we have to call the first game 'the original Doom' from now on to avoid confusion. This problem generally wears off over time for movies (no one can even remember that they remade RoboCop or Total Recall) but the trouble with games is that the reboots are often good and you have to acknowledge they exist.

There was actually a Doom 4 in development, which was to take place during the demonic invasion of Earth, but it was cancelled on account of it being soulless, heavily scripted and more like the Call of Duty games than Doom. That was in development from 2007 to 2011, then this game sprang from its ashes in 2016. So henceforth it shall be known as Doom 2016.

I'm very familiar with the earlier Doom games, but all I've seen of this one so far is the demo. I've been deliberately avoiding reading too much about it just in case it had an actual plot to spoil. Hey if Wolfenstein: The New Order of all sequels can have an emotional thought-provoking story then there's hope for every game series!

(Click the pictures to view screenshots at a slightly less pitiful 1280x720 resolution).
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Remastered -	Developer:	Double Fine	|	Release Date:	2016	|	Systems:	Win, Linux, OS X, PS4, PS Vita, iOS
Original Game -	Developer:	LucasArts	|	Release Date:	1993	|	Systems:	MS-DOS & Mac OS

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This week on Super Adventures I'm having a quick look at LucasArts' 1993 point and click masterpiece Day of the Tentacle! Though I'm actually playing the 2016 HD remaster by Double Fine, partly because it's the only version you can digitally download, but mostly because I want to.

I played Tim Schafer's latest adventure game the other day, Broken Age, and now I'm going back 20 years to his very first game as project lead! Well, co-project lead, with Dave Grossman. I wish I could say this is all to tie-in with the release of Full Throttle: Remastered today, but honestly I had no idea that'd come out until five minutes ago. The timing's pure serendipity.

Day of the Tentacle is the third of a trilogy of sequels released during the early 90s, back when LucasArts were the gods of adventure games. After a game inspired by a pirate novel and a theme park ride and another inspired by 30s movie serials, this time they went back to 50s sci-fi horror movies with a sequel to 1987's Maniac Mansion. Though you'd have to really squint to spot the name on the box and it's not written at all on the title screen. I'm not sure I even realised that this was a sequel back when I first played it. Well, until I found the original game hidden inside it in its entirety anyway. Hey I wonder if they remastered that Easter egg too.

(Click the screenshots to view them in a slightly more impressive 1280x692 resolution. Which incidentally is the aspect ratio of the original game, minus the box with verbs in it).
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Developer:

Croteam

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Release Date:

2001

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Systems:

PC, Xbox

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This week on Super Adventures I'm taking a quick look at a classic first person shooter from the dawn of the 21st century: Serious Sam: The First Encounter! I always assumed that 'The First Encounter' was something they slapped on after The Second Encounter came out, but I just checked and nope it was there on my box cover all along. So I've learned something today.

I've also learned that it was the game's 15th anniversary on March 21st... last year. So I was just a little late on that one.

Serious Sam started life in the mid 90s as a game called In the Flesh, which would've had you fighting through nightmares and Hell and suchlike, but a couple of years into development they decided to switch to bright sunny open levels instead and rename it Serious Sam, after its protagonist. It worked for Duke Nukem after all, and it's possibly not a coincidence that two heroes shame the same dress sense. Sam's more of an affectionate clone than a parody, seeing as Duke's already a parody, but it's not like 3D Realms held the patent on smart-assed muscle-bound 80s action movie heroes in jeans, so whatever. They get to complain just as soon as they give Bruce Campbell his lines back.

The game was given a shiny Serious Engine 3 makeover back in 2009 and released for PC and Xbox 360 as Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, but I'm playing the original right off the CD (with all appropriate patches). There's also an Xbox port which has smaller levels and lives, and even a version for PDAs running Palm OS. Except not really, as the PDA version is more like Wolfenstein 3D and looks like a 3DO game.

(Click the screenshots to view the original sized images).
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Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

PSX, PSP, PSN, Saturn, Xbox 360

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Today on Super Adventures I'm celebrating the 20th anniversary of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night! It was the 20th anniversary of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series a few days back and it'll be the movie Blade's 20th birthday next year too, so in retrospect the late 90s was a terrible time to be a vampire.

Speaking of things that happened in ages past, man it's been while since my epic marathon of all the traditional Castlevania platformers. "This is going to be the final Castlevania game I'll be playing for a long long time," I wrote at the end of my Castlevania Legends article, but I had no idea it'd take me 6 years to get around to the next one! You could make a third of a Duke Nukem game in that time. Though in my defence I used to avoid writing about games I'd played before and I've actually beaten this one on the Xbox 360.

If playing all those classic Castlevanias taught me anything, it's that Konami were determined to get those Belmonts onto every system they could, and that each console had to get its own exclusive game. Seriously, to play the whole series up to this point you would've needed access to a NES, an MSX2, a Game Boy, a PC Engine with a CD drive, an X68000, a Mega Drive, a SNES and an arcade with the Haunted Castle cabinet. In this case though they skipped the Sega 32X due to it being dead and put their new 2D Castlevania on two consoles, the PlayStation and Saturn (with the Game Boy getting Legends instead and the N64 getting both Castlevania 64 and Legacy of Darkness two years later).

It was a bit strange though that Konami released this for the PlayStation, at least in the West, partly because Sony of America had a real hate on for 2D and partly because it's the direct sequel to a game that didn't get an English release until a decade later! In Japan the game�s called Akumajo Dracula X: Gekka no Yasokyoku (Nocturne in the Moonlight), because it follows on from PC Engine game Akumajo Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (Rondo of Blood). This 'music term of the vampire-related thing' theme carried on through a couple of the GBA games until they started throwing in words like 'Dawn' and 'Portrait' and ruined the pattern.

Anyway I've waited long enough to give this a replay so I should get on with it. I hope I don't hate it now!

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Developer:

Double Fine

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Release Date:

2015

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Systems:

Win, OS X, Linux, Ouya, iOS, Android, PS4, PSVita

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This month on Super Adventures I'm playing Broken Age, formerly known as Double Fine Adventure back in its Kickstarter days.

Though this isn't one of them Kickstarter success stories like Giana Sisters, FTL, Pillars of Eternity and the rest, this is THE Kickstarter success story, the one that kickstarted all the others by proving that game developers could actually crowd-fund niche video game projects that publishers would never touch. In this case Tim Schafer wanted to make an old school point-and-click adventure game like the ones he worked on at LucasArts during the 90s.

They asked for $400,000 ($300,000 for the game, $100,000 for a documentary), which seemed like they were pushing their luck a little, but soon people were lining up to take a risk in the hopes of getting another Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle or Grim Fandango. They ended up raising a massive $3,336,371 in the end, which is clearly $3,038 too much. Except not really, as even after getting over 8 times the amount they wanted they still ran out of cash and had to split the game up into two parts, with their plan being to fund the second half with their earnings from the first half.

Broken Age: Act 1 came out in 2014 (just 2 years later than planned), but I've written 2015 up there as the release date because I'm playing the complete product here, with both acts welded together into one seamless whole. I remember that its second act wasn't all that well received, on account of it being bastard hard due to overcompensation after criticism of Act 1, but that's about where my knowledge of the game ends, so I'm not really sure what to expect from this. Though I'm hoping it's like a cross between Broken Sword and Dragon Age, or maybe Brain Age and... damn I can't think of another game with 'Broken' in the title.

By the way, the game supports widescreen just fine, but it's making me rescale the window manually by dragging the edges around and every time I start it up it resets to defaults, so I'm leaving the title screen how I found it to teach Double Fine a lesson. Also I think I like it better in 4:3 anyway, as there's more clouds.

(Click the screenshots to view them slightly bigger than they are here but not as big as they'd be for most players.)
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Developer:

Vic Tokai

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

Master System

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This week on Super Adventures I'm not even going to acknowledge the fact that I didn't post a new game last week. I'm just going to act as if I wasn't too busy/lazy to give you your weekly screenshots and move right on to talking about whatever this is.

Psycho Fox is basically what you get if you put Metal Gear Solid characters Psycho Mantis and Gray Fox into one of those teleporter pods from The Fly. But it's also a platformer released for the Master System during Sega's Alex Kidd era by Vic Tokai, creators of Clash at Demonhead and Magical Hat no Buttobi Tabo! Daiboken (aka. that DecapAttack game I played in 2011). In fact Wikipedia claims that DecapAttack is meant to be Psycho Fox's spiritual successor, which means I should have some idea what to expect. But I don't, because it's been six years since I played it.

I've only just turned this game on and already I have so many questions! Why is that monkey sticking a metal rod into Psycho Fox's ear? Is Psycho Fox related to Spy Fox? What's the 'F' supposed to be made out of? Why is the sun so bloody happy? Why magenta? Also this has to be the first time I've seen a fox that looks like he's about ready to fuck up a tiger. I'm getting a real Clockwork Orange vibe from these guys, like it's Psycho Fox and his Droogs.

Alright I'm going to give it an hour or so and see what it's like.

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Developer:

Stainless Games

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

PC, Mac, Android, iOS

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This week on Super Adventures you can look forward to several words on the subject of PlayStation-era vehicular carnage racing game Carmageddon! Or is that supposed to be CarmaGeddoN? The oversized letters are throwing me off.

It feels like it's been ages since I've had a racing game on the site. In fact looking back through the archives it seems like the last one was Super Mario Kart all the way back in 2013. I don't remember much about this besides what I can pull from my fuzzy memories of old magazines, but I expect it to be dissimilar.

I'm also expecting to be driving a red car with spikes running down the middle. Plus I'm sure this is the one with a picture of a bloke in the top left of the screen that makes faces when you run people over. Or run zombies over if you're playing the censored version with the green blood, which I'm hopefully not. I've had enough zombies lately thanks, no more zombies.

I'll be playing the Carmageddon Max Pack from GOG, all packaged up to run on modern PCs with nGlide pretending I've got a 3dfx card. So the graphics may potentially be a little prettier than they were back in the day, but I wouldn't bother clicking the screenshots for a better view because they'll all be 640x480 resolution or less.

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Developer:

Humongous Entertainment

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

Windows, Mac OS, Wii, iOS, Android, Linux

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm taking a look at a Junior Adventure about a fox who does intelligence work, designed for 5-10 year olds! Because it appeared as a gift in my Steam library one day, and I want to know if I should be grateful.

Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal" is apparently the first of three Spy Fox adventure games, and I've never played any of them at any age, so I have zero nostalgia for the series. I've managed to go my entire life so far in blissful ignorance of what any of Humongous Entertainment's games are like, but I am very slightly optimistic because I know that it's where Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert disappeared to for a while after Monkey Island 2.

The Steam download comes with ScummVM so that it runs on modern systems, but I don't know if they've given me the US or the UK version. I've read that there's a few small differences between the versions, the main one being that the game was redubbed with British accents! Spy Fox sounds like a suave English agent in the UK dub, but in the original game he's more like Don Adams from Get Smart. I've no idea why they did this, half the cartoons on British TV come from America and we'd been listening to Don Adams' voice come out of Inspector Gadget's mouth for years, but I guess they were concerned some references would fly over young kids' heads. They'd have never heard of Get Smart for one thing.

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Developer:

Namco Tales Studio

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Release Date:

2003 (Jp)

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Systems:

GameCube, PS2, PS3, Windows

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This week on Super Adventures I'm looking at this title screen wondering what 'Custom' does. Is that the 'Options' option maybe? Now I'm wondering if that other Tales game I played a while back did this as well; is it a Tales tradition, or are they rebelling against standard video game terminology for the sake of being weird?

I've only really played one of these games before, Tales of Destiny II on the PlayStation, so I went back and checked and it turns out that it has 'Customize' in place of 'options', so I see what they've done here. It also turns out that I played that six years ago now, so that explains why I've forgotten everything about how Tales games play. All I remember is that the trees looked very nice and by the look of this title screen that definitely is a Tales tradition.

Here's a fact that'll shock absolutely no one: Tales of Symphonia here is the 5th game in the long running Tales series, and yet it's the first to have been released in Europe! I'm surprised to learn that they've already reached game number 16 since then though. It's kind of hard to keep track of where they're up to as they don't usually put numbers on the games, and when they do you can't trust 'em. If you're curious, Tales of Destiny II is the 3rd game... and Tales of Destiny 2 is the 4th.

(Clicking pics will make them big.)
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Developer:

Ukiyotei

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Super Nintendo

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One thing I like about consoles like the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, is that they had seemingly infinite games released for them during the 90s. Sure its actually closer to a few thousand, but when you only play 50 something games a year, that may as well be infinite. Every time I think that I must be running out of interesting games to play, there's always something else in the library to check out.

Which is why I'll never be tempted to do a Chrontendo-style project of my own for the SNES, as that'd be one hell of a mountain to dig through.

Anyway, today's semi-buried SNES gem on Super Adventures is Star... Skyblazer. I keep wanting to call it 'Starblazer' and have to correct myself, because this isn't a black & white sci-fi anthology comic or the US adaptation of 'Space Battleship Yamato', it's the Western version of a Japanese game called Karuraou. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but a quick Google search tells me that Karura is an alternate Japanese spelling for 'Garuda', a Hindi god with the head and wings of an eagle. Garuda's also what the game's hero was called in Japan, until it was changed to 'Sky' for the Western release.

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Developer:

WB Games Montr�al

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Win, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U

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This week on Super Adventures, a game about punching people at Christmas!

It's been ages since I've played a Batman game, in fact I think the last one on the site was probably Return of the Joker for the NES, back in April 2015. Though it still seems too soon to play Batman: Arkham Origins, because of how similar it is to the other two. In my Batman: Arkham City article I joked that I'd be able to copy/paste parts of my Arkham Asylum post and save myself some work, and here that's doubly true! But it's a Christmas game and I feel like playing it again, so I am.

I love these beautiful tableaux of frozen Batviolence behind the menu by the way. Batman's so gritty in this one with his tactical Bat-armour and his permanent bad mood, that I keep expecting the camera to pan across blood and displaced teeth flying through the air.

This used to be the black sheep of the franchise, due to it not being developed by Rocksteady, and the bugs, and the fact that they prioritised releasing paid DLC instead of fixing them all, but I think Arkham Knight's claimed that position now (at least on PC). There's still a bit of an issue with the multiplayer, seeing as it was switched off forever earlier this month, but I didn't even know it had multiplayer, so that shows how much I care about that.

(Click on the images to view my original full size screenshots. DX11 mode, all settings on full... resolution at 1280x720).
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Developer:

Jaleco

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Release Date:

1990

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Systems:

Arcade, Amiga, Atari ST, CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum, NES, Game Boy, iOS

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This week on Super Adventures I'm taking a quick look at arcade action game Rod�Land! I'm tempted now to look up if there's some CSS trick I can use to display the title in color-cycling rainbow text. Though I'm not even sure if I've written it right, as sometimes it's called Rod Land and other times it's Rodland.

Rod�Land is one of the games I used to play as a kid on my Amiga, so I'm not exactly going into this blind. Though I used to cheat the hell out of it back then by pressing the 'Help' key five times and getting infinite lives; one of the few times that 'Help' button was ever helpful.

This is my first time playing through the arcade version though and I can already tell it's not quite the same. For one thing this title screen fanfare sounds terrible; it's all synth brass and clock chimes. Amiga wins this round.

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Developer:

Revolution

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Release Date:

1996

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Systems:

Windows, Mac, GBA, PSX

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. Not to be confused with Shadow of the Beast, Shadow of the Colossus, Shadows of the Empire, Shadow of Memories/Destiny or the Christian Slater/John Travolta movie 'Broken Arrow'. Wow, I haven't seen that film in forever, I should give it a rewatch some time.

In America the game was originally given a different subtitle: Circle of Blood. I guess shadows and Templars just didn't seem as marketable back then in those pre DaVinci Code/Assassin's Creed days. In 2009 it got another subtitle: Director's Cut, as the game was remade with extra content for PCs, phones and the Nintendo systems of the time.

This is Revolution Software's third adventure game, after Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky, but I've also written about In Cold Blood as I'm getting to them all out of order. Plus it's the second graphic adventure I've played this year about the Knights Templar, as I took a look at Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade back in January. There, I think I've just broke the record for the amount of games I've mentioned in an intro! I'll say Monkey Island as well just to make sure, seeing as it's inevitably going to get brought up at some point anyway.

Alright, I'm going to give Broken Sword an hour or two and take lots of screenshots, while writing up what I've been doing and what I thought about it. Same deal as ever.

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Developer:

Irem

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Release Date:

1993

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Systems:

Arcade, PlayStation, Saturn, PC

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing an arcade game, because I feel like showing off some pixels and I figured this'd be a good place to find them. Plus I haven't played a single arcade game for the site all year and I'm running out of time to make up for that.

My first criticism is that it needs more space between the words in the title. It looks like it says "INTHEHUNT", and that's not what it's called!

In the Hunt came out in arcades first in 1993 and was ported to PlayStation, Saturn and Windows 95 a couple of years later. It almost made it to Super Nintendo as well, but it was getting a bit close to the system's end by that point, and Irem's game development department departed soon after. The team that made this were apparently already gone by then though, as they formed Nazca in '94. I've already played one game they made as Irem, scrolling beat 'em up Undercover Cops, but they're more famous for what they made afterwards... Metal Slug! Which I'm totally going to play one of these days, maybe.

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Developer:

Rockstar North

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Release Date:

2008

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PS3

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This week on Super Adventures I'm having a quick go of acclaimed crime 'em up Grand Theft Auto IV. Though knowing what these games are like, I'll have to put 20 hours in before I really get how it works, maybe more! So I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for your entertainment.

Actually I've got a vague memory of playing this once before and not liking it much. I've beaten Vice City and San Andreas (and I came so damn close to finishing GTA 3) but I didn't get on with this one for whatever reason. Probably something to do with the combat; I've got another vague memory of arguing with someone about the shooting being the worst thing ever, while they tried to convince me that the driving physics were worse.

The game came out the same year as sandbox rival Saints Row 2 (which I really liked) and one difference between the games I've already noticed is that Volition know how numbers work. Rockstar on the other hand have given their sixth game the Roman numeral for 'four'. Well really it's the eleventh game on the Grand Theft Auto series, if you include the two GTA: London mission packs, the Stories games on PSP and Grand Theft Auto Advance, but I'm happy enough to consider them outside the main series.

Unlike its predecessors GTA IV has multiplayer, which I'm not going to even try. I'm not going to use iCEnhancer to prettify it either; this is pure, straight out of the box, vanilla single player GTA.

(Screenshots can be clicked to view them in their original resolution, but I'm warning you now it's not great.)

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