Ho ho ho - Merry Christmas. Not that merry for me this year, unfortunately, as I've had tonsillitis since Christmas Eve (I did, with the help of lots of painkillers, manage to eat my own weight in Christmas dinner though).
Game-wise, this year I received the excellent Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (nothing says 'Christmas' more to me than assassination*) on 360 from my wife and a book, 1001 Videogames you must play before you die from my daughter (a handy reminder of my own mortality from my first-born).
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood uses the same characters and setting (albeit mainly set in Rome this time) as Assassin's Creed II - sort of an Assassin's Creed 2.5. There is enough new content and new activities (mainly related to killing people, admittedly) in the new game to make it an essential purchase for fans of the previous game (my Game of the Year in 2009).
1001 videogames... is a slab-like (960 pages) trawl through seminal (and some less so) videogames from the 1970s up to Heavy Rain in early 2010. With any book like this (whether it be videogames, films, footballers etc), I usually try to catch it out with games that I think *should* have been included (the answer to which would be, of course, 'write your own bloody book then') but so far I've only thought of 3D Ant Attack on Spectrum (first isometric-perspective adventure game) and Vandal Hearts on PS1 (niche strategy RPG from Konami), both of which are quite obscure. It is a great read and I highly recommend it to everyone with an interest in the history and progression of videogames.
* this is literally, if oddly, true - I received both Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II as Christmas presents over the last few years.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Saboteur (ZX Spectrum) iPhone review
8-bit gaming house Elite Systems was a big hitter back in the mid-late eighties, bringing out a number of great titles. I particularly remember its arcade conversion of Capcom classic, Commando and its flick-screen licensed 'Airwolf' game, both of which were favourites of mine. Surprisingly, given most of those old companies having gone bust or been acquired by other, bigger, companies over the years (Infogrames - now Atari - taking over Gremlin Graphics and Ocean in the nineties, for example) the company is still around and has brought a number of classic (and, to be fair, some filler) ZX Spectrum titles to iPhone.
Initially, ZX Spectrum Elite Collection Volume 1 brought 6 titles to the Apple platform but there has since been an update (the originally-titled Volume 2) doubling the total. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a further release (as in-App 59p purchases) of four new volumes, two of Gremlin Graphics games (including the Monty Mole games) and one each for Software Projects (including Manic Miner) and Vortex (including one of my top 5 favourite Spectrum games, Highway Encounter).
Despite the name, not all the games in the two initial volumes were originally Elite titles - a few, including the one I'm going to concentrate on, Saboteur, were originally published by Durell. Durell is still in business too but it pulled out of the games market in the late eighties, to concentrate on writing software for insurance companies, presumably on the basis that loss adjustment spreadsheet titles aren't going to be copied on C90 tapes and passed around school playgrounds. Elite bought the rights to its back catalogue at that time, a purchase that continues to bear dividends now that technology and nostalgia have combined in the form of emulators.
Saboteur is a flick-screen proto-stealth game, with the protagonist an early version of a Sam Fisher type agentWithin a time limit, you have to infiltrate a base, collect a floppy disk (well, it was programmed in the eighties) - at which point the timer thankfully stops - and then escape in a handily-placed helicopter (optionally, you can also blow up the base if you find a carelessly-placed bomb). The base is populated with guards, guard dogs and automatic gun emplacements, of varying degrees of intelligence. There are 9 difficulty levels, adding some longevity to a game that can be completed reasonably quickly (on the lower difficulty levels anyway). And that's pretty much it.
Unlike many 8-bit games, the basic theme of Saboteur is similar to that of modern games - it could be Solid Snake infiltrating this base (though, thankfully, Saboteur doesn't feature a 15-minute cut scene after you successfully do so). The game was considered a technical achievement at the time, with intelligent use of the Spectrum's limited palette and featuring a large, detailed (for the time) central character. When it came out, it was the first game that I had played where the main character had a regenerating health bar, that allowed you to cower in a corner after being savaged by a particularly persistent dog (as the time limit ticked mercilessly down).
The muted use of colour (well, it is night-time) is another reason why Saboteur doesn't seem hopelessly ancient today. Some of the games in the collections - Kokotoni Wilf, say - look like garish explosions in a paint factory (albeit a factory that only makes 8 different colours of paint). Saboteur's extensive use of black, together with only two or three colours at a time, means the on-screen action is subdued and consequently less jarring to eyes spoilt by thirty years of progression in graphical techniques.
The game can either be played in portrait mode, with the action shown in the top half and control 'keys' on the bottom, or landscape, with the whole screen used for play and controls superimposed over that. I played the game on iPad, as I do most iPhone games and went with the divided screen option, which worked fine. The conversion is a faithful and well-realised one and either control method works well (or as well as the original at any rate).
With any emulated game, I think it is difficult to divorce the playing experience from the nostalgia buzz and Saboteur is no different. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it again but would that have been the case if I'd been twenty (thirty!) years younger and playing it for the first time? Would some of the gameplay now be too grating (only being able to carry one item at a time for example) if I'd been brought up on Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell? Probably I think it would but if you have fond memories of Saboteur and the other games available, the best of them - a category within which I would include Saboteur - can certainly still provide enjoyment.
Initially, ZX Spectrum Elite Collection Volume 1 brought 6 titles to the Apple platform but there has since been an update (the originally-titled Volume 2) doubling the total. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a further release (as in-App 59p purchases) of four new volumes, two of Gremlin Graphics games (including the Monty Mole games) and one each for Software Projects (including Manic Miner) and Vortex (including one of my top 5 favourite Spectrum games, Highway Encounter).
Just like a shelf in WH Smiths in 1985
You'd think they'd station a guard on this jetty
Unlike many 8-bit games, the basic theme of Saboteur is similar to that of modern games - it could be Solid Snake infiltrating this base (though, thankfully, Saboteur doesn't feature a 15-minute cut scene after you successfully do so). The game was considered a technical achievement at the time, with intelligent use of the Spectrum's limited palette and featuring a large, detailed (for the time) central character. When it came out, it was the first game that I had played where the main character had a regenerating health bar, that allowed you to cower in a corner after being savaged by a particularly persistent dog (as the time limit ticked mercilessly down).
The strange 'Man at C&A' stance, is the default standing posture
The game can either be played in portrait mode, with the action shown in the top half and control 'keys' on the bottom, or landscape, with the whole screen used for play and controls superimposed over that. I played the game on iPad, as I do most iPhone games and went with the divided screen option, which worked fine. The conversion is a faithful and well-realised one and either control method works well (or as well as the original at any rate).
With any emulated game, I think it is difficult to divorce the playing experience from the nostalgia buzz and Saboteur is no different. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it again but would that have been the case if I'd been twenty (thirty!) years younger and playing it for the first time? Would some of the gameplay now be too grating (only being able to carry one item at a time for example) if I'd been brought up on Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell? Probably I think it would but if you have fond memories of Saboteur and the other games available, the best of them - a category within which I would include Saboteur - can certainly still provide enjoyment.
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