Frothing Demand

Rabid commentary on video games, movies and television.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Terminator (Mega Drive, 1992)

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned something about developing some other skills to compliment my writing, along with producing more original content for this blog. Of course I did absolutely nothing about it until today when I captured and pieced together this video of me playing through The Terminator on the Mega Drive.

The game came out in 1992, well after the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, let alone the original film. It actually looks pretty good, but there’s not a whole lot to it. This playthrough is on the Easy mode – on all other difficulties there is a fight with a mini-boss (kind of like the T-1 from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) before you can get the machine gun. It’s not my best run through the game either – you can see a few moments of hesitation and I take way too many hits.

Dave Perry was the game’s lead programmer – before he went on to become a hotshot with Disney’s Aladdin and set up shop at Shiny and then fail miserably on Enter The Matrix despite years of awesome games like Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah and Sacrifice. Also interesting is that the producer is Neil Young, who’d later set up the Medal of Honor series at EA before becoming an iPhone magnate at ngmoco.

I’ll probably add a commentary track to the video and do this sort of thing more often (even thought about putting it up in the Let’s Play board on Something Awful). Challenges in producing this sort of thing are time – capturing, editing and recompression take ages, uploading to YouTube takes even longer. This is a game I know inside out, and it’s really short, so I thought it would be a good one to start out on. In future, I might produce something more elaborate.

posted by Matthew Keller at 7:39 pm  

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Quick Capsule Reviews

Sometimes the best review is a quick one. My bank account doesn’t necessarily agree, but sometimes you can tell someone all they need to know in 50 words or less. I figured I’d do that here and slap on a traffic light styled rating system for those people with even shorter attention spans and ratings fetishes.

Shadow Complex
Everyman stumbles upon extremist plot to take over USA while looking for kidnapped girlfriend in action/adventure inspired heavily by Super Metroid et al. What it lacks in gameplay originality is made up for by its sheer quality.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
Deplorable tie-in to a not-so-bad summer action film feels like it was rushed together in record time. Very basic gameplay structure, difficulty is absent, and variety is minimal. Plays like a bad Contra game.

Ashes Cricket 2009
Latest Codemasters cricket title features a very in-depth bowling system, which came at the expense of the rest of the game’s quality. Far too many glitches than acceptable in a retail product, poor presentation and too easy to master.

Madden NFL 10
EA’s latest American Football effort still feels inferior to their 2005 game on last gen hardware. Some nice new presentation features, but everything feels shakey and disjointed; only die-hard fans will be able to detect and appreciate any changes.

Trials HD
Don’t let the dirt bike fool you – Trials HD is a devious, spectular and addictive physics based puzzle game. Starts out easy and gets crazy hard but never becomes exceedingly frustrating. Level editor and excellent leaderboard implementation will make it go further if you’ve got a few friends.

posted by Matthew Keller at 8:30 am  

Friday, August 21, 2009

An Amnesty

Too many games are released with the subtitles Heroes, Origins and Legends. I propose that we outlaw these subtitles. To appease the poor sods in marketing who rely on these titles, I suggest consulting a thesaurus.

How about an example. Instead of Origins, why not use Genesis, Alpha or Emergence? They convey the same thing, but sound cooler, and haven’t been run into the ground.

posted by Matthew Keller at 9:07 am  

Friday, August 21, 2009

Work Update – 21/08/09

Decided to do things differently and perhaps produce some original content/commentary for the blog, so the work updates are going to be separate.

Reviews
Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) at Games on Net
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Wii Sports Resort (Wii) at Games On Net
Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii) at Games On Net
The Conduit (Wii) at Games On Net
‘Splosion Man (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net
TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net

Features
The Warp Pipe – More Absent-minded Pondering at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – A Wrong Turn at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Where’s The Hype? at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – 64-bit Game, Two-Bit Movie at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Even More Random Video Game Facts at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Gaming Book Club (EA 25th Anniversary/Book of Games) at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 08/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 15/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 22/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 29/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 05/08/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 12/08/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 19/08/2009 at Games On Net

posted by Matthew Keller at 8:35 am  

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